Are great leaders born or made? I think it is likely some of both. Great leaders are gifted with certain personality traits and develop important skills through failure and perseverance. People do not become great leaders by winning every game or closing every deal. Those who win most of their games and close most of the deals will likely tell you they have learned more about leadership by losing than by winning. Accepting loss and disappointment as a valuable teacher is indispensable to the wisdom they bring to their leadership role.
Moses was a great leader, considered by many to be the greatest in all the Old Testament. Our journey through the book of Exodus will give proof of why that is the case. But this was not evident until, at age eighty, God commissioned him to lead the Israelites out of Egyptian bondage.
You may have noticed, as I did, how the second chapter of Exodus has a couple of forty-year time gaps where we know almost nothing about what was happening in Moses’ life. The first gap comes between Exodus 2:10, where Pharaoh’s daughter names him Moses, and Exodus 2:11, where he has grown up and kills the Egyptian who was beating a fellow Hebrew. Stephen’s testimony in Acts 7 provides some insight into these forty years.
Exodus 2:15 tells us that after killing the Egyptian, Moses feared for his life and escaped to the land of Midian. During the next forty years, Moses married, had two sons, and became a shepherd, tending the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro. Also, during these forty years, the evil pharaoh died, and the Israelites pleaded with God for help. The next time we see Moses, he is eighty years old and in the wilderness taking care of sheep.
“Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God.” Exodus 3:1
We will explore Moses’s life-changing experience with God in future posts, but for now, consider the following question with me: How did forty years of shepherding contribute to making Moses a great leader?
In researching this subject, I’ve discovered the following as a starting point to answering this question. ” Moses was a somebody for forty years, and then he became a nobody for forty years, and then learned what God could do with a nobody for forty years.”
Moses thought he was somebody.
Moses was the adopted son of the Pharaoh’s daughter, growing up in the king’s house. Acts 7:22 tells us the great advantages this provided him, “Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in speech and action.” 1
What a striking young man he must have been! He was educated, well-dressed, physically powerful, and ambitious. He was presumptuous and proud, also. Acts 7:25 tells us that he assumed that his fellow Hebrews would understand that his killing of the Egyptian meant he was going to be their deliverer. “Moses thought that his own people would realize that God was using him to rescue them, but they did not.”
Moses’s oversized ego, presumption, and pride led him to murder an Egyptian, resulting in the necessity to get out of Egypt to save his life.
God had gifted Moses many of the traits needed for the task to which He would later commission him, but Moses’s pride led him to rely on his abilities and charisma to do what God alone can do.
“Pride goes before the fall.” There is a big difference between “playing God” and being the instrument through which God works. This is a lesson Moses will learn in the wilderness, an important reminder for all of us. Moses must become a “nobody” before God will do great things through him.
God made Moses into a nobody He could use.
Think about this: in one presumptuous act, Moses lost his position of influence in Egypt and was relegated to the lowly work of shepherding. In his day, Egyptians considered shepherds a lower class of humanity. He went from palace food to common meals, from sleeping in a comfortable bed to sleeping under the stars, and from associating with the upper class of Egyptian society to keeping company with common, working-class people.
God spent forty years removing pride from Moses. The lonely days and nights in the wilderness exposed him to the harsh elements of nature, building a rugged endurance in him. Quiet nights by the campfire gave him time to appreciate the vast expanse of heaven above and to see himself as a small, ignorant, and insignificant part of God’s creation.
As the great story of Exodus tells us, when Moses was ready to lead the Israelites, God heard their cries for deliverance and went to meet Moses in the wilderness where he had been working for forty years. His sense of self-sufficiency and pride are gone. He knows his place and is ready for God to make him a great leader.
- Follow this link for more on how Moses became a great leader. https://focusmagazine.org/preparing-a-leader-moses-exodus-1-4.php