Music Video

Psalm 40:1–5 NIV

1 I waited patiently for the Lord; he turned to me and heard my cry. 2 He lifted me out of the slimy pit, out of the mud and mire; he set my feet on a rock and gave me a firm place to stand. 3 He put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God. Many will see and fear the Lord and put their trust in him. 4 Blessed is the one who trusts in the Lord, who does not look to the proud, to those who turn aside to false gods. 5 Many, Lord my God, are the wonders you have done, the things you planned for us. None can compare with you; were I to speak and tell of your deeds, they would be too many to declare.

Pray

Opening Hymn

Father’s Day Video

Announcements

Genesis 15:6–16 NIV

6 Abram believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness. 7 He also said to him, “I am the Lord, who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to take possession of it.” 8 But Abram said, “Sovereign Lord, how can I know that I will gain possession of it?” 9 So the Lord said to him, “Bring me a heifer, a goat and a ram, each three years old, along with a dove and a young pigeon.” 10 Abram brought all these to him, cut them in two and arranged the halves opposite each other; the birds, however, he did not cut in half. 11 Then birds of prey came down on the carcasses, but Abram drove them away. 12 As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him. 13 Then the Lord said to him, “Know for certain that for four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own and that they will be enslaved and mistreated there. 14 But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions. 15 You, however, will go to your ancestors in peace and be buried at a good old age. 16 In the fourth generation your descendants will come back here, for the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.”

3 Worship songs

Hebrews 11:8–22 NIV

8 By faith Abraham, when called to go to a place he would later receive as his inheritance, obeyed and went, even though he did not know where he was going. 9 By faith he made his home in the promised land like a stranger in a foreign country; he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. 10 For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God. 11 And by faith even Sarah, who was past childbearing age, was enabled to bear children because she considered him faithful who had made the promise. 12 And so from this one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore. 13 All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth. 14 People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. 15 If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 Instead, they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them. 17 By faith Abraham, when God tested him, offered Isaac as a sacrifice. He who had embraced the promises was about to sacrifice his one and only son, 18 even though God had said to him, “It is through Isaac that your offspring will be reckoned.” 19 Abraham reasoned that God could even raise the dead, and so in a manner of speaking he did receive Isaac back from death. 20 By faith Isaac blessed Jacob and Esau in regard to their future. 21 By faith Jacob, when he was dying, blessed each of Joseph’s sons, and worshiped as he leaned on the top of his staff. 22 By faith Joseph, when his end was near, spoke about the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and gave instructions concerning the burial of his bones.

Prayer Chorus

Prayer

Exodus

Video Intro & Video:

May I begin by saying, “Happy Father’s Day” to each of our fathers here today or those watching online. Good fathers are not only important in a family but to all of society. I am not preaching a father’s day sermon per se, just as I did not do a specific mother’s day sermon this year. This does not mean that I do not value the roles of fathers and mothers, I just had a different objective for this time and am tight for time to fit them in. However, next week we will see just how significant Godly parents can be, not only in the home but for achieving God’s plan for salvation.

As for this week, we will begin a new series on the book of Exodus.

I have been accumulating resources for this series for sometime since I determined to preach this subject last summer. A few months ago, I came across a very interesting video that I feel lends some fascinating information on recent and not so recent archaeological discoveries regarding the Exodus event.

This video is too long to show the entire thing in a service and it should in no way replace the preaching of the word, but it is more for education and equips apologetic arguments.

So, I have decided to show clips each week before we begin. These clips range anywhere from 2 - 8 minutes. Today’s is an 8 minute segment since it introduces the entire video. If you would like to see the entire video, it is on YouTube published by Parable. Without further ado, we will go to our video of the day.

Video - Chapter 1, 8 min

Please stand with me as we read from today’s text. I am reading from Exodus 1:6-14

Exodus 1:6–14 NIV

6 Now Joseph and all his brothers and all that generation died, 7 but the Israelites were exceedingly fruitful; they multiplied greatly, increased in numbers and became so numerous that the land was filled with them. 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.

The Word of God for the People of God. Thanks be to God.

Pray

I. God’s Salvation Revealed

Last summer we worked our way through the book of Genesis. If you were not here, I should warn you that I did not read every chapter and every verse. For this reason, I highly recommend you read along as we move through and be sure to read the chapters or verses I have skipped. I will try to keep you apprised of where I am going, but sometimes I forget.

There are people who will tell you that the Old Testament is not relevant anymore but they are incorrect. The Old Testament is vital to our understanding of the New Testament.

One of the amazing things about God is the way He has set up historical events to be a foreshadowing of things to come in the future. God, who is the only true all-knowing and all-seeing One, can do this and when we see these events unfold both past and present, we know beyond any doubt that we are created beings guided by a supernatural God who has a purpose and not some random accident that has no purpose or direction.

One of the greatest examples of this is the Exodus account and the life of Moses. To begin understand the account of the Exodus, we have to drop back and recount some of what has happened in Genesis. When we do so, we find that God knows the future and He has a plan even in the current moment. So, let us look at...

A. The Foretelling of God

God has a purpose for us and when He deems it appropriate, He shares the future with us. I believe God does so for a couple reasons.

He is revealing Himself to us. He is God and as God, He knows all things.

He does so to prepare us or to prepare others. God isn’t trying to trap or trick us. God always works through revelation and current circumstances to prepare us for what is to come.

Sometimes God is very direct and literally proclaims to us a situation that is coming in order to prepare us or others. For example, a good year before I was called to move to Colorado Springs to attend the Bible College, I felt God impressing upon me that I would be moving further from my family than I had ever been before and that it would be for ministry purposes. Now, in many ways, I was already geared up to do God’s bidding, but I still had lessons to learn to prepare for it and my son and family needed time to adjust to the idea. A year later when the idea of the Bible College came up (which was nearly 1,300 miles away from my family), we all knew that God was in it. He had prepared our hearts and minds to accept it and recognize that it was His will.

There are other times when God is not so clear about future events, but after we experience them, we realize how God has prepared us in other ways. An example of this is when someone suffers an extreme loss, but are able to cope because of coping skills they learned from lesser tragedies previously experienced.

We see many experiences such as these in scripture. God has recorded them so we can know Him and begin to understand how He works in our lives.

The account of the Exodus is just such a case. God reveals very specifically, the situation that the Children of Israel will find themselves in the future. It was revealed to their ancestral father, Abraham hundreds of years before it happened. This account was read earlier, but allow me to re-read specific verses.

God is cutting a covenant with Abraham and God shares the distress that Abraham’s people will find themselves in later and how God will deliver them.

Genesis 15:13–14 NIV

13 Then the Lord said to him, “Know for certain that for four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own and that they will be enslaved and mistreated there. 14 But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions.

Why did God share this with Abraham? I believe it was for Abraham. I believe it was an act of friendship plus showed God’s good faith for his purposes for Abraham’s family. However, it also would offer hope to Abraham’s future descendents when the time came. What God shared with Abraham was for the purposes of Abraham’s descendents and it was passed down father to son through hundreds of years providing hope in the dark days.

We know this to be true as we see it revealed through Jacob and Joseph. Jacob as he was dying encouraged his boys while they were in Egypt by referring to the fact that they would eventually return to the promised land. Joseph upon his death did the same entreating his people to take his body back with them when that time came.

Genesis 50:24–25 NIV

24 Then Joseph said to his brothers, “I am about to die. But God will surely come to your aid and take you up out of this land to the land he promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” 25 And Joseph made the Israelites swear an oath and said, “God will surely come to your aid, and then you must carry my bones up from this place.”

This was also passed down father to son until hundreds of years later when they exited the land of Egypt to return to Canaan, they obeyed Joseph’s request.

There were no books that declared these truths at this time. It was strictly passed down from father to son and probably mother to daughter. Eventually, God called upon Moses to write these things down. This was important for our benefit that we would know as well. If these accounts had not eventually been recorded in book form, they would have eventually been lost to future generations or even more so, those of us who are not of Jewish descent.

When we get to the book of Exodus, we find God’s revelation proven true.

When we begin in Exodus 1, we find...

B. The Prophecy Fulfillment

Or at least the beginning of the fullfillment and there was more than one prophecy given to Abraham that is fulfilled in the beginning of Exodus.

The first thing we find is God’s fulfillment of His promise to give Abraham a huge family. In Exodus 1:1 we are reminded of Jacob’s twelve sons and told that there were 70 family members in all who came to join Joseph in Egypt.

However, as large families tend to do, they grew exponentially and we find God’s promise of numerous family members by the time of the Exodus.

Exodus 1:6–7 NIV

6 Now Joseph and all his brothers and all that generation died, 7 but the Israelites were exceedingly fruitful; they multiplied greatly, increased in numbers and became so numerous that the land was filled with them.

Then we find another fulfilled prophecy. Now that they have grown in number, they are no longer welcome in Egypt. Pharaoh is intimidated by their numbers.

The book of Exodus does not identify the exact Pharaoh of these events. It really is not relevant to the story, though it does appeal to our curiosity. It has been a major point of debate for centuries. For one thing, it would help pinpoint the exact timeline of when Israel was in Egypt. Here again, this is important to man, not so much to God. But I do not think God is against us exploring such information as long as we do not lose sight of the actual important parts of the story, that being God’s love and His interrelations with humankind as well as the salvation He offers us all.

That is why I cannot warrant replacing an entire sermon with the video, but it is interesting and next week’s video they will share newer information pointing to which Pharaoh this may have been.

But back to today’s subject. The Hebrews were considered foreigners. They were green card holders if you will. They were not credentialed citizens of Egypt and over time their population grew to such that the Egyptians began to fear them.

Now, the Israelites would remember Joseph. He was a descendant and probably revered as a hero since his position in Egypt saved their families from dying during the great famine. However, Egypt had no great reason to remember Joseph in the long run. He was a hero for the moment, but he was still a foreigner. Over the course of centuries, his memory faded and now few Egyptians if any may even know the history of how these foreigners came to live among them.

If that were not bad enough, they were shepherds. You may ask, “what has that got to do with anything?” Well if you will recall, when Joseph was educating them on Egyptian etiquette in preparation of presenting them to the Pharaoh, he gave this warning.

Genesis 46:31 NIV

31 Then Joseph said to his brothers and to his father’s household, “I will go up and speak to Pharaoh and will say to him, ‘My brothers and my father’s household, who were living in the land of Canaan, have come to me.

Genesis 46:33–34 NIV

33 When Pharaoh calls you in and asks, ‘What is your occupation?’ 34 you should answer, ‘Your servants have tended livestock from our boyhood on, just as our fathers did.’ Then you will be allowed to settle in the region of Goshen, for all shepherds are detestable to the Egyptians.”

In other words, the Egyptians were the equivalent to cattle ranchers in the old west and the Hebrews were “stinking sheep keepers!”

Well, of course, Joseph’s brothers didn’t heed his warning and blurted right out that they were keepers of sheep! Oh well, it passed for the moment but over time, it would begin to grate on the Egyptians. If things weren’t bad enough, in Joseph’s day, these Hebrew foreigners were given prime real estate. That too would become a sore point over time.

Have you ever noticed how life ebbs and flows between good times and bad times? There are good years. Things go relatively well and you feel good about life. Then suddenly, it seems to change and it feels like every time you turn around something bad happens. Well, the Israelites had done well for a long time. Then slowly, the attitudes began to change toward them. Then the unthinkable happens even though their own family stories indicated it would happen. Perhaps they thought it would happen more slowly or hoped it wouldn’t happen, but suddenly they are pressed into slavery. They are tasked with incomprehensible hardship and abuse as they are forced to build two incredible cities of Egypt.

It did not matter if they were the construction crew or the farm crew. They were mistreated and abused.

The Egyptians figured the Israelite numbers would begin to deteriorate. Between work accidents and accounts of being beaten to death, they expected their numbers to fall, but God had another plan. Instead of decreasing in number, they only continued to grow.

Exodus 1:12 NIV

12 But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites

We read this account and we see the struggle between the Egyptians and the Israelites, but what is less obvious is a deeper truth. The Israelites were God’s chosen people. They were prospering. They were not hurting anyone. There was no real reason for Egypt and her Pharaoh to feel threatened. However, Satan placed fear in the heart of the Egyptians in order to try to destroy God’s people. And for a time, it seemed like Satan was winning and yet, the harder the Egyptians tried to destroy the Israelites, the more they grew. We will see more on this next week.

Oh and in case you didn’t catch it, this is the first case of Jewish persecution. From here on forward to current day, God’s people have suffered as such because Satan has targeted them/us. However, upon Christ’s second return this persecution for them and any of us will end.

But the question begs answering, “Why did God allow it?” I should add then and now?

There are probably more reasons than I understand or want to take time in this moment to answer, but I will list a few.

1. God has a higher purpose than is seen in any one moment.

Israel was probably pretty content in Egypt at first though they knew God intended them to eventually be in Canaan. Why else had they not returned yet? They could have petitioned Pharaoh to let them leave after the famine was over and Joseph had passed on. They had not done so and God knew enough to understand that it would take some hardship to push them to leave because God knew he had something better for them in Canaan. Keep in mind, these later generations had never seen Canaan. They only knew Egypt.

2. God’s purposes are based on eternal outcomes, not momentary pleasure.

If you had to choose between being happy and content for 100 years then suffer eternally or struggle through 100 years or so and live like a king for eternity, which would you choose? Hopefully, you would choose the latter. To choose the first option is foolishness. Yet, that is the choice we all are faced with. God knows that what we suffer now is short in comparison to all eternity. He has our best option at heart and works to get us to that happy ending.

3. God directs events to open our eyes to truth.

God had the Israelites best interest at heart, but He was also allowing events to reveal a greater truth to all humankind. This brings us our third point of this sermon.

C. God Sets the Scene for a Greater Event

God needed a way to demonstrate for all humankind our need for a savior and how He can provide for that need. In fact, He is the only one who can. For this reason, He chose Abraham. Abraham was not perfect but Abraham had faith in God. God then promised Abraham that He would make his people flourish and they would become God’s chosen people. Once again, not because they were perfect or special. They were chosen to be God’s avenue to reveal Himself to all humankind and to provide a Savior.

Genesis 12:3 NIV

3 I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

The account of the Exodus is a historical event but it is much more. Through this event God reveals that we are all slaves to sin. Just like the Israelites needed a deliverer to save them from their slavery, we need a deliverer to save us from ours.

In the weeks to come, we will see the parallels between the deliverance of Israel and our own deliverance from sin.

Conclusion:

It always amazes me how the Biblical accounts can speak so directly into our own lives. We find our own history, the history of all humankind in its pages.

We discover the God who created us and as I have just shared, how He reveals Himself to us through the events as well as His desire for the salvation of each of us so we can spend eternity with Him.

But if that were not enough, we also get insights into our own daily lives and current events.

The culture and times of the Egyptian and Israelite conflict are foreign to us and our culture, and yet the human spirit reacts and responds in many of the same ways.

As I read of Pharaoh’s response and actions to Israel, I also see the same pattern of response and actions by Hitler toward the Jews. However, I see the same pattern happening today in our nation.

See if you do not see the same pattern happening to those who dare to support Trump politics (Christians are often identified with this same group).

Prejudicial Escalation

Public denunciation

Denial of privileges

Wanton destruction of shops and property

Marked publicly as enemies

Attempts to annihilate

If you are watching the news regularly, 4 of those 5 are already happening to a certain level and it is escalating.

We are in a situation where we can relate to the Israelites and their frustration over how fast their social standing went from good to bad. Their prosperity from rich to poor.

As we study the account of the Israelites in Exodus, I pray that you will find gems of truth that will give you hope and help in the days that we are currently facing. And if you have not yet placed your full trust in God, you will see why this is so very important. as God has the power to overcome the enemy and usher us into the Promised Land eternally! He is the only one who can.

Exodus is a very rich, but also very revealing passage when it comes to our human nature and God’s mercy and grace. I am excited to explore these event with you in the coming weeks.

Pray