Exodus + Redemption

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Exodus begins with a significant problem: God’s people are slaves in a foreign land.

– Francis Chan

GotQuestions.org Summary of Exodus

Gen. 15:13–14
The LORD said to Abram, “Know 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 the nation that they serve, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions.”

It’s hard to imagine being enslaved for 400 years. As I write this, our nation (the USA) is approaching 250 years since its birth. That’s roughly half the time Isaac’s descendants lived as slaves in Egypt. This means there were probably 3-5 generations that lived their entire lives as slaves.

God’s promises to Abraham were exactly on track, and as the book of Exodus opens, the scene is being set for the greatest act of redemption that the world has seen to this point. Here we find God’s people in an impossible situation without any hope of relief.

If God is going to keep His promises to Abraham, then He will have to accomplish something spectacular.

Encounter with I AM

They are the most fundamental questions we could ever ask, because everything in our lives—not only here and now, but for all of eternity—is based on a right answer to those two questions:

Who am I, and who is God?

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God’s name is “I AM” because He has always existed.

This reminds of Tozer’s statement in ‘Knowledge of the Holy’ about a man’s thoughts on God being the most important part of him.
Tozer also mentions the fact of God being something completely ‘other’ – there is no comparison to Him.

‘I AM’ is a statement of residing outside the created dimensions of time & space. It is existing in a state of ‘eternal now’.

In Chapter 11 of ‘Systematic Theology’, Grudem marks this ‘self-existence’ as one of God’s incommunicable attributes – attributes that God does not share or communicate to others. Examples of these attributes include:

• Immutability
• Omniscience
• Omnipresence
• Omnipotence

The implication of this frequent use of God’s personal name (YHWH) is that God aims to be known in Scripture not just as a generic deity (Elohim), but as a specific person with a wholly unique character and a special relationship with His people.

Passover Lamb

Gen 12:30
At midnight the LORD struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of the livestock. And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he and all his servants and all the Egyptians. And there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house where someone was not dead

It is difficult to image such a scene. It is morbid and hard to stomach, but it teaches us an important lesson about God. Just as He is faithful to keep His promises of blessing, God is also faithful to carry out His warnings of wrath. This is important to keep in mind in a time when so many doubt and even ridicule God’s intention to punish.

It’s sobering to stop and consider that ALL of Egypt would be punished for the sake of its leadership. Even the prisoner in his cell lost their firstborn.

These are some tough passages of scripture where we will need to lean on the goodness and sovereignty of God in trying to understand a holy, infinite, and omniscient God, with our fallen, finite minds.

Notice that God had graciously offered the Egyptians an alternative before it got to this point. Pharaoh could have submitted to God’s call and his nation would have been preserved.

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God also provided an alternative for the Israelites. Any Israelite who put the blood of a lamb on their doorpost would be “passed over”—the angel of death would move on to the next house.

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This night was the first Passover, an event that the Jews have cele­brated once a year ever since. It is full of significance that Jesus, on the night He was betrayed, recast the Passover celebration in terms of His own death and resurrection. Jesus could hardly have been clearer that He was laying down His life for His followers, as their Passover Lamb.

Some commentators have linked the passage of the Israelites through the Red Sea with baptism.

No matter what we try to make ourselves believe in our darkest moments, every one of us has unmistakably seen the hand of God in our lives.

But we forget. We complain. We lose our trust in God and try to go back to doing things our own way.

Take some time to learn from Israel’s example and focus on remembering God’s provision in life’s most difficult circumstances.