Now it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown, that he went out to his brethren and looked at their burdens.
And he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his brethren. So he looked this way and that way, and when he saw no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. And when he went out the second day, behold, two Hebrew men were fighting, and he said to the one who did the wrong, 'Why are you striking your companion?'
Then he said, "Who made you a prince and a judge over us? Do you intend to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?" So Moses feared and said, "Surely this thing is known!"
(Exodus 2:11-14)
According to Acts 7:23, this happened when Moses was forty years old. For all his forty years before this, Moses had been trained to become the next Pharaoh of Egypt, all the while being made aware of his true origins by his mother. On this occasion, Moses was certainly right in preventing the beating of one of his Hebrew brethren. Yet at the same time, this was perhaps a premature attempt to fulfill his destiny - to make himself the deliverer of Israel from Egypt's bondage in a way that made sense to his way of planning.
Acts 7:25 shows us exactly where Moses' heart was: "For
he supposed that his brethren would have understood that God would deliver them by his hand, but they did not understand."
God planned to use Moses to deliver Israel, but He did it in a way that no one would expect, especially Moses. Moses planned the deliverance of Israel the way any man would, and logically saw himself as the deliverer, because of his accepted leadership among the Egyptians. The only problem was that God was going to accomplish this deliverance and use Moses in a way that no man would ever dream of!
Why did God allow all this? Moses had no idea of it at the time, but he was too big for God to use. Moses had tried to do the Lord's work in man's wisdom and power. It wouldn't work. After forty years of seemingly perfect preparation, Moses had another forty years of seemingly meaningless waiting to perfect God's preparation.
In addition, Moses' leadership was not accepted by the Jewish masses, even though God had made him a prince and a judge over them. Moses, like Jesus, was rejected by Israel at his "first coming."
Both Moses and Jesus were favored by God from birth, both were miraculously preserved in childhood, both were mighty in words and deed, both offered deliverance to Israel, both were rejected, and rejected with spite, both with Israel denying that they had any right to be a ruler and a judge over them.
Just like Jesus, Moses could not be a deliverer when he lived in the palaces of glory. He had to come down off the throne, away from the palace, into a humble place before he could deliver his people. We remember when our Savior left His exalted palace and place of privilege to save His people - and we see how Moses was a "preview" of Jesus.
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