Exodus 1:7-12 - Homiletics

God the Protector of his people.

I. THE MULTIPLICATION OF ISRAEL . All increase is of God, and comes to man by his blessing. As he gave the original command, "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth" ( Genesis 1:28 ), so he in every case gives the new lives by which the earth is replenished. "Children, and the fruit of the womb, are an heritage and gift that cometh of the Lord" ( Psalms 128:3 ). He gives or withholds offspring as he pleases; enlarges families, tribes, nations, or causes them to decline, decay, and die out. Increase is a sign of his favour—

1 . To the individual—"Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them" ( Psalms 128:5 );

2 . To the nation—" I will multiply them and they shall not be few; I will also glorify them and they shall not be small" ( Jeremiah 30:19 ); and

3 . To churches—"Walking in the fear of the Lord, and the comfort of the Holy Ghost, they were multiplied" ( Acts 9:31 ). A nation or church that increases has, so far at any rate, a sign of God's approval of it, of his favour, of his having in his eternal counsels work for it to do for him in the present and the future. One which dwindles has, on the contrary, a note of God's disapproval—at the very least, a warning that all is not with it as it should be. Nations, when they can no longer do God service, die out; churches, when they become effete and useless, have their candlesticks removed ( Revelation 2:5 ).

II. EFFECT OF PERSECUTION ON IT . Note, that the effect of persecution was the very opposite of what was intended. The more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied. So is it ever with God's people. Persecutions always "fall out for the furtherance of the Gospel" ( Philippians 1:12 ). "They which were scattered abroad upon the persecution that arose about Stephen, travelled as far as Phoenice, and Cyprus, and Antioch preaching the word" ( Acts 11:19 ). Persecution brought Paul to Rome, and enabled him to proclaim the Gospel and make many converts in the very citadel of Satan, the headquarters of the enemy. So marked was the prevalence of the law, that among the early Christians it became a proverb, that "the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the Church." After each of the ten great Imperial persecutions, the Church was found within a brief space to be more numerous than ever. And so it will be to the end. "The gates of Hell" cannot prevail against the Church. Out of the last and greatest of all the persecutions, when Antichrist shall be revealed, the Church will issue triumphant, a "great multitude, which no man can number" ( Revelation 7:9 ).