3 CONTEXT

God was kind to Israel, in multiplying them exceedingly, but the Egyptians’ were wicked to them, oppressing and enslaving them, and murdering their children. In this lesson we will try to understand the difficult context into which Moses was born and raised. Our goal is to identify leadership principles God has recorded in His Word through living stories of what He can do through obedient leaders.

Moses wrote all the Scripture that forms the basic foundation for this series of lessons on leadership. His description of the difficulties of the slaves in Egypt gives us, from the beginning, the insight that Israel’s increase in Egypt and eventual deliverance from it is all the more wonderful explicitly because of that difficulty! The more difficult any problem is the more glorious is the one who can solve it. God is great! Furthermore, it is good for those whose latter end greatly increases to remember often how small their beginning was. Job reminds us. “Your beginnings will seem humble, so prosperous will your future be.” But God needs a leader to make that happen. That is where you come in. Can we learn from this series how God used Moses? What Moses did right? What Moses did wrong?

This lesson begins with the death of Joseph, “Now Joseph and all his brothers and all that generation died” (6). Possibly all Jacob’s sons died much about the same time; for there was not more than seven years’ difference in age between the eldest and the youngest of them, except Benjamin. When death comes into a family, sometimes it makes a full end in a little time. When Joseph, the mainstay of the family, died it seems a change took place. We must look upon ourselves and our brothers, and all we converse with, as dying and going out of the world. This generation passes away, as the one that went before. So today too present leaders will pass away and new leaders need to be trained and raised up. Will you volunteer?

Notice the great increase of Israel in Egypt. Because of this increase a new leader was needed. Verse 7 says, “but the Israelites were exceedingly fruitful; they multiplied greatly, increased in numbers and became so numerous that the land was filled with them.” Four words are used to express it: They  (1) were fruitful, and (2) multiplied, (3) increased in number, and (4) the land was filled with them. Like fishes or insects, so that they multiplied; and, being generally healthful and strong, they waxed exceedingly mighty, so that they began almost to outnumber the Egyptian nationals, for the land was in all places filled with them, at least Goshen, their own allotment. Though, no doubt, they increased considerably before, yet, it should seem, it was not until after the death of Joseph that it began to be taken notice of as extraordinary. When they lost the benefit of Joseph’s protection, God may have made their numbers their defense so they became better able than they had been to shift for themselves. If God continues to be our friend and like relations or family to us and He removes our loved ones, let us acknowledge that He is wise, and not complain that He is hard on us. After the death of Christ, our Joseph, His gospel began most remarkably to increase: and His death had an influence on it; it was like the sowing of a grain of wheat, which, if it die, brings much fruit. This wonderful increase was the fulfillment of the promise long before made to the fathers. From the call of Abraham, when God first told him He would make of him a great nation, to the deliverance of his offspring out of Egypt, it was 430 years. During the first 215 of those years Israel increased only to seventy persons, but, in the latter half, those seventy multiplied to 600,000 fighting men! . . . plus women and children. Sometimes what God allows may seem for a long while to go against His promises; to go counter to them. This is so that His people’s faith may be tried, and His own power the more magnified. Though the performance of God’s promises is sometimes slow, yet it is always sure just as Habakkuk says in 2:3, “For the revelation awaits an appointed time; it speaks of the end and will not prove false. Though it linger, wait for it; it will certainly come and will not delay.” Let me state the obvious. The reason God needs leaders is because He has people that need to be led. The reason God needs deliverers is because there are people who need to be delivered.

The land of Egypt here in Exodus, becomes to Israel a house of bondage, though earlier it had been a happy shelter and settlement for them. The place of our satisfaction may soon become the place of our affliction, and that may prove the greatest cross to us. Let us not say concerning any place this side heaven, This is my rest for ever.

The favor the Egyptians owed the Israelites was forgotten as verse 8 says, “Then a new king, to whom Joseph meant nothing, came to power in Egypt.” All that knew Joseph loved him, and were kind to his relations for his sake; but when he was dead, he was soon forgotten. The memory of the good he had done for Egypt was either not retained or not regarded, nor had it any influence on the councils of the new leaders of Egypt. The best and the most useful and acceptable services done to men are seldom remembered, so as to be rewarded to those that did them in the notice taken either of their memory, or of their posterity after their death. Ecclesiastes 9:5 & 15 say, “For the living know that they will die, but the dead know nothing; they have no further reward, and even their name is forgotten.”  “. . . Now there lived in that city a man poor but wise, and he saved the city by his wisdom. But nobody remembered that poor man.” Our great care should be to serve God, and please Him, who is not unrighteous, whatever men are, to forget our work and labour of love. Hebrews 6:10 says, “God is not unjust; he will not forget your work and the love you have shown him as you have helped his people and continue to help them.” If we work for men only, our works, at even their best, will die with us, but if we do it for God, they will follow us. This king of Egypt did not know Joseph; and after him one arose that even had the audacity even to say, “Who is the Lord, that I should obey him and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord and I will not let Israel go” (Exodus 5:2). As we progress through the story of Moses, we can pick up varied treasures and insights. This is one of them. Men will forget us. We lead for the Lord; not for men. That means we are responsible to Him; not to them. This alone is a valuable lesson.

The Israelites are represented as more and mightier than the Egyptians. This was certainly not true, but the king of Egypt, when he resolved to oppress them, would have them to be thought of like the, and looked on as a formidable body. So it is inferred that if caution were not taken to keep them under control they would become dangerous to the government, and in time of war side with their enemies and revolt from the crown of Egypt. It has been the policy of persecutors to represent God’s congregation as a dangerous people, so that they may have some pretense for the bad treatment they want to give them as was also done to Ezra in his day, “The king should know that the people who came up to us from you have gone to Jerusalem and are rebuilding that rebellious and wicked city. They are restoring the walls and repairing the foundations.” And in Esther’s day, as we notice in what Haman said to the king, “There is a certain people dispersed among the peoples in all the provinces of your kingdom who keep themselves separate. Their customs are different from those of all other people, and they do not obey the king’s laws; it is not in the king’s best interest to tolerate them” (Esther 3:8). From one angle, the king had a legitimate complaint because he may have heard that the Israelites had a promise through Abraham that they would become a great nation. Very possibly he had heard someone speak of the promise made to their fathers that they should settle in Canaan. It is therefore proposed that a course be taken to prevent their increase: Come on, let us deal wisely with them, lest they multiply. The growth of Israel is the grief of Egypt, and that against which the powers and policies of hell are leveled. When men deal wickedly, it is common for them to imagine that they deal wisely; but the folly of sin will, at last, be manifested before all men. In the face of this, God needs you to be a leader. There were deep feelings against God’s people and the group that Moses eventually led out of Egypt was greatly in need of deliverance. And today the policies of the church’s enemies aim to defeat the promises of the church’s God, but in vain; God’s counsels shall stand. He needs you to pray and to make that happen.

And another miracle was this, “But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites” (12). This surely sorely grieved and troubled the Egyptians. Times of affliction have often been the church’s growing times, Being pressed, it grows. Christianity spread most when it was persecuted: the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the church. Those that take counsel against the Lord and His Israel do but imagine a vain thing “Why do the nations conspire and the peoples plot in vain?” (Psalm 2: 1) Those men today who oppose God’s people simply create so much the greater problems to themselves: hell and earth cannot diminish those whom Heaven will increase. Yet, I repeat, God needs you to be a Christian influence and by your prayer and spiritual ministry set His people free. 

The Egyptians’ unhappiness at Israel’s increase, even with the many hardships they put on them, drove them at length to the most barbarous and inhuman methods of suppressing them, by the murder of their children. It was strange that they did not rather pick quarrels with the grown men, against whom they might perhaps find some occasion, but to be in this way bloody towards the infants, whom all must acknowledge to be innocent, was a sin about which they could not be proud. The hatred that is in the seed of the serpent against the seed of the woman robs men of humanity itself, and makes them forget all goodness. One would not think it possible that men should ever be so barbarous and blood-thirsty as the persecutors of God’s people have been over the centuries. What blood is as guiltless as that of a new-born child? Yet that is carelessly and hatefully shed like water, and sucked with delight like milk or honey. Pharaoh and Herod sufficiently proved themselves agents for the devil. Pilate delivered Christ to be crucified, after he had confessed that he found no fault in him. It is well for us that, though man can kill the body, this is all he can do. Two bloody edicts are here signed for the destruction of all the male children that were born to the Hebrews. Is it becoming clear that God needs leaders, deliverers. We are looking at the context in which Moses was born and grew up. He became a leader; you can too.