When at the age of 40 Moses went out to see his people, who were slaves, he witnessed an Egyptian beating a Hebrew. Moses took matters into his own hands, killing the slave master and burying him in the sand. Almost as though he had decided right then to deliver his people from bondage, one at a time. But that was not God’s will at the time, and not God’s way at all. 

One of the keys to growing up is learning from our mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes, each one of us, and with regularity. But do we learn from them? Not just that we did something wrong. More importantly, are we willing to recognize what we did wrong and then change accordingly? Otherwise we are like people Paul wrote about who were burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, but were always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth. Moses had to flee Egypt and the Pharaoh because he committed murder, a crime of passion fueled by his anger and his overblown reaction to injustice. Will he learn from that? Will he change? God gives him an opportunity almost as soon as he arrives in Midian and rests near a well.

While Moses sat there, seven daughters of the priest of Midian came to water their father’s flock, but shepherds also showed up and started to run the women off. Apparently, this was a daily occurrence, but Moses was there this time. We have seen this movie before, haven’t we, where Moses sees oppression taking place and he takes out the oppressor? But this day was different. He stood up when he saw the aggression and took care of the shepherds himself. We don’t know how many men there were, but it didn’t matter. Moses’ skill and training was more than a match for them. How do we know that Moses learned from the last time he responded to oppression? He didn’t kill the shepherds! The story of rescue was told to their father, Reuel, when the seven daughters got home and he asked how they could possibly have gotten the flocks watered so quickly. An Egyptian protected us, ran off the bad guys and then watered out flocks! 

They were as amazed that Moses watered their flocks as they were that he protected them from the shepherds. This just was not done. For a man to serve a woman in those times and in such a way, drawing water for her flocks, was unheard of. This is Moses pointing us to a greater prophet, the greatest of all. Jesus taught his disciples, and you and me, that we are not supposed to be like the Gentiles who lord it over the people, “But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all.” Then while the disciples were scratching their heads over that one, Jesus added, “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Like Jesus, when confronted with evil, Moses stood, saved, and served. 

When Reuel heard this from his daughters, he rebuffed them for leaving their rescuer in the wilderness. So they found Moses and fetched him to the house. He stayed for a meal. Then he stayed for a good night’s sleep. Then he stayed for a wife, as Reuel gave him his daughter, Zipporah, to marry. She then gave Moses a son. And Moses, the prince of Egypt and one-day deliverer of God’s people became a shepherd for 40 years. Perfect training for what lay ahead.

What can we learn from this event in Moses’ life? God’s plan and timetable are perfect, but they often do not match ours. We want it now. We want it easy and convenient. We want it our way. But God patiently prepared this man as he cared for sheep and learned how to live in the wilderness and learned how to protect his flock and learned how to lead stubborn sheep even when they didn’t want to follow. Hmmm. Sounds like God was preparing Moses for what would happen in the last 40 years of his life.

Hey, young people, don’t be in a hurry to figure out your whole life. But do not delay in preparing your heart to follow God. Commit to doing hard things. Commit to reading the Bible and listening to God’s voice as he speaks through his word. Commit to serving others. Hey, older people, the same is true for us! It is never time to sit back and say, “My work here is done.” Or to believe that God cannot use you and your time, talents, and gifts in his service.

The Pharaoh issued a hit on every Hebrew baby boy. If anyone in Egypt found one, they were to throw him in the Nile. Serve him up to the crocodiles. Genocide was on Pharaoh’s mind, and Amram and Jochebed were living in the kill zone. One cry and one vigilant neighbor who heard and investigated would result in the death of their baby, Moses. Here is where we see the first act of a mother’s faith. “She hid him for three months.” That’s 90 days and over 2,000 hours, every one of which could have been Moses’ last. Why did she risk it? 

Because this was her son, flesh of her flesh. But she also knew because this was a critical time for Moses to be nursed by his mother, to bond with her, to be held and comforted by her, not to mention all of the physical and cognitive development that would take place in those first few months. This boy was being raised by faith and make no mistake: all godly parents raise their children by faith. We may not be living under the edict of a tyrant, but we are about the business of raising godly children in an ungodly world. We can only do that by faith and by the grace of God. But no matter what, we must do that. Each child and each day is precious. 

The writer of Hebrews wrote, “By faith Moses, when he was born, was hidden for three months by his parents, because they saw that the child was beautiful, and they were not afraid of the king’s edict.” Stephen mentioned the same thing in his sermon before he was stoned to death, that Moses “was brought up for three months in his father’s house.” This mom and dad cherished every moment with their son, not knowing how long they would have him. The same is true for us, Mom and Dad. 

 The next act of faith was also born out of tremendous pressure: Jochebed knew that she could not hide Moses forever. So she prepared a basket for him, an ark, made of bulrushes, and covered it with pitch. The word in Hebrew for this little boat is used only one other place, in the book of Genesis when God told Noah to make an ark…and cover it with pitch. The readers of Exodus in the wilderness and later generations would certainly recognize the symbolism. God saved his people through an ark in Noah’s day. God delivered his people by sparing the deliverer in an ark many years later. The Bible says that Moses’ mother “put the child in (the basket)…among the reeds by the river bank.” Philip Ryken said she must have put her heart in there as well. She “placed” the basket in the water. The word means, “gently placed.” With a mother’s love and courage born of faith in a loving God, Jochebed gently turned her child over to God. Hannah did the same with Samuel but she was just giving him over to Eli the priest. Jochebed was turning her son over to the elements, but she knew, by faith, that she was placing Moses in the arms of God. 

You know the rest of the story. God did protect Moses. He used five women in the birth narrative to make sure the deliverer of His people would be able to grow up and do just that. We owe so much to Shiphrah, Puah, Jochebed, Miriam, and even the unnamed daughter of the Pharaoh. She raised Moses in the seat of power, where he was “trained for Pharaoh’s overthrow right under Pharaoh’s nose!” (James Hoffmeier)

God is good, and our children are precious.

The new Pharaoh did not know Joseph, except perhaps by reputation. What he did know was the people of Israel living in Egypt were growing and were strong. The ruler of the most powerful nation on earth said of the Hebrews, they are “too many and too mighty for us.” He was afraid of these people he did not know, who came from a different land, and his fear of them rising up against him led him to take drastic and wicked actions. His first act was to command the Israelites be made slaves. Their freedom to live in a foreign land disappeared over night, as taskmasters were appointed to rule over them with whips. God told Abraham this would happen, many years before: “Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs, and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for 400 years.” 

But the more the Hebrews were oppressed, the more they multiplied. These were God’s people, devoted to him and free in him, even while enslaved. Their suffering did nothing but cause them to lean more into God by faith as they “groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help.” The same holds true today and always has: the greatest growth of Christianity happens in times and places where it costs something to follow God and trust Jesus. “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.”  

What happened in Egypt? When the oppression of slavery didn’t work, the king took steps to eliminate a race of people by destroying the male seed. He commanded the midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, to put to death every Hebrew baby boy as soon as he was born. 

The Pharaoh’s new edict threatened to eliminate the birth of the one who would lead God’s people out of bondage. But Shiphrah and Puah stood in the gap, as their reverence for God and life led them to refuse to do what the Pharaoh had commanded. Included in the number saved was Moses, the deliverer of Israel. 

These women are clearly heroes of the faith in the Bible, the first two “pro-life heroines” in history. Shiphrah means “beautiful one” and Puah means “splendid one,” and they were true to their names. These two effectively said to Pharaoh, long before Peter and John said to the rulers and elders in Jerusalem, “We must obey God rather than man.” 

Do you see the contrast between Pharaoh and these two women? Fear of man can cause us to do unspeakable things, as the Egyptian ruler did. But a love and reverence for God leads us on the path of righteousness, no matter the cost, as these two godly women illustrate for us. They must have understood the consequences of disobeying the Pharaoh. But the Bible and the history of Christianity are filled with examples of people who were willing to offer themselves as living sacrifices for the sake of obedience to the call of faith in Jesus.

Finally, the irony cannot be missed. The Pharaoh was worried about boys becoming men, but his plan was blown up by two women.

You know the old joke, “How do you eat an elephant?” One bite at a time. How do you eat the book of Exodus, 40 chapters, nearly 26,000 words, packed full of amazing stories of the redemption of God’s people? One bite at a time. I hope to spend most of the next two years walking through this book with the family of believers at Antioch. Why would we do that? Because we meet God in Exodus, as the hero of the story, just as he was in Genesis. God makes himself know to Moses and to the children of Israel, and to us, in this book. The Bible itself is the story of creation, the fall, redemption, and restoration. Exodus is the greatest story of redemption in the Old Testament. The book was first called “Names” in Hebrew because of the first few words, “These are the names.” But when the translation into Greek happened in the third century B.C., the Septuagint, it was renamed “Exodus,” which means “departure.” The first time that word occurs in the Greek is chapter 19: “On the third moon after the people of Israel had gone out of the land of Egypt…” 

This book is not about a people in Egypt, not primarily. No, they went out. This book is about the departure of God’s people by God’s mighty hand out of Egypt. It is not about residence; it is about exodus. And it is about God’s intervention in the affairs of men. In honor of our nation’s history and our celebration of Independence Day last week, I offer this story, which many of you know, about God’s intervention in our nation’s history before our nation ever came to be.

In 1755, during the French and Indian War, 23-year-old Colonel George Washington was one of 1,400 British troops under the command of General Braddock marching to capture Fort Duquesne, near Pittsburgh, when they were attacked by a French and Indian force. During the battle, “Braddock was killed and every officer on horseback was shot, except Washington.” The young colonel later wrote to his brother, “But by the All-Powerful Dispensations of Providence, I have been protected beyond all human probability or expectation; for I had four bullets through my coat, and two horses shot under me, yet escaped unhurt, although death was leveling my companions on every side of me.” A Native American who fought in the battle later stated, “Washington was never born to be killed by a bullet! I had seventeen fair fires at him with my rifle and could not bring him to the ground.” 

Sounds like a miracle to me. But it pales in comparison to what we read in Exodus.

 “The exodus,” Philip Ryken wrote, “was the great miracle of the Old Covenant.” There is only one greater act of redemption in the whole Bible, the greatest of all time, and that was the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. 

Psalm 66 invites us to study Exodus: “Come and see what God has done: he is awesome in his deeds toward the children of man. He turned the sea into dry land…Bless our God, O peoples; let the sound of his praise be heard…” The exodus shaped the whole Bible, and there are over 120 references to it in the Old Testament alone. Psalm 77 tells us who God is:

“Your way, O God, is holy. What god is great like our God? You are the God who works wonders;
you have made known your might among the peoples. You with your arm redeemed your people,
the children of Jacob and Joseph. Selah When the waters saw you, O God, when the waters saw you,   they were afraid; indeed, the deep trembled…Your way was through the sea, your path through the great waters; yet your footprints were unseen. You led your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron.”

I am looking forward to every bite of this wonderful testimony of God’s providence and love.