Generally speaking, God cares for his world with the minimum of interference. He has created the world; he has created the rules of nature. He has created human beings with their personalities and emotions. And generally speaking God works inconspicuously though ordinary people and their actions.

The events that take place in this chapter are everyday ordinary events. Although the people involved have a faith in God, they do not realize the great significance of the events that they are involved in and how God was working through those events. The story is set at a time of terrible hardship for the people of God. They have been oppressed and enslaved by the Egyptians. They came to Egypt as welcome guests; but under the present ruler the Egyptians have turned against them. The Egyptians are paranoid with fear that the Hebrew are a threat to their security, and Pharaoh orders that all baby Hebrew boys must be drowned in the River Nile. God’s people are not immune to injustice, cruelty and tragedy.

Yet God cares for his people; he is faithful and compassionate, and he is at work with his plan to save his people from their predicament. And God works through ordinary people and ordinary events. A couple get married. A son is born to them, but he is born into world where he is under Pharaoh’s sentence of death because of his race. His mother’s compassion for that little baby boy moves her to protect him by hiding him away.

Then comes the time when he is too big to hide. What shall she do? She is obviously a lady who is hopeful by nature. She gets a basket, waterproofs it, puts her 3-month-old baby in it and hides it in the reeds at the edge of the river. It doesn’t say what she was hoping would happen. His sister stays nearby to see how things develop.

A royal entourage arrives. The princess has come to bathe. As she takes a dip her attendants walk along the bank. Pharaoh’s daughter spots the basket there in the reeds. She sends a slave girl to get the basket, and the princess takes a curious peep inside. It’s a baby boy, and he’s crying. She realises it’s one the Hebrew babies and she feels sorry for him.

His sister speaks up ‘would you like me to get a nurse for him?’ She goes and fetches mother. Pharaoh’s daughter instructs her to look after the baby for her, promising to pay her for her labours. So his mother takes the baby, he belongs to the princess now; no one will lay a hand on him.

What relief, what thankfulness that woman would have felt. Her baby’s life has been spared. Thank God for his answer to her prayers. But yet in those events, God was doing so much more than any of the people involved realized. God was saving and preparing the one who would be instrumental in delivering his people from their slavery.

Sometimes as Christians we get quite discontented and impatient and even frustrated in trying to accomplish great plans for God, when to fulfil his purposes what he really wants us to do is to do life’s basic tasks in the right way. That young lady from the tribe of Levi was simply being a good mother to her baby son; She simply loves and cared for him to her best ability. She kept hoping even when she had not got much ground for hope. God honoured her faith and hope. He was also about to prepare her son for the special task of being his spokesman to Pharaoh. When the child was old enough he was to go to live in the royal residence as son to Pharaoh’s daughter. Moses was to benefit from the privileges of his position. No doubt he would be given an excellent education. No doubt it gave him insights into the royal household that stood him in good stead for the times much later on when God would send him to go to speak to Pharaoh.

It seems though, that Moses grew up with the awareness that he was a Hebrew. He regarded the Hebrews as his own people. When he had grown to man, he watched the cruel way the Hebrews were treated. It aroused in him a sense of injustice and anger. On one occasion he saw an Egyptian cruelly beating a Hebrew. He could not stand by and do nothing. After looking to see no one was watching he killed the Egyptian and hid his body.

It seems Moses had a sense that he should help his people in their suffering. But helping them was not a simple task. The next day he sees two Hebrews fighting, he tries to intervene and get then to settle their differences. They resent his intervention. Not only that, but it seems that it’s now common knowledge that Moses has killed the Egyptian the day before. Moses has to flee for his life.

Moses had tried to do the right thing. He had gone out on a limb when he had killed the Egyptian; he thought he was striking a blow for his fellow Hebrews. But his sense of justice and youthful zeal and enthusiasm had not been enough. We have thought about other youthful enthusiasts as we looked at the book of Acts. There was Stephen who zealously argued the truth of the gospel to the Jews of his day and was stoned to death by the Jewish authorities.

There is St Paul who after his conversion argues so zealously with the Jews at both Damascus and Jerusalem that at one place after the other he has to flee for his life because his opponents are out for his blood. We shouldn’t write off or disparage enthusiasts; they have made a vital choice as Moses had. As the writer of Hebrews in the New Testament puts it- ‘He chose to be ill treated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a short time.’

But before anyone can be really useful to God, they have to get beyond that, have to realise the magnitude of the task. To free the people from slavery, it was not just Pharaoh and the Egyptians who were the problem. It was also the Hebrews themselves who were imprisoned by their own fears and unbelief. Ultimately God had to not only deliver the Israelites from their captivity, he had also to renew and restore their faith.

We often perhaps take the line that we will help people if they value and appreciate the help we give. If the Hebrews were going to be helped, they would have to be helped in spite of their ingratitude and mistrust.

But Moses can’t go that far. He runs away. He comes to Midian, East of Egypt. The Midianites were a nomad people, wandering the dessert with their flocks. Midianites in the Old Testament trace their ancestry back to Abraham through a son that was born to him from a woman that he married after Sarah had died, so in a way the Israelites were distant cousins to the Midianites.

Moses arrives at the well and meets up with seven sisters who have come with their flocks for water. They are suffering at the hands of the local shepherds who wont let them near the well. They are grateful to gallant Moses who defends and helps them.
The girls’ father is the priest of Midian. He welcomes Moses the newcomer. Before long Moses is part of the family.

He marries Zipporah, one of the sisters. They have a son. Moses is doing all the normal natural things. But he is still acutely aware that that he is an alien in a foreign land. Moses knows that his place is really among the people of Israel who are captive in Egypt.

I think many of us can sympathise with Moses. We know what it’s like in our hearts to want to help people find God’s salvation for them, but yet they reject us, they don’t want our help. Yet that desire to do what we believe is right is still there, it’s frustrating, and it doesn’t go away.

One factor in God’s plans can be timing. Sometimes we have to wait for the right time. It seems this was certainly a factor in our story. It talks about a long time passing, and then it mentions for the first time the fact that the Israelites cried out for help, and their cry went up to God. Sometimes God cannot help until people want him to and ask him to. Sometimes we have to be patient.

Another thing we have to learn is that if we are to be the ones through whom God brings help, even when the time is right, our help may not always be appreciated, and people will lack faith.

The wonderful thing is that God in his love and grace perseveres with people; in the book of Exodus we will find that God persevered in his rescue plan for his people, even when they were lacking in faith. Jesus shows the same grace and faithfulness too. The disciples were often lacking in faith. When they were in the boat with Jesus when the storm arose they say to him ‘don’t you care if we drown? The way they said that I suspect really said ‘you don’t care if we drown’. Jesus in his kindness continues to care, he stills the storm; he saves his people.

The thing that we have to do in the end is not to pay too much attention to fickle human opinion or changing moods; but rather to listen to what God is telling us is the right thing to do. That’s what Moses was learning in Midian. Working as a shepherd he developed character. In Egypt as a prince he would have learned pride and aggression, and he had attempted to the right thing in the wrong way. As a shepherd he would learn humility. In Exodus it tells us that eventually Moses became the one of the meekest of people.

In the end that is what Moses had to learn. God would use Moses to deliver his people from their slavery. Although God usually works in a non-intrusive way in his world, where need be in faithfulness to his promise he intervenes in ways that are as dramatic as necessary to save his people.

Most dramatic of all of his interventions was his coming into the world in Jesus, and his resurrection. It was certainly dramatic for those first disciples who saw it with their own eyes.

For most of us however, it is a matter of believing it and accepting it with the ordinary, everyday quality of faith, God’s gift that is available to us all.
 

Amen.

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