When Power Becomes Afraid

Good morning. I’m grateful we can gather as we keep studying Exodus together. Last week, we started with a quiet passage—no burning bush, no Pharaoh, no plagues, and no Red Sea. Instead, we read a list of names, saw one generation pass away, and another begin to grow.

But those first verses showed us something important about God. Joseph and his brothers died, and a whole generation was gone. Even though the people who saw God’s help during the famine had passed away, God’s promises stayed true. Exodus 1:7 says the Israelites “were fruitful and increased greatly; they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong, so that the land was filled with them.” God was quietly keeping his promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

This shows us something central in Exodus: God’s faithfulness isn’t always obvious right away. Sometimes he acts in big, dramatic ways, but often we only see his faithfulness when we look back and realize he kepthis Word.

Today, that belief is put to the test. In verse 8, everything changes for Israel: a new king comes to power, their good standing in Egypt ends, and the people who were once welcomed are now seen as a threat. What once showed God’s faithfulness is now seen by Pharaoh as a danger.

The message today, “When Power Becomes Afraid,” focuses on this truth: When fear is in charge, people are treated as expendable. When God is in charge, people are seen as precious.

Fear isn’t always unreasonable. Sometimes, real dangers make us afraid and help us respond wisely. God made us to notice and react to danger, so Pharaoh’s fear in this story isn’t wrong by itself.

The problem is what fear does to Pharaoh’s view of others. He stops seeing Israel as families and starts seeing them as just numbers or a problem to solve. He imagines threats that aren’t real, and as fear shapes his thinking, it becomes easier for him to justify hurting others.

This is the danger of fear in a broken world. Fear can turn what might happen into what we think will happen. It can make suspicion seem like wisdom and cause us to judge others based on what we imagine, not what is real. When we start seeing someone mainly as a threat, it becomes easier to mistreat them.

When fear is mixed with power, the results can be terrible. In this chapter, Pharaoh’s fear turns into policy, policy turns into oppression, oppression leads to trying to kill babies, and finally, he tells all of Egypt to commit genocide.

But two women stand up to Pharaoh’s fear. Shiphrah and Puah don’t have any obvious power, but they fear God. This changes how they see Pharaoh, the children, and what they are called to do.

Here’s the main point: Fear can make people seem unimportant and human power look like it’s all that matters. But God’s people are called to fear him most of all, trusting that nothing can stop his plans.

Verse 8 begins,

Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.

With one sentence, the world Israel had known changes. Joseph once had occupied an extraordinarily important position in Egypt. God had used him to preserve the nation during a famine, and because of Joseph, Jacob and his family had been welcomed into the land and given a place where they could flourish. But Joseph is now gone, his generation is gone, and a ruler has arisen for whom that old relationship carries no meaningful weight.

When the text says that this king “did not know Joseph,” it likely means more than that he had never heard of Joseph. The point is that Joseph’s service to Egypt and the earlier relationship between Israel and the Egyptian government no longer matter to this regime. Whatever goodwill had protected Israel is gone. The political environment has changed, and Israel is now living under a government that looks at them very differently.

Verse 9 tells us exactly how Pharaoh sees them:

And he said to his people, “Behold, the people of Israel are too many and too mighty for us.

That description ought to sound familiar after last week. The reason Israel is numerous and strong is that God has been keeping the covenant promises he made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Exodus has deliberately used the language of fruitfulness and multiplication to connect Israel’s growth with God’s blessing, tracing it all the way back to Genesis.

That means Pharaoh is looking at evidence of God’s faithfulness and interpreting it as evidence of danger. What God sees as covenant blessing, Pharaoh sees as a political threat.

Of course Pharaoh does not understand Israel’s multiplication in theological terms. He looks at the population and begins calculating what their presence might mean for Egypt’s security. In verse 10 he says,

Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and, if war breaks out, they join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.”

Notice how much of that reasoning is built on possibilities rather than actions. Israel has not attacked Egypt. The text never tells us that they have formed a rebellion, plotted with foreign powers, or taken up arms against Pharaoh. Instead, Pharaoh imagines a future war, imagines Israel joining a future enemy, imagines what that hypothetical alliance might do, and then uses those imagined possibilities to justify action against people who have not actually committed the thing he fears.

This is where Exodus begins to expose something not only about Pharaoh but about fallen humanity. When fear becomes the controlling perspective through which we see other people, we can quickly stop responding to what is true and begin responding to what fear tells us could be true. A person becomes “dangerous” because of the group we have assigned them to. A neighbor becomes suspicious because we imagine what people like that neighbor might someday do. We stop dealing with individuals and start dealing in categories.

That pattern can emerge in almost any sphere of human life. It can operate through ethnicity, nationality, social class, generation, politics, economics, or cultural difference. None of those distinctions is necessarily evil in itself, and legitimate questions of law, security, justice, and public policy can certainly exist. Exodus does not require us to pretend that every concern about any group of people is automatically sinful. What it exposes is the spiritual danger that arises when fear teaches us to see human beings primarily as threats instead of as persons made in the image of God.

That is why dehumanization matters so much biblically. A government, a majority, a marketplace, or a political movement do not assign human dignity. Genesis tells us that men and women bear the image of God. Their value therefore precedes questions of usefulness, productivity, nationality, ability, or agreement with us.

Pharaoh forgets that because fear has begun interpreting Israel for him. He no longer sees the people living before him; he sees what he is afraid they might eventually become.

We need to recognize that same danger in our own hearts. We are not Pharaoh, and our circumstances are not ancient Egypt, but the fallen condition exposed in Pharaoh is not unique to him. When we become deeply afraid of losing security, comfort, influence, control, or a way of life we cherish, other people can begin to look less like neighbors and more like obstacles standing between us and what we are trying desperately to preserve.

That’s why we can’t let fear control us. Fear can make us see our neighbors as threats long before any real harm is done.

Pharaoh’s fear does not remain in the sphere of rhetoric. Verse 11 tells us that the Egyptians

Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with heavy burdens...

Pharaoh’s first strategy is systematic forced labor. If Israel’s multiplication seems dangerous, perhaps oppression can weaken them. Perhaps a population he cannot remove can at least be controlled, exploited, and put to work in service of Egypt’s ambitions.

The Israelites are therefore forced into major construction projects, including the store cities of Pithom and Raamses. The text describes labor in bricks, mortar, and fields, and verses 13 and 14 intentionally repeat the language of harshness. The Egyptians work Israel ruthlessly, make their lives bitter, and force them into severe labor. The repetition is designed to make us feel what has happened. These people are no longer being regarded as neighbors living within Egypt. They have become instruments of production, their bodies and labor belonging to Pharaoh’s projects.

This is where fear and power become especially dangerous together. Once people have been dehumanized in the imagination, exploiting them can begin to feel reasonable. If their primary identity is “threat,” then imposing suffering on them can be redefined as necessity. Pharaoh is no longer asking what justice requires toward these human beings; he is asking what will preserve his control.

But then verse 12 introduces the great reversal:

But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and the more they spread abroad.

Pharaoh increases pressure, but Israel continues increasing. He attempts to control God’s blessing, and the blessing refuses to submit to him.

That verse teaches us an extraordinarily important distinction between being powerful and being ultimate. Pharaoh is unquestionably powerful. Scripture never asks us to minimize what his authority can do to real people. He can enslave Israel. He can take away freedom. He can make life bitter. Before this chapter ends, he will issue commands that place children in mortal danger.

Earthly power is real, and sometimes it’s scary.

But having power isn’t the same as being in control of everything. Pharaoh can make Israel suffer, but he can’t make God’s promise fail.

That distinction matters for believers because Christianity does not teach us that painful circumstances are imaginary or that faithful people somehow become immune to others' actions. Governments can act unjustly. Employers can mistreat workers. Institutions can become corrupt. People can betray us. Illness can change our plans. Economic hardship is able to destabilize our lives. The Bible never asks us to call those things harmless.

But Scripture tells us that none of these things take God’s place.

The pressure may be real, but God’s promises remain sure. Pharaoh has the machinery of the Egyptian state behind him, yet he cannot make one word of God’s covenant fall to the ground. Even while Israel suffers, God continues quietly fulfilling the purpose Pharaoh is attempting to stop.

That failure, however, does not humble Pharaoh. Instead, it intensifies his fear. This is another pattern the text exposes: fear often becomes more dangerous when our attempts at control fail. Pharaoh does not respond to verse 12 by admitting that his policy may be wicked or futile. He doubles down.

His first strategy involved forced labor. When that fails, verse 15 tells us that he summons two Hebrew midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, and commands them to kill Hebrew boys as they are born.

The shift from verse 10 to verse 16 is horrifying when we slow down enough to notice. Pharaoh originally said, “Let us deal shrewdly with them.” His supposed wisdom has now become a command to kill newborn children.

That is one of the ironies of sin. Fear often presents itself as prudence. It tells us that the next compromise is necessary because circumstances are unusual. It tells us we would never ordinarily do such a thing, but the threat is serious, and something must be done. Then one compromise makes the next compromise easier, until conduct that would once have seemed unthinkable becomes defensible in the name of security.

That’s why the Bible doesn’t just say, “Don’t be afraid.” Exodus gives us something better than just being fearless. It gives us a greater fear—the fear of God—and that’s the turning point in this story.

Verse 17 says,

But the midwives feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but let the male children live.

That sentence reveals the central contrast of the passage. Pharaoh fears Israel, while Shiphrah and Puah fear God. And what each of them fears ultimately determines what each is willing to do.

Pharaoh fears losing control, and that fear produces oppression, exploitation, and death. The midwives fear God, and their fear produces obedience, courage, and the preservation of life.

We need to understand what Scripture means by describing these women as fearing God. This is not simply terror at the possibility of divine punishment. The fear of God is reverence, awe, submission, and the recognition that God’s authority is ultimate. To fear God means that when competing voices tell us what we must do, God’s Word carries greater weight than every other voice.

That changes the way Shiphrah and Puah see Pharaoh. He is still Pharaoh. His power has not disappeared. He still holds authority in Egypt and can make their lives very difficult. Yet because these women understand that there is a King above this king, Pharaoh can no longer occupy the place of ultimate authority in their minds.

This is one of the surprising things about biblical courage: fearing God sets us free from being controlled by the fear of people.

These women do not become reckless rebels. The Bible nowhere teaches us that every disagreement with governing authority is grounds for defiance. Scripture repeatedly commands God’s people to honor legitimate authority, and Christians should be careful not to turn Exodus 1 into a general permission slip for resisting any law, leader, or policy we happen to dislike.

What happens here is much narrower and much clearer. Pharaoh has commanded these women to murder innocent children. A human authority has required what God forbids. At that point, submission to Pharaoh would become rebellion against God.

The principle is later expressed plainly in Acts 5:29:

“We must obey God rather than men.

Every human authority is real authority, but every human authority is also limited authority. Government is not God. An employer is not God. A teacher is not God. A parent is not God. A pastor is not God. No human institution possesses an unlimited claim over the conscience, because every authority ultimately remains accountable to the One from whom authority itself comes.

That principle may occasionally confront believers in dramatic circumstances, but much more often it appears in ordinary places. Someone may ask us to lie because telling the truth is inconvenient. We may be expected to conceal wrongdoing because exposing it would cause problems. We may be pressured to mistreat another person because everyone else has already decided that person deserves it. We may face a situation in which obedience to Christ costs us approval or opportunity.

In those moments, being faithful might be as simple as saying, “I can’t do that.”

Not out of pride. Not because we enjoy conflict. Not because we think every authority is wrong. We say no when we must because we have already said yes to God’s authority in our lives.

The midwives’ fear of God also changes how they see the children placed into their care. Their reverence for God produces respect for human life. Pharaoh sees male infants as future threats; Shiphrah and Puah see lives that must not be intentionally destroyed.

That gives this passage a legitimate place within the biblical theology of the sanctity of human life. Certainly the passage speaks to the value of unborn and newborn children, but the principle is larger than a single contemporary controversy. Human beings do not become valuable because they are strong, productive, independent, politically useful, socially desired, or capable of contributing something to us.

The unborn child has dignity. The newborn child has dignity. The older adult has dignity. The disabled person has dignity. The poor have dignity. The foreigner has dignity. The prisoner has dignity. The person who can offer us nothing in return still has dignity.

Why? Because human value does not originate with Pharaoh or any other human authority. Human beings belong to their Creator.

There is also a wonderful literary detail in this section that is easy to miss. We know the title Pharaoh, but this Pharaoh’s personal name is not given. By contrast, the two midwives are introduced by name: Shiphrah and Puah.

That would have been a striking reversal in ancient Egypt. Pharaohs built monuments, temples, tombs, cities, and inscriptions so that their names would endure. These were men who possessed the resources of a civilization and wanted history to remember them.

Yet Exodus gives us the names of two midwives and leaves the great ruler unnamed.

The world remembers visibility, achievement, power, wealth, and influence. God sees faithfulness that almost no one else notices. He sees the ordinary act of obedience performed because someone fears him more than they fear the consequences.

This should encourage anyone who wonders if ordinary faithfulness matters. Most acts of Christian obedience aren’t written down or noticed by many. Most faithfulness happens in everyday places—homes, workplaces, classrooms, hospitals, church hallways, conversations, and private choices where few people know what’s really at stake.

Shiphrah and Puah obey God in the responsibility placed before them, and Scripture remembers them thousands of years later.

Verse 20 tells us that God “dealt well with the midwives,” while verse 21 adds that because they feared God, he gave them families. Again, the chapter's irony appears. Pharaoh is attempting to reduce Israel’s families, while God is giving families. Pharaoh is trying to stop multiplication, while Israel continues multiplying. Pharaoh’s fear keeps producing death, while God’s purposes keep producing life.

At this point we might expect the chapter to end with Pharaoh defeated and the danger removed, but Exodus does not allow the story to resolve that quickly. Verse 22 says,

Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, “Every son that is born to the Hebrews you shall cast into the Nile, but you shall let every daughter live.”

Pharaoh’s first plan used forced labor. His second attempted to use the midwives as secret agents of death. Both plans failed, so now he widens the policy. What had been a command given privately to two women becomes an order directed to the Egyptian population.

The progression is now complete. A minority population was first treated as a threat. Fear justified suspicion. Suspicion became policy. Policy became exploitation. Exploitation developed into attempted killing, and attempted killing now becomes a public command for genocide.

The chapter then ends there.

That matters because sometimes God’s people live through times when the rescue hasn’t happened yet.

We know the rest of Exodus. We know Moses is coming. We know there will be a burning bush. We know God will reveal his name. We know the plagues will come, Passover will come, the sea will open, and Pharaoh’s army will finally be defeated.

Israel does not know any of that yet.

They are living inside Exodus 1, and if we place ourselves within their experience for a moment, the obvious question is, “Where is our God?”

That question becomes especially striking because God is not yet acting in the dramatic manner that will characterize the rest of the book. There is no pillar of cloud or fire. There is no public judgment upon Egypt. The Nile has not turned to blood. Pharaoh has heard no divine command from Moses.

God is present, but much of his activity remains hidden.

We saw some of that last week. Israel multiplies because God’s covenant promise is being fulfilled, even though Exodus 1:7 does not describe a spectacular intervention. The same pattern continues here. Pharaoh attempts to crush Israel, yet the people multiply. The midwives fear God and preserve life. God blesses them. The divine purpose continues even while the circumstances become darker.

This teaches us something we really need to remember: Just because God is hidden doesn’t mean he’s absent.

We often assume that if we cannot identify what God is doing, then perhaps God is not doing anything. If the answer has not appeared, maybe he has forgotten. If circumstances worsen rather than improve, perhaps his promises are no longer relevant to our situation.

Exodus won’t let us think that way. God’s people are called to look at their situation through what they know about God, not to change their view of God every time things get scary.

The chapter ends with Pharaoh ordering Hebrew boys thrown into the Nile. In the next chapter, a Hebrew boy will indeed be placed into the Nile, but he will not die. The very river Pharaoh intends to transform into an instrument of death will become the place in which Moses is preserved.

There is an almost holy irony to the way God works throughout Exodus. Pharaoh’s attempts to stop God’s purposes repeatedly become part of the means through which those purposes advance. He demands that Hebrew sons be put into the Nile, and the Nile delivers Moses into Pharaoh’s own household. Later Pharaoh will refuse to release God’s people, and his refusal will become the setting in which the Lord displays his glory throughout Egypt.

Pharaoh is not simply unable to defeat God’s purpose. His rebellion cannot escape God’s sovereignty.

That does not make Pharaoh’s actions good. Scripture never turns evil into righteousness simply because God sovereignly overrules it. Pharaoh remains morally responsible for each act of oppression. Yet God’s sovereignty is so complete that evil does not possess the ability to create a future outside God’s redemptive purpose.

By the end of Exodus 1, therefore, the question is no longer, “Will God’s promise survive Pharaoh?” Everything Pharaoh has tried has already failed to stop Israel’s multiplication. The real question has become, “How will God bring Pharaoh’s plans to nothing?”

That’s a whole new way to look at what’s happening around us.

The darkness may be real. The injustice may be real. The suffering may be real. God’s people do not have to pretend otherwise. But the present chapter is not the final chapter.

What Does This Passage Reveal About God?

Although God often seems to remain behind the scenes in Exodus 1, this passage reveals a great deal about him. He is the covenant-keeping God whose promises continue even under circumstances completely hostile to their fulfillment. Pharaoh changes, governments change, and generations change, but God’s Word does not change with them.

He is also sovereign over human power. Pharaoh exercises enormous authority, yet his authority remains bound by a greater authority he does not acknowledge. The king can make Israel’s life bitter, but he cannot make God’s covenant fail. He can command death, but he cannot write the outcome of God’s redemptive story.

The passage also reveals that God sees faithfulness that appears insignificant in the eyes of the world. He knows Shiphrah and Puah. He sees their obedience and deals well with them. Their names matter in his story even though the rulers of Egypt would have considered them insignificant.

And throughout the passage, God reveals himself as the giver and sustainer of life. Pharaoh turns people into problems to be managed, but God continues to produce, preserve, and bless life.

Perhaps most importantly for the Israelites living through these events, Exodus 1 teaches that God’s presence cannot be measured only by visible intervention. Before Exodus shows us how to trust God when the sea opens, it teaches us how to trust him when the sea has not opened yet.

What Does This Passage Reveal About Us?

Exodus 1 also tells the truth about our own hearts. Fear can be spiritually destructive when it becomes the ruling principle of our lives. It can distort judgment, elevate self-preservation into the highest good, and make control feel like wisdom.

Fear can also become an idol because it reveals what we believe we must possess to be secure. Pharaoh cannot imagine an Egypt in which Israel is numerous, and he is not completely in control of what that might mean. So rather than entrust anything beyond himself, he attempts to dominate every variable.

We may not possess Pharaoh’s power, but we understand the impulse. We want to control outcomes. We want guarantees about the future. We want assurance that the things we value cannot be taken away. When fear tells us that those things are in danger, compromise can suddenly begin to look reasonable.

The question, then, is not whether Christians will ever experience fear. The question is what will govern us when fear comes.

Pharaoh fears losing control. Shiphrah and Puah fear God. Those competing fears gradually form them into very different kinds of people.

Christ and Exodus

Now we need to ask where this text stands in relation to Christ. We do not have to find hidden references to Jesus in every detail of the passage.

In Exodus, a ruler becomes afraid as God’s purpose advances in ways he cannot control. His fear leads him to command the death of Hebrew sons, yet the child God will use as deliverer survives.

When we arrive in Matthew’s Gospel, another ruler becomes afraid. Herod hears that a king has been born, and, frightened by power, once again begins viewing children as threats. He orders the killing of boys in and around Bethlehem, yet the promised Deliverer survives.

Matthew deliberately tells the story of Jesus in ways which reflect Israel’s story. Jesus will come out of Egypt. He will pass through water. He will enter the wilderness. He will succeed where Israel repeatedly failed. The Exodus story, therefore, participates in a much larger biblical pattern that ultimately finds its fulfillment in Christ.

Yet the connection becomes even deeper at the cross. Eventually, earthly rulers do succeed in killing Jesus. Religious authorities condemn him. Roman authority crucifies him. His body is placed in a tomb, and for a moment every visible circumstance seems to say that the powers of this world have won.

If we interpreted God’s purposes only through what could be seen on Good Friday, we would reach exactly the wrong conclusion.

Acts tells us that even the cross took place within God's sovereign purpose. Human beings acted wickedly and remained responsible for their actions, yet their wickedness could not escape God’s redemptive plan.

Then on the third day Jesus rose from the dead.

The grave discovered what Pharaoh had already begun to learn in Exodus: you cannot stop what God has purposed to redeem.

Pharaoh could not stop the promise. Herod could not stop the promise. Rome could not stop the promise. Satan could not stop the promise. Death could not stop the promise.

And because Christ has risen, Christian courage isn’t based on thinking evil is weak. Sometimes evil is very strong. Our courage comes from knowing that evil is never the final word.

Jesus Christ is Lord.

That means we don’t have to control every outcome in order to obey. We don’t have to make everything turn out right before we can be faithful. The resurrection shows us that Christ’s kingdom doesn’t depend on our ability to make it happen.

We obey because Christ reigns. We protect what God values because God’s purposes will prevail. We can endure the cost of faithfulness because the final verdict does not belong to Pharaoh, Herod, Rome, or any other earthly power.

It belongs to the risen Christ.

Let’s Live This Out

So what kind of people is God forming us to become through this passage?

First, Exodus calls us to fear God more than we fear losing control. Most compromise begins with something we are terrified to lose. It may be financial security, approval, influence, comfort, reputation, opportunity, or some future we have carefully imagined. Those things may be good gifts, but when keeping them becomes more important than obeying God, fear has become a rival lord.

Pharaoh’s tragedy is not simply that he wants Egypt to be secure. His tragedy is that he believes he must possess sufficient control to guarantee his own security. Every failure of control, therefore, produces greater desperation and, eventually, greater evil.

The Christian is called to a different kind of life. We can obey God without controlling the outcome because the outcome ultimately belongs to God.

Second, this passage calls us to refuse to let fear determine another person’s worth. Pharaoh’s road toward genocide begins when he stops seeing Israel simply as people and begins seeing them as a problem. The church should therefore be deeply suspicious of every form of dehumanization, regardless of the direction from which it comes.

We affirm the dignity of unborn children because human life belongs to God. We value children, the elderly, and the disabled because human life belongs to God. We care about foreigners, the poor, and those pushed to the margins because human life belongs to God. We reject ethnic hatred and racism because human life belongs to God. We refuse to speak as though people with whom we profoundly disagree somehow cease to bear God’s image.

That does not mean all moral, political, or cultural disagreements disappear. Scripture itself makes real moral distinctions. It does mean that Christians never gain permission to erase human dignity simply because another person belongs to a group we fear or oppose.

Third, Exodus calls us to obey God when obedience carries a cost. Most of us will never face a command like the one given to Shiphrah and Puah, but we will encounter smaller moments where faithfulness is not free. We may have to tell the truth when lying would protect us. We may have to refuse participation in something wrong when everyone around us treats it as normal. We may have to defend someone who cannot defend themselves or speak when silence would be safer.

Being faithful is often quieter than being a hero. The midwives didn’t make speeches against Pharaoh. They just refused to kill the children.

Sometimes, that’s what courage looks like—doing the next right thing because God is bigger than whatever or whoever scares us.

Finally, the passage calls us to trust God when his providence is not yet obvious. Some seasons of life make it relatively easy to recognize God’s kindness, while others feel much more like Exodus 1. We know what Scripture says about God, but what we see around us does not seem to match what we know.

That is when this passage teaches us not to interpret God’s character through our circumstances. Instead, we interpret our circumstances through what God has already revealed about himself.

He is faithful. He is sovereign. He remembers his promises. He sees his people. He does not surrender his throne because a chapter becomes dark.

Israel can’t see Moses yet. They can’t see the burning bush, Passover, or the Red Sea. But just because God is invisible doesn’t mean he can’t act.

So What?

So what do we actually do with Exodus 1:8–22 when we walk out of here today? I want us to carry four questions with us into the week.

The first is, What fear is shaping the way I see other people? Is there a person, group, generation, political category, social class, or ethnicity that I have stopped seeing primarily as individual human beings and started seeing mainly as a threat? Have I begun assigning motives to people I do not know because fear has already told me what people like them must be thinking or intending?

Pharaoh’s oppression begins long before the first brick is made. It begins with the story fear tells him about Israel. We need to ask God to expose where fear may be telling similar stories in us.

The second question is, What am I so afraid of losing that I might compromise faithfulness to preserve it? What feels so necessary to my security that losing it seems almost unbearable? Approval? Money? Comfort? Influence? A plan for the future? Control itself?

Fear often reveals our functional gods because it shows us what we believe we cannot afford to lose. This passage invites us to bring those fears honestly before the Lord and say, “God, I do not want protecting this gift to become more important to me than obeying the Giver.”

The third question is, Where might obedience require quiet courage from me this week? No significant confrontation, no looking for conflict, and no treating ourselves as heroes. Is there simply some place where faithfulness requires truth instead of convenience, integrity instead of compromise, compassion instead of indifference, or a gracious refusal instead of easy participation?

Shiphrah and Puah were not trying to become biblical heroes. They feared God in the moment placed before them.

The final question is, Where am I interpreting God through my circumstances instead of interpreting my circumstances through God?

Perhaps something in life has not unfolded the way you expected, and the temptation is to conclude that God’s apparent silence means his absence.

Exodus 1 reminds us that Pharaoh changes while God does not. Governments change while God does not. Cultures change while God does not. Our opportunities and circumstances change while God does not.

God’s faithfulness isn’t measured by how clearly we can see what he’s doing right now.

So take this truth with you this week: When fear is in charge, people are treated as expendable. When God is in charge, people are precious. Because Christ reigns, fear doesn’t have to rule us.

When Power Becomes Afraid

There are two fears competing in Exodus 1. Pharaoh fears Israel, while Shiphrah and Puah fear God. If we judged the story only by visible power, there would be no question about which side appears stronger. Pharaoh sits on a throne. He commands a nation. He possesses wealth, armies, administrators, and the entire machinery of Egypt. Shiphrah and Puah are two midwives caring for women and newborn children.

But the man who seems to have all the freedom is actually trapped.

Pharaoh is a slave to his own fear. Every time his plans fail, he gets more desperate. Every time Israel grows, he tries harder to control them. The less control he has, the harsher he becomes. He rules Egypt, but he can’t control his own fear.

Shiphrah and Puah, on the other hand, don’t have much power, but they are truly free. They are free to say no to evil, free to protect life, and free to accept whatever happens because Pharaoh isn’t the most important reality in their lives.

God is.

That’s where real courage comes from. Courage isn’t pretending scary things aren’t real. It’s not denying that people or systems can hurt us. It’s not about making ourselves feel strong enough to get rid of fear.

Courage comes from seeing that God is greater than whatever scares us.

Jesus Christ is Lord.

No Pharaoh, no Herod, no empire, no institution, no cultural pressure, no suffering, no opposition, and not even death itself can overthrow the redemptive purposes of God in Christ.

So when fear comes—and it will—the question is not whether the thing frightening you possesses real power. Pharaoh possessed real power.

The question is whether it is ultimate.

It is not.

Christ is.

Therefore fear God. Value what he values. Protect what he calls precious. Obey him faithfully, even when faithfulness costs something, and trust him with the outcome.

The God who quietly kept his promises while Israel suffered in Egypt is the same God who raised Jesus Christ from the dead.

And he has not changed.

Amen.

Father, you are the God who rules over kings and nations, the God who keeps his promises throughout generations, and the God whose purposes cannot be overturned by human power. We confess that fear so easily becomes larger in our hearts than it should. It can distort the way we see other people, tempt us to protect ourselves at the expense of others, and convince us that our security depends upon our ability to control circumstances that ultimately belong to you.

Forgive us when we allow fear to govern us. Forgive us when preserving comfort, approval, influence, or security becomes more important than faithfulness. Forgive us when we speak about people made in your image as though they were merely problems to be managed or threats to be defeated.

Teach us to fear you rightly. Give us the quiet courage we see in Shiphrah and Puah. Give us wisdom to honor legitimate authority and courage when obedience to you requires us to refuse what is evil. Make us a people who protect the vulnerable, honor human dignity, and value life, because every human life ultimately belongs to you.

And when your providence is hidden, teach us to trust your character. When we cannot see what you are doing, remind us that you are not absent. When the answer seems delayed, remind us that you have not forgotten. When earthly power appears overwhelming, remind us that it remains temporary and accountable to you.

Above all, fix our eyes on Jesus Christ, the crucified and risen King whom no earthly power and not even death itself could defeat. Let his resurrection give us courage to obey without needing to control the outcome.

We ask these things in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

May the God who rules over every power, who remembers every promise, and who raised our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead give you courage to fear him above all else, grace to value what he values, and faith to trust him even when his purposes remain hidden.

Go in the peace and confidence of Christ.

Amen.