Sermon Tone Analysis

The opening books of the Bible contain very much more than an inspired history of events that happened thousands of years ago: they are filled with reminders and illustrations of the great doctrines of our faith which are set forth categorically in the New Testament epistles.

Thus “whatsoever things were written aforetime were written for our learning” (Romans 15:4),

and we lose much if we neglect to study the historical portions of the Old Testament with this fact before us.

This truth from Exodus is the main truth in all of Scripture.

God delivers us from our slavery to dwell with us.

Listen to Peter's words in 1 Peter 3:18

So, Exodus begins to speak to us in our situation.

James addressed his letter to "the twelve tribes scattered among the nations

and in doing so parallels Exodus, for we - the church of Jesus Christ - are the tribes of God's people dispersed in the world.

The corollary of this is that the Exodus people are our ancestors.

Like them, we find ourselves exposed to days of darkness, and we ask the inevitable question, "Why?"

Isaiah remind us that there are no pat answers to our questions.

However, God does provide us with a framework and context which can help us to make some sense of the days of darkness.

Our first sermon in this series took us back to Genesis which is where Exodus actually begins.

This connection helps us to see that God is working out His own schemes, in His own way, on His own time plan, and according to His own wisdom.

We can rest assured that though the days were dark, it was all right, it was all planned, and it will all be well.

These words should have reassured God's people in the day of their doubts that they were in Egypt according to plan.

God had led them down into the land of Egypt, in fact he had accompanied them there.

Plainly, this does not make anything easy, but it does make it right.

Furthermore, if we turn back to Genesis 15, we find another light that plays on the opening scenes of Exodus—it was all planned.

Their experiences may have come as a surprise to the people of God,8 but if this was the case, then it was because—as we might put it—they were not reading their Bibles!

Genesis 15 contains the very clear promise to Abram that God would give him the land in which he was then but a resident alien—but not yet.

There would be an intervening period during which ‘your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and ill-treated four hundred years’ (Gen.

15:13).

The day of darkness was all part of God’s plan to bless the descendants of Abraham—a long day, no doubt, and longer to live through than merely to say or read about.

GOD IS NOT ALWAYS THE CAUSE OF OUR SUFFERING BUT HE IS ALWAYS IN CONTROL OF OUR SUFFERING.

Earthly sufferings may well have taken Israel by surprise (as they do us), but they come as no surprise to the Lord.

The Egyptian experience was all anticipated in Gen. 15:13.

Ramm observes that, ‘God works in the pushes and pulls of history, even though we who live in the midst of history and cannot see the end from the beginning have no way of detecting his work’ (p.

8).

their peace was disturbed thirty years after their settlement in Goshen seems clear from a comparison of Acts 7:6

and Exodus 12:40

in the former we are told they were “evilly entreated four hundred years”, in the latter we are informed that “the sojourning of the children of Israel, who dwelt in Egypt” was “four hundred and thirty years.”

IT WILL ALL BE WELL

Verse 14 of Genesis 15 goes on to make plain that not only was everything just as God had planned it, but it would all come out right in the end for, ‘I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterwards they will come out with great possessions’.

The day of deliverance would eventually dawn when the time of darkness would end and the people would emerge from their enslavement with great wealth.

Genesis 46:4 also speaks of the certain and sure end to the long period of suffering, ‘I will go down to Egypt with you, and I will surely bring you back.’

In each half of that sentence the pronoun ‘I’ should be emphasized.

The people were living under a personal divine undertaking.

All would be well.

Stephen claimed at his trial that Moses ‘received living words to pass on to us’ (Acts 7:38),

and his words apply just as much to us as to his first-century audience.

The gap of thousands of years between the Lord’s word to Moses and Stephen and on to our possession of Holy Scripture means nothing.

There is a contemporary reality about the word of God, so that when we read Exodus we are not just learning of the past, we are learning for the present.

This is a living word for us.

The people of God—we—are still the twelve-tribe-unity scattered in the world, subject to the world’s pressures, enduring the world’s hardships, suffering the world’s sorrows.

We would like an answer to our question, ‘Why?’, but God does not come down to explain himself.

Experiences without explanations—that is what the first chapter of Exodus is all about.

Our only comfort is that God comes to us in the day of darkness and lovingly reassures us that, ‘It is all right, it is all planned and it will all be well.

Several questions naturally suggest themselves at this point.

What was God’s reason for allowing Israel to spend so long a time in Egypt?

Why did He suffer them to be so cruelly treated?

The purpose of God was that the descendants of Abraham should occupy the land of Canaan, which He had given to their father.

But why should an interval of more than four hundred years elapse before this purpose was realized?

To this I think a twofold answer may be returned.

First, to prepare Israel for their inheritance.

The rough schooling they had in Egypt served to develop their muscles and toughen their sinews.

Also, their bitter lot in Egypt and their trials in the wilderness were calculated to make the land that flowed with milk and honey the more appreciated when it became theirs.

Moreover, the land of Canaan was too large for a single family or tribe, and the lengthy sojourn in Egypt gave time for them to develop into a nation that must have numbered fully two millions.

GOD BEHIND THE SCENES

In the middle of the day of darkness there is this as well: secret and ceaseless care.

The people of God are never ‘merely’ gripped in life’s circumstances, they are always gripped in the hand of God (John 10:28–29).

We can trace the evidence for this in the supernatural preservation of the Israelites during their suffering in Egypt.

The facts are quite illogical given the circumstances.

Pharaoh had set his sights on totally destroying the people of God, and, as a oppressive ruler, he set the whole machinery of government and the weight of popular feeling in motion against the Hebrews.

But far from being crushed by all this we read

This is so much against what ‘should’ have happened that we can only account for it by saying that there must be some other factor at work that ensured that the people were not at the mercy of circumstances.

Here we can see evidence of a secret and ceaseless care whereby the Israelites were not only preserved in life but, against all the opposition that was heaped upon them, they went on increasing, flourishing and expanding.

There is a deliberate contrast between verses 10 and 12 which says it all.

Pharaoh’s actions were all taken (lit.)

‘lest they multiply’, but the resulting reality was ‘so they multiplied’.

The same verb expresses the mind of the would-be destroyer and the mind of God, so that in the outcome the measure of oppression became the measure of multiplication.

All through the days of darkness, there is just that one gleam of light, but behind that one gleam of light stood the God of secret and ceaseless care.

Embedded within the structure of this story we see the pervasive hand of God turning events to his purposes.

We see also the irony of the situation—Pharaoh’s plan of genocide include the preservation of daughters but, as things turned out, it was daughters who were its downfall.

INDIVIDUALS IN THE HAND OF GOD

We can see Moses, therefore, as an example of the fact that in Egypt individuals were just as surely in God’s hand and under his secret and ceaseless care as were the whole people.

Moses was threatened by the king but what happened?

Moses’ mother took her son, put him in a little boat and set it down in the shallows of the Nile, and the river was foiled of its prey, and in the process a great god of Egypt was defeated.

It was not just the river but also the royal house that was subordinated to God’s overruling providence.

The very same royal house which had decreed death was made the instrument of life when Pharaoh’s daughter went down to the Nile to bathe (2:5).

She came from a savage and heartless royal family, capable of an edict of genocide, of commanding that babies should be thrown into the river, and yet she was a girl with a tender, maternal heart.

As she was walking along the river bank she saw the little basket among the reeds and when it was opened, there was the baby.

He was crying, and she felt sorry for him (6).

She did not react as her father would have done by saying, ‘A Hebrew boy, throw it in the river!’

No, she felt sorry.

How God in his providence cares for his people.

He subjects all the power of the enemy to his own power.

So, the river cannot capture its prey, and even Pharaoh’s house is changed from destroyer to saviour, but what about the people who were so hostile to their Hebrew neighbours, the third strand in the hierarchy of power in 1:22?

They too were prevented from carrying out the death sentence on the baby Moses.

When Miriam secured Moses’ mother as his nurse, the baby came under a powerful royal protection that no-one could challenge (7–9).

We can well imagine Moses’ mother carrying the baby out and about and being met in the street with, ‘That’s a lovely little girl you have there, Mrs Amram’ (because, of course, sons would not be out on public view) and being able to reply, ‘Oh, no, this is my son, Moses.’

‘Well then, hadn’t you better keep him hidden?’ would have been the obvious response.

‘Certainly not!’ she could say with confidence, ‘He’s the adopted son of Pharaoh’ daughter.

They can’t touch him.’

So … for us?

Pharaoh left the God of the Hebrews out of his reckoning; that was his big mistake, and it can be ours too.

There is something very basic in us that needs life to be logical and is restless and resentful when we cannot see adversity fulfilling some purpose.

Our faith needs to mature if it is to survive the days of darkness that will inevitably come upon us.

The first two chapters of Exodus teach us three qualities of such a faith.

First, it is a trustful faith which rests in the knowledge that underpinning everything that happens to us there is a secret, undeclared providence always at work, always providing, always purposeful, always on the side of the people of God (cf.

Rom.