Hebrews Lesson 187 February 18, 2010
NKJ Acts 4:12
"Nor is there salvation in any other, for there is no other name under
heaven given among men by which we must be saved."
We are in Hebrews 11. I will give
you a little introductory background as we get into the next section, which
focuses on the spiritual life of Moses, once again emphasizing the role of
faith in Moses’ spiritual life.
Back in verse 1 the writer said:
NKJ Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the
evidence of things not seen.
…indicating that there is a reality
(a spiritual reality) that is beyond the 5 senses that is not directly
perceivable by our mind or our physical senses and that we can only come to
know and come to understand when God tells us by way of His informing us. So
God then stands in the position of authority telling us and describing to us
things that we cannot come to know any other way other than by His revelation
(His disclosure) of that information. It is that information that He discloses
in His Word that is the critical information necessary to really be able to
properly interpret everything around us in creation; everything from history
and the meaning of history to the meaning of our own individual lives and the
role of our own individual lives within the plan of God so that faith then
meaning both the act of faith but including within that concept the content of
the faith, i.e. what is believed. We have evidence of the reality of a world
(an environment) that is not directly perceivable.
So we have emphasis on words such as
evidence, promise, things of that nature, which are threads that run throughout
this particular chapter because faith does not operate in a vacuum. Biblically
faith is always in a propositional statement by God.
Now that sounds kind of fancy like
it comes out of Philosophy 101; and it will and does because a proposition is a
technical term for a statement that can be proved to be true or false.
Questions are not propositions. What’s the temperature outside? You can’t prove
that to be true or false. That is a question. If I ask you to go into the
kitchen and get me a bottle of water, that cannot be proved to be true or
false. It is a request. So orders, requests, imperatival statements are not
propositions. Questions are not propositions. But declarative statements or
what the Greek would put in the indicative mood and what you and I learned in
high school would be just plain declarative statements (statements of fact) can
be proved to be true or false. You either believe it to be true or you believe
it to be false. If you say it is raining oil drops outside, you can believe
that to be true or believe that too be false. If you say that it is snowing
outside, then if it is August in Houston, you know that to be false that that
cannot happen. So you have these various propositions. Faith is always related
to a proposition of some sort.
That is why we refer to the Word of
God as propositional truth because it is revealing to us things that can be
demonstrated to be either true or false. They are to be believed. Sometimes
there is not much evidence of some of the propositions. Sometimes there is a
tremendous amount of evidence related to the propositions of truths that are
revealed in God’s Word; and we are to believe them.
The focus of the belief that we see
in the Old Testament related to Noah, related to Adam, to Abel, to Noah, to
Abraham, to Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses – that God gave revelation to
each one of them. But it developed over time. That’s what we call progressive
revelation.
So far in this little introduction
today I’ve given you several terms to define which are all at the very core of
understanding basic doctrines about inspiration, infallibility of the Bible; what
theologians call bibliology. So we have progressive revelation.
Progressive revelation is the idea
that God doesn’t just dump everything He wants people to know at the same time,
that there is a progression of information given and that each individual in
terms of the time in which they live is responsible for the amount of
revelation that they’ve been given to that point so that Adam was given a set
amount of information. There was a little more information available to his son
Abel. There was a certain amount of information more available to Noah. There’s
even more information available to Abraham; and there’s even more information
available to Moses. That’s the whole idea of progressive revelation.
With revelation comes at different
times requirements that God sets forth for man. These are often stated as
mandates. The major changes occur with the introduction of covenants and a
covenant change. For example there is the initial creation covenant that God
made with Adam in Genesis 1:26-27. Genesis 2:17 would be part of that: not eating
of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil.
Then there’s failure. Man failed to
live up to and obey the revelation that was given to him in terms of violating
the prohibition. Now there’s going to be a change. There’s modification of
revelation that occurs in Genesis 3. Now new information is brought forth that
because of sin there are consequences that change the nature of reality, the
nature of creation. The serpent is going to crawl on his belly. There are going
to be certain changes in relation to the biology, reproduction parts of the
woman and the man, different changes in relationship to how they relate to each
other. The woman is going to desire to control the man; the man is going to
want to rule over the woman, which is the beginning of the basic marital
conflict that can only ultimately be resolved through sanctification. Then you
have the problem of the thorns and thistles and physical death and all of these
other things that mean that man has to earn his living by the sweat of the brow.
They are given new information about
sacrifices. Then as time goes by man rejects that and God makes a statement
that the thoughts of man's heart are evil continuously and so there is the
judgment of the worldwide flood under Noah because of the invasion of the sons
of god and the daughters of men. All those factors there bring about the Noahic
flood.
Then, there’s new information given.
Always new information means new requirements, new expectations, new tests, and
new responsibilities; and man fails.
We come up to Abraham. Abraham is
given more information. Now God is going to specifically relate to the entire
human race through Abraham and through his descendents: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob
and Joseph. We have the Abrahamic Covenant and the focus on the 3 provisions of
the Abrahamic Covenant: land, seed and blessing. That is the promise of
God.
What we have seen in our studies
since we got into Abraham in verse 8 down through Joseph in verse 22 is the
focus on this promise that they never saw fulfilled in their lifetime. In their
living life on the planet, they came under various measures of adversity and
testing. They failed at times; they succeeded at times. They trusted God at
unique and significant times in their life. For those times when they trusted
God in light of this unfulfilled promise that was still far off in the distance
and even though they never saw it in their lifetime; they were steadfast. They
never gave up. They persevered. They endured; and they didn't give up because
it got hard or because they became weary or became it was tough.
Now that application will come into
play in the next chapter; but in this chapter the writer is going through
evidence after evidence after evidence through all these key people in the Old
Testament and what underlies all this is this key doctrine of progressive revelation
that each one is responsible for the amount of revelation given to their
generation to fulfill the responsibility God gave to them in terms of their
dispensation. So dispensational truth really undergirds. It’s the thread that runs through this
whole chapter that is not as obvious as you would think it would be. But there is the emphasis on not
growing weary, which is really driven home when we get down into the middle
part of the next chapter.
Now we come to the next key person
in line, which is Moses. What lies behind this and the question we ought to ask
initially is: what's the promise that Moses is focusing on? When we get into
this section from verse 23 down to 29, what is the promise? What was the
promise that was the focus of the last section on dealing with Abraham, Isaac,
Jacob and Joseph? It’s the Abrahamic Covenant: land, seed and blessing. Guess
what. It really isn't going to change much. It's still within that same basic
framework and in Genesis 15:13-14 God in this chapter where He officially cut
the covenant He officially entered into the one-sided covenant with Abraham.
It’s one-sided because typically in the ancient world when they would sign a
contract rather than calling for the local authority to come and validate their
signature to make sure that everything was right and get the lawyers involved
and everything else; what they would do is offer sacrifices. They would split
the animals in two and then the two parties to the contract would walk between
the two halves of the sacrifice indicating that they are both bound to the
point of death to the covenant they were entering into.
But when God in Genesis 15 has
Abraham cut the animal (sacrifice the animals) and lay them out; God causes a
deep sleep to fall on Abraham. God alone (signified by a torch moving between
the animals) moves between the animals indicating that He alone is bound by the
covenant. Abraham is not. God is making this is an unconditional permanent
covenant with Abraham and his descendants.
Well, as part of that covenant He
warns Abraham that he will not always live in the land. In fact there's going
to come a time soon in terms of just a few generations when his descendants
will be out of the land.
NKJ Genesis 15:13 Then He said to Abram: "Know certainly that your
descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and will serve
them, and they will afflict them four hundred years.
Now it's really easy to count up to
400 unless you put billion or trillion behind it and then nobody can figure out
how much it means; but it just a simple 400 years. You can count that up. By
the time Moses is born it's easy for his parents and that generation to be able
to count how many years it has been since Jacob moved the family with 70 people
down from Canaan to Egypt. So they can count up 400 years.
They’re saying, “Hmm, it's getting
pretty close.”
They’re about 320 years from the 400
so they would know that we're approaching this and we're going to be delivered
and whoever's going to deliver us is going to be born sometime soon. Remember
Moses’ life breaks down very easily into three 40 year segments: 40 years in
Egypt, 40 years with his father-in-law in Midian and then 40 years wandering in
the wilderness. You have the first 40 years he’s still functioning in Pharaoh’s
court. Then in the second 40 years he's out in the desert with the sheep
learning a few things that God has to teach them about real leadership in terms
of being in obscurity and learning humility and authority orientation. Then
when he's ready God brings him back to Egypt. So 80 years before the Exodus (80
years before those 400 years over with) is when Moses was born. So that’s why I
said 320 years.
So God prophesied and made it clear
that there would be 400 years when they were out of the land.
He went on to say in verse 14:
NKJ Genesis 15:14 "And also the nation whom they serve I will
judge; afterward they shall come out with great possessions.
The Israelites knew that as they
were in servitude and had become enslaved to the Egyptians that God has
promised to judge the Egyptians and that they would come out as the promise
says with great possessions. They can anticipate that.
That is the promise that they’re
latching on to in terms of the key focal point of the faith rest drill in their
life. Every morning when they're getting up and they have to go out and work as
slaves for the Egyptians, there is a promise from God that this is temporary
that they're going to go back to the land and when they go back to the land
they're going to have great possessions. That is the backdrop for understanding
the faith operation of Moses’ parents in verse 23 and Moses in verses 24 down
to 29.
So let me just give you a breakdown
of what we see here. There are 5 events mentioned in Hebrews 11. First of all
in 11:23 the focus is on the faith of his parents.
NKJ Hebrews 11:23 By faith Moses, when he was born, was hidden
… passive verb. Moses isn’t the one
exercising faith. He didn't have anything to do with being hidden. He received
the action of that. It was his parents' faith.
three months by
his parents, because they saw he was a
beautiful child;
That is an interesting word in that
Greek; but it’s just a translation of the word that is used back there in the
Hebrew. It means that he was exceptional in his appearance. Even as an infant
there was something physically distinct about him that made him stand out. They
knew that there was something special about this child.
and they were
not afraid of the king's command.
They’re not afraid because they're
trusting in God.
We have the birth of Moses in verse
23 and then in verses 24 to 26; again, one whole sentence. This now speaks of
Moses’ faith. Moses got some doctrine somewhere and before he departed from the
court of Pharaoh, not like the movie. After you read this section, go back and
read what Stephen says about Moses in Acts 7. Then go back to the book of
Exodus and read the first 25 chapters of Exodus. Read that about 8 or 10 times,
make some notes, write down the chronology, identify who the key people are and
what names they are given in the Bible, and then give yourself a little test
and watch the Ten Commandments. It’s
not long until Easter so you can read that section of Scripture 15, 20 or 30
times between now and Easter. Then typically at Easter they’ll show the Ten Commandments; and you can watch it
and give yourself a little test and see how many errors you can find in the
film. If you find less than 30 discrepancies between the film and the Bible;
then you didn't read very well. There are a lot of little distinctions and one
of these is that it seems in the film Moses surprisingly discovers that he is
not the physical child of the pharaoh’s daughter who he thought was his mother,
but he is actually a Hebrew. But
the indication from this section is that he knew that all along and that before
he comes to that point of making a decision as to which way he's going to go,
he has some real doctrine in his soul that's the basis for that decision. He
knows what the significance and the consequence of that decision is and what
the real spiritual issues are, because verse 25 says:
NKJ Hebrews 11:25 choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people
of God
He understands they are the people
of God that there is a destiny for those people and that it would also mean
that he understands who God is and why that's important.
than to enjoy
the passing pleasures of sin,
NKJ Hebrews 11:26 esteeming the reproach of Christ
Wait a minute. I didn’t think Christ
was mentioned in the Old Testament. Hmm...he had a pretty good understanding of
the Messianic promise.
greater riches
than the treasures in Egypt; for he looked to the reward.
He’s doing the same thing that
Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and Joseph did. He’s doing the same thing that Adam and
Abel and Enoch and Noah did. He sees a future fulfillment that's not going to
be realized even in his own life. Yet that is more real to him than the
circumstances of his present condition. He considered the ultimate future
reward he would receive from the Lord a greater treasure than all of the
treasures that he had.
As the son of a pharaoh there are
very few people in this life who’ve had the power and the privileges and the
prestige and the education and the treasure that Moses had. I mean Bill Gates
doesn't even comprehend what this is. You cannot name 5 political leaders who
had the kind of power in combination that the pharaoh had. He not only had
power; he had the wealth. He not only had the power and the wealth, at this
time the pharaoh is god and he owns all the land (It was an early form of
socialism) and all the means of production in Egypt. It all belongs to the
pharaoh. People are just living there and paying property tax so to speak. The
god-king of the pharaoh was unlike anything we could ever imagine in our world.
We've never seen anything like this. He has it all and he turns his back on it
because the reality of the reward of God it's more concrete to him than all of
this that he has around him.
If you watched the movie that helps
you to get a little bit of a physical grasp (an empirical grasp) of what it
must've been like. And he walked away from it, not simply by mistake, not
simply because he got angry, and he kills the overseer, and he suddenly
discovered to be a Hebrew which is how the movie portrays it: that this shocks
everybody in the court and shocks everybody in the pharaoh’s household, so he
has to be banished. That is not how it happened. It is a choice he made that he wasn't that the victim of
something. He wasn't mistreated and kicked out. He made the choice to leave.
That is a phenomenal decision that can only come from somebody who has already
learned a certain amount of doctrine and is applying it.
Then the third event that is
emphasized is in verse 27.
NKJ Hebrews 11:27 By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of
the king;
Hitler, Stalin, Saddam Hussein or
Ahmadinejad - all of these are just would be 10-horned dictators who just in
their wildest dreams they think would like to have the power the pharaoh had. I
mean, if there is any historical figure on earth to be really afraid of because
of the real power they wielded, it would be the pharaoh. Yet, Moses as a
relaxed mental attitude; and he's not afraid of the wrath of the king because
he knows that the king serves at God’s pleasure.
for he endured
as seeing Him who is invisible.
Notice the irony of those words. He
sees the One who was invisible. We know that his seeing the One who's invisible
isn’t a physical site; but it is a mental perception of the One who is
invisible.
Then the 4th event
relates to the Passover.
NKJ Hebrews 11:28 By faith he kept the Passover and the sprinkling of
blood, lest he who destroyed the firstborn should touch them.
That has to do with the death of the
firstborn as God came to take a life of all the firstborn in Egypt. No Jews
died, only firstborn Egyptians did.
Then the final event is the event of
the Red Sea, passing through the Red Sea on dry land where, instead, the
Egyptians were drowned.
So that's the outline view of these
5 events that are used as illustrations in verses 23 to 29.
In the background we have to
understand just a few things related to the Exodus. I don’t want to belabor
these points, but there are things that need to be addressed and questions
consistently come up related to these. Let’s just take it one verse at a time
and work our way through this.
NKJ Hebrews 11:23 By faith Moses, when he was born, was hidden three
months by his parents, because they saw he
was a beautiful child; and they were not afraid of the king's command.
Let’s turn away from Hebrews 11 and
go to a couple of corroborating passages on our way back to Exodus 2. The first
place we're going to stop on our little time travel back through history is in
the 7th chapter of Acts. Now the 7th chapter of Acts
gives us a tremendous example of an early church sermon. This is Stephen, one
of the original deacons in the church that were chosen to assist the apostles
in Jerusalem. As a famine occurred they were scattered, but Stephen was still
in Jerusalem. He is ministering there, and he is brought before the high priest
because of his stand that Jesus is the Messiah. He is being interrogated before
the high priest and the Sanhedrin. He addresses them. It shows just how cool,
calm and relaxed he is.
Now what's important to understand
about this particular address is how he uses Old Testament events and weaves
them together in order to make his point.
What we see here if you trace it, if you read this is he goes to certain
key events that happened historically in the Old Testament, and these are the
key events that provide the major pegs on which biblical history and doctrine
turn.
When Charlie Clough started his
Framework series he recognized that people just don't have this biblical
framework. It's not just Stephen’s speech but in the life of Christ and various
references that Paul makes, there are certain events that occurred in the Old
Testament that are referred to again and again and again because in those
events when they historically happened that is when certain key doctrines were
revealed in and through those events. Doctrine wasn’t just revealed in an
abstract 20-point doctrine where God said, “Okay Noah. Come on over here. Let’s
sit down for a minute and let Me give you 20 points on the doctrine of the
covenant I’m going to enter into with you.”
That’s not how it happened. Doctrine
wasn't separated from historical situations and circumstances. You can’t tear
them apart. If you deny the historicity of the Bible, you have to deny the
doctrine.
These people come along today and
say, “Well, I believe what the Bible teaches; but I don’t believe that it
happened like that.”
Well, they have the IQ of a grain of
sand because in the Bible all the doctrines everything that is taught is
anchored in a real time historical event. If the history didn't happen,
doctrine is irrelevant. If you don't have a historic fall with two individuals
(Adam and Eve) then all the Bible falls apart because the Lord Jesus Christ
affirms that as a foundation for sin. Paul affirms their existence in the
reality of the fall as a foundation for understanding justification by faith
and reconciliation and everything that happened on the cross. If you deny the
historicity of Genesis 2 and 3, you have to throw out the cross. If you deny
creation in Genesis 1, you have to throw out the rest of the Bible.
A literal 24 hour, 6 consecutive day
creation week is not optional because that is the foundation for everything
else the Scripture. Jesus clearly affirms it. Paul affirms it and uses it to teach doctrine. So if the
doctrine that they teach on the basis of those historical events; if that
doctrine is taught on the basis of those historical events and those historical
events are false, then the doctrine is irrelevant. It doesn't fit.
So I encourage you some time to read
through Acts 7 as to the events that Stephen is going to emphasize. Isn’t it
interesting that he goes through the same thing. He starts with dealing with
Abraham and the patriarchs and then they move of the patriarchs down to Egypt
in verses 9-16 and that they become enslaved.
Then in verse 17 we read:
NKJ Acts 7:17 "But
when the time of the promise drew near which God had sworn to Abraham, the
people grew and multiplied in Egypt
That’s what we started with, Genesis
15:13-14, the promise God made Abraham that they would only be in Egypt 400
years.
NKJ Acts 7:18 "till another king arose who did not know Joseph.
When Joseph and his brothers moved
down, they were under one regime in Egypt's history that had gratitude. But
there was another group of foreigners that came in not long after that after
the brothers all died. They came out of the area of southern Canaan somewhere
in the Middle East called the Hyksos people. The Hyksos people were hated by
the Egyptians and they dominated Egypt for about 100 years or so. They were
eventually thrown off and when they were thrown off a new dynasty (Egyptian
dynasty) came to power. This was the eighteenth dynasty. The first pharaoh in
the 18th dynasty we’ll see in a minute was named Ahmoses or Ahmose.
Hear the ending? Sounds just like Moses, doesn’t it? It is an Egyptian name and
so a lot of the pharaohs had that “mos” as part of their name just like we have
people named Johnson and Williamson and that “son” is a very similar idea to that
part of the name “mos.” Moses was probably not his full name. It was probably
part of his name. Or it might have even been sort of a nickname that was given
to him as opposed to the full name because just like if you examine someone
like Prince Charles in England he has a lengthy list of names that were given
to him; but he's just know as Prince Charles. That is only one of his several
names.
Stephen says:
NKJ Acts 7:17 " But when the time of the promise drew near which God had sworn
to Abraham, the people grew and multiplied in Egypt
NKJ Acts 7:18 "till another king arose who did not know Joseph.
NKJ Acts 7:19 "This man dealt treacherously with our people, and oppressed our
forefathers, making them expose their babies, so that they might not live.
Now that's a different piece of
information than you get in Exodus 1. In Exodus 1 the midwives are directed to
kill the male children. But this adds the idea that the people were to expose
their children; just to take the male infants and leave them out to starve to
death and die.
NKJ Acts 7:20 "At this time Moses was born,
…right in the midst of all of that
happening.
and was well
pleasing to God; and he was brought up in his father's house for three months.
Again it's that 3-month period that he is there with his
mother.
NKJ Acts 7:21 "But when he was set out, Pharaoh's daughter took him away and
brought him up as her own son.
This is the whole story about Moses
being put out on the river and pharaoh’s daughter discovering him.
NKJ Acts 7:22
"And Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty
in words and deeds.
He is exceptionally well educated.
He had all of the best tutors and the best minds in Egypt who were teaching him
in all of the various academic arts of military skills as well as architectural
design, trigonometry, geometry. They couldn't build the pyramids as they did
without a knowledge of these mathematical skills, like trigonometry and
geometry. We think they came along later. I believe that they were still being
remembered from the pre-flood period, that that memory eventually got lost and
then rediscovered later under the Greeks and later Egyptians and others. But at
this stage he is taught all of this. He had a phenomenal education.
We read in verse 23:
NKJ Acts 7:23 "Now when he was forty years old, it came into his heart
That is, his mind.
to visit his
brethren, the children of Israel.
NKJ Acts 7:24 "And seeing one of them suffer
wrong, he defended and avenged him who was oppressed, and struck down the
Egyptian.
NKJ Acts 7:25 "For he supposed that his brethren would have understood that God
would deliver them by his hand, but they did not understand.
That tells us that he had some sense
(some realization) of his destiny that the reason that God has called him at
that point. Now he’s trying to do it in his own flesh. He hasn’t matured enough
to be able to do it in the power of God; but it shows that he has some doctrine
at this point and has the sense of God's personal plan for his life.
We'll leave Acts 7 there and go all the
way back to Exodus 2. There are 2 questions that always come up whenever you
study Exodus. These are questions that come up again and again and again. The
first question is: when did this happen? What is the date of the Exodus event?
How can we date it? The second question that comes up, that is then sought to
be answered after the first one, is: who was the pharaoh of the Exodus? Who was
that? Was it Yul Brenner? Ramsey
II? Or was it somebody else? Was it Amenhotep II? Was it Thutmose III? Was it
somebody else, somebody we’ve never heard about? Somebody in one of the
intermediate periods that is not really well known and there's no historical
data because there are certain periods of Egyptian history where there's very
little information left for us to understand.
The circumstance that we see is that
this pharaoh that did not know Joseph, had no respect for the Hebrews, hated
the Hebrews because the Egyptians hated the Hebrews more than any Mississippi
Ku Klux Klan member ever hated a black person. I hope that will put that in
context. I mean the prejudice and hatred (the racial hatred) that Egyptians had
for Semites was unbelievable. They wouldn't even sit down and eat in the same
room with them. They did not want to do anything with them at all in any way,
shape or form. Yet during this time God has blessed them; that is, blessed the
Hebrews so much that they have multiplied. They’ve had a very low infant
mortality rate; and they have grown in abundance.
Back in verse 7 of chapter 1we’re
told:
NKJ Exodus 1:7 But the children of Israel were fruitful and increased abundantly,
multiplied and grew exceedingly mighty; and the land was filled with them.
They started with Jacob who came
down from Canaan with approximately 70 people. Four hundred years later, they
had 2 ½ to 3 million people. That is a healthy birthrate. The women were having
lots of children. We live in a
generation now where if you have 3 children it just kind of an aberration. If
you have 6 or 7, it’s thought to be strange. When I was in my first church
there were several people who were in their 80’s who were babies in families of
17 or 20 children. So there are generations before us who had more than just
1.5 children. The Jews had (the Hebrews had) had a tremendous number of
children. They were healthy. They
had a low infant mortality rate and as a result they had grown exponentially.
The normal lifespan was between 100
and 130 years of age. So you have at least two more generations living at the same
time than we do today. That would just explode the population. That scared the
Egyptians to death because it was like having an enemy within your country that
was another ethnic group with another culture; and they were threatening the
very culture and existence of the Egyptian people. People today don't often
recognize now how that happens. The French recognized it some years ago and
quit letting citizenship be determined simply by being born in France because
so many Muslims had moved to and immigrated to France that they were being born
there and being given French citizenship. They knew that if that continued then
they would lose all of French identity. So they stopped that. Other nations
haven’t been quite as wise. Other European nations are beginning to wake up and
do the same kind of thing; otherwise the will lose their historic ethnic
identity. Germany won’t look like Germans any more and Danes won’t look like
Danish anymore and the Norwegians won’t look like Norwegians any more because
of the huge influx of Middle Eastern Arabs into their nations.
So in order to exercise a little
population control:
NKJ Exodus 1:22 So Pharaoh commanded all his people, saying, "Every
son who is born you shall cast into the river, and every daughter you shall
save alive."
All of the male children were to be
destroyed by drowning in the river and then every daughter saved. This is an
attempt to destroy and wipe out the Hebrews.
But the question is: who’s this
pharaoh? To understand this we have to have a timeline (go through a little
chronology) and we're going to build this backward. We know pretty well when
the cross occurred. It was approximately 33 AD. There are some who say it was
30. I think the best date is 33. So now we're going to build our timeline going
backwards and extending it back in time.
We'll put a marker in here for just
after 1000 BC, about the time that David was king. About 970, David died and
Solomon took the throne. In 966 BC - we can date this. It’s fairly solid. It's
not completely solid though. I’ll have some caveats a little later on. But what
I'm presenting to you is pretty much the standard accepted chronology at this
point. There are a few people (conservatives) who believe the numbers in the
Bible who are challenging this because as I’ll show in just a minute after
about 700 BC there's just not as much certainty as we have for events after 700
BC. But this is the standard accepted chronology that you'll have in most of
your study Bibles or any other commentaries you read by conservatives who
believe the numbers in the Bible are accurate.
Solomon dedicates the temple in 966
BC and we're told that it was 480 years after the Exodus in 1 Kings 6:1 - states
it very clearly, 480 years. Unless you doubt the Bible - liberals will come
along and say, “Well, you divide 480 by 40 you get 12 generations and so this is
sort of the perfect number. Yet generations were actually only 25 years so it
really wasn’t that long. That’s
their way of denying the historicity of the text. But that’s how they’ll end up with a date of the Exodus of
around 1250. That’s when Ramses II was the pharaoh. But if you take the
biblical numbers literally, you end up with the date of the Exodus at 1446
BC.
We also know that there were 430
years between Jacob entering Egypt and the Exodus. 1876 BC is when Jacob would
enter Egypt. That would mean Isaac was born in 2066 and Abraham would be born
in 2166. This is accepted within let’s say plus or minus 100 years.
There have been some studies that
have come out recently. I just haven't had the time, the energy, or the
mathematical capacity to really get into the technicalities of a lot of this
chronology, which suggests this that this may be off maybe 50 years even. I
don't know how valid that is, but there are some chronological problems that we
have to deal with. Now when we look at this timeline, we have to then look at
the basic timeline of the 18th dynasty of Egypt. The 18th
dynasty comes in after they kick the Hyksos out in 1570. The first is Ahmoses
or Ahmose. You see that there are certain names that continue over again. You
have Amenhotep and Thutmose I, II, III and IV. You have Amenhotep I, II and III
all the way down to Tutankhamen.
Now there was an article in the
paper yesterday about the analysis of DNA on King Tut and that he had all kinds
of degenerative bone disease and all these different things. He is the son of
Amenhotep IV otherwise known and Akhenaton or Ikhnaton who is sometimes said to
be the first Egyptian to try to bring monotheism to Egypt.
Now this is a favorite liberal ploy
because the monotheism that he's bringing in isn’t really a true monotheism. Akhenaton
is the sun disk, the sun god. He just wants to do away with the other gods and
goddesses and promote his favorite deity, sort like what Muhammad did when he
instigated Islam. He got rid of the 359 other gods in the Arabic pantheon. He
just wanted to promote Allah; but initially there were other goddesses that
made up Allah’s three wives. Then later on they sort of got taken out of Islam.
But it’s not a pure monotheism, at least originally and neither was that. But
what you hear in the typical Western Civilization university class is that the
Exodus occurred in 1250 to 1260 BC. Well, that's after Tutankhamen and
Akhenaton. Moses got his ideas of monotheism from Akhenaton, not from God.
Now, I was 18 years old I never
heard any of this. I’m sitting in Western Civ and this is what I'm hearing.
I’m going, “I know that's not right;
but I’ve got to be able to answer this guy.”
You know, how do I know he’s wrong? I
mean, that's what the textbook says that's what he says. And that is standard
liberal approach.
Ramses II then comes after
Tutankhamen. He’s the most powerful pharaoh. There was an assumption made back
in the very beginning of Egyptology in the 19th century that said
that the only pharaoh we know that was really a big, bad, powerful dude that
had a tremendous amount of wealth was Ramses II. So that must have been the
pharaoh that Moses was dealing with. Notice there's no data there. There's no
archaeological data. There's no historical data. It's just this assumption that
Ramses was rich and powerful. The pharaoh that Moses dealt with as rich and powerful
so that must have been Ramses. Egyptologists still do not want to give that up.
They want to believe that it had to be Ramses because Ramses was a bad,
powerful dude. But that doesn't fit the biblical data at all. So we've got this
chronological problem.
Here’s the chronological problem.
Here’s our timeline. The Exodus occurs in 1446 BC according to the Bible. Abraham
would be born in 2166 BC as I just showed you in that timeline earlier. But if
we take the numbers strictly in the genealogy in Genesis 11, then that would
indicate that the flood of Noah would end about 2503 BC. According to standard
Egyptian chronology we have a little problem because the first dynasty would
have begun in 2920 BC, some 400 years before the flood ended. Hmm… Well if it’s
worldwide flood it would have wiped everything out, so how would we have the
pyramids and everything else? Somebody is wrong. Somebody is getting dates
wrong. Somebody is getting all confused on this. So how are we going to resolve
this? The problem that we have is there's a 387-year difference plus or minus a
few. Maybe the flood was a little earlier; maybe the flood was 3000 or 3100. One
approach that is being taken by some conservatives today is that they're
recognizing we have got some problems in the intertestamental period and the
early period from Babylon on, and that we need to maybe find another 50 or 100
years in there. But that really doesn’t solve the whole problem.
Another approach that was made up
about 10 to 15 years ago by a guy named David Rohl called Pharaohs and Kings. There are problems with his view as well; but
at least here’s a secular Egyptologist who’s taking the biblical numbers at
face value. Now he said that the problem we have in ancient chronology is that
we've got this initial assumption that Ramses II was the pharaoh of Exodus. This
goes back to when Champlain first discovered (translated) the Rosetta Stone and
gives birth to Egyptology. This was the assumption that they made. They still
don't want to get this up.
In 664 BC we know that Ashurbanipal
invades and sacks Thebes. That's almost a 100% sure. That's about as far back
as we go with any really solid dating. Then we know that in approximately 925
BC there is this invasion by Shishak. That is mentioned at the time of Hezekiah,
I believe. So there's an equation between Shoshank I of Egypt with Shishak. The
trouble with that is that the SH sound in Egyptian, when those words get
converted to Hebrew, becomes an S sound. When an S sound in Hebrew goes to
Egyptian, it would become a SH sound. The SH would go to S and the S would go
to SH in both languages. So it’s very difficult identify Shoshank with Shishak.
This is a false identification.
Then there's a calendar know as the
Ebers calendar which is the basis for arguing that the 18th dynasty
began about 1550 BC. But the only date that we know of for sure is the 664
date; everything else this is sort of in flux. The Ramses date was based on the
Ebers calendar. But if that’s off, Ramses is off. So all of that is rather speculative;
and we really don't know for sure.
This is why this really makes a
difference and this is just one reconstruction. In conventional Egyptian
chronology, you have a timeline up there that starts in 1526 BC. At the
beginning of the timeline you would have the 18th dynasty. The
benchmark dates would be 1526, 1446 BC for the Exodus, 966 BC for when the
temple was dedicated. The New Kingdom (18th dynasty) runs in that
period from 1539 – 1550, depending on who you're looking at today to 1069
BC. In this time period you have Ahmose I. The reason I have two sets of dates
there is because Kenneth Kitchen (who’s evangelical, but he doesn’t fully
accept all the numbers in the Bible as literally true) went back and he
reconstructed the chronology in what's called the third intermediate period in
Egyptian history.
He said, “Well, Ahmose didn’t really
start in 1570, that's more the traditional date. He was 1539.”
So that's this disagreement within
the Egyptian chronology. Now they don’t tell you that on the History Channel.
They don't tell you on the Discovery Channel that even among Egyptologists
there's disagreement as to when these people ruled.
I’m working off the traditional
dates.
Then after Ahmose (several
generations later), you had Hatshepsut came to the throne. Then her nephew
Thutmose III was the coregent with her from 1504 to 1450. If the Exodus occurs
in 1446, we’re getting really close now to the Exodus. Thutmose dies in 1450, 4
years before the Exodus. He is succeeded by Amenhotep II, whose dates are 1450
to 1425.
Now here's an interesting question.
Did the pharaoh die in the Red Sea? I almost feel like saying, “ Raise your
hands.” How many of y’all think the pharaoh went down in the Red Sea? He
didn’t. Well there's debate on that. Today I sent out a link to 5 or 6 articles
on the Biblical Research Associates website. These are really solid guys. They publish a journal. Some
have been put out in the lobby called Bible
and Spade. There are really
conservative biblical archeologists. No two of them agree as to who the pharaoh
of the Exodus is. We had a pastor's conference with Chafer Seminary back in the
mid 90’s up in Minneapolis and 3 or 4 of these Egyptologists came and spoke and
they didn't agree with each other as to who the pharaoh of the Exodus was. So
when you think it was Hatshepsut was the mother and you think it was Thutmose
and Amenhotep because it's been drilled into you; we don't know that. We really
don’t. The Bible doesn't give a name to pharaoh or to pharaoh’s daughter or any
of these other people.
So this
is the traditional view, but look at the yellow dates. If the yellow dates are
true (that’s Kenneth Kitchen’s reconstruction), then Thutmose III is still on
the throne from 1479 to 1425, which would mean he was the pharaoh of the
Exodus, not Amenhotep. We know the graves of both of them. We've recovered the
mummies of both of them. But if you read carefully Exodus, you read “the
pharaoh and his chariots, the pharaoh and his chariots are pursing the
Israelites.” “The pharaoh and his chariots.. the pharaoh and his chariots… and
then Moses parts the Red Sea” and then “the army of pharaoh pursues them and
then the waters close in.” It didn’t say pharaoh. It was “pharaoh and his army,
the pharaoh and his chariots, the pharaoh and his chariots; then the army of
pharaoh.”
There's one reference in Psalms,
Psalm 136:15 which reads:
NKJ Psalm 136:15 But overthrew Pharaoh and his army in the Red Sea, For His mercy endures forever;
So a lot of people say, “Ah! See, he drowned pharaoh.”
No! The word for overthrow is naar which means to shake, to rattle his
cage or to mess things up; but it doesn’t mean to drown. So you can’t go to
Psalm 136:15 to argue that pharaoh was drown in the Exodus. But that’s what a
lot of people believe.
Now if you actually go read some
articles that I recommended, you will have one by Bryant Wood who’s very good.
I love his stuff; but Bryant Wood believes this supports the view that pharaoh
was drowned. But then there's another article by someone else on the
identification of the pharaoh, and he says no.
This shows you the disagreement
there. That's part of what I wanted you to understand tonight: that when we
talk about these things related to the Exodus event and who is the pharaoh and
who’s the daughter of the pharaoh and everything – you've heard for years
who that was – we don't know.
Now let me go back and do one more
thing here before I finish. We've gone through the chronological conundrum here
(We did that. Let me get through this slide) the conventional Egyptian
chronology. This is what we've all been taught, what we’ve all heard going back
to Unger’s Bible Dictionary, even
before that. But if this chronology is off – for example with David Rohl
says it is off 300 years – then those people in the New Kingdom aren’t
reigning at this time. They're reigning after the Exodus. Do you see that? Let
me do that again for those of you are asleep. This is the new kingdom period
with these as your key pharaohs. That's the traditional date for when they
rule. But if we’re off by 300 years which several people have suggested.
Immanuel Velikovsky was one. I think he had 450 years that were artificially
put into the Egyptian chronology. If we’re off two or three hundred years, then
Ahmose and Hatshepsut and Thutmose and Amenhotep did not reign during the life
of Moses and overlap the Exodus.They’re not even alive yet. They're actually
300 years later. Now I'm not sure that Rohl is right. His is one of about 6 or
7 competing reconstructions of Egyptian chronology.
The mainstream Egyptologists don't
like any of it, because there are bound and determined to hold onto the same
structure that they’ve always held onto,
and it’s as politicized as climatology. It’s as politicized as any
science department in any university or anywhere else. So there are all sorts
of problems related to that.
So historically we don't know
exactly who the pharaoh was. We don't know exactly who the daughter of pharaoh
was. But we do know that the events of the Exodus happened exactly as the
Scripture said. When the time came for Moses to be born, his parents understood
enough doctrine not to be afraid of the pharaoh and to relax and then they hid
him instead of drowning him by putting him out in the river and basically
letting God take care of it. It’s a great illustration of casting all your
cares upon Him because He cares for you – just faith rest drill in
action. And look at what God did with that.
So we’ll come back next time and
we'll get into the life of Moses a little more and his faith rest drill in
relation to God.