Exodus chapter one, verses six through 14. Then Joseph died and all his brothers and all that generation. But the people of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly. They multiplied and grew exceedingly strong so that the land was filled with them. Now there arose a new king over Egypt who did not know Joseph. And he said to his people, behold, the people of Israel are too many and too mighty for us. Come let us deal shrewdly with them lest they multiply, and if war breaks out, they may join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land. Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with heavy burdens. They built for Pharaoh store cities, Pithom and Ramses. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied, and the more they spread abroad. And the Egyptians were in dread of the people of Israel. So they ruthlessly made the people of Israel work as slaves and made their lives bitter with hard service in mortar and brick and in all kinds of work in the field. In all their work, they ruthlessly made them work as slaves. Brothers and sisters, this is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Our most merciful God and King, we do indeed thank you this day for your word to us. We thank you that you have opened our ears and eyes that we may hear it and read it. But Father, more so we pray now you would open our hearts and souls that by the power of your Holy Spirit, we might behold the deep truths of your word this day, that we might find ourselves enlightened to the mysteries of your will as you have them for us. Father, we pray that as we look into your word this day, you might indeed strengthen us in a character that you might build us in faith and hope. Father, we pray that we might behold our Savior, Jesus Christ, even the Word made flesh this day. For we ask that all that we think and all that we study might be centered around him and this great salvation you have given us through him. And so, Father, we pray that you would impart to us once again the joy of our salvation as we behold the salvation of your people so long ago. We ask all of these things in Christ's precious name. Amen. As we turn to Exodus this morning, we find the people of God in a difficult place. Yet, as we noted last time, they are in this place by the hand of God himself. It was God in Genesis who ordained that Joseph would go ahead of them to Egypt to prepare the way. And it was God who ordained that Jacob and his sons and their families, 70 people in all we are told, would then follow Joseph to Egypt to find relief from the famine sweeping through the region. All of this, as we know, was prophesied by God to Abram as he made covenant with him in Genesis 15. The irony of that prophecy was that God was promising Abram, soon to be called Abraham, he was promising him heirs as numerous as the stars in heaven and the sand on the seashore, and he was promising them a land to give them the land that Abraham was on forever. But then he prophesied that those same heirs, the stars in the heaven and sands on the seashore, great-grandchildren and their great-grandchildren would all suffer at the hands of a foreign power, that they would be sojourners in a foreign place, they would not be in their land, and that it would be God who brought them into that place to sojourn there. And so, to Abraham's ears, it must have been odd to hear God promise him such blessing and then immediately tell him, Those heirs God would give him would become slaves in a foreign land. Well, as Exodus begins, we find the names of those settling in Egypt, as we saw last time, in the land of Goshen primarily, which was east of what we now know as present-day Cairo and the Eastern Nile Delta. And there they found comfort amidst the famine and they found prosperity and they began to multiply all of these things within the providence of God. But then we find something else. Their fecundity, their ability to reproduce, their ability to grow as a community, as was foretold by God to Abraham, this feature of the people became quite worrisome to the Egyptians, and to the Pharaoh in particular. For as the scriptures tell us this morning, here was a king who did not know Joseph, or even know of him as we are to understand. In fact, in the timeline of the scriptures, we are to assume this is several generations removed from the original settlers who had come with Jacob. And in that time, during the course of years, several changes had been made, not only in rulers, but in dynasties. During this time, history tells us the Hyksos, a Semitic people, had invaded Egypt and actually two of the known dynasties of Egypt during the time that the Israelites were there were actually under Hyksos rule. And so Egypt has undergone great upheaval. They had been a powerful, powerful nation when Jacob and his sons went into the land. but they had been shaken to their very core. At the time we understand the exodus to most likely have happened, the Hyksos had been cast out of the land and the Egyptians had once again ascended to the throne in what we believe to be the 18th dynasty. And the dynasty in power, be it the 18th or some other, The dynasty in power, as the story of Exodus begins for us, is one that is fearful. It is one that is afraid of conquest, having been conquered already in centuries past. And it was afraid that the sojourners, these foreigners in their land, would rise up and seek to destroy them in the event of war. The Pharaoh on the throne, perhaps Thutmose I, but again, scholars aren't quite sure, knew that the Hyksos had been driven from the empire only recently. And as the Hyksos were a Semitic people, just like the children of Abraham, Pharaoh reasoned that if the Hyksos came back, the Hebrews would then rise up and aid them in the fight. thus depriving Egypt of their labor and perhaps even subjecting Egypt to foreign rule once again. And this was not something the Pharaoh was willing to countenance. And so he, meeting with his advisors, watching the growth of this foreign nation within a nation, as it were, becomes fearful. And so the people of God began to be oppressed and they began to be persecuted. The people of Egypt were afraid of them as they began to spread out through the land, moving apparently away from the place they had settled in that area of Goshen. And so by order of the Pharaoh and by the will of the people, seemingly, as the text tells us, the Hebrews were made to be slave labor. to serve the will of the Pharaoh, to serve Egypt, to build the storehouse cities of Pithom and Ramses, and to do so under very harsh conditions. And while we don't know whether these things happened right away or whether this was a gradual change in which they began to be oppressed, eventually they went from being free, relatively, in this foreign land, to being slaves. And they went from living and working for their own profit and provision to, as we come to the end of our text this morning, slaving in the ovens, making bricks, transporting those bricks most likely to buildings and to build those buildings, along with the back-breaking work of bringing in crops in that Nile Delta area. And in enforcing these things, the Egyptians, we are told twice, are ruthless. They are out to oppress the people of God. That is their point. That is the Pharaoh's stated point. We must oppress them. We must hold them down. But while we fault Egypt for their paranoia and we fault them for their harsh and unjust treatment of those who were originally guests in their country, and rightly so, it is also vital for us to understand the deeper principle at work here. All of this is happening under the providence of God. And not that God is surprised by it and it's happening because he allows it. This is exactly what God predicted to Abraham would happen. And we know that it happened not just because God saw the future and told Abraham what the future would be, but because God ordained the future for his purposes, as he always does. And we know from the rest of the scriptures, and because we know the story of Exodus, we know that God is using the Pharaoh to test his people. Too often we think trial, or testing or tribulation is something that just happens to us by virtue of living in a fallen world, or is predicated upon our sin, or is leveled against us by those hostile to the faith. And while all of those things are true in a sense, the biblical reality is that for the people of God, testing and trial is given to us by God as a means of our refinement. and he often uses the people of the world for such purposes, but it is God who is the one bringing trials which test the genuineness of our faith. This is why the New Testament speaks so frequently of God's people rejoicing amidst tribulation, of those God loves keeping their perspective in the midst of suffering and persecution, because all of these things are happening under the providence of God. And the questions when these kinds of things happen, in the day that the Hebrews struggled in Egypt, as in our own day, the questions often are, or should be actually, to whom will we cry out for relief? And where will we go for comfort? That was the question before the Israelites in Egypt's day, and that is the question before us when we undergo testing in our own day. To whom will we cry out for relief and where will we go for comfort? For the temptation is always to flee to those in authority for redress, to search out those with the power to stop our suffering, even perhaps to physically try and flee the persecution itself. But for those who have trusted in the Lord, Our first response must be to turn to Him. Our first response must be to cry out to our merciful Father in faith. We must always turn to Him first and foremost for relief and redress. We must always flee to Him first and foremost for comfort and solace. And He may provide it through authorities, He may provide it through others, but it is God to whom we must cry out and it is God to whom we must flee when we desire relief and comfort. And that's not to say that we can't look for help in other places when we're able to, but that our faith and hope are to be placed in God first and foremost, and that we must recognize, as Psalm 46.1 says, God is our refuge and our strength, a very present help in trouble. Or Psalm 145.18, the Lord is near to all who call on him, to all who call on him in truth. The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit. For the point of God testing his people is ultimately to turn them to him and bring them closer to him. The design of earthly trial is to refine the people of God that they might more fully exhibit their trust in him to his glory. The reason God not only passively allows suffering, but sometimes actively brings us into places where suffering will be certain to test us, is that we might honor and glorify His holy name. 1 Peter 1, 6 and 7, in this you rejoice, though now for a little while. If necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold, that perishes though it is tested by fire, may be found to result, here is the results of this, to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. The testing and trial and tribulations of God's people are ultimately to bring praise and honor and glory to our Lord Jesus Christ. when we think about how gold is refined. we recognize that the ore and the dirt that holds the ore doesn't just roll into a really hot fire by happenstance. And somehow the fire is so hot that all the gold is melted out. And somehow that gold, when melted out, actually finds itself separated from the impurities of the other dirt. And somehow that gold dribbles out of whatever fire it fell into. and finds its way into an ingot, and there cools and hardens into a gold bar. That isn't how gold is made. or is intentionally mined, and it is then set into the fire, and it is set into the fire again and again and again as the impurities boil up and are skimmed away. And then that molten gold that has been refined by fire is poured into forms, and it is measured for weight, and it is stamped so that its value might be known to all who look upon it. But the process is very intentional. And this concept is crucial for us to understand as believers. God places us in the fires of testing to burn away the impurities, that the value of our status as his people might be made known to all the world, that we might be a testimony to his glory in Christ Jesus, and that we might reflect his glory in our lives. Testing is not accidental. It is intentional. and it is for the purpose of purification and refinement. 1 Peter 4, verse 12, Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you as though something strange were happening to you. To be surprised by suffering is to forget the teaching of the scriptures. To exhibit some sort of existential disbelief that God testing us in a manner that is sorely grievous to us is to close our eyes to his eternal purposes. To despair of our lot in life or to become desolate in the midst of tribulation is to walk by sight and not by faith. And to neglect the true purposes of God in our lives and in the life of his church and the life of his people that we as his people might reflect his glory to the world around us. See, the danger for the Israelites, for the Hebrews living in the land of plenty, was that they might start to trust in Egypt instead of God. After all, Egypt had been feeding them for 400 years. The danger of the Israelites was that their faith might be found in the magnanimity of a Pharaoh instead of the mercy of God. If Pharaoh continued to be gracious to them, then they would begin to trust in Pharaoh. The peril that awaited the people of God was that they would become comfortable and content in a strange land in such a manner that they wouldn't even desire the promised land, much less actually try to go there. Because now we're generations removed from that promise and they have no memory of the promised land. They don't even know what it looks like. And if all they knew in Egypt was comfort and ease and plenty to such an extent that they became complacent and uncaring of the covenant God made with their forefather Abraham, then their lives in Egypt would be lives lived in idolatry. as they trusted in someone and something else other than the God who had called them to be his people. Beloved, the danger before us is really not so different. In fact, it is far more similar than we might want to admit. When we live our lives in comfort, it becomes easy to forget in whom our true comfort lies. When we enjoy the plenty brought forth by the land around us and take pleasure in the luxuries afforded to us, it becomes easy to fall into complacence. When our daily lives exhibit little true difficulty, we have little reason to turn to someone else for help. When we believe we have attained our wealth by the sweat of our own brow, we tend to lose sight of where our true wealth is stored up in the kingdom of heaven. And when our attention is turned to seeking the fleeting pleasures provided to us in this life, we often stop seeking that which is true and eternal and promised to us in the next life. We must be very careful, as the people of God not to allow our eyes to be diverted from the future promises of our God in pursuit of the pleasures of the now. We must be very careful as the people of God not to put all of our time and energy into seeking redress or recourse in the courts and congresses of men. We must be very careful as the people of God not to put too much stock in where we live or what form of government we live under. Or thinking that our rights and our freedoms can be granted to us by a man-made government from a man-made document, from things that we somehow think are timeless, when there's only one thing that is timeless, and that is the Word of God. For if 6,000 years of recorded human history tell us anything, it is this, the nations of the world will always, always oppress or persecute the people of God. The nations of the world will always oppress the true church at some point. They don't usually start out that way, but almost every single nation in human history in one generation or another has persecuted or oppressed the people of God. Some nations started out friendly to the people of God and turned. Some nations split and the people of God found themselves being oppressed from odd directions. Some nations, like our own, were founded by the people of God, and yet look where we are now. Persecution and oppression aren't just coming, they are here. And at the point the church begins to find its comfort in the laws of the land or place its hope in the protection of its rights by a government or put its trust in the provision of a nation, at that point, The church begins heading down the easy road of idolatry. But praise be to God, he does not let his people go down that road for long. For he will turn us to him. If we are his, the Bible says he will discipline us. If we are his, he will turn us back to him. And how he often does that is through testing, through tribulation, through persecution. But we are to recognize that and we are to trust in Him and Him alone for our protection and our provision. We are to trust in God Almighty for true justice and eternal peace. As the people of God, we belong to a kingdom that cannot be shaken, a kingdom that transcends heaven and earth, a kingdom that has No end. Nations rise and nations fall, and civilizations come and civilizations go, but the people of God remain forever. Pharaohs are lifted up and pharaohs are torn down. Caesars and emperors come and go. Dictators and presidents gain and lose their power, but the people of God, the church of Christ, remains forever. The church is the only institution in the history of mankind that is eternal because we belong to an eternal kingdom. not to the kingdoms of this world. And as part of that eternal people, as part of that kingdom that has no end, we are called to look not to nations and men, but to God and God alone for our comfort, for our solace, for our relief. For any of these we might find in this life are but fleeting and temporal. It is the comfort of the everlasting covenant that is eternal. It is the relief God promises to us as we look in faith to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ that is our hope and our salvation. It is the solace found in the knowledge that our God has, is, and will always be working out all things for our good through the gospel of his son that brings us the peace that passes understanding. For no matter where the Lord may lead us, no matter what trials we may undergo, no matter how heavy the hand of the world may rest upon us, no matter how difficult the test, Jesus Christ promised to never leave us nor forsake us. And any tribulation that is ours, if we but trust in Christ and lean on Christ and hope in Christ, any tribulation that is ours to bear will result only in the refining of our character to the glory of God. And he who began a good work in us will complete it to the very end. For that is his plan for his people. That has always been his plan for his people. And so may we look to our God as his people, fully trusting in his providence, his guidance and his wisdom. May we find our faith strengthened in the knowledge of his love and the truth that he is never far from us. And he will always protect and provide for those who are called by his name. May we not be content with the idolatrous offerings of the world and this life in which we sojourn, but may we cry out to our God day upon day that the peace he gives us in heart and soul would one day be fully realized as he brings us home to be with him in eternal glory, there to know his perfect peace forever. Yes, we live in a time of trouble. Our brothers and sisters around the world are persecuted and oppressed. The church in our own land is becoming that way. Slowly, but surely. But let not your hearts be troubled, beloved. For as Paul tells us in Philippians 2.13, it is God who works in you. both to will and to work, for his good pleasure, that we might honor and glorify his mighty name, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, now and evermore. Amen.