Intro to Exodus (Exodus 1)
Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.
Transcript
Good morning. My name's Chet. I'm one of the pastors here. Grab your Bibles. Go to the book of Exodus. If you grab one of the blue Bibles down in the chair in front of you, it'll be on page 26.
It's the second book of the Bible. We are about to work our way on Sundays through the book of Exodus. There are 40 chapters in the book of Exodus. We are going to go through Exodus chapter 1 today, and we're trying to accomplish two things. Exodus. The first thing we're going to do in the first half of Exodus chapter 1 is introduce the book of Exodus.
We're going to try to understand where we are, what's going on, what's happening, and kind of set the stage for what happens in the rest of the book of Exodus. And then we are going to zoom in because the second half of the first chapter of the book of Exodus zooms in on an interaction between the Pharaoh and some Hebrew midwives. And as we zoom in on that, we're going to continue to see one of the major themes that's going to happen in the book of Exodus. And we're going to try to this morning, take a little bit of courage and a little bit of correction from these two midwives. So that's our hope.
Introduce the book of Exodus and then learn a little bit from this story that we're greeted with in the first chapter. This all takes place in 1800 to 1400 BC, and we're going to cover about 300 years today. And so we're going to go from about 1800 BC to 1500 BC. And as you're working your way BC, if you're working your way towards Christ, it counts down. So 1800 is further away than 1400.
And we keep working our way till we get to Jesus. But we won't get to Jesus today in time. We will talk about him. But we'll go 1800 to 1400 today, or 1800 to 1500. So let's pray and then let's start reading.
Lord, we ask that you would bless our study of the book of Exodus and that you would bless our time this morning. We ask that your Holy Spirit would move through the proclamation of your word to lead us to repentance and to faith. And we ask this in Jesus name. Amen. Exodus chapter one, verse one. 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. Exodus assumes that you know the book of Genesis.
And there are a few obvious clues in this opening text. One of them we can't see in the ESV, in our English translation that we have. Some of you might have a different English translation. The first Hebrew word in the book of Exodus is the word and. The reason the ESV doesn't do it is because the English, we don't do that in English. It would be bad grammar.
But that's what happens in Hebrew. So some versions of the Bible will start with and. Some will start with now. But it just says and. And then it just keeps on going. Also the first nine words in Exodus are a direct quote from Genesis chapter 46.
And it also just assumes you know things. Like it says these are the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob. Well Israel and Jacob are the same person. It assumes you know that it also says Joseph was already in Egypt while it's listing people like you know who Joseph is and you know he was already in Egypt. If this was a new story, it'd be a little weird to introduce Joseph and then immediately kill him off because it says Joseph was already in Egypt. Then Joseph died.
OK, well, sorry for Joseph. We just met him. No, you're supposed to know what's happening because you're supposed to know the book of Genesis. In 1997, the first Harry Potter book hit the shelves. I turned 10 in 1997. And so I'm 34.
So nobody has to sit and do math. I turned 10 in 1997 and Harry Potter in the first book is 10. He starts off 10. He turns 11. These books were aimed right at me like they were intentionally designed for 10 year old boys to pick up, read and like keep going. Girls could read them, too.
That wasn't like I didn't mean to make that sexist or something, but just they were aimed at my generation to read and to like grow up with. And so that having been said, I don't think I heard about Harry Potter until I was like 21, paid no attention to it whatsoever. The first Harry Potter thing I interacted with, I was married. My wife and I had never read any Harry Potter, never seen any movies, but my mom wanted to go. And we said we would go with her to see the movie that had just come out in 2009. And she said, are you sure?
It's kind of in the middle of stuff. And we said, we don't care. We are 0% invested. We will come and watch this. So we saw a movie called Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
And in that movie, the goth professor murders the Santa Claus professor. He like, he shoots him. I said, well, it's a wand. So I guess he zaps him. Said something like Havarti, Kadabra or something. And I remember watching the bearded guy like fall off this tower in slow-mo.
And you could tell that the room was upset by this. And I thought, this seems important. I probably would care if I was more invested. And the beginning of Exodus is going to feel like that to you if you don't understand Genesis. You're going to be going, that seems important. Feels like they're referencing something here, but I don't quite understand what's going on.
So what I'm going to do is we talked through the book of Genesis in 2018. It's online. You can go listen to it. Hopefully what we said was good and hopefully we've gotten better at preaching. But I think it was fine in 2018.
What we said was fine. And you can go listen to that if you want to. But I'm going to give you the five-minute version of what was, I think, 33 sermons. So, and 50 chapters. So I'm going to give you the five-minute version of that so that we can catch up.
So, Genesis. God creates the world out of nothingness. He makes the world. He makes Adam and Eve. Humanity is the pinnacle of creation. He makes it all good.
Adam and Eve exist in the Garden of Eden. So God's made people in his place, in his presence. They were meant to relate to him. They sin. They rebel against God, disobey him, run from him, choose to elevate themselves. And the fall happens.
When that happens, God curses the man, the woman, and the serpent. And in his curse to the serpent, we have what theologians call the proto-evangelion, which just means first gospel. But he tells the serpent, basically, sin won't win. You're going to be destroyed. This isn't the end of the story. The fall is not the end.
And so we turn in the opening chapters of Genesis and we turn to kind of await this promise of a son that will be born that will ultimately conquer this and we start moving forward. Then in Genesis chapter 12, 15, and 17, God takes Abram, changes him to Abraham, changes his name, and gives him covenantal promises. That he makes promises to him that he is basically choosing to beholden himself to Abraham to accomplish a thing for Abraham. And those promises are, I'm going to make you into a great people. Abraham's very old, has no heir of his own. He says, no, I'm going to make you into a great people.
He says, I'm going to give you a place. I'm going to give you this promised land where you are. It's in the land of Canaan. So I'm going to give that to you. Then he says, I'm going to be your God.
You will be my people. I'll be your God. So he's going to give them presents. So what he promises Abraham out the gate is the first three things that we already had and lost to be God's people in God's place, in God's presence was lost at the fall. And so he comes and basically is promising to undo that. My people, my place, my presence.
And then he says, and you will be a blessing to the world. And so we start looking forward to that in Genesis and we kind of get it. We've watched these promises follow from Abraham to Isaac, from Isaac to Jacob, who gets named Israel. So we already read about him in Exodus. He has 12 sons, which ultimately are going to become the 12 tribes of Israel. So we see somewhat of this building into these promises being fulfilled.
But when we end Genesis, we have some people about 70, which is a lot better than one that he started with, but it's still not a big people. It's not as numerous as the stars of the sky or as countless as the sand on the seashore. They're not in the place that he promises them. And there's some his presence with them, but it's not idealized. There is a bit of the blessing. Joseph has been a blessing, but it's hard to see exactly how this has been a blessing to the whole world, although Joseph did help stave off a famine.
And so this is kind of where we are when we pick up an Exodus. This is the world. So this is just from Google Earth. So all the names are modern names, but Egypt is still Egypt. So we're going to zoom in here.
Yeah, let's zoom in. All right. So that's top of Africa, Egypt. You can see Turkey. You can see the Middle East here. That's the Mediterranean Sea.
We're going to zoom in a little further. Yeah, zoom in. So put the arrow up over here. This is where we started in the land of Canaan, and that's the promised land. This is where he says, Abraham, I'm going to give you this land. And then Israel has four sons.
So Jacob slash Israel has 12 sons. Sorry. He has a favorite. And so the other 11 sons decide to kill the favorite, which is a really good way to, you know, bring you up in the ranking. And then they decide, well, let's not kill him. Let's sell him into slavery.
And they do. And he gets sold into slavery into Egypt. And then there's a famine. Then Joseph becomes second in command in Egypt. And everybody goes to Egypt to survive. And then they settle in the land of Goshen.
And that's where we end in Genesis. And then Exodus says, and these are the names of the sons of Israel. And it picks right up there. So here's what happens. Oh, let me say this. Sorry.
I'm getting excited. I'm going too fast here. God plans. This is, this is what he basically promises in Genesis 12, 15 and 17, that according to the purpose of his will, God will bring his people into his place and his presence to be a blessing to the world, all for his glory. I'm going to read that again. According to the purpose of his will, God will bring his people into his place and his presence to be a blessing to the world, all for his glory.
And that's what we're going to pick up and continue with in Exodus. Now to make that a little more memorable and just a skosh more Baptist, I'm going to give you five Ps. You ready? Five Ps. Purpose, people, place, presence, priests. This is, this is the promise he makes that according to God's purpose.
He's going to make a people who live in his place and his presence. And then he makes them a kingdom of priests, meaning they will be a blessing to the world and they will display to the world how to relate to God. Okay. So that's where we pick up in Exodus, hoping for, longing for, looking forward to these promises. So it says in verse six, then Joseph died and all his brothers and all that generation.
So if we know Genesis, we're going, Oh, there's a moment just for a moment where we hit that period at the end of that sentence and go, wait, did what happened? Did they, what happened to the promise of making a people? Where are we in this? And then it says, but the people of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong so that the land was filled with them. One of the actual ways that's written in Hebrew is that the land swarmed with them. It's crawling with Hebrews now in Goshen.
That's what it's saying. And so we're supposed to see, because we know Hebrew, we know Genesis. Oh, this is some of the fulfillment of the promise. He's starting to do the thing he said he was going to do with making a people. We're working our way towards it. Now we know they're in Egypt, so they're not in the promised land, but he's fulfilling the promise to the people.
Verse eight. Now there arose a new King over Egypt who did not know Joseph either did not know about him at all, or just did not care about him. And he said to his people, behold, the people of Israel are too many and too mighty for us. Come, let us deal shrewdly with them lest they multiply. And if war breaks out, they join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land. So the Egyptian people have another people group living near them, multiplying.
And they say, this isn't good. And we get some, uh, old fashioned, like ethnic racism, ethnic fear that they speak a different language. They're not our people. There's too many of them. This is dangerous. And this has been a problem since the tower of Babel, that this is what humans do so often is they fear people who are different from them.
And so they say, Hey, they don't speak our language. They're growing too fast. There's too many of them. And there's a good chance because of where they're located in Goshen, that an army comes marching in and they just go, Hey, you know what? We're not Egyptian. So we'll just move out your way.
Hey, you go get them, leave us the land of Goshen. Or actually we're glad you're here. We've been wanting to kill them for a long time and they'll just join them. And so he stirs up fear and he says, we're going to deal with them shrewdly. And his specific plan is we're going to keep them from multiplying. We're going to stop this growth that they have.
And so it says this verse 11, therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with heavy burdens. They built for Pharaoh store cities, Python and Ramses. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and the more they spread abroad. And the Egyptians were in dread of the people of Israel. So this fear continues, but the more they're oppressed, they enslaved them.
The more they're oppressed though, the more they spread. So what we're learning is that Pharaoh does not get to work all things according to his will, because he says, I've got a plan that'll keep them from multiplying. And then it was like trying to get rid of dandelions by kicking them. It doesn't work. It actually made it worse. The more they were oppressed, there's more of them.
It's like the meaner we are to them. How, why are they all pregnant? What has happened? This plan has failed miserably. That's what's happening. So that's what he says.
The more they're oppressed, the more there are. And we're just seeing God at work here, that he's blessing them even in the midst of what is a terrible situation. It says, so they ruthlessly made the people of Israel work as slaves and made their lives bitter with hard service in mortar and brick. And in all kinds of work in the field, in all their work, they ruthlessly made them work as slaves. Now, Joseph would have come to Israel and about to Egypt in about 1800 BC. Moses is born around 1500 BC and the Exodus takes place towards 1400 BC.
And God specifically in Genesis promise that they would be there and be oppressed for 400 years. So we don't know how long, I mean, we, we don't know how long after Joseph, this Pharaoh rose up, but we know that they are oppressed for hundreds of years. The United States is only 200 and something years old. So these people would have been oppressed slaves, building these cities, working under taskmasters, having their only value come from their labor for hundreds of years. Generations would have been born into slavery, lived under slavery, died under slavery, and that would have continued on. And it's a bitter life.
We're to see traces of God's blessing as they multiply. But this is a bad, wicked situation. And that's where we are. That's, that's the intro to this situation is they've been enslaved in the land of Egypt. And now we're going to zoom in on a story where we actually get to see some people speak. We get to meet some characters.
We get to see what's happening. We're going to zoom in on this story. And the hope is that in this story, we'll see a bit of the tension continue to grow and a little bit of where this is going in the rest of the book of Exodus. And we will take some courage and some correction from two Hebrew midwives. All right.
You're ready. Exodus chapter one, sermon one, part two. Verse 15. Then the king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, a midwife is someone who helps deliver babies. Said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shifra and the other Pua. When you serve as a midwife to the Hebrew women and see them on the birth stool, if it is a son, you shall kill him.
But if it is a daughter, she shall live. So he's worried about sons growing up and fighting against them. So he specifically calls these midwives in and says, I want there to start being a lot of complicated male births among the Hebrews. I want there to start being a lot of still births. I want you to, as you're delivering babies, I want the boys to not make it. So just when you're in there, when you're helping out, just have a lot of them, just boys don't get born.
That's, that's the plan. And it's a wicked, heinous plan. Verse 17. Probably my favorite verse in chapter one of Exodus. But the midwives feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but let the male children live.
Now I want y'all to know something about Pharaoh. People don't tell him no. That's not how being Pharaoh works. We actually, there's a quote of somebody talking about the Pharaoh of Egypt. And it, he's a, a royal like counselor to the Pharaoh to two, two different Pharaohs. And he says this, what is the King of upper and lower Egypt?
He is a God by whose dealings one lives, the father and mother of all men alone by himself without an equal. The Pharaoh was understood to be a part of the pantheon of Egypt, that he was a God alone by himself, the father and mother of all men. The Pharaoh got what he wanted. If he told you to do a thing, you did it. There are very few recordings of what we have in verse 17, where it says they did not do as he commanded. That doesn't happen.
People do what he commands. And can you imagine the fearfulness of this situation? I don't know for you that some of the scary situations you've been in. I don't know if that was standing before your parents when you had done something you shouldn't have done. I don't know if that was the long walk to the principal's office. Some of you, you never had to do that walk because they just threatened you with the long walk to the principal's office and you immediately straightened up because you just, I'm not, we're not doing that.
I don't know if that's a boss. If you've ever stood before a judge. I don't know if you've ever been in a situation where you were under someone else's power, but to be before the Pharaoh was to be under his power. Even if we stood in front of the president, the president can't give a little nod to one of his, one of the secret service and they walk over and shoot us. That won't happen. But the Pharaoh can do that.
The Pharaoh has absolute control and he commands them to do a thing. And what does it say? It doesn't say they feared him. The midwives feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them. Oh, praise the Lord for these two ladies. I feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but they let the male children live.
They have a fear that is greater than their fear of Pharaoh. They have a Lord that they are held accountable to. They fear God and they don't do what he says. So then it says this. So the king of Egypt called the midwives and said to them, so he sends them off expecting them to accomplish what he asked.
All of a sudden it doesn't work. He brings them back. Why have you done this and let the male children live now? They're before him. And he, again, they're completely under his control. Why have you let the male children live?
And the midwife said to Pharaoh, because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women, for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them. They, uh, they use Pharaoh's racism against him. And they say, Oh, you know what Hebrew women are like? Just like, we don't even like they have a baby and then they go right back to making bricks. We showed up one time. It was like a box under the stairs, six babies in it.
Nothing we can do about it. And Pharaoh apparently believes this mess. So they just are like, Hey, this is, this is what they do. They're cunningly responding to him in the midst of this extremely difficult situation. Verse 20. So God dealt well with the midwives and the people multiplied and grew very strong.
So now it's the first mention we have of God. God's actively involved. He's blessing. He's working that he dealt well with the midwives and the people multiplied and grew very strong. And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families. Not only is he at work in the nation, but he's at work in these specific ladies' lives.
Verse 22. And this will set us up for what we're going to look at next week. But it says, then Pharaoh commanded all his people, every son that is born to the Hebrews, you shall cast into the Nile, but you shall let every daughter live. He's had two plans. He's onto his third. We're going to stop this.
And he says, now we're just going to start rounding up babies and throwing them into a river. So I want us to take a moment as we'll deal with what the ramifications of that situation, what happens next, next week as we go into chapter two. But I want us to take for a moment, I want us to consider Shiphrah and Pua. I want us to consider the fear of God versus the fear of man. Proverbs 29, 25 says this, the fear of man lays a snare, but whoever trusts in the Lord is safe. The fear of man is a trap.
We can see clearly in this story how if Shiphrah and Pua had feared Pharaoh, they'd have walked right into a trap. They would have been snared. They would have joined in evil and wickedness. But the fear of man ultimately bends us towards honor and worship and obedience. I want you to see that. One of the ideas that comes out in scriptures is that fear is often tied to worship.
It's tied to obedience. It's tied to this idea of honoring someone. We're told to fear the Lord. Let me give you a quick example and then we'll kind of talk it through a little bit. Let's say you have a 10 o'clock curfew.
And let's say you have a group of friends who don't. And so you get the choice of going home at 10 o'clock and being a dork. I mean like a real big dork. Or staying out with your friends and being awesome. Like just so cool. Like you just can't even imagine how cool you would become.
At 10 o'clock. Like just so cool. You won't even have to buy a leather jacket. You're cool. And you have this tension. And you're actually going to choose who am I going to honor?
Who am I going to give glory to? Who am I going to obey? Who am I going to fear? And fear there can mean fear. Like the consequences will be bad. Fear can also mean honor.
It can mean who am I going to show respect to? Who is weightier? That's what glory often means is weightiness. Who is weightier in my life? My peers who get to dictate my coolness. So maybe you honored your parents.
They weren't overly fearful but they were good parents and you decided to honor them. Maybe they were fearful. Maybe you knew that your mama would snatch you up. And you didn't know what would happen at that moment but you knew you didn't want to participate. But do you see how fearfulness leads to obedience?
And how the fear of man can lead to sin? How it can be a trap? That if we base, I want to be liked. I want to have their respect. I want them to honor me. I want them to, and so that we can build our life around what do people think?
And that can lead us into a trap. You ever heard of someone and you found out they had embezzled or they had stolen from the job and you thought, how? How did they do that? How could they have gotten there? The reality is, most likely, they operated off of some fear. Fear of failure.
Fear of not being able to pay their bills. Fear of having to be people seeing what has happened to them. Fear of any number of things, however they would do it. Fear of failing themselves or failing others or failing their spouse or just being looked at poorly. And they operate under fear and so they choose sin. They obey and worship and honor money.
Fear of failure. And we could see that if this said, Shifra and Pua feared Pharaoh, how differently this story would have gone. This says, Shifra and Pua feared God. You see, Shifra and Pua understood something that Jesus teaches us later, which is this. This is Luke chapter 12. Jesus says this, I tell you my friends.
Now, that's not a joke. He means it. My friends. He's being kind when he tells us this. Do not fear those who can kill the body and after that have nothing more they can do. Okay.
Fearing someone who can kill the body seems like a thing. Like that's a thing that you should fear, right? Like, oh, what are you going to do? Just kill my body? That feels like a... Like, I mean, I'll slowly kill my own body with Mountain Dew.
But I do a lot of things to keep my body from getting killed. Like wear seatbelts and a helmet and stuff like that. I'll lock my doors at night. Like, I don't wear a helmet in the car. Somebody looked at me like... During other activities.
That would be awesome. I should start wearing a helmet in my car. I'm making a life choice right now. I'm thinking about it. All right.
But we do things to keep ourselves from getting injured. And we ought to. This feels like a big thing. But Jesus says, no, no, no, no, no. That's so short-sighted. Do not fear those who can kill the body.
And after that have nothing more they can do. But I will warn you. And this is a warning. I warn you whom to fear. Fear him who, after he has killed, has authority to cast into hell. You say, was Jesus trying to scare us?
Yes. I tell you, fear him. Yes, he wants to scare you. Because he's calling you his friend. He's trying to help you out. That's a reality.
This is something Shifra and Pua knew. Shifra and Pua were like, what are you going to do, Pharaoh? Kill us? To which he responded, yeah, that's my go-to. To move. That's the thing I do.
I will kill you. And they're like, hmm, weak. That's all you got? All you can do is kill my body? It's like, yeah, that's a big thing. That's a big thing.
He's looking at his guard. It's like, that's a big thing, right? Like, that's usually people are scared. And what they understand is that after I die, I will stand not before Pharaoh. I'll stand before the king of the universe. And after you die, Pharaoh, you get in the same line.
You'll stand before the king as well. So Shifra and Pua are guided. It's a tough situation, but it's not a tough decision. There's clarity here. And there's clarity for us. We live in a fearful time.
You are told consistently that you ought to be afraid. And I don't know which, this is often in our culture driven by politics. It's not just politics. It's like everything that ever talks about children tells you how afraid you should be. Like, I wish the internet didn't exist because it has saved my children from 50,000 imaginary diseases. People were fine.
Like, we were fine. We didn't need all this. But it often is driven by politics. And I don't know if you ever do this, but I would encourage you to go listen to the other side for a little while. If you're listening to only your side of the political spectrum, you get scared. If you go listen to the other side, you feel amazing because they're terrified of you.
You are winning if you listen to the other side. Did you know that? You're out to get them and you're succeeding. You have accomplished. You've taken over the world. Like, that's...
But when we listen to things, what we're told is they're coming for us. They're going to get you. They're going to get your children. They've already secretly done it. We've got to stop them. We're told we're supposed to be afraid of so much.
We live in a very anxious time. And then we operate this way in normal life. We're afraid of our coworkers. We're afraid of our peers. We're afraid of our spouses. We're afraid of what people are going to think of us.
We live in fear of man, and it is a trap. And Jesus says, I'll tell you who to fear. Fear the only one who actually has authority. Fear the one who actually does work out things according to the purpose of his will. Fear the one who has the keys to eternity. Fear the one who you can be cast into hell by.
But he says this. He says, yes, I tell you, fear him. And then the immediate next thing he says is this. Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? And not one of them is forgotten before God. Now, on first glance, that feels like a drastic change of subject.
He just said, yes, I tell you to fear him. Fear him who can cast into hell. And then he says, are not five sparrows. He says it, are not, are not like this should help you. This is clarifying. Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies?
Not one of them is forgotten before God. What he's saying is God knows you and loves you. He's not out to get you. He's telling us this for a good purpose. There's not a sparrow that dies that God forgets about. And they're cheap, I think.
Two pennies, five sparrows sounds like a good deal. If you were needing some sparrows, two for five. Five for two. Something like that. What he's saying is that God knows you, cares about you, loves you. And then, yeah, you should have a healthy, honoring fear that he rules over the world.
This is what Isaiah 8, 12 says. Do not call conspiracy all that this people calls conspiracy. And do not fear what they fear, nor be in dread. But the Lord of hosts, him you shall honor as holy. There's that word. Let him be your fear.
Let him be your dread. And he will become a sanctuary. I love that. If he's your dread, he becomes a sanctuary. Sanctuary is a safe place. If we look to him as the most fearful being, if we look to him as the one to be feared above all else, then we're safe.
Then we can run to him. Then we can rest in him. Then we can hope in him. So, I want you to consider what is it you're afraid of? What are the things you worry about? Who are you afraid of?
Who are you likely to honor with your actions, with your efforts? Who are you likely to give glory to? And then I want you to, as you consider that, and as you really genuinely answer yourself as to what I'm afraid of, I want you to take that and mentally, prayerfully, bring it before the king and just see how it stacks up. I feel like there might have been, I don't know, I don't know how quickly Shifra and Pua came to this conclusion, but I think there had to have been a moment where they thought, I just can't do it. We're going to stand before him. I can't stand before him having killed babies.
I don't want to. I can't stand before him having lived my life in fear of Pharaoh and then go stand before the king who rules over eternity. I can't do it. And the beautiful hope for us is that Jesus offers forgiveness and grace for all the times we've failed and he warns us because he's our friend, because he loves us, to place our fear in the Lord, the only one who rules over all. You see, we're going to get to, as we walk through Exodus, see some of these promises start to be fulfilled and then stop and start and stop. We're going to get to see that even as you walk through the whole Old Testament.
The reality is that those things, God working all things according to his purpose, is only accomplished in Christ fully. That he's going to make a people. He does. By first Jesus being the one true Israel, the son that does not fail, and then by making a people who are brought in through faith in him, that he makes a new people. That he actually gives us the place. First the church, the people that belong to him.
Ultimately heaven through faith in Christ. That we actually get his presence. First the Holy Spirit. First Jesus on earth, then the Holy Spirit at work in his church, and then ultimately we will be brought before the presence of his glory with great joy. And that Jesus is the blessing that would come through Abraham. That he then makes a kingdom of priests to be sent out.
And that we actually have a God to fear. We have a kingdom to serve. And that we are commissioned to trust Jesus and to work to tell other people about how wonderful he is. And I will just say this. It's very short, but it's for anybody who's fearful over the state of the church. Enemies have risen up against God's people before.
And while they can make life bitter, they cannot stop the multiplication and the working of God's purposes. And we get to see that even now as the church spreads in the midst of difficulty. God still works to accomplish his will and to see people place faith in him and follow him just as he worked among the people in Exodus to continue to multiply to accomplish his purposes. The band's going to come back up. In a moment we're going to sing and take communion. And I want us to consider for a moment before we take communion, what is it we fear?
What are you worried about? What do you think is going to get you? What are you afraid is going to happen in life? What's your biggest nightmare? And then take a moment to set that in front of the Lord. Asking him to reorient your heart where you care more about him and his work and his kingdom and where you trust him as being gloriously, wonderfully, more dreadful than Pharaoh.
Gloriously, wonderfully, more dreadful than anything you would face so that you can run to him as your sanctuary. And then as you do that, I would invite you to take communion where we celebrate that Jesus came to rescue people, to die on our behalf, to pay for our sin, to make us his. If you are not a Christian, communion is not for you. It's a celebration of what Jesus has accomplished for us, that his life and his body and his blood, his body was broken for us, that his blood was poured out for us and that we've been brought into a new covenant of grace through the work of Jesus. If you're not a Christian, we invite you to trust in Jesus to become a Christian.
And then you would be free to take communion as you celebrate for the first time that he has covered you, that he is your sanctuary. But if you are not a believer, we ask you to refrain from participating because this is not for you. So I'm going to pray. Lord willing, you'll join in prayer, considering your own heart and your own fears. And when you're ready, take communion. It's gluten-free communion back there.
And then we'll sing together and praise our gloriously, wonderfully, loving, dreadful King who is our sanctuary and our hope. Let's pray. God, we thank you that you sovereignly work in the midst of difficulty. And Lord, we pray that we would take correction and courage, that we might step in faith to fear you, to honor you, to glorify you above all else. And God, we praise you for your grace and the redemption that's offered through the work of Christ.