#16 1:15-22 The Need for Redemption Part C

Exodus 1:15-22

15 And the king of Egypt spake to the Hebrew midwives, of which the name of the one was Shiphrah, and the name of the other Puah:

16 And he said, When ye do the office of a midwife to the Hebrew women, and see them upon the stools; if it be a son, then ye shall kill him: but if it be a daughter, then she shall live.

17 But the midwives feared God, and did not as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the men children alive.

18 And the king of Egypt called for the midwives, and said unto them, Why have ye done this thing, and have saved the men children alive?

19 And the midwives said unto Pharaoh, Because the Hebrew women are not as the Egyptian women; for they are lively, and are delivered ere the midwives come in unto them.

20 Therefore God dealt well with the midwives: and the people multiplied, and waxed very mighty.

21 And it came to pass, because the midwives feared God, that he made them houses.

22 And Pharaoh charged all his people, saying, Every son that is born ye shall cast into the river, and every daughter ye shall save alive.

In these verses the LORD drives home the deep need for redemption and full deliverance to His people by making it clear that remaining in Egypt was a matter of life and death. It was not merely that for a number of generations they had lived and died there. Everyone is going to live and die somewhere until the LORD comes. It was that their entire bloodline was in danger of being destroyed. Pharaoh had determined that the midwives were to kill all of the male babies. Behind the scenes, Satan was seeking to utterly destroy the bloodline through which the promised Redeemer was to come.

But God never loses sight of His eternal redemptive purposes in His Son. We may be sure that whenever Satan seeks to utterly destroy the Seed of the Woman[1] God will intervene. Nothing will prevent the fulfillment of His redemptive purposes, established before the foundation of the world. Satan, in attacking the Seed through the threat of death, actually oversteps the bounds that God had set for him.

In this instance, by allowing Satan to institute the edict of death for the Hebrew male babies, God actually accomplishes several precious and important things. First, this clearly clinched for the believing remnant among the Hebrew people in Egypt their truly desperate plight, driving them to long for full deliverance in the depths of their hearts. Maybe they would have continued serving with rigor and bitter hard bondage for many more years. But, when their entire destiny as the seed line of the promised Messiah was threatened, it was “the last straw” so to speak.

Additionally, as we shall soon see, Pharaoh’s edict fostered compassion on the part of the midwives, and later in the heart of his own daughter. This reality ought to be of great encouragement to us at any point in our lives when God permits terrible things that threaten us on very deep levels! It is during such times that God is working in ways that we could never even imagine to bring about His staggering worldwide redemptive purposes!

[1] Genesis 3:15.