God Graciously Provides a Deliverer

At key moments in the history of redemption, when hope seemed all but lost, God provided a deliverer for His people. The ultimate example of this is the Lord Jesus Christ, born at just the right time to save His people when it seemed that sin might have the final word (Matt. 1:21; Gal. 4:4). Before Jesus came, however, there were other deliverers whom God sent when it seemed as if His people would be utterly crushed. For instance, David arrived on the scene to defeat the Philistines’ champion, Goliath, and rescue the Israelites from being conquered by their foes (1 Sam. 17).

In today’s passage, Stephen tells of another rescuer who came when Israel was on the brink of extinction—Moses, the mediator of the old covenant. Summarizing the events recorded in Exodus 2:1–10, Stephen recounts the birth and early life of Moses, including his rescue from destruction at the hands of Pharaoh when he was seeking to kill the Hebrew boys. In one of the great reversals in the history of salvation, the evil king who sought to wipe out the Israelites ended up being part of God’s provision of Israel’s deliverer, for Moses was adopted into Pharaoh’s house (Acts 7:20–21). The Egyptian court educated Moses, helping him develop the leadership and writing skills that he would later use to liberate the Israelites from slavery to Egypt (v. 22). This is the kind of thing that our God loves to do—to use the schemes of His and our enemies against them to rescue His church from destruction and devastation. Let us marvel that even when the foes of the church seem to be their strongest, the Lord is readying them for a great fall and using them to provide for the needs of His people. Matthew Henry comments, “God is preparing for his people’s deliverance, when their way is darkest, and their distress deepest.”

That the Lord had set apart Moses for his special work was evident from the beginning of his life. Stephen mentions that Moses “was beautiful in God’s sight” (v. 20), a reference not ultimately to physical attractiveness but to Moses’ receiving favor in the sight of the Lord. Our Creator graciously favored Moses so that He could graciously favor His people by using Moses to lead them out of slavery. His provision of Moses, then, is yet another example of God’s grace to His people Israel, a grace that the Sanhedrin was turning its back on by opposing Jesus and His servant Stephen (see Acts 6:8–15).