THE BOOK OF EXODUS

The book of Exodus is the second book of the Bible and it picks up the storyline from the
previous book, Genesis, which ended with Abraham's grandson Jacob leading his large family of
seventy people down to Egypt.
Now Jacob's eleventh son Joseph had been elevated to second in command over Egypt and he
had saved his whole family in a famine. And so Pharaoh the king of Egypt offered the family to
come live there as a safe haven. And so eventually Jacob dies there in Egypt and Joseph and all
his brothers do too. About 400 years pass and the story of the Exodus begins.

The Exodus (1-18)

Now that name refers to the event that takes place in the first half of the book--Israel's exodus
from Egypt, but the book has a second half that takes place at the foot of Mount Sinai. In this
video we'll just focus on the first half, where centuries have passed and the Israelites were
fruitful and multiplied and they filled the land. Now this line is a deliberate echo back to the
blessing that God gave all humanity back in the Garden of Eden. And it reminds us of the big
biblical story so far. Humanity forfeited God's blessing through sin and rebellion and so God
chose Abraham's family as the vehicle through which he would restore his blessing to all the
world. But the new Pharaoh does not view Israel as a blessing. He actually thinks this growing
Israelite immigrant group is a threat to his power. And so just as in Genesis, humanity rebells
against God's blessing, so here Pharaoh attempts to destroy the source of God's blessing, the
Israelites. He brutally enslaves them in forced labor and then he orders that all the Israelite boys
be drowned in the Nile River. Now Pharaoh, he is the worst character in the Bible so far. His
kingdom epitomizes humanity's rebellion against God. Pharaoh has so redefined good and evil
according to his own interests that even the murder of innocent children has become good to
him. And so Egypt has become worse than Babylon from the book of Genesis and so now Israel
cries out for help against this new Babylon and God responds.

God first turns Pharaoh's evil upside down, as an Israelite mother throws her boy into the Nile
River but in a basket. And so he floats safely right down into Pharaoh's own family. He's named
Moses and he grows up to eventually become the man that God will use to defeat Pharaoh's evil.
In the famous story of the burning bush, God appears to Moses and commissions him to go to

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Pharaoh and order him to release the Israelites. And God says that he knows Pharaoh will resist
and so he will bring his judgment on Egypt in the form of plagues. Then God also says that he
will harden Pharaoh's heart. And so we're introduced into the next main part of

Confrontation
The story the confrontation between God and Pharaoh, Now what does this mean that God says
he will harden Pharaoh's heart? It's super important to read this section of the story really closely
in its sequence. In Moses and Pharaoh's first encounter we're told simply that Pharaoh's heart
grew hard. There's no implication that God did anything. And so in response God sends the first
set of 5 plagues, each one confronting Pharaoh and one of his Egyptian gods. And each time
Moses offers a chance for Pharaoh to humble himself and to let the Israelites go but after each
plague we're told that Pharaoh either hardened his heart or that his heart grew hard. He's doing
this of his own will and so eventually it's with the second set of 5 plagues that we begin to hear
how God hardened Pharaoh's heart. So the point of the story seems to be this: even though God
knew that Pharaoh would resist his will, God still offered him all these chances to do the right
thing. But eventually Pharaoh's evil reaches a point of no return I mean even his own advisers
think that he has lost his mind. And it's at that point that God takes over and bends Pharaoh's evil
towards his own redemptive purposes. God lures Pharaoh into his own destruction as he saves
his people, which is what happens next. With the final plague, it's the night of Passover. And
God turns the tables on Pharaoh. Just as he killed the sons of the Israelites, so God will kill the
first born in Egypt with a final plague. But unlike Pharaoh, God provides a means of escape
through the blood of the Lamb. And here the story stops and introduces us in detail to the annual
Israelite ritual of Passover. On the night before Israel left Egypt, they sacrificed a young,
spotless lamb and painted its blood on the door frame of their house. And when the divine plague
came over Egypt, the houses covered with the blood of the Lamb were passed over, and the son
spared. And so every year since, the Israelites have reenacted that night to remember and
celebrate God's justice and his mercy. But Pharaoh, because of his pride and rebellion, he loses
his own son and he's compelled to finally let the Israelites go free. And so the Israelite slaves
make their exodus from Egypt, but no sooner did they leave than Pharaoh Changes his mind and
he gathers his army and chases after the Israelites for a final showdown. As the Israelites pass
through the waters of the sea safely, Pharaoh charges towards his own destruction.

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The Exodus story concludes with the first song of praise in the Bible. It's called the Song of the
Sea and the final line declares that the Lord reigns as king. And then the song retells in poetry
what the story of God's kingdom is all about. It's about how God is on a mission to confront evil
in his world and to redeem those who are enslaved to evil. God is going to bring his people into
the Promised Land where his divine presence will live among them. This story is what it looks
like when God becomes king over his people. So after the Israelites sing their song, the story
takes a sharp turn. The Israelites they're trekking through the wilderness on their way to Mount
Sinai and they're hungry, they're thirsty, and they start criticizing Moses and God for even
rescuing them. They say they long for the good old days in Egypt. I mean, it's crazy. So God
graciously provides food and water for Israel in the wilderness, but these stories, they cast a dark
shadow and we begin to wonder, "Could it be that Israel's heart is just as hard as Pharaoh's?" We
shall see, but for now that's the first half of the book of Exodus.

EXODUS SECTION 2
We explored chapters 1 through 18, which tell the foundational story of how God rescued the
enslaved Israelites by confronting and defeating Pharaoh while offering the way of escape
through the blood of the Passover lamb. God then delivered his people by bringing them through
the waters of the sea and then into the wilderness, where surprisingly they grumbled and
complained. Now the second half of the book of Exodus opens as Moses leads Israel to the foot
of Mount Sinai, where God invites the nation of Israel to enter into a covenant relationship. And
here we reach another key moment in the biblical storyline because this is picking up in
developing God's promise to Abraham. So remember from the book of Genesis, God promised
that through Abraham's family, somehow he would restore his blessing to all of the nations. And
here we find out more. God says that if Israel obeys the terms of the Covenant, they will be so
shaped by God's laws and teaching and justice that they will become a kingdom of priests, which
means that they will become God's representatives and show all of the other nations what God is
truly like. Now the people of Israel eagerly accept the offer and so God's presence appears right
on the top of Mount Sinai in the form of clouds and lightning and thunder. And Moses goes up as
their representative and God opens with the basic terms of the Covenant the famous Ten
Commandments. These are like the basic terms of the agreement how the Israelites and God are

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going to relate to each other, And then after this come another collection of commands which
fill out the first 10 in more detail.

There are laws about Israel's worship, about social justice, how they are to live together; all
shaping Israel into a nation of justice and generosity that's different from the other nations. So
Moses writes down all of these laws and he brings them down to the people, who again eagerly
agreed to enter into this covenant with God. And once they do so, God takes the relationship
forward another step. He tells Moses that he wants his holy, divine, good presence to come and
dwell right in the midst of Israel, which develops another aspect of God's covenant promises.
Remember after humanities rebellion in the garden, it was access to God's presence that was lost.
But now it's through the family of Abraham that God's presence is becoming once again
accessible through this covenant relationship, And first with Israel and then somehow one day to
all nations. So what follows are seven chapters of detailed architectural blueprints about this
sacred tent called the tabernacle. There's the outer courtyard with an alter and then in the center
there's a tent that has an outer room and then inner room and then inside the inner room, which is
called the most holy place, is a golden box called the Ark of the Covenant. And there's angelic
creatures over the top of it. It's the hot-spot of God's presence. Now there's lots of detail in these
chapters and it's important to know that every piece has some kind of symbolic value. All of the
flowers, the angels, the gold and jewels-- it all echoes back to the Garden of Eden-- the place
where God and humans lived together in intimacy. And so the tabernacle is like a portable Eden,
so to speak. It's the place where God and Israel can live together in peace, at least in theory,
because right here something goes really, really wrong. Israel breaks the covenant. As Moses
is up on the mountain receiving the blueprint for the tabernacle, down below at the camp, the
Israelites, they're losing patience. And so they asked Moses's brother Aaron to make for them a
golden calf idol so they can worship it as the God who saved them out of slavery in Egypt. Now
God's presence, it's right there on top of the mountain; they can see it, but here they are below
breaking the first two commands of the Covenant they just agreed to no other gods and no idols.
Now what follows is really important. God knows what's happening down below. So he first
invites Moses into his own anger and pain and he tells Moses what he wants to do just to wipe
Israel out. But Moses intercedes by appealing to God's character. He says, first of all, destroying
Israel would be going back on your covenant promises to Abraham. And then Moses appeals to

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God's reputation among the nation's. What would they think if they see you destroy your own
people? And so God accepts Moses's intercession and he relents. And while he does bring his
judgment on those who instigated idolatry, he forgives the nation as a whole and promises to
renew his covenant. And it's right here at this point in the story that God for the first time
describes his own character to Moses. He says, "The Lord is merciful and gracious. He's slow to
anger, abounding in covenant faithfulness. He forgives sin but he will not leave the wicked
unpunished."

We have this tension: God is full of mercy but also he must deal with evil if he claims to be
good. And above all, God is faithful to His promises even though it means he knows he's
committing himself to a people who are utterly faithless. And so after renewing the covenant
with Israel, God commissions Moses to go ahead and build the tabernacle. And once again we
get five long chapters describing in detail the construction of the tabernacle. And it all comes
together in the final chapter where the Tabernacle is finished. God's glorious divine presence
comes and hovers over the tent and our hopes are high. And so Moses, he goes right up to enter
into the tent, and he can't. He actually can't go in and that's how the book ends. It's really
surprising, but not really if you think about it. You can see now how much Israel sin has
damaged the relationship with God in more ways than we realized.

So the book opened, remember, with Pharaoh's evil threatening Israel and threatening God's
covenant promise. But now as the book ends, Israel has become its own worst enemy. It's their
sin that is threatening the future of the covenant. And so the question as the book closes is,
"How is God going to reconcile this conflict between his holiness and his goodness in His
presence with the sinful corruption of his own covenant people?" The solution to that
problem is what the next book is about, but for now, that's the book of Exodus.