Exodus – By Bob Wilkerson

Outline

Introduction

In order for us to render due respect and admiration for the second book of the Bible, we need only remember the signification which the exodus out of Egypt and the making of the Covenant had for the people of Israel. Here was established a theocracy. Here was born a chosen people. Little wonder it is then that the echoes of this event should be heard reverberating down through the halls of the later historical literature, of the prophets, and of the Psalms. No wonder too that the events surrounding the Exodus are considered by the Israelites as the greatest events in the history of the people, and at the same time as the promising type of future and greater deliverances. The significance of the book of Exodus in connection with the New Testament is to be seen in the fact that great blocks of New Testament scriptures and sometimes entire books are devoted to expanding the typical-antitypical relationship. To Exodus the Holy Spirit looks when He would set forth Jesus as our Passover Lamb (see 1 Corinthians 5:7; John 19:36; 1 Peter 1:19). The rock that was mentioned in Exodus 17:6 followed and was Christ (1 Corinthians 10:4). The shadowy symbols of Israel’s worship as described in Exodus take on new meaning when revealed in Hebrews 10.

Discussion

Many efforts have been made to outline the book of Exodus, most of which have considerable merit. Francisco sees three divisions: the oppression (1:8 – 12:36); the Exodus and to Sinai (12:37 – 19:); and the giving of the law (19:2 – 40:38). Others consider the portion dealing with the building of the Tabernacle (25:1 – 40:38) worthy of special note in and outline. Hester in great detail points out that the first 14 chapters deal with (1) the Hebrews in Egypt, (2) the increase of the Israelites (3) their changed status, 4. Moses, and 5. Deliverance.  Chapters 15 through 40 then tell of (1) leadership, (2) fresh mercy’s daily, (3) Jethro’s advice, (4) around Sinai, (5) the Law communicated, (6) The Ten Commandments, (7) the golden calf, and (8) the Tabernacle.  Eerdman summarizes the contents in four words: (1) the Deliverance, (2) the journey, (3) the Law, and (4) the Tabernacle.  A yet broader outline sees the first 18 chapters as describing the origin and deliverance of the people and the remaining chapters as describing the organization and consecration of the nation. From these various views it is apparent that as a whole the story may be described as the record of the redemption and consecration of Israel as the covenant people of God.

Throughout every part of Exodus there is an effort to show God’s interest in human affairs. Here is described His watchful care over an oppressed and enslaved people. Here also is His guiding and sustaining hands as well as His judgments tempered with Divine Mercy. The arrival of the king “that knew not Joseph” plunged the Israelites from favoritism into an extended period of suffering, enslavement, and exploitation. They subsequently were underfed, overworked, poorly housed, unfairly treated, insulted, prodded, and beaten like unwanted animals. However, they were nonetheless God’s chosen people.

There is no reason to suspect that God removed their egos in these unhappy circumstances. Their morale undoubtedly scraped bottom much of the time. They were too tired to think, too beaten to revolt. They sighed; they cried. God, in his long-range planning, permitted it to be that way. He heard their cries, but He was toughening them for the wilderness path ahead, getting them to the point of utter helplessness, so they could look to no one but Him. Israel’s oppression experience is a reminder of a perennial truism of history – the righteous suffer. Behind it is a plan. When the path was too dark, they looked up; they longed for a leader; they prayed that God would soon reveal His plan of deliverance. They became able and ready to move out.

Exodus shows the Divine interest in human affairs.  The corduroy terrain of being misunderstood and maligned prompts us to tighten our hand-hold with God, that we should know better the evenness of His strength. The problems and perplexities that weigh us into bone tiredness can be the very force that sends our weary sighs heavenward to touch His ever caring heart. Our untenable, unbearable circumstance is always seen by our faithful Deliverer by Whose perfect plan we may walk forward in Victory. God’s control of a life does not mean easy-going; rather it means the Spirit’s loving help over the rough spots and the promise of rich reward for those who overcome.

The abiding value of the book of Exodus both centuries ago and today, grows out of its revelation of the nature of God. Moses desired a description or name of him who sent him. In answer, Jehovah said, “I am that I am” or, as some would think more accurate, “I will be that I will be.” He seems to be saying, “Moses, a definition is a poor thing by which to know the kind of God with Whom we have our dealings. Hence, I will give you a name which describes the Divine character as that which, from time to time, His people would discover it to be. As My nature is the more and more unfolded, it will prove to be more than words can express. I am the ever-existent, self-existent One.”

This blanket promise made at the burning bush was sufficient for the time being. Later, however, after the people’s sin with the golden calf, God’s wrath and their need for forgiveness, Moses comes questioning God again. This time he does not merely ask for a name, but he prays, “Show me now the way, that I may know You.” In the morning, as Moses cowers in a cleft of a rock, Jehovah passes by and says, “The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty.” In this remarkable answer is set forth the very essence of what God is like. William N. Clark (An Outline of Christian Theology) says that God is in essence Holy Love. Certainly God’s answer to Moses as well as the total revelation of Exodus supports such an analysis.

We have discussed how the love of God is apparent through His interest in human affairs. This love is not seen as weak sentimentality in the story of our book. The strength of this love can stand by, with long-suffering, and behold His beloved possession mix their blood with the mire of the mud pits so long as He had ordained it for their good. This same Love stood by many centuries later to hear a pain-racked and humiliated voice cry, “My God, why have You forsaken me?” and to see an agonizing and blood-speckled frame bow His head and give up the ghost. The love of God is seen expressed through His marvelous provisions of leadership and human needs through the fearful and tedious days of the wilderness wanderings.

Perhaps more apparent than appreciated in the book of Exodus is the revelation of God’s holiness. God’s holiness is His inward character of perfect goodness. He is opposed to evil essentially because He is for the good, hence the wrath of God is not at all the loss of His temper but the natural and necessary reaction of His holiness towards sin. An aspect of God’s holiness is His righteous judgment. If He at all overlooked sin or winked at rebellion, He would lack what we are calling holiness.

One of the most graphic illustrations of God’s judgments in Exodus is told in the story of the wonders or plagues of Egypt. Moses and Aaron had gone before the pharaoh to ask that the people be allowed to go free to worship, but in response they received only intensified brutality. Then followed the ten wonders, stroke upon stroke, until at last Israel marched out of Egypt toward the land of sacred promise. This history is no mere contest between a slave state and its masters. It is rather a contest between Jehovah and the gods of Egypt. Although almost every one of the plagues was a natural pest of Egypt, yet their miraculous character is seen in both their intensity and their timing. Nearly every stroke was a blow at some form of Egyptian idol worship. God has not left Himself without witness among the nations. Yet, in the time Exodus records, Israel is the lone race which held to the unity and spirituality of God, and they were slaves in danger of losing both their faith and their national identity. The plagues were justified both from the standpoint of the needs of Israel and the needs of idolatrous Egypt. The Exodus record of the plagues became so ingrained into the national consciousness that they formed one of the most effective forces that held Israel to the ancient faith amidst the seductions of an all-embracing polytheism. 

On the eve of The Exodus, the Hebrews followed the instructions of Moses in observing the Passover feast. The Passover, as described in Exodus, has been the reminder of Divine concern for human affairs throughout the centuries and to this day Orthodox Jews observe some form of the feast. Phillip Sidersky, a Protestant-Jewish evangelist who often lectured on the Passover, described its modern observance by Orthodox Jews in part as follows: 

Before the feast the houses are cleaned from top to bottom; all cooking utensils are purged. All Jewish holidays and festivals begin on the evening of the previous day with the appearing of the evening star. After a service in the synagogue the family goes home and gathers about the table, which is decorated and provided with unleavened bread, bitter herbs, wine, candles, an egg, salt water, greens, the shank bone of a sheep, and grated apple. There is a plate at the table for every member of the family. The unleavened bread and the bitter herbs are in accordance with the Exodus command, but all the other items on the Passover table were added later by the rabbis. The lamb, which God required as first and most important of all, is not used today. For bitter herbs, horseradish is generally used in memory of the bitter suffering in the Egyptian brickfields. Grated apple, which turns to the color of clay, was introduced as a reminder of the clay from which Egypt’s bricks were made. The salt water is a reminder of the tears shed in Egypt.  The shank bone is said to resemble “the strong arm” with which God delivered them out of Egypt.  At one end of the table there is a silver cup filled with wine, a plate and an armchair set aside for the Coming One. This chair has been empty at all Passover services these hundreds of years. The Jews beseech God to send his Anointed One speedily. How pathetic that they do not know that He has come!

Israel went out of Egypt and Into the wilderness were God once and again manifested His concern for their welfare. Sometime later, the encampment on the expensive plain around Sinai was prolonged into a year’s sojourn and filled with significant activities designed to induct Israel into her special career as a nation. He who had called Abraham and cared for the Patriarchs; who had heard his people sigh in Egypt and redeemed them from bondage; who had led them and fed them and defended them on their journey there, now proposes to take them into peculiar covenant relations with Himself. The covenant, proffered by God through Moses, was accepted by the people, written in a book, and solemnly ratified with sacrifices and the sprinkling of blood. The ground of this covenant was the grace of God and the ten “words” or Commandments. The ten were expanded into a full body of civil and ceremonial law.

In the Old Testament the word “law” is invariably used as some manifestation of the will of God. In the solitude of the sacred Mount did the Divine Presence make Himself and His will known to Moses, the chosen leader of Israel. God “came down upon Sinai” and gave to Israel the most splendid gift that a nation could then receive.  Kalisch (a Jewish commentator) says, “The delivery of the moral law formed a decisive epoch in the history of the human race and was the greatest and most important event in human history.”

The law was given through Moses, but it was accepted and ratified by the people in a sacrificial offering, without which no covenant was regarded as binding. We read of the formal ratifying ceremony in Exodus 24:3-9. First Moses rehearsed the Decalogue and the whole of the statutes following, in the ears of the people, and got their formal assent. Then he wrote them down in the Book of the Covenant, the first book actually mentioned in the Bible, and the nucleus around which all later legislation gathered. Building an altar, he caused burnt offerings and peace offerings to be laid up on it, to signalize the fact that it was not on legal grounds alone, but by an act of grace, that Israel was admitted to this privilege. No Covenant of a similar character is afterwards found in the Old Testament.

Paul saw the fact of Israel being “instructed with the oracles of God” as an advantage “much in every way” (Romans 3:2). So also did Moses consider that “statutes and judgments so righteous as all this law, which I set before you this day . . .” (Deuteronomy 4:7) were to be prized as an act of grace.

A King’s communication with His people must be designed to secure a reverence for Him and the means of exalted intercourse for them. The Law, if heeded, will ensure unbroken fellowship. It is a revelation of the condescending mercy of God, who desires to associate with Himself a holy people. Its principle is expressed in the words: “I am the Lord your God: you shall therefore sanctify yourselves, and shall be holy for I am holy” (Leviticus 11:44). 

The Law, as a command, worked wrath (Romans 4:15). By its works no flesh living could be justified. It was good in itself; but it could not speak the word “forgiveness”, nor furnish inspiration like the expulsive power of love to Christ. Its multiform ordinances, the categorical form of its precepts, the prohibitive character of its injunctions and social restrictions, were all adapted to show man the weakness of his efforts to reach a standard of moral perfection. By this lengthy and tedious process, in which the Israelite became more dissatisfied with himself as sin became more hateful, God was educating his people to long for something more satisfactory to the conscience. He was preparing the heart of man, ever too fond of trusting to its own, to accept the righteousness which is of faith in Christ Jesus. Little wonder, then, that Kalisch would refer to Exodus as “forming the center of the Divine Revelation”, and as being consequently “the most important volume which the human race possesses.”

When we come to consider the tabernacle described in chapters 25-40, we are in the school of God to learn that worship and reverence go hand-in-hand. When Moses stood in the presence of Jehovah in the bush which burned with fire and was not consumed, he was told to put the shoes from off his feet for he stood on ground made holy by the presence of Deity. This theme is carried throughout the various specifications for the tabernacle. There was the tent itself into which none went but the chosen and sanctified family of Levi. Even these may not approach worship without first making their offering and washing in the brazen laver without the tent. Inside the tent, and into the Most Holy Place, went the high priest and him alone. This entrance was on one day per year only. In the transporting of the ark and other articles of furniture, divine instructions are given so as to keep these articles from being defiled by human pollutions. No hand was to be put upon the ark at any time at threat of death. On and on the commandments come to point out how separate and different is Jehovah from weak and erring man. Although there are glaring exceptions to the truth, for the most part the teachings of the book of Exodus about worship to God had the effect of creating a profound respect and fearful awe in the hearts of Israel.

The entire contents of the book of Exodus are summarized in an excellent way in the word of God to Israel spoken through Moses concerning the making of the covenant: “You all have seen what I did on to the Egyptians, and how I bear you on eagle’s wings, and brought you unto Myself. Now therefore, if you will obey My voice indeed, and keep My covenant, then you shall be mine own possession from among all peoples; for all the earth is Mine: and you shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:4-6). Here reference is made to the powerful deeds of God done to the Egyptians, to His deeds of loving-kindness done to Israel in the history of how He led them to Sinai, to the selection of Israel, to the conditions attached to the making of the covenant, to God’s love, which condescended to meet the people, and to His holiness, which demands the observance of His commandments; but there is also pointed out here the punishment for their transgression.

Conclusion

The whole book is built on one statement in the preface of the Ten Commandments: “I am Jehovah the God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage” (Exodus 20:2). 

Sources

1. Kalish, M. Historical and Critical Commentary of the Old Testament with a New Translation: Exodus. London: Longman, Brown, 1855.
2. Sidersky, Philip. Jewish Passover and From Sinai to Calvary. Los Angeles: publisher not given, 1928.

 Questions for Class Discussion

1. Discuss the influence of Exodus on New Testament Christianity.
2. Give an outline of the book of Exodus in four words.
3. Explain why God would allow his chosen people to be so poorly treated in Egypt.
4. Explain the phrase “Divine interest in human affairs does not mean easy-going.”
5. For what purpose did Moses ask God for a name to tell Israel?
6. What is another way of interpreting “I am that I am”?
7. Discuss the idea of “Holy Love”.
8. What was the basic contest involved in the plagues on Egypt?
9. Do Orthodox Jews continue to observe the Passover feast?
10. Describe the ramifications of the Covenant between God and Israel.
11. What does Kalish consider to be the “greatest most important event in human history”?
12. Discuss the limitations of the Law.
13. What effect has the specification for the Tabernacle on the attitude of Israel in worship to God?
14. Give a one sentence summary of the contents of the book of Exodus.