One day, when Moses had grown up, he went out to his people and looked on their burdens, and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his people. He looked this way and that, and seeing no one, he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. When he went out the next day, behold, two Hebrews were struggling together. And he said to the man in the wrong, “Why do you strike your companion?” He answered, “Who made you a prince and a judge over us? Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?” Then Moses was afraid, and thought, “Surely the thing is known.” When Pharaoh heard of it, he sought to kill Moses. But Moses fled from Pharaoh and stayed in the land of Midian. And he sat down by a well.
Exodus 2:11-15
Moses' childhood and youth are now left behind, and he is forty years old (see Acts 7:23). We are told that he 'went out unto his brethren' (11). This might seem an almost casual visit, if we did not have Hebrews 11:24-26 to guide us to a much deeper significance. When he was come to years, the Apostle tells us, 'he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing ... esteeming ...'. It is clear then that he was brought to a great place of consecration. It must have been a tremendously costly thing for him to do; indeed it was the fulfilment of the 'death' enacted in symbol for him in the ark experience (2, 3). The statement in Hebrews 11 is worthy of the closest and most careful study. It is not too much to say that it explains almost everything in his subsequent history. But we should also note particularly in this passage that although his great surrender to the will of God for his life meant that he was willing for all that will, it did not thereby make him ready. These verses in fact show both his willingness and his unreadiness. He was now in the place of God's appointment for him but not as yet in the state of readiness for all that would involve. We assume too easily that consecration means readiness for anything. No, it is an essential preparatory in the sense that we cannot ever be ready without it, but it does not signify readiness itself. Training and equipment need to follow. Moses' action here was rash and impetuous, and it is perhaps salutary for us to realise that a consecrated spirit can sometimes do rash and impetuous things that are ill-considered and immature. It was undirected, and therefore unrelated to the divine will and purpose. It is a high mistake to think that anything will do, so long as we do something in the service of the kingdom. Moses was sent to another school to learn the ways of the Lord, and it was from that long discipline of the wilderness that he finally emerged to fight the battles of the Lord to some purpose.