Midweek Devotion: Wednesday 2nd December 2020: A God who rescues
Exodus 2:23-25
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.
Devotion: A God who rescues
On Sunday, as we continued our series looking at times when God met people, we thought about the time when God met Moses.
It’s worth us remembering why that happened.
The Israelites were in Egypt and, as a people, they had grown rapidly (and so fulfilling God’s promise to Abraham made in Genesis 12, 15 and 17) but they were enslaved by the Egyptians. The Egyptians were cruel taskmasters and the Israelites suffered greatly. In their suffering they ‘cried out’ to God for help (see Exodus 2:23).
In our reading for today, let’s notice God’s actions – He ‘heard,’ He ‘remembered’ (not that God forgets, rather that, at this point, He decided to act), He ‘saw’ and He ‘knew.’ God knew what was going on, He knew the pain His people were suffering and, in response to their prayers, He started to act to save them.
And that rescue plan required Moses, and that’s why God met Moses at the ‘burning bush’ (see Exodus 3:1-6) and God spoke to Him:
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. 10 Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.” Exodus 3:7-10
These events tell us a great deal about what God is like – His character – particularly the fact that He is committed to saving them. And, as the Bible’s story unfolds we learn that God is so committed to the salvation of His people that He launched His greatest rescue mission, and for that He used someone greater than Moses – His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ – the One who ‘came down’ (linked here with Exodus 3:8) to rescue them from the enslavement of, and the deserved punishment for, their sin. A rescue He would achieve through His death and resurrection.
In these painful and challenging days, can I encourage us all to know that, as we ‘cry out’ to God, He ‘sees’ and He ‘knows’ and ultimately He will bring everyone who turns inn faith to Him, through the challenges of this life and into His eternal presence – the ultimate fulfilment of the idea of the ‘Promised Land.’ We are not on our own, our loving Father is with us and will bring us through.
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