Exodus: from the Greek ‘exodos’, the Latin ‘exitum’ and the Hebrew יציאה'’. Defined as, “a going out; a departure or emigration, usually of a large number of people.”
Welcome to the book of Exodus, the second book in God’s Word, the second book in the Old Testament and the second book in the Pentateuch (the first five books of the O.T., all written by Moses.) We finished looking at all 50 chapters of Genesis on Friday so that naturally has us beginning the study of the book of Exodus today. The very last verse of Genesis ends with us paying our respects to Joseph as he goes into the glory of being with the Lord for eternity. “So Joseph died, being 110 years old. They embalmed him, and he was put in a coffin in Egypt.” (Gen 50:26) God had used Joseph to bring his family into Egypt and as we will see today, God had good reason. The entire story of Joseph, from prison to palace, from slave to royalty, from Canaan to Egypt, from hated to loved, all had a purpose. And that will be our focus today, the purpose of prophecy.
As you flip a single page in your Bible and go from Genesis 50 to Exodus 1 we skip forward about 350 years. And during these years we will see that the prophecy of God has been at work. Prophecy is defined as “a prediction of something to come.” God is a God of prophecy. In fact, it’s not really prophecy to God, He created all, knows all, sees all and guides all. It’s really only prophecy to man as we cannot see the future like God.
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” Isaiah 55:8-9
So as God is seeing to the perfect execution of His perfect plan, from time to time He sees it acceptable to reveal things to us before they actually happen. This is prophecy. God’s perfect plan that He created at the beginning for all time, being executed as days and years turn into history. The glory of God’s prophecy in His Word is a miracle to behold.
To understand God’s prophecy, you must first fully grasp and understand the truth of God. Nothing can exist without truth. Truth is the rose line of a map, the GMT of time and the true North of a compass. It is what all existence is based upon. Without the absolute truth of God, His Word would be void. Without truth in our lives we falter. Without truth in our relationships, they fail. Truth is the cortex of our existence and truth has to have an origin. That origin is our Heavenly Father, the God of all creation. God is truth.
“Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6
“Jesus said, “If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” John 8:31b-32
You see, God is truth, therefore His Words are outside of time. Absolute truth is not bound by days, hours, months or years. The truth is the same today, tomorrow and in 1,000 years. “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and forever.” (Heb 13:8) God’s perfection was pure truth from the beginning so it begs not alteration. I had a wise man tell one time, “always tell the truth because no matter how many times you tell it, it will never change.” It was wise advice indeed and has saved me much grief.
There are a lot of prophecies in God’s Word. J. Barton Payne’s Encyclopedia of Biblical Prophecy lists 1,239 prophecies in the Old Testament and 578 prophecies in the New Testament, for a total of 1,817 that encompass 8,352 verses. There are over 300 Old Testament prophecies about Jesus Christ alone that were fulfilled, some being two thousand years before they happened. We somehow today think that the Bible was written all at once by just a few people in one big room, but God’s Word was written over 4000 years by 44 different God-inspired men, all carried along by the Holy Spirit as they wrote. “For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” 2 Peter 1:21
Concerning Jesus and prophecy, think about this. It was predicted throughout the Old Testament that one day a Messiah would come. A Savior that would be sacrificed to redeem the world. God revealed facts about the coming of this Messiah to men and they then wrote down these facts. Over 300 of them. Thousands of years before they would ever happen. Now think about the odds of these coming true. Even one. That would be like me predicting the winner of the Super Bowl, the Word Series, The NBA Finals, the Stanley Cup and the Masters this year. And the next. And the next. But what if I were to predict the Super Bowl winner in 2197? You see, the difficulty increases exponentially because I have now introduced future wrinkles that are out of my control. What teams will even be in existence in 2197? How could I ever know? These men knew because God informed them. Listen to the probability of the prophecies of Jesus being fulfilled.
“Mathematically speaking, the odds of anyone fulfilling this amount of prophecy are staggering. Mathematicians put it this way: 1 person fulfilling 8 prophecies: 1 in 100,000,000,000,000,000. 1 person fulfilling 48 prophecies: 1 chance in 10 to the 157th power. (that’s 157 zeroes) 1 person fulfilling 300+ prophecies: incalculable.”
Amazing. Professor Stephen Stoner is well known for applying his mathematical work to the prophecy of God. In one of his more colorful illustrations he shows the amazing impossibility of “accidentally” fulfilling God’s prophecies about Jesus Christ.
“Stoner selects eight of the best known prophecies about the Messiah and calculates the odds of their accidental fulfillment in one person as being 1 in 10 to the 17th. (100,000,000,000,000,000)”
“Stoner then illustrates the meaning of this number. He asked the reader to imagine filling the entire State of Texas 2 feet deep in silver dollars. Included in this massive number of silver dollars is one silver dollar with a black check mark on it. Then, turn a blindfolded person loose in this sea of silver dollars. The odds that the first coin they would pick up would be the one with the black check mark are the same as 8 prophecies being fulfilled accidentally in the life of Jesus.”
Wow. I heard somebody addressing one of God’s miracles in their life one time by saying, “Now God is just showing off.” When you see the prophecies of God fulfilled, it is definitely God showing off. Him declaring prophecy and then fulfilling that prophecy in a way that refutes all logical and mathematical disclaims.
Today we see 2 more prophecies from God fulfilled.
In Genesis 46:2-3 God speaks to Jacob:
“And God spoke to Israel in visions of the night and said, “Jacob, Jacob.” And he said, “Here I am.” Then he said, “I am God, the God of your father. Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for there I will make you into a great nation.”
And over 350 years later in Exodus 1:7 we read:
“But the people of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly; they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong, so that the land was filled with them.”
And in the second prophecy we see in Genesis 15:13 God telling Abraham:
“Then the Lord said to him, “Know for certain that for four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own and that they will be enslaved and mistreated there.”
And today in Exodus 1:13-14, 350 years later, we see this verse:
“So they ruthlessly made the people of Israel work as slaves and made their lives bitter with hard service, in mortar and brick, and in all kinds of work in the field. In all their work they ruthlessly made them work as slaves.”
Think about it this way. Say I sat down this week and read Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. You have never read it and did not know that I had ever read it. We sit down and talk about the book and I proceed to tell you exactly what happens in the beginning of chapter 19. You would more than likely be amazed. Folks, God didn’t read the book, He wrote the book. And he has so much more that is not in the book. God knows all because He created all. And He created it all in truth.
How sweet our Savior’s hand as He paints His truth across the broad expanse of our existence.
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