Acts 7:17-36 - Moses, A Rejected Savior
17 As the time approached for the promise God had made to Abraham, the people grew and multiplied in Egypt, 18 till another king arose to rule Egypt who knew nothing of Joseph. 19 He took a cunning method with our race; he oppressed our ancestors by forcing them to expose their infants, to prevent them from surviving. 20 It was at this period that Moses was born, a divinely beautiful child. For three months he was brought up in his father's house; 21 then he was exposed, but Pharaoh's daughter adopted him and brought him up as her own son. 22 So Moses was educated in all the culture of the Egyptians; he was a strong man in speech and action.
23 When he had completed his fortieth year, it occurred to him to visit his brothers, the sons of Israel. 24 He saw one of them being badly treated, so he defended him, struck down the Egyptian, and thus avenged the man who had been wronged. 25 (He thought his brothers would understand God was going to bring them deliverance by means of him, but they did not understand.) 26 Next day he came upon two of them fighting and tried to pacify them. "You are brothers!" he said, "why injure one another?"
27 But the man who was injuring his neighbour pushed him aside. "Who made you ruler and umpire over us?" he asked. 28 "Do you want to kill me, as you killed the Egyptian yesterday?"
29 At that Moses fled; he became a sojourner in the land of Midian, where he had two sons born to him. 30 At the close of forty years an angel [of the Lord] appeared to him in the flames of a burning thorn-bush, in the desert of mount Sinai. 31 When Moses saw this, he marvelled at the sight; and as he went up to look at it, the voice of the Lord said, 32 'I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.' Moses was so terrified that he did not dare to look at the bush.
33 But the Lord said to him, 'Take the sandals off your feet, for the place where you are standing is sacred ground. 34 I have indeed seen the oppression of my people in Egypt, I have heard their groans, and I have come down to rescue them. Come now, I will send you back to Egypt.'
35 The Moses they refused, when they said, 'Who made you ruler and umpire?' ??that was the very man whom God sent to rule and to redeem them, by aid of the angel who had appeared to him in the bush. 36 He it was who led them forth, performing wonders and signs in the land of Egypt, at the Red Sea, and in the desert during forty years.