Defying Pharaoh: Standing Up for What's Right

You're listening to The Bible Guys, a podcast where a couple of friends talk about the Bible in fun, in practical ways. Here we are, Chris, we are here. Man is good to be here. Yes, And it is Friday, which means that Friday, it is the last day of the week. People have to suffer through the weekend without us. But it's the best day of the week for Friday is the best day for most of our listeners because the majority of time, this is when we get to find out what made Chris mad this week. It's the most important. Yeah, it's the most important segment we do. Somebody, Yeah, so I do have one. I do. So you're kidding you've had something making mad this week? But it makes everybody mad. I never saw it coming out of all fairness. This makes everybody mad, Okay, because sometimes, like if I say I'm really angry at like returning shopping carts, that doesn't make everybody mad. Yeah, it makes most people, most people, but not everybody. But this right here makes everybody mass Okay. Okay, So what happened this week? And I can't tell you who it was or exactly the circumstances because it was personal within my family. But somebody texted me from my family and assumed the worst, and they didn't approach it with a question, because the question should have been, hey, did you do this, and then my answer would have been no, I didn't do that. But instead the assumption came with like, hey, you did this, and now blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, and all of a sudden, this text comes with this really poor assumption right of assuming the worst, and yet what should have happened is assuming the best, right like, oh, he probably didn't do that. Hey, Chris, did you do this? Right? And so let me give you an example. So even though I can't get specific about this, I can get specific about a time that this happened in my previous church. So we were doing this building campaign and it was, you know, a large church, the previous church I worked at, and we had printed these really nice, full color, high gloss us campaign books. Right now, what I knew was these books were donated. Right, So this company who we used was owned by a person who now comes the heritage, by the way, but owned by a person who said, hey, this will be my gift to this capital campaign, and I'm going to provide. I'm not even kidding when I say this, Like I think probably tens of thousands of books, like twenty thousands of these books, and they were just really nice and they decided to give that. Well that's a big financial gift, right, so they give it. But we're not going to stand up on the stage and say, hey, credit goes to this guy, right, we just don't mention it. So this lady comes over to me after the service, and she comes over and she goes, I'm not giving a dime. I'm not giving a dime to this capital campaign. I'm like why, and she goes, because I can't believe that you spent so much money on these books. She goes, why would you want your money with this high gloss look at these books. These books must have cost, you know, tens and tens and tens of thousands. In a church that's going to waste that much money. I'm not going to give a dollar or two. And then I you know, of course, you know I know what's coming, right, And I go I said, actually, these books were donated by this person who gave it as a gift. And she goes, oh, and she court you immediately she felt so unbegally dumb, right, But then she goes, she didn't know what else to say, so she goes, well, then why didn't you say that from the platform? And I said, I have a better question. Why didn't you just assume it? And she had no answer for it. Right, I'm like, why didn't you assume that we're going to make good financial decisions? Right? Of all the things that we've done for you as a church, why wouldn't you just assume something like that, Hey, they must have probably got a deal, or they must have you know, maybe even donated or or something like this. Right, Why didn't you assume that? Why won't you assume the best? Instead you assume the worst? And then all of a sudden you have this horrible conclusion, right, and I think that that makes everybody Matt. So what made you mad this week was you had a family member who assumed the worst, yes, instead of approaching it just with the question, at least give me the benefit of doubt of saying is this true? Right? Hey? Can I confirm something before I get mad? Right? Approaching the question? Right? No, they were wrong, they were wrong. Yeah, they assume the worst, and it was wrong. Well, obviously, if they were right, they wouldn't have made me mad. Right. Well, no, it still makes me mad when people assume the worst, even if it is the worst. Yeah. So Annie Stanley does a message where he says there's always a gap between expectation and reality. Right, So the expectation is, hey, my daughter's going to be home at eleven thirty. The reality is it's now twelve o'clock and her phone's not answering. So assuming the worst is she's avoiding means she's staying outlet on purpose. Assuming the best is, hey, she something must have happened and her phone must have died. Right, So when you come in through the door, here's an idea, ask the question first, ask the question, Hey, was your phone? And if it's not, then you can get mad. But why would you assume the worst? I told my daughter's boyfriend. If I say be home at eleven, I mean like ten thirty. Ten forty five is what I mean? Yes, and not eleven oh one? Right, that's when you stop getting to date my daughter. And he goes, oh okay, I said, So here's the thing. Two things. One don't have flat tires. Two, if you do, you should go home and practice right now, how to change your tire really fast. Yeah. Right, And then so if you leave a half hour early so you know you're going to get her home a half hour early, then you have a tire, flat tire. You should be able to a strong young man like you should be able to change a flat tire in less than thirty minutes. So I said, you understand what I'm saying. There are no excuses, none come home early. And he started laughing. But then, yeah, we still have to do the same thing, check and make sure. Why are you guys late? Yeah, And the rest of the sermon is every time there's a gap between expectation reality, you as an individual have a choice of what to insert in that gap. So you could either insert believe the best or you could insert assume the worst. That's right. So anyway, that's what made me mad this week. And I get mad when people assume the worst. And I think all of us get mad. Absolutely, I think so. I'm mad for the world. I thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. We cannot thank you enough. Yes for being being irate for the rest of us, I'm here for you. Vicariously angry, and I'm here for everybody else, thank you. So here's the story. We've gone all through the entire Book of Genesis, and not every verse, but the major stories, and then through the Book of Job. Job was a contemporary, probably of Abraham Isaac Jacob Braden that that timeframe. There's no evidence in the Bible that they knew each other, but Abraham was famous and Job was famously wealthy, and so perhaps they might have known each other known of each other, but there's no indication of that. Job also talks about things to the heat. He was the Wizard of Us. Yeah, that's true. Job talks a little bit about things from the east. He mentions like stuff mind in Afghanistan and some of those things. So he might have been further east than Abraham. But anyways, it was about the same time. Then. Remember we ended the Book of Genesis with the life of Joseph, right yep, And so Joseph then from that point, remember Joseph's family moves to Egypt to avoid the famine that was happening, and they wind up living there for four hundred years and somewhere near two million Jews, probably Hebrews Jesse. He didn't live for four hundred years. No, he did not, but the Joseph's family and Jacob's family descendants, their descendants lived there for four hundred years. Eventually they were enslaved by the Romans. At first they were beneficiaries of the Roman ross Egyptians. They were beneficiaries of the Egyptian's generosity, and eventually they became slaves. And here's what the Bible says. It picks up in Exodus chapter one, four hundred years after the story of Joseph. Yeah, crazy, and it says, these are the names of the sons of Israel, that is Jacob who moved to Egypt with their father, each with his family Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Zebulan, Benjamin, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher and all. Jacob had seventy descendants in Egypt, including Joseph, who was already there. In time, Joseph and all his brothers died, ending that entire generation, but their descendants, the Israelites had many children and grandchildren. In fact, they multiplied so greatly that they became extremely powerful and filled the land. Eventually, a new king came to power in Egypt who knew nothing about Joseph or what he had done. He said to his people, Look, the people of Israel now outnumber us and are stronger than we are. We must make a plan to keep them from growing even more. If we don't, and if war breaks out, they will join our enemies and fight against us. Then they will escape from the country. So the Egyptians made the Israelites their slaves. They appointed brutal slave drivers over them, hoping to wear them down with crushing labor. And they forced them to build the cities of Pitham and Ramsays as supply centers for the king. But the more the Egyptians oppressed them, the more the Israelites multiplied and spread, and the more alarmed the Egyptians became. So the Egyptians worked the people of Israel without mercy. They made their lives bitter, forcing them to mix mortar and make bricks and do all the work in the fields. And they were ruthless in all their demands. Then Pharaoh, the King of Egypt, gave this order to the Hebrew midwives Shiffra and Pua. When you help the Hebrew women as they give birth, watch as they deliver. If the baby is a boy, kill him. If it's a girl, let her live. But because the midwives feared God, they refused to obey the king's orders, and they allowed the boys to live too. So the king of Egypt called for the midwives. Why have you done this? He demanded, why have you allowed the boys to live? The Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women. The midwives replied, they are more vigorous and have their babies so quickly that we cannot get there in time. So God was good to the midwives, and the Israelites continued to multiply, growing more and more powerful. Because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own. Then Pharaoh gave this order to all his people, throw every new born Hebrew boy into the Nile river, but you may let the girls live. That's rough, Yeah, you want to talk about rough. So you ever seen the cartoon the Prince of Egypt? Yes, so there's a They communicated this through and like, because you know, this is a horrible thing to put in a cartoon, right, you think, you think? And so they communicated it through. When he was walking through the hallways and he saw all those Egyptian Uh, what do they call those there's a name, there's a not a high lift for graph. What is it called hieroglyphics. Hieroglyphics. I'm think enough that's the that's their writings. Ye I was thinking of the singular it ends with graph anyway, but the hieroglyphics. He was walking through the hallways and then he saw the history of the baby's thrown into the now river, just through drawings, and it didn't say anything, it just showed it. And then and then he was like danta dom the music. Then he runs off and he cries and all that, and and so it's just it's just such an unbelievable thing to talk about throwing babies into an out river. It's just it's just you can't get any worse right than killing worse. So Herod did this in the New Testament, didn't He was so threatened when Jesus he heard that a king was born of the Jews, and he thought it was maybe threatening his title when Jesus was born, So he had ordered, uh, you know, all the babies, all the firstborns what two years in under, yeah, yet to be killed, and all of death on him. And then and then and ironically, Joseph and Mary fled to where Egypt, Egypt, which is where it happened in Egypt way back when, which is pretty crazy. So the Devil, this is one of the Devil's tactics, right, The Devil always tries to kill babies. So the Devil tried to destroy humanity in its infancy with the very first two humans. The Devil tried to kill Israel in its infancy. Devil tried to wipe out Israel here through babies. Devil tries to wipe tried to wipe out Jesus as an infant. Devil tried to destroy the early Church as an infant. Right, Devil loves to try to kill baby things. When we launch new ministries, when we have to be really, really careful, it's those early seasons that the Devil loves to try it because they're so vulnerable. Devil hates babies. I don't think it's a mistake that we kill millions of babies a year all around the world. Devil hates babies. And then the same thing with young Christians, new Christians. The Bible says that when you trust Christ and you're a brand new Christian, you're a baby in Christ that's what says. And the devil tries to wipe out brand new Christians too all the time. It's just it's his tactic. Over he keeps running the same play because it's pretty effective, right right, So he's trying to kill kill the Egyptian baby boys to stop them from growing. I looked up online. It seems like this pharaoh was either very likely it was Ramses the second, which is one of the most powerful pharaohs, or have been who was the other one? Here Seti the first. Both of these guys, this is like near the peak of the Egyptian Empire up to that time. So in Charlton Heston's movie, it was Seti who then gave birth to Ramseys and then Moses ended up saying with ram Yeah. Yeah. So it's right there right in that that those two that dynasty that they're in, and they were just on this building machine. Now they weren't building pyramids then, right, So it wasn't the pyramids, uh, but the what they did build it mentions these two cities. It mentions was it Pitham. I don't know where that is. I don't have any sense of where that is. There's there's some archaeological sites in the eastern Nile Delta. So if you know, if you ever look at the Now River, everybody along the Nile River for thousands of miles lives within like seven miles of the river. And then suddenly when you get north of Cairo, splits way out towards of this giant delta, and a huge portion of people, with Alexandria being up at the top of it, and it's a huge portion of the food grown and the Egyptian culture is in that Nile Delta, and so both Ramsays and Seti had their capital up in the delta. Later on at the end of all of the Egyptian empires, Cleopatra, her capital was there in Alexandria. King tut His was way down south with his parents Akonat and all them down in Luxore. So they had different each of these We think of the Egyptians as one group, but it wasn't. It was all these conquering groups had come in and take over and then they set a new dynasty. And sometimes he had Nubians from Africa, you know, southern south of Egypt in the Sudan, and they would come up and so it was different groups of people would be the rulers of Egypt, and at this time they were ruling out of that northern Nile Delta areas. Probably Pitham was up there, and there's a couple of archaeological sites. But this Ramsey City pie Ramses, we know where that is, right, and it's up there as well in the northeastern and it's Quantier is the name of the village where it was at. So huge palaces, temples, extensive storage facilities, it's all these things. And it was the jew the Israelites that they forced to build all of that, right, wow, So it's really kind of an interesting time in history that this is one of the spots you can time it exactly. Prior it was more difficult, but here this is seventeen fifty BC right right. The pyramids are already built at this point and they now have been enslaved and they're going to be going through a pretty tough time. So then Pharaoh calls in two of the midwives and say, hey, ladies, we don't trust these Israelites. We think they're going to take over. So whenever you see a baby boy born, just killing of course, right infanticide right there, now that late stage abortion right there, right, yeah, it's it's a infanticide, right kill a well, it'd be legal murder, yeah right yeah. So then but the ladies refused. And that's what I love about this, right It just said because the midwives feared God, they refuse to obey the king's orders. And there's something to that. There's something too, you know. I can't tell you how many people I've had conversations with afraid of losing their jobs, so they go ahead and compromise what they believe God says over and over and over again. And these two ladies, they were willing to risk their lives because they feared God more than they feared Pharaoh. And you know, we just talked in the Book of job I Alasay at the beginning of wisdom is fearing God, so putting God first, And it's a it's a great lesson that says, you know, always obey your parents unless they unless they tell you to do something that directly conflicts with what God says, right right, which is maybe an unpopular view to the to the dedicated Christian, But I mean, seriously, we obey the laws of man unless they conflict with the laws of God. Well literally, John and Peter said that right, obey God rather than man. That's right, Yeah, that's right. Yeah, should we should we? What is it if I choose to be obey man over God, then I should not be deserving of Christ. That's Christos Yeah right, yeah, right, So there is I think a challenge. Jesus said, in this world you'll have trouble because they hated me before they ever hated you. And so you know, we make our decisions based on comfort, what's going to be best for us? And God calls us to stand for what's right, and it's always it's always right to stand for what's right. So in this situation, as soon as the ladies chose to stand against him, look what the note says. I love this note in Life Applications study Bible. It says, against Pharaoh's orders, the midwives spared the Hebrew babies. Their faith in God gave them the courage to take a stand for what they knew was right. In this situation, disobeying the authority was proper. God does not expect us to obey those in authority when they ask us to disobey Him or his word. The Bible is filled with examples of those who are willing to sacrifice their very lives in order to obey God and save others. Esther and Mordecai and Esther, Shadrackmishak in a bed and to Go and Daniel are some of the people who took a bold stand for what was right. Whole nations can be caught up in immorality, racial hatred, slavery, prison cruelty. Thus, following the majority of the ruling authority is not always right. Whenever we're ordered to disobey God's word, we must obey God rather than any human authority. That's that verse I quoted in Acts chapter five, right nine, And so I just think that that was a really great thing. Now the question is the lie? What the lie? These two ladies lied to Pharaoh? He said, he said, what's the deal? How come you haven't been killing the babies? And the two ladies like, oh man, the Hebrew women are very vigorous, and they have their babies very quickly. We don't get there in time. That was a lie. Do you really think the Hebrew women are more vigorous than the Egyptian women? So a midwife could not possibly make it to deliver all of the Israelite babies. Oh well, see this. This is interesting that you pointed this out, because I took that comment to mean that, because because didn't earlier it said, uh, it said that the Israelites were having babies right there. It says, uh, it says the more the Egyptians are pressed them, the more Israelites multiplied and spread, and the more the alarm of the Egyptians became. So what I was taking that to mean was the millions of people that were there, the hundreds of thousands, so many people were pregnant at one time that it was they couldn't possibly keep up with all the people that were pregnant. That's not what that means, just the ones with the baby boys. Yeah, what I'm saying is like they can't keep you. They slipped through the cracks because they can't possibly govern that many people. They can't go around and just check them. So there could be thousands of babies born, but we can't get to them because they're all having That's certainly their claim. That's their claim here, And it seemed to believable, believable to the Pharaoh. You think that was a lie. I think it probably was really yeah, So were they having trouble before before he told them kill the baby boys? Were they having trouble? It doesn't say they were. Huh, he had. And very likely these these ladies were the supervisors of the midwives, right, It's very unlikely that if you have, you know, a couple million Israelites, that two women are delivering all the babies, right, right, So they're probably supervisors of the midwives, and these are the two getting hauled in and then uh, you know, so we were able to deliver the babies last week, but now this week we just can't get to them all. I see. So you're saying, you're saying you're assuming that this statement meant that an Egyptian midwife was there for a Hebrew birth. No, I'm saying I'm saying that they were claiming that they didn't actually deliver the babies when they did. Huh. Interesting. Yeah, well either either way though, it's it's a uh yeah. The note here does kind of acknowledge. The note for that passage says, did God bless the Hebrew midwives for lying to Pharaoh? God blessed them not because they lied, but because they save the lives of innocent children. This doesn't mean that a lie was necessarily the best way to answer Pharaoh. The midwives were blessed, however, not for violating, for not violating the higher law of God for business senseless laughder of innocent lives. This would be like Schindler hiding, you know, cooking his books and changing his books so the Nazis wouldn't discover that he was rescuing, right, and you know, buying Jews, right, That's that's what they're doing, is they're misleading the Pharaoh in order to save a life. Hey, you know, I think there's another sermon hidden in here too that talks about that. You could use it to talk about how God's going to use even the most wicked of kings for his purposes. Right, So, like, you know, here comes, you know, we're about to see that God's going to choose Moses. Moses is going to come. You know, there's gonna be a big deliverance and it's gonna have a spiritual significance and all these different things, and uh and and yet God is still working in the midst, in the midst of even the most wicked king. It reminds me of like when when when we read the Christmas story every year, and it says, uh, uh, you know that Caesar Augustus uh put a census over the whole world that they should be taxed. And then from the king's decisions, from the Caesar's decisions comes Jesus being born in his hometown Bethlehem to fulfill the scripture. Right, so God's going to use somebody like Caesar Augustus, you know, just through his decision of wanting more money to fulfill the scriptures. And and uh, it reminds me that even the most wicked of kings, you know, God's gonna have his way and use and work amongst even the worst of these guys. So you know, it just goes to show you that God is not thrown off by ungodly leaders. So therefore we don't need to fret. Right, that's right, We don't need to fret no matter who our political leaders are, because it doesn't trump the fact that God's always going to continue to work and have his way and fulfill his purposes regardless of the leaders. Yeah. Yeah, I also think it's interesting, you know, he finally comes to the end verse twenty two there and says, throw every newborn Hebrew boy into the Nile River, right, and they worship the Nile as the source of life. But they're killing here now. So they're sacrificing these Hebrew children to their god or the Nile river there. And it's interesting because the rest of the story of Moses is God squares off with all the gods of Israel, I mean, of Egypt. Right by the end of Moses's life, we'll get to that. But he squares off and every one of the at the end of this story, every one of the plagues was challenging another one of the main gods of Egypt. Right, So it starts off with kill the babies. No, we won't kill the babies. Okay, Now take the newborns. So newborn is different from the you know, infant. The so kill the newborns always says, yeah, every newborn Hebrew boy. So now I think that that expands it. Now, if you just find a little boy, you know, a tiny boy, throw him in the water, drowning him. You got nile crocodiles out there, You got all kinds of crazy stuff, right then, I'm sure the crocodiles were yeah, raging, So it would be uh, you know, in his mind then look at my power. I'm a god and I'm demanding that you sacrifice these babies to another powerful god that we recognize. And you know, I think a lot of times so we were tempted to sacrifice the most important things to the gods in our own lives. Right, we worship our job so much that we're willing to sacrifice our family. We worship our ability to make money, We're willing to sacrifice our integrity, you know, all those things. And so a lot of times, if you wondered where you're willing to sacrifice the most important things, look at what you're spending most time on and the things that you worship, and the those will those are rise up like that. So there's a lot of little sermons. Yeah, sure, there's tons of here in next this one. Well, it's going to get crazy from here. Yeah, Yeah, tune back in on Monday because we're gonna be talking about Moses. Yeah, because it's gonna it's going to go from here. So hey, thank you so much for tuning in, and hopefully we will see you next time. All the Bible guys, mhm h