40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Episode 63 (Exodus 2:5-14)

Episode Date: November 16, 2016

Baby Moses is found by Pharaoh's daughter and adopted. His mother gets to be involved in his upbringing. When grown, Moses comes to the defense of some fellow Jews resulting in him being on the run. Chad and Daniel talk about all these things and more, check it out!

Welcome to another episode of 40 Minutes in the Old Testament. I am Daniel Emery Price. I'm here with Chad Bird. We got the Bibles open to Exodus. Chad, how are you doing? Hey, I'm good. I'm good. Had a good week and ready to dive back in. I think we left poor baby Moses in the middle of the river last week. We did.

He's been waiting on us. Yeah, we better check in on him. We were going to spend this whole show talking about the presidential election, And then we decided that, well, since we left Moses in a precarious situation, we'll just do that. Yeah, I think everyone can be happy to have a little break from politics after they flooded with it for several months. So a very non-political subject is where we're going to be starting today. I think we left off a few verses in chapter two. Is that what you remember, Dan? Yep, I believe so.

All right. So just kind of recap what's happened so far. We have the reference made to Moses' parents, that they're from the house of Levi. His mom gets pregnant with him, and she has him. But, of course, he's born into a dangerous situation because he's living under this decree of Pharaoh that every male Israelite child is to be cast into the Nile River. So what does his mom do? Well, she hides him as long as she can for the first three months of his life. but he's getting too big to hide or the situation is getting too dangerous for him to be hidden any longer, whatever it is, after the three months, she comes up with this plan. She makes a little ark. We talked about that last time, that this is one of only two stories in the Bible where this Hebrew noun is used for ark.

Of course, the ark of Noah, and now we have the ark of Moses. These ships of salvation, if you want to call them that, that are located in waters that are filled full of danger and death. And yet in both cases, God preserves the ones inside the ark alive. He preserved Noah and his family, and now he's going to preserve Moses as well, but in a most unexpected way. So we have the ark. We have baby Moses in the ark. the ark is covered with tar and pitch just like the little just like the big ark of noah was she carries this down to the nile river and i guess you know if if i were a lawyer i suppose that maybe i could make a case that she actually maybe didn't follow the letter of the law but she

He did follow the spirit of the law because the decree of Pharaoh was that every male Israelite was to be thrown into the Nile River. And his mother does put Moses into the Nile River. She doesn't throw him in there. It's a much softer verb that's used. She set him or set it, the ark, among the reeds by the bank of the Nile. So she does put her baby in the Nile River, but safely ensconced within this little ark. So that's kind of where we left off last time, and we'll see what happens next. So we're now going to meet another person.

Turns out that Moses has a sister. We're going to hear more about her as the story of Exodus unfolds. Right now, she is watching to see what's going to happen. You kind of get the feel as you as you go through this story that this was meticulously planned out. The ark was planned. The location where Moses was put into the river was planned. Miriam, the sister, she's watching from a distance and she's going to speak here in just a few minutes. But that's where we are right now, baby Moses in the river with his sister watching to find out what would happen. And now we're introduced to another person, to Pharaoh's daughter.

This happens to be the spot where she comes down to bathe in the Nile River, and she's got her maidens, her maidservants, walking alongside the Nile. and all of a sudden she sees the basket or the ark among the reeds and she sends one of her maids to get it and she brings it to her

and this was well planned, this ark even had a little lid on it evidently because it says when she, that is Pharaoh's daughter when she opened it she looks inside and lo and behold there's a child, a boy

Okay, and here we have the beginning of what's going to be a radical change for Moses, because it says she had pity on him. So she didn't see this Israelite male child and think, oh, these are the ones that need to be thrown into the Nile River and then kill Moses. Instead, her initial reaction after the curiosity is pity. She has compassion on the child. And she recognizes, she says, this is one of the Hebrews' children. So we're kind of left wondering, well, what's going to happen now? We've got the baby. We've got Pharaoh's daughter.

I mean, she's part of the royal household. So if anybody should have been following the decree of Pharaoh, it should have been his daughter. so she's identified the hebrew child she has pity on him and here is where the uh the well thought out plan if that's what it was of moses's mother comes into play because up walks moses's sister miriam and she says to pharaoh's daughter shall i go and call a nurse for you from the Hebrew women that she may nurse the child for you? And Pharaoh's daughter is like, hey, yeah, yeah, that's a good idea. Go ahead. So the girl went and called the child's mother. And Pharaoh, of course, Pharaoh's daughter doesn't know who this is, doesn't know that

she's speaking to the very mother of this child that was found. It's just a foundling to her, just an abandoned child. So she says, this just gets more ironic as it builds. She says, take this child away and nurse him for me and I shall give you your wages. So the woman took the child and nursed him. Now you talk about a situation that from the outside, from the very beginning looks like it's going to end in a terrible tragedy. And in the end, ends up with a complete reversal of what we would expect, full of just unbelievable irony. Well, that's what we have here. We have a child who was destined for execution, basically. And instead of being killed, he saved and not only was he saved

but he ends up being basically adopted by Pharaoh's daughter and not only that but he's placed back into the hands of his own mom and then finally on top of all of this

his own mother gets a paycheck from Pharaoh's daughter for nursing her own child. It's amazing. it's pretty it's pretty incredible because because you're not talking about um she doesn't obey the law exactly puts him in like the little basket here sends him down it's still a pretty risky

proposition man oh yeah yeah you're not like oh this will be foolproof at all you're not like this would be safe no it's just better than like i mean like the percent the chances go up but like if somebody doesn't find him and do something he's still gonna die in there yeah babies can't survive in baskets down rivers by themselves for very long i know the whole thing is crazy yeah it is i mean it's one of the problems with actually knowing the biblical story uh is you sort of get uh numb to some of these these amazing amazing details but if you didn't know this story you just heard it and you didn't know how you know you didn't know how it was going to end up you're just listening along you know you'd be like oh man this is this is bad this is

there's no way this is going to go well you just put a baby in a little basket in the Nile River he's going to die the point is you never would have expected this to be the outcome uh because from the from the very beginning it looks like it has failure and death written all over it and you get to the end and I mean things not only turn out good I mean they turn out phenomenal You have a child from a slave caste who was supposed to be killed, who ends up being adopted as royalty. And his own mom has allowed them to spend some formational time with him. Of course, we're not told how long she nursed him. But the average time, average age at which children were weaned back then was around, you know, three years old.

Yeah. We all know that the earliest years of a child's life are those which are most formational. So these early years of Moses' life are formed by his own family, even though he's been adopted by Pharaoh's daughter. He's formed in those early years by the Hebrews. Yeah, it's pretty crazy. If you're just reading this like it's a book or something, it would be pretty bizarre. Yeah, yeah, very bizarre. You know, there's an aspect of this too that's worth mentioning in the broader perspective, and that is, this is a great example. Well, we've seen it already. In chapters 1 and 2, we have great examples of how God is using unexpected people to work good for Israel. People that are not powerful. They're certainly not famous. They're just kind of common, everyday people.

And not only that, but in a male and a patriarchal society such as this was, where men possess all the positions of power and authority, you have God using women. You've got these Hebrew midwives in chapter 1 who are blatantly defying the order of Pharaoh to kill all the male offspring when they're being born. So they disobey Pharaoh, and they get away with it. And not only that, but God blesses them. So you have God using these two women in chapter 1. And then you have the same thing happening here. You have him using the mother of Moses and the sister of Moses, and even Pharaoh's daughter, even a pagan woman,

to be instruments in his plan of saving Israel. And this is, of course, not isolated to just Exodus 1 and 2. Time and time again, whether it's a man or whether it's a woman, most of the people who end up being used by God to accomplish these important or saving deeds in the Scriptures are not the people that we would have chosen. I mean, the only one I can think of that really, you know, when he's described, seems like, yeah, that dude would be a good choice, a good leader. I mean, electable, the guy that you'd want really on your side.

The only one that comes to mind, really, is Saul, the first king of Israel. He was a big guy. He towered above everybody, and yet, look what happened to him. Yeah, yeah. He backfired. and then it ends up going to the the the runt of the litter if you will the eighth son of jesse david who's just a kid he ends up being the one who's the greatest thing in israel yeah i mean everyone by all accounts yeah saul's the only guy that like it talks about you know from the moment

he was sort of chosen looking like yeah this is the guy right here it says like he's a he's a full head taller than everyone else and he's like this big big dude uh yeah yeah that's it's it's pretty bizarre i suppose you could say like samson seems like a pretty uh like a pretty legit guy but but uh but he was samson was crazy so like oh yeah that dude was he was nuts there's no doubt about it so so probably not they weren't like yeah like he's a good leader they'd just be like that guy's a freak right yeah a freak with a huge achilles heel yeah uh for for women so yeah i mean you look what the book of judges is a great example of this you go through the book of judges and look at all these people that god used to deliver his people israel and every single one

of you you're shaking your head like oh no way no way you know uh god's god's hr department They should all be fired because these are all bad decisions from an objective point of view, from a worldly perspective. They all look like they're just going to totally ruin whatever God has in mind, and yet they don't. Well, that's the point. Like God is going to tell Moses in the next chapter when Moses says, hey, no, no, no, I can't deliver Israel. There's no way. God says, look, I will be with you. That's it. I will be with you.

In other words, whatever you do that's going to be good, I'm going to be the one doing it. So I'm going to squeeze myself into your person, and it will be me using you as my mask, my tool in order to accomplish this. So God is always, as we frequently say in this podcast, God is always hiding himself behind his opposite. He's always putting himself in places, in people, in situations where you would least expect him. In order that it might be obvious that it's God who's doing it,

that it's not human power or some kind of ingenuity or intellectual prowess or anything like that. And it's always going to be God using the weakness of people to accomplish these acts of salvation for Israel as well as for us. And his use here of Pharaoh's daughter and of Moses' sister and Moses' mom and the Hebrew midwives is a great example of that. I guess you could say that with each of these situations of God working in these backwards, unexpected ways, you see the shadow of the cross. Because all of these, in one way or another, point toward that ultimate act of weak foolishness on God's part, submitting to death at the hands of sinners. And in that very death on the cross, then working the glorious act of salvation for the world. So, let's figure out what happened to Moses. I didn't mention this last little bit here, ending this section.

So Moses is placed with his mom. She gets a paycheck for nursing her child, and the child grows up, and his mom brings him to Pharaoh's daughter for sort of, I guess, an official adoption, as it were, and he became her son. that is the son of the princess and she names him she names him moses because i drew him out of the water she says so this is a this is a play on a hebrew verb moshe which uh or masha which means to to pull out or to or to draw out so she drew him she pulled him out of the water and so she gives him the name Moses. Now, here's another, when you know the rest of the story, of course, this is another irony, because an Egyptian gives Moses his name, and that name is itself prophetic of what Moses will do for his own people, and at the same time, do against the egyptians because he's going to draw his own people out of slavery in egypt he's going to

lead them draw them through the waters of the red sea and those same waters will then collapse over over the egyptians so already uh in his uh when he's a toddler i suppose and given the name and given the name moses that name is indicative of what he is what he's going to grow up to grow up to be so up that's a that's where we can wrap up his early his early life and kinda like I I guess you compare this to life in Jesus you know it we're not told a whole lot and you guys are are covering this I'm sure it up

in 30 minutes in the New Testament we're not told a whole lot about what happens in the early a the early years of Jesus of course we know a lot about his nativity and then we meet him later when he's 12 years old in the temple, and then the Bible just, you know, skips way ahead until he actually begins his ministry. So the Scriptures are never concerned with giving us a full life story of anybody. I mean, we probably know more about Moses than we do about almost anybody else,

but even there, we're going to skip now from when he's just a toddler all the way until he's about 40 years old. Yeah, that's an interesting parallel between the narratives about Jesus and the narratives about Moses is that they sort of do skip, like, yeah, he's a baby. Here's how his birth happened. Here's a couple of things about how his situation came about, where he got to where he grew up. But they don't really tell you about him growing up. So they do the same thing with Jesus, where it's like, here's his birth. there's a flight into Egypt

and then they come back, set up shop in Galilee and now boom, let's jump ahead at least in Gospel of Matthew, which you're correct that's where we are, so all of a sudden let's jump ahead to John the Baptist and Jesus is 30 years old or whatever really what they seem

what Matthew seems like really concerned about doing is really just setting the table for Jesus being one, the son of God Not just like a son of God Like you or I are like children of God Or even as the children of Israel were

Like the children of God But like the son of God And Israel Reduced down to one person Like that's That's what Matthew tries to set up But it is I think that also there is these mirrors

That they talk about These two deliverers One obviously imperfect and imperfect deliverance and a deliverance from the physical slavery of Egypt and then an ultimate

deliverer from sin and death which is Christ but the information it gives you about their birth and their childhood is very similar yeah and on the road to Emmaus when Jesus

was talking with his disciples and of course open their minds to understand the scriptures, it says, beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things concerning himself and all the scriptures. And of course, Moses is often a shorthand for the five books that Moses wrote, for what we call the Pentateuch. But I can't help but wonder also as if when Jesus began with Moses and with all the prophets. He also included plenty about Moses himself. Because if there's, I mean, there's so many, they're often called types, these foreshadowings of the work of the Messiah. There's tons of them, of course, throughout the Old Testament. Jesus himself talks about

how, of all people, Jonah was a type of him, just as Jonah was three days in the belly of the fish, the Son of Man will be three days in the belly of the earth. But Moses is also referred to in the New Testament as a foreshadowing of the Messiah, and perhaps as is David and a lot of others. But Moses, perhaps more than any other, because he was so central to the central act of salvation for Israel. The exodus, as we talked about a couple of episodes ago, the exodus was the act of deliverance for the people of Israel. That was the defining moment for Israel.

Just like we might say as Christians, the central act of salvation for us, of course, is Christ crucified and risen. So in the language of the Old Testament, they would have said the central act of salvation is God's deliverance of us out of Egypt. I mean, that was basically their creed. What God do you believe in, O Israel? Well, we believe in the God who brought us up from the land of Egypt. That was it. That said everything about who they were and about who God was and how he had acted to save them.

So this central act of salvation has Moses as a central character, and because of that, Moses becomes emblematic of the work in Messiah, both in who he is, kind of his own life story, if you will, as well as what he does for Israel. And on top of that, his role as a prophet. We have a direct messianic prophecy at the end of the book of Deuteronomy about God will raise up another prophet like Moses. And, of course, that is the anointed one. That is the Christ, this prophet who's like Moses but greater than Moses. Yeah, yeah.

So let's get back to Moses. So we are jumping ahead. I said 40 years old. That is actually not in Exodus. But if someone is interested, take a look at Acts chapter 7 sometime and read through that. because this is the sermon that Stephen delivers right before he's killed, before he's the first martyr. And in that sermon, Stephen talks a lot about Exodus and Moses. And he actually adds some details, which were probably kind of traditional fill-in-the-blank kind of stuff that was circulating among the Israelites. It's not necessarily in the Old Testament,

but it was kind of part of the story of Moses. And one of those details that Stephen adds is that Moses was about 40 years old when what we're about to talk about took place. So what we're going to see here is actually three different episodes in the life of Moses that kind of give us a view of what kind of guy he was, what made him tick, and what really got under his skin, what made him react to people and in situations. And if there's anything that kind of comes out of these stories,

it is that Moses cannot stand injustice. If there's anything that sets him off That's what it is We're going to see that in some situations Coming up here So the first of these Gets Moses In big trouble

So he's a grown up Like I said he's about 40 years old And it says This is interesting He went out to see his Brothers So You've got to think about this

He was born a Hebrew, of course. He is a Hebrew, but he was adopted at an early age by the Egyptians. He was raised in the palace of Pharaoh. We're told, this is again from Acts chapter 7, that he was educated in all the learning of the Egyptians. That's Acts chapter 7, verse 22. Now, again, we're not told that in the Old Testament. That's something that Stephen says, but it makes sense. If you're going to be raised in Pharaoh's household, then you're going to be also raised according to their educational model of the day. You're going to learn the Egyptian language.

You're going to learn probably all of the religion and magic and politics and history and everything else that was part of their education. So here's Moses, raised as a Hebrew, raised as an Egyptian. and yet it says he went out to see his his brothers so there is an awareness we don't know we don't know how this was cultivated but there is there is a deep awareness on the part of moses that he is still really a stranger in pharaoh's house yes he was raised there yes he was adopted there but he is a hebrew and it will always be you will always be a hebrew and so he goes out to see those who are his not just you know his his uh fellow citizens but his brothers and it says he looked on their hard labors so there's there's already beginning kind of here

this uh he has this familial connection with him they're they're really his own flesh and blood and he sees their hard labors and so you can already begin to see here he has an awareness of what they're going through but then we come to the culminating act he sees

an Egyptian beating a Hebrew and it adds once more one of his brethren so twice it says he goes out to see his brothers and then he sees an Egyptian beating one of his brothers

so moses has a choice to make and this this is perhaps uh the the most critical this is these are the this is the crossroads for moses this is the this is the critical moment this will really determine what his future is going to is going to be he doesn't know it but we know it what's he going to do is he going to uh try and stop him is he just going to turn around and go back to the to the palace uh what will this action be well it says he looked this way and that and when he saw there was no one around he struck down the egyptian and hid him in the sand so moses has uh created a a situation here for himself that is murder by the way just to clarify i mean if anyone if anyone's wondering

this is uh this is this is murder i mean it's not i mean i mean some might say like oh like he like stopped the fight um he didn't just like break something up or i mean like he murdered this guy yeah he took him out think about this with me uh i find this uh i find this very interesting again i'm gonna let me let me find it here so that i can uh so that i can read because so what was going on in the mind of moses that's that's the question i asked myself about this let's see here i'm looking at acts chapter 7 and this is okay so this is the way that stephen is talking about this it says when he was approaching the age of 40 it entered his mind that is the mind of moses to visit his brethren the sons of israel and when he saw one of them

being treated unjustly, he defended him and took vengeance for the oppressed by striking down the Egyptian. And this is the section that I think is most interesting. And he supposed that his brethren understood that God was granting them deliverance through him. But they didn't understand. What do you think about Stephen's take on that? He's kind of getting it getting into the mind of moses isn't he yeah i mean i think i think that there's sort

of this look like going to the cause of the oppressed is like a good thing we know we know that that's something that god would uh would approve of and have you do but like we do uh we don't do it perfectly yeah overzealous action here perhaps well yeah i mean if you if you take you know jesus says like you've heard it said an eye for an eye right and the reason that you've heard it said an eye for an eye is because it was said an eye for an eye that's like a real thing but that doesn't mean that like you're beating me so i get to kill you that's that's like that's not an eye for an eye an eye for an eye is a rule in place that jesus even says that you don't have to follow and you shouldn't like yeah you don't have to take this but the reason it's there is

a buffer that says like look man if somebody punches you in the face you can't cut off their head that's not that's not an eye for an eye so uh if if somebody steals something from you you can't just like take everything they own like you go it's it's eye for an eye hand for a hand this kind of stuff right uh that the punishment has to fit the crime as it were uh yeah there's a big equity right right right and jesus even says that like but and you don't have to demand that even but that that is there not to say like you must take their eye if they take your eye it's that you can't take more than their eye if they take your eye moses doesn't exactly roll this roll this way it's like you're beating this person which obviously is terrible

like i'm gonna kill you um so it's it's the it's like it's the right motivation in this in the sense of like my just this is an oppressor who needs to be stopped but of course like we always do like we go further than than we ought and uh and decide that well i'm just gonna end you Yeah, this might be what we would call a day of crime of passion. Right. He's filled full of rage at seeing one of his brothers treated this way. And, I mean, I don't want to psychoanalyze too much here, but, you know, it could be that there's a little bit of guilt going on here on Moses' part because he's had it good all these years. And he is more than ready to do something to help his brothers.

And so in his anger and in his haste and in his overzealousness, he ends up killing the Egyptian. He didn't just stop the fight. He didn't – certainly with his authority, he could have commanded the Egyptian to stop. It was, after all, royalty. But instead he goes – he basically goes too far, and he commits murder. And he knows it, too. You know he knows it, because if this was no big deal, like, hey, man, I got the authority to do this. This is fine.

This is what you get. You don't have to hide the body in the sand. And notice he looks this way and that before he does it, too. There's every indication in the text that Moses is like, he's scoping things out. I don't see anybody there. No. All clear. Bam.

And, yeah, then he hides the body. So he's got guilt written all over him. Whatever all his motivations might have been, he realized that if he did this, it was wrong. And if he was found out, then he was in big trouble, which, as we're about to hear, was exactly what happened. So this all happened one day. Then, it says he went out the next day. So, I mean, this is the very next day. The body is still in the sand.

And he sees another fight. Except this time, it's not an Egyptian beating up on a Hebrew. It's two Hebrews that are beating up on each other. They're fighting. They're quarreling with each other. And one of them was hitting the other one. So, Moses steps between them. And he says, why are you striking your companion?

I mean, why are you beating up on one of your own people? Why are you doing this? And his question gets answered by another question. So the guy that was beating up on the other one turns to Moses and says, hey, who made you a prince or a judge over us? Are you intending to kill me as you killed the Egyptian? And then, it says, then Moses was afraid and said, uh-oh, surely the matter has become known. So, we don't have enough time to go into all of this.

We're almost at the end of our 40 minutes. But there's a pretty fascinating dynamic that's at work here in these small situations that's going to blow up much later on. So just in these two little stories that we just looked at, you really have kind of writ small what's going to be writ large later on. You've got Moses coming between one of his people and the Egyptians and killing one of the Egyptians and burying his body in the sand. So now he's put himself against the Egyptians by this act. He wanted to save one of his own people, but to do that, he put himself against the Egyptians. And then now we turn right around the very next day, and when he's trying to act as a peacemaker between two of his own people, when he's actually wanting to do good for his own people and break up the fight and reconcile them, instead of interpreting his actions as those which are prompted by love, they said, are you going to kill us like you killed the Egyptians? So they interpret, they see Moses, in other words, as not out for their good, but out to get them.

And what we see as the story develops is that this same dynamic continues to play out in the life of Moses. I mean, he's sent by God eventually to deliver his own people from the Egyptians, so he's against the Egyptians in that way. And it just so happens that the same verb that's used, nakah, means to strike or to smite, just like Moses nakahed the Egyptians. He struck the Egyptians. That's the same verb that's going to be used when God strikes down the Egyptians later on. So that's going to expand as the story goes on. But also, this unwillingness of the Israelite people to accept Moses that you see in this little episode here continues to be a major theme throughout the rest of Exodus. In fact, just like they said, are you going to kill us like you kill the Egyptians?

So when they get into the wilderness later on, the Israelites are going to say, you brought us out into the wilderness to kill us. so they're always interpreting these loving acts of of moses that he does in faithfulness to to god and and and for the love of his people they're they're kind of turning all those around they don't want to accept the gift instead they they rebel against it and kind of twist it around to where it means it means something else so it's what we see here is kind of what's going to be what's going to be played out as we as we work our way work our way through to the rest of the story but the story does does continue uh we we're gonna have to leave moses once more in a kind of a precarious situation we left him in water last time we're gonna leave him now with uh a heart

full of fear because he doesn't know what's gonna happen if uh if it's found out by more people that he's committed this act that's it yeah we're worried that that gossip is spreading and uh and uh if it gets back to the wrong people that he's gonna be in trouble and we're gonna have to leave them there guys if you uh enjoy christ holds fast if you enjoy 40 minutes in your test we can enjoy any of the stuff we do uh the events the podcast the articles uh you could help us out we really could use it we are uh actually trying to uh bring some some stuff together that uh that costs a little bit of money and so we could use your help you might assume this this stuff is like super well funded because it looks so good, but it isn't. It's just happens to be a whole lot

of volunteer work from people that are talented. Uh, so, um, if you would like to help us do some of the things that we want to do, um, you can go over to Christ holds fast.org, go over to the support page and, uh, and you can contribute there and that would go a long way, uh, to that end. So thank you to those who have done that, and thank you to those who would be willing to consider it. All right, Chad, we will pick this back up again next week. Yeah, look forward to it. We'll see you all then. Thanks for watching!