Acts 7:17–36

The God of glory thought of His people in Egypt and in the wilderness, before the holy place or even the law. He will never give Israel up until He has made good His promise — the promise He guaranteed when Abraham had no child. God called Abraham alone, and blessed and increased him. How wrong they all were, then, to make so much of themselves and of their privileges, and so to slight His grace and Himself. … As Abraham went about as a stranger in Palestine, so his descendants first appear as slaves in a land not their own. This was no brief moment: in round numbers 400 years passed from the birth of the child of promise until God judged the nation that held them in slavery.

We find these two words, "growing and multiplying", used of the children of Israel. They occur in Stephen's address to the Jewish council. The sons of Jacob went down into Egypt, seventy-five people, and in a short space of time they grew and multiplied to a miraculous degree. This increase was so striking that it attracted the attention of Pharaoh, the king of Egypt. He was alarmed, and he took drastic measures to stop the marvellous increase. That increase was God's gift to His chosen ones as the descendants of Abraham. God had promised that they would be as many as the stars in heaven and the sand on the seashore.

God, however, took them in hand and allowed them to feel the scorching heat of Egypt's furnace. "But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and the more they spread abroad" (Ex. 1:12). In that furnace of affliction they were welded together as a nation. They entered Egypt a feeble and divided family: they left it a compact and powerful nation.

It is always so. There is always war between God and the enemy. It rages most fiercely where His people are involved, and when a clear display of divine mercy is close at hand. God's approaching favour to Israel drew out the hostility of Satan. He stirred up a fitting tool for his malice in the ruler of the world of that day, "another king who did not know Joseph." … The order to destroy the boys failed. It failed not only through human pity, but through the fear of God. He honoured those who honoured Him, and He brought His enemies to nothing.

As the time drew near for this promise to be fulfilled, you might have expected the children of Israel to grow in might and power and prominence. But instead of rising, they stand at what is perhaps the lowest point of their national history. God had allowed them to become slaves under the tyranny of this king who did not know Joseph.

Here the people are in Egypt, waiting for God to carry out the promise He had made to Abraham. … Their position then is very much like ours today. A promise has been left us of entering into our heavenly part at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Some have hoped that as this event draws near, a wonderful revival will take place among those who look for Him… But do we not rather see something different in places like the messages to the seven assemblies? The nearer we are to that moment, the more we need to hold fast His word and not deny His name… Like Israel here, we may find our liberties more and more restricted before we are taken out of this world.

The word expresses "a different kind." … In Egypt there arose a different king who did not know Joseph, Acts 7:18; this doubtless refers to one of a different dynasty.

As the years passed, a great change came over the whole situation. A new king rose up, who "did not know Joseph." This may not mean he was unaware that Joseph had existed. It may mean that he saw him as an intruder and an oppressor, and ignored him altogether.

The statement that he "did not know Joseph" is deeply significant. Joseph in Egypt was a type — a picture — of Christ in His earthly glory, and so not to know him is the mark of a moral state. Pharaoh in fact is the god of this world, and as such must of necessity be in opposition to the Lord's people.

That land was thus the ungrateful, the rebellious. She had departed from Joseph, and so from God Himself, from Him who had filled her storehouses with plenty, and her throne with honour and strength. Egypt was the world in miniature — the great deserter from its rightful Lord and gracious Benefactor. … Joseph's memory had been despised, and all that remained to Joseph was put to work at the brick kilns.

It is always so. There is always war between God and the enemy. Nowhere is it fiercer than where His people are concerned, and when a clear display of divine mercy is close at hand. God's approaching favour to Israel drew out the enmity of Satan. He stirred up a fitting instrument for his malice in the prince of the world of that day, "another king who did not know Joseph."

These verses are a compact summary of Exodus 1:7-20. That chapter gives the details of Pharaoh's cunning, aggressive and ruthlessly cruel efforts to crush them. God defeated those efforts just as strikingly, for, say or do what he might, "the people multiplied and grew very strong." The order to destroy the boys failed. It failed not only through human pity, but through the fear of God, who honoured those who honoured Him, and brought His adversaries to nothing.

Here we see grace in its first workings: a nation's small beginning in the seventy souls who came into Egypt with Jacob, set against their astonishing and unstoppable increase. Even the bondage they come into had already been announced to them. What seemed most against them was really the working out of the promise for them. The hand of power works in disguise, yet faith can see right through it. It is essentially the same story, whether told of the nation of Israel or of any of the Lord's redeemed.

He recites to the Jews a history they could not deny, a history they boasted in, yet it condemned them completely. They were doing as their fathers had done. Two people stand out in Stephen's account, in connection with the goodness of God towards Israel at this period — Joseph and Moses. Israel had rejected them both, handed Joseph over to the Gentiles, refused Moses as judge and leader. In cases the Jews could not deny or argue with, it was the history of Christ as well.

You might have thought that as the time drew near for God to keep this promise, the children of Israel would be growing in might and power and prominence. Instead, their national standing did not rise. They are seen at what is perhaps the lowest point in their national history. God had allowed them to become slaves under the tyranny of this king who did not know Joseph. They seemed so much at his mercy that he decided to wipe them out. He ordered every baby boy to be thrown into the river.

There is a clear double tyranny over the people. It guards against two dangers. Israel might rise to first place in the land, or they might escape altogether, and then the Egyptians would lose their labour. So the order went out to kill all their males. In this way the nation would stay in slavery, unable to escape, and would still supply slaves to do the work of the Egyptians. Their oppression and misery made them cry out loud in their distress. Meanwhile the faith of individuals who took hold of God and refused to obey the king's command shows how God works through His people when they count on Him.

It is always like this. There is always war between God and the enemy. It rages most fiercely where His people are concerned, and when a clear display of divine mercy is about to come. God's approaching favour to Israel drew out the hatred of Satan. He stirred up a fitting tool for his malice in the prince of the world of that day, "another king who did not know Joseph". These verses are a compact summary of Exodus 1:7-20. That passage gives the details of Pharaoh's cunning, aggressive and utterly cruel efforts to hold them down. God defeated those efforts just as plainly, for whatever Pharaoh said or did, "the people multiplied and grew very strong". The order to destroy the boys failed, not only through human pity, but through the fear of God. He honoured those who honoured Him, and brought His opponents to nothing.

The attempt to destroy all the male children comes next. Satan, who is a murderer from the beginning, showed his cunning and power in this way. He wanted to destroy the seed of Abraham so that the coming of the Promised One would be impossible. The murder of Abel was his first attempt. Here is an attempt on a larger scale, followed by many others. See Exodus 14; 2 Chronicles 21:4, 17; 22:10; Esther 3:6, 12, 13; Matthew 2, and others.

Then he starts at the very beginning of the nation's existence, dating it from Abraham. He goes over its history down to the days of Moses. He points out that twice over their ancestors made the great mistake of rejecting the one God had appointed for their deliverance. First it was Joseph. Next it was Moses… With these facts in front of them they might well pause. They might well consider carefully what they were doing, and where they might be drifting. The mistake they made over Joseph they had repeated over Moses. What were they doing now?

Their position at that time is much like ours today. A promise remains for us — we will enter our heavenly portion at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ… Like Israel here, we may find our liberties shrinking more and more before He takes us out of this world. The conflict between light and darkness goes on without a pause. The enemy will do his best to end all testimony to Christ in this world.

The enemy had raised up a suitable instrument, another king over Egypt who did not know Joseph. Suffering became Israel's portion. The king aimed a deadly blow at the promise by striking at their babies... At that critical moment Moses was born, fair to God. A glorious career lay ahead of him, however dark its beginnings. He too came under the sentence of death, and after three months of care in his father's house, he was cast out like the rest.

This world offers different types of beauty. Saul was "handsome and tall; there was not a man among the people of Israel more handsome than he." Eliab also had a fine appearance that caught Samuel's eye. But such beauty by itself is worth nothing except in men's eyes. There is another beauty. In men of faith it may go together with outward beauty, and God values it as the reflection of character. It is the beauty of a pure soul or of simple faith. It is the shining out of a heart that shuts out evil and sin, a heart without deceit. This is the beauty of the little child Moses, of whom the Word says he "was exceedingly lovely," literally, "fair to God" (Acts 7:20).

It means that when he was born there was an expression in his face that faith read. "Beautiful to God" is the word. There was a certain beauty in him that awakened the faith of Amram and Jochebed, and they obeyed it. Was there not a beauty in the face of the dying Stephen? Should not his murderers have obeyed it? They stand in moral contrast to Moses' parents. Under the finger of God they saw the purpose of God and hid the child.

Here we have a remarkable simplicity of faith in Moses' parents, which acts on grounds that to most would seem slight enough — the beauty of the child. God still answers it, for it was faith in Him; and how largely He answers, for this is Moses the deliverer! Is there not here one of the natural signs of the mind of God, which we are so unskilled at finding? The poor and unlearned perhaps read such signs best, and people easily confuse them with mere superstition... but God makes no mistake, and wherever faith is, He will honour it.

Such is God's valuation of the actions of the father and mother whose natural affection for this son given to them rose up against the king's decree. They recognised that they owed loyalty to an earthly ruler. But by faith they acknowledged a higher loyalty to their God, and this proud tyrant was accountable to Him too. Trusting in God, they were able to rise above the fear of man that brings a snare... and they hide their child from the tyrant and a hostile world.

The providence of God raised up a fitting instrument for His merciful purpose. But even Moses had to learn dependence on Him, and that neither the advantages of his person, nor his training in Egypt's wisdom, nor the court influence of Pharaoh's daughter, could achieve that purpose to His glory... But no: that would have been man's method and the world's wisdom, to the credit of Moses' genius and prudence, and in no way a foreshadowing of Christ.

Moses, as we have seen, was by birth exposed to the death sentence that lay on the sons of Israel in Egypt. Faith saw him "fair to God," but that did not exempt him. And what do we learn of the One whom Moses pictured? Every moral beauty shone out from that blessed One's wonderful Person, to the full delight of the Father's heart. Yet neither His own people nor the world at large saw any beauty in Him. There was no room for Him in the homes or the hearts of men.

The enemy had raised up a suitable instrument, another king over Egypt who did not know Joseph. Suffering became the portion of Israel, and a deadly blow was aimed at the promise in the person of their babies. The king's command was to expose them so that they would not survive. At that critical moment Moses was born, beautiful in God's sight, with a glorious career ahead of him, however dark its beginnings. He too came under the sentence of death. After three months of care in his father's house, he was cast out like the rest. But we have the highest authority for saying that his parents hid him for those three months "by faith," whatever their natural affection (Hebrews 11:23). "They were not afraid of the king's edict."

Who would have thought it? The man who had said, "If it is a son, you shall kill him," and again, "Every son that is born you shall cast into the Nile," had one of those very sons in his own court — and such a son. The devil's own weapon defeated him. He was using Pharaoh to frustrate the purpose of God. And God used that same Pharaoh to nourish and bring up Moses, who was to be His instrument in overthrowing the power of Satan.

From that time Pharaoh's daughter claimed the child, "and he became her son." She raised him from infancy to manhood as her own son. And what was the result? By the age of forty he was within direct reach of the throne of Egypt, with every prospect of taking it. Pharaoh had no son, and Pharaoh's daughter had no children. If she died, her adopted son would without doubt have come to the throne of Egypt and ruled the leading nation in the world at that moment.

While they had faith they hid him — they kept their beautiful child. At the end of three months they cast him out; they "could hide him no longer." Had they not come to the end of their faith?… But a home in Pharaoh's house is not presented to us as an answer to faith… One sees the desire of the heart granted — the child's life; but see what the mother loses. She is a hired nurse to Pharaoh's daughter. When the child is grown she loses him, and another woman names her child and has him for her son.… Faith was powerful as long as faith was there. When faith was gone, God's mercy was there, and it showed more clearly than in the day of faith.

Providence had placed him in a distinguished position, unsought and unexpected. Educated to match it, he was "learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians," and mighty in words and deeds. Why not use his ability and his wisdom? Why not use the influence his high rank gave him, and his nearness to the most princely people in the realm? Why not wisely and thankfully turn such obvious gifts of providence to the service of God's people?… But no! Faith at once disposes of all such reasoning built on providences.

But no: this would have been man's method and the world's wisdom, to the praise of Moses' genius and prudence, and in no way a foreshadowing of Christ.

Stephen said: "Moses was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and he was mighty in his words and deeds." This tells us that he was what the world would call a man of genius. Many men are good talkers — they have gifts of speech, but are hardly men of action. Other men show their ability in what they do. Their actions are wise and powerful, but their powers of speech are small. The man who shines in both areas is a rarity.

Moses was plainly a very clever man. He was "instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians," and the Egyptians were not fools. It would puzzle our builders to do what they did — to put up the Pyramids… He was a scientific, accomplished, intellectual man; but more than that, "he was mighty in his words and deeds."… That man had everything in his favour. He had the world before him. He was not only the king's favourite, and the adopted son of Pharaoh's daughter, but was within reach of the throne.

Nature would say, What a fitted, prepared instrument God now has at hand! But this is exactly the thought that falls short of the mind of God. He will not, and does not, accept the qualifications of Egypt. He sends Moses to school (as we would say) for forty years. There he is fitted and prepared and qualified for the work God has for him to do. God's instruments must learn in God's school. There is no buying rank in His army; everyone must rise from the ranks.

All this learning was of no use to him as the deliverer God chose. It was of no use to him as the king in Jeshurun (a name for Israel), guiding the course of the people of God in the wilderness. The "wisdom of Egypt" would have been baffled to make a way through the Red Sea, and had no resource at all to meet the demands of the wilderness. Egypt's learning could not have provided the ability to bring water out of the rock or provide the manna to meet the needs of that vast host in the wilderness.

No one can deny that Moses was capable of rightly judging the situation. He was instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and he was mighty in his words and deeds. Yet he looked, not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. His eye was on the kingdom of God. He waited for the Messiah. He knew that the purposes of God centre in Christ, and that Israel was their inner circle on earth. So his affections were not with the court of Egypt, nor on the most brilliant future it could open to a man of his energy.

Knowing something of human nature in ourselves, we think it was not that he had really lost his powers of mighty speech. Instead, the forty years of discipline in the desert had completely broken his self-confidence. But he had also become taken up with himself, and so he was unwilling to answer God's call and commission.

Few of us have had an education like this, but then very few are needed for such great work. The point here is not secular education, but ability for the particular service God has appointed for us… It does not matter how clever we are by nature. If God is not using us, our efforts will be in vain. Nor does it matter how simple we may be. If God uses us, we will do His will. The question is, Are we using what God has given us to serve Him?

It is claimed that Acts 7:23, 30, 36 mentions three separate periods of forty years, and that only the last appears in the books of Moses. But turn to Exodus 7, and we are told that "Moses was eighty years old… when they spoke to Pharaoh" (v. 7). These eighty years agree exactly with Stephen's account. Moses was forty when it came into his heart to visit his brothers, and he spent forty years after that in Midian. Stephen makes the age of Moses one hundred and twenty years altogether. Deuteronomy 31:2 and 34:7 say he died at the age of one hundred and twenty. Now, where is there any discrepancy?

Then he went out from the palace and looked at the burdens of his brothers among the brick-kilns (Exodus 2:11). This was the second stage in his life of devotion and single-heartedness, while he was still in Egypt and everything outside him was against him. "It came into his heart," we are told, to do this (Acts 7:23). And it is good, and the fruit is pleasant, when affection is the parent of service.

In all the forty years he had been moving in the court of Pharaoh, it now appears that he never forgot that those despised slaves were his brothers. One may imagine him looking round at the glitter of that court and at those who moved in it. In his heart he was thinking, "these are not my brothers."… We find that the word visit comes from the same root as the word for oversight. It seems as though he was already overseeing his own district, the future sphere of his service.

But divine providence is no guide for faith; nothing but the word is. Providence brought him in, and from there faith led him out. "By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter… He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward" (Hebrews 11:24-26).

This was zeal for his brothers, but it was "not according to knowledge." God's time had not yet come for judging Egypt and delivering Israel, and the intelligent servant will always wait for God's time. Moses "had grown up." He was "instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians." And further, "he supposed that his brothers would understand that God was giving them salvation by his hand." All this was true. Yet he ran ahead of the time, and when someone does this, failure must be the result.

So Moses was an outcast for many long years. His own unworthy brothers drove him out as much as the angry king of Egypt did. They loved him less the more he loved them. They forgot the promised deliverance, and they set no value on the man who gave up everything for their sake. Israel denied the one who was in that day the type of the Holy and Righteous One. It was nothing new.

All of this is personal history. Yet Stephen plainly uses it as a type of Christ. When Christ presented Himself to His own people as their Deliverer, they rejected Him. Indeed, the flight of Moses into the land of Midian is a marked type of where our Lord stands now toward Israel and the world… But, like Moses, our Lord will return to deliver His people on earth, just as Moses returned from Midian and led Israel out.

Holiness toward God always means separation from evil. It also means standing with His people, in heart and in the way you live. But now faith is tested, and its path never runs smooth for long. … Hating unrighteousness, he punished the oppressor of his brother. He took no thought of what it would cost him.

The Spirit could not blame the love that moved the hand of Moses. But neither could He justify the act. God has left it there, as He always knows how to do. He leaves what came from Himself to tell its own story. What did not come from Himself stands before the spiritual judgement of those who trust Him. Any other book would offer some kind of apology here, or even a long argument, to clear God of all share in what was far from His own holiness.

He had learned the wisdom of Egypt, but not yet the wisdom of God. He showed zeal for his brothers, but it was not according to knowledge. He attempted a deliverance before the time. Yet it was an action of faith.

"Mighty in deeds," and acting for the people of God too — but acting in his own natural strength, not as one sent by God. That explains what followed. Moses was thinking about how Moses was going to deliver the people. … God had to teach him that He accepts service only in the power and strength that come from Himself, not in the strength or wisdom of Egypt.

Before, when he went out in his own natural strength, the failure he met hit him hard. Now he has learned how small he is, and he says, "Who am I?" And it is always so. When a believer senses that God has sent him on a mission, he always feels the deepest humbling of spirit. God may bring this about through painful discipline of soul, but the aim of His training is to break down self-confidence.

The people had no readiness of heart. They gave no generous response to the devotion that would have served them, and they saw nothing of the mind of God at all. They drove their appointed deliverer out among strangers. Israel was now doing the same to One who had come down from a far more wonderful height. God had borne witness to Him beyond anything ever given before, and He had come to bring a much mightier deliverance.

So too with Moses. The words that made him flee — "Who made you a ruler and a judge over us?" — came from one of his own brothers, not from an Egyptian. The rejection came from among his own people, not from outside. So it had been with Jesus too.

God had sent conviction into Moses' heart both of sin and of righteousness. He saw how far Pharaoh's palace stood from the rest of God. He heard and understood the word of promise. God had made it known to him — we are not told how — that Israel was His people. He also made known that the day of their deliverance was near, and that He would keep His word of promise by Moses' own hand.

This was zeal for his brothers, but it was "not according to knowledge." God's time had not yet come to judge Egypt and deliver Israel. The servant who understands God will always wait for God's time. Moses had grown up. He was "instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians." And "he supposed that his brothers would understand that God was giving them salvation by his hand." All this was true. Yet he ran ahead of God's time, and when a man does that, failure must be the result.

"Mighty in deeds," he acted for the people of God. But he acted in the energy of the flesh, not as one sent by God, and that explains what followed. Moses was thinking about how Moses would deliver the people... But no — "they did not understand." Moses had another lesson to learn. God had to teach him that He would be served only by the power and strength that come from Himself, not by the strength or wisdom of Egypt... When a person acts in the energy of the flesh, there is always disappointment and surprise when our efforts fail.

They had fallen, not only in their circumstances, but in their souls. Faith was at work in very few of them, so few expected a deliverer or valued a man who had faith in God. They were dark and dead toward God. They felt how hard men can be. The hope God had given to Israel had almost vanished from their souls. They expected no deliverance close at hand, yet they should have been looking for it. The fourth generation was already running its course. In that generation, as the Lord had said, this long-afflicted people were to leave a judged Egypt and come into the promised land again.

His brothers, however, did not understand, because they did not share his faith. So they rejected him as their deliverer. They wanted to keep going their own wrong way... In Acts 7, God leads Stephen to make these points clear. He shows that when the Jews rejected the Lord Jesus, they were doing again what their fathers had done with Moses — but on a far more serious scale. In the Lord Jesus there was not the slightest element of imperfection. In Moses there was distinct failure. His desires were right: his action wrong.

He left the palace and, perhaps, the throne, and came to his own to take up their cause. It all points to Him who left the glory and came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. When Moses came the first time to his brothers to deliver them, "they did not understand." But they understood when he came the second time. In the same way Israel will understand when He who is greater than Moses comes the second time.

The word is aposato = driven away. You can see its force in Acts 7:27, "thrust him away." It means complete refusal.

It was the unworthy dealing of his brethren which broke up all hope for the present. The man who was in the wrong was also the one with the bitter feeling — as is always the case. Moses loved both men and would gladly have made peace between them. Yet it was the wrongdoer who taunted him with the words, "Who made you a ruler and a judge?" The Israelite's own proud spirit was quick to read pride into others… Moses had certainly been hasty, and the Lord judged it. But he was right in the main. So the Lord left the completing of Israel's deliverance not to another, but to him, when the right time came.

Moses was not understood when he took a stand with Israel against their oppressors. He was not understood either when he tried to restore or build unity among Israelites. All they could see was selfish motives. The man who wronged his neighbour pushed Moses away with the cutting words, "Who made you a ruler and a judge over us?" He then asked whether Moses would kill him as he had killed the Egyptian. That warned Moses that his killing of the Egyptian was known, and that Egypt's authorities would hear of it… Israel was not ready to be delivered for another forty years, and Moses had to learn on his own what would fit him for public service.

Reading Exodus, we get the impression that his main motive was the anger of Pharaoh. Acts 7:29 casts a different light on it. "Then Moses fled at this saying" — the saying of the wrongdoer — "Who made you a ruler and a judge over us?" So it was rejection by his own people that cut him to the quick. Forty years later they all had to discover that it was GOD who made him a ruler and judge over them. For the time being, though, they had lost him.

In Acts 6 and 7, Stephen was the last great witness. He summed up their history: they had rejected every deliverer God ever sent. They had sold Joseph into Egypt. They had asked Moses, "Who made you a ruler and a judge?" They had killed the Just One, as their prophets had foretold. And now they resisted the Spirit of God! A broken law, stoned prophets, a slain Christ, and a resisted Spirit closed the tale.

The world sentenced Moses to death, and he was taken out of it. Then he had to take his place as a man rejected by his own people. Otherwise he would not be a true picture of the Deliverer here. The world casts him out, and his own people reject him, as they rejected our Lord… They say, "Who made you a ruler and a judge over us?" and Moses fled into Midian, rejected by his own people. It is in that character that we have to do with the Lord Jesus Christ now.

The man who did wrong to his neighbour — it is always so — resented the love that sought their good, and pushed Moses away. He did worse still. "Who," said he, "made you a ruler and a judge over us? Do you want to kill me as you killed the Egyptian yesterday?"

Stephen made it very plain that the Jewish rulers of his day were repeating the sin of their forefathers in a worse form... So too with Moses. The saying that made him flee, "Who made you a ruler and a judge over us?" came from one of his own people, and not from an Egyptian. The rejection came from among his own people, and not from outside. So it had been with Jesus too.

All they could see was selfish motives. The man who did wrong to his neighbour shoved Moses away with the cutting words, "Who made you a ruler and a judge over us?" His next words asked whether Moses would kill him as he had killed the Egyptian. They warned Moses that his killing of the Egyptian was no secret, and would not stay hidden from Egypt's authorities. He fled the country and became a stranger in a strange land for no short time.

True, at first they rejected his authority. The wrongdoer "thrust him away, saying, Who made you a ruler and a judge over us?" But we also read, "This Moses, whom they rejected, saying, 'Who made you a ruler and a judge?'—this man God sent as both ruler and redeemer by the hand of the angel who appeared to him in the bush."

The people had no readiness of heart. They made no generous response to the devotion that would have served them. They saw nothing of the mind of God at all. They drove out their appointed deliverer to live among strangers. Israel was doing the same thing now to One who had come down from a far more wonderful height, with witness from God beyond anything ever given before, and who came to carry out a much mightier deliverance. But the warning was plain. The Moses they now boasted in had been an outcast for forty years, cut off from the people who still had to admit that God really had raised him up to be their ruler and their judge.

The time of deliverance had not come. So far Moses was mistaken. He had not yet fully judged himself; without realising it, he was off his guard in using his strength in words and deeds. The people had to sink lower — they had to cry to God under their bitter burdens... Moses thought his own people would understand that God was giving them deliverance through him. But they did not understand. And this is a far more searching trial than any fear of Egyptian anger.

Moses stepped in, and the immediate result was his flight from Egypt and forty years in Midian. Reading Exodus, we certainly get the impression that the main motive with him was the anger of Pharaoh. Acts 7:29 casts a different light on it: "At this retort Moses fled" — the retort of the wrongdoer, "Who made you a ruler and a judge over us?" So his rejection by his own people was what cut him to the quick. Forty years later they all had to discover that it was GOD who made him a ruler and judge over them, but for the time being he was lost to them.

The sharpest wound, like the lowest blow, comes from God's people: when man rules among them and not God, Satan works underneath it all and at his worst.

Yet it was all useful discipline for Moses. He must learn of God alone in the wilderness. The wisdom of Egypt must be, as it were, unlearned: God does not choose to honour it for His deliverances. The wisdom He uses must come down from above.

Moses needed forty years at the back of the desert to fit him to lead God's people out of Egypt and through the wilderness. No doubt God used his education in Egypt in forming the vessel for His service, but the forty years were needed to empty the vessel of what had filled it during its forming. It was the same with Saul of Tarsus. He needed three years in Arabia to be emptied of what he had picked up in the schools of this world, and then filled in the school of God.

Moses spent forty years in the wilderness doing, as it were, nothing. Then in Exodus 3 God says to him, "Come, I will send you." Moses answers, "Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?" Now that God is sending him, he feels the weight of that responsibility deeply, and he shrinks from it. Before, he went out in the energy of the flesh, and the failure he met bitterly disappointed him. Now he has learned his own insignificance, and he says, "Who am I?"

Moses had to flee from his brothers. They would have valued his using the world's influence for them, but cared nothing for his going down in love to share their affliction. No fact marks the difference more clearly than this: he called his son Gershom, "a stranger," while Joseph called his eldest Manasseh, "forgotten." Moses had in no way settled down in Midian. His affections were with his poor brothers, and he looked for the day when deliverance would come for them by his hand.

The "stranger" son does not become a resident of the land where he is born. These things should need no interpreter for any of our hearts. May God only grant that we be more Gershoms in the land of Midian — strangers in a world where, if Christ can find a bride, He cannot find a home.

He goes over the nation's history from its beginning with Abraham down to the days of Moses. He points out that twice over their ancestors made the great mistake of rejecting the instrument God had designed for their deliverance. First it was Joseph. Next it was Moses... With these facts in front of them they might well pause and weigh what they were doing, and where they might be drifting.

The hour of Messiah's rejection is only the occasion for a higher glory and a closer relationship with those who meanwhile believe. It is like the stranger in the land of Midian, who becomes the father of two sons. He did not have them in Egypt, with the sons of Israel around him.

When the conquest of Canaan was the question, what could encourage more than a man with his sword drawn, the captain of the Lord's army? When the work was to bring the people through a wild, howling desert, what sign could fit better than a bush blazing yet never burning up? And more than the sign itself, there was "the favour of Him who dwells in the bush."

"And the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. And Moses said, 'I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned'" (Ex. 3:2-3). This was truly "a great sight" — a bush burning, yet not burnt. The palace of Pharaoh could never have offered such a sight. But it was a gracious sight as well as a great sight. It showed clearly the condition of God's chosen people. They were in the furnace of Egypt, and the Lord reveals Himself in a burning bush. But as the bush was not consumed, neither were they, for God was there.

May we not turn aside at times to gaze more closely at His person, while we trace the acts of His life, or the secrets of His love and truth? It is part of the obedience of faith to do so… The sight Moses turned to look at was great and mysterious too. Yet with bare feet he could still look and listen. Had he not done so, he would have gone away with no blessing. But he listened, until he found that the "I AM" was in the bush, and that "the God of Abraham" was there too. A strange place for such glory to make its home! But so it was.

God says at the bush, "I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." But if He stood in that relationship to them then, they must exist for Him to be so. He could not be the God of the dead — dead in the sense the Sadducees meant, where the dead no longer exist at all. They must be alive in some sense, alive to Him, and so they are.

Before redemption, even a saint trembled when brought into God's presence. His voice does declare Him the God of promise, the God of the fathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Even so, "Moses trembled, and did not dare to look." Until redemption, peace is impossible.

What a difference it must make to anyone to deal with God personally and directly. God assures him that this is his God — the God of his fathers — and this once bold man trembles before Him. Later God used Isaiah to tell us the man He will look to: one who trembles at His word (Isa. 66:2). Forty years have taken Moses from boldness to trembling, and now he is fit to go out in God's service.

Notice the force of his quoting the call to take off his sandals. Holy ground is where God shows Himself. It was not Jerusalem only. That is how the Lord settled it with Moses in Midian, and later with Joshua when he crossed the Jordan. Their making an idol of the temple courts was out of place.

Stephen speaks of the "Angel of the Lord," who appeared to Moses from inside a bush. But in Exodus 3 that very Angel becomes, a moment later, God Himself, saying, "I am the God of Abraham," and so on. No mere angel could make the place too holy for Moses to stand on with his shoes still on. No mere angel could be too much for his eyes to look at. That would be giving the glory of God to another.

Moses was told to unloose his sandals from off his feet, and heard the divine voice say, I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob. It was for the fathers' sakes, to whom He had pledged His promise and whose God He was. But He had also heard His people's cry under bitter oppression, and came down to deliver them. They indeed groaned and sighed because of the bondage; but they had not the faith to cry to Him. Yet their cry came up to God.

The words the Lord spoke to Moses are the expressions of His sovereign grace. What had they earned? What could they do to secure His intervention? Nothing whatever. They were in Egypt, a crowd of miserable slaves, given more or less to idolatry, a sinful people. It was grace which looked upon them and heard their cry. It was grace which came down to deliver them.

Before redemption, even a saint trembled in God's presence. His voice declares Him the God of promise, the God of the fathers Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. Even so, "Moses trembled, and did not dare to look." Until redemption, peace is impossible.

God's presence was bound to have this effect on the heart, while He was not yet known as the Justifier. The moment it becomes a question of appearing before God, conscience speaks up and bears witness that we are sinners.

Notice the force of Stephen quoting the command to take off his sandal. Holy ground is wherever God reveals Himself. It was not merely Jerusalem. So the Lord decided with Moses in Midian; so afterwards with Joshua when he crossed the Jordan. Their idolising of the temple courts was out of place.

The Lord Jesus quoted these words, and with them He silenced the unbelieving Sadducees, who rejected the teaching of the resurrection (Matthew 22:31-32).

God says at the bush, "I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." If He was their God then, they must exist for Him to be so. He could not be the God of the dead — in the Sadducee sense of death, the non-existent. They must be in some sense alive, alive to Him, and so they are.

This once bold man trembles in the presence of God. Later God used Isaiah to tell us the sort of man He will look to — one who trembles at His word. Forty years have taken Moses from boldness to trembling, and now he is fit to go out in God's service. We can be sure that when God uses a man who trembles at His word, mighty things will happen.

Notice the force of Stephen quoting the call to take off the sandal. Holy ground is where God shows Himself. It was not only Jerusalem. So the Lord settled it with Moses in Midian, and later with Joshua when he crossed the Jordan. Their treating the temple courts as an idol was out of place... The case of the Jews who falsely charged Stephen with blasphemous words against the holy place was even more desperate and groundless... The only holy place God owns now, as faith too accepts, is above where Christ is.

But God must remind him how holy His presence is. "Do not come near; take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground." This is the first lesson everyone who comes near God must learn: to recognise His holiness. True, He is a God of grace, of mercy, and love. But He is all these because He is a holy God... Our feet must be bare. We must remember how holy the God is with whom we have to do. Without that we can never receive the gracious messages of His mind and will.

The place of God's presence is holy, and only bare feet may walk there. God lives among His people, and His presence gives their assembly a character of holiness. That holiness is the basis of every holy affection and every holy activity. The character of the dwelling place takes its stamp from the character of the Occupant.

Before redemption, even a saint trembled when God brought him into His presence... "Moses trembled and did not dare to look." Until redemption there can be no peace... From the very start God declares that His holiness must never be violated. It is no less so when God calls Israel under Joshua to a fight with no compromise against the Canaanite living in the land... The same opening warning comes first in both pictures: redemption carried out for His people, and war against Satan in their midst.

Shoes appear as early as Exodus 3:5, when God told Moses to take off his sandals, because the ground he stood on was holy, for God was there (Acts 7:33). God said the same to Joshua (Joshua 5:15). It showed that man had no welcome yet into the presence of God. He had no standing there yet, whatever goodness and kindness God might show him. Under grace he gains a standing: the prodigal received shoes, and he was welcome and at home.

Grace brings us into the place of holiness, and into joy in God's holiness. There the soul learns its deepest lessons about what sin is. It sees not only its own nothingness, but how opposite to God it is. There it learns that salvation must be grace from first to last... The moment God rescues us from the world, He brings us to stand in the place of holiness, and He deals with us accordingly.

First, God reveals His name: "I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham," and so on (v. 32). Second, His grace: "I have seen, I have seen the afflictions of my people," and so on (v. 34). How blessed to be sure of this: not one sorrow of His people, not one groan, escapes His full knowledge. Then we get the formal commission: "And now come, I WILL SEND YOU into Egypt."

He had also heard His people's cry under bitter oppression, and came down to deliver them. They did groan and sigh because of the bondage; but they did not have the faith to cry to Him. Yet their cry came up to God. He heard their groaning, and remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. They had forgotten that covenant, long sunk in the darkness and idol worship of their cruel masters.

Here the absolute, free, unconditional grace of the God of Abraham shines out in all its own brightness. Nothing holds it back — not the "ifs" and "buts," not the vows, resolutions, and conditions of man's legal spirit. God had come down to show Himself, in sovereign grace, to do the whole work of salvation, and to keep His promise made to Abraham and repeated to Isaac and Jacob. He had not come down to see whether the subjects of His promise were in such a condition as to deserve His salvation. It was enough for Him that they needed it.

"To deliver" was true as well. But the literal wording says far more. It gives not just relief from the oppressor's hand, but the positive purpose — and what can surpass that? If this is often overlooked, in teaching and in practice, that makes it all the more important to insist on… Here it is God taking Israel out for Himself… For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God.

"Come now therefore, and I will send you" (Ex. 3:10). God's moment has arrived. Earlier Moses wanted to go without waiting for God's time, but now he is about to hesitate. God does not say "Go" but "Come." It is with Him, in His company and fellowship, that Moses is sent.

Third, He told Moses that he was to be the servant. He was commissioned to face the mighty king, Pharaoh, and deliver the children of Israel out of his hand… What he had tried to do in his own wisdom and strength, and failed to do, he is now to do in the wisdom and power of God.

God had seen the affliction of His people, and the time had come for Him to deliver them. Now He was sending Moses to do it — the same Moses whom Israel had refused forty years earlier, saying, "Who made you a ruler and a judge?" The same thing can be said of Israel's refusal of the Lord Jesus. He will yet be their welcomed Deliverer.

So Moses, commissioned now by God, returns to Egypt and begins again the work he had attempted forty years before — but this time God is using him, whereas before he seemed prepared to do it himself. He does not return as a ruler and a judge, but as a ruler and a deliverer (v. 35). Nor does he think this time he will do it by his own hand. He knows now that it will be by the hand of God in the power of His angel. At his first attempt he killed one Egyptian and partly delivered one Israelite. How long would he have taken to deliver the nation by his own efforts, killing one Egyptian at a time and delivering one Israelite?

The same God was now at work. He brought Moses by providence into the house of Pharaoh's daughter, and He brought him out of it by faith. Even then He did not use him for the deliverance of His people, though he was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians. First Moses had to unlearn man as well as himself. He had to come to know, alone in the wilderness for forty long years, what God is. Then, and only then, was he fitted by God to be a ruler and a deliverer.

The angel of Jehovah who spoke to Moses out of the burning bush reveals His name. It shows that the Angel of Jehovah is God. He calls Himself the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob… The words Jehovah spoke to Moses are the expressions of His sovereign grace. What had they deserved? What could they do to secure His intervention? Nothing whatever. They were in Egypt, a crowd of miserable slaves, given more or less to idolatry, a sinful people. It was grace which looked on them and heard their cry. It was grace which came down to deliver them.

He starts at the very beginning of the nation's existence, dating it from Abraham. He goes through its history to the days of Moses. He points out that twice over their ancestors made the great mistake of rejecting the instrument God had designed for their deliverance. First it was Joseph. Next it was Moses… The mistake they made with Joseph they had repeated with Moses. What were they doing now? They were repeating that mistake.

That generation denied Him, saying, "Who made you a ruler and a judge?" Even so, God raised Him to be a more blessed Redeemer, and a more glorious Ruler of the kings of the earth. God has appointed Him to be Judge of the living and the dead. He will also fulfil every hope of Israel according to the prophets.

He left the palace, and perhaps the throne, and came to his own to take up their cause. It all points to Him who left the glory and came to His own, and they did not receive Him. When Moses came the first time to his brethren to deliver them, "they did not understand" (Acts 7:25). But they understood when he came the second time, as Israel will understand when He who is greater than Moses comes the second time.

Nobody denies that Moses stands in the front rank of great and good men. But God is the one who made His presence unmistakable and respected. He worked mainly through Moses, though sometimes without him, across that long stretch of wilderness patience and power, rich in wonders and full of instruction... What could Moses have done in the desert without God for one day, let alone forty years?

Stephen goes on with the story of how a commission came from God to that rejected man. It was sealed with the broad seal of wonders and signs. In that day those signs proved his commission to another generation. Now no miraculous signs could prove it, however far they went beyond the old ones.

Then Stephen recalls the history of Moses, who turned his back on all the glory of Egypt to help his own people whom he loved. But Israel thrust him away. They refused the one God had sent to be a ruler and a deliverer. In the wilderness they would not obey him. In their hearts they turned back to Egypt. So again they resisted the man God was with.

In his address Stephen had pointed out that Joseph's brothers refused him, yet he became their saviour, and in the end they all had to bow down to him. He also reminded them that Israel rejected Moses at first, yet he became both ruler and deliverer of Israel. Now he testifies to a similar but far greater thing about Jesus. The Just One whom they had murdered is to become their Judge — and at last, for those who receive Him, their great and final Deliverer.

He starts at the very beginning of the nation, dating it from Abraham, and goes through its history down to the days of Moses. He points out that twice over their ancestors made the great mistake of rejecting the instrument God had appointed for their deliverance... So in rejecting Moses, they rejected God as well. With these facts in front of them they might well stop and think carefully about what they were doing, and where they were heading.

God brought the Israelites out of Egypt by great signs and wonders. For forty years He fed them and cared for them tenderly on their wilderness journey. Yet they made no progress in the knowledge of God. They never showed the slightest sign of thankfulness for the deliverance He had given them when they were slaves in Egypt, or for the countless mercies they received daily from His hand.

Turn to Exodus 7 and we are told that "Moses was eighty years old... when they spoke to Pharaoh." These eighty years agree exactly with Stephen's account. Moses was forty years old when it came into his heart to visit his brothers, the children of Israel, and he spent the next forty years in Midian... So Stephen makes the age of Moses one hundred and twenty years in all. Deuteronomy 31:2 and 34:7 say that he died at the age of one hundred and twenty. Now where is there any discrepancy?