Delay In the Darkness

Key Elements

In Exodus 2:1-25, the Bible records for us the birth of Moses and God’s sovereign protection over him and His preparation of Him to become the deliverer of the Israelite people from bondage in Egypt. What seemed like God’s delay was actually the preparation for His rescue.

Main Idea: God’s delay in the dark seasons of life is often His deliberate preparation for the rescue He has already planned.

I want my audience to trust God when it seems like He is delaying in dark seasons knowing that He is preparing them for deliverance and rescue.

Intro

We’ve all been there. We find ourselves in a situation because we are hosting an event or planning a party and there’s that one thing we need that we forgot to get. So, what do we do? We turn to the one place that usually solves all of those type of problems pretty quickly-Amazon. We open the app, we search for the product, we find what we need, it says it will be delivered in two days, and we order it-problem solved, Amazon to the rescue. The confirmation email gets sent or the notification pops up on our phone and we are good to go. And then, it happens. The next day, we get notified that the shipment is running late and then we get the dreaded notification that looks like this (show pic) our package has been DELAYED. And we panic! Because now we are in a situation where we don’t know if what we ordered will arrive on time or not. And, if you’re like me, your mind begins to race. Because suddenly that item that you were counting on arriving on time is now stuck in some warehouse in a town you’ve never heard of, in a delivery truck you can’t track, that’s being driven by someone you’ve never met. From your perspective, nothing is happening. Your shipment has been delayed. But the reality is this-just because it’s delayed doesn’t mean it’s lost. It’s still moving. It’s still in process. It just hasn’t arrived yet. Eventually, you will receive it.

And I think that perfectly describes the situation that all of us find ourselves in at one point or another as followers of Jesus in this life. And it’s a very unique situation because it usually brings a pain that only followers of Jesus know. It’s not the pain of doubt-it’s what I would call the pain of faith. It’s the pain that comes from knowing God can act, believing that God will act, and living in the tension of a moment when God has not yet acted. We’ve all been there or maybe we’re there right now. We’ve prayed the prayers, we’ve read the promises of God from His Word, we’ve trusted God and what He has said; and yet, the silence seems to linger, the darkness seems to deepen, and it just seems like heaven has gone quiet.

You see, we have constructed, in our modern Christian culture, a theology of immediacy. We expect God to move quickly because we serve a God who can move quickly. And when He doesn’t, we find ourselves in a situation where we really don’t know what to do. We have a hard time living in what seems like a delayed status.

But here’s the truth, just because God seems delayed in His deliverance, doesn’t mean He’s not moving. Just because God seems silent, doesn’t mean that He is absent. And that is a truth that comes to the forefront in our text today in Exodus 2. And as we open our copy of God’s Word there today and we continue our series that we are walking through in the book of Exodus, what we find is that chapter 2 of the book of Exodus can only be defined by one word and that word is DELAY. Exodus 2 is a chapter of delay. But I would say this, when we look closely, what we discover is that the delay is not disorder. The delay is designed by God. Because what seemed like delay in the midst of this dark season in the life of the Israelite people was actually a moment God was using to prepare them for deliverance and rescue.

Message

So, picking up where we left off last week in Exodus 1, the Israelite people have been enslaved in Egypt. Through a particular set of circumstances that occured in the book of Genesis, the people of Israel find themselves in Egypt and not for a brief period of time. They have been in Egypt for four hundred years. It’s four centuries of darkness. And what we discovered last week is that things are only getting worse. A new pharaoh has come to power and, being threatened by the population growth of the people of Israel, he has issued a command that every Israelite baby boy is to be murdered. And it’s into this context that Exodus 2 opens. It’s into this context that God, who has been working in the midst of the darkness to deliver His people, begins to raise up a deliverer who will rescue His people and lead them out of darkness. But that deliverance and rescue will come on His timetable. That deliverance and that rescue will come when and how God has ordained it. And what will seem like a season of delay will turn out to be a time and a season of preparation for a man named Moses. You see, what Exodus 1 taught us is that even in the dark, God is at work-so we remain faithful; and what we’ll see today in Exodus 2 is that even when God seems silent, He is still preparing deliverance and rescue.

Today, the word delay might be what describes your life. For whatever reason, it might seem like God is not moving or speaking. But here’s the good news we see from Exodus 2 today, God’s delay in the dark seasons of life is often His deliberate preparation for the rescue He has already planned.

In Exodus 2 today, we see three truths that are revealed when it seems like there’s a delay in the darkness:

1. God’s delay calls us to a response of faith. (vs. 1-10)

Exodus 2 does not open up in an extraordinary way, in fact, it opens up in a somewhat ordinary fashion. Look at vs. 1-2...

Again, no miracles, no plagues, no amazing events yet. It’s a family who gives birth to a child. But this is no ordinary child and this child is not born into ordinary circumstances. This baby boy is the one God has chosen to be the deliverer of His people from the slavery and bondage of Egypt. And there’s a little humor in the details about him that’s given in vs. 2, it says that “when his mother saw him she noticed that he was beautiful.” Now, first of all that statement is hilarious because the writer of the book of Exodus is Moses and he’s bragging on himself and how beautiful he was as a baby. But second, we see that immediately after his birth, his mom recognized that there was something special about this child, there was something different about him and the man he would become. And through God’s revelation of this to his parents, they make the decision to hide Moses for the first three months of his life.

So, immediately from the very beginning of this chapter, we recognize the act of faith that Moses’ parents bravely step into. Remember, pharaoh, the most powerful person in the known world at the time, has ordered that all the Hebrew baby boys are to be murdered. And in an act of faith, Moses’ parents hide their son for three months not because God has spoken to them and told them to do that, but because, in faith, they believe in the covenant promise God has made to His people. The writer of the book of Hebrews in the NT sheds a little more light on the situation for us here, he says in Hebrews 11:23 “By faith Moses, after he was born, was hidden by his parents for three months, because they saw that the child was beautiful, and they didn’t fear the king’s edict.”

“By faith!” That’s the key. In a moment of delay during a dark season in their own lives and in a moment of delay in a dark season in the life of God’s people, a mother and father because of their belief in the promises of their God to His people respond in faith and hide their son who will eventually be the one who becomes their deliverer. You see, in moments in life when it seems like there’s a delay in that dark moment, we as the people of God are called to respond in faith. And here’s what’s unique about that response of faith...

a. Faith requires Our obedience in impossible circumstances.

And impossible is putting it lightly. Think about it, it’s not that easy to hide a baby. Babies get hungry and cry, babies wet themselves and mess up their diapers and cry, babies get just a little irritated or uncomfortable and they cry. And the older they get, the louder they get. This situation screams impossible. Because if that baby is discovered by the Egyptians, who probably regularly patrolled the homes where the Israelites lived, he will be taken immediately from his parents and drowned in the Nile River or worse the parents will be made to drown him. And so, what Moses’ parents chose to do in the face of impossible circumstances is obey. And then that obedience goes a step further, look at vs. 3...

After three months, it becomes impossible to hide baby Moses and keep him safe, so his mom makes the incredibly brave decision to build a basket and hide him in it in the reeds at the edge of the Nile River, the very river where pharaoh has ordered all the male Hebrew babies to be drowned. There is nothing about this plan that is safe, there is nothing about this plan that leads, naturally, to a good outcome and yet that is what faith in the midst of what seems like moments of delay looks like. You see, faith is not the absence of risk, faith is obedience in the presence of risk, it is doing the next faithful thing in obedience to God even when we can’t see what the next step is after that.

And that is the kind of faith that God is calling us to especially when there’s a delay in the darkness. It’s obedience in the moment when the next step is unclear. It’s obedience in the midst of impossible circumstances. It’s taking a step of faith in obedience and trusting that God will lead and guide us to what’s next. Faith requires our obedience in impossible circumstances and...

b. Faith leads to God’s provision in unlikely places.

Now, look at what God does, vs. 4-10...

So, there are several things going on here and it’s all because of God’s purpose and plan for Moses and for the deliverance and the rescue of His people. First, again, there’s the faith of Moses’ parents, which is the driving force behind all of this. No longer able to hide the baby, they build a basket and his mom and sister take him down to the Nile and leave him in the reeds to hopefully be found and rescued. Moses sister, Miriam, stands at a distance to see what will happen. Then, pharaoh’s daughter comes to the river to bathe and she and her servants discover the basket containing baby Moses and her heart is moved to care for him. Then, she discovers he’s a Hebrew and instead of drowning him in the river as pharaoh has commanded, she is approached by a Hebrew woman, who is Moses’ sister, who in turn goes to get another Hebrew woman to care for the baby, who is actually Moses’ mother, and he is taken into her care. When Moses gets beyond the nursing stage, his mother brings him to pharaoh’s daughter and he is raised in the palace as her adopted son. You can’t make this stuff up!

In obedience and faith, Moses’ parents placed him at the edge of the Nile and in response to their faith, God provided for Moses to live and grow up and experience a life that prepared him to be the deliverer of God’s people from slavery in Egypt. God used the most unlikely people and places to provide and prepare Moses for the plan and purpose He had for him. This is a defining moment in Moses’ early life. And I want call to our attention to something significant about this moment. In vs. 3, it says that Moses’ mom “placed him in a basket and coated it with pitch” so that it would float in the waters of the Nile River. Now, growing up and hearing this story and seeing the pictures of this basket floating on the water doesn’t really bring out anything significant. But when we look a little deeper, we notice something that is at the foundation of the Exodus story. The Hebrew word in Exodus 2:3 for “basket” is the same word that is used in Genesis 6-9 to describe the ark that Noah built. In fact, that is the only other place it is found in the Bible. What does that say to us? Just as God used the ark to rescue Noah and his family to provide deliverance and a new start for all humankind, in the same way, God used this “basket or little ark” to rescue Moses who would eventually provide deliverance for God’s people from enslavement in Egypt.

And Moses will grow up with his feet in two households: being nurtured by his mother in the ways of God’s people and being raised in the household of pharaoh learning how to lead armies and administrate and organize large groups of people all for the purpose and the plan of God.

When there’s delay in the darkness, God calls us to a response of faith. In faith, we obey even in the midst of impossible circumstances taking one step at at time, and when we do, we experience God’s provision in the most unlikely places: through an avenue we never expected or a door we thought was closed or on a timetable that we did not have scheduled out.

God’s delay calls us to a response of faith. Second, we see that...

2. God’s delay prepares us for the rescue to come. (11-22)

We’ve all found ourselves in the position in life where the door got shut on a direction we were sure we were going in life. A job that we interviewed for-that we were qualified for, we had the degree, the skills, and the training; and we were so sure it was going to work out. In fact, we started making plans for what relocating to that new place would look like. And then we got the call that no one wants to get. “We’ve decided to go in a different direction.” The door just didn’t close, it slammed shut. And it’s crushing to us. But then another door opened and we went in a direction that we never saw coming. And after a while we look back and we realize that if we had gotten the first job, we never would have spent time being prepared for what God had for us in the future. What felt like rejection at first was actually preparation for a future that was coming.

And that’s what we see God doing in the life of Moses in vs. 11-22… (read vs. 11-15)

Moses grows up and the time that passes between vs. 10-11 is forty years. We find this out from Acts 7:23. And it says that one day Moses goes out of the Egyptian palace to observe the forced labor of the Israelite people. But it’s interesting the language that’s used here. It says that Moses “went out to his own people...” talking about the Israelites. And what he discovers is that his people are being treated horribly. You see, even spending forty years in the palace of pharaoh could not take away the fact that Moses was a Hebrew, he was one of God’s chosen people. And what happens next is another major turning point in Moses’ life, it says in vs. 12 that he struck down the Egyptian officer that was beating the Hebrew.

Deep down, Moses knows who he is. Deep down, Moses knows where he belongs. And when he sees one of his own people being mistreated, something in him rises up and in anger, he kills the Egyptian officer. And to make things worse, he panics and he hides him in the sand. And in Acts 7:25, we find out the real reason why, it says “He assumed his people would understand that God would give them deliverance through him, but they did not understand.” Here’s what Moses was thinking that by defending his Hebrew brother this would be a rallying cry for the Hebrew people and that they would rise up and follow Moses as their deliverer. But that’s not what happens, instead the next day as he’s walking among his people again, he breaks up a fight between two Hebrew men and one of them responds with indignation and asks a question that stops Moses in his tracks. He says, “Are you planning to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?” Now, think about this, there were only three people who knew what Moses had done: one is Moses, the other is buried in the sand, which means this Hebrew who is so angry at him had to be the guy he rescued and he has gone out and told everyone what Moses has done. Moses is exposed and when pharaoh hears about it, he puts a death sentence on him and Moses flees to the desert to a place called Midian. And for the next forty years, Moses will spend time in Midian as a shepherd. You see, Moses thought he was ready to deliver the people of Israel from Egypt. He had the passion, he had the position, he had the skills. But he acted in his own strength and things changed again. Instead of delivering the people of God, Moses finds himself in the desert of Midian. And from his perspective, everything looked like it was falling apart. From his perspective, Moses probably felt like a failure. But from God’s perspective, Moses was being prepared to be the deliverer God needed him to be.

And the same is true for you and me as followers of Jesus. Moments of delay in our lives, times in our lives when we jump the gun and as a result, things change, are moments that God uses in our lives to prepare us for what He knows is coming down the road in our lives. There are times when God says “not yet” and it’s those times He uses greatly in our lives, because God’s delay prepares us for the rescue to come. And here’s how God uses that time of preparation in all of our lives...

a. Preparation reshapes our dependence.

Now, here’s the situation Moses found himself. He had spent forty years in the palace of pharaoh. He had military training; he had been trained in organizing large groups of people; even though he was an Israelite, he had the status of Egyptian royalty because he was an adopted son in the pharaoh’s family. So, in his mind, he was ready to lead. When he came across the situation of mistreatment that was happening to one of his fellow Hebrews, he, in his own power, took action. And it was an action that indicated that he was totally dependent on himself. And it was an action that led not to him leading the Israelite people out of Egypt but to him fleeing as a fugitive to the desert of Midian.

Moses has gone from the palace to the desert. He’s gone from the position of royalty to a man with no home. And eventually, he will assume the position of a shepherd which the Egyptians considered the lowest position in society at the time. Moses had been stripped of everything that would cause him to be dependent on himself and was now in a position where he was totally dependent on God. Which is exactly where God wanted him to be. And unbeknownst to him, God would use this time in his life to reshape him into a man who was totally and completely dependent on God.

One commentary describes Moses’ situation this way, “Before God could use Moses to lead Israel out of Egypt, God had to lead Moses out of Egypt.” (Ryken)

And that’s a situation that we see played out in the Bible over and over again in the lives of people that God raised up to do something great. Before great times of ministry occured in many of the great people we see in God’s Word, there was always a time of preparation. In fact, we see this exact thing happening in the life of Jesus Christ the Son of God in the Gospels. Before He begins His ministry, He goes into the wilderness for forty days to be tempted by the devil.

And the same is true for us as well. Before God uses us, before God provides deliverance and rescue, there is usually a time He wants us to spend in the wilderness. A time of delay, not as punishment but for preparation. Because that’s what the wilderness does for us. It strips us of every resource we have that would cause to think that we, in our own power, can accomplish whatever God calls us to and it forces us to realize that we are totally dependent on God for everything. And today, this may be where you are. You may be in a moment of delay in the wilderness. But know this-that God is using that moment not to punish you but to reshape your dependence on Him and prepare for what is to come in your life.

Preparation reshapes our dependence and...

b. Preparation refines our character.

Not only will this time of preparation be used by God to cause Moses to be totally dependent on God, but it will be used by God to refine Moses’ character molding him into the man and the leader God has called him to be. Look at how this happens in vs. 16-22...

Moses going to Midian was no accident or coincidence. It was sovereignly ordained by God. Again, God has Moses right where He wants him. And it’s interesting how we already see a little bit of transformation occuring in Moses’ character. Before when Moses has been put in a confrontational situation in Egypt, his response is violence and the use of power, now, when put in a confrontational, Moses responds differently-he defends these women but he takes it a step further and waters their flock. And God, in turn blesses him with favor in the eyes of the priest of Midian and he also gains a family in the process. What we begin to see developing in the life of Moses is the character of a deliverer and a servant leader.

Moses arrives in Midian as a broken man, a man with no place to call home. He is a man who has lost everything and yet, he responds with grace and comes to the defense of those in need. And it’s through this wilderness experience that God will refine his character and raise him up to eventually return to Egypt and fulfill the purpose God created him to fulfill. Moses’ time as a shepherd in Midian and his time with Jethro, his father in law and the priest of Midian, prepares him to shepherd the people of God leading them out of slavery and bondage.

You see, not only does the wilderness reshape our dependence but it refines our character. Because it’s in the obscurity of the wilderness that God is forming us into the people He has called us to be to fulfill the purpose He has called us to fulfill. So, we don’t look at the wilderness moments of our lives as times of punishment but times of preparation that God is using to refine our character and it’s all part of His plan for rescue and deliverance.

God’s delay prepares us for the rescue to come. Finally, we see that...

3. God’s delay reveals His plan is perfect. (vs. 23-25)

Look at these last three verses...

Now, out of all the verses in chapter 2, these are probably some of the most important because they reveal to us what’s been true the entire time: God has been present and active behind the scenes working for the rescue and the deliverance of His people and for the preparation of His deliverer. And it’s all summed up in four words: God heard, God remembered, God saw, and God knew.

Now, what does that say to us. First, God being present the entire time among His people, even though He hasn’t spoken to them in 400 years has heard every prayer and every cry they have lifted up to Him; Second, God has not forgotten His people nor the covenant promise that He had made to Abraham centuries before; Third, God is intimately involved in the circumstances that His people are facing, He’s not distant or far off somewhere, He sees exactly what is going on and what His people are going through; and Fourth, God knew exactly what was happening, He was personally and intimately leaned into the circumstances and the suffering of His people, He knew every detail and was engaged in orchestrating the deliverance and rescue that was coming.

I think we can sum this all up in one sentence: God’s plan is always perfect. And some of us, probably all of us, need to heart that today. Just like God had not forgotten the people of Israel, He has not forgotten you; just like God had not lost track of His promise to deliver them, He has not lost track of His promises to you; just like God had not been indifferent to their pain, He is not indifferent to yours. While we are waiting, God is working; while we are crying out, God is preparing. The delay in our life that seems like disorder is actually design. God’s plan is never rushed, never random, but it’s always perfect. Which shows us that...

a. God’s plan is never late.

It’s always on time. And that’s hard for us to realize because we’re not God and we can’t see the big picture. And when God doesn’t move by a certain point, we assume He’s either late, absent, or unwilling. But God doesn’t operate on our timeline or according to our deadlines. Thank goodness.

The people of Israel waited 400 years on God to move. They prayed, they cried out, and deliverance kept getting delayed. Moses is born and is raised in pharaoh’s palace and makes a mistake and the delay is extended. But all of this was a part of God plan and God’s purpose, according to God’s timing. And here’s why: Moses had to be born at the right time, Moses had to spend time being prepared to lead, and the people of Israel had to be in a place of complete desperation so that the magnitude of what God was about to do could be seen in all of it’s glory. The exodus-the deliverance and the rescue of God’s people from Egypt-had to happen in the way it did so that it would be unmistakably and undeniably the work of God alone.

And this same God, who’s timing and plan was perfect back then is the same God who’s timing and plan is perfect in your life and my life now.

God’s delay reveals His plan is perfect which shows us His plan is never late and it shows us...

b. God’s plan is all encompassing.

And that’s something else we have to remember. God is not surprised by any of the details of any of the circumstances of His people. He doesn’t go “You know I didn’t think about that.” He accounts for it all.

One pastor puts is like this, “The darkness of Egypt was not a problem God had to solve, it was a detail God had already accounted for.”

You see, God’s perfect plan doesn’t often go around the darkness, it goes through it. The suffering of the people of Israel in Egypt was not a hiccup in God’s plan, it was a chapter of it. The years Moses spent in the wilderness of Midian were not a sidetrack, they were a crucial part. And the darkness we face in our lives and the delay that comes in that darkness is not God’s enemy but it is the environment He uses for preparation.

When vs. 24-25 say that “God heard, God remembered, God saw, and God knew,” that is the all encompassing aspect of God’s plan revealed for the people of Israel in their darkness and for us in ours as well. And the ultimate proof that God’s plan is perfect and all encompassing is the cross of Jesus Christ. The death of Jesus was not a crisis God managed, it was the plan that was set in motion before the foundation of the world. The darkness of Calvary was what had to happen for the glory of the resurrection. The forgiveness of all sin and access to a restored relationship with God had to go through the darkness of the cross for on the other side was the light of the resurrection. And because of the darkness of calvary, the darkness in our lives leads to the light of a relationship with God. And it shows us that God has accounted for the darkness in our story as well. The delay we might be experiencing has not surprised God, He hears, He remembers, He sees, and He knows.

Closing

If you’re walking through what seems like a moment of delay in the darkness, remember this:

God’s delay calls us to a response of faith.

God’s delay prepares us for the rescue to come.

And God’s delay reveals His plan is perfect.

Trust Him in the waiting, submit to Him in the preparation, and remember He is there.