Scripture Daily

Context No. 1281 of 4322 · Acts

Context · Reflection

Acts 7:17-25: in context

17“But as the time of the promise came close which God had sworn to Abraham, the people grew and multiplied in Egypt, 18until there arose a different king who didn’t know Joseph. 19The same took advantage of our race and mistreated our fathers, and forced them to abandon their babies, so that they wouldn’t stay alive. 20At that time Moses was born, and was exceedingly handsome to God. He was nourished three months in his father’s house. 21When he was abandoned, Pharaoh’s daughter took him up and reared him as her own son. 22Moses was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. He was mighty in his words and works. 23But when he was forty years old, it came into his heart to visit his brothers, the children of Israel. 24Seeing one of them suffer wrong, he defended him and avenged him who was oppressed, striking the Egyptian. 25He supposed that his brothers understood that God, by his hand, was giving them deliverance; but they didn’t understand.

In his sermon, Stephen recounts the early life of Moses. As the time drew near for God to fulfill his promise to Abraham, Israel multiplied in Egypt under a new Pharaoh who oppressed them and forced them to abandon their infants. Moses was born, hidden three months, then taken and raised as Pharaoh's daughter's son, educated in all the wisdom of Egypt, commanding in word and deed. At forty, moved to visit his people, he saw one being mistreated, defended him, and struck down the Egyptian. Moses supposed his brothers would understand that God was giving them deliverance through his hand, but they did not understand.

The telling line is Stephen's observation: Moses supposed his brothers would understand that God was rescuing them through him, but they did not understand. Moses had the right calling, God really did intend to deliver Israel through him, but he acted at the wrong time and in the wrong way, taking matters into his own hands with a sudden act of violence, forty years before God's appointed moment. He was right about the destiny and wrong about the timing; the deliverer God had prepared tried to begin the deliverance on his own schedule and by his own strength, and it failed. He had to flee, and spend forty more years in the wilderness before God called him at the burning bush to do the very thing he had tried to do too soon. There is a lesson in that about the gap between a genuine calling and God's timing for it. It is possible to be right about what God has called you to and still ruin it by running ahead of him, forcing it in your own strength before he has prepared the moment. The forty years in the wilderness were not wasted; they were where the man who had trusted his own strength was made ready to be used in God's. Sometimes the calling is real and the waiting is God's way of preparing us to do it his way, not ours.

Have I run ahead of God, trying to force in my own strength a calling that is real but not yet ripe, and can I trust that even the waiting is God's way of preparing me to do his work his way?

Sources