Hey everyone.
Two weeks ago I wrote about God and his plan for Moses. How Moses' young life was spared and in fact how he ended up becoming a part of the household of Pharaoh. Too many things happened for it to have been just coincidence. God had a plan, I believe, not only for Moses, but for all of his people to be liberated from the bondage of the Egyptians. I would like to continue to look at that plan today.
Exodus 2:11-15 tells us how Moses, when he had grown up, killed an Egyptian who had been mistreating one of the Israelites. This situation eventually put Moses on the run for his life from the vengeance of Pharaoh. Stephen shed a little more light on this story in Acts 7:22-25. He says, "Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in speech and action. When Moses was forty years old, he decided to visit his own people, the Israelites. He saw one of them being mistreated by an Egyptian, so he went to his defense and avenged him by killing the Egyptian. Moses thought that his own people would realize that God was using him to rescue them, but they did not."
At forty, Moses was well-educated and powerful. He believed that he was part of the plan to set his people free. (Indeed he was, but not yet.) His plan made sense. He was a powerful, that the Israelites could rally behind and be free of the Egyptians. So he tried to rally the people, but they did not rally behind him. Instead, he becomes a man of the run for his life.
He ends being a shepherd for the next forty years, until in Exodus 3, God calls him, at the age of eighty, from a burning bush. Now God is ready to work his plan. But why did God wait an extra forty years to free his people? I don't know. All we can do is speculate. Perhaps Moses was not ready. At forty, he thought he was ready, but perhaps he was not. Maybe, he needed that time in the Maybe the Israelites weren't ready. Maybe they needed that extra time of suffering to really appreciate what God would later do for them.
To us, we can think, "OK, why the delay? Doesn't God care that His people are suffering?" Think about all of the Israelites that died in captivity during that extra forty years, that could have been free if Moses had led the people out forty years earlier. The truth is that God really does care, and works in way for our benefit, even if we don't see. God had a plan for Moses and for His people. It was just a very long plan. So far the plan has taken eighty years and in truth, from the time of Moses birth, to the people of Israel actually entering the Promised Land, the plan took one hundred and twenty years. Makes you think, doesn't it? Don't we sometimes wonder why God is taking so long in giving us what we want? Does is cause us sometimes to question His power? Like Moses and the Israelites, however, we have to trust in His plan for us. Peter wrote in I Peter 5:6, "Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time." God has a plan for us, It just may not work as fast as we want it too. But he will lift us up in "due time." Moses waited until he was eighty, but God lifted him up. If you are waiting for your "due time," let's hope that the wait is as long as Moses" wait, but have confidence that God does have a plan.
Tom
