Be Delivered (Exodus): Finding Freedom by Following God

by Warren W. Wiersbe

Overview

 

Getting free is only half the story Freedom is a central theme in our world. It’s become a rallying cry for people, groups, even entire nations. But freedom without boundaries can be costly. Based on the book of Exodus, this study offers an eye-opening look at the pitfalls of deliverance without discipline, and shares the freedom found through a loving submission to God and His will for us. 

Part of Dr. Warren W. Wiersbe’s best-selling “BE” commentary series, BE Delivered has now been updated with study questions and a new introduction by Ken Baugh. A respected pastor and Bible teacher, Dr. Wiersbe explores the need to balance freedom with responsibility. Filled with real-world examples that resonate today, this study uncovers how you can experience true freedom in [every area of] your life.

 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781434702449
Publisher:	Cook, David C
Publication date:	08/01/2010
Series:	BE Series Commentary
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	240
Sales rank:	395,474
File size:	474 KB

About the Author

Dr. Warren W. Wiersbe is an internationally known Bible teacher and the former pastor of The Moody Church in Chicago. For ten years he was associated with the Back to the Bible radio broadcast, first as Bible teacher and then as general director. Dr. Wiersbe has written more than 160 books, including the popular “BE” series of Bible commentaries, which has sold more than four million copies. He and his wife, Betty, live in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Read an Excerpt

BE DELIVERED

FINDING FREEDOM BY FOLLOWING GOD

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By Warren W. Wiersbe

David C. Cook

Copyright © 1998 Warren W. Wiersbe
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4347-6503-1

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CHAPTER 1

Wanted: A Deliverer

(Exodus 1—4)

The little girl who defined "radio" as "television without pictures" didn't know what she was talking about. I grew up in the Golden Age of Radio, and I can assure you that as I listened, I saw many vivid and exciting pictures—right in my own imagination. Television doesn't let you do that. And the stories on radio went on and on, day after day, always leaving us wondering, "What will happen next?"

The Old Testament is God's "continued story" of His great program of salvation that He announced to Adam and Eve (Gen. 3:15) and to Abraham (12:1–3). That explains why the Hebrew text of Exodus begins with the word and, for God is continuing the story He started in Genesis. God's wonderful story finally led to the coming of Jesus to earth and His death on the cross, and it won't end until God's people go to heaven and see Jesus on the throne. What a story!

The theme of Exodus is deliverance, and you can't have deliverance without a deliverer. That's where Moses comes in, the great liberator, legislator, and mediator.

The Deliverer Needed (1:1–22)

The Jewish rabbis call Exodus "the Book of Names" (or "These Are the Names") because it opens with a list of the names of the sons of Jacob (Israel) who brought their families to Egypt to escape the famine in Canaan (Gen. 46). God used Israel's experiences in Egypt to prepare them for the special tasks He gave them to accomplish on earth: bearing witness to the true and living God, writing the Holy Scriptures, and bringing the Savior into the world.

Blessing (vv. 1–7). During the years Joseph served as second ruler in Egypt, his family was greatly respected, and even after Joseph died, his memory was honored in the way the Egyptians treated the Hebrews. God kept His covenant promise to Abraham by blessing his descendants and causing them to multiply greatly (Gen. 12:1–3; 15:5; 17:2, 6; 22:17). By the time of the exodus, there were more than 600,000 men who were twenty years and older (Ex. 12:37; 38:26), and when you add the women and children, the total could well be nearly two million people, all of whom descended from the original family of Jacob. God certainly kept His promise!

But a new pharaoh wasn't happy with the rapid multiplication of the Jewish people, so he took steps to control it.

Step #1—Afflicting the adults (vv. 8–14). God had told Abraham that his descendants would go to a strange country and there be enslaved and mistreated, but He had promised that He would set them free by His power at the right time (Gen. 15:12–14). God compared Egypt to a smoking furnace (v. 17; see Deut. 4:20) where His people would suffer, but their experience in that furnace would transform the Israelites into a mighty nation (Gen. 46:3).

During the centuries the Jews had been in Egypt (15:13; Ex. 12:40–41), they had seen many Egyptian dynasties come and go, but who was the new king who was ignorant of Joseph and his family and tried to destroy "the people of the children of Israel"? The Seventeenth Dynasty, the Hyksos, were foreigners and "strangers" in the land as were the Jews, so they were probably sympathetic with Israel, but the Eighteenth Dynasty was Egyptian, and their rulers expelled foreigners from the land. This may have been the dynasty that began the persecution of the people of Israel.

Why would the Egyptians want to make life miserable for the Jews? Israel was a source of blessing in the land, as Joseph had been before them (Gen. 39:1–6), and they weren't causing trouble. Pharaoh's stated reason was that the presence of so many Jews was a security risk: Since the Jews were outsiders, if there were an invasion, they would no doubt ally themselves with the enemy. However, whether Pharaoh realized it or not, the real cause was the conflict announced in 3:15, the enmity between the people of God and the children of Satan, a conflict that still goes on in the world today.

No people in recorded history have suffered as the Hebrew people have suffered, but every nation or ruler that has persecuted the Jews has been punished for it. After all, God's promise to Abraham was "I will bless those who bless you, and I will curse him who curses you" (12:3 NKJV). God kept that promise in the way He dealt with Egypt and Babylon in ancient days and Stalin and Hitler in modern times. God is longsuffering as He sees nations persecute His chosen people, but eventually His hand of judgment falls on the oppressors.

The Egyptian taskmasters "worked them ruthlessly" (Ex. 1:13 NIV), forcing the Jewish slaves to build cities and work in the fields. But the blessing of God caused the Israelites to continue to multiply, and this frightened and enraged their captors even more. Something else had to be done to keep Israel under control.

Step #2—Killing the Jewish boys at birth (vv. 15–21). If this plan had succeeded, Pharaoh would have wiped out the Hebrew people. The future generation of men would be dead and the girls would eventually be married to Egyptian slaves and absorbed into the Egyptian race. But Genesis 3:15 and 12:1–3 said that God would not permit such a thing to happen, and He used two Jewish midwives to outwit Pharaoh.

This is the first instance in Scripture of what today we call "civil disobedience," refusing to obey an evil law because of a higher good. Scriptures like Matthew 20:21–25; Romans 13; and 1 Peter 2:11 admonish Christians to obey human authorities, but Romans 13:5 reminds us that our obedience must not violate our consciences. When the laws of God are contrary to the laws of man, then "[w]e ought to obey God rather than men" (Acts 5:29). You see this exemplified not only in the midwives but also in Daniel and his friends (Dan. 1; 3; 6) and the apostles (Acts 4—5).

Were the midwives lying to Pharaoh? Probably not. The babies were born before the midwives arrived because Shiphrah and Puah had told their assistants to be late! God blessed the two leading midwives for putting their own lives on the line in order to save the Jewish nation from extinction. However, He honored these two women in a strange way: He gave them children at a time when it was dangerous to have children! Perhaps all their children were daughters, or perhaps God protected their sons as He protected Moses. Regardless, this blessing from God shows how precious children are to the Lord: He wanted to give these two women His very best reward, so He sent them children (Ps. 127:3).

Step #3—Drowning the male babies (v. 22). When Pharaoh discovered he'd been deceived, he changed his plan and commanded all his people to see to it that the Jewish male babies were drowned in the sacred Nile River. Pharaoh's police couldn't check up on every Jewish midwife, but the Egyptian people could keep their eyes on the Jewish slaves and report when a boy was born. But one boy would be born that Pharaoh couldn't kill.

The Deliverer Born (2:1–10)

Amram and Jochebed were Moses' parents (Ex. 6:20), and while the Exodus text emphasizes the faith of the mother, Hebrews 11:23 commends both the father and the mother for trusting God. Certainly it took faith for them to have normal marital relations during that dangerous time when Jewish babies were being killed. Moses became a great man of faith, and he learned it first from his godly parents. Amram and Jochebed already had two children: Miriam, who was the oldest, and Aaron, who was three years older than Moses (Ex. 7:7).

From the very first, Moses was seen to be "no ordinary child" (Acts 7:20 NIV; see Heb. 11:23), and it was evident that God had a special purpose for him. Believing this to be true, the parents defied Pharaoh's edict and kept their son alive. This wasn't easy to do, since all the Egyptians were now Pharaoh's official spies, watching for babies to be drowned (Ex. 1:22).

Jochebed obeyed the letter of the law when she put Moses in the waters of the Nile, but certainly she was defying Pharaoh's orders in the way she did it. She was trusting the providence of God and God didn't fail her. When the princess came to the Nile to perform her religious ablutions, she saw the basket, heard him cry, discovered the baby, and her maternal instincts told her to rescue the child and care for him.

God used a baby's tears to control the heart of a powerful princess, and He used Miriam's words to arrange for the baby's mother to raise the boy and get paid for it! The phrase as weak as a baby doesn't apply in the kingdom of God, for when the Lord wants to accomplish a mighty work, He often starts by sending a baby. This was true when He sent Isaac, Joseph, Samuel, John the Baptist, and especially Jesus. God can use the weakest things to defeat the mightiest enemies (1 Cor. 1:25–29). A baby's tears were God's first weapons in His war against Egypt.

The princess adopted Moses as her own son, which means that Moses had a favored position in the land and was given a special education for service in the government (Acts 7:22). In the Egyptian language, Moses means "born" or "son" and sounds like a Hebrew word that means "to draw out" (of the water). Years later, his name would remind Moses of the God who rescued him and did great things for him in Egypt. On more than one occasion, Moses would rescue his people because he trusted the Lord.

The Deliverer Prepared (2:11–25)

Moses spent his first forty years (Acts 7:23) serving in the Egyptian bureaucracy. (Some students think he was being groomed to be the next pharaoh.) Egypt seems the least likely place for God to start training a leader, but God's ways are not our ways. In equipping Moses for service, God took several approaches.

Education. "And Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and deeds" (Acts 7:22 NKJV). What did that involve? Egypt had a highly developed civilization for its time, particularly in the areas of engineering, mathematics, and astronomy. Thanks to their knowledge of astronomy, they developed an amazingly accurate calendar, and their engineers planned and supervised the construction of edifices that are still standing. Their priests and doctors were masters of the art of embalming, and their leaders were skilled in organization and administration. Visitors to Egypt today can't help but be impressed with the accomplishments of this ancient people. The servant of God should learn all he can, dedicate it to God, and faithfully serve God.

Failure (vv. 11–14). Though some people were confused about his racial identity (Ex. 2:19), Moses knew that he was a Hebrew and not an Egyptian, and he couldn't help but identify with the plight of his suffering people. One day he made a courageous decision to help his people, even if it meant losing his noble position as the adopted son of the royal princess (Heb. 11:24–26). The pleasures and treasures of Egypt faded from view as he saw himself helping to liberate God's chosen people.

It's possible that the Egyptian officer wasn't just disciplining the Jewish slave but was beating him to death, because the Hebrew word can mean that, so when Moses interfered, he was probably saving a man's life. And if the Egyptian officer turned on Moses, which is likely, then Moses was also defending his own life.

But if Moses was planning to free the Hebrews by killing the Egyptians one by one, he was in for a shock. The next day he discovered that the Egyptians were only part of the problem because the Jews couldn't even get along with one another! When he tried to reconcile the two Jews, they rejected his help! Even more, he learned that his secret was out and that Pharaoh was after his life. There was only one thing to do and that was to flee.

These two incidents reveal Moses as a compassionate man who was sincere in his motives but impetuous in his actions. Knowing this, you would never suspect that later he would be called "the meekest man on the earth" (see Num. 12:3). Moses' failure to help free the Jews must have devastated him. That's why God took him to Midian and made him a shepherd for forty years. He had to learn that deliverance would come from God's hand, not Moses' hand (Acts 7:25; Ex. 13:3).

Solitude and humble service (vv. 15–25). Moses became a fugitive and fled to the land of the Midianites, relatives of the Jews (Gen. 25:1–2). True to his courageous nature, he assisted the daughters of Reuel, the priest of Midian (Ex. 2:18), and this led to hospitality in their home and marriage with one of the daughters, Zipporah, who bore him a son. Later, she would bear another son, Eliezer (18:1–4; 1 Chron. 23:15). Reuel ("friend of God") was also known as Jethro (Ex. 3:1; 18:12, 27), but Jethro ("excellence") may have been his title as priest rather than his given name.

The man who was "mighty in word and deed" is now in the lonely pastures taking care of stubborn sheep, but that was just the kind of preparation he needed for leading a nation of stubborn people. Israel was God's special flock (Ps. 100:3) and Moses His chosen shepherd. Like Joseph's thirteen years as a slave in Egypt and Paul's three years' hiatus after his conversion (Gal. 1:16–17), Moses' forty years of waiting and working prepared him for a lifetime of faithful ministry. God doesn't lay hands suddenly on His servants but takes time to equip them for their work.

God's delays aren't evidence of unconcern, for He hears our groans, sees our plight, feels our sorrows, and remembers His covenant. What He has promised, He will perform, for He never breaks His covenant with His people. When the right time comes, God immediately goes to work.

The Deliverer Called (3:1—4:17)

Moses spent forty years serving as a shepherd in Midian (Acts 7:23; Ex. 7:7), and during those many days and nights in the field, he no doubt meditated on the things of God and prayed for his people who were suffering in Egypt. It's significant that God calls people who are busy: Gideon was threshing grain (Judg. 6), Samuel was serving in the tabernacle (1 Sam. 3), David was caring for sheep (17:20), Elisha was plowing (1 Kings 19:19–21), four of the apostles were managing their fishing business (Mark 1:16–20), and Matthew was collecting taxes (Matt. 9:9). God has nothing good to say about laziness (Prov. 24:30–34; Matt. 25:26–27; 2 Thess. 3:10–12).

What Moses saw (vv. 1–4). God can take an insignificant bush, ignite it, and turn it into a miracle, and that's what He wanted to do with Moses. Some see in the burning bush a picture of the nation of Israel: They are God's light in the world, persecuted but not consumed. But the burning bush was also a picture of what God had planned for Moses: He was the weak bush, but God was the empowering fire (Ex. 19:18; 24:17; Deut. 4:24; Judg. 13:20; Heb. 12:29), and with God's help, Moses could accomplish anything.

What Moses heard (vv. 5–10). God spoke to Moses and assured him that He was the God of his fathers and that He felt the suffering of the Jews in Egypt. He was now ready to deliver them out of Egypt and lead them into the Promised Land, and Moses would be His chosen leader. God's statement "Behold, I will send you" must have astonished Moses. Why would God choose a failure?

What Moses did (3:1—4:17). Moses should have rejoiced because God was at last answering prayer, and he should have submitted to God's will saying, "Here I am! Send me!" But instead, he argued with the Lord and tried to escape the divine call to rescue Israel from slavery. In Egypt, forty years before, Moses had acted like the impetuous horse and rushed ahead of God, but now he is acting like the stubborn mule and resisting God (Ps. 32:9). Moses gave five reasons why he couldn't accept God's call.

(1) "I'm a nobody" (3:11–12). What Moses thought of himself, or what others thought of Moses, really wasn't important. God had spoken and that was all Moses needed for assurance that he was the right man for the job. Had forty years of shepherding so extinguished the fire in his soul that he didn't think he could serve the Lord? Why was he looking at himself instead of looking by faith to the Lord? "I will be with you" is all the assurance God's servants need in order to succeed (Josh. 1:5; Isa. 41:10; 43:5).

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from BE DELIVERED by Warren W. Wiersbe. Copyright © 1998 Warren W. Wiersbe. Excerpted by permission of David C. Cook.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

The Big Idea: An Introduction to Be Delivered by Ken Baugh,
A Word from the Author,
1. Wanted: A Deliverer (Exodus 1—4),
2. War Is Declared (Exodus 5:1—8:19),
3. "The Lord, Mighty in Battle" (Exodus 8:20—10:29),
4. One More Plague (Exodus 11:1—13:16),
5. Redeemed and Rejoicing (Exodus 13:17—15:21),
6. The School of Life (Exodus 15:22—16:36),
7. "The Lord of Hosts Is with Us" (Exodus 17—18),
8. Hear the Voice of God (Exodus 19:1—20:21),
9. The Book of the Covenant (Exodus 20:22—24:8),
10. The Place Where God Dwells—Part I (Exodus 24:9—25:40; 27:20–21; 30:11–16; 31:1–11; 35:4—36:38; 37:1–24; 38:21–31),
11. The Place Where God Dwells—Part II (Exodus 26:1–37; 27:1–19; 30:1–10, 17–21; 37:25–29; 38:1–20),
12. The Holy Priesthood (Exodus 28—29; 30:22–33; 39),
13. A Broken Heart and a Shining Face (Exodus 32—34; 40),
Afterword,
Notes,