Moses!

ACTS 7:23"When Moses was forty years old, he decided to visit his fellow Israelites. 24He saw one of them being mistreated by an Egyptian, so he went to his defense and avenged him by killing the Egyptian. 25Moses thought that his own people would realize that God was using him to rescue them, but they did not. 26The next day Moses came upon two Israelites who were fighting. He tried to reconcile them by saying, ’Men, you are brothers; why do you want to hurt each other?’ 27"But the man who was mistreating the other pushed Moses aside and said, ’Who made you ruler and judge over us? 28Do you want to kill me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday?’ 29When Moses heard this, he fled to Midian, where he settled as a foreigner and had two sons.

I would like us to look at Moses...the man this AM. He was the great law giver, a mighty man of God and one of the greatest men in the Old Testament. Yet as we study him we will find him to be a very ordinary individual. He had all the problems and hang ups that you and I have. He was not some super being springing from a phone booth with a giant "S" on his chest. He was simply a normal man empowered of God for a ministry which he was able to accomplish totally in the power of God. Whenever he was in the flesh it stood out like a sore thumb. This should be an important encouragement to us because whatever God has called us to, whether large or small, He will empower us to accomplish exactly as He did with Moses.

Moses was exceptional even as a baby. Remember he was spared even though Pharoah had decreed the deaths of all male Jewish babies. The historian Josephus tells us that as a young man the Egyptians would stare at him as he walked along because he was so beautiful. It is also thought that Moses was a highly regarded leader in the Egyptians war with Ethiopia. Vs 22 says Moses was educated in all the learning of the Egyptians, and he was a man of power in words and deeds."

So apparently at the age of forty, in some way, God must have revealed to Moses that he was to be the deliverer of Israel because it says in verse 25, "And he supposed that his brethren understood that God was granting them deliverance through him; but they did not understand." He knew, at the age of 40 that he was to be the one to deliver the Israelites. The trouble is, no one else knew! As a matter of fact, they even ridiculed him, didn’t they? The very people that he felt he had a call to deliver were making fun of him!

Have you ever felt like God was calling you to do something and it seemed like YOU were the only one who thought so? It happens all the time! Ministries struggle, maybe you’re having a hard time teaching a class...and Satan is in your ear saying "see, I told you that you couldn’t do it! I want us to look at some of the things Moses was up against, and how he was still able to accomplish the job God had for him to do.

There in vs 29 we see Moses do what most of us do whenever things aren’t going well for us....he fled! This must have been a very confusing time for Moses. Here he was thinking he was the one God chose to deliver his people and it wasn’t going right at all! So what happened? Did God change His mind or was God just trying to make it hard on Moses? NO! Moses made it hard on Moses! He lost his temper. He did that a lot, didn’t he? Actually, he had a right to be angry. We SHOULD get angry over injustices! But he reacted wrong. He committed murder, and that was NOT of God. His temper, in fact, kept him out of the promised land.After leading the Isralites for 40 yrs, he still had to pay his actions. Moses need "devine preparation" and needed to know that even though he was quite special, even he could not accomplish what God had for him by his strenght and cleverness alone.

So, Moses fled into the wilderness. Some might say "life begins at 40....but for Moses he probably felt like his life was over! But God had a plan! And He’s got one for you, too! For 40 more years, Moses sat in the wilderness. He had time to reflect, didn’t he? You see, I believe that Moses needed to be humbled before the Lord....and being banished into the wilderness after living a "priviledged life" would be quit humbling! He went from royalty to sheep herder! And Moses had a lot of time to think. I’m sure that he felt like he would no longer be the one to deliver the children of Israel. He had gotten married, and probably accepted his humble life.