“Inadequacy, The Moses Complex”
Exodus 3:11,13, 4:1-17
Rev. John Dilworth
June 28, 2015
Introduction: Have you ever felt inadequate? I mean, have you ever felt like you weren’t up to
the task or problem or challenge you faced? Ever felt like you just weren’t good enough? You
are not alone. Inadequacy is a huge emotional problem that most of us struggle with at some
point in our life. It is the focus of many cartoons.
There is a man lying down in his psychiatrist’s office. He looks depressed and so his
therapist tries to comfort him with the words, “These feelings of inadequacy you have are
common among the inadequate.” That is the kind of therapy that just doesn’t help. This is how
many feel, though, they feel they are deficient in managing life.
Now the king of all inadequate characters is Charlie Brown. Charles Shultz made a mint
off of portraying his main Peanuts gang member being totally inept at life. Charlie was the
epitome of inadequacy, nothing ever went right for him, and it made all the rest of us feel better
about ourselves. One night, Charlie is sitting in bed. He says, “Sometimes I lay awake at night
and I ask, ‘Where did I go wrong?’ Then a voice says to me, ‘This is going to take more than
one night.’”
Or, you know his infatuation with the little red haired girl. One day, he is pondering her
and says, “That little red haired girl has lots of friends. I don’t have any. They say that opposites
attract. She’s really something and I’m really nothing. How more opposite can you get?”
You get the point? We are all like Charlie sometimes. We think ‘something is wrong
with me’, or, ‘I am not good enough’, or we get into that comparison game and we come up
short. We’re not attractive enough, skilled enough, successful enough, smart enough, and on and
on. We struggle with feelings that we are just not up to the task, the challenge, the stuff life
throws at us. If you feel any of this, you are not alone. Feelings of inadequacy are epidemic
among us. Our media-driven society lifts up people that are successful, or beautiful, or brilliant,
or eloquent. It can leave the rest of us feeling rather pathetic, boring and inadequate. These
unrealistic images of who we should be, or could be, keep therapists in business. Except the one
who said, “These feelings of inadequacy are common among the inadequate.” He is out of
clients.
What I find encouraging in all this inadequacy discussion is that God loves those who feel
inadequate. In fact, God uses them. One of the major characters in the history of Israel, who
towers over the whole Old Testament, is a man who had a deep inadequacy complex. There was
no one who epitomizes inadequacy more than Moses. It is almost humorous as we see his life,
and call by God, unfold. This morning, let’s learn about how to deal with inadequacy from the
true king of inadequacy, the man Moses.
Moses, Man of Humility
Remember where we left Moses last week? He was on the far side of the mountain of
God, Mt. Horeb. He was shepherding his flock of sheep and goats, which he had done for close
to 40 years. He was going nowhere fast. From a prince in Egypt to a nobody in the desert of
Sinai. Then, all of a sudden, everything changes. He sees a bush burning that doesn’t burn up. It
just keeps shooting up flames. He goes over to see this strange sight. Then it is that God
intervenes in Moses’ life and speaks to him out of the burning bush.
Last week, we saw how God revealed his heart to Moses, telling him how much he felt
the pain of his people suffering under slavery in Egypt. Then God told Moses he was sending
him to confront Pharaoh and lead the people out of that oppression. Right from the get go,
Moses begins to raise questions, objections. For instance, when God says he is sending Moses
back to deliver his people, Moses responds, “Who...Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh to
bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” In response, God promises his presence, saying, “I will go
with you.”
This is not enough. Moses then raises a second question. I call it the suppose objection.
“Suppose I go to the Israelites and tell them the God of your Fathers has sent me to you and they
say, ‘Ah right...What is his name, this God who sent you?’” Remember at this moment, God
revealed to Moses his name, Yahweh, “I am who I am. Tell them I Am sent you.” This is a
profound revelation because it says, “I am the God who is always present with you.”
Then the Lord tells Moses, in detail, what he is to say and do, and what he, God, is going
to do when Pharaoh balks. This brings us to question number 3, the disbelief objection. Moses
says, “What if they don’t believe me or listen to me and say, ‘The Lord did not appear to you?’”
Then what?
What you see developing here is Moses is back peddling. He is trying to argue his way
out of this terrifying call. The last thing Moses wants to do is go back to Egypt. Remember,
when he left, Pharaoh had put a contract out on his life. He wanted him dead. Moses isn’t
interested in confronting Pharaoh. He is looking for a way out, but God has chosen. Moses is
his man.
In response to Moses doubts that they will believe him, God provides miracles for Moses
to do to prove the Lord has sent him. The Lord makes his staff become a snake, his hand become
leprous, and then the water from the Nile poured out, become blood. God is removing all the
excuses Moses is coming up with. But Moses is not done.
Even after being given all these miracles, Moses is not convinced. He doesn’t want to go.
He raises question #4, or objection #4. He says, “O Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in
the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue.” Here is
where we begin to see the deep inadequacy feelings emerge. Moses looks at himself and he feels
he is not up to the task. He lacks the skills, the ability, and the confidence, to do what God is
calling him to do.
Many of us public speakers can relate to this. We go through times we feel totally
inadequate. You know my story, how I just hated getting up in front of people and speaking
when I was younger. I could never imagine doing this for a career. Recently, I ran across a
revelation about one of my favorite professors in seminary. He was actually one of my favorite
preachers because he would often speak in the weekly chapel.
His name was Lewis Smedes. He had a tragic childhood. His father died when he was an
infant. His mother was left on her own to raise 5 children, Lewis being the youngest. It deeply
affected him because he grew up without the confidence and self-assurance that we need in life.
Smedes went into the ministry, but then he felt this deep inadequacy and quit preaching. He felt
he wasn’t up to the task. Then God came to him in an experience of solitude and spoke to him.
He told Smedes he would lift him up. Then, literally, Lewis Smedes felt God lift him out of this
black pit straight up into his joy. He said he never felt that dark deficiency again.
God never calls us to a task, or work, or mission (even the Alaska mission), that he does
not provide the strength and help and ability to do it. As Corrie ten Boom used to say, “It is not
my ability, but my response to God’s ability, that counts.”
That is what Moses would learn, but we have one last question, or I would say,
declaration, from the king of inadequacy. The Lord assures Moses he can do what he is calling
him to do because, “Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him
sight or makes him blind. Is it not I, the Lord? Now go; I will help you speak and teach you
what you are to say.”
Moses responds, or, I would say, pleads, “O Lord, please send someone else to do it.”
Moses suffers from a profound sense of inadequacy. Or does he? There is another word for
inadequacy, isn’t there. Do you know what it is?
Humility. Humility is that feeling we are not able, not good enough, not the right person
for the task. That is what Moses felt. He felt he was not up to the call that God was giving him.
Listen, this was a great moment. This is a moment we all need in our lives before the Lord. We
need to feel, within us, that we do not have what it takes to fulfill the call that our Lord Jesus has
laid upon us. This was a moment of utter humility. And Moses’ humility, seen in his deep
reluctance to answer God’s call to lead his people, is what made him the very best candidate. It
is why God chose Moses. In Moses, God had one who would utterly, humbly, trust him.
There is something so appealing about the reluctant leader. The person who is clamoring
to be the leader, is one we often are suspicious of. Think of all the Presidential candidates there
are now. We are over a year away from the elections and yet the candidates on both sides are all
clamoring for media attention and money to run.
Did you know that in the history of our nation, we have had just one President who never
ran for the office? He became Vice President when the one holding the office was forced out by
scandal, Spiro Agnew. He became President with the humiliating fall of then President Nixon.
Gerald Ford, never elected, was catapulted into the Presidency at a time of national trauma. We
had just lost the war in Vietnam and the Watergate scandal dominated our national stage. Yet, at
his memorial service in 2006, every single speaker, every one gave tribute to Gerald Ford for
being the right person at that moment to be President. Why? Because of his character and
humility. Humility was mentioned by every single speaker.
Did you realize only two people in the Bible were characterized as humble?. One was
Jesus and the other was Moses. Of Moses, it was said, “Now Moses was a very humble man,
more humble than anyone on the face of the earth.” Can you imagine that? Perhaps the greatest
leader in the Bible, who led the entire nation of Israel out of Egypt, yet Moses’ chief
characteristic, was humility. He was the inadequate, reluctant leader.
The truth is, most of us do not choose to be leaders. Life simply thrusts us into positions
of leadership. When we become parents, we become leaders. When we are given a supervisory
role in our company or office, we are suddenly seen as a leader. If we become a teacher or a
doctor or coach or grandparent or youth, going on a mission to Alaska, we suddenly are in a
position of influence and leadership. What is the fundamental quality we need as a leader?
According to the Bible, it is not decisiveness or charisma or eloquence or even an advance
degree. It is humility- that capacity to utterly rely on the God, who called us and placed us where
we are.
Moses, Man of Prayer
Moses’ humility expressed itself in an obvious, but hidden way. He became a man of
prayer. What is so telling to me is that, despite God’s anger with Moses over wanting him to
send someone else, the Lord did not give up on Moses. He simply provided someone to help
him, his brother Aaron. Why did God persevere with Moses? Why didn’t he give up on him?
Because he saw what Moses would become. He saw Moses would become a man of prayer who
would utterly rely on him. Remember that. God does not see us for who we are today, but he
sees who we will one day become.
Moses’ story is truly remarkable because he does relent, and he returns to Egypt with his
brother Aaron. Then, as we will see, after God convinces Pharaoh to let his people go, via the
plagues, Moses leads some 1.5 to 2 million people, scholars estimate, out of Egypt, through the
Sinai desert and wilderness, for 40 years. Can you imagine? What an impossible task.
The humor of it is that the only training Moses had was as a shepherd, what he had
been doing for the last 40 years. It turned out that is not bad training ground. People are like
sheep. They are always wandering off into trouble. From the moment Moses led this mighty
nation out from under Egyptian oppression, he had nothing but trouble. The Israelites, God’s
chosen people, were constantly wandering away from God, rebelling against Moses, complaining
of conditions.
How did Moses handle this unruly flock? I don’t know if you realize this, but as soon as
Moses got out into the desert with the people, he did something no leader had ever done before,
or perhaps, since. He created a place to pray. He called it the Tent of Meeting. He pitched a tent
outside the camp and Moses would go out there and meet with God and pray. When he did, a
cloud would come down and stay at the entrance. Then, we are told, the Lord would speak to
Moses, “as a man speaks with his friend.”
Moses learned to pray and listen and the Lord carried him through all those years of
leading his people to the Promised Land. Great leaders lead from their knees. Great leaders lead
from their knees. That is why I love the image on our bulletin cover. That is Moses, a humble
man of prayer. He learned to utterly rely on the Lord.
A boy and his father were walking through the woods together. They came across a large
log, blocking their path. The boy turned to his father and said, “Do you think I can lift this log,
Dad?” The father replied, “If you use all your strength, absolutely you can.” The boy rolled up
his sleeves, bent his knees, and got his hands under the log. He locked his arms and heaved with
every ounce of strength he had. But the log wouldn’t budge. He tried over and over again until
at last, exhausted and breathless, he gave up.
He looked at his dad with disappointment and frustration and said, “You told me I could
lift it!” His dad smiled and said gently, “I told you you could lift it if you used all your strength.
You didn’t ask me for help.”
So the boy asked his dad to help him and together, they lifted the log out of their path.
Listen. Our strength isn’t in us alone, but also in the Lord, who is with us, by our side,
offering to help. We can’t do life alone. We are inadequate, we need Jesus and we need other
people of faith. We need the Aaron’s the Lord provides. This is what Moses learned. He
learned to utterly rely on the Lord who was with him and, then, even Pharaoh, the most powerful
man in the world at that time, was not too big for Moses to confront and overcome.
When you feel unequal to the task in front of you, perhaps it is simply because you aren’t
using all your strength. With the Lord, you can move any log in your life.
Let me end with my professor, Lewis Smedes. I mentioned that he was born the 5th child
to his mother, Rena. Rena and her husband had just emigrated from the Netherlands to the US.
Smedes’ dad was building a house for them in Muskegon, Michigan. He had a heart attack and
died before he could complete it and left Rena alone, 30 years old, with 5 children, in a strange
new country, without any source of income. Lewis was just 2 months old. His mother went to
work. Rena began to clean people’s houses. She did this the whole time Lewis was growing up.
He remembers his mother, on her knees, cleaning. But then, he has another memory of his
mother, seared into his soul. Every night, Rena Smedes would kneel down in her kitchen and ask
the Lord for strength to lead and care for her family one more day. Every night,. Rena led from
her knees. She was a humble woman of prayer, just like Moses.
Lewis was with her shortly before she died. She confessed to him, “Lewis, I’m so glad
the Lord forgives me all of my sins; I’ve been a great sinner.” Lewis writes, “Great sinner!.
When did she have time to do any great sinning?..It saddens me that such a triumph of a woman
should have to die feeling like a wretch.” But she wasn’t feeling like a wretch. She was feeling
the grace of humility. She had lived her life utterly humble, utterly relying on the Lord who was
with her, all those years, just like Moses. She led from her knees.
One day, Rena is going to learn she did triumph, just like Moses. Because of her
leadership, her last son, Lewis, went on to become a professor and best-selling Christian author.
His book, “Forgive and Forget”, sold a half-million copies. He influenced hundreds of thousands
of people, including a young couple who sat in his classes named John and Sylvia. I am grateful
for Rena’s humble prayers. Remember, we lead from our knees. That’s what Moses did and it is
what we must do.