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A good Thursday morning to you. Exodus chapters 1 and 2 today is where we're reading, also in Matthew 19 and Psalm 19.
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What are some encouraging things to point out in Exodus chapter 2? When the story or the chapter begins, it begins telling us about a baby that's born to a man who's a
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Levite and his wife, and it's a little baby boy, and there's been an edict by Pharaoh that any baby boy is supposed to be killed, but God has a plan for this little baby boy, and of course you recognize that we're talking about Moses, and God's plan for this man, for this baby, is far off into the future.
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The way he's going to use him and how he's going to use him will not become known for eight decades, 80 years past this point in chapter 2, verse 1.
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Here's a baby who's sentenced to death by Pharaoh, but God has a plan for that baby 80 years into the future.
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How is this going to work out? God is going to preserve and he's going to protect this little baby, but I want us to notice the means that God uses.
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You notice how God doesn't break open heaven and come down and put some kind of a force field around Moses, baby
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Moses, so that any attempt to pick him up and throw him into the river, nobody can get a hold of him?
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That God doesn't send a couple of angels with swords to do away with anybody who tries to take this baby?
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No, that's not what he does. What he does is what he does most of the time for his people.
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He preserves and he protects through human instrumentation.
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His sister is involved, Pharaoh's daughter is involved, and Moses is preserved by these normal human instruments.
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Does anybody recognize the hand of God in this when it's unfolding? Does anybody see that God sent
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Pharaoh's daughter by the river at just the right time to hear Moses cry, and that God put within Pharaoh's daughter's heart a heart of compassion for this little baby, rather than a heart of hostility and anger like her father had?
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Does anybody see that as it's unfolding? I really don't think so.
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You may thank the Lord for the preservation, but does everybody recognize that God has a plan for this little baby, that he's going to use this little baby 80 years into the future to preserve and to protect his people?
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I don't think so. We don't see it. We don't see it very clearly stated here, but nevertheless,
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God works in that way. The other thing I want to point out is just how long it takes for this plan to unfold and to develop
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God's plan for the use of Moses. Eight decades.
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Half of that time, Moses is spending far away from the people of Israel, far away from his family, if you will, the rest of the
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Jewish people. He's nowhere near them, and he's involved in things that seem to be totally unrelated to that calling of being the deliverer.
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He's just taking care of a bunch of sheep. He's out in the backside of a desert. What in the world?
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But again, how often this occurs, that the Lord in his preparing us for what he ultimately has in store for us to do, how he wants to use us somewhere down the road, during these many days of seemingly unrelated stuff, the
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Lord is actually preparing us for how he would have us use him. It's an interesting little statement in verse 23, where it's in chapter 2, it says, now it happened in the process of time that the king of Egypt died.
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In the process of time. The ESV translates it, during these many days, and indeed it was many, many days.
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Years passed by, and in those intervening years, does
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Moses have a clue? Does he have any idea what God wants him to do the last third of his life?
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Not at all. Not until we come to chapter 3. What an amazing, authoritative, sovereign
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God we serve. He uses even the most mundane circumstances to prepare us.
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He uses the most unlikely people to preserve his own. What a great
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God we serve. Our Father and our God, we thank you for who you are. We thank you for your power and your authority.
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We thank you, Father, that you do graciously preserve your people, and you protect, and you prepare for service.
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We thank you for your work in our behalf, and we praise you for it.
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We ask these things now in Jesus' name. Amen. Have a good rest of your