EXODUS: GOD PROVIDES A Deliverer is Born Exodus 2

EXODUS: GOD PROVIDES A Deliverer is Born Exodus 2 God provides is one of the foundational truths of the Bible. Provision for his people is God s nature and character. Provision is God s identity one of the names He used to reveal Himself to the Israelites was Jehovah Jireh, which translates, God provides. God Provides is an especially appropriate title for this series, because it captures so well God s activity in the Book of Exodus. Last week we emphasized God s provision for us, even when we re not aware of his presence or of his concern. God s provision and his activity in the life of his people is even more evident this week as we see the way in which God orchestrated events in Moses life to raise him up as the deliverer of God s people. As you and I walk through all that life holds the joys and the difficulties, the peaceful times and the challenging times it s critical that we re aware of God s provision for us. The Apostle Paul assured us of God s provision in Philippians 4:19 when he wrote, And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus. In conjunction with God s provision for us, there is a complementary truth that I also want to highlight. When God provides for us, He has a much bigger picture in mind than just meeting our needs. God s provision is never meant to end with us. God provides for us because He loves and cares for us and wants his best for us, but He also intends that his provision for us results in blessing others and providing for them, as well. God made this clear when He spoke to Abraham in Genesis chapter 12: I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you. Think about challenges you ve encountered in your life. When God met you in your place of need, He provided for you, but I ll bet He also used what He did in your life to bless others as you shared with them all that God did for you. Keep this truth in mind as we look at today s sermon. chapter 2 Today s sermon is titled, A Deliverer is Born. I ll begin reading at verse 1 of Exodus 1

Now a man of the house of Levi married a Levite woman, and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months. But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile. His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him. Then Pharaoh s daughter went down to the Nile to bathe, and her attendants were walking along the river bank. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her slave girl to get it. She opened it and saw the baby. He was crying, and she felt sorry for him. This is one of the Hebrew babies, she said. Then his sister asked Pharaoh s daughter, Shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you? Yes, go, she answered. And the girl went and got the baby s mother. Pharaoh s daughter said to her, Take this baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you. So the woman took the baby and nursed him. 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. Exodus 2:1-10 (Map) The first verses of Exodus tell us that all of Jacob s family his 12 sons and their wives and children, numbering 70 people followed Joseph and settled in the upper corner of Egypt, in a region called Goshen. Over the next 400 years this small band of wandering nomads grew prolifically until there were 1 & ½ to 2 million of them in Egypt. At this point Pharaoh and the Egyptians became afraid that the Hebrews would someday rebel against them. Chapter 1 of Exodus tells us that Pharaoh made two attempts to thwart the growth of the Israelites. First, he oppressed them by making their work harder, but we read, But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread. And then he commanded the Hebrew midwives to kill baby boys as they were born, but the midwives feared God and refused to do this. Instead they told Pharaoh that Hebrew women, unlike Egyptian women, were very vigorous and gave birth before the midwives arrived. Chapter 1 ends with Pharaoh s ominous decree, Every boy that is born you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live. In the verses that I just read we see that Pharaoh s 3 rd attempt to halt the growth of God s people failed again. A baby boy, the son of a Levite the priestly tribe in Israel not only survived, he was adopted by Pharaoh s daughter and raised in the royal court strike 3 on Pharaoh and his attempts to counter God s growth of his people. This boy named, Moses, which sounds like the Hebrew word for drew out was drawn out of the Nile River and eventually, he would be used of God to draw God s people out of the waters of the Red Sea. I ll pick up reading again at Exodus chapter 2 verse 11 One day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to where his own people were and watched them at their hard labor. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people. Glancing this way and 2

that and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. The next day he went out and saw two Hebrews fighting. He asked the one in the wrong, Why are you hitting your fellow Hebrew? The man said, Who made you ruler and judge over us? Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian? Then Moses was afraid and thought, What I did must have become known. When Pharaoh heard of this, he tried to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in Midian, where he sat down by a well. Exodus 2:11-15 These verses raise a number of questions that aren t answered like, When did Moses learn that he was an Israelite? When did Moses become a champion for his people? Did Moses have hints that God was stirring him to be the deliverer of his people? Did Pharaoh know of Moses growing concern for his people? What else had been happening that led Pharaoh to decide so quickly to kill his own adopted grandson? We can only guess at the answers to questions like these, but what we do know is that a dramatic shift in Moses story has occurred. The infant who was preserved by God and raised in the Egyptian court as Pharaoh s grandson with all of the privileges that came with that position was now on the run, a refugee in the middle of the desert. Most of us know Moses story so well that it s hard for us to go back and imagine we don t know what God is doing here, but at this point it seemed the plans God had for Moses had hit a giant detour. Follow along as I begin reading at verse 16 Now a priest of Midian had seven daughters, and they came to draw water and fill the troughs to water their father s flock. Some shepherds came along and drove them away, but Moses got up and came to their rescue and watered their flock. When the girls returned to Reuel their father, he asked them, Why have you returned so early today? They answered, An Egyptian rescued us from the shepherds. He even drew water for us and watered the flock. And where is he? he asked his daughters. Why did you leave him? Invite him to have something to eat. Moses agreed to stay with the man, who gave his daughter Zipporah to Moses in marriage. Zipporah gave birth to a son, and Moses named him Gershom, saying, I have become an alien in a foreign land. Exodus 2:16-22 Moses detour wasn t a quick one into the desert only to return to the royal palace again in a few days or weeks. (Map) Moses settled into this desert community. He married a wife and became a father. Moses spent 40 years in the desert. Again, many questions surface which we re not given answers to: Did Moses tell his wife and father-in-law everything about his past? What was it like for an Egyptian prince like Moses to transition to the life of a nomadic shepherd? Did Moses think he would spend the rest of his life in Midian or did he have an inclination that God might have something else for him somewhere down the road? Did Moses think about his former life and his people in bondage in Egypt often or did he push that 3

part of his life into the recesses of his memory? Did Moses have any relationship with Yahweh? Some of these questions we can surmise answers to later when God appears to him at the burning bush, but that s next week s sermon. Right now, all we know is that Moses has settled with a family in the desert of Midian where he is shepherding his father-in-law Jethro s sheep. Now we come to three of the most important verses in the Exodus story in fact these might be the most important verses in the Israelites history. These verses are the bridge between the Israelites suffering and God s activity on their behalf. Follow along as I read Exodus 2:23-25 During that long period, the king of Egypt died. 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, with Isaac and with Jacob. So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them. Exodus 2:23-25 I won t belabor this point because I talked about it a lot last week, but I m intrigued by the fact that the Scriptures make no mention of the Israelites calling out to God. They groaned, they cried out and they even cried for help, but the text makes no mention of them calling out to God. They were just bitterly complaining among themselves to whoever wanted to listen. As I read Exodus chapter 2 throughout the week in preparation for this sermon I was struck by the recurrence of the word, cry in this chapter. Pharaoh s daughter heard the baby she later named Moses cry out from the basket in the Nile River. And the word cry is used twice in verse 23 to describe the Israelites groaning and complaining. The Hebrew word for cry is sa aq. This word means cry or outcry. It is used throughout the Bible as an expression of pain and some say it resembles the ouch sound we utter when we are wounded. It is the cry of the oppressed who are unable to help themselves. It is a cry for mercy in the face of injustice. I want to branch out a bit here to explore the implications of God answering the cries of his people. Hearing the cries of the oppressed was what God did for the Israelites, and it became his expectation for them and example for them to follow in response to the cries of people they encountered. Hearing the cries of the oppressed and caring for their needs was one of the defining characteristics that set God s people apart from the other people who 4

surrounded them. Mid-eastern peoples of this era tended to ignore the cries of the downtrodden they were concerned with their own survival and the cries of others weren t their problem. But God taught his people that it was their responsibility to respond to the cries of the oppressed, just as He had heard and responded to their cries. Later in Exodus God told his people that if they ignored the cries of the oppressed orphans, widows, others in distress He Himself would hear their cry and come to their aid. Coming to the aid of the oppressed was a value that became part of the fabric of Israelite life and it began in the Exodus when God revealed Himself as the One who hears the oppressed and provides for their needs. The Israelites weren t calling out to God, but their cry did reach God s ears. God heard their groaning; He remembered his covenant with their Father Abraham; and, He looked down upon them and was concerned about them. It was through God s concern for them that the Israelites learned who God was. Other ancient cultures learned about their gods through observing nature and not surprisingly they worshiped gods of the sun, moon, rain, harvest, fertility, rivers, mountains, etc. Israel, In contrast, knew God through their history and how God interacted with them as a people. This would be true for generations to come. God s people s understanding of his nature and character came to them through his interaction with them. That brings us to the end of Exodus chapter 2. Next week Pastor Traci is going to preach on Exodus chapter 3 and we ll see a number of loose ends from Moses story, which we were introduced to today, tied together. We ll walk through God s specific call to Moses to be the deliverer of his people the Israelites in Egypt. As we conclude this message I want to call our attention once again to God s Provision... God revealed Himself to the Israelites through his activity on their behalf in history. He responded to their cries in the midst of their oppression. The same is true for us today. We learn to know God through our experience of Him in our lives through Him providing for us in response to our cries for help. So, who do you know God to be based on your experience with Him? How has He worked in your life in the past? How is He at work in your life currently? Who do you know God to be based on his activity in your life? 5

Or, maybe you haven t had much experience with God and his work in your life and it s more helpful for you to begin with your experience rather than with God s nature that s the way it worked for the Israelites in Exodus. They weren t aware that God existed, but God actively pursued them and met them at their point of need. What s happening in your life right now? What do you most need? What s the cry of your heart? Understand that God hears your cries, even if they aren t directed to Him. He knows what s happening in your life, even if you haven t invited Him into your circumstances. He loves and cares for you and is concerned about you, even if you re oblivious to Him or haven t paid attention to Him. I m confident that you ll learn to know and love Him as you invite Him into the hard places of your life. And here is something else that may help us. We like to think of ourselves as selfsufficient. We don t like to feel like we re in need. We d much prefer to be on the giving end of charity, rather than on the receiving end. So, for some of us, it s tough to admit our need to God. We don t want to feel like we re using Him as a crutch or as a giant Santa Claus. God sees a much bigger picture than we do. He does provide for us it s his nature and his identity but The end result of God working in our lives is that He provides for others through us. Think about testimonies that you ve heard people share here at McBIC. Just 2 weeks on Youth Sunday two teens shared about God s work in their life one spoke of God s deliverance from pornography and another shared how they received victory over fear. Their experience of God s grace and deliverance wasn t just for them. God used their victory as an encouragement and source of strength to others. That s the way God always works. So, understand that as you allow God to work in your life, He will bless you, but his blessing to you becomes a channel through which He then is able to bless many others. When you and I experience God s provision in our lives, we open the door for others to receive his provision in their life. 6