This time of year brings with it some of the saddest TV commercials. And you know when those sad commercials are coming on, because most commercials have this really upbeat music that is suppose to get you excited for the product. But not the sad commercials, their music is usually somber and with a lot of string instruments to really get at the heart. Then the pictures start. A little girl with dirt on her face, outside a shack, and the streets are muddy. Or the sad looking dogs behind chain link fences. And it crushes you to watch these images, because these children and animals seem to be abandon with no hope.
Recently my wife and I just watched the movie, Instant Family with Mark Wahlberg. The story follows a married couple who take on three foster kids. At first they decide to just take on a teenager, but as they discuss it with the agency, the agents show the couple that she has two younger siblings. The dad gets up and yells out, why would you show us their pictures, their cute, now we have to say yes. Those agents did it, for the same reason those commercials are done the way they are.
People that put them together know what it takes to pull on our hearts, and we tend to feel bad if we don’t resound. I’ve got to the point, where I try to avoid those commercials. As soon as I hear that sad music, I desperately search for the remote, because if I don’t, my heart strings get tugged and I get kind of down. And I’m not saying it’s bad to recognize the hurt of other people, it’s actually really good, but when you start to think of all the people and all animals that are in those situations, it can be overwhelming, because the reality is, we can’t help them all. And when you realize you are powerless to do something, it makes watching those commercials all the more difficult.
But it’s this idea of people feeling abandoned that brings us to our second week in our Ark Series. So if you have your Bibles, we’ll be in the book of Exodus chapter 1, starting verse 8.
As we open to Exodus 1:8, let’s talk about where we’re at in this Christmas series. Last week we began talking about the arks of the Bible. We looked at the Hebrew word for ark, which was tebah (tay-baw). This word means a chest or box. But when we looked at the first use of the word in Scripture, we found that it was used to describe a boat, which is not the first image that pops into my head of a box or chest. And really stretching the definition a bit. We then talked about how this boat, was used by God to carry out both a judgment upon the people, and as a way to save humanity. We talked about how this ark represented God’s regret that humanity used his gift of creation to make evil, and how the ark represented God’s rescue of people so as to not utterly destroy them.
We walked away from the first week with two observations. First, the Bible’s use of what an ark is, is more than it’s common definition. And second, God used the idea of the ark to bring about both his judgment and rescue. Now, let’s move further into the Scriptures, where we’ll see the next use of the word ark. Let’s read together from Exodus chapter 1, starting in verse 8.
8 Then a new king, to whom Joseph meant nothing, came to power in Egypt. 9 “Look,” he said to his people, “the Israelites have become far too numerous for us. 10 Come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous and, if war breaks out, will join our enemies, fight against us and leave the country.”
11 So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh. 12 But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites 13 and worked them ruthlessly. 14 They made their lives bitter with harsh labor in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their harsh labor the Egyptians worked them ruthlessly.
15 The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah, 16 “When you are helping the Hebrew women during childbirth on the delivery stool, if you see that the baby is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live.”
In the opening verses of the book of Exodus, we get a situational update on the state of the Israelite nation. At the end of the last book of Genesis, God had led the Israelites to the nation of Egypt to escape a large famine. God did this by using an Israelite named Jospeh, which brought about prosperity for the Israelite people, and security for Egypt.
But then, sometime after Jospeh died, there was a king change in the land of Egypt. I once heard an Old Testament scholar say that what might have happened, was the king during Joseph's time was an outside conquer who conquered Egypt. This would make sense that he would have no problem allowing a Israelite to become so great in his kingdom. But eventually the Egyptians overthrew that outsider king’s descendants and saw the Israelites as a potential problem. Hence the reason the new king thought the Israelite would join Egypt’s enemies.
So the new king decides to enslave the Israelites, so that they would be too weak to challenge him.
When the hard labor didn’t work, the king tried to curb the Israelite’s population by conducting infanticide. Trying to kill any male offspring. But if we continue to read, the midwives who were conscripted to do this wouldn’t participate in such an action, so the king calls on all of the Egyptian people to help. And it seems the Egyptian people responded by participating in the infanticide. And it’s in the midst of the king’s killing of children that we pick up the story in chapter 2 verse 1.
1 Now a man of the tribe of Levi married a Levite woman, 2 and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months. 3 But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile. 4 His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him.
5 Then Pharaoh’s daughter went down to the Nile to bathe, and her attendants were walking along the riverbank. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her female slave to get it. 6 She opened it and saw the baby. He was crying, and she felt sorry for him. “This is one of the Hebrew babies,” she said.
7 Then his sister asked Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?”
8 “Yes, go,” she answered. So the girl went and got the baby’s mother. 9 Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you.” So the woman took the baby and nursed him. 10 When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh’s daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses, saying, “I drew him out of the water.”
Here is the birth of Moses. Like we said last week when talking about the flood and Noah’s Ark, if you’ve been to Sunday school, or have been in the church for a number of years, you probably know this story. Really, you don’t even need to have gone to church at all, because Hollywood has turned this story into several movies, both live action and animated.
So as we look at this story, we have to come at it with a desire to see it with fresh eyes. Because if we don’t, then we’ll miss the connection of each of these arks.
Let’s go back into the passage, because we’re talking about the arks of the Old Testament, but we might have missed where the ark showed up here. Let’s re-read verse 3.
3 But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile.
Did you catch it? Most English translations describe what the basket Moses was put in looks like. But the Hebrew reads like this, “But when no longer she could hide him then she took for him an ark of bulrushes and pitch and dabbed it with asphalt and put the child in it.”
That word for ark, is the same root word that we saw back in Genesis 6:14 last week. And what’s even more interesting, is the fact that so far in Scripture, it has only been used in two places. The first ark was Noah’s boat, and now the second ark is Moses’ basket.
Neither of these arks really follow the definition of what an ark is, but instead point us to what the importance of what these arks contain. In Noah’s case, the ark held the animals and people, both to be rescued by God from his judgement. In Moses’ case, the ark holds a three month old baby boy that is spared from the infanticide around him. And why is that important? Let’s jump over to chapter 3 verse 7.
As we do that, let me fill you in with the story between these two points, if you’ve never heard it in church, or if you’ve never watched any one of the movies based on it. Moses grows up in the king’s court, an adoptive son of the daughter of the king. One day, Moses sees the cruelty done to the Hebrew people, which leads him to kill a man. He then runs for his life. He eventually finds himself in Midia, where he creates a life for himself. He marries a daughter of the priest Jethro, and becomes a shepherd. By the time we catch up with him in chapter 3 verse 7, Moses is about 80 years old. One day he’s out with his sheep when he sees a bush on fire, but the fire isn’t consuming the plant. So Moses investigates, he then hears a commanding voice come from the burning bush that claims to be the God of his ancestors, and Moses becomes afraid. Let’s pick up the purpose of conversation in Exodus chapter 3, verse 7.
7 The Lord said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. 8 So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. 9 And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. 10 So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.”
In this brief exchange between God and Moses, we can quickly come to an understanding of why Moses was saved in that ark. God saved him to bring the Israelite people out of the harsh treatment they were experiencing from the Egyptians. And God’s intention is not to just save his people, but to also judge the Egyptians for their cruelty.
After a back and forth with God, Moses reluctantly agrees, and we end up seeing ten plagues come into Egypt, each one attacking one of the Egyptian gods that were falsely worshiped. And at the end of the story, God shows himself to be greater than any other in the land of Egypt. And through this, we again see the judgment and rescue of humanity. Both found, not in a giant boat, but a small basket.
As I reflect on this passage, the idea to call this ark, the ark of hearing, comes to my mind. Because God heard the cries of his people and acted to deal with the injustice.
And again, God uses an ark to bring about judgment and rescue. It is here, that I hope we begin to see both pattern and a non-pattern. The non-pattern is the ark’s definition, which is a chest or box, yet in the first two instances in the Bible, the ark has been a gigantic boat, and a small basket. Both, in some sense fitting the definition, but both vastly different than the imagine of what a box or chest brings to mind. We need to recognize this, because God’s use of the word ark, is not the same as the definition of the word ark. Whereas the word ark is simply a box or chest, God’s use of it is that of something that contains something very important that deals with judgment and rescue. This is the pattern, in both biblical uses of the word ark at the beginning of Scripture, we see a pattern of judgment and rescue connecting them.
As I have meditated on this story and read and re-read it this year, it hits me that this whole story takes place over a period of at least 80 years. It starts with Moses being born just after the decree to start killing babies happens in chapter 3. He is saved at three months. By the time he grows up, leaves, and then returns to Egypt, about 80 years pass. And as I think on this time frame that it took God to respond to the people’s cries for help, I wonder if the people thought that God had abandon them?
I mean, I have a problem when God doesn’t respond after a couple of minutes, and yet here we see that the people had to wait 80 years for God’s rescue. They might have felt abandon, yet God was at work that entire time. He prepared Moses’ ark before they cried out, and then worked to bring about his judgment upon the Egyptians, and the rescue of the Israelites through the little boy he saved in that ark.
All this reminds me that though there are times when I don’t think God’s working, the reality is, he’s already been dealing with what I will eventually need, even before I cry out to him. And when I bring my needs before him, I can trust that he is all ready at work, even if it takes more time than I think it should.
I want to challenge you this week to recognize the ark of hearing that God is already working on in your life.
This week, if you’re seeking God to move and deal with something in your life, I want to challenge you to praise him for him already working on it. Let us not fall into the mindset that God is too busy, isn’t interested, or our problem too small for him, but rather let us realize that he is already at work providing a solution to our situation. We need to be praising him that our situation is in his hands, trusting him to deal with it. But as we praise and trust him, we must be willing to wait patiently, who knows, it might take 80 years, but God’s on it.
Let us be God’s people who are waiting on his work to be carried out, and satisfied in the knowledge that he has not abandon us. Let us not take our eyes off of him, praising him as we wait. Amen.
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