“1 These are the names of the sons of Israel who went to Egypt with Jacob, each with his family: 2 Reuben, Simeon, Levi and Judah; 3 Issachar, Zebulun and Benjamin; 4 Dan and Naphtali; Gad and Asher. 5 The descendants of Jacob numbered seventy in all; Joseph was already in Egypt.
6 Now Joseph and all his brothers and all that generation died, 7 but the Israelites were fruitful and multiplied greatly and became exceedingly numerous, so that the land was filled with them.
8 Then a new king, who did not know about Joseph, came to power in Egypt. 9 “Look,” he said to his people, “the Israelites have become much too numerous for us. 10 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.”
11 So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh. 12 But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites 13 and worked them ruthlessly. 14 They made their lives bitter with hard labor in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their hard labor the Egyptians used them ruthlessly.
15 The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah, 16 “When you help the Hebrew women in childbirth and observe them on the delivery stool, if it is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live.” 17 The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do; they let the boys live. 18 Then the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and asked them, “Why have you done this? Why have you let the boys live?”
19 The midwives answered Pharaoh, “Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women; they are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive.” 20 So God was kind to the midwives and the people increased and became even more numerous. 21 And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own.
22 Then Pharaoh gave this order to all his people: “Every boy that is born you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live.””
Ladies and gentlemen, it is time for the main event. Before your watching eyes and listening ears, we have a fight of world-wide proportions. Charging out of this corner with the power of the world behind him, Pharaoh and his machinery of terror backed by all the gods and armies of Egypt. In this corner, we have the Lord of slaves. One of these two combatants will destroy and embarrass the other.
That is what we will be experiencing in this series. It is a glory war. In Galatians, we studied the enemy of you—the flesh. Now it’s on to the enemy of the world. It is going to be a smackdown and it will be surprise upon surprise as the Lord’s dealing with this dark world always are. We start with quite the surprise, which is that the world, the Lord’s world, often seems quite out of control. Sometimes the Lord’s world seems, but only seems, out of control—that’s the claim of this first sermon in Exodus.
We will study this in five points using the language of “us” and “we” because the this is our story too. First: how we got here. Second: blessings and trouble. Third: plan A – they worked us to death. Fourth: plan B – they killed us before we grew. Plan C – they unleashed terror. In verses 1-5, how we got here. Second, in verses 6-10, blessings and trouble. Third, in verses 11-14, plan A – they worked us to death. Fourth, in verses 15-21, plan B – they killed us before we grew. Fifth, in verse 22, Plan C - they unleashed terror.
Let us start at the beginning, which is a very good place to start with our first point: how we got here. Exodus follows Genesis. With the first word of Exodus, Moses makes the progression from Genesis to here clear. The first word of the book of Exodus is “and.” The NIV turns that into grammatically good English by eliminating it, but sometimes the improper is better and so it is with, “And these [are] the names of the sons of Israel who are coming into Egypt.” Moses starts with “and” to make clear that Exodus continues the promises to Abraham.
Genesis ended with God bringing the family, His family, to Egypt for salvation from famine.
That is the reason for the names listed in verses 2-5. We know they weren’t thinking about what could go wrong when they moved to Egypt, but the Lord knew. They could see that the bread basket of Egypt was the Lord’s plan for them but will they be able to see that generations of sorrow were His plan too? Can we? That’s difficult to accept, but that’s part of this transition Genesis to Exodus. I don’t want any of us years from now walking away from Christianity because we consider it a naïve faith which glosses over its tensions. It doesn’t. It puts its tensions out there explicitly, regularly. Jesus does the same with his calls to discipleship. The Hebrews didn’t wind up in slavery this time because they left the Lord’s will in anyway. The Lord led them along the right paths, but sometimes the right paths lead through dark places.
The Lord had told Abraham that this was coming. “Know for certain that for four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own and that they will be enslaved and mistreated there. But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions.” It’s easy for us to see this in hindsight. It’s much more difficult to see it in real time or looking ahead. The skill the Lord is looking to increase through this book isn’t us merely becoming aware of the Lord’s plan in hindsight, though. The skill He is looking to increase is our learning to trust a seemingly planless God in the seemingly dead end into which He guides us and that is just as hard for us as it was for Israel in Egypt. “Know for certain that for four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own…” “Know for certain that you will be raising a child with overwhelming needs.” “Know for certain that your spouse will walk away not just from you but from all common sense.” “Know for certain,” and you can fill in the blank with your own catastrophe.
We will be seeing that this is a nasty, brutish, desperate world and the system of which is impossibly stacked against you and your power and mine is absurdly insufficient to address this tragedy—as insufficient as mine. It’s that realistic and as we will see it’s realistic about the Lord who takes it all on and takes it all down—here as in Jesus.
The Lord is with us in the absurdity of life and we see that in our second point: blessings and trouble. Infertility plagued God’s people in the book of Genesis—Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel. Genesis focused on infertility to make clear that the chosen line continues not by flesh but by God’s promise. Here in Exodus, we find exceeding fertility; verse 6, “Now Joseph and all his brothers and all that generation died, but the Israelites were fruitful and multiplied greatly and became exceedingly numerous, so that the land was filled with them.”
This is blessing language—Eden language: ‘God blessed [Adam and Eve] and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.”’ This is blessing language—Abraham language: “I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore.” Moses wants us to think about those blessings when we read, “the Israelites were fruitful and multiplied greatly and became exceedingly numerous, so that the land was filled with them.” He wants us to recognize this baby boom as His blessing.
Babies are a blessing. Considering what’s about to happen with their enslavement, this is a correction to anyone who doubts the integrity of bringing children into a world like this. Our experience of the world is in many ways tragic—in this world we will have trouble—but the Lord still thought and thinks that babies are blessings—in a world like the one we will see in slavery and in twenty-first century America.
Babies are a blessing and that means you, no matter how old, were born a blessing. “I’m writing this in part to tell you that if you ever wonder what you’ve done in your life, and everyone does wonder sooner or later, you have been God’s grace to me, a miracle, something more than a miracle,” as John Ames wrote his son. “You may not remember me very well at all, and it may seem to you to be no great thing to have been the good child of an old man in a shabby little town you will no doubt leave behind. If only I had the words to tell you.” That’s how God thinks about children.
Generation after generation of Hebrews had babies and made very happy memories in Egypt. “Then,” as verse 8 puts it, “a new king, who did not know about Joseph, came to power in Egypt.” It’s possible that this Pharaoh had literally never heard of Joseph, but that’s unlikely. What’s more likely is that this new Pharaoh just didn’t care. It’s a bit like the phrase, “Never forget,” after 9-11. It’s not about forgetting the facts. It’s about not caring about the meaning. The book of Exodus regularly uses this language of “know” in this way. “The Egyptians will know that I am the Lord when I gain glory through Pharaoh, his chariots and his horsemen.” The idea is that they will learn to reckon with God. This Pharaoh didn’t reckon with what Joseph had done for Egypt years before and so he would have to reckon with the Lord.
It seems likely that this new Pharaoh came to power after Egypt was liberated from foreigners. Joseph most likely served what were known as the Hyksos Pharaohs—foreigners who seized power in Egypt. It’s likely that this new Pharaoh became king after the Hyksos were expelled from Egypt. This meant there was now great anti-foreigner sentiment in Egypt. That’s probably part of why he didn’t care much about what this foreigner, Joseph, had done for Egypt. He was tapping into a nativist sentiment which is often part of politics; verse 9 is Pharoah’s word to his advisers, ‘“Look,” he said to his people, “the Israelites have become much too numerous for us. 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.”’
Pharaoh saw the Lord’s blessing—this baby boom—as a threat. Egyptian politics became consumed with the Hebrew problem—“They are going to take our jobs. They are going to take our land. The Hebrews are going to rise up and destroy us from within.” Pharaoh was tapping into this sentiment for a more sinister reason—free labor.
This tremendous blessing from the Lord of babies led to slavery. The real blessings of the Lord often bring real trouble in this dark world. As Doug Stuart put it, “in a fallen world, the blessings of God are often so in conflict with the prevailing corrupt values of this world’s culture that they function as a threat to those who are not aligned with God’s will.” The ways in which the Lord blesses us as His people often provoke trouble with the world—suspicion, envy, and malice. You’ve likely experienced it. We see this trouble in our next three points—Pharaoh’s three plans for dealing with the Hebrew problem. First is Plan A—work them to death; that’s our third point.
Pharaoh tapped into anti-foreigner sentiment to rebuild the glory of Egypt by using the Hebrews as free labor; verse 11, “so they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh.” Pithom and Rameses were likely in the Goshen region, which was the northernmost part of Egypt. If Egypt was to be invaded, the invasion would come from the north. The Hebrews were likely building a line of protection like how the Great Wall protected China from their threats to the north.
Pharaoh was strengthening Egypt while at the same time keeping the Hebrew threat under his thumb; verse 14, “They made their lives bitter with hard labor in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their hard labor the Egyptians used them ruthlessly.” “The severity of the workload was, of course,” as Doug Stuart put it, “integral to the population control plan. If people are going to die under a workload, it has to be hard enough to kill people, making weak and sick those who were previously strong and terminating the lives of those who were already weak and/or sick.” Pharaoh was using the Lord’s gift of babies as cheap and dispensable labor—like the Irish in New York City in the 19th century or black people for centuries in the South. The more the world changes, the more it stays the same.
Pharaoh thought he could do whatever he wanted, but verse 12 made clear that he couldn’t; “the more [the people] were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread.” Pharaoh planned to keep them in check. They wound up multiplying even quicker. Persecuting the Lord’s people never goes as intended. Sin never goes as intended. In the book of Acts, the Jews persecuted the Christians to reduce their numbers and wound up spreading the faith rapidly. Plan A was work them to death. They wound up multiplying even faster. Plan B was to kill them before they grew; that’s our fourth point.
If you can’t kill them with work, kill them in the cradle. The plan was to kill the baby boys. The Egyptians were likely planning to, in time, take the women and girls for themselves. “We read of no such detestable example of inhumanity since the world began,” as Calvin put it in disgust. This is demonic—literally. The seed of the serpent has always worked overtime to destroy the seed of promise. We see this genocide instituted as state policy in verses 15-16, ‘The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah, “When you help the Hebrew women in childbirth and observe them on the delivery stool, if it is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live.”’
These two midwives, who were likely the managers of all the other midwives working with the Hebrews, are the heroes of this story. That’s why they are named—Shiprah, which is a bit like our name “Dawn”, and Puah, which is a bit like our name, “Jasmine.” They are still remembered because they feared the Lord more than they feared Pharaoh.
That will become one of the biggest questions in this study—will the people fear the Lord or Pharaoh? Who will be like the midwives in verse 17? ‘The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do; they let the boys live. Then the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and asked them, “Why have you done this? Why have you let the boys live?” The midwives answered Pharaoh, “Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women; they are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive.”’
The midwives were likely telling a half-truth. The Hebrew women probably did give birth before the midwives arrived but likely because the midwives told the Hebrew mothers-to-be something like, “now we are under strict orders to kill any baby boys we deliver, but if—by chance—you deliver your baby before we show up, then there’s no way we can carry out Pharaoh’s order. Don’t be in any hurry to get us there. We’re more than happy to show up well after you deliver and just congratulate you and go on our way.”
Much has been made with situational ethics as to whether these midwife managers did right. The Lord seems to think they did, and so He gave them children of their own. This is another sign that He, and not Pharaoh, was in charge. Pharaoh wanted to kill babies. The Lord made even more babies. Plan A wanted to reduce the population. It wound up increasing it. Plan B was to kill the babies. They wound up with more babies. Plan C unleashes terror. That’s our final point: plan C—they unleashed terror.
Pharaoh is likely talking to his advisors again in verse 22, ‘Then Pharaoh gave this order to all his people: “Every boy that is born you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live.”’ This is open terror. The Egyptian population but especially the vanguard of their police state were invited to join in the genocide by tossing Hebrew babies in the Nile. Now the Nile was almost like a national god to the Egyptians—after all it gave life to Egypt, so given the anti-foreigner sentiment there might have been something almost patriotic about throwing foreign babies in the glorious Nile.
Pharaoh’s plan was to drown the Lord’s people. I’m going to need some congregational participation here. What did the Lord do to Pharaoh’s army at the Red Sea? He drowned Pharaoh’s people “You wanted to drown my babies? I’m going to drown you.” Time and time again in this story we will see the Lord do unto the Egyptians as they did unto His people. That’s still how God judges today; “in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you,” as Jesus put it. It’s the same God—the same justice.
Pharaoh thought he was in charge—the world always does—but the world doesn’t have any idea of the real power at work in the world. It an unexpected salvation that will come in this story—the same unexpected sort of salvation we see in Jesus. “Deep in unfathomable mines of never-failing skill, He treasures up his bright designs, and works His sovereign will,” as William Cowper put it and as we will sing it. The Lord was and is guiding, blessing, present in our affliction turning evil to our good if we will but trust in Him.
He’s marvelous. The Lord is absolutely marvelous. We’re going to see Him run circles around Pharaoh and the world week after week. It will be effortless for Him. It’s fun to watch. It’s enough to make you stand up and cheer for the Lord as the people will in our last study. That’s the Exodus. It’s a glory war and the Lord is going to smack the world to the ground. He continues to and will do it on the last day. The world is no match for Him. Don’t fear it. Trust Him. Amen.