Insight for Today
A Daily Devotional by Pastor Chuck Swindoll

God was saying to his servant, "Moses, you simply go before Pharaoh and deliver the goods. He won't like it. He won't want it. Just bear in mind that even his stubborn, hardened heart is not outside My will."

Isn't God gracious? We have a Lord who knows our hearts, knows our thoughts, and knows our fears. When Moses had left Egypt forty years before there were those who sought his life.

Moses, you'll remember, approached his father-in-law Jethro and asked permission to return to Egypt. He certainly didn't tell Jethro everything at that point, but he let the man know there was something stirring in his heart.

Verse 18 features a glimpse into Moses' humanity and God's patience. "Then Moses departed and returned to Jethro his father-in-law and said to him, 'Please, let me go, that I may return to my brethren who are in Egypt, and see if they are still alive.'"

Do you know what God did? He accommodated Moses' desire. But the compromise was less than the best; brother Aaron proved to be an albatross around his neck. It was Aaron who got impatient while Moses was on the mountain.

"But Lord," Moses was saying, "I can't be Your spokesman in this situation. Why, I wouldn't have any answers when those guys started firing questions at me." Before we consider the Lord's response, stop and think about that lame excuse for a moment.

Moses had been resistant for forty years, telling himself all that time that his was a lost cause. Now, when God came with a direct, simple call, the old shepherd couldn't handle it.

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."

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.