GOD IS KEEPING HIS PROMISES
WITHOUT OUR HELP
Exodus 2:11-25

INTRODUCTION

All of us share in common a core conviction that our work matters. We all live under the illusion that the reason for our good situation is ultimately due to our effort, our wisdom, our work, while usually, any trouble we have is someone else’s fault. While the Bible clearly says that our work produces consequences and we are going to be held accountable for what we do, yet it just as clearly says that the ultimate explanation lying behind our current status and our future status is not our work but God’s work. This fact is expressed in many different ways. Paul in his sermon to the Athenians says, “God gives all men life and breath and everything else.” In his first letter to the Corinthians he asks, “What do you have that you did not receive? If you did receive it, why do you boast as though you did not?” In Romans he says, “Who has given to God that God should repay him? For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever.” Jesus says this, “I am the vine, you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit. Apart from me, you can do nothing.” The Psalmist says it this way, “No king is saved by the size of his army. No warrior escapes by his great strength. A horse is a vain hope for deliverance, despite all its great strength it cannot save.”

The knowledge that we are completely dependent creatures and that God’s work is what matters does not breed passivity or complacency in Christians. Rather, it is the knowledge that God’s work is what matters that motivates and empowers our work. In 1 Samuel 14 Jonathon the son of King Saul and his armor bearer, by themselves, attack a garrison of Philistine soldiers that numbered more than twenty men. This is what Jonathon said to his armor bearer before they attacked, “Come, let’s go over to the outpost of those uncircumcised fellows. Perhaps the Lord will act in our behalf. Nothing can hinder the Lord from saving, whether by many or by few.” The apostle Paul said about himself, “By the grace of God I am what I am and his grace towards me did not prove to be without effect. No, I worked harder than all the rest of them. Yet, not I but the grace of God with me.”

The emotional and relational turmoil in our lives is clear evidence that we don’t really believe that God’s work is what matters. Virtually all the emotional turmoil in our lives is due to the fact that we are trusting in our own work, not God’s work. This last week on Wednesday, I could feel the panic rising in me as I thought about all the work I had to get done before going on the Elder Retreat on Friday evening. I felt this panic because I believe my work is more necessary than God’s work. Your heart is gripped by fear as you think about how little you have laid aside for your retirement because your forethought and planning is far more crucial than God’s promise to provide. Your pride in your accomplishments or in your own goodness simply shows that your faith is in you, not God. Your guilt and despair over your sin often is due to the fact that you believe God accepts you because of what you do, not because of what he has done.

In this story of God’s delivering Israel from its slavery in Egypt God reveals in startling ways that his work is what matters. God has made promises and he is going to keep them and he doesn’t need anybody’s help to do it. God is the hero in the Bible, not men. Let’s look at this passage to see how God makes this clear.

MAIN POINT

God is keeping his promises without the help of human beings because…

I. Even believing humans are treacherous and impotent (vv. 11-13a)

I need to remind you of where we are at in the story. If you’ll remember, Israel and his 12 sons and their wives and all his grandchildren, some 70 people, came to live in Egypt 390 years prior to v. 11. They moved there because there was a famine in Canaan and they had no food. Joseph, Israel’s 11 th son, in an amazing way had become the second most powerful man in all of Egypt. He brought his dad and his family to Egypt and settled them in the region of Goshen in Egypt. Over the intervening centuries the descendants of Israel had grown into a vast nation. A king came to power who forgot all that Joseph had done for Egypt and full of racial hatred, he enslaved the entire nation of Israel. He made their lives miserable through the oppression of slavery. However, the people of Israel continued to proliferate and become an even greater people. This infuriated the king and he set out to destroy the race of Israel by killing all the baby boys when they were born. He commanded every Egyptian to kill the Hebrew baby boys by throwing them into the Nile River and to let the girls live. In this way, he planned to create a permanent slave class with no racial identity of its own.

It was in the midst of this slaughter of the babies that Moses was born. His mother, after hiding him for three months, set him adrift in the Nile River in a basket made of reeds. Beyond anything she could hope or imagine the daughter of Pharaoh adopted the baby as her own and paid Moses’ mother to care for the baby until he was weaned. Moses grew up enjoying all the privileges and advantages that come to the sons and grandsons of royalty. In v. 11 after he was a grown man (Acts 7 says he was 40), he went out to see how his brothers were doing. We are not told how he knew of his Jewish ancestry. We are only told that he went out from the courts of Pharaoh and watched his people in their slavery. Apparently, as he watched what was going on he became enraged at the injustice of it all. He had sympathy for his people in their slavery and he wanted to do something about it. He knew it was God’s will for the nation of Israel to live as a free people in the land of Canaan. Therefore, when he saw an Egyptian beating a fellow Hebrew he killed the Egyptian and buried him in the sand. The next day he went out to watch his people in their slavery and found two Hebrews fighting and sought to reconcile them by confronting the one who was mistreating the other. His fellow Hebrew resisted Moses’ attempt to help and mocked him by asking him if was going to kill him like he did the Egyptian the day before. Moses then flees for his life as the king of Egypt sets out to kill him for sympathizing with the slaves and killing the Egyptian.

This passage only hints at the motives of Moses for what he did. What is hinted at in these two short verses is made quite explicit in the NT commentary on this passage as recorded in Acts 7 and in Hebrews 11. First, in Acts 7 we are told that Moses’ coming out to see his people and his murder of the Egyptian were due to his ambition to deliver the Hebrew people from their slavery. In fact, he viewed himself as God’s agent of salvation for the nation Israel. Then in Hebrews we are told that he was motivated by faith or trust in the promises of God. Specifically we are told that Moses “refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt for he was looking to the reward.” In short, Moses believes that this nation of slaves is God’s chosen people and the vehicle of blessing to the whole world. He believes that God is going to deliver them from their captivity and take them into the land of Canaan. He also believes that he is the one God will use to bring about this deliverance. He believes the promises God made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. That’s part of what faith is. But also notice that he believes that being treated like a slave, as a member of God’s people, is better than all the pleasures of wealth and power that he could have as Pharaoh’s daughter’s son. His confidence is not simply that God is going to save Israel through him but that being part of that salvation, in spite of the enormous suffering that must be endured to obtain it, is infinitely more valuable than the pleasures of living as royalty. He knows that in order to obtain the salvation he must suffer with the people of God but the end, the reward of salvation is so great that losing the pleasures of wealth and enduring the suffering of slavery are nothing compared to it.

Moses, in vv. 11-13 reveals the nature of faith. Faith, as John Piper says, is not only believing that God will do what he promises but that what God promises is better than the whole universe. This is how we are to live as Christians. The reason a person leaves behind the pleasures of sin is because they believe knowing Jesus Christ is a better pleasure. The way you escape the enslaving pleasures of alcohol or pornography or gambling or gossip or buying stuff you don’t need is by discovering that Jesus and the salvation he provides is a better pleasure. The way you live a life of denying yourself in order to love others is by believing what Jesus said, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” That is what motivated Moses to leave behind the temporary pleasures available as a prince of Egypt. He believed that knowing Jesus forever, in spite of the suffering he would endure was a better pleasure, a better treasure. This is the hard question we all must face, am I forsaking the pleasures of sin and of this world and pursuing all my pleasure in Christ? What are the risks I am gladly taking, the sacrifices I am joyfully making because I believe that belonging to Jesus Christ is better than a risk free, sacrifice free life?

However, though Moses is a person of faith and is acting in faith, yet he does evil and his actions are completely fruitless. There is no other place in the Bible where Moses murder of the Egyptian is discussed. However, it seems to me that his furtive, secret murder, with no warning and his burial of the corpse in the sand point to the fact that this was not a divinely sanctioned act. What was he planning on doing, killing one Egyptian at a time? It was the act of a man who believes that his work is what matters. He was unwilling to wait for God and determined to take matters into his own hands. He is the one who will set God’s people free. He is full of self-confidence. After all he is a prince of Egypt. He has been instructed in all the ways of Egypt. These people will be glad to have a Savior like him. When Pharaoh discovers what he did, Moses, the man of faith, turns tail and runs, leaving behind the people of Israel to endure another 40 years of slavery. His actions prove that he is a treacherous man and that he is an impotent man. He cannot, regardless of his connections, save God’s people. His work is not what matters. He has no ability to do God’s work in his own power, something he has yet to learn. He does not yet fully understand that he is powerless and that only God is powerful. If you want a clue as to why your efforts so frequently accomplish nothing you can find it right here. God is out to convince you, just as he is out to convince Moses that your strength is not what matters.

God is keeping his promises without the help of human beings because…

• Even believing humans are treacherous and impotent
• And because…

II. Humans don’t really want God’s help (vv. 13b-14)

Up to this point in the story of Exodus we have been repeatedly told two things about the people of Israel. We have been told about their proliferation, their growth into a great multitude of people and we have been told of the oppression they are enduring. Other than Moses’ mom and his sister and now Moses himself we have not been told anything about how the people of Israel are responding in their slavery. What do we discover when we first see the Israelites? We find out they are acting just like their fathers did in the book of Genesis. The sons of Israel beat, betray, and sell into slavery their younger brother Joseph. They treat Joseph just as this man treats his fellow Hebrew. The brothers of Joseph were shown to be violent men and here we discover their descendants have not changed. Even though these men are slaves and are mistreated daily by their slave masters, yet they mistreat one another. It’s not bad enough that they are being beat up by foreigners, they also beat each other up. This fighting shows that the character of the nation of Israel has not changed. Throughout the story of Genesis, we saw that the brothers of Joseph did not trust God and hated one another. They only repented of their betrayal of Joseph and selling him into slavery after they were exposed to extreme difficulties.

When Moses tries to intervene and to reconcile these two men the one who has the upper hand asks Moses who he thinks he is. Who gave him the right to tell him what to do? Who appointed him judge over the people of Israel? Then he uses Moses’ murder of the Egyptian against him. While Moses’ murder was wrong, foolish, and futile, yet it was motivated by a desire to help his people. He has left behind the pleasures of the Egyptian court and has exposed himself to the wrath of Pharaoh. At the minimum, the guy ought to have understood that Moses was doing something he didn’t have to do. He had exposed himself to danger by murdering the Egyptian and shown he was on the side of Israel, though he had been raised in the Egyptian court. His refusal to accept Moses’ help and his using his crime to resist him shows the hardness of human hearts to the grace of God. Moses clearly means to use his position and power to help his people, yet they don’t want his help. Moses is the Savior but nobody is interested in the salvation he offers. Then notice in vv. 23-25 it is only after many decades that the people of Israel finally cry out to God for help. This is the same story we saw in Genesis. It took the 10 brothers of Joseph decades to repent of their sin and turn to God. It is the same story we are going to see throughout the book of Exodus. This question, “who appointed you judge over us?” is going to be repeated on numerous occasions by the Jewish people as Moses leads them out of Egypt and to the land of promise.

This is the same story we read in the gospels. Listen to these verses from the beginning of John’s gospel. “He (Jesus) was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.” We see here, in the rejection of Moses by the Hebrew people, the rejection of Jesus Christ by the world he made and the people he chose, the Jewish nation. The question this violent Hebrew asked Moses is the same question that is asked of Jesus on numerous occasions, “who made you judge over us?” “Who gave you authority to cleanse the temple, to cast out demons, to teach about the kingdom of God?” It is the question that humans have been posing to God and to his prophets since Adam and Eve were thrown out of the Garden of Eden. What right do you have to tell me how to live, how to act, how to be saved? Who do you think you are, God?

God has given us life, he gives us every breath we take, and every pleasure we ever experience in this life. The God upon whom our entire existence depends comes to us in the person of Jesus and offers us his salvation but we like our salvation better than his. We trust our solutions not his solutions. We trust our power, not his power. Here is a married couple that is embroiled in conflict and Jesus tells them to forgive one another and stop demanding that their spouse meet their needs. Rather they are to believe his promise, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” One or both of the spouses respond by saying, “You expect me to meet her needs regardless of how she treats me? She’ll just take advantage of me.” Here is man consumed with worry about being able to pay the mortgage and all the other bills and Jesus tells him to sell his possessions and to give to the poor. Jesus tells him to stop worrying and to seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness but he says, “I have to live in this home and I have to have all this stuff in order to be happy. This is America.” Jesus offers himself to us as our Savior but we don’t really want his help. Sure, we’d like to go to heaven, but we don’t really want the salvation life he offers to us. We prefer our life as slaves fighting with one another rather than his life of freedom, a saved life, where we live at peace with one another.

God is keeping his promises without the help of human beings because…

• Even believing humans are treacherous and impotent
• Humans don’t really want God’s help
• And because…

III. God doesn’t help the strong and the good but only the weak and sinful (vv. 15-25)

Moses’ attempt to free the people of God by killing one Egyptian at a time ends in complete failure. The king of Egypt discovers his sympathies for the slaves and seeks to kill him and so Moses the Savior is forced to flee from Egypt to the land of Midian. What didn’t happen in Egypt among God’s chosen people, does happen in a foreign land among a foreign people. Moses again acts to bring justice, but this time his actions produce results. He comes to a well out in the arid plains of Midian and sits down by it. Soon, a flock of sheep appears over the distant hills being shepherded by seven women, all sisters of the same man, a priest who lives in Midian. These women do the difficult work of pulling up pail after pail of water to fill the troughs to water their sheep. However, no sooner do they fill the troughs with water but another group of shepherds, men, come along and drive the sisters and their sheep away from the troughs and water their own sheep. You can just imagine the boisterous and mocking crowd of men driving off the frightened and intimidated sisters. Moses has been watching this happen and like a hero out of one of our westerns or like Aragorn helping the hobbits, he rises up from his seat and forces the belligerent shepherds to take their sheep and go. He then draws up the water and refills the troughs for the sister’s sheep.

The girls thank the Egyptian man for his help and return to their father, leaving Moses to sit by the well. Their dad is surprised that they have returned from watering the sheep so quickly and so we discover that these sisters are oppressed every day by this same group of shepherds. When they inform him of how Moses has helped them the father rebukes them for their lack of hospitality and sends to fetch the man who rescued his daughters. Moses agrees to live with this man and his family and is given one of the daughters as his wife. So Moses settles down in the land of Midian with his wife and they have a son whom he names Gershom. The name of his son is a reminder that he is not living with his own people or in the land of promise. He is a foreigner living in a foreign land.

What happens here in Midian is truly shocking in view of the story we have been following. We know that the nation Israel is God’s chosen people. It is God’s will that they leave Egypt and go the land of Canaan. It also appears, through the miraculous way that Moses is born, his life preserved and then his faith to leave behind Pharaoh’s courts to join with the people of God that he is to be the agent of salvation. However, his attempt to help Israel is futile and the people of Israel reject him. Yet, when he comes to this foreign people he is an agent of salvation for them and they act to save him. Why is this happening? First, Moses and the Midainite sisters are both in trouble in this story. Moses is homeless and the shepherds are oppressing the sisters. We see in Moses delivering them that he also is delivered. God rescues both Moses and the sisters. Both are helpless and so we discover that God helps the helpless. In the previous story, Moses wasn’t helpless, he was a prince of Egypt and was acting from a position of power. In addition, it was apparent that the Hebrew people as represented by the slave who was beating his fellow slave, did not view themselves as helpless either. Therefore, God doesn’t act to save people who don’t need his help. Here he saves those who need his help.

Second, we discover here that Moses knows this is not the end of the story. His naming his son as he does shows that he knows God is still planning to save his people. Moses believes the promises yet and is now in the position of waiting for God’s timing. We find that Moses is learning to wait for God to act rather than acting as if his work is what matters. Forty more years are going to pass before anything happens. We discover, as does Moses that even when it doesn’t look like anything is happening, God is at work preparing everything for the day of salvation. Notice that after a long time the cruel king of Egypt dies, yet the slavery doesn’t end with his death. Israel groans in his slavery as before but now, unlike any other time, they cry out to God for help. We find out that Israel has not cried out to God during the long decades of his slavery. It took decades of suffering before Israel turned to God. God could not deliver Israel because Israel did not want God to save before this. Israel finally believes the promises and cries out to the God who made the promises. Later in the OT, we find out that during those long years of suffering, Israel had been crying out to the gods of the Egyptians, not to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It took decades of suffering before they stopped crying out to false gods and sought the true God.

Notice that God now hears their groaning. He did not hear it before in the sense that he was moved to act because their groaning did not result in their crying out to him. Don’t miss what vv. 24-25 say. God remembers his covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He looks upon Israel and he knows, becomes personally acquainted with their suffering. God looks upon Israel and is concerned for them because of the promise he made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He made promises and he will keep his promises because he is a promise keeping God. He does not look upon Israel and have a concern for them simply because they are in trouble but because he has chosen them by grace.

We know from the book of Genesis that every time God remembers someone he always acts to save them. He remembered Noah and the animals on the ark and sent the wind to dry up the waters. He remembers his promise to Noah every time he sees a rainbow in the clouds and does not destroy the earth by flood anymore. He remembered the promise he made to Sarah that she would have a son and so she became pregnant at the age of 90 and bore Isaac. He remembered Rachael and caused her to become pregnant with Joseph, who saved his family through much suffering.

It is the same with us. God remembers the promises he has made to us in Christ. He acts to save us first because Christ has died for our sins and now intercedes for us before God’s throne. Our prayers of desperation are heard because of Christ. He saves us because we are helpless to save ourselves and we are waiting upon him for his salvation in Christ. God’s people are weak and helpless. God’s people know that he alone is our refuge and our strength. We do not seek salvation in anyone or anything else. In our misery, we cry out to him and he remembers the promise he has sealed with the blood of Christ and he comes to save us. We must wait for him and his salvation, not seek to take matters into our own hands. We are helpless like Moses, like the sisters, and like the people of Israel in slavery. Our life with God is a continual crying out to him to save us. It is a continual turning away from our own strength and a relying on his strength. The Lord tells us in the prophet Isaiah, “This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel says, ‘In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength.” “Even youths grow tired and weary and young men stumble and fall; but those who wait for the Lord will renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and be faint.” Don’t wait for decades of misery to pass before you cry out to the God who saves the weak through Christ. You are helpless now and can do nothing to save yourself. You don’t have to go through decades of misery to find the salvation that Christ offers. Now is the day of salvation.

God is keeping his promises without the help of human beings because…

• Even believing humans are treacherous and impotent
• Humans don’t really want God’s help
• God doesn’t help the strong and good but only the weak and sinful

© Copyright 2004 John Swanson.
You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that:
(1) you credit the author,
(2) any modifications are clearly marked,
(3) you do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction, and
(4) you do not make more than 1,000 copies.
If you would like to post this material to the web, or if your intended use is other than outlined above, please contact River Hills Community Church, 2843 West Court Street, Janesville, WI 53545. (608) 758-0943. mail@riverhillsonline.org

Back to the Top