On the day when Moses enjoyed that high privilege, direct communion with
the Great I Am, he heard the call of heaven to high duty and
responsibility. He shrank from it, as greatness usually does. True worth
is seldom a candidate. In church and state alike, things go better when
the office seeks the man.
Among the reasons Moses offered why he should not be chosen to lead Israel
from its bondage was one very commonly heard given in reply to calls to
religious duty. Moses said he was not eloquent.
God was ready with a counter proposition. After having a man in training
for forty years the Almighty was not to be put off so easily. He proposed
that Moses should undertake the task of leadership as a man of action,
while his brother Aaron should share it with him as a man of speech.
It was the old but ever-new combination of the man of deeds and the man of
words—the practical leader and the spiritual one. We see it later in the
case of Ezra and Nehemiah, and still later in the necessary partnership
between the modern minister and laymen in the work of the kingdom. Neither
type of service can be at its best unless it is in cooperation with
the other.
In fact, each type of service is so necessary that the kingdom suffers
when these two types of Christian workers get their functions confused.
It is usually a mistake for a minister to forsake the altar to serve
tables, and just as much so for a layman to forsake the things for which
he is peculiarly qualified and usurp the place of the minister. In the
work of the kingdom, Moses and Aaron each has his own function, and his
highest ministry is to perform his own function well.
The work of the minister is with the dynamics of Christianity, while that
of the layman is with the mechanics of it. Too often each stands and
debates with the other that his part is most important, or else each
envies the other his task and neglects his own. The mechanics of the
kingdom could not exist if the dynamics were not maintained, and the
dynamics would be wasted if the mechanics were not intelligently promoted.