Who Am I - Send Someone Else!

Exodus 4

Please Lord, send someone else!  Now that's a prayer I can relate to.  Been there, prayed that. I've stomped my feet, threw temper tantrums, even shook my fist at God, begged him. Please, please! Don't send me.  But, I learned that if you hear him calling to you in order to send you out someplace, to someone, you may as well listen the first time, because he will, in all likelihood, keep on calling and in the end you will go.  May as well quit wasting your time and do what he asks. If you are being sent, you can be assured that God knows what he is doing.  All the excuses you can come up with are worthless.  He wouldn't send you if he hadn't already or had a plan on how to prepare you to go.  Remember, it is not the elequent in speech, not the nobles, it is not the rich or famous; it is not the first that God sends, but the ones who are the last or least in the eyes of the world. 

And so the least, Moses with his dual heritage, born a Hebrew but known as an Egyptian, an exile himself, a man without a people, is sent to lead Israel, God's "firstborn son" out of bondage in Egypt.  Even as I wondered through the stories of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, I cannot help but continue to wonder why God has so often blessed the second, called and sent the last or the least to lead the first. What does God mean "my first-born son"?  If Israel is first, who is second?   I wonder about the relationship between this first born Israel and those who have been adopted later into God's family through the blood of Christ.  What does all this means?  So, I leave you this morning to ponder about the relationship between the "first born" and "second born" sons and God. 

May God help you to more fully understand what it means "That you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy." 1 Peter 2:9-10 (NIV)

You are a chosen people, called and sent with a message for all people that they might be free from the bondage of sin, empowered by the Spirit of Christ to be children of God.