IN OUR BIBLE LECTURE THIS WEEK we looked back to the Western church at the beginning of the sixteenth century: crippled by ignorant, greedy, and absent leaders; wracked by heresy and superstition; the strong oppressing the weak; the Gospel smothered almost to invisibility.
How will historians in 2526 describe the church today? Will they observe that worldliness, wrong-thinking, and superstition had abated? That the strong had learned to serve the weak? That the light of the Gospel blazed from a lampstand?
Whatever your analysis of our present condition, the church at the beginning of the book of Exodus was in a terrible place. Yet the LORD was at work and we have vital doctrines to learn from these verses.
The Book of Exodus
Exodus is the second book of the Torah, or Pentateuch: the first five books of the Bible. Though written by Moses in Hebrew the English title derives from an ancient Greek translation: ex hodos (ἐξ ὁδος) means “the road out.”
In Exodus the LORD powerfully redeems his people from slavery in Egypt and carries them on the road out to the Promised Land.
Exodus presents many crucial events, including: the defining of God’s personal name, the first Passover, passing through the Red Sea, the provision of manna, the pillar of cloud and fire, the writing of the Ten Commandments, the design and building of the Tabernacle, and the establishment of the Levitical priesthood.
Exodus also establishes some of the Bible’s most basic doctrines: God’s power, supremacy, holiness, and grace; human depravity, slavery, and inability; sacrifice, redemption, law, priesthood, and the Land of God’s presence.
The opening fourteen verses of Exodus establish a connection back to Genesis and set the scene for the forty chapters to follow. They are packed with vital truths and doctrines.
Exodus 1:1–14
Exodus 1:1–5 These are the names of the sons of Israel who went to Egypt with Jacob, each with his family: 2Reuben, Simeon, Levi and Judah; 3Issachar, Zebulun and Benjamin; 4Dan and Naphtali; Gad and Asher. 5The descendants of Jacob numbered seventy in all; Joseph was already in Egypt.
Exodus picks up where Genesis ends. Abraham had sojourned briefly in Egypt (Gen. 12). Joseph’s brothers had sold him into bondage but God was with him so he rose, after years of slavery and imprisonment, to become the prime minister and saviour of Egypt. Jacob and his twelve sons and their wives and children, seventy in all, fled from Israel to Egypt to find deliverance from a deadly famine.
Moses names Jacob’s twelve sons up front because in Exodus God deals with the twelve tribes who are descended from these sons. That they are in Egypt and not in the Land that God promised to Abraham and his descendants means something is fundamentally awry.
The Egyptians are the pagan descendants of Ham (Gen. 10:6). They worship created things – the sun, the Nile, Pharaoh, the falcon, the crocodile, the jackal, and so on – rather than the Creator who is forever to be praised.
Just as Genesis opens with physical chaos, darkness, and lifelessness, Exodus opens with God’s people in a state of spiritual chaos, blindness, and slavery. In Genesis God brought order, light, and life to the chaos. In Exodus we will see him do the same.
Exodus 1:6–7 Now Joseph and all his brothers and all that generation died, 7but the Israelites were exceedingly fruitful; they multiplied greatly, increased in numbers and became so numerous that the land was filled with them.
Though the initial seventy refugees are long dead, Moses emphasises four times over the exponential multiplication of their descendants. He uses the same words he used to describe the teaming life and abundantly fruitful multiplication of the birds, fishes, land animals, trees, shrubs, and grasses in Genesis 1.
Note how Moses ties Israel’s proliferation back to key Genesis commands and promises: God had commanded Adam and Eve to be fruitful (פרה, parah) and multiply (רבה, rabah). He promised Abraham that he would “exceedingly multiply” (rabah) his seed (Gen. 22:17). Isaac foretold that God would make Jacob fruitful (parah) and multiply (rabah) his descendants (Gen. 28:3). The LORD kept his promise: he had made the Israelites “exceedingly fruitful” (parah), he had “multiplied” (rabah) and caused them, literally, to “grow exceedingly greatly.”
Exodus 1:9–11 Then a new king, to whom Joseph meant nothing, came to power in Egypt. 9‘Look,’ he said to his people, ‘the Israelites have become far too numerous for us. 10Come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous and, if war breaks out, will join our enemies, fight against us and leave the country.’ 11So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labour, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh.
Though God is at work the devil is lurking. He is manifest in Exodus not as a cunning serpent but as a cruel and powerful king – the title Pharaoh derives from a word meaning “great house.” Until Christ returns these two absolutely asymmetrical entities – one the benevolent, infinite, and inherently omnipotent Creator; the other a finite and malevolent creature with derived and limited power – will always be working to bless or to harm God’s people.
Joseph was carried to Egypt in chains and spent years as a slave and prisoner. Now his descendants will relive that time. God foreordained this long before (Gen. 15:13).
Oppressing the Hebrews ticks three of Pharaoh’s boxes: it makes them too weak to fight their way out of Egypt if war ever breaks out; it should slow down their multiplication; and they will build the things that Pharaoh wants. But just as God had a better plan for Joseph than that of his cruel brothers, things are not going to work out as Pharaoh hopes.
The devil kicks many goals, but they are only ever own goals.
Exodus 1:12–14 But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the sons of Israel 13and worked them ruthlessly. 14They made their lives bitter with harsh labour in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their harsh labour, the Egyptians worked them ruthlessly.
Against Pharaoh’s design oppression only multiplies the Hebrews. The Egyptians dread that some greater power favours them. But why back down when you can double down? Jacob once described how “with bitterness (מרר, mārar) archers attacked Joseph; they shot at him with hostility” (Gen 49:23). Now the Egyptians grievously attack and embitter (mārar) Joseph’s descendants.
Contempt for God always spills over into contempt for his image bearers. People who deny the imago dei inevitably come to grade and then degrade human beings according to their own schemes and value systems. Stalinists, slavers, abortionists, and euthanisers all practice this gradation. The deification of Pharaoh and the dehumanisation of the Hebrews manifests this perverse tendency.
God created us to work, to tend the Garden, to discover and enjoy its riches, and to rest one day in seven. The Curse deformed work into something sweaty, toilsome, and frustrating. Human greed and cruelty – whether manifest in the nineteenth-century cloth mills of Manchester or the twenty-first-century Cobalt mines of the Congo – terribly magnify the curse of work.
The bitterness of the Hebrews’ slavery echoes the bitter meaninglessness of life without God. Though we are cushioned in the West by material prosperity the godless can never fully escape the lash of finity and godless purposelessness.
Doctrines from Exodus 1:1–14
God ordains all that happens in creation; fulfilled prophecy proves this. We ought bow before the Sovereign LORD.
The LORD has ordained that his people – his church – will multiply and extend across the earth. This gives his church confidence as we obey and prosecute the Great Commission.
The powers of evil will work against the LORD and his people until Christ returns. We should expect this, prepare for this, and be rightly armoured to stand firm.
Unbiblical anthropology inevitably breeds inequality and cruelty. We must know, believe, live out, and vigorously promote humanity as the imago dei. Christians have and must continue to call out and resist the evils of slavery, child-abuse, abortion, euthanasia, and whatever other evils Fallen humanity brings down upon the weak and vulnerable.
The Curse has embittered humanity’s work and human cruelty magnifies this bitterness. Christians have and must continue to work for humane and fair work conditions.
The unredeemed life is a terrible slavery. Only the Gospel brings redemption; let us take it vigorously to the four corners of the earth.