Do you know who God is and what He has done for you?
Do you know why God calls his people to obey him?
Does God have a limit to his power or does anything ever surprise him?
When every realm of your life seems to be collapsing around you, can you still believe God’s promises are true?
Perhaps you feel as though you’ve been stumbling or staggering through life for so long you can’t help but ask: is God really strong enough, powerful enough to save you?
Those are just a few of the questions that are answered in the first half of the Old Testament book of Exodus. A book that, Lord willing, we will spend the next nine weeks studying together.
Throughout our nine-week study of Exodus, we will be covering 20 chapters. That’s an average of a little over 2 chapters a week! Some weeks we’ll cover a little less, some weeks we’ll cover a lot more. This means a single Sunday sermon cannot provide sufficient time to cover all of the biblical text for that week so we have prepared a free study guide for you.
The book of Exodus is a narrative, meaning, it tells a story. When you read/study the part of the story we are studying on Sunday, before Sunday comes around, you’ll know who the main characters are and have a much better understanding of what’s going on in the story. You’ll know when we get to Exodus 18 and you hear me talk about Jethro, we are not talking about the crazy guy from the Beverly Hillbillies. We’re talking about Moses’ father-in-law.
I know that several of you used the study guide even this past week and I hope that others of you take advantage of that aide in your personal bible study and small groups this week.
Let’s begin our study of this grand picture of God’s rescue and redemption of His people recorded for us in the book of Exodus…
Take your Bible and turn with me to the book of Exodus – the second book of the Old Testament. Exodus chapter 1.
After spending the summer months studying some of the practical principles for daily life from the book of Proverbs, we return to what has become the normal practice here at GCC – the expository preaching of a particular book of the Bible.
Last fall and spring we spent 18 weeks studying the New Testament book of Ephesians, verse by verse. I praise God for the ways that He used the truth of that book by the power of His Spirit to conform us more to the image of His Son, that we might walk in a manner worthy of our calling.
Now, we turn our attention to the Old Testament book of Exodus because we believe whole-heartedly that ALL Scripture – including the Old Testament - is breathed out by God and is useful teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness – so that the man or woman of God is complete – equipped for every good work.
Exodus teaches us more about the character and nature of God than perhaps any other book of the Old Testament as it brings us face to face with the incomparable and infinite God. As we’ll soon see, the two main points today are centered around the PERSON and WORK of God.
The book of Exodus establishes the paradigm of redemption upon which the rest of the Bible follows. Generation after generation of Israelites would reflect upon and remember the power of God at work in Exodus to bring about his covenant promises. The Psalmists celebrated a recount the miraculous work of God.
The prophets preached of a new exodus that would be signaled by a voice crying in the wilderness – prepare the way of the Lord.
God’s entire plan of redemption, all of scripture, is shaped in the pattern of Exodus
Exodus shows us the price of redemption as the blood of innocent lambs are shed to rescue God’s people from his wrath.
The book of Exodus falls at a pivotal point in history, perhaps THE MOST pivotal point in the history of the nation of Israel.
And before we get to Exodus 1 we need to take some time to orient ourselves in God’s story, so let’s take a few minutes and quickly recap some key information that is foundational to understanding the story of Exodus.
Although it is the beginning of a new book in our Old Testament, Exodus is a continuation of God’s story that began in the “book of Beginnings” – Genesis.
The book of Genesis shows us that God is the Creator. From nothing, God created everything in six days, including the pinnacle of his creation, mankind. God placed the first man and woman in paradise, he blessed them, and said to them in Genesis 1:28 “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it.”
But in Genesis chapter 3, the first man and woman chose to disobey the command of God, which brought sin into the human race and death through sin. Creation is now marred because of sin and God’s image bearers, humans, are now slaves to sin.
Through the life of Noah, we learned of God’s mercy and grace as He chose to save a small remnant of His people from the worldwide flood that washed the wicked and corrupt generation from the face of the earth.
It was God who provided the way of salvation for his people!
After the flood we read the same words in Genesis 9:1 that we read back in Genesis 1.
Genesis 9:1 “And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.”
After the creation – be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth.
After the cleansing of the floodwaters - be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth.
In Genesis 12 we learn that God choose a man named Abram who would latter be renamed Abraham. And God made a covenant with Abraham and promised that through him a new nation would be founded. A nation with a promised land. A nation with promised descendants. A nation that would ultimately be a blessing to the whole world.
Yet in the middle of that covenant promise to Abraham, land and descendants and blessing, here’s what we read in Genesis 15:13-14 “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. 14 But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions.”
Abraham would eventually have a son named Isaac. Isaac would have a son named Jacob whom God would rename Israel.
Israel (Jacob) had 12 sons who became the twelve tribes of Israel. His favorite son was Joseph, who was despised by his brothers because of the special treatment he received. So, his brothers sold Joseph into slavery and told their father that he was killed by a wild animal.
Joseph, in God’s sovereignty, ended up in Egypt where he eventually became second in command over the entire nation, second only to Pharaoh.
Ultimately, through a famine in the land, Joseph’s brothers ended up in Egypt where Joseph was now in the unique position to care for them and provide food.
Still, when Jacob (Israel) died, Joseph’s brothers were afraid that he would have them killed as an act of revenge for selling him into slavery but here was Joseph’s response to his brothers - Genesis 50:20 “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today.”
God is always working to bring His plan to completion – through the good, the bad and even the ugly, sinful things of this world. He is sovereignly working all things together to bring about the story of Exodus – the rescue and redemption of his people!
Exodus 1:1-14
1These are the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob, each with his household: 2 Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, 3 Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin, 4 Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher. 5 All the descendants of Jacob were bseventy persons; Joseph was already in Egypt. 6 Then cJoseph died, and all his brothers and all that generation. 7 dBut the people of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly; they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong, so that the land was filled with them. 8 Now there arose a new king over Egypt, ewho did not know Joseph. 9 And he said to his people, “Behold, fthe people of Israel are too many and too mighty for us. 10 gCome, hlet us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and, if war breaks out, they join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land.” 11 Therefore they set taskmasters over them ito afflict them with heavy jburdens. They built for Pharaoh kstore cities, Pithom and lRaamses. 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. 13 So they ruthlessly made the people of Israel mwork as slaves 14 and nmade their lives bitter with hard service, in mortar and brick, and in all kinds of work in the field. In all their work they ruthlessly made them work as slaves.
NOTHING….SURPRISES….GOD!
Another way we can say it-
I. God Sovereignly Works
When we speak of God’s sovereignty it means – there is there is not a single event that happens in this world that is not within the control of God.
This is an incredibly important truth about God because, as Jerry Bridges explained so well, “If there is a single event in all of the universe that can occur outside of God’s sovereign control then we cannot trust Him.”
Depending on what English translation you pick up, the word Sovereign will be used explicitly in Scripture in a number of places. In the Old Testament, some translations use the word Almighty, others use Sovereign because they mean one in the same thing. If you are all-powerful then you are sovereign. If you are sovereign then it requires all power!
In Revelation 6:10 - They cried out with a loud voice, “O Sovereign Lord, zholy and true, ahow long bbefore you will judge and cavenge our blood on dthose who dwell on the earth?” The martyrs in heaven explicitly cry out to the Sovereign Lord who will avenge their blood. Why? Because only the sovereign Lord has the power to avenge.
At times, God’s Sovereign work is more implicit, like Psalm 135:6 “He (God) does whatever he pleases in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all the ocean depths.”
The Apostle Paul wrote in Ephesians 1:11 God accomplishes all things according to the pleasure of His will. And He does this through His limitless power. God Sovereignly works.
Here in Exodus, the first seven verses are a wonderfully encouraging few verses. We are reminded of Israel (Jacob) and his 11 sons that traveled with their families to join Joseph, the 12th son, in the land of Egypt. God had sovereignly positioned Joseph to care for his people during a devastating famine in the land
God sovereignly worked to bring Jacob and his descendants to this foreign land where he would provide for them and preserve them.
The entire nation of Israel in it’s infancy stages, as they enter Egypt, 70 persons in all.
In verse 6, the text hits the fast forward button on the timeline. Joseph, all his brothers, all that generation dies. Years pass.
And then 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.”
Even in the midst of a foreign land among a foreign people we read the same exact language of God’s blessing in Genesis chapter 1 and chapter 9.
God’s people were fruitful and they multiplied so that the land was filled with them!
In the New Testament, Stephen’s sermon in Acts 7:17 recalls this blessing of God when he said “But as the time of the promise drew near, which God had granted to Abraham, the people increased and multiplied in Egypt.”
The people of Israel were fruitful and they multiplied in Egypt as the time of the promise to Abraham drew near. The promise of Genesis 15 – land, descendants, blessing – but the path to that promise involved another promise – a promise that the Israelites would just soon forget.
God also promised that Abraham’s descendants would be sojourners in a land not their own, Egypt, and God promised to bring them out of that nation with great possessions but not before they would be afflicted as slaves of that nation for 400 years!
Which is exactly what we see happen next in Exodus 1:8-14
God multiplied the people of Israel but when Joseph died, there was a regime change. A new Pharaoh came to power and he saw how many Israelites were now living in his land and he had a “panic attack…”
What would happen if the Israelites rebelled? What would happen if they joined Egypt’s enemies and fight against them? What if… What if… What if… so he treated them harshly and enslaved them. For 400 years the Israelites would be slaves in Egypt.
Look at the descriptive language in verse 11 – afflict… heavy burdens… verse 12 – oppressed… verse 13 – ruthless…. verse 14 – bitter and ruthless
It’s not a good situation yet that’s all that generations of Israelites knew. They lived and they died as oppressed slaves.
Why?! These were the people of God!
400 years is a long time – a long time to wonder what in the world God was doing and whether or not he had abandoned them??? But, as Exodus most definitely shows us, God sovereignly works through all things.
God is weaving your painful past and even your destructive decisions into a beautiful picture that will one day be revealed. And for all eternity, we who have believed in Jesus will rejoice in the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
God Sovereignly works, which means, as Solomon said in Ecclesiastes 9:1 – “we do not know” whether something is good or bad. We cannot begin to comprehend the complex nature of life in this world.
Perhaps God is using the terminal diagnosis that you view as bad to bring about the salvation of a beloved family member. Perhaps God took away your job to keep you from shipwrecking your faith through the love of money. Perhaps God allowed you to fall into the depths of sin so that you might more brilliantly experience His grace and be able to encourage others who struggle in the same way. We do not know. God does.
Just as prosperity is not always an indicator of God’s blessing in your life, for even the wicked prosper at times, so too adversity is not always a sign that you are being punished or disciplined by God. The book of Job is proof of that! Your illness, your struggle, your pain, your burden is not necessarily an indicator of God’s disdain with something in your life
Think about this for a minute – What if the Israelites enjoyed their life and were treated well in Egypt? Would they have ever even remembered, let alone desired, the promise of a better land made to Abraham. What if the Israelites all had nice houses, fabulous jobs, full refrigerators? Perhaps they’d be like many of us have become today – too comfortable in a foreign land.
Every trial and tribulation, whether minuscule or monumental, should refocus our attention on the God who is sovereignly at work.
God himself said through the prophet Isaiah - "My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are my ways your ways," (Isaiah 55:8). That is one of the most difficult lessons to learn in life. We think that because God tells us certain things about himself through His Word, or because we’ve been a Christian for 50 years, or we’ve been to seminary or Bible college - we can now figure out what He is going to do. We cannot know for certain why things happen the way they do in this world. We must resist that urge to think we do.
There’s an old hymn by Francis H. Rawley entitled “I will sing the wondrous story” that captures the darkness and despair we often feel in this world, the same darkness and despair of the Israelites in Egypt.
Days of darkness still come o’er me;
Sorrow’s path I often tread,
Days of darkness may still surround you. Sorrow may be the only path you know. But despite ongoing sin and evil in the world, God is faithful to His covenant promises. He sovereignly works all circumstances for His glory and the ultimate good of His people, even when they have to go through periods of exile.
Which is exactly what we begin to see next in Exodus 1 and 2.
The more Pharaoh oppresses God’s people the more they multiply!! So he orders the Hebrew midwives to murder all the male babies born to the people of Israel. Which, they refused to do and God ultimately blessed the midwives for their obedience to Him rather than to man.
When the whole midwife plan didn’t work, Pharaoh, then, at the end of chapter 1 commands all the Egyptians to throw all the male Hebrew children into the Nile, another attempt to slow the growth of the people.
Why the males?? Because the men made up the army! It would be hard for the Israelites to rebel if they didn’t have many men!
But then we come to Exodus chapter 2 and we read about the birth of a little boy and his mother who sought to save his life by placing him in a basket and floating him down the Nile. That baby’s name was Moses.
God sovereignly worked to save that baby boy’s life that God might raise him up to rescue and redeem His people from their slavery in Egypt.
Just as God would sovereignly work to save the life of a baby boy from King Herod almost 1,500 years later, a baby boy who was born in a manger in Bethlehem, that he might rescue and redeem his people from their slavery to sin.
The people of Israel were stuck in their despair; perhaps how you are feeling today – hopeless – helpless.
What do you do?
Let’s look at the end of Exodus chapter 2
Exodus 2:23-25
23 oDuring those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel pgroaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. qTheir cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. 24 And rGod heard their groaning, and God sremembered his covenant with tAbraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. 25 God usaw the people of Israel—and God vknew.
There are two key things happening in these verses.
First – is the response of the people.
The days were long and hard and verse 23 emphasizes there were many days summarizing what we will soon learn was 400 years of hardship.
And the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery. They sighed a heavy sigh for at times there were simply no words for what they were experiencing. What could they say?! What could they do?! Nothing. They had no power to deliver themselves.
So they cried out for help from the only one who could do something – the God who sovereignly works!!
In the New Testament, the apostle Paul wrote in the 8th chapter to the Romans that the whole creation is groaning under the weight of bondage to the curse of sin and not only the creation we, as Christians, God’s people, are groaning as we await eagerly our completed salvation. We groan because we know what has been promised and we know all too well - that things are not how they are supposed to be.
The pain is still ever present. The sorrow overwhelms like a flood. The frustration abounds as we see experience and see the injustice that is around us. Babies are murdered and fellow image bearers of God are marginalized and oppressed simply because they have a different color of skin or speak a different language. Brothers and sisters, this ought not be so and we groan and we cry out to God - Come, Lord Jesus, Come!
The second key thing that happened in these last verses of chapter 2 is the action of God. The people acted then God responded.
There are four verbs tied to God. God heard, remembered, saw, knew….
These are some of the greatest anthropomorphisms in Scripture, where God, although he has no physical body and is not constrained by human limitations, He is described in human and physical terms.
This is intentional, God-breathed language of Scripture which God uses to reveal himself to us, as a personal God, who has not turned a blind eye to our helpless position nor is he ignorant of our need!
God knows all and these four terms signal at the end of Exodus 2 that God has always been involved in the situation only now it was the time to make himself known! Nothing surprises the Sovereign Lord! He doesn’t have to adapt or change His plan for His plan is perfect, completed before the foundation of the world.
God heard the cries of the people. He is an attentive God. God saw their burdens. AND GOD KNEW!
What did He know? He knew it all! The object of the verb “knew” is the entirety of verses 23-24. God knew personally, He fully understood. In fact, he had ordained all that the Israelites had been experiencing.
My guess is there is someone in your life right now that could be reminded that God knows all of what is happening in his or her life. Write them a note (a text, email, or actual hand-written note), encouraging them with verse 25 – that God knows what is happening in our lives – and that He will bring deliverance.
Heard, saw, knew – but what about the 4th verb that I skipped over?
God remembered his covenant with Abraham!
This does not imply that God had forgotten. He never did not hear. He never stopped seeing. There was never a time when he didn’t know.
And He never forgot His covenant.
When we read that God remembered his covenant, it is an indicator that God is about to erupt into action like a volcano. He’s always working under the surface but when we read “God remembered” – BOOM! what was implicit, under the surface is about to burst forth in fire!
Our second point:
II. God remembers His covenant promises
God remembered his covenant with his people! And that’s wonderful news since he is the sovereign God!
The specific covenant promises that God made had to do with Abraham and his descendants.
First made in Genesis 12, confirmed in Genesis 15, and sealed in Genesis 17 through the sign of circumcision.
In Genesis 17 God revealed himself to Abraham for the very first time as God Almighty, the Sovereign God and in verses 1-8, God said over and over again to Abraham - I will make… I will act… I will… I will… I will…. God would do the work so that He gets the glory.
And here’s what God said in verses 6-8 of Genesis 17 - “6 I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make you into nations, and kings shall come from you. 7 And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. 8 And I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God.”
God had decreed that he would do it and now. The people were about to see it.
God remembers His covenant promises.
And as I said earlier, the prophets spoke of another exodus.
Isaiah 40 describes this new exodus in verse 3 which says - "A voice cries: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord; make straight in the desert a highway for our God.”
In the New Testament, all four Gospel writers applied Isaiah 40:3 to John the Baptist as the one who came to prepare the way for Jesus but it was John the Baptist’s father, Zechariah who prophesied and made an amazing connection between the birth of his son as the forerunner to the Lord and the language of God remembering his covenant here in Exodus 2.
In Luke 1, Zechariah said God has raised up a horn of salvation for us.
Luke 1:72-75: to show the mercy promised to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant, 73 the oath that he swore to our father Abraham, to grant us 74 that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies, might serve him without fear, 75 in holiness and righteousness before him all our days”
God remembers his covenant promises and He sovereignly preserved the life of his new born son Jesus so that he might live a perfect life, free from the bondage of sin, in order to set the captives of sin free.
Later in his life, just before he would give himself over to be crucified, that he might pay the price of our redemption solely through His own blood, Jesus said this in John 8- “If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, 32 and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” 33 They answered him, “We are offspring of Abraham and have never been enslaved to anyone. How is it that you say, ‘You will become free’?” (John 8:31b-33)
The Jews to whom Jesus was speaking didn’t even realize they were still slaves. Look at what Jesus said next (John 8:34-36) “Jesus answered them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin. 35 The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son remains forever. 36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”
Perhaps today God has shown you that you are a slave to sin, you are in need of rescue and redemption. The groaning you’re experiencing is because you still need to cry out to Him for salvation!
God remembers his covenant promises and one of the many promises of the New Testament is that whoever calls on the name of the Lord Jesus will be saved.
Call on the name of Jesus today. Ask him to save you from your slavery to sin and He will set you free indeed.
When you confess you are sinner before God and believe in his Son Jesus to cleanse you from your sin, you are given the righteousness of Christ. In Philippians chapter 3 the apostle Paul says that we may “be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith.” (Philippians 3:9)
So, as a believer in Jesus, when trials of life and even death stare us in the face, we can rejoice and be confident that God will deliver us because we are righteous through the work of Christ.
He may deliver us temporally, He may deliver us eternally, but He will deliver us – for that is his promise.
Scripture quotations are from the ESV Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version), copyright 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
© Geist Community Church
Permissions: You are permitted and encouraged to reproduce this material in any format, provided that you do not alter the content in any way and do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction. Questions? Email: church@geist.org. Please include the following statement on any distributed copy: by Matt Walker. © Geist Community Church—McCordsville, Indiana. www.geist.org
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