MOSES: A Legacy Model

We are all familiar with the epic narrative of the life of Moses that runs throughout four books of the Old Testament, from Exodus through Deuteronomy. His story is one that is rich with wisdom and adventure. However, as a leader, there is no one who parallels Moses. From the most humble of beginnings, God brought Moses to a place where he was the most influential person in the Old Testament. J. Oswald Sanders wrote in his book Spiritual Leadership that “God's greatest gifts to Israel, better than the land itself, were men such as Moses and David and Isaiah. God's greatest gifts are always men; His greatest endowment to the church was the gift of twelve men trained for leadership.”
There is so much more of value in Moses' life than we could ever hope to cover here. However, we can look at the life of Moses simply as a model of the kind of legacy leadership that we have been discussing. The best way to accomplish this task is to look at Moses’ life along three natural breaks, which loosely represent the stages of influence, impact, and legacy as I have laid them. Moses was 120 years old when he died on Mount Nebo, and his life can be measured by three forty-year segments.
The House of Pharaoh: Standard and Influence
The story opens in Egypt, where Jacob and his family had settled and lived for four hundred years. In the thirteenth century BCE, a new Pharaoh came to power in Egypt who was a great builder, but who had no respect for the Hebrew people. In order to build his great cities, he made the Hebrew people slaves and put them to work in forced labor camps. He feared they would revolt against him because they became great in number, so he ordered that every male infant be killed at birth.
Moses was born to Amram and Jochebed, who were from the line of priests called Levites. We know how Moses was saved by being hidden for three months and then being floated down the river in a basket. Pharaoh's daughter found Moses and had him fished out of the river. She felt sorry for him and decided to keep him. So, Moses grew up as the adopted son of the Pharaoh. However, Moses was always aware of his true heritage as a Hebrew because God made a way for his mother to be his nurse and to raise him in the house of Pharaoh. This is all-important to us because this is the context in which God established a standard of excellence in Moses' life and gave him influence.
Moses spent the first forty years of his life living in one of the great societies of human history. Living in the house of Pharaoh, he was trained in language, art, law, engineering, and all of the sciences of his day. Having been raised by his Levite mother, he was instructed in the heritage of the Hebrew people and nurtured in a love for the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. This is why the idea of generational faithfulness was so important to Moses, as we read in Deuteronomy 6.
Moses was being given the foundational preparation that He would need to become who God had created and called him to be. However, though he had a position of influence as a member of the house of Pharaoh and was a person of influence among his own people, he was not yet ready to have the impact that God intended for him to have. In fact, in Exodus 2:11–12, we read how Moses tried to use his position to take matters into his own hands. "Now it came about in those days, when Moses had grown up, that he went out to his brethren and looked on their hard labors; and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his brethren. So he looked this way and that, and when he saw there was no one around, he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand."
In the very next verse, we see that Moses again tried to use his persona to take matters into his own hands. "He went out the next day, and behold, two Hebrews were fighting with each other; and he said to the offender, 'Why are you striking your companion?'" Though Moses had been raised to live up to a standard that called him to defend and lead his people, he did not yet have the integrity and insight to do so. Though he had been given a position of authority, the rest of the passage reveals that his lack of integrity and vision had caused him to not walk in a manner worthy of his calling. "But he said, 'Who made you a prince or a judge over us? Are you intending to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?' Then Moses was afraid and said, 'Surely the matter has become known.' When Pharaoh heard of this matter, he tried to kill Moses. But Moses fled from the presence of Pharaoh and settled in the land of Midian, and he sat down by a well."
Despite the advantages of what God had done in his life to this point, Moses lacked integrity, vision and a godly life. This did not produce a life of impact and legacy, but one of fear, fleeing, and loneliness.