Exodus 17:14a And the Lord said unto Moses, Write this for a memorial in a book…

When we read this verse we take the instruction for granted and it seems to us no big deal. We don’t look at the underlying issue of education in this matter. Israel was enslaved by Pharaohs for four hundred years. The only source of understanding about the God they prayed to was oral tradition. The Pharaohs would not have allowed these slaves to be educated.

We often overlook the plight of a people with whom we have no common history. We fail to understand the depths of their ordeals. Luckily God did not overlook this small matter. He chose Moses to be their deliverer.

Moses was a Levite raised in the house of Pharaoh’s sister. He would have been educated as one of the privileged few. It was no little thing for his mother to set his new life in a basket and put it upon the waters. It was no small thing for his sister to follow the basket to find out his fate. It was no small thing for the woman to pluck the baby from the water and love him.

All this happened at a time when Pharaoh ordered all newborn males of the slaves killed.

It was no small thing for Moses to lead Israel free.

It was no small thing that Herod the Great would, like Pharaoh, order the death of our deliverer in Bethlehem, and that He too should escape that execution.

But we accept without much thought for the peoples of those times and how difficult life must have been for them to believe God.

Now our time has come with easy of life, freedom and perfect peace but do we give thought at all to those enslaved and what they need to be set free?

Are they educated about Jesus?