Providence in the Reeds

Good morning. It is so good to be together this week. I want to thank everyone for their understanding for last week.

Two weeks ago we watched Pharaoh become increasingly afraid of the people of Israel. He looked at their growing numbers and began to see them not as people made in the image of God, but as a threat that had to be controlled. His fear became oppression, his oppression became brutality, and eventually his brutality became an attempt to destroy an entire generation. By the end of Exodus 1, Pharaoh had issued that horrifying command that every son born to the Hebrews was to be thrown into the Nile.

That is where the chapter ends. Pharaoh is still on the throne, Israel is still enslaved, Hebrew families are still living beneath the shadow of this death sentence, and God has not yet spoken.

Last week we said something that I want us to carry directly into the passage today: God’s hiddenness is not God’s absence.

Exodus 2 is going to show us what that actually looks like.

When chapter 2 begins, God is still silent. There is no burning bush, no plague, no pillar of fire, no sea parting, and no voice from heaven announcing that deliverance has begun. Instead, we meet a man and a woman, a newborn baby, a basket, a sister watching from a distance, a princess coming down to the river, a crying child, and a conversation between a few women beside the Nile.

Everything looks painfully ordinary, and yet through all of those ordinary things God is already beginning to prepare the deliverance of his people.

That is why today’s message is called “Providence in the Reeds.” Exodus 2 shows us that God does not have to act dramatically in order to be sovereignly at work. Sometimes he parts the sea, but at other times he works so quietly that, if we are not paying attention, we might conclude that nothing is happening at all.

Let’s first begin with a brief word of prayer.

Father, give us eyes to see what this passage reveals about you. Teach us to recognize your faithfulness even when we cannot trace your hand, and teach us what it means to obey faithfully without pretending that we are sovereign over the outcome. We ask in Jesus’ name.

Amen.

Faith Does What It Can

Verse 1 begins very simply:

Now a man from the house of Levi went and took as his wife a Levite woman.

Later in Exodus we will learn their names. This is Amram and Jochebed, the parents of Moses. But the narrator does not give us those names here. At this point they are simply a Hebrew husband and wife trying to live faithfully under the decree of Pharaoh.

Then verse 2 tells us that the woman conceives and gives birth to a son.

We need to remember what that would have meant in that moment. Under Pharaoh’s decree, the birth of a son was not simply a joyful family event; it also brought immediate danger. Every Hebrew family expecting a child had to live with the dreadful question of what would happen if that child were a boy. What do you do when the king has decided that your child should not be allowed to live?

The text tells us that when Jochebed saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months.

Hebrews 11 later helps us understand how Scripture wants us to understand that decision. It says,

By faith Moses, when he was born, was hidden for three months by his parents, because they saw that the child was beautiful, and they were not afraid of the king’s edict.

That does not mean they felt no fear. In Scripture, courage usually does not mean the complete absence of fear; it means that fear is not allowed to determine whom we will obey. Pharaoh was powerful, but Pharaoh was not God. So Moses’ parents did what faithfulness required of them even though doing so involved very real risk.

For three months they hid their son, and then verse 3 gives us one of those phrases that is so simple we could pass over it too quickly: “When she could hide him no longer…”

There is an entire world of human limitation inside those words.

For three months, there had been something she could do. She could hide him, keep him out of sight, try to keep him quiet, and do everything in her power to protect him. But the child was growing, the danger was increasing, and eventually she reached the point where she could do that no longer.

Every one of us eventually reaches that sentence somewhere in life: “I can do this no longer.”

There are things we can do. We can work, prepare, plan, pray, speak, warn, counsel, apologize, make the phone call, go to the appointment, fill out the application, raise our children in the instruction of the Lord, tell the truth, make wise choices, and carry out the responsibilities God has placed before us.

But sooner or later, we discover that there are places our hands simply cannot reach.

We discover that we can influence someone but cannot control them. We can prepare for tomorrow but cannot guarantee tomorrow. We can love someone deeply but cannot make every decision for them. We can obey faithfully, but we cannot determine how everyone else will respond.

When we reach that place, we often fall into one of two temptations. One is despair: “If I cannot control this, then there is no hope.” The other is the desperate attempt to maintain control: “If I just plan more, worry more, say more, work harder, or find exactly the right thing to do, maybe I can force the outcome I want.”

Biblical faith gives us another way.

Look at what Jochebed does. When she can no longer hide Moses, she does not simply throw up her hands and say, “Well, God is sovereign, so I suppose there is nothing left for me to do.” She gets to work.

Verse 3 says that she takes a basket made of bulrushes and coats it with bitumen and pitch. She puts Moses inside it and places it among the reeds along the riverbank.

The word translated “basket” is particularly important. The Hebrew word is tevah, and outside this story it appears only in the flood narrative in Genesis, where it is the word used for Noah’s ark.

In other words, Jochebed does not merely make a basket. The narrator deliberately gives us the language of an ark.

That should make our ears perk up. In Genesis, God preserved life through waters of judgment by placing Noah inside an ark. Now in Exodus, another life is placed inside an ark and preserved through waters associated with death. Pharaoh has commanded that Hebrew boys be thrown into the Nile, and now the Nile itself becomes part of the means through which this Hebrew boy will be preserved.

The details matter. Jochebed builds the ark, seals it, places Moses inside it carefully, chooses where to put it among the reeds, and Moses’ sister stands at a distance to watch what happens.

This is what active faith looks like.

The doctrine of God’s sovereignty never makes human obedience irrelevant. Jochebed does what she can, and Miriam does what she can. They take responsibility for what God has placed into their hands, but neither of them can control the result.

Jochebed can build the ark, but she cannot control who comes to the river. She can waterproof the basket, but she cannot govern the heart of the person who finds it. Miriam can watch from a distance, but she cannot determine what will happen when the basket is discovered.

Eventually, Jochebed has to place Moses somewhere her hands can no longer hold him.

And that gives us an important distinction for the Christian life: God calls us to faithfulness, but he does not call us to sovereignty.

Those are not the same thing.

Sometimes we exhaust ourselves because we confuse them. We assume that if we are truly responsible, then somehow we ought to be able to guarantee the outcome. But Scripture never gives us that kind of power.

You can be responsible for your faithfulness without being sovereign over the outcome.

There is tremendous freedom in learning that distinction.

The question faith asks is not, “How do I make certain everything turns out the way I think it should?” The question faith asks is, “What has God actually given me to do here?”

And then, having done what faithfulness requires, we entrust the rest to him.

That is what Moses’ family is doing. They do what they can, and then they reach the place where they cannot do any more.

And that is where the providence of God becomes especially clear.

Providence Works Where We Cannot

Verse 5 says,

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.

Notice how ordinary the sentence sounds.

There is no indication that she woke up that morning with some great spiritual awareness or a sense that she was about to become part of God’s redemptive plan. She simply goes to the river. Her attendants walk with her, she notices the basket among the reeds, and she sends one of the women to retrieve it.

She opens the basket, sees the child, and verse 6 tells us that the baby is crying. Then we are told that she has compassion on him.

She understands immediately what she has found. She says, “This is one of the Hebrews’ children.”

She knows that this child belongs to the people her father is trying to destroy. She knows what Pharaoh has ordered. The royal decree says death, and yet Pharaoh’s own daughter responds with compassion.

Then Miriam moves. She has been standing at a distance watching, and when she sees what is happening, she approaches Pharaoh’s daughter and asks, “Shall I go and call you a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?”

The princess agrees, Miriam goes and gets the baby’s own mother, and then we arrive at one of the great ironies in this whole story.

Pharaoh’s daughter looks at Jochebed and says, “Take this child away and nurse him for me, and I will give you your wages.”

Think about what has just happened. Pharaoh has ordered the Hebrew boys to be killed. His own daughter has rescued one of them. The child’s mother now gets her son back, and Pharaoh’s own household is going to pay her to raise him.

That is more than a clever turn in the story. That is theological irony.

The very regime trying to destroy Israel is now financing the upbringing of the man God will eventually use to confront that regime.

One of the most striking things about this entire paragraph is that God is never explicitly mentioned in verses 1 through 10. The narrator never interrupts the story to say, “And the LORD caused Pharaoh’s daughter to come to the river.” He does not tell us, “God made the baby cry at precisely the right moment,” or, “The LORD moved her heart to compassion.”

The story simply unfolds.

A princess comes down to the river and sees a basket among the reeds. She opens it and finds a crying baby. Compassion rises in her heart. Miriam recognizes the opportunity and speaks. The princess agrees. The mother is summoned, the child is returned, and Pharaoh’s household pays the bill.

God is not named, but by the time the episode is over, his fingerprints are everywhere.

This is providence.

And I think it is important for us to distinguish providence from miracle, because the Bible teaches us to recognize the work of God in both.

A miracle occurs when God acts in an extraordinary way that goes beyond the ordinary patterns of creation. We are going to see plenty of those in Exodus. Water will turn to blood. Darkness will cover Egypt. The sea will divide. Bread will appear in the wilderness.

But nothing in these verses has to break the ordinary patterns of the world. Princesses go to rivers. Babies cry. People feel compassion. Young women speak. Mothers nurse children. People are paid for their work.

There is nothing individually spectacular about any of those things, and yet when we put the entire sequence together, we realize that something extraordinary is happening.

God does not need to suspend the ordinary workings of creation in order to govern them.

Sometimes providence comes with thunder, and sometimes providence comes through a conversation beside a river. Sometimes God parts a sea, and sometimes he arranges a meeting. Sometimes he intervenes in a way that is impossible to miss, and sometimes years may pass before we look backward and recognize how one ordinary event connected to another and another until something had taken shape that we never could have engineered ourselves.

And here is the truth at the center of this part of the passage:

The end of our control is not the end of God’s activity.

Jochebed reaches the end of what she can do, but God has not reached the end of what he can do. Her hands can no longer reach Moses, but God’s providence can.

Or to say it another way, what you can no longer hold is still held by God.

Now, I want to be very careful about what that means, because we can misuse a passage like this if we turn providence into a promise that everything painful will eventually resolve exactly the way we hope.

That is not what Scripture teaches.

The fact that Moses is preserved does not mean every endangered child will be preserved in the same way. It does not mean every illness will end in healing, every job will be saved, every relationship will be restored, or every frightening circumstance will have a neat and happy ending in this life.

Faithful Christians still suffer. Faithful Christians still lose people they love. Faithful Christians still receive difficult diagnoses. Faithful Christians still walk through doors they desperately wished God would close, and sometimes they watch doors close that they desperately wanted him to open.

Providence does not mean that God prevents every painful thing. Providence means that no painful thing can finally overthrow the purposes of God.

Those are very different statements.

Romans 8:28 does not teach us that everything that happens is good. Pharaoh’s decree is not good. Slavery is not good. Murder is not good. Human cruelty does not somehow become holy merely because God is sovereign over it.

What Scripture teaches is that evil itself is not sovereign.

Pharaoh is powerful, but Pharaoh is not sovereign. He can make decrees, but he cannot rewrite the covenant promises of God. He can throw children into the Nile, but he cannot stop God from raising a deliverer. He can build an empire, but he cannot make himself lord over history.

And that matters for us because some of the deepest anxiety we carry comes from confusing our responsibility with God’s sovereignty.

We tell ourselves, “If I were more faithful, maybe I could make this turn out differently. If I could find exactly the right words, perhaps I could change that person. If I prayed with enough faith, maybe I could guarantee the result. If I planned enough, worried enough, prepared enough, perhaps nothing painful would happen.”

But there comes a point where that is no longer faithfulness. It is an attempt to be sovereign.

And we are not.

You are a creature, and God is God. That is not meant to make you feel insignificant; it is meant to set you free from a burden God never intended you to carry.

You can be responsible for your obedience without carrying the unbearable responsibility for everything that happens next.

Jochebed is responsible to hide her son while she can. She is responsible to prepare the ark carefully. Miriam is responsible to watch and then to speak when the opportunity presents itself. Neither of them is responsible for making Pharaoh’s daughter compassionate.

That belongs to the providence of God.

There is another small sentence in this story that captures something profound. Verse 4 says that Moses’ sister stood at a distance “to know what would be done to him.”

She does not know what is going to happen. She simply watches and waits.

There are seasons of Christian faith that look very much like that. You have done what you know to do, and now you are standing at a distance wondering what will happen. You have prayed the prayer, had the conversation, made the decision, sought counsel, acted as wisely as you know how, and there is still a large part of the story you cannot see.

We often want God to hurry us through that part, but sometimes he does not. Sometimes faith means standing at a distance and saying, “I do not know what will happen next, but I know who God is.”

That is the comfort of providence.

Providence does not give us the ability to read the future. Providence gives us confidence in the God who governs it.

God Is Preparing More Than We Can See

Then we come to verse 10:

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.”

There is wordplay in the name Moses and the Hebrew verb meaning “to draw out,” and that becomes beautifully significant as the story continues.

Moses is the one who was drawn out of the water, and later he will become the man through whom God brings his people through the water. The child preserved among the reeds will one day lead Israel through the Sea of Reeds. The infant whose life is threatened by Pharaoh will one day stand before Pharaoh with the word of the LORD.

But here is what I want us to notice: nobody standing beside the Nile in Exodus 2 knows any of that.

Jochebed does not know about the burning bush. Miriam does not know that she will one day stand on the far side of the sea singing praise to God after Egypt’s army has been destroyed. Pharaoh’s daughter certainly does not know that the child she has just adopted will one day become the great human adversary of Pharaoh.

Israel does not know that the deliverer God will use is already alive.

No one inside the scene knows where the story is going.

We do.

That is one of the privileges of reading biblical narrative after the fact. We know who the baby is. We know what comes next. We know that the basket among the reeds is connected to the burning bush, the burning bush to the plagues, the plagues to Passover, Passover to the Red Sea, and the Red Sea to Sinai.

But the people living inside the story cannot see any of it yet.

And that means that while Israel is still suffering and wondering whether God has forgotten them, God is already preparing the answer to prayers they may not even know how to pray.

From Israel’s perspective, almost nothing has changed. Pharaoh is still Pharaoh. Slavery is still slavery. The suffering still continues.

If you had stopped an Israelite that morning and asked, “What is God doing about all of this?” the answer may very well have been, “I have no idea.”

And yet while that Israelite says, “I don’t know what God is doing,” God’s answer is lying in a basket among the reeds.

Deliverance has already begun before anyone recognizes it as deliverance.

One of the great lessons of providence is that God is often preparing more than his people can presently see.

We usually recognize providence best in retrospect. It is much easier to look back across a chain of events years later and say, “Now I can see at least some of what God was doing.” However, the truth of the matter is that it is much harder to trust him while the story is unfinished.

And most of us are living right now somewhere in the middle of an unfinished story.

You know what has already happened, but you do not know where it leads. You can see the reeds, but you cannot see the Red Sea. You can see the unanswered question, but you cannot yet see what God may be doing through it.

One of our greatest temptations is to interpret God through an unfinished chapter.

We look at what we can see in the moment and conclude, “Nothing is happening. God must have forgotten. God must not care. God is not answering.”

Exodus teaches us to be very careful about drawing final conclusions when we are still in the middle of the story.

Because while Israel is crying beneath slavery, God is preparing Moses. While Pharaoh is trying to secure his empire, he is unknowingly providing the environment in which Israel’s future deliverer will be raised. While God appears absent, his covenant purpose is moving forward.

Now, that does not mean every unanswered question in our lives will eventually make sense to us this side of glory. There are mysteries we may carry for the rest of our lives, and Scripture never promises that we will receive a detailed explanation for everything God allows.

As Christians, however, we have something better than an explanation for every circumstance.

We have the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

And that is where this passage ultimately leads us.

Christ and Exodus

Moses is a deliverer, but he is not the Deliverer.

As the story of Scripture unfolds, Moses becomes part of a larger biblical pattern. Here is a child born under the shadow of death. A wicked ruler is determined to destroy him. God preserves the child, and that preserved life becomes bound up with the deliverance of God’s people.

When we come to the Gospel of Matthew, those themes begin to sound again. Another ruler, Herod, becomes afraid of a child who appears to threaten his power. Another ruler orders children to be killed. Another child is preserved, and Matthew deliberately presents Jesus as the One in whom the story of Israel reaches its fulfillment.

We should not force every detail of Moses’ infancy into an allegory about Jesus. We do not need to. The biblical pattern is strong enough on its own.

Moses will deliver Israel from Pharaoh, but Jesus will save his people from their sins. Moses will confront an earthly tyrant, but Jesus conquers sin, Satan, and death. Moses will lead Israel out of physical slavery, but Christ brings his people out of a slavery far deeper than anything Egypt could impose.

And there is another connection that matters especially for what this passage is teaching us about providence.

In Exodus 2, what appears to be a place of death becomes part of God’s pathway toward deliverance.

At the cross, that truth reaches its highest expression.

If there was ever a moment when God appeared absent, it was Calvary. Jesus is mocked and beaten. His enemies seem to have won. The One his disciples believed to be the Messiah is nailed to a Roman cross, and eventually he dies. His body is laid in a tomb, and a stone is rolled across the entrance.

If you had stood there on Friday evening and judged the purposes of God only by what you could see, it would have looked as though everything had failed. The Messiah was dead, his followers were scattered, and evil appeared to have won.

But God’s hiddenness was not God’s absence.

The cross was not the collapse of God’s redemptive plan. The cross was the accomplishment of God’s redemptive plan.

The very instrument designed to shame and destroy becomes the means by which our sin is atoned for. The powers of darkness do their worst, and through the very act by which they believe they have defeated Christ, God accomplishes the redemption of his people.

Then, on the third day, the tomb is empty.

So when we talk about providence as Christians, we do not mean vague optimism or simply hoping things will somehow work out. We are looking at the crucified and risen Son of God and saying, God has already shown us that even the darkest moment in history could not overthrow his saving purpose.

If God can bring resurrection out of Calvary, then we can trust him even when we do not understand what he is doing in the reeds.

Let’s Live This Out

So what does this passage ask us to do?

I think the first thing is very simple: do the faithful thing that God has actually placed in front of you.

Jochebed could not overthrow Pharaoh, but she could build the basket. Miriam could not control the princess, but she could watch, and when the opportunity came, she could speak.

Sometimes we become paralyzed because we cannot solve the entire problem, when perhaps God has never asked us to solve the entire problem. Maybe he has simply asked us to take the next faithful step.

That may mean making a phone call, having a difficult conversation, asking forgiveness, offering help, telling the truth, setting an appropriate boundary, finishing the work in front of you, praying faithfully, showing up when you would rather withdraw, or simply obeying something Scripture has already made clear.

We often want God to show us step twelve when he has only given us step one.

Faithfulness takes step one.

The second thing this passage invites us to do is identify what is not ours to control.

Some of us would benefit from saying that plainly before the Lord: “This person is not mine to control. This outcome is not mine to control. This future is not mine to control. This decision belongs to someone else. This circumstance has moved beyond what I can fix.”

There is humility in admitting that, but there is also tremendous relief, because the alternative is trying to carry a kind of sovereignty God never gave us.

The third thing is to entrust the unfinished story to the character of God.

Notice that I did not say we entrust it to the outcome we want.

Faith is not confidence that God will do exactly what I have decided would be best. Faith is confidence in God himself.

We know that he is good. We know that he is wise. We know that he is sovereign. We know that he keeps covenant. Most importantly, we know what he has done in Jesus Christ.

So when we cannot interpret our circumstances, we learn to interpret our circumstances through what God has already revealed about himself.

Do not interpret God through the unfinished story. Interpret the unfinished story through the character of God.

That difference matters.

If I judge God only by what I can presently see, there may be days when I conclude that he has abandoned me. But if I judge what I can presently see in light of what God has revealed about himself, then I can say, “I do not understand this. I would not have chosen this. I do not know what happens next. But I know who God is.”

Finally, this passage teaches us to recognize God’s providence in ordinary things.

We naturally look for God in the spectacular, and he certainly does work spectacularly. Exodus will give us plenty of that.

But do not miss him in the reeds.

Do not assume that because there is no miracle, God is doing nothing.

His providence often comes wrapped in ordinary life: a conversation you almost did not have, a person you happened to meet, an opportunity you did not expect, a closed door you resented at the time, a kindness from someone you never expected to help, or a responsibility that seemed small but turned out to matter more than you knew.

At the same time, we should remain humble. We should not pretend that we know exactly why God allows every event or precisely how every circumstance fits into his purposes, because we do not have access to God’s secret counsel. There are things he has revealed, and there are things he has chosen not to reveal.

What we can know is enough to trust him.

We can say, “God is here. God is ruling. He has not surrendered his world to chance. I may not know what he is doing in this moment, but I know that he has not stopped being God.”

So What?

So what do we carry home from Exodus 2?

I want to leave us with one question and one truth.

The question is this: What has God actually given me to do?

Not, “What would I have to control in order to make everything turn out right?” Not, “How can I guarantee the future?” But, “What does faithfulness require of me today?”

Some of us probably know the answer already. There may be something we have been postponing because we cannot guarantee what will happen if we obey.

But obedience has never required that guarantee.

Build the basket. Take the next faithful step, and then entrust the outcome to God.

And here is the truth I want us to remember:

What lies beyond your control does not lie beyond God’s providence.

That does not mean the path will always be easy, and it does not mean we will always understand what God is doing. It certainly does not mean we are promised the outcome we would have chosen for ourselves.

It means that God is still God when our hands reach their limit.

Think one last time about Miriam. She stands at a distance looking toward that little basket among the reeds, waiting to see what will happen.

She cannot know that the child inside that basket will one day confront Pharaoh. She cannot know that she herself will one day stand on the far side of the sea singing because God has delivered Israel. She cannot see the burning bush, Passover, Sinai, or the journey toward the Promised Land.

All she can see is the basket.

Sometimes that is where we live. We can see the basket, but God sees Exodus.

And listen, we know even more than Miriam knew. We know where Moses’ story eventually goes, and more importantly, we know where the story of Jesus goes.

We know the cross was not the end. We know the tomb is empty. We know death did not have the last word. And because Jesus Christ is risen, the ultimate future of God’s people is not uncertain.

So when you cannot see what God is doing, do what faithfulness requires of you and entrust to him what you cannot control. Refuse to interpret his hiddenness as absence, and remember that the end of your control is not the end of his activity.

God’s hiddenness is not God’s absence.

You can be responsible for your faithfulness without being sovereign over the outcome.

And what lies beyond your control does not lie beyond God’s providence.

Amen… And Amen.

Let us pray.

Father, we confess that we often want the kind of control that belongs only to you. We want to know what will happen before we obey, and we want assurance that the outcome will be the one we would choose.

Teach us a better kind of faith, a faith that is courageous enough to obey and humble enough to trust.

Give us wisdom to recognize the responsibilities you have actually placed in our hands, courage to carry them faithfully, and humility to acknowledge where our responsibility ends. For those who are carrying circumstances they cannot fix, give peace that is rooted not in easy answers but in your character, your covenant faithfulness, and the certainty of your promises.

Teach us not to mistake your hiddenness for your absence. Help us remember that even when our control ends, your activity does not.

And most of all, thank you for Jesus, our greater Deliverer. Thank you that the cross reminds us that apparent defeat cannot overturn your saving purpose, and thank you that the empty tomb assures us that your redemption cannot fail.

Help us to do the next faithful thing and to trust you with what comes after.

In Jesus’ name, amen.