Current news from Florida has a strange parallel to Egypt in 1400 BC. The Governor has recently signed into law a very strict immigration law that will affect the nearly 700,000 undocumented immigrants in that state.
The Orlando Sentinel opinion writer, Scott Maxwell, wrote about a recent meeting between two legislators at a Hispanic church event.
Maxwell writes: “In a remarkable video that surfaced Monday, GOP legislators Rick Roth and Alina Garcia begged migrant workers in South Florida to ignore the new immigration crackdown law that both of them supported, promising it was more tough talk than serious action.
“Roth said the immigration law he supported ‘is more of a political bill than it is policy. This bill is 100% supposed to scare you,’ he said.
“The two hoped Hispanic faith leaders would urge their followers to keep working in Florida so that the state’s tourism, agriculture and construction industries won’t collapse.
“It was a bizarre scene. And it got even more bizarre when Roth, a farmer himself, said farmers were ‘mad as hell’ about the law. ‘I’m a farmer, and the farmers are mad as hell,’ he said. ‘We are losing employees. They’re already starting to move to Georgia and other states.’
“Nobody was angrier about this bill than the lawmakers who voted for it.”
A Parallel Story
Exodus presents somewhat of a parallel story to the one in Florida.
The Egyptians required Hebrew slaves for labor, but they were concerned that the Israelites would surpass them in power.
Now a new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph.
He said to his people, “Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we (Exodus 1.8-9).
The Pharaoh needed to maintain the Israelite presence as an economic asset without jeopardizing national security.
The same issue appears to be the case in Florida. Undocumented immigrants are a welcome source of cheap labor until their numbers become too large.
According to the legislators, the bill should not be taken literally. It is simply intended to scare more immigrants from coming to the state.
Shrewd Dealings
Pharaoh’s plan included shrewd dealings with the Israelites.
He said, “Come, let us deal shrewdly with them, or they will increase and, in the event of war, join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land” (Exodus 1.10).
Satan keeps people enslaved to sin through shrewd methods.
A fisherman’s bait looks like breakfast to a fish, but the fish ends up being lunch for the one who caught it.
Satan’s shrewd tactics are consistently appealing, but they ensnare and consume us.
Thinking about the “shrewd” dealings of Florida’s immigration laws, I have several complaints but no answers.
If someone were to give me a blank sheet of paper and ask me to fix the issue, I wouldn’t be able to accomplish the task.
In my opinion, immigration problems don’t start at our borders, but in oppressive and corrupt countries that care little for their citizens.
When a person who picks lettuce in California makes more in a day than the $70 a month salary of a university professor in Venezuela, it is easy to see why people want to come to our country.
I don’t have an answer to the problem. As we read Exodus, we will see that Moses didn’t have an answer for their situation either.
The good news is that God has the answers for immigrants, people enslaved to sin, and all other issues of life.
Production = Value
Whether it is Pharaoh’s brickyard or a corporate office, the world’s system values a person in a measure equal to their production ability.
Pharaoh’s goal was the maximization of profits and he used taskmasters to make sure the slaves produced.
Therefore they set taskmasters over them to oppress them with forced labor. They built supply cities, Pithom and Rameses, for Pharaoh (Exodus 1.11).
The cities were built to store provisions and possibly armaments and the taskmasters made sure the people produced what was needed.
Pharaoh may have planned for the harsh conditions to limit the growth of the Israelites.
God also had a plan. It was to fulfill his promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob to multiply their family into a great nation.
But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread, so that the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites (Exodus 1.12).
God caused his people to multiply and become a source of fear to their captors.
Pharaoh’s response was to make life even more difficult for the Israelites.
The Egyptians subjected the Israelites to hard servitude and made their lives bitter with hard servitude in mortar and bricks and in every kind of field labor.
They were ruthless in all the tasks that they imposed on them (Exodus 1.13-14).
The “ruthless” behavior was intended to crush or break in pieces the spirit of the Israelites. They were to be a cooperative and productive workforce that maximized the wealth of the Pharaoh.
Whether it is Satan or the world’s system, the tactics are the same.
Satan keeps enslaved to sin and the world’s system keeps workers in a production-equals-value existence.
The message of Exodus is that God has an escape plan from slavery to the promised land.
YouTube Video
Rudy Ross and I continue our study of Exodus on YouTube today. It is on the Bob Spradling channel.
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