Because they populated so
quickly, he imposed birth control on them, and we all know the story of
how Moses escaped the fate of tens of thousands of his fellow-Jews
(although this was before the time they were known as such) by his
mother's wisdom to obey Pharaoh's command in her own way, namely by
putting her baby into a basket, before giving him up to the Nile.
Thus Moses became the Jewish
"Prince of Egypt," having been found and reared by one of Pharaoh's
daughters. But one of the main lessons we learn from Moses' life is
that God does not choose the "Princes of Egypt" to deliver His people,
but strange and lonely old shepherds, who would think of themselves as
the least likely candidates to deliver anyone.
The young, ambitious hothead
Moses only made a mess of things when he tried to play the "deliverer"
or defender of his people, and as a result he had to flee into the
wilderness. It's interesting to note here that by today's judgment,
especially that of our youth, a person is already considered half dead
by the time he turns 40. However, the Bible considers Moses still a
"young man" at that age.
Thus we're not surprised when
he turns out to spend another 40 years in the wilderness, herding
sheep. (Seems as if there are a lot of shepherds among the lineage of
God's people: Abel, Abraham through Jacob... even Moses didn't get
around it). It is here that Moses receives the real training he needs
to become the deliverer, the mouthpiece of God that he is meant to be.
He had to get to the point
where he would let God do the work through him. By the time God
recruited him out there in the wilderness, to lead His people out of
Egypt, Moses probably had already resigned to his fate that he was
going to spend the rest of his life quietly herding sheep, and God
Himself had to practically persuade him into taking on that job, which
by all natural reasoning would have been an impossible task for an 80
year old man, who probably didn't even speak the language of his own
people well, having been reared by Egyptians, and having spent the past
40 years abroad. Moses felt anything but ready for the job, and it
seems as if God uses his sample to flash a message at us that that's
the kind of people He prefers to use: not the self-confident, big shot
hot heads who can't wait to do all the talking and preaching and busy
bubbling in some sort of religious show-business, but the quiet types
who know they don't stand a chance in a life-time to do it on their
own. All they know is that God told them to do it, and that He's going
to have to lead them step by step.
The number one requirement for
any servant of God is that he needs to learn to listen. One must first
hear God's voice, before he is able to pass on God's Words.
And like so many others of his
kind, we find that Moses isn't exactly received with red carpet
treatment when God finally sends him back to Egypt. Just like many true
prophets of God today are despised and rejected by the majority of
Christianity. Just like today, the captive Israelites in Egypt didn't
want any old weird shepherd from the desert to tell them any strange
doctrines of burning bushes and voices of God. They were slaves to the
rulers of this world, but at least they had some sort of safety, and
they weren't going to put their lives so quickly into the hands of this
old man they knew little about, who wasn't even married to one of their
own kind...
Only when the miracles of God
started happening, and the plagues started falling around the
Egyptians' ears, they reluctantly started paying heed to Moses and
respecting him. Maybe they were scared that the same things that
happened to the Egyptians might befall them, otherwise.
But as the history of the 40
years that were to follow shows, the children of Israel never really
followed Moses with their hearts. They doubted, murmured and complained
and rose up in disobedience and rebellion against their anointed leader
time and again, and when they reached the Promised Land, they were too
scared to conquer it. God was so upset with them that He sent them to
wander through the wilderness for 40 years instead, until nearly the
entire older generation was wiped out, and only their children were
allowed to enter into the land that was to be their home.
Moses had to plead with God on
occasion not to wipe them all out and start all over again with another
people, because they were so stubborn and rebellious.
This is a quite different
picture than the one traditionally conveyed of the Exodus, but it's
what one will truly find out happened, if they read their Bible. Here
was another "special" person whom the Lord had chosen and anointed to
be their prophet and leader, and yet relatively few followed him with
their whole hearts. If the chosen people would have had their choice,
they would often have rather returned to Egypt as slaves than follow
that old madman and His God.
Paul tells us about this very
incident, "all these things happened unto them for ensamples: and they
are written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the world are
come" (1Cor.10:11). The human heart hasn't changed for the better since
the days of Adam and Eve, nor Moses, nor since the days of Jeremiah,
who later wrote, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and
desperately wicked: who can know it?" (Jer.17:9). It certainly hadn't
changed by the time Jesus came around, nor His apostles, many of whom
became martyrs to the cause of God, the first of which, Stephen,
reminded them, "Which of the prophets have your fathers not
persecuted?" (Acts 7:52). And if you ask me, it certainly hasn't
changed in thir "era of enlightenment," either.
We think we're different than
those "savages" 2000 or 4000 years ago, because we have modern
technology and democracy. But if you peek beneath that thin veneer and
look at the carnage our "enlightenment" spells for the poor of the
world, and when you see people's reactions to the voices and
mouthpieces of God, you'll know the only difference is that things have
gotten worse.
You may not hear much about it,
or even if you do, you won't say much about it, just as the German
people didn't say anything when the Nazis hawled off the Jews during
the 3rd Reich. They figured the authorities knew what they were doing.
We always do. "All that will live godly in Christ Jesus must suffer
persecution" (1Tim.3:12). Nothing has changed about that. If you don't
believe that religious persecution is happening in the 21st century,
you don't know the history of The Family International, or have never
been to VoiceOfTheMartyrs.com, or maybe you've never heard what
happened to the Branch Davidians in Waco at the wake of the Clinton
administration, or missed the more recent news about the plight of the
FLDS church in Texas… The persecutors of today always only
look bad in the history books of tomorrow, never at present.
So, what's the big lesson we
learn from Moses? That it's not the high and mighty whom God chooses,
not the promising "Princes of Egypt," but the weird old shepherds from
the wilderness, and that those shepherds are usually only received and
followed quite reluctantly by the majority of their flock. It's not an
easy job, and not one to be desired, to be a leader of God's people.
God's people are a peculiar people, anything but a perfect people, and
one needs to have a lot of patience with them.
The one time Moses finally ran out of patience and showed his anger cost him his ticket into the Promised Land.
We sometimes resent our godly
leaders, and resent the fact that they should have anything from God to
tell us, any new commandments we should obey. While we obey our worldly
superiors without reluctance, and willingly slave away for them, just
in order to stay alive, when it comes to obeying God and His chosen
ones, it's as if the very rebellion that caused Lucifer to fall enters
into our hearts and make us resist their godly authority over us. As
John, the only of Jesus' apostles who was miraculously spared a
martyr's death, wrote: "This is the condemnation, that light is come
into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their
deeds were evil" (John 3:19).
Whatever light God sends us, we
nearly always seem to prefer to dwell in our old darkness. We resent,
resist, reject the light. Only once we allow the light to fully enter
and we fully enter into the light and yield to it, only then are we
ready to truly be used by God, and in return become part of those who
are rejected by the masses...
It's harder to get Egypt out of the people than to get the people out of Egypt.
