I don't know where I heard this but apparently a number of years ago there was a period drama series on the BBC and it was about a group of nurse midwives working in the east end of London. in the 1950s and the early 1960s. It was called Call the Midwife. Some of you may have watched this. I've never had the pleasure of seeing that, but I can guess what it was all about. And so the subject before us tonight is Call the Midwives. That's the title of the message tonight. And you will soon see the reason why. Verse 15 of Exodus chapter 1, 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 was Puah. And he said, When you do the office of a midwife to the Hebrew woman, 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. But, the ominous but. But the midwives feared God, that's a good thing to do, they feared God, and did not as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the men children alive. 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? And the midwives said unto Pharaoh, because the Hebrew woman are not as the Egyptian woman, for they are lively, and are delivered ere the midwives come in unto them. Therefore God dealt well with the midwives, and the people multiplied and waxed very mightily. And it came to pass, because the midwives feared God, that he made them houses. I'll explain that in a minute. 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. And may the Lord be pleased to bless his word. Now we'll pray once again for help. Father, we do thank thee for the portion that is before us. We pray that our Bible study will be profitable. that we will be able to understand clearly what the portion is about and that it will be greatly blessed to our hearts and souls. We want to learn more every day from the scriptures. We want to see what the Lord has got to say to us each day. And so we cry to thee once more to send thy gracious Holy Spirit to lead us and to guide us. opening our understanding, opening our blinded eyes, unstopping our deaf ears and warming our cold hearts. Spirit of the living God, fall afresh in us. and bless us richly tonight. And we will be careful to give thee all of the praise, all of the honor, and all of the glory. For we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Call the midwives. Now, in the opening verses of the book of Exodus, we read of how God blessed the descendants of Jacob. In the opening part of the verse, they're called the children of Israel. That's, of course, Jacob's new name. And at the end, they are described as a household of Jacob. And the first thing that we note about the children of Israel is that they were preserved. They were a preserved people. Remember in the book of Genesis, the Lord said to Jacob, I want you to go down into Egypt, take your whole family there. I have made provision for you there in the time of famine. And now you can see in the opening five verses the list of names of those who entered into the land of Egypt. So these names, this family was preserved. The children of Israel were preserved. Then in addition we learn that they were a prosperous people for it says there in verse seven, the children of Israel were fruitful and increased abundantly. There's two things we know about them. They were preserved, and they were prosperous. But before we read much more, we discover that they became a persecuted people. And the reason for this is stated in verse 8. The new ruler, who was not an Egyptian, the Egyptians hadn't been conquered by a different people altogether. The new ruler, who knew not Joseph, saw their growth as a threat to national security. This was his fear, that if an enemy should attack us, that the children of Israel, because of the children of Israel, they would take sides with them and turn against us and fight against us. He was alarmed, therefore, because of their growth. And because of this, he issued three commands in a bid to rectify the situation. So in order to curb their growth and ensure that they wouldn't go to war against the Egyptians, he commanded the Egyptians to enslave them and set taskmasters over them, verses 11 through 14 deal with this issue. He also ordered the midwives to kill the baby boys born to a Hebrew woman, verses 15-21. You can see the way the chapters divide it. This is the way you should study the word. Look at each chapter, divide it into different sections, see what it's all about. That's how we come to understand what God is teaching us through his own precious, infallible word. Then in addition, in addition, he commanded all the people to throw every Hebrew boy into the River Nile, verse 22. So the Nile to the Egyptians was a god. So in a sense, they were making a sacrifice. unto their God and it so happened to be Jewish boys. Some things just never change. But the king did not reckon on God. God began to intervene on behalf of his people in verses 15 through 21 and we see one of the ways he worked to preserve his people. Call the midwives. God brought in the midwives. He had a work for them to do. Now, there are three simple things. I may get through it or I may not. But there are three simple things I want you to think about here. In the first place, there is the command that is diabolical. Verse 16. Look at what it says. And he said, when you do the office of a midwife to the Hebrew woman and see them upon the stools, if it be a son, then ye shall kill him. So Pharaoh's diabolical plan is unfolded in this verse. Do you see it? If his plan had succeeded, he would have wiped out the Hebrew people. Future generations of men would be dead, and the girls would eventually be married to Egyptian slaves and absorbed into the Egyptian race. But you know what Genesis 3 verse 15 is all about. It's all about the seed of promise. You know by now, being good Presbyterians, what Genesis 12 verses 1 and 3 are all about. The promise of God to Abraham that he would multiply his seed. that they would extend to all the earth and be a blessing to all of the nations of the world. So the promise of God made to Abraham was under threat at this particular time in the history of his people. Now killing the baby boys would weaken the Israelites. The birth rate would fall. Eventually this act of genocide would lead to the extinction of that race, serious times, dark times. Pharaoh wanted to kill all the boys but he could not kill the promise of God. Satan was behind the strategy of course, diabolical plan it was. He was a murderer from the beginning. This was an attempt to destroy the Jews and to keep the Messiah from being born. And later he would use Herod to try to do the same thing. He would try to slay the infant Jesus at the time of his birth. Matthew 2 verse 16 and so on. So some things just never change. Now the murderous plan of Pharaoh and the murderous plan of Herod and the murderous plan of Haman were all to exterminate, to annihilate the Jewish people. And we can still see this happening today. We also see in this chapter Satan's attempt to bring God's people into bondage. And that's what the devil seeks all the time with us. to lose our liberty and our freedom and our joy and to bring us into bondage. So he came to these midwives, he wanted them to conform to the worldly attitude towards God. He wanted them to side with him and implement his policy. Think about the Holocaust, 1941 through 1945. What happened then? Six million Jews were murdered in the concentration camps headed up by Nazi Germany. Think about the 7th of October, 2023. Hamas had a non-provoked attack upon the kibbutz and that particular function that was going on and hundreds were annihilated. And so all down through church history, this has been the way it has been. There's been this attempt by the devil to destroy the Jews and ultimately to destroy the coming Messiah and the Savior himself. Revelation chapter 12, and there are many mysterious things in Revelation 12, but we have a wonderful picture. It's the picture of a woman and maybe sometime I'll come and deal with this chapter. There are three characters in the chapter 12. There's the woman. Now, the woman represents the Jewish church, but I really think she represents the saints of God in both testaments, because the Jewish church gave the world the scriptures. The Jewish church gave the world the Messiah, the Savior, And so we can see Christ came forth of the Jewish nation under the image here of a woman, especially the Jewish church. And there stood before the woman, this great beast, this great dragon. That dragon is the devil. What was he standing there to do? To devour the child once it was born. And this actually did happen in the case of Mary. Now this woman is not Mary. But it certainly did happen in the case of the Virgin Mary, because once the child was born, the devil attacked. Pharaoh was inspired of the devil. It was a diabolical plan. And it's still going on in the world. And the attack is upon the people of God. It's going to get worse, you know. And we, as the people of God, need to prepare ourselves for difficult times in the days that lie ahead. In the second place, there's the courage that is displayed. So the plan has been announced, if you like. The courage is displayed. But the midwives feared God and did not, as the king of Egypt commanded, verse 17. That but marks the contrast. The king said one thing, but the midwives did the opposite. They refused to obey, and this is what they said. They said, no. We've heard that down through the years in this land. No, no, no. But that's what the woman did. That's what the midwives did. They said no, preferring to obey God. Now one author said, this is the first instance in the Bible of civil disobedience. Now it took courage for these midwives to stand up to the mighty king. It always takes courage to be a Christian, to be a true follower of the law. We understand that. This is something that we need to face up to now, today. They took a courageous stand. Remember what Joseph said. He said no to part of his wife when she tried to seduce him, Genesis 39. Joseph had high principles to live by. And if he had these high principles to live by, ought not we as the people of God in this day have similar high principles to live by? to keep us on this straight and narrow way. And by the way, this is the first mention of God in the book of Exodus. And it shows the right attitude that ought to be shown to him. They just seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. We're told here, the midwives feared God. We're told this twice. There's emphasis here, verse 17. And again, in verse 21. So when a word appears a few times, it's there for a reason. God is just not filling space in his book. He's got a reason for it. He's emphasizing this, that the fear of God. And the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom. That's what the Bible tells us. They revered God in doing, so they prevented the genocide of the children of Israel, which made the birth of Moses possible. Do you see that? Had things been allowed to go ahead, Moses would never have been born. Well, he was Moses. The Lord raised him up to be the liberator. Same with Christ. the liberator of his people. So we have this picture before us and the rest as they say is history. He did the right thing but it took courage. Now in this way God overruled Pharaoh's plans. Now it was a refusal to obey an evil law because of a higher good. Romans 13, you can read it for yourselves there, and those opening few verses. And Paul admonishes the Christian to obey civil authorities. We are obliged to do that. We're to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's. But verse 5 of Romans 12, 13 rather, reminds us that obedience must not violate our conscience. When the laws are contrary to the laws of God, we ought to obey God rather than men. Acts 5 verse 29, that makes that abundantly clear. That's the solution. So we have a responsibility to render unto the government the things that pertain to the government, pay the taxes and everything else. But when it comes to the point they're commanding us to do something that's contrary to our conscience in the sight of God, we have the right to say no. You think about Daniel. He's down there in Babylon, a teenager with his three colleagues. Pressure's on. You've got to conform. You've got to do certain things. So they changed their names, but they couldn't change the determination in their hearts. They said, we fear God. Put us to the test. And sure enough, God blessed them because they took that stone. The apostles in Acts 4 and 5 there, they're preaching the word. They're arrested. They're cast into prison. Don't you name his name again. Don't you preach this message again. But they did the same thing. They went to their own community. They prayed together. They worshiped the Lord. They gave him the glory for being able to suffer for him. They went back to preach, to preach Christ, to preach the word. I love that story of Nehemiah. Remember when he was threatened, you come down, come on down here, we want to have a chat with you. Come on down to a discussion with us. And Nehemiah said in chapter 5, 15, but so did not I. He didn't compromise. He didn't bow the knee. He didn't come down. He continued on with the work. And this is what he said. So did not I because of the fear of God. And we're told that Noah moved by fear. It caused him to do the right thing. The fear of God will cause us to do the right thing and be the people we ought to be for him. It's the fear of God. If the fear of God grips my heart, I'll bow humbly before Him. I will let Him have His own way in my life. I'll not fight Him. I'll not resist Him. I'll render submission to Him. I'll go through with God. If I love Him, if I am surrendered to Him, if I fear God's in my heart, I will do these things that bring praise to His name. The names of those who fear God and who refuse to conform are known to God. Now, we're told here about the name of one of them. She was called Shifra, which means beauty. I don't know whether she was a beautiful woman or not. I can't say for sure. But the name means beauty, or beautiful, or fair, or brightness. Maybe she was a good-looking woman. I don't know. Well, if the name is anything to go by, she was a good-looking woman. Pua means splendor or splendid. Now here we have a splendid testimony of a woman who feared God. What an example she sets. Now they're not mentioned again anywhere in the Bible, but it seems they were Hebrews because their names are Semitic. They weren't Egyptian names. And one gets the idea that they attended both the Hebrew and the Egyptian births because they were able to give Pharaoh a comparison in verse 19. They said, the Hebrew woman are not as the Egyptian woman, for they are lively and are delivered ere the midwives come. Now, some people say they lied. But you don't necessarily have to believe that, because they may have said, just don't be in a hurry. when you go to one of these homes where you're called to call the midwives but don't don't be in a hurry about it so that being the case then they would arrive late that would have saved anything else so don't jump to conclusions people do jump to conclusions and sometimes it's the wrong conclusion that reach and so we want to look at these people in the best firms who knows god knows but i know that's god blessed and The reverence for life sprung from the reverence of God. And those who do support abortion have no reverence for life because they have no reverence for God, that's it. That's the nail in the head. And these women refused to take the infant's life. Now why are only two names mentioned? Some think they were just two midwives. Maybe these were the only two who feared God or who really obeyed God. I don't know. I'm not convinced about that. Some suggest that there could have been 500 midwives and the two women were the chief ones. That sounds better to me. Now in Numbers chapter 146, when the Israelites left Egypt, there were 603,550 men over 20. Many of them were probably saved by the midwives who refused to kill them as babies. Now such a large number of men also indicated that the Midwives were organized, and perhaps there was a wide scale organization that helped save and hide the male babies. That sounds right to me, knowing the Jewish people, the way they get, and they stand side by side. I don't know for sure. I'm only throwing this out to you for your consideration. No matter what they did, the point is this. It's impressive. that the midwives were able to save so many babies and keep it a secret from Pharaoh. That's the amazing thing. How God overruled, how God worked at this time is unknown to us. But does it really matter? He did it, that's the point. We don't need to know everything. We have the proof in the pudding, as I say in this, what God did, and that satisfies me. That's enough for me, that's faith. William Gurnall said, we fear men so much because we fear God so little. Maybe that's true. It says they saved the men, children alive, verse 18. So the king's plan to kill all male babies would have met with success except for the intervention of God. God intervened. He providentially overruled the king's wicked plans and thus, preserved the messianic line. God's honor was at stake here, you see. He wasn't going to allow Pharaoh to get one over on them, not in your life. And this is the way God rules the world today, for his own glory, to accomplish his divine purposes, in spite of the works of the devil and the powers of evil. and the age in which we live. Now Exodus 1.22 describes another focused genocide targeting the seed of a woman. Yet God made provision for the Hebrews. In the case of Moses, God used a baby's cry to reach the heart of Pharaoh's daughter. The mother of Moses moved by fear, prepared the ark. And you have the child in the ark, that's a picture of the child of God trusting in Christ there. And remember what happened, I may have said this before and I'll say it again. His sister, Miriam, she stood watching over the ark. Here's a wonderful thought that came to me. When you're in Christ and the Ark of Salvation, you'll always have someone watching over you. And that person is Jesus Christ. You'll always have one watching over you. And so here's the baby in the Ark. God has preserved the child and Pharaoh's daughter's out washing, bathing with the rest of her handmaids and so on, her maids. And then she hears the cry for baby. God arrested her heart, you see that? And Moses was brought into the palace. He was educated. He had his education paid for by the king who sought to exterminate all the baby boys in Egypt at that time belonging to the Hebrews. God laughed at the whole thing. Do you not see it? God laughed at the whole idea. The man who was pioneering this great plan to eradicate and destroy the baby boys, he paid for the education of the man who had become the liberator of the people. who would destroy the Egyptians at the end of the day, in a sense. So God overruled, started with a cry for baby. Moses knew, had good lungs, knew what was to cry. It's not so good, you know, lying there at two o'clock in the morning with newborn babe, and next thing, oh, you hear the yell goes up, scares you in the middle of the night, but it saved this young child's life. It brought him into a place of safety, and the rest, as I've already said, is history. Ah, God preserved the child there floating in the basket. And if God did that in the past, can he not do it again? So he therefore used these two humble midwives to outwit this mighty Pharaoh. Only a few verses tell their story, but their courage makes them outstanding examples. They're needed to be a nation. There needed to be a nation called Israel, for the nation, as I said before, will give to the world the Holy Scriptures and the Messiah, the Son of God. If God be for us, who can be against us? So notice what precedes the story, the bondage of the people. What follows the story, the birth of the deliverer. So the people are in bondage in the beginning, before this, and at the end there's the birth of the Deliverer. Do we not have a picture here of us in our own saved days in bondage to sin, but God sent the Deliverer in the person of his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, who survived the plot of Herod. But through life, until he was 30 years of age, then he began this great mission culminating in the cross. And through him, we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins. And God preserved us until we didn't get to see it. He kept his hand upon us. Many a time, we could have been cut off and damned, but he preserved us. So we've looked at these two things. We've got to finish. The command that was diabolical, the courage that is displayed, and then finally, there's a climax that is described in verses 19 through 22. Notice what it says there in verse 19. Therefore God dealt well with the midwives. Verse 20 rather. He showed kindness to them, if you like. And because the midwives feared God, he made them houses. Verse 21, what does that mean? He made them houses. Did he build them a mansion down there on the banks of the river? No. He didn't build them that kind of house at all. So God blessed these two midwives for putting their own lives on the line to order to save the Jewish nation from extinction. So when it says he built them houses, what does it mean? He gave them families. We read in the Bible of the house of Levi. Really, it's like saying, well, it's the family of Levi. So he built them houses. He gave them families. He built them families. He gave them children. He provided households for them. Now, some scholars are of the opinion that midwives in Israel were always barren women. who, in order to find their place in a society where family values, where family was valued above all else, they were given the responsibility of helping other women bring life into the world. That sounds good to me in a way. And if this is true, it makes the fact that God gave them houses or posterity a reward for their faithfulness. And what was the reward, children? Children are a blessing to any family. They may have actually been the very midwives who attended the birth of Moses. Who can tell? And consequently saved his life. Now Moses was the one who wrote the book of Exodus. He gave this account. And it's probable that's the reason why he knew their names. Because his mother would have said, you see that woman there? She saved your life when you were a baby. She brought you into the world. She's Shipwreth. And there's Poole beside her there. Those two women. And he never forgot that. The two women who may have been responsible for delivering him. So because God blessed them, he gave them children. I wonder, did he give them girls? I wonder did he give them girls because the threat was still against the sons. Did he reward them by giving them girls? Or if he did give them sons, well, he could have done the same thing that he did with Moses. I don't know, we're not told that. It's a thought to think about anyway. Perhaps their children were all daughters. They had saved others. Now God gave them children of their own. This blessing shows how precious children are. He wanted them to have the very best. And no doubt that's the reason why the children of Israel continue to prosper and grow because of the work that these two house, these two midwives performed. Now I come to a close. Pharaoh wanted to cast the baby boys of the Hebrews into the Nile. What do you think of this? What did God do when the Egyptians pursued Israel after the exodus? He drowned the Egyptian boys, the soldiers of Pharaoh in the Red Sea. You reap whatsoever you sow. So it's just all in thought. But here were two women, God was pleased to bless them and use them, and he rewarded them for what they did for him. So there's three things. The command that is diabolical, still going on. The courage that is displayed, I suppose we could say for us today the courage that is demanded. And then the climax that is described, God bless them. Oh, that we might know his blessing as we seek to love for him in these days. Call of advice. May God be pleased to bless his word. Let's bow for prayer. And as always, keep our prayer short to the point. We need a pastor for the congregation, remember that. Brother Stephen has mentioned the Monday night meeting, Sunday school work, the young people. The ladies, of course, have their meetings as well. and the youth meeting here in the church Sunday night, and pray for me for the Lord's Day, and pray for the communion service that we might sense the presence of God with us, get a rise in Him, get a rise in everything else, get a rise in Christ. So we'll bow for prayer, we'll ask