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.