Escape from Egypt

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Transcript:

Alright, tonight we’re going to be in Exodus chapter 3 through 13. And fear not, we are not reading through and going verse by verse through 11 chapters. I had a lot of trouble with tonight’s message.

Took me a bigger part of the week than it normally would. And I told Charlie, I said, well there are 11 chapters I’m covering where eyes got big. I said, well that’s the trouble is trying to cut it down.

But as we’re going through these events from the Bible that still shape our world today that we can learn from these historical events, the Exodus is a pretty big one. You know, that time that God led His people out of slavery and led them to the promised land, that’s a pretty big event in biblical history. And it’s not one that I could skip over.

And yet it really starts, I guess actually it starts in chapter 1. The story really gets going in chapter 3 and goes to chapter 13, and then there’s some of their wanderings in the wilderness. And it’s hard to say, okay, here’s just two verses, and we’re going to hone in on those in great detail and talk about the Exodus.

It starts in Exodus chapter 3. It really, like I said before then, in Exodus chapter 1, we see how the descendants of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob were enslaved in Israel after Joseph died. If you remember the whole story that Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers.

We’re going way back now. into slavery by his brothers and he made his way to Egypt where God worked it to where he became second in the kingdom. And then his brothers came to him and it turned out that all that evil that had taken place in Joseph’s life was used by God in order to save the people of Israel, to save them alive from the famine that was going to come.

And so Joseph had his whole family moved to Egypt to escape the famine that was taking place in their promised land. So they came to Egypt, and they were given a part of Egypt to live in. They made themselves at home in the country, and they began to multiply.

And after Joseph died, there’s about a 400-year period between them moving to Egypt. Excuse me, y’all are going to get confused if I don’t get unconfused. Between them moving to Egypt and God leading them out of Egypt, there was a period of over 400 years.

We know it was sometime after Joseph died that the Bible says a Pharaoh rose up who did not know Joseph or his God and decided that these Israelites were a problem. And if they didn’t do something about the Israelites soon, they were going to rise up and take over their country. Because not only were there many, many, many of them, but they were also prosperous.

God had his hand on them and God blessed them. And so this Pharaoh rose up and said, we’re going to enslave the Israelites and we’re going to make sure they feel it. And so somewhere in this 400 year period, they became enslaved.

Was it 100 years after Joseph died? Was it 200? Was it 50 years?

We don’t know exactly. But they were in slavery for some time. They were in slavery for, I mean, honestly, a day in slavery is not a good thing.

A day in slavery is something to avoid. So even if it was a day, it was too long. But we don’t know how long they were enslaved.

But even though they were enslaved, even though they were being worked to death, they were still, their population was growing. Because God had his hand of blessing and protection on Abraham’s descendants just like he promised. And so we see in chapter 2 that a man named Moses, you’ve probably heard of him, was born to a Hebrew slave family right around the time that Pharaoh said, you know what, we need to do something about this Israelite problem, about the Jewish question.

And I preached before on the book of Exodus and really compared Pharaoh to Hitler. And the more I think about it, I think that’s a good comparison. He was determined.

He didn’t have gas chambers, but he was determined he was going to wipe out the Jews. And so he came with his solution to the Jewish problem, which was, we’re going to take all of the male Hebrew children and we’re going to have them slaughter. The girls you can leave alive.

But the men, they didn’t want the Hebrew men rising up and forming an army. So you’re going to slaughter all of those. Well, Moses’ mother found out about it and set him adrift in a basket of reeds on the river only for him to be found and adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter.

And folks, none of this happens by coincidence. None of it happens by coincidence. God’s hand is involved in all of it because God had already chosen Moses and had already planned for him to be a deliverer for his people.

so he’s found by Pharaoh’s daughter in chapter 2 and he’s raised as a prince of Egypt but then we see later on in chapter 2 somewhere along the way he finds out about his heritage maybe he knew all along who he really was and he sees an Egyptian overseer beating a Hebrew slave and that word beating doesn’t necessarily convey to us the horror of what was going on because we use that word so readily in our language today. You know, clean your room or I won’t beat you. It does not mean the same thing.

He was about to kill this slave and Moses intervenes when he sees this Egyptian overseer doing this and he ends up killing him and he’s sent into exile. He’s sent out of the country. He’s sent running for his life.

Many years pass. Forty years pass. Moses was about forty when he went into exile.

And he spent the next forty years of his life in exile with essentially Arab tribes, and he’d married into one. And while he’s there out in the wilderness guarding his father-in-law’s flock of sheep, God suddenly shows up. That’s where we are at the beginning of chapter 3.

And again, I’m not going to read all of this verse by verse because we wouldn’t have time to get through all of it tonight. But it says in chapter 3, verse 1, Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father, the priest of Midian, his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the backside of the desert and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb. And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush, and he looked, and behold, the bush was burned with fire, And the bush was not consumed.

And how do we know that this was a sign from God? Because the bush was on fire and it wasn’t burned up. It was out in the desert.

I can’t imagine that it was lush with vegetation, probably like scrub that you see on the desert floor. It would go up like a Roman candle. And yet he sees this and it’s on fire, but it’s not being burnt.

It’s not being consumed by the fire. And he sees this, and the Lord speaks to him out of the midst of this. Moses sees this weird sight and goes over toward it in verse 3.

And Moses said, I will now turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt. And when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush and said, Moses, Moses, and he said, Here am I. And he said, Draw not nigh hither.

I feel like I am so tongue-tied tonight. Draw not nigh hither. Put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground.

He said, Moses, don’t even walk any closer. Take your shoes off, because you’re standing on holy ground. Moreover, he said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.

And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look on God. so Moses had a healthy fear of God and God spoke to him through this bush because he had a special job lined up for Moses he said in verse 7 the Lord said I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt and I have heard their cry by reason of their task their task masters my goodness I ought to get somebody up here to read this for me for I know their sorrows. He said, I hear the suffering that they’re going through.

I see it. I hear their cries as they’re being abused and oppressed by their masters. And I’ve heard their cries.

I know their sorrows. And I am come down, verse 8, to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land, a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey, unto the place of the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Amorites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites. Now therefore, behold, the cry of the children of Israel has come unto me, and I have seen the oppression wherewith the Egyptians oppressed them.

Come now therefore, and I will send thee unto Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt. That’s where he reveals his plan to Moses, who’s now 80 years old. Hey, I want you to go talk to one of the most powerful rulers on the face of the earth, and I want you to go tell him to let my people go.

Now, Moses obviously has a great fear of God, but he’s got to be wondering how does this work. I’m supposed to go to the ruler of the known world and say I represent the God of slaves, who, by the way, if he’s so powerful, why are his people still slaves? And I’m supposed to demand that he let his free labor go.

I would think I would be a little bit skeptical and probably the rest of us would be too saying God are you sure about this and Moses even said Moses said unto God who am I verse 11 that I should go unto Pharaoh and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt and he said certainly I will be with thee and this shall be a token unto thee that I have sent thee when thou hast brought forth the people out of this out of Egypt ye shall serve God upon this mountain. Moses said who am I who am I to accomplish this task? And his thinking probably is I’ve already been disgraced in Egypt I’ve already been thrown out I’ve been living out here in the desert for 40 years as a nobody herding sheep and you want me to go talk to Pharaoh?

And God said you go ahead and go you go and do what I told you to do and I will strengthen you to do what I told you to do I will be with you he said and just know that once you have accomplished this, basically it’s already done. In God’s economy, it’s already done. He said it, and it’s just a matter of Pharaoh needs to get on board.

It’s already done, and once you’ve set them free, you will come back and you will worship me and serve me on this very mountain. So God calls him out of the burning bush and says, I want you to go liberate the Hebrew people from slavery. So Moses goes back in chapter 4.

He goes back, starting in chapter 4, to Pharaoh and begins to talk to Pharaoh on God’s behalf and says, God said, not just Moses said, but God said, let my people go. And Pharaoh’s response is to laugh at him. Pharaoh’s response is to mock him and to be angry and to say, fine, if you think your God is so powerful, then let’s see how he helps you do this.

We’re not going to provide you with straw anymore to make bricks. You may think, what’s the big deal? You need straw to make bricks.

You know, we used to build stuff out of mud when we were kids. We used to play in the mud because we didn’t know better. And we didn’t have video games then.

We would build stuff out of mud and you know it wouldn’t last. There’s nothing left in my parents’ backyard that I built out of mud that’s still there after all these years. And yet they would build towers and things and walls out of these mud bricks thousands of years ago that are still there. Learned all about this in sixth grade when we studied the Babylonians.

Had to do this for a school project and my mother said never again because it stank up her house. Had to get an aluminum loaf pan and go gather, we didn’t have straw or hay, but we had dead grass in the backyard, and mix that up with the mud and stick it in this aluminum loaf pan and stick it in the oven and bake it at a really high temperature and make a brick, and we all have to bring our bricks to school. You know what?

It crumbled because I’m not an expert brick maker, but it held together a lot better than just the stuff made out of mud. He said, you’ve got to make bricks for my cities, Hebrew slaves. You’ve got to make bricks to build my cities, but we’re not going to provide you with the straw anymore.

You’ve got to work all day on the mud pits, and you’ve got to go at night and glean the straw. So good luck with that. If your God’s so powerful, let’s see how he helps you with this.

So Pharaoh took a very high-minded attitude, very haughty attitude toward God. And just because you said I need to let your people go doesn’t mean I’m going to do it. Don’t you know, God of the slaves, don’t you know that you’re dealing with Pharaoh?

And you all know God wasn’t impressed. God didn’t care. Because Moses came back to Pharaoh and said, you’ve been warned.

You’ve continued to oppress the people. And by the way, the people were mad at Moses now. Because they thought, you’re the one who caused this.

They didn’t realize that it was Pharaoh being so prideful before God. He came back and said, you’ve been warned, and God is about to unleash havoc on your country. And Pharaoh said, I don’t care.

I’m not letting them go. Of course, I’m paraphrasing a lot of this. You can find the story word for word in chapters 3 through 13.

In chapter 7, we see the first plague came that all the water in the country was turned to blood. It was turned to blood. Now, scientists have tried to explain this and say, well, there was a certain kind of algae that is blood red, and I’ve seen evidence of that as well.

You know what? Even if God, let’s just say for a minute, God did use algae to turn all the water in Egypt red. it’s no less a miracle that it happened exactly when God said it would it’s no less a miracle just like when scientists try to say well there’s an underwater ridge under the Red Sea and when the wind blows just at the right angle and just hard enough it can naturally clear this okay maybe that’s true how do you account for it happening right when Moses raised his rod don’t tell me God’s not involved in this stuff but I mean let’s just say for argument that it was algae, what a coincidence, which I don’t believe in, but what a coincidence.

It turned bright red just at the time Moses had said all the water in Egypt is going to turn to blood. But I’m not sure I buy that explanation either because the Bible doesn’t say that the water was like blood. If memory serves, it said it was blood.

And I don’t think it’s any harder for God to turn water into blood than it is for God to make algae where there wasn’t algae before. You know what, He made all of this to start with, and I don’t see any reason limiting what we think he can do. So he turned all the water into blood, and this, as you can imagine, created quite a lot of chaos in Egypt.

But still, Pharaoh said, I’m not going to let him go. And so, the next thing, God sent frogs. Moses warned that there would be frogs, and boy, were there frogs.

What chaos that can create.

a few it’s been a month or two ago we were out doing I was out doing yard work and charla was watching and uh it was when we found the snakes in the backyard the one on the patio that got in the wood pile just creeped me out we were out there and doing all sorts of things and I was already on edge because we’d been finding snakes and snake skin and I don’t like them even if they are that big and we came in the house finally we’d washed the kids after we did our fire pit and we the house and charlis said there was a frog in the house I said how’d the frog get in the house we don’t know but huh he was running from the snake probably was that thunder was that thunder or is there something wrong with the microphone okay I really couldn’t tell there was a frog in the house and that sent us all into panic trying to get the broom and sweep the frog out of the house, get him to, I mean, I didn’t want to hurt him.

I was trying to encourage him to leave on his own of his own free will. And while she’s watching him so we don’t lose him, while I go and get the broom, and it was chaos, and we’re moving all the furniture just between that and the snakes. And I said, boy, we get my turtles here, and we’ll just have a wonderful time with these cold-blooded animals.

And one frog in the house created chaos. Now imagine your whole house being overrun with frogs. You try to back the car out of the driveway and frogs.

You’re running over frogs. Frogs are jumping out of the way. If you can even get into your car.

You open your cookie jar. They’re frogs. They’re just everywhere.

Chaos. Still, Pharaoh said, I’m not letting your people go. So then there were gnats.

Those are irritating, aren’t they? They get in everything. They get in your food.

They just get everywhere. I hate them. And they’re little.

They can go wherever they want to go. And still, Pharaoh said, I’m not letting your people go. So God sent flies.

And flies are even worse than gnats. And I would imagine these are the kind of flies that bite. And the kind of flies that chase you.

Because that just seems like how God would work. And the whole country was overrun by flies. And then the flies died.

Still Pharaoh said, and by the way, dead frogs and dead gnats and bloody water and dead flies. I’m enough of a germaphobe. I’m giving Moses whatever he wants at that point.

But Pharaoh is so stubborn and so hard-hearted toward God that he says, No, I’m not going to let your people go. And so God sent another plague and all the livestock died. Dead animals everywhere.

All the Egyptians’ livestock died. And of course, I’m sure there were more flies and more pestilence and more disease. Still, Pharaoh said no. Now, that’s a pretty big hit to the economy.

They had a livestock-based economy, very much unlike what we have today. I know we have a lot of agriculture and livestock in this area. But imagine if God got mad at America and turned all the oil into water.

what would our economy do? everything would plummet that’s basically what would have happened to Egypt he hit the Egyptians right where they lived still Pharaoh said no I’m not going to let them go so God said okay I’ll deal with each of you personally and they developed boils I’ve never had a boil but I understand they’re very painful and everybody to be covered with boils from head to toe, the whole country, and still Pharaoh says, no, no, no, I’m not going to let them go. So God sent locusts.

Now growing up, I thought locusts were just the cute, weird-looking little bug that leave their shells behind. They eat everything, though. See, the reason they were interesting when I was growing up is because we didn’t, we had a garden, but we didn’t rely on crops to survive, And we might have one or two at a time.

They had millions. And they swarmed in and they would eat everything. Suddenly, so not only is everybody afflicted with boils and there’s dead stuff everywhere.

And the economy’s come to a grinding halt. But there’s nothing to eat. I’ve been counting calories a little bit today and I’m already cranky.

Amen? Imagine the desperate situation when nobody in the country has anything to eat. Imagine that today if suddenly the grocery store shelves were empty and we don’t can like people used to.

It becomes a desperate situation very quickly because the locusts have come and eaten everything. And still Pharaoh, no concern at all for his people. At this point it has become a, it’s become personal between him and God.

And he says, no, I will not let your people go. And so God brought darkness over the nation of Egypt for days. Darkness.

You say, what’s the big deal? They live in the desert. You’d think it’d be nice to have a respite from the hot blazing sun.

They worship the sun god. He was the chief of their deities in ancient Egypt. So it’s like God’s saying, you’re really counting on Ra to protect you here?

You’re still sacrificing to the gods of Egypt? You worship the sun? All right, no sun for you.

Let’s see who really is powerful. And there was darkness in Egypt for days. And still Pharaoh said, I’m not going to let your people go.

And he’s digging in his heels further. And God says, okay, one more, one more. I’ve given you nine chances.

Look at this and say, how harsh God is. No, God gave him nine chances before he says, I’m really going to dig in and mess your country up. They were warned that the firstborn of Egypt would die.

That God would send the angel of death and every Hebrew household that took the blood of a lamb and marked it over the doorframe would be saved. It’s like that old song that we don’t see nearly enough anymore in churches. When I see the blood, I will pass over you.

Or I will pass, I will pass over you. That if they would kill a lamb and they would put the blood over the doorframe, they would be saved. The Hebrews did it, the Egyptians did not.

And so every firstborn in Egypt died that night, including the son of Pharaoh. And there went up such a great cry out of Egypt, went up such a great cry out of Egypt in chapters 11 and 12, that Pharaoh finally broken like he should have been before God in the first place, said, fine, God, get out of my country. Get out of my country.

And so we see in chapter 12 where God led them out. And God led them to make sure they went in the right direction, to make sure that they knew that God was with them. He led them with a pillar of fire by night and a pillar of cloud by day so that they could see the presence of God and know that he was with them and know the direction that they were supposed to go to follow him.

He led them out through the desert with these visible signs. And even when Pharaoh decided, hey, I think I want them back, maybe I was a little too hasty. Look at all of the free labor they took and look at all the wealth that they took with them.

Because see, the Egyptians, when Pharaoh said go, the Egyptians said, here, we will give you our jewels, we’ll give you our gold, we’ll give you provisions, whatever, just get out of our country. And Pharaoh says, look at all that they’ve taken with them. And look at the hit to our prestige.

Look at how the other countries laugh at us now. Pharaoh still just couldn’t let go. And he sent his army after him, after the Israelites, after the Hebrews.

And God, in one final act of deliverance, final in this story anyway, the people of Israel were caught with their faces to the Red Sea and their backs to the Egyptian army. And it was not the last time that somebody would come along and threaten to drive the Israelites into the sea.

and faced with that do we die at the hands of the Egyptians or do we die of drowning we have no options here God stepped in told Moses to raise his arms and God parted the Red Sea and the people crossed on dry land and God held back the Egyptian army while they crossed as if to give them one more chance hey back off don’t do this but when the Israelites were across then God stopped holding back the Egyptians and because they were determined not to let God’s people go they charged into the Red Sea after them and God took his hand off the waters and ground Pharaoh’s army and just as Moses had said to his people, to God’s people you shall see these Egyptians no more forever them. They were gone. And the Israelites were free.

They were finally and completely free on the other side of the sea, away from Egypt. Now this next to the cross is probably the most dramatic story of deliverance in the entire Bible. The most dramatic time that God said, I’m going to set my people free.

I’m going to let my people go. So how does this affect our world today? First of all, we can learn from Pharaoh’s bad example.

You can learn from a good example. You can learn from a bad example. We can learn from Pharaoh that, hey, you may think you’re going to stand against what God wants to do, and you may stand against him for a little bit, but eventually God is going to thwart the prideful.

Those who stand in God’s way are. . .

Folks, God’s going to have his way in the long run. Either way, God’s going to have his way. I’m convinced Satan probably thought he had won when he got Adam and Eve to eat the fruit in the garden.

But he didn’t win because God already had a plan in mind. See, God’s plan has always been to redeem a people to himself. As I believe the book of Titus says, a people unto himself zealous for good works.

People who would love him by choice. And he already had a plan in mind to do that. Satan might have put a little kink in the plan, but he couldn’t stop God from getting what he wanted.

And so we need to remember that, you know, we can try to, we can try to ignore God’s plans in our life. We can try to run from God. We can try to argue with God, but we’re better off just giving in and surrendering to God and realizing that ultimately he’s going to have his way, The easy way or the hard way for us.

And second of all, we can learn from this that it’s a picture of God’s deliverance of his people. God has from the beginning delivered his people and God still to this day delivers his people. Now it doesn’t always look like this.

It’s not always in earthly terms where, hey, something bad’s going to happen. And he saves us from it. He rescues us from it.

Sometimes he does. Sometimes he lets us walk through the difficult circumstances too without rescuing us from them. But when he does that, he’s usually to rescue us from something that could be worse.

But God is a God who delivers his people. Everyone sitting in this room tonight who’s a born-again believer has been rescued by God out of our greatest problem that we face, which is the problem of sin, which has the greatest consequences of any problem we face, meaning eternity separated from God in the fires of hell. And God has delivered us.

He’s rescued us from that. He’s plucked us up out of the suffering that we would endure. And He’s delivered us into His kingdom.

Up to and including the cross, God continues to deliver His people today. And I find it very interesting that this is not the only instance in Scripture when a firstborn died to bring deliverance to God’s people. But you know what the next time it happened?

The next time it happened, it was God giving up his son for the deliverance of his people. And the pain and the anguish that the people of Egypt went through pales in comparison to what it cost God to purchase our deliverance at the cross. You start reading the Old Testament and looking for Jesus in there, he’s in there all over the place.

His fingerprints are all over the Old Testament, and there are so many signs in there that point to him. So how do we respond to the lessons that we can learn? Because again, I tell you this every time.

I don’t want this series just to be a bunch of history lessons about stories that happen. I want us to look at it and say, what can we learn and what do we do about it? The biggest thing that we can do is to trust God to deliver us.

And when he says it’s time for us to be free, then it’s time for us to be free. We need to obey him and follow him and trust him. When God says, you’re free, we need to believe it.

The people of Israel didn’t believe it at first when God sent Moses to say, you’re free. And when things got just a little bit harder before they got easier, the people turned against Moses and probably had turned against God too. We’re not free, we’re worse off.

No, God said, you’re free. It’s just a matter of time. It’s just a matter of Pharaoh getting on board with it, but it’s already done.

You’re free. you know what we see the same thing in our in our Christian lives God says we’ve been set free from sin we’ve been set free from death and yet we don’t seem to get the memo sometimes we think why you know we find ourselves living defeated we find ourselves living like we’re still slaves to sin and God already told us sin should have no more dominion over you you’re free Jesus Christ you’ve been purchased You’ve been bought with a price. Jesus paid the price of our redemption and we are slaves to nobody but God.

We’re free. We need to remember it. We need to believe it.

And we need to act like it. That when God says you’re free, don’t let the world and don’t let your circumstances convince you of anything to the contrary. When God says you’re free, you’re free.

He’ll make sure of it.