Saved to Save
Did you know that you were saved by God? Depending on where you are in your faith journey, you might ask: what have I been saved from? Why did God save me? Or what have I been saved for? Our story about Moses today answers all of those questions.
We started our sermon series called Escape for your Life on Ash Wednesday night. If you didn’t get a chance to hear it, I would urge you to go back and listen to it on YouTube. In the first chapter of Exodus, we discovered how Egypt needed to escape from their fear and the consequence of their actions and that Israel needed to escape from death in this world. Today, Moses’ escape overcomes all of them.
The Pharoah, out of fear for the growing Israel, had just commanded all Israelite male babies to be thrown into the Nile. After three months, Moses’ mother knew that she couldn’t hide Moses anymore. So instead of giving up or running away, she does something really scary. She puts Moses in danger and trusts God to protect him. I would never recommend any mother do this, but there are parallels today. Mothers that because of their own awful situation put a child up for adoption, or leave them at someone's door are doing a similar thing. They are trusting in God and others to bring a better future, one they know they can’t provide on their own.
Moses' mother makes a basket and covers it with pitch. Then puts it the Nile. You can imagine her fear and all the possible dangers for her newborn. Will anyone find him? Will any Egyptian be kind enough to rescue him and take care of him? I can barely imagine doing this, but somehow Moses’ mother trusts God enough. She must have been praying a whole lot. God meets her trust and the cries for help and provides for Moses. Do we trust God this much? Whether we are in dire straights or not. We should be willing to trust him with the little things, but do we trust God enough to put even our most cherished things in his hands?
Taking a step back though. Does anyone remember the last time in Scripture someone covered something in pitch? Do you remember the last time someone floated above the water and it saved their life? Moses’ basket is a miniature ark, in fact, in Hebrew, it is the same word: Tebah. This moment of Moses’ salvation is meant to draw us back to that moment of the flood.
Back in Noah’s day all of humanity had become corrupted, violent, seditious, manipulative, murderous, and worse. They were causing chaos to reign and they became deserving of death. So what happens the chaotic waters flood in and swallow up their life. But God gives one family a way to rise above the chaos and escape death.
A similar reality is happening with Moses. He has been sentenced to death. We see first that the sentence came from Pharoah, but we see later when Moses murdered an Egyptian slave driver that chaos lives in him too. In many strange and uncomfortable ways, Moses even as an infant needed to escape chaos and death. You can imagine the moving water, lapping up against the edges, the industry happening in and around it, and all the numerous dangers. Yet, Moses in his little ark floats above it all and then is pulled out of those chaotic waters by a savior provided by God.
We too have to escape the chaos and not just the external chaos that surrounds us, but the chaos we cause, the chaos in our hearts, and the death that our own actions and fear put us in danger of. We need an ark to help us float above it, we too need someone to pull us out of the water. We all need to be little Moses. Thank God that through Christ the cross has become our ark and Christ Himself is continually offering his hand to pull us out. I hope all of you know and have experienced what the salvation of God can mean.
The next struggle is that we have to live in our salvation, believe its reality every day and act out of it. Who was it that pulled Moses out of the water? It was the daughter of Pharoah and she adopts Moses. This means that Moses becomes a prince of Egypt. (A small aside, the Prince of Egypt is the name of a great Moses film/musical). Moses even as a baby has passed through the water and found a new role and identity because of his saviour. Again, does this remind you of anything? It should remind you of our baptism. As we pass through the water, we pass through the chaotic waters and death with Christ and then are raised up to a new life and identity in Christ. Through baptism, we are adopted by God and made heirs, so we too are meant to be princes and princesses in God’s Kingdom. We have to learn how to live in that new role and identity because leading in God’s kingdom is very different than leading in this world. We’ll get to those challenges in a second.
The interesting thing is that Moses still ends up living with his own family. Remember Moses’ sister watched him in the water and saw when he was picked up by Pharoah’s daughter. Moses’ sister then asks Pharoah’s daughter if she should get a wet nurse for Moses and of course, the one she gets to nurse and take care of Moses is his own mother. His mother gives Moses up to God and then has him returned to her with greater status and potential. Everything finds greater status and potential in God, the difficult part is we have to have faith enough to give everything over to him. The funny thing is that Moses’ mother is even paid to raise and feed her own son Moses. God’s provision and bounty are extraordinary. Moses’ mom participates in God’s saving work and so meets blessing. She gives a lot, but God gives back far more.
Moses now lives in this dual identity. He is a child of his parents and an Israelite, yet he has been adopted and embraced to become a prince, a child of the ruler. We too must walk this fine line of living in this world and yet belonging to and living as a child of God.
Both of our dual identities are important to recognize and we cannot just abandon this world, but we also can’t be conformed to its ways. Moses gets it wrong. He has the potential to become a great leader in Egypt for Israel and even affect Pharoah’s actions, but instead, he acts out of anger and becomes a rebel. Moses sees an Egyptian beating an Israelite and kills the Egyptian and tries to hide it. Was the Egyptian doing something wrong? Yes. Did justice need to be done? Yes. Was Moses right in what he did? No. Was this the only thing Moses could have done? No. Who knows what God could have empowered Moses to do while he was in Pharoah’s courts? How could this whole story have looked different? We will never know because Moses takes things into his own hands and rather than trusting God, he lets chaos take over.
There are plenty of realities and needs for justice that we could relate to in our own lives. How do we hunger for justice in a way that humbles ourselves before God and trusts him first? But this reality doesn’t just apply to social justice, it challenges every decision we make, and every moment we live. We have been entrusted as leaders in God’s kingdom. Are we going to use this authority, leadership, and potential to humbly follow and seek God’s way? Or are we going to take things into our own hands and get it wrong?
We see the result for Moses as we can see it for ourselves. Moses now has blood on his hands. He is guilty, but it is more than that. The very next day Moses tries to stop two Israelites from fighting, particularly challenging the one who was in the wrong, but Moses’ ability to act out or create justice and peace becomes debilitated by his own act of injustice. Then through fear and natural reprisal, Moses becomes exiled from both families and roles. He finds he no longer belongs to either family. A scary idea, but we have experienced or at least seen this as well. We have seen how people are unable to act out of justice or cannot create it because of what they have done in the past. We have seen how people have become exiled and separated, even when intentions are good.
It seemed like Moses might have even known that God had a purpose for him and that God’s purpose was to turn Moses into a savior. Just as he was saved from the chaotic waters and death, Moses would soon help God to do the same for all of Israel. Yet, at this moment, we must come to the realization. God saves us for a purpose, but if we try to live into that purpose on our own, we will get it wrong. In fact worse than that, we will destroy our purpose and debilitate it. It is like we cut off our own hands.
Thankfully, God doesn’t leave us there. He doesn’t leave us in our own weakness. We will find out next week how God empowers Moses through his exile and reinstitutes his purpose in a new and powerful way, but even today we see that through marriage to a Midianite woman, God is making Moses into a shepherd, someone to guide, feed and protect his flock. Because God hears Israel’s cries for help, Moses will soon become God’s instrument in saving Israel. Israel themselves are then given a purpose to save as we all are.
God through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit has saved us time and time again. They have saved us from the chaos in this world, they have saved us from the consequences of our actions, and through faith, they want to save us from our own fear and inadequacy. But God doesn’t just leave us there. He does save us out of love, but out of love for others he gives us the purpose to join in his salvation work. We are meant to pull people out of injustice, slavery, and death to create peace and a new kingdom in God. We can’t do it on our own. As always, we need God’s help and guidance. We are saved to save. AMEN
