We’re Not in the Promised Land Anymore
September 26, 2021
Preached by Benjamin Vrbicek
Scripture Reading
Exodus 1:1-2:25
1:1 These are the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob, each with his household: 2 Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, 3 Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin, 4 Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher. 5 All the descendants of Jacob were seventy persons; Joseph was already in Egypt.6 Then Joseph died, and all his brothers and all that generation. 7 But the people of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly; they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong, so that the land was filled with them.
8 Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. 9 And he said to his people, “Behold, the people of Israel are too many and too mighty for us. 10 Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and, if war breaks out, they join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.” 11 Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with heavy burdens. They built for Pharaoh store cities, Pithom and Raamses. 12 But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and the more they spread abroad. And the Egyptians were in dread of the people of Israel. 13 So they ruthlessly made the people of Israel work as slaves 14 and made their lives bitter with hard service, in mortar and brick, and in all kinds of work in the field. In all their work they ruthlessly made them work as slaves.
15 Then the king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, 16 “When you serve as midwife to the Hebrew women and see them on the birthstool, if it is a son, you shall kill him, but if it is a daughter, she shall live.” 17 But the midwives feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but let the male children live. 18 So the king of Egypt called the midwives and said to them, “Why have you done this, and let the male children live?” 19 The midwives said to Pharaoh, “Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women, for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them.” 20 So God dealt well with the midwives. And the people multiplied and grew very strong. 21 And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families.22 Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, “Every son that is born to the Hebrews you shall cast into the Nile, but you shall let every daughter live.”
2:1 Now a man from the house of Levi went and took as his wife a Levite woman. 2 The woman conceived and bore a son, and when she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him three months. 3 When she could hide him no longer, she took for him a basket made of bulrushes and daubed it with bitumen and pitch. She put the child in it and placed it among the reeds by the river bank. 4 And his sister stood at a distance to know what would be done to him. 5 Now the daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river, while her young women walked beside the river. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her servant woman, and she took it. 6 When she opened it, she saw the child, and behold, the baby was crying. She took pity on him and said, “This is one of the Hebrews' children.” 7 Then his sister said to Pharaoh's daughter, “Shall I go and call you a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?” 8 And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, “Go.” So the girl went and called the child's mother. 9 And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, “Take this child away and nurse him for me, and I will give you your wages.” So the woman took the child and nursed him. 10 When the child grew older, she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son. She named him Moses, “Because,” she said, “I drew him out of the water.”
11 One day, when Moses had grown up, he went out to his people and looked on their burdens, and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his people. 12 He looked this way and that, and seeing no one, he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. 13 When he went out the next day, behold, two Hebrews were struggling together. And he said to the man in the wrong, “Why do you strike your companion?” 14 He answered, “Who made you a prince and a judge over us? Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?” Then Moses was afraid, and thought, “Surely the thing is known.”15 When Pharaoh heard of it, he sought to kill Moses. But Moses fled from Pharaoh and stayed in the land of Midian. And he sat down by a well.
16 Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters, and they came and drew water and filled the troughs to water their father's flock. 17 The shepherds came and drove them away, but Moses stood up and saved them, and watered their flock. 18 When they came home to their father Reuel, he said, “How is it that you have come home so soon today?” 19 They said, “An Egyptian delivered us out of the hand of the shepherds and even drew water for us and watered the flock.” 20 He said to his daughters, “Then where is he? Why have you left the man? Call him, that he may eat bread.” 21 And Moses was content to dwell with the man, and he gave Moses his daughter Zipporah. 22 She gave birth to a son, and he called his name Gershom, for he said, “I have been a sojourner in a foreign land.”
23 During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. 24 And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. 25 God saw the people of Israel—and God knew.
There’s that famous line in the movie The Wizard of Oz where Dorothy realizes she’s not in Kansas anymore. When we pick up the book of Exodus, God’s people are not in the Promised Land anymore—and they haven’t been there for a long time. And life is not getting hard; it’s been hard. Maybe you can relate. Maybe you’re asking what the Israelites were asking: Does God hear? Does he see? Does he know? Does he care? Let’s pray, and we’ll see this passage’s encouraging answer. “Dear heavenly Father . . .”
Introduction
I could give you a list of the silly things that make me afraid, at least they are silly in the light of the more serious things a person could be afraid of. I’m afraid I’ll accidentally eat a bunch of dairy, which would make me super sick. It wasn’t always that way, but I’m not going to go off track to explain. I’m also afraid of heights. Don’t worry. I’m okay here on the stage; we’re good. But I don’t like being close to edges and lookouts even when I know I’m perfectly safe. I also have an irrational fear of flying insects. As a child, to my knowledge, never was I engulfed by a swarm of bees, but you might suspect I had been to see me run from a bee.
There are other fears, though, more serious ones, I won’t share with you. Probably they are not too fantastical because I suspect they are the sorts of fears we all have. There’s a line in one of Paul’s letters where he says, “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man” (1 Cor. 10:13). I suspect the same is true of fears. No fear, no deep fear anyway, is so bizarre or unique others don’t share the same fear. The fear of being destitute. The fear of losing a spouse or never finding a spouse. The fear of not being known for who you really are. The fear of being known for who you really are. The fear of physical danger and disease and death. No fear overtakes us that is not common to man.
The passage in Exodus before us this morning, as we will often have as we journey through the book of Exodus, is an epic passage, a passage full of fear, none of them silly fears—all of them real. I would put our passage in two halves, though not the halves you might expect: chapter 1 and 2. In the first half, even though it is almost the entire passage, we have the hidden hand of God’s promise-keeping. We don’t see God moving, but he’s moving. In the second half, which is only a few verses, we read of the explicit statement of God’s promise-keeping. But that doesn’t come until the very end of chapter 2.
The Hidden Hand of God’s Promise-Keeping
Let’s talk about the hidden hand of God’s promise-keeping. Probably we can relate well to this because the hidden hand of God’s promise-keeping is how we most often experience God. We long for something more overt, more dramatic—something with more ka-pow. I know the Israelites did. Yet, the opening lines of the book seem to only talk of names and death and life and travel. They lines go like this:
These are the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob, each with his household:Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin, Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher. All the descendants of Jacob were seventy persons; Joseph was already in Egypt. Then Joseph died, and all his brothers and all that generation. But the people of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly; they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong, so that the land was filled with them. (1:1–7)
A modern novelist might say that a good writer should start a story with more flare than a list of names, but note this: Exodus is not so much a new story, so much as a new chapter in the same story. In the Hebrew Bible, the first word in the book is “And.” In other words, all this stuff happened, and then this happened—the Exodus happened.
Speaking of what came before, I should give more context. The name Israel is used in the first sentence in the phrase “the sons of Israel.” (Later in the passage he’s called by his other name, Jacob.) We most often know Israel as a nation, hence Israelites, but first Israel was a person. And God promised Israel, just as God had first promised Israel’s grandfather Abraham, that God would bless Israel and that he would become the father of many, many people (Gen. 35:11–12; 12: 1–3). You see this happening in v. 7. The fact that the people of God are multiplying is evidence of God’s promise-keeping. The author is saying, “You know that thing God promised in Genesis, the promise to make Abraham and Israel into a great nation? Well, he’s keeping his promises.”
But God’s promise-keeping and the size of Israel become problems because, as I said, they ain’t in the Promised Land anymore. Back in Genesis, one of Israel’s sons named Joseph got sent to Egypt where God gave him a position of power, and then, when there was a famine in Egypt, Joseph was able to help his family who all needed food, and that’s how all the brothers mentioned at the start of Exodus got to Egypt.
All is well and good until we read in v. 8 that, “Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.” Nearly 400 years have passed, so probably. And this king, this Pharoah, experiences the promise of God to bless his people and make them great, not as a blessing but a threat. Look how Pharoah phrases it:
Behold, the people of Israel are too many and too mighty for us. Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and, if war breaks out, they join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land. (1:9–10)
Shrewdly? That’s an interesting word, isn’t it? Shrewdly is a euphemism, a nice word for something harsh. That’s often how propaganda goes: You appeal to the fears of the people (in this case, that Israel is a threat to the national security of Egypt), and then you provide the people a solution to the problem you just told them about, and all the while you conveniently benefit from the solution. Propaganda requires enflaming fear before you calm fear. “Maybe Israel will join the enemies of Egypt in a war. Do you want that?” Pharoah says. Maybe, but maybe Pharaoh also needs a cheap labor force. Let’s see what shrewdly really meant.
Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with heavy burdens. They built for Pharaoh store cities, Pithom and Raamses. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and the more they spread abroad. And the Egyptians were in dread of the people of Israel. So they ruthlessly made the people of Israel work as slaves and made their lives bitter with hard service, in mortar and brick, and in all kinds of work in the field. In all their work they ruthlessly made them work as slaves. (1:11–14)
The new king who arose over Egypt did not know Joseph, but he did know how to suppress Joseph’s people. Or he thinks he does. We have to remember Genesis 12:1–3. God promised that whoever blessed Abraham’s family would be blessed, but those who dishonored his family would be cursed. Pharoah, though he doesn’t know it, is preparing to reap the whirlwind.
When slavery isn’t enough to suppress the people of Israel and their growth, Pharoah tries to kill their babies, at least the male babies. Men, Pharoah thinks, will be stronger and more able to rebel and that the women can be kept around because they couldn’t rebel in the same way and were likely good for abuse. Women, so they thought, were of less value. Little does Pharoah know it will be the courage and faith of women that bring him down, or at least what God uses to start the process of bringing him down.
Speaking of women full of faith, two Hebrew midwives in particular are named. Pharoah is not important enough to be named, but these two women, Shiphrah and Puah, “fear God” (v. 17). This means that their reference and their awe and their allegiance to God is stronger than their fear of Pharaoh, even stronger than their fear of losing their lives. Where did this kind of courage come from?
Where does your courage come from? When you have to do something hard for God as a Christian, where does your courage come from? Maybe you’ve committed a sin, and you know you need to confess to someone because you sinned against them, and you are afraid of what will happen. Maybe you’ve been sinned against, and you can’t get over it, and you need to confront someone, and that’s scary. Where do you get your courage? Are some people just more courageous than others?
I doubt anyone in this passage wanted these things to happen in their time. Everyone in this passage is like us in the way we want to choose courage on our own terms, to be brave when we want to, when the odds are in our favor, when we can play to our strengths, when the risk is low. In other words, we want to be courageous when no courage is really required. As teaching pastors at our church, we have to ration the number of times we quote from Lord of the Rings, but I think of that line where Frodo is lamenting the need to destroy the ring in Mordor. The passage reads,
“I wish it need not have happened in my time,” said Frodo. “So do I,” said Gandalf, “and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” (J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring)
I confess that I want to be a courageous pastor at this church, but I want to do it in the battles I get to pick, the ones I know I’m good at. But that’s not courage.
Where did their courage to conquer fear and save babies come from? They believed in the promise of God. In v. 17 we read, “But the midwives feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but let the male children live.” Then we read in v. 20: “So God dealt well with the midwives.” We might paraphrase that by saying God blessed the midwives. Where did their courage come from? They believed in the hidden hand of God to keep his promises, the promise to bless those who bless his people. They feared the Lord, and they took his promises seriously, and they acted in courage.
In v. 22 Pharaoh must tweak his plan. He now commands “all his people” to do the dirty work. Now, you must imagine that just because Pharaoh made this rule—to throw the boys in the Nile—it’s not like mothers and fathers were just like, “Well the law says to do this, so we better do it.” No, a common occurrence in the streets of Israelite ghettos would have been soldiers kicking through doors, followed by screaming and then wailing.[1] Then a mother with empty arms would shake her fists at the heavens and yell, “Does God hear? Does God see? Does he know? Does he care?”
The passage shifts abruptly in chapter 2 and the birth of Moses. I won’t read the passage, but in the first ten verses of chapter 2, Moses is born, hidden, floated on the Nile River in what is described in similar language as the Ark back in Genesis, then he’s found by Pharoah’s daughter, and Moses’s mother becomes the nurse of Moses. More courage by more women. We should feel the irony of this. Right under Pharoah’s nose, though he kept women alive, what happens? A Hebrew sister and a Hebrew mother and an Egyptian daughter of Pharaoh undermine the whole state-sponsored genocide. Even when it doesn’t seem like God’s working, he’s working to keep his promises.
Now, in the next section, Moses is often referred to as a murderer, one who tried to take matters into his own hands. I’m not so sure. Look at vv. 11, 12.
One day, when Moses had grown up, he went out to his people and looked on their burdens, and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his people. He looked this way and that, and seeing no one, he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. (2:11–12)
I tend to think Moses’s intervention was for the cause of justice. Maybe he looked left and right because he wanted to get away with something. Or perhaps, as I think, he looked left and right because he knew someone needed to do something courageous (see Dale Ralph Davis, The Word Became Fresh, chapter 9). When he saw no one else, he jumped in to save the man from being beaten to death, and in the process an Egyptian was killed. We could talk about that more, but it would take us off-field. The pressing issue for Moses was that the rumor traveled fast. The Israelites hear, and Pharaoh knows, so Moses runs away.
I won’t read the next part. I’ll just summarize. Again Moses defends people being mistreated, this time several women. The father of the women wants to meet him. “Wait, some guy just beat back the rough shepherds who were mistreating you, and you didn’t invite him over for dinner?!” So they invite him, and the father gives away one of his daughters in marriage to Moses, and they have a son who Moses names Gershom, which means sojourner. Moses feels like he belongs nowhere. He thought the Hebrews were his people—and they are—but they mocked him. In v. 19 the women Moses rescues call him an Egyptian (v. 19). And then Moses marries a Midianite. So what is he, and who is his son? Sojourners, men without homes, at least for the next forty years.
The Explicit Statement of God’s Promise-Keeping
So that’s how the first thematic half of the passage ends, with a few rays of hope here and there, but on the whole, God’s people continue to be mistreated, and their leader—their guy inside the palace of the king, if that’s what Moses was—well, he’s disappeared to the wilderness, and they don’t know what’s become of him. And the people groan in their fear. Look with me at 2:23.
During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God.
I can sympathize with their groaning. Last weekend was a high-water mark at our church. We had three baptisms and took the Lord’s Supper with three hundred people, had a picnic under the sun. That was Sunday. On Monday I held the hand of a man who loves the Lord and might very soon meet the Lord. Another day I got a series of emergency phone calls that I won’t go into. On several days I talked to different people who are weary. I spoke with others wrestling with outcomes to issues that feel out of their hand but greatly affect their futures. I suspect several of the people were asking if God hears or sees or knows or cares. Have you asked these questions? Look how the passage ends.
And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel – and God knew. (2:24–25)
Does God hear? Does God see? Does he know? Exodus 2:24–25 says he does. But you might say, “Yeah, maybe he does, but he can’t do anything about it. It’s not the thought that counts, God. Do something,” someone might say. Can God do something about your groaning? Well, in the book of Exodus, God is just about to roll up his sleeves.
In the New Testament, we know God to keep his promises because he sent his Son Jesus to be our Savior. The women in the passage didn’t seem like much, but God uses them to undermine Pharaoh and break the chains of slavery. Jesus, in one sense, might not look like much, a lowly Jewish carpenter-turned-rabbi. But his righteous life, his sacrificial death, and his victorious resurrection over sin and death becomes the guarantee of his promise-keeping that he will come again and that he will, one day, make every wrong right and wipe every tear from our eyes. No fear has overcome us except that which is common to all. And no fear has overcome us that the promises of Christ cannot comfort. As Paul writes in Romans 8,
If God is for us, who can be against us? . . . . Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? . . . No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:31–39)
Let’s pray . . .
[1] I was helped on this point by Matt Chandler’s sermon, “Days of Darkness,” The Village Church, Sept. 4, 2016.
Family Discussion Questions
What are some silly things in your life that you fear? What are some serious things?
“How does the failure of Pharoah’s plans to extinguish Israel encourage you as you look at what is happening in the world today?” (Taken from Tim Chester’s commentary on Exodus, page. 17.)
Describe a really hard season in your life and whether—in the moment— you felt God as near to you or far away? Why did he feel near or far? What does Exodus teach us, specifically 2:23–25, about God’s nearness to his people?
God uses people to save his people who are often considered of no importance. How does that theme show up in this story? How does this theme show up in the story of the ultimate Savior, Jesus Christ?
