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"Salvation by Water" - Sermon by Caleb CampbellA note for those new to studying the BibleAt DSBC, we work to equip people to discern their own convictions. The teaching below is an exploration of a portion of the Bible in which the pastor gives insights on the text and invites us to think about what we have heard and to draw our own conclusions.During the live teaching, the speaker will usually place portions of the text on a screen, read it and then ask us to notice interesting things. The scripture text below is shown in quotes and bold type with italics.Today we are continuing in a study in the Book of Exodus. We're going to be in Exodus Chapter 2, and here's the question that I want to ask you. Actually, what I want is that you to think about it. Have you ever thought about or asked this question: What is God up to? What is God up to? You're seeing things happen in the world. You're seeing things happen in your own life. And you're saying to yourself, “OK, I don't quite understand what's going on here. Some of this stuff is painful, some of it's scary. Some of it just seems quite strange, and I think maybe God is working, but I have no idea what God’s up to.” Have you guys ever been there?So here's the deal. In your Bible this theme shows up all over the place, and I want to invite you in today to explore this question together. What's God up to? What's God up to in this confusing circumstance, in this strange situation, maybe even in this painful season. What is God up to?We're going to be in Exodus Chapter 2. I'm going to catch you guys up. If you missed last week, I'd encourage you to listen to last week’s sermon. It's the best one I've done all year on Exodus chapter one. So go ahead and listen to that. But I want to just get you caught up. OK, so Exodus is the second book of the Bible. And by the way, if you have a Bible and encourage you to turn there, Exodus Chapter 2. If you're joining us online and you don't have a print Bible, no problem. Just go to bible.com. We're using the Christian Standard version of the Bible today. If y'all are joining us in person, I believe you got a printout with it, so you can make marks and notations. If you don't own a Bible, we'd love to get you one, and those are available in the tables in the back. Please take one of those as our gift to you. I want to encourage you to follow along because the Exodus story, chapters one and two are intricately interwoven, not only with each other, but also with the first book of the Bible, which is Genesis.Genesis starts with God creating humanity. The whole goal was for God to dwell in peace, blessing and harmony with humans -- and for humans to multiply, to go out and fill the earth and to make the rest of the earth like the Garden of Eden, to use the raw elements that God had created. But the big idea was that God would dwell with his people, and then people -- you're never going to guess -- people messed it up. People gave God the finger, turned their back on God and basically said, “I want to be God, not you.’ Of course, this creates a rift in the relationship, and so now you've got humans expelled from the garden, severed from the direct presence, blessing and peace of God.And so the question is, will we ever get back to Eden? Will we ever get back to union with God? Will we ever get back to standing in the direct presence of God, even though we have turned our backs on God? We've missed the mark. We've gone our own way, we've done evil. Even though we've done that, is there any possible way to get back to that Eden, being in the presence of God? Luckily for us, the Bible does not end in Genesis Chapter 3, but continues. It's going to answer that question. In the middle part of Genesis, you find that God is going to do a redemptive work through a person named Abraham. God goes to Abraham and says, I'm picking you. Leave your land. Leave your people. I'm going to make you, Abraham, into a great people, into a great nation. You're going to fill the earth, and through you all the nations of the earth, all the peoples, all the world will be blessed.So you're thinking, “Cool God is going to do a work through this guy named Abraham.” But here's the rub. God promised Abraham that he would make him into a great people or nation. And what do you need to do? And I hope you don't mind. I'm not trying to be crass or anything, but you need to start procreating. Yeah, right. Hallelujah, right. Thanks be to God for his many good gifts, right?The thing is, though, that throughout Genesis there's this tension, where the promised line of Abraham, they keep bumping up against these hindrances that God ends up overcoming. It looks like God's not at work. You know there are people who cannot conceive children. There's barrenness. There are threats. There are promised ones being put under threat, and this whole thread through Genesis is this promised line coming under threat. And you, as the reader, are wondering, what is God up to? What's he doing? Because it doesn't seem like he's working. But then it seems like he's working.So Abraham has Isaac. Isaac has Jacob. And Jacob has multiple children. In Jacob's day, they leave the land because there's a famine. Oh, right. In Genesis, we're wanting them to become a great nation, but there's a famine. Oh, and we're wondering what’s God up to. There's this great famine, but God doesn't seem like he's working. But then it turns out he's working through one of Jacob's kids, Joseph. He’s actually been sold into slavery into Egypt, but because of God working behind the scenes, he actually elevates Joseph. Joseph figures out this plan, where during the seven years of abundance, he harvests all this food and then he keeps it for the seven years of famine. And so Jacob's family, the promised line, we're wondering what's going to happen in them. Are they going to die? They actually go into Egypt, where Joseph is. Lo and behold, God’s at work, and God provides for them. And so, they settle in Egypt. And then this is the end of Genesis.We're wondering about this small group of about 70 people, this little clan. What's going to happen to them? Are they going to become a great nation? Then you go to Exodus chapter one, which we talked about last week. In Exodus chapter one, you see that this small clan of people has been fruitful. They’ve multiplied, and now they're swarming all over Egypt. Many years later, a new king comes to power, and he knows nothing about how Joseph saved the day years before. He's threatened by this promised nation. He's afraid that they're going to take up arms and conquer him. What he does is an act of xenophobic ethnocentrism, like subjection. He puts all the Hebrews into slavery. Then that doesn't work. They continue to be fruitful and multiply more. And you're thinking, oh no, if Pharaoh gets his way, this promised line is not going to work.Then Pharaoh, so scared of losing his power, says, “I want you to kill all the boys.” Have you guys heard this before? It's shocking. It's horrifying, right? In chapter one, he tells these two midwives, “Hey, when you're delivering babies, check and see if it's a boy. If it's a boy, kill it.” And these two midwives actually deceive Pharaoh at peril to their own lives. They deceive pharaoh. They make up a lie, a story. And then Pharaoh -- the very last act of Pharaoh in that chapter --tells everyone in Egypt, “If you see a Hebrew boy, throw it in the Nile.”You guys got me? And we're wondering about this promised line of Abraham. We're on the edge of our seats, right? What's going to happen? Great question. Are you guys excited? Yeah, I am. I'm really interested to see what happens. OK, so what's the question? We're asking what's God up. OK, so here we go.“Now a man from the family of Levi married a Levite woman.”Notice that we don't have their name, their proper names, but we have their tribe. They’re descendants of Levi. Back in Genesis, Levi was one of two brothers. This is a horrible story, and I'm actually not going to go into details. Something really bad happens to their sister, and to avenge their sister’s honor they go and kill a whole village of people. This is not in your children’s Bible. In fact, do you guys want to know why children’s Bibles are only this big? Because most of the Bible stuff is like horrifying, right? Could you imagine reading that to your children at bedtime? Oh, and, by the way, can I give you guys a pro tip? Don't do the Noah's Ark story. Yeah, there's a little cute giraffe, there's a little there's a little bunny rabbit. But why are all the people floating out in the water? They're engorged corpses because of God’s great justice. Would tell your kid that before bed? Don’t do that.OK, so now what do we know about Levi is that he was one who would not, who could not, suffer an injustice done. He was a person who would rise to action. He would not suffer an injustice. That's one of the things we know about Levi. So Levi got married, and you've got two people from this tribe who are known for not suffering an injustice.“The woman became pregnant and gave birth to a son; when she saw that he was beautiful, she hid him for three months.” (Verse2)Check this, the woman became pregnant, gave birth to son. What's supposed to happen? According to Pharaoh, you throw him in the Nile.OK, when she saw that he was beautiful … I actually don't like that translation, because every mom thinks her kids beautiful, and most of them are wrong. In Hebrew, it actually means good.So we're going to get kind of Bible nerdy today. I hope that's OK with you. If it's not OK, I've got a list of great churches for you to check out. So she gave birth to a son, and when she saw that he was good, she hid him for three months. Why did she hide him? Because what was Pharaoh going to do?“But when she could no longer hide him, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with asphalt and pitch. She placed the child in it and set it among the reeds by the bank of the Nile.” (Verse 3)But when she could no longer hide him, she got a papyrus basket. Not a great translation, and here's why. This word in Hebrew, the only other time it's used, it's translated as ark. It's the same word for what Noah put all the animals and his family in. You see, Noah was saved through the waters. He was saved through the waters. The waters were going to kill everybody, but Noah was saved through the waters in in an arc, OK. And so, this is like a miniature ark. She makes a miniature ark for him and coats it with asphalt and pitch, the same things that got coated on Noah's ark. She placed the child in it in the ark and set it among the reeds … *** TV, time outHow many of you have ever seen the movies about Moses? There's always this scene where -- usually they'll refer to it as the Red Sea -- the Red Sea parts. It's not actually the Red Sea. It's the sea of reeds. So if you skip ahead in Exodus, when Moses leads the people out of Egypt, they're being chased by Pharaoh, who wants to kill them, God does a miracle where he parts the waters of the sea of reeds. Now the people of Israel are saved through the waters. And the waters mean death, right? What are the waters in your Bible? By and large, they mean death. They’re saved by going into the watery abyss of death. Do you guys see it? How's Noah saved? In an arc through the watery abyss. What's going to end up happening to the people that Moses saves? They go through death. They go through the waters to find redemption. Notice that with Moses you get a miniature foreshadowing of what's about to happen. The Bible is so cool. ***OK, check this out. Where did she put the baby? In the Nile. What did Pharaoh say to do with your baby? Did she obey or disobey Pharaoh? This is compassionate subversion. And at this point in time, you now have two midwives who engaged in this conspiracy of compassion. To subvert the king of this world, who is trying to demand an injustice, now you have his mom, the daughter of Levi, who could not suffer an injustice notice. This theme will continue. So, are they obedient or disobedient? OK, so check this out.“Then his sister stood at a distance in order to see what would happen to him.” (Verse 4)OK, so now we've got a sister who stood at a distance in order to see what would happen to him. So where is he? He's in an ark by the Nile, among the reeds. Is this bad parenting? Is this good? Is she hopeful? Is she in despair? We don't actually know Pharaoh's daughter. Who ordered that the babies get thrown in the water? Lo and behold …“Pharoah’s daughter went down to bathe at the Nile while her servant girls walked along the riverbank. She saw the basket among the reeds, sent her slave girl, took it, opened it, and saw him, the child – and there he was a little boy crying. She felt sorry for him and said, ‘This is one of the Hebrew boys.”” (Verses 5-6)A little boy. Notice what he's doing. OK, pay attention to that. You are going to have to remember when we get near the end. You're going to have to remember crying.OK, he was crying, and she felt sorry for him. Again. Compassion. And what did she say? “This is one of the Hebrew boys.” She looks upon the baby and identifies Moses as what? A Hebrew boy. Notice that she gives him an identity of Hebrew boy. I love this. She just says he's one of the Hebrew boys.“Then his sister said to Pharoah’s daughter, ‘Should I go and call a Hebrew woman who is nursing to nurse the boy for you?’” (Verse 7)I wonder if I could find anyone to fit that description. Right? I think I want to make a little bit of a case. I think that we're meant to understand Pharaoh's daughter as being in on the conspiracy of compassion. She must have known what dad ordered. She definitely knows what she's supposed to do with this baby. And now notice what happens. I think that Pharaoh's daughter is wise to what this sister is proposing.“’Go,’ Pharoah’s daughter told her. So the girl went and called the boy’s mother. Then Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, ‘Take this child and nurse him for me, and I will pay your wages’. So the woman took the boy and nursed him.” (Verses 8 -10)OK, so check this out. What Pharaoh wanted to do was kill every boy because these Hebrew people, God’s promised, were, frankly, a threat to his power. And notice that through the humble, compassionate subversion of two midwives, one mother who is in the clan of Levi, one Princess and one sister -- so five women are making Moses’ life possible in this moment through their conspiracy of compassion.Moses is saved and, moreover, don't you see the irony of what's going on here? Who's paying the mom's wages? Where does Pharoah’s daughter get her money from? Do you see the irony here? Pharaoh thinks he's in charge, but notice what God's doing. He's using the faithful, humble subversion -- this conspiracy of compassion. These five women are used to bring about God’s ultimate redemptive plan.It's what God’s up to, right? You'd see a baby in a little ark in the reeds and you're like, “Is this God’s plan? How is this God’s plan? What is God up to?” But do you see how, notice this. Has God entered the scene yet? Have we have we heard from God yet? Nope, he has not been an active player in the narrative thus far. OK, keep that in mind. Oh, there's this song, that goes “Even when I don't se…
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