In yesterday’s devotional, we concluded by saying that God always had a remnant, those who are faithful to Him even in dry times. Now that’s exactly what we have here in the second chapter of Exodus. In this case, the remnant that we’re told about is one family, a husband and wife, whose names were Amram and Jochebed. Amram means “exalted people." We’re not given his name in Exodus 2, but the name is supplied elsewhere in the Old Testament genealogies in Exodus 6, Numbers 3, 1 Chronicles 6, and so on. He was of the tribe of Levi, and lived to be 137 years old. Jochebed means “the honor of Jehovah." 

The last point of application is that it would be better to have been one of the Hebrew midwives than to have been pharaoh. You see, the world exalts the great and it despises the lowly. But in God’s way of doing things, it’s usually the exalted people that are brought low and the lowly people that are exalted, at least if they do the right thing out of reverence for God. Are you willing to be among the foolish and the weak and the despised people of this world? That’s what most Christians are. So when God works through you, it won’t be you who will be glorified but the glory will go to God. In order to be that, you have to pay a price. That’s costly, sometimes it even brings you into danger, which was certainly the case with the midwives. But if you stand for God, God will notice it. God notices every act of righteousness; nothing ever escapes Him. He writes the names of those people in His book. And not only that, God will reward you in His own right time. 

When we read our text for this study, starting with 1:8, the first question we have is who is this king who did not know Joseph? Who is the pharaoh of the exodus? There were two different men involved, and scholars are divided on it because when you read the book of Exodus it doesn’t tell you who the pharaoh was. And when you turn to Egyptian records, they don’t have any record of the Jews except to a reference to them in a stele set up by Pharaoh Merneptah, in about 1220 BC, that describes a victory that the pharaoh had over the Jews in the southern area of Canaan. But this is well after the Jews had left Egypt and settled in Canaan.

The story of Moses begins in the book of Exodus. Now “exodus” means “exit,” or “going out.” And it’s called that because it’s really the story of the deliverance of the people from Egypt. Yet it’s more than that. What we read in Exodus is not only the story of the deliverance of the nation, we also read about the creation or birth of the nation. The reason I say that is that when we read the opening verses, we find that the ones who went down to Egypt initially in the time of Joseph numbered only around 70. They were just a large family. But by the time the people left Egypt they must have numbered about two million. 

Now I would like us to look at that call to Abraham, because it gives us an outline of what’s coming. Next time, we’re going to see a little bit more about the condition of the people in Egypt, and after that the birth of Moses. I want you to see that what we find here in these books—Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy—is what was prophesied very clearly by God to Abraham, and recorded for us in Genesis 15. This chapter describes what was probably the most significant day in the whole life of the patriarch Abraham.