The Groan That Started It All: Beginning Exodus
The Untitled, Open-Ended Study Bible
Exodus 1:7, 1:8, 1:12, and 2:23-25.
Kick-Off Sunday, September 13, 2026
Rev.'s David & Megan Collins
Good morning church!
Welcome to Maitland Pres! I see quite a few new faces here today, so allow me to re-introduce myself, my name is Dave.
I’m one of the co-pastors here, along with my lovely and brilliant wife Megan. We’ve been the co-pastors here for eleven years, and you’ve probably already heard that we went to preschool here too. We like to tell everyone that, because it’s adorable.
What you might not know is that I was also a member here from 1992 to 2000 when we got married right here on these steps and then moved away to start our ministry together.
Which means that I was initially formed by the zenith of American evangelicalism, which was itself formed in part as a reaction to, as a defense against the scientific revolution, and a few other revolutions that were making people nervous, too.
That left me with some damage to undo, as well as a determination to lead the kind of church that doesn’t pass that stuff on to the next generation
But I still do want to pass on the good parts from that formation too, like the determination to take the Bible seriously.
But this way of reading of the Bible where you pull out one verse, out of context, away from the whole story and the original languages and the history, and read it literally, like an magic answer or a dictionary definition, so often misses the whole point.
And that’s what we have seen happen in some of the loudest corners of Christianity over the past few years. It’s become a weapon to ostracize and marginalize whole groups of people. The Bible is being used as a tool to prop up power, and to keep anyone seen as a threat to that power quiet.
This is part of the reason for the study that we are still in the beginning of here at Maitland Pres. For those who are new with us, at the beginning of this year, we started a project called “The Untitled, Open-Ended Study Bible.”
So if one of the reasons you’re here is because you have seen that happening too, I’m glad you’ve come. This is a safe community to deconstruct the faith that may have been used against you or people you love, and insist on a faith that is good, and true and beautiful.
The book we’ll start today in our project is exactly the kind that some people, in some churches, would like to keep quiet.
Because as soon we move into Exodus, right out of the gate, it clearly challenges people in power. And it encourages those on the margins to get loud. Which is why some have historically preferred to gloss over it.
The Slave Bible
In fact, in 1807, a society in London printed a Bible for the enslaved people of the British West Indies, and they took things out .
One of the things they cut was Exodus. Not all of it, because that would look suspicious. They kept the Ten Commandments, but their version of the Bible jumps from Genesis 45 straight to Exodus 19, so you get Moses handing down the rules but there is no slavery, no Pharaoh, no liberation. They also cut Exodus 21:16, which says that anyone who steals a man and sells him shall be put to death.
But they kept the part in Ephesians that says, Servants, obey your masters.
So they knew. They knew how powerful the truth is, they knew just how radical and political the Bible is, so they tried to silence it.
They still know.
Historical Revisionism in Florida Schools
I’ll never forget my sons horror at taking a standardized test that referred to enslaved people in America as “Involuntary servants”
Florida's state standards now include instruction that some enslaved people quote “developed skills that could be applied for their personal benefit.” Books about slavery have been pulled off school library shelves by people who will tell you they're protecting children.
And so out in our lobby stands the Brave Little Bookshelf, because a book somebody wants taken away from your kid is exactly the book we're going to hand them here. So we encourage you to check one out.
And let’s not miss the irony that the same people removing books about slavery from the schools want the Bible read in schools, which makes me wonder if they’ve actually read it, especially Exodus. In fact, there’s a version from 1807 they might really appreciate.
In this project we’re making sure that all of us have a better understanding of the whole Bible than they do, and than we did before all this. So we can deconstruct and rebuild on our own faith. And then defend it out there. And because, despite what you may have heard, it’s not at all a book that was created to protect the powerful.
Let’s do a quick overview of the story we’ll be getting into in Exodus.
The Story of Exodus
When we last left the family of Israel, they were chilling in Egypt, waiting out a great famine, that Joseph had saved them, and the whole known world, from. Instead of leaving after the famine, 1:7 the Israelites were fruitful and prolific; they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong, so that the land was filled with them.
They grew so much that when 1:8 a new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph. He oppressed them and enslaved them. 1:12 But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread, so that the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites.
A new king is almost never good news in the Bible or any other book.
(Two out of forty-two is the count of kings in the Bible who get a good review with no asterisk attached, and that’s just the kings of Israel and Judah. The Bible’s verdict on kings is not a good one.)
And this king in Exodus looks at people who are multiplying and spreading and calls it a threat. They're more numerous than we are, he thinks. This isn't true, but it felt true, which is all that matters.
(Every word of Pharaoh's speech is still in circulation today. We’ve heard all of this in political speeches and positions. There are too many of them. They breed. They'll side with our enemies. And words like those are never just words. They become policies.)
And they do in Exodus as well. Egypt enslaves the Hebrew people, and institutes a system of murder, ordering the baby boys born to the Hebrews to get thrown into the river.
Which is what they did with Moses. But they put him in a basket first, so he survives and ends up raised in the palace of the very man who ordered him killed. He grows up, and when he sees an Egyptian beating a slave, he kills the Egyptian. Then he runs for his life.
Forty years later he's tending sheep in the middle of nowhere when he sees a bush that's on fire and won't burn up, and God tells him to go back and to tell the most powerful man in the world to release his entire labor force.
But Moses says no, several times, and points out that he isn't a good speaker. God sends him anyway and tells him his true name, which is a really big deal.
Then there are ten rounds with Pharaoh and the plagues, and each one goes worse than the one before it, until the last night, when the people paint blood on their doorposts and eat a meal standing up with their shoes on. Pharaoh finally lets the people go but then changes his mind and comes after them, and the sea opens for people escaping and then closes on those who wanted to control them.
They spend three months in the desert complaining about the food, and then they come to a mountain that's shaking and smoking, and God gives them a law. While Moses is up there getting it, they immediately get into trouble and build a golden calf and worship it. God all but begs Moses to kill them all, but Moses talks him out of it.
Then the last third of the book is instructions for building a tent, down to the fabric and the furniture (which is where most Bible reading plans quietly die.)
And at the very end, God moves into the tent.
That's the whole book.
Charlton Heston does most of it. He does skip the tent.
But that’s what we’ll be digging into as we move through Exodus, bit by bit.
And we will look very closely at the parts that get glossed over, or consistently get misinterpreted by people who live like the Egyptians, while somehow also claiming to be the people of God.
Some of whom you might see at Thanksgiving this year.
Because somehow, this book that is so clearly anchored in the real lives of a real people, has been kept hostage, and taught as only spiritual, and not, in any way, political.
Which is a very good strategy to keep the Bible tamed. Keep it as just something spiritual, or something just about a vague morality. And then miss the entire point. But Exodus isn’t interested in letting itself be tamed. Look at chapter 2:
The Groan That Started It All
Exodus 2:23 After a long time the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned under their slavery and cried out. Their cry for help rose up to God from their slavery.
There’s another transition, another new king, and this time, the Israelites can’t be silent anymore. It says they groaned and cried out.
Groaning in the Ancient Hebrew this verse was originally written is a deep sigh, like the kind you feel during grief. It’s a recognition that this is not the way things should be. It’s a little quiet, and personal, but not silent.
And then . . . .they cry out. The Hebrew word for cried out is different from groaning. It has a collective sense to it, it’s people coming together and crying out, loudly and as a group, for help.
It’s more urgent, more of a protest, or even rage. And, most importantly, it has an expectation of being heard. So there’s this flicker of hope there that things could change.
And then:
24 God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. 25 God looked upon the Israelites, and God took notice of them.
God heard. God remembered. God looked. God took notice.
They even didn’t direct this cry to God. It wasn’t a prayer. It was a guttural collective yell at how bad things were. And that’s all it took.
They didn’t have to earn God’s attention, or say just the right prayer.
The only qualification for God to remember and see and notice and hear, was that they needed God’s help.
And it was this loud crying out, as a community, that started the exodus. God became personally involved in liberating his people because they needed help. And it’s the political, physical liberation that happens first. Only after the Israelites are free will the business of how then to live as God’s people come up with the law and the commandments later in the book.
Jesus
And that’s not the only time we see this. When we meet God in Jesus in the New Testament, he gets involved in the physical liberation of people, from oppression, from hunger, from illness, from isolation, alongside of doing the spiritual work of forgiveness and teaching.
And his biggest critics when he does, are the powerful religious leaders.
People start gathering. He feeds thousands of people who have come to hear him teach. He heals on the sabbath. He spends time with the people the religious establishment had decided didn’t count.
And the crowds kept getting bigger. And the people who benefited from the way things were started getting nervous. There are too many of them. It was the same fear Pharaoh had. Not "he's wrong." But "He's a threat to our arrangement."
And it isn't just the religious leaders. Jesus ends up crushed between two power structures that usually can't stand each other.
Empire and religion took a break from hating each other and teamed up against the guy who was healing people, feeding people, and telling the truth about both the empire and the religion.
And the powerful religious leaders, the ones who had this whole Exodus story sitting right there in their own scriptures, did everything they could to stop him. They had him killed after all. It just didn’t stick.
And the tragically ironic part is that they did it all during Passover, the big holiday commanded in Exodus, to remember everything God did to rescue people who needed help.
So when we meet God in Jesus, it’s what we see in Exodus. God getting involved in real, physical liberation. In Jesus, the mission gets bigger. Not one enslaved people anymore. It’s for the whole world, every person.
From Exodus to the Gospels, God gets involved when people need help.
So if you’re frustrated with the way the world looks, if you think this can’t be the way things are supposed to be, perhaps the first thing to do is what the Israelites did: groan and cry out.
Exodus starts before anybody finds the words or had a plan. It started with a groan, a cry. And that's the part God heard.
But you don’t does this alone. The cry for help in Exodus, it was communal. God hears and sees and notices what’s happening here. And as a community, one thing we do together is get a little loud and cry out against things that aren’t right.
And we don’t groan without hope. We cry out expecting a response . . .and we expect that response to happen through people. In Exodus, even the supernatural acts like parting seas happened through regular people like Moses. Through people like you.
Because sometimes you’ll groan and cry out, then you’ll realize the person God is going to use to do something about it - is you. And God isn’t just using you for his purpose. God truly cares about you.
Perhaps you are someone who is okay asking God to fix the world but you have trouble believing God cares about you. But God sees and notices you, too.
So next week we go back to the beginning and start walking through the book of Exodus slowly.
We’ll see more from this God who is involved in the world and in our individual lives. But today we go to the table. This transformed Passover table.
And nobody at this table has to qualify for it. It isn't a reward for getting it right. It's food for people who know we need help.
And after that, there's more food in the gym and I mean it when I say stay. This is a church for people who cried out and then got shushed. Come eat with us. We can’t wait to hear what you have to say.
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