FRIDAY 4th
Exodus 1:8-22
NIV (v7) – ‘. . . but the Israelites were exceedingly fruitful; they multiplied greatly, increased in numbers and became so numerous that the land was filled with them.’
ESV (v7) – ‘But the people of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly; they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong, so that the land was filled with them.’
We come today to the Book of Exodus, its name describes what is its main theme, the exodus of the Children of Israel from out of Egypt to commence their journey to the promised land.
The opening verses, 1-7 remind us of how Genesis ended, with the death of Joseph (Genesis 50:26) and tell us that all his brothers and his generation had also died. But verse 7 says that ‘the people of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly; they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong, so that the land was filled with them.’
Joseph had been the man of God for the moment in the closing chapters of Genesis and through his relationship with God, and his intervention in the circumstances of the nation of Egypt, and toward his family who were suffering with famine back in their homeland, they were saved from starvation, given a new home and to used an old KJV phrase ‘they waxed strongly’. They multiplied and increased so much that they eventually became a ‘nuisance’ to the new king over Egypt. (Exodus 1:8)
But God was going to provide another man for the moment who we are introduced to in the second chapter of Exodus, the man Moses.
As we consider the opening verses of Exodus 1, it is a picture of what happened with the Church after the day of Pentecost. Immediately after the Holy Spirit had come and Peter had preached, it says that three thousand souls were added to the Church, then we read that the ‘Lord added daily to their number’, and the more the number of believers grew and multiplied, the more the authorities disliked the believers and all that they were doing in the name of Jesus and they became a persecuted people. It is said of the people of Israel that the more the king of Egypt tried to destroy them (through the killing of the new born baby boys) the more the people multiplied and grew very strong (Exodus 1:20) and in Acts we discover that the more the authorities persecuted the Church, the early believers, the stronger they became, the more they spread out, the more widely the gospel was preached and the more their numbers multiplied.
This should remind us that God’s people have always known persecution, or have been disliked by those in authority, we have seen it over the generations, we saw it in the last century with the rise and the threat of communism, we see it today in countries where other religions hold sway and our Christian brothers and sisters are persecuted and oppressed. But despite all of the opposition, God is still in control, Jesus is still building his Church, and although the gates of hell have done all they can muster up to destroy the Church it is still growing and multiplying the world over. We declare again today what Paul declared to the early believers in Philippi, ‘Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the father’ and every authority on earth, whether through kings, queens, presidents, etc are subject to the King of kings and the Lord of Lords. And one day every knee will bow, every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.
The new king of Egypt thought he had the power, but there was one above him who holds all power and all authority, and as the king of Egypt plotted to kill and to destroy, the ‘Great I am’ had a plan of redemption, a plan to deliver the people of Israel from evil and into a land of Promise. Thank God that the ‘Great I am’ also had a redemption plan for the whole of humanity, which he put into effect by sending his Son, to deliver us from the evil kingdom of darkness and into his eternal kingdom of light.