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Exodus 1:1 – 4:17Carol MartinWhen I spoke to you last week about the material we’re going to cover in our lessons this year, I made a point of trying to stress that God is a God of grace . . . always has been, always will be. It was by grace that He called Abraham; His grace repeated that give Abraham, Isaac and Jacob the promise of the land; His grace that moved Joseph from being a slave to being prime minister in the palace of Pharaoh; and His grace that brought the Hebrews to Egypt and the fertile land of Goshen.As you began reading in Exodus it was noted that there were 70 people who went down to Egypt. Our questions had you review Stephen’s account of Israel’s history in Acts, chapter 7 where he says 75 went down. Why the difference? Depending on which commentary you read, here are a few explanations. You can choose the one you like best:There were 70 as named in Genesis 46:8-27 of the Hebrew text from which we get our Old Testament. There were 75 names listed in the Septuagint, the Greek translation that may have been Stephen’s source.Either 70 or 75 was just a round number.Stephen was facing death when reciting Israel’s history from memory and could have given an approximate figure under the strain of interrogation.In any case . . . the point is it started out as a small number of people.What changed or did not change for the Hebrew people between the times of Joseph and Moses? We read that they were fruitful, increased abundantly, and multiplied . . . the land was filled with them. In the fertile district of Goshen, shepherds also became agriculturalists. Instead of a nomadic lifestyle, they settled into the land . . . peaceful, prosperous and probably slowly assimilating some of the Egyptian influences around them.Evidence we’ll see later in the preparation of the various materials for the Tabernacle, as well as its construction, implies they had acquired many of the arts and industries of Egypt. There was evidently some intermarriage between Hebrews and Egyptians as Leviticus 24:10 speaks of the “mixed multitude.” As the population grew, there was subdivision of the twelve tribes into clans and families (Joshua 7:14).So what happened to the religion of Israel all this time? That the pagan gods of Egypt became very influential is evident in the story of the Golden Calf we’ll study soon, but the two basics of Hebrew faith remained intact – circumcision and sacrifice.After Joseph’s death, a new Pharaoh reigned in Egypt who didn’t know Joseph and saw the multiplying population of Hebrews as a possible threat to his throne, so he enslaved them. Now the question arises, did God’s grace fail when that happened? 400 years is a long time to us! The answer is, “Of course, not!”Grace is not getting what we want or deserve, but exactly the opposite . . . it’s the undeserved, unmerited expression of the character of God. God is love – the supreme love that acts in our best interest even when we don’t know what that best interest is.How long do you suppose the Hebrews prayed to the Egyptian false gods for deliverance? How many years did they spend blaming God for their situation? When was their collective heart humble enough to cry out to God for deliverance? One thing Scripture always makes clear . . . God always has a remnant and there were people who still had faith in Him. The increasing numbers meant that the oppression and brutality increased even to the point of demanding the midwives murder the newborn Hebrews males. When the midwives failed, all the people were instructed to carry out the Pharaoh’s edict.Murdering innocent children for the convenience of society, or population control . . . is that a relative issue for our day and time? Abortion issues today and the Holocaust of the past remind us of what man’s sinful nature is capable of when it succumbs to fear and the work of Satan.These were perilous times. Where was God? Surely this was a curse, and they finally cried out to Him. Before we go any further, I want to share a fable with you from Max Lucado’s book titled In the Eye of the Storm, which is about the last week in Jesus’ life. Some of you may have heard the fable before or read the book, but I think it gives us something to think about.Once there was an old woodcutter who lived in a tiny village. Although poor, he was envied by all, for he owned a beautiful white horse. Even the king coveted his treasure. A horse like this had never been seen before – such was its splendor, its majesty, its strength.People offered fabulous prices for the steed, but the old man always refused. “This horse is not a horse to me,” he would tell them. “It is a person. How could you sell a person? He is a friend, not a possession. How could you sell a friend?” The man was poor and the temptation was great. But he never sold the horse.One morning he found that the horse was not in the stable. All the village came to see him. “You old fool,” they scoffed, “we told you that someone would steal your horse. We warned you that you would be robbed. You are so poor. How could you ever hope to protect such a valuable animal? It would have been better to have sold him. You would have gotten whatever price you wanted. No amount would have been too high. Now the horse is gone, and you’ve been cursed with misfortune.The old man responded, “Don’t speak too quickly. Say only that the horse is not in the stable. That is all we know, the rest is judgment. If I’ve been cursed or not, how can you know? How can you judge?”The people contested, “Don’t make us out to be fools! We may not be philosophers, but great philosophy is not needed. The simple fact that your horse is gone is a curse.”The old man spoke again, “All I know is that the stable is empty, and the horse is gone. The rest I do not know. Whether it will be a curse or a blessing, I can’t say. All we can see is a fragment. Who can say what will come next?”The people of the village laughed. They thought that the man was crazy. They had always thought he was a fool; if he wasn’t, he would have sold the horse and lived off the money. But instead, he was a poor woodcutter, an old man still cutting firewood and dragging it out of the forest and selling it. He lived hand to mouth in the misery of poverty. Now he had proven that he was, indeed, a fool.After fifteen days, the horse returned. He hadn’t been stolen; he had run away into the forest. Not only had he returned, he had brought a dozen wild horses with him. Once again the village people gathered around the woodcutter and spoke. “Old man, you were right and we were wrong. What we thought was a curse was a blessing. Please forgive us.”The man responded, “Once again, you go too far. Say only that the horse is back. State only that a dozen horses returned with him, but don’t judge. How do you know if this is a blessing or not? You see only a fragment. Unless you know the whole story, how can you judge? You read only one page of a book. Can you judge the whole book? You read only one word of a phrase. Can you understand the whole phrase?“Life is so vast, yet you judge all of life with one page or one word. All you have is a fragment! Don’t say that this is a blessing. No one knows. I am content with what I know. I am not perturbed by what I don’t.”“Maybe the old man is right,” they said to one another. So they said little. But down deep, they knew he was wrong. They knew it was a blessing. Twelve wild horses had returned with one horse. With a little bit of work, the animals could be broken and trained and sold for much money.The old man had a son, an only son. The young man began to break the wild horses. After a few days, he fell from one of the horses and broke both legs. Once again the villagers gathered around the old man and cast their judgments.“You were right,” they said. “You proved you were right. The dozen horses were not a blessing. They were a curse. Your only son has broken both legs, and now in your old age you have no one to help you. Now you are poorer than ever.”The old man spoke again. “You people are obsessed with judging. Don’t go so far. Say only that my son broke his legs. Who knows if it is a blessing or a curse? No one knows. We only have a fragment. Life comes in fragments.”It so happened that a few weeks later the country engaged in war against a neighboring country. All the young men of the village were required to join the army. Only the son of the old man was excluded, because he was injured. Once again the people gathered around the old man, crying and screaming because their sons had been taken. There was little chance that they would return. The enemy was strong, and the war would be a losing struggle. They would never see their sons again.“You were right, old man,” they wept. “God knows you were right. This proves it. Your son’s accident was a blessing. His legs may be broken, but at least he is with you. Our sons are gone forever.”The old man spoke again. “It is impossible to talk with you. You always draw conclusions. No one knows. Say only this: Your sons had to go to war, and mine did not. No one knows if it is a blessing or a curse. No one is wise enough to know. Only God knows.”So let’s return to the little Hebrew family here in our story of Exodus. Were the neighbors gossiping? “Jacobed and Amram are expecting another baby. What a curse – they already have a girl, Miriam, and a boy, Aaron. Another boy will just be killed.”We’re awfully good at judging circumstances, aren’t we? Especially in other people's lives. Job’s friends had it all figured out – he did something wrong to deserve such suffering. Sometimes we are given heavy tests, but God doesn’t desert His children. This may lead to a wonderful blessing in God’s plan. I remember some 35 years ago when our house burned down and we lost everything but our lives. Now we see that God had to take away the material things we were so attached to in order to redirect our priorities to Him and to bring our family to salvation.Well, the midwives “feared God,” it says in 1:17. They disobeyed Pharaoh’s order and lied about it. What the king told them to do violated God’s moral law of preservation of life, and out of reverence for Him, they refused to obey. Remember Peter’s response in Acts 5:29? “We must obey God rather than man!” It was Augustine’s opinion that “God rewarded them for their piety, not for their deceit.We learned in Hebrews 11:23 that faith was a strong commodity in the household of Amram and Jacobed and they didn’t fear the king’s edict. Children were precious and considered as “arrows in the quiver” and a baby boy was born. Since the midwives were ineffective, Pharaoh had given ALL the people authority to kill Hebrew baby boys . . . what a trying time! A plan had to be made. Sometimes we get the idea from the movies that the baby was just pushed out on the Nile River to float in the current and hope for the best. But look at chapter 2, verse 3 – She put the basket among the reeds (those are usually pretty strong and thick along the river banks) and left Miriam to watch. My guess would be that she knew Pharaoh’s daughter bathed in that area and was counting on a compassionate maternal instinct to receive the baby. It worked, plus she got to nurse her own child. Many commentators think Jacobed had him up through his formative preschool years to maybe age 4 or 5. At any rate it was enough time for the young child to bond with his natural parents and his brother and sister and learn their heritage before being returned to Pharaoh’s household where he was given the Egyptian name, Moses. The word means “brought forth” or “drawn out” because “I drew him out of the water.”We learned he was a student, statesman and soldier in that he was highly educated, powerful in speech, nurtured in the court and respected in the land. Dwight L. Moody said about Moses, “He spent the first 40 years thinking he was somebody, the next 40 years learning he was a nobody, and his third 40 years discovering what God can do with a nobody.”At age 40 Moses made a decision. Some may think it was a mid-life crisis questioning, “Who am I? Where do I belong?” But one thing we know for sure, it was a deliberate decision that meant turning his back on the comforts and pleasures available to him. Think of the hurt he knew he had to inflict on his adoptive stepmother in rejecting her . . . this was not an easy thing to do. Was it a hard choice for you to make to become a Christian? Some were almost born into it. They can’t remember when they didn’t go to church and have a Christian influence in their lives. For others of us, it was a counting of the cost in habits, friends, relationships and priorities to choose a life in Christ. But for everyone who has made that decision, we can attest to what we have gained in Christ by accepting His grace and forgiveness . . . and still sometimes wonder, “Why did I wait so long?” But it’s a painful process of surrender for many. Satan doesn’t give up his trophies easily.Well, seething with righteous anger, Moses killed an abusive Egyptian and buried him in the sand. Far from an act of faith, it sprang from an uncontrolled temper. Spiritually speaking, acts committed in the flesh will often try to be hidden in some way. We must learn that spiritual ends are not achieved by carnal means. His intervention was premature.Perhaps Moses expected the people to rally around him, but that didn’t happen. Did you notice in 2:12 that it says, “Glancing this way and that and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian.” So if no one saw it, who told? The man he saved! Were they grateful? NO! Moses was forced to flee to Midian.We studied the circumstances of his marriage to Zipporah, the birth of his son and the 40 years of tending flocks for this father-in-law, Jethro or Reuel. So I want us to think about his years in the desert and what we might observe and apply to our lives from his experience.First of all, when we’ve been driven by fleshly actions, it invariably leads to spiritual dryness. We repent. We wonder if God will ever use us again. The answer to dry times is in the Living Water, Jesus Christ, and in the Spiritual Water, His Word.Isaiah 12:3 “With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.”God is in the business of restoration.Psalm 23 begins, “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures, He leads me beside still waters, He restores my soul.”Secondly, desert times in life promote two things according to Psalm 119: an obedient life. Vs. 67 “Before I was afflicted, I went astray, but now I obey your word.”; and a teachable spirit. Vs. 71 “It is good for me that I was afflicted that I may learn your statutes.”So often we have to learn lessons the hard way.Thirdly, the desert is not a place where God is absent or silent. We may feel He is, but in fact, He is actively caring for us. Whether our desert takes the form of confinement, ill health, a broken romance, loss of job or even the death of a loved one, God’s desire is to see us through. In Deuteronomy 32:10 speaking of the nation Israel, it says, “God found them in a desert land and in the howling waste of a wilderness. He encircled them, He cared for them, He guarded them as the pupil of His eye.”Our desert times peel away the layers of pride so our strengths and weaknesses are exposed as we stand humbly before an awesome God.V. Raymond Edman, in his book Quietness and Confidence, wrote this: “Something painful happened to me. This is how I met it. I was quiet with the Lord for a while and then wrote these words to myself . . . First, He brought me here. It is by His will that I am in this straight place. In this fact I will rest. Next, He will keep me here in His love and give me the grace to behave as His child. Then He will make the trial a blessing, teaching me the lessons He intends for me to learn and working in me the grace He needs to bestow. Last, in His good time He can bring me out again. How and when only He knows. Let me say I am here first by God’s appointment; second, in His keeping; third, under His training; fourth, for His time.”Well, certainly the passage of time, the obscurity, solitude, reflection and discomfort were great teachers to mold a usable vessel for God’s deliverance.It was probably an ordinary day . . . but the sight was extraordinary. A thorn bush on fire, yet not consumed. God called, “Moses! Moses!” Moses removed his shoes and stood on holy ground and hid his face – afraid to look at God. God called – the plan was clear and simple (and not multiple choice). “I will send you to Pharaoh so you may bring my people, the sons of Israel out of Egypt.”Four times Moses offered an excuse as to why he shouldn’t go.Who am I?Who shall I say sent me?What if they don’t believe me?I’m not a good speaker (but he was a pretty fast on the excuses)Who me? I’ll get in a corner, I won’t have all the answers, I’ll look ridiculous. Why do we feel we have to have ALL the answers? It’s true 1 Peter 3:15 says, “always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you for the hope that you have.” But this doesn’t mean we must know everything before we can talk to anyone. We don’t lose respect for people who honestly say, “I don’t know.” We want to have all the answers because of our pride. Moses was saying, “I won’t have all the answers,” – but God was saying, “You’ll have all of Me.” You represent the I AM, you’ll have all My power. Your staff will have power, your hand will turn from clean to leprous and back to clean as a sign, and the waters of the Nile will turn to blood.Face it, Moses – You’re going!Did you ever have your kids push you to the point of exasperation? Vs. 4:13 “But Moses said, “O Lord, please send someone else to do it.” I’m not a good speaker. So the Scripture says, “The anger of the Lord burned against Moses . . . “ Yet gracious God that He is, He let Moses take his brother Aaron to do the talking. That was an accommodation that would have consequences later.Did you ever wonder how Aaron got out of Egypt and into Midian? How hard do you think Moses had to talk to get Aaron to go back? Perhaps you’ve identified with Moses in today’s lesson. Like him, you’ve had to make some hard choices. You’ve made the choice to leave the worldly focus that was represented by Egypt and made a clear commitment to Jesus Christ. Perhaps your Midian desert experience may still be a reality today. But God has reassured you in this lesson – He’s there and He cares.Maybe the old man in the fable was right. We only have a fragment. God sees the embroidered finished piece from the top while we’re still looking at the messy backside. We must reserve judgment on life’s storms and circumstances until we know the whole story of how God is working all things together for those who love Him and are called according to His purpose. (Romans 8:28).Max Lucado comments, “I don’t know where the woodcutter learned his patience. Perhaps from another woodcutter in Galilee. It was that carpenter who said it best, “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.” We should know. He is the Author of our story. And He has already written the final chapter.”Let’s pray. Father, help us not to be people who pray “Please send someone else,” but instead, “Here am I, send me.”In Jesus’ name. Amen. ................
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