The Exodus Overture

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 slave to get it. She opened it and saw the baby. He was crying, and she felt sorry for him. “This is one of the Hebrew babies,” she said.

- Exodus 2:5-6

Exodus 2 serves as the overture to Moses’ entire story. Like any good overture, it prepares the audience for what is to come. Deliverance. Failure. Redemption.

After Pharaoh’s fear-filled and fear-filling decree to throw Israelite baby boys into the Nile River, a Hebrew woman gave birth to a son. She threw the baby into the Nile, but she also gave him a raft.

What would it have been like to surrender your child to the water?

The baby floats down the river right in front of Pharaoh’s own daughter. In an act of courageous defiance, Pharaoh’s daughter rescued the baby and decided to raise him, eventually giving him the name “Moses.”

This wouldn’t be the only time Moses would experience water deliverance. Decades later Moses led God’s people through the Red Sea. They passed through without even getting wet, safe to the other side.

This theme of water deliverance shows up time and time again in the Scriptures, like a rock skipping across the surface of a pond. Each time it makes a bigger ripple in the water. Crossing the Jordan. Psalm 69. Isaiah 43.

Ultimately, these images of water deliverance lead us right to Jesus. He was baptized in the Jordan River. He preached from a fisherman’s boat. He calmed the stormy sea.

And all over the world, Christians celebrate baptism, surrendering ourselves to the water and entrusting our lives to our Jesus, our Deliverer.

God delivered Moses through the waters and then re-delivers and re-delivers his people through waters, trials, and difficulties all throughout his great and mighty story.

What do you think it means that God is our deliverer? How do we celebrate that even when things don’t always turn out our way?

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