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.
But guess what? God wasn’t finished with Moses! EX chapter 3 tells us that God spoke to Moses thru a burning bush and instructed him to go deliver his people. Moses didn’t belive God. In vs 11 But Moses said to God, "Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?" 12 And God said, "I will be with you. There’s the difference in the first attempt to free the Israelites and this one. This time, Moses is allowing God to do the work! Too many times we attempt to do things in our power and volition when it is GOD that must be at the helm! I don’t care how powerful or mighty you are. It’s not by might, nor by power, but by the Spirit of the living God that we can accomplish ALL things! PHILLIPIANS 4:13 I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me. and that goes for you and I today! We can do NOTHING in and of ourselves, without the power of Christ dwelling inside us!
It took 10 plagues for Pharoah to release the Israelites. I want to show you how God works and this attests to the very FIRST commandment to have no other Gods before Him. The Egyptians were FULL of false gods! The Nile was the lifeblood of Egypt. The gods Hapi and Osiris supposedly protected the river. You know what the first plague was? The Nile turned to blood!
The Egyptians also had a god of fertility and ressurection....Heqt. He was a frog god. Can you guess what the secong plague was? Swarms of frogs! In EXODUS 8:16 we see that the dust became lice. The Hebrew word for lice is kinnim, which refers to gnats! They got all over men and livestock...this was the third plague. Next came the swarms. The insect god of Egypt was Kheper who was obviously not much of a god because he was shown to be impotent against the third and fourth plagues!
The bull god Apis and cow god Hathor protected the cattle. Plague #5 killed most of the cattle. It was pestilence! Number 6 was interesting! Boils broke out on the Egyptians...despite their god of healing... Thoth. Oh, and then there was Nut (aptly named). He was the sky god. Plague #7? Storm and hail!
There was also an Egyptian god of agriculture, Osiris (remeber he was also supposed to help protect the Nile? He was unable to stop the swarms of locusts that devoured the crops ...plague #8! The Egyptians also had a Sun god....Ra. Guess what the 9th plague was? Total darkness! ALL of the false gods were proven worthless by the one true God! The God of the Hebrews and the God that sent His Son to die in our place! Praise God!
The final plague brings us back to Moses. Remember that Pharoah had ordered the firstborn males killed? Even Pharoah was mocked and shown how powerless he really was compared to God. He must have really wondered about the God of the Israelites as he held the body of his own son in his arms! The blood of the perfect, flawless lamb protected the Jews that dreaded night as the precious blood of Jesus, perfect and flawless, without blemish protects us christians today!
Pharoah relented...and the Israelites were off! Only to be stopped by the banks of the Red Sea, where god performed another miracle! Moses put up with a lot of gripping, didn’t he? When you work for God, it ain’t always peaches and cream! Get used to people coming against you, fussing at you, telling you HOW to do it, but never volunteering TO do it! Mosews was critisized a LOT!
God called Moses to Mt Sinai to deliver the 10 commandments for His people to live by. While Moses was in Gods very presence, the people were making a graven image...a golden calf. They thought Moses was dead and God had abandoned them! After all, he had been gone 40 days! Guess what happened when Moses came down off that mountain? Yep, Moses got mad....again! So mad that he lost his temper and threw down the stone tablets on which God Himself had personally written on! When Moses went back up to get the commandments again guess who had to chisel them out this time? See, God will let us make it hard on ourselves!
Everything was going smooth again for moses....until everybody got tired of manna! Moses was tired of all this....he thought he had a noble calling and that everything should be all good all the time. Moses was mad at EVERYBODY....including God! NUMBERS 11:11 He asked the LORD, "Why have you brought this trouble on your servant? What have I done to displease you that you put the burden of all these people on me? 12 Did I conceive all these people? Did I give them birth? Why do you tell me to carry them in my arms, as a nurse carries an infant, to the land you promised on oath to their forefathers? 13 Where can I get meat for all these people? They keep wailing to me, ’Give us meat to eat!’ 14 I cannot carry all these people by myself; the burden is too heavy for me. 15 If this is how you are going to treat me, put me to death right now—if I have found favor in your eyes—and do not let me face my own ruin." Just kill me now!
In NUMBERS 20, Moses was instucted to "speak to the rock" in order to get water. Moses did something different than God said. He struck the rock twice, thus costing himself a place in the promised land. He directly dis-obeyed God and it cost him dearly! His whole life mission was terminated just short of its goal because he couldn’t control himself! After all he’d seen and been through, he let his human side manifest itself!
Things we can learn from Moses: 1. Humility. When Moses ran off to the desert, he learned humility. He also learned how to be alone with God! 2. Dependence. Moses had to learn to depend on God for everything. We are powerless in ourselves. 3. Spiritual Confidence. We all need to understand that God is in control....and put aside all of our own personal desires and feelings! 4. Accountability. Moses learned the hard way that you are accountable to God for your actions.....or in-actions. Be careful to work to please Him...and not yourself! PROV 3:5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;
