400-Year Prophecy

 In Genesis 15:13, the Lord told Abram that his descendants would be in a strange land as servants for 400 years. Then Exodus 12:40-41 says,

“Now the sojourning of the children of Israel, who dwelt in Egypt, was four hundred and thirty years. And it came to pass at the end of the four hundred and thirty years, even the selfsame day it came to pass, that all the hosts of the LORD went out from the land of Egypt.”

It was exactly 430 years, to the day, when the children of Israel came out of Egypt.

Understanding the Timing Discrepancy

 Why is there a thirty-year discrepancy between what the Lord told Abram and what it says in Exodus? If you subtract the forty years that Moses spent in the wilderness (Acts 7:30) from the 430 years, you will find that Moses actually killed the Egyptian and tried to free the Israelites in the 390th year of their captivity. He was ten years premature in trying to fulfill God’s will for his life.

This comes as a total shock to many people. They think, If God wasn’t ready for Moses to bring the Israelites out of Egypt yet, then why didn’t He wait to reveal His will to Moses? There could be many reasons, but certainly one of the main reasons is that it would take at least ten years for the Lord to get Moses ready for the job. We wrongly assume that when the Lord puts a vision in our hearts, He is ready to bring it to pass right then.

God’s Timing Requires Preparation

If you study Scripture, you will find that it always takes years for the Lord to get His servants ready. It took twenty-seven years for Abram, twenty-two years for Joseph, thirteen years for David to become king, seven more years before he was king over the whole nation, and fourteen years for Paul. If Moses would have cooled his jets and had waited patiently on the Lord, his ten-year wait would have been one of the shortest in the Bible.

Instead of having to spend forty years in the harshness of the desert, he could have spent his ten years in the comfort of the palace. It wasn’t God who willed Moses into the desert. It was Moses’ self-will that put him there. The same holds true for us.

The Consequences of Self-Will

What caused Moses to disregard God’s plan and timing for accomplishing His will? The Scriptures don’t spell it out for us, but people haven’t really changed from then to now. Certainly, many of the reasons we use to disregard God’s timing now are probably the same reasons Moses used back then.

He might have been ignorant of the prophecy God gave Abram about his descendants spending 400 years in slavery. Ignorance of God’s Word is certainly one reason people don’t wait on God’s timing today and could have been true of Moses.

Rationalizing God’s Plan

It’s also possible that Moses knew about the prophecy in Genesis 15:13, but he rationalized that a loving God could be made to change His mind because of the great need. Likewise today, many people are aware of Paul’s command to Timothy that a novice shouldn’t be put in a position of authority (1 Tim. 3:6), but they routinely ignore it because they feel the need is so great.

The Cost of Premature Action

Moses could have thought, God, how many Israelites will die in the next ten years under the cruel bondage of the Egyptians? What he couldn’t predict was how many Israelites would die during the thirty years of extra bondage caused by Moses’ self-will. Even so, we may feel like we can’t wait to accomplish God’s will for our lives. You can’t rush the timing of God. You can delay it as Moses did, but you can’t speed it up. It’s better to let God bring His will to pass in your life, in His timing.

Wisdom in Waiting

These are some tremendous truths that have become a foundation of our lives, and I believe they have saved us a lot of heartache in the desert. There are also other truths about humility and authority that I have learned from the life of Moses which could make a huge difference in your life. I would love to share these truths with you through my teaching “God’s Man, Plan, and Timing” that is part of our Guidance Series, along with How to Follow God’s Will. God has a perfect plan for your life, but you have to be sensitive to His timing. This teaching will help you do that.