Making Sense of Exodus pt 1
We’re in this message series called “Making Sense of the Bible.” It’s pretty fun, at least for me, and many of you have said you’re digging it, too. Each week I take an entire book of the Bible and try to give the gist of the book, show how it fits into the overall big picture of how God’s saving the world, especially how it points to Jesus.
This week is the book of Exodus. It’s probably the most important book in the Bible. It’s the Gospel of the Old Testament, the defining moment in history for God’s people until the cross and the resurrection. The other thing I’m trying to do in this series is cover the entire book in 30 minutes or less—which is not going to happen today. I’ll do half this week and half next week.
Exodus is really Genesis part two. The first word of chapter one is literally “and.” The setting is the same as it was for Genesis: Moses is writing this for the children of the Israelites who were rescued from slavery in Egypt. Their parents and grandparents had lived through the plagues and walked through the Red Sea on dry ground.
Genesis started with God telling Adam and Eve to be fruitful and multiply, it ended with Joseph taking his family, the people of Israel, into Egypt.
And it’s been 400 years. They have been very fruitful. The seventy people that Joseph brought to Egypt have multiplied to a couple million. Chapter one, verse 8 says,
“Eventually, a new king came to power in Egypt who knew nothing about Joseph or what he had done. He said to his people, “Look, the people of Israel now outnumber us and are stronger than we are. We must make a plan to keep them from growing even more. If we don’t, and if war breaks out, they will join our enemies and fight against us. Then they will escape from the country.” Exodus 1:8–10
Moses doesn’t even bother telling us the Pharaoh’s name. One of the biggest disses of all time.
So Anonymous Pharaoh tries a few strategies to keep the Israelites from growing. First, he makes them slaves and tries to crush them with harsh labor. But it says the more he oppressed them, the more the Israelites multiplied. It backfired.
Pharaoh makes a declaration to everyone, He said, “Throw every newborn Hebrew boy into the Nile river.”
This is a foreshadowing of both the final plague against Egypt, as well as what happens at the Red Sea. But Christians see Christmas.
Now, usually in this series, I’ve kinda waited until the end to show how the book points to Jesus but there’s too much in Exodus to do it that way. I have to point things out as we go. The Book of Exodus is like the whole Bible in miniature. The life of Jesus was a re-enactment of Exodus. Everything He did points in some way to something that happened in Exodus.
Like when Jesus was born, Herod ordered the death of all newborn baby boys, too. Then his step-father took Him to Egypt for protection. Joseph took Jesus (who is Israel reduced to one man) to Egypt. Joseph once again took Israel to Egypt. There are things like that all through the life of Jesus, you just have to look for them.
So one day a Hebrew woman gives birth to a boy and when she looks at him she realizes he’s special, so she hides him for three months. Some translations say the baby was special or beautiful or fine—none of them say what the original text actually says. It says “she saw that he was good.” Good. As in “And God said, “Let there be light,” And God saw that it was good.” This is supposed to take us back to creation.
This is the origin of Moses, you’ve probably heard it before, right? When his mother couldn’t hide him anymore she put him in a basket and floated him in the Nile. You know the story, right? Except the word isn’t basket. The word is “Tebah,” which means box or ark. It literally says she made a little Ark, covered it in pitch and placed it in the water. It’s totally supposed to make us think of Noah and the flood.
This is exactly the kind of story God likes to tell. The setup always looks completely hopeless.
But Pharaoh’s daughter finds the little ark and opens it, sees the Hebrew baby boy inside and feels sorry for him. We don’t know if this was some big well orchestrated thought-out plan or not, but Moses’ sister comes walking up at just that moment saying “should I go and find one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?” So she goes and gets their mom. The princess even offers to pay this helpful woman to take care of the baby she found. A lot could have gone wrong with that plan. So his own mother nursed him until he was old enough, usually two to three years back in those days, and then the princess of Egypt adopted him and named him Moses—which means “drawn out” or “rescued” because she said she “drew him out of the water. Prophetic. Everything that happens to Moses is going to happen to Israel, too.
Then we fast forward. Kinda like how with Jesus we have the Christmas story and then jump to when He’s an adult.
So Moses is forty-years-old. He has a little midlife crisis and decides to visit the land of Goshen, where his people the Hebrews live. It was disturbing. His people were tired, they had been slaves for forty years, being worked to death. He saw an Egyptian taskmaster beating a Hebrew slave, and he lost it. It says he looked in all directions to make sure no one was watching and then he murdered him. Moses, the Punisher. He killed him and buried his body in the sand.
The next day, while he was still in Goshen on his little vacation from the palace, he sees two Hebrew men fighting and breaks it up. They’re like, “Who made you our judge? Are you going to kill us like you did the Egyptian yesterday?”
Not good. Everyone knows what he did. Pharaoh orders Moses’ execution. Moses gets out of town and hides in the land of Midian. He meets a pretty Midianite girl, marries her, moves in with her family, becomes a shepherd, has a couple kids, and grows old. The end.
At least you’d think that would be the end but the next thing that happens is we fast-forward another forty years. Now Moses is eighty. He’s practically a Midianite. And Egypt was a long time ago.
The Pharaoh had died but the Hebrew people were still groaning under the burden of slavery—they prayed for God to rescue them. And He heard them.
God doesn’t choose heroes the same way we do. We would have picked someone like Thor or Superman. God chose an eighty-year-old man with a stick.
One day Moses was tending his sheep at the base of Mount Sinai. You probably know the story. It says the Angel of the LORD appeared to Moses in a blazing fire from the middle of a bush but the bush wasn’t being consumed.
God tells him that He’s heard the cries of His people in Egypt, He wants Moses to go back, confront Pharaoh and lead them to freedom.
Moses is like, “Me? Who am I?”
God says, “I’ll be with you. It doesn’t matter who you are. I’ll do all the heavy lifting.”
Moses says, “You say You’re the God of my ancestors but I don’t even know Your name. Who would I tell them sent me?”
This is a very interesting part of the story.
God says “I AM WHO I AM.” Tell the people “HE IS WHO HE IS” sent me. The way to say “HE IS WHO HE IS” in Hebrew is “Yahweh.” Tell the people Yahweh sent me.
“This is my eternal name,
my name to remember for all generations.” Exodus 3:14
Whenever we see The Angel of the LORD, it’s a theophany—a physical manifestation of God. Colossians 1:15 says
“Jesus is the image of the invisible God,”
so it’s Jesus in the burning bush. Jesus said “before Abraham was, I AM. Jesus is Yahweh. Moses is talking to Jesus.
But he’s still looking for a way out. “What if they don’t believe that a brush fire talked to me?”
God says “Throw your shepherd’s staff on the ground.” He did and it became a snake. Moses jumped back just like we would.
God says “Now pick it up by the tail.” Which is totally the wrong way to pick up a snake, and the fact that Moses does it proves that he has much more faith than I do. It turns back into a stick.
God says “put your hand inside your cloak and it’ll be covered in leprosy, pull it out and it’ll be fine again, and one more trick, you can’t practice this one, but if you take some water from the Nile and pour it on the ground, it will become blood.
Moses begs, “I really don’t want to do this. I’m not good at speaking. Never have been. I’m just not the right guy for the job.”
God says, “I told you, I’ll be with you. I made your mouth. I’ll make sure you do fine.”
He’s starting to feel like God isn’t going to take “no” for an answer, so he just lays it out there: “Can’t you just send someone else? Send anyone else.”
God finally gets angry, “Fine. I’ll send your brother Aaron with you, he can do all the talking. In fact, he’s on his way here even as we speak.”
But I don’t think Moses ever told God the real reason he didn’t want to go back to Egypt because in Exodus 4:19 it says,
“Before Moses left Midian, the LORD said to him, “Return to Egypt, for all those who wanted to kill you have died.”
I think that’s why he really didn’t want to go. I love that God showed Moses that kindness, and put his mind at ease.
So Moses took his wife and sons and headed back to Egypt.
And the LORD told him,
“When you arrive back in Egypt, go to Pharaoh and perform all the miracles I have empowered you to do. But I will harden his heart so he will refuse to let the people go. Then you will tell him, ‘This is what the LORD says: Israel is my firstborn son. I commanded you, “Let my son go, so he can worship me.” But since you have refused, I will now kill your firstborn son!’ ” Exodus 4:21–23
Jesus is Israel reduced to one man, we can’t hear this and not think of Jesus as the only begotten Son of God.
Moses and Aaron go to the leaders of the Hebrew people, tell them about Yahweh and the Burning Bush, show them the stick trick—and they’re all in. Everyone is very excited.
Then they go to Pharaoh and say,
“This is what Yahweh, the God of Israel, says: Let my people go so they may hold a festival in my honor in the wilderness.” Exodus 5:1
But Pharaoh thought of himself as a god. He was pretty sure he had the puny god of his Hebrew slaves in a headlock. “I don’t know Yahweh, and I’m not gonna let Israel go.”
He said, “Man you people are lazy. I’ve been too easy on you if you have time to think up stupid stuff like this.” So he punishes the people by making them gather their own straw for the bricks they had to make, but kept the quota the same. Which was impossible, so the slave drivers beat them more.
Things are looking pretty hopeless again.
Moses prayed,
“Why have you brought all this trouble on your own people, Lord? Why did you send me? Ever since I came to Pharaoh as your spokesman, he has been even more brutal to your people. And you have done nothing to rescue them!” Exodus 5:22–23
So God smashed Moses with His mighty fist. The end.
No. God doesn’t mind when we are honest with Him. It’s what He wants. Somehow, we think our flowery polite prayers are better but God wants us to mix it up with Him. He called His people “Israel” which means “wrestles with God.”
God says to Moses, “No, it’s all coming together now. Wait ‘till you see what I do to Pharaoh. Go back and tell him to let my people go.”
Moses is shaking his head, “my own people won’t even listen to me anymore, they’re so discouraged. How can I expect Pharaoh to listen to me? I told you I was bad at the talking thing.”
But God says, “I’m going to make you like a God to Pharaoh.”
God sends Moses to Pharaoh to demand His people be freed or it’s going to get ugly.
First, Moses does the “stick becomes a snake” trick but God takes it up a notch. I had never noticed this before but it says when Moses threw down the staff before Pharaoh, it became a “serpent.” The Hebrew word is “tannin.” Which is the word for dragon. The staff became a dragon. How cool is that? Pharaoh’s magicians turned their sticks into dragons, too. But Moses’ dragon swallowed up all of theirs. Pharaoh wasn’t impressed. He hardened his heart.
These are the ten plagues. A battle between Gods. The gods of Egypt and Yahweh.
First He turns the Nile into blood. Killed all the fish, ruined the water. But this was just the beginning. This is like creation only in reverse—uncreation.
Second plague, Moses said, “Let my people go or there will be… wait for it, it’s going to really be scary!”
“Frogs!”
Pharaoh was probably confused. No one is afraid of frogs. But when the plague of frogs came, it was like mountains of frogs. Frogs in your bed, in your coffee cup, You couldn’t take a step without squashing a few. Frog poo and pee everywhere. It was comically disgusting. The magicians of Pharaoh were able to use their magic and summon frogs, too. Which is funny because that just made more frogs. Pharaoh begged Moses to get rid of the frogs and, fine, your people can go worship. So Moses prayed and all the frogs died. Right where they were. The smell of piles of dead frogs filled the land. Once Pharaoh got what he wanted, he hardened his heart and changed his mind, though.
Third plague was nats, mosquitos, lice. Aaron struck the dust with the staff and the dust flew up into the air and turned into swarms of them. The magicians weren’t able to do it.
Fourth plague—biting, blood-sucking flies. This is the first plague that didn’t happen to the Hebrews, from now on they will only be against the Egyptians. These suckers were painful.
Pharaoh gives in a little—begs for the flies to go away, you can take a day to sacrifice but stay here. Nope.
Fifth plague—pestilence. A plague on the livestock.
Sixth plague—boils, on people and animals. Even the magicians call in sick. This is the first plague where it says that God is the One who hardened Pharaoh’s heart.
Seventh plague—hail. The size of baseballs. Total destruction. Egypt was the world’s superpower and it was being reduced to nothing.
Eighth plague—locusts. They eat everything. People start begging Pharaoh to let the Israelites go. He says, “okay but just the men.” God drowns all the locusts in the Red Sea, a little foreshadowing.
Ninth plague—three days of darkness. Darkness you could feel. A direct assault on Ra the sun god. A foreshadowing of the three hours of darkness that would accompany Jesus on the cross.
This has all been very discouraging for the Egyptians. But it has done wonders for the faith of the Hebrews.
The final plague is the death of the firstborn. It was going to take some preparation. God told them to ask for gold and treasure from the Egyptians they served—who were happy to give it to them. God explains how Passover is going to work, and how they’re going to celebrate it from now on.
They’re to choose a perfect one-year-old lamb or goat. Bring it in the house for four days. Sacrifice the lamb, paint its blood on the door frame of the house using a hyssop branch, roast the meat over an open fire, get dressed and ready to leave, then eat it in a hurry—be careful not to break any of the bones.
At midnight, Yahweh will pass through all of Egypt and kill the firstborn sons and male animals. It says “This will be a judgment against all the gods of Egypt.” But God will pass over any home that has blood on the doorframe.
If you can’t see Jesus in all that, you haven’t been paying attention. Jesus is the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Destroys demonic powers. His blood saves you from the wages of sin. From the wrath of God. The Last Supper was a Passover meal where Jesus said, “This is my body, this is my blood.” Jesus is the firstborn Son of God who died in our place. Communion is our Passover meal. This all points to Jesus.
And then it happened. Bible says,
“Pharaoh and all his officials and all the people of Egypt woke up during the night, and loud wailing was heard throughout the land of Egypt. There was not a single house where someone had not died.” Exodus 12:30
Pharaoh sent for Moses and Aaron in the middle of the night and told them “Just go, leave as fast as you can.”
So 600,000 men, along with women and children and all their livestock left Egypt that night. There was also a “mixed multitude” of Egyptians and other slaves who joined them. Two to three million people. It was never only about Israel, they were to be a blessing to all people, this was the beginning of that.
God didn’t take them the fastest route to Mount Sinai. He said if they ran into the Philistines they would get scared and go back to Egypt. So He took them the long way. He led them as a cloud by day and fire by night. That same cloud was at The Mount of Transfiguration in the Gospels, where Jesus met Moses and Elijah. During that meeting, it says in Luke that Jesus talked with Moses and Elijah about His “exodus.” He was talking about the cross.
I don’t have time to really do the rest of this story justice but Pharaoh’s heart is hardened once again and he changes his mind. His spies tell him that the Hebrews seem to be lost and are camped by the Red Sea. They’re trapped. Fish in a barrel. Pharaoh decides to take everything he has left, all his military might, and go exterminate those pesky Israelites once and for all.
Moses and the people of Israel are caught between a rock and a hard place. Between Pharaoh’s chariots and drowning in the sea. Once again, things look hopeless.
The people yell at Moses, “Were there not enough graves in Egypt?”
Does God get tired of hearing this? “Where are you, God? Why have you abandoned us? My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”
God tells Moses, “Don’t be afraid. Just be still. I will fight for you.”
“Hey Moses, hold my beer.”
He tells Moses to lift his staff, the water will part, and the people will walk through on dry ground.
The cloud of fire moves from the front of the camp, where it was leading them, to the rear of the camp—putting God’s presence between them and the Egyptian army.
The sea parts like two walls in a giant aquarium, an east wind blows all night and dries the mud into a solid road, and the people walk through amazed.
The army rushes in to attack. But God confused them, He makes their wheels come off or get stuck—they were the ones who were trapped—and then the walls came down. No one in the Egyptian army survived.
Just before the water crashed down on them someone said, “Let us flee from Israel because Yahweh is fighting for them!” Someone else had to say, “You think?!”
You ever wonder why the devil keeps trying? Why he never gives up? You ever wonder why your old sinful nature never stops coming at you? Pharaoh and Egypt are a perfect picture of your old sinful nature. That part of you that keeps hardening your heart. Doing the same old sins. No matter how God tries to get your attention.
In the light of the morning, they could see the corpses floating at the shore. They thanked and praised God for saving them.
Exodus is probably the most important book in the Bible. Jesus is all over it.
1 Corinthians 10:1 says,
“I don’t want you to forget, dear brothers and sisters, about our ancestors in the wilderness long ago. All of them were guided by a cloud that moved ahead of them, and all of them walked through the sea on dry ground. In the cloud and in the sea, all of them were baptized into Moses.” 1 Corinthians 10:1–2
They came out of the water a new people, saved from slavery, just like you are baptized into Jesus, and through the water and the word of promise your old sinful nature is drowned, you are forgiven and are made alive in Christ. A new person.
Part two next week.
When things look hopeless, that’s when God is just getting started.