Defying Pharaoh: Standing Up for What's Right

You're listening to The Bible Guys, a podcast where a couple of friends talk

about the Bible in fun, in practical ways. Here we are, Chris,

we are here. Man is good to be here. Yes, And

it is Friday, which means that Friday, it is the last day of

the week. People have to suffer through the weekend without us. But it's

the best day of the week for Friday is the best day for most of

our listeners because the majority of time, this is when we get to find

out what made Chris mad this week. It's the most important. Yeah,

it's the most important segment we do. Somebody, Yeah, so I do

have one. I do. So you're kidding you've had something making mad this

week? But it makes everybody mad. I never saw it coming out of

all fairness. This makes everybody mad, Okay, because sometimes, like if

I say I'm really angry at like returning shopping carts, that doesn't make everybody

mad. Yeah, it makes most people, most people, but not everybody.

But this right here makes everybody mass Okay. Okay, So what happened

this week? And I can't tell you who it was or exactly the circumstances

because it was personal within my family. But somebody texted me from my family

and assumed the worst, and they didn't approach it with a question, because

the question should have been, hey, did you do this, and then

my answer would have been no, I didn't do that. But instead the

assumption came with like, hey, you did this, and now blah blah

blah blah blah blah blah, and all of a sudden, this text comes

with this really poor assumption right of assuming the worst, and yet what should

have happened is assuming the best, right like, oh, he probably didn't

do that. Hey, Chris, did you do this? Right? And

so let me give you an example. So even though I can't get specific

about this, I can get specific about a time that this happened in my

previous church. So we were doing this building campaign and it was, you

know, a large church, the previous church I worked at, and we

had printed these really nice, full color, high gloss us campaign books.

Right now, what I knew was these books were donated. Right, So

this company who we used was owned by a person who now comes the heritage,

by the way, but owned by a person who said, hey,

this will be my gift to this capital campaign, and I'm going to provide.

I'm not even kidding when I say this, Like I think probably tens

of thousands of books, like twenty thousands of these books, and they were

just really nice and they decided to give that. Well that's a big financial

gift, right, so they give it. But we're not going to stand

up on the stage and say, hey, credit goes to this guy,

right, we just don't mention it. So this lady comes over to me

after the service, and she comes over and she goes, I'm not giving

a dime. I'm not giving a dime to this capital campaign. I'm like

why, and she goes, because I can't believe that you spent so much

money on these books. She goes, why would you want your money with

this high gloss look at these books. These books must have cost, you

know, tens and tens and tens of thousands. In a church that's going

to waste that much money. I'm not going to give a dollar or two.

And then I you know, of course, you know I know what's

coming, right, And I go I said, actually, these books were

donated by this person who gave it as a gift. And she goes,

oh, and she court you immediately she felt so unbegally dumb, right,

But then she goes, she didn't know what else to say, so she

goes, well, then why didn't you say that from the platform? And

I said, I have a better question. Why didn't you just assume it?

And she had no answer for it. Right, I'm like, why

didn't you assume that we're going to make good financial decisions? Right? Of

all the things that we've done for you as a church, why wouldn't you

just assume something like that, Hey, they must have probably got a deal,

or they must have you know, maybe even donated or or something like

this. Right, Why didn't you assume that? Why won't you assume the

best? Instead you assume the worst? And then all of a sudden you

have this horrible conclusion, right, and I think that that makes everybody Matt.

So what made you mad this week was you had a family member who

assumed the worst, yes, instead of approaching it just with the question,

at least give me the benefit of doubt of saying is this true? Right?

Hey? Can I confirm something before I get mad? Right? Approaching

the question? Right? No, they were wrong, they were wrong.

Yeah, they assume the worst, and it was wrong. Well, obviously,

if they were right, they wouldn't have made me mad. Right.

Well, no, it still makes me mad when people assume the worst,

even if it is the worst. Yeah. So Annie Stanley does a message

where he says there's always a gap between expectation and reality. Right, So

the expectation is, hey, my daughter's going to be home at eleven thirty.

The reality is it's now twelve o'clock and her phone's not answering. So

assuming the worst is she's avoiding means she's staying outlet on purpose. Assuming the

best is, hey, she something must have happened and her phone must have

died. Right, So when you come in through the door, here's an

idea, ask the question first, ask the question, Hey, was your

phone? And if it's not, then you can get mad. But why

would you assume the worst? I told my daughter's boyfriend. If I say

be home at eleven, I mean like ten thirty. Ten forty five is

what I mean? Yes, and not eleven oh one? Right, that's

when you stop getting to date my daughter. And he goes, oh okay,

I said, So here's the thing. Two things. One don't have

flat tires. Two, if you do, you should go home and practice

right now, how to change your tire really fast. Yeah. Right,

And then so if you leave a half hour early so you know you're going

to get her home a half hour early, then you have a tire,

flat tire. You should be able to a strong young man like you should

be able to change a flat tire in less than thirty minutes. So I

said, you understand what I'm saying. There are no excuses, none come

home early. And he started laughing. But then, yeah, we still

have to do the same thing, check and make sure. Why are you

guys late? Yeah, And the rest of the sermon is every time there's

a gap between expectation reality, you as an individual have a choice of what

to insert in that gap. So you could either insert believe the best or

you could insert assume the worst. That's right. So anyway, that's what

made me mad this week. And I get mad when people assume the worst.

And I think all of us get mad. Absolutely, I think so.

I'm mad for the world. I thank you, thank you, thank

you, thank you, thank you. We cannot thank you enough. Yes

for being being irate for the rest of us, I'm here for you.

Vicariously angry, and I'm here for everybody else, thank you. So here's

the story. We've gone all through the entire Book of Genesis, and not

every verse, but the major stories, and then through the Book of Job.

Job was a contemporary, probably of Abraham Isaac Jacob Braden that that timeframe.

There's no evidence in the Bible that they knew each other, but Abraham

was famous and Job was famously wealthy, and so perhaps they might have known

each other known of each other, but there's no indication of that. Job

also talks about things to the heat. He was the Wizard of Us.

Yeah, that's true. Job talks a little bit about things from the east.

He mentions like stuff mind in Afghanistan and some of those things. So

he might have been further east than Abraham. But anyways, it was about

the same time. Then. Remember we ended the Book of Genesis with the

life of Joseph, right yep, And so Joseph then from that point,

remember Joseph's family moves to Egypt to avoid the famine that was happening, and

they wind up living there for four hundred years and somewhere near two million Jews,

probably Hebrews Jesse. He didn't live for four hundred years. No,

he did not, but the Joseph's family and Jacob's family descendants, their descendants

lived there for four hundred years. Eventually they were enslaved by the Romans.

At first they were beneficiaries of the Roman ross Egyptians. They were beneficiaries of

the Egyptian's generosity, and eventually they became slaves. And here's what the Bible

says. It picks up in Exodus chapter one, four hundred years after the

story of Joseph. Yeah, crazy, and it says, these are the

names of the sons of Israel, that is Jacob who moved to Egypt with

their father, each with his family Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah,

Issachar, Zebulan, Benjamin, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher and

all. Jacob had seventy descendants in Egypt, including Joseph, who was already

there. In time, Joseph and all his brothers died, ending that entire

generation, but their descendants, the Israelites had many children and grandchildren. In

fact, they multiplied so greatly that they became extremely powerful and filled the land.

Eventually, a new king came to power in Egypt who knew nothing about

Joseph or what he had done. He said to his people, Look,

the people of Israel now outnumber us and are stronger than we are. We

must make a plan to keep them from growing even more. If we don't,

and if war breaks out, they will join our enemies and fight against

us. Then they will escape from the country. So the Egyptians made the

Israelites their slaves. They appointed brutal slave drivers over them, hoping to wear

them down with crushing labor. And they forced them to build the cities of

Pitham and Ramsays as supply centers for the king. But the more the Egyptians

oppressed them, the more the Israelites multiplied and spread, and the more alarmed

the Egyptians became. So the Egyptians worked the people of Israel without mercy.

They made their lives bitter, forcing them to mix mortar and make bricks and

do all the work in the fields. And they were ruthless in all their

demands. Then Pharaoh, the King of Egypt, gave this order to the

Hebrew midwives Shiffra and Pua. When you help the Hebrew women as they give

birth, watch as they deliver. If the baby is a boy, kill

him. If it's a girl, let her live. But because the midwives

feared God, they refused to obey the king's orders, and they allowed the

boys to live too. So the king of Egypt called for the midwives.

Why have you done this? He demanded, why have you allowed the boys

to live? The Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women. The midwives

replied, they are more vigorous and have their babies so quickly that we cannot

get there in time. So God was good to the midwives, and the

Israelites continued to multiply, growing more and more powerful. Because the midwives feared

God, he gave them families of their own. Then Pharaoh gave this order

to all his people, throw every new born Hebrew boy into the Nile river,

but you may let the girls live. That's rough, Yeah, you

want to talk about rough. So you ever seen the cartoon the Prince of

Egypt? Yes, so there's a They communicated this through and like, because

you know, this is a horrible thing to put in a cartoon, right,

you think, you think? And so they communicated it through. When

he was walking through the hallways and he saw all those Egyptian Uh, what

do they call those there's a name, there's a not a high lift for

graph. What is it called hieroglyphics. Hieroglyphics. I'm think enough that's the

that's their writings. Ye I was thinking of the singular it ends with graph

anyway, but the hieroglyphics. He was walking through the hallways and then he

saw the history of the baby's thrown into the now river, just through drawings,

and it didn't say anything, it just showed it. And then and

then he was like danta dom the music. Then he runs off and he

cries and all that, and and so it's just it's just such an unbelievable

thing to talk about throwing babies into an out river. It's just it's just

you can't get any worse right than killing worse. So Herod did this in

the New Testament, didn't He was so threatened when Jesus he heard that a

king was born of the Jews, and he thought it was maybe threatening his

title when Jesus was born, So he had ordered, uh, you know,

all the babies, all the firstborns what two years in under, yeah,

yet to be killed, and all of death on him. And then

and then and ironically, Joseph and Mary fled to where Egypt, Egypt,

which is where it happened in Egypt way back when, which is pretty crazy.

So the Devil, this is one of the Devil's tactics, right,

The Devil always tries to kill babies. So the Devil tried to destroy humanity

in its infancy with the very first two humans. The Devil tried to kill

Israel in its infancy. Devil tried to wipe out Israel here through babies.

Devil tries to wipe tried to wipe out Jesus as an infant. Devil tried

to destroy the early Church as an infant. Right, Devil loves to try

to kill baby things. When we launch new ministries, when we have to

be really, really careful, it's those early seasons that the Devil loves to

try it because they're so vulnerable. Devil hates babies. I don't think it's

a mistake that we kill millions of babies a year all around the world.

Devil hates babies. And then the same thing with young Christians, new Christians.

The Bible says that when you trust Christ and you're a brand new Christian,

you're a baby in Christ that's what says. And the devil tries to

wipe out brand new Christians too all the time. It's just it's his tactic.

Over he keeps running the same play because it's pretty effective, right right,

So he's trying to kill kill the Egyptian baby boys to stop them from

growing. I looked up online. It seems like this pharaoh was either very

likely it was Ramses the second, which is one of the most powerful pharaohs,

or have been who was the other one? Here Seti the first.

Both of these guys, this is like near the peak of the Egyptian Empire

up to that time. So in Charlton Heston's movie, it was Seti who

then gave birth to Ramseys and then Moses ended up saying with ram Yeah.

Yeah. So it's right there right in that that those two that dynasty that

they're in, and they were just on this building machine. Now they weren't

building pyramids then, right, So it wasn't the pyramids, uh, but

the what they did build it mentions these two cities. It mentions was it

Pitham. I don't know where that is. I don't have any sense of

where that is. There's there's some archaeological sites in the eastern Nile Delta.

So if you know, if you ever look at the Now River, everybody

along the Nile River for thousands of miles lives within like seven miles of the

river. And then suddenly when you get north of Cairo, splits way out

towards of this giant delta, and a huge portion of people, with Alexandria

being up at the top of it, and it's a huge portion of the

food grown and the Egyptian culture is in that Nile Delta, and so both

Ramsays and Seti had their capital up in the delta. Later on at the

end of all of the Egyptian empires, Cleopatra, her capital was there in

Alexandria. King tut His was way down south with his parents Akonat and all

them down in Luxore. So they had different each of these We think of

the Egyptians as one group, but it wasn't. It was all these conquering

groups had come in and take over and then they set a new dynasty.

And sometimes he had Nubians from Africa, you know, southern south of Egypt

in the Sudan, and they would come up and so it was different groups

of people would be the rulers of Egypt, and at this time they were

ruling out of that northern Nile Delta areas. Probably Pitham was up there,

and there's a couple of archaeological sites. But this Ramsey City pie Ramses,

we know where that is, right, and it's up there as well in

the northeastern and it's Quantier is the name of the village where it was at.

So huge palaces, temples, extensive storage facilities, it's all these things.

And it was the jew the Israelites that they forced to build all of

that, right, wow, So it's really kind of an interesting time in

history that this is one of the spots you can time it exactly. Prior

it was more difficult, but here this is seventeen fifty BC right right.

The pyramids are already built at this point and they now have been enslaved and

they're going to be going through a pretty tough time. So then Pharaoh calls

in two of the midwives and say, hey, ladies, we don't trust

these Israelites. We think they're going to take over. So whenever you see

a baby boy born, just killing of course, right infanticide right there,

now that late stage abortion right there, right, yeah, it's it's a

infanticide, right kill a well, it'd be legal murder, yeah right yeah.

So then but the ladies refused. And that's what I love about this,

right It just said because the midwives feared God, they refuse to obey

the king's orders. And there's something to that. There's something too, you

know. I can't tell you how many people I've had conversations with afraid of

losing their jobs, so they go ahead and compromise what they believe God says

over and over and over again. And these two ladies, they were willing

to risk their lives because they feared God more than they feared Pharaoh. And

you know, we just talked in the Book of job I Alasay at the

beginning of wisdom is fearing God, so putting God first, And it's a

it's a great lesson that says, you know, always obey your parents unless

they unless they tell you to do something that directly conflicts with what God says,

right right, which is maybe an unpopular view to the to the dedicated

Christian, But I mean, seriously, we obey the laws of man unless

they conflict with the laws of God. Well literally, John and Peter said

that right, obey God rather than man. That's right, Yeah, that's

right. Yeah, should we should we? What is it if I choose

to be obey man over God, then I should not be deserving of Christ.

That's Christos Yeah right, yeah, right, So there is I think

a challenge. Jesus said, in this world you'll have trouble because they hated

me before they ever hated you. And so you know, we make our

decisions based on comfort, what's going to be best for us? And God

calls us to stand for what's right, and it's always it's always right to

stand for what's right. So in this situation, as soon as the ladies

chose to stand against him, look what the note says. I love this

note in Life Applications study Bible. It says, against Pharaoh's orders, the

midwives spared the Hebrew babies. Their faith in God gave them the courage to

take a stand for what they knew was right. In this situation, disobeying

the authority was proper. God does not expect us to obey those in authority

when they ask us to disobey Him or his word. The Bible is filled

with examples of those who are willing to sacrifice their very lives in order to

obey God and save others. Esther and Mordecai and Esther, Shadrackmishak in a

bed and to Go and Daniel are some of the people who took a bold

stand for what was right. Whole nations can be caught up in immorality,

racial hatred, slavery, prison cruelty. Thus, following the majority of the

ruling authority is not always right. Whenever we're ordered to disobey God's word,

we must obey God rather than any human authority. That's that verse I quoted

in Acts chapter five, right nine, And so I just think that that

was a really great thing. Now the question is the lie? What the

lie? These two ladies lied to Pharaoh? He said, he said,

what's the deal? How come you haven't been killing the babies? And the

two ladies like, oh man, the Hebrew women are very vigorous, and

they have their babies very quickly. We don't get there in time. That

was a lie. Do you really think the Hebrew women are more vigorous than

the Egyptian women? So a midwife could not possibly make it to deliver all

of the Israelite babies. Oh well, see this. This is interesting that

you pointed this out, because I took that comment to mean that, because

because didn't earlier it said, uh, it said that the Israelites were having

babies right there. It says, uh, it says the more the Egyptians

are pressed them, the more Israelites multiplied and spread, and the more the

alarm of the Egyptians became. So what I was taking that to mean was

the millions of people that were there, the hundreds of thousands, so many

people were pregnant at one time that it was they couldn't possibly keep up with

all the people that were pregnant. That's not what that means, just the

ones with the baby boys. Yeah, what I'm saying is like they can't

keep you. They slipped through the cracks because they can't possibly govern that many

people. They can't go around and just check them. So there could be

thousands of babies born, but we can't get to them because they're all having

That's certainly their claim. That's their claim here, And it seemed to believable,

believable to the Pharaoh. You think that was a lie. I think

it probably was really yeah, So were they having trouble before before he told

them kill the baby boys? Were they having trouble? It doesn't say they

were. Huh, he had. And very likely these these ladies were the

supervisors of the midwives, right, It's very unlikely that if you have,

you know, a couple million Israelites, that two women are delivering all the

babies, right, right, So they're probably supervisors of the midwives, and

these are the two getting hauled in and then uh, you know, so

we were able to deliver the babies last week, but now this week we

just can't get to them all. I see. So you're saying, you're

saying you're assuming that this statement meant that an Egyptian midwife was there for a

Hebrew birth. No, I'm saying I'm saying that they were claiming that they

didn't actually deliver the babies when they did. Huh. Interesting. Yeah,

well either either way though, it's it's a uh yeah. The note here

does kind of acknowledge. The note for that passage says, did God bless

the Hebrew midwives for lying to Pharaoh? God blessed them not because they lied,

but because they save the lives of innocent children. This doesn't mean that

a lie was necessarily the best way to answer Pharaoh. The midwives were blessed,

however, not for violating, for not violating the higher law of God

for business senseless laughder of innocent lives. This would be like Schindler hiding,

you know, cooking his books and changing his books so the Nazis wouldn't discover

that he was rescuing, right, and you know, buying Jews, right,

That's that's what they're doing, is they're misleading the Pharaoh in order to

save a life. Hey, you know, I think there's another sermon hidden

in here too that talks about that. You could use it to talk about

how God's going to use even the most wicked of kings for his purposes.

Right, So, like, you know, here comes, you know,

we're about to see that God's going to choose Moses. Moses is going to

come. You know, there's gonna be a big deliverance and it's gonna have

a spiritual significance and all these different things, and uh and and yet God

is still working in the midst, in the midst of even the most wicked

king. It reminds me of like when when when we read the Christmas story

every year, and it says, uh, uh, you know that Caesar

Augustus uh put a census over the whole world that they should be taxed.

And then from the king's decisions, from the Caesar's decisions comes Jesus being born

in his hometown Bethlehem to fulfill the scripture. Right, so God's going to

use somebody like Caesar Augustus, you know, just through his decision of wanting

more money to fulfill the scriptures. And and uh, it reminds me that

even the most wicked of kings, you know, God's gonna have his way

and use and work amongst even the worst of these guys. So you know,

it just goes to show you that God is not thrown off by ungodly

leaders. So therefore we don't need to fret. Right, that's right,

We don't need to fret no matter who our political leaders are, because it

doesn't trump the fact that God's always going to continue to work and have his

way and fulfill his purposes regardless of the leaders. Yeah. Yeah, I

also think it's interesting, you know, he finally comes to the end verse

twenty two there and says, throw every newborn Hebrew boy into the Nile River,

right, and they worship the Nile as the source of life. But

they're killing here now. So they're sacrificing these Hebrew children to their god or

the Nile river there. And it's interesting because the rest of the story of

Moses is God squares off with all the gods of Israel, I mean,

of Egypt. Right by the end of Moses's life, we'll get to that.

But he squares off and every one of the at the end of this

story, every one of the plagues was challenging another one of the main gods

of Egypt. Right, So it starts off with kill the babies. No,

we won't kill the babies. Okay, Now take the newborns. So

newborn is different from the you know, infant. The so kill the newborns

always says, yeah, every newborn Hebrew boy. So now I think that

that expands it. Now, if you just find a little boy, you

know, a tiny boy, throw him in the water, drowning him.

You got nile crocodiles out there, You got all kinds of crazy stuff,

right then, I'm sure the crocodiles were yeah, raging, So it would

be uh, you know, in his mind then look at my power.

I'm a god and I'm demanding that you sacrifice these babies to another powerful god

that we recognize. And you know, I think a lot of times so

we were tempted to sacrifice the most important things to the gods in our own

lives. Right, we worship our job so much that we're willing to sacrifice

our family. We worship our ability to make money, We're willing to sacrifice

our integrity, you know, all those things. And so a lot of

times, if you wondered where you're willing to sacrifice the most important things,

look at what you're spending most time on and the things that you worship,

and the those will those are rise up like that. So there's a lot

of little sermons. Yeah, sure, there's tons of here in next this

one. Well, it's going to get crazy from here. Yeah, Yeah,

tune back in on Monday because we're gonna be talking about Moses. Yeah,

because it's gonna it's going to go from here. So hey, thank

you so much for tuning in, and hopefully we will see you next time.

All the Bible guys, mhm h