Flavors Of Favor-Day 2

Today's Flavors of Favor post will not be talking about how God gave favor to an individual person but a group of people or more specific, the Hebrew midwives that the Bible tells us about in Exodus chapter 1. This is what the Bible says: "Now a new king arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. He said to his people, "Behold, the people of the sons of Israel are more and mightier than we.  "Come, let us deal wisely with them, or else they will multiply and in the event of war, they will also join themselves to those who hate us, and fight against us and depart from the land." Exodus 1:8-10

Pharaohs grand scheme was to make the Israelites their slaves and put them to hard work but something amazing happened. The Bible says that the harder the Egyptians afflicted the Israelites the mightier and more populous the Israelites became! Well Pharaoh saw this and called all the Hebrew midwives together and told them that if a baby boy was born to kill him but if it was a girl it could live. Then the Bible says this, "But the midwives feared God, and did not do as the king of Egypt had commanded them, but let the boys live." Wow! What courage they must have had to be able to defy the Pharaoh like that! And of course the Pharaoh notices this and asks the midwives why they did not obey him. Guess what they do? They lie! Here is what they answered him and said, "Because the Hebrew women are not as the Egyptian women; for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife can get to them." Now here is a interesting question. Is it OK to lie? One of the seven things that God hates most is a lying tongue. (Proverbs 6:16-17)  Maybe we should see what happens after the midwives lie. This is what it says:

 "So God was good (or gave favor) to the midwives, and the people multiplied, and became very mighty. Because the midwives feared God, He established households for them." God gave favor to the midwives? But they lied! Lets look at why God blessed them because it says why. It says "Because the midwives feared God". The Bible says that the fear of Yahweh is the beginning of knowledge. How did they fear God? Well if they killed the baby boys that would be murder and I am sure they all knew about Cain and what happened to him when he murdered and I am sure none of them wanted to go through what Cain had to go through for the rest of his life. They feared God by realizing that He had the power to do the same to them as He had done to Cain and they decided to follow God and obey Him. 

I think I have come to the conclusion that if someone is harming another person and they must lie in order to save them then God is pleased. But if you lie for your own selfish benefit then God will not be pleased. Since I love reading about WW2 I hear of many instances where people must lie to save other people's lives. In many cases the person is lying to benefit another person and if caught are risking their own lives. It would take me forever to really study this subject deeply but what I have realized by reading this is that there are times when people must lie but I believe it only to be when someone's life is in danger. (When I say someone, I mean a living human being. I notice that many young girl stories like to show that lying, even to your parents, is OK if it is benefiting your "favorite horse"  or animal. I believe that this is a point in the story where the girl should practice some submission towards her parents because her parents are more important than her pet. 1 Peter 2:18) 

So lets take a look at how God showed favor toward the midwives. It says that "He established households for them". Meaning that they were able to have children. Back then most midwives were women who were not able to have children. We see here that God blessed them by letting them be able to have children. And guess what this meant to the Pharaoh? More baby boys to deal with! As before, Pharaoh sees this and appoints his own men to go and kill the baby boys. But this is a story for another time. 

Would you please stop and pray for a minute? Please pray first that God will give us His spirit so that we may be bold and able to stand up for what God tells us. Also pray that we will learn to fear Yahweh. Proverbs 1:7 says, "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge". Now we do not only fear Him but we also love Him. Same way with our parents. I love my parents soooooo much, yet I also fear them if I do not obey because I know a consequence is coming! :) 

I hope you have enjoyed today's Flavors of Favor post. I am thankful that you have stopped by! I pray that you have learned more about Gods favor through the Hebrew midwives examples. I pray that Gods favor shines down upon you today.

Oh! By the way my new header will be in soon....just incase y'all were wondering if I was just going to leave it like that! :) I can't wait for y'all to see it. It is so pretty! Thank you to Grace who also made my button and my new signature. Thank you also to Storyteller who was so sweet to offer to make me a header as well. Well, that is all the announcements for today. I hope you all have a blessed Sunday!