Study Guide

Redeemed to Worship

From Creation to Canaan

Exodus 1-40

Introduction

There may be no other story in the Bible, except for maybe the Nativity, that has received more attention than the Exodus of Israel from Egypt. How many of you have seen at least one movie on the life of Moses? There’s a 50/50 chance it was either Prince of Egypt or The Ten Commandments featuring Charlton Heston. Who has seen them both?

Why is Exodus so famous?

Epic Drama: It’s the story of oppression, liberation, and divine intervention; a high-stakes standoff between Moses and Pharoah.

Iconic Imagery: a burning bush, the parting of the Red Sea, the pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night.

Moral Influence: the Ten Commandments have shaped culture for millennia.

Raise the Need, State the Destination, Give Signposts:

But how well do we understand the meaning of Exodus? If all we see are the dazzling special effects and escapes of the movie adaptations, what are we missing?

Today, we’ll walk through the entire book of Exodus, all 40 chapters, telling the story of God’s redemption, his law, and his desire to dwell with his people.

Introduction to Exodus

Author: Moses

Exodus was written by Moses, the man who God sent as Israel’s deliverer from their slavery in Egypt. So, Moses is both a central figure in the narrative of Exodus, as well as its author.

Date & Audience: 1447 (Exodus) 1440 (Composition)

God delivered the children of Israel from their Egyptian slavery around 1447 B.C. But rather than going into Canaan immediately, that first generation which came out of Israel fearfully refused to trust God, and as a consequence, they wandered in the wilderness for 40 years until everyone from that generation died.

As the second generation prepared to go into Canaan, Moses composed the book of Exodus, to remind that second generation of their parent’s failure, and to spur them on to faithful trust in the Lord. So, the events of this book would have been history for its first audience.

Scope:

Exodus covers three different time periods.

• Exodus 1:1-7 covers 400 years of history. Joseph died in Egypt at the end of Genesis. The family of Jacob expanded greatly and filled Egypt.

• Exodus 1:8-2 covers 80 years of Moses life from birth until his arrival as Israel’s deliverer. (Exodus 7:7)

• Exodus 3-40 cover one year, cataloging the plagues of Egypt, and God’s instructions at Sinai.

Not only does Exodus cover three different periods of time, but the story also plays out in three different geographies.

• Exodus begins in Egypt, where Israel is in bondage.

• Exodus moves to the wilderness, as the Lord sets his people free from slavery.

• Exodus ends at Mount Sinai as God establishes a covenant with the people and instructs them in the building of the tabernacle.

Purpose:

Most of us are familiar with the events recorded in the first 18 chapters of Exodus. We know the stories of Moses birth, the miraculous signs and plagues of Egypt, the Passover, the Red Sea crossing, and the giving of the 10 Commandments. But the majority of the text of Exodus, nearly half the book, records the detailed instructions for the construction of the Tabernacle, Ark of the Covenant, holy furniture, and garments of the priests, which raises a question:

What is the connection between the events of the Exodus, the giving of the law, and the meticulous designs for Israel’s worship?

And the answer to that question is this:

Exodus is the story of God’s salvation. It shows how God’s salvation always works. God redeems, commands, and indwells his people.

Exodus begins with a slave-people building palaces for Pharoah, and it ends with a free people building a tent for God. It tells how people were saved by the blood of a lamb, and how that same people foolishly bowed down to a golden calf. It’s the story of the God who freely redeems a people, gives them his law, and comes to dwell in their midst. And that’s our outline:

1. God Redeems His People (Exodus 1-18)
2. God Commands His People (Exodus 19-24)
3. God Dwells with His People. (Exodus 25-40)

These three points will feel like an upside-down pyramid. The first will be the longest, and they will progressively shorten.

1. God Redeems His People (Exodus 1-18)

Much has happened since Genesis 50 and a quick recap will help us set the stage. God made a covenant with an old man named Abraham and a barren woman named Sarah that they would have a child through whom all the nations of the earth would be blessed (Genesis 12:1-3) By the end of Genesis, Abraham’s family has reached the 4^th generation as Abraham’s grandson Jacob has 12 sons. Because a famine devastates Canaan, the entire family moves to Egypt where one of Jacob’s sons, Joseph, is a ruler under Pharoah. There the family prospers, multiplies, and experiences blessing for 400 years.

The story of the Exodus begins with these words in Exodus 1:8

Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.

This new king did not favor Joseph’s family, and he forgot Joseph’s God. Fearing the growing strength of the Hebrews, this new Pharoah enslaved and forced them to hard labor. But the more the people were oppressed and the more difficult Pharoah made their labors, the more they multiplied until Pharaoh ordered the murder of all Hebrew baby boys. Obeying God, rather than Pharaoh, the Hebrews refused the genocidal decree and we’re told of the birth of one boy in particular: Moses, who would be raised in Pharoah’s own house.

This same Moses, once he was grown and seeing the harsh treatment of his own people, became a murderer. He took justice into his own hands and slayed an Egyptian, forcing him to flee the wrath of Pharaoh into the wilderness for 40 years. But even though Moses failed to help his people, God did not forget them. Though their pain and suffering lasted for decades, God was not deaf to their cries.

God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel—and God knew.

This takes us to the end of Exodus 2 and the calling of Moses at the burning bush in Exodus 3. God calls Moses to go back to Egypt, equipped with powerful signs and wonders to say to Pharaoh, “Let my people go.” Exodus 5-12 record Moses return to Egypt and the 10 plagues God sent against Pharaoh. It records God’s protection of his own people, and his hardening of Pharoah’s heart. All of this culminates in the final plague: the Passover. God sends death to every house in Egypt, and death only passes over those who have covered the door of their home in the blood of a spotless lamb.

Pharoah breaks, permitting the people to leave, yet changes his mind pursing them in his chariots to the Red Sea. There God parts the waters, the people cross, and the waters crash back down in cataclysmic judgment on Pharaoh and his armies.

All of this accomplishes our first point: God Redeems His People. What is God’s redemption like? His redemption is sovereign and free.

God’s Redemption is Sovereign

Exodus challenges the idea that God is passive or simply waiting on us to respond to him. Rather, in Exodus, God is the prime actor, the prime mover.

It is God who multiplies the Hebrews despite their hardship. It is God who calls Moses to go back to Egypt. It is God who sends the plagues against Pharoah. God parts the Red Sea. God gives his law. God instructs Moses in the construction of the Tabernacle. 20 times throughout the book, when God explains what is happening, he says these words: “That you may know that I am the Lord.” In fact, you could write that phrase on the title page to Exodus. Lord, of course is how we translate the proper name Yahweh which God spoke to Moses. It means “one having power and authority over others.”

The supreme and terrifying example of God’s sovereignty in Exodus is God’s hardening of Pharaoh’s heart. God declares that he will control Pharoah’s resistance to the Exodus.  I don’t claim to understand all the implications of this. I know many who claim this means that God merely permitted Pharaoh to harden his own heart. I appreciate the desire to interpret it in that manner, but that’s not what it says.

Look in Exodus 4:21

²¹ And the Lord said to Moses, “When you go back to Egypt, see that you do before Pharaoh all the miracles that I have put in your power. But I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go.

Yes, there are other times when it says that Pharaoh hardened his own heart, or other times when it simply declares that Pharaoh’s heart was hardened. Friend, God did not present evil to the will of Pharaoh as an enticement. James 1:13 says:

Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one.

Nonetheless, God unchanging holiness, justice, and sovereignty, which softens some hardens others. The same Sun which melts the wax, hardens the clay. And so Pharaoh’s heart is hardened until finally, after the 10 plagues, Pharaoh finally gives in, letting the people God, and it is here that we see the culmination of God’s sovereignty in Exodus 14:24. As the children of Israel cross the Red Sea on dry ground, and Pharaoh’s chariots pursue them we read these words:

²⁴ And in the morning watch the Lord in the pillar of fire and of cloud looked down on the Egyptian forces and threw the Egyptian forces into a panic, ²⁵ clogging their chariot wheels so that they drove heavily. And the Egyptians said, “Let us flee from before Israel, for the Lord fights for them against the Egyptians.”

Friend, how sovereign is God in Exodus? He is even sovereign over the chariot wheels of the Egyptians, clogging them with mud. His redemption is totally sovereign redemption.

God’s Redemption is Free

Exodus also challenges the idea that we can redeem ourselves through our own efforts. Last week, I said that Genesis 3-11 shows us how hopeless we are if God does not rescue us. The same is true here in Exodus.

Consider the very structure of the book. It’s redemption followed by the giving of the law at Sinai. God does not first ask Israel to be obedient to him. In fact, after centuries, they have utterly forgotten who he is. This is why, in Genesis 3, Moses says, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, “What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?”

Church, not only does God save his people before they can obey his laws, he purposes to save them before they can even call upon his name. Why? Because God keeps his covenant to Abraham, no matter what.

And our redemption is just the same. We are not made right with God because of anything we do. We are redeemed because God made an eternal covenant with Christ. Listen to how the London Confession puts it:

man having brought himself under the curse of the law by his fall, it pleased the Lord to make a covenant of grace, wherein He freely offers unto sinners life and salvation by Jesus Christ, requiring of them faith in Him, that they may be saved; and promising to give unto all those that are ordained unto eternal life, His Holy Spirit, to make them willing and able to believe…

This covenant is revealed in the gospel; first of all to Adam in the promise of salvation by the seed of the woman, and afterwards by farther steps, until the full discovery thereof was completed in the New Testament; and it is founded in that eternal covenant transaction that was between the Father and the Son about the redemption of the elect; and it is alone by the grace of this covenant that all the posterity of fallen Adam that ever were saved did obtain life and blessed immortality (2LCF 7.2, 3)

The Apostle Paul put it like this:

saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began (2 Timothy 1:9)

Friend, there is nothing you can do to earn the redemption of God. There is nothing you can do to commend yourself to him. He has offered you, a sinner, life and salvation by Jesus Christ. His redemption cost him much, so that it could be free to you who believe.

2. God Commands His People (Exodus 19-24)

Having redeemed his people, God delivers the moral law to them in the 10 Commandments at Sinai. (Exodus 20) We don’t have time to read the entire chapter, but hear now the law of God:

1. Thou Shalt Have No Other Gods Before Me
2. Thou Shalt Not Make Unto Thee Any Graven Image Nor Bow Down to Them
3. Thou Shalt Not Take the Name of the Lord Thy God in Vain
4. Remember the Sabbath Day to Keep It Holy
5. Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother
6. Thou Shalt Not Kill
7. Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery
8. Thou Shalt Not Steal
9. Thou Shalt Not Bear False Witness
10. Thou Shalt Not Covet

Now, what I am about it give you is 4 sermons worth of material in a few minutes, so hold on for dear life.

The Ten Commandments Reveals the Nature and Character of God

Exodus 31:18 tell us the Ten Commandments were written on tablets of stone with the very “finger of God.” God, of course, does not have fingers. This is metaphorical language signifying that the Ten Commandments as moral law, are uniquely connected to and flow from God’s very nature. They reveal God as the only and most holy God, who is worthy of our honor and requires our total obedience.

The Ten Commandments Contain Two Sections

You may have heard of the two tables of the law. The first four commandments regular our relationship with God, while commands 5-10 regulate our relationships with one another. We ought to expect human governments to honor the first table of the law and enforce the second table of the law. Far more needs to be said here.

The Ten Commandments Are Not a Means of Justification

Though we are obliged to keep the Ten Commandments, they are not given to us as a means of justifying ourselves in God’s sight. “For by works of the law no human being will be justified.” (Rom. 3:20a)

The Ten Commandments Condemn Us All

Not a single human since Adam, save Jesus Christ, has obeyed the Ten Commandments entirely. And as the Apostle James tells us, anyone who breaks the law in one part is guilty of all, because we have transgressed against the Lord who is the giver of the law. One of the purposes of the law, therefore, is to show us our guilt and prepare us to see Christ’s obedience and death as our only hope of justification.

The Ten Commandments Are Binding On Us

God has nowhere set the moral law aside. We are all required to obey all of the Ten Commandments. That may sound strange to hear from a pastor who constantly preaches salvation by grace alone. Again, we’re pressed for time, but if you read James 2:8-12 and Romans 3:28-31 you will see that both of these New Testament authors, the brother of our Lord, and the greatest theologian in the Bible, affirm the perpetuity, of abiding validity of the Ten Commandments.

The Ten Commandments are a Rule for Life

We are no longer under the law as a covenant of works. In other words, we are not required to obey the Ten Commandments to justify ourselves. Rather, we are justified by God’s grace as a gift, through the redemption we have in Jesus, whom God put forward to absorb his wrath on the cross. All we must do is receive Christ by faith.

And when we do that, the Ten Commandments become to us a rule of life. Christ does not make us free from obedience to the law. He makes us free for obedience. Christ does not remove our obligation to obey God. He first obeys God in our stead and his obedience is imputed to us. Because we are born again, of the Spirit, we are empowered by grace to obey.

The law, therefore, is a tool for discovering indwelling sin and convicting us that we might confess it to Christ and change. The law is a lens that helps us see our need of Christ every day. The law restrains sin, for in it we learn of the stern warnings and threats God makes toward sinners, and though we cannot lose our salvation, we see how sin breaks our fellowship and close communion with our Maker.

The Ten Commandments are Not Opposed to the Gospel.

All of Scripture is either law or gospel, and both are necessary for the conversion of sinners and the sanctification of saints. Faithful preachers must proclaim both the law and the gospel. This is what it means to preach the whole counsel of God. To only preach the law leaves us with the impression that what God wants most is external moral conformity. To only preach the promise of the gospel does not tell us how God expects his people to live. We must preach both. The law kills all pride so that the gospel can make alive. And when the gospel has made alive, it is the grace of God that enables new, loving obedience.

William Cowper, author of the famous hymn There is a Fountain Filled with Blood, also wrote a hymn entitled Love Constrained to Obedience. Hear the final stanza:

To see the law by Christ fulfilled,

And hear his pardoning voice,

Changes a slave into a child,

And duty into choice.

How does the Holy Spirit do his enabling work? He points us to the fullness of Christ’s work. He reminds us of our pardon. He reminds us that Jesus made full satisfaction. It is as we dwell on our free justification that our hearts are moved to free and cheerful obedience.

1. C. Berkouwer put it this way, “The believer’s constant ‘commerce’ with the forgiveness of sins and his continued dependence on it must be laid bare, emphasized, and kept in sight.”^[1] In a sense, the path to personal obedience doesn’t begin with a focus on personal obedience at all. Obedience begins by meditating on the obedience of Christ. Obedience to the law of God is the destination of the ship, and the gospel is the wind in the sail.

If you don’t do anything else this week: memorize the Ten Commandments. Thank Christ for obeying them in your place. Ask him to empower you to live them our for his glory in the world.

3. God Dwells with His People (Exodus 25-40)

The final section of Exodus, 25-40, contain essentially two parts. God instructions the artisans of Israel in the construction of the Tabernacle, and the people turn away from the Lord to worship a false deity (the Golden Calf) which Aaron makes out of gold that ought to be used for the Tabernacle itself. Nearly one half of Exodus is given to the building of the Tabernacle and the items it housed. What is the Tabernacle and why is it important?

The Tabernacle was essentially a portable temple, a place for God to meet with his people. It was physical manifestation of his covenant relationship with Israel. As God led them through the wilderness, they broke camp, carried the Tabernacle with them, and when they stopped, they set up camp, with the Tabernacle in the center, and all the people camped on its four sides. In other words, the Tabernacle showed that the God of Israel had come to dwell with his people.

The Tabernacle complex had several courtyards and sanctuaries. The outer courtyard contained an outdoor altar for the daily animal offerings required by God. The inner courtyard contained the Tabernacle tent, where the Priests would enter. Inside the tent itself, was an outer sanctum, containing a lampstand, a table of bread, and an altar for burning incense. The inner sanctum, known as the Holy of Holies, contained the Ark of the Covenant. It was a wooden box, overlaid with gold symbolizing the footstool of God’s throne touching earth. Inside the Ark was a copy of the Ten Commandments. The lid of the Ark was known as the Mercy Seat, where the High Priest, once a year, would place blood on the Day of Atonement.

Do you see the symbolism? How can a Holy God dwell in the midst of a sinful people? Only if, as he looks down from his throne, he sees the blood of a sacrifice covering his law which the people have broken.

And as we turn the page to the New Testament, John tells us that Jesus Christ, the Word, became flesh, and dwelt among us. That word “dwelt” is actually the word, “Tabernacle.”

Conclusion

Here is the message of Exodus: God sovereignly redeems a people and gives them his law, that he might dwell in their midst. Church, that’s the gospel foreshadowed in Exodus. God turns slaves into a covenant people.

• God saves us sovereignly and freely, not because of anything good we have done, but because it is his covenant purpose to do so.

• God gives us his law. Not as a ladder to climb to heaven, but as a gracious revelation of his nature, and to point us to our great need for a Savior.

• God has pledged to dwell in our midst, by his Spirit, whom Christ has sent.

At every turn, Exodus whispers the gospel message: salvation is God’s initiative, accomplished through Christ’s obedience, and applied by his Spirit who indwells his people.

[1] Gerrit Cornelis Berkouwer, Faith and Justification (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1954), 84.