Courage in Crisis: The Midwives of Exodus - Saved for the Glory of God | Studies in the book of Exodus

It was in June 2024 that we finished our series in the book,

that first book of the Bible, Genesis.

Genesis, of course, meaning in the beginning.

And that whole account took us through creation, to the fall, to

the flood and the promises to Abraham of a great nation and of

a land in which they would live.

And at the end of the book, we see the people then living in Egypt,

having been saved from famine by God's providence in placing Joseph

in the land of Pharaoh.

And it would be fair enough to think, well, whenever we look at.

Whenever we look at the story of God's people in Genesis, we see

the covenant promises of God, the covenant of works with Adam.

Then we see the covenant of grace with Noah, and then we have

the covenant of salvation with Abraham, of a people of God, a people

that continues today as we know the church, and the fulfillment

and the continuation of that covenant promise of the nations coming

to know God.

And so now that we talk about Egypt, and very much the image on

the screen is there for you to remind you that we see these tourist

attractions today.

But these pyramids would have been around at the time in which

we're talking.

This is not just something that we think, oh, it happened way,

way back then.

We can still walk in the footsteps of God's people, particularly

whenever they were enslaved into the building works of Egypt,

and that we still see before us today.

Exodus doesn't take its name from the opening of the book.

Rather, it means exit.

And of course, we know that, because if we've ever been to an

event with lots of people and everyone rushes out, and let me tell

you, I've been to a church once where it felt like there was

a mass exodus as soon as the benediction was said, and right through

the door, they rushed, and within 10 seconds, it was almost

like a fire drill.

No one was left in the building.

We know that saying.

It was like a mass exodus.

Everyone just exited.

Well, as we go through Exodus, yes, it is an exit, but it's an exit

from Egypt for a purpose.

It's an exit from Egypt to be saved.

That's why the series is entitled Saved for the Glory of God.

And so not only do we see God's salvation in this book, but

we see his glory.

And in fact, a verse that we'll come to look at in chapter

14 is the key verse of understanding what Exodus is all

about.

Because time and again, we see the glory of God displayed to the

world and every chance given that they would turn and worship

him.

So this idea of Exodus, this exit this departure from the land,

it's not actually until chapter 19 that we get to see in

the original Hebrew, then translated into the Greek, the word

Exodus.

Because there in verse one of chapter 19, in the third month after

the Israelites left after the Exodus, Egypt, on that very day,

they came to the desert of Sinai.

So in only chapter 19, halfway through the book, we get them beginning

their wanderings through the wilderness.

But before we get there, so much happens.

And if you're like me, you'll remember as a child, every Easter,

the Ten Commandments playing on television.

Those days when we only had four channels and for three hours

on either Easter Sunday afternoon or Monday.

Must have been Monday.

We weren't allowed to watch TV on a Sunday.

So it must have been Easter Monday.

You got to see the Ten Commandments, or you got to see Ben

Hur.

You got to see these great movies retelling these epic tales,

retelling the story.

Well, things have changed dramatically for God's people before

we even get to this point.

Because after Joseph died.

Because quite literally, where we ended in Genesis 50, we simply

pick up in Exodus 1.

Everything changed after Joseph had died.

They had no advocate anymore, working in the high ranks of government.

And as the Pharaohs died, so the of Joseph and his work faded.

People stopped telling of the great rescue from famine by this

Hebrew who became the prime minister of the land and was respected

by the pharaohs.

That was gone.

And the opening verses of chapter one remind us of the humble

beginning of God's people in Egypt.

The descendants of Jacob numbered 70.

That's it, 70 in all.

Because Joseph was already in Egypt, and he settled them in Goshen,

the best of the land, where they could flourish.

And flourish they did, because from just 70 people, they grew into

a nation within Egypt.

And verse seven tells us that they were fruitful and multiplied

greatly.

Yes, the Lord had blessed them, just as he promised Abraham.

In Genesis 15:5, speaking of God, it says he took him outside

Genesis 15:5

and said, look up at the heavens and count the stars, if indeed

you can count them.

Then he said to him, so shall your offspring be.

I think for a moment of Genesis and Exodus as one continuing

story.

This promise was given to a man who had no children.

This promise was given to a man whose wife was old, who by all

natural order were beyond childbearing.

Yet the Lord made it possible.

But here we are a few generations later, and there's still

only 70 of them.

Has God failed?

Has God's covenant promises been let down?

No, because as we will see in the 350 to 400 year period that moves

from Joseph through to verse eight of chapter one.

We see a million people being born, a million people of the Jewish

community, the Israelite community, living in Exodus.

And that's why the Pharaoh gets worried, because God indeed

has been faithful to his covenant promise and the people are

growing in number.

This 70 quite literally has multiplied, being fruitful to a million

people.

And as we will see, this becomes an issue for the pharaohs,

particularly as we begin this study.

When I was at school, I wasn't particularly good at art.

But one subject in art that I was looking forward to was that of

photography.

You know, you didn't have to draw, you didn't have to color in.

There was a wee bit of technology in it, so it was good

for me.

But during my first three years at high school, there was a

promise of the development of a dark room so that we could learn

about the development of photographs.

Well, this never materialized.

And it was the year after I left school that a dark room was

added with our instant photographs displayed on our camera

screens.

Perhaps we've forgotten how photographs have been developed for

over 100 years.

Do you remember taking your film into the chemistry?

Having to wait a week for just 24 photos in the hope that you at

least got one good one and it cost you 5.99, but you got a free

film.

That was not clever.

So you take the photographs again and then go back and pay another

5.99.

We've forgotten this, haven't we?

Because we're so used to taking not just one, but multiple

ones on our cameras and looking at them.

When a photographer used to develop pictures, they would take

the film into a dark room.

At first the photo would be completely invisible.

It looked like nothing was there, just a blank sheet.

But as the chemical solution spread over the paper, slowly an

image began to appear.

And what once was hidden in the negative all along was now becoming

visible.

And that's what's happening here.

At the beginning of Exodus, God had already made his promises

to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.

Promises of a great people, promises of a land, and promises

of a blessing to the nations.

But here in chapter one, those promises don't seem obvious at all.

Instead, Israel is enslaved, Israel is oppressed, and Israel are

groaning under Pharaoh's cruelty.

And so from a human perspective, it looks like the picture

is blank.

As though God had forgotten all about his people for over 300

years.

But in reality, his plan is in the dark room.

Slowly but surely, the image of redemption is beginning to emerge.

And by the end of Exodus, that picture will come into focus.

The God who redeems his people with mighty power, the God who dwells

among them because he is the God of covenant love.

And so as we step into Exodus 1, we're entering God's dark room

because on the surface, all that we can see is hardship and oppression,

but underneath, his promises are developing.

And this is where we come to what is the key verse of understanding

this book.

It's in Exodus 14, verse 4, where God tells us his plan and his

Exodus 14:4

purpose of the rescue.

Yes, he says that he will harden Pharaoh's heart and he will

pursue them.

He says, but I will gain glory for myself through Pharaoh and all

his army.

And the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord.

And so with this statement, the Israelites then did what God

told them to do as they got ready for the Passover.

See, God is about his glory.

He wants his glory to be seen so that people will know they cannot

look to anything else but Him.

And you know, the glory of God is displayed all around us.

The psalmist tells us the heavens declare the glory of God.

We look at our lives and although we're not perfect, if we're

living for Christ, we display something of the glory of God by

how we are towards Him.

Yes, we'll not always get it right.

We will fail, we will slip, because the evil one is prowling

round like a lion, waiting on whom he may devour.

But we declare, and we display the glory of God, not that people

will look to us, but they will look to him.

And that's a huge calling for us because it means we must pay attention.

It means we must understand what God's way is for us so that

we can live in the light of his glory and display it to all those

around.

So God's purposes in Exodus are going to be revealed to his people,

but they're also going to be revealed to the world.

And the greatest of that is going to be 1 million people leaving

Egypt and crossing the Red Sea, journeying to the land of covenant

promise.

And the story begins here in Exodus with a new king.

And there are many debates as to who this Pharaoh is.

But the best speculation that I have read in my studies for this

series is that the Pharaoh spoken of here is Amenhotep the second.

And they think this is what he looks like.

Well, it fits in whenever you look at history of great expansive

building works undertaken, building works under which the children

of Israel were enslaved.

So this Pharaoh, who knows nothing of Joseph sees the growing

population of Israel as a threat.

Look at what his main concern is in verse 10.

The main concern is not about food to feed them, because remember,

they're in the breadbasket, they're in Goshen.

They have the best of the land.

It's most likely that they are producing the land, the food from

the land, for the nation.

But Pharaoh says, come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they

will become even more numerous and if war breaks out, will join

our enemies, fight against us and leave the country.

The Pharaoh here is worried about the enemies on the other side.

He's questioning the loyalty of the children of Israel.

He's questioning will they fight with us or against us.

And of course he'll go to the negative and he'll say, well, they're

going to fight against us, so let's sort them out now.

And despite his military superiority, he is worried about

getting overthrown.

And the more foreigners, as he would call them, that there are in

his country, the more alarmed he became.

Soon the immigrant population grew so large that it threatened

to destabilize his entire government.

Pharaoh worried that the next time he was attacked, the Israelites

would join forces with his enemies, outnumber his own army,

and bring his dynasty to an end.

A king who doesn't know his history, a king who doesn't know

that this is the people that saved them.

In our generation today, are we any different, particularly in

what we've seen in the news of late, with people legally here being

attacked, simply doing what people came to this island to do

400, 600, a thousand years ago, to find a home and a land in

which they could live at peace.

There'll always be the pharaohs of this world who will always

be fearful rather than looking to the Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ,

the sole head and King of the church.

So Pharaoh is paranoid about this people group who are not his

own.

And so his solution is simple.

Just like the solution of many dictators and many pharaohs since

enslaved the Hebrews by putting them to work in his building

projects.

Now, this would have had a twofold result.

First, there would be natural deaths due to the accidents on building

sites, thereby reducing the number of Israelite men.

The second was that they would be too tired to produce offspring

and the numbers then would plateau before eventually reducing,

particularly in the male population.

And so it was the meals of Israel that he was the most concerned

about.

But this plan didn't work.

And the Israelites continued to grow in number because verses

12 and 13 tell us but the more they were oppressed, the more they

multiplied and spread.

So the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites and worked them ruthlessly.

Well, the Egyptians became hard taskmasters against the Israelites

with the word ruthlessly used in this passage twice to describe

how the Egyptians treated the Hebrews.

When the king saw that this tactic wasn't working, he decided

to take a different tact.

And so attached with his fear of military attack and the support

that attack might be given from the Israelites, the Pharaoh

summons the Hebrew midwives and commands them to kill every male

born to to an Israelite.

Now in this command, Pharaoh is pushing for genocide of Israel.

He is a man completely ignorant of God and his promises,

and in his ignorance sets himself up against God.

Now, this ignorance doesn't excuse his actions.

We now have the table set before us of this great battle between

Pharaoh and God, a battle that is going to rage for these next 14,

15 chapters.

But we know what's going to happen in the end, because God will

win.

And we see this victory first of all in these midwives.

Because the two midwives who receive this command, they're called

Shiphrah and Puah, no more than Pharaoh knows.

They knew that God is the Lord of life.

And so they didn't do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but

let the male children live.

Now, this was an act of civil obedience.

Pharaoh give the midwives a direct order and they disobeyed it.

But this is what God's people always do when the laws of men contradict

the laws of God.

Our first allegiance must be to God and to him alone.

And as Peter and the other apostles say in Acts 5 and Verse

29, Peter and the other apostles replied, we must, must obey

God rather than men.

Now, there are times when Christians not only have the right,

but also the responsibility.

In a way, this act of civil disobedience was the start in Egypt

of a revolution, the first beginnings of the slave revolt that

ultimately led Israel out of Egypt.

By refusing to follow Pharaoh's orders, these two midwives,

Shiphrah and Puah, became the first pro life heroines.

The reason these women had the courage to do such a splendid, beautiful

thing is that they feared God much more than they feared Pharaoh.

Pharaoh was the most powerful man in the world.

With a simple wave of his hand, he could have executed them

all.

Yet Shiphrah and Puah dared to risk their lives because they feared

God.

As verse 17 tells us, they understood that obeying God is always

the safest thing to do.

They were acting in accordance with the command of Christ, who said,

do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the

soul in Matthew 10:28.

Matthew 10:28

And this is a warning to us.

Who do we love more?

Whenever things get tight, whenever you're actually forced to

take a position, be it in the workplace, be it at home, or be it

in a community gathering of some kind, of all of the things that

are on the political agenda that we do not agree with as the

church, because the Bible tells us so where do we fall?

Are we going to stand on the side of what is right and true?

Or are we going to give in to the way of the world because the

fear of the Lord is greater?

The fear of the Lord is what we need to have so that we can stand

firm, knowing that there may be those who will kill the body,

but they will never kill the soul.

And after all, what is the only thing that is going to pass

from this life into the next?

It's not our arguments, it's not our positions.

It is our souls.

So here we have two midwives standing firm in the fear of the

Lord to do what is right in his eyes.

But they are actually do not go unnoticed, because Pharaoh expected

the male population to have reduced in number.

Instead, it remains the same.

And so he summoned the midwives back into his presence and

asked them why they have disobeyed his command.

And their simple reply comes in verse 19.

The midwives answered Pharaoh, Hebrew women are not like Egyptian

women.

They are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive.

Now, I don't believe that the midwives here are telling a lie.

We have evidence in Scripture and we've even evidence in the first

chapter that they have a great fear of God.

And it might be that they slowed down their response to the

birth of Israelite women so that the birth took place.

And they arrived just in time to support the mother and the baby.

And what their action does is to save the male children of Israel.

And look at how they're rewarded, not by Pharaoh, but by

God.

So God was kind to the midwives, and the people increased

and became even more numerous.

And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families

of their own.

Pharaoh's plans have been thwarted once again.

The most powerful man in the world at that time cannot win against

the covenant promises of God to make a great nation from the children

of Israel.

So he resorts to even drastic measures, because the final verse

in this chapter is very sobering, because it tells us just

how evil, just how insecure, and just how Anti God, because he

is anti life.

That is, the Pharaoh is anti life, thereby he's anti God.

This king is then the Pharaoh.

Give this order to all his people, not just to the Hebrew midwives,

but to all his people.

Every boy that is born, you must throw into the Nile, but let

every boy girl live.

This is not the action of a king who seeks to serve his people

well.

He is serving himself.

And it is the same story for those who do not seek the Lord for

salvation.

We will do anything and everything to vindicate ourselves,

to always be right, and to think that we are our own saviors.

But in the end, like Pharaoh, we will not win against God.

In fact, God has made it possible for us to come to him rather

than fight against him.

And this is what John tells us in his first letter in chapter two

and verses one and two.

My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin.

But if anybody does sin, well, we have one who speaks to the Father

in our defense and Jesus Christ, the righteous one.

He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours,

but also for the sins of the whole world.

There's no sin that can be committed that Christ's death cannot

cover.

So stop fighting against God.

Stop thinking you can save yourself.

Stop thinking you have time.

Because the time you think you have, you're going to waste and you're

going to be filled with regrets.

Come to Jesus as the Savior.

Don't be like the Pharaoh and the pharaohs of this world that continue

to reject God and his truth.

But come to him and know him as the only one who can rescue you.

Because, going back to thinking of our photographs, when

the photograph is finally lifted out of the darkroom, the image

is clear and it's unmistakable.

What was hidden is now visible for all to see.

That's the way God works with his promises.

In Exodus, the picture of redemption starts faint, but it comes

into focus with the deliverance from Egypt, the crossing

of the Red Sea, and God's presence with his people.

And so for us, that picture has come fully into view.

In Jesus Christ, what was once hinted at in shadows and even in

Exodus, is hinted at in shadows, is now made plain to us

in Him.

He is the Redeemer who brings us out of slavery to sin and into

the freedom of life with God, that we may fear him more than we

fear the world.

Not that that fear is a caring in the corner, but an understanding

of just how awesome and just how great our God is.

And so the faint images of this are seen in chapter one as God

rescues His people from death and he will continue to rescue this

group of people whom he has called his own.

And so we finished this chapter this morning and our response

is to look onto Jesus for salvation today.

Because Jesus is our great rescuer.

He is our great redeemer.

And you know each and every one of us, from me standing here

before you to you sitting in the pew, each and every one of us

need to Christ today.

I need him more because I need to know the love that he demonstrated

on Calvary's cross.

I need to know that he is the only way, the only truth and the

only life by which I can know salvation.

And I need to live by his standard in how I respond to you

and to others in the society around us.

And so I say this morning that each and every one of us here need

Christ because you need to know the love that he demonstrated

on Calvary's cross.

You need to know that he is the only way, the only truth and

the only life by which we can know salvation.

And you need to live by his standard and how you respond to one

another and to the society around you.

You see, we need, we all need Jesus to keep us to the end when

he will return and he will welcome those who have trusted in

him home to heaven.

To look onto Jesus means that we believe and live what the writer

of Hebrews tells us.

In chapter 12 and verses 2 and 3, let us fix our eyes on Jesus,

the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before

him, endured the cross scorning at shame and sat down at

the right hand of the throne of God.

Now consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men so

that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

If you've been at teaching week this week, you will know that

we've been looking at the by faith statements.

And last Monday evening, David explained to us that whenever we

see by faith, it is an invitation to consider.

Consider who Jesus is.

Believe in Him.

Think of who he is to you.

And that is our response this morning.

Because this is the Savior who calls us today to trust in him and

not to become like Pharaoh and think that we are better than God

and better than his ways.

The Savior who calls us to fix our eyes on him so that we will not

be distracted by this world and taken down paths of sin that

ultimately lead to destruction.

The Savior who loves us even when we feel the world is against

us.

Our response today is to trust more in him today, to fix your eyes

on him for the days that are ahead, as you know only him for your

salvation.

Let us pray.

Our Father God, as we think of these words and as we see these images

of salvation coming through in this Old Testament book, even in

its first chapter, Father, continue to give us that focus of

Christ, who is our only Savior, our only Redeemer, that we

may live by his standard.

And so, Father, may we delight in this truth, and may we live by

it.

And as we now approach this table, this table of great blessing,

this table of grace, Father, may we know Christ more and be determined

to live for him all the days that you give us.

And we ask these things in his name alone.

Amen.