God sends Moses to deliver the Israelites from slavery in Egypt and in doing so, foreshadows Jesus, the One who delivers us from slavery to sin.
God sends Moses to deliver the Israelites from slavery in Egypt and in doing so, foreshadows Jesus, the One who delivers us from slavery to sin.
Advent Day 8, The Deliverer.
We know in the abstract and theoretical that everyone suffers.
Everyone feels sorrow.
But when we experience suffering, we encounter a strange effect.
We often feel isolated.
Living in an after we didn't and wouldn't choose have given the choice.
Today's readings from Exodus remind us that we are not alone when we sorrow and suffer.
We have a compassionate and powerful deliverer, Jesus, God with us.
He was born as a tiny human to accomplish the greatest of tasks, delivering everyone who believes in him from sin and death.
Equally amazing, our Deliverer, Jesus, hears us.
He remembers us.
He sees us and he knows.
Exodus 2:23-25 says, 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.
You see, God hears, God remembers, God sees, and God knows.
Which of God's actions do you need to hold on to today?
Even though Moses grows up in the house of Pharaoh, Moses identifies with his people, the Hebrews.
He longs to ease their burdens.
His method of deliverance, though, is short-sighted.
He strikes down a single Egyptian.
Does his action solve anything?
Or cause the Hebrews to accept him as their beloved brother and Deliverer?
Not at all.
The Hebrews scorn him.
Who made you, prince and judge?
Do you plan to kill me as you kill the Egyptian?
And as for Pharaoh, Pharaoh wants Moses dead.
Moses flees to the faraway land of Midian.
He marries and has children and cares for sheep.
Moses is content and heartsick.
He names his first son Gershom, saying, I have been a sojourner in a foreign land.
The Hebrews also feel heartsick.
They groan because of their slavery and cry out for help.
And God hears them.
Their cry arises to him.
And he remembers the promise he made.
He sees their anguish.
And he knows their pain and their joy, their hopes, and their fears.
God is with them.
Moses disappears from Egypt and reappears as a shepherd in Midian.
In between those two things, God hears the Hebrews' cries and remembers the covenant.
But is his remembrance an interruption in the narrative flow?
Or is it the main event?
And if it is, how does it hold both Moses and the Hebrews together?
God promises deliverance.
And he plans to provide it through Moses.
In what ways have you experienced God's deliverance in small or big ways over this past year?
If God hearing, remembering, seeing, and knowing are the point, then God is up to something marvelous.
He's going to deliver Moses from heart sickness and homesickness.
And he's going to deliver his people from slavery and oppression through one person, Moses.
What a thing.
What a miracle.
Moses, on the run from the Egyptians and rejected by the Hebrews, is going to be returned to his people as their deliverer.
But Moses is an unlikely deliverer.
He clearly feels uncomfortable with the idea as evidenced by all his questions and hypotheticals.
Who am I to go to Pharaoh and to bring out the children of Israel?
And who should I say has sent me?
And they'll say, the Lord did not appear to you.
Despite Moses' speech impediment, he overflows with words until he reaches the root of his discomfort.
He doesn't want to go.
My Lord, please send someone else.
When have you thought your issue was one thing, only to find out that it was another?
Who helped you to discern what the root of your discomfort was?
God says no to Moses.
God gives Moses a helper, his brother.
But God still says no.
Moses is to go.
Moses the unlikely deliverer is to deliver the Hebrews out of slavery.
God is doing a work in Moses and in his people.
It's going to be a hard work, but most good works are.
They require uprooting, wrong-headed beliefs and softening winded hearts so that something good and life-giving can take root and grow.
Think of a time that God said no to you for your good.
Did you know that no was for your good at the time or only in hindsight?
Looking back, what would you do differently about that time in your life?
What lessons will you take with you into the future?
Jesus is an unlikely deliverer too.
Jesus, God's Son, puts on flesh, God with us.
Jesus is born as a baby, dependent on his mother and father for his every need.
He spends most of his life in obscurity, and yet Jesus is our mighty deliverer.
He becomes like us that we might become like him.
What comfort or encouragement do you find in knowing Jesus became like us?
Jesus is our deliverer, but we sometimes feel or think that we have been abandoned by him.
Our prayers go nowhere, or it seems that way.
But is that true?
Or could Jesus be inviting us to trust him with all our questions and uncertainties, to learn that God desires a relationship with us, that he wants to be with us in our fears and doubts and hopes?
In what areas of life do you feel unseen, unheard, or unremembered?
Cry out to Jesus.
He sees you, he hears you, he remembers you, and he wants you to talk with him about all that is painful and all that is unresolved.
Go to him now in prayer.
Let's pray together.
Lord God, you are our deliverer.
You see us when we hurt, you hear our cries, you remember us, and you know.
When we believe we have been abandoned, help us to remember Moses and the Hebrews.
You heard their cries and you delivered them.
You gave Moses a people, and you gave the people a deliverer.
And you give us a people through your Son Jesus, our great deliverer.
Thank you for giving us your Son.
Amen.