Exodus, God's Faithfulness in Our Affliction - Exodus: 1-2

Happy New Year. We are in twenty twenty six. Do

you guys have a good new year? All right? Did

any of you get to like finally chill like maybe

just a little bit? No? All right, Well here's the deal.

The new year officially marks the time like I don't know,

maybe a couple days or me and my family finally

after like the last three months of craziness, finally got

to just have like a couple days of downtime. And

it was a perfect excuse not to have to take

down any of the lights outside because it was raining,

so I used that as an opportunity to just chill

up with my family. It was a great time. And

how we decided to spend that time is by introducing

our children to the Lord of the Rings movies. What

extended edition, of course, which also means that it took

multiple days to finish even one movie, but we got

at least two done, so we have one more to go.

It's been really awesome, a good time to kind of

get to share that with the kids. But at the

beginning of the first movie, Frodo, at the very beginning

of the movie, Frodo runs up to greet the Wizard,

who is just showing up to town, and Frodo says

to the wizard, he says, you're late. But Gandolf, who

is the wizard, replies, a wizard is never late, nor

is he early, but he arrives precisely when he means to.

Gandolf isn't sovereign. So it was a fun remark at

the beginning, but during that same movie you see that

he can't really follow through on that because he's literally late. Later,

Gandalf is not sovereign, but God is sovereign. God is sovereign,

meaning God is never late, nor is he early, but

he shows up precisely when he means to. And this

is a perfect picture for us to keep in mind today,

because today I cannot be more excited. I'm like trying

to like stay calm and slow down in my own

talking because we are starting a brand new series in

the Book of Exodus. We're starting a brand new book

in yeah series in the Book of Exodus, where we

see God delivers, God demands, and God dwells. So we're

gonna be looking at this book over the next couple

of months. It's only gonna be a couple of months.

We just got out of our Luke series, which set

back two and a half years. But we're gonna be

looking at Exodus over the next couple of months, and

I think we are in for a real treat. We're

gonna see that God delivers the people of Israel. God

makes a covenant with these people and even makes them

his own people, and that ultimately God dwells with these people.

So I really do hope you guys are ready for

the right of your life. I wouldn't miss any of

these next coming Sundays. You just shouldn't miss church in general, guys,

But I wouldn't because this is such an exciting book

for us people to go through. It's jams packed with

incredible truth, incredible hope, incredible displays of the wonders of

our sovereign God. And we may not realize it or

think of it like this today, but Exodus has more

implications on our faith than we may realize. A lot

of times, maybe we approach the Old Testament, we're a

little daunted by all the names and all the instructions

and all those things. But it's actually a very very

rich book. When it comes to the Old Testament. Exodus

is like the Gospel of the Old Testament. Let's say

that again, Exodus is like the Gospel of the Old Testament.

Now I'll explain that a little bit. Jesus in his ministry,

in his life, when he goes up on the Mount

of Transfiguration and he meets with Moses and Elijah, Luke

tells us that the reason that they're talking together is

to get him ready for his departure where he is

going to go to the cross. But that word departure

means exodus. So Jesus is talking to Moses and Elijah

about his exodus that is about to happen because of

the Cross. But here we're going to look at the

original Exodus, the first Exodus. Today, if you were to

ask a Christian when their redemption happened, they would point

you to the Cross. That's where my redemption happened. But

if you were to ask an Old Testament Israelite when

their redemption happened, they would point you to the Exodus.

That is when God delivered us, That is when God

made a covenant with us, that is when God came

to dwell with us. So Exodus really is like the

first big salvation story of God delivering his people, making

his people his own, setting them apart and dwelling with them.

Not so much. Not only that, but so much of

what is in Exodus actually points us to Jesus and

the person that tells us that is Jesus. Jesus all

throughout the New Testament, all throughout the Gospels, points to

how he is the fulfillment or he is the true

form of the things that we've seen in our Old Testament.

Let me give you just a couple examples. That God

saves his people in the Old Testament from slavery, and

Jesus does the same thing. At the Cross. God appoints

a man, a prophet, a shepherd, to be the one

to lead his people out of slavery. And Jesus is

the prophet. He's the good shepherd who does the same.

Jesus is the slain lamb. Jesus is the living bread

come down from heaven. Jesus is the living water. Moses

goes up on a hill to receive command from God

and deliver them to the people. And what does Jesus

do when he shows up in his ministry. He goes

up on a hill and he sits down, and he

delivers God's commandments to God's people. And just like God

comes to dwell amongst his people, Jesus himself in dwells

every believer who puts their trust in him. And here's

the deal. That's not all them. There's more. But if

we could go on and on, but I want to

kind of give you a taste of the things to

come and kind of show you already how this redemption

story found in your Old Testament paves the way and

actually points to the ultimate redemption story, and that is

the Gospel of Jesus Christ. So what we're gonna do

is we're going to pray and get right into it.

Sound good, awesome, Lord Jesus, We thank you so much

that we have your word that is alive and active.

We just asked that you'd be preparing our hearts to

receive your word today, that as we get to open

your word and go through it, that we would see you,

that you would reveal yourself to us. They would start

to plant the seeds of truth and of who you

are in our lives to start to bear fruit and

save us to yourself in Jesus name. Everyone said, amen.

So we're gonna be looking today at the first two

chapters of Exodus, and if you do not have a Bible,

please go grab one. We have we have I believe enough.

If you don't have one, to go grab one for

yourself to keep. We love to go through the Bible here.

Like we said, we're going through the Book of Exodus.

So it's gonna be really exciting. Go grab one. But

we're gonna be looking at the first two chapters of Exodus,

and the first two chapters of Exodus set the stage

for the rest of the book. It's gonna set the

stage for the rest of the Book of Exodus. That's

what we're looking at today. But not only does it

do that, but the beginning of this book shows us

that it's not an isolated book. This isn't some ram

Ydom's story, but this story is actually a continuation of

God's story that he has already been telling. So when

we look at these first couple of verses, it's actually

a continuation straight out of Genesis. Where he leaves right

off in Genesis is where it picks up in Exodus.

So let's look at the first couple of verses, and

it's going to give us some context for what we're

looking at. Starting in verse one says, these are the

names of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob, each

with his household. So these are the sons of Israel, Ruben, Simeon, Levi,

and Judah, Issachar Zebulin and Benjamin Dan and Naftali, Dad

and Asher, all the descendants of Jacob were seventy persons.

Joseph was already in Egypt. Then Joseph died and all

his brothers in all that generation. But the people of

Israe were fruitful and increased greatly. They multiplied and grew

exceedingly strong, so that the land was filled with them.

So seventy people come down to Egypt. And by the

end of these verses here it says, after that first

generation passes away, they've multiplied and grown, and now the

land is filled with them. And if you remember, this

is continuing the story from the end of Genesis. It's

the conclusion right after the conclusion of this incredible story

where Joseph, who's the son of Jacob, the son of Israel,

is sold into slavery by his brothers, but by the

amazing hand of God ends up being made right hand

to Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, and all for the

purpose that when a severe famine hits, Joseph is able

to save his entire family, and his family would actually

come down to dwell in Egypt. So here the people

of Israel are in Egypt, and they began to multiply

and spread to great numbers. And this was not by accident.

It wasn't just happenstance. Oh, this is just the way

things went. God had assured Israel that he should go

to Egypt, and not only that, but that God had

a purpose in them going down to Egypt, and that

he would still be with them. Look at this verse

Genesis forty six. Then he said, I am the God,

the God of your father. Do not be afraid to

go down to Egypt, for there I will make you

into a great nation. I myself will go down with

you to Egypt, and I will and I will also

bring you up again. And Joseph's hands shall close your eyes.

So the two things we see here is God tells

Israel that he will be with him and he will

make him into a great nation, and that after some

time he Lord will bring them up again out of Egypt.

Joseph when he dies, we see this right at the

end of Genesis fifty. He has the same expectation that

their time in Egypt wasn't forever. Look at this, says

and Joseph said to his brothers, I am about to die,

but God will visit you and bring you up out

of this land to the land that he swore to Abraham,

to Isaac and to Jacob. So Egypt isn't forever, but

it is part of the plan. So the people are

in Egypt and begin to multiply greatly, and things are

incredible while Joseph is alive. But then the book takes

a turn. There it is the music. Just like with

every salvation story. Just like with every salvation story, it

starts with a problem to be saved from. Every salvation

story starts with a problem to be saved from. And

we know this with the Gospel. If we just tell

people Jesus loves them and can save them, people are

like cool, except cool awesome. I'm good to know He's

rooting for me just as much as I am. That

doesn't tell them why Jesus loves them and what they

need saving from. Before the good news is ever good news.

People need the bad news because the good news doesn't

make sense without the bad news. So here's where we're

going to start to see the bad news in Exodus,

because it's verse eight. Now there arose a new king

over Egypt who did not know Joseph. And he said

to his people, the Egyptians, behold, the people of Israel

are too many and too mighty for us. Come. Let

us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply. And if

war breaks out, they join our enemies and fight against

us and escape from the land. So there's this new

king who comes to power who has no regard for Joseph.

He has no regard for the people of Israel, and

so he looks out over Egypt, and really what happens

is he sees basically a bunch of foreigners in his

land and starts to kind of fearmonger the rest of

his people. And the way that he decides he's going

to try and solve the solution of this fear mongering,

this problem is he's going to start to oppress these

foreigners in his land. We see that in the following versus.

How he does that is he enslaves them. He enslaves

the people and puts them to hard labor, thinking that

that will slow down the multiplying, but in fact it

actually has the oppositet effect. It's pretty funny. In verse twelve,

we see that the more they were oppressed, the more

the people grew. And it was actually really funny because

this last week when I was talking to my daughter

or my kids about it, she was talking about how

the king was afraid about the people growing and how

strong the people were, and she's like, but if they're

giving them like heavy burdens and making them do all

that work, wouldn't that just make them stronger? And I

was like, it would It actually would, so not only

when he was he oppressing them, and instead of it

diminishing the numbers, it was growing the numbers, but actually

they were getting stronger. So it was very funny and

it was solid observation. This is an amazing testimony of

God's faithfulness even in the midst of persecution and suffering.

When you read church history, you see that at times

when the Church is most persecuted some of the times

of most growth and multiplication of the church, And Scripture

even tells us that in our own lives, when we

face trials of various kinds, that they aren't there to

beat us down. Those trials that are in our lives

are not there to beat us down, but God actually

uses them to refine us and grow our faith. We're

gonna actually gonna kind of continue to see this over

and over again in these first two chapters, and ultimately,

what I want from for us to get out of

this text today is this that God is faithful. God

is faithful and hears the cries of the afflicted. That's

good news, isn't it. God is faithful and he hears

the cries of the afflicted. We're gonna flush this out

a little bit more as the text goes on, but

I want this in your mind, not only just for

understanding this text, but also for your own life, your

own situation. So Pharaoh, the Kingdom of Egypt, begins to

oppress the people of Israel. He makes them slaves, he

puts them to work with heavy burdens, and he starts

to afflict them. He makes their lives bitter and deals

with them ruthlessly. Things are just not going well for

the Israelite people. But it doesn't stop there, because in

the midst of this hard labor, he also starts low

key committing genocide. And what I mean Loki, that's pretty

much what he's doing specifically against the males in of Israel.

So look at this in verse fifteen, then the king

of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom

was named Shiprah and the other Pua. When you serve

as midwife to the Hebrew women and see them on

the burstool, if it is a son, you shall kill him.

But if it is a daughter, she shall live. But

the text tells us that the midwives fear God more

than they feared for Pharaoh. The midwives are giving this

wicked decree to kill these baby boys, but they fear

God more than they fear Pharaoh. And here's the deal.

They had kind of a lot of reason to fear Pharaoh.

He's the king of Egypt. He got anything that he

says goes. They don't listen to the wicked decree of

the king and said they fear God and disobey him.

And this is a beautiful picture of how the fear

of God should affect our lies. And it's kind of

an interesting thing as we talk about the fear of God,

and we can go like, all right, like maybe it

is helpful to kind of like have this awe and whatnot.

But I think kind of a helpful picture and I

was thinking about this today is when I was a kid,

I used to run around my other church friends. We

get in all kinds of trouble, and one time after church,

went to my friend's house and he's like, hey, let's

go run around the neighborhood. I was like, okay, should

we let your mom know that we're gonna leave the house.

And he's like, oh, no, it's fine, Like are you sure?

Are you sure? He's like, yeah, yeah, it'll be fine.

I'm like okay, So we go run off into the neighborhood.

We're running around. All of a sudden, we hear his

mom screaming from her house, calling for our names. So

we start booking it back, start running as fast as

we can to get back to the house, in which

case his older brother comes flying down the road. He's

probably about sixteen, we're probably like middle school age, and

he comes flying down the road in his car, screeches

to a halt. He's like, good in the car, taking

you back to the house. So my friend hops in

his back seat and they're like get in, and I'm

like nope. The reason I said, no, is because my

mom had made very clear to me that I was

not allowed to ride with his older brother. His older

brother had just gotten his new license, and I was,

under no circumstances allowed to ride with his older brother.

And they're like, just get in the car, we're taking

you home. And I was like mm hmm, because in

that moment, in that moment, as much as I could

feel the peer pressure of my friends, I feared my

mom way more than I feared my friends in this moment.

And here I think we're seeing something very similar. It's

not that the thing that they're facing isn't scary or intense.

It's just they fear God way more. They fear God

way more than they fear this wicked command. So when

we are ordered or invited to take part in wickedness,

whether it's the sinful desires of our flesh or the

issues of our day like abortion, we should fear God

and obey what he says, rather than go along with

the cultural pressures that want us to do or prom

mote this wickedness. So I think there's something to learn

from these these Hebrew midwives who fear God. And we

see that actually, not only well they fear God. But

not only does God reward them, but God continues to

preserve and grow the people of Israel. Look at this

verse twenty So God dealt well with the midwives, and

the people multiplied and grew very strong. And because the

midwives fear God, he gave them families. But this made

the king even more intense. He ups the ante and

tells all the Egyptians to just throw the hebrew boys

into the Nile. Look at this verse twenty two. Then

Pharaoh commanded all his people, every son that is born

to the Hebrews, you shall cast into the Nile, but

you shall let every daughter live. So here it really

setting the scene. It's a grim time to be in

Israelite in Egypt specifically, But this doesn't mean that God

wasn't with them. He's In the next chapter, we're going

to see God starting to set things in motion, put

things forward his plan, even in the midst of all

of this suffering. In the next chapter we get introduced

to one of the main characters of Exodus, that of Moses.

So we're gonna be in chapter two now. Starting in

verse one, it says, now a man from the house

of Levi went and took as his wife, a levite woman.

The woman conceived in Bora's son, and when she saw

that he was a fine child, she hit him. Three

months when she could hide him no longer, she took

for him a basket made of borushes and dubbed it

with beutymen and pitch. She put the child in it

and place it among the reeds by the river bank,

and his sister stood at a distance to know what

would be done to him. This is a crazy scene.

This is a crazy scene. You know that this child

that you just birth, this child that you just had,

this child that you just welcomed into your home, has

death hanging over his head, and that if anyone finds out,

they're going to try and take this baby from you

and throw them into a river to either drown or

be eaten by crocodiles. It's a scary time. And so

after she can't hide him for any longer, she sticks

him in a basket. This is a crazy time of oppression.

This woman has this baby boy. She does what any

loving mother would do, and she tries to protect her child,

first by hiding him and then trying to kind hide

him again by sticking him in a basket in the river. Actually,

something that was really interesting in my study this week

is the word to describe the basket in this text

is only used one other time in the Old Testament,

and it was used when describing the arc, which is

really it's kind of a cool picture you have, literally,

you have this little arc made to protect this child

from the dangerous waters and the danger outside of it,

which is really cool. But once again the story takes

an even bigger plot twist verse five. Now, the daughter

of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river. While

her young woman walked beside the river. She saw the

basket among the reeds and sent her servant woman, and

she took it. When she opened it, she saw the

child and behold, the baby was crying. She took pity

on him and said, this is one of the Hebrews children.

Then his sister said to Pharaoh's daughter, shall I go

and call you a nurse from the Hebrew women to

nurse the child for you? And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, go,

So the girl went and called the child's mother. It's

crazy turn of events, this crazy turn of events. Things

could have gone very differently in this situation. But Pharaoh's

daughter clearly was not like the king. She clearly had

a different heart, a different disposition towards these children. She

takes pity on the baby boy and decides to take

him in as her own. What's more, Moses's sister is

there and she pipes in and she's like, hey, do

you want me to go find you a woman to like,

maybe nurse's child for you, And then she just runs

and gets her mom, which is hilarious. We see in

the next few verses that not only does es Is

Mom get to really have her son back, so to speak,

but she also gets paid to raise him and nurse him.

All the mother said, amen, she is to raise the

child until he's a little bit older and then bring

him back to Pharaoh's daughter where he will be trained

and brought up in the royal house. This baby went

from certain peril to being made a prince of Egypt.

So the baby got older, his mother brought him back

to Pharaoh's daughter and she named him Moses. And it

says because she drew him out of water. And something

also really interesting in my study this week is they

point out how Exodus is actually full of puns. Exodus

is full of puns and irony puns because a lot

of times when people name something something, they just name

it after whatever happened. So the reason that Moses gets

named Moses is because the word Moses sounds like Hebrew

for draw out. She's like, well, I drew you out

of water, so I might as well call you draw out.

And it's irony because the king decides to let who

live the Hebrew women, and all over the place, these

Hebrew women are subverting his plan left and right, keeping

the babies alive, having the babies really quickly so that

it doesn't matter even when someone does show up hiding

them well, and even his own daughter, Pharaoh's own daughter

has a part in plague to subvert his plan. So

now we have one of the main characters in Exodus,

and he's also the one believed to have written Exodus,

and specifically the first five books of the Bible Genesis included.

So really this is Moses's origin story, and it's against

the odds and clearly this crazy turn of events, but

it wasn't chance, This wasn't by accident, but all of

it was by God's hand. What we're going to see

next is very interesting. Moses, after many years in Pharaoh's house,

being raised as an Egyptian, being schooled and taught in

their ways, still doesn't identify as an Egyptian, but he

has kept his identity as an Israelite. Look at this

verse eleven. One day, when Moses had grown up, he

went out to see or he went out to his

people and looked on their burdens, and he saw an

Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of who his people. You

see how he still identifies with the Israelites being his people.

He hasn't lost sight. Moses was raised in the house

of Pharaoh and would have had first hand experience and

all of that time of watching his brothers and sisters

be mistreated and abused. He had a front row seat

to the oppression going on all around him, and yet

he himself had been saved out of it. So Moses

goes out and sees his people being mistreated, and he

decides enough is enough. He is going to try and

do something about it. Look At this verse twelve. This

is actually crazy that it says it like this. It

says he looked this way, and that he looked this

way in that way. He's turning his head back and forth,

is anyone around, and seeing no one, he struck down

the Egyptian and hit him in the sand. Moses sees

his Hebrew brother being mistreated, and he decides to take

matters into his own hand. Make sure no one's watching. First,

strikes him down and hides him in the sand. Strikes

down the Egyptian. So Moses kills this Egyptian and hides

his body. And actually I wanted to pull up in

our New Testament, Stephen, he recounts this story, and so

I actually want to look at his recounting of this story.

It says when he talking about Moses was forty years old,

it came into his heart to visit his brothers, the

children of Israel, and seeing one of them being wronged,

he defended the oppressed man and avenged him by striking

down the Egyptian. He supposed that his brothers would understand

that God was giving them salvation by his hand, but

they did not understand, And on the following day he

appeared to them as they were quarreling and tried to

reconcile them, saying, men, you were brothers, why do you

wrong each other? But the man who was wronging. His

neighbor thrust him aside, saying, who made you ruler and

judge over us? Do you want to kill me as

you killed the Egyptian yesterday? At this retort, Moses fled

and became an exile in the land of Midian, where

he became the father of two sons. So Stephen does

a great job here retelling the text that we're looking

at today, because as he says, and we see in

our text, after Moses kills this Egyptian, he comes out

the next day to see two Israelites fighting, and he

tries to intervene, and they throw the murder back in

his face, like what are you gonna do? What are

you gonna do about it? He's gonna kill us two.

Moses thought that they would see that he was there

to help them, but they didn't want any of it.

Moses tried to take matters into his own hands of

trying to deliver his people, but it backfired. And there

is a reason why. This is why Moses was positioned

by God for salvation. Moses was positioned by God to

bring salvation, but Moses had yet to actually be commissioned

by God to use that authority. To use that position

to bring about salvation. It wasn't his time. Moses still

had some learning, he still had some growth, he still

had some things to go through before his time for

him to be the instrument that God would use to

bring about deliverance for his people. And why this is

helpful for us to recognize is because many of us

want to rush things in our own life. Many of

us want to rush things and have them done in

our own timing rather than trusting God and his faithfulness

and plan to bring about what he wants when he

wants it. And so in our story, Moses realizes that

has what he's done really has become public knowledge. Pharaoh

hears about it and tries to kill Moses, and Moses

gets out of town. Moses flees to the land of

the Midians. Interesting, just for some historical background, the Midians

are actually kind of distant relatives of Moses. Jacob came

from the line of Abraham, and later in Abraham's life,

after his first wife died, he took another wife, and

he had many more kids, and he sent them all

off with gifts and sent them to the east. Well,

Moses ran to the east and one of those sons.

Their name was Midian, so the people of Midian also

come from Abraham. So he runs into these people in

Midian and things start to kind of take a turn

for him. Things get a little bit better. He ends

up at a well where some girls bring their father's

flock to get some water, and when some other shepherds

basically kind of start to bully the girls, Moses drives

the bad guys off. It's kind of a win. Finally,

something's kind of going right in Moses's life here, and

as a result, the father of those girls, who happen

to be the priest of Midian, brings Moses into his house.

He even gives Moses one of his daughters, Zipporah, and

Moses ends up having a son, naming him Gersham, which

of course is another pun. His Gersham means sojourner, which

is exactly the situation that Moses has found himself. And

this is what he says in verse twenty two. He says,

I have been a sojourner in a foreign land. That's

why he named his son this. So now in our text,

it takes a pause for Moses, it kind of leaves

it right there. The stage is set. The people of

Israel are great in number, but severely oppressed. This man, Moses,

has been born, and through these various circumstances, has benefited

and made mistakes and grown a lot. He saved as

a baby, adopted into the king's house, flees as a fugitive,

leaving Egypt and going into the wilderness, where he then

resides for some time, living out his life. But this

is where it leaves off for now, and we're going

to get to Moses's commission by God next week. But

the last few verses actually turns back to the suffering people.

It turns back to the people in affliction, and the

God who sees them look at this, and I actually

need the band to come up, please and thank you.

Verse twenty three says, during those many days, the king

of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because

of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry

for rescue from slavery came up to God, and God

heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham,

with Isaac and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel,

and God knew such sweet verses, such beautiful verses. The

people of Israel are in bondage, in slavery and great affliction,

and so their groans become these cries, and God hears them.

God hears their groaning. God sees their affliction. But not

only that. Look what it says here. It says that

God remembered his covenant with Abraham. When it says he remembered,

it's not saying that God needed reminding, because God does

not forget. And that's actually what it's trying to say.

When it says God remembered his covenant, it's saying that

God did not forget his people. God has not forgotten

the people of Israel. He's not forgotten the covenant that

he has made with Abraham and his sons. That God

is faithful, and God is faithful to his word. God

is faithful to his covenants that he has made. And

like we talk about at the very beginning, God is sovereign.

He arrives and does everything precisely as he intends to.

So when we are in affliction, it may be hard

for us to see or know what comes next. But

that's because we're not God. We're not sovereign when we're

in affliction. Let me see say it again It can

be really hard for us to see or know what

comes next. But what we can be sure of is

that God sees us and that God is good, for

His word is here. The people have been suffering for

some time, but they've never been alone. They may have

felt alone, but they have never been alone. God had

never left them. God had a plan, and it was

coming to pass, not in the Israelites timing, but in

God's timing. Earlier we looked at how God told Jacob

that he would go down with him to Egypt and

bring them out again. Joseph had the same expectation that

God was going to visit them and bring them up

out of them out of Egypt. But the covenant that's

being talked about with Abraham that is mentioned is so

important because everything that is happening, everything that's happening, is

exactly what God said was going to happen. None of

this was an accident. In fact, God had told Abraham

the exact plan. Look at this, we're gonna see it.

Back in Genesis fifteen, God speaks to Abraham while he's

in the Promised Land and says what's to come of

the later generations after him? He says this. Then the

Lord said to Abram, know for certain that your offspring

will be sojourners and a land that is not theirs,

and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted

for four hundred years. But I will bring judgment on

that nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come

out with great possessions. As for you, you shall go

to your father's in peace. You shall be buried in

a good old age, and they shall come back here

in the fourth generation. For the iniquity of the Amorites

is not yet complete. God is sovereign over all of it.

He had this plan hundreds of years beforehand, and just

now he's finally starting to put these things in motion.

God is faithful to his promises, He's faithful to his covenant,

and that people can cry out to God because God

is faithful and actually able to do something. But here's

the deal. Here's the real situation that we're looking at. Here,

it's setting the scene, and it might just seem like, Okay,

you just told us a bunch of information, But what

we're seeing is long before these people actually get to

see the deliverance that God was going to bring, even

in the midst of the suffering. God had already started

to work out the plan. The people didn't know it.

He had already begun to answer their call before they

ever knew it. They are suffering, and out of this suffering,

Moses is worn and placed in a very specific place

at a very specific time. What's crazy is Moses was

about forty when he fled Domitian, and he would be

there for about another forty years before he came back

to Egypt. That's a long time to be waiting. That's

a long time in affliction to the Israelites, would have

seemed like forever. But God knew exactly what he was doing.

God was making way for their deliverance. God was answering

their cries before they ever knew it. And this is

good news for us. Also, these many of us are

going through many different afflictions. So many different people in

this room, so many different lives, so many different families, backgrounds, upbringings.

Many of us don't just have one affliction. We're carrying

various burdens, being oppressed in different ways. But God sees you.

God hears your groans, and you're not alone. Our afflictions

should cause us to cry out to God. Our afflictions

should push us to cry out to God, and in

the midst of our afflictions, we need to rest and

trust knowing that God answers those prayers. Now I need

to say, maybe it's not in the way that we

would expect, maybe it's not in the timing that we

would hope. Not only that, but we need to realize

that these afflictions can be used for our good. That's

how sovereign God is that these afflictions, these pains, these burdens,

these trials can be used for our good. Not only used,

but they can be intended for our good, used to

refine us, use to bring us closer to God, and

use to grow us like the Israelites. But some of

us might be in some real trouble, even even deeper

than just the world the afflictions and the pains that

we go through, because there's a deeper problem, a deeper oppression,

a deeper slavery going on in us that, once God

reveals to us, should cause us to call on His name.

And that is the slavery to our sin, the burdens

of guilt and shame that we carry, the afflictions of

the consequences of years of running from God, the bitterness

brought to our life, brought to our heart because of

our sin. The affliction of our sin, of our crooked heart,

is not something we can save ourselves from. And if

we're left in the slavery to that sin, we will

face the wrath do that sin, the sin that we've chosen.

We choose this slavery. We're happy in in a weird way.

We don't feel happy, we don't like the consequences, but

we choose it. And ultimately we can't free ourselves from

this slavery to our sin. We need a deliverer. We

need someone who can come and help us, save us

out of this and set us free. We need someone

who sees us, who hears our cries and can actually

answer us when we call. And the only person who

can do that for us is who, just like Moses,

actually was born and had a king tried to kill

all the male babies, who because of the persecution, actually

had to grow up in Egypt until it was safean

could come out again. Someone who, like Moses would meet

a woman at a well and instead of saving her sheep,

would save her soul. Someone who, like Moses was also

a prince, but not of an earthly throne, but of

a heavenly throne. And that person is the God man

Jesus Christ, who came to earth born in the flesh,

who live a perfect life that we have not and

cannot live because of our slavery to sin, and has

come to die in our place to set us free

from the power and tyranny of sin that rules our lives.

That he died on the cross for our sins, that

for whoever believes in him would be saved. He was

raised on the third day, showing he has absolute victory

over sin and death. And he offers that life to

anyone who would cry out to him, to anyone who

would cry out to him and put their trust in him.

Romans ten thirteen says, for everyone who calls on the

name of the Lord will be saved. As I said

at the beginning, God is faithful, and he hears the

cries of the afflicted. So what should we do with that?

Pretty clearly, we should cry out to Him in our afflictions,

from our sin to the various situations that we have

going on in our life, our broken our broken relationships

with our families, with our spouses, with our kids, are

broken attitudes from sin about our work and the life,

in the way that things have gone, our expectations that

have been shattered by our own self centeredness. We need

to cry out to Him for help because we can't

do anything. We need him to deliver us from our sin,

and then we need to rest knowing that He actually

hears us, and that he has promises that we can

cling to, and knowing that He is good for his word.

And what I really want us to see is the

beauty from the very beginning here of God's faithfulness in

this situation. But what I also want to call out

is how it's possible to haveath or faith in the

face affliction. You can have faith in the face of

affliction because everywhere we looked at today, there are places

where people had faith despite the circumstances they were facing.

And what's nice for us reading these stories is we

usually get to see the outcome and we go like, man,

they were faithful, because it's awesome that they stayed faithful

and continued to trust God, and look how God delivered them.

And then we bring it to our own life and

we're like, who knows what's on the other side of

that that I'm kind of I'm trying. I'm struggling to

trust God here. Rather than following the example, they didn't

know what was on the other side. They trusted God

that he would deliver them on the other side. They

didn't know exactly what that was going to look like.

But we as believers can trust that God is going

to deliver us on the other side of whatever we're

going through. The only difference is we don't have a

book yet that says what's happened on the other side.

We actually have to trust him. So I want to

look at just a couple things here Hebrews where he

actually talks about the faith on display in this account,

that we're looking at the faith on display in these

various afflictions. How they'd rather have the affliction and endure

the affliction if it means having Christ rather than having

comfort and losing Christ. Look at this Hebrews eleven. By faith.

Moses when he was born was hidden for three months

by his parents because they saw that the child was beautiful,

and they were not afraid of the king's edict. So

their faith made them not afraid. By faith, Moses when

he was grown up refused to be called the son

of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the

people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin.

He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the

treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward

by faith. He left Egypt not being afraid of the

anger of the king, for he endured as seeing Him

who is invisible by faith. Given the circumstances, these people

were not afraid. They refused to be associated with the world.

They chose mistreatment with God's people rather than enjoying sin.

And get this, he considered having a bad name on

account of Christ worth more than all the treasures of Egypt,

which by the way, was a lot of treasure. But

he treasured Christ more. And why why would he treasure

Christ more? Because he was looking to a greater reward

than anything that could be offered by this world. There's

nothing in this world that can compare with what Christ

offers in himself and can be found in Christ himself.

He endured all things by looking to God. So what

are you looking to to get you through your affliction?

What have you even been putting your trust and hope

in to try and get you through your trial. Is

it some other thing, Is it some hope that you

have in this world? Or is it Christ? And there's

so much of this that feels in like counterintuitive, but

that's how God operates. God takes the wisdom of the

world and flips it on its head. We see this

in our text. He has growth come out of affliction.

He is the kings using their own resources to raise

up the Deliverer from the very ones that he's trying

to oppress. God uses our affliction for his good purposes

and our ultimate good. And if we treasure Christ as everything,

we can endure anything. Though we face affliction, we can

have faith and confidence because God is faithful and he

hears the cries of the afflicted. And I want to

close with this. I want to close with just a

handful of verses. Listen to this two Corinthians four. But

we have this treasure in jars of clay to show

that the surpassing power belongs to who God and not us.

We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed, perplexed

but not driven to despair, persecuted but not forsaken, struck

down but not destroyed, always carrying in the body the

death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may

be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are

always being given over to death for Jesus' sake, So

the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our

mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but

life in you. Since we have the same spirit of faith.

According to what has been written, I believed, and so

I spoke. We also believe, and so we also speak,

knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will also

raise us, will raise us also with Jesus, and bring

us with you into his presence. For it is all

for your sake, so that as grace extends to more

and more people, that may increase thanksgiving to the glory

of God. And he listened to this, so we do

not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away,

our inner self is being renewed day by day. And listen,

listen to this perspective. Here, he says, for this light,

momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of

glory beyond all comparison. As we look not to the

things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen.

For the things that are seen are transient, but the

things that are unseen are eternal. Would you please stand