The Old Testament reading is Exodus 1:1-7. And this is the infallible, the inerrant, the inspired word of God. These are the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob, each with his household, Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, Issachar, Zebulon, and Benjamin, Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher. All the descendants of Jacob were 70 persons. Joseph was already in Egypt. Then Joseph died and all his brothers and all that generation. But the people of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly. They multiplied and grew exceedingly strong, so that the land was filled with them. 

Keep your place there and turn to Luke chapter nine. This is the passage of the Transfiguration of our Lord, and we’ll see how this is relevant to our Old Testament passage and sermon text. Luke chapter nine verses 28 through 36. Now, about eight days after these sayings, he took with him Peter and John and James and went up on the mountain to pray. Of his face was altered and his clothing became dazzling white. And behold, two men were talking with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. 

Now, Peter and those who were with him were heavy with sleep. But when they became fully awake, they saw his glory and the two men who stood with him. And as the men were parting from him, Jesus or Peter said to Jesus, master, it is good that we are here. Let us make three tents, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah, not knowing what he said. And as he was saying these things, a cloud came and overshadowed them, and they were afraid as they entered the cloud. And a voice came out of the cloud saying, this is my son, my chosen one. Listen to him. And when the voice had spoken, Jesus was found alone, and they kept silent and told no one in those days anything of what they had seen. 

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. 

Last Sunday, we finished our study of the book of Romans. And so this morning, we are beginning a new sermon series through the Old Testament book of Exodus. I’m really looking forward to diving into it together with you and Lord willing, it will be a blessing to all of us as we hear what this part of scripture speaks to us as God himself speaks to us through his word. 

Now, I know that all of you know that all of scripture is breathed out by God. It is profitable for us. And therefore, to spend time in Exodus or in any other part of scripture is valuable, it is profitable, it is good for us. But if we were to ask more specifically, what does this book in particular, what does Exodus specifically have to teach us? The answer that I would suggest to that question is this, that as Christians, you and I are the people of God. We are God’s people, and therefore, Exodus is the story, not just of Israel, but Exodus is your story. Exodus is our story. This is not just a series of stories and accounts of amazing things that took place in a faraway time, in a faraway place, to a people who lived long ago as though this had no real connection to us. 

No. This is your history. This is the history of your God, our God, and his dealings with his people. So even though Exodus or the events of the Exodus took place about three thousand five hundred years ago And by the way, we won’t get into the dating of the actual Exodus events. There is some debate as to when that took place, but most likely, it was around January, so about fifteen hundred years BC, which would be about three and a half millennia before our time. So this was a long time ago. 

But nevertheless, despite it taking place so long ago, this is every bit as much your story as it is the story of Israel. And that’s how the Bible treats the events in Exodus in the New Testament. In first Corinthians chapter 10, when Paul talks about the people of Israel during this time, he connects their experience to our own experience as Christians. Just as we have been baptized into Christ, so Paul says that the Israelites then, in 1 Corinthians 10:2, they were baptized into Moses in the cloud and the sea. 

Also, just as our spiritual food is Christ, so Paul says, the Israelites in Exodus, they all ate the same spiritual food and all drank the same spiritual drink, for they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ. So just as Christ is our sustenance, he is our food and drink, so it was for the people of Israel in the days of Exodus. And so this story is very much our story. These are our fathers in the faith. This God in Exodus, their God is our God. And we can say even more their Redeemer, their Savior is our Savior. 

In another place in the New Testament, in Jude, verse five, Jude tells us that it was Jesus, specifically, it was Jesus who saved the people out of the land of Egypt. And so we have the same God. We have the same Lord and Redeemer, Jesus. And so it is good for us to study the book of Exodus to better understand as we see God’s dealings with his people then, to understand God’s dealings with us as his people today. 

And this morning, as we begin our study of the book of Exodus, just by way of introduction, I want to cover with you three lessons that we can, gain not only from this passage that we are looking at this morning, but also from the book of of Exodus in its entirety as we consider, the whole book. And so those three lessons are these. First of all, you are a covenant people. Secondly, you are a redeemed people. And thirdly, as Christians, you are a pilgrim people. 

So those are the three lessons that we’ll take, from Exodus this morning. So first of all, as Christians, as those who belong to Christ, you are a covenant people. If you were to read the book of Exodus in Hebrew, first of all, you would be reading from right to left instead of left to right, and you would notice that the very first word of the book is the word and, a n d. In Hebrew, it’s actually just one letter, but it means and. So verse one would say something like this, and these are the names of the sons of Israel. 

By the way, we’re gonna just take for granted that the author of Exodus is Moses. And, just as we believe, we assume, on the basis of scripture, that the author of all the five books of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible, that is Moses as well. One of the major debates between conservative and liberal biblical scholars when it comes to the Old Testament has to do with whether Moses actually wrote the books of the Pentateuch, whether he actually wrote the book of Exodus. There’s no need for us to get into that debate, but I would want to say that the greatest Old Testament scholar who ever lived, he believed that Moses wrote the book of Exodus. And on the basis of his authority, we are safe in assuming that Moses was the author. And, of course, that greatest of all Old Testament scholars, his name is Jesus. And in his teaching, he referred to the book or he referred to the book of Exodus as the book of Moses. He also said that Moses wrote of him. So Jesus not only confirms that Moses is the author of Exodus, but that everything that Moses wrote about had to do with Jesus himself. 

And so the book of Exodus begins with the word and. And by doing this, by beginning the book like this, Moses is intentionally connecting Exodus, to what we read, what takes place in the book of Genesis. Particularly the way in which God dealt with his people, his chosen people in Genesis. 

And it would be helpful for us before we launch into our study of the book of Exodus just to review the background of what took place in the book of Genesis just to give us a better understanding of the context in which this book begins. And so, in Genesis and if you have been coming to the evening services, this will sound more familiar to you since we have just finished going through the book of Genesis. 

But in Genesis, God’s dealings with his people, of course, begins with Abraham. God first spoke to him when Abraham was living in Ur of the Chaldeans. God promised to make of Abraham a great nation, and he told them that in him, all the families of the Earth would be blessed. And the promise was that the Lord would be Abraham’s God. That he and his offspring would be God’s people. And then God extended that same promise to the son of Abraham, that is to Isaac. And then that same promise was given to Jacob, Isaac’s son. And then that same promise was given, of course, to all the patriarchs and to all the people who descended from Jacob. They were the heirs of God’s promise. They were the heirs of God’s calling to be his people. 

And as you know, Jacob, he had 12 sons. And from these 12 sons of Jacob would descend the 12 tribes of Israel. And of these sons, one was hated by the rest, and of course, that was Joseph. His brothers hated Joseph’s dreams. He dreamed that his brothers and father and mother would be bowing down to him. Of course, they hated that. They hated Joseph’s coat of many colors that their father had made for him. And so out of their enmity and envy of Joseph, his brother sold him into slavery. He was taken to the land of Egypt by his new owners. And although there he was a slave, and for many, many years he was even a prisoner, the Lord was with Joseph. He blessed him. He raised him up to such a high position in the government of Egypt that Joseph was second only to Pharaoh himself in power and authority. 

And, of course, that’s what Moses refers to in verse five when he says that Joseph was already in Egypt. In the providence of God, God sent Joseph ahead into Egypt, where ultimately, he raised him up to this place of authority and power. Meanwhile, Joseph’s brothers and his father, they’re back in Canaan. They are on the brink of starvation because of the great famine that had taken hold of that whole area of the world. And Joseph, as you are familiar with the story, his brothers come to Joseph to visit him. Ultimately, he reveals himself to them. He sells them grain to keep them from starving, and then he welcomes, he invites his brothers and his father and their families to come live in Egypt. And so they come and live in Egypt, and there they will be able to carry on their livelihood as shepherds and have provision and survive. And it’s that whole history now that Moses has in mind when he begins in this very first book of Exodus with the word “and”. 

So all of that is in the background, and all of that is the reason why Jacob and his sons and his families went down to Egypt. This is why they go from Canaan to Egypt, to escape the famine, to live in Egypt under the protection of their brother Joseph, under the protection of Pharaoh. But most of all, they are living under the protection of their God. Again, they were God’s covenant people. And God’s promise to his descendants, or his promise to Abraham and to his descendants, is that he would be their God and they would be his people. This is the great covenant promise. 

When you read the scriptures, especially in the Old Testament, you see this. It’s very pronounced. When God says, I will be your God. You will be my people. That is at the very heart of God’s covenant with his people. That is his covenant promise with us, that in Christ, he is our God. We are his people. In all that, as we go on in Exodus, all that we see, in the Lord’s dealings with his people is based on his covenant with them, his commitment to them, his devotion as their God. He will save them. He will provide for them. He will guide them in the wilderness. He will protect them from their enemies. And he will do all this for his people because he has made them his covenant people. He loved them, he chose them, and he makes them his own, and they are his. And specifically, when God made his covenant with Abraham, he made several promises. One, he promised that Abraham would have many descendants, that he would “make of him a great nation”. He said that his offspring would be no more numerous than the stars in the sky or the sand on the seashore. 

Two, the Lord promised Abraham that his offspring would inherit the land of Canaan, that that land would be theirs, it would belong to them. And three, God promised Abraham to bless the nations of the world through Abraham, that through his offspring, all the families of the earth would be blessed. Now that last promise, that all the families of the earth would be blessed through the offspring of Abraham, we are seeing this being fulfilled today. That offspring is Christ, and it is through him that the people of the world are blessed as God in his grace brings sinners, to faith in Jesus Christ to come into that state of salvation, to be blessed by the Lord. And so we are seeing that being fulfilled today. As for the promise of the land of Canaan, from the perspective of the beginning of the book of Exodus here, that promise will be fulfilled a short time later, under the leadership of Joshua when he will bring the people of Israel into the promised land. But as for the promise for many descendants, we see in this passage that the Lord has fulfilled it. At the beginning of Exodus, this one part of God’s covenant promise with Abraham is now being fulfilled. It has come to fruition. 

And and so Moses tells us that when Jacob and his sons went down to Egypt, they started out with, as a family of 70 people. So there were 70 of them. Apparently, the Jewish commentators in history, they noticed that in Genesis chapter 10, where you had the list of all the nations, the table of nations, that there were 70 nations listed there. And what these Jewish commentators said was that the 70 people of Jacob’s family were more worthy than all those 70 nations. And it is remarkable to consider that of all the nations in the world at this time, including the mighty empire of Egypt, that it’s this one family that the Bible zeroes in on. This one small family, a relatively small, 70 people, this nomadic sheep herding family somewhere in Canaan that the Bible focuses on. And of course, that’s the reason for that is because this is the family through whom God is bringing about his plan of salvation for the world. And so, yes, in terms of God’s saving work, in terms of what was truly important, these 70 members of Jacob’s family were more significant than all the nations, all the peoples in the world at this time because these are the people who were God’s people, and through them, God would raise up a Redeemer. 

Now 70 people is a pretty big extended family. If we had that many family members living here in Reno, for example, or or anywhere, I guess. That would be a lot to take, you know, to keep track of. A lot of anniversaries, a lot of birthdays. But it’s a big family, but it’s certainly not as numerous as the stars in the sky or the sand on the seashore. And so at the very beginning here then, it’s safe to say that God has not yet fulfilled his covenant promise. As far as Jacob could see, this part of the covenant promise of God was not yet fulfilled. In fact, this promise appears to be in serious danger because here they were, just 70 people, one family. They’re barely surviving this famine that’s afflicting the whole world. They’re about to go to Egypt, where who knows what might threaten their existence there. 

And what’s more, they’re also leaving the promised land. They’re going in the wrong direction. They’re leaving Canaan. And so it’s not hard to imagine that at some point, Jacob thought to himself, what will become of these promises? A multitude of descendants, the promised land, and all of that. But as we read on in this first passage, we’ll see that God is definitely not forgetting his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Verse seven tells us that after the death of Joseph and his brothers, God blessed the family of Jacob. He blessed them mightily that they became an entire nation of people. 

Exodus one seven says, But the people of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly. They multiplied and grew exceedingly, exceedingly strong, so that the land was filled with them. A more literal translation would say something like this, “As for the Israelites, they grew. They were fruitful. They swarmed. They increased. They got powerful. More and more, and the land was filled with them”. So Moses, in a not so subtle way, he is telling us that after four hundred years, there were a bunch of Israelites living in Egypt, that they grew incredibly large. And we know from the book of Numbers that at this point, the number of fighting men among the nation of Israel is 600,000. And so what that means is that the total population of the descendants of Jacob has grown from 70 to well over a million people. So under God’s blessing then, in these four centuries, as he promised Abraham, his descendants grew to be this numerous, this mighty nation. And the point of this is to show that as the covenant people of God, they were experiencing the fulfillment of God’s promises to them through Abraham. At least here in this passage, the fulfillment of this one promise, many descendants, an entire nation. 

And one lesson that we can take right here as we begin our study of the book of Exodus is this, that as the covenant people of God today, as those whom he has brought to himself and made us his people, we can know, we can have full assurance that God will keep his promises to us, just as he kept his promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He did not fail to “make of Abraham”. As he said, he made of him a mighty nation, a huge nation. And God will not fail to bring about any one of the promises that he makes to you and me in his word, in his son Jesus Christ. Those promises include the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, the gift, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, his continual grace and peace and goodness and love towards us. All of these promises that God makes to you and me in Jesus Christ, he will fulfill them. Some of them he has already fulfilled. We have already been forgiven. We have already been justified. But the promises that we still wait for for the fulfillment of God is faithful. He will keep his promises because he is in covenant with us. He has pledged himself to us. He is true to his word. 

Exodus also reminds us that with these covenant promises and blessings come covenant responsibilities. Getting ahead of ourselves a little bit in Exodus, as we’ll move on in the book, we’ll see that much of Exodus contains the laws that God gave to the people of Israel. And of those laws, of course, in Exodus chapter 20 are the 10 Commandments. And as their God, the Lord delivered them from bondage. He delivered them from Egypt to be his people. He freed them that they would be his, that they would serve him, that they would worship him, that they would obey his commandments. And as we’ll learn from Exodus, we have been as we have been redeemed by the Lord Jesus Christ, we too have been saved from our bondage to sin and death and set free from that in order to belong to the Lord, to serve him, to obey his word, to find our joy and blessing in that communion with him and as we as we live according to his commandments. And so we have covenant responsibilities as the people of God, as well as covenant blessings. 

For example, Peter tells us that we are to worship the Lord. First Peter two nine, but you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of the darkness into his marvelous light. And so Exodus will remind us that on the one hand, the salvation that God has accomplished for us freely in Jesus Christ this is something in which we rejoice, just as the Israelites rejoiced in their deliverance from Egypt. But also, on the other hand, he has called us to himself in order that we may worship him, and serve him, and obey him. And another reason why it’s important for you and me to see that as believers in Christ, we are included among the covenant people of God that we have been brought into this covenant. It’s important to see that in order to appreciate that as a Christian, you belong or you are not your own. You do not belong to yourself. First of all, you belong to Christ. You are his. But not only that, but as your covenant lord, he has brought you into, he has brought you into his people. You belong to the body of Christ. You were made one of the entire body of his people. 

Romans 12:5, so we, though many, are one body in Christ, so we, though many, are one body in Christ and individually members one of another. And so this is a good reminder for us as we go on through Exodus to see how God dealt with his people as his people. That God deals with us individually, yes. But also, he deals with us as his people. That we have responsibilities not only to Christ, but also to those who belong to Christ. We are individually members of one another. And so your faithfulness as a Christian is not just about how you live your individual life before the Lord. It’s not just your walk with Christ as your savior, but it’s also how you spend your life, devote your life in serving, building up, loving those whom Christ loved, those who belong to the body of Christ. 

And so as with the Israelites in the days of Exodus, we have been saved to be God’s covenant people. We are to worship him and serve him together as his chosen and beloved people. So first of all, you and I, we are God’s covenant people. 

Secondly, you are a redeemed people. You are a redeemed people. So Exodus, primarily, is about the great salvation event for the people of Israel. And that is, of course, that under the leadership of Moses, the Lord brought his people out from under their bondage to Pharaoh. They were enslaved by Pharaoh, and he not only enslaved them, but as we’ll see next week, he began to violently persecute the Israelites. Pharaoh embarked on a campaign of what today we would call ethnic cleansing. He ordered all the male babies of the Hebrews to be killed. And in order to deliver them from their plight, from their bondage, through Moses, the Lord brought the devastation to the land, to the people of Egypt, to the 10 plagues. He then brought his people out of Egypt. We’ll see the stories in Exodus, but he brings them through the Red Sea, causes the waters to part for them. When Pharaoh and his chariots and armies start chasing after the people of Israel, he causes the waters of the Red Sea to come crashing over their heads. And all of these powerful and amazing acts of God were part of his saving mercies towards his people. And so the Exodus then, this becomes the signature act, the main event of God’s saving works for his people in the Old Testament. 

Now there are other times in which God would bring deliverance to his people that we read about in the Old Testament, but the Exodus was the big one. This is the one that the Psalmist sang about. As one person has said, the Exodus was the “gospel of the Old Testament”. Here is the great saving work of God in bringing his people out of Egypt. And when we come to the New Testament, and when we come to the salvation that Christ has accomplished for us, significantly, the New Testament refers to that saving work of Christ for us in terms of an exodus. That’s why we read the account of the Transfiguration in Luke chapter nine. In that passage, Luke tells us this in verses thirty and thirty one. He says, and behold, two men were talking with him, Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory and spoke of his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem. And so Moses, Elijah, and Jesus are on the top of the mountain. Jesus is transfigured. He is seen in all of his glory. And they’re talking about what? His departure. In Greek, that word translated departure is exodus. It is exodus. And so Luke is saying this about Jesus, that the Exodus that he is about to accomplish at Jerusalem, that is his suffering, his death, his burial, his resurrection, everything that he would do for our salvation is an Exodus. And so what Luke is saying is this, that the exodus that the Lord accomplished for his people back here in the book of Exodus, that this was just a type of a far greater salvation, a far greater exodus, in which the same Lord, now incarnate in the person of his of his son Jesus Christ, that he would accomplish for us in his death, his burial, his resurrection, and exaltation. He delivered his people from bondage to sin and death. He will deliver us, or he delivered them from their bondage to pharaoh. He will deliver us, he has delivered us, from our bondage to sin and from the tyranny of death. 

Not only that, but in 1 Corinthians 5:7, the Apostle Paul calls Jesus the “Passover Lamb who has been sacrificed”. Again, you’re familiar with the story. We’ll get to it in the weeks ahead. But the Lord told the people of Israel to sacrifice a lamb, take the blood of it, smear it on the doorpost of their houses. And so when the angel of the Lord passed over the land of Egypt, killing all the firstborn of families and livestock, he would pass over the houses where he saw the blood on the doorposts. But Jesus is called the Passover Lamb. And so just as the Israelites were saved by the blood of that sacrificial lamb, so Jesus is the greater sacrificial lamb. It is his blood shed on the cross that covers us, that saves us from the wrath of God. And so as we study the book of Exodus then, we will be reminded again and again of this truth that we, as a covenant people, as God’s covenant people, we are a saved people. We are redeemed people. And again, we have been saved. Why? In order to worship, to serve the Lord as our God. 

So Exodus tells us that you are a covenant people, you are a redeemed people, and finally, Exodus also will teach us that you are a pilgrim people. And this very first passage in Exodus shows us a theme that will be consistent throughout the book of Exodus, and that is this, that the people of Israel were sojourners. They were pilgrims. And this has been true of the people of God all the way up to this point. Abraham was a pilgrim, a sojourner. Isaac and Jacob were. They did not own the land that they lived in in Canaan. They were guests there, pilgrims. And in verse one, we are reminded of that. Jacob and his sons, they go to Egypt. They sojourn there, they become pilgrims in Egypt. And everything that takes place in the book of Exodus takes place before the Israelites are given the land of promise. And so they are pilgrim people. They’re looking forward to the promised land. 

And as Christians, you and I are also a pilgrim people. We are looking forward to the promised land. And praise the Lord, the land that he promises to give us is not a piece of real estate in the Middle East somewhere, but the land that he promises us is life in a resurrection body, a new heavens, a new earth forever and ever. That is the promised land that he has said that he would give us. But in the meantime, like the Israelites living in the wilderness, we live in a wilderness. We live in a spiritual wilderness. This world is not our home. This world, as you well know, is apathetic at best and hostile at worst to the God who created this world. It is apathetic or hostile to his son in whom God has revealed himself to us as Lord and savior. We live in a world that by and large has no concern for the truth of God, for righteousness, for sin, for salvation, for judgment, for heaven, for hell. All of these spiritual realities that are so precious to us for a big part of the world, they are not precious. They do not hold them dear. So we live in a world that is opposed to Christ and his righteousness, his truth. Because of the natural depravity and the rebellion that dwells in the hearts of all people, including us, though we have been redeemed, we have been saved, and yet because of that natural sinfulness and depravity, the values, the priorities, the desires of this sinful world, of this fallen world are opposed to the values, the priorities that are given to us by God in the scriptures. And for that reason then, as a Christian, if you seek to be faithful to God in this world, you will have to adopt the mindset that you are just like the people of Israel in Exodus. You are a pilgrim people. You have not yet arrived. 

The promised land is still being held out to you as a promise. It is yours, but not yet. Not yet. And so this is not our home. And as we study the book of Exodus, Lord willing, we’ll understand more and more what it means to be faithful in this world to God and to Christ as a people who are strangers, who are pilgrims here. And so by the grace of God, as we go forward from here into the book of Exodus, may we grow in our understanding of who we are as God’s covenant people, as his redeemed people, and in this world until we are brought to our eternal home, a pilgrim people. Let’s pray.

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