Look Up at the Night Sky - Psalm 8

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NOTE: We are taking a week’s break from reading through Exodus; our Exodus readings will resume on Monday, February 19 with the account of the battle between the Lord and Pharaoh and the Ten Plagues.

I have previously mentioned that I read one psalm a day, every day. So, over the next week, I’d love to have you jump in and join me in my psalms reading plan. —Andrew

 

Psalm 8

1 O Lord, our Lord,
    how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory above the heavens.
2     Out of the mouth of babies and infants,
you have established strength because of your foes,
    to still the enemy and the avenger.
3 When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
    the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
4 what is man that you are mindful of him,
    and the son of man that you care for him?
5 Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
    and crowned him with glory and honor.
6 You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;
    you have put all things under his feet,
7 all sheep and oxen,
    and also the beasts of the field,
8 the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea,
    whatever passes along the paths of the seas.
9 O Lord, our Lord,
    how majestic is your name in all the earth!

 
 

Every been somewhere really dark and looked up at the glory of God’s handiwork? It’s as if the Lord screwed each star into place. Psalm 8 comes from that kind of experience—the psalmist has looked up at the heavens and is reflecting on the universe that God has made and man’s place within it.

 

To the choirmaster: according to The Gittith. A Psalm of David.

“The Gittith” is an unknown musical term that is lost to us.

1 O Lord, our Lord,
    how majestic is your name in all the earth!
You have set your glory above the heavens.
2     Out of the mouth of babies and infants,
you have established strength because of your foes,
    to still the enemy and the avenger.
3 When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers,
    the moon and the stars, which you have set in place,
4 what is man that you are mindful of him,
    and the son of man that you care for him?
5 Yet you have made him a little lower than the heavenly beings
    and crowned him with glory and honor.
6 You have given him dominion over the works of your hands;
    you have put all things under his feet,
7 all sheep and oxen,
    and also the beasts of the field,
8 the birds of the heavens, and the fish of the sea,
    whatever passes along the paths of the seas.

In Genesis 1, we read that God created humankind to rule over the earth in his place—to be stewards and caretakers of all that God has made. The psalmist marvels that God has entrusted his precious creation to human hands.

9 O Lord, our Lord,
    how majestic is your name in all the earth!

 
 
 

Everything Is Prepared

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Exodus 4:27-31

27 The Lord said to Aaron, “Go into the wilderness to meet Moses.” So he went and met him at the mountain of God and kissed him. 28 And Moses told Aaron all the words of the Lord with which he had sent him to speak, and all the signs that he had commanded him to do. 29 Then Moses and Aaron went and gathered together all the elders of the people of Israel. 30 Aaron spoke all the words that the Lord had spoken to Moses and did the signs in the sight of the people. 31 And the people believed; and when they heard that the Lord had visited the people of Israel and that he had seen their affliction, they bowed their heads and worshiped.

 

Moses was afraid that the people would neither receive him nor listen to him, but when he and Aaron arrive back in Egypt, everything goes just as the Lord promised!

Everything is prepared. Now is the time when God will save his people.

Exodus Part 1 concludes here, and Part 2 picks up on Monday [actually, we will take a week’s break and begin Part 2 on February 19]. In the meantime, remind yourself, God always does what he says.

Be not afraid.

 

Two Of The Hardest And Strangest Things In The Entire Book

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Exodus 4:21-26

21 And the Lord said to Moses, “When you go back to Egypt, see that you do before Pharaoh all the miracles that I have put in your power. But I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go. 22 Then you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the Lord, Israel is my firstborn son, 23 and I say to you, “Let my son go that he may serve me.” If you refuse to let him go, behold, I will kill your firstborn son.’”

24 At a lodging place on the way the Lord met him and sought to put him to death. 25 Then Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son's foreskin and touched Moses' feet with it and said, “Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me!” 26 So he let him alone. It was then that she said, “A bridegroom of blood,” because of the circumcision.

 
 

Today’s reading contains two of the hardest and strangest episodes in all of Exodus.

1. Why does the Lord say he will harden Pharaoh’s heart? Doesn’t that just make the entire process more difficult? How is that fair to Pharaoh any way?
2. Why does the Lord try to put Moses to death?

Why does the Lord plan on hardening (The Hebrew word translated “hardening” means "to make strong,” i.e. to strengthen Pharaoh's resolve.) Pharaoh’s heart? Doesn’t that seem to undermine the purpose of Moses’s mission? Leon Kass is helpful:

These questions, if they occurred to him, do not detain Moses from beginning his journey. But we will tarry over them a little, for they can illuminate the meaning of subsequent events in Egypt. Our perplexity diminishes once we recognize that getting the Israelites out of Egypt is not the only goal or even the most important one. How they are delivered, and by whom, matters almost as much: If Pharaoh freely and easily let them go, would not he, rather than the Lord, be seen as their deliverer? There are also considerations of justice: shouldn’t the Israelites’ deliverance from Egypt involve retribution for their lengthy oppression? Finally, there is a decisive issue of knowledge: shouldn’t the Israelites—and the Egyptians, and also we readers—learn from their deliverance about the powers that be? Shouldn’t they (and we) learn who or what is highest and mightiest, and who or what governs the world and the people in it? For hundreds of years, the Israelites have lived and suffered in a society ruled by a single human master—an autocrat who is both feared and revered and who thinks and acts as one of the gods— atop the world’s most advanced civilization. To correct their way of thinking, they need to witness a protracted contest between the Lord and Pharaoh through which he and all of Egypt are compelled to acknowledge the superiority of the Lord. Only in this way can the enslaved Israelites learn that Y-H-V-H, their God, is indeed God Almighty.

But if the contest is to be conclusively revealing, there must be no easy victory over Pharaoh. He must be at the top of his game and must not fold his cards too early out of fear or weakness. Pharaoh must remain Pharaonic at the highest level, both to reveal the full meaning of Egypt and his despotic rule and to provide knowledge of the Lord needed for founding the nation of Israel. Thus, Pharaoh must not become dis-heart-ened. If he cannot strengthen or harden his heart by himself, the Lord must help him stay true to himself to the bitter end. Only in this way can the differences between Egypt and Israel, and between the rule of the Lord, be brought clearly to light. —from Founding God’s Nation: Reading Exodus, by Leon Kass

So, the Lord is giving Pharaoh over to himself, not making Pharaoh act against his will. To put it another way, Pharaoh is becoming more of what he already is. The ambiguity in the language reflects this: ten times (including here) we are told that the Lord hardened (or “strengthened”) Pharaoh’s heart; three times we’re told that Pharaoh strengthened his own heart; six times we are just told that “Pharaoh’s heart remained strong.”

The key to understanding the strange episode of the Lord trying to put Moses to death and the circumcision of the son is to note the mention of the “firstborn” in the passage. The Lord calls Israel his firstborn and says that if Pharaoh refuses to let Israel go, then he will kill Pharaoh’s firstborn. When the event comes to pass, it is the blood of the Passover lamb that protects God’s people. Here it is the blood of the covenant of circumcision that protects Moses’s family, and it is his (non-Hebrew) wife who saves him!

“Once again it is a woman who, by her quick-wittedness and insight, saves Moses. [Zipporah] stands in the train of the midwives, Moses’ mother and sister, and the daughter of Pharaoh. Moses owes his very life to a series of actions by women, two of them non-Israelites. ... Moses is thus revealed as one who does not himself stand without need of mediation with God.” —from Exodus: Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching, by Terence Fretheim

What Zipporah does here is fully pledge her and Moses’s family to the covenant of Abraham. They are now fully God’s people, ready to be used to free God’s people.

Moses Halfway Obeys

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Exodus 4:18-20

18 Moses went back to Jethro his father-in-law and said to him, “Please let me go back to my brothers in Egypt to see whether they are still alive.” And Jethro said to Moses, “Go in peace.” 19 And the Lord said to Moses in Midian, “Go back to Egypt, for all the men who were seeking your life are dead.” 20 So Moses took his wife and his sons and had them ride on a donkey, and went back to the land of Egypt. And Moses took the staff of God in his hand.

 
 

Moses goes back to his father-in-law but he doesn’t leave for Egypt at once. Did you catch that? It is only when the Lord again speaks to Moses in v.19 that he finally loads up his family on a donkey and begins the trek back to Egypt.

How many times have I been halfway obedient? Meanwhile, the Lord wants to use me to bring his message of rescue and salvation to other people, and my reluctance to fully obey is delaying the good things God has for others.

 

Moses Misses Out

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Exodus 4:13-17

13 But he said, “Oh, my Lord, please send someone else.” 14 Then the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses and he said, “Is there not Aaron, your brother, the Levite? I know that he can speak well. Behold, he is coming out to meet you, and when he sees you, he will be glad in his heart. 15 You shall speak to him and put the words in his mouth, and I will be with your mouth and with his mouth and will teach you both what to do. 16 He shall speak for you to the people, and he shall be your mouth, and you shall be as God to him. 17 And take in your hand this staff, with which you shall do the signs.”

 
 

Some of the rabbis thought that Moses here misses his chance to be THE man God will use. All his complaints force the Lord to involve his brother Aaron in the plan. Aaron, we learn, is already on his way to meet Moses, but perhaps the reason for the Lord’s anger is that Aaron, though a help to Moses, will also cause problems, most obviously in the terrible story of the golden calf.

God’s purposes will be realized, but our disobedience and reluctance will cause problems.

How can you be immediately and completely obedient today?

 

Who You Are Is Enough

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Exodus 4:10-12

10 But Moses said to the Lord, “Oh, my Lord, I am not eloquent, either in the past or since you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and of tongue.” 11 Then the Lord said to him, “Who has made man's mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? 12 Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak.”

 
 

Moses complains that he in himself is just not up to the task. The Lord’s response:

I made you, and I know what I’m doing.

Life is short and it can be difficult. You may very well feel unable to do what the Lord is asking of you today, namely to be strong and courageous. But the Lord is only asking of you that which he knows is possible because he made you!

So, be strong and courageous. The Lord will be with you.

 

You "Already" Have What You Need Today

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Exodus 4:1-9

4 Then Moses answered, “But behold, they will not believe me or listen to my voice, for they will say, ‘The Lord did not appear to you.’” 2 The Lord said to him, “What is that in your hand?” He said, “A staff.” 3 And he said, “Throw it on the ground.” So he threw it on the ground, and it became a serpent, and Moses ran from it. 4 But the Lord said to Moses, “Put out your hand and catch it by the tail”— so he put out his hand and caught it, and it became a staff in his hand— 5 “that they may believe that the Lord, the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has appeared to you.” 6 Again, the Lord said to him, “Put your hand inside your cloak.” And he put his hand inside his cloak, and when he took it out, behold, his hand was leprous like snow. 7 Then God said, “Put your hand back inside your cloak.” So he put his hand back inside his cloak, and when he took it out, behold, it was restored like the rest of his flesh. 8 “If they will not believe you,” God said, “or listen to the first sign, they may believe the latter sign. 9 If they will not believe even these two signs or listen to your voice, you shall take some water from the Nile and pour it on the dry ground, and the water that you shall take from the Nile will become blood on the dry ground.”

 
 

Moses again shows his fear at the mission the Lord has for him—he feels inadequate to the task ahead.

Note, however, that the staff the Lord turns into a serpent is already in Moses’s hand. That is, Moses already has what he needs to do what the Lord is asking him to do!

The disciples could only come up with five loaves and two fish, but they were enough when put into the hands of Jesus. In fact, they made a feast.

If you have faith in Jesus, then you have what you need today. It might not feel like it, but nevertheless it’s true. Act accordingly.

P.S. Each of these miracles is showing the Lord’s power over the gods—better to say “demons”—of Egypt. Over the serpent god, the Lord has power; over the medical and healing magic of Egypt, the Lord has power; over the fertility god of the Nile, the Lord has power.

 

P.S. As I’ve mentioned before many times, I read one psalm a day, every day. Well, I’m about to start over again this Sunday. (There are 150 psalms; I’m on Psalm 149 today and will finish with Psalm 150 tomorrow, Saturday.) Who’s with me?

 

Why The Three Days Request?

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Exodus 3:15-22

15 God also said to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations. 16 Go and gather the elders of Israel together and say to them, ‘The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, has appeared to me, saying, “I have observed you and what has been done to you in Egypt, 17 and I promise that I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt to the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, a land flowing with milk and honey.”’ 18 And they will listen to your voice, and you and the elders of Israel shall go to the king of Egypt and say to him, ‘The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, has met with us; and now, please let us go a three days' journey into the wilderness, that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God.’ 19 But I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go unless compelled by a mighty hand. 20 So I will stretch out my hand and strike Egypt with all the wonders that I will do in it; after that he will let you go. 21 And I will give this people favor in the sight of the Egyptians; and when you go, you shall not go empty, 22 but each woman shall ask of her neighbor, and any woman who lives in her house, for silver and gold jewelry, and for clothing. You shall put them on your sons and on your daughters. So you shall plunder the Egyptians.”

 
 

Here, God lays out the entire plan:

- How Moses will speak to the Israelites;
- How God will bring them from slavery into the Promised Land;
- How God will show his power and strike Egypt;
- How the Israelites will take wealth with them from Egypt.

But did you notice that strange detail—which we’ll see Moses enact later—when God says that the Israelites are to ask Pharaoh for permission to journey three days into the wilderness? Why?

Remember, Exodus is about God shaping his people for mission. One of the essential things for Israel to learn is that it is God’s power that brought them out of Egypt and not Pharaoh’s kindness nor their stubborn requests. So, God has the people ask for a holiday knowing that Pharaoh will refuse, and thereby proving that God rescued them and that they should trust him.

What, on reflection, in your past should make you trust God more?

 

The Actual Name Of God

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Exodus 3:13-14

13 Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” 14 God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I am has sent me to you.’”

 
 

“God” is just the generic name for “Spiritual Being.” Moses quite reasonably wants to know the specific identity of this spiritual being with whom he is speaking. Presumably he is familiar with the names of the Egyptian gods—who is this god in the wilderness?

God’s reply is one of the most profound sentences in the Bible, or out of it:

“I AM.”

God’s name—often transliterated in English as Yahweh—means “I am” or “I am who I am” or just being itself.

God is. And that’s his name.

P.S. In most English Bibles today, when you see Lord printed in all capital letters, that’s the editors' way of indicating that it’s the actual Hebrew name of God in the text, i.e., “Yahweh.” Be on the lookout for that—it will change how you read the Bible.

 

The Only Way You'll Know Is When You Know

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Exodus 3:10-12

10 Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.” 11 But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?” 12 He said, “But I will be with you, and this shall be the sign for you, that I have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.”

 
 

Note the amazing privilege God is giving Moses:

“I will send YOU to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.”

Moses gets to be the liberator of Israel!

But Moses wants some proof that this will actually happen. God’s answer: “I will be with you, and when you find yourself back here one day, you’ll know that it happened.”

In other words, the only way he’ll know is when he knows!

This is why faith is essential—without trust, we cannot live the lives God has for us.

Where do you need to trust the Lord today?

 

God Sees Everything

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Exodus 3:7-9

7 Then the Lord said, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings, 8 and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. 9 And now, behold, the cry of the people of Israel has come to me, and I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them.

 
 

Moses is in Midian because there was something about the oppression of the Israelites that provoked him to murderous action, and his murder caused him to have to flee Egypt. Here, Moses hears that God is concerned about the Israelites’ oppression, too. The deep passions of Moses match those of God.

What is it that really troubles you about the world? Could it be that God put that passion in you so that you would do something about it? How can your passions reflect those of God?

 

Awe-Fear-Reverence

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Exodus 3:6b

And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.

 
 

What Leon Kass has to say about this verse is helpful:

We pause a moment over this experience. Awe-fear-reverence (the hard-to-translate Hebrew word is yir’ah) is the central religious passion, and no story I know better exemplifies the phenomenon of its sudden appearance. Yir’ah is called forth by an encounter with overwhelming power, with great authority, with deep mystery, with grandeur and sublimity—in short, with the “awesome,” in its original, nondebased meaning. Awe- fear-reverence is not a congenial passion: it implies, and insists on maintaining, clear distance from the object that elicits it. It acknowledges our weakness and inadequacy before something much greater than ourselves (“do not come closer”; “put off your shoes”). And yet it does not—like simple fear or terror—lead us to flee. On the contrary, despite the evident inequality, the very fact of our recognizing the superiority of the object builds a connection between us. We are both attracted and repelled; we want both to approach and to stand back; we oscillate in place, bound in relation to the thing that defies our comprehension and makes us feel small. We hide our face, but we hold our ground. Paradoxically, thanks to awe-fear-reverence and the bond it builds across the unbridgeable divide, we also feel less small. We are, in fact, lifted up, enlarged, magnified. This surely happened here to Moses. —from Founding God’s Nation: Reading Exodus, by Leon Kass

The second half of Exodus will be about what it will take for Israel to live with the awe-fear-reverence of Lord in their midst, and the New Testament will be about what happens when God himself puts on flesh and dwells among us.

(That’s worth thinking about over the weekend.)

 

Who Is Moses's Father?

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Exodus 3:6a

6 And he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”

 
 

Moses’s father is never mentioned in the Bible, apart from this reference to his tribal identity:

“Now a man from the house of Levi went and took as his wife a Levite woman” [2:1].

Here we have Moses, the rootless man without a country, and look how the Lord addresses him:

“I am the God of your father” [v. 6]. The Lord specifically identifies Moses and makes it clear that the strange circumstances of his life are not an accident. This rootless man is given an identity by God.

We become who we need to be when we are defined by God’s word to us and not the words of the world. What matters is not what other people say about us, but what we know to be true about us from God’s word.

 

"Here I Am"

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Exodus 3:4-5

4 When the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called to
him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” 5 Then he said, “Do not come near; take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”

 
 

When the Lord calls Moses, Moses responds in exactly the right way:

“Here I am.” In other words, Moses immediately makes himself available to the Lord.

How are you and I half-heartedly responding to God’s call today? What would it look like for you and I to be fully obedient and take the next faithful step?

P.S. “Holy” is something set-apart for God’s purposes. So, the ground is holy ground because God is using it to commission Moses. And, it will turn out that this same mountain is where Israel will later receive the Law and be commissioned as God’s people.

 

How Would You Know If God Were Trying To Get Your Attention?

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Exodus 3:3

3 And Moses said, “I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.”

 
 

The rabbis asked, “How many times was the fire in the bush on the mountain of God and Moses failed to see it?” It’s a fun question.

Is the Lord trying to get my attention these days, and am I too distracted to notice?

 

Non-Competitive Transcendence!

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Exodus 3:2

2 And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed.

 
 

Allow me to use a ten-dollar term today: “non-competitive transcendence.” I first heard the Roman Catholic Bishop Robert Barron use this term years ago, and I’ve loved it ever since.

If I want to sit in the seat you’re sitting in, you will have to move before I can sit there. If I want to park my car in your parking space, your car will have to move. This is because we live in a finite world and for me to be where you are, you’ll have to give way. We are “competing” so to speak for the finite resources of the world.

In the Greek myths, when Zeus shows up the same thing happens: people have to get out of the way. There is lightning and violence when the gods arrive. Why? Because the gods are part of this world, and so they are also competing for its finite resources.

Note, however, that when the Lord shows up, he is not competing with us. This is because God is not the biggest part of Creation; rather, God is not part of Creation at all—God made Creation. In fact, the first sentence of the Bible tells us that there is God, and then there is everything else.

So, when the Lord appears to Moses in the bush, the bush is burning but not consumed. In other words, God’s presence doesn’t take anything away from the bush—God’s presence is a non-competitive transcendence.

Why does this matter?

I’m convinced that the primary reason people today refuse to believe in God is because they are afraid that if they do so, they will lose their freedom. But this is to misunderstand God! When God comes close to us, we become more of who we are—we become more free, not less.

In traditional Eastern Orthodox iconography, the Virgin Mary is sometimes portrayed in the midst of the burning bush? Why? Because she was the vessel that contained the Son of God, but she wasn’t consumed by the fiery glory of God! Isn’t that a lovely image?

Don’t be afraid to trust God today—his will for you is freedom and joy, and the only way you’ll find it is in him.

P.S. Try to work “non-competitive transcendence” into a conversation today. I’ll be so proud!

 

Moses The Shepherd

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Exodus 3:1

3 Now Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God.

 
 

How long has Moses been in Midian? Later on in Exodus it will turn out that it’s been decades that Moses has been a shepherd in a foreign land (see 7:7).

Just like his great ancestor Abraham, who was rootless and fatherless when the Lord called him (see Genesis 11:31-32), Moses is in-between when the Lord finally calls him. All that time wandering in the desert has been preparation.

What if you trusted that everything about your life has been preparation for the Lord to use you now? How might you see your life differently?

 

"And God Knew"

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Exodus 2:23-25

23 During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. 24 And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. 25 God saw the people of Israel—and God knew.

 
 

Most of us understand that life requires us to persevere through hard things. What makes hard things unbearable is the thought that God isn’t with us, that we have been abandoned.

Here, the Israelites cry out because of the evil of their situation and the Bible tells us that “God saw...and God knew” [v. 25].

God sees your struggles today, too, and he is at work to bring good out of what is evil. (see Psalm 10:14)

Don’t give up—keep going. Rescue is coming.

 

Moses, The Man Without A Country

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Exodus 2:16-22

16 Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters, and they came and drew water and filled the troughs to water their father's flock. 17 The shepherds came and drove them away, but Moses stood up and saved them, and watered their flock. 18 When they came home to their father Reuel, he said, “How is it that you have come home so soon today?” 19 They said, “An Egyptian delivered us out of the hand of the shepherds and even drew water for us and watered the flock.” 20 He said to his daughters, “Then where is he? Why have you left the man? Call him, that he may eat bread.” 21 And Moses was content to dwell with the man, and he gave Moses his daughter Zipporah. 22 She gave birth to a son, and he called his name Gershom, for he said, “I have been a sojourner in a foreign land.”

 
 

So, Moses ends up in Midian, an region outside of Egyptian territory, on the other side of the Red Sea in the area of the upper Arabian peninsula. He is nowhere and has no identity. Note that the women think he’s Egyptian! Are they wrong? Who is Moses? What he names his son—“stranger”—is revealing: Moses is a man without a country.

This lack of clear identity will be important when the Lord calls and commissions Moses. He will receive his identity from God—he’ll be God’s man.

I think that each of us feels at times that we don’t fit, that we’re not totally at home. But what if this isn’t a bad thing? What if a sense of rootlessness can set us up to hear from God?

 

Moses Flees Egypt

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Exodus 2:13-15

13 When he went out the next day, behold, two Hebrews were struggling together. And he said to the man in the wrong, “Why do you strike your companion?” 14 He answered, “Who made you a prince and a judge over us? Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?” Then Moses was afraid, and thought, “Surely the thing is known.” 15 When Pharaoh heard of it, he sought to kill Moses. But Moses fled from Pharaoh and stayed in the land of Midian. And he sat down by a well.

 
 

Some more questions:
• How did the Hebrews know what happened the previous day? Did the
Hebrew man Moses saved spread the word about the murder, or did
someone else see it?
• Why do they specifically call him “prince and judge”? Are they resenting
his Egyptian upbringing?
• Why does Pharaoh want to kill Moses? Does he see Moses as a threat to
his rule?

Once again, we see that the events of Moses’s life will prove formative. His way of trying to rescue the people isn’t working. There is a problem that must be solved and a people to be rescued, and though Moses has the heart for the task, he isn’t yet prepared for it. His flight to Midian turns out to be exactly what God needs.

Our lives may often seem to be following a winding road, but what the story of Moses shows us is that God is at work in the detours, using them to shape us into whom he needs us to be.

What if all that has happened to you has shaped you into the kind of person the Lord needs you to be?