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Today we pick up where we left off last week, with Moses on his way from his home in Midian back to Egypt, to meet his brother Aaron and confront Pharaoh. Moses is being sent to Egypt, despite his reluctance, by God who appeared to Moses in a burning bush.
Let’s read Exodus 7:1-7.
Then the LORD said to Moses, “See, I have made you like God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron will be your prophet. You are to say everything I command you, and your brother Aaron is to tell Pharaoh to let the Israelites go out of his country. But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and though I multiply my signs and wonders in Egypt, he will not listen to you. Then I will lay my hand on Egypt and with mighty acts of judgment I will bring out my divisions, my people the Israelites. And the Egyptians will know that I am the LORD when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring the Israelites out of it.” Moses and Aaron did just as the LORD commanded them. Moses was eighty years old and Aaron eighty-three when they spoke to Pharaoh.
This passage is an overview of what is about to happen. Moses and Aaron will tell Pharaoh to let the Israelites go. Pharaoh will refuse, despite a tremendous display of God’s power until the final of ten plagues kills Pharaoh’s firstborn son. Let’s look at chapter 11, starting at verse 4:
So Moses said, “This is what the LORD says: ‘About midnight I will go throughout Egypt. Every firstborn son in Egypt will die, from the firstborn son of Pharaoh, who sits on the throne, to the firstborn son of the female slave, who is at her hand mill, and all the firstborn of the cattle as well. There will be loud wailing throughout Egypt—worse than there has ever been or ever will be again. But among the Israelites not a dog will bark at any person or animal.’ Then you will know that the LORD makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel.
This is the background for our message today. It is a dramatic story of how God’s people are about to be delivered from bondage to Pharaoh so that they can become their own nation under the rule and protection of God. We will look at three main features of this deliverance story:
The Passover, The Crossing of the Red Sea, and Provision of Water and Food in the Wilderness.
The Passover – Exodus 12
In this chapter, we read a description of how God is providing a way for the Israelites to be protected by the death wave that is about to sweep over Egypt. Verse 7 explains how they are to take the blood of a lamb and cover their door frame with it. In verse 12, we read that God is going to pass over Egypt during the night and strike down every firstborn of both people and animals, and bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. The blood on the door frame will be a sign and when God sees the blood, he will pass over that household. No harm will come to anyone in a house that is covered by the blood of the lamb.
This is the beginning of the annual Passover celebration called the Festival of Unleavened Bread because it was the day on which God brought the Israelites out of Egypt. I am not going into all the details of this festival today, but it will come up as we continue to go through the Pentateuch.
What I do want to highlight is that this was an identifying practice. It marked the Israelites as God’s people, who were saved not literally by the blood of the lamb, but because God chose to save them. The practice of covering the doorframes with blood was an act of obedience. It was a statement of trust in God, a declaration that they want to be saved from the judgment that was being delivered.
If you go down in chapter 12 to verse 43, we read some restrictions on the Passover.
The LORD said to Moses and Aaron, “These are the regulations for the Passover meal: “No foreigner may eat it. Any slave you have bought may eat it after you have circumcised him, but a temporary resident or a hired worker may not eat it… A foreigner residing among you who wants to celebrate the LORD’s Passover must have all the males in his household circumcised; then he may take part like one born in the land. No uncircumcised male may eat it.
The ones who participated in the Passover ritual belonged to Israel. The mark of belonging to Israel was circumcision of the men. The females and children of the households of these men belonged to Israel through the circumcision of the adult men. This is how they distinguished between people who belonged to Israel and those who didn’t.
Some of you are visiting today. Perhaps you have come just for this one Sunday as we celebrate 90 years of God’s faithfulness in Hoadley. But, some of you are regular or irregular attenders of this church. And others belong to this church. So, we have three groups of people here today: foreigners, friends, and family.
We do not practice circumcision as the requirement for belonging to the church. But, we do have practices. Two of the practices are baptism and communion, which are mandated in Scripture for those who belong to Jesus. I’ll come back to those a bit later. The third practice is church membership. It is one that has developed over time as a statement that I belong to a specific congregation. The foreigners among us can come and participate and we are happy to have you. But, we expect that you’ll go back to where you came from and continue worshipping with the church to which you belong. We don’t expect you to sign a membership agreement in order to attend here.
But, we have two other groups of people. Friends and family. Family are the ones who belong as members of this church. You are members here. You give, you serve, and you are deeply invested in this church as your family of faith. You are family because you have committed through membership to this church.
Friends are the ones who attend, give and serve regularly, but are not fully invested. I want to challenge the friends among us. I know that what I’m saying will make some people uneasy because perhaps you are not a member but you feel like family. You ask, why is it necessary to become a member? It is important as a follower of Jesus to have a family of faith. Membership is the only action we have that represents your commitment to a local congregation.
If you have not committed to be a member of this family, I will be having membership classes throughout the summer. You only need to attend one of them, but there will be several options for dates to choose from. Then, in September, we will have a membership Sunday for everyone who is committing to membership, including those who are currently members. We will commit ourselves to one another and to God.
Let’s continue on our journey through Exodus by looking at the Red Sea crossing.
The Red Sea Crossing Exodus 14
The Israelites rush out into the wilderness after a devastating night in Egypt. God gives them instructions to go one place and then another in order to make it seem like they are wandering aimlessly. In Verse 4, God says, “I will gain glory for myself through Pharaoh and all his army, and the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord.”
The Egyptians pursued Israel and cornered them at the edge of the sea. The pillar of cloud that had been leading the Israelites until this point went between Israel and Egypt and Moses stretched out his hand and the Lord parted the sea so that the Israelites could walk through it to the other side. When they got to the other side, the sea closed in on the Egyptians, and none of them survived. Verse 31 says, “And when the Israelites saw the mighty hand of the LORD displayed against the Egyptians, the people feared the LORD and put their trust in him and in Moses his servant.”
I’m curious, is there anyone here who has never heard this story before?
Now, is there anyone here who knows that this story is connected to baptism?
1 Corinthians 10:1-2 – our ancestors were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea.
The context of this passage is that Paul is warning Christians about falling away from their faith. He is saying that all of the Israelites were saved, but many of them fell away after they were saved. He is concerned that Christians are living too liberally, ignoring the fact that salvation leads to a certain way of living, a way that demonstrates the character of God revealed in Christ.
But, baptized into Moses… what does that mean? Hebrews 3:3-6 – Jesus has been found worthy of greater honor than Moses, just as the builder of a house has greater honor than the house itself. For every house is built by someone, but God is the builder of everything. “Moses was faithful as a servant in all God’s house,” bearing witness to what would be spoken by God in the future. But Christ is faithful as the Son over God’s house. And we are his house, if indeed we hold firmly to our confidence and the hope in which we glory.
In 1 Corinthians 10, Paul is drawing the connection between Moses and Jesus, just as is the case in Hebrews 3. All throughout the New Testament, there are statements about Jesus that recall stories and prophecies from the Old Testament. This is because the New Testament writers are showing how Jesus is the fulfillment of all God’s promises.
Jesus dying, resurrecting, and now ruling over us as king is the completion of what happened at the crossing of the sea with Moses as the mediator between Israel and God. The Israelites were baptized into Moses. We are baptized into Jesus.
Earlier I talked about three practices of Christians. Baptism is the very first practice after salvation. Look at the Israelites. God saved them by the blood of the lamb. They were freed from bondage to Pharaoh. Now, they are being baptized by the crossing of the sea. Salvation comes first, meaning that baptism is not what saves. But, it is the very first thing after salvation and, using the example of the crossing of the sea, baptism is what completes the salvation process.
Acts 8:26-39 tells an interesting story of baptism. Philip, who was an early leader and evangelist in the church, is instructed by an angel of the Lord to go to a certain place south of Jerusalem. Along the way he meets an important Ethiopian official who was reading from the book of Isaiah.
“Do you understand what you are reading?” Philip asked. “How can I,” he said, “unless someone explains it to me?” So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him. This is the passage of Scripture the eunuch was reading: “He was led like a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before its shearer is silent, so he did not open his mouth. In his humiliation he was deprived of justice. Who can speak of his descendants? For his life was taken from the earth.” The eunuch asked Philip, “Tell me, please, who is the prophet talking about, himself or someone else?” Then Philip began with that very passage of Scripture and told him the good news about Jesus. As they traveled along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, “Look, here is water. What can stand in the way of my being baptized?” And he gave orders to stop the chariot. Then both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water and Philip baptized him. When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord suddenly took Philip away, and the eunuch did not see him again, but went on his way rejoicing.
After hearing that Jesus is the fulfilment of the Isaiah prophecy, that he is the promised Messiah, he was baptized. Other stories of baptism in Acts are similar. People hear and believe the gospel and are baptized almost immediately.
Going back to what I said about the three different groups of people here today, we have those who are foreigners, who do not know or believe in Jesus. You are here visiting but have no relationship with Jesus. There are the friends among us, those who know the gospel and perhaps believe that it is true, but you are not baptized. And then there are family, those who have trusted Jesus and been baptized.
I want to once again challenge the friends. If you believe that the gospel message is true and you have trusted Jesus to rescue you from the bondage of sin, but you have not yet been baptized, I’ll say it really clearly: you should be baptized. There is nothing in Scripture that indicates any reason why you should wait.
For those who have yet to believe, this next section is for you. It’s for all of us, but especially for those who are foreigners among us.
Provision – Exodus 15:22-16:18
The Israelites are rescued by the blood of the lamb. They pass through the baptism of the Red Sea crossing. And now they are in the middle of nowhere. They have limited food and have run out of water. They are facing certain death. Now what? 15:22…
For three days they traveled in the desert without finding water. When they came to Marah, they could not drink its water because it was bitter. So the people grumbled against Moses, saying, “What are we to drink?” Then Moses cried out to the LORD, and the LORD showed him a piece of wood. He threw it into the water, and the water became fit to drink. There the LORD issued a ruling and instruction for them and put them to the test.
Again, later in the story, in 17:6, they have no water, so God instructs Moses to strike a rock and water will come out of the rock.
So, God provides water. But, they are also running out of food. How are they going to continue to feed the thousands of people in this group wandering in the wilderness? Their flocks of animals are quickly disappearing.
In chapter 16, we see that God provides them with food in the form of manna, which is a type of bread, in the morning and quail, which is a small bird, in the evening. 16:11 – The LORD said to Moses, “I have heard the grumbling of the Israelites. Tell them, ‘At twilight you will eat meat, and in the morning you will be filled with bread. Then you will know that I am the LORD your God.’ ”
For the next 40 years, the Israelites wandered in the wilderness. God provided for them water, bread, and meat. God saved them by the blood of the lamb, brought them through the waters of baptism of the Red Sea, and is now sustaining them with food and water.
This is the story of the Christian life. We are saved, baptized, and sustained through Jesus.
1 Corinthians 10:4 – They [the Israelites] all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink; for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ.
For those who have not believed in the gospel or trusted Jesus to rescue you, what is sustaining you? What do you depend on to give you meaning, purpose, and hope? Anything other than Jesus will fail. You will lean on something, it will not be strong enough to sustain you, and then you will go looking for something else.
Have you ever heard the story of how Jesus fed thousands of people with five loaves of bread and two fish? Now that you’ve been reminded of this story of the Israelites in the wilderness, doesn’t that make this story about Jesus more profound? Thousands of people, out in the countryside because Jesus has drawn them out there. They are hungry and there isn’t enough food. Jesus provides.
John 6:25-35 describes what happened the very next day. As you listen, see how Jesus is the same God that rescued and provided for the Israelites:
When they found him on the other side of the lake, they asked him, “Rabbi, when did you get here?” Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs I performed but because you ate the loaves and had your fill. Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.” Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?” Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.” So they asked him, “What sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do? Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written: ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’” Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.” “Sir,” they said, “always give us this bread.” Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.
The people saw how Jesus provided. They wanted him to do it again. But he said, what you need and what you are asking for are two different things. What you are asking for will not sustain you. It is temporary. What you need is what I offer: eternal life. How do you respond to this?
In a few minutes, we will participate in a practice called communion, which is an act of obedience to God and a declaration of our trust in Jesus as our saviour. The practice of physical acts as declarations of trust is important. Our faith is not only spiritual, but also physical. What we do matters.
On the night before Jesus was crucified, which was the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, Jesus wanted to share in the Passover meal with his followers. We read about this in Matthew 26. I’ll read starting at verse 26… While they were eating, Jesus took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to his disciples, saying, “Take and eat; this is my body.” Then he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, “Drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.”
Pentateuch Series Bibliography
Alexander, T. Desmond. From Paradise to the Promised Land: An Introduction to the Pentateuch. Fourth Edition. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2022.
Alter, Robert. The Five Books of Moses: A Translation with Commentary. New York: W.W. Norton, 2004.
Averbeck, Richard E. The Old Testament Law for the Life of the Church: Reading the Torah in the Light of Christ. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic: An Imprint of InterVarsity Press, 2022.
Brueggemann, Walter. Preaching from the Old Testament. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2019.
Glanville, Mark. Freed to Be God’s Family: The Book of Exodus. Bellingham: Lexham Press, 2021.
Longman III, Tremper. Genesis. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2016.
Lynch, Matthew J. Flood and Fury: Old Testament Violence and the Shalom of God. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2023.
Provan, Iain, V. Philips Long, and Tremper Longman III. A Biblical History of Israel. Second Edition. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2015.
Smith, James E. The Torah. 2nd ed. Old Testament Survey Series. Joplin, MO: College Press Pub. Co., 1993.
Walton, John H and J. Harvey Walton. The Lost World of the Torah: Law as Covenant and Wisdom in Ancient Context. Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2019.