Exiting Egypt Chapter One Part 4

Exiting Egypt: Chapter One –

A People Who Refused to Die

By Dennis Lee Part 4 of 5

Exodus 1:1-22

The third word that helps put us into the story is Conflict

Read Ex. 1:9-14

Change produces Conflict, and so like change, conflict is also inevitable, and so the third lesson of this chapter is not only is conflict inevitable, but Conflict brings out

A Desire to Survive

When change produces conflict, then everything is out the door. Human kindness is out the door. Justice is out the door. Surviving life is the issue.

Look at what the king said, “Let’s deal shrewdly with them.” Now, in context this is an evil thing, but being shrewd isn’t. Jesus commended the shrewdness of the manager who got caught in stealing from his master, but made arrangements to support himself once he got fired. But here, shrewdness is pure folly when it comes down to man trying to come against the plans and affairs of God and against God’s people.

And so, in his shrewdness or folly, the king decided to put them into slavery to weaken them and not allow them to continue to grow into a real threat. The folly, he didn’t take into account God and His covenant, and so even in such great persecution, the Jewish people continued to grow an multiply.

“The only way to make men glad to remain in community is to make them at home there. The sense of injustice is the strongest disintegrating force. It three is a “dangerous class,” the surest way to make them more dangerous is to treat them harshly. It was a blunder to make “life bitter,” for hearts also were embittered. So the people were ripened for revolt, and Goshen became less attractive.”

(Alexander Maclaren a Baptist preacher in England in the late 1800’s)

The years of ease had multiplied the nation. Now the period of conflict and oppression continued this multiplication along with a desire to risk such an Exodus.

This is as true today as it was back then. Conflict, especially life’s sorrows and burdens give to us a perspective that nothing else can on what is truly important in life. It’s easy to hang in Egypt when Egypt is easy, comfortable and secure. But conflict detaches us from the fairy tale and what we have come to trust in, the world. And God allows such conflict in our lives to wean us off of the world where we will depend wholly upon God. As long as were happy in Egypt, we’ll never yearn for the Promised Land.

{How this was the case with the Jews of the 1900’s and the Zionist movement.}