God Does Big Things With Small Stuff based on Exodus 1:1-2:10

I. Story of Howard Rutledge. Howard Rutledge was an American fighter pilot shot down and captured in North Vietnam in 1965. The North Vietnamese threw him into a prison in Hanoi in North Vietnam. What was the prison called? Heartbreak Hotel.

Howard Rutledge writes, “When the door slammed shut a feeling of utter loneliness swept over me. I was locked in a six-by-six cell. It’s hard to describe what solitary confinement can do to defeat a person. There are no books, no magazines and no newspapers. The only colors you see are drab gray and dirt brown. You’re locked in your filthy cell, trying to keep your sanity.”

II. Our personal Heartbreak Hotel.

III. Sermon series is “Let My people go!”

IV. Exodus 1:8 and Heartbreak Hotel. You remember the narrative. The family of Jacob ended up settling in Egypt after a time of famine. Exodus 1:8 tells us, “Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.”

V. Exodus 1:11 and slavery was stage 1. Stage One was slavery. Exodus 1:11 says, “Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with heavy burdens. They built for Pharaoh store cities, Pithom and Raamses.”

VI. Exodus 1:15-16 and Hebrew midwives was stage 2. Stage Two was Hebrew midwives ordered to kill newborn boys. Exodus 1:15-16 states, “Then the king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, ‘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.’”

VII. Exodus 1:22 was stage 3. Stage Three was throwing Hebrew boys into the river. Exodus 1:22 tells us, “Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, “Every son that is born to the Hebrews you shall cast into the Nile, but you shall let every daughter live.”

VIII. Exodus 2:1-2 and Moses. Exodus 2:1–2 tells us, “Now a man from the house of Levi (named Amram) went and took as his wife a Levite woman (named Jochebed). The woman conceived and bore a son, and when she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him three months.”

IX. Exodus 2:3 and basket/ark. Exodus 2:3 continues, “When she (Jochebed) could hide him no longer, she took for him a basket made of bulrushes and daubed it with bitumen and pitch. She put the child in it and placed it among the reeds by the river bank.”

X. Exodus 2:6 and crying baby. Miriam watched closely as the basket with her little brother Moses was in floated in the Nile River. Exodus 2:6 states, “When she (the Pharaoh’s daughter bathing in the river) opened it, she saw the child, and behold, the baby was crying.”

XI. Moses led his people out of Egyptian Heartbreak Hotel with a staff.

XII. Bad news for “superheroes”.

XIII. Good news for us.

XIV. The small stuff of Christ’s Passion.

XV. Howard Rutledge has more to say. Howard Rutledge has more to say about Heartbreak Hotel. He writes, “I prayed for strength to make it through the ongoing night. Then, one day, a glimmer of light dawned through the bottom of my prison door. I knew that God would set me free. And he did!”

XVI. Life can get dark.

XVII. Easter light in Jesus. But there is a light in the darkness. Can you see that light? That light is Easter light. That light is Easter deliverance! How can we be so sure? God still does really big things—He sets us free from sin, death, and the powers of darkness through Jesus—with really small stuff! Amen.