The Midwives

It is so exciting to finally be standing here with you guys this morning, it has been a long season of prayer for my family to be able to get to the place we feel like God wants us to be. We want to thank everyone for all of their help during the move and all of the prayers you guys had for us to get here safely. One of the things that impressed us most about this place when we talked with the elders and did interviews and when we came to visit is just the vast history of this church and how it has been a beacon of light for Jesus over the years. To hear the stories of what this church has done and continues to do for its community is one of the things we love the most. Some of you have shared stories of your high school days here and how many teenagers from the community would come and make this place their home during youth group and how amazing it was. We have seen stories and pictures on Facebook from the past of kids and people filling the sanctuary for different events and we are excited for what God has in store for us here in Georgetown, and even Danville, and all of Vermilion County. We truly believe the best is yet to come not just in this body, but for the church as a whole, and we are thankful that God chose to put all of us together so we can be on mission for Him.

As I thought about how we are going to start this journey together I walked through quite a few different ideas and places I think we will go together. At the beginning of the year we will take a journey through the Book of Nehemiah and we will look at a man on a mission to restore God’s kingdom and how he united entire group of people behind him to rebuild what God had called them to do. We will walk through a great Christmas series together, and I am planning an Easter series that I think will open your eyes to truths you may have never seen before in the crucifixation story; how’s that for building suspense?

But over the next few weeks we are going to start a series called, Ordinary People, Extraordinary God, where we look at how the life and acts of ordinary people just like us turned into amazing things when God was in the middle of it. We are going to look at moments in the lives of Ruth, John the Baptist, the disciples, Peter, and a story from 2 Kings about building ditches, but this morning we are going to look at what happens with ordinary midwives who are faithful to God in the first chapter of Exodus. Now to kind of give us an idea where we are in scripture in the passage this morning we learn that Joseph and all of his brothers have died. Remember, Joseph who was working for Pharoah had saved the Egyptians from the death of famine and in the middle of all of this Josephs brothers had come to Egypt and Joseph was able to save them as well. He was able to do this because of how much Pharaoh had loved and appreciated him and the work he had done. So, while his family was there his family “multiplied and grew exceedingly strong, so that the land was full of them,” we learn in Exodus 1:7 but now there is a new King in Egypt and this is where we pick up the story.

Exodus 1:8–10 ESV

8 Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. 9 And he said to his people, “Behold, the people of Israel are too many and too mighty for us. 10 Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and, if war breaks out, they join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.”

This is the beginning of the captivity of the Israelites, did you see how it started; fear. The new Pharaoh was afraid of losing his stature, or his power he was afraid everything they had would be gone because they were about to be outnumbered and he didn’t want to lose it. So he made a decision on his own, lets do something about this, we have to handle these guys bad. Now, he didn’t know the Lord and this is probably why he didn’t seek the Lord and his direction for what to do, but what we see happening is Pharaoh is missing the whole point and he is scared and makes this rash decision on his own and it leads down this horrible road. We can learn some lessons from this, we can see we must put our trust and faith in the Lord, trusting his plan and not doing what feels right in our heart based on fear. How many times have you allowed fear to cause you to make bad decisions? You didn’t seek the Lord, your heart got fearful so you just moved first in what seemed to be the best idea at the time. It is never a good idea. However, what we are going to see is even in the middle of this, even when we make bad decisions, or when other people do things to oppress and wrong us, God has a plan that is redemptive and to restore.

Exodus 1:11 ESV

11 Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with heavy burdens. They built for Pharaoh store cities, Pithom and Raamses.

And this is plan A for how he is going to deal with these people, he thinks look, if I keep them really busy and make them really tired they aren’t going to want to have any babies. That should be all I will have to do, keep them busy make their bodies tired and then the population will die and we won’t have to worry about it. However, what we see, is that didn’t exactly work…

Exodus 1:12–14 ESV

12 But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and the more they spread abroad. And the Egyptians were in dread of the people of Israel. 13 So they ruthlessly made the people of Israel work as slaves 14 and made their lives bitter with hard service, in mortar and brick, and in all kinds of work in the field. In all their work they ruthlessly made them work as slaves.

Exodus 1:15–17 ESV

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.” 17 But the midwives feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but let the male children live.

Exodus 1:18–21 ESV

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.

I love what Douglas Stewart says about these two midwives in his commentary on Exodus he says this,

“The story of the midwives is a story of heroic resistance. So noteworthy was their courage that their personal names are recorded, in contrast to any of the elders of Israel (3:16, 18; 4:29) and even the pharaoh. Thus these two midwives’ names, along with the names of Jacob’s children and Moses’ family, are the only names actually mentioned in the early chapters of the book” 

Church these women were just ordinary midwives who were faithful to God and the work he had called them to, and even in the face of opposition they trusted and held firm to what he wanted them to do and because of that faithfulness we know who they are today. Honestly, if you continue to follow through with the story what you will see is when Plan A, and Plan B didn’t work out for Pharaoh, he came up with another plan to just have all the Hebrew boys drowned and because of the faithfulness of the midwives we see the life of Moses spared who would ultimately be the one who would lead his people to freedom from Egyptian captivity.

The question I have for you this morning is this, are you being faithful to God and the plan he has for you life in the areas he has placed you? When you walk into work tomorrow morning and you know your coworkers don’t believe the same thing you do are you faithful to the mission field he has placed you in and trusting his plan for your life, or are you fearful of what society tells you and afraid to share? Are you standing up for your faith in the places where people may be pushing back against your faith? Or are you fearful of what they may say or how they make think of you? The truth is, Jesus needs you, the world around you needs you, because honestly, there is nothing you or I have to offer the world that is better than Jesus. Your friend going through a rough time that needs advice, absolutely we should share sound wisdom with them but ultimately what they need most, is a relationship with Jesus so even in the middle of those hard times, they know He is there.

However, if we really want to break it down, before we can get there many of us probably need to go back to our roots, and we will talk more about this in our time together in the future, but we need to get back to those core disciplines of our faith and we will talk about these in a few weeks more in depth, but we need to get back to prayer, worship, and fasting as the basis for our personal faith so we can have those conversations. The good news is we are now at the moment in the service when we can come before the Lord and seek him in prayer, we can lay our hearts and lvies on teh line for him to mend together. So if you are here this morning and you need prayer for anything, I would love to pray with you, and I am sure one of the elders would also love to pray for you, but you have to be faithful enough to walk down the aisle and meet us here. Not only that, but over the next few moments we are going to have the opportunity to worship Him. Not just sing words, but truly worship him for who he is and what he has done. This morning I want to invite you to do as the spirit is leading you, if you need prayer come on down here, and if you need to worship, now is the time.

Let’s pray.