The Sovereignty of God (In Exodus)

God is Sovereign Over Our Fears

Exodus 1:1–22 CSB

1 These are the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob; each came with his family: 2 Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah; 3 Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin; 4 Dan and Naphtali; Gad and Asher. 5 The total number of Jacob’s descendants was seventy; Joseph was already in Egypt. 6 Joseph and all his brothers and all that generation eventually died. 7 But the Israelites were fruitful, increased rapidly, multiplied, and became extremely numerous so that the land was filled with them. 8 A new king, who did not know about Joseph, came to power in Egypt. 9 He said to his people, “Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and powerful than we are. 10 Come, let’s deal shrewdly with them; otherwise they will multiply further, and when war breaks out, they will join our enemies, fight against us, and leave the country.” 11 So the Egyptians assigned taskmasters over the Israelites to oppress them with forced labor. They built Pithom and Rameses as supply cities for Pharaoh. 12 But the more they oppressed them, the more they multiplied and spread so that the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites. 13 They worked the Israelites ruthlessly 14 and made their lives bitter with difficult labor in brick and mortar and in all kinds of fieldwork. They ruthlessly imposed all this work on them. 15 The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives—the first whose name was Shiphrah and the second whose name was Puah—16 “When you help the Hebrew women give birth, observe them as they deliver. If the child is a son, kill him, but if it’s a daughter, she may live.” 17 The midwives, however, feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt had told them; they let the boys live. 18 So the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and asked them, “Why have you done this and let the boys live?” 19 The midwives said to Pharaoh, “The Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women, for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife can get to them.” 20 So God was good to the midwives, and the people multiplied and became very numerous. 21 Since the midwives feared God, he gave them families. 22 Pharaoh then commanded all his people: “You must throw every son born to the Hebrews into the Nile, but let every daughter live.”

exodus 1

God showed himself to be absolutely sovereign in the midst of Israel’s problems.

God displays his sovereign power in the midst of our greatest problems and pains.

God is sovereign over your depression. God is sovereign over your parents broken marriage. God is sovereign over your awkward personality. God is sovereign over your insecurity. God is sovereign over the death of your family member. When you get the diagnoses of cancer, He will be sovereign on that day too. He is sovereign over every problem you have ever faced or will ever face. He has not left you to fend for yourself, He is still on His thrown and he is working for your good which is His glory.

You’re struggling with depression, thoughts of suicide? God displays his power through our problems. Trust him.

Trust him.

Why do you think Jesus went to the cross even though He knew the pain and suffering he was about to experience? Was it not because he trust in the will of the Father? Is this not what he meant when he said, “Let this cup pass from me, but not my will, but yours be done.”?

Jesus trusted that God was at work even as he stared down death, and he willingly submitted himself to God’s plan and God’s will because he knew that God was sovereign, that He was good, and that he could be trusted.

God is Sovereign Over our Future

Exodus 1:15–2:10 CSB

15 The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives—the first whose name was Shiphrah and the second whose name was Puah—16 “When you help the Hebrew women give birth, observe them as they deliver. If the child is a son, kill him, but if it’s a daughter, she may live.” 17 The midwives, however, feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt had told them; they let the boys live. 18 So the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and asked them, “Why have you done this and let the boys live?” 19 The midwives said to Pharaoh, “The Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women, for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife can get to them.” 20 So God was good to the midwives, and the people multiplied and became very numerous. 21 Since the midwives feared God, he gave them families. 22 Pharaoh then commanded all his people: “You must throw every son born to the Hebrews into the Nile, but let every daughter live.” 1 Now a man from the family of Levi married a Levite woman. 2 The woman became pregnant and gave birth to a son; when she saw that he was beautiful, she hid him for three months. 3 But when she could no longer hide him, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with asphalt and pitch. She placed the child in it and set it among the reeds by the bank of the Nile. 4 Then his sister stood at a distance in order to see what would happen to him. 5 Pharaoh’s daughter went down to bathe at the Nile while her servant girls walked along the riverbank. She saw the basket among the reeds, sent her slave girl, took it, 6 opened it, and saw him, the child—and there he was, a little boy, crying. She felt sorry for him and said, “This is one of the Hebrew boys.” 7 Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, “Should I go and call a Hebrew woman who is nursing to nurse the boy for you?” 8 “Go,” Pharaoh’s daughter told her. So the girl went and called the boy’s mother. 9 Then Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this child and nurse him for me, and I will pay your wages.” So the woman took the boy and nursed him. 10 When the child grew older, she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son. She named him Moses, “Because,” she said, “I drew him out of the water.”

Exodus 1:15-2:

God was working to prepare the way for salvation before Moses was ever even born.

Moses was born in the most inconvenient time. A time when the Hebrew people were greatly oppressed. They were enslaved, they were being forced to abort their male babies. The greatest injustices imaginable were being done to them. It is easy to imagine that the people of Israel would have been hopeless. Just try to imagine the situation. You are an Israelite, your entire history is wrapped up in the story of God promising to be your provider and protector. You had been taught that God made this promise to Adam to send a savior who would crush the head of the serpent that tempted Adam and Eve. They had been told the stories about how God had saved Noah and his family from the flood. They had been told the stories about how God had made a covenant with Abraham—that He would provide and protect his descendants forever. You would have just moved to Egypt because God had raised up Joseph to be the Lord over the affairs of Pharoah. Everything had been going so well. Then all of the sudden everything just starts falling apart. In the blink of an eye, everything changes.

And yet, it was in this moment where we see God work in the most incredible way!

The circumstances were all wrong. Moses was born at the wrong time. He was born in the wrong country. Under the wrong house of Pharoah. He was born into the wrong family—a people enslaved and under the most intense persecution.

But Moses did have one thing going for him. When everything else was going wrong, he had the God who is always right.

Moses was threatened by an evil Tyrant, the people of Egypt, and a Nile River. But look what happens. Moses mother puts him in a little boat, and where does he end up but in the protection of the very house that was determined to end his life!

God was at work in the life of Moses to show His people that he was at work in the life of Israel as a nation.

And in the same way, no matter what your current situation looks like, God is at work in your life.

You may find yourself in the midst of the tyranny of hopelessness.

You may find yourself feeling as if you are being tossed about by the waves of life like that of the Nile.

You may think all hope is lost and that you have no future.

But our hope is not defined by our perception of the circumstances we face.

Our hope is found in the Omnipotent—All Sovereign—God of the Universe. He is sovereign over our present circumstances and is soverigeinly at work in our future.

God is Sovereign Over our Failures

exodus 2:11-

Exodus 2:11–15 CSB

11 Years later, after Moses had grown up, he went out to his own people and observed their forced labor. He saw an Egyptian striking a Hebrew, one of his people. 12 Looking all around and seeing no one, he struck the Egyptian dead and hid him in the sand. 13 The next day he went out and saw two Hebrews fighting. He asked the one in the wrong, “Why are you attacking your neighbor?” 14 “Who made you a commander and judge over us?” the man replied. “Are you planning to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?” Then Moses became afraid and thought, “What I did is certainly known.” 15 When Pharaoh heard about this, he tried to kill Moses. But Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in the land of Midian, and sat down by a well.

For the Love of God, Volume One February 19

Yet one cannot help reflecting on the place of this episode in the plotline that leads to Moses’ leadership of the Exodus some decades later. By God’s own judicial action, many Egyptians would then die. So why doesn’t God use Moses now, while he is still a young man, full of zeal and eagerness to serve and emancipate his people?

It simply isn’t God’s way. God wants Moses to learn meekness and humility, to rely on God’s powerful and spectacular intervention, to await God’s timing. He acts in such a way that no one will be able to say that the real hero is Moses, the great visionary. By the time he is eighty, Moses does not want to serve in this way; he is no longer an idealistic, fiery visionary. He is an old man whom God almost cajoles (Ex. 3) and even threatens (Ex. 4:14) into obedience. There is therefore no hero but God, and no glory for anyone other than God.

For the Love of God, Volume One February 19

Yet one cannot help reflecting on the place of this episode in the plotline that leads to Moses’ leadership of the Exodus some decades later. By God’s own judicial action, many Egyptians would then die. So why doesn’t God use Moses now, while he is still a young man, full of zeal and eagerness to serve and emancipate his people?

It simply isn’t God’s way. God wants Moses to learn meekness and humility, to rely on God’s powerful and spectacular intervention, to await God’s timing. He acts in such a way that no one will be able to say that the real hero is Moses, the great visionary. By the time he is eighty, Moses does not want to serve in this way; he is no longer an idealistic, fiery visionary. He is an old man whom God almost cajoles (Ex. 3) and even threatens (Ex. 4:14) into obedience. There is therefore no hero but God, and no glory for anyone other than God.

Why would God use a murder who is past his prime, lacks confidence, lacks faith, and is temperamental at best? Maybe it is to show us that God is so sovereign that he can make crooked sticks drawn straight lines.

We think our failure to be all that we should be for God keeps us from the work of God. But in reality, it is our failures and our weaknesses that are often how God shows Himself to be the sovereign hero of all.

We fail. But we serve a God who is undefeated.

We sin. But we serve a God who sovereignly saves us by grace.

Maybe you struggle to find solace in the sovereignty of God tonight.

Maybe you struggle to find solace in the sovereignty of God tonight.