Exodus: Chapter Two

Welcome to the sermon. Today we're in Exodus chapter two. We often think of the Exodus as a "movement of the people," but it's not an uprising. The people are stuck. This is a move of God. He is the one who steps in to rescue the oppressed. As we study the life of Moses, remember this: God will do something in you before He does something through you. Moses's life is a mini-exodus that sets the pattern for the entire nation.
Scripture References

• Exodus 2: The birth, rescue, failure, and flight of Moses.
• Acts 7:21-22: Describes Moses's education and power in Egypt.
• Hebrews 11:24-26: Explains Moses's faith in choosing to identify with God's people.
• Song of Songs 8:5: "Who is that coming up from the wilderness, leaning on her beloved?"

Key Points

1. God Delivers the Deliverer

Against the dark backdrop of infanticide, God sovereignly rescues Moses. His mother places him in a basket—described by the Hebrew word for "ark"—and he is saved through the very waters meant for judgment. In an incredible twist, the Pharaoh who ordered Moses's death ends up paying for his upbringing. God was preparing a deliverer right under the nose of the enemy. This is a move of God, not of people.

2. God Gets Egypt Out of Moses

Moses, mighty in the wisdom and power of Egypt, tries to be a deliverer in his own strength. He murders an Egyptian, only to be rejected by his own people. This failure teaches a crucial lesson: our own strength, status, and timing are not enough. God led Moses out of Egypt and into the wilderness to get the pride and self-reliance of Egypt out of him.

3. The Wilderness Teaches Dependence

The wilderness is where we learn the prayer, "He must become more, and I must become less." For 40 years, the prince of Egypt became a humble shepherd. The wilderness is where God strips away what we lean on so that we come out leaning only on Him. He uses these mundane, difficult seasons to prepare us for what's next.

Conclusion

Moses's story points to Jesus, the greater Deliverer. Moses saw his people's suffering; God saw and knew. Moses identified with his people at great cost; Jesus identified with us by leaving heaven. God's goal is not just to get you out of bondage, but to bring you to Himself. He is leading a cosmic exodus to rescue you from sin and bring you into a covenant relationship with Him.

Calls to Action

1. Embrace God's Sovereignty: Recognize that your salvation and deliverance are a move of God, not your own works.
2. Trust the Process: Allow God to work in you, even in frustrating seasons of preparation, before you expect Him to work through you.
3. Lean on Him: In your wilderness, ask God what props you're leaning on and learn to lean on Him alone.

Transcript

You can cut the Bob Marley is. Well. Hey, we're we're in a series, on the book of Exodus. And I've spent the last few months, studying in preparation to teach the book of Exodus. And, Bob Marley's Exodus album has been my soundtrack. And I found myself many days seeing Exodus movement of people.

It's really important that we introduce Bob Marley to the next generation. And, it's also really important as a dad that you take your kids to the Central Coast, blare Bob Marley as your cruise in the streets of Pismo. And then when your kids say, do we have to listen to this? You do an awful like, Rasta accent and say, Jamaican.

It's really important part of being a dad. Why don't you go ahead and turn this safe place? Just someone say, do we have to listen to this? And then you go jam and that's it. That's all you need to know. Two words. Go jam on.

So I'm studying the book of Exodus while listening to Bob Marley, and I'm singing, this is a this is a movement of people. And it dawns on me as I'm studying the book, that it's very much not it's not a movement of people. The people are stuck. They're in bondage. There is no way out of the situation they're in.

This is not an uprising. This is not them organizing to stick it to the man. They're oppressed, they're exploited, and then they are rescued by God. This is a move of God. And so don't make the mistake of thinking as we read through Exodus. This is just a movement of the people. It's it's not. It's a movement of our God to rescue and save a group of people who are stuck in bondage.

And this is how we should frame our salvation, that we're not saved by our works or some some sort of uprising in our own lives. But we're saved by God stepping down, stepping into our situation, moving towards us. So today I'm going to read chapter two of Exodus, which is a lot about Moses. But as we study the life of Moses, please don't make the mistake of this of thinking this is a movement of the people.

If you've got a Bible open to Exodus two. Last week we worked our way through Exodus one, which creates for us a backdrop for Exodus two. If you remember, Exodus one describes very dark days, maybe the darkest days that the Hebrews had ever faced.

They're being oppressed and afflicted by a Pharaoh that lived in fear of them. And it says that they ruthlessly made Israel to work as slaves and made their lives bitter with hard service and mortar and brick, and in all kinds of work in the field, in all their work, they ruthlessly made them work as slaves. Emphasis on the ruthless.

It's repeated because, again, these are really dark days. And in an attempt to control the Hebrew population, Pharaoh ordered Hebrew midwives to kill Hebrew boys. When the Pharaoh couldn't get the Hebrew midwives to cooperate with his plan, he gave every citizen permission to take a Hebrew boy and heave them into the Nile River. I know you had a tough week, but these are dark, dark days and against that backdrop, a deliverer comes Exodus chapter two.

Now a man from the house of Levi went and took as his wife a Levi woman. The woman conceived and bore a son, and when she saw that he was a fine child, she hit him for three months. And when she could hide him no longer right, she took him to the foyer. That's. That's what happens. Moms trying.

Trying. And when she can't keep it down, she moves to the foyer. And when she could hide him no longer, she took for him a basket made of bulrushes and daubed it with women and pitch. She put the child in it and placed it 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 out to bathe at the river while 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 a child, and behold, the baby was crying. She took pity on him and said, oh, this is one of the Hebrew 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'll give you your wages.

So the woman took the child and nursed him, and when the child grew older, she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son. And she named him Moses, because she said, I drew him out of the water. One day when Moses had grown up, he went out to his people and looked on their burdens and saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his people.

And he looked this way, and he looked at that, and seeing no one, he struck down the Egyptian and hit him in the sand. 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, oh, surely this thing is known. And when Pharaoh heard of it, he sought to kill Moses. But Moses fled from Pharaoh, and he stayed in the land of Midian. And he sat down by a well. Any time anyone sits down next to a well in the Bible, they're getting ready to meet someone.

This was the water cooler at work. This is the place where people went to have conversation. This is like ancient Near East Harmony. So that's about to happen. Anytime someone sits next to a well, it's like there somebody is going to meet. Now, the priest of Midian had seven daughters, and they came in, drew water, and filled the troughs to water their father's flock.

The shepherds came and drove them away. But Moses stood up and saved them, and he watered their flock. And when they came home to their father, well, he said, how is it that you've come home so soon today? And they said, an Egyptian delivered us out of the hand of the shepherds, and even drew water for us. And then he watered the flock.

And he said to his daughters, then where is he? Why have you left the man? Call him that. He might eat bread. And Moses was content to dwell with the man. And he gave Moses his daughters of Sephora, and she gave birth to a son. And he called his name Gershom. For he said, I have been a sojourner in a foreign land during those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery.

And they cried out for help, their cry for rescue from slavery. It came up to God. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel, and God knew.

We've invited you to see yourself inside the Exodus story. We think that the Apostle Paul and the scriptures themselves give us permission to see ourselves in this story. We want you to live into this. We also made a way for people to participate in the Feast of Tabernacles, to see that the feast that the people celebrated in the Book of Exodus, they point us to Jesus.

And so this will start next Monday. And homes all around Visalia. If you're here and you don't have Christian community people to participate with, we'd love to find a place for you to do that. If you're here and you want to open your home, you can do that. But this is going to be a seven day devotional that we'll do together starting next Monday.

And then we're going to party, will gather in homes together, rejoice in what God has done through Jesus. But it's part of living into this story. I also shared with you that the melody line that works its way through Exodus is not just in Exodus, it's in all of your Bible. And what's really interesting is that in chapter one, in chapter two, just in this one chapter, we can recognize the melody of Exodus.

We can pick up on kind of the familiar hook that happens throughout the Bible. Did you recognize it?

Moses has his own little mini exodus in this chapter. He's surrounded by death and judgment. And then Moses is himself delivered from the waters. And then he flees from Egypt out into the wilderness, where he'll be for 40 years. And then in the wilderness, he takes a wife. He enters a covenant with Zafira. And this is essentially the story of the whole book of Exodus.

Eventually, Moses will lead all of Israel out of death and out of judgment. He'll lead them through the waters, through the Red sea. They'll flee from Egypt, and they'll escape into the wilderness where they'll be for 40 years. And it will be in the desert, in the wilderness, that the people of God will make a covenant with God at Sinai.

What happens to Moses in this chapter will happen to every Israelite. What God does in Moses, he'll then do through Moses. And this is a really important lesson for you to to hear today, because I know you're here and desperate for God to move in certain situations. And I just want you to know really clearly that God will do something in you before he does something through you.

And that's the lesson that we're reading here in Exodus chapter two. God's going to work a little mini exodus in Moses before Moses leads an Exodus. There is a sort of, remodel that happens in Moses's life. And you know how remodels go, right? Twice as long, twice as much. But God wants to work in you. I know you're here and you're like, Lord, I'm desperate for you to work in my family.

He'll start by working in you. I know you're here and you're desperate for God to work in your school. He'll start by working in you. When God wants to do something, he'll normally pick a man or woman and begin to work on them and in them before he does anything through them. And I wish this weren't the truth.

I remember planting, Radiant Church, and I was so desperate to reach my friends and reach our city, and I was so sure, because I had stepped out in obedience, that certainly my church would be hundreds, if not thousands of people in a matter of weeks. And then here comes the painful process of going underground and God doing something in you before he does something through you.

And it's frustrating, isn't it? He's not just going to change California. He's not going to change our nation without changing you. There will be a personal revival that happens for you before there's a corporate one. And this is the lesson that we learn from Moses's life in this, chapter. So I want to point your attention to three acts.

And I want you to know that this is this is not a movement of Jewish people, because I'll stop. That'll be the last time I do that. There's not enough of my daughters glaring at me in the front row to to to help me hit the brakes today. But the first act is that God delivers Moses.

Before he becomes a deliverer. Only God could write a story like this. A desperate mother who can't keep her son quiet any longer, places that child in a basket and thinks, I'm going to have to throw this child in the Nile anyways. I might as well give it a fighting chance. Builds what we believe to be a very substantial basket.

She puts everything she knows into the creation of this basket and through tears and groans, floats her child into the Nile. Moses, his sister, kind of follows to see what happens. And maybe this was a plan. Maybe they knew where Pharaoh's daughter based. Maybe they were hoping this would happen. We don't know. And I think in Hebrew literature there is gaps because we're supposed to speculate.

We're supposed to wonder, how did this happen? What we know for sure it was the sovereignty of God and not a movement of the people. This child floats downstream. And then one of Pharaoh's daughters servants goes, grabs the basket, finds a crying baby inside, and then Moses, the sister pops up and goes, hey, if you want that baby to stop crying, you should probably nurse it.

And I know a crying lady who would like to nurse that baby. And then she goes and gets Moses's mother and Moses's mother went from placing her child in the Nile River. And please don't picture a creek. It's the Nile River.

She goes from surrendering her child.

To being paid by Pharaoh to nurse her baby. That's the sovereignty of God. Only God does stuff like that. Only God can pull that off. The very Pharaoh who ordered Moses's death is now funding the person who will take out his army. It's awesome.

It's incredible.

Remember how I told you last week that there's a few, Easter eggs in Exodus chapter one? There's these links between Exodus chapter one and Genesis chapter one. There's words that you read in Exodus one that connect you to the words written in Genesis, one that are supposed to make you think about what happened in the garden, whether there's more Easter eggs in Exodus chapter two.

And one of those is that the word used to describe the basket that was made was Ark. This mom made an ark.

It's only used twice in the Old Testament. This word and it of course, was also used to describe Noah's ride as well. Right. And the author is making a really clear point by describing this basket as an ark. And the message is, God is going to save Moses. In the very same waters that others are drowning in, just as he did with Noah.

That's the message. God's going to use Moses's ark like salvation to create a new nation. That's what is happening after Moses is grown and certainly learned about his Hebrew culture and the God of the Israelites, it says that he was adopted into Pharaoh's household. We don't know how old he is, but he obviously knows that he's a Hebrew even when he's in Pharaoh's house.

The book of acts fills in the storyline for us, and it says this in seven. Pharaoh's daughter adopted him and brought him up as her own son. And Moses was instructed in all of the wisdom of the Egyptians, and he was mighty in his words and deeds. So we know that God is being. We know that Moses is being raised as God's deliverer, and we're seeing more of God's preparation in his life.

Who better to confront Egypt than the one who knows Egyptian philosophy intimately? Who better to confront Egypt than the one who knows Egyptian military strategy? This is exactly what God's doing in Moses's life. He's preparing him. But Moses has no clue. That's what's going on. Probably Philip in helps us with the background of this. He says this was the finest training that the world had to offer.

A first class secular education. We know that from the time of Tet, most of the third middle of the 15th century BC, it was customary for foreign born princes to be reared and educated in the Egyptian courts. The children of the nursery they were called, and as a child of the nursery, Moses was trained in linguistics, mathematics, astronomy, architecture, music, medicine, law, and the fine art of diplomacy.

In other words, he was being trained for Pharaoh's overthrow right under Pharaoh's nose. The historian Josephus claims that Moses was an Egyptian general, and that might help us make sense of him being mighty in words and in deeds. Moses would go on to write the Pentateuch, the the first five books of your Bible. He would write, who better to become God's writer than the person who has trained and experienced the finest reading and writing education in the entire world?

Prepared him. Pharaoh prepared him to write your Bible.

Moses would go on to fight wars in the wilderness, and he trains up the most famous general of Israel's history, Joshua. What better way to become God's general than to learn the military strategies of the most powerful nation in the world at that time?

Before Moses fights any battle, God fights for him. This is not a movement of Moses. This is a movement of God. He's delivered and in God's sovereignty, prepared to lead the Exodus act two God leads Moses out of Egypt before Moses leads others out of Egypt. 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 then he looked this way and that, and seeing no one, he struck down the Egyptian and hit him in the sand. And 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 him, who made you a prince and a judge over us?

Do you mean to kill us the way you killed the Egyptian? And then Moses was afraid and thought, surely the thing is known. And when Pharaoh heard of it, he sought to kill Moses. But Moses fled from Pharaoh, and he stayed in the land of Midian. And he sat down by a well. So in the ancient world, there's actually several stories of babies surviving great odds and then becoming heroes.

And what we find out here is that Moses survived against all odds, but he's not necessarily the hero. And that's the beautiful part about our Bible. If you read it, you're going to find out that there's one savior, because even our heroes need to get saved. Even our heroes need to get rescued. And that's what's happening right now in Moses's life.

He takes matters into his own hands, and God is in the process of getting Egypt out of Moses. He thinks with his power, with his status, he can do whatever he wants. And God's teaching him to rely on weakness and dependance. And so there's a huge process that will take place in his life to get Egypt out of him.

He's mighty in words and deeds, but he's not mighty in God. And there's a difference between those two things, and we all need to probably learn the difficult lessons that come through failure and the failure in particular that comes when we just step out in our own strength, in our own gifting, but without God's timing, it wasn't enough that he was gifted, wasn't enough that he had power and place and prestige and was educated.

Didn't matter that he was a general. There's more to it than that. For him, there is such a big difference between operating in your own strength and in your own timing, and operating in God's strength and God's timing, and Moses needed to learn it. Moses was 40 years in Egypt. We know that Moses was 120 years old. He was 40 years in Egypt learning something.

He was 40 years in the desert learning to be nothing. And he was 40 years in the wilderness, proving God to be everything, says James Boyce. Sometimes only failure and humiliation can teach us certain lessons, and this is what's happening. He takes matters into his own hand and he tries to save in his own strength. Anybody tried this?

I love the story because not only does he end up killing an Egyptian with his bare hands, but even his own people, the people who he was trying to save were like, nah, who are you? He loses on both accounts, and when we try to save others in our own strength, we lose on all accounts. And I know you've experienced that before.

We lose with Egypt and we lose with our fellow Israelites. Hebrews 11 talks about where Moses his heart was. And I think his heart might have been in a good place because it says by faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin.

So he considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt. For he was looking for reward. So his heart's in a good place. He wants to see something happened, but he takes matters into his own hands. Here's a couple quotes to kind of drive home this. This point. Whatever the Lord may call any of us to, we may rest assured that his gracious preparation has made us exactly right for the task.

But as we see in the young Moses, not even a wonderfully tender heart was enough. Again, Philip Reichard says God had not yet called Moses to lead his people out of Egypt, and it was wrong, because it was not God's way. God had not commanded Moses to take up arms against the oppressor, as if somehow he could liberate Israel, one Egyptian at a time.

God had a different plan, a different way of dealing with Egypt. But before he dealt with Egypt, he needed to deal with Moses and get Egypt out of this man. Part three the wilderness. Part three God wanders with Moses before Moses wanders with the Israelites. The wilderness is the place where God gets Egypt out of you. Where we learn not to rely on our own strength or our own gifting, or what we bring to the table, or what we think we should or should happen when we think it should happen.

The wilderness is where God takes us to break us, where we learn to trust in him and not in our own strength. We have a lot of flowers on stage because there was a wedding yesterday, and in that wedding I reminded the couple of John the Baptist. He's, famous for baptizing Jesus. That's how he got the name.

He's also famous because he prayed this great prayer and he said, you must increase, referring to Jesus, and I must decrease referring to himself. In some of your translations, the prayer reads, you must become more and more, and I must become less and less. Do you know where John the Baptist was reared? In the wilderness? The wilderness is where you learn that prayer.

You must become more and more, and I must. I must become less and less. And the goal of the wilderness is really simple. Again, takes twice as long and it costs twice as much. But the goal of the wilderness is really simple. Song of songs frames it this way.

Who is that coming up from the wilderness, leaning on her beloved? Whatever you've been leaning on, whatever, whatever's been propping you up, whatever's been supporting you comes down. And the goal, the intention of God in the wilderness is you would come forth leaning on him. I don't know what you lean into and what you lean on when you're in the wilderness sometimes.

It's been a busy weekend for me, and I can't wait to lean on Saturday Night Football.

I'm excited about it. I'll probably fall asleep, but that's what dads do, right? Jamin?

He spent 40 years in the wilderness.

In humble tasks. Imagine the Prince of Egypt, and he's like, oh, I got it. I'm a shepherd now, and I'm changing diapers. And God's at work in the mundane, teaching him again not to rely on a place of power, prestige or his status. But he's going to come out of the desert leaning on his lover. This is why Tony Meridia writes this Moses spent two years of preparation for every one year of ministry.

By living in the wilderness, he learned to rely on God. By having a family. He learned to lead, guide, discipline those he loved by working with the Midianites, most likely as a shepherd, he developed skills to help him lead the Israelites out of their enslavement. Remember, God wastes nothing. He often prepares us for the next chapter of life with the present chapters, experiences.

This is the last point I'll make, and then we'll respond, together. But I just want to remind you, as you read Exodus chapter two, it's really important that you remember that God is leading a cosmic exodus through Jesus, who is greater than Moses. And there are ways, as we read chapter two of Exodus, that Moses is pointing us to Jesus, the salvation, the rescue that's going to come through Jesus.

Here's just a couple ways. And I think you probably picked up on this. Chapter two starts with one of Pharaoh's servants picking up a child because she hears it crying. Chapter two ends with God hearing the cry of his people and picking them up. Moses, it says he saw. He saw the way his people were being mistreated. He's looking.

He's seeing. He's recognizing what is happening. And in the same way we're told at the end of Exodus chapter two, God knew God saw the oppression of his people. And the same way that Moses saw God sees what you're going through. And then it says that Moses identified with his people at great sacrifice to himself. He said no to Egypt's treasure in order to be recognized with its Hebrew people.

And of course, that we know that our God didn't just see what was going on down here. He stepped in to what's happening down here at great cost to Jesus, who said no to what he had in order to be identified with us. Then it says, Moses, actually in vengeance took the life of an Egyptian. And the scriptures tell us that God's going to deal with our enemies, and vengeance is the Lord's.

He's going to bring us out of bondage and deal with our enemies. We won't do that in our own strength. And then at the end of this chapter, Moses steps into a covenant. And we too aren't just being led out of Egypt. We're not just being led out of bondage, we're being led into covenant with God. He just does.

He doesn't just want to get you out of the mess you're in. He wants to bring you to himself, and he'll do that in his steadfast love for you. He doesn't want you just to be out of bondage. He wants you to be in communion with him.