David Pawson Exodus 1
If you enjoy reading escape book and I do, you will like the book of Exodus. It’s a story of the biggest escape in history I believe. Over 2million slaves escaped from one of the most highly fortified nation in the entire world. It’s a miracle in fact it was a series of miracles.
So here we have this tremendous escape story. Moses actually saw more miracles than Abraham, Isaac and Jacob put together. It is just one string of supernatural interventions on behalf of the people. Some of the miracles sound a bit like magic as when Moses stick turns into a snake and then back into a stick again but most of these miracles are clear manipulations of nature. They certainly couldn’t come into that blessed tight semantic miracles. They indecencies God is actually manipulating what is created for the good for His people. Now the whole event of the Exodus had a profound significance in two regards.
First of all it has national significance for the people of Israel. These were the beginning of their national history, this is when they got their political freedom, this is when they became a sovereign nation on their own right and though they didn’t yet have a land. They were now a people a nation with their name of their own the name Israel. And forever afterwards they have celebrated this event once a year they hold their Passover. Much as in America they celebrate their love for their independence.
But it also has spiritual significance and not just national significance because this was when they discover that their God was the God who made the whole universe and that therefore He could control what He had make for their good. They actually came to believe that their God was more powerful than all the gods of Egypt put together. Ultimately they realized that their God was the only God that existed and Isaiah keeps on emphasizing that there is no God besides me. At this stage, they were to discover that their God was more powerful than every other God that he was a supreme God.
It’s here that He has a title “El Shadai”, God Almighty. But He also has a name and in the book of Exodus that the nation was given His personal name. Somehow when you know some ones name the relationship becomes more intimate and personal. That’s why you’re all wearing budges with your name on it because it helps you to relate in an intimate, in a personal way. Here in the budges you can say “Hello Peter” and God have a name as well as many, many, titles and His name is “Yahweh”. I don’t even know if I’m saying it correctly because I have yet to find the Jew who would tell me how to say it. They dare not even say the name in case I take it in vain. So I’m hoping I’m pronouncing it right. But the name “Yahweh” doesn’t mean much to me, it doesn’t set my heart on fire, it’s a funny word, it is not English.
Sometime ago I was praying and I said, “Lord please give me an English word that will convey the meaning of Yahweh to me and also give me the feelings that arouse your people”. And immediately into my mind came the name “always”. I thought that’s a beautiful name, because Yahweh is a participle of the verb “to be” and to call God Always communicates what that name really says. And that’s only His first name He has many second name. Always my Provider, Always Helper, Always my Protector, Always my Healer, Always, Always. And so that’s the name I’ve use for God since but the Hebrews is “Yahweh” and this was when they found his name and they give them not only His title “El Shadai, God Almighty”, but His name "I’m Always", I’m always with you, I was Always here, I’m Always .
To put it in other way it’s in the book of Exodus that the creator of everything became the redeemer of the few people and it is the combination of creator and redeemer which we need to hold very firmly. I’m afraid some Christians go to the extreme of only thinking God is creator and some only think of His redeeming power but they belong together. The creator of the entire universe becomes the redeemer of a bunch of slaves.
Now this is one of the five books of Moses and when you study them four of them much as same and one is quite different. Just to mention that different first, Genesis stands alone, because Genesis is the only one of the five books of Moses that covers events before Moses lived. The other four all happened within his lifetime and clearly he wrote the other four. But this whole bunch of slaves who have been 400 years in slavery without their own land, without their own money, without their own whatever. And the result for is they needed to be retold their roots. I don’t know if you read Alex Haily's book <Roots>. There was a man whose ancestors were sold into slavery and taken from Africa to America and became slaves. And he went back to rediscover his roots before his people were slaves and he discovered them in Africa. It is a very trilling story.
Well now Moses had to write the previous history of this people for these slaves so that they knew their roots so that they knew where they come from. And so Moses clearly collected from people’s memory two things Genealogies, their family trees and story about their ancestors.
The book of Genesis is entirely made up of such memories and Moses collected them. But with Exodus he begins with his own lifetime. And Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy are mixtures of narrative and legislation of what happened in the history and what God has said to them by with how they should live. And it’s a unique combination of narrative and legislation that characterizes the four other books of Moses. And the book of Exodus is typical. The first half of it is narrative the second half is legislation. The first half is about what God did on their behalf by the miracles to get them out of slavery. But the second half is about what God said and how they were to live now that they were free. The first half therefor demonstrates God’s Grace toward them, His free favor in getting them out of their problems. And therefore the second half expects them to show their gratitude for that grace by living this way.
Now the reason I have emphasize that is too many people when they read the Law of Moses think that this law was their way to be redeemed by God, no, no! They were redeemed by God first and then given the law to keep by with gratitude. Now that’s the very important part. They weren’t given the law first, they were set free first and then they were given the law to live by and that is exactly the same in the New Testament too. We are redeemed and then were told how to live holy lives. You don’t become a Christian by living right first. You become a Christians by getting redeemed first and liberated and then you live right. So that is liberation comes before legislation. Their set free and then they were told ‘that don’t abuse your freedom, use it properly’.
So here they are set free from Egypt but here they enter into a covenant or a marriage with God at Sinai and it take a form of a wedding service. God says, “I will” and them the people have to say “we will” and literally they were married and it is called a marriage. And what follows is called the honeymoon, and then the marriage has to begin in the land, in the place of God’s choosing. They are liberated from slavery but not so that they can do their own sin. They go into the wildness to serve God. They are set free from slavery but for service. That is an important point, it the same in the New Testament for Christians. We were not set free to do our own thing, we are set free to serve God whom to serve his perfect freedom. So redemption comes before righteousness. That’s the important part I want to make. The book of Exodus makes that absolutely care. God redeemed them first, now he said “live right because I set you free”.
So that is the two halves of the book of Exodus. And them I divided the rest of it up into ten very simple portions and given them each a title because I can memorize things that is simple. And there are six sections in chapters 1 – 18 and four in chapters 19- 40. Running through them the six sections in the first half I call “multiplication and murder”. That covers the incredible increase in the number of Hebrews slaves over 400 years from one family to two and a half million. That’s some increase. Actually we only need 4 children in each generation for 30 generations and you can do it mathematically. So it wasn’t all that multiplication but they certainly became a huge number. And then of course the boys were murdered by the pharaoh. We will look at all these in detail later.
Bull rushes and bush, you all know the story of how Moses was taken out of bull rushes and therefore given the name Moshe which means ‘drawn out’ because he was drawn out of the river Nile. The baby boy was of course thrown out into the River Nile to the crocodiles but Moses was drawn out (Moshe) of the river Nile. Plague and pestilence, well that’s sends on pharaoh is the hardest part. Feast and first born that the origin of the Passover. We will look at that in great detail. Delivered and drowned is the crossing of the Red Sea but they were not drowned but it’s the Egyptian army was. Provided and Protected talks about their journey from Egypt to Sinai and some of the things had happened how God had protected them and provided for them. In the wilderness where the Egyptian army and the Yom Kippur war was perishing after three days and yet two and a half million people survived for 40 years. again God had to do a lot of miracles.
In the second half we have first of all the commandments and especially the Ten Commandments. And these were sealed in a covenant a marriage between God and His people and God said “I will” and they said “we will”. And that bound them together forever. God never goes back on the covenant. And then in chapters 25-31, we have the fact that God is now going to live among them and therefore he needs a place to live. He needs a tent but He needs rather different tent from theirs for they might think He is just one of them. And so we have this specification of the tabernacle. And God provides specialist, people who have never made anything but bricks up to now and now they got to work with gold and silver and wood. And God had taught them those skills and the Holy Spirit gave those skills to people who have never made anything but bricks before, that’s a miracle. And then comes the saddest part of Exodus, the story of the “golden calf” when they indulge themselves and Moses have to pray most honestly on their behalf or they have never got any where further. And finally the book of Exodus finishes for the construction of the tabernacle. Its direction and God takes up residence and the glory comes down on His tent.
In Hebrew these book is called ‘these are the names’. That’s because it is read every year in the synagogues as all the five books of Moses and its read of course in rolled up scrolls. And the first word at the scroll are “these are the names” and that’s how they named all the five books of Moses, by the first words so you could unroll them in the synagogue and get the right one. But when the Old Testament was translated into Greek, they gave it a different name. They use two Greek words, “ex” which means out and “Hodos” which means way. I don’t know if hodos to me plays down the road is connected to that or not. But “ex hodus” means “out way” and you would have seen it in the Greek Theater when over that door you can see the word exit that’s a Latin word, Exit, the Greek word would be “Ex hodos” or “way out”. And then the book was called “the way out”, the “ex hodus”. And it’s just been slightly corrupted in English word, “Exodus”. But I’m sure you realize it was the way out, it sound too like exit.
◑Alright let’s look at the first half of Exodus in this tour, chapters 1-18.
They were many so called problems in this first half. It is so obvious and unnatural story. This kind of thing doesn’t happen every Tuesday and when you read through one thing after another it makes you wonder at times “did this really happen?’ And there were plenty of people that tell us ‘it didn’t’ and we’re reading about legends and myths. There was a series on the television not long, ago which took that line and tried to tell us that there is whole lot of legends gathered around the beginnings of the Israelites history. Well is it myth or miracle? Why are these problems?
Well the first reason is that there is no secular record of these events. Outside of the Bible there is no trace whatever of any of these, of any Egyptian records for example. Now that is astonishing because they did keep pretty good records and that’s one of the reason people say, “Oh that must be a legend”. Well I can think of a jolly good reason why the Egyptians didn’t record this, can you? Yes you’ve seen it already. I’m quite sure they didn’t want to record for posterity, such a humiliating experience as seeing their best chariots, and charioteers drawn in the Red Sea. They didn’t want to be humiliated. So I’m not bothered at the fact that there is no other record.
The numbers involved created problem for other people. Two and a half million, well, that’s a huge number. If they marched five abreast I suppose the column would be about a hundred and ten miles long and would take months to pass. It is an enormous number, two and a half million. Man wouldn’t to save nothing of all their animals and were told even some Egyptians came with them. That’s an interesting point. So that’s a big number to get through the desert for forty years where there is no food or water.
So the numbers created problem for some. Then there’s a problem of the date of it because we don’t have a record of it outside the Bible. We don’t know for example which Pharaoh it was. And therefore we don’t know which century it was. And there are two possibilities of this scholars look at. one is the 15th century BC and the other is 13th. If it was the 15th it was the Pharaoh Tacmus but if it was the 13th, and to be frank that’s the one I go for, I believe all the evidence point to the 13 century then it would be this Pharaoh. I got a picture of him for you just to show you what an impressive character he has. He even have four statues of himself made not contended with one, he has four. This is Ramses II and you can just see the top two people at the bottom picture to show you the size of these monuments. Now this is what the Israelites were up against. See we often treat Pharaoh as a little body. He wasn’t, he was very powerful emperor and he had the most powerful military force in the Ancient world. A man who could cause those four statues to be erected of himself how doubts to this solid mountain he use no mean character. But in Gods side he was puny and it was no problem to God to deal with that man. But I believe you are looking at the likeness of the Pharaoh who is involved in the book of Exodus.
Then there is division about the routes of the Exodus and there are three possibilities we got to have to look at. Again we don’t know exactly which route they took. And there are three alternatives to consider, north middle and south. And we have to look at those. You see, all these questions made scholars doubts whether they are reading fact or fiction or perhaps faction about modern mixture of fact and fiction which are now a custom to a TV historical place. Well it doesn’t boil down to Faith and my faith says the most understandable explanation for the facts is the book of Exodus. And the facts of these first of all, the existence of the nation called Israel.
Now nobody can dispute there is a nation called Israel in the world today. Where did they come from? How did they start? How did they ever become a nation if they were actually a bunch of slaves? We do know that from secular records that they were a bunch of slaves.
Something dramatic is needed to explain the existence of the Israel or take another fact. It is a fact that every year every Jewish family celebrates the Passover. Now that’s a fact. Every Jewish family does that. Why do they do it? You got to have some explanation for such a ritual that has survived for so many thousands of years. Well the book of Exodus provides the most reasonable explanation of that. Well I could go on, there are facts after fact in our modern world which has to be expected as fact which you got to find an explanation and for me the book of Exodus gives the best explanation of all the facts.
Well now let’s run through the sections of this book and look at some of the points of interest. I can't give you a commentary on the whole book. I just want to take out of each section something that might have troubled your mind or some question that you might ask and try to give you an answer to that. Let’s take “multiplication and Murder”. The question I have is, ‘why they did stayed so long in Egypt four hundred years’? They went down there in the time of Joseph and Jacob, you remember, because there was a famine and Egypt had bread. And they simply went down there because there’s more food. They went voluntary, they were accepted as guest of the government, they were given a jolly good fertile piece of the Nile delta called Goshen and they were there during the seven years of famine. But at the end of that time why didn’t they go back to their own land? Why did they stay? And in fact they stayed so long that they outstayed their welcome. And that’s when they were forced into forced slave. So why did they stay?
Well there an human answer to that and the divine answer and I’ll give you both because so often there are two side of every question. The human answer is they were Jolly comfortable. It was much easier to make a living in the Nile delta than it was in the hills of Judea, much easier. And it was fertile the climate was warmer there was no snow. In the Nile delta there wasn't the hills of Judea. There were just all together more comfortable in much as same way as Lot was more comfortable than in the Jordan Valley at Sodom and Gomorrah. The climate was very similar to the Nile delta and it looks more comfortable and people like to live in a more comfortable climate where life is more easy. And that’s why they stayed though God had never given them any land in Egypt. He said I’m giving you the hills of Canaan, that’s where you belong, but they stayed.
Well we can’t blame them because we tend to do the same thing and they didn’t want to leave until it was too late. Amazing how many Christians find a new house before they start looking for church or start asking how they going to serve God there because they have seen their house of their like. Well that what they did. And they stayed in Egypt too long until it was too late and they were not free to leave and they were now into position of being forced slave, that’s the human answer.
And then and only then they cried out to God and say, “God why are you letting us be slaves in Egypt?” Isn’t it amazing how we get ourselves into problems then we’re blaming God for not getting us out of them quickly. It’ is so human. But God didn’t do anything about it for about four hundred years. And we got to ask why?
Had they gone back as soon as the famine was over they would have only been a few people. And there was room for those few in Canaan. But now they had stayed so long that they were a large people and there was no room for them in Canaan because there were already other people living there. Now God was going to kick those people out, but not until they were so wicked that they didn’t deserve to live there. And God explains in the book of Genesis even, He explains to Abraham that your descendants will stay in Egypt a long, long, time until the wickedness of the Canaanites is completes. And so before God could enter the land of the Canaanites for all of them now, He had to wait until they became so bad that it would be an act of justice and judgment to throw them out of the Promised Land and let all the Hebrew slaves in. (This is the spiritual answer for their long staying in Egypt)
So God waited until He could do that and that’s the reason God gave for that 400 year gap. It’s a long time to wait for God Trans the oppressed. You pass it down to generation keep passing God and one day He will get us out of here. What patience you need to go on praying for that. Four centuries but God had and at the right time he acted.
Well now they had through three oppressive decrees, first was force labor, second was to make bricks without straw, do you realize what that meant. Have you ever lifted up two bricks, one made to straw one without, the one with out is about three times heavier. The more straw you put in the lighter the brick and the easier to carry and the bricks without straw that’s heavy. And the Egyptians saw that if they did this and they wouldn’t have any energy left for leisure, mischief, or sex. That was the idea and so that they’d be too tired even to make love and therefore their numbers would go down again. In fact the harder their conditions they made for the Hebrews slaves the more children they had. So they have to introduce the third decree and that was that all the baby boys had to be thrown in the Nile to the crocodiles. The Nile of course is a source of life to Egypt, there is no life apart from the Nile in Egypt, but is also the place of death for the Hebrew slaves.
That’s the first section, bull rushes and the bush, I don’t need to say much except to point out that Moses like Joseph was brought out it courts, and therefore was given the best education. If ever you go to along the Tames embankment in London, look for clear patches needle. There are two of them, one is in Rome is on the Tames embankment. And those two were the gate post of the Egyptian University. And when you see Cleopatra’s needle, you’re looking at something that Moses saw every day as a student. He walks and passes that. And how know that education. This of course made him far better educated than any other Hebrew slaves and this of course is why he was able to write the first five book of the Bible. And it says he capture a careful record everything and he collected people’s memories and he put together this five books. His education as an Egyptian prince was not wasted, but of course all that came to a sudden end when he lost his temper with one of the Egyptian slave driver and killed him and had to flee for his life.
Interesting then that he actually spent his forty years in the very wilderness where lately he would have to live forty years for the people of Israel. So that again God prepared him for this. I don’t know if you can do this but I can look back for my pre Christian days and see God preparing me for what happened. I remember going in for speaking competition in the young farmers club. Little dreaming but in doing that God is getting me ready for what I do now. And God got Moses ready for leading His people to the wilderness by making him spend forty years by himself being a shepherd looking out for few goats or sheep. But then he met the Egyptian guard.
The burning bush is very interesting not so much for the bush as for Moses excuses. God called Moses out of a burning bush and said, “take your shoes off you are on a holy ground”. And then He said “Moses, you’re going to look people going to be the man to draw my people out of Egypt. You were drawn out of the Nile but you will draw my people out of Egypt”. And Moses made five excuses as to why he shouldn’t do it and again you might identify one of this.
First he said “I’m insignificant”, “who am I that anybody should take notice of me?” have you ever said that? Well God said I’ll be with you. Who am I? I’m the important one not you.” So you try the second excuse. You say, “I’m ignorant, what shall I say.” And God said I’ll make a promise I’ll tell you what to say. So he made the third excuse ha said “I’m Impotent”, I can’t convince them they won’t believe me,” and God said “my power is going to be with you. You are going to do miracles. Then he said I’m incompetent I’m not eloquent actually I had a stammer, I can’t put words together. Did you ever say that to God? And God said, “Alright your brother Aaron will be your prophet”. So that was a prophet is, a prophet is sends someone who’s a mouthpiece. So you tell your brother Aaron what to say and he will say it to pharaoh. That’s all a prophet should do. He should just pass on a message. And the last excuse he made was I’m irrelevant and send someone else. “Here am I, send him!” Again many have answered a call from God with that, send some else please not me. And that’s when God promised his partner.
Let’s move on the plagues and pestilence. Ten plagues: the Nile to blood, frogs, knots and mosquitoes, flies cattle disease, boils, hail, locust, darkness and the death of the first born. I want you to notice about those ten plagues. The first thing I noticed is that God is in total control of the insect world. Have you even thought about that? In the book of Jonah, when I remember telling you that the biggest miracle, there is not the whale but about the worm. When God tells the worm what to do, a whale is easy, training worms is a little bit harder but God can do it and God can tell mosquitoes and locust what to do and where to go, he can tell frogs what to do. Tremendous sense of Gods control of what is created in these plagues but there’s something else about these, first do you notice that they are increasing intensity. There’s a build up from this comfort to disease to danger to death. The plagues gradually got worst as Pharaoh and the people refuse to respond to these warnings. But I think what many Christian readers missed is that this was a religious contest. This was a contest between gods, because every one of those plagues was on attack on a particular god worshiped by the Egyptians and that gives the plagues a real meaning.
Let me just run through some of the Egyptian gods, there was Khum, the god of the Nile, Hapi the spirit of the Nile, Osiris and it was believed that the blood stream of Osiris was the Nile, then there was Heket a frog like god, an god of resurrection, there was Hathor, another goddess was a cow and then there were a number of sacred bulls the god Apophis was a bull, and the god Mafdet was a sacred bull of Hide polis. Then there was the god of medicine then there was a sky goddess, a goddess of life. Another one sets as a protector of crops is. And then there were four sons other gods. And on the top of that, Pharaoh was supposed to be divine as well. So that can you see that these plagues were specifically directed against the Egyptian gods and the message was very simple. This God of the Hebrew slaves is far more powerful than all your gods. And still they didn’t listen.
Now there’s a little bit problem about Pharaoh’s heart here that I need to mention. It says, “God hardened Pharaoh’s heart” And some are afraid of made too much of this and erected the doctrine of pre destination on it. Especially in the light of Romans 9 where Paul talks about God hardening Pharaoh’s heart and you can go overboard on predestination saying, “It’s up to God to choose whether he soften some ones heart or hardens them. It’s His choice, we don’t know why he makes this choice but he makes it chose and He chose Pharaoh and said “I’m going to harden his heart”, as if it was Bingo game. I said that reverently but that’s the kind of God that sometimes is preached. A God that just picks name out of the hat and decides to save some and send others to hell and harden the heart and soften some, that’s not what the Bible teaches. If you study this carefully you will find this, ten times Pharaoh’s heart was hardened but the first step pharaoh hardened his own heart and after he hardened it seven times God said “right if that coarse your choosing ill help you to go further down that road and three times God hardened it for him.
Now that puts our whole different light to it to me. God only hardened Pharaoh’s heart after Pharaoh had deliberately and repeatedly hardened his own heart. And indeed that’s what God does by way of punishment for people, he says if you go down this road alright ill help you down that road, if that’s for you…….
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