Exodus: Resisting Wrong

Henry Holub

Exodus: Between Familiarity and Freedom • Sermon • Submitted 7 years ago

Exodus 1:8–2:10

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The courage of Shiprhah and Puah are the first act of faith in the Exodus

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Waking up to Slavery

Today we dive into the book of Exodus which is perhaps the most influential book in the Old Testament, with Moses at the center of it all. To call Moses an important person in the story of the bible would be a colossal understatement. Moses is a person who is pointed back to and looked up to throughout both the old and new testament. More important than that, God’s actions through moses, the rescuing of the people from slavery in Egypt, becomes the story through which the people of Israel understand the work of God. Moses name appears 761 times in the old testament. The person of Moses and the rescue of the people from slavery during exodus shapes everything in Jewish thought. This also means that it is the story that Jewish believers in the time of Jesus understand the work of God. Moses is named 81 times in the new testament. In spite of the fact that Moses life had ended centuries upon centuries upon centuries before Jesus birth, the influence of this story has carried forward in a powerful way. In fact, there is a very convincing argument to be made that the Exodus story is the first gospel- the story of God working to bring about freedom and salvation to a group of people who cannot save themselves, and to establish a faithful community from them that is called to live faithfully to God so that the world will notice and be changed- that sounds a whole lot like the life and message of Jesus, doesn’t it? I”ve said several times before that the study of the old testament is extremely important for understanding the new testament. In this case I’ll be more specific- If we want to fully understand the work of God as made clear in the bible, we must understand exodus.

Common English Bible Chapter 1

8 Now a new king came to power in Egypt who didn’t know Joseph. 9 He said to his people, “The Israelite people are now larger in number and stronger than we are. 10 Come on, let’s be smart and deal with them. Otherwise, they will only grow in number. And if war breaks out, they will join our enemies, fight against us, and then escape from the land.”

The book of Exodus opens with an act of forgetting. A new Pharaoh rose to power who did not know Joseph. The word here for know is a word that means way more than simple knowledge or awareness. The fact of the matter here is that this Pharaoh could have well known Joseph’s name and this passage would still be accurate because “know” here means to understand, to be intimately connected to, to remember the value of- When he see’s the family of Joseph, the Hebrew people, he doesn’t remember the God-given wisdom that allowed a nation to survive a drought. He doesn’t realize that it is quite possible that the only reason he is alive and has a country still intact is because of Joseph. Instead he sees a group of outsiders to fear, dangerous people who need to be controlled. Because he views the Hebrew people, these others, these people not like him, through this lens of fear, he cannot see any value in them. The only worth they have to him is as a controllable labor force.

Common English Bible Chapter 1

11 As a result, the Egyptians put foremen of forced work gangs over the Israelites to harass them with hard work. They had to build storage cities named Pithom and Rameses for Pharaoh. 12 But the more they were oppressed, the more they grew and spread, so much so that the Egyptians started to look at the Israelites with disgust and dread. 13 So the Egyptians enslaved the Israelites. 14 They made their lives miserable with hard labor, making mortar and bricks, doing field work, and by forcing them to do all kinds of other cruel work.

Keep them, work them, control them, oppress them, enslave them, manage them. Pharoah’s fear becomes the country’s fear, and the people of God whose ancestors once rescued their region of the world during a crisis are now so loathed that people of the empire would rather see them suffer than succeed, would rather see them enslaved tahn free, would rather see them dead than alive. Can you imagine what it would be like to live each day of your life in the shadow of that type of disdain. How do you live in the face of that kind of hatred? How do you function with that type of constant oppression? How did they even find themselves there? As a people, they had been happy, grazing flocks on the river delta in some of the most fertile land in the region.

This didn’t happen over night.

Instead power shifts, a new leader takes over, people are forgotten, a new vision is cast- one rooted in fear, new policies are made that marginalize a portion of the population. For the Hebrew people in Egypt- they didn’t go to bed one night as shepherds and wake up the next morning as slave labor. An entire nation regressed around them, Old jealousies created new ideology, opportunities dissipated, resources were taken, and the need to survive supplanted any hope to thrive. The went from being the family of Joseph, descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to simply “The Oppressed.” You don’t need a biblical text to tell you the pattern of how this happens. All you need is a history book, or a newspaper. Vs 14 sums up best exactly what their lives looked and felt like at this point- They made their lives miserable. But the question still remains- how do you live in that new world? How do you live that life in miserable setting?

If you are faithful to God, You Resist- ask Shiphrah and Puah

Common English Bible Chapter 1

15 The king of Egypt spoke to two Hebrew midwives named Shiphrah and Puah: 16 “When you are helping the Hebrew women give birth and you see the baby being born, if it’s a boy, kill him. But if it’s a girl, you can let her live.” 17 Now the two midwives respected God so they didn’t obey the Egyptian king’s order. Instead, they let the baby boys live.

18 So the king of Egypt called the two midwives and said to them, “Why are you doing this? Why are you letting the baby boys live?”

19 The two midwives said to Pharaoh, “Because Hebrew women aren’t like Egyptian women. They’re much stronger and give birth before any midwives can get to them.” 20 So God treated the midwives well, and the people kept on multiplying and became very strong. 21 And because the midwives respected God, God gave them households of their own

I hope you catch the gravity of what is happening here not simply in this story, but for the story of God in general and the narrative message of the bible specifically. The beginning of the undoing of Pharaoh, the beginning of the liberation of the Hebrew people, the beginning of the formation of the community of Israel, the first big step from family of promise to nationhood, the first act in a story that repeatedly tells of a God so dedicated to humanity that God will sacrifice far more for them than they ever do for God, that story begins with an act of resistance by two relatively powerless Hebrew women with their own faith in God being the only thing that drives them. The ignore the leader of the earthly kingdom because they love and are faithful to the one of the Heavenly one. By faith they defy a king in order to serve their God. Shiphrah and Puah are the first models of faith that we come across in the Exodus story. And not even a pharaoh is more powerful than their faithfulness. But they aren’t alone in their resistance.

Common English Bible Chapter 1

22 Then Pharaoh gave an order to all his people: “Throw every baby boy born to the Hebrews into the Nile River, but you can let all the girls live.”

Common English Bible Chapter 2

2 Now a man from Levi’s household married a Levite woman. 2 The woman became pregnant and gave birth to a son. She saw that the baby was healthy and beautiful, so she hid him for three months. 3 When she couldn’t hide him any longer, she took a reed basket and sealed it up with black tar. She put the child in the basket and set the basket among the reeds at the riverbank. 4 The baby’s older sister stood watch nearby to see what would happen to him.

5 Pharaoh’s daughter came down to bathe in the river, while her women servants walked along beside the river. She saw the basket among the reeds, and she sent one of her servants to bring it to her. 6 When she opened it, she saw the child. The boy was crying, and she felt sorry for him. She said, “This must be one of the Hebrews’ children.”

7 Then the baby’s sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, “Would you like me to go and find one of the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?”

8 Pharaoh’s daughter agreed, “Yes, do that.” So the girl went and called the child’s mother. 9 Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this child and nurse it for me, and I’ll pay you for your work.” So the woman took the child and nursed it. 10 After the child had grown up, she brought him back to Pharaoh’s daughter, who adopted him as her son. She named him Moses, “because,” she said, “I pulled him out of the water.”

Shiphrah and Puah aren’t getting the job done that pharaoh wants though he buys their version of the story. He decides 4 hands just aren’t enough to do the job he wants done, so he calls on the entire nation. Now it is the responsibility of all people under Pharaoh’s authority, Egyptian and Hebrew alike, to throw Hebrew baby boys into the Nile river. And disobedience to murderous king isn’t exactly an act that leads to a long and happy life, and yet people continue to resist. Moses parents hold out as long as they can, but when they can no longer hide him they “follow the kings orders” and cast Moses into the Nile- though in a way that hopes beyond all hope that something good can still happen. and Moses’ sister goes to watch, hoping in a hopeless situation that something good might happen. And then the Pharaoh's daughter shows up and SHE resists his orders. She could have walked away. She could have ignored the child in the basket. She recognized that he was a Hebrew baby, she could have gone on, and yet she chose to involve herself in the care of one who has been ordered dead by her own father. She sees and then she acts- she didn’t have to be one of the oppressed to be driven by mercy to action. Some things are just wrong- and those things you reject outright. And by her action, the daughter of the pharaoh, not exactly a low-profile figure in the kingdom, shows that resisting the empire is the right thing to do. You don’t have to be one of the oppressed to defend the oppressed.

This story moves forward because of the faithfulness of the powerless and resistence to evil

Deitrich Bonhoeffer understood what it meant to live faithfully to save others. Bonhoeffer was a German Minister in Nazi germany. He could have saved his own neck by simply not involving himself in the resistance against the Nazi policies toward the Jews during the 30’s and 40’s. The temptation not to speak up had to have been great. The ones who spoke out publicly, the ones who resisted, went missing. Why get involved? He wasn’t at risk. But he understood that resistence to the evil of others was what it meant to live in the Kingdom. Quite fittingly, Bonhoeffer once summed up the calling of God this way: “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” Because of his faith, Bonhoeffer sacrificed his life in resistance to Nazi policy because that’s what you do if you’re a follower of God and you see others people, any other people, being treated as if they are anything less than human beings created by the holy creator.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. understood what it meant live faithfully to save others every bit as much as he understood what it meant to live an unwanted member of society. Born in Georgia in the Jim Crow Era, he understood the experience of being a part of a minority population the dominant culture didn’t want as a part of their lives beyond what they could be used for. He understood what it meant to live as a person who others sought to make life miserable for. He also understood the example set by Shiphrah and Puah perhaps better than any of us, certainly better than me, that resisting the wrong policies and actions those with power put in place and carry out is exactly what people of faith do. Because of his faith, Dr King sacrificed his life in resisting a morally-bankrupt system that resulted in people being treated as something less than children of the holy creator.

Jesus the savior understood what it meant to live faithfully faithfully to save others. That even though he’d rather have that cup pass by him, that his own comfort, indeed his very life was worth giving in serving to the resistance, and ultimately the utter defeat, of evil.

If this is who we are, then that is what we do. Do we?

When Christ calls a person, Christ bids the come and die. Shiphrah and Puah were willing to stick their necks out because their faith was more important that their very lives, and so begins the story of the God who brings his people out of Egypt. The ways in which God works to set God’s people free all along the way. Egypt makes that story obvious. God works to set God’s people free. God is always working to set God’s people free.

You’re invited to that way of life...

Embrace that freedom. You’re invited to that way of life...

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