The book of Exodus is where we're coming to today. So turn to Exodus 1, let's just turn to the first page of Exodus. The authorship of the book is very, very clear. It really is quite undeniable that Moses is the author. We looked at the Pentateuch as a whole and that Moses is the author of the Pentateuch. And remember, I made something of an emphasis that in the New Testament, the Pentateuch is referred to as the book, not books plural, but book singular of Moses. And Exodus, no doubt, is part of that. But there's internal evidence as well. So in your notes, you'll see I listed for you Exodus 17 and verse 14, Exodus 34 and verse 27. Both of these are internal evidence pieces. It's actually in the book of Exodus. So Exodus 17, 14, the Lord said unto Moses, write this for a memorial in a book. and rehearse it in the years of Joshua, for I will utterly put out the remembrance of Amalek from under heaven. And then in Exodus 34, and the Lord said unto Moses, write thou these words. And so we have pretty clear evidence there. The Lord commanded Moses to write. Moses did write. Not really rehearse a lot that we've talked about before about the nature of inspiration and how it happened. One of the views of inspiration is called the dictation theory. And we don't argue that the entire Bible was written in that format, a dictation format, but it seems pretty clear that a good part of the book of Exodus was more or less a dictation format. God said, write these words. And so Moses wrote down what God told him to write down. And so it does follow something of that pattern. Now, when you come to the book of Exodus, it is an incredibly obvious sequel and really continuation of the book of Genesis. So, I have you in the first page of the book of Exodus. I don't know how your Bible's laid out, so mine, Genesis, stops on one page, and then I have to turn the page to get to Exodus. But if you look at Genesis chapter 50 and verse number 24, so right at the very, very end of the book of Genesis, and Joseph So Genesis 50, 24, and Joseph said unto his brethren, I die and God will surely visit you and bring you out of this land unto the land which he swear to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. And Joseph took an oath of the children of Israel saying, God will surely visit you and you shall carry up my bones from hence. So Joseph died being 110 years old and they embalmed him and he was put in a coffin in Egypt. Now these are the names of the children of Israel, which came into Egypt. Every man in his household came with Jacob. And if you didn't have to turn the page in your Bible, or if you didn't have a big thing at the top of your page that says Exodus, well, you wouldn't know you were in any different book. It just keeps going. And one of the other interesting things, you don't see it in your English Bible, because in your English Bible, it starts with the word now, but it's actually in Hebrew what's called the WoW consecutive, which is the word and. You don't really, Ms. Hamilton here can correct us, but you don't normally start a sentence with and, but yet you definitely don't start a book normally with and. And so it ties back to what was in Genesis. That's part of the argument that we say that the entire Pentateuch was really just one collective whole, and then in the process of the collection of the canon was broken up into the different individual books, but You look at the book of Exodus, and it basically tells the story of the fulfillment of what we read in Genesis 50 in verse number 24, when Joseph was saying to his brother and his people, I'm going to die, but surely the Lord is going to visit you and bring you up out of this land of Egypt. Well, here we go. Here's the story of the Lord visiting his people and bringing them up out of the land of Egypt. And so Exodus tells that story of the fulfillment of Joseph's prophecy. And the central theme and the message of Exodus really is very clear to discern. It is the message of redemption. We could use some synonyms here. It's salvation, obviously, but really big picture story of redemption. introduced to a more developed understanding of the necessity of a blood atonement. We're introduced to the necessity of a mediator between God and men. ultimately fulfilled in the man Christ Jesus. We're introduced to so many types and shadows of the gospel and the whole story and message of redemption. And so it's clear that the book of Exodus has that as its main theme. There are several different ways to outline the book. It's a very traditional and really very surface and quite simplistic way of outlining it. You look at Israel in Egypt, that starts in chapter 1, verse 1, all the way to chapter 13 and verse number 16. And then starting in chapter 13, verse 17, Israel leaves Egypt, so you have Israel in the wilderness. That goes all the way to chapter 18, verse 27. Obviously, they're in the wilderness after that, but in chapter 19, they arrive at Mount Sinai. And that becomes a big event in the nation of Israel's history. So you round out a threefold division of the book, Israel in Egypt, Israel in the wilderness, Israel in Sinai. So that's one way to break up the book into various parts. There's another book by a man named Tremper Longman. He actually wrote a series of books, How to Read, and then various books of the Bible. His on how to read Proverbs is really quite good, but he has one How to Read Exodus, and he has a little bit different outline. You can see the similarities. So he goes from chapter one all the way to 18. So if you look at the other one, it goes from 1-1 to 13-16, 13-17 to 18-27. He lumps those two together, and his basic structure there for those first 18 chapters is that God saved Israel from bondage. And so that's the story we read, God saving Israel from bondage through the Red Sea, and they get in ultimately to Mount Sinai in chapter 19, And that's where God gives Israel his law. And the sum and substance of that is chapters 19 to 24. And then starting in verse, I'm sorry, in chapter 25, all the way to the end of the book, we have the details of God's commandments to Israel about how to build a tabernacle. So again, a lot of similarities in these two outlines, but Tremper Longman really looks at a little bit different perspective. There's another interesting structure to look at in the book of Exodus. It's not so much a structure of the book, because it does skip around back and forth, but it is quite interesting to take the story of the life of Moses and just isolate out Moses' story, and look at the timeline of Moses' life, and then pull out a timeline of Israel's history and development in the book of Exodus. And notice how these two parallel one another. And some commentators look at the book of Exodus and they track that parallel between events in the life of Moses and events in the life, the nation of Israel. And so I've tried to give you a chart there and put these two things side by side in five different groups, five different categories. So in the top section there, group one, you see in Exodus chapter two, verses one to two, Moses is born as a slave in Egypt under oppression, and he becomes a victim of a murder attempt. And so that's how Moses' life starts, that's how the book starts. But then we see the nation of Israel in Exodus 1. The Israelites, they're born as slaves in Egypt under cruel bondage, and Pharaoh attempts to murder all the male babies. Now, Moses is one of those male babies, but you see something of a parallel in Moses' beginning, Israel's beginning. Group 2, in Exodus 2, verses 3 to 10, Moses undergoes this ordeal with water. You know, he's in the basket and in the Nile River there, and he's delivered in really an unexpected and we could say miraculous way, where Pharaoh's own daughter finds him and brings him into her home and raises him. You read the story as narrative, you didn't see that coming. That's a big twist in the story. Well, at Exodus 14 and 15 in the nation of Israel, well, they also undergo this water ordeal, they're trapped at the Red Sea, and it seems as if there's going to be certain destruction, just like Moses. I mean, how many of you moms would put your baby in a basket and send it floating down a river and have any anticipation at all of your child surviving that ordeal? You wouldn't, you figure a certain destruction. Well, in Exodus 14 to 15, that's where Israel finds itself between the proverbial rock and hard place, but yet there is an unexpected and miraculous delivery. The third group in Exodus 2, verses 11 to 22, Moses escapes to Midian, and we see the same thing with the children of Israel as they escape from Israel I'm sorry, escape from Egypt after they're on the other side of the Red Sea. Midian is the direction that they go until eventually in chapter 19 they arrive at Mount Sinai. In the fourth group, we have Moses experiencing a theophany at the burning bush. So a theophany is a pre-incarnate appearing of Christ. And so there at the burning bush, the bush was burning but yet not consumed, and the Lord was there speaking to Moses directly. And in Exodus chapter 19, the Israelites, they experienced this theophany at Mount Sinai. God is thundering his voice down to the people. They're scared. And they asked Moses, you go up and you talk to him. We're terrified. And so the same parallel of events. And then in Exodus 4, verses 1-17, we see Moses being unfaithful, and he's doubting, but yet God responds to him with a series of various miracles. And Moses trusts the Lord, follows Him, etc. Well, in the book of Exodus, really after the giving of the law in Israel's history, all the way through to the rest of the Pentateuch, We see the Israelites responding by being unfaithful to God, but we see God over and over performing and giving miracles to the people as an evidence of his power and of his glory and bringing the people back to himself. And so all that, we look at those parallels with Moses and Israel, we can look at these other outlines that are offered by other commentators, and it becomes clear that the main message, I said a theme of redemption, but a message in that of redemption is that God delivers His people for Himself and to Himself. So why does God deliver His people? Well, it's nothing about who they are. It's no goodness in them. He delivers them for himself, for his own purpose, for his own glory, for his own honor, but he also delivers them to himself. He brings them to him as that ultimate place of safety. And so we can look through the book of Exodus and develop some pretty prominent themes. I have for you, is it five? Five themes, so let's go through these. The first very prominent theme is that God is present with his people. Now, this is one of the themes that I outlined for you when we looked at the Pentateuch as a whole. And we see that in the book of Genesis, God being with his people, that's undeniable. But we come to the book of Exodus, and it is especially true. We see in the early chapters, the Lord hears their groanings. He is paying attention to them. He's not a God that's very distant, that doesn't care anything about His people. No, He is with them. Chapter 3, we see something quite dramatic of Moses seeing the Lord at the burning bush. There, God was with Moses. He was tracking Moses. He knew where Moses was all the time. He called Moses to meet himself. Chapter 19, God meets Israel at Mount Sinai. And chapter 13 and following, God is with his people in that pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night. So you see chapter 13 verse 21, and the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud and led them the way and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light to go by day and night. And so the Lord's presence was constantly manifest in a way that was visible for them. They could see this cloud, they could see this fire, and they knew that the Lord was with them. But then the capstone of it all is the whole idea of the tabernacle, the God being with his people, literally in the very center of the camp. And so as you continue to read the book of Exodus and you go on into Leviticus and Numbers and you understand how the whole thing was organized and the 12 tribes, So imagine a giant circle and 12 pie pieces around this circle, and the tabernacle was right in the middle of them. And so the Lord was literally in the center of his people, and each tribe would camp around where the tabernacle was, the Lord dwelling with his people. You come to the New Testament, to the book of John, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, verse 14, and the Word was made flesh and dwelt. That word dwelt that's in Greek is the word that the Septuagint uses for tabernacle, literally to dwell. So the Word was made flesh and tabernacled among us. It's the same idea, it's the same theology, the same truth. And you come to the very end of the book of Exodus, for example, so turn to Exodus chapter 40, right at the very end. And we see this concept of the Lord being with his people in quite a dramatic way. Exodus 40 verse 34, then a cloud covered the tent of the congregation, so that's the tabernacle, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle, and Moses was not able to enter into the tent of the congregation because the cloud abode thereon, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle. And when the cloud was taken up from over the tabernacle, the children of Israel went outward in all their journeys. But if the cloud were not taken up, then they journeyed not till the day that it was taken up. For the cloud of the Lord was upon the tabernacle by day, and the fire was on it by night in the sight of all the house of Israel throughout all their journeys." And so again, a very clear manifestation of the fact that God is with his people. But then a second big theme that we can trace through the book is the fact that God keeps his covenant with his people. So go back to chapter two. Chapter two, verse 24. We read here, and God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. And God looked upon the children of Israel, and God had respect unto them. And then a page or two over, chapter six, verse four, same thing. And I have also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, the land of their pilgrimage wherein they were strangers. And I have also heard the groanings of the children of Israel, whom the Egyptians keep in bondage, and I have remembered my covenant. One commentator pointed out the fact that at that period of time in history, the nation of Israel was not the only enslaved people group in the world. For that matter, they weren't even the only enslaved people group in Egypt. But yet other nations and other parts of the world that are not in the purview of what the Bible is seeking to communicate to us, they had slaves or were enslaved. And so there were many people who were groaning under cruel bondage. And so what was it about the Israelites that caused God to stop and pay attention to them? Well, we could fast forward to the book of Deuteronomy, and there Moses tells the children of Israel, the Lord did not set his love upon you because you were a great nation, because you were more in number. You know, you look at a military prowess, Israel was not at the top of the heap. Israel didn't have really any significant thing going for it as a nation at all, other than God had made a covenant with their forefathers. And the Lord kept his covenant with his people. The Lord heard the groanings of their people for one reason and one reason only. And it didn't have anything to do with them, but it had everything to do with the fact that God made a promise to Abraham and God was gonna keep that promise. That's the only reason that God heard their groanings. and they were delivered. This speaks to us something of prayer. All right, why does the Lord hear your prayers? Why does the Lord hear your groanings in prayer? Well, it's not because of anything with us. It's because God made a covenant with our father, with the Lord Jesus Christ, and we are in him, and we are answered for his sake, not ours. And we see this theme of a covenant-keeping God. A third big theme is the fact that God is holy. And so you look at Exodus 3, verses 5 and 6, and the Lord said, draw not nigh hither. So the Lord is speaking to Moses, and he's basically saying, Moses, don't come any closer. Put off thy shoes from off thy feet. for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground. Moreover, he said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face for he was afraid to look upon God. And so we're introduced there undeniably to the holiness of who God is. In Exodus chapter 15, Verse 11, who is like unto thee, O Lord, among the gods? And notice little g, a god with a little g. Who is like thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praise, doing wonders. And then in verse 12, the giving of the law in part of the ceremonial outfits that Bezalel was commanded to make. Exodus 28 verse 36, and thou shalt make a plate of pure gold and grave upon it like the engravings of a signet, holiness to the Lord. And so here is a title, an identifying characteristic of who God is. He is holy. A fourth aspect is, a fourth major theme is that God is a saving God. So the book opens. with this story of salvation, God saving Moses in this unexpected way, we've already talked about with the basket, and you know the Bible story from Sunday school. Moses was put in that basket, floated down the river, Pharaoh's daughter found him, and Moses' sister came and said, hey, do you need a nurse? Yes, I do. And so Moses was back to his mom, but then back to Pharaoh's court. but the Lord saved Moses from what seemed to be certain death. We have at the Passover, God saving Israel through the blood of the lamb applied to the doorposts of their house. There were nine plagues previous to that. There was some death along the way in that, but this was a plague of the death of the firstborn. Firstborn of Israel, firstborn of Egypt, all the firstborn in the land. And how to be saved if you were a firstborn? Well, there was only one way. The blood had to be applied to the posts of your door. And then we come to the Red Sea and see God saving Israel from that certain death at the Red Sea. And so we see this theme of salvation, God saving his people. But we come to really the biggest of the themes that is developed through the book of Exodus, and that is the fact that God is the only true and living God. And this one, we see in other places in the book, but if we focus our attention on the 10 plagues and the events of the Red Sea, we can see this quite clearly. The whole reason that God sent these plagues was to demonstrate to Pharaoh, I am God and there is none else. I am powerful and you are not. And in the process of doing that, we see that Pharaoh hardened his heart and we also read that Pharaoh hardened his own heart. And so God unloaded a mountain of evidence to demonstrate to Pharaoh, I'm the one true God, submit to me. But even in the face of all of that evidence, there weren't conversions. We don't see the nation of Egypt seeing this evidence of God's power on display and turning to God. No, what we see is a hardening of the heart, a continual hardening of the heart. Evidence alone does not convince a man to turn to God in saving faith. Now, we're happy for evidence. Was it Lee Strobel wrote the book, Evidence Demands a Verdict? I think Lee... That was Jim McDowell. Yeah, Josh McDowell. Josh McDowell wrote Evidence Demands a Verdict. Yeah, yeah, very fine book. And I would recommend you read it. There's great evidence that it does demand a verdict. And the whole premise of his book and everything about it is great. There is evidence that we look for. But evidence alone does not save the soul, does not convince a man and turn a man to Christ. It must be a work of grace in the heart. And again, God gave the Egyptians all the evidence they could ever need, but they were not converted in that. But the purpose of the plagues in Egypt was not to convert the Egyptians, But it was to show the Egyptians that Jehovah alone is the true and the living God. And God was demonstrating his power and his glory. So let's look at a few verses here. Go to Exodus chapter seven. We'll start in seven and we'll just go a page at a time or so to run through these verses. But Exodus chapter seven, verse five. And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I stretch forth mine hand upon Egypt, and bring out the children of Israel from among them." And so here really is the justification of these plagues. This is an explanation as to why the Lord was going to send these plagues. And so chapter 7 verse 17, you come to the very first plague of the Lord turning the Nile River into blood. Thus saith the Lord, In this thou shalt know that I am the Lord. Behold, I will smite with the rod that is in mine hand upon the waters which are in the river, and they shall be turned to blood. Thou shalt know that I am the Lord. Before we get going too much farther here, one thing just to take note of, and I didn't outline this out in your notes so much. Maybe you've heard this preached before and said, but the Egyptians were a pantheistic society. They worshipped many different gods. And in their pantheon of gods, there also was a hierarchy of gods. And so at the bottom of the rung was a god that was the god of the Nile River. At the top of the echelon of the Egyptian pantheon was Ra, the sun god, the god of life. and you can trace this pantheon right on up, and what the Lord was doing in these plagues is he started at the bottom, and he just systematically knocked off God, after God, after God, after God, after God, working through each of these ten plagues, showing, okay, you wanna trust this God? Gone. You wanna trust this God of agriculture? Fine, kill all your cows. You wanna trust this God that controls the weather? Nope, darkness and hail. And just on and on and on, the Lord is showing His power and His authority and His sovereignty over everything that Egypt held dear. and they never converted. They hardened their heart more and more. Chapter 8, verse 10, the second plague. And he said, tomorrow, and he said, be it according to thy word that thou mayest know that there is none like unto the Lord our God. the fourth plague, chapter 8, verse 22, and I will sever in that day the land of Goshen in which my people dwell, that no swarms of flies shall be there to the end that thou mayest know that I am the Lord in the midst of the earth. And so you come to liberal commentators they go to the plague of the Nile River, where the river's turned into blood. And they will point to a natural event that does happen at certain times of the year in different conditions. There's a particular algae that will grow that from a distance when you look at the Nile River, it looks red because of all this algae. And they will argue that these are no miracles at all. These are just natural events that Moses soothsayers in Israel would be able to predict. Well, that's silly because the Egyptians would have known and predicted the same thing. And they would have known that this is not any kind of miracle. This happens every year at this time of the year, this, I mean, they didn't know what algae was, I guess, but that it turned red. Well, you could say that, you know, I've been on a picnic, and I love the Lord, but my picnics get swarmed with flies. You've been on picnics, and you love the Lord, and your picnic gets swarmed with flies. And so, if there's a swarm of flies, if you're at 10 picnic tables, there's flies at every table. Well, in this plague, the Lord says, okay, I'm gonna do something different. So far, the plagues affected everybody. Well, now I'm going to section off the land of Goshen. This is where my people live, and there's not going to be any flies there. And so Pharaoh very easily could have sent somebody over and was like, hey, go check out Goshen and see if there's flies, and come back, and well, sure enough, no flies in Goshen. And you would think, Pharaoh would think, well, how in the world are there flies here and not there? It doesn't make any sense. unless God did a miracle, and he did, obviously. So chapter nine, verse 14, is the seventh plague. For I will at this time send all my plagues upon thine heart, and upon thy servants, and upon thy people, that thou mayest know that there is none like me in all the earth. You come to the eighth plague. and that thou, chapter 10, verse two, and that thou mayest tell in the ears of thy son, and of thy son's son, what things I have wrought in Egypt, and my signs which I have done among them, that ye may know how that I am the Lord. Over and over, the Lord is emphasizing this truth. Chapter 12, verse 12, this is the final plague. This is the Passover. For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and I will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast, and against all the gods of Egypt, I will execute judgment. I am the Lord." Now there's no virus that is unique to the firstborn. There's no wild animal that distinguishes between whether you're a firstborn or a secondborn. Only God who knows who's who and what's what is able to distinguish out between firstborn and not firstborn. I would submit to you that there was not one person on that night that was not a firstborn that died. You know, millions of people live there. People die from natural causes, et cetera. Nobody died from natural causes on that night. Nobody. There were no second-borns that died. The only people that died were first-borns. And the only reason they died is because God slew them through this judgment. But to prove what? That He is the Lord. He would execute judgment, I am the Lord. You come to the Red Sea, chapter 14, verse four. I will harden Pharaoh's heart that he shall follow after them. And I will be honored upon Pharaoh and upon all his host that the Egyptians may know that I am the Lord. And they did so. And so Pharaoh had said, let my people go. or let the people go, so they went. And the Lord said, I'm going to harden Pharaoh's heart to cause his army to chase after you. And he did. And the Lord said, I'm going to destroy all of them. Why? To show the Egyptians that I am the Lord. And then chapter 14, verse 18, we see the destruction of the entire Egyptian army. And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord. when I have gotten me honor upon Pharaoh, upon his chariots, and upon his horsemen." And so I think we understand from this that, like the city of Marathon, where there was a survivor and he ran all the way back to tell everybody what happened, somebody ran all the way back to tell the Egyptians what happened, that the whole army is gone. They're buried in the sea. And the Lord demonstrated His power and His glory. And so we have this massive theme of redemption, a massive theme of the Lord being the one true and only God, a Savior of His people, one who is a holy, covenant-keeping, present God. And so that's the book of Exodus. There's obviously lots of parts we didn't cover and get into the nitty gritty of the building of the tabernacle. That's not so much our purview and a big, huge overview of a book, its theme and its message. We'll no doubt get into some of that when we look at the book of Leviticus and outline some of those things next week, Lord willing. So let's close in prayer. We'll stop here. and prepare our hearts for the worship service here. Let's pray. Our Father, we do thank you for your word and especially for teaching us in these pictures and object lessons of your great power of redemption. We thank you that we, because of what Christ has done for us, are no longer the objects of your wrath. We don't live in fear of these great plagues upon us, but we thank you that Christ has saved our souls, and we have now hope of glory and everlasting life. We pray that you'll bless us as we go into this worship service to follow I pray that you'll bless the reading of the scriptures, our singing, our praying together, our listening to the word preached, that you would give us ears to hear, every one of us, and we ask in Jesus' name.