Exodus 1;1 22 build on the rock 4 benson vail

Exodus 1:1-22 [Build on the Rock Summer Series 4] Pastor Ron Koehler

Grace-Benson/Vail

June 24, 2018

My friends in Christ, Wouldn’t it be great if you could be happy all the time…if you could avoid all pain and sadness and grief and regret? Unfortunately life isn’t happy all the time and difficult and painful things are unavoidable in this life. We all experience things that bring bitterness to our lives.

Everyone is different, but all of us have had people in our lives who have made things unpleasant or painful for us—a nasty neighbor, a slave-driver of a boss, a teacher who doesn’t seem to like us, a family member who doesn’t seem to know what proper love and respect are. Maybe it is our past sin that haunts us or the loss of someone special. Maybe it just seems like nothing ever goes right for us. Some of us have experienced a great deal of bitterness in life. Some of us are enduring things right now that give life a nasty taste. Why do these things happen? Why would God allow people and circumstances like this into our lives? What can we do about life’s bitterness?

We can find some help, I think, as we examine our Bible Building Project for this morning: the store cities of Pithom and Rameses. We might even call these…

Buildings of Bitterness 1. Ought to Turn Attention to God (11 2. Are Overcome by a Rescuing Savior (12, 17, 20) Before we get to all that went on in those places, we need to understand what put God’s people, the Israelites, into the position of building those Egyptian cities.

In some ways, the Bible paints a flattering picture of Egypt. They were the big, powerful, wellrun country that helped others out. Perhaps you recall how Joseph rose to the position of second only to the Pharaoh of Egypt—though that was unknown to his family—and how his brothers ended up coming to Egypt seeking food during a time of scarcity. Our lesson at first mentions Jacob’s extended family who came to live there in Egypt. And how eventually, that whole generation died, including Joseph. And as important a man as Joseph was, he was eventually forgotten after a new king, a new pharaoh, came to rule the nation. It may be that as much as a couple hundred years had passed by this time also. Historians believe this might have been the beginning of a new dynasty in Egypt and perhaps Joseph’s important contributions to the nation were simply not remembered by then.

But over the many years that God’s people lived in Egypt, the LORD greatly blessed them— God was making good on his promise to Abraham, to make his people into a great nation! It says that the land of Egypt was filled with Israelites. And though I said the Bible shares good things about Egypt, it also records some not-so-pleasant history. This Pharaoh was fearful of the rapidly increasing number of these foreigners in his land. He feared them joining forces with an invading army to attack Egypt. But he also did not want to see them leave, for reasons we’ll discuss in a moment.

God had continued to bless his people as they lived in this foreign land. They were able to provide for their families and the Hebrew people experienced unusual growth in the size of their families. And though the number of their people was increasing, I’m sure they wondered when they would all be living in their own land—the picture they had in their heads when they thought about God’s promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

The reaction of godless people to God’s people will sometimes cause bitterness in the believers’ lives. This is what happened there in Egypt. Pharaoh and the Egyptians—when they realized how great a people the Israelites were becoming—could have turned their attention to the God who was blessing them! How great would it have been for the Pharaoh to learn about the LORD and put his faith in him?! Imagine if the nation of Egypt had turned to God! If you’re tempted to think that that could never have happened, I’ll remind you how later Jonah went to the cruel and godless Assyrians in the capital city of Nineveh and how they turned to the LORD en masse! If Pharaoh considered his life embittered by the growing population of foreigners living in his land, he might have considered that their God might actually be blessing them. He might have asked and learned that the God of the Hebrews had promised long ago that this would happen. He might have turned his attention to the one true God. But Pharaoh had no such interest. So he tried to alleviate his unsettled heart and mind by enslaving the Israelites. His callous heart caused him to make the lives of the Hebrew people bitter, forcing them into slavery. North and east of modern day Cairo and the area where the great pyramids and Sphinx are, is the fertile Nile Delta. The storage, or supply, cities of Pithom and Rameses were built there by God’s people in forced servitude—Buildings of Bitterness.

Yet even as Pharaoh made life miserable for the Hebrew people, he still did not recognize that the LORD is God as, despite his cruel actions, the number of Israelites continued to swell. His next ruthless effort was to have all the Israelite baby boys killed at birth. That would solve two problems—the population growth would stall and going forward, there would be fewer men who might fight against Egypt. But the two midwives who received the orders to kill the Hebrew children (and who were probably in charge of all the midwives), disobeyed the Pharaoh’s orders. As Pharaoh continued to hit roadblocks, he continued to reject the opportunity to turn his attention to the God that was blessing these people.

As they were constructing these Buildings of Bitterness, did the Israelites turn their attention to God? You heard the words used to describe their treatment—“oppressed,” “forced,” “worked ruthlessly,” “harsh labor.” God allowed this to happen and it ought to have turned their attention to their God. This should have resulted in prayers to God—an acknowledgement that all things were in his hands and his control. This should have caused them to seek patience and understanding, to ask for release from life’s bitterness, to recognize that they had the promise of an eternity of peace and safety and joy in the presence of their God.

Their bitter lives should have resulted in a continued reliance on the LORD as they dealt with people who hated them and abused them and made their lives miserable. And this did happen! How do we know? This account doesn’t tell us how they handled it. But we do know.

We know that they held onto faith in the LORD and his promises because years later, under the leadership of Moses, they still trusted the LORD. They listened to God’s commands and they sacrificed the lambs and painted the blood on the doorposts of their homes so that the angel of death would pass over them. They followed the Lord’s instructions to eat the lamb as part of a special meal—made with bitter herbs so that every year after this, they would recall the bitterness of those years in Egypt. They trusted the LORD’s direction as they were led out of Egypt and through the Red Sea to freedom. Their Buildings of Bitterness were Overcome by a Rescuing Savior!

Forever in their memories were the hardships they and their people had endured—those Buildings of Bitterness, the cities of Pithom and Rameses, the forced and cruel labor, the threats to their children and, no doubt, many lives lost along the way. It would have been impossible for them to shake loose those bitter memories—and God didn’t want them too! He wanted them to remember the difficulties and to remember how he blessed them in spite of those things even while they endured them. He also wanted them to remember how he ultimately delivered them from that bitterness as he fulfilled his promise of making them a great nation and deposited them in their own land—a place where they could worship him with their whole lives and formally in his Temple until the time came when they began their eternal worship of God and enjoyed the safety and peace and joy of heaven.

It is impossible for you and me to truly appreciate the exact struggle of the people whose lives were full of bitterness because of slavery and mistreatment at the hands of the Egyptians. But we do have our share of things that suck the joy out of life and cause physical pain and emotional distress. We too can wonder at times if God is really there…if any of his promises are really going to be carried out. Has God forgotten us and the bitterness we live with—in particular when others create misery in our lives? What do we do when we feel like the world is against us and the pressure is coming from everywhere? When God is quiet and suffering continues, what do we do? What can we do about the Buildings of Bitterness in our lives?

The bitter things in life ought to turn our attention to God. So one of the things we might do is think back to this time in the history of God’s people when they experienced misery and suffering. We might notice that God was still blessing them, even when there were admitted difficulties and trauma in their lives. They were blessed in ways that caused their population to grow—there must have been health and a certain strength to carry on. There were faithful people around them like those midwives who were faithful to God and ended up saving countless lives. Are there blessings we are missing when we are focused only on negative things we’re experiencing? Most certainly there are.

We can also look at the experience of God’s people in Egypt and see that life’s bitterness is overcome by a rescuing Savior. Despite the way things looked for a long time, God never abandoned his people. God allowed some suffering in their lives in order to urge their reliance on him and to teach them about his power to save. Think of it this way—when you witness how awful their suffering was, you can appreciate how tremendous God’s rescue was! Imagine what it was like for those who eventually were led out of Egypt and witnessed the power of God in plagues around them, in the parting of the Red Sea, the destruction of Pharaoh’s army!

Deep suffering and amazing rescue!

When God allows hardship into our lives, he promises to work through those things for our spiritual good. We ought to spend time in prayer and consider what God might be using these things for. Perhaps we can see how God is still working after all. And when we can’t, we can at least trust his promises of love and salvation. God does promise to rescue us from our misery.

There may be release from some of those difficulties as we go through life, but even if we endure some difficulties until the day of our death, that time will come—and then we will be finally and fully rescued. The fact is, you and I—like the Israelites—also have a “promised land.” God has promised that when we die or when this world comes to an end, we will escape life in this world, which is a life with bitterness built in. Then we will be free from the things that cause bitterness.

We have those sure promises because of Jesus. And this is a most important thing to remember as we think about our suffering. We would not choose misery and abuse and discomfort, but our Savior did. He purposely entered this world full of sinful people opposed to him. He knew what he was getting into. He knew he would suffer ridicule from others. He knew his words and actions would be taken the wrong way. He knew he would be misunderstood and slandered. He knew he would be treated unfairly and nailed to a cross, a cruel instrument of torture that always led to death. He knew he would be forsaken by God, his Father. He knew all of that but he chose to drink that bitter cup of suffering to bring forgiveness to sinners and to open heaven to us.

No matter what we go through in this life, you and I will not experience being forsaken by God—the worst thing that can happen to a person. Though everything else in our lives can fall to pieces, THAT will not happen. It won’t happen here and it won’t happen eternally because the bitterness of our own sin and the bitterness of our lives lived in a sinful world have been overcome by our rescuing Savior. The love of Jesus for sinners like us is the greatest thing we will ever know…and it is far more important and impactful that anything we suffer here.

Reliance on Jesus and his promises of forgiveness, care, and salvation is the foundation our faith is built on and is what enables us to get by even when faced with life’s bitterness. Amen.

Now the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.