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We're going to be doing today
is just introducing the book of Exodus. We wrapped up Genesis
the last time I had the opportunity to preach and so I've been debating
and praying and asking the Lord what next and it just seemed
to make enough sense to move on into Exodus. So today will
really just be kind of a general introduction to the book as we
prepare to look at that and then the Again next Sunday. We have Nate Muse, but following
that I'll have a few Sundays before pastor Mike returns And
we'll get a start into the end of this book Which continues
the story of Genesis really? The book of exodus is just kind
of a continuation uh... from where we left off uh...
in genesis and so i'm going to do a little bit it is kind of
a teaching sort of uh... message today uh... but i hope
that you will fall asleep i hope you'll find good things uh...
in this uh... as we as we look at how things
go on the first of all it's i want to create context for our book
so here's the general layout of the old testament you see
the separate boxes many of you know this well some of you may
be not so well maybe you haven't uh... Formerly been taught some
of these things, but we have the first five books of the Old
Testament and let's be interactive here What do we call those that
group it says history over the column? But we have a special
name for that group of the first five books of the Old Testament.
What is that? Pentateuch great. Okay, and who
was our author of the Pentateuch apart from the Holy Spirit? What
human guide and did he guide? Moses, right, great. So those
books are known also to Jewish people as the law. Good, very important to understand.
Then we have the books that follow, which do continue in narrative,
giving us the history of Israel and God's work through them,
and you see them all listed there. Then we have the books of poetry,
or sometimes referred to as wisdom literature. Job, Psalms, Proverbs,
Ecclesiastes, Psalm of Solomon. And then we have prophecy. We
have what we refer to as the major prophets in this smaller
box here. Why are they major? Were they
bigger men than the other prophets? Were they more important than
the other prophets? They just wrote larger books of prophecy. So that's how they get called,
the major prophets. They're just more voluminous.
And then we have what we refer to as the minor prophets, several
of those. And altogether the sum total
is, have you done quick math or do you remember how many books
in the Old Testament? Mm, I hear conflicting numbers. It is good that we review once
in a while. 39, 39. All right, so that's the general overview. Now here's the Pentateuch more
specifically, and this is how it kind of fits together. Notice
that the flow of the narrative is Genesis, Exodus, Numbers to
Joshua. That's where the history is and
kind of its linear fashion in the Old Testament. Then you have
Leviticus and Deuteronomy, which are really iterations of the
law. that are kind of, you know how
it is with a map, when you have a big map, and then you have
a blow-up of a smaller section of the map that's drawn out in
a special box. That's kind of what you have
with those two books, with Leviticus and Deuteronomy. Other books
cover bigger spans of time, whereas those are kind of like relatively
short periods of time but there's a lot to be written about for
us to understand and that's and that's essentially the law given
to the people of Israel in Leviticus and then in Deuteronomy it is
repeated because it's a whole new generation that is about
to enter the promised land because of the disobedience which we'll
be talking about but many of you know and remember the disobedience
of the wilderness and so a whole generation dies A new generation
gets to enter the promised land and before they enter, Moses
reiterates the law to them. He gives them a review of their
own history. and demonstrating how disobedience
against God results in bad things. Obedience results in blessing.
Here are God's expectations. This is the covenant. If you
obey it, you will live and you will be blessed. And if you disobey
it, you will die and you will be overcome by your enemies. And so that is the book of Deuteronomy
just before Moses passes away and Joshua leads the rest over
into the promised land. And then that story continues
into Joshua as they enter the promised land. So that's the
flow of how those books fit. Then down below, if you can see
it all the way down there, especially the people in the back, you may
not be able to so well, but it says Job. And that's just to put it
in its historical frame. Job lived in the Genesis period
of time, probably the same time as Abraham or close to his lifetime. So even though you come to it
later in the Old Testament, that's where he fits historically. All
right, good. So, we talked through Genesis.
I'm gonna give you the quicker review this time, just kind of
boiling down the overall makeup of the book. First of all, we
saw the creation in chapters one and two. Starts out with
these very important words, right? In the beginning, God created
the heavens and the earth. God is assumed from the beginning
to be true, doesn't need to be defended, doesn't need to be
explained. He is. He always has been. He always
will be. Anyone who rejects that doesn't hurt God. They're hurting
themselves to reject that very apparent truth that we came from
somewhere and there is a source of all this order that we enjoy.
So he created a perfect earth and yet his enemy came along. Satan and tempted Adam and Eve. And so we read about the fall
in chapters 3 through 5. We see that choice to not obey,
to not love and trust and obey God. That choice to do the wrong
thing and its effects that happened almost immediately but then continued
to get worse and worse as history has continued. So chapter 3 is
tragic, the most tragic chapter in the whole Bible, I believe. Well, but after that we have
the global flood. By the time we get to chapter
6, we see that about 1,600 years has passed from creation. And
during those 1,600 years, people have multiplied on the earth,
and the animals have multiplied on the earth, and they are described
as being just desperately wicked. All their imaginations and doings
are just wicked. And so much so that in a bit
of anthropomorphology, God is said to be sorry that he ever
made them. And so he decides to kind of
scrub this clean and start fresh. Not entirely, because he preserves
one righteous man, Noah, and his family. And so we have a
global flood described for us in great detail in these chapters. And if we read it and just trust
God to know his own business, to know what is true, then we
see undeniably this was a global flood. This was something that
wiped out the earth. This was not local. This was
not minor. This is something that changed
the face of the earth entirely from the way it was before. This
was massive. This floodwaters covered the
entire globe. In fact, the Bible gives us the
detail of waters mounting several meters above the highest peaks
of the mountains. And we've seen this image before,
just recently, when we had our speaker from Creation Ministries
International, and I've always appreciated how this brings the
point to bear very poignantly, right? It cannot be, as some
people would like to argue, a local flood, because a local flood
cannot cover mountaintops. We all know from science that
water seeks its lowest possible level, right? So this is what
you would have to have in order to have a local flood that covered
the mountain peaks in that part of the world. It would have to
cover the globe in order to achieve that. So what we do know of science
and of logic tells us that it was global. And the fossil record
and the layers, the strata of the earth actually support that
better than any other story. People underestimate the reality
or the possibility of Noah's Ark because they see cartoony
little figures of, you know, an overrun bathtub type of an
ark, right? But the reality is it was a massive
structure. And using biblical dimensions
there, this is just a boxy form here, just using the dimensions
just as such, you can see them compared to many things. You
can see even the largest of dinosaurs would have fit in there just
fine. But there's no reason that full grown dinosaurs had to be
on the ark, right? They could have been babies and
that would have been smarter anyway to give them longer life
and reproduction afterwards. You can see the 747 jet that
could pretty much fit in there except for its tail fin and its
wings. Another perspective there. Larger, longer than the typical
city block, longer than a footy field. This was a massive structure
and very tall as well. This is an artist's imagining
based on historical findings of ancient sea craft that have
been found, you know, just remains of things. seeing ways in which
they fashioned very, very large ships. And so contrary to what
some modern critics say that, oh, they couldn't have made a
seafaring vessel that large that would have, you know, that would
have floated and so on and so forth, to the contrary, It has
been demonstrated to be very, very feasible and many very large
structures of ships have been created from timber that would
have survived. And so this is kind of using
some ancient designs as far as what would have created stability
in the water and so on, but still being true to what information
we have in scripture. So this is a more likely realistic
image of the ark that you should plant in your mind. Well, after
we have the creation of the fall and the flood, then we have the
nations in chapters 10 and 11. And we see as those descendants
of Noah described here. all the people that came from
each one, Shem, Ham, and Japheth, and the nations that developed
from them, and then it even comes to the point of the division
at the Tower of Babel. As people disobeyed God, He told
them to spread out, to multiply, to replenish the earth, and instead
they decided to huddle together to form their own religion to
build a tower that they thought would save them from any future
floods, ignoring the fact that God said he'd never flood the
earth that way again. And they began to turn their hearts to
wickedness once again. And God saw this and knew how
quickly this would escalate. And so to slow it down, the scripture
describes how he divided them by family groups, by language. And so then people drifted off
in their different family language groups and that's how we have
all the different variety of people that we have where you
might see predominant characteristics in other parts of the world because
their genetic pool was isolated from the others as they went
to that part of the world. And so you tend to have certain
different characteristics of hair and skin and so on and so
forth. These are not different races, they're just different
people groups. who drifted apart from the Tower
of Babel. We all have the same ancestry, ultimately, just some
different characteristics that were isolated. And so you see
the nations developing through all of that. Then we see Abraham's
journey of faith because he is called in Chapter 12, And then
we begin to see how God, just out of His sovereignty, chose
this man, said, I'm going to bless you, I'm going to help
you, I'm going to make your name great, and through you, there
will be a blessing to all the world. Let's read those words
here. This is the beginning of the
story of Abraham. We'll just read a few verses. Now the Lord
said to Abraham, go from your country and your kindred and
your father's house to the land that I will show you. I will
make of you a great nation and I will bless you and make your
name great so that you will be a blessing. And I will bless
those who bless you. And him who dishonors you, I
will curse. And in you, all the families
of the earth shall be blessed. That is a very important promise
for all of us. That verse from way back then,
over 4,000 years ago, applies directly to us. So Abram went, as the Lord had
told him, and Lot went with him, his nephew. Abram was seventy-five
years old when he departed from Haran. And Abram took Sarai his
wife, Lot his brother's son, all their possessions that they
had gathered, and the people that they had acquired, those
would be their servants in Haran, and they set out to go to the
land of Canaan. And when they came to the land
of Canaan, Abram passed through the land to the place at Shechem
to the Oak of Moreh. And at that time, the Canaanites
were in the land. And we saw before in chapter
10 and 11 that the Canaanites were descendants of Ham. Then
the Lord appeared to Abram and said, to your offspring, I will
give this land. So he built there an altar to
the Lord who had appeared to him. We have here on this map
a little layout of Abraham's journey. If you can see over
to the far right, you can see the Fertile Crescent there, right?
You see the green arc, known as the Fertile Crescent of Mesopotamia. Nick, that is a tricky word sometimes,
isn't it? Mesopotamia. You have to practice that one
a few times. Over on the far southeastern part there, you
can see Ur, just underneath where it says Chaldea. Okay, see the
Persian Gulf just running off the edge there on the bottom
right and then just kind of go northwest from there and you
say you are who are that's where Abrams family came from to begin
with and They moved up along between the rivers and went up
there to Haran which you see at the top at the peak of the
ark there H a r a n and it was from there that God called Abram
to leave his father had settled there and their whole larger
family, but God called Abram to leave there and and to go
to the land where he showed him and he took him down there to
the land of Palestine as we know it today which says Canaan and
it says Shechem, you can see that mentioned there, the Sea
of Galilee, the Jordan River, the Dead Sea, all of that area
there. Abraham went through that area
and God said he was going to give him that land. Here are
some of the places there that Abram traveled and we've talked
about a number of them, Shechem being at the top. So after We
trace his journey for several chapters, God proving his faith,
proving him worthy, making him worthy in a way through trial.
He chose him to be the one that he would make a great nation
of for a purpose, that there would be some nation of people
after what had already happened prior to the flood and what was
beginning to happen in the Tower of Babel, God chose someone who
would be the beginning of a nation that would preserve, that would
retain and possess knowledge of the one true and living God.
While all the other nations and peoples might go off and create
their own false religions, there would be this one people that
God would preserve who would always possess the truth of who
the one true and living God is. And through that people, not
only would he deliver the truth, the revelation of himself, but
he would also deliver that promised one, that anointed one that he
mentioned, that he told all the way back to Adam and Eve, that
would be the one who would correct their error, who would deal with
the sin problem that comes between human beings and God. And it
was through these people that God would carry out his plan.
And so he was going to preserve them as a very special people.
That's why there are many things that were unique to Israel and
strict laws that God gave them. Not because he wanted them just
to be religious and just to live strictly, but because he wanted
them to remain pure and untainted in a way that they would be able
to retain his truth. and that he would be able to
deliver the Messiah, the promised one, through them. And so there's
very great purpose in all of those things that he took them
through and that he demanded of them. And then we begin the
journey of the faith life of Isaac. And we don't learn a whole
lot about him, but we do see a measure of faith early on as
he accepts his father's answer. First of all, that God will provide
the lamb. And then when he's told, well,
I've been instructed to sacrifice you, there's no, nothing says
that he fought his father. He seems to trust God likewise. And yet God did provide that
substitutionary lamb, which was very important as well for us
to understand. God giving us great hints, great
foreshadows along the way of what his solution would be. for
that sin problem. So after creation, fall, flood,
the nations, Abraham's journey of faith, Isaac's journey of
faith, we see Jacob's. And you'll see these begin to
overlap because it's not all so neat like a cutoff from each
person's account in Genesis. And so you have Jacob comes along
as Isaac's son and you learn about Jacob and Esau and all
of their stress and trials and Jacob has to be proven because
god repeats his promises to him that he had given to his father
abraham that i'm gonna make a great nation of you and through you
is going to be someone who is a blessing to the whole world
i will help you and so on but jacob was much more reluctant
than his father Isaac or his grandfather Abram to trust God
and was only after God had proven himself by doing great things
for him as he promised that Jacob finally recognized him as his
own true God. If you remember when we studied
that, when he first had the dream of the ladder and slept on the
rock and everything like that. God spoke to him, gave him these
promises, and he said, if you will help me, if you will bless
me, if you will do these things and bring me back here safely,
then I will worship you as my own true God. Interesting approach,
don't you think? God, because he had his purposes
and his plans and his sovereignty, he chose to bless Jacob regardless
of his early lack of faith. He proved himself to be the one
true and living and loving and trustworthy God. And Jacob did
turn his faith to Yahweh. So we see his journey of faith
and then overlapping with that, these are not spent, that's all
go away, sorry. Then we have Joseph's as one of Jacob's sons. And we see Joseph demonstrating
perhaps some of the greatest faith of all, since Abraham at
least. Joseph, how can you imagine being kidnapped essentially,
sold into slavery, human trafficking, sent to another country where
you don't know the language or the culture, made a slave and
trusting God that God knows where I am, I'm going to live in a
way that honors Him, even in these circumstances. Can you
imagine? And then to be so sorely tempted and to say, no, I won't
sin against God. How many of us would be tempted
to say, you know what? God has done me wrong. What do
I owe Him? But Joseph was faithful. He trusted
God. And he went from bad to worse
to even worse as he ended up not just as a slave but as a
prisoner in this other foreign land. And hope would be offered
and it would be dashed until finally God had him just where
he wanted him. And after 13 years of, why God? Why would you let this happen
to me? God puts him in place and elevates him to the point
where he saved nations. But most importantly, he was
in a place to save his own family, which preserved the messianic
line and helped fulfill God's purposes and plans of a Messiah
who would come and deal with our sin problem. God is working
throughout history as we read all of these things as a purpose.
They're not just nice little stories that are for good little
morals. Although we can learn morals,
we can certainly learn good examples from these things, but what we
see is God's sovereign hand working through history to carry out
His plans and His purposes to provide us with salvation from
our sin. To make it possible for us to
be reconciled to Himself. He moved nations to accomplish
our salvation. So we end up down here in Egypt. This is where we end with the
book of Genesis, don't we? Because as we read part of Stephen's
great message, this account of how God had maneuvered the whole
family, though he had promised Abram that land of Canaan, he
moved him and all of the, well, Abram had passed away, but he
moved the family then to Egypt. where he would continue to carry
out his plan, but perhaps in a way differently than people
might have expected. So we continue from where we
left off in Egypt. Here we are, there's the Nile
Delta, and you recognize the other bodies of water, Dead Sea
and Sea of Aqaba and so on. Egypt, the Israelites ended up
building some of their greatest structures there, temples, whole
cities, not to mention the pyramids and so on. A difficult, difficult
trial for how long? 400 years. Why God? Why did you allow this
to happen for 400 years? Well, they were slaves for the
whole 400 years, but for well over 300, apparently. Well, here
we come to the book. Here are a few just basic things,
some of these you, some of you know, some of you maybe not.
The title, Exodus, just means exit, right? So this is a record
of God bringing the Israelites out of out of slavery. The author we've established
as Moses, and that is attested to throughout scripture and throughout
tradition as well as internal reference throughout the Pentateuch.
So there's no reason not to believe that, though there are other
theories that have been floated that really don't have anything to
stand on. The dates of what it covers, essentially, because
early on, we're still with Jacob and Joseph and those guys at
the very beginning of Exodus, but then we slide through 400
years, essentially, until the time of the actual Exodus. So
there's a good span of time there from 1875 approximately BC to
1445 BC. A key word or a key theme throughout
the book is redemption. God redeems his people from slavery
and into his promises and blessings. Very important concept. Here's a quote from an excellent
study notes here. I like this summary. Exodus is
the record of Israel's birth as a nation. Within the protective
womb, so to speak, of Egypt, the Jewish family of 70 rapidly
multiplies. At the right time, accompanied
with severe birth pains, an infant nation numbering between two
and three million people is brought into the world where it is divinely
protected, fed, and nurtured. How is it that they fared so
well in the big picture in Egypt? Do you remember we talked about
it when we studied Genesis? God wanted to preserve them as
a unique nation. He wanted to keep them as a particular
family line. The Egyptians did not like the
Hebrews. The Hebrews were shepherds. That was very lowly and stinky
and dirty and disgusting to the Egyptians. So they did not want
to intermarry with them. They didn't want to mingle with
them in any way. So though they were in the land of Egypt, they
were isolated in that place. And even through slavery, they
remained isolated and pure as a nation to accomplish God's
purposes. And they did become a great and
unique nation in those circumstances. Well, the Hebrew title, here's
just a little bit of the teaching. The Hebrew title of the book, Ve'elei
Shemot, originated from the ancient practice of naming a Bible book
after its first words or its first phrase. And it is, now
these are the names of, that's the beginning of Exodus, right? Talking about the family who
had gone down to Egypt. And so that is the beginning,
these are the names. as the traditional Hebrew title.
The now in that, which is the we or they, the W-E that you
see there with the apostrophe, okay, it's a vav, that is a connecting
word that's as though the story's already going. So when you come
to Exodus, we're so used to thinking of these things as very different
and separate books sometimes in the Bible, but for Moses,
it was just, okay, and now the next chapter. And so it's just,
it's a continuative, a connecting, you know, and now these are the
names of those who went down there. And so the story just
continues from Genesis as we go here. So really, we can't
study Exodus without having studied Genesis. It's a good thing we
did. Well, the book covers almost
431 years. It opens with Jacob moving to
Egypt, as we said, and it closes with the erection of the tabernacle
in the wilderness in Sinai. So look how far we've come by
the time we get to the end of Exodus. They're out of that place
of 400 years of bondage of slavery, and they have established their
place of worship where God would meet them in a very special way.
Most of the book of Exodus, after our big time lapse at the very
beginning of 400 years, then the rest of it, the details,
cover essentially two years. One is the year before Exodus,
and the one then following and Exodus itself, the leaving is
the main event, main focus of the book, and a very pivotal
thing in the whole Old Testament and in the history of the Jewish
people. It is still referred to as one of the most critical,
vital elements of Jewish history. You're familiar with the Seder
supper, right? what the Jewish people have every year. They
celebrate the Passover still today. It's called the Seder.
And even secular Jewish people get together and celebrate this
historical tradition. And they read through the story
of how God did the plagues, and they dip their finger in a glass
of red wine, and some of them just do nice little dots. Angie
and I have been privileged to be at a couple of Seder suppers
with a Jewish family in Chicago, completely secular. And yet they
read this account and they rehearse these things and talk about what
God did for their people even though they don't believe in
him. And so they follow this tradition and they dip their
finger in their wine and on their white plate they will, some of
them very neatly, do a little row of dots for each one of the
plagues as they name them. They just kind of go down. Others
get more enthusiastic. They dip their finger in there
and they go fling down there. Locusts frogs. I like that version
myself a little bit kind of very enthusiastic Remember these terrible
plagues that God brought on on Egypt and so still today. It's
a pivotal moment in Israel's history Exodus 1240 we see Egypt Israel
was in Egypt for 430 years. That's just supporting what we
said, but here's the interesting thing Genesis 15 13 this is an important reminder
important connection here this was god's beacon abram back when
about what we read about earlier when he said this land is going
to be yours someday it was that uh... lord said to abram most
all capitals always represents god's property in your way so
really agree then he always said to abraham no for certain that
your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs
and will be servants there and they will be afflicted for four
hundred years But I will bring judgment on that nation that
they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions."
God predicted this whole period of 400 years in Egypt and the
slavery as part of His plan, and He predicted that He would
bring them out with great and powerful acts and judgment against
those who had done His people harm in the meantime. So this
is, again, part of a fulfillment of God's promises and plans. God wants to have a special relationship
with his people. This is something that we can
draw from this. Genesis shows that the only way we can know
our purpose in life is to have a personal relationship with
God. Even Job found that, as we place
Job in that historical timeframe. Even when things were going very
badly, and he was encouraged to just curse God and die, He
refused. He knew that he needed to continue
to love and trust the one true and living God. We must exercise
faith in a trustworthy God. And the reason he is trustworthy
is that he is sovereign. He is in control. And we see
his acts throughout history through all of these things that we read
and study. And this really should prompt us both to worship and
obedience as we read these things. Yes, it's history. Yes, there
are facts and dates and things like that that are maybe less
interesting, but what we learn is that these are things that
happen in real time, real history, real locations with real people,
and God was active. God was involved. God was in
charge of these things. God loved and was helping his
people even when they were in circumstances where they couldn't
tell if this made any sense at all. even for long periods of
time. We can take that to heart, can't
we? Can we remember that? Because we all suffer difficulties
somewhere along the line. Sometimes it's so hard that you
are tempted to ask, is God real? Does he really care? Is he really
good? And as we look back and see his
dealing with others, we can see, yes, he's real. Yes, he's in
control. Yes, he cares. Yes, he's good.
He just might have a purpose for these things in your life
that you don't know, that you don't understand. Think of the
generations that lived and died in slavery in that 400 years,
never seeing for themselves in their own personal life experience
what God was really doing there. You might be part of a plan that's
so big that you'll never know it in this lifetime. You'll never
have that personal satisfaction in this lifetime of seeing the
pieces fit together and knowing, oh, that's why God did that.
Maybe you won't know. Maybe not until you get to heaven.
But that doesn't mean he doesn't have a purpose, that he doesn't
have a plan, that he isn't still good, that he doesn't still love
you. So remember the lessons of history and trust God. Well, some of what we see, again,
an overview of what we see in Exodus is that He is sovereign God who
provides deliverance for people from the slavery they find themselves
in. We see these points driven home again and again throughout
the book. God is sovereign. God saves people. And He uses
a miraculous way sometimes to do this. on the point that God is sovereign.
One of his attributes, his sovereignty, means that he is the ultimate
ruler of the universe with no one higher in authority. These
are just truths to take to heart. It means more than his controlling
every detail in our lives. Actually, in his sovereignty,
he allows people certain freedoms of choice. You see that. You
see people sometimes making not very good decisions. And yet
somehow in his sovereignty, he still can bring about his will
and his purposes and his plans in spite of that. God saves people. Genesis shows
the need for salvation. It started with the fall of man,
with sin. It's revealed through man's repeated
failures, which meant God had to intervene often. We see that
even in the people who are heroes of the faith, right? They failed. In a strange way, that's comforting.
If Abraham, the great Abraham made mistakes, then maybe there's
hope for me yet. We see the real account of people's
lives and God working in and through and sometimes in spite
of people. I'm glad to know that. Exodus shows the method for salvation. This is this is the method now
It's not always going to be by plagues in our experience right
the way that he saves or rescues it helps us in our circumstances
It's not always by plagues, but here's the bottom line. It's
that God makes plans and he reveals them and the people have to obediently
follow what he has revealed and When it comes to, for instance,
Jesus points back to the serpent on a pole out in the wilderness,
right, we'll come to eventually. Jesus tells his own disciples
that just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,
so the Son of Man, speaking of himself in third person, because
that's a reference to prophetic words about the Messiah, the
Son of Man, so the Son of Man will be lifted up. Now why did
he invoke that historical event of the serpent on a pole? We've
talked about that before. Remember, it wasn't a magical
serpent. It wasn't a magical pole. It was simply, God said,
this is my solution. You've sinned. You're experiencing
the consequences. You want to be saved? This is
what you do. Just do what I say, whether it makes sense to you
or not. Look at the serpent on the pole. And you can imagine what's going
through people's minds. a metal snake on a pole when I'm dying
from this terrible venomous snake bite. How is that going to do
any good? I need a poultice. I need a spell. I need something.
God said, just look at the snake. Those who did, lived. Why? Because God provided a solution,
and he expected people to trust and obey, and if they do, He
does what he says he'll do, his promises. It's the same with
our salvation today. This is the thing that people
struggle with so much. Why is it so hard for humanity
to accept that God provided the solution for our sin problem
when Jesus was lifted up, when he was on the cross? And people
go, well, how can that man's death have anything to do with
me today? How can he die for my sins? How is that God's justice
to kill an innocent man? And all kinds of arguments against
these things, and yet God says, this is my solution. Accept it. And if you do, you live. If you
don't, you're already on a path to destruction.
and yet all the world's other religions are all about people
trying to figure out another way to help themselves. It can't be that simple, right?
It can't be that easy. I've got to do stuff. I've got
to make myself bloody and bruised. I've got to show that I'm sincere.
I've got to crawl on my knees and do difficult things and sacrifice
things and give stuff. There's got to be stuff that
I can do. And people work so hard to try to save themselves
when God made way, and he just said, just accept it. We see God providing salvation
in his own unique way, even back in the history of Israel. these
little lessons in advance. Trying to build everybody up
so that they can accept the big one when it comes. Just trust
me and do this. I'll rescue you. Just trust me
and do this and I'll rescue you. Just eat the manna that you need
for today and trust me to give you food tomorrow. Just trust
me. God's showing his faithfulness
and his ability to save in his own way leading up to the ultimate
solution at the cross. This is what we can learn from
the study of a book like Exodus. God uses sometimes miraculous
ways to accomplish the salvation of his people. He established
a relationship with Israel, as we said, and intended for them
to reveal himself to the world. Now, some people teach wrongly
that God changed his mind after Israel rejected their Messiah,
then he changed his mind and said, okay, fine. Fooey on you,
I'm going to the Gentiles. Now salvation is for the Gentiles,
not for the Israelites anymore. But we see in his promise even
to Abraham that the Messiah from the very beginning was meant
to be the blessing for all the peoples of the earth, all the
families of the earth. And all along the way, God is
preserving the Israelites, not just to be one little group of
people that are the only people who worship Him, but that they
would preserve the truth and represent Him to the rest of
the world. And so even the way that they live, the things that
He told them how to do things day in and day out, were to demonstrate
what it's like to live in a godly way in a relationship with a
good God. so they could see by their lives,
by their existence, that there is a true and living God, and
there's a better way than these other ways. And this is what
it's like to have a relationship with him. The Israelites were
the first missionaries to the world just by their existence,
just by obeying God and living the way he wanted them to. And
that was the purpose, that the nations would know the true and
living God through the Israelites' testimony. His purpose was always
for everyone to have salvation through his promised Messiah.
God miraculously showed his people how to live for him and to enjoy
his blessings, lessons that we can take. Today, we are to be
the means of that message to others. If we look at the record
of God's activity in Exodus, we're impressed with progress.
We see, if we look at the record of man's activity, In this book,
we'll be impressed with failure. That's what we see over and over
again. But if we look, excuse me, but while man constantly
falls short of what God requires, the ultimate purposes of God
are not frustrated, even by human failure, where he allows free
will, still his purposes cannot be thwarted. This proves that
God is indeed sovereign. These are the words of a scholar
by the name of Constable. Here's the very big overarching
outline of Exodus as we come near our conclusion for our introduction
today. In Egypt, this is where we start.
It's a very physical sort of a book, this historical record.
It starts in Egypt. You see that in chapters 1 through
14. We then go from Egypt to Sinai. This is kind of the middle
ground. And then And then what happens
at Sinai, and then of course the story continues on into numbers
after that. So this is the overall. way of breaking up the book is
by location. In Egypt, first 14 chapters,
Egypt to Sinai, the trip, making the trip, 15 to 18, and then
what takes place at Sinai where God begins to establish his relationship
formally with the Israelites and beginning to give them the
law, including the Ten Commandments and so on. So, back to where
we were here in our basic points. Key chapters to keep an eye on.
chapters 12 through 14 and chapter 20. 12 through 14 is the real
exodus stuff right there, where we see the mighty hand of God,
as he says, working to build an intensity through each of
the plagues to the point where Pharaoh finally yields and the
people are delivered by God's mighty hand and as they escape. And then in chapter 20, we have
the Ten Commandments. Now just before we go, I want
to look at these verses here. Key verses for the whole book. Exodus
6-6 and then chapter 19 verses 5 and 6. Say therefore to the people of
Israel, this is God speaking to his messenger Moses, I am
Yahweh. I will bring you out from under
the burdens of the Egyptians. I will deliver you from slavery
to them. I will redeem you. There's that
key word. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with
great acts of judgment. This is key to the whole book.
Look at these promises of great action. First of all, he declares
himself, I am not any other of the phony gods that people worship.
I am Yahweh, the one true and living God. I am the one who
is. And he says, I will bring you
out. I will deliver you. I will redeem
you. When we come to Colossians, we see a description of that
same thing where it talks about how God delivers us from the
kingdom of darkness and delivers us into the kingdom of his beloved
son, Jesus Christ. We are rescued in a similar way
by this one true and living God. It's good to see. God offers
salvation. He offers redemption. He alone
has the power to do it. And those who receive and enjoy
the benefit of his salvation are meant to represent him then
to others that they might likewise learn about this God and the
salvation that he offers and his great power to accomplish
it. In Exodus 19, five and six. Now
therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant,
You shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the
earth is mine, God says. And you shall be to them a kingdom
of priests and a holy nation. These are the words that you
shall speak to the people of Israel, God said to Moses. Now what is the purpose of priests? What purpose did priests, what
have they always served in their history? What is it? Sacrifice, good. To what end? What are they accomplishing
through their sacrifices? Okay, for our sins, so is there
a representative role perhaps? They're intermediaries, right?
They stand between man and God to, through their sacrifices,
make a reconciliation, to establish a right relationship. And so
God says to the people of Israel, the whole earth is mine. My purpose
is to preserve you as a special nation so that you can be a,
what? A kingdom of priests and a holy,
which means set apart, a set apart nation. The purpose being,
what priests are for, to connect mankind with God. So we see that
it wasn't just, there was no prejudice in this. This was not
God saying, I don't like Gentiles. I just decided I love only Jewish
people. No, this is God's act of love
to all mankind to preserve this nation that they might be like
priests to all the rest of us. people who would represent God
to us and who could help us to understand and come to understand
and know God. And it's interesting that now,
in the New Testament era, as believers in Christ, as children
of God, through this relationship that is made possible through
the Messiah, who has now come, not that we're looking forward
to, but who has now come, now Peter uses very similar language
when he writes in 1 Peter 2, of verses nine through twelve
was written to him and i don't think i actually have on the
screen so read it to you he says to us now as believers you are
a chosen race a royal priesthood a holy nation does that sound
familiar a people for his own possession that you may hear
the purpose what a priest do that you might proclaim the excellencies
of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light
Once you were not a people, scattered among the nations, you just had
whatever random traditions you might have had, but now you are
God's people. Once you had not received mercy,
but now you have received mercy. Beloved, I urge you then as sojourners
and exiles in this world to abstain from the passions of the flesh,
which wage war against your soul. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles,
and now that word is used in the general sense of people who
don't know God. Keep your conduct among the Gentiles honorable,
so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see
your good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation. So
now we have that role. We don't take Israel's place
in all of the promises that he made to them as a unique nation.
But we are now, as Paul explains, grafted in so that we are now
partakers in many of God's special promises, particularly the relationship
that we have of access to the one true and living God, and
therefore the responsibility to be representatives to those
who do not yet know him. And so as the Israelites were
saved for a purpose, so we are saved for a purpose. We can,
through our experience of salvation, know the true and living God,
rejoice in His sovereignty and His grace and His goodness and
mercy toward us, but we have a responsibility to represent
Him well to those in this world who do not yet know Him in that
personal way. And so we are challenged by Peter to live in such a way
that even when people are looking for a way to bring charges against
us, when they're trying to find ways to accuse us, They find
themselves embarrassed because they cannot find anything. And
indeed, they turn around and have to give glory to God. Perhaps
they'll come to know Him through our testimony. That's where even
an introduction to Exodus becomes practical for us. We have been
saved by His mighty hand that we might represent Him to the
world around us.
The Exodus Promise Remembered Part 1
Series Exodus
| Sermon ID | 6181752168 |
| Duration | 49:52 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Language | English |
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