Identity Crisis

Identity Crisis

March 4, 2019

Exodus 3:11 "But Moses said to God, 'Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?'"

Moses was born when the Pharaoh was killing the Hebrew babies, so Moses' mother hid him. When Pharaoh's daughter found the baby, she paid Moses' mother to nurse him (she did not  know she was his mother). But Pharaoh's daughter had not named him Moses at that point. The Bible says that Moses own mother nursed him and then when the baby became a child, Moses mother had to give him to Pharaoh's daughter as her own son. It is likely that Moses was born under a different name, a name only his birth mother knew, a name Moses had never heard spoken. When Moses' mother gave him over to Pharaoh's daughter after he had been weaned, maybe two years old or so, Pharaoh's daughter named him Moses at that point and became his mother. Now Moses was raised in Pharaoh's household, clearly identified as a Hebrew but raised as an Egyptian, under the name Moses. He had two mothers, two names, and two cultures.

Some time in his adulthood, still identifying as a Hebrew, he killed an Egyptian to save a slave from being beaten. But the Hebrews rejected Moses as one of their own, they saw him as an Egyptian. Pharaoh now wanted to kill Moses for the murder, seeing him as a Hebrew  and a threat. So Moses fled. He was now rejected by both groups of people, with no family, not belonging anywhere. Moses fled into the desert and finally found a clan that accepted him, when Moses was married and had a son, he named him Gershom, meaning "I have become a foreigner in a foreign land." Moses did not know how to identify himself anymore, so he referred to himself as a foreigner. Needless to say, he was having an identity crisis

That identity crisis carried over into his relationship with the Lord. When the Lord appeared to Moses in the burning bush and told him to go back to Egypt to free the slaves, Moses argued with the Lord, saying he had become a nobody, not able to do anything for the Lord because he lacked a strong identity. The Lord's response was to re-direct Moses from referring to himself and refer to the Lord. It wasn't critical that Moses had a strong human identity, it was critical that Moses had a connection with the Lord. The Lord told Moses not to worry about his identity, simply to make sure that the Lord was with him in front of Pharaoh. In short, Moses' relationship with the Lord was far more important than Moses' personal identity. Moses was supposed to get his identity from his relationship with the Lord. 

In your own life, you are probably known by what you do or who some of your family members are. But the Lord wants you to be known as His child, known as His own from a deep and personal relationship with Him. If you have that, a rooted relationship with Himself, it does not matter what name your mother calls you or what family you come from, or what nationality you are born under. All that matters is that you are known for having a relationship with the Father. When you have that, you won't even desire to be known by anything else.

Don't take my word for it; look it up:  Ex 2-3