What kind of leader was moses

For a variety of reasons a move, retirement, moral failure, etc. That was true of Moses. We said above that God had given Moses a vision to deliver his people out of the hand of the Egyptians and bring them to a land flowing with milk and honey.

But he did not get to enter the promised land with his people. We hear that the people again opposed Moses, quarreling with him, asking him why he brought them out of Egypt into the wilderness to die Numbers God tells Moses to take his staff and bring forth water out of the rock for the people and their cattle. But Moses, instead of speaking to the rock, strikes it. As a result of his disobedience, God tells Moses and Aaron that because they did not believe in Him, they shall not bring the people into the promised land Numbers Moses was one of the great leaders we read about in the Bible.

There are many more leadership lessons we could learn from him. What would you add to my list? This is part of a series of articles on leadership origianlly published at Bill Pence's blogsite, Coram Deo and appears here by permission. Jump to navigation Close Menu. Search form Search.

Home About Events Contact Donate. Although few can emulate all of these traits, humility is one that stands out. The Book of Numbers stresses that "Moses was a very humble man, more so than any other man on earth" Num. Hence, humility was clearly deemed an important trait and one that ought to be emulated by more people aspiring to lead others. After all, what is humility but the opposite of arrogance? Most people have an understandable dislike for arrogant leaders.

The book considers various types of leadership approaches that have been advocated by scholars over the past century. One or two people can be very discouraging. Moses Endured Constant Grumbling How often can a leader tolerate criticism before they become tired? Moses showed definite signs of endurance when dealing with the children of Israel. The grumbling behavior of adults was a common practice: The whole community grumbled Exodus Moses and Aaron heard their grumbling Exodus The Lord heard their grumbling Exodus 11 How much grumbling can any leader endure?

You may even criticize it in yourself and wish you could stop it. But there may come a day when you can no longer. Then there will be no you left to criticize the mood or even to enjoy it, but just the grumble itself, going on forever like a machine.

In each of us, there is something growing, which will be Hell unless it is nipped in the bud. He was challenged to be a consistent leader. The story of Exodus recounts the Jews going from a good situation as when they were welcomed into Egypt by the Pharaoh himself to a very bad situation when they were enslaved to the highest heights, the pinnacles of spirituality when they were freed from slavery by God Himself and given the Torah at Mount Sinai.

At the point in time when the Exodus story begins the family of 70 individuals that arrived in Egypt at the time of Joseph has grown to a nation of about 3 million people. The supernatural, rapid increase in the Jewish population has made the Egyptians nervous -- "there are too many of them, what if they rise up against us" -- and Pharaoh issues a genocidal decree: Kill all the Jewish boys. This is a classic anti-Semitic pattern -- the Jew the in Diaspora is always loyal to his host country, yet can never escape unfounded suspicion of treachery.

At this point, baby Moses 1 is born. His parents, Amram and Yochevet, decide to hide him, but after a few months they realize that very shortly they will be found out. So his mother, in order to save him somehow, puts him in a waterproof basket and hides it in the reeds the Nile. As we all know, he is found by none other than the daughter of Pharaoh. Irony of ironies?

It's all part of the plan. As noted earlier, God puts the cure before the disease. This is another classic case. It does give one pause though -- that the savior of the Jewish people is going to be raised in the house of the ultimate enemy of the Jews. The only modern equivalent would be of some fellow who is meant to overthrow Nazi Germany being raised as Adolf Hitler's adopted grandson. That's what we have here.

You realize what a wild story this is if you imagine it in a modern context. The events of Exodus happened circa BCE if we translate Jewish chronology into the Christian dating system the world uses today. But that may be misleading. There's a huge amount of educated guesswork involved in these chronologies.

If you open any books on ancient Egypt you'll get lots of different opinions as to when different Pharaohs reigned. Generally, the Pharaohs associated with the Exodus are Seti and Rameses. And it's interesting that the Bible says that the Jewish slaves built the cities of Pitom and Ramses.

See Exodus Of course, it took them years to build these cities so that covers the reign of more than one Pharaoh. Now what's fascinating is that after Rameses there was a period of chaos in Egypt; this much we know from available records. This would fit if Egypt was, in fact, destroyed by ten supernatural plagues; they would be in bad state for a number of years afterwards. So there we may have some evidence of it. Now what's most interesting is that in Thebes modern Luxor in Egypt , Mernephtah carved on a large slab of black granite known as a "stele" a victory inscription.

And it's the first extra-Biblical mention of "Israel" anywhere in human history. We're talking about something that's around 3, years old. And this would correspond in Jewish chronology to some time after the Exodus story.

What does the stele say? Her seed is no more. This means:. Jews are here today 3, years later, they hardly wiped the Jews out; in fact, they're gone. This is not surprising as the ancient people are notorious for lying in their official records. Objective history was non-existence three thousand years ago. What few events were recorded were usually grossly exaggerated and recorded solely to glorify the accomplishment of the ruler of the country. Egyptian inscriptions of battles show Pharaoh as larger than life slaughtering his enemies.

He is always victorious and no dead Egyptians appear anyway. Losses, failures, imperfections and the like are never recorded by any ancient people. Like the story of Judah and Tamar, we see yet another example of the unique objectivity of the Bible. Faults and failures must be mentioned, otherwise how could the necessary lessons be learned? This is very significant piece of archeology. Moses grows up as the grandson of Pharaoh, who is then whoever he was the most powerful human being on earth, being the ruler of the mightiest nation on earth.

Moses could easily have grown up to be a totally assimilated, totally spoilt Egyptian kid. But the Pharaoh's daughter has hired his own mother as his nanny and so he never loses the connection or the commitment to his people. It is no surprise therefore that, when one day he sees an Egyptian taskmaster beating a Jew, he cannot stand it and he kills the taskmaster. Then, of course, some Jews inform on him, which is another classic case we're going to see in Jewish history -- Jews informing on other Jews.

And Moses has to flee for his life. Eventually he ends up in the land of Midian, which is across the Sinai Peninsula. There he meets Jethro, an excommunicated priest who has several daughters, one of whom named is Tzipporah, Moses marries Tzipporah and they have two sons, Gershon and Eliezer, about whom we don't hear much and he becomes a shepherd.