The Bible is an amazing book and it's filled with
unbelievably exciting stories. You don't
have to make the Bible more exciting than it already is. We want to begin our journey through one of
those stories and it's going to be the life of Moses.
We're not going to get through the entire life of Moses but we are
going to go from his birth to the Exodus as we study through the first 13
chapters of the book of Exodus. We begin
in chapter one by seeing the times in which Moses was born into. We're going to learn the history behind the
birth of Moses. If you're going to
understand the Bible theologically, you must also understand it
historically. To really understand the
man, you have to understand the time in which the man lived. We're going to break it down into three
areas. We're going to see, first of all,
that Israel goes to Egypt. Then we're
going to see that Israel grows in Egypt and then we're going to end by seeing
that Israel groans in Egypt.
ISRAEL GOES TO EGYPT
Let's begin by talking about how Israel got to Egypt to
begin with. To understand this you have
to know the story of Joseph. Joseph is betrayed
by his brothers which results in his being sold as a slave into Egypt where he
spends many years as a prisoner. Ultimately,
he is elevated to the position of prime minister where only Pharaoh himself was
greater in power.
God then uses Joseph to save all of Egypt and the
surrounding areas from a horrific seven-year famine. During that famine, Joseph's brothers are
forced to go to Egypt for food. They
think Joseph is probably long since dead.
It ends up that they are reconciled to their brother, the prime
minister. Joseph is again bonded with
his brothers and all of Joseph's family leaves the land where they live and
they come to Egypt where Pharaoh gives them the good part of the land and they
end up living in prosperity in the land of Egypt. That's where Exodus picks up the story in Exodus
1:1.
“Now, these are the names of the
sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob. They came each one with his house
hold.”
In verses 2, 3 and 4, he lists the names of his sons. Now, interestingly enough, he doesn't list
them in the traditional way which would be to list them in the order of their
birth. Instead, he lists them in groups
based on who their mother was. If you
remember the story of Joseph, the sons of Jacob were born to him by four
different women.
“All the persons who came from the loins of Jacob were 70 in number but
Joseph was already in Egypt.”
We see that when Israel arrives in Egypt, they arrive with 70
men along with women and daughters. There
is 70 of them - that's all. That's how
they start in the land of Egypt.
ISRAEL GROWS IN EGYPT
From there we discover is that Israel grows in Egypt. In verse 6 of Exodus 1, we learn that Joseph
dies.
“Joseph died and all his brothers and all that generation.”
To give you a little bit of a timeline, Joseph would have
been 17 when he was sold into slavery.
He would have been 39 when his family moved to Egypt. He then would have lived another 71 years
ruling as prime minister and he dies as the age of 110. Along with him dying, so does his
generation. His dad has already died. All of his brothers have died. All the generations of Joseph are completely
gone. Time is marching on.
From the time of Joseph's death to the time of Moses' birth
is about 350 years. Many of the
following generations have all died. But
during this time, we discover the prosperity of the sons of Israel. Look at verse number 7 and notice what
happens to Israel in the land of Egypt during these 350 years.
“But the sons of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly and
multiplied and became exceedingly mighty, that means in numbers, so that the
land was filled with them.”
Here are the sons of Israel.
They have lived in the land of Egypt now for 350 years. God supernaturally blesses them and they
multiply in amazing fashion. They start
with 70 men plus Joseph, but notice how they end up. In Exodus chapter one, 70 men enter into
Egypt but in the book of Numbers, when they leave Egypt there are over 600,000
men. When you add women and children, at
the time of the exodus there were probably over 2 million Jewish people. It all started with 70 men who entered Israel
350 years prior to the birth of Moses.
God blesses them in amazing ways which, by the way, is
evidence of God's promise. Back in
Genesis 46:3, when Joseph invites his family to come live in Egypt, his father is
hesitant. Should he really leave the
land where he lived and move to Egypt?
So God makes him a promise.
“I am God, the God of your father.
Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt for I will make you a great nation
there.”
God keeps that promise.
At the time of the exodus, the Israelites have grown from 70 men to over
600,000 men. They are an amazing number
of people filling the land of Goshen in the region of Egypt.
ISRAEL GROANS IN EGYPT
Now we get to the time period that leads up to the birth of
Moses. This is not just a time period of
misery it is a time period of misery multiplied. Two things take place. In verse number 8 we find that a new Pharaoh
has come into power.
“Now a new king, a new Pharaoh, arose over Egypt who did not know
Joseph.”
Keep in mind it's been 350 years since Joseph died. There have been several different Pharaohs
reigning in Egypt during that time. The
Bible doesn't tell us which Pharaoh it was that ruled during the time of Joseph,
or which Pharaoh it was that ruled at the birth of Moses, or which Pharaoh it
was that ruled at the time of the exodus.
But a new Pharaoh comes on the scene and this Pharaoh has no remembrance
of Joseph. If you were to bring up
Joseph's name, he would go, “Joseph who?”
He has no idea about Joseph or what happened in Egypt through Joseph.
How could that be?
How could a Pharaoh not remember Joseph?
Keep in mind that it was 350 years earlier. Let's do a little exercise to see if we can't
plant that into our minds. Let me give
you a year in history and I want you, without cheating and using your
smartphones, to tell me who were the main characters on the world stage and
what were the main occurrences going on at that time. The year is 1664. Who were the main characters? What were the main occurrences? You likely don’t have a clue because it was
350 years ago. So it's not surprising
that this new Pharaoh would have no recollection of Joseph.
For him, there's no sentimental connection at all to the
Hebrew people. They are just a group of
people, a large group of people, living in the land. That results in a nagging problem for
Pharaoh. Beginning in verse 9 you see
the problem and how he deals with it. Here's
what it says,
“Pharaoh said to his people, behold, the people of the sons of Israel
are more and mightier than we. Come, he
says. Let us deal wisely with them or else
they will multiply and in the event of war they will join themselves to those
who hate us and fight against us and apart from the land. So, they appoint taskmasters over them to
afflict them with hard labor. And they
built for Pharaoh storage cities. But
the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and the more they spread
out so that they were in dread of the sons of Israel. The Egyptians compelled the sons of Israel to
labor rigorously and they made their lives bitter with hard labor, in mortar
and bricks and in all kinds of labor in the field, all their labors which they
rigorously imposed on them.”
The Israelites have grown to the point that they outnumbered
the Egyptians. For Pharaoh, this is a problem. It also produces fear in Pharaoh's mind and
heart. The fear is that the children of
Israel may join forces with one of their external enemies, and if that were to
happen, the Egyptian empire would topple easily. Based on this fear he decides he needs to
break their spirit which he believes would keep them from multiplying and
becoming an even mightier group of people.
To do so, he puts them into severe slavery. Go back and read verses 9 through 14 and notice
the adjectives and adverbs. This was
hard slavery. They worked
rigorously. They worked in bitter
conditions. This was an attempt to break
their spirit.
He puts them in slavery and they build storage cities. Some people have the mistaken idea that it
was the Hebrew slaves that built the pyramids.
The pyramids pre-date Moses and Joseph.
That's astonishing. I've had the thrill of standing at the foot
of the largest pyramids in Egypt and when you look at these amazing
structures, one of the greatest wonders of the world, it is staggering to think
that they were built in a time period with no modern construction or
engineering equipment. The Hebrew slaves
did not build the pyramids. They already
existed. They built storage cities.
Notice a principle that is worth contemplating. What was it that drove Pharaoh to put the
Israelites in hard labor? Was it his
dislike of the Israelites? Not really. Was it mere racism? No.
The thing that propelled Pharaoh to act in such an aggressive and brutal
nature was his internal fear that they would join with an external enemy. Quite often people who act in aggressive ways
are really acting out of an internal fear that you cannot see. When you look back over your life at the times
that people acted towards you aggressively, even brutally, chances are very
good that it wasn’t really stemming from a hatred towards you as much as it was
from an internal fear of something. In your
own life, when you find yourself being aggressive towards somebody else, you
need to stop and ask yourself, “What am I really afraid of?” Often our aggressive nature is propelled by
an internal fear. That's what happens to
Pharaoh which results in his wanting to break the spirit of the Israelites by
putting them in hard slave labor.
It doesn’t work and instead the Israelites multiply even
more. His problem grows. His fear escalates. Now he has to try something else. He's going to have to get more brutal. He's going to have to get more aggressive to
try to alleviate the fear that's in his own life. He issues a nasty proclamation which really
comes in two phases. First, there is a
subtle phase, kind of an ‘under the radar’ approach. Then, there will be an ‘over the top’
approach. The first approach deals with
the midwives. Pharaoh issues an order to
the midwives in verses 15 and 16.
“Then the king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives and said, ‘When
you are helping the Hebrew women to give
birth, and see them upon the birth stool, if it is a son then you shall put him
to death but if it's a daughter then she shall live.’”
In order to try to stop the growth of the Jewish people,
because that's what Pharaoh sees as the problem, he goes under the radar and
calls in the midwives who help with all the Jewish births. Two are mentioned by name, Shiphrah and Puah. There would have most likely been more than
two midwives so chances are really good that Shiphrah and Puah were
supervisors. All the midwives probably worked
underneath them.
Basically Pharaoh says, “Here's what I want you to do. When you're called to a Hebrew home because a
woman is giving birth and she is on the birth stool (keep in mind in the
culture of that day ladies didn't lay down when they give birth, they crouched
on a stool) and you're helping to deliver the baby, as the baby's coming out,
as soon as you notice the gender of the baby, if it's a boy, smother it. If it's a boy, as it comes out, kill it and
tell the women it was a stillborn. Tell
them that their baby was born dead.’ That's the command to the midwives.
It's amazing to me how cultures change in many ways except
evil continues to progress. What the
king was demanding of the midwives is no different than the modern-day practice
in our country of partial-birth abortion.
That's what the king commands of Shiphrah and Puah, the Hebrew midwives. Notice how they respond. Notice their courage in verse 17. I
“But the midwives feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt had
commanded, but instead, let the boys live.”
Shiphrah and Puah, though they are names most people have
not heard of, are amazing heroes in Scripture.
These are women of great courage because to disobey the king would most
likely result in execution. These women
are caught in a quandary. If they
disobeyed the king, they would probably die.
But if they obeyed the king, they were going to have to disobey their
God.
So they make a decision and this decision is that they fear
God more than they fear the king. They would
rather face the king being disobedient than to face God being
disobedient. One of the number one
reasons today as to why believers continue to live compromising lives in our culture
is, because unlike Shiphrah and unlike Puah, believers today fear man more than
they fear God. They fear their neighbors
more than they fear God. They fear their
co-workers more than they fear God. They
fear their classmates or their bosses more than they fear God. Not Shiphrah.
Not Puah. These ladies said, “We
would rather face Pharaoh and disobey him than face our God and disobey Him.” So they chose not to obey and the children of
Israel continued to grow.
The Bible is filled with examples of individuals who walked
in the steps of Shiphrah and Puah, who disobeyed human authority when human
authority called upon them to disobey God.
In the Bible we are told very clearly that we're to obey our authorities
but it is not a blanket submission.
There is an exception. In Acts 5 we
see Peter and the apostles who have been arrested for preaching about
Jesus. They've been beaten, thrown into
prison and told, “You are not to preach about Jesus ever again.” Jesus Himself was the one that commanded
Peter and John and the apostles to go into the world and preach the gospel
so they can't obey the orders of their Jewish leaders. Instead, they continue to preach and they're
brought before their authorities again who question them. Notice how Peter responds,
“Peter and the apostles answered and said, we must obey God rather than
man.”
It's very simple. We
are to always obey our authority unless by obeying our authority it causes us
to disobey God. That's the
principle. If you go back to the book of
Daniel, you are introduced to three young men -- Meshach, Shadrach and
Abednego. King Nebuchadnezzar orders
that at the sound of the music everyone is to bow down and worship the idol and
Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego refuse to do it because God said, “You shall
have no other gods before Me.” The king
brings them in and says, “Don't you realize by not doing this I can throw you
in the fiery furnace?” Look how they
respond.
“Meshach, Shadrach and Abednego answered and said to the king, ‘Oh
Nebuchadnezzar, we do not need to give you an answer concerning this
matter. If it be so, our God whom we
serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire, but even if He
does not, let it be known to you, O King, we are not going to serve your gods
or worship the golden image that you have set up.’”
They say, “Sorry, King, we can't obey you because to obey
you, we'd have to disobey our God.” Notice
another important principle that we see.
When you're put in the position that you have to choose to disobey a
human authority because by obeying that authority you would be disobeying God,
you must be willing to pay the consequences.
Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were and they were thrown in the fiery
furnace as a result. God ultimately saved
them but they were willing to pay the consequences.
Notice one more example.
In Daniel 6, Daniel is told that he can't pray. Daniel knows that to obey that command he'd
have to disobey God so he prays anyway and he's thrown into the lion's den. The next morning the king, who has a hunch
that Daniel's God will save him, runs down to the lion’s den.
“The king arose at dawn at the break of the day. He went in haste to the lion's den. The king spoke and said to Daniel, Daniel,
servant of the living God has your God whom you constantly serve been able to
deliver you from the lions?”
I love Daniel's answer.
God did deliver him and Daniel responds and says, “O King, live forever!” Here’s another principle to remember. Even when Daniel is forced to disobey his
authority, because by obeying his authority he would be disobeying God, he
still does so with respect. If the king
threw me in the lion's den and God sent an angel and saved me and the next
morning the king showed up, I'd say something like, “Ha, sucker! It didn't work!” I love how Daniel responds, “O King, live
forever.”
These examples are not teaching that any time you disagree
with an authority you can disobey them.
The Bible doesn't say that. The
Bible doesn't say, “Submit to your authorities unless you disagree with them.” The Bible doesn't say, “Submit to your
authorities unless you don't like them.”
The Bible says, “Submit to your authorities unless their command would
cause you to disobey God if you did it.”
In the 48 years that I have been alive I can only think of
one time in my life when I was put in that kind of a situation. I was a kid playing little league baseball. I wasn't very good. I had a lifetime batting average
of .034. If you know anything about
baseball, you know how rotten that is. Our
team was going down to the building where they had all the uniforms and
equipment to pick up our gear. Every
team got so much equipment. You could
buy additional equipment if you desired.
As we were walking through the facility, my assistant coach looked at me
and pointed at a doughnut. In baseball,
that's not something you eat. A doughnut
is a weight with a hole in it that you put on the bat as you're warming
up. He pointed to the doughnut and he
said to me, “They have more of those than they need. Put it in your bag.”
What in essence did my assistant coach tell me to do? He was telling me to steal the doughnut. If I obeyed him, who would I be
disobeying? I would have been disobeying
God. As a result, my answer should have
been, “Sorry, Coach, but I fear God more than I fear you. I can't do that.” Instead, I took the doughnut as instructed
and put it in my bag. Someone caught
me. I got in big trouble and when I told
them that the assistant coach told me to do it, he denied the whole thing.
My point is simply that in our culture (at least today) this
is not a common occurrence. In 48 years
I've only been put in this position one time where to obey an authority, I
would have to disobey God. I think
sometimes we're way too good about rationalizing away why it's okay to disobey
authorities we don't like and don't agree with.
When I was a youth pastor I was trying to teach this
principle to my teenagers so one night at youth group I put white papers all
over the walls of the youth room and I said, “I want to make a list of every
dumb rule that you have to obey. Let's
start with your parent's rules. I want
you to tell me every dumb rule your parents have and we're going to write them on
the walls.” We filled those white papers
and a lot of those rules, frankly, did seem pretty dumb.
I then said, “Now let's go to your school. Let's list all the dumb rules that you have
to follow at school.” We listed many
more. Then I said, “How about youth
group? What are some dumb rules I have
as a youth pastor that you have to obey?”
We had the walls filled with these rules.
I then gave each student a marker and said, “I want you to
go up to the walls and I want you to star any of these hundreds of dumb rules
that if you obeyed them you would have to disobey God.” Not one rule got a star next to it. Even though some of them were really dumb
rules, and even though these students didn't agree with or like them, none of
the rules would have caused them to disobey God by doing it. We are called upon in Scripture to submit to
our authorities with an attitude of respect unless obeying a command of our
authority would cause us to disobey God. That's what happened to Shiphrah and Puah.
Over time, Pharaoh realizes that his command was not
followed and he questions the midwives saying, “Why do I still see baby
boys? How come you haven't done what I
told you?” They respond in verse 19.
“The midwives said to Pharaoh, ‘Because the Hebrew women are not as the
Egyptian women for they are vigorous and they give birth before the
midwives can even get there.’”
I can't help but laugh when I read that verse. I think the thing that makes me laugh the
most is that Pharaoh bought it! They're
saying, “Pharaoh, you know we tried but you have to understand that Egyptian
women, they take a long time to get that baby out, but not those Hebrews. Boom-boom-pop and there it is. It’s all over before we even get there.”
Now, in essence what did they do? They lied.
We could talk about situational ethics all day long. We could bring up all kinds of examples and give
all kinds of explanations as to why this might have been a justifiable lie. But when I look at scripture I see very
clearly the principle that God hates a lying tongue. I really do believe that God could have
protected these midwives even if they would have told the truth. I just wish that we as Christians would be as
zealous to find ways to obey God as we are to find ways to get around His commands. Notice, though, that God still rewards these
midwives. Look at the consequence that they
face in verse 20.
“So God was good to the midwives and the people multiplied and became
very mighty and it came about because the midwives feared God that He established
households for them.”
Nowhere in the text does it say He rewarded them for
lying. He rewarded them because they
feared God more than they feared man, seen by their refusing to obey
Pharaoh. As a result, He gives them
households. If you go back and read the
ancient literature, it appears that for the most part in that culture, that
midwives were barren. Barren women
became midwives. Women who couldn't give
birth became midwives to help others give birth. Chances are really good that Shiphrah and
Puah were barren women and as a result of their willingness to obey God, even
though the king had given them a command, God allows them to have families of
their own.
For Pharaoh, however, his problem continues to increase. The children of Israel continue to grow and
Pharaoh’s fear continues to escalate. Now,
instead of an ‘under the radar’ command to the midwives, he gives a public
decree to the masses. Notice the order
he gives to the masses in verse 22.
“Then Pharaoh commanded all his people saying, every son who's born,
you are to cast into the Nile River and every daughter you are to keep alive.”
Pharaoh now gets aggressive.
He escalates his brutality. He gives
a public decree to every Egyptian in the land that whenever a Jewish baby boy
is born into the world, they are rip that baby out of the arms of its mother
and throw it into the Nile River to drown it.
It's hard to estimate how many thousands of Jewish baby boys were thrown
into the Nile River but many of them were.
It's that culture into which Moses is born. It's that scenario that's going to make the
birth of Moses unbelievably miraculous.
Keep in mind that back in Genesis 15 God made a promise to
Abraham about 450 years before Moses was born.
“God said to Abraham, ‘Know for certain that your descendants will be
strangers in a land that is not theirs (the land of Egypt) where they will be
enslaved and oppressed for 400 years (and they were), but I will judge the
nation whom they serve and afterward your descendants will come out of Egypt
with many possessions.”
That's what's ultimately is going to happen. The children of Israel living in misery for
400 years as slaves with baby boys being drown in the Nile River will
ultimately leave that time of slavery with 2 million plus people and many
possessions on their backs and animals.
It didn't matter how powerful Pharaoh was, he couldn't thwart the plan
of God. It doesn't matter how powerful
man thinks he is, man cannot thwart the plan of God. It doesn't matter how powerful Satan thinks
he is, Satan cannot thwart the plan of our God.
And that's what the story of Moses is going to show us in amazing,
vibrant color.
