Exodus 4:27 And the LORD said to Aaron, Go into the wilderness to meet Moses. And he went, and met him in the mount of God, and kissed him. True greatness is modest. It is a false greatness that magnifies its own powers, and disparages the strength of opposing forces. One of the penalties of greatness is isolation. It removes the man from common aids and sympathies, and sets him by himself. Greatness is lonely. This isolation Moses was beginning to feel, while the task before him grew awful, and swelled into a frightful magnitude. Solitude, and that isolation which is worse than solitude — separation from the insight and sympathy of men around us — is weakening. Moses grew weak and drew back. Thinkers are not always speakers, nor speakers thinkers. Nay, thought in its very striving after accuracy and exactness, is apt to be a hindrance of fluency. Moses could think and act, but he could not speak. He was a greater man than his brother, but his brother was a better speaker. He could excogitate the ideas, and his brother could put them into words for him. God is economical in His bestowments, and seldom heaps His manifold favours on one man. Cromwell, whether a good or a bad man, was certainly a great man; yet out of his tangled utterances it was hard to come at his meaning. Here, then, the want was supplied, and with it, as appears in the subsequent history, a much broader surface of want besides; for God is, "able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think," and is "wont to give more than either we desire or deserve." The abundance of His mercy will not be kept within the narrow bounds our mean conceptions set to it. Moses, in the guise of an Egyptian, and as the son of Pharaoh's daughter, had learned to recognize and love his brother Aaron under Amram's roof; they had been nurtured for uses of which neither of them dreamed. How much of this provision for a secret future is there in the lives of men. What important effects to the end of life may flow from the seemingly casual associations and intimacies of childhood I This companionship at once delivered Moses from his solitude, the isolation of peculiarity, by raising up for him a co-worker, to stand with him on the same elevated plane above the mass of the people, and aid him in bearing cares on which none but one so commissioned might presume to intrude. Here, then, was unity with subordination, and harmony with distribution and diversity; and thus the apparatus of action for the great enterprise was complete. See here the good of association. See how it raised Moses out of the ague of despondency that overtook him when the object of his long desire had at last come within his grasp; how it warmed his powers into resolute endeavour, and shed a benign influence upon his subsequent labours and sufferings. So "Jonathan, Saul's son arose, and went to David in the wood, and strengthened his hand in God." So, too, our blessed Lord thought of this principle and acted upon it, and stamped it with the seal of His infallible wisdom, when He sent out His disciples two by two, making but six missions, where an earthly wisdom would have thought it better economy to make twelve. And the great St. Paul had always with him Barnabas, or Mark, or Luke, or Gaius, or Epaphroditus in his missionary travels and labours. Let us remember that in the Divine household we are knit together into one fellowship, and are to learn to be mutually considerate and helpful, and "bear each other's burdens," as "every one members one of another." God's work, our work, will be done more easily, pleasantly, effectually. See here, too, the good of subordination. Aaron was always with Moses, his shadow or second self; but Moses always was head. If both had been heads the machinery would not have worked so kindly, smoothly, and comfortably. Nothing does well with two heads. (R. A. Hallam, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: And the LORD said to Aaron, Go into the wilderness to meet Moses. And he went, and met him in the mount of God, and kissed him. |
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