A Deliverer Is Coming (Exodus 2:11-25)

Scripture Introduction:

It’s 2025. Did you think we’d ever make it here? Did you think you’d make it here? Have you ran out of beans and toilet paper from Y2K yet?

Today, I want to tell you a story about a guy named Moses. And a story about his people—the Israelites, or as they are referred in this text, the Hebrews. We will read from Exodus 2:11-25 in a moment.

But first, let’s talk about Moses. Moses had quite the birth story. He wasn’t supposed to be around. The pharaoh tried to kill him and all the other dudes his age that were Hebrews.

But Moses was put in a basket by his mom, sent down the river and rescued by Pharaoh’s daughter. She found him in the creek in his little basket—kind of like his own personal Noah’s ark—and she pulled him out of the water…and to show God’s amazing providence…she said, “hey I can’t nurse this baby…I want to keep him though…these Hebrew ladies know how to do it…i’ll get one of them to help me out....” And what happens is that she takes him to Moses’ birth mother.

She gets to raise her own son, even though they don’t know it’s her own son. But this creates a bit of identity crisis for Moses as he grows up. He certainly heard the stories of the people of God. Heard about the promises given to Abraham, heard about Joseph, learned about YHWH (that’s the name for God).

But he also was raised as the child of the most powerful ruler in the world. In Acts 7, Stephen tells us that he was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in speech and action. But there was this other story that was part of Moses.

It was an injustice. You can only imagine what he must have felt. Does he hate himself that is an Egyptian with all of this privilege and such? Or does he hate himself as a Hebrew—a commoner, a slave?

The text that we’re going to read in a moment would have us to see Moses as one who is going to identify with his Hebrew heritage. He’s a warrior for change. He doesn’t like things as they are and he wants to see things different.

To put this where we can grasp it, think about the things that you want to see change. Put yourself in Moses’ sandals for a moment…what do you want to see change. In your life? In the life of others? In the life of the church—local, national, global?

What are you fired up about?

Maybe nothing much…you’ve tried that. Not going to get too excited about things anymore.

Well, there are really two stories…well actually three stories going on in our text. There is Moses…younger…fired up…going to change the world…then there are the Hebrews.

Let’s think of all this from their side for just a second. We don’t know for sure that the whole 400 years was slavery, in fact while the Pharaoh who was buds with Joseph was reigning we can be certain that it wasn’t. But they were at least in slavery for 80-100 years. That’s a lifetime. Do you know what that means?

That means a ton of prayers that don’t get answered the way that you want. That is a ton of sorrow and heart break. And let’s not pretend that there wouldn’t have been stories of rescue amongst the people of Israel. That promise given to Abraham would have been part of their tradition. Would the story of Moses’ birth and dramatic rescue and rise to power in Egypt have done anything? We don’t know.

But here is the picture for you…you have a young reformer, fired up, ready to take the world by storm. Likely has a list of resolutions about a mile long. Then you have the Hebrews…their resolution…survive…or well, who really cares at this point. Who has time for resolutions? We’ve got to make these bricks...

If you’re reading this for the first time, with everything you would have read in Exodus 1 and the first part of 2, you’re thinking of Moses as a rescuer…hang on frustrated and discouraged people…your rescuer is coming!

READ EXODUS 2:15-22

Exodus 2:15–22 ESV

When Pharaoh heard of it, he sought to kill Moses. But Moses fled from Pharaoh and stayed in the land of Midian. And he sat down by a well. Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters, and they came and 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 watered their flock. When they came home to their father Reuel, he said, “How is it that you have come home so soon today?” They said, “An Egyptian delivered us out of the hand of the shepherds and even drew water for us and watered the flock.” He said to his daughters, “Then where is he? Why have you left the man? Call him, that he may eat bread.” And Moses was content to dwell with the man, and he gave Moses his daughter Zipporah. She gave birth to a son, and he called his name Gershom, for he said, “I have been a sojourner in a foreign land.”

Well, that fell flat didn’t it. That’s giving up on your yearly Bible reading plan in Genesis 6.

What a disappointment. The story starts well, but ends with Moses the deliverer as a family man living in exile in a foreign land. He’s got a murder charge and likely charges of treason against him. That’s disappointing.

I remember when we first got married. Couples would tell us, “Ah, just wait. That’s puppy love. Won’t be long and you’ll be just like us. You won’t want to sit next to each other. You’ll fight all the time. Yada yada.”

What I think they were trying to say is that life hits you in the throat and it makes things difficult. You’ll fizzle out Moses. You can’t keep at this pace.

Well, I can say that in one sense they were right. Life is hard. Marriage can be tough. It exposes how selfish I am. It chisels us and makes us more like Christ. And that can be painful.

But in another sense they were totally wrong. We love each other even more than when we were married, and we still love holding hands.

What I’m trying to say is that, yes, Moses needs to learn things. He’s not yet ready in this text to be the deliverer. BUT there is quite a bit here that ought to inspire us and we ought to be like Moses a bit more.

The Awakening of a Deliverer

We do not get to learn about Moses the child or Moses the teenager. Stephen’s speech in Acts tells us that Moses was 40 when this took place. The story picks up with Moses “grown up”. The language here in verse 11 is loaded. Where it says “he went out” that is the same word that will later be used of the Exodus. As one has fittingly said, “before Israel could go out of Egypt, Moses needed to go out of Egypt, emotionally if not physically.”

But our biggest clue that Moses has turned his back on Egypt and is now identifying with the Israelites is the repeated phrase, “to his people”. Hebrews 11:24-26 tells us even more:

24 By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, 25 choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. 26 He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward.

Now this is unbelievable what Moses is choosing here. We know that Moses would have had contact with his biological mother, he would have been brought up at least early on in the ways of Israel. But he would also have been heavily influenced by the Egyptians. He was raised to show utter contempt for slaves. If you look through Egyptian literature you’ll see slaves called things like, “the living dead”, you’ll see them compared to donkeys. You’ll even find literature that was taught within the schools which looked down upon those who engaged in manual labor. And this would have been contrasted with the amazing way of living as a ruling elite in Egypt.

You’ve watched the movies about Egypt. You’ve seen all the treasures in King Tut’s grave. All the wealth and treasures of Egypt would have been for the taking for Moses. But he turned his back on all of it. He gave up status…his status as an elite, his status as the majority…he gave up pleasure and he gave up prosperity. And he did all of this to be identified with slaves. As one commentator noted:

He had everything to lose and nothing to gain, but the moment he was moved to compassion by the sufferings of God’s people, he made his choice.

This is the path of a deliverer, of a rescuer. It’s the path that Jesus walked…who for the joy set before him endured the cross. Who left all the glory of heaven to become a man and redeem us. To become a man and die a horrendous death on a cross. To identify with vile sinners like you and I.

And this is a path that Christ calls us to follow. To identify with the weak and the hurting. It’s a call for us to at times lay down our majority status, our privilege, our prosperity, etc. for the sake of identifying with brothers and sisters in Christ. Those who might have a different nationality, a different skin color, etc. but still share the name of Jesus Christ. We are called to identify with them instead of the ways of Egypt. As Philip Ryken has said,

God calls us to identify with his people, even when it causes us pain and persecution. Some people, if put in Moses’ position, would have figured out a way to stay in Pharaoh’s court, ‘with my influence,’ they would rationalize, ‘I could do more good for the Hebrews here than I could ever hope to accomplish out in the slave camps.’ But Moses took a radically God-centered approach to career advancement. As far as he was concerned, there could be no compromise with Pharaoh’s evil regime. He was called to forsake sin, with all its pleasures, even if it meant suffering disgrace for Christ.

Now Moses has the heart of a deliverer and the zeal of a rescuer. We should too. But then Moses does something in verse 12 that throws him back 40 years and sets him in the wilderness.

The Deliverer’s Failure

Some have tried to rescue Moses in verse 12 saying that the “looking all around” was him trying to see if somebody else was going to help this Hebrew slave. Now, the wording here is not just that this slave is being treated harshly. He’s being murdered. And Moses is doing the same thing to the Egyptian that the Egyptian was going to do to the Hebrew slave.

But there is no reason to read the text that way, and frankly, that wouldn’t even rescue the problem with Moses’ behavior here. The problem is that Moses is taking thing into his own hands. Think about this with me for a second. What is the purpose of Exodus? You see this more as the story progresses, but the main purpose of Exodus is so that the name and character of God is known. So what would happen if Moses here would have taken on a Jason Bourne or some other action hero persona and went all throughout Egypt knocking down the higher-ups?

What will happen is that Moses will be seen as the Deliverer. But the Exodus isn’t about Moses it’s about God. And the same is true of your story and my story. It’s not about us it’s about Him. And whenever we forget this we have a tendency to take things into our own hands. We can think that God needs us to carry on his plan. I love the way John Piper puts this:

“What is God looking for in the world? Assistants? No. The gospel is not a help-wanted ad. It is a help-available ad. Nor is the call to Christian service a help-wanted ad. God is not looking for people to work for Him but people who let Him work mightily in and through them…God is not a scout looking for the first draft choices to help His team win. He is an unstoppable [running back] ready to take the ball and run touchdowns for anyone who trusts Him to win the game.”

Moses, I believe, thinks at this point that God is offering him a help-wanted ad. But that’s not what God wants. That’s not the story of the Exodus. God wanted to save the Israelites for his glory and not for the glory of Moses. He didn’t want Exodus saved through the strength of man but through His strength. Now, lest you think this is God being an egomaniac, it’s not because He is God and we are not. It’s loving for him to do this. Would you rather the unchanging and all-powerful God show himself as such or would you rather He hide behind a creature, like Moses, who is going to die and disappoint?

That, friends, is the purpose in my life and in your life. And it’s the purpose of our church. That we make much of God. To put it bluntly, I think the message that Moses had to learn, and the message for us here from Exodus 2 is simple---Get over yourself!

There are consequences to taking matters into our own hands.

Moses, as he will later for doing the same thing when he strikes a rock, suffers the consequences for his action. He is now a wanted man and he has to flee to the wilderness. His credibility was now destroyed. We see this in the way that the two fighting Hebrews responded when Moses tried to intervene in their matter. “Who made you a prince over us…murderer”. And they are right. At this point God had not made him anything over them. He hadn’t yet called Moses. He’d just opened up his eyes. So we see the result, though, in their response…Moses had lost his moral authority to deliver God’s people.

This is what happens when we try to solve things on our own and in our own way and in our own wisdom. When we use unholy methods to try to accomplish holy ends. We lose our moral authority to speak into things.

When we identify ourselves with evil and evil actions we lose this ability. The most persuasive church is the one that looks the least like the world. The one that is radically centered on Jesus Christ. The one that is not tied to anything except for Jesus. The one which can speak into the evil from the Left and evil from the Right. We cannot sell this birthright for a pot of stew. We can be zealous like Moses and have the heart of a deliverer…to have your heart in the right place…and set your rescue mission back 40 years. Moses has the disposition of a deliverer but not yet the dependence of one. For, it is only God who can accomplish this rescue mission.

But even here God is gracious to Moses. We meet up with Moses again in Midian. We see his character again. He’s a rescuer. He can’t help himself. He sees these women being potentially abused by these filthy shepherds and he steps in and rescues them. I think he’s already learned a lesson. He doesn’t beat them to death. He just protects the women. He’s acting like a deliverer here.

He ends up marrying one of the ladies. Zipporah. And there is a great deal of attention paid to his marrying of a non-Israelite. I need to mention this because some in the past have spoken against inter-racial marriages. That’s just simply not biblical and here is one spot of evidence. As one commentator noted, “contrary to popular impression, the composition of the Israelites was simply not genetically/ethnically monolithic but rather a matter of faith as opposed to flesh”.

We also see that Moses has a son. His name is significant. His name means “an alien there”. This is how Moses feels. Remember he’s now identifying with the Israelites, his people, but he’s a foreigner in exile in another land. He really wanted to do something to help his people but he is now on the sidelines. As another as put it:

“He was a failure as a deliverer of his people, a failure as a citizen of Egypt, unwelcome among either of the nations he might have called his own, a wanted man, a now-permanent resident of an obscure place, alone and far from his origins, and among people of a different religion.”

If this guy is your rescuer…if he is your deliverer…the story looks pretty bleak at this point, doesn’t it?

Have you ever been there? You’ve had your eyes opened and your heart stirred and so you jumped in with both feet and messed the whole thing up. Your heart was in the right place but you checked your brain at the door. You’ve got the heart of a deliverer but not yet the wisdom, not yet the patience. What Moses needed, and often what we need, is the Midian desert.

A preacher of old said it this way, “Moses was 40 years in Egypt learning to be somebody, he was 40 years in the desert learning to be nothing: and he was 40 years in the wilderness proving God to be everything.”

But you know, sometimes we just stay in Midian. This is who I am now. This is what I’ve done…this is my lot. I’m tarnished forever. Can’t shake this off me. I tried once. I tried to make change happen. I’ll leave it up to somebody else now.

And then Moses comes along and it rebukes us a little, we don’t like it and so we say, “Just you wait...” And there is some truth to that…there are lessons that Moses needs to learn. But one of those lessons isn’t.... “you really should just give up and stay in Midian…”

I said earlier there is a third story going on in this story. Moses failed as a deliverer. The Israelites are broken and hurting. Let’s finish out the chapter.

Exodus 2:23–25 ESV

During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery 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.

Look with me now at verse 23. It’s almost like a “meanwhile back in Egypt”. They’ve been enduring terrible slavery still. About 40 more years have passed since Exodus started, and things aren’t getting any better for them. We read that the Pharaoh who was in charge when Moses left has now died. But this didn’t provide relief. It will be good in that Moses can likely return to Egypt.

Something happens though in these verses which will thrust the story forward. This will be the fuel for the whole Exodus story. The Israelites are desperate. They did not have the luxury that Moses had…they don’t have the option to take matters in their own hands. They cannot rescue themselves. All they have and all they know is slavery. Their rescue must come from without, it certainly cannot come from within. And so they do the only thing that helpless people can do…they groan…they cry out to God for deliverance.

And God hears.

This is amazing. This changes everything. He remembered his covenant. Now, it reads almost like God was sitting on his throne and then all of a sudden realized, “oh, man I forgot all about my people”. But that’s not what is happening here. That “God remembered” is an intimate term. It’s God saying that he is going to make right on his promise to Abram. Even his promise that he’d rescue them from the hands of their oppressors in Genesis 15.

Now you’ve got something.

Groaning accomplished what grit couldn’t. Prayer accomplishes what personality could not. A sigh to God does more than any human effort. Rather than taking matters in their own hands the Israelites placed the matter in God’s hand. Now, don’t hear me wrong. God will accomplish his purposes. He isn’t doing something here that he didn’t intend to do all along. But when we cry out like this God hears us. I’ve heard that prayer changes things….I might agree with this…but I think it’s better to say that God changes things. We pray to God because we are desperate. He is sovereign. We are not. Prayer is placing our situation in His hands.

What a lesson this is for us. We all have dreams and things we’d like to see happen don’t we? Some of these might be silly. They might just be wish dreams. They might be foolish and for God to answer them would be our destruction. He won’t answer those in the way we want. But perhaps we’ve got our heart exactly in the right place but our knees aren’t where they should be. Our hands are calloused from grit and not folded in prayer. (That’s not to call for an unholy passivity, but to say that we can learn from Moses here.)

How many things are we tempted to place into our own hands? Are we praying? Are we pleading with God? Are we begging God for redemption in our personal lives? Within our church?

I want to close by looking at Isaiah 59. Read Isaiah 59.

Friends, this is the story of what God has done through His Son Jesus. He has made his name known as Rescuer and Redeemer. This tells us that we cannot accomplish our own righteousness. Only Jesus can do this. Are you trusting in Him as your deliverer? Maybe you are like Moses. God has shown you that you need things changed in your life, you want to identify with God’s people, and so you are setting about to get things all changed and fixed in your life. Friend, that’s just doing what Moses did. Taking matters into your own hands. Today, you need to surrender to Jesus. You need to trust in Him alone for your salvation and not your own efforts.

What this passage also tells us is that we cannot accomplish redemption in the life of others. Just as Moses we’ve given up our moral authority by our own sin. God still gracious uses us—but he never will use us apart from the Cross. Our own human efforts are always going to come up short. Does our prayer life reflect this? Are we self-sufficient? Are we cold and formal in our prayers or desperate as the Israelites were? This will tell us all we need to know about our theology.