Priest, King, and Sojourner

Good morning. It's good to see all of you. For those of you who are new or visiting,

my name is Sean. I'm one of the pastors of Trinity Cambridge Church.

We started a new sermon series in the book of Exodus last week. We are in chapter 2 today.

So if you would turn with me to Exodus chapter 2. We'll go through the whole chapter together.

Exodus 2 · chapter mention

Let me pray for the reading and preaching of God's Word.

Amen.

Heavenly Father, our sinful flesh and this sinful world is full of counter-messaging to your Word of truth.

So we come humbly before you again that we might hear you speak to us in your Word, from your Word again.

That we might walk by faith and not by sight.

That our lives might be governed by faith and not by cynicism and despair.

So Lord, as we incline our ears, our hearts to you this morning, fill us with hope.

Remind us of your love and your faithfulness.

In Jesus' name we ask. Amen.

Exodus chapter 2, verses 1 to 25.

Exodus 2 · chapter mention

Now a man from the house of Levi went and took as his wife a Levite woman.

The woman conceived and bore a son.

And when she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him three months.

When she could hide him no longer, she took for him a basket made of bulrushes and daubed it with bitumen and pitch.

She put the child in it and placed it among the reeds by the river bank.

And his sister stood at a distance to know what would be done to him.

Now, the daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river.

While her young woman walked beside the river, she saw the basket among the reeds and sent her servant woman and she took it.

When she opened it, she saw the child.

And behold, the baby was crying.

She took pity on him and said,

This is one of the Hebrews' children.

Then his sister said to Pharaoh's daughter,

Shall I go and call you a nurse from the Hebrew woman to nurse the child for you?

And Pharaoh's daughter said to her,

Go.

So the girl went and called the child's mother.

And Pharaoh's daughter said to her,

Take this child away and nurse him for me, and I will give you your wages.

So the woman took the child and nursed him.

When the child grew older, she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter,

And he became her son.

She named him Moses,

Because, she said, I drew him out of the water.

One day when Moses had grown up,

He went out to his people and looked on their burdens.

And he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew,

One of his people.

He looked this way and that,

And seeing no one,

He struck down the Egyptian and hit him in the sand.

When he went out the next day,

Behold, two Hebrews were struggling together.

And he said to the man in the wrong,

Why do you strike your companion?

He answered,

Who made you a prince and a judge over us?

Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?

Then Moses was afraid and thought,

Surely the thing is known.

When Pharaoh heard of it, he sought to kill Moses.

But Moses fled from Pharaoh and stayed in the land of Midian.

And he sat down by a well.

Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters,

And they came and drew water and filled the troughs to water their father's flock.

The shepherds came and drove them away.

But Moses stood up and saved them and watered their flock.

When they came home to their father,

He said,

How is it that you have come home so soon today?

They said,

An Egyptian delivered us out of the hand of the shepherds

And even drew water for us and watered the flock.

He said to his daughters,

Then where is he?

Why have you left the man?

Call him that he may eat bread.

And Moses was content to dwell with the man.

And he gave Moses his daughter Zipporah.

She gave birth to a son.

And he called his name Gershom.

For he said,

I have been a sojourner in a foreign land.

During those many days,

The king of Egypt died.

And the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery

And cried out for help.

Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God.

And God heard their groaning.

And God remembered his covenant with Abraham,

With Isaac,

And with Jacob.

God saw the people of Israel.

And God knew.

This is God's holy and authoritative word.

At the end of chapter 1,

We saw Pharaoh escalating his oppression of the Israelite people.

And when his wicked plan to kill off a large portion of the male babies,

Hebrew babies,

Using the midwives,

Failed.

Because the Hebrew midwives refused to obey Pharaoh

And chose to obey God instead.

He commanded all of the Egyptians,

Every son that is born to the Hebrews,

You shall cast into the Nile.

So now he has mobilized all of the Egyptians

To carry out this extrajudicial killing of all male Hebrew babies.

And so in chapter 1,

At every turn,

Pharaoh's attempt to control and oppress God's people have failed.

Because God's promise to Israel is continuing.

The promise to protect and preserve them

And to make them into a great nation.

And so that raises a question now,

With Pharaoh further escalating his oppression.

What will happen now?

Where is justice?

Will God intervene to deliver his people from even this?

And chapter 2 gives us the Bible's answer.

And the main point of this passage is that God remembers his promises

And raises up a priest to rescue his people from slavery.

We're going to see Moses' identity as a priest,

As a king,

As a sojourner,

And how that points to Christ in this chapter.

And the first thing we learn about Moses is that he was a priest.

Because it tells us in verse 1,

Now a man from the house of Levi went and took as his wife a Levite woman.

The fact that Moses is born of a Levite father and mother is significant.

Because later in the book of Numbers, which Moses also writes,

The Levites are specially set apart for God to assist Aaron and his sons,

The priests,

With work around the tabernacle.

There are people who God said after the Exodus

That all of the firstborn males belong to him.

And instead of having to,

Taking the firstborn males for himself,

He chooses to take the Levites in there instead.

He says,

The Levites belong to me as my special servants.

And so Moses is one of those people,

And that's significant because of the connection later to Christ.

So far so good.

But verse 2 introduces the problem.

The woman conceived and bore a son.

We find out in verse 4 that the baby boy, Moses,

Already has an older sister named Miriam,

And an older brother named Aaron.

So this is not the woman's first baby,

But these are the times in the past.

In the past it was fine to have babies.

But right now is dangerous time for a Hebrew woman to have a male baby.

In these times, I mean, you can imagine the sinking feeling,

You know, when after the painful labor,

They hold the baby in their arms,

And they see that it's a boy,

And then the joyful celebration gives way quickly to grief and panic.

It's a boy!

It's a boy!

Praise God!

It's a boy!

It's a boy!

What do we do, honey?

Oh, how I wish you were not a boy!

How I wish you were born at another time!

If only you were a girl in this day and age!

And verse 2 continues,

And when she saw that he was a fine child,

She hid him three months.

Of course, from the perspective of a loving parent,

Every baby is a fine child.

But here the word fine conveys, you know,

Health, beauty, and general desirability.

I mean, when babies are born nowadays at hospitals,

They run APGAR tests.

You guys have heard of this?

I think you guys have all had APGAR tests.

They poke the baby.

Their reflexes see how active they are with arms and legs.

They observe their breathing.

Whether or not they have a vigorous cry.

You know, they check their pulse.

If it's over 100 beats per minute, then it's good.

If it's less than that, it's not as good.

And they score them.

You know, how does their skin look?

Is it, you know, reddish and ruddy?

Or is it bluish and pale?

And so they score them out of 10.

It's an APGAR score to see how viable, how strong the baby is.

So if you were to give Moses an APGAR test,

He scored really high.

That's what it means here.

He was a fine child.

The mother looked at this baby boy and thought,

Okay, this boy will grow up and be a healthy man.

He's strong.

He is ruddy.

So she hides the boy for three months

so that her Egyptian neighbors would not find out

that she gave birth to a boy.

And these three months, can you imagine,

would have been very stressful

because it's very hard to hide a baby

because you can't control a baby.

And a baby cries.

And they cry very loudly.

But somehow she manages to hide them for three months.

But the baby's getting too big.

You can't hide the baby any longer.

And so the moment of reckoning is here.

And she can't, as a loving mother,

bear to see her son taken away by the Egyptians.

And she could never hurt him herself.

So it says in verse 3,

She took for him a basket made of bulrushes

and daubed it with bitumen and pitch.

And she put the child in it

and placed it among the reeds by the river bank.

She weaves the basket together and waterproofs it

and then floats it onto the river

and makes it caught in a reed

so that it doesn't just drift into oblivion.

And technically, it's ironic.

She's obeying Pharaoh's command.

She's putting him into the Nile,

but in a boat, right?

And it's an ingenious solution.

And the Hebrew word for basket

is used to refer to only two items

in the entire Old Testament.

It's Moses' basket and Noah's ark.

It's the same word for ark.

So Noah's ark became the vehicle

by which Noah and his family

and through them the entire humanity

was saved from the deadly flood waters.

And now here, Moses' ark becomes the vehicle

by which Moses is saved from the deadly waters of the Nile.

And through Moses, God's chosen people too

will be delivered from Egypt.

And then it says in verse four

that Moses' sister stood at a distance

to know what would be done to him.

So they're watching,

hoping that the exposed baby

will be picked up by a compassionate Egyptian family

who will bring him up as their own.

It says in verses five to six,

Now the daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river

while her young woman walked beside the river.

She saw the basket among the reeds

and sent to her servant woman and she took it.

And when she opened it, she saw the child

and behold, the baby was crying.

She took pity on him and she opened it.

And she said, this is one of the Hebrews.

Sorry, where am I?

Then his sister said to Pharaoh's daughter,

shall I go and call you a nurse from the Hebrew woman

to nurse the child for you?

And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, go.

And so the girl went and called the child mother.

This is an incredible turn of events.

I mean, this sister is quite the go-getter.

She goes, she watches and goes,

and then she says, hey, I happen to know a woman

that can be a wet nurse for you.

Can I go get her for you?

And then she goes and gets Moses' mother.

And so this is a great example of God's providence.

Providence refers to how God governs

and guides all of creation and all of history.

You know, ironically, in God's providence,

it's Pharaoh's own daughter that defies his father's command

to cast these Hebrew boys into the Nile

and then draws the boy out of the Nile.

And ironically, it's Moses' own mother

that gets to take care of Moses.

And now she gets to get paid for it.

It's amazing.

Only God could orchestrate something like that.

God is still governing and guiding all creation,

all of history today.

Even through the ups and downs,

twists and turns of our own lives,

God is sovereignly working out his plan for us.

And notice also how in both chapters one and two,

highlights how God used the woman in particular

to thwart Pharaoh's wicked plan

to kill the Jewish male babies.

In chapter one, it was the Hebrew midwives,

Shiphrah and Puah,

who defied the Pharaoh's command

to kill the male Hebrew babies.

Now in chapter two,

it's Moses' mother and sister

and Pharaoh's own daughter

who defy Pharaoh's command.

Pharaoh thinks he can't control the Jewish population

simply by limiting the number of their men.

But that turns out to be a miscalculation

because the woman won't allow him

to carry out his evil plan.

And they subvert Pharaoh's rule

and defy the most powerful man

in this part of the ancient world

simply, and this is the amazing part,

simply in their roles as midwives and mothers.

Later, God will use a man,

Moses, to confront Pharaoh

and deliver Israel from their slavery.

Moses only survived

because God used a woman in his life

to save him from Pharaoh.

This is a wonderful illustration

of what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11, 11 to 12.

After teaching us that a man is the head of his wife,

since the man was not made from the woman,

but woman from man,

and because the man was not created for the woman,

but woman for man,

Paul goes on to say this.

He says,

Nevertheless, in the Lord,

woman is not independent of man,

nor man of woman.

For as woman was made from man,

so man is now born of woman,

and all things are from God.

There is a wonderful complementarity

in the way that God has designed man and woman.

The woman was created from man

to be the man's helper,

but every man is first born of a woman as a son.

I know Mother's Day is still two months away,

and I probably will not have a special sermon for that

that's different,

so I'll talk about something here.

We all have mothers who brought us into this world,

and there are many mothers in our congregation

and we should esteem what they do very, very highly.

Even if the world does not often remember

the contributions of mothers,

we should remember that all history makers

and all kingdom shakers had mothers who raised them.

Childbearing and childrearing are not insignificant roles.

The future of humanity depends on them.

Verse 10 continues this incredible story.

When the child grew older,

she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter,

and he became her son.

She named him Moses

because she said,

I drew him out of the water.

So Pharaoh's daughter most likely did not speak Hebrew,

and she would not have given her a Hebrew name.

So the word Moses is likely an Egyptian name first.

The word Moses or Moses is an Egyptian word that means born of.

It's very common to find that word in Egyptian names,

or born of, son of something.

So for example,

various pharaohs from around the same time period

have names that contain the word Moses.

So Amos means born of,

or son of Ah,

the Egyptian god of the moon.

Thutmos means son of Thuth,

the Egyptian god of wisdom and writing,

science and magic.

Ramesses means son of Ra,

the Egyptian god of the sun.

So there are two main possibilities

for the interpretation of the meaning Moses.

So first possibility is this.

Since the Egyptian hieroglyphic for water was Mo also,

Moses' name could simply mean born of water

because he was taken out of the water.

Second possibility is that Moses' name simply means

born of without the attribution

because he was an orphan,

an exposed child,

a foundling,

an abandoned child.

So he's not a born of anything,

he's a born of,

son of nobody,

Moses.

Moses.

But that's what's important for us

is not the name that Pharaoh's daughter gave him,

but the connection that the Bible makes to Moses,

his person and his,

what he will do in the future.

Because if you look at the footnote

at the end of verse 10

in your English Standard Version Bibles,

it says that Moses sounds like the Hebrew

for draw out.

It's quite ironic

because Moses was cast into the Nile

because of Pharaoh,

but his name means drawn out of the Nile

because of God.

And God will later use Moses

to draw out his people

from the water,

through the water,

the Red Sea.

Isaiah 63, 11 to 12

makes this connection explicit

and plays on the word Moses,

the name Moses.

Then he remembered the days of old

of Moses and his people.

Where is he who brought them up out of the sea,

drew them out,

this word play on the same name Moses,

with the shepherds of his flock.

Where is he who put in the midst of them

his Holy Spirit,

who caused his glorious arm

to go at the right hand of Moses,

who divided the waters before them

to make for himself

an everlasting name.

So already in the name of Moses,

we see God's destiny for him.

He is going to draw out his people

from the water.

Pharaoh's edict

to kill the male babies at birth

could not thwart God's plan for Moses.

Being exposed as an infant

could not thwart God's plan for Moses.

Growing up in Pharaoh's household

could not thwart God's plan for Moses.

Moses will be the one

who draws God's people out of the water.

Likewise,

God's sovereign plan for us

cannot be thwarted.

So we don't need to worry

that we've missed a time

or irreparably messed up our lives

because we can keep following the Lord,

trusting that his sovereign purposes

for us will prevail.

So...

Verses 1 to 10 told us

about Moses' childhood.

The word child is used seven times there.

Now in verses 11 to 15,

we learn of Moses' adulthood in Egypt

and here the word man is used seven times.

It says in verses 11 to 12,

one day when Moses had grown up,

he went out to his people

and looked on their burdens

and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew,

one of his people.

And he looked this way and that

and seeing no one,

he struck down the Egyptian

and hid him in the sand.

So we know from Stephen's speech

in Acts 7.23

that Moses was 40 years old at this time.

So despite the fact

that he spent 40 years in Pharaoh's court

and grew up in Egypt,

getting Egyptian education,

Moses does not see himself

as an Egyptian.

Verse 11 says,

he went out to his people

and looked on their burdens

and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew,

one of his people.

So Israelites are slaving away

under Egyptian oppression

and it seems Moses is indignant.

He has anger at this injustice.

Perhaps he feels some guilt as well.

I mean, the way it's phrased, right?

He sees his people bearing their burdens.

It doesn't say their burdens together,

like with him.

Moses is not sharing any of their burdens.

He's enjoying the comfort of a life

in Pharaoh's household.

So maybe he feels some guilt

looking at what the Israelites

are going through.

And so he looks around

to make sure there are no witnesses

and then he strikes.

The Egyptian man kills him.

There's a contrast here.

The word for beat and strike,

there are different translations,

the same Hebrew word.

So the Egyptian man was beating the Hebrew

and Moses beats the Egyptian man.

So there's a comparison there.

But the difference is the outcome.

Moses' response is disproportionate

because the Egyptian man

didn't kill that Hebrew man,

but Moses kills the man.

No doubt that Moses

had some good intentions here.

He wanted to intervene

on behalf of an oppressed brother.

However, it was still wrong for him

to take things into his own hands

and murder the Egyptian.

It's not true in our own lives.

When we take things into our own hands,

often things spiral out of control even more.

It says in verses 13 to 14,

when he went out the next day,

behold, two Hebrews were struggling together

and he said to the man in the wrong,

why do you strike your companion?

He answered,

who made you a prince and a judge over us?

Do you mean to kill me

as you killed the Egyptian?

Then Moses was afraid and thought,

surely the thing is known.

So this time it's two Hebrew men

arguing and fighting

and Moses makes a quick judgment

that one person is in the wrong

and he confronts the man

that he perceives to be in the wrong,

says, hey, stop.

Why are you striking your companion?

That could also be translated

your compatriot or your comrade,

your own people.

Why are you hurting him?

And then the man retorts to him,

who are you?

You're an Egyptian prince.

You're not our prince.

You're not our ruler.

You're not our judge.

Moses, Stephen says in Acts 7.25,

wanted his brothers to think

that God was raising them up

to save them in this time,

but he took things into his own hands.

It was not the time.

It was not the way to do it.

If he's gonna lead God's people,

it will not be as Pharaoh's grandson.

It will be as the descendant

of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

So verse 14 tells us

that Moses was afraid

and thought surely the thing is known.

And so when Pharaoh finds out

and tries to kill him,

he flees to Midian.

Midian is in modern-day Gulf of Aqaba,

which is just at the northern tip

of the Red Sea.

And can you imagine

Moses' disillusionment

and disappointment in Midian?

He was once a prince of Egypt.

He grew up in Pharaoh's court,

but now he's a murderer.

He's a fugitive fleeing for his life.

He is destitute.

He's got nothing to his name.

He has no roof over his head,

no means of providing for himself

in a foreign land to boot.

He has no family.

His prospects are dim.

And his aspiration

of rescuing God's people

from their oppression in Egypt

seems all but doomed.

But as we will find out,

it's not all over

because during Moses' sojourn in Midian,

God humbles and grows Moses

as a man of God

and blesses him with a family.

We know that he spends

40 years in Midian.

We know that because of Exodus 7-7,

which tells us that Moses was 80

when he confronted Pharaoh.

So those 40 years

could not have been easy years for Moses.

I mean, 40 years of feeling

like you don't quite belong

in a foreign land.

Midianites think I'm an Egyptian.

The Egyptians think that I'm a Jew.

Who am I?

Where do I belong?

40 years of being frustrated

that there's nothing he could do

about the oppression

of his own people in Egypt.

What am I doing here?

I'm wasting my life.

What's my purpose in life?

But those 40 years

are not wasted years.

God is at work.

He is shaping, molding Moses.

Because surely,

without those 40 years,

Moses would not become the man

that Numbers 12-3

decides as the meekest man,

the humblest man

on the face of the earth.

Have you taken matters

into your own hands like Moses?

Do you feel that you've messed things up,

ruined your life?

Rest assured that just as Pharaoh

can thwart God's sovereign plan for you,

neither can you.

God is at work in your life,

even in and through your sins and mistakes.

In the updated Alpha class

that we've run in our church before,

there's an episode seven

entitled,

How Does God Guide Us?

And one of the narrators

recount the story of Lord Bradstock.

He was a British aristocrat

from the mid-19th century,

and he happened to be traveling in Norway,

and at the hotel

or whatever accommodation

he was staying at,

he heard a little girl

playing a piano in the hallway.

Playing is too generous.

She was tinkering,

hitting random,

discordant notes,

plink, plink, plunk,

and the noise was tolerable at first,

and then a minute later and longer,

it starts to drive him crazy,

and he's just watching on,

doesn't have the heart

to stop this little girl

who's enjoying herself,

but he can't do anything else,

and as he's watching this little girl,

a man comes and sits by her on the bench,

and then he starts playing the piano.

He starts surrounding those random notes

with beautiful chords and harmonies

and turns it into glorious music,

and as he marveled at it later,

he found out,

Lord Bradstock found out

that this man was,

the daughter,

the girl was the man's daughter,

and this man was

the famous Russian composer,

Alexander Borodin.

I didn't know about him

until I heard this,

but I looked him up.

He's best known,

his string quartet,

number one and two.

Maybe you guys played it.

Okay, you guys have played,

some of you guys have played it before,

in his opera,

Prince Igor.

In a much deeper

and more transcendent way,

God also works in

and through the mess and ruin

we have made of our own lives.

If you are discouraged this morning

and thinking that your life

is an irredeemable mess,

feeling like a hopeless failure,

whether it's due to your own sins and faults,

and or that of others,

remember that our God

is the redeemer yet,

and there is still music

to be played in your own life.

The story continues

in verses 16 to 22.

Moses meets

Midian's seven daughters

at the well,

helps them,

rescues them from the shepherds

who are trying to harass them

and drive them out.

And we meet Moses' father-in-law,

Reuel,

which means friend of God.

He was a worshiper

of the true God of Abraham.

We know him more

by his other name

or title,

Jethro.

Perhaps,

you know,

Reuel couldn't attend

to the flock himself

because of his priestly duties.

He says that he's a priest

of Midian.

He sends his daughters

to the well

to water them,

but that was a difficult task

to put them in charge

because most of the shepherds

were men

and they were stronger

and they wanted their flocks

watered first

and so they harassed

these girls regularly,

it seems,

because they came back

earlier than they usually do.

It seems they dealt with this

on a regular basis.

But Moses comes to their aid

and helps them

and then they tell,

report back to their father,

an Egyptian

helped us.

That leads to an invitation

to dinner,

which leads to an invitation

to stay

in lodge

and then it eventually

leads to a marriage proposal.

And this too

is a clear evidence

that God's sovereign purposes

are being fulfilled

in and through Moses.

Moses meeting

his eventual wife,

Zipporah,

at the well

is intentionally reminiscent

of Isaac

whose servant met

Isaac's eventual wife,

Rebecca,

at the well

in Genesis 24

and it's especially

reminiscent of Jacob

who was also a fugitive

fleeing for his life

from his father,

Eve,

and then he met

his future wife,

Rachel,

at the well

and what did he do there?

He watered her flock

at the well.

So in the same way

that God had guided

those patriarchs

and through them

continued his promise

to Abraham

and Isaac

and Jacob,

God is now guiding Moses

and fulfilling his promises

to his people.

So Moses marries

Redwell's daughter,

Zipporah,

who gives birth

to his son,

Gershom,

whose name means

sojourner

in a foreign land

and in this too

Moses resembles

the patriarchs

because Abraham,

Isaac,

and Jacob

were all sojourners

in Canaan

holding on to God's promises

that he would give them

this land

and make them

into a great nation.

Moses didn't quite belong

in Egypt

though he was adopted

by Pharaoh's daughter.

He was a sojourner there.

He doesn't belong

in Midian.

He's a Jew,

a descendant of Abraham

and Isaac and Jacob.

God's people belong

in God's promised land

and this is true

for all of God's people.

That's why 1 Peter 2, 11

addresses all of God's people

as sojourners

and exiles

and urges us

to abstain

from the passions

of the flesh

which war against

our souls.

As God's people,

we're always going

to feel a little

out of place

in our sinful flesh.

How many of you

have felt that?

If you're a believer,

you have all felt that.

You want to love the Lord

and serve the Lord

and obey the Lord

and be holy

and set apart for him

but you wrestle

with your own sinful flesh.

You feel out of place.

What is wrong?

Until our bodies

are made perfect

at the resurrection,

we'll feel like

sojourners

in a foreign land.

As God's people,

we're always going

to feel a little

out of place

in this world

like we don't quite belong.

James chapter 4,

James 4:4

verse 4 says,

whoever wishes

to be a friend

of the world

makes himself

an enemy of God

because our world

is fallen and sinful

and the world's purposes

and priorities

are not aligned

with God's purposes

and priorities

until Christ returns

and brings the new heaven

and the new earth.

We are Gershom.

We are foreigners,

sojourners

in a foreign land.

And through the ups and downs

and the twists

and turns of Moses' life,

we're seeing God's

sovereign hand at work.

God is raising up

a deliverer for Israel

and we see this

in the most emphatic way

in verses 23 to 25.

Please follow along with me

as I read it.

During those many days,

the king of Egypt died

and the people of Israel

groaned because of their slavery

and cried out for help.

Their cry for rescue

from slavery

came up to God

and God heard their groaning

and God remembered

his covenant with Abraham,

with Isaac,

and with Jacob.

God saw the people of Israel

and God knew.

Notice the deliberate repetition

of word God here.

That was not necessary.

This is intentional

to emphasize a point.

It's like powerful hammer fists

that come down

over and over again

to smash all of our doubts

of whether God is good,

whether God cares,

whether God sees.

Do you ever wonder

if God hears

your groaning for help?

Do you feel sometimes

like God has forgotten about you

in your suffering,

in your loneliness,

in your pain?

Do you ever wonder

if God notices

your struggles?

Do you question

whether or not

God really knows you,

knows your heart?

Listen to the declaration

of verses 24, 25.

God heard.

God remembered.

God saw.

God knew.

God hears your pained groans

in the middle of the night,

your whimpers.

God remembers you

and the promises

he has made to you.

He has not forgotten you.

God sees all of your struggles

and sufferings.

God knows you intimately

and loves you completely.

God has been guiding

Moses' life

for the past 80 years

so that he might use him,

deliver his people

from slavery in Egypt.

And that plan of God

has been in the works

since eternity past.

And Moses is ultimately

a shadow.

He's only a foreshadowing

of the ultimate redeemer

we have,

Jesus Christ,

the new and greater Moses.

Hebrews 3 tells us

that Jesus is

the great high priest.

He's the priest

who is greater than Moses

because Moses was God's servant,

but Jesus was God's son

because Moses had,

Moses the priest

had to make sacrifices

again and again and again,

but Jesus makes

the one sin for all sacrifice

by giving his own life

on the cross

for our sins.

There's no more sacrifice

needed because of what

Jesus has done.

And our sin,

not in part,

but the whole is accounted for,

covered and forgiven.

And Jesus is also

the true and greater king.

Moses tried to take things

into his own hands.

He sinned.

Jesus never sinned.

Jesus ruled in a perfect way.

He's the messianic king,

the promised king.

He's the prince of peace

who brings God's peace

to those who trust in him.

Jesus was also himself

a sojourner.

On Christmas Eve,

we studied Matthew 2 together

where it speaks of

how Jesus fulfilled

the prophecy of Hosea 11.1

that out of Egypt

I called my son.

Moses escaped

the Egyptian king's

infanticide

by leaving his fellow Jews

and living among the Egyptians.

Similarly,

Jesus escapes

King Herod's infanticide

by leaving his fellow Jews

and spending his infancy

in Egypt.

The biblical authors

are drawing

an intentional parallel here

in order to teach us

that God's redemptive acts

in the Old Testament,

including his redemption

through Moses

in the Exodus,

prepare the way for

and point ultimately

to God's redemption

in Jesus Christ.

all your wrestlings

with sin,

all the brokenness

that we see in this world,

all the pain

and the hardship,

all the answer

is found in Jesus.

In Jesus,

all the promises of God

are yes and amen.

He fulfills them all

for you.

Amen.

So when you are

in your groaning,

in your grumbling,

in your complaining,

in your doubting,

look to Jesus.

Look at him,

his cross,

his empty grave.

And know that God

will keep his promises for you.

Let's pray.

God,

we do feel

out of place at times.

We feel unknown.

But Lord,

we thank you

and praise you

that you know us.

God,

I pray for your comfort

for those in our midst

right now

who are going through

really hard times

and suffering.

Help them to feel

and remember

with faith

that you

hear them

and see them

and remember them

and know them.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.