An Exodus Man/Woman Series

Exodus 1:11-22

So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites and worked them ruthlessly. They made their lives bitter with harsh labor in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their harsh labor the Egyptians worked them ruthlessly. The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah, “When you are helping the Hebrew women during childbirth on the delivery stool, if you see that the baby is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live.” 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.” So God was kind to the midwives and the people increased and became even more numerous. And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own. Then Pharaoh gave this order to all his people: “Every Hebrew boy that is born you must throw into the Nile but let every girl live.”

AN EXODUS MAN/WOMAN

The children of Israel had just come through one of the biggest famines that was seen in that day. If you go back to Genesis, it will tell you how Joseph was the savior of the people then as he accepted his father Jacob and Jacob’s children to be a shelter for them during the famine. Joseph had been earlier thrown into a pit and later sold into slavery by his own brothers. Little did his brothers know that this was the beginning of their salvation. We are now in a place in our text where the children of Israel were thriving. They outnumbered the Egyptians by almost four to one. Many hundreds of years had passed, and Egypt had gone through many Pharaohs and leaders and kings. It is at this time where we come to a place in history where the current king of Egypt did not know Joseph and what Joseph had done. The Jews were plunged into a world of darkness where they were enslaved and afflicted. The Egyptians had forgotten about Joseph and all he had done for their nation and saw his descendants as thorns in their eyes. It was a time in which everything that had been in the time of Joseph was reversed or obliterated. The Israelites were in their first exile. This king was not sympathetic to the children of Israel. He even got bad advice about how susceptible Egypt was to these vile people. He even said that if we let this continue, in terms of the Israelites continuing to grow, that the Egyptians would be run over by them as he felt the Israelites would take the side of the enemy.

According to our account, the midwives’ names, Shiphrah and Puah, were code names for Miriam and Jochebed, Moses’ sister and mother. Shiphrah was Jochebed because Shiphrah means “cared for” and Jochebed used her skills to care for newborns. Puah equals Miriam because Puah means “cry out” – and Miriam would “cry out through the Holy Spirit, ‘my mother will bear a son who will be the savior of Israel.’” A midwife was someone who helped in the delivery children in that era. Sort of like being a nurse who was an OBGYN.

So far, we know that the children of Israel were protected by God. We know that they flourish in this strange land. We know that they knew God. The other thing we know is that the children of Israel is that they adopted some of the practices of their captors, the Egyptians. we know this because of the names that some of the people were given were Egyptian names and not Israeli names. this is what happens my brothers and sisters when we stay in a place that is not sanctioned by God or we start doing some of the things that our captors are doing. we're in a place now where we have to be able to stick out in a world that will beat us up just for being people of God. we're living in a place where we, as Saints of God, can find ourselves captured or captivated by the world and the world society. it is like we are in Egypt right now. how often do you hear Saints of God talk about God as the Bible depicts him? today we see ourselves being overtaken by the world in the world system. Social media, our cell phones have us enslaved to the world. We are captivated by preachers who don't mind preaching about it being OK to be gay or for two men to be married. we hear about the world system where if you say things like “I feel like”, it makes it OK. we hear things about how hatred is OK as long as it is hatred against a certain group of people. I think we're in a world where we have settled into the world system just like in Egypt. the people of Israel became comfortable in this place called Egypt. Nobody tried to go home. No one thought about going back to Jerusalem. No one thought about taking advantage of the wealth they had accumulated to go back to their own home. my brothers and sisters we must get to a place where we don't mind going home which is church. we have to go home which is on our knees. we must go home which is the word of God. we must go to a place where we're not distracted by the world and the world system.