Mid-Lent 2
Ex
2:1-15
2/28/17
It was an act of desperation. There really isn’t anything else that you can
call it. A husband and wife – both from
the house of Levi – had a son. Normally
this would be a source of joy. But they
were Israelites living in the land of Egypt.
As we heard last Wednesday, a new Pharaoh had arisen who did not know
Joseph. He viewed the Israelites as a
threat to be controlled and exploited.
And so he gave the command that while new born girls could live, all new
born boys were to be drowned in the Nile River.
We learn that this mother hid the
child for three months. Imagine what it
was like for her as she attempted to keep a newborn quiet in the fear that he
would be discovered and killed. But finally,
it was clear that she could no longer pull it off. There would be no hiding her son.
So she formed a plan. She took a basket and covered it with bitumen
and pitch to make it water tight. She
put the child in the basket and placed it among the reeds by the river bank.
Then she had her daughter stand at a distance to see what would
happen to him.
We are so familiar with the account
that we probably don’t stop and think about the logic of it. The Egyptians want to kill her son by
drowning him in the Nile River. So she
takes her son and places him, floating in
the Nile River. What’s she trying to do – make his murder convenient for
the Egyptians?
Apparently she held out hope that an
Egyptian finding the child abandoned would have compassion on him. And I suppose
that it was the only real hope she had for saving his life. If discovered and
reported there was no doubt what would happen to him. At least, in this way there was still a
chance.
God had big plans for this
child. And so, sure enough, someone did
find the child and have compassion. In
fact, it turned out that she wasn’t just anyone. Pharaoh’s daughter had gone to the Nile to
bathe. When she saw the basket floating
along the edge of the river she sent a servant girl to fetch it.
We hear about
the daughter of Pharaoh, “When she opened it, she saw the child, and behold,
the baby was crying. She took pity on him and said, ‘This is one of the
Hebrews' children.’” She saw a crying,
helpless child and she had compassion on him.
She did not seek to kill the boy.
Instead, in a bold move his sister asked, “Shall I go and call you a
nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?” Pharaoh’s daughter told her to do so and as a
result the mother received wages to nurse her son until he had grown. Then she
brought him to Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son. She named him Moses,
“‘Because,’ she said, ‘I drew him out of the water.’”
The name
“Moses” often has some negative connotations among Lutherans. Moses, of course, received the Torah – the
Law – from God at Mt. Sinai. His name is
sometimes used as shorthand among Lutherans for the Law in its full theological
meaning – those commands of God that tell us what we must do. The Law that we can’t do shows us our sin.
The Law condemns. That’s what “Moses” brings to you.
But this
overlooks entirely the fact that in the Old Testament Moses is the instrument
of God’s rescue. God uses him to lead
the people out of slavery as he works signs, wonders and miracles through
Moses. God uses Moses to speak his word
to his people. In doing this, Moses is
the first prophet, and we are told that he is also the greatest prophet. Everyone else was just following in the model
he had already established. In
Deuteronomy chapter 18 Yahweh promised, “I will raise up for them a prophet
like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and
he shall speak to them all that I command him. And whoever will not listen to
my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him.”
In our
text, the instrument of God’s deliverance is rescued from a king who wants to
kill him while he is a small child. If
that sounds familiar, it should. Jesus
Christ, the Savior sent by God to deliver all people from sin and death, is
rescued from King Herod who wants to kill him while he is a small child. God warns Joseph to take Jesus and his mother
and flee to Egypt before Herod can kill him.
The similarity is not by chance. In the incarnation, God sent his Son into the
world to be the prophet like Moses. He
sent him to be the instrument of his deliverance and salvation.
Moses was
raised in the house of Pharaoh. There
must have been an interesting dynamic between father and daughter for that to
happen. Moses was raised with all of the
benefits of the royal court. But he
didn’t forget where he was from. We
learn in our text that, “One day, when Moses had grown up, he went out to his
people and looked on their burdens, and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew,
one of his people.” He looked around
and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the
sand. Clearly, Moses felt the connection
to his own people – so much so that he killed an Egyptian in order to protect
an Israelite.
When Moses went out the next day, two
Israelites were struggling together. He said to the man in the wrong, “Why do
you strike your companion?” Moses again
showed concern for his people. He
confronted the one who was doing wrong and asked why he was striking this
fellow member of his own people.
The
response that came back was nothing that he expected. The Israelite said, “Who made you a prince
and a judge over us? Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?” Moses
was afraid, because at that moment he realized the killing of the Egyptian was
known by others. When Pharaoh learned about it, he wanted to kill Moses. So
Moses fled from Pharaoh and stayed in the land of Midian.
Moses
speaks the truth to an Israelite. He
confronts wrongdoing. Yet instead of
taking his words to heart and being corrected, the Israelite rejects Moses and
snaps back at him. This was Moses’ first
experience of this. It would not be his
last. In fact in his role as God’s
prophet leading the people of Israel it would happen again and again. More than that, it would characterize the
experience of all of Israel’s prophets.
Like Moses, God’s word spoken through the prophets was rejected. The Israelites rejected the prophets,
persecuted the prophets, and even killed some.
This
behavior is not unique to Israel. It is
our reaction as well to God’s Word that directs how we are to live. We have our own ideas about what we want to
do, and we don’t want God telling us do and don’ts. After all, the world doesn’t listen to that
stuff. We want life to go the way we
want it to go, and are not interested in hearing God’s word that calls us to
trust in him in the midst of difficulties; God’s word that says he even uses
difficulties for our good.
Because we
react this way, Jesus Christ came as the prophet like Moses sent by God. He came to speak God’s word. He came to be rejected. He came to be persecuted and killed. Yet his death was not just about faithfulness
to the will and word of God. God was working
through Jesus to provide deliverance from sin itself. Jesus died on the cross and then was raised
from the dead as the instrument of God’s rescue from sin, death and the devil.
He has
given this rescue to you, and the events in our text call to mind how he has
done this. The water of the Nile River
was to be the means that killed. Yet
instead it by being placed in that water Moses was rescued from death.
This is
what God had done for you through your baptism.
The apostle Paul told the Romans, “Do you not know that all of us who
have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were
buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ
was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in
newness of life.”
The water
of baptism was the means by which you died.
Through that water included in God’s command and combined with God’s
word you died with Christ and were buried with him. His saving death became yours. But because Jesus rose from the dead, the
water is the means by which you have been rescued from death. Paul goes on to say, “For
if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be
united with him in a resurrection like his.” You are now a “Moses” – you are a
person who has been drawn out of the water of baptism. And because you are, you have forgiveness, salvation and resurrection on the Last Day.
