Lessons from Moses: Grace, Obedience, and Redemption

Devotional

Day 1: Rescued Reeds and the Basket of Grace

A child floats in a tar-pitched basket among Nile reeds, protected by a sister’s watchful eye. This fragile vessel becomes the unlikely cradle of deliverance, mirroring Noah’s ark of salvation. Moses’ survival reveals God’s habit of using ordinary objects – and ordinary people – to accomplish extraordinary rescues. Grace often arrives disguised as desperation, a mother’s tear-stained plan becoming the means of preserving Israel’s future. The same hands that crafted death traps along the Nile would later part its waters. [59:39]

“When she could hide him no longer, she took for him a basket made of bulrushes and daubed it with bitumen and pitch. She put the child in it and placed it among the reeds by the river bank.”
(Exodus 2:3, ESV)

Reflection: What “basket” has God placed in your life – a seemingly fragile provision – that actually carries His protection? How does Moses’ rescue challenge your view of what’s “safe” versus what’s sacred?

Day 2: Midwives Who Measured Fear

Shiphrah and Puah stare down Pharaoh’s death decree, their hands still smelling of newborn life. These forgotten heroines choose trembling before God over trembling before power, turning delivery rooms into resistance cells. Their story whispers that true courage isn’t the absence of fear but the presence of greater allegiance. While pyramids rose through forced labor, two women’s quiet defiance built eternal monuments in heaven’s halls. [57:06]

“The midwives feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but let the male children live.”
(Exodus 1:17, ESV)

Reflection: Where does your cultural moment demand Shiphrah-and-Puah courage? How does their example reframe “obedience” when human authority conflicts with divine conscience?

Day 3: Desert Degrees and Burned Bush Credentials

Moses trades palace linen for shepherd’s wool, his BSD (Backside of Desert) degree etched by forty years of sandstorms. The bush that burns without consuming becomes God’s classroom for a stuttering prince. Our most profound preparation often happens far from crowds, where ambition dies and ears attune to holy ground whispers. What the world dismisses as “wasted years” God uses to forge deliverers. [01:05:29]

“Now Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God.”
(Exodus 3:1, ESV)

Reflection: What “desert season” in your life, initially seen as setback, might God be using to prepare you for sacred purpose? How does Moses’ midlife transition redefine your view of timing?

Day 4: Waters That Divide and Define

Chariot wheels churn mud as the Red Sea swallows Egypt’s pride. What begins as a death march becomes a birth canal for a nation. The same waters that judge oppressors baptize the liberated, their sandals crunching on ocean floor stones like communion bread. Deliverance often comes through impossible paths – where walls of water flank and heaven’s wind carves roadways. [01:13:13]

“The Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided.”
(Exodus 14:21, ESV)

Reflection: What “Red Sea” confronts you – a situation requiring both radical trust and obedient movement? How does Israel’s passage redefine what you consider “possible” for God?

Day 5: Four Questions at Sinai’s Foot

Smoke-cloaked Sinai receives a people asking identity’s core questions: Who are we? What’s our purpose? Who is God? Will He stay? The thundering answers shape covenant, not just doctrine – a relationship etched in stone yet written on hearts. Our deepest spiritual journeys still orbit these four queries, each answered ultimately in Christ who tabernacles among us. [01:14:18]

“Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples.”
(Exodus 19:5, ESV)

Reflection: Which of Sinai’s four questions resonates most with your current season? How does Exodus’ ending – God dwelling among His people – answer our deepest existential fears?

Sermon Summary

Exodus begins with God’s rescue mission already in motion. Genesis had shown a good creation, then one rebellion after another: Eden, the flood generation, and Babel. God could have “kicked the wretched thing to bits,” as Luther put it, but God chose another path. God built a rescue team through Abraham’s family, and by the end of Genesis, Joseph stood in Egypt like a shadow of Jesus, forgiving by grace and giving provisions.

Exodus 1 turns the page with the words, “Joseph died.” A new Pharaoh rises who “did not know Joseph,” and that spells disaster for the people of God. Pharaoh sees Israel multiplying and decides to deal “wisely” with them, which really means slavery, bitterness, forced labor, and then child murder. Shiphrah and Puah stand out as heroes because they feared God more than Pharaoh. Their names stay emblazoned in history because obedience to God mattered more than orders from a king.

Moses enters the story under the banner of grace. His mother sees that he is beautiful, hides him, and places him in a little ark-like basket on the Nile. Pharaoh’s daughter, from the very household killing Hebrew boys, draws out the very child God will use to draw Israel out. Moses grows up torn between two worlds: a Hebrew by blood and a prince in the greatest superpower on earth.

Moses then tries deliverance in his own strength. He kills an Egyptian, hides him in the sand, and finds out everybody knows. Pharaoh tries to kill him, and Moses runs across the world to Midian. There Moses earns his “BSD,” his backside of the desert degree. For forty years he lives in luxury, for forty years he is humbled, and for forty years he becomes God’s spokesman.

God hears Israel’s cry, takes notice, and meets Moses at the burning bush. Moses answers God’s call with excuse after excuse: no credentials, no name to give, no confidence that Israel will believe, no public speaking skill, and finally, “send somebody else.” God’s anger burns, yet God still sends an eighty-year-old ex-murderer shepherd from nowhere to Pharaoh.

Pharaoh answers, “Who is the Lord that I should obey his voice?” The plagues answer that question. Egypt’s gods fall one by one until Pharaoh finally lets Israel go, then changes his mind. At the sea, Moses tells the frightened people, “Do not fear, stand and see.” The Lord fights while Israel keeps silent, and the waters that threaten become the way of redemption. Sinai then raises the great questions: Who are God’s people now? What should they do? What should they think about God? Will God ever leave? God’s answer is redemption and presence.

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Key Takeaways

1. Grace floats in dangerous waters Moses’ basket sits on the Nile, the very river Pharaoh meant to turn into a graveyard. God turns that place of death into the place where the deliverer is preserved. Grace is not sentimental in this story; grace is God working right in the middle of threat, irony, and helplessness. [58:10]
2. Obedience may require desert years Moses’ failure does not end his calling, but it does send him into a long season of humbling. The “backside of the desert degree” is not wasted time when God is forming a servant who cannot trust his own strength anymore. God often prepares useful people by first making them smaller in their own eyes. [65:03]
3. God uses unlikely rescuers God sends an eighty-year-old ex-murderer shepherd from the middle of nowhere to confront Pharaoh. That choice strips rescue of human glamour and puts the weight back where it belongs, on God’s power and God’s word. The deliverer’s weakness does not cancel the mission when the Lord is the one sending him. [68:56]
4. Stand still when God fights Israel sees Pharaoh’s chariots, the sea, and no visible way forward. Moses says, “Stand by and see the salvation of the Lord,” which means fear does not get to write the final interpretation of the moment. Silence before God is not passivity when God himself has taken the battlefield. [72:32]
5. Redemption reshapes identity and trust The other side of the Red Sea raises the deepest questions: Who are these people now, what must they do, what is God like, and will he leave? Redemption is more than escape from bondage; it is entrance into life under God’s name and presence. The God who delivers also defines, commands, reveals, and stays.

## [74:18]

Youtube Chapters

[00:00] - Welcome
[45:40] - Mission Work in Washington DC
[46:19] - Museum of the Bible Reflections
[47:28] - Woodbridge Church of Christ VBS
[49:45] - Exodus and God’s Rescue Mission
[53:34] - Joseph Dies and Pharaoh Rises
[56:03] - Shiphrah and Puah Fear God
[58:10] - Grace in Moses’ Rescue
[62:26] - Moses Kills and Flees
[65:03] - Moses Earns His BSD
[67:00] - The Burning Bush and Excuses
[68:56] - Let My People Go
[70:05] - Plagues Against Egypt’s Gods
[72:32] - Stand and See Salvation
[74:18] - Redemption’s Big Questions

Bible Study Guide

Bible Reading

Exodus 1:6-22
Then Joseph died, and all his brothers and all that generation. But the people of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly; they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong, so that the land was filled with them. Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. And he said to his people, "Behold, the people of Israel are too many and too mighty for us. Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and, if war breaks out, they join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land." Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with heavy burdens. They built for Pharaoh store cities, Pithom and Raamses. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and the more they spread abroad. And the Egyptians were in dread of the people of Israel. So they ruthlessly made the people of Israel work as slaves and made their lives bitter with hard service, in mortar and brick, and in all kinds of work in the field. In all their work they ruthlessly made them work as slaves. Then the king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, "When you serve as midwife to the Hebrew women and see them on the birthstool, if it is a son, you shall kill him, but if it is a daughter, she shall live." But the midwives feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but let the male children live. So the king of Egypt called the midwives and said to them, "Why have you done this, and let the male children live?" The midwives said to Pharaoh, "Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women, for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them." So God dealt well with the midwives. And the people multiplied and grew very strong. And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families. Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, "Every son that is born to the Hebrews you shall cast into the Nile, but you shall let every daughter live." [49:45] [53:34] [56:03]

Exodus 2:1-10
Now a man from the house of Levi went and took as his wife a Levite woman. The woman conceived and bore a son, and when she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him three months. When she could hide him no longer, she took for him a basket made of bulrushes and daubed it with bitumen and pitch. She put the child in it and placed it among the reeds by the river bank. And his sister stood at a distance to know what would be done to him. Now the daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river, while her young women walked beside the river. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her servant woman, and she took it. When she opened it, she saw the child, and behold, the baby was crying. She took pity on him and said, "This is one of the Hebrews' children." Then his sister said to Pharaoh's daughter, "Shall I go and call you a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?" And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, "Go." So the girl went and called the child's mother. And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, "Take this child away and nurse him for me, and I will give you your wages." So the woman took the child and nursed him. When the child grew older, she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son. She named him Moses, "Because," she said, "I drew him out of the water." [58:10]

Exodus 14:13-14
And Moses said to the people, "Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the LORD, which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again. The LORD will fight for you, and you have only to be silent." [01:12:32]

Observation questions

In Exodus 1, what steps does Pharaoh take as Israel keeps multiplying, and how does the pressure on God’s people grow from forced labor to something even darker? [53:34]
What does the text say about Shiphrah and Puah that explains why they disobey Pharaoh, and how does God respond to them? [56:03]
In Exodus 2, what details show how vulnerable Moses was as a baby, and what surprising people end up helping preserve his life? [58:10]
At the Red Sea, what exactly does Moses tell the people to do, and what does he say the Lord will do for them? [01:12:32]

Interpretation questions

Pharaoh says he will deal “shrewdly” with Israel, but his wisdom turns into slavery and murder. What does this reveal about the way fear can twist power and make evil sound reasonable?
Shiphrah and Puah feared God more than Pharaoh. What does their example suggest about how a believer should respond when human authority directly opposes God’s will? [56:03]
Moses is rescued by grace first, and only later goes through years of humbling in Midian. What does that order teach about the relationship between God’s grace and a person’s growth in obedience? [01:05:03]
“The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent.” How should this be understood? When is silence an act of trust rather than passivity or avoidance? [01:12:32]

Application questions

Shiphrah and Puah obeyed God when obedience was costly. Where might fear of people be shaping decisions right now at work, at home, or with friends? What would fearing God more look like in that setting? [56:03]
Grace preserved Moses in the very place Pharaoh meant for death. Can there be a season in life that felt dangerous, confusing, or unfair, but where God’s kindness can now be seen more clearly? [58:10]
Moses tried to bring deliverance in his own strength and failed badly. Where is there a temptation right now to force an outcome, take control, or “fix” things without waiting on God?
Desert years can feel hidden and unproductive, yet they may be part of God’s shaping work. Is anyone in a season that feels like the backside of the desert? What might God be teaching there that could not be learned in easier days? [01:05:03]
Moses gave excuse after excuse before obeying. Which excuse sounds most familiar: “I’m not qualified,” “people won’t listen,” “I’m not gifted enough,” or “send somebody else”? Why does that one come so naturally? [01:07:00]
At the sea, Israel saw only danger, but God was already making a way. What situation right now feels trapped or impossible? What would it look like this week to stand firm instead of letting fear set the meaning of that moment? [01:12:32]
Redemption raises big questions: Who are we now? What should we do? What should we think about God? Will he stay with us? Which of those questions feels most personal right now, and why? [01:14:18]

Sermon Clips

43s

“So, verse 13, Moses said to the people, do not fear, stand and see. Or as my grandmother used to say, hide and watch. Y'all ever get one of those when you're about to get in trouble? Hide and watch and see if you don't. I don't even know what that means. Stand by and see the salvation of the lord and I love verse 14. The lord will fight for you while you keep silent. That's softened. You be quiet and you watch the lord fight for you.”

59s

“So, these three ideas, god's grace and the obedience learned from Moses. It leads then to this idea of redemption. What's about to happen and I wanna just pause on this and we're through, okay? What's about to happen is there's a series of questions that are about to be asked and answered. They get to Sinai in chapter 19 and they say, okay, we're on the other side of the Red Sea. Who are we now? And what would you have us to do and how we live out our lives and oh by the way, what should we think about you? And then the last of those questions is Exodus ends, Are you ever going to leave us?”

80s

“But then verse 15, this is a very heroic verse. The king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shipprah and the other was named Puah. And he said, when you're helping the Hebrew women to give birth, if it's a son, you shall put him to death. What are they trying to do right here? Are you listening? They're trying to engage in population control. In the way that they think they're gonna do it, the pharaoh thinks he's going to murder these children and bring down the population. What a horrible idea by the way. But can we pause just for a moment and notice there are two heroines in this text. Notice their names in verse 15. Shipra and Pua, they are the two kind of the leaders or bosses of the midwives and what does it say about them in verse 17? feared and as a result of that, they did not do what the pharaoh had commanded. These two women are forever emblazoned in history as heroes of the faith because they obeyed god rather than men. Is there a lesson in there for us?”

64s

“And she saw the basket among the reeds verse six when she opened it. She saw the child and she says, this is one of the Hebrew's children. There's some irony here because this Egyptian princess's is the one killing all of the Hebrew babies but his own daughter is about to rescue out of the Nile the very rescuer of all the Hebrews. There's an irony here. No doubt about it. And not only that but she then sets Moses' own mother up to take care of the child in the normal day to day activities of life. In verse 10 says, the child grew, she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son, and Pharaoh's daughter named him Moses, which has an Egyptian root, and said, because I drew him out of the water.”

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