Names

Exodus 1:1-5

1 These are the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob, each with his household: 2 Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, 3 Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin, 4 Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher. 5 All the descendants of Jacob were seventy persons; Joseph was already in Egypt.

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Exodus begins with a list of names. In fact, in Hebrew that’s the title of the book: “Names.”

The story of Exodus is how those names become a nation.

God forms a people out of Abraham’s family. Here, that family is just 70 people. When the book concludes forty chapters from now, they will have become a nation. What we will see is that God’s outcomes have no relation to how things begin. Jesus makes this same point in one of his most-famous parables:

“The kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed that a man took and sowed in his field. 32 It is the smallest of all seeds, but when it has grown it is larger than all the garden plants and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches” [Matthew 13:31-32].

The good thing is that God controls the outcomes; all he asks of us is just to do the next faithful thing.

In fact, I think that’s a good way to think of the Christian life—just taking the next faithful step.

What’s your next faithful step today?