September 21st 2017 – Exodus 1:1-6

There are two ways of studying the book of Exodus. One is to take it as a straightforward, historical account of the experiences of the peoples of God - it is this, of course, and as such, many valuable lessons can be learned from it. The other is to take it as constituting a part of the divine unfolding of redemption, promised first in Genesis 3:15 and fulfilled in the coming of Christ as the Seed of the woman who was to bruise the head of the serpent. It is in this second way that our Lord Himself encourages us to read Moses (Luke 24:27), and unless we do so, we shall fail to understand the real meaning of the Old Testament. For 'faith' in the Old Testament is 'faith in the promise', and it is in relation to this that the deepest significance of Exodus is to be seen. We must never forget that Jesus said of the Old Testament Scriptures, 'They are they that testify of Me' (John 5:39).

These are the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob, each with his household: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin, Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher. All the descendants of Jacob were seventy persons; Joseph was already in Egypt. Then Joseph died, and all his brothers and all that generation.

Exodus 1:1-6

In the introduction above it was pointed out that any true interpretation of Exodus must be related to Christ. This does not mean that we are merely to look for 'types' of Christ in a particular verse or character, but rather see the history of Exodus as having meaning in relation to the coming of Christ in the fullness of the time, and to see the whole unfolding history in its broad outline 'suggesting' the grand drama of redemption wrought out on the Cross. The Old Testament as a whole is the covenant of promise, and as such points forward to its fulfilment in the New; but within that framework one sees 'little' fulfilments, anticipatory and token in character, that are shadows and suggestions, 'pictures' of the greater fulfilment to come. Thus, in Genesis we have the first word of promise, and in Exodus the work of deliverance, and this must be thought of as a hint, a foretaste, so to speak, of the real Exodus to come, by which men are brought out of the bondage of sin into the glorious liberty of the children of God (cf Luke 9:31, where 'decease' translates the Greek word for 'exodus'). This, it seems clear, is the kind of interpretation Paul himself puts on the Old Testament, as we may see from 1 Corinthians 10. The Old Testament was not a mere historical record for him, speaking of material blessings and deliverances, but essentially a spiritual reality related to and mediated by Christ Himself to His people. We are therefore to see in Moses a 'type' of Christ in this deeper sense, and in journeyings of Israel a 'type' of the Church's battling on to glory. Exodus thus gives us illustrations of Christian experience and Christian doctrine.