Review:

• Jacob (Israel) and his family of 70 people transferred to Egypt with Joseph.
• Jacob moved from Canaan to Egypt about 1876 B.C., during the reign of Pharaoh Senusert III (Sesostris, ca. 1878-1871).
• His predecessor, Senusert II (1894-1878), would have been the man whose dream Joseph interpreted and who made Joseph his 1st in command.
• Moses, who lived from about 1525 to 1405 B.C., wrote Exodus (17:14; 24:4; 34:4, 27-29).
• Exodus embraces about 431 years of history, from the arrival of Jacob and his family in Egypt (ca. 1876 B.C.) to the erection of the Tabernacle in the wilderness of Sinai (ca. 1445 B.C.).
• However, 1:1-7 is a review of Jacob's family.
• If we eliminate this section, the narrative resumes the story of the Israelites where Genesis ends, after Joseph's death.
• About 364 years elapsed between Joseph's death and the Tabernacle's building.
• The bulk of the book (chs. 3—40) deals with only two of those years, the year before and the year after the Exodus from Egypt.
• The Exodus event is the focus of this book.
• The Israelites lived in Egypt 430 years (12:40).
• Genesis 15:13 has the rounded number "400 years" as the total time of Israel's oppression in Egypt.
• It may be helpful to remember that about 400 years elapsed between the end of Malachi and the beginning of Matthew and that about 400 years elapsed between the end of Genesis and the beginning of Exodus.
• The deliverance of Israel out of Egypt by Yahweh in the Old Testament is parallel in importance to the resurrection of Christ in the New Testament.
• The historicity of these events is a critical foundation for adequately understanding the rest of the Bible.

 
ISRAEL OPPRESSED IN EGYPT
EXODUS 1
1 These are the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob; each came with his family:

• NASB ’95 – “Now” – We couldn’t have Exodus without Genesis.

2 Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah;
3 Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin;
4 Dan and Naphtali; Gad and Asher.
5 The total number of Jacob’s descendants was seventy;, Joseph was already in Egypt.
6 Joseph and all his brothers and all that generation eventually died. 7 But the Israelites were fruitful, increased rapidly, multiplied, and became extremely numerous so that the land was filled with them.

• His purpose was to contrast the small number of Israelites that entered Egypt, with the large number that existed when Moses was born, which was about two million individuals (cf. 12:37; 38:26; Num. 1:45-47). 603,550 men

8 A new king, who did not know about Joseph, came to power in Egypt.

• The "new king" may have been Ahmose (Gr. Amosis), who founded the eighteenth dynasty and the New Kingdom Period and ruled from 1570 to 1546 B.C.
• However, the identity of this new king, Israel's oppressor, was not important enough for the writer to identify by name.
• His emphasis was instead on the oppression of the Israelites, the awful condition out of which God would redeem His people.

9 He said to his people, “Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and powerful than we are. 10 Come, let’s deal shrewdly with them; otherwise they will multiply further, and when war breaks out, they will join our enemies, fight against us, and leave the country.” 11 So the Egyptians assigned taskmasters over the Israelites to oppress them with forced labor. They built Pithom and Rameses as supply cities for Pharaoh. 12 But the more they oppressed them, the more they multiplied and spread so that the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites. 13 They worked the Israelites ruthlessly 14 and made their lives bitter with difficult labor in brick and mortar and in all kinds of fieldwork. They ruthlessly imposed all this work on them.[1]

• The first plan (plan A) was to make the Hebrews toil hard in manual labor.
• Normally a population grows more slowly under oppression than in prosperous times.
• However, the opposite took place in the case of the Israelites ("the more they oppressed them, the more they multiplied," v. 12).
• Physical oppression also tends to crush the spirit, and in this objective the Egyptians were somewhat successful (2:23-24).
• Tell vv. 15-22 - second plan (plan B)
• Pharaoh instructed the midwives to kill all the male babies born to a Hebrew woman.
• The midwives feared God and did not do this.
• When confronted by Pharaoh, they responded, “The Hebrew women are stronger than the Egyptian women and birth their children on their own before we can get there.”
• They lied to Pharaoh.
• God blessed the midwives, and they multiplied.
• Third plan (plan C) - Pharaoh then instructs the Hebrews to have all the male babies thrown into the Nile after birth.

 
MOSES’S BIRTH AND ADOPTION
EXODUS 2
1 Now a man from the family of Levi married a Levite woman.

• At this point Scripture's aim is to inform us that from an ordinary man, … and from an ordinary woman, … whose names there was no need to mention [at this point – 6:20], God raised up a redeemer unto his people.

2 The woman became pregnant and gave birth to a son; when she saw that he was beautiful, she hid him for three months. 3 But when she could no longer hide him, she got a papyrus basket for him and coated it with asphalt and pitch. She placed the child in it and set it among the reeds by the bank of the Nile. 4 Then his sister stood at a distance in order to see what would happen to him.

• Miriam is Moses’ only sister in the Bible that is mentioned by name.

5 Pharaoh’s daughter went down to bathe at the Nile while her servant girls walked along the riverbank. She saw the basket among the reeds, sent her slave girl, took it, 6 opened it, and saw him, the child—and there he was, a little boy, crying. She felt sorry for him and said, “This is one of the Hebrew boys.”
7 Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, “Should I go and call a Hebrew woman who is nursing to nurse the boy for you?”
8 “Go,” Pharaoh’s daughter told her. So the girl went and called the boy’s mother. 9 Then Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this child and nurse him for me, and I will pay your wages.” So the woman took the boy and nursed him. 10 When the child grew older, she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son. She named him Moses, “Because,” she said, “I drew him out of the water.” [2]
 

• Tell vv. 11-25
• Stephen’s Message in Acts 7:17-36
• 17 “As the time was approaching to fulfill the promise that God had made to Abraham, the people flourished and multiplied in Egypt 18 until a different king who did not know Joseph ruled over Egypt. 19 He dealt deceitfully with our race and oppressed our ancestors by making them abandon their infants outside so that they wouldn’t survive. 20 At this time Moses was born, and he was beautiful in God’s sight. He was cared for in his father’s home for three months. 21 When he was put outside, Pharaoh’s daughter adopted and raised him as her own son. 22 So Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in his speech and actions.
• 23 “When he was forty years old, he decided to visit his own people, the Israelites. 24 When he saw one of them being mistreated, he came to his rescue and avenged the oppressed man by striking down the Egyptian. 25 He assumed his people would understand that God would give them deliverance through him, but they did not understand. 26 The next day he showed up while they were fighting and tried to reconcile them peacefully, saying, ‘Men, you are brothers. Why are you mistreating each other?’
• 27 “But the one who was mistreating his neighbor pushed Moses aside, saying: Who appointed you a ruler and a judge over us? 28 Do you want to kill me, the same way you killed the Egyptian yesterday?,
• 29 “When he heard this, Moses fled and became an exile in the land of Midian, where he became the father of two sons. 30 After forty years had passed, an angel appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount Sinai, in the flame of a burning bush. 31 When Moses saw it, he was amazed at the sight. As he was approaching to look at it, the voice of the Lord came: 32 I am the God of your ancestors—the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob., Moses began to tremble and did not dare to look.
• 33 “The Lord said to him: Take off the sandals from your feet, because the place where you are standing is holy ground. 34 I have certainly seen the oppression of my people in Egypt; I have heard their groaning and have come down to set them free. And now, come, I will send you to Egypt.,
• 35 “This Moses, whom they rejected when they said, Who appointed you a ruler and a judge?—this one God sent as a ruler and a deliverer through the angel who appeared to him in the bush. 36 This man led them out and performed wonders and signs in the land of Egypt, at the Red Sea, and in the wilderness for forty years.[3]

 
MOSES AND THE BURNING BUSH
EXODUS 3
1 Meanwhile, Moses was shepherding the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian. He led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2 Then the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire within a bush. As Moses looked, he saw that the bush was on fire but was not consumed. 3 So Moses thought, “I must go over and look at this remarkable sight. Why isn’t the bush burning up?”
4 When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called out to him from the bush, “Moses, Moses!”
“Here I am,” he answered.

• This was the first time that God had revealed Himself to Moses, or anyone else as far as Scripture records, for over 430 years.

5 “Do not come closer,” he said. “Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” 6 Then he continued, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” Moses hid his face because he was afraid to look at God.

• Clarifying that He was the God who had been and who always would be—the same God that their forefathers worshipped

7 Then the Lord said, “I have observed the misery of my people in Egypt, and have heard them crying out because of their oppressors. I know about their sufferings, 8 and I have come down to rescue them from the power of the Egyptians and to bring them from that land to a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the territory of the Canaanites, Hethites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. 9 So because the Israelites’ cry for help has come to me, and I have also seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them, 10 therefore, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh so that you may lead my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.”
11 But Moses asked God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and that I should bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”
12 He answered, “I will certainly be with you, and this will be the sign to you that I am the one who sent you: when you bring the people out of Egypt, you will all worship God at this mountain.”
13 Then Moses asked God, “If I go to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what should I tell them?”
14 God replied to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.

• "I am that I am" means "God will reveal Himself in His actions through history."

This is what you are to say to the Israelites: I AM has sent me to you.” 15 God also said to Moses, “Say this to the Israelites: The Lord, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you. This is my name forever; this is how I am to be remembered in every generation.
16 “Go and assemble the elders of Israel and say to them: The Lord, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, has appeared to me and said: I have paid close attention to you and to what has been done to you in Egypt. 17 And I have promised you that I will bring you up from the misery of Egypt to the land of the Canaanites, Hethites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites—a land flowing with milk and honey. 18 They will listen to what you say. Then you, along with the elders of Israel, must go to the king of Egypt and say to him: The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, has met with us. Now please let us go on a three-day trip into the wilderness so that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God.
19 “However, I know that the king of Egypt will not allow you to go, even under force from a strong hand. 20 But when I stretch out my hand and strike Egypt with all my miracles that I will perform in it, after that, he will let you go. 21 And I will give these people such favor with the Egyptians that when you go, you will not go empty-handed. 22 Each woman will ask her neighbor and any woman staying in her house for silver and gold jewelry, and clothing, and you will put them on your sons and daughters. So you will plunder the Egyptians.”[4]
 

• The outstanding contribution of this book is the revelation that Yahweh is the sovereign God who provides deliverance for man from the slavery in which he finds himself.
• Jesus has delivered His Church from the slavery of sin.
• Jesus’ death & resurrection rescued us from the penalty of sin and even from the power of sin.
• Jesus has rescued us from doing our own works, and the Spirit constantly encourages us to rest in Him.

[1] Christian Standard Bible (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2020), Ex 1:1–14.
[2] Christian Standard Bible (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2020), Ex 2:1–10.
[3] Christian Standard Bible (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2020), Ac 7:17–36.
[4] Christian Standard Bible (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2020), Ex 3:1–22.

​Acts 7
STEPHEN’S SERMON
1 “Are these things true?” the high priest asked.
2 “Brothers and fathers,” he replied, “listen: The God of glory appeared to our father Abraham

• Stephen’s address opens with “the God of glory” and closes with the glory of God (Acts 7:55); and all the time he spoke, his face radiated that same glory!
• Why? Because Israel was the only nation privileged to have the glory of God as a part of its inheritance
• (Romans 9:4 - 4 They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the temple service, and the promises.[1])[2]

when he was in Mesopotamia, before he settled in Haran, 3 and said to him: Leave your country and relatives, and come to the land that I will show you. (Genesis 12:1)
4 “Then he left the land of the Chaldeans and settled in Haran. From there, after his father died, God had him move to this land in which you are now living.

• Abraham was the founder of the Hebrew nation, and his relationship to God was one of grace and faith.
• God had graciously appeared to him and called him out of heathen darkness into the light of salvation, and Abraham had responded by faith.
• Abraham was saved by grace, through faith, and not because he was circumcised, kept a law, or worshiped in a temple.
• All of those things came afterward (see Rom. 4; Gal. 3).
• He believed the promises of God and it was this faith that saved him.[3]

5 He didn’t give him an inheritance in it—not even a foot of ground—but he promised to give it to him as a possession, and to his descendants after him, even though he was childless. 6 God spoke in this way: His descendants would be strangers in a foreign country (Egypt), and they would enslave and oppress them for four hundred years. 7 I will judge the nation that they will serve as slaves, God said. After this, they will come out and worship me in this place. (Genesis 15:13-14) 8 And so he gave Abraham the covenant of circumcision.

• The Jews prided themselves in their circumcision, failing to understand that the rite was symbolic of an inner spiritual relationship with God (Deut. 10:16; Jer. 4:4; 6:10; Acts 7:51; Gal. 5:1–6; Phil. 3:3; Col. 2:11–12).
• Over the years, the fulfilling of ritual had taken the place of the enjoyment of reality.
• This happens in churches even today.[4]

After this, he fathered Isaac and circumcised him on the eighth day. Isaac became the father of Jacob, and Jacob became the father of the twelve patriarchs.
 
THE PATRIARCHS IN EGYPT
9 “The patriarchs became jealous of Joseph and sold him into Egypt, but God was with him 10 and rescued him out of all his troubles. He gave him favor and wisdom in the sight of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, who appointed him ruler over Egypt and over his whole household. 11 Now a famine and great suffering came over all of Egypt and Canaan, and our ancestors could find no food. 12 When Jacob heard there was grain in Egypt, he sent our ancestors there the first time. 13 The second time, Joseph revealed himself to his brothers, and Joseph’s family became known to Pharaoh. 14 Joseph invited his father Jacob and all his relatives, seventy-five people (Greek Septuagint – Greek translation of the Old Testament - included Joseph’s 5 grandchildren. Stephen was a Hellenistic Jew) in all, 15 and Jacob went down to Egypt. He and our ancestors died there, 16 were carried back to Shechem (between Jerusalem and the Sea of Galilee – Palestinian territory), and were placed in the tomb that Abraham had bought for a sum of silver from the sons of Hamor in Shechem.
 
MOSES, A REJECTED SAVIOR
17 “As the time was approaching to fulfill the promise that God had made to Abraham, the people flourished and multiplied in Egypt 18 until a different king who did not know Joseph ruled over Egypt. 19 He dealt deceitfully with our race and oppressed our ancestors by making them abandon their infants outside so that they wouldn’t survive. (Jewish genocide) 20 At this time Moses was born, and he was beautiful in God’s sight. He was cared for in his father’s home for three months. 21 When he was put outside, Pharaoh’s daughter adopted and raised him as her own son. 22 So Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in his speech and actions.
23 “When he was forty years old, he decided to visit his own people, the Israelites. 24 When he saw one of them being mistreated, he came to his rescue and avenged the oppressed man by striking down the Egyptian. 25 He assumed his people would understand that God would give them deliverance through him, but they did not understand. 26 The next day he showed up while they were fighting and tried to reconcile them peacefully, saying, ‘Men, you are brothers. Why are you mistreating each other?’
27 “But the one who was mistreating his neighbor pushed Moses aside, saying: Who appointed you a ruler and a judge over us? 28 Do you want to kill me, the same way you killed the Egyptian yesterday? (Exodus 2:14)
29 “When he heard this, Moses fled and became an exile in the land of Midian, where he became the father of two sons. 30 After forty years had passed, an angel appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount Sinai, in the flame of a burning bush. 31 When Moses saw it, he was amazed at the sight. As he was approaching to look at it, the voice of the Lord came: 32 I am the God of your ancestors—the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob. (Exodus 3:6) Moses began to tremble and did not dare to look.
33 “The Lord said to him: Take off the sandals from your feet, because the place where you are standing is holy ground. 34 I have certainly seen the oppression of my people in Egypt; I have heard their groaning and have come down to set them free. And now, come, I will send you to Egypt. (Exodus 3:5-10)
35 “This Moses, whom they rejected when they said, Who appointed you a ruler and a judge? (Exodus 2:14)—this one God sent as a ruler and a deliverer through the angel who appeared to him in the bush. 36 This man led them out and performed wonders and signs in the land of Egypt, at the Red Sea, and in the wilderness for forty years.
 
ISRAEL’S REBELLION AGAINST GOD
37 “This is the Moses who said to the Israelites: God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your brothers and sisters. (Deuteronomy 18:15) 38 He is the one who was in the assembly in the wilderness, with the angel who spoke to him on Mount Sinai, and with our ancestors. He received living oracles to give to us. 39 Our ancestors were unwilling to obey him. Instead, they pushed him aside, and in their hearts turned back to Egypt. 40 They told Aaron: Make us gods who will go before us. As for this Moses who brought us out of the land of Egypt, we don’t know what’s happened to him. (Exodus 32:1, 23) 41 They even made a calf in those days, offered sacrifice to the idol, and were celebrating what their hands had made.

• As God was giving Moses the Law… the Israelites were breaking the first two.

42 God turned away and gave them up to worship the stars of heaven, as it is written in the book of the prophets:

• As compared to Romans 1:24-28 – (24 Therefore God delivered them over in the desires of their hearts to sexual impurity, so that their bodies were degraded among themselves. 25 They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served what has been created instead of the Creator, who is praised forever. Amen.
  26 For this reason God delivered them over to disgraceful passions. Their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 The men in the same way also left natural relations with women and were inflamed in their lust for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the appropriate penalty of their error.
• And because they did not think it worthwhile to acknowledge God, God delivered them over to a corrupt mind so that they do what is not right.[5])

House of Israel, did you bring me offerings and sacrifices for forty years in the wilderness?
43 You took up the tent of Moloch and the star of your god Rephan, the images that you made to worship.  So I will send you into exile beyond Babylon. (Amos 5:25-27)

• This included the worship of sex, religious prostitutes and even child sacrifices.

 
GOD’S REAL TABERNACLE
44 “Our ancestors had the tabernacle of the testimony in the wilderness, just as he who spoke to Moses commanded him to make it according to the pattern he had seen. 45 Our ancestors in turn received it and with Joshua brought it in when they dispossessed the nations that God drove out before them, until the days of David. (Exodus 40:34-38) 46 He found favor in God’s sight and asked that he might provide a dwelling place for the God of Jacob. 47 It was Solomon, rather, who built him a house (1 Kings 8:10-11), 48 but the Most High does not dwell in sanctuaries made with hands, as the prophet says:
49 Heaven is my throne, and the earth my footstool. What sort of house will you build for me?
says the Lord, or what will be my resting place?
50 Did not my hand make all these things? (Isaiah 66:1-2)
 - The Jewish defense of their temple was both illogical and unscriptural.
 
RESISTING THE HOLY SPIRIT
51 “You stiff-necked people with uncircumcised hearts and ears! You are always resisting the Holy Spirit. As your ancestors did, you do also. 52 Which of the prophets did your ancestors not persecute? They even killed those who foretold the coming of the Righteous One, whose betrayers and murderers you have now become. 53 You received the law under the direction of angels and yet have not kept it.”

• You refused to submit to God and obey His Laws.
• Even though you memorized the prophets words, you didn’t obey them and you eventually even killed them.
• By the time Jesus came to earth, the truth of God was encrusted with so much tradition that the people could not recognize God’s truth when He did present it.
• Man’s dead traditions had replaced God’s living truth (see Matt. 15:1–20).[6]

 
THE FIRST CHRISTIAN MARTYR
54 When they heard these things, they were enraged and gnashed their teeth at him. 55 Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, gazed into heaven. He saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. 56 He said, “Look, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!”

• Stephen’s coronation.

57 They yelled at the top of their voices, covered their ears, and together rushed against him. 58 They dragged him out of the city and began to stone him. And the witnesses laid their garments at the feet of a young man named Saul.

• The men who had witnessed against Stephen, ch. 6:13, were required by the law (Deut. 17:7) to cast the first stones on the transgressor.
• In order that they might not be impeded in the act by their wide and flowing upper garments, they laid these aside, and entrusted them to the care of the young man who was named Saul.
• Then they and the rest of the people hurled stones at Stephen.[7]

59 While they were stoning Stephen, he called out: “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit!” 60 He knelt down and cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them!” And after saying this, he died.[8]
Stephen died a similar death to Jesus and similar last words.

[1] Christian Standard Bible. (2017). (Ro 9:4). Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers.
[2] Wiersbe, W. W. (1996). The Bible exposition commentary (Vol. 1, p. 430). Wheaton, IL: Victor Books.
[3] Wiersbe, W. W. (1996). The Bible exposition commentary (Vol. 1, p. 431). Wheaton, IL: Victor Books.
[4] Wiersbe, W. W. (1996). The Bible exposition commentary (Vol. 1, p. 431). Wheaton, IL: Victor Books.
[5] Christian Standard Bible. (2017). (Ro 1:24–28). Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers.
[6] Wiersbe, W. W. (1996). The Bible exposition commentary (Vol. 1, p. 432). Wheaton, IL: Victor Books.
[7] Lange, J. P., Schaff, P., Gotthard, V. L., Gerok, C., & Schaeffer, C. F. (2008). A commentary on the Holy Scriptures: Acts (p. 135). Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software.
[8] Christian Standard Bible. (2017). (Ac 7:1–60). Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers.