The Fulcrum of History Text: Exodus 2:23-25
Introduction: The Silence and the Fulcrum
History does not move in a straight line, and it is certainly not, as the pagans of our day would have it, a meaningless cycle. History is a story, written by the finger of God, and like any good story, it has plot twists, long periods of suspense, and dramatic reversals. For four hundred years, the sons of Israel had been in Egypt. For a great deal of that time, they had been under the boot of a tyrannical state, engaged in brutal, back-breaking slavery. And during this time, from the death of Joseph to the birth of Moses, the heavens were largely silent. God had spoken to their fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but now there were no prophets, no open vision. There was only the sting of the taskmaster's whip and the groan of a people in bondage.
We must understand that God's apparent silence is not His absence. His delays are not His denials. God often allows a situation to get humanly impossible before He intervenes. He does this for two reasons. First, so that no man can take credit for the deliverance. He wants to make it clear that salvation is from the Lord. Second, He does it to teach His people to cry out to Him. A self-sufficient people do not pray. A comfortable people do not groan for a savior. But God in His wisdom knows how to apply the precise amount of pressure needed to bring His people to their knees, which is right where He wants them.
Our text today sits at a crucial turning point, a fulcrum upon which the history of redemption pivots. A king dies, a people cry out, and God, who was never absent, begins to act publicly. This passage is the hinge between the long silence of Israel's suffering and the thunderous proclamations of the ten plagues. It is the transition from the quiet nurturing of a people in the womb of affliction to their violent birth as a nation. What we see here is not God being stirred to action as though He had forgotten. Rather, we see the appointed time in God's perfect calendar finally arriving. And when God's alarm clock goes off, not even the might of Pharaoh can hit the snooze button.
These three verses are packed with dense, covenantal theology. They reveal the character of our God and the unshakeable foundation of His promises. This is not just a story about something that happened a long time ago. This is a pattern of how God deals with His people in every age. When we are in bondage to sin, when the culture around us seems like an unassailable Egypt, when God seems distant and silent, this is the text we must run to. For it teaches us that our groans have an audience, and that God's memory is covenantal.
The Text
Now it happened in the course of those many days that the king of Egypt died. And the sons of Israel sighed because of the slavery, and they cried out; and their cry for help because of their slavery rose up to God. So God heard their groaning; and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And God saw the sons of Israel, and God knew them.
(Exodus 2:23-25 LSB)
The Cry of Bondage (v. 23)
We begin with the historical setting and the human response:
"Now it happened in the course of those many days that the king of Egypt died. And the sons of Israel sighed because of the slavery, and they cried out; and their cry for help because of their slavery rose up to God." (Exodus 2:23)
The death of a king is noted. In the ancient world, the death of a tyrant was often a moment of hope for the oppressed. Perhaps the new Pharaoh would be more lenient. Perhaps policies would change. But for Israel, nothing changed. The system of oppression was bigger than one man. Their bondage was not tied to a particular personality but to the very structure of the Egyptian state. This is a crucial lesson. We should not put our ultimate hope in political change. While we should work and pray for righteous rulers, we must recognize that the root of our problem is never merely political. The problem is spiritual, and the only solution is divine.
So the people "sighed" and "cried out." These are not the articulate prayers of a seminary professor. This is the raw, guttural cry of desperation. A sigh, a groan. It is the sound of a people at the end of their rope. And notice the repetition: "because of the slavery... their cry for help because of their slavery." The Holy Spirit wants us to feel the weight of this. This was not a mild inconvenience. This was soul-crushing, hope-destroying bondage.
And their cry "rose up to God." This is significant. They were not crying out into a void. Even if their theology was weak, even if they did not know exactly how to address Him, their misery had a destination. God's ears are open to the cries of the afflicted. As James would later say, "the cry of the harvesters has reached the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth" (James 5:4). God is not a distant, deistic clockmaker. He is intimately involved in the affairs of His world, and He pays particular attention to the groans of the oppressed. This is not to say that all suffering is a sign of righteousness. But it is to say that God is a God of justice, and He hears the pleas of those who are mistreated.
The Divine Response: Hearing and Remembering (v. 24)
Verse 24 shifts the focus from the human cry to the divine response, and it is a response grounded entirely in God's own character and promises.
"So God heard their groaning; and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." (Exodus 2:24 LSB)
First, "God heard their groaning." This is more than just the passive reception of sound waves. In Hebrew thought, to hear is to act. When God hears, He is preparing to intervene. This is the same language used in Genesis when God heard Hagar's cry (Gen. 16:11) or later when He promises to hear the cry of the widow and the orphan (Ex. 22:23). God's hearing is an active, engaged listening that leads to deliverance.
But the central engine of this verse is the next phrase: "and God remembered His covenant." This is one of the most misunderstood concepts in all of Scripture. This does not mean that God had a moment of forgetfulness, as though He were an old man who had misplaced His keys. It does not mean that the cry of Israel jogged His memory. God is omniscient; He never forgets anything. In the Bible, when God "remembers," it means He is beginning to act on the basis of a pre-existing promise. It is a covenantal term. To remember the covenant is to activate its clauses. He remembered Noah, and the floodwaters receded (Gen. 8:1). He would later remember His covenant and not utterly destroy Israel for their sin (Lev. 26:42-45). God's memory is His faithfulness in action.
And what did He remember? "His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." He did not act because Israel was righteous. They were not. He did not act because they were numerous or powerful. They were slaves. He acted because centuries earlier, He had made a unilateral, unconditional promise to their fathers. He had promised land, seed, and blessing (Gen. 15, 17, 22). And God is not a covenant-breaker. Our entire salvation rests on this fact. God's faithfulness is not contingent on our performance. It is grounded in His own sworn oath. The deliverance of Israel from Egypt was not an improvisation. It was a promise, hundreds of years old, coming due on God's timetable.
The Divine Response: Seeing and Knowing (v. 25)
The final verse deepens our understanding of God's intimate involvement with His people.
"And God saw the sons of Israel, and God knew them." (Exodus 2:25 LSB)
Just as God's hearing is active, so is His seeing. "God saw the sons of Israel." This is not the detached gaze of an astronomer looking at a distant star. This is the look of compassion and concern. He saw their affliction. He saw their suffering. In the very next chapter, God will say to Moses, "I have surely seen the affliction of My people who are in Egypt" (Exodus 3:7). God is not blind to the pain of His people.
And then the final, powerful verb: "and God knew them." The word "know" in Hebrew, yada, implies much more than intellectual awareness. It speaks of a deep, personal, intimate relationship. It is the word used for the intimate knowledge between a husband and a wife (Gen. 4:1). When God "knows" His people, it means He has chosen them, set His affection upon them, and entered into a personal relationship with them. The prophet Amos would later say on God's behalf, "You only have I known of all the families of the earth" (Amos 3:2). This was not a statement about God's omniscience, but about His elective, covenantal love.
So, put it all together. God heard, God remembered, God saw, and God knew. This is a four-fold statement of God's sovereign, covenantal grace. He is not moved to action by their inherent worthiness, but by His own promise and His own intimate knowledge of them. This is the bedrock of our hope. He does not save us because we are impressive. He saves us because He made a promise, and He knows His own.
The Gospel in the Groaning
This pattern of bondage, groaning, and deliverance is not a one-time event. It is the story of the Bible in miniature. It is the story of every Christian.
We were all born in a greater Egypt, in bondage to a greater Pharaoh. We were slaves to sin and to the prince of the power of the air (Eph. 2:1-3). Our slavery was not to brick-making, but to our own lusts and rebellion. And in that state, we groaned. The whole creation groans, Paul says, waiting for the revealing of the sons of God (Rom. 8:22). And we too, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies (Rom. 8:23). Our sighs, our cries against the bondage of our own sin and the brokenness of this world, rise up to God.
And what is God's response? He hears. And He remembers. He remembers the ultimate covenant, the new covenant sealed not in the blood of animals but in the blood of His own Son. He remembers the promise He made before the foundation of the world to redeem a people for Himself. His action is not based on our groaning alone, but on the covenant that predates our very existence.
And so, God saw us in our affliction. He saw us dead in our trespasses. And He knew us. He knew us before we were born (Jer. 1:5). He chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world (Eph. 1:4). And because He heard, remembered, saw, and knew, He sent a deliverer. Not Moses, but a greater Moses. He sent His Son, Jesus Christ, to confront the ultimate Pharaoh, Satan himself. Christ won the victory not through ten plagues, but through one perfect sacrifice on the cross. He has led us out of bondage, not through the Red Sea, but through the waters of baptism, and is leading us to a better promised land, the new heavens and the new earth.
Therefore, when you find yourself in affliction, when you are groaning under the weight of sin or sorrow, do not despair. Cry out. Your cry is not unheard. It rises to a God who sees, who knows, and who remembers His covenant. He is faithful. He has acted in the past, and He will act again. His timing is perfect, and His deliverance is certain, all because of a promise He made and a people He knows.