Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Does God Have a Purpose for You? | Torah | Exodus 1:1-6

Episode Date: May 3, 2022

Where do you fit in God's story? Will he keep his promises? How can you know God's working in your life? Tanya begins our walk through the book of Exodus and shares what Exodus 1:1-6 reveals about God's bigger story. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Exodus 1:1-6 Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Tanya Wilmeth, and right now we're in the book of Exodus. I think I told you before that I learned to cook by watching TV, and it was a show called Cooking Live with Sarah Moulton. Then I moved on to Rachel Ray and then the Pioneer Woman. But the first one, Sarah, she was a trained expert. I think she even attended that super fancy culinary school in France. But Rachel Ray and Reed Drummond, they're both cooks with no. no formal training. They just popped into our living rooms with their charm and the desire to show

us that anyone can be a great cook and gather people around a table for some meaningful time and conversation. As we start into the new book of Exodus in this podcast, I want to be super transparent with you. I'm learning right along. If you're a Bible scholar, you are way ahead of me. If something we learn is news to you, chances are it's news to me too. I'm super excited and willing to put and the hard work to bring it to you, but all in all, I'm just proof that anyone can be addicted to the Bible. Anyone can fall in love with the word. It will impact your life and maybe God will even use it. Surely God will use it to impact someone else's. I think it's not only going to be worth your time, but also super enjoyable to take a slow walk with us to the book of Exodus.

It's a beautifully constructed narrative. It has a few cliffhangers and intimate revelations from Moses. You're going to get detailed insight into Moses' conversations with God and the juice on his confrontations with Pharaoh. There's even some of Moses' own inner thoughts mixed in. There's also content that comes directly from God in this book. The Ten Commandments are delivered by God's voice, and God gives specific instructions for the tabernacle. You're also going to relate to the people in Exodus.

Exodus begins with the Israelites who are flourishing and thriving in Egypt, and then they come under oppression, and it ends with them on the move. In the middle, they're delivered from slavery. They journey through the wilderness. They encounter God at Mount Sinai. They're confirmed and included in God's covenant with Abraham. And they commit an act of rebellion that threatens to bring everything and everyone to a halting end.

There is no lack of real-life problem, drama, and action in these pages. And it all has deep theological meaning that will ground us and give us hope. but it also just really does describe the human condition and what it's like to be human. Most of all, though, in Exodus, we will see God. We will see His holiness in the burning bush and on top of the mountain. We'll see his compassion and grace in the way he deals with rebellion and comes to dwell among his people. Now today, we're just going to crack the surface and get a little taste of what's ahead as we open with the first seven verses of Exodus chapter 1. They're the kind of verses that you might.

totally speed by on your morning commute because they seem to be pretty benign in their listing of names and location. But let's pretend that we're on a slow walk with nowhere to be for at least the next six minutes and look at why these verses are here. I don't think this is something we want to miss. Exodus 1.1-7. Pay attention. See if there are names you recognize or language we've heard before. If you have, that's great. And if not, we're going to talk for a few minutes about why this information is so important to our understanding of the rest of the book. Exodus 1. These are the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob, each with his household. Rubin, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, Issaacar, Zebulin, Benjamin, Dan, and Naftali, Gad, and Asher.

All the descendants of Jacob were 70 persons. Joseph was already in Egypt. Okay, quick pit stop here. this is a retelling of what already happened in Genesis 46. Joseph was already in Egypt and everyone else moved there to find food because of the famine. Now, let's continue with Exodus chapter 1, verse 6. Then Joseph died and all his brothers and all that generation. But the people of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly. They multiplied and grew exceedingly strong so that the land was filled with them. This is super important. You might be familiar with the Bible story about Pharaoh and the plagues and crossing the Red Sea. But this is how these people got there and how it started.

Now, by the end of Genesis, God's promise to Abraham to make him into a great nation has survived a lot of obstacles, and his family has gone through generations to a community of famine refugees, if you will, that have traveled to Egypt. And now we move from a narrative about a family to a narrative about a nation.

From verse 7, the people of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly. And this echoes the words of Genesis 128, where God blessed Adam and Eve and commanded them to do just this. And it also confirms the words of God's promise to Abraham to make him into a great nation. We are only in the second book of the Bible, and God has already done exactly what he promised. He has already empowered what he commanded. We already see the overarching theme of God's mission and redemption. The little family that began with Abraham went to Egypt as famine refugees, and their community exploded to become a perceived threat to Pharaoh. They are refugees, and they are heirs of a promise. They have increased in number, and because of this,

they will become victims of exploitation, slavery, and even genocide. Will they survive? Pharaoh will do everything in his power to oppose Exodus 1-7. Where God is creator, Pharaoh is anti-life, an anti-humanitarian. This story resonates with many parts of our world today. It resonates with our history. Here's where we experience the tension. God is holy, God is good, God is sovereign, God keeps his promises, and people are rebellious.

So let's not skip over. Exodus 1 and a quick drive-by, but let's take in some things that will ground us and help us in our doubts and our questions and our fears. Will they survive? Will we survive? Will our faith survive? Will our family? Will your family survive this heartache? Will our country survive this period of history? Now a good intro lays a foundation for a book or a movie, and it gets us hooked and a really great intro establishes where we're been and where we're going. Exodus 1 is a really great intro, and there are a few ideas I want us to capture so they can develop and take root as we go through this book. The first thing for us to remember is that the

survival and growth of this family of 70 that came to Egypt is God's work. Sarah and Abraham didn't even think they could have one child, and Sarah used her handmade to conceive with Abraham when she thought she wasn't going to be able to have a child. And then Rachel and Rebecca also at trouble conceiving. And then Tamar seduced her father-in-law. And then Esau wanted to kill Jacob. But we have the line of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the 12 tribes. And then we have multitudes of people because it was part of God's plan.

Also, let's take away that if God has clearly kept his promise as evidenced by Exodus 1 then he will surely keep his promise to also bring them out of Egypt and back to the land of their fathers. And beyond that, he will clearly keep his promise to bless all nations through them. And he will surely keep his promise to bring all nations back together under his blessing one day. It's so important that we know our history. God's promises to Abraham have been 400 years in the making. We should let the Bible give us perspective. Exodus will speak to us.

Our lives have become fast. We look for immediate solutions to our problems and our discomfort, and we demand visible results. The Exodus will encourage us in the art of waiting for the Lord, not in a meaningless, boring, or mediocre way, but in true, joy, hope, purpose, patience, and expectancy. Now, Patrick ordered all of us these commentaries for Exodus that are written in Hebrew and English. But since they are Hebrew, you have to read it. read them from the back to the front. Like literally when I went to pick mine up, another friend was there and she and I both tried to figure out if we should ask the printing company for a refund

because the book was backwards. But this is the way we read our days, our lives, our story in view of God's big story. We read from the pages of revelation backward, believing God because we know he does what he promises. And this gives everything in our life. And this gives everything in our life's purpose. God didn't waste the first seven verses of Exodus, and he doesn't waste the things he brings or allows into our lives. Last week, I was talking with a friend, and she was describing some challenges her family had been through in the last week. She said, I'm discovering that we're not good at communicating. And then we kind of cried, laughed at the same time, because we realized God was giving them opportunities to be better communicators. Their challenges were not just challenges with no

purpose. They were opportunities to grow more like Jesus, to trust him more, to encourage each other. Personal, trivial, mundane, difficult things are under the purpose of God. Even if you're cutting the grass right this minute and have to cut it again next week, the things in your life have purpose because you are part of the story of God. That's what we're going to know through and through as we walk through Exodus together. We can't wait to go on this journey with you. Before you forget, sign up for the brand new TMBT newsletter. Hit the link in the show notes, and you'll get an email every Wednesday that will help you beat the midweek slump and go deeper in your walk with Jesus.

Thanks for listening.