“When Pharaoh heard of this, he tried to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in Midian, where he sat down by a well.” Exodus 2:15
This week we will study Moses. You may notice this study will be posted in a different format. Instead of posting the entire week’s devotions in one post, I am aiming to post five times: one for each weekday.
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Moses. You may be quite familiar with his story. He is another hero whom God utilized. Moses, like many of us, had some concerns about his calling.
The background leading up to this chapter is that the Israelites are in slavery to Pharaoh. But amazingly, the harder the Israelites were driven, the more they seemed to multiply. Pharaoh was getting concerned all these Israelite babies might one day outnumber the Egyptians.
He decided to take control, (or so he thought,) and issued an edict to the midwives. When an Israelite woman gives birth to a baby boy: kill him. The midwives would not comply and then Pharaoh ordered every baby boy killed in the Nile River.
Let’s pick up the story by reading Exodus 2.
“Now a man from the house of Levi married a Levite woman and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months. But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile. His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him.
Then Pharaoh’s daughter went down to the Nile to bathe, and her attendants were walking along the river bank. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her slave girl to get it. She opened it and saw the baby. He was crying and she felt sorry for him. “This is one of the Hebrew babies,” she said.
Then his sister asked Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?”
“Yes, go” she answered. And the girl went and got the baby’s mother. Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you.” So the woman took the baby and nursed him. When the child grew older she took him to Pharaoh’s daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses, saying “I drew him out of the water.”
One day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to where his own people were and watched them at their hard labor. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people. Glancing this way and that and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. The next day he went out and saw two Hebrews fighting. He asked the one in the wrong, “Why are you hitting your fellow Hebrew?”
The man said, “Who made you ruler and judge over us? Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian?” Then Moses was afraid and thought, “What I did must have become known.”
When Pharaoh heard of this, he tried to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in Midian, where he sat down by a well. Now a priest of Midian had seven daughters, and they came to draw water and fill troughs to water their father’s flock. Some shepherds came along and drove them away, but Moses got up and came to their rescue and watered the flock.
When the girls returned to Reuel their father, he asked them, “Why have you returned so early today?”
They answered, “An Egyptian rescued us from he shepherds. He even drew water for us and watered the flock.”
“And where is he,” he asked his daughters. “Why did you leave him? Invite him to have something to eat.”
Moses agreed to stay with the man, who gave his daughter Zipporah to Moses in marriage. Zipporah gave birth to a son and Moses named him Gershom, saying “I have become an alien in a foreign land.”
During that long period, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them.”
As your read chapter 2, you see Moses became a criminal in Egypt. Fearing for his life, he wisely fled. Moses had become an outlaw.
He was not popular, at least in the sense that anyone might listen to his words.
Reflections:
Maybe you have never become an outlaw, but most of us can relate to feeling unpopular.
How have you let your perception of other’s view of you, discourage you or even hinder you from your calling?
Have you ever needed to step out in faith, knowing that performing your calling could indeed cost you your life?
After you have had some time to reflect on your own life, please take a few moments to pray for our brothers and sisters world-wide who are persecuted for talking about or teaching Christianity. To see how you could pray more specifically for some of these Christians, please visit: Voice of Martyrs, at www.persecution.com.
The next post, A Little Insecurity, will be posted tomorrow, (Lord willing!).