future water.
Hi I'm Ryan, founder and pastor of Ocean Water. We install systems that turn ocean
water into drinking water for small marginalized rural communities in the
108 countries of the world that have direct ocean access. The water is
distributed for free and the annual savings for the community goes towards
empowering locals for their future. Now we do this while starting easy beach
churches revolving mostly around reading the Bible together every day and eating
a lot of food together. We would love for you to be involved so I'd like you to
email me at ryan.oceanwater.gmail.com because I'd like to send you a
free copy of a book I wrote called Ride for Water, the story of the time I wrote
a hundred thousand miles through ten countries and help bring clean water to
over a hundred thousand people. It's a fun read and it documents our beginnings
here at Ocean Water. In the next 12 months we will go to El Salvador,
Indonesia and Bangladesh and we want you to be on one of those trips with us. We'd
love to have you come. Our objective is simple, it's disciples making disciples
who plant churches that plant churches. Now today we're looking at Exodus chapter
2 from our daily Bible reading plan. Let's read it together. It says, now a man
of the tribe of Levi married a Levi woman and she became pregnant and gave
birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child she hid him for three
months but when she could hide him no longer she got a papyrus basket for him
and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it
among the reeds along the bank of the Nile. His sister stood at a distance to
see what would happen to him. Then Pharaoh's daughter went down to the Nile
to bathe and her attendants were walking along the riverbank. She saw the basket
among the reeds and sent her female slaves to get it. She opened it, she saw
the baby, he was crying and she felt sorry for him. She said, well this is one
of the Hebrew babies. Then his sister asked Pharaoh's daughter, shall I go out
and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for him? Yes, go she answered.
So the girl went and got the baby's mother. Now Pharaoh's daughter said to her,
take this baby and nurse him for me and I will pay you. So the woman took the
baby and nursed him. When the child grew older she took him to Pharaoh's daughter
and he became her son. She named him Moses saying, I drew him up out of the
water. 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, seeing no one, he killed
the Egyptian and hit him in the sand. The next day he went and saw the two
Hebrews fighting. He asked the one in the wrong, why are you hitting your fellow
Hebrew? And 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.
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, came to their rescue and watered their flock.
When the girls returned to Ruel, 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 Ruel?
Asked his daughters, why did you leave him? Invite him to have something to eat.
So Moses agreed to stay with the man who gave his daughter Zipporah to Moses in
marriage. Zipporah gave birth to a son, Moses named him Gershom, saying, I have
become a foreigner in a land. During that period the king of Egypt died. The
Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out for help because their slavery
went up to God. God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with
Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. So God looked on the Israelites and was
concerned about them. So let me give you some background. Exodus has been called
the sequel to Genesis. In the book of Exodus nothing is commenced, nothing is
finished. Exodus actually means a way out. Now the key verse of the whole book says,
I am the Lord thy God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the
house of slavery. Exodus 20 verse 2. Now Moses's life is divided into three parts,
kind of three forty-year periods. The first is forty years in Pharaoh's
palace, then forty years in the desert, then forty years in the wilderness as
the leader of Israel. Now today we're gonna look at the very beginning of his
life, the first forty years. Verses 1 through 4, Moses was a Levi both by
father and mother. Now Jacob left Levi under the mark of disgrace and yet soon
after Moses appears and descended from him, this tribe began to distinguish from
the rest by the birth of Moses and afterwards it became remarkable in many
other instances. So there's a newborn infant now he's hidden. It seems to have
been at just that time that there was a cruel law that was passed about
murdering all of the newborn baby children. Now observe the beauty of God's
direction. Just at the time when Pharaoh's cruelty rose to the height a
deliverer was born, though he didn't appear for many years. You see men have
always predicted the ruin of the church but God's always been preparing its
salvation. Moses is a type of this. Now God ordered that being afterwards told
of this, he might be come to the deliverance and bring his brothers out of
Egypt. Now I want you to note that God sometimes gives his gifts and manifests
himself in those that he designs to do great things. He put an early strength
into Samson, an early strength in Samuel, an early strength in David, an early
leadership in Timothy. Now we can often see the signs of our leadership early on
in our lives but faith needs encouragement. It needs favor. We need
hints that God's actually working in our life. This is what he was doing with
Moses. He was preparing Moses. He wanted Moses to fear him and not fear man. So
God puts into his hearts these things to bring about his own purposes that Moses
might be the means to bring his people out of the land of Egypt. So he prepares
Moses by making him a part of Pharaoh's court. Now verses 5 through 10 he talks
about that he'd been left there, that he'd been perished there. Then in a little time
with hunger, if he had not been sooner washed into the river, he might have been
devoured by a crocodile. Now God cares for us in our infancy to remind us that
he's working for us later in our life. You see Moses was surrounded by a lot of
peril but God also brought him out of much. God often raises up people even
amongst their enemies. Now Pharaoh was seeking Egypt's destruction but God was
preparing a deliverance. Now Moses was provided with a mom. Pharaoh's
daughter became his mother. Now God often looks out for us in raising people up to
help us. This is what's happening here. Many who seem by their birth marked for
poverty, God can raise up and prosper them and actually prepare them to help
be his hands and feet in the world. Those whom God designs for great service he
often finds ways to qualify and prepare them for. Moses got his education in
Pharaoh's court. He got his training in the best Egyptian schools. He learned how
to serve and be a good employee under Pharaoh's care. He got his education there.
These were all the early signs of something that God was going to prepare
Pharaoh for. God was already laying the seeds of preparing Moses for what he was
going to do in his life. Now the seeds of how God is going to use this is usually
shown very early but it's only in looking back that we can see with
clarity what God was up to. Now Pharaoh's daughter called him Moses, drawn up out
of the water. This signifies this in Egyptian language, very strong. He was
drawn out. He was a leader. Now Moses had passed the first 40 years of his life in
the court of Pharaoh. He was preparing himself for business and now it's time
for him to enter into action and he boldly owns and begins to lead God's
people but he doesn't get off to a great start. Moses was grown when he went out
to his brothers and he looked at their burdens. This really bothered him. It said
that he had a holy contempt for the way that his people were being
treated. So much so that he took a man's life. Now this is really an interesting
passage. Why was Moses so quick to short-circuit everything that God was
beginning to do in his life? Was it good that he saw his brothers and sisters in
bondage? Yes. Was it poor that he acted impetuously and struck out at a man and
caused it to take his life? Yes it is. Moses found himself under God's divine
direction and impulse but he rushed in and made some wrong moves. He killed an
Egyptian man, one of the taskmasters who he found abusing one of his fellow
people. A man of the same tribe. Now this Egyptian was killed by Moses. Now
Moses was only reprimanded really. So what's going on here? Well God's the
ultimate judge. God always has all the facts. Justice will be distributed
perfectly in heaven. On earth we have social justice. Sometimes we have no
justice and sometimes we get justice right. But in heaven justice will be
perfect. It's gonna be so refreshing and God will be able to have justice
perfectly because he has all of the facts. Now later on this would come into
play because Moses would experience God's grace and this would help him
later on be gracious as a leader. We find in verse 16 Moses gains a settlement
in Midian. The father of Jacob had gained one in Syria and again God was working
through this situation. Events that would seem weird or accidental were
actually designed by God in his wisdom and in his purpose to set Midian, Moses
up to be the leader that God wanted him to be. Moses had some melancholy and some
distress and was really confused but he rose up and he began to be the person
that God wanted him to be. Now he loved justice and appearing in the defense of
those that he sought injured which every man should do as it is in the power of
his hand to do. He loved to be doing good. Wherever God puts us we should desire
and endeavor to be useful and when we cannot do the good we should be ready to
do the good that we can. And God is faithful when we're faithful in the
little things God will help us be faithful over the big things. Now when
the young women acquainted their father with the kindness that they have
received from the stranger he sent them to invite them to his house and he made
much of it. Now God will repay the kindness which were shown any time that
we show it to others. God will never lose our reward. Now Moses soon recommended
himself and received the favor of this prince in Midian who took him into his
house and in the process at this time married one of his daughters by whom he
had a son and he called him Gershom. He was a stranger there. Now if God would
ever give us a home we should remember in the land that God has given it to us.
Now this was a settlement in Midian. It was designed by God to shelter him for
the present moment to do great things for him. God will often hide us in a
place to prepare us for what he's going to be doing for us. Just because you're
hidden doesn't mean that you're forgotten. It was also designed to prepare him for
the future. He gave him a manner of life in Midian where he kept the flock of his
father-in-law. This prepared him to be a shepherd over a large group of people and
to toughen him up to hardship and poverty that he might know how to lead
in a desert situation. So those God intends to exalt he first humbles to get
complete devotion to him. Now Egypt accomplished in him the role of being a
scholar and a gentleman and a statesman and a soldier because those were the
qualities he was going to need to lead God's people in a desert. Now in verse
23 the murdering of the infants did not continue. This part of the suffering was
only for a period. It was connected with the birth of Moses and served to
signalize it. Now the Egyptians were content with their increase. They were
finding that Egypt was enriched by their labor so they might have had them for
slaves. Now they were intent to keep them working in the land so much so that 70
people entered in to the land of Egypt. Now they were swelled to two million
people by most scholars study of this and so this created a problem. The people
wanted out and so if ever there was a time when God wanted to deliver them it
was now. God had began to hear their cry and that's how we kind of see this
chapter wrapping up. So we can see God preparing Moses early on. We can see him
testing his leadership and developing him and then he starts to see his moment
of leadership that he's then gonna begin to step into. We all have a moment in our
life that we step into. It's been said that you get to pick the furniture in
your house but you don't get to pick your moment. This is certainly true of
Moses. Now was it hard looking after sheep and Midian? Yes. But God was getting him
ready to answer the afflictions that they were facing. Now the preface to
their deliverance at last it says they cried and they began to think of God
under their troubles and to return to him from the idols that they had served.
Now they had worried they had been exposed to all of this and now they were
finally ready to come and worship God after all of the slavery and the
oppression that they had been experiencing. Now it's a good sign that
God is coming with us and he's about to deliver us when we
cry out to him. God heard the name of God here is different. It's with a focus that
God was ready to move and God was ready to act. God had heard their groaning. He
made it appear that he took notice of their complaints. There's not a complaint
in our life that God doesn't hear and want to help us with but his timing is
different than when we cry. We have to always trust God for his timing. So we
can see God working in the life of Moses. We can see him preparing. We can see God
getting ready to do things through Moses and we're gonna learn about this as we keep reading it into the rest of the book of Exodus.
Now God was preparing him just like he's preparing us. Now God looked upon the
children in Israel. Moses looked upon them and he pitied them but now God
looked upon them and he helped them. God had respect for them, a favorable aspect
towards them. The final repetition of the name of God here at the end of the
chapter intimates that we're to expect something great when we cry out to God.
Do you expect something great? I know I do. It's one of the reasons I pray. I
believe that God's gonna hear me and answer my prayers. God wants to show
himself strong on Moses's behalf and strong on our behalf. Now this concludes
our time today in Exodus chapter 2. Now every time we finish I'd like to invite
you to pray with us at the end. Would you pray with me right now? Would you just say
God I ask that you help me to follow you today. That you'd help me to do your will
for my life. That you would transform me into the person that you want me to
become. I ask that you help me today. That you would forgive me of my sin. That you'd come
into my heart. That you'd fill me with your spirit. In Jesus name, Amen.
Now I want to thank you, our team of 15 people now that really helped run
Ocean Water. On our website we have a 38 page business plan and a market
analysis of the 108 countries. We have a link of over 2,000 future sites that
we're praying for. When I started Ocean Water I knew that if we had a plan, we
have a 38 page one, that if we had a great team and that if we ran a
transparent organization that we would attract smart, generous, and capable
people and we are. Now there's never been a better time to give through Ocean Water.
We're doing our part. Would you do yours? Would you pray to God? Would you ask him
what to give and then would you give it? Amen. Have a beautiful week.
If you'd like more information about Ocean Water Church, how to join us on an upcoming
trip, how to be part of one of our Clean Water projects, how to financially
support our movement, or even information on how you can start an Ocean Water
Church yourself, please look us up at OceanWater.com