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Preacher: Ross Macdonald
Scripture: Exodus 1:1-14
Well, this morning we begin in the book of Exodus, and you'll likely hear that phrase for the next year or two as we pace our way through God's way of delivering his people from the land of Egypt. And this morning we hope merely to accomplish a sort of 10 ,000 foot view, maybe more of an appetizer than any sort of summary, preparing Exodus, even as we see in chapter one, God preparing the Exodus for his people.
And so we'll first consider preparing Exodus and really how we go from the end of Genesis into Exodus and how we take up the plot of Genesis into the plot of Exodus. And then we'll consider in verses one through 14, secondly, God's promise, and thirdly, man's dilemma.
We really have that held out to us at the very beginning of Exodus. This creates the sort of skeletal structure of everything that will follow, not only in the book of Exodus, but really ideally in all of Scripture.
Exodus has a sort of skeletal structure that advances upon the foundation of Genesis and begins to inform the design of God's redemption in greater detail. And so we'll prepare Exodus, we'll consider God's promise, and finally, we'll conclude with man's dilemma, which will sort of be a placeholder until next week and weeks to follow.
Exodus, in Hebrew, the name simply comes from verse one, which is the names, or the names of the children of Israel. The Greek translation of the Hebrew, the Septuagint, appended a title that is where we get the word Exodus, which comes from the Greek, and it simply means the way out.
Hodos would be the way, ek is a preposition meaning out of, so ekhodos, or Exodus, the way out. And I love that title, and I'm glad we stuck with that rather than the names, because truly Exodus is the way out, not only the first chapter, they're the first salvos of God's delivering His people out of the house of bondage, but also God raising up a deliverer.
This will be vital to what the Bible begins to unfold as the promise God made in Eden to the woman begins to unfold, and we look through the deliverer of Moses to the great deliverer, the ultimate deliverer, the promised seed, the Lord Jesus Christ.
So this is the way out of man's dilemma. This is the way out of the bondage of the fall. This is God's way out of tyranny and oppression. This is God's way of providing all that He has promised, all of the yes and amens that belong to the Lord Jesus.
Consider where we've been. The book of Genesis is the foundation of the entire Bible. The book of Genesis, if you come tonight to SLVC, we'll talk a little bit more about that, how the book of Genesis is indeed the foundation of all of reality, all of lived, experienced reality, all of history, all of that is bound up in what Genesis records for us.
Genesis begins with the creation of man, the creation of all worlds. Genesis begins with the fall of man into sin. Genesis begins with the promise of God's redemption, the promise of God's redemption.
Genesis tells the story of God electing a man and through that man designating a line that would bring forth the seed He had promised to the woman. Genesis reveals God making a covenant with Abraham so that this long-awaited promise of redemption would bring blessing upon countless people from every tribe upon the face of the earth, that through the seed of Abraham, every nation would be blessed.
And along the way,.
The book of Genesis copes with the reality, the abysmal reality of man's fallen condition and the plight of sin and the destructiveness of human corruption. But also alongside that shows the power of God's grace and God's mercy as He transforms sinners into saints.
This carries as a theme right into the book of Exodus. The book of Exodus begins to take a major step forward into understanding how God is going to deliver His people through the promised deliverer. So we have the central plot of Genesis 2, 3 and beyond taking a major step forward with the book of Exodus.
It is the supreme account of how God will bring forth salvation. I say that advisedly. Exodus is the supreme account of how God will bring forth salvation. Raymond B. Dillard, a very noteworthy Old Testament scholar says, Exodus is the paradigmatic salvation event of ancient Israel.
Paradigmatic is very important. We're creating a pattern, a mold. This is the salvation event of Israel and it's a mold for God's salvation event fulfilled in and through the Lord Jesus Christ. Everything that follows the book of Exodus will follow the patterns that Exodus establishes as we see God's grace bring forth deliverance through a great deliverer.
God's grace bring forth a law. God's grace bring forth His dwelling presence with His people. It's noteworthy that here for the first time we actually have an elaboration of redemption. We use redemption as shorthand for salvation but really you don't have a picture of redemption throughout the entirety of the book of Genesis.
Not until we get to Exodus do we actually see something like redemption. The bondage of slavery and the language of being redeemed from slavery which the early Christians used almost exclusively to speak about conversion.
The Lord's redemption having been bought by a price. That price being the precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. This comes out of Exodus, not out of Genesis. In Exodus, more so, we have a major step forward not only in the design of redemption but also in the revelation of God.
It is here that God reveals His name to His people. It is here that the theophanic presence of God drops the deliverer to His knees as He makes Himself known in greater ways yet to His people. And we'll see that not only in the way that God commissions Moses but also in the way that God delivers His people.
Here we see the self-revelation of God to His people. The very heart of God and His desire to dwell with His people. In Exodus, we have the giving of the law. It's gonna occupy quite some time when we make our way toward Exodus 20.
The giving of the law is so significant because there the finger of God inscribes upon tablets of stone the 10 words which designate and define every intention of God for humanity and also every failure of humanity.
All of that is bound up in God's law. All of that is binding together Scripture and history, human experience and the condition of the world in us and all around us. We remember that it was to fulfill the law that Christ came into this world.
In Exodus, we have the institution of the Passover. It's where we ended our reading last Sunday. The celebration of which, of course, is ultimately fulfilled by Christ on the night before He was crucified, revealing Himself as the true Passover.
We have the priesthood established of which Christ is the ultimate fulfillment, the great high priest after the order of Melchizedek. We also see, stepping forward into His threefold office, the great prophet Moses as a type of the Lord Jesus Christ who is our prophet, our priest, and our king.
Derek Cole, another scholar, says Exodus is the very center of the Old Testament. Now, I know we do our sword drills and we always divide at the Psalms, so he's not meaning the physical center of your open Bible.
He's saying the thematic and theological center.
Of the Old Testament.
That is the book of Exodus. These events dominate the thought and the life of Israel ever after. It's not primarily Genesis that dictates the lived reality and cultural memory of God's people. It is the book of Exodus that defines and identifies and coheres in the life and experience and worship of Israel.
Israel could not be gathered around the content of Genesis, but it is gathered and defined around the content of Exodus. And importantly, these events lead Israel, rightly understanding, to the person and the promise of the promised seed, the Lord Jesus, His person and His work.
Even Abraham saw his day from afar and rejoiced. We're taking a step forward in God's fulfillment of this great deliverer, and therefore, if we read Exodus rightly, that day becomes clearer, the fulfillment becomes much more close.
These events are more of a revelation of the character of God and the character of God's salvation than perhaps anything we have read in the book of Genesis. Hopefully I'm wetting your appetite. Consider perhaps one of the great summary statements along these very lines.
See how this will define the people of Israel in ways that the book of Genesis never could, and see how this is always pointing forward in greater fulfillment to us who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and His completed work.
Exodus 6, six through eight. Therefore, the Lord says, say to the children of Israel, I am the Lord. I will bring you out from the burdens of the Egyptians. I will rescue you from their bondage. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm, with great judgments.
I will take you as my people and I will be your God. And then you shall know that I am the Lord, your God, who brings you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians and I will bring you into the land which I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and I will give it to you as a heritage.
I am the Lord. And how does Paul, as we spent some time, if you remember many months ago, how does Paul take that Abrahamic promise in Romans four? It was promised to Abraham that he would be an heir of the world.
Exodus 6, verses six through eight, ultimately has the people of God in view. Exodus 6, six through eight, designates and identifies the body of Israel ever after and still today as the true Israel of God, we look to Exodus 6, six through eight, having been redeemed from the outstretched hand of the Lord who brought great judgment upon His Son at the cross of Calvary.
And in that way, He redeemed His people so that we could be called His people and He could be called our God. Exodus then is the greatest foretaste in the Old Testament of God's desire for redemption and worship.
Let me say that again. Exodus then is the greatest foretaste in the Old Testament of God's desire for redemption and worship. His desire to redeem those who were once dead in trespass and sin so that they could be taken out of the house of bondage and into the house of the Lord.
And ultimately that defines all of redemptive history to be taken out of the house of bondage, Genesis 3, into the lived reality of every human being that's ever born alive ever since Adam and Eve to the house of the Lord where we can abide with Him forever.
Out of the house of bondage into the house of the Lord. Ultimately that's the difference between the ending of Genesis and the ending of Exodus. Where does Genesis end? The patriarch is in a coffin. The people of God, as it were, the greatest hope lies dead.
Where does the book of Exodus end in chapter 40? The people of God gathered in a tabernacle, the house of the Lord, no longer under the curse of death, but now gathered under the presence of God in the pillar of cloud, in the pillar of fire, His divine glory cloud, His presence over the meeting place, dwelling with His people.
Holding Genesis and Exodus together, we will see how Exodus truly is the center of God's plan of redemption in the Old Testament. So let's consider, hopefully that will stir you for the year, enough fuel in the tank to get you through the next few years.
Let's consider God's promise. We are picking up in many ways where we left off. I'll begin reading in Exodus chapter one, verse one. Now, these are the names. It's where, again, in the Hebrew, the title comes from, Shemayot.
Now, these are the names of the children of Israel who came to Egypt. Each man in his household came with Jacob, Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher.
All those who were descendants of Jacob were 70 persons, for Joseph was in Egypt already, and Joseph died. We're sort of heading back into the narrative a little bit from Genesis. Joseph died, all his brothers and all that generation, but the children of Israel were fruitful and increased abundantly, multiplied, and grew exceedingly mighty, and the land was filled with them.
We had left them in Goshen as the abominable shepherds. Most likely, the land of Goshen is filling up with the children of Israel, maybe spilling out into other parts of the Egyptian kingdom. This opening verse not only is a turn of the page from Genesis into the book of Exodus, but also it's picking up really where we left off.
In fact, the first six words of the first verse are simply a quotation from Genesis 46, verse eight. These are the names of the children of Israel. So there's implied continuity to the book of Genesis, and there's also direct continuity to the book of Genesis.
And of course, all of this is meant to hold together the books of Moses, the first five books, often we call the Pentateuch. All of this narrative is downstream from Genesis 3 .15. When you read something as simple as these are the names of the children of Israel, do not disconnect that from all of the steps leading back to God's initial promise to the woman in Eden, because this is all part of the same uniform plan of God that through the seed, through the line that's being preserved, the promise deliverer will come.
This will be vital as we make our way through the book of Exodus. So Exodus clearly continues the story that we have begun in Genesis. It continues God's promises that He had made in Genesis. It takes us back as we begin the first chapter to the time that Jacob and his family extended is sojourning down toward Egypt, planning to settle as God had instructed them.
And then with the wave of a page, with a mere six words, we gloss over approximately 400 years of history, 430 years of history. It's like saying in a sentence to get us from the Protestant Reformation to today.
Yeah, you know, God raised up these mighty reformers and well, and here's America in 2022, and here's what's going on. That's a lot of history to gloss over. So the point is not so much all that happened in between, but what God is up to now that He is taking a major step forward in what He had promised Abraham.
70, we're told, have left the promised land for Egypt, and that's very significant, not only because 70, seven being a perfect or whole number in the Hebrew mind, a symbolic of perfection, a number set apart.
And so adding a 10 to that, making it 70, is even more of a symbol of perfection. And perhaps also this is meant to make enigmatic Genesis 10. You remember the 70 nations in the table of nations. And so here's 70 leaving the promised land, this symbolic of the world, Abraham inheriting the world, the 70 going into the fallen kingdom of Egypt.
They're sort of a microcosm, as it were, of the world that God intended, the world that God has promised He will restore and bring about. So there's significance to the 70 being brought into the fallen kingdom to face persecution and hostility.
What had been a relatively small family, 70 extended wide, has now become a mighty nation. That's the difference between a page. 70 dragging their children along, pushing strollers through the sand, crumbs of Cheez-Its along the way.
And now they're a mighty nation. 600 ,000 men, according to Exodus 12. 600 ,000, just counting the men, when they're brought out. This is very important to understand the flow of what God is doing. Remember in Genesis 15, when that great darkness fell upon Abraham and God had him divide the carcasses and he fell into that great sleep, that deep, almost edamic sleep, as God began to show him this covenantal promise, having passed through the curse himself, passed through the corridor of the slain sacrifices, and God made a promise to Abraham.
Blessing, I will bless you. I will multiply you. I will make you an exceedingly great nation. Well, God's fulfilling his promise here. They're multiplying and they're becoming an exceedingly great nation.
But what else did God say in Genesis 15, verse 13? Know this, your descendants will be taken out of this land into land that does not belong to them and they will serve as slaves until I bring them out.
So even as God is fulfilling his blessing, he's also taking a step forward and fulfilling the very heavy, dark plight of the Israelites, bringing them forward into a condition for which they will need deliverance so that all of this can project upon his ultimate design for redemption in and through the Lord Jesus Christ.
The details in the text are very significant as well. We read that they multiplied greatly in the land and the language is frothing with vitality. They teemed in the land, they swarmed in the land. It's drawing us back to Genesis 1 and just the effortless multiplication of life, of plants and animals, fish and birds, of every stripe multiplying without thorn or sweat or curse, without disease or predatory corruption.
According to God's promise, the Israelites multiplied so greatly that the whole land was filled with their descendants. Even in pockets where maybe one or two Hebrews would pass through now, there's households and maybe ghettos or neighborhoods that are established.
There's a presence being felt throughout the land. It reminds me of, I haven't watched, I'm far too busy to watch any full games, but I really enjoyed watching five-minute highlight clips of the Bruins this season because it's one of the greatest Bruins teams ever.
And what I love about the Bruins is it's such a storied hockey team that when you're in enemy territory at your opponent's arena and the black and yellow score, you almost would think you're at a home game.
What had been a sea of maybe orange or red or silver, all of a sudden you see black and yellow dots everywhere in the arena and this roar and it's like, wow, I think we have as many fans here as the home team.
That must have been what it was like in Egypt.
Wait a minute, there's Hebrews everywhere.
Doug Stewart says, Israel's amazing population explosion, I love this, was the result of God's original design, right? Genesis 15, this is what he had promised Abraham. God is fulfilling what he had promised.
But Stewart says more than that. Israel's amazing population explosion was a result of God's original design and ongoing care. God did not make a promise to Abraham that he wound up like a clock and said, well, let that sit for four centuries.
God is actively present, caring for, and dwelling with and abiding with his people. And so his people, maybe without realizing it, are experiencing blessing from the hand of the Lord and the presence of the Lord, whose eye is always on the sparrow, even across these intervening decades and centuries.
The Lord is fulfilling a promise he has long made. And for a lot of these families, it must not have felt like that. It's amazing how we can get caught up with the events of the day and lose perspective on God fulfilling his promise and his purpose.
We begin to think, well, these were the days that men and women could live with real purpose and real mission. They had God's promise to Abraham. They knew why they were in Egypt. They had the lineage and destiny of the family.
Oh, if only I had something that clear. If only I knew why I was married and what this was all leading for and what God's objective was. Well, then I would have a real purpose. It would cause me to go to bed early and wake up early.
It would cause me to be about my Master's service. But the world is so far gone and this is really a separate compartment from all that and everything's so foggy and so unclear, but it's really no different.
We'll see that again and again throughout Exodus. Remember, we're going to keep in plain view these different spheres of the state and the church and the household and to think through carefully what it would have been like across these centuries to be just one small cog in the wheel of God fulfilling His Abrahamic promise, living and dying in the hope of what He had ordained.
Do you cast your life in light of that promise? Do you see your little task and your little vapor on this theater of God's activity as something that has significance in eternity, as something that has significance in history?
Big things have small beginnings. An extended family of 70 becomes a nation of millions. An individual life may seem like a drop in the ocean, but the ocean is made of drops. It's really significant if we're going to be talking about participating in God's mission that we gain this perspective as we work through the book of Exodus.
It's so easy to speak of God's people and God moving through His people as though there was something they had that we don't have, some opportunity, something that was clear to them that is not an opportunity or something clear to us.
And I would say, in fact, it's quite the opposite. We have more clarity and more opportunity than any Israelite at this point in history could have ever dreamed of. We understand more clearly God's purposes for the world than perhaps any of the patriarchs could have understood.
We're on this side of the fulfillment of redemption, the now, the already has occurred, and we have clear revelation on the not yet. So we have no excuse. We have to do our part as minute as it may be.
I love Alexander McLaren. I was reading his exposition on it this week and he likened these intervening centuries to old stonemasons in the Middle Ages who would work their whole lives on a cathedral.
And it was a multi-generational work, right? No power tools, no cranes. It's wood, rope, and backs. That's how you build a cathedral. So a father would be there every day, chipping stone, ornately carving and making beautiful this place of worship.
And he would, from the time he was apprenticed and learned his skill till he was elderly and could no longer hold a hammer, he would have lived and died without that building being completed. And perhaps his great-grandson, who had learned his skill and his craft and his trade, would have carried on with a half-completed cathedral as he did his part to get the next eight feet of wall built.
But the sower and the reaper joined together and they rejoice in the unity of their work, which is not that they did it all, but that whether one sowed or one reaped, it was God who gave growth and God who gave blessing.
We need to have that kind of vision if we want to understand God's mission. Notice this language, multiplying greatly. God blessed them and made them fruitful. Where's this language coming from? It's Genesis 128.
It's this creation mandate, what's sometimes called the cultural mandate. It's God's people being made fruitful, God's blessing increasing them greatly so that their influence is felt upon the land. And all of this, remember, not only here in Exodus, not only in Genesis 12 with the call of Abraham, but even, yes, even there in Genesis 128, that mandate exists so that God's intention for humanity can be realized.
God's desire to bless humans, to be with His people in a new heavens and a new earth without threat or stain of sin. And what we see heading now out of God's promise into our last focus this morning, which is man's dilemma, we see in conjunction with this great blessing and promise is persecution and tyranny waiting in the wings.
And brothers and sisters, this is always the case. I don't know that there's ever been more than a handful of years where the great blessing and promise of God, the major advancements of the kingdom of God have not come in conjunction, step and step, with persecution and tyranny in the wings.
We'll see this paradigmatically, not only in Exodus, but how John in Revelation takes up the book of Exodus. We'll see a little bit of that even next week.
So beginning in verse eight,.
Arose a new king over Egypt who did not know Joseph. And he said to his people, look, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we. Let us deal shrewdly with them. Let us deal wisely would be a good translation as well.
And I'll mention why. Lest they multiply and it happen in the event of war that they also join our enemies and fight against us and so go up out of the land. Therefore, they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with their burdens and they built for Pharaoh supply cities, Pithom and Ramses.
But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew and they were in dread of the children of Israel. So there arose, first of all, a new king. Most likely what's being implied here is there arose a new Pharaoh, a new king that was part of a new dynasty, a new succession.
We see that because of the contrast in the way he does not know Joseph. And we'll talk about that in a moment. I don't wanna spend too much time this morning, get into the nitty gritty of history, but I do wanna say the history really is significant here.
It's just that it's so widely debated. I don't wanna see eyes roll into the backs of your skulls as I talk about Amos or Thutmose or Ramses II or this or that dynasty. So go ask Joshua Harris about it after the service if you have questions about the dynastic history maybe.
No, I don't mean to put you on the spot, brother. Eugene Merrill has a great intro to the Old Testament called Kingdom of Priests. And he, I think, probably has the best treatment of some of the history and some of the issues in which Pharaoh is in view here in Exodus and which Pharaoh is the one that Moses encounters when God begins sending the plagues upon the land.
So I would direct you to Eugene Merrill. I could summarize that for you if you're interested later. The history really does matter. Please don't take me breezing past it as if it doesn't matter. History and scripture matters.
It's a horrific thing in my mind that one of the effects of postmodernism in biblical studies and maybe even in the church as a result of that, has been to privilege theological readings or narratival readings and ignore historical claims and historical bases in the text.
Reminds me of the Australian bishop in the Church of England who was asked if it could somehow be proven beyond doubt that the Lord Jesus' body was in fact buried and he had not risen from the grave, how would this affect your faith as a Christian?
And he said, well, the Lord Jesus has risen in my heart. Paul says, you're a fool. If he hasn't risen, we're fools. This is a complete waste of our time. History matters. It matters for the risen Lord Jesus and it matters here in the book of Exodus.
In any case, we read that a new king, perhaps a new dynasty rose in Egypt who did not know Joseph, felt no loyalty to Joseph and significantly, the text doesn't say he didn't know about Joseph. I'm sure every pharaoh dwelling in the splendor that 20 tax increase had brought knew about Joseph's administration or at least maybe in their minds, Zabnat Penea's administration.
Doesn't say he did not know about Joseph, just that he did not know Joseph, likely implying he did not view Joseph with favor or did not feel any need to be loyal to Joseph and his people. Yeah, that was then, there's a new regime in town, a new order of affairs, we owe you nothing.
The plastics factory where I worked, family-owned business and about a year after I began working there, a French company bought them out and they axed the upper brass and it was like, we owe you nothing.
We start from scratch and everyone has to kind of go grovel to get any privileges in the workplace. Pharaoh has no loyalty to Joseph. I love what Calvin says on this point. The favor that had been brought about by Joseph was forgotten by all.
The shame and the sin of ingratitude, however, cleaves especially to the king. Now remember, this is dicey to write things like this in the 16th century. The shame and the sin of ingratitude cleaves especially to the king, but so are tyrants accustomed to engulf whatever is paid them without considering how it is acquired.
As long as we get the wealth, we don't care how we get the wealth. Who's Joseph to me? Pharaoh believes he's acting wisely. He sees a potential threat. More likely, he doesn't actually see the Israelites as a threat, but he wants his people to see them as a threat, right?
It's not Pharaoh reasoning in his heart, surely they're gonna rise up against us. That's not what these abominable shepherds have shown, but rather it's what he's saying to his people. Hey, we got a problem here.
In fact, I could really use some slave labor. So this is a great PR campaign to get some building projects done. Let us deal wisely with them. Really significant that he says that. Let us deal wisely with them.
Never mind about justice. Never mind about gratitude and kindness. Never mind about rewarding good and only punishing what is evil. Let us deal wisely, which is his way of essentially saying I'm going to act foolishly and it really is foolish.
In fact, everything that Pharaoh undertakes to weaken and suppress the Israelites only makes them bigger and stronger. What he thought was acting wisely is the most foolish thing he could have ever done.
Israel was no threat while they were shepherds in Goshen, however many children were being given to them. But when he begins to crack down and tyrannize, they become mighty and they become embittered.
The very thing that he had feigned to fear, they'll rise up and overthrow us, he's creating the conditions for by oppressing and tyrannizing. That's acting foolishly rather than, as he claimed, let us act wisely.
And I really like that translation for this reason. It draws my mind to Psalm 2. You remember the great imperative of Psalm 2, which is sort of the royal enthronement Psalm. Today I have begotten you.
This enigmatic language that 2 Samuel 7 takes up and you have certain Psalms that were tied to the enthronement. And Psalm 2 is an enthronement Psalm. And what's the great imperative there? Be wise, O kings and rulers of the earth.
Be wise.
How are you going to be a wise king? Don't act like Pharaoh in Exodus chapter one. How are you going to be wise according to Psalm 2? Kiss the son, lest he be angry. His wrath is kindled in a moment. Christians today still need to say to kings and rulers,.
It's not enough, senators. It's not enough, mayors and governors, to say, well, I personally wouldn't do this. I personally wouldn't adopt this lifestyle, but far be it from me to impinge upon anyone else's choices.
Far be it from you.
Kiss the son, lest he be angry. There's a problem that has infected. It's something that C .R. Wiley touched on whenever we read that little book. The idea that Jesus' enthronement is only designated in the cardiac area.
In fact, I don't know if you picked up on it, but we sang it from good old Chuck Wesley in the first hymn this morning. Born to reign in us forever. Born to reign over all forever. Rule in our hearts alone.
Certainly it's biblical to think of the enthroned Lord to have nothing else in our hearts before Him, but evangelicalism, modern Christianity, has taken that as a reductive lordship. Well, He's only gonna be Lord of my heart as a believer.
I can't expect Him to be a Lord anywhere else. And the politicians and the kings and the rulers say,.
Of course not.
We need to be wise. We need a dose of Psalm 2. We need a dose of Exodus 1 to correct that imbalance. He thinks He's acting wisely. He's proving to be the fool. That's often the case, isn't it? In their wisdom, man shows his foolishness.
They go against God who says, my counsel shall stand. I do all my good pleasure. I destroy the wisdom of the wise. I bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. We ought to take that to the bank.
There's the wisdom of the wise all around us today clamoring for our attention and our capitulation. We ought not give them an inch. It's ironic, brothers and sisters, that it was Joseph's faithfulness unto the Lord that prospered the empire of Egypt.
And in that prosperity, the empire of Egypt uses all of the luxury and might and power to begin to persecute the people of Joseph. And that, if anything, says a lot about our nation today. It was faithfulness and fervent belief that built this nation and made it great in the world.
And the greatness and the might of this nation that was built from faithfulness has now turned in hostility against faithfulness. And so we see this repeated throughout history. Christianity creates civilization and it flourishes so much that it begins to spoil and corrupt and then resent and turn against the very thing that made it so great in the first place.
We're living in those days today. Pharaoh ought to have viewed the Israelites as a great asset to his kingdom, but he sees them as a threat. It's China today. Be wise, rulers in the CCP. They ought to view Christians as the only hope for their nation, but they view them as a threat rather than an asset.
Egyptian ruins today bear the marks of all Pharaoh's tyranny. It's amazing. The wonders of the world in Alexandria and, of course, the pyramids at Giza, the great ruins that were hallmarks of tyranny and slavery.
That's his plan. He's going to crush the Israelites' spirit by forcing them into hard labor, by putting taskmasters over them so that they can't increase, so that just getting through and slogging through burdens that they're unable to bear prevents them from expanding and multiplying.
But look at the design of God. It's for this very reason that God blesses them and causes them to increase greatly. And this creates a whole cycle of misery that will take us into the great lament of Exodus 2.
The more that God is causing them to expand, the more that tyranny and taskmasters are rising up and punishing the Israelites, but the more they're being punished and oppressed, the more they're multiplying.
And so there's this whole cycle of growth and corruption and tyranny that continues to repeat until God acts in judgment and redemption. In the Hebrew, you can put a word in a certain stem to intensify.
We call that the pl stem.
And here, the verb,.
Which would normally be oppressed, is in the pl stem. And so it means abuse, humiliate, subjugate, crush. Throughout church history, God's people have been abused,.
Humiliated, subjugated, crushed.
And as that is taking place, God is expanding and making fruitful and growing. Tertullian said it best, the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church. You have that here in Exodus 1. Gradually, the Egyptians, if they believed the PR campaign, they fear the Israelites, but gradually they begin to hate the Israelites.
Pharaoh, of course, didn't just resent the Israelites. He ultimately resented the God of the Israelites. And when the Pharaoh rises that Moses will deal with, we'll see that quite directly. Who is the Lord?
Who is the God over Israel?
But even here, we have the echo, not so much of Pharaoh, but of Satan, of the serpentine kingdom, the serpentine desire to destroy the people and the line that will bring forth the seed. Remember, the seed of the woman is at enmity with the seed of the serpent.
You cannot see this hatred, this mutual campaign against one another as anything less than what God had foretold in Genesis 3. There's enmity now between the serpentine kingdom that seeks to crush and humiliate and destroy the line and the people that would bring forth the promised seed, the seed of the woman.
So this part of Exodus is ultimately a satanic opposition to God's promise and God's purpose for His people. And therefore, when we read Exodus, and John takes up Exodus in this way in Revelation, we read it as God's calling for His people to be faithful even through tribulation.
That there's a purpose for God that will triumph in the end. And it's a call to be steadfast and to be holy and uncorrupted or unperturbed by all that takes place around us. What we see as a chief contrast is the mercy of God and the cruelty of Pharaoh.
That's the chief contrast. The mercy of God, which enrages Pharaoh and causes him to double down in cruelty. There's nothing more satanic than that. And when you've been blessed by the mercy of God, be sure the prowling lion has you in his sights.
He does not desire to see God's people enriched, multiplied, blessed, enhanced, sanctified. And so he throws all the darts and all the pitch from hell to try to corrupt and undermine and swallow up that good influence.
It's the parable of the kingdom and how the seed is sown and he's so quick to snatch the seed away. It's the great frustration of times that we witness, right? To relatives or to friends or coworkers.
And we can just almost see tangibly a spiritual reality, seed being snatched away, seed being choked up. The corruption, the bondage of sin. Exodus is showing us point blank, the corruption of sin, the bondage of sin.
But I would highlight,.
Before we conclude with a focus on that, I would simply highlight this. God loves to grow and bless and make fruitful His people in the midst of affliction and persecution, not apart from it. We see the same thing in Acts 12.
Do you remember how Acts 12 begins? Herod arose and he began to harass the church. And what does Herod do when he harasses the church? He kills James. And then he seizes Peter. When you get to the end of Acts 12, I think it's like verse 24, what does it say?
But the word of God multiplied greatly. God loves to bless and advance His kingdom through the hostility and affliction of His people. He almost exclusively makes us fruitful in that way. Do you remember it was because Laban was persecuting and cheating Jacob, that Jacob's flocks were multiplying and strengthened in health and in number?
And so it is at the church today. Israel is multiplied and made fruitful because of affliction, not apart from it. Believer, in your life, you will be blessed and sanctified and made fruitful because of affliction, not for lack of it.
It is good that I was afflicted in my youth. How are we to view the bondage as we sort of come to a close here? This is man's dilemma. Not just the tyranny of the state and of the serpentine empire seeking to crush out the seed of the woman, but also the plight of the bondage, the plight of the slavery, which clearly is taken up in New Testament language to speak of this whole fallen condition.
There was a popular surge of theological readings of the book of Exodus really in the 60s and 70s. A number of Marxist Latin American theologians, if you could even call them that, created what has been called liberation theology.
The idea was, like all Marxist literary approaches, it was viewing everything through oppressive structures of class. And it was viewing Exodus primarily as a story of economic deliverance. And so liberation theology was meant to take the story of Exodus and use that to further sort of a Marxist agenda in some of these nations.
Gustavo Gutierrez is sort of one of the chief architects of liberation theology. And of course, we don't want to do the equal and opposite error, which is to ignore the physical aspects of fallenness, the physical lived experience of bondage.
We don't want to spiritualize it and make it something ethereal and mystical. But we also don't want to carnalize it and make it something worldly and flat. We want to hold together body and soul, spirit and life.
But primarily, we look at the bondage in the way the New Testament would lead us to look at the bondage, which is the fallen condition as a whole. The crushing oppression of slavery in Exodus 1 is taken up in the New Testament logic as the crushing oppressive tyranny of Satan and the bondage of sin in the life of an unbeliever.
Remember what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 10 and 11. Now, all these things happened to them as examples. They were written for our admonition. And consider language, 2 Peter 2 .19, speaking of false teachers who come in and deceive.
They promise them freedom, right? They promise the undiscerning freedom, but they themselves are slaves of corruption. And for whatever overcomes a person, to that he is enslaved.
When you're an unbeliever,.
It rarely feels like you're enslaved. The day comes, the year comes, the season comes where you, if you're granted by God some measure of life, you begin to realize this is stronger than I am. This is something that commands me even against my best wishes, even against my conscience, even against all my struggles to stop.
And 2 Peter says, you're a slave.
You've been enslaved.
And the taskmaster doesn't lessen up.
He doesn't lighten up.
He doesn't say, ah, you know, five more years and I'm gonna just, I'm gonna make it a lot easier for you. It only gets worse. Jesus said as much, John 8 .34, truly, truly, I am saying to you, everyone who makes a practice of sin is a slave to sin.
That's bondage. It may not feel like bondage. You may not have the shackles gnawing on your flesh immediately, but you're still a slave. And you'll know you're a slave when you try to leave. That's when the shackles appear when you try to stop.
This is no longer pleasurable. This is no longer helping me. This is hurting me and I want out. And then the shackles appear. No, you can't have out. You see, you're a slave to sin. You're a slave to corruption.
You're a slave to a debased mind. You're a slave to the flesh that has infected every imagination and every thought and evil intent of the heart. You're a slave to sin, Jesus says. John Gill, using Philo, an ancient writer, talks about this sort of crushing slavery.
He says, Pharaoh not only compelled them to servility, right, humiliating servility, but commanded them things heavier than they could bear, heaping one labor after the other. And then through weakness, he withdrew himself.
If anyone withdrew himself, it was judged a capital crime and the most merciless and cruel punishments were set upon them. That's a description of sin. That's a description of sin. It's a picture of the hatred and the cruelty of Pharaoh.
It's a picture of the hatred and the cruelty of Satan, the liar, a murderer, the malice, the hatred, the cruelty. He revels in marring the image of God in man. He revels in making the blessings of God a curse.
He revels in watching people weep at night. He revels in watching people fall into pits of depression and self-implosion. He gratifies himself in it, just like Pharaoh. The more I crush, the more I rejoice.
It's the bondage of the will. It's the bondage of sin. Martin Luther, the greatest treatment that's ever been written on the bondage of the will, writing against Erasmus and this idea that somehow our will is a clean slate and I can choose after God and I can choose after salvation.
Martin Luther says, what have you been reading? How have you been living? It's God's own testimony. Men are of the flesh. They can savor of nothing but the flesh. The only thing free will can avail is sin.
And if while the Spirit of God is calling and teaching among them, they go from bad to worse, what could they do when left to themselves without the Spirit of God? Your observation, Erasmus, that Moses is speaking of the men of that age is of no point at all.
The same is true of all men, for all are flesh. As Christ says, that which is born of flesh is flesh. How grave a defect is. He himself there teaches when he says, except a man is born again, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.
I call a man ungodly if he's without the Spirit of God. For the Scripture says that the Spirit is given to justify the ungodly. As Christ distinguished the Spirit from the flesh, saying that which is born of flesh is flesh, and adds that which is born of the flesh cannot enter the kingdom of God, it follows that whatever is flesh is ungodly.
Under God's wrath, a stranger to His kingdom, and if it's a stranger to God's kingdom and Spirit, it follows that it is under the kingdom and the Spirit of Satan. It's under the boot of Pharaoh. It's under the oppression and the misery and the crushing, excruciating bondage of sin.
There is no middle kingdom of God and Satan. They are ever at war with each other. There is no neutrality. Everyone sitting here this morning is either firmly rooted in one or the other. You either have been freed from the shackles that once binded you in misery, or you only have yet to discover how deep those shackles and that misery goes.
But, if the Son sets you free, you are free indeed.
Maybe I can give you a little foretaste.
This will be the last thing I read from A .W. Pink from his gleanings in Exodus. It's a good little summary statement of everything that we'll encounter, and it begins with this picture of bondage. Israel and Egypt illustrates the place that we were before divine grace saved us.
Egypt symbolizes the world according to the course of which we all walked in time past. Pharaoh, who did not know Joseph, much less the Lord, who defied the Lord, who was the inveterate enemy of the people of God, who at the end was overthrown by God, shadows, I love that, shadows forth, rather than shines forth.
Shadows forth the great adversary, the devil. The cruel bondage of the enslaved Hebrews pictures the tyrannical dominion of sin over its captives. The groaning of the Israelites under their burden speaks of the painful exercise of conscience and heart when one is convicted over their lost estate.
The deliverer raised up by God in the person of Moses points to a greater deliverer, even our Lord Jesus. The Passover tells of the security of the believer, sheltering under the blood of God's Lamb. The Exodus announces our deliverance from a yoke of bondage that we could not bear and our judicial separation from the fallen world.
The crossing of the Red Sea shows our union with our Savior in His death and resurrection. The journey through the wilderness, its trials and its testings, and God's provision to meet our every need represents our pilgrim course.
The giving of the law to Israel shows the obedient submission which we owe to our new Lord. The tabernacle, with all of its fittings and furnishings, shows the excellencies and glories of Christ. Therefore, say to the children of Israel,.
I am the Lord.
I will bring you out from under the burdens.
Of the Egyptians.
I will rescue you from their bondage. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great judgments. I will take you as my people.
I will be your God.
And then you shall know that I am the Lord your God who brings you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. And I will bring you into the land which I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And I will give it to you as a heritage.
Let's pray.
Father, we thank you that you are indeed the Lord. You are indeed our great deliverer. For those who have received the new birth, for indwelt by your Spirit, Lord, you have taken us by your outstretched arm, outstretched upon the cross.
You have delivered us from bondage. You've set us free, not to go and serve ourselves, but you've set us free to serve you, to worship you. You've given us a yoke that is light and easy because you took the burden that was insufferably difficult, a burden that we nor anyone could bear but you.
You became a slave that we might be free. Lord, help us in our liberty, Lord, to serve you as our risen Lord, our Master. I pray for those in bondage in this room, even this morning. First and foremost, Lord, unbelievers who perhaps have not felt the shackles of their bondage in sharp detail quite yet, make that pain exquisite, Lord.
Make them groan and labor after your deliverance. Don't let them be deceived by the liar, taken astray by the murderer who hates them with a perfect hatred. Let them rather be beckoned to your perfect love which casts out fear.
I pray also for believers, Lord, who perhaps have felt the bruises and the echoes of slavery that you've delivered them from, Lord. If they're in need of untangling themselves from corruptions that so easily entangle, Lord, show them your great deliverance.
Even now we pray. Bless us as we begin to embark through this book, Lord, show us the greater themes and greater fulfillments that draw our gaze and our glimpse to our Savior in whose name we pray, amen.