Lessons From Failure Series

Finally, with all other options exhausted, Tracinda let go. The infant tumbled three stories down into the waiting arms of Felix Vazquez, a Housing Authority employee and catcher on a local baseball team. Vazquez, trained as a lifeguard, performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on the baby, which saved its life.

Moments later, Tracinda was rescued from her apartment by firefighters, and was reunited with her child. Neither was seriously injured. Later, when someone asked her about the painful decision to drop her baby from the window, Tracinda said: “I prayed that someone would catch him and save his life… I said, ‘God, please save my son’” (Catherine Donaldson-Evans, “The Good News of 2005,” Foxnews.com, 12-30-05; www. PreachingToday.com).

I’m sure Moses’s mother felt the same way, dropping her little boy into the arms of Pharaoh’s daughter, praying that God would save his life! Moses had a birth mother who had a strong faith in God.

And he had an adopted mother who was very powerful. Pharaoh’s daughter, here, is none other than the great Hatshepsut, who later became ruler of all Egypt. When Pharaoh died, his son took over, but he died shortly thereafter and the next son in line was too young to rule. That’s when Hatshepsut stepped in; and for more than 20 years, she led Egypt into a time of tremendous prosperity. She ruled with a brilliance that far outshone any of her predecessors, and she was the one who insured that Moses had the best training Egypt could offer, no doubt grooming him to be her successor.

Acts 7:22 says, “Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians” (NIV).

Moses, no doubt, went to school at the Temple of the Sun where all the privileged boys went. Archeologists and historians have called it “the Oxford of the Ancient World.” There, he would have learned hieroglyphics, science, medicine, astronomy, chemistry, theology, philosophy, and law. He would have studied the great literature of his day and dabbled in the arts – sculpture, music and painting. More than that, Moses would have also studied the battles and combat strategies of that nation’s proud military history… (Chuck Swindoll, Moses, pp.38-39).

As a result, Acts 7 says he became “powerful in speech and action” (Acts 7:22).

Josephus, a First Century Jewish historian tells us that after Moses grew up, he led the Egyptian army to a great victory over the Ethiopians who had invaded Egypt. Previously, the Egyptian army had fled before the Ethiopians, but when Moses took over as general, the Egyptians experienced one victory after another. They were able to rout the Ethiopians, overthrow their cities and “indeed (as Josephus says) made a great slaughter of these Ethiopians” (Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, Book II, Chapter X).

Moses had become a bold military strategist, wise in worldly matters, and a competent leader. He was a self-made man, or so he thought, and that’s clearly evident as he begins to take on another mission.

After Moses delivers the Egyptians from the Ethiopians, he tries to deliver his own people, the Hebrews, from the Egyptians. Verse 11 “One day, when Moses had grown up”—Acts 7 says Moses was 40 years old at this time.