Essentials Of The Faith / Sunday Morning Sermon Series / Exodus

Exodus 1 10/19/03

Introduction: Anyone own a DVD player? One of the neat things about DVD’s is the extra stuff you get on them. Like actors and directors commentaries, deleted scenes, optional endings and even how they made the movie. You would think it would be enough to watch the movie itself. Now, we have the chance to watch how they made the movie. And we watch…don’t we?

We are fascinated with how the movie industry makes a movie. Why do I know that? Because there are shows on TV that are just about that… ‘The making of…a behind the scenes look at The Matrix’. And if the movie industry spends money on a TV show, they know there is an interest.

Let’s face it, we like, no want to be in the know. This is why we have such a hard time understanding why God doesn’t always let us know what He is doing, especially when it involves us.
 
    When God is silent, we are often bewildered.
    When God is silent, we are often afraid.
    When God is silent, we are often angry.

Explanation: If you have ever experienced the silence of God, then you can identify with what the Israelites were going through as we read about them in ch. 1 of the Book of Exodus. There was a lot of bad stuff going on in their lives and it seemed that God had forgotten them.

Yet, God had promised a place for Israel. Was this it? Slavery in Egypt? Where was God? Why is he silent? You may be asking the same questions. Let’s take a look behind the scenes…the making of a nation.

Transition: Open you Bibles to the Book of Exodus, chapter1, verse 1-7. Where we will find how Israel’s past is linked to her present.

Exodus 1:1-7 ‘Linking the past to the present’
Read: Ex. 1:1-7

Ex. 1:1-7 links the Book of Genesis to the Book of Exodus. Exodus takes us where Genesis leaves off.  These 7 verses sum up the history of the Israelites as a people which was given in much more detail in the book of Genesis.  The word ‘and’ in vs 1 (which is not in the NIV but is in the Hebrew) fills in about 400 years from the past of Gen. 50 to the present of Ex. 1.

Now for a ‘behind the scenes’ look.

Did you notice the words used in vs 7? ‘but the Israelites were fruitful and multiplied and became exceedingly numerous.’ Do those words sound familiar? They should. It’s creation language. Remember in Gen. 1:28 and 9:1 Be fruitful and multiply. What began as 70 people was now quickly becoming a nation…just as God had promised to Abraham in Gen. 12:1-3.

God was working behind the scenes to make this a reality. God may have been silent, but he was working to fulfill his plan for his people, even though they may not have seen it at the time.

Transition: In verses 8-14 life for the Israelites begins to take a nose dive and it seems that God has completely forgotten his people.

Exodus 1:8-14  ‘God’s faithfulness…unseen’
Read: Ex. 1:1-14

We don’t know who this new king is. Probably an outsider to Egypt who conquered it and set himself up as Pharaoh. That may have been why he didn’t know or care about who Joseph was. But, he saw something in his new kingdom that he didn’t like…an ever increasing population of Hebrews who may attempt to overthrow his rule.

For 400 years the Israelites had been living happily in Egypt. Not just in Egypt, but in the best, most prosperous part of Egypt. They had it pretty good…and that was the problem. They had it so good, it would have been very hard for them to decide to leave on their own, to follow God to the promised land.

Their happiness was about to come to an abrupt halt. This new Pharoah thought if he oppressed the Hebrews, he would insure his rule.

    By his oppression Pharaoh sought:
1. To break the Israelites spirit and rob them of everything in them that was joyful and creative.

    By his oppression Pharaoh sought:
2. To ruin their health and shorten their lifespan to diminish their numbers.

    By his oppression Pharaoh sought:
3. To discourage them from marrying. He hoped the Hebrews would not want to bring children into a world of slavery.

    By his oppression Pharaoh sought:
4. To encourage them to split, to defect, to leave the Hebrews and join in with the Egyptians.

Sounds like a plan. But you know what? It wasn’t original. Satan has been wanting the same thing of the Israelites. Why? To pollute, even end, the line of the Messiah. This Pharaoh was nothing but a pawn for the desires of Satan himself. And God would have nothing to do with that. He may be silent, but he is still faithful to his word and to his people.

So the Israelites suffered extreme oppression. But it didn’t work, did it? They continued to be fruitful and multiplied….even more than before. Do you think they were just having more date nights? No! The Israelites were not procreating every free moment they had between being beaten and overworked. God was intervening, behind the scenes, to keep his promise to make them a great nation.

Let’s go ‘Behind the Scenes’

Why did God bring Jacob and his sons to Egypt in the first place? The obvious answer is because there was a famine in Canaan and there was food and Joseph in Egypt. But that was what Jacob could see. What he couldn’t see was God at work silently, behind the scenes.

1. God led Jacob and his family to Egypt to discipline them. They had gotten into all kinds of sin in Canaan and the discipline was exile from the land of blessing.

2. God needed to isolate them geographically. That was impossible in Canaan. They were already intermarrying with their neighbors, something God had forbidden them to do. Why Egypt? Because the Egyptians were very prejudice. They hated all foreigners, especially shepherds like the Hebrews.
They wouldn’t intermarry with the Hebrews even if the Hebrews wanted to.

3. God needed to teach them about how to live as a nation. They saw civilization, established government and the administration of law in Egypt. This would help them when they became a great nation.

4. God, once again saw that his people were getting complacent. He needed to rekindle their passion for the promised land. He used the harsh treatment of this new Pharaoh to accomplish this.

God may have been silent…but God was active and intervening in the lives of his chosen people. His plan and purpose would not be stopped.

Application: Remember last week I said that Israels past, through the Exodus story, becomes our present? Well, this is more true for some here this morning than for others.

I am certain that all of us have or will one day be in the same sandals of the Israelites. Perhaps not in bondage to a Pharaoh, but in bondage to some circumstance that just won’t let you go.  Or perhaps it is that you are now or will one day be like the Israelites were in vs 1-7…complacent. Living on cruise control and having little thoughts of the promised land or a desire to get there and take others with you. Life is too comfortable to follow God into some unknown place. God may have a place for you, but until this place gets really bad, you’re not moving.

Strong words, perhaps. But understand…God will have his way. He may be silent, he may be allowing you enjoy the fat of the land or allowing you suffer under what seems like unnecessary bondage, but God will have his way. Even if he is silent for the moment.

Transition: Well, if things weren’t bad enough for the Hebrews, Pharaoh comes up with a new way of oppressing them.

Exodus 1:15-22  ‘God and his people remain faithful’
Read: Ex. 1:15-22

Pharaoh is desperate. He orders two women, who seem to be the head of the Hebrew Midwivery Association, to kill all the male Hebrew children at birth. (Legalized abortion)

Do you think it is coincidental that both these women are God fearing? Once again God is behind the scenes working on behalf of his people. And they never saw it. The Hebrew midwives don’t do what they are told and the Pharaoh call them back. They give him an excuse. Whether it is truth or a lie, we don’t know. Pharaoh doesn’t like it but he doesn’t have them killed either?

Coincidence? I think not. God was working through the lives of these two brave women, and rewarded them for their faith displayed in their actions.

So, Pharaoh pulls out all the stops. If the Hebrew midwives won’t do his dirty work, he will enlist the help of the Egyptians who disliked the Hebrews anyway. He told them to kill any male Hebrew child they saw. (Legalized Murder). But even in this, God was working behind the scenes, through the birth of a baby boy..Moses and the faith of his parents.

God has always had those faithful to him. And he has always been faithful to his people. Whether we can see it or it has been hidden from us. That is the essence of a life of faith.

Conclusion

We have been singing this morning about the wonderful works of God. Works that we have all seen. Works that we have all recognized as being acts of a loving God. But what about what we don’t see?

    However you may choose to view your present circumstance,

    How ever you may choose to view the certain difficulties that will come,

    However you may choose to view your present life of comfort and complacency,

    What you can see, is not the whole story.

The first chapter in the Book of Exodus reminds us that while God may seem to be silent, he is there and he is at work to bring about his plan, his purpose and his place for his people..for you.

Even when we are not aware of his presence and even when everything else points to the contrary.

When God is silent, we need to trust him. We need to look where he is at work and thank him. And we need to trust him even when we can’t see what he is doing.

We need to let our natural curiosity cause us to look for God, behind the scenes.