My Deliverer

“My Deliverer”

The Old Testament Challenge

FCC – February 5, 2006

Text: Exodus 1-15

Introduction: We are well into the Old Testament Challenge. In four weeks we covered the book of Genesis and now we are ready for the book of Exodus. Remember that we are covering the highpoints of the OT! In Genesis, all you really need to remember is that God created the world, man fell into sin and death, God promised to make a great nation of Abraham, and he continued His covenant love with Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph.

You may remember that God had brought Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to Canaan, the Promised Land. He used circumstances in Joseph’s life to bring the Israelites to Egypt.

Exodus 1:6-7 (NIV) 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.

Joseph had found favor with the Pharoah, but Joseph was dead and buried, and a new King ruled the land. Exodus 1:8-10 (NIV) Then a new king, who did not know about Joseph, came to power in Egypt. "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…" Israel would have their children murdered and become enslaved by the king of Egypt. They would cry out to the Lord as they were in desperate need of a deliverer. This is a theme throughout the Old Testament.

Psalm 18:1-3 (NIV) I love you, O Lord, my strength. The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge. He is my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold. I call to the Lord, who is worthy of praise, and I am saved from my enemies…

Have you ever found yourself in way over your head and needed someone to save you! The children of Israel were in need of a Deliverer! I believe the same God who used Moses to deliver Israel, is standing by to deliver you this morning. I created an acrostic EXODUS to guide us through today’s story. The message is entitled, “My Deliverer.” God’s story today reminds us that first there was an…

Emergency (Ex. 1-2)

The children of Israel were in a dire emergency and in desperate need of a deliverer. What was the nature of the emergency? Exodus 1:11-14 (NIV) 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 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 children of Egypt were enslaved by a king who didn’t know Joseph. This is a picture of a desperate people in need of deliverance! They had a bitter life, but it gets worse…

Exodus 1:15-17 (NIV) 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." The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do; they let the boys live.

The emergency grows as the king of Egypt orders the midwives to kill the Hebrew boys but they refuge. How about Shiphrah and Puah? They are two of the nsung heroes in the Exodus story. Pharaoh finally became frustrated with the growing Israelite population. Exodus 1:22 (NIV) 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."

You know the story of baby Moses. His mother hid baby Moses in a papyrus basket and placed him in the Nile River. Pharaoh’s daughter finds him among the reeds and takes Moses to be raised in Pharaoh’s court. This is just a foreshadowing of God the deliverer responding to the emergency of His people.

Xtreme call (Exodus 3: 1-10)

God’s people were in a desire emergency, and God the deliverer chose to extend an extreme call to Moses. He was in the desert tending the flocks of his father-in-law Jethro near Horeb, the mountain of God.

Exodus 3:1-8 (NIV) Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the desert and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. There the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. So Moses thought, "I will go over and see this strange sight--why the bush does not burn up." When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, "Moses! Moses!" And Moses said, "Here I am." "Do not come any closer," God said. "Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground." Then he said, "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob." At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God. The Lord said, "I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey….