Exodus chapter 2 is the very familiar story of Moses birth. He is born to a Levite woman who hides him to keep him alive for three months. But when she realizes that plan won’t work long term, she puts him in a basket and floats him down the Nile. Pharaoh’s daughter finds the basket as you recall, rescues baby Moses and raises him as her adopted son. This is a rather significant piece of the story because in the last chapter Pharaoh had ordered all new baby boys be drowned in the Nile. Moses future was not very secure until he was adopted by the daughter of Pharaoh. Moses grows up in the life of Pharaoh and is pretty oblivious to what is happening with his people. “One day he went and saw his brothers, saw all that hard labor”. Remember that his people were slaves and being forced to do intense hard labor for the king. He sees an injustice against one of his brothers and makes a decision that is life changing. He kills an Egyptian that was hitting one of his relatives and buries him in the sand. Life changes at that point forever for Moses. “The next day he went out there again”. You probably recall that Moses sees two Hebrews fighting and he asks “why are you hitting your neighbor”. Of course they ask if he is going to kill them like he did the Egyptian and Moses knows the truth is out. Pharaoh hears and “tried to kill Moses”. What a life change a simple decision can make. Moses does what seems right, and now he moves from being part of Pharaoh’s household to being an enemy of the state. He takes off to save his life.
Of course Moses heads down the road and comes to a well. A group of seven daughters comes to water their father’s sheep. The local shepherds “came and chased the girls off” but Moses saved the day and helped them get the sheep watered. They get home and dad asks how it happened so quickly. They tell the story of Moses help and Reuel tells them to go get Moses to come eat with them. That leads to him staying, settling and then marrying Zipporah as his wife. She bears a son Gershom to Moses. Pharaoh dies but the Israelites still “groan under their slavery and cried out”. A series of things are recorded here regarding to what happens. Pay close attention: “God listened….God remembered….God saw….God understood”. What a progression of interaction. Far too often we never even get to the place where we cry out to God. When things get difficult we just try to deal with it on our own. The people of Israel have been in slavery for a long time. They have been doing hard labor, getting up day after day working dawn til dusk. But they didn’t really live in relationship with God. Scripture doesn’t give us any indication they were seeking His hand til now. And when they did – He responded. I love how the Message captures this series of steps ending up with God understood. God knew all along the plight. He knew exactly what was needed. But it comes into action when they cry out dependent upon Him. We need to be in communication with the Father. We have to get into relationship. We need to ask!
