“Then the Lord said, “I have seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters; I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey…”
Exodus 3:7-8 (RSV)
There have been two great exoduses that happened, and both exoduses began with God seeing and hearing the cries of His people who were in misery. God is Holy and just, yet is so full of compassion and love for us, that He “came down” to His people. He is tuned in to our every cry, and He sees everything that causes us misery. We may feel like He is far off and doesn’t hear us or see what we are suffering, but the Israelites felt the same way. They almost gave up hope that God was watching or hearing them in all their suffering in Egypt. The word used in this scripture is misery, and other versions use the term oppression or affliction. God told Moses from the burning bush, that He sees and hears His people crying. He said He sees their misery, affliction and oppression and has come down to deliver them. This scripture should remind us of how God came down to us through the incarnation of Jesus. His coming down to us verifies the truth that God also sees us and hears us today when we cry out to Him. Of all the miracles God did for the Israelite slaves, it was the blood of an unblemished lamb, which was essential to comply with His plan of deliverance. Easter is the second, and final exodus, God’s final fulfillment of the first one. God came down again to deliver us, only this time He provided the unblemished lamb Himself, giving us His only son, Jesus. He heard the cries and saw the misery of His people living under Roman oppression, and today He sees whatever sorrow or misery we go through, and He still comes down to us today. After He divided the sea in the first exodus He provided bread from heaven to sustain them in the wilderness. In the second exodus, the temple curtain was divided and split open the moment Jesus died, giving us new access to God through His sacrifice. We are journeying through a wilderness now, as the Israelites did, and God also gives us His bread from heaven to sustain us. Since Jesus called Himself the bread of heaven, He is with us day by day, sustaining us through whatever wilderness experience we are going through. In His love and compassion, He hears and sees everything we suffer. Our destination and hope is to reach His promised land of heaven, instead of a geographical one as in the first exodus. The route to get there involves the wilderness just as in the first exodus. His resurrection broke the power of sin and death, which has no power over us anymore. Instead of leading us with a pillar of cloud or fire, His Spirit dwells within us and leads us as we journey onward. He divided and split open the curtain that separated us from God, and after Jesus came down and brought us final deliverance, He told us to ask anything in His name, because He is our eternal intercessor. So after Easter, we continue on our journey to the promised land, with the shepherd of our souls leading us. Remembering that we are the children of the second exodus and God loves us so much that He came down to us through Jesus, we trust His promise that He will never leave us or forsake us. Lord, thank you for our exodus as we celebrate this Easter season of deliverance. As you lead us through the wilderness all the way to our promised land, please keep sustaining us one day at a time, on our journey with Jesus, who is our daily bread of heaven. Amen