Why study the book of Exodus?
As a church, we are about to launch a new teaching series through the book of Exodus. Pastor Matt and I are both very excited to sink our teeth into this book, and have been for a while. Why Exodus you ask? Well, that’s exactly the question I’d like to take a moment to answer.
Exodus gives us the definitive salvation event of the Old Testament
“God’s entire plan of salvation is exodus-shaped. The whole of Scripture is exodus-shaped.”
The first reason we would invest time and energy in the book of Exodus is this: much of the Bible simply won't make sense without a grasp of its story. It is like an interpretive key that helps unlock the pages that follow, bringing them to life. From the slavery of God's people in Egypt, the mighty hand of God that delivered them through miraculous wonders, the Passover and the giving of the Law at Mt Sinai, these elements are threads that begin to weave together the greater story of God and the world.
The exodus is the model of salvation for the whole of the Old Testament. Bobby Jamieson writes:
“The Psalms celebrate and reflect on it. The prophets predict a new exodus patterned after it (e.g., Isa 40:1–11). Crucial New Testament terms like “redemption” derive from the Exodus, when God rescued his people at the precisely calculated cost of one lamb per household (Exod 12:1–13) … God’s entire plan of salvation is exodus-shaped. The whole of Scripture is exodus-shaped.”
Again and again, the biblical authors are going to point back to the Exodus as the prototype of redemption:
“Was it not you who dried up the sea,
the waters of the great deep,
who made the depths of the sea a way
for the redeemed to pass over?” (Isaiah 51:10)
“For I brought you up from the land of Egypt
and redeemed you from the house of slavery,
and I sent before you Moses,
Aaron, and Miriam.” (Micah 6:4)
”…but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.” (Deuteronomy 7:8)
What the cross is to the New Testament, so the Exodus is to the Old.
Exodus is about God's self-disclosure to the world.
There is an ever present temptation to make God in our own image. We project our own desires, hopes and imaginings onto our conception of God, instead of allowing Him to reveal to us what He is truly like. The greatest error we can make is to reduce God to a more manageable size, and in so doing elevate ourselves.
J.I. Packer writes:
“Churchmen who look at God, so to speak, through the wrong end of the telescope, so reducing him to pigmy proportions, cannot hope to end up as more than pigmy Christians.”
“Exodus reveals to us a God who is both holy and compassionate, fierce and faithful, powerful and kind-hearted. He is the great I AM, the one who is, the one who has always been, and will always be.”
The good news is that God has profoundly revealed Himself in human history so that we might know Him. Ultimately the Bible teaches that God is most perfectly revealed in Jesus Christ, however that is not the only time He has disclosed Himself. Millennia before that stable in Bethlehem heard those first cries, God had begun to make Himself known.
There are two moments in particular that stand alone in all the pages of the Bible as being especially profound moments of divine revelation – both occur in Exodus. Firstly, in chapter 3, Moses has an encounter with God in a burning bush. In this conversation, God answers Moses questions as to what He is to be called: “God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM … say this to the people of Israel ‘the I AM has sent me to you’” (Exod. 3:14). So much is wrapped up in the divine name, but most striking is that it teaches us that God is self-existent and cannot be defined by anything outside of Him, and therefore any other name is insufficient. He simply is who He is.
The second moment of revelation comes from chapter 34, where again God reveals Himself to Moses, this time on Mount Sinai: “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness…” Exodus reveals to us a God who is both holy and compassionate, fierce and faithful, powerful and kind-hearted. He is the great I AM, the one who is, the one who has always been, and will always be.
Let us heed the words of Mr Packer, and not look at God through the wrong end of the telescope. Let us beware of seeing God in our image rather than opening up our eyes to who He has declared Himself to be.
Exodus lays the foundation for us to understand the cross of Christ
Although the story of Exodus is a wonderfully exciting and dramatic tale, it also points to something outside of itself. Ultimately, it sets the scene for the final deliverance of God’s people from sin and evil, accomplished by Jesus Christ in his death and resurrection. Peter Enns writes:
"The story of Exodus does not actually end until we come to the cross and the empty tomb - or even beyond, not until the Second Coming. In other words, seeing how we as Christians fit into the story must be seen in light of how Christ completes the story.”
“...seeing how we as Christians fit into the story must be seen in light of how Christ completes the story.”
What is God doing in the story of Exodus? For example, why demand a lamb be slain and the people of God to gather underneath its blood? In a deep sense, He is constructing the mental furniture in the imaginations of the people: that God will rescue through the blood of a sacrifice. He is foreshadowing the atonement of the cross of Christ. When John the Baptist announces to the world that Jesus is “the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world” (John 1:29), the minds of his first hearers go straight to Exodus. This is just one example among many of the way Exodus lays a foundation to understand why it is the cross of Jesus saves us. Your worship will be richer and your gratefulness more instinctive as you begin to see the depths of the love of God in the cross through Exodus.
Exodus is about Redemption - which makes it our story
“As we meditate on the exodus, we will find that this image of God’s redeeming the lost out of darkness and slavery is beautifully transformative, even as it finds its “yes and amen in Christ”.”
And finally, we turn to the mega-theme of redemption, which finds its roots in the pages of Exodus. In the exodus we see God’s redeeming His people out of slavery to pharaoh, and yet redemption is not merely about rescue. Redemption is about restoration, and even more, it’s about re-creation. God was not just restoring the people to a state of “non-slavery”, but ushering in a new era of relationship with Him. As Graeme Goldsworthy wrote: "The exodus is the end of captivity but it is only the beginning of freedom". All that was lost in the garden through the sin of Adam, God was setting in motion to reclaim. That fractured relationship between God and people was being restored, even as the people were constituted into a nation at Mount Sinai. Of course, from where we stand in history, we know that this newly constituted people of Israel would suffer the results of their persistent rebellion against God, and that Jesus would come to establish a new covenant by His blood.
“If you are a Christian, then Christ has redeemed you out of slavery to Satan, sin and death. You are free. Right now. Saved from death, and saved to relationship.”
As we meditate on the exodus, we will find that this image of God’s redeeming the lost out of darkness and slavery is beautifully transformative, even as it finds its “yes and amen in Christ” (2 Cor. 1:20). If you are a Christian, then Christ has redeemed you out of slavery to Satan, sin and death. You are free. Right now. Saved from death, and saved to relationship. And in that redemption, there has been something of a re-creation, to the extent that Paul calls you a new creation (2 Cor. 5:21)!
Exodus is about redemption, which makes it our story.
Where to now?
Let me take a moment to really encourage you to open up the book for yourself, and get familiar with the story. If you’re unfamiliar with the Old Testament and somewhat nervous about getting started, don’t be afraid. It will point you to Jesus if you let it. Read it to see the big story. Read it to learn about your God. Read it to understand the cross. And read it to plunge yourself into the story of redemption - your story.
Stay tuned for some more resources to help you get started.
Grace and peace,
Pastor Mike