I. Four Ways of Reading Exodus 00:00
Well, Lord, we just lift up today to you. We lift up our praises, we lift up our lives. We trust you, God, in the midst of the chaos, in the midst of the difficulty, in the midst of the brokenness. We declare today, by coming here, that we trust you. So, Lord, guide the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart. May they be always acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our strength and our redeemer (Ps 19.14). Amen.
Today I wanted to start off on a little journey with you all, into a place completely different from where we’re at in the lectionary. I’ve been praying about this for quite some time, and I have the series in mind. I think it came from a couple of sources. One of them was this amazing sermon that we got from Father Jim a while back, where he pointed out that Moses striking the rock and bringing forth the waters of life is actually a symbol of what we’re called to do for the world. It’s important to remember that, to keep that in mind. We get all these teachings and these sermons, and sometimes they can resonate so strongly. But then we get into the world and we do our thing, and a few months later we’ve forgotten the lessons that we learned. But that just started to stir something in me.
The whole Exodus story has always been taught as a microcosm, a certain historical example, of what our life is called to be. There are actually four ways of reading the book of Exodus that are traditionally talked about. You can read it as the history of the people of Israel, God’s chosen people, enslaved and redeemed and brought out. That’s what exodus means: to be brought out of something, to exit something, out of slavery and towards the promised land. You can read it as a prefiguring of Christ. That’s how Moses is referred to in the New Testament: Moses was a type of Christ. He came and he brought his people out of slavery and led them to the promised land. You can read it as a historical prediction of what the church is doing in this day and age: the church is God’s chosen people, bringing people from exile, from slavery, to the promised land of the kingdom of God, which Jesus taught us to pray to bring to earth. Or you can read it, in a very similar vein, as an individual’s journey out of the lands of darkness, of death, of slavery to sin, into the light of the kingdom of God, the salvation of Christ.
Now, we’re going to kind of mix a lot of those as we go through this story. But I titled my sermon “The Book of Exodus: Let’s Get Out of Egypt,” because I’m tired of living under tyranny myself. I don’t know about you, but I wasn’t built to live enslaved in this world. I was built to live free. We just sang today that Jesus gave us the authority, that miracles should happen, that we can actually speak words of life into situations of death. And last week Father Jimmy preached that the snare is broken. So why are we living as if we’re trapped? Why are we living as if we are burdened down and enslaved?
Well, like the book of Exodus shows us, it’s actually not an instantaneous thing. God can declare your freedom and then walk you through forty years in the desert to bring you to the promised land. And so I hope as we go through this story we take life and courage. We see the similarities between our situation and the people of God back then, because God’s been doing the same thing for six thousand years. He’s been taking his people out of slavery and into the promised land. And that’s all he will ever do. While we live, God will always be taking us out of slavery and into his promised land. So take heart this morning as we journey into the tyranny of Egypt some six thousand years ago.
II. From the Garden to One Family 03:29
So let’s talk about how we got to the book of Exodus. God created the world, and as you all know, the world is no longer as God intended it to be. God created the world as a walled garden, a paradise of fellowship with one another and with him. And yet we, in our brilliance, decided to go a different direction, as humanity often does. Eve ate the fruit. Adam thought that was a great idea; he partook of the fruit too. And as the story goes, we left the walled garden of Eden that God had set up for us.
And ever since then God has been doing everything in his immeasurable power to bring us back to fellowship with one another, fellowship with him. The promised land, the city of Jerusalem, the garden of Eden: all of these things are symbols of that longing in your heart when you look around and you say, “Man, there must be more than this. There is something better.” That longing in your heart has a name. It is the kingdom of God. And God wants to bring that into your life, not just someday when you die and you go to heaven. No, he wants to bring the kingdom of God here in this world, in your life.
So we have this world that needs saving. And how does God… God has this really insane marketing plan. Instead of just writing sky messages out of stars so that people can read it in their own language, or instead of trying to reach everyone in the world at the same time, there is this plan that God has where he’s going to use a family to reach the world. That’s insane. One family. Why doesn’t he use a country? Why doesn’t he use a nation? Well, out of this family he grows his nation. But he starts with the family, and there’s a reason for that. God’s kingdom is built on fathers and mothers raising their children to become good fathers and mothers. That is the kingdom of God encapsulated in its smallest form. And then those fathers and mothers get in fellowship with brothers and sisters, who come together to form the people of Israel. It’s not a legal arrangement. It’s a family, the family of God.
And so he starts with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and then we get to Jacob’s twelve sons, and we get to Joseph. I had the privilege at Saint Michael’s Academy of playing Joseph in the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and that was just a delight. But it was chaos even at the level of one family. You think countries are bad? Take a family with twelve sons competing for their father’s attention. The seed of chaos was already there as God was bringing these people.
III. Joseph, God's Sleeper Agent 07:01
And you might look at the story of Joseph. This guy gets sold into slavery in Egypt. This is how we get to the Exodus story. And God, because he wants to make his name known, allows Joseph to become a slave in Egypt. Egypt’s the big country. Egypt’s the United States of its day. Everybody looks to Egypt to see where the world is going. It’s the military power, it’s the science power, it’s got everything. And God says, “You know, I want to make my name known in the earth, so I’m going to sell one of the members of this special family, my chosen people, into slavery in Egypt.” God doesn’t think the same way we do, guys. I would not have done it that way.
But you know what? He wasn’t finished. Joseph’s like, “All right, I’ve got a good attitude. I learned my Bible lessons growing up. I’m going to serve well.” And he gets promoted to the master of his household as a slave. He’s the best slave there is. And then Potiphar’s wife comes along and seduces him, or tries to. He in his righteousness does the right thing and runs away from the temptress. And yet he gets framed and accused of sexual assault and gets thrown in prison, all because God didn’t think he was influential enough as a slave. So he made him a prisoner, a convicted rapist. He made him the worst of the worst, because God had a bigger plan.
And we’re going to see this pattern. In fact, I would argue that the Exodus story is the template for God’s salvation throughout all eternity. And I’m on good footing, because a lot of other smart people said that too, so I feel really good about it. The point is, God had a plan, and we see it happen.
And not only that: he’s in prison, he interprets a couple of guys’ dreams there, one of them gets to be Pharaoh’s right-hand servant, and he lets Joseph rot for six more months in prison. Can you imagine? The lowest of the low. And finally God says, “Okay, now I can use him. Now I can accomplish my purposes through this guy Joseph.” And he allows him to interpret Pharaoh’s dream (we’re not getting into all the details), and he becomes the number two ruler in all of Egypt and saves the known world from a famine of, at the time, global proportions. I mean, they didn’t know it was a globe yet. But the point is, in that region it was a giant deal. People were dying because they didn’t have food. But Joseph, God’s sleeper agent, God’s inserted person in the leadership of Egypt, saves the world. Remember that God doesn’t think the way we do.
And by doing so, though, the seeds of Exodus were planted. Because you know what happened? Nobody had any money. They bought all the food they could, but they ran out of money. And what happened? Joseph bought their land, and then he bought their lives. And now Egypt has become not only the most powerful country in that area, but everyone who lives there is technically a slave to Pharaoh. That’s going to have some bad repercussions down the road.
I just want to throw this out there: there is a link between government-provided food and housing and slavery. There’s something in us, in our families, that is called to own our land, to take dominion over the earth, to grow in prosperity, and not to be enslaved to the cultures and worldviews and nations of this world. Just a little nugget in there.
So we have this, and for a little bit they’re really happy slaves. They grew and they multiplied. In fact, you’ll see in the first chapter it says they “were fruitful and increased greatly; they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong” (Exod 1.7). Where do we remember those words from? “Fruitful,” “multiply.” Well, that’s what God promised they would do in Genesis. What was God’s first command? “Be fruitful and multiply” (Gen 1.28). So even in slavery, even in tyranny, God is multiplying his people. That’s a little nugget of hope for us today. And let me tell you, Egyptian slavery is a little bit worse than anything we’ve faced, I would argue. God multiplied his people even in their slavery.
IV. A New King Who Did Not Know Joseph 11:48
But you know what? Just like with Joseph, he wasn’t done yet. Instead, something stirred in the hearts of the Egyptians towards these Hebrew people, and that’s where we’re going to start. So Joseph and his family establish themselves in Egypt. They start to become more and more prosperous. They go from being just a family to actually a large enough group of families to be considered a people or a nation. They’re starting to grow in God’s purposes under slavery in Egypt. And now there arose… this is in Exodus chapter 1, verse 8:
8 Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. Exod 1.8
It’s always hard when you have new rulers come in who don’t remember what God has done in the past. It’s always gonna happen. You see it again and again and again. You’re like, “Man, that was a really great king. The next one’s probably gonna ruin everything.” Don’t be afraid when the governments of this world go from something you like to something you hate. This is just a part of the way the world works. Psalm 2 says the rulers plot in vain and the Lord laughs (Ps 2.1–4). So we can hold on to hope even when things aren’t going the way we think they should be going.
So this new king arises. He doesn’t know Joseph. He looks around and goes, “Who are these Hebrews?” which is actually a derogatory term. They said that like “these dirty people,” basically; that’s what it meant. “Who are these people who are not us?” Which, once again, is the way the world works. They look for the other people to vilify. Let’s not participate in that. But he says, “Look at these Hebrews. They’re growing too strong. We need to…” Well, I’ll just read it; it’d be easier.
9 “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. Exod 1.9–14
V. The More They Were Oppressed, the More They Multiplied 13:56
Okay, one more principle in here. This is the way the world works, and this is the way God works: the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread abroad. What does that mean? It’s what we just read in our Gospel lesson today: the first shall be last and the last shall be first. We live in a kingdom that does not count prosperity the way the world counts prosperity.
And let’s remember this too: we’re not just talking about an oppressive government. In this particular case we’re talking about Egypt, a tyranny who owned them as slaves. But you know what’s a far greater tyranny in our life? Sin. The power of sin is what leads to death, and what we fight every day, on top of whatever other systems and tyrannies may be out there, is the power of sin. And the more they were oppressed, the more the tyranny pushed down on them, the more God’s grace abounds. What did Paul say? Where sin abounds, grace abounds all the more (Rom 5.20). What that should be telling us is that there’s actually nothing that man, the world, sin, the devil, anybody can do to us that God cannot use to bless us. What was Joseph’s great line after all of that stuff I talked to you about? His great line was, “What you intended for evil, God used for good” (Gen 50.20).
So as we’re talking about this, we’re making these connections between the tyranny, the slavery, of God’s chosen people… And who are God’s chosen people today, if it’s not clear? The church, without borders, without national identity, the church anywhere and everywhere. God’s chosen people. The more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and were spread abroad. There is nothing we have to fear.
I would say that one of the biggest oppressions going on right now is the one of fear. The way that the enemy is seeking to tyrannize us, seeking to control us, to enslave us, is with fear. In fact, think of the number of safety measures that you have to go through just to get from your house to work nowadays. I’m not saying any of them in particular are bad, but the regulations: “Well, you’ve got to get a COVID test to make sure that you can go to most jobs nowadays. You’ve got to make sure that you’re vaccinated, or double vaccinated, or boosted. You’ve got to make sure that you’re strapped in, that you’re going the speed limit.” While individually there may be good things going on in all of these things, we have to remember that there’s a background. There’s a war, a spiritual war, that is for our hearts. And if we trust in the locks on our doors to save us, we will fall. It is God and his foundation that is our safety, our life, our hope.
That’s why we get so twisted up when something new comes out that we disagree with, some new law or regulation: because somehow we think that that’s the thing that’s going to save us or destroy us ultimately. While we fight tyranny everywhere we can, we can hope in God. There’s nothing that man can do to us. And even though you try your best to keep your kids safe, keep your family safe, keep your financial endeavors secure, we always have to come back to a place of trust and not fear. That’s more of an individual audit. You’ve got to ask yourself, “Am I doing this because I’m scared, or am I doing this because I’m trying to be wise and walk in the way of the Lord?” That’s something I ask myself all the time. Trust me, I get scared plenty, and I have to apologize to Haley: “Yeah, Haley, I probably did that because I was scared of something.” This story tells me that even in slavery we have nothing to fear.
VI. Tyranny Goes After the Fathers and the Mothers 18:32
Then the king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives… You see, this little family that started with Joseph and his eleven brothers has now grown to a people that scares Egypt. And he said, “Okay, we’re just going to work them to death. We’re going to make them our slaves. We’re going to use their force for us.” But they keep multiplying. God’s blessings keep multiplying on them. And he’s so scared now that he’s taking another measure.
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.” Exod 1.15–16
What is this about? This is a whole new level. He’s now going after their children. But you know what? He’s not just going after their children. What he’s going after is their fathers and their mothers. Tyranny will always go after the fathers and the mothers. Because by killing the men, who then never become fathers, he is depriving them of having that family unit that the kingdom of God is built on. And he is taking away from the mother. He’s taking away her child. He’s forcing her to give up her child.
In our culture you can so clearly see the war against fathers and mothers. I’m not going to spend a ton of time here, because I don’t want to open Pandora’s box. But you just have to open your eyes to see every new thing that is getting pushed by progressive ideology. “Let’s go, we’re going to progress forward!” What a great name. Every new policy, every new attempt, is to steal our fathers and our mothers away, whether that’s homosexuality or transgender. You know what transgender is? It’s just making yourself unable to have kids and miserable. That’s the bottom of what you get with transgenderism. They promise freedom, and they make it so you can’t be a father or a mother, what you’re called to be, whether you’re a biological father or mother or not.
I’ll make that exception. There are people who are called to dedicate their lives to raising the church, to being a father and mother in the church, to ministries. But most of us are called to be a father and a mother, biologically or to adopt, to create that family unit. That’s the kingdom of God.
And so where is our culture hitting? Homosexuality, transgenderism. Not only that, they’re going after the kids. That’s the secret behind everything: while they’re attacking the father and mother, the kids are the ones suffering. In a way we can become callous: “What do I care if that 24-year-old man decides that he wants to change gender? That’s not my problem.” But who is suffering in our culture from the lack of fathers and mothers? It’s the children. Single-parent households are higher than ever before. Not to mention the fact that there are declining birth rates around the world. There’s a crisis right now because of one thing: our culture does not realize that our greatest resource is humanity. Period. And where do you get humans? Children. Even if they don’t seem like it at times. I feel like I’m raising an animal, but eventually they become humans. No, they are humans. But you get what I’m saying. There’s a real sense of the value of humanity, and that’s what tyranny assaults.
That’s what’s happening in Egypt: humans are being dehumanized. They’re being called Hebrews instead of men and women. They’re being dehumanized, and then they’re being enslaved and slaughtered. That’s what tyrannies do. That’s what sin does. Sin enslaves you, and then it kills you. That’s the greatest tyranny we’re all fighting. But that’s what tyrannies do worldwide. They enslave you and then they kill you. Those they can’t enslave, they kill.
VII. The War for Our Children 22:00
So what’s going on here? Well, let me just say one more thing about the value of children. You guys probably remember the classic film that I can’t rightly recommend from the pulpit, Talladega Nights. It is just a piece of cinema history. There’s this great moment in that film where Ricky Bobby tells everyone at the table that he’s going to pray to sweet Lord baby Jesus. And from that moment on he defends it: “Well, I like my Jesus as the sweet baby Jesus.”
And there’s something in us that laughs, because it’s kinda true. Don’t you love the sweet baby Jesus when Christmas comes? That is the joy, the wonder. What is important about baby Jesus? He represents the most important resource in the entire world, the most valuable thing in the entire world, which is our offspring, our kids. There’s a reason that we need to be going to war for our children right now, and I don’t think that language is out of proportion to the situation we’re in.
There’s a reason I’m enrolling my son Rowan at Saint Michael’s Christian Academy this year: because there is a war for our children right now. And thanks, sweet Lord baby Jesus, we have a place to send them. There is something that we can do to protect our kids, and that is we can raise them in the knowledge and love of God. Sure, I want them to learn math and reading and all the other things that they need to learn. But more than anything I want them to know the love of God, because we’re in a world at war, and basic training is required to survive.
You need to know who your Father is, your spiritual, heavenly Father. You need to know the love of God. You need to know that the snare in your life is broken, that the power of sin and death has been triumphed over by Jesus Christ, that you have the freedom to be joyful, to live a life of building the kingdom, to build a family that is not divisive and burdensome but is full of joy and life and light. You need to know that to survive in this world. And so that’s what fathers and mothers bring to their children. And that’s why the tyranny of sin and death is out to get not only the fathers and mothers, but ultimately the children. But God has a plan. The next two points are all about God’s plan.
VIII. The Midwives Feared God 24:27
So we move on here. Pharaoh tells the midwives to kill the children. I mean, Pharaoh really doesn’t understand how women work, or midwives work, if he thinks that they’re going to be the ones going around slaughtering babies. Why do you become a midwife? Because you love children. You want to bring life into the world. But they also feared God. They knew who God was.
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?” Exod 1.17–18
That is a powerful statement, because you know who’s scary? The king of Egypt. He is scary. He has the power of life and death over these women, and yet they feared God more. That’s a lesson for us today. How many times do we kowtow to the government or the culture because we fear the government or the culture, and yet we forget that we should be more afraid of God?
I love their excuse:
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.” Exod 1.19
You can imagine: what is Pharaoh thinking? “They’re just like, ‘Oh, sorry, midwife, I don’t need you’?” This is a crazy idea that the midwives are trying to sell to Pharaoh. But God has mercy on them and spares them and blinds Pharaoh. I don’t know what his wife said at that point. But the point is, God dealt well with the midwives, and the people once again multiplied and grew very strong. And because the midwives feared God, what did he do? He gave them families (Exod 1.20–21). He made them mothers. So not only is God going to redeem and save the fathers and mothers of Israel, but anybody who wants to be on that bus is welcome to come along. Anybody who wants to do it God’s way can be blessed with the same blessing. He makes them mothers.
Then Pharaoh commands his people:
22 “Every son that is born to the Hebrews you shall cast into the Nile, but you shall let every daughter live.” Exod 1.22
And so the slaughtering of the innocents happens. And what happens here is that Pharaoh writes the doom of Egypt with this proclamation. It’s really fascinating, because we are so certain that the people who are evil and big and powerful get away with it, and that is just not true. It’s even in the Psalms. It’s a refrain: “How long shall the wicked prosper? How long, O God?” Well, we find in this story: not that long, in the grand scheme of things. By the killing of the innocents he dooms Egypt in this story.
IX. A Fine Child 27:46
So what does God do to save the world? First he raises up mothers, and the midwives, mothers who will stand for life. They’re a symbol of that. And now he’s going to raise up a father, in chapter 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. Exod 2.1–2
I love the language there, because I’ve seen some ugly babies. What would she have done if he was an ugly baby? I don’t understand. He was a fine child, so she saved him. I’m joking here. But the point is, she was a mother who, like a good mother, is not going to give up her son to the tyrannical forces that are opposed against them. She’s not sending her kid to public school. She’s not giving up her kids to the tyrannical forces that oppose them, that want to eat them, that want to throw them in the Nile. Just a challenge, something to think about.
So she hid him for three months, and she couldn’t hide him any longer, because babies grow. And she put him in a basket and threw him in the river and hoped that he’d be okay. I think that’s sometimes how we tell this story, like she just thrust him in the river and left it to go. I think she was smarter than that. I think she saw, “Oh, Pharaoh’s household bathes right here. If I go this far up the river and put the basket in the water, he might end up floating down to Pharaoh’s household, where he might be saved,” throwing him on the mercy of these women. That’s just my idea. God probably gave her some inspiration there. He’s in all of this. But I think she was smarter than just throwing him in the river. The cartoon makes it seem like she threw him where the crocodiles were and the ships. It’s really dramatic. I don’t think she did that.
But then she sent his sister to run along and keep an eye on the basket, to make sure that her plan went as planned. And by God’s grace one of the princesses of the land picks up the baby and goes, “This is a Hebrew child.” Now, did she just really know how Hebrews looked, or was she wise enough to look: is he circumcised? There’s a marker for the people of Israel. And once again it creates this moment of salvation for this baby, because now she knows, “Okay, I’ve got to find a place for this baby that is safe,” because this baby’s under that law, that edict, to be thrown into the Nile. So the sister comes, and the actual mother of Moses gets to nurse her own child and raise her own child for the early years (Exod 2.3–10). Isn’t that beautiful? God is so good. From “your child’s gonna be thrown into the river” to being paid (the princess pays her) to raise her child for the first couple of years.
X. Drawn Out of the Water 30:49
So what is God doing? God is preparing a savior in the midst of tyranny. And we’re going to end here. In fact, this is the best possible place to end today, because what do we have today? We have a baptism. And what is the symbolism as Moses is put onto the river and then drawn out of the water? From the earliest days the early church has known that that was a symbol of baptism, a prefiguring. Because just like Jesus, Moses gets baptized first. Just like Jesus, he has his own special baptism. And then when all of Israel gets saved out of Egypt, where do they go? They go through the waters of baptism. You’ll actually see that in our prayer for baptism today: it’s referenced, just like Israel was brought out of Egypt through the waters of baptism.
And what is Egypt? It’s the tyranny of sin and death. And what are we baptized from? We’re baptized from the tyranny of sin and death. What are we baptized to? What did I start with? Father Jimmy’s sermon about how we are called to be Moses to the world, to bring salvation to the world. That’s what baptism is all about. It’s not just saving us from a life of sin and death. It’s saving us to build the kingdom and to save the world.
So as we end this morning, as we think about all the various tyrannies and slaveries that we can submit ourselves to, let’s remember that God is always preparing our salvation. That’s just what he does. The snare’s already broken. The battle is won. We have the authority to now go out and be saviors for the whole world. And we’re going to demonstrate that right now in Hannah Elise Batterton’s life as we baptize her this morning. We’re going to bring her through the waters, out of the tyranny of sin and death, into the kingdom of God. Amen.