A Tail of Surrender

No, there hasn’t been a spelling mistake in the title. This is a true story (tale) about a tail and how significant it was in proving not only complete and utter obedience to God but showed that this man was now finally ready to fulfil his calling and destiny.

The man, of course, is Moses. If you read not only the account of his birth and early days in Exodus but also as retold by Stephen in Acts 7 and by what the writer of Hebrews in chapter eleven says, you will see the following.

His family recognised that he was no ordinary child, there was something special about him. Despite the edict by the King of Egypt that all male Hebrew babies were to be thrown into the Nile to die, his family hid Moses for three months but after they couldn’t hide him any longer, they placed him in a papyrus basket and put him into the river where he was eventually seen and rescued by Pharos daughter. It’s an amazing story, considering also that his mother ended up being employed by Pharos daughter to nurse the young Moses.

There Moses grew up in Pharos household and what a position to be in! He had an incredible education and lived in the royal palace of the very person who was enslaving and persecuting the Hebrews living in Egypt. Moses knew who he was as we can presume his mother would have told him. Also, he may very well have been aware of how the scriptures had said that his people would be slaves for a period of four hundred years. He would have put all these things together and come to the conclusion that he was the man at the right time and place. He had a very real sense of God’s calling and destiny for his life. His undoing was that he didn’t wait for God’s timing and went not only on presumption but on the basis of probably quite understandable self-confidence and tried to instigate things in his own strength, killing an Egyptian in the process. He was rejected by his own people and had to flee because of the murder he had committed.

Moses then had to spend forty years in the wilderness where God used this time to strip him of his pride and self confidence and this was a time of preparation to get him ready to ultimately fulfil his purpose and destiny but in God’s way and God’s strength not his own.

It’s very interesting that Moses saw the burning bush (which wouldn’t have been an uncommon site given the heat and arid desert) and after noticing that it wasn’t consumed but kept burning, he went to take a look to see this strange sight. It would seem that the Lord often uses this method to get our attention. Remember how Jesus had told the disciples to go, by boat, to the other side of the lake by themselves at night. Shortly before dawn Jesus went out to meet them, walking on the water, and was about to pass them by until they cried out to him. And on another occasion, on the road to Emmaus, he was talking to two men and as they approached their destination, Jesus made out that he was going on ahead to continue his journey alone but the two men urged him to stay with them. So, I think that we can conclude that the Lord was hoping that Moses would respond to this nudging towards Him.

When the Lord gave Moses the news that now was the time for him to be used to deliver his people from the oppression of the Egyptians, he was a completely different man than the one who had fled forty years ago. He wasn’t so self-confident.

In chapter 4 of Exodus, we read how God uses the staff of Moses to perform signs and miracles. Firstly, I think it is hugely significant that God tells Moses to throw his staff to the ground. That staff wasn’t just any old stick. In his wilderness time, Moses had become a shepherd and that staff was the tool of his trade so to speak, it would have been hand chosen and carefully crafted. He would use his staff to protect the sheep by fighting off predators. He could also use the staff to help them if they had fallen or got caught in a bush. Moses would also use that stick to help him climb and maybe also walk. In many ways, it represented his livelihood that God was asking him to lay down. This was the penultimate final test (after the years in the wilderness). The final part of the test was to come next and is also the whole point to the title of this piece, “A Tail of Surrender).

Ater Moses had thrown his staff to the ground, it turned into a snake! Moses was so scared that he fled! Now, what happens next is huge! God tells Moses to pick the serpent up by the tail. Now, anyone who knows anything about snakes knows that you don’t pick them up by the tail – by doing this, you are highly likely to get bitten. By the fact that Moses fled, he probably saw that this was a venomous snake that could kill him. The correct way to grab a snake like this would be to pick it behind the back of its head. By doing what God has said, Moses was not only being completely obedient but was now at the point where he was willing to die in the process of doing what God had told him to do. That is a hugely significant moment for Moses and by doing this, I believe he passed the test with flying colours! The ordinary staff of Moses then became the rod of God. It was used to perform miracles before the Egyptians, used to part the Red Sea and even struck a rock and produced water!

How can we apply this to our lives? Well, for one, we are told that we are to be living sacrifices (Romans 12:1). We need to be willing to lay down our lives for the Lord (because of his great mercy towards us. Secondly, and I’ve been thinking a lot about faith recently, and we read this in Galatians 2:20, and need to follow the example of Paul:

“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

Moses was willing to take that snake by the tail, even if it meant death, because God had told him to do it. He demonstrated that he was fully surrendered and ready to be used by God.