Romans 8:28 “We know that God works for the good of those that love Him, are called His people and live according to His purpose for them.”
We have to make sure we’re on the same page regarding Romans 8:28 before we get to any ancient history today because we need to look beyond the story to the condition of the heart in these ancient lives.
People are notorious for placing periods in the wrong place of a sentence.
• “We know that God works for the good.” Just watch the evening news and you’ll see that this is just plain bad theology. Not all things are good.
• “We know that God works for the good of those that love Him.” This gives us a slightly more accurate picture, but it is, at best, incomplete.
• God works for the good of people that meet all three criteria:
o They love Him.
o They are called (identified or labeled) His people
o They live according to His purpose for them.—this is the one that disqualifies too many. We love the Lord and we are labeled as His people, but we are not living according to His purposes for us.
Every person we’ve studied so far was recorded in Genesis. Today we begin in Exodus with Moses. Actually, we’re going to cover all of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy—those books are entirely about Moses. That certainly will make it difficult to fit the entire life into one story. I mean it took Charlton Heston 3 hours and 45 minutes and he didn’t even cover everything!
Well, here it goes…
and we should qualify that The Ten Commandments is much loved, but not completely accurate according to scripture. Just keep in mind that the images you recall of Charlton Heston & Yul Brenner (with that funky ponytail) are not necessarily scriptural.
As the Israelite in Egypt population grew, Pharaoh (which is a title, not a proper name) begins to take steps toward limiting their presence in Egypt. He is afraid the Habiru will join forces with the enemies of Egypt.
So first, Pharaoh places supervisors over all the Israelite workers. The Israelites as “slaves” is more comparable to the idea of a mortgage or loan. In, basically, a cash-less society, labor was a way to repay debt. “I’ll gladly work for you on Tuesday for a hamburger today.”
It wasn’t that the Israelites were unwelcomed in Egypt, but they spoke a different language and had different customs. They were good workers, but you wouldn’t want you daughter to date one.
Hence, the supervision. Pharaoh had people that were his eyes and ears among the Israelites. Watching and listening to find out if there was any indication that they would revolt.
But, the harder Pharaoh pushed them, the more blessed they were. For even in slavery, God was working good for those that loved Him, that bore His name and lived according to His purpose for them. The bounty of the Israelites just proves the old saying, “the rich get richer and the poor get children.”
So Pharaoh has to move to more drastic measures of crowd control, and he orders all boy babies born to Israelites are be killed immediately.
However, the Egyptian midwives feared God and they allowed all the children to live. When Pharaoh asked them about this, they answered, “These Hebrew women are just so healthy and sturdy that the babies come out so fast we don’t arrive in time!”
Pharaoh changes his tactics again. He orders all boy babies to be thrown into the Nile River.
Well, along comes one particular baby boy. The baby is recognized to be no ordinary child. The bible says he was “fair in the sight of God”. His mother hid him from the judgment of Pharaoh for 3 months, but eventually she succumbed to the ruling and threw the baby in the Nile River. Well, technically, she placed him in a watertight basket and gently placed him to float along the riverbank in the softness of the plants growing there. And, she sent the baby’s older sister to follow the basket and see what happened.
Both his father and mother are mentioned to be descendants of Levi. It’s important to note that because Levi’s descendants become the line of priests, and the fellow we eventually come to know as this baby’s brother will be the first “official” priest of the Israelites.
So, here’s a relevant truth: no matter your background, the things in your past—the good, the bad or the ugly—God wants to use it for His purposes.
• Who better to help break the chains of addictions than those who have won the battle?
• Who better to help victims of divorce than those He has delivered from it?
• Who better to model the positive effects of sexual purity than those who have lived it?
God did not make you go through it, but He delivered you from it for a purpose.
Here’s some Egyptian irony. The baby’s basket is discovered in the river by none other than Pharaoh’s own daughter. The baby was crying and she starts to feel all motherly toward him even though she recognizes him as a Hebrew baby.
Now, how would she recognize a Hebrew baby? Hmmm… Oh yeah, the covenant of circumcision.
She claims the baby as her own, and sends a nearby slave girl to find a Hebrew woman to nurse the baby. The slave girl was the sister sent to watch the basket case. She retrieves the baby’s own mother to be the nursemaid.
How convenient is that? God is working for the good. The baby is safe from Pharaoh’s ruling because he is presumed to be Egyptian, and Pharaoh’s not going to turn on his own daughter.
The boy is named Moses, which is an Egyptian name bearing similarity to a Hebrew word meaning bring out. Talk about a name representing who you are: It’s both Egyptian and Hebrew and foreshadows his purpose in life.
No place does the Bible identify the moment when Moses was aware of his true heritage. But, Scripture indicates the Moses had to choose his future: Hebrew or Egyptian?
An Egyptian future would certainly have looked appealing—luxuries, power, affluence, cushy-ness.
A Hebrew future would be at best, laborious and uncertain.
We must understand that the things that are “good”, according to God’s presence in our lives, are not necessarily “things” at all. Like any responsible parent, God does what is best for His children whether or not it creates comfortable scenarios. Just because we love Him, bear His name and live according to His purpose doesn’t mean life is always easy breezy.
Which future will you choose? Will you choose instant gratification or the eternal reward?
Moses is walking among the Israelites one night and he sees an Egyptian beating a Hebrew. He looks right; he looks left. Observing no witnesses, he kills the Egyptian for the unfair treatment of another human being. He hides the body in the sand.
The next day, he’s walking around again and this time sees two Hebrews beating each other. “Isn’t there enough hardship without you beating your own people?”
“Um, who died and made you King of Egypt? Are you going to kill me like you killed the Egyptian yesterday?”
Moses is busted and busted on a grand scale because word of this gets to Pharaoh himself who tries to kill Moses. So, he high-tails it out into the desert and sits in a local watering hole in Midian.
Seven sisters come to the watering hole to water their father’s flocks. But there were whippersnappers that teased the girls and drove them away. We begin to see a pattern of Moses as a buttinski, because once again he steps in a matter not of his concern and sends the boys packing. He proceeds to draw water for the girls and the flocks.
The girls run home and tell their dad of the events of the day. Jethro, the girls’ father, must have been Italian for after hearing their story, he says, “Where is he? Did you invite him to eat?”
Moses spends about 40 years with the family, marrying one of the daughters and having two children. Somewhere during that time, the Pharaoh that wanted Moses dead, dies.
The new Pharaoh (presumably Moses’ adoptive brother or at least a cousin) has made the oppression even worse and the Israelites cry out to God. The Bible says that God heard their crying and remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and is now ready to do something about it.
Here’s a relevant truth: God hears us when we call to Him. There’s a lot of conjecture about how God answers our prayers, but really, that’s not the important part of the equation.
We need to cry out to God. Period.
No, we need to cry out to God—exclamation point! Prayer is a significant part of his purpose for us. If you’re prayer life is lacking, you’ve no reason to expect good things for you are not living according to his purpose.
Moses is tending the flocks of his father-in-law one day, he sees an unusual sight—a bush is in flames, but not being consumed. In my NIV study Bible, the title heading even says “Moses and the burning bush”, but then text says, “Moses saw that the bush was on fire, but it did not burn up.”
Then, on top of this hot mess, there is a voice…“Moses…”
These are the moments in the lives of these characters of which I am most jealous: I want God to talk to me in an audible voice. Well, maybe He is, but I’m not listening very good.
“Take your shoes off Moses, because my presence in this place has made it holy. I’m not just any god or an apparition, but I am the God of your true fathers: Abraham, Isaac & Jacob.”
Moses is overwhelmed and he covered his face because he was afraid to see the face of God.
God goes on to say He has heard the cries of His people in Egypt and is ready to deliver on His promise. “Moses, I created you for a purpose—and that purpose is to be the leader of the Israelites. You are the one designed to lead them out of Egypt to the Promised Land.”
Here’s a relevant truth, though I hope you’ve noticed it already: You were created for a purpose. God has especially crafted you—your personality, your past, your passions, your training and special skills, everything that sums up YOU—crafted for His purpose.
The dialogue between Moses and God continues with Moses making excuses—he doesn’t want to own up to his purpose—and then God shoots down every one.
Moses tries to get out of it and God delivers miracles of confirmation such as turning Moses walking stick into a snake and then back to a stick again and giving Moses a horrific skin disease and then healing it.
Moses says he can’t talk so good and God says, “You won’t have to. For, by the way, you have a brother named Aaron who is on his way to meet you. He’s eloquent and will speak on your behalf.”
So Moses leaves his wife and children with his father-in-law so he can meet his brother for the first time ever. Moses tells Aaron everything God has said, shown and confirmed regarding this whole ordeal. Aaron takes Moses to meet the Israelite leaders in Egypt and they recount the whole thing again. Not just one, but three levels of confirmation.
That’s a relevant truth: God will confirm His purpose for you. Some people have an idea and they run without confirmation. Some people keep hearing the same truths from saints and sinners alike, but hesitate. Confirmation leads to action.
Moses and Aaron go to Pharaoh for what is the first of several visits. “Let my people go!”
Pharaoh asks, “Who is your God that I should listen to him?” Keep in mind that Egyptian beliefs held that Pharaoh was divine—a king and a god. To hear this from Moses and Aaron was to deny Pharaoh as both.
And as a way to flex his powers, Pharaoh orders that the slaves maintain their quota of daily work, but they must also begin to acquire their own supplies for the work. This pill is not easily swallowed by the Israelites, nor by Moses—all of them complain to God.
But God explains to Moses that this whole experience will be a display of the power of God Almighty, a demonstration of how God work good in their lives! And Moses resumes his excuses.
Exodus 7-11 tells about the events that are most spectacular in our human vision. Not since Creation have we seen miracles of this magnitude. And though we’ve seen miracles for other purposes, this is the first time in Scripture that we see God showing off, that is, demonstrating His power.
First, Aaron’s walking stick (an actual dead branch and not the bug) becomes a snake!
Next, the entire Nile River was turned from water to blood. The Scripture indicates that every drop of water drawn from the river was also turned to blood, meaning that water in jars or pools or whatever, also turned to blood.
And just for perspective, the Nile is the longest river in the world. It’s basin covers nearly 10% of the continent of Africa. It flows at a rate of 58,752,000,000 gallons per day. Hoxworth couldn’t handle it.
The next plague on Egypt was frogs. Scripture says that the Nile River (remember its immensity) will “burst at its seams with frogs”. That’s a lot of ribbit!
That is followed by a plague of gnats. Noseeums—those little bugs that you hear and feel, but can’t see and irritate you to the point of insanity. Imagine enough of them to be categorized as a “plague”.
Then comes flies.
Then all of the Egyptian livestock dies—not the Israelite’s livestock, just the Egyptian livestock.
Then there are boils on all the Egyptian men and the remaining animals. Boils, for those who don’t know, are a staph infection that causes a knot to form in the skin. They are very painful, oozing sores, about an inch in size. The Egyptians had them head to toe.
Next is a hailstorm. Many of us have experienced the damage caused by hail. And we need to keep in mind that all of these plagues were nation-wide. The entire nation of Egypt, which was significantly larger than the modern day country of Egypt, was affected by these curses—nearly half a million square miles of curse.
You think Cincinnati Cicadas are bad? Try a plague of Egyptian locust. They came after the hail.
Then darkness came over the land. And this is not just a simple power outage—the sun actually stopped shining, but only in the places where the Egyptians lived. The Israelites in the same area had plenty of sunlight. How is that possible? Oh…it’s a miracle.
Think about Pharaoh’s perspective. If he endures these plagues, he and his entire nation suffer (though the Israelites are conspicuously not being plagued). If he relents, then he loses credibility with his people, for he is supposed to be a king and a deity—an entire government and belief system crumbled. He has no way to win and God has no way to lose.
Through all of these plagues, Pharaoh has been back and forth.
• “Go ahead and leave.”
• “No, I changed my mind.”
• “Take your people and go.”
• “Just kidding, you have to stay.”
But after the final plague when Regis asked if it was his final answer, Pharaoh was sure.
God tells Moses that He is going to kill every first born and it doesn’t matter if it is Egyptian or Israelite—the first child born to any household will die unless they know the secret handshake.
Well, actually the Israelites were to smear lamb’s blood on the frames of their front doors so that while God is out-and-about smiting said first-borns, He’ll leave those houses alone and will pass over them.
This provides a profound confirmation of the truth of Romans 8:28. It’s not enough to love the Lord or have His name on you—you have to live according to His purpose. That means obedience. Even Israelite homes that did not have the blood of the lamb on their doorframes lost their firstborn. It’s not enough to be one of God’s children—we must be obedient children!
I can’t let this point go without at least a brief mention of Passover. For thousands of years, the Jews have celebrated Passover—a time to remember this event: what God did in Egypt, specifically, exemption from death
As Christians, we celebrate weekly our own type of Passover—a remembrance of what Christ did. When the blood of Jesus, the Passover Lamb , is applied to our lives, we are also exempt from death—spiritual death.
Passover is now not just a historical event, it is a way of life that confirms the truth of Romans 8:28.
And of course, God was true to His word—all the first-born died (except those marked by the blood of the lamb). And as you can imagine, this affects Pharaoh in a deeply personal way with the death of his own son, so he sends a message to Moses to take the Israelites and leave.
The Israelites packed and left so quickly that they didn’t have time to put any yeast in their bread.
Yeast-less bread (or unleavened bread) is standard for the observance of Passover. Jesus was observing Passover in the Upper Room with the disciples on the night He was arrested. By extension, we know that He served yeast-less bread on the night He established communion. So that’s what we use most of the time.
It’s not a command for Christians to commune with unleavened bread, but it is supposed to point us back to these events in history—ancient history, relevant truth. Perhaps even today as you take a piece of cracker when the tray is passed to you, you’ll be more aware of this great history—the history of God working His good for those that love Him, bear His name and live according to His purpose for them.
Estimates of the population are about 600,000 men. When you add women and children the estimates jump to as high as 5 million—just picture metropolitan Cincinnati and Suburbs picking up and walking out one day.
Since there were no maps to the Promised Land, God places a pillar of cloud in the sky during the day and a pillar of fire in the sky at night to lead the way.
Once they’re gone, there are some significant gaps in the society and economy of Egypt, so Pharaoh changes his mind again and tries to recall the Israelites to Egypt.
Perhaps you’ve seen a map of the Red Sea, but the top of it forms two fingers. Pharaoh is a sound military leader, he traps the Israelites against the fingers of the Red Sea. He thinks he’s got them between a rock and hard place, or at least a wet place.
But we know that God works His best for those that love Him, that bear His name and are living according to His purpose. God provides a way of escape, even when it looks impossible—that’s a relevant truth. You’ve heard of split-pea soup? Well, here’s the split sea poop: God split the sea in half and the Israelites walked across on dry ground. Pharaoh and his troops tried to follow, but his plans were a wash out.
Now you would think that after witnessing all of these phenomenal, catastrophic and colossal demonstrations of the power of Almighty God that Moses and the Israelites would be changed forever. However, we see in them the same patterns we see in ourselves. Instead of staying on the mountaintops, we wander back to the valleys. Or as the Proverbs and Peter both say, “a dog returns to its vomit.”
The Israelites begin to complain and long for “the good old days of slavery in Egypt”. So, more miracles. God makes a rock leak water. He provides quail for eating. He gives manna. Manna and quail were to be collected every day with just enough for that day (extra to be set aside for the weekly day of rest). If anyone took extra, it was rotten the next day and had to be thrown out. We’re not exactly sure what manna is…but, Jesus himself called it bread, so I’ll call it bread. In fact, Jesus makes a passing reference to manna in the Lord’s prayer: give us this day our…daily bread.
In Numbers chapter 20 we see what happens when you don’t live according to God’s purposes. The Israelites are bemoaning a lack of water, so Moses goes before the Lord on their behalf. God tells him to provide enough water for all the people and livestock—however, God goes on to say that because Moses did not honor God as holy in the sight of the Israelites, he would not enter the Promised Land.
I’ll say it again: we must live according to His purpose for us. We have grace for when we screw up, but there is no grace for those that don’t even try.
You might remember that back before all the hubbub in Egypt, Moses had left his wife and two boys with her father because of the uncertainty of the situation with Pharaoh. Finally, they are reunited along with Moses’ father-in-law, Jethro.
Now, the people had been coming to Moses with their disputes so that he could pass along God’s will to them. But Jethro sees the wear on Moses that this is causing. Jethro gives great advice—“You can’t do it all by yourself. You need help!”
That’s some relevant truth and good advice for us as well.
Jethro advises Moses to set up a judicial system that lets other trusted leaders handle the simpler cases. If they can’t handle the case, only then is it brought to Moses. Does this sound familiar? It’s the model upon which our own American legal system is based. And then to help keep God’s laws straight, Moses climbs Mt. Sinai where God gives His word: the 10 suggestions, the 10 “if you feel like it”s—no, wait, they are in fact commandments. And they are…set in stone. And to make sure you know what they are, let me go through them quickly.
1. There is only one God and He ain’t you.
2. Don’t worship any other thing. When in doubt, refer to commandment #1
3. Don’t say God’s name unless you’re talking to Him.
4. A weekly day of rest is a command, not just a good idea.
5. Honor your father and mother
6. The Word of God says there is a time to kill, but never a time to murder
7. Never have sex with someone besides your spouse
8. If it ain’t yours, don’t take it.
9. don’t be a deceiver, either by lying or implying or omitting or any means…
10. don’t try to keep up with the Joneses.
Once he comes down from the mountain, Moses sets down other laws for the people to live by. There are regulations on building the Tabernacle—a tent that would be the worship place for the Israelites—and rules for building all the things that go in it, like the Ark of the Covenant (you know…that thing that Indiana Jones rescued from the Nazis). There are policies on what the priests should wear. All of these rules, regulations and policies are extremely explicit and detailed. The bulk of Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy are the details of this system—a system we’ve come to know as Mosaic law.
And after all these laws, the Israelites forgot commandment #1—there is only one God. We see that they have collected jewelry and formed it into a statue that looks like yellow veal, a golden calf. Moses freaks out and burns the darn thing. Aaron says to him, “Don’t be angry, you know how prone these people are to evil”. Well, aren’t we all?
Deuteronomy 34 has Moses climbing to the top of Mt. Nebo where to him, God points out all the places that are the promised land of the Israelites. “This is the land I promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. But as I said, you will not enter it.”
Moses died on that mountain and God himself buried him. The text specifically says that’s why to this day no one knows where his grave is.
Deuteronomy 34:10-12 “Since then, no prophet has risen in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face, who did all those miraculous signs and wonders the Lord sent him to do in Egypt—to Pharaoh and to all his officials and to his whole land. For no one has ever shown the mighty power or performed the awesome deeds that Moses did in the sight of all Israel.”
No one, that is, until Jesus.
Romans 8:28 “We know (because we’ve seen it in the life of Moses) that God works for the good of those that love Him, are called His people and live according to His purpose for them.”