All true service of God and His people will be distinguished by a consciousness of being sustained and guided in it by God. But in order to do this, there is commonly a hard lesson to be learned by painful discipline-the lesson of our own nothingness, and the vanity of all our own devices and resources.

Moses occupied the highest place in Egypt under Pharaoh, learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and mighty in word and deed. All the treasures of Egypt were at his command. We know that even then he was a believer, and by faith turned away from the wealth, honors and pleasures of the world, "choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God." He had a conviction that God would use him to deliver His people. And no doubt he supposed that all these worldly advantages, which had been so wonderfully bestowed on him, were important means of accomplishing this end. In such a confidence, he chose his own time to interfere in their quarrels; and supposed that they, too, would think as he did, that one possessed of such advantages was the very man to deliver them. But in this expectation he met only with disappointment, and learned that it was not by the strength and wisdom of Egypt that God was to be served.

At the age of forty, in the vigor and maturity of all his natural powers, Moses is a fugitive in the wilderness, and there he spends forty years in tending sheep. The fires of natural zeal and ambition have burned out; all the advantages he once possessed are lost; if remembered at all at the court of Egypt, the remembrance will render his return thither perilous. He is now an old man, well stricken in years. But God's time has now come; and in solitude with himself He has been preparing His servant; and the last step of the preparation was the manifestation of His own glory to one who was to act in His name. The mode of this manifestation was instructive-"a flame of fire in a bush;" and the wonder was that, frail and perishable as it seems, "the bush was not consumed." That fire which devours the enemy, and will at last consume every evil work, is as a wall of defense to God's people, few and feeble as they appear by any carnal estimate.

There Moses stands unshod in the presence of the divine holiness, while God proclaims His name, and reveals His compassion for His chosen but afflicted people. "And now come," He says, "I will send thee into Egypt." Where is now the forwardness and self – confidence which assumed the office of Israel's deliverer, uncalled and unsent ? Now, when God sends, Moses is filled with a humbling sense of his incompetence. "Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt ?" He has learned his own insignificance. And never yet did a believer go forth in a service to which he was truly called of God with any other feeling than that which Moses expressed when he said, "Who am I ? "All in which nature glories, and on which nature would count, go for nothing when we come to this point. "Who is sufficient for these things?"Brethren, have you been brought to this point ?As has been remarked, "There would be much more profitable and happy service if we only served God's order."It is delightful to see activity in service; but then it should be connected with communion with God in secret, and the acknowledgment of God's sovereignty. Thus we should serve joyfully, not as though God needed our service, but as desiring to glorify Him in our bodies and our spirits, which are His; not lightly, but "with reverence and godly fear; for our God is a consuming fire."