Hello and welcome to Bible Stories. I am your host, Matt Mullins. Todd

Hamons is out today. He is at a middle school camp for his church and Todd will be out

for a couple of weeks with family vacations and a couple of more church responsibilities. The

Mullins family just returned from Washington State and then down in California and now I am

settled nestled back in Dallas, Texas where it is 102 degrees today. A little bit different from

the 50 degree weather that we had come from but despite all that. I'm back because I want to

tell you this story today about a few people that God had used outside of the nation of Israel

in the Old Testament. A couple of very interesting details. So we're going to start back in the

Exodus and you recall the Exodus, our main man Moses. He's been sent by God to leave the Israelites

out of Egypt and into the Promised Land. God's people had gone to Egypt originally as a means of

rescue way back in Joseph's day and things were good. However, the nation grew and grew and grew

and eventually Pharaoh came to view the Israelites as a threat. This group that started as a family

has multiplied and he's so concerned that he forced them into slavery. The Israelites were

physically abused and they were used as forced labor. However, the more and more that Pharaoh

tried these attempts to subdue the Israelites and to stop their growth, he couldn't break them,

they grew more and more they kept growing. Well, this growth was met with a harsh hand. The Bible says

in Exodus chapter 1 verses 13 and 14 that the Egyptians made the lives of the Jewish people

bitter with harsh labor and brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields. In all their

harsh labor, the Egyptians worked them ruthlessly. Well, Mom, Mom's friends, you know the story.

Eventually Pharaoh instructed the Hebrew midwives, the ones who helped to deliver the babies.

Well, he instructed them to kill any baby boy that was born. But these women, the Bible says they

feared God and they didn't abide by these instructions. They were courageous. And when Pharaoh kept seeing

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