Title: Then He Saw a Burning Bush Date: 8.10.2014 Series: The Acts Series Text: Acts 7:17-38 Synopsis: If failure doesn’t destroy us, it can do us a lot of good. Failure reveals mistakes that we have opportunity to correct. Failure reveals areas of weakness that we have opportunity to strengthen. Failure reveals sin in our lives that we have opportunity to repent and change. As important as all of these things are, most importantly, God uses our failure to form us into the men and women he wants us to be so that he can use us for his own redemptive purposes. All of these things are happening in the early life of Moses. Stephen continues his defense before the Sanhedrin by recounting how the Israelites have been in Egypt for over four hundred years and for the last two hundred years or so they have been degraded to the status of slaves. Yet in spite of their suffering, God has blessed them and their population is exploding. So much so that Pharaoh issues an edict that all male babies must be aborted by exposure, a practice wherein the child is left to die exposed to the elements or to wild beasts. Moses’ Hebrew parents hide him for three months but are finally forced to obey Pharaoh’s terrible edict and Moses is set adrift on the Nile River. However, Moses is miraculously saved by the daughter of Pharaoh and raised in Pharaoh’s house as his own son. When Moses is forty years old he takes the law into his own hands and kills an Egyptian who is beating a Hebrew man. In his pride, he thinks he is helping his fellow Hebrews but he quickly learns how wrong he is when his own people accuse him of trying to be “lord and judge” over them and accuse him of killing the Egyptian. Fearing reprisal from Pharaoh and the rejection of his own people, Moses flees to the desert town of Midian. There, the great Moses, raised and educated in Pharaoh’s home and destined to greatness, humbly marries, raises two sons, and tends sheep for the next forty years. There are many ways to view the story of Moses’ life before he is raised up as Israel’s deliverer. Moses made mistakes that needed corrected. He had weaknesses that needed strengthened. Moses struggled with pride and needed to learn humility. Moses sounds a lot like you and me. Yet Stephen is looking at the life of Moses through the perspective of God’s redemptive purposes. God took Moses’ weakness, mistakes and even his sinful nature to bring deliverance to his people. Throughout the forty years Moses spent in the deserts of Midian raising a family and tending sheep, Moses had no aspirations to somehow regain the power and privilege he enjoyed in Egypt. He certainly had no aspirations to become the great hero and deliver of God’s people. He was just a humble husband, father and shepherd. Then he saw a burning bush… youtu.be/_sqreUNN6dw
Posted on: Wed, 13 Aug 2014 16:55:59 +0000