Our identity as Adventsits in this time. 

<p>Our identity as Adventsits in this time.</p> <div></div>

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Advent HOPE Sabbath School

Adam Ramdin

Our Identity

Father in heaven, Lord, we pause to thank you for your goodness and your mercy, allowing us to see this day.

We thank you, Lord, for the privilege of this technology that we can communicate with different believers in various parts of the world at the same time.

And where 2 or 3 are gathered around the internet connection together, Lord, we know you are there in the midst of us.

And we pray that you would speak to our hearts and speak to us now in Jesus' name.

If you have your Bible, if you open it to Exodus chapter 2, we're going to start there today, Exodus chapter 2.

And take some time to meditate upon this story.

I want to share with you before we go into that story though that I read on the New York Times a short while ago.

The New York Times has a long comprehensive article about these 2 sets of twins, maybe you have read the story, that were born in the country of Columbia.

1 set of twins was born in the northern part of the country to a rather less well-to-do family.

Another set of twins was born in the city of Bogota.

And there they were born, 2 sets of twins, 2 or 300 miles apart, no connection to each other whatsoever, but there was some complications at the birth, and so both sets of mothers had to go to a hospital.

And while they're in the hospital, they're on probably the same ward, and both sets of mothers with 2 sets of twins, 2 sets of identical twins, were in the hospital.

Something happened though while the twins were in the hospital.

1 of the nurses picked up 1 of the twins, and the other 1 picked up another twin.

And when they put the twins down into the crib or the incubator, wherever it is they were, they switched over the twins unknowingly.

Sometimes when babies are born, they can look very similar.

And so the twins got switched over at birth.

The 2 mothers, when the 2 sets of twins were better, then took their twins home, not knowing that they had taken home another woman's baby.

As the twins grew up in their homes, they grew up not as identical twins, but they grew up as fraternal twins, what we call the opposite of identical twins, meaning they were twins, born on the same day, from the same mother, they thought, but they did not look the same.

There's some interesting stories about their upbringing, about how even though they grew up in the same home, even though they grew up in the same family, even though they grew up in the same neighborhood, there were some differences in their characters and their personalities that manifested right from the very start.

1 of them wanted to study, the other 1 didn't want to study.

1 of them was outgoing, the other 1 was quick-tempered, and they kind of maybe thought it was a little bit strange that the 2 sets of twins were so different, but they didn't really give it much thought.

I'm gonna pick up the story a little bit later on.

I just wanted to kind of leave that story with you.

Some of you may know the story, some of you may not, but it's a fascinating story about how 2 twins really came to grips and really found their identity.

And that's the subject I want to talk a little bit about today.

And that is our identity in the book of Exodus.

Moses is, 1 of my favorite characters in the Bible.

In fact, he is my favorite character in the Bible.

I just liked the story of his leadership and how he demonstrates immense courage in leading God's people from Egypt to the borders of Canaan and how he led people for 40 years through the desert and the characteristics he demonstrated.

But Moses, the way that he was born, he probably wasn't sure, you know, he may have had a, his mother had a plan for his life, or he may have had a plan for his life.

But at the time he was born, he was born at an incredibly hard time for the people of God.

Moses' mother was a slave, his father was a slave, his grandparents were slaves, and his great grandparents were slaves.

Moses was born at a very hard time in Israel's history.

Not only were they slaves, but there was a law at the time where the Pharaoh said that the baby boys who were born to the Hebrew mothers, They had to die.

The midwives were commanded to kill the baby boys at birth, but fortunately, some people say that good people disobey bad laws.

They didn't listen to this law of the king, and they broke this law, and they let the baby boys be born, And Moses' mother was no different.

And for the first 3 months, he was hidden at home and everything was okay.

But as he got bigger, as he got noisy, as he got louder, they had to come up with a plan.

And if you're familiar with the story, you would know that Moses' mother, she made a basket of reeds.

She then wove it together, she daubed it with pitch to make it waterproof.

She put it in the River Nile and every day she put Moses in the River Nile to keep safe and his older sister Miriam would go there and peek through the reeds and watch and make sure that he was okay.

Well, 1 day this happened and as Moses was there in the basket, Pharaoh's daughter came down to the river and she saw the little basket in the water with a baby boy.

She put 2 and 2 together and she got 4 and she realized that it was a Hebrew mother who was trying to save her son.

Her heart was touched, she knew the law of her father, her heart was touched and she said, what can I do?

And then at that point Miriam jumps out the bushes and says, do you want to have someone to look after the mother?

And like sometimes maybe sports clubs do today where they loan a player to another team, Moses was loaned back to his mother, even though it was his rightful mother, loaned back to his mother, and she had 12 years to look after the son.

The Bible says in Exodus chapter 2, Exodus chapter 2 in verse 10 is the verse I wanted to read.

It says there in verse 10, and the child grew and she brought him unto Pharaoh's door.

So I can just imagine how Moses' mother would have felt when the child was 12 years old and after she'd raised him and put everything she could into her child, knowing that he would go into the palaces of Pharaoh.

Now she takes her own flesh and blood and hands him over to Pharaoh's daughter.

She can see all the palaces and the gods that are on display.

She hands over her son into this environment.

And the Bible says, it says, and she, and, and he became her son.

And she said, because I drew him out of the water.

And the Bible says he was taken to Pharaoh's house and that's it.

We don't hear anything for the rest of Moses' teenage years.

We don't hear anything about how Moses lived in his 30s.

And we don't hear anything about how Moses lived in his 30s and we don't hear anything about how Moses lived in his 40s.

Those 3, 40s, 30s, no actually it's almost 4 decades, oh no sorry it's 20s, it's 30s, and it's 30s.

Those almost 3 decades of Moses' life, we don't hear anything about his life.

We can put 2 and 2 together, and oftentimes preachers will say that he trained in the universities of Cairo or of Egypt.

He would have learned how to marshal men.

He would have learned how to be a great military and political leader.

We can assume all that based on what a Pharaoh would have learned.

A pharaoh in training would have learned at the time, but the Bible record really does not say anything.

It just says that Moses went to Pharaoh's palace and there in Pharaoh's palace He was.

The next 28 years of Moses' life, it's silent.

Sometimes you don't read the story, but you can read what happens and then you conclude what happened before.

We can conclude what did happen in Moses life based on who he is when he pops up back on the scene at the age of 40.

At the age of 40, in verse 11, Moses suddenly reappears.

Like I said, we haven't heard about his teenage years, his 20s or his 30s, but now at the age of 40, Moses all of a sudden reappears on the scene.

And now when we can see what type of person he is here, we can conclude what he might have been doing over the last 10, 20 or 30 years.

The Bible says in Exodus chapter 2 and verse 11, it says there, and it came to pass in these days that when Moses was grown, he was a grown man then, he went out to his brothers and looked on their burdens and he spied an Egyptian smiting a Hebrew, 1 of his brothers.

See, I reckon Moses struggled with his identity when he was growing up there in Pharaoh's palace.

He was told by his mother, you're a Hebrew.

He was told by his mother, you're 1 of the Israelites.

He was told by his mother, we are, this is not our home.

We are 1 day going to move and go to another country.

He was told all these things by his mother.

And he goes out and sees an Egyptian who he's grown up with now in most of his life, beating 1 of his Hebrew Israelite brothers.

He gets so angry, he's not sure how to contain or process or funnel his anger.

The Bible says that he, verse 12, he looked this way and that way.

And when he saw that there was nobody, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.

So no 1 sees him kill the Egyptian except the person that he saved.

Then the next day, or a few days later, he sees 2 Hebrews fighting, and he goes and tells them to stop fighting.

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Our Identity

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