The Life of Moses

Introduction

Moses' story stretches across four books, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, and he is referenced more times by name in the Bible than almost anyone else. He is the lawgiver, the prophet who spoke with God face to face, the meekest man on the earth in his generation, and the leader of a nation through its formation in the wilderness. This study walks his life in five movements. The basket, where God preserved him in infancy. The wilderness, where God hid him after a failure. The bush, where God called him by name. The plagues and the parting of the sea, where God made Himself known to Egypt and to Israel. And the long journey to a promised land that Moses himself would see but not enter. Throughout, two themes run like deep underground rivers. Calling and presence. Moses is called by a God whose first promise to him is not a strategy but a person. I will be with you. The presence of God is the answer to every objection Moses raises. It is still the answer today. Moses' story will encourage you because he was not naturally bold. He was a stammerer. He was a runaway. He was a man with blood on his hands and forty silent years behind him. And God used him to lead an entire nation out of slavery. Whatever you think disqualifies you, take it to the bush. The bush is still burning.

Genesis foundations

Moses' life begins with a promise made in Genesis. In Genesis 15, God told Abraham that his descendants would be in a foreign land for four hundred years, and that He would bring them out with great possessions. Moses is the man God raises up to keep that promise. Moses is also profoundly shaped by Genesis itself. He is the human author of the book of beginnings. The God who calls him out of the bush is the God who walked in the garden, who called Abraham out of Ur, who wrestled with Jacob, who preserved Joseph. Moses inherits a story already in motion and is asked to carry it one chapter further. The pattern of creation in Genesis 1 echoes through Moses' life. God brings light into darkness, dry land out of waters, order out of chaos, and forms a people for Himself. The parting of the Red Sea is creation language, waters held back so dry ground can appear. The tabernacle Moses builds in Exodus uses seven speeches, like seven days, and ends with God's presence filling it, like the Spirit hovering over the waters in Genesis 1:2. Reading Moses against Genesis keeps the Exodus from feeling like a one-time miracle in someone else's history. It is the same God doing the same kind of work. He is still parting waters in lives. He is still bringing His people out. He is still building a place where He can dwell with them. Through Christ, that place is now you.

Chapter 1: The basket

Moses is born under a death sentence. Pharaoh has ordered every Hebrew baby boy to be killed. His mother hides him for three months, and then, when she can hide him no longer, she places him in a basket of reeds and sets him into the Nile. Notice the word for basket in Exodus 2 is the same Hebrew word used for Noah's ark in Genesis. It is a tiny rescue vessel for one life. God has done this before. He will do it again. The daughter of Pharaoh finds him. His own mother is hired to nurse him. He grows up in the palace of the very king who wanted him dead. Before Moses can speak, God is already weaving providence around him. If you ever doubt whether God is at work in the early, fragile parts of a life, look at this basket. The God who saved Moses saved you too. Your first breath was not an accident. Your hidden years were not wasted. The same God who set Moses among the reeds set you in the family, the country, the city, the body you have, and He is not finished writing your story.

Chapter 2: The wilderness

In Exodus 2, the grown Moses sees an Egyptian beating a Hebrew. He looks around, sees no one, and kills the Egyptian. The next day, when he tries to mediate between two Hebrews, one of them throws his crime in his face. Moses runs. He ends up in Midian, marries Zipporah, has a son, and spends forty years tending sheep in the back side of the desert. The man who could have inherited Egypt herds animals in obscurity. The wilderness is where God strips a leader of the leader he thought he would be, so He can give him the leader He intended him to be. The young Moses tried to deliver Israel by his own hand and made a mess of it. The older Moses will deliver Israel by God's hand, and it will work. If you are in a wilderness season after a failure, do not despise it. God is not done with you. He is teaching you to lead with His strength instead of your own. Forty years in Midian is a long time, but God was not punishing Moses. He was preparing him.

Chapter 3: The bush

Exodus 3 is one of the most important chapters in the Bible. Moses, now eighty, sees a bush burning that is not consumed. He turns aside to look. God speaks his name. Moses, Moses. God sends him back to Egypt to lead His people out. Moses raises five objections. Who am I. Who are You. What if they do not believe me. I am not eloquent. Please send someone else. God's central answer is not a resume upgrade. It is a presence. I will be with you. He gives Moses His name, I AM WHO I AM. He gives him signs. He gives him Aaron. But the heart of the call is the company. The God who calls you also goes with you. If you have been arguing with God about your inadequacy, you are in good company. The bush is not lit for the qualified. It is lit for the available. God does not need you to be impressive. He needs you to turn aside, take off your shoes, and trust the Voice that calls your name. He will supply the rest.

Chapter 4: Plagues and the parting sea

Moses returns to Egypt, and over ten plagues God dismantles Egypt's gods one by one. Each plague targets a deity Egypt trusted. The Nile, the sun, the firstborn. The God of Abraham is showing the most powerful empire on earth that He alone is God. Then comes the Passover, where the blood of a lamb on the doorposts spares the firstborn of Israel from death. The whole Gospel is hidden in that night. Centuries later, John the Baptist will look at Jesus and say, behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. At the Red Sea, in Exodus 14, Israel is trapped between the water and Pharaoh's army. Moses says, the LORD will fight for you, you have only to be silent. God parts the sea. Israel walks through on dry ground. If you are trapped right now, with a sea ahead of you and an army behind you, this chapter is your chapter. There may be no path you can see. There never was one for Israel either. But the God who parted that sea is the same God you are praying to. He has not lost His power. Stand still and watch.

Chapter 5: The mountain, the wilderness, and the long obedience

After the Exodus comes Sinai. God descends on the mountain. Moses goes up. He receives the law, the tabernacle plans, the covenant. In Exodus 33, he prays one of the boldest prayers in the Bible. Please show me Your glory. God hides him in a cleft of the rock and passes by, proclaiming His own name, the LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. The rest of Moses' life is a long obedience. Forty years of leading a stubborn people through the wilderness. Carrying their complaints. Interceding for them. Watching a generation die because of their unbelief, and patiently leading the next generation to the edge of the Promised Land. And then, in Deuteronomy 34, God Himself takes Moses up Mount Nebo, shows him the whole land, and buries him there. Moses does not enter the land in his lifetime. But centuries later, on another mountain, the Mount of Transfiguration in Matthew 17, Moses stands with Elijah next to Jesus, in the very land he was once denied. God kept the promise after all, in a fuller way than Moses could have imagined. Sometimes the answer to your prayer comes in a form you did not expect, at a time you did not plan, in a country your physical feet may not touch in this life. Trust Him anyway. He is faithful to the very last page.

Reflection

Moses' life will teach you three things if you let it. First, you are never too late for God. Moses was eighty at the bush. Eighty. Most of the world had already counted him out, and so had he. God had not. If you feel you have wasted decades, listen carefully. God does not waste years. He uses them. Forty years in Pharaoh's palace taught Moses how power works. Forty years in Midian taught him how weakness works. By the time God called him, he understood both, and that is exactly the kind of leader his people needed. Second, the presence of God is the central promise. Every objection Moses raised, God answered with Himself. I will be with you. That is still the answer. You will not always have certainty about the path. You will not always have eloquence, or strength, or clarity. You will always have Him, if you are His. Christ has said, I am with you always, to the end of the age. That sentence is enough to walk on. Third, faithfulness, not arrival, is what God measures. Moses did not enter the Promised Land in his lifetime. By human metrics, his story has an incomplete ending. By God's metrics, his story is celebrated for thousands of years and ends with him standing with Jesus on a holy mountain. You do not have to see the harvest of your obedience in this life to know that God is faithful. Plant anyway. Lead anyway. Pray anyway. Love anyway. The God who buried Moses with His own hand will not forget the smallest thing you do for Him. Most of all, see Jesus through Moses. Like Moses, He was hidden as an infant from a murderous king. Like Moses, He went into the wilderness. Like Moses, He gave a law from a mountain, the Sermon on the Mount. Greater than Moses, He did not merely lead a people out of slavery to Pharaoh. He led His people out of slavery to sin and death. The God who spoke to Moses at the bush is the same God who, in Christ, now speaks your name.

Prayer

Father, I am so quick to tell You who I am not. Not eloquent. Not strong. Not ready. Not enough. Like Moses, I have my list. Be patient with me. Speak my name again. Light a bush in the middle of my wilderness so I cannot miss You. Remind me that the central promise is not my ability, but Your presence. I will be with you. Let those words be enough. Make me faithful for the long obedience. If I never see the land I am praying for in this life, give me grace to keep leading the people You have entrusted to me, trusting that You will finish what You started. In Jesus' name, the greater Moses, amen.

Journal prompts

• Which forty-year season of Moses' life mirrors yours right now, the palace, the wilderness, or the long leadership?
• Which of Moses' objections at the bush sounds most like the argument you are having with God? How does God's answer, I will be with you, speak to that argument?
• Where in your life are you trapped between a sea and an army right now? What would it look like this week to stand still and watch the LORD fight for you?
• Read Exodus 34:6-7 slowly. Which attribute of God in that self-description do you most need to receive today?
• Is there a promise you have been praying about for a long time that you may not see fully in your lifetime? How does Moses' story shape the way you pray about it now?