Law – Exodus 1-4

The start of a new quarter and the start of a new book – Exodus.

Bible Passage:  Exodus 1-4

Many of the stories of Exodus are familiar to us – but how much of the stories are shaped by our actual reading of the recordings in the Bible or by the movies or cartoons that we watch?  Though at times the book of Exodus may seem heavy going – take your time to read it and you may realize that many of your ideas of what actually happened in Exodus is different from what we see in the movies!

Exodus 1 starts with looking back some 400 years to Genesis when Jacob relocated his family to Egypt because of the famine.  Joseph, his 2nd youngest son was now a very important man in Egypt and this was actually part of the master plan of God.

We see that Israel’s population grew quickly and this worried the Egyptians so much so that they conscripted the minority Hebrews to be workers and subsequently slaves to them.

They cried for deliverance and God raised Moses – through a series of God planned events and he was raised in the palace and yet, brought up by his own mother.  But the mishandling of a dispute between the Israelites and Egyptians led to his life as a fugitive in the wilderness where he married and had children.

But God had a plan for Moses.  And God Himself called Moses to take His people out of Egypt.  Read the passage to see what was Moses’ real response.

There are so many incidents worth for us to dwell and ponder today but I was particularly impressed by the Hewbrew mid-wives (Ex 1:15-21).

What do you think?   Was it right for God’s people to participate in acts of civil disobedience?

It is interesting to note that in Exodus, the story of deliverance from oppression begins with a case of political resistance and civil disobedience by 2 midwives who refused to obey the Pharoah.  Because his command was the law of the land, they were openly breaking the law.

This seems to contradict the teachings of the Bible (see Rom 13:1-2).

Pharoah wanted to do this because he was afraid of the Hebrews.  He was fearful that they will grow too much in numbers and the Egyptians will suffer.

But the midwives feared God.  This healthy fear of God enabled them to risk Pharoah’s wrath to do what was right.

We always talk about God being one of love, grace and mercy.  But let us not forget that God is to be feared as well.

Sometimes we behave in a manner that only shows our fear for our bosses but having no fear for our Lord.

The midwives were different.  They knew clearly who their real Lord is.

What about us?