EXODUS 2
It is said of Moses’ parents that “they saw the child beautiful” (Hebrews 11: 23), and Stephen told the council that he was “fair to God” (Acts 7: 20). They [p. 5] beheld in him a beauty that was in relation to God, and that must be preserved for God’s pleasure and service. What a lovely type of Christ is before us here! The One in whom all moral loveliness came under the eye of God, and in whom was His delight! If we get an apprehension of Christ in His beauty God-ward I think we shall realize at once that He could not have any place in the world under Satan’s rule. He could not possibly be tolerated there. The only man who is accounted of in the world is the man after the flesh, who is in every way a grief to God. There is no place there for the new order of Man that is seen in Christ.
Moses’ mother felt that such a child must be hidden. “She saw him that he was fair, and hid him three months”. We have to face the fact that there is no acceptance in the world for that which has true moral beauty; there is no niche in the world-system where what is lovely in the sight of God can be fitted in. It is under death here. We may connect this with the early chapters of Luke. We see the Child “fair to God” there, but we see it fully recognized that there would be no place for Him in the world. Simeon said to His mother, “Even a sword shall go through thine own soul”, and he asked to be let go in peace; he did not wish to remain where no place would be accorded to Christ.
Jochebed realized that Moses’ beauty was something which it was her privilege and joy to cherish in secret, but that in the Egypt world it would only be exposed to hatred and death. Do we cherish in our hearts that which has beauty God-ward, and which can never be accepted in Egypt? If we cherish it for ourselves, we surely cherish it in regard of our children also.
[p. 6] Every believing parent to whom Christ is precious recognizes that his children are “holy” (1 Corinthians 7: 14), and that they are to be preserved for God in view of the rights of Christ over them, and in view of Christ being cherished also in their faith and affections. For those who have holy children it is an exercise, as it was with Moses’ mother, to hide them from the world.
Then she put him in an ark of reeds, and laid it in the sedge on the bank of the river. She committed him to God in the recognition that he was under death, but with the faith in her heart that God would preserve the beauty she had seen in him. She wanted Moses, not for the Egypt world, but for God and for the brethren. See verse 11 and Acts 7: 23. The flesh is under death with God, and must go out in death, but, on the other hand, every feature of the moral beauty of Christ which is precious and delightful to God can only have the place of death in a world dominated by Satan. So that faith has no thought of a place in the world either for itself or for those whom it cherishes as “fair to God”. It accepts death for them as to the world-system, but looks for God’s providential care that, as carrying the features of Christ’s moral beauty, they may be preserved for His service and testimony, and for the brethren.
In connection with Pharaoh’s daughter we see how wonderfully God preserves providentially what is of Himself and for His pleasure. Even as to the Lord Jesus there was a providential preservation in His being taken into Egypt (Matthew 2: 13 - 15). Where there is faith God comes in providentially so that what is of Himself may be preserved. Otherwise soon there would not be a saint on earth. If Satan had been permitted to have his way he would, by [p. 7] means of Herod, have killed Jesus as a little child, and he would not suffer a saint to live. But God preserves providentially what is precious in His sight, so that it may be maintained here according to His will and for His testimony, in spite of all the hostility of Satan and the world. And “all things serve His might”; He could move the heart of Pharaoh’s daughter, and use her to defeat her father’s plans, and still retain Moses under the care of his parents.
I think Moses got his spiritual training under the care of his parents, perhaps more particularly from his mother, as she is the one mentioned most in connection with him, and that training proved superior to all the influences of Egypt. You may depend upon it that what he learned in Pharaoh’s court, and in the colleges of Egypt, was not of the least use to him as Israel’s deliverer, or as king in Jeshurun to order the people of God in the wilderness. “The wisdom of the Egyptians” would have been quite baffled to make a way through the Red Sea, or to supply water and food for that vast host in the wilderness. Egypt’s learning is absolutely of no use in the wilderness, and that every one must find. In keeping Jethro’s flock in the wilderness Moses was being disciplined and taught of God, and fitted to care for Jehovah’s flock in a similar position, but this was divine education. We have to distinguish between what we may learn, in the course of God’s providence, of this world’s wisdom, and that spiritual education and divine teaching which give the knowledge of God, and which give qualification to act for God and the good of His people. What we may learn, in the course of God’s providence, in Egypt’s schools, will never be of the smallest help to us in the discernment [p. 8] of the path of faith; nor will it furnish us with an atom of power to take one step in that path. No doubt Moses became a finished product of the highest education that Egypt could afford, but all that had to give place to a very much higher education of an entirely different order. The elements of that education were, I doubt not, imparted to him by his mother, and through her faith became effective in his soul:
So that Moses came out at forty years of age as the product of the faith and influence of his mother. “It came into his heart to look upon his brethren, the sons of Israel” (Acts 7: 23). He had been cherished by faith as having beauty God-ward, and we may be sure that his mother nursed him not for Egypt but for the brethren. No doubt she gave him an impression of their moral greatness as “the people of God” and “the sons of Israel” that he never lost, even amidst the surroundings of the court, and the ensnaring influence of the wisdom of the Egyptians. He cherished them in his heart as his brethren. “He went out to his brethren, and looked on their burdens”. We are only told here what he did outwardly, but in the New Testament we have brought before us his personal exercises of faith. “By faith Moses, when he had become great, refused to be called son of Pharaoh’s daughter; choosing rather to suffer affliction along with the people of God than to have the temporary pleasure of sin; esteeming the reproach of the Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt, for he had respect to the recompense” (Hebrews 11: 24 - 26). This shows that the true value of a position in the world is that its possessor has the privilege of surrendering it for Christ, and choosing rather [p. 9] that suffering and reproach which are the portion of the people of God, and of Christ, in the world.
But nothing of this is mentioned in Exodus 2, because Moses is viewed here as typical of Christ the Deliverer of His people. His affections and interests were bound up with his brethren, and how perfectly do we see this in the true Moses, the One whose soul ever said to the saints on the earth, and to the excellent, “In them is all my delight”. He would go with the repentant remnant in the path of righteousness which they were treading in submitting to John’s baptism and accepting its import; and He loved to own as His brethren those who heard the word of God and did His will. He loved the people, and had the thoughts and mind of God as to them, and would connect Himself with every divine exercise that moved in their souls. We see the spirit of all this in Moses — the Spirit of Christ, the true Deliverer — and he looked on the burdens of his brethren as one conscious that he was there for their deliverance from oppression and bondage. “He thought that his brethren would understand that God by his hand was giving them deliverance” (Acts 7: 25).
God had in His mind to free His people from the associations of Egypt, and from everything servile, that He might be served according to the pleasure which His love found in them. “When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son” (Hosea 11: 1). Moses cherished his brethren in relation to God, and he was in accord with God’s thoughts as to them. “But they understood not”. He had to experience in his measure what happened afterwards to the true Moses: “He came to his own, and his own received him not”.
[p. 10] We see him here in a twofold character which is full of interest and instruction. The hand of a deliverer smote the Egyptian who was “smiting a Hebrew, one of his brethren”; and the heart of a true shepherd appeared in the care with which he would have set two Hebrews at one who were quarrelling. But, refused by those whom he would have delivered, and hated by Pharaoh, he fled to the land of Midian to show there the same hand and heart. He could not be other than what he was — a precious type of Him who is the same yesterday, and today, and for ever. If his brethren refused him, and he had to flee from Egypt, it was only that he might reveal in other circumstances, and to other needy ones, the hand of a deliverer and the heart of a shepherd. The hand of a deliverer intervened on behalf of Reuel’s daughters, and the heart of a shepherd expressed itself in his care for the flock. He was an exile and apparently buried in obscurity, but be was true to his character as the deliverer even there.
No doubt we may see in this a figure of the present service of grace which Christ is rendering amongst the Gentiles, while rejected by His own people Israel. He is making that precious well — the knowledge of God in grace, and the gift of His Spirit — available for Gentiles.
Then the figure goes further, for we find that of those delivered by his hand he gets a bride. This is clearly a type of the church as given to Christ in the day of His separation from Israel who has refused Him. And the special character of this type of the church is that she is set forth as sharing with Christ the sense of His rejection. Moses in Midian is a figure of Christ in rejection, carrying the sense of it ever in His heart;
[p. 11] this is indicated in the name which he gave his son; Gershom means “A stranger there”. And Zipporah represents the church as the companion of His rejection, sharing the sense and the experience of it with Him, and keeping the word of His patience while anticipating the coming day when, through divine working, Israel will call Him Blessed, and reap the fruit in liberty of His delivering power.
Christ will not have His rights on earth, nor will Jehovah have His rights as “the Lord of all the earth”, until Israel receives Him and is delivered by Him. The church in the intelligence of this, and as the companion of Christ in rejection, can never be an earth-dweller; she can never take the place of being at home here while Christ is rejected; she must ever have in her heart that name Gershom — “A stranger there”! In type Rebecca is the church as a comfort for Christ in the day when Israel yields Him no comfort, when she is dead as to her affections for Him. Asnath is the church as affording Him full satisfaction and fruitfulness, so that the sense of toil and exile is forgotten by Him. But Zipporah is the church as sharing with Him in sympathetic affections the place of rejection and strangership. Each type is beautiful and full of instruction in its place.
Moses was no doubt being qualified by the long years of his discipline in obscurity in Midian for the great service which he was eventually to render. Like Joseph he displayed in obscurity the qualities of divine wisdom which afterwards came into public display in the most exalted position. We also see this in the One of whom both Joseph and Moses were types. In humiliation and under reproach, and moving about in the lowliest guise, He showed in every way the [p. 12] Hand and the Heart that will ere long deliver the wide creation from every form of bondage, and that will tend in Shepherd care the vast multitudes that come under His universal rule. The church, too, as typified in Zipporah, has her place with Him in lowliness and obscurity and suffering before she shares with Him the wide glories of His coming reign.
The closing verses of the chapter carry us back to Egypt to show us how God was preparing His people there to appreciate deliverance. We have seen them oppressed and afflicted, and made to serve with harshness, and when Moses went out he looked on their burdens, but there is no mention of any cry until verse 23 of this chapter. When their cry came up to God He heard it, and remembered His covenant. Nearly eighty years of affliction are comprised in the history of this chapter; all intended, under the hand of God, to produce such a sense of their condition and position that they could only sigh and cry. They could not be true “sons of Israel” without being first sons of Jacob, and learning in helplessness what it was to be shut up to God for blessing. God allows the oppression of the enemy, whatever form it may take, and uses it to bring the souls of His people to a point when they can only cry to Him. He is ready to hear as soon as that cry goes up. When His people know no resource but Himself He can appear in delivering power. It is ever so in the ways and grace of our God.
His compassions are seen in His hearing the groaning of the children of Israel in their bondage. But He also “remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob”. It was from those two points of view that “God looked upon the children of Israel”. He had a compassionate regard to their condition, and to their cry and groaning, but He also remembered His covenant. “In his love and in his pity he redeemed them”. There was pity for their distress and misery, but there was love which had covenanted blessing for them long before. Now that they felt their condition He could acknowledge them as His people.
The chapter closes with these words — the sure pledge of divine deliverance and blessing — “And God looked upon the children of Israel, and God acknowledged them”. Whenever the cry of conscious need and misery goes up to God there is that which He can acknowledge. It is like the repentance which causes joy in heaven, or the supplication of a broken and subdued heart concerning which He can say, “Behold, he prayeth”. When such a cry is genuine, God can acknowledge those who utter it, not only as the subjects of His compassion, but as the people of His covenant.