Lessons From the Exodus Story (part 1)

Thank you again, Tony. I really appreciated Sam's sermonette here because it's really a perfect lead-in to what I wanted to talk about and some of the things we should be thinking about this time of year. With Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread coming up in just a little over two months away. The story of Israel's Exodus should be on our minds. It should be something we should be thinking about. And if you're like me, you've probably read the story over many, many times, perhaps from childhood. You've probably watched some of the movies about that, like the classic Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston there. And you've probably looked at these things somewhat superficially. You've heard, no doubt, many sermons on these topics as well. But have you ever sat down and really studied the story? And this year I have made it a point to do that, to really study the story of the Exodus. And in doing so, I've learned a lot of little details that I would like to share with you today that add depth to our understanding of what happened back then almost 35 centuries ago. 35 centuries ago. Quite a long time. And as a result of studying the story, I want to help all of us understand the story better. And again, Sam's sermonette was very helpful in that, digging in a little deeper into the story than what we normally do. So in the next three sermons, hopefully I'll be able to fit it into three. We'll see. But I want to share with you a number of lessons from the Exodus story. Lessons from the Exodus story. So this will be part one of hopefully a three-part series. So let's jump right in to where the story begins in Exodus 1. And I'll make it fairly easy for you today because nearly everything that we'll read will be just going through the account that is preserved there for us in the book of Exodus in the first few chapters of it. So let's get into the story then. Exodus 1 and verse 1. Now these are the names of the children of Israel who came to Egypt. Each man in his household came with Jacob. Jacob, of course, is the patriarch grandson of Abraham, whose name was changed to Israel. And then we read of his twelve sons, who were the progenitors of the twelve tribes of Israel. And they're named here, Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah. Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin. Dan, Naftali, Gad, and Asher. All those who were descendants of Jacob were seventy persons, for Joseph was in Egypt already. And we know the story of how Joseph was sold into slavery and the trials he went through in Egypt, where he eventually rose to become second in command after Pharaoh himself. Verse 6.

Now why did Jacob and his sons' families, who would become known as the Israelites, go to Egypt in the first place? Well, it was because there was a famine in the Holy Land. The grain crop had failed. So they go down to Egypt, we remember the story there, to get grain, wheat, and barley to feed themselves there. Why had the crops failed? The answer isn't specifically spelled out, but obviously there was a drought there in the Holy Land. There wasn't enough rain.

And they were experiencing global warming, or excuse me, climate change there, caused by all of the SUVs and all of the heavy manufacturing industry there in the Holy Land, 3,500 years ago. And I'm being facetious about that, but I say this to make a point, because I don't know of any archeologist who believes in man-made global warming. Because archeologists have studied history, they've studied ancient climates and population patterns and things like that, and they all know that climate changes over time.

It has not always been the way it has been here in the last couple of decades here. Climate changes. Sometimes it gets warmer and drier, as it did then, creating these drought conditions, which force them to migrate down into Egypt. And sometimes the climate gets cooler and wetter. And if you don't believe it, you can drive down to southwestern Colorado to Mesa Verde and areas around there and see these magnificent cliff dwellings where communities of hundreds or thousands of people lived at their peak from about 1,000 AD to about 1,200 AD. And the climate changed, and they disappeared. They migrated out of that area because of climate change, 1,200 AD, caused by all of their SUVs and heavy industry and so on.

Again, I'm being facetious about that. But we tend to think that only in the last few decades climate has changed as a result of human activity. And that's just simply a lie. It's a farce. And the problem that we have today, one of our huge problems in society, is that people are ignorant of history and too gullible to realize they're being deceived by people who want control over them and their lives. And control over people's lives and deceit are a major part of the Exodus story, which we'll see as we get into this. So it does fit in with what I'll be seeing and going through some of the background to the Exodus story.

So continuing on here, verse 7 of Exodus 1, It's interesting the language that is used in this verse. They increased and multiplied, and the land was filled with them. Learned something very new. And going through this account here, that Remes, which we've talked about quite a bit in the Gospels, was not new with Jesus in the New Testament period. There's actually a Remes right here. A Remes back to Genesis 1 and verse 28, where the exact same words are used.

The exact same words for fruitful and multiply. And the land was filled with them. Moses, the author here, presumably of this part, is giving us a Remes back to Genesis 1 and verse 28, where God commands Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. So there's an obvious parallel here. What is the point, as we've discussed before, Remes has a point to it. What is the point? Well, the point is that just as the world was created by God in the beginning there in Genesis 1, now a new creation is taking place with the formation of the Israelites as a nation.

We're being taken out of slavery there in Egypt. And they're going to come to the Promised Land to build a new nation. It is, in a sense, a new creation, as the original story there in Genesis was. So, interesting Remes. There are actually several examples of Remes that I came across we'll be talking about here. Continuing on with the story in Exodus 1 and verse 8, Now there arose a new king over Egypt who did not know Joseph.

Again, Joseph rose from slavery, followed by imprisonment, to become the second most powerful man in Egypt. And he was actually credited there in the biblical account with saving Egypt from famine. And given that Joseph's role in Egyptian history was so important, the statement here that he was forgotten or the new Pharaoh did not know Joseph is quite extraordinary. That they forgot the story of somebody who was so powerful and so influential in Egypt's history and actually credited with saving the nation from famine, as we're familiar with the account.

And there are many lessons that we'll bring out in going through this. And here's one of the lessons here that one of humanity's most common traits, unfortunately, is in gratitude. It's in gratitude because people either don't acknowledge the good that somebody else does, or they forget the good that somebody else has done. And that is what this verse is describing here. In gratitude for getting the debt that they owed to somebody else.

And if we don't remember our history, who are we? What are we? How important is memory of who and what we are? One commentator that I read about regarding this verse described how he had interviewed a man who, as a result of a fall on his head, suffered amnesia, severe amnesia, to the point that he didn't even remember who his wife and children were.

A grown man with a wife and children, and he did not know them, did not remember them at all. And the commentator pointed out that for all intents and purposes, the man that this person had been had died. For all intents and purposes, because he no longer knew who he was, didn't know his family, didn't know his own wife, his own children there. That person simply no longer existed. He was gone. Erased from history through amnesia. And the same thing is true of nations, because nations too are kind of the accumulation of their memories, of their culture, of their values, and so on.

And a nation that doesn't remember its past, like this man who suffered amnesia, ceases to be the nation that it was. And what is happening, this is what is happening right now in nearly all of Western civilization. That borders are being erased. History is being erased. History is being rewritten. I read earlier this week that there is a law being proposed in our state legislature here to emphasize the restructuring of the teaching of history to our school children, to emphasize all of the important contributions that have been made by homosexuals and transgenders.

So they're going to make room for that in the Hix History lesson. So what does that mean? Well, it means in practical terms, if you go through and emphasize those individuals, you're going to have to leave out other people. People like great scientists. People like great generals. Great thinkers. Great leaders. Great inventors. Great statesmen. Things like that. Great explorers. We'll be left out to emphasize the contributions of homosexuals and transgender individuals.

So students not only get dumbed down about the history of our country and society and the world in which they live, and at the same time they get brainwashed into thinking that these values are normal. So it's no wonder that in the United States today, and this has been documented, the level of ignorance about America's past, particularly among its young people, is unprecedented. I just read an article this morning from, I believe it was the Washington Examiner, that they did a survey and to pass, if you're a new immigrant to the, if you become a U.S. citizen, if you're an immigrant and become a U.S. citizen, you have to take a citizenship test. And they had administered this citizenship test to a number of people who are Americans by birth, and barely 40% of native-born Americans could pass the basic citizenship test, which is largely about the history of the nation, the way our government functions and works. And that is a sad commentary on how ignorant our American citizenry is of the nation's history, of its past. And if we lose our past, if we lose our history, what does it mean for the future of the nation? It's not good, and this type of thing is happening throughout Western civilization right now. So again, it's no wonder with what's going on in our educational system that our people are being dumbed down to the extent that they are.

It's interesting, in contrast with this, and this ties in with the story of the Exodus, one thing that has kept the identity of the Jewish people so strong over the last 3,000 years is this story. The story of the Exodus, because what do they do? At least the practicing Jews every year, and actually even a number of secular Jews, will have their Passover Seder every year and recount this story. The story of the Exodus and of God's miraculous delivery of the people, and it's been rehearsed in Jewish homes for more than 3,000 years. And there's an obvious lesson from this, too, that it is important that we understand and remember our history and our place in God's plan. And that's why we do observe the Passover and celebrate God's Holy Days every year. God knows we are prone to forgetting these things, so He commands us to rehearse and to remember these things every year. That's another important lesson from the story of the Exodus. Continuing now in verse 9, And he, Pharaoh, said to his people, Look, the Israelite people are more and mightier than we. And something to notice here is that it was the Egyptian leader, not the Egyptian people, who initiated the campaign against the Israelites that ultimately would lead to attempted genocide.

The terrible truth that we see from history is that individuals, you might think of people like Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot, Cambodia, Mao Zedong, Joseph Stalin, others like that, individuals are capable of inflicting enormous evil on the world.

Frankly because individuals are quite capable of creating more evil than creating more good. Were it not for Vladimir Lenin, it's unlikely that communism would have ever taken over Russia, and ultimately the Soviet Union, where over 150 million people were enslaved to that system. And Joseph Stalin, who murdered literally tens of millions of people, somewhere between 40 and 60 million people, died under the reign of Joseph Stalin. Same true of Mao Zedong and China, where again billions, some estimates 60 million Chinese died under his reign. Kim Il Sung in North Korea, and so on. Were it not for Adolf Hitler, the Holocaust would likely, almost certainly, never have taken place. So these examples show that you don't necessarily have to have a person of great ability or great mental skills to do great evil, because most of these individuals were rather ordinary people. Run-of-the-mill people. Not just average at best, some quite a bit below average. It was only when they got their hands on power that they were able to do great evil. And this is another lesson of the Exodus here, that it doesn't take a lot of evil people to do great evil. That one evil individual, given power, can accomplish a great deal of evil. And we'll see that happening here in the story of the pharaoh, of the Exodus. Continuing, verse 10, Pharaoh says, Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and it happen in the event of war, that they also join our enemies and fight against us, and so go up out of the land. Verse 11, Therefore they, now it transitions to the Egyptians themselves. Pharaoh has initiated this persecution of the Israelites, and now he's joined in rather enthusiastically by the rest of the Egyptian population. Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with their burdens. And the story here actually condemns the Egyptians four times in the next few verses here. It says, the Egyptians set taskmasters over them. They're in verse 11. And verse 12, The more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew. The Egyptians, verse 13, made the children of Israel serve with rigor. And verse 14, They made their lives bitter with hard bondage. They're in slavery. So four different things that the Egyptians are doing here to make the lives of the Israelites bitter.

So the Exodus here, Exodus account here, we see starts to emphasize the collective guilt of the Egyptians. And this plays out later because if you just read the plague accounts in isolation, it can sound like God is punishing all of these innocent people. Were they innocent? No, they weren't. As we see from the example right here, the four things that they are doing and making their lives miserable. God's chosen people there. So even though it is Pharaoh who initiates the campaign of slavery, enslaving them and then committing genocide against them, the Egyptian people are the ones who carry it out.

Individuals initiate mass evil, but they need the collaboration of other people to carry it out. And this explains the collective national punishments the Egyptian people will experience. Most of the Egyptians were not as evil as Pharaoh, just like in World War II, the period leading up to that.

Most Germans in the 1930s were not inherently evil people. They weren't. They were just average people, some of the most cultured, civilized people in the world there. But you don't really need, again, a lot of truly evil people to carry out great evil. Really what you need, how great evil succeeds, and we see this from the story of the Exodus and from the Holocaust, parallels here three different things. For great evil to succeed, you need ordinary people who have allowed themselves to be indoctrinated by those who are truly evil. You need people who benefit from the evil.

The Egyptians benefited from having all the slaves there doing all the work, just as during World War II when the Jews were persecuted, their property confiscated, what happened to all of that wealth? Well, it was distributed out to other people. Just a couple of weeks ago, I watched an interesting movie that was produced in Hungary, actually, about a little town that had a sizable Jewish population before the war.

And it emerges through the course of the movie. The title of the movie is 1945. And it emerges that eventually nearly everybody in the town has gotten wealthy because they turned in the Jewish population of the town and stole the Jews' businesses, stole their homes, stole their property, their furniture, their carpets even, the jewelry, everything, by turning the Jews over to the Nazis. So the people profited enormously from that. And then, last, a final factor in how great evil succeeds is you have to have a shortage of truly courageous good people.

Truly courageous good people. And courage is perhaps one of the rarest of good traits. There are a lot of kind people in the world, a lot of honest people. There are a lot more of them than there are courageous people.

And again, I appreciate Sam's sermonette there about the courage of Moses. He's a very different individual. He is courageous. He stands up. And in the battle against evil, all of the kindness, all of the honesty, all of the good traits in the world don't amount to much unless people are willing to act on that, as Moses was.

And as we'll see, this is one quality that made Moses very different. Continuing with the story, verse 14, The Egyptians made the Israelites' lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar and brick, and in all manner of service in the field. All their service in which they made them serve was with rigor. Then the king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives, of whom the name of one was Shifra, and the other, and the name of the other, Pua. And he said, when you do the duties of a midwife for the Hebrew women, and see them on the birth stools, if it is a son, then you shall kill him.

But if it is a daughter, then she shall live. And I've referenced genocide several times here. What they are doing is committing genocide against the male baby boys here. So the account here emphasizes Pharaoh's direct order to the midwives, and also highlights their courage. We just talked about courage a bit. Here is the first example of courage that we see, and who are the courageous ones who are standing up to Pharaoh. A couple of women. A couple of women who stand up. It's interesting, the Hebrew here, it says the midwife for the Hebrew women can be translated either as the Hebrew midwives, meaning that the midwives were Hebrew themselves, or it can mean midwives of the Hebrews.

Meaning the midwives could have been of any cultural group or nationality. But there are several clues in the text that indicate the midwives aren't Hebrew. We have tended to always assume that they were, but actually there's clues that indicate they are probably not. And I'll mention those as we go through the text here. The most obvious clue, however, is not rooted in the text, but just in simple common sense, because given that Pharaoh ordered that every Hebrew baby male be murdered, it's highly unlikely that he would order the Hebrew women themselves to murder the children of their own relatives and clans and tribes and so on.

That just doesn't make sense there. Also, in another side point here, in giving us the names of the midwives who are courageous and stand up to Pharaoh here, the exit account is making a powerful moral point. We tend in history to remember the names of the villains all too often, like those I mentioned earlier.

Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Paul Pot, others like that. But we don't often remember the truly good people in life. And the exit account here actually gives us the names of the good guys, or the good gals in this case, the two Hebrew women here, Shefrah and Puwa.

Does the account give us the name of the Pharaoh? The bad guy? It doesn't. It's interesting that the Exodus account preserves the names of the good people and ignores the names of the Pharaoh. And that's been one of the big puzzles for historians over the years. Who's the Pharaoh of the Exodus account? Bottom line, we do not know. There are a lot of clues. There are a lot of different theories about it. But the bottom line, we don't know because the Bible doesn't give us the name of the bad guy.

His name is blotted out of history here and not preserved for us. It's interesting that to this day Shefrah is a very common name among Jewish girls in honor of this courageous midwife who defies the edict of the evil Pharaoh. Continuing verse 17, but the midwives feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt, commanded them, but saved the male children alive. Now, let's notice here. What was their motivation?

It doesn't say that they saved the babies out of pity, out of feeling sorry for them or anything like that, or because they loved God. No, what it says is they saved them because they feared God. They feared God. And here's another great lesson of the Exodus story. That fear of God is necessary for a healthy society.

People fear, we naturally fear people and things that are more powerful than we are. And in the culture and society of that day, what could be more powerful than a ruler who has power of life and death over you and your family, who can order you to be executed and confiscate all of your property and sell your wife and your children into slavery? That's the kind of power that rulers have had, frankly, up until recent centuries with the Anglo-Saxon peoples.

The British and then the American forms of government, where the king is subject to the same laws as everybody else. So spell that in the Magna Carta and King John from British history. That wasn't the case before then. Read the accounts of the Roman emperors. If they had political enemies, they would accuse them of treason, confiscate their estates, exile their wives and families, or sell them into slavery, confiscate the escapes, and put it in the state treasury.

End of problem. That's how you got rid of your political enemies at that time and throughout much of history. So fear of God is necessary to have a functioning, moral-based society here. People fear those who are more powerful. So the only way not to fear a powerful people is to fear God. Because if you fear God, you don't need to fear man.

You don't need to fear what man can do. In the instance that is recorded here, those who feared God did what? They save the Hebrew babies. Those who fear Pharaoh do what? They murder the Hebrew babies. Again, a lot of parallels, as Sam mentioned, with today's society. What do we see? One of the greatest abominations in history. Something like 50 million abortions in the last year alone. Approximately a million a year in the United States every year, year after year after year. So those who fear God saved the Hebrew babies, and those who fear Pharaoh were participants in the genocide of the Israelite boys.

So remember, as I highlighted here, it is the midwives fear of God that freed them from fearing Pharaoh there. Fear of God is liberating because it does free us from fear of what man can do from evil and powerful people. If we fear God, we don't need to fear other human beings. And this fear of God is what gave the midwives the strength and the courage, the moral conviction to do what is right, and to save these innocent babies here.

And that is why, again, totalitarian states like the Soviet Union, like Communist China, like Cambodia under Pol Pot, like North Korea, and all of these, why do they go to such great lengths to stamp out religion and stamp out God?

Why do they imprison people for owning a Bible or religious materials? Why do they do that? Because they know if their people come to fear God more than they fear the totalitarian leaders, their regime is doomed. So that's why they do that. They recognize that fear of God is a mortal threat to their power, their authority over people.

So that's why people over the years have been horribly punished in these totalitarian societies here. And that, again, is, we see a lot of parallels with society today because what has happened in the lifetimes of us sitting here? We've seen the Bible banned from schools. We've seen prayer banned from schools. We've seen Ten Commandments displays banned, removed from public life.

People who are serious about their religious beliefs—I've shared some of the articles in my news articles with you— people who share sincere religious beliefs are condemned as being unfit for public office. Unless you happen to be a Muslim, or unless you happen to be a Catholic who believes that abortion and gay sex is okay, then you're okay.

Then you can serve in public office. So again, just a corrupting and erasing the history of the values on which this country was founded. So the bottom line here, bottom line lesson, is we need to be sure that we fear God, like the midwives, and not fear man. Verse 18, So the king of Egypt called for the midwives and said to them, Why have you done this thing and served the male children alive? The fact here that the pharaoh is puzzled, he seems to be genuinely puzzled by their actions, is another indication these women are not Hebrews, but are instead Egyptians. His question, Why have you done this thing?

Suggests he's really puzzled, he's mystified by their behavior. But it's unlikely that this would be the case had the midwives been Hebrew. He wouldn't have been puzzled. He would have known they're trying to do that to save their own people there. And would understand why the women would not want to kill their babies. So here's another clue that these are actually Egyptian midwives and not Hebrew. Verse 19, And the midwives said to Pharaoh, Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women, for they are lively and give birth before the midwives come to them.

And here's another clue that these are Egyptian and not Hebrew, because what do the midwives say? The Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women, for they, referring to them in the third person, not we Hebrew women, are lively and give birth. But they, those Hebrew women, indicating it's another group of people. So another clue that these are Egyptian midwives and not Hebrew. So the midwives, frankly, lie to Pharaoh and give them an excuse for not participating in the murder of the Hebrew boys.

And the midwives want to save the infants, but at the same time they don't want to die for defying Pharaoh's edict. So what do they do? They lie about it. They don't tell people what they're really thinking, that we fear God more than we fear you.

So they come up with this excuse. And notice what happens here. Is it, well, continuing in verse 20, let's read the rest of the story. Therefore, God dealt well with the midwives, and the people multiplied and grew very mighty. And so it was because the midwives feared God that He provided households for them. So are the midwives punished for disobeying Pharaoh in His order? Or for lying to Pharaoh? No, actually, as the story shows here, God rewards them.

He rewards them for this. Verse 22, So Pharaoh commanded all his people, saying, Every son who is born, you shall cast into the river, and every daughter you shall save alive. So he commands this to all of the Egyptian people, that every son that is born to the Hebrews will be cast into the river.

And I'm not sure how many of you have been to Egypt before, but this is a photo of the Nile River. It is a huge, huge river. This is right south of Cairo. But an enormous river that at that time was throwing the Hebrew babies into the river would have meant, one, they would drown, or two, they would be eaten by crocodiles, because crocodiles still infest the Nile River to this day. Or they would be eaten by the fish, the scavenging fish there. This is how Pharaoh decided to dispose of the bodies there.

But notice here, too, that the whole Egyptian people here, verse 22, are now implicated in this genocide of the Hebrew baby boys. Cruel as Pharaoh is, he could not have carried this all out on his own. He had to have the willing help and participation of the people. So the Egyptian people come under condemnation for the mass murder of the Hebrew children as well.

So why does he order only the Hebrew boys to be murdered, to be cast into the river, and not the newborn girls? Well, it seems the best explanation I've come across for this is that this is a very patriarchal, a very male-oriented society, as most of them were at that time. And naturally, girls aren't going to cause as much trouble as boys are. Those of you who are parents, and I was a boy once, so I know this, girls aren't as much trouble, generally, as boys are.

The girls aren't going to be as prone to rebelling against government in this evil, corrupt system and so on. So the thinking seems to be that if all the Hebrew males, the boys are eliminated, and when the girls get older and look too married as somebody else, they're going to intermarry with the Egyptians, or with other cultures there as well. And eventually, the Hebrew race, the Hebrew people, are going to go extinct through intermarriage with other peoples there. That seems to be what he's thinking.

He's still going to get the benefit of having the labor force, but he's going to get rid of those troublesome males there that are a potential threat to the Egyptian kingdom. So the Hebrew people will eventually disappear, and that will be the end of the problem. That seems to be Pharaoh's rationale for that. Okay, continuing on in chapter 2 now, now we come to the birth of Moses.

A man of the house of Levi went and took his wife, a daughter of Levi. So this is one of the twelve tribes of Israel, the Levites. So Moses is clearly a Levite as we read from here. And we'll notice now, let's see...

Yeah, let's notice, I mentioned earlier, that the first heroes of the story are the midwives. What we'll see in this story is multiple women who play heroic roles in the story. They're the midwives first, and then there is Pharaoh's daughter who saves Moses, and also Mariam, Moses' sister, who contributes to the saving of Moses and who intervenes with Pharaoh's daughter to have Moses' mother appointed to nurse and care for Moses. So most people have the view of the Torah, the Pentateuch, as being very anti-woman, that sort of thing, but it's not.

It actually depicts women as the heroes of the story here early on. So this is another important lesson here. The Pentateuch often portrays women as playing an important role, sometimes an even more important role, than men in the story here. And it's not just here, actually, even in the book of Genesis. Before this we see the same type of thing as well. Continuing, verse 2, So the woman conceived and bore a son, and when she saw that he was a beautiful child, she hid him for three months.

But when she could no longer hide him, she took an arc of bull rushes for him, daubed it with asphalt and pitch to waterproof it, and put the child in it, and laid it in the reeds by the river's bank.

And it's interesting here because now we see another Rimes. Another Rimes. Again, I used to think Rimes was just a New Testament thing with rabbinical teaching, but it actually shows up in the Exodus story a number of times. What's the Rimes to? It's a Rimes to Noah's ark. Because we have two arcs, the same exact Hebrew word is here.

Although one arc is the size of a baby basket, the other size is several times the size of this room here. But it's still the same Hebrew word that is used here to draw a deliberate parallel between Moses and between Noah. Why is it a Rimes? Why does Moses point readers back to the ark? Well, again, how is Noah saved? He's saved by an ark on the water. How is Moses saved? He's saved by an ark on the water. It keeps him from getting eaten by the crocodiles there.

So, what is the parallel? Well, the parallel, very similar to the earlier Rimes here, is that as God started a new world with Noah and his family, God is essentially now starting a new world with Moses. And the new nation of Israel are going to come out of Egypt. So that's the point of the Rimes here. Again, a very obvious Rimes, with very obvious parallel to what we read earlier about multiplying and filling the earth there, as a new people, as a new creation that God is doing here. So here, the Rimes is that essentially a new world is being started over with Moses and the Israelites.

Continuing verse 4, let's see, here's two points. And his sister stood afar off to know what would be done to Moses in the ark. Then the daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river, this is the Nile, and her maidens walked along the riverside, and when she saw the ark among the reed, she sent her maid to get it. And when she had opened it, she saw the child, and behold, the baby wept or cried.

So she had compassion on him, and said, this is one of the Hebrew's children. So this account specifies here that Pharaoh's daughter is aware that this is a Hebrew baby. And it does this to emphasize her moral greatness, that she is a hero of the story, because she takes pity on the baby, knowing that it is a Hebrew boy that has been condemned to death under Pharaoh's edict.

She knows it's a Hebrew boy, the same group that her father has ordered to be exterminated. So it's remarkable that the daughter of the man who orders the annihilation of the Hebrew babies actually saves the one who will be the savior of the Israelite nation. So that's why she's one of the heroes of the story.

So the message is clear that although Pharaoh has this hatred of the Israelites, his daughter, in contrast, is a humanitarian. She is moved with compassion, and she thwarts her father's evil intention here. And this shows that a person can be a child of a truly evil person, but that doesn't mean that the children are evil as well. They can be very different from their parents, and still be a good person as Pharaoh's daughter. Here is in the story, and it's depicted as one of the heroes of the story.

Verse 7, So this is talking about Maryam. Moses' sister, his sister Maryam, said to Pharaoh's daughter, shall I go and call a nurse for you from the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child for you. So now we see another woman who enters the story as a hero. And she demonstrates courage and boldness in coming to Pharaoh's daughter. She's not afraid to come forward and make a suggestion to the daughter of the Egyptian Pharaoh, which the daughter then accepts.

Even though Maryam is a slave girl, she still has boldness and courage to come forward and make the suggestion. And if you think about it, it's only natural that they would seek a Hebrew woman to be a wet nurse for this baby, because after all, there are probably thousands of Hebrew women who have lost their babies. And they still have milk there in their breasts. So it would be only natural for the slave girl to say, well, let me go find a Hebrew woman to be the wet nurse for the baby.

And Pharaoh's daughter doesn't know that Maryam is going to get Moses' own mother to become the wet nurse for him here. Verse 8, And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, Go, so the maid and Maryam went and called the 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. So here we see something else quite remarkable that Pharaoh's daughter actually offers to pay Moses' own mother to become the nurse, the wet nurse for Moses, not knowing it's his own mother there.

So this again tells us something about the character of Pharaoh's daughter. She's not even going to take advantage of a slave woman. She's going to pay her there for nursing the child. So again, Pharaoh's daughter is one of the heroes of the stories. Even though she's Gentile, she's pagan, she's a hero of the story. Verse 10, And the child grew, and she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter. She, meaning Moses' mother, brought him to Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son.

So she called his name Moses, saying, Because I drew him out of the water. Moses, or in Hebrew, Moshe, you'll see a lot of Israelis named Moshe to this day. Moses means I drew him out, or drawn out, drawn out of the water. It's entering Moshe, Moses has a Hebrew meaning drawn out. But we actually see it in the names of a number of the famous Egyptian pharaohs, like the Thutmoses. I'm not sure what Moshes means in Egyptian. I haven't been able to find that out. But it's interesting. It's a name that appears in both Egyptian and Hebrew there.

Verse 11, Now it came to pass in those days when Moses was grown, so now we fast-forwarded from his infancy up to he's a young grown man at this point, when Moses was grown that he went out to his brethren and looked at their burdens, and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his brethren.

So even though Moses is raised in Pharaoh's household as a prince of Egypt, he apparently recognizes that he is Hebrew. It's possible his mother has told him that he's Hebrew. It's possible his adoptive mother, Pharaoh's daughter, has told him that he's actually Hebrew. Or since he's had some contact with Meriam, it's possible she has told him that he's Hebrew. We just don't know. Maybe some of the resentful Egyptians in Pharaoh's court kind of insulted Moses and said, you know that you're really a slave, don't you? There's a lot of infighting going on, intrigue, palace intrigue, so it's possible others told him that. We just don't know.

But he is apparently aware at this point that he is Hebrew, that he is part of the lineage of the people who are slaves there. Sam gave some good points about Moses' character. I'd like to add here three character traits of Moses that we see brought out in this incident and what is going to immediately follow here. Three character traits of Moses. One is that he fights evil. Then he is not going to tolerate suffering and injustice as he sees with this Egyptian beating the slave.

He does whatever he can to stop the evil. What was the term you used, Sam, for that? A protector? Is that right? Yeah, that's a very good term. That's what we see in Moses' action here. He shows moral courage, which is a rare trait among people. Later, we'll see that he will command the respect of the Israelites, in part because he chose to be with them when he could have lived a happy, wealthy, prosperous life as part of Pharaoh's household there as an Egyptian prince.

Another factor we see is that Moses does not have a slave mentality. He doesn't share their demoralization. It's interesting what we read about the Israelites. What do they do? They cry out. They cry out. They cry out. They don't do anything, but they cry out. They cry out. They cry out. Because of this slave mentality, they don't seem to be able to muster up the courage to take action and do something about it. They just cry out. Moses, on the other hand, acts on it. And that's what sets him apart. He takes action.

So these are three character traits of Moses that show up in the story. Again, these are some of the important lessons from the Exodus. How well do we personify these traits, as with Moses? So he sees this Egyptian beating on a Hebrew slave in verse 12. Moses looked this way and that way, and when he saw no one, he killed the Egyptian and buried him in the sand. And so Moses looks around to make sure there's nobody looking, because he knows this is an illegal act. He's an Egyptian prince, but still killing an Egyptian is a capital crime for which the punishment would be execution.

Many people would criticize Moses for this act of homicide, but what should Moses have done? Should he have walked away? Should he have turned his back on this injustice? Should he have intervened and tried to persuade the Egyptian from stop beating the slave? Or maybe attack the Egyptian and try to keep him from hurting the slave? Well, then you're in a fistfight that you may end up losing, and then be reported to the authorities and jailed or executed as well. We just don't know. What we do know is that Moses killed the Egyptian, buried the body, and then he takes off.

And it's interesting, there is no disapproval shown in the Exodus account here. God doesn't seem to disapprove of Moses intervening and killing the Egyptian for beating the slave. And this is the first of three stories that we read about Moses before God calls him that show us what kind of man he was and give us clues as to why God would have chosen Moses to be the leader of his people Israel, to lead them out of Egypt.

Verse 13, And when Moses went out the second day, behold, two Hebrew men were fighting, and he said to the one who did the wrong, why are you striking your companion? So we've read one story, now we read a second story. It's interesting the reactions of Moses in the first story that we just read. He witnesses injustice, the Egyptian beating the slave, and he fights back and kills the Egyptian. In the second story, he witnesses injustice, and he speaks out to intervene to stop the fight between the two Hebrew slaves.

So here's the second story. The next time he will witness injustice, and now he will stand in the gap there against the injustice, which we'll get to that story in just a few minutes here. So Moses is apparently, he's definitely a protector type person, as we heard here, but he also knows what response is going to work and which situation.

Since Ringy doesn't take on a band of other shepherds, he stands in the gap and doesn't let them oppress the Midianite women. But he's wise enough to not get into a fistfight with maybe a dozen of other shepherds.

He might not have survived that fight. So he's wise enough to know what course of action to take in different situations there. As I summarize it here, he knows which response is appropriate in the given situation. So continuing verse 14, intervening with the two Hebrew slaves who are fighting, then one of the slaves said, Who made you a prince and a judge over us? Do you intend to kill me as you kill the Egyptian?

So Moses feared and said, Surely this thing is known. When Pharaoh heard of this matter, he sought to kill Moses. But Moses fled from the face of Pharaoh and dwelt in the land of Midian, and he sat down by a well. So killing the Egyptian overseer and identifying with the Hebrews would have been treason as far as the Egyptians were concerned. So this would have been worthy of capital punishment and the death penalty.

So he flees. He gets out of Egypt to preserve his life. And then we come to the story about him intervening with the Midianite women. The priest of Midian, and this is Jethro, we'll learn his name later, had seven daughters. They came and drew water, and they filled the troughs to water their father's flock. They're drawing water from a well. If any of you have done that, you know that's fairly heavy labor.

To draw enough water to feed a flock of sheep and goats. Then the shepherds, who were other people, came and drove them away. They get to the water to the well first and drive the daughters and their flocks away. But Moses stood up and helped them and watered their flock. We're not given more details, but he stands in the gap there. He sees an injustice being done to these women, and he stands up and defends them and waters their flock.

When they came to Ruel, their father, this is another name for Jethro, he has multiple names in the account, he said, How is it that you have come so soon today? And they said, An Egyptian delivered us from the hand of the shepherds, and he also drew enough water for us and watered the flock.

So the Midianite women understandably refer to Moses as an Egyptian, because that's what he looks like, that's what he's dressed like. That's the way he talks, that's his mannerisms. They think he's Egyptian. Verse 20, So Jethro said to his daughters, And where is he?

Why is it that you have left the man? Call him, that he may eat bread. So here's a father, Jethro, who has these daughters, unmarried daughters, and he's always looking for a good suitor for the unmarried daughters. So he says, Go, go get him! Bring him here, let me meet the man. Give him something to eat here. And then we fast forward in the story here. Then Moses was content to live with the man, and he gave Zipporah, his daughter, to Moses.

So he's eager to marry off some of these daughters to this nice, eligible bachelor who comes along and shows he's a brave and courageous man there. So fast forward in the story, he marries Zipporah, verse 22, and she bore him a son. And he called his name Gershom, for he said, I have been a stranger in a foreign land. He is an exile there, in Midian. He is stateless, having fled Egypt. So now we fast forward more in the story. Now it happened in the process of time that the king of Egypt, the Pharaoh, died.

Then the children of Israel groaned because of the bondage. And they cried out, and their cry came up to God because of the bondage. So God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. And God looked upon the children of Israel, and God acknowledged them. Now I should mention here that when it describes God or says God remembered them, does it mean that God has forgotten them? That he is like us old white-haired people, and we forget our spouse's name and anniversaries and little details like that, and so on?

No. God is not like this. In Hebrew, this term, remember, means that God now knows it's time to act. Enough time has passed, and now it's time to intervene and to act. So that's the meaning of the word, not that God is some forgetful figure up there in the sky. But no, he's decided it's time to act.

He remembers his promises, the covenants he's made with Abraham, and Isaac and Jacob to bring the people into the Promised Land. And now it's time to bring those promises to fruition and to act on it. So continuing chapter 3, we get started quite a bit late, so I'm going to run a bit over our normally scheduled time to get to a good breaking place here.

Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian. And he led the flock to the back of the desert and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire from the midst of a bush. So he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, but the bush was not consumed. Then Moses said, I will now turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush does not burn. And here we see another important insight into Moses' character. Because most people would, if you or I were in these circumstances, we see a burning bush, but we know the fire isn't spreading, it's not affecting the other vegetation, we would maybe look at it for a minute and say, okay, well, it's not a danger, we'll move on.

But Moses, this tells us something about Moses. He's a deeper person, he's a deeper thinking. He notices the bush burning, but then he notices, he pays attention long enough to notice, something is different about this bush. It's burning, but it's not being consumed. It's not being consumed.

And think about this, because Moses' behavior here illustrates an important point about life, and that is that life is a matter of choices. And this is another important lesson from the Exodus story, that we have a choice when we see things, when we view things. I appreciate very much red sermonettes when he's talking about his morning walks and going up and communing with nature, and drinking in of kind of God's presence there, God's creation.

I can certainly identify with that very much, and I kind of see glimpses into Moses' character in this. He's out there in the desert all alone, him and his sheep and goats and God. However, he envisions God at this point, because God hasn't revealed himself to him. But he notices something different, and he pays attention. His behavior exemplifies a choice, and we all have these choices in life when we see things. We've talked quite a bit about babies. When we see a baby, do we look at that baby as so many people in society do, as a lump of tissue to be disposed of because it's an inconvenience, or as a miracle from God?

As a baby that has the potential to be a part of God's family?

It's a choice. We choose in life whether we're going to be a hard worker, whether we're going to be honest or deceitful, whether we're going to be kind, whether we're going to be compassionate, as Pharaoh's daughter was. We choose whether we will see the miracles in life.

And we're blessed to live in a beautiful state where those miracles abound. They're all around us here. Do we see the miracles? Do we see the miracles as a handiwork of God? Or do we see it as just, oh, it's just an accident, just coincidence? It just happened. So, that's a lesson for us. How do we choose to see things around us? Moses chose to look at this and look more deeply and to see a miracle in the burning bush. And if we look at things carefully, we too will see God's handiwork, a miracle in everything around us. And we choose whether to believe it or not, and whether it's the work of God or not. Verse 4, so when the Lord saw that Moses turned aside to look, God called him from the midst of the bush and said, Moses, Moses! And Moses said, Here I am. And here we see another Rimes, another Rimes. A Rimes back to Genesis 22 and verse 1, with a man by the name of Abraham. And notice the Rimes, notice the exact parallel in the wording here, Genesis 22. Now it came to pass after these things that God tested Abraham and said to him, Abraham. And Abraham said, Here I am. The exact same thing. God calls the individual's name, Abraham and Moses, and the individual responds, Here I am. And Abraham's case and Moses as well. This is another Rimes here. What's the point of the Rimes? Well, the obvious point here is that as Abraham here, this happens when he is about at the point of sacrificing his son Isaac, and God prevents that sacrifice because he knows now that Abraham has totally surrendered his life to God. And now we see the same thing happening in Moses' life, that Moses is now surrendering his life to God to be a tool in God's hand to raise up and bring the people of Israel out of Egypt. So another example of Rimes here. I never thought about these number of Rimes in that we see in this account, but here's what? I think this is four of them we've covered today. So far. Continuing, verse 5, Then God said, Do not draw near this place, take your sandals off your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground. And it's holy there because this is where God is. It's not just this random square yard of wilderness desert that's holy. No, it's holy because God is there and God is holy. Verse 6, Moreover, God said, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God. And God, of course, is the God of all people, not just the God of the ancestors of Moses. But God doesn't introduce him here as the creator of all mankind, the creator of all people. He reveals himself to Moses to make the connection to the promises that he had made through Moses's ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and so on. Verse 7, And the Lord said, I have surely seen the oppression of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows. So I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites. Now therefore behold, the cry of the children of Israel has come to me. And I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them. Come now therefore, and I will send you to Pharaoh, that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.

But Moses then responds to God, Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and that I should bring the children of Israel out of Egypt? So we can imagine Moses' surprise here. He's just a normal shepherd out here in the desert with his flock of sheep and goats. And suddenly God appears to him and says, Guess what? I've got a job for you. You're going to lead the Israelites out of Egypt. And Moses responds, again, showing one of his character traits that Sam talked about, Humility. Who am I to do this? Who am I? Why me? Why are you choosing me? So he's a very humble individual, as we've heard about there. And God said, verse 12, I will certainly be with you. And it isn't mentioned here, but keep in mind, Moses is under the death penalty for murdering the Egyptians. So he knows if he goes back to Egypt, he could be susceptible to arrest and execution for homicide there. So he's not enthusiastic about the idea of going back to Egypt. So God reassures him and says, I will certainly be with you. So God assures him he's going to be with him to see him through anything that might happen. And this shall be a sign to you that I have sent you when you have brought the people out of Egypt. You shall serve God on this mountain. Now, it's interesting here, the sign that God promises to give is that the people will be freed from slavery in Egypt, and they will come to worship God at this mountain. And usually this is at or very near Mount Sinai, where God is going to bring them and reveal to them the Ten Commandments here. And it's interesting, the sign is going to be given not up front, but after the fact. This is the sign that you'll see this after the fact, when you bring the people out of Egypt and come and worship me at this mountain. And that's, a lot of the times, that's the way God works. He doesn't give us the sign up front. We only recognize the sign after the fact that God's hand was in this, that God's hand was leading and guiding and directing things. They're most often seen not before, not during, but after the fact, in retrospect, when we sit and think about it later. And let's see, I'm going to, I hadn't intended to stop here, but I'm going to, because there's a fairly involved discussion to get in here, so I'm going to go ahead and break it off here, and we'll pick it up next time. So, this is our introduction to the story, and this may go a little bit longer than I thought. I may finish it by the Feast of Tabernacles at this rate, but anyway, we'll keep going. So, I hope this has been helpful for you to bring out some of these things and help us think more deeply about this story, because as we can see, there are just a lot of lessons that God has packed into that for us. So, hope you have a good rest of the Sabbath, and we'll look forward to continuing this with you next Sabbath.