What do I need to know about Exodus
Having spilt some ink over the reasons why we are jumping into Exodus recently, we are now going to ask the question: OK, so what do I need to know?
This will be a brief introduction to the book, followed by some great recommendations for further study.
Having spilt some ink over the reasons why we are jumping into Exodus recently, we are now going to ask the question: OK, so what do I need to know?
This will be a brief introduction to the book, followed by some great recommendations for further study.
Who wrote it and when?
The book of Exodus does not include any claim of authorship, however is generally considered to be primarily written by Moses, like the rest of the Pentateuch. As for dating the events, there are two main theories: the first theory places the exodus around 1446 BC as per the record, while the second theory places it later - around 1260 BC.
What’s the backstory here?
Within the great story of God’s redemptive plan, Exodus contains incredibly significant forward steps from where things left off in Genesis. The first book of the Bible opened with the creation of the world (Gen. 1-2), followed by the tragic fall of the human race in the garden (Gen. 3). After the continued spiraling of humanity into darkness and depravity (Genesis 4-11), God reveals the first step of His plan of redemption: to create a people for Himself. In Genesis 12, Abraham is given a promise that he will become a great nation, and that through his line he would bless the whole earth. Fast forward generations and his family finds themselves in Egypt, where they begin to multiply and fill the land (Exodus 1:7). This sets the scene for the events of the book, where God steps in in the most dramatic of fashion.
Give me the short version – what happens in Exodus?
Pharaoh, fearing an uprising, brutally enslaves the rapidly expanding Israelites, inflicting on them heavy burdens and impossible expectations. His intentions were simple, he wanted to crush their spirits to dust. The chapters that follow tells the story of God’s great liberating acts, by which he frees the people, before constituting them into a nation with the giving of the Law at Mount Sinai.
It begins with the calling of Moses to be God’s instrument in the people’s liberation – a conversation that took place through one famous burning bush. Moses confronts Pharaoh demanding that his slave army be released, a request Pharaoh rejects with derision. A dramatic back and forth follows, culminating the miraculous display of power in ten horrific plagues. Pharaoh finally relents after losing his firstborn son, but changes his mind and sends his army after the Israelites, resulting in the iconic scenes of the Red Sea parting, only to collapse once more upon the Egyptian soldiers.
God miraculously then supplies all the vital needs of the people in the desert – manna from heaven (manna translated literally means “what is this?”) and water from the rock – only to be confronted with the persistent grumbles of the people. God leads them to Mount Sinai where they receive the law, including the ten commandments, and He initiates a new covenant with the people through Moses (sometimes called the Mosaic Covenant). This is the moment that this family of Jacob formally becomes the nation of Israel.
The book ends with God revealing that He desires to dwell with the people. He didn’t simply rescue the people from slavery so that they might just be free from political oppression, He saved them so that He might be with them. Chapters 24 onward are God’s meticulously detailed plan for dwelling with the people through the tabernacle – a sort of traveling temple. The detail in these chapters might feel overwhelming, and it might feel anticlimactic after such a dramatic narrative for the first half of the book, but its significance is profound. God was going to dwell with them, be known by them. And in the detail, He is preparing them (and us) for all that Christ would do in the cross.
Outline
At its most basic, the book of exodus breaks into 2 sections:
1. Departure from Egypt (ch. 1 - 15)
2. Journey to and arrival at Mount Sinai (ch. 16 - 40)
A more detailed outline of the book, courtesy of the ESV Gospel Transformation Bible:
1. God Hears, and Remembers His Covenant (1:1–2:25)
2. God Comes Down and Calls His Deliverer (3:1–4:17)
3. God Redeems His People (4:18–15:21)
a. God redeems his people through his promise (4:18–7:7)
b. God redeems his people through his plagues (7:8–10:29)
c. God redeems his people through his Passover (11:1–13:16)
d. God redeems his people through his power (13:17–15:21)
4. God Leads His People (15:22–18:27)
5. God Instructs His People (19:1–40:38)
a. God instructs his people through the commandments (19:1–20:17)
b. God instructs his people through the covenant (20:18–24:11)
v. God instructs his people through the tabernacle (24:12–40:38)
Resources
Books
Tim Chester’s Exodus for You
“ The book of Exodus is key to understanding Jesus. It is an exciting story, a historical story and - as it points us to and inspires us to worship Jesus - it is our story.”
Reading Plan
You can find a great reading plan for Exodus on the Bible app by Spoken Gospel
Online Introduction Courses
The Gospel Coalition, in conjunction with Crossway, have put together some great digital resources to serve as an introduction to the book. These are definitely worth a look!
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/course/introduction-to-exodus/#overview
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/course/knowing-the-bible-exodus#week-1-overview
Also, the Bible Project have a few great videos that will serve as helpful introductions:
Final word of encouragement
I would love to encourage you to intentionally open yourself up to the book of Exodus. Get familiar with the story. Spend some time meditating on what you find in its pages. If you’re particularly unfamiliar and maybe daunted about digging into the Old Testament, let me give you this encouragement: Jesus sees Himself as the point of Exodus. In Luke 24:27, we read: “…beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.” Jesus sits down with these disciples and shows them how Exodus is about Him.
On the mount of transfiguration, where Jesus talks with Moses and Elijah, do you remember what Luke 9:31 says that he was speaking to them about? It says he “spoke of his departure (literally, exodus) which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem”! Jesus talks about his death as literally his exodus. Jesus Himself quoted Exodus on at least seven different occasions, making it one of His most drawn upon books. My point is, Jesus clearly loved and honoured Exodus.
I think we should too.
Grace and peace,
Pastor Mike
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 the 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.
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