Exodus 1

Division 1. (Exodus 1:1-22; Exodus 2:1-25; Exodus 3:1-22; Exodus 4:1-31; Exodus 5:1-23; Exodus 6:1-30; Exodus 7:1-25; Exodus 8:1-32; Exodus 9:1-35; Exodus 10:1-29; Exodus 11:1-10; Exodus 12:1-51; Exodus 13:1-22; Exodus 14:1-31; Exodus 15:1-27; Exodus 16:1-36; Exodus 17:1-16; Exodus 18:1-27.) Power acting in grace, according to the promise to the fathers, and to the name “Jehovah,” the Self-Existent One. Subdivision 1. (Exodus 1:1-22; Exodus 2:1-25; Exodus 3:1-22; Exodus 4:1-17.) Sovereign grace in the call of the deliverer.

Exodus 1:1-22

Section 1. (Exodus 1:1-22.)The first actings of grace: the hidden hand of overruling power. Grace in its first actings is here shown to us: the small beginning of a nation in the seventy souls that came into Egypt with Jacob, contrasted with their marvelous and irrepressible increase. Even the bondage into which they come had been already assured them, and what seemed most against them was really the working out of promise for them. The hand of power works in disguise, yet one to faith quite penetrable. It is the same story essentially, whether told of the nation of Israel or of any of the Lord’s redeemed. First, we are reminded how it is the children of Israel are found in Egypt: every man and his household came with Jacob. The natural name of their father is in perfect place here. We do not inherit grace. We came into the land of bondage with our father Adam. The bondage itself, however, does not begin at once; for conscious bondage is not the expression of our mere natural state. The man in the seventh of Romans is not a mere child of nature. You will not find such an one crying out, “Oh wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me?” That is an expression of felt bondage. There was a time when Egypt pleased us well enough, as there was a time when Egypt pleased Israel well enough. Afterward, we find them remembering with desire the good things they had in Egypt, as the golden calf was an imitation of the worship of Egypt. They had had a flourishing and happy time there, as we know; and it was God who, seeing a need in them they saw not, as He says Himself, “raised up Pharaoh,” and thus brought about a state of bondage. Egypt thus became “the smoking furnace” of Abraham’s vision (Genesis 15:1-21), in which, however, it was really God who thought upon His covenant. So with us all -the life of God begins in the very ability to feel death; and the light, as at the beginning, shines but on a chaos. Thus are our hearts set yearning after Himself. The famine in the far-off land makes us think upon the bread in a father’s house. Pharaoh’s expedient to keep the people down and in bondage should be noted: he uses their own strength against themselves. They build him store-cities, -cities whence he may provision his troops; and these cities are in Goshen, -in the lands allotted to themselves. Thus every where men rivet their own chains. If it is money that a man is after, every dollar he puts into his treasury only sets his heart more upon it. Every thing that the heart prizes here, the more one succeeds in getting it, the more will it attach the heart to itself. “How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God!” And this is true, in principle, of Christians also. If we allow our hearts to go out after the world in any shape, the more we gain of it, the more its weight will drag us down to earth.