Moses in Egypt
The character of Moses dominated the early years of sacred history.
He was kept alive in the providence of God, who worked through an
enterprising mother and a caring sister. When Pharaoh’s daughter found
baby Moses in the ark of bulrushes, she asked his Hebrew mother to
care for him and paid her to do so. What a blessed challenge for a
young mother who was an exile and slave! Jochebed had only 12 years
to teach her child to pray, to trust and honor God, and shape his charac-
ter for a life of service. For years, Moses was trained in the royal courts
of Egypt. “ ‘And Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians,
and was mighty in words and deeds’ ” (Acts 7:22, NKJV). As Moses
matured as a man, he made a conscious decision that changed his life
and the course of history.
Read Hebrews 11:24–29. Think about what Moses left behind and
what he had to face instead. Try to look at it from his position,
before he made the choice. What was he leaving, and what was he
choosing to accept by leaving?
Egypt was one of the greatest powers in the ancient world at the
time, if not the greatest. The Nile River created such fertile land that
Egypt, flush with crops, was a wealthy and powerful nation, and Moses
himself would have been at the top of this kingdom. It’s hard to imag-
ine how tempting the lure of the world, the world of Egypt and all its
treasures, must have been to him in his early years. Surely, he must have
found the adoration, the pleasures, and the riches tempting. No doubt
he probably very easily could have justified staying rather than throw-
ing in his lot with a bunch of despised slaves.
And yet, what? As Scripture says, he chose “rather to suffer affliction
with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin” (Heb.
11:25, NKJV). And talk about afflictions: a major part of the book of
Exodus deals with the struggles and trials of Moses, who, even after all
he went through, was still not able to cross over to the Promised Land
(see Num. 20:12). Yet, in the end, we all know that Moses made the right
choice, even if at times he must have wondered himself if he really had.
From a worldly perspective, Moses should have stayed in Egypt.
However, as Christians, we have been given a view of reality that
takes us way beyond this world. When we are tempted by the
world, how can we keep the big picture always before us? Why is
it so important that we do so?
