‘David had served the purpose of God in his own generation’. Are you serving the Lord in your generation? Are you seeking to be used of him, even though basically no one knows you from Adam, and no one knows what you are doing for Christ and the Kingdom? Often our work for the Lord will go completely unnoticed not just by the world, but by the church. We just quietly do what God is leading us to do. We serve when, where and how we best can, and that is enough.

We are all significant in God’s Kingdom:

Do you know who these characters are? Pallu, Hezron, Huppim, Jamin, Ohad, Jachin, and Ard. I will let you know in a moment. And here are two more names worth mentioning: Shiphrah and Puah. Any idea who they are? These names recently came out of my daily Bible reading – I just finished Genesis and started Exodus.

As to the first set of names, they are all found in Genesis 46. That chapter deals with the story of how Jacob and his family journeyed to Egypt to be kept alive during a great famine. In verse 27 we read this: “All the persons of the house of Jacob who came into Egypt were seventy.”

Now all Christians should know the names of some of God’s great people, be it Abraham or Moses or David or Jeremiah or Peter or Paul. And many would know of Jacob’s twelve sons who basically morphed into the twelve tribes of Israel.

So you likely know who Joseph or Levi or Reubin is. But the children of the twelve sons are not so well known. Some of them I listed above. And only the descendants of Judah eventually led to the Messiah. The closing chapters of Genesis deal with the Israelites’ sojourn in Egypt.

After some centuries there, we read in Exodus about a new Pharaoh who did not know Joseph. Recall that he wanted to kill the male children born to Hebrew women. But two brave midwives (named above) kept them alive, including Moses, who would go on to free the people from Egyptian bondage and take them to the Promised Land.

So in Genesis 46 we have all sorts of names, many of them who mean nothing to us, or are long forgotten by us. But in Exodus 1:15-22 we read about these two women who are now forever known in history. Had they not been named in verse 15, they would just be two anonymous heroines.

Lessons for believers today

So what is the point of all this? My aim is simple: There are countless people that have played a role in the ongoing work of God. There are millions of these people that have lived over the centuries and served the purposes of God. Some of them are found in Scripture. But in the Bible we get various differences in this regard.

-Sometimes Scripture records the names of people that we know quite a lot about. They are well-known heroes of the faith.

-Sometimes Scripture records the names of people that we know very little about. We might even wonder why they were named in the first place.

-Sometimes an individual is noted in the Bible but without his name given. Consider Mark 14:51-52: “And a young man followed him, with nothing but a linen cloth about his body. And they seized him, but he left the linen cloth and ran away naked.” It is thought that this individual was Mark himself.

-Sometimes God records the heroic acts of individuals, and we have their names in print. The entire account of the Hebrew midwives takes only eight verses, but it is an integral part of the Old Testament story, and an integral part of God’s on-going work, leading to the ministry of Jesus Christ. So we can thank God for Shiphrah and Puah.

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