Sermon on Exodus 2. The Rescuer Rejected.
From http://www.ozemail.com.au/~gsmunro/resource.htm
G.S. Munro. Scottsdale-Bridport Presbyterian Church, Sunday, September 28th, 2003.

1 MOSES THE WOULD-BE MESSIAH

Talk about a Messiah complex! From this story we see that Moses just couldn't help himself, could he? In the episodes with the Egyptian and the Hebrews who were fighting, and also later in Midian when he comes to the rescue of seven damsels in distress, we see a man with a very high sense of justice. And a corresponding sense of his own destiny to be a righter of wrongs. Well, was Moses right? Or like some politicians, did he have an inflated sense of his own importance as a saviour?

Did Moses jump the gun? Did he take the law into his own hands by striking the Egyptian? Before we answer that, we need to look carefully at what actually happened, and then at the motivation of Moses.

Verse 11 says, "one day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to where his own people were and watched them at their hard labour. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people."

If you were here last week, you recall that Moses was saved as a baby from the king's attempted genocide of the Hebrew race. A daughter of Pharoah adopted him and brought him up as a prince of Egypt. He had all he could want. But it wasn't enough.

Moses knew he was a Hebrew, because his own Hebrew mother nursed him for the princess. She must have told him about God and the promises He made to their ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

On this fateful day, Moses went out to look at his own people. He watched them at their forced labour. They were slaves. His sense of outrage at their plight overcame his Egyptian upbringing, when he saw an Egyptian beating one of the Hebrews. And, in verse 12 we read "he killed the Egyptian and hid his body in the sand."

Now in the Hebrew bible, the word translated here in our English bibles as "beating," in verse 11, is the same word as "killed" in verse 12, and the same word used in verse 13 of the man who was hitting his fellow Hebrew.

In other words, the same word is used of the Egyptian hitting the Hebrew, Moses hitting the Egyptian, and the Hebrew hitting his fellow. It just means to strike. The Egyptian struck the Hebrew, and so Moses, applying "an eye for an eye, a blow for a blow," struck the Egyptian. We're not told whether the Egyptian killed the man he struck, but the Egyptian certainly died, because Moses hid his body in the sand.

What Moses did was premeditated – he looked around to see whether anyone was watching, but personally I doubt that Moses meant to kill him. It was something done in the heat of the moment. 

Was what Moses did wrong? The bible makes no comment, nor passes judgement upon his action. And so neither will I. But whilst the bible is silent about Moses' action, it does praise him for his motivation.

2 THE MOTIVATION OF MOSES - FAITH IN CHRIST

Hebrews 11:26 says: "By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be known as the son of Pharaoh's daughter. He chose to be mistreated along with the people of God rather than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a short time. He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward."

Strange thing to say, isn't it? How could Moses know Christ? He lived more than a millenium before Christ. Yet Moses' disgrace, his loss of favour before Pharaoh, is said to be for the sake of Christ. We don't know how much God specifically revealed to Moses about the Christ who was to come. Later, when he led Israel out of Egypt, the bible says that Moses talked with God face to face, so I suspect he knew a lot about Jesus.

But at this point, in Exodus 2, when he leaves Egypt, he has not yet met God in that intimate way. So how is it that it was by faith in Christ he left Egypt? It is because he has a knowlege of the God of his ancestors, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. To have faith in this God, is to have faith in the true God, the God who is present in His Son, Jesus Christ. And all those faithful saints of the Old Testament put their trust in Christ though they may have had a far more vague idea of him than we do. God through his acts in Israel's history, progressively revealed more and more about Himself and His plan of salvation. But though the people at the end of the Old Testament knew more about God than those at the beginning, they all believed in the same God, the God who is ultimately revealed in His Son. You see, we are not saved by how much we know ABOUT God. We are saved by being in a right relationship WITH God.

Moses, then, chose to be mistreated with God's people, because of his faith in God, which amounted to faith in Christ, since Christ is fully God, and was fully God before he was born.

3 MOSES THE REJECTED RESCUER

But though Moses chose to be mistreated along with his people, his own people did not want him.

Verse 13: "The next day Moses 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?"

The response of the Hebrew in the wrong is typical of the way we all respond when someone calls us to account for our bad behaviour. Haven't you ever said to, or thought about someone, "who do you think you are, telling me what to do?" But what this guy says is more significant than that, because this question is typical, prophetic even, of Israel's later response to Moses and God. As we'll see next week, God did in fact make Moses ruler and judge over them. And more than once in the wilderness, after they left Egypt under Moses, they asked the same question. Throughout their history, the Jewish nation continually rebelled against God and his appointed rulers.

This question is typical also of the natural response of all human beings to God's rule. God has the right to rule over every human being. But our natural impulse is to resist that rule, and anyone we think stands for that rule.

You often hear homosexual activists, including our own Mr Croome, saying to the Roman Catholic Church and other Christian groups, "who are you to condemn homosexual acts?" A couple of years ago in Sydney people were outraged with the dismissal of a homosexual teacher from a Catholic School for promoting promiscuity by attending Mardi Gras. Why? Because the church dares to say that people's private lives are God's business. I'm not singling out homosexual behaviour by the way. God has the right to rule all our behaviour. But that is not a popular concept in our society.

The mass media are generally scathing in their ridicule of any church figure or organisation that has the temerity to suggest that God has the right to run people's personal lives. They, on the other hand, are quick to assume the right to tell the church how it should run its affairs of course.

All of this comes from the same attitude to God that this Hebrew shows. We want to run our lives our own way. "Who made you ruler and judge over us?"

Now this question is significant for another reason. It forces us to ask, "but, had God yet made Moses ruler and judge over them?"

The bible, as I said, neither condemns nor commends Moses' act of killing the Egyptian. But I think Moses did somewhat jump the gun. It wasn't yet the right time for him to act as Israel's saviour. What he did, he did from faithful motives. He identified with God's people. But, God was not going to start the process of his amazing salvation of Israel, by Moses' vigilante Rambo act. It's not the right time for Moses to act, as the next verse makes clear: "When Pharaoh heard of this, he tried to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in Midian."

Moses thought he was ready to be Israel’s Rescuer and Ruler, when he killed the Egyptian. But God knew he wasn't. He prepared Moses in Midian for another forty years before he let him loose on the Egyptians.

4 MOSES IN MIDIAN - THE SAVIOUR PREPARED

Well, what happens to Moses in Midian? God gives him a Midianite wife, Zipporah, who turns out to be a godly woman who in the next chapter will save Moses' life. He also gave him a wise father-in-law, Reuel the priest of Midian. Reuel means "friend of God." And later, he lived up to his name, when he helped the Israelites to live in the desert.

God gave Moses a family and a useful father-in-law. But how did God prepare Moses in the desert of Midian for his great task of saving God's people? Did He train Moses like Arnold Schwarzenegger, so he could go back and blow them all away? Hasta la vista Gyppos? No. He didn't make Moses a mighty warrior. Did he give Moses more courage, like the lion in the Wizard of Oz? Did he make Moses a great speaker, so that people would rally behind him because of his persuasive words? No. When he went back 40 years later, he was so scared God had to use his brother Aaron to speak for him.

Well, what did God do with him in the desert for forty years? He made him look after sheep. He made him a nobody. He humbled him.

Humility was the one essential ingredient missing from Moses if he was to be the great leader God had in mind. He doesn't seem to have it before he leaves Egypt. Not the done thing for an Egyptian prince to be humble, is it? Yet the book of Numbers, chapter 12, verse 3, says: "Now Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth."

Is that just exagerration? I don't think so, because God did something else besides reducing Moses to obscurity, to make him humble. God gave Moses a vision of Himself. And that is the subject of next week's sermon. But let me draw one application now from Moses' humility. If you fancy yourself as a leader, and teacher of God's people, then what God looks for in you more than anything else, is true humility. Because humility comes from faith in Christ. It comes from a true realisation of who God is and who you are in relationship with him. Before God will use you to lead others, you must be content to be obscure. To work behind the scenes, not putting yourself forward. To do all the ordinary mundane things. Being a leader is about being humble, not about being up front or being well known.

We have the example not only of Moses, but of other great leaders of Israel, like that other famous shepherd, King David. And of course, the Lord Jesus himself. Like Moses, he spent the decades before his public ministry in total obscurity. He worked with his hands as a carpenter.

Now this goes for being a leader in the home, also. No parent can do that, without the humility that comes from personally knowing the salvation of God in Jesus Christ. Knowing that God is the boss, not you. Leading your children with humility is not easy.

CONCLUSION: MOSES' GOD OURS

Let's conclude by looking at verses 23 to 25. "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."

Do you believe that the God of all the universe is concerned about you? We worship the same God as Moses. The Apostle Peter says, "cast all your cares on him because he cares for you."

We know that, because God sent His Son to be our Saviour. To die for our sin, to make us right with God. John tells us, “he came to his own, but his own received him not.” Like Moses, he was rejected by his own people, but like Moses, God exalted him.

The Saviour is still rejected by those who say to Jesus, what they said to Moses: "who made you a ruler and judge over us?" But Peter says, in chapter ten of the book of Acts, "God commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that Jesus is the one whom God appointed as judge of the living and the dead. All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name."

God has made Jesus our ruler and judge. Will you rebel against him in pride and say, "who made you my ruler and judge?" If you do, in the end you will be overthrown. Or will you bow to him in humility and thank him for all he has done in dying in your place, to bear your sins? Will you, like Moses, have God's values above the world's values? Moses regarded disgrace in the world's eyes for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the short-lived pleasures of sin. Are you willing to be thought of as stupid in the eyes of the world for the sake of faith in Christ? May God give us all the grace to be disgraced in the eyes of the world, but faithful to him.