Exodus 01: God Frees His People

A new Pharaoh rises, forgets Joseph, and turns fear into policy and the result is slavery, oppression, and a shocking command aimed at wiping out a generation. We slow down in Exodus chapter 1 to see what’s really happening beneath the surface and why this ancient story still reads like a mirror for modern life. When power feels threatened, it often tries to control the vulnerable, rewrite the past, and call injustice “security.” Exodus refuses to sanitize any of it, and that honesty is part of what makes it hope-filled. 

We also zoom out to why Exodus is a cornerstone for Bible study and Christian faith. We talk about Moses and the setting of the book, then connect the dots to the themes that shape the rest of Scripture: God’s redemption and deliverance, covenant relationship, holiness, and God’s presence with his people. Along the way we preview why the plagues are more than spectacle, how Passover becomes the foundation for understanding Jesus as the Lamb of God, and why the tabernacle points to God dwelling with his people, all the way to Revelation. 

Most of all, Exodus 1 raises a personal question: what do you do when you’re living with consequences you didn’t cause? If you’ve carried the weight of someone else’s choices, loss, betrayal, sickness, or a situation that feels unfair, this chapter meets you there. We end with prayer and a simple promise rooted in Exodus: God sees you, and God frees his people. Subscribe, share this with a friend who needs hope, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

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Scripture quotations taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation (NLT).
Copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation.
Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

Transcript

Welcome To Bible Breakdown

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hey everyone and welcome to the Bible Breakdown Podcast. In this podcast, we will be breaking down the Bible one chapter a day. Whether you are a new believer or have been following Christ for a while, we believe that you will learn something new and fresh every single day. So thank you for joining us and let's get into breaking down the Bible together.

Launching Exodus And Big Themes

SPEAKER_01 0:23

Well, hello everybody. Welcome back to the Bible Breakdown Podcast with your host, Pastor Brandon. Today, Exodus chapter one. Today's title is God Frees His People. God Frees His People. I have been looking forward to the book of Exodus for a long time. So many reasons why. There's so many things that we will explore throughout the rest of the Bible that we see in Genesis and Exodus. And I can't wait. We're going to learn more about why when the Bible talks about over and over again about Jesus being the Lamb of God, we're going to find out about it in the book of Genesis, uh, Exodus. We want to know about what this Passover thing was, like the celebration that Jesus was celebrating, the feast he was celebrating on the night that he was arrested, happens in the book of Exodus for the very first time. Just so many things happen in the book of Exodus, along with we get to find out the covenant name of God. The name of God that is so powerful, that is so sacred, that Orthodox Jewish people to this day will not say out loud. They won't even spell it. And I can't wait. I can't wait to talk about it. Can you tell? Can you tell I'm a little bit excited? So if you have your Bibles, you got your coffee. It's the first part of a book, which means we're going to dive deep for just a few moments. Make sure you get all that ready to go. And also take just a moment, like, share, subscribe to the YouTube channel and the podcast. Make sure you leave us a five-star review on the podcast. It really does help. And make sure you're going to the Bible breakdown discussion on Facebook. There's an amazing group of people writing devotions every single day. We want to engage with you. So make sure you're commenting on those. You're sharing those with different people. And you can get the links to all of that at thebiblebreakdown.com. Let's dive into the book of Exodus.

Authorship And Historical Setting

SPEAKER_01 2:09

The book of Exodus is very, very important because of what it sets up. And so we're going to break this down about the whole idea of where we are, what's going on, and all that kind of good stuff. Okay, so here we go. First of all, it was written by Moses or scribes under his direction. So either it would have been a situation where Moses is literally with, you know, with parchment and he's he's writing it down, you know, and he's kind of scrolling it out, or he would have people who would listen to him and he would dictate it. So one of the one of the ways that's what would be going on. It was written likely in the wilderness during the Israel's uh journey from Egypt. So it's thought by a lot of people that Genesis would have been written, you know, right there at the foot of Mount Sinai, just kind of riding through that. Exodus would have likely either been written at the same time or within a couple of years afterward, which would have been, you know, to the Israelites around 1446, 1400 BC. So we're talking about, you know, if if this is 200, you know, 26, then this was written in 1400. So you kind of do that math. You got 2000 before Christ, you got 1500 after Christ, or 1400 before Christ, 2000 after. So that's about 3,400 years ago. That's a long time ago, right? But they're writing about how they got there. Because remember, Genesis was all about creation. Well, Exodus is about what just got through happening to them and making sure that it is written down because the people who would have heard this the first time, they were there when it happened. So they're like, yeah, that's exactly the way it happened. So here's some of the background.

Why Plagues And Passover Matter

SPEAKER_01 3:52

The big idea of Exodus is it tells God's sovereign plan of creation, of covenant, and redemption. So it's continuing that story that started in Genesis. It's taking the next step with it about how God keeps his promise to the Jewish nation. And then he also redeems them, he liberates them from Egyptian bondage. Exodus reminds us, this is why we should read it today. Exodus reminds us that God delivers all of us from bondage, that he has the ability physically, spiritually, and eternally, that God is a God of complete and total redemption. Things to notice. Here's some things. There's so much going on in the book of Exodus that we're going to miss a lot of it, which is why we'll have to go back in and do these again. But for this time, I want you to notice, number one, God's power over the plagues. Now, I cannot wait to get into this when we get into this, but there is a very particular reason why God did what he did. You ever wondered why in the world would God do all these plagues? Why would he do that, was it nine, 10 different plagues? Why would he do that? Why don't he just, you know, you got Charlton Heston up there going, Moses, you know, and he's like, set my people free and all this kind of stuff. And you just think, you know, no. Instead, you know, you've got Yule Brenner and Charlton Heston, that's only for the old people, who are debating back and forth, and there's all these different plagues. Well, I can't help it. I got to go ahead and tell you. The the plagues represented the what they attacked, like the, like, you know, the the boils, the the night, the toads, the things, they represented a god or goddess of Egypt. You know, Egypt was a polytheistic culture, and they would have all these different gods that they would worship, the Nile River, Pharaoh himself. And so what God was doing every single time is he wasn't just showing his power, he was showing Israelites and Egypt who was more powerful. It's like every one of the plagues was a showdown between God and their supposed God, and he was just picking them off one after another. The biggest gods they had. He said, I'm bigger than this one, I'm bigger than this one, I'm bigger than this one. That was the reason God was showing himself to be supreme. Okay, you can tell I'm excited about Exodus. The other thing is that it shows us where Passover comes from and that it points to Jesus. And man, it's about building the tabernacle. Moses gets a pattern of what he sees in heaven and he builds it on earth. And there's so much more to the tabernacle than we realize. Not only is it God setting up a place, a kind of an oasis where people can meet with him, there's so much that we don't also realize that it also looks an awful lot like what it would be when Pharaoh would go and would go on a journey. When they would go on a journey, they would set it up. They would set up kind of his royal court on the road. It looked a lot like the tabernacle. What God was showing them, because they would have recognized this, is that the king is among you. And because what they would do is they would set the tabernacle in the middle. And so it just means

Tabernacle And God’s Presence

SPEAKER_01 6:58

so much more. Okay, the next thing, key themes. God's redemption and deliverance. That God is a God who saves and delivers. Covenant relationship, that God kept his word. Over 400 years, he kept his word. God's presence among his people, that's what the tabernacle was all about, and worship and holiness. We're gonna get to see a moment. I can't wait to get to this moment when the Bible says that God comes down onto Mount Sinai. And when he comes down on Mount Sinai, just the way the earth reacts to the raw presence of God, that there's lightnings and thunder and a dark cloud, and it's just the static electricity of God invading. Because you got to think, God sits outside of time and space. And so when he comes into time and space, that the very air interacts with the presence of the Creator. And we get to see that as we're reading in the book of Exodus when he comes down on the mount. I can't, I can't wait to get to that one. All right, background, background.

God’s Name And Covenant Identity

SPEAKER_01 7:55

Elsewhere in the world, this was written during a time when Egypt was the dominant superpower over the world. Pharaoh was thought to be the most powerful person in the world to the point that they worshipped him as a god. And also, God demonstrates his supremacy over Pharaoh and all the Egyptian gods. And so that's why it's so important to realize that at the time there is no power greater than that of Egypt. And then God comes along, right? So here we go. Interesting facts. It continues the Genesis story. The word Exodus actually means a way out, it means deliverance. And so it could have very well to the to the people that would have been reading this in the time, Genesis means the beginning. Exodus means deliverance. So they read the beginning, then they read the deliverance. All right, God reveals his name, Yahweh. And so what we're going to see after this, it is a tantrummaton. We'll get to that later. But it's a yud, he, vav, he. It's the letters that we say in English, Yahweh. And then because we say our Ys and our J's a little bit differently in English and in Hebrew, that's where you get Jehovah, which is makes me so sad for Jehovah's Witness people. They don't realize they're actually saying it wrong. God's covenant name is not Jehovah. It's actually Yahweh or Yahweh, Yahweh. That's actually how you say his name. And because it is so sacred that Jewish people don't even say the name Yahweh. Like they're mad at me right now if you're an Orthodox Jew and you're hearing me say this. Don't worry, I'm saying this with the utmost of respect. But they won't even spell it. They'll do G-D. They'll say Adonai. Or they'll say, or they will say Hereshim. If I can't hardly say Herashim, which means the name. So they're they're referring to God, but they just, his name is too holy. And so they they won't actually say his name out loud. But we get to discover his name in just a few chapters. It introduces the Passover fulfillment in Christ. We get to see the Ten Commandments, since we got this moment of Charlton Heston coming down, you know, and he's showing everybody the Ten Commandments written by the very finger of God. It connects to Revelation, the book of Revelation, because it's God dwelling with his people. And we get to see the heavenly tabernacle, the temple of God in the book of Revelation. And then the tabernacle symbolizes God's presence. And that we now, according to the New Testament, we are the earthly tabernacle, that we now are part of God's presence here on earth. All right, one

Why Read Exodus Today

SPEAKER_01 10:22

more. We're going to start reading. Why? Why should we be reading the book of Exodus? There's so many reasons why, but if you think about it, this was written around 1400 BC. It's 2026 now. So, you know, we're talking about a long time ago. Why should we still care about it? Here's four reasons we're going to jump in. Exodus teaches us the meaning of true freedom. It teaches us that God cares about our freedom. And that even if it takes longer than we think, God is still faithful. Here's another one. God reveals who He is in times of crisis. When everything was going wrong, God stepped in. We're going to see so many different times throughout the book of Exodus when the nation of Israel couldn't help themselves at their back up against, literally back up against the Red Sea. And God makes a way. And if God will do it for them, he'll do it for us too. Here's another one. Exodus explains the foundations of justice, morality, and human dignity. When we get to the part where God says, okay, I need you guys to not kill each other. So I'm going to establish some ways that you're going to honor me and establish some ways you're going to honor one another. And we get to that later in Leviticus and Deuteronomy again, all that kind of stuff. Deuteronomy is actually retelling what he's going to tell us in the book of uh in the book of Exodus. But what he's doing is, is for the time, there's people now who look back at the book of Exodus and they go, man, that seemed kind of archaic. That seemed kind of crazy. Well, for the time, it was considered revolutionary. He said, What? I mean, it was it would have considered to be the most freeing document ever, according to the time. Here's one more. Exodus points forward to Christ and redemption. So let's not wait anymore. Let's jump into the book of Exodus.

Exodus 1 Reading And Oppression

SPEAKER_01 12:06

Here we go. Exodus chapter one says this. These are the names of the son of Israel, that is Jacob, who moved to Egypt with their father, each with his family. Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Zebulon, Benjamin, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher. In all, Jacob had seventy descendants in Egypt, including Joseph, who was already there. In time, Joseph and all his brothers died, ending that entire generation. But their descendants, the Israelites, had many children and grandchildren. In fact, they multiplied so greatly that they became extremely powerful and filled the land. Eventually the king, a new king, came to power in Egypt, who knew nothing about Joseph or what he had done. We'll get back to that in a moment. Verse nine. He said to his people, Look, the people of Israel now outnumber us and are stronger than we are. We must make a plan to keep them from growing even more. If we don't, and if war breaks out, they will join our enemies and fight against us. Then they will escape from the country. So the Egyptians made the Israelites their slaves. They appointed brutal slave drivers over them, hoping to wear them down in crushing labor. They forced them to build the cities of Pithom and Ramses as supply centers for the king. But the more the Egyptians oppressed them, the more the Israelites multiplied and spread, and the more alarmed the Egyptians became. So the Egyptians worked the people of Israelite without mercy. They made their lives bitter, forcing them to mix mortar and make bricks and do all the work of the fields, and the ruthless in all their demands. Then Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, gave this order to the Hebrew midwives, Sira, Sephra and Puah, When you help the Hebrew women as they give birth, watch as they deliver. If they deliver a boy, kill him. If it's a girl, let her live. But because the midwives feared God, they refused to obey the king's orders, and they allowed the boys to live too. So the E the king of Egypt called for the midwives. Why have you done this? they demanded. Why have you allowed the boys to live? The Hebrew women were not like the Egyptian women, the midwives replied. They are more vigorous and have their babies so quickly that we cannot get there in time. So God was good to the midwives, and the Israelites continued to multiply, growing more and more powerful. And because the midwives fear God, they gave them families of their own. And then Pharaoh gave this order to the people throw every newborn Hebrew boy into the Nile River, but you may let the girls live.

Egypt’s Dynasty Shift And Slavery

SPEAKER_01 15:00

Wow. What a start. So what's happening in this? Well, the Bible tells us that Jacob had moved down to Egypt, and all the family had moved down to Egypt. But then after a while, as time goes on, Jacob died. The original, you know, twelve tribes of Israel, though those men, they died, and Joseph was well known. But here's what happened in the background. In the background, over the next several years, Egypt went through a little bit of a civil war. Because what had happened is that different people that were not native Egyptians had started coming to power. And the those who were like considered to be like multi-generational Egyptians, they started to feel like that their country and their way of life had been tainted because of people like Joseph who'd come in and he didn't worship their gods. He worshiped Yahweh. And so there ended up being this civil war, and a new dynasty called the Hyksas dynasty came to power. And as they came to power, they didn't know about the old regime. They didn't like the old regime. Joseph represented the old way. And so they're trying to get back to more Egyptian style, where the Egyptians are in charge, the Egyptians are doing everything. And so, and they they are not for Joseph because Joseph was part of the other dynasty. And so as they're looking around, they're going, okay, well, we're looking to, you know, just make sure this is all Egyptians all the time. And they're seeing this massively growing people group that were part of the old dynasty. So if you think about it, what would you do, right? And in a perfect world, we would have made peace with them. But instead, they're going, those all are our enemies. So we better, we better beat them up before they beat us up, right? That's what they decide to do. It's horrible, it's wrong, but that's what they did. And so they put them under forced labor. But the Bible says, as we just saw, that the more they they tried to destroy them, the more they grew, because God's hand of blessing was on them until they tried to sabotage them in every possible way. But then when the midwife said, Well, we are going to honor God rather than honor what this king is telling us to do, God blessed them as well. So that's actually how they ended up in slavery because of something that they didn't do anything about. Because of the civil war that happened in Egypt, new dynasty comes around along, and now they have to deal with the ramifications of what somebody else did. And so that's my question for us today.

When You Pay For Others’ Choices

SPEAKER_01 17:20

Have you ever been there? Have you ever been in a place where you're having to face the consequences of somebody else's bad decision? Let's think about it. Maybe you come from a divorce family. You were one of the kids. You didn't do that. You didn't make the choices your parents made, but you're having to live out the consequences. What if you were in a divorce, but you're the innocent spouse? You you didn't make their choice. You're having to live with it. Maybe you're someone it wasn't about a choice. It was it was about something devastating. Maybe you're dealing with a with a health issue, dealing with cancer, dealing with the the death of a loved one, something that you had nothing to do with, but yet you're having to live with the ramifications of it. You ever been there? You know one of the things I love about the Bible is the Bible just tells the truth. It it doesn't paint these pictures of God's people always going through great times, but it actually is painting the picture that they didn't do anything wrong, but they're having to face the consequences for other people's bad actions. And here's the thing if that's you, God sees you. God saw the nation of Israel. God had a plan to deliver the nation of Israel. It took longer than they would have wanted, they had to go through more than they wanted, but on the other side is a story and a blessing that we still benefit from today. And so here's my encouragement to you. What if, what if God sees you? I know he does, but what if he hasn't forgotten about you? And that maybe it's going to take longer than you would like. Maybe the journey will be longer than you would like. But it will end off in a beautiful story if you don't let go of trusting in the Lord. Because God sees us, and God always frees his

Prayer And Promise Of Freedom

SPEAKER_01 19:07

people. Let's pray together right now. God, thank you so much for today. Thank you for the book of Exodus. Thank you because it reminds us that you see us and that in this world bad things do happen to good people. But you are for us and not against us. I pray that today, God, that you will give us, Lord, the ability to see. To see that this wasn't written to us, but it was written for us. For an example of what you do in the lives of those who put their hope in you. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. And amen. Well, God's word says in Exodus chapter 6, verse 6, it says, I will free you from your oppression, and I will rescue you from slavery. Whatever has you bound today, God wants to set you free. I love you. I'll see you tomorrow for Exodus chapter 2.