Exodus - My Deliverer is Coming

Welcome to the City Covenant Podcast.

We are a warm, welcoming church located in downtown Spokane, dedicated to practicing the way of Jesus in the heart of the city.

Please join us as we dive into the Word of God together.

Hey, I want to tell you guys about a couple, um, I want to tell you about what we're doing right now.

Um we're looking at Exodus 2.

Um, we're looking at Exodus 2.

We're on this 10-week sermon series, looking from the beginning of Exodus through the Passover.

Just so you know, part of why we're doing this short little series from about the Passover is we just uh this is kind of a prequel to what we did during um Good Friday in Easter, right?

What we look at, and we talk about this every week.

Jesus um during when we come up and do communion, right?

We you hear this every week in the words of institution, is this is a Passover meal, right?

That Jesus was with his friends, right?

He break, he broke bread.

Um, this was a Passover time.

So um what I've learned though is this a lot of us as Christians don't know that much about the history of the Passover, right?

Um, all of Jesus' Jesus' disciples, they understood what was happening during the Lord's Supper.

We might not.

And so we wanted to really look and say, let's drill in and really understand more about what was going on in the history of Israel to understand the Passover.

And so we're looking at what leads up to the Passover, so we're looking at Exodus 1 through 12, okay?

And we're looking at God's movement that at times looks slow of God's deliverance of his people, right?

We're looking at the way even today that salvation starts small.

Sometimes salvation starts slow.

And so we're looking at salvation starting small in this little baby, Moses.

And so what we're gonna do is we're gonna read the whole of Exodus 2.

So get comfortable.

It's a little long, but you'll like it.

And um the good news is if you um if you were a kid, or sorry, if you grew up in church, you're like, oh, I remember this story.

The great news is if you didn't grow up in church, this is brand new and it's gonna even be more exciting.

So it's a win-win, okay?

And this is a seminal moment um in Israel's history.

Um so we're gonna read Exodus 2, and then we'll pray, and then we're gonna study through this together as we look at salvation starting small, and um, we and we see God's big deliverance.

This is Exodus 2 on page 48 in your Pew Bible.

Now a man of the tribe of Levi married a Levite woman, 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.

Oh, yeah, because I forgot.

Last week Pharaoh said he was gonna kill all the baby boys.

So um, they had to hide that this little baby.

Um, but when she could hide him no longer, she got a paperus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch.

Then she placed the child in it and put him among the reeds along the bank of the Nile.

His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him.

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.

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.

Then his sister asked Pharaoh's daughter, Shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?

Yes, go, she answered.

So the girl went and got the baby's mother.

Pharaoh's daughter said to her, Take this baby and nurse him for me, and I'll pay you.

So the woman took the baby and nursed him.

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.

One day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to where his own people were, and he watched them at their hard labor.

He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people, looking this way and that and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian, and he hid him in the sand.

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?

The man said, Who made you ruler and judge over us?

Are you thinking about killing me as you killed the Egyptian?

Then Moses was afraid and thought, What I did must have become known.

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.

Now a priest of Midian had seven daughters, and they came to dry out water and fill the troughs to water their father's flock.

Some shepherds came along and drove them away.

But Moses got up and came to their rescue, and he watered their flock.

When the girls returned to Raoul, their father, he asked, or he asked them, Why have you returned so early today?

And they answered, An Egyptian rescued us from the shepherds.

He even drew water for us and watered the flock.

And where is he?

Raoul asked his daughters.

Why did you leave him?

Invite him to have something to eat.

Moses agreed to stay with the daughters.

Um excuse me.

Moses agreed to stay with the man, excuse me, who gave his daughters, who gave his daughter to Zipporah to Moses in marriage.

Zipporah gave birth to a son.

And Moses named him Gershom, saying, I have become a foreigner in a foreign land.

During that long period, the king of Egypt died.

The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out.

And their cry for help and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God.

God heard their groaning.

He remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.

So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them.

Friends, this is the word of the Lord.

Let's pray together.

Father in heaven, you sent your servant Moses.

And he was in a tiny little boat.

This boat of salvation.

Lord, later, you would come for our ultimate salvation.

You, Jesus, are the true Moses.

We confess that we need you so much.

Lord, as we learn about Moses today, help us know our own story better.

Help us know your bigger story, what you've done, what you did in Jesus, and what you're gonna do, even in our lives.

Lord, help us to trust you more.

We love you, God.

In Christ's name we pray.

Amen.

So as we look at this story today, where and we see salvation kind of off to the slow start, the small start, we're gonna see it reach ultimately, right?

It's narrative arc and climax in Jesus Christ.

Um, what I want us to see is I want us to see this beginning as Moses is delivered as a baby.

Then he moves and he'd be kind of this would-be deliverer of sorts, right?

It doesn't work out though, right?

And then he's delivered into the wilderness, right?

He's delivered into the wilderness with the Midianites.

And ultimately, though, we see that God Himself is Israel's deliverer.

And so let's look at the story of deliverance by looking at the beginning of the story.

So this is an interesting story.

Some of us, the these stories that I love from the Old Testament, what I love about them is sometimes we think we know the story, but it turns out we don't know it as well as we think.

Do you guys ever, how many of you guys have read the story before?

Like, and I'm not saying you get credit for if you just read it with me, you know, three minutes ago.

But like, this is a story probably a lot of us are vaguely familiar with at least.

So here's what is incredible about the story.

I think this story is something that most of us make mistakes about if we're new to it, right?

I don't think before studying this even for preaching, the first time I ever studied this years ago, I didn't understand what was happening.

See, I think I always thought that like maybe his mom kept him safe for three months, and then just like put him in this tiny little you know boat thing, and then just he's floating down the river, like the Nile.

I don't know how far he went.

And then somewhere along the lines, Pharaoh's daughter is there, and boom, that's all it was.

Um, and there's something more to it that that's happening though.

So here's probably what actually happened in this.

There's a little more detail that helps fill it out for us, and as soon as we know these details, it like it kind of explodes in excitement, I think.

And here's why.

So she hid him for three months.

We know that.

Well, why do you hide a baby for the first three months?

Why?

Because babies are quiet for three months, right?

This is literally what like some pediatricians or even um other doctors will call like the fourth trimester, right?

So babies are in the womb for three months, then for or nine months, sorry.

I mean, you know, I as I say this as a dad, right?

So um I'm kind of an expert in this.

So no, right, so babies are in the womb nine months.

Then what happens though?

They show up and planet Earth, boom, I'm on and about.

They're not doing a lot.

They sleep a lot, they cry a fair amount, but it's quiet little nice cries, right?

It's quiet, nice cries.

And then um, after a while, they start getting more mobile.

They want to move around.

Babies, they can't even like what's amazing about tiny babies is like you just put them somewhere and you can come back in like a half hour.

Don't.

But if you did, you could just leave them there and come back in a half hour, they're still there.

They get older, they move around, right?

They start rolling around, but not for the first couple months.

And so Moses is there for a few months while he can be with his mom.

And then she probably does this.

Um, she creates this little boat, and just so you know, this boat or you know, this little like reed basket, I don't know why.

In my head, I think it was because I grew up in the 80s.

So when I first learned about this, I thought of this kind of like she made it out of wicker furniture, right?

Because there was a lot of wicker um in the 80s.

And so I thought she made it out of wicker, um, but it's actually different material.

And but it's like this small little um boat, but you know what the word is?

It's the same word for Noah's Ark.

Just you know, this is like this tiny little boat of salvation, and we're supposed to see it in Exodus 2, right?

The narrator narrator wants you to know this is a tiny salvation boat, just like Noah had, okay?

And so probably what's happening here is during the day when the baby's awake, she would go put Moses in this boat near a river.

You know why?

Because rivers actually make a fair amount of noise.

So he's down there safe and sound, and then probably, this is like what Josephus says, is probably actually then they would go and get him and bring him home.

And so, and his daughter, or excuse me, his sister, excuse me, his sister Miriam would watch.

Typical firstborn daughter, right?

Always out there helping, right?

She's out there helping, firstborn daughter, watching out for baby Moses, right?

And um, and then but something happens, something interrupts the story.

Um another woman shows up, right?

It's it's Pharaoh's daughter, right?

So what's amazing about this is um Miriam's this incredible, that's the older sister, is this incredible hero in the story.

So is his mom, right?

Um, guys, just for a second, don't ever buy into this cultural narrative that like women aren't heroes in scripture.

Okay, I need you to see something in Exodus 1 and 2.

We have five women who play an incredible role in the salvation, not only of Moses, but in the whole narrative arc.

Last week, we had these two midwives that are named Rua and Shifra.

Don't worry, I remember this because I wrote it down.

Okay, don't worry if you don't remember their names.

Okay, these gals, two women last week, the um the two midwives.

This week, we have three women who all play this incredible role in Moses' salvation, these unlikely women, right?

First, his mom, second, his sister, and now Pharaoh's daughter, all playing this role in God's story, right?

And what you see is God's salvation story, right, is not beginning with power, right?

But just this ordinary courage under pressure, right?

These are no, no one's making like big speeches.

You know what they do?

They just refuse to go along with this culture of death and say, we're gonna do something differently.

That's all they did.

Okay, so what's Miriam, the sister, do?

This is what's so incredible.

I love this.

In case you missed it, because I missed this until I studied it.

Miriam meets Pharaoh's daughter.

Pharaoh's daughter's like, oh my gosh.

I don't know if she's talking, just you know, like she's there with like her helpers and she's talking to them, she's talking to herself.

She says, Oh no, this must be one of those Hebrew baby boys.

This must be a Hebrew.

I've got to help him, right?

Miriam's there watching.

And what's amazing about Miriam is Miriam goes up and talks with her and says, Hey, what's happening?

Um it looks like you want to help this little baby.

I can help you help him.

Um, do you want me to go get one of those Hebrew women and have him this Hebrew woman take care of him for a while and nurse him, right?

And she says, sure.

Okay, are you seeing like the genius of this?

Miriam, the daughter, is getting her mom paid to become the foster parent of Moses.

She's getting paid to be her kid's mom.

This is an incredible deal, right?

This is like financially very savvy.

And then what's even more amazing is this assures Moses' protection.

This is incredible.

And again, guys, don't forget, God is behind all of this, right?

God is arranging and orchestrating all these little things.

Right?

And so he's lifted up out of the water.

That's literally what his name's name means.

He's named Moses because he was lifted out of the water.

Right?

His life is now defined by what he's been delivered from, right?

What he's been delivered to.

Right?

And not just for him, but for all the people around him.

So he lives with his mom, he lives with his family, and then now it's been a couple years.

He goes and lives in the court of Pharaoh.

He's old enough.

He must, he knows a fair amount about his history.

He knows enough about his history to know who he really is.

Is he one of the Hebrews?

What he really knows, I mean, you gotta imagine, right?

If you were his mom, wouldn't you always, and his dad and his parents and siblings, wouldn't you always be letting him know, hey, one day you have this special calling in your life, you're with us for right now, you're gonna have to go sojourn with these other people at some point, bud.

But you know, he's three, four years.

You are going to ensure that as his true parent, that he knows his identity, wouldn't you?

And so Moses under somehow, right?

The text doesn't say, but something must have been happening to where he understood his true identity.

Because it the text says that there was an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, and it says, and Moses know that that's one of my people.

And so what does Moses do?

He looks this way and that, see no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.

When I was a kid, I always kind of imagined, you know, just because I think of like North Africa as generally just a mass of sand dunes, like the whole thing is the Sahara.

And so I just kind of imagined um Moses like getting out a shovel and just in that like super fine sand where you've seen those massive sand dune pictures as a little kid, you know, him like tossing the Egyptian under there.

And um it was probably a little more, uh it was probably a little more complex than that.

Um but here's the thing.

Moses is trying to do the right thing.

He's trying to be this peacemaker, he's trying to be this advocate, he's trying to help his people.

But here's the thing.

He does it with his own wisdom, he does it with his own ability, right?

Rather than with God.

He just does, boom, what we think he's what he thinks he should do.

What is he?

He's a vigilante.

That's what he's doing right now, right?

His heart burns for justice.

He just goes in, he tries to fix the problem.

But he doesn't he doesn't know it how to do it well yet, right?

So that doesn't make him justified, right?

He witnesses an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, he intervenes, but with violence.

And then he's rejected by his own people.

Right?

Moses knows who he is, he understands his identity, but he doesn't know how to live it out yet.

Okay, guys, I'm just gonna tell you this.

Sometimes when we understand who we are in Christ, sometimes the first step we make towards doing what's right, we do it wrong.

So you gotta give people grace when they mess up, right?

I mean, you think about this.

You think back five, six years, you think about during COVID, you think about all the um immense cultural shifts we were making, right?

You had your friend that became super woke and decided for the first time in their life to start advocating for folks um that were vulnerable.

And guess what?

They went way overboard.

And you look and say, oh my gosh, that was so over the top.

Enough Facebook posts already, right?

Um, enough preaching about this stuff, right?

I know you might, some of you guys said that about me.

And here's the challenge.

Sometimes we try to do the right thing because we have this heart that burns for justice, but we don't know how to do it yet, right?

Our our feet are still not quite under us.

That's what happens here with Moses, right?

You might try to be a peacemaker, but it doesn't mean you're gonna get it right right away.

Right?

The thing is, peacemakers even don't always get peace, even when you do it the right way.

Right?

When Jesus says, blessed are the peacemakers, he's talking about those who strive for peace, not those who attain peace.

Right?

Not those that are necessarily effective.

Jesus is the Prince of Peace, yet his life ended on the cross.

Right?

And the and the region that Jesus lived in became so war-torn that by the year 70 AD, the armies of Rome marched into Jerusalem less than 40 years after Jesus and tore the whole thing apart because they said this has become full of so much unrest, even though the Prince of Peace had been there.

But in the end, peace will come.

Right?

Even though you may never see it, you realize that actually it was starting this small bit of salvation, right?

Even maybe in the work that you're doing.

Right?

Even though at first it doesn't seem like Jesus' peace worked well, well, guess what?

It did.

Right now, in fact, you you you've seen millions of Christians across the last 2,000 years wage peace on a broken world because of Christ, because they're driven by his spirit.

Right?

So it worked.

It didn't look like it worked, but it worked.

Sophie Scholl in World War II in Germany distributed leaflets, subverting the German government.

Guess what?

It didn't look like it worked.

She was killed by a guillotine a few days later.

But it did work.

She just didn't see it.

Friends, don't be discouraged when you do what you know you're called to do in the gospel, but it doesn't look like it's working.

You keep doing what you know God is calling us to do.

Why?

Because God is the ultimate deliverer.

Right?

You look and say, how is Moses saved from death in the river?

Was it his sister that saved him?

Was it Pharaoh's daughter?

Or was it God?

Yes.

It was all three.

God did it.

God used real people, though.

God saved him.

Right?

The sovereign hand of God put this together and God actively did this.

Just as God actively directed all of Joseph's life in Genesis, right?

It seemed like chaos from the outside, but God was directing it the whole time.

Here's a question.

Moses gets delivered.

Just on a personal level, heart level.

In your own life, you have to ask a question: what have you been delivered from?

And what are you being delivered to?

Right?

If God pulled you up out of some type of mock and mire, what is God delivering you to?

And how does he want to use you to bring other people along with you in it?

You gotta ask that question this morning.

Right?

If we're gonna take this story of Moses seriously.

Moses, after he failed as a would-be deliverer, has to flee.

He moves out into the wilderness.

He goes out into this wilderness so that he can come back and lift out his people from the wilderness.

It's wild is what Moses does in the wilderness is what ends up shaping his whole trajectory.

Right?

He he lives into this calling by helping Midianites.

These are these distant cousins.

He helps these um seven sisters, that's a lot of girls, by the way, to have as a family.

You know what we realize with with Moses?

In some ways, with Moses, what we realize is that we all have this call to help people.

Moses does a very normal thing.

And this, I will tell you, I feel like I grew up in a small town.

The type of small town I grew up in said, if you were going to be a Christian, of course you helped people.

However that was.

You know why?

Because that's normal Christian life.

Right?

You you care about people who need who are vulnerable.

That's all Moses does.

He's not getting gold stars for it.

He literally, there's like these gals, they're trying to water their flocks, and then these other dudes show up, push these women out of the way.

So Moses says, Whoa, whoa, hold on, time out, time out.

And he just steps in and says, Hey, it looks like you need to help me down.

And so he does it.

He's not trying to win any awards.

He just does the right thing because he's following after Yahweh.

That's all he does.

Right?

This is like so many of us at work every single week, every single day.

You just do little things that you just keep doing in the in, and I heard this quote somewhere, right?

Where you just keep doing the next right thing.

That's all it is, right?

Is you follow Jesus, you just keep doing the next right thing.

That's God's will for your life on a day-to-day basis.

Right?

I don't know, right, even at the end of the day, what your ultimate like career calling is.

I don't know who you're supposed to marry, right?

I don't know what type of house you should live in as a pastor.

I'm just telling you this, what I do know is that God's will is that you keep doing just the next right thing.

Right?

Try to honor him with all of your actions.

Right?

The early church thought God's will was very, very simple in that way.

You just did what the Bible said to do.

Right?

You cared for the vulnerable.

That's what he does, right?

So here he is in the wilderness, doing what he's supposed to do.

Did he have success from it?

And what's interesting is verse one says he came from two Levites.

These are this is this priest family.

Um actually, it's just so you know, um, we end up naming Levi, Levi, because my family are Levites.

Sorry, that was that sound like something I would say back when I was in speech therapy.

Um, when you keep repeating the same word a lot.

So my family are the Koans, like C-O-H-E-N.

If you meet some folks that are Koans, they probably came originally from the Levites.

They were the priests of Israel.

That's how we got Levi's name, as a kind of a nod to our family.

So this is from this priestly family Moses is born into, right?

These are these spiritual, these religious leaders in Israel.

They're appointed by God to bridge this gap of holiness between Israel and God's self, right?

And, so that's, I mean, he's already starting pretty high.

Then he grows up, once he moves in with Pharaoh's daughter, and she becomes like his adoptive mom, he becomes like this prince of Egypt.

You can watch the cartoon at home, right?

So Moses' pedigree, right, what we're going to see, his this he has this intention to be faithful to God in all things, right?

So what happens to him?

Does he have health, wealth, power, beauty?

Is that what it's all about?

Is that what you'll get if you're one of God's people?

No! Well, what we'll end up seeing, I'm just gonna tell you this now to burst your bubble.

What we're gonna end up seeing when you see the story of Moses and guess what?

The human experience and what it meant for Moses to really follow God was that instead of power, he had wandering.

He became a foreigner in the foreign land.

Instead of wealth, he lost it all.

And he went to go live with a bunch of nomads out in the wilderness.

Right?

See, one of these great fallacies today is that people say that you should look up to the ones that seemingly have it all together.

What does God warn us about in Psalm 49 and many other places not to look up to the healthy and wealthy?

You know why?

Because we think that if they have that, they must be the real geniuses.

They must have the real wisdom.

And so we honor them more than we honor the weak and the feeble.

The early church often flipped it upside down, right?

That is the inverted kingdom of God.

It's when we realize how much we have to learn from those that seemingly are the most broken, who seem to be suffering the most.

What do we see Jesus being and doing and saying?

Jesus gives up all of his incredible spiritual wealth to dwell with us here.

Right?

God takes on flesh so that in Christ we can see what it truly means to live out the human life.

Yet he doesn't have any wealth, he doesn't have any power, he has very little cultural influence actually at the time.

He wasn't a power broker.

He wasn't some type of like superdelegate that got to choose the next president.

He was actually one of the lowly.

Right?

It's what we see the early church fathers call the great condescension.

He keeps going lower and lower and lower, all the way not only to the cross, but even down into hell.

Right?

That is what Jesus does.

Think of the way that Jesus, just like Moses was an outsider.

You know, Moses was welcomed in to the land of the Midianites as an outsider.

Jesus was not welcomed in.

Right?

So what's Moses end up doing with his pedigree, his prestige, his power?

You know, he does.

He ends up losing all of them.

He, even though he is a Levite, he marries a Midianite, he marries an outsider.

He grows up living as a prince in a castle, and now he's gone to be living as a nomad in a tent.

Right?

The prestige of being a prince, lost.

It's gone.

All because you know what he did?

He advocated for the wrong people.

He did the right thing, but he did it in the wrong way.

Right?

He goes from palace to fugitive to shepherd.

Right?

What's he but it what's he do?

He helps a woman, he helps some gals at a well, right?

Kind of still has this calling to protect, right, from what he did when he was still back in Egypt.

He marries, he starts a family.

Here's the thing, guys.

This looks like an incredible detour.

God doesn't waste those detours.

God is forming Moses in this time.

Guys, some of you feel at times like you right now are in the middle of what feels at least like at maybe like you're on the wrong road altogether.

At least a detour.

What you have to know is God is not wasting that for you.

God is forming you in the midst of it, just like he did Moses.

Right?

The same thing.

You might you might have what looks like blessing if you follow God well.

Maybe.

But you might also have what looks like a curse.

Because you're being faithful, actually.

You have to ask then, where is God then?

In that whole time when Israel's in the wilderness.

I'll tell you what, he's not hanging out by the pool.

Right?

He's in the wilderness with his people.

Right?

If you're in the wilderness right now, then you have to know that God is with you in your suffering.

Right?

Luther, Martin Luther actually said that whatever that Luther says that whoever does not know God in suffering does not know God at all.

That it is often in our suffering that we see God's face the most clearly.

Right?

It's in this suffering that we often grow closest to God, even if we don't feel like it at the time, right?

This is what Tim Keller said, right, when he was dying of pancreatic cancer.

I just saw this interview with um, you guys know who Ben Sass is?

So he's actually, um Ben Sass is a Republican politician.

I know some of you guys don't like Republicans.

Stick with him anyway, on this one.

So he's from a PCA church, like Tim Keller.

Um, Ben Sass is currently dying of pancreatic cancer.

And you know what Ben Sass said?

Ben Sass quoted Tim Keller.

And he said, you know, when Tim Keller was dying of cancer, he said, I would have never, I never wanted this cancer.

But I would never give back the intimacy I'm getting with God in the midst of it.

Tim Keller said it, and then Tim Sass, or Tim Keller said it, and so did Ben Sass.

In the midst of my suffering, I'm growing so much closer to God.

Moses is not only out in the wilderness, he's failing at what he thought he was supposed to be doing.

Right?

I know some of us, we just feel like failures.

Right?

You feel like you're on this cosmic wrong road or cosmic detour.

Right?

Think about Moses.

He's this failed deliverer for his people, right?

Now he's living with his like hillbilly cousins out near Curlu.

Right?

He's this like failed Egyptian citizen, right?

Now he lives the life of an exile, knowing that he's not even very good at delivering people.

Right?

He he's now an alien in a foreign land.

The only way that he can be effective at all is if a sovereign God uses him, right?

He knows he's not very good at stuff.

His ability is not enough.

Only God can do it.

Right?

As this alien in this foreign land, we see that like God does not waste these hidden years in Moses' life.

You might feel right now like you have these hidden years that you're in.

And you know what Moses was doing?

He was learning from his obscurity, he was learning his limits, he was learning patience.

And you know what he was doing?

He was figuring out not just his identity, not just who he was, but what he was supposed to do.

He was learning where he fit in God's kingdom.

Did you catch what he named his son?

He named his son Gershom.

You know what it means?

I have become a foreigner.

Right?

Moses is an exile.

And Moses understands this that he was saved and he continues in his brokenness to save those around him.

Right?

What we see is Jesus broken on the cross.

And it's in Jesus' brokenness on the cross that he saves us.

You know, you have over here Moses in the wilderness.

And then you got Israel over here.

We have this flashback at the very end of Exodus 2.

Do you notice this?

We're all all looking at Moses, Moses, Moses, and then boom, three verses.

Oh, there's also this whole rest of his people, the nation of Israel.

What are they doing?

And it says they're groaning.

Right?

Just like what Daniel read from us in Romans 8.

They're groaning, they're longing.

You know what's wild is it says the Pharaoh died.

The forgetful pharaoh that couldn't remember what Joseph and his people did for the nation of Israel, that guy died.

You know who keeps living?

The God of Israel.

The God of Israel still lives.

The pharaohs come and go, but God still lives.

And then you know what happens?

This is where it gets beautiful.

It says, God heard them, he heard their groaning, and he saw them, and he remembered them.

Pharaoh forgets.

God remembers.

Pharaoh doesn't see Israel, God does.

God sees you.

Just like when in Genesis, Hagar was out in the wilderness in utter despair.

And then the angel of the Lord comes to her, and she says, Oh my goodness, oh my God.

He sees me.

He remembers me.

He saw Israel.

He remembered them.

He sees you.

He remembers you.

He knows about your groaning.

And he is still moving.

And where we are going to see this go ultimately, friends, is all the way to Jesus Christ.

Knowing that that's the promise.

Right?

The promise here we have just two weeks out from Easter.

We have the promise of the resurrection that we know where it ultimately goes.

The reason you hold on to hope now is actually just, you know, it's not just because of Exodus 2.

You might look and say, that was a nice story.

I'm glad it worked out for them.

But boy, I'm not sure if it's gonna work out for me.

I'm gonna tell you this.

Here's why we know it will.

Because of the resurrection.

We know how the end of the story goes because of Jesus.

And that's how we can hang on to hope.

Let's pray.

Father in heaven, you see us, you remember us, you love us.

We thank you for that.

In Christ's name we pray.

Amen.

Thank you for listening.

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We are located at 512 South Bernard Street, Spokane, Washington, 99204.