All right, well, good morning to everybody. We're glad you're here through the spotty rain this morning. Today, we're going to open up with a new study, beginning to look at Exodus. We'll take our time working through the book. As you can see, we just have seven verses this morning, so we'll go bit by bit. But let's open up with a word of prayer, and then we'll get started. Heavenly Father, we thank you for your goodness. We thank you for drawing us together this morning for this time of study. We ask that you would bless us as we open your word. We thank you for the way you preserve your word throughout the generations, how you preserve your people as well. We pray that we would be encouraged as we turn to this passage this morning. We ask this all in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, let's Go ahead and jump in. We'll look at the first seven verses. I'll read those, and then we'll start the lesson from there. Exodus 1, verses 1 through 7. These are the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob, each with his household, Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin, Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher. All the descendants of Jacob were 70 persons. Joseph was already in Egypt. 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." So a pretty straightforward opening. I know when I first read it for our lesson, I was like, well, I can get five minutes out of that. And then a few hours later, I was like, okay, I'm done. So there's actually more than meets the eye going on in this short little passage. Let's go back though and do a little bit of review from Genesis. If you've been with us for the last several years, we studied the life of Abraham, the life of Isaac, the life of Jacob, and Joseph, working our way through the bulk of Genesis. There's a little chart on the bottom, you can keep your eye on that one, that covers those patriarchs. But if you think about Abraham's life, of course, we first meet him in Genesis 12. the son of Terah who receives this covenant promise from God. What was included in that covenant promise? Quiz time. Okay, blessing his offspring. We think about the repeated blessings that your descendants will be more numerous than the stars in the sky. Other aspects of that promise? land, I'll get up from this land, go to the land that I will give you. That's a huge piece of it. And maybe a third little element is just blessing, right, that I will be your God, you will be my people. Not only will he give him descendants, but he will bless them as his covenant people. So those promises were first made, and then there's even the bizarre covenant ceremony, right, where Abraham's snoozing after God tells him, hey, cut up some animals and make an aisle, and the flaming pot passes between the pieces. God ratifies that covenant himself. This is why we call it a covenant of grace, because Abraham is totally passive. He's not, hey, Abraham, if you obey, if you tick off these check marks, then I will be your God. It's all of God's grace. And that continues down through the generations. Of course, in Abraham's life, God gave him the child of promise, Isaac. We learned, of course, that the message of grace stands out pretty obviously when you study Abraham's life, because Abraham has another son, right? Ishmael. But he doesn't come about through the proper means. He has a child with Hagar, this servant girl. But God provides another child. He gives them Isaac. The line continues. Of course, we can think about when God tells Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, and obviously there's a foreshadowing of the work of Christ on the cross, but God provided another way out to preserve Isaac as well. And then we have Jacob, right? Isaac has these two sons, Jacob and Esau, twins. Again, that message of grace stands out because Jacob is the mama's boy, the dirty, rotten scoundrel of the two brothers. Right? That always stands out in my mind. Esau's out in the fields and Jacob's hanging out with mom, scheming. Doesn't go too well. It's true. It's right there, right? And yet, God continues the covenant line through Jacob. And this is why we see it repeated in Romans 9, of course, right? That this is highlighting God's grace that he'll show mercy on whom he'll show mercy, even someone like Jacob. even people like us. Jacob, of course, has 12 sons. We just heard their names in this first chapter. And even then, we'll reflect a little bit on who these guys are and where they came from as well. They're not the product of a bunch of righteous living either. There's a lot of treachery in his life that has multiple wives and children coming up from these different women. So those patriarchs, we see this all unfolds, of course, Joseph. That's where we left off in Genesis, was studying the life of Joseph. And this is what brings us to Egypt, right? So let's jump and look at these themes real quick, because some of the themes of Genesis, of course, the Bible's not some clunky thing that just, let's have a new book now and totally new topics, but especially these first five books. They're all written by Moses. They go together, telling these covenant events of the people of God. So those same themes in Genesis are going to be woven together in Exodus as well. We have promises and fulfillment. God makes the promises, and then he works in real ways to bless his people and to fulfill those promises. Like, if we go back to the land, the people, and the blessing, They certainly have descendants by the end, right? Abraham and his grandchildren and his great-grandchildren are a pretty big group by the end of Genesis. This man that had no children, now at the time of Exodus, we just read there's 70 of that family all together. They don't yet have land. In fact, they're out of the land. There was a time when they sojourned in the land of promise, but they've ended up in Egypt. So that one is still to develop further. And of course, blessing. We've seen that, that God has been faithful to his people despite their own unfaithfulness. We've seen his grace on display. We've covered that a few times already. This is a big one. Really, if you go back to even the opening chapters of Genesis, with Adam and Eve, and the flood, and he preserves Noah, what is God doing? Well, he is calling a people to himself even before Abraham, right? You have all the world created, and yet God is promising to preserve the seed of the woman, to save his people, and he's you start to see it more clearly throughout Genesis in the life of Abraham and the other patriarchs, because he's calling those people to be his. He's going to work through that group of people to preserve his ultimate promises of salvation. And he provides, and that one is a huge theme that God provides in real ways for his people, giving Abraham a son, preserving them from their own foolishness, right, from their own folly, going and trying to do things their own ways, and yet God provides through all of it. So they end up in Egypt. Here's a little map. The land of Goshen up there in northeastern Egypt. They are settled there because famine had settled on the land, you remember that one way that God provided was to give Joseph dreams about the coming famine. And seven years of plenty, seven years of want, and so Joseph was able to store up plenty of food in Egypt, so much so that his own brothers come to Egypt begging for food. And if you remember in Genesis, little do they know, their brother whom they betrayed was the man they have to beg for food. And yet, he's gracious to them as well. And Genesis closes, we go back and really pick apart those final blessings from Jacob. Jacob gives each of his sons blessings. Some of the ones that stand out prominently would be that Judah would The scepter would not depart from the line of Judah. Of course, Jesus comes from that line later on. Their kings predominantly come from that line as well. So, You have all those blessings upon his children, which is a repetition of the promise wasn't just for Abraham, it wasn't just for Isaac or Jacob. It doesn't stop there, but this is an everlasting covenant. And of course, you hear that repeated throughout the book of Exodus as well. Well, the very end of Genesis, Joseph dies too. He's one of these guys that gets to die twice, in a way. At least the record of his death is recorded twice. He's recorded at the end of Genesis, and we just read it in verse 6, then Joseph died, and all his brothers, and all that generation. So it's recorded twice, both in Genesis and Exodus. There's no conflict there. It's just repeating and emphasizing again that, hey, time is passing. And yet, God still remains faithful. So that brings us up to Exodus. And before we come right back to the seven verses, What's to come? And by the way, most of this we won't get to in the next couple of months. I think we're only scheduled to go through the first six chapters, six or seven chapters, I believe, for this study over the next quarter. But what does happen in the book of Exodus? These are easy. The law is given. That's somewhere in there. I won't do that one yet because it's not first. What else happens? They leave, okay, good. The exodus happens, right? What even leads to that? God provides this redeemer in Moses. We'll learn about that in the rest of chapter one that he's born and saved throughout the persecution. I think Rod has that passage next week. And I think we could see that back in Genesis too, right? It's that same image of despite their own mass, right? Oh, we were better off in Egypt. At least they had graves in Egypt. I'm just going to get picked apart by the buzzards out here. Is that ever a people we would have picked? No, never. Does it reflect us? Yeah. It's too hot, it's too humid. Alright, it's like everywhere we go we're complaining about something. But he does, he provides a Redeemer, maybe I should have put a lowercase r, Redeemer there, but certainly Moses clearly, even more clearly than what we've seen, starts to typify what Christ will do. Brian? Oh yeah, the Passover itself with put the blood on the doorposts and lentils. You have this Passover lamb and all those who faithfully put their trust in God's promise of salvation will be saved. That's all part of the plagues. I'm sure people have heard this before, but you know, when they put blood on the top and on the two sides, the blood that dripped onto the bottom ran across. Ah, yeah, yeah, that is good. So, even starts to point us to the cross, and maybe even in some literal ways. And that Passover was the culmination of all those plagues, right? Because for the people of God, it was salvation, but for the people of Egypt, it was a terrible event. They were not passed over. They faced the death of their firstborn. We go on. The Exodus. Okay, we got that one. Receiving the law at Sinai. What else happens though? Because we often forget about this. What chapter are the Ten Commandments given in? 20. There's 34 chapters in the whole book. So what's going on for those other 14 chapters? It's not just the Ten Commandments. There's a number of other laws given, but there's also the instructions to build the tabernacle. And so they're at Sinai for quite some time receiving this law. I could have thrown another one in here. They have another covenant ceremony, right? Those are not meaningless things. There's this moment where the whole nation of Israel is at Mount Sinai. They say, everything that the Lord has spoken, we will do. And they say their I do's. And they have a covenant ceremony. And the blood of the covenant is sprinkled on them, which we hear echoed even in the Lord's Supper. So that covenant still progresses throughout this book. That's where we're going. One last one. The covenant people do turn into a covenant nation. What do you need to have a nation? Land. OK. The one piece they're missing at the end of Exodus is the land. What else? So laws. We'll say laws. Land, laws. You need a leader. They have Moses. So you're getting a lot of these pieces of what's going to make them, not just some random group of 12 sons of Jacob and these guys that invaded another country, immigrants into the land of Goshen. They turn into a real nation governed by God's law with God's appointed leader. And they're on their way to the land as well. Good. Yeah. Yeah, they're not just, there is a purpose behind it, right? God's, God's promises, which again, tie all the way back to Genesis three of that seed of the woman continues on and he's going, he's preserving them, not because they're so lovable, but because he's working through them to provide his governor promises to all the nations eventually. Right. Yeah. Sure. And you see that culture, that identity isn't just self-defined, right? Like our day and age, my goodness. What is it, George, the attack helicopter? Somebody identified as an attack helicopter? That's, you hear some wild stuff out there, right? But we don't define our identity based on our own feelings, but what God has revealed to them. He defines who they are and draws them and puts them together as this covenant nation. by the end of Exodus. All right, so back to this text. Those first five verses focus in on the sons of Jacob, the sons of Israel. And we hear their names again, but if you're like me, names, oh my goodness. We have a new school year about to start, and it's always for a couple of weeks, you, right? I know you. but you get the names mixed up. So who are these guys? Well, a familiar list. We know these are later the 12 tribes, but they're really arranged based on the baby mama, right? Who did Jacob have these sons with? Well, you had Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, and Zebulun were born through Leah. And what's her backstory? The less favored one. The less favored one. That would be a terrible, terrible legacy to be recorded in scripture for all of generations for being the ugly sister, to put it frankly, right? The one that nobody wanted. And yet, of course, her dad deceived Jacob And so he has these sons through Leah. Rachel, his prized bride, he has Joseph and Benjamin. And there is another little matter. Sometimes you don't see the name Joseph in the list, and instead it's Ephraim and Manasseh, you might remember. He has two sons who, yeah, the half-brothers that they, there was even the switching of the covenant blessings over them. The younger one receives the promise. Well, Leah's servant provided two sons, Gad and Asher, and Rachel's servant, Bilhah, also gave two sons, Dan and Naphtali. So whenever we see this list of names, these 12 sons, I think we oftentimes just gloss over it. I know I do. Or say, I didn't remember that guy named Gad. There's not a lot of stories about Gad out there, I guess. But when you focus in on these are real people with a real background, it reminds us of their own brokenness. and their own failings and points us to, but yet God is still working through this family. Even with all of the treachery involved, even with all the brokenness, Joseph himself being betrayed by his brothers, God is still working through these covenant people and through this covenant family. In all, we read There's 70 persons, and Joseph was already in Egypt. So we don't need to over-focus on that, but certainly 70 is an important large number. It's much larger than Abram and Sarah, who had no children, and now, just a few generations later, 70 of them. It's like the Lippums are starting to fill up the phone book. If anybody knows what a phone book is. We are at 70. You're at 70. There you go. And my name is not Abraham. You sure it's not your middle name? That's good. So God has blessed, right? He's blessed them with 70 descendants. But it's also a number of completion, fullness, right? You get there by seven times 10, seven days in the week. God works six days, rest of the seventh. This is a number of fullness and completion, same like the number 10 as well. So it's almost just another passage that might pop to mind with 70 is when Peter asked Jesus, how often should I forgive my brothers? Seven times, he thought that was That's the number of completion, a full seven days, a full seven times. No, 70 times seven, which is kind of like this much, right? Times infinity. So we're starting to see a hint at that as well. Let's go on. Why list these guys again? I think that's a good question to ask. Why does Exodus start with these 12 sons of Jacob listed? I mean, who did Moses write this thing for? They know who they are. It would be like writing a book and saying, these are the 50 states of the United States of America, and then just list them all off. Well, I think we all know, hopefully we know, 50 states. It'd be hard to list them all, I'm sure. Probably forget something out there, Utah or somebody. Well, one reason why we find this at the very beginning is it does link us back to Genesis, and we've already focused some on that. We should never take one passage of scripture and just completely disconnect it from all the others. In fact, you see a strong emphasis. Moses wrote Genesis and Exodus, and he's connecting the books together. That's why we see Joseph dies at the end of Genesis, and we see it repeated again in chapter one. It's almost like, anybody ever watch the old Batman TV shows? You know, he's always left in some dire situation. What will happen? But when same bat time, same bat channel comes around, what does the next episode start with? Oh, no. There he is in his dire situation repeating that theme. So there's clearly a connection with Genesis. We also are being reminded these aren't just some rando people. These are the covenant people. This is that covenant line, and it should remind us that God is still at work through these people, not just for their sake, but to show his grace, his mercy, to show his goodness, to not only redeem them, but to be a blessing to all the families of the earth. That was part of the original covenant promise as well. So see that connection, and here's another one. This connects us with real history. I like to emphasize this as much as I can because it's easy for us to often think of Bible stories as just stories. I don't like to use that. term stories, right? They're events. These are real people. This is a genealogy. This is a family. Time and again you hear how old somebody is when they die, and we're going to see a little more of that historical sense in the rest of this passage of what's going on in the world. The Bible is not like other religious books that do tell stories. You know, somebody's vision, some supposed message that God has you know, beamed into somebody's mind. These are historical events. These are real people. And this goes back to, like, the real nuts and bolts of our faith. Jesus' life, death, and resurrection aren't just stories that we tell, and neither are the lives of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, and the people of Egypt. These are real people and real events. And unlike other religions, so the Bible puts itself out there as a testable thing. If you could find historical information that contradicts these stories, we'd be in big trouble. And oftentimes people may make some proposition that, hey, this artifact doesn't quite fit in. And interestingly, as more research unfolds, they often find they do fit in perfectly well. But that's an important one for us as well. Don't just chalk these passages up, all these stories. Don't count them as stories, but as real events in the lives of God's people, because we live real life too. One of the things that I saw just this very week was somebody was announcing to the world that the Old Testament was never written for Christian people. We have a New Testament that is for that purpose. How evil and how blind those people that believe that are. They miss the whole beauty of the Old Testament and how it connects us through the history that we have the Redeemer that we see in the New Testament. Yeah. Go to Matthew chapter 1, right? What happens there? A genealogy linking Christ directly to these Old Testament people. That one sticks in my mind. Side story. I was once doing a Christmas chapel program at the school, and the person that had printed off the sheet of what passages to read, they typoed, and so I read Matthew 1. I just read this lengthy genealogy. And then I was supposed to make comments, so it was the wrong passage. But we made it work. It is God's word after all. So that one sticks in my mind. All right. Don't forget this as well as we go through Exodus. Moses' audience. Well, he's writing this. In his own generation, he's living this out with the people, but he writes these books of the Pentateuch to preserve it for the redeemed Israelites traveling to Canaan. Remember, he never gets there himself. He gets to overlook it, but he doesn't enter. So in his generation, certainly, that's his audience. Here we go, echoing on that. It's also for believers through all ages, right? It's for us as well. We are the covenant people of God. There's no disconnect between the Old Testament and New Testament believers. We are the fulfillment of God's promise to Abraham. We're not the end fulfillment, but we're part of that fulfillment, that we're part of the people of God's grace connected through those same covenant promises. And so certainly, the events that happen in their lives of how God redeems them points to the way he redeems us as well. Well, let's go on. All right. Verses six and seven. So the first five verses really just kind of plow through all those descendants. And then all the descendants were 70 persons. Joseph was already in Egypt. Verses six and seven. 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." So what do we make of this? There's a lot of time passing here. And we're not going to steal Rod's thunder for verse 8 yet. But verse 8, I think it's Rod next week. says, now there arose a new king over Egypt. So that's the next big event is things are going to change. But before things change, Joseph dies, his brothers, and all that generation. seems to be even all of those 70 kids, they all die. And the people are fruitful. They multiply. They're blessed. Things are going really well. And so we want to say, how long is this? How long will it be till there's like a Lipum town here in Northwest Georgia? Because the land was filled with them, it says. That's pretty wild. But we can actually do a little digging historically and try to piece some clues together. Now, these are not recorded right in the text, right? The text gave us a very broad brush, but we can go back and use some other biblical passages as well to get some clues. The timing of the Exodus, there's two big camps, an earlier date and a later date. We're going to go with the earlier date. I'll show you why here in a second. The early date is 1446 BC, if you want to round it up, 1500 BC for the Exodus. The reason for that is that it seems to be most consistent with 1 Kings 6, which refers to something in Solomon's reign. It gives a number of years from the time of the Exodus to the time of Solomon. Judges 11, similarly, gives a number of years between the Exodus and the time of the judges there. And so that would point us back to this earlier date, around 1500 BC. What else is going on? If we go with it now, there's a little bit later date, which I think is about 1200 BC. So it's not like off by those two dates are not that wildly inconsistent. But that passage or that view bases itself more off of archaeological findings. And so that's why I prefer the earlier date because it really starts with scripture, it interprets the archaeological evidence in light of scriptural evidence instead of the other way around. And I think it seems to fit even better, you'll see, as we go on. Well, Exodus 12, verse 40, you could go flip there if you want, tells us that they lived in the land of Egypt for 430 years before the Exodus occurs. That gives us a pretty solid timing already that what's going to happen in the rest of Exodus 1? Moses is going to be born, right? So by the end of Exodus 1, we've covered that 430 years. And I would suggest that's really the gap of time that is included in, and they all died and they filled the land over roughly 400, 430 years. That would put Joseph's life going back further. So if the Exodus is at 1500, 400 years from there is 1900 BC, roughly. That gives us another historical insight. This is just from Egyptian history, not mentioned in the Bible. But there were a group of kings in Egypt. So Egypt was ruled by dynasties. And there was a group of rulers known as the Hyksos, who were really from the land of Palestine. Where does that, that sounds familiar. They're a Semitic race of people that ruled Egypt. They were basically outsiders that ruled over Egypt and they ruled between 1630 and 1530. That's before the Exodus. That's about a hundred years before the Exodus. And it's not too far of a stretch to think that Hey, if the rulers of Egypt are these outsiders from the land of Palestine, a Semitic race, who might they get along really well with? Other Semitic people from that area, like the descendants of Abraham. And so, we often think of, okay, well, things were going great, and then they went so badly. What happened? Well, Rod will show us. A new king arose over Egypt. of stealing your thunder a little bit, maybe. But that's all right. I got the genealogy passage. So they rule, treating the Israelites favorably. But after the Hyksos are removed, do we ever have any experience with massive political shifts? And what happens when you have one extreme view and then switch over to another pretty extreme view, polar opposites? Yeah, it's going to be some rough waters. And so when the Egyptians maintain their rule again, they're meek. Egypt great again, right? Get rid of all these Semitics, sorry. Borrow that one. They drain the swamp of all those Semitic people. And so this seems to fit historically with biblical passages, but also some of the historical information we know as well. We already covered that. Alright, so some conclusions. Joseph, that would put him dying around 1800 BC, which this fruitful season would be a pretty long period of time, from 1800 to 1530, the end of that Hyksos period, could be in that time frame, about 270 years of prospering. That's pretty amazing blessing. 270 years? Is that roughly? How old is America? I mean, we're roughly in that ballpark. I can't do the math that quickly, 1776 to now, but about the same, not even quite 270 years old. So Israel has really prospered. And I believe many people estimate the number of Israelites at the time of the Exodus, somewhere over a million, like 1.1 million. That number sticks in my mind. What else happens here? Verse seven, not only are they growing and time is really passing and a lot of history unfolds that we don't have details recorded about, but we should notice, this one just jumps off the page, right? They are fruitful and increased greatly. They multiplied and grew exceedingly strong so that the land was filled with them. Where do we see those key words that are highlighted? Where do? Yeah, be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. Where have we heard that? All the way back, Genesis 1, the creation mandate, it's repeated again in Genesis 35. It's repeated again here in Exodus 1. This is still the command, the basic, like this is what we're to do in life, right? Maybe you've had to teach your kids that one. I know I always taught that at different times when you just want to sit around and do nothing. Hey, You're not supposed to just sit around and do nothing. We're created to be fruitful, to multiply and fill the earth, and we're seeing it unfold, right? They are multiplying. They are fruitfully increasing, even in the land of Egypt. They're not in the promised land yet. They're not waiting to get there. Well, when I get there, then I'll be fruitful and multiply. Maybe we've all told ourselves that before. After this, then I'll start the diet. That's right here. But they are growing. And it's not necessarily because, hey, they're the heroes of the story. God is blessing them. We've seen that all along. They're not the heroes, but God certainly, even in the midst of their time in Egypt, they're wandering their own sinfulness. He's continuing to bless them. So I think we're, yeah, we're near the end here. Some key applications from all of this. Certainly we can be pointed to God's faithfulness, right? Through all of this, he is exceedingly faithful. You go back through those sons names and you can't help, but remember their failings, right? And the failings of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and ourselves, and yet, God's covenant promise is continuing to unfold. It is an everlasting covenant. That's why we connect it with the New Testament as well, because we're part of the same covenant promises. We wouldn't unhitch ourselves from the Old Testament or claim that that's just from a bygone era. No, these promises, God is the same God yesterday, today, and forever. And His promises are everlasting. And so we see His faithfulness then, just as He's faithful now. We see His grace then. We see that now. We will see His law then too, and we should live according to His law today as well. We can also, as we focused in on a little bit earlier, remind ourselves that the Bible is not just a storybook, right? That it is real history with real people in real time, and we can really put confidence there. If you're talking to people today, right? We often interact with people outside of the church circles, right? Unbelieving neighbors, friends, people all around us, family members, and they may know of Bible stories, right? That's why you have your CEOs, your Christmas and Easter only folks, right? They come to celebrate the story of resurrection, and it's a familiar story. Of course here, I've heard it said that we don't just live in the Bible belt, we live in the buckle. Here in well, maybe not Atlanta proper, but North Georgia. We're in the deeper South, deeper part of the Bible Belt. And there's a lot of that knowledge about God, Jesus. Maybe you heard a lot of that this week publicly, people talking about God and how he does these things. And you wonder like, what depth of relationship do these people have? with God that they're speaking of. Well, we can say this is beyond just the story realm. This isn't just some myth and vague story about big man upstairs who does nice things for us. No, he's the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the God of the people of Israel in the book of Exodus, and our God as well. So that gives us great confidence. We can point people to that. That's a great tool. When people try to equate Christianity with other religions, this is one distinctive that we can really point them to is confidence in. This isn't just some vision, some message received through some ethereal experience. These are real stories, real people, real events, and point them to that. And of course, maybe this one is a big one for us as well. They're fruitful in Egypt. They're not to the finish line yet. We're never to the finish line, right? And yet, they're being blessed there. They're fulfilling that creation mandate to be fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth. They're doing it in Egypt. Well, where are we? First Peter talks about us as exiles, strangers, aliens. This world is not our home, and it's not. We are citizens of God's kingdom, which is fantastic, but we do live somewhere in this life where we're planted. Thankfully, it's not the most antagonistic place in the earth. We have lots of blessings where we live. However, we're still strangers and exiles. That Bible Belt culture is actually diminishing, isn't it, in a big way. And so I run into more students now that I teach at a Christian school where kids are coming from a Christian home where they claim that they're active in their churches. And they may claim that, but a lot of kids come in. And I've had kids in the last couple of years grew up in a church and they don't know David and Goliath, right? Basic biblical knowledge is failing all around us. Should that discourage us? Maybe in some sense, but should it stop us from being fruitful and multiplying? Of course not, right? We see God is with us no matter what situation we're in, whether we're in a culture where is backsliding, maybe in an antagonistic culture, where Christians are being persecuted. That happens all over the place, and yet we see God continue to bless with ongoing faithfulness. So, anything else that stands out to anybody before we wrap up? Go ahead. Some writers call all this history the kerygma to the gospel, that is the back story to the men on the road to Emmaus what was happening. He didn't go back to Matthew, it didn't exist yet. He went back to Moses, beginning with Moses and all the prophets. He declared unto them all the things written about him in the scripture. So, we need to know this. Absolutely. Yeah, that's a great point. Especially on that road to Emmaus, Jesus himself goes back to Moses and the prophets, the Old Testament passages, to point to the gospel. Probably should have put that on there, the gospel. We see it here. Darryl. Just a quick summary thought. Again, I am so deeply struck by how unheroic are all of our biblical heroes. Old and New Testament. Right. But that allows God to be the great hero. Sure. Yeah, that's one of the pitfalls I think that we often fall into as Christians is we want to put David up on a pedestal, we want to put all these biblical heroes in air quotes on a pedestal, but they all fail. Yeah, even when they do some acts of faithfulness, it's really God working in and through them. And same for us, right? To God be the glory. So let's pray, and then we'll wrap up. Father, we do give you the glory for what you've done in our lives and the lives of your people throughout the ages. Father, as we begin to study Exodus, we ask that you would remind us of your goodness, your greatness, your grace and mercy, that you would remind us that we are connected to these covenant people through your promise, through your Son, Jesus. Father, they looked forward to that true Redeemer, and we can look back at what he's already accomplished in our behalf. So, Father, we ask now that you would be with us as we prepare for worship, that you would focus our hearts to meet with you in the hours ahead. We ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.