Old Testament

Sermon: The King Who Knew Not Joseph
Scripture: Exodus 1:8-22
In this week’s lessons, we learn about the historical setting for the exodus, and see that it is far better to be counted among the righteous lowly who serve the Lord than the pagan great who serve the world’s idols.
Theme: Egypt’s History

Sermon: The King Who Knew Not Joseph
Scripture: Exodus 1:8-22
In this week’s lessons, we learn about the historical setting for the exodus, and see that it is far better to be counted among the righteous lowly who serve the Lord than the pagan great who serve the world’s idols.
Theme: Egypt’s Cultural Condition

Sermon: The King Who Knew Not Joseph
Scripture: Exodus 1:8-22
In this week’s lessons, we learn about the historical setting for the exodus, and see that it is far better to be counted among the righteous lowly who serve the Lord than the pagan great who serve the world’s idols.
Theme: Dating the Exodus

Sermon: The King Who Knew Not Joseph
Scripture: Exodus 1:8-22
In this week’s lessons, we learn about the historical setting for the exodus, and see that it is far better to be counted among the righteous lowly who serve the Lord than the pagan great who serve the world’s idols.
Theme: Sophisticated Yet Cruel

Sermon: The King Who Knew Not Joseph
Scripture: Exodus 1:8-22
In this week’s lessons, we learn about the historical setting for the exodus, and see that it is far better to be counted among the righteous lowly who serve the Lord than the pagan great who serve the world’s idols.
Theme: Trusting the Lord and Doing What Is Right

Moses’ educational background was important, and God gave that to prepare him for the work He had for Moses. Yet it was overshadowed by the education he received in his early years in his home from his slave mother. She taught him about God. We already saw that this was a godly family, and apparently for several generations.

When Moses was forty years old, there came this momentous turning point in his life. We all have turning points in our lives, decisions we make that affect what happens afterward. But it is hard to imagine any turning point in anyone’s life more monumental than what happened with Moses when he threw in his lot with his people and turned his back on the pleasures of Egypt.

We have a tendency, simply because we live in the world and are surrounded by the world’s ideas and ideals, to want to do God’s work in the world’s way, even as Christians. What is the world’s way? Well the world’s way is power, pressure, and money. And so we think that we need to do things that way, too. We need to collect a war chest in order to get our programs through, and we need to get our people elected and put them in positions of government so they can pass laws and force people to do what we think is right. Now there is a place for just laws and they flow from a citizenry who wants to do just things. But the Christian mode of operating is not by money or by power or by politics. Our way of operating is by the Word, teaching it to others, and also by prayer, asking God to bless it.

The last verses of Exodus 2 say, “The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. And God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them” (vv. 23-25). The Bible startles us from time to time by these understatements. God was concerned about them. I’ll say He was! He was about to shake heaven and earth to get them out of Egypt and bring them into their own land

Are you demoralized because of some past failure? You can find yourself thinking, “God can’t use me anymore. I have failed Him.” Well, that’s what the devil would like you to think. And in case you don’t think of it, the devil will put those thoughts into your mind anyway. But listen, it is not true! And Moses is a great example to the contrary. He certainly failed, but it didn’t mean that God couldn’t use him. God came again and he used him greatly. God knows you. He knows you’re only dust. He made you. He’s not surprised that there is failure in you. He knows what you are like. But He also knows what He is able to do through you by Jesus Christ, and that makes the difference.

This week, we are going to look at the battle by which the Jews were freed from their slavery in Egypt. But I want to begin by saying that there is an enormous gulf between the way a secular historian would look at this and the way the Bible does. Secular historians might look at in a variety of ways, of course. Some would be inclined to see history as the acts of great men, and would say, “Well, this is a case of a marvelous leader, a man of great charismatic ability and faith and integrity and vision. And it was through the force of his personality that the people were brought out.” Somebody who is more inclined to think in terms of mass movements of people through the consolidation of the will of a vast number would say, “Well this is a people movement. Here were a vast number who, in this ancient culture, began to get a taste of what freedom was all about. They wouldn’t rest until they really obtained it.” That’s very different from what the Bible says.

Now God said to Moses and his brother that they were to go back and demand again that Pharaoh let the people go. This time they gave Pharaoh a sign. We’re told in Exodus 7 that they did the same sign that God had given to Moses when he was on Horeb on the other side of the Arabian Desert. When they appeared before Pharaoh, Moses had a staff in his hand, a shepherd’s crook, and he was to throw that on the ground. But when he did this and it became a snake, Pharaoh wasn’t very impressed. He probably had seen tricks like that done by his magicians. So he called over his magicians and they did the same thing, but with one very important difference: the snake that had come from the staff of Moses ate up the other snakes. You think that would give anybody pause! But it didn’t give Pharaoh much pause, and he still refused to let the people go. Exodus 7:13 says something that’s going to be repeated again and again in this struggle. It says, “Pharaoh’s heart became hard and he would not listen to them, just as the LORD had said.” Now at this point the plagues begin.

The second plague was an abnormal multiplication of frogs. God told Pharaoh to let His people go, and that if he did not, the Lord would bring a plague of frogs upon the country, in the Nile, in Pharaoh’s palace, in every house, even in their ovens and kneading troughs (Ex. 8:1-4). Aaron stretched out his rod over the Nile, and immediately all the frogs began to multiply and spread across the land.

Now the plagues got worse, with the sixth one being against the bodies of the people. Aaron took soot from a furnace and threw it up into the air. The dust dispersed and created boils on the bodies of the Egyptians. That must have seemed very ironic because one of the things they did in their ancient religion was to take the ashes of an offering and throw it into the air. The people thought they were blessed by these ashes thrown into the air and actually falling upon them. But what they regarded as a blessing is now a curse, and it causes boils to break out upon the people.

No more warnings would be given. The ninth plague came suddenly and without any announcement whatsoever. Darkness descended upon the land, and it lasted for three days. That was the most significant judgment of all in terms of Egyptian religion, because the greatest of all the gods was the sun god Ra, and Pharaoh was considered the incarnation of Ra.

There are some days that stand out above all other days. That is true personally as well as historically. Of all the days that stand out in the minds of the Jewish people, this great day of the Passover and their exodus from Egypt must be above and beyond them all.

Now we come to the tenth plague itself. We’re told about the death of the firstborn at the end of chapter 12, in only two verses (vv. 29-30). They tell us that there was loud wailing in Egypt, and that there was not a house without someone dead. That is a very sober thing.

Yesterday, we said that the exodus teaches us important spiritual lessons. The first was that Israel was also guilty before God. Now there are reasons why the people might have been tempted to think differently. For example, even in the account of the plagues, from the fourth to the ninth plague, we are told that God made a distinction between His people who lived in the land of Goshen and the Egyptians in the rest of the land. This is why when the plagues came upon the Egyptians, it didn’t touch the Israelites. The Hebrews might have concluded that they were not harmed because they were special of themselves and that God would not do anything to judge them.

In our own day, the requirement of faith seems absurd to those who are unbelievers. You talk about salvation through faith in the work of Jesus Christ, something that a man did two thousand years ago, and people think you’re foolish. But this is what God says. He tells us that salvation is in Him and by Him alone. If we believe in Him we are spared, and the judgment passes over us; and if we don’t, we perish.

As Christians read these stories in Exodus, they see parallels to the Christian life. We think of Canaan, the land to which they’re headed, as being a picture of heaven, and the passage through the wilderness representing the pilgrimage of this life. The parallels are not always exact, but certainly they are in this respect: the people were not mature; they had to learn to trust the Lord and see His provision for them. And seeing how God provided for them during those years of wandering is very instructive for us as we go through life as Christians.

After the water at Marah was made sweet for the Israelites to drink, God said, “If you listen carefully to the voice of the LORD your God and do what is right in his eyes, if you pay attention to his commands and keep all his decrees, I will not bring on you any of the diseases I brought on the Egyptians, for I am the LORD who heals you” (15:26). Just as He healed the water, you see, He’s going to heal them.

God had provided food for the Israelites. We are told that they were to gather the manna each morning, just enough for each individual. They couldn’t keep it until the next day because it would spoil. On the sixth day they were to gather a double portion because it wouldn’t be provided on the Sabbath, when they were to rest. There is one other interesting thing about this and it does give us an idea on how we’re to interpret the manna. They were to take an omer of it, put it in a jar, and then put it before the ark of the covenant. Now at this point that is an anachronistic reference because they didn’t yet have the ark or the tabernacle. But later, when these had been constructed, they were to take some and lay it up in the holy place of the tabernacle as a remembrance of what the Lord had done (see Deut. 8:2-3). At the end of this passage from Deuteronomy 8 we see that “man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.”

A fourth parallel is that the manna gathered daily had to be eaten. It was not enough to see it on the ground, appreciate that it arrived that morning, gather it up, and then do nothing else with it. The purpose of the manna was to feed the people, which means they needed to eat it. In the same way, you and I have to do that with the Word of God. Moreover we have to do it bit by bit.

Following this battle, Moses erected an altar. The name he gave to it introduces another name for God: Jehovah Nissi, which means “the LORD is my banner.” The Lord is the banner around which we rally, and who gives the victory.