Exodus 2 (Unlocking The Old Testament)
David Pawson
Well let’s go on with a study of Exodus and we walked to the fifth section of it delivered and drowned. I can’t resist telling you about the story about the liberate preacher. You know to liberal preacher is it’s a man of rich and bars and with a pair of scissors and he cast all the miracles and this liberal preacher was preaching about the Exodus and he said there is no miracle. He said at that time and in that place the Red sea is just a half meter deep. And the lady in that congregation shouted out Halleluiah! And he stopped and said why did you shout Halleluiah? She said its the great miracle. He said but I explained it was only half meter deep and they just waited the acrossed, what miracle? She said 'drowning the Egyptian army in a half meter water?' Whichever you look at it there is a miracle.
Having said that let’s look at the practical side of it and first of all the question of which was the route they took out of Egypt and into the land of Canaan. There were three possibilities which you will find in various commentaries in the Bible books.
The first is what is called the Northern route that they left Goshen and they went through this bare of sand banks. These are sand banks in the shallow part of Mediterranean and they cross the sea there, the Mediterranean they crosses, this is the theory, and couldn’t be followed by chariots across the sand bank. If you look at the map of Egypt you’ll find those sand bank marks. And this is called lakes of burns inside. And then they went on to Kadesh Barnea. That is one theory.
The second theory is that they straight went across to Kadesh Barnea, that is the middle theory, but here is a line of fortresses roughly where the Suez Canal is. The Egyptian has a very strong defense line here against an invasion from the east and they would have had to get through that line of fortresses which is I think unlikely. They went unarmed and they weren’t able to fight.
The third possibility which I believe is the right one was the southern route going to down to Mount Sinai. This was where Moses had been a shepherd for forty years. He knew this country and it was down here that I believe he led them uncertainly Gabal Musa, as the mountain is called today, is the one in long tradition where Moses received the Ten Commandments. As Sadat the president of Egypt wanted to build a building on top of Mt. Sinai a truth combined a Jewish synagogue, a Muslim mosque and a Christian church in one building but he was assassinated before that could happen. But all the tradition in the Middle East put say Sinai down here. But let’s look at this area in greater detail because this magic explains something.
The Bible doesn’t say that God divided the Red sea what it does say is that he sent an east wind which divided the Red sea. Now how could an east wind divide the sea? That is the question many of us. Let’s look at that are in a little more detail.
The great Bitter lakes were actually joined up for what we call the Red sea in the old days and they were joined up by a shallow sea called the Reed sea. And in fact the Hebrew is much more like it to be the Reed Sea than the Red sea. Here is what we now know as the great Bitter Lake but in those days it was joined up through this marshy channel called the Reed sea. The fortified line came right down to the Bitter Lake. The Israelites left Goshen and came south because Pharaoh won’t let them go into the desert thinking he could always bring them back from there. So you can imagine them, can’t hear hidden by a cloud. God sent a cloud to hide them from the Egyptian army approaching from that side. Now if this was where they across then two natural forces could have divided it. A strong east wind would drive the water of the Great Bitter Lake that way and at tide the water of the Red sea would be going that way so can you see a division coming rather than a to wars of water coming. Here we have it. But of course it doesn’t explain the miracle at all. Why did the east wind just happen to come at the right time? It is because God sent it.
So in looking at it in sort of down to earth way like this, we are not trying to explain the miracle at the very lest it is a miracle of coincident. But in the Bible there is no such thing as coincidence, it is only the providence. But I believe that is what happened and in fact a satellite photograph of this area reveals the channel that links up the Reed sea is still there but it is dry now. (Can you just see it? The great Bitter Lake) You’ll see the line from a satellite photograph you can see the old reed sea very clearly. Where it is on the ground it is so clear. You can just see joining up there so that I believe this southern route across this Reed sea and down to Sinai is almost certainly the right route. From there they headed north again to Kadesh Barnea. This way they avoided the fortified line on the eastern front of Egypt.
To me the striking fact about the crossing of the Red sea or Reed sea is the fact that it happened on the third day after the passover lamb was killed. Their liberation came the third day after the passover lamb died. Even most striking, this will cause you to think, the book of Exodus will tell us the very hour where the passover Lamb has to be killed. And that had to be killed in the midst of the afternoon on the day before the passover which is 3:00 PM, the midst of the afternoon. Are you following me? Passover lamb dies at 3:00 PM. On the third day (Jesus' resurrection) after that they finally escape and they are free of Pharaoh and they will never see him again.
(Well we’re beginning to see more as we go on.)
Let’s now move on to the next section. I have to go back to the original.
Provided and protected, they are now in a place where there is no support for human life except the few Bedouin. They descended on the place to take two and a half million people plus animals. There would be both external problems and internal problems which Moses had to face. The external one was food and water. Where do you get enough food and water? The answer is God has to provide it and He provided food for them in a form of little round form of whatever lying on the desert floor in the morning. And when they found it, they found it edible and they gave it a name, they call it ‘What is it?’ in Hebrew, Manna. But it means 'what is it?' What is the breakfast for me? ‘What is it’. What are we having for lunch? ‘What is it?' More for supper? 'What is it?', not again? And they live on 'what is it' for forty years. We call it Manna as if that is a beautiful name but that is what it means. But they then compare it for literary bread form heaven. That is picked up again later in the Bible but they live on bread from heaven.
They complain bitterly they weren’t getting any meat. They were used to a high protein diet in Egypt and they complain they weren’t getting enough meat. They are always tricky to complaining to God. He sent such a flock of quails that are lying 1.5 meters deep on the desert floor and they eat quails until they were sick. Don’t complain to God he might give you what you want. What about water? Well they have really problem with water. The first oasis which they came through was in Mara. They saw water there and they dash to it and try to drink it and it was brackish and salty, it was undrinkable. But through the miracles through Moses it was cleansed and they able to drink it. But you can almost see the brackish state of the water there that is taking out the very place. However the next place they got to has fresh water. The place is called Elim. So God provided when the water is bad God improved it and when it was alright they didn’t have miracle just water. So God provided for them, they protected them.
Do you realize they needed two million gallons a day for those numbers of animals and people? It is two million gallons per day. Later they got it from rock reservior fresh waters. For me that was one of the greatest miracles of their providential journey was that their shoes were never worn out. I have been in sandals climbing Mt. Sinai and it was wrecked by sharp stones quickly but it says their shoes never worn out. Now you either have to say this is true and that God did it. Or you have to dismiss all those legends, there is no in between stage when you read statements like this.
But they also have internal Problems. Can you imagine that number of people camping together? I mean sometimes it is bad enough just taking your family camping when you are all pushed together in that same tent of the same caravan. Can you imagine two million people? It is no wonder that one of the biggest problem that Moses had was actual dispute between the people and he have to be a judge. And the all came to Moses with those problems like in some large churches. Everybody wants to go to the pastor with that problem and that is what is happening. Unfortunately Moses’s father in law was good in more sensible on Moses, he is not one of God’s people and he said you need elders and Moses appointed seventy elders.
◑Well let’s go back and on to the sections. We are in to the second half now and the first thing that happens in the second half of the Ten Commandments written with God's finger on the rock, on two tablets of stone. Now every time you see a picture of those two tablets of stones you’ll see the first four commandments among the next six on the other. Ten were on one and ten were on the other. Why? Because this was a legal contract and one copy is of God and one is of the people. So do you understand now why it has two copies of stone? Because it is how it should be done. There should be two copies one for each party. But since is a covenant as much as a contract, God wrote them both. There was no bargaining went on. God says now this is how you to live.
And he gave them three legal collections. one we call the Ten Commandments, so that is Decalogue which means ten word. The second we call the book of the covenant which we found in chapters 20-23 and then we have another book of laws in chapter 25-31 or 32 which have laws of worship. Now all these make up the Law of Moses and more, there are more in Deuteronomy as well. But the Law is not just Ten Commandments; it is a whole lot more. There are 613 laws and regulation for the way on how to live right before God but let us start with the Ten Commandments.
◒There are three basic principles or two that I want to mention.
▲First of all, the principle of respect, all the Ten Commandments had based on that principle. Respect for God, respect for His name, respect for His day, and then respect for people, respect for family life (father and mother), respect for life itself (don’t murder) respect for marriage (don’t commit adultery), respect for people’s property (don’t steal), respect for people’s reputation (don’t bare false witness), respect, respect, respect. A healthy, holy society is built on respect.
An nationally known television comedian recently said, “We intend to live nothing sacred”. A TV comedy more than anything else is destroying respect, respect for the queen, respect for authority, respect for the police, and respect for the law. We can see in our society what happens when respect disappears. That God’s Law is based on respect. Loving God and loving your neighbor can be translated respecting God and respecting your neighbor. That is the basic principle behind God’s law. So Law of Respect and loss of respect for God leads you to idolatry and loss of respect leads you to immorality and injustice so that you can see how the law is made up. Its a good law. Most of the Ten Commandments are about acts and deeds or words but the last of the ten is about feelings, only one about the heart. And perhaps that is why Paul ones said that he kept all nine but he couldn’t manage the tenth and the tenth is don’t be greedy, don’t want what you haven’t got. That is the only one concerned with your inner life and the rest are all concerned with behavior.
15:30~
There is a principle about the ten laws which the Jewish boys and girls learn on their fingers. The principle is this, if you break one you have broken them all because they belong together like a necklace. And when you lady, it doesn’t matter where you break a necklace but if you break it, just one of the beads will all be lost. This is the profound principle, they are not tens separate commandments they are the law. They are not laws, they are the law. And if you break it at any point you have broken the law. If a place has stopped me from speeding it’s no use now saying I stopped at every red traffic light this afternoon. It doesn’t matter how many laws you have kept, you have broken 'the law' and God says this is a holy law, a holistic law, we would say today. You beak one you have broken a lot. It’s spoiled it is in pieces if you break it at any point. Respect you see is a whole thing and you can’t have some respect and not others. You are either that respecting person or you are not. And you’re sure are not if you break one.
▲The second principle is responsibility. And now we have brought up, I’m afraid, on psychology and sociology to believe that people are not responsibility for their actions. They are now even trying to say that wickedness is due to our gene. Well we know that original sin goes down to the genes but the idea that some people are more wicked than others because they have the wrong genes means they are not responsible for what they do. The law of God says you are accountable, you are responsible, you have chosen to break this and it holds us responsible before God, every one of us to live right before God.
So the two principles of respect and responsibility are written in and therefore a third principle is also written in, ▲the third principle of retribution. There are sanctions in this law, one of them is capital punishment. The death penalty is applied to 18 different sins regard God in the Law of Moses. Aren’t you glad you don’t live in the Law of Moses? Because breaking the Sabbath is death penalty. There is retribution here. There is punishment. And I notice particularly there is very careful distinction in God’s Law between intentional and accidental breaking. There are two sort of killing, there is intentional murder and there is accidental man slaughter that in every case it says, there is no sacrifice in the Mosaic Law for continued delivered intentional sin. And there is in the New Testament either. You read the letter to the Hebrews.
Well now this law is given in a context and the context is this, I brought you out of Egypt. I’m going to bring you into Canaan. This is how you to live now. That is an important point, it is on the basis of what God has done for them and what he’ll do for them that he appeals for them to live right now. And it is the same in the New Testament. Isn’t it? It is the basis of what God has done for you and what He’s going to do for you that He says, ‘now this is what I want you to live’. Now without that context the Law becomes a harsh, impersonal, horrid thing. But in that context it is a good thing. It fits. it’s the response of gratitude to God’s grace.
▲Then we come to the fact that God wants to live with them. He gave the ten commandments of the tabernacle in Mt. Sinai. Let’s look at Mt. Sinai perhaps and to face the mountain. This Mt. Sinai is an extraordinary mountain. I have climb that at 3:00 in the morning before the sun came up. I have found a little girl at the top, a little Jewish girl reading the Ten Commandments in Hebrew. I said what is your name? She said, “Merriam”. And I said, “My! You’ve been here a long time(humor)”. Anyway since Catherine monastery at the foothill. But I always wondered when it says in the Bible don’t touch my holy mountain. I thought how we can touch your mountain. It is ridiculous. Until I saw this picture you can actually walk up to the mountain and touch it because it rises here from the desert floor. Can you see that? It is like a cliff and they have to put a fence around it because God wanted them to realize He was a holy God and anybody can’t just come up and talk to God because He is holy. And therefore He said nobody must touch my holy mountain. So Moses sensible erected the fence around the bottom because you can just walk up, there are people there, and you can just walk up and touch the mountain. But God is going to communicate to them ** his utter holiness.
So Moses can come up, Aaron can come up but none of them can touch the mountain but now God says having given Moses the Ten Commandments up here in the middle of lightning, thunder and fire, awesome site, He said I want to come down and live in the camp with you. But if I do, it must be a tent that communicates my holiness. A tent that you must treat respectably, that you respect with all, a holy place. In fact, right at the middle of the tent will be the room where I actually live and that will be the holy of holies. And so God gave them specifications for His tent. You have a glimpse at it earlier but let us look at it again.
It had to be right in the middle of the camp and all the other tents have to be arranged around it in special order which will come to later. And immediately around it with the priest and the Levites so that they were between the ordinary people and the holy place and the tent itself had to be fenced off with only one entrance and then God’s tent was inside but that had two rooms and inner room is God’s room and into that only one seer, one man could go nobody else ever. And the whole tent is just full of detail. Let us look at some quick pictures of it. The beauty of it must be breath taking, yet most of beauty was hidden. Beautifully embroidered curtains and covering and yet they were all covered with the barge skin outer, other thing that would hide the beauty from the people. All they would see was this rough outer skin, only knowing that inside was golden pieces of furniture and beautiful curtains embroidered with heavenly colors. There is blue, color of heaven. There was red, the color of blood, silver and gold. Isn’t that magnificent tent with its high fence around it which you can’t see over? So that in a sense it was hidden there is a mystery attached to it. And here you see some of the priest of the outer veil and there is another inner veil before the holy of hollies.
▲So let’s go and see inside. Here you have the outer room. The kind of a best view, the room of God’s palace if you like. And here you have the table of the show bread, the seven candle stick, another little altar. (In fact let us go back to the other one). You see He wanted even the priest of approaching God had to come to an altar first and offer sacrifice, kill an animal and burn it. Then he moved on to a great big basin to wash himself clean. The whole thing is saying that if you’re going to come to God you’ll have to have sacrificed first and then you need to be clean. It is full of meaning isn’t it? In fact this is a copy of where I live in heaven. This is just a replica of a real thing.
So there is the **room and finally in the holy of hollies, one piece of furniture, a seat wood covered with gold, the mercy seat. The chams which inside some manna, they never saw it even when this tent was dismantled and moved somewhere else it is covered up. And the tent has to be carried by special people and the ordinary people have to keep a thousand paces away from it until it was erected again. The first thing erect God’s temple, tent and you could put around it at the proper place around it. It all spoke of God’s holiness and yet it also spoke of a holy God who was welling to live in the midst of His people. Amazing!
We have perhaps lost something of the oar and reference that is needed for the holy God. We got to pally with Him. We need to remember He is holy.
▲The high priest, even the closes of the priest was specified. They have to write. The high priest wore in his chest the twelve jewels which represented the twelve tribes of whom he is priest for. And those twelve jewels pomp up again in the last phase of the Bible in the New Jerusalem.
Well we can spend hours of it but you have to read on the books. It is full of meaning, symbolism. God says only special people can use this, priests. And only special people can build it and that when he gave them all this incredible skills. You just thought all that would really bring home to the people, God’s utter holiness.
▲But when Moses is on the mountain you know what happened. Aaron stayed down this time and the people came to Aaron and said ‘Moses is a long time out there, I don’t think he’s coming back’. We want a God down here. And so Aaron said 'give me your gold', and they gave him gold. And Aaron told Moses later I put it on a melting pot and out came this(golden calf). I mean, if you’re going to have an excuse you’ll think of a better than that. But that is what he had bare face to say Moses. ‘I’ll just put the gold in and then look what came out?' Now of course that photograph is of an Egyptian God. I told you about the bulls and the cows, it is simply fertility. And the bull is very common symbol. I’m told there is a golden bull like that outside the European stock exchange in French. It is a symbol of wealth and fertility, prosperity. And this comes out, said Aaron and because idolatry leads to immorality, because the loss of respect to God leads to the loss of respect to people. They had a wild orgy well you know the story, it is a sorted bit. And when Moses came down and saw what was going on, he broke those copies of the law and smashed them. He was only symbolizing what they were doing, they smashed it already and he said what are you doing?
And he went back to the mountain and said to God ‘I’m fed up with them’ and God said ‘so am I’. and God said I think I’m going to finish with them. I’m going to try someone else. That is when Moses has reached the heights of his career, I think. He took the form of the priest then and he said God if you are going to block the mountain block me out. I don’t want to be in a new one. And God replied I only block out of my book the names of those who standing against me and you haven’t.
And that thought is taken up all to through the rest of the Bible when David sins with Bathsheba he said ‘God don’t blot my name out of your book, please’. And in the last book of the Bible Jesus promises he who overcomes I will not blot out his name from my book. The most important thing in life is to keep your name in the book of life, believe me. God says I’ve blot out thy name from my book those who sins against me. It is a tragic story and when Moses insisted that the people was punished. Do you know how many died? It is three thousand.
▲Now I want you to bear in mind that the Law was given on Sinai, on the 50th day after the passover lamb was killed. (just let me put this together for you). The passover lamb was killed at 3:00 afternoon. on the third day after that there are liberated. on the 50th day after that, the day they called Pentecost, they were given a law and 3,000 people died through breaking it. Now does that put something together for you? Isn’t it amazing? The pattern of the old and the new, the letter kills but the spirit gives life. On that same 50th day centuries later when the Jews was celebrating the giving of the law God gave His spirit and 3,000 people got saved, same 50th day. How that Bible fits together.
◑Finally the last section in Exodus, construction & consecration, they build it
Where did they get all of the material, the gold for example. one ton of gold was used. Well it says that every man gave a fifth of an ounce or six grams of old each. Where did they get it from? The answer is that the Egyptians were so glad to see the back of them that they gave all their jewelry to get rid of them. Take it and go. After the ten plaques the ordinary people just wanted all the Jews to leave. They gave them all the money and their jewelry that they could give them to bribe them. So that is where they got it.
But it says that for the construction of the tabernacle the people gave spontaneously, thoughtfully, regularly, and generously. Now that is a sermon for somebody here as a preacher. It says they gave spontaneously. They did not have to be waddled or pressed unto giving. They gladly gave, they gave thoughtfully. They thought about a church would be, it wasn’t just a talk coin in that purse but they gave regularly. They went on giving. And they gave generously and it says they have to be stopped giving. Isn’t that lovely?
Pray and found People always give like that. You’ll have to stop through giving. Halleluiah!
And finally God takes up residence and consecrates the tent and they saw the glory come. And from then on they saw the flow of smoke. From then on they saw the pillars of smoke above that inner room. Now the inner room has no natural light forever nor there were candles but there is a blaze that lays the glory of the Lord. And when they saw that move they have to move. And when it stops they camp.
◑Now what is the Christian use of the book of Exodus?
Well it is the same God. He hasn’t changed. The God of Exodus is our God and we are his people. He has not changed and he deals with us in the same way as he did with them. That is why many of the words in Exodus are used again in the New Testament. Words like law, covenant, blood, lamb, Passover, Exodus, leaven. All these words in the New Testament get their meaning from the book of Exodus so we need to know this book. And yet it is different, we are not under the Law of Moses; we are under the law of Christ. That is very, very, important otherwise I’m breaking the Law of Moses now because he said no must not wear cloths of mixed material. It must be pure wool or pure cotton. I’m not under the Law of Moses. I’m under the law of the Christ.
Now in many ways that is harder and in other ways it is easier. But the first way that Christians apply to the book of Exodus is to apply to Christ and seek Christ in this book. Search the scriptures He said for it bear witness of me. Now the Exodus is central to the Old Testament. All the books after Exodus look back to Exodus as the redemption on which everything else is based. The cross is essential to the New Testament. In what way is the Exodus connected to the cross? Well, 6 months before He died on the cross, Jesus was on top of Mt. Hermon, that is the snow capped mountain of the north of Israel, 4000 feet high. And he talked with Moses. and Luke’s gospel tells us what they talked about. I wonder if you’ve ever notice what they talked about. It says they talked about the Exodus which Jesus was about to accomplish in Jerusalem. Isn’t that amazing? Moses and Jesus talking about the Exodus, that Jesus’s going to accomplish, that give us a clue.
Jesus of course died at 3:00 in the afternoon. At the very minute where thousands passover lambs were being slaughtered. That is why Paul says Christ our passover has been sacrificed for us. It is all there. So the angle of death came to passover. He rose from the death on the third day after that and it he’s resurrection that liberates us from death. He is the bread from heaven. The New Testament says He was the rock from which Moses drew the water for the children of Israel. John in his gospel says the word became flesh and tabernacle among us. What an interesting word to use. Literally pitched his tent among us for the tabernacle to us is Jesus, God (incarnated Jesus) dwelling in the midst of His people.
So we understand Christ much better now and he said I did not come to destroy the law but to fulfill it. So we apply the book of Exodus not only to Christ but to Christians, for example crossing the Red sea prefigures baptism. Paul says the children of Israel were baptized into Moses in the Red sea and you have been baptized into Christ. That crossing the Red sea was then your baptism is for you. Have you ever seen that link? Amazing link!
We too have a passover meal regularly for the Lord’s Supper simply is a passover. I we to a synagogue in Northeastern London and I was the only guest and sat next to the Rabbi for the passover meal. Wonderful privilege! And he took bread and he broke it, gives thanks for it, and gave to the people. Then he took cup of wine, give thanks and pass it to the people. Then he happens to look at me and he said "this is not a communion". He saw on my face what I was doing, what it meant to me because this is my passover meal. See I was remembering the setting free, the liberation of Christ. And Paul says "rise and keep the festival but not with the leaven of malice and wickedness."
There is an equivalent of no leaven bread in the Christian life. Leaven in the in the New Testament is usually a picture of malice and evil and bad thinking. And in the festival we have to keep without the leaven. But we’ll serve the Lord to keep in many ways the Law of Christ is much harder in the Law of Moses. The Law of Moses says don’t kill anybody well I haven’t known that to my knowledge. Have you ever wished anybody dead since Jesus? The Law of Moses says don’t commit adultery. Well I have done that but Law of Christ I have thought about it. It is much harder to keep the law of Christ than the Law of Moses. I rather try and keep the Law of Moses every day. Wouldn’t you? And it is much easier because we don’t need a lot of priest and a lot of ritual and a lot of special buildings. As one dear Scottish lady said, When I went to enter the holy of hollies I just shove my apron out of my head. We enter right into the holy of hollies. Whenever you pray you could enter the holiest place of all unhindered in the name of Jesus.
There is a big difference in between the new covenant and the old. Under the Law given at the Pentecost, a thousand died and of the spirit given at Pentecost thousand lived. I rather have the spirit than the law and the spirit writes the law inside.
But there is still a future deliverance for Christian’s equivalent to the Exodus. If you read the book Revelation you’ll find the place of pharaoh is going to happen once again. There is an astonishing correlation between the place of history and the plaque of pharaoh and those who remain faithful to Jesus, who comes through all that and be victorious. And you know what the book of revelation says that the martyrs and those who have overcome all the pressures of persecution outside and temptation inside will sing the song of Moses. Haven’t you heard the song of Moses?
If you go back to Exodus in chapter 15, the first song recorded in the Bible, is the song composed by Merriam to celebrate the drowning of the Egyptians in the Red sea. And when all this works this world’s trembles are over and we have safe and glory we can then sing the song of Moses. We shall not have a double Exodus, both the Exodus of the cross which has happened already and the escape from all the trouble that is coming through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
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