Good morning, everybody. My name is Timothy Hine. It's a privilege and a pleasure to share with you
all. For those online, I encourage you to keep Pastor Greg's account on there. We're going to
try this little dry erase board action today a little bit, kind of make it a little more at home
like, all in person like, so I hope that works out well for everybody. I do hope you have the handout
on you. There's way more on there than we're going to cover, especially in the first two pages,
but I do just want to say that at the outset, since I'm teaching also next week on Leviticus,
there are a few things I'm going to leave hanging today on purpose because we'll catch those next
Sunday when we hit Leviticus, especially talking about Christians and the law, and we'll talk a
little bit more about the tabernacle next week as well, so I guess a shameless plug to come next
Sunday school, so that's there. Let's pray, and then we'll just go ahead and jump right into it
this morning, so let's ask God's help today. Gracious Heavenly Father, merciful God, we thank you that you
are a good Father in heaven, and you provide and protect your people, even on a rainy New Haven morning.
Thank you for the good news that you sent Christ to rescue us from sin, and thank you for the good news
that you have recorded all that you have done in history so that we might know you and love you more
for it. Teach us from your word now as we look briefly at the entire 40 chapters of Exodus,
and Lord, we pray that we would be more like Christ for it. It's in Jesus' name that we pray and ask. Amen.
All right, I'm just going to mute the audio on this one here. Let's see. Oh, yeah, okay. All right, so
by way of introduction into the book of Exodus itself, I just want to pause at the outset there
and talk a little bit about the Old Testament itself and specifically the Pentateuch, because I
think it's important to remember as Christians, we have this text that we call the Bible, but the first
half of it, particularly the Pentateuch, is really a Jewish text, right? And especially when it comes to
the Pentateuch, we're dealing with God's self-revelation of himself, God's law given to an ancient
people, Israel. And so at the outset, when we read this, we really want to think carefully and just
acknowledge for the moment that we are dealing with a text that came to a people group that was
not us as Christians initially at the outset, because oftentimes what can happen is as Christians,
but I think sometimes the reason we struggle to understand the Old Testament in particular,
or the Old Testament in general, the Pentateuch in particular, is that we sometimes forget or don't
give due credence to the fact that not only is there a couple thousand years of history between
us and the events of the text, but there's also at a certain level a spiritual distance that we have
to the text. No one in this room, maybe I'm mistaken, but none of us online or in this room are
biological descendants of Abraham. None of us were slaves in Egypt. None of us were born and raised in
Palestine. None of us went to Shabbat, went to the temple or the synagogue for service. So there's a
whole economy of life that is the first audience to the Pentateuch in particular, the Old Testament
as a whole. And as Christians, it's a helpful, I think it's a helpful exercise for us to just to take
a quick pause and recognize, okay, when I come to this text, I'm coming to this text as a Christ follower,
as a Christian. And that's going to be different from, say, the way a Jewish person is going to take
a look at this text. My colleagues at the university are going to look at this text. My Hindus can look
at this text. Muslims can look at this text. And so just to pause and acknowledge for just a brief moment
that we are dealing with a text that as Christians is part of our Bible, part of our Christian Bible,
Bible Bible, but that wasn't its first audience right away. That said, as Christians, we need to
begin by recognizing that God's word is his self-revelation of himself to us, and that God did so at a
particular times in human history. And we find ourselves at a particular time and place in human
history ourselves, reading this historically embedded text. It's an ancient text, not about
life in New Haven, Connecticut and its situation. That's our situation. We're in New Haven, Connecticut.
We're living in the 21st century. And so taking a moment to just kind of mentally before we approach
the text, say, okay, this is the text context. This is my context. And then we march forward. But this is
God's word. It's inspired. It's authoritative. And it's revealed to us, revealing and revealed to us
and revealing to us who he is and what he's done. So lastly, by way of introduction, then
I just want to say in regards to the Pentateuch as a unit, all five books, there's a tremendous amount
of continuity from book to book. If you've ever had the privilege or taken the time to just sit and read
Genesis through Deuteronomy, it's a chore. Let's just be honest, right? You get to Numbers and you're
like, man, a lot of begatting happened here, right? Or in Leviticus next week, as you hopefully get a
chance to read Leviticus, it's just law after law. It can be challenging. Absolutely. But if you look at
it, the differences aren't from Genesis to Exodus to Leviticus numbers aren't as dramatic as it may
first appear. For example, you can find all 10 commandments that we see in Exodus 20 within the
first few chapters of Genesis. There's themes of worship and sacrifice and redemption that bleed
through every story across the Pentateuch. And then you come to places like Leviticus where it's like,
okay, these are the formal sacrifices. These are the sacrifices you need to make. These are the times to do
it. The Pentateuch's narrative flows from the tall adults in Genesis, you know, the story of Abraham,
the story of Isaac, the story of Jacob, to there's history, there's legal and religious code,
there's genealogies, and back again. As you read, there's kind of a narrative arc even to the
Pentateuch, not just straight law or straight history. And even there, the history itself
is theologized history. It's not Encyclopedia Britannica reporting data. This is God telling us
on purpose these things with a particular goal in mind and the teaching of these things that happened
that happened to the people of Israel that are for us to learn who he is and what he's done for us.
So Torah is God's word. It's God's self-revelation. It's God's history of his creation and his redemption
plan through the Hebrew peoples, Abraham's descendants, historically situated by the time and place
and people that Torah came to us today. And in our book today, Exodus, as it's called,
as we're going to see, as we'll see here, is the defining story for the Jewish people and for us
as Christians to understand God's redemption plan. The Israelites, the ancient Israelites are people
miraculously rescued from slavery by God to worship him. So let me pause there just to say by way of
recap. It's a text situated in a particular history. And you have on page two, I believe it is, I'm sorry,
page three, I've taken the liberty to kind of make a kind of uber outline of the entire Old Testament
with the books of the Bible peppered in there as well and some key figures, a little bit of world
history as well, just to kind of put our minds in the world, not just of these Hebrew slaves who are
taken out of Egypt, but then also to those first readers in the wilderness when Moses comes down
and says, hey, this is what God told me. So you have that there for your benefit. There's more
and more there than there's time to read through. So I'm not going to bother with that. Also in your
handout on page two, there's a bunch of things about the pen, a couple of more things about the
Pentateuch and the way it's structured and the literary plan of the Pentateuch. I'll leave that
for you to enjoy later. That bit on the Old Testament law, we'll talk about that next Sunday.
Come back. Shameless plug. There we go again. But let me just pause there. I kind of downloaded a whole
bunch by way of just orientation. Am I making sense? Any comments, questions, concerns before we march
forward here? So I just want to, I'm kind of taking a little bit more of a historical look at the moment
before we jump to a more theological reflection. But I want to, I just want to make sure we're on the
same page there. So if you're online, raise, use the raise your hand function in person. You can raise
your hand as well. Yes. You sure? Okay. Okay. No worries. No worries. Fantastic. Fantastic. A
preemptive hand raise. We're all good. It's okay. It's okay. So, all right. Well, let's, let's,
let's take care of a few more historical bits and bops, as they say, and then we'll, and we'll dive
into text. So reading the text Christianly, I just want to take a quick, one more quick moment on that.
If you're on, on your handout, I'm looking here at page four now, reading the Old Testament
Christianly. And last week, oh, it was a Luke. Yeah. Luke talked about how like in the Pentateuch,
we can read it through the, we can read the ultimate covenants through a creation, fall,
redemption, hermeneutic as well. I'm going to lean more on that side of the equation for those who were
there last, here last Sunday. Cause I think it's, I hope you'll see why I think that's a little bit
more helpful for us with the book of Exodus in particular. So reading Christianly, just a couple
comments on that. You have there, that little diagram there, if you want to fill it in.
Um, if you're not familiar, when we talk about scripture as kind of, uh, the main meta narrative,
the big picture of scripture, we're talking, we start of course with creation, right? And then we have
the fall, things get really bad. God made things good. In fact, very good in many places, Adam and Eve
in humanity messed it up. We fell and then Christ comes to redeem it all and make right what was once
wrong. And then anyone want to take a stab? What's that last bit? A raise of hand, hand. I'm sorry.
The coming of Christ. Yeah. The coming of Christ. Yeah. The consummation. We'll use a big word today.
Con, let me do it a little bigger. Sorry guys. For everyone online. Con, some, a, shun. Oh, I can't spell
today. O-N. Consummation. If you can read my penmanship, you're ready for Hebrew. Consummation,
right? So creation, things made good, very good. The fall messes things up. Christ comes to redeem it.
And all of history is kind of working up to that high point of Christ's redemption. And then here we
are somewhere in here. We'll say, we don't know where, um, Trinity Baptist Church, somewhere in there.
And then it comes to another climax once again, as we learn to live the time between the times,
so to speak, where Christ has come. Salvation is already, but not yet. And here we find ourselves
wrestling with God's redemption plan and how the story of the Exodus and God's law works out for us
in this in-between time of Christ, but things aren't as they're going to be as they ought to be.
So as Christians, then we want to recognize first that the Old Testament was inspired in
authoritative, an authoritative text for ancient Israel, like I said earlier. And then secondly,
as I said before, we want to recognize the Old Testament and in particular the Pentateuch
was God's self-revelation of himself. He isn't just telling us historical facts. He isn't just giving
us a theologized history. He's revealing himself, his character. Spoiler alert for next week.
The law reveals God's character, not that he has a to-do, a spiritual to-do list for us.
When God, in chapter, in Exodus chapter one and two, God hears the cries of his people.
If you read the Pentateuch through, that's no surprise because God also heard when Hagar cried
out to God after Sarah kicked her out of the house with Ishmael, God heard. Then God saw and God
promised a blessing to Ishmael. Check it out. It's almost as big a promise. It's about as big a
promise as he gave to Abraham in some respects. Kind of a big deal there, but I'm getting distracted here.
The point is God reveals his character, not just a history. God reveals a people and how he's taking
care, how he's providing and protecting his people. So as Christians then, we want to read with three
major, major frames of reference. I summarize in three very glorious words, context, context,
context. This is what keeps us out of crazy things like blowing shofars on the nation's capital.
We recognize the text of the first audience, the text context. Exodus is given to Moses on Mount Sinai.
And then the people, he has to come down and tell it to the people.
Let that sink in for a second.
What this means then, it may well be that these Hebrew slaves wandering in the wilderness don't get it right away.
Just like maybe Jesus' disciples heard Jesus talk, heard the story, but they didn't get it right away, did they?
Right? It wasn't until after the resurrection, the disciples were like, oh, that's what Jesus meant when he said, right?
There may be a very real sense for these Hebrew slaves that as they're reading Exodus, as they're hearing Moses tell them the word of God that he got on the mountain.
Oh, that's why that's going on.
And then for the children in the second and third and fourth generations, Exodus has written for them to say, oh, that's why they called it manna.
Because they complain and God gave them something far better than they ever expected.
And they didn't know what to call it.
So they called it, what is it?
That's the Hebrew translation of the word manna.
What is it?
The stuff.
Maybe a more colloquial way of saying it.
The stuff.
So the context of Exodus itself, the context of the text first readers is super helpful to us as Christians to keep us out of some silly mistakes, some silly pitfalls that we'll come to in a second.
Then secondly, and this gets to our idea of redemptive history here, God's context.
Where are we in God's redemptive plan?
Where is Exodus and God's redemptive plan?
It's not after Jesus.
It's before Jesus.
In fact, it's before King David and the establishment of a nation.
It's even before the wilderness.
At this point in Exodus, we're just starting the wilderness wanderings.
We're just getting out of Israel, out of Egypt.
So we're not even really.
They're just a group of slaves that have a family connection.
And they're just starting to figure out how to be a nation together.
Well, that changes the game tremendously, doesn't it?
No wonder they didn't follow God's law.
They're still learning what, oh, it means this, not that.
Okay, they're figuring it out.
Right?
Almost like I kind of imagine it like raising, like having a child.
You know, they got to learn the rules, break them a thousand times.
And then eventually they'll go off to college and like, oh, that's why mom and dad gave me all those rules.
Okay, it makes sense now.
That's some of what's going on in terms of God's context.
Because he's using these as training wheels to help his people know him and love him as he is and as he's like.
And then lastly, number three, your context.
What am I bringing to the text?
Here we are, 21st century, we have in Connecticut.
What are we bringing to the text that maybe is there in the text, is not in the text?
You know, the idea of a democratic republic, not exactly a political idea in ancient Egypt.
The idea of, you know, this idea of freedom that we have here in the United States.
I'm free to do what I want to do.
Yeah, not a concept in ancient Israel, in ancient Egypt.
No cell phones.
Ah!
No internet.
Ah!
These are all little things.
But just take, this is what makes a historical theological text so beautiful.
It gets us outside of ourselves to realize, you know what, there's a God who's vastly bigger.
And he's doing the exact same kind of things today with the exact same amount of supreme power that he was doing way back then.
And maybe, just maybe, some of my 21st century trappings are just that.
Trappings that I need to shed and let the text expose more of who I am and who God's making me to be in Christ through this text.
So, and so we want to, so as Christians today, we want to, we also want to recognize we're bringing the gospel to this text too, right?
Yes, we, everyone needs to shake their head.
Yes, we're bringing the gospel to this text.
If you're a Christian, that's the difference between a Christian and a Jew, a Christian and anyone else on planet Earth, interpreting the New Testament, interpreting anything in the New Testament or anything.
We are bringing the gospel to bear on these things.
So, common pitfalls that this helps us avoid, equating the USA Today or modern Israel with ancient Israel.
Allegorizing the text, trying to find spiritual meaning in every last minutia of detail.
Those are places that aren't really helpful to go for your soul.
Also, because they're not really where the text is trying to go either.
The text is not trying to find spiritual value in every last minutia of detail.
Did they turn left after the Red Sea or right?
Important question, a good historical question, but, you know, do they cover one mile a day or three?
Doesn't really, that's not super important.
And there's no spiritual value.
There's no way to apply that to your life and be a better Christian in pressing that.
It's an important historical question, but maybe not something we need to think about for spiritual meaning of the text.
Also, direct imports or moralistic imports I have there in my handout there.
Let me explain what I mean by that.
In other words, we don't want to necessarily take a one-to-one, oh, God did this with Israel.
He freed them from slavery.
Therefore, God's going to free me from my boss.
There's something bigger going on in the story here than that.
So, that's what I mean by direct import of the text, right?
Maybe he is going to free you from your boss.
Maybe you have a terrible boss, and if so, I hope he does.
But maybe God wants you to learn something through that.
Just like God had Israel spend, you know, what, 300, 400 years in slavery to learn something through that.
You're right.
Which gets to the other extreme of taking moralistic interpretation, investments from the text.
As if to say that, oh, if I just cry out hard enough to God, he'll hear me and answer my prayer.
Or, you know, he's got a plan he's working on.
He'll do it.
You follow hard after him.
Or, oh, God's given us this law of the Passover and trying to add more spiritual meat.
If I just be a good Passover practicer, you know, or something else.
Finding ways to say kind of be good from the book of Exodus.
The book of Exodus doesn't say be good.
The book of Exodus doesn't say something that simple.
It says something massively more.
It says there is a God who's revealed himself.
You're separated from him.
And he'll rescue you if you let him.
And that changes everything.
It's not enough to just be good.
I mean, being good is good, right?
But the big bird can say be good.
The Muslim can say be good.
The Hindu can say be good.
The point is, Scripture says, Scripture has the voice of God saying be like me.
You're infinitely holy and perfect and righteous.
And you can't do that without my help.
I'll rescue you.
Let me tell you about it.
So, let me pause there.
Any questions or comments?
Again, I'm being a little repetitive at the moment here.
But I just want to kind of set the table for what's going to happen the rest of the hour and into next week.
And hopefully for the rest of your Christian reading of Scripture, we'll be here.
But any comments, questions, thoughts?
Anyone?
Okay.
Let's press on.
And I hope this isn't terribly new.
I should just say, too, that quote there, the mature believer is one who has combined Christ-like character with theological excellence.
A favorite professor of mine often said that.
And I find that a very helpful reminder to myself.
It's not enough to know God's word.
It's to know him.
So, and act like it.
So, a couple of detail things here.
So, date for the Book of Exodus.
When is this happening?
This is happening sometime in the 15th century BC.
15th century BC.
And if you were, that's on your hand.
You kind of can infer that from the timeline a little bit.
And the purpose of Exodus, as best I understand it at least.
And please feel free to push back or if you've got a better way to say it.
The purpose of Exodus is to explain how the ancient Hebrew people became slaves in Egypt and their deliverance from Egyptian oppression.
The book also reveals Yahweh, the divine name, is the glorious supreme God who is mighty to save, worthy of worship, and his divine presence dwells among his redeemed people.
The Book of Exodus is this glorious mix of story, of law code, and history all at once.
And God does amazing, it's a fun book to read, actually.
Because you get it, just when you get, if you get bored, it changes course pretty quickly.
I want to, maybe we should pause here for a second.
What are some stories that come out of Exodus that are of particular impact to you, perhaps?
I wonder if, maybe you've read Exodus, or maybe you've read through a story you thought to yourself, oh, that's really interesting.
Is there any stories for you that you found particularly fascinating or hard to wrestle with in the book of Exodus?
Anyone?
For me, I'm always tripped up by the story of, in Exodus 16, the second water story.
I call it the water 2.0 story in Exodus 16.
To me, it's a fascinating, they complain, and it's so bad that Moses, it's almost like the whole thing's going to get called off and they're going to go back to Egypt.
It's really bad.
It becomes, it becomes actually something that gets talked about often in the Psalms.
Remember back at Meribah.
How about for you?
Something else?
Is there a story or an episode?
Yeah.
In general about the people, the other people around the Israelites that get punished.
Mm-hmm.
Are they only getting punished if they don't turn to God?
Or because Pharaoh won't acknowledge God, they have to die?
Yeah.
Is it directed at them or just Pharaoh and they're suffering because of it?
Yeah.
Great question.
Yeah.
The suffering that other people experience with like the plagues, for example, or when they go into, when they march, when they go on their wanderings, they have to decimate the Amalekites.
It's like, wow, I thought this is a loving God.
Why are these terrible things happening?
Yeah.
We'll come back to that in just a second, actually.
But yeah, that's a tough, that's a tough one, isn't it?
I mean, what do you do with that?
He saves one people and damn, this is the other.
What do we do with a God like that?
Yeah.
Anybody else?
Somebody else?
All right.
So we look through the story of Exodus.
You have the outline there.
A couple of key events that weren't highlighting it.
The story really breaks down into two parts.
Part one would be Israel's key event number one.
This chapter, Exodus 1.1 starts with them in Egypt.
And it's a little explainer as to how.
But then the key event really is God, or they're in Egypt, and God's rescue plan to get them out.
And what's curious about this story is that you have the introduction of Moses just as quickly in chapter two.
It very quickly goes from, here's why Israel, in Exodus chapter one.
If you have your Bibles, you can open up to Exodus chapter one here.
Chapter one begins, just very briefly, and you can see the narrative scene to Genesis right away.
Exodus 1, verse 1, if you have your Bibles, join me there.
Now these are the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob.
They came each one with his household, Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, etc.
He's picking up right where Exodus leaves off.
After Joseph's burial, and the sons are all there.
And then chapter two rushes right in to the life of Moses, and how God essentially hears their prayers,
and is raising up right off the bat a mediator of a new covenant.
This is where places like Cecil DeVille's The Ten Commandments, or if you're like me, you like cartoons a little bit.
Prince of Egypt.
You know, Jesus, Moses isn't a liberator.
He's not, you know, if you believe hard enough in miracles, they'll come true.
That's a moralistic reading of the life of Moses, of Israel.
No, this is God redeeming, a holy God redeeming his people, and he's raising up someone to mediate that relationship.
So, part one then of Exodus is that story that takes us through most of chapter 18, or all of chapter 18.
And we've got the plagues.
I'm sorry, let's take it in order.
We've got the life and call of Moses.
We've got, oh, I missed a punctuation mark there.
Sorry about that.
A 1.3.
Add your little bracket there.
Moses and Aaron's request to Pharaoh.
Pharaoh says no.
And then here we have it, right?
God hardens Pharaoh's heart.
And so there's the ten plagues.
We'll come back to that bit in a second here.
And then the second part, after the rescuing, is really pretty straightforward.
It's God's covenant at Sinai.
It takes place in different kinds of ways.
Different, lots is happening there.
There's rebellion against God's plans.
There's the covenant given and confirmed.
There's instructions for the tabernacle.
And that's really then where the story ends, is when the tabernacle is built, and that presence in the cloud comes and lands on the tabernacle itself.
And so to put it in parlance, the RV park gets God's presence at the middle of it.
And the camping, the camp gets God's presence right at the center of it.
Mind-blowing stuff.
We'll come back to that, though, next week.
So hold me accountable if we don't talk about that more or less next week.
So a couple of key ideas, and then we'll wrap up here.
Okay.
So a couple of key ideas.
This is on page six of your handout.
A couple of key ideas.
All right.
Some key ideas.
First, the glorious supremacy of Yahweh over pagan deities.
I have it in my book.
I have it written down this way.
You don't have to do it this way.
But the glorious supremacy of Yahweh.
Can everyone see if I go down this slow online?
Everyone can see that?
Yeah, we can see it.
Okay.
Y-H-W-H.
In Hebrew, there's no vowels, or at least there's no vowels necessarily.
So Y-H.
Whoops.
Ah, good grief.
Pastor Greg, don't tell anybody I messed up my Hebrew.
H-W-H.
Yahweh, the divine name.
God reveals his name to his people.
I am that I am in Exodus 3, verse 14.
And he reveals that I can do whatever I see fit to do to redeem my people.
He's righteous and just and holy, as we'll see through his law code.
But he, he, Pharaoh's got nothing on him.
In fact, it says in several places that God hardens Pharaoh's heart.
Exodus 4, 21, Exodus 7, a couple times, Exodus 8, Exodus 9, Exodus 10, Exodus 11.
Even again in Deuteronomy chapter 2, verse 30, and again in Deuteronomy 15, verse 7.
God hardens Pharaoh's heart.
Why?
Because that's how glory, he can even change the hearts of men and still rescue his people.
That's the God you serve, Israel.
That's the God you serve, Christian.
He's that glorious, that powerful.
And he's faithful to save.
He's faithful to Abraham's promise.
If you look at Exodus 1, verse 7, he was going to remember his promises.
And at the end of chapter 1, he remembers his promise.
And that's part of what gets Pharaoh so nervous, right?
Oh my gosh, maybe God can save these people.
And he saves them for worship.
An interesting connective tissue along those related to that with the life of Moses, the story of Moses and God preparing his servant.
He can take a Hebrew slave.
The couple gives birth to a baby and that baby rescues his people.
That's how gloriously supreme God this God is.
Take that, Pharaoh, right?
And in fact, it's kind of interesting.
If you looked at the word in Genesis 9, the word ark, Noah builds an ark.
That's the same word used in Exodus chapter 2 for Noah's basket that he's riding in along the Nile River.
And God rescues him.
So again, some connective tissue there.
The idea that the promise I made then, those promise I made, I'm going to bring them to fruition in a whole new, better way.
Because I'm the glorious supreme.
I can do that.
And I'm going to do that for my people.
So he identifies Israel as his son.
And then the 10 plagues, there's a little bit of debate about that among some scholars.
But the point of the 10 plagues, regardless of that debate, cannot be missed.
God wanted both the ancient Hebrews and the ancient Egyptians to know that he alone is a sovereign supreme God.
Because he can undo anything their gods can do.
The purpose of those plagues, amongst other things, was to show that the various things, the various institutions and gods that ancient Israel worshipped, God has control over that.
In fact, even the magicians, there comes a point.
Remember the first three plagues, the magicians are able to replicate it, or the first two plagues, the Egyptians are able to replicate the water and the blood, when all the frogs come down in chapter 8.
But when it comes, once it gets the gnats or the mosquitoes that come in, the magicians can do this.
And then these magicians themselves, Exodus 8, verse 19, this is the finger of God.
Even they can't escape it.
And they're supposed to be the experts who can say, ha, Pharaoh, you're the man.
Pharaoh, you're the God.
This is our gods that we can take care of things.
You can't do anything about this.
That's the real God.
So the glorious supremacy of Yahweh over pagan deities or the Egyptian deities.
Number two, Exodus as the defining act of redemption.
The defining act of redemption for ancient Israel.
Defining act of redemption.
I'm just going to use that redemption for ancient Israel.
Throughout the Psalms, throughout the rest of the Old Testament, this is that moment in history that they're going to come back to to say, this is our God.
He is our people.
Look what he's done for us.
And lastly, I won't belabor that point.
I trust we can get that.
I'm sorry, number three, the Mosaic law as a covenant and social charter.
It's not just a legal code, right?
If he's revealing himself, this is also a covenant, a promise to his people, a relationship with his people.
That's why he calls Israel his son.
And then lastly, number four, the presence of God dwelling with his people in the tabernacle.
This is the first.
Dwelling.
Everyone see that?
It's a little low there.
Everyone can see it online.
Here we go.
Dwelling.
Christ dwelling or the presence of God dwelling with his people.
God is no longer out there.
God's no longer in a statue.
He's no longer.
He's with his people.
Not even in a temple at this point, right?
Because the tabernacle, strictly speaking, is a tent that you pick up and you move along.
It's a mobile.
It's a motorhome, if you will.
It's a mobile space of worship.
But it's not just a space.
It's God's presence there.
So no wonder he's going to be so particular about the way his place should look.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
We've got just a few moments left.
So let me just close us with some gospel connections.
And then we'll take a few minutes for question and answer here.
We've got just about five more minutes here.
So sorry, I'm kind of going on a little bit more than I intended, but I'm running out of time.
Sorry.
So gospel connections.
Number one, ancient Israel's redemption from slavery is a model for our redemption from slavery to sin.
Ancient Israel's redemption from Egyptian slavery is a model for our redemption from slavery to sin.
Romans 6, 16 to 18, Ephesians 2, 1 to 10 are helpful places to think through this idea of thinking redemptive historically.
God rescues his people from a slavery, not a political slavery, but a spiritual bondage to sin.
I trust we're strong on the gospel here.
So I'm going to not minimize the importance of that, but move on for the sake of time here.
Secondly, Christ and Moses.
Christ is the better lawgiver, better priest, better sacrifice for sin.
Better covenant.
Christ and Moses.
There's a parallel for us as Christians, I think, between Christ and Moses.
Christ is the better lawgiver, the better priest, the better sacrifice, and the better covenant.
And the reason I think that is because that's basically the message of Hebrews.
Particularly Hebrews chapter 3, chapters 3 through 10 in particular.
But also interestingly, for those who have ears to hear, the gospel of Matthew.
If you take a few moments to just kind of read it and read it from like at a distance and see the way the stories in Matthew's gospel line up.
They actually line up the same way Moses' life lines up.
Think with me for a second.
A child born in obscurity to a Hebrew girl, to a Hebrew family.
Have to go off to Egypt because there's a threat to the child's life.
Man, I feel like I've heard that somewhere.
Right?
Yeah, it's the life of Moses in a sense.
I mean, it's not exactly.
Right?
But that's part of the point of the gospel of Matthew is he's trying to say, you know, for Jewish Christians, for Christians trying to wrestle with how a Jewish savior relates to a non-Jewish person.
Matthew's trying to help connect the dots there.
If you think Judaism, there's a lot of great things God did.
But you know what?
Jesus is better and he's completing.
He's fulfilling all of that.
Matthew chapter 5, for those who want to read that more.
But Matthew chapters 1 through 8, Hebrews chapters 3 through 10 in particular, all draw attention to that theme.
Check it out.
Number three, the Passover meal as a model for communion.
It's another great and important gospel connection for us as Christians because if nothing else, Jesus is making that connection, right?
In the gospel accounts.
And Exodus 12 is where the Passover meal is given.
But then you have Matthew 26, John 18, where Jesus and the disciples, it's the time of the Passover.
He has the meal and it's the Passover bread that he's breaking.
And it's the communion, it's that, it's the, how is it?
I think it's four cups.
Oh, shoot.
Someone correct me if I'm wrong.
I think it's four cups at the Passover meal.
I'm getting a nod there from Ms. Laura Bush.
Thank you.
The four cups, he's probably raising one of those cups.
There's some scholarly debate whether it's the Passover meal or not.
But the point is Passover meal.
And then last, a couple last things.
We'll talk about this more next week.
The tabernacle as a metaphor for God's presence with his people and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
I think it's a little bit there too.
The tabernacle is a metaphor for God's presence with his people in Christ.
Number five, a kingdom of priests.
As Christians, we're a kingdom in Christ.
We're a kingdom of priests for worship.
We find that in 1 Peter 2, 4 to 10.
And then a couple others.
A fruitful exercise.
We can go through it.
We can look at the stories of how God deals with ancient Israel and Exodus in a parable-like fashion.
And if you choose to do so, I encourage you, see yourself as Israel, not Moses.
Moses is the savior, the mediator character, not you, Christian.
You and me would complain about the water too.
You and me would complain about the manna.
You and me, we would all, we would doubt God's faithfulness given the chance.
That's why we need to be rescued from our slavery to sin.
And then lastly, Christological readings.
How, a Christological, look, read this for yourself.
How is God providing?
How is God protecting?
And how do I see Christ doing that in my own life?
That can be another fruitful way to read through scripture.
Again, keeping in mind where we are in redemptive history.
Let me pause there.
Our time is near expired.
But if there's a question or a comment or something, I rushed through a whole bunch there.
Fire away.
We've got a few minutes left.
You are in charge of the class now.
So I put my pen down.
Comments, questions, concerns.
Online, feel free to raise a hand if you have a question there.
All right.
Let's close.
Oh, yeah, yeah.
Sure.
I'm sorry.
The Old Testament.
I mean, when there's a space on law.
How is the interpretation of that?
It's over time.
I mean, your interpretation versus this is a solid, since we're having years ago.
Yeah.
Your interpretation.
Yeah.
Let me give a painfully, inadequately short answer to that.
That's a huge question.
So for us in the 21st century, I'll work backwards.
The Enlightenment was a huge deal.
With the questioning and the attitude of critic, the critical attitude to every question that the Enlightenment encouraged was an important turn.
There was oftentimes a hostility to the Jewish people.
And a place like Exodus was a place to use.
Look at them.
They just whine and complain.
They're just a bunch of crybabies.
And God was right to let terrible things happen to them.
That's a terrible interpretation, but it's out there.
In other places, let's see, other points in time, there was a season when Christians did take a very allegorical approach to the Old Testament in particular and saw in the minutia of the details an allegory for this or that aspect of Christian life.
But St. Augustine or Chrysostom does this in his sermons oftentimes.
So what helps us to stay on the guardrail, so to speak, to let the text speak for itself and not have it go is to kind of take a deep breath and think, okay, this is a historical situation.
Here we are on this side of the cross.
What are the biblical truths?
What are the truth principles that transfer in light of Christ, in light of the gospel?
That's kind of become, as Christians, and you can see that even as early as the second century, too, sometimes.
There's places where people are doing that as well.
So it's not a foreign thing.
I would even argue that's what the gospels are doing in large part, too.
Is that helpful?
Yeah.
Okay, great.
Let's close in a quick word of prayer, and we've got about 10 minutes to service time.
So I'll make sure we have appropriate time to get prepared.
Let's pray.
Father in heaven, thank you for being our God, and thank you for the great news that you made everything very good,
and that no matter how badly our sin corrupts your good creation, you redeem it.
You redeem us.
Just like you rescued ancient Israel from slavery in Egypt, you rescue us from our slavery to sin.
And God, you give us the privilege to live a new life.
You give us this earthly life that's a mix of sin and temptations to discipline us and prepare us for a life in eternity with you.
Thank you for being so patient, so gracious, so kind, and still remain holy and righteous and just.
Thank you for our new covenant in Christ, our new mediator, who made a better sacrifice to atone for sin.
Lord, we look forward to looking into those things more next Sunday.
But Lord, now prepare our hearts and our minds to hear from your word, to worship with your people online and in person.
And Lord, we pray that we be transformed by the fellowship of the saints and the singing and preaching of your word.
It's in Jesus' name that we pray.
Amen.
Thank you so much, everybody.
Thank you.
For those, I'll hang around if someone wants to ask a question and talk.
But otherwise, we've got about 10 minutes of service time.
So, see you there.
Oh, I almost forgot.
If you have opportunity, read what you can of Likus.
It'll help us out for next Sunday.
All right.
Cheers.