So when the LORD saw that he turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, “Moses, Moses!”

And he said, “Here I am.”

Then He said, “Do not draw near this place. Take your sandals off your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground.” Moreover He said, “I am the God of your father—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God.

And the LORD said: “I have surely seen the oppression of My people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows. So I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Amorites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites. Now therefore, behold, the cry of the children of Israel has come to Me, and I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them. Come now, therefore, and I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring My people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.” (Exodus 3:4-10)

The people of Israel were in slavery because God had put them there. God sent Joseph to Egypt at the hands of his brothers so that he would be in the right place at the right time to save their lives and the lives of the Egyptians. Then God sent Jacob and the rest of Joseph’s brothers to Egypt to live. God had told Abraham that they would spend four hundred years in slavery there. And that is precisely what happened. Joseph’s enslavement, though done with evil intent, happened because it was ultimately a good thing. With Moses, the time had come at last to rescue the Israelites from their bondage, a bondage that had not come through disobedience, but through their ancestors’ obedience to God’s commands. God wanted the Egyptians to know about him. He wanted the Israelites to learn about God’s power and to give them a picture of salvation.

God intended to take the land of the Canaanites and give it to the Israelites. The Canaanites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites all spoke a language similar or in many cases the same, as the Hebrews. The Hittites, however, spoke a language related to the languages of Europe and India. The people living in the Promised Land were disunited; no one king ruled the entire area, no one language or culture bound them together beyond their evil religion, a religion that included child sacrifice. Israel would get the land of the Canaanites because God needed to punish the Canaanites.

Sometimes doing what God wants might not be pleasant. We simply must trust that God knows what he is doing and that he is doing it for a very good reason.

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