We start a new series on Sunday.  Moses.  This should be interesting.  Anyone who has seen the movie "The Ten Commandments" (with Charlton Heston) has an image of Moses that is very inaccurate.  I think Moses was a man searching for who he was.  Born a Jewish slave.  Hidden in the bullrushes by his mother when Pharaoh ordered the male Jewish babies killed.  Then rescued and raised as an Egyptian prince.  Educated, privileged, protected.  An outside insider.

He had no idea what his identity should be.  Was he a Jew?  Was he an Egyptian?  Was he a slave?  Was he a prince?  On the day that he killed the Egyptian who was assaulting a Jew, he was taking sides with his Jewish heritage.  But he was not ready to give up being an Egyptian Prince.  He hid the body--he wasn't ready to leave the palace as a murderer.  He was torn between two identities.

But the Jewish people began to spread the story of how someone had come to the rescue of one of their own.  The Egyptians found out, and Moses was forced to flee the wrath of Pharaoh.  You just didn't kill an Egyptian because he mistreated a Jewish slave.  Moses was forty years old, and had lost both of his identities.  He could no longer be an Egyptian prince.  He could no longer join the people who had given him birth.  He was now a nobody.  An outside outsider.

So Moses fled to the desert where he married.  Had sons.  Became a sheepherder.  And forty years later, eighty years old, he finally meets God.  He hadn't been raised as a Jew, so his knowledge of God was scanty.  It wasn't personal.  The Egyptians had many Gods.  And when God appeared to Moses in the Burning Bush, one of the questions Moses asked was, "Who shall I say you are?"  Which God--that was the thing he was asking.  Moses did not have a concept of "one" God at that point.

He was an old man, alone with a bunch of sheep--the lowest form of work in that day.  He had lost his position in Egypt.  He had lost his position as a Jew.  He didn't see that he had a future.  But God had a plan.  God always has a plan.  Sometimes, in our lives we lose sight of that because we are living in an emotional desert.   Scott called this morning and said, "I'm guilty.  You listed the people who keep in touch with you in your blog and I wasn't in it.  I'm sorry.  I'll do better."  That's as good as a cup of water in the desert.