September 2, 2007

• Discovering God’s Character
  
  
  
  Exodus 1 & 2:  Bondage in Egypt, Moses is Born

  In Exodus 1, we pick up where we left off in Genesis with a reminder
  of the last things that happened in there with a bit more information
  about how the sons of Jacob faired after their father died.  We see
  that God blessed them exceedingly and their numbers multiplied and they
  became extremely strong and the land was filled with Israelites.

  It always seems to happen that someone has to spoil a time of blessing
  or at least try to do that.  The new pharaoh knew nothing about Joseph
  and began to be concerned with the Israelites becoming so strong that
  they could join with an enemy, defeat the Egyptians and leave the
  country. So they began to oppress the Israelites and put them under
  hard labor. Yet they multiplied all the more. So Pharaoh had a plan. He
  would have the midwives kill the male babies and the female babies were
  to be allowed to live. He discussed this with the Hebrew midwives but
  they didn’t do what the Pharaoh told them.  So Pharaoh told all his
  people to throw their male babies in the river but let the daughters
  live.

  It was into this setting that Moses was born. In Exodus 2, he was born
  into a Levite family. His mother tried to hide him for three months but
  it was impossible to do that anymore so she took a papyrus basket,
  sealed it with pitch and bitumen to allow it to float and put him in
  it.  She set it in among the reeds along the edge of the Nile. His
  sister watched him from a distance.

  It happened that Pharaoh’s daughter came down to wash herself in the
  Nile, while her attendants were walking alongside the river and she saw
  the basket among the reeds.  She sent one of her maids to get it. She opens it
  and found the male child crying. She felt compassion for the child and
  said that it was one of the Hebrew’s children.  Now his sister had been
  close by and asked Pharaoh’s daughter if she needed a nurse for the
  child and she could find one for her. So she got her mother (Moses’
  mother), and Pharaoh’s daughter gave her the child and had her nurse
  him for her and she would be paid to do so. So his mother took him and
  did so.  When the child grew older she brought him to Pharaoh’s
  daughter and he became her son.  She named him “Moses” having taken him
  out of the water.

  Now when Moses had grown up, when he visited his people and saw their mistreatment. He was angered enough by it to wait and then kill the Egyptian he saw
  beating one of his people.  Even though, he had hid the body in the
  sand, the matter was found out and Moses became a fugitive when Pharaoh
  tried to kill Moses.  So he fled and settled in the land of Midian and
  stopped by a well where he met the seven daughters of Reuel, the priest
  of Midian, and helped them water their sheep and dispensed with the
  shepherds who usually drove them away when they come to the well. The
  daughters told their father what had happened and of course that led to
  an invitation for Moses to come by and have dinner. Things went well and Moses stayed with the man and he gave his daughter
  Zipporah to Moses as his wife who later has a son who he names Gershom
  since he was a sojourner in a foreign land.

  Now it came about over that time that Pharaoh died. And the sons of
  Israel were still being oppressed and they cried out to God because of
  the bondage they experienced. God heard their cry, saw them, and taking
  notice of them remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

  Do we recall what God had told Abraham about his descendant to whom the blessing would be conveyed?

  
  God said to Abram, “Know for certain that your descendants will be
  strangers in a land that is not theirs, where they will be enslaved and
  oppressed four hundred years. But I will also judge the nation whom
  they will serve, and afterward they will come out with many
  possessions. As for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace; you
  will be buried at a good old age. Then in the fourth generation they
  will return here, for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete.”
  Genesis 15:13-14 (NASB)

  God had already known that this was going to happen and as He delivers
  His people, this act would be a firm confirmation that He knew who they
  were and He had kept his promise. While others in Canaan and
  surrounding lands might have had something to say about never being
  captives, yet no nation had ever arisen from another and left it by the
  means Israel had. We will be seeing how God delivers.  We are now about
  to see that He is not the angry, spiteful God most people make Him out to be. He not only hears their cries from the pain of their oppression, He hears the cries of a mother who must abandon her child.  He also notices their
  hard labor. Yet He not only sees and hears, He is going to do something
  about it and it won’t be a secret either. We are about to enter the
  time when some of the most fantastic miracles will happen by God’s own
  hand which, for Israel, will be things that are never to be forgotten. 
  We will be seeing the God of Israel in action and the One to whom we
  worship. However, Moses must receive his commission from the Lord
  first. Mr.Vee

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