Why did God make Moses spend 40 years herding sheep in the desert before sending him to Pharaoh?
God used the forty years of herding sheep in the desert to humble Moses and remove his confidence in himself. Isolated from Egypt's population centers, Moses became a nobody, unable to claim his own ability. That brokenness was exactly where God wanted him before sending him back to Pharaoh.
Les explains that after forty years of herding those smelly sheep, with no contact with big population centers, God could approach Moses and say He was going to send him back to Pharaoh. Moses protested, “Lord, I can’t. I’m a nobody. I can’t talk,” but that was exactly where God wanted him. Les points to the same pattern in King Saul, who was proud, the best-looking young man around, and had military talent, yet did not amount to a hill of beans, while God finally used the little shepherd boy, David. Likewise, Saul of Tarsus was a big man in Judaism and in the upper echelons, but God could not use him from there. He put him on the dust on the road to Damascus, where he became a nobody with nothing to claim as worthy. Trembling and astonished, Saul asked what the Lord would have him do, and the Lord sent him into the city to be told what he must do, using Ananias as the go-between.
More Questions
Why did God wait until Moses had spent 40 years herding sheep before sending him back to Pharaoh?
After 40 years of herding sheep on the back side of the desert and having no contact with population centers, Moses had become a self-described nobody, and that was where God wanted him before sending him back to Pharaoh.