It Begins with the Fear of God

Prayer

The Fear of God

Question of Being Human

I’m guessing that many of you have heard about the advent of the new AI (artificial intelligence) programs - such as ChatGP, where you literally can ask it any sort of question or do any number of tasks and it will search the internet, comb through resources and give you an answer or create what you ask it to.

And it’s particularly the task aspect that raises all sorts of difficult questions - because things that people would take hours and hours to do, ChatGP can do in mere moments - and do it really well, if not better.

So students can give it the parameters and it will write a paper for them - a unique one, very different from copying and pasting a wikipedia article. Or design a corporate logo. Or write a sermon or put together a Bible study.

So it’s raising all sorts of questions about what this means for jobs. The concern used to be that robots would take all the manufacturing jobs - but now it’s more “white collar jobs” - service and administrative and even creative jobs that are in question.

If I can get ChatGP to do digital design work for me or basic boiler plate legal documents or create emails or company reports - why would I pay people to do those tasks?

Some people think this will be a panacea, that we can essential have AI do jobs, do the work, undergird the economy, and it will free people for lives of leisure. We’ll be able to pursue recreation and creative endeavors, it will be amazing - computers will run the world and we’ll be free to enjoy it.

But it begs the question about the essence of what it means to be human. How well would that really work for the bulk of humanity to be sitting poolside sipping the cold beverages of choice - all day, every day?

Is there something essential about who we are, what we were made for - that involves work? And even struggle, challenge. What kind of population do you create if the computers do all the thinking for you - you simply plug in your question, but you never have to think it through yourself - that mental exercise. Do you really know math if all you do is plug problems into a calculator? Would we be inadvertently diminishing who we are as human beings?

There are other ways this question of what it means to be human is arising - one of the most obvious is the transgender issue. The push has been a fundamental change in what it means to be human - up until now, we’ve understood that humans are binary, men and women, male and female. There may be men who are more feminine and vice versa, but they are still biological men, biological women - that’s been the understanding.

Now the assertion is that it’s not so clear cut. And that our gender identity is something that is internally discovered rather than biological determined. An individual is free to choose whatever gender they are and that biological distinctions don’t exist - or don’t matter - or are more complicated, more on a spectrum than previously understood to be.

So the lines between men and women are being blurred. The big battle of the moment involves the retail store, Target, who has created a Pride section for their stores and are selling clothing for transgender people - women’s bathing suits with extra material in the crotch for the guys parts, “tuck friendly” clothing, chest binders.

This is a monumental shift in understanding the nature of human beings, it’s huge - the fact that many in our society are denying basic biological reality. And it’s absolutely false, we should strongly resist it because it is not true, it’s not real.

So, we have these big questions confronting us today about what it means to be human (that is, if we’re thoughtful enough to pull back and consider these questions). You may think - why bother? Who cares, let people believe what they want. Here’s why, ideas (way we think) have consequences. Bad ideas have victims. They hurt people. So it’s vital that we know how to answer these questions.

You can’t answer these questions without God. It all begins with God - he created us. He designed us. He made us with purpose and for a purpose. Our understanding of who we are begins with God.

This is what undergirds the story of the book of Exodus. This morning, as we continue our journey through the Old Testament, having just finished Genesis, we’re going to start our way into Exodus.

And Exodus addresses the question of what it means to be human, what we were meant for, in two very important ways:

First, it demonstrates the dehumanization of people - what happens when the question is answered wrongly, which is exactly what we’ll see right here in the beginning of Exodus. More on that later.

But the flip side of that is what God is doing in that same group of people to form and shape them into his people. To show and teach them how they are to live - in other words, what it means to be human beings as God created us to be. And it begins with one fundamental thing: the fear of God.

So, let’s dive in: Today we’re going to be covering Exodus chapter one and the first part of Exodus 2

Before that, a quick recap to keep today’s story in the broader context of the story of the Old Testament. We began with Genesis, the story of creation, God making all things, heaven and earth, humanity in his own image, male and female he made us. Making us for himself, to be in loving relationship with God and with one another.

Then the tragedy of the Fall - Adam and Eve rejected God’s way, eating of the fruit they were forbidden from eating, sin entering the world. Things get worse from there as we saw in the story of Cain and Abel, the flood to destroy the earth, the Tower of Babel.

Then God works his plan of redemption by choosing one family in which he is going to create a great nation, a nation through which he will bless every other nation on earth. God begins that work with Abraham, then continues his covenant with his son, Isaac, then on to Jacob.

Book of Genesis ends with all of Jacob’s family in Egypt as a result of a terrible seven-year-long famine. They have a great situation, Joseph is second in command of all of Egypt, they live in the area of Goshen, experiencing the best Egypt has to offer.

And this brings us to the book of Exodus, where things change drastically. Joseph and his brothers and that entire generation die out. And in the succeeding generations, their numbers increase dramatically. And because of this, a new king, “to whom Joseph meant nothing,” is threatened by the growth of the number of Israelites. He fears they will join with Egypt’s enemies and rise up against them.

And here’s where the question of being human arises, because here we see the intentional dehumanization of others: Exodus 1:11-14...So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh. 12 But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites 13 and worked them ruthlessly. 14 They made their lives bitter with harsh labor in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their harsh labor the Egyptians worked them ruthlessly.

They enslave the Israelites. They force them into hard labor making bricks and working in the fields. But in spite of their cruel treatment, the Israelites continue to increase in number.

To enslave another is to treat them as less them, to reduce them as a human being. As far as the Egyptians were concerned, the Israelites were beneath them. You exist for our benefit. You don’t belong to God, you belong to us. We may treat you as we please.

Then the Egyptians continue their dehumanization of the Israelites by moving from slavery to murder. They command the Hebrew midwives - we actually know their names, which is pretty amazing - Shiprah and Puah. They command them to kill any baby boy born to a Hebrew woman. To murder a child in order to limit the number of Israelites and so they won’t grow up to be soldiers.

Now, your lives don’t even matter. Because it allays our fears and serves our purposes, we will destroy your life. It has no worth in our eyes. You have no worth in our eyes. You are not a unique person made in the image of God whose life has worth and value. Dehumanized. This is the same lack of valuing life that we see in abortion.

But catch this, Exodus 1:17, The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do; they let the boys live.

This is huge. These two women, just ordinary Hebrew women, defy the king’s direct orders! Even when he summons them before him and confronts them with their actions, they defy him - they lie to him, telling him that the Hebrew women are so vigorous that they give birth before they arrive, so they never have a chance to kill the baby boys.

As intimidating as that must have been (being called before the king of all of Egypt - and then being called out on their defiant behavior), as scary as that must have been, they have a greater fear. A greater reverence - of God.

They recognize God as God. As the one true God, Lord of all, the one whom they should obey. We should do what he says, over and against what Pharaoh says.

God is the one who creates all life, who makes it precious - he is the one who declares it wrong. He is the one who desires people to live freely, to be recognized as worthy of the fullness of life.

God honors these women, and their humble recognition of him, Exodus 1:20-21: So God was kind to the midwives and the people increased and became even more numerous. And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own. God honored their reverence of him: You try to deny my people, destroy them - I’m going to have them increase in number! And I will bless you.

Pharaoh, however doubles down - chapter one ends with Pharaoh ordering all the Hebrews, not just the midwives, to kill any Hebrew boy by throwing them into the Nile.

In Exodus 2, we see the courage, the fear of God, manifested in one particular family, a Levite family. The wife gives birth to a son and defying the order for the Hebrews to kill any baby boy, she hides him for three months.

But that strategy can only last for so long - so she makes a papyrus basket (the Hebrew word used here is the same as the word used for “ark” - it, too, becomes a lifeboat), coats it with tar and pitch, and places it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile.

The family is quite clever about this - turns out the baby boy’s sister is watching from a distance as Pharaoh’s daughter goes down to the Nile to bathe and discovers the child, recognizing it as a Hebrew baby. The sister approaches Pharaoh’s daughter, asking her if she should get a Hebrew woman to nurse the child for her - and who does she get? The mom.

It ends up that this Hebrew mother gets to care for her own son - and get paid for it! And here’s where we finish this part of the story of Exodus, Exodus 2:10…When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh’s daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses, saying, “I drew him out of the water.”

The word Moses means “drew out.” Just as Moses was drawn out of the water, he will be the one through whom God draws his people out of the land of Egypt. This is the story of the birth of Moses, the man who will become the central figure of the Old Testament, the man who will lead his people out of slavery in Egypt.

His life is spared, he himself is saved from death because two Hebrew midwives, Shiprah and Puah, feared God more than they feared Pharoah. He is saved from death and enslavement, being taken into Pharaoh’s own household as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, because his mother and sister feared God more than Pharaoh.

Essence of Exodus: Fear of God

I began our message this morning with the question of what it means to be human, the essence of who we are. It’s an essential question - because if you get it wrong, you can come to all sorts of terrible conclusions: see people as no better than animals - keep them as property, compel them to do work, kill them if they no longer serve our purposes. What the Egyptians believed about the Israelites. Or we have people trying to defy the reality of their biological sex. Or we live self indulgently, because we believe the primary goal of being human is doing whatever I want, whatever makes me feel good.

As we go through the book of Exodus, God freeing his people from slavery in Egypt, we’re going to see over and over again God working in them in order to help them understand what it means to be his people. How they are to live. What they are to prioritize. What they should do, and what they shouldn’t do. It’s Humanity 101.

But today we just want to take note of where it all starts. With the fear of God. This isn’t fear in the sense that of just being afraid. It’s fear in the sense of overwhelming awe. Great reverence and respect - you pay attention to this, this is a thing you should have a proper fear of.

Same is true of anything that has great power - power for great good or great harm. Years ago, in college, I was on a backpacking trip through Young Life’s Wilderness Ranch - we making our way to the top of a mountain when an afternoon thunderstorm started rolling in. Thunderstorms are incredible - dark beauty and power to them. And you’ve got to take that seriously. And by being near the top we were some of tallest things around - so we hightailed it down the mountain - we had a proper fear of that thunderstorm.

Proverbs 1:7 - The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and understanding.

This is the whole basis of the book of Proverbs - if you’re going to live rightly, live way you’re supposed to, wisely - it begins with fearing God. Honoring God as God, the one true God. With giving him the attention and consideration he deserves. To heed what he says. To not do so is as foolish as standing on top of a mountain as a thunderstorm rolls in.

If we’re going to understand what it means to be human, how we are to live, we have to look to God first, fear him above everything and everyone else.

How much of what I do is driven - not by fear of God - but by fear of others. What they think of me matters more - because I don’t want to be socially ostracized, I want to fit in. I want to be well liked. I want to be well thought of - seen as attractive…smart…successful…good. I don’t want to look too religious, because that’s weird (people will think I’m weird).

I strongly believe we’re living in a culture that has moved away from any sort of faith in God. It’s becoming not simply apathetic to God, but anti-God, anti-Christian. Which means its going to be increasingly difficult for us, because we’re going to have to be willing to live differently, to experience persecution, hatred. Much like the Israelites.

There will be great temptation to get along. To not rock the boat.

Unless we fear God more than we fear the world…like that Levite family. Like the Hebrew midwives. Like Jesus himself.

Spiritual Disciplines - How do we cultivate a proper fear of God in our lives? Really is no better example than Jesus. He lived his life in absolute obedience to the Father. In John 5 he talks about how he only does what the Father tells him to - he’s always looking to the Father.

Why Jesus lived the perfect human life - he wasn’t affected by what others thought of him. He was willing to defy the social conventions of the day - drove the religious leaders crazy. He loved others - all others, especially those who others would overlook - not deem worthy. Jesus lived with a fear of God, a reverential honoring of the Father.

This is why we often talk about putting together a Rule of Life, a set of disciplines that help you to center your life in Jesus. God - you are most important. I want you to be the one I pay most attention to. Fix my eyes on Jesus, the author and finisher of your faith.

Rule of Life will include how you will spend time with Jesus on a daily basis...

It may include how you will rest (Sabbath), ministry you’re involved with, time of study & learning, how you’re going to be intentional about growing in relationships with family, church family, with those who don’t know Jesus yet.

Second thing I would encourage you to consider this morning is one specific element of your Rule of Life - daily time in the Scripture, this is one of the key elements in growing as a follower of Jesus.

What are you being discipled by? Who or what is teaching you? Cable TV news (social media, YouTube, TikToK???) Where in your life are you listening to God? Heeding his instruction? All of us have influences in our lives - the question is where is your “wisdom” coming from.

Begin today. Set with a specific plan. Set a time and place where you can be quiet to be with Jesus and in his word. I’d suggest beginning with the Gospels. A chapter a day.