Gods Sabbath

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E NTERING INTO G OD ’ S S ABBATH R EST

Moses thought that his own people would realize that God was using him to rescue them, but they did not.” Acts 7:24, 25. “In slaying the Egyptian, Moses had fallen into the same er ror so often committed by his fathers, of taking into their own hands the work that God had promised to do. It was not God’s will to deliver His people by warfare, as Moses thought, but by His own mighty power ....” Patriarchs and Prophets , 247.3. Although he did not realize it, when Moses killed the Egyp tian he was not yet ready to lead the Israelites out of bondage. He had made the typical Babylonian mistake of doing the work God had promised to do, with far too much confidence in himself and too little in Jehovah. If the people had joined Moses without battle training, weaponry, and sufficient faith, the slaughter would have been of such magnitude as to decimate Israel. Noth ing could have suited Satan more. When Moses fled from Egypt, he had not been subjected to heavenly influences as much as he had been surrounded by the glories of human achievements. Therefore, at that time, he was in no way fitted for his divinely appointed mission of leading Israel from bondage to freedom. Instead he needed to be re-educated in order to learn God’s ways and unlearn his own. Accordingly, God turned Moses’ failure to good account by permitting him to be driven out of Egypt. After fleeing to Midian, he underwent forty years of re-education to eradicate the pride and self-sufficiency which had been cultivated in Egypt, and to fill him instead with a true sense of human insufficiency and unworthiness, and trust in God rather than self (see Exodus 2:11–22 and Acts 7:29, 30). There, as he led Jethro’s flocks among the hills of Midian, many years were devoted to developing in Moses such humility and such faith in his divine Plan Maker that any inclination to trust in his own works was eliminated. The luxurious life in Egypt’s court where nothing was visible other than human works, was ex changed for the rugged wilderness life where God’s almighty works and personal presence continually surrounded him. As his eyes were opened, his trust in human ability faded, while his awareness of his dependency on God’s power steadily increased. “Moses was not prepared for his great work. He had yet to learn the same lesson of faith that Abraham and Jacob had been taught,—not to rely upon human strength or wisdom, but upon the