Last Sunday, as we left the book of GENESIS, we talked about the faith of Joseph. How he kept focused on the Lord and the dreams he received, even in the face of great hardship. And, looking back, we can see how God blessed Joseph, by letting him become the second most powerful man in the world – so that he could save the Israelites from starvation.
Through the encounter of his brother coming to buy grain from him, Joseph was reunited with his family and they moved to Egypt to be with him, and while the Pharaoh was still alive, the Israelites were treated as royal guests, and they multiplied in exceeding numbers.
But a change in Pharaohs, brought in a change of political climate, much like that of electing a new president does today. And with those changes, the Israelites went from being treated as royal guests to becoming slaves at the hands of the harsh slave masters. And they were kept as slaves in very miserable conditions for just over 400 years.
God foretold this to Abram in GENESIS 15:13-14.
‘Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward, they will come out with great possessions.’
Today, we begin our series that will take us through the book of EXODUS, and along this journey, we will see where the prophecy that God gave to Abram comes true exactly as it was foretold. We will see how God entered into the daily lives of His people and walked with them daily, giving them step-by-step instructions on what to do next.
He not only led them out of captivity, but He did it in such a way as to prove that the Egyptian gods were as nothing when compared to Him, and He also made the captors want to give their treasures to the Israelites as they were leaving that nation.
The word “EXODUS” means ‘to exit from or to depart from.’ In this book, we will see how God rescues the Hebrew nation from their captors, and we will see how He rescues Moses from certain death – several times. And woven into this entire story, we will see how God, in His infinite love, continues to show great mercy for us, even though we continue to sin against Him.
Our nature is to complain loudly, and often, about the situations we find ourselves in, but even while we are busy complaining, we choose to do nothing to get out of those situations. Why is that? We do that because no matter how much we might hate where we are, something that is “known” to us is always more comfortable than something that is “unknown” to us. And when we do something different, that takes us from what we know, into an area we do not know.
The Israelites went from being honored guests in Egypt in the days of Joseph, to being held in severe captivity, brutalized if they could not meet production quotas on making bricks. So, God set them free in the most miraculous of ways, and as soon as the going got just a little bit rough, they started griping, and wanted to GO BACK TO SLAVERY IN EGYPT!
Joseph and all of his brothers and father had long since died by this time. Remember that 70 people had gone to Egypt to be with Joseph, but God let them multiply over a 400-year period to over a million. In fact, the Pharaoh was faced with much the same problem as we are here in America today.
Let’s talk about …
1. THE INFLUX OF ALIENS INTO A NATION
One of the biggest political problems facing our nation today is how to handle all of the immigrants in our land. There are millions, and there is no doubt that they do take a toll of some sort on both our national and local budgets. Do we just bundle them all up and kick them out? We are a loving nation, and there is no way we can do that, so the only solution left is to find a way to incorporate them into our society and help them to help themselves.
But that is not how Pharaoh chose to deal with the same problem.
EXODUS 1:9-14
‘Look,’ he said to his people, ‘the Israelites have become much too numerous for us. Come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous and if war breaks out, they will join our enemies, fight against us, and leave the country.’
‘So they put slave masters over them, to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses, as store cities, for Pharaoh. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites and worked them ruthlessly. They made their lives bitter with hard labor in brick and mortar, and with all kinds of work in the fields – in all their hard labor, the Egyptians used them ruthlessly.’
Now, that took care of the people who were already there, but the Pharaoh went one step further and that was to plan for the Israelites who were not there yet.
EXODUS 1:15-22
‘The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiprah and Puah, “When you help the Hebrew women in childbirth and observe them on the delivery stool, if it is a boy, kill him: but if it is a girl, let her live.”
The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do; they let the boys live. Then the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and asked them, “Why have you done this? Why have you let the boys live?”
The midwives answered Pharaoh, “Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women; they are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive.” So God was kind to the midwives and the people increased and became even more numerous. And because the midwives feared God, He gave them families of their own.
Shiprah and Puah were the two Israelite ladies who were in charge of the mid-wife profession. Since they feared the Lord more than they feared the Pharaoh, God blessed them with their own families. But we read once more where the Pharaoh was intent on getting rid of the boy children.
Then Pharaoh gave this order to all his people, “Every boy that is born you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live.”
In these passages, we see that the more the Israelites were oppressed and persecuted, the more God blessed them with growth. We see the same thing in the church throughout the centuries. The more it has been oppressed and persecuted, the more the church has grown. In fact, the church has seen its largest and strongest growth during these times.
That brings us to …
2. A BABY FLOATING DOWN THE RIVER
There was a woman who had just given birth to a baby boy during the time when all baby boys were to be killed. This woman’s name was Jochabed. She could not stand to see her son killed, so she devised a way to not only save him, but raise him, too, with full authority from the Pharaoh’s house.
She made a basket of straw and made it watertight with pitch –a tar-like substance – and took him to the river. She did not cast him out aimlessly to just float past the horizon, but she carefully put him in the grass by the river just upstream from the Pharaoh’s daughter, where she was sure to see him while bathing in the river with her maidens.
When Pharaoh’s daughter got the baby, she felt compassion and saw that the baby was crying because he was hungry. Now, all this time, Moses’ older sister, Miriam, watched as her mother planted the baby, and when the Pharaoh’s daughter picked up the baby, she asked her if she should go get one of the Israelite women to nurse him.
The Pharaoh’s daughter told Miriam to do so, and she went and got her own mother, the real mother of the baby. This allowed her to take the baby back home with her, with full royal authority, and nurse him until he was older, and then she gave him back to the Pharaoh’s daughter to raise. That is when the daughter named him Moses.
Moses was brought up as a prince - and thoroughly trained in the religious, cultural, and political ways of Egypt. He was afforded every luxury one would expect from living in the royal family. Yet, the first recorded test of his character showed that he did not have the instincts of a child of Pharaoh, but those of a child of God.
Moses rode out one day to where some Egyptian slave masters were overseeing an Israelite work force. Moses saw one of the overseers severely beating a slave, and when he saw that nobody was looking, he killed the Egyptian and buried his body in the sand.
The Pharaoh heard about this and was going to kill Moses, but Moses fled and went away to a place called Midian, where he met a man named Jethro who was the local priest. Jethro eventually let Moses marry his daughter Zipporah. They had a son named Gershom. And it was during the years that Moses stayed in Midian, that the Pharaoh died.
Scholars say the Pharaoh’s son probably became the next Pharaoh. He would have been considered Moses’ brother when they were growing up. That might explain the animosity between Pharaoh (the son) and Moses that we see in the book of EXODUS.
Now, we have seen how a ruler of a nation treated their own influx of foreigners and how, because of that decision to kill all the baby boys, a mother devised a way to keep her son alive. And that boy was Moses, who became the writer of much of the Old Testament.
We saw how he grew up to kill an Egyptian who was beating an Israelite, and because of that, he had to flee the area. He went out into the desert, met some people, married, raised a family, and spent 40 years tending a flock of sheep in the desert.
And that brings us up to where …
3. MOSES WAS CALLED BY GOD
Have you ever been called by God to do a specific thing at a specific time or in a specific way? If you don’t know, then you probably have not been – yet. If you have, you know that is a feeling that is different that anything else you have ever experienced and something you will never forget.
While Moses was in the deserts of Midian, watching out over the flocks of sheep for his father-in-law Jethro, he saw something he had never seen before. He saw a bush that was on fire, but it wasn’t being burned up. So Moses did what any of us would have done; he ventured over to take a look at such an odd sight. And when he got near it, the Lord spoke.
EXODUS 2:4-10 –
‘When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush! “Moses! Moses!” “And Moses said, “Here I am.”
“Do not come any closer.” God said. “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” Then, He said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.
‘The Lord said, “I have indeed seen the misery of My people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So, I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land into a good spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey – the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites.
And now, the cry of the Israelites has reached Me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. So now, go – I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring My people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.”
There are a couple of things in this passage I want to go over. First of all, God told Moses that he was standing on holy ground. Do you realize that is what we do every time we come into this building? We are standing on holy ground. When we first planted this church, we went through and prayed in ever room and in every doorway that God would make this a permanent dwelling place for His Spirit; that He would take this ground as His and make it holy for His glory.
Now, considering that, how many of us give any thought at all to how precious and righteous this place is? How many of us envision the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob being in here right now? We are standing on holy ground this very minute. As soon as Moses became aware that the voice he heard was God’s voice, he quickly hid his face because he was afraid to look upon the holy God of Heaven.
And know that each time we enter this building; we are coming into God’s holy ground. Just as Moses hid his face, we must be sure that our hearts are worthy of standing in His sacred area.
The Israelites were in captivity in Egypt for over 400 years. Why did God wait until now to come to their rescue? He waited for two reasons. Remember, I told you that the Pharaoh had died, and his son took over? That is the time it went from bad to worse for the Israelites. If it had gotten much worse, the Pharaoh would probably have killed the Israelites.
So the first reason God came now was to save His people. The second reason He came now is because this is the first time it was recorded that His people cried out to Him in unison. He was waiting until they came back to Him as a nation.
There are many parallels between the ancient Israelite nation and today’s America as far as focusing on God is concerned. They focused on God at first, and then when they were blessed and things got really easy, they didn’t need to focus so much on their daily survival, so they started focusing on their daily desires. And that is what has happened to us, too.
America was fully focused on God in the beginning, and things were not so easy, so we had to focus on staying alive and surviving. Then, we got affluent and started having all our needs met, so we started concentrating on what we wanted. The problem with that, is when we focus on what we “want”, we are focusing on the worldly things we have around us. And when we focus on the world, we take our focus off God.
I truly believe that America is getting ready to suffer more than any of us are ready to endure. Things are going to get so bad we will want to die. I am not trying to scare you, but I am trying to paint an accurate picture for you. I am going to prophecy for you.
We will suffer hardships that are beyond our capabilities of understanding right now. And then - - things will even get worse! They will get worse for us, just like they did for the Israelites, until we come back to God, in unison as a nation. At that point, if Jesus hasn’t come back yet, I think God will come down and rescue those of us who are left. And He is giving us a time now to come to Him.
He isn’t expecting every American to come to Him, either. He is expecting only His children to come to Him.
In 2 CHRONICLES 7:14, he tells us who He wants to hear from and how He wants to hear from them.
“If My people, who are called by My name (Christians), will humble themselves (think of God first), and pray and seek My face (spend quality time praying in depth for God’s presence), and turn from their wicked ways (repent and become devoted to Jesus), then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”
If we will do four things for God; humble ourselves, pray, seek God, and repent, then God promises to do three things for us; hear our prayers, forgive our sin, and heal our nation. When we do today, what the Israelites did then, God will rescue us just like He did them. But He will let us suffer until we do those things.
And now, God is telling Moses that He is getting ready to take them home! One minute, Moses is busy tending sheep in the desert, and the very next minute, God has given him a job. A very special job, in that Moses is to go lead his people out of Egypt.
Most of us don’t think we are spiritual enough, or mature enough as Christians to be called by God. We can look at examples from Abram in the Old Testament, to the Apostle Paul in the New Testament to see that God does not call the qualified but rather He qualifies the called. And now, we see that He is calling Moses.
And what does Moses do? Look at verse 11.
‘But Moses said to God, “Who am I, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”
Moses did the same thing we do when God wants us to do something. The first thing out of our mouths is to question God about why we should do it. But we find that what God promised Moses, He also promises us.
In verse 12, God says – “I will be with you. - - .”
PHILIPPIANS 4:13 reminds us,
“I can do all things through Him, who gives me strength.”
See, it isn’t us who accomplishes the things in this life, it is God in us. It wasn’t Moses who made the Pharaoh release the Israelites; it was God in Moses. Moses was humble of heart and he knew that he could not do this by himself. God knew this, too, so God promised to be with Him. And none of us are strong enough to do anything for God by ourselves, either, so it is crucial that we remember that when God brings us to it, He stays with us so He can get us through it.
Moses wasn’t too sure about all this, and he even asked God what he should say when people questioned him. So, God does something for Moses that He normally does not do for anyone else. He tells Moses exactly how this is going to play out, step by step. When God tells us to do something, we have to wait until we have done it to see what the results will be, but He gave Moses the details of what was going to happen.
Even after God gives Moses all the information, what does Moses do? He still tries to get out of it by offering objections. He wants to know what he should do if they don’t believe him. God responds by telling him to throw the staff in his hand down on the ground. Moses throws it down and it instantly turns into a snake. Then God tells Moses to pick the snake up by the tail, and when he does, it turns back into a staff.
The next thing we are going to discuss is what happened when Moses went and spoke to Pharaoh. We are going to see Pharaoh’s heart turn as hard and as cold as stone, and then we are going to see our God in action. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob creates a series of miracles to show Egypt that He and He alone is the only God, and the gods they worship are just figments of their imaginations.
But I want to ask you a question now. Have you ever seen a miracle in you life? Have you ever had God perform something before your very eyes that could never have been done without the supernatural efforts of the Lord? Chances are, you have, but you may have not recognized it. Most of us have had miracles performed for us and around us throughout our lives. The Israelites saw miracle after miracle, but they did not recognize them as such and quickly forgot.
I pray that we become so sensitive to the Holy Spirit in our every day lives that we see the miracles as they occur, and that we open our hearts and give thanks immediately for those miracles.
The biggest miracle in our lives, however, is not when we see someone else healed, but when we see our hearts changed after receiving Jesus as Savior. Some of you might be able to look back and see the change in your heart, while others have yet to witness that.
As we go into our invitation, let me ask you to search your heart. If you have never received Jesus as your Savior, or if you are not absolutely sure if you have or not, I ask you this morning to come forward right now. Step out and receive Jesus in your heart today.
INVITATION
