What was Moses planning to
do? Did he plan to kill every Egyptian in Egypt and hide them all in the sand?
God had a better plan.
THIS WEEK'S TORAH PORTION:
Shemot (שמות | Names)
Torah: Exodus 1:1-6:1
Haftarah: Isaiah 27:6-28:13,
29:22-23
Gospel: Luke 5:12-39
The Death of a Dream
When Moses was forty years
old, he went out from Pharaoh's court to visit his brethren, the sons of
Israel. He was appalled to see the mistreatment they endured. He realized that
God had placed him in a position of power in order to help his people. Moved
with compassion for his countrymen, Moses went to the defense of one man who
was being beaten by an Egyptian. Moses struck the Egyptian, killed him and
buried him in the sand.
He returned to the Hebrews
the next day. He had a deep sense of purpose. Somehow he must help his people.
He was on a mission from God. When Moses came across two Hebrew men fighting,
he attempted to mediate between them. Instead they turned their resentment
toward him. Clement, the disciple of Peter, says that they resented him out of
a sense of envy:
Envy compelled Moses to flee
from the face of Pharaoh king of Egypt, when he heard these words from his
fellow countryman, "Who made you a judge or a ruler over us? Will you kill
me, as you killed the Egyptian yesterday?" (1 Clement 4:10)
Yeshua taught that a prophet
is without honor in his own home ( Matthew 13:57). Just as the Israelites
initially rejected the authority of Moses, so too the Jewish leadership in the
days of the apostles rejected the authority of Yeshua. Just as Moses
disappeared, only to reappear a generation later and bring about the redemption
from Egypt, so too Yeshua has been concealed and will be revealed in the last
generation to bring about the final redemption.
When Moses realized that his
attempts to help his people were not welcomed, nor could he trust them to
conceal his secret about the Egyptian he had killed, he fled from Egypt. His
noble delusions of being the redeemer of Israel all came crashing down.
"He supposed that his
brethren understood that God was granting them deliverance through him, but
they did not understand" (Acts 7:25).
Moses' life can be divided
into three forty-year segments. At the age of forty, Moses thought he was the
redeemer of Israel. He had a dream of saving his people. His dream was
frustrated, and in exasperation, he gave up. He fled into the wilderness, where
he became a shepherd, herding sheep for a pagan. He married a Midianite woman.
His dream of redeeming Israel died in the wilderness. Only after the dream was
dead and Moses was no longer trying to achieve it at all did God call him. Only
then—long after the all the pride and bravado were gone—was Moses ready to be a
tool in the hand of God. He spent the last forty years of his life fulfilling
the dream that had been birthed in him forty years before.
This can be compared to a
carpenter who hired a young apprentice. The apprentice was eager to get busy
with building houses, too eager to take the time to learn the carpentry trade.
"Very well," said the carpenter, "if you are so certain of
yourself, go ahead and build." Halfway through the construction project,
the lopsided frame he was erecting collapsed. The young apprentice turned in
his tools and shamefacedly said, "I have to quit. I'm not a carpenter. I
can't build anything." "Excellent," the carpenter replied.
"Now you are ready to learn how to build."
-First Fruits of Zion
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