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Redeemer Women's is a discipleship ministry of Redeemer Community Church. We exist to help women celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
For more information about our church, visit rccbirmingham.org. To get in touch with our team, send a message to women@rccbirmingham.org.
Okay. How's everyone doing this morning? Good? Good? First week under our belts?
Krystal Brummitt:Yeah? I I get so excited every Thursday morning, which is great because Thursday's kinda... It's our Friday here at Redeemer when we work on staff because we work Sundays, so we don't work Fridays. And so, you know, sometimes you get to Friday and you're kinda dragging, but not during women's bible study season. I'm not dragging.
Krystal Brummitt:I have so much pep in my step when I wake up, and so it's so good to be back with you all. Everyone feeling good first week of study, small group discussion good. If you're new, you're probably learning pretty quickly why we love our small groups so much. I'm glad to be back on eavesdropping on Lauren and Kathy's group that meets up here because I'm just sitting in the back listening to what they have to say. So all all feels right to be back together.
Krystal Brummitt:So I told you all last week that our... The goal of this time is to connect puzzle pieces to maybe bring things to light that we wouldn't necessarily see in our study through our prayer, through our study of God's word. And so this is a continuation of the work that you've already done through your personal time with God and his word, through your small group discussion, and we're gonna wrap this up together this morning as we continue our study. As a reminder from the introduction last week, Moses, he's writing Exodus to the generation of Israelites that had been wandering in the wilderness for forty years, and they are on the brink of entering into the promised land. But remember Moses is not the one who's going to take them into the promised land.
Krystal Brummitt:It's going to be Joshua. So as they go, Moses is writing this for them. And so we looked at like what would he want to tell them? And we talked about that he wanted to give them their history, where they came from. And he writes to give them their identity, who they are as God's chosen people.
Krystal Brummitt:And he writes and he gives them their future, where God is taking them. And most importantly, and we're gonna see this all throughout this book, he is writing to tell them who their God is, that there is one true God, the only God, Yahweh. And he is faithful, and he is gracious, and he is powerful. And leading up to the opening of Exodus, we did a flyover of the book of Genesis. We called it the prequel.
Krystal Brummitt:It really sets up everything that is about to happen in this book, in this story, in this major event in the life of the people of Israel. And, we did that to trace the promises of God that one day, there would come one who would crush the head of the enemy. That one day, one would come through the line of Abraham who would come and rescue rescue God's rebellious world, that one day a king would come through the line of Judah who would rule over all nations and command obedience to God and bless his people. The promises of God are directly linked to God's people, and that's what we were tracing last week. The promises of God are directly connected to God's people.
Krystal Brummitt:But at the end of Genesis, we saw that Jacob had died and Joseph died and his brothers died. And so all the promises, all of the future hopes of the rescuer, the king, the savior to come seems like maybe that's not gonna happen. Have the promises of God died with his people? And that's where we pick up in Exodus. And we don't see this in our English translations, but the opening of Exodus begins with the word and because it is a continuation of the story.
Krystal Brummitt:And as Moses continues into Exodus, he he is going to help. He's going to inform. He's going to encourage the people of Israel in two ways that I want us to see... Two specific ways that I want us to see this morning. First, that God is a promise keeping God.
Krystal Brummitt:God is a promise keeping God. We can rest assured that his promises were never in danger. The second thing, we are going to trace the unseen hand of God's providence. We're gonna trace the unseen hand of God's providence. He is quietly on the move, and we saw this week that he is working through the most unexpected circumstances and the most unexpected people, but we can rest assured that he is at work.
Krystal Brummitt:So we're gonna take this text in major sections. You've studied it this week, so I'm making that assumption as we go, so we'll move at a decent pace. But we open up in chapter one in these first seven verses. Exodus picks up, and Moses, he's setting the scene for how the descendants of Jacob, essentially the descendants of Abraham, ended up as slaves in Egypt in the first place. He's answering the question of how did we get here?
Krystal Brummitt:And like all of our favorite stories do, he opened with a genealogy. That... That's y'all's favorite stories. Right? It's riveting.
Krystal Brummitt:If you did study Genesis with us a couple of years ago, you may remember our encouragement not to skip over, not to move past genealogies too quickly for a multitude of reasons. But for our purposes this morning, I want to remind us that genealogies allow us to see a record of God's faithfulness. It is a picture that God does what He says He will do because He is a promise keeping God, and His promises are linked to His people. We saw in verse five of this opening section that all of the descendants of Jacob were 70 persons. It seems like maybe that's not a lot if you read 70.
Krystal Brummitt:You're like, would have thought maybe there would have been more from this family. But after multiple studies that we've done in Revelation, I think we did this some in Hebrews, many of us in Bible study are now formal biblical numerologists, and we know that when we see numbers in the Bible that they mean something in particular more than just a face value number. So, I'm sure that most of you saw this, the number seven in the Bible is meant to convey completeness. It's perfect. And, the same is also true for the number 10.
Krystal Brummitt:So, when you take seven times 10, what do you get? So, essentially, what Moses is communicating is that the full measure of God's people were in Egypt. Everyone who was supposed to be there was there. These are these are the bible study tools that we're putting in our tool belt as we study because you know now when we see numbers in the bible, there's a little bit of work that we can do to understand them. But even so, with the full measure of God's people there, Joseph and his brothers, all of that generation had died.
Krystal Brummitt:But we read in verse seven, this is the CSB translation. It says, but the Israelites were fruitful, increased rapidly, multiplied, and became extremely numerous so that the land was filled with them. It's like Moses couldn't convey enough how much they had grown, how much they had multiplied. They were exceedingly fruitful. In Egypt, God had not forgotten his people.
Krystal Brummitt:And in our homework this week, we got to trace this through Genesis. We saw that the command and the mandate that God gave to Adam and Eve at creation to be fruit ful and multiply that was then reiterated to Noah after the flood, that then became a promise to Abraham, and then was passed down to Isaac and to Jacob and to Joseph. It's now being realized. It's happening. God's people are being fruitful and they're multiplying.
Krystal Brummitt:It's like this massive Hebrew baby boom. They're everywhere. And so Exodus opens and it's and it's kind of a positive note. Like you kind of feel good. The people of God are there and they're multiplying.
Krystal Brummitt:Although, we know they're not in the land that God had promised. But, we keep reading which brings us to the next big section that we studied this week, verses eight through 14 of chapter one. And, verse eight, you can almost feel the tone change. As Moses keeps writing, it goes from this hopeful note to a more somber tone because there is a new pharaoh in town. And, if you remember pharaohs, these are Egypt's little g god like kings, and we're told that he did not know Joseph.
Krystal Brummitt:And, so what this means is that to him, Joseph didn't mean anything. He didn't care about any agreement that was there between Joseph and Pharaoh in the years that proceeded. He was under no obligation and had no intent to maintain this special status that his predecessors before him had conferred on the Hebrew people. And so, out of his own fear of their size and of their multiplication and of their fruitfulness, he begins to incite fear of the Hebrew people in the eyes of Egyptians. And up until this point, the Hebrew people, they have been living peacefully in Goshen.
Krystal Brummitt:And so he begins to stir up fear and speculation, and he says, come. He's drawing the people and he says, let's deal shrewdly with them. And the use of this word shrewdly, we looked this up in our homework this week. There there's an element of wisdom that goes with it, but it's not just wisdom in its purest form. It's...
Krystal Brummitt:It means to be crafty or cunning or deceitful. It's twisted wisdom. Mhmm. It carries with it plotting with malicious intent. And if you're familiar with Egyptian pharaohs, you know how they presented themselves visually.
Krystal Brummitt:And if you're not, let me paint a picture for you. Every pharaoh wore a giant gold crown with a cobra emblem on the front. It is a rearing striking serpent positioned right above his forehead. And so, the pharaoh's own face then became the body behind the serpent's head. To look at Pharaoh was to look at a serpent positioned and ready to strike.
Krystal Brummitt:And so here in Exodus one, when this serpent crowned king looks at Israel's rapid multiplication and says, let's deal shrewdly with them, he's doing exactly what his crown depicts. He's a serpent. He is an enemy of God striking at and attempting to destroy God's people. And, does this remind you of anything that maybe you've ever read before? Maybe in Genesis.
Krystal Brummitt:The serpent is described in Genesis three as more crafty than any other beast of the field. He is more cunning. He has this twisted wisdom. And, what did this first enemy serpent of God do? He set out to destroy the people of God.
Krystal Brummitt:And so for Pharaoh, what does this look like for him? What is his plan of attack? He doesn't attack head on, he schemes. He chooses a slow, more deniable strategy in the form of forced labor. They become slaves.
Krystal Brummitt:And verses 11 through 14 give us this description of God's people put under these harsh taskmasters, and they're forced to build pharaoh cities. Pharaoh was set on destroying the people of God, building his kingdom on their backs in the process. And Moses tells us multiple times that they were treated ruthlessly. It was brutal and cold blooded and merciless. It is dark for the people of God in Egypt.
Krystal Brummitt:And even so, with that being true, what was happening? Verse 12 tells us that the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied. They are multiplying even still. Bitterness and hard labor, these were meant not only to break Israel's bodies, but to also break their hope. Pharaoh's primary goal probably wasn't only productivity in cities, but to crush their spirits so that they would stop multiplying, that they would stop hoping, that they would stop believing, that maybe, just maybe, the promises of God might still be alive.
Krystal Brummitt:But, God is a promise keeping God, and all hope is not lost. Because as it is often in the kingdom of God, the promises of God come through opposition, not despite it. I think that we could probably go around this room and we could all testify to this reality. And so, I want us to consider, are there are there hardships? Are there difficult circumstances in your life right now that threaten you to give up hoping and give up believing in the character and the promises of God.
Krystal Brummitt:Difficulty in opposition and hardship and suffering, they will not get the final word, and they cannot thwart the purposes and the promises of God. Suffering can be and often is the very context where God's promises are realized. I was just... This is not in my notes because it just happened this morning, but I was waiting for all of you to arrive. Ann and Ruth Ann walked in and we were chatting and I overheard literally just kind of like lurking there.
Krystal Brummitt:Ann encouraged Ruth Ann on a book that she just wrote of her story, of the ways that God has met her in suffering, in trials, in loss, and in grief. And and that was an encouragement for me just listening to tell the story. That's what Moses is doing here. Tell the story of God's faithfulness. Tell the story of how God is keeping his promises and his purposes cannot be thwarted.
Krystal Brummitt:He has been at work all along. All hope is not lost. It wasn't for them then, and it's not for you today. And Moses, he paints this picture of the people of God as slaves in Egypt suffering oppression, and treated ruthlessly by a pharaoh bent on their destruction. And when this plan a that he has doesn't work, he moves on to plan b, which brings us to chapter one verses 15 through 22.
Krystal Brummitt:So, Pharaoh, what he does is he he calls in two Hebrew midwives. They're named for us here Shifra and Pua, and he commands them to do the unimaginable, to kill every Hebrew born son as they come into the world. I don't know if you thought about this this week or maybe you talked about it in your small groups, but why do you think only sons? Why just sons? Well, he probably sees them growing into men, probably becoming soldiers, probably joining a resistance against the Egyptian people.
Krystal Brummitt:They seemed more of a threat. Pharaoh likely thinking that daughters would be harmless. Little does he know. Right? One thing that I want to make sure that we see in this text, what's Pharaoh's name?
Krystal Brummitt:We don't know. We don't know. He's not named here. He is a no name Pharaoh. But whose names do we know?
Krystal Brummitt:These Hebrew midwives, we know Shiphrah and Puah. Their names are forever recorded in the word of God. We're speaking them today. Why? Verse 17 tells us, they feared God.
Krystal Brummitt:The midwives feared God. They didn't listen to this ruthless command of this pharaoh because they feared their God more than they feared him, more than they feared this little g serpent like Egyptian king. There is one greater to fear than Pharaoh. And, when he realizes that they are not killing the male Hebrew babies and he confronts Shifrah and Puah, they lie. And, they're like, the Hebrew women, they just give birth too fast.
Krystal Brummitt:We can't keep up. We can't get there in time. And, it's often talked about and speculated about whether or not they were wrong for lying to Pharaoh. That question was prompted in our homework this week because we do. Bearing false witness is a sin.
Krystal Brummitt:That is not up for debate. Some scholars believe that maybe they were a partial truth. I mean, Moses has told us over and over again that they're multiplying, they're multiplying, they're multiplying. Maybe they are giving birth so quickly. They're good at it.
Krystal Brummitt:But I don't think that's it, and I don't think that's the point. A couple of things that I want to help us see here. First, the text tells us, the word of God tells us in verse 20 that God dealt with the midwives, and he gave them families. Just a side note because I don't want to miss it. Let's not miss that God gives them the very thing that Pharaoh is seeking to destroy.
Krystal Brummitt:He gives them families. He is no match for God. And there's there's only so much we can do in this time to unpack this here, but I think what we can take confidently from it is that truth is not owed to evil. Truth is not owed to evil. Obedience to the law should never undermine God's kingdom of life.
Krystal Brummitt:He is the God of life. Truth is not owed in service to the kingdom of death. And, I think the Hebrew midwives showed great courage and faithfulness as they feared their God in the very face of the one who could have taken their lives for what they had done. And, let's think back again. Where have we seen this before?
Krystal Brummitt:Unlike Eve in the garden in Genesis chapter three when tempted by the serpent, she gave in to temptation. She rebelled against her God. But Shiphrah and Puah, in the face of this serpent like enemy of God, feared their God more. And their actions in word and deed subvert the death plan of Pharaoh. And they are commended by their God.
Krystal Brummitt:And, we can be assured that he is the ultimate judge of their actions, and we see here that he rewards them. And again, Pharaoh thought daughters would be no threat. History, it is filled with forgotten pharaohs, with nameless people, but eternity is filled with faithful men and women whose names will be known forever because of their faithfulness, not because of their status. And so, question that I bring for us as we study this text is, who or what do you fear? Who or what do you fear?
Krystal Brummitt:What consequence, whether it's rejection or conflict or loss of a relationship or a professional risk? Is it family pressure? What of that tempts you to comply with something you know dishonors God? You know is not pleasing to Him? And, what would fearing God more look like for you?
Krystal Brummitt:And so this week, I wanna give us all some... A prompt to think about, to to pray through this, to ask the spirit to help you survey your life, to help us identify what we fear and what is driving us. And so, I want to encourage you to complete this sentence. I go along with blank because I'm afraid of blank. I go along with blank, That's for you to fill in.
Krystal Brummitt:Because I'm afraid of blank. Also for you to fill in. It could be something like, I go along with gossip among my friends because I'm afraid of being left out or myself talked about if I don't. It could look like I strive after and chase a certain standard of beauty because I'm afraid that if I don't, I won't be valued or I won't be seen. It could be I avoid sharing my faith with certain friends or family because I'm afraid of being mocked or rejected.
Krystal Brummitt:I go along with blank because I'm afraid of blank. So my my encouragement for us is that we would pray and that we would ask God to reveal our fears, reveal what's driving to us so that our fear of him would drive out every lesser thing. There's a a short sermon by an old pastor named Thomas Chalmers, and it's called The Expulsive Power of a New Affection. Let's let our greater affection for God, our greater fear of God more than anything else drive out every lesser thing. May it be said of us, women of God just like the Hebrew midwives, but she feared God.
Krystal Brummitt:There's one greater to fear. So when this plan b doesn't work, Pharaoh moves on to plan c. And in verse 22, he commands that when a son is born, when they make it through birth, that he should be cast into the Nile River. We're gonna talk more about the Nile later in our study in Exodus, Exodus, but this was the source of life for the people of Egypt, and it is now being turned into an instrument of death. And it can be tempting to want to move really quickly past this, but don't rush past the suffering of God's people here in chapter one.
Krystal Brummitt:They're slaves. They are being treated ruthlessly. They are being commanded to kill their own. And when they wouldn't, the Egyptians were gonna do it for them. The world is dark for the people of God.
Krystal Brummitt:It's dangerous. It is full of hissing serpents whose venomous bites threaten the very people and promises of God. But even so, all hope is not lost. And that brings us to the last portion of our text that we studied this week, chapter two verses one through 10. Chapter two opens and it zooms in on one particular group of people.
Krystal Brummitt:And it opens with a man and a woman. They have a baby, a baby boy. That's important. And verse two of this text describes this baby boy as a fine child. Any mother would describe her baby as a fine child.
Krystal Brummitt:Right? But this adjective fine, it's significant. Modern bible translations use words like fine or beautiful or special, but I wanna read from the King James version. Everyone's favorite version of the bible. Right?
Krystal Brummitt:Pick it up all the time. But I want you to hear something here. Verse... I didn't write down the verse. Two maybe.
Krystal Brummitt:Oh, Verse two. I did write down. Okay. And the woman conceived and bare a son. And when she saw him that he was a goodly child, she hid him three months.
Krystal Brummitt:Did you hear that? He is good. Her son is good. This Levi gives birth... This Levi mother gives birth to her son and she says, behold, he is good.
Krystal Brummitt:And it could be he's he's... She's a mother who loves her baby and he's healthy and he's fine and he's good, but I think Moses is doing something very intentional here with this language. It's the language of creation. It's Genesis chapter one. God creates the world and it's good and it's good and it's good.
Krystal Brummitt:And I think what Moses is bringing here is a new creation story, a new creation story of God's people, of the nation of Israel. Behold, it is good. And, imagine being this mother. It's it's a pretty unimaginable thing, I bet, Knowing that what awaits your beautiful, special, fine, good baby boy is that he be plunged into the waters of death, never to rise again. It's unimaginable.
Krystal Brummitt:It's impossible for us to wrap our minds around that. And what does she do? She gets a papyrus basket for him and she coated it with tar and pitch, and she puts it together and she places her baby boy in it among the reeds along the banks, the bank of the Nile. And so why... Where do you think this Levite woman gets this idea to place her baby in a basket.
Krystal Brummitt:A flotation device covered in pitch that floats on the water and preserves this good creation. Does this sound familiar? Sounds like an arc. Right? One commentator called this portion of the text Moses and the ark two point o.
Krystal Brummitt:The word used for basket here in Exodus chapter two is the same word that's used in Genesis chapter six verse 14 for the ark. And, it's the only time that this word appears outside of Genesis. This mother, this Levite mother, she has been shaped by the stories of her people. Knowing the story of God preserving Noah and his family, I'm getting emotional, through the waters of judgment, through an ark. She saw that her son was good, and she placed him in a floating ark in an attempt to save him from certain death.
Krystal Brummitt:And like Shiphrah and Puah, Moses' mother and sister are brave and faithful, but they aren't in control. They can only do so much and we feel that uncertainty as Moses' sister is standing off to the side watching to see what's gonna happen, hoping against hope that he would be okay. And then, as if the story couldn't get any more shocking up to this point, who comes along down to the river? The very last person you would probably want. It's the daughter of pharaoh.
Krystal Brummitt:It's the daughter of the one who is bent on destroying God's people. You could imagine Moses' sister standing off to the side saying, not her. Not her. What we expect here would be murder, but what we see is mercy. She shows compassion on this crying baby boy.
Krystal Brummitt:And in an extraordinary turn of events, this princess, she defies her father, and she takes this Hebrew baby, and she adopts him into the very family that's trying to kill him. And then, that's not the end. Then, through the courage and the wisdom of Moses' sister, his own mother comes and is paid by pharaoh to be his nurse. I just wrote down, I was like, Hollywood could never. Like, it's amazing.
Krystal Brummitt:It's this this this unseen hand of God's providence. He's at work. He's at work. He is on the move. And, we ended this week in our text with the the second name or the third name technically that we see here and it's this baby is named Moses.
Krystal Brummitt:Meaning, drew him out of the water. Further emphasizing this providential rescue from a watery grave. And we were asked this week in our homework at the end where we saw themes of deliverance. Don't miss this. We know the story.
Krystal Brummitt:We're familiar. But before Moses came on the scene, before he was born or after he was born, he must first be delivered through daughters who feared God more than pharaoh, who pharaoh thought would be no threat. Israel's deliverer is delivered. They were the first deliverers. This serpent like king of Egypt relentlessly and ruthlessly tried to destroy the people of God and with them, his promises.
Krystal Brummitt:But whose plan was was thwarted? Not God's. His promises were never in danger in quiet, nearly unnoticeable, certainly unexpected ways. God preserves his people through their greatest suffering because God is a promise keeping God. And, Moses here, he helps his original audience, the people of Israel and us trace this unseen hand of God's providence.
Krystal Brummitt:He's always been at work. He's on the move. And so, the stage is set and all hope is not lost. And that's where we'll pick up this week. Let's pray.
Krystal Brummitt:God, I'm a little speechless. Your your word is astounding and even more so, God, you leave us in awe. God, you are a promise keeping God. Your promises then, your promises now, your promises of what's to come will never be in danger. No one can thwart your plan.
Krystal Brummitt:And God, I pray that the ways that we saw this unfold in these opening chapters of Exodus would encourage us, God, that they would help us to stand more firm on your promises and who you tell us you are. God, I pray that they would drive us to fear you more than we fear any other thing. God, that everything we do, every day,