by Matthew W. Bassford<\/p>\n
At first glance, the narrative of Exodus 2:11-14 appears to be one of impulsiveness and immaturity. Moses, a 40-year-old resident of Pharaoh’s household, decided to visit his Hebrew kinfolk. He sees an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, strikes the tormentor dead, and hides the body. The next day, he tries to break up a fight between Hebrews and gets a snarky retort about the Egyptian he killed yesterday. He realizes that the word is out and flees for his life.<\/p>\n
However, the inspired reading of this story, as provided by Stephen in Acts 7:23-28, doesn’t lay any of the blame on the future lawgiver. According to Stephen, Moses expected his people to understand that God had sent him to deliver them, but they missed the point. The exile of Moses in Midian, then, doesn’t represent the 40 years in which he needed to grow up. Instead, it represents 40 years of unnecessary suffering by the Israelites because they rejected the one God had chosen to lead them to freedom.<\/p>\n
As Stephen reveals during the rest of his final sermon, this is not a unique problem for the Jews. Their fathers had rejected God’s chosen deliverer Joseph, and they themselves had rejected God’s chosen deliverer Jesus. Of course, this problem isn’t limited to the descendants of Abraham. To this day, members of every nation under heaven reject those whom God has sent to teach them.<\/p>\n
Let’s look at this first from the perspective of the teacher. Today, many Christians consider evangelism to be work best suited for highly trained diplomats. You have to say everything just right and give no grounds for an offense if you want to lead someone to the Lord. In many cases, they base their beliefs on their own experience. They themselves tried to lead a sinner to Christ, they didn’t say everything just right, the sinner rejected the gospel, and they blame themselves for it.<\/p>\n
Generally, the explanation is much simpler. Moses certainly didn’t do everything exactly right in his first attempt to rescue the Israelites, but it was still their fault for rejecting him. In the same way, if we don’t present the gospel in exactly the right way and people reject it, they’re not rejecting our approach. They’re rejecting the gospel. They weren’t ready to hear it, and they may never be ready to hear it.<\/p>\n
Sometimes, though, the shoe is on the other foot. Someone else has challenged what we believe. Maybe they’re young and a little bit arrogant, like Joseph. Maybe they come from a different background than ours and seem stuck-up, like Moses. Regardless, we decide they’re not worth listening to, and we close our ears to their position.<\/p>\n
Although this is a natural way to behave, it is very dangerous. Truth from the lips of anyone remains the truth, no matter whether we like them or not. If we pay more attention to the messenger than the message, our rejection of truth may cost us our souls.<\/p>\n
In fact, in both scenarios, the gospel ought to be the most important element. When we try to teach others, we must put our trust in the gospel and rely on it to do its work. We aren’t going to change matters much one way or the other. So too, we must allow the gospel to do its work in our hearts. If that comes at the price of overlooking annoying behavior by someone else, it’s a small price to pay indeed!<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
by Matthew W. Bassford At first glance, the narrative of Exodus 2:11-14 appears to be one of impulsiveness and immaturity. Moses, a 40-year-old resident of Pharaoh’s household, decided to visit his Hebrew kinfolk. He sees an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, strikes the tormentor dead, and hides the body. The next day, he tries to break…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[485,354,451],"class_list":["post-52318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article","tag-moses","tag-responsibility","tag-teaching"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":26104,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/could-stephen-be-making-moses-out-to-be-bigger-than-life\/","url_meta":{"origin":52318,"position":0},"title":"Could Stephen be making Moses out to be bigger than life?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"February 14, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: I know from Acts 7 it is said that Moses knew he was a Hebrew prior to the burning bush event.\u00a0 What is your take on the possibilities that this was based on the Jewish tradition?\u00a0 Acts was written by Paul who was brought up a Pharisee and in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":36950,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/did-the-magicians-know-in-advance-what-moses-planned-to-do\/","url_meta":{"origin":52318,"position":1},"title":"Did the magicians know in advance what Moses planned to do?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"July 28, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: Dear sir, I read the article above.\u00a0I wanted to know why the Egyptian magicians added to the problem of frogs rather than removed them.\u00a0You said they could not remove them, but have given no logical explanation why they could not.\u00a0In regard to the snakes you said and I quote\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":51859,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/why-is-stephen-charged-with-blasphemy-if-jesus-did-say-that-the-temple-would-be-destroyed\/","url_meta":{"origin":52318,"position":2},"title":"Why is Stephen charged with blasphemy if Jesus did say that the temple would be destroyed?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"November 5, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: In Acts 6:14, Stephen is charged with saying that this Jesus of Nazareth shall destroy this place. How is this a false statement if Jesus was speaking of the destruction of the temple in Matthew 24? Thank you. Answer: The charge against Stephen was, \"We have heard him speak\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":31310,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/the-rest-of-stephens-sermon\/","url_meta":{"origin":52318,"position":3},"title":"The Rest of Stephen’s Sermon","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"January 29, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"by Matthew W. Bassford Acts 7:2-53 contains the longest sermon in the New Testament by anybody but Jesus. The speaker is Stephen, on trial for his life before the Sanhedrin, and he is accused of a number of crimes. According to Acts 6:11-13, he is accused of blaspheming God and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Article"","block_context":{"text":"Article","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/article\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/IMG044-195x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":88064,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/on-baptism-into\/","url_meta":{"origin":52318,"position":4},"title":"On Baptism Into\u2026","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"June 23, 2025","format":false,"excerpt":"by Terry Wane Benton Paul, guided by the Holy Spirit, stated that the Israelites were \"baptized into Moses\" when they crossed the Red Sea while fleeing Pharaoh and his armies. They were immersed under a cloud of water and with the walls of water on each side (I Corinthians 10:1-2).\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Article"","block_context":{"text":"Article","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/article\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":35991,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/baptized-into-christ\/","url_meta":{"origin":52318,"position":5},"title":"Baptized into Christ","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"June 22, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"by Terry Wane Benton Paul, guided by the Holy Spirit, said that the Israelites were \"baptized into Moses\" when they were crossing the Red Sea while fleeing Pharaoh and his armies. They were immersed under a cloud of water and with the walls of water on each side (I Corinthians\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Article"","block_context":{"text":"Article","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/article\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"By Distant Shores Media\/Sweet Publishing, CC BY-SA 3.0, https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/w\/index.php?curid=18898659","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/06\/Book_of_Exodus_Chapter_15-7_Bible_Illustrations_by_Sweet_Media-300x222.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52318\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}