8/21/22 Exodus 1:8-2:10 “You Are Living a Chain of Events”

19 Aug 8/21/22 Exodus 1:8-2:10 “You Are Living a Chain of Events”

8/21/22     Exodus 1:8-2:10    “You Are Living a Chain of Events”

I think that I can safely say that this is the time of year that many of us dread.  Some of us dread it because this is the wind down time for the summer.  It seems that summer just gets started and then we find that it is over.  It is time to come home from the lake.  It is a time when vacations are over.  Other people don’t like this time of year because school will be starting again.  Grade schools, high schools and colleges will all start new terms in the very near future.  For many young people, it will be the going back to a system of regimentation, rules and studying.  I can remember when I was young and going to school, I thought that there was no rhyme nor reason for some of the rules and some of the subjects that we were required to study.  Fifty some years later I can not only see their validity, but maybe we should even have more of some of these things.  It seems to me that some of the best things we get in life come after a period of hardship or stress.  This includes education.  Today, we are going to look at the birth of one of the most revered figures in the Jewish faith, Moses.  Let’s watch closely and see if we can see the workings of God in this passage and our lives.

Dave Phaneuf tells the story of a mother putting her 4-year-old daughter to bed one evening.  The trouble was that the child was afraid of the dark and on this occasion the mother was also afraid because her husband was away.

The mother lay with the child after she put out the lights so that they could really comfort each other even though the mother would say she was doing this mainly for the child.  As they lay in the dark looking out the window, the child got a nice look at the moon in the sky.  “Mommy,” she asked, “is the moon God’s light?”  “Yes,” the mother said.

Now comes the good part when the child asked, “Will God put out his light and go to sleep?”  The mother replied, “No, dear, God never goes to sleep.”  Then, out of the wonderfully simple faith of a child, the little girl gave her mother more reassurance than she could ever want.  “Well,” she said, “as long as God is awake, there is no sense in both of us staying awake.”  And she fell asleep.

There is so much theology in this simple statement by a child that we could talk about it for weeks.  But I want to tie this in with our reading so this is the direction I want to go today.  We all have dark times in life.  Maybe you are in one of your darkest hours right now.  We all have them and we will probably have some more.  We find that Moses was born into one of these dark times and praise the Lord that He supplied people to help out this tiny infant.
I would like to start today by telling some of the ways that God provides for us that we may not even notice.  Let’s begin by looking at the times of Moses.  It was sometime prior to this Joseph had been one of the leaders of Egypt.  He did many great things but unfortunately for Moses these things were done about 400 years prior to his birth.  This would be kind of like if we expected things to remain the same from about 1600 to today.  It just doesn’t happen.  Things change in this amount of time.

We don’t know for sure but Joseph may have left a legacy in Egypt because he was such a good man.  But he and his brothers finally died as we all do.  Things went along smoothly for the Jewish people after this because of the notoriety of Joseph.  Finally, somewhere along the line the family of kings of Egypt was wiped out.  Then a new royal family came along who knew nothing of the events that took place in the time of Joseph.  This shouldn’t be too surprising if we take a look at all the kings who ruled Judah and Israel in the Old Testament.  If you remember there were all kinds of treachery going on and many royal families paid the price with their lives.  In those days, it wasn’t good enough just to kill the king.  The whole family and extended family had to be killed.  This is what happened in Egypt.

During these 400 years, the Jewish people went from a few families of the brothers of Joseph to a people numbering over a million.  The new king of Egypt didn’t like this because they were a threat to his throne.  So, the first thing the king does is he enslaves the Jews.  This way he keeps them under his thumb so to speak.  But they still keep multiplying and multiplying.

Then he decides that he will have all the male babies killed at birth.  So, he calls in the two head midwives and tells them to do it.  Something happens; it might be a God moment, where these two decide that they cannot kill innocent babies.

I just want to stop here for a moment and point out something.  What the king asked these midwives to do was atrocious.  They were to let the babies be born and then kill them.  If they didn’t, they would be killed themselves.  These were a couple of brave women who were following God and disobeying the King or Pharoah.  Today we have what they call partial birth abortions.  This so-called medical procedure is pretty much the same as what the ancients were doing or trying to do.  Only we are much more diabolical because it is our choice to do this.  We have the choice to kill our babies or keep them.  Now I don’t know about you but I find this to be a repulsive act.  God will not help us to stick around as a nation; He will not continue to bless this nation when we are so totally against the ways of God.

So, the king of Egypt finds out that this plan isn’t working so he comes up with another.  He will send out soldiers to find baby boys and they will throw them into the Nile where they will drown.  I think that the cruelty of some of these ancient rulers was almost beyond comprehension.

The mother of Moses has this baby and she knows full well what could happen to him.  She is able to hide Moses for a while but finally the heat gets to be too much and she makes a basket and floats him onto the Nile.  Moses’ sister kept an eye on the baby and finally the daughter of the Pharaoh finds the baby and rescues him.  Through some nifty talking, the Pharaoh’s daughter decides to find a nurse to help her raise this boy.  Wouldn’t you know it that the nurse ends up being the real mother of Moses.

I have read in places that this is just a story and it couldn’t have happened this way.  There are just too many twists and turns for this to be true.  All I can say about that is these critics have never really lived life.  I’m sure that each of you has a life story that makes it almost unbelievable that you are here.  The most amazing story that I have is that I am here being a pastor.  That is an unbelievable story but here I am.  Too many of these so-called experts rely too much on evidence and science that they forget who we are talking about.  This is the story of God and how He works.  In the process of telling this story we really find out that God can and will do anything to further His Kingdom.

The reason that I am dwelling so much on the history of the Jewish people is that I want you to see how God works.  This story starts back with that rascal Jacob.  Then we have all the trials of Joseph and he finally is put into a position where he can help his family.  Then the people stay in Egypt and they are enslaved.  God decides that Moses will be the person to lead them out of their slavery.  But first Moses has to survive being a baby.  This is no easy task but with God anything and everything is possible.  Do you see God’s hand in all of this?  God is working through every twist and turn of this story.  And the result is unbelievable.  But that’s who God is.

So, what in the world does this have to do with us?  I say that God has a plan for each and every one of us.  It is a plan that dates back from before the time of Jacob.  You know that I like to talk about God moments in our lives for this past week.  I would like you to think back to some of the God moments in your life.  Many of us remember something that happened when we were kids that change how we looked at things.  Some of us had a big God moment when we got married.  For some of us it was something else or many other things where God had His hand in shaping our lives.

For me and I think this is for everyone, I didn’t realize what God had been doing for me until after I came to know Him personally.  In college I had a dream or more like a vision that I would be standing in front of crowds of people talking about Jesus Christ.  God has given me a glimpse of heaven.  He did many, many other things for me as He prepared me for this very day.  However, I knew nothing of it until I came to know Jesus.  Only then was I able to connect some of the dots where Jesus had been working in my life.  I’m sure that many of you have very similar stories.

I think with a little reflecting we are able to see how God has always been working in our lives even when we don’t know about it.  Look at Moses.  Look at all that God did for him and he was just a baby.  He didn’t remember any of it.  He does the same thing for us.  If you don’t know Jesus then you are a baby just like Moses was when this happened.  Confess to Jesus and ask Him into your life and your eyes will be opened.  Your life will make a huge change for the better.  God has a great plan for each of us.  All that has to happen is that you accept Jesus.

The other thing I wanted to point out in this passage or from the whole story is that God will prevail over evil all the time.  In the story of Jacob and the story of Joseph we see evil all over the place.  Jacob was full of evil.  Joseph’s brothers were full of evil.  Joseph ends up in the pagan nation of Egypt where there were lots of evil.  But God was not to be out done and He had an answer each time evil arose.  Unfortunately for us, God’s timing is a little different from ours.  Jacob was a man before he wrestled with God.  The brothers of Joseph had to wait something like 13 years to find out that they never killed Joseph.  The descendants of all these patriarchs had to wait more than 400 years before God led them out of slavery.  They were slaves for many years and it would take that long before they would be led to the Promised Land.  They would have to suffer greatly before God would come to save them through Moses.

We have troubles in our lives.  You have trouble in your life as do I.  I would like you to think of some of the troubles you have had in the past.  I would like you to examine how you came out of them.  I would like you to think of all the things that had to line up in order for anything to happen.  I would almost be willing to bet, if I wasn’t a good Methodist, that some of the solutions came from your parent’s teachings which came from their parent’s teachings.  In other words, God had been working for years and years to solve one little problem that you have had today.  And then people try to say that there is no God when He is present all the time and everywhere and throughout time.

God is always there answering you but He answers in His own time according to the needs of His Kingdom.  He protects you as only He can do.  Soon we will be at the beginning of another season of activities in our churches and schools.  One of the most important services that we provide is our Sunday school.  This is one of the places where we will be planting God’s seed for an event that may happen 100 years from now.  This is how important our church is.

This is how important everything that you do is.  You will not see the fruits of most of your labor for Jesus.  Often times you get to thinking that there are so many people in the world that it really doesn’t matter what you do anyway.  This is very wrong because what you tell or show a son or daughter or grandson or granddaughter today, may have profound consequences to some person who is not even born yet.  I think that the chain of events that God lets loose is fascinating.  They are fascinating and you are a part of it, a big part of it!

Jerry Shirley tells the story of 5 young men who went west to live in California.  Eventually they all came back and 4 of them had changed for the worse, morally.  The 5^th young man came back stronger than when he left.  Someone asked him how he survived the moral onslaught out there and came back a better person that when he left.  He told them that he carried a picture with him that carried him through.  They asked if it was a picture of his girlfriend.  “No,” he said, “it was a picture of the last supper I had with my family before I left.”  His family was deeply saddened that he was going.  So, after this supper they all gathered and the father read from the Bible as was their custom.  The father got so choked up that the mother had to finish the reading.  Then the father led them in prayer and once again he couldn’t finish as the tears ran down his face.  The mother finished the prayer by saying, “dear God, thank you that our boy can leave our home chaste and clean and pure…dear God, bring him back as clean and pure as he is today.”  That is the picture the boy carried with him to California.  He said, “How could I disappoint my mom and dad who had done so much for me, and more importantly, how could I let down my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.”

When we do good things for our families or friends in the name of Jesus, something will happen that is good.  I don’t know when it will happen but it will happen.  God works all the time and God works for you.  Go to Him with anything and everything.  He loves you so much that He will always answer.  And thank you, Jesus, for first loving us.  Let’s pray.