Egypt in the Time of the Exodus

The last two months we have been going through a lot of sermons and sermonettes and really zeroing in for a long time about the Passover, the days of the month of bread. We've gone through the bread, the wine, we've gone through coming out of Egypt. We've really zeroed in on so many aspects of this as we try to prepare all of us for the real meaning of these holy days. I want to do something a little different here this afternoon. I want to basically give a little bit of a history lesson this afternoon. In fact, a lot of this I would like to really zero in on some of the children and some of the teenagers and give them a little bit of a history lesson and help them maybe capture a little bit of a vision. What was it like to be in Egypt at the time of the Exodus? What was it like? What was it like to be a person living at the time of Moses? What was Egypt really like? Then tie that into a little bit of what it's like to be today as a Christian trying to live in spiritual Egypt and the important parallels between that and this. But I really want to zero in on the physical aspects of that. What was it like to live in Egypt? Now, I have a few slides, simple slides I wanted to show to try to help you be able to visualize a few things. This first slide I want to show you, I'll bring it up, that is a satellite picture. Can you see that? That's a satellite picture of Egypt. What you're actually looking at, the real dark areas, the Mediterranean Sea, all that brown and beige you see is desert. For hundreds and hundreds of miles is desert. See the little strip of green? That's the Nile River with what's growing on both sides of it. Now, at the time of Moses, that little strip of green was a little wider. We know that because archaeologists have been able to discover a little bit of how farther out Egyptian civilization went through irrigation and through the fact that the river was a little bigger than, they built a dam on it here back in the mid of the last century that changed some of it, but it was a bigger, a little bigger river. They did a lot of irrigation. That green strip was a little bit wider by a few miles and in some cases by maybe 20, 30, 40 miles. In some places here, it's only a mile on each side of the river. But basically, if you would have been able to take a satellite picture of this at the time of Moses 3,500 years ago, give or take a few years, it would have looked a lot like this desert with a green strip following a river. This is all Egypt was. You see where it's really green there where it empties into the Mediterranean Sea? That's the land of Goshen. The Bible talks about the land of Goshen. That's where most of the Israelites were. So this is what Egypt is. Egypt is totally dependent upon a river. Without that river, there's nothing. It's just desert like everything else around it. And so you can't separate the river from Egypt. And that river was everything in their life. Their religion centered around the river. Their concept of medicine is very interesting. Egyptian concepts of medicine believe that your body was like the Nile River flowing back and forth. Everything in their thought process was centered around this river. Egypt, by the way, is a very ancient society. The Egypt that we know started very soon after the flood. There was actually Egyptians living there or people living in there before the flood. But after the flood, people ended up migrating here and Egypt became a civilization very quickly after the flood. Look at the second slide here.

That's a picture of what the basic shipbuilding, they became shipbuilders. You know why? That strip of land was so fertile, they could grow food there in greater quantities than any other place in the Middle East. Now that's hard for us to imagine, but it was like that for well over 1500 years. This is why the Romans conquered Egypt. It is why the Greeks conquered Egypt. The Romans conquered Egypt because Egypt could grow more food than Italy. Now, Italy is a pretty fertile place. If you've ever been to Italy, it's very green. They grow lots of food. That narrow strip was so fertile, and remember it was wider because they had damned it, it was so fertile that they fed the Roman Empire from Egypt. What happened was, Egypt, as that civilization grew after the Flood. They grew so much food, they could even begin to eat all the food that they grew. So they became the greatest exporters of food in the Middle East for century after century after century. Everybody needed food. Now, let's just think about something for a minute. In Genesis, we have the story of Abraham. And there's a point in there in Exodus 12 where Abraham leaves his country that God had given to him, and he goes to Egypt. And if you go back and read, the reason he went to Egypt was there was a famine. Now, the area that he was in, which is now modern-day Israel, is actually a very fertile area of the world. But the one place you could always get food was Egypt. But you had to cross the desert to get there, which made Egypt a very isolated culture. Also, they didn't get invaded much. Arbeys tended to run out of food and water before they got there. So they didn't get invaded much. And so they're isolated. They're protected by the desert. But everybody has to go there to get food. Joseph ends up at the end of the book of Genesis. Joseph ends up in Egypt. And what does God tell him? There's going to be a famine of the whole world. And Egypt's the only place that we can store up enough food to feed the entire Middle East. And he spent seven years knowing what? Storing food. It's hard for us, as we see Egypt the way it is today, basically being a third world country, with not a lot of wealth. And that area along the Nile is much smaller than it used to be. It's hard for us to understand that Egypt was the breadbasket of the world, and they can trade. And they traded with everybody. And guess what happens when you trade excess wheat? People give you whatever you want for it. When you trade excess food, they give you whatever you want. So guess what began to pour into Egypt? The wealth of the world. The wealth of the world poured into Egypt. Look at the next slide. Now, as the wealth of the world begins to pour into Egypt, that means not everybody has to be a farmer. So the fact that not everybody had to be a farmer meant that there were people with talents that could begin to become craftsmen. So they became experts at making pottery, and experts at working with stone, and experts with being able to make doing medical, or medical, or working with metals, bronze. Well, it was a little bit before the Bronze Age, but they were working with copper. Eventually, they started working with bronze. They eventually began to become experts in every kind of jewelry-making art, the practical building skills. They were able to develop more than most civilizations because they had people freed from farming. Next slide. So guess what happens when you're freed from farming? A caste system develops.

What I mean by a caste system is a society forms where there's certain levels of wealth. Now, this is very important to understand when we look at the life of Moses and the life of the ancient Israelites. At the top of this system, and let me show you the next little slide here.

This is from a tube or a wall in ancient Egypt that they've been able to pull off of what was there. And what is there is an explanation of the caste system. Certain people have more importance than others. At the very top of this is a man, one man. A man so important, so great, he's considered a god, and that all the other gods that you don't get to see, the other gods communicate to this god. And he is Pharaoh. And you have Pharaoh and his family, and they rule everything. In fact, Pharaoh actually owns everything in Egypt. He is Egypt. He comes from the Nile.

Pharaoh would get up every morning and pray, and the sun would appear. Because the fear was the sun god would not come back in the morning if Pharaoh didn't go ask him to come back. That's a lot of power. So the pharaohs actually had to do a ceremony every morning before the sun came up to make sure that the sun god came. Absolute power, life and death.

Underneath this was a second group of people that were very wealthy, and they tended to be priests because there was nothing in Egypt that wasn't touched by religion. Religion was everything. There were priests, there were army officers, government officials and merchants.

People who ran little businesses, and they had money. And so there was this upper class of people. There was then actually a middle class of people that had some wealth, and they had their own homes. They would have their own gardens, which they would grow food, a little bit of land of their own. And they may not own the land, but they were able to at least lease the land from others. So they actually had property. They could say, well, this is my house. My father lived in this house, my grandfather lived in this house, and I may not own it, but it's ours because it's really owned by Pharaoh.

So there was a middle class. And these people were draftsmen in basins and carpenters, the bricklayers and sculptures and scribes, people who could write. And they lived a pretty nice life. Now remember, when I say pretty nice life, they didn't have air conditioning, they didn't have indoor plumbing, and they had a pretty nice life. What we would consider pretty much poverty today in many ways. But in that day and age, it was pretty much great. It wasn't the grand palaces of the Pharaoh or the really nice houses of the wealthy, but the middle class has a pretty comfortable life.

Now, underneath that class, you have the low class. And that class are peasants. They don't own anything. Everything they do is rent, and they basically are hired help. They hire themselves out to work in the fields. They hire themselves out to work for merchants. They're employees, but they're employees with zero rights. And much of the time, their pay is in food. So you work all day, and at the end of the day, you get a little basket of food.

Which means that most of the peasants, when they went home, they would make things to sell. They would make tools. They would make furniture. They would make things to sell. It was a hard life, but it wasn't near as hard as the people that had no... they were no class at all. They were the slaves. The slaves had no class at all. They had no rights at all. They were the personal property of Pharaoh. Now, if you were a really lucky slave, you got to be owned by a wealthy person who may not beat you to death because you were property.

And so you had a purpose. If you were really unlucky slave, you ended up in the copper mines or the gold mines out in the Sinai someplace where you lived a short, horrible life and died a long, horrible death. Most of them worked as slaves for Pharaoh himself because one thing the Pharaohs did was they built things. And so the slaves had no value in this society except of what they could produce in their short life. It's very important to understand when we look at the ancient Israelites and where they were. The spiritual aspects of this and we begin to understand that you and I live in a spiritual Egypt.

And you and I have no value unless God frees us from this. Now, if you and I lived in the poverty and absolute horrible conditions of the Israelites, it would be easier for us to say, oh good, God's going to free us from this. But you know, most of us live pretty good lives. You know, most of us live lives that the wealthy people of ancient Egypt would have said, ooh, I wish I could live a life like that person.

Driving cars are pretty cool. That's a whole lot better than driving, you know, my wagon or my chariot. They couldn't even imagine what you and I consider as everyday things as wealth. You know, really nice cushions on the couch. You know, there's things we just think for granted. The wealthy of Egypt would have said, wow, that's amazing. Pharaoh and his family, they lived in an absolute luxury that's hard for us to understand because he was considered a god.

Let's look at the next slide here. One of the things that happened all along the Nile, they began to build towns and cities. Of course they did. They were trading with the world. They had to bring in all these food stuff someplace where they could ship it up the Nile and ship it all over the world. And in every one of these cities, these craftsmen would form little businesses. There was absolute freedom of business as long as you paid your taxes.

There were no government regulations. If you had an employee, you could do whatever you wanted, not pay them, be any mop, it didn't matter. There was no government regulations. It was complete utter capitalism as long as you worship Pharaoh and pay your taxes. So what happens is these towns form and that's where the wealth ends up. And it ends up in the hands of the business people who take this stuff and sell it to other people. And so, Egypt becomes a class of middlemen that are getting goods all over the world and bringing goods in, which meant that the average Egyptian could own things that nobody else owned.

It even had filtered down some into the peasant class, where they could own things that nobody else owned because they could trade for it. And Egypt, for 1,500 years, was the trade center of the Middle East. It'd be like the New York City of today with ships coming in and out all the time, and up and down the Nile. As food goes out, and things come in. Now, when Egypt had a bad year, they had a bad economy. But it always came back. The Egyptian and the Nile River would flood on a regular basis. And that's why they didn't live right along the river, because it flooded.

And every time it flooded, this very, very fertile silt would be deposited. All they had to do was irrigate, and anything would grow. They could grow anything. And so, a bad year? Okay, it'll get better next year. And they would have a flood, and sure enough, they could grow anything. This was the world they lived in. They couldn't control the floods. They did believe they had to pray to the Nile God to make sure the Nile God flooded.

If he didn't flood, there was something wrong. Let's look at the next... Here's another thing. They created written language. You have to understand how important that is. If I create written language, and I create numbers, and I can write it down, that means I could take a piece of stone or clay. They would take clay, and I could chisel on it what I want to say to you, and say, this is how much you're going to pay for wheat.

And I can send it up the river to somebody else, and the guy can say, okay, and send it back down the river. You have business communication taking place. You have ideas that are shared all the way up and down that Nile River. Now, hieroglyphics are a very complicated language, by the way. It's pictures, it's letters, it's sounds. It's a very complicated language, but it communicates. It communicates huge amounts of information. And today, since they've been able to now decipher most hieroglyphics, we know all kinds of things about ancient Egypt that we never knew.

We know more about ancient Egypt today than they knew 50 years ago. In fact, today I'm going to speculate a little. I don't speculate a lot. I'm going to do a little bit of historical speculation today, because I want to show you something that will maybe help you understand Moses a little bit more. But we've got to put him in this world first. We've got to put him in the most sophisticated, most wealthy, most vibrant place in the world. Egypt was exciting.

Egypt was the place to be. If you were a businessman in Babylon and you wanted to make a lot of money, you had contacts in Egypt. If you were a Hittite businessman and you wanted to make a lot of money, you had contacts in Egypt, because it's Egypt where it came and went. And remember, a lot of this is not done through money. It's done through bartering, although they did have what they called an out-now, which was either copper, silver, or gold. It was a little round, like a coin with a hole in the middle, and they had to weigh it. And they would cut them up.

In fact, one of the most fascinating descriptions of ancient Egypt I've ever read was by Gasset and Mespero. He was a French Egyptologist back in the 1800s. After all his research, he wrote a book on what it would be like to live in Egypt at that time, in ancient times. Because you say, well, what do you mean by ancient times? You have to understand, for about 2,500 years, Egypt didn't change. It stayed the same for thousands of years. It's hard for us to understand, because our society changes constantly. Their society did not change a lot. Now, even when the Greeks conquered them, the Greeks became Egyptians. Cleopatra, the most famous of all the Egyptian queens, wasn't Egyptian at all. She was a Greek. She just pretended to be Egyptian, so she could rule. So, Egypt didn't change a lot for a long period of time. It stayed basically the same. In fact, I've seen pictures of Egypt today, where people are harvesting food the same way they would have at the time of Moses. They're irrigating the land sometimes at the same way they would have at the time of Moses. Now, there's a lot more modern things in Egypt, too. But it is a very ancient land. But, uh, Maspero wrote a fascinating description of what it would have been like. And he uses Thebes as an example, but any of the cities. What it would have been like on the day where the bazaar was open, in the middle of the town. Now, Egyptian week was set up every 10 days. So, you had a day off every 10 days. It wasn't a 7-day week, it was a 10-day week. Not based on anything except a calendar they made up. So, every 10 days, you have a day off. There was also religious holidays that you had off. And on that day off, everybody would be open. Of course, sometimes in the evening, everything would be open, too. I mean, people had to go in and buy their food. They had to exchange things. But if you went into a bazaar, the way he describes it is fascinating. He says, can you imagine walking into the center of a town, you're walking down a little narrow dark street, because the streets were very narrow, and all of a sudden you walk into this brightly, you know, the sun shining in the middle of the town, a big square, and the noise is deafening as there are thousands of people arguing. And you have cattle running around, and dried fish, and fresh fish, and animals being butchered right to eat it. The smell is unbelievable. And you have musicians playing, and you have people dancing, and everybody's arguing because everybody is bartering. So, you know, you have a guy walk over and say, ooh, I'd like to buy that basket of fish. And a guy says, well, I can give you this piece of furniture I made. And then that guy walks over and says, ah, I can do better than that. I can give you this piece of furniture and two onions. And then the two guys get into a fight. So everybody's standing there, watching these guys beat each other up. I mean, just all entertaining, right? And up and down the streets around this, all those little shops are open, and everybody's going in and out of these shops arguing with each other, trying to barter. And if you have an out now, you're real. I mean, if you have three ounces of silver, you're rich. So it's like, okay, what can we barter here? Well, let's split your out now in half. I'll take an ounce and a half of silver for this. And there's just this noise. And surrounding all this are little bars.

Because there's bars set up all over the place where everybody's selling beer. So everybody's sitting around drinking beer and watching all this happen. So they got soused, and then they got in fights.

There are restaurants set up. So you go get something to eat while you and your wife shop. You get tired of arguing, let's go get something to eat. I'm tired of this. Come on. And of course, barbers. I thought it interesting. Barbers didn't set up shops. Barbers just walked along with the big box and said, barber, barber, I would like a haircut. And the person would squat down, and they would cut their hair right in the middle of the street. In the middle of all this mayhem, there's dozens of people getting their haircuts.

This is ancient Egypt on the day off. This is what it's like on the day off. It's everybody laughing, and the whole family would come out, and everybody is arguing, and everybody's bartering, and everybody's trading things. But it was amazing what they're able to buy. Because here's an average person in Egypt, and they're buying coral. They're buying goods from Italy. They're buying goods from Babylon. They're buying goods from all over the world. The average person.

They can do this. Why? Because they're just shipping food out as fast as they can grow.

All over, they're feeding the world, and the world's trading with them everything they can give to them. You might go into the poorest person. You might go into the poorest person. There are some peasants, not the slaves, but some peasants, and they might have a piece of gold jewelry that only rich people in other places would have. Here's a person living in a hovel with a piece of gold jewelry. Why? Because it's this wealth that's just flooding into this country.

This is the Egypt of the time of Moses. Let's look at the next slide here.

One thing they became, they became expert engineers.

The engineering and mathematical skills of the Egyptians are still marbled at today. They still debate how did they do certain things. What's amazing is around that Nile, you saw that little strip of green, 10, 15, 20 miles away from that little strip of green today. And this happens all the time. They'll discover entire cities that they didn't even know were there. And the sand covers them up faster than they could go out and excavate.

Up and down the desert along the Nile, there are hundreds of sites and huge buildings and pyramids and ruins that they can't even excavate. Nobody has the money to go excavate all of Egypt. But they became expert engineers in this incredible way. But most of this was built, by the way, of the backs of slaves whose lives only had value in how much work you could do today. Slaves had no rights. Slaves get sick. You better get better soon. Now, Egyptian citizens had a little better thing. They had a little better. It's interesting that they have a list. It was a magistrate. It was a judge. And people were getting off work. And he was ruling whether they could get off work or not. You know, these are peasants and people in the middle class. And one guy was let off work. They translated it from the higher buildings because he went to the judge and said, I've got to get off work. I mean, look at me. My wife beat me up. And the judge said, yeah, poor guy. His wife beat him up and he let him off work. So, I mean, they actually have records of somewhat these, you know, in these courts, just like we kept records of courts today. They kept records of what the rulings were made of courts. And some of the higher glyphics are nothing more than court records. The religion now, let's go to the next slide. The religion of Egypt is so confusing, you would find it uncomfortable. It is the pure worship of demons.

Simple. They worship demons. They saw spirits inhabiting everything. And so, everything had a god for it. There was a crocodile god, and there were different bird gods, and there were gods, and there was the sun god. And that sun was believed to be a spirit that it had to be prayed to. Because one day, if he wasn't happy, he would not show up. They participated in witchcraft. They were so superstitious. They had lucky days and unlucky days, and they wore little charms all the time. They wore it off, the evil spirits. And so, they wore around their neck, around their ankles, and around their... just all kinds of charms. People wear something... today, someone will wear maybe a little necklace, and say, oh, that's pretty. Yeah, well, I like it. It's flowers. They didn't wear a flower because it was pretty. They wore it for a totally different reason. They would be designed to ward off evil spirits that would attack them that day, or to keep bad luck from happening to them. They were superstitious, and they lived in fear. They were obsessed with death. It may have been the most death-obsessed group of people on the face of the earth. In fact, when we look at the pyramids, all we're looking at are the tombs of the kings who believed that if they built the biggest, best pyramid, that's what helped them. I mean, the biggest, best pharaoh when they went to heaven. They had a concept of heaven and hell, and they had to go to heaven. That's why when a pharaoh was killed, or died, all his closest slaves were killed and put in the tomb with him, because he would need somebody to serve him in the next life. So they were killed. They were obsessed with death. Everything about their hieroglyphics, everything is about the glory of Egypt and death. And their religion is pure demonic worship. Although I have to admit, I think the funniest Egyptian god is the hippopotamus god. He is the god of pregnant women. I've always thought that was rather who came up with that. But the one god that everybody knew was Pharaoh. He was a god on earth. When he spoke, it was considered divine. When he spoke, his word was carried out no matter what. And so they're absolutely obsessed with death. Here's the next slide. And this is what then the guys, you know, every guy between the age of like eight and eighty, mummies... Oh man, that's cool. Okay, now we got mummies. That's the reason they did mummies. They created mummies. They were dead. No, they didn't come back to life. Mummies were created to protect, to protect the person as they were going to go on into their afterlife. You know, the average person didn't get mummified. Pharaoh and his family did, and the wealthy people did. Nobody else got mummified. You know, you got to go in the afterlife in a pretty messed up state. But they had to go in, you know, the best they could. What's amazing is their mummification is so incredible. We find mummies today where they unwrap them, and the skin is still on the mummy. And they took the organs out, and they put them in jars. They have jars of their organs.

Once again, the obsession with death. The obsession with death. Into this world, around 1523, Moses is born. Now let's pick up the story of Moses. Let's go to Exodus 2. I have one more slide I'll show you in a little bit here. Exodus 2.

You ever wonder about this one that we're going to talk about here? I'll show her to you in a little bit.

Exodus 2. And verse 1. It says, unleavened water. I appreciate that.

Somebody's really, really serious about their job.

And a man of the house of Levi went and took his wife, the daughter of Levi. Now this is after the Israelites are made slaves. Remember, Joseph was a powerful man in Egypt. It took a number of generations, and there's probably a really good reason why they became slaves. They kept populating and populating and populating. We know that's one of the reasons the pharaohs were afraid of them, because they just got to be so many of them, Israelites. But another reason probably is that a number of generations after Joseph, Egypt was actually invaded and conquered by another people that hadn't happened in the memory of anybody.

And those people spoke a language that was very, very similar to Hebrew. Now they got a group of slaves that all speak Hebrew, and they're conquered by a group of people who speak a language that's like Hebrew. And guess what happened? It took a while.

It took decades. They finally threw those people out and drove them out, and they became the most xenophobic people you can imagine. They were going to protect Egypt at all costs, and it was probably at that time where the Israelites were made slaves. They were never again going to be conquered, and those people, they were afraid of them. Being afraid of the Israelites is a very important point as we go on here, and we're going to read some scriptures and look at them a little different way. Then at the house of Levi, when it took his wife, his wife, the daughter of Levi, so the woman conceived, and for his son, and when she saw that he was a beautiful child, she hid him for three months, because at this point, the Egyptians were killing all the male Israelites.

They had to stop the population growth. So as soon as a male, they, you know, the women, good, we want girls. We could use them for work. We could use it, but we've got to stop the guys. They're just populating too much. And when she could no longer hide him, she took an arc of bull rushes for him, dabbed it with asphalt and pitch, put the child in it, and laid it in the reeds by the riverbank. Now this is, of course, the Nile. And his sister started far off to know what would be done of him.

And when the daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river, and her maidens walked along the riverside, and when she saw the arc among the reeds, she set her maid to get it. When she'd opened it, she saw the child, and behold, the baby wept. So she had compassion on him and said, this is one of the Hebrews' children. Then his sister said to Pharaoh's daughter, I shall go and call a nurse for you, from the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child for you. Now, it didn't take much for the daughter of Pharaoh to figure out, oh, this little Levi girl shows up.

It's a Levi baby that says, I know a nurse who can nurse this. Well, yes, it's the mother of the baby, okay? She's not stupid. I got a nurse. I know a nurse that could nurse this child for him. Verse 8, and Pharaoh's daughter said to her, Go, so the baby went and called her child's mother. Then 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. And the child grew, and she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son. And so she called his name Moses, saying, I drew him out of the water. It says he became her son. This is really, really important, because this meant that he had now become a member of the God family, the family of gods who ruled. He was now a member of Pharaoh's house.

Now, Pharaoh's house was not a great place to be if you were a kid, because they tended to kill each other off to see who got in power. That's not necessarily each other. Mom and dad would kill them off. Or Pharaoh almost always had lots of wives. So there was always this competition over which child was going to get to be Pharaoh. It wasn't a safe place to be. But Moses is now the adopted son. He's considered an actual son of the daughter of Pharaoh.

That's a very important point, because there's always this question. You know, historians like to say, how the world when Moses gets a power that he had, he got the power that he had because he was the adopted son of Pharaoh's daughter. That's why he was part of the ruling family. And this would have grave consequences. This tie went on. Now, years ago, if you've ever seen the movie when Charlton Heston, the 10th Commandments, you know, and they would say, years ago, it was commonly believed that the Pharaoh of the Exodus was Ramesses. The Ramesses were great.

There were a number of Ramesses, but Ramesses was great. Most biblical historians no longer believe that. And that's partly because what they discovered the last 50 years has allowed us to put together, you know, when all the pharaohs ruled, and Ramesses comes along long after, but the Bible says the Exodus took place. So, if you get most charts today, if you've got a book on Egyptian history, you'll find most of the charts agree with each other to a great extent. And you start looking through there, and if you know about when the Exodus took place, you'll see that the pharaoh of this time was named Thutmose I.

Now, Thutmose I had a daughter named Heptshepsin. Most people don't know much about Thutmose I. And Shepsin is very famous. And Shepsin is one of those famous people in Egyptian history.

Thutmose I has his daughter, and then Thutmose I dies.

Thutmose II marries his half-sister, and they have a child.

Now, this makes... I know they're intermarried here, so I mean, Shepsin is like his stepmother, grandmother, and all at the same time. But she's basically the queen, because Thutmose III is a child. And so she becomes pharaoh. Oh, he's pharaoh in name, but she's actually pharaoh. Most statues you will see of Heptshepsin, she has a little beard. You think, there's a woman with a beard. You know, that little beard that you see that the pharaohs have. She has no beard, because she was ruling pharaoh. Now, I want you to really stop and think about where we're going here. If Heptshepsin is... Now, this is what I'm speculating a little bit. Most secular history now backs this up. If this is the time of this, the period that we read about in Exodus, and it matches up right at this time that these things happened, what we have is, the woman who took Him, Moses, out of the water as he becomes older becomes the de facto pharaoh, while Teutmoses III is growing up. Now, if you know anything about Egyptian history, that means when Teutmoses III grows up, she had better kill him before he grows up. Because he grows up, he's going to kill her, and he's going to take over Egypt. Have you ever wondered what the woman who pulled Moses out of the water looked like? Look at this next slide.

Most of the statues we have of Heptshepsin shows her as pharaoh. So, she just looks like all the other pharaohs with the head guard on and a little goatine. You know, there's a woman. No, she's on a ship. There is.

That's probably the face, and she's very young in this sculpture. Probably the face of the woman who picked up Moses out of the Nile River. And she became pharaoh. And guess who Moses was? Her son.

Now, this means... Now, let me bring in another little piece of secular history. Josephus, first century Jewish writer. He tells us all kinds of things about the life of Moses that we don't know anything about in the Bible. But he does face some interesting things. He says, first of all, that the priests of Egypt were given visions to kill Moses when she brought him in to the court. When he was a small child, all through his childhood, they tried to kill him. All through his childhood, the priest keeps saying, he is going to destroy Egypt. You must kill him. And in every case, his mother was able to stop it. Now, that's an interesting little tidbit. How in the world does she have the power to stop that? But she did. That's a very powerful woman. Had Shepseth, we would have known very little about, because when she died, they tried to erase her memory. But you know, she actually had a temple built. And the priest, when they were coming to kill them, took her statues and her records and everything, and went up in a bunch of caves and hid it. And they fought all over. They know who the goateen woman is now. As in this goateen woman, now they know who it is. They know when she reigned. They know all about her.

Her temple, you can go to Egypt today and take a tour of her temple. And you can find all kinds of statues of her, and it's because her priests hid when they came to kill them.

Because what did happen is that eventually she lost power. Now, according to Josephus, not only was he saved by her mother, his mother over and over again, but he also commanded as an adult the Egyptian army and conquered Ethiopia.

Now, they do show that in the Ten Commandments movie, by the way. He conquered Ethiopia. He was an extremely popular army commander.

Moses lives in a privileged class that you can't even imagine. He walks down the street and everybody bows. He just doesn't walk down the street and nobody pays attention. When he walks down the street, everybody gets out of the way. He's part of the divine family. He commands an army. He possesses a wealth. He gets anything he wants. Think about that. Give me anything, any food you want. As an Egyptian, now Moses didn't do this, but as an Egyptian royalty, he could have any woman he wanted. He could have all the music he wanted. He could do whatever he wanted. Now, there were certain strict guidelines, certain things that they couldn't do, but basically when it came to his own desires and pleasure, he could do whatever he wanted. And he would have been revered wherever he went. This is Moses. He has all the power you can imagine. But Thutmosis III isn't a child anymore. He grows up, and they do know that something happened between Hatshepsut and him. No one knows exactly what happened. What we do know is Hatshepsut dies. Let's look at Hebrews. Hebrews 11, verse 23.

I never forget the first time I saw a statue of Hatshepsut, and I thought, well, that's her. You don't get to go back 3500 years very often and see what somebody looked like. That's her, without the beard. He was 11.

My wife said, oh no, a history sermon.

You've got to give a history sermon every once in a while. He was 11, verse 23.

By faith, Moses, when he was born, was hidden three months by his parents because they saw he was a beautiful child, and they were not afraid of the king's command. By faith, Moses, when he became of age, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter. Stop and think about what that means. When he came of age, where he could have legitimately fought and seized power.

He was just as much considered part of the divine family as those born into it. Well, not by the priests. They wanted him killed because he worships a different god. This whole society was so influenced by demonism, Satan was letting these guys know. Destroy him because he's going to destroy you.

Always life he did in that entry. All his life, till the age of 40, he had lived always with one eye behind his back. But he had consolidated power. If he actually had the army behind him, he may have been the most powerful man in Egypt at that time.

It says he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter. That's very important. The son part of this family. Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, that enjoy the passing pleasures of sin. Choosing to give up the power, the wealth, what was considered the good times, what anybody else in the world would have given anything to be, he consciously gave it up and thought it was good to give it up. This is where you and I have to be. And this is where it's so hard for young people. Because you don't feel like slaves in Egypt. You feel like Moses in Egypt.

If you were slaves, you'd be saying, yeah, good, yeah, let's get out of this slavery. But you don't feel like slaves. You feel like Moses.

You could have anything you want, practically. If you just didn't have to do what God says to do, he understood that what was being offered him in Egypt was very temporary. In fact, so temporary, he could die at any time. He could be poisoned at any time. He could be killed at any time. He didn't know what someone was going to kick him into his door, down his door, and a group of army officers were going to say, hey, we decided to follow Thutmose III or some other son, okay, that they hadn't killed off yet. He didn't know when a coup was going to happen. He didn't know who was going to kill him. He didn't know what was going to happen. That's the world he lived in. The boy was his son.

And he had to decide to give that up. And he said, it's better not to live like this.

Esteeming the reproach of Christ. In other words, the fact that he would be made fun of, and the fact that he would miss out on something that everybody else thought was real important, in order to be a follower of God. He thought, he esteemed it. He thought, this is so much better. Greater riches than the treasures in Egypt. For he looked to the reward. See, what Moses said is, God will give thee more than this. I think sometimes, young people in the church, what happens is, you think I'm missing out on something, and God's saying, oh no, and I'm going to give you so much greater than that. You forget the reward. Moses had to say, the reward is greater than the cost. So I take the reward. You have to believe the reward of God is greater than the cost. In fact, as an adult, if I didn't believe that the reward is greater than the cost, why would we do anything? I believe living this way makes me happier than not living this way. Because every time I don't live this way, I'm really not happy. Living this way brings me greater rewards than not living this way. And the eternal rewards are greater than any temporary rewards I get. At some point in your life, you either buy into that or you don't. It comes down to that simple. Because you're not feeling like slaves in Egypt, you're like Moses in Egypt. You're Moses in Egypt.

And you have to believe. You have to value. You have to esteem God greater than Pharaoh. You have to esteem what he's going to give you in life greater than what you think is fun. That doesn't have good consequences. Just like Moses did. Verse 27 says, By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king, for he endured as seeing him who is invisible. He says, I, it's like I see God. I believe of God. I believe God's evolved in my life, and I'd follow God over Pharaoh any day. We have to say, yeah, okay, I'd do that. Wait a minute. You have to realize what Pharaoh meant to him. He could be Pharaoh.

Where he walked down the street and people worshipped him. He had all the power. He had everything you could imagine.

Everything was being offered to him.

He said it wasn't worth it. By faith he kept the Passover, the sprinkling of blood. A sea who destroyed the first one should also touch them. By faith they passed through the Red Sea, as by dry land, whereas the Egyptians attempting to do so were drowned. And so here you have this man who's seen as part of the divine family, and he does something. And this something destroys his ability to even stay in Egypt. Now what he does doesn't seem that bad. And that's why I put this whole context together, because I believe, once again I'm speculating a little here, because I'm using secular history from Josephus. I'm looking at what secular history has been able to put together about Egypt, and it's pretty airtight. It's pretty good. I used to have books at home on Egyptian pharaohs, and they would have Egyptian pharaohs hundreds of years apart. This one would say he reigned at this point. This person, well, he reigned 300 years later. I mean, 500 years difference, same pharaoh. That doesn't exist anymore. We have so much information. It's from the hieroglyphics. We have so much information we can now put together. We know about when things happen, and we know the players here. And we know why being the son of Pharaoh was so important. If she was just the daughter of Pharaoh, that wouldn't be near as important as if she is pharaoh. All of a sudden, this gets real important.

And she has power that the boy she's ruling over isn't a boy anymore, and he's not going to take her ruling over him anymore. Let's go to Acts 7. Acts 7. Moses still didn't understand what God was doing in his life. He knew that God had called him to do something great. I mean, all his life, every Egyptian priest was saying, kill this boy! He's the middle of controversy his whole life. He's not going to be persecuted as a teenager. Can you imagine walking into the palace? You know, you walk into the palace and you overhear the priest saying, we've got to get Pharaoh to kill that boy. That's persecution.

But he still didn't understand it. And he does something here that's very interesting. Acts 7, verse 20. At this time, Moses was born. Now, remember, this is a New Testament statement by Stephen. So Stephen has 2,000 years or 1,500 years of information that's been passed on from generation to generation here, and he talks about this. So some of it is a little bit of new information. There's something in here that's not said in Exodus. At this time, Moses was born and was well pleasing to God. He was brought up in his father's house for three months. Now, when he was sent out, Pharaoh's daughter took him away and brought him up as her own son. And Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was mighty in words and deeds. Mighty in words and deeds. He knew Egyptian society in and out. He knew hieroglyphics. He was educated and mighty in words and deeds, which makes what Josephus says now very possible. He was known throughout Egypt as a great man. He was known throughout Egypt as someone to be respected.

It says now when he was 40 years old, he came into his heart to visit his brother and the children of Israel. He knew that they were his brethren. He knew it. He knew he was an Israelite. The Egyptians knew he was an Israelite. He never masqueraded as an Egyptian. They knew who he was.

It says that seeing one of them suffer wrong, he defended an avegetum who was oppressed and struck down the Egyptian. Now, we know in Exodus what happened. He saw a couple...he saw a being beating his Egyptian taskmaster, beating a slave, and he lost his temper, and he went over and he beat the guy to death. Now, of itself, Moses is the daughter of Pharaoh. He could basically beat to death anybody he wants. But I believe the context here is greater than that, because it's right at this time, it's right at this time period, that have Sheps that dies. Most the third tries to destroy everything about her, everything connected with her. And the next statement now is really interesting. For he supposed, he supposed that his brethren would have understood that God would deliver them by his hand, but they did not understand. He killed the Egyptian because he thought they would understand, I'm leading you out of here. Now, you think about Moses going back 40 years later and God saying, okay, I'm going to lead the people out. We can't do that. There's no way. Pharaoh's too big. They're too strong. I'll do it, God says. Oh, yeah, how are you going to do it? Get, send somebody else. Take your staff and throw it down. You know, turn it into a snake. How's that? I'm still not going to do it. Get somebody to speak for me. Okay, I'll send your brother. I don't want to do this. That's a huge difference than a man who 40 years later kills a man and looks at the people out of his head. I'm freeing you. Understand, if he has the army, he now has an army of slaves. He tells them, I'm going to free you. Could you imagine when it gets back to Pharaoh that Moses is declared, I'm going to free you?

What you have is a coup and Moses is going to take down Egypt. God is going to take down Egypt. Moses is going to take down Egypt.

He supposed they knew what he was doing. I killed this Egyptian because, come on, we're going to rise up. We're going to take over. We're going to be free.

Interesting, God hadn't told him anything yet. And suddenly, his mother's gone. He has no power. He doesn't even have the slaves following him. And he runs. He runs out into the desert, and for 40 years, he takes care of sheep. And 40 years later, when God comes to him, he speaks into a burning bush of a shepherd. He used to be the son of Pharaoh's daughter. I'm a shepherd. He used to be the second most powerful man in Egypt. I'm a shepherd.

I'm not going back there. I don't want to go back there. They'll kill me if I go back there. I tried. I did the one thing that was the most illegal, despicable, horrible thing in all Egyptian society. He was going to overthrow the living God. He was going to overthrow the living God. He supposed they would get it. They didn't get it. The army obviously didn't get it. His mom's gone. And Moses had to run. I think for so many young people, your experience is you don't realize your slaves because you're wrapped in gilded chains. So your experience is like your Moses.

And sooner or later, God will strip that from you so you have to come to grips with who you are and who He is. Who you are and who He is. And that He is your God. And He has something better for you than Egypt.

Moses would return. He would face the next Pharaoh, Emmet Hotep II. Emmet Hotep II was a... He prided himself in being the strongest man in all of Egypt. And they say he had a bow that only he could draw. That the pole on that bow was so strong that only he could draw it. Now, I don't know if that's true or not, but I know if I was an Egyptian soldier, and he said draw that, I'd go, oh, Pharaoh, you can do it. So I don't know if anybody else could do it, but nobody else was going to do it. Nobody was going to draw that thing back.

But he was known for his physical strength and his absolute stubbornness. I mean, even for a person who thought he was God, he thought he was like the best God. He was one of the most arrogant men to ever live. And that's who Moses had to go face. Without an army, and without an army of slaves, in fact, most of the slaves kept saying, why didn't you leave us alone? Remember, they actually said, why didn't you leave us alone? Well, God told me to do this.

He had to do it with nobody but him and God.

I think for a lot of the young people, there's a time in life where you're going to realize that this is you and God, and all this other stuff has to be made unimportant in your life. You're going to have to give up the treasures of Egypt, because this is, the Bible calls the world we live in, spiritual Egypt.

And you're going to have to give it up.

You have to give it up if you want what God's offering you. You want God's offering you? He's actually offering you to be part of a royal family.

He's actually offering you to be part of a royal family, his family.

That's what he's offering. And we think Pharaoh, who is Satan, we think what Satan offers us is better than what God offers us to be part of his royal family. It is time. You can't play it this you know, you can't play it this long enough. You either end up in slavery or you end up out of it.

There was a time when Israel left Egypt, and it was too late. There would have been Israelites that probably stayed behind. It was too late. We have to realize that now is the time to come out of slavery. Now is the time to say, I reject the pleasures of Pharaoh. I don't want the wealth of Pharaoh, because it's all smoke and mirrors. I want what my God gives me to be part of his family. We have to forsake this pursuit. We have to forsake all the spiritual trivia. That's what the Days of Unleavened Bread are about. One of the lessons is coming out of Egypt. And you're actually coming out of Egypt.

I stress to you that your experience is not like slaves.

Your experience is that your slaves with gilded chains look gold, because your experience is more like Moses. Look what God did with Moses' life. For forty years, he was a shepherd and thought probably God had forsaken him. He was preparing to go back and face Amenhotep II, who had made Tuthmos III look like a sissy. That's what he was preparing for.

Because the next time he walked in, he wasn't walking in with his power. I got an army and I got millions of slaves, and I will become Pharaoh. He wasn't coming in with that kind of power. He was walking in with his brother, who wasn't any more powerful than him, and a staff that turned into a snake. That's all he had.

Because that's all he needed. Because God was with you. And God will be with you.