THE HAND OF GOD
Exodus 1 and 2
“But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites and worked them ruthlessly.”
Imagine that you reproduce prodigiously so much so your host country is in fear of your impact and tries to slow your population growth. The little story about the midwives would have been funny if not for the Pharaoh putting his foot down and ordering the culling of Israelite boys.
Yet we do not read of God raining fire and brimstone on Egypt. Pharaoh’s order was not rescinded. The oppression of the Israelites did not abate for another 80 years when God called Moses. Instead, the focus shifted to the birth of a baby boy to a Levite couple and how by some happy coincidence the boy ended up being raised by his mother with all the resources of the Pharaoh’s daughter.
In the midst of all the misery that the Israelites had to endure, we see a family numbering 70 becoming a nation of more than a million if you count the women and children (see Exodus 12)—a people toughened, trained and educated by their stay in Egypt. God’s covenant with Abraham is now taking shape.
Many of us are raised on stories of the superhero who overpowered the wicked and saved the day. This is who we want God to be for us. But this is not what we see the hand of God doing here. Perhaps it is time we open our eyes to see God’s hand at work. God is faithful and continues to be faithful in keeping his promises; but perhaps not always in the way we often expect.
The way I see it, the course of human history is in the hands of man but God’s will and plans are not thwarted by man’s decisions. Even as man hurtles into the abyss in the time that God has allowed, God’s hand is at work in individuals and in situations to rescue us from the darkness.
Israel’s travails in Egypt became, in the New Testament, a metaphor for our enslavement to sin. The baby saved from a mass murder that would have killed him is now Jesus, who would one day lead us out of our misery and slavery to free us from sin and lead us into the Kingdom of God.
Yet in the midst of all the big movements, a mother was reunited with her child, the child was raised and educated as the son of a princess, faithful midwives were blessed with families of their own and in the New Testament, a childless couple, Zachariah and Elizabeth, had their prayers answered and was blessed with a baby boy.
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.”