Ex 1:7, But the sons of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly, and multiplied, and became exceedingly mighty, so that the land was filled with them. 
We now begin our considerations of the Book of the Exodus, the removal of the nation of Israel from the slavery and the domination and the affliction of their taskmasters in Egypt. The account opens with the fact that a new Pharaoh had arisen in Egypt who did not know Joseph. He simply saw the Children of Israel as a threat and a source of immediate concern, as we will see shortly. Before that, however, let us reflect on what had developed with the people whom God had chosen and blessed as His own heritage on this earth. 
When they entered into the land of Egypt, they were but a family of shepherds, about 70 in number who prospered and received such blessing in the land of Goshen that they were now numbered in the 100’s of thousands. They were no longer just the family of the Children of Israel, but were now reckoned as the 12 tribes of Israel. They were so numerous as to be thought of as a nation within the nation of Egypt. God had blessed them and prospered them and made them ready to inherit the land of Promise as His nation on this earth. 
Let us, once more, see how this developed as one of the central themes of all scripture comes to the forefront at this precise point of our readings. Please consider all the way back to the Garden of Eden, at the sixth day of creation as God outlined what was to take place through His creation of humanity. Gen 1:27+28, And God created man in His own image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. And God blessed them; and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth." 
God intended for humanity to fill the earth, to be fruitful and to multiply and to subdue the earth. We see this once again after the flood when God instructed Noah and his family with the same encouragement. Gen 9:1, And God blessed Noah and his sons and said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth. 
Then, this proceeded forth through Abraham as God told him to leave his country and to go to the land which God would give him. Gen 12:1-3, Now the Lord said to Abram, "Go forth from your country, And from your relatives And from your father's house, To the land which I will show you; And I will make you a great nation, And I will bless you, And make your name great; And so you shall be a blessing; And I will bless those who bless you, And the one who curses you I will curse. And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed." 
	The promise was that a great nation would ensue through Abraham’s lineage to be a blessing to all the other nations of the earth. This was the specific detailing of what was going to happen as Abraham’s family became fruitful and multiplied and filled the earth with the testimony of the One True and Living Lord God Almighty. There is the sovereignty of God at work within this family to make it one which would prosper and manifest what a relationship with God entailed for all the peoples as God’s heart of love found fulfillment in the blessing of humanity.
	God made this promise to Abraham several times in order to encourage him with the fact and the reality that God would, in truth, accomplish this so great and marvelous promise for His own name’s sake through the lineage of this chosen man. Gen 13:14-16, And the Lord said to Abram, after Lot had separated from him, "Now lift up your eyes and look from the place where you are, northward and southward and eastward and westward; for all the land which you see, I will give it to you and to your descendants forever. And I will make your descendants as the dust of the earth; so that if anyone can number the dust of the earth, then your descendants can also be numbered. 
	Again, we read this covenant promise detailed as God changed Abram’s name to Abraham, as he is called even to this very day. Gen 17:3-6, And Abram fell on his face, and God talked with him, saying, "As for Me, behold, My covenant is with you, And you shall be the father of a multitude of nations. "No longer shall your name be called Abram, But your name shall be Abraham; For I will make you the father of a multitude of nations. "And I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make nations of you, and kings shall come forth from you. 
	Our final reading of God’s direct promise to Abraham is found in Gen 22:15-17 after Abraham showed his love and trust in God to the point of the obedient willingness to sacrifice Isaac, his only son by his beloved Sarah. Then the angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven, and said, "By Myself I have sworn, declares the Lord, because you have done this thing, and have not withheld your son, your only son, indeed I will greatly bless you, and I will greatly multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens, and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your seed shall possess the gate of their enemies. 
To this point, this multitude of the blessing of Abraham’s seed amounted to only Isaac. Abraham’s other son; Ishmael by Hagar, the son born not of the promise but of human effort and desperation, was an outcast and no longer carried the weight as the son of Abraham. Only Isaac stood as the means by which God would carry forth His promise and His blessing through the lineage of His miraculous and Divine Sovereignty. 
God affirmed this directly to Isaac in Gen 26:4+5, And I will multiply your descendants as the stars of heaven, and will give your descendants all these lands; and by your descendants all the nations of the earth shall be blessed; because Abraham obeyed Me and kept My charge, My commandments, My statutes and My laws." Isaac stood alone as the threshold of the divine plan of God was carried forth through him. Of his two sons, Jacob was the chosen one by whom the blessing would proceed. 
In Gen 28:1-4, Isaac pronounced this blessing upon Jacob. Gen 28:1-4,  So Isaac called Jacob and blessed him and charged him, and said to him, "You shall not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan. Arise, go to Paddan-aram, to the house of Bethuel your mother's father; and from there take to yourself a wife from the daughters of Laban your mother's brother. And may God Almighty bless you and make you fruitful and multiply you, that you may become a company of peoples. May He also give you the blessing of Abraham, to you and to your descendants with you; that you may possess the land of your sojournings, which God gave to Abraham." 
While it was sufficient that Isaac so gave voice to the promise and the blessing, God, Himself, once more proclaimed it upon Jacob at the point at which He changed Jacob’s name to Israel as we read in Gen 35:10+11. And God said to him, "Your name is Jacob; You shall no longer be called Jacob, But Israel shall be your name." Thus He called him Israel. God also said to him, "I am God Almighty; Be fruitful and multiply; A nation and a company of nations shall come from you, And kings shall come forth from you. 
Again we hear the instruction from God to Be fruitful and multiply. In the lineage of Israel, that equated to the twelve sons that are listed at the beginning of this first chapter of Exodus. The descendents of these sons would eventually, in Egypt, become the 12 tribes of Israel. 
Even this is held in God’s communication to Jacob as Jacob wanted to be certain that the move to Egypt would please God. It meant that he would be taking his family out of the land that had been so fully promised to him and to his father and to his father’s father for the past three generations from Abraham. Jacob could not just go because the food was in Egypt and his son Joseph was there. He had to sacrifice and to seek God’s will in what would be his final sojourn on this earth. 
In Gen 46:2+3, God answered his query with the following statement and reaffirmation that God would do all that He had promised from Abraham to Jacob. And God spoke to Israel in visions of the night and said, "Jacob, Jacob." And he said, "Here I am." And He said, "I am God, the God of your father; do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for I will make you a great nation there. 
Notice that God was very specific that He would make Israel a great nation within Egypt. The plan and purpose of God to manifest and to establish the great nation from the seed of Abraham would be exponentially multiplied as they prospered in the land of Goshen. It was there, safe from all the effects of the so severe drought and intrusions of the warring elements of the tribes of Canaan that Israel would become a nation of people, brought to the point of being ready to conquer the Promised Land. This would be through all the hardships and trials of their eventual captivity, as we will consider later. 
At this point, however, God settled in Jacob’s heart the fact that the entire family should uproot itself and travel into the land of Egypt to see the fulfillment of God at work. His divine protection and guidance and blessing was upon these 70 or so people as they left Canaan and journeyed into the heart of Egypt.
God did His excellent work, as He always does, as we read in Deut 10:22, Your fathers went down to Egypt seventy persons in all, and now the Lord your God has made you as numerous as the stars of heaven. When the people came out of the slavery of Egypt, they were a company of people who were vast in number and, through the strength of God, were powerful enough to inhabit the land of Promise.
Again, we have the nation of Israel being encouraged in Deut 26:5, And you shall answer and say before the Lord your God, 'My father was a wandering Aramean, and he went down to Egypt and sojourned there, few in number; but there he became a great, mighty and populous nation. Egypt gave this nomadic family the time and the space and the resources and the will to grow and to develop into the nation whom God chose unto Himself. 
This was not a derailment of the plan of God for the people to be put into slavery in Egypt. It was not an interruption of what would eventually happen. Every footstep of the family of Israel into Egypt and even into the heart of the new Pharaoh to enslave this then booming and fruitful nation was at the direction and the plan and the purpose of God to honor His promise and His blessing upon Abraham and his seed. 
This was all even foretold to Abraham by God in Gen 15:13-14, 
And God said to Abram, "Know for certain that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, where they will be enslaved and oppressed four hundred years. But I will also judge the nation whom they will serve; and afterward they will come out with many possessions. 
This entire growth into a nation and God’s might in their release from captivity is further recounted for us by the Prophet Nehemiah as we find in Neh 9:23, "And Thou didst make their sons numerous as the stars of heaven, And Thou didst bring them into the land Which Thou hadst told their fathers to enter and possess. God was the One who instructed Jacob to go into Egypt. As well, God was the One Who prospered His people there to the point that when they came out, they were a mighty nation whom the inhabitants of the land of Canaan feared and fell before in battle after battle. God was the One Who ruled and overruled. We need to remind ourselves of this fact that despite all the concepts and the plans and the plotting and the scheming of any ruler, governor, freeman, or slave, God’s plan and purpose will always be accomplished. 
And, before we finish this morning, let us also remind ourselves of the fact that this is important to each one of us as we have been brought into the inheritance of this so great promise and blessing of God as evidenced in this Book of Exodus. This history of the nation of Israel carries with it the culmination of the Promise of God that He has made to be ours in Christ Jesus Our Lord and Savior. As Christ is the seed of Abraham, and as we are now found in Him, so does all the reality of God’s work in the nation of Israel find purpose and fulfillment in Him. 
The Apostle Paul details this for us in Gal 3:26-29. For you are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus. For all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to promise. We are all Abraham’s offspring as we are found in Jesus Christ, Our Lord and Our Savior. 
In this reality, the Apostle Paul relates what needs to be in evidence in our lives as we enjoy the blessing and the promise of God having so chosen us unto Himself. Please turn to Col 3:12-17, as we conclude this week. Col 3:12-17, And so, as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience; bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone; just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you. And beyond all these things put on love, which is the perfect bond of unity. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body; and be thankful. Let the word of Christ richly dwell within you, with all wisdom teaching and admonishing one another with psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through Him to God the Father. 
This is the heritage with which we have been so blessed in Christ. Just as the Children of Israel were so fruitful and multiplied under the mighty hand of God, so should we find that our lives and our fellowship with one another is so blessed and fruitful and multiplying in all the joy and fruit of our salvation in Jesus Christ. So be it! 
    	But the sons of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly, and multiplied, and became exceedingly mighty, so that the land was filled with them. Amen.
	
	This morning’s benediction is Rev 15:3+4. And they sang the song of Moses the bond-servant of God and the song of the Lamb, saying, "Great and marvelous are Thy works, O Lord God, the Almighty; Righteous and true are Thy ways, Thou King of the nations. "Who will not fear, O Lord, and glorify Thy name? For Thou alone art holy; For all the nations will come and worship before Thee, For Thy righteous acts have been revealed." Amen.