Joseph & Moses — The Story Before the Burning Bush (Jan-31)
Background Information. Preparing Our Hearts for Exodus 3 - Day 1 (Feb-1)
Background on Joseph:
Before we step into Exodus 3, it helps to remember the story that brought Israel to Egypt — a story of Joseph, suffering, waiting, and God’s quiet faithfulness. Israel’s time in Egypt did not begin with bondage but with rescue. Joseph, the beloved son of Jacob (Israel), is betrayed by his jealous brothers and sold into slavery 🙏 (Genesis 37–50) Though wounded by injustice, God remains with him: Joseph serves faithfully in Potiphar’s house, is falsely accused and imprisoned, and yet is ultimately raised by God to authority so Egypt can prepare for famine 🙏 (Genesis 39)
When famine spreads, Jacob’s sons come to Egypt for grain, unaware that the ruler before them is the brother they rejected. Instead of revenge, Joseph chooses forgiveness and reconciliation, and Jacob’s household relocates to Egypt, where they are preserved and begin to multiply. What his brothers meant for harm, God meant for good — keeping the family of promise and carrying His covenant purposes forward 🙏 (Genesis 50:20).
But over generations, refuge turns into oppression: a new king arises who does not remember Joseph, and fear hardens into slavery 🙏 (Exodus 1 (NKJV). Joseph’s story reminds us that even when the path feels unjust or hidden, God is still at work — preserving His people, shaping His purposes, and preparing the way for what unfolds in Exodus.
Background on Moses
Before Exodus 3 opens, Moses has already walked a long road shaped by suffering, providence, and waiting 🙏 (Exodus 1–2 (NKJV). Israel lives under brutal oppression in Egypt. Work becomes bondage, and bondage becomes cruelty, yet God miraculously preserves Moses. As an infant, he is placed in a woven basket and set afloat on the Nile River to spare his life from Pharaoh’s decree. This decree applied specifically to male infants, newborn baby boys at the time of birth 🙏 (Exodus 1:15–22 (NKJV) Moses is discovered by Pharaoh’s daughter, who has compassion on him and raises him as her own. A Hebrew child grows up inside Pharaoh’s house, yet his heart remains tied to his people. When Moses sees their suffering, he acts in defense of a Hebrew man and is forced to flee to Midian, where he spends years unseen and unknown, stripped of status, formed in wilderness silence, while Israel continues to cry out under affliction. It is in this long pause between promise and deliverance, years of hidden shaping rather than public action, that tomorrow’s passage begins.
We will start tomorrow’s study at the burning bush where Moses meets God, not at the height of power, but in obscurity 🙏 Exodus 3:1–10 (NKJV). A bush burns yet is not consumed; God calls Moses by name, reveals Himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and declares that He has seen His people’s suffering, heard their cry, and come to deliver them. The moment is holy. God is near, God is compassionate, and God is purposeful, and the hesitant shepherd becomes the servant God will send.
In the FaithBindsUs Narrative-Redemptive journey, this moment reminds us that God is never distant from suffering: He sees, He hears, He remembers, and He comes down to redeem. Tomorrow, we step into the turning point where waiting gives way to calling, and God’s rescue story moves forward.