Exodus 3:1

THE CALL OF MOSES. -- Exodus 3:1-12.

GOLDEN TEXT. --. will be thy mouth, and teach thee what thou shalt say. -- Exodus 4:12. TIME. --B. C. 1491, when Moses was eighty years old. PLACE. --In Arabia, among the mountains of Horeb. HELPFUL READINGS. -- Exodus 2:11-15; Exodus 2:16-22; Acts 7:20-36. LESSON ANALYSIS.--1. The Burning Bush; 2. The Call of God; 3. The Cry of Israel Heard.

INTRODUCTION.

The life of Moses divides itself into three periods of forty years each; the first spent in the Egyptian court &a the adopted son of Pharaoh's daughter; the second, beginning with his banishment from Egypt for espousing the cause of his oppressed people and rashly killing one of the oppressors, was spent in Midian,. part of the Sinaitic peninsula in Arabia, where he married and devoted himself to the shepherd's life; the third begins with his call when he was eighty years old.

As Moses is himself the historian of his own life, it is reasonable to infer from his silence that the period of his residence in Midian was not distinguished by any occurrences sufficiently important in his view to deserve. record. His days probably passed quietly away in the wonted discharge of his duties as. shepherd, and the shepherd, too, of another man's flock. His situation was no doubt favorable to contemplation and communion with God. He could scarcely fail to make progress in that divine knowledge which would do more to qualify him for his future mission than all the learning he had acquired in Egypt. The life, too, which he led was happily adapted to work within him that hardihood of constitution and character of which he would afterward stand so much in need, and of which the sequel of his story affords so many striking instances. Still it could not but be. severe trial of his faith to find year after year elapsing, and the prime and vigor of his age apparently wearing away with no tokens from above indicating that the great work of his vocation was any nearer at hand. Yet he seems meekly to have endured as seeing Him who is invisible, and to have evinced that true wisdom which consists in waiting and following the call of heaven instead of running before it.-- Bush.

I. THE. URNING. USH.

1. Moses kept the look.

There is no doubt. very marked contrast between Moses in the court of Egypt, making his abode in. palace, and surrounded with all the splendors of royalty, and Moses,. humble hireling shepherd, leading his flocks over the rough places of the desert, sleeping often in the open air, exposed to heat and cold, to weariness and watchings, and living upon the coarsest fare. But as we know that he had voluntarily and deliberately made the exchange of one condition for the other, and as we know, too, the motives by which he had been governed in doing it, it would be no matter of surprise could we be assured, as was doubtless the fact, that he was as truly happy while thus traversing the rocky region of Midian, his tent his only shelter, as when treading the marble pavements of Egyptian halls.-- Bush.

Of Jethro, his father-in-law.

It has been stated that Moses married the daughter of Reuel. As he had seven grown daughters (Exodus 2:16) he must have been already an old man. Forty years later he would hardly be living. Hence Jethro is thought to have been his son and successor in the priesthood. The term rendered "father-in-law" might mean any relative by marriage, brother-in-law as well.

Backside of the desert.

"Behind the wilderness." Jethro probably lived east of Horeb, near the shore of the Gulf of Akaba.

The mountain of God.

So called, not so much from its great height, as in anticipation of the remarkable scenes of which it was to be the theatre. The greatest of these were the call of Moses, as related in this lesson, and the delivery of the law at Sinai.

Horeb.

This name was given to the whole mountain cluster of which Sinai was. peak. At last the people and the deliverer were ready; "the iniquity of the Amorites" and of the Egyptians was "full"--events had ripened for another epoch of Providence to disclose itself, and the divine voice which had been silent for centuries was heard once more. The forty years' trial of Moses reminds us of the forty days' temptation of Jesus, also in the wilderness, before he began to break the bondage of which the Egyptian servitude is. constant Scripture symbol, and to announce the law for which the Sinai statutes were. preparation; himself, like Moses, "despised and rejected" by those he came to save.-- F. H. Newhall.