Exiting Egypt Chapter One Part 3

Exiting Egypt: Chapter One –

A People Who Refused to Die

By Dennis Lee Part 3 of 5

Exodus 1:1-22

The second word that places us in this story is the word Change

Read Ex. 1:8

Who is this king of Egypt? Well, before I answer that, there is something that I found interesting that I needed to investigate. Why call this person King. When Joseph was alive and in Genesis the person who headed up Egypt was called Pharaoh. When Moses was born it was Pharaoh daughter who drew him up out of the Nile, and it was Pharaoh that Moses encountered when he was banished and when he returned. So why this “king.”

What fits the time line and this choice of words is that was a king of the Hyksos people. The Hyksos were foreign invaders who drove the Egyptians south and ruled the land around 1730 BC. That is why he didn’t know about Joseph and his contributions to Egypt. The reason we have no knowledge of his name is because they were a Semite tribe, the same as the Jews, hence the hatred and their fear of the Jews. This would also explain the king’s report’ with the midwives and how he would speak directly to them. Pharaoh considered the Jews inferior and therefore would have never spoken directly to midwives, but would have had his officers do the task. Yet, we cannot get away from verse 7 where it says that Pharaoh gave the command to kill all make babies. But that could have happened after Egypt defeated the Hyksos.

Further, in the Hebrew, “came to power” literally would read, “to rise up against.”

But, now let me give my reply to who this king is – It doesn’t matter, or is not of great importance in this story. It was a real event, and what it represents is a dramatic shift in attitude toward the Jews. It brought dramatic change in the life of the Jews. Once free, not they were slaves.

This brings me to the second lesson of this chapter and that is Change is Inevitable so we need to trust in God’s faithfulness.

The very essence of our faith is not the certainty of things around us, but rather a trust in God no matter what is happening around us. How this has proven true as throughout the centuries there has always arisen leaders who do not know Jesus, and there always will be.

This idea of the consistency of change is seen in the dieing words of an old Rabbi. His students filled his room, house and all the way out into the street. One student asked the Rabbi to give them one last truth. The Rabbi said, “Life is like a river.” This answer past from student to student all the way out into the street, when one of the students in the front yard said, “What does that mean?” Well this question found its way back to the Rabbi who responded, “So, life is not like a river.”

How quickly change occurs in life. The one consistency that we can count on is that change will occur, and that calls upon us to trust the Lord and His covenant, His promises. To trust the Lord who never changes and is our only constant in an un-constant world.

The Lord confirmed this reality in Malachi 3:6 when He said, “I am the Lord, I do not change.”

How often has it been that a new leader takes over a country that doesn’t know the Lord, and we see changes that scare us to death? Or a new boss comes in and our jobs are no longer secure, they don’t know us. They only know the bottom line. The technology of our day is so fluid that our own skill set soon becomes archaic unless we keep up.

Death also brings big changes in our lives. Parents die, which leaves others in charge of children, or the children are of an age that they have to take over these responsibilities. Or then illness strikes and we hear words that change our whole perspective on life, words like cancer or fatal disease, to even those that tell us we have diabetes and our whole way we live life changes.

And so, change brings with it despair, defeat, and devastation. But there is an alternative, and that is Trust.