February 08, 2025
According to Acts 7:23, Moses was 40 when he left Egypt to become a shepherd in Midian.
Wild sheep can survive on their own – not so with domesticated sheep. They are skittish and easily frightened. They can’t protect themselves, so as a survival strategy, they flock together. However, flocking can also be a problem because sheep will follow each other blindly into dangerous places, over cliffs or even into fast moving rivers – they need a shepherd.
The life of a shepherd is difficult. It requires a humble and compassionate person who can endure and persevere because the hours are long and the conditions can be brutal. Shepherding is a very hands-on job: lambing, finding good grazing and knowing which plants to avoid, tending to the sick and injured, protecting the flock from predators, leading them away from dangerous situations and rounding up the lost sheep - a shepherd is never not on guard.
For Moses, this was the last place he expected to find himself – tending the flocks of his father-in-law. He had been groomed for power. He had attended the finest schools. Every whim had been catered to. He was brash, reckless and self-confident. Yet his position could not protect him from his choice to “help God.” And now he was looking after sheep….
40 years went by (Acts 7:30a) and while Moses was tending Jethro’s sheep, God was tending to Moses. He had been refining and pruning and transforming the former Prince of Egypt. Now a man of 80, Moses was finally ready.
Chapters 3 and 4 of Exodus are devoted almost exclusively to Moses’ calling. What we notice first, is that Moses was not the one who initiated the call – It was God who went looking for Moses. One day, Moses was tending his flocks on the far side of the desert near Mt. Horeb (Mt Sinai). He was minding his own business, when he saw something amazing – a burning bush that was not being consumed. Moses thought to himself, “I’ve got to go check that out.”
When God saw Moses wandering over, he called to him from the bush:
“Moses, Moses”
“Here I am”
“Do not come any closer. Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground. I am the God of your fathers -- the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob."
Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.
"I have seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians – and bring them into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey -- the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. Now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people out of Egypt."
Dramatic pause ---- “Wait, what?! Care to repeat your last statement? Did you really just tell me to go back to Egypt for the express purpose of bringing the Israelites out of Egypt? Did I hear you correctly? (Not in scripture)
Can you imagine what Moses must have been thinking and feeling. 40 years ago – as a strapping prince of Egypt, sure, no problemo – but as an 80-year-old shepherd? Hard pass.
Here we encounter a very human problem. When Moses initiated his own call – when he decided he was ready to do something for God – he was very energetic. However, when God showed up unexpectantly and was the one doing the calling, Moses was less than enthusiastic, what might God ask him to do?
So, Moses went about explaining to God why he was not the man for the job:
• Excuse #1 – “Who am I?”
“I am a nobody, why send me to go before Pharaoh? I am in no position to bring out the Children of Israel.”
God’s response:
"I will be with you. And this will be the sign to you that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain."
• Excuse #2 - “Who are You?”
"Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, 'The God of your fathers has sent me to you,' and they ask me, 'What is his name?' Then what shall I tell them?"
God’s response:
“I AM WHO I AM. Tell the Israelites that ‘I Am’ has sent you.”
Translated Yahweh. This name of God is used over 6,000 times in the Old Testament, and is translated as “the LORD” in most bibles. It is God’s self-disclosure of His eternal, self-sustaining, self-determining, sovereign reality. He is the SELF-EXISTENT ONE. He has NEVER been defined or determined by any other thing or being other than Himself. It is not a lifeless god of Egypt who has called Moses. It is Yahweh, the eternal living God of the universe.
• Excuse #3 - “What if they don’t believe me or listen to me?”
God’s response:
“What is in your right hand?”
“A staff.”
“Throw it down.”
The staff became a snake and Moses ran in terror.
“Pick the snake up by the tail.”
Moses did and the snake became a staff once again.
“Put your hand inside your cloak.”
Moses put his hand inside his cloak and when he pulled it out again it was covered with leprosy.
“Put you hand back inside your cloak.”
Moses put his hand back inside his cloak and when he removed it, his hand was completely restored.
"If they do not believe you or pay attention to the first miraculous sign, they may believe the second. But if they do not believe these two signs or listen to you, take some water from the Nile and pour it on the dry ground. The water you take from the river will become blood on the ground."
• Excuse #4 - “I have never been eloquent. I am slow of speech.”
God’s response:
"Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, Yahweh? Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say."
• Excuse #5 - “Send Someone Else”
God’s response - He became angry:
"What about your brother, Aaron the Levite? I know he can speak well. He is already on his way to meet you, and his heart will be glad when he sees you. You shall speak to him and put words in his mouth; I will help both of you speak and will teach you what to do. He will speak to the people for you, and it will be as if he were your mouth and as if you were God to him. But take this staff in your hand so you can perform miraculous signs with it."
Moses headed home and told Jethro, his father-in-law, that he needed some time off: “I’d like to go back to my family in Egypt to see if any of them are still alive.”
“Go, and I wish you well.”
Yahweh spoke to Moses again: "Go back to Egypt, for all the men who wanted to kill you are dead."
So, Moses put his wife and sons on donkey’s and head back to Egypt – he took his staff with him.
On the way, Yahweh spoke to Moses yet again: "When you return to Egypt, see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders I have given you the power to do. But I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go.”
Here we have a problem. At first glance it would appear that Pharoah will have no say it what happens to him or his country, but is that true? I have made it a point for some time to tell you that one of the most important things to God is giving humanity the ability to choose – to have free will – to be able to say yes or no. Has he now decided, in this case, to remove free will and give Pharaoh no option to say yes? Who would follow a God who randomly did that?
Throughout the rest of the story, the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart will be expressed in three different ways:
• He hardened his own heart (8:15, 32; 9:34)
• His heart was hardened (7:13-14, 22-23; 8:19; 9:7, 35)
• God hardened his heart (9:12; 10:1, 20, 27; 11:10; 14:8)
I don’t believe that God is randomly removing Pharaoh’s free will and here is why.
God chose to show up in the deliverance of his people. When God shows up a response is required. God initiated the encounter and by doing so, he took responsibility for what was about to happen.
Think about it this way – the sun comes up and by coming up it creates a situation where a response is required. Clay responds by hardening. Butter responds by melting. If the sun did not come up no response would be necessary, both the clay and the butter would remain as they are. In that sense it is the sun’s “fault” – it’s his responsibility that the clay hardened and the butter melted.
So, it was with Pharaoh. When God showed up, Pharaoh had 2 options: harden or melt. Despite ample evidence that he was not dealing with a lifeless deity, Pharaoh chose repeatedly to throw his fist in the air and say, “bring it on!” He chose to be clay. God initiated the encounter, but Pharaoh was the author of his own defiance.
Back on the road to Egypt….
Exodus 4:24-26 - At a lodging place on the way, the LORD met Moses and was about to kill him. But Zipporah took a flint knife, cut off her son's foreskin and touched Moses' feet with it. "Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me," she said. So the LORD let him alone.
• Benson Commentary – “This was a great change: very lately God was conversing with him as a friend, and is now coming forth against him as an enemy. The cause seems to have been Moses’s neglecting to circumcise his son; which, perhaps, was the effect of his being unequally yoked with a Midianite, who was too indulgent of her child, and Moses so of her. Now God was offended with him for this neglect of duty, not only because Moses knew that no child could be admitted a member of the Israelitish community without circumcision, nor be entitled to the blessings of God’s covenant with Abraham’s seed, but also, because Moses’s example was of great consequence; for who would have regarded the law if the lawgiver himself had neglected it? As Moses was raised up for an extraordinary service, it was peculiarly proper that he should set an example of exact obedience in his own conduct. Hence he was thus sharply rebuked.”
• Ellen White (PP 255.5) – “On the way from Midian, Moses received a startling and terrible warning of the Lord's displeasure. An angel appeared to him in a threatening manner, as if he would immediately destroy him. No explanation was given; but Moses remembered that he had disregarded one of God's requirements; yielding to the persuasion of his wife, he had neglected to perform the rite of circumcision upon their youngest son. He had failed to comply with the condition by which his child could be entitled to the blessings of God's covenant with Israel; and such a neglect on the part of their chosen leader could not but lessen the force of the divine precepts upon the people. Zipporah, fearing that her husband would be slain, performed the rite herself, and the angel then permitted Moses to pursue his journey. In his mission to Pharaoh, Moses was to be placed in a position of great peril; his life could be preserved only through the protection of holy angels. But while living in neglect of a known duty, he would not be secure; for he could not be shielded by the angels of God.”
Yahweh told Aaron to go and meet Moses in the desert. Soon the 2 brothers met and as they made their way to Egypt, Moses told Aaron everything God had done. When the brothers arrived in Goshen, they called all the elders of Israel together and Aaron told them everything Yahweh had said to Moses and performed all the signs. The elders believed and bowed down and worshiped Yahweh.
Until Next Time……….
