Day 30: Exodus 1-3

Welcome to five -minute Bible your daily guide for your daily reading today's January the 30th and we'll be looking at Exodus 1 through 3.

Now today's reading brings us to the opening movement of the book of Exodus. Exodus 1 through 3 does not begin a new story it continues the one that Genesis left unresolved.

The family of promise has become a people the promise has grown and now it collides head -on with a power that seeks to crush it.

What unfolds is not merely a political struggle between Israel and Egypt but a theological confrontation between the purposes of God and the powers that oppose his creation and covenant.

Exodus 1 opens by deliberately echoing Genesis 1. Israel is described as fruitful multiplying and filling the land which was

God's original blessing that he gave to Adam in Genesis 128. Pharaoh responds not with wonder but with fear and he enslaves

Israel intensifies their labor and finally commands the death of their Hebrew children.

Pharaoh who literally wears a serpent on his crown as a symbol of divine authority sets himself against the seed of the woman just as the serpent did of old.

Yet God's plan advances through unexpected means. Faithful women, midwives, mothers, sisters, and even

Pharaoh's own daughter become instruments of deliverance. Again it's an echo of Genesis 3 .15

where the seed of the woman will crush the head of the serpent. Moses a child marked for death is preserved through water and raised within the household of the serpent king himself.

Exodus 2 follows Moses into exile after an impulsive act of attempted vigilante justice goes badly wrong.

What appears to be a failure becomes actually years of formation where Moses spends 40 years in the wilderness being refined by God.

Then in Exodus 3 God speaks from a burning bush wholly present and unconsumed revealing his covenant name and commissioning

Moses to confront Pharaoh face to face. The God who heard the cries of his people now declares that deliverance is coming.

Now as you read today I want you to ask the following question. What happens when human power sets itself against what

God has promised? Exodus 1 through 3 shows us that that opposition does not thwart

God's promises at all it actually reveals his power. You see the central pattern in Exodus 1 through 3 is life advancing under threat.

Pharaoh attempts to reverse God's blessing by multiplying death and yet God answers by multiplying life.

The more Israel is crushed the more they grow. The deliverer is preserved not through his own strength but through weakness, through hiddenness, through exile and through obedience that's marked in obscurity.

God advances his plan quietly before he ever advances it publicly. What looks like delay is often divine preparation.

What looks like opposition is often the stage on which God displays his power most.

Now these chapters point unmistakably to Jesus Christ. Pharaoh is crowned with the serpent and functions as a new embodiment of the ancient enemy who seeks to destroy the seed of the woman and Moses who is preserved through woman and drawn out of death rises to confront the serpent king and deliver

God's people. This is Genesis 3 15 moving forward in history. And Moses foreshadows

Jesus who is the greater deliverer. Pharaoh's slaughter of the sons anticipates Herod's rage.

Moses is saved hidden and sent. Jesus is preserved revealed and sent in fullness.

Moses confronts Pharaoh with God's Word. Christ confronts sin, Satan and death itself. The burning bush reveals a

God who is holy yet near and in Christ that holiness comes even closer as God dwells among his people in flesh.

Exodus begins the story of the serpent crushing King and the story will be completed perfectly at the cross.

So as you read Exodus 1 through 3 today I want you to notice how quietly God is preparing his people before he acts decisively.

The enemy has revealed himself, the deliverer has been formed, the name of the Lord has been spoken and tomorrow the showdown will begin and the question will no longer be whether God will act but how far

Pharaoh himself will be hardened against him. And with that I want you to read your

Bible carefully, devotionally, and joyfully and may the Lord use his word to sanctify you completely and we will continue our journey tomorrow.