Episode 1– God Grows His Kingdom through Families

Blessings in the Lord! Welcome to our maiden episode of Keys for Kingdom Living. My name is Dr. Crystal Morla. I have a Ph.D. in psychology, and I am Bible teacher. I love to look at the scriptures to see what God is doing to fulfill his salvation plans on earth and in heaven and its impact on our hearts as he reveals himself to us personally. I am overjoyed to serve as your host and guide to unlocking spiritual truths in God’s Word.

The title of today’s message is God Grows His Kingdom Through Families. I hope you will be encouraged as we look at one passage from God’s Word today. Whether you’re at home, watching your children, having a cup of coffee or tea like I am here, or listening as you drive to work, my hope is that for the next few minutes, your eyes will be lifted upward to see God and what he’s doing, not only in history, but in your life personally today. As we ponder precious truths about God and his kingdom, it is my hope that his kingdom come more deeply in our hearts and minds to help us strive to take hold of the abundant life we have in Christ, one day at a time. May God give us daily bread as we open up his word now…and give me good words to speak through this tea [drinking].

So today we will see how God uses the blessing of family to bring about his great plan of salvation in our homes and in the world. If you have your Bibles out, let’s open up the passage. That’s Exodus chapter 1, verses 1 through 7. And we read,

These are the names of the sons of Israel who went to Egypt with Jacob, each with his family. Reuben, Simeon, Levi and Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin, Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher. The descendants of Jacob numbered 70 in all, Joseph was already in Egypt. Now Joseph and all his brothers in that generation had died, but the Israelites were exceedingly fruitful. They multiplied greatly, increased in numbers, and became so numerous that the land was filled with them.

This passage begins with a summary of the sons of Israel. These are the names of the sons of Israel who went to Egypt with Jacob, each with his family, Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin, Dan and Naphtali, Gad, and Asher. Let’s look at that list of names. That’s an interesting passage. Israel, also known as Jacob, was the third patriarch or third head father of the family after his father Isaac and his grandfather Abraham, who was first to inherit God’s covenant blessings.

To appreciate the significance of the covenant blessings as they relate to Jacob having 12 sons, let’s take a look at Genesis 12 to see the beginning of the covenant blessing that God gave to his grandfather Abraham. Let’s read Genesis chapter 12 verse 2:

The Lord said to Abram, go from your country, your people, and your father’s household to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you.

And more specifically, as it relates to growing Abraham’s family, let’s read from Genesis chapter 22, verse 17:

I will surely bless you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on the seashore.

Wow! God painted an incredible picture of blessing for Abraham and for all his descendants to come. God promised Abraham that if he left his nation and his father’s household to go to the land God had showed him, that he would make Abraham into a great nation, that his descendant’s numbers would be as vast as the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore. Let’s look at this photo. Here’s a picture of the Milky Way in the Canadian Rockies. Recently, my husband and I visited and stayed over at Moraine Lake, and we were awestruck at nighttime when we looked up into the sky and saw the Milky Way. If you’d like to see more of this picture, please go to my website at crystalmorla.com. Or you can click on the link in the notes below to see the photo attached to this podcast episode.

Anyway, God gave Abraham an out-of-this-world outrageous promise. Astronomers estimate that there are about 200 billion trillion stars in the universe that we can see from the Earth. Another trivial fact, there are about 8 billion people in the world with a new baby born about every two seconds. Even more amazingly, researchers estimate that between 100 billion to 117 billion people have ever lived on Earth. Even those numbers are mind-boggling when we realize that over 100 billion people have lived on the face of the Earth since time began. And this is likely an underestimate since it’s difficult to count people in prehistoric times when writing and records were not kept. So God’s promise of such an astronomical number begins to look a little bit more possible.

Honestly, all things are possible with God, right? But the daunting promise to make Abraham’s descendants more numerous than the stars leads to a more profound question. And that is, why did God make such an incredible promise to expand Abraham’s family beyond what we can imagine? More on that in a moment.

So, God gave a covenant of blessing to Jacob’s grandfather, Abraham, and it was passed on to his father, Isaac, and then to Jacob. Now, at this juncture, as we look into the book of Exodus, we see that verses 1 through 4, Jacob, or as God renamed him– Israel’s [Jacob’s] 12 sons are named. Hence, the famous 12 sons would later become the 12 tribes of the great and mighty nation of God called, you guessed it, Israel. The nation is the namesake of God’s beloved servant Israel.

Israel means struggles with God and prevails. Linguistically, it’s a combination of two words, Yisra and El, from which Yisra, we get the retention of fluid, which makes an object stand upright. And then the word El for God. So we see this new name, Israel, meant that Jacob had been made righteous by God or that he had become to be upright before God. And so Jacob goes from being a trickster, his old name, to being a man who is righteous and a blessing in his lifetime.

So we see that God gave him this covenant promise of expanding his family in numbers. Let’s take a look at verse 5. The descendants of Jacob numbered 70 in all. Joseph was already in Egypt. We see the covenant promise that God originally gave to Abraham, then Isaac, and Jacob starting to take shape. Jacob had 12 sons in his lifetime that grew into a clan of 70 people. So Jacob’s family grew more than five times in size from the time that they relocated to Egypt until the death of their father.

Next, in verse 6, we learn that Jacob’s sons, including Joseph, and all his brothers in that generation died off. After Joseph dies, we see God accelerate growth to make Jacob’s family super-numerous, and God refers to Jacob’s descendants as Israelites. In verse 7, we read,

But the Israelites were exceedingly fruitful. They multiplied greatly, increased in numbers, and became so numerous that the land was filled with them.

Only God can bless the fruit of the womb in this way. This is after Israel grew to be a nation. A passage from Isaiah 66, 8 and 9 describes this miraculous blessing of God’s fulfillment of his plan to grow his people this way. Let’s read Isaiah chapter 66, verse 8 and 9:

Who has ever heard of such things? who has ever seen things like this?
Can a country be born in a day or a nation be brought forth in a moment?
Yet no sooner is Zion [Israel] in labor than she gives birth to her children.

There again we see only God can boast on the speed with which he grew and turned Israel into a nation through the fruit of the wombs of mothers. Remember the question I asked about why did God make such an incredible promise to expand Abraham’s family beyond what we can count or imagine? We see here, in the same passage of Isaiah 66, verse 9, the answer to that question. In fact, in verse 9, the prophet Isaiah concludes, with God asking his people this question. Verse 9:

Do I bring to the moment of birth and not give delivery, says the Lord?– Isaiah 66, 8 and 9

God’s covenant blessing to make Abraham’s descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky is astounding, but even greater and more heartwarming is God’s promise that despite the darkness in the world and in our own hearts due to sin, God kept his promise to establish a people for himself as part of God’s family and to deliver his people through Jesus, who descended through the family line of Israel and became a savior for all the nations. Anyone from every race, creed, and color who believes in Jesus’ crucifixion, death, and resurrection, that it paid for our sins, has become one nation under God. God cares very deeply for every life that is born. He has given those who acknowledge him through accepting Jesus Christ as Lord, a double blessing. In the same moment that we accept Christ as Lord, we are both born again into God’s greater family and delivered from the judgment that our sins bring.

It’s wonderful. It’s a wonderful thing to take part in God’s greater salvation plan by giving birth and raising a family. As parents, we can co-work with the Lord who compels us to pray and share God’s word and his love with our sons and daughters. Let’s read the final verse in Exodus chapter 1, verse 7. Verse 7:

But the Israelites were exceedingly fruitful. they multiplied greatly, increased in numbers, and became so numerous that the land was filled with them.

Verse 7 begins with the word but. But is a clause that usually indicates an exception to the rule. And in the Bible, it is used in many cases when God acts exceptionally above and beyond what we expect. In such situations, God defies the rules of nature as we know it.

So what did God do? Despite the fact that Jacob’s family, who God now refers to as Israel, was a minority living in Goshen on the outskirts of a powerful nation, Egypt, who ruled over them, verse 7 tells us that Israel became exceedingly fruitful, multiplied greatly, increased in numbers, and became so numerous in the land that it was filled with them. About 400 years or four generations after Jacob and his sons died, Israel had grown from a clan of 70 people to a sprawling company of people who filled up the land of Goshen. By the time they left Egypt, it is written in Exodus 12:37 that there were roughly 600,000 men on foot. Most Bible commentaries add that by the time they left Egypt, they numbered 2 million people, when you include women and children.

Have any of you experienced a surge in growth in numbers of your family through the generations? You know, in earlier years of my marriage, before I was submitted to following Christ, we prevented ourselves from becoming pregnant so I could finish my education. But God was merciful, and I was able to conceive after I finished. Then after having my miracle baby, I decided to put children on hold again so I could enjoy raising my son and work part-time. I didn’t know at that time that he would be my only child. If it was left to me in those early years, I would have gotten in the way of God’s plan for my family to grow.

For the last five years, I have prayed for God to increase my family so that the legacy of faith would continue in my family beyond my son. But it was not until my son prayed for God to show him who to marry that God moved. I’m happy to say that now my son is engaged to a young Christian woman from the Philippines who has a very big family both there and in the United States. And so nothing is impossible with God. We are just a family of three. But through this union, his family is already increasing greatly, both in two countries, in the Philippines and in the United States.

God is full of grace and mercy. His greater plan is always salvation and deliverance. He is building his kingdom one family at a time. He invites us to co-work through raising our children to know Christ and proclaim His goodness. But God is not confined to working only through biological families. He works through Christian families who are part of the church, Sunday school teachers, Bible teachers, shepherds, mentors, and those who share their homes and their faith through adopting children.

The next time you feel drained and weary from chasing, disciplining, and providing care for your children or someone else’s children, or from sacrificing to work long hours to provide financially for your family, just remember it’s a cross and a blessing that you share for Christ’s sake, for his people, especially young people, as you pray for strength to love them with Jesus’ love.

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Let’s pray. Lord, I thank you for your mercy to a sinner like me. Despite years of not offering my family plans to you, you are expanding my tent of family. Lord, help me to see your greater kingdom plans as higher, wider, and more vast than any smaller desire that I may have. Help me to submit and wait on you to care for my family and dwell in the land of this increasingly less god-fearing culture. Make your people like the descendants of Jacob who were small in number and prayed to hold on to your promise to make them a great nation in the midst of their enemies. Thank you, Father, that your plans never fail despite our weakness and how we fail you. You are patient and compassionate. Lord, may you hear the prayers today of those who are praying for a prodigal son or daughter. Lord, may you call this young person to yourself. May they see them come to faith and life in Christ as their Lord, in their lifetime even. And Lord may you hear the prayers today of those who may want to conceive and raise a family of faith. May you make them able to be fruitful and conceive or fruitful with whoever you give them to serve, Lord. And even if the answer is wait or no to being able to bear children may we all know that your answer is always yes and amen as you turn our heart to be in line with your salvation plans to grow your kingdom. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.

Thank you for listening today. I hope you found a word of encouragement from today’s passage on Exodus chapter 1 verses 1 through 6. Join me again next week when I look at the next passage in Exodus chapter 1 verses 8 through 22 where we see God continuing to expand his kingdom despite great threat and a plan of male genocide against the Israelites.

If you enjoyed this video be sure to click the like button below and subscribe. You can also listen to the Keys for the Kingdom Living podcast, along with other truths and resources you can find on my website at crystalmorla.com.

Until next time, the Lord bless you and keep you.

Bye now!