Three Tests: God's Provision

Exodus 15.22-17.7

The people of Israel, held under slavery for centuries in Egypt, were finally free. God brought them out of Egypt with great power, visiting plagues on the people of Egypt when the Pharaoh refused to let Israel go free. Finally the Pharaoh relented and let the people go—and then he quickly changed his mind and chased after them. God held him at bay while he separated the waters of the Red Sea and allowed the people of Israel to cross over on dry ground. Then, when the Pharaoh and his army chased them into the sea, God let the waters go, and the sea swallowed them up.

At the end of chapter 15, it’s now been three days—three days since God showed himself to be Israel’s ultimate Protector. In today’s passage, God moves from the role of Protector to that of Provider. But he doesn’t do it simply—as is often the case with God, there is a goal behind the way he does what he does. Here we see him begin to train the people of Israel in obedience—as someone put it, “After getting Israel out of Egypt, he has to get the Egypt out of Israel.”

On the one hand, although they were slaves in Egypt and their lives were hard, they still had their basic needs provided for. The Egyptians wouldn’t have wanted them to be weak, or they wouldn’t be able to work. So this was their first experience, not of pain and suffering, but of true deprivation.

On the other hand, God doesn’t want slaves; he wants joyful obedience. And for people who had been through what they just had, joyful obedience wouldn’t be easy to muster; understandably, they would have been wary of any kind of authority after their lives with the Pharaoh. And if God wants his people to joyfully obey him, he knows they will need to trust him to provide, not just when things are easy, but when they’re hard.

So he’s going to start training them in that trust now.

There are three separate episodes in our passage in which we see him do this. We’re going to look at them quickly, and then we’ll try to bring them together to see the larger picture of what’s happening here.

1. Bitter Water Made Sweet (15.22-27)

The first time takes place three days after they leave the Red Sea, three days after the song we saw the people sing last time. And it’s so predictable—God sends the people into the wilderness, into the desert, so naturally, it’s hard to find water. Chapter 15, v. 22:

22 Then Moses led Israel on from the Red Sea, and they went out to the Wilderness of Shur. They journeyed for three days in the wilderness without finding water. 23 They came to Marah, but they could not drink the water at Marah because it was bitter—that is why it was named Marah. 24 The people grumbled to Moses, “What are we going to drink?” 25 So he cried out to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a tree. When he threw it into the water, the water became drinkable.

It’s a kind of reversal of the first plague they saw in Egypt, isn’t it? In the first plague God sent against Egypt, he took the good water of the Nile and turned it into blood—he made it undrinkable. Here, he takes undrinkable water and makes it pure again.

And then we read (in the second half of v. 25):

The Lord made a statute and ordinance for them at Marah, and he tested them there. 26 He said, “If you will carefully obey the Lord your God, do what is right in his sight, pay attention to his commands, and keep all his statutes, I will not inflict any illnesses on you that I inflicted on the Egyptians. For I am the Lord who heals you.”

27 Then they came to Elim, where there were twelve springs and seventy date palms, and they camped there by the water.

So you see what happens—the people worry about their material need, the need for water; God miraculously provides for that need by making the water drinkable. Then he pulls them toward obedience. “If you obey my commands, none of the things that happened to the Egyptians will happen to you. I will not be the God who harms you; I am the God who heals you.” He’s teaching them to trust him.

And after that, he goes beyond the miracle—he directs them to Elim where there are all these springs and date palms, enough for everybody to have their fill.

2. Bread and Meat Provided (16.1-36)

Then when we start chapter 16, we skip ahead in time. Now a month and a half has gone by. The food the Israelites took with them from Egypt is gone. Now a new need has presented itself—it’s no longer thirst, but hunger.

So what happens? They complain again. V. 2:

2 The entire Israelite community grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. 3 The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in the land of Egypt, when we sat by pots of meat and ate all the bread we wanted. Instead, you brought us into this wilderness to make this whole assembly die of hunger!”

4 Then the Lord said to Moses, “I am going to rain bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. This way I will test them to see whether or not they will follow my instructions.

Notice how the people of Israel act, and how God responds. The people forget that in Egypt they were slaves and they were miserable, they had literally suffered the mass murder of their little boys just a few decades earlier—and they’re talking about how much better things were in Egypt!

And yet, God doesn’t punish them, but instead promises to provide for them. This is how he responded to them before, and this is how he responds to them again here.

Why is he so patient? Because Israel is like a baby here—you don’t punish a little baby for crying when they’re hungry, or when another kid takes a toy they wanted. A little baby doesn’t know any better. We’re generally much more patient with little babies than we are with older children, because older children should know better.

That’s what’s happening here: God is patient with them, and in his patience he is teaching them to obey. Look again at v. 4:

4 Then the Lord said to Moses, “I am going to rain bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. This way I will test them to see whether or not they will follow my instructions. 5 On the sixth day, when they prepare what they bring in, it will be twice as much as they gather on other days.”

So God clearly states his intention: he’s not merely going to provide for them, but he will test them to see whether they will follow his instructions. What are his instructions? We see that in the verses that follow, which we read earlier: every evening God will send quail for meat, and every morning he will send bread from heaven, which they came to call manna (which literally means, “What is this?” because they don’t know what it is at first).

So every evening the people will gather meat, and every morning the people will gather bread. They’ll only take what they need for the day, and they won’t keep any excess, because it won’t keep until morning. They’ll do this for five days, and on the sixth day they’ll collect double, because on the seventh day they’ll rest (we’ll come back to this).

Those are the instructions: don’t gather too much, don’t keep any leftovers—everyone gets what they need, and no more.

Why? Because God wants the people to learn to depend on him to provide for their needs, and he wants them to know that he will always provide. He’s not a fickle master like the Pharaoh, who might suddenly double their workload at a moment’s notice.

And they see it: twice they disobey God’s instructions, in v. 20 and in v. 27. But still, God doesn’t punish them—he knows they’re still learning. He patiently provides for their needs.

3. Water from the Rock (17.1-7)

At the beginning of chapter 17, we see the same thing again. V. 1:

The entire Israelite community left the Wilderness of Sin, moving from one place to the next according to the Lord’s command. They camped at Rephidim, but there was no water for the people to drink. 2 So the people complained to Moses, “Give us water to drink.”

“Why are you complaining to me?” Moses replied to them. “Why are you testing the Lord?”

3 But the people thirsted there for water and grumbled against Moses. They said, “Why did you ever bring us up from Egypt to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?”

This is starting to get ridiculous. Remember, God is still sending them quail in the evening and bread in the morning, every day. They can still see God providing for them. But they don’t see any water here in this wilderness, so just like at the Red Sea, they start doubting and complaining, worrying about their needs.

And once again, God responds with incredible patience. V. 4:

4 Then Moses cried out to the Lord, “What should I do with these people? In a little while they will stone me!”

5 The Lord answered Moses, “Go on ahead of the people and take some of the elders of Israel with you. Take the staff you struck the Nile with in your hand and go. 6 I am going to stand there in front of you on the rock at Horeb; when you hit the rock, water will come out of it and the people will drink.” Moses did this in the sight of the elders of Israel. 7 He named the place Massah and Meribah, because the Israelites complained, and because they tested the Lord, saying, “Is the Lord among us or not?”

(In case you were wondering: “Massah” means “testing”, and “Meribah” means “quarreling.”)

What’s changed about this particular instance is that instead of God testing the people, to see if they will obey, the people test God, to see whether he will provide. Just like children often do with their parents. There is a push and pull between God and the people, where their trust is being stretched and grown. Later on in the book we’ll see that the people’s trust has its limits, just as God’s patience has its limits. But for now, they’re still learning.

These three events are the beginning of that learning process. God has set them free, yes, but by sending them into the wilderness, he’s also willfully depriving them. In Egypt, they had meat and they had bread—but they were slaves. And God does not want slaves; he wants joyful obedience, the obedience of children who love a good Father.

So he starts depriving them of old things, in order to reshape their affections around essential things. That deprivation is painful at first, and it’s hard for them to understand—but it is necessary for them to learn to trust that God will not only protect them, but he will also provide for them.

God’s Provision for His People’s Needs

So we’ve seen the basic story. Now I’d like us to dig a little deeper, because as is almost always the case in this book, the simple things we see are actually showing us patterns that will continue far beyond the story we’re reading.

In this passage we see that there are four essential things that characterize God’s provision for the needs of his people. And these characteristics of God’s provision carry over in the New Covenant that Christ established with the church.

1. God’s Provision Is Necessary.

The first time God tests the Israelites, he tests them by depriving them of a real, genuine need: the need for water.

Think about the situation they’re in: for any new society, particularly an agrarian society, the questions they’re going to be asking at first are extremely basic. How do we drink? How do we eat? You can live for a good while without food, but without water, you won’t last long.

God shows here that he isn’t merely concerned with Israel’s spiritual provision, but with their material provision as well. He knows they need water; he knows they need food. So the first thing he does is to test them—will they trust God to provide for their most basic human needs? Will they obey him even when they’re not sure exactly how he will provide?

This is an incredibly important question, because God knows what their deepest needs actually are. He knows that even more than food or water, they need him.

And of course the same is true for all of us. Remember when Jesus meets the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well, in John chapter 4. He asks her to give him a drink from the well, and then he says (John 4.13-14):

“Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

The most profound need of God’s people is God himself. But we’re separated from God because of our sin, so Christ came as our Substitute: he lived our life and died our death and was raised so that we might become righteous in him. We can only come to God through Christ, through his perfect work, and when we do, we are reconciled to God, and find eternal life in him. That is our biggest need.

But God knows that at least at the beginning, the need to be reconciled to him may not feel as strong as the need for water when we’re thirsty, or the need for food when we’re hungry. So he shows Israel that he will provide for these most basic needs, in order that they might trust him to also provide for their greater need.

2. God’s Provision Is Limited.

This one is a little harder to swallow, but it’s important.

When God gives the people bread and meat, he gives them what they need, absolutely—but he just gives them enough each day for that day. With one exception, he doesn’t give tomorrow’s provision today; he gives today’s provision today.

The 19th-century English preacher Charles Spurgeon once spoke on those who had been martyred for their faith in the Bible, and someone came to him after the service and asked him, “If someone came in here today and threatened to kill you if you didn’t renounce your faith, could you do it? Would you be ready to die for your faith?”

Spurgeon responded, “If it happened today? Of course not. I’m not ready to die for my faith today.” The person looked surprised at his answer, so Spurgeon continued: “But I am confident that if that day should come, on that day, God will give me the strength I need to stand firm and die for him.”

God limited his provision in order to teach the people of Israel to depend on him every day. This is how you build trust. Trust can be destroyed in an instant, but it takes a long time to build. You can decide to trust someone, but the only way you can truly know they are dependable is if you have depended on them for something, and have seen them provide over, and over, and over again.

God knows this, so in his provision he includes a means to prove to the people that as he provided yesterday, he will provide today—and he will continue to provide tomorrow. So that they might trust him.

This is why Jesus teaches us to pray for exactly what God gave the Israelites: “Give us this day our daily bread” (Matthew 6.11). Lord, give us what we need today, and help us to grow in the knowledge and assurance that as you have provided for us today, you’ll also provide for us tomorrow.

Now of course this forces us to expand our idea of what we really need—much of what we think we need are actually things we want. And sometimes we genuinely do need something, and God holds back. That’s genuinely difficult, but there’s always a reason for it: either we didn’t really need it, or God wanted to teach us something through the wait. (God didn’t give the people water before they got thirsty; he let them feel the need before providing for it.) Often God will stretch us beyond what feels like the breaking point before he provides for us.

But again, he knows what he’s doing. Every time that happens, we’re forced to decide once again: will I keep obeying him? Will I keep following him? Will I keep trusting him, even when I don’t see his hand? And what a blessing it is to learn that he not only provides for our need, but even better, that he gives us the strength we need to remain faithful while we wait, and actually provides for other needs through the wait.

3. God’s Provision Is Abundant.

I say this for two reasons. The first is because God recognizes and provides for a need that the people may not even have anticipated yet: the need for rest. Read Exodus 16.4-5 again:

4 Then the Lord said to Moses, “I am going to rain bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. This way I will test them to see whether or not they will follow my instructions. 5 On the sixth day, when they prepare what they bring in, it will be twice as much as they gather on other days.”

And then, in v. 29, we see what they are to do on the seventh day of the week:

29 Understand that the Lord has given you the Sabbath; therefore on the sixth day he will give you two days’ worth of bread. Each of you stay where you are; no one is to leave his place on the seventh day.” 30 So the people rested on the seventh day.

God doesn’t just provide for their material need; he goes beyond that, and provides a day of rest.  This is really interesting, because God provides this day of rest, the Sabbath, before he gives the law—the actual commandment that says, Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy won’t come until chapter 20. But already, this structure is in place: six days, you work, and on the last day, you rest.

God goes beyond what the people ask for, and provides for a need they didn’t see.

Here’s the second reason why I say that God’s provision is abundant.

It may seem like I’m contradicting myself, because I said just a minute ago that God’s provision is limited—“Give us this day our daily bread.”

So how can God’s provision be limited and abundant at the same time?

God doesn’t give them everything all at once; but he shows that he will provide for their need for as long as they need it. As long as that need is still there, the bread will always be there in the morning, and the meat will always be there in the evening.

We see a profound echo of this promise from God every time we take Communion together. 1 Corinthians 11.23-26:

On the night when he was betrayed, the Lord Jesus took bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, broke it, and said, “This is my body, which is for you. Do this in remembrance of me.”

25 In the same way also he took the cup, after supper, and said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood. Do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 26 For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death—for how long?—until he comes.

God goes beyond providing for our basic, material needs; even those needs are not the most fundamental. The deepest need we have is our need for him—and we have him. Always, and forever, even in death. Every time we take the bread and we take the cup together, we remind ourselves that every day, the new covenant God established with his people in Christ is still new, still real, still active, still available. His mercies are new every morning.

If God saved you, he will keep you, because his provision for our salvation is abundant—it goes on as long as we need it to go on. It goes on forever.

Finally:

4: God’s Provision Is Trustworthy.

I’ll be honest with you: I’ve read this passage dozens of times, but in preparing this message, I noticed something I had never noticed before—and I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it.

Go back to the beginning of chapter 17. The people are thirsty again, so this time instead of God testing them, they test God—even while they see God sending bread and meat for them every day, they complain to Moses: “Why did you ever bring us up from Egypt to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?”

So when Moses comes to God to ask him what to do, look at how God responds—chapter 17, verse 5:

5 The Lord answered Moses, “Go on ahead of the people and take some of the elders of Israel with you. Take the staff you struck the Nile with in your hand and go. 6 I am going to stand there in front of you on the rock at Horeb; when you hit the rock, water will come out of it and the people will drink.” Moses did this in the sight of the elders of Israel.

I had always seen, of course, that Moses does what God says and hits the rock with his staff. What I hadn’t seen before was what God tells Moses in v. 6: “I am going to stand there in front of you on the rock at Horeb; when you hit the rock, water will come out of it and the people will drink.” When Moses hits the rock, God is on it. It’s almost as if the people deserve to be smacked, but God says, “No, smack me instead.”

Now, if this was all there was, I’d think I was reading too much into the text; it’s easy to attribute deeper meaning to something in the Bible that is merely descriptive. But that’s not all there is. God didn’t stand on the rock for no reason; he wanted it to be clear that when Moses struck the rock, God was there—the water wasn’t coming from the rock, but from him.

And we know this because in 1 Corinthians 10, the apostle Paul mentions this episode and says,

[The people of Israel] all ate the same spiritual food, 4 and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ.

This is a complicated passage, and we don’t have the time to dive deep into every detail of it, but at the very least, Paul is saying one thing very, very clearly: this moment of Moses striking the rock, and the water coming out of the rock, is a picture of what would come in Christ. Christ was struck for our obstinance and our rebellion, and because he was struck, we have life: rivers of living water, as he said in John 4.

The rock that Moses struck was the final test in this first series of tests; it was the final test of the people’s dependence on God, and of his trustworthiness. And, as we’ll see later on in Exodus, in many ways they failed that test.

Jesus Christ is the final test for us.

We always wonder if God will provide for our needs. We always worry about whether or not we’ll have what we need to do what he’s called us to do.

Why do we worry? What more does God have to do to prove himself? He did not even spare his own Son but gave him up for us all. How will he not also grant us everything with him (Romans 8.32)?

There’s a reason why Paul wants us to see this. He says a little later, in 1 Corinthians 10.6, 11-13:

6 Now these things took place as examples for us, so that we will not desire evil things as they did… 11 These things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our instruction, on whom the ends of the ages, have come. 12 So, whoever thinks he stands must be careful not to fall. 13 No temptation has come upon you except what is common to humanity. But God is faithful; he will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation he will also provide the way out so that you may be able to bear it.

You see, Paul is saying that the story of Israel’s grumbling and complaining, and their other failures which we’ll see later on in the book, were written so that we might be driven to holiness: that we might learn from their experience and become more like Christ.

Do you see how that changes the way we look at God’s provision in these chapters in Exodus? God’s provision is not mainly focused on comfort, or material sustenance, but on holiness. He definitely provides for their material needs, and he also provides comfort—he provides a day of rest. But mainly he provides for his people so that his people might be holy, and even our rest and our comfort and the moments of pleasure he gives us are meant to help us raise our eyes to the God who gave us that rest and comfort and pleasure.

The water from the rock was proof for the people of Israel that God was trustworthy—and they still desired evil things. Jesus Christ is the final proof we need to know that God is trustworthy.

So don’t desire evil things like they did. If God has done all this for you, you can trust him. His provision is necessary; it is enough for today; it is abundant; and it is absolutely trustworthy.

So trust him. Look at his faithfulness in the past, and trust in his faithfulness in the future. Resist temptation, stay faithful, and trust that God will provide.

Raised: Easter 2024

1 Corinthians 15

Easter is typically the day when preachers will take out their easiest sermons. They’ll pick one verse or two, and talk about those verses for twenty minutes and leave everyone feeling good.

I’m not going to do that this morning. If you’re here for the first time, and you’re not a Christian, I’m very happy you’re here…but I’m not going to let you off easy. We’re going to work our way through chapter 15 of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians—the whole thing. All fifty-eight verses.

And we’re doing it because in this one chapter, we have an entire overview of what the Bible says about the resurrection of Jesus and what it means for us as Christians.

But I promise I’m not doing it to torture you. My prayer is that for those of us who are Christians, we will leave this chapter simply refreshed and energized and encouraged by spending some time thinking of what Christ did; and for those here who aren’t Christians, my prayer is that what you might hear, as hard as it is to believe, might make you want this.

Let’s turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 15.

Before we start reading, a bit of context, and a bit of warning.

First, the warning. It would be tempting for us to take this passage—which does indeed say a good deal about us—and make it about us. This passage isn’t ultimately about us, but about God, as we’ll see.

Secondly, the context. Paul is writing to this church in Corinth which has gone seriously off the rails—in their Christian lives, in their struggle to obey God, in the things that they believed… This was a church on life support. So Paul is writing to help correct certain errors; to call the church out on many of their incoherent behaviors; and hopefully, to set them back on the path the gospel would have them on.

This chapter addresses one particular error that some Corinthian Christians had fallen into. Some of them believed that although Christ was raised from the dead, Christians would not be. They believed that resurrection exists, but only for Jesus. Now, they of course knew that Jesus had raised some people from the dead, like Lazarus, during his ministry. But Lazarus, at some point, died again—he didn’t live forever. And their understanding was that once we’re dead, we’re dead. Our spirits may live on, but they would live on in a non-physical form.

What’s interesting is that many Christians still believe this today. Our concept of what will happen to us after we die, and after Christ returns, is very fuzzy. A huge number of Christians (as much as one-fourth of all Christians, according to polls) don’t believe we’ll have bodies in heaven. We imagine ourselves almost in a cartoon, floating on clouds and playing harps for all eternity, or in a forever-long church service. My mother-in-law, a confirmed atheist, said she found the idea of heaven awful, because it would be so boring.

I have to say, if that’s her picture of heaven, I agree with her. But that’s not what the Bible tells us about heaven at all.

So we’re going to look at what the Bible says about this. We won’t be able to see everything—this is an incredibly dense subject. Rather, we’ll focus on those aspects of heaven on which nearly all Christians, throughout the history of the church, have accepted as true. And it may be surprising for many of us.

We see a lot of things in this text, but we can summarize them in two amazing truths Paul lays out for us.

I.

The first one begins, as expected, in verse 1.

1 Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, 2 and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you—unless you believed in vain.

3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.

(When Paul says “fallen asleep” in this chapter, he means “died”—he’ll use it again.)

7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. 8 Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. 9 For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. 10 But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me. 11 Whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed.

There are subjects we can disagree on and still be Christians. This is not one of them. This issue is of first importance. We are all rebels against the reign of a good God—we have all sinned against him—and the only just consequence for our sin is condemnation. So God came down to us. Jesus Christ lived the perfect life we should have lived, he suffered the death we deserve for our sin, as the Scriptures said he would; he was buried, a totally dead man; and he was raised on the third day. He took our death, and he gave us his life, so that God could declare us righteous, and we could belong to him.

Jesus died and was raised, he appeared to the disciples, and that he was changed after his resurrection, but he was still visibly recognizable as the same person: he still bore the marks of the nails on his hands and feet; he still had the mark of the spear in his side. And he was physical: they could touch him; they could see him; he could eat food.

This is of primary importance: he really did live, he really did die, he really was raised, and his resurrection proved that his sacrifice for us was sufficient and accepted by God—proved that he really had defeated sin.

Really, that’s all we need. If the good news of the gospel stopped there, it would already be enough to deserve the rest of our lives. But the amazing thing is, God doesn’t stop there, and neither does Paul: he goes further. Essentially everything that comes after is the icing on the cake—the good news added to the good news. God didn’t have to go this far; he went this far just because he’s good.

And that’s what Paul’s going to do for the rest of the chapter: he’s going to give us the icing on the cake, by showing what the long-term effects of the resurrection will be for us.

Let’s keep going, v. 12:

12 Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?

13 But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14 And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. 15 We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. 16 For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised.

17 And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. 18 Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. [Permanently. Forever.] 19 If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.

Do you see? He’s correcting another very common misconception. Christians often put all the emphasis on Jesus’s death, as if his death were the only thing that mattered. Believers see Jesus’s death as the ultimate thing that Jesus did for us. We are sinners—we are all rebels who have rejected God—and we are separated from God because of our rebellion. And on the cross, Jesus took our sin on himself and was punished for that sin in our place. That is wonderful news.

But here’s the thing: without the resurrection, his death means nothing. Without the resurrection, Jesus was just another man, like all the others. He’s now a pile of dust in a Jerusalem tomb.

Which means that everything we believe is meaningless: we are still under God’s wrath for our sins, and we still have no hope.

Thank God that is not what happened! V. 20 :

20 But in fact Christ HAS been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. 21 For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. 22 For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.

We remember the story—Adam, the first man, rebelled against God and sinned. And when he sinned, his sin infected all of humanity. That’s how “by a man came death.”

So when God set in motion his plan to defeat sin and death, that defeat also came through “a man,” Jesus. Through man came death, and through a man comes eternal life. And Jesus is the first man to actually go through that process of dying and being raised to eternal life—that’s why Paul calls him “the firstfruits”.

And what are the firstfruits, in a vineyard or a garden? They are indicators: they show us what kind of fruit will come after.

23 But each in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.

In other words, what happened to Christ will happen to those who belong to Christ. V. 24:

24 Then comes the end, when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power. 25 For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. 26 The last enemy to be destroyed is death. 27 For “God has put all things in subjection under his feet.” But when it says, “all things are put in subjection,” it is plain that he is excepted who put all things in subjection under him. 28 When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, that God may be all in all.

29 Otherwise, what do people mean by being baptized on behalf of the dead? If the dead are not raised at all, why are people baptized on their behalf? 30 Why are we in danger every hour? 31 I protest, brothers, by my pride in you, which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die every day! 32 What do I gain if, humanly speaking, I fought with beasts at Ephesus? If the dead are not raised, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.” 33 Do not be deceived: “Bad company ruins good morals.” 34 Wake up from your drunken stupor, as is right, and do not go on sinning. For some have no knowledge of God. I say this to your shame.

So let’s sum up what he’s said so far. In this passage Paul is trying to do three things: firstly, he’s trying to explain why rejecting the idea that we will be physically raised from the dead is so dangerous—why it’s dangerous to think we’ll just be disembodied spirits for all eternity.

And he’s working backwards to get there. Usually we begin with Christ and work our way down to us. In his logic, he starts with us and works his way up to Christ. He’s saying, if we won’t be raised—physically, bodily raised from the dead—then Christ wasn’t raised either, which means our faith is meaningless… And if our faith is meaningless, then you’d be much better off doing something else.

Christ’s followers at this time were not just embarrassed by their faith, like we are today. They were killed for it. It was a dangerous thing to be a Christian (as it still is in many parts of the world today). But if we won’t be raised, then Christ wasn’t raised…so what’s the point?

And then he works back to where he began, saying, “But Christ was raised! So our faith is not in vain! We’re not suffering for nothing! If Christ was raised, then he will be ultimately victorious! He prove that he has defeated sin and death! Because he was raised, we will be raised too!”

And that’s his first point:

Christ’s resurrection assures our resurrection.

That is the promise: at Christ’s return, we will be raised, and our bodies—these bodies we have today—will be renewed, made perfect, all of the effects of sin removed. We’ll no longer get sick, we’ll no longer have pain, we’ll no longer die. And we’ll live forever in these perfect bodies in a perfect, physical world.

Why is this good news? For all kinds of reasons! This world has a lot wrong with it, but there’s still a lot to love about it. I love mountains. I love the sun. I love good food. It’s wonderful news to know that we’re not going to have to give any of that up, but we’ll get to keep it, and an even better version of it: a world set free from sickness and decay and natural disasters.

And for anyone here today who is sick, if you have a handicap of any kind, this good news is particularly poignant, because your body will be healed, in the most complete sense of that word. It will be perfectly and eternally healed, made absolutely perfect. When you look at yourself in the mirror, it will be you—but there will never again be a single pained expression on your face.

Christ’s resurrection assures our resurrection. That’s the first amazing truth.

II.

The second begins at v. 35:

35 But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?”

THAT’S the question people would ask today.

To answer this question, Paul uses the image of seeds which grow into plants. Seeds are dry; there is no life in them; if they sit on a shelf somewhere, nothing will happen. But if you plant those seeds in the ground, and water them and give them sunlight…suddenly you have something different. V. 36:

36 You foolish person! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies.  37 And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain. 38 But God gives it a body as he has chosen, and to each kind of seed its own body. 39 For not all flesh is the same, but there is one kind for humans, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish. 40 There are heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is of one kind, and the glory of the earthly is of another. 41 There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory.

42 So is it with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable; what is raised is imperishable. 43 It is sown in dishonor; it is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power. 44 It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. 45 Thus it is written, “The first man Adam became a living being”; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit. 46 But it is not the spiritual that is first but the natural, and then the spiritual. 47 The first man was from the earth, a man of dust; the second man is from heaven. 48 As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust, and as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. 49 Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.

So he gives us two points of reference here: the “man of dust” (Adam), and the “man of heaven” (Jesus).

We know what Adam gave us: because of his rebellion against God, Adam made us ALL rebellious; because of his sin he made us ALL sinners. And sin gave us these bodies: these bodies which get sick and hurt and ache and age and die. Every time you have a cold, every time you have insomnia and are tired, every time you feel yourself aging...remember where it came from. It came from Adam. It came from sin.

So that’s what we have from the “man of dust”; what do we have from the “man of heaven”?

Again, what happened for him will happen for us.

Just like Jesus, our bodies will be changed—they will be made perfect and eternal—but they will still be us. I’ll be able to recognize you if I see you in heaven. Might take me a second, but I’ll see that it’s you.

But how can this be? How can God take the ashes of someone who was cremated thousands of years before (perhaps even ashes which were scattered in the sea!) and put them back together into an even better body than before, and put life back into the body? It’s not for nothing that Adam is called the “man of dust”.

This should be impossible; but with God nothing is impossible (v. 50):

50 I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. 51 Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, 52 in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. 53 For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality.

In other words, this should not be possible. Perishable beings should not be able to become imperishable. The only way for this to work would be for the imperishable—the divine; God himself—to come into our perishable humanity and give us what we are lacking. The only way for this to work is for God to become like us, and then use his divine power to reverse our perishable humanity and make us imperishable, clothing us in perfect, eternal humanity like a garment.

V. 54:

54 When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:

“Death is swallowed up in victory.”

55  “O death, where is your victory?

O death, where is your sting?” 56 The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.

It’s almost ironic that these verses are often read aloud at funerals. “Death, where is your victory? Death, where is your sting?”

It’s right there! In that casket! This person died: their body was made imperfect of sin, and this person was a sinner because he was born into a world where he was submitted to a law of perfect righteousness that he could not obey. There’s the sting of death. It makes no sense to say this at the funeral of someone who doesn’t know Christ.

But for someone who belongs to Christ, it makes perfect sense. We can say itbecause we know the person lying there dead in that box won’t stay that way. When Christ returns, he will raise us; and he will raise us in perfect, renewed, imperishable bodies.

57 But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

Christ, the Son of God, God himself, became a man; he lived a perfect life; he died for our sins; he was raised in a perfect, glorified body; and

he gives his victory over sin and death to us.

His victory is our victory. His resurrection will be our resurrection. He will raise us, just as he was raised.

III.

Now the question here is, What difference does all of this make? Is Paul just telling this stuff to the Corinthians to make them happy? So that they’ll be comforted knowing that there is more after death than just an ethereal, spiritual existence?

Partially, probably. It’s quite possible that there were people in the Corinthian church, like there may be here today, who had doubts about the Christian faith, and Paul’s letter would have perhaps encouraged them to think more deeply about their faith, and even place their faith in Christ. And it’s quite possible God is doing that in some of you today.

This is wonderful news for people who are afraid—afraid of the unknown, of the future, of death. This means that everything truly will be okay. Think about that: we are the only people who can say that. We are the only people in the world who can truthfully, and with assurance, say, “I know it hurts, and it will probably keep hurting until he comes back, in one way or another. But I promise you, in all truth—everything’s going to be okay.”

No one else can say that, and what wonderful news it is.

But that’s not the only thing, or even the main thing. Paul is speaking mainly to Christians here, and he’s telling them all of this in order to drive them to the proper response. And we know this because he begins the last sentence of this chapter (v. 58) with the word “Therefore.”

58 Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain.

In other words, given all that we have just seen, knowing that Christ’s resurrection assures our resurrection, knowing that Christ’s victory over death and sin is our victory over death and sin,

do not fear death, and serve your Lord.

The Christian life is a hard life. It’s harder in some places than in others. Some Christians today are being killed for their faith. Most Parisian Christians won’t have to die for their faith, but they’ll probably face ridicule; they’ll face losing friends or family; they may even face losing job opportunities.

Whatever difficulties your Christian life brings you, however, keep going. Be steadfast. Be immovable. Continue to obey your Lord. Kill your sin. Share the gospel. Do the work of the Lord, whatever work he gives you to do this day.

And do it because you know that your labor is not in vain.

Whatever pain you’re enduring today because of your faith is nothing compared to what you’ll gain from your faith when Christ returns.

We are suffering today. But we persevere. We remain steadfast. We remain immovable. That suffering in obedience is just our muscles burning; it is just a reminder that we are going somewhere. That one day we will be with him. That one day we will be like him.

Jesus lived for us, he died for us, and he was raised for us. And he did all of that so that we might be raised with him—that we might see him, physically, and hear his voice, and touch him and know him. And glorify him, forever.

If you know him, then don’t despair. Look at what is ahead of you and keep going: your labor is not in vain. 

If you don’t know him, then don’t imagine for a second that everything I said this morning is just for us. It is for anyone who turns to Christ in faith. Come to him, repent of your sins and trust in him, and believe that our end will be yours.

Now, I gave a warning at the beginning, and I’d like to come back to it as we close. It would be tempting for us to see everything Paul is saying here and to make it all about us. To think of ourselves as future superheroes because we’ll be given resurrected, glorified bodies like Christ. Or even worse: to somehow imagine that because he’s promised us these things, we somehow deserve them.

But this passage is not about us. This passage—from beginning to end, including all the things he says about what will happen to us—is about God. About what he has done. About who he is.

God didn’t need to create us. And he didn’t need to save us. He has always been perfectly complete in himself; he has always been perfectly and infinitely happen in the fellowship of the Trinity, and he didn’t need us to fill some kind of hole in his own heart.

And he didn’t send Jesus because we’re just that fantastic. Marshall Segal writes, “God did not write Holy Week into history because he was desperate to have you (cf. Acts 17:25), but because loving you, despite how little you deserved his love, would display just how loving he is—how glorious he is.”

So when you think about heaven, when you think about these wonderful promises, don’t think about them for your own sake. Let the comfort of these promises drive your eyes up to God, and be thankful for the blessing of simply knowing him.

The Decontamination

Exodus 15.1-21

God has divided the Red Sea in two, allowing the people of Israel to safely cross, then the Pharaoh and his army chased them into the sea, and God brings the sea back down on them. The people of Israel watch, amazed, as God exercises his judgment against their enemies…

And then, after a beat, Moses starts tapping his toe, and Aaron next to him begins to snap his fingers in rhythm, and Moses starts to sing a solo. Pretty soon all the people of Israel, all two million of them, have broken into song and dance, like in La La Land.

That’s not exactly what happens in this text, but it’s true that Exodus 15 can be a bit jarring to our modern ears. There is an explanation for it. It was customary at this place and time for women to welcome their men home with songs and dancing after a victorious battle. This time the men join in, because in this battle there was only one victorious warrior: God himself. (Even Moses is not mentioned in the song—finally, the people fully acknowledge the power of God alone.)

The form of the song suggests that this wasn’t just a song they sang this one time, but that it entered into the lexicon of songs they sang repeatedly. So rest assured: the fact that they’re singing here wasn’t as weird as it may seem when we read it today.

However, even if there is a cultural reason behind this song, it’s still difficult for us. It’s difficult for us, not because they’re singing, but because of the song’s content.

If you believe much of what you may find online today—all these descriptions of a God of love who only wants everybody to be happy and fulfilled, a God who accepts absolutely everyone unconditionally—this chapter is going to feel very odd, maybe even offensive. But this didn’t come from a blogger, it came from the Bible—the Word of God himself.

The first thing we need to remember is that nearly everything the people of Israel did together—their feasts and their sacrifices and their songs—had a pedagogical goal. Everything the people did was designed to teach the people something, and help them remember that thing.

So our big question today is, what was this song designed to teach us about God?

Two main things, in fact; but these two main things are absolutely monumental.

God Judges Evil (v. 1-10)

Like I said before, this song can be unsettling to our modern ears, because it describes God in a way we don’t often think of him. Let’s read the first few verses again, starting at v. 1:

Then Moses and the people of Israel sang this song to the Lord, saying,

“I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously;

the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea.

2  The Lord is my strength and my song,

and he has become my salvation;

this is my God, and I will praise him,

my father’s God, and I will exalt him.

So far so good. Most of this sounds like the psalms we’d be comfortable singing. But then comes v. 3:

3  The Lord is a man of war;

the Lord is his name.

4  “Pharaoh’s chariots and his host he cast into the sea,

and his chosen officers were sunk in the Red Sea.

5  The floods covered them;

they went down into the depths like a stone.

6  Your right hand, O Lord, glorious in power,

your right hand, O Lord, shatters the enemy.

7  In the greatness of your majesty you overthrow your adversaries;

you send out your fury; it consumes them like stubble.

8  At the blast of your nostrils the waters piled up;

the floods stood up in a heap;

the deeps congealed in the heart of the sea.

Already, all of this is hard enough. But it isn’t just the violence of the events the song describes that we have a hard time swallowing; it is the fact of the people celebrating that violence. It seems like they’re reveling in it, almost in the way that spectators would cheer at a boxing match.

We have to remember something absolutely crucial if we’re going to understand why they’re singing. We must remember that the people of Israel here are not celebrating the deaths of the unrighteous. That kind of celebration would be understandable, given everything they’ve been through, and probably some of them felt that way. But Moses wrote these words under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit; his intent was not to encourage flippancy over the loss of human life. That’s not what they’re celebrating.

They are celebrating God’s justice, his judgment against evil. That is a very different thing. V. 9:

9  The enemy said, ‘I will pursue, I will overtake,

I will divide the spoil, my desire shall have its fill of them.

I will draw my sword; my hand shall destroy them.’

10  You blew with your wind; the sea covered them;

they sank like lead in the mighty waters.

This enemy was the enslaver of God’s people; their intentions were to exploit and destroy these people until there were none left. That God would execute justice against such evil is right. And anyone who has ever suffered injustice knows it. If you are abused or manipulated, or if someone you love is abused or manipulated or mistreated, you want to see the abuser come to justice. You want to see them punished. Even if you don’t want revenge against that person, the fact that they would suffer the consequences of their actions is right. It is just. Justice is a good thing to celebrate.

But that kind of thinking will only take us so far; our challenge isn’t going to be acknowledging that it’s a good thing for God to judge evil. If we follow that logic—that it’s a good thing for God to judge evil—all the way down to its root, we’ll realize that we should be targeted by that judgment as well.

When we talk about evil, we tend to think of the worst things imaginable. We think about genocide. We think about torture. We think about the Coliseum and the Holocaust and the famine in Ukraine under the Soviet Union. But evil isn’t merely all the worst things we can imagine. Evil, by definition, is the absence of good.

And that’s a problem for us, because Christ himself said that “No one is good except God alone” (Mark 10.18).

Now of course we tend to think that’s an exaggeration; I can think of twenty people off the top of my head whom I would consider to be “good” people, even great people. But we need to think about that word in a theological sense: what does the word “good” mean for God?

Think of Tchernobyl. Most of us know what happened there. In April of 1986, the reactor in the Ukranian nuclear plant at Tchernobyl melted down and exploded, sending out a plume of radioactive fallout that spread all over the nearby region. Over 91,000 people had to be evacuated, and an “exclusion zone” was formed; it’s still there today. This exclusion zone stretches over a thousand square miles, because the radiation within that zone was so powerful, everyone had to stay away. They had to set up systems to keep water from the exclusion area escaping into rivers.

Of course some areas were “worse” than others. The power plant itself was more radioactive than the surrounding towns. But all of it was uninhabitable.

This is what sin is like. Sin is radioactive. It is a contaminant. God will not go near it. God’s standard for good is infinitely higher than ours: nothing less than moral perfection will fit the bill, because God is morally perfect. He is, as verse 11 says, “majestic in holiness”.

And the contamination of sin goes much further than the contamination of Tchernobyl. Sin doesn’t just need to be isolated; it must be destroyed, because it is an affront to God’s holiness. If God is going to maintain his goodness—and the world he created good—sin much be destroyed. Sin must be judged.

The Pharaoh, and his enslavement of the Hebrews, is one example of sin at its worst. So the people celebrate God’s judgment, because it means decontamination. Imagine if, in the weeks that followed the meltdown at Tchernobyl, the people who lived in the surrounding areas were told there was a way to get rid of all the radiation. That there was no longer any danger for them, their sickness could be healed, and they could go home.

That is a good reason to celebrate.

God’s judgment of evil is absolutely worth celebrating, because that is how heaven is made possible: when evil is reduced to nothing, when all sin is eradicated, all that is left is holiness. That is heaven.

All of that, everything I’ve just said, you can learn from just this song, which reminds us of the events at the Red Sea.

Even so, by itself, that is an incomplete picture. The people were well served by learning that lesson, but it wasn’t the only lesson to be learned. There’s a whole other section of this song that, taken on its own, could be celebrated as true, but not fully understood until much later.

The song celebrates God’s judgment on evil, thus describing one of the main joys of heaven: a place where sin is no more, and where a holy God reigns over all.

But in heaven, there is not just the absence of sin and the presence of a holy God. There is also the presence of redeemed sinners. And that, at least from the little the people could know at this point, was incomprehensible.

God Dwells with Sinners (v. 11-21)

So far we’ve seen that God judges sin. That makes sense—we can wrap our minds around that. Sin is injustice; if justice is to be done, then that injustice has to receive its proper consequence.

But the mystery of salvation is this: not only does God rightfully judge sin, he also dwells with sinners.

In the first ten verses we see how the people celebrates God’s victory over the Pharaoh and his army in the Red Sea. But starting in, the song marks a certain transition.

V. 11:

11  “Who is like you, O Lord, among the gods?

Who is like you, majestic in holiness,

awesome in glorious deeds, doing wonders?

12  You stretched out your right hand;

the earth swallowed them.

13  “You have led in your steadfast love the people whom you have redeemed;

you have guided them by your strength to your holy abode.

14  The peoples have heard; they tremble;

pangs have seized the inhabitants of Philistia.

15  Now are the chiefs of Edom dismayed;

trembling seizes the leaders of Moab;

all the inhabitants of Canaan have melted away.

16  Terror and dread fall upon them;

because of the greatness of your arm, they are still as a stone,

till your people, O Lord, pass by,

till the people pass by whom you have purchased.

This hasn’t happened yet. God has led them out of Egypt, but he hasn’t yet led them to Canaan, the country he had promised to give them. All these nations that are mentioned—Philistia, Edom, Moab—are enemies the Israelites will have to fight against once they get there. But they haven’t fought anyone yet. They’re not in Canaan yet.

And in fact, the song seems to be speaking about something bigger than just Canaan, the land God promised to give them. Look again at v. 13: you have guided them by your strength to your holy abode.

And then, in v. 17:

17  You will bring them in and plant them on your own mountain,

the place, O Lord, which you have made for your abode,

the sanctuary, O Lord, which your hands have established.

18  The Lord will reign forever and ever.”

19 For when the horses of Pharaoh with his chariots and his horsemen went into the sea, the Lord brought back the waters of the sea upon them, but the people of Israel walked on dry ground in the midst of the sea.

Now there is a mountain coming up later in the story—the Mount Sinai, on which God would give Moses the law. But this can’t be the mountain they’re talking about here, because this mountain is the place which God has made for his abode, the sanctuary which his hands have established. It would be on this mountain that God would bring his people and plant them, making his dwelling place their dwelling place as well.

This mountain pops up often in the Bible, and is later referred to as Zion, or the new Jerusalem, or the new heavens and the new earth. Or, to say it the way we often say it today, heaven. Not heaven as it is today, but heaven as it will be: the place where God will dwell in the midst of his people, on a creation freed from the effects of sin and death. A place of perfect peace, perfect life, and perfect holiness.

So here is the question we are left with: How is this possible? We said it before: we are all contaminated with sin. We may not be as bad as the Pharaoh, but no one is good except God.

You see, this song poses a problem for which the people don’t have yet have an answer. How is it possible that God would “purchase” sinners for himself (v. 16)? How is it possible that God would lead sinners to a place where he himself will dwell with them (v. 17-18)?

This is the question that will start to be answered later on in the book, and this is the question that the church spent the first several centuries of her existence trying to answer: How can a just God forgive sinners?

It seems like a silly question for us today, because how many times have we seen stickers posted on traffic lights or bar windows saying, “Jesus saves”? How many times have we repeated 1 John 1.9 to ourselves: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness”? It seems obvious to us that God would forgive us of our sins; in fact, it seems unthinkable that he wouldn’t. This is why sometimes we still find ourselves asking the question, “Why doesn’t God save everyone?”

Remember Tchernobyl. When the meltdown happened, it wasn’t enough for you to not go near it; you couldn’t go near anything else that had gone near it. Trucks and hazmat suits had to be scrubbed clean with decontaminating solution. People had to be isolated. If rocks from the site got stuck to the bottom of your shoe, that was enough to be dangerous.

Sin is a contaminant. By all reasonable metrics, God’s justice shouldn’t be able to go near it.

And yet, what do we see in this song? We see God bringing a sinful people to his mountain, to his dwelling place, where they will live with him.

It shouldn’t be possible, but it is: God came into proximity with our sin, in the person of Jesus Christ. Christ took on a human nature like ours, and he came close. We see him not only not rejecting the sinners around him, but actively seeking them out. We see him go to the leper that everyone is terrified to approach, and actually touching him and healing him.

And not only did he come near our sin; he took it on himself. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5.21: For our sake [God] made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. Christ gave us his sinless life, and he took our sin, and his punishment on the cross was our decontamination. Now, when God examines us, he does not see our sin; he sees the perfect life that his Son lived for us, and he declares us righteous.

But here’s what most of us already know: one of the primary struggles of the Christian life is fully and continually believing that. It’s hard for us to believe that God has really and truly decontaminated us. We look at our lives, and we see plenty of sin—we feel it radiating off of us. How could God come near to that?

The apostle Paul actually goes into this in quite some depth in his letter to the Romans, which we studied last year. He explains that for every Christian, as long as we are still alive and living in this fallen world, we have one foot in two separate realities.

The first reality is the new life we have been given in Christ. That is, Christ’s sacrifice in our place removed both the power of sin, and the penalty of sin. Sin no longer has the power to control us, and it no longer has the power to condemn us. That’s the first reality.

The second reality is that even if we have been given new life in Christ—new hearts, new desires, and new minds to know him and love him—the one thing that hasn’t been made new, for now, is our body. We still have the same bodies we had before we met Christ. And those bodies are still weak; they are still used to sinning; they still want to sin.

The struggle between those two realities of our experience is what Paul describes in Romans 7.14-20:

14 For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. [There’s the sinful body, still used to sinning.] 15 For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. 16 Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. 17 So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. 18 For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right [There’s the new desires, the new heart that came with Christ], but not the ability to carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.

As long as we’re living on this earth, that’s what we have to deal with: new desires fighting against old habits. And one of the hardest things about this is that we’re always tempted to imagine that our old habits define us; we’re always tempted to imagine that our old habits have the ability to control us. But Paul says this isn’t the case. Romans 8.9-11:

9 You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. 10 But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. 11 If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you.

So here’s what Paul is saying: at the cross, when God poured out his wrath on Christ, he didn’t remove the struggle, but he robbed sin of its power.

This is how the believer’s sin and the unbeliever’s sin are different—not fundamentally different but different in terms of their effect on us. Think of the sin of an unbeliever as an open wound. It is exposed to the elements; it hasn’t been cleaned; and now it’s infected. That infection is ravaging the body, because it’s being left untreated. If left unchecked, eventually an infection like this will kill you.

The sin of a believer is different. A few years ago my brother Jeremy (whom some of you know) was in a motorcycle accident. He was okay—he didn’t suffer any severe injuries—but he had pretty bad road rash on his arms, legs and back. So he got it treated. They took steps to prevent infection. And pretty soon his wounds scabbed over. They still hurt—he had a hard time lying down or getting dressed for several weeks, and they made his life difficult—but they couldn’t get infected, and they were healing. Eventually those scabs started falling off, revealing the clean, new skin underneath.

Now I know that’s gross, and I know that between this and Tchernobyl we’ve gone to some dark places today, but that’s appropriate. Jesus had to go to some pretty dark places to take care of this problem for us. Our bodies are still used to sinning, so we still have sin that we struggle with. Today, as Christians, our sin is like a scab. It still has an impact on our lives; it still hurts, and there are still negative consequences attached.

But that sin no longer has the power to control us, and it no longer has the power to condemn us. The Spirit of God living in us is giving life to our mortal bodies, and little by little, the scabs are falling off, revealing the new skin underneath. We’re learning to obey Christ. We’re learning to live more like him. We’re learning to follow him.

Brothers and sisters, the end result of God’s plan is the decontamination of the entire creation. God judges the evil of the Pharaoh and his armies in the Red Sea, and he promises to make a dwelling place for his people, where he will dwell with them.

We’ll find out in a few chapters how he provides for the purification of his people, so that he might dwell with them. But ultimately, he fulfilled this purification, this decontamination, perfectly in Christ. Once and for all, Christ suffered the judgment of the sin of his people, so now, although we still feel the effects of sin in our lives, we are no longer slaves to it, and it no longer separates us from God.

Now, we can come near to him, and he can come near to us, because that sin has been dealt with.

Now, that sin is slowly but surely being whittled away, like a scab falling off and revealing the new skin beneath.

We need to know this, just like the people of Israel needed to know that God would fight for them in the future. Because they would very soon need to persevere in their trust in God, and in their obedience to him. In the same way, we have to know that God will take care of us, will make us more and more like his Son, because we too must persevere in our faith until the end. And God will fight for us, to make sure that we get there.

Today, because we dwell with him and he dwells in us, we are becoming more and more like him; and one day, we will dwell with him fully and forever, freed from the effects of sin as well as its condemnation.

The decontamination of God’s creation is a marvelous thing, and absolutely worth celebrating. C.H. Spurgeon wrote:

“I, for one, am perfectly satisfied with everything that God does.… I make bold to say that I would have praised God as the waves went over Pharaoh; for the Lord did it, and he did right. I would have cried with Moses, 'I will sing unto the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously: the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea.’ I expect to be among the number, though some seem as if they would decline the service, who shall for ever bless God for all his dealings with mankind—the stern as well as those that seem more tender. The Lord God, even Jehovah, the God of the Old Testament, is the God whom I worship.”

My prayer for us is that we would lend a hearty amen Spurgeon’s sentiment. That’s exactly this that the people of Israel are doing. We read at the end, v. 19-21:

20 Then Miriam the prophetess, the sister of Aaron, took a tambourine in her hand, and all the women went out after her with tambourines and dancing. 21 And Miriam sang to them:

“Sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously;

the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea.”

After the great celebration of the people of Israel, what happens? Miriam (a woman of some authority, since she was a prophetess) and all the women of Israel perform an encore, dancing and banging tambourines and singing the exact same thing they just sang: the Lord’s justice against Egypt was right. It was worth celebrating, because it was judgment against sin.

This is right—this is the God we worship.

Questions from the Red Sea

Exodus 13.17-14.31

Some of you already know this about me, but I’m a sucker for magic—particularly close-up magic, when you can see the person’s hands and examine what they’re doing. I love it because there’s always a moment when the trick happens, and your jaw drops and you feel like you just saw something impossible.

Now of course, there’s always a gimmick—whether it’s sleight of hand or a trick deck or a modified object of some kind, there’s always a way, and most of the time it’s extremely simple. But unless you know what the trick is, you still see it as something completely impossible, something you never could have predicted.

That’s what I always think of when I read Exodus 14. Because the people of Israel find themselves in a situation in which they can see absolutely no way out, and then God rolls up his sleeves and says, “Okay…now watch closely.”

There’s a reason why this story is the climax of multiple Hollywood films, why it is a well-known picture of divine intervention. The images put forth here are simply spectacular. Last week we saw the people of Israel, in slavery in Egypt for 430 years, finally freed by God’s mighty hand. God sent his final plague against the Pharaoh’s hard-heartedness, and the Pharaoh relented at long last, telling Moses to take the people and go.

That’s where we left off: with the people of Israel leaving Egypt and making their way into the wilderness, and as we see at the end of chapter 13, God is guiding them by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, showing them where they should go. And where are they going? He is taking them to the Red Sea, which is the body of water between Egypt and the desert of Sinai to the east.

We just read what happens there: God brings them miraculously through the Sea while the Pharaoh pursues them, then lets the sea fall back down on the Pharaoh’s army. It’s a striking story, and we’ll see it more closely in a bit.

But if you keep reading the Bible, you see that it’s a lot more than a story. As is often the case, this relatively simple story asks us a lot of questions. In fact there are four main questions that the story of the Red Sea asks, and we’re going to take them one by one.

1. What Pictures Does This Story Show Us?

If you read the Bible long enough, you realize that there are things God does all throughout the Bible, and he does them in a particular way, in order to communicate specific things.

The example we have here in our text is the picture of water—God parts the water for the Israelites, and he lets the water fall back down over the Egyptians.

There are many other passages in the Bible where water plays such a significant role, and it’s never on accident.

One the very first explicit images we see in the Bible is the image of water, in Genesis 1.2:

The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.

So water here is a picture of formless nothingness—a lot of people have used a lot of words to help explain this, but many theologians have decided to describe it as chaos: over all creation, there isn’t nothing (there are waters for the Spirit to “hover over”), but there isn’t something either. It’s chaos.

When I was a teenager we went to the Bahamas; it was the first time I had ever been on a beach with seriously big waves. When a really big wave crashes over you, you are lost—turning in every which direction, not knowing which way is up or down. That’s what I think of when I think of this formless void of the waters of creation. It’s not inherently bad, but there’s no order to it.

So what does God do? He brings order to the chaos in v. 9-10:

9 And God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, [bring order to the chaos] and let the dry land appear.” And it was so. 10 God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas.

So there we see the grace of God the Creator—what does he do? He brings order to chaos.

But then what happens? Man rebels against God (he sins against God), and all of creation is corrupted by that sin. And some time after this, we see the water return in a massive way in the flood, in Genesis 6-7. Nothing could possibly be more chaotic than a worldwide flood that destroys almost everything.

So in this case, we see another layer of meaning added on to this image of water. It’s not just chaos, but it’s chaos as judgment: God judges the sin of the world through water.

We see these exact same things at work in the story of the Red Sea. We see the sovereign Creator, who rules over creation (including its chaotic aspects). Nothing is more unwieldy than water, but God is able to bring order to chaos and make the water go exactly where he wants it to go.

Then, once the people of Israel are out of the riverbed, and the Pharaoh’s army are pursuing them, what does he do? He brings the waters crashing down on their heads in judgment. Just like in the flood.

So this image of water as chaos which God powerfully calls to order to save the Israelites, then uses to bring judgment on the Egyptians, is a picture of what he does on a much larger scale. God created us in his image, but that image his been distorted, mangled, by sin. Because God is just he must punish sin.

But he is not only driven by anger against sin; he is also driven by love for his people. So how does he bring order back into the chaos our sin has created? He takes on a human nature, in the person of Jesus Christ. Christ shows the same mastery over the elements that he did at creation: he turns water into wine at a wedding. In the middle of a storm at sea, he walks on the water without sinking. He commands the winds and the waves to be still, and they obey him.

He lives a perfect, sinless life—the embodiment of order in the midst of chaos—and suffers the consequences of our sin for us, then applies his victory to us.

And how do we celebrate this reality publicly? Through baptism. We are plunged under water, joining ourselves with Christ in his burial—our judgment fulfilled in him—and we come up out of the water, still living and breathing, in newness of life.

We could go a lot further with the symbolism behind these pictures of water, but I wanted to bring it up quickly to show that none of this is accidental. Our God is a wise teacher: he teaches us not only through words, but through pictures—even pictures brought about in human history. God did what he did in Egypt, and brought his people to this particular place at this particular moment, to give us mental hooks on which to hang our theology, images that would help us remember what kind of God he is.

2. What Events Does This Story Describe for Us?

But all of that may sound impersonal, and this isn’t at all impersonal. This is real history, and these are real events (if we believe this is the Word of God, and we do), and these real events happened to real people. What must this have been like for them?

I’m convinced this is real, in part, because the people of Israel are so relatable. At the end of chapter 13, God takes them out of Egypt, and instead of leading them north toward the land of the Philistines (which would have been the most direct route to Canaan), he takes them straight east, toward the Red Sea and the wilderness beyond.

Why? Because he already knows these people would freak out. If they went to the land of he Philistines, they would meet the Philistines. And the Philistines are not nice people. God knows if that happened, they would go to war, and they’d run back to Egypt (we see this in v. 17). So he leads them to the Red Sea, guiding them by a pillar of cloud by day, and a pillar of fire by night. When they get to the sea, God tells them to camp there and wait.

Again, he knows what he’s doing. Chapter 14, verse 4:

“And I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and he will pursue them, and I will get glory over Pharaoh and all his host, and the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord.”

And that’s exactly what happens. Not long after the Pharaoh lets the people go, he regrets it. He calls his army together, and they follow the Israelites out of Egypt. Again, v. 8:

And the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and he pursued the people of Israel while the people of Israel were going out defiantly.

So now essentially, the people of Israel are boxed in: they have the Red Sea at their backs, and the Pharaoh’s army in front of them. They don’t have time to go around the sea. There is nowhere for them to go. They have chaos on one side (the sea), and death on the other (the army).

So God tells Moses (v. 15):

15 The Lord said to Moses, “Why do you cry to me? Tell the people of Israel to go forward. 16 Lift up your staff, and stretch out your hand over the sea and divide it, that the people of Israel may go through the sea on dry ground. 17 And I will harden the hearts of the Egyptians so that they shall go in after them, and I will get glory over Pharaoh and all his host, his chariots, and his horsemen. 18 And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I have gotten glory over Pharaoh, his chariots, and his horsemen.”

In case it’s not clear, all these repetitions are intentional. Three times in eighteen verses, we’ve seen it now: I will harden his heart, so that he will pursue you. Why? So that I get the glory.

This is absolutely unthinkable to the people of Israel, they’re freaking out. So Moses encourages them (we’ll come back to that in a minute), and does what God said. He stretches out his hand over the sea, and it divides.

Can you imagine what this must have been like for them? No one could have seen this coming, just like no one could have pictured what the flood would be like until it happened. Out of the chaos that the sea represents, God brings order: he puts the water exactly where he wants it to go. (By the way, in v. 21 when it says that the Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night, the word for “wind” there is the same word as the one used for “Spirit” in Genesis 1.2, when he says, the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. It’s not an accident. Order from chaos.)

With the Pharaoh’s army coming from behind, God intervenes again: the pillar of cloud stands behind them and blocks the Pharaoh’s army, giving the Israelites the time they need to cross.

They cross the sea on dry land, the cloud lifts, and the Pharaoh’s army pursues them into the dry seafloor. And once they’re through, God stops the wind, and brings chaos raining down on the army of Egypt—his final judgment against them.

3. What Lessons Does This Story Teach Us?

When I ask this question, I’m thinking about us, because every time I read this story, on top of what I’ve already said and the fourth question that’s coming after, there is an aspect of this event that always jumps out at me, because it is so pertinent for us, Christians of today—and really for human beings in general.

Let’s rewind back to verse 10 of chapter 14. God has boxed them in: the sea is behind them, the Pharaoh is before them, they have nowhere to go—and they are terrified. V. 10:

10 When Pharaoh drew near, the people of Israel lifted up their eyes, and behold, the Egyptians were marching after them, and they feared greatly. And the people of Israel cried out to the Lord. 11 They said to Moses, “Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us in bringing us out of Egypt? 12 Is not this what we said to you in Egypt: ‘Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.”

Now here’s the question: Why were they afraid?

It's not because they don’t believe God can do great things. They had just seen God unleash ten disastrous plagues against the Egyptians. They could literally lift their eyes and see the pillar of cloud by day, and the pillar of fire by night, guiding them. They had concrete, empirical proof that God was powerful. So they weren’t afraid because they didn’t think he could do it.

They were afraid because they couldn’t imagine how he could do it: how he could rescue them from this, how he could get the glory from this.

You see, their problem wasn’t even necessarily a lack of belief; it was more a lack of imagination.

Because they couldn’t imagine how God was going to get them out of this, they came to fear that he might not.

And Moses doesn’t tell them. He doesn’t give them the details of exactly how God was going to rescue them in this particular case. What does he say instead? V. 13:

13 And Moses said to the people, “Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again. 14 The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent.”

He doesn’t give them an explanation; he gives them a promise. The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent. Fear not, stand firm, and see his salvation.

But he doesn’t stop there; look at the very next verse, v. 15:

The Lord said to Moses, “Why do you cry to me? Tell the people of Israel to go forward.”

They didn’t know what he was going to do, but he still commanded them to walk: “You’ve got what you need, God will take care of the rest.”

I bring this up because the Israelites’ attitude and fear in this part of the story is something we see all the time in our lives—sometimes every day.

If we belong to Christ, we too have empirical proof that God can do great things. We have his Holy Spirit, witnessing to our spirits that we are children of God. We know what he did through Christ, and we know what he has done in us.

And yet…how often are we faced with situations, or with sins in our lives, and we despair, unable to see how God could possibly make good come out of this? This is one reason why God gives the people of Israel the feasts we talked about last week: to help them remember that just as he saved them in the past, just as he knew what he would do even when they didn’t know, he will be faithful to sustain them in the future.

The people of Israel never could have predicted that God would part the sea in two. We will never be able to imagine or predict what God can do for his people.

And that’s okay. That’s part of why our God is worthy to be worshiped and followed—because he can do things we can’t possibly imagine.

That knowledge—the knowledge that we lack imagination—should bolster our faith rather than weaken it.

We don’t know how he’ll do his will…but he does. He doesn’t expect us to understand it all. But he does expect us to trust him, that he understands it. And there always comes a point where he calls us to obey in our uncertainty, where he says, “Why are you crying to me? Go forward. You’ve got what you need, I’ll take care of the rest.”

The result of such a life is what we see in v. 31, at the very end of the chapter.

31 Israel saw the great power that the Lord used against the Egyptians, so the people feared the Lord, and they believed in the Lord and in his servant Moses.

To fear the Lord isn’t to be afraid of him; it is to acknowledge that God can do what we cannot. The fear of the Lord is humility, and reverence before his great power.

This is such good news for us. Our God is the God who brings order out of chaos, who brings life out of death, who brings his people out of darkness into light.

But that deliverance rarely looks the way we think it will. Like I said last week, it would have been so easy for God to simply change the Pharaoh’s mind so that he would let the people go. It would have been so easy for God to never let the people of Israel be enslaved in the first place.

But instead, he took them through the sea, not over it.

Why?

There may be several possible answers to that question, but I can think of at least one. And that is because theoretical conviction is very different than experiential conviction. It’s one thing to hear the gospel, to read the Bible, and to believe what you see there. And that is a wonderful thing. It’s a miraculous thing. It’s something that only happens through the work of the Holy Spirit in us.

But that faith takes on a very different character when it has been pulled through suffering. It gains the weight of experience.

God took the people through the sea, and not over it, so they would know—so that they would not just believe intellectually, but fully—that he was with them in the chaos. Not just because Moses said so, but because they were there, and they felt the wind holding the sea at bay, and the mist on their faces as they walked past. The Pharaoh was coming after them, but God was behind them, holding him off long enough for them to get across. He was on either side of them, holding the sea away.

It’s one thing to hear that God will fight for you; it’s quite another to see him fight for you. It’s one thing to hear that he will sustain you; it’s quite another to have no strength left, and to watch him hold you up. It’s one thing to believe the promises that God will strengthen your faith; it’s quite another to look behind you, to look at your past suffering, and to see that all that time, he was there, giving you what you needed, even when you couldn’t feel him.

We can’t imagine how God could possibly work in us and for us. But our lack of imagination is no obstacle to his power. We don’t need to know how he’ll do what he needs to do. We just need to trust that he will.

And that’s a perfectly reasonable thing to trust, because in Christ, he has.

Which brings us to our last question, the question of this story:

4. What Choice Does This Story Set Before Us?

This story isn’t an end in itself; it points the way toward a much bigger story.

Ultimately, how does God work out his will in our chaos, in our sin, in our guilt?

He brought the people of Israel through the Red Sea, this instrument of judgment piled up high on either side of them, and brought them out onto dry land on the other side. They didn’t deserve this. They were just as guilty of sin as the Pharaoh was. And yet, in God’s grace, he brought them through the judgment rather than raining it down on them. Once they were through, he sent the sea crashing down in judgment on the Pharaoh’s army; in one mighty moment, God defeated the imminent death that was pursuing the Israelites. And just like that…the people were free. They were safe, and they were free.

We are no different. The sea—this instrument of judgment—is what we deserve, and the judgment is necessary. God is just; he must exercise justice. The sea is what we deserve, and its judgment is necessary.

So Christ brought us through it. He suffered judgment for us, carrying us through and placing us on the other side. In so doing, he brought down judgment on sin, and he defeated the death that we deserve. Those of us who have been brought into Christ will never again be slaves to sin, or to the death that is its consequence.

That is how he fights for us. That is why we have nothing to fear. That is how we “see the salvation of the Lord.”

But that is not what all of us will choose. There are two things that happen in this story. The people of Israel walked through the sea on dry land, and the Egyptian army was covered by the sea in judgment.

Likewise, we only have two possibilities: we are saved through Jesus Christ, or we are judged by him. The agent of salvation, the Savior of the world, is also the great Judge, who will judge the living and the dead.

So which side of that fence will we be on? Will we trust him, and fear him, and submit to him in thankfulness for his grace? Will we repent of our sins and accept the free gift of salvation he is holding out to us? Or will we refuse him, and remain obstinate, and keep trying to be our own masters?

That is the question the Red Sea asks of us. There is only one right answer, and it is so right that I pray no one in this room will choose another. Let Christ carry you through the waters of judgment, and thank him that he suffered that judgment for you. See his great power, and fear him, and believe in him.

Our Priorities After the Exodus

Exodus 11.1-13.16

Okay, let’s jump right in, because we have a lot to see today. If you remember, in Exodus 5-10, Moses stood before the king of Egypt, the Pharaoh, as God’s representative, demanding that the Pharaoh release the people of Israel from slavery. The Pharaoh continually refused to listen, so God let loose nine different plagues against Egypt, each one worse than the last. As time went on, no matter how bad the people’s suffering got, the Pharaoh grew harder and harder against God’s commands, refusing to let the people go.

But there was one plague left. And through this final event, and everything else that surrounded it, God would prepare his people for something much bigger, coming much further down the road.

We’re going to be looking at three chapters today—Exodus 11, 12 and 13—and these chapters are dense: there is a lot of imagery here that we can analyze, and there’s no way I can get through it all. So I’ll just be scratching the surface today, but even that is enough to feast on.

Preparations (11.1-12.28)

So we’re going to begin at the beginning of chapter 11, right after the ninth plague of darkness covering the whole land of Egypt. God tells Moses what he’s about to do—what the tenth plague will be: he says that at midnight, he will go out into Egypt, and every firstborn in the country will die—“from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on his throne, even to the firstborn of the slave girl who is behind the handmill, and all the firstborn of the cattle” (v. 5).

But then we see something interesting. God gives instructions to his people concerning how to prepare for this night. This is the only plague God has sent against Egypt which demands preparation from the people of Israel. With every other plague that has taken place, the Egyptians were targeted, while the Hebrews were left alone. When, for example in chapter 9, all of the Egyptian livestock was killed, Moses said that the Lord would make a distinction between the livestock of Israel and the livestock of Egypt; all the Egyptian livestock died, all the Hebrew livestock were fine.

But in this case, it’s different. In chapter 11 (a relatively short chapter), Moses tells the Pharaoh what God will do, and of course the Pharaoh doesn’t listen to him. (We saw the reasons why that is the case last week.)

And then at the beginning of chapter 12, God gets the people of Israel involved in the process. First of all he resets their calendar, saying that from now on this month will be the first month of the year, and during this month, each family will make a sacrifice of a lamb, one year old, without blemish. On the tenth day they’ll set their lamb apart, and at midnight on the fourteenth day, every one of these lambs will be killed.

And on this first occasion of this particular sacrifice, the Hebrews are called to do something really specific. Before they cook the lamb and eat it, they must take some of the blood from the lamb and put it on the doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. Once they go inside to eat, they are not to come out until morning.

After that, he gives specific instructions on how this meal is to take place. Chapter 12.8:

8 They shall eat the flesh that night, roasted on the fire; with unleavened bread and bitter herbs they shall eat it. 9 Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roasted, its head with its legs and its inner parts. 10 And you shall let none of it remain until the morning; anything that remains until the morning you shall burn. 11 In this manner you shall eat it: with your belt fastened, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. And you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord’s Passover.

The bread they eat is to be without leaven. Unleavened bread stays good a lot longer than leavened bread; it’s food for traveling. They will bring no leftovers—no roasted lamb sandwiches for lunch the next day. Whatever meat you don’t eat, you burn, because the meat won’t stay good on the road. You’ll eat this meal with your shoes on, your belts cinched around your waist, your staff in your hand. Keep your backpacks on, your car keys in your hand—be ready to move.

Why? Because tonight, God is going to clear a path for you to leave; this time tomorrow, you’ll be out the door. V. 12:

12 For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord. 13 The blood shall be a sign for you, on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you, when I strike the land of Egypt.

So the people of Israel do what Moses tells them to do. They get their lambs ready, they kill the lambs at the same time, they take some hyssop branches and paint the doorposts at the same time, and they go inside and have their meal.

Can you imagine the heaviness of that meal? You’re at that table, eating that food, with your bags packed and your shoes on, about to be released from slavery…and the whole time, you know full well what the cost of your freedom will be.

The Exodus (12.29-42)

And finally, once the people of Israel are safe and sound in their houses, with their doorposts painted red with the blood of the sacrificial lambs, God visits one last plague on the land of Egypt, because of the Pharaoh’s refusal to obey him. 12.29:

29 At midnight the Lord struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of the livestock. 30 And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he and all his servants and all the Egyptians. And there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house where someone was not dead. 31 Then he summoned Moses and Aaron by night and said, “Up, go out from among my people, both you and the people of Israel; and go, serve the Lord, as you have said. 32 Take your flocks and your herds, as you have said, and be gone, and bless me also!”

So the entire people of Israel—six hundred thousand men, plus the women and children, which would likely have put their total number at around two million people—take up their belongings and leave Egypt. Their belongings are now substantial, because, as we see in v. 36, God had influenced the people of Egypt to give them riches. Thus, Moses writes, they plundered the Egyptians.

They left in a hurry, bringing with them no provisions other than the unleavened dough they had made to bake bread. They left together, after 430 years in Egypt, many of which were spent in bondage. God rescued his people; it was the beginning of the fulfillment of his promise to Abraham, to give them a land that would be theirs.

The Feasts (12.43-13.16)

Now if you know the story, you know that we’re reaching the climax of this part of it—the scene at the Red Sea. And we really want to get there, because we’ve seen the movies—we know how awesome that part it.

But before we get there, we have another set of instructions, and they’re easy to overlook because what comes before, and what comes after, are both so massive.

But this is probably the most important section in this entire text, because not only does it respond to what has just happened, but it sets up some incredibly important things, not only for the rest of the book of Exodus, but for the entire biblical narrative.

Starting at v. 43 of chapter 12, through verse 16 of chapter 13, we see three separate sets of instructions that God gives to Moses and Aaron. They’re not instructions concerning where they are to go, but rather they are ritual instructions: God is telling them how the people of Israel are to commemorate what has just happened in Egypt.

The first instruction God gives them concerns the Passover that the people will now celebrate every year. He says (12.43-49):

43 And the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “This is the statute of the Passover: no foreigner shall eat of it, 44 but every slave that is bought for money may eat of it after you have circumcised him. 45 No foreigner or hired worker may eat of it. 46 It shall be eaten in one house; you shall not take any of the flesh outside the house, and you shall not break any of its bones. 47 All the congregation of Israel shall keep it. 48 If a stranger shall sojourn with you and would keep the Passover to the Lord, let all his males be circumcised. Then he may come near and keep it; he shall be as a native of the land. But no uncircumcised person shall eat of it. 49 There shall be one law for the native and for the stranger who sojourns among you.”

Now, why these instructions about foreigners and slaves, and how they should approach the Passover? The first reason is because, as we see in v. 38, the people of Israel were not the only ones who left Egypt with them that day: a “mixed multitude” went with them. We don’t know exactly who these people were, but they were not Hebrews. So if they were hoping to join with the people of Israel, it would be natural for them to want to celebrate their feasts with them.

And God says that’s fine—provided that all the males of their households be circumcised.

This is actually really important, because it connects the Passover God is instituting here to his promises to Abraham. Remember, God gave circumcision as a sign of the covenant he was making with Abraham, and of the promises he had given to him. God told Abraham he would make him the father of many nations (Genesis 17.3-4). God was open to letting foreigners join in his saving purposes (something the people forgot fairly quickly later on), but if they would share in his blessings, they would also share in the commitments that came with those blessings: they would commit to fulfilling Israel’s side of the covenant, to obey God’s commandments.

The second instruction God gives, in 13.3-10, concerns a feast Israel would hold, called the Feast of Unleavened Bread. This was a feast that would last seven days; it would be initiated by the Passover, after which the they would eat unleavened bread for seven days before culminating in a feast to God.

Why unleavened bread? Because that’s what they had to take with them the night they left Egypt: bread that would not go stale, bread made for traveling.

The third instruction is incredibly important. The firstborn of all of Israel would be consecrated to God. 13.1:

The Lord said to Moses, 2 “Consecrate to me all the firstborn. Whatever is the first to open the womb among the people of Israel, both of man and of beast, is mine.”

To “consecrate” something meant to give it back to God, to set it aside for his honor and for his service. God goes further in v. 11-13:

11 “When the Lord brings you into the land of the Canaanites, as he swore to you and your fathers, and shall give it to you, 12 you shall set apart to the Lord all that first opens the womb. All the firstborn of your animals that are males shall be the Lord’s. 13 Every firstborn of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb, or if you will not redeem it you shall break its neck. Every firstborn of man among your sons you shall redeem.

So the firstborn of every creature belonging to Israel—the firstborn sons and the firstborn of all the male animals, were to be given to God.

Now concretely, what did that mean? It meant that every firstborn animal that was male was to be sacrificed to God (or redeemed through the sacrifice of another animal), and every firstborn son was likewise to be “redeemed.” That is, they would sacrifice a lamb instead of the son (thank goodness). In other words, God says, because I killed the firstborn of Egypt in order to free you, you owe me your firstborn as well. It’s only fair that if they lost their firstborn, you lose yours as well.

But I’ll provide a way for you to not have to lose your sons: sacrifice a lamb in their place, and your son will be considered “redeemed.”

The Exodus for Us

Now, let me ask you a question I find really interesting, that I always like to ask when I’m reading the Bible, particularly the Old Testament. You can’t always find an answer, but it’s a good question to ask: Why did God chose to do it like this? Why do you think God choose to free the people of Israel like this? Why go through all these complicated plagues, and the death of the firstborn in Egypt?

Because he could easily have done this another way. God could have just struck all of the rulers in Egypt dead—the Pharaoh, the ministers, the foremen tasked with managing the people of Israel, the heads of the army—and no one would have been left to stop the Hebrews from just walking out of there. Or God could have simply rewired the Pharaoh’s brain and changed his mind. God didn’t need the Pharaoh to let the people go; he could have made the Pharaoh do it, in an instant.

So why didn’t he do it that way? Because he wants to teach his people—and us—a number of things.

God frees the people from slavery in Egypt, and commands them to observe a number of rituals afterwards. I’m sure, if you read these chapters 12 and 13 this week, that you noticed something interesting. In these chapters we see something repeated: a hypothetical situation that would almost definitely come up in the life of a faithful Hebrew family.

The first time we see it is when God is giving his more extensive instructions for the Passover, in chapter 12. In v. 26, God says this:

26 “And when your children say to you, ‘What do you mean by this service?’ 27 you shall say, ‘It is the sacrifice of the Lord’s Passover, for he passed over the houses of the people of Israel in Egypt, when he struck the Egyptians but spared our houses.’ ”

And again, in 13.8-9, during the instructions for the Feast of Unleavened Bread:

8 You shall tell your son on that day, ‘It is because of what the Lord did for me when I came out of Egypt.’ 9 And it shall be to you as a sign on your hand and as a memorial between your eyes, that the law of the Lord may be in your mouth. For with a strong hand the Lord has brought you out of Egypt.

And then again, in 13.14-16, during the instructions for the consecration of the firstborn:

14 And when in time to come your son asks you, ‘What does this mean?’ you shall say to him, ‘By a strong hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt, from the house of slavery. 15 For when Pharaoh stubbornly refused to let us go, the Lord killed all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both the firstborn of man and the firstborn of animals. Therefore I sacrifice to the Lord all the males that first open the womb, but all the firstborn of my sons I redeem.’ 16 It shall be as a mark on your hand or frontlets between your eyes, for by a strong hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt.”

When you see something repeated like this in such a short span of time, it’s because the author means for us to pay attention. What he’s saying is that these feasts, these rituals, were not meaningless; they have a pedagogical purpose behind them. They are meant to keep the events of the Exodus in the forefront of the minds of God’s people, so that they might not forget them. (A mark on your hand, frontlets between your eyes—something you won’t be able to miss.)

The Passover, and the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and the consecration of the firstborn, are a reminder—embodied memorials. They’re a series of physical acts that helped the people of Israel to look back at what God did in Egypt, so they would not forget.

But that’s not all it is; these feasts aren’t merely memorials to an event that took place a long time ago. They look back to the story of the Exodus, but the Exodus itself is a reminder of something too. It’s a reminder of a different sort—one that doesn’t look back, but forwards.

We see it in the Feast of Unleavened Bread. God reminds the Israelites of a meal taken in haste, with dough that would not need to rise, because their departure was imminent. We too have been told (Luke 12.40): You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.

We see it most clearly in the Passover and the consecration of the firstborn. God tells Israel to set aside all their firstborn sons for him. Even if you only have one son, that son is to be consecrated to God, and redeemed by the sacrifice of a lamb. God demands the first.

But he doesn’t just demand the first from his people. He gave the first to his people.

John 3.16:

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

The firstborn of Israel were to be redeemed by a sacrifice that would take their place. God’s firstborn too, eight days after his birth, was consecrated in the temple (Luke 2.21-39). But this firstborn of God wasn’t only redeemed by a sacrifice; he was himself the sacrifice given for all the people—a perfect sacrifice, given once and for all.

When John the Baptist first saw Jesus coming to him at the river where he was baptizing, what did he say about him? John 1.29:

The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”

John already understood what other took longer to grasp: Jesus was the Lamb of God, sent to redeem his people—to be sacrificed in their place, that they might be freed from their sin.

God gave his firstborn—his only Son—in order to save his people. All of us are born in bondage to sin, that instinct in us to reject God and rebel against him. Because of that sin, we are as guilty as the Pharaoh: hard-hearted and under God’s just condemnation. But in his grace, he provided an Exodus for us: a means of being redeemed, a means of being released from slavery to our sin.

You see, the story of the Exodus has its echoes all throughout the Bible, not because it is a seminal story in the life of the people of Israel, but because this story is our story. The true Exodus of the Bible is not Israel’s exodus, but ours.

The story of the Bible is entirely centered around God giving his firstborn in order to free us from bondage to sin, to bring us out of darkness into light, out of death and into life.

God Deserves the First

Now here is what we have to see. Jesus, through his life, death and resurrection, brought an end to the Law of Moses. We are no longer required to celebrate the Passover, or the Feast of Unleavened Bread. We are no longer required to offer sacrifices for our firstborn sons.

But God has not changed. These things are no longer required of us, not because they are unimportant, but because they are completed. What is not completed—what will never be completed—is the proper response God that deserves from us because of what he has done for us.

When God rescued the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt, he told them to observe these feasts, and to consecrate their firstborn, as a way of remembering and responding to what he did for them. When your sons ask you why you’re doing these things, he said, tell them it’s because of what God did for us in Egypt: how he freed us by a mighty hand.

The Exodus of the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt was far less significant than our Exodus from slavery to sin. This second Exodus took place, not for one nation, but for all nations—for people from every country, every tribe, every language, throughout all of human history.

But for many Christians today, if God made the same demands he made on the people of Israel—observe these feasts, perform these rituals, perform these sacrifices to consecrate your firstborn—they’d think he’s asking way too much. It’s just too much work; lighten up, God, no one has time for all that.

Why do we think that God would deserve so much less after the second Exodus than after the first?

You see, many Christians have completely misunderstood what grace means. God’s grace does not mean there is nothing left for us to do after we are saved; his grace means that even when what we do is far from enough to repay him, we are still loved and accepted by him. It means our salvation doesn’t depend on our works, but on his.

But he still deserves the first—not just of our children, but of everything we are, and everything we have: our time, our thoughts, our actions, our resources, our talents—everything. God has given us so much, so much that we did not deserve: that is the gospel. And we can gauge our understanding of the gospel by how we respond to the gospel.

If you remember, earlier I mentioned that first Passover meal in Egypt—the people of Israel eating their food with their clothes and shoes on and their bags backed, while they could hear the cries going up in all the land of Egypt around them. It’s a heavy image, and it would have been a heavy experience. The same is true for these festivals they were meant to keep. The consecration of the firstborn, the celebration of the Passover, were bloody affairs.

These things are meant to be heavy, because our salvation is not a light thing. The Exodus story helps us remember just how serious these things are—how much God has saved us from, and how much it cost.

This is no light matter. God gave the first, and he deserves the first from us.

Often when we think about where God fits in to our calendar, our budget, our priorities, we’ve already started off on the wrong foot. Just look at what I just said: we think about where God “fits in” to our priorities. God shouldn’t “fit in” to our priorities; our priorities should be shaped around him. He’s not the meeting we have to try to find a place for; when our calendars are clear, when our budget is still undefined, when our priorities are still taking shape, the first event we create, the first line in our budget, the first priority, should be his.

Not because we have to do it to be saved, but because he deserves it. After everything else he’s done for us, how could any other response make sense?

While we were in the U.S. on vacation we heard a great sermon on just Exodus 13.11-16, the consecration of the firstborn. The pastor told a story during that sermon of a discussion he had with his son, a discussion similar to ones we have had with both of our kids many times. He explained that he was paid at the beginning of every month, and the first thing he did at the beginning of every month was to set aside a certain sum for the church. When his son was about thirteen years old, he came into his dad’s office while he was writing checks for the monthly bills (this was before direct deposit). He looked at the stack of checks on the desk, and noticed that the first check on the pile was written out to the church.

His son’s eyes bugged out when he saw the amount (a lot for a thirteen-year-old). “Dad!” he said. “Why are we giving that much money to the church? Didn’t they just pay you that money? Why are you giving it back?”

The pastor looked at his son and said, “I give that much to God because I used to be a slave, but he set me free.”

God deserves the first—not just of our finances, but of everything: of our time, our talents, our love. And we know how much he deserves by how much he gave; he gave the first.

My prayer for my family, and for all of our families, is that we might live in such a way that will cause some confusion in our children—why do we spend our money on this? why do we spend our time doing this? why don’t we do this?

And I pray that when they come to ask us these questions, we might get excited about the answer we will give. “We do these things, kids, because we used to be slaves, but God set us free.”