Israel - The Next Generation

Today we begin a new book.

We are returning to the Old Testament and beginning our journey through the book of Exodus.

This is the second book written by Moses.

The events of this book shape the history of Israel.

You cannot understand the life of Israel, without knowing Exodus.

You cannot know the Old Testament, without knowing Exodus.

Through this book, you will learn of God’s faithfulness to redeem a people for His own possession.

Why do we need Exodus?

We live in a culture that is becoming more and more isolated.

People are content with being by themselves.

Even Christians are falling for this trap.

And this lockdown is not helping.

More and more people think that Christianity is only about you and God.

People think we are weird because we desire to be together.

People think we are weird, because we aren’t happy just watching church on TV.

What you will see is the Exodus is about God making a people.

Not individuals.

God doesn’t convert people and tell them to be by themselves.

To go live in a cave and meditate alone.

People are converted, and then become a part of the church.

Which is why we don’t just evangelize.

We evangelize, then desire to see people become involved in the body of Christ, join a church.

The miracle of the Old Testament is that God took 1 person and made many.

God took 1 man and 1 woman, and all life came from them.

We see this with Adam and Eve.

We see it reproduced with Noah and his family.

We see it with Abraham.

As we begin Exodus, Exodus 1 shows us 3 ways that God faithfully multiplied His people, so that you can trust in Him.

Let’s read God’s Word, beginning with Exodus 1.

Read Exodus 1.

First, God Multiplied Despite Time.

Exodus was written to a people who had suffered.

We will read about there suffering in this first chapter.

They live in a foreign land, as slaves.

They’ve lived there for 400 years.

400 years of generations coming and going.

And as time goes on, you forget your history.

You forget where you came from.

We see this within our own nation.

We forget the principles that founded this nation.

We forget what our founding fathers were escaping, and the dream that they were pursuing.

Which is why the beginning of Exodus is so important.

Exodus begins right where Genesis left off.

Look at Genesis 50:26, “So Joseph died, being 110 years old. They embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt.”

It ends with Jacob’s family all in Egypt, and Joseph’s death.

Then we look at verse 1, “These are the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob, each with his household:” - Then it lists Jacob’s 12 sons.

The reason for such a smooth transition, is that it was all originally 1 book.

In our Bibles, the first 5 books are each unique.

In the original Hebrew Bible, these 5 books were all one book.

They were called The Law of Moses.

Moses begins by reminding the Israelites where they came from.

They may be slaves now, but they weren’t always slaves.

They have a history.

They have an origin.

Turn with me back to:

Genesis 12:1-3

“Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”

This was and is the Abrahamic Covenant.

This was God’s promise that He would make a great nation out of that one man.

This is God declaring what He would do.

You see it over and over again.

I will show you the land.

I will make you a great nation.

I will bless you.

I will curse.

God is saying what He will do.

This is all about the actions of God.

Flip forward in your Bible to Genesis 15:4-5.

Abraham is doubting this promise from God, but God reassures Abraham.

“And behold, the word of the Lord came to him: “This man shall not be your heir; your very own son shall be your heir.” And he brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.””

Again, reiterating what God would do.

And in the following verses, God swears to fulfill this promise.

The promise was that God would make a mighty nation out of Abraham.

A nation that was huge, and uncountable.

As Exodus begins, this promise is starting to be fulfilled.

It’s not fulfilled yet, but it’s in the process of being fulfilled.

What started with one man, Abraham, resulted in 1 man with 12 sons, and as Genesis concluded, Israel was 70 people strong.

Then the book of Exodus starts.

Look down at verse 7, “But the people of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly; they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong, so that the land was filled with them.”

Israel is starting to become a nation.

They blossomed from 70 people to about 2 million people.

Not only are they reproducing, but they are filling the land.

“It says they grew exceedingly strong, so that the land was filled with them.”

They were all over the place.

They went from a minority group, do nearly the majority.

Does this remind you of any thing earlier in Genesis?

Creation.

Look back at Genesis 1:28, “And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

A blessing from God is that people reproduce.

The reproduction of people is a blessing.

Growing populations are a blessing.

Families are a blessing.

Children are a blessing.

Filling the earth is a blessing.

Modern day man’s approach to the blessing of reproducing and filling the land shows how far and how deceived our world is today.

Consider Psalm 127:3-5, “Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them! He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate.”

But children are not seen as a blessing.

Abortion is championed today.

Many times politicians have zero policy or platform other than the death of children in the womb.

Children are seen as a curse.

This is a blessing.

And God blesses humanity with children.

Meanwhile, our culture despises them.

At times, celebrities use children to manipulate us.

They go on TV, pushing their agenda or their cause.

They say, “Think of the children.”

They appeal to that last spark of a godly conscience within the soul of man.

Inside man’s conscience, there is that knowledge of what is good.

As if it is God’s fingerprint on our souls.

Our culture pushes that mark left by God when it supports some cause or some effort to raise money.

But the rest of the time, children are a burden.

A curse.

The world is crying out for a blessing from God.

“God if you’re there, give me a sign.”

And every sign given, is despised.

Psalm 139:13-14 says, “For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.”

Mankind doesn’t like that sign.

They don’t want the miracle of life.

And so we become a culture of death.

As Exodus opens, describing a people who are in slavery within Egypt, it opens with a blessing.

They have been blessed by God.

They have been fruitful and increased.

They have multiplied and filled the land.

Not only have they been blessed, but things are operating according to the plan of God.

They are not forgotten.

Again, back in Genesis 15, in that same chapter where God reaffirmed His blessing to Abraham, in Genesis 15:13, God told Abraham this, “Then the Lord said to Abram, “Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for four hundred years.

That was 700 years prior.

700 years earlier God told Abraham that His descendants would be in a land that wan’t there, and be slaves there.

Why does Israel need to hear this?

They are exactly where God desires them to be.

His plan is for them to multiply.

And that is happening.

I love the opening of Exodus, because it starts with action.

It starts by telling us about what God is doing.

Have you ever watched an action movie, or at least a movie that’s billed as an action movie -

You’ve seen the trailers.

Explosions.

Loud noises.

Excitement.

But when you watch the movie, it’s an hour and a half of build up, and 5 minutes of glory.

And you’re disappointed.

That is not Exodus.

Exodus starts with the action of God.

The promise of God.

It starts with God being sovereign, and multiplying the Israelites through time.

The second multiplication is that God Multiplied Despite Oppression.

Verse 8 says, “Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.”

You may remember the Pharaoh that worked with Joseph.

He made Joseph the number 2 person in the nation.

That Pharaoh liked Joseph.

That dynasty ended up being removed.

There was a bit of a civil war within Egypt.

The northern and southern portions of Egypt unified.

A foreign dynasty came in and removed the previous rulers.

This new king instituted a new policy.

He threw out the previous customs of the land.

He ignored the blessing of Israel within the land, and how it was a Hebrew who saved the day.

This new Pharaoh instituted a new anti-Israel policy.

He examined the nation and saw that Israel had filled the land.

He used fear to manipulate the population.

Saying that if Israel went rogue, they could have taken over the land.

This new king’s desire for power, motivated by fear, brought in a new policy of slavery.

He enslaved the Hebrews.

They were pushed into forced labor, heavy labor.

The king’s goal was to overwork them, and wear them out.

Ultimately, he was looking to suppress and lower the Hebrew population.

The king didn’t know it, but he was waging a war upon the blessing of God.

His goal was to remove the blessing of God.

Here’s where it gets interesting.

Have you ever thought about when it is the right time to have a child?

Obviously, it’s when you are married.

Husbands and wives often think about when they should start having kids.

Should they do it right away?

Should they wait until they have the right job?

Many couples are influenced by their circumstances in life to decide when to start having kids.

This might have been what the new Pharaoh was playing on.

Make their life so miserable, that there is no way the Israelites would ever consider bringing children into this world.

Maybe, Pharaoh just wanted to physically wear them out.

Work their bodies so hard, that it would be impossible to bear children.

Either way a miracle happened.

Look at verse 12, “But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and the more they spread abroad. And the Egyptians were in dread of the people of Israel.”

They multiplied.

The conditions were certainly not optimal, but they had more kids.

You’d think the population would shrink.

But it grew!

The second miraculous multiplication was that God multiplied them even through oppression.

God’s committed to His plan.

He’s faithful to His plan.

His plan is to have a people.

And He will have His people.

The beauty here, is don’t confuse your situation or circumstances in life, whatever is immediately in front of you, and question God’s faithfulness to His promises.

The promise to Abraham, and in turn to his descendants, was that they would multiply and become a great nation.

We must remember what God has promised.

We must never lose that perspective.

Therefore, our great care in life should be to serve God.

To please Him.

To live for Him.

To work for Him.

Colossians 3:22-23, Paul told the slaves in Colossae, “Bondservants, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord. Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men,”

Because if we lose this perspective.

If we confuse our situation, with God’s promises, then we accuse God of faithlessness.

God has promised to keep those who are His.

All who Christ died for, He will keep.

But that doesn’t mean this life will be easy.

So we endure difficulty, trusting in the faithfulness of God.

The final multiplication is God Multiplied Despite Corruption

When the Pharaoh’s first attempt at population control failed, he came up with an even more diabolical plan.

Murder.

Verse 16 records what Pharaoh told the midwives, “When you serve as midwife to the Hebrew women and see them on the birthstool, if it is a son, you shall kill him, but if it is a daughter, she shall live.”

3 questions about this final section in ourpassage.

1. What is a birthstool?

It’s probably not what you think that it is.

You don’t have to be a doula, midwife, or doctor to understand it.

It was a difficult word to understand.

It’s actually not a bench.

It means stone.

And it is actually a dual, or double word.

Meaning there are 2 of these stones present.

When the baby is born, you inspect it for stones, or male genitalia.

When the baby is born, if it is a boy, kill him.

2. In verse 15, there were 2 midwives named. Were there really only 2 midwives for these 2 million people?

It probably means that they were the head midwives.

All the midwives received their orders from them.

The king made a new law, summoned the 2 head midwives, then expected them to pass on the message to the rest of the nation.

3. The third question, did the midwives lie and is it okay to lie?

Verse 19 says that they refused to kill the boys.

They claimed that the Hebrew women were giving birth too quickly.

They said the Hebrew women were “vigorous”.

They got the baby out too fast, and were gone before the midwife showed up to kill the boy.

So did the midwives lie?

I don’t know if they lied.

They could have been telling the truth.

But I have a feeling they lied to save the children’s lives.

But to be honest that’s not the most important part of the question.

A better question is why didn’t they follow the king’s orders?

Aren’t we supposed to obey the government?

In this instance, the government ordered the death of the Hebrew boys because of national security.

For the sake of the health of the nation, the midwives were ordered to kill the young boys.

This we have a clear answer for.

Why didn’t they obey the government?

You see the answer down in verse 21.

“And because the midwives feared God ...”

They had to disobey Pharaoh, because they feared God.

If they followed through on Pharaoh’s plan, they would be disobeying God.

And to disobey God would bring a punishment worse than physical suffering.

A punishment worse than what Pharaoh could bring upon them.

It would bring eternal suffering.

This is applicable for us today.

We see that Israel obeyed the government in some aspects.

They submitted to the evil Pharaoh in regards to being slaves.

Governments will be cruel.

Yet, we obey.

But where the government’s laws were evil and required its people to participate in evil, then you must disobey the government.

For Israel to participate in the murder of the young boys, that would have been evil, and involved them in the sins of Egypt.

Therefore they had to resist.

Church, we are nearing this point.

We are told that for the safety of the nation we are banned from meeting.

Yet, the Lord has called for us to worship.

There is going to come a point, where we value obedience to God, and worshipping more than our supposed safety.

Like the midwives in this passage, or Peter and the apostles in Acts, we must come to a point where we stand firm and say, “We must obey God rather then men.”

The midwives were blessed because of their obedient fear of God.

Verse 21, “And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families.”

Remember, children and families are a blessing from the Lord.

These midwives made the scary decision to go against the popular consensus and spare the lives of the Hebrew boys, but they received a blessing from the Lord.

And I too believe that we will be blessed by our obedience.

That blessing may not be children like the midwives received.

The martyrs never received a physical blessing for their obedient suffering.

The blessing is stored up in heaven for you.

In Pharaoh’s second attempt at lowering the population of Israel within Egypt, he didn’t hope that they would die, he made plans to actively lower the population.

But remember, this chapter is about the action of God.

Look back at verse 20, “So God dealt well with the midwives. And the people multiplied and grew very strong.”

The people grew.

Take a moment and recognize that there is actual evil in this world.

Pharaoh’s plan was evil.

But evil and evil’s power are impotent before a mighty God.

Their most deadly and contrived plans have no true power before God.

God will have His victory over His foes.

This makes the assurance of God’s promises all the more sure.

And so goes the story of the Bible.

Satan tempts Eve - sin enters the world.

Sin grows so great that God sends a flood.

Esau trades his birth right.

Israel pursue idols.

Jerusalem rejects her Messiah.

And none of these great evils are a scratch on the paint of God’s sovereignty.

In fact, the greatness of God is that He can even use men’s evil intentions for His good and perfect plan.

The death of Jesus Christ being the best example of that.

It was predestined by God, planned by God to take place ahead of time, so that His people’s sins would be paid for, and there would be life.

The more I think about it, the more Exodus mirrors the book of Acts.

Exodus, God has His plan - to redeem and deliver His people.

The road was not an easy road.

But ultimately, it was God who multiplied the people.

It was God who provided the increase.

Acts, God has a plan - to document the birth of His church, His body.

The road was not easy.

But ultimately it was God who multiplied the people.

Acts 2:47, “ … And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.”

We are watching a world grow more and more corrupt.

But God is not hindered by what is happening.

He is not caught off guard by what He sees.

None of it changes His plans or throws His decree out of sync.

Therefore, you can be confident that the Lord will be faithful in what He has promised.

Imagine being Israel.

The glory days of their culture were long gone.

The people had forgotten Joseph.

They were now on the opposite side of a pagan culture.

God’s plans were still solid.

Look at our culture.

Morally, our nation is changing.

The church used to be a refuge, a sanctuary from the culture.

Now it’s not.

It’s seen as equal to an entertainment venue.

Governor Newsom sees the church as no different from a movie theater, and less than a mall, or a cannabis shop.

Once, like Joseph, we were seen as important.

In fact, the very first amendment of the US Constitution stated that importance.

We are not on the opposite side of a pagan culture.

But God’s plans are still valid.

Just as He was faithful to Israel.

He is faithful to you who are in Christ.

Christ has died for you.

And you have an inheritance ahead of you.

In the same way that God is faithful to His promises, He is also faithful to His enemies.

The faithfulness of God to those He loves, should be a warning to those who rebel.

He is faithful to give them the wages they have earned.

He is faithful to condemn those who have not feared Him.

So while you have air in your lungs, let Exodus 1 serve as a witness to the sovereignty of God, and His faithfulness to Himself.

You cannot escape Him.

You can either be freed by Him.

Or face His judgment.

Because He is faithful.

To the saints be encouraged by the faithfulness of God.

He is not dependent upon an obedient world.

He is faithful to Himself.

Pray