Foreign.

If you want to turn in your scriptures with me this morning in Exodus chapter one, we're going to be looking there. We're going to start in the sixth verse and read down through the end of the chapter. The idea today is that I might not be able to save everyone, I might not be able to take care of an entire issue, but I might be able to be influential in one life. We're going to see a story in the word of God about how that happened and what the implications of that was, even down to this day. Starting in Exodus 1, verse 6.

In this time Joseph and his brothers and all that earlier generation had died. By the way, these are the Israelites who had moved into Egypt as a number of 70 people. Now they've all died. Many generations have passed. Here we find ourselves.

Verse 7. The Israelites however, were fruitful, increased greatly and multiplied and became extremely strong so that the land was filled with them, the land of Egypt. Then a new king or a new pharaoh who did not know about Joseph. Remember Joseph had done miraculous things by the hand of God. He, he was able to interpret dreams that the Pharaoh had had.

And he says, here's what's going to happen. There's going to be seven years where it's very plentiful and there's going to be excess food and grain in the land and we need to put that into the storehouses because following that is going to be seven lean years where there is a drought and a famine and where there won't be any provision. And so that Pharaoh had made Joseph kind of the ruler over all of Egypt. And in the entire known, all the nations around them would come to Egypt for grain. And that's how the Israelites had moved there after that.

But this Pharaoh knew nothing about that. He had no respect for that heritage, for that history, for the work of God in the Egyptians and Israelites lives at that time. And so it says that the Israelites were fruitful and increased greatly and multiplied and they became extremely, extremely strong so that the land was filled with them. This new king didn't know about them though. He didn't know about Joseph and he didn't know how he had come to power over Egypt.

Verse 9. He Pharaoh said to his people, look, the Israelite people are more numerous and stronger than we are. Come, let's deal wisely with them. That's code by the way, for being very strict, very harsh. He was not being wise.

He's saying we need to make sure that they don't become too strong for us. Otherwise they will multiply. And if war breaks out, they will ally themselves with our enemies and fight against us and leave the country. So they put foreman over the Israelites to oppress them with hard labor, to enslave them. As a result, they built Pitham and Rameses as store cities, storehouse cities for Pharaoh.

But the more the Egyptians oppressed them, the more they multiplied and spread. As a result, the Egyptians loathed the Israelites. And they made the Israelites serve rigorously. They made their lives bitter by hard service with mortar and bricks, and by all kinds of service in the fields. Every kind of service the Israelites were required to give was rigorous.

The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah, and the other, Pua, when you assist the Hebrew women in childbirth, observe at the delivery, if it is a son, kill him. If it is a daughter, though, she may live. But the midwives feared God, and they did not do what the king of Egypt had told them. They let the boys live. Then the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and said to them, why have you done this?

And let the boys live. The midwives said to Pharaoh, because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women, for the Hebrew women are very vigorous. They give birth before the midwife even gets to them. So God treated the midwives well, and the people multiplied and became very strong. And because the midwives feared God, he made households for them.

He gave them families as well. Then Pharaoh commanded all his people, all the sons that are born to you, you must throw into the river, but the daughters you may let live. This Pharaoh, he didn't know the history. He didn't know what God had done with not only the Israelites, but also how. How the Israelite people had become a blessing to the Egyptians.

He didn't know that his whole, his whole nation would be as strong as it was if not for what God had done through Joseph the Israelite. He didn't care about that heritage, and he didn't care about their God. He only cared about what he saw in front of him. And so his design was that he would subjugate the Israelites and force them to serve as slaves so that they might break their spirit, break their bodies, and keep them subjugated. And then when that even didn't work, he not only made life bitter for them by enslaving them, but he decided that the more he had worked, the more fruitful they had become.

The more he had worked them, the more they were prosperous in their in their offspring and in, even in their human spirit, they hadn't given up. You know, one of the things that slavery does is it breaks down a people's will to even succeed, to even try to, to make anything of their lives. But these, these Hebrews, even though they couldn't break out of this slavery, they still kept having babies. They didn't see that the world was so hopeless that they would stop having children. They continued in doing that, and God blessed them in that way.

So Pharaoh, when he couldn't break down their spirit, when he couldn't break down their bodies and forced them to, to, to shrink in their numbers that way, or to be weak, they were instead stronger. And he was worried that they would rise up and, and overthrow the yoke, the burden that he had placed on them. What he ended up doing was he decided, I'm going to attack the children. Now right here we see that this is Satanic. You see, Satan always goes for the family and he always goes for the children.

Satan is always working against families and raising children because when he sees children, he sees one of the things that are most important to God. Jesus spoke that. He said. He said, let the children come to me. He said, if you, if you hinder them from coming to me, if you stand in their way, you'd be better off just tying like a heavy rock around your neck and jumping into the sea.

You'd be better off drowning yourself, ending your own life than getting in the way of a child coming to Christ. He says, Jesus says, if you don't approach the kingdom of heaven like a child would, with the faith and wonder and awe of a child, you miss out on the whole thing. So we're in this little series called Life at Stake. It's just two weeks. It was last week and this week.

And we're looking at the idea that there are lives at stake and that it's our job as Christians and as the church to do something about that. Last week we looked at the vulnerabilities of people whose lives are caught in various addictions and what it is that the church can do in partnering with groups that are, that are working to bring solutions to their life, namely salvation in Christ. But we also were looking today at the other end of the spectrum. Those who are unable to care for themselves, unable to protect themselves. Babies and children, families who are raising these kids up.

And those kids have no ability to change their outcome or their situation. But in the middle of that, we know that God's heart is for them, that God's Heart is for the lives of these children. We believe that every life is valuable. And so unlike this Pharaoh, who is willing to literally throw their lives away, we believe in upholding the sanctity of every human life. So what Pharaoh did was he.

He had told these, these midwives to kill the baby boys that were born to commit infanticide. If we had somebody saying that openly today, we might be a little bit shocked. And yet there are people that are quietly saying that. In certain parts of our country, there are people that are making the case that say, well, it's okay for certain babies to be. For their lives to be ended even after birth.

In other words, abortion in, in, in early term or late term isn't far enough for some of these people. That's not extreme enough for them. They want to go so far as to saying, well, certain times after a baby's actually out of the womb, it might still be okay to deny health care to it so that it expires. That's infanticide. It's sickening.

It's disgusting. It should cut to the very core of a society and say, something is wrong. Well, when this started happening in the Egyptian land, what happened was the people of God started groaning. It says it wasn't just because of that. It was because of their slavery, but it was because of everything that Pharaoh was doing to them.

They started groaning under the burden of their slavery. Groaning is basically saying, I'm crying out to God because I. I'm at the end of my ability to do anything. And saying, God, you've got to step in. It was at the time where Pharaoh was hunting down their children, their baby boys, that, that they.

They started groaning to God and saying, God, do something. And it was in that time frame that God started raising up a piece of salvation, a bit of salvation. It was at that time that God started raising up salvation in the midst of his people. I wonder if he's doing that today in our midst. I wonder if God's saying, you know, there's been enough of this going on.

And, and I'm not bringing stats and figures to you. You're probably aware of them. Pete might bring something, I don't know. But there are more than, like, one is more than too many, but there are so many more than we could ever imagine. Babies that are targeted for termination around the world, Families that aren't that don't feel like there's any.

Any hope that they have. And so they, they've been told that their only option is to not bring this life into the world that is in the mother's womb. And so we look at that and we say, God, something needs to change. Something needs to happen. God, what are we going to do about this?

Well, it's interesting, when we look in this story, we see these Hebrew midwives that they feared God. They didn't fear Pharaoh who had the power to end their life. They feared God who had the power to protect their life. And what we see that God did, even though, even though we, we believe that it's good to follow the laws of a nation and it would have been good for them to follow the laws of the land, it's immoral, it's unjust to follow any law that goes against God's plan for life and salvation. Amen.

And so these women, God honored them. He did two things. The first thing he did was he gave them their own families. That's not a given. That's not a given if you, you know, especially if your name is Shipra or Pua, but that was the one lady's name.

It's not even a given that you're going to go on a date. You know what I'm saying? Like, you might be like, hey, do you want to go on a date with my friend Pua? No, I don't think I'd like to do that. You know, and yet somehow, not only did they get married, they had children of their own.

And, and not only that, but their names are recorded in the scripture. You know, not everybody gets their name written down in scripture for all of us to read today, that if your name is in the Bible, there's a good reason for it. You either did something really notoriously terrible, or he did something that just honored God and he honored you. And God honored them by having their names recorded. Now, we also believe that Moses is the guy that wrote this book.

And so Moses had a certain debt of gratitude for what they did because he was one of the babies that was saved. We'll read about that in a little bit later on. But the idea is that God had. They. They had, they had honored God.

And so he honored them. He gave them families, he gave them legacy. He recorded their name.

I'm not saying that if you do something great today or in the future for the cause of saving and promoting and protecting lives, that God's going to make sure that for centuries to come, people will remember your name. But you will get that time where you are passed on from this life to the next and you're face to face with God and you're in heaven and you hear the words, well done, my good and faithful servant. You see, we have the opportunity today and from the time from here on to take care of some big things, to take part in some big things. As we care for others and as we do that, God remembers that, God recognizes that. And you have the opportunity to hear well done, my good and faithful servant.

Pharaoh wasn't just happy to tell these midwives to kill these babies. When they wouldn't do it, he was outraged. And I believe our term might be insanity. It might have even been demon possessed. I'm not sure what was going on with Pharaoh, but he does something that's even more insane.

He empowers anybody that works for him. It just says his people. He empowers anyone that works for him, if they find a Hebrew baby boy to just throw it into the river. Just take a baby right out of someone's home, out of their arms, out of their stroller. I doubt they had strollers.

Maybe take them out of whatever they're carrying them in and just throw the children into the river.

I don't know how a society devolves, degrades itself into accepting that. I don't know how anybody can follow that order. And yet we've seen it in civilizations, if we dare call them that throughout time, where somebody said, well, this is our enemy. Go and eliminate them. I know this is a little bit heavy right now.

Don't worry. The story takes such a great turn in a little bit. But if we had people doing that today, we, you know, throwing babies just into a river, we would either call that terrorism or, or like Planned Parenthood 2.0. And if you think that I'm being a little extreme in that, I'm not making a political statement. I'm simply.

If you don't know the history of Planned Parenthood, there's a lady named Margaret Sanger that decided that she didn't like black people and that to eliminate them and to call their numbers down, that they would start having abortions, that they would put abortion clinics and call it health care or call it family planning, and that they would put them in poverty stricken black neighborhoods and that would lower the birth rate numbers in those neighborhoods. It was a racist organization with the most disgusting of morals from the get go. Pete, you weren't going to go this deep into it. I, I will. He gives you opportunities.

I'm telling you, the, the, the situation that's going on in our world. You see, the thing is for our world to get, for our country to get that far gone. And it's even promoted in churches sometimes as a good and necessary thing for these communities. And that's sickening to me. We would have called it terrorism as we read that, that story of Pharaoh telling his people to do it.

But because a government agency is fund, or this agency is funded by government, by our tax dollars, somehow people have promoted it and we've just stood beside the sidelines and said, eh, I guess maybe for some people that's okay. I'll fight against it. I'll vote against it. That's not good enough. There's work for us to do.

We need to stand up like these Hebrew midwives, Shiphrah and Pua or whatever it might be and say, no, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to take part in that. I'm not going to stand for that. As long as I have breath in my body, I'm not going to take part in these things. See, when people get so insane as to kill babies, God starts raising up a horn of salvation like he did with Moses.

Sa Sa Sa Good morning, church family. It's great to be back at First Nazarene. Thank you, Pastor Nick and Amy and Pastor Kendall. Pastor Nick has become a great friend of mine. And before I even took this job, when I was interviewing for it, first person I called was Pastor Nick.

First person I called after I took the job was Pastor Nick. So he's become a great friend. So I had spoken here before as the founder of Oasis Pregnancy Care Centers, but now I am the executive director of the Zephyr Hills Pregnancy Care center, like right around the corner. I mean, it's, it's. It was less than a mile away from where we're sitting, so it's really close.

So come over for a tour. I love that Amy Yarborough is still with us. She was the former executive director. She has become the client services director. So the board has stepped out on faith and hired additional people so that we can take this pregnancy center to the next level.

So how many people know that there's a battle going on? There's a battle for right and wrong and good and evil. And I think the scripture that summarizes this the best is found in John 10:10. What does John 10:10 say? The thief, the devil, Satan only comes out to do three things.

What are they? Steal, kill, or destroy. But it goes on to say that I, Jesus, come to bring life and life abundantly. So I think you can conclude very quickly whose side you're on. Do you Bring life or do you bring death?

I pray that all of you bring life. Now Pastor Nick already mentioned that in Moses Day they killed babies. Well, Satan's mission is still the same and he's been doing the same thing. In Moses Day he killed babies. In Jesus day he killed babies.

And in our day they try to kill babies. But take heart, God has overcome. In the state of Florida, we are very fortunate that we have passed some very great pro life laws, including the Heartbeat bill. And I'm so happy to report to you that Amendment 4 did not pass, which was the abortion amendment. So.

So thank you for those that voted against that. So what do we do? Our mission statement says the Pregnancy Care center of Zephyr Hills is Christ center, non denominational organization upholding the sanctity of human life. It is our desire to provide individuals and families with free spiritual, emotional and physical and educational support in a loving and caring and confidential environment. Clinical clients are equipped to make responsible, healthy and informed decisions for themselves and their families.

So I'm going to go over what we do. However, you're only going to remember 20% of what I say today. That's just the way it is. So on your way out, we have a little table in the foyer area. Pick up one of these brochures if you would like to get more information from us.

But what do we do? We do free pregnancy testing. We provide material assistance. I like to say, from bibs to cribs and everything in between. And everything we provide is new or like new.

My rule of thumb is if I don't give it to one of our, if I wouldn't give it to one of my own children or grandchildren, I'm not giving it to one of our clients. So we like to give our best. We do pregnancy options. There's three options. A mom can have the baby and parent it.

A mom can do a very loving thing and do an adoption plan or she can have an abortion. Now hear me clearly, church. We do not ever refer or recommend for abortion. Never. But what we do is we explain to them when an abortion is and what kind of procedures they're going to have and what kind of side effects as they know the truth.

And what does the Bible say? If the truth will set you free. And so that's what we try to do. We do pregnancy education and parenting education. We also have life skill classes as well and we have that in English and in Spanish because a large population of the people we serve are Hispanic and we try to serve them well.

Also we have Bible studies and support for men. We have post abortion support for women that have made that choice. And we love them regardless of their choice. And we have had people come back to us who have made that choice because we love them well. And the next time, a lot of times the next time they keep their baby, we do, we provide information on STDs and much more.

We do adoption and community referrals. We are very well connected with wic, Healthy Start, the Department of Health. So God has worked very well. He has done more than we can ask or imagine as found in Ephesians 3, 20 and 21. But before I get into a few numbers, let me assure you that it's about showing Christ's unconditional love with everybody who walks through our doors.

And that's the main goal, is to show our love. We had served last year 127 families representing 164 children, which represents over 900 client visits. That's the number of times they come in and out. So we're serving pretty close to 100 families a month, 100 intake services per month. We also are extension of your church.

We have some people at our center that are very gifted at sharing the gospels of Jesus Christ. And so we pray with people, we share the gospel with people. And several people have come to a saving knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ through our ministry. So I haven't told the story in a while, but Pastor Nick sort of reminded me of it when he was talking this morning. I think the reason that most people don't do anything is because they think they have to save everybody.

But I want to tell you a story. There was this man, he was walking down the beach and he looks over far away and he sees a young lady who looks like she's dancing and she's bending down and throwing something and twirling around and. And he doesn't know what she's doing. So he continues to walk down the beach and gets a little bit closer to her. And what he sees her doing is she's reaching down, she's picking up a starfish and she's throwing it into the ocean.

And so he's really curious, he's like, what is she doing? So he walks a little bit further where he could speak to her and he goes to the young lady, what are you doing? She said, I'm saving starfish. He goes, you can't save starfish. There's hundreds of them on the beach.

She goes, yes, I know, I can't Save all the starfish. But she reaches down, picks up another starfish and throws it into the ocean. And she says, well, I made a difference for that one. So today, what I would like you to think is you don't have to save everybody, but if everybody in this room saved one person, what a difference we would make. So there are five ways you could help us make a difference.

Number one is prayer. Prayer. How many prayer warriors do we have in this church? A lot.

Ephesians 6:12 says this. Our battle is not against flesh and blood, but against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. And that's no more true than the battle of abortion. So I need your prayers. So if you're a prayer warrior, we ask you to pray for us.

Number two is donations. We take new or, like, new baby items. So if you have young children, if you have grandchildren, and you're not using any items anymore, please donate them to the center. Number three, this is a big need for us. Volunteers.

We need volunteers. There's a lot of different things you can do. You can work in a baby boutique. You could be a mentor. You could help with Bible studies.

There's many things you can do. So all it takes to volunteer is eight hours a day for five days a week. Can anybody sign up for that? What are you laughing at? No, seriously, it only takes one day a week, about three to four hours a day.

And we'll train you what to do. And we got many different positions you can fill in the back. I have a volunteer signup sheet. And also in the pamphlet is a volunteer pamphlet that tells you all the different positions we have. Okay, number three.

Number four, financial support. This is a big one. God has spoken to me and has said to me that we need to try to raise $50,000 in the month of January to get us started. We're already 25% of the way there, so we need your help. Now, I have an.

I think an easy way for you to do this. You could become what I would call a life supporter. The average cost to save a baby in the United States is $1,500. Sounds like a lot of money. Maybe to some of you it is.

Maybe to some of you it's not. But let me break it down for you. It's $125 a month or $4 a day. Now, folks, if you go out to breakfast, a cup of coffee is $3.60 now. So make your coffee at home and support the pregnancy center.

If you can do that, it would be a great blessing to us, or if you could just make a small donation to us, that would be great. Whatever God has blessed you with, save a child's life. And then lastly, be our ambassadors, tell people about our pregnancy center. We would love to help hundreds of more families in the area. And then the other thing I would ask you to do, if you have friends that go to other churches in Zephyr Hills, please talk to them.

See if they'd be willing to introduce me to their pastor so we can get into other churches and get additional support. I think that's all I have today. If you have any questions, my beautiful wife Ellen and I will be out in the foyer after the service. Thank you very much and may God richly bless you. Thank you.

I want to wrap this up over the next just few minutes here in Exodus chapter 2. I want to read just a few verses here that talks about a really positive turn in this story. In Exodus chapter 2, it says this. A man from the household of Levi married a woman who is a descendant of Levi. In other words, they kept it in the the same clan there, you know, the woman became pregnant and gave birth to a son.

When she saw that he was a healthy child, or some versions say a beautiful child or a fine child. When she saw that he was a good kid, she. She hid him for three months. Now, I, I don't know where like, what this baby got going on, but like, to be quiet for three months is amazing. Like, no baby has ever done that.

But she hid him for three months. But when she was no longer able to hide him, she took a papyrus basket for him and sealed it with bitumen and pitch. By the way, this sounds a lot like a miniature version of Noah's Ark. In fact, the Hebrew word is the same as an ark. She built a little baby ark for one life and she put it, the child in it and set it among the reeds in the edge of the Nile.

Isn't it interesting that what Pharaoh had used as a tool to destroy the lives the Nile River God is about to turn into something that is going to be the salvation of the child and of his people. His sister, Moses's sister, stationed herself at a distance to find out what would happen to him. Notice here there's a lot of faith going on. There's faith that's saying, I've done all I can do. Now I'm going to sit back and watch what God's going to do, right?

Like, like Moses, mother says, I did my part for, for bringing him to life, for protecting him, for Three months now. All I've got left is this basket and some faith. And in fact, Moses's mother and father get listed in Hebrews chapter 11 in what we've called the hall of Faith, the. The faith hall of Fame, where. Where what their actions were constitutes an extreme faith in God.

So Moses's sister is watching. Verse 5. The daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself by the Nile. And while her attendants were walking alongside the river and she saw the basket among the reeds, she sent one of her attendants to who took it, opened it, and saw the child, a boy, crying. She felt compassion for him, and she said, this is one of the Hebrews children.

Then his sister said to Pharaoh's daughter, shall I go and get a nursing woman for you from the Hebrews so that she may nurse the child for you? In other words, she said, hey, I know a lady that can help with this, you know. Turns out she had a good inside line on what's going on. Pharaoh's daughter said, yes, please do that. So the young girl went and got her mother.

Pharaoh's daughter said to her, take this child and nurse him for me, and I will pay you your wages. So now she's getting paid to raise her own son. Isn't this great? The woman took the child and nursed him. When the child grew older, she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter and he became her son.

She named him Moses, saying, because I drew him from the water. There's a whole lesson here on adoption and what's going on there. But the beautiful thing is that this woman said, I'm willing to give up my son into the hands of God if it means preserving his life. She saw that he was a fine child, but she had no idea what Moses was going to go on to accomplish in his life. There's many studies we can do on the life of Moses and, And everything that he did, good and bad.

But if, if, if God hadn't risen up the. The faith in the mother and father of Moses to do this thing, to preserve his life, then we wouldn't have seen the miracles that God did through Moses. He would have been just another casualty, just another statistic. I think that every child has a bit of hope, a bit of potential, a lot of potential if we allow God to work through their lives. But the thing that gets me the most in this story is Pharaoh's daughter.

You see, I don't know what her. Her political leanings were. I don't think they had politics in this, in that sense, but I don't know what she thought about matters of, of the big things that we think about today and that our politicians argue about. I don't know if she really hated everything her father was doing, if she despised him as a person, as a king, or if she just didn't even like this one thing that he was doing with the Hebrew children. I don't even know if she disagreed with him about killing these Hebrew children.

But one thing happened when she came face to face with this one child. Her heart broke in compassion when she saw that she could just save one. As you talked about with the starfish story, she, she might have seen many times where this had gone on and on and on, but she knew that she could save just this one child. And as that happened, as she said, I can just save one. I'm going to do it.

And so she decided that she was going to save this one baby. And so she did. See, the true enemy we have in this world isn't the, isn't abortions. It's not that people have abortions. It's the desperation, the poverty, the hopelessness that drives people to make that decision, to make that call for their lives.

So we stand with mothers and fathers and children from conception and birth all the way up through raising those children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. We have work to do. We do that here in the church by standing beside families and saying, whatever it is that you need as you're raising your children, we want to help you in that. We stand beside them with partnering with organizations. As Pete said, the pregnancy care center is an extension of this church.

Not only are they involved in the lives of families in ways that we might not be able to do on a day to day basis, but they also have volunteers who are sharing the gospel with these people. They're sharing the hope that they can have in Christ. And as we look to that, we say we can support this organization because it's part of who we are. At First Church of the Nazarene, Moses was one that God used to bring freedom to the people. He was the one that as he was grown up, God moved in his heart to lead the children of Israel out of the bondage of slavery and into freedom.

God worked through Moses in that way because somebody had stood up to save him. Pharaoh's daughter couldn't save all of them. She knew that she could save one. And we might not be able to change the entire mindset of the culture in our country, but we can work in our community to make A difference. And to say life is valuable, we value life.

Whether you're old or young or unborn yet, or are headed towards that day that we all have coming, we, whatever your place in life is, whatever your age is, we value those lives. We all can make that difference. And we have the opportunity to give ourselves to this work. Whether it's throwing money, giving your time, just talking about the good things that God has in store in mind for the lives that are coming up. Whether it's working to say, I want to send some kids to camp, or whether it's saying, you know what, I want to make sure that.

That. That this church isn't just here for. For this generation, but for. Here for generations to come. And we want to welcome as many children and families as we can.

And you know what? There's going to be some. Some marks on the walls, some stains on the floors, and some kids running around like crazy sometimes where we're like, could you just calm down a little? And we praise God for that. Because what God's doing is he's saying, these kids, you have to approach the kingdom of heaven through the eyes of a child if you want to really see it.

We've got some stuff to learn from the kids, you guys, is what Jesus is trying to tell us. You might not be able to save all of them, and I know I can't. We can save one or two or ten or a hundred or a thousand. We can work to make a difference in our generation. So I don't really have much to close with today.

Pastor Kendall's going to come up and pray. My closing for you is going to be just a charge to say, do something you can. God has enabled you to do it. It might not be with Pregnancy Care Center. That's fine.

Like, I'd encourage you to do that. But whatever it is, get involved in the work of promoting life that Christ is already passionate about. Amen.

Sa.