This is Spoken Gospel.

We’re dedicated to seeing
Jesus in all of scripture.

In each episode, we see what’s happening in a Biblical text and how it sheds light on Jesus and his gospel.

Let’s jump in.

The book of Exodus picks up
right where Genesis left off.

God promised that one of Adam and Eve’s
children would reverse the curse and beat death,

so that their family line is
traced throughout Genesis in

several genealogies, including
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

God said that this line
would be so fruitful

that it would multiply and cover
the whole earth with a blessing.

But by the end of Genesis,
the promise isn’t yet fulfilled.

So, in the opening pages
of Exodus, we find that

the story isn’t over
and the promise is not lost.

Because the genealogy
that opens the book of Exodus

is Eve, Abraham, Isaac,
and Jacob’s family tree.

The promise is still active.

400 years have passed since the end of Genesis
and God’s promised people are enslaved by Egypt,

tortured by their captors, and their children are being
systematically killed by that nation’s leader, Pharaoh.

But what we should notice in
these first two chapters is that

not even Pharaoh, the ruler of Egypt,
can prevent God’s promises.

God’s people would grow abundantly and
produce the promised descendent of

Adam and Eve, no matter what
kind of evil stood against them.

Through Pharaoh’s oppression,
in fact because of it, God raises up

the deliverer for his people -
a man named Moses, whom God

will use to save his people, to deliver
them from death, and bring them to himself.

Exodus lets us see behind the
scenes of suffering and hopelessness.

It shows us that, even when things look so
terrible that they must be outside of God’s plan,

God is still working to provide for his
people and make good on his promises.

There is another place in the Bible that feels very
similar to turning the page from Genesis to Exodus.

It’s when we turn the page from what we
know as the Old Testament to the New Testament.

God’s people are, again, far from their promised
land and are under the oppression of a foreign power.

There is, again, around
400 years of waiting.

All this time has passed and people are still waiting
on the promise God made to Eve to be fulfilled.

And what happens when we turn the page and
read the first words of Matthew in the New Testament?

We see a genealogy.

The point is to show that God made good on
his promise to Eve, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob

because Jesus has come
from the same family tree.

Jesus is the one descendent of Eve, who
defeats evil and brings us back to live with God.

Much like the story of Israel in Egypt, in Jesus,
God’s plan was accomplished through suffering.

There is a murderous king, a flight to Egypt,
rejection by his people, mockery and torture

by the political powers, and
ultimately death on a cross.

But through these,
Jesus showed that

God’s plan was still working,
even in the worst circumstances.

I pray that the Holy
Spirit gives you eyes to see

the God who works all things, even
the worst things, together for good.

And may you see
Jesus as the one who fulfills

God’s promises despite
everything evil did to try to stop him.