From Genesis to Exodus: Understanding the Biblical Timeline of Israel

Hello, and welcome to Through the Bible with Les Feldick. An Oklahoma rancher and farmer, Les Feldick has been teaching homestyle Bible classes for 20 years in Iowa, Oklahoma, and Texas. Les Feldick's unique style of Bible teaching has made the books of the Bible come to life. When Les is teaching, it's so interesting that people say time just seems to fly by. And now, here is Les Feldick. Good afternoon, or good evening, whatever the case may be, and we're just glad to have you in the class. And again, for our television audience, we keep hearing from people who have just watched the program for the first time. And for those of you who have missed everything since Genesis 1-1, we want you to know that all these programs are available on VCR. We have put 12 programs on one six -hour tape in which we can sell for $20, no gimmicks If you want a six -hour tape, just write to us or call us, and for $20, we'll send one to you. We'll stand the postage. Other than that, we don't want to take any time for announcements. We want to get right into the book, because there again, this is what our television audience has complimented us on, is that we just simply get into the Word, and that's what we want to do week after week. Now, if you remember last week, or our last program, we were winding up the book of Genesis. As one gentleman wrote in one of his letters, with tongue-in-cheek, I'm sure, he said, By the time you finish Genesis, will you be through the Bible? Well, he was close, but not really. So we're going to just review, just for a moment or two, and then we're ready to go into the book of Exodus. So if you'll turn with me to Genesis chapter 46, because I've made it a point now over the years to make it so plain where the nation of Israel came from, because I had several people who had taught Sunday school for years that never really knew where did the Jew come from in the first place. When did Israel become a nation? Well, as we've been studying now for the last several months, how that it all began, of course, when God called Abram out of the midst of idolatry, and I always have to stress, remember, that the whole human race was steeped in paganism and idolatry. No one had a knowledge of the one true God, but God saw in that man Abram a potential for faith, and so He revealed Himself to him, told him to leave Ur and his family, remember, and go to a place that He would show him later, which, of course, ended up to be the land of Canaan. Then you remember from Abram we had the covenant, and that was passed on to Isaac. Isaac in turn had two sons, Jacob and Esau, and Esau was destitute of faith, so Jacob ascends to the place of having the birthright and the blessing. And then it's through Jacob that the seed would come, that is, the Messiah of Israel, the seed of the woman of Genesis 3 .15. And then you remember Jacob went back up to his kinfolk in Syria, married a couple gals up there, and then with a couple women servants, he has twelve sons. And those twelve sons and their families, by virtue of Joseph, of course, being sold into Egypt earlier, they all end up down in Egypt because of the famine. You all know the story, how that during the seven years of good production, Joseph piled up the grain and the foodstuffs in order to carry the world of that time through the seven years of famine. Now since he had the grain and he had the food, and the other eleven brothers and old Jacob and the family were about to starve to death up in Canaan, they found out that there was grain in Egypt. And again, you know the story, how that they end up down in Egypt, all of them, and Joseph, of course, being the second highest man in Egypt, was able to give them the very fruit of the land, that part right around the Nile River, which in the Old Testament was called Goshen, G-O -S-H-E-N. And so in the area of Goshen, those twelve sons, or the eleven plus Joseph, who was of course in the high government place, but those twelve sons are then the setting for the population explosion that we will see then when we come into the book of Exodus. But you'll remember that all through the sojourning, from the time that God called Abram and told him that he would have a nation of people coming out of his loins and from his own wife, even though she was now well past childbearing time, yet the promise was always associated with that if they would stay in the land, the land of promise, and then these things would come to fruition. All right, now I've had you turn to Genesis 46, but you see, under the circumstances and in God's sovereign plan, of course, again of bringing all this to pass, He finally tells Jacob in no uncertain terms to go on down into Egypt. Now that's in chapter 46, verse 3, where God said, that is in Genesis, we're going to just review this a little bit, and then we'll go into Exodus, where God said, I am God, the God of thy father, fear not to go down into Egypt, for I will there in Egypt make of thee a what? A great nation. Now lock that into your computer. It's down in Egypt in those next 215 years, which are part of the 430 that God said to Abraham would transpire from the time that He first called Abraham until Israel goes out of the wilderness experience into the land of Egypt, or when the tabernacle is raised up is probably the way I should best put it, when they're ready to go to the promised land, and of course, then they're going to reject it and go 40 years in the wilderness. But you see, God's timetable is so exact that when He told Abram that it would be 430 years that's exactly what it was. From the time that Abram had Isaac, I think is what year it really amounts to, until the tabernacle is raised up there at Mount Sinai, and they're ready to go up into the promised land was exactly 430 years. So it's in that time period, 215 years from Abram until here, when Jacob goes down into Egypt with all of his offspring, another 215 years while they'll be in Egypt under slavery that fills the 430 years. All right, now then, just one other little comment out of the book of Genesis, and that is in the very last chapter, chapter 50. And let's just look quickly at verses 22 through 26, because again, the Word of God is so accurate. And as I told, I think, my class last night, oh, I want people to get to the place where you can believe every word of this book, even though there's things that we can't quite put together and we can't quite understand, and it may almost seem illogical at times, believe it. Believe it. It's the Word of God, and God does not lie, He does not make mistakes. Now, of course, we always have to remember that our Bibles are translations. Our Bibles may contain a little error here and there, because they're translations. But when we say that the Word of God is without error, that it's perfect, we're talking about the originals. And on the other hand, I've always maintained that God has been so jealous of His Word that He has not permitted gross error to come in. Now, there may be a word or two here and there, and maybe a number that could very easily have lost its original through the process of translating, but you can believe it. The Word of God is true, and the more you study it, the more true it becomes. All right, now here in verse 22, then, of chapter 50, it says, Joseph dwelt in Egypt, he and his father's house. And Joseph lived 110 years, he saw Ephraim's children of the third generation, I remember Ephraim was one of Joseph's sons, the children also of Masher, the son of Manasseh, who were brought up upon Joseph's knees. And Joseph said unto his brethren, in other words, to the rest of the families of Jacob, he said unto brethren, I die, and God will surely visit you and bring you out of this land, that is, Egypt, unto the land which he swear to, who? Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Now those three names just keep popping up all the way through Scripture, well into the New Testament. So verse 25, Joseph took an oath of the children of Israel, saying, God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones from hence, in other words, back to Canaan. And so Joseph died being 110 years old, and they embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt. And so ends the book of Genesis, this book of beginnings, this book that starts with in the beginning God created, but it ends with, of all things, a coffin, death. But always remember, and this is not original with me, but I've read it from several different authors, so who originally said it, I don't know, do not know, but always remember this, God buries his servants, but never his program. He'll bury his servants, in other words, great men of God come and they go, but God's program just keeps moving on. All right, now you're at the book of Exodus. Israel has now been in the land over 200 years, and they're multiplying. And God is about ready to fulfill these promises that he had made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He's going to now take them into the land that he had delineated in that Abrahamic covenant. But let's start in chapter 1, verse 1. This is, of course, a book of redemption. I think I mentioned that last week. It's a matter of buying back or paying the price for something that he had once owned, but he had lost. And I think I made reference to it, and if not, we'll do it now. You see, this is the whole idea of man's redemption itself. That which God had in complete control, Adam and Eve in the garden, he fellowshiped with them, they fellowshiped with him, everything was perfect. But what happened? Sin entered, and sin separated Adam and Eve from God and, of course, out of the garden. And so immediately, what did God have to institute? A plan of redemption to be able to buy back, pay the price for that which he had lost control of. Now, it's the same way here with Israel. When the brothers sold Joseph into slavery, and Joseph ends up down in Egypt, it was the sin of the brethren that precipitates, that gets the old ball rolling, that God lost control. He lost control of his covenant people. They're now down in Egypt, and they're under the influence of all the idolatry of the Egyptians. And he's going to have to redeem them. He's going to have to pay the price to bring them back unto himself. All right, verse 1. Now these are the names of the children of Israel which came into Egypt. Every man and his household came with Egypt. And of course, the sons are all mentioned here. But now drop down quickly then to verse 7. And the children of Israel were fruitful, and they increased abundantly and multiplied. Now that word multiplied in the Hebrew almost speaks of swarming. In other words, like we can just about see insects just increase in tremendous amounts, or even little fish, how they can just swarm from where those eggs were laid. Well, this is what's animated here in the Hebrew. This wasn't just a casual increasing. They were exploding. You know, population people like to talk about the world's exploding population. Well, they were. Their population was just exploding. And you could about imagine that the land was filled with them. And now there arose up a new king over Egypt. Now again, you have to have a little knowledge of ancient history. You know, things weren't very stable back then any more than they are now. And an empire could rise, and a line of kings could come on the scene. But it wasn't very long until someone would come in, probably in this instance from Egypt. They'd come in from over the desert to the east, or maybe down from Syria. And they would overrule the pharaohs, as they were then ruling. And they would set up a whole new line of kings. And I think from ancient history, this is what we can pick up. That the line of pharaohs that had been on the throne from the time of Joseph coming on the scene, and while Jacob brought his children down into Goshen, they were friendly with the Israelites and got along fine. But along comes a new line of pharaohs who didn't know Joseph and had nothing to do with these agreements that the pharaohs of old had made with Joseph and his offspring. And so here we have a new pharaoh who knew not Joseph. And he said unto his people, Behold, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we. Now, when you read things like this, you've just got to stop and ask yourself, now what would it be like? Here you are, natives of this land, and all of a sudden you've got people coming in from outside your borders who are not part of your stock whatsoever. And they're beginning to multiply so fast that they're outnumbering you. Well, how would we begin to feel as Americans? Well, we'd begin to feel a little defensive too, wouldn't we? And we'd begin to say, now wait a minute. These people are outnumbering us and won't be long. They're just going to knock us off the scene and they'll take over and we won't have anything. Well, that's exactly what was happening here. And so the pharaohs and the Egyptian people were getting worried lest these Israelites, with their increasing numbers, would be able to overtake them. And again, remember, in the antiquities, it didn't take much to knock one king off the throne and set up another one. Now, when it says that they are more and mightier than we, verse 10, come on and let us deal wisely with them lest they multiply and come to pass that when there falleth out a war they join also to our enemies and fight against us. So get them up out of the land. How many people do you suppose pharaoh and his cabinet were looking at? Well, I want you to forget the few thousand that Cecil B. DeMille put together for his movie, The Ten Commandments. It's millions, millions. And if you doubt me on that, let's look at Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers. Numbers chapter 22. Numbers 22. Now, by this time, of course, they have ended their 40 years of wilderness wanderings and Moses is leading them around to the southeast of Canaan through the land which was called Moab so that they could come in from the east side of the Jordan River over there opposite the Dead Sea. But as they come across the land of Moab, the king of Moab gets just as shook up as the pharaohs were. And so you know the story of how he will send for the false prophet Balaam. Well, now, we'll be looking at this someday when we get to the book of Numbers, but I just want you to see where I get this figure of three to seven million people that will leave Israel on the night of that Passover. In chapter 22, verse 4, And Moab said unto the elders of Midian, Now shall this company, that is of Israelites, lick up all that are around about us, as the ox licketh up the grass of the field. Verse 5, He sent messengers therefore unto Balaam the son of Beor to Pethor, which is by the river, the land of the children of his people, to call him, saying, Now watch the language, Behold, there is a people come out from Egypt, they cover the face of the earth. Now, of course, that's a play on words, no doubt. But nevertheless, in later verses, when the king of Moab takes Balaam up into a high mountain, and he says, Now look, and he says, You can't see the end of them. They went beyond the horizon, even from a high place. Now, that's not a few thousand, that was several million. Now, I looked up again on my 1990 census, so I'm sure I won't be way out in left field on my figures. But Dallas-Fort Worth, the megaplex, Tarrant and Dallas counties together, right now are between 3 and 4 million people. So when we get ready to deal with the children of Israel coming out of Egypt, I want you to picture something like Dallas -Fort Worth moving out. I mean, it's mind-boggling, and yet I believe every word of it. I have no doubt that that's exactly how it happened. All right, now, I still haven't told you, I think maybe it's in chapter 26 of Numbers. In chapter 26, drop all the way down to verse 51, and then when you got a little time, sit down with your computer or calculator and just do some calculations using your own logic and see what you come up with. Verse 51, these were the numbered of the children of Israel, 600,730. But I think it says earlier in the chapter that these, yeah, go back to verse 2 now of chapter 26. That isn't the total, 600,000 weren't the total number of Israelites, but it was only that select few, and here it comes now in verse 2, take the sum of all the congregation of the children of Israel from 20 years old and upward, all that are able to go to war in Israel. Now in Israel, the age considered fit for military service was from 20 to 30. Now all you have to do is, like I said, take your computer and you just sit down, how many other family members would be involved to bring about one young man, unmarried, between the age of 20 and 26? And I'll tell you what, your numbers just start piling up. And so in order to get 600,000 young men of military capability, single, they wouldn't take married men, single, you have to have a minimum of 3 million people total when you're taking in parents and grandparents and sisters and other brothers and the whole bit. But like I say, I'm just doing that so that you'll know where I come up with this number of from 3 to 3 1⁄2 or even more. I've even said at times up to 7 million, because there was a mixed multitude that went out with them as well, which was probably a lot of the Egyptians and various other groups that were hanging on at that time. All right, now if you'll come back quickly to Exodus chapter 1 again, verse 11. So now in order to slow down this population explosion amongst the Israelites, the Egyptians therefore did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens. And as part of their slavery then, they built for Pharaoh treasure cities, Python and Ramesses. But the more they were afflicted, the more they multiplied. And they were grieved because of the children of Israel. And so they made them serve with rigor. Verse 14, they made their lives bitter with bondage, working in mortar and brick and all manner of service in the field. And then verse 15, the king of Egypt spake to the Hebrew midwives, of which the name of one was Shipra, and he said, when you do the office of a midwife to the Hebrew women and see them upon the stools. Now the word stools, again in the Hebrew, was evidently a little hewn out stone wherein they would immediately bathe the newborn. And so whenever they saw a male baby, as they were cleaning it up after its previous birth, they were to kill them. Now, we wonder, where do people get the thought of such a thing? Well, never forget that back there in Genesis 3.15, God said it in plain English to old Satan the devil, that the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent or Satan. So what is Satan immediately going to start doing throughout the human race? He's going to do everything he can to keep this seed of the woman from ever coming to fruition. Now, that's why Israel has suffered so many times through her history a complete demolition of her people, genocide as we call it. Because see, Satan was attempting to totally remove that group of people through whom the Savior or the Messiah must come. And so even here, before Israel even gets into the land of promise and can get started on all these promises associated with that Abrahamic covenant, Satan is going to try to stop it in its tracks. And here's his first little ploy, is to kill all the boy babies as they're born with the excuse of course that they're multiplying too fast. So anyway, verse 17, the midwives feared God and did not as the king of Egypt commanded them, but they saved the men's children alive. Now let's go back to Hebrews 11, because unless we comprehend what God's Word says about the activities of these people, it probably just goes in one ear and out the other. But there's more to it than that. This is not just a story. This is a biblical truth, and it all helps build, build, build to the plan of salvation as we now know it today. In fact, when we get a little further into the book of Exodus, we're going to jump right back to the New Testament and show how clearly, beginning with the night of the Passover and their trip through the Red Sea and all that, is a perfect illustration of our plan of salvation as we know it tonight. All right, in Hebrews chapter 11, this tremendous faith chapter. And we just read about Joseph, so we might as well start with that one in Hebrews 11, verse 22, where it says, By faith, by faith. That's why Joseph said, When you leave this place, take my bones with you. Now, we always have to come back and by definition, what is faith? You know, I get disturbed when I read or I hear people say, Well, I'm of the Methodist faith and I'm of the Catholic faith or I'm of this faith or that. Hey, listen, that is not faith. That is not what the word faith means. Faith means taking God at His word. What is Romans? What is Romans chapter 9, where it says, Faith cometh how? By hearing, but hearing by the word of God. So, you cannot exercise faith until God speaks it. Joseph could not have faith in the fact that Israel would one day leave Egypt unless what? God had said they would, see? And knowing that that's what God said, Joseph could with all the faith at His command say, You take my bones with you because you're going to leave. God said so. And it's that way in every aspect of how God deals with us, is that when He says something, that's when we have to believe it and not until. All right, then verse 23, we'll just jump to it. We'll be coming back to it in Exodus in a moment. So it was by faith that when Moses was born, he was hid three months rather than having put him to death as the Egyptians had commanded. And so it was by the faith of Moses' parents that he was hid because they saw, not through the physical eyes so much, but through the what? The spiritual eyes. And they knew that what God had promised, what God had said, God would fulfill. And through those eyes of faith, they saw in this little infant the working of God. And so they took their chances and never forget, nothing happens by accident. This is all sovereignly unfolding as God has commanded it. All right, now then if you'll come back for just a closing moment, back to Exodus once again and we'll finish chapter 1 at least. And so when the authorities find out that the midwives are not killing all the boy babies as they were supposed to, they come in at verse 18 and they say, Why have you done this thing and have saved the men children alive? And the midwives said unto Pharaoh, Because the Hebrew women are not as the Egyptian women, they are lively, they're strong. You want to remember God has had his thumb on them. And ere they are delivered, they're delivered before the midwives even get there. Then verse 20, Therefore God dealt well with the midwives, and the people multiplied and waxed very mighty. And it came to pass, because the midwives feared God, that he made them houses. And Pharaoh charged all the people, saying, Every son that is born you shall cast into the river, that is into the Nile, in order to destroy them, and every daughter you can keep alive. But oh listen, God is watching over his people Israel. Even as he does today, no one is going to destroy the nation of Israel tonight because they are God's covenant people. That's Ralph 1, Box 760, Quinta, Oklahoma, 74552. Through the Bible with Les Feldick, is viewer supported, and your gift is appreciated.