Saved from Outrage

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Transcript:

We’re going to be in Exodus chapter 2 this morning. Exodus chapter 2. We’ve been going through the book of Exodus, not necessarily verse by verse, but story by story, and looking at really stories of God’s deliverance.

You will find that throughout the Bible. And I think I’ve shared with you that’s what I’ve been working on with my Bible classes, is telling them some stories from the Bible and getting them to a point where they start thinking about how God’s deliverance is shown, how God’s redemption of us is shown through this story. Had them write paragraphs on Tuesday about who their.

. . I said, I want you to answer four things in this paragraph.

I want you to write it out. Who’s your favorite Bible character? Where can we read about them?

What was the most interesting thing that happened to them? And how did God deliver them from a difficult situation? Now, some of them began to answer those questions and just knew right away how God delivered them from a difficult situation.

Somebody wanted to write about Noah. Well, how did God deliver Noah? Well, he didn’t kill him.

He warned him to build an ark, and then he sealed him up in the ark. That was fairly easy. Some others were a little more difficult, and it made them stop and think.

And that was really the point of the exercise. How does this story demonstrate how God delivers or redeems us? Because really that’s the theme throughout the whole Bible.

And Exodus is very open about this because Moses was sent to be a deliverer. And not just sent to be a deliverer, but he was sent by God to be a deliverer on God’s behalf of God’s people. And so we’re looking through these, and I want you to start seeing, hopefully, evidence of God’s deliverance throughout the Bible.

And if we start looking for it in the Bible, we’ll find it more than we’ve ever noticed it before. It’s there. We just need to learn to look for it.

We need to learn that that’s what we’re looking for. And honestly, when we start looking for God’s deliverance in the Bible, we start seeing it in our own lives. We start seeing the way God interacted with his people in the Bible, and I think it teaches us something about how God interacts with us in our own lives.

Sometimes God delivers people from difficult situations. Sometimes God delivers people from difficult situations through a difficult situation. We talked about that last week.

Sometimes he’ll let us go through a difficult situation to deliver us from something worse. The ultimate deliverance that we see in Scripture is God’s deliverance of mankind from our sins through faith in Jesus Christ and what He did on the cross when He shed His blood and died. But we can go from something as simple as an inconvenience, and sometimes God can deliver us from that, to the greatest problem that mankind has ever faced, our sin that we cannot atone for.

And God’s deliverance works there as well. And folks, if you will learn it from the scriptures to start looking for God’s deliverance, you’ll start to see it all around you in your own life. And I can attest to that fact from this week.

We pulled up and Charles said, how many people do you think are going to ask us about this week? I said, probably everybody. We had, as you know, unless you were living under a rock, we had an F2.

I think they finally decided it was an F2 tornado there and more again. And at least one. I’d say there were probably about three or four, but what do I know?

This was my sixth tornado to go through and more. The only one I’ve ever missed was the May 31st of 2013 tornado because I had gone back to Arkansas. Sixth tornado.

This one came on us without any kind of warning whatsoever. It took the newscasters. I don’t know if any of y’all were watching the news at the time.

took the newscasters by surprise. We were watching Channel 5 and others were watching Channel 9, and they were talking about storms out in El Reno, and next thing you know, we’re getting phone calls saying, there’s a tornado on the ground in Moore. Channel 4 picked up on it and let us know before the National Weather Service said anything or before the city sirens went off.

And ran out then to try to open the cellar, and I was actually out in it. I was glad it wasn’t an F5 this time. Because I stood there trying to open the cellar and watched debris swirling over my head.

I guess it was not on the ground at that point. They kind of skip and they kind of move around. And I didn’t come here today to tell you about all my tornado war stories.

But I stood out there in it. And I opened it up and we got the kids out there. And I think, though, by the time we got everybody to the cellar, it was mostly over, but better safe than sorry.

I was actually out in the tornado, hit by a little bit of debris. You know what? I’ve seen and heard stories from the last ones that could have been much worse.

I have no doubt that God’s hand was on me to protect me. There was a young woman who showed up at our door as we were headed out to the cellar. I say showed up at our door.

I should say showed up on the inside of our door. Driving down our street and something hit her car. And she ditched her car and just ran into a house.

Now, that’s pretty brave. or you have to be pretty brave or pretty scared at that point. And comes in, opens the door and says, my name is such and such and I’m coming in.

And my mother says, who are you? I don’t know why you’re announcing your name, but come on, we’re going to the cellar. I said, mom, it’s Oklahoma.

They’re barging into your house. You’re less likely to shoot them if you know their name. That’s why she was introducing herself.

But she came in not knowing we had a cellar out back, but came in anyway. And I have no doubt that God’s protection was on her too, because she stopped at a house that had one. Across the street from Charlotte’s grandparents, the house is just obliterated.

The damage is not as widespread as it has been previous times. And yet where there’s damage, it’s pretty bad. And keep in mind, we had no warning about this.

Everybody’s scrambling to the shelters, headed to the Frady Hole. as the tornado is on top of us. And nobody died.

And people are saying, already we’re hearing, well, why would God allow this to happen? Why would God do this? Folks, nobody died.

I’d say the preservation of life is evidence that God’s hand was upon us. Because even in F2, if you saw it today, what it had done to some of those houses, there are people who should not have walked away from it. I went to the school after it was over, and I had parked one of our vans in not the normal place because when I went to park, we came back from a field trip Wednesday afternoon, brought them back from the field trip and closed school, sent everybody home early because of the weather.

I parked one of the vans in a place it doesn’t normally go because there were kindergarteners offloading off of the bus and I couldn’t pull into the normal space. Where it was parked, there was a box truck right next to it that flipped on its side. We don’t use the box truck.

I don’t think the school even owns it. But it flipped on its side, busted that whole vehicle, and came to rest three inches from the van that we use. I thought we could have been out hundreds if not thousands of dollars that we don’t have if that had destroyed that van.

And it didn’t. I know that’s just a little thing. It’s just money.

But folks, when you start to look for it, you see God’s deliverance and God’s protection all around you. So it was hard for me to complain even in all the chaos that was going on, even with the police having streets blocked off and even with debris everywhere and ruining shoes and having no electricity. It was hard to complain Wednesday night because I was seeing, and I credit going through and starting to look at these stories and knowing what to look for, I was seeing God’s deliverance all around us.

And as I said before when I started off, It can be a matter of a difficult situation that God delivers us from. It can be a life and death situation that God delivers us from. It can be a spiritual life and death situation that God delivers us from.

But folks, God’s deliverance is all around us if we know to look for it. Moses was in so many situations that were tough, that were life or death situations that were difficult, that he could have complained about, he could have sat down and griped and said, I’m done serving God, look at everything I’ve had to go through. And yet, God’s deliverance was all around him, even in the midst of the difficult situation, sometimes through the life and death situations.

We talked about last week, God let him be set adrift on a river, let his mother set him adrift on a river in a basket. And I know she was trying to protect him as best she could, but still, you put a baby in a basket and let him loose on the river, that’s dangerous today. DHS would be after her.

It’s dangerous and yet God let him go through that situation so that he could be picked up out of the marsh and be taken into the royal palace to be a part of the deliverance of Israel. Sometimes through the life and death situations that God delivers us through, he has even greater things planned. I want to look at this third story this morning and see some more things that God delivered Moses from.

He’s setting the stage and everything we’ve looked at in chapters 1 and 2 so far, God has been setting the stage for what the real deliverance was for Israel. And all these stories about Moses, as important as they are, are incidental to God’s overall plan. And we’re going to start in Exodus chapter 2, verse 11.

It says, and it came to pass in those days when Moses was grown, that he went out unto his brethren and looked on their burdens. And he spied an Egyptian smiting and Hebrew one of his brethren. So what’s place in the story.

It says here when Moses was grown, he’s not 18, he’s not 21, he’s 40, according to Stephen in the book of Acts chapter 7. He’s 40 years old. And he goes out from the royal palace one day knowing he’s a Hebrew.

This is one thing I shared with you last week. Growing up watching the Ten Commandments, I always thought that it was something that took Moses by surprise in his later years that he was a Hebrew, that he had no idea. Moses evidently knew all along, Pharaoh’s daughter knew all along that Moses was a Hebrew.

Now was it an open secret throughout the whole kingdom? I doubt it. But Moses had to have known he was Hebrew.

And part of my reason for thinking that, and without going into too much graphic detail, is the fact that Hebrews circumcised their children on the eighth day and Egyptians don’t. Moses throughout his life would have known that he was Hebrew. Not to mention the fact that he was nursed by his own mother.

He was raised by his own mother in Pharaoh’s courts. And when he goes out when he’s 40, he’s not surprised that he’s Hebrew. This evidently is something that he’s known and he was bothered by and he decided to go out and check on his people.

Now imagine walking through the Egyptian work sites, the construction sites, and seeing the Hebrews under such bondage. Remember Pharaoh, I don’t think it’s unfair to compare Pharaoh in this story to Hitler. I get tired of hearing, I listen to a lot of talk radio and a lot of news, and I get tired of hearing, so-and-so’s a Nazi.

Really? No. Okay, they want to cut school lunch programs. It’s not the same as murdering six million Jews.

Get over it. Okay. We throw that word, we throw that terminology around way too much.

But in this case, I don’t think it’s unfair. He’s wanting to exterminate the Jews. If we go back to chapter one, he was worried about the Jews and what they could do to his kingdom.

And so he says, well, we’ll just keep them beaten down by working them hard. And when that didn’t work, he says, okay, we’re going to kill them. He wants to exterminate the Jews.

I don’t think it’s unfair to compare the two. Imagine being Moses and walking through as they are going through this tremendous suffering. They’re not just at hard work.

Pharaoh was not a nice guy. Pharaoh was doing everything he could to crush them individually and as a nation. And imagine for a moment being Moses walking through these construction sites where they are working themselves to death, building monuments to Pharaoh, building cities that are a monument to the man who’s trying to destroy them, and they’re suffering, and they’re being beaten, and they’re being mistreated in just about every way imaginable, and realizing to yourself, whether Pharaoh or anybody else knows it or not, realizing, I’m one of them.

Why them and not me? Can you imagine the guilt that Moses must have felt? Why am I special?

Why did God let me be plucked out of the waters like that? Why did God let me be raised in Pharaoh’s palace? And if you’re a person with any compassion at all, you’ve got to be thinking, how can I alleviate their burden somehow?

How can I make things better for them? If only there was something I could do. He’s looking at their burdens not just for his curiosity.

He’s not one of the what we call rubberneckers who go through the tornado area and clog up traffic because they want to see what they can see. He’s not on a sightseeing tour. He’s looking at their burdens thinking, what can I do to alleviate their suffering?

We know this because of how he reacts when he sees an Egyptian taskmaster beating one of the Hebrew slaves. And it reiterates in verse 11, one of his brethren. He sees this and he knows that whatever he did, he didn’t deserve the beating that he got.

So Moses, it says in verse 12, and he looked this way and that way. And when he saw there was no man, he slew the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. Now, the Bible is fairly quiet on the question of whether what Moses did was right or wrong.

Well, he killed somebody. Isn’t that right? We don’t know all of the circumstances surrounding what was going on.

Did he kill a man who was about to kill one of the Hebrews? Is that murder? He was defending someone else.

This is just my personal opinion. Don’t take this as doctrine. Read it in the scriptures for yourself.

But if I was on the jury, I would acquit Moses. I would say he took a life to save a life. That’s my personal opinion.

But he looked this way and that way, and when he saw there was no man, he slew the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. Well, if he hid the body, he must have known he did something wrong. Not really.

Whether his conscience was clear before God or not, How do you think Pharaoh was going to respond to this? You killed one of my overseers to protect a slave. Guys, knowing what we know about Pharaoh, he’s not somebody, about this Pharaoh in particular, this is not somebody I would want to mess with.

And so he hid the body. He went out a second day, it says. When he went out the second day, behold, two men of the Hebrews strove together, and he said to him that did wrong, Wherefore smidest thou thy fellow?

So he walks out the second day. the day after this happened, and he sees two, and he thinks he’s hidden this, it’s done with, he sees two Hebrew slaves fighting with each other. And one of them was in the wrong and was being violent toward the other one.

And Moses comes to them and asks why he’s doing this. You men are in this together. You’re both Hebrews.

You’re both Israelites. You’re supposed to be on the same side. You’re brothers.

Why are you destroying each other? There’s a common adversary here. Your war is not with each other.

Folks, that’s a good point. I could camp out there for days. Christian brothers and sisters, when we have squabbles, we are not each other’s enemy.

We have a common adversary. And it’s not each other. Why are you doing this to each other?

Stop it. The Egyptians were causing the Hebrews to suffer enough. They didn’t need to be adding to each other’s suffering.

And he says, Why do you smite your brother, your fellow? In verse 14, he said, Who made thee a prince and a judge over us? Well, who indeed?

Who’s God who made Moses to be a ruler and a judge over them? But they didn’t know that yet. Moses didn’t even know that yet.

Who made thee a prince and a judge over us? Intendest thou to kill me as thou killedst the Egyptian? And Moses feared and said, Surely this thing is known.

So when he gets on to the Hebrew who’s victimizing his brother and says, why are you doing this? He said, who made you my boss? Who made you my judge?

What, are you going to kill me like you killed the Egyptian? First of all, no conscience there. You would think you’d hear that and say, you’re right.

What am I doing to my brother? I mean, that would be the reasonable answer. But instead, who made you my boss?

What, are you going to kill me too? Moses immediately began to fear and realized, this is not the secret that I thought it was. Because we know there’s at least, there are at least three people involved in the killing of the, in the story of the killing of the Egyptian.

There’s Moses and there’s the Egyptian. Then there’s the slave he was beating who probably saw the whole thing. He might have gone back to his family that night, to his friends and gathered around the table and said, did you hear what happened today?

Moses came out of nowhere and protected me. He killed the Egyptian who was beating me. Or he could have gone back to his family and said, Did you hear what happened?

That Egyptian got killed and we’re going to get blamed for it. Folks, we don’t know what happened. But what we do know is somebody talked.

Because this slave says, Are you going to kill me just like you killed the Egyptian? And Moses became terrified and rightfully so. Because he realized he’d been found out.

Now when Pharaoh heard this thing, he sought to slay Moses. We’re in verse 15. But Moses fled from the face of Pharaoh and dwelt in the land of Midian.

Pharaoh was so angry he wanted to kill Moses. Now Moses was, even though he was a Hebrew, a member of the royal family. I have to assume that Pharaoh did not at that point know that he was a Hebrew, even though Moses knew, because I doubt that he would still be considered a part of the royal family as he was.

Everything I know about royalty from history says that the belief was that royal blood was sacred. That the royal family was sacred. And sometimes they would kill each other.

But a lot of times in history, somebody would fall out of favor and they’d overthrow somebody else. Well, the other member of the family wouldn’t always be killed. and sometimes they’d be locked away because we’re not going to spill royal blood.

Pharaoh had to be incredibly angry. This is not something that even power-hungry dictators within royal families don’t take lightly the idea of shedding their own family’s blood. Pharaoh had to be incredibly enraged.

In a way, I can’t even imagine feeling that kind of rage. And he sought to slay Moses. Moses didn’t stick around to see what Pharaoh’s verdict was going to be.

Moses knew as soon as he’d been found out that eventually Pharaoh will find out. Rumors have a way of getting back. And eventually Pharaoh’s going to find out and he’s going to be enraged.

And I’m not going to stick around for that to happen. Moses got out of there and went to Midian, which is in modern day Saudi Arabia. And he sat down by a well.

Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters and they came and drew water and filled the troughs to water their father’s flock. And the shepherds came and drove them away, but Moses stood up and helped them and watered their flock. You know, there are a lot of, as we read through the scriptures, there are a lot of irritating shortcomings that Moses has.

And the reason they’re irritating to me is that sometimes they’re the same shortcomings that I have. And it’s easier to pick at them on somebody else than to identify them for ourselves. But there’s a lot to like about Moses, too.

Moses was not a guy who was going to sit back idly while somebody else was being oppressed, while somebody else was being mistreated. Moses wanders through the desert. I don’t even know how many days it would take to get from Egypt to Midian.

But what familiarity we have from the news and other things. We know Egypt is desert. Saudi Arabia is desert.

He was wandering in inhospitable conditions. He wandered through the desert. He came to Midian.

He sits down by a well. He’s tired. He’s thirsty.

He’s exhausted from trekking through the desert all that time. And the seven daughters of the priest of Midian are there to water their flocks. And this group of rowdy shepherds come through and drive the women away.

Send them away so they can reap the rewards of the water that the women drew. But Moses, it says, stood up and helped them and watered their flock. Moses stood up for these women he’d never met before.

They weren’t Hebrews. They weren’t family members. They weren’t people he knew.

But what Moses saw was somebody being mistreated. And he stood up for them. That’s part of being a deliverer.

You know, God delivers us from things that are our fault sometimes. Our sin is our fault, is it not? And yet God delivers it, delivers us from it.

But God also speaks up for the voiceless and the oppressed and the mistreated and tells his people to do the same thing. So Moses helps these women and waters their flock. Verse 18 says, And when they came to Ruel their father, who is elsewhere in the scriptures referred to as Jethro.

So as far as I can tell, these are just two different names for the same person. When they came to Ruel their father, he said, How is it that you are come so soon today? Why are you back so early from watering the sheep?

That sounds like a funny way to say that, watering the sheep. Is that what you do or do you give the sheep water? I’m going to water the sheep so they’ll grow big.

Why are you back so early from giving water to the sheep? And they said, an Egyptian delivered us out of the hand of the shepherds and also drew water enough for us and watered the flock. He said, well, it didn’t take as long today because this Egyptian came out of nowhere and helped us.

And he said unto his daughters, and where is he? Why is it that ye have left the man? Call him that he may eat bread.

Well, where is he now? You didn’t bring him back with you. The man helped you.

Well, first of all, in Middle Eastern culture, then as a lot of times now, hospitality is of the utmost importance. There are still places in this world where hospitality is of the utmost importance. When I first moved to Arkansas, I thought, I’m not going to get out of this state without weighing 400 pounds.

Because you’d go visit somebody at their house, they wouldn’t let you leave without pie or cake or something. I really, I really shouldn’t. No, you’ve got to.

I’m going to be offended. Okay, fine. There are some places you can’t escape from hospitality.

And there are parts of Oklahoma that are that way, too. To not show hospitality is the supreme insult. And not to the guest you refused, but it insults the host. It’s a reproach.

You’re a bad human being if you don’t show hospitality. So he says to his daughters, you didn’t bring him back? Where is he?

Have him come back here so that he can eat with us. And it says in verse 21, they must have gone and gotten him because it says Moses was content to dwell with the man. And he gave Moses Zipporah his daughter.

Now that’s hospitality. it wasn’t just here’s a slice of pie it was here how about a wife I have seven daughters and so he gave zipporah to moses to be his wife and she buried his son and called his name gershom for he said I have been a stranger in a strange land and it came to pass in the process of time that the king of egypt died and the children of israel sighed by reason of the bondage and they cried, and their cry came up unto God by reason of the bondage. Hey, it would be expected that king dies, new king comes on, king is dead, long live the king.

There might be some changes that take place. That’s usually the case, isn’t it, when there’s a new administration? I remember hearing about all the executive orders from Clinton that Bush overturned his first day, and all of Bush’s executive orders that Obama changed on his first day.

Remember I was reading last night an article about the Choctaw chiefs and how one did this and so one came back and said, no, we’re going to change this after we come in. Every time, folks, there’s a regime change, we normally expect some change in the way things happen. It’s not always for the best. Sometimes it changes in the wrong direction.

Well, this appears to have been one of those times. He either continued the previous Pharaoh’s policies or doubled down on them. There was no relief.

So while Moses is away in Midian, Pharaoh dies, new Pharaoh comes on the throne, the new Pharaoh does not let up on God’s people. And they cried out to God, probably from the expectation that maybe with the new guy we’ll get some relief and it doesn’t come. And they became desperate and they cried out to God by reason of the bondage.

And God heard their groaning and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It’s not that God heard them complaining and suddenly remembered, oh yeah, didn’t I make some promises back there? When the Bible says God remembered, it means God purposed to do something about it.

God didn’t say, oh yeah, I forgot. I made these promises. When it says God remembers His promises, it means God said I made these promises and now I’m going to follow through with them.

And God looked upon the children of Israel and God had respect unto them. Now, if you don’t know how the story ends, I’m sorry, you’re just going to have to come back next week. Wait, next week is Easter, isn’t it?

You’re going to have to come back in two weeks and find out the rest of the story. But what we’ve seen through this story is that God used Moses to deliver a Hebrew. Moses got in trouble for it.

God delivered Moses from that trouble. And God is setting the stage here for the deliverance of all of his people. I want to share three things with you.

from this story. And then we’ll be dismissed for the morning. The most dangerous thing that they faced here was Pharaoh’s outrage.

Pharaoh had absolute power. Absolute power is a bad idea. People cannot handle it.

President of the United States does not need absolute unquestioned power. I don’t care who it is. I, I know me.

I’m not a perfect person, but I’m a fairly nice guy. I do not need absolute, unchecked, unquestioned power. Nobody does.

We can’t handle it. Pharaoh had unquestioned, absolute power. Could do whatever he wanted to.

Could wipe out entire nations of people on a whim. So the most dangerous thing faced by Moses and the Israelites here is Pharaoh’s rage. Pharaoh’s temper.

I don’t know why we say temper. Because to have a temper means you temper yourself, you’re calm. To lose your temper means you fly off the handles.

But the way we use it, it was Pharaoh’s temper, his rage. It was the most dangerous, volatile thing at this moment. And God consistently delivered out of the hands of this, can I call him a psychopath?

I’m sorry, you want to annihilate an entire race of people, that word fits pretty well. First of all, God spared Moses from Pharaoh’s rage to save his life. Okay, Pharaoh could have killed Moses.

Think about this. What if Moses hadn’t realized other people knew before Pharaoh found out? As much as I can’t stand the smart mouth who said, what, are you going to kill me too?

Do you think God could have orchestrated that to get Moses out of Egypt? I don’t believe in coincidences. And we know from reading verse 15 that Pharaoh’s response in his rage was to want to kill Moses.

Was Moses the cause of Pharaoh’s rage? Yes, he was. I’m not saying that what Moses did was wrong.

But did Pharaoh have a reason, a cause to be mad at him? Yes, he did. And God could have let him stay there and deal with the consequences.

But God saved his life. God delivered him from Pharaoh. What if Moses had been caught trying to escape?

All sorts of things could have happened. But God opened the ways for Moses to leave. God compelled him to leave out of fear.

And God gave him a place to go where he’d be sheltered and protected. God spared Moses from Pharaoh’s rage in order to save his life. And sometimes God will deliver us from things just for our protection.

Just because he loves us. Now, don’t think from that then that the opposite is true, that, well, if I’m having to go through things and God didn’t deliver me from it, it must mean he doesn’t love me. That’s not true at all.

But sometimes God, just to protect us, delivers us from things that we may have even caused. Other times, he’ll let us go through those things to deliver us from something much worse. Sometimes he’ll let us go through the consequences of our sins so we’ll wake up before it destroys us.

But the point here is that God spared Moses from Pharaoh’s rage to save his life. Second of all, God spared Moses from Pharaoh’s rage to free the Israelites from bondage. God’s plan here always was to free his people from bondage.

Now I’ve asked the question before, why didn’t God just strike Pharaoh down or wipe out the Egyptians? God could have snapped his fingers and freed the Israelites. Why did he send Moses?

Why did all this happen? Well, first of all, Pharaoh made the choices he did. When the Bible says God hardened Pharaoh’s heart, as we’ll see in future chapters, I don’t think that means that God made Pharaoh want to not release the Israelites.

I think Pharaoh was already wanting not to release the Israelites, and God solidified him in the choices he’d already made. But God’s plan was always, I believe, to use Moses to deliver them, to make them free, And I believe because we look at Moses and we see a picture of the deliverer who was to come. We see a picture of Jesus Christ. An imperfect picture.

And I’m not saying Moses was divine in any way, shape, or form. But I’m saying there are parallels through the story that we look for. And even then, God was preparing the people of Israel for the ultimate deliverance through Jesus Christ. He was getting them ready through this story.

There were things about their wandering in the wilderness. There were things about the rock that he struck 

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