I was thinking about that alphabet.
Remember, the Greek alphabet. Christ is Alpha and Omega, the
first and last letter of the Greek alphabet. Let's open our
Bibles tonight to the book of Exodus. Exodus chapter 1. I plan, the Lord willing, beginning
tonight to bring several messages to us on Wednesdays from this
book. There's no reason to question
that Moses was the writer as he wrote Genesis and Leviticus
and Numbers and Deuteronomy, the first five books of the Bible,
which we call the Pentateuch. The Lord Jesus Christ, in speaking
with some religious leaders when he was here in the flesh, said,
for had you believed Moses, had you believed Moses, they boasted
in Moses, didn't they? We know that God spoke through
Moses, but as for him, but our Lord said, had you believe Moses,
you would have believed me. Because, why? Because he wrote of me. Because he wrote of me. If you
believe Moses, you would have believed me, for he wrote of
me. Several of the writers, the commentators,
all mention the fact that this book of Exodus probably contains
more types of Christ than any other Old Testament book. The title Exodus, of course,
is taken from the first part of the book, the Exodus of the
nation of Israel out of Egypt. In the gospel, according to Luke,
he wrote that on the Mount of Transfiguration, when Moses and
Elijah appeared there with him, that they spoke of his And in
the Greek, his exodus is translated in our English Bible with the
word, what is the word? His departure, his departure. But it's from the word exodus
that Moses and Elijah spoke with the transfigured Christ there
on the mountain of his exodus, which he should accomplish at
Jerusalem. Don't you love to think of the
fact that the Lord Jesus Christ accomplished something in his
death? He's the only person who's ever
accomplished anything by dying, I would think. And he accomplished,
we know, everything. that God purposed in eternity
that he should accomplish. Now tonight, as we look at this
first chapter, I'm going to divide our message, my message, into
four divisions, and hopefully these divisions will help us
to think upon these several truths. But first, I want us to think
about our faithful God. our faithful God. And you might
say, well, Preacher, you talk about that a lot. Well, I do. But I want to encourage us always
to be aware and to remember that our God is faithful. Our God,
the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, the God that we
love and serve, he is a faithful God. Great is thy faithfulness,
O God, our Father. Let's think for a few minutes
about his faithfulness and the sureness, the certainty of his
word. Let's read the first seven verses
here. Now these are the names of the
children of Israel, which came into Egypt. Every man in his
household came with Jacob, Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Iscachar,
Zebulun, Benjamin, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher. And all the souls
that came out of his loin, out of the loins of Jacob, were 70
souls. For Joseph was in Egypt already. And Joseph died and all his brethren. And it's interesting to know
that Joseph had 11 brothers Ten of those brothers, including
Joseph, they were all born within a seven-year period. Remember,
Jacob had four wives. Benjamin was the exception, the
youngest. But all the other sons were born
within seven years. So when Joseph died, we can assume
that most of these other brothers died within a year or two of
Joseph's death. They were all about the same
age. And the children of Israel, verse seven, and the children
of Israel were fruitful and increased abundantly and multiplied and
waxed exceeding mighty and the land was filled with them. Let's
think about the faithfulness of God. I want you to look back
to Genesis chapter 15. Genesis chapter 15 and these
words to Abraham. beginning with verse one. After
these things the word of the Lord came unto Abram in a vision,
saying, Fear not, Abram, I am thy shield and thy exceeding
great reward. And Abram said, Lord God, what
wilt thou give me, seeing I go childless? And the steward of
my house is this Eliezer of Damascus. And Abram said, behold, to me
thou hast given no seed. And lo, one born in my house
is mine heir. And behold, the word of the Lord
came unto him, saying, this shall not be thine heir, but he that
shall come forth out of thine own bow shall be thine heir.
And he that is God, brought him, Abram, forth abroad, and said,
Look now toward heaven, and tell the stars, if thou be able to
number them. And he said unto him, So shall
thy seed be. And he believed in the Lord,
and he counted it to him for righteousness." Now what we have
read here in these first few verses in Exodus, we see the
faithfulness of God in fulfilling this promise, this declaration
that he made to Abraham, that his seed would be as the stars. So shall thy seed be. If you turn back here into Exodus,
in verse five, when Jacob and all of his sons and their families
All of those that says it came out of his loins. There was more
than 70 that came with them, no doubt, but those that came
out of Jacob's loins, his sons and grandsons, I would assume,
maybe grandchildren. Joseph was already in Egypt with
two sons, but they made up 70, 70 souls. Now, the writers tell us, and
God told Abram in that same place there in Genesis chapter 15,
that his seed would be servants, be afflicted in a strange land
for 400 years. Actually, it was 430 years from
the time that God spoke to Abraham, 30 years They were not servants. Then they went into Egypt for
400 years. But if you divide that 430 years
into two parts, 215 years had passed, and there's 70 souls. 215 years had passed, and now
there's 70 souls that come into Egypt. 250 years, which would make up the
430 years. There are, if you look in chapter
12 here in Exodus and verse 37, there are now about 600,000 men,
not counting the women and children. Exodus chapter 12 and verse 37. when they leave Egypt. And the
children of Israel journeyed from Ramesses to Succoth, about
600,000 on foot that were men beside children. What we see
here is the faithfulness of God, the power of God, the blessing
of God. How do we account for this great
increase when 250 years pass, there's only 70 and then 250
years more and there's 600,000 plus. How do we account for that? How do we account for such an
increase? God's promised Abraham. That's the only way we may account
for this because we read here in Exodus 1, in verse 7, and
the children of Israel were fruitful. Who made them fruitful? God did. Just like He made Abram's wife,
who was 90 years old, to have a child, who made them fruitful? Now they were fruitful. And it
says they increased abundantly and multiplied and waxed exceedingly
great." And then at the end it says, the land was filled with
them. We don't believe the whole land of Egypt was filled with
them, but the land of Goshen, which was the land that Pharaoh
gave Joseph to give the best of the land of Egypt to his family. It was filled with them. Who
made them fruitful? Who made them to increase abundantly? The Lord did. The Lord fulfilled
His promise that He made to Abram. The same God is the God that
we worship tonight. And when God speaks to us from
His Word, and that's the way He speaks to us, and He gives
us a promise, He's faithful. He abideth faithful. He cannot
deny himself, the scripture says. That's one of the four things
the scripture says God cannot do. He cannot deny himself. And for him to prove unfaithful
to his word, he would be denying himself. He can't do that. What
an encouragement, right, to our faith. You have a promise, or
whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved?
You've called. You've asked the Lord to save
you. What was His promise? Whosoever shall call upon the
name of the Lord shall be saved. God is not going to go back on
His promise. He's a faithful God. He's a faithful
God. And as I looked at this chapter
and the increase, It's so amazing as the stars of heaven, as the
stars of heaven, the nation of Israel became. His physical seed,
and we believe, of course, that refers to his spiritual seed
as well. All of the souls who've been
saved were all Abraham's children. So as the sand by the seashore,
a multitude, John said he saw, when he was given that vision
in Revelation, a multitude that no man could number. Sometimes I think we may fall
into a trap because we believe in God's sovereign grace. We
believe in His sovereign election. The Word of God declares it.
Then we get the idea somehow there's only going to be a few
who are saved. Now, few may be in comparison
to the world at any given time, but all together, excuse me,
all together, there's a multitude of saved sinners already in heaven,
and there's more to come. And when all are gathered home
on that beautiful shore in the sweet by and by that we just
sang about, A multitude so numerous that we, man, is not able to
compute. But thinking about how God blessed
them, look down to verse 19. Well, actually, let's read verse
18 also. You're familiar with this, but
the king of Egypt, he called for the midwives. He commanded
them, you know, to destroy all the male children. Every time
a Hebrew gave birth to a son, that son was to be destroyed,
to be killed. And he calls them back now in
verse 18, and the king of Egypt called for the midwives and said
unto them, why have you done this thing and have saved the
men's children alive? And the midwives said unto Pharaoh,
because the Hebrew women are not as the Egyptian women. for
they are lively and are delivered ere the midwives come in unto
them. Listen to what Matthew Henry
commented on that verse. He said, I see no reason we have
to doubt the truth of this. It is plain that the Hebrews
were now under extraordinary blessing of increase, which may
well be supposed to have this effect. that the women had very
quick and easy labor. And that may be one reason that
they increased as rapidly as they did. One way that God fulfilled
his promise. We should never question, we
should never doubt God's faithfulness and the truthfulness of his word. Here's the second thing. That's
our faithful God. Just think about that. Chew on
that a while. the faithfulness of God, the
certainty of the Word of God. What a blessing! What a great
blessing! I mean, we praise God, don't
we, every day, or we should, for the Word of God. What a great
blessing to be in this world and have God's Word, His written
Word, when we know that there are places, even today, after
all these years, where you could not get a copy of the Word of
God. I've just been reading John Wycliffe. You know, he's called the Morning
Star of the Reformation. But the work that he went through
in trying to translate, and did translate, the scriptures into
English, he was the first man. to translate the Word of God
into the English language. He didn't translate from the
original text, the Hebrew and the Greek. He translated from
the Latin Vulgate. But still, he gave to the English-speaking
people the Bible, and it all had to be copied by hand. Can
you imagine how long it would take for you to copy the Bible?
So there wasn't very many of them, but what a blessing. What a blessing. I just received
a, I looked at an advertisement before I came over here that
I was sent from a Bible publishing company. They republished a certain
Bible and, and gave the price and, and you can buy a Bible
at, at Kmart or Target or one of those places probably for
What, $10? Maybe, maybe less. I don't know,
maybe a little bit more. What a blessing that we have
the Word of God. And don't you love to read the
Word of God? Someone said, this book will keep you from sin,
or sin will keep you from this book. Don't you love to read
the Word of God? Oh, I encourage us all to read.
I won't point out who it is, but someone in our congregation
here tonight told me that last year, for the first time, read
the Bible through from Genesis to Revelation. Every child of
God, every believer should do that at least once in your life. To get accustomed to the word
of God. Get accustomed to the word of
God. All right, here's the second
thing. Now that part was free. That part was free. I kind of
got away from my notes. I've tried to tell myself I'm
not going to do that anymore. Our changing world. Our changing
world. Verses 8 through 14. Now there arose up a new king
over Egypt. which knew not Joseph. And he
said unto his people, Behold, the people of the children of
Israel are more and mightier than we. Come on, let us deal
wisely with them, lest they multiply, and it come to pass that when
there falleth out any war, they join also unto our enemies, and
fight against us, and so get them up out of the land. Therefore
they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens,
and they built for Pharaoh treasure cities of python and But the more they afflicted them,
the more they multiplied and grew. And they were grieved because
of the children of Israel. And the Egyptians made the children
of Israel to serve with rigor. And they made their lives bitter
with hard bondage in mortar and in brick and in all manner of
service in the field. all their service, wherein they
made them serve was with rigor. Our changing world, changes in
this world should be expected because that's the only constant
in this world, really, is change, change, change, should be expected. But you and I, we do have God's
promises to keep us, to keep us in the midst of changes. In
verse 8, this phrase, a new king, a new, now there arose up a new
king over Egypt. According to Albert Barnes, this
phrase is not found anywhere else in the scripture. And most
of the commentators understand that it implies this king did
not succeed the former king in the normal order of things. In other words, A king dies and
his son becomes king. He reigns for a while and then
his son becomes king. That's not what happened here.
This man became king probably over Egypt by conquest, by some
war, overthrowing the throne, overthrowing the dynasty that
was upon the throne. And that explains, at least part
of it explains, why he did not know Joseph. He didn't know Joseph. But don't we see how things change
in this world? One day, the Israelites, they
had the best of the land. That's what Pharaoh told Joseph,
wasn't it? To give them Goshen, the best
of the land in Egypt. And they had everything there.
And their relative was prime minister. I mean, they had someone
in court. They had someone up there just
next to the king. But now, there's a new king. A new king who did not know Joseph. And they have fallen out of favor
with the throne. Things change. Things change
in this world. Sometimes overnight, things change. But here we see again, that the
wisdom of man is foolishness with God. Now, they have a plan. The king, and I'm sure his counselors,
they come up with a plan. Well, this is what we can do.
We can afflict them. We can cause them to serve with
rigor. We can make them work almost
night and day. That's going to stop this population
growth. But the more they afflicted them,
the more they increased. Don't we see man's wisdom is
foolishness with God? They put them to forced labor. I don't believe that the Israelites,
the Hebrews, were ever properly called slaves, but they were
forced into labor. But the more they were afflicted,
the more they multiplied and grew. And they made them serve
with rigor. They made life miserable for
them. Hard work. No doubt this was
part of God's plan as well. When things were going well,
they were in the best of the land. They had their uncle, brother,
right next to the king. They had somebody at court. They
were not concerned with the things of this world going against them.
They were happy. They were content. They were
not crying to God for deliverance. Yes, God had promised their ancestors
the land of Canaan for an inheritance, but we're happy here. We have
everything here in Egypt. What could we want more? But
oh, they come, don't they? They come under affliction. They
come to serve with rigor. And before long, the Lord willing,
we will see they will begin to cry out to God for help, for
mercy, for deliverance. But that's just a thought about
the world we live in. It's a changing world. The third
thing, our gracious God. our gracious God, in verses 15
through 22. And the king of Egypt spake to
the Hebrew midwives. Now, most people, most of the
commentators and those who are gifted in the languages, they
explain that doesn't mean that these midwives were Hebrews. What it means is they were midwives
to the Hebrews. And there are only two that are
named. Surely there were many, many more, but there are only
two here that are named. The king of Egypt spoke to the
Hebrew midwives of which the name of the one was Shepherd
and the name of the other Pua. And he said, when you do the
office of a midwife to the Hebrew women and see them upon the stools,
If it be a son, then you shall kill him. But if it be a daughter,
then she shall live. But the midwives feared God and
did not, as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the
men's children alive. And the king of Egypt called
for the midwives and said unto them, why have you done this
thing and have saved the men's children alive? And the midwives
said unto Pharaoh, because the Hebrew women are not as the Hebrew
the Egyptian women. For they are lively and are delivered
ere the midwives come in unto them. Therefore God dealt well
with the midwives, and the people multiplied and waxed very mighty. And it came to pass, because
the midwives feared God, that he made them houses. And Pharaoh
charged all his people, saying, Every son that is born you shall
cast into the river. every daughter you shall save
alive." I said, we see our gracious God here. These two midwives
who are named, those are not Hebrew names, they are Egyptian
names. And we have an illustration here
of something that I mentioned in the message last Sunday night.
When we are commanded, yes, Authority, civil authority is ordained of
God. But when we are commanded to
do something which violates our conscience and violates God's
commands, we are to obey God rather than man. Now, the law,
the Ten Commandments wasn't yet given, was it, on Mount Sinai,
as it will be in this book of Exodus. But it has always been
wrong to kill. Before there ever was a law given
on Sinai, there was a law, law of God, natural law, moral law,
if you please, that is written on the heart of every person
that is born in this world. And these women knew it was wrong
to kill. And notice they feared God. They feared God. And so God blessed
them. God rewarded them, didn't he?
It says that he built them houses. He made them houses. Now some
understand that means that they married Hebrew men and became
mothers in Israel. That may be so. Others, like
Matthew Henry, he was of the opinion that This means that
God built them up into families, blessed them with children, and
prospered them in all that they did. But the point is, God was
gracious to these two women. And not only that, but we have
an illustration of that text in 1 Samuel 2 in verse 30. For
them that honor me, I will honor. And these two women, they honored
God. They feared God more than they
feared the wrath of the king. Now let me close, here's the
fourth thing. If you look back to verses six
and seven, let me just read part of verse
six. And Joseph died, verse seven, and the children of Israel were
fruitful and increased abundantly. Joseph died and the children
of Israel were fruitful and increased abundantly. Why were the Israelites
in Egypt? Because God provided for them
through Joseph. Joseph was the one who administered
the wheat, the corn that was sold for people to survive during
the time of famine. He's a type of Christ. Joseph
is. He's a type of Christ. And this
scripture says, when Joseph died, then the nation multiplied. And I think about our Lord's
words in John 12, when he said, Verily, verily, I say unto you,
except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth
alone. But if it die, it bringeth forth
much fruit. Joseph died, much fruit. The Lord Jesus Christ died, much
fruit, much fruit. He speaks of himself, doesn't
he, as that corn of wheat. Unless he died, would have abode
alone. But since he died, the church,
of the Lord Jesus Christ has increased and multiplied. So
much fruit has come from his death. So many. And will continue. His death will continue to bring
forth fruit until the last one of his sheep is saved. I pray the Lord would bless these
thoughts to all of us here.