Summary
At Easter we remember God’s deliverance of us from our slavery to sin through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We remember that God keeps the promises he makes, and that they were fulfilled in Jesus. Through Jesus, God delivers us from slavery to be his people.
In Exodus Chapter 2 we see this foreshadowed in the beginning of God’s delivery of his people from slavery. Moses, who will eventually lead God’s people out of Egypt is born. But God must deliver Moses at birth and in adulthood from Pharaoh, showing his hand working as he hears his people and remembers them.
Our passage explained
v1-10
In the first ten verses, we see God’s hand moving as he delivers Moses at birth. A Levite couple have a child, who they hide for three months because of Pharaoh’s edict to kill male Israelites (vv.1-2). With hiding a growing child no longer possible, the mother trusts God to deliver her child by placing him in a basket “ark” in the Nile (vv.3-4), to be carried away from danger.
By God’s providence, the instrument of deliverance is one of Pharaoh’s daughters, who recognises the child is Israelite but takes him for her own anyway, and even arranges (through Moses’ sister’s initiative) for Moses’ own mother to care for him at her own expense! (vv.5-9).
Once he was fully weaned, perhaps two to three, Pharaoh’s daughter legally adopted the Israelite Moses as a Prince of Egypt (v.10), where he would receive formal education.
v10-15
In adulthood, Moses will again need God’s deliverance, this time from his murder of an Egyptian. Despite being adopted as a prince, and receiving the benefits of that position, Moses still identifies himself as an Israelite and studies the way his people are treated (v.11).
Seeing an Egyptian overseer beating an Israelite slave, he “struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand” which ultimately led to his fleeing Egypt to avoid Pharaoh’s wrath when his act became known (vv.12-15). Acting in his own strength, Moses’ attempts to help his people fail.
v16-25
In Midian, God provides for Moses with a family. Moses escaped Pharaoh’s immediate reach and wrath, but now has no idea what to do, and is sitting by a well (a common meeting place in nomadic societies). God sends the daughters of a Midianite priest to the well to draw out water for their flock (v.16). Shepherds attempt to bully them away so they can take the water for their own flock, but Moses intervenes to help the daughters by driving away the shepherds and helping water their flock (v.17).
Moses’ generous act earns the respect of the Midianite priest, who invites him home for hospitality (vv.18-20). Moses begins to live with him, and even marries one of his daughters, Zipporah, with whom he has a son, named Gershom, whose name recognises that he is not home but a sojourner (vv.21-2).
The life and deliverance to date of Moses has occurred because God hears His People. The Pharaoh who wanted Moses dead has died, but the people continue in their groaning “because of their slavery and cried out for help” (v.23). God’s response is fourfold; he “heard their groaning, and … remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob… saw the people of Israel—and God knew” (vv.24-5).
Our passage applied
The Israelites’ cries for freedom reach God’s ears. God hears, and “remembers”, which means more than recalling, but bringing to mind with intent to act. God is getting ready to intervene for his people as he promised the Patriarchs, and so he observes their plight and concerns himself with it, as he prepares to act.
We live in an age of instant gratification and satisfaction, where we want things now. But God’s plans take time. This passage shows that God is aware of his people’s suffering, but God’s timing is not always ours. Decades pass in this chapter, but God is still acting to deliver by sending Moses, his instrument, and protecting him from harm.
God is acting in this passage because God keeps his promises and cares for his people. God is not coolly indifferent to the suffering of his people, but not only hears their cries, acts as he promises, observes our suffering, and concerns himself with it. When we cry out, this passage shows that God hears, recalls, observes, and acts, in his own timing.
God acts on his promises to deliver his people, as he has for us all in Christ. At the right time, Christ came to die for the ungodly (Romans 5:6), so we may have eternal life. Enslaved to our sin, God redeemed us and set us free so we can worship God freely and glorify him. The promise made in the Garden of Eden and the deserts of Canaan was fulfilled thousands of years later when Christ was nailed to a Cross for our sins, and rose three days later.
This Easter we remember again that God hears, remembers, sees, and knows. God remembers his promises … and he acts.
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