In the gold-plated Egyptian palace, Moses had been highly honored, even worshipped. Some historians believe the Pharoah, the greatest god in the land, had no other male progeny, and that Moses was in line to take the throne. If that had been Moses’ ambition, the dream had died with the murder of the cruel Egyptian taskmaster.
It is also possible that Moses harbored a secret dream to rescue his blood relatives from slavery, that when he went “out to his own people and observed their forced labor” (Exodus 2:11), he was really on an intelligence-gathering mission, preparing and planning a future revolt.
When Moses had murdered the Egyptian taskmaster, he had forfeited everything. Once respected and revered, Moses had become a nobody in the land of nowhere, a foreigner in a foreign land.
Moses’ first forty years had been spent living in luxury in Egypt. There, he focused on the future; where he would go, what he would accomplish, who he would become.
The next forty years, Moses lived in Midian, eking out an existence, living in relative poverty, tending his father-in-law’s few sheep (Exodus 3:1). In Midian, Moses spent much of his time remembering the past… “How did I become such a failure?”
When Moses’ son was born, he named him Gershom, meaning, “I’m a foreigner in a foreign land.” Moses was alienated from the Israelites and rejected by the Egyptians. He was a nobody living on the back side of nowhere.
That’s when God came near, revealing Himself to the runaway murderer. When Moses was a foreigner living in a foreign land, Moses saw the “flame of fire within a bush … the bush was on fire but was not consumed” (Exodus 3:2) … God appeared!
Do you sometimes feel like a frail, fearful, failure? God is near!
“… think on these things” (Philippians 4:8, KJV).
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