What is your Christian heritage? Week 1: God s people enslaved (Exodus 1-2) Discussion Questions Read Genesis 1:1-4 1. What does God tell Abram (later Abraham) to do? 2. What promises does God make to him? Read Exodus 1:1-7 3. In what ways can we already see God s promises to Abraham having been fulfilled? 4. What parts of the promise are missing or in doubt? 5. How is the choice of words in v7 significant? Read Exodus 1:8-22 6. Do you think the king of Egypt was justified in his thoughts about the Israelites? Do we see parallels in our own society and immigration policies? 7. Does the Bible condemn slavery? How should Christians respond to the fact that millions of people around the world are slaves even today? 8. Were Shiprah and Puah justified in their words and actions? If they were right to lie, what circumstances could we possibly face where a lie (or other action that is worng in itself) is justified? Read Exodus 2 9. What parallels are there between Moses and Jesus? 10. In what way did God remember his covenant with Abraham and his descendants? 11. How can this story give us confidence in our relationship with God?
God s people enslaved Exodus 1&2 Opener: My great grandfather sailmaker on the Cutty Sark, jumped ship on Thursday Island to start a new life far from his native Scotland. My grandfather an undefeated amateur boxer who gave up boxing for the woman he loved; he was friends with a tribe of aboriginal Aussies long before they were considered citizens under Australian law. My father the first member of my extended family to realise that Jesus was the way, the truth and the life. The first one to be rescued. That s all part of who I am; it s my heritage. What is YOUR heritage; and especially, what was YOUR introduction to God? How did you first get to know him as YOUR rescuer? We know that we are rescued through Jesus life, death and resurrection. That is our rescue. But if you had asked any of God s people in the fourteen centuries leading up to Jesus, the biggest rescue happened back in the book that we are lookng at for the next nine weeks. Exodus it means coming out and we will see how in many ways it was the start of the people of God. And as such it is OUR heritage. Context: The first word of Exodus in the original language, Hebrew, is and : this is a continuation of what was told in the book of Genesis. The last third of Genesis was largely about Joseph and his brothers and their father, Jacob, and that is how this book starts out. And we are reminded of how God blesses his people. That s the lesson from the first seven verses Part One: Ch 1:1-7 - God blesses his people 1 These are the names of the sons of Israel who went to Egypt with Jacob, each with his family: 2 Reuben, Simeon, Levi and Judah; 3 Issachar, Zebulun and Benjamin; 4 Dan and Naphtali; Gad and Asher. 5 The descendants of Jacob numbered seventy in all; Joseph was already in Egypt. 6 Now Joseph and all his brothers and all that generation died, 7 but the Israelites were fruitful and multiplied greatly and became exceedingly numerous, so that the land was filled with them. Israel he stuggles with God The twelve sons they will become the fathers of the twelve tribes of Israel the complete people of God in the OT We know that these were not the first members of the family. Jacob <<< Isaac <<< ABRAHAM Gen 12:1-3 LOOK IT UP! God has delivered descendents, and fame and blessing of the nations (as Joseph engineers the saving of Egypt and others from famine). The promises are largely incomplete, and we learn with sadness in v6 that Joseph and his generation have all died. BUT God is continuing to bless as they grow V7 fruitful and multiplied That s what God told Adam and Eve to do in Gen ch1 now Abraham s family line is blessed as God enables them to fill the land of Egypt. Illustration: A man named Ran crop farmer; always took Sunday off as part of his Christian obedience. If it was harvest time and a storm was coming, he d still down tools on Saturday night and leave the crops in the ground on Sunday. God always looked after him and blessed him. His non-believing neighbours would even come around on Saturday to lend a had if Sunday looked like rain, and no doubt he blessed them by telling them about his God.
Application: count your blessings. Our hurts and hardships are easy to dwell on, but think: how has God blessed you this week/ year? How has he blessed your family? How blessed YOU since you accepted Jesus as Lord and Saviour? But sometimes things can look too hard for God We are left thinking: how will he keep his promise? Part two v8-22 Pharoah oppresses God s people. 8 Then a new king, who did not know about Joseph, came to power in Egypt. 9 "Look," he said to his people, "the Israelites have become much too numerous for us. 10 Come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous and, if war breaks out, will join our enemies, fight against us and leave the country." 11 So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh. 12 But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites 13 and worked them ruthlessly. 14 They made their lives bitter with hard labor in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their hard labor the Egyptians used them ruthlessly. 15 The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah, 16 "When you help the Hebrew women in childbirth and observe them on the delivery stool, if it is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live." 17 The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do; they let the boys live. 18 Then the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and asked them, "Why have you done this? Why have you let the boys live?" 19 The midwives answered Pharaoh, "Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women; they are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive." 20 So God was kind to the midwives and the people increased and became even more numerous. 21 And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own. 22 Then Pharaoh gave this order to all his people: "Every boy that is born you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live." The fortunes of the Israelites take a downward turn: V8 not known, not acknowledged V9 objects of suspicion V10-11 victims of oppression And yet there are glimmers of hope! V9 Pharaoh calls them Israelites, he acks them as a nation, just as God had said they would be. V12 the more they are oppressed, the more they fulfill the mandate of Genesis 1:21 they multiply and spread. And so the oppression is stepped up: V13-14 they are worked ruthlessly; their lives are bitter. And in v15, Pharoah goes from the revolting to the despicable. Slavery isn t working, so he reosrts to genocide. It s enough to kill the males; females can be used to make more Egyptians. Get rid of the males and the nation dies. BUT there are rescuers: the midwives save the baby boys. Does God reward them for telling lies? I wouldn t go that far but I would say he rewards them for saving lives; he rewards them for obeying him rather than the king.
Illustration: The oppression of God s people is certainly nothing new, nor is it a thing of the past. Right now, millions of our brothers and sisters in Christ are being persecuted for their faith. Many will not be meeting up today because they might get arrested or are already in prison for their faith. We can face small scale oppression too, from people who reject us because of our faith in the Lord. And what about internal oppression which afflicts us: depression, anxiety, fear. What about forms of slavery we stumbled into foolishly and now we are stuck: substance abuse, porn, bitterness. What of these? Application: God knows about everything that oppresses us. And he cares. He can rescue us and can send the unlikeliest of rescuers to help us, just as those women, the midwives in a man s world, were used by God to rescue those baby boys. But in Exodus, the attempted genocide continues, it has been stepped up. And that will be the start of the big rescue by the God who remembers his people. A quick overview of a well-known story: Baby boy/ mum hides him/ a basket boat/ a bathing princess/ a brave sister/ a brilliant trick! And so we end up with an Israelite boy being nursed and taught his heritage by his own mum, and then being adopted into an Egyptian family the ROYAL family! Where he will have knowledge and langauge and influence he should never have had. And God will use him to bring his people out of Egypt. Moses first attempt to liberate an Israelite was a misguided failure it wasn t God s timing and it ended in him running for his life into self-imposed exile. But the time will come, as we will hear next week, For this is the God who remembers his people. END OF CH 2: 23 During that long period, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. 24 God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. 25 So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them. Some 1450 years later, another Israelite boy would be born during a time of oppression. He too would survive an attempt on his life while and infant. He too would be a dual citizen, would do time in the wilderness, and rescue God s people. It is through Jesus that we see how everything about the Egyptian Exodus makes sense, and how God has fully delivered on his promises to Abraham. Moses was forty years old when ran from Egypt and eighty years old in ch3 that s at least 80 years of this oppression! groaned in their slavery and cried out their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob.
It is through Jesus that we cry out to God in the midst of any oppression and hardship, and because of Jesus that we can know God hears us and remembers us. It s our heritage. COME BACK NEXT WEEK!