Insight for Today
A Daily Devotional by Pastor Chuck Swindoll

What was God's larger message to Moses in that moment? Release your imagination for a few moments. It might have included some thoughts such as these: "Moses, forty years ago you were a fine looking bush, impressed with all your own foliage."

I think one of the most important words in this verse is the very first one. When. The Hebrew word means "at the same time." That goes back to verse 3, where Moses said, "I must turn aside." When did God speak to Moses? At the same moment when Moses turned aside.

This was the day when God decided to break a forty-year silence. Pause and let that sink in! Through four decades in Midian, we have no record of God's speaking to Moses. Not even once. The day that was going to shatter that silence, however, dawned like every other day in the wilderness.

Notice carefully how the process took place through those years of desert learning, because it is the same with you and me. God must break through several hard, exterior barriers in our lives before He can renovate our souls. His persistent goal is to break through to the inner person.

The desert is a place of obscurity. Moses had to cope with being a nobody. All his adolescent and adult life, he had been a big-time somebody. The spotlight followed his every move, much as the contemporary spotlight follows Britain's Prince William and Prince Harry.

You'd better believe that Moses, though tucked away in a corner of that wasteland, heard the latest news from the travelers in caravans making their way up from Egypt through the Midian desert. When Moses learned the Hebrews were crying out, his heart must have turned over within him.

Pay close attention to that last sentence. "Moses was willing to dwell with the man." How good that is. Here is a man he had never met; an obscure desert priest and shepherd, who had spent a lifetime raising sheep (and daughters!) in the desolate patch of land known as Midian.

Moses, the Prince of Egypt, alias Prince Charming, watering animals? Why? Because Moses had just choked down the biggest wedge of humble pie you can imagine. By now, the man was ready to do anything.

Spiritual ends are never achieved by carnal means. Back in Egypt, as you may recall, Moses had "looked this way and that," then murdered an Egyptian and buried him with sand. As we have already noted, Moses may have thought he was following God's plan in that moment.

Moses took a forty-story fall. As we pick up the biblical account, he's a heavy-hearted, bruised-and-battered soul who has come to a sudden stop at the bottom. In a matter of mere days, he has stepped off the top of the pyramid as Pharaoh-designate and down to a bedraggled, penniless fugitive.

Moses was a frightened and disillusioned fugitive running, escaping for his very life. His vaunted education now meant nothing to him. His knowledge of hieroglyphics and Egyptian culture gave him no comfort. His military victories seemed hollow.

First surprise. Next confusion, followed by fear, like icy fingers around the heart. When Moses' well-kept secret hit the prime-time networks, he got the shakes. And acting on fear, the biblical account states that "he fled from the presence of Pharaoh." Why did he run?

Moses believed he was to be the deliverer, many years before he received his recommission at the burning bush. He assumed everyone else would realize it too. The passage goes on to tell us, "On the following day he appeared to them as they were fighting" (Acts 7:26).

According to Exodus 2:12, Moses hid the body of the slain Egyptian. But by the next day, it was all over the papers. They found the Egyptian. Five inches of loose sand hid nothing. Hiding wrong, Moses now had to admit, does nothing to erase wrong.

Moses looked this way, and he looked that way. Isn't it interesting? He didn't look up, did he? He looked in both directions horizontally, but he ignored the vertical. And what did he do with the results of his murderous anger? Scripture says "he hid the Egyptian in the sand."

I'm convinced Moses was doing more than grandstanding. I believe he was absolutely sincere. He didn't see himself murdering a cruel slave driver as much as courageously striking a blow for God's people. The desire to do something right overcame him.

Jochebed had faith. She also thought through a very creative plan. I'd like to pause to reflect on this tension between careful planning and full-hearted faith. Are they mutually exclusive? Not on your life! Yet to talk to some believers, you might be led to think otherwise.

When we come to passages like the first chapter of Exodus, we are reminded that God's law always comes before man's law. Scripture does not teach blind-and-blanket submission. The fact is, there is a time to submit, and there's also a time to resist.

According to Pharaoh's instructions, the Hebrew midwife was to watch closely as the baby emerged. She was immediately to discover the sex of the child as it came forth from the womb and to snuff out its life if she noticed it was a male.

The Egyptians' insecurity and abhorrence for their Jewish neighbors eventually led to savagery. I find that interesting. It strikes me that if you are prone to violent anger and brutality, it might be wise for you to back off and ask yourself what you're afraid of.