You pick up your Bible and wonder, is there more here than meets the eye?
Is there something here for me? I mean, it's just words printed on paper, right? Well, it may look like just print on a page, but it's more than ink. Join us for the next half hour as we explore God's Word together, as we learn how to explore it on our own, as we ask God to meet us there in its pages.
Welcome to More Than Ink. I loved a good fairy tale when I was a kid, and they always start once upon a time. Once upon a time. Or modern movies, they start with, in a galaxy far, far away.
A long, long time ago. But these are all stories that are fictional. They're fables. Today we're going to start a gigantic true story. A real story.
In the Bible. And you're not going to miss it, because this one starts with the word, and, today, on More Than Ink. Well, good morning to you on this lovely fall day. I'm Jim.
And I'm Dorothy. And we're excited you're with us. We are finally, as anticipated, going to start into the book of Exodus.
And I'm really excited about it. And, in fact, what you need to do is you need to consider this as sort of an adventure, or an exploration. Like, say you've never read this before, and we're just going to walk our way into this. Or, like, the metaphor I like to use is being on a riverboat.
We have a guy pointing at stuff on the banks. So we're going to go down this riverboat together, and we'll point at stuff at the banks that maybe you haven't noticed. And we hope that you notice them, too, because we want you to notice them as we go along. So I'm really looking forward to this adventure. Exodus is a great adventure.
Well, I'm looking forward to it, too. And I think this is one place where we have to really practice that observation skill that is just so central to Bible study. We have to notice what the text actually says. Because when we come to Exodus, a lot of us have formed our thoughts based on the movie we saw as children, or on perhaps some movie we've seen as adults, or some we got. We got these stories handed down to us by maybe not the most accurate means. And so when we come to actually reading the text, that will be really helpful. These are the actual words of Moses, who was there.
Rather than the corners they have to cut to do movies and stuff like that. Although I'm still cursed with seeing Charlton Heston when I read this book. I'll put that away. So we're going to jump into chapter one and start this thing. Why don't you mention for us just briefly why it's important to read something like this. This is a historical narrative. This is going to tell you a real event that happened.
But why do that? Well, Exodus is in many ways the very central story of the whole Bible. That word Exodus is based on two Greek words, but it means the way out. Well, you know, that is the central story of the Bible. God, our deliverer, provides a way out of bondage. And this is the central story of how Israel became a nation, not just an extended family descended from Abraham. So before we start reading, why don't we cover kind of the prehistory that leads us up to this point.
Well, we have to. Why do they need freeing? Why do they need a rescue? What happened before this? Read that in Genesis.
Well, right. The interesting thing is you almost have to read all of Genesis, the later part of the book, in order to understand the context for the story. Because Exodus 1 picks up right where Genesis left off. Yeah, in fact, the very first word in Exodus is the word and in Hebrew. So it really picks up right where Genesis leaves off.
Right. Now these are the sons. And if you just think about, remember, and you know this story in Genesis 15, when God promised Abraham, I'm going to make a great nation of you.
Yeah, great nation. But first, your family will have to go down to Egypt and they'll be there 400 years and they'll be enslaved. You can go and read this in Genesis 15. Right, and I bet you that confused Abraham when he heard that.
Probably. What about the promised land? And this was at the point at which God actually cut the covenant with Abraham, right? This was sealed in blood. This is going to happen. I said, I'm going to give you this land, but first your people, you will have to go to Egypt and then I will bring them out of there and bring them into this land.
Right, right. So you have Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And Jacob has the 12 sons.
And one of the sons, the second youngest, Joseph, is despised by his brother. Sold off into slavery to a bunch of Midianite traders who are on their way to Egypt. So they sell Joseph into slavery in Egypt and from there the story really picks up steam. Yeah, and we really encourage you to read that because it's a great story.
You may know it already, but I made a note. It starts around Genesis 37. That's where the being sold into slavery happens. But by the time you get to the end of Genesis, not only Joseph is down there, but his entire family.
The entire family, which really only numbers about 70. So that's what we're starting with. We're starting with 70 people that go down to Egypt. But they're not in the Promised Land, which is the place that God promised Abraham.
And what looks like a detour is not really a detour. And that's one of the questions we'll answer as we go along. Was the stay in Egypt a detour or was it necessary? Well, you know, it was initially part of God's plan all along, as he said to Abraham. But when they first get there, it's just Jacob and his 12 sons and their wives and children. And they settle in the land of Goshen, this rich, healthy, green growing place that's good for them to raise their flocks. And that first generation was happy because Joseph was essentially ruling Egypt. And they were treated as kind of extended royalty.
Yeah, yeah. So by the time we get to the action part of this narrative, we're many, many generations past even the death of Joseph and Jacob and many generations, over 400 years. So let's just pick up in chapter 1, verse 1.
And this is the problem. The Israelites are living in Egypt and by this time they need a rescue. Okay, but Genesis ends with Joseph saying, Now I'm about to die, but God will surely take care of you and bring you up from this land. So that's how Genesis ends with the reiteration of God's promise to bring them out of there.
God will bring you out. Which at the time of Joseph, when he's still alive, doesn't seem like a great deal because it's a great place to live and one of their relatives is sort of in charge of the place. But God's going to pull them out of there. And we'll see why later, why that's necessary and why God has to do that. Well, chapter 1, verse 1.
Are we ready? Okay, so these are the names of the sons of Israel who went down to Egypt with Jacob, each of his household. Reuben, Simeon, Levi and Judah, Issachar, Zebulun and Benjamin, Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher. All the descendants of Jacob were 70 persons. Joseph was already in Egypt.
Then Joseph died and all his brothers and all that generation. But the people of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly and they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong so that the land was filled with them. So they went from 70 people to the land being filled with them. So they were everywhere. They were everywhere. There's a lot of them.
There was a lot of them. And in fact, you know, it's an interesting point. Culturally speaking, had they gone to Canaan right now, the dangers of intermarrying there would have been great.
It would have been a bad deal. Here, you know, the Egyptians were so ethnic. They allowed the Israelites to live there without really intermixing with them. And so in a sense, it was kind of a perfect cultural incubator to turn an extended family into a nation. It's an interesting thing.
I mean, strategically from God's perspective, it was brilliant. But there's more brilliance coming up. So let's just keep reading. What do you say?
Okay. So now there arose a new king over Egypt who did not know Joseph. And he said to his people, Behold, the people of Israel are too many and too mighty for us.
Okay, let's stop for a second. So a new king arises. There's been some political turnover and there's a lot of historical stuff that's kind of buried here or that Moses omits that you can go back and read some of the history of Egypt. But in any case, this is kind of Moses's shorthand saying now, time passed, the people grew, and a new king came. And Joseph was pretty chummy with the previous Pharaoh. That's why Joseph had so many responsibilities. So the Pharaoh was very favorable toward Joseph and the Israelites. But you change the Pharaoh, you change that favorability.
So that's what he said. So the political system has changed somewhat. And now because of their size, they're a threat.
Okay. And this is generations past. Generations. That initial generation.
Like centuries. They are equally with them lest they multiply and if war breaks out, they join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land. Therefore, they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with heavy burdens. They built for Pharaoh store cities, Pithom and Ramses. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and the more they spread abroad. And the Egyptians were in dread of the people of Israel. So they ruthlessly made the people of Israel work as slaves and made their lives bitter with hard service and mortar and brick and in all kinds of work in the field.
In all their work, they ruthlessly made them work as slaves. So they're seen as kind of a latent military threat. You know, the Egyptians were mostly dealing with the Hittites at this time who were extended from northern Canaan up into Syria and stuff like that. So they were afraid that what was going to happen was that someday these Hittites will invade and the Israelites are going to say, well, we're with you and we'll take over the land. So their numbers were just too much of a threat for the Egyptians. So they said, we got to do something, we will oppress them.
We will oppress them and that will keep them under our control. And by the way, just as a rule of note, this slavery period, it's debated about how long it was. But somewhere between like 150 and 300 years.
Somewhere like that. So it was many generations of enslavement. And by the way, if you look at your calendar, this post dates the building of the pyramids we know about today. So the pyramids were already in place when we're talking about here. But they did go into the building trade.
They built every building that the Egyptians needed. They were enslaved. It was a bad deal. Well, let's move on.
I'll pick it up at 15. So then the king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, these are the people who helped deliver babies, to the midwives, one of whom was named Shipra and the other Puah, when you serve as midwife to the Hebrew women and see them on their birth stool, if it is a son, you shall kill him. But if it's a daughter, she shall live.
So you see the deal here. We're going to thin out the men, which actually in less than a generation will remove the potential fighting force. Right, to weaken the people.
So there you go. But the midwives, verse 17, feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but let the male children live. So the king of Egypt called the midwives and said to them, why have you done this and let the male children live? And the midwives said to Pharaoh, well, because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women for they're vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them. So God dealt with the midwives, dealt well with the midwives and the people multiplied and grew very strong and because the midwives feared God, he gave them families. Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, all his people, not just the midwives, every son that is born to the Hebrews, you shall cast into the Nile, but you shall let every daughter live. So this is his way of thinning out the Israelites, especially the fighting force. And this whole thing here is almost comical in terms of the fact that Pharaoh says I want less of these people and God says, nope, we're going to have more of these people. Because it says right here they increased.
They increased, they didn't decrease. Well, now it's interesting to me that the command was throw those babies into the river. And I'm going to go off the page a little bit here, but if you know anything about Egypt, you know that the Nile was the lifeblood of the nation.
That's where all their water came from. It was the central issue in Egypt. That's why they were there because of the Nile Delta. And to throw all those male babies into the Nile in a sense is sacrificing them to the strength of Egypt.
Yes, yes, yes. Because they had a lot of worship that was tied into the Nile itself. So in a sense it's like throwing your babies to some pagan god. So that's clearly figured right here too. By the way, too, I love the fact, and of course this is the obvious comment, that the women decided to obey God and not men in this case.
And that was very brave. But a lot of people point at the excuse they made and say, were they lying right there? Well I don't think, they weren't really lying. They probably weren't telling the whole truth. But it could very well be that the Hebrew women being enslaved and working harder than the Egyptian world, they actually did do better at delivery.
I mean this could be a truism without any other question to it. But it satisfied Pharaoh. And God, I like the fact that God rewarded the midwives by giving them families. Established families for them. The implication of that is not just that they had children, but that they became somebody. And often the midwives are qualified to be midwives because they had no family. But now God says, good for you, you're going to have established families. It's a wonderful thing while Pharaoh is kind of conniving to figure out how to reduce the people of Israel. God's saying, well not on my watch. The midwives that you tried to pull into this whole shenanigans of Pharaoh, I'm going to give them even more families of themselves. It's interesting to me that so many say, well you know, women really have no part in the scripture. They don't really show up in the story. And here we have these two that are the heroes. By name. By name of this part of the story.
And I think when we approach the scripture, assuming that women have no part or no place, it's because we really haven't read it. Yeah. They're there.
They're there. And they were very bold. Very bold to do this.
It's great. So we get to the end of chapter one. And General Dictate goes out to the entire populace. You spot a Hebrew baby, a baby son, chuck him in the Nile. Chuck him in the Nile. Which brings us to chapter two. So the scene is set for the birth of Moses.
So beginning in chapter two. Now a man from the house of Levi went and took as his wife a Levite woman. And the woman conceived and bore a son. Incidentally, this was not her first son. She already had an older daughter and son. Because we know Aaron was older. Right. And the daughter Miriam was older because she figures in the story.
So okay. So this woman conceived. But the writer here is concerned with Moses. So that's how he's telling the story. And when she saw that the child was a fine child, she hid him three months. And when she could hide him no longer, she took for him a basket made of bulrushes and daubed it with bitumen and pitch. And she put the child in it and placed it among the reeds by the riverbank. So technically she did put him in the river. She put him in the Nile.
So following the rule of law. She just didn't throw him in so he drowned. And his sister, oh who's that? That's Miriam, right? Even though she's not named here. And she plays a key role in the following narrative. So watch her.
She just happens to be there. Verse four. And his sister stood at a distance to know what would be done to him. Now the daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river while her young women walked beside her. And she saw the basket among the reeds and sent her servant woman and she took it. And when she opened it she saw the child and behold the baby was crying. Well you think?
You think. He's three months old. He's laying in a basket instead of on his mommy's lap.
Well it's a good thing he was crying because they spotted him. Well, yeah, okay. So she took pity on him and said, this is one of the Hebrew's children.
Well, how did she know? Isn't that interesting? It is interesting, yeah. Then his sister said, of course if you find a baby in the Nile. That's right.
Find a baby floating in the river. Chances are. It's very likely, yeah. Okay, then his sister said to Pharaoh's daughter, shall I go and call you and nurse for me Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?
I mean this means he hadn't been there very long. No. No, no, no. Yeah. Just long enough to get hungry and cry.
Yeah. And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, go. So the girl went and called the child's mother. And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, take this child away and nurse him for me and I will give you your wages. So the woman took the child and nursed him. And when the child grew older, she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter and he became her son.
And she named him Moses because she said, I drew him out of the water. Oh my gosh. It's a great story. God's hands all over this thing. It's a great story. And why the sister's there watching, you know, and what's going on.
She's pivotal right here. Yeah. Because after the baby is noticed by Pharaoh's daughter, then she also notices the baby's crying probably because he's hungry. He's hungry. Yeah.
You know, exposure is one thing, but also hungry. So then the sister suddenly appears on the side and says, can I help you? She's been watching.
She wants to know what's going to happen to this baby brother. Exactly. Yeah. Can I help you? Well, yeah. Can you go find someone to nurse this baby from the Hebrew women?
She doesn't say go find the baby's mother. No. Just find a Hebrew woman to nurse her.
Go find a nurse. Yeah. Which is not an uncommon practice.
No. A very common practice. But instead of just finding any old Hebrew woman, she brings the baby right back to his mother. And mom gets paid. And she gets paid to nurse him. For nursing her own baby. Is this the best thing ever? Yeah. Not only does she, after she puts the baby into the basket, launches him out into the Nile, you know, thus obeying Pharaoh. Not only does she give up Moses by launching him into the Nile, but she gets him back and gets to raise him and get paid for it.
To boot. It's just great. God thwarts all these plans in a very creative. And it's ironic.
It's just really something. If you look at the power of Pharaoh and think that his power is absolute and ultimate, God's just kind of walking his way through the same, nope, don't think so. Don't think so. We're going to bring Moses right back to his mom. And in doing so, Moses then benefits from a Hebrew upbringing, which is important. You mean an Egyptian upbringing?
No, Hebrew to start with. Until he's weaned. Oh, until he's weaned.
As a young child. And then he gets Egyptian. So he gets the very earliest training from his mom, from his family, gets to stay there. And then quite clearly after, at least he's weaned.
We don't know how long after that. Then he's brought and he goes into Egypt. So he benefits both a very early upbringing from his mom and from a Hebrew background. And then in Egyptian he gets both. Well, and it becomes very clear in the next chapter that Moses knew he was a Hebrew. He knew from his birth. So that just raises a whole ton of questions about this period of time.
And yet it's Pharaoh's daughter who gives him his name, Moses. Right. Which means drawn out. He was lifted out of the water.
Drawn out. And in a larger context, look at Moses' life. He was drawn out to be used by God. And then he drew out God's people.
Yeah, it's a wonderful picture here. And a prefiguring to what's going to happen. Yeah, so just making observations of this text, I realized that Moses is found.
He's identified and rescued and adopted into Pharaoh's household. Huh. There's some interesting kind of prefiguring theology there. But God's hands are all over this thing as we just look. And again, this is Moses writing his own story.
Right, right, right. And when did he do that? Probably while they were traveling in the wilderness those 40 years. He said these people need to know their own history.
And so he began to write these, traditionally we understand that Moses wrote these first few books of the Bible. Yeah, yeah. He probably got this story from his family. Well, if not directly from his mother, he got it from his sister, Miriam, who also figures prominently in the story of the Exodus. By name, she's big.
Yeah, she's big. So don't lose sight of her because she shows up all over the place as we go on. But there's also some fascinating early parallels with the life of Jesus. You know, because remember the threat to the babies in Jesus' time. And Herod said, kill all the male babies.
Yeah, and so he killed all the male babies. Somehow Jesus survives. We don't know somehow.
We know how. God preserves him. So even again, Herod doesn't have ultimate power. Pharaoh doesn't have ultimate power.
And in trying to thwart God's plan, they will never succeed. Well, ironically, Jesus' earthly parents take him to Egypt to escape the threat in his life. So he himself, as a young man, is drawn out of Egypt. Is drawn out of Egypt, yeah. And there's some prophecy issues we're not going to touch on right here about that very phrase.
But we'll see these ideas develop as we read the story. But sure enough, here's Moses, who is a deliverer. Jesus, who's a deliverer. Both of them in danger as an infant, helpless. Both of them know, it seems like early on, that they are a deliverer.
We'll see that in the next section when we look at that. So their calling is clear. God's sovereign care for them is clear.
And God's plans to enact a rescue through these two men is clear and un-thwarted. So, you know, that's just the beginning thought of why we say that Moses was a type. A picture of a greater truth of Jesus. Yeah. He's a type. And when we say type, it means he's kind of like a model in a way. He's a model. And he shares so many characteristics that, like, for instance, if you were to talk to a Jew and try to introduce to them who Jesus is, if they know nothing about Jesus, you could start with, well, he's kind of like Moses.
Right. It's a comparison, a like. Not an exact likeness. And they could say, well, in what way is he like Moses?
I don't understand. And you just start going through the parallels. And so there's so much of that in the Old Testament that it's a type of the truth. And we read this in Hebrews, you know, that what we see in the physical world is actually a type of the real reality in the spiritual world. It teaches you.
So you can say, if you want to understand this, look at this. Well, if you want to understand Jesus, you can start with looking at Moses. As a matter of fact, the writer of Hebrews says, and where is it? It is in chapter 3, I think, where he says that Moses was faithful as a servant in God's house, but Jesus is faithful as a son.
He owns everything. So he's like, but he goes a giant step past that. He's better, as we said about Hebrews. So here we have an Exodus. We have this introduction of the beginning of the plot line, which is, you know, the promise people are in bondage in a foreign place. And we know that God's promise is to bring them to the land of promise. How's that going to happen when you're incarcerated in the most powerful country in the world?
They are a world power. And Pharaoh has absolutely autonomous control over everything and ultimate power. And yet, in the midst of all that, against all odds, the sovereign God says, Pharaoh's nothing.
I'm going to make my plan come about because I'm God and Pharaoh is not. So we want you all to start reading Exodus, beginning of the book, and read as far as you can. It will just draw you forward through about chapter 12, then you're going to hit a kind of a slow down place, and then the story picks up again. And some of that has to do with just the way ancient writing takes place. Some of that has to do with what was in Moses' mind, what do the people need to know at this point before the story goes on. And we'll unpack some of that a little bit as we go through this in the coming weeks. But as a narrative, it's kind of like reading a novel.
It is a gripping story. And there's a lot of teaching that's embedded throughout the novel, throughout the arc line of the plot. And that's deliberate on God's part. I always say as a pastor, we're always struggling to communicate a truth by finding an illustration. And this is the other way around.
This is the illustration. And now you have to pull out what you're understanding about who God is as a result of what you read here. And for me, the most powerful pullout right here about God is this kind of clash of power. You have Pharaoh who is, no kidding, he's the most powerful man on earth at the time. And yet he can't seem to squash the coming of the deliverer in Moses.
And that's deliberate. And God uses his sister and these midwives by name. I mean he uses all these nobodies in order to bring his plan about because God is sovereign and he will not be thwarted in what he's going to do.
He's going to start this rescue and he's going to finish this rescue and he's going to use Moses in a very unusual way to do that very thing. And yet we'll see in the next chapter that it took place over a long period of time. Right there, 400-ish years. It's a long story. It's a long, long story. And God doesn't seem to flinch at taking a long time for the human story to develop. Time is different for him. In fact before we come back we're going to pick up in the next verse and we're going to go 40 years between what we just read and the next verse. Where you get Moses as being all grown up.
Wow, how did that happen? Oh my goodness, so the scene is set. The scene is set and we hope that you join us in this wonderful adventure into this incredible story that is full of negative truth for us. So I'm Jim and I'm Dorothy and we're glad we hope you stay with us on this adventure because this really is a good one. So we'll see you next week on More Than Ink. More Than Ink is a production of Main Street Church of Brigham City and is solely responsible for its content. To contact us with your questions or comments, just go to our website, morethanink.org. We're a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Yeah. Yeah.
Whisper: medium.en / 2023-07-16 18:55:55 / 2023-07-16 19:08:06 / 12