Keith Battle - Passing The Torch

I want to use the subject today, «Passing the Torch.» The phrase «passing the torch» actually comes from the world of the Olympics. It is a terminology that originated in 1936 when the first Olympic torch-passing relay took place, beginning in Greece. That historical habit, that pattern, has continued all the way up to this day. The way it works is this torch is lit in Olympia, Greece, and it goes through 121 days of being passed from one designated person to the next until it arrives at the site where the Olympics take place that year. It is a phenomenal event. When they arrive at the location, they light the Olympic cauldron, which stays lit for the entire games until the closing ceremony.

That phraseology, «passing the torch,» has since moved into the corporate and professional sectors, where people are moving on from their responsibilities. They’re retiring and giving their responsibilities to their successors. So it is that they say, «I’m passing the torch on to my successor.» This happens in the world of sports, typically when a leader in a particular field is considered the best in that sport. Usually, once they have moved past their prime, and everyone knows there’s a new sheriff in town, so to speak, there’s a new rising star on the horizon. There comes a moment when, out of respect for this new leader, the old leader passes the torch to the next player, the next generation of leaders. It occurs in so many different sectors, and it’s exactly what I see happening in the passage we are looking at today.

Moses is passing the torch of leadership to Joshua, and what a moment it is! It is an amazing moment because of who is involved—Moses. There has never been a man on earth like Moses. The Bible says he was the meekest man ever on earth. Moses led two million people out of slavery and into freedom. Moses was just different. He was so powerful that when the Israelites, whom he led, were in combat, he would not even lift a weapon. Moses simply lifted his hands, and whenever his hands were raised, his followers—the Israelites—would win the battle. He was so influential that when his hands dropped from fatigue, the Israelites would start losing the battle.

It became such a serious matter that because the pendulum would swing based on where his hands were, they set him down on a rock and had Aaron come on one side of him and Hur on the other. They stood next to him and held his hands up, and as long as Moses’s hands were raised, Israel would prevail. Moses was just different. We owe the Pentateuch in our hands today because of the writing of Moses. In fact, God said about Moses, in the book of Numbers, that when He talks to His prophets, He speaks to them through dreams and visions, but not so with Moses. When God spoke to Moses, He talked to him face to face; Moses was on another level.

In Psalm 103, verse 7, it says about Moses that God says the people of Israel are familiar with His deeds, but Moses is familiar with His ways. Yes, they know what God does, but Moses understands what God is up to. He knows how God moves; he knows how God thinks; he knows how God operates; he knows how to act. Moses was just different. Under God’s direction, Moses went to Pharaoh in Egypt, who didn’t even know God, and under God’s guidance, he told Pharaoh to let God’s people go. He was speaking to a Pharaoh who didn’t even know the God he was talking about, and because of the miraculous exploits of Moses and the power of God, Pharaoh let an entire workforce of slaves go to follow Moses to serve a God that Pharaoh didn’t even know. Moses was just different.

Moses was so extraordinary that when he died, Israel mourned for 30 whole days. The entire nation shut down; commerce was closed, the economy was frozen, the marketplace was closed, and ships weren’t sailing or conducting trade. Nobody was interacting; there were no songs being sung and no instruments being played. The whole land was hushed as tears flowed across the nation because Moses was dead. He was mythological in nature— a living legend, even while he was alive. Yet, in spite of all that, even Moses grew too old to lead. I don’t care who you are and what you’ve done and how long you’ve done it; every single one of us will come to a point in our lives when we are too old to lead. It’s time to pass the torch.

By the way, with Moses, it wasn’t so much that he was physically unable to lead, because we learn in Deuteronomy, chapter 34, verse 7, that at the time of his death, Moses still had good eyesight and was strong and full of strength. So it wasn’t his physical strength that was missing. What was missing is, as we look at verse 2, Moses says, «I am no longer able to lead you.» So if it’s not physical in nature when a leader is physically healthy but they’re no longer able to lead, it’s…