“Courageous Women, a Compassionate Princess
and an Evil King”
Theme: Moses the Reluctant Prophet
Scripture: Exodus 1:8-14
Things I’d like to remember from today’s sermon:
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Over the next several weeks we will read through the parts of the Bible which relate to the life of Moses. This study
will give us a better understanding of the sermons for each week and help us as connect the life of Moses more
than 3000 years ago to our lives today. Enjoy!
Meditation Moments for Monday, September 7 – Joseph Becomes Pharaoh's Prime Minister – Genesis 41
Before moving into our study of Moses' life, let's take a look at the movement of the Israelites to Egypt. Recall
from Sunday's sermon that the Hyksos were Semitic people, related to the Israelites, who descended upon Egypt
in 1720 BCE and became foreign rulers of that land for 170 years. It is likely that the Pharaoh of Joseph's time was
a Hyksos - thus originally from the lands that the Israelites had hailed from - they were distant cousins.
 How does this help us understand the story you are about to read? Read Genesis Chapter 41 where Joseph
the former slave and prisoner becomes Prime Minister of Egypt. The entire Joseph story is wonderful and
memorialized in the Andrew Lloyd Weber and Tim Rice musical, Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor
Dreamcoat.
 What do you find most powerful about this part of Joseph’s story in Chapter 41?
Tuesday, September 8 – The Israelites Move to Egypt – Genesis 47:1-27
As you read this story, consider how the Egyptian people may have felt under foreign kings who, while protecting
them from famine, in the process confiscated much of their land and property. Read Genesis 47:1-27. This story
shows the Israelites migrating from the Promised Land to the land of Egypt, along with hundreds or perhaps
thousands of other tribes, during the famine, and perhaps as part of the greater movement of the Hyksos move
into Egypt in the 1700's BCE. In 1550 BCE, when the Egyptians overthrew Hyksos rule, it is not hard to imagine
their hatred of these people who had taken their land. The Hyksos, who were distant cousins of the Israelites,
were expelled from Egypt. The Israelites were allowed to stay, but were despised, and eventually made to be the
slave labor of the Egyptian state, used in the Pharaoh's massive building programs of that time.
 Have you ever gone from a time of great freedom to what felt like slavery in your life? How did you find
strength to make it through that time? Are you able to see God at work as you look back at that time
which felt like you were trapped or enslaved?
 If you are in a season of your life right now that feels like slavery, is there a way you can draw close to God
as you move through this time?
Wednesday, September 9 – The Oppression of Israel – Exodus 1
As we noted in yesterday's reading, around 1550 BCE the Egyptians overthrew the Hyksos and expelled them from
Egypt. This corresponds perfectly with Exodus 1:8. From a historical perspective, what is amazing is reading these
Sermon preached by Jeff Huber – September 6-7, 2015
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passages we've been studying and seeing how closely aligned they are with what is known of Egyptian history
from Egypt's own historical records. Read Exodus 1:1-22 and review your notes from Sunday's sermon.
 What did we learn about the power of fear? What bearing might that have for us today?
 Notice in this story that Pharaoh is not named, while Shiphrah and Puah are named, and that these two
powerless women, by their courage and through saving Moses, ultimately defeated the most powerful
man in their world. What speaks to you in this story?
Thursday, September 10 – The Birth of Moses – Exodus 2:1-10
Read Exodus 2:1-10. Look over your notes from Sunday's sermon. Imagine what Moses' mother was feeling
throughout this story. Notice how God cared for Moses and his birth mother – she is paid by Pharaoh's daughter
to nurse him!
 Why is Pharaoh's daughter such an unlikely person to save Moses from the river? What qualities of
character did she exemplify?
 What does this story teach us about adoption? What does God's work in Moses' life, even from his birth,
teach us about God's ways of working in our lives?
Friday, September 11 – Moses Flees Egypt – Exodus 2:11-25
Today is the 14th anniversary of 9/11, a day that most of us will always remember. It was a day which moved our
nation into a time of uncertainty and fear. Do you feel like we still live in fear today as a nation? If so, why? If no,
why not? How can our faith help us overcome uncertainty and fear? Today we skip ahead to Moses’ as an adult –
learning nothing more in the scripture about his childhood. Read Exodus 2:11-25.
 Describe the heart of Moses. What motivated him to kill the Egyptian? Why did the Israelites respond with
disdain to his help?
 What does the story of Moses' care for the daughters of Reuel teach us about Moses? As you read the end
of the story, note that years went by before God delivered Israel from Egypt – but God was working,
preparing and planning for their deliverance the entire time. What does this say about God's timetable?
What might that mean for you?
Saturday, September 12 – Moses in the New Testament – Luke 2: 21-24
Each Saturday during this series we will look at a reference to Moses in the New Testament. Today we read about
the birth of Jesus and how his parent’s dedicated him in the Temple after his birth.
 What similarities do you see between the birth story of Jesus and the birth story of Moses we read earlier
in the week? (Hint: Think about how Jesus’ parents had to move shortly after he was born. Why did they
have to move? Where do they move to? Can you see the theme of adoption? Do you see the connections
to the story of Moses? Can you see others?) Many times throughout the story of Jesus you will find
connections to Moses and the Law of Moses. Keep an eye out for those as we move through the next few
weeks.
Family Activity: Both Jesus and Moses were loved by their parents and received blessings from them. Think about
things for which you are grateful. Make a list of them and put them in a basket, like Moses was placed in a
basket. Now think about things there given up or sacrificed so you could receive those blessings? Talk as a
family about how you can, on a regular basis, give thanks for your blessings and the sacrifices that were so you
could have them. Leave the basket out over the next few weeks as we talk about Moses and use the “blessing
basket” at least once a week, maybe over a meal or on a certain evening.
Prayer: Thank you God for the blessings we receive and the sacrifices made for us so we could receive them. We
often take our blessings for granted. Help us not to do that in the days ahead but to always be grateful.
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Theme: Moses the Reluctant Prophet
“Courageous Women, a Compassionate Princess and an Evil King”
Sermon preached by Jeff Huber
September 6-7, 2015 at First United Methodist Church, Durango
Scripture: Selections from Exodus 1 and 2
VIDEO
Sermon Intro – Moses Week 1
SLIDE
Courageous Women, a Compassionate Princess and an Evil King
I want to encourage you to take out of your bulletin your Message Notes
and your Meditation Moments. There is a space for you there to take notes on
anything you want to remember and feel like the Holy Spirit is speaking to you.
The Meditation Moments over the next eight weeks will take you through the
complete story of Moses. Every week you will have a chance to read through the
life of Moses as it was written by him and the people who loved him. We will read
Exodus and selections from Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy as well as some
preliminary information from the book of Genesis to give you some background.
Each week we also will have on Saturday a New Testament reading that refers to
Moses so we can see how he connects to the life of Jesus.
Today we launch an eight week series of sermons on the towering figure in
the Old Testament, the lawgiver and the prophet Moses. After the death of
Moses, the writer of Deuteronomy describes his life this way in chapter 34, verses
10 through 12.
SLIDE
10 There has never been another prophet in Israel like Moses,
whom the Lord knew face to face. 11 The Lord sent him to perform
all the miraculous signs and wonders in the land of Egypt against
Pharaoh, and all his servants, and his entire land. 12 With mighty
power, Moses performed terrifying acts in the sight of all Israel.
As Christians, Moses is a part of our heritage and there is no doubt that
Jesus knew his story and his teachings and they impacted his life and ministry.
Moses met God face to face as we read in this text and because of that he has
must to teach us about God and about ourselves. Every week in this sermon
series when we look at Moses I believe we will find connections to our own lives
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and we will find similarities to his life. Moses struggled in life in his relationships
and had periods of anxiety. He was frustrated and he struggled with his identity
and who he was and where he belonged in the world. We are going to find the
stories about Moses in the Scriptures are mirror held up to our own lives that we
might learn about who we are, our dark side as well is the great potential which
God has placed within us in creating us in his image.
We also will learn I hope a great deal about God. No other person besides
Jesus had the level of intimacy with God that Moses developed over the course of
his life. In all the stories of Moses God is the hidden character who is interacting
with Moses and acting behind the scenes. We are going to learn about who God is
and how God works in the world and what God’s will might be for our lives. We
see the character and nature of God through Moses and that can give us
profound insights into our own relationship with God.
In order to fully understand the life of Moses we need to take a few
minutes to understand the time in which he lived and some ancient Egyptian
history surrounding him. I know not all of us like history, but I enjoy
understanding the background and so bear with me as we look at a few key
components to the historical context in which Moses lived. I believe this can give
us some insight into the Scriptures we may not have before. In 1720 BCE the
people who lived in the Fertile Crescent, which is the Mesopotamian River Valley,
began to migrate south because of famine in the land. You will see a map on the
screen and the upper right-hand portion is modern-day Iran and Iraq. They
migrated downward through the land of Canaan which is modern-day Israel and
into the land of Egypt. That migration followed the Fertile Crescent which is the
green stripe you see on the map.
GRAPHIC 1
Map of Mesopotamia
One of the major groups which migrated we’ll call the Hyksos, which meant
“foreign rulers.” They took over the cities as they migrated until they finally
reached northern Egypt where they set up a capital and took control of the
Egyptian Empire. They controlled the entire region you see on this map.
GRAPHIC 2
Map of Egypt Empire
They were also known as Semitic people. You have heard that word Semitic
because we talk about anti-Semitism which has come to mean anti-Jewish
sentiment or prejudice against those who were Jewish. But Semitic people were
not only those who were Jewish but they were all people who came from the
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Fertile Crescent region and migrated south. Abraham’s descendants came from
this region as well as others and the Hyksos were part of this group and were
known as Semitic people. They were cousins of the ancient Israelites and they
ruled over the Egyptian Empire until 1550 BCE.
It was during the early part of the Hyksos ruled that Joseph was sold into
slavery by his brothers and ended up in Egypt. If you have not read the story of
Joseph in Genesis then maybe you have seen it in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s
“Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.” Joseph is finally released from
slavery in Egypt and becomes the Pharaoh’s right-hand man because he is able to
interpret dreams. He eventually is appointed to the post of Prime Minister.
We might wonder how someone who is Jewish might be appointed to be
Prime Minister of Egypt but this was possible because the Pharaoh of Egypt was a
Hyksos, a Semitic person like those who were Jewish. They were both considered
outsiders and so it was very feasible that they would serve together in leadership
over the Egyptian Empire. When the Pharaoh looked at Joseph he saw a cousin
and they would rule together as foreigners.
There was eventually another famine in the land of Canaan which is where
the Israelites lived and they migrated down south to the Egyptian Empire as well.
They followed the Hyksos and Joseph and his clan were given the land of Goshen
which was fertile land in the northern part of Egypt. We might wonder why the
Egyptians would give land to the Israelites but it’s because they were both
foreigners in a strange land and they were cousins, both Semitic people who had
traveled to this region from the Fertile Crescent. It actually built up the security of
the Hyksos rulers to have the Israelites in northern Egypt which was the entryway
to the main portion of their Kingdom.
In 1550 BCE the Egyptians rose up and pushed out the Hyksos rulers. The
Israelites were allowed to remain because they were distant cousins and they had
not really been the source of Hyksos rule. The Israelites were seen as a threat to
the new Egyptian leadership and they eventually began to fear them. The
Israelites began to multiply and the hatred and jealousy towards them began to
develop by the Egyptians who began to oppress them. Eventually the Israelites
became slaves and the Egyptian leaders decided they needed a plan to keep the
Israelites from overthrowing them. We read about this in the opening pages of
Exodus.
SLIDE
8 Eventually, a new king came to power in Egypt who knew nothing
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about Joseph or what he had done. 9 He said to his people, “Look,
the people of Israel now outnumber us and are stronger than we
are. 10 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.”
11 So the Egyptians made the Israelites their slaves. They appointed
brutal slave drivers over them, hoping to wear them down with
crushing labor. They forced them to build the cities of Pithom and
Rameses as supply centers for the king. 12 But the more the
Egyptians oppressed them, the more the Israelites multiplied and
spread, and the more alarmed the Egyptians became. 13 So the
Egyptians worked the people of Israel without mercy. 14 They made
their lives bitter, forcing them to mix mortar and make bricks and
do all the work in the fields. They were ruthless in all their demands.
15 Then Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, gave this order to the Hebrew
midwives, Shiphrah and Puah: 16 “When you help the Hebrew
women as they give birth, watch as they deliver. If the baby is a
boy, kill him; if it is a girl, let her live.” 17 But because the midwives
feared God, they refused to obey the king’s orders. They allowed
the boys to live, too.
18 So the king of Egypt called for the midwives. “Why have you
done this?” he demanded. “Why have you allowed the boys to
live?”
19 “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.”
20 So God was good to the midwives, and the Israelites continued
to multiply, growing more and more powerful. 21 And because the
midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own. 22 Then
Pharaoh gave this order to all his people: “Throw every newborn
Hebrew boy into the Nile River. But you may let the girls live.”
In this story we find the most powerful man in the Mediterranean, and the
northern part of Africa, the King of Egypt with all of the wealth and all of the
horses and all of the swords and all of the chariots at his disposal. Yet he was
afraid of a group of people in his land who are at the bottom of the social
structure in society and had shown no sign of violence. He lived in fear of this
group because of the way they were treated.
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Then you have these two women who were at the bottom of the bottom of
the social structure. They are not only Jewish but they are midwives and they
don’t have husbands or families of their own and so they are considered
nobodies. Their task was the difficult and sometimes deadly task of bringing
babies into the world. These two women showed remarkable courage in the face
of fear and hatred and the most powerful man in the world.
Exodus one is meant to be a story of contrasts between someone with the
most power and someone with the least. It is also the story about our own human
nature and the potential and the possibility inside of each one of us. Every one of
us as the potential inside of us to be Pharaoh and every one of us has potential to
be Shiphrah and Puah.
SLIDE
Pharaoh or Shiphrah and Puah
One can understand the fear of Pharaoh and the threat he felt of the
Israelites in Goshen and how they might hook up with the Hittites to the North
and help them take over Egypt. He had a right to have some degree of concern
about the security of his land but that right to be concerned turned into a
dreadful fear. When we begin to fear those who are different from us because
they have a different language or different color to their skin or their religion is
different, that fear can easily turn into hatred. That hatred can turn our mind into
irrational behavior which can often end up and violence toward those who are
innocent and are just in the wrong place at the wrong time.
This is what happens to Pharaoh and the longer he oppressed them and the
more they multiplied and prospered, the more he began to hate and loathe them.
The more the hatred would build up inside of him the more he would devise plans
for what he could do to suppress their growth and ultimately he demanded that
all of the baby boys be killed. This is unthinkable and unfathomable, that a
midwife would put a baby to death considering their main job was to usher life
into the world, yet this is what Pharaoh asked.
The truth is that Pharaoh’s story has been repeated throughout ancient and
modern history again and again which is why we have to know our history or we
will be doomed to repeat it. Can you remember a biblical parallel to this story in
the New Testament? The time of Jesus King Herod was terrified that a new King
might come to usurp his authority. Do you remember the rest of that story? He
had all the baby boys in Bethlehem under three years of age put to death so no
king would rise up to threaten his leadership.
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We don’t have to go back that far to find instances where fear has taken
hold of the lives of human beings in the civilized world, and then how that fear
manifests itself in hatred and violence. It happened with the Hutus and Tootsies
in Africa. It happened with the Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. It
happened with the Croats in central Europe. It happened in South Africa and it’s
happening today in parts of the Middle East and the area of the world we are
looking at on the maps where whole groups of people are being wiped out
because of their religious tradition or ethnicity.
We saw it happen in an extreme form that touched all of us in deep ways
14 years ago this week when Osama bin Laden and his followers, motivated by
fear and hatred towards the west and Christians because they felt we threaten
their way of life, flew planes into buildings, killing innocent man, women and
children. We saw up close and personal how fear can turn to hatred which turns
to loathing which turns quickly and easily to acts of violence.
The challenge is that the work of bin Laden and other terrorists then brings
fear to us. While it would be easy to simply point our fingers at others we have to
recognize that it is our own fear which leads to the racial tensions that we have
felt in our nation this past year. All of this history, present and current, begs the
question for us as people of faith. We have to ask this question or we will
continue the cycle of violence because of our fear which turns to hatred.
SLIDE
When will we stop being afraid?
We have to be honest and recognize that we are afraid and we sometimes
let our fear get the best of us. We might be able to set it aside after period of
time, but it gets reignited when a new crisis flares up. Every day on the news we
sit and watch all the different reasons we should be afraid.
Because there is a little bit of Pharaoh in each of us, we have to be careful
with our fear. In the aftermath of 9/11 14 years ago United Methodist Bishop
Janice Riggle-Huey was in Texas and wrote about a Muslim family that she met.
They owned a business in a shopping mall and had lived there for 15 years. They
went to buy lunch in the shopping mall near their business where they had eaten
many times and they were refused service. Their children went to the same
elementary school they had attended for their entire lives, day after day, week
after week, but this day they were spit upon by their classmates at school. They
received threats and menacing telephone calls at their home to the point where
they had to disconnect their phone lines.
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That story ends in a very hopeful note because the people of the First
United Methodist Church in that community adopted that family into their own
and said, “This is not how we treat people. We are sorry for our community and
the way you have been treated.” Members of their church walked with their
children to school and children from their church sat with them in class and stood
with them at recess and lunch time. The adults of a Sunday school class agreed to
take turns spending the night at their home to let the community know that
Christians were living in the house with their Muslim brothers and sisters. They
wanted make a clear statement that these were their friends and this is what love
that overcomes fear looks like.
We have to consciously choose how to respond to the fear that wells up
inside of us or it will take a hold of us and turned into something ugly. I feel it in
myself when I see what ISIS has been doing to Christian and Muslim communities
who they deem as infidels. Their brutality and disdain for human life and religious
experience different from their own makes me first, thankful I get to live in this
country, and second angry and wanting vengeance. I’m not proud to admit it, but
I let fear get the best of me sometimes just like the rest of humanity. When that
happens, I forget to ask some important questions.
Why do terrorists do what they do?
If we are going to wage a war on terrorists or ISIS, we need to know what it
is that drives them and prompts them to do what they do. Why are they doing
these things? Unless we understand the answers to that question we can’t
possibly wage a war on terrorism. That leads to a second and more potent
question for us as people of faith.
How do we wage a war on terrorism? What means do we use to defeat
terrorism? What will work? By our best guesstimates there are more than 100
countries with terrorists active in them. How are we going to root them out?
There are potentially 1 million or more who could be terrorists so how do we go
to war against that? Do we defeat them with more bombs and guns and airplanes
or do we defeat them with more missionaries and more humanitarian aid? I don’t
really know the answer to that question but it’s a nagging question in the back of
my mind. Here’s the most potent question for us as a nation which likes to call
itself Christian.
What is the Lord’s will for how we address these problems? What does
God want us to do? How is God working or acting in our lives and in our country?
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Let’s not pretend we are atheist or agnostic and that God does not work in the
world. We believe that God does work in the world and God works primarily
through people and so how should we be acting and living when there are days
that are filled with fear? How are we called to live and act so that this kind of evil
doesn’t continue and perpetuate itself? We have to ask the tough question. What
does Jesus want us to do?
I think of one of the greatest sermons ever delivered on this topic of how to
deal with our tendency to become Pharaoh. It was a sermon delivered on the
teachings of Jesus and it remains one of the most powerful sermons in human
history.
Why should we love our enemies? The first reason is fairly obvious. Returning hate
for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out
hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and
toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction. So when
Jesus says “Love your enemies,” he is setting forth a profound and ultimately
inescapable admonition. Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern
world that we must love our enemies—or else? The chain reaction of evil—hate
begetting hate, wars producing more wars—must be broken, or we shall be
plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.
Another reason we must love our enemies is that hate scars the soul and distorts
the personality…But there is another side which we must never overlook. Hate is
just as injurious to the person who hates. Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes
the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man’s sense of values
and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as
beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false and the false with the true.
A third reason why we should love our enemies is that love is the only force
capable of transforming an enemy into a friend. We never get rid of an enemy by
meeting hate with hate; we get rid of an enemy by getting rid of enmity. By its
very nature, hate destroys and tears down; by its very nature, love creates and
builds up. Love transforms with redemptive power.
To our most bitter opponents we say: “We shall match your capacity to inflict
suffering by our capacity to endure suffering. We shall meet your physical force
with soul force. Do to us what you will, and we shall continue to love you. We
cannot in all good conscience obey your unjust laws, because noncooperation with
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evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good. Throw us in jail,
and we shall still love you. Send your hooded perpetrators of violence into our
community at the midnight hour and beat us and leave us half dead, and we shall
still love you. But be ye assured that we will wear you down by our capacity to
suffer. One day we shall win freedom, but not only for ourselves. We shall so
appeal to your heart and conscience that we shall win you in the process, and our
victory will be a double victory.”
Jesus is eternally right. History is replete with the bleached bones of nations that
refused to listen to him. May we in the twentieth century hear and follow his
words — before it is too late. May we solemnly realize that we shall never be true
sons of our heavenly Father until we love our enemies and pray for those who
persecute us.
–Excerpted from The Radical King by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a sermon written
from the Birmingham Jail
Somewhere along the way we need to wrestle with this question that Jesus
gives us which is to love our enemies. Until we wrestle with the fundamental
human questions there will always be people who rise up out of fear or hate and
perpetrate acts of violence. We have to do our best to understand what makes
them tick and then find ways to get at the root of whatever it is driving those acts
of evil and hatred.
Fortunately, while every one of us has a bit of the Pharaoh in us we also
have the potential of Shiphrah and Puah. These midwives were commanded by
the most powerful man in that part of the world to ensure that the children who
were born to the Israelites who were boys were killed shortly after birth. In an age
of high infant mortality that may not have been a daunting task and might not
even have been noticed by many, but Shiphrah and Puah refused to do this and
they could be killed for their insubordination. They were willing to risk everything
because they trusted God more than they feared the Pharaoh, and they knew
what was right in the eyes of the Lord.
This is one of the few places in the Bible where you find people are
rewarded for lying, but the two of them make up a conniving and convincing
story. They were blessed because they didn’t tell the truth. Every one of us have
the ability to act with this kind of courage. Those who are willing to turn their
back on what the Pharaoh wants and instead do the work of God and are willing
to sacrifice everything for it are the ones who find the most meaning and purpose
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in life.
I was trying to find some modern day examples of Shiphrah and Puah and
found the story of these young girls, including 10 year old Myriam from Mosul,
Iraq, who are Arab Christians living in the midst of the ISIS oppression.
Her family fled their home last July with hundreds of thousands of other
Christians, finding safety in Kurdistan’s Irbil. Essam Nagy of SAT-7 Kids (a Christian
video program in the Middle Easter) visited the refugee camps and connected
with Myriam, a faithful viewer who praised God for not allowing ISIS to kill them.
Asked about her feelings toward those who drove her from her home,
Myriam wondered why they did this. Then she said: “I will only ask God to forgive
them. Why should they be killed?”
To date, millions of people have seen her witness online. SAT-7’s 5 channels
reach an audience of 15 million in North Africa and the Middle East, though it’s
impossible to measure how many people watched Myriam. However, numbers
can be tracked through the social media campaign, which has reached 25 times its
normal audience, with subtitles of the video provided in English, Spanish, Turkish,
and Chinese. Word spread not only through SAT-7 affiliates, but also in the local
secular press.
Pan-Arabic al-Arabia praised Myriam for confronting ISIS with love.
“Everyone who listens to her is astounded,” echoed the Egyptian Youm 7. Leading
Lebanese daily al-Nahar called for the clip to be shown in the nation’s schools as a
lesson in humanity.
Another forgiveness message was broadcast from al-Our village, 150 miles
south of Cairo and home to 13 of the 21 Christian martyrs in Libya. Bashir
Estephanos, who lost two brothers in the killings, phoned in to SAT-7 and
surprised all by thanking ISIS. Half a million people have now listened to his
testimony online.
“ISIS gave us more than we asked for,” he told Maher Fayez on the popular
We Will Sing program. “They didn’t edit out the part where [as their throats were
cut] they declared their faith and called out to Jesus.”
Estephanos prayed on air for God to save the killers from the ignorance
they have been taught, and related a conversation with his 60-year-old mother. If
someone from ISIS was in their village, “she said she would invite him in her home
… and ask God to open his eyes.”
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“These clips provide a counter-shock to the horrifying videos of killings that
people receive on mainstream media,” said Farid Samir, executive director of
SAT-7 in Egypt. “Myriam's and Bashir's calls are a form of resistance—through
forgiveness.”
VIDEO
Myriam
When I hear stories like that I often ask myself what I would’ve done in the
same situation. Would I have had the courage to do what they did? Could I have
said goodbye to my family on the telephone and then make sure that thousands
of others weren’t killed? What price are we willing to pay for our faith and to do
what is right? What risks are we willing to take?
Most of us will not have to make this choice which those people on flight 93
made or the choice that was made by Shiphrah and Puah. Maybe a better
question is to simply ask what risks we are willing to take for our faith. Are we
willing to say no to our boss when we are asked to do something unethical even
though it means we might be fired? Are we willing in school to not participate in
certain kinds of behavior or activities because we are people of faith and it might
hurt others, knowing it might cost us our popularity? What price will we pay to be
faithful to God?
All of that leads to the birth story of Moses that we find in Exodus 2.
SLIDE
1 About this time, a man and woman from the tribe of Levi got
married. 2 The woman became pregnant and gave birth to a son.
She saw that he was a special baby and kept him hidden for three
months. 3 But when she could no longer hide him, she got a basket
made of papyrus reeds and waterproofed it with tar and pitch. She
put the baby in the basket and laid it among the reeds along the
bank of the Nile River. 4 The baby’s sister then stood at a distance,
watching to see what would happen to him.
5 Soon Pharaoh’s daughter came down to bathe in the river, and
her attendants walked along the riverbank. When the princess saw
the basket among the reeds, she sent her maid to get it for her.
6 When the princess opened it, she saw the baby. The little boy was
crying, and she felt sorry for him. “This must be one of the Hebrew
children,” she said.
7 Then the baby’s sister approached the princess. “Should I go and
find one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?” she
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asked.
8 “Yes, do!” the princess replied. So the girl went and called the
baby’s mother.
9 “Take this baby and nurse him for me,” the princess told the
baby’s mother. “I will pay you for your help.” So the woman took
her baby home and nursed him.
10 Later, when the boy was older, his mother brought him back to
Pharaoh’s daughter, who adopted him as her own son. The princess
named him Moses, for she explained, “I lifted him out of the water.”
Imagine being the mother of Moses and being pregnant and wondering if
the child would be a boy. She then has a son and imagine then her fear for his life
and her willingness to hide him. Pharaoh had realized the midwives were not
going to put the baby boys to death and so the Hebrew women who had boys
would hide them and muffle their cries if needed to keep them from being found.
All the Egyptians were told to throw any baby boys that were Hebrew into the
Nile River and drowned them. She hid him for three months and then realized she
couldn’t do it anymore. Sooner or later her son will be found and he would be put
to death.
Because she loved her son so much she was willing to give him away that
he might have a life. I mentioned two weeks ago that this is the Bible’s first
adoption story of a mother in great anguish who gives her child away so it might
live. She risked floating the baby in a basket down the Nile River towards the
princess, hoping beyond hope that the princess would find the child and love him
and take pity on him. She no doubt waited with tears.
In this part of the story we have an unexpected hero, a woman of great
courage who was the daughter of the evil king. This woman who is not even a
believer becomes the Savior of Moses. She delivers this child and raises him as
their own. Part of God’s amazing providence in this story is when Pharaoh’s
daughter sends for a wet nurse and Moses’ biological mother is the one who was
brought to her. She is able to attend for Moses and care for him and she is even
paid for it.
SLIDE
God’s Providence
The final message for us in the story of Moses is about the providence of
God. Providence is a fancy word for how God provides for our world and works
within its to bring about his purposes. We learn in the story that God was listing
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to the cries and the prayers of his people the entire time they were enslaved. God
works in mysterious and what seems to be to us painstakingly slow ways. God’s
plan involves a baby and Moses is born into this world. It would still be 80 years
before Moses goes back and confronts Pharaoh and demands the people be set
free. It was 80 long years that the people continue to cry out and suffer in slavery
but all along God was working out his purposes. God had not forgotten them. God
had not turned his back on them. God was working to prepare something even
better than they could imagine or believe.
This is how it works in our lives. God works at times slowly and it frustrates
us. We pray and we want instant answers but God doesn’t work that way like a
genie in a bottle or Santa Claus. Sometimes the prayers we pray will not be
answered until we are on old man or woman, or maybe not until we are in God’s
kingdom do we see or understand the answer to those prayers. But God has been
listening and longing for us to know that we are not alone and in the end the
worst thing in our lives will never be the last thing in our lives.
Finally, we see in the story of Moses how God typically works in the world
when it comes to answering prayers and that’s through people. In the midst of
power and palaces and all the finest things that Egypt had to offer, God is growing
up in Pharaoh’s own court a young boy who would learn to speak the language
and understand the culture of Egypt. He was recognized and held in high esteem
by those in the courts and he learned the strengths and the weaknesses of those
in power, so that one day when God called him, he would be perfectly equipped
for such a time as that to lead God’s people to freedom and through the
wilderness and into the Promised Land.
God has a purpose and a plan for each one of our lives. Did you know that?
God has hopes and dreams for us that we haven’t even fathomed were possible.
Every step along Our Way, God brings people along our path and by his Holy Spirit
works in our lives in ways we don’t even notice it first. Sometimes it’s years later
when we can look back and see God working and guiding and then one day we
recognize that, “It was for such a time as this that God was doing all of those
things in my life.”
God has a dream for each one of us and being here at First United
Methodist Church on this day is even a part of God’s plan to prepare each one of
us for what God has in store to fulfill God’s calling and purpose on our lives. I look
back over my life and see how God was at work even in the midst of living in an
alcoholic home and with parents who were divorced and making some poor
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choices as a youth that led to some challenges. I look back at a number of
extremely painful moments as a pastor and recognize that in those moments God
was preparing me for other moments I would face later on that I never would
imagine I would be prepared for.
This is how God works and from today’s story about Moses we should
remember and learn these truths we have talked about today. All of us have a bit
of Pharaoh in us. We have the capacity, out of our fear, to do things that cause
hurts and pain and lead to ugliness instead of beauty. Second, we all have a bit of
Shiphrah and Puah in us. We have the possibility of doing amazing things and
being willing to risk everything for the cause of Christ so we can be used by God.
Finally, God has a dream for each one of us and God works in our lives to help
that dream become reality. God is working out that plan even now, even if you
can’t see it.
So let’s seek God’s will as we seek to be the presence of Jesus Christ in the
world and let’s offer our lives to his purposes as we pray together.
SLIDE
Prayer
Oh God we give you praise and thanks that you do hear the cries of your
people; that while we impatiently plead with you and wonder why you are not
working you are already at work. Forgive us for thinking that you are not listening
or paying attention or doing anything in those moments of pain and tragedy that
we see on the news every night. God help us to know that your wheels of justice
are already spinning. Forgive us God when we begin to think that all the world’s
problems rest upon our shoulders.
Forgive us as a nation when we fear those who are different from us and we
fall victim to being like Pharaoh where that fear turned into hatred and hatred
turned into violence. Forgive us when we have done this in our individual lives,
where we have slandered or gossiped or stabbed someone in the back because we
were threatened by their popularity or their success. Help us O God to follow the
example of aged heroes like Shiphrah and Puah and modern-day heroes like those
on flight 93 to be willing to risk everything if need be for the sake of your call, for
the truth of the gospel.
Today we give our lives to you and invite you to fulfill your purposes in us.
We pray these things in Jesus name. Amen.
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