I mean, he gave us these nations and they're ours by golly.
And we like it when people worship us,
in fact, we're going to get the Israelites to worship us too.
But to get a little bit of a taste of it, because,
I don't want to miss talking about the Exodus,
which is sort of the core event of Israel's identity, even today,
without drawing attention to the fact that this was more than just a bunch of,
you know, a slave class or a servant class, leaving Egypt under the leadership of Moses.
And yes, you know, there were miraculous things that happen here.
But it's not just that they were directed against Pharaoh, and the Egyptians.
There's another layer to the sort of under the surface,
that if you're an Israelite, especially if you're closer to the events,
where you have some familiarity with Egyptian religion,
you're going to see very plainly that there's validity when God says
that he's judging the gods of Egypt, in the plagues.
I mean, there's something to that. It's not a nonspecific sweeping generalization.
If you have a knowledge of Egyptian religion,
enough so that when you read the plague narratives,
like an ancient Israelite would have,
you're going to see very plainly that this is Yahweh against the gods.
And of course, there's a clear winner here,
which really is the ultimate point of the narrative.
So we want to ask; how does the Exodus echo Eden in some respects,
(the exodus event and some of the trappings there),
and the Deuteronomy 32 world view; Yahweh against the gods.
And I want to start with Exodus 1:7, just as we hit these fundamental questions.
This doesn't sound like it would be significant, but it actually is.
Exodus 1:7 says, "But the people of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly;
they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong, so that the land was filled with them."
You say, big deal, there are lots of Israelites, I get it.
Well, if we click on "fruitful" here, that should sound familiar,
"Be fruitful and multiply."
Yes, this is the term one of the terms that is in the Edenic covenant,
and repeated several times in the Torah, for what God wanted his family to do.
"Increased greatly", is typically not the word for multiply, except in one key passage,
where the Edenic covenant is repeated, but in a special circumstance.
I'm going to search on this lemma, just to show you where this is.
Here we are in Genesis 9:7. This is when they come out of the ark,
"And you, be fruitful and multiply." There's fruitful, there's multiply.
So there's our Genesis Edenic, mandate verbs.
And then God adds, "increase greatly on the earth and multiply in it."
Do you realize what this is?
This is what God wanted after the flood, before the Babel debacle.
This is what he wants. When does God finally get it? When do we finally see it?
In Egypt. Okay, God providentially allows Jacob, you know,
we say, well, Jacob was wrong by leaving Canaan and going to Egypt.
No. Yes, we understand Canaan was the promised land,
and so on and so forth. And they're going to get there.
But God actually tells him, if you read the Joseph's story,
God actually says it's okay to go down there because
he has put Joseph there for this specific reason; to keep them alive,
along with lots of other people.
Isn't it interesting that God would want his people and people of all nations alive?
And well?
Isn't that interesting? I think we've heard that before.
But he tells Jacob to go down to Egypt where they have food.
The problem was that they don't return home.
In other words, they settle in Goshen and stay,
and they don't go to the land of promise and fulfill the command
that God gave Noah and his sons when they came out of the Ark.
Now it happens, that they multiply an increase greatly in Egypt.
So God is still working what he wants done, even when they're not obedient.
And God even has a purpose in that.
Remember when God talked to Abraham in Genesis 15. And he said,
"Look, Abraham, let me give you a little hint of the future here,
your descendants are going to go down to Egypt.
And they're going to be there for 400 years.
And you know, I'm going to let them down there, I'm going to let that happen.
Because the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.
Now, we could take a little rabbit trail on the Amorites,
we're not going to take time to do that. This is really Unseen Realm 2 stuff.
But you've already heard me say when we had the Genesis 6 sessions,
that the Amorites are a big deal. Because they are crucial to understanding
the population of Canaan prior to the conquest under Moses and Joshua,
and the whole giant clan thing.
So God is waiting for the right time to go in and clean house in Canaan.
He's telling Abraham this, these things are telegraphed.
Again, it's another indication if you understand the whole Amorite issue.
That the logic, the rationale of the conquest, in terms of the elimination
is specifically aimed at eliminating the chaos agents;
those peoples who were identified with the Genesis 6 episode,
the Babylonian motif of chaos, all this kind of stuff.
Because that's what the Genesis 6 thing is about.
The Apkallu story being the backdrop of that.
All of these things intertwine together, they are not accidental.
Most of them we can't detect, because we're either reading just the English Bible,
or we've been taught not to see them.
Because we've become selectively supernatural in our reading of Scripture.
But here we are in Egypt. And God looks at the situation and says,
Now I've got what I want; I've got my people multiplied. They've increased greatly.
The iniquity of the Amorites is just about full. So let's go. Let's go.
Let's put the plan in motion. So who is Israel?
They are the remnant that God wants of his Edenic family.
Especially after God divorced the nations at Babel.
God starts over with a new humanity, a new family with Abraham, and his seed.
That's these people. That's Israel.
This is why Israel is going to be called in the Exodus story, the 'Son of God'.
Hey, we'll get to that in a moment. Israel's in Egypt. Who are Israel's enemies?
Obviously, the Egyptians, and we're going to see lots of other people too.
But these are seed thoughts to help you sort of read the Exodus a little differently.
Maybe not differently, but a little more richly, a little more deeply.
Because if... let me just rabbit trail here a little bit,
because if the powers of darkness understand what's going on,
and they do, they know God hasn't given up on Eden.
They know God has a new people called Israel.
They know God wants to take them back to Canaan,
to kickstart this silly nonsense and this Edenic vision,
and to use Cannan as a beachhead to really hone in on our turf now.
I mean, "he gave us these nations and they're ours by golly.
And we like when people worship us,
in fact, we're going to get the Israelites to worship us too."
I mean all these spiritual warfare currents are running underneath.
So the gods of Egypt aren't interested in having Israel go home.
They're not interested in Yahweh's program.
And they need to be dealt with, and they're going to be dealt with.