Exodus 1-2: What to Do When You Feel Forgotten
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
Forgetting to mail marriage license - last weekend - set a reminder on my phone. My memory not what it used to be.
You’ve forgotten important things. You’ve also been forgotten. Maybe your spouse forgot your birthday. Or, someone forgot to call you. Or, someone forgot to invite you to an important event. We don’t like to forget, and we don’t like to be forgotten.
Have you ever felt like God has forgotten you? Theologically, we know God doesn’t forget anything, and He surely doesn’t forget the people He loves. But, when life isn’t working the way we think it should, or when we’re in the midst of significant trials, it feels like God has forgotten us.
How should you respond when you feel like God has forgotten you? Exodus 1-2 is going to help us answer that question.
Exodus an amazing book of the Bible that helps us to understand salvation like no other book in the Old Testament. (First time word salvation used in Bible is Exodus 15).
The Bible tells the singular story of salvation in Jesus Christ. As the Bible points to Jesus, the biblical authors keep pointing back to the Book of Exodus to help us to understand the story of Jesus. Important that we understand this book. This book is going to help us know God, because in Exodus, God clearly reveals Himself to His people.
This morning, as we start our journey, three ways to respond when you feel like God has forgotten you.
You can always look to God’s faithfulness in your life.
You can always look to God’s faithfulness in your life.
The book opens with a genealogy. Exodus is a sequel to Genesis. In Gen. 12 God called Abraham to follow Him, and God promised to make Abraham’s descendants into a great nation.
Eventually, Jacob, a descendant of Abraham had twelve sons, and they lived in the land of Canaan. The brothers sold Joseph into slavery in Egypt. A horrible story, but God prospered Joseph in Egypt. Ultimately, in a time of famine, Joseph reunited with his brothers. He forgives them, and the family moves to Egypt to escape the famine.
Joseph was an incredible leader who not only saved his own family from starvation but also the nation of Egypt. Joseph dies, time goes on, and the legacy of Joseph forgotten (vs. 8).
A Pharaoh in power who fears the descendants of Joseph because they are more numerous and powerful than the Egyptians. It’s about to get bad for the Hebrews, but Moses, the author of Exodus, wants us to see what God has done. God has fulfilled His promise to Abraham. God has made Abraham’s descendants into a great nation, and God fulfilled the promise in Egypt, not in the Promised Land of Canaan. From the outset, Moses wants us to know that God was faithful.
So faithful that God KEPT multiplying the Hebrews. vs. 10 - Pharaoh attempts to stop their growth. Vs. 12 - the more Pharaoh oppresses, the more they populate. It’s miraculous!
Pharaoh is the epitome of evil - he’s like Satan doing everything he can to stop God’s people from thriving because Pharaoh sees the Hebrews as a threat to his power. Hebrews enslaved and their lives were bitter. BUT… God’s plan to raise up a nation that would be a blessing to the rest of the world would not be thwarted. God would fulfill His promises (Gen. 15).
Egypt will not be the end of the story for God’s people, nor will the difficulties that you experience be the end of your story. When you feel like you are forgotten, you can always look to the faithfulness of God.
No matter how hard your life may be, God is at work (Philippians 1:6, Romans 8:28).
Two questions to ask when you feel forgotten:
How has God been faithful to you in the past? Regularly remembering God’s work in your life is hugely important. Your salvation, significant times you’ve seen God at work, people He’s placed in your life. What has He brought you out of? What has He protected you from? Those are reminders that He’s been faithful.
How is God being faithful to you right now? It may not seem like God is at work, but there’s never a time He’s not. How do you see Him at work right now? Teaching you from His Word, providing a church family, meeting your needs in tangible ways, etc. You are not forgotten. Ask God to show you how He’s being faithful to you.
https://www.npr.org/2025/01/29/nx-s1-5279204/doomsday-clock-2025-history Doomsday clock - even if the worst is coming - it will not change God’s faithfulness to you.
You can continue to be used by God.
You can continue to be used by God.
mSounds like the problem we all experience: an enemy who wants to see us enslaved to sin and who wants to kill us eternally. This is what we need salvation from. Slavery and death.
Pharaoh gives a command to two midwives to kill every son born to the Hebrews.
So many babies being born - likely more than two midwives among the Hebrews, but maybe these were the head midwives.
Twice in text: “The midwives feared God” (vs. 17, 21). Pharaoh was powerful, and he could execute swift judgement. But, midwives knew he wasn’t as powerful as God.
Two midwives courageously defied the word of Pharaoh. If not for their bold faith, the Hebrews would have become extinct. Promise of Gen. 3:15 in jeopardy if the Hebrews were extinct. These two ordinary women saved the nation of Israel by defying the enemy of God. They are so significant that their names are recorded in Scripture (Shiprah and Puah). Pharaoh’s name not recorded.
Pharaoh learns of their defiance - “The Hebrew women are vigorous!” (Did they lie or laughable nonsense?) Maybe: “It’s not possible to keep up with all the babies being born.”
Pharaoh outraged…”Throw every son into the Nile…” The Nile would be a place of death - a watery grave (think flood).
God honors the faithfulness of the midwives and gives them families (vs. 20).
When you feel forgotten, God is still at work, and God can still use you.
Two questions to ask when life is challenging:
Whose voice is loudest in your life?
When life gets hard, you’re not forgotten by God, but you tend to forget God because you become so focused on your hardships rather than God and His calling on your life. You tend to pull away from Him, and you tend to not serve Him.
Are you listening to the enemy who is telling you that God doesn’t care about you? That if He cared you wouldn’t suffer like you do? Are you listening to the culture around you that tells you to pursue life apart from Christ because religion is a crutch? Are you listening to friends or family who are giving you bad advice that’s contrary to the Bible?
Or, are you listening to God’s voice. You need to determine whose voice you will listen to.
The voice of truth is reminding you that He’s faithful - and because He’s faithful, you have every reason to obey Him and be used by Him.
There’s never a season that God does not want to use you for His purpose.
How can you make God’s voice louder in your life?
You need to realize that every voice that is saying something contrary to what God says is just noise. Don’t let the noise distract you. What God is saying to you is NOT noise. It’s life-giving.
Stay close to people who can help you hear God’s voice clearly. Stay close to a church that makes God’s Word a priority.
You can trust that God will always hear your cries.
You can trust that God will always hear your cries.
Ch. 2 - Introduced to the hero of Exodus - Moses. Born to a man and woman who didn’t want their son to die at the hands of Pharaoh’s decree.
Moses’ mom hides him for three months until she can’t hide him anymore. Makes a basket for him and places him in the Nile. Hebrew word for basket same word as “ark.” Ark in Genesis where God places Noah and his family so that humanity can be preserved. Now, Israel going to be saved by this baby boy who floats safely in an ark on the Nile.
The Nile was a place of death, much like the flood waters in Gen. 6-9. But the place of death would become a place of life. God was going to bring life out of death.
vs. 4 - Moses’ sister watches as the baby floats on the Nile when Pharaoh’s daughter comes to bathe and discovers the baby. Perhaps Pharaoh’s daughter bathed here regularly and Miriam and Moses’ mom knew it - and knew that Pharaoh’s daughter would have compassion? (vs. 10 - the naming of Moses.)
Moses rescued, gets to be nursed by his mom AND gets to grow up in Pharaoh’s home. Access to the best the world had to offer, and God would use Pharaoh’s house to prepare Moses to be a deliverer.
vs. 11-15 - Moses a flawed deliverer. Every day he sees his own people mistreated, and finally has enough. He sees his people suffering, and this one who was raised in the wealth and privilege of Egypt chooses to identify with his people rather than the Egyptians. He murders an and flees to the backwoods of Midian.
At a well, he meets his wife, Zipporah, and begins to work for his father-in-law tending sheep far away from Egypt. In the hills of Midian, God will eventually change everything about Moses and make Him into a deliverer.
vs. 23-25 - Turning point of the story. People cry out for help. God heard, and God remembered. God hadn’t forgotten, but in His timing, God waited for this moment to act. When the OT tells us that God remembers it’s a signifier that He is about to act on behalf of His people (E.g., Gen. 8:1). God is going to use a man who fled from Egypt to rescue His people.
You may feel forgotten but God hears your cries as well. God is at work in your suffering. Age-old question: If God loves us, why does He allow us to suffer?
1. Suffering is a natural part of living in a broken world where sin runs rampant. Sometimes your suffering is a result of your sin, sometimes the sins of someone else, sometimes suffering happens just because the world is broken.
2. Suffering is used by God to give you a longing for something better. If life was always comfortable, would you want to be with God in new heaven/earth? It is right to cry out to God when you suffer, and it is right to expect God to hear your cries and deliver you. God wants to save you.
Two questions:
Do you want to be saved? Exodus points us to Jesus, the ultimate deliverer. Matthew 1-2 - Matthew showing us Jesus is the Ultimate Deliverer. Parallels - Herod ordered death of sons. Jesus’ family flees to Egypt. Matthew 2:15: Jesus came out of Egypt. Matthew wants us to know Jesus came to deliverer us not from Pharaoh but from sin and death. He came to save you through His death and resurrection. He came to give you life. Do you want to be saved? Will you trust Him for forgiveness of your sins and life eternal?
If you are saved, will keep crying out in faith? Cry out with patience. God may not deliver you from your troubles today, but He is at work. Wait on the Lord. He is at work in you and through you even in your suffering. Cry out with confidence - God is true to His Word - He will bring you safely home. Cry out for people you love. Don’t give up pray for lost family members, people you love. Cry out in repentance - repenting of where you’ve taken your eyes off him and leaned on your own understanding rather than trusting Him with all your heart.
