Out of Egypt: Introduction

Out of Egypt - Introduction

Exodus 1:1–14 · Out of Egypt, Week 1 · September 13, 2026

Preamble and Welcome
We're grateful for you and the gifts of God that you bring with you into this space. As a church, we want to live in God's unfolding story, being transformed by Jesus, learning to belong to each other across our differences, as God invites us into freedom, joy, and boundless generosity. We pray that whether this is your first time with us this morning, or you've been a part of our community for a while, that you will feel the invitation of the Holy Spirit to join in with our vision. If you are looking for a church home, we would love to become your church home, and I in particular, would love to become one of your pastors.

Surveying the Landscape
Today we launch our fall sermon series, Out of Egypt. From now until Advent, we will make our way through the book of Exodus, reading it alongside the book of Acts. Exodus is the story of God freeing a people from empire and teaching them what it means to trust God and live in freedom. Acts is the story of that same God pouring out the Holy Spirit and forming a new family that crosses borders and boundaries. We are reading these stories together because the story of a people leaving Egypt is also our story. We, too, are becoming the people of God.

Why tell the story of a people held in captivity? Because getting out of Egypt is one thing; getting Egypt out of you is the work of a lifetime. Exodus is certainly a story about the goodness of God confronting the powers of evil, but more than that, it is a story about God and God’s activity to liberate people and form them into a new kind of community. God does not simply bring Israel out of slavery. God must teach them how to live as free people.

Pharaoh, who is never named in the story, represents the powers of the empire: fear, greed, violence, material wealth, and scarcity. And everyone in this story is confronted with a choice: empire or God. Pharaoh has that choice. The midwives have that choice. Moses will have that choice. The Israelites will have that choice. And, of course, so do we. It is a choice we make again and again: Will we harden our hearts and follow the Pharaohs in our lives, or will we trust and follow the Creator God, the God of peace, freedom, abundance, and generosity?

So every week throughout this series, we will return to the same invitation: Name your Egypt. Trust the God who brings you out. And take another step toward becoming the people God is forming.

A Story in Progress...
Our journey begins in Exodus with a simple word, “And.” This is a prompt to us that this story in Exodus is a continuation of a story already in progress, a story that started in Genesis with “In the beginning...” “Be fruitful and multiply...” This is the story of God and humanity. As we make our way together, let us be reminded that our story is part of a story already in progress. “And...” tells the story of a God who is always present and is always at work. It reminds me of what Paul says in Philippians:

being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. [ Philippians 1:6 ]
By the time we arrive here in Exodus, the descendants of Abraham and Sarah, called out from among the people in Genesis 12, are now numerous and plentiful living in Egypt as refugees. I use this term because it is the most accurate way to describe why the descendants of Abraham and Sarah are living in a foreign land. They are in Egypt because of opportunity and security, which are the very reasons why most people flee their homelands. They arrived because of famine, they stayed because they found opportunity and security.

Now Joseph and all his brothers and all that generation died, but the Israelites were exceedingly fruitful; they multiplied greatly, increased in numbers and became so numerous that the land was filled with them. Then a new king, to whom Joseph meant nothing, came to power in Egypt. [ Exodus 1:6-8 ]
I want us to slow down over these first fourteen verses this morning, because what Pharaoh does here is not a single act of cruelty. It is a plan. It is calculated, methodical, and multi-faceted, and it unfolds in phases. If we can see the phases, we can see the plan. And if we can see the plan, we will recognize it when it shows up in our own place and time.

Phase One: Attack the Nation’s Memory (Exodus 1:6-8)
“A new king, to whom Joseph meant nothing.” That one line is the hinge of the whole chapter. Everything that follows depends on forgetting.

Remember who Joseph was to Egypt. Sold by his brothers, falsely accused, imprisoned, Joseph interpreted the dreams of Pharaoh’s servants and asked only one thing: don’t forget me. And then he was brought out of prison to interpret the dreams of Pharaoh himself, with such success that Pharaoh put him in charge of the plan to survive the coming famine. Joseph, a Hebrew, saved Egypt. Egypt is standing because of a refugee.

And now a king comes to power to whom Joseph meant nothing. The Hebrew says he did not know Joseph. Not that he never heard the name. He refused to know. He chose not to remember. Empire always begins by attacking memory, because a people who remember that the stranger saved them cannot be taught to fear the stranger.

This is exactly where Stephen starts when he is on trial for his life in Acts 7. Standing before the council, he retells this passage almost word for word:

“As the time drew near for God to fulfill his promise to Abraham, the number of our people in Egypt had greatly increased. Then ‘a new king, to whom Joseph meant nothing, came to power in Egypt.’” [ Acts 7:17-18 ]
Stephen tells this story to the religious leaders because he wants them to see that they have become the king who forgot. We will read Exodus alongside Acts all fall because the church that is born at Pentecost is a people trying to remember what Pharaoh worked so hard to forget.

Phase Two: Misrepresent the Hebrews to Exploit Social Divisions (Exodus 1:9-10)
Their growing presence appears to Pharaoh as a threat, not the intended blessing that God promised Abraham and Sarah that their descendants would be. So, Pharaoh acts in fear. Pharaoh implements a demonization campaign. He tells the Egyptians that the Hebrews don’t contribute much to Egyptian society. He’s already forgotten the history of how Joseph, a Hebrew, helped to save Egypt. Instead, Pharaoh uses dehumanizing language as the first step to get the people to support his plan of subjugation and control. He tells his people that the Hebrews don’t belong, they aren’t Egyptians, and when put to the test, they won’t be loyal instead “they will betray us, abandon us, and fight with our enemies.”

“Look,” he said to his people, “the Israelites have become far too numerous for us. Come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous and, if war breaks out, will join our enemies, fight against us and leave the country.” [ Exodus 1:9-10 ]
Notice the word “look.” Pharaoh is teaching his people how to see. Before he lays a hand on a single Hebrew, he trains the eyes of Egypt to see a neighbor as a threat. Nobody in that room had been betrayed by a Hebrew. Nobody had watched a Hebrew join an enemy army. It hadn’t happened. Pharaoh is not describing the present. He is describing a future he is afraid of, and asking the people to treat the people next door as if it had already happened.

Some of you will remember that back in January, at Epiphany, we sat with Herod. Herod is afraid because power, in his imagination, is always a zero-sum game. If there is a new king, then someone has to lose. If someone else rises, he must fall. And so his instinct is preemptive: take them out before they take you out. That is how his world works. That is Pharaoh’s world too. It is the oldest move empire has.

Phase Three: Enforce Division as Social Etiquette (Exodus 1:11-12)
So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh. [ Exodus 1:11 ]
Look at what they build. Store cities. Warehouses. Pharaoh is the first speaker in Scripture to declare there is not enough. This was a lie. There was always enough, even through the famines, but Pharaoh wanted everything, he wanted a monopoly on life. Pharaoh takes God’s abundance, hoards it for himself, and turns the people of God into slaves.

In spite of his wealth and power, Pharaoh actually believes in scarcity. Consider this, when Pharaoh was at the pinnacle of power, with endless resources and wealth, Pharaoh was endlessly anxious. He had almost all of the land. He had all of the grain in the world, yet he's afraid. He's afraid because he fears that creation won't produce sufficient food, which leads to his hoarding. So the slaves are put to work building bigger barns for grain Pharaoh will never eat.

And here is where I want you to hear the first note of hope in this story:

But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites. [ Exodus 1:12 ]
Notice, God has not said a word yet. God is not named anywhere in these fourteen verses. And yet “be fruitful and multiply,” the very first blessing spoken over humanity in Genesis, is still running underneath Pharaoh’s feet. Be fruitful and multiply is more than a command to have children and fill the earth. It is God unleashing the hidden potential in creation, and no store city can hold it. This is the “And.” God is present and at work before God is ever announced.

Acts tells the same story. Every time the church grows, the authorities get afraid. Peter and John preach, the number grows to about five thousand, and the priests and the captain of the temple guard are “greatly disturbed.” The apostles keep teaching, and the high priest and his associates are “filled with jealousy.” Growth among the people God is forming has always looked like a threat to the people who are hoarding.

Phase Four: Institutionalize the Caste System (Exodus 1:13-14)
Fear that does not work gets harsher. When the multiplying continues, Pharaoh makes the oppression permanent:

and worked them ruthlessly. They made their lives bitter with harsh labor in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their harsh labor the Egyptians used them ruthlessly. [ Exodus 1:13-14 ]
Pharaoh has to supervise the work, Pharaoh has to instruct the supervisors, the taskmasters, the slaves — they are all caught up in an endless cycle of production. In this view there is no rest, no rest for anyone. What Pharaoh fails to see is if there’s no rest for those who labor then there’s also no rest for him.

This slavery was no accident or plot device. Pharaoh does not know the name of the God of the Hebrews yet. In chapter 5 he will say so out loud: “Who is the Lord?” But you do not have to know God’s name to reject God’s vision. The enslavement of the Hebrews was intentional, and it was a rejection of the Creator God whether or not Pharaoh knew who he was rejecting. It was a rejection of God’s abundance and provision, and it was and is always sinful. God never intended for humanity to be slaves, and our willingness to allow slavery to exist in any form reveals our participation in an active rejection of God and God’s vision for humanity, which is centered in abundance and generosity.

God never had to be convinced that slavery was wrong, so God rejects Pharaoh’s vision of the world, a world of scarcity, a world of fear, a world of anxiety. God responds to Pharaoh by partnering with those under foot, with those who are marginalized, with those who are enslaved. This is a continuation of a story started in Genesis, finished in Jesus.

Remember how Paul, the New Testament church planter, frames it,

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. [ Galatians 5:1 ]
Look at the Fear
This calculated, methodical, and multi-faceted plan of Pharaoh reveals just how deep his fears are. Consider this, when Pharaoh was at the pinnacle of power, with endless resources and wealth, Pharaoh was endlessly anxious. He didn’t even trust his own gods to provide for him, let alone trusting the God of the Hebrews. Why is Pharaoh so fearful?

His fear is tied up in the future. That’s what anxiety is — it’s fear of the future. Pharaoh wasn’t afraid of losing his possessions, he was afraid the Hebrews would rebel and join his future enemies. Instead of treating them with kindness today, with partnership and generosity and peace, he chooses to enslave them. This is what fear manifested as anxiety does to us, it asks us to use a demonic imagination, creating a narrative that says I must participate and partner with evil today in order to prevent tomorrow’s evil. Look at the story. Pharaoh had a choice. Long before it’s said that Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, fear gripped Pharaoh, and directed his demonic action. Instead, God invites us to partner with the Holy Spirit to use our prophetic imagination, imagining a reality where we embodied the in-breaking kingdom of God, a kingdom that ushers in liberation, peace, healing, and jubilee, the year of the Lord’s favor.

Name Your Egypt
Now the text turns and looks at us.

Forget the ones who saved you. Teach the people to see their neighbor as a threat. Build the warehouses. Make it permanent. I am reading this from the good book, not the newspaper. But if it sounds like the newspaper, that is because Pharaoh’s plan has never gone out of print. The people who picked our food and built our cities and cared for our children and our parents are told they don’t belong, that they aren’t really us, that when put to the test they will betray us. It hasn’t happened. It is a future someone is afraid of. And a whole nation is being trained to say, “Look.”

And here is the harder word. The pharaohs are not only out there. There is a pharaoh of fear that tells you there is not enough. There is a pharaoh of scarcity that tells you to build a bigger barn. There is a pharaoh of exclusion that promises to keep you safe if you will just give it the people you are afraid of. Every one of them is anxious about a future that has not arrived, and every one of them asks you to do a little evil today to prevent tomorrow’s evil.

So this is the invitation, the one we will return to every week this fall. Name your Egypt. Say out loud what you are afraid of running out of, and who you have been taught to see as a threat. Trust the God who brings you out. Not the god of the store cities, but the Creator God who was already at work in verse 12 before anyone said God’s name, the God who makes a people multiply under the very feet of the empire. And take another step toward becoming the people God is forming.

Because here is what Pharaoh cannot see. God is not named in these fourteen verses, but God is not absent. God is in the “And.” God is in the multiplying. And next Sunday, Hannah will take us to the delivery stool, where God is finally named in this story, and God is named in the hands of two women who decided they were not afraid of Pharaoh.

Let us pray.

Creator God, you are not anxious. You are not afraid of the future. You have never once believed there is not enough. Forgive us for the store cities we have built, for the neighbors we have learned to see as threats, for the small evils we do today to guard against tomorrow. Name our Egypt for us, the fear that rules us, and then bring us out. Give us your prophetic imagination, that we might see the world the way it is, full, abundant, overflowing. And make us a people who remember the ones who saved us. We pray in the name of Jesus, whom you called out of Egypt. Amen.