There is no doubt that it was one thing for God to take the
Israelites out of the slavery from Egypt but quite another to get the slavery
of Egypt out of the Israelites. That first generation of Israelites, with two
notable exceptions, never overcame the slavery of their souls. They had been
released to walk free, they had seen the mighty miracles of God but inside
every one of them was still a slave.
The problem is that slaves have no passion, no purpose, no
vision and no personal direction. They
have no rights and there is little pleasure in life because all they are doing
is fulfilling other people’s purposes.
They have little or no sense of personal destiny. They have no freedom of any sort and no
ability to choose because their owner provides for them. What they lack most of
all is any leadership capability because they rarely if ever lead.
It would have been almost impossible to find someone to take
these million slaves out of the slavery of Egypt from amongst the Israelites
but God had a wonderful plan. He needed to raise up a Hebrew, one of their own
but one not raised in slavery. God hand picked Moses and then trained him up
for 80 years. Moses needed to be
comfortable and confident in two different places; a palace and the desert. For
40 years this Hebrew was raised as a prince in the palace and for another 40
years he learned how to shepherd in the desert.
God was working out his plan for both Moses and his
people. When Moses tried to pre-empt the
plan by intervening in the lives of the Hebrews and killing an Egyptian who was
beating them, God used the event to take Moses from the first part of his
training plan (the palace) to the second part (the desert). God uses our
mistakes, presumptions and assumptions to work out his plans.
Moses I suspect knew there was a great call on his life. Why
else would this Hebrew boy have been brought up in the palace when everyone
else was making bricks? However the flame of destiny must have been burning
very low by the time God suddenly appeared at the burning bush after 80 years.
Moses’ confidence in his abilities by this time was shot to
pieces but that was fine. God wanted to
teach him to be confident in God not in himself. There was no way anyone would
be able to bring about the 10 plagues and part the Red Sea if they were looking
to their own abilities. God taught Moses
plague by plague, confrontation by confrontation with Pharaoh to trust him. By
the time of the tenth plague it says in Exodus 11: 8 Then Moses, hot with anger, left Pharaoh.
This
was the Moses who was so scared of re-visiting the palace and confronting
Pharaoh at the beginning that he begged God several times not to send him but
to get someone else to do it. By the
time of the 10th plague he knew who his God was and how Pharaoh was
defying the plans and purposes of the Living God. It was the same spirit of holy
boldness that David had when he slew Goliath.
Moses
was God’s man for the task and God trained him till he was ready to fulfil his
divine calling. God has a destiny and calling for you and, though it may not
look like it, he is working it out often in small painful steps. Despite our
shortcomings, complaining and grumbling God will bring about his plan and purpose
in our lives. He doesn’t give up even when we do. Keep faithful, keep trusting, God is at work.
