40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Episode 61 (Exodus 1:1-14)

Episode Date: November 1, 2016

After 60 episodes in Genesis Chad and Daniel begin the book of Exodus. They spend a while laying some groundwork and talking about how we never really move past what happens in the Exodus of Israel from captivity. Joseph is dead but the Jews are multiplying and the new Pharaoh is getting worried... check it out!

welcome to episode 61 of 40 minutes in the old testament i'm daniel emmy price i am with chad bird and today we are starting a brand new book after 60 episodes in the book of beginnings we have moved on to the book of exodus chad are you are you ready to get your exodus on i am ready i am pumped i've been looking forward to exodus since about the middle of genesis in fact uh you can't get much better than than this book so i am i am primed and ready to to jump in and see what we got awaiting us all right let's do it all right very good so exodus uh i want to spend just a few minutes kind of orienting us to to the book as a whole i want to talk about some of the uh some of connections that it has with Genesis, and then, more importantly, the connections that Exodus

has with really the whole rest of the Bible, and how it provides kind of the framework or the paradigm that we're going to see played out time and time again in the life of Israel, and then, most importantly, in the life of Christ himself. Because as we're going to see, beginning today, and then continuing through the rest of the book of Exodus, what you have in this book, is the pattern or the paradigm for the life and ministry of Jesus. More so than any other book, Exodus gives us the framework whereby we can understand exactly who Christ is and what he does for us. So we're going to go next to this, in other words, what we did in Genesis. We're always going to read it from the perspective of Christ.

We're going to ask of every chapter, every story, how in these words is Christ speaking of himself to us? So, first of all, you can kind of get this maybe in your head as far as a general framework of the book as a whole. There's 40 chapters in Exodus, and the first 15 deal basically with the coming out of Egypt, everything that leads up to it, and then their exit from Egypt. That's 1 through 15. Then you've got 16 through 18, a shorter section. And this details what happened when Israel left Egypt on their journey to Mount Sinai. So that's 16 through 18, the second section.

And then the third section, which is the longest, is chapter 19 through 40. And this deals with all sorts of events that take place at and around Mount Sinai. You've got the giving of the Ten Commandments. You've got the institution of the covenant. You have the ordination of Aaron. You have the golden calf. You've got all sorts of things going on at the foot of Mount Sinai. In fact, once we get to chapter 19, once we have journeyed from Egypt across the desert and to Mount Sinai,

we are going to be there a long time because we don't leave Mount Sinai until the end of Deuteronomy. So we're going to be, once we get to chapter 19, we'll just as well get used to being camped around Mount Sinai because we're going to be there for quite a while. So those are the three main sections. You've got 1 through 15, which is leading Egypt. You've got 16 through 18, the journey to Sinai. Then you've got 19 through 40, where they're camped around Sinai.

Now, of course, we just spent 60 episodes in Genesis. And toward the end, we started kind of looking forward to Exodus. And once we're now in Exodus, we see clearly that Exodus is sort of Genesis 2, if you will, because there's all sorts of things that connect Exodus to everything that came before it. Of course, it's part of the – it's the second book in this ongoing narrative of the people of God, so of course there are those connections, but there's even more than that. In fact, Exodus begins with the Hebrew word vav, which is and, more or less. So the book begins, and these are the names of the sons of Israel. So that and, of course, is just telling us, hey, this is the continuation of the story. This is not an original news story.

This is a continuation of what we've seen before. We also have these interesting connections, too, between the beginning of Genesis and the beginning of Exodus. Because the beginning of Genesis, of course, has this language of Adam and Eve being fruitful and multiplying. And right away, at the beginning of the book of Exodus, you have the sons of Israel being, this is verse 7, being fruitful and increasing greatly and multiplying and becoming exceedingly mighty so that the land was filled with them. Now, this already strikes something that is a theme that you will see throughout the book of Exodus, and that is that these elements in creation that we see, God's work as creator, his work through the people of his creation, is going to be brought to fulfillment in various ways in the book of Exodus. So right away you see that the blessing of being fruitful and multiplying in Genesis 1 is now coming to fulfillment in the life of Israel in Exodus chapter 1. You also have these other connections back to Genesis. For example, you have way back in the life of Abraham, early in the life of Abraham, once he gets into the promised land, God tells him that his people are going to go to a land that is not their own, and they're going to remain captive there, and that God will bring them out.

So already there you have a prophecy of what is recorded in the book of Exodus. And Abraham himself, you'll remember, Abraham himself has already really gone through what you might call the first Exodus. because during the famine, he and Sarah end up in Egypt where they get into all the trouble of Pharaoh that we talked about, and then God brings them out loaded down with all the riches of Egypt. So already there we have this blueprint for what the Exodus is going to look like in the life of Abraham. So really when we get to what we call the book of Exodus,

it's not the first Exodus, and it's not going to be the last Exodus either. You have Abraham's exodus. Now you're going to have Israel's exodus. And then when you get to the prophets, there are these amazing promises of a future exodus that God is going to bring about in the time of the Messiah. So the whole ministry of the Messiah is pictured in terms of an exodus, where he comes to redeem us from the land of slavery and to bring us out of our bondage into freedom. And he does that by means of water, just like he brought Israel through the Red Sea. He brings us through the waters of baptism, and he feeds us.

He fed in the manna. He feeds us his body and blood in the supper. So you've got all sorts of connections between the exoduses that we have throughout the Scripture. Yeah, it's almost as if the entirety of the Old Testament, certainly it's a little bit more in a narrative sense in the Old Testament. But still, the entire scriptures can sort of be boiled down to these themes, exile and return and provision. Yeah, that fits perfectly. Exile and return, because we begin in exile, in captivity, and then God brings us home. And as he brings us home, he provides for all of our needs. that's it exile or return and provision yeah and this just happens sort of over almost like we're

like we're so dumb that if you just did it one time and the and the bible just kind of had one one of those kind of uh stories like hey look at this story about uh exile return and the provision i i had for my people if we just did it once maybe we not might not understand that's kind of the whole point so he just does it over and over and over and over and and and and our lives And you read in the New Testament, all of that that actually happens in the physical sense, in a historical sense in the Old Testament, is just telling us exactly what's happening to us in a spiritual sense, that we are exiled and we're far from God and we're in captivity of sin, death, and the devil, and that we have to be exodus out of that to a good place. and that God himself is the one that's going to provide everything we need for that and along the way through that. Yeah, we're slow learners.

So thankfully God gives us multiple examples throughout the scriptures and then in our own lives as well. And one of the real blessings that we have with understanding the scriptures and then also our own lives in terms of this exile and return, And one of the blessings is that God is always the one who brings us home. It's always completely his work. So he alone rescues Israel from their slavery and brings them to the promised land. And then he alone reaches out to us in our exiles, and he, again, brings us home, restores us to himself, provides for everything that we need.

I mean, one of the benefits of reading the scriptures is simply to understand that what is happening in our life, what God is doing in our life, is nothing different than what he's always done in the lives of his people. So when we read the Old Testament, it's not like we're visiting a museum. It's not like we're reading ancient history. This is not the book of the Jews. This is our story. This is our God. This is always the way that God has worked among his people and always the way that he will work in our own lives as well. So these words, far from being just kind of ancient relics of what happened a long time ago, are living and life-giving and ever-present words whereby God gives us the understanding of who he is and who we are and how he works in our lives.

So when we're reading Exodus or Genesis or anything else in the Old Testament, we're always reading a living word that speaks to us in the here and now about how God continues to work in our lives. So the Exodus is, needless to say, extremely important. I might mention also that when you get to the New Testament, the Exodus continues to be one of the foundational books of the Old Testament, whereby the New Testament writers express themselves. So I often kind of half-jokingly call the New Testament an inspired commentary on the Old Testament. And I'm only half-joking when I say that, because it really is true. Everything in the New Testament looks back to the Old. So it's a commentary in the Old Testament about the fulfillment that we have in Christ. It's an inspired commentary upon how Messiah has brought all the Old Testament together to its fulfillment and fullness in himself. But some books, of course, are more important to the New Testament writers than other books as far as shaping their language and their imagery and their imagination.

And Exodus ranks right up there at the top. In fact, there's 40 chapters in Exodus, all but six of them. all but six of them are referenced or quoted or alluded to in the new testament and there's uh if my if my numbers are right there's 200 217 references to the exodus in the new testament so it doesn't matter if you're in the gospels or if you're in the epistles or if you're in revelation wherever you're at you're going to hear these echoes and and allusions to to the exodus that's how that's how pervasive it is you know it's even if you continue oh so so you have uh by the way guys there's a there is a podcast called 30 minutes in the new testament

i've heard of that which is like a sister podcast of this if you guys if you subscribe to this you should probably go there and check that out happens to be going through matthew but what you find one of the things that's interesting about matthew is that matthew's uh go-to line is this was done to fulfill what was written and then and he's quote this dude matthew's quoting the old testament all day long that's like that's a go-to move because he's a jew and he's talking to jews uh so you see that so that's prevalent and and uh and matthew and and and and all the gospels and and the epistles i mean paul quotes the the old testament like crazy but what's also interesting is that the old testament never never really gets over the exodus uh i mean you there's

there's few things i mean it's it's sort of abraham and the exodus that that you see that when we go read the psalms um the songs that they sang i mean exodus is all over the place and they're um the red sea the the all of all of that i mean they never get past that the passover I mean, they're celebrating that to this day. This is all stuff found in the book of Exodus. And so not only is Exodus all the way in the New Testament and all the way to present day for the Jews as well and for us as Christians, but even the people of Israel in the Old Testament,

you'll see them hearken back to the events that happened in the Exodus over and over and over again in the Old Testament. The prophets do it. The Psalms do it. It happens all over the place. Yeah, it really is the foundational act of salvation in the Old Testament. If you were to ask an Israelite to sum up in just a few words how he understands who he is

and how God has been good and gracious toward him and to his people, he would probably say something like, but the Lord is the one who brought us up from the land of Egypt. That kind of summarizes everything that God has done for them. So I am the Lord your God who brought you up from the land of Egypt. That's how God prefaces the giving of the Ten Commandments. God's own self-identification is the God who acted to redeem his people from slavery in Egypt. So that's how God identifies himself.

I'm the God who brought you up from the land of Egypt. That's who I am. So that's his, when he wants the Israelites to understand who he is and what his attitude is toward them, and then who they are in his eyes, that's the way he describes himself. The God who redeemed them, who brought them up from the land of Egypt. And so, yeah, throughout everything, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Chronicles, the Psalms, the Prophets, it's all there. The Israelites never forget this. In fact, they not only remember it in their heads,

but they enact a remembrance of it every spring when they celebrate the Passover. So this becomes the defining moment for how they understand who they are and who God is. And the remarkable thing about this is that as we trace it to the Old Testament and we get to the New Testament, we see that the reason it was so important was because this was the backdrop for everything that Jesus was to be and to do. So what you have in the life of Jesus is more or less a reenactment and a fulfillment of what happened in the Exodus.

I mean, just to give you a couple of examples, we're going to encounter the building of the tabernacle later on in the book of Exodus. There's a lot of chapters spent about that, this tent which is full of the glory of God. And John says in chapter 1 that the Word became flesh, the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us, and we have beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten of the Father. So the incarnation, the taking on of our own humanity by the Son of God, that was prefigured in the tabernacle. And the filling of the tabernacle with the glory of God, that glory is what we see in a humble way, hidden within the tabernacle of Christ's body.

So you've got his whole incarnation prefigured by the tabernacle. But there's other elements in his life as well. I mean, for instance, Jesus himself, we sometimes forget this. I'm sure you guys are talking about this in 30 minutes in the New Testament. Jesus spends time in Egypt. So he has to flee from Herod. And where does he go? Well, they go into Egypt.

So he is following in the footsteps of Israel. So Christ, who is like the second Israel, he goes down into Egypt, and he's going to come up from there in his own exodus. So what you have, especially in Matthew, is the evangelist saying, Hey, when you see Jesus, what you're seeing is Israel reduced down to one man who is retracing the steps of our ancestors and is bringing to fulfillment everything that happened in the past. He's not simply going through the motions again, but he is repeating it and fulfilling it in himself. So that what you see laid out for you in Exodus is what now has been filled to its fullness in the life and ministry of Jesus. So there's a lot there, and we'll be getting into this, of course, more as we go along.

Just kind of giving you a taste now for what's coming up and kind of giving you some kind of bigger, broader categories to keep in mind as we go through this. Just trying to get you guys psyched. yeah get your sight just in case you didn't believe us we're trying to convince you now exodus is important it's the main thing in the in the jewish hymnal there you go that sums it up exodus is important they sang about it they preached about it they under they self-identified they reenacted it i reenacted it yeah so it just just in case you may have been uh not quite getting the point, Exodus is extremely important. And without it, you can know

the truth of the New Testament, but you can't know the whole truth. Because this really gives you this broad background understanding of everything that's taking place. I was thinking about this the other day. If you just kind of jump into the new testament without the real knowledge of the old testament it's just like you know jumping into season seven of the walking dead never watched the first six you didn't do that did you no i mean you might watch it and you know sort of you know pick up what's what's going on just kind

of on the surface but if you don't have the background then you don't know the characters you don't know the past you don't know all the stuff that's happened that's right well uh well that is sort of a uh introduction kind of wetting people's appetites then why don't we uh why don't we jump right on in yeah man see what awaits us yeah well it sounds like everything's going pretty sweet for israel is that gonna hold hold fast oh of course yeah i mean every everything goes sweet for israel non-stop right sounds like they're multiplying sounds like things are going good yeah you know they uh they they go down into uh they go down to egypt 70 of them and before you know it there's uh they're all over the place that's kind of the way it starts out in fact the

the opening words are now these are the names which by the way uh is is where we get the the hebrew name we call it exodus but the hebrew name for this book is shmote which is uh the hebrew word for names. The way that the Jews title each of these books is by the opening word or words of each of them. So Genesis, we call it Genesis, but they call it Bereshit, which is the opening word of Genesis 1.1. And so they call it Shemot or Elishemot. These are the names. That's the way it starts out. So Exodus or Shemot, these are the names of the sons of Israel. And he goes through a list of them. These are the guys that we know well, right? Jacob's sons, there's Reuben and Simeon and Levi and so forth, all the way down to Joseph. He says there's 70 when they get there,

but then it says Joseph dies, all his brothers die, that whole generation dies, and instead of remaining about the same, instead of decreasing in number, they multiply beyond any reckoning it says they were fruitful they literally in hebrew they swarmed my my translation has the increased greatly but this is a this is a word that occurs only a couple of times actually in reference to people usually it's used in reference like animals or vermin swarming all over the place like you have swarm of flies or mosquitoes or bees or something like this but this imagery from the animal kingdom is applied to israel and they were they were swarming all over the place, fruitful, multiplying

increasingly greatly, so that the land was filled with them. Now, this is exaggerated on purpose, because it's pointing to the fact that what God promised actually came to fulfillment. You may remember

when we talked about chapter 46 in Genesis, that when Jacob was about to go down into Egypt, he was hesitant. He stopped But along the way, he offers sacrifices in Beersheba, and God appears to him in a vision and says, I am God, the God of your father.

Don't be afraid to go down to Egypt, for I will make you a great nation there. So that was God's promise to Jacob before he entered Egypt. And what we see in the opening chapter here is the fulfillment of that. They're increasing in number. They're increasing in power. So everything is going sweet, going well for him, at least through the first seven verses, which is usually what happens, right? It's like we know something's coming. Anytime things start going really well for Israel, you know that something's right around the corner.

And here's what's around the corner. now verse 8 now a new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph so he says to his people look the people of the

sons of Israel are more and mightier than we so let's deal wisely with them lest they multiply and in the event of war they join themselves to those who hate us and fight against us

and depart from the land. So we are introduced already in chapter 1 to a guy that's going to be one of the central figures in the first half of the book of Exodus. What's his name? That's an interesting question. What's his name? Here's how the Bible identifies him.

A new king who didn't know Joseph. That's the only indication we have of who this guy is. Now, you can read in your commentaries and your other books on Exodus various speculations as to which one of the pharaohs this was. And that's of historical interest, I suppose. But I like to stick with the fact that even though the Bible could have named this pharaoh, it didn't. He was one of the most powerful men in the world at the time. Egypt was a superpower, ruled by a guy that had almost unlimited power and authority, and yet the scriptures purposefully do not give him a name. This Pharaoh remains anonymous.

Now, the reason that I think this is significant and really, to some extent, humorous is because even though we don't know the name of this Pharaoh, we do know the names of the two Hebrew midwives that are going to pop up at the end of this chapter. This is the Bible's kind of subtle way of alerting us to the fact that the people who make the news, the people that everybody knows, the people who have made a name for themselves, the people who are famous or powerful for whatever reason, aren't necessarily the ones that the divine focus is going to be on. Of all the people in Egypt that we would expect to know the name of, His name we don't know, and yet the people, the common people, the people who just go about their ordinary task or vocations, whatever those might be, the people that are not even going to make a footnote in the history books, these are the people that are named in the Scriptures. So we know the names of the two Hebrew midwives that all the world overlooked, but we don't know the name of the Pharaoh that everybody else at that time would have known.

It's a beautiful way that the scriptures tell us what's important to God. And it's not what's important to the world. It's not what is most important to us. What's important to God is that which is usually overlooked by everyone else. So we don't know the name of the Pharaoh. We do know the name of the Hebrew Mibwais, and we'll get to them in just a minute. But let's first of all talk about this plan of Pharaoh, how he's going to try and control the Israelites. Because the problem is that Israel, the people of Israel, have become a risk to national security, at least in Pharaoh's mind they are.

He's worried that there's so many of them that what's going to happen, and this is almost paranoia, but what's going to happen if we get invaded and these Israelites join forces with the invaders and then conquer us and depart from the land? Then what's going to happen? In many ways, Pharaoh ends up unwittingly prophesying what's going to happen anyway. Because what's going to happen in the next few chapters is there is going to be a war, but it's not going to be an invading army that attacks Pharaoh and the Egyptians. It's going to be God himself. There is going to be an attack. It's going to come from heaven. And he's afraid that the Israelites are going to depart from the land,

but that's exactly what ends up happening when God attacks. And finally, after ten plagues, he brings the people out from there. So in many ways, Pharaoh is prophesying his future, even though he doesn't realize that he's doing it. So they have this problem, according to Pharaoh. There's too many of the Israelites. There are risks to national security. So what are we going to do with them?

Well, the first step is they appoint taskmasters over them to afflict them with hard labor. So more or less, they enslave them. They put these taskmasters over them. They make them into servants. They build for Pharaohs some storage cities. So they're doing everything that they can, basically, to make their life as hard as possible, thinking that the harder they make the life of the Israelites, the weaker they will become, the less powerful, the less fruitful, all of this stuff.

That's the plan. And it backfires. I love this. This is one of my favorite verses from the book of Exodus. This is verse 12. It says, But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied, And the more they spread out so that the Egyptians were in dread of the sons of Israel.

So the whole plan backfired. The more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied. The worse that they made it for the Israelites, the better the Israelites were. I always connect this particular verse with that famous saying of Tertullian, where he's talking about the persecution of the Christian church. And he says that the blood of martyrs is the seed of the church. So just like the Israelites, the more that they were afflicted, the more they multiplied. So the blood of martyrs is the seed of the church.

Because the church thrives most when it bears the heaviest cross. There's something about the church coming to the full realization of what the church should really be when she bears her Lord's cross. This is the way in which God reminds the church of who they are and who her Lord is, because it's in this bearing of the cross that the fruits of the cross are most manifest in the life of the church. And then conversely, it's often when things are going remarkably well for the church that things don't go so well in other ways it holds i think it holds the same

truth same truth in our lives as well uh one of the most uh one of the most dangerous times in the life of a christian is when everything is going just the way that he or she wants it to go because we we we get deluded into thinking that uh we don't need god as much because smooth sailing but the more that we bear the cross the more that we are brought and conform into conformity with our lord's sufferings the more we learn to live by by faith in his word and promise and not according to to ourselves and to our own deeds so that's uh that's kind of what happened with uh the first the first plan they uh they made them slaves they afflicted them they put these taskmasters over them and everything blew up in their face it is it is kind of

interesting to think about the um the fear of man is a weird thing we're not prone to like put the best construction on stuff and uh and any time when this still happens today when you feel threatened by numbers or whatever and this happens with countries still um we're basically i mean as you know as americans say we you still see us uh we feel pretty comfortable because we feel like we're uh the biggest baddest dude on the block right peace through strength baby like like no one's gonna mess with us because we'll just thump on you but if all of a sudden uh say the people i don't know say mexico since it's connected uh all of a sudden had this massive army and all these weapons uh which is the equivalent you know of just having more guys back then but all of a sudden

they were becoming the superpower we'd start to freak out and you better believe there'd be be people talking about how we probably should subdue that. It's an immediate reaction that we have. It's like, that's stronger, or it's going to get stronger. That's a threat to me. It's not like, well, they're probably decent people, and we could probably live in peace with them. It'll be fine. That's not the immediate assumption in anyone's mind. It's not the assumption of Pharaoh either. He's not like, well, I mean, the Hebrews are growing in numbers, but I mean, they haven't been a problem so it's probably fine no it's they're growing in numbers this is a problem this is a problem we have to do something about it yeah i think that's because uh partly because

anyway both nationally and personally so as a nation and then just as individuals we tend to operate in terms of fear and self-protection yeah you know instead of instead of faith and love it's fear and self-protection and so we're we're afraid of that which in some way might uh take away something from us that we think we're entitled to or we interpret event we it becomes kind of the the filter through which we interpret everything that's happening around us this is actually extremely extremely biblical because in uh in the in the blessings and curses that you hear pronounced for example the book of book of leviticus one of the curses is that if if israel disobeys the covenant, breaks the covenant, rebels against God, all that kind of stuff.

One of the things that's going to happen is that they will be afraid. One of Luther's favorite verses from Leviticus is how they will flee at the sound of a rustling leaf. Right. It doesn't take some big burly guy coming at you to scare you. All it's going to take is the sound of a rustling leaf because that becomes the way that you interpret everything happening around you. So everybody's against you. Everything's against you. You have to live in fear.

You're afraid of both things that are real and things that are even just in your imagination. Why? Because you're no longer trusting in God. You think all you have is yourself, but you begin to doubt yourself. And because of that, you're afraid of everything. And I think, like I said, this happens nationally. It happens personally as well. And so our reaction is always to engage in some sort of self-protection.

So instead of seeing our neighbor as one that we can love, we see him as one against whom we must protect ourselves. Instead of seeing someone who has more than us, for instance, as someone that we should give thanks to God for. He becomes someone that we envy or we covet. That's what fear does to us. It shapes our thoughts and shapes our speech so that everything is perceived negatively. And this can happen in the church. It happens in the church all the time as well. There's some sort of threat because there's something new.

And so we react out of fear. We circle the wagons. We think we have to engage in self-protection. instead of trusting that God is with us. And in fact, he may be opening up an opportunity for us to love our neighbor in a new way and to welcome him as a brother or sister in Christ. Yeah.

I love how God uses his spot-on anthropology to accomplish his will. So he's got an exodus in mind. And how is he going to bring this about? He doesn't have to do anything too crazy. All he's got to do is make them multiply. He'll be like, this guy will freak out. That's all it's going to take.

He'll freak out. Like, are you sure? Yeah, I know people. My anthropology is pretty good. Look, he's going to freak out. Like, if I multiply them greatly, this dude will feel super threatened. I don't have to really do anything else. You just hide and watch.

Pharaoh's going to fall exactly into the pattern that people always fall into. And sure enough, he does. You know, Pharaoh is sort of the embodiment of the old man here. Everything that Pharaoh does, or almost everything anyway, is old man-ish, old Adam-ish. He represents exactly who we are according to our sinful nature and how he reacts is how we react when we're acting in accordance with the old Adam. Yeah. So, just going to finish off this section here. they uh they they multiplied the more they were afflicted and then it says the egyptians

compelled the sons of israel to to work and to work and to work some more in fact there's two verses here 13 and 14 in which five times the the hebrew verb avad is used which is the word for serve or or to labor so they compel the sons of israel to labor rigorously and make their lives bitter with hard labor in mortar and bricks and in all kinds of labor in the field etc so one of the the the the the point that you can't miss in these verses is that the egyptians were all about making the israelites their servants their slaves their laborers and the reason this is so important is because this becomes one of the other major themes in exodus more or less the question is this. Who is Israel going to serve? Because they're going to serve somebody. Are they

going to serve the Egyptians as slaves, or are they going to serve Yahweh as freed men and women? That's the struggle that we see leading up to the Exodus itself, because Pharaoh doesn't want them leaving to serve Yahweh. He wants to keep them there as slaves, and yet Yahweh wants to free his people so that as freed people, they will serve him. That's one of the great ironies that we have in the scriptures, is that we are slaves of God, and yet we are free. We serve because we're free. So we're not free agents. We're not choosing who we're going to serve. We're going to be serving somebody. We're going to be serving God or the devil, and we serve the devil as slaves. who serve God as freedmen.

It's this irony that we are both served and free because we are freed from sin and we are made the servants of God and we are His children and so we are free in our service to Him. So that's

kind of where things are leading up to this point is you've got Israel and Egypt, you've got them multiplying, you have Pharaoh and then all of the Egyptians being wrapped up with fear interpreting the Israelites and everything they do in terms of fear

and so they afflict them they make slaves of them they compel them to labor vigorously and nothing is working every plan that they have backfires and what we're going to see in our next episode

is a very sinister plan that Pharaoh comes up with to take care of the male offspring, to eradicate the newborn males in the Israelite community. So we'll have to come back to that next time, but hopefully talk a little bit about Exodus as a whole, how it fits in the scriptures, gives everybody a taste for what is to come.

We've barely got started. There's so much good stuff coming up. Yeah, all right. Foundation laid. 40 minutes up. Hey, guys. If you want to go over to ChristRuleFast.org and help us out, you can do that. This is all listener-supported stuff. So if you benefit from it and you think it's worth investing in,

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that's the best way you can help us out and obviously come back next week and we will continue down this path in Exodus Thank you.