Exodus chapter 1 and we'll read
from verse 1. Now these are the names of the
children of Israel which came into Egypt. Every man and his
household came with Jacob. Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah,
Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin, Dan, and Naphtali, Gad, and Asher. And all the souls that came out
of the loins of Jacob were seventy souls, for Joseph was in Egypt
already. And Joseph died, and all his
brethren, and all that generation. And the children of Israel were
fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceedingly
mighty, and the land was filled with them. Now there arose up
a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph. And he said
unto his people, Behold, the people of the children of Israel
are more and mightier than we. Come on, let us deal wisely with
them, lest they multiply, and it come to pass that when there
falleth out any war, they join also unto our enemies, and fight
against us, and so get them up out of the land. Therefore they
did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens,
and they built for Pharaoh treasure cities, Pithom and Ramesses. But the more they afflicted them,
the more they multiplied and grew, and they were grieved because
of the children of Israel. And the Egyptians made the children
of Israel to serve with rigour. And they made their lives bitter
with hard bondage, in mortar and in brick, and in all manner
of service in the field. All their service wherein they
made them serve was with rigour. And the king of Egypt spake to
the Hebrew midwives, of which the name of the one was Shephira,
and the name of the other Putah, Puhah. And he said, when ye do
the office of a midwife to the Hebrew women, and see them upon
the stools, if it be a son, then ye shall kill him, but if it
be a daughter, then she shall live. But the midwives feared
God, and did not as the king of Egypt commanded them, but
saved the men children alive. And the king of Egypt called
for the midwives, and said unto them, Why have ye done this thing,
and have saved the men children alive? And the midwives said
unto Pharaoh, Because the Hebrew women are not as the Egyptian
women, for they are lively, and are delivered ere the midwives
come in unto them. Therefore God dealt well with
the midwives, and the people multiplied and waxed very mighty. And it came to pass, because
the midwives feared God, that he made them houses. And Pharaoh
charged all his people, saying, Every son that is born ye shall
cast into the river, and every daughter ye shall save alive. Amen. May the Lord bless to us
this reading from his word. After Joseph and his brothers
all had died, we learn from Moses, because Moses was the writer
of this book of Exodus, that the children of Israel rapidly
increased in number. And that is exactly what had
been promised in God's covenant to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. In fact, there had not been very
much of a growth up until this point. But now that Abraham,
Isaac, Jacob and Jacob's sons had all died, their families
grew rapidly. And we see the promise of God
coming to pass. Sometimes we are reminded that
we need to be patient to see God's promises fulfilled, but
we may be sure that no divine promise ever goes unfulfilled. I like verse 7 in this little
chapter and it reminded me, perhaps like me, you've heard children
trying to outdo one another with numbers. So they might say something
like, one will say, oh I've got a hundred. And the other one
will say, well I've got a hundred times a thousand. And then the
first one will reply, well, I've got a hundred times a thousand
million more than you. Well, that's what verse seven
is doing right here in front of us. This is the Bible's equivalent. Verse seven says, and the children
of Israel were fruitful. and increased abundantly, and
multiplied, and waxed exceedingly mighty, and the land was filled
with them. It almost appears as if Moses
couldn't get enough words into this verse to show us the growth
and the surplus of people that there were. But that explosion
of numbers did not go unnoticed. It couldn't, of course it couldn't.
And we're told that there was a new pharaoh in the land and
he began to be afraid of the children of Israel. So he called
his people and they conspired against the Israelites to make
their lives harder, to make them poorer and hopefully to make
them less fruitful. What we discover was that it
had the opposite effect. The taskmasters that were set
over the children of Israel to make their life hard only seemed
to make them stronger and more numerous. So the king planned
another way. He told the midwives, these were
women who helped with the birth of babies, that they were to
kill the boy babies and keep the girl babies alive. And the two midwives that are
spoken of here, they might have been head midwives or something,
or leaders in their profession, that there were only two of them
mentioned, that they might influence others. We're told that these
midwives feared God, and they respected the command of God
for the sanctity of life and the preservation of life. Because
God had said that we are not to shed blood, for in the image
of God made he man. So Shifra and Pua made an excuse
that the Hebrew women didn't need midwives and so the babies
were born before the midwives arrived. There's a couple of
things that we can learn from this passage also. The powers
that are in this world will always be suspicious and fearful and
if they are able, they will be vindictive and troublesome to
the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. And that doesn't mean
that individuals will always be nasty to us or violent towards
us. although we saw in our opening
psalm that that might be the case on occasion. But what it
means is that the systems of this world and the values of
this world will be opposed to the good and to the well-being
of our souls. The world will never encourage
us spiritually. The world will always want to
tempt us away from God and it will always attempt to make us
weaker and poorer and less fruitful in our souls and in our spirits. And sometimes the opposition
of the world will be subtle and devious and sometimes it will
be blatant and open. I don't think there could be
anything more devious than asking midwives to secretly kill babies. And yet we find at the end of
the chapter that Pharaoh was openly saying that it was open
season for the Egyptians to kill any of the children of Israel's
babies that they came across. Such is the depravity of human
nature. John the Apostle tells us in
1 John chapter 2 verse 15, therefore, let us love not the world, neither
the things that are in the world. For if any man love the world,
the love of the Father is not in him. There is this opposition,
there is this contrast, there is this trouble that exists deep-seated
in the relationship between the Lord's people and the powers
and the systems of this world. The taskmasters, here's another
point, that were set over the children of Israel to make life
difficult for them. They actually made the Israelites
grow more strongly. Something that you'll perhaps
have heard said before, sportsmen and sportswomen and athletes
have a little saying. They say that there's no gain
without pain. Well, spiritually speaking, that's
true as well. No one likes to endure trial
and hardship. But we find in scripture that
God uses our trials and he even brings trials upon his people
in order to teach us and cause us to become more dependent on
him, more familiar with him through prayer and trusting him for help
and therefore spiritually stronger. in our lives and in our faith
and in our trust of the Lord Jesus Christ. So that we should
learn to look for the Lord in all our troubles and even ask
the Lord to use our troubles and our weaknesses to make our
faith stronger in him. And don't miss the lesson, thirdly,
that Satan always sought opportunity to kill the male children of
the Jews so that he could destroy the line of promise and so that
he could break the plan and the covenant of God to send a saviour
and a deliverer. This Jesus who came had been
promised in the very earliest days of God's dealings with men
and women. We call him the Messiah, we call
him the Christ. But all through the history of
the Jews, Satan employed men and women to try and break the
line of that covenant promise. But what we find here is that
no pharaoh in Egypt or no Haman in the court of Persia, no Nebuchadnezzar
in Babylon, no Herod at the time of Christ, could destroy the
line that God ordained to bring about the coming of the Lord
Jesus Christ into the world. This Saviour Jesus Christ would
come in due time and he would save his people from their sins. And we thank God for preserving
his people. We thank God for his mercy. We
thank God for grace. and we thank God for the Lord
Jesus Christ. Let us trust and obey the Lord
Jesus Christ who saves us by his death and brings us into
relationship with God through all he has done for us. Amen.