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Thoughts from Exodus 1 & 2: Where is God?
By daniel | January 16, 2007
When we read Exodus 1 and 2, I get this real sense of how it needs to be read. It begs for you to read with your eyes peeled — looking, waiting, and asking, 'Where is God? What will He do next?'
So even before we touch the text, we can pull this "life lesson" from the approach the text asks for us to take. Approach life that way. If something is not right, even if whole nations aren't enslaved (which, there actually ARE), for all things, let's keep the question before our minds: 'Where is God? What will He do next?'
So, that being said, God's people are in slavery, demoralized, and as all enslaved people do, grow to simultaneously hate and rever their captors. Where is God, and what is He doing? His movements in these chapters are understated, so we need to let them really jump out at us when we see them. (There's a real propensity in Hebrew writing for understatement and overstatement to draw attention to things) There is, in fact, a building anticipation of what God will do. Watch for it with me.
Chapter 1:17-21: The Egyptian midwives fear the Lord instead of Pharoah, and He blesses them. Their obedience and God's blessing causes the nation's population to grow. This is a good thing.
Chapter 2:1-22: No outright mention of God. We're anticipating, but we don't really see what he's up to. Here's this Moses guy, and he's not necessarily following God, and he's really kindof screwed up his life trying to free Israel on his own. He really couldn't have even believed his one act could set the entire nation free, right? But who is this guy, and where is God?
Chapter 2:23-25: There He is! He DOES hear the cries of His people and is moving on their behalf. There is a sense in which this feels like a 'to be continued…' God has seen and heard and is moving…. I can't give a better to be continued than that.
Topics: The Word |
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