Devotional
Growing up, I had the dubious privilege of living with 4 different families, and in each one I was the youngest. Being the youngest, yes, has its advantages. Perhaps you know of a spoiled younger sibling, who somehow avoided all of the rules that the older siblings had. But being the youngest also meant that you had to stand your ground when all the older siblings wanted to do something you didn't want to do. You lost the wrestling matches, got the smallest piece of dessert, and didn't get to pick the movie.
Sometimes being the smallest, weakest, or least advantaged can have a backfire effect. Because of your disadvantaged position, you work that much harder to be faster, stronger, smarter, cuter, or sneakier than all your older siblings. You have no choice!
The Book of Acts is the history book of the founding of the church. Similiarly, the book of Exodus is the history of the founding of Israel. That's why we're going to take the next few weeks to read its stories through the lens of Jesus and the early church.
In Exodus 1 we see that the descenents of Israel's family have begun to be oppressed by the Egyptian people. But there's a backfire effect. Verse 12 states, "But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread."
We will see this same thing happen in the book of Acts as the young church begins to get noticed and antagonized by Jewish and Roman authorities.
In our own lives, we will often resent the pressures of life put on us - especially when those pressures come because we choose the do the Jesus-like thing. But God has a way of taking those pressures and up-ending their intended purpose. As the song says, "Even what the enemy means for evil, You turn it for our good."
Prayer
Thank God that He takes the pressures of life and uses them for our good. Pray that He would give you faith to believe that, even when the pressure seems unbearable.
Tomorrow's Reading
Exodus 1.1-14 Sermon Prep Notes, February 2022
Notes on Exodus 1.1-14
Exodus is the base of all stories of revolution. Wherever revolutionaries have known Scripture, they have used Exodus as their base.
Exodus is a story of progression: oppression, liberation, promised land. It contrasts with the endless, cyclical histories of the other cultures around Israel. There's a sense of hope. Of possibility (though, perhaps, not outright confidence).
Irony that the cities that Israel builds are meant to be garrisons against attack; they will likely be the gate by which Israel leaves.
Fentress-Williams, Africana Bible Notes
Israel remembers and retells her story as a means of affirming, preserving, and, at times, redefining her identity. No retelling of the story is the same. Each recounting of the event is shaped in part by the teller, the context, and the purpose of the story. In other words, when Israel obeys the command to remember, she is retelling. The events of the exodus were "remixed" as subsequent generations tried to find their way into the narrative.
Judy Fentress-Williams, The Africana Bible: Reading Israel's Scriptures from Africa and the African Diaspora (Kindle Locations 1722-1725). Kindle Edition.
God's work is not limited to a single people Amos 9.7. Remix of Exodus language to speak more truly about God.
In context with sampling: "The inherent danger of sampling is that the subsequent sequent generations do not know the song in its entirety, the original artist, or the context" (Fentress-Williams).
Example: Moses as single, solitary leader. But, in context, 1) Moses was reluctant and ill-suited. 2) Needed liberation himself; and 3) overlooks the women (sometimes foreign or otherwise marginalized) who make this story possible
Summary of 1-14: "Two groups of people once lived in community, but when the relationship dissolved, one group was perceived as a threat by the other and the response to that threat was oppression.""
Understanding Whiteness, Donnell Wyche
The telos of the Gospel is the reconstitution of God’s multiethnic worldwide family. (Eph 3:1–6) But the demonic imagination of whiteness—by which I mean a system that forces people to disorient themselves, breaking their connection to place, to land, to language, to the work they were called to by God all in the name of a construct of superiority and equality with Christ that is denied to the rest of humanity—and the white supremacy and racism that whiteness produces are in the way.1
Let me be clear about this: white people and whiteness are not one in the same. When I speak of the demonic imagination of whiteness, I am describing an anti-life, anti-human, anti-God system that is rooted in cultural genocide, enslavement, conquest, plunder, and oppressive power. It is a system that invites people to give up their ethne in order to participate in this evil system in order to see themselves as co-equal with Christ at the top of the hierarchy while the remainder of humanity is at the bottom. This demonic view of the world created the racial construct of whiteness, which has resulted in devastating effects for all involved. Despite all we are seeing today in with our own eyes with the perpetual flow of racial injustice in our nation, the church refuses to confront its partnership with this death-dealing system.
Fretheim, Exodus
God is doing redemptive work "outside the promised land."
Pharaoh is a symbol of the anticreation forces of death.
Pharaoh does not know; contrast God who knows (2:25, 3:7; 33:17)
Irony of Pharaoh's speech
- Pharaoh is the first to recognize them as a People.
- Recognizes fulfillment of Gen 18:18 and 15:13
- His actions will be entirely his undoing