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125: Deliverance
44 Plays27 days ago
This week we enter the Book of Exodus and meet Moses. For hundreds of years, the Israelites have been enslaved in Egypt. Their deliverer is one of their own who was raised in Pharaoh's household and lacked any notable qualifications to lead a revolt. But with God, anything is possible and Moses comes to lead his people to the Promised Land. Take a listen as Pastor Jim Mueller walks us through this time in The Story.
If you’d like to dig deeper, check out these discussion questions. You can complete them on your own, with your Community Group, or with family and friends.
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Transcript
Introduction and Context
00:00:00
Speaker
The following podcast is a Jill Devine Media production.
00:00:20
Speaker
I'm so happy that you chose to hit play on this week's episode of Normal Goes a Long Way. I'm Jill Devine, your host, and this week we are covering chapter four of the story, Deliverance.
00:00:32
Speaker
All right, we are in our series, The Story.
The Bible's Narrative: Creation to Abraham
00:00:35
Speaker
And going back to the beginning of January, I was supposed to lead off with an introduction to the story and kind of like a big overview of the entire Bible and how it's arranged and how it's organized. But we were snowed out, we were snowed home. So that didn't happen. And then we looked at chapter one of The Story, which is a narrative form of the Bible. And so you try to go through the entire story of the Bible, at least the main parts of the story of the Bible. And we started with the creation and the fall, so the story of Adam and Eve. And then we looked at the story of Abraham. And Abraham lived about 2000 BC, so way back in time, 2000 years before Christ. And we looked how God called Abraham and his descendants.
00:01:21
Speaker
ah to be his chosen people and God was going to use this new chosen people to bless the rest of the world to be an example to the rest of the world and to bless the rest of the world and of course Abraham had his greatest trial the greatest trial is that God was going to give him a son even at an old age and wow he and Sarah now had this miracle in their life and then God challenged him and to sacrifice his own son. And I like to think that part of the reason Abraham was called to do that is to take him up to the Mount and just get ready to sacrifice him. And of course, then God says, no no, no, no, no, I don't actually want you to do that. I just wanted to see where your heart is. In a lot of other religions, yes, Abraham, they're sacrificing children. they're But I don't need that. But maybe just for a moment, you felt what I'm gonna feel
00:02:13
Speaker
when I have to give my own son over. And of course, I'm talking about the cross there. So that Abraham moment is such an important part in the story of Israel.
Joseph's Story and Transition to Moses
00:02:23
Speaker
And then last week we looked at the story of Joseph or really the story of Joseph and his brothers, the 12 sons of Jacob. And the story of Joseph happens a few hundred years after Abraham. And today now we're gonna look at the story of Moses because Joseph helped lead the Hebrew people into Egypt. And that went well because Joseph was second in charge over all of Egypt. There was a Pharaoh who who loved him and and who knew that he was faithful. And so this Pharaoh actually trusted in Joseph. So despite the fact that Joseph initially was enslaved when he was in Egypt, God found a way ah to bring him up.
00:03:03
Speaker
and to protect his people. But our story begins today in Exodus chapter one, ah because generations after Joseph's family, ah there was a new king, there was a new Pharaoh in Egypt, and this is where it begins in verse eight.
00:03:20
Speaker
Says, there's a new king to whom Joseph meant nothing. He didn't know about him, didn't care about him, didn't care about Joseph's God, forgot the story, who knows. And he came to power in Egypt. Looked, he said to his people, the Israelites have become far too numerous for us. Come, we must deal shrewdly with them, where they will become even
Moses' Early Life and Leadership
00:03:40
Speaker
more numerous. And if war breaks out, we'll join our enemies, fight against us, and leave the country.
00:03:49
Speaker
They become too numerous. he's He's scared of their numbers. He's gotta do something about this. And so Pharaoh finds a very unique way to make sure that he can keep his thumb on them. Pharaoh uses the old trick that almost every place in the world has used at some time and that trick is slavery. Verse 12 says, but the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied,
00:04:16
Speaker
and spread, that the more you did to them, the more God found a way to bless them. So the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites and they worked them ruthlessly.
00:04:29
Speaker
Now Pharaoh's got a problem, because it's like the more he oppresses them, the more he enslaves them, the more he beats them, the better they seem to be doing. Like God's finding a way to bless them. They're multiplying and multiplying. And so Pharaoh has got this real problem on his hands that the earlier question of whether they would ever rise up against them is now even doubly the problem. And so Pharaoh comes up with another idea. And this idea is to kill the firstborn sons. See Pharaoh knows something. If you can take out the next generation of leaders, the firstborn sons,
00:05:07
Speaker
If you could take out the next generations of leaders, it'll be so much easier to control these families, to control these people. And so he orders the midwives, if a son is born, to kill the son, to make sure that son doesn't live. It's a terrible thing.
00:05:28
Speaker
And then in verse 19, the midwives have an answer for Pharaoh because Pharaoh is wanting to know, well, why are some of these babies living? I don't understand what's happening. You're supposed to kill them at childbirth. And the midwives, these are my heroes of the entire Old Testament. Shippurah and Pua, get to know their names. Maybe name your kid after them. Anybody? Shippurah and Pua answered Pharaoh. Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women.
00:05:55
Speaker
They are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive. As if to say Hebrew women are not like your wimpy women. They're vigorous. They give birth before the midwives arrive. Then Pharaoh gave this order to all his people. He can't trust the midwives. They're ignoring him. So he says it to all the people, to all the citizens.
00:06:20
Speaker
Every Hebrew boy that is born, you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live. Again, he's trying to take out the future leaders. And why are the girls useful? I don't even wanna say why.
00:06:39
Speaker
Well, the shippurah and pua and the other midwives, they gave the same blessing to Moses. They helped his mom, they helped his older sister hide Moses for as long as they could. And eventually when they realized that the citizens were closing in on them and they were gonna take out their son as well, they hid Moses in a basket. And I'm sure with lots of prayer, a tremendous amount of prayer, the kind of prayer that no mother wants to ever have to say, had to bless her child and give her child over to God.
00:07:15
Speaker
as they placed him in the Nile and Moses floated away. and His older sister kept watch over the basket, followed it, followed it. And then Moses was found. And not just found by anybody, he was found by Pharaoh's own daughter who then adopted him. A child from a different people, from a different race of people,
00:07:45
Speaker
and wanted to raise Moses as her own. And now think of what God has just done here. He didn't just protect Moses at birth, and he didn't just protect Moses in the Nile, and he didn't just get Moses adopted. He got Moses adopted into the most powerful family in the world.
00:08:04
Speaker
which is to say Moses would have the best kind of home and protection and security. Moses would have the best kind of nutrition, the best kind of education, the best kind of military training. Moses was gonna be raised as the best of the best, a leader of leaders in the household of Pharaoh. Now God's gonna need this later on.
00:08:29
Speaker
But let's not overlook this very important miracle in Moses' life that happens right at the beginning of his life. Because yes, anywhere else, maybe Moses would have been safe, but here, Moses is getting trained. He's getting trained to become a prince of Egypt.
Racial Identity and Slavery
00:08:51
Speaker
The story continues. Moses is now a man, he's about 40 years old,
00:08:59
Speaker
He sees a ah slave being beaten and he comes to the slaves defense. He can't imagine how this is happening. And he actually kills the guard. And then he flees. He flees to Midian. I think he's confused. I think he's confused about what Egypt is, what his home is, why they're doing the things they're doing.
00:09:22
Speaker
And so he goes to Midian and in Midian, he meets a family there and he ends up marrying into the family. ah foses Moses is married off to a daughter named Zipporah. One of the most common pictures of Moses and Zipporah is a painting like this. And you'll notice something about her. Zipporah has dark skin. And the Bible tells us later on that later on that she's actually a Kushite. ah Well, where is Kush?
00:09:49
Speaker
Now Cush is modern day Ethiopia where it meets Sudan, that region. I've been to that region. I've been to Ethiopia, I've been on the border of Sudan. I had a Sudanese pastor at my last church. So I got to know the church over there quite a bit. My ah former associate pastor is now the Bishop of the Lutheran Church of South Sudan, which is really amazing. He still lives in America, but he goes over there ah routinely.
00:10:16
Speaker
but she was from Kush, this region of of Ethiopia and Sudan, and this is very much what she probably looked like. So just think about this, in the one of the earliest stories in the Hebrew Bible, in the second book of the Bible, we have Moses and his wife. God is bringing different racial identities, different ethnicities. He's bringing them together into the story that will become the story of his son, Jesus Christ.
00:10:45
Speaker
Now, I don't possibly understand how our country or any other Christian country that was around the world at any time, but specifically, I'm talking about the 1700s and the early 1800s, how we ever justified slavery. And I'm talking about the Christians. There's always gonna be people like Pharaoh, people who wanna use people. But I don't know how a church-going Christian could ever open their Bible and think this is what God thinks is okay.
00:11:15
Speaker
Now you can open your Bible and and you can look at it and you can see slavery in it. Yeah, the Bible describes a lot of the crummy things we do to each other, describes them, doesn't pre prescribe them. And there's such a huge, huge difference. The Bible loves to talk about sin. And unfortunately, sometimes Christians like to to justify their sin.
00:11:42
Speaker
Zipporah also does something really important to Moses. And this is maybe the weirdest part of the story. It's not gonna be in chapter four called deliverance. When you're going through it, they they condense the story a little bit. But one of the ah real weird stories in the Old Testament is in the book of Exodus, where Moses and Zipporah finally accept God's call and they're going back to Egypt to to tell Pharaoh to let God's people go. And when they're on their way, they're they're staying at a place and God shows up and he intends to kill Moses.
00:12:12
Speaker
which is so weird that he just called Moses. And now it looks like he's gonna kill Moses. And Zipporah with like quick thinking grabs their son and circumcises their son. And then God backs off. Because something something has escaped Moses' attention. He's calling his people into a new covenant and circumcision was gonna be a part of this covenant. It was always a part of the covenant.
00:12:40
Speaker
with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and so on and so forth. Moses, when he was born, would have been circumcised by the midwives as a Jewish boy. But Moses has become a Midianite.
00:12:55
Speaker
And as a Midianite, Moses has forgot the custom. He's gonna give the covenant to the people, but Moses isn't accepting the covenant for his own family. And Zipporah is like, hey, if God's calling us into this,
00:13:10
Speaker
You need to be a part of the covenant as well. It saves his life. You know the story of the burning burning bush maybe, but after burning bush, essentially God gives Moses three promises.
God's Call and Plagues on Egypt
00:13:24
Speaker
The first one is, Moses, I have seen my people's misery.
00:13:29
Speaker
I have seen their misery. If you thought I wasn't watching, if you thought I didn't hear their prayers, if you thought I didn't know what was going on, Moses, I've been watching it the whole time and I've been waiting for you to grow up. I've been waiting to use you. I've been waiting to find a leader like you. So I have seen their misery and I have heard their cries every single prayer. And if you're ever in one of those moments in your life where you you feel like your prayers sound more like cries, you're calling out to God,
00:13:57
Speaker
You don't have your answer yet, but you're still calling out to God. Maybe this is such an important thing. He heard every single cry of the Jewish people and he hears yours too. And then number three, God makes a promise and he doesn't say exactly when it's gonna happen, but he says, and I'm gonna rescue them. I've seen their misery, I've heard their cries and I will rescue them.
00:14:22
Speaker
So again, he sends Moses to Pharaoh. ah Moses takes his brother Aaron with him. Aaron's gonna be the spokesperson. Another one of the reasons God was kind of mad at Moses is when he calls Moses. Moses is like, well, I'm a terrible public speaker. And God's like, hey, who invented the tongue, Moses? Who invented speech? I did all this. You keep talking about your limitations and you're putting your focus on you in the mirror. You're not putting your focus on me and my calling, Moses. But fine.
00:14:52
Speaker
Take Aaron with you and Aaron and Moses. They go before Pharaoh and God warns Pharaoh through these two prophets. He warns Pharaoh that plagues are coming, 10 plagues. And these plagues are gonna become more severe at each step. They turn the waters of the Nile into blood.
00:15:15
Speaker
unless Pharaoh will let his people go. Well Pharaoh won't let God's people go. And so the Nile waters turn to blood and the fish die. The only thing is it looks like the magicians of Pharaoh are able to do the same thing. So Pharaoh is not budging, not gonna let the people go. Then you have the plague of the frogs and the the frogs are everywhere. They've come into the city, they've come into their homes.
00:15:37
Speaker
Pharaoh's magicians are able to replicate the same miracle. The problem is they double the amount of frogs. So there's frogs everywhere. Pharaoh goes to Moses and says, just get rid of the frogs and I'll let your people go. Moses prays, Moses does, the frogs are gone. And then Pharaoh says, nevermind.
00:15:56
Speaker
The plagues continue with ah the gnats or the the lice. If you have a kid in second grade, it's the word is lice. The flies, the disease on the livestock, these unhealable boils, and Pharaoh doesn't escape any of these, by the way. But all along the way, he promises to let God's people go, but then he changes his mind when the plague is gone. And before we get to the last plague, which is the most just horrible thing we can imagine,
00:16:27
Speaker
just Just take for a moment and realize that after the death of the firstborn of the Jewish people and God trying to get his people out of slavery, he gives Pharaoh 10 very clear warnings, one after another, one after another, one after another. And finally, when he gets to the 10th one, it's like God saying, hey, I don't wanna go here, but if you're not gonna change,
00:16:56
Speaker
If you're not gonna set these people free, then I will give you exactly what you gave them. I will give you exactly what you gave my people. And finally, we have the the plague of the death of the first born.
00:17:15
Speaker
The Egyptians are so upset by this, obviously. that they want the Israelites out, these people are bad luck, let's get them out of here. Come on Pharaoh, let's get these people out of here.
Exodus and Red Sea Deliverance
00:17:27
Speaker
Pharaoh lets the people go. But once the people leave, Pharaoh realizes something. He realizes he doesn't have his free labor anymore. He's angry, he's upset, he's lost his slave, he's he's lost his free labor, and so he goes after them.
00:17:49
Speaker
He's got chariots. They've got women and children and and grandparents. They've got all their stuff. He's got an army. He's got horses. He's got weapons. They've got they've got moving trucks, except there's no trucks.
00:18:07
Speaker
And at every turn, you can just imagine the Jewish people thinking the most powerful army in the world is hunting us down. We have no chance, but God leaves them by fire at night. by cloud by day. And finally, when they get to the Red Sea, it's Moses' chance to raise his staff and to put it down and to part the waters of the Red Sea.
00:18:29
Speaker
And the Bible is just kind of super clear, but it's hard to get a picture of it. This is verse 29, in chapter 14, it says, the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground with a wall of water on the right and one on their left. And that day the Lord saved Israel from the hands of the Egyptians. And Israel saw the Egyptians lying dead on the shore.
00:18:51
Speaker
And again, I don't know how to describe it. I can just read the scripture there. But there was a movie before I even had kids. And then i when I did have kids, I showed them this this movie it was the Prince of Egypt. And these are a couple of the pictures that they had. If you can just imagine, these are like all inspiring pictures. You know, Moses splitting and and this is what it might've looked like. And then I have another picture as the people are walking through and you look you look as they're going through with their torches. and like There's there's ah a fish there, a whale maybe.
00:19:22
Speaker
Somebody even points out that the way that the the tail wags a little bit, that this would have been an ancient sea creature, not a modern whale. I don't know.
00:19:34
Speaker
But they get to dry ground. And this becomes the defining story of the Jewish people. Then you might ask, ah well, why did the angel of death, when it went in to kill the first born?
00:19:48
Speaker
of the Egyptians, why didn't it affect the firstborn of the Jewish people? Well, the Jewish people were given a command by God that they were to sacrifice a lamb or a goat, an unblemished one, and to take the blood and to paint their doorposts. And when the angel of death would come through Egypt, it would pass over their homes, because it saw that there had already been sacrifice there.
00:20:14
Speaker
They were also commanded to to have a meal with their family. And this meal would become a yearly me meal from the Jewish people from that point forward. It's called the Passover.
00:20:25
Speaker
I call the Passover meal the first fast food meal in history. Because the Jewish people were commanded by God, hey, put your sandals on, tuck in your cloak, have your staff and eat your meal standing up. Because as soon as this goes down, you're gonna have to get out of Egypt.
00:20:44
Speaker
because he's gotta come for you you. This is your chance. This is a fast food meal, guys. Eat fast and get out of town. And so this Passover meal, every time we come to the Lord's Supper, in a way, we're celebrating a new Passover, a new forgiveness, a new sacrifice, a new lamb who has taken away our sins.
00:21:07
Speaker
Every time we come to this meal, it's like a new Passover meal. And this becomes the defining story of the Jewish people. And every year when they celebrate the Passover, they don't say that they're just celebrating the Passover. They say they are reliving the story of the Exodus. It's their deliverance story.
Women in the Exodus Story
00:21:24
Speaker
And there's two big things that really stand out to me in the story of Moses. Number one, for all you ladies out there, a lot of times you read through the scripture and it seems like it's just ah a bunch of names of dudes.
00:21:37
Speaker
But in the story of Moses, I'm gonna tell you something. There are a lot of female heroes in the deliverance story of God's people. There's a lot of women stepping up and a lot of men who are not. Moses' mom and and his sister, they hide the baby, they protect the baby. Shipra and Pua and the other midwives who delivered Moses and others and ignored the most powerful man in the world, Pharaoh, ignored his orders.
00:22:04
Speaker
Pharaoh's daughter for adopting a son that didn't look like her.
00:22:10
Speaker
Sephora, Moses's Kushite wife, who seems to take his covenant with God more seriously than he does, more seriously than the the leader of the Israelite people does. So there's a lot of female heroes in the story, but number two, there's a lot of people, and and and I think this is possible to do to some degree, there are a lot of attempts that you can reasonably make to explain away a lot of the unbelievable parts of the story.
Miracles and Resurrection
00:22:40
Speaker
And a lot of people try this. Other bodies of water have been turned blood red. In Texas, we have ah a river called the Red River and it's called the Red River because honestly, it looks like a red river. It's the clay, it's, yeah.
00:22:59
Speaker
There's also bacteria out there that they can get into bodies of water and they can turn the water red. There's gases that can leak from the flora bodies of water. And in some instances, it it actually kills off the fish. And if that were to happen, yeah, maybe a plague of frogs would would would leave the lake or the pond and go into the city.
00:23:22
Speaker
There's even recent historical events like in Cameroon at Lake Neos in 1986, where gases came pouring out of the lake and killed over 1700 people and 3500 livestock. And because it the CO2 that escaped was heavier than the air, it descended onto villages and it suffocated all of those within about 16 miles of the lake.
00:23:49
Speaker
Except most notably, some people on the second story of homes lived through it. Because again, the CO2 was heavier than the air. And it just took out those at ground level. You wanna know something about Egyptian homes at that time, guess who slept on the first floor? The firstborn son.
00:24:13
Speaker
And there are some who believe that there's an underwater shelf in the Red Sea that if the waters are parted a bit by ah a huge storm or a hurricane or something like that, it exposes a pathway through. People have been trying to find that pathway. There's even a researcher who led a dive team and he claimed that they found a slew of artifacts like the remains of chariot wheels. They found the parts that were inlaid with gold they didn't decompose because of the gold that was around them. And I've seen the supposed pictures.
00:24:42
Speaker
Now, are they legit? I'm not an archaeologist, but I'm not so sure they are, but I don't know. So yeah, you can come up with natural explanations for some stuff, but here's the thing. The more we do that, the question becomes, what do you do with the resurrection?
00:25:13
Speaker
Because if you wanna explain away all that stuff with natural answers, then what do you do with the resurrection? Because if he didn't really rise from the grave, if Jesus didn't really rise from the grave, then why are we here on a Sunday morning when it's gonna be in the mid 60s in February? And if he, Jesus, didn't really rise from the grave,
00:25:42
Speaker
then why would the disciples all die, give their lives for a lie? The resurrection is the power of God over death. And it's that historical event that gives eternal life to us. If we can't leave room for the cross and the tomb,
00:26:09
Speaker
to be historical miracles, the work and power of God. And it can't just be a metaphor. That's not good enough if we're talking about salvation. We're not here to tell good stories. We're here to connect with the living God.
00:26:26
Speaker
And so of all the ways that the gospel writers could choose to begin the story of Jesus, they all quote Isaiah 40. And this is what Isaiah 40 says, in the wilderness, prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. What are they saying? There's gonna be a new Exodus.
00:26:46
Speaker
Rather than an oppressive king, we have a suffering servant. And he gives his life as an atoning sacrifice to destroy the power of sin in our lives. Because we all have Egypts, don't we? Addiction and depression and and anger and rage and prejudice and hate and ego and dishonesty. We all have Egypts in our life that try to trap us. We could all make a list. And we're all guilty. And all those lists would be long.
00:27:17
Speaker
Sin is just a very short word that means spiritual slavery. Yet the new Exodus is telling us that all we need to do just like the Jewish people is to cry out like slaves in Egypt and God will hear us. You see, it's one thing to pass through the waters of the sea. It's quite another thing to not wanna go back where you were stuck.
00:27:44
Speaker
Don't settle for bondage. spiritual or actual. Don't settle for it. When I took my daughter back to college just a couple of weeks ago, her cousins were there already and they were telling me how sad they were that they they had had to put their dog down.
00:28:04
Speaker
And he they had had him, I think, since elementary school. So, I mean, They just grew up with this dog, an old Rottweiler, big Rottweiler. They were telling all these sweet stories about him and just going on and on about how much they loved him. And yet I couldn't couldn't get out of my mind the last time I saw their dog. Jagger was over a hundred pounds, like Mick Jagger. He didn't play the guitar, but he was over a hundred pounds and he had really let himself go. He was pretty much blind, couldn't really smell.
00:28:40
Speaker
probably had body image issues. He just laid around all day and he did nothing. Well, that's not true. He laid around all day and did nothing except farted, very smelly farts. And it was really nasty. And they were loud and they were smelly and they were disgusting.
Spiritual Deliverance through Jesus
00:29:03
Speaker
And nobody else seemed to notice except for me. And it was terrible.
00:29:11
Speaker
probably because they were used to it. Just as an aside, I will never get used to that. But here's my point. That's what the devil's trying to do in your life.
00:29:25
Speaker
He's trying to get get you to accept that the smelly, gross sin, bondage, spiritual slave, whatever, whatever you wanna call it. He's trying to get you to accept that it's always gonna be that way and that you're always gonna be that way. He's trying to get you to accept that it's normal.
00:29:49
Speaker
And here's what Jesus is doing. He's saying when when things seem at their worst, He's calling you to something better. He knows the past, He knows the baggage, He knows all the junk, but He still calls you.
00:30:04
Speaker
And He calls you to cast light into the darkness, to set captives free, a new way through the wilderness and into the promised land. And if no one has ever told you that, then listen to me now. You are never too far gone. You are never too lost. You are never too broken to be found by God and put back together again. Never, never, never.
00:30:31
Speaker
the do The gospel of Jesus Christ is simply this. It is deliverance from everything that shackles you. And so a part of what we're gonna be doing as we journey through the story of the Bible
00:30:50
Speaker
We hope you've been inspired so far by the messages we have based on the story by Randy Frazee. If you're ready to go deeper, head to the show notes or to normalgosalongway.com and check out the study questions that we have for you. These study questions can be done by yourself or with a friend. And make sure you tune in this Thursday as Miss Hannah and Miss April deliver you the kids' version of this week's message.