Flight EXO01 Part 1

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Skip Heitzig: Have you ever dreamed of visiting Israel? Lenny and I want to invite you to join us for a life-changing journey through the land of the Bible in April of 2027. You can walk where Jesus walked, you can worship on the Sea of Galilee, you can celebrate baptisms at the Jordan River. And we're going to share communion at the empty tomb. You'll also have the option to attend the Epicenter Summit in Jerusalem where I'll be speaking alongside of Joel Rosenberg, Greg Laurie, Anne Graham Lotz, Jack Graham, and more. So join us April 5th through April 16th. You can learn more today at connectwithskip.com/Israel.
Announcer (Female): Now, here's today's message from Pastor Skip Heitzig.
Skip Heitzig: Let's turn to the book of Exodus. Are you there? Good, because we're going to move quickly. We're flying over it, remember? So every group of people desire freedom. America was built on that concept of freedom, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We broke from England because we wanted the freedom to worship God according to the dictates of our own heart and not be under the oppression of a king. So it is with the children of Israel. When we open up Exodus, we see a bondage that they are in. Now, if you can remember, God promised to Abram back in Genesis chapter 15. He said, go look at the stars and I want you to know that as the stars are in the heaven and you can't count them, so will your descendants be. In other words, you're going to grow, you're going to be prolific, you're going to spread out, you're going to be a great nation. But in that same chapter, he said that your progeny, those that you birth, and when that nation gets sizable, they're going to be in a foreign land. And they're going to be there for 400 years and they're going to be oppressed, but I'm going to bring them out with a strong hand. That was the setup for the book that we are considering now, the book of Exodus. So Genesis was about four great events and four great people. You remember them, right? The four events, formation of the heavens and the earth, the fall of man, the flood of Noah, universal flood, the fallout because of man's rebellion, and then four great people, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and then finally Joseph. Joseph, if you remember, became the second most powerful man in the world at that time, the Prime Minister of Egypt. He had a plan to save the world during desperate times. In chapter 47 of Genesis, in verse 11, Joseph situated his father and brothers, gave them a possession in the land of Egypt in the best of the land, the land of Ramsey, as Pharaoh had commanded. Then Joseph provided his father, brothers, and all of his father's household with bread according to the number of their families. Awesome. The book closes. Years pass. 350 years pass. Joseph dies at age 110. His dad is long gone, his brothers die, Joseph's sons die, his sons' sons die. The Pharaohs from that era die. And after three and a half centuries, nobody in Egypt can remember the great things that Joseph had done as a deliverer at one time. So when we get to Exodus chapter 1, 350 years later, we are immediately confronted with two problems, increased population and decreased popularity. The children of Israel have grown immensely. They started with 70 people, now they're up to about 2 million people in a few centuries time. They have just filled the land of Egypt. With the increased population comes a decreased popularity. It threatens the stability in Pharaoh's mind of the land of Egypt. So in Exodus chapter 1, verse 7, but the children of Israel were fruitful and increased abundantly, multiplied and grew exceedingly mighty. The land of Egypt was filled with them. Verse 8. Now there arose a new king in Egypt who did not know Joseph. Now the problem begins. Ever had a job where your first boss leaves the company, a new company buys the company you're in, so now you have a new boss, you stay, and you think everything's going to be the same. I'm indispensable. The first boss, he was so good to me, he treated me with special favors. Now you have a new boss. He didn't care about the old relationship you had with boss number one. It's a whole new day, right? There's a whole new company. And you're not all that special anymore. This is happening on a national level with the children of Israel. Now, in the book of Exodus, we are witnessing a birth. It is the birth of a nation. The delivery room is the land of Egypt. Births are exciting, but they're also very painful. Births are very, very painful. You know, I'll tell you the thrill of my life was watching my wife Lenny grow and glow with that pregnancy of our firstborn and only born, our only begotten son Nate. But what I remember, just that growth, and it was so awesome, but the birth was painful. Not only did I see it, but I felt it because there was one time that she punched me. She still denies it to this day, but I was in the right state of mind, I believe. I think I remember that. So a birth is painful. This birth is an Exodus. The word Exodus means to go out, an outgoing, a going forth. Israel entered Egypt as a family, they are going to go out, Exodus, exit as a nation. Now the theme of this book could be summed up with these two words, redemption, revelation. Redemption and revelation are the two grand themes of the entire book. But I'm going to divide it up for you into four parts. I'm going to give you four words, just like I gave you four great events in Genesis and four great people, four words that sum up the book of Exodus. Domination, liberation, revelation, identification. Now we'll get those again next week. We're going to cover the first two in the next few minutes. First of all, chapters 1 through 12 is the first section of the book of Genesis. It is domination, domination by Egypt. Domination by Egypt. Chapters 13 through 18 is liberation from Egypt. Chapters 19 through 31 is the revelation God gives them after Egypt. Takes them to Mount Sinai, reveals the laws they are to live by. Then finally, chapters 32 through 40, identification away from Egypt, or apart from Egypt. Now they are God's people. Now they identify themselves as God's unique people, trusting only in Him. A whole new nation develops. Now, those four words describe your testimony. You were once in bondage. You were delivered by the Savior. He forgave you of your sins. He revealed His word to you. You and I are growing in our faith as we read His word. The revelation of God is part of our ongoing process. And identification. We see ourselves as children of God, a new kingdom. We're under the kingship of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, Exodus, though it is 350 years later, it begins by showing us that this is not a new story. This is the continuation of an old story. So, it begins, even though I went into verse 7 and 8, you've just glanced back at verse 1. It says, and, or now in the New King James, but in Hebrew, it's the word and. And these are the names. Ve'elleh Shemot is the Hebrew. In fact, that is the name of the book in Hebrew. Ve'elleh Shemot. You go, well, what does that mean? It means, and these are the names. So if we were in a synagogue, I would say, let's turn to the book of and these are the names. Ve'elleh Shemot. But we call it Exodus because that is the Septuagint name. And it has stuck, and it's a better name, I think, the book of Exodus. So these are the names of the children of Israel who came to Egypt, each man and his household came with Jacob. Now let's jump to the heart of the problem. Verse 9, chapter 1. He, Pharaoh, said to his people, look, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we. Come, let us deal shrewdly with them. Lest they multiply, and it happened in the event of war, that they also join our enemies and fight against us and so go up out of the land or have an Exodus. Therefore, they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with their burdens. There are, we believe, about 2 million, conservatively, Jews in the land of Israel at this time. They started out with 70, there's about 2 million. How do we know this? Because the number 600,000 men is mentioned in the book of Exodus. 600,000 men were counted apart from their wives, apart from their children. So conservatively, we can say a good number, about 2 million people, probably. So, Pharaoh comes up with a plan to deal with this. How do you deal, he thought, how do you deal with the Jewish problem? Does that phrase ring a bell? That is what Adolf Hitler called the proliferation of Jews in Europe at his time, the Jewish problem. And Pharaoh's approach was not dissimilar to Adolf Hitler's approach. First of all, he thought, let's oppress them, let's make life hard for them. So, verse 13. It says the Egyptians made the children of Israel serve with rigor.
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Skip Heitzig: Now into chapter two. Again, these 70 descendants have become 600,000 men or 2 million people. He oppresses them, serve, making them serve with rigor, but his second approach, besides just oppressing them, is let's just eliminate them. Let's kill them when they're born. It's perhaps the first, at least biblical, example of state-sponsored genocide. Every male child that is born, he commands the midwives, toss them in the Nile River, get rid of them so that the population won't increase. So that is the command. Now what the Holy Spirit does is interesting. As the story continues, and you have all of these people in the land of Egypt, the lens of the Holy Spirit focuses on a single couple, a single Jewish couple. Their names are Amram and Jochebed. They are the parents of a little baby that is born called Moses. And the Holy Spirit is setting us up for a deliverance. Before there is a deliverance, the deliverer is seen in these chapters. So these next couple chapters are about that. The baby is born in verse two. It says, when she, that is mama, saw that he was a beautiful child, she hid him three months. It's interesting that Moses's appearance is described in this verse. It says he was a beautiful child. Now what's fascinating about that is, you know who the author of this book is, right? Not knocking it, I just think it's kind of interesting. Oh, by the way, I was a beautiful child. My mama said so. So she hid him three months in the reeds. Let that little boat go down the river. You know the story, it's so familiar. Pharaoh's daughter was out bathing with her handmaidens, picked up that little baby, got Hebrews to raise him. The Hebrews that she got to raise him, Moses' own mother. And she was paid for it by the government. Verse 9, Pharaoh's daughter said to her, take this child away, nurse him for me, and I will give you your wages. So the woman took the child and nursed him. And the child grew, and she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son. This is legally became her son. So she called his name Moshe. That's the Hebrew term, Moshe, Moses. It was the name given by Pharaoh's daughter to the baby. Moshe means to draw out, saying because I drew him out of the water. Moses is perhaps the most remarkable man who has ever lived next to Christ. There's a book that was written several years ago called The Jewish 100. I've referred to it before. Michael Shapiro, a Jewish author, was its author, and he writes about 100 of the most influential Jews in all, and he ranks them. Number one in his book is Moses. Now, it wouldn't be in our book. The most influential Jew to us wouldn't be Moses. He might rank second or third, but Jesus would be. In Shapiro's book, he's unconverted, he is Jewish. Moses ranks number one. He was the lawgiver. But interesting in his book, he ranks Jesus Christ as number two and Albert Einstein as number three. Also, just FYI, Paul the Apostle makes the list at number six, followed by Karl Marx at number seven, and for sports fans, pitching great, left-handed Dodger pitcher Sandy Koufax at number 98. I'd have ranked him a lot higher than that. That's because I grew up watching him pitch and he was awesome. Has nothing to do with the text. Chapters two and four, two, three, and four of Exodus, are all about Moses' upbringing in that household of Pharaoh's daughter and Pharaoh himself. It would not be an overestimate to say that Moses was a child who grew up with a golden spoon in his mouth. I mean, he was rich and powerful. The book of Hebrews says that he enjoyed all the riches of Egypt. That is the wealth of Pharaoh's household was at his own disposal. If you know anything about Egypt, you know that the culture even at that time was a very progressive culture. The theory of the round Earth, you know, the Earth was thought to be flat for a long time way back thousands of years ago. One of the first groups that believed the Earth was round were Egyptians. That was their theory. They also, interestingly, calculated and were almost exactly accurate the distance of the Earth to the sun way back then. And they were advanced in chemistry, witness their embalming procedures. If you go to world-class museums, you'll be able to see the sarcophagi with inside the remains of those who were buried, like the ancient Pharaohs, and you can still see their hair and their skin preserved by Egyptian embalming. Egypt was known for its famous university. Maybe even Moses went to that. It was called the university or the temple of the sun. It was the Harvard of the ancient world. So Moses becomes the adopted grandson of the Pharaoh who is in power at that time, meaning, according to Josephus, the Jewish historian, Moses would have been next in line for the throne. Why? Because according to Josephus, this Pharaoh had no sons, only daughters. So this adopted grandson would place him in prime, in prime position for being the next Pharaoh of Egypt. But something happened. He, Moses, found out that he was Jewish. And one day he's out and he's watching Egyptians beating a Jewish person. And so he kills the Egyptian and buries him in the sand, thinking that no one has seen it. It's interesting. It says, he looked this way and he looked that way and then he killed the Egyptian. His problem is he looked this way and that way, but he didn't look that way. God saw the whole thing. And Moses didn't know this, but somebody else saw it as well. Because the next day, after he buries the evidence of his murdered victim, he's walking and he notices two Hebrews arguing. And he says, hey, what are you arguing about? And one of them said, what, you want to be lord over us? Are you going to kill us like you killed the Egyptian yesterday? Now, this stopped Moses dead in his tracks. He didn't know that they knew, and because they knew, others knew, and eventually Pharaoh got wind of it, so Moses had to run away from Egypt, to flee. And he flees. I mean, he runs. He runs all the way across the the uh the desert into the Arabian Peninsula to a land called Midian. Exodus 2:23. It happened in the process of time that the king of Egypt died. The children of Israel groaned because of the bondage and they cried out. And their cry came up to God because of the bondage. So here's what I want you to notice. There's a lot of them, they're numerous, the population has increased, but they are not strong. They are weak. They are feeling oppressed. They are helpless. They are hopeless. So, verse 24, God heard. I love this. God heard their groaning. God remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, with Jacob. And God looked upon the children of Israel and God acknowledged them. Meanwhile, Moses, far away from Egypt in Midian, that Arabian desert, finds a girl, falls in love. Her name is Zipporah. Zipporah is the daughter of one Jethro, the priest of Midian. So for the next 40 years, Moses, the favorite son of Pharaoh at one time, is now out in the desert punching a clock for a shepherd. He's just a shepherd guy working for a guy who has a bunch of flocks, his father-in-law named Jethro. It's been well said that you could divide Moses' life up into segments of 40. Since he lived to be 120 years old. For the first 40 years, Moses went to school, got famous, got wealthy, and tried to be something. For the next 40 years, God took him to the backside of the desert where he finally realized he was nothing. In the next 40 years, God showed Moses that he could take nothing and make something out of him. And that's what he does. That's the story of his life.