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Good morning my “Walking with Jesus” friends.
We’re walking toward Christmas together and today is day #2 as we follow the story chronologically.
Yesterday we began with God as He developed the Redemption Plan before the Creation of the world, and then we saw God’s pronouncement in Genesis 3:15, that there would be a Redeemer powerful enough to defeat Satan. That Redeemer, of course, is Jesus and that victory was in His death & resurrection, but that of course required Jesus to come to earth and have a human body! And that’s the Christmas miracle!
The second Old Testament event which I’d like us to consider is found in Exodus 3.
We human beings like pictures more than we do words, and personal experience more than stories. Have you ever considered that the remarkable story of the rescue of more than 1 million Hebrew slaves, from the inescapable slavery bondage in Egypt, is a picture of what Jesus Christ accomplished through His coming to earth and defeating Satan, so any and all human beings can be set free, from our inescapable sin condemnation, and free to live in relationship with God as a people of God!?
That great rescue from Egyptian slavery needed a deliverer, someone to tell the people God loved them and wanted to rescue them. Someone to lead the slaves to know and trust God. Someone who, with God’s unlimited power unleashed, could then lead them out of their bondage, to freedom with God. That someone was Moses, and in many ways he’s an example, a picture, of Jesus coming to lead us to rescue from our sin.
Look with me at Exodus 2:23-25. “The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help went up to God. God heard their groaning and He remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them.” From the days of Adam & Eve, as they were expelled from the Garden of Eden, because of their refusal to trust God, and their trusting of Satan… humanity has been groaning. You can hear it everywhere. TV, radio, movies, neighborhoods, schools, hospitals, and businesses, courtrooms, prisons, political debates, arguments in marriages, families and even among friends. It’s the groaning of the pain of sin my friends, do you agree? It’s the pain of the human journey in a sin-filled world.
In Exodus 3 we see God’s response… He drew Moses with his sheep, to a mountain where a bush catches fire, and Moses is attracted to take a look. A voice comes from the fire… calling Moses’ name, in a language he understands. Rather than running, Moses responds, and then God and Moses have a life changing conversation. When Moses finally walks away from that burning bush, he’s no longer a shepherd of sheep, he’s God’s carefully chosen man who will go, tell the people God has heard their cries and is concerned, and is working their deliverance by His power! Moses will go confront Pharaoh and tell him God will decimate Egypt and defeat him in the process of delivering His people, from Pharaoh’s bondage.
Look at Exodus 3:7,8 “The LORD said ‘I have indeed seen the misery of My people… I have heard them crying out… and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land, into a good land…”
As you read Exodus 3 can you make the parallel? God the Father invites God the Son to leave his glory in heaven and come to earth (remember we saw that in Philippians 2:6-8) and to tell sinful humanity about God’s love and His desire for their freedom. Jesus comes in the Christmas miracle of incarnation, and the Gospel accounts tell us how Jesus explained God and our sin bondage, and God’s Redemption Plan. Eventually Satan is defeated through Jesus’ obedience to God the Father, and God unleashing His mighty power against Satan. And from that day, hundreds of millions of people have experienced deliverance from their sin, and new life in their restored relationship with God! Amen!
Do you see the picture in Exodus 3:9-12 “And now the cry of the Israelites has reached Me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. So now go, I am sending you to Pharaoh, to bring My people out of Egypt… I will be with you. And this will be a sign to you, that it is I who have sent you. When you have brought the people out of Egypt, they will worship God…”
We have no record of the conversation between God the Father and God the Son regarding Jesus’ mission to come to earth and lead sinful humanity to God, and help them experience God’s redeeming rescue. But we know Jesus frequently claimed that God the Father had sent Him to earth (John 16:28). Jesus claimed He was doing only what the Father had sent Him to do (John 5:19, 36) and Jesus was saying only what the Father had told Him to say (John 8:12-30). Remember how each time Moses went to speak to Pharaoh he spoke only what God had told him to say to Pharaoh. And remember Moses went up Mount Sinai 8 times and then he pitched a little ‘tent of meeting’ outside the camp, so he could go and meet with God. Moses made sure he did and said only what God had sent him to do and say.
But the people grumbled and were very reluctant to listen to Moses, believe him or follow him, even when God did amazing miracles to prove He was working on their deliverance. Jesus faced the same problem didn’t he? John tells us John 1:10,11 “He (Jesus) was in the world, and though the world was made through Him, the world did not recognize Him. He came to that which was His own, but His own did not receive Him.” The religious leaders who should have recognized Jesus and honored him and called the people to Him, did the opposite! They rejected Jesus, they spread doubt about Jesus. The same thing happened to Moses, didn’t it?
Now I want to be careful here my friends… there of course is NOT a direct parallel between Moses and Jesus. Moses did not give his life as a death sacrifice for the deliverance of the Hebrew slaves. Moses is not God in the flesh. But there are so many parallels in what God called Moses to do and what Jesus came to do, that through the rest of the Bible authors like Paul frequently point us back to see our God provided Redemption is pictured in His deliverance of His people from Egyptian bondage. And Jesus leading the people to understand God’s Redemption Plan from sin, is so similar to Moses leading the people to understand God’s plan of rescue from Egyptian bondage.
And of course in the final plague, the Passover Lamb, we see the picture of Jesus going to the cross as the sacrificial Lamb to pay for the sins of every person. The fact that the crucifixion of Jesus takes place during the Passover weekend, the day after the Jews have celebrated the Passover meal, is a wonderful link to that first Passover in Exodus 12.
And as Moses led the people out of Egypt to the Red Sea, (Exodus 14) and then God opened the Red Sea so the people could walk through, and then God closed the Red Sea on Pharaoh’s pursuing army destroying them, do you see how it is a picture of Jesus leading us out of our sin slavery and destroying Satan and his pursing army of demons through Jesus’ resurrection?
And as the Red Sea closed back over the pursuing army, so that there was no return to Egyptian slavery for the delivered Hebrew slaves, do you see once we’ve fully trusted Jesus to be our Savior and God delivers us from our sin slavery, there is no going back. No undoing what God has done. We are born again, (John 3:3-7), we are new creations in Christ, (2 Corinthians 5:17), and what God has done in our transformation we cannot undo!
Freed from our sin condemnation we are now free to live as followers of Jesus Christ, indwelt, led and empowered by the Holy Spirit of God, as we daily live worship of God the Father, (and isn’t that the picture of what we see in Exodus 19&20). And we are doing that in anticipation of the day that we’ll stand in His presence and live forever in heaven with all who have trusted Jesus for their salvation!
Oh friends, I hope today you can rejoice in all Jesus has accomplished FOR and IN you! The story of the Exodus is a powerful description of our deliverance, isn’t it!
Thank you Jesus for being willing to come to earth and lead us to know God and see our need for a Savior! Thank you for becoming our Savior as you paid our deliverance price. Thank you for leading us now, as we live our lives as God’s people, rescued from our sin slavery! We praise you today Jesus!
Have a comment or question about today’s chapter? I’m ready to hear from you, contact me here.
Pastor Doug Anderson 262.441.8785
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)
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