(From Holiness in Fresh Perspective: Covenant, Cross, and Kingdom. Wipf and Stock, expected 2014)
Faith was the subject matter in the patriarchal stories, and here, once again, in the story of the Exodus and desert wanderings, we have faith as the focus; not only faith, but faithfulness. This is true even of Moses, the deliverer and covenant-maker. Moses, like Abraham, at the start of his story depends on his own facility to rescue his own people (with Abraham this is exemplified in the story of Hagar and Ishmael). Do you remember the story of Moses killing the Egyptian in defense of his people? Moses fails miserably. Moses ends up fleeing from Egypt and wandering in the desert as a shepherd with no homeland. One would think that Moses would have been more effective as a deliverer when he sat on the royal throne of Egypt. This is not the case. It is when Moses gets off his throne and ends up wandering in the desert as a shepherd that he becomes useful to God. It is once Moses gets out of the way that God does the true redeeming work.
When God initially calls Moses, he has little faith. Just like in the story of his killing the Egyptian in defense of the Israelite slave, Moses is thinking entirely about himself. “But behold, they will not believe me, or listen to my voice . . .” (Ex 4:1). For Moses to be an agent of redemption in God’s plan, just like Abraham, he had to get his mind off of himself and on God—he had to have faith. This is holiness.
