A New Pharaoh
(Exodus 1)
We have spent the last few months studying the history of God’s people in the Old Testament.
We finally finished the book of Genesis, but the story of God’s plan of redemption has really only just begun.
The Children of Israel are not yet a nation. They are just the 12 sons of Jacob and their families, a few dozen people.
But now as we begin studying the book of Exodus, we see how this small clan of shepherds grew into that mighty nation that would one day bring the Messiah into the world.
God’s chosen nation was born in the midst of slavery and brutality, and we are about to read about how that came to be.
But we are also going to study about two brave women whose names you may have never heard until now. It was their bravery that preserved this infant nation from the schemes of an evil ruler who would have destroyed God’s nation before it even got started.
The text begins by reminding us of how God’s chosen ones found themselves as sojourners in a foreign land.
Let’s read Exodus 1 verses 1-7
These are the names of the sons of Israel (that is, Jacob) who moved to Egypt with their father, each with his family: 2 Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, 3 Issachar, Zebulun, Benjamin, 4 Dan, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher. 5 In all, Jacob had seventy descendants in Egypt, including Joseph, who was already there.
6 In time, Joseph and all of his brothers died, ending that entire generation. 7 But their descendants, the Israelites, had many children and grandchildren. In fact, they multiplied so greatly that they became extremely powerful and filled the land.
So far so good for the Children of Israel. They enjoyed the favor of the Egyptians and their king because of all that mighty Joseph had done to rescue them from the famine, and I suppose that favor continued for a time even after Joseph and his brothers had passed from the scene.
But the people of this world are fickle friends, and the people of God will do well not to depend on the kindness and tolerance of people who do not worship the living God.
This good favor with the people of Egypt was not to last. Let’s read verses 8 through 10.
8 Eventually, a new king came to power in Egypt who knew nothing about Joseph or what he had done. 9 He said to his people, “Look, the people of Israel now outnumber us and are stronger than we are. 10 We must make a plan to keep them from growing even more. If we don’t, and if war breaks out, they will join our enemies and fight against us. Then they will escape from the country.”
An alternate translation of that last line is “they will take over the country.” In all likelihood, that was what this new Pharaoh really feared. He thought the Israelites would become so powerful that they would join forces with Egypt’s enemies and take over, then the Pharaoh would be out.
In our country, Christians have enjoyed freedom for many years. None of us even knows of a time when we were not free to worship and live according to God’s commands. But there have been forces in the culture and the government who have been trying to limit our freedoms for some time, and their plans have been advancing so gradually, we barely even notice.
We now live in a time when Christians can lose their jobs or be publicly ostracized just for speaking the truth from scripture. They have not yet gained the power to limit how we worship, but make no mistake, they are coming for that freedom too, if they get their way.
The Isrealites found themselves under the power of a king who had no memory or regard for all the Lord had done for them through Joseph.
We now find ourselves surrounded by a culture that has no understanding of how Christianity shaped the founding of this nation and served as the moral compass that made us the moral nation we have been.
We have had some serious failures along the way, and we are far from perfect. But everything good and wholesome about America has been because of the influence of Christian principles. But a large portion of our modern culture is prepared to discard that godly foundation, and they think that the rest of the structure will just continue to stand with that foundation swept away.
There may be dark times in our country’s future if they continue to move away from Christian values. It may not come for my generation and those older, but the young people need to prepare themselves for living in a nation that outright commands them to disobey God.
In Egypt, it started with oppression, trying to break the spirit of God’s people. Let’s read on. Verse 11
11 So the Egyptians made the Israelites their slaves. They appointed brutal slave drivers over them, hoping to wear them down with crushing labor. They forced them to build the cities of Pithom and Rameses as supply centers for the king. 12 But the more the Egyptians oppressed them, the more the Israelites multiplied and spread, and the more alarmed the Egyptians became. 13 So the Egyptians worked the people of Israel without mercy. 14 They made their lives bitter, forcing them to mix mortar and make bricks and do all the work in the fields. They were ruthless in all their demands.
The Israelites would have had scarcely any time to worship God the way they wanted to amid all this back-breaking oppression. The goal of the Pharaoh seems to be the demoralization of the people. He wanted to rob them of their identity. You can’t see yourself as people of a mighty nation if you are in chains. But the people continued to multiply, so the Pharaoh was not satisfied with just killing the spirit of the Israelites. He wanted to curb the population itself. That’s where our two courageous heroines come into the story. Verse 15:
15 Then Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, gave this order to the Hebrew midwives, Shiphrah and Puah: 16 “When you help the Hebrew women as they give birth, watch as they deliver. If the baby is a boy, kill him; if it is a girl, let her live.” 17 But because the midwives feared God, they refused to obey the king’s orders. They allowed the boys to live, too.
18 So the king of Egypt called for the midwives. “Why have you done this?” he demanded. “Why have you allowed the boys to live?”
19 “The Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women,” the midwives replied. “They are more vigorous and have their babies so quickly that we cannot get there in time.”
20 So God was good to the midwives, and the Israelites continued to multiply, growing more and more powerful. 21 And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own.
In a time when the redemptive plan of God was in great peril, these two women Shiphrah and Puah defied the order of the evil king. They would not obey his command to kill the Hebrew baby boys. If the Pharaoh’s plan had succeeded, the Nation of Israel would have been destroyed along with God’s plan to send a Savior. But God was never going to let that happen. He worked through these brave women, who endangered their own lives to do the right thing.
They could have looked at how the Hebrews were already suffering as and concluded that God had abandoned them. Just like Joseph could have gave up his faith in God in the midst of all of his troubles. But Joseph knew, and Shiphrah and Puah, knew that God had not deserted them. They knew that God is faithful to his promise, and that even this suffering was part of his plan. They remained true to God through it all. And God blessed them with families of their own.
Will we remain true to God like these brave women, even when our whole way of life seems to have crumbled around us? Will we do the right thing even at great risk to our own lives?
What these women’s courage did was to buy time for the people of God. Because there was a boy child about to be born who would change everything for the nation of Israel. He would have never been born if these Hebrew midwives had obeyed the king’s order.
The king’s next command was to all the Egyptians:
Verse 22
22 Then Pharaoh gave this order to all his people: “Throw every newborn Hebrew boy into the Nile River. But you may let the girls live.”
We don’t know how many Hebrew boys were killed in this mass murder, but we do know that at least one did escape, and that made all the difference for the people of Israel.
Let’s look at Exodus chapter 2 for a preview of our next lesson, and learn how the time that these midwives bought through their defiance of the king changed history.
About this time, a man and woman from the tribe of Levi got married. 2 The woman became pregnant and gave birth to a son. She saw that he was a special baby and kept him hidden for three months. 3 But when she could no longer hide him, she got a basket made of papyrus reeds and waterproofed it with tar and pitch. She put the baby in the basket and laid it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile River. 4 The baby’s sister then stood at a distance, watching to see what would happen to him.
This little baby, spared by the midwives bravery, and by his mother’s craftiness, would grow up to be the great deliverer. He would be 80 years old before he would fulfill his destiny, but now he is just a little baby floating in a basket in the river.
Why was the Pharaoh only interested in killing the boys? Have you ever wondered that?
It’s because by killing a generation of boys, you rob the next generation of their mighty men. And that’s how you destroy a society.
Do we see anything like that happening today? Do we see a culture that degrades and dismisses traditional manliness and masculine virtue? Do we live in a country where the leaders of the popular culture are telling us that masculinity is toxic, and that traditional gender roles need to be dismantled? We know why their doing that, don’t we?
In the last century, when the forces of evil tried to take over the world, a generation of mighty men answered the call, and hundreds of thousands of them gave their lives to defeat this evil. Rows and rows of white crosses and Stars of David stand in Arlington National Cemetery to remind us of their sacrifice.
When that kind of threat rears its head again, where will we be without courageous men?
Where will the church and the Christian family be if a generation of boys are robbed of their manhood by the popular culture?
Time will tell if the people of God allow this attack on manhood to continue.
Pharaoh wasn’t afraid of the women, but the great irony is that it was two brave women who thwarted his plan to exterminate the men. We need both brave women and brave men doing their part to preserve a godly nation.
We trust that God will ultimately deliver us from whatever the Evil One has planned. For the Israelites, God sent them a deliverer in their time of greatest need. And through the nation that he led to freedom, God sent an even greater deliverer, the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth.
He will deliver us even now if we trust him and surrender to him.
And in the end, when the Lord’s patience with this evil world finally runs out, that Deliverer is coming again. He will set all things right, and judging by the way the world is going right now, it seems he could come any day now.
Will you be ready?
