The 400 year nothing

Exodus 1: 6-8
“The Joseph died, and all his brothers and all that generation. But the people of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly; they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong so the land was filled with them. Now there arose a new King over Egypt who did not know Joseph…”

If you have ever wondered about your importance in the Story of God you can discover it in the fact that over the course of these three verses 400 years passed. Think about that. We are in the year 2011 if we go back 400 years we find ourselves in the year 1611. Do you want to know some of the important things that were going on in time? In 1611 The first telescope was invented, people had just coined the word “Electric” but Ben Franklin would not discover how to use electricity until 150 years later. The King James Bible Translation was released. How many of thouest still readith that version of the Bible?

Now as we look on those events or accomplishments from a 2011 perspective we realize that the world has changed dramatically!!! So, image that God was writing a story and at one point he drops in on 1611 and tells the story of somebody inventing the telescope and then three verses later he begins telling your story in 2011 without referencing anyone in between? That’s crazy right? Think of all the “important” people and discoveries that God missed! Or did he? God doesn’t miss anything. The things that are truly important in the telling of his story, God zero’s in on with laser beam focus.

So, what does that say to how we should view our lives? For one thing I think we should stop taking ourselves so seriously! We spend so much of our time trying to climb the corporate ladder, further our education or prepare our kids for whatever we want for their future and even if we or our kids accomplishes something great, like discovering a new planet in our solar system or creating the IPad 3, if it’s not furthering God’s story, we might as well have just discovered an extra curly fry at the bottom of our Jack In A Box lunch bag. Our lives are just a blip on this planet and truthfully in grand scheme of things most of the worldly things we accomplish will have little effect in the Story of God. Sorry. Now it may have tons of effect and be of great interest to the other non-story worthy blips that will live on this planet, but truthfully it’s not that interesting to God.

Now before you go and throw yourselves off a cliff, do you want to know what is interesting to God? Look back at the verse above. In the middle of the passage he does have one sentence that describes what he took note of over that 400 years between Joseph and Moses. “…the people of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly, they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong so the land was filled with them.” Do the words “fruitful” and “multiplied” bring any other biblical references to mind? How about the very first command of God to Adam and Eve in Genesis 1:28 “Be fruitful and multiply fill the earth and subdue it…” or what he told Noah’s family after the Flood “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.” (Gen. 9:1) and in the covenant with Abraham in Genesis 17:6 what did he promise to do? “I will make you exceedingly fruitful and I will make you into nations, and kings shall come from you…”

God has always desired for his world to be filled with his people and since the fall of man his desire has not changed but how he would achieve this desire has changed because now we are born broken and so he has to fix us, for us to be his people and that is what Jesus is for. Don’t miss the main point of this multiplication. In the Old Testament covenants more Israelites born meant more people of God and the parents were to teach their children who God was. In doing so the people were fulfilling their part of the covenant with God. But, if they did not pass on their faith to their children then they would create useless generations who would forget about God and disobey him, which would lead to some catastrophic discipline by God because they were not fulfilling their end of the covenant. After the cross and resurrection, God establishes a new covenant that cuts the rest of the world in on the deal he had been giving the Jews for years and look at what he commands to his “New” people “ Go therefore and make disciples of all nations…” (matt. 28:19) or be fruitful and multiply.

God is interested in more disciples that will be saved from the punishment of hell to spend eternity in heaven with him. So, to be a part of God’s story what should we be doing? 2 Corinthians 5:18-20 lays out the story of God and his “peoples” place in it the best:

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come. The old has gone, the new is here! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us…”

Simply put God desires to see all his creation saved from their sin and back in a right relationship with him (reconciliation). We are whom he chooses to use for his marketing or we are his representatives of reconciliation. If we are not intentionally taking part in this job i.e. introducing others to God, or worse yet have no excitement or urgency in doing these things we may need to check whether we really have been reconciled ourselves.