God’s Servant — Saved & Tested

--- In today's lesson, we're going to cover Exodus chapters 1 and 2, and you might remember that we covered verses 1-7 last week in the introduction, so we're going to pick it up in verse 8. But before we do that, I want to remind us of the very last phrase, last verse in Genesis chapter 50, verse 26. It tells us about one of the sons of Jacob, Joseph, and it says of him, he was put in a coffin in Egypt. But in his day, before the coffin days, in his day, he was quite the guy in Egypt. He was this amazing national advisor to the Pharaoh, and he saved Egypt from the great famine. He saved his brothers. He saved his father Jacob that we know as Israel. Probably in his day, Joseph could do no wrong. He was probably a national celebrity, but you know how things go, fades from memory, and pretty soon we get to verse 8, and Exodus chapter 1, verse 8 says, now there arose a new king over Egypt who did not know Joseph. Maybe too much time had passed. Maybe the history books had been revised, but this current administration did not remember what Joseph had done to save Egypt. Not only that, but this new king had taken to staying up nights with paranoid thoughts about the Hebrews. It says, joining forces with their enemies, and fighting against Egypt, and escaping from the land. This was his fear. I wonder if there was any substance to his phobia. Because to me, I think, you know what, they were herdsmen. I don't really see them as a national security threat. But anyway, this Pharaoh thought that they were, and he was concerned. It's interesting too, that Pharaoh feared them escaping from the land. They had no ability whatsoever to escape from the land, or maybe one at a time, or four at a time, but not two million at a time. They couldn't escape. It was impossible for them, and yet when God entered into the mix, the impossible became the possible, and what Pharaoh feared actually became a reality. His fear was realized. But anyway, fear and paranoia can turn everyday run-of-the-mill Pharaohs into tyrants, and that's what happened to him. We read now, you see in verse 11 and 13, that his response to this was to afflict them with heavy burdens, to ruthlessly make the people of Israel work as slaves, to make their lives bitter with hard service in mortar and brick, and in all kinds of work in the field. And so what was the result of his strategy to do this to the people? Well apparently, when people have to work very hard all day, they make babies at night. Can I say this on the video? I didn't make this stuff up. That's just what the Bible says. Look at, look at what it says. It says verse 32, or 12, the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied, and the more they spread abroad. So note to self, if you're ever in that situation, that's how it works. And it was bound to happen because God told Jacob that, Genesis 46, we talked about last week. God said, it is there that I will make you a great nation. So it's no surprise. So the domination didn't work for Pharaoh, and it says in verse 14, the Egyptians were in dread of the people of Israel. And so now this uncovered an even more vile and sinister side of Pharaoh, and he stepped up his game from mere persecution to now infanticide. And so let's pick up and start reading in verse 15. Then the king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Sifra and the other Pua, when you serve as midwife to the Hebrew women and you see them on the birthstool, if it is a son, you shall kill him. But if it's a daughter, she shall live. But the midwives feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but let the male children live. So the king of Egypt said to them, why have you done this and let the male children live? The midwives said, because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women, for they're vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them. So God dealt well with the midwives and the people multiplied and grew very strong. And because the midwives feared God and he gave them families. Now this might be a familiar passage to us. Many of us know this passage, but it raises some questions. Were there only two midwives for 2 million people? Was there only two of them? Or were these just two women that God raised to our attention, as he sometimes does in the Bible, gives names to situations that are happening? Or were these the only two midwives that actually disobeyed Pharaoh and honored God? We don't know. Were they lying about the women giving birth before they got there or protecting them? Or is it a truth that there was a genetic propensity for the Hebrews to be very vigorous in giving birth? A lot of things we don't know and can't answer, but I wanna put our focus on what we do see. What we do see in this passage, and that is that these women chose to honor God by their actions and help those around them. And in return, God honored them. That is what is clear in the passage. And that's a model for us. It's a great model for us to look at that. Because of the midwives, now Pharaoh's genocide went nowhere. He was not getting accomplished what he had hoped to get accomplished. And so I wonder if one morning he took a walk out along the Nile River, as was his custom in the morning, rolling this over in his mind. And as he's looking into that river, which is ascribed as the source of strength and stability for Egypt, I wonder if he looked in that river and thought, that river can accomplish for me what the midwives failed to do. And I can solicit the help of my countrymen to get that done. And so in verse 22, then Pharaoh commanded all his people, every son that is born to the Hebrews, you shall cast into the Nile, but you shall let every daughter live. Now, who were all his people? The common sense of the passage tells you that it was everybody. Everybody had this directive. Maybe, maybe not, maybe it was just like, as we say today, his peeps, you know, his administration, you know, we're supposed to, but it doesn't matter. He told all, this was broadening. Now, all his people, and it wouldn't have been the first time or the last time in history that neighbor was set against neighbor in a genocidal way like this, but how would all his people know that an infant was Hebrew? It's not, how would you know a Hebrew from an Amalekite or a Hittite or, you know, this wasn't a purely Egyptian and Hebrew society. There were others. It's not like these babies were born with a little sign on them that said, I'm a Hebrew baby, or maybe they were. Maybe they had the sign of the covenant on them that said, I'm a Hebrew baby. Maybe there were some other people, other people groups that use circumcision as well, but maybe it wasn't so difficult to identify a Hebrew baby when you unwrapped him. Anyway, this is the world that the people of Israel were living in. This was the condition, and you might remember our narrative started with a very narrow focus on the sons of Israel, the 70 people who came into Egypt, and then it broadened for us to the people of Israel and the condition as we see that they were facing in this time in history, and now as we turn the page to chapter two, it's going to narrow again to one particular family in the nation of Israel, and our focus is going to go to one family, but we want to remember some things. God was with them. He had never left them during this time. God may have seemed silent, but he was hard at work, and God had a plan for the deliverance of his people way back from the day, Genesis 46, when he told Jacob, do not be afraid to go down into Egypt, for I will go with you, and I will bring you out again. God had a plan from that day of deliverance for the people, but now the stage was being set, and we're being informed of God's servant that he's choosing to use in his plan, and the next chapter's gonna reveal that and remind us that God loves to use his people to serve his purposes in his way and in his time. All right, so chapter two, as we look at verses one through 10, maybe in your Bible it is titled The Birth of Moses, and we peek into the life of an ordinary Israelite family who's facing a crisis pregnancy. They already have one girl and then one boy, and now she's pregnant in this environment, okay? That's a crisis pregnancy. We learn that they're Levites. You looked up their proper names from other passages in the Bible, and we learn that the mother gave birth to this child, and then she hid him for three months. And maybe, maybe I wonder if she was walking one morning along the Nile River crying out to God and saying, what am I gonna do? Like I love this baby. My little grandbaby is 14 days old today and I spent a couple hours with him yesterday. Like you get bonded to those little guys, you know. And maybe she was looking, gazing out upon the river saying, Lord what am I gonna do? How, how am I gonna function? This is gonna kill me. And maybe God said to her, you know what honey, just obey Pharaoh. Just put him in the river. Just not the way he wants you to put him in the river. Maybe, look at verse uh three. So she took for him a basket made of bulrushes and dabbed it with bitumen and pitch. And she put the child in it and placed him among the reeds by the riverbank. And his sister stood at a distance to know what would be done to him. Now the daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river while her young woman walked beside, her young women walked beside the river. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her servant woman and she took it. When she opened it, she saw the child and behold the baby was crying. And she took pity on him and she said, this is one of the Hebrew's children. And then his sister said to Pharaoh's daughter, shall I go call you a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you? And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, go. So the girl went and called the child's mother. And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, take this child away and nurse him for me and I will give you your wages. So the woman took the child and nursed him. When the children grew older, excuse me, when the child grew older, she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses because she said I drew him out of the water. What an incredible grace of God in this story that he allowed her to have her own son back in her arms, almost as if a resurrection from the dead. It really was that way. And so she was able to nurse him and to nurture him and to impress upon him during those early years of his life who he was, where he came from, and where he was headed. And I wonder, I picture her singing little songs. You know how we memorize things better with little songs than we do just things people say to us. So I picture her singing lullabies over him and expressing to him, Moses, God saved you in a very special way for a very special purpose. Because she knew she only had a limited amount of time with him. And so this is an example to us mamas. If we have kids still in our home, we have a limited amount of time. And to make use of it, you make use of every moment, particularly those earliest formative years. Even psychologists who don't know the Lord will tell us how important the impressions in those earliest of years are to the formation of children there. And so we should be inspired to take advantage of this. But what I want to do here for a moment is just pause now and examine the women that we have learned about. Because I don't know if you noticed, I think we pointed it out in the study guide, that God did not draw our attention to very many men so far in the passage, but very many women that he used in his plan. And like I said, since this is a women's bible study, let's slow down and examine them. And let's start back with those midwives, Sifra and Pua. And to me they represent women who are willing to honor God in their everyday actions, even when life gets difficult, maybe especially when life gets difficult. They were ordinary women taking care of the needs of other ordinary women. They didn't run around raising awareness for needs and situations beyond their control, but they took their time to help with the situations right under their noses. And I think that they're a great example to us. My oldest daughter has an Etsy shop and they make hand-crafted and hand-painted signs. And she tells me that after the silhouette of Idaho, the most common requested and ordered sign in her shop is a quote by Mother Teresa. And it goes like this, if you want to change the world, go home and love your family. It's a great quote, but that's the address of these midwives. Like do what's right in front of your nose. That's how we change the world is by doing what's right in front of us. Do you know any women in your life like the midwives? Do you want to be like the midwives? The next woman we want to look at is Jochebed, Moses's mother. And she represents to me those special women who can sense when God is at work, even when life is difficult. And I want to show you a passage from Hebrews 11. I'll put it up for you. Hebrews 11, 23. And I did this out of the NIV. It says, Moses's parents hid him for three months after he was born because they saw he was no ordinary child. How did they see he was no ordinary child? Well, we all think our babies are no ordinary child, right? But I think, did he have a little sign on him that said, I am no ordinary child? No, it had less to do with him and more to do with her vision, more to do with her eyesight. And because she had spiritual receptors to see the work of God in this situation, then it says, and they were not afraid of the king's edict. And so God is looking for women in every age with spiritual insights that we can see something. God is doing something here because God is looking to accomplish his plan through women, people, men as well, that have spiritual vision. Do you know a woman like Jochebed? Do you want to be a woman like Jochebed? The next girl that we run into is Miriam, Moses's sister. And to me, she represents those women who are humble enough to play a supporting role in what God is doing, knowing full well they're not the hero of the story and they're not the main actors in the story. And these types of women will take directions. They will wade into the water and wait. They will get leeches between their toes while they wait. They will allow their legs to be cut by the reeds while they wait. They will watch the drama unfold before their eyes while themselves remaining drama-less. And then they will be bold enough to say what God puts in their heart to say. Outrageously bold things with a straight face like, would you like me to go get you a Hebrew woman to nurse that baby for you? Right? They know it's not all about them. They know that they're a part in the story. I know quite a few of these women because lots of you are these kind of women. We have lots of women at Calvary Chapel who are willing. They say things to me like, whatever you need me to do, that's what I'll do. And I love it. Maybe you know women like Miriam. Maybe you want to be more like Miriam. And then the last one is Pharaoh's daughter herself. And she plays a role as well in this story. And we see that she seems to be tenderhearted and compassionate, which is out of agreement with the family that she comes from. But she represents those souls that God uses for his purposes, despite the fact that they neither know him nor honor him. And yet God reaches in and uses them. Maybe she had other motives in her heart, but God was directing her steps. There's a verse in the Proverbs, Proverbs 21.1 that says, the king's heart is in the hand of the Lord, and he directs it like a water course wherever he pleases. And God does this sometimes where he takes complete pagans, King Darius, King Artaxerxes, and he does his work through people that don't even know him. Have you run into that situation? Has that touched your life at all? I thought of a time that it touched my life when we left Montana and went to Seattle so that Paul could go to Bible college. We were young and green and we didn't know anything, but we needed a place to live. And so we went to this very large apartment complex because it was beautiful and had a little lake. And we thought, that'll be great. And we come to the office and we say to them, do you have some apartments for rent? And she's like, yeah, what do you want? And we're like, tiny, cheap, whatever you have that's tiny and cheap. She goes, well, we have a one bedroom. Here's an application. And we're like, application? That's not the world we came from. And we're like, oh, okay. So we start writing it out. And we said to her, we said, oh, well, we don't have any jobs. We just got there, right? We said, because it has employment listed. And we said, oh, we don't have any jobs. And I feel like this is one of the situations that the Lord was just like a puppet moving her mouth. She goes, oh, well, that will be fine. So we move on down the application. And we're like, first, last deposit. We're like, well, obviously, we got can pay the first month's rent, and we can pay a deposit, but we don't have enough to pay the last month. She's like, well, that will be fine. Oh. Oh. Oh. And then she said, oh, we get all done with the application. She's processing it. We give her money. She goes, oh, there's a problem. The only one-bedroom apartment we have still has furniture left in it, because you know where this is going, right? Because in order to get to Seattle, we sold everything that we owned except a water bed, which packs small, and Nellie's playpen. And for some reason, we thought it was important to have this ginormous microwave. You remember from the 80s? They were the size of a furnace. Well, we brought that with us, too, but we had nothing else. And so anyway, and she said, but so there's still a furniture in there. And we said, well, that will be fine. And then the next week, the furniture company called us, and they said, we are just slammed. We are not going to get there till the end of the week. And we said, that will be fine. And then they didn't pick it up for like six weeks. It was awesome. Anyway, I think back to a time that God was just so gracious to these young kids that didn't know. We were just on an adventure of faith. We just want to go to Bible college. I don't know how people do this. And God just used someone that didn't even know him or honor him to get his will accomplished. Anyway, the pharaoh's daughter, back to her. The irony that I see that it was the pharaoh's own daughter who saved the one baby who was going to bring such devastation to Egypt and deliverance to Israel. And the irony that she pulls him out, she draws him out of the water, and names him that name to draw out. And he's the one that will grow up and draw out God's people from their place of bondage. It's quite beautiful. One last thought before we move on is I'm fascinated by the different opportunities that people saw in the river. And I kind of made this up. This is my rendition of this, because it doesn't say the pharaoh looked into the river. But in the Nile River, pharaoh saw the opportunity to kill those who threatened his security. In the Nile River, the princess saw the opportunity to take possession of something she probably thought was a gift from the gods. And in the Nile River, Jochebed saw the opportunity to give God a chance to be God in this situation and to give her child into the security and the safety of God's hands. After all, maybe she knew, maybe she remembered that her ancestors were saved from the destruction in the waters as they rested in the ark. Maybe she knew that, and maybe she thought if God did it once, he can do it again. And I will make for my son a little ark, just like Noah and his family were saved from the waters. We better finish this chapter. We're going to fast forward 40 years. Verse 11 says, one day, when Moses had grown up, he went out to his people, and he looked on their burdens. And he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his people. And he looked this way and that, and seeing no one, he struck down the Egyptian, and he hid him in the sand. And this passage makes me wonder about Moses' motivation there. Did he already see himself as a sort of a liberator right now of sorts? I don't know. What's clear is that he seems to have committed murder and was discovered. When he went out the next day, behold, two Hebrews were struggling together. And he said to the man in the wrong, why do you strike your companion? And he answered, who made you a prince and judge over us? Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian? And then Moses was afraid and thought, surely the thing is known. And Pharaoh heard of it, and he sought to kill Moses. But Moses fled from Pharaoh and stayed in the land of Midian, and he sat down by a well. And right there, God's rescue mission seems to have just sunk right into low gear. Everything seems to have grinded to a halt. Everything looks so promising for a season. Moses was saved from his watery death. He was nursed and nurtured by his mother. He was educated in the palace. It seemed as though God was putting all the pieces together for a grand liberation of his people. And now, look, the murderer Moses is a fugitive sitting by a well in the desert. And you read the story. You know that he hadn't lost his strength or his eyesight. And when he saw the opportunity to impress some pretty girls and get water from them out of the well, that's what he did. He rose to the occasion. And by the way, seven times in scripture, we see these love stories at a well. So note to anyone who's looking for a husband. Apparently, that's the place to be. But so the father of those pretty girls happened to be the priest of Midian. And Moses ended up settling in with their family. He married Zipporah. He had a son who, it says in verse 22, he named Gershom. For he said, I have been a sojourner in a foreign land. And Gershom literally means sojourner. So this detour into Midian now is going to take up 40 years. 40 years of Moses's life and 40 years while Israel is still oppressed. So does this delay God's program of deliverance by 40 years? Is God saying, I had a good thing going, but now look what happened. So now I'm going to have to think on it a while and do something else? Or does this delay give God an opportunity to shape his deliverer into the man he needs to be, to test him, and to prove his character? And we'll talk next week about the hidden years. When God chooses people for his service, God very, very often puts them on the bench, puts them into obscurity where they can grow slow and steady like a good hardwood tree ready for the carpenter to make something out of them. And we see it happen with Abraham and with Moses, Joseph, David, Daniel, and even John, the Apostle John to some degree. So we'll talk about that more next week. But for now, I just want to focus on maybe how Moses felt at this moment. Certainly, he must have felt a sense of failure in this moment. There had been a time in his life when he perceived a calling, maybe, like something rolled around in his head, almost like a lullaby that told him, Moses, you are saved in a very special way for a very special purpose. And it sort of rolled around in his head. And now he thought, must have been my imagination. Because look where I am. Look where things are. And he was now married to a Midianite girl based on a wanted poster, sojourner in a desert place. And every time he called his son, Gershom, he was reminded that he was a sojourner. But we're reminded that Moses's actions were not bigger than God's plan. Our actions are never bigger than God's plan. We already know, and we're going to study next week, that God had yet to test Moses. So I want to close up with these last three verses. These are for personal encouragement. I'm going to even break my own rules that say don't rush to personal application before you digest the information. But I want to rush to application with these. Look at starting in verse 25. During those many days, the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. See, nothing had changed back in Egypt, really, except that one thing that we read about. Look at, their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. And one of the most beautiful verses in scripture, God heard their groaning. God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel, and God knew. God was not only waiting for his plan to execute at the time that he planned for it, but he was also waiting for his plan to execute at the time that they cried out for rescue. Now, how those two things intersect in God's world, I have no idea, but it's a Bible truth, that God has a plan that's moving forward in his way and in his time, and that God waits for us to cry out for help. Even Jesus said to us, you have not because you ask not. There was a verse in your study guide, Psalm 34, that says, when the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles. This happens over and over again. I was reading through judges yesterday, and I'll just tell you what I read in judges. When the people of Israel were oppressed by the Midianites, when the people of Israel cried out to the Lord, the Lord raised up a deliverer for the people of Israel who saved them. We could take that verse out of Judges and insert it right here to the end of this chapter and it would make just as much sense because that's what is happening. When they cried out, the Lord came to rescue. So our rush to application, what is the rescue that you are waiting for? What is the rescue you have been waiting for many days? Have you cried out for help? I don't mean said a prayer, I mean have you cried out for help or have you been crying out for help for a long time and you just need someone to say to you, hang in there because you know what? The people cried out for help but their rescue wasn't coming at 9 30 tomorrow morning. The rescue is still years away for Moses to be at the burning bush and to come back into Israel and even once he came back into Israel there's going to be time that will lapse and so we are reminded of the patience that is required when we cry out to help. We don't cry out one day, get an answer the next day. Maybe. That's happened to you, I want your testimony. But the point is this should encourage us to have patience. Keep crying out to the Lord for the help that you need and if you don't remember anything else from this lesson to remember the character of God that we see in this verse. God hears, he remembers, he sees, and he knows and it's not just the Israelites, it's us. We're his people. Lord, thank you for your scripture. Thank you for these reminders. Lord, you have a way of bringing what we need to hear when we need to hear it and we praise you for that Lord. We thank you for the richness that you've unfolded through your word and Lord, now as we discuss this passage, I pray that you would bring further insights as we listen to one another, Lord, and as we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. ---