Exodus - God Hears the Cries: Week 1
Opening Prayer:
Lord God,
You are the God who hears, who listens and who moves. You involve yourself in your world and you call us to be involved too. Help us be people who hear, listen and move to the cries of those around us.
In Jesus’ name,
Amen
Key Scriptures:
These are the names of the sons of Israel who went to Egypt with Jacob, each with his family: 2 Reuben, Simeon, Levi and Judah; 3 Issachar, Zebulun and Benjamin; 4 Dan and Naphtali; Gad and Asher. 5 The descendants of Jacob numbered seventy in all; Joseph was already in Egypt.
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 labour, 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 labour in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their harsh labour 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.”
Exodus 1:1-2:10
Sermon Summary:
Today we start a new series on the book of Exodus. In this book we meet the people of are descended from the family of Jacob (Israel). Pharaoh is playing God with the family of Israel - dehumanising them and killing them. He “looked at them with disgust and dread” – a problem that is still very present and real in our current world as well. Pharoah has enslaved the Israelites in forced work gangs, killing baby boys as they were born, eventually commanding every baby boy to be drowned.
What can be done in the face of such evil? Where is God in the middle of this?
Over the past few weeks, we have heard that God works in partnership with people. That’s the way we see God at work in our world. Whenever there are situations of pain and oppression in our world, God raises up and partners with people to do the work of bringing goodness, hope and freedom. In this story, we are introduced to three groups of women choosing to align themselves with God over against pharaoh:
1st: the midwives - standing against evil using the skills and power they had.
2nd: a mother and her daughter - taking a huge risk to save the life of a child
3rd : the princess and her servants - seeing the humanity in the life of a baby even though they are the “enemy”.
For us - We can choose to see that others are made in the image of God and are worth standing up for.
We can take risks to do the work of God even when it seems impossible
We can stand against oppression and evil with the ordinary God-given skills that we have.
We can do all this because we know that this is the work of God, and God works with us. God uses ordinary people. He transforms ordinary people to do extraordinary things.
God resists evil non-violently yet still resists it completely and utterly. God showed us this in the person of Jesus, whose death and resurrection demonstrated God’s power of the work of oppression and evil.
God hears the cries of people and calls us to partner with us to liberate them. He chooses to partner with people; people have to choose to partner with him. That’s why we, as a church, work around the world standing alongside the poor in the face of oppression. Let’s continue that work!
Questions to Consider:
What motivated these women to care for this baby?
What did they do? How did they do it? What do think they were feeling as they did so?
What would motivate you to publicly stand against injustice?
What skills do you have? How can these skills be used to combat oppression today?
“God hears the cries of his people.” What cries would God be wanting us to act on now?
When has God heard and answered your cries? How did he use others to do this?
How can he use us to answer others’ cries today?
Practices to Consider:
Give to our church as we collectively spend what resource we can on behalf of the poor and unreached. Give here.
Pray for people in places suffering, and for opportunities to join with God in their liberation.
Go, consider spending a chapter of your life overseas alongside the poor and unreached to explore this further email global@swbc.org.nz
Prayer Prompts:
Pray for the Rohingya people in Myanmar who are facing extreme persecution at the hands of the government authorities.
Additional Resources:
Bible Project - Exodus Scroll
Bible Project - The Exodus Way
Find the full sermon recording here
For a printable version of this guide click here