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EXODUS 1–2; PSALMS 26–27

Week 4, Day 3

When Jacob and his family came to Egypt, they were only the size of a good family reunion. As such they were welcome, particularly since one of their number, Joseph, was already established as a national hero. But when both Joseph and the generation that knew him died, and the family took on the proportions of a small city-state, their Egyptian neighbors began to fear them.

So the government set out to destroy Israel by killing each newborn baby boy. But the midwives frustrated their effort in general, and then one family in the house of Levi frustrated it in a particularly dramatic case. By faith and courage they saved the baby’s life; then, by God’s providence, the baby ended in Pharaoh’s palace, adopted by his daughter. So it was that the king who intended to destroy all Israelite male babies ended up preserving the very one who would one day deliver the Israelites from slavery, a man named Moses.

But it was not going to be easy. Moses received the best of training in his setting of preferment, yet somehow kept a heart for his own people, and apparently a sense of justice too. One day, while trying to protect an Israelite slave, Moses killed an Egyptian.

Just that suddenly the prince became a fugitive. He fled to Midian, where he could live in obscurity. There he became a shepherd, married, and started a family. End of the dream? Not with God.

PRAYER: Help me to see, dear Lord, that you are at work at all times and in all places, always and unfailingly. Thank you! Amen.

As you consider the down, up, and down again of Moses’ life in these two chapters, make a comparison and an application to your own life.