The Murderer Who Led a Nation Free — Why God Picked the Man with Blood on His Hands
Moses killed a man, buried the body in the sand, and ran. He spent 40 years hiding in a desert, convinced his story was over. Then God showed up in a burning bush — and chose the fugitive with a stutter and a criminal record to lead the greatest rescue mission in human history. If you think you're disqualified, you need to hear this.
You Wouldn’t Have Hired Moses
Let’s play a game. You’re on the hiring committee. You need someone to lead two million people out of slavery, negotiate with the most powerful ruler on earth, and guide an entire nation through a trackless desert for decades.
Here’s the résumé that lands on your desk:
Name: Moses Age: 80 Current occupation: Shepherd (40 years, no advancement) Previous occupation: Egyptian prince (terminated) Criminal record: Murder (fled jurisdiction to avoid prosecution) Communication skills: Self-described as “slow of speech and tongue” References: Father-in-law (sheep owner), a bush (was on fire)
You’d throw that résumé in the trash. You wouldn’t even call back. An 80-year-old stuttering fugitive shepherd with a murder conviction is not what anyone means when they say “leadership material.”
And yet.
God didn’t just consider Moses. He chose him. Deliberately, specifically, and with full knowledge of every failure on that résumé. He chose the man with blood on his hands to become the liberator of His people — and one of the most important figures in the entire story of Scripture.
That should wreck every assumption you have about who God can use.
The Golden Boy Who Snapped
Before Moses was a fugitive, he was royalty. Pharaoh’s daughter pulled him from the Nile as an infant and raised him as her own — an Israelite baby growing up in the palace of the very empire that was enslaving his people.
Think about the tension of that childhood. He had everything: education, wealth, power, access. Ancient historians suggest Moses would have been trained in military strategy, Egyptian law, literature, architecture. He was positioned for greatness by every human measure.
But he also knew. At some point — whether his birth mother Jochebed whispered it during those nursing years, or whether it was something he always sensed in his bones — Moses knew he wasn’t Egyptian. He was Hebrew. And his people were dying under the whip.
In those days, when Moses had grown up, he went out to his brothers and saw their burdens. He saw an Egyptian striking a Hebrew, one of his brothers.
Notice what the text says: “his own people.” Moses had made a choice. He identified with the slaves, not the slavers. Despite everything Egypt had given him, he looked at the Hebrew getting beaten and thought: That’s me. Those are mine.
And then he did the worst possible thing with the best possible instinct.
He looked this way and that way, and when he saw that there was no one, he killed the Egyptian, and hid him in the sand.
“Looking this way and that.” That detail is devastating. Moses didn’t act in righteous fury — he checked to see if anyone was watching. This wasn’t justice. It was vigilante violence with a cover-up built in. He wanted to help his people, and the impulse was real, but the method was murder. And the burial in the sand was pure panic.
One act. One body. One grave dug in haste.
And just like that, the golden boy became a killer.
The Desert That Swallowed 40 Years
When the murder came to light — exposed by the very Hebrews he’d tried to help — Moses ran. Not to another city. Not to a neighboring country. He ran to the farthest edge of nowhere: Midian. The backside of the desert. The kind of place where the world forgets your name.
Now when Pharaoh heard this thing, he sought to kill Moses. But Moses fled from the face of Pharaoh, and lived in the land of Midian, and he sat down by a well.
And there he stayed. For forty years.
Let that timeline sink in. Moses spent four decades in the desert. Tending someone else’s sheep. Watching sunrises over the same rocks. Walking the same paths. Year after year after year after year.
At 40, he was a prince with the world at his feet. At 80, he was a nobody with sand in his sandals. Every ambition buried. Every dream of liberating his people turned to ash. If anyone had asked Moses at age 79 what his life had amounted to, he probably would have said: I had a chance and I blew it. I tried to help and I killed a man. Now I’m here.
The desert wasn’t just geography. It was identity. Moses became the man who failed. The man who ran. The man whose story was over.
Have you ever been in that desert? The place where your biggest failure defines you? Where you replay the moment — the decision, the word, the act — and think: If I could just go back. If I could just undo that one thing.
Moses lived there for 40 years. And God let him.
That’s the part that bothers us. Why would God waste 40 years? Why leave someone with that kind of potential tending sheep in the middle of nowhere?
Here’s what I think: God wasn’t wasting those years. He was using them. The palace taught Moses leadership, education, and how power works. The desert taught him humility, patience, and how to survive in a wilderness. God was going to need a man who could do both — and you don’t forge that kind of man overnight.
The desert wasn’t punishment. It was preparation. But it didn’t feel like preparation. It felt like the end.
That’s usually how God works.
A Bush That Burned and Didn’t Burn Up
And then — after decades of nothing — fire.
Now Moses was keeping the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the back of the wilderness, and came to God’s mountain, to Horeb. Yahweh’s angel appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the middle of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.
“The far side of the wilderness.” Moses wasn’t at the center of anything. He was at the edge of the edge. The farthest point from relevance you can imagine. And that’s exactly where God showed up.
The bush burned but wasn’t consumed. It’s a strange detail that means everything. A normal fire consumes its fuel and goes out. This fire just kept burning. It didn’t need the bush. The bush wasn’t the source — it was just the vessel. The fire was self-sustaining, endless, other.
Moses turned aside to look. And God spoke.
When Yahweh saw that he came over to see, God called to him out of the middle of the bush, and said, “Moses! Moses!” He said, “Here I am.” He said, “Don’t come close. Take off your sandals, for the place you are standing on is holy ground.”
God knew his name. After 40 years of silence. After the murder, the cover-up, the flight, the decades of obscurity — God called him by name. Twice. The repetition in Hebrew isn’t just emphasis — it’s intimacy. Abraham, Abraham. Jacob, Jacob. Samuel, Samuel. God doubles the name when the moment is urgent and personal.
And then God did the unthinkable. He told the 80-year-old fugitive shepherd with a body buried in Egyptian sand that He was sending him back — not to hide, but to liberate.
Yahweh said, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows. I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey; to the place of the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Amorite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite. Now, behold, the cry of the children of Israel has come to me. Moreover I have seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them. Come now therefore, and I will send you to Pharaoh, that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.”
Read that again. “I have seen. I have heard. I am concerned. I have come down. I am sending you.”
God didn’t say: “I’m sending an army.” He didn’t say: “I’m sending an angel.” He said: “I’m sending you, Moses. The fugitive. The failure. The man with the stutter and the body count. You.”
The Five Excuses (And God’s Answer to Every One)
Moses did what most of us would do when God calls us to something terrifying. He argued.
Excuse 1: “Who am I?” (Exodus 3:11) “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”
This is the identity objection. I’m nobody. I’m not qualified. I’m not important enough. And God’s answer is stunning — He doesn’t tell Moses who Moses is. He tells Moses who God is:
He said, “Certainly I will be with you. This will be the token to you, that I have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.”
The answer to “Who am I?” isn’t a better résumé. It’s a better companion. God doesn’t say “You’re amazing, Moses.” He says “I’m coming with you.” That’s the only qualification that matters.
Excuse 2: “Who are You?” (Exodus 3:13) “Suppose I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ Then what shall I tell them?”
And God answers with the most mysterious, powerful name in all of Scripture:
God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM,” and he said, “You shall tell the children of Israel this: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”
Not “I was.” Not “I will be.” I AM. Present tense. Eternal tense. The name that means God is always, fully, completely Himself — self-existent, self-sustaining, never beginning, never ending. The bush that burns and is never consumed. The fire that needs no fuel with a name that needs no explanation.
Moses asked for credentials. God gave him His very nature.
Excuse 3: “What if they don’t believe me?” (Exodus 4:1) God gives Moses three signs — a staff that becomes a snake, a hand that turns leprous and is healed, water that becomes blood. Physical proof for a terrified man who needs to see before he can speak.
Excuse 4: “I can’t speak well.” (Exodus 4:10) “Pardon your servant, Lord. I have never been eloquent… I am slow of speech and tongue.”
This is the ability objection. I’m not gifted enough. I don’t have the talent. And God’s response is almost indignant:
Yahweh said to him, “Who made man’s mouth? Or who makes one mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Isn’t it I, Yahweh? Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth, and teach you what you shall speak.”
God doesn’t fix the stutter. He doesn’t give Moses a speech coach. He says: “I made your mouth. I’ll use your mouth. Your weakness is not a problem for Me.”
Excuse 5: “Send someone else.” (Exodus 4:13) The last excuse. The honest one. After all the theological objections and practical concerns, Moses finally says what he really means: I don’t want to go. Please pick someone else.
And here, for the first and only time in the conversation, God gets angry:
Yahweh’s anger burned against Moses, and he said, “What about Aaron, your brother, the Levite? I know that he can speak well. Also, behold, he is coming out to meet you. When he sees you, he will be glad in his heart.…”
Not because God was petty. But because Moses was looking at every reason not to go and ignoring the one reason that made every objection irrelevant: God Himself was going with him.
God compromised — He sent Aaron to speak — but He didn’t back down. Moses was going. The murderer, the fugitive, the stutterer, the excuse-maker. He was going because God chose him, and God’s choosing is final.
Why This Story Wrecks Your Excuses
Here’s why Moses’ story should shake you to your core.
If you think your past disqualifies you — it doesn’t. Moses had a body buried in the sand. A literal murder. If God can use a killer, He can use you. Your worst day is not the final word on your life. It might not even be the most important chapter. Sometimes the worst thing you ever did becomes the doorway to the most important thing you’ll ever do — because only someone who has failed that spectacularly understands grace that deeply.
If you think you’ve wasted too much time — you haven’t. Moses was 80 when God called him. Eighty. In a culture where life expectancy was far shorter than today, God looked at an octogenarian and said: “Now. Now is your moment.” Your wasted years, your wandering years, your desert years — God was at work in every one of them, even when you couldn’t see it, even when you couldn’t feel it.
Paul would later put it this way:
We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, for those who are called according to his purpose.
All things. Including the desert. Including the failure. Including the forty years you thought were wasted.
If you think you’re not talented enough — that’s the point. God didn’t choose Moses despite his weakness. He chose Moses with his weakness. A stuttering deliverer. An inarticulate spokesperson. It makes no human sense — and that’s exactly why God does it.
but God chose the foolish things of the world that he might put to shame those who are wise. God chose the weak things of the world that he might put to shame the things that are strong.
God’s power shows up best in human weakness. When the résumé is impressive, people credit the résumé. When the résumé is a disaster and the person still leads a nation to freedom — everyone knows it was God.
If you think God has forgotten you — He hasn’t. Forty years of silence. Forty years of sheep and sand and obscurity. And then: “Moses! Moses!” He knew the name. He’d always known. The silence wasn’t absence. The waiting wasn’t abandonment. God’s timing is not our timing, and His silence is not His verdict.
The Burning Bush Is Still Burning
There’s one more thing about that bush.
It burned, and it wasn’t consumed. The fire didn’t need the bush. The bush was just ordinary desert scrub — nothing special, nothing sacred, nothing impressive. It became holy ground not because of what it was, but because of Who showed up in it.
You are that bush.
You’re not the fire. You’re not the source. You don’t have to be impressive or gifted or perfect or unblemished. You just have to be available. God provides the fire. God provides the power. God provides the words. You just have to stop running, turn aside, take off your shoes, and say: “Here I am.”
Moses’ résumé was garbage. And God used him to split the Red Sea, deliver the Law, and lead the people of God for forty years. Not because Moses was qualified. Because God was.
That same God is looking at your disqualifications right now — and He’s not intimidated by a single one of them.
Reflect
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What’s on your “disqualified” list? What failure, weakness, or past mistake do you carry as proof that God can’t use you? Name it honestly.
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Are you in a desert season right now? A long season of waiting, obscurity, or feeling forgotten? How does Moses’ 40-year desert reshape how you see your own waiting?
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Which of Moses’ five excuses sounds most like yours? “Who am I?” “I can’t speak well enough.” “Send someone else.” What would it mean to hear God’s response to that specific excuse?
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What would it look like to turn aside? Moses could have walked past the bush. He turned to look. Is there something God is doing in your life right now that you’ve been walking past? What would it look like to stop, pay attention, and say “Here I am”?
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Read Exodus 4:11-12. God says He made your mouth, your eyes, your abilities. What weakness are you treating as a disqualification that God might be planning to use as His greatest display of power in your life?
A Prayer
God, I’ve been looking at my résumé and deciding I’m not enough. I’ve been staring at my failures, my weaknesses, my desert seasons, and calling myself disqualified. But You chose a murderer to lead a nation. You chose a stutterer to speak Your words. You chose an 80-year-old fugitive to change the course of history. If You can use Moses, You can use me — not because I’m impressive, but because You are. Help me stop running. Help me turn aside. Help me take off my shoes and say “Here I am.” I don’t need a better résumé. I need You. And You’ve already said You’re coming with me. Amen.
This is Part 1 of “The Résumé God Threw Away” — a series about the deeply flawed, wildly unqualified people God chose to change history.
Next: The Prostitute in the Bloodline of Jesus — How the Most Scandalous Woman in Jericho Ended Up in the Gospel — a woman whose profession should have disqualified her from everything — but whose name ended up in the bloodline of Jesus Himself. You don’t want to miss her story.