Question: Both taught and caught?

Principle: The Shining

Context & Text: Having been in education for years and years, a proverb that you cannot go without hearing is this: Better caught than taught. In other words, sometimes lecture is frowned upon. Be “the guide on the side, not the sage on the stage.” The list of cliches is long for how it’s best to teach myriad audiences. There are whole libraries on how to teach children versus how to teach adults, etc.

In Scripture, we see both. That is, we see lecture and inference. Here’s an example. Exodus 34 records how Moses once again went up on Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the testimony (the Decalogue). Moses spent time in the presence of YHWH/the LORD and interceded on behalf of the people of Israel. Moses was receiving the direct words of God to teach them to the stubborn and recalcitrant people. But here’s a line that strikes me every time I read it: “Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God” (Ex 34:29b). And in v. 35 of the same chapter, we are told “the people of Israel would see the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses’ face was shining. And Moses would put the veil over his face again, until he went in to speak with him [YHWH/the LORD].”

As the human leader, Moses received the lecture, so to speak, from God. Why? In order that he, before he was fit to talk or minister to others, might first be transformed, and fitted for the job to which God called him. Godly leadership is like that. So much takes place behind the scenes, away from the crowds, in the times of hard work, early mornings and late nights, in the study, in the gymnasium of the soul.

Encouragement: We remember Moses’ name today as one of the greatest names of leaders in history, a man whose bio few would dare to compete with. But Moses went it alone a lot in order that the people might see what it means to be transformed by God. Moses was not a perfect man. Far from it, he blew it on many occasions. But Moses was a man who was known by God and whose leadership carried with it the scents of having been with the LORD. Why? In order that others might not just hear of the LORD but catch it, too, via the example of Moses.