Exodus displays the primary biblical imagery for deliverance from bondage. Someone once said that when God wants to change history, he does not start with a battle, he starts with a baby. The book of Exodus opens with a people in bondage and the birth of a baby - Moses. 

Exodus declares the doctrines of enslavement, deliverance, judgment, revelation, law, worship, Sabbath, and covenant. The Exodus is the premier symbol of redemption in the Old Testament as the cross is the symbol in the New Testament. Exodus presents the gospel before the law and the Passover tells of the efficacy of the shedding of blood. The book of Exodus centers around three main events and locations: the Passover in Egypt, the crossing through the Red Sea in the wilderness, and the giving of the law on Mount Sinai.

Let's pray. Oh Lord that you would open up our eyes to see wonderful things from your law, the ways that you've carried your people, the ways that you have delivered your people are here before our eyes and I praise you Lord. Thank you for your great deliverance. Amen. Okay.

If Genesis' theme is beginnings, Exodus' theme is deliverance. And as we go through these studies, I'm going to give you a word that will help you categorize and capture the overwhelming message that's in that book. And Exodus is deliverance. Ex means, you know, out of, to come out of. It's a departure.

To experience an exodus is to leave something. And it's this whole matter of how God called his people to leave Egypt. They were in bondage in Egypt. The key verse of Exodus is Exodus 6 5 through 11 So I'd like you to turn there if you can, Exodus 6, 5 through 11. And I have also heard the groaning of the children of Israel whom the Egyptians keep in bondage and I have remembered my covenant." That is such a pivotal phrase there because people without God in the world, they're groaning and they're in bondage and they're being kept by the devil And Pharaoh is the devil.

He's the image of the devil. It's such a dramatic picture. Verse 6, therefore, say to the children of Israel, I am the Lord. I will bring you out from under the burdens of Egypt. I will rescue you from their bondage and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm with great judgments." Remember we've been going through Isaiah and we see what the idols do to you?

They wear you out. They weary you. Well, here you have it right here. You're out from the burdens of Egypt. The devil burdens you.

God, on the other hand, he rescues you and he carries you on eagle's wings. Verse 7, I will take you as my people and I will be your God Then you shall know that I am the Lord your God Who brings you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians? And I will bring you into the land which I swore to give Abraham Isaac and Jacob and I will give it to you as a heritage. I am the Lord." So Moses spoke thus to the children of Israel, but they did not heed Moses because of anguish of spirit and cruel bondage. And the Lord spoke to Moses saying, Go in, tell Pharaoh king of Egypt to let the children of Israel go out of his land." So this is a key section.

This really gives you the center of the whole thing. It's deliverance from bondage. It's to get out from under the terrible reign of Pharaoh. The world, the flesh, and the devil, that's Pharaoh. God, He is sweetness and light.

He's a deliverer. And He takes you out of your bondage of sin. And that's really the central message here. And this verse really speaks of it. Now God is desiring to change the fortunes of His people.

When God wants to change the fortunes of His people, what does He do? Well in this case, He doesn't start with a battle. He actually starts with a baby. How about that? God starts with a baby.

This testimony opens with the people in bondage. The very first thing that we read about is the birth of a baby and you have this baby who is going to be be the deliverer of the children of Israel. This is reflected in Matthew chapter 2 verses 12 through 15. This is speaking to Joseph and Mary. Country another way.

And when they had departed behold an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream saying arise and take the young child and his mother flee to Egypt and stay there until I bring you word for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him. When he arose, he took the young child and his mother by night and departed for Egypt and was there until the death of Herod, that it might be fulfilled which spoken by the Lord through the prophet saying, Out of Egypt I have called my son. You have Moses coming out of Egypt, you have the children of Israel coming out of Egypt, and you have Christ coming out of Egypt. Moses and the children of Israel are a picture of Christ. Moses is under bondage and he is delivered.

He is one of God's sons and God takes his son out of Egypt. Out of Egypt I have called my son. Now there are many doctrines in Exodus, and I'll just itemize some of them for you. Of course, first of all, there's the doctrine of enslavement, spiritual enslavement. And the kind of enslavement that the children of Israel experienced in Egypt physically is the kind of enslavement of the soul to the devil spiritually.

In Scripture, you always have this. The physical tells the story of the spiritual. If you read about the different elements of the bondage of the children of Israel and think about them spiritually, what do they tell you about spiritual bondage under the devil? In Egypt there is no rest. No rest.

More bricks, less straw. You have less and less to work with and you never get any rest. Under Pharaoh there's no rest, but under God when he delivers the Ten Commandments, we'll get to that later, when God is your king then you have rest. You have rest for your soul. He gives you an entire day of rest.

Pharaoh doesn't give you rest. Pharaoh only wears you out. The devil only wears you out. So if you look at the various elements of bondage, then you'll be able to see what spiritual bondage looks like. And those images are really critical.

You know, reading them carefully, and they're so much fun to read, really, because Pharaoh does all these kinds of things that the devil does to you spiritually. So whenever you read about, you know, what's happening in Egypt, recognize the physical is bearing witness to the spiritual. So you have the doctrine of enslavement. Primarily, you have the doctrine of deliverance. That is absolutely the central theme of Exodus.

You have the whole doctrine of judgment. You have the judgment of God upon the enemies of God, the persecutors of the church. That's Egypt. And what does God do with his enemies? How does he deal with them?

Well, he deals with them any way he wants and he also controls their hearts. So you have the whole doctrine of judgment. And you also have the judgment of God toward his own people and God's chastisements. There are many different times in Exodus where God corrects his people. One really dramatic time is when Moses and Zipporah, his wife, and their son Gershom is on the way to Egypt.

Well the Bible says that God wanted to kill Moses, and guess who else wanted to kill him? His wife. Okay? All was not well, And so apparently we don't really know exactly what it was that Moses was doing that was so reprehensible to both God and his wife. But she got so angry at him, she took a flint and she circumcised his son and threw the foreskin on the ground and said, you're a bridegroom of blood to me.

Now what was that all about? Well we're not sure. I have a theory and that is that he wasn't taking responsibility for his children. He had not circumcised his son. Something was going on with Moses at that time.

He was going through some kind of a period in his life. But God's wrath was burning against Moses at that time. So you have lots of different elements of the judgment of God. You have the judgment of God showing up at the feet of Mount Sinai when the children of Israel were dancing and they make the golden calf, and the judgment of God falls. And there are a number of places where you see rebellion and the judgment of God.

You see slander, you see the judgment of God. You see all kinds of things like that going on in Exodus. You also see the law. Of course, you know, God has seen fit to reveal the Ten Commandments in the book of Exodus. Exodus chapter 20.

You know, this is one thing you need to remember about the book of Exodus. Where is the Ten Commandments? Exodus 20. You just need to know where to turn. Exodus 20 is where you go.

There's also tremendous doctrine of worship here. You have the story of Nadab and Abihu and their inventions in worship. You have the doctrine of the Sabbath. You have the doctrine of the Covenant that's there. There are many really critical doctrines that you find in the book of Exodus.

Let's just talk about the author for a moment. Of course the author is Moses. Moses was the supreme eyewitness. He was there in Egypt. He grew up in Egypt.

He knew everyone in the royal court. He understood the laws of Egypt, and he recorded the whole experience there. If you go to chapter 2, go ahead and look at chapter 2 for a minute. In chapter 2, you get 80 years of Moses' life. How about that?

The first 80 years of Moses' life is recorded in one chapter, And then in all the rest of the chapters is deliverance. You know, it sort of gives you perspective on a man's life. What is really important? You know, God raises Moses up for deliverance. But it's interesting that there's just one chapter given to 80 years of his life, but it was a fascinating life.

He was a Levite. You find this out in verse one in chapter two. This Levite's wife conceived and bore a son, and he was a beautiful child. It's interesting this idea of a beautiful child shows up you know fairly consistently in Scripture. David, Absalom, you know they were thought of as beautiful But here you have Moses was a beautiful child.

Everybody thinks their child is beautiful and that's just the way it always is gonna be. But so she can see if she bears a son and she hides him for three months because Pharaoh is putting to death the male children. It was a really tough time to be a baby, a male baby in Egypt. One of the most fascinating parts of this section of Moses' life is the whole role of the midwives in saving his life. But I love these midwives.

They're spunky, they're wise, they're protective, and they do their duty before God. They're a remarkable picture of faithfulness and how God raises up the most unusual people to rescue his people. Now remember the devil wants to kill Moses as a baby. Do you remember who else wanted to kill a baby? Herod wanted to kill a baby as well.

Moses is a type of Christ and when you see the trajectory of Moses' life and you see the trajectory of the Lord Jesus Christ, there are lots of parallels there. I wish we could draw a bunch of those parallels but there are many of them. Moses is put into the family of Pharaoh there at the very beginning of his life and Pharaoh's daughter nurses Moses and the child grows and becomes part of the court in Egypt. Now verse 11 is critical in chapter 2. Now it came to pass in those days when Moses was grown that he went out to his brethren and looked at their burdens and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew one of his brethren." Now notice who Moses identifies with.

He grew up in the royal palace but at the same time he identifies with the people of God. He sees himself as a Hebrew. Well, he was born of a Levite. But what should we conclude about that? We should conclude that Moses' education was not just Egyptian education.

He had been thoroughly immersed in the doctrine of God and so he identified with the Hebrews more than he did the Egyptians. You know Moses could have had anything he wanted. What we learned from the book of Hebrews is that he did not want the passing pleasures of sin. He wanted to throw in his lot with the people of God. He wanted to be identified with the people of God.

So he sees this Egyptian beating a Hebrew and he kills the Egyptian and hides him in the sand. And then as a result, you know, he had to flee and he did flee. In verse 15, we see this matter here. When Pharaoh heard of this matter, he sought to kill Moses. But Moses fled from the face of Pharaoh and dwelt in the land of Midian, and he sat down by a well.

So again Pharaoh wants to kill Moses. Pharaoh wanted to kill Moses when he was a baby and now when he's a young man, Pharaoh still wants to kill him. You know as a father who has had children, here's one thing I'm convinced of, the devil wants to kill your children. And he starts early. And he attacks your children in various ways.

And parents need to be very well aware of how the devil is attacking their children. The devil wants your children dead. And so he starts early, as he did with Moses, and he doesn't stop either. And so Moses flees Egypt and he goes out and he meets the priest of Midian who has seven daughters and he marries one of them. Her name is Zipporah and he's out in the Midian desert.

Remember now chapter 2 is 80 years of his life. We've just taken him from the time he was born, now he's in Midian, and he is going to spend 80 years of this documentation just in this second chapter. Now, let's just back up and think about the main characters. We've already mentioned the main characters. But there's a focus on particular characters in the outline of the book.

For example, in chapters 1 through 18, the whole focus is Moses and Pharaoh and the battle that's going on. And then chapters 19 through 40, it's Moses and the children of Israel. So that's how the book is arranged in terms of the basic personalities that are there. Now we learned at the very beginning in chapter 1 that only 70 people came to Egypt with Jacob, but those 70 people turned in to millions. They multiplied greatly.

And this was one of the things that terrified the Egyptians. They multiplied so dramatically that it actually became a threat to their state and so that's why the babies were being killed. Pharaoh understood demographics. Pharaoh understood population growth. And so he understood that he had to start at the root and kill the root and stop the multiplication from happening.

So that's why he was dealing with the male children and that's why Pharaoh commanded the midwives to kill those male children. Let's talk about the date of the Exodus. Most people put the date of the Exodus at 1445 BC. Now, as we're going through the Bible here, there are several dates I want you to really get locked in on. You know, creation, 4000 BC.

Abraham, 2000 BC. Moses and the Exodus 1445 BC. David 1000 BC. Sennacherib's sacking of the northern kingdom 722 BC. Nebuchadnezzar's destruction of Jerusalem and taking captive, that happens in 586 BC.

Nehemiah is around 400 BC when the wall is being rebuilt and of course you have Christ at 30 AD and then you have the fall of Jerusalem in 70 AD. You need to be able to arrange the chronology of history and when the critical, you know, books happened. In our church we're in Isaiah. We're in the eighth century BC. You know, we're at about 700 BC, something like that, in Isaiah.

So that's sort of the time frame. You know, Moses is after Abraham and before David, before the judges, you know after the Tower of Babel. Getting those dates in mind is really critical. So the significance. What's the significance of Exodus?

Here's what you need to remember. Exodus is the premier symbol of redemption in the Old Testament in the same way that the cross is the symbol in the New Testament. This imagery of the Exodus is repeated more than any other imagery in Scripture regarding redemption. Almost any book of the Bible you turn to you're gonna find some allusion to the Exodus. You find it all over the Psalms.

You find it all over the prophets. I don't even know how many times we've encountered the Exodus in Isaiah, a bunch. You know, I probably should go count them, but there are so many illusions. Sometimes a single word, you know, is brought forward from Exodus to explain something that's happening in the prophets. It's the premier symbol of redemption in the Old Testament.

Nothing surpasses it, and it's always being referred to all throughout the Bible. You know, as you read your Bibles, look for the Exodus and remember why it's there. It's pointing to Christ and it's really pointing to what is absolutely the central message of the Bible. God is a deliverer and he wants to deliver his people from the bondage of Pharaoh. There's also another really critical matter here and that is the gospel and the law.

If you read Exodus from beginning to end, you'll notice when the law comes. The law comes after the deliverance. The law comes after the gospel. The gospel is given. The Passover and the whole imagery of the Passover is a pre-figurement of the gospel.

That's in chapter 12. So the law comes after the gospel. The law comes in Exodus chapter 20. You find this very same logic in the New Testament, that a person is redeemed and then they submit to God. God saves them and then they learn His laws.

They learn how to live according to what pleases Him. But the Gospel precedes the law. Now in the New Testament, you actually have a little bit more highly nuanced scheme and that is the law terrifies you and shows you your sin and drives you to Christ and Christ saves you and then you obey the law. That's the scheme in the New Testament. But when you read Exodus, remember that the Gospel always comes before the law.

And that's really critical. Why is it critical? If the law comes before the gospel, all you really have is legalism. All you're doing is obeying rules. There's no heart within you to love is law.

You can always tell a legalistic person is that they have no heart for it. They're just doing it. They're just going through the motions of religion. You know, Christianity is just a kind of a thing rather than it being a heartfelt relationship with God where you have been redeemed, where you're like the children of Israel on the other side of the Red Sea and you're so happy that your enemy has been destroyed and you love him from your heart. So that's why the Gospel comes before the law.

Any other order is very misleading. 1 Corinthians chapter 10 is really critical for understanding Exodus. Now I'd like you to open your Bibles to 1 Corinthians chapter 10. So the Apostle Paul is speaking to the Corinthian Church and he says, Moreover, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware that all our fathers were under the cloud, all passed through the sea. Now, what is this?

This is the Exodus, okay? All were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. Now you just learned why the cloud and why the sea. They were pictures of baptism. They were pictures of being saved, of dying to your sin and being resurrected, going under the water, being clean and then brought out as a new life.

So then he says, All ate the same spiritual food. What? Spiritual food? That food was spiritual? Well, it was pointing to something spiritual.

And drank of the same spiritual drink, for they drank of that spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ. So you remember they come out of Egypt and water comes out of the rock. Why did that happen? It was to point to Christ to show you how refreshing Christ is. He's a rock.

He's solid. He's impenetrable, but break him open and living water flows. That's Christ. So That incident happened in the wilderness to point to Christ. Okay, are you following me here?

Do you see how the imagery, the physical and the spiritual are lining up here? Verse five, but with most of them, God was not well pleased, for their bodies were scattered in the wilderness the disobedient now these things became our examples to the intent that we should not lust after evil things as they also lusted and do not become idolaters as were some of them as it is written the people sat down to eat and drink and rose up to play this is right out of the golden calf's narrative it's a quote nor let us commit sexual immorality as some of them did and in one day twenty-three thousand fell. Nor let us tempt Christ as some of them also tempted and were destroyed by serpents. Nor complain as some of them also complained and were destroyed by the destroyer." Now, verse 11 is really critical. Why Exodus?

It tells you exactly why we have Exodus. All these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages have come. Therefore, let him who thinks he stands Take heed lest he fall. No temptation is overtaken you except such as is common to man But God is faithful who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able But with the temptation will also make the way of escape that you may be able to bear it. So why the Exodus?

To serve an example for what? To teach you not to love your idols because the judgment of God falls upon you and to recognize that you're frail. Exodus is there to humble you, to help you not think so highly of yourself. You're not thinking that you are so strong and you cannot fall. The book of Exodus has given you to show you people who had some of the most remarkable miracles performed right in front of their face like the crossing of the Red Sea.

And they still were disobedient. We often think, well, if I could see a big miracle, I would have no problem believing. Well that's not really true. We're susceptible. We're frail.

The Exodus is designed to teach us our frailty, that you could even see the greatest miracle and still have your heart hard before God and to teach us not to be idolaters and not complainers and all the things that are mentioned there. So the purpose of Exodus is to be an example to lead us out of idolatry. Let's talk about the structure. There are three main events. The Passover, the Red Sea, and the giving of the law in Sinai.

Got that? Remember in Genesis, it's four great events, creation, fall, flood, scattering of the nations, and four great patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph. In Exodus, there are three main events, the Passover, the Red Sea and the giving of the law in Sinai. There are three geographical locations as well. This is how you can remember it.

Three great events and three geographical locations. And it's very logical. Egypt, the wilderness, and Mount Sinai. Egypt, the wilderness, and Mount Sinai. Three great events, three main locations, okay, and that gives you where all the narratives of Exodus are found.

Now there are two major sections as you can see in your outlines. Chapters 1 through 18 is all about deliverance from bondage, redemption. In chapters 19 through 40 are the instructions from Sinai. This is the revelation of God. So in the first section it's the redemption of God.

In the second section it's the revelation of God. The Word of God delivered. The Ten Commandments. All the instructions regarding the tabernacle, worship, you know, all kinds of things like that. So those are the two major sections, 1 through 18 and 19 through 40.

Further on the outline in chapters 1 through 11 is the call of Moses and the showdown of Pharaoh. In chapters 12 and 13 is the Passover and the final deliverance from bondage. In chapters 14 through 18 it's the crossing of the Red Sea and deliverance from death. In chapters 19 through 31, it's the giving of the law and the deliverance from the world and the flesh and the devil. And then finally, chapters 35 through 40 is the construction of the tabernacle, which is a picture of the believer.

The tabernacle is a figure for your body. When you get to the New Testament, you realize that the tabernacle was put in the middle of the children of Israel to show them that God comes near. That was the purpose of the tabernacle. And you had the twelve tribes of Israel all around the tabernacle. The tabernacle was the center of everything.

It was the center of life. But the tabernacle was built to show the children of Israel that God comes near. They were awestruck when it happened. They all knew when God had come into the tabernacle. And it was God's way of saying to the families, because the families were scattered.

Some were placed in the north, some in the east, some in the west, and some in the south. And they all had duties around the tabernacle which is the church the Church of Jesus Christ the tabernacle is a figure of the church it's also a figure of your body because Your body is the tabernacle of God. And your body was created to demonstrate that God can come near. He comes into your very life. He takes up residence.

You have a new heart. And He's there. He pours out His Holy Spirit. He says, I'll never leave you or forsake you. Your body is like the tabernacle.

Why are you created? It's so that there are these tabernacles that are walking around in the earth, a place where God dwells, a place where God speaks. So the tabernacle should be really clearly understood. It's not just about that building and those tents. The tabernacle is about your whole life.

You know, your body is the tabernacle of God. The Apostle Paul speaks of this really clearly about the significance of your body. Your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, and your body is a physical representation of God coming near in the tabernacle itself. Interesting when the Lord Jesus Christ came The Bible says that He came and He dwelt among us. What does that mean?

Tabernacled. The literal terminology is He came and He tabernacled with us. He came near. So you have God coming near the tabernacle, God coming near the temple, God coming near through Christ, and then God coming near to the believer to actually indwell him. So Exodus speaks about all of these things.

Now one of the things that you should always ask yourself when you think about Exodus is, can I recite the Ten Commandments? Can you? Now, I know a lot of people who've memorized the Ten Commandments, but they worked on it real hard and then they sort of forgot it. They used to be able to recite the Ten Commandments, but they can't right now. Maybe you're like that.

It's good to keep up the Ten Commandments. You know the very first Memorial Day that we had, the guy stood up and he said, is there anybody here who can recite the Ten Commandments? And amazingly a couple of kids jumped up and recited the Ten Commandments. Okay so, types of Christ. You see that number nine on your outline?

There's several types of Christ. Moses is one, the Passover, the seven feasts, Exodus, the manna, the water, the tabernacle, the high priest, all these things point to Christ. I've got lots of key verses for you to consider. It would be so nice if we could just walk through this whole book, but I'm just going to give you a few that I think are critical, and you don't have to turn there. Chapter 1 verse 5, all those who were descendants of Jacob were seventy persons, and Joseph died and all his brothers but the children of Israel were fruitful and increased abundantly multiplied and grew exceedingly mighty and the land was filled with them.

That's a critical matter in Exodus. Chapter 3 verse 14 when Moses says to God what am I going to tell them? And God says, tell them, I am who I am, sent you. He says, Thus shall you say to the children of Israel, I AM has sent you." The Lord Jesus Christ quotes Exodus 3.14 and He says, I AM. I AM the Bread of Life.

I AM the Light of the World. I AM the door. And this is how Moses is a type of Christ. Moses before Pharaoh in chapter 5 verse 1. Moses and Aaron go to Pharaoh and they say, Let my people go that they may hold a feast to me in the wilderness." That classic line, let my people go.

Why? So that they can have a feast in the wilderness. What have they been doing in Egypt? They're enslaved. They don't have any rest.

Where's the feasting in Egypt? Well, God is going to give them a feast outside of Egypt and that's the way God works. You have the plagues in chapter 8. Why the plagues? It's found in chapter 8 verse 23.

Why did God send these plagues? He states it very clearly. I will make a difference between my people and your people. The people of God were not afflicted like the people of Egypt. The plagues were to demonstrate that God favors His people.

He treats His people better than Pharaoh. You have the Passover in chapter 12, that's really important. You have God's leadership of His people in chapter 13, the pillar of cloud leading the way and by night the pillar of fire the way that God leads his people. In chapter 14 you have one of my favorite verses in the Bible, the Lord will fight for you. There's a song that I love to sing to Claudia at night and it has these words, the Lord will fight for you.

You need only to be still, you know, and that's exactly what Moses says. Moses said to the people, do not be afraid. Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord which he will accomplish today. The Lord will fight for you and you shall hold your peace." You need to understand that about God. God fights for his children And we don't have to fight in this quite so much because of that.

In chapter 19 verse 5 we learn that the people of God are a special treasure. That's why they have a covenant. That's why they have laws. In chapter 20, the Ten Commandments. In chapter 34, God asks Moses to cut another stone for the Ten Commandments because he broke the first ones.

You know, Moses got angry and he threw the stones down and broke them. And later on God commanded Moses to go do it again. Okay. God didn't just give Moses a second chance. God was merciful to Moses.

And even in his time of sin and departure, God brought him back to that place again and didn't kill him, didn't cut him off. This is the mercy of God. This is the grace of God. So there's so many critical sections. Hey, go to chapter 18 and get Jethro's counsel to His son-in-law.

Go to chapter 39 verse 30 and read about holiness. Chapter 32, the golden calf. You can learn a lot about yourself through Exodus. But remember this, what is the summary of Exodus. It's deliverance.

Deliverance.