God Knows
Notes
Transcript
Sermon Tone Analysis
A
D
F
J
S
Emotion
A
C
T
Language
O
C
E
A
E
Social
NOTE:
This is a manuscript, and not a transcript of this message. The actual presentation of the message differed from the manuscript through the leading of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, it is possible, and even likely that there is material in this manuscript that was not included in the live presentation and that there was additional material in the live presentation that is not included in this manuscript.
Engagement
Have you ever been going through a rough time in your life and got really discouraged because you felt like God just didn’t understand what you were going through? Some of you might very well be feeling like that right now.
And if that’s the case you’re certainly not alone. The Bible is full of stories of people who felt exactly that way. All you have to do to see that is to read through the Psalms. Or perhaps the best illustration is the account of Elijah who runs away from Queen Jezebel and hides in a cave and asks God to let him die because he doesn’t think God knows what he is going through.
But, as we’re going to see this morning, not only does God know every detail of what we are experiencing, but He is already at work in our lives, even before we cry out to Him and even when we don’t see it.
Tension
This morning we’re going to begin a new series in the Book of Exodus that will take us all the way to Spring break for those of you who are still in school. And some of you may wonder why we’re going to take so much time to study a book of the Old Testament. And you’re certainly not alone. Several years ago a well-known pastor encouraged Christians to “unhitch” from the Old Testament, even making the claim that Peter, James, and Paul elected to do so. But that just isn’t the case.
Here at TFC we’ve always been committed to preaching all the Scriptures, and if you’ve been here for any time at all you know that every year we teach from both the Old Testament. There are a lot of reasons that we do that, but to me the biggest reason is that what we call the Old Testament is the Bible that Jesus and the apostles read and from which they frequently quoted. So it seems to me that if it was relevant for them, it is still relevant for us today.
Truth
There is about a 300 year gap from the end of Genesis to the beginning of Exodus. Genesis ended with Joseph’s brothers and father joining him in Egypt because of the famine in their land. The opening verses of Exodus serve as a bridge between the two books:
1 These are the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob, each with his household:
2 Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah,
3 Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin,
4 Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher.
5 All the descendants of Jacob were seventy persons; Joseph was already in Egypt.
6 Then Joseph died, and all his brothers and all that generation.
7 But the people of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly; they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong, so that the land was filled with them.
Originally only 70 members of Jacob’s family had entered Egypt, but 300 years later God had blessed them greatly, just as He had promised Abraham, and they had multiplied greatly. The exact number of Israelites in Egypt is not known, but there are some indications later in Exodus that by the time they leave Egypt, there are as many as two and a half million of them, including women and children.
Obviously we can’t cover every verse in the book of Exodus in detail in the time we’ve alloted for this series. So the approach we’re going to take is to do more of a survey , or overview of the book and try to develop some overall themes that we find in larger sections of Scripture.
The overall theme of Exodus is that God provides a deliverer for His people. And the reason that is so relevant for us is that we are also a people in need of a deliverer - someone to save and deliver us from sin so that we can have a relationship with a holy God. So as we study the life of Moses, the deliverer that God provides for the people of Israel, we’re going to be able to better understand how God delivers us by sending His Son, Jesus, to be our deliverer.
Today we’re going to cover the first two chapters of the book. I’m not going to read that entire passage, but we will focus on a few of the key sections as we make our way through the passage.
Here’s the overall idea we’re going to develop this morning:
Even when it might not look like it God knows
Even when it might not look like it God knows
After Joseph died, a new king came to power in Egypt. He viewed the Israelites as a threat to his power and so he made them slaves and afflicted them with heavy burdens. But even though there is no indication that the Israelites call out to God at that point, God remains faithful to His people and His promise to make them into a great nation. So they continue to prosper.
So the king of Egypt decides to take things to the next level. Let’s pick up the account in verse 15:
15 Then the king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah,
16 “When you serve as midwife to the Hebrew women and see them on the birthstool, if it is a son, you shall kill him, but if it is a daughter, she shall live.”
We certainly see some similarities here with the edict issued by King Herod when Jesus is born and he orders all the male babies under two years old to be killed. But in both cases, God is at work to protect His people and carry out His plans. Let’s continue in verse 17:
17 But the midwives feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but let the male children live.
18 So the king of Egypt called the midwives and said to them, “Why have you done this, and let the male children live?”
19 The midwives said to Pharaoh, “Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women, for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them.”
20 So God dealt well with the midwives. And the people multiplied and grew very strong.
21 And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families.
The Israelite midwives feared God more than they feared the king of Egypt. So they did what was right in the eyes of God even though that meant they opened themselves up to the anger of the king. Although we don’t have a lot of information here, I think it’s safe to assume that their fear of God had been developed in their homes and in their community where the accounts of how God had been faithful to His people had been passed down from generation to generation. We also see an important principle that is relevant to us here:
We are to respect and obey government authorities except when they require us to do something that violates the Scriptures.
Interestingly the law hadn’t been given yet, but God had clearly made it known that murder was wrong, going all the way back to when Cain killed his brother Abel. So the midwives chose to obey God even though they knew they might face repercussions. And because of that God blessed them and gave them their own families.
Most of us are probably familiar with what happens next. An unnamed Levite man and his wife have a son. It is not until chapter six that we learn the name of his parents - and probably for good reason. Amram, the father, married his aunt, Jochebed, a union that would later be prohibited in the law that God would give to their son, Moses. So not only is God working before anyone calls out to Him, He is even using someone with a checkered past to be the one to deliver His people from bondage in Egypt. And the process of bringing Moses to that position of leadership is going to take a long time, as we’ll see.
When Jochebed could no longer hide her baby, she put him in a basket and placed it in the river. When the king’s daughter came down to the river to bather, she found Moses, and in a plot twist that no one could have imagined, she hires Jochebed to nurse and take care of her own son and get paid for it. Only God could orchestrate that!
So Moses grows up in the king’s house and is essentially raised as the king’s grandson. But when we get to chapter 2, verse 11, we see that Moses somehow maintained his identity as a Hebrew. The writer of the book of Hebrews provides us with this insight:
24 By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter,
25 choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin.
Apparently as his mother raises him in in the king’s house, she teaches him about his heritage, his people and his God. So when he observes an Egyptian beating one of his fellow Hebrews, he takes things into his own hands and kills the Egyptian and hides the body.
The next day, Moses tries to intervene in a dispute between two of his fellow Hebrews and learns that his secret is out. So when Pharaoh threatens to kill him, he flees to the land of Midian. And it will take another 40 years before God has sufficiently humbled Moses to the point that he is ready to be used by God.
While in Midian, Moses marries Zipporah and has a son.
That brings us to the last part of chapter 2. Before we look at those verses, what I want to point out is that during the entirety of chapters 1 and 2 up to this point, we don’t see the Israelites, or even any individual within that community cry out to God in spite of the fact that they are suffering horribly at the hands of the Egyptians. But in spite of that, God has been at work all long because He is faithful to keep His promises, even when His people do not. Let’s take a moment to reflect on what God has been doing:
He caused the Israelites to flourish in spite of the obstacles they faced and had grown them into a large powerful nation.
He had worked through the Israelite midwives to save the lives of the Hebrew babies.
He had caused the deliverer he was going to use to be born to two parents that had violated the very law that Moses would receive directly from God one day.
He had preserved the life of Moses. But even more amazing, in His complete sovereignty, He allowed Moses’ mother to be paid for raising her own child.
He had made sure that Moses understood his Hebrew heritage in spite of the fact that he was raised in Pharaoh’s house and that He at least knew of God to some degree.
He protected Moses when the king of Egypt wanted to kill him.
So with all that in mind, let’s look at the final words of chapter 2:
23 During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God.
24 And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.
25 God saw the people of Israel—and God knew.
Finally the Israelites cry out to God. And God takes action in response to their cry.
And each of those actions show that...
Even when it might not look like it God knows
Even when it might not look like it God knows
FOUR ACTIONS THAT GOD TAKES WHEN ISRAEL CRIES OUT
FOUR ACTIONS THAT GOD TAKES WHEN ISRAEL CRIES OUT
God heard.
This is so encouraging! Even though we find no evidence that the people had cried out to God for thousands of years, as soon as they cry out to Him, He hears their cries. What I take away from this is that God is there waiting for us to cry out to Him. He is constantly listening to His children.
The verb translated “heard” here doesn’t just mean to have something go in one ear and out the other. It’s not the kind of selective hearing that we sometimes engage in, like I am sometimes guilty of doing. There are times when I’m deeply engaged in some task and Mary will say something and I hear it but I don’t really pay attention to it. But the verb that is used here means “to pay close attention to”. So when God hears we have His full attention.
God remembered.
I need to spend a little more time on this one because if we’re not careful, we could mistakenly get the idea that God somehow forgot His people and only remembered them when they cried out. What we’ve seen in this passage certainly refutes that idea because God had been at work the whole time in the lives of His people long before they cried out.
God is 100% omniscient, which is just a fancy word that means He is all-knowing. So God doesn’t forget, at least not the way we use that word. The Hebrew verb used here has a much wider meaning than just the mental action of remembering. It also includes the idea of taking action. So when God “remembers” it means that He takes action, usually on the basis of a promise that He had made previously. Here He acts based on the promises that He had made back in the book of Genesis, particularly the promise made to Abraham in Genesis 12 to make his descendents into a great nation.
We see this idea of God “remembering” throughout the Old Testament. And it is frequently in response to His people crying out to Him.
God saw.
Again this verb doesn’t mean that God just gave His people a quick glance. This verb means to examine, inspect or understand. He understood everything they were going through physically, emotionally and spiritually.
God knew.
Sometimes we get the feeling that God is somehow caught off guard by the things going on in our lives. But nothing could be further from the truth. God knows every single detail about our lives.
Although the people of Israel may have felt that God had no idea what they were going through, God not only knew about that, He had actually predicted it would happen hundreds of years earlier when He spoke to Abraham:
13 Then the Lord said to Abram, “Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years.
14 But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions.
The Israelites’ plight in Egypt was not an unexpected occurence to God. He had planned it hundreds of years earlier and He has also promised His deliverance. So it was certain to come to pass.
Next week we’re going to see a very similar idea expressed by God:
7 Then the Lord said, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings,
God knew their sufferings and He knows our sufferings.
Application
IMPLICATIONS FOR ME
IMPLICATIONS FOR ME
God is at work in my life even when I don’t see it or understand it
Your affliction has a purpose. You likely don’t know what it is yet, but someday you will. And your affliction has a timeline. You likely don’t know what it is yet, and likely it already seems too long. But someday you will understand. And you will understand that the purposes for both your affliction and how long you were required to endure it extended far beyond the range of your perception. And then it will make sense.
God delights when we cry out to Him
Our past does not disqualify us from being used by God in the present
Now I’ve never committed murder, but I’ve certainly taken things into my own hands instead of waiting on God. And I’m certainly not the most eloquent speaker either. I didn’t come to know Jesus as my Lord until I was in college and I didn’t enter vocational ministry until my 40’s. And I don’t have a seminary degree. So in many ways I’m about as unlikely as anyone to have been a pastor here at TFC for nearly 20 years. But God has used me anyway.
Moses is certainly not the person that we would expect God to use to deliver His people from bondage in Egypt. He is born to two parents who shouldn’t have even been married according to the Jewish Law. He took things into his own hands instead of crying out to God. He was a murderer. And, as we’ll see next week, he was not a skilled orator. And God obviously knew every detail about his past. And yet God chose to use him anyway.
So no matter what you might have in your past, no matter what you’ve done or not done that you think may disqualify you from being used by God, the fact is that God wants to use you anyway. Because when He uses someone like you or me or Moses, He gets all the glory.
Action
Inspiration
Jesus Christ has guaranteed your exodus. And it is a far greater exodus than the mere escape from your affliction. There is coming an end to your sojourning in this foreign land (Hebrews 11:13). There is a Promised Land far greater than Canaan. And when you reach it, no matter what you suffered in this veil of tears, you will have no regrets. God will have worked it all for such good that you will wonder that you ever questioned his judgment or goodness (Romans 8:28).
In your affliction, cry out to God for help (Exodus 2:23). He hears. And when the time is right, God will answer you. For God sees you — and he knows.