Exodus 1-2

Have your Bible open to Exodus, chapter 1, please. This is the second of the first 5 books of the Bible. We call the first 5 books, The Pentateuch. And of course you understand the beginning of that, Penta, 5, Penta-gon, Penta-gram, 5-sided thing. The Pentateuch, the first 5 books, we'll put them up on the screen for you. THE PENTATEUCH  Genesis  Exodus  Leviticus  Numbers  Deuteronomy Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. And as the second book of the Bible, Exodus continues the narrative that we started in our study of the Book of Genesis. In fact, if you try to start off just reading the Book of Exodus without having read or studied the Book of Genesis, I think you're going to find yourself a little lost without the background that the Book of Genesis gives. But, whenever I'm getting ready to start a book study, I always think, what's the theme? Well, there's probably multiple themes from the Book of Exodus. One of which is, I think a major theme anyway, is the idea of just knowing God. Knowing God and we're going to see that in this book. It'll consume the first half of the book. And then in the second half, you're going to see how that whole idea of knowing God through a covenant relationship with Him, with the nation of Israel is going to take center stage.

Another major theme is obedience and we see that from the get go. It begins with Moses trying to talk God out of calling him into being His servant. And then we get to Egypt where we see the opposite of obedience. When Pharaoh refuses to recognize and surrender to God's demand saying, who is the Lord God and so forth. And then of course that narrative of obedience extends into the life of the people of Israel as they have their rollercoaster ride of obedience and disobedience and obedience and disobedience, similar probably to our own lives in Christ, I dare say at times. Other than that, I would have to say that probably the biggest and most pervasive theme that we're going to see here in Exodus, as well as, frankly, the rest of the Pentateuch, is the theme of holiness. Not man's holiness, God's holiness. And that's going to be a major theme as God teaches Israel to understand that He is a holy God. And I think there's probably some people who read through the Old Testament and they come away with an idea about God that is quite different from reading the new. Some people have really struggled with this idea. In fact, some people have stayed away from the Old Testament because God seems so severe. It seems like He's always killing people, or something. Or opening up the earth and swallowing them if they don't live the way they should or whatever the case might be. But God was going to impress upon His people about His holiness, and He gave them the law to understand the concept that He is a holy God. The law was not meant to make us miserable, it was meant to teach that He is a holy God. And when we talk about holiness, or the holiness of God, honestly, that's not something that modern day Christians are always terribly comfortable to approach. We would much rather think of God as kind of an all-powerful santa claus figure, who deals with us on the basis of whether we've been naughty or nice, but He's pretty forgiving when we've been naughty. And we know that. We're probably not going to get that proverbial lump of coal because, after all, He's good and stuff like that. We like rather the idea of a God who is imminently approachable and always available and He is imminently approachable and always available. But we tend to forget the things that caused that to become a reality for us. That was an awkward way of saying it. What I mean by that is, we tend to forget the cost that is connected to our freedom and ability to approach God whenever we want. In other words, to come before the throne of grace whenever we want. We can come into God's presence whenever we want. You know that wasn't true in the Old Testament, right? They couldn't waltz into God's presence whenever they wanted. In fact, only the high priest could come into the Holy of Holies and he had to wait and go in once a year. Now he would go in 2 times on that 1 day; the day of atonement. But it was once a year and when he did, there was all this stuff that had to happen. And all this slaughtering of animals, and the shedding of blood, and all these things that had to take place in order for him to go in 1 day a year. And the rest of the people, sorry, you're out of luck. When they carried the ark, the people were told, you stay back that far. Don't get close to the Ark of the Covenant because that is the very presence of God. Don't touch it. It's interesting, some people did and paid the price. I get questions from people from time to time who are incredulous when they read Old Testament passages that speak of the consequences of ignoring God's holiness. It wasn't that long ago I got a note from a gal who was reading through reading through her Bible in 2 Samuel, and she was very troubled because she came upon this passage. Let me put it on the screen for you. From 2 Samuel chapter 6, it says, 2 Samuel 6:5-7 (ESV)

…David and all the house of Israel were celebrating before the LORD, with songs and lyres and harps and tambourines and castanets and cymbals. And when they came to the threshing floor of Nacon, Uzzah put out his hand to the ark of God and took hold of it, for the oxen stumbled. (So the ark…, he was afraid the ark was going to fall off the cart. And it says,) And the anger of the LORD was kindled against Uzzah, and God struck him down there because of his error, and he died there beside the ark of God.

And this gal wrote me this note not long ago, and she was completely caught off guard by that. And she's like, pastor Paul, can you explain to me what's going on in that passage? Yeah, it's called the holiness of God. And can I suggest to you that nothing has changed about the holiness of God. He hasn't become less holy. But there was a price that was paid that you and I have been given the ability to approach His holiness. And the price that was paid, it was the suffering of Jesus Christ on the cross. And because He suffered, and suffered terribly, and because you have accepted that suffering on your own behalf. And you have received the forgiveness that goes along with that suffering, now you have the freedom to come whenever you want into the Holy of Holies. You'll remember, that was one of the Calvary miracles, remember? There were Calvary miracles that took place when Jesus died on the cross, that's what we call them. One of them is that thick veil that separated the holy place from the most holy place was rend in two. It was literally ripped from top to bottom and that was a symbolic way of God communicating that the way into the presence of God was now open to all, not just the high priest. Why? Because our high priest went in before us and brought not the blood of goats and bulls, but His own, His own blood. And there made atonement for us so that we could come into the presence of God. I think, it's something we cannot afford to forget as New Testament believers is the beauty of what Christ has made available to us through His body and His blood. But we're going to have to deal with a lot of holiness here as we get through the rest of the Pentateuch. Exodus chapter 1, verse 1.

But don't forget what land we're talking about. This is the land of Egypt that is now overflowing with Israelites. All right. Well, the fact that they multiplied and that they are overflowing is a sign of God's blessing, right? This is the blessing of the Lord. They are being blessed abundantly by the Lord, growing and growing and growing and growing and so forth. But here's the thing, God's blessings are not always viewed by everyone as blessings and we're going to see that here. That the Egyptians end up seeing the same phenomenon, but they don't see it as a blessing. Verse 8 says, “Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.” And the only comment I'm going to make about that is never underestimate the danger associated with forgetting your history. Know your history. I'll confess right here in front of you all that when I was in school, I didn't care a snit about history. American history, world history, European history, what a yawner. I mean, the whole thing was really a huge bore to me. I became more of a history buff after I got out of school. I actually should have started high school when I was about 30 years old. That would have been about right. But I would have enjoyed it probably, except for the drama. But we are living in a day and age today where history is not only being ignored, it's being rewritten. We're getting rid of certain aspects of our history because they're offensive to some people. They don't want to hear about it. We talk about things that are historically accurate and well, don't mention that because you're going to offend somebody. Well, it's history. I love how the Bible just lays out the history of the Israelites, whether it's good, bad, or ugly, and a lot of it's ugly. And frankly, very offensive, but it's their history and we learn from it. We learn from our own history and I think it's important to see. And here you got this new king who doesn't care a snit about history. He doesn't know anything about Joseph or anything like that. And we don't know how many kings had to rise up before Joseph was a forgotten governor, hard to say. Could have been a few, but either way, here's what you have. And it says in verse 9, “And he said to his people, “Behold, the people of Israel are too many and too mighty for us.”” See, that's his conclusion. That's his take on the blessing of the Lord on the people of Israel. He says they're too many, and they're too mighty.

So he says, “10 Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and, if war breaks out, they join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.” Alright. Again, this is how the new Pharaoh sees the blessing of the Lord. Well, he sees it through eyes of fear, doesn't he? Whereas, you might look at a situation the Lord is blessed, and go, wow, that's a blessing of the Lord. He's afraid of it. He's fearful of it. He sees this explosive growth as a threat to his security and the security of his kingdom, and he feels like we need to act in order to secure our kingdom. Here's what he says. Verse 11, “Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with heavy burdens. They built for Pharaoh store cities, Pithom and Raamses. 12 But the more they were oppressed, (look at this) the more they multiplied and the more they spread abroad.” Now, that's an interesting phrase there, “…the more they multiplied, the more they spread abroad.” When? Why? How? The more they were oppressed. Do you know that's true of God's people in general? In the New Testament, God's people become oppressed and what happens? They spread like wildfire. And so you see this principle throughout the Old Testament, the New Testament, whenever God's people are oppressed and persecuted, the gospel spreads, the people of God spread. It's pretty cool. Anyway, middle of verse 12 it says, “And the Egyptians were in dread of the people of Israel.” The more they grew, the more the Egyptians feared them. “13 So they ruthlessly made the people of Israel work as slaves 14 and made their lives bitter with hard service, in mortar and brick, and in all kinds of work in the field. In all their work they ruthlessly (there’s that word again) made them work as slaves.” But they're going to continue to grow so the king's got to come up with another scheme to try to stifle that growth. Verse 15, “Then the king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, 16 “When you serve as midwife to the Hebrew women and see them on the birthstool, if it is a son, you shall kill him, but if it is a daughter, she shall live.”” Now we know the story of how this goes, and I assume you know how this goes on here. But this sounds like a dumb thing that a man would say. Doesn't it? I mean, you just try taking a baby away from a woman that just gave birth. I mean, just try. She's going to wreck you right there. And I don't care if she just had a baby or not. I mean, there's this principle across all of nature, it seems, a mother will protect her newborn with her life. And it's a good thing these women never sought to be obedient to the Pharaoh because they would have lost their lives. Anyway it goes on to say that, verse 17, “But the midwives feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but let the male children live. 18 So the king of Egypt called the midwives and said to them, “Why have you done this, and let the male children live?” 19 The midwives said to Pharaoh, “Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women, for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them.”” In other words, guys, they lied. Yeah, they lied. Verse 20. “So God dealt well with the midwives. (oh, is that going to mess with your theology a little bit?) And the people multiplied and grew very strong. 21 And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families.” There you go right there, verse 21 tells you why God blessed the midwives. Was it because they lied? No, it was because they feared God. It says it right there, “because they feared God,” God blessed them, yeah. Verse 22, “Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, (he went beyond, he's going over the heads of the midwives now. He says,) “Every son that is born to the Hebrews you shall cast into the Nile, but you shall let every daughter live.”” So he gives this nationwide command to kill the baby boys born to the Israelite women. Can you imagine living in a country during this time and how scary that would have been. How frightening to have the king send an edict down from the top saying, you see a baby boy that's born to a Hebrew woman, take that baby, forcibly if necessary, and of course it would have to be, and cast him into the Nile because we don't want their numbers to grow and become strong. Wow, the heart of man, right? Chapter 2. “Now a man from the house of Levi went and took as his wife a Levite woman.” And that is simply to say that this man married within his ancestral tribe. Both the man and his wife descended from the son of Jacob, Levi. All right? So they are of the Levitical tribe. Verse 2, “The woman conceived and bore a son, and when she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him three months. 3 When she could hide him no longer, she took for him a basket made of bulrushes and daubed it (which is to say she

--- coated it) with bitumen and pitch. (which of course would have made the basket waterproof) She put the child in it and placed it among the reeds by the river bank. 4 And his sister (that would be Mariam who we will learn more of later) stood at a distance to know what would be done to him. 5 Now the daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river, while her young women (and of course, that refers to her attendants) walked beside the river. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her servant woman, and she took it. 6 When she opened it, she saw the child, and behold, the baby was crying. She took pity on him and said, “This is one of the Hebrews' children.” 7 Then his sister (who was obviously watching all of this transpiring) said to Pharaoh's daughter, “Shall I go and call you a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?” 8 And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, “Go.” So the girl went and called the child's mother. 9 And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, “Take this child away and nurse him for me, and I will give you your wages.” So the woman took the child and nursed him.”” Can you pause there for a moment? Is this cool or what? I mean, think about this, it's just crazy. Because this woman, Moses's mother trusted the Lord here in this situation, she gets to have her son back to nurse him. And by the way, they would nurse kids to like 2 years old and up. And no further threats to his life and she gets paid to do it. That's a perk. Wow. You couldn't have even hoped for a better outcome, right? Verse 10 says, “When the child grew older, she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son. (that must have been hard) She named him Moses, “Because,” she said, “I drew him out of the water.”” And if you follow that little footnote to the bottom of the page, you'll see that it says that Moses sounds a bit like the Hebrew for the phrase, draw out. Now you're going to see that the narrative moves really, really quickly here. I mean, we know that we are approximately 80 years at this point from the birth of Moses. We're about 80 years from the actual Exodus of the people of Israel out of Egypt. Which means that they've been there for somewhere around 320 years. But we didn't get any of that background. We didn't get any of that information. The book simply started by saying this, here's the sons of Israel, they died. Well, yeah, in 320 years, they died a long time ago and their generations and generations and generations have been going. But we don't get any of that background. We don't get any of that historical information about their lives. ---

And we don't even know exactly when the slavery took place necessarily in terms of that, that 400 years. Anyway, here we are and this is going to keep going very quickly. In fact, you'll notice in verse 11, it says, “One day, when Moses had grown up,…” And so you're catapulted into the future here once again. And by the way, he's 40 years old. He’s not just 15 or 25 or something. He's 40. Again, notice the biblical writer doesn't take time to give us any of the details about Moses's upbringing from the time he was weaned to the time he was a 40 year old man. There's nothing there which you might say, well, wait a minute, I saw The Ten Commandments, so I know how that all went. Yeah, they just interjected all this stuff into the movie. Anyway, he's 40 years old, and it says that, “…he went out to his people (referring to the Hebrews) and looked on their burdens, and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his people. 12 He looked this way and that, (presumably trying to see if anybody was watching) and seeing no one, he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.” In other words, he killed him. Verse 13, “When he went out the next day, behold, two Hebrews were struggling together. And he said to the man in the wrong, “Why do you strike your companion?” 14 He answered, “Who made you a prince and a judge over us? Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?” Then Moses was afraid, and thought, “Surely the thing is known.”” Well, it was. Verse 15 says that, “When Pharaoh heard of it, (we're not sure how long it took to get to Pharaoh, but it says, when it finally reached him) he sought to kill Moses. But Moses fled from Pharaoh and stayed in the land of Midian. And he sat down by a well.” Midian, by the way, would have been in probably, what is today the most northernmost part of Saudi Arabia. And again, notice we're leaping, we're moving quickly in the narrative. He leaves and we hear nothing about the journey, only that he makes his way to Midian and there he sits down by a well. Now it tells us in verse 16 that, “…the priest of Midian had seven daughters, and they came and drew water and filled the troughs to water their father's flock. 17 The shepherds came and drove them away, but Moses stood up and saved them, and watered their flock. 18 When they came home to their father Reuel, he said, “How is it that you have come home so soon today?”

19 They said, “An Egyptian delivered us out of the hand of the shepherds and even drew water for us and watered the flock.” 20 He said to his daughters, (well) “Then where is he? (in other words, that's not the kind of Middle East hospitality you've been taught to practice. Where'd you leave him?) Why have you left the man? Call him, that he may eat bread.” In other words, that he may break bread with us and so forth. “21 And Moses was content to dwell with the man, (now notice how quickly things move) and he gave Moses his daughter Zipporah.” We don't hear anything about any kind of a courtship, or lovey dovey eyes, or whatever between the two of them. And then look at this. “22 She gave birth to a son, and he called his name Gershom, for he said, “I have been a sojourner in a foreign land.” And again, Gershom sounds like the Hebrew for sojourner. You notice how quickly things are moving. So Moses is there, he's married just like that, and he's got a baby, so we're moving things along here. You can tell that the author wants to get us to the point of what this book is all about, which of course is about God's deliverance of His people from Egypt. And then the last 3 verses of chapter 2 are very, very important. And we're going to spend a little bit of time with this. It says, “23 During those many days…” And by the way, “those many days” for Moses, came to another 40. He was 80 years old when he finally received the call from the Lord and went to Egypt. That's how many those many days were. “23 During those many days the king of Egypt died, …” And that was, that's told us in the narrative to communicate that Moses was no longer a hunted man because of that. “…and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. 24 And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. 25 God saw the people of Israel—and God knew.” That's an interesting statement, is it not? Verse 25, “God saw the people of Israel—and God knew.” It's interesting in light of the fact that I don't know if you ever do this, we have access today, for free, to look at numerous Bible translations and see the differences in the way that certain statements are rendered. And I did that with this last verse of chapter 2, and I want to show you what I found. I apologize for the smaller text here because I wanted to get everything on the same page. So check this out from Exodus 2:25. Exodus 2:25 (NIV84) So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them. (NASB2020) God saw the sons of Israel, and God took notice of them. (NKJV) And God looked upon the children of Israel, and God acknowledged them. (NLT) He looked down on the people of Israel and knew it was time to act. (NRSV) God looked upon the Israelites, and God took notice of them. (HCSB) God say the Israelites, and He took notice. First, the NIV says, “So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them.” Okay. The New American Standard Bible (NASB), the latest revision says, “God saw the sons of Israel, and God took notice of them.” The New King James (NKJV) says, “And God looked upon the children of Israel, and God acknowledged them.” I love the New Living Translation (NLT). “He looked down on the people of Israel and knew it was time to act.” Isn't that good? The New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) says, “God looked upon the Israelites, and God took notice of them.” And the Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB), I don't know if you've ever read that one or not. It's kind of good. It says, simply, “God saw the Israelites, and He took notice.” And all of those different renderings are translations of the same Hebrew sentence. And they're all put to a different translating committee who is doing their best to convey to the reader the intent of the passage. And I think you would agree with me that even though they chose some different wording, they all got the same message across. And that is, very simply, God saw and God knew. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Pretty simple. God saw, God knew.

Here's what's interesting about that very simple statement. We tend to believe it as it relates to other people. We struggle to believe it when it comes to our own lives. And the reason I know that is because I'm like you. I have the same temptations to doubt that God sees my life all the time or knows everything going on. You ever notice the way sometimes we pray? It's like we're informing God of something He didn't know otherwise. It's like, Lord, I'm not sure you knew this, but here's the deal. I need to tell you what's going on here because I know you're busy. But I got something you need to know. Well, He knows and He sees. He sees, He sees what you're going through. He sees everything about your life and yet we struggle to believe it. And there are times in our lives when God will make it clear to us that He sees and He knows, and we're just delighted. I remember, and I'm sure you guys do too, that passage we looked at not terribly long ago in our study through the Book of Genesis. Remember when Hagar, the maidservant of Sarah ran off because Sarah was treating her badly. And the Lord met her and said, Hagar, what are you doing? Well, my mistress is treating me badly and the Lord spoke to her and made Hagar realize that He knew. He saw, and He knew what was going on in her life. And she was so impressed by that, she named Him. She named the Lord. Let me show you this on the screen, just to remind you, from Genesis 16. It says,

She gave this name to the LORD who spoke to her: “You are the God who sees me,” for she said, “I have now seen the One who sees me.” In fact, we're told that is why, that the well, where this happened was called, Beer-lahai-roi. And it is still there between Kadesh and Bered. And Beer-lahai-roi means, the well of the one who lives and sees me. It's interesting, and the reason I bring that up for you tonight is because, what I find very important here in the biblical text is that the Israelites and other biblical characters would do things. And they would name cities, and wells, and places after something that the Lord did in their lives to remind them of His faithfulness and His goodness. And I find that this is, for the most part, this is a lost sort of a thing on a modern audience. We'll have some situation happen in our life where the Lord responds to a prayer, and we are brought once again to the realization God sees and He knows. And then it's a short period of time and we forget about it and we're moving on. We're down the road and then something else happens that threatens our safety or our security or something like that and we're just tied up in knots all over again and we've forgotten to go back to the well and to draw once again from the remembrance of the Lord's faithfulness and goodness. Now, I don't know how that might come about for you in your life or how it might happen in my life. But I think it's important that we learn to remember because we see in the Bible that Israel or the, again, the people in the scriptures often built altars of remembrance. Altars of remembrance. Here is where the Lord delivered me and whatever that altar may be today, they could look back then and they could look at that altar. In fact, there were some altars where God told them, do this, build an altar here. And when your children ask you, what's that heap of stones over there? Well, let me tell you, that's where, da, da, da, da, da, whatever the situation might be, that's where that happened. And what happened? God was faithful. God met us at the time of our need, our great need, and He touched our lives. He answered prayer. He was there when we needed Him. We called upon the Lord, and He was there. That's just, that's so incredibly powerful, I think. And so you might want to just pray about that. Maybe there's a Beer-lahai-roi well in your life that you could name after the faithfulness of God, so that when you come around to another challenge, you can look back and you can look at that altar, that well, that place, that thing, that you named, and you can say, God was faithful. He was faithful in the past. We cried out to Him and He took care of us. I believe He's going to be faithful again. The Lord's going to take care of us. We are so incredibly forgetful when it comes to God's faithfulness. And that's one of the reasons why in some of the most desperate times in my own life, the Lord hasn't spoken to me many times throughout the course of my walk with Him, but a few. And there have been some times when life was pretty desperate and I cried out to God as if He had never been faithful before. And the Lord has spoken to me in the past, and He has said to me, have I ever not, have I ever failed to be faithful to you? He'll just simply ask me that question from time to time.

Have I ever failed you? Have I ever not been there when you needed me? And I have to say, no, there's never been a time that you've failed me. And so the lesson is clear. If God has been faithful in the past, He will be faithful now and in the future, and we can trust Him. So building altars, important stuff. Well, I'm going to give you guys plenty of time to do some fellowshipping and maybe you might even want to grab somebody. And if you want to spend some time praying tonight, that's cool too. Kids are not going to be done for another 25 minutes or so if you if you want to hang out, just fellowship, chat, pray, whatever. We'll give you time to do that. So let's pray together. Lord, we thank You for the reminders that are here in the scripture. Thank You, Father, for this first study in the in the Book of Exodus. We're excited to get into this and learn all of the lessons that are to be learned concerning this incredible narrative that you've preserved for us and we look forward to it. And we pray that as we dig into the Word each time, Lord, that our hearts would always be open to hear from You and to hear what You have to say. We long for Your truth. We long to be immersed in Your truth, that our hearts might be filled with it. We hear so much falsehood in a given day that we need to hear from You every single day, and we pray that You just continue to speak to us and give us, Lord, the strength to be in the Word on a daily basis. We thank You, we praise You, we rejoice in You, King of kings and Lord of lords. In Jesus name we pray, and all God's people said, amen. Alright, God bless you.