A Little White Lie

Good morning and welcome. i am glad that we are here this morning. It is always a good day to be gathered in the house of the Lord. This morning I wanted us to shift our focus to another section of the Bible. As I have been doing my own personal devotional time i was struck by the power of the stories of Exodus. We go back and read these stories it is always an amazing showing of God’s work in his People and how he has delivered them. WE will begin by looking at Exodus chapter 1 but before we read the passage this morning I want to talk about a topic that I think is important.

Disobedience

Have you ever thought about this idea. It is a common theme and thought within the Bible that we talk about. In fact I found one statement from an Old Scottish Minister Alexander Maclaren. He said

“Disobedience is the root of unbelief. Unbelief is the mother of further disobedience.”

Disobedience is simply defines as the “refusal to obey”

It isn’t really that complicated. When we think about disobedience and our faith we realize that our failure to obey God is the very thing that keeps us from him.

We could sit here and think up a lot of different ways that we could disobey God but the most powerful one that comes to mind for me is the Ten commandments. Now of course in the beginning of Exodus these things hadn’t been shared yet with the people but I still imagine the expectations of the 10 commandments would remain true of God’s nature.

It is here that we begin to start seeing the ways that we can disobey God. Yet, what do we do when we are faced in difficult times. Let’s look to the scriptures to set the stage of a story of disobedience.

Exodus 1:8–19 NIV

8 Then a new king, to whom Joseph meant nothing, came to power in Egypt. 9 “Look,” he said to his people, “the Israelites have become far too numerous for us. 10 Come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous and, if war breaks out, will join our enemies, fight against us and leave the country.” 11 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. 15 The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah, 16 “When you are helping the Hebrew women during childbirth on the delivery stool, if you see that the baby is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live.” 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. 18 Then the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and asked them, “Why have you done this? Why have you let the boys live?” 19 The midwives answered Pharaoh, “Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women; they are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive.”

The Midwives

Did you catch it. The Midwives did something wrong. They did something that we know today to be contrary to the will of God. They lied to the Pharaoh.

Now i can hear what you are thinking already. It really isn’t hard to figure it out.

They had to lie. If they didn’t lie they would be killing the infant boys of the Hebrew people.

But lying is wrong.

But murder is wrong. Infanticide is wrong.

When we compare the level of the disobedience being committed suddenly that one act of “disobedience” is not comparable to another.

Can we relate to this struggle?

Okay maybe not to this extreme. I don’t think many of us can think of a time we were asked to kill children and we were faced with the choice to lie or kill.

Yet, I am willing to bet we are faced with the challenges of speaking the truth or not to protect someone. In fact we have a term for this.

The Little White Lie

Little white lies are often told not for the benefit of the individual telling the lie but for those who the lie is being told to. Think of Children. As adults we sometimes don’t share the truth with children to shield them from the truth of a situation. We aren’t being truthful.

Is this contrary to the will of God?

Another example for you.

This one was a common discussion I had with my father in law in the past with my Wife’s Grandfather suffering from dementia. When his wife passed he was torn over how do you tell your dad that his wife is dead almost every day because he can’t remember it?

The horrible position of protecting someone for their own sake.

How do we handle this. Does it push against our ethic as Christians?

Do we see how the slippery slope starts. Where does it stop? Where does it begin?

This is the challenge that I think we all face at some point in our walk with God. How does Grace play out in these kind of situations?

The Midwives

The Midwives story is an example for us that we can look at and see that God’s grace is present in an impossible situation. The midwives fear God they know that they serve a God who has the right of life and creation. The Pharaoh was trying to take the right and control of life into his own hands. He wanted to end the expansion of the Hebrew people. The Midwives knew that he would end their lives if they did not follow his orders but they knew their life would be far worse not only in the moment but for eternity oh man I wouldn’t want to be in their situation.

They come up with a convenient excuse.

“Pharaoh, These Hebrew women are just too good at child birth. They get them out before we get there so we can’t fake the death of the child”

Well that's how i imagine they said it. I am still amazed that the Pharaoh bought it. Well did he...

The Pharaoh’s New Order

The Pharaoh changes the order. To this point he was trying to allow for the midwives to be discrete about what they were doing. They could hide the murder by claiming the child was still born. The pharaoh moves away from this discrete order to something that not only comes from him but he places the burden on all of egypt.

To this point the Pharaoh i think was trying to keep the damage of the genocide of what he was doing to a behind the scenes thing. He had to know that what he was doing was despicable. Yet, he did not care. He wanted this to be done. We know that his heart was hard and he was after these people. He comes back after the Hebrew people seemed to be growing instead of declining and he decided to include all of the Egyptian people.

Exodus 1:22 NIV

22 Then Pharaoh gave this order to all his people: “Every Hebrew boy that is born you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live.”

He no longer was coming to just the midwives to deal with this problem he included all of Egypt in this genocide and informed them of what was to be done with these Hebrew Boys. I can only imagine what would happen if you were found out not reporting the birth of a Hebrew baby boy. If he was willing to just literally throw these kids away. I can only imagine what he would do to those who opposed his order.

This is the scene this is the situation. This is the hardship that the Hebrew People faced. This is an impossible situation. This is about as bleak as it can get.

We can’t compare

I Shared earlier that we can think of times where we have to tell a little white lie or hide the truth from people for their own sake or their own protection. Many of these situations can’t even begin to compare to what the midwives were faced with. Yet, I think there is some truth here that we can take from these kinds of stories.

This is a story of...

Mercy: In Impossible Situations

There is no good answer in these moments. To be honest the choice isn’t to kill or not to kill the babies. I don’t think that is that hard of a choice to make. The challenge comes is knowing the consequences of the choice. The lie becomes necessary because the midwives know that God is the only bringer of life. They submit to the righteousness of God for the sake of upholding life.

In a way they are seeking mercy from God for the sin of lying knowing that they were saving the lives of children. There is some amazing truth in that attitude. We can recognize that something like lying is against the will of God but we will easily submit ourselves to that for the sake of others. This is where Mercy is so important. God’s grace is bigger than we can see. We know this mercy and grace is there because he blessed the midwives despite their transgression to honor life.

Exodus 1:21 NIV

21 And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own.

It shows us that God’s grace is amazing and his intention is more than just following a set of commandments like the 10 commandments we talked about earlier. It is a call to live life that is honoring of him and serving of him. The Heart of these women set a standard for us. They remind us that we are to devote our hearts to God. IT is in this position that we can be confident to stand before God. IT returns us to that attitude of it isn’t just about the rules we follow but it is the intention and the attitude in which we live life. IT is in the “fear of God” the respect the heart that wants to honor God that these women set the stage for God’s glory to be shown. It is here that we see his grace is beyond what we might expect and we can move beyond the consuming thought of i told this little white lie to instead focusing on how we are honoring God.

I feel like I need to insert a small asterix at this point though. This is not an excuse to start reasoning away the things that we know God expects us to not do like Lying. It is instead a reminder that grace is powerful. We don’t want to abuse that grace and mercy of God and we need to let him speak and lead in our lives and We will be amazed at how he moves.