The evil that slipped through the Flood created the enemies of Israel throughout their history. Yet despite the Satanic opposition God, using real people who made real mistakes, formed the beginnings of the Nation of Israel through Abraham, Isaac and Jacob (later renamed Israel). However, without Jacob, a manifestation of Christ on the earth, the small race would have been destroyed. Joseph, after being imprisoned for 11 years (“Until the time that his word came to pass, The word of the Lord tested [refined him] him” Psalm 105:19) was raised to the throne of Pharaoh and saved his family so they could become a great nation. You don’t see God moving through all the surrounding pagan nations but you find Him moving through Israel His chosen people.
God was true to His word and remained faithful revealing His Son on earth at the chosen time to bring salvation to all His people.
Introduction to Moses
Moses was the deliverer, leader, lawgiver, and prophet of Israel. He was the greatest man of God in the earth until Christ. The name in Heb. is mōsheh (“drawn out”), but the original is Egyptian ms˒, a “child,” a “son,” reflecting that Pharaoh’s daughter simply named him “child” (cf. Thutmose, Ahmose, etc., in which the same element appears frequently in Egyptian names). Thutmose=“Son of Thot,” etc. Moses belonged to the tribe of Levi, and was the son of Amram by his wife Jochebed. The other members of the family were Aaron and Miriam, his elder brother and sister. The life of Moses is divided into three equal portions of forty years each (Acts 7:23, 30, 36): his life in Egypt, exile in Arabia, and government of Israel. The books of Moses are full of references to Christ. The book contains no direct prophecies, but it is full of previews or pictures called types. Typology is the study of these fore glimpses of Christ and the Christian age. Persons, places, objects and even events can be typical of New Testament realities. A type is more than just an analogy between something in the Old Testament and something in the New. A type was created by God with the intention of foreshadowing the coming age. Without revelation the certain identification of types is impossible. In other words, only those persons, places, objects or events of the Old Testament, which are identified as types in the New Testament, can strictly speaking be classified as such. Some of the more outstanding types referred to are the following:
1. Aaron, or at least the office of high priest which he occupied. The writer of Hebrews repeatedly refers to the ministry of Aaron and the more glorious ministry of the Christian high priest Jesus Christ.
2. Paul saw the crossing of the Red Sea as a type of baptism in 1 Corinthians 10:2.
3. The Passover lamb clearly depicted the Lamb of God. Paul declared that Christ is the Christian’s Passover (1 Cor 5:7).
4. The wilderness manna was typical of the bread from heaven which Jesus declared himself to be (John 6:48–51).
5. The rock from which water sprang forth pointed forward to the water of life supplied by Christ (1 Cor 10:4).
6. The grand type in Exodus is the Tabernacle which Israel constructed at Sinai. While some have carried the typology of the Tabernacle to extremes, the New Testament does make clear that certain aspects of this structure were typical. These are:
1. The bronze altar. Hebrews declares that Christ is the Christian’s altar (Heb 13:10).
2. The bronze laver is used in Titus 3:5 to portray baptism.
3. The incense altar points to the prayers of the saints of God (Rev 8:3–4).
4. The golden lampstand points to Christ the light of the world, and to the Christians who reflect that light.
5. The table of showbread seems to be a type of Christ, the bread of life, and of the Lord’s table which commemorates the body and blood of the Lord (1 Cor 10:21).
6. The holy of holies was a picture of heaven into which the Christian’s high priest, Jesus, has entered upon his ministry (Heb 9:24; 10:34) (typology from Smith, J. E. (1993). The Pentateuch (2nd ed.).
As we have previously noted through the efforts of Joseph the small band of Israelites. Then consisting only of Jacob, his sons and their families and servants and maids were given use of a fertile piece of land in Goshen, Egypt, through the generosity of the Pharaoh at that time. They were to remain there for 430 years. However in the later part of that period Egypt began to fear Israel, who had grown in numbers into a nation. They feared Israel might turn on them. So they made them slaves building various types of structures for the Egyptians. It was at that time they began to cry out to God who heard them and sent a deliverer--Moses.
The sons of Israel had been fruitful in Egypt and increased greatly, and multiplied, and became exceedingly mighty, so that the land was filled with them. But a new generations of Kings arose over Egypt, who did not know Joseph. The Pharaoh said to his people, “Behold, the people of the sons of Israel are more and mightier than we. “Come, let us deal wisely with them, or else they will multiply and in the event of war, they will also join themselves to those who hate us, and fight against us and depart from the land.”So they appointed taskmasters over them to afflict them with hard labor. And they built for Pharaoh storage cities, Pithom and Raamses. But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and the more they spread out, so that they were in dread of the sons of Israel” (Exodus 1:8-12).
So fearing the Israelites the Pharaoh ordered all the first born boys to be killed. Note the similarity to Christ’s birth wherein King Herod ordered all the first born in Bethlehem to be killed as he feared a King had been born who would take his thrown (known as the “slaughter of the innocents”). However jesus escaped this fate when taken to Egypt until Herod died. Moses Mother, unable to hide her new born Moses, got a wicker basket and covered it over with tar and pitch. Then she put the child into it and set it among the reeds by the bank of the Nile. By chance (divine intention) the daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the Nile and she saw the basket among the reeds and sent her maid, and she brought it to her. When she opened it, she saw the child, and behold, the boy was crying. And she had pity on him and said, “This is one of the Hebrews’ children.” She gave the baby back to his mother to nurse for a time then took the child for her own. The child grew, and she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter and he became her son. And she named him Moses, [Heb Mosheh, from mashah] and said, “Because I drew him out of the water” (Exodus 2:1-10).
When Moses had grown up, he went out to his Israelite brethren and looked on their hard labors; and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew. So he struck down and killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. When he discovered that the murder had became known he fled as the Pharaoh sought to kill him. He fled into Midian in the desert. Moses was about 40 at this time so he had been born and raised an Egyptian and knew their ways (Ex 2:11-15). Moses found favor with a Midianite tribe and married the chief’s daughter Zipporah. He had a son Gershon and stayed with his father-in-law and the Midianites for 40 years tending their sheep.
“Now it came about in the course of those many days that the king of Egypt died. And the sons of Israel sighed because of the bondage, and they cried out; and their cry for help because of their bondage rose up to God. So God heard their groaning; and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God saw the sons of Israel, and God took notice of them” (Ex 2:23-25).
“Now Moses was pasturing the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian; and he led the flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God (the same mountain from which he was later to give the Law, also called Mt. Sinai). The angel of the Lord appeared to him in a blazing fire from the midst of a bush; and he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, yet the bush was