Sunday 2 November 2025

Uh, this morning our reading is coming from Exodus chapter two verses 22 to 25. The words don't exactly match what I've got here, but I'll read, I'll read from the screen. I think. Exodus 2 22 to 25, Sephora gave birth to a son, and Moses named him Gersh saying, I've become a foreigner in a foreign land. During that long period, the King of Egypt died.

The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery, went up to God. God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. So God looked on the Israelites as was concerned about them. That's the end of the reading this morning.

Thank you.

So we are continuing our short look at the first part of Exodus. So that's the, uh, the slide that I used last week. Who can tell me what this might mean? Anyone know what that might mean? It's cricket. It's cricket. Very, very perceptive. It is Cricket 100 not out. A bat. Yeah, century. Today is the 100th time that I'm preaching at Na Lamara Church.

So I'm 100 not out. I dunno if I'm soon to be dismissed, but hey, maybe come up for a double century one day. The title of our message today is, Lord, hear Our Cries. Let's, let's pray. Father, we thank you that we can come gather as your people. We thank you for the power of your word. That it can convict, that it can comfort, that it can bless Holy Spirit.

Come and dwell my words this day, and bless us, we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Now there was a story out of the US about a guy who used to commute each day for work. Now. Like many people in the us, he'd live in the suburbs and he'd catch the train into the city, and every single day his journey into the city would take him through these rough inner city neighborhoods.

Now, you've probably seen the films where you kind of get a a reference point for what I'm talking about. Now, unlike the suburbs, there were no big houses with well maintained yards and leafy green streets. Instead, what he saw in these rough inner city neighborhoods were burnt out buildings. Houses with broken windows.

Graffiti was sprayed everywhere. There'd be rubbish on the streets and all the children he'd see out playing, they're wearing, you know, like dirty and tattered clothes As he rode through these areas on the train, it used to bother him. It would bother him so much that he'd find himself at his desk. He'd be distracted.

He's trying to work Instead, he's thinking about everything he's seeing each day, and one day he said, enough is enough. Enough is enough. Tomorrow I'm gonna do something about it. So the next day, get on the train. Do you know what he did? He pulled the shade down so he wouldn't have to look at it. He didn't like what he saw, so he simply pulled the shade down.

It was just, you know, too uncomfortable. Now, today's the International Day of Prayer for the Persecuted church. We need to understand that while we may come, we may gather and worship in safety and comfort. That's not the reality that many of our brothers and sisters in Christ enjoy. I. The very fact that we have a day dedicated to prayer for the persecuted church.

It goes just to show you know how widespread this problem really is. Now, listen to these statistics. It's estimated that more than 365 million Christians worldwide live in places where they face high levels of persecution and discrimination for their faith. Do you get those numbers that equates to one in seven Christians globally?

Now if I can count, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 1 in seven. It's a lot of people just for carrying the name of Jesus. Could you imagine that? I've decided to follow Jesus? No. Turning back for our brothers and sisters in some parts of the world, that's a, that's a hard call to follow. Jesus. Now, there's so much I could say about the persecuted church.

You know, my inbox and social media feed, they get flooded every day with stories. There's so much happening out there. I just wanna focus initially on what's happening in Nigeria. That's where this picture's taken from. Over 7,000 Christians have been killed in 1200 churches destroyed in the first seven months of this year alone.

They estimate thousands more have been displaced. And I've heard estimates that as many as 50 to 70,000 Christians have been killed in Northern Nigeria in the past 10 years. Some figures are even much higher now. We've all heard of Boko Haram. Yeah. You've heard of what Boko Haram is doing. There's also, um, the Ani militants, they're 99.9% Muslim.

This is the situation, the reality our brothers and sisters are facing. This slide states that Christians are the most persecuted group, and yet the world is ignoring this reality. And to an extent, this is true. You, you're not gonna hear much about this on the six o'clock news. The world is largely ignoring this reality.

But what about God? Is God ignoring this reality? Now, before you answer, stop and think about it from their perspective. Think about it from the shoes of someone in northern Nigeria. Where is God? As these Nigerian Christians lose their lives? Where is he? Where is God as they mourn and bury their dead? Has he forgotten them?

Is God like that man that's riding past on the train? He's seen what's happening, but he's pulled the shade down. Is that what God is like? No. Now reading today was from Exodus chapter two. I wonder if this is how the Israelites felt. I wonder if they thought maybe God's ignoring our reality as well. Now, think about it.

These are a people that have grown up with the stories of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They know all the stories they've heard about the miraculous way in which God blessed Abraham with a son. They've heard of how, you know, the angel of the Lord stayed his hand as he went to sacrifice him. They've heard of how you know God was with Joseph as he rose to the rank of two IC in Egypt.

These are the stories they were raised on. These are the stories they grew up with. But that was a long time ago. It's a long time ago. Where is God now? They hear the stories and they thinking he may have acted in the lives of our forefathers, but what about us? Where is this God that we've heard so much about?

Can't he see our situation? Can't he see that we've been enslaved and mistreated? Where was he when our infant sons were being tossed into the Nile? Maybe he's forgotten about us. Or worse still, maybe those stories weren't even true. Maybe that's what they're thinking. I wonder, have you ever felt this way in your own life?

Have you ever felt this way? Maybe there's some things you're going through and you're beginning to wonder where is God? Does he see? Does he know? Does he care? Is he passive indifferent? Has he pulled the shade down and you know, just passes on by this passage we'll look at today. It challenges us to think about the character of God.

Where is he and how does he respond as his people suffer? So we closed last week by looking at the end of chapter one. What we heard is Pharaoh, he's issued this decree to all his people. Every Hebrew boy that's born, throw them into the Nile. As I said last week, it's open season on the Israelites. It's what they call genocide.

Today, you wipe out the males and the Hebrew women, they're gonna have to intermarry with Egyptians. This is how you end a race of people. Let me pick up the story from the start of chapter two. I'll read now. A man of the tribe of Levi married a Levite woman and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son.

When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months. That's the reality. If this boy to survive, I need to hide him. Don't get to show the family. Gotta keep him under wraps, hides him for three months, but when she could hide him, no longer. She got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with Tara and pitch.

Now that detail I've highlighted. Remember this, it's important. Then she placed the child in it and put him among the reeds along the bank of the Nile. His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him. Then Pharaoh's daughter went down to the Nile to bathe, and her at attendants were walking along the riverbank.

She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her a 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. Then his sister asked Pharaoh's daughter, shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?

Yes. Go. She answered. So the girl went and got the baby's mother. Pharaoh's daughter said to her, take this baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you. So the woman took the baby and nursed him. When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh's daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses saying, I drew him outta the water.

Let me mention a few things before we move on. This world that Moses was born into, it was dark and cruel. Amen. It's a dark and cruel, harsh world, but it was not without God. You see as the other male babies are getting thrown in, Moses is getting rescued out. And notice the language here. Notice what I highlighted.

The papyrus basket that Moses was placed into was what? It was coated with Taran pitch. Now this may seem like an insignificant detail, but this is the language of salvation and rescue. In Genesis chapter six, God commands Noah to build an arc. And what does he tell him to do? He tells him to code it with tar and pitch.

What we're meant to see here is the correspondence between Moses and Noah, just as Noah was saved through the waters in an arc coded with pitch. So to Moses and just as Noah was the one through whom God's purposes for humanity would continue after the flood. So to through Moses, God's purposes for Israel would continue.

That's what we're meant to see through these little seemingly insignificant details. Now, the name Moses. It sounds like the Hebrew word to draw out. Moshe and Asha. Pharaoh's daughter names him. Moses saying are drew him outta the water. Everyone else is getting thrown in. Moses is getting rescued out and by Pharaoh's daughter, no less, and he's adopted, raised as her son in the royal household.

Now, the name Moses is also his mission. I love this detail. His mission is to draw out God's people from Egypt and lead them to Canaan. Have you ever noticed that detail before? This is his purpose and it's inbuilt into his name. And ironically, it's through water that that Moses is gonna lead them out.

This is a lot of significance that's happening here. So what we see here is that God, right from the beginning, has a sovereign plan for Moses life, right from the very beginning. Moses has a destiny. Now we know the story, Moses. He gets to grow up in the luxury and privilege of the palace. And I tell you, it could be pretty good there in the palace, silver spoon in your mouth, and you can easily forget where you came from, but not Moses.

Okay? He may be immune from the struggles of his people, but he never, ever forgets his roots. What he does, as we know, he sees the injustice has suffered by his people, and he sets out to do something about, let me read verse 11, one day. After Moses had grown up, he went out to to where his own people were and watched them at their hard labor.

Can you see this? He sheltered, but they're the ones that are suffering doing the hard labor. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people looking this way and that, and seeing no one. He killed the Egyptian and hit him in the sand. The next day he went out and saw two Hebrews fighting. He asked the one in the wrong, why are you hitting your fellow Hebrew?

The man said, who made you ruler and judge over us? Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian? Then Moses was afraid and thought What I did must have become known, and it was when Pharaoh heard of this, he tried to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in Midn, where he sat down by a wealth.

As I said last week, everything's changed. Yeah, everything's changed. Now for Moses, what he's done is he's taken the law into his own hands. He's killed this Egyptian, but think about this. He's motivated by a genuine desire to help his people. He could have hung back on the fringe and said, it doesn't concern me.

My life is good. I don't care. But that's not Moses. He's motivated by this genuine desire to help his people, and it's all gone horribly wrong. His own people reject him. He's now an enemy of the state. Pharaoh's put out this death warrant on him, and so he runs for his life to the desert of Midn. It really couldn't have gone any worse.

Yeah, that's so much for being the deliverer. So much for being the one. That's what Moses could have thought. God rescued me, set me apart from birth to be the deliverer. I'm the one, I'm the man so much for that. So here he is. He's sitting in Midn by a, well, he's had 40 years in Egypt. Now he's gonna have another 40 years in the wilderness.

And I wonder if he's thinking to himself, why, God, why? Why not let me rescue your people? It was my destiny, Lord. Why not let me fulfill what it is I was born to do? Don't you see their suffering? God, I was born for this. What we see is Moses settles down. He marries a Midianite woman named Za Porter, and in verse 22, we read Za Porter gave birth to a son and Moses named him Ham saying, I have become a stranger in a foreign land.

Now, again, this name Gersh. It sounds like the Hebrew word for a stranger there. He names his child based on his predicament, his life, circumstances where life has led him. But you hear the name, it's the lament of a lost stream, all of his dreams, life shattered and dead at his feet. All he wants to do was be a blessing.

All he wanted to do was help those. He dearly loved the people He saw enslaved and mistreated, but he failed, and now he's lost and he's broken. That's what we see reflected in this name. He's a lost and broken man. He's shattered. Now, you may have heard of Robert Plant. This is him there. He was the the lead singer of Led Zeppelin.

Anyone familiar with this guy? Led Zeppelin? Thanks Nancy. One of the greatest rock bands of all time. So this is him. He's a wild guy. I couldn't find a shirt, uh, a picture of him with his shirt, you know, not undone. I'm sure you can't trust me. So this guy's famous for all the excesses of the 1970s, you know, sex, drugs, rock and roll, alcohol.

This was that band. Now in the late 1980s, he was out somewhere for dinner and it's England, it's cold. He's probably dressed very differently. And there's this guy in this restaurant and this guy's just staring at him from across the the room. Eventually he came up to him and said, excuse me, didn't you used to be Robert Plant?

Now, of course he still was. But what this guy really meant was when you were the lead singer of Led Zeppelin, you used to be somebody. You were somebody, but not anymore. That's what life's become like for Moses. He used to be somebody, but not anymore. Whatever Moses thought his life would be. That dream is long gone.

It's gone. It's broken, it's shattered, and he's resigned himself now to the fact that he's gonna be a stranger in a strange land hurting sheep over rocks. Perhaps he's sinking. You know, God's long forgotten about me. I've, I've slipped well off his radar. That's how we can feel when life doesn't turn out the way we expected.

We can think maybe God's pulled down the shade. He doesn't see me anymore. This is how Moses feels, and this is also how the Israelites feel. Moses hoped to be their deliverer. They're still hoping and praying for deliverance. Verse 23. During that long period, not a short time, a long period, the King of Egypt died.

Good news. Maybe a regime change might change things. Nope. The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with I Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them.

The Pharaoh who cared nothing about Egypt, the one we looked at last week, he's dead. And the Israelites, their situation hasn't changed. You see, they've gotten used to this free slave labor. Our economy runs off their backs from the tip of the whip, and we can't let them go. We have to keep oppressing them.

And the suppression continues for a long time. A long time, and we're told that they cry and groan. They cry out to God. Now it's interesting because these two Hebrew words for for groan and cry out, they speak of something that you're unable to articulate or give voice to. They're just like cries of anguish.

They're noises that get made. They're not words that are spoken or prayers that are made. They're just noises that go up to heaven. One writer in reading about this said, our tears have voices to God. I like that our tears have voices to God. The Israelites, they're not saying anything. They're just crying out in pain.

And God hears, think about the story of Cain and Abel. Cain kills Abel, and God comes to him and says, where's your brother? Where's your brother? And how does he respond? Am I my brother's keeper? And even though Abel is dead and can't speak for himself, God says to Cain, he says, listen. Listen, I want you to hear your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground.

Abel's not there to speak for himself, but his blood has a voice that is heard by the highest courts in heaven. It's a, it's a voice that demands a reckoning that the guilty not go unpunished and that justice be satisfied. And that's exactly what's happening here at the end of Exodus chapter two. These unarticulated groans reach the ear of God.

Now, this small passage that we looked at in our reading today, it's actually a hinge point in the entire narrative of Exodus. Up until this point, go home and read chapter one and two again, do some revision. All you're gonna see up until this point is oppression, slavery, and death. Moses, the deliverers failed and the people, they're still in bondage, so there's not really much so far.

That's good to write about, but here at this point is where things begin to turn. And what swings the narrative is the people groaning and crying out to God. And so how will God respond? Now, you can see I've highlighted four verbs that are used here of God. Can you see them? God heard. God remembered. God looked, and God was concerned.

Now, please understand it doesn't mean that prior to this time, you know, God was blind and deaf to his people's suffering. You know, sometimes ever, have you ever said to someone, Hey, look, you commit to something, I'll do it. And then over time you forget. And so they call you up to remind you, okay? And the response is, Hey, yeah, this is usually husbands and wives.

Yeah, I'm glad my wife's not here today. She's not well, but usually she's saying, Hey, Jamie, can you do something? But just imagine you've committed to doing something. You forgot someone gives you a call and you say, yeah, yeah, I, I hear you. I'll get onto it. Can I tell you that's not what's happening here?

God has not been blind and deaf to his people's needs, and he's certainly not forgotten about them. What we see here is what we call an an anthropomorphism. That's a big word, and you'll know what an, an anthropomorphism is. It's where we ascribe human characteristics to God, okay? And it's done so that we can grasp what God is like now, for example, the Bible speaks of God's hand being upon Moses or his hand being upon someone.

Okay, but God is spirit. He doesn't have physical hands. The language conveys what God is like in human terms so that we can understand, and what the language here in Exodus two is telling us is that when we cry out to God, he hears us. He sees us. He remembers his promises, and he has a deep concern. He's moved.

The Bible wants us to read these words and to know that this is what happens inside of God when we cry out to him. Something happens inside of God. He's moved and stirred to action. Now, I love these words from Psalm 34. The eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears are attentive to their Christ.

So more anthropomorphism. Now, how often do we really hear someone think about this? How often when someone's talking, you know, we might be listening, but we're distracted. Ever had that? You're engaged kind of. Okay. You're not fully attentive. Or maybe we're listening to respond. We kind of listening, but we're not completely attentive.

Psalm 34 says, God listens fully when his people cry out to him. He's not distracted. All the noise in this universe, God still hears fully the cries of his people. Don't ever think when you cry out to God that maybe there's too much going on for God to hear. Little old me God hears the cry of his people.

He's fully attentive. It's a beautiful, beautiful thought. That's what we see here at the end of Exodus chapter two. There's suffering's not gone unseen. The groans have not gone unheard, and God has certainly not forgotten his promises to Abraham and his descendants. And while for these poor Israelites, they're looking around them, it seems that nothing's happening.

But what they can't see is that God's busy behind the scenes working out his plan. In his timing, I think of Moses. He's in median by the, well. He's now a sheep herder. He may have resigned himself to this as his fate, but God has not yet finished with him. God is not yet finished with Moses. What he's about to do is shape him into the kind of person he can use.

He's had 40 years in Egypt and those 40 years he had the best training, the best education. He had the platform and he thought to himself, I can lead the people out. I can do it. I can do it. Do you know it's gonna take him another 40 years to unlearn all that stuff he learned in the first phase of his life.

Do you know what the greatest lesson he'll need to learn is? Humility. He'll need to learn that he's not as big as deal as he thought he was. Can I tell you that's a lesson that every servant of God needs to learn? You ain't so great as you thought you were. And what's gonna happen? He's gonna return to the palace to do the very thing he was born to do, but he'll do it.

Having learned what it means to depend upon God and God alone and not his giftedness, man, that's a hard lesson to learn. I can do it, Lord. And God's gonna just keep his hand upon you, catch you when you fall, until you get to that place where you realize the things he's called me to do. I can't do them, but God can do them through me and in me.

Amen. So, God's gonna prepare Moses and God will send Moses, he's gonna send the deliverer. But until that time, God's people, they're gonna continue to suffer and they're gonna continue to cry out. Do you know their situations? Not unlike the situation faced by the persecutor church today. It's a similar situation for them amid the suffering and death.

They're, they're, they're there waiting. They're waiting for the deliver to come, and they too continue to cry out. Listen to these words from Revelation chapter six. John writes, I saw under the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God and the testimony they had maintained.

They cried out in a loud voice, how long sovereign Lord holy and true until you judge the inhabitants of the earth and avenge our blood. Then each of them was given a white robe and they were told to wait a little longer. Until the full number of their fellow servants, their brothers and sisters were killed just as they had been.

How long, oh Lord, how long? That's the cry that goes up to heaven. And just like the ancient Israelites, the persecuted church today, they may very well wonder where is God. And what we see here in this revelation is that God hasn't pulled down the shade. Instead, what he does is he pulls back to the curtain to give us a glimpse into the heavenly reality that God does see.

He does hear and he will act. He will not let the guilty go unpunished and he will avenge the blood of his people.

I wanna close by sharing a story from a book called No Man's Land. It's a story that comes from the final days of the First World War. Now if you've seen any movies, you know the horrible thing about the First World War was the way in which it was fought. Do you know they never really got anywhere, did they?

You had all these lives being sacrificed. They never really went anywhere. Each side. What they did is they dug these deep trenches, so we're on our side, the enemies on the other side, and in between us was this empty space known as no man's land, and that's where all the fighting was done. What would happen is you'd be ready with your kit, the whistle would blow.

The men, they'd rush out of the trenches and there'd be these violent skirmishes, and then they'd all go scurrying back to where they came from. Now, on this one occasion, there was two men named Bill and Jim, and these are men who were forged a deep bond under fire. They went out, they engaged the enemy, there's this brutal encounter, and then they all the, all the troops, they ran back.

And as they jumped back into that trench bill realized that Jim was missing. Before long darkness set in and bill's there, thinking to himself, you know, I can't leave Jim out there. Maybe he's hurt, maybe I can go out there and and help him get back. But the problem is, if you go out into no man's land, there's a good chance you ain't coming back.

There's a good chance you pop your head over that trench. You are gonna get shot and you're gonna get killed. And so here's, here he is, Bill's in this quandary, and all the guys around him in the trench are saying, bill, don't do it. Don't be a fool. Don't go back out there, bill. Don't waste your life. Think about it, Jim's probably dead.

Why don't you just wait until morning until you can see what's out there? And Bill says, no, I'm, I'm, I'm going. And so off he goes into the black of no man's land, and he's gone for almost an hour. The men in the trench, they're waiting, nervously, they're watching. And finally out of darkness, this lone figure, it's Bill, he's coming back all by himself.

And one of the men said to him, did you find Jim? Bill says, yeah, yeah. I, I found him. Is he alive? No. No, he's, he's dead. Well, there you go. We told you to be a waste of time. We told you, you know, brother, you could have lost your life. And for what? For nothing. Bill replies. He's dead now. But he wasn't dead when I found him, and when I held up his head and riled at it in my arms, I looked into his eyes and do you know what he said to me?

He said, I knew you wouldn't forget me. I knew you would come times in this world. We may feel like we've been abandoned, that we are left dying alone in no man's land, but our deliverer will come. He sees us, he hears us, and he remembers. And he's filled with deep concern. And at the appointed time. At the appointed time, he will come.

He will come for his people. I wanna close by praying the words of Psalm 13. It's a prayer not only for us, but also for the persecuted church. If I could ask you to bow your heads,

Psalm 13. How long, oh Lord. How long will you forget me forever. How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me? Look on me and answer, Lord my God, give light to my eyes. Or I will sleep in death and my enemy will say, I have overcome him.

And my foes will rejoice when I fall. But I trust. I trust in your unfailing love. My heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing the Lord's praise. For, he has been good to me. Amen.