Exodus 2:11-25 Study Guide: Exiled

Community Group Study Guide — Exodus 2:11-25 Remembered

Study Information:
We each experience turning points in our lives that define us. Some of those turning points are things that happen to us against our will, often in the form of suffering and other times they take the shape of bold decisions we made. For Moses, when he had grown up, his eyes were able to see the injustice being done against his people. 

Moses was providentially spared from a life of slavery and hardship through the bold faith of his mom and the surprising compassion of Pharaoh’s daughter (Exodus 2:1-10), but now he began to identify with the suffering of his people and he needed to act. What we read in our text is that Moses had God’s heart of justice, but lacked God’s timing, patience and method and rather than being embraced as a hero, his life changed when his own people rejected him. This bold decision and rejection from his people led to Moses’s exile out of Egypt into the land of Midian which would in many ways define much of his life, but God was faithful to use that experience to form and shape Moses into a man whom God would use to lead his people. 

God’s Heart Without God’s Timing
Exodus 2:11-14
When Moses had “grown up,” his eyes were open to the suffering of his people. According to Stephen in Acts 7:23 “grown up” was 40 years old! Moses had lived and trained in Pharaoh’s household for 40 years, which means he had been established in the Egyptian court and knew the ins and outs of life in the empire. It appears that Moses knew his won heritage as a Hebrew because he decide to get a first hand look at what was happening to his people. It would be hard to imagine him not knowing about their slavery since that was integral to Pharaoh’s oppressive government, but there is a difference between knowing and “knowing” what was going on. What Moses saw appalled him; he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, “one of his people.” Notice that very important statement of identity…, Moses saw the Hebrews as "his people,” not the Egyptians. 

Moses had God’s heart for justice in this situation. Like God, Moses saw this oppression and knew that it was wrong (Exodus 2:25). The big difference is that Moses did not have God’s timing, patience or methods to respond to this injustice. Moses reacted rather than allowing God to respond and act, like God would later do with the plagues, the passover angel and the Red Sea. It is likely that Moses did not know God very well at this point in his life, and even if he did, it is likely that he thought God was moving too slowly. So, Moses looked around to make sure that no one would see, and then he killed the Egyptian with his own hands and buried him in the sand (Exodus 2:12). 

Instead of being accepted as a hero and savior, Moses experienced tremendous rejection as a person stuck between two worlds. Was he part of the system or was he a savior? The next day Moses went out to investigate the oppression of his people and saw to Hebrews fighting. The word “strike” used here in Exodus 2:13, and is the same word used of the Egyptian beating the Hebrew in verse 11, and for Moses’s fatal assault of the Egyptian in verse 12. So what Moses saw was a violent physical attack between two of his own people. He went to break it up and instead of being a hero, Moses was met with rejection, “who made you ruler and judge of us?” The Hebrews saw Moses as still part of the system of oppression, not a liberator. And they threw back into Moses’s face the murder that he committed. This rejection will be characteristic of Moses’s life and shows us a theme that is also part of Jesus’s life as he was rejected by the ones he came to save (John 1:11-12).

Exile
Exodus 2:15-22
This secret act of justice was known to the Hebrew community and from there it got to Pharaoh’s ears and it appeared that any sort of protection Moses had evaporated in that moment. Moses was afraid, Pharaoh sought to kill him, so Moses fled to the wilderness. This was Moses’s own personal exodus out of Egypt, one that he’d do all over again with the entire nation of Israel as they would need to escape a new murderous Pharaoh (Exodus 2:23).

Moses’s reception in Midian could not have been more different than what he left in Egypt. A group of women were in need of help at the area’s well and Moses rose up and rescued them from a group of aggressive shepherds. The priest of Midian, a man named Reuel (translates as “Friend of God”) received Moses and brought him into his home and gave him his daughter Zipporah for marriage. Moses would establish a new home and a new family with his wife and new son whom he named Gershom or “foreigner here.” This may seem like a strange name, but names in the ancient world were chosen for meaning more than for how they sounded and Moses saw his life as one of an exile. He was placeless in Egypt, placeless in Midian and would die looking at the Promised Land on Mount Nebo. 

God used this exile to protect Moses and to establish this relationship with Reuel/Jethro which would become instrumental in Moses learning how to lead and establish elders in Egypt (Exodus 18). Likewise, Moses lived the next 40 years of his life in obscurity, learning and unknowingly waiting for God to call him back to the mission of justice that he had abandoned. 

God Remembered
Exodus 2:23-25
Was God silent and disinterested? These verses serve to give us an understanding of what God was doing through all of what we read in Exodus 1-2. These chapters encapsulate hundreds of years of time and many decades of oppression.

While Moses was in Midian, the king of Egypt died. So the next Pharaoh will be the third one we’ve encountered in Exodus. However, the slavery of the Hebrews did not end with this regime change; they continued to groan and cry out for help. How did God respond? God heard, God remembered his covenant with Abraham, God saw and God knew. God did not forget, rather this remembering is consistent with how the scripture speaks about God being faithful to his promises, God would act and respond to the cry for help by sending a person, Moses. Likewise God heard our cry, remembered his promise, saw our need and knew our suffering. God responded to our need for redemption and freedom from sin by sending Jesus who would die for us and for our salvation. 

At your community group:
Take 15-20 minutes to share about how God has been at work in your life, prayer concerns and pray for one another.

How did God speak to you through the scripture and the sermon this week? 

Discussion Questions:
Read Exodus 2:11-25

How did Moses have the same response of justice as God (see Exodus 2:11 and 2:23-25) and yet acted differently than how God would of had him respond?

Why do you think Moses was rejected by the Hebrews, who were fighting, instead of being seen as someone to rally behind? How does this point forward to the life of Jesus?

Exodus 2:23-25 gives us insight into God’s thoughts about what was going on in that God heard, God saw, God remembered his covenant and God knew. What do you think these verses are communicating to us? What do you do when you struggle to believe that God knows and cares about your suffering?

This was a turning point in Moses life and one that he seemed to struggle with (notice how he named his son based on Moses’s own life as an exile). How has God used these types of turning points in your life to deepen our faith and trust in him?