The God who Rebels Against Authority

I’m hoping our current series (All the stuff they didn’t teach you in Sunday school) gives you a sense not just of interesting moments from the Bible but how these moments tie into the mentality and history of God’s people. In other words, do their actions make more sense? Does God make a little more sense? And, at least as far as the beginning of the series goes, does the Old Testament make a little more sense? I have no idea if that will happen or not, but that’s my hope.

Today we’re skipping ahead a bit- moving beyond the stories of individual people and moving into stories that are more directly about a group of people. If I could choose my legacy as a pastor (and I probably won’t have a “legacy” nor would I get to choose it if I did, but whatever) it would be to help people see themselves as part of the group called God’s people (or God’s family) and not as just an isolated person who happens to worship the same God as other people. Maybe thinking about the Israelites will help us make that move. Again, I’m not sure. But let’s dig into today’s passages and see what happens.

8 Now a new king came to power in Egypt who didn’t know Joseph. 9 He said to his people, “The Israelite people are now larger in number and stronger than we are. 10 Come on, let’s be smart and deal with them. Otherwise, they will only grow in number. And if war breaks out, they will join our enemies, fight against us, and then escape from the land.” 11 As a result, the Egyptians put foremen of forced work gangs over the Israelites to harass them with hard work. They had to build storage cities named Pithom and Rameses for Pharaoh. 12 But the more they were oppressed, the more they grew and spread, so much so that the Egyptians started to look at the Israelites with disgust and dread. 13 So the Egyptians enslaved the Israelites. 14 They made their lives miserable with hard labor, making mortar and bricks, doing field work, and by forcing them to do all kinds of other cruel work.

~ Exodus 1:8-14, CEB

It never feels good to think of, or say, or draw attention to something like slavery. It’s an important reality of history to remember but something that, emotionally, we may feel inclined to resist. Who wants to voluntarily sit with and make space for reflection on tragedy, cruelty, violence, and so on. Yet, this is largely the legacy of God’s people, and even becomes the legacy of God himself once he enters the flesh in the form of Jesus: Dismissed in his hometown, viewed as a threat by the authorities, and put to death at the hands of his own people (Jesus was Jewish, let’s not forget).

The mentality of the Egyptians here is a mentality shared by the powerful throughout human history: There’s more of them than there are of us, and we don’t want to lose what we have, so let’s make sure they don’t rise up. There is a reason that the legacy of God’s people is one of suffering abuse at the hands of oppressors. Oppressors take active measures to protect themselves from the oppressed. It is the way of the world and history bears it out time and again. But we don’t need to get ahead of ourselves. It happens to God’s people several times in the OT alone. Here in Egypt, again by the Assyrians, again by the Babylons, eventually freed by the Persians (in a way). Fast forward a few thousand years and we have WWII with a great deal of persecution between those two events and prejudice that continues even today.

So, wait a second, this is a spiritual blog…what has all this to do with anything?

Well…you know…imagine what it’s like to live as someone who perpetually lives underneath someone else’s boot. What is the impact? There’d be quite a few. You’d have doubts. You’d be skeptical. You’d see yourself as helpless and incapable. You might be desperate. You might be violent if you’re desperate. In other words, you might look quite a lot like God’s people in the OT. They were a people who couldn’t trust what they saw because they’d been conditioned to believe that something awful was waiting right around the corner.

We’re supposed to believe that God is going to save us from slavery? Why? He hasn’t done it yet, and the conditions are only getting worse. Okay, so eventually someone leads them out of slavery but they end up in the desert. Now they’re free, but they have no food. What kind of trade is this? Now they’re still working hard and they can’t eat. They’re promised a land full of milk and honey and treats and stability and so on…but they’re not allowed to enter. Eventually, hope is a luxury…a luxury they don’t have. It’s fools gold. Believing that things will be better is just a way of setting yourself up for disappointment.

So you consider worshipping other gods. What’s the harm, really? So you stop caring for the needy among you…they’re just dragging down the rest of us, right? May as well embrace survival of the fittest (a few thousand years before its time).

Now, you see, that’s where God’s people end up. But this is the origin story of their pain and suffering. It starts here, with Egypt. Making bricks and being forced to do cruel work.

11 One day after Moses had become an adult, he went out among his people and he saw their forced labor. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people. 12 He looked around to make sure no one else was there. Then he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.

~Exodus 2:11-12, CEB

Moses was Hebrew by birth, and adopted into an Egyptian family. He grew up wealthy and spared of the cruel work that was forced upon his people. When I read this story as a kid, I thought Moses was a cruel person. Murder is wrong…so how can Moses, of all people, commit murder? And how can God let Moses be a voice of the people if he is a murderer?

One way to read that is to say, well, this is kinda good, even murderers can be redeemed by God and given a new purpose. Another way to read this is, God needed a revolutionary who understood suffering and was willing to go to any lengths to fight back against injustice.

Is Moses’ murder of the Egyptian moral or immoral?

For what it’s worth, God never says a word about it. But, then again, God stays silent on all sorts of things throughout the Bible. This isn’t exactly “proof” of approval.

When this story is read in developing countries, where rebellion and corruption and such are even more widespread and problematic than they are in our country, Moses is often seen as a hero for what he does in this story, as opposed to someone with a checkered past.

So, what shall we say? What do we takeaway from all this?

It’s up to you. Do with Moses what you will.

When it comes to God’s people, God wasn’t protecting the good or the righteous or the just, God was protecting the weak. In fact, of all the different types of people in the world, God chose the weak to be His people. He could have sided with the Egyptians, and chosen them. But perhaps God wanted a challenge. Perhaps God wanted a bit of a fight. Perhaps God didn’t want oppressors to rule without resistance. And so God sided with the “little guy”.

That’s a pretty cool God, if you ask me.