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Conversing the Kindgom: Satisfaction to Affliction - Exodus 1:8-22

Sermon Preached 06/11/2011 at the Simpson Memorial Church Bathgate

***Podcast***

Last time we focused on setting the scene for a study in Exodus. Looking right back to the call of Abraham out of Ur of Chaldeans we picked up the main theme of sojourning, Abraham’s temporary residence in foreign lands. It turns out that God’s view of temporary and ours seldom line up and God warned Abraham that his offspring would not have a land to call their own for another 400 years. Kind of brings a whole new meaning to the word temporary in God’s Kingdom. As Christians in the Church of Jesus we can relate to Abraham and his life of residence as to be a Christian is to be called out of a life of status quo into a life that is distinctly at odds with the world around us. However, the promise of heaven is to be forever in our hearts just as the Promised Land was for Abraham. ‘No yet’ is the reoccurring theme for Abraham as it is for us. However, as for Abraham and us as we deal with the ‘Not yet’ in life the Lord is always with us sanctifying us through his spirit for righteousness that we might declare his praise.

In the passage that we are to look at today we find the Israelites in Egypt. Joseph is dead and a new king has arisen in Egypt who does not know Joseph. Whilst Joseph, all his brothers and that generation was still alive the Israelites received great favour from the Egyptians having been settled in the best of the land and with God’s blessing upon them they had multiplied exceedingly, filling the land. But it was not just the new king who did not know joseph but the Israelites themselves were beginning to forget who they were and where they had come from. They had gotten comfortable. The land of great blessing, the land of safety was about to become a place of bondage. The Israelites were settling in for the long haul. Feeling safe and secure in the land of Goshen they believed they had found home. They had lost sight of the promises that the Lord had given to Abraham and they were about to get a wake-up call, the wake-up call to end all wake up calls. Their place of satisfaction was about to become a place of affliction.

It is a truth that we must come to accept, either on faith or through hard lessons that if we look for our satisfactions in this life in the end they will turn out to be the source of our affliction. The career driven person who gets fired from their dream job is not just upset but devastated. The romantic who longs to find the ONE becomes more and more disillusioned with each failed relationship. Etc etc. The trouble comes when we say to ourselves “If only... then I will be satisfied.”

I have often caught myself out and perhaps you have too thanking the Lord for the blessing that it is to live in a country with such a great Christian heritage on the one hand and then on the other hand being shocked by the news headlines. The Sectarianism Bill, Redefining Marriage, Stem Cell Research, IVF, Section 5, Sex education in schools, euthanasia, Abortion, sex changes, New age spiritual healing, homosexual ministers. This list quite literally goes on. What is happening to this once morally strongly Christian country? I feel almost a sense of grief towards the UK. Is this right for us to have? What should be our attitude be towards the state of the United Kingdom? As we look at the passage this evening we can observe some striking parallels. We find here four levels of degradation that we can begin to observe here in the UK too and the hope is that as we look we can learn to identify the stages, be more prepared for what the future might bring and discover the encouragement and responses we can have in a world continuing to reject the Lord.

The four points I would like to briefly cover this evening are as follows. Firstly forgotten heritage where the trouble starts; secondly the forgotten heritage leads on to the beginning of fear where the kingdom of God is labelling a threat; thirdly we see the response to the perceived threat as the world looks to suppress the work of God’s Spirit in his Kingdom; and fourthly we discover the depths of human cruelty in the murder of the innocents. As a church we need to consider that we too can so easily fall into these four steps but for the grace of God in our lives and living a life of repentance led by the Holy Spirit towards righteousness.

So let us firstly look at the forgotten heritage. It is interesting that in the previous few verses we read of Joseph’s death and that of his brothers and then that whole generation. The only way that the story of God’s promises and his faithfulness during the time of the famine will reach the next generation is if the previous generation has done a good job of passing on the message. It is a major responsibility of each generation to pass God’s word to the young to the next generation. But this did not happen and the Israelites began to settle and the knowledge and the fear of the Lord diluted with each new generation. There were the Israelites settling in for the long haul when the Lord’s Promised Land lay 100s of miles to the North East. Israel was beginning to forget its heritage.

On the other side we see as we start this passage there has arisen a new king in Egypt who knew not Joseph. It seems almost crazy to imagine. Joseph’s influence on the country of Egypt simply has no equal and his position in the country second only to Pharaoh. He quite literally, single handily, through the Lord’s direction saved the entire nation and surrounding nations from almost certain death. Yet just a generation later and his name is forgotten, with the knowledge un-retained or considered of little worth. So easily forgotten without continued remembrance are the good works of those who have gone before us. The trouble is that the forgetting of Joseph and his good work is just the first of a two-step process that leads to a forgotten heritage. The second we see clearly outline in ch5:2 with the rise of another pharaoh who declared to Moses and Aaron “Who is the Lord that I should obey his voice.” We are to be wary that those who are forget their benefactors will soon forget the ultimate benefactor, the Lord. The Egyptians were quick to forget that the reason they still lived was due to the work of one man Joseph and soon to follow they forgot the God of the Israelites who was the ultimate source of life in the years of famine.

As our country forgets the blessing of the institutes of family and marriage let us not be surprised that they also forget the Lord who instituted the marriage and the family for our blessing. It is a challenge to us that we take seriously the teaching of the upcoming generation that they do not forget the law that they might also not forget the law giver. And so the first point the forgotten heritage.

Secondly we have the beginning of fear and the labelling of the kingdom of God as a threat. God was truly blessing the Israelite nation their numbers were going through the roof. We commented last time that the language in the verse 7 is more akin to describing the multiplication of insects than a group of people. There are so often two responses in this world to God’s blessing. For those close to the kingdom they will rejoice along with the People of God and even acknowledge the hand of the Lord in that situation. The second response is one of suspicion and fear leading to the person taking a defensive position of insecurity. We see this here in the passage as Pharaoh observes the rapid growth of the Israelite nation. He becomes suspicious and fearful of their intentions and from a position of insecurity he looks to defend against that which he refuses to acknowledge. And so he labels the Israelites as a threat and in order to bring all other Egyptian over to his cause he not only labels them a threat but a threat to national security.

This is a pattern that has repeated itself again and again all the way through history. The Israelites and now the Church continually labelled as a threat. And why has this continued to happen again and again. Well I’ll let you into a little secret... Christians are a threat. If we truly live for the Lord with the Spirit of that Lord in our hearts we will shine as lights and we will upset the status quo. We will shine as lights on the things that are hidden away, we will challenge by just being Christians. It is an interesting measure of how Christ like we are and how much we are shining for Jesus when those far from the Kingdom begin to label us a threat. As Christians it is our job to make people non-believers uncomfortable that we might bring them to a state of crisis. The overweight person will not consider a diet until they have had their own personal crisis moment. Similarly the sinner will not be open to receive the good news of the gospel until they have reached their crisis point. As Christians we have all gone through it. We are not Christians because we are good people, we are Christian’s because at some point we have reached that crisis point and confessed ourselves sinner in need of a saviour. The gospel is offensive to unbelievers and when it’s not being offensive we are not doing our job properly. It is Christ in us who challenges the world and refuses to let them sit on the fence and it was Christ among the Israelites as his people that was making Pharaoh and the Egyptians feel very uncomfortable. Similarly in our country today the kingdom of God is making people uncomfortable. Commitment is making people uncomfortable, discipline is making people uncomfortable, self-control is making people uncomfortable and they are withdrawing from it at 100 miles an hour.

This brings us onto the third point the systematic suppression response to the perceived threat of God’s kingdom. Pharaoh has labelled the Israelites a threat and looks to deal wisely with them lest they multiply. I mean, what is worse than having the threat of thousands of Israelites?  Hundreds of thousands of Israelites! And so Pharaoh began taking measures to try and suppress the Israelites. Some have suggested it began with heavy taxes to impoverish the Israelites but all we can know from the text is that somehow Pharaoh managed to inflict them with heavy labour forcing them to build the storage cities of Pithom and Raamses. But instead of suppressing the Israelites the heavy labour caused them to multiply all the more, to the point that the Egyptians were in dread of the sons of Israel. See how what began as a perceived threat has now inflated to such an extent that the Egyptians are in dread. What an incredible process from what seems like a position at the beginning when the majority of Egyptians did not so much as give the Israelites a second thought to now a debilitating sense of dread towards them. And so with the dread of the Israelites before their eyes they suppressed them further in order to make their lives bitter. The Egyptians hope to break their spirits, to ruin their health, to discourage marriage and children, to dissuade them from following the Lord that they might be brought over to worship the Egyptians gods. They were looking to force them to conform! Unfortunately we read later this tactic did have an effect as we read in Joshua 24:14 “put away the gods your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt.” Despite this God’s blessing was still with the Israelites and they continued to multiply much to the annoyance of the Egyptians. So it is God’s presence with the Israelites that began the affliction but in the affliction it was the Lord’s presence that brings about the growth to his glory and praise. As we draw close to the Lord in trials he will draw close to us. 

Fourthly and finally we discover the depths of cruelty of the human heart. This is the last stage in the process and tends to come about because of continued and stubborn none conformance from the church. I think with respect to the Israelites and later the Jews we have a particularly special case because they are the Lords chosen people. But I think I can be confident in saying if as a church here in the UK we rolled over and conformed to the moral challenges persecution would stop. However if we don’t I believe we need to be ready to discover the depth of human sin like the Israelites did as this story continues Verses 15-22.

The Egyptians started to get desperate. They had labelled the Israelites as a threat, specifically their continued multiplication. And they are working themselves into a frenzy of fear and dread because no matter what they do nothing seems to prevent this threat from growing. The treat is beginning to fill their entire vision. They are desperate, but not in the helpless sense but in the sense that they are now willing to condone any course of action if only to remove their dread. And that is exactly what they turn to. They justify to themselves the murdering of the innocents for the greater good. Romans 3:15 “Their feet are swift to shed blood” In this act things have turned from foolish (In the Biblical sense of rejecting the Holy Spirit) to evil.

In Genesis we lean of The enmity between the devil and the seed of the woman. The devil is a murderer and what could delight him more than the death of innocents. We see it here with the Egyptians, we see it with Herod and we see it today with the widespread murder of the unborn. But most of all we saw it with Pilate who after confessing that Jesus was innocent he aligned himself with the devil and had Jesus crucified. The greatest injustice of all time at which point the devil believed he had won but instead Jesus wrought the greatest victory of all time. In his death and resurrection he conquered Satan, sin and death. This means that if we believe in Jesus we have no need to fear those who can kill the body because death no longer has a hold on us.

What we see around us in our country is worrying because we see the foolishness of this world has labelled God’s Kingdom as a threat and they are doing everything in their power to suppress it. We also see that in some areas this has moved on from foolishness and is turning evil where the freedom to choose is valued higher than life. But we should not be afraid to challenge the status quo and in fact we must challenge the foolishness of the world because if not the alternative is to be luke warm. And to take up the challenge is not going to be easy; in fact it’s likely to get messy particularly if this country begins to get desperate about pushing out Christ. We have to choice to make a spiritual stand, and it’s never too late to begin. But let us understand that it will cost us and lets not be surprised if soon in this country that cost will be our life!

Just as I finish I would like to share with you the spark of hope in this section of the story that I have just found fascinating. Something I had never noticed before (till I read a particular commentary). The Hebrew midwives noticed something. They observed the Hebrew people and they saw the extraordinary birth rate and vigour of the Hebrew women. They were managing to give birth before the midwives were even able to get there. And what was their response. Were they threatened, did a sense of dread grow within them. No they saw the blessing and they called it out. This is the Hand of the Lord. In the text we read that they feared the Lord. Well you say to me no big deal they were Hebrew Midwives it’s not that surprising. No it wouldn’t be until we look deeper at the text and realise these we not Hebrew midwives they were midwives to the Hebrew people. These two women were Egyptian! And because they could see the blessing that the Lord was giving the Hebrews they feared the Lord instead of Pharaoh and the Lord bestowed upon them the same blessing that they had called out and identified as the Hand of the Lord. The Lord and blessed them with many children. What and amazing ray of light in the darkness!