Chapter 1
Exodus opens with the listing of Israel’s sons and then tells us his family numbers seventy in the land of Egypt. We are then told Joseph died along with all his brothers and all of that generation.
Deduct that entire generation and you have a mighty small nation of people that have been the focus of the world ever since their beginning. But the Israelites were fertile and prolific, they multiplied and increased very greatly. In the writing of Exodus, with all it contains, we see God’s great attempt to make a moral world.
God’s first attempt to make a good world was creating human beings with a conscience. We know that didn’t work because Adam and Eve’s first child Cain killed his brother Abel. After that episode, and some following events, God came to regret creating human beings. It was then that God sent the flood, destroying all mankind except for one particular good man and his family. God knew that human conscience did not work, so he set up a few rules in Genesis chapter nine. He then revealed some basic moral laws and principles. The first was to not murder. In fact, they were to take the life of those who deliberately murdered.
Next, they were to have children, and they were not to consume the blood of any creature, and He reminded them every human being is created in the image of GOD. But that didn’t work either. People murdered and plundered and engaged in other evils. Then God made a third effort to morally improve mankind by revealing Himself to one specific group “who would be charged” with spreading ethical monotheism in the world.
That group was first known as the Hebrews. The word which meant to cross over or to pass through. Next, they were known as Israelites. The new name given to Jacob by God which means “to wrestle with God”. And then they got the name Jews, which is retained to this day, from Jacob’s son Judah, the Lion of God.
The question, of why God had to keep trying different ways to make man good, may have crossed your mind. It could make you wonder, “Doesn’t God know the beginning from the end”? Or don’t you even wonder why He didn’t just begin the world with The Ten Commandments or with a Chosen people who would obey?
But as you are led off in that path you have to remember God created the human with free will. We have the freedom to believe God – or not. And then with hindsight we know that God dealt with different people, in different times, and in different ways. That is what we call dispensations.
When the unbeliever stands before God, he cannot blame God for not covering all the angles. God can only say I tried all these different methods to convince mankind and yet “you would not believe in spite of all My efforts”. Scripture continues with “and the world was filled with them.” This statement implies that the Egyptians perceived that the Jews were everywhere. They ignored the fact that the Jews only occupied the land known as Goshen. The Jews evidently made a large impression.
The Jews presence throughout the centuries and throughout the world has always been overstated. Today (2021) there are about fourteen million Jews over all the world and the entire world has approximately 7.9 billion people. But back in Egypt there was a change, a big change. A new king, who did not know Joseph, arose over Egypt. We all tend to have a short memory when it comes to anything good. That new king did not know that Joseph actually saved Egypt from the famine.
But maybe it is not a short memory that plagues us. Maybe it is a lack of gratitude that does the most damage. Human beings tend to much more quickly forget the good others have done.
It is human nature for people to remember vividly the bad that has been done to them but it is so much harder for anyone to remember the good that has been done to them. This is one of the very good reasons why it is so difficult to be a good person. Being good actually is only accomplished by fighting our prominent nature.
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