Exodus 2

Intro: Reading the Old Testament

We are studying the Old Testament book of Exodus this Autumn as a way to learn more about this God we claim to worship, and to learn more about how to live as the people of God in our current world.

The Exodus is the defining event of God’s people until Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. Exodus is the most quoted, the most referred to event in the scriptures…

It’s in Exodus that God makes himself known and shows the humans what its like to live as his people on the earth.

These are all things we desperately need to learn and apply to our lives today.

Today we are in chapter 2 – on page ???

When we read this chapter, what kind of literature are we reading? You intuitively realize that you read all sorts of literature differently, right? We don’t read—poetry, prose, textbooks, a science or psychology journal, a song lyric, a text from a friend—the same.

I like the way our friends at the Bible Project have talked about what we’re reading as Meditational Literature. What does that mean?

Here’s a little video that explains it better than I can…https://bibleproject.com/explore/video/bible-jewish-meditation-literature-h2r/

with that in mind, I want to read Exodus 2 and then make some application to our lives today…

Read the passage:

Exodus 2 NIV

1 Now a man of the tribe of Levi married a Levite woman, 2 and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months. 3 But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile. 4 His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him. 5 Then Pharaoh’s daughter went down to the Nile to bathe, and her attendants were walking along the riverbank. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her female slave to get it. 6 She opened it and saw the baby. He was crying, and she felt sorry for him. “This is one of the Hebrew babies,” she said. 7 Then his sister asked Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?” 8 “Yes, go,” she answered. So the girl went and got the baby’s mother. 9 Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you.” So the woman took the baby and nursed him. 10 When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh’s daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses, saying, “I drew him out of the water.” 11 One day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to where his own people were and watched them at their hard labor. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people. 12 Looking this way and that and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. 13 The next day he went out and saw two Hebrews fighting. He asked the one in the wrong, “Why are you hitting your fellow Hebrew?” 14 The man said, “Who made you ruler and judge over us? Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian?” Then Moses was afraid and thought, “What I did must have become known.” 15 When Pharaoh heard of this, he tried to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in Midian, where he sat down by a well. 16 Now a priest of Midian had seven daughters, and they came to draw water and fill the troughs to water their father’s flock. 17 Some shepherds came along and drove them away, but Moses got up and came to their rescue and watered their flock. 18 When the girls returned to Reuel their father, he asked them, “Why have you returned so early today?” 19 They answered, “An Egyptian rescued us from the shepherds. He even drew water for us and watered the flock.” 20 “And where is he?” Reuel asked his daughters. “Why did you leave him? Invite him to have something to eat.” 21 Moses agreed to stay with the man, who gave his daughter Zipporah to Moses in marriage. 22 Zipporah gave birth to a son, and Moses named him Gershom, saying, “I have become a foreigner in a foreign land.” 23 During that long period, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. 24 God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. 25 So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them.

We are part of a much bigger story

The writer of Exodus is leaving all sorts of literary clues to remind us that we are part of a much larger story…

Remember the Exodus simple begins like this, “and these are the names…”

Another thought: we are used to the chapter and verse divisions, we think of the bible as broken up into small bits of information; but the scriptures weren't written in that way. Those helpful divisions came along much later in the process. Early writers and readers used other methods to organize their thoughts, and to highlight of differentiate parts of the text.

Throughout this series are are going to draw your attention to repeating themes and patterns to watch for, key thoughts that keep reappearing…and each time they do these repetitive patterns are both reminding you of what came before, and point you to what's coming.

Realizing how God has worked in the past helps us to say "yes" to what God is inviting us into today.

Moses’ birth story is just one example of a common Old Testament theme. At various crucial junctures the birth of a child is instrumental to God’s plan of delivering his people from a dire situation… this points into the future, to the incarnation, as Mary, the mother of Jesus recognizes, yes, this is exactly how God works in our lives.

recognizing how God has worked in the past helps us to say yes, to actively participate in what God is doing today.

I think studying through this as a community will help to prepare us to say yes to whatever God may lead us into in the coming days…

There is a sovereign designer who can be trusted

I want us to notice a repeating theme in this chapter: A marriage, a son, a cry, and a rescue

In the first third of the chapter, there is a marriage, a son is born, and the cries of a baby are heard by a princess, whose compassion leads to a rescue.

In the closing scene, there is a marriage, a son is born, and the cries of a whole people are heard by God, whose compassion will shortly lead to a rescue.

When you notice a pattern like that, you begin to notice the designer behind the pattern. And all of these repeating patters highlight for me that there really is a designer behind all of this whom I can trust.

What if your story, your experiences, your very life isn’t only about you? What if all the tiny bits of your story is more intimately connected to the story of God, the story of the people of God then you might ever have imagined? What if?

We often experience the events of our world as chaotic and out of control…who can tell when or where the next heartbreaking tragedy is going to take place?

When we say that God is sovereign, we’re saying that he has the ability rule over every single part of creation—all-knowing, all-powerful, and absolutely free—not held back by any limitations.

And God is designing it all,

Because of all of this, he can be trusted

We can be in the world without being of the world

We are being invited into a whole different way of life…

its a way of living that is highlighted in the first couple of chapters in scripture…

Its a way of life we see in Jesus as he announces and demonstrates what he calls the “kingdom of God”

Its a way of life that brings what I’ll call “resurrection newness” from the future, right into the present.

Throughout history, when the people of God have gotten this wrong, we’ve either retreated from culture, or we’ve fought against culture. What if we used an approach more like Christ, who through the incarnation, enters into our culture and lives differently, to the point of laying down his life for those who would consider him the enemy…what if?

this world as we know it, is not our home. It does not own us.

We are strangers, or as Peter call us…

1 Peter 2:11–12 “11 Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul. 12 Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.”

…foreigners and exiles, on this earth the way it currently is.

But we look forward to the day, and we are participating in it right now, when the earth will be made new, recreated, a new creation that will be redeemed, renewed, cleansed and healed…that is our true home!

Hebrews 11:10 “10 For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.”

Hebrews 11:10 NIV

10 For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.

John 17:14–18 NIV

14 I have given them your word and the world has hated them, for they are not of the world any more than I am of the world. 15 My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. 16 They are not of the world, even as I am not of it. 17 Sanctify them by the truth; your word is truth. 18 As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world.

John 18:36 NIV

36 Jesus said, “My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jewish leaders. But now my kingdom is from another place.”

Moses shows us how to live in this reality – in Egypt by adoption, in Midian by marriage, yet belongs to neither (naming of his son)

Living with “one foot raised”

always ready to respond to emerging opportunities. The leaders must rid himself of ingrained habits, prejudices, cultural preferences, "always done it this way" attitudes.

God shows his strength by meeting us in the depths of our despair and working those circumstances for ultimate good

Pharaoh tries to abort God’s plan by putting infant boys into the Nile river. God saves Moses through the Nile river, bringing him to be raised in Pharaohs own household.

EXTRA MATERIAL…

I’m so excited! We are studying through the Old Testament book of Exodus together. and there is so much wonderful material, so much we can learn about what it means to be the people of God in our current world, so much about the nature of God, the character of God in these pages… I’m so glad that you’re here with us today.

I quickly highlighted last week how this Old Testament literature is written as meditational literature. What do I mean by that?

Bible project video…?

For me, the first three chapters of the bible are my absolute favorite part, because in these chapters we see the beginnings of what we will see throughout the entire narrative/story of scripture.

In Genesis 1–3 we see a pattern, a sequence of events that gets repeated again and again:

“God does something good (starting with creation itself);

then human beings turn to something evil and thwart God’s good plans (starting with the story of the fall).

Only the last two chapters of the Bible have no such sequence. In the end, God wins, evil is defeated, never to return, and the goodness and blessing of the new creation will be eternal and unbroken.

In Exodus 1 we see this sequence in verse 7, with its description of how the people of Israel were fruitful and multiplied and filled the land (a clear echo of the blessing that God intended for his creation and of the promise he made to Abraham)

And then a chilling new reality in verses 8–10: a new king arises who sets out to thwart the work of God by stopping the growth of God’s people.

It’s the same story with Noah, Abraham, Gideon, David, Solomon,

Exodus A Tragic Sequence

it is typical of the way the Bible shows the constant interplay between God’s plans and actions on the one hand, and human evil, rebellion, and opposition on the other. That theme is woven through the whole Bible story until the climactic resolution when God caused human evil to be the very means of its own destruction (at the cross) and when God will finally eliminate all evil from his good creation (at Christ’s return).

Exodus Listen to the Story

The Hebrew storyteller often provides hints and resonances of the earlier narratives. The effect is not only to remind us that we are in the flow of a single and connected large story but also to keep our attention focused on the main character whose story it is—the God who acts in consistent and characteristic ways across many generations.

Saved by water…a picture of death and destruction: the chaos before creation, the waters of the flood, baby boys being tossed into the Nile

Women at wells: Rebekah at a well with the servant looking for a wife for Issac; Jacob and Rachel; Moses sits at a well and 7 women appear.

Jesus at the well in John 4…and an entire Samaritan village comes to believe in Messiah Jesus.

God hears and remembers. A cry goes up (from cruelty and suffering and oppression), and God comes down: Sodom and Gomorrah, from the blood of Abel

Let’s begin reading the chapter…

Exodus 2:1–4 NIV

1 Now a man of the tribe of Levi married a Levite woman, 2 and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months. 3 But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile. 4 His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him.

the first of three daughters in the first part of teh chapter and one of ten daughters in the entire chapter; and the story of God depends on them all

Mom is apid to nurse her own son by the daughter of the man who ordered him killed

Exodus A Marriage, a Son, a Cry, and a Rescue (2:16–25)

So, in the first third of the chapter, there is a marriage, a son is born, and the cries of a baby are heard by a princess, whose compassion leads to a rescue. Here, in the closing scene of this chapter, there is a marriage, a son is born, and the cries of a whole people are heard by God, whose compassion will shortly lead to a rescue.

Exodus Original Meaning

THE DESPAIR AND apparent hopelessness of chapter 1 are “interrupted” by the report that a child is born to a Levite household

He is born, hidden, abandoned, found and adopted

Exodus Original Meaning

The menace and vile poison of Pharaoh’s attempt at genocide yields to the story of the birth of an innocent child.

Exodus Original Meaning

What we do have is a presentation of history that is firmly at home in the literary conventions of the ancient world

what about how this story is so similar to other ancient stories?

Exodus Original Meaning

This in no way diminishes the truth of the Word. Rather, the eternal Word becomes “incarnate”; it enters into the very lives of God’s people. Christ himself is the Word of God incarnate (John 1:1–14). In becoming a human being—in identifying with us, in becoming like us—Christ is no less the Creator and Ruler over all (Col. 1:15–20). Let me suggest here that not only Moses’ birth narrative, but much of the Old Testament ought to be understood in terms of this same “incarnational analogy.”

He was a “fine” child… an echo to genesis 1 where everything God created is proclaimed as good!

the birth of a child savior…

Exodus Bridging Contexts

Moses’ birth story is just one example of a common Old Testament theme. At various crucial junctures the birth of a child is instrumental to God’s plan of delivering his people from some dire situation

a miraculous or “against the odds kinda birth: God’s promise to Abraham, and the eventual birth of Issac. The birth of Sampson. Hannah and the birth of Samuel.

This word (tebah) is only use in two stories in the Hebrew bible: Here and with Noah. In both cases God is about to bring a de-creation as he rescues

Moses is saved through an ark

A hint backward and a hint forward: when Moses his the people will be saved at the Sea of Reeds, and the end of movement one…all of the people will undergo a passage through the sea of reeds at the end of this movement.

Exodus Original Meaning

The theological connection between these two events is self-evident. (1) Both Noah and Moses are specifically selected to forego a tragic, watery fate; (2) both are placed on an “ark” treated with bitumen and are carried to safety on the very body of water that brings destruction to others; and (3) both are the vehicles through whom God “creates” a new people for his own purposes. Furthermore, Moses’ safe passage through the waters of the Nile not only looks backward to the Flood story, but forward to the passage through the sea in Exodus 14 for all of God’s people.

Miriam, Moses sister

Raised for his months years by his mom, then adopted into the house of Pharoah.

The Hebrews come fro Noah’s son Shem. The Egyptians comes from Noah’s other son Ham (sp)

After he grows up, he comes to an awareness of his heritage…

An inversion of Cain & Able. He believes he is his brother’s keeper.

Looking one direction and another direction…”koh wakoh” …signaling ahead to the water on both sides at the Red Sea…looking this way and that way.

Moses steps into the middle and murders, becomes the cain character—murdering to be his brother’s keeper

murder leads to threat of murder

This is a first attempt of Moses to save the people – by his own strength/power.

“Who made you king around here?” it all backfires. He’s get a plan to redeem the people but it fails. He’s going to go through a long transformative journey, to actually become a liberator of the people…but not in the way he originally thought.

I wonder how often that’s true for you and I? We have an inkling of something God wants to do through us, and in our own strength and planing, we make a mess of it.

Moses flees to the land of Midian. East of Egypt, like Cain going east of Eden.

God provides a gift in exile. He meets his wife, rescues her, is welcomed into this household, she becomes his wife.

The way the inversions and echos appear throughout the narrative patterns is so beautiful.

its a little bit of Eden in the wilderness

Israel becomes like Able here…God hears their cry

You guys are reducing creation back to disorder and death…he brings about a de-creation, but single out a remnant, making them the birth of a new humanity.

Normal english: the injustice and violence of humans (blood of the ground) is drawing the human community into such chaos and disorder, that God is going to let it completely crumble, even accelerate it (de-creation: some terrible even that happens in the life of a community, or person, that breaks down all the boundaries of order in that community, or in a person’s life)—humans redefine good and evil for themselves, they live accordingly, which creates a community that descends into disorder, God ushers that chaos to its bitter end, but not everyone suffers…a select group passes through the terrible circumstances, they, through they’re faithfulness to God, becomes a seed community, becoming a new kind of humanity, who then try to be faithful to God’s wisdom.

In this case, when they cry out, God remembers his covenant, and he had knowledge of them—he will select them out of the de-creation because of the promise he made to their ancestors.

This is the launchpad into the rest of the story—this is the motive for it all.

Moses spent 40 years thinking he was a somebody. another 40 years thinking he was a nobody. and his next 40 years finding out what God can do with a nobody.

God may seem distant, but he is working behind the scenes.

Exodus A Marriage, a Son, a Cry, and a Rescue (2:16–25)

The ESV captures it rather better: “God heard … and God remembered … and God saw …—and God knew.” The implication is clear. The Israelites may think their suffering is forgotten. The Egyptians may think their crimes are committed with impunity. Moses may think he can never help his people again after his first two-day failed attempt. But God is on the case. God now steps from backstage, the hidden hand in events, and takes front-and-center charge of the action.

Exodus A Marriage, a Son, a Cry, and a Rescue (2:16–25)

The exodus will be the monumental demonstration of God’s rectifying justice against the perpetrators of oppression, God’s compassion for their victims, and God’s faithfulness to his covenant promise—all of which are implied in the statements that God saw and heard all that was going on and that God remembered and knew who these people were. God will soon affirm these central points to Moses (3:7–9) and to the Israelites (6:6–8).

Exodus Bridging Contexts

As we see often in Scripture, the Lord shows his strength by meeting his people precisely in the depths of their despair and working those very circumstances for ultimate good. Pharaoh wishes to counter God’s plan by casting infants into the Nile. God saves Moses by casting him onto the Nile and bringing him to Pharaoh’s front door. Truly the power of God is at work in this boy’s life.

The story of Joseph is so similar…what his brother meant for harm, God used to rescue the entire family.

Romans 8:28 NIV

28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.

Too often this is a Pollyanna viewpoint, ot that God’s works against present difficult circumstances rather then through them.

Exodus Contemporary Significance

It was not as if the Lord “reacted” to the decree and thought, “What am I going to do now?” Rather, it is precisely by means of this decree that God brings deliverance to his people. God is in full control both of Moses’ birth and of the external circumstances that threaten to undo it. God does not remove Moses from the situation, nor does he strike down Pharaoh who dares to oppose him, both of which he certainly could have done. Instead, God places Moses in the same Nile that Pharaoh intends for the boy’s harm, brings the boy right to Pharaoh’s doorstep, and has him raised in Pharaoh’s house. Why? To defeat the enemy decisively at his own game, at the very heart of his strength.

Exodus Contemporary Significance

We should think of the resurrection of Christ in the same way. Christ worked salvation for his people not despite his death but precisely in his death. It is because he died and rose again that those who believe in him are also raised to a new life. To put it another way, Christ triumphed over death because he first endured death. He defeated death because he participated in it. He suffered the ultimate ignominy to bring the greatest glory to himself and therefore to those whom he calls his brothers and sisters. This is why Scripture encourages the Christian to look on his or her circumstances, however horrible they may be, not stoically but joyously, with anticipation, because the heavenly Father is sure to have some great blessing waiting on the other side. This is why Paul can say in Romans 5:2–5:

And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.

Paul is not encouraging his readers to ignore their circumstances and rejoice anyway, to keep a stiff upper lip. Rather, we are to rejoice because we suffer, for we know that the end product is hope that “does not disappoint.” James expresses the same view in James 1:2–4:

Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.

Perhaps we begin to see in these passages the “good” that Paul refers to in Romans 8:28. The ultimate reason for enduring harsh circumstances is to promote Christian maturity (cf. James 2:4). What is always on the Christian’s horizon is the hope that God has confirmed by virtue of Christ’s death and resurrection. This same resurrection power that raised Christ from the dead is also at work in the lives of those who are called according to God’s purpose in Christ. In the same way that God’s resurrection power brought Christ victory through death, so too does this resurrection power bring us through all our trials and challenges, and, like Christ, ultimately through the greatest challenge, death itself