Out of Egypt: Getting Egypt Out of Moses

We're grateful for you and for the gifts of God that you bring with you into this space. As a church, we want to live in God's unfolding story, being transformed by Jesus, learning to truly belong to each other across our differences, as God invites us into freedom, joy, and boundless generosity. Our prayer is that whether this is your first time with us this morning, or you've been a part of our community for a while, you will feel the invitation of the Holy Spirit to join us in this vision. And if you're looking for a church home, we would love to become your church home, and I, in particular, would love to become one of your pastors.

Surveying the Landscape

We are in week four of Out of Egypt, reading Exodus alongside Acts, because the story of a people leaving Egypt is also our story. Getting out of Egypt is one thing. Getting Egypt out of you is the work of a lifetime.

In week one, Pharaoh taught Egypt how to see a neighbor as a threat. Then Hannah took us to the delivery stool, where the midwives feared God more than they feared Pharaoh. Who we fear determines who we obey, and who we become. Last Sunday, Jonathan took us to Acts 6, where we learned that it doesn't take intention for there to be injustice.

Today we come to Moses. Not the baby in the basket. Not the man at the burning bush. The Moses in between, who sees something and doesn't know what to do with what he has seen.

Every week, the invitation is the same: Name your Egypt. Trust the God who brings you out. And take another step toward becoming the people God is forming.

Moses Sees

One day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to where his own people were and watched them at their hard labor. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people. Looking this way and that and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. [ Exodus 2:11-12 ]

This passage is built around one verb, ra'ah, to see. Moses watched. Moses saw. Moses looked this way and that. And then, in verse 25, God looked on the Israelites. The question isn't whether Moses sees. The question is what he does with what he has seen.

Pharaoh spent a generation teaching Egypt not to see the Hebrews as human, and Moses sees through it. The woman who drew him out of the water saw a baby and felt compassion for him, and her son has her eyes. And that is a crack in everything Pharaoh built.

He Looked This Way and That

He looks this way and that, not to see if anyone is in danger, but to see if anyone is watching.

Moses is a patriarch of the faith, and he is also a man who killed another man and buried the evidence. Notice the act. Violence, done in secret, by someone with power, who first checked to see who was looking. Those are the tools of the house he was raised in. And people of peace cannot use the tools of a violent world. His justice lacked mercy, and justice without mercy is a form of tyranny.

The next day he 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?" Then Moses was afraid and thought, "What I did must have become known." When Pharaoh heard of this, he tried to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in Midian, where he sat down by a well. [ Exodus 2:13-15 ]

Nobody made him ruler and judge. Nobody sent him. Seeing an injustice isn't the same as being sent. And the people he's trying to help are the first to say so.

Then Moses was afraid. Hold that next to the midwives. They feared God, so they did not do what the king of Egypt told them. Moses fears Pharaoh, so he runs. Same word. Opposite direction. Moses doesn't give up his access to wealth and power voluntarily. He gives it up because he's afraid.

A Stranger at the Well

Now a priest of Midian had seven daughters, and they came to draw water and fill the troughs to water their father's flock. Some shepherds came along and drove them away, but Moses got up and came to their rescue and watered their flock. When the girls returned to Reuel their father, he asked them, "Why have you returned so early today?" They answered, "An Egyptian rescued us from the shepherds. He even drew water for us and watered the flock." "And where is he?" Reuel asked his daughters. "Why did you leave him? Invite him to have something to eat." Moses agreed to stay with the man, who gave his daughter Zipporah to Moses in marriage. Zipporah gave birth to a son, and Moses named him Gershom, saying, "I have become a foreigner in a foreign land." [ Exodus 2:16-22 ]

Moses is the first person in this book to get out of Egypt, and look at what he carries out with him: the fist, the secret, the fear. Getting out of Egypt is one thing. Getting Egypt out of Moses is going to take a long time. That's what Midian is for. And it happens first to the man who will eventually lead everybody else out.

At the well, he sees the strong pushing the weak aside, and this time there is no looking this way and that. He gets up. He helps them. And he draws the water himself. Notice what the daughters call him: an Egyptian. He names his son Gershom, a foreigner in a foreign land. The name is his autobiography. Some of you don't need a sermon to tell you what that name means. The prince who had every advantage now has to learn what his people already know: what it is to be the stranger. And Israel will build its law on that memory: love the foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt.

Transition has three phases: an ending, a wilderness, and a new beginning. Moses has moved from knowing to unknowing. Egypt is over. The Hebrews did not want him. And he doesn't know who he is. The wilderness is where we lose our meaning. But it is also where God's presence is over all of it: the ending, the middle, and the beginning that Moses cannot see yet. And the women keep showing up: seven daughters at the well, and Zipporah, who will save his life in chapter four. It was a long time. Long enough for Moses to develop an inner world and an awareness of God.

God Heard, God Remembered, God Saw, God Knew

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. [ Exodus 2:23-25 ]

The king dies, and the people are still groaning. Nothing changes. Pharaoh is never named in this story because Pharaoh isn't just a man. Pharaoh is a system. And systems outlive the men who run them.

And then God moves. Before God says a single word, God is the subject of four verbs. God heard. God remembered. God saw. God knew. God was listening the whole time. It's the same verb used for Moses. But when God sees, God's eyes rest on the people who are suffering.

When Stephen retells this story in Acts 7, he puts it in God's own voice: "I have indeed seen the oppression of my people in Egypt" (Acts 7:34). And then, this same Moses they rejected with the words, "Who made you ruler and judge?" is the one God sent. Nobody sent him in chapter two. But in chapter three, God sends that same man: the killer, the fugitive, the stranger. God never prosecutes Moses. God calls him. That's the character of God we're discovering this week. The God who hears the groaning meets failure with a call. The rejected one is the one God sends. And that is the shape of Jesus.

Name Your Egypt

Now the text turns and looks at us. We live in a country where nobody can say anymore that they didn't see. We have watched men in masks take people out of parking lots and courthouses and off church steps. The question isn't whether you see. The question is what you do with what you have seen.

Jonathan said, last week, God sets us free from and free for, and this chapter gives us two Egypts to name. The first is Moses in Goshen. We see the injustice, and we answer it with the empire's own tools. Rage. Contempt. The dehumanizing of the dehumanizers. A little evil today to prevent tomorrow's evil. That's not free from anything. The second is Moses in Midian. We see it. We feel it. And then we flee to a place where the groaning cannot reach us. We sit down by the well, and we stay there. Free from Egypt, and free for nothing yet.

So here is the invitation. Name your Egypt. Say out loud which Moses you have been: the one with the fist or the one by the well. Then hear what God does with that Moses. Trust the God who brings you out, the God who heard, remembered, saw, and knew, and who sends the very people who ran. And take another step toward becoming the people God is forming. What is the decent thing in front of you, with what you have, from where you are? Next Sunday, Moses is going to notice a bush that burns and does not burn up. And God is going to wait until Moses looks before God says a word.

Let us pray.

God who hears, we confess that we have looked this way and that, checking who was watching before we moved. We confess that we have reached for the fist, and we confess that we have run. Hear the groaning we have learned not to hear. Meet us at the well, and make us people who get up. You saw before we were ready. You sent the man who ran. Bring us out, and get Egypt out of us. We pray in the name of Jesus, whom you called out of Egypt. Amen.