The Fugitive

The Life of Moses – Act 1, Scene 5:
Exodus 2:11-25
Rev. Clark Lynn Callender, 5/16/10

Lefkos Hajji is a man in love. Two years ago he decided to pop the question of marriage to his girlfriend in a way she would never forget.
Well, let’s just say: She hasn’t.
According to an article in Reuters, Lefkos – a flooring contractor from Hackney, East London, England – thought he had everything right when he decided to spend $12,000 dollars on a beautiful engagement ring for his girlfriend, Leanne.
He had the place he planned to propose all picked out with their families surrounding them. He even came up with the unique idea of getting a dozen balloons filled with helium – one of them containing the engagement ring – and having Leanne pop the balloons, eventually popping the one with the ring inside it – at which point he would “pop the question.” Very clever.
Everything seemed perfect. Lefkos’ plan was great; his execution, on the other hand, was a disaster.
It had been a particularly cold and windy week in London, and as Lefkos left the jewelry shop with the balloons – with ring inside, the jeweler warned him that he had better hold on tightly or they might fly away. And as luck would have it, just as he stepped out of the shop a strong gust of wind took them out of his hand. The balloons, along with the diamond ring, sailed away.
Lefkos said, “I couldn’t believe it. I just watched as they went further and further into the air. It cost a fortune and I knew my girlfriend would kill me.” The frustrated suitor jumped into his car and followed the balloons for two hours before they sailed out of sight.
Instead of a glorious moment, the start of their life together, Lefkos was left having to go and announce to his fiancé, and to all the company assembled, what he had done and what had happened.
At last report, Leanne is still refusing to talk to Lefkos until he gets a new ring. And Lefkos, for his part, is now saving up to try again – however, this time resolving that he and Leanne will go to the jeweler’s together... and she will put the ring on in the store!
Totally lousing things up. Taking something wonderful and ruining it, getting it all wrong. Failing horribly. But hopefully learning from one’s mistakes.
We all have our own moments, our own stories to tell; don’t we? Times when we’ve loused things up royally?
Well, this is something of what I would like to talk about this morning: FAILURE – when we’ve loused up, when we’ve ruined everything... most especially, when we’ve failed God, sinned, gotten the life God wants for us all wrong and the mess we’ve made seems hopeless... What does God want us to know? Today, we learn from the mistakes of one of history’s most famous individuals...

In our scripture reading today, Moses makes his first appearance as an adult, and, to put it mildly: he makes an inauspicious entry. If we take today’s Scripture reading at face value, Moses was a man who started life as a failure, lousing everything up, getting everything wrong...
Last week, as you may recall (in our continuing study of the story of Moses), we read (in the first half of Exodus Chapter 2) of Moses’ unique birth, and how after his birth he was raised by Pharaoh’s daughter in the palace of the King of Egypt. Well, a long period of time exists between verse 10 (where we ended last week) and verse 11 (where we pick things up this week.) Traditionally, this gap in time being understood to cover about 40 years. We are left only to speculate about the life of Moses in this intervening time. If we look to some extra-biblical sources, we can glean a little information, but it is mostly speculation.
Of the biblical record we do have, the book of Acts records a sermon by an early Christian disciple, Stephen, who tells us that Moses grew up as the Prince of Egypt. He was schooled under the best Egyptian teachers. According to the Jewish historian Josephus, Moses learned the best tactics of the military, and was actually a general who led Pharaoh’s armies into battle and victory. Other historians have said that Moses was Pharaoh’s first choice to ascend the throne of Egypt at Pharaoh’s death. His was a place of prestige and privilege in the palace, surrounded by the pomp and ceremony of royalty.
But that is not where the biblical writer chooses to start. The writer skips that entire royal splendor thing as seemingly unimportant. But then, of course, we remember that tradition tells us that Moses himself was the author of the book of Exodus. Perhaps Moses, like many other great people, believed that failure eventually proves the greater blessing. But we can only know that after we’ve gone through the failure. So there, in the midst of lousing everything up, we pick up the story of our champion Moses:
He appears on the scene as a middle-aged adult. Seeing one of his Hebrew kinsman being beaten by an Egyptian slave-master, he lashes out in anger killing the Egyptian. Then, realizing what he has done, he tries to cover up his crime – to hide the body in the sand. But word has gotten out, the murder is known, judgment is pending; so Moses makes a run for it, across the Sinai Peninsula to the land of Midian. There he gets married, settles down in the life of a nomadic shepherd, and many more years pass. And this is where the “first act” in the story of Moses concludes: with him a FUGITIVE, HIDING OUT from the law. “An alien living in a foreign land.”
It’s interesting that Moses would choose this episode to include in his account of the exodus of the Hebrew nation from Egypt. Hardly the story of a great hero. Far more the story of a coward, a murderer... a sinner, a failure. Very human: there are gifts here, but he is deeply flawed. And maybe that’s the point...
You know, I think Moses included this because he saw this event as pivotal in understanding of God’s call in his life, and he did, in fact, learn more from this failure than all the successes of the previous forty years. He learned about lousing up your life, he learned about failing God. What did he learn? Or better yet, what can we learn from Moses’ great failure? There are undoubtedly many lessons here; but I’d like to mention three things I believe we learn from Moses’ failure...
(I)
First: RUIN WILL SNEAK UP ON YOU.
As our scene today opens, Moses is motivated by compassion for his people. Compassion, of course, is a most admirable drive. Moses looked out and saw the anguish of the Hebrews, and his heart was moved to do something about it. No doubt Moses may have even felt that God was calling him to do something about it. We see Moses’ compassion not only in this episode with the Egyptian, but also in his encounter with the young women by the well in Midian.
But Moses’ compassion did not justify the action he took in regard to his people. Murder is still murder – however we may try to “spin” it. We can justify many actions in life, but that doesn’t make those actions right. And this, I believe, directs us to our first point here:
Moses’ failure began with something GOOD. And that’s how evil, how sin, so often works to trip us up – to lead us to those actions that result in failed, broken lives, to getting things wrong and ruining the “gift.” It doesn’t necessarily come straight at us as the desire to do something evil; rather it may even begin with something that appears righteous and good but which then becomes twisted and wrong. Something which we then justify and rationalize and excuse and compromise.
What’s the old saying? “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” A reminder to us not only of the good we often intend but fail to enact; but even more, of the tricky ways sin likes to trip us up.
Moses’ failure first teaches us that we need to be vigilant, seeking always (and only) the very highest ideals. Fighting the justifying and the rationalizing and the compromising that leads us away from God and into failure.
Simply put: Rarely do we ruin our lives in one fell swoop. Far more often it is the culmination of a long series of small actions: choices, temptations given in to, weaknesses unchallenged, low standards accepted, instant gratification desired... all of which ultimately results in something great, big and horrible! It’s a whole bunch of small choices we make when we know we should choose otherwise! One author puts it this way:
“Exodus 2:12 tells us, ‘Moses looked this way and that (before he acted).’ That is, Moses made sure no one was looking. You think he didn’t know what he was about to do was wrong? He knew. He just chose to do otherwise. One reason we so often take the wrong actions (and get into all sorts of trouble) is because we spend too much time looking this way and that - either to make sure no one is looking before we do something bad; or to make sure someone is looking when we do something good – so that we will get the credit. More concerned with what others think than what God thinks! Instead of looking this way and that, we need to spend our time looking up!”
It has been said: “Catastrophic spiritual failure is rarely an instantaneous event; rather it is, far more often, the cumulative product of small indulgences and minuscule compromises, the immediate consequences of which were, at the time, indiscernible.” It “SNEAKS UP” on you!
Things that begin as “nothing” and then eventually TAKE OVER. Reading from a New York Times article a few years ago entitled “A Tiger Grows in Harlem”:
“His obsession began innocently enough, with the puppies and broken-winged birds many little boys beg to bring home. Over the years, however, Antoine Yates’ taste in animals grew ever more exotic, neighbors said, and his collection came to include reptiles, a monkey or two, and a hyena. But when Yates’ most exotic pet - a tiger he named Ming - grew to more than 400 pounds and let loose a fearsome roar, the trouble began.
“Terrified by the beast, his mother, Martha, packed up and moved away. Yates, himself, increasingly hard-pressed to control the tiger, decamped too, to a nearby apartment. He continued to feed the tiger by throwing raw chicken through a door opened just enough to keep a paw the size of a plate from swiping through.
“On Saturday, police arrived, after being alerted by phone tips. They removed the tiger, and an alligator, after a sharpshooter shot them with tranquilizer darts.
“Police are now trying to determine where Yates, 31, got a tiger and how he managed to raise it in a public housing project for years. Outside the courtroom Yates commented to the reporters, ‘It didn’t start out like this. Ming started out small and cute. I didn’t know what to do’”
Such it is with a life taken over and ruined. Such it is with sin. How are we feeding something that seems small and cute now; but that will eventually grow to devour us?
The first lesson that we learn from Moses’ failure: RUIN WILL SNEAK UP ON YOU.
(II)
The second lesson: HIDING OUT DOESN’T HELP.
Having killed the Egyptian soldier, Moses hid the body under a few feet of sand hoping to hide the sin he had committed. It was an automatic response. “Uh, oh! I’ve really loused-up now! Can’t let anyone find out. Got to hide it.”
This response goes all the way back to the Garden of Eden. Remember in Genesis, God came to walk in the cool of the day after Adam and Eve had sinned by eating the forbidden fruit? What did Adam and Eve do? They hid in the hydrangea bush. And we’ve been hiding ever since. We hide from God, we hide from others, and we even try to hide the truth from ourselves, thinking if we believe it, we can make others believe it, too. As Mark Twain said, “We’re all like the moon. We each have a dark side that we don’t want anyone to see.”
Why? Because we are much more concerned with appearances and images than we are with truth. But hiding our wrong doesn’t erase it; it only postpones its discovery. Attempting to hide the wrong we’ve done, the ways we’ve loused up, leaves us, like Moses, with a corpse at our feet, a shovel in our hand, and sand between our toes. It leaves us fugitives, running from life, hiding out in a foreign land far from home, scared every day of being found out!
No matter how hard we may try to cover up, we can’t bury the consequences of our actions. Our “stuff” eventually catches up to us! The only answer is to FACE UP to it, ACKOWLEDGE it – confess our wrong and give it to God saying, “Lord, this is what has happened. This is what I have done. Help me with this, please!” Put God in charge! Until we do this, we can only know ultimate failure and brokenness.
It has been said that “the problem in most of our lives is that we try to manage our problems rather than confront them.” We blame, we avoid, we deny, we pretend – we do everything except face up to our failures and acknowledge them, seeking God’s help to truly change the direction of our lives; and thus we never get better... we constantly ruin everything. Preacher John Ortberg writes:
“A CEO had taken on a new job at a major company, and the outgoing CEO said to him, ‘I’d like to offer you some advice. Sometimes you’ll make wrong choices. You will. You’ll mess up. When that happens, I have prepared three envelopes for you. I left them in the top drawer of the desk. The first time it happens, open #1. The second time you mess up, open #2. The third time, open #3.’
“For the first few months, everything went fine. Then the CEO made his first mistake, so he goes to the drawer, opens up envelope #1, and the message reads, ‘Blame me.’ So he does – he says to everyone: ‘This is the old CEO’s fault. He made these mistakes. I inherited these problems.’ Everybody says, ‘Okay.’ It works out pretty well.
“Things go fine for a while, and then he makes his second mistake. So, he goes to the drawer and opens up envelope #2. This time he reads, ‘Blame the board.’ And he does – he says: ‘It’s the board’s fault. The board of directors has been a mess. I inherited them. They’re the problem.’ Everybody says, ‘Okay, that makes sense.’
“Things go fine for a while, and then he makes his third mistake. So, he goes to the drawer and opens up envelope #3. The message reads: ‘Prepare three envelopes.’”
We can try to push things off, avoid our problems, our wrong, as long as we can; but eventually we have to face up to it.
The second lesson of Moses’ failure: HIDING OUT DOESN’T HELP. And finally…


(III)
Thirdly: GOD PROVIDES A WELL.
When Moses’ knew his sin was discovered, he fled to Midian. As mentioned, Midian is east of Egypt, across the Sinai Peninsula. And there is nothing between Egypt and Midian but desert. Hot, arid, dry desert. Moses fled to the desert. In the manner of two short days Moses went from being the apparent heir to the throne to a fugitive because of his failure. Two hundred plus miles of desert gives a person plenty of time to think. I can only imagine what Moses must have thought about as he crossed that dry, barren land.
We don’t think too much about traveling 200 miles these days. Hop in the car and go. A couple of hours later we’ve reached our destination. But for Moses this was perhaps a two week trip depending upon his mode of travel. On foot, it may have even been longer than that. Two plus weeks crossing the desert. Moses fell far and he fell fast. Then we see God’s grace at work. Verse 16: “...he sat down by a well.”
I imagine Moses searching for water. Wind-burned, sun-baked, lips dry and cracked from the desert sun. The well would be so refreshing. And it was refreshing for Moses – not just physically but spiritually:
The well in the middle of the desert became the open door God provided for Moses’ future. There God reached out to him providing him sustenance, companionship, a family. And it provided him with an opportunity to use his well-meaning heart in the right way: to help those in need. In this simple moment God showed Moses that he was caring for him even though he had done wrong, and that there was still great good in him even though he had failed horribly. In all, a continued story, a fresh start, a sense of worth and value despite his failure.
Likewise, sometimes we may feel we are living in the desert of failure. The truth is that we often have to cross this desert. It is in the crossing of the desert of failure that we have time to reflect. It becomes a place that allows us to reflect on our mistakes. The time in the desert of failure becomes the beginning of God’s restoration for us. We have to go to the desert to discover the well of refreshing.
Just as it was for Moses, it is for us. God has placed a well of refreshing, and it is at that well that God opens the door to our restoration and redemption. Think of the words of Jesus...
He was passing through Samaria and stopped for a drink of water. There at a well, Jesus encountered a woman of Samaria and he joined her in conversation. They talked about water, and Jesus told her, “You will drink the water from this well and get thirsty again. But the water I give takes away thirst altogether. It becomes a perpetual spring within them, giving them eternal life.”
A well springing up to eternal life. One author writes:
“Many of the greatest people in history had lives that began with failure:
“Einstein was 4 years old before he could even speak.
“Beethoven’s music teacher once said of him, ‘As a composer, he’s hopeless.’
“Thomas Edison’s teacher told him he was too stupid to learn anything.
“The great concert pianist, Paderewski, was told by his first music teacher that his hands were much too small to ever master the keyboard.
“The great operatic tenor, Enrico Caruso, was told that his voice sounded like the wind whistling through a crack in the window.
“Automotive giant Henry Ford forgot to put a reverse gear in his first car.
“Poet Robert Frost’s writing was considered too “vigorous” for The Atlantic Monthly, and it was rejected.
“Albert Einstein’s Ph.D. dissertation was turned down because it was “irrelevant.”
“Winston Churchill’s school principal wrote on the 16-year-old student’s report card: “A conspicuous lack of success.”
“All went on to greatness. The point is that failure is not the end. This is what God desperately wants us to know when we’ve loused up and seemingly ruined everything.” Ultimately, failure is not the problem; it is what one does after one has failed that makes all the difference.
Here is the good news. God is not nearly as put off by our failure as we imagine him to be. Oh, don’t get me wrong: God’s heart breaks when we fail, when we do wrong and ruin things; but he doesn’t love us any less. Perhaps you’re here this morning and you’ve failed at a job. You’ve failed financially or in a business venture. Perhaps you’ve failed in a relationship or in your Christian walk and witness. Perhaps there’s some sin, some moral failure that has forced you into the desert of self-condemnation. The well God has placed in our desert is Jesus Christ.
When failure forces us to flee, we find forgiveness and freedom when we discover the well of God’s grace in Jesus Christ. Find his refreshment; be refreshed as God begins the transformation process in your life preparing you for the journey ahead. God saying, “Even though you’ve failed, I still believe in you, there is good in you – I love you! Today is fresh start, a new beginning. Live the good. I can make something even greater of your life now! The story isn’t done. I’m not through with you!”
When you louse up, remember: GOD PROVIDES A WELL. Go to the well. Start again. Let God take the good he sees in you and make something even better out of it. Let God use your failure for something good. In an article entitled “Feeding His Lambs” preacher John Merop writes:
“By the time of his 22nd arrest—following a dramatic chase through Miami [that involved] many police cars and much shooting—John Sala had reached the end of the line. Guilty of the attempted murder of a policeman, aggravated assault, and grand theft, he was headed to jail for a long time. But jail, of all places, turned out to be his saving grace...
“Sent to a prison in Avon Park, Florida, John eventually met Chaplain Warren B. Wall, who shared the good news of the gospel. John dove right in, accepted Christ, and immersed himself in every opportunity for Christian growth.
“Assigned to the tape ministry of the chapel, he listened to Bible teachers while organizing and labeling tapes. The chaplain found someone willing to underwrite a seminary correspondence course for John, who became a passionate, disciplined student of the Bible.
“’God was birthing something new in me,’ he says today. ‘Before, I wanted to take. Now I wanted to give, love, encourage, and nurture.’ John also found his musical voice in prison and performed with the prison choir in local churches, singing solos and giving his testimony.
After serving his time, John walked out of prison in 1983 a freer man than ever before. ‘I’m not coming back!’ he declared, not knowing that, in time, he would indeed be back... but not as an inmate.
After his release, John went on to form All Things New, a ministry to prison inmates and their families. Years later, after he’d married his wife, Eileen, the ministry developed beyond his wildest imaginings:
John and Eileen changed their ministry title to Little Lambs, Inc., with the mission of loving inmates into the family of God. ‘Little Lambs offers inmates a family connection that helps satisfy the need for belonging and being cared for as a lamb that has gone astray,’ the Salas say.
“John’s book, I’m Not Coming Back!, is now in the hands of thousands of prisoners who identify with him. It has been translated into numerous languages and is turning lives around the world over. John knows their mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual pain. And, though he may not have seen himself as a shepherd to this unlikely flock, it was God’s plan nonetheless. There’s no question that John and Eileen Sala have certainly introduced many men and women — all Little Lambs in training - face-to-face with a Shepherd who loved them all along... even when they went astray. Just about every week, another letter arrives at their home from someone who has turned their life around, always with the tag-line: ‘I’m not coming back.’”

“Ultimately, failure is not the problem, it is what one does after one has failed that makes all the difference.”
This week, when you louse up, when you feel like you’ve ruined everything, when failure and guilt and shame seems to plague you; think of the failure that began Moses’ life and remember: Ruin will sneak up on you. Hiding out doesn’t help. And God provides a well.