DISCIPLINE IN THE CASE OF MOSES

^[p. 181] DISCIPLINE IN THE CASE OF MOSES

Moses is an interesting case. It took forty years to break him down, though at the start he made a very great sacrifice for the Lord. He was brought up as Pharaoh’s son, but he chose “rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season”. (Hebrews 11: 25) You might say, That man will get no discipline; he does not want it. But no; he thinks he can do the work of the Lord in a human way, and he must get forty years of discipline in the wilderness, and after that he is quite timid about himself, too timid indeed to speak. Now the Lord starts him as His servant, and another kind of discipline comes in; for he is disciplined for a servant and as a servant; the discipline is in the service to fit him for the service; and it continues all through his course; his own family find fault with him; the people murmur against him; one thing after another until at last he dies on mount Pisgah, and does not go into the land at all.