The God Who Hears

Read it: Exodus 1–3

Genesis ended with Jacob’s family safe in Egypt. Exodus opens centuries later, and everything has changed.

The Israelites “were fruitful and increased rapidly; they multiplied and became exceedingly numerous” (Exodus 1:7). Remember God’s first blessing in Genesis 1, “Be fruitful and multiply”? And His promise to Abraham of a great nation? It’s happening. But that’s exactly what frightens Egypt.

Slaves

“Then a new king, who did not know Joseph, came to power in Egypt” (Exodus 1:8). This Pharaoh sees a large foreign population and decides it’s a threat. So the Egyptians “appointed taskmasters over the Israelites to oppress them with forced labor” (Exodus 1:11). They made “their lives bitter with hard labor in brick and mortar” (Exodus 1:14).

It gets worse. Pharaoh orders two Hebrew midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, to kill every baby boy at birth. They refuse: “The midwives, however, feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt had instructed; they let the boys live” (Exodus 1:17). Two women with no power at all, standing up to the most powerful man on earth, because they feared God more than him. Their names are remembered. Pharaoh’s isn’t even given.

So Pharaoh gives a new order to the whole nation: “Every son born to the Hebrews you must throw into the Nile” (Exodus 1:22). This is genocide, the attempt to wipe out a people.

A baby in a basket

One Hebrew mother hides her son for three months. When she can’t hide him any longer, she puts him in a basket coated with tar and sets it among the reeds of the river, the very river Pharaoh wanted him drowned in. His sister watches from a distance. Pharaoh’s own daughter comes to bathe, finds the crying baby, and feels sorry for him. The sister steps forward and offers to find a Hebrew woman to nurse him, and fetches the baby’s own mother. Later the princess adopts him and names him Moses, explaining, “I drew him out of the water” (Exodus 2:10).

Moses grows up in Pharaoh’s palace, but he knows who his people are. One day, seeing an Egyptian beating a Hebrew slave, he looks around, kills the Egyptian and hides the body in the sand. The next day it’s clear people know. Pharaoh tries to kill him, and Moses flees east to Midian, in the desert. He marries there, has a son, and becomes a shepherd. The prince of Egypt is now a nobody in the wilderness. According to Stephen in the New Testament, forty years go by (Acts 7:30).

God hears

Meanwhile, back in Egypt: “The Israelites groaned and cried out under their burden of slavery, and their cry for deliverance from bondage ascended to God. So God heard their groaning, and He remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God saw the Israelites and took notice” (Exodus 2:23–25).

Four verbs: God heard, remembered, saw and took notice. For people who feel forgotten, this is one of the most important passages in the Bible. God’s silence had not been absence. He had promised Abraham this would happen, and that He would bring them out.

The bush that didn’t burn

One day Moses leads the flock to Horeb, “the mountain of God” (Exodus 3:1), also called Sinai. There he sees a strange sight: a bush on fire that doesn’t burn up. When he goes over to look, God calls from the bush, “Moses, Moses!” (Exodus 3:4), and tells him to take off his sandals, “for the place where you are standing is holy ground” (Exodus 3:5).

“I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Exodus 3:6). Moses hides his face. Then God says: “I have indeed seen the affliction of My people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their oppressors, and I am aware of their sufferings. I have come down to rescue them” (Exodus 3:7–8).

I have come down. That is what God is like.

But then: “Therefore, go! I am sending you to Pharaoh” (Exodus 3:10). Moses’ answer is very human: “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” (Exodus 3:11). God doesn’t answer by telling Moses how great he is. He says, “I will surely be with you” (Exodus 3:12). The point isn’t who Moses is. It’s who goes with him.

So Moses asks the obvious next question. If the Israelites ask the name of the God who sent him, what should he say? God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM” (Exodus 3:14). And He told him what to say: “I AM has sent me to you” (Exodus 3:14).

God’s name is linked to the Hebrew verb “to be”. It’s usually written in English Bibles as “the LORD” in small capitals. It means God simply is. He doesn’t depend on anything. He doesn’t change. He was the God of Abraham, and He still is. And He is the God who sees and hears and comes down.

Where Jesus is in this

Once, arguing with religious leaders about Abraham, Jesus said something that made them pick up stones to kill Him: “before Abraham was born, I am!” (John 8:58). They understood exactly what He meant. He was taking the name from the burning bush for Himself.

And the God who “came down” to rescue His people from slavery came down all the way in Jesus. The book of Hebrews says Jesus “shared in their humanity, so that by His death He might destroy him who holds the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death” (Hebrews 2:14–15). Israel’s slavery in Egypt is a picture of a deeper slavery we’re all in. Jesus is the rescuer God sends, and unlike Moses, He is Himself the great I AM.

Think about it: God heard Israel’s groaning long before they saw any change. When God seems silent, what helps you keep believing He hears?

Go deeper: The God of All Comfort by Hannah Whitall Smith — starting from Moses’ question at the burning bush, Smith argues that everything depends on what kind of God we have, and that the “unfinished” name I AM invites us to add whatever we need: “I am their strength ... I am their peace.” Start with chapter 2, “What is His Name?”.