All right, everybody, it is the top of the hour. So six o'clock, you don't know what top the hour is. I think all y'all know, though. I think I told some of y'all that I was talking to my boss. We were doing something a couple weeks ago and asked him when we were coming back from a break. And he said, 10 minutes, whatever. I looked at my watch. I said, bottom of the hour? And he looked at me like I had three eyes. You don't know what the bottom of the hour is? He's a little bit younger than I am. Yeah, take your copy of God's Word, turn to Exodus this evening, I almost said this morning, save afternoon. So if you're on Facebook, you saw the message I posted earlier, something I've been wrestling with for a little over a week, I guess, if not longer. You may have noticed as I was talking about us studying through the attributes of God, I kept saying, I wanna do this, I wanna do this, I wanna do this, and how important the study of the attributes of God is, and we're not doing that tonight. Actually, it's gonna be a while. Conviction of the spirit, probably not conviction, prompting of the spirit is to go elsewhere, and I'm not gonna give you the whole story, but we just finished Genesis right before Christmas, and I made a comment about how I wanna go through the attributes of God and how important of an endeavor it is, and I still believe that 100%, and then I said something about going to a shorter book, because we were just in a 50-chapter book of Genesis that took us two years to get through, go through a shorter book, After that, so I had all this planned out and mapped out in my head, right? Well, got other plans because I read back through Genesis, start of the year, and started reading through Exodus. And I got to thinking, this is all so fresh in our minds from Genesis, right? I mean, all this stuff about Genesis is so fresh in our mind, and how so few people have gone through a deep study of Genesis like we did for two years. Well, likewise, there's probably a lot of people that have been through a deep study of Exodus, and most of our Exodus thoughts, quite frankly, quite often come from a very famous movie that we watch certain times of the year. And there's so many things in the book of Exodus that we're taught in Sunday school, perhaps, as a child, and kind of like in the Genesis account, these stories, as we read them as adults, they're so much more expansive and so much more for us to take part of. So with that said, we're gonna jump into Exodus. That might disappoint some of y'all, it may not. Some of you might be happy that we're gonna do that instead of this deep study in the attributes of God. But here's something else I noticed reading through Exodus again for the first time in a long, long time, if I'm being honest. So much of the attributes of God that we were gonna be studying the next couple weeks are on full display in the book of Exodus. just so displayed and not just talked about but like worked out in God's providence and how he handles things in the book of Exodus. And we read about all these promises in Genesis, we really start seeing them get fulfilled in Exodus. But let me make this statement. I still want to do a study through the attributes of God, but what I will probably do, and I've made this threat and or promise many times of doing something over a summer on a Sunday night study, probably wait and hold that off for Sunday nights this summer and go through a study on attributes of God in kind of a sit-down discussion type environment versus a Wednesday night Bible study type environment. So y'all hold me to that as we get closer to warmer weather that I wanted I want us to go through the attributes of God but I think it's maybe best done in that format actually than in the midweek Bible study. All right, so as studying through, as I began to look through the book of Exodus, oh, and by the way, if we would have went to the attributes of God tonight, we were going to study the immutability of God, which means that God cannot change, does not change, and that's tied into his promises and provisions too. So it's very important for us, and when we left off in Genesis, We left off with Joseph dying. The last verse of Genesis, Joseph died. They embalmed him and he was placed in a coffin in Egypt. You might remember all the way back in Genesis 15, God had told Abraham that his people would be sojourners and actually talk about slavery for 400 years and how he would call them out and punish those who had them in slavery. That's really where we are in history as we are studying through these books, the first two books specifically. I found a very interesting, this isn't just a typical quote, this is a two-paragraph introduction, kind of, to the Book of Exodus from Philip Rykin, who Philip Rykin succeeded James Montgomery Boyce at 10th Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia. and he cobbled this from some of his own thoughts and thoughts of Boyce, and so let me read this, and then we're gonna pray, and then we're gonna do more of an extended introduction to the book of Exodus, okay? So just bear with me here as I read this quote slash introduction that Philip Ryken and James Montgomery Boyce's words are both intermingled in here. Exodus is an epic tale of fire, sand, wind, and water. The adventure takes place under the hot desert sun, just beyond the shadow of the Great Pyramids. There are two mighty nations, Israel and Egypt, led by two great men, Moses, the liberating hero, and Pharaoh, the enslaving villain. Almost every scene's a masterpiece, the baby in the basket, the burning bush, the river of blood and the other plagues, the angel of death, the crossing of the Red Sea, the manna in the wilderness, the water from the rock, the thunder and lightning on the mountain, the Ten Commandments, the pillar of cloud by day and pillar of fire by night, the golden calf, the glory in the tabernacle. Once heard, the story's never forgotten. For Jews, it is the story that defines their very existence. Rescue in which God manifested that they were his people. For the Christian, it is the gospel of the Old Testament, God's first great act of redemption. We return to the Exodus again and again, sensing that somehow it holds significance for the entire human race. It is the story that gives every captive the hope of freedom. Thus it was also natural for African American slaves, many of whom were Christians, to understand their captivity as a bondage in Egypt and to long for the day when they would be free at last. The Exodus shows that there is a God who saves, who does deliver his people from bondage, and does fulfill his promises. A paragraph, two paragraphs like that are part of the reason I wanted to read Exodus and study it. Let's pray. Father, we come to your house tonight as I've laid bare, revealing that our plans and our thoughts, although they may be good, do not always mean that they are from you. God, I've bent the knee to what you would have us study. I pray that your people that are gathered here tonight or that may listen later, our understanding of that, Lord, and appreciative of that, and desire us to know you more, through the way you have given to us the events and the things that happen in the book of Exodus. Lord, I pray that your people would understand that this is history, this is truth, just as all of your word is truth, and that the truths of these words would resonate in our hearts, that you would give to us perhaps a fuller picture of who you are as we launch out into this study of the book of Exodus. God, I thank you for those that are here. Thank you for those that couldn't be here. Lord, I pray protection over them. I pray that you will watch over us, keep us, lead, guide, and direct us as you have told us you will. In Christ's name, I pray. Amen. Well, I sure did build all that up about the attributes. I just shut the switch off, didn't I? Molly's shaking her head because I told her last night I was thinking about that. It really came on to me pretty much last minute to do this. Let's read these first seven verses. Now these are the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob. They came each one with his household, Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin, Dan, and Naphtali, Gad, and Asher. And all the persons who came from the loins of Jacob were 70 in number. But Joseph was already in Egypt. Then Joseph died, and all his brothers, and all that generation. But the sons of Israel were fruitful, and increased, and multiplied, and became exceedingly mighty, so that the land was filled with them." Right off the bat, we don't see that word exodus yet, right? We don't see it till we get all the way to chapter 19. But it's in our English Bibles at the very top of this page we just read. What does the word mean? What does the word exodus mean? We use it sometimes, what's that? To leave, to depart, to exit. We don't see it show up until chapter 19, that word itself. Now, when the Hebrew scriptures were translated into Greek, which is what, anybody? the Septuagint, the verb used for leaving Egypt, Exodus. That's kind of where the word comes from. It's a Greek word. Eventually the word came to be used as a title for the whole book. The Exodus then is a story of departure, an epic journey from slavery to salvation. As we look at this, I think We use the terminology oftentimes about being in Babylon and being caught out of Babylon or whatever, is we kind of try to attribute our walk with, because of the world we live in, right? And the culture we're in. But when you talk about the salvific part, we are more connected to bondage and slavery to sin prior to our salvation. So it is out of Egypt and kind of living in Babylon today. Now, that brings our mind to a couple things. Well, y'all just heard me in the introduction talk about all these big, massive events that happen in the Book of Exodus, right? There's some massive events that we just summarized as we read through that that happen in the Book of Exodus. Some that even the secular world are familiar because most people have at least caught parts of the Ten Commandments on TV at some time in their life, and that's capturing most of these events we're going to be studying. There's a couple of different things we need to keep in our mind in our approach to studying the book, and most of these we do with every book we study, but especially Old Testament books. But our first approach must be biblical, that we need to study the book as it's given, as it's rendered. We'll walk through it just like we do anything else, chapter by chapter, verse by verse, looking at the plain meaning, but we need to study it as a whole also, the beginning to the end. Now, I say all that, you think, well, that's, yeah, no kidding, that's what we do, right? I mean, it's what we do here. But the truth is Exodus probably wasn't written in a single setting. And there are probably a couple that have contributed to parts of this, and you'll see some places later on in Exodus where Moses is spoken of in third person. However, the majority of it was written by Moses. There are actually multiple times, Exodus 17, Exodus 34, where God tells Moses specifically to write these things down. I'll read Exodus 17, 14. Then Yahweh said to Moses, write this in a book as a memorial and recite it in Joshua's hearing that I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven. Exodus 34, 27. Then Yahweh said to Moses, write down these words. For in accordance with these words, I have cut a covenant with you and with Israel." Now, I find this interesting that I was pulled to a podcast today that I wasn't expecting to go to. So I may have listened to it a time or two before. Joe Rogan has probably the most popular podcast in the world. Most of his stuff is way out there, outlandish stuff. But he interviewed a guy. The only reason I listened to it is I saw a post online that said this guy gave about the best gospel presentation he had ever heard on Joe Rogan's show, and how many people will hear it because of that. So I started listening to the podcast. He's an apologist. that had a debate with a guy a week or two ago that blew up because the apologist was given 24 hours notice and destroyed this other guy in a debate about something this guy was supposed to be an expert on and he didn't know what he's talking about. The apologist's expertise is in languages, ancient languages. So he kept going back to the ancient languages and how they line up and you know, like the Isaiah scroll that was 1000 years older than what we had and is exactly word for word what we've been studying for all those years. I say all that to say this, something was brought up about Moses in that podcast, I haven't listened to the whole thing yet, that speaks to the fact of the literacy level and how low it was. I hope we realize that only in the past 100 years or so have we seen the mass level of literacy worldwide that we have today. For most of human history, the majority of people couldn't read or write. Moses, What is another way that God prepared Moses that we may not think about to be the handwritten author of all this stuff? Being raised up in Pharaoh's court, he was in that elite status. Guess what he learned how to do? A lot of things. One thing is learn how to read and write. Little sidebar there, but I thought it was interesting and it ties into the text, which is another direction of the providence of God that this is where we need to be at. Now, the important thing about reading it, thinking of it biblically, is to receive it as it's been given. Studying it one story, it's the living word of God, it was breathed out by the Holy Spirit, and literally sometimes God specifically spoke to Moses and said, write this. And of course, as you go further on, we see some other things that are written by the hand of God himself in this same book. Now, Genesis tells us about the creation of the world, the promises, Exodus recounts the creation of the nation. We saw the promises of the nation and the early foundations of the nation, but as they come into Egypt, as sojourners, we read in Genesis, there were 70 of them. 70. Now how long transpires between the end of Genesis and the first of Exodus? Roughly. Roughly 400 years. Roughly 400 years. There have been some secular scholars, historians, what have you, that say there's no way that they could outnumber the Egyptians in 400 years. What was the commandment God gave? Be fruitful and multiply. Maybe not humanly speaking, it might not make sense to them to go from 70 to more than there is in Egypt, but this is God at work. This is God at work. This is God who opens the womb and closes wombs. So, the book of Exodus has wide connections in the rest of the Old Testament. The Exodus was the great miracle of the Old Covenant. Many passages in Psalms, the prophets look back to it as kind of the paradigm of salvation. There are many, many Psalms that reference back to Exodus when it speaks about salvation. In The New Testament, the writers worship the same God, so they often use that same correlation of the Exodus to talk about salvation. So I dare say that a grasping of the salvific work of God, y'all remember when we studied Genesis, I may have mentioned a couple times that if we don't get Genesis right, the rest of the Bible doesn't make sense. It just doesn't. The total depravity of man and how God has worked and all these things and the promises and the covenants and the shadows of Christ in Genesis and all these things. I dare say that if you don't have at least a pretty good knowledge of Exodus, or let me back up, a deeper knowledge of Exodus will help you in understanding the larger picture of God's fulfillment of his promises and that he is a saving God for his people. Reichen also says this, in some ways, the whole Bible is an extended interpretation of the Exodus. Thus, the way to understand Exodus is to study the book itself in the context of the entire Bible. Historically speaking, we need to consider the book of Exodus. Now, there's been some objections within a couple hundred years of when the Exodus actually took place. We have some earmarks, though. In 1 Kings 6.1, We read this, the house Solomon built for Yahweh, now it happened in the 480th year after the sons of Israel came out of the land of Egypt in the fourth year of Solomon's reign over Israel in the month of Ziv, which is the second month, and he began to build the house of Yahweh. The first Kings tells us it was 480 years prior to that event happening. That would, and the temple was built around 762. So that would put the exodus about 1440 BC. So what are we looking at there? 3,400 years ago. Got my math right, pretty close. 3,400, 3,500 years ago, roughly. The problem with that is it doesn't fit with some of the things in ancient history in Egypt or Israel. There's a whole lot of detail I'm not gonna go into about that, about how sometimes when you use 480 that God used those kind of numbers, speaking of generations and all kinds of stuff that I'm not gonna go into with y'all. The other thing that has caused some controversy is historians say there's not a lot of evidence that it actually happened. There's not a lot of evidence that it actually happened is what historians will say. One of the reasons they say there's not is because there's not any Egyptian writings about this stuff. Diane already kind of went where I was wanting to go. Why wouldn't the Egyptians want to write about it? Wasn't their best hour. Who usually writes the history? The people who win. And Egypt was this mighty power and God wiped out a whole brigade of their, his army, Pharaoh's army. and these people had been holding in slavery left, a lot of bad things happened. They wouldn't be too proud about writing about, I mean, if you go, if you watch anything on history about Egypt, all these massive things that they found, as beautiful as they are, what are they all, what's the purpose in all that stuff? It's to point the glory and the honor back to those pharaohs and to those people and everything else. There was nothing they could glory in with what God is about to do with them here. But, interestingly enough, there are, in the past 50 years, they've been finding remnants of chariots and stuff at a certain part of the Red Sea where they thought this bridge that where God had spread open in the middle of this thing that shouldn't be there. There's no reason for it to be there had there not been an army chasing a people group across water. See what I'm saying? tied to that kind of, you can Google all that when you get home. It's pretty interesting to look at. And not just any old chariot, some of them are lined with gold and things like that, which would only come from the royal court. It wasn't just a couple of guys out riding a chariot. Oh my, yeah, really, it ices over a lot, the Red Sea. So, the other thought is that it was more around 1260 BC. And there's some reason for that based on the pharaohs that were in charge and all that kind of thing. But what we're about to read in verse 8, we don't really see the name of the pharaoh anyway. However, the first date I mentioned, about 1400 BC, really probably aligns more, because we do have information about slavery in Egypt in that time period. We have some ancient Egyptian texts that talk, that name Semites, those kind of things, that's speaking about Hebrew people, those kind of things. But anyway, and right around that time is when we start seeing 40 years after that is when we start seeing the remnants of civilization of Israelites in Canaan. So that makes more sense, really. Now, the third point. So we talk biblically, historically, the third point as we study Exodus must be theological. Y'all knew I'd get to that one, right? Must be theological. We discover who the real hero of the story is, is God. that it's God at work through Moses, that it's God at work in all this stuff. God is the one who reveals himself. God is the one who hears cries of the people, raises up a deliverer to save them, the one that sends the plagues on Egypt, the one that hardens Pharaoh's heart. From beginning to end, Exodus is a God-centered book. So to read Exodus from the proper standpoint is to experience God. It's to experience God. And he's fulfilling of his promises, which is gonna be a big part when I talk about his immutability if we went that route tonight, that he fulfills his promises. Now, the New Testament writers quote Exodus a lot too. Consider Jude 5. Q5 says this, now I want to remind you, though you know all things that Jesus, having once saved a people out of the land of Egypt, subsequently destroyed those who did not believe. There's a real connection. There's a connection between Moses as being a type of Christ, a type of being very small compared to who Jesus is. We see that example with Joseph and saving the people, right? Moses is the deliverer. Moses is coming out of Egypt. Moses is trying to be killed as a child by a king. You start to see some of the similarities there if you haven't seen them before of Jesus, of him being the shepherd that brought him through, of all these things. After the resurrection, When Jesus talked to the disciples on the road to Emmaus, what does he tell them? How far back does Jesus go to say this was talking about me? Well, I'm glad you're asking that question because in Luke 24, 27, when Jesus appears to the disciples on the road to Emmaus, he says this. Then beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things concerning himself in all the scriptures. So Exodus is pointing to Christ as well. If Jesus began with Moses, that's something to say about Exodus, doesn't it? It sets the pattern for the life of Christ. We talked about some of those things. Out of Egypt, I have called my son. We know that's a prophecy in what book? It was quiz, wasn't it? Out of Egypt, I will call my son. It's a prophecy of Jesus. Hosea, Hosea 11 one. When Israel was a youth, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son. Matthew 2.15 points back to that. The Israelites, how long did they wander in the desert? After they got a cross, they were grumbling, they made the golden cow, all that stuff, how long did they wander in the wilderness? 40 years. When Jesus went out to be tempted, how long was he tempted? 40 days. There's a lot in the life of Christ that follows the pattern of Exodus. There's a clue about this in the transfiguration account. Jesus went up to the mountain to pray. When he appeared to his closest disciples, and this majesty, this glory, the veil was peeled back a little bit. Who did he converse with? Moses and Elijah. Significant that Moses was present. The word, go ahead. Yes, good point, Diane. Old two men were talking with him and they were Moses and Elijah. For the very next verse, who appearing in glory were speaking of his departure, which he was about to fulfill at Jerusalem. What is that word departure in the Greek? Exodus. At the Mount of Transfiguration, the comment is made about Jesus soon to exit. He was the Passover lamb. We're gonna hear about that. We're gonna learn about that. He was the Passover lamb. He is the Passover lamb, I should say. Takes away the sins of his people. Some of the same words used in the Old Testament to describe the Exodus are these. See if these sound familiar to you when you're thinking about the salvation that we have through Christ. Ransom. Where did my words go? Redemption and deliverance are all words used of the Hebrews coming out of Egypt. So, a lot of connections there too. Last thing I'll say before we jump in is that it needs to be practical. There's practical benefit. When the Apostle Paul wanted to exhort the Corinthians to persevere in the faith, he reminded them of the Exodus. 1 Corinthians 10. This is speaking of temptation and God's faithfulness. For I do not want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea. Verse two, and I were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. So he's pointing back to Moses and the perseverance there. Then Paul drew a connection between their salvation and our salvation in Christ in the next couple of verses, verse three. And all ate the same spiritual food. And all drank the same spiritual drink, for they were drinking from a spiritual rock which followed them. And the rock was Christ. So Paul goes all the way back to the Exodus and makes that connection there to Christ. Are y'all starting to see why I felt this prompted by the Spirit that we should probably go through Exodus? And he goes on, and you get down to verse 11. This is still in 1 Corinthians 10, verse 11. Now these things happened to them as an example, and they were written for our instruction, upon whom the ends of the ages have arrived. See what Paul's saying here? He's saying, yes, they really were saved from Egypt. Yes, God really brought them out. Yes, yes, yes, yes. He said, but these were written for our instruction. written down for our instruction. It didn't help them to write it down, did it? They just lived it. For our instruction, it was written down. So Exodus is a story of deliverance from bondage to the work of a Savior. It is the story of the Christian life. It's the story of your life if you've been saved. So let's think about this. Starts off pretty simply, doesn't it? Now, these are the names of the sons of Israel, and then we list these names. We know this. We just studied it for two years, didn't we? Why is it here? Well, because 400 years have passed. Not everybody had their nice, you know, new Bible where they could just go pull it up and go straight from Genesis to Exodus as they were reading. Something I would find interesting, I looked at almost every modern English translation And everyone starts this first verse with one or two words, one of two words. Either now, very first word is either now. Somebody doesn't have now in here, raise their hand or tell me what yours says, the very first word in verse one. Yours says now. Anybody has anything different, does it say now? These. Most of the translations say now, it says now these though, right? Now these. You might think, why are you pulling that piece of bark back to look at it? For some reason, it struck me. So that's fancy software I've got. I hovered over the word to see what the word is. And then I saw in the commentary where in the Hebrew text, it is more of it runs straight from Genesis to Exodus. And the transition word there is and. So it's almost like you end Genesis, jump 400 years, and just keeps on going. It's the story of God. It's the story of God in time working in men. So it's just and. And our transition is a little bit different with what we use now, but the original Hebrew word can mean now or and. But in the Hebrew, if we're reading this in Hebrew tonight, literally read in Hebrew, we'd read and there instead of now. Interesting. So let's let's jump into this journey. The we introduced to the 12 tribes again, we knew these, they're listed in a formal way. Just for the heck of it, before coming out of Egypt, they why they have to go there in the first place. Famine, there's a whole lot takes place over about 10 chapters of Couple of the sons coming and Joseph kind of saying, they had sold him into slavery, right? So can I trust them back to dad? There's a lot of stuff that happened in those last 10, 12 chapters of Genesis that we looked at. But the bottom line is, they would starve to death had they not went. What is one of the most profound statements in Genesis about the sovereignty of God? It's found in Genesis 50, 20, right? As for you, brothers, I'm adding that, it's not in the text, but that's who he's talking to. But as for you, brothers, you meant evil against me. But God meant it for good in order to do what has happened on this day to keep many people alive. Kept them alive, but they were gonna be in bondage for 400 years. But they were alive. God made a whole bunch of promises to them that hadn't been fulfilled yet. The book of Exodus, we'll see, actually already we're starting to see the fulfillment of one of those promises. What are the two major promises God promised to Abraham? Abrahamic covenant. What's the two major promises of the Abrahamic covenant? A great nation, yeah. And what's the other promise? The land. The land. He had a land for them. He had been fulfilling that first one this whole time, had he not? For 400 years, he's growing them into a large group of people, so much so that it worried the Egyptians, which is not an easy thing to do. The land was still far off, though. And even though there were a lot of people, large-seeded people, a great nation, they were still in bondage. They didn't have their own place. They were still sojourners. Now, The providence of God, Joseph eventually became this, like a prince of Egypt. They came later. The irony in all this is that, or providence, irony, is that eventually the families of the men who sold their brother into slavery, their descendants would become slaves themselves. Y'all catch that little piece of, that little nugget in all this? Now, what about these 12 sons for a minute? We're about to get into this glorious tale of how God used Moses, right? And we know Moses had a lot of places at times he failed too, right? He was not a perfect example for us. What about these 12 sons? Is there anything we read about them in Genesis that would make you think these guys are epic heroes in this story? No, no, there's not. And yet God, this is who God's using. And all that generation died out, as we just read in Exodus 1 through 6. Joseph and his brothers did have one major thing going for them, though. What is the one major thing that these 12 had going for them? From an earthly perspective, Joseph, but even more than that, who positioned Joseph to be where he's at, Well, God was on their side. God's the father of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. The God of your fathers. This God, the God, Yahweh God. Now again, there was only 70 Israelites to start with, but now the land was just teeming with them. The promise that Randy gave us part of it, Diane gave us the other part of it, Genesis 12, two, Genesis 17, two, this is 17, two, I'll make you into a great nation and will bless you, 17, two, I will confirm my covenant between me and you and will greatly increase your numbers. God gave Abraham two great promises. And also this, did you catch here in this text in verse seven, But the sons of Israel were fruitful, increased, and multiplied, and became exalted so that the land was filled with them." There's two words in there that should just jump out to you from a lot earlier in Genesis. Be fruitful and multiply. Where did we first hear that said? Genesis 1. Genesis 1, 28. But God blessed them. Who's he talking about? Adam and Eve. And said to them, be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, have dominion over the fish of the sea and over birds of the sky and over every living thing that creeps on the earth. Now God was keeping his promise in that family to do this very thing. The psalmist in Psalm 105, 23 says this, then Israel came to Egypt and Jacob sojourned in the land of Ham. That's where we kind of ended at a couple of weeks ago. And verse 24 of Psalm 105, and he calls his people to be very fruitful and he calls them to be stronger than their adversaries. So for the sake of the secular historian or whatever who's looking into this and saying there's no way in 400 years that this people could grow that strong and that big and that prosperous. Guess what? Psalm 105 tells us why. God multiplied them. God made them fruitful. So. The very practical question here that we were thinking about as we were thinking about the attributes of God is who is our God? Who is this God? We start to see more of him on display in the book of Exodus. Actually, what we see in the book of Exodus, as the people got this benefit of being pulled out of slavery, but ultimately the Exodus was about God receiving the glory and the salvation of the people in which he made the promise. That's really what the story of Exodus is. If you want to boil it down to the lowest or the most profitable definition of what's going on in Exodus, it's God saving a people for his own glory and his own purposes in fulfillment of the promises he made to them in Genesis. That's the bottom line. There's a lot of awesome things we see in the process that we're gonna look at over the next, however long it takes us. So much for jumping into a short book. If you haven't looked already, there's 20, 40 chapters in Exodus. That doesn't mean it's gonna take us the same amount of time as it did Genesis, but it doesn't mean it doesn't, won't take that amount of time either. Jonathan Edwards says this. Speaking of this topic, he says this. The great end of God's works, which is so variously expressed in scripture, is indeed but one. And this one end is most properly and comprehensively called the glory of God. Whom I'd argue with Jonathan Edwards, much regarded as the greatest theologian who ever lived in this country. Now, The chief end of God is to glorify himself and do it in all he does, all he says, but it's really true in Exodus. The Exodus was for his glory in Psalm 106, verse 7 and 8. Our fathers in Egypt did not consider your wondrous deeds. They did not remember your abundant love and kindness, but they rebelled by the sea at the Red Sea. Yet he, God, saved them for the sake of his name that he might make his might known. If you know the story of Exodus, you know it doesn't take them very long to start complaining and bellyaching and whining about being brought out of slavery. Oh, that we would just go back and die there. At least we had a place to live. Not often considering the fact that they had to wander in the wilderness that they eat the same thing every day, but it was sent down from heaven. Their clothes didn't wear out, their shoes didn't wear out. They make a golden calf when Moses is not gone for that long up on the mountain. We'll get to all that. Maybe, Lord willing. Think about when Moses told Pharaoh to go let God's people go. He told him why. Again, we get to this too. This is kind of an introduction to Exodus, if you didn't figure out what I'm doing here. This is kind of an introduction. Exodus nine, verse one. This is when the plague of the dying of the Egyptian livestock. Then Yahweh said to Moses, come to Pharaoh and speak to him. Thus says, so God is telling Moses what to say. Thus says Yahweh, the God of the Hebrews, Let my people go, we know that part of it, why? That they may serve me, that they may worship me. The purpose that God sent Moses to tell Pharaoh of why to let them go is so that they would come and worship me. Now we know, if you know the story, there's a little temporary thing there of let us go out a little way and worship him, and there's some stuff that will work there when we get there, but that's the purpose that his name will be. worshipped. Three times God promised to gain glory for himself through Pharaoh, that God would gain glory through Pharaoh. Exodus 14 18, the Egyptians will know that I am Yahweh when I am glorified through Pharaoh through his chariots and his horsemen. Same verse we, same chapter we were in a minute ago, Exodus 9, 16. But indeed for this reason I have caused you to stand in order to show you my power and in order to recount my name through all the earth. Exodus 14, four. Thus I will harden Pharaoh's heart with strength and he will pursue them. And I will be glorified through Pharaoh and all his army so that the Egyptians will know that I am Yahweh and they did so. Verse 17, as for me, behold, I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians with strength so that they will go in after them and I will be glorified through Pharaoh and all his army through his chariots and his horsemen. And we know Romans 9, 17, for the scripture says to Pharaoh for this very purpose, I raised you up in order to demonstrate my power in you and in order that my name might be proclaimed throughout the whole earth. Remember what I said on Sunday that in order to proclaim the truth of the gospel, proclaim the truth of who God is? No matter if somebody comes to him in faith or not, the message doesn't change, and he's glorified in that. The same in this. Whether they believe it or not, that's proof that God is God. Edward says God did gain glory for himself at Pharaoh's expense. Now, I made a comment about how they whined and complained a lot. But we're also gonna see as soon as they were escaped, as soon as they crossed the Red Sea, the Song of Moses comes out, does it not? There is the times of praise as well. The Song of Moses in Exodus 15. You get to Exodus 16, it's when they traveled further into the desert, they saw the glory of the Lord appearing in the cloud. They get to the Holy Mountain. thunder and lightning from heaven on the mountain. But as they were waiting on Moses is when things went bad for them there. Impatience. Doing what they'd seen for 400 years, right? Making these molten images and these one giant golden calf and all this stuff. The last chapter of Exodus gives us some detailed instructions on building the tabernacle. Some say that should be excluded. I say not, because the whole purpose is to glorify God and to honor him and worship him. And God said, you will build this tabernacle. That's where I will dwell with men. So it all connects. So from beginning to end, Exodus was for the glory of God. It shows God's the God of Israel. The God of Israel is the God who saves, points to Christ, Psalm 106 is considered the Exodus Psalm, and it kind of lays that out. We owe it all to Him. These Hebrews owed it all to Him. They didn't even know they needed to be saved from it, right? They were just probably complaining about being slaves. The deliverance, though? That He pulled them out of and delivered them from? So, I kind of stopped where I did because we're going further and we kind of get into the meat and potatoes of this chapter. This was kind of a recap, what came before, an overview of what's to come. I will read through the text just to get your mind in the right place for where we're going, but there's probably not much expositing or much time to exposit left in this. We're 15 minutes still. I didn't know I talked as long as I did, but I hope at least I whetted your appetite for what's to come in the book of Exodus. Thank you for that confirmation and a little bit of affirmation there too. So here's what happens next. And a new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph. Did it really take 400 years for him to forget about him? We'll talk about that next week, Lord willing. And he said to his people, behold, the people of the sons of Israel are more and mightier than we. Come, let us deal wisely with them, lest they multiply, and it be in the event of war that they also join themselves to those who hate us, and fight against us, and go up from the land. So they appointed taskmasters over them to afflict them with hard labors, and they built for Pharaoh storage cities, Pithom and Ramses. But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied, and the more they spread out, so that they were in dread of the sons of Israel. So the Egyptians brutally compelled the sons of Israel to slave labor, made their lives bitter with hard slave labor and mortar and bricks and in all kinds of slave labor in the field, all their slave labor, which they brutally compelled them to do. And the king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shipra and the other was Pua. And he said, when you are helping the Hebrew women to give birth and see them upon the birth stool, if it is a son, then you shall put him to death. But if it is a daughter, then she shall live. But the midwives feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt had spoken to them, but they let the boys live. So the king of Egypt called for the midwives and said to them, why have you done this thing and let the boys live? The midwives said to Pharaoh, because the Hebrew women are not as the Egyptian women, for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife can come to them. So God was good to the midwives, and the people multiplied and became very mighty. Now it happened that because the midwives feared God, he made households for them. Pharaoh commanded all his people, saying, every son who is born, you are to cast into the Nile, and every daughter, you are to keep alive. So he went from killing them, midwives kill them at birth, to you throw them in the river. There's some other things in there that'll be interesting for us to look at next week, because these midwives lied. And God blessed. We'll talk about that next week. If I didn't whet your appetite enough before, maybe that did it. Any other thoughts on kind of the introduction to Exodus, or? We are