Order, Words, & Voices
06.02.24, Faces – Shiphrah and Puah, Exodus 1:8-22
Order
Pre Worship Music – Spotify – Open and Close
Songs Lord I Lift Your Name On High Billy/Team
Firm Foundation
Passage/Prayer Mitch
Songs Eagles Wings Billy/Team
Show Me Your Ways
Passage/Intro Exodus 1:8-21 ?
Message Shiphrah and Pual Rick
Music Show Me Your Ways Billy/Team
Community/Benediction Rick
Closing Peace Rick
Closing Music Firm Foundation (He Won’t) Billy/Team
Post Worship Music – Spotify – Open and Close
Please have video card in camera and ‘recording’ on for entire service. Thanks!
Music (Slides) Billy/Team
Lord I Lift Your Name On High
CCLI Song # 117947
Verse 1
Lord I lift Your name on high
Lord I love to sing Your praises
I’m so glad You’re in my life
I’m so glad You came to save us
Chorus
You came from heaven to earth
To show the way
From the earth to the cross
My debt to pay
From the cross to the grave
From the grave to the sky
Lord I lift Your name on high
Firm Foundation (He Won’t)
CCLI Song # 7188203
Verse 1
Christ is my firm foundation
The rock on which I stand
When everything around me is shaken
I’ve never been more glad
That I put my faith in Jesus
‘Cause He’s never let me down
He’s faithful through generations
So why would He fail now
Chorus 1
He won’t He won’t
Verse 2
I’ve still got joy in chaos
I’ve got peace that makes no sense
So I won’t be going under
I’m not held by my own strength
‘Cause I’ve built my life on Jesus
He’s never let me down
He’s faithful in every season
So why would He fail now
Chorus 2 (x2)
He won’t He won’t
He won’t fail, He Won’
He won’t fail
Verse 1
Christ is my firm foundation
The rock on which I stand
When everything around me is shaken
I’ve never been more glad
That I put my faith in Jesus
‘Cause He’s never let me down
He’s faithful through generations
So why would He fail now
Chorus 2 (x2)
He won’t He won’t
He won’t fail
He won’t fail
Passage/Prayer (Slides) Mitch
A new king who did not know Joseph arose over Egypt. He to his people, “There are too many Israelites, they are becoming too numerous and powerful.”
“Let’s increasingly, yet subtly, mistreat and minimize them, so they won’t escape our land and join our enemies fighting against us.”
Taskmasters oppressed the Israelites with forced labor. Ironically, the more the they oppressed the Israelites, the more the Isrealites multiplied and spread. The Egyptians came to dread and fear the Israelites.
So then the Egyptians increased the hard servitude making the Israelites’ lives bitter in every manner of never ending back breaking work. The Egyptians were ruthless in all the tasks they piled onto the Israelites.
The king of Egypt said to Shiphrah and Puah, two of the Hebrew women who were midwives, “When you act as midwives to the Hebrew women and see the gender of the child, if it is a son, kill him, if it is a daughter, let her live.”
However, the midwives feared God and did not do as the king commanded, instead they let the boys live. When the king learned the boys were being born he summoned the midwives and said to them, “Why have you let the boys live?”
The midwives said, “Hebrew women are vigorous and give birth before we can get to them, they are not like Egyptian women.” Pharaoh believed the midwives who feared God and allowed them to continue to serve the Hebrew woman. The people multiplied and became very strong.
Exodus 1:8-20
Join me in the prayer of Jesus,
Our Father who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name. / Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven. / Give us this day our daily bread.
Forgive us our trespasses, while we forgive those who trespass against us.
And, lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen.
Music (Slides) Billy/Team
Eagle’s Wings CCLI Song # 2478168
Verse
Here I am waiting
Abide in me I pray
Here I am longing for You
Hide me in Your love
Bring me to my knees
May I know Jesus more and more
Chorus
Come live in me
All my life take over
Come breathe in me
And I will rise
On eagle’s wings
Show Me Your Ways CCLI Song # 1675024
Verse
Show me Your ways
That I may walk with You
Show me Your ways
I put my hope in You
Chorus
The cry of my heart
Is to love You more
To live with the touch
Of Your hand
Stronger each day
Show me Your ways
Message Rick (Slides)
Introduction
Evil – movies, television, question Judas…
19th century Evil Rulers (based on deaths under these rulers)
5. North Korea dictator, Kim Il-Sung,1949 till 1994, 3 million people killed.
4. Pol Pot, Khmer Rouge/Cambodia, 1970s, 25% of the citizens were killed.
3. Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, 1920s, millions killed
2. China, Mao Zedong, 50s-60s, over 50 million people.
1. German (and much of Europe) Chancellor and Führer Adolf Hitler, 30s-40s, 6 million Jews and other ‘undesirables’, add upwards of 60 million if you count all that died in Hitler’s pursuit of power. Hitler was democratically elected.
[Slide – leave screenshare up until noted otherwise] Philosopher John Stuart Mill said, “Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.”
[Slide] “He is not a good man who, without a protest, allows wrong to be committed in his name, and with the means which he helps to supply, because he will not trouble himself to use his mind on the subject.”
(Nineteenth century Philosopher John Stuart Mill, 1867 inaugural address at the University of St. Andrews, St Andrews, Scotland)
[Slide] Passage Speculations and Points
- [Slide] Remember and recognize – New King who, along with the Egyptian society, forgot who Joseph was and what Joseph did for Egypt. Not all of the sudden, the Isrealites who had been honored and respected guests had gradually gone from entitlement to despised.
- [Slide] Why did the The Israelites remain in Egypt so long after the famine in Cannan was over – which was the original reason they migrated. Perhaps they remained there out of comfort, giving themselves an opportunity to prosper, multiply, and form a coherent society, preserving their identity through the memory of their ancestors, the patriarchs and matriarchs, and their covenant relationship with God.
- [Slide] Besides his historical ignorance, what was Pharoah’s agenda against the Hebrews? The land inhabited by theIsrealites had become valuable land, fertile and geographically significant. Much like the Indigenous people in the Americas, those in power wanted to take this land away from the Isrealites like America did to the first Americans.
- [Slide] The heroes of the story, the heroes of this season of the life of the Hebrews, are 2 women who refused to participate in the ruler’s evil agenda and, they refused to be silent.
[Slide] In scripture, up until this story of these resistance fighters Shiphrah and Puah, women were largely depicted as Victims, Villians, and/or Voiceless. Examples – Eve in the garden giving fruit to Adam, Sarah abused and given away twice by her husband, or the disregard of Lot’s daughters by their father, and then uses the same abuse to target another.
[Slide] Also, in scripture, we see the female heroes who were the ones that proclaimed the hand of God even when the circumstances seemed to tell another story. Eve at the birth of Seth, Mary after the empty grave, and countless other woman who credited the hand of God in the midst of pain and misery.
[Slide] Rev. Lisle Gwynn Garrity sums up the story, ‘Pharaoh’s plan is a clever one. In an attempt to obliterate the Hebrews, he enlists midwives to pull a quick-handed maneuver by smothering any Hebrew baby boys seconds after birth so that their mothers will believe they are stillborn.’
[Slide] ‘Pharoah wrongly speculates that the more this happens, the more the Hebrew people will believe that their fertility—their life-force—is diminished. Progeny was everything, for the ability to procreate determined the survival, legacy, and strength of a tribe.’
[Slide] ‘Pharaoh doesn’t just want these newborn males dead, he wants to eradicate their identity, their resilience. But, instead, two gutsy women throw a wrench in his plans.’
[Slide] ‘Two midwives, Shiphrah and Puah who were midwives were assigned to the pregnant Hebrew pregnant women, most likely Hebrew themselves, are the unlikely heroes of this story.’
[Slide] ‘These two women are the first known instance of civil disobedience in recorded history, male or female. A resistance that took place because these two women decided to say ‘no’ to the Powerful Pharaoh, the Supreme King.’
[Slide] ‘These midwives, these lowest-of-the-low-status-women who were simply glorified servants, risked everything to say ‘no’ through their defiant actions. Through this simple but mighty act, they changed the course of history.’
I’m not sure I had ever truly noticed the story of resistance of these two women who said ‘no’ to evil. They took a monumental risk that could lead to their own loss and their own death.
[Slide] This was the first intentional resistance movement in history, all history not just womens’ history, a resistance that would later empower another group of woman to rescue another male baby. See, years after the Midwives resistance, the frustrated and raged filled Pharaoh, who was still seeing infant male babies, commanded all his people saying,
[Slide] “Every son that is born to the Hebrews you shall throw into the Nile, but you shall let every daughter live.” [leave this slide up until next slide]
[Slide] The daughter of Pharaoh, an unintentional resistance fighter, possibly unaware of Shiphrah and Puah the two pioneers of resistance and maybe even unaware of her father’s command, rescued a baby named Moses who had been sat in the Nile by two other resistance women, his mother and sister. This daughter was probably an unintentional resistance leader who did lead a resistance- but she surely had the heart of a warrior ready to stand against injustice, fear, and hatred.
[Slide] All of these women, along with Shiphrah and Puah, are the hands that said no to a power-hungry ruler and, instead, said ‘yes’ to the God of justice—to the God who transformed a story of massacre into one of liberation. The impact of this small group of marginalized humans who resist continues to send ripples out today.
[Slide] In a time when the progress made in our country and probably the world, progress for those who had been the targets of discriminating evil, in this time when that progress seems to be going backwards, these two women need to be an inspiration to us all.
[Slide] Why? Shiphrah and Puah feared God much more than they feared Pharoah.
[Slide] The story of Shiphrah and Puah calls on us to read scripture (OT and NT) from the perspective of the oppressed and marginalized. Not from the perspective of our own privilege and entitlement. Evangelicals failure to recognize this may be the reason the practice and reputation of Christianity is what it is (not just today but throughout history). It is also probably a major contributing factor to the evangelical embrace of unholy politics we have arrived at.
[Slide] Calls us to stand up in the face of hatred and bigotry and it calls on us to stand 4 the marginalized and dismissed.
[End Screen Share]
Statement from Friday’s session to those who say we love and support, ‘Will you stand up for us?’
For God so loves the world that…
Music (Slide) Billy/Team
Show Me Your Ways CCLI Song # 1675024
Verse
Show me Your ways
That I may walk with You
Show me Your ways
I put my hope in You
Chorus
The cry of my heart
Is to love You more
To live with the touch
Of Your hand
Stronger each day
Show me Your ways
Community (Slides) Rick
- Faces Of Our Faith, Summer Series,Go to ‘Sunday Passages’ on web page home page to be sent to the passages for series
- Next Sunday, 06.09.24, Faces of Our Faith -Daughters of Zelophehad, Numbers 27:1-11
- June Food and Games night TBA
Closing Responsive Reading Benediction (Slides) Rick
Leader: May we be a people who say no to the bullies and brutal agenda laden leaders of our world. May we be a people who say no through our actions, our opinions, and our words.
Response: For God so loves the world that he gave his only son.
Leader: May we be a people who do not withhold truth. May we be a people who are not silent in the face of injustice.
Response: For God so loves the world that he gave his only son.
Leader: May we be a people who discern the injustice in the actions of our leaders. May we be a people who hear the hatred in the voices of our community.
Response: For God so loves the world that he gave his only son.
Leader: May we be a people who seek to carry on the mission of Jesus. May our calling be the calling of Jesus, that all persons may have a full and abundant life.
Leader: For God so loves the world that he gave his only son.
Leader: May the love of God be the yoke we bear.
Response: For God is Love.
Closing Peace (Slides) Rick
[Slide] Leader: May the peace of the Lord go with you.
[Slide] Response: And also with you.
Closing Music Billy/Team
Firm Foundation (He Won’t) CCLI Song # 7188203
Verse 1
Christ is my firm foundation
The rock on which I stand
When everything around me is shaken
I’ve never been more glad
That I put my faith in Jesus
‘Cause He’s never let me down
He’s faithful through generations
So why would He fail now
Chorus 2 (x2)
He won’t He won’t
He won’t fail
He won’t fail
Order, Words, & Voices 