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Exodus 2:11-22
Sometimes God takes longer
At 40, Moses, the man of two worlds, is the perfect leader for God's plan.
God misses the Hollywood perfect moment for Moses leading Israel in a Spartacus revolution.
Instead, Moses is banished to live another 40 years as a shepherd in the wilderness.
God again turns Moses' persecution into preparation for His plan... and the timing of that plan transcends our expectation.
Sometimes God takes longer.
Intro - Anna's Terrible Timing
Sometimes, when we are getting ready for church, I get stressed out.
Or ticked off.
I will have all of the kids ready to go and in the car.
I will have the car warmed up.
We are ready to go.
It is time to go.
That is a great combination... except the one person who isn't ready to go.
Anna is still inside.
And she is still still inside.
She has been still inside for 5... 10... 15... minutes.
We have been married for 13 years now, and we have found a solution to this frustration.
I drive away, she follows later in the truck.
Anyhow... that brings us to Moses.
Moses Chooses a side
Exodus 2:11.
As we go through these narrative chapters, I will be referencing the text and covering the story of the text, and I encourage you to follow along in the Scripture.
It will sometimes be up on the slides.
Moses was born, as we learned last week, under persecution from Pharaoh.
God turned that persecution into preparation for His plan.
Moses was Hebrew but raised Egyptian, a man of two worlds.
Steven, the first martyr, inspired by the Holy Spirit summarizes Moses' story this way:
Acts 7:21-22 21and when he was exposed, Pharaoh’s daughter adopted him and brought him up as her own son.
22 And Moses was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and he was mighty in his words and deeds.
We pick up today with the Moses who is now "mighty in his words and deeds."
Exodus 2:11-22
He is kind of sitting on the fence between Hebrew and Egyptian.
As we all can imagine, sitting on the fence is incredibly painful.
And the time comes when Moses has to choose.
There is this slight tension between the Hebrews and Egyptians because... at this point, the Egyptians had now enslaved the Hebrew people.
He watched their hard labor, he looked upon their burdens.
The man of two worlds, Moses, born Hebrew and raised Egyptian, he chooses one: "his people... are the Hebrew people."
He sees one of his people being beaten.
Now perhaps Moses had chosen long ago, identified with his people long ago.
Perhaps the persecution and enslavement of his people had bothered him for years.
But this was a watershed moment.
And Moses acts.
"he looked around..."
He looks left, he looks right, this is premeditated, here.
This is the moment: and he kills the Egyptian, properly an overseer over the Hebrew slave.
No witnesses... except probably the witness: the man he saved.
Later, another scene of violence, but this time his own people are fighting each other.
Moses goes to intercede...
Alternate direction
And you all know the story:
Moses adjudicates and intervenes with wisdom.
He unites his people under His leadership.
They see and value his Egyptian education but they know he is their people in heart and blood.
The people rally behind Moses' leadership and all of Pharaoh's fears come true.
The united people of Israel outnumber the Egyptians, and Moses has been trained in war and was himself mighty in deeds!
Their rebellion became a revolution, casting off the chains of Pharaoh and taking the nation of Egypt for God.
The people of Israel now rule Egypt and have vacation homes in Israel!
Escape the summer heat in the Holy Land.
Maybe not...
Now is this crazy imagination?
No, this is what Moses seems to have thought would happen.
That isn't just me making it up, Steven, inspired by God, taught this as he surveyed God's work..
Acts 7:23-2523 “When he was forty years old, it came into his heart to visit his brothers, the children of Israel.
24 And seeing one of them being wronged, he defended the oppressed man and avenged him by striking down the Egyptian.
25 He supposed that his brothers would understand that God was giving them salvation by his hand, but they did not understand.
Actual Story
So what actually happened?
Who do you think you are "big Egypt boy!" Oh, looky here, prince of Egypt, come to rescue us poor downtrodden Hebrew people.
The bitterness and resentment.
We could dismiss this and condemn the Hebrew people, but here was Moses who had been getting a free-pass for 40 years.
We have been in the trenches, you have been in the palace.
"You think you're better than me?"
And Moses' little rescue operation from the previous day probably had some unforeseen consequences.
An Egyptian overseer had gone missing, who do you think they were likely to blame?
And when the Egyptian NSA comes around to find out who did it, what reason do they have to protect Moses at their own cost.
Moses chose to cast his lot with his people, he put himself at risk for them, he killed an Egyptian for them... he expected his brothers to understand.
Instead, they rejected him.
They did not understand.
Indeed, for some pretty understandable reasons, they had some bitterness and resentment against Moses.
So Moses fled to Midian (probably modern day Saudi Arabia, or the Saudi peninsula) for another 40 years.
Midianites were descended from Abraham through his wife after Sarah, Keturah.
Northwestern Arabia or modern day Saudi Arabia.
So Moses went to spend 40 years of Arabian nights.
Still quick to act against oppression (at well).
Imposing enough to drive off a group of shepherds (to whom the well was pretty important) and do the work that seven girls were planning to do.
Notice that the girls identified him as an "Egyptian".
That is what he looked like, what he dressed like, and probably how he sounded.
To make his banishment complete, Moses comes to live with a priest of a foreign God, Jethro, also called here Reuel (or friend of God).
And he marries a foreign woman.
He is completely rejected by his people, by both peoples, a total exile.
Persecution into Preparation Revisited
Now we can see that God again turns Moses' persecution into preparation.
From princeling of the greatest nation of his world to the obscurity of criminal exile in the Sinai wilderness... an alien in a foreign land.
But he is an exile being prepared to lead a nation in exile.
Moses is sent out into the wilderness to take care of a bunch of smelly, unruly, sheep.
Sound familiar?
This is incredible preparation for Moses' ministry to come, it taught him how to live in the wilderness, taught him the lay of the land he was to lead the people of Israel through... it prepared him.
God's Terrible Timing
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