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Good Monday morning friends. Today we begin a new month… July and we’re reading Exodus chapter 2. My commentary will be shorter than yesterday, I promise!
Moses, of course, is the author of this book of Exodus, and perhaps you know most Bible scholars believe, he wrote the first 5 books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.
For Jews, throughout their long history, those 5 books have often been called the “TORAH”. Of course the entire Old Testament is sacred to our Jewish friends, and as we’ll see in Exodus, it ALL points to Jesus Christ!
Exodus 2 opens as a continuation of the story begun in Exodus 1. Please note Moses’ birth parents are BOTH from the tribe of Levi. You’ll remember Jacob had 12 sons. God changed Jacob’s name to Israel in Gen. 32:28, and thus his descendants, through those 12 sons, are known as ‘the children of Israel”. An authentic Jew, is one who can trace their family lineage, all the way back to one of those “12 tribes” of Israel. Levi was one of Jacob’s sons, and later on in the story, we’ll see the significance of that. For this morning, I simply ask that you put yourselves into the story.
They were slaves, the children and grandchildren of slaves. Life was beyond harsh. The building of the pyramids and all the huge, self-glorifying monuments of the Pharaoh’s, without any modern construction equipment or mechanics, was beyond back breaking, as it was all done with raw man-power. The only value of these Hebrew slaves, at least to the Pharaoh, was as his workforce. If you’ll notice vs 23, you’ll see it was a very painful time to be alive, as a Hebrew in slavery in Egypt.
This pregnancy, which opens chapter 2, must have been met with great anxiety. They knew the Egyptian law and horrific practice… death to a Hebrew, male newborn, by being thrown into the Nile river.
We really don’t have much of an understanding of what the spiritual condition of this huge Hebrew slave population was at this time. From their perspective, it has been nearly 400 years since Jacob had moved his family, from Canaan to Egypt during the famine. While most had probably heard the story I gave you yesterday, or at least parts of it, I imagine it is fair to say, there was very little interest in the supposed blessing, that came with being a descendant of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and his sons.
While it is true, there was an Egyptian coffin, with the mummy of Joseph inside, being kept in the back corner of someone’s house… his death had been several generations past, and I’m sure it all seemed like a myth, a fairy-tale.
There was no Hebrew alive who had ever been to Canaan, the land God had promised Abraham nearly 500 years before. For these Hebrews… nothing but a desperate existence of brutality, as worthless slaves. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, for these slaves, must have been little more than a myth from generations long past. For them, in the mud pits of making bricks for Pharaoh’s projects, God must certainly have seemed to be dead or at least totally uninterested in them. Do you think that’s too harsh?
But into that misery, a baby boy was born…who should have been thrown into the river to drown, but instead was placed in a basket, in that river, and simply entrusted to fate. Can you imagine the scene of that mother placing her baby in that basket and giving it a little push out into the current and watching it float away. . . let’s stand in the reeds, alongside her, with the water up to our knees, and just feel the emotion.
Think back my friends. When in your life have you found yourself in a place where God seemed silent, far away, perhaps uninterested in you and your situation in life? When have you ever put your hopes and dreams in a basket and pushed them out in to the river, to watch the currents take them…and wondered what would ever become of your life?
But… Almighty, Eternal, Sovereign, Holy God was watching and directly, strategically, involved, as you see in Exodus 2.
Pharaoh’s daughter and that little basket had an unexpected rendezvous, and history began to be re-written that morning! You see how God provided… that the mother who gave up her son to the river, was invited to nurse her son to health and strength, and then offer her son to be raised in the Palace of Egypt as a grandson of the Pharaoh!!
Notice verse 10 “When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh’s daughter and he became her son. She named him “Moses” saying, ‘I drew him out of the water'”.
Does that remind you of another time a mother brought her newly weaned son and handed him over to be raised by another person, in a special place? Hannah, handing Samuel over to Eli, the High Priest, to be raised in the Tabernacle at Shiloh (1 Samuel 1:21-28)?
Here’s an important, spiritual life principle my friends…God is always watching, to see who He can involve, to accomplish His great purposes, here on earth! It’s a combination of two great verses:
“The eyes of the LORD roam to and fro, across the whole earth, looking to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to Him.” (2 Chronicles 16:9)
“I will raise up for Myself a faithful priest, who will do according what is in My heart and mind.” (1 Samuel 2:35)
Can you see yourself in these verses, in the principle, in the story?
You remember what happens to adult, Prince Moses, as he’s walking among the slaves one day, and “…saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew…” Something welled up inside Moses and he took action…and it turned the corner on the rest of his life!
As he fled, we see Moses encounter a family of 7 daughters and their father. He has two names. In vs. 18 he is “Reuel”, and in chapter 3:1 and later in Exodus 18 he is known as Jethro. In vs. 16 he is introduced to us as ‘…a priest of Midian…” We can only presume he is a man who is the spiritual leader of his town, and maybe a worshiper of the one true God, perhaps like Noah or Abraham. We know nothing of his spiritual beliefs, but his behavior of kindness here in chapter 1 and wisdom in chapter 18, would suggest Reuel Jethro is a worshiper of God. It is also interesting that in Exodus 3, Moses refers to Horeb as ‘the mountain of God’. Is that the name Reuel Jethro had given that mountain?
Lastly for this morning, may I draw your attention to the closing verses of chapter 2. They are vital to living the human journey of life. They are another spiritual principle about God. “The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help, because of their slavery, went up to God. God heard their groaning and He remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. So, God looked on the Israelties and was concerned about them.” What do you hear my friends?
Perhaps you have watched the graphic pictures on the evening news or your internet screen of desperate misery around the world, and wondered WHY? Where is God? Why doesn’t God do something? Why would God allow such horrible suffering, especially for children and the elderly?
Do you remember my recounting yesterday of the story leading up to Exodus and how Jacob and Joseph BOTH did not give leadership to their large family and lead them back to God’s provided and promised land Canaan, after the famine in Egypt was over? Instead they allowed the best in the land of Egypt, to capture their affections, their hearts, and that over-ruled their minds, when they knew full well, and had told the Pharaoh, that Egypt was not their home. God had provided another home, and they had only come to Egypt for a little while. . .but a little while turned into 400 years simply because, they allowed their affection for the things of this world, to suppress their desire to be a people of God, living in obedience to God, and enjoyment of God’s provision.
The Apostle John, Jesus’ best friend, saw the very same problem in his day, and wrote: “Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in them. For everything in the world – the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does – comes not from the Father, but from the world. The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever.” (1 John 2:15-17)
But do you see… in Exodus 2:23&24, God had not forgotten or given upon His people, the Hebrews, even though they had done, as others before them, and had chosen a different path, from what God had as His best for them.
Tomorrow, in that great chapter 3, we’ll see how God responded to their desperate cries and put in motion the most remarkable deliverance, that could only be accomplished by an Almighty God.
As we close today, may I invite you to consider something powerful? From that day to this, God’s ears have been alert to the desperate cries of people, all around the world. And I see two great responses from God. . .the Church, His people all over the world, in communities just like yours, responding with the love of Jesus to the desperate needs of the poor, widow, orphan, addict, disadvantaged, abused, abandoned, rejected, mistreated, persecuted, people of that community. You and me, my friends, God’s people, living Holy Spirit filled lives, are God’s answer to the cries of communities and nations all around the world. Think about that!
Also, consider this… the great missionary movement, is God’s second response to the desperate cries of the broken people in our world. Men and women, and their children, willing to leave family, friends and all that is familiar, to MOVE to a different part of the world to live there, learn their language and culture, learn to eat their foods, and love the people there…and bring the hope and help of Jesus to them. That has been God’s great answer to the cries of the world.
This week as we celebrate July 4…please consider these two great responses of God, and that here in America, since our founding, we have prioritized the liberty to worship God, follow His directions obediently, and respond, by His leading, to the cries of the world. No other nation, none…anywhere in the world, through all time, has experienced such a work of God in blessing us and then mobilizing us to respond to the pain of the world. It has been one of the greatest aspects of the story of the United States of America! Celebrate that this week.. .and ask God to help us understand what our role is TODAY in turning America back to God!
Pastor Doug Anderson 262.441.8785
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)
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