God Knows Our Situation Series

God Knows our Situation

Exodus 1:1-14

- This year, our church is focusing on honoring God with our lives.

- I believe strongly that God will bless our church if we focus on honoring Him in all that we do, as individuals and as a church.

- Today, we’re starting a study of the book of Exodus, and we’re going to parallel the lives of the Israelites in the Old Testament with our lives as New Testament Christians.

- All throughout the book of Exodus, we can observe the ways the Children of Israel honored and dishonored God.

- And that’s going to be the focus of our study as we journey through the book of Exodus verse by verse…what does this passage tell me about honoring God?

- One of the ways we can honor Him is by remembering that God always knows our situation, no matter how bad or how good it is…

- He knows our situation.

- Here, in the beginning of Exodus, we find the Israelites going through some difficult times as the slaves of Egypt.

- To any person walking by, it might seem like God didn’t know or didn’t care about their situation.

- But God was with them the entire time, and He never forgot about them.

- So, let’s look this morning at 3 things about Israel’s situation the God was fully aware of and was going to use for His glory.

I.) There were a lot of Israelites- Vs 1-7

- I’ve always preferred to live in a small town rather than a city.

- When we lived in New York and then Colorado, the places we lived were bigger than Bangor, but they were still small, and I was comfortable.

- When my family moved to Maine, I loved it because small town Maine is peaceful and comfortable.

- Then, I enlisted in the Army.

- My first duty station was in San Antonio, Texas.

- Texas is a huge state, and everything they do, they do big!

- Well, San Antonio wasn’t the largest city in Texas, but their population was approximately 2.5 million people!

- Put that number next to the total population of Maine, which is about 1.3 million, and you’ve got a whole city that is bigger than the population of our state!

- Well, needless to say, I wasn’t too excited about living in the big city, but that’s where Uncle Sam sent me, so I didn’t have a choice.

- It actually wasn’t too bad…

- There were a lot of stores, restaurants, churches, and many more places of interest.

- One of the things that I remember is that there was construction everywhere!

- It seemed like on every corner, something was being built, or a building was being made bigger…

- Their highways always had construction because they were constantly building more roads, and adjusting to the increase in traffic as more people moved to the city.

- Now, compare their population today with their population in 1846, and the results are amazing…

- There were only about 800 people living there.

- Then in 1850, that increased to about 3500, and then in 1860, it increased to about 8200.

- Today, the population is well above those numbers, and it keeps increasing every year.

- Those number comparisons are fascinating, but they’re nothing compared to how fast the Israelites multiplied.

- At the end of Genesis, when Joseph’s father and brothers moved to Egypt with their families, there were only 75 of them total…

- It says 70 here in vs 5, which is different from the number given in Acts 7:14 by Stephen, which is 75, but the reason is because in Acts, the number includes Joseph’s family.

- When they moved to Egypt, it was approximately 215 years after God made His Covenant with Abraham.

- So in that first 215 years, the number of Abraham’s descendants grew, but they didn’t rapidly increase…75 isn’t a large number.

- Then, when they moved to Egypt to join Joseph, that began their sojourn of another 215 years in Egypt, which included their captivity, until God delivered them and led them out of Egypt…that was 430 years after God made His Covenant with Abraham.

- During their 215 years in Egypt, they grew from a mere 75 people, to over 603,000 males 20 years of age and older, and when we add in women and children, that makes over 2 million Jews leaving Egypt, which is the number given in the book of Numbers 1:46.

- That’s a huge increase in population in a very short period of time!

- Why?

- The answer is because God knew their situation, and increased their number.

- Notice the words Moses uses to describe their increase in number…