1/21/2024
Friends, I want you to open your pew bibles, not quite yet to Exodus chapter 1, but rather to page 1369. Go one page over to what would be page 1370, and what you’ve got here with an open bible in your hands, is the Old Testament on your left and the New Testament on your right.
When I was in seminary, the first class I took was Introduction to the Old Testament. It was taught by this amazing woman, who had this killer Australian accent, Dr. Carol Kaminski was her name. Our very first class I remember her making this comparison that I’ve never forgotten.
She compared reading the bible to watching a movie. And she said, imagine turning on a movie and rather than starting at the beginning you started at the ¾ mark, with say 30 min left in a two hour movie. Imagine that’s how you watched the movie. Or in other words, imagine you were to watch the Lion King, only watching the part at the end where Simba makes his return to Pride Rock.
Her point was simple: you’d never watch a movie that way, and yet, for many of us, that’s how we read our bibles. We start ¾ of the way in and begin with the New Testament. And I do it too.
And here’s the kicker. Her point in all of this was not to guilt and shame us for our lack of reading and understanding and neither is mine. After all, there are a whole host of understandable reasons why we gravitate towards the New Testament rather than the Old. Rather, what she would go on to say, is that when you read the Old Testament not only will you understand the New Testament better, but in fact, you’ll appreciate it and delight in it more, because you now see it in light of its larger story, you’ve felt the tension and drama, the peaks and the valleys, the characters and plot, from start to finish, all the way through.
In other words, if you begin with the beginning, you’ll love and admire your movies more, the Lion King more, your bibles more, you’ll love and admire Jesus more.
And so friends, let’s begin at the beginning, or I should say, near the beginning. Let’s go all the way back to the book of Exodus. Let’s turn back a page or two, all the way back to page 78, with Exodus chapter 1.
Anytime we start a new sermon series we’ve got some serious table setting to do and groundwork to lay and that’s certainly true of a lengthy and maybe unfamiliar book such as Exodus. So before we dive into the finer details of text itself, let’s first try and get our bearings.
Exodus is the second book of the bible and is meant to be seen as Part 2 of a larger five part series that includes Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. And Exodus, in fact, each of the first five books of the bible, are written by Moses himself, who just so happens to be, second to God, the main character within the Exodus story.
And the book of Exodus is named after its main event, after its central story, where God’s people, the Israelites, who we find at the beginning of the book are enslaved in Egypt, are led by God in an exodus out of Egypt.
That, after all, is what the word Exodus means. It means “to go out from” “to exit” “to depart.” Or to use it in a sentence, if I give 40 sermons from the book of Exodus there will be a mass exodus from this very sanctuary.
But do not fear! This will be more of an overview series, as we look at this 40 chapter book over the course of 10 sermons. And so it’ll be a bit of a flyover, 30,000ft foot view of Exodus and yet I still hope to make it a truly immersive experience as I vow to grow the best Moses like beard I can muster.
And if you’re feeling unfamiliar or overwhelmed by this prospect of studying Exodus, well chances are you’re more familiar with the book than you might realize. For example, if you’ve ever heard of the story of Moses and the Burning Bush, or heard rumblings about the first ever Passover meal, or used the phrase “this is manna from heaven” or seen Charlton Heston part the Red Sea, well, that’s Exodus.
And whether you’ve read Exodus dozens of times before, or whether you’re hearing the word for the very first time, I’m confident that we’ll all learn a thing or two from this old, old book and grow in our love and admiration of Jesus, the God of the Exodus, as we do.
If I were to summarize the book of Exodus in a sentence, here’s how I’d do it (and how many others do it as well). God’s people are set free to live free. God’s people are set free from slavery to live free to worship and bring glory to Him. And if that sounds vaguely familiar, well, it happened to be one of the recurring mantras within our 10 Commandments series last summer, yet another portion of scripture that is first introduced in Exodus.
God’s people are set free to live free. That might be the big idea for the entire book, and yet, here might be the big idea for chapter 1 itself. While the king’s plans are great, God’s plans are always greater still.
And in order for us to understand how both this minor theme and major theme play out, we first need to see how they became enslaved in the first place.
Which now finally brings us into Exodus chapter 1. Verses 1-7 serve as a summary or recap of sorts of what has happened in the story so far. After all, Exodus, following Genesis, is part 2 of a 5 part series. It’s as if Moses begins the book of Exodus just like our favorite T.V. shows, with a short bit entitled, “Previously on.” So let me hear you say, “Previously on …” “Previously on … ”
In verse 1, we’re given this list of names, the names of the sons of Israel who went to Egypt with their father Jacob. And then at the end of verse 5, we read that Joseph, another one of Jacob’s sons, was already in Egypt. Here’s what had happened:
Joseph, through the miraculous hand of God found favor with the king of Egypt of his day, and was placed in a key position of leadership. And during that time a famine came upon all the land, and Joseph brought his 11 brothers, his father, and his extended family of 70 to Egypt so that they could survive and make it through the famine. And they did! So far, so good.
And in verse 6, the story fast forwards quite a bit, saying, “6 Now Joseph and all his brothers and all that generation died, 7 but the Israelites were exceedingly fruitful; they multiplied greatly, increased in numbers and became so numerous that the land was filled with them.”
The good news continues on! Still here, so far, so good. The people of God, the Israelite people are growing, thriving, flourishing, they are doing the very thing that God had told them to do, that God had promised to do.
You see, Exodus 1 echoes back to Genesis 1, where God gave this creation mandate, “To be fruitful and multiply, increase in number.” The very same language is being used here.
Even more, Joseph was Abraham’s great grandson, and it was to Abraham that God made this promise, that he was going to make Abraham into a great nation and that all the peoples of the earth will be blessed through his descendants.
And so, so far, so good, everything seems to be falling into place. The people of God are fulfilling the very purposes of God in the very presence of God.
But not so fast. Verse 8, there’s a new king in town, who doesn’t care about or remember Joseph from long ago, and even worse, feels threatened by the growth of the Israelites. And while this turn for the worse might surprise us as readers, it wouldn’t have surprised the Israelites, as God had told Abraham long ago that something like this would happen.
Altogether, the king institutes a vicious and cruel multi part plan. The first thing he does is enslave them and work them into the ground.
Verse 11 says, So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor.
And then later, in verse 13, and worked them ruthlessly. Making their lives bitter with harsh labor.
And yet, their enslavement actually had the opposite effect that the king had intended. You see, verse 12, the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread.
And so the king moves to more drastic measures, as he orders that all the Hebrew baby boys are put to death. Which will, both decrease any military power they might have while also keeping them from having children and growing as a nation over time.
And so, what’s the king of Egypt ultimately trying to do here? He’s trying to ensure that the people of God, the nation of Israel, has no future.
Rather than being fruitful and multiplying, rather than creating life, they’re being put to death. Rather than being a blessing to all the nations, they’re under a curse instead.
And yet, while the king’s plans are great, God’s plans are greater still.
There’s a glimmer of hope from an unexpected source. A glimmer of hope through two courageous women, two Hebrew midwives, by the name of Shiphrah and Puah. When they are asked to execute the king’s plan, that when they help the Hebrew women during childbirth, to kill the baby boys and let the baby girls live, it says, 17 The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do; they let the boys live.
And when later asked by the king why they didn’t go through with his orders, here was their curious defense, saying, “Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women; they are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive.”
Now, how’s that for an answer? It almost serves as a bit of comedy in the midst of a horrific tragedy. Could it really be true that one race of people can give birth faster than another? I don’t know. We probably need the women to weigh in here as this is a bit above my pay grade. Maybe it’s simply that the midwives gave the pregnant Hebrew women a heads up beforehand saying, “Hey don’t call upon our services when you go into labor, call upon our services just before you deliver, that way we can then say to the king, “I’m sorry, we just couldn’t get there in time.” In all honesty, we don’t really know how this all shook out, and truth is, we don’t really need to.
Because the point is this: the Hebrew women feared God. They didn’t carry out the king’s orders. They let the little boys live. They demonstrated unbelievable courage and conviction. And in an ironic twist, while the king was concerned with how the boys, how the men would threaten his power, it was two women whose courage is remembered by us thousands of years later. And because of it, people have been naming their daughters Shiphrah and Puah ever since. No? Not quite?
While the king’s plans were great, God’s plans were greater still, using the courageous actions of two women to help ensure that his people have a future. To ensure that his promise to Abraham long ago, to make Abraham’s descendants into a great nation would come to fruition.
And when the second part of the king’s plan to have the midwives kill the baby boys doesn’t work, he raises the stakes even further, saying to all the people in verse 22, “Every Hebrew boy that is born you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live.”
And next week, we’ll read the story of a Hebrew baby boy named Moses, who was thrown into the Nile, thrown into the waters of death, as it were, only to be saved by the wonderful scheming of even more courageous women and the miraculous hand of God. That’s next week.
But for now, let’s briefly consider some applications. This, after all, is one of many reasons I think we are intimidated by the Old Testament, as it indeed can be really hard to bridge the Old Testament world to our world and connect the dots to how their story applies to our own.
Nevertheless, let’s ask this question: How might we as God’s people today fear God and demonstrate courage like Shiphrah and Puah long ago?
This past Monday was MLK day and on it we remember and honor the tremendous leadership and courage shown by men such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis and women such as Rosa Parks. Men and women who feared God above all and stood up against the injustices of their day.
And not long ago, I came across something MLK once said about the story of the Good Samaritan, you know, the famous story that Jesus told about the Samaritan who helped the man left for dead by the side of the road.
And in his sermon, MLK summarized the mindset of those who could have helped in the most powerful, striking way. Saying that when the Priest and Levite saw the man left for dead, they asked themselves, “What will happen to me if I help?” while the Samaritan asked a more costly, a far more beautiful question, asking, “What will happen to him I don’t?
Friends, do you see how women like Shiphrah and Puah were driven by a similar question?
They could have asked, “What will happen to us if we help these baby boys, if we let these baby boys live? Lord knows, if this monster king would demand that baby boys be murdered upon their birth, I’m sure he’d have no problem seeing these women experience the same fate for not carrying out his orders.
And yet, driven out of their fear and worship and devotion to God and out of love for his people, these women must have been thinking to themselves, “What will happen to these baby boys if we don’t help?
As you go about your week, whatever it entails, wherever it takes you, wherever you live, work, play or learn, with a spouse or child, neighbor or co-worker, stranger or friend, if you find yourself in a situation and see someone in need, asking yourself, “What will happen to me if I help?” Maybe it’ll cost you time and energy and money, who knows, maybe even you reputation. Instead, ask yourself the more beautiful question, the more Samaritan like question, the more Christ like question, instead of asking, “What will happen to me if I help? Ask yourself, “What will happen to them if I don’t? See where that road takes you.
That seems to be the question a couple Hebrew midwives who feared God above all were asking long ago, maybe it can be your question too.
While King’s plans were great, God’s plans were greater still. That in many ways is the theme of Exodus 1, and it’s a theme that will carry on, as we see over time, how the people of God are set free from slavery to live free, that they might worship and glorify God to the very ends of the earth.
Alright, it’s time to wrap this one up. As promised at the top, one of my hopes for this sermon series is that by going back to the beginning, or near the beginning, we’ll over time love and admire the story of scripture more, you’ll love the New Testament more, as you see connections you’ve maybe never seen before, and ultimately, most importantly, that you’ll love and admire Jesus more.
You see, the Exodus story echoes everywhere. And it echoes throughout the story of Jesus too. For example, Christmas wasn’t that long ago. Do you remember how the news about Jesus’s birth was received by the powers and authorities, by the king of his day? Well, just like it was with God’s people long ago, the king was so threatened by the power of a baby boy that he demanded that all the baby boys in Bethlehem be put to death. And so Mary and Joseph and baby Jesus run for their lives, and where do they go? They go where God’s people once found themselves long ago, in Egypt.
You see, God sent his beloved son, Jesus, into Egypt, so that he too, like his people long ago, could be sent out from Egypt, to experience an exodus out of Egypt, that we might be set free to live free, to worship and glorify him.
You see, with Jesus, there’s a new deliverance taking place, a new freedom being given, a new redemption unfolding, a second exodus happening, this time, not through a freedom from slavery, but a freedom through the chains and power of sin itself.
As this God long ago came and dwelt among us, asking a far more beautiful question. Not, “What will happen to me if I help? But rather “What will happen to them if I don’t?”
As we’ll see, exodus echoes everywhere. In the story of Jesus, and in our story too. Looking forward to exploring this one with you.