6-14 Joseph and all his brothers died, but the Israelites were fruitful and multiplied greatly and became exceedingly numerous, so that the land was filled with them. A new king, who didn’t know about Joseph, came to power. “Look,” he said to his people, “the Israelites have become too numerous. We must deal shrewdly with them or they’ll become even more numerous, and if war breaks out, they’ll join our enemies, fight against us, and leave the country.”
So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites and worked them ruthlessly.
The King of Egypt told the Hebrew midwives to kill the babies at birth if they were boys.
17 The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do; they let the boys live.
20 So God was kind to the midwives and the people increased. And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own.
Since the midwives wouldn’t do it, Pharaoh ordered everyone to throw newborn boys into the Nile.
A Levite couple gave birth to a son, and the mother hid him for three months. When it got harder to hide him, she coated a papyrus basket with pitch and tar and put him in the basket along the bank of the Nile. His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him.
Pharaoh’s daughter saw the baby as she went down to bathe in the river. The sister approached the woman and asked if she should go get a woman to nurse the baby, and the woman said yes. So the sister ran and got her mother.
9-10 Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you.”
When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh’s daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses.
One day, after he had grown up, Moses saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew. He killed the Egyptian and buried him in the sand. Pharaoh heard about it and tried to kill Moses, but Moses ran off to Midian.
As he sat at a well, seven daughters of a priest came to water their father’s flock. Some shepherds came along and drove them away, but Moses got up and watered the ladies’ flock. When the girls told their father, Jethro, what Moses had done, Jethro invited Moses to come stay with them. He also gave Moses his daughter Zipporah in marriage, and they had a son, Gershom. Meanwhile, the King of Egypt died.
One day as Moses was tending Jethro’s flock, he came to Horeb, the mountain of God.
2-3 The angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire, it did not burn up, so he went over to it.
God called to him from within the bush.
5-10 “Do not come any closer,” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground. I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. I have seen the misery of my people, and I am concerned about their suffering. I have come down to rescue them. So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.”
11 Moses asked God, “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”
It’s so easy for us to assume that our human limitations are a limitation to God.
12 God said, “I will be with you. And this will be the sign that it is I who have sent you: When you have brought the people out, you all will worship God on this mountain.”
13 “What if I go to them and they ask, ‘What is his name?'”
14 God said to Moses, “I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I am has sent me to you.'”
God instructed Moses to first go tell the elders of Israel what had happened. He assured Moses that they would listen to him. God told Moses to then go with the elders to the king of Egypt.
18-20 “Say, ‘The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, has met with us. Let us take a three-day journey into the desert to offer sacrifices to the Lord our God.’ But I know the king will not let you go unless a mighty hand compels him. So I will stretch out my hand and strike the Egyptians with all the wonders that I will perform among them. After that, he will let you go.”
But wait, there’s more!
21 “And I will make the Egyptians favorably disposed toward this people, so that when you leave you will not go empty handed. Every woman should ask her neighbor and any woman living in her house for articles of silver and gold and for clothing, which you will put on your sons and daughters. And so you will plunder the Egyptians.”
Not only would God deliver the Israelites, he’d plunder the Egyptians and bless the Hebrews on their way out.
Moses wasn’t perfect. He’d already killed a man, but in contrast to Dinah’s brothers, it wasn’t out of violence. Moses was a man who had a heart to rescue others, just as he had been rescued and adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter. He defended those who could not defend themselves. Although the Bible doesn’t say this, it seems very coincidental that he had been placed as a Hebrew into Pharaoh’s life through his daughter. He had a part in both worlds, and that understanding helped him ask God some very specific questions about the game plan ahead of time.
This story brings about two questions:
Do I limit God working through me based on my own limitations?
Do I limit myself or others based on past mistakes?
Lord, thank you for your Word. Thank you for hearing the cries of your people and delivering us. Thank you for calling people into leadership. I pray for the leaders in this world, that they would fear and obey you. Leaders of homes, companies, countries, churches, ministries, groups, classrooms- please guide them today to honor and serve you and each other. Convict their hearts and speak to them clearly. Give them wisdom. Thank you for your guidance and intervention. Please deliver all who are being oppressed today, and let them come out more prosperous than ever before.
A Walk Through The Bible 