Exodus 1:1-14
How does God work in the world today?
Does he wind up the world like a clock and then let it run down?
Does he send down a bunch of operating instructions (the Bible, for example) and then wait and see what happens?
Does he play with us like dolls, like a child, and we are mere puppets in his play?
What we learn in Exodus is that none of those are correct. The reality is that God is sovereign (in control) and active in His world. And we are not puppets but real people with real choices and real responsibility, and somehow our choices and God’s sovereignty go hand in hand. God is active, for his glory – and we can be part of his glorious salvation plan!
Exodus takes place in history. These are historical events with real people and in real places. The Bible is not embarrassed by this, this dependence on provable (or disprovable) events. God reveals himself to us through time and history, through events that human being experience. This is not a book of dry philosophy, thoughts we must thing about God. Greek philosophy and Oriental mysticism always seek to remove man from nature, from creation. Matter is dirty. From Buddhism to Zoroastrianism to Hinduism to Star Wars (“luminous beings are we, not this crude matter” says Yoda) we are spiritual beings, and we must seek to throw off the shackles of the material.
The other extreme is of course our Western materialism which assumes that there is only a material world, that the spiritual does not exist.
The Bible is an embarrassment to both. Materialism is revealed to be only part of the picture – but spiritualism has a faulty view of the material. Remember that the end of the story is not that we become a bunch of floaty angelic spirit beings, sitting in white light playing harps – but a new heavens and a new earth, with new imperishable bodies (that is, bodies that cannot be destroyed).
So in Exodus we see great material events with great spiritual significance. It is what is called theological history. Theos is the Greek word for God, so theological history is history in relation to God or history through God’s eyes.
This year we’ve spent a long time reading theological history in the book of Acts. In Acts we’ve been reading the events of the growth of the Christian church, and at each point we are shown how it is God who is behind these events, how it is He who is growing his church, sending out missionaries, converting people. He is the Prime Mover of church history.
And we find the same revealed here in Exodus. It is God who orchestrates these events in order to reveal to us who he is: his character, his power, his glory, his Name. A refrain throughout the Old Testament is this “that you/they may know that I am the Lord (YHWH)”. He is the Prime Mover in all of history for one purpose: that we may know him. John Piper, based on Jonathan Edwards work, sums up the Bible, and indeed all of history, to be about one thing: the glory of God.
Ex 14:4 I have planned this in order to display my glory through Pharaoh and his whole army. After this the Egyptians will know that I am the LORD!
We are not the hero of the Bible stories. It is Christ. He is the hero of the Bible. Remember Jesus’ words to the Pharisees: “You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life.” (John 5:39-40 (ESV))
And remember what we learned from Colossians: Col 1:26–27 This message was kept secret for centuries and generations past, but now it has been revealed to God’s people. 27 For God wanted them to know that the riches and glory of Christ are for you Gentiles, too. And this is the secret (or mystery): Christ lives in you. This gives you assurance of sharing his glory.
Exodus is about Christ, and reveals to us the glory of God.
With that in mind, let us turn to the introduction to the book.
1. The people of Israel are blessed 1:1-7
These are the names of the sons of Israel (that is, Jacob) who moved to Egypt with their father, each with his family: 2 Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, 3 Issachar, Zebulun, Benjamin, 4 Dan, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher. 5 In all, Jacob had seventy descendants in Egypt, including Joseph, who was already there. 6 In time, Joseph and all of his brothers died, ending that entire generation. 7 But their descendants, the Israelites, had many children and grandchildren. In fact, they multiplied so greatly that they became extremely powerful and filled the land.
Here we have listed the twelve tribes of Israel, named after the twelve sons of Jacob (called Israel). And look how numerous they have become. V7 In fact, they multiplied so greatly that they became extremely powerful and filled the land.
The opening verse of Exodus remind us that God keeps his promises. What promise, you may ask? Turn back to Gen 12:1–3 The LORD had said to Abram, “Leave your native country, your relatives, and your father’s family, and go to the land that I will show you. 2 I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you and make you famous, and you will be a blessing to others. 3 I will bless those who bless you and curse those who treat you with contempt. All the families on earth will be blessed through you.”
It’s an echo of the covenant (promise) God made to Adam Gen 1:28 Then God blessed them and said, “Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and govern it.”
The Lord is keeping his promise, Abraham’s descendants filling the land, becoming as numerous as the starts in the night sky, or sand on the seashore (Gen 22:17, God’s promise to Isaac, Abraham’s son). V9 is the first time Israel is called a “people”. The Lord is keeping his promise.
But not all of the promise is fulfilled, is it? They’re not in the Promised Land, are they? They are in Egypt! And so Exodus opens with a problem – how to get the people of God to move from their comfortable houses and good lands in Egypt, and get them to the Promised Land.
The start of God’s fulfilment of his promise to Abraham is surprising: the plan to bless Israel started with a declaration of slavery! (v11)
How powerful God is. How majestic. How surprising. How different. His ways are not our ways, his thoughts not our thoughts. He is a master at using our evil for good.
How often does something terrible happen to us – which later we see is of such a deep blessing to us. When I was at Sagavoll (here in Gvarv), one of my classmates killed himself – hanged himself in the cellar of our dormitory. And I discovered his body. That experience was like a wrecking ball whistling through my carefully constructed life. At one moment I was laid bare – and I realised that, at the end of the day, there is nothing but me and God. I stand before him, alone. Nothing else. It shook me up, and was the beginning of God’s saving work in my life (he saved me 9 months later in Drammen. Bing, the lights came on!). But that experience, terrible as it was in seeing my friends corpse, is not something I would ever give up. God used that to save me. God used that to show me where I stood with him. He knocked away all my other support structures to show me that He is enough.
The Israelites found themselves enslaved. And so what do they do? They cry out to the Lord. They realise they are helpless, that they need him. And they experience the most amazing rescue that history has ever seen – other than the cross of Christ.
God keeps his promise. His people will be blessed in slavery and in rescue. They will know that he is the Lord, and his name is glorious.
But before we carry on, let’s take a quick step back through the chapters of Genesis we skipped over, and get ourselves up to speed. Context is key to understanding the Bible, so what have we missed?
2. Genesis 22-50
Earlier on this year we covered the life of Abraham. If you’ve missed that series, download it and listen to it. What we saw was how God chose this man Abraham to be the start of his salvation plan for the world. We’ve already read the promise God made to Abraham in Gen 12:1-3, and the rest of the Bible follows the fulfilment of that promise: land, people, and blessing. The land of Canaan (Israel), the people of Israel, and the blessing of knowing God, and sharing that knowledge with the nations (Israel was a kingdom of priests, a light to the nations – at least, they should have been!). All this finds its fulfilment ultimately in Christ. We know Israel mess things up – sinning at every turn and generally behaving like…well, a lot like us if we’re perfectly honest! The Old Testament ends with the Abrahamic Covnenant still unfulfilled, and carries the tension “how can a holy God forgive unholy people”.
All that is solved in Christ. His death covers our sins and we receive his righteousness. And he fulfils the Abrahamic Covenant: we are his people, the church from every nation and tribe and people-group; we are blessed, his Holy Spirit is with us and in us; and our land is the New Creation, promised and guaranteed.
But that’s the end of the story. We’re still at the start. We saw how Abraham lived in a “bubble” of blessing – the Lord had promised to bless him and so he was blessed, even though, as we saw, he certainly did not deserve it, as he sinned against the Lord, a faithless, cowardly, adulterous man. Yet God forgave him and loved him. Gives us hope doesn’t it! If Christ can cover the sins of Abraham, he can cover our sins.
When we left Genesis, in chapter 23, Sarah had died and been laid to rest. Abraham bought a burial plot because of his faith in the Lord. It is the first piece of land he owns in the land promised to him by the Lord. He buys it, instead of accepting it as a gift, because he trusts that the Lord will keep his promises. For Abraham, it is a deposit guaranteeing (looking forward with certainty) his inheritance (the land). In the same way the Holy Spirit is our deposit guaranteeing our inheritance. We know that we will be with Christ upon the new Earth because the Spirit is with us now. (Eph 1:13-14)
In Chapter 24 which we hopped over, the story starts to focus in on Isaac and Rebekah, his wife, provided by the hand of God, and we see that God is blessing Isaac, just as he had promised. As we read in 25:11 After Abraham’s death, God blessed his son Isaac, who settled near Beer-lahai-roi in the Negev.
Because the story has now moved on from Abraham to Isaac. Chapter 25 spends a few verses on the final years of Abraham – and that’s basically it. Abraham’s part in this tale is over, his job is done – but God’s plan – oh, that is just beginning! Wait and see what God will do! After Abraham’s death, God blessed his son Isaac.
Isaac marries Rebekah, the bride given by God. A bride who is once again barren – oh no, what will happen to God’s promise? Ge 25:21–22 Isaac pleaded with the LORD on behalf of his wife, because she was unable to have children. And God remembers his promise: The LORD answered Isaac’s prayer, and Rebekah became pregnant with twins.
Those twins were Easu and Jacob. Jacob was a conniving sneak, as was Rebekah! And yet God chose him, despite the fact that he was the younger twin, despite the fact that he was a cheat and a thief and a liar, and Jacob receives the promises of God and birthright of the firstborn. God forgives and blesses sinners! Are we getting the message yet?
Jacob has two significant experiences: In Gen 28, in a dream he sees ladder between heaven and earth, and the Lord confirms the Abrahamic Covenant with him. The Covenant is the bridge, the way from earth to heaven, the Covenant which is fulfilled in Christ Jesus our Lord, whose outstretched arms ont eh Cross bridged heaven and earth as he gave his life so that sinners like us could be made righteous to be with the Righteous One, God Almighty.
Jacob’s second experience was when he received the name Israel. In a rather strange tale, Jacob wrestles with God (in Gen 32), and is renamed “Israel” which means “God fights” or “fights with God”, and is blessed, receiveing assurance that the Lord is with him and the Covenant is reaffirmed.
Israel then has twelve sons (unsurprisingly his wife Rachel was barren – oh no! But God again steps in to honour his promise). One of these sons was Joseph, and that brings me to my final point in setting the scene for Exodus.
3. Joseph, saviour of the world
8 Eventually, a new king came to power in Egypt who knew nothing about Joseph or what he had done.
What had he done? Well, we already know that Joseph was one of the twelve sons of Jacob, from which come the twelve tribes of Israel. Joseph was Jacobs favourite son because he was Rachel’s son, and Rachel was his true love – his other wife Leah, and their two servants he slept with…out of duty, I suppose? The books of Israel’s history hardly ever stop to condemn what the characters are doing – like polygamy and adultery is bad. No, it just tells the story, unfolds the consequences of those actions. Jacob’s multiple sexual partners ended up with a bunch of brothers who hated Joseph, because he was the favourite. It didn’t help that Joseph had a dream that they would all bow down to him, including their father and mothers. This made them furious and so they plotted to kill him.
Out in the fields Joseph came to them, and they attacked him, tore off his coat of many colours – the special coat given to him by his father Jacob, and threw him into a pit while they decided how to kill him. At that time a group of traders just happened to pass by, and the brothers thought “why kill him, when we can make a bit of money”, and sold him into slavery. The traders took him to Egypt. Little did they know that there evil actions, their prostitution of brotherly love – even that God would use, and turn into salvation for the whole world, including them!
Joseph learned humility as a slave, and worked hard for his new master, Potiphar. But Potiphar’s wife wanted to have sex with him, and when he refused, running away (good job Joseph), she falsely accused him of sexually assaulting her, and so he was thrown in jail, wrongly accused. But God had not forgotten him. At the right time he was brought before Pharaoh, king of Egypt, because of a dream he had. None of the wise men of Egypt could understand it, but God gave Joseph understanding: there would be a famine in the land, and this is how they were to prepare for it. Pharaoh was so amazed that he raised Joseph up to the highest position in the land, and gave Joseph charge over the preparations for the famine.
The severe famine came to the lands, lasting for seven years, but because of Joseph, Egypt was blessed and suffered no ill effects of the famine. People from the lands around came to Egypt for food, including, would you believe it, Joseph’s brothers! They came to ask him for food, but they did not recognise him, until he told them who he was. Joseph forgave them, understanding that what they had intended for evil, God had worked for good. There was great joy as the family was reunited by the love of God.
So that is what v8 is talking about: Joseph, the saviour of Egypt, and indeed, the world. But there is more to Joseph’s story.
Joseph was rejected by his own people, betrayed by his brothers for twenty pieces of silver, unjustly punished by the Gentiles for crimes he did not commit, but he was not forgotten by God, but exalted to the highest place in all the land where he saved the whole world. Sound familiar?
Philippians 2:6–11 Though [Christ Jesus] was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to. 7 Instead, he gave up his divine privileges; he took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being. When he appeared in human form, 8 he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross. 9 Therefore, God elevated him to the place of highest honour and gave him the name above all other names, 10 that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
God gives us these patterns, these foreshadowings, so that when Jesus appears we will recognise him as the Christ. Here he is, the man of sorrows, rejected, unjustly condemned, but now raised up, the saviour of the world!
God reveals his glory to us through real events and people in history. Abraham, Joseph, now Moses and the people of Israel – and supremely in Jesus of Nazareth, his son, our Lord and Christ (Messiah).
So have no fear, the Lord is in control. He is ruler of history, and all things are moving towards one goal: At the right time he will bring everything together under the authority of Christ—everything in heaven and on earth. Eph 1:10
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