In Exodus 2 (below), God was preparing to go global with the announcement of His glory to the entire world – and He had chosen a people through whom He was going to accomplish His purpose. But even though they were His chosen people, they found themselves in bondage to Pharaoh. And they groaned under the weight of their oppression – they groaned to the point that they could no longer endure. Then, they turned to the One who could deliver them from their bondage.
The people cried out to God. Their deliverance began with the people calling upon God. Deliverance will always begin with our recognition that the solution to the problem is beyond ourselves and dependent upon God – that we are powerless in and of ourselves. Repeatedly throughout Scripture, God tells us to call upon Him – that we must come to the end of ourselves and call out to Him. The first step of deliverance is admitting we have a problem and we cannot fix it ourselves – and only God can.
God heard their cries. God has promised us that if we seek Him, we will find Him. Just like the mother’s ear is attuned to the whimper or the cry of her child, even more so is the ear of our Heavenly Father. And there is nowhere we can go that He cannot hear us, if we will call out to Him.
God remembered His promise. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had made a covenant that through this people all the families of the earth would be blessed – that He had chosen them to be His people through whom He would accomplish His purpose for His glory. And our God has made that promise to His adopted children – those who name the name of Christ – that we have been grafted into the Vine with all the rights and privileges of a joint heir – and He has chosen us to be His children through whom He accomplishes His purpose for His glory. He has promised that He will never leave us or forsake us; He has promised that what He begins He completes, and He has sealed His promise through the indwelling presence of His Holy Spirit.
God looked upon His people. His eyes looked upon them with compassion and with purpose. The eyes of the LORD search the whole earth in order to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to Him (2 Chronicles 16:9). He has fixed His children in His gaze – nothing in our path escapes His attention – and He desires to marshal every resource at His disposal to strengthen them and equip them for His purpose.
God acknowledged them as His children. It was one thing for the people to acknowledge Him as God; but in His acknowledging them as His children, He is acknowledging His love for them and His commitment to them. Yes, He is their Creator; but He declares ownership when He acknowledges them as His creation – and He declares that they are a part of His purpose.
As John wrote in his first epistle, “This is the confidence which we have before Him, that, if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. And if we know that He hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests which we have asked from Him.” God revealed this pattern to the children of Israel when they stopped groaning to themselves under their bondage, and cried out to the One who could make a difference. We, too, can and will experience our deliverance, if we will cease groaning to ourselves, and will turn from ourselves and call out to Him. We can then call unto Him with that same confidence – a confidence that He has assured through His Word, He has enabled through His Son, and He has sealed through His Holy Spirit.
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Scripture: Exodus 2:23-25 Then the children of Israel groaned because of the bondage, and they cried out; and their cry came up to God because of the bondage. So God heard their groaning, and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. And God looked upon the children of Israel, and God acknowledged them.
Excerpted from The Journey Begins, Ch. 1
Photo by Cristofer Jeschke on Unsplash