God Saves Us

We are beginning a new sermon series this week called “God with Us.” We will be having the book of Exodus show us how God helped to lead the Israelites out of slavery to Mount Sinai which has been called the mountain of God.

We will see in this series that God is with us just as he was with them during their journey. Today we look at how God saves us. Our scripture comes from Exodus 1:8-2:10. The words will be on the screen.

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.” 20 So God was kind to the midwives and the people increased and became even more numerous. 21 And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own. 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.”

2 Now a man of the tribe of Levi married a Levite woman, 2 and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months. 3 But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile. 4 His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him. 5 Then Pharaoh’s daughter went down to the Nile to bathe, and her attendants were walking along the riverbank. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her female slave to get it. 6 She opened it and saw the baby. He was crying, and she felt sorry for him. “This is one of the Hebrew babies,” she said.

7 Then his sister asked Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?” 8 “Yes, go,” she answered. So the girl went and got the baby’s mother. 9 Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you.” So the woman took the baby and nursed him. 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.”

Please pray with me…

What does it look like to have God save us? What are the circumstances that we have to find ourselves in to believe that it is God that saved us? If you believed that these were trick questions you are correct. God can save us from any situation and any circumstance that we find ourselves in.

We have to go back over 100 years from the birth of Moses to truly understand how God was at work first saving all the people of the area and later Moses as we find in today’s text. God is at work long before the circumstances we find ourselves looking at today.

(Transition)

We have to go back to the birth of Joseph to truly understand God at work in the life of the Hebrew people. Joseph was born to a mother who struggled to conceive. Some would state that his birth alone was a miracle.

Some also would say that Joseph growing up was a spoiled brat and didn’t mind letting his brothers know that he was the favorite. Everything came to a head when he speaks of dreams that he had about the brothers bowing before him.

(Transition)

The brothers found an opportunity and took it. They sell Joseph into slavery which is how Joseph got to Egypt where today’s story takes place. He became a successful house servant who eventually ended up in prison.

Under all these circumstances the scriptures state that “the Lord was with Joseph.” Joseph eventually finds himself interpreting the dreams of the king. Dreams which spoke of seven years of plentiful crops followed by seven years of famine.

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These dreams lead Pharaoh to appoint Joseph to be placed in charge of storing enough grain to allow the people to survive the upcoming famine. He is successful and eventually we have his brothers show up looking for food for his father and the family.

Can you see how over and over again God was at work helping the circumstances around Joseph to take place in such a way to allow him to eventually save the people of that region. God saved Joseph so that he would be able to save everyone else.

(Transition)

It is possible that God will choose to have you save someone. It might not be from death or starvation. But it could be from the effects of some trauma they had in their lives. It might be that you can offer hope when anxiety has taken over a person’s life. God chooses to use people like you and me to affect the lives of those around us.

We have a message to share with the world. A message of a person that walked the earth and allowed for those around him to learn how God desired for them to live their lives. A person who eventually dies on a cross so all people can have available to them the hope and peace of living a life as a follower of him.

(Transition)

We find Joseph’s family ending up moving to Egypt where they live successful lives and as our scripture states they continued to grow as a people group until a pharaoh that either did not know or did not care about what Joseph had done began to fear a takeover by the Hebrew people

The story of Joseph should tell us that it does not matter how close we are to God. It does not matter how much we follow and do what God asks for us to do. We may still face hardships that we believe we do not deserve.

Even if Joseph was a spoiled brat, he didn’t deserve the treatment that he received. What we discover in the story of Joseph was someone that did not lose hope. A person that kept the faith. A person that continued to serve God no matter where he was in the world.

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We have a number of ways that we can react to disappointment in where our lives take us. We can wallow in self-pity, woe is me. We can take out our frustration on those that are weaker than us. Showing them that we are stronger than everyone thinks.

Or we can be like Joseph. It wasn’t that Joseph at times didn’t say “why me,” but that he continued serving God and living the best life he could under the circumstances that he finds himself in.

We get to decide how we react to the circumstances of life. We get to choose how much we allow God to be a part of our lives. Are we going to cry out to God and ask for his help, or are we going to attempt to live our lives as if God doesn’t even exist?

(Transition)

When we look at our main text, we have a group of people that are facing a tough situation. They have lived good lives up until this point, but they now are facing the hardships of life because I would argue they didn’t return back to the land God had given to them.

They became comfortable with their lives in Egypt. They were happy there as they were receiving the advantages of having been a part of the people group that had saved all of the people of that region.

(Transition)

The problem is that as memories fade, our circumstances can change. Those around us may ask the question “What have you done for me lately?” The Pharaoh has an answer, The Israelites can become slaves to the Egyptians.

The problem that the Pharaoh still faced was that slavery didn’t stop the Israelites from “multiplying and spreading” as a people group. This leads him to come up with another answer. The midwives for the Hebrew women were to kill all of the males that were born.

I can’t imagine what this would mean for the Hebrew families. The heartache of expecting that if you had a male child that this child would be removed from your care and drowned in the Nile River.

(Transition)

This leaves two women that are mentioned, Shiphrah and Puah, with a decision to make, are they going to follow the direction of the king or are they going to choose to risk their lives and do what they know would be right in the eyes of God.

It is believed by most scholars that these were Hebrew women. Hence, we hear that they “feared God.” The phrase feared God can mean two different things. It can mean a literal fear of harm that God could bring to someone, or it can mean reverence for the God above all gods.

In this case it probably means both. They would have been afraid of what would happen to them if they went through with this dastardly task given to them. But they also would have not listened to Pharaoh because of the reverence they had for their God.

(Transition)

These women should be honored for their willingness to place God before man, to decide to follow what they believed was the will of God over the Pharaoh of Egypt. A man who could have had them killed for their decision to not follow his orders. They show us that God may sometimes use others to save us.

We find that God honors them. We are told that “God was kind to the midwives” and that “because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own.” God rewarded them for the choices they made.

(Transition)

There maybe times when we face a similar dilemma. We may have to decide if we are going to follow what the world would desire for us to do or are we going to make the moral or ethical decision that we know God would want for us to do.

We have to be willing to trust that God has a plan and that no matter what happens to us God will use it for good. We have to trust that God will protect us and save us from any troubles that we may face.

(Transition)

It is also possible that God will choose to use someone that we would least expect to save us. As our story continues to unfold a time has come when they can’t hide Moses any longer. He is starting to move around. He wants more independence than can be given to him if he is going to remain hidden.

The decision is made to do what was supposed to be done at his birth. They are going to place him in the Nile. They are going to put him in a basket and let God decide his fate. They are choosing to put the life of Moses into the hands of God.

(Transition)

His sister is following to see what will happen. As luck would have it, I say that facilely, the Pharaohs daughter happens to see the basket and take the baby out knowing that this is one of those Hebrew children that her father wanted to have drowned in the river.

We find her making the decision not to drown the baby as her father had desired but to keep the baby and raise the baby as her own.  Mariam talks to her and offers her mom to nurse the baby until the time comes for him to eat on his own.

Did you catch that, Moses’ mother got Moses back at least for a little while. She got to continue to impact his life even after she was forced to release him. Her willingness to put the fate of Moses in God’s hands allowed for her to be blessed.

(Transition)

We never know how God will surprise us next. What we know from the rest of the story is that Moses, who the king wanted to have killed will end up growing up in his house as the son of his daughter.

God can save us under any circumstances that we find ourselves in. God can help us overcome the obstacles that we find before us. We never know how God will help us and who he will have help us become the person that he desires for us to be.

(Transition)

We find a similar situation occurrence in the life of Jesus. In our first reading, we have Jesus born and Wise Men know of his birth and follow a star until they reach Jerusalem. They go before the king and ask, “where they can find the king of the Jews.”

This concerns the king, but he gives them an answer that they should be able to find him in Bethlehem and then he asks them to come back to him and tell him where Jesus is so that he also can worship him.

(Transition)

God intervenes before king Herod can harm Jesus and comes to his father Joseph in a dream and tells him to leave for Egypt. Joseph listens and Jesus is able to escape. We have King Herod eventually order that all the children under the age of two be killed.

We have in both the case of Moses and Jesus two people that should no longer be alive. The first one ends up leading the chosen people out of slavery in Egypt to the land promised to them by God. The second one, Jesus, becomes the one who will become the Savior of the world.

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All of this talk showing how God saved Joseph, all the people of the region around Egypt, Moses and now Jesus can lead us to ask ourselves a question. What about the children that lost their lives while God was saving Moses and Jesus? What about the ones that weren’t saved?

Or, why didn’t God save my mom, or dad, or brother, or sister. They were good people. They shouldn’t have had to suffer and die the way that they did. Why is life sometimes not fair? The answer is not an easy one.

(Transition)

Harold Kushner in his book “Why do Bad Things Happen to Good People” offers his own explanation. What if we are in the midst of the chaos of creation. Scripture tells us that God created the world out of nothing, out of darkness.

God broughtlife and light into the world. He brought order into what would have been at the very least nothing if not chaos. What if through the decision made by Adam and Eve to go against the will of God returned us back towards the mess that the world had previously been.

Meaning that God is with us but until the return of Jesus there will still be chaos. There will still be times of trouble. Life is not going to be perfect because humanity allowed imperfection to reenter into God’s perfect creation.

(Transition)

It is this chaos that leads to evil. It is this no longer perfect world that allows Satan to do his work amongst God’s creation. It is not a perfect answer, but it can help us receive a greater understanding of why bad things will sometimes happen to good people.

Our lives are not going to be perfect but all of creation has one that will never leave us or forget about us. Jesus died on the cross to save anyone who desires to follow him. This is the message we have to share with those around us.

(Transition)

As the chaos of the world continues to affect us and those around us let us let our friends and family and those God places before us know of the love that God has for them and how he wants to have each of us be saved by him and allow for him to offer us hope in a broken world.

Let us pray…