When Your Actions Cause an Interruption • Exodus 2:11-22; 3:5-10
By Melody Mercer
As a grown adult, my mind is swirling with different actions that could cause an interruption. We could run the gamut with examples. Sometimes you have time to think about the ramifications of your actions. Like when the police officer turns on his lights behind you, but goes around you to pull over the car up ahead. Sometimes the emotions take over, and there’s no thinking about it until the deed is done. Either way, we are ultimately responsible for our actions and the consequences that follow. We will see this week that God still chooses to use us regardless of our choices.
Our first scripture passage picks up 40 years after Moses becomes the grandson of Pharoah. The Bible doesn’t tell us just how long Moses’s mother “nursed” him before bringing him to Pharoah’s daughter, however two to three years is the common estimate based on the typical weaning age in the ancient world. I wonder if Moses remembered those Hebrew lullabies his mother would sing to him, or the stories of their forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
“Years later, after Moses had grown up, he went out to his own people and observed their forced labor” (2:11 CSB).
Somehow, he knew that the Israelites were “his people.” Had he been watching them work and be mistreated for years, months, days? Did he hear people in the palace talk about them mercilessly each day? Whatever the case, the fateful day that he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew slave was the last straw.
“Looking all around and seeing no one, he struck the Egyptian dead and hid him in the sand” (2:12 CSB).
Moses totally knew what he was doing. His caution showed that his actions were deliberate. He also tried to cover it up before anyone saw him, or so he thought. Somehow word got out. Could it have been the Hebrew slave that he saved? Did he go home and tell his family and neighbors who came to his aid? The next day, Moses goes back out and sees two Hebrews fighting. He is confused and obviously surprised to see one neighbor strike another. Moses sure didn’t get the response that he expected.
“Who made you a commander and judge over us?” the man replied. “Are you planning on killing me as you killed the Egyptian?” (2:14 CSB)
This makes me think about the resentment that the Israelites had toward this fellow Hebrew. He was one of them, but had lived in Pharoah’s palace with all the privileges of an Egyptian, while they had been slaves and worked like dogs. The last thing they wanted was Moses questioning any of their actions. He knew that he had been found out and had to think of something quick. Even Pharoah wanted Moses dead when he found out. Moses had no one to turn to, so he fled to Midian. Fleeing, meaning to run away from a dangerous situation, not a leisurely exit. It also was not just a two-day trip. Biblical scholars estimate the trip as being two weeks to a month across the Sinai desert.
For the next forty years, Moses lived in Midian, had gotten married, had a family, and was a shepherd for his father-in-law, Jethro. He was probably living a pretty comfortable, low stress life. Little did he know that Jehovah God was about to show up. God’s plan of redemption was ready for the next step. Moses was the one God had saved as a baby and saved from being killed in Egypt. He was the one to lead God’s chosen people to The Promised Land. God assured Moses that He had heard the cries of His people. Their misery and sufferings had never escaped His notice or concern. God had been watching over them, and it was finally time for them to be delivered from Egypt. This had been God’s plan for Moses’s life all along. Surely Moses thought back to the Hebrews that hated him, and the Egyptians that didn’t want him. How would he carry out this task God had given him?
I often remind my students that God chooses ORDINARY people to do EXTRAORDINARY things. God can take whatever situation we get ourselves into and use it for His glory.
Mercer is a member of First Church, Jackson.
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