Groaning Heard
After more than two months, I finally covered the whole book of Genesis in this series of biblical reflections. The first time I attempted this was on 01 October when I wrote A Perfect World. Time is so fast. I could not imagine that after two months and eight days, I would be able to complete a study on the book of Genesis.
This time, I will touch Exodus the second book in the Old Testament. However, instead of starting with the first chapter, we will go straight to chapter 2. As for Chapter 1, you can just check my series on financial freedom. I explained the relevance of the first chapter here.
The title of this article is Groaning Heard. This covers the narrative of when the Jews suffered under the tyranny of an oppressive Ruler of Egypt. At that time, amid tyranny and oppression, the Jews cried out to God. And their cry for help came to the attention of God:
God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God looked at the Israelites and was concerned about them (Exodus 2:24-25).
In this story, we learn that God listens to the cry of His people. He knows our deepest longings. He knows our struggles and pain. We see this truth time and again throughout biblical history. And God always remains faithful and comes to aid us at the right time.
When God answers the prayer of his people, usually he does this by sending a person. We find this truth in the second chapter of Exodus. God heard the groaning of the Israelites and showed his concern for them by preparing a man to be his answer, Moses.
In this article, we will look into the way God has prepared his answer in advance to the groaning of his people. And so we will look into the manner God prepared Moses. And so this is the question I would like to answer in this post:
How did God prepare Moses to be the deliverer of the Israelites from oppression?
Or to make it more personal:
How does God prepare a person he wants to use in a mighty way?
The person whom God uses in a mighty way is not a stranger to suffering.
Moses himself was a victim of Pharaoh's wicked law of killing Jewish infants. I wonder how many infants were thrown into the Nile River and drowned at that time. I also wonder how many were so fortunate to be saved from the power of such tyrannical law. I imagine the suffering of Jewish parents who lost their children. It is such a pain that it refuses to be comforted.
In an age where the leaders of our time ignore the law of God, knowingly or unknowingly, they are making laws and regulations that aim toward the preservation of life, personal liberty, and property. Unfortunately, due to ignorance of God's law, they ended up with human laws and regulations making life of their subjects more difficult. As such, laws that are supposed to serve life and justice are utilized as a weapon to oppress life and they become tools of injustice.
When the Son of God came into this world in human flesh, Israel that time was under Roman rule. The Jews were suffering not only from political oppression but also from religious apostasy. Such was the political and economic environment where Jesus grew up as a man. He knew firsthand the reality of human suffering.
However, Jesus knew that slavery under sin was the cause of human's greatest suffering. And so His Father sent him into this world to become our Deliverer. As our Deliverer, Jesus identified himself with humanity by becoming human himself. And part of being human is to experience firsthand the reality of pain and suffering.
Moses knew suffering by experience. Jesus too suffered so much while he was still here on earth. As God used Moses to deliver the Jews from the hands of Pharaoh taking his suffering as part of his identification with the Jews, God also sent Jesus into this world to identify himself with our suffering and therefore qualified to be our Savior.
God protects and equips the man whom he intends to use in a mighty way.
The very reason why Pharaoh made such a wicked law was to prevent his perceived threat to the national interest of Egypt from happening due to the growing population of the Jews. The irony in this story is that the very law he made became instrumental for the baby Moses who would crush his kingdom later to grow up in his household. In this sense, Pharaoh became instrumental in raising the man who would be used by God later on to crush his kingdom. The law that he thought would save Egypt became a tool for Egypt's destruction.
We see here that the government of God overrules human government. In the foolishness of men, they might think that they are frustrating God's plan and achieving their own goals through humanistic laws, but leading to their destruction. We see here God's Almighty power and wisdom. He used Pharaoh to raise Moses in Pharaoh's palace. Since Moses was adopted to be the son of Pharaoh's daughter, we could say that Moses was Pharaoh's grandson.
God protected Moses from Pharaoh's wicked law. Raising Moses in Pharaoh's household, he "was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in speech and action" (Acts 7:22). In other words, God prepared him by providing him the necessary education for the great task that God would assign him, to be the deliverer of the Jews from Pharaoh's tyranny.
We see the same pattern repeated during the time of Jesus' birth. As God protected Moses from Pharaoh's murderous law, God also protected Jesus from King Herod when he gave the order to slaughter all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under (Matthew 2:16).
The man whom God uses seems to be not qualified for the task.
Moses was a fugitive from Egypt. Out of zealousness to liberate his people from oppression, he wrongly thought that using his might could help. By killing an Egyptian, he ended up in trouble, leaving the glory of Egypt and running away as a fugitive of the law.
As a murderer, in the eyes of men, Moses appears to be not qualified for the task that God would assign him. Here we see the power of God's grace. It is neither our past and our weakness nor our strength that count in God's service. What matters most is the grace of God. Despite Moses' seeming disqualification, God called him to lead Israel out of Egypt.
Here lies the difference between Moses and Jesus. Moses was a sinner just like his fellow Jews. In Jesus' case, there is nothing that disqualifies him to be our Savior; he is sinless.
Conclusion
In this article, we learn that the man whom God uses mightily to be his answer to the groaning of his people is no stranger to suffering, and appears to be disqualified, and yet God equips him. In the case of Jesus our Savior, we see how God protected him from Herod's power while still a baby. As our Savior, he identified himself with us by becoming human, and yet he remains pure and sinless. Jesus is God's answer to our groaning because of our misery and suffering under the power of sin.