Mid-Lent 1
Ex
1:1-22
2/21/18
“What have you done for me
lately?” In a results based world this
phrase indicates that past history doesn’t mean anything. For the aging sports star or the product line
of a business, past performance is irrelevant.
What matters are the benefits produced now and those that can be
expected in the future. Anyone or anything that that doesn’t produce now is
expendable. The past doesn’t matter.
In our text tonight, we learn that
this is the position in which Israel found herself. That past had been remarkable. Joseph had been sold into slavery by his brothers
and taken to Egypt. However, God had
cared for Joseph and blessed him.
Eventually, God used Joseph to reveal to Pharaoh, the leader of Egypt,
that seven prosperous years were coming followed by seven years of famine. Pharaoh made Joseph second in charge over all
of Egypt as he made preparations during the seven good years by storing up
grain, and as he then began to sell it during the seven bad years.
Joseph’s family in Canaan was
effected by the famine and traveled to Egypt to buy food. As a result, they learned that Joseph was
alive, and that he forgave his brothers who had mistreated him. Eventually Joseph’s father Jacob and the
entire family came to live in Egypt.
There Joseph was able to provide for them.
Yahweh had promised Abraham that he
would give him the land of Canaan along with numerous descendants. In our text we learn that his grandson Jacob
went down to live in Egypt and that the entire family amounted to seventy
people. Jacob’s family left the land God
had promised to them, and while they were away Yahweh kept his promise about
many descendants. We hear in our text: “But the people of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly;
they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong, so that the land was filled with
them.”
God’s blessing arrived in an
unexpected way. Israel didn’t become a
nation while in the land of Canaan that God had promised to give them. Instead,
they became a numerous people while sojourning in a foreign land – in the land
of Egypt. We see here that God gives his
blessings in surprising ways. He works
to bless us in ways that we don’t expect.
That doesn’t mean everything that
happens is what we would consider good.
Joseph had been the reason that Egypt had been saved from the famine.
Through his plan and administration, Pharaoh’s wealth soared. But we learn in our text: “Now there arose a new king over
Egypt, who did not know Joseph.”
Time passed
and the actions of Joseph were forgotten.
When the new Pharaoh looked around, he now saw in Israel a threat and a
resource. He said, “Behold, the people
of Israel are too many and too mighty for us. Come, let us deal shrewdly with
them, lest they multiply, and, if war breaks out, they join our enemies and
fight against us and escape from the land.”
Though we
can’t be certain, the circumstances of the time may have shaped his view of the
Israelites. The eastern Mediterranean
was ravaged by a group who are described in the ancient sources as the “Sea
People.” They threatened Egypt too. As Pharaoh faced this threat from a foreign
people, it may have caused him to look inside his own land and see the
Israelites as a potential threat.
The
Israelites may have been a threat.
However, they were also an opportunity. The Egyptians began
using the Israelites as forced labor.
Moses tells us, “Therefore
they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with heavy burdens. They built
for Pharaoh store cities, Pithom and Raamses.”
Yet
something unexpected happened yet again. The more the Egyptians oppressed the
Israelites, the more the more they multiplied. The result was that the
Egyptians were in dread of the people of Israel. So the Egyptians increased the
pressure. We hear: “So they ruthlessly
made the people of Israel work as slaves and made their lives bitter with hard
service, in mortar and brick, and in all kinds of work in the field. In all
their work they ruthlessly made them work as slaves.”
The
Egyptians enslaved the Israelites. And then they took steps to control the
numbers of men who might threaten them.
We learn in our text that orders were given to the Israelite midwives
that male babies were to be killed. When they didn’t comply, Pharaoh commanded his
own people: “Every son that is born to
the Hebrews you shall cast into the Nile, but you shall let every daughter
live.” Male babies were to be drowned in
the Nile River. They would not be
allowed to grow up as a potential threat to Egypt.
Slavery and death – that’s what we
find in our text tonight. In the exodus,
Yahweh will rescue Israel from these.
The Old Testament refers to this using the word “redeem.” Originally the word “redeem” came from the
world of commerce. It meant “to buy a
person out of slavery.” Eventually it
took on a more general meaning: to free from slavery.
That is what Yahweh does in the
exodus. He redeems Israel – he frees her
from slavery and death. In time, the New
Testament would take up the word “redeem” and apply it to what God has done for
us in Jesus Christ. St. Paul wrote, “But
when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born
under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive
adoption as sons.” The New Testament teaches us that in Israel’s experience we
see a picture of what God has done for us.
Slavery and
death – that’s what describes life. It
has been that way since the event that we heard about in the Old Testament
lesson on Sunday. Adam and Eve rejected
God’s ordering of the world. Being the
crown of God’s creation wasn’t enough.
Being the only creature made in the image of God wasn’t enough. Instead, they wanted to be like God. They
rejected the one limitation God had placed upon them as creatures. Adam and Eve
were to show that they feared, loved and trusted in God above everything by not
eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
Yet instead
they tried to be God. They ate. They
sinned. And they learned that the wages of sin is death. God told Adam, “By the sweat of your face you
shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken;
for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”
“Remember
that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” That’s what we heard last
Wednesday. As descendants of Adam and
Eve, we are conceived and born as slaves to sin. And that sin always leads to one outcome:
death.
Because
this is so, God acted in his Son Jesus Christ to redeem us – to free us from
this slavery. During Lent we are
preparing to remember the suffering, death and resurrection of Jesus. We will follow him to the cross because by
his death and resurrection he has redeemed us from sin and death – he has freed
us.
We are
freed because on account of Christ God no longer charges us with our sin. Instead, we are innocent in his eyes. We are
freed because death can no longer hold us.
Instead, in Christ we already have eternal life. And in the resurrection of Jesus, our
resurrection has already started. Sin
and death have not ceased – we still fall into sin, and until Christ returns we
will die. But through repentance and
faith in Jesus we have forgiveness and the certainty of resurrection on the
Last Day.
We know
that this is true for us because we have received Holy Baptism. St. Paul told the Romans, “Do you not know
that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his
death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that,
just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too
might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death
like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” You have been redeemed. You have been freed from the slavery of
sin. You have been freed from the
slavery of death. Through water and the
word God has given you the redemption earned by Jesus on Good Friday and
Easter.
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