Now, when we come to look at these stories of people's lives in the Bible, it is a reminder to each one of us that character counts, ultimately, not just in this life, but in the life to come. When you go for your dinner or lunch today in a restaurant or a cafe, one of the things that often sits in the middle of the table is a little packet of red sauce. And on the red sauce, there's a name, Heinz, on the sauce. Heinz is a name that comes from a family of a man called Henry Heinz. who lived in the United States in the middle of the 19th century. It's not an English name, it's a German name. The Heinz family came from Germany, migrated to America, and Henry Heinz started a small business at that time, making horseradish, horseradish, sorry, selling horseradish. Unfortunately, because of a great economic turmoil that hit the nation, His business was wiped out and he was made bankrupt and many others also. And the laws of the nation at that time said that in such an event that all your debts were wiped out and you could restart again when the economic conditions were better and you wouldn't have to pay back all your debts. But Henry Hines grew up in a Christian home. He believed you pay back what you owe. He started a new business, which ultimately became the Heinz business that we know today. And as that business grew and flourished, he made sure the first thing he did was he paid back every penny of every single debt that he owed. And then he established his business on the same principles of honoring God and honoring man. And throughout his life, that's how he lived. And when he died, they read his will. And the first statement in his will said, I desire to set forth at the very beginning of this will as the most important item is my confession of faith. in Jesus Christ as my Savior." What a statement. Left a great fortune behind. Left a great business empire behind. But he wanted everybody to know the most important thing was Jesus Christ in his life. And Henry Hines was a man who believed that character and testimony were far more important than anything else in this world. Now, many of you have probably not heard of the name Shipra and Pua, these two women in Exodus chapter 1. They're not really famous for anything else than being midwives. The setting of the story that they grew up in is in ancient Egypt, and the context is this. For 400 years, the children of Israel had been down in Egypt. If you remember, Joseph went down to Egypt and then the family came down later. Joseph had been dead now for over 300 years. And when the children of Israel came down to Egypt, there was 70 of them with Jacob. But after four centuries of being in Egypt, the 70 had multiplied to the point that it had grown from 70, listen to the word, listen to the numbers, not to 7,000 or 70,000 or even 700,000, the number had grown to somewhere between 2 to 3 million Jews or Hebrews now living down in Egypt. I'm sure the birthday parties must have been very big for that family. And a new pharaoh had come to the throne. We believe according to history that the new pharaoh was not from the same line of pharaohs that Joseph had worked with. It was a different family, a different nation they were from. The word pharaoh or the title pharaoh was just like a title for king. So by four centuries after they had come down to Egypt, a completely new dynasty from a different place had taken over Egypt and we're told this new pharaoh didn't know Joseph, knew not Joseph, verse eight. And he looked and he saw this large ethnic minority, which had almost become a majority in the land of Egypt of Israelites or Hebrews. And he said to himself and to his fellow Egyptians, if we're not careful, These Hebrews are going to be bigger than us very soon. They're breeding so fast. There's so many of them. And if we let this go on the way it is, what's going to happen is if an enemy attacks us from without, it may well be that we have an enemy sitting here from within who will join forces with the external army and use it to overthrow us and seize all the wealth and power of Egypt. And Pharaoh decided he must do something. Verse 10 says, he says, come on, let us deal wisely, or shrewdly, lest they multiply. He says, they're so vast, the numbers of them. And he says, if we let this go on, they're just going to overwhelm us. Now, Pharaoh, at least was shrewd, or appears shrewd, because he knows that he just can't go in and just wipe them all out. For one thing, the economy of Egypt would collapse because you can't go in and just wipe out all of your, a huge chunk of your workforce. Remember, they've grown to two to three million. That means many of them are young, healthy, and they're hardworking, and they're wealthy. They're part of the economy. And to just go in and wipe them all out, That would be just as dangerous for the Egyptian economy and also dangerous because if their economy collapsed they could be attacked from without and the enemy would take advantage of it. So Pharaoh says this is a strategy we've got to do and he comes up with phase one of his strategy. He took the children of Israel. And we're told in verse 11, he did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens. It was a kind of pre-Nazi concentration camp, work camps. And Fellow's idea is this. Let's basically take away all their employment rights, all their legal rights, and let's just enslave them. And when they're slaves, we'll work them to death almost. We'll use them to build our economy and we'll build great buildings out of it. Of course, if you go to Egypt today, we have the relics, don't we, of the pyramids and all those great architecture. And probably many of them were built by the slave labor of the children of Israel, the Hebrews. And no doubt they paid them nothing for doing it. Pharaoh's thought in all of this is we'll intimidate them, we'll control them. Maybe he's even thinking they'll be so exhausted they won't be able to breed. Or they're so afraid they have no money they won't get married. But whatever his strategy was, it doesn't work. Because we're told, although the children of Israel were afflicted, verse 12, it says, the more they were afflicted, the more they multiplied. and grew. Wow. Didn't work. What does Pharaoh do next? Again, he has to be discreet because you just can't go in and wipe out two to three million people just like that for all kinds of reasons. Pharaoh comes up with another solution in verse 15. He calls two women into his midst. Now we have to assume in a nation the size of the Hebrew people at this time, two to three million, maybe slightly less, that these were not the only two midwives who worked helping women deliver babies. There must have been tens of thousands of babies born every day in the land of Egypt. But these two women were from the guild of midwives. They seemed to be the two leading midwives. Maybe they controlled all the other Hebrew midwives. who work for them or are under their supervision. And Pharaoh very discreetly calls these two in. Probably he's hoping to maybe bribe them, intimidate them as well. And he has a very cunning plan. And here, listen to his plan. It's a very shrewd one. He says to them, listen, when the Hebrew women are giving birth and they're in the agonies of delivery, As soon as you see the baby emerge, if it's a boy, discreetly kill it. That's what he says. If it's a girl, let it live. Now, why does he say let the girls live and the boys die? Well, I think for a number of reasons. The boys would have been the ones that would have been the greater threat, Pharaoh would have assumed. If there was a war between another nation and Egypt, the Hebrew young men could have joined in the battle against the Egyptians. So by wiping out a whole generation of Hebrew boys, young men, Pharaoh would very carefully neutralize that danger. But why let the women live, the girls? Why not just kill them all? Well, I think what his intention then was, he would let the girls live so that they could contribute to the economy because the thing would have to be stabilized. But then Pharaoh would take the girls and marry them off to Egyptian men, maybe a second or third wives, and force them to be almost slave wives. of Egyptian men. And of course over time what would happen is the children that would be born of them would be half Egyptian, half Hebrew, but because their father was Egyptian, they would be Egyptian, brought up in the Egyptian religion. And their mothers would be forced to do that. But it would be a slow gradual process of assimilation and wiping out really the Israelite race, the Hebrew race. down in Israel. It's cunning, isn't it? It's clever in a devilish way. Of course, behind Pharaoh is the devil at work because what the devil wanted to do was wipe out the Jewish race by this process because Satan knows if he could wipe out the Jewish race, he can wipe out the promises given that the Messiah would come through the Jewish race, the Lord Jesus Christ, the seed of the woman would come and destroy the power of the serpent. Salvation could not be realized through the Lord Jesus Christ as the Son of David. So Satan knows all this. It's part of his plot, working through Pharaoh. And it will not be the first time or the second time or the third time that this will occur throughout history, that the devil tries to wipe out the Jewish people. Now, of course, he can't wipe them out to block the Messiah coming the first time, because he's already come. But he can try to wipe them out to stop Messiah coming the second time. Because when Jesus returns, he will return firstly to the nation of Israel. We're told in the book of Revelation and in the Old Testament. Satan's trying to block that. So that's Pharaoh's strategy. And it seems a very clever strategy. Get the women. who are in charge of these slave women who are giving birth to discreetly kill all the boys. And you say, well, somebody would have seen through this somehow, surely. But for all we know, because they're all slaves, both male and female working, possibly Pharaoh at this time had ordered all the babies, once they're born, to be taken away to a central nursery or kindergarten and separated the mothers from the children. So it seemed a very clever strategy, a very cunning strategy. But something went wrong because we're told in verse 17 and again repeated in verse 21 that these two women, Shipra and Pua, feared God. Now what does it mean they feared God? Does it mean they're terrified of God? No, it doesn't mean that. The idea in the word feared here in this context is more to do with this. They respected God. They reverenced God. Yes, Pharaoh was great and powerful, but they knew someone who was greater than Pharaoh, someone who was infinitely more powerful than Pharaoh, and it was God. And they looked beyond Pharaoh, and behind Pharaoh they saw a greater king, a greater authority. And because they feared him, reverenced him, they knew that they had no need to fear Pharaoh and his command. And these midwives then refused to kill the boys. And Pharaoh discovered that this had happened. And he called these women in. Now, someone will ask the question, but if the king tells you to do something, it's his command, doesn't the Bible say you're to obey the authorities over you, the government, the king? And yes, it's true. The Bible does say in multiple passages that you and I have to obey the lawful authorities of the nation over us. Likewise, in the home, the Bible says you are to obey and submit to the authority of those like a father in the home, like a husband in the home, over the wife. That's what the Bible teaches. In the church, there are authorities. In the Board of Elders, you have to submit to the Board of Elders as a member. The Bible teaches that. You and I who are citizens of Singapore, or permanent residents, or whatever pass holders we are, we have a duty before God to submit to the authority of the government of this nation. We're not to speak evil of them, the Bible says. We're to pay our taxes on time. We're not to cheat. We're to be honest, to respect and reverence them. But all of these authorities, whether in the home, the church, the state, They are what we call delegated authorities. Their authority is delegated by the ultimate authority, God, to them. And here's the point now. What happens when the delegated authority, whether it's the government, the king, the church leaders, the parents, the husband, their command, their law, contradicts the ultimate authority, God. What do you do? It can happen. Do you obey the delegated authority over the command of the ultimate authority, God? And the Bible makes it crystal clear, many, many passages. No better passage than Acts chapter 5, verse 29, where the apostles make it crystal clear. When the delegated authority disobeys the ultimate authority, we ought to obey what? God rather than man. That's the principle. Only in that case, no other case. But when the delegated authority contradicts the ultimate authority, God, you have to obey God rather than man. no debate, no argument. And these two midwives, they are aware of this principle, that all authority ultimately comes from God. And God has commanded, thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not murder a child. And when Pharaoh tells them, discreetly kill the babies, the male babies, they say to themselves, no. God says, thou shalt not kill. The baby should not be put to death. And unfortunately for Pharaoh, the two women, Shipra and Pua, that he was dealing with that day were women of character, women who believed that God's law was greater than his law, who believed that obeying God was of far more importance than obeying Pharaoh. and they refused to do it. Now, they were very clever in handling this arrogant, proud man. They didn't look him in the eye and say, we're not going to do it. They were shrewder than that. They just didn't do it. They smiled at Pharaoh. Thank you. They went their way, and they just got on with their job. And then when Pharaoh called them in, he was aghast. Why am I seeing all these meal Hebrew babies being born and growing up in the nursery, what's going on? Thousands of them. And they said to Pharaoh, well, it's like this. Verse 19, because the Hebrew women are not as the Egyptian women. for they are lively." What does he mean? What do they mean? They're saying that the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian. The Egyptian women, they spend their times in the beauty salons, getting their nails done, pampered, soft, weak. But these Hebrew women, they're not like the Egyptian women. They're out working in these cities, lifting the stones. They work hard all day. They're tough, athletic. They eat sparsely. Their body is slim and athletic and energetic. And when it comes to give birth, Pharaoh, they say, unfortunately, by the time we get to the birth of the child, the boy is out before we can kill him. And then it's too late because everybody sees the baby is alive. That's the story they tell. Now, this actually may be true, by the way. what they said. God could have enabled these Hebrew women to give birth more easily and faster than the Egyptian women. It could well be true. It may not be a lie what they said. But that's the answer they give Pharaoh. Now, was God happy with what these women did? That they honored him over Pharaoh? That they refused to obey Pharaoh over his word, and the Bible makes it clear that he was. And isn't it a great irony? Pharaoh thought that the instrument that would bring about the destruction of the children of Israel, two women, ended up becoming the instrument that blessed the nation of Israel. Because notice what happens in verse 20. Therefore God dealt well with the midwives, and the people multiplied and waxed very mighty." Wow. Backfired again on Pharaoh. And God, to show his pleasure of what these two women had done, just ordinary women, midwives, The Bible says God dealt well with them. I think that means a number of things. The first thing it means, obviously, is he protected them from Pharaoh's anger. It was a very risky thing for them to do, to disobey the king's commandment. Pharaoh is not the type of guy you play the fool with. When he says A, you don't say, well, what about B? He doesn't take well to suggestions. He's a dictator. He's a ruthless tyrant. And we'll see later in the story, he just orders his people just to throw the babies into the river. That's the type of character he is. He's a kind of pre-Hitler before Hitler arrived. He's the Adolf Hitler of the Old Testament, this guy, Pharaoh. He's not somebody you play around with. Yet these women, they dared to defy the king's command because they wanted to honor God. And in doing so, God protected them. from the anger of the king, from the retribution of the king. Now, let me just say this in passing. It doesn't always happen this way. Sometimes when you do right and stand up for right, you end up losing your life. You end up paying a heavy price. But that's still part of God's protection. Because if you die as a martyr, that gives you a greater blessing. You just go straight to heaven anyway. But in this case, God chose to honor these two women who took this stand for him by protecting them from the retribution of Pharaoh. And then he does something else to show his pleasure with what they have done. We're told in verse 21, and it came to pass because the midwives feared God. See the connection? Because they feared God, because they did the right thing. It says that he, that's God, made them houses. Now this doesn't mean that God built them a big mansion on the Bukit Timah Road and gave them two maids to take care of it. It doesn't mean that at all. It's nothing to do with a physical building. What it means is God made them houses is this, that God gave them a family with a big testimony and reputation in the nation of Israel. He built them a name. Remember King David? He had a great family that came from his line. God gave him this great blessing of having this lineage, he told him, all the way to the Messiah. And God honors these two women who were in working with other women to give birth, helping other women to see families emerge, believers homes emerge through the childbirth. God says, I'm gonna bless these two women and their families are going to be great. And their legacy is going to be great. I wonder as the children of Israel went through the wilderness and into the promised land, there must have been families in that mix from Shipra and Pua. And they must have been saying, my great-great-grandmother was called Shipra or Pua. And God honored them because of what they did for him. But here's something just as significant. All through the centuries, God recorded their names. because he wants you and I to speak of them. You know, there are many names in history of people who achieved many things that are easily forgotten, isn't that right? Sometimes when we drive along in the car or go on the MRT or the bus, we go past all these street names in Singapore, don't we? And if I was to do a quiz with some of you today and say, well, who's this named after? 99% of the street names you'd say, oh, sorry, I don't know. I live in Clementi. Where's Clementi? Who is Clementi? Most people who live in Clementi have no idea. No idea. We have all these Chinese names, English names, Malay names in Singapore. And they're up on buildings. They're up on streets. And often the individuals were very significant people in their time. Very powerful people. Very wealthy people. Achieved, in many ways, great things. Scientifically, economically, militarily, politically. But here we are, 50, 100 years later, nobody even knows who they are. You have to almost look it up on the internet. Who is this Clementi guy? Never heard of him before. His name's all over, his name's over a whole section of Singapore. Nobody knows who he is. But God put the name of Shipra and Pua in the Bible, ordinary women who he used to do an extraordinary thing, save the lives of all the male children. of the nation of Israel. And here we are, 4,000 years later, 4,000, not 40, not 400, 4,000 years later, we are reading about not just the name but the achievements of these two women, Shipra and Pua in Singapore. in the 21st century, in a language that they didn't even speak, in a place that they'd never heard of, and were honoring their name and their legacy and their achievements. And God put it here to tell you and I, that's what he can do when you make a choice to do the right thing. Simple choice, obey the king or obey God, but make that simple choice and take the consequence of that choice and God can do great things through your life. You know, none of us remember who lived here 400 years ago. Right, nobody does. Never heard of the person. Never mind 4,000 years ago. Were Shipra and Pur were they wealthy women? No. You know, one of the sad things in Singapore is if you want to be a nurse in Singapore or a midwife in Singapore, it's almost considered a job that nobody wants to do. Sorry to say that. It shouldn't be that way, but it is, isn't it? If a son or a daughter comes to her father or mother in Singapore and says, well, I'm thinking of becoming a nurse, most parents say, well, OK. Have you feel something? It's true, isn't it? And our hospitals are full of foreign nurses because we can't even get any locals to be nurses, or very few of them willing to be nurses. It's not a significant job in most people's eyes. They're not wealthy, they're not prominent, these two women, in any great way. We never hear of them again in the Bible or in history. But God puts their names in the Bible for people to read all over the world down through the centuries, and not just read, but be encouraged, inspired, and blessed by their example. Now you know where I'm going to go with this. Maybe you're here today, and you say, I'm just a woman. I'm just, and we like to use that expression, just. You ever hear people say, I'm just a housewife. I'm just an admin worker. I'm just a maid. I'm just a factory worker. I'm just a taxi driver. I'm nothing. Well, there are two women here in the Bible. And they say to you, we are just midwives down in ancient Egypt, probably didn't get paid a penny for the work, slaves working for Pharaoh. But they'll say to you, it doesn't matter who you are, where you're from, if you make a choice to use your life to honor God, then God can do wonderful things through it. Now, how great was the impact of these two women? I tell you how great it was. Their actions literally changed the world. Because, humanly speaking, if it wasn't for Shipra and Pua obeying God, the children of Israel would have been wiped out. And if the children of Israel were wiped out and the race of the Jewish people was wiped out, there would be no Messiah. there would be no Savior. And if there's no Savior, here's the great reality. There's no forgiveness of sins. There's no salvation for you or for me. The way to heaven is closed forever for you and for me. So the actions of these two women that day when they said, we're going to obey God rather than man, even if he's a very powerful man, even though we're just ordinary people doing an ordinary job, midwives. The actions of these two women produced extraordinary results. There's an old expression that's said all over the world. The hand that rocks the cradle changes the world. It's not right. Touches the world. Never let anybody tell you that the little job that you do is nothing. The little role that you have in life is nothing. If God has given to you, it's not nothing, it's something. If God has appointed you to it, it's just as important as the appointment of God for a king to become a king or a CEO to become a CEO. It's just as important in God's eyes. And at the end of life, It doesn't matter what people think. They don't judge you. Only God does. Because at the end of the journey of life, and the journey comes to an end. Like every journey, life comes to an end. Even the longest of life comes to a point where it ends. At the end of the journey of life, every one of us in this room has to stand before God. And he alone is the judge. It's not he plus a group of your peers. And if your life pleases him, that's all that matters. That's all that matters. If Pharaoh's not happy with you, who cares? If the Pharaohs of this world are not happy with you, who cares? All that matters is that God is happy with you. You know what the great irony of this story is this? The name of Pharaoh is not mentioned. You notice that? Who is this Pharaoh guy? You don't know. We don't care. God has buried him as a footnote in history. Nobody knows. Nobody cares. But Shipra and Pua, their name echoes down the centuries. Honored by God because they honored God more than they honored anybody else. You know, let me finish by saying this. He who puts God first, he or she, will find God with them at the end. That's the most important thing. A little boy was asked to go and work in a shop. I say little boy, he was a teenager. One day the owner of the shop, the master of the shop, said to the boy, I have to go somewhere, I'm leaving you in charge. One of the customers came into the shop and he looked around and he saw that the owner was away. And he said to the boy this, he said, you must give me a cheaper price. because your master is not here. And the young boy was a Christian and he looked at the customer and he said, sir, my master is always here because my master is God. And I can't do anything to disturb him because he's always watching. I preached a sermon on this topic Shipra and Pua some years ago. In the message, I was looking through the notes of it yesterday, I told a story of a preacher who's now passed away, I believe, called Stuart Briscoe. Stuart Briscoe, before he became a pastor of a church in England, worked in a bank. He was very excited to get this new job in a bank. And his family were very pleased and thrilled that their son had got to this position, a very respectable position. But Stuart Briscoe was a Christian and he was determined that he would do the right thing ethically at all times because his testimony was more important than his job. One day the manager of the bank, as he passed into his office, said to Stuart Briscoe, if this person rings, and he named the person, tell them I'm not in. You know, you heard people say that, haven't you? And without any more conversation, the manager went straight into his office and closed the door. Well, you know what's going to happen. The phone rang. And Stuart Briscoe picked up the phone. That was his job. And the man said, I'm so-and-so, and I need to speak with the manager, Mr. So-and-so. Is he in? What to do? Do you tell the truth? Do you tell a lie? Mr. Briscoe says, yes, he is. I'll put your call right through now. And he put the call through to the manager. Well, as soon as the conversation was over, the door of the manager's office opened, and the manager stormed out in a rage. And he said to him, I told you, if this person calls to say, I'm not in. Stuart Briscoe very calmly said to the manager, but that would be a lie. And I'm a Christian, and I can't tell a lie. Well, the manager got even angrier. When he had finished hurling all of these vulgarities and abuse at Stuart Briscoe, Stuart Briscoe looked at him and he said, sir, it's like this. If I won't lie for you, then you'll know this first fact. I won't lie to you. And you can rely on me to be a faithful employee of this bank because you have proved from my action today that I am an honest man and I tell the truth at all times. Well, amazingly, the manager cooled down. And after that incident, he promoted Stuart Briscoe because he said, now I realize that this man has real character, real integrity. Later on, many years later, Stuart Briscoe was called by God to be a minister of the gospel, became a famous preacher. But he set a pattern for his life that day, that character counts, integrity counts, and obeying God in everything is everything in the life of a person. Please do so likewise, like Shipra and Pua. Let us pray. Lord, we thank Thee for this Thy word. A word that really speaks to us at the very practical level of life. That character counts. Choices have consequences. And our choices make us who we are. The world says when in Rome, do as Rome does. God says when in Rome, do what God wants you to do. Wherever you put us this week, may we be like Shipra and Pua. men and women of integrity, honesty, and character. May our word be truthful, may it be consistent, and may it be glorifying to God. For these things we ask in Jesus' precious name. Amen.