The Journey to Freedom
Thirteen Studies on the Major Movements of Exodus
by David Gooding
Exodus is a book ablaze with the glory of God. Tracing the major movements of the book, David Gooding takes us on a journey to witness the power, majesty and wrath of God as he leads his people from the bondage of captivity and through the wilderness, dwelling with them in his tabernacle. Studying Exodus this way will help us to appreciate it as a carefully planned narrative, so we may better understand and proclaim its gospel of freedom.
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This text has been edited from a transcript of thirteen talks given by David Gooding at the European Bible Study Conference, Fairmile Court, Surrey, England, 2–6 January 1991. View the brochure here.
1: The Process and Goal of Liberation (1): Introduction, Aims and Thought Flow
Introduction
Our topic, as you know, is the book of Exodus, so I take comfort that all of us will have already acquainted ourselves with a great deal about it, even before this week. When we come to our set periods of questions, I understand that I shall be allowed to put the very difficult ones to you, as well as receive from you. I gather we have some lawyers here, and Exodus being a book that is concerned in some parts very much with the law, we look forward to hearing from you. Exodus is supremely a book that is ablaze from one end to the other with the manifested glory of God. On many occasions in very different circumstances and surroundings, God was pleased to declare his name and manifest his power and his glory.
For instance, early on we shall consider God revealing himself and his name in the thorn bush, lighting it up with inextinguishable glory. It was but one of a million prickly thorn bushes in the desert. Or at the other extreme of the book, no longer in an old thorn bush which was a symbol of the curse, but in the sophisticated glories, craftsmanship and wealth of the gems, the gold and silver in Israel’s tabernacle, which was built to God’s design and honoured with the descending fire of his glory. May God grant that as we’re together, we might take that same journey in our spiritual vision and see God’s glory in the thorn bush of our troubled world, and glimpses of a glory that shall yet be when the great tabernacle of God shall descend from the new heavens towards the new earth and the nations bring their glory into it (Rev 21:26).
Or there again, the glory and power of God as his name was seen in the plagues upon Egypt. They were severe judgments, but not the final series of judgments this world will see. The last book of the Bible promises us that before this world comes to its end there will be judgments very reminiscent of the plagues of Egypt.
Pray with me then, that as we study the written word of God this week, that same living God may be pleased, in the context of Fairmile Retreat House, to manifest himself to us and declare his name. You’ll remember that the Lord Jesus declared in his prayer, ‘I have manifested your name to the people whom you gave me out of the world. . . . and I will continue to make it known’ (John 17:6, 26).
We shall study solemn things therefore, as we think together of the wrath of God. May God help us to see his glory in his wrath. Sometimes we’re inclined to be a little bit apologetic on God’s behalf, like we are for our friends: ‘You know Tom. Well, he’s a nice chap really, but he blows his top and makes a fool of himself and so on, but he gets over it and not much damage is done in the end.’ If we’re not careful, we can treat the wrath of God like that—as something that we have to apologize for. It is not so, is it? The wrath of God is both glorious and, in its way, beautiful.
Or again, we shall be standing at the edge of the wilderness with the Israelites after they had crossed the Red Sea. They had seen God’s glory in the pillars of cloud and fire that had come between them and the Egyptians as he brought them salvation. But perhaps they hadn’t realized before quite so much what it would mean to enter and pass through a desert. As the sun shone on the shimmering sand with scarcely a blade of grass in sight, the men began to wonder what kind of fools they had been to bring their wives and families out to such a place. They thought of bread and butter issues and financial affairs. Where would they get water for the children, and how would they survive? It’s very difficult to be spiritual on this earth if you don’t survive, isn’t it? How will they get the wherewithal to survive? And as they thought of those things, they saw the glory of God come down in the middle of that waste, howling wilderness. It may be that as we’ve come to this week, some of us have left difficult home situations. The rigours of the Lord’s work might even have left some of us short of cash. If that is so, may we find peace in him.
On the boat crossing the Sea of Galilee, when our Lord wanted to teach the apostles a lesson about leaven, he said, ‘Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees . . .’. The very mention of the word leaven set their minds thinking about their daily bread, and how they hadn’t ordered enough bread from the baker to put before the preacher. The rest of our Lord’s sermon was in danger of being completely obliterated in their minds by the swelling up of concerns about mundane things, so our Lord reminded them of what had happened when he had fed the five thousand and the seven thousand. He said, ‘Gentlemen, could you not rely on me to do again what I’ve done before? If you could, then your minds would be clearer to learn these more important things’ (see Matt 16:5–12).
And then we shall stand with the Israelites at the base of Mount Sinai. If we keep ourselves well hidden, we may get special permission to go up alongside Moses to the top, to see the glory and majesty of God revealed, as he comes to make his covenant with Israel in the giving of his law.
As we do so, I dare say that we shall begin to think in terms of that greater glory that is given to us in our ministry for the Lord. When Moses came down from the mountain with the restored tablets of the law in his hands, it is said that his face shone. You’ll remember in 2 Corinthians 3, as Paul refers to that incident he bids us sense the exceeding glory of the ministry of the new covenant that God has put into our hands. ‘The old covenant that Moses had ministered,’ says Paul, ‘was, in the end, a ministry of condemnation and death; and yet, for all that, it was glorious’ (see v. 9). Would you want a God who soft-pedalled the seriousness of sin? There could be no glorious heaven if heaven’s God compromised with evil. Moses was given the ministry of condemnation and death, whereas we are given the ministry of justification and life.
May God fill our hearts as we take a well-deserved rest from our arduous labours for the Lord in our different fields, and give us a renewed sense in our hearts of what it means that ‘our sufficiency is from God, who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant’ (vv. 5–6). May it grip us again and may God light up our hearts with the excellency and wonder of the new covenant that God has entrusted to us. If you’re given a sharp chisel and you’ve enough patience and accuracy, it’s a comparatively easy thing to write a message on tablets of stone. Try writing on the fluid substance of a human heart and personality and make it last. ‘That’s what God has done through me in Corinth City,’ says Paul. ‘Using me as his pen and the Holy Spirit as his ink, the risen Lord has written his letter on human hearts; and it’s a message that shall never fade away.’ Before these days are out may God encourage us to be bold like Moses and pray, ‘Lord, as we study your word, show us your ways’ (see Exod 33:13). You have many people who are dependent upon you spiritually. You are trying to lead them from this garish world to the genuine glories of the eternal city and tabernacle. Like Moses in the wilderness, sometimes you despair, wondering how you will ever get them there. ‘Lord,’ said Moses, ‘if you’re going to tell me to lead this people to the promised land, would you not be realistic enough to tell me how you propose that I should do it?’ When he saw that God in his mercy was willing to show him the way of getting them there, then Moses said, ‘Please show me your glory’ (v. 18). Add this to your prayer, if you would.
It falls to us all at times to play the part of the exhorter and sometimes the rebuker. That ministry is important, but it is scarcely sufficient if we are going to lead people from earth to glory. Sometimes along their Christian way it would seem that every little buttercup glinting in the sun is enough to distract believers to all kinds of irrelevant bypaths. The attractive glories of this present day so tug at their hearts until they appear to have forgotten the goal that God has set before them. How shall we get God’s people who are committed to our charge to overcome those fatal attractions and purposefully move forward to the eternal glory? As Moses considered the problem he said, ‘Lord, show me your glory’.
As God puts us in the cleft of a rock and covers us with his hand, may he again show us his glory so that we in turn may not merely impart information to the people to whom we preach (important as information is), but as we preach his word may we be men whom God can use to communicate a sense of his glory. Join with me in your prayers, that by the end of this week God will so appear to us that our very faces shall shine.
Our aim in these studies
I would like to begin by outlining what I hope and aim to do, particularly in the first two or three lectures. Exodus is a very well-known book. All of us are aware that it is the book in holy Scripture that stands for liberation and freedom. It is the record of God interposing in the affairs of Egypt to let his people go free. Exodus, therefore, is a book from which all of us will want to preach the glorious gospel of freedom.
At what level and in what sense are we meant to apply that message of freedom?
Obviously we ought to start with the historical events and the inspired record of those events in holy Scripture. But if we say, ‘Yes, let’s take the historical meaning and then try to work out its significance for us today’, how shall we go about determining that significance? As the liberation theologians would have it, is this story of liberation there in holy Scripture to tell us that God encouraged his oppressed people in Moses’ day to get together and overthrow and break the political structures that kept them in bondage? They were to assert their rights as human beings and lay claim to justice, since justice is the birthright of every man and woman on planet Earth.
If that was the meaning in Moses’ day, is it therefore the proper application to us? In other words, we too should be concerned with those who are oppressed politically and economically the world through, and should do our best to conscientize them, as Moses did with the Hebrews in the brick kilns of Egypt. We should make them aware that they have a right to justice, and if need be lead them in protests and subversion—activity, at any rate—until they too break the political structures that hold them in bondage, thus setting themselves free both politically and economically. Is that the level at which we should be applying the historical story of Israel’s liberation? Or should we say that the real application is the significance we arrive at when we allow all the details of the historical exodus to become for us a type of the great liberation and redemption obtained for us through Jesus Christ our Lord?
Even in a casual reading of the New Testament, isn’t it obvious that it frequently uses the events of the exodus as some kind of type or prototype of the work of Jesus Christ our Lord? I remind you of Paul’s famous statement in 1 Corinthians 5:
For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. (vv. 7–8)
Or again, the Apostle Peter’s words in chapter 1 of his first Epistle, that we are to remember:
Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by tradition from your fathers; but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot. (vv. 18–19 KJV)
Shall we say then that when we have read the actual facts of the historical story, their true application to us is via typology—taking these things as a picture of the work of Christ? There is not necessarily a choice, of course, of one or the other. We may decide that both ways are truly legitimate. My contention would be, nonetheless, that our first duty would be to determine what the book of Exodus itself is saying as it stands.
I know that some people have objections to that approach. Our friends, the liberation theologians, will tell us that it is a false method to read the Bible as the story is written on the page. They maintain that we must go back to the original event, for it was in the historical event that God made himself known. The Bible record of that event, they will say, is a secondary thing, a later comment on the event, which is already coloured, if not prejudiced, because it comes through the minds of those who were used to write the story down. Our duty therefore is to work back to the actual event itself and see what its significance was at the time.
But even from a practical point of view, if you don’t start first with the story given in Exodus, I can’t see how you will manage to work back to the historical event. If you’re going to work back from the record to the event, you’ll first of all have to decide what the record is. If you don’t know where you’re starting from, you are in grave danger of not knowing how to work back from it to whatever it is you want to work back to!
Secondly, the liberation theologians will tell us that if we come simply to Scripture, we bring the prejudices of our own particular level of society, and we shall look at the story through the spectacles of our own class prejudices. Moreover, the danger will be that, after reading the story and thinking we have got hold of its meaning, we shall merely confirm our prejudices and end up with a very interesting intellectual construct. It may beguile an afternoon class, or even fill a whole term’s theology course in a university, but it will become barren and arid because it doesn’t lead to practical behaviour. The liberation theologians will tell us that the true preparation for understanding the book of Exodus is the actual experience of life first of all. We must be actively engaged in the struggle for the oppressed, and then when we come to Scripture we shall see it from that particular vantage point and be able to rightly interpret what the record is saying.
But if we do that, it seems to me that we shall not get rid of our prejudices. We shall only adopt a different kind of prejudice perhaps. Granted, we all ought to be involved in the struggle for the oppressed, but if that is simply the background from which we come as we consider the book of Exodus, we shall be in danger of interpreting everything in the book from that particular angle. Recognizing that we all have prejudices, I argue that it would be safer to start with the book as it stands, to see what the book itself is saying in so far as we can, and only then proceed with the application of its message. So, how should we make up our minds as to what Exodus itself is saying?
Tracing the thought flow of Exodus
What I propose to do in that direction is to run through with you the actual text of Exodus to try to determine its major movements of thought—its thought flow. Is the book one undifferentiated whole, running from 1:1 to 40:38 in one breathless uninterrupted gallop? Or is it composed of sections or movements of thought? To borrow language from another field, is it like a great work of music that is made up of different movements? There are slow movements, fast movements, in-between movements and so forth, though each movement contributes to the meaning and effect of the whole.
We shall now look, therefore, at the book of Exodus to determine its content—its major thought flow; and having done that we shall ask ourselves how the major movements of thought in the book are related to one another. So, without further theorizing, let’s start into the actual practicalities of tracing the thought flow through Exodus.
Movement I (1:1–6:27)
In chapter 1, we notice that we start off with a list of names of the people who came with Jacob into Egypt. The names go down to verse 5, and then we’re told:
Then Joseph died, and all his brothers and all that generation. But the people of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly; they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong, so that the land was filled with them. (vv. 6–7)
So the Israelites come into Egypt, and they are a small bunch; but lo and behold they begin to increase. The narrative is going up, isn’t it? We’re tracing the flow of it.
At that point, when the nation had increased somewhat, there arose a pharaoh who didn’t know Joseph and he oppressed the people. The Egyptians made them ‘serve with rigour’, says verse 13 (KJV); and now the narrative goes downhill a little.
And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in morter, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field: all their service, wherein they made them serve, was with rigour. (v. 14 KJV)
But verse 12 informs us that ‘the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew’. The narrative is going a little bit uphill again.
In verses 15 to 16, we’re told that the king of Egypt spoke to the Hebrew midwives and ordered them to kill the male children at birth—so we’re going downhill again. But the two midwives feared God and refused to do any such thing—good souls. ‘Well,’ you say, ‘that’s marvellous; they’re making a stand against the old king and the narrative is going uphill now.’
When that didn’t work, verse 22 says that ‘Pharaoh commanded all his people, “Every son that is born to the Hebrews you shall cast into the Nile, but you shall let every daughter live”’. That was bad, and things were going downhill again. But notice the connection of thought between the first and second tactics of Pharaoh. That very command of the king, that they were to kill the male children when they were born by throwing them into the river, was the very thing that caused Moses’ parents to put him into the ark among the bulrushes, where he was discovered by Pharaoh’s daughter. Straight into the palace he went; or nearly straight, after his mother had weaned him and suitably schooled him.
You say, ‘We’re going uphill now. Isn’t that typically marvellous of God! They’re a tiny little nation; they begin to multiply, and the great old grim pharaoh comes after them and tries to oppress them. But you can’t keep them down; they’re like a jack-in-the-box, and the nation multiplies under the hard service. Pharaoh orders the midwives to kill the male babies, but they don’t do any such thing. Then he tries to have the baby boys thrown into the river, and . . . whoops!
Obviously the Israelites are soon going to be freed, if you’ve got a God like that, who can turn the very wrath of man and pharaoh to his own advantage. So here’s the deliverer; they will soon be free. Notice how quickly the narrative passes over Moses’ lifetime and his long years of education in the palace, and then: ‘One day, when Moses had grown up, he went out to his people . . .’ (2:11). First, he delivered one of them from an Egyptian taskmaster by slaying the Egyptian. Then the next day, he came and found two Israelites quarrelling and rebuked them for it. But one of them turned on him and said, ‘Who made you a prince and a judge over us? Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?’ Moses took fright, and when Pharaoh heard of it Moses ran off to Midian (vv. 14–15).
You have to agree it’s a good story. It isn’t just that they were in trouble, they prayed and God sent them a deliverer who brought them out and they lived happily ever after. It’s an exciting story: it lifts you up and then at the appropriate moment it brings you down to the depths.
In Midian, Moses married—oh, dear me!—and got himself anchored in this foreign country (2:21–22). You say, ‘The whole case is ruined now—Moses the great deliverer is lost to Israel’. But God appeared to Moses there, and the narrative begins to come up again. We read in chapter 3 about the great revelation in the burning bush; the declaration of the name of God and God’s affirmation that he had remembered his covenant. And then God commissions Moses to go back and deliver Israel. Moses puts every possible objection in the way, all of them failing, and the second half of chapter 4 tells us of his return to Egypt. Aaron came out to meet him and they gathered the elders of Israel together. Aaron told them what God had said when he appeared to Moses, and did the signs God had given him to do. Now notice the tremendous climax of chapter 4:
And the people believed; and when they heard that the LORD had visited the people of Israel and that he had seen their affliction, they bowed their heads and worshipped. (v. 31)
We saw in chapter 2 that the people had rejected Moses. Now Moses has come back, and the people have believed. You see, if you were going to get the people out of Egypt, you not only had to overcome Pharaoh; first of all, you had to get the people to believe in Moses, or they wouldn’t follow him out. This is a tremendous climax. All it needs now is for Moses and Aaron to go to Pharaoh and demand in the name of the Lord that he let the Israelites go.
So chapter 5 tells us that they went and demanded authoritatively, in the name of the Lord, that Pharaoh let the people go. Pharaoh thought Moses and Aaron had gone absolutely crazy, and instead of letting them go, he ordered the taskmasters to make their slavery ten times worse. Now, instead of being given the straw to make bricks with, they had to go and scrabble around to get it for themselves, and yet deliver the same number of bricks every day.
When the foremen of the Hebrew workers heard this from the taskmasters, they couldn’t believe their ears and sent a deputation to His Majesty themselves, to say, ‘Look here, we’re being beaten more than ever by these unreasonable fellows, who demand that we go and get our own straw for the bricks. The fault is theirs, not ours; they haven’t given us any straw.’ They thought there was a mistake somewhere. But Pharaoh said, ‘You’re idle. Get back to your work, there shall be no straw given to you.’ In that terrible moment, they realized that the command had come from none other than Pharaoh himself. Browbeaten and crushed, they went out from the presence of Pharaoh. As they came out, Moses and Aaron were waiting for them, and they came near to cursing Moses and Aaron:
and they said to them, ‘The LORD look on you and judge, because you have made us stink in the sight of Pharaoh and his servants, and have put a sword in their hand to kill us’. (5:21)
So now the narrative has gone downhill, and Moses protested to the Lord:
Then Moses turned to the LORD and said, ‘O Lord, why have you done evil to this people? Why did you ever send me? For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has done evil to this people, and you have not delivered your people at all.’ But the LORD said to Moses, ‘Now you shall see what I will do to Pharaoh; for with a strong hand he will send them out . . . I am the LORD’. (5:22–6:2)
This is the second declaration of the name of God, and it will be our task on another occasion to ask why there had to be two in this particular part of Exodus. In his words to Moses, God assures the Israelites that he has remembered his covenant and that he’s going to bring them out.
In chapter 6, God says to Moses, ‘Say therefore to the people of Israel . . .’ (v. 6). And in verse 9, we read: ‘Moses spoke thus to the people of Israel, but they did not listen to Moses, because of their broken spirit and harsh slavery’. Whereas they had earlier believed, now the Israelites themselves can no longer find the power in their hearts to believe this promise of liberty.
So the LORD said to Moses, ‘Go in, tell Pharaoh king of Egypt to let the people of Israel go out of his land.’ But Moses said to the LORD, ‘Behold, the people of Israel have not listened to me. How then shall Pharaoh listen to me, for I am of uncircumcised lips?’ (6:10–12)
It’s not only Israel that have lost heart; now it’s Moses himself, and you come to the abyss of the narrative. And with that we’re told, ‘But the LORD spoke to Moses and Aaron and gave them a charge about the people of Israel and about Pharaoh king of Egypt: to bring the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt’ (6:13).
And then there simply comes a long list of names, which concludes the first major movement of thought in the book of Exodus. From the high expectations of deliverance with which it began, after many ups and downs it has landed us in the abyss of despair. Let me suggest to you therefore, that in Movement I—which started with a list of names (1:1–5) and concludes with a list of names (6:14–27)—things are apparently worse off at the end than they were at the beginning.
Movement II (6:28–10:29)
So now comes Movement II:
On the day when the LORD spoke to Moses in the land of Egypt, the LORD said to Moses, ‘I am the LORD; tell Pharaoh king of Egypt all that I say to you.’ But Moses said to the LORD, ‘Behold, I am of uncircumcised lips. How will Pharaoh listen to me?’ And the LORD said to Moses, ‘See, I have made you like God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron shall be your prophet. You shall speak all that I command you, and your brother Aaron shall tell Pharaoh to let the people of Israel go out of his land. But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and though I multiply my signs and wonders in the land of Egypt, Pharaoh will not listen to you. Then I will lay my hand on Egypt and bring my hosts, my people the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great acts of judgement. The Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD, when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring out the people of Israel from among them.’ Moses and Aaron did so; they did just as the LORD commanded them. Now Moses was eighty years old, and Aaron eighty-three years old, when they spoke to Pharaoh. Then the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, ‘When Pharaoh says to you, “Prove yourselves by working a miracle”, then you shall say to Aaron, “Take your staff and cast it down before Pharaoh, that it may become a serpent.”’ So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and did just as the LORD commanded. Aaron cast down his staff before Pharaoh and his servants, and it became a serpent. Then Pharaoh summoned the wise men and the sorcerers, and they, the magicians of Egypt, also did the same by their secret arts. For each man cast down his staff, and they became serpents. But Aaron’s staff swallowed up their staffs. Still Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, and he would not listen to them, as the LORD had said. (6:28–7:13)
Thereupon, we get the plagues; so we see that Moses’ and Aaron’s going into Pharaoh leads to the plagues. The mere demand to Pharaoh in Movement I that he let the Israelites go has achieved nothing. Now Moses and Aaron are sent in to do their signs, and when Pharaoh doesn’t believe the first sign, then come the plagues. There are nine plagues, three groups of three, in the course of which you get the same kind of thing happening. At first, Pharaoh will not believe. With the second plague, he asks for mercy and says he’s going to let them go. You think things are going to happen, but when the plague is removed he doesn’t let them go, and so on and on through the plagues. We needn’t go into the details now. The fluctuation of Pharaoh’s response to God as the various plagues come upon him is a kind of mirror image of the fluctuation of Israel’s faith and fortunes in the first movement.
Coming to the last of the nine plagues, let’s read how it is:
But the LORD hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he would not let them go. Then Pharaoh said to him, ‘Get away from me; take care never to see my face again, for on the day you see my face you shall die.’ Moses said, ‘As you say! I will not see your face again.’ (10:27–29)
So the second movement ends in what appears to be failure, just like the first movement did. It isn’t actually, but it appears to be. Having built up Israel’s faith, the first movement ended at last sunk in the absolute abyss; not only with Israel doubting but with Moses himself saying it was useless. Now, after much fluctuation, the second movement ends with Pharaoh’s complete hardness of heart and his refusal to let them go.
You may argue, perhaps, that the tenth plague—the ‘one plague more’—ought to be included in this second movement:
The LORD said to Moses, ‘Yet one plague more I will bring upon Pharaoh and upon Egypt. Afterwards he will let you go from here’. (11:1)
You say, ‘Why don’t you include that one final plague along with the nine in Movement II?’ You may well be right and perhaps you ought to include it here. For the moment, at any rate, I prefer to take it as the beginning of the next movement. My reason is simply that this ‘one plague more’ is fundamentally and essentially different from all the other plagues. In this one, Moses doesn’t lift up his rod, wave his hands towards heaven, or throw ashes into the air. Nor does Aaron say anything; he doesn’t even appear. This final plague is what the Lord says it’s going to be: it will be his execution of judgment, and in its nature it is different from the other nine.
So let’s look at Movement II again. It starts when God tells Moses to go and speak to Pharaoh (6:28–30). What he had to say on behalf of God was, ‘I am the LORD’. In other words, he had to go and announce the name of God to Pharaoh, and throughout this movement you will find many occasions when that motif is repeated. Let’s look at a few of them:
. . . By this you shall know that I am the LORD . . . (7:17) . . . that you may know that there is no one like the LORD our God. (8:10) . . . that you may know that I am the LORD in the midst of the earth. (8:22) . . . that you may know that there is none like me in all the earth. (9:14) . . . so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth. (9:16) . . . so that you may know that the earth is the LORD’S. (9:29)
Running through all these demonstrations before Pharaoh is the declaration of the name of the Lord—Yahweh or Jehovah, however you prefer to pronounce it. We needn’t spend much time on the details now as we move on to the other movements.
Movement III (11:1–13:16)
As I understand it, we start Movement III in chapter 11. This is going to be the tenth plague—the ‘one plague more’ (v. 1), which is different from all the others. It is the visitation of God’s wrath on Egypt.
You will notice that there is a difference between this plague and all the others that preceded it. In the plagues in Movement II, God put a difference between Israel and the Egyptians. From the fourth plague onward, Israel did not suffer any inconvenience or loss as a result of the plagues. It is said explicitly that God advises Pharaoh, ‘I’m going to do this plague now; but I’ll put a difference between you and my people so that you may know I am the Lord in the midst of the earth’ (see 8:22–24). None of those plagues, therefore, fell on Israel. But this time, when the destroying angel walked through Egypt on that terrible night, it is clear that Israel’s firstborn would have perished along with the Egyptian firstborn if God had not provided the sacrifice of the Lord’s Passover for them. I mention that simple fact because, when we come to consider these movements in detail, we shall need to notice the essential difference between this judgment and the plagues that had gone before. Notice, therefore, how Movement III begins:
The LORD said to Moses, ‘Yet one plague more I will bring upon Pharaoh and upon Egypt. Afterwards he will let you go from here. When he lets you go, he will drive you away completely. Speak now in the hearing of the people, that they ask, every man of his neighbour and every woman of her neighbour, for silver and gold jewellery.’ (11:1–2)
Then we read:
So Moses said, ‘Thus says the LORD: About midnight I will go out in the midst of Egypt, and every firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die . . .’ (11:4–5)
This is concerned with the killing of the firstborn. There follow the directions to Moses and to Israel on how their firstborn could be saved by the sacrifice of the Passover lamb and the sprinkling of the blood upon the doorposts. The judgment falls, and Pharaoh and his people now urge the Israelites to leave (12:30–33). ‘And on that very day the LORD brought the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt by their hosts’ (12:51). Now look at chapter 13:
The LORD said to Moses, ‘Consecrate [sanctify] to me all the firstborn. Whatever is the first to open the womb among the children of Israel, both of man and of beast, is mine.’ (vv. 1–2)
Having announced the theme of the sanctification of the firstborn, God goes on to talk about the institution of the Feast of Unleavened Bread (vv. 3–10). But then he comes back to dealing with this question of the firstborn and gives the detailed requirements (vv. 11–16).
As we pass by rapidly, as a matter of interest we could notice that, while Movement III is certainly concerned with God’s provision of the Passover celebration that should deliver Israel from God’s judgment, it is even more concerned that once Passover has taken place, Israel should institute a memorial of it: ‘This day shall be for you for a memorial day’ (12:14). At that point, the judgment hadn’t happened; the Passover lamb had not yet been killed; the angel hadn’t come through; and the people hadn’t been delivered. This is the initial instruction for keeping the Passover, but even before the judgment descends, God orders them to keep this day permanently throughout their generations as a memorial. When Israel comes out of Egypt, the historian comments:
It was a night of watching by the LORD, to bring them out of the land of Egypt; so this same night is a night of watching kept to the LORD by all the people of Israel throughout their generations. (12:42)
Chapter 13 repeats the idea with the keeping of the Feast of Unleavened Bread:
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. You shall therefore keep this statute at its appointed time from year to year. (vv. 9–10)
There are references to memorials throughout, but we shall have to consider that on another occasion.
Movement IV (13:17–17:16)
In Movement IV, Israel are now out of Egypt, so let’s follow the thought flow.
When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them by way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near. For God said, ‘Lest the people change their minds when they see war and return to Egypt.’ But God led the people round by the way of the wilderness towards the Red Sea. (13:17–18)
Movement IV begins with God deliberately avoiding war, lest when these ex-slaves see war, they haven’t the courage to face it and turn round and go back. When Pharaoh and his hosts came following after them the people panicked. Then we read in chapter 14:
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. The LORD will fight for you, and you have only to be silent.’ (vv. 13–14)
‘You won’t have to fight; the Lord will do all the fighting,’ said Moses, and that’s what happened. In chapter 15, the victory God gave them is celebrated in a great song of praise, and Israel go on their journey from the other side of the Red Sea with their varied experiences.
Come to chapter 17. ‘Then Amalek came and fought with Israel in Rephidim’ (v. 8). Notice what God says: ‘Choose for us men, and go out and fight with Amalek’ (v. 9). Now Israel must fight.
Then the LORD said to Moses, ‘Write this as a memorial in a book and recite it in the ears of Joshua, that I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven.’ And Moses built an altar and called the name of it, The LORD Is My Banner [Jehovah Nissi], saying, ‘A hand upon the throne of the LORD! The LORD will have war with Amalek from generation to generation’. (vv. 14–16)
‘You are to fight now,’ says the Lord; ‘and through all your days. Write it in a book so nobody forgets that I will have war with Amalek from generation to generation.’
So Movement IV begins with Israel shielded from war so they don’t have to fight. But notice that it ends up with Israel being made to fight, trained to fight, and consigned to an everlasting war with Amalek.
Movement V (18:1–24:11)
Movement V begins in chapter 18, and things change completely. When they come into the wilderness of Sinai, they pitch there before the mountain, and Moses’ father-in-law, Jethro, comes with Moses’ wife and his two children. When Moses tells Jethro all the wonderful things that God has done for them, Jethro says:
‘Now I know that the LORD is greater than all gods, because in this affair they dealt arrogantly with the people.’ And Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, brought a burnt offering and sacrifices to God; and Aaron came with all the elders of Israel to eat bread with Moses’ father-in-law before God. (vv. 11–12)
You will notice, therefore, that chapter 18 already begins to introduce the topic of the law and administration. Then comes the famous chapter 19, which contains the revelation at Sinai and the giving of the law. After rehearsing all the laws, eventually the covenant is proposed on the basis of those laws.
Moses came and told the people all the words of the LORD and all the rules. And all the people answered with one voice and said, ‘All the words that the LORD has spoken we will do.’ And Moses wrote down all the words of the LORD. He rose early in the morning and built an altar at the foot of the mountain, and twelve pillars, according to the twelve tribes of Israel. And he sent young men of the people of Israel, who offered burnt offerings and sacrificed peace offerings of oxen to the LORD. And Moses took half of the blood and put it in basins, and half of the blood he threw against the altar. Then he took the Book of the Covenant and read it in the hearing of the people. And they said, ‘All that the LORD has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient.’ And Moses took the blood and threw it on the people and said, ‘Behold the blood of the covenant that the LORD has made with you in accordance with all these words.’ (24:3–8)
One could not overestimate the importance of this great central thing—the revelation of God’s glory on Sinai; the proposal of his covenant with Israel; the role he would give Israel on the condition that they kept that covenant; and the actual making of the covenant. Movement V, therefore, is heavily given over to the law, and when the covenant had been made, we read:
Then Moses and Aaron, Nadab, and Abihu, and seventy of the elders of Israel went up, and they saw the God of Israel. There was under his feet as it were a pavement of sapphire stone, like the very heaven for clearness. And he did not lay his hand on the chief men of the people of Israel; they beheld God, and ate and drank. (24:9–11)
I trust you will begin to recognize the simple artfulness of the historian. Look how Movement I begins and ends with names. Movement II is about declaring the name of the Lord to the Egyptians. Movement III starts and ends with a reference to the firstborn; and Movement IV starts and ends with the question of war. Movement V starts with Jethro the Gentile, now converted and joining in that special sacred meal, with Aaron, Moses and the Israelites eating before God. It ends after the covenant is made, with the elders being invited to come a certain way up the mountain with Moses. The historian records the remarkable fact that they saw God, but God ‘did not lay his hand on them’—he did not destroy them, and they ate and drank. These are the simple devices used by the historian to begin and end the movements.
Movement VI (24:12–31:18)
And it becomes simpler still, if you look at the beginning of Movement VI.
The LORD said to Moses, ‘Come up to me on the mountain and wait there, that I may give you the tablets of stone, with the law and the commandment, which I have written for their instruction.’ (24:12)
‘Come up, that I may give you the two tablets of stone,’ says God. So Moses goes up, and God takes the occasion to give him the blueprint for the building of the tabernacle, for the making of the vestments (the clothes of the priests in which they are to minister before God), and for the making of those parts of the tabernacle furniture that the priests will especially require in their priestly duties (chs. 25–30). Then in chapter 31 the Lord indicates to Moses who the workmen must be to make the tabernacle (vv. 1–11). He reminds Moses that the workmen must still observe the Sabbath law, even when they are making the tabernacle (vv. 12–17). And coming to the end of the movement the Lord gives Moses the two tablets (v. 18).
Movement VII (32:1–34:35)
Chapter 32 now introduces a very different incident. This is the beginning of Movement VII. When the people saw that Moses delayed coming down, they made the golden calf. He came down after this, because God told him that the people had corrupted themselves. Moses was hot with anger; he smashed the tablets of stone, proceeded to discipline the people, and then to intercede with God on their behalf.
What God eventually offered to do was to spare the people from further judgment. He said he would give them the promised land so they could go if they wanted to. There would be grass for the livestock, so they would have plenty of milk. He’s got thousands of bees, so they could have honey too. But he wouldn’t be coming with them (see 33:1–3). ‘It’s all right,’ says God to Moses, ‘you take them and lead them, but I will not go up among them.’ Because of their sin, this whole thing about the tabernacle was in danger. God had proposed that he would come down and dwell among them. Now he is yielding to Moses’ intercession. ‘All right, I’ll spare them; they can have the promised land, but what I will not do is to come and dwell among them.’ Moses persists in his intercession, and finally God grants that he will come and actually dwell among them. More of that on another occasion.
But look now, if you please, at how the movement ends.
When Moses came down from Mount Sinai, with the two tablets of the testimony in his hand as he came down from the mountain, Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone because he had been talking with God. (34:29)
At the beginning of this movement, we saw that Moses delayed coming down from the mountain (32:1); and now at the end his final coming down is in very different circumstances. It also forms one unit, as you can see.
Movement VIII (35:1–40:38)
And finally, there are six chapters that deal with the actual building of the tabernacle. But notice how the movement starts. Chapter 35 begins with a reiteration of the Sabbath regulations. Then they set about the work of producing the tabernacle. Now look at how it ends: ‘So Moses finished the work’ (40:33). You will remember that the Sabbath was instituted on the pattern of God’s work in creation. God made all things in six days and rested on the Sabbath, for the work of creation was complete. And now, this is not God’s work in creation but his crowning work of redemption. It was finished, and the finishing of the work was crowned with the glory of God as God descended to dwell in that tabernacle (40:34–35).
Conclusion
As you can see, for my part I read Exodus as being composed of eight major movements of thought. To be sure, I believe in the total inspiration of the book of Exodus, and if it became necessary I would seek grace to die at the stake for my faith in its inspiration. But I wouldn’t die at the stake for this analysis, and you don’t have to either. You can, however, make it a scaffolding for our thinking in the coming days. Where it can be improved, do tell me; and if you think it should be scrapped altogether, tell me that too.
The relationships between the major movements
In the second part of this session, I want to begin to examine the contents of the eight major movements. Let me borrow an analogy from good old Aristotle and company. You see, if you were going to describe a human hand, you might be content with describing what a hand is composed of. There’s a bit of a square thing in the middle here with four fingers sticking up out of it and one thumb coming out at the side. That’s a hand. I’ve now listed the contents of this part of my anatomy, but it would scarcely satisfy as a description of a hand merely to list the anatomical contents, would it? It would tell you something, but it wouldn’t tell you the really important things. What is a hand? A hand is far more than a square bit of stuff with four fingers coming out of the top and a thumb at the side. To understand what a hand is, you will have to understand what the relationship is between those four fingers and the palm, between the thumb, the four fingers and the palm, and the function of each one of those various members. If you have correctly described the contents, so to speak, but you haven’t described the function and the interrelationship between each of those members, then you really haven’t described the hand.
We have listed in some fashion the contents of the book of Exodus—the eight movements. But what is their relationship? What are they doing? This is the book of liberation. If you’d been writing it, would you have delayed the actual liberation until Movement III? What are the two preliminary movements doing in relation to the story of the liberation? And if you were going to describe the liberation itself, would you limit yourself to Movement III? Is it complete at the end of Movement III, or are the later movements also part of the liberation? What is the relationship between the movements?
What is each movement’s particular function in relation to liberation?
It is along the lines of asking this question that we as preachers are going to begin to see how to preach this book. Because if we come round to agreeing with the Holy Spirit (which is a good thing to do when you’re studying Scripture!), then, if we’re going to preach liberation and freedom the way the Holy Spirit preaches it, we won’t preach liberation to start with; we’ll preach these first two movements, whatever they are about. Therefore, we will need to ask ourselves why those two movements are there and what they are about. What are all the other things about in the other movements, and how do they relate to the topic of liberation? These are questions we will want to explore further.
The two parts of the book
As outlined in the first part of our session, it seems to me that the book of Exodus is composed of eight major movements of thought, and on the piece of paper that I have just given you, I have listed those eight major movements.1
An overview of Exodus
Part 1
| Movement I | 1:1–6:27 | Fire in the bush (3:2) | Promise to Israel of liberation and wealth. |
| Movement II | 6:28–10–29 | Fire on the earth (9:23) | Demand to Pharaoh: Let Israel go to serve God. |
| Movement III | 11:1–13:16 | The lamb roast in fire (12:9) | The one plague more as judgment. |
| Movement IV | 13:17–17:16 | Guiding pillar of fire (13:21) | Escape through sea and desert |
Part 2
| Movement V | 18:1–24:11 | Fire on the mount (19:18) | The goal is God himself. Proposal that Israel be God’s special treasure and privileged priesthood. The conditions: Law and Covenant. Lord’s name = The Lord who brought you out of Egypt. |
| Movement VI | 24:12–31:18 | The continual burnt sacrifice (29:38–40) | Implementing the proposal. Israel to offer wealth for sanctuary and daily sacrifice to God. Israel’s names to be presented before God on jewels of breastplate. |
| Movement VII | 32:1–34:35 | Burning wrath against Israel (32:10) | Israel’s wealth set up as a false god and goal. The false Festival: These be thy gods that brought thee out of Egypt. |
| Movement VIII | 35:1–40:38 | Fire in the tabernacle (40:38) | Israel repent, offer wealth, make and present Tabernacle and vestments. Israel’s names engraved on jewels of breastplate. God’s glory fills the Tabernacle. Lord’s name = God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Israel’s privileged role as firstborn. Israel’s fluctuating faith. Then they repudiate Moses. Lord’s name = God of Nature. The plagues as evidence. Pharaoh’s fluctuating unbelief. Then he defies Moses and God. The Lord’s Passover. Israel’s firstborn not privileged. Israel given great wealth. Festival instituted lest Israel forget the true meaning of Liberation. Lord’s name = Man of War, the Lord who heals, the Lord My Banner. Route chosen lest Israel repent and go back. Israel’s song of faith. Then they rebel against Moses. |
I have also made an attempt—a beginning at least—of trying to understand how those eight major movements relate one to another, what each one’s function is and what it contributes to the meaning of the book as a whole. If my analysis is anywhere near true, we shall notice an interesting device that divides these movements into two groups of four each.
In the setting of the early chapters of the story (1:1–17:16), Israel was enslaved. By God’s good providence, Moses was preserved and taken into the court of Pharaoh where he was educated. When he grew up, he came to visit his brethren and tried to put right their wrongs; but he was rejected as a prince and judge, and fled to Midian. That is the setting and context of the first half of the book.
Notice then, that the second group of four movements (18:1–40:38) begins with a kind of reverse process. By this time Israel is free and out in the wilderness. Now it is Jethro who comes to Moses, and on Jethro’s advice Moses organizes Israel’s judges. You may say that’s a very slight matter, and so it is by itself. It can, however, serve as the proverbial straw in the wind, and the preachers among us will see something there that has to be preached. Israel were a lot of slaves under Egyptian bondage and Moses came to deliver his people. It grieved his heart to find his own people so unjustly oppressed by these wicked capitalists, or whatever they were. He stood up for his brethren and protected them and avenged them against the Egyptian oppressor. Coming out the next day, somewhat to his dismay and alarm, he found two Hebrews striving with each other. ‘Tut, tut, my good men,’ he said, ‘you oughtn’t to do that; you’re Hebrews’, only to find that they rounded on him and rejected him as judge. It is a melancholic fact, that sometimes the oppressed are as unjust as the oppressors. These oppressed Israelites were not for having Moses interfere in their lives, not even if he came as a champion of justice. God delivered the Israelites, liberated them, redeemed them and brought them out into the wilderness; but one of the marks that the redemption and the liberation were genuine was that they would have to submit to Moses as lawgiver and judge. In that simple literary device and structure there is a tremendous practical lesson on what is involved in redemption.
Part 1: The Process of Liberation (1:1–17:16)
The prelude to liberation: Movements I and II (1:1–10:29)
Movement I: Appeal for liberation on the grounds of Israel’s privilege as God’s firstborn (1:1–6:27)
As we were saying in the first part of our session, the actual liberation is not effected until Movement III, so, whatever else you call them, Movements I and II are obviously the prelude to the actual liberation. In the book, why do you need two whole movements as a prelude to liberation? Well, I want to suggest to you that in Movement I Moses is instructed to go to Pharaoh and announce to him the grounds upon which God demands the liberation of Israel (4:22–23). Now let us notice what they are.
Is it that Moses comes to Pharaoh and says, ‘Your Majesty, God has had enough of your injustice, your oppression of the poor and the awful inequality in economic wealth and prosperity among the people under your control. Look at the wealth of the Egyptians and the poverty of the Israelites. Look at the unjust oppression of the taskmasters, whipping their slaves. In the name of justice and equality for all mankind, I bid you to let the Israelites go’?
No, God does not demand their liberation in the name of justice and equality; it’s the very opposite. He demands their liberation in the name of privilege. Let’s read it again: ‘Then you shall say to Pharaoh, “Thus says the LORD, Israel is my firstborn son”’ (4:22). Israel is the firstborn, carrying all the rights and privileges of the firstborn among the nations. It is in the name of privilege and a privileged role that God demands that Pharaoh lets Israel go.
That seems to me to fly straight in the face of much liberation theology. Now, I am not denying that the God of heaven is concerned with the poor. There are multitudes of verses in the Old Testament as well as in the New Testament that proclaim God’s interest in the poor: ‘Whoever oppresses a poor man insults his Maker’ (Prov 14:31), and so on. Israel’s own legislation is full of laws and ordinances that are concerned with protecting the poor—I’m not denying that one little bit. But I am observing that in the book of Exodus, the grounds on which Moses is to demand Israel’s liberation is not justice or equality, but privilege and a privileged role.
Shall we read any further or give it up in disgust? After all, would we not at least have preferred the book to have begun with a tremendous demand for justice and equality? Well, this much is to be observed: the pursuit of justice, both within nations and between the nations of the world, is a very noble cause. Let me say nothing against it. But, as we sit here this afternoon, if our sole hope for the liberation of mankind from injustice and oppression is in the efforts of human beings, then surely we would be in dire pessimism and melancholy. The pursuit of justice has been like the stone of Sisyphus. With great effort, men have rolled the stone up to the top of the hill and seemed to have secured justice for their nation or the world, only for it to slip through tired fingers and roll down to the bottom again.
How often in history people have suffered evil oppression, and deliverers of one kind or another have risen up to deliver them. Then fifty years later, the once oppressed have become the unjust oppressors themselves. Marx and Lenin and their friends got rid of the tsars and all their evil oppression of the poor and substituted themselves. Honecker and Ceaușescu did the same. That’s not the fault of Marxist doctrine, is it? It’s the fault of the ineradicable evil of the human heart. So, I say again, if our total hope for the liberation of mankind and the nations from injustice and oppression was merely in human effort to bring in a world of justice and equality, we might almost give up hope right now. There is a bigger hope, and at the first level it is not to be found in the question of equality but in the special privileged role that God gave to Abraham and his descendants. That unique movement in history began with Abraham, coming at last to Abraham’s seed, the Messiah (see Gal 3:16). Here is hope indeed for the world.
So then, as we read of it in Movement I, this prelude to liberation was not to encourage Israel to engage in political activism. They were not to break the structures of society and set themselves free from the brick kilns through subversion. It was in the announcement to Israel as well as to Pharaoh that God had chosen Abraham and the patriarchs; he had made a covenant with them and now he was about to honour that covenant and put it into effect.
Movement II: Appeal for liberation on the grounds of God’s sovereign right as creator (6:28–10:29)
We come now to Movement II. Why are there two movements before the great story of liberation? First of all, in Movement I we have seen God’s message, largely to Israel, regarding the covenant he made with their fathers, and his promise that he remembers that covenant and has come down to put it into effect. Movement II will put forward the other side of the story, as God reveals himself to Pharaoh. To put it another way, in Movement I at the burning bush and then subsequently on another occasion, God reveals his name to Moses and thus to the Israelites as the I AM, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. But in Movement II, it is expressly said that God sends Moses to Pharaoh to make Pharaoh know the name of Jehovah, what it stands for, and these are the grounds, therefore, upon which God will demand from Pharaoh the release of the Israelites.
Now notice the message that is repeated so many times in Movement II. It is not simply, ‘Pharaoh, you have been a monster of injustice in enslaving the Israelites. Men and women have a birthright: they have the right to be free, to make up their own minds, to settle their own destiny.’ It is not simply, ‘Let the people go free’—the repeated message to Pharaoh is this: ‘Let my people go that they may serve me’. The difference is not between service and no service or between service and freedom; the difference is between service to Pharaoh and service to God.
One of the leading Hebrew words, and therefore ideas, in the book of Exodus is going to be abodah and its related verb abad—the term for service. In English Bibles it tends to be translated by different words from time to time as is suitable; so sometimes it’s service and sometimes it’s worship. It is one of the most frequent words in Exodus, and certainly one of the leading ideas. It’s repeated many times. For instance:
And the Egyptians made the children of Israel to serve with rigour: And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in morter, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field: all their service, wherein they made them serve, was with rigour. (1:13–14 KJV)
How many more times will the historian repeat the word? The book is about service, and the question is, will it be service under Pharaoh or service under God?
In Movement II, when God comes to Pharaoh and begins to demonstrate his name, naturally he doesn’t say, ‘I am the God of your fathers, Abraham [and so forth]’. That would be irrelevant when talking to Pharaoh, wouldn’t it? To Pharaoh, he’s the God of creation—the God of the whole world. He is the LORD, unique among the gods, the owner of the planet: ‘The earth is the LORD’S’ (9:29). Nor is he some absentee landlord who made the world but has run away and left it. He demonstrates to Pharaoh that he is the Lord in the midst of the earth. It is his earth; this material creation is his.
That is an interesting thing, and at once it shows us that Movements I and II are balanced. In Movement I, the focus is on the God of redemption: the God who began the whole story of redemption with Abraham, which will lead to the Messiah. But in Movement II, the focus is on the God of creation. Notice the order. Movement II says that the God of redemption is, in fact, the God of creation. You will meet that order of events in the New Testament: ‘We have redemption through the blood of Christ,’ says Paul (see Col 1:14 KJV). So here he speaks first of redemption. And who is Christ? ‘He is the one,’ says Paul, ‘through whom all things were made, and for whom they exist’ (see v. 16)—the God of redemption is the God of creation.
What God is protesting against is Pharaoh’s complete perversion of the material aspects of life; grinding God’s people down with rigorous service in the material things of life, so they are not free to worship and serve him in the spiritual things. That’s his first protest. It is an utter perversion, I repeat, of all the glorious material things of the creation around us. It is a perversion of the organization of life and its necessary engagement in material things, if some tyrant so forces our noses to the grindstone—so forces us to be occupied with material things—that we have no time for the worship of God.
Secondly, God now insists upon his rights. In Movement I, it was Israel’s rights: ‘Israel is my firstborn’. In Movement II, it’s God’s rights: ‘I made the world, Pharaoh; these are my people and I demand that they should be free to serve me’. Two sides, then, are evident in the prelude to redemption.
Let us embroider that for just a moment in the remaining moments of this session. When God demanded of Pharaoh that he let the people go so that they should worship him, some commentators have felt that God was being a little bit less than completely honest. God’s intention was to have Israel leave Egypt and never come back again. He ought to have told Pharaoh that straight to start with, but he made out that all they needed to do was go outside and have a little festival and then come back again. Well, we shall have to deal with that when it comes.
For now, let us see what, in actual fact, Exodus tells us the goal of liberation was, for the second half of the book is concerned with the goal of liberation. In Movement V, at the great revelation of God on Mount Sinai, he says to Moses:
Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the people of Israel: You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant . . . you shall be to me a kingdom of priests . . . (19:3–6)
The goal from the start was genuine, and God would be satisfied with nothing else. Israel had been chosen for the privileged role of being priests on behalf of mankind to God, and to minister to him in that capacity. In furtherance of that objective, Movements VI and VIII tell how he commanded the Israelites to build a tabernacle so that their God might dwell among them, and they might serve him there. It is an essential part of the structure of the book that the liberation effected in the first half has this freedom to serve God as its goal, which will then percolate through the details.
In chapter 1, at the beginning of the first movement, we are told how Pharaoh used Israel to build treasure cities to store Egypt’s collection of wealth (v. 11). When Israel came out of Egypt it is said many times over that they had to ask, and the Egyptians would give them considerable wealth in the form of gold, gems and clothing. If nothing else, these were the wages that were owing to the Israelites, which the Egyptians had kept back unjustly. When God freed them, he insisted that the Egyptians settle all the arrears. Thus, Israel were given considerable wealth.
What was the aim of wealth? In the end, how would you define it? See now how the second part of the book is related to the first. When Israel have been brought out, God invites them to bring their wealth as an offering so that they should make a tabernacle where he may dwell among them. For that purpose, they used their gold, their gems and their silver. There’s a delightful little touch in this book of Exodus when we’re told that they gave their gems for the jewels on the high priest’s vestments. He had one great jewel on each of his shoulders, and on each jewel was engraved six names of the tribes of Israel. On his breast he had a breastplate with twelve jewels, and on each jewel was the name of a tribe of Israel. When the high priest entered the Holy Place in his stately vestments as the representative of his people before God, he carried the names of Israel upon his breast as a memorial.
Mark how Exodus is weaving its themes together. In many of the movements, the leading idea is the revelation of the name of God to men—first to Israel and then to Egypt. But in other movements it is the reverse: it is the taking of men’s names and presenting them to God, each name on a jewel.
What better description of wealth could you have than God revealing his name to us, and we in turn having our names presented before God? What is it that gives me significance? Who are you anyway? Are you Tom, or Hans, or Dieter or something else? ‘What’s in a name?’ said Shakespeare. What is our significance? Wherein lies our worth and our value? It isn’t ultimately in how much money we have piled up in our storehouses, but in the fact that we are creatures of God, to whom God has made known the glory of his name—that is, his person. And in response our names are known to him, and we mean something to God. That’s wealth.
See the difference then, between Pharaoh taking Israel’s energies, their time and talents, and grinding them down in mere materialism, and Israel’s great high priest, appointed by God, leading Israel and all their activities in the service of God.
We’ve now covered Movements I and II, and despite all I’ve said about materialism, there’s enough of it in me to say that dinner calls. Let’s interrupt our studies here, and in our session this evening we’ll come back to this topic of the relationship of the movements to each other.
The Process and Goal of Liberation (1:1–17:16)—Part 1 continued2
In our first session this afternoon, I suggested to you that the book of Exodus is composed of eight major movements of thought. We then set ourselves to consider those movements and to ask how they are related to each other, what is the function of each one and its contribution to the message of the book as a whole. We proceeded to notice that, before the great event of liberation, there are two movements that by definition therefore are the prelude to liberation. They put forward the case for liberation from two opposite points of view. The first is the basis of appeal on the grounds of Israel’s privilege—they are God’s firstborn. Secondly, the ground of demand before Pharaoh is God’s sovereign right as the creator of the world.
Liberation effected and maintained: Movements III and IV (11:1–17:16)
Movement III: Getting Israel out of Egypt (11:1–13:16)
Now we come to Movement III, the actual liberation itself, and we should notice at once how that liberation is effected. Not, of course, by the Israelites themselves joining in some protest movement. The liberation is effected directly by God himself without an intermediary. Secondly, we should notice that when God interposes to deliver Israel, he does not interpose on the grounds of privilege (that Israel are special). In the second series of plagues God made the difference between Israel and Egypt, to make a particular point to Pharaoh. Now, when God rises up to liberate them, there is no difference between Israel and the Egyptians. The method of liberation is the judgment of God upon Egypt, and in the slaying of the firstborn Israel were subjected equally with the Egyptians. There is no difference when it comes to deserving the judgment of God, ‘for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’ (Rom 3:23)—the oppressors are sinful and the oppressed are sinful. Israel were delivered by God’s provision of a sacrifice for them. The blood of that sacrifice was sprinkled upon their doorposts and the Israelites hid behind it; and when the destroying angel passed through, God passed over them and protected them.
Movement IV: Getting Egypt out of Israel (13:17–17:16)
Now let us notice that, just as there were two movements in the prelude, there are two movements in the actual liberation. They are liberated in Movement III, but in Movement IV they likewise needed to be liberated. So we have to ask ourselves why two movements should be devoted to the discussion of liberation, and we could give a whole series of reasons. While Movement III results in deliverance from Pharaoh, notice that the actual protection is from the wrath of God. The first thing that Israel is given in Movement III is deliverance and salvation from the destroying angel, and that speaks volumes about the question of liberation as Exodus understands and portrays it.
It is in Movement IV that Israel is eventually and finally delivered from the power of Pharaoh, for when Israel came out of Egypt and arrived at the Red Sea, Pharaoh tried to pursue them and bring them back. If you wanted to sum it up theologically, I suppose you would say that in Movement III they were saved by blood, the blood of the Passover lamb, and in Movement IV they were saved through water. Throughout the whole of Scripture, you will find that same expression of salvation here and there; it consists of two parts—salvation by blood and salvation by water. When we come to study the building of the tabernacle, we shall find that in its court, which was the road of approach to God, there were two major vessels: the larger copper altar and then the copper laver. Both of those vessels offered cleansing: the altar by blood and the laver by water.
The New Testament will likewise talk to us about both types of cleansing. We read in the first Epistle by John, ‘The blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin’ (1:7). Whereas in Ephesians Paul remarks that ‘Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word’ (5:25–26). ‘This is he’, says John, ‘who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ; not by the water only, but by the water and the blood’ (1 John 5:6). This is one of the leading themes connected with redemption in holy Scripture. But before I go off in that direction, let me restrain myself and come back to the book of Exodus.
Movements III and IV stand as twins, not only historically but theologically as well. They tell us of Israel being saved and delivered from the power of Pharaoh. Movement III tells us how God got Israel out of Egypt, and Movement IV tells us how he kept them from going back into Egypt. When we come to study Movement IV we shall see more than once that, having been delivered, Israel weren’t quite sure that they wanted to be delivered after all. Looking back, they felt that life would have been more pleasant had they stayed in Egypt, and Moses had an enormous task to persuade them to continue with their liberation and not give it all up and go back. This is a true-to-life story. You can put it this way if you like: in Movement III God was getting Israel out of Egypt, and in Movement IV God was getting Egypt out of Israel.
THE LESSON OF THE MANNA
One of the leading stories in Movement IV will be the lesson God taught them about their attitude to their literal daily bread, their physical food: how they should be provided with it and so forth. In other words, it is the lesson of the manna, and how they should regulate their working week. In Egypt they had earned what bread they got through their hard service and slavery. Now that God has them in the wilderness, he must teach them what the true attitude to daily work and the earning of their daily bread is, so that they don’t go about it as unregenerate slaves. They, like us, must learn the basic lesson of how these things can be done in the true and godly fashion of free sons and daughters of God.
2: The Process and Goal of Liberation (2): Levels of Interpretation and Thought Models
Part 2: The Goal of Liberation (18:1–40:38)
Now we come to the second half of the book and the second four movements. Of course, what is written in this book is history, but earlier we noted the narrative device whereby the setting of the second half echoes the setting, or is a mirror image, of the first half.
The goal proposed: Movements V and VI (18:1–31:18)
Movement V: God reveals himself as the goal (18:1–24:11)
Israel are now liberated and Moses has managed to keep them from going back to Egypt. But liberated for what? What is the goal of liberation? And here, if we were not thinking too carefully, we could easily jump to the conclusion that the goal of liberation was for Israel to exchange the bitterness, the poverty and the slavery of Egypt for the enjoyments and pleasures of Canaan. Earlier chapters have told us how God informed Moses that he had come down to take Israel out of Egypt and bring them into the inheritance he had promised to Abraham and the patriarchs. Should we not say, therefore, that the goal of redemption is the great inheritance in Canaan? But if we fell into that mistake, we would stand in danger of vitiating the whole purpose of liberation.
As the second half of the book of Exodus is now going to show us, God did not wait until Israel had crossed the wilderness before he came and made himself known to them. God did not set them free from Egypt and say, ‘Now look here, Israelites, I’ve prepared Canaan for you. If I were you I would journey steadfastly, and when you get there call on me and I’ll meet you when you arrive.’ No, they had only been out of Egypt for a few months when the transcendent Lord came down and stood on Mount Sinai to meet Israel and declare to them what the goal of their liberation was:
You yourselves have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession among all peoples, for all the earth is mine; and you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the people of Israel. So Moses came and called the elders of the people and set before them all these words that the LORD had commanded him. (19:4–7)
And then follows that heart-moving spectacle when Moses brings the redeemed people of God out to meet him (vv. 17–20). Later rabbis talked of this event as Moses being the middleman, or the groom’s man who took the bride and introduced her to her husband. Is there a more exalted ministry than to introduce a man or woman personally to their Creator? It is the goal of redemption, the goal of life. If you’ll permit me to run off into typology, allegory, or any such other desperate thing, I would say that it is so with our redemption too, is it not?
Why do I say that? All sorts of reasons could be given, among the humblest of them all is to escape from hell. That’s a good and valid reason. We are to flee from the wrath to come, as John the Baptist put it (Matt 3:7; Luke 3:7). We are to flee for refuge and hold fast to the hope set before us (Heb 6:18). But valid as it is to escape the pains of hell, it’s not the highest reason, is it? Why would you want to go to heaven? You say, ‘According to well-founded rumours, heaven is going to be so delightful, with golden streets instead of potholed tarmac’. Is that why we want to go to heaven?
Would you want to go to heaven if God wasn’t there? What is the goal of redemption? The magnificent message of the book of Exodus is that Israel didn’t have to wait until they actually entered into their promised inheritance before they could begin to realize the goal of their redemption, for God himself came down on Mount Sinai in the wilderness and proposed himself as the goal of that redemption. ‘I have brought you to myself, and now you have the option: would you care to be my treasured possession to serve me in that privileged role of being my priests?’
So Movement V, then, is about the manifestation of the name of God on Mount Sinai; his proposal to the people and the conditions for that proposal to be realized, namely their willingness to obey his word and keep his covenant. In consequence, the laws (some of them at least) involved in that covenant are then set out in detail, most of them regulating secular life (see chs. 20–23).
Movement VI: God proposes to dwell among Israel in the tabernacle (24:12–31:18)
But notice how their deliverance and the goal of redemption in Movement VI complements Movement V. God proposes that they build a sanctuary where he may dwell among them. From between the cherubim on the ark he will meet them and speak with them. In response, Aaron, Israel’s first high priest, will lead Israel’s worshipful service of the Lord. The goal of redemption is beginning to be realized while Israel are still in the desert, and before they have reached their great inheritance.
The goal rejected, restored and achieved: Movements VII and VIII (32:1–40:38)
Movement VII: Israel chooses a false god (32:1–34:35)
Now, finally, the last two movements. You will see at once how they are related to Movements V and VI, for Movement VII tells us how Israel at one stage, and very soon—while Moses still hadn’t come down from the mountain—rejected the goal God had put before them. ‘You see,’ says the historian in his simple narrative art, ‘when the people saw that Moses delayed coming down from the mountain, they said to Aaron, “Up, make us gods who shall go before us”’ (see 32:1). I don’t know who first proposed it. Perhaps a young gentleman pointed out to his neighbour: ‘Have you considered in this last week or so what an impossible situation we’re in? Here we are, sitting at the bottom of a mountain in the middle of the desert, waiting for this Moses to come back. Well, he’s been gone for four or five weeks, and when he went he had no visible means of support. I mean, he can’t have survived up there; he must be dead. We’re sitting here twiddling our thumbs, quickly getting nowhere at all, waiting for him to appear again. It’s an impossible situation to be in; you can’t spend your life sitting at the bottom of a mountain, going nowhere. We must have some goal to aim at, something to lead us on to make our way through the wilderness. We need to make gods to go before us.’
You do have to have a goal in life, don’t you? You can’t sit still; you’ve got to be aiming at something, or else you’ll go round in circles. What will you aim at? And though they covered it up by using the same name of Jehovah for the idol they’d made, they now proposed quite a different goal for themselves and began to follow it. It brought upon them God’s great discipline.
If God made you the offer he made to Moses, what would you have said?—‘Moses, look here, I’ve had enough of these Israelites; I shall destroy them and make a nation of you’ (see 32:10). But Moses pleaded on their behalf and the Lord relented (v. 14). Then subsequently the Lord sent a plague on the people, and he said to Moses: ‘I shall allow the nation to continue, and they can have Canaan as well. But I will not go up among you’ (see 33:3).
If we had been the Israelites, what would we have said to that?—‘Well, now that’s a pity, Lord. We were looking forward to spending some time with you when we got to Canaan—at least once a week. But if you feel obliged not to come with us, we’re sorry about that. On the other hand, we hear that it’s a good place, and we’ll have a bungalow of our own there and a car and three acres and flowers and honey and such things. Sorry you can’t come, but we look forward to enjoying it, and thank you very much for it.’
Movement VII shows the terrible disaster that befell Israel when they got muddled up in their minds about this very matter of what the goal of redemption was.
Movement VIII: Israel repents, is restored and achieves the goal of redemption (35:1–40:38)
In my simplistic fashion that is how I would construe the relationships between the eight major movements of this book. I’ve tried to make the point that, in my estimation, Exodus is not a patchwork of odd sources put together rather clumsily, and every now and again contradicting each other. Exodus is a narrative that has been exceedingly carefully planned, arranged and constructed, in which each movement plays its peculiar function. You cannot remove one of the movements without rending this most beautiful garment.
My next contention would be that it is not a matter merely of seeing literary patterns in the narrative of Scripture, though there are literary patterns of course; but that the very literary structure of the book itself is an integral part of the message the book is getting across. Therefore, it is of great practical benefit to those of us who preach to observe the literary structure of the book, so that in using the details we may preach them in that particular proportion in the particular function that the Holy Spirit himself designed.
I trouble you to stay a little bit longer on this matter of structure, and to consider now the major movements of the book side-by-side, instead of one after the other.
The book of Exodus
| Part 1 | Part 2 | |
| Movement I (1:1–6:27) | Movement V (18:1–24:11) | |
| Movement II (6:28–10:29) | Movement VI (24:12–31:18) | |
| Movement III (11:1–13:16) | Movement VII (32:1–34:35) | |
| Movement IV (13:17–17:6) | Movement VIII (35:1–40:38) |
On this second sheet,3 all I have done is list the eight movements, four on one side and the other four on the other, side-by-side this time. From each movement I have drawn a few details that show a certain relationship between the first and second halves of the book—doubtless you could think of many more. It is not simply a question of playing crossword puzzles with holy writ but of observing connections that will prompt us to see what things should loom large in our expositions and applications.
In Movement I, on the left-hand side, you see prominent there, God’s self-revelation to Moses in the flames of the burning bush and God’s emphatic declaration that Israel’s deliverance is to be based on his covenant with Abraham. Movement V balances that with the revelation of God in the flames of Mount Sinai, where it is not Israel’s deliverance but their status, role and behaviour, which are made to be dependent not on Abraham’s covenant but on the covenant at Sinai.
The very arrangement of the material in the history will drive us to ask, ‘What is the relationship between those two covenants: are they simply variations on the same theme and of no particular significance?’ Are the covenants the same, or are they different? Would it have upset you from a theological point of view, if deliverance from Egypt had been dependent upon keeping the covenant made at Sinai?
Or, if you’d like to come down to Movement III, you will see that this is the section dealing with the Passover. As we observed in our earlier session, in giving Moses the directions for the Passover, God emphasized that they were to keep the Passover as a feast to the Lord forever. The Hebrew word for such a feast is chag, which is the equivalent of the Arabic word hajj. So, even before the angel of destruction had stalked through the land, before they’d begun to keep the Passover and before their liberation, God insisted that Israel were to keep this regularly as a memorial throughout their generations.
Why all the fuss? How would Israel ever forget how they came out of Egypt? Well, look at Movement VII on the other side, where the gold that Israel took from the Egyptians as they came out on that memorable night of Passover they now turned to the making of a golden calf. They said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’ (32:4), and Aaron had it broadcast over the news: ‘Tomorrow shall be a feast to the LORD’ (32:5). How was it possible that they forgot so soon? The opposition of Movement VII to Movement III in the narrative is not just a little artistic device; it is pressing home directly and violently the seriousness of what was done when they made the golden calf—the seriousness of allowing the people of God to forget exactly who and what had brought them out of Egypt.
If God ordained the Passover as a memorial of how the Israelites got out of Egypt, then can we as Christians not help remembering that our blessed Lord instituted the taking of bread and wine to remind us how we were delivered?
‘Why the need for it?’, you say.
Let none of us suppose we are wiser than our Lord. It is so desperately possible for the people of God, when they’re a few miles down the road of experience, to forget exactly what it was that delivered them.
I’ll just briefly mention here some of the differences in Israel’s attitudes and behaviour that we see emerge in Movement VII, but we’ll come round to mentioning them again on another occasion. The gold, the gems, the silver and whatnot that Israel got when they came out of Egypt were what you might call the by-products of redemption. It wasn’t the gold and the silver that brought them out of Egypt; that was only a result of their being redeemed. But at this stage in the wilderness, they declared that these were the very means that got them out. Then they made the by-products the goal, instead of making God the goal. In doing so, they still talked about Jehovah (v. 5). They used the same language, but now they didn’t mean exactly the same as what the term Jehovah really meant.
Exodus is a carefully integrated literary whole
I don’t wish to go into any more detail about it now; all I wish to argue here is that, if we take the two halves of the book and put them side-by-side and notice their similarities and contrasts, we shall once more be led to the conclusion that the book of Exodus is an exceedingly carefully constructed book. I emphasize that because, as I said earlier, it has been a current theory this last one hundred and fifty years that Exodus is a patchwork quilt of all kinds of sources. Well, it may be, but when it is stated that they are put together in a rather unsatisfactory fashion and are all over the place—you can see the unequal joins and contradictions and thus and thus and thus—then one wonders where those who propose such things learned the art of literary criticism.
In my humble estimation at any rate, the book is a very carefully constructed literary whole. Why does that matter? I come back to where we began. Many people will tell you that certain parts of Exodus are early, and they are valid; other parts come from later sources and are not valid. You’ll notice that the liberation theologians are tempted towards that kind of solution. When they have chosen parts that seem to favour their particular theology, they will openly reject other parts as being later and rather degenerate additions to the original, pure stock. Other theologians take the opposite view. They hold that the early bits are primitive and the later bits are more sophisticated.
I want to suggest to you by means of this literary analysis that, whatever material Moses may have used in the construction of the book, the book as a book, as it comes before us, is a carefully integrated literary whole. And if we believe that the Holy Spirit’s inspiration lay behind the human author, then, in order to come at the Holy Spirit’s message, we must be prepared to allow the book to be the whole that he constructed it to be.
Other levels of interpreting Exodus
In our previous sessions, we suggested that the sensible thing to do in trying to understand the book of Exodus and its message for us today is to start with what it has to say about the history of God’s liberation of his people. At that level we can bring many a lesson to ourselves by the use of the simple means of analogy. But now I want to begin to say some things about those other levels at which Scripture indicates we should try to understand the exodus event. I say that in the general context of what has brought a certain amount of uncertainty to preachers and others over the past twenty years and more.
Very early on in the church, the stories of the book of Exodus were allegorized, if that’s the right word to use about them, by people like Origen and Augustine. That kind of interpretation of Scripture has not been without its practitioners in the ages that have followed, and taken to such extremes that people have reacted strongly against allegorizing interpretations. So much so that in more recent years and decades the very word typology was enough to make a true theologian turn pale. It was left in large measure to Leonhard Goppelt, a liberal theologian, to restore the honour and validity of typological interpretation of the Old Testament. Nonetheless, in some quarters nowadays it is laid down as a canon of interpretation that we should not say that anything in the Old Testament is a type unless the New Testament explicitly says it is. If the New Testament does not say so, then we should keep as far away from typological interpretation as we possibly can.
So how are we to proceed when it comes to the book of Exodus? May we or may we not say that certain things are types, and what are types anyway? I want, therefore, to make a range of observations. We shall start this evening, and it will have to continue a little bit tomorrow before we eventually get down to considering the detailed exposition of the text.
Passover as a prophecy
If I may start with Passover: as we have just considered, from the very first God said it was to be an event that Israel must remember. It was a memorial, and in celebrating it each year all down the centuries, Israel have looked back to that great deliverance. And because they have benefitted from that prime deliverance as a nation, when they celebrate the Passover, they like to feel that somehow they were involved in the original Passover. Just as we Christians have been taught to remember our Lord in breaking the bread and drinking the cup of wine, and to believe and acknowledge that we are the beneficiaries of that great redemption accomplished and procured for us so long ago.
As the centuries went by, Israel not only looked back to the Passover, but it is evident in many places in the Old Testament that they began to see it forming for them a picture or precedent of an even greater deliverance that was to come. They pictured that coming deliverance in terms of the original, historic deliverance. Let’s immediately go to some passages in Isaiah where he talks of God’s future deliverance of the nation:
And the LORD will utterly destroy the tongue of the Sea of Egypt, and will wave his hand over the River with his scorching breath, and strike it into seven channels, and he will lead people across in sandals. And there will be a highway from Assyria for the remnant that remains of his people, as there was for Israel when they came up from the land of Egypt. (11:15–16)
If this passage does no more, it presents a parallel between the original Passover deliverance and crossing the Red Sea, and this future deliverance that God will accomplish for them. It is not an isolated and unique text.
Let’s look at Isaiah 51:9–11: ‘Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the LORD; awake, as in days of old, the generations of long ago. Was it not you who cut Rahab in pieces, who pierced the dragon? Was it not you who dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep, who made the depths of the sea a way for the redeemed to pass over?’—a reference to ancient Egypt and God’s deliverance of Israel at the exodus. If God did that in the past and God is consistent with himself, then he will do it again in the future: ‘And the ransomed of the LORD shall return and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away’ (35:10).
Again, one could quote Isaiah:
Then he remembered the days of old, of Moses and his people. Where is he who brought them up out of the sea with the shepherds of his flock? Where is he who put in the midst of them his Holy Spirit, who caused his glorious arm to go at the right hand of Moses, who divided the waters before them to make for himself an everlasting name, who led them through the depths? Like a horse in the desert, they did not stumble. (63:11–13)
And now, on the basis of God’s action in the past to deliver, the prophet is looking forward to God’s great deliverance for Israel in the future. In the prophet’s mind, therefore, the historic event becomes a prototype, if not a type, of the coming future deliverance.
Passover as a prototype
Now let us turn from that to our Lord and his interpretation of Passover. Already, Passover in the Old Testament has become a kind of prophecy, if you like, of a great future messianic deliverance. Let’s look at what our Lord said in the Gospel of Luke:
And he said to them, ‘I have earnestly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer. For I tell you I will not eat it until it is fulfilled in the kingdom of God.’ (22:15–16)
Here our Lord is commenting upon Passover, indicating that it is about to be fulfilled, which immediately raises a question. In what sense is our Lord using the word fulfilled? After all is said and done, Passover was the memorial of a historic event. It wasn’t originally a prediction, was it? Not like, for instance, the prediction in Isaiah: ‘Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son’ (7:14). Was Passover ever a prediction? No; not in the normal sense of that term. If it was not a prediction, then how can it be fulfilled?
Unkind critics have made merry with some of the passages in the New Testament that claim that such and such an event in the life of our Lord was a fulfilment of an Old Testament passage. One such instance is Matthew’s quotation from the prophet Hosea (11:1), where he tells us of how our Lord was taken by his parents down to Egypt to escape the wrath of Herod. When Herod was dead, an angel of the Lord summoned Joseph and Mary and told them that it was safe to come back, so they brought our Lord out of Egypt into Palestine. Matthew says that this happened so that the prophetic Scripture might be fulfilled, ‘Out of Egypt I called my son’ (2:15).
As I say, unkind critics have had a field day over what they consider to be Matthew’s unfortunate mistake. Their theory is as follows: Matthew had the basic conviction that, by definition, every prophecy in the Old Testament was to be fulfilled in the life of Christ; so Matthew went hunting around for prophecies of Christ in the Old Testament and collected a number. He then looked at the life of Christ and picked out events that he thought were fulfilments of those predictions. He came across the prophecy that said, ‘Out of Egypt I called my son’, so he looked for something in the life of Christ that should fulfil that prophecy too. He didn’t find one—at least, not in his sources—so he thought that he’d better make up a story for it. Surely it was true that the prophecy would be fulfilled, so he made up a story of our Lord’s flight to Egypt and his return, recorded it and remarked that it fulfilled the Old Testament prediction. Wiser heads than Matthew’s at last got working on the Bible and found out that the original statement in Hosea, ‘Out of Egypt I called my son’, was never a prediction in the first place. It was but the record of a historical fact, that when Israel as a nation was in its infancy, God called them out of Egypt. And they said, ‘Poor old Matthew, he’s been caught out. He thought it was a prophecy, and it wasn’t. He made up a fulfilment for something that never was predicted.’
If you hold that view yourself, I suspect you have felt some problems about the divine wisdom in getting Matthew to record the life of Christ. Why didn’t he delay the coming of our Lord until wiser heads were around to record the events more appropriately?
But perhaps then, the error is in the misunderstanding of what the word fulfilment means. It is true that the New Testament uses the term in one sense of the fulfilling of a prediction, but obviously also in a larger sense than that. In James 2, for instance, James is talking about the necessity that we justify our profession of faith by our works. To encourage us along that line, he cites the experience of Abraham, and says, ‘Was not Abraham our father justified by works . . .? And faith was completed by his works (vv. 21–22). He was justified by his works in that he offered up Isaac his son upon the altar. Verse 23 says, ‘and the Scripture was fulfilled that says, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness”’.
But come now! The Scripture in question is Genesis 15:6, which says, ‘And he [Abraham] believed the LORD, and he counted it to him for righteousness’. As far as I can make out, that wasn’t a prediction either, was it? It was a statement of fact—God justified the man there and then. How can the record of that fact, ‘And he believed the LORD, and he counted it to him for righteousness’, be fulfilled when Abraham subsequently offered Isaac upon the altar?
It seems to me that the answer lies in understanding what indeed was happening when Abraham offered Isaac on the altar. As Paul subsequently explains in Romans 3 and 4, when Abraham was justified by faith he was putting his faith in God and solely in God—in a God who could bring life out of death; and out of the bodies of Abraham and Sarah, which were as good as dead, bring a new life, the promised seed (4:17–19). Abraham’s faith was in God. In the intervening years, Abraham’s faith wobbled a bit, did it not? But it was ready when at last God put that faith to the ultimate test. When Isaac had grown up, God comes to Abraham and says, in effect, ‘Abraham, regarding your future and all the blessings I have promised you, in what does your faith rest for the fulfilment of those promises? Does it rest in me or in Isaac?’
Abraham said: ‘Well, Lord, in you of course, not in Isaac, in you’.
‘Right,’ says God, ‘shall we now just demonstrate that, Abraham? If you wouldn’t mind, give me Isaac’ (see Gen 22:1–2).
As the writer to the Hebrews pertinently remarks, there was Abraham the great patriarch, taking Isaac in whom humanly speaking were vested all the promises of God, and he was offering him up on the altar to God (11:17–19). He stood there bereft of Isaac with only God left, thus demonstrating by his works that his faith was in God alone. What had already been true, that Abraham believed God, was now exemplified and demonstrated at that higher level, and his faith was shown to be the true faith that it was. James comments that Genesis 15:6—‘And he believed the LORD, and he counted it to him for righteousness’—was fulfilled in Genesis 22:2 on Mount Moriah (see Jas 2:23).
So in Luke 22 our Lord is saying, ‘I must keep this Passover with you before I suffer. I will not eat it again until it be fulfilled in the kingdom of God’ (see v. 15). I take that to mean simply this: when God delivered Israel out of Egypt certain basic principles of redemption were manifest. They were demonstrated at that lowly level, but they were real. There was the wrath of God against sin—both oppressed and oppressor were sinners subject to the wrath of God. If Israel were ever to be delivered they first needed deliverance from the wrath of God, and only second, deliverance from Pharaoh. God provided that deliverance in the form of the blood of a Passover lamb. The basic principles of redemption expressed at that lowly historical level were repeated in the memorial ceremonies all down the centuries until the Lord came. Then, when our Lord Jesus died, those same basic principles of redemption were expressed and carried out at an infinitely higher level, thus being fulfilled.
The New Testament abounds with examples of that kind of fulfilment. To describe it, I don’t use the term typology; I use the term prototype. Forgive its crudity. You see, I’m not a theologian; I’m a do-it-yourself student.
The first aeroplanes that ever flew were very humble and curious machines. Yet somehow they flew, crude as they were, because they incorporated certain basic principles of aerodynamics. Now you will see the great Jumbo Jet going across the sky way above the bright blue. Those same basic principles of aerodynamics are incorporated in that gigantic flying machine, plus many more of course, and much more efficiently at that higher level.
On the basis of the New Testament’s comment, it seems to me that God has done the same in history. In preparing the way for the coming of our Lord and the redemption that is through him, God began to redeem his people in ancient times and demonstrated these principles of redemption at a lowly level. In the coming of our Lord, now we see them fulfilled at the highest level.
Allusions to Passover elsewhere in Scripture
Why bother to trace out those levels of interpretation? What good does it do? We shall all be immediately aware of how sometimes the New Testament takes advantage of those Old Testament stories and draws a parallel by using a simile. Peter reminds his fellow believers, ‘You were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver or gold, . . . but with the precious blood of Christ’ (1 Pet 1:18–19 NKJV). The dear man could have left it there, couldn’t he? None of us would have had any grounds for complaint. But Peter was not content to leave it there; he added on a simile: ‘as of a lamb without blemish and without spot’. Why did he do that, and where did he get the simile from? There is no doubt where he got it from; every Sunday school scholar knows it. When he says, ‘As of a lamb,’ Peter is thinking of how his ancient forefathers were redeemed by the blood of a woolly lamb in the days of the Passover in Egypt. Now we’re redeemed with the blood of Christ ‘as of a lamb’.
That is elementary, and I needn’t stay on it any longer. But sometimes the New Testament has allusions and parallels with the Old Testament that are not necessarily made explicit. So, just before we finish tonight I want to remind you of what doubtless you’ve already seen: how that throughout the Gospel of John, John constantly alludes to the Passover story, though more often than not he doesn’t stop to tell us.
Parallels between the Passover story in the book of Exodus and the Gospel of John
| Book of Exodus | Gospel of John | |
| Egypt holds Israel in bondage | The ‘world’ holds people in bondage | |
| Pharaoh presides over Egypt | The ‘prince of this world’ dominates the world | |
| Moses is sent by God to deliver Israel | Christ is sent by God to deliver people | |
| Moses does signs that people may believe | Christ does signs that people may believe | |
| Moses declares the name of God (I AM) | Christ declares the name of God (I AM) | |
| Passover lamb is slain for their redemption—no bone of the lamb is broken | Christ the Passover lamb is crucified for our redemption—no bone of Christ is broken | |
| God provides manna from heaven | Christ is the true bread from heaven | |
| The light of God’s presence leads them | Christ is the light of the world |
You start, of course, with Egypt and its prince, the pharaoh. Israel were in bondage to this prince, so Moses was sent to deliver them. ‘Well of course he was,’ you say.
Yes, that is an important part of the story, as we shall see when we come to it—God sent him.
‘But when I come to the Israelites and say, “The God of your fathers has sent me”, perhaps they won’t believe me,’ says Moses. ‘How shall I prove it if they don’t believe what I say?’
So God gave Moses signs to do so that Israel should believe that God had sent him (4:1–9). As we said earlier, it would be vital in the process of getting Israel out of Egypt that the Israelites should be brought to believe Moses. If they didn’t believe Moses, they wouldn’t budge a centimetre out of Egypt.
‘All right,’ says Moses, ‘but when I come to the Israelites and say, “The God of your fathers has sent me,” and they say, “What is his name?”, what shall I say?’
Moses was told to declare the name of God. It turned out to be ‘I AM’, or something of the sort—‘I WILL BE’ or ‘I AM THAT I AM’. So Moses went off to Egypt.
Subsequently they kept the Passover, and according to the regulations no bone of the Passover lamb may be broken (12:46). He then led them to the mountains of the wilderness, where they were fed with manna from heaven, and the light of God’s presence guided them. And so we could go on, but let’s come back now to the Gospel of John because the time is escaping us.
Terms that John uses
In the Fourth Gospel, as our Lord comes towards the end of his ministry, you’ll begin to get a concept that you do not get as explicitly in the other three Gospels, namely the world. For instance, in chapter 17 as our Lord prays to his Father he observes that his disciples are not of the world, even as he himself is not of the world. He says, ‘I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world’ (v. 14). He doesn’t pray that God would take them out of the world, but that he should keep them from the evil one (v. 15). In addition, several times he uses the phrase ‘the prince of this world’, which no one else does. ‘Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out’ (12:31 KJV). ‘The prince of this world cometh, and he hath nothing in me’ (14:30 KJV), and thus and thus.
Of course, every Sunday school child knows that in the Fourth Gospel, Christ is the sent one of God. So much is that a typical title and description of our Lord that when John records the miracle of the blind man receiving his sight, and observes how our Lord sent him to wash in the pool that is called Siloam and then he would see, John nudges us in the ribs and says, ‘You know what “Siloam” means, don’t you? It means sent’ (9:7).
We say, ‘Yes, John, but you’re not going to be so fanciful as to tell us that names mean anything, are you?’ So we pass it by. But it is there for us to see that Christ is the sent one. As he comes to the end of his Gospel, John reports how Christ did many other signs that are not written, but these are written so that you may believe (20:30–31).
And even more important is how our Lord describes it. In John 17, he says to his Father, ‘I made known to them your name, and I will continue to make it known, that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them’ (v. 26). So here is the declaration by Christ of the name of God. It turns out, of course, to be ‘I AM’. ‘If you do not believe that I am He, you will die in your sins’ (8:24 NKJV).
In his record of the crucifixion John is the only writer who records the Passover regulation that no bone of the lamb is to be broken, and he tells us that no bone of Christ was broken so that the Scripture might be fulfilled (19:36).
John 6 is a whole discourse given over to our Lord as the bread from heaven. And in both chapters 8 and 9, our Lord refers to himself as the light: ‘I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life’ (8:12); ‘As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world’ (9:5).
And so we might go on. What becomes apparent is that there are some very vivid parallels between the story of Exodus and the Gospel of John. Some are explicitly mentioned as being parallels; for instance, the manna and the bread from heaven. ‘The bread from heaven is not as your fathers did eat the manna in the wilderness,’ said Christ, ‘and, actually, it wasn’t Moses who gave it to you anyway, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven’ (see 6:32–33). That parallel is mentioned; but for most of them, John doesn’t even stop to call our attention to the fact that there is a parallel. I think he takes the view that if you can’t see the parallel, perhaps you oughtn’t to be reading his Gospel—I don’t know.
My colleagues who are learned in Byzantine literature count it their crowning joy and glory if they can trace out parallels between the later authors of the Byzantine period and the earlier authors of classical Greek. How would it ever be wrong if, as students of God’s word, we sought out parallels between the New Testament and the Old Testament? And you say, ‘We should need something more than just the literary pursuits that satisfy the minds of Byzantine literary historians; we want sober exposition.’
Yes, of course you do, so let’s observe the importance of this type of thing. If there is this deliberate parallel, and in the end it is a parallel organized by God himself, then the parallel itself will serve an exceedingly important practical purpose. Looking at our list, these ones are obvious: Moses did signs, and our Lord did signs; Moses was sent, and Christ was sent—in both cases the signs were done so that the people might come to believe; Moses declared the name of God, and Christ declared the name of God.
But look at the two parallels at the top of our list. If our Lord says we are not of the world, what on earth does he mean by the term the world? I don’t know about you, but I find it extraordinarily difficult sometimes to put across to young people what the biblical concept of the world is. When John exhorts us that we’re not to love the world or the things that are in the world (1 John 2:15), what does he mean? In some circles, it has been interpreted in a very puritanical way, so that you end up historically with dear Christian people who will not use modern clothes or motor cars, and still keep to their horses and buggies because they will not use anything of the world—as though the horses and buggies weren’t of the world. What is the world that we’re not to love?
Using thought models from the Old Testament to analyse New Testament doctrines
Let’s look back for a moment at our list. What the column on the left-hand side does is give us not only history but a thought model. It’s just as when a scientist, investigating the insides of an atom, is led by his mathematics to such curious results that he feels he must find a way to somehow represent it to himself to try and conceive of it, so he will make thought models. The technique has been very useful because, having constructed a thought model, when the physicists have looked at it, they say, ‘Hey, according to our model, there ought to be a particle here. Let’s look at the reality and see if there is a particle in that position.’ And very often, by following the indication in the model, when they have looked at the reality, they find the particle is there. As I understand it, using a thought model to analyse a situation is an exceedingly important method in modern scientific investigations.
When God talks to us about our blessed Lord and the prince of this world, what the world is and how his Son is sent to deliver us from the world, how are we going to understand the term world? In his wisdom, God has given us a thought model, just as he has done with Passover. What would be the use of telling me that Christ died for my sins, if that was all that was ever said? If all I knew was that Christ had died for my sins, I should want to ask, ‘In what sense did he die for my sins? Did he die as a result of my sins? If my sins killed him, that was a vast tragedy. Did he die as a protest against my sins?’ Being told that Christ died for our sins wouldn’t be altogether helpful, if that was all we were told, so Paul is instructed to tell us that ‘Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures’ (1 Cor 15:3).
One of the thought models that God has given to us in the New Testament to help us analyse the significance of the death of Christ is, of course, Passover. It’s a model to think with, and if we get time tomorrow we may just concentrate a little bit more on that for a few moments to see how the thought model of Exodus can help us to analyse the New Testament doctrines. And merely as a matter of preaching, if we have to put across the abstract—I nearly said theoretical, but I mean theological—terminology to people of limited education, we would be very wise indeed to use the models that God has given us.
Allow a crusty old pensioner to remark that, in our fear of the excesses of typology, we might not be wise to deny the validity of all typology. We mightn’t even be wise to say to the young and tender that nothing is to be regarded as a type in the Old Testament, unless the New Testament explicitly says it is. We’ll look at the details of those that are not explicitly said to be types tomorrow and see how that could be profitably used. What I’m doing at this stage is preparing the way for our detailed studies, because in some places we shall want to draw lessons from the historical situation by simple analogy, and in other places we shall find it profitable to consider the significance of the story in the New Testament sense of a prototype and its fulfilment at a higher level.
Then briefly, before we get down to detail, I should also like to observe how both the Old Testament and the New Testament use the Exodus story prophetically. In the time of Isaiah, Israel looked back to the Passover and used it prophetically of the coming great deliverance; and so we too shall find the New Testament using Passover imagery, particularly in the tabernacle, to picture events that shall precede the coming of our Lord at the end of the age.
If I can first convince you in the course of the next few days that I have biblical authority for saying that the book of Exodus has significance at all these different levels, perhaps you will not find it too hard, though irksome at times, when I jump from one level to another and back again, somewhat like a bouncing ball.
3: Exodus as a Thought Model: The New Testament Concept of 'The World'
Recap of our last session
In our studies yesterday, we fell to discussing the various levels at which we may apply the message of the book of Exodus to ourselves. First, at the historical level: the need to take the story as straightforward history of what happened many centuries ago, and we saw the principles that were involved in God’s historical deliverance of Israel from their literal Egypt. Taken at that level, the historical story provides us with many important profound and practical lessons.
Then we moved on to observe it at the level of prophecy. Not only was their deliverance celebrated annually in the form of Passover as a means of reviving the memory of the past, but it became for them a prophecy of what God would do again in the future. Reading the story as prophecy, therefore, is not something that some peculiar Christians invented; it is what the Holy Spirit of God showed to Israel through the Major Prophets like Isaiah. What God did in the past becomes hope for what God will do in the future. And not only a vague hope, said the Prophets, but the deliverance that God will effect for Israel in the future will bear a striking resemblance to what he did in the original historic liberation.
Then we noticed how our Lord referred to Passover and talked about its fulfilment. Because Passover in itself was not a prediction but a record of something that had actually happened in the past, we were obliged to enquire what the term fulfilment would mean in this context. How was a historical Passover somehow fulfilled in Jesus Christ our Lord? To help us understand that, we used the term prototype. I gave you my little illustration of the early aircraft, which were crude affairs. They succeeded sometimes; but, as the theologians would say, the prototype broke down. They were made largely of string and paper and glue and spit, but certain basic principles of aerodynamics were already being expressed at that lowly level. You’ll pardon the crudity of the analogy! Nowadays they are expressed at much higher levels in the sophisticated Jumbo Jets that fly aloft. When God set his hand to redemption, he redeemed Israel out of Egypt. Certain basic principles of redemption were expressed there that were later expressed at the highest possible level in the redemption accomplished by our Lord as the great Passover Lamb of God.
We further noticed that, in addition to explicit reference to the Passover being fulfilled at this higher level, there are allusions to the exodus in various parts of Scripture. Sometimes those allusions are explicit, but very often they are implicit. New Testament writers expect you to know the story of the exodus upside down, inside out and like the proverbial back of your hand, so they won’t stop to point out that they are alluding to the Old Testament, nor that the things they are telling you about the Lord Jesus and his work bear a striking resemblance to what happened in the story of the exodus.
As an example of that, we cited last night the many parallels that exist between the book of Exodus and the Gospel of John. We noticed that the study of those parallels is not just an occupation for sophisticated university literary departments; it provides us with a thought model to analyse the spiritual concepts of the New Testament. I called attention to two of those elements in the Gospel of John that are parallel to the story of Exodus. In Exodus we’re presented with the story of Egypt, which was a house of bondage for Israel presided over by its evil prince, the pharaoh. God delivered his people from that Egypt and from that pharaoh. The counterpart to Egypt in the Gospel of John is the world, which is presided over by the prince of this world. We recognized what a major topic this is in the writings of John, both in his Gospel and in his Epistles. That presented us with a practical problem. How are we to understand what John means by the world, and how shall we express it to the people to whom we preach? I have found it a difficult thing to do. It is easy enough to get up and exhort Christians that they are not to love the world or the things in the world; but how is that meant to apply to daily life? Mustn’t you love cucumbers or sunsets? What do you mean by the world?
The New Testament concept of the world
So this morning I’m going to suggest that the story of the exodus provides us with a thought model to help us grasp at least one of the concepts associated with it in the New Testament. It also supplies us with a vivid illustration to use when we are preaching. You gentlemen have been blessed with sophisticated brains that can easily deal with abstract concepts, but remember that there are those in your congregations who do not necessarily have that same facility for dealing with these abstract concepts. In his wisdom, kindness and compassion, God has given to us not only the abstract theological concepts in his word, but also divinely inspired stories that are true to history. These stories become pictures by which people can grasp the significance of otherwise rather abstract and difficult concepts. Let us not neglect, therefore, this pictorial side of God’s communication of truth.
In the First Epistle of John you will remember that there are different aspects to what is meant by the term the world.
It draws hearts away from God
In chapter 2, for instance, John warns us against loving the world:
Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is from the world. (vv. 15–16)
Here is the world in all its attractiveness—the world and the things in it that will appeal to a believer’s heart and attempt to captivate his love. John feels it necessary to warn us as Christians against this attractive side of the world: how easily it can invade our hearts and take our love away from the Father to loving the world.
It is hostile to God
In chapter 3, John presents a completely different aspect of the world. Here he tells us that we ought to love one another and not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and slew his brother. And then he adds, ‘Do not be surprised, brothers, that the world hates you’ (see vv. 11–13).
This is another face of the world. Not now its attractive side competing for the love of a believer’s heart. This is the world in its hostility to God, engineered of course by the evil prince of this world. ‘We should not be like Cain, who was of the evil one and murdered his brother’, says John. While engaged in apparently religious exercises, Cain was filled with murderous hatred against Abel the child of God, and he slew him. ‘Why did he murder him?’, John asks. ‘Because his own deeds were evil and his brother’s righteous.’ It is very sad and sorry, but an all too real aspect of the world when the prince of this world fills a religious person’s heart with hostility against God and the children of God. How very different it is from the charming world that would compete for our love and affection.
It opposes obedience to God
In chapter 5, John presents another aspect of the world. Here he is pointing out that true love of God means loving God and doing his commandments. ‘For this is the love of God,’ he says, ‘that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome’ (v. 3). Why are they not a burden? ‘For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith’ (v. 4).
So it’s not now the world as being very attractive and stealing our love, nor is it the world as necessarily hostile to the children of God; it is the world becoming an enormous weight and a burden when believers want to do the will of God. When they set themselves to keeping the commandments of the Lord, they find the world to be a colossal weight against them doing it. Not because the world is necessarily hostile, but because the world is not organized so as to facilitate the commandments of God. If you haven’t had any experience of that, try entering the Stock Exchange in London. The world is organized to make money, but it’s not necessarily organized to help a Christian stockbroker keep the commandments of God. It’s a sheer dead weight that makes it very difficult. So if believers are going to keep the commandments of God, they will have to overcome this dead weight. That might sound like a daunting task. ‘It isn’t really,’ says John, ‘his commandments are not burdensome.’
Working for Pharaoh in Egypt was a burden. God’s deliverance set them free to serve him and to keep his commandments in such a way that those commandments should not be a grievous, slavish burden. As John says here, the secret to it is our faith—in particular, faith that Jesus is the Son of God. We shall come back to that observation shortly, as we begin to examine the first part of the book of Exodus in more detail.
The exodus event used as simile and metaphor in the New Testament
Just before we do that, let me remind you of what has been familiar to you for many years, namely, the way that Peter and other apostles take up the language of the exodus event and use it both as simile and metaphor. I’m conscious of dim voices in the background that might accuse me of being allegorical and having joined the allegorists, but I don’t like joining the allegorists—at least not before lunch on Thursday mornings! I would want to protest vigorously that neither I nor the Apostle Peter is an allegorist. But he’s a good poet, isn’t he? May God give us more theologians who can talk in such delightfully poetic language as Peter does. As I said last night, he reminds us that we’re redeemed, not with corruptible things like silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ (see 1 Pet 1:18–19). But the dear man can’t leave it there; he has to add a simile, ‘as of a lamb’. The simile is not there simply to make his sermon a little bit brighter and more entertaining than otherwise it would have been; the simile is meant to evoke in the minds of his readers all they know of that wonderful Passover story.
Peter is not concerned merely with the simile; he starts using Exodus as metaphorical language. Metaphor isn’t allegory; metaphor is metaphor! He says that we’ve been ‘born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you’ (1:3–4). Why use that terminology? It is Exodus terminology, of course. When God came down to redeem Israel, it was not merely to deliver them from the grip and bondage of Pharaoh; it was explicitly stated, ‘I’ve come down and I will bring you out of Egypt into that glorious inheritance that I covenanted to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob’ (see Exod 6:6–8).
Peter opens this very epistle by addressing his fellow believers in these terms: ‘To those who are elect exiles of the dispersion . . . according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in the sanctification of the Spirit, for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood’ (1 Pet 1:1–2). If we pay close attention to his terms, we shall once more hear an echo of the exodus story. When God brought Israel out of Egypt, he brought them very speedily to Sinai, where he offered them his covenant and a special role as a kingdom of priests, on the condition that they obeyed and kept his covenant. When Israel heard the terms, they responded with one voice, ‘All that the LORD has spoken we will do’ (see Exod 19:5–8).
In Exodus 24 Moses took the Book of the Covenant and read it in the hearing of the people. ‘All that the LORD has spoken we will do, and we will be obedient’, they said (v. 7), at which point the covenant sacrifice was offered and Moses took the blood and sprinkled it on the people, saying, ‘Behold the blood of the covenant that the LORD has made with you in accordance with all these words’ (v. 8).
Granted, the covenant to which our blessed Lord Jesus calls us is a different covenant—it is a new covenant—yet its principles are the same, are they not? It is a new covenant in which he gives us his laws, not merely as precepts written upon a bit of cold stone, but a covenant according to which his laws are written on our very hearts by the Holy Spirit through his gracious work of regeneration (see 2 Cor 3:3). As he passed the cup of wine from hand-to-hand, our blessed Lord said, ‘This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood’ (Luke 22:20).
It is a covenant, nevertheless, that is meant to lead to obedience. ‘. . . elect . . . for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood’, says Peter (1 Pet 1:2), evoking the atmosphere of Passover and reminding us that, having been redeemed, we too are called to a life of obedience. Following on from that, Peter exhorts his fellow believers that, having a living hope placed in their hearts by the resurrection of our Lord from the dead and an inheritance to go to, they must be prepared to do rigorous thinking and work out the logical implications of their hope. Once more, he borrows a metaphor from the exodus experience, ‘Gird up the loins of your mind’, says he (v. 13 KJV). At least that’s what it says in the original language of old English (in which some people say the Bible was written!). Anyway, that’s what it always used to say until modern translations got at it and took the metaphor out of it because they feel that modern English speakers cannot cope with such metaphors. This rather ordinary and somewhat poverty-stricken speech was introduced in its place: ‘prepare yourself for rigorous thinking’. That will do, I suppose, for that’s what it means in the end. But Peter, being a poet, couches it in delightful language, doesn’t he? And if you knew the exodus story, what a marvellous plus that would be, and what an added dimension it would give to your preaching.
The Israelites were about to be delivered when Moses said, ‘But you can’t eat this Passover just any way; you must eat it roasted with fire . . . your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand’ (see Exod 12:8–11). It was not the most comfortable way to eat roast lamb, I suppose. I prefer to eat mine seated at a table with waiters in attendance, but no, they had to eat it whilst all dressed up and ready for the journey. You see, if there was anything at all in this Passover sacrifice, it implied that those who were eating it were ready to go out that very night and begin the long journey of progress that would lead them to their inheritance.
Anybody who came to Moses and said, ‘Now look here, Moses, I believe in this liberation you’re talking about. I’ve long since been irking under this slavery. I would, in fact, like a few weekends off from work to go and tour the pyramids. But this slogging it out across a wilderness doesn’t appeal to me. It may appeal to some people of the ascetic sort, but for myself I would buy into the first element of redemption, but not the second. I’ll eat the Passover lamb, but not in that rather ridiculous posture with my loins girt, shoes on my feet and one hand on a staff. That makes it decidedly difficult to manage your bread and your meat at the same time, so I won’t gird up my loins.’
Then Moses would have said, ‘I’m sorry, but you can’t have one without the other. You cannot partake in the benefits of the sacrifice of the Passover lamb and refuse to start and continue the journey towards your great inheritance.’
More of that when we come to Movement III of the book of Exodus and consider the directions for Passover that God himself laid down. I mention it now because, in what I have to say, I shall be obliged presently to use the story of Israel’s inheritance as a metaphor for our great inheritance that lies ahead.
Deliverance from the world through declaring the name of God
But with that, we come back to the first movement of the book of Exodus to study it in a little bit more detail.
Firstly, we shall have in mind the particular emphasis that the Gospel of John has put upon the question of the world. What is meant by the term world? And secondly, a matter that will profitably engage us is why is the declaring of the name of God so prominent in this story of delivering the Israelites from Egypt and delivering us from the world?
Crucial in the message that set Israel free from Egypt was the declaring of the name of God: first in the burning bush, and secondly in the reiteration of the name of God as recorded for us in Exodus 6. And it is similar for us, as we saw last night. In our Lord’s prayer in John 17, he speaks to the Father of those whom God has given him and prays that the Father should keep them. ‘They are not of the world,’ he says. ‘Father, keep them from the evil one’ (see vv. 14–15)—that evil prince who dominates and controls the world. He finishes his prayer with this observation: ‘I have declared to them your name and will declare it’ (see v. 26).
What has declaring the name of God got to do with delivering people from the world? I do not ask this merely as a question of biblical study; I raise it, gentlemen, as a question that we all ought to ask ourselves as preachers. If you should suspect that your own heart is growing worldly, or suppose you feel that the people of God in whatever sphere it is that God has called you to minister are growing worldly, how would you set about curing worldliness? Would you take the big stick of exhortation? Would you take a whip and snap it around their heels? That technique can have some results, and for people like me it needs to be applied judiciously. These two passages of Scripture—Exodus and the Gospel of John—would suggest that central to delivering God’s people from the world is to declare the name of God to them. In so doing, we shall follow our Lord’s own example. But what does it mean ‘to declare the name of God’?
The setting of Exodus: oppression and promise
We start with Exodus 1:
These are the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob, each with his household . . . Joseph was already in Egypt. Then Joseph died, and all his brothers and all that generation. But the people of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly; they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong, so that the land was filled with them. (vv. 1–7)
The remark that this tiny extended family came into Egypt with Jacob is meant to turn our memories back to the book of Genesis. It was Jacob who took the momentous step and responsibility of taking the patriarchs and their families from the land of Canaan down into Egypt (see Gen 46). As I said, it was a momentous step, but a step that Isaac had been forbidden to take. When he succeeded to the headship of the extended family upon the death of Abraham, God told Isaac, ‘Don’t go down into Egypt; dwell in the land of which I shall tell you’ (see Gen 26:2–3). Abraham was a good old soul, but he had developed this curious habit of going down to Egypt now and again when things got tough. God told Isaac not to do that but to stay in the land.
But there came a time when God’s purpose demanded that the extended family be taken down to Egypt. God explicitly told Jacob in a vision that he was behind this move, and Jacob was to take the people down into Egypt. In the same breath, God added that he would bring them back up again from Egypt to Canaan (Gen 46:2–4). That takes us back to the plan of God for Israel that God had manifested to Abraham. Abraham, being justified, was also promised the inheritance of the land of Canaan. God not only promised it but covenanted it with a covenant, signed, sealed and settled, that he would give that land to Abraham and to his seed as an inheritance (Gen 15). The going down to Egypt therefore was deliberate, but meant to be only a temporary stay during which the extended family would be multiplied to become a nation. There they would be saved from the rigours of famine and be nourished, so that when the time came they might leave Egypt as a large nation, and proceed to the destiny that God had for them—their glorious inheritance. That is the setting of the first movement of the book of Exodus.
So they came down to Egypt, they multiplied, and all seemed to be going according to plan when there arose a pharaoh who didn’t know Joseph. Fearing the growing numbers of the Israelites, he oppressed them and tried to destroy them. He made their lives a misery with hard, slavish work. He died and another pharaoh arose. By this time, the groans of Israel were coming up before God, and he heard them and heard their sighing. He saw the Israelites and took notice of their sufferings (3:7). When the time came for him to deliver them, he sent Moses to tell Pharaoh, the great prince of the land, ‘Thus says the LORD, “Israel is my firstborn son . . . Let my son go that he may serve me”’ (4:22–23).
So Moses and Aaron went and said to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, “Let my people go, that they may hold a feast to me in the wilderness”’ (5:1).
‘Nonsense. I have never heard such twaddle. What did you say? “The God of Israel”? You don’t expect me to believe that old-fashioned stuff, do you? What are you doing with your irresponsible attitude towards the workforce of this country, Moses? The people are many, and you encourage them to be idle. Now get out of my presence.’ And Pharaoh made their work a thousand times harder.
As for going out into the wilderness to worship God, Pharaoh refused to grant that any such dimension to life would be allowed to these Israelites. Pharaoh was denying them all those glorious heavenly, spiritual realities, which God had encoded for Israel in the tabernacle that they would eventually build in the wilderness. As for the story that out there in the blue somewhere there was an inheritance that God was going to give them, Pharaoh poured utter scorn on the whole business. For the Israelites in Egypt, life was to consist of working and eating the odd cucumber (and melons and garlic, if that was to your taste) and sleeping—work, eat, sleep; sleep, eat, work—and the odd game of football, and that was that.
Let’s put Egypt in diagrammatic form. Israel came into Egypt and had been there for the past four hundred and thirty years. But even before they came, God had designed a future for Israel. Their stay in Egypt was for the practical purpose of multiplying the extended family into a nation, and it was never intended to be anything more than temporary. As long as it lasted, it was a stepping stone from the past into their future. At first, Moses was sent to ask for a dimension of service to God in the present—a three-day journey into the wilderness to worship the Lord. Pharaoh denied them that. He denied the very existence of God and repudiated the inheritance God had for Israel. He made Egypt a prison house for Israel, a house of bondage (13:3 KJV). If we may take that as a thought model of one aspect of the world, is it difficult to see what aspect of the world it is?
In this last century, the little world in which we live has become a very small place, hasn’t it? There were days in the past when to get from London to Paris, it was a matter of a couple of days’ journey at least—Paris was a long way off. Now you can get to the opposite side of the earth in one day—to Australia, for example. If you’re a little bit more adventurous, you could step into a space capsule and go round the whole world as many times in an hour as you care to. The world is getting to be a very small place physically. But in another sense it is also true for many people that world fashions of thought make the world an exceedingly tiny place. Now some people say that this world is all there is. As far as you’re concerned, they say that there was no past, and there will be no future. There is no other world out there, no transcendent Lord Creator with whom you could have spiritual fellowship even now in this life. According to them, he doesn’t exist, and they stoutly deny that there is any such thing as a future that lies ahead—no eternal inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading (1 Pet 1:4). People live their lives in a very tiny world with limited dimensions of sleeping, eating, working, Gazza4 and football, holidays in Spain. And the arts, of course, as Egypt cultivated them in such a glorious way. But beyond that, nothing.
What a tiny world that is. If it were true, what a prison house it would be. It is not escapism that moves me to say that; it is not merely that I want to believe in a future and a heaven when this life is done. It’s a question of its immediate and present dimension. Is there a spiritual dimension to life? Is there an eternal dimension that breaks in on the temporal?
Here in Movement I, then, God is coming to deliver his people. It is not a question of first convincing Pharaoh. Pharaoh would never be convinced; he would have to be destroyed. Moses found it difficult to rid his mind of that mistake. He thought Pharaoh was going to be convinced, in particular by his speaking, and he had to be disabused of that by bitter experience. The first great objective would have to be in convincing the Israelites that there was another dimension and another world. In the first movement of the book, it is this that God sets himself to accomplish through Moses as he sends him to his people, Israel.
4: Movement I: Declaration of the Name of the Lord to Israel: Exodus 1:1–6:27
We come now immediately to the heart of the message of this first major movement of the book of Exodus to observe the declaration of the name of the Lord in the burning bush, and then subsequently on another occasion to examine how it is designed to break the oppression in Egypt by restoring Israel’s faith in God and in his purposes.
God making his name known to Israel
‘God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob’ (2:24), and he says to Moses from the flames of the burning bush,
‘I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God. (3:6)
Subsequently, when God commissioned Moses to go to Pharaoh and deliver his people, Moses says:
Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them? (v. 13 KJV).
And in reply,
God said to Moses, ‘I AM WHO I AM.’ And he said, ‘Say this to the people of Israel, “I AM has sent me to you.”’ God also said to Moses, ‘Say this to the people of Israel, “The LORD, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.” This is my name for ever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations. Go and gather the elders of Israel together and say to them, “The LORD, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, has appeared to me, saying, ‘I have observed you and what has been done to you in Egypt, and I promise that I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt to the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, a land flowing with milk and honey.’” (vv. 14–17)
Moses was quaking at the enormous responsibilities that were now being thrust upon him. You must remember that, while he had a heart for his people, his initial attempt in Egypt to deliver them from bondage to Pharaoh had been repulsed by his own brethren, who rejected both him and his methods. He had lived in exile for these long, long years. We hear him now: ‘When I come to the Israelites and I tell them that the God of their fathers has appeared to me; and they shall say to me “What is his name?”, what shall I say?’
Have you never yourself felt that trembling of heart as you have responded to God’s commission for you to go and preach to men and women lost in this world under the power of the prince of darkness? Or when you have sensed in your heart the commission to go and preach to your fellow believers who are all entangled in the love of the world? You go and preach a message that God has sent the Saviour to deliver them, and they say, without words maybe, ‘What is his name?’ And at that moment, standing in the pulpit or on the street corner, you say to yourself, ‘Whatever shall I tell them?’ How can I, a mere six feet of clay, tell people the name of God in such a way that it will provoke faith at the deepest level of their being: a faith that can break the bondage of ‘this-world-ism’, set them free to enjoy the eternal dimension to life in the present and start them on the journey that shall lead them to the eternal inheritance above? It is not mere information that we’re called upon to impart, is it? In our little way, we have to do what the Saviour did supremely: we have to tell the people the name of God.
The God of Israel’s past
And so, when God was asked ‘What is your name?’, he gave a number of replies. Firstly, he indicated, ‘Tell them that I am the God of their past: I am the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob’. For many Israelites this had become a very dim memory indeed, if it had even survived, for they were modern Israelites and they’d been in Egypt for a long while. Doubtless, some of them had heard the story of Abraham, but they were now nearly four hundred years beyond that in a very sophisticated Egypt. For some of them, perhaps, it had become nothing more than a folk tale—like Christian doctrine has become to many of our contemporaries in Christendom.
‘Go and tell them that I am the God of their past’—but how would that help? Well, in this immediate way: ‘I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and I made a covenant with Abraham and with his seed long before you were born in Egypt. There was a past in the counsels and covenants of God that concerned you, and it is vital that you come to believe in that past. Your feet may never have walked outside of Egypt; your eyes may never have seen across its borders; perhaps to you Egypt is everything. But that isn’t the real situation. Before you came into Egypt, I was planning and purposing; and I covenanted with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob concerning Abraham’s seed. I am the God of your past and I still adhere to my original purpose.’
Now God has remembered his covenant, in the sense that he is bringing it before Moses to act upon it, to put it into action, to fulfil it and to bring them up out of Egypt.
The God of Israel’s future
Involved in the covenant that God made in the past was not only their now-present deliverance but also the glorious inheritance that they were to be given in the future. Declaring the name of God, therefore, would mean stirring up their faith in those past revelations and provoking their faith in the glorious future that lay beyond them.
‘I AM THAT I AM’, or if you’d like to so translate it, ‘I WILL BE WHAT I WILL BE’. The nub of the matter seems to be that God is now declaring his eternal constancy. Not, of course, simply his being in the Greek philosophical sense of mere existence; for to this eternal God, being is always active. Thank God, he is the unchanging eternal I AM THAT I AM. Because he is the eternal God and had covenanted with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob regarding their seed, even though Israel were oppressed in Egypt the thorn bush was not consumed, for in the very midst of it was the presence of the unchanging I AM.
‘Therefore you, O children of Jacob, are not consumed’ (Mal 3:6). He is the God of Israel’s past, the God of their future, and the God of their present.
Declaring God’s name to the believer
Is it not easy to see how this message applies with equal force and relevance to us today, as we attempt to preach to our modern world? What a magnificent thing it is to be allowed by God’s grace to stand before one’s fellow believers, hemmed in as they may be by the modern pressures that make life such a drudgery sometimes and such a slavery, to remind them that there is a God who is the God of their past. I tell you again, my brothers, those great simplicities you’ve known from your babyhood are nonetheless real. We were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world; chosen and predestined for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will (see Eph 1:4–5). For you who trust the Saviour, things didn’t begin when you breathed your first breath as you came out of your mother’s womb, did they? You are the subject of the very counsels of eternity, chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world.
You say, ‘That was a remarkably long time ago, wasn’t it—the foundation of the world? When do you think the world began?’ That’s not my interest this morning, because when Paul says, ‘chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world,’ he’s not thinking merely in chronology; he’s thinking in logic.
By way of example, if your end product is a Christmas cake, then you must do some logical thinking. That is the end product, but as Christmas draws near the question will be, ‘What steps must I take beforehand that will eventually lead to the desired Christmas cake?’ You will have to think of the flour, the currants and the spices you’ll need and, if need be, go to the grocer’s and get them. Then you’ll have to scratch your head and think, ‘Yes, but to have a Christmas cake, I shall need an oven’. That’s quite logical, isn’t it? You first choose your end out there in the future, and then you work backwards from the end and take the logical steps to reach it.
God’s heart was set on having what he calls ‘sons through Jesus Christ’—that was the end (see Eph 1:5). It is an impertinence, I suppose, to talk about the Almighty as though he had to take logical steps like we humans do. He will pardon me for associating himself with such humble processes; but if having sons was the end state, how could it be achieved? One of the processes was the creation and foundation of our Earth, so that there he might bring forth mere creatures of God—born, I might add, without asking their permission. I don’t know about you, but nobody asked me whether I wanted to be born into this world, I just woke up and found I was here. But you can’t get sons of God that way, any more than you can be born married. If you were born married, then marriage would be a very different thing from what it appears to be at the moment. To become a child or son of God, the creature will need to be given the proposal and the opportunity to respond. That meant God would have to have an Earth to put his creatures on, and it would have to be distant enough from him that they should not be overpowered in making their decisions, but free to use all their rational processes to come to a genuine response to God Almighty.
What an incredible story it is, that the infinite God should plan to have sons for himself through Jesus Christ, and for that purpose create our whole world. If the vast universe around our planet is somehow necessary for the existence of our planet, then it was for that purpose that he created the whole lot. Being a backyard astronomer, I go out some nights and turn my telescope to the sky and ask myself what it’s all about, and the words of Paul come before me, ‘Chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world’. The whole great universe is a mere stepping stone to God’s purpose for me.
If God’s Holy Spirit should so reveal the name of God to us as the God of our past, I tell you, it would break the restrictive bounds of the prison house of this little world over which Satan its prince presides.
The God of our future
I needn’t elaborate on it; you know it and could preach it far better than I. The scheme of redemption is not just a present reality, important as that present reality is, but it is geared towards the great eternal future. We have been ‘born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead’ (1 Pet 1:3). I sometimes think that Peter’s very terminology is geared towards the fact that those who would read his letter were Jews. They knew of an earthly inheritance, but much of their earthly hope had been shattered. Would it ever be real? He tells them that ‘[God] has caused us to be born again to a living hope . . . to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading’ (vv. 3–4).
I for one am not ashamed. Let those who tell me that I’m building castles in the air and giving vent to my childish fantasies say what they will. They may tell me it’s because life has been rough that I comfort myself when I go to bed by dreaming about a heaven that doesn’t really exist. No, I am not ashamed of my hope. How did it come into my heart that I have been ‘born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead’?
This is a dying universe. The scientists tell us that it’s all running down. The old sun up in the sky that is giving out its energy is doomed to collapse one day. And to add insult to injury they tell me that my brain cells are running down. It’s true that when you get over sixty they do so at an alarming rate. This is a decaying universe, but when our blessed Lord Jesus was put in the grave, the process was stopped—‘You will not . . . let your Holy One see corruption’ (Acts 2:27). The whole process was reversed, and Jesus Christ came out of the grave, raised with a glorious body, never, as Paul put it, ‘to return to corruption’ (Acts 13:34). He was ‘declared to be the Son of God . . . by his resurrection from the dead’ (Rom 1:4), from whence springs our hope of a great inheritance ahead.
This is declaring the name of the God of our past, the God of our future, and then the God of our present.
The God of our present
And God said to Moses, ‘Say, “I AM has sent me”’. Such a revelation of the name of God could well keep us occupied for many, many hours indeed, and we’d never plumb its depths. Allow me to revive in your mind the comment the Lord Jesus made on this declaration. It was when the Sadducees had accosted him in public in the last week of his life on earth (see Mark 12:18–27). They’d come to Jesus to expose him before the crowd, as they thought. In their view, you could tell this crowd anything. The Sadducees were getting uneasy because the simple-minded crowd was listening to this crazy, popular preacher from Galilee with his silly notions, including resurrection. They thought it would be good tactics to expose him to the crowd, so they said, ‘You believe in the resurrection, don’t you, Jesus of Nazareth?’. He said, ‘Yes, I do’.
‘Well,’ they said, ‘let us put a case to you. There was a woman who was married, and her husband died. After a suitable interval, she married his brother, and the poor fellow died. All seven brothers successively married her.’ (An extraordinary story—perhaps this was the only concept of the resurrection in Sadducean experience!) ‘At last, the seventh died as well. Now, young man, if your theory’s true, when they rise again in the resurrection whose wife will she be, for she was married to all seven?’
According to the Sadducees, quod erat demonstrandum.5 What perversity lives in the human heart. They thought they’d proved that there was no resurrection; and in proving that, they thought they had won. If it had been true, what a defeat their victory would have been and what a diminution of the significance of the human race. How it degrades and devalues mankind.
And our Lord replied, ‘Is this not the reason you are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God? . . . have you not read what God said to Moses at the burning bush? He said, “I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob”’—this was the great I AM, of course (see Mark 12:24–26).
God doesn’t characterize himself by dead people. The living and eternally existent God cannot be described as being the God of things that no longer exist. ‘If he says he is the God of Abraham,’ says our Lord, ‘then Abraham still exists and shall live eternally.’ Isn’t this an amazing and wonderful thing? When you enter into relationship with the eternal God, and the eternal God enters into relationship with you, that relationship is like God himself— eternal.
If you were to come to me after this session, and say, ‘Good evening, do you know Napoleon?’, I’d say, ‘Which Napoleon are you talking about? The man who keeps the sweet shop round the corner?’
‘No,’ you say, ‘the military commander Napoleon the Great.’
I’d say, ‘Don’t be so silly, of course I don’t know Napoleon. He lived nearly two centuries ago; I’m not that old!’
Conversely, if you were to come to God this morning, and say, ‘Your Divine Majesty, did you know Abraham?’, God would immediately correct you. ‘What do you mean, did I know Abraham? Your choice of tense is most unfortunate. I know Abraham: here he is.’
He’s not the God of the dead but of the living, which means there is not merely a future for us in some glorious eternal inheritance, there is an eternal dimension to now. We shall see more about that when we come to study the provision that God made for Israel in the tabernacle. According to the Epistle to the Hebrews, God brought the realities of heaven down to earth so that, even as they were crossing the wilderness, Israel might already begin to enjoy that dimension of life.
The lampstand is an illustration of life in all its stages simultaneously
The tabernacle was a copy of heavenly things and brought the realities of the eternal world down to the dimensions of time. There in that tabernacle we shall discover a lampstand. It was an unusual lampstand, because it was made in the form of a stylized tree with a base that resembled the roots of an oak or some other big tree. Then it had branches, and in both the trunk and the branches there were symbols of life. All the stages of life were simultaneously in it—bud, flower and fruit. Yet, while it was a tree, it was the vehicle of light: a symbolic representation of the tree of life that is in the paradise of God (Rev 22:2). By God’s infinite grace, when Jesus Christ was born that great tree of life came down into our space and time. Says he, ‘For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself’ (John 5:26). He is the source of life: ‘In him was life, and the life was the light of men’ (John 1:4). When the very source of life came down into our space and time, that ancient symbolic lampstand found its eventual fulfilment in reality. By believing in him we enjoy not merely a heaven to be, but the present experience and possession of eternal life.
I shall not need to tell you how we need to stress what to us is a simple and elementary fact, for religion and the bulk of Christendom still believe that you can’t know you have eternal life now in this life. It is thought that eternal life is some vague thing that you hope to attain to in the world to come, which is why the request is made to God: ‘Grant us [this, that and the other], and in the end everlasting life’. But why ‘in the end’, when we may enjoy it in the here and now?
God can use us with our disabilities
We see then the significance of the declaration of the name of God. We haven’t time to follow all the details, but if it’s any comfort to us preachers, when God sent Moses to declare his name to the Israelites, he showed himself to be the God even of our disabilities.
‘I’m not eloquent,’ says Moses, ‘I can’t speak.’ And God replied to him, ‘Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?’ (see 4:10–11). It’s a staggering statement and difficult for us to handle, because surely it doesn’t mean that God sits upon his throne dishing out muteness to one and blindness to another?
You say, ‘Are these disabilities not the end products and results of long heredity and the fall of man?’
Yes, I hear what you say; there are many intervening causes and events. But ultimately I want to know if there is anyone behind all that long chain of cause and effect that landed me on planet Earth. May I not believe that the God who chose me in Christ before the foundation of the world has a glorious future for me with him and now invites me into a present and eternal relationship with himself, has exercised his divine control even over my disabilities? And may I not comfort my heart that they are not some mere accident of mindless evolution, but behind all earth’s sorrows and the heredity of a broken, fallen world stands the superior wisdom and providence of God, who can take me, disability included, and use me for the declaration of his name?
The sent one of God
‘But when I come and say to the Israelites that the God of their fathers has sent me, perhaps they won’t believe me’, says Moses (see 4:1). So it becomes exceedingly important that the Israelites should be brought to believe that Moses has been sent by God. That is a small matter compared with what we find constantly repeated in the Gospel of John: that it is of absolute and eternal importance that we should come to believe that Jesus is the sent one of God. He was sent by the Father and has returned to the Father. I take just one instance of that from chapter 16. These are almost our Lord’s last words with his disciples before he went to suffer, and he sums up what is perhaps the most important and basic ingredient to his message and his mission:
‘I came from the Father and have come into the world, and now I am leaving the world and going to the Father.’ His disciples said, ‘Ah, now you are speaking plainly and not using figurative speech! Now we know that you know all things and do not need anyone to question you; this is why we believe that you came from God.’ Jesus answered them, ‘Do you now believe? Behold, the hour is coming, indeed it has come, when you will be scattered, each to his own home, and will leave me alone. Yet I am not alone, for the Father is with me.’ (vv. 28–32)
Picture the scene. It is almost the final briefing of the apostles before he suffered, and the thing our Lord chooses to concentrate on and to impress upon their minds as the very heart of his message is this: ‘I came from the Father and have come into the world, and now I am leaving the world and going to the Father’. He asked them, ‘Do you now believe it?’ Why is it so basic? Well, listen to what he’s saying: ‘There is another world, and I came from that other world, sent by the Father’.
Do we believe it? There are a good many theologians in Christendom who don’t. A whole bevy of so-called Christian theologians published a book some years ago called The Myth of God Incarnate6 and hoped it would be a bestseller, but I’m glad it didn’t make them too much money. ‘Because we cannot accept the possibility of divine intervention in our world, we cannot accept the doctrine of the incarnation,’ they said.
By definition, if the incarnation is true, it is the biggest divine intervention in our world that the world has ever seen, so we are contending for everything when we contend for this point. Jesus Christ is the sent one of the Father, not merely in the sense that God raised him up as a prophet from Nazareth and sent him to Jerusalem, but that God the Father sent him from heaven into our world. That is its meaning in John 16, as now he adds, ‘And now I am leaving the world and going to the Father’.
So there is another world, and one day his design is to take us to it. Why is it important that I believe it? Listen to the Apostle John again, ‘Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?’ (1 John 5:5). The secret to overcoming the world is not that I’ve had such a happy experience in my heart and I feel so good—though let’s hope we have ten thousand happy experiences in our hearts and feel very good! The key to overcoming the world is in rightly answering this: Is Jesus, or is he not, the Son of God? Was he the sent one of the Father? Did he come out from heaven into the world, and has he gone back to the Father, or is he still in the grave outside Jerusalem’s city walls? If he is the sent one of the Father and has returned to the Father, we should dance for very joy, for the gift he offers us of eternal life is no exaggerated devotional expression; it represents reality.
Signs to prove the reality of God
‘Suppose I come to them and they don’t believe me?’ says Moses (see Exod 4:1). ‘Well,’ says God, ‘I shall give you some signs.’
When the question time comes up, I’ll be very interested to hear how you interpret those signs, for I warned you that I shall question you too, and I shall want to know what you say. Don’t say, ‘Ah, well now, signs! No, no, you should believe with blind faith; that’s the only decent kind of faith.’ If you do, are you not forgetting the remark of our Lord’s apostle: ‘These [signs] are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God’ (John 20:31)? How do they prove what they are alleged to prove, and could we use the record of them effectively in our evangelism?
Anyway, Moses went and told them and declared the name of God, and initially he was successful.
Recap of the major elements of Movement I
In our closing moments, I just want to comment on the major elements of the narrative in this first movement of the book. You will remember that it begins with the names of the sons of Israel (1:1–5). It continues with the story of the oppression of the Israelites and how God preserved Moses, educated him, and how Moses attempted to deliver God’s people but failed and fled to Midian (1:8–2:15). You remember they said to Moses in Egypt, ‘Who made you a prince and a judge over us?’ (v. 14). Then comes the declaration of the name of God (3:14–16), as we have just been considering, and God says to Moses, ‘They will listen to your voice’ (v. 18).
The third element comes after Moses had made his five points to God and God had answered them; and Moses returned to Egypt (4:20). Having commissioned him once more, God told Moses to go to Pharaoh and say, ‘Thus says the LORD, Israel is my firstborn son . . . Let my son go that he may serve me’ (v. 22–23). Then the great climax: ‘And the people believed’ (v. 31). A marvellous climax, isn’t it? From the point of view of narrative, you see how that is linked to the first element of the movement when Moses was initially rejected and ran off. Now he returns, the people believe, they bow down their heads and worship God. As far as Moses was concerned, all he now had to do was go to Pharaoh, announce the message and tomorrow Israel would be free.
But the oppression was made ten thousand times worse. As the Israelites in their misery came out from Pharaoh’s palace, they met Moses and Aaron, and said to them, ‘The LORD look on you and judge, because you have made us stink in the sight of Pharaoh and his servants . . .’ (5:21). Hope and faith are dashed to the ground—no hope is left, and faith finds it virtually impossible to rise above its disappointment, chagrin and grief (see 6:9).
Moses’ response to it was to declare God’s name again. ‘Your patriarchal ancestors didn’t really know what was involved in this name of Jehovah, but now I’m going to tell you what’s involved in it. When you are at rock bottom and your faith is blown to bits and you’re saying to yourself, “This message of deliverance won’t work; just look at my circumstances, now ten thousand times worse than they were before”, and you haven’t got a shred of respectable faith left amidst all your doubts and groanings, then this is a God who tells you, “I have remembered my covenant that I swore with my uplifted hand to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and what I swore I will perform. You will know, not now as by theory but in practical experience, that I am Jehovah and what Jehovah means”’ (see 6:2–9).
Marvellous, isn’t it? If you should ever come across believers who once ran well and were full of faith and hope, and you meet them now in middle age, and life has gone sour on them until their faith is almost gone by the very miseries of life, pray that God will give you that ministry of declaring the name of God again.
He is a God who will be true to his covenant; he will do what he has said and redeem his people out of Egypt. They will discover it through practical experience. Says God, ‘All right, Moses, I’m now sending you to Pharaoh’. But Moses says, ‘It’s about time we were realistic. All this preaching is okay, but if the Israelites haven’t listened to me, what is the use of my going to Pharaoh? Sorry, God.’ Did God say, ‘Well then, Moses, here are your cards, you can leave and I’ll get somebody else’? No, no. ‘I want you to go to Pharaoh,’ says God (see vv. 10–13). And eventually Moses and Aaron went (v. 27).
Let’s just give thanks for God’s abounding grace.
5: Movement II: Declaration of the Name of the Lord to Pharaoh: Exodus 6:28–10:29
This morning, we gave ourselves to studying Movement I of the book of Exodus in some detail, and found its centre portions to be concerned with the declaration of the name of God to Israel. Now this afternoon, we must move on to Movement II, and as we pointed out last evening, we shall find that it too is concerned with the declaration of the name of God, but this time mainly to Pharaoh, and then through him to the nations of the whole world.
It lies on the surface of things to observe that the declaration of God’s name to Israel in Movement I implied the deliverance of Israel from slavery and setting them free. On the other hand, the revelation and declaration of the name of God to Pharaoh in this second movement will lead to God’s judgments upon Pharaoh, and Pharaoh subsequently being used as a lurid beacon of warning to all impenitent sinners the world through.
Since that is so, let us mention at once that in making Pharaoh an example, and thus declaring his name through him, God was using Pharaoh as a vessel of wrath not only to exhibit his own righteous character, but so that other people might hear, be warned, repent and be saved. So when we consider these heart-chilling stories of God’s wrath on Pharaoh and Egypt, we should remember those other stories of how the report of what had happened to Pharaoh eventually percolated across the desert, and reached the ears of a prostitute in Jericho for instance (Josh 2:10–11). It began the process that led to her repentance and faith in the living God, her being saved and enrolled amongst the people of God, and subsequently the high honour of becoming an ancestor of Jesus Christ our Lord (Matt 1:5). Surely God makes even his dealings in wrath with men and women the medium and means of the salvation of others.
God’s ways with Pharaoh and Egypt
God will compel Pharaoh to release Israel
These are solemn matters therefore, and in particular we have to try and grapple with the fact that is put before us many times of the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart. We are informed of these matters early on in the narrative. In Movement I for instance, God announces to Moses that he must be sent to Pharaoh to demand Israel’s liberation: ‘But I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go unless compelled by a mighty hand’ (3:19), meaning, ‘I know that Pharaoh will not let you go unless I bring my mighty hand to bear against him and compel him to let you go’. That is a very important statement, which we should put into the pool of our thinking in this matter. God surely is not about to proceed in a contradictory manner: first by hardening Pharaoh’s heart so that he will not let them go, and then by using his big hand on him to make him let them go. God is not contradictious; he is informing Moses that such is the hardness and pride of Pharaoh’s heart to start with, that he will not let them go unless God compels him by the use of his mighty hand. So, in the first reference to the matter, God says that he will have to force Pharaoh to let them go.
God will harden Pharaoh’s heart
And the LORD said to Moses, ‘When you go back to Egypt, see that you do before Pharaoh all the miracles that I have put in your power. But I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go.’ (4:21)
So now, in the second place, God announces that he will harden Pharaoh’s heart. The point that will exercise us here is, at what point in the proceedings did God himself harden Pharaoh’s heart? And, indeed, what does God’s hardening of Pharaoh’s heart really mean? You will doubtless give me the true answer tonight in our question time.
As far as I am aware the first actual explicit and complete statement of the Lord hardening Pharaoh’s heart is: ‘But the LORD hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and he did not listen to them, as the LORD had spoken to Moses’ (9:12). It occurs at the end of the sixth plague: quite a way through the plagues, just before a long record of the final series of plagues (vv. 13–33). God now explains why he will harden Pharaoh’s heart—I nearly said, God now explains the morality of it. Therefore, it seems to me to be exceedingly probable that when God originally said to Moses that he would harden Pharaoh’s heart, he was referring to what he foresaw would happen. Pharaoh himself would not let the people go unless he was compelled, and he hardened his own heart until there came a point when God himself stepped in and fixed Pharaoh in the stance that Pharaoh himself had adopted.
In holding that view, I am aware that I do not carry many people with me. The more learned say that I am making a false deduction from the Hebrew usage. You’ll notice in some places in the course of the plagues, the text says that Pharaoh hardened his heart. The wording is explicit: Pharaoh did it. But in other places it says that Pharaoh’s heart was hardened. Grammatically, that is a simple passive structure without the agent of the hardening being specified. They say that it is simply a variation in language from the phrase the LORD hardened Pharaoh’s heart, which would mean there is no real difference in substance in the way a Hebrew looked at these things. Accordingly, if that is so, it was ultimately God who hardened Pharaoh’s heart. Therefore, they conclude that it is false to deduce that it was only from 9:12 onwards that God actually hardened his heart; God’s hardening started much earlier on. ‘Still Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, and he would not listen to them, as the LORD had said’ (7:13). Indeed, the old English translation at that point has ‘And he [that is, the LORD] hardened Pharaoh’s heart . . . (KJV). Other translations, of course, give ‘And Pharaoh’s heart was hardened’.
The problem of how we should understand these variations is not confined to the book of Exodus. In his classic discussion of this in Romans 9, Paul uses a similarly differentiated phraseology:
What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, [grammatically, this is a plain passive structure, with the agent who has prepared them for destruction not specified] in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he [now explicitly referring to God himself] has prepared beforehand for glory. (9:22–23)
To this day, the commentators remark upon that difference in phraseology and tell us that it is deliberate. But when it comes to the preparing (fitting, KJV) of vessels of wrath, Scripture draws back from saying that God himself prepared (fitted) them for that purpose.
Doubtless, in the question time you will put me on the right lines of how to think about these things. I shall be looking for help in the understanding of God’s ways with Pharaoh and the plagues upon Egypt. If you say, ‘What will you really want to know?’, that will become all too evident as I proceed with this afternoon’s exposition. Please make a note of those places where you think I need help. I mean that sincerely, my brothers. I am not being unduly modest, nor am I indulging in a little effort to gain your sympathy or something, as you will see presently.
God will send plagues upon Egypt
The very fact that God is going to use these plagues and the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart to make his name known to the Egyptians and to the world at large forces us to ask a question. ‘What exactly was God doing in sending so many plagues upon Egypt?’ If God was simply hardening Pharaoh’s heart so that Pharaoh should refuse to obey, and God could then destroy him, why did God take such a long while about it? Why didn’t he give him three opportunities at the most, and destroy him if he refused on the third occasion? Why prolong the procedures so far?
We should notice, of course, that the plagues themselves evidently do not result in Pharaoh’s destruction. All nine put together do not persuade Pharaoh to let the people go. It is the tenth plague that actually persuades Pharaoh to let them go. As we saw last night, it is specifically separated from the others. It is a different thing: ‘one plague more’ (11:1), which was the execution of God’s wrath upon Egypt. Therefore, it is not to be confused with the nine plagues and the purpose of those plagues. But if the plagues were not purposed to destroy Pharaoh, then what were they meant to do?
The context for the encounter with Pharaoh
Recap of Movement I
With those questions in mind, let’s begin by looking once more at the context and I ask for your patience while I go back to where we left off this morning. In the last moments we were considering the broad composition of the first movement of the book. It starts in chapter one with the oppression in Egypt, Moses’ unsuccessful attempts to deal with it, and his flight; leading on to the declaration of the name of God to Moses; and then his return and his success. So that when he addressed the Israelite people and did the signs, all the people believed, and they bowed their heads and worshipped (4:31).
And then in the second half of that first movement we saw how, when Moses did as he was told and went in and demanded from Pharaoh that he let the people go, instead of Pharaoh letting them go, the only effect was that the oppression was made ten thousand times worse (5:9). As far as Moses’ relationship with the Israelites was concerned, it was now worse than before. Before his flight to Midian, they had said to Moses, ‘Who made you a prince and a judge over us?’ (2:14), and rejected him. Now they come within a shadow of cursing him outright: ‘The LORD look on you and judge, because you have made us stink in the sight of Pharaoh and his servants, and have put a sword in their hand to kill us’ (5:21).
When Moses complained of it to God, God’s delightful response was not to abandon his people but to declare his name again, and this time to make it very personal. When they first came to the Israelites, Moses and Aaron were to say, ‘The LORD, the God of your fathers . . . has appeared to me, saying . . .’ (3:16–17). But in this second declaration of the name of God, Moses and Aaron were to say to them, ‘I am the LORD, and I will bring you out . . . deliver you . . . redeem you . . .’ (see 6:6–8). In other words, the Israelites would come to know God personally—the significance of his name, the nature of his character and his faithfulness. But when Moses told that to the Israelites, it says explicitly, ‘they did not listen to [him]’ (v. 9).
So God recommissioned Moses, and Moses said, ‘What’s the good of your sending me to Pharaoh again, when even your own people will not listen to me?’ But God persisted and gave Moses and Aaron a charge:
But the LORD spoke to Moses and Aaron and gave them a charge about the people of Israel and about Pharaoh king of Egypt: to bring the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt. (6:13)
That is going to be repeated now at the beginning of the second movement, when God charges Moses to go to Pharaoh king of Egypt and tell him all that the Lord had said (vv. 28-29).
But in between you’ll notice that long paragraph, which at first sight is peculiar (6:14¬–25). It begins with ‘These are the heads of their fathers’ houses’, and ends with ‘These are the heads of the fathers’ houses of the Levites by their clans’. Then it comes to Aaron and Moses:
These are the Aaron and Moses to whom the LORD said: ‘Bring out the people of Israel from the land of Egypt by their hosts.’ It was they who spoke to Pharaoh king of Egypt about bringing out the people of Israel from Egypt, this Moses and this Aaron. (vv. 26–27)
You might think that all the repetition is rather superfluous. What is the point of this whole paragraph? Is it simply to identify Moses and Aaron and which tribe they belonged to? Well, that is useful information, but is there not more to it?
We began the first movement with a list of names (1:1–5), but it was a very short list. It was the names of the eleven patriarchs who came into Egypt with Jacob and their extended families. Then we’re told that Joseph was already in Egypt.
Now the first movement ends with a long list of names, and this time it is not a complete genealogy of all twelve tribes, is it? You will have noticed that at once. It starts with the sons of Reuben, the firstborn of Israel, and proceeds to the sons of Simeon (6:14–15). Then from verse 16 to verse 25 it gives you in great detail the names of the sons of Levi; not only the names of Moses and Aaron but also the names of the sons of other branches of that family. Having brought the genealogy of Levi up to date, it stops there and doesn’t bother to give you the genealogy of any of the other tribes. As I said earlier, it may be simply because he’s identifying Moses and Aaron in their tribe, but I ask again, is there not more to it?
The history of the Levites
You only begin to ponder the history of the Levites, when some vivid stories from the book of Genesis come to mind.
The story of Levi and Simeon in Genesis 34
This is an exceedingly sorry story. Jacob had come back into the land where he had spent his early years before having to flee for his life from Esau. He had gone and lived among the Gentiles and made an enormous amount of money. He made so much money that his Gentile relatives began to get very tired of him when they saw his name over every bank in town. All his father-in-law Laban’s capital had somehow found itself in Jacob’s hands, and ‘Laban did not regard him with favour as before’ (31:2). So Jacob felt it wise to flee from these Gentiles, taking his capital and Laban’s daughters. You will remember that he had some very vivid experiences of God before he came back into the land to try to establish himself, and he made peace as best he could with Esau.
But then Dinah, one of Jacob’s daughters, went out to see the women of the land. ‘When Shechem the son of Hamor the Hivite, the prince of the land, saw her, he seized her and lay with her and humiliated her’ (34:1–2). Nevertheless, he proved himself an honourable man and came along with his father and asked Jacob if Dinah could be his wife. The sons of Jacob heard of this, in particular Simeon and Levi, and they said, ‘If you want our sister for the wife of the prince, all the men of Shechem must be circumcised’. They agreed, and circumcised themselves. But on the third day, when they were still sore, Simeon and Levi took their swords and killed every male, thus expressing their wrath against these Gentiles. And now we read:
Then Jacob said to Simeon and Levi, ‘You have brought trouble on me by making me stink to the inhabitants of the land, the Canaanites and the Perizzites. My numbers are few, and if they gather themselves against me and attack me, I shall be destroyed, both I and my household.’ But they said, ‘Should he treat our sister like a prostitute?’ (vv. 30–31)
Outraged, they vented their wrath upon these Gentiles and felt justified in doing so. They did it in the name of religion and in the name of Israel’s distinctives. ‘You have made me stink to them’, says Jacob. When old Jacob lay on his deathbed, he said as follows:
Simeon and Levi are brothers; weapons of violence are their swords. Let my soul come not into their council; O my glory, be not joined to their company. For in their anger they killed men, and in their wilfulness they hamstrung oxen. Cursed be their anger, for it is fierce, and their wrath, for it is cruel! I will divide them in Jacob and scatter them in Israel. (Gen 49:5–7)
Jacob was giving voice to the sentiment that his namesake Jacob (James) of the New Testament repeated, ‘the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God’ (Jas 1:20). Jacob on his deathbed was addressing his twelve sons; and in his Epistle, James the Christian was addressing the twelve tribes (1:1).
We’re soon going to hear of Moses the Levite and Aaron the Levite going in amongst the Egyptians with the rod, that lethal rod of God, to smite Egypt with these plagues.
The nine plagues were not implementing the wrath of God
So let’s now return to Exodus, and remember that ‘the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God’. What will happen as these two Levites each takes his staff (rod KJV) and smites Egypt (see Exod 7:15, 19)? The aforesaid commentators say it is the wrath of God; but is it? Or is it only a rationalization of their own wrath, seeking to get revenge upon the Gentiles?
That would be an important question to ask, would it not?
You say, ‘But the Bible makes it clear that it’s the wrath of God and not the wrath of man’.
Very good, and you believe the Bible. But there are other folks who don’t, and they say, ‘In these old stories it’s said to be God who punished the Egyptians, but this is only a rationalization, and it fuels the fire of Israel’s national indignation and desire for revenge upon the Gentile nations around’.
Is that so? What is the nature of these stories? Let us consider what we have already observed and immediately answer our question. The plagues are not the execution of the wrath of God in the full and final sense of that term at all, are they? The Passover was the execution of the wrath of God, and Moses and Aaron had nothing whatsoever to do with it. The plagues serve a different function.
The purpose of the plagues
To declare the name of the Lord to Pharaoh
But let’s come now to the briefing that God gives Moses and Aaron at the beginning of Movement II:
On the day when the LORD spoke to Moses in the land of Egypt, the LORD said to Moses, ‘I am the LORD; tell Pharaoh king of Egypt all that I say to you.’ But Moses said to the LORD, ‘Behold, I am of uncircumcised lips. How will Pharaoh listen to me?’ (6:28–30)
‘. . . when the LORD spoke to Moses in the land of Egypt, the LORD said to Moses’—that’s a curious circumlocution, isn’t it? So, Moses’ first task is to speak, and he is to make known to Pharaoh the name of the Lord.
Moses protests for the third time about his inability to speak (see also 4:10; 6:12). The man seems to be obsessed, if I might say so of such an eminent personage! It is a curious apparent contradiction with what Stephen was later to say, that Moses was a man mighty in his words and deeds (Acts 7:22). This has led some people to suppose that what Moses meant was that he’d been out of Egypt for so long that he’d forgotten how to speak Egyptian, and therefore stammered and stuttered when he got back into the presence of Pharaoh.
But here it comes again, ‘You keep telling me to speak to Pharaoh; how will he listen to me when I am of uncircumcised lips?’ (see 6:30). So God has to explain. ‘My dear Moses, may I not tell you yet another time? Pharaoh will not listen to you. Please disabuse yourself of the idea that your speaking will bring the Israelites out of Egypt. You and Aaron shall speak all that I command you, but what you say won’t bring them out.’
I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and though I multiply my signs and wonders in the land of Egypt, Pharaoh will not listen to you. Then I will lay my hand on Egypt and bring my hosts, my people the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great acts of judgement. The Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD, when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring out the people of Israel from among them. (7:3–5)
And once more, the contrast is made: ‘All your speaking throughout all the plagues won’t bring them out—I shall bring them out by my mighty hand’. That forces us to ask the question once more, what was the function of the plagues? As we saw last night, they were to declare the name of the Lord. Let me just give you the references again.
First, there is none like him; he is unique. Not one of the gods of Egypt is like him.
‘I am the Lord; tell Pharaoh king of Egypt all that I say to you.’ (6:29)
‘The Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD . . .’ (7:5) Thus says the LORD, ‘By this you shall know that I am the LORD . . .’ (7:17)
‘. . . that you may know that there is no one like the LORD our God.’ (8:10)
‘. . . that you may know that there is none like me in all the earth.’ (9:14)
‘. . . to show you my power, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth.’ (9:16)
Then we see that God is not an absentee landlord. He is the Lord in the midst of the earth, controlling its affairs:
‘. . . that you may know that I am the LORD in the midst of the earth.’ (8:22)
‘. . . that you may know that the earth is the LORD’S.’ (9:29)
But how do the plagues establish these facts about the name of God? It is at this point that I genuinely shall need your help. Is it that the Egyptians deified various aspects of nature? They imagined that the Nile was a god, the sun was a great god; they deified other parts of nature. So, were the plagues directed at showing that these gods were no gods at all? The water of the Nile was turned to blood, and the supposed god of the Nile was shown to be a nonsense. The sun was darkened in the land of Egypt, so it didn’t shine, and thus the notion that the sun was a god was contradicted. At least, it was shown that Jehovah is unique and none of the supposed gods is like him. Were the plagues, therefore, judgments on the gods of Egypt to show that they were nonsense?
Let’s take up that idea. How was it done? And here innocents like me meet one or two problems.
You say, ‘It was done by marvellous miracles: anybody could see they were miracles’.
But wait a minute. When Pharaoh said, ‘Show me a sign’, Moses cast down his staff and it became a serpent. Pharaoh smiled and said, ‘That’s no miracle; my men can produce the same results in the laboratory’, and in came the white-coated magicians (scientists always wear white coats!). ‘The magicians of Egypt also did the same by their secret arts’ (7:11).
Well, that was a funny way to start, wasn’t it? Why did God Almighty start with a thing that they could reproduce? Is that how you would have conducted the argument if you had been an apologist for the Lord?
‘No,’ you say, ‘but it was just a sort of aperitif to get their interest, like a speaker would tell an anecdote before he gets down to the real stuff!’
But when Moses went before Pharaoh to carry out the first plague, he stretched out his staff and the river Nile was turned to blood, and once more Pharaoh’s magicians were able to do the very same thing. Why on earth go and do a plague that the Egyptian wise men can do? He’ll surely do better next time! So Moses is told to bring up frogs out of the river—then the magicians go and do it again. We’re not getting far, are we?
But look at the third one. Moses was able to turn the dust of the ground into lice—mosquitos or something (gnats, ESV)—and when the magicians tried to do it, they couldn’t, and they said to Pharaoh, ‘This is the finger of God’ (8:19).
You say, ‘All that introduction was to lead the magicians up the garden path, and when they thought they had proved their point, to smash the whole thing down. Moses did a real miracle this time that the magicians couldn’t do. So, there’s the proof!’
Really? Proof of what? I’m going to ask you that question tonight. In your apologetic work before the ungodly and unbelieving world, would you quote the record of these plagues as evidence for the reality of God and his uniqueness?
Some explanations that are put forward
- It sufficed for them in that early day, but it wouldn’t suffice now because we are really scientific. In other words, we’ve got even better magicians nowadays than they had. Are you saying that the argument Moses advanced towards Pharaoh was a very limited truth or something, and it only convinced them because they weren’t sharp enough to see its weakness? Or was God demonstrating something that is still valid? If so, what was he demonstrating?
- The convincing part of the evidence was not that it was a miracle, because the magicians could do most of it themselves. The really convincing thing was the word of the Lord spoken through Moses, so that Moses was able to say, ‘Tomorrow this sign shall happen’ (8:23), and it did. The impressive thing was not that it happened, but that it should happen at the time when Moses said it would. This was the evidence. It wasn’t just an occurrence in nature; it was accompanied by the word of God. He prophesied that it was going to happen, and it happened as he said it would. And so their argument goes. That was the evidential force of the plagues, and to have a similar effect nowadays, God would need to let you know today that a plague was going to happen tomorrow, so that you could deliver the prophecy. Nowadays that’s a rather difficult thing to arrange, perhaps, but if such things were possible, it would be the evidential force of it. So that’s the second suggestion.
- Along that line and developing it a bit further, comes the third suggestion by theologian Fenton Hort: the plagues were not really miracles at all; they can all be explained by normal physical happenings. Well, not quite normal, perhaps, but the explanation for the first one is that the Nile flooded very severely that particular year. Being so full and boisterous, it brought down a lot of stuff from the upper reaches—certain microbes and things that eventually turned red and gave the river the appearance of blood. When the water subsided, the mosquitoes abounded: the lice of the third plague. And then things went according to their natural cycle. There was anthrax and the cattle died, some people caught the disease as well, and so forth and so on. Then there came a Khamsin wind, which helped to bring the darkness upon the Egyptians. We can understand that because it says that the wind blew up the sand and it came in a particular direction. It caught the Egyptians, but Israel’s houses were free from it. Similarly, with the locusts and so on. So, according to Hort, all these things can be explained by God using natural causes, but the importance of it was that through Moses God prophesied that these things would happen, and they happened accordingly. Now, in and of itself, you could support that particular argument by saying that the text tells you that God used natural means. For instance, concerning the plague of locusts, it says that the wind blew all night, and after so many hours of the wind blowing, it blew up a whole lot of locusts, so God was using natural means. Or again, when Israel crossed the Red Sea, it was, from one point of view, an ordinary physical happening. A strong wind blew all that night and as a result the waters parted. So there’s a good deal to be said for that particular view of the plagues, isn’t there? I have to immediately confess to you that one little thing troubles me with that explanation, if not others. What was the point of the magicians doing the same thing? As far as the narrative goes, we shall not escape this emphasis, so many times repeated, that in the early stages the magicians were able to do what Moses did.
In the second little bit of our afternoon study, I want to take courage in both hands and put before you how I tend to read these stories of the plagues and what the issue at stake might be. Then I look forward even more to your contributions in the session after dinner.
6: Movement II: The Plagues: Exodus 7:1–10:29
So now I am bold to put before you how at this stage in life I tend to think about the plagues of Egypt, but I am sincere in saying that I welcome your correction and contribution. I would dearly love, however, to be able to stand up in a hostile audience and preach this part of God’s living word, and make apparent the force of its evidential value.
I’m looking, therefore, for what those plagues were meant to do; what they were meant to prove; what they were meant to demonstrate, and how they were designed to fulfil their purpose.
Pharaoh’s demand for a sign
So we come back to the original situation where God is briefing Moses and Aaron:
Then the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, ‘When Pharaoh says to you, “Prove yourselves by working a miracle”, then you shall say to Aaron, “Take your staff and cast it down before Pharaoh, that it may become a serpent.”’ So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and did just as the LORD commanded. Aaron cast down his staff before Pharaoh and his servants, and it became a serpent. Then Pharaoh summoned the wise men and the sorcerers, and they, the magicians of Egypt, also did the same by their secret arts. For each man cast down his staff, and they became serpents. But Aaron’s staff swallowed up their staffs. Still Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, and he would not listen to them, as the LORD had said. (7:8–13)
With that, we are introduced to the atmosphere of ancient Egypt and see at once that the call for Moses to do a miracle, or a sign, came from Pharaoh himself: ‘Prove yourselves by working a miracle’ (7:9). There was Moses before Pharaoh demanding in the name of the Lord that he let the Israelites go, and with his mindset and his attitude to affairs Pharaoh thinks to invite Moses and Aaron to do a sign. In this forum he has a lot of very clever men at his disposal. You can call them sorcerers; you can call them wise men (but that’s getting dangerously near university lecturers and professors!); and you can call them magicians, if you will. These were men who had developed all kinds of powers that they could use according to their day. That is the essential nature of a magician—he has learned how to manipulate the powers of the universe, and he can do a sign for himself. He has the power to do it; he has the learning to do it; he has the mystique; he has the technique; he knows the secrets—he can do this marvellous magic.
When I talk about modern scientists as the equivalent of ancient magicians, I don’t say it disrespectfully. I pray their forgiveness upon an innocent Arts man—I meant no harm. But the power of the scientist lies precisely in that, and a very good power it is, isn’t it? To be sure, there is none of the hocus-pocus and demonism about scientists, but they have learned the secrets of how the world works, right down to the atom and its nucleus and so forth, and they can do certain things if they want to. They can set off a hydrogen bomb or an ordinary bomb. They can do magnificent things like hurtle probes through space, bring them down in the Atlantic Ocean within five hundred miles by the laws of gravity, and hurl them round by the same force of gravity off to visit Jupiter, or wherever it is they have to deliver their visiting cards later on. The scientist can do it because he has understood the secrets of nature.
These early magicians may have been a lot of hocus-pocus, but there was something real about them too, wasn’t there? Perhaps they had found out some secrets unlawfully, and we remember the warnings of the New Testament that there shall come a great world figure, who shall do wonders and science. He will be so impressive because he’ll understand secrets of nature in a way that the very devil himself has given him (Rev 13:13–14).
So Pharaoh was thinking in terms of powerful wise men—magicians who could do these impressive feats of power themselves. By going in and talking to Pharaoh, perhaps you can see at once what Moses must not do. He isn’t to go in and compete with the wise men of Egypt; he’s not another ‘wise man’ who is able to manipulate the powers of the universe. The message he’s got to get over is: ‘I know that your wise men have powers and can do these wonders; nobody denies it. But I come to you in the name of the living God. There are certain things that God does that your wise men can do—nobody is disputing it. And there are certain things that the wise men can do that I will presently appear to do. But that isn’t the point at issue. The point at issue is the source and who’s doing it.’
Is Moses using his own powers, or is it true that he isn’t doing anything in particular but speaking a word, and it’s the living God who is behind him doing it? That is the issue. If we can transpose it into modern terms, the issue is not if are there certain things that God can do that scientists nowadays can do. Of course, there are abundant things. In my younger days it used to be said that scientists can do some wonderful things, but God has put a limit on them; and there are certain things they can’t do. We’ll see about that in a moment.
God’s model for his demonstration of power
Notice what God says to Moses when Moses is complaining that he can’t speak very well and Pharaoh won’t listen to him:
And the LORD said to Moses, ‘See, I have made you like God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron shall be your prophet. You shall speak all that I command you, and your brother Aaron shall tell Pharaoh to let the people of Israel go out of his land.’ (7:1–2)
In an earlier passage, God had said to Moses, ‘You shall speak to [Aaron] and put the words in his mouth, and I will be with your mouth and with his mouth and will teach you both what to do. He shall speak for you to the people, and he shall be your mouth, and you shall be as God to him’ (4:15–16). There is a similar thing with Pharaoh here. God is setting up a model as to how things will happen. Moses shall represent God and Aaron shall represent himself and Moses. When they would go in before Pharaoh, Moses would take the place of God and speak to Aaron, Aaron would do what Moses tells him, and then the miracle would happen to demonstrate to Pharaoh the issue at stake.
When Moses subsequently did the sign, it was not Moses’ power that did it. He isn’t a magician or a qualified scientist; he’s an ordinary fellow doing what the living God has told him to do, and it is God who performs the miracle, not Moses. We see it demonstrated in the first three plagues. In this first series Moses’ staff isn’t used. It’s not even the rod of God that is used. Aaron takes his own staff, and when the great work has to be done Moses just speaks to Aaron, Aaron does what he’s told and the miracle happens, thereby setting up an analogy that this is the issue at stake.
Now, subsequently, when Moses does a sign, he’s saying, ‘Look, I am not claiming any part of this for myself; it’s God who’s doing it. He tells me what to do; I do what he says, and this is what happens.’ And so they come to Pharaoh, and, as we’ve noticed, in this first series of three plagues it is Aaron who actually wields the staff.
But perhaps I ought to pause to point out that the nine plagues are grouped into three series of three by a very simple device. The first plague in each series begins with a similar command to Moses. In the first plague (water turned to blood), God tells Moses to rise up in the morning, and go and stand, or station himself, in front of Pharaoh (7:15). That command isn’t used with either the second plague (frogs) or the third (lice). It’s used again in the fourth plague (flies, 8:20), then it doesn’t occur in either the fifth (livestock die) or the sixth (boils), until it occurs again in the seventh (hail, 9:13).
The nine plagues—three series
| Series one: | ||
| 1. Water turned to blood | 7:14-25 | |
| 2. Frogs | 8:1–15 | |
| 3. Lice | 8:16–19 | |
| Series two: | ||
| 4. Flies | 8:20–32 | |
| 5. Livestock die | 9:1–7 | |
| 6. Boils | 9:8–12 | |
| Series three: | ||
| 7. Hail | 9:13–35 | |
| 8. Locusts | 10:1–20 | |
| 9. Darkness | 10:22–29 |
The preface to the plagues
Let’s notice now the preface to all of this (7:8–13). As we said earlier, when Pharaoh asked for a sign, Aaron was to cast down his staff and it became a serpent. But then Pharaoh made the point that his magicians could do the same thing, and so they did ‘by their secret arts’ (7:11, 22; 8:7); ‘For each man cast down his staff, and they became serpents’ (7:12). It’s true that Aaron’s staff swallowed up all the other staffs, but still Pharaoh’s heart was hardened. I don’t know what explanation he gave for the superiority of Aaron’s staff. Perhaps he said there was a technical deficiency in the materials or something. For the moment, therefore, Moses and Aaron had the advantage over him, but that was all it was, nothing much really.
God’s presentation of the evidence of his power
Was Moses another magician, a superior magician, or what was the situation? No, he was just an ordinary man doing the word of God.
The magicians could only do so much
That question regarding the magicians comes again in the first plague, where the magicians did the same thing and caused the water to turn into blood (7:22). It comes also in the second plague, where the magicians did the same thing and brought up the frogs (8:7). But then in the third plague, the magicians could not produce lice, and they said, ‘This is the finger of God’ (8:19). They do not say, ‘Moses is a better magician than we are’, but, ‘This is the finger of God’. Even so, Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, and he wouldn’t listen. He had started out trying to demonstrate that his magicians were as good as Moses and Aaron; but now that his own magicians admit that they are defeated and acknowledge that this is the finger of God, he is not prepared to listen to the evidence that he himself had demanded.
Hence, there come four more plagues, which likewise reach their climax in the sixth plague, when ‘the magicians could not stand before Moses because of the boils, for the boils came upon the magicians and upon all the Egyptians’ (9:11). So, thematically, we seem to be on the right track. God is not wanting to show that Moses is a better magician but that his actions are of God, and in that way they are distinguished from the things that magicians can normally do.
We also noticed that the first three plagues are dispensed through Aaron and his staff. In the second series of three plagues, on the first two occasions it’s neither Aaron nor Moses, but God who dispenses them—plague four (flies) and plague five (livestock die). On the third occasion it is both Aaron and Moses who act directly—plague six (boils). God tells them to take handfuls of soot from the furnace and fling it up into the air, resulting in the plague of boils. No staff is used. In the third series, it’s Moses who dispenses the three plagues: hail (9:22–23), locusts (10:12–13), and darkness (10:21–22).
Let’s just go back for a moment and think about it all. Through Moses, God calls upon Pharaoh to let the people go. He refuses, and the river is turned to blood. Pharaoh is not impressed because his own magicians can do the same thing (7:22). Through Moses, God had turned the river to blood, and the life in it had died. God doesn’t try to show that the magicians can’t do the same thing—of course they can. And so can the scientists and technologists of our own day, which we know to our cost.
Nature is very finely balanced; God never says that mankind can’t ruin it, including killing rivers so that the very fish can’t survive. If the magicians can effect the same result, God isn’t disposed to deny it—who said they couldn’t? But it would be a muddled argument that says that when it happens, it’s always mankind who does it. If it isn’t an understatement, God can do things that they can do. Isn’t that extraordinary? One day he did, and one day he will do it again. Humans can pollute the rivers and disturb the balance of creation. In protest to the oceans of blood that evil men—indeed, evil religious men—have shed upon this earth in their persecution of the righteous, one day God will cause nature to revolt under men’s hands, and the very rivers and seas shall be turned to blood (Rev 16:3–5).
To say that scientists can do it is to miss the point sublimely. Pharaoh was threatened with the frogs in the second plague, and they came up in such a multitude. The Egyptian magicians could bring them up as well. Well, that’s nothing to be wondered at—who denies it? We have observed the agriculturalists doing similar things. They don’t like the birds that come and get the apples, so they develop insecticides and kill off all the birds. Then there’s a vast plague of red spiders that proceed to ruin the apple crop anyway. The cycle of nature—the food chain—is very delicately balanced, isn’t it? It is altogether credible that, by their techniques, these old magicians could disturb the cycle of nature, and the frogs came up in vast multitudes and made a plague and pest of themselves. But Moses was saying that this time it came from God, for surely God can also do what men can do.
The plagues grow more serious
You will notice another feature about these plagues. In the first two in each series there is a warning given to Pharaoh; but in the third plague on each occasion, no warning is given—God just acts. And there is a build-up, in that the plagues are gradually getting more serious.
In the first two (water turned to blood, and frogs), there are warnings, and then clear evidence is given that Pharaoh himself has asked for, from the experiment that he himself has conducted. And when he rejects that, the third plague is dispensed without warning, and the lice come up. The magicians try to do the same thing, but this time they can’t, and they tell Pharaoh, ‘Your Majesty, this is the finger of God’. They do not say, ‘This is of Moses, who is superior to us’, nor do they say that of Aaron either. They say, ‘This is the finger of God’. But Pharaoh’s heart was hardened and he wouldn’t listen.
As I said earlier, in my younger days it used to be taught that there was a limit that God himself had put down. ‘Men will be allowed to do all sorts of wonderful things,’ my superiors told me, ‘but when it comes to the creation of life, man will never be able to do it. If the text is to be taken literally, the dust in the third plague was turned into the lice—or mosquitoes or whatever they were: that is the creation of life, and man will never be able to do it.’
That may be so if, in strict terminology, you mean the creation of life out of nothing. But it’s not said here that they created life out of nothing; the dust turned into mosquitoes or lice. There is an ominous verse in Revelation 13 that says when the great world figure comes— Satan’s final agent, the man of sin, the beast—his minister of disinformation will suggest to the people that they make an image and fall down and worship it. In the language of Revelation, ‘it was allowed to give breath to the image of the beast’ (v. 15). You may dismiss this as figurative language, but perhaps we wouldn’t be wise to dismiss it altogether. I think we are wiser to leave the question open of how far God will let science go, and what powers he will allow humans to get their hands on. Medical professionals can already do some marvellous things, can’t they? One endocrinologist was telling me recently how they can take things out of plants and develop them until they become human antibodies.
Someone may ask, ‘Are you now saying that the magicians could do certain things, and when there was something they couldn’t do, that must be God? Is that not the old argument of the God of the Gaps? Because the magicians couldn’t do it in that far-off day, then that was meant to be God. But of course, we can do it in our day, so we’ve no longer any need of that hypothesis.’
Well, it’s a fair kind of argument, but we’ve not done with the plagues yet, nor with God’s presentation of the evidence.
The distinction between Egypt and Israel
The point has been made to Pharaoh that it isn’t Moses doing the signs, it is God himself, and Pharaoh’s own magicians have recognized it for the time being (8:19). God moves Aaron and Moses aside, and he himself does the next series of three plagues without any throwing down of staffs or anything of the sort.
But this time, you’ll notice that there is a change in the nature of the evidence. God is not an absentee landlord. Moses was to tell Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the LORD . . . I am the LORD in the midst of the earth’ (8:20–22). It is not only that marvellous things happen, but on each of these occasions (the fourth, fifth and sixth plagues), a distinction is made between the Egyptians and the Israelites (v. 23). To make the point that God is the Lord in the midst of the earth, three times over the discrimination is made. Terrible things happen among the Egyptians but not to the Israelites. Granted, these may be physical phenomena, but that isn’t the point. The point is that God is in the midst of the earth, pushing the phenomena this way and that, and making a distinction between the Egyptians and the Israelites.
It seems to me that there is an addition to the evidence here. We’ve had the evidence of prayer—Pharaoh’s own request to God and God’s answer. We now have the evidence of this three-times-over repeated discrimination in applying the plagues. What power has so curiously discriminated between Israel and the Egyptians? Moses is claiming that it is the power of God.
Pharaoh hardens his heart
Pharaoh tries to bargain with God and then goes back on his own bargain. I mustn’t weary you by going through all those details (see 8:25–32). Are you beginning to see what the term hardening means, when it refers to Pharaoh hardening his heart? If you are given one piece of clear evidence and you reject it, if you’re not careful it will set up an attitude in your mind that will lead you to reject the next bit of evidence. Every decision we make confirms, emphasizes and strengthens the attitude that led to the first decision. It is an awesome thing to watch as Pharaoh is confronted with evidence. He was determined at the start to reject it; now it’s multiplying, and of course each time he rejects it his own heart is hardened.
You say, ‘How can I know there’s a God?’.
Well, you can pray.
I will plead with the LORD that the swarms of flies may depart from Pharaoh, from his servants, and from his people, tomorrow. . . . And the LORD did as Moses asked, and removed the swarms of flies from Pharaoh, from his servants, and from his people; not one remained. (see 8:29¬–31)
When the evidence is given and Pharaoh hardens his heart, who’s doing the hardening? ‘But Pharaoh hardened his heart this time also, and did not let the people go’ (v. 32). This is an awesome thing. One day men and women will harden their hearts so they can no longer be moved, and they will go down to hell. Why isn’t God in a hurry to destroy Pharaoh? In his mercy, he will hold him up before the whole world as an example of what happens to human beings when they are faced with the evidence and start hardening their hearts.
It ceases to be simply an intellectual exercise for Pharaoh and now becomes a moral one. From being intellectually perverse, he descends to being morally perverse. He makes a bargain with God, and when God keeps his part of the bargain Pharaoh deceitfully goes back on his promise.
God hardens Pharaoh’s heart
It seems to me that the second series of plagues may be conveying more than just God discriminating between Egypt and Israel. In the sixth plague, of the boils, there might even be a hint of God’s moral reaction. He simply carries out the fourth and fifth plagues, but in the sixth he tells Moses and Aaron not to use their staffs but to take handfuls of the ashes out of the furnaces and fling them to high heaven. Why does he do that? Well, it might just be to make it more impressive, but the learned commentator Umberto Cassuto suggested that the ashes had come from furnaces that were part of the brick kilns, although nobody can prove it. The Egyptians made a lot of their bricks by other methods, but it does seem that they also used brick kilns to harden some of their bricks. If that is so, what a powerful gesture this is. The Lord in the midst of the earth puts a difference between the Israelites and the Egyptians. Now Pharaoh hardens his heart once more and refuses to let the Israelites go (thereby going back on his agreement). Then God tells Aaron and Moses to fill their hands with the ashes of the brick kilns and fling them to high heaven. What a gesture, for it was in the brick kilns that the Israelites were oppressed under the whip of the taskmaster. How will heaven react to the flinging up of those ashes?
If my German friends here will forgive me for being an old man and remembering things of the past, it’s as though somebody had stood in the concentration camp of Auschwitz and taken ashes out of the furnaces and flung them to high heaven.
What does it mean, and what will God do? It is not an intellectual problem anymore. We’ve had the intellectual side; this is the moral side of the evidence. If Pharaoh is now becoming so morally perverse that he can’t even keep his own agreements and goes back on his word, then what will heaven say to the way he oppressed the Israelites? What will God say to the lashes of the taskmaster in Egypt’s brick kilns? It’s clearly a moral question.
At that point in the sixth plague, the magicians could not stand any longer because of the boils, and for the first time it explicitly says, undeniably and unquestionably, that the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart (9:12). Why did God not destroy him at once? God now intervenes to explain.
God’s justice and moral standards
‘Go and tell Pharaoh that I could have cut him off by my power’, says God. Morally he could have done that, for Pharaoh had been urged to deliver Israel, and God had the right to ask him to do so, but Pharaoh had refused. Pharaoh then demanded evidence that could convince him, and God had patiently given him a whole series of evidence. So now, at this point if never before, God had the right to cut him off and could have done so. Why didn’t he? Firstly, ‘so that you may know that there is none like me in all the earth’. And secondly, ‘for this purpose I have raised you up, to show you my power, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth’ (vv. 14, 16).
God has his honour to consider. And whereas this unscrupulous tyrant has ground down the Israelites, tortured and bullied them, and enslaved them until their cry has come up before God, God has his own name to consider. What would you have God do to Pharaoh? Would you have him just ruffle his hair and say, ‘You’ve been a naughty boy, but never mind’? What then would the world think of God, his justice and his moral standard? If there is no justice in this universe, we may as well quit talking about salvation—it’s irrelevant. God must make his power known and his name known. So, when Pharaoh has at last deserved his punishment and there is no doubt about it, God will further deal with him to make him an object lesson to the whole world. Pharaoh now becomes a ‘vessel of wrath’ (see Rom 9:14-23).
God’s mercy on the Egyptians by warning them of the coming hail
Notice that after the Lord had hardened Pharaoh’s heart, he announces a very terrible plague of hail. But he warns the ordinary Egyptians and tells them how they may escape the judgment (Exod 9:19).
Then whoever feared the word of the LORD among the servants of Pharaoh hurried his slaves and his livestock into the houses, but whoever did not pay attention to the word of the LORD left his slaves and his livestock in the field. (vv. 20–21)
What a merciful exhibition this is of how the gospel works. As the first step in that direction, even now when judgment is sure and Pharaoh is going to be destroyed, God preaches the gospel to the Egyptians: ‘There is a way of escape if you will listen to the word of the Lord’.
Look at Pharaoh’s reaction:
Then Pharaoh sent and called Moses and Aaron and said to them, ‘This time I have sinned; the LORD is in the right, and I and my people are in the wrong. Plead with the LORD, for there has been enough of God’s thunder and hail. I will let you go, and you shall stay no longer.’ (vv. 27–28)
So the plague was removed, and then we read:
But when Pharaoh saw that the rain and the hail and the thunder had ceased, he sinned yet again and hardened his heart, he and his servants. (v. 34)
These are terrible words, for when the plague came Pharaoh began to show a spark of conscience—his moral sense was awakening. At last, he is admitting that his attitudes and actions are sinful and that he and his people are in the wrong. He can now see that it is sin that has brought the plague upon him, and asks for the removal of the plague. But even though he sees that it is sin, when the plague is removed he continues in his sin. The horror of it. There is a point beyond which people will go when God finally hardens their hearts. But that doesn’t mean they’re relieved of all moral sense afterwards. One of the tortures of hell itself will be a moral conscience—people will be aware that their attitude is sin and that God is just, yet they persist in their sin.
In the eighth plague (locusts) Pharaoh’s attitude was even worse:
Then Pharaoh hastily called Moses and Aaron and said, ‘I have sinned against the LORD your God, and against you. Now therefore, forgive my sin, please, only this once, and plead with the LORD your God only to remove this death from me.’ (10:16–17)
Moses went out and pleaded with the Lord, and in his mercy the Lord listened to Moses’ prayer once more and the plague was removed. But Pharaoh’s heart was hardened. This time, not only does he see that he has sinned, but what he’s objecting to is the result of sin—the hard consequence of death. He asks for the consequence to be removed, but when it’s removed and all the locusts have gone, he cannot repent. Thinking about the lost, you say, ‘If God relieved them of their torments, would they not be saved?’ No, they wouldn’t. Perhaps it is true to say that they couldn’t any longer repent.
Now, once more without any preliminary warning, God intervenes directly and sends a darkness over Egypt that could be felt (10:21). It was a physical darkness, but who can resist seeing in it a symbol or emblem of a greater darkness? Pharaoh had started by asking for evidence of the reality of God. Having been given the evidence and persistently rejecting it, he is now beyond hope. He is hardened. He cannot even follow the yielding of his own moral conscience. He cannot repent, and he sinks into a darkness that can be felt.
The New Testament application
This is a stern message to learn from the Old Testament, but I am persuaded that it is not merely ancient history. By God’s own mercy, what happened to Pharaoh is set before us as an example of what happens to every man and woman who is given clear evidence, and who, beyond all doubt and with their eyes open, reject the evidence for the truth of God. They shall go down into eternal darkness.
Pharaoh was a vessel of wrath. You say, ‘Was he not foreordained to be a vessel of wrath? Who prepared the vessels of wrath; and who decides who shall be a vessel of mercy?’ Let us ponder again those words of Paul: ‘vessels of wrath prepared for destruction . . . vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory’ (Rom 9:22–23). Could anybody be a vessel of mercy? Or, if you’re a vessel of wrath, have you got to stick with the role that God has given you? A vessel of mercy is someone who is shown mercy by God so that he himself might be an example to all others. Paul shows us what it means to be a vessel of mercy by relating his own conversion:
The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. (1 Tim 1:15–16)
So Paul was not merely forgiven; God showed him mercy.
‘Yes,’ says Paul, ‘observe God’s purpose when he showed mercy to me. You see, I was the very chief of sinners, the very worst specimen you could lay your hands on. I was not a drunkard; I was a high-powered Pharisee and with all the wealth of religious experience in Judaism I persecuted God incarnate and his people. A worse rebel against God you wouldn’t find.’
Says God, ‘I chose Paul on purpose. I thought I’d take the worst rebel because I not only wanted to forgive him, but to make him an example.’
‘An example of what?’ you ask.
‘Of how willing I am to save’, says God.
And so he saved Paul as an example for all those who were to believe. If God saved Paul, the chief of sinners, there isn’t anybody that God wouldn’t save, for there is no distinction, no favouritism or partiality with God. If you want to know God’s attitude, look at Paul, the worst sinner, who was saved to be an exhibition to all the world of God’s willingness to save.
In Romans 9, Paul laments the fact that Israel could have been vessels of mercy. Why weren’t they, and whose fault was it that the Israel of Paul’s day were not vessels of mercy?
‘I’ll tell you,’ says Paul. ‘They sought after righteousness, but they insisted that they were to gain this righteousness by their works, and they would not submit to a righteousness that is by faith’ (see vv. 30–32).
Well now, if you insist on seeking righteousness by works, you might succeed up to a point, but you’ll never be a vessel of mercy, will you? You’d be an exhibition of how salvation could be won by works, which, of course, can’t be done. The Israel of Paul’s day insisted that they could do it and persisted in trying to earn salvation by their works. But so long as a man or woman insists on trying to earn salvation by their works, one thing they will never be is a vessel to display God’s mercy.
How can you become a vessel of God’s mercy? By being an outrageous sinner like Paul. That’s one way of doing it, but don’t do that! Be much milder, for we’re all sinners, and be prepared to accept salvation totally by God’s grace. Oh the magnificence of God, in displaying Paul, the chief of sinners now saved, as an encouragement to every other sinner on the face of the earth that God is prepared to save them by grace.
But if you won’t have grace, what will you have? God made Pharaoh a vessel of wrath, for when Pharaoh hardened his heart God at last fixed him in the position he himself had chosen. God did not do it out of spite. He displayed Pharaoh as a warning, not only to Rahab but in the pages of holy Scripture to the world at large, and multitudes have repented, believed and been saved. We must therefore thank God for letting us see what the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart meant.
7: Movement III: Deliverance from the Wrath of God: Exodus 11:1–13:16
Preliminary remarks
We have spent a day and a half considering the first ten chapters of the book of Exodus, and reason would have it that we cannot afford the same on the sections that remain. Indeed, I would hope now to cover Movement III, and Movement IV in the next session. Both movements only comprise about six chapters (11:1–17:16).
And then I would like to forewarn the lawyers present, as I did on the first occasion, but now with a greater sense of urgency, that tonight I hope we shall consider Movement V (18:1–24:11)—the giving of the law at Sinai. It is perhaps comparatively easy to think about the proposal of the covenant in chapter 19, and the actual making of the covenant in chapter 24, but in between there are long chapters of detailed laws, so I shall be in urgent, dire and desperate need of your help. On the principle that the Lord in his wisdom has given some gifts to some and some to others, I want to announce here and now that he’s not given me the gift of being a lawyer! Amongst us there are a number of lawyers, and I shall be calling on you in our final session to do what you all did so liberally last evening, and help us in our thinking on the particular topics of Movement V.
Passover
We come now to chapter 12, to consider that great fundamental and seminal event in the history of Israel, the Passover. It was said by God himself to be in some sense a completely new beginning: ‘This month shall be for you the beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year for you’ (12:2). The historians tell us that Passover and the Feast of Weeks may have gone back to earlier agricultural celebrations in that part of the world, but it is evident here in the book of Exodus that, whatever the previous feasts may have been, from the time of the Passover the celebration of the annual feasts of Passover and Unleavened Bread marked the beginning of Israel’s experience; it was a new beginning. In the religious calendar of festivals that were subsequently celebrated, Passover naturally stood first.
It is not so much now amongst modern Judaism. The beginning of the year, Rosh Hashanah, has migrated to the second half, commencing in the autumn with the blowing of trumpets, and culminating in the observance of the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur.
But here in Exodus and also in Leviticus, where the religious annual festivals are listed, Passover naturally stands first for Israel. It is likewise for us, who have been redeemed by our Passover Lamb, the real beginning of freedom and experience of the God of liberation. All that flows from our redemption starts with the great Passover sacrifice of Christ.
The two sides to deliverance
That said, let us now notice what we noticed on our first occasion, that there were two sides to Israel’s deliverance from Egypt.
Movement III has the first of them. Israel were delivered from bondage to Pharaoh when God used his mighty power to smash Pharaoh’s resistance. Simultaneously they were redeemed and liberated by the blood of the Passover lamb when the wrath of God descended on Egypt.
Movement IV will direct our attention to the other side of the story of liberation, for it tells us how Pharaoh eventually regretted letting the Israelites go and tried to recapture them. Whereas Israel were taken through the Red Sea as on dry ground, Pharaoh and the Egyptians trying to do the same were drowned in the sea. Israel were set free from Pharaoh again, and in particular from being taken back under Pharaoh’s domination.
Theologically then, as we said in our second session, you could say that on the first occasion they were saved from the wrath of God, and on the second occasion from the power of their enemy. Put it another way: on the first occasion they were saved by blood, and on the second occasion they were saved through water. When we come to the use that the New Testament makes of this great deliverance by using it as a prototype of higher things, it will refer to both these aspects of liberation. First Corinthians will remind believers that Christ, our Passover Lamb, was sacrificed for us (5:7), whereas chapter 10 will remind us that our fathers were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea (v. 2)—two aspects of deliverance.
Passover themes in the New Testament
In our study I want to concentrate on the New Testament’s usage of this Old Testament prototype. As most of us here are preachers, we will want, in the first instance, to be reminded how we may preach these glorious things. So let’s see how the New Testament itself takes up this original prototype and applies it at the higher level.
Redeemed by the blood of Christ to serve God
Different writers in the New Testament chose different aspects of this great seminal event to press home the lessons they wished to teach. We have already considered Peter’s use of it: ‘Knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver and gold . . . but with the precious blood of Christ’ (1 Pet 1:18–19 NKJV). ‘We were redeemed,’ says he, ‘from our empty way of life.’ Israel were redeemed from a bondage that ground their lives down in meaningless futility, and set free to serve God as they should, thus finding meaning in life. Peter reminds the believers that God redeemed them from their empty, vain and ultimately valueless way of life: ‘You were redeemed with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot’. At once we pick up those value assessments: from a valueless way of life that is empty and futile, we were redeemed by the blood of Christ, the value of which surpasses all calculation.
A journey to Christ-likeness
As we saw the other day, the application Peter makes of that is the journey to which Passover introduced Israel. In Exodus 12, as we shall presently observe, the first paragraph is God’s instruction to Moses not only on how they should be delivered, but in particular how they should treat the sacrifice. How they were to prepare and process it, and especially how to eat it: with their loins girded, staff in hand and shoes on their feet, ready to take off on the journey. That, of course, was implied in their being set free, and I needn’t preach again what I talked about on the other occasion.
Just let me remind you how Peter applies it through the second half of that first chapter. He says that we are to gird up the loins of our mind, do some rigorous thinking, and set our hope fully on the grace that will be brought to us at the revelation of Jesus Christ (see 1:13). That is interesting, because earlier he talked about the purifying of our faith: ‘it is much more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire’ (see v. 7), meaning, to have it cleansed from all those unworthy elements that at first are mixed in with it. And then in verse 13 he calls upon us to use our minds for rigorous thinking in working out the implications of our hope.
Two things move us to such thought, if not three. One is the journey to which we are committed: We are to set our hope fully on the grace that will be brought to us at the revelation of Jesus Christ. If we are looking forward to that grace, if that is indeed our Christian hope, we must work out its implications.
The Apostle John would express that in other language: ‘Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is’ (1 John 3:2). He talks here of our hope that, whereas we do not know exactly what we shall be, we do know that when the Lord Jesus appears again, we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is. And then John adds: ‘And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure’ (v. 3). He states it not as an exhortation but as a sheer fact. Notice the weight of it: if you have the hope of being like Christ when the Lord appears, you will purify yourself now. If men and women do not set about purifying themselves now, it raises a big question mark about the genuineness of their hope that they’re going to be like Christ then.
‘Gird up the loins of your mind and set your hope perfectly on the grace that is to be brought to you’—work it out to its logical conclusion in all its implications. As I suggested the other day, Peter employs the metaphor to help us grasp the situation: when you eat the Passover, you must eat it with your loins girded, ready for the journey (see Exod 12:11 KJV).
Suppose you had been taking a tour round the pyramids of Egypt six months after Moses and the Israelites had left, and coming round the corner on your moth-eaten camel you bumped into your old Jewish friend by the name of Zechariah. You say, ‘Hello, Zechariah, I’m pleased to see you, but a little bit surprised to see you here. I thought you believed in this inheritance business that Moses used to preach when he was here. Don’t you redeemed Israelites believe there is an inheritance for you out there in the blue?’
‘Yes, we do’, he says.
‘Well, what are you doing here then? Why aren’t you moving on with the rest?’
He says, ‘That’s not particularly my line of country. Some people go in for that kind of ascetic, rigorous discipline and mark up so many kilometres a day across a desert. I’m not that type, I prefer to take my spirituality a bit more easily. And anyway, Egypt’s got a lot to offer, so why shouldn’t I stay here and enjoy it?’
You say, ‘But, my dear good man, how do you propose to get to Canaan?’.
‘I don’t bother my head about those theological questions,’ he says, ‘I haven’t really thought about that. I shall get there one day, somehow or other. I do fervently believe, but I just don’t think it’s necessary to do all that foot slogging across the wilderness.’
I don’t need to preach the sermon to you, gentlemen, but you may need to preach it to others, and the vividness of the prototype lends force to the exhortation, doesn’t it? How can we get this across to people who seem to think that trusting in Christ and receiving forgiveness of sins is the sum total of things? They do not necessarily see the implication that they must do some rigorous thinking and work out that redemption is to lead us to the inheritance. We are heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, and one day we shall be conformed to the image of his Son (see Rom 8:17, 29).
The Lamb of God manifest for you
And then, as he applies this Old Testament story, Peter twists the screw just a little bit more, doesn’t he? Peter is very aware of what I call comparative time. He makes many references to time, and here is one of them: our salvation is ready to be revealed in the last time (1 Pet 1:5). And then he says that the Lamb was ‘foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you’ (v. 20).
It is a thing to be pondered: why did Christ come when he did? All sorts of answers can be given to that, and Peter observes that the Lamb was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but was made manifest in the last times. And now he particularizes it—for you. I suspect that Peter was overwhelmed with the fact that he lived in the generation who saw the coming of the Son of God into our world and the actual crucifixion of Christ, and felt to himself, ‘Who am I that I have been privileged to live in that moment in history when God’s own Son was manifested and the purposes of God swung into action?’
I suspect Moses and the Israelites—most of them—felt a similar thing. Four hundred years before, God had told Abraham that he would deliver them and bring them out. For hundreds of years, many Israelites had lived and died in slavery, so why was it given to this generation that they should see the Passover? You’d suppose that it would have such an impact on them that they would be the godliest generation in the history of Israel. Alas, it wasn’t so—how will you account for it? The generation of the wilderness was one of the wickedest generations that Israel ever saw. That’s not Christian anti-Semitism; it’s the admission of Stephen, the Hellenistic Jew (Acts 7).
As for us, if we may take the larger canvas—how blessed are our eyes, for they see, and our ears, for they hear. As our Lord said to his disciples: ‘For I tell you that many prophets and kings desired to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it’ (Luke 10:23–24). King David would have given his right arm to know what we know about the unfolding purposes of God: that the Redeemer has actually come, his name is Jesus, and the Passover sacrifice has been offered.
You and I live in an age where we know this tremendous thing: ‘the Lamb, foreknown before the foundation of the world, was manifest in these last times for you’ (see 1 Pet 1:20). And I say to myself, ‘Gooding, how much time do you have out of God’s great history, and then his eternity? Just one little life. Is God interested in my few moments? Will it make a difference for him?’ The staggering reply comes that, in the very councils of eternity, it was ordained that the Lamb of God should be manifest at this time for me. What kind of implication does that have for the way I spend what Peter calls ‘the time of my sojourning’ (v. 17 KJV), knowing I am redeemed with the blood of the Lamb? How vain is the manner of life from which we have been redeemed, and how costly the life that God gave to buy our little time of sojourning—well might we spend it in fear.
God’s claim upon our wealth and material possessions
If that is the emphasis that Peter puts on it, we find a slightly different emphasis with John. According to the Gospel our Lord attended two Passovers, if he didn’t attend three, and that makes a very interesting study. As you come to the Gospel of John, structured as it is and built up of certain journeys that our Lord made to Jerusalem for the national festivals, it is instructive to notice what each particular festival stood for and then to watch the Lord Jesus going up with the pilgrims and to listen to his comments. For instance, we are told ‘The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem’ (2:13). What would you have expected the crowds to be talking about in the celebrations of Passover week? I know they wouldn’t be talking theology all the time because their long-lost relatives from Paphlagonia would all be coming up and there would be a lot of socializing. But it was a religious festival, and this one was Passover. What would you have expected the people to be talking about?
Here’s Zephaniah, and he’s talking to his long-lost cousin, Amos. ‘My brother, isn’t it marvellous to look back and remember how “the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm”?’ (see Deut 26:8). ‘And here we are celebrating this annual event. It’s not just a little bit of antiquity, is it? Truly, it’s an ongoing experience for us all. Tell me Amos, what experience of the power of God have you been having this last year or so?’
Doubtless, there were such conversations; but when our Lord went into the temple he found them selling oxen, sheep and pigeons, and it so infuriated him that he made a whip of cords and drove them out. The Jews said to him, ‘What sign do you show us for doing these things?’ (John 2:18).
He said, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up’. They said, ‘It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and it takes a lot of money to keep it up. All these ornate ceremonies we have to put on for the people, and this gorgeous temple, they’re such an important part of our religious experience, but it costs money and you’ve got to be a realist in this world and screw every shekel you can out of the people.’
It’s Passover time—what had happened? You see, it was in the Passover regulations that when Israel were delivered from Egypt the Egyptians would give them their gold and silver and whatnot (see Exod 3:22; 11:2; 12:35). So the people came out with vast wealth as a by-product of their redemption. They hadn’t been long in the wilderness when God showed them what the ultimate purpose of that gold and silver was, and the cry went out in the camp that they were to bring their offerings.
As we were noticing the other night, at first in their folly they nearly apostatized and lost God’s gracious offer of coming to dwell among them. But after God’s disciplines and Moses’ intercessions, God graciously granted them again that they might know this wonderful thing: they could make a sanctuary and God would dwell among them. So when Moses called for the offering, they brought and they brought and they brought until the various craftsmen came to Moses and said,
‘The people bring much more than enough for doing the work that the LORD has commanded us to do.’ So Moses gave command, and word was proclaimed throughout the camp, ‘Let no man or woman do anything more for the contribution for the sanctuary.’ So the people were restrained from bringing, for the material they had was sufficient to do all the work, and more. (Exod 36:5–7)
‘Please stop giving,’ said Moses.
If you ever hear that there’s going to be a Christian convention where the leaders will be obliged to get up and tell the people to stop giving, let me know, as I’d like to be there just for the unique experience! What a slander on redemption it is that Christian people have to be pushed, prodded and driven, or alternatively worked on and their emotions put on the boil, before they give. How shall we cure it? Well, if we have to descend to the moneymaking and fund-raising techniques of the world, I suppose we must; but if we do, is it not evidence that somewhere along the line the meaning of our redemption has escaped so-called Christian people? We can afford to be as literal here as we like. When God brought Israel out of Egypt by the blood of the Passover lamb and they got this wealth, he expected that at least some of it would be given to the making of his dwelling place. Knowing that we were redeemed and what it cost, its claim should reach to our last dollar, euro and pound.
Saved from the wrath of God by the Lamb
It’s a slightly different emphasis again when you come to the last Passover that our Lord attended, as recorded in John 11:55–18:1. For it is at that juncture in the Gospel of John, and particularly in chapter 12, that our Lord begins to indicate that what is about to happen at Jerusalem is a battle of the kings. Last night, as we were thinking about the plagues, some of you very helpfully suggested this concept of a power struggle. That is the side of the Passover that John presents to us here—the struggle between the prince of this world and our blessed Lord. ‘The prince of this world cometh,’ he says to his disciples privately, ‘and hath nothing in me’ (14:30 KJV).
In all the Gospel accounts of the crucifixion, it is only John who refers to the stipulation that no bone of the Passover sacrifice may be broken (Exod 12:46). Standing by the cross, watching, and subsequently being guided by the Holy Spirit as to what of all those tremendous happenings he should record, John chooses to find space for this little part of the ordinance, ‘Not one of his bones will be broken’ (John 19:36), because John is wishing to affirm to us that here is the Passover lamb. So at once, perhaps we can see the flow of thought. As God’s power moved through and smashed Pharaoh’s domination, it was by the suffering of the Passover lamb that Israel was protected. That will provoke long thoughts on our part. What is the connection between these two things?
Standing on the street, or was it in the temple court, our Lord says:
Now is the judgment of this world: now shall the prince of this world be cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me. This he said, signifying what death he should die. (12:31–33 KJV)
And die he did, as the great Passover Lamb; and the question that confronts us is, why did he choose that means to overcome the domination of the prince of this world? It isn’t the normal method of settling a power struggle among nations, is it? You might have thought that the power struggle between God and the devil would come to its climax in an outburst of inimitable, unique divine power, but according to this passage the way the prince of this world was broken was through the sufferings of the Lamb of God. Why is that so?
You say, ‘That’s because God in Christ identified himself with the sufferings of the oppressed, and therefore the oppressed come to love him.’
There may be truth in that, but isn’t there a deeper side to it? At the Passover in Exodus, God was not identifying himself in that sense; God was executing his wrath, and it was the suffering of the Passover lamb that saved Israel from his wrath.
How does that break the domination of the prince of this world?
There is an obvious answer to that question, isn’t there? With his devilish ingenuity, Satan slandered God and brought our forefathers to believe the lie that God was against them.
‘I hear you can’t eat of any of these trees in this garden’, said the serpent one breezy morning to Eve.
‘Oh, that’s an exaggeration,’ she said, ‘we can eat of all the trees except one.’
‘Ah well,’ said the devil, ‘that’s typical of God. Look how lovely this tree is. God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil’ (see Gen 3:5). ‘He wants to keep you down and spoil your enjoyment.’
In other words, Satan was saying, ‘God is against you’. It was a devilishly cunning move because, when they disobeyed God, there was a sense in which God had to be against them. How could God be for their sinning? How could he tell them that their sinning didn’t matter? How could an eventual paradise be built on the notion that it doesn’t matter if people sin? An evil conscience and the threat of God’s necessary judgment has driven fear and resentment of God into many a heart, pushing them further away from God until the very thought of God creates enmity in their hearts. What an enemy Satan is! How should God overcome it? By coming with his big divine club, bashing Satan and all those who have been rebellious, forcing them to their knees by the exhibition of his power? Is that God?
If I may ask, what was it that broke the enmity in your life and made you want to obey God? What broke the spell of that satanic liar and slanderer of God and set you free? It was through him, who said that he had come to declare the name of God. He never declared it more loudly than at the Lord’s Passover, when he hung as an apparently helpless lamb upon the tree. God’s wrath was poured out, but instead of falling upon us, it fell on Christ. It was there that the battle, the struggle between the two great powers, was won. That remains the same message of the gospel: ‘It is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes’ (Rom 1:16). It breaks the hold of the prince of this world upon the hearts and loyalties of men and women.
Passover fulfilled in Christ
However, in John’s Gospel we see the sad irony of it all. Some theologians tell us that in the Gospel of Matthew we have an inspired presentation of our Lord as King; in John we have him as the Son of God. These categories are helpful to some extent, aren’t they? Actually, if you look at them more closely, Matthew’s account of the crucifixion chooses to concentrate on the deity of the Lord Jesus. For instance, Matthew quotes the mocking words of the Jewish leaders: ‘He said, “I am the Son of God”’ (Matt 27:43). John chooses, by contrast, to concentrate not on our Lord’s deity, but on his kingship. So we read that Pilate was up to his tricks and, as a final desperate move, he brought Jesus out crowned with thorns, and said to the people, ‘Behold your King!’ (John 19:14). To get rid of Jesus, the leaders of the nation replied, ‘We have no king but Caesar’. By rejecting the Passover Lamb who could have set them free from bondage, they hugged their chains around them. What foolish men they were. They said, ‘We have no king but Caesar’, and Pilate handed Christ over to them to be crucified.
Pilate wrote an inscription and put it on the cross: ‘Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews’. Hurriedly the Sadducees came to Pilate and said, ‘Don’t write, “The King of the Jews”, but rather, ‘This man said, I am King of the Jews’. But Pilate was fed up. He said, ‘What I have written, I have written. I don’t change my mind or my writing for anybody—you get in your place’ (see vv. 19–22). They said they had no king but Caesar, so let them accept what Caesar’s representative proposes to do. Pilate’s writing wasn’t changed, which is interesting as John proceeds to describe the Lamb of God nailed to a tree as God’s King.
Scriptures fulfilled at the cross
They divide my garments among them, and for my clothing they cast lots. (Ps 22:18)
First of all, says John, there are the soldiers. They divided his garments into four parts, one part for each soldier. But there was only one tunic, and they said, ‘Let’s not tear it, but cast lots for it to see whose it shall be’. Why did they do that?
‘Well,’ you say, ‘there was something about it; it was so beautiful.’ But John tells us that behind it all, though they knew nothing about it, there was a writing that said they wouldn’t tear his garment. They changed their minds—and the writing was fulfilled (see John 19:24).
You say, ‘That’s a little thing, isn’t it?’. Well, it is a little thing, but I’d have you know that the command of this King extends to the littlest things in the world, and he’ll have his writing fulfilled, even though he hangs spiked on a tree.
I haven’t time now, and I mustn’t yield to the temptation to consider those other writings that were fulfilled, save two, for we’re talking about Passover.
Not one of his bones will be broken. (Ps 34:20)
When at last the crucifixion was coming to its end and the Jews wanted to celebrate their special religious festival the next day, they came to Pilate and asked that the legs of the victims might be broken, and that they might be taken away, since it was the day of Preparation (19:31). So the soldiers came with their hammers and broke the legs of the first one, and then of the other who had been crucified with Jesus. But when the soldier lifted up his hammer to smash the knees of the figure on the centre cross, he stopped (v. 33). Why? Well, he was already dead, so he changed his mind. John adds, ‘For these things took place that the Scripture might be fulfilled: “Not one of his bones will be broken”’ (v. 36; Ps 34:20).
They will look on him whom they have pierced. (Zech 12:10)
Then a soldier had another idea; he got his spear and pierced his side, and there came out blood and water (John 19:34). He didn’t know that another writing said that one day ‘they will look on him whom they have pierced’ (Zech 12:10).
They didn’t crucify our Lord the way they intended to; he made them change their minds to be in accord with his writing. John was standing by the cross, and he implores us to believe him: ‘I saw it and I bear record, and God knows that I’m telling the truth’ (see 19:35). Why the emphasis? Because he was standing by that historic act, which was the beginning of redemption for all mankind from the greatest slavery there ever was.
John is pointing to Christ and saying, ‘The tiniest details of God’s plans, which were announced in prototype in Israel’s Passover, are being fulfilled at the highest level to the very last detail. For he who has won your loyalty and obedience by his suffering is none other than the King of the whole universe, who proposes to rule it from one end to the other.’
The worthiness of the Lamb to execute final judgment
Those are some of John’s emphases in his Gospel. Now let me remind you of his emphasis in his book of the Revelation, which I must do very speedily. The book of Revelation opens with the letters to the seven churches, and after that it proceeds to talk of something quite different, namely, the heavenly scene.
Worthy are you . . . for you created all things. (Rev 4:11)
In chapter 4 John is given to see the throne of God and learns that it is the throne of the Creator. At the end of its description, John listens to the heavenly choirs as they sing the worthiness of the Creator to receive all the due revenues from his creation.
The universe has no other raison d’être than to serve the will of the Creator, and the chaos that we see around us is because mankind and other powers have turned to their own way. Just as he interposed in Pharaoh’s day, first he will introduce three series of warning judgments—plagues, if you like, leading to the great day of judgment and the day of the Lord when Christ shall come and take over the government of our world. The seals are opened (ch. 6), the trumpets are blown (8:6¬–11:19), and the bowls of God’s wrath are outpoured (ch. 16).
In the last analysis, if this world can only be brought back to serve its Creator as it was originally intended to by the exhibition and use of God’s power in judgment, then a question arises. Who is not only able, but who has the moral worth to exercise that power? Any fool could press a button and blow the planet to smithereens with some hydrogen bomb or other.
Worthy are you . . . for you were slain. (Rev 5:9)
It’s not just who is able, but who is morally worthy to set loose the judgments and bring this planet back in submission to God’s government. And of course it is the Lamb who is found worthy, ‘for he was slain and by his blood has ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation’.
Yes, but listen to the second thing:
. . . and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth. (v. 10)
At once, you’ll see the parallel with Exodus. What was the purpose of Israel’s redemption? When Israel were redeemed by the blood of the Passover lamb out of Egypt, it was not merely to take them to their glorious inheritance. There was a prior thing, which we shall find in Movement V. When they came to Sinai, God came down with his proposal that they should be his treasured possession—they should be to him a kingdom of priests (Exod 19:5–6).
These would be people who have learned to obey God and serve him as priests; who have learned to serve their fellow men and women, not in the spirit of godless competition, enslaving those who are inferior, but to live as priests, putting God first, their fellow man second and themselves last.
There is no hope for a paradise unless men and women can not only be forgiven and redeemed but transformed. The mere exhibition of divine power cannot change a rebel into a priest. Who can provide suitable inhabitants and suitable servants of God to take over the dominion of earth along with Christ? And the wonder of our Lord is that he’s worthy to set loose the judgments that shall bring earth back, because he is in the process of creating the ‘civil service’ to take over the administration, and he has not only redeemed us but has made us a kingdom and priests to our God.
Instructions for keeping Passover
Having gone through those things, let me come now to the emphasis of the passage itself, the actual portion from the book of Exodus chapter 12 onwards. What I was attempting to do in the first half of this session was to remind you of the different ways in which the New Testament takes up and applies the Passover theme, and to point out how different writers, or the same writer in different parts of his work, will seize on different elements in the Passover story in order to press home the lessons they wish to teach.
I want to continue with that for the remaining minutes of our session, but I would like us first to go back to the actual text in Exodus 12 and 13 to make a quick rundown of the parts of the narrative that go to make up the whole; and then to notice the way the story is told and the sense of proportions it exhibits, and perhaps surprisingly how things get constantly repeated.
So, firstly, in 12:1–20 we notice God’s instructions to Moses and Aaron that they are to keep this Passover, and instructions are given about the selection of suitable lambs; what they are to do with them and their blood; how they are to eat the lamb; and how they are to be clothed as they eat it.
‘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 judgements: I am the LORD’ (v. 12)—with the explanation in verse 13 that the blood upon the houses shall be a sign to give Israel security and peace of heart while these solemn events are proceeding; and also a token for God: ‘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’.
Memorials
And then, even though the Passover hasn’t yet been celebrated, comes the reminder for coming generations: ‘This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the LORD; throughout your generations, as a statute for ever, you shall keep it as a feast’ (v. 14). And as if that were not enough, notice that the following verses describe the second feast they must keep, the Feast of Unleavened Bread. ‘. . . On the first day you shall remove leaven out of your houses . . . until the seventh day,’ and the demand is pressed home by the solemn announcement that anybody who eats leaven shall be cut off from Israel (vv. 15–20). Mark the proportions: verses 1–13 are about preparing the Passover; verses 14–20, seven verses in all, are about the two memorials of this great event.
Secondly, in verses 21–28, Moses calls the elders of Israel and passes on the instructions to them (see vv. 21–24). But look now at verses 25–28: again, half of it is devoted to telling the Israelites that when they come out of the land, they must keep this service, so that ‘when your children say to you, “What do you mean by this service?” you shall explain to them about the Lord’s Passover and what he did’.
We notice in passing that the grievous service of the Egyptians, of which we read from chapter 1 onwards, is to be replaced by another service—the keeping of a memorial to remind Israel of the service they now owe to God forever.
Thirdly, verses 29–36 record the actual smiting of Egypt, and Israel is now being urged to depart, first by Pharaoh and then by the Egyptians as a whole. They went out in haste, as Moses had told them. ‘So the people took their dough before it was leavened’, says verse 34, and spoil from the Egyptians, taking their silver and gold jewellery and clothing (v. 35).
Then there is another shortish paragraph, comprising verses 37–42, where the historian puts this great event into its historical context: ‘It was a night of watching by the LORD, to bring them out of the land of Egypt; so this same night is a night of watching kept to the LORD by all the people of Israel throughout their generations’ (v. 42). We can’t get away from the emphasis on the need to observe this night and keep it as a memorial forever.
Verses 43–51 contain the ordinance of the Passover: ‘No foreigner or hired servant may eat of it’ (v. 45). To eat it, you must be circumcised. And so we come to a seeming climax in verse 51: ‘And on that very day the LORD brought the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt by their hosts’; but we haven’t finished yet.
The Lord spoke two more things to Moses, as we see from chapter 13. First, he mentions the demand, ‘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’ (v. 2). But he doesn’t explain why they should be so consecrated.
Then verses 3–10 talk about the necessity of keeping the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and as that comes to an end, this matter of memorials is raised once more. ‘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’ (v. 9).
And then verses 11–12 revert to what verse 2 was talking about: ‘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, you shall set apart to the LORD all that first opens the womb’. In other words, they are to set apart the firstborn to the Lord. That occupies the text down to verse 16, which ends with another reminder that these things have to be a memorial: ‘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.’
If, therefore, we have been paying attention to the way the story is told and to the emphases and the proportions that are given, beyond the actual night and the deliverance by blood, there are four things among others that would stand out in our minds:
• Passover must be kept as a memorial every year to remind successive generations how it was that Israel gained their freedom; • the Feast of Unleavened Bread; • the sanctification of the firstborn; • the ordinance about circumcision.
So that in any understanding of Passover and in any application of it to our hearts, we must pick up these things too—not only the fact of redemption through the blood of the sacrifice but the duties that come upon us as a result of it.
The call to remember our release from bondage
If Israel needed to be constantly reminded year by year and throughout the generations of what it was that delivered them from Egypt, by simple analogy may we not say that we Christians need constantly to be reminded of that self-same thing?
We may say, ‘How could the Israelites forget so soon?’ We noticed in our first session how soon they did forget, for in chapter 32 Israel demanded of Aaron that he make them gods, and Aaron made the golden calf for them. They danced around it, and said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’ (v. 4). And they kept this event as a chag (feast) to the Lord (v. 5). It was an utter perversion of the original chag laid down in chapter 12 and a complete forgetting of the true facts of what it was and who it was that brought them out of the land of Egypt. Some would argue that it was not a complete contradiction of those facts; but it was definitely a fluffing of the edges, a distortion of the narrative, and an addition of all sorts of idolatrous concepts to the original Passover ceremony.
If we say, ‘How could Israel forget so soon?’, surely we should first criticize ourselves as members of Christendom, for has Christendom not often forgotten what it was that brought us out of bondage? All sorts of other recipes are prescribed: social engineering, education of the poor, political involvement—all kinds of things that are good enough in themselves. They are what I would want to call the by-products of redemption, which have often been substituted for the gospel of how men and women are to be delivered. Christendom needs to be reminded of what has brought us out of bondage. Not for nothing did our Lord institute the memorial of himself. I know you will say to me that it too has very often been perverted by being turned into a sacrifice or mixed in with magic. Well, as we’ve just seen, the Passover was perverted, but that is no reason for abandoning the Lord’s Supper. We need the constant reminder of how we were brought out of bondage. For myself at least, I want to say, in humility and not in any boasting pride, that if the Lord commanded Israel to keep the memorial, then they were meant to keep it. And if our blessed Lord has commanded us, as Christian people, to keep his memorial, it is surely enough for us that he commanded it and we shall do it.
The Feast of Unleavened Bread
But then we come to this second feast that was allied to the first. Notice how many times it is mentioned, and the regulation is such that you couldn’t keep the Passover without keeping the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Not a day intervened between the two festivals. You couldn’t have one without continuing pronto with the other—if you keep the Feast of Passover, you must keep the Feast of Unleavened Bread as well. I shall not stay to deal with the history behind it, save only to notice that Exodus itself says that they actually did eat unleavened bread when they came out because they came out in haste; but the requirement that they keep the Festival of Unleavened Bread was given even before they came out (Exod 12:14–20).
Leaven as a symbol of corruption and evil
I want to proceed straight to the use that later rabbis and then the New Testament made of this festival.
RABBINICAL APPLICATION: PURGING OF PHYSICAL LEAVEN
Rightly or wrongly, later rabbis quickly came to see leaven as a symbol of evil. You may protest that they were allegorizing, typologizing, or any other such thing that you may count irregular; but they did it, and therefore to this day, at the appropriate time of the year, our Jewish friends purge their houses of leaven. For the serious-minded it isn’t a little joke like Santa Claus at Christmastime or what have you, it is a serious religious festival when they make an attempt to cleanse and remove from their homes what, for them, is a symbol of corruption and evil.
NEW TESTAMENT APPLICATION: PURGING OF THE LEAVEN OF WICKEDNESS
The apostles of our Lord Jesus do the same thing in the sense of calling us to purge out the leaven of wickedness in our own lives and in the church. Let us look at the major passage that deals with that.
It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans, for a man has his father’s wife. And you are arrogant! Ought you not rather to mourn? Let him who has done this be removed from among you. (1 Cor 5:1–2)
FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE INDIVIDUAL
Paul directs that this offending Christian brother should be disciplined and put away: that is, excommunicated from this particular Christian church. Then, to urge upon them this duty of godly discipline in the church, Paul refers them to the Old Testament:
Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump? Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us therefore celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. (vv. 6–8)
He is making the point that, if we have partaken in the benefits of Christ’s sacrifice as our Passover, there is a necessary duty upon us to keep our equivalent of the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Now that exhortation applies to us all as individuals. All of us who are redeemed by the blood of Christ must be diligent to purge out from our lives the old leaven of malice and wickedness, seek to be renewed, and feed on the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. Not once a year, but every day of our lives.
FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE CHURCH
Doubtless in the first place the exhortation has application to our personal discipline as individuals. But the context in which Paul preaches this is clearly not simply in our private lives, but public godly discipline in the church. That has proved to be a very thorny problem for Christian people down the centuries, has it not? I must not attempt to speak without being aware of it. Against it is the argument that it is impossible to implement, because our churches are a mixture of believers and unbelievers. And please don’t tell my gracious Queen what I’m about to say; but if the monarch of the land is the head of your church, and in some centuries in England they have been notoriously immoral, how is it possible to exercise discipline? It is not for me to comment further upon that, but I want to ask whether that is an adequate reason for failing to obey holy Scripture.
THE PARABLE OF THE WEEDS AND THE WHEAT (MATT 13:24–30, 36–43)
Some people say, ‘It’s not only impossible, but it’s anti-scriptural to exercise discipline in the church. In his famous parable of the weeds and the wheat, didn’t our Lord tell us that we are not to attempt to root out the weeds, but to let them grow to harvest? If we were to attempt to root out the weeds from the professing church, would there not be a grievous danger of all kinds of witch hunts and inquisitions of every conceivable type, which indeed have marred Christendom down the years? Therefore, we must heed the exhortation to leave the weeds there and let them grow along with the wheat until the harvest of the final judgment.’
That seems to me to be quite a false interpretation of that parable. Certainly, it cannot be set up as contradicting the plain commands of Paul. In our Lord’s interpretation of the parable, the field in which both wheat and weeds were sown was not the church but the world. ‘The field,’ said our Lord, ‘is the world’ (v. 38).
Secondly, those who were eventually commissioned to root out the weeds were not elders, bishops, or others in Christian churches; they were the angels of God (v. 41). The purpose of rooting out the weeds was that they might be consigned to the everlasting burning.
You’ll notice that this passage on Christian discipline in the church is very different. The purpose of the excommunication of this particular man is not so that he shall be consigned to the everlasting burning, but the very opposite: ‘you are to deliver this man to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord’ (1 Cor 5:5). This discipline is not to be looked upon as some terrible inquisition or witch hunt designed for the man’s destruction; it is for his salvation.
FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE GOSPEL
There’s a third reason why it must be done, and that is not merely for the good of the man and his salvation but for the testimony of the gospel itself. ‘It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans . . .’ (v. 1). Paul was writing to a Christian church in an ancient Greek city, and without being offensive I can tell you that they weren’t too bothered about sexual immorality. It was the normal thing at that time.
As he was defending Marcus Caelius Rufus in front of the Roman establishment, Cicero the Roman said, ‘Of course I don’t approve of sowing wild oats myself, but those antique moralists who used to urge a strict morality on the young have gone out of fashion, and now there’s a difference in public attitude. It’s sort of milder, more sympathetic and understanding. Who says it’s wrong for a young man to sow his wild oats? So long as he doesn’t injure other people, it’s okay. It’s the modern fashion, and you’re not going to stop it anyway. What if my friend Caelius has kicked over the traces a little bit? He’s young, and perhaps later on he’ll simmer down and become a respectable citizen.’7
Wouldn’t it be alarming if the Christian church in Corinth had been allowed to slither into copying the moral standards of the pagan world, and permissiveness of that kind were to invade the church? The practices of homosexuality and adultery not only fall short of the ideal, but are they not always sin? How shall we preach the gospel if the church permits such practices, not only in its congregations but in its ministers? In the church at Corinth they were allowing and even glorying over the sin that is mentioned in verse 1, presumably because they thought it to be liberty in Christ. But even the Greeks were scandalized. What would be the use of the Christians in Corinth publicly preaching that men and women need to be saved, only to find that the church allowed this kind of immorality? You might as well pack up the preaching. Surely we must not so undercut the evangelist, nor so pervert the gospel of Jesus Christ, as to say that you can have forgiveness, be a member of a Christian church, and yet carry on as before in blatant immorality?
The man is to be removed from among them, but not in harshness, for all of us are sinners. Paul says that he must be ‘delivered to Satan for the destruction of the flesh so that his spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord’ (v. 5). What does he mean by flesh? He cannot mean it in the theological sense—I don’t know that Satan is in the business of destroying our bad tendencies towards sin; he’s more in the business of promoting them. The opposition of flesh and spirit in the text suggests that what Paul is talking about is physical discipline; that the protective ‘hedge’ of the church that God puts about his people is to be removed and Satan given permission to attack the man, as he attacked Job (though Job was not a sinner of this sort).
Let me say at once that if God in his wisdom allows Satan to attack his people, it is not always because they’ve been engaged in gross sin, but to purify their faith. On this occasion, Satan was to be allowed to attack a believer and bring him into such physical suffering. Why? Well, my good friends, if he is a believer, but has it in his head that he can go on sinning in this manner that is quite inconsistent with being a Christian, is it not Christian love for God eventually to show him that his notion is so false that he must be stopped? Indeed, the idea that you can carry on unrepentantly sinning like that and still be a believer is false, and constant practice would begin to throw doubt on whether he is truly a believer at all. If it requires extreme discipline to wake him up to that fact and bring him to ask himself, ‘Where do I stand in this great matter of salvation?’, then the discipline would be worthwhile. Mankind has an eternal spirit. If God needs to discipline him, then he will do it so that the person’s spirit may be saved in the day of the Lord.
The ordinance of circumcision
I should like us to notice then the proportions of the Passover record in the Old Testament. It is so easy to preach redemption through the blood of Christ and use Passover as an illustration, and quite rightly so; but then to fail to implement the implications in Scripture that are inseparable from it. Israel were told that they must continue to participate in the Passover down the centuries, and to do so they must be circumcised. We do not have the time to go into all the many significances that are attached to that ordinance, save this. If you would experience redemption there in Egypt, you must be prepared to stand as a member of the people of God and take the covenant sign.
And it is still so. It is not false separation but true Biblical separation. Redemption calls us out from the world to become part of the people of God. It will then send us back into the world to evangelize, but it will insist that the redeemed stand as the people of God and take the covenant sign of baptism (Col 2:11–12).
The consecration of the firstborn
And finally, there is the matter of the firstborn. You may well not agree with me, but in my analysis of the contents of this part of Exodus the Passover story starts in chapter 11, where God immediately mentions this matter of the firstborn (vv. 4–5); the record also ends with it (13:1, 15). The Israelites were forever after to sanctify the firstborn and hand them over to God. He could redeem them from that lifelong service in Egypt, but the logic of it was clear enough.
Says God, ‘I demand that the firstborn be consecrated to me entirely on the ground that on the night of Passover I passed through Egypt and smote the firstborn. Israel’s firstborn survived solely because they were covered by the sacrifice and death of the Passover lamb, and now I demand that their lives be consecrated to me.’
If a firstborn objected, I suppose the argument would be, ‘If it hadn’t been for God’s Passover lamb, you wouldn’t have any life to live’.
Now we pass immediately to our own situation—from the Old Testament to the New Testament. The lasting implication of redemption is surely that all who are redeemed must be consecrated to the Lord. In 1 Corinthians, if Paul makes reference to the Feast of Unleavened Bread in chapter 5 (vv. 6–8), when he recurs to this matter of immorality in chapter 6, he says, ‘Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body’ (vv. 19–20). How would I protest my case before God that I ought to be allowed freedom to do as I please? For what argument could I bring against him?
What should I say to God if he said, ‘Gooding, you don’t want to serve me? Were it not for the death of my Son in your place, you would have no life to lead anyway.’
For the love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised. (2 Cor 5:14–15)
As we ponder that particular implication of redemption, surely the emotion that surges round our hearts as we remember God’s love will be a potent motivation to yield our lives as a sacrifice for Christ? But emotion might not be enough and we are asked to bring logic to bear upon the situation. ‘The love of Christ controls me,’ says Paul, speaking of that burning fire of the love of Christ, ‘because we have concluded this . . .’ (v. 14). God grant that our love for the Saviour shall induce in us that rigorous logic, so that when we are tempted to live selfish lives, that very logic calls us back. He died for me; without him I had no life to live; how can I do anything now but live for him?
If logic doesn’t suffice, in the final analysis let us hear the voice of morality: ‘You are not your own, for you were bought with a price’ (1 Cor 6:19–20). There are a number of words in the English language to describe what it is a person does when they take without permission something that is not their own and misappropriate it for their own use. None of those words is pleasant, and it offends against the basic morality of redemption to take without his permission what God has bought and misappropriate it for our selfish living.
May the Lord speak to our hearts as we need to hear it, and give us courage to obey his word in our situations, both individual and ecclesiastical.
8: Movement IV: Deliverance from the Power of Egypt: Exodus 13:17–17:16
This is the second part of Israel’s deliverance from Egypt. Thank God, there was not just one part—salvation from the wrath of God. There was a second part—salvation from bondage to Pharaoh. Salvation and deliverance from sinful attitudes, a slave mentality and Egyptian principles of living.
We come now to what I regard as the fourth major movement of the book of Exodus, which as I understand it begins in Exodus 13:17. It will deal with the other major element of Israel’s liberation. As we said this morning, in the Passover they were delivered from the wrath of God and brought out of Egypt. Now in this section of the book they are delivered from going back into Egypt and falling again under its oppressive power. We shall find that they are not only saved from slipping back under the power of the pharaoh, but they are also saved from the Egyptian mindset that they had developed in the course of their long stay as a nation in that country, and also from the slave mentality that had built up in them during those long years.
It is noticeable in this fourth movement, which records the early days of Israel’s freedom, how from time to time they expressed their preferences and gave the impression that they found this experience of being liberated anything but pleasant; almost so painful as to be unbearable, to the point where they would prefer to have been left in Egypt. When they turned round and saw Pharaoh and his chariots pursuing after them,
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? 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.’ (14:11–12)
They didn’t find liberation pleasant at first, and it is a thing that we should ponder, perhaps, in our preaching of the gospel. Not everyone immediately finds the results of being saved comfortable and positive. To preach to such people that upon being converted their life is going to be a heaven of undiluted, unmitigated and uninterrupted joy is to lead them to a false gospel. It can result in severe emotional and spiritual struggles. Here, the people were saying that life in slavery was better than death outside of it.
and the people of Israel said to them, ‘Would that we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full, for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.’ (16:3)
This now has a slightly different emphasis. ‘Yes,’ they say, ‘we were eventually going to die in Egypt, but as bad as dying is, at least it’s made a bit more comfortable if you’re by the meat pots with your cucumbers, onions and such like things. If you’ve got to die, it’s better to die with that enjoyable food than to die of starvation in a wilderness.’
Under another trial that came their way, they got to the point of quarrelling with Moses, testing the Lord and accusing Moses of having brought them out of Egypt to kill them (17:2–3). In their bitterness they said, ‘Is the LORD among us or not?’ (v. 7). They had come to doubt whether there was anything in this business of redemption at all and in the often repeated promise heard from Moses’ lips that the Lord would be with them and among them if they believed and stepped forward. They were on the verge of concluding that it was a lot of nonsense and imagination run riot, and there was no reality in it whatsoever. The path of deliverance was not immediately smooth for the people of Israel, nor is it for many a convert in the present day.
So let us just notice again how this movement is bound together from a literary point of view. It begins by saying,
When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them by way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near. For God said, ‘Lest the people change their minds when they see war and return to Egypt.’ But God led the people round by the way of the wilderness towards the Red Sea. (13:17–18)
God was taking steps so that they should not immediately see war and be discouraged by it, though the last story in this particular section begins with the record of an occasion when Israel were called upon to fight (17:8). The Lord announces that he would have an unending war with Amalek: ‘Write this as a memorial in a book . . . that I will utterly blot out the memory of Amalek from under heaven’ (17:14). And there and then God called on Israel to fight. You’ll notice, therefore, the balance that this particular part of Exodus is to put before us.
When Israel first came out of Egypt, having been a nation of slaves for four hundred years or so, they were in no mood or mental attitude to fight a war against anybody. They were still browbeaten and broken, and the sight of an enemy in front of them might have been disastrous, so they were not called upon to fight. ‘The LORD will fight for you, and you have only to be silent’, said Moses (14:14). That’s glorious, as we shall see in a moment.
But on the other hand, that couldn’t be the only part of their redemption. It couldn’t be the final story. They would eventually have to be rid of the slave mentality that was still with them so that they could fight and dare to stand up to an enemy. They would have to learn to take up arms for themselves and fight their enemies, and not just stand there and ‘let go and let God’. It is not the purpose of salvation to leave us morally and spiritually maimed, as mere spiritual infants who can do nothing for ourselves and just rely on God to use us as robots. God is determined not only to save us from our external enemies but also from our internal enemies and remake us as responsible men and women. He will call upon us to ‘fight the good fight of the faith’ (1 Tim 6:12), and, as Joshua said to his captains, to put our feet on the necks of our enemies and put to death those spiritual enemies that would stand in our way (see Josh 10:24).
Deliverance at the Red Sea
But first, we begin at the beginning of the movement with the story of God’s deliverance of Israel at the Red Sea or, as the learned call it, the Reed Sea; though in all probability the bit that they crossed over didn’t have any reeds in it. As one very clear commentary points out, it was called the Reed Sea because other parts of that same sea had reeds in them. So anyway, you choose what you like to call it, the Red Sea or the Reed Sea. (Being learned can be a trial sometimes!)
Fear that deliverance is an impossibility
Anyway, the story as told is exceedingly graphic. They were on their way and God had told them to go this way and the other, so as not to meet any enemies. On looking back, however, they saw Pharaoh drawing near. The Egyptians, with all their chariots, were marching across the desert after them, and the people were afraid. They said to Moses, ‘We told you it was a nonsense scheme even beginning to think we could ever be free of Pharaoh’. They cursed the day that they had believed Moses, trusted him and come out, for now here were the Egyptians in their massed might (see 14:10–12).
Surely we shall find some compassion in our hearts for the Hebrews and their reaction at this stage, ‘Better to have been in Egypt and survived than to seek our liberty and die in the wilderness as a consequence’. We are told sometimes that when people are confined in concentration camps or such things, their prime objective is not always to get their freedom; their prime objective is to survive. They will study every grimace on the faces of their jailors and train themselves not to appear to object to anything, lest the officers that oppress them should take exception even to the way they look. The major objective is not so much escape as survival, and this had been imprinted on the Israelites’ minds, and on their backs and bodies by the lashes of their taskmasters. The very sight of an Egyptian coming up behind them reactivated those memories. They could already feel the lash coming down upon their backs once more, and in their sense of helplessness and bitterness they cursed Moses for bringing them out.
When people get saved nowadays they know they’ve been forgiven, yet sometimes the bondage of sin has marked their psychological makeup very deeply and they despair of ever being free. There was a young woman in Northern Ireland at one stage, whose story was this. Together with her boyfriend and some others, she was taking drugs. One morning she and her boyfriend woke up, still sitting in the chairs where they’d fallen asleep, to find that their friend was dead in his chair from an overdose. They ran away, and the police caught up with them. Eventually, the young woman was put in prison. She shared a cell with an older woman who had murdered her mother—a bright twosome they made. When the young woman eventually came out of prison, somebody took her to meetings arranged by a Christian organization called Prison Fellowship, and she was saved. In the months that followed, some of us used to go round to have a Bible study with her on Saturday nights; though it was not just to have Bible study but also just to be with her when the old craving came over her.
I know of another man who many had worked with, and I happened to be there when eventually the Lord opened his eyes and he was saved. Before his salvation, he was a besotted fool. His house was literally a hovel. After he got converted, he eventually became a foreman, if not a manager, in his factory—he was not without ability. But in the early days after he got saved, the tormenting time was when the clock began to come up to 10 o’clock at night, which is the time when pubs in respectable Éire were supposed to shut, and he felt that it was now or never. If he couldn’t get the beer now, what would he do? How would he survive? So his friends used to go and sit with him to help him face his enormous craving. For many, the whole thing of being free from the domination of sin appears to be an impractical idea. Yes, they can believe in forgiveness, but how can they find deliverance from sin’s power and the psychological wounds and inhibitions of the years?
What a wonderful story this is of the grace of God in saving ex-slaves! When they shouted out in their panic, Moses told them, ‘Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the LORD, which he will work for you today . . . The LORD will fight for you, and you have only to be silent’ (14:13–14). What use would our gospel be if all we could offer people was forgiveness of the guilt of sin, and couldn’t also tell them of a gospel that could deliver them from the power of sin?
Delivered from the power of the oppressor
You know the story of how the deliverance at the Red Sea was done at the historical level (see Exod 14). Moses was told to lift up his staff and stretch out his hand over the sea, and the Lord drove the sea back by a strong east wind, and Israel went over. When the Egyptians tried likewise to cross over, Moses stretched out his hand once more, and the winds ceased and blew the other way; the waters came down on the Egyptians and they were drowned.
Baptism
Let’s go immediately to the application that the New Testament puts upon it. Paul says to the Corinthian Christians,
For I want you to know, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ. (1 Cor 10:1–4)
The first thing we ought to say about Paul’s observation here is that he isn’t indulging in allegory, still less in unlawful allegory. When he says that they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them and ate of the spiritual food, he’s talking literally. The history book is exceedingly clear that when God saved them, one great part of their salvation was that the pillar of cloud went before them by day, and at night it was a pillar of fire (Exod 13:21). On the night when the Egyptians came up behind, the cloud of God’s presence moved back behind Israel to stand between them and the pursuing enemy (14:19–20).
How poignant it is that the God who had stretched himself over their doors to prevent the destroying angel from entering their homes and killing them, now puts himself between them and the enemy to bear the brunt of their attack.
The simplicity of the Hebrew narrative may not please us altogether as sophisticated theologians, but there it is. ‘In the morning watch the LORD in the pillar of fire and of cloud looked down on the Egyptian forces and threw [them] into a panic’ (14:24). I like the simplicity of that because I’m a simple soul! While you, gentlemen, are sophisticated theologians, never forget that in your congregations you have simple souls and they can’t understand terms like imminence and transcendence. It won’t do holy writ any harm, nor to the glory of the divine person, if you say that the Lord looked out of the cloud. I can see him doing it to have a look at these Egyptians, can’t you?
Was the Lord in that cloud? Is this a serious matter of faith or merely a religious myth—an empty story? I dare to believe that it means what it says: the Lord was in the cloud (13:21). As the cloud overshadowed the Israelites and they went into the sea, they were not only being baptized into Moses, they were being baptized or covered with the cloud of the very presence of the Lord.
It’s not a myth nor an allegory; it is a historic fact. I am proceeding by simple analogy or simple repetition when I say that being delivered from the power of sin is part of our Christian salvation—it involves the very same principle. It’s applied at one level by Paul in the passage I have mentioned in 1 Corinthians 10. He says, ‘For I want you to know . . . that our fathers were all . . . baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea’ (vv. 1–2). That’s vivid, isn’t it? There was the sea; there were the Egyptians; and here were the Israelites in between. The question was, how do you escape the domination of Pharaoh who’s there to bring you back to Egypt? And the answer is Moses standing there with his staff, and the sea divided. At this moment you have your choice: will you follow Pharaoh back to Egypt, or will you follow Moses, God’s appointed saviour? The only way to escape Egypt and Pharaoh’s domination was to be baptized into Moses.
We should not forget the simple, straightforward significance of our Christian baptism either, for at its simplest level it proclaims a basic principle of salvation. If I would escape the domination of sin and the slavery of Satan, the only way it can be done is by accepting another master, lord and captain of our salvation (see Heb 2:10). My public expression of that is to be baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus. Somebody says, ‘But I don’t see the point of it’.
Well, never mind. If the Lord commands it, doesn’t it become the first step of obedience and commitment to him? Liberation for Israel from the bondage to Pharaoh did not mean that now they were at liberty to chart their own course and go where they wanted. The doctrine of salvation is that, to escape the dominion of the evil pharaoh, they must accept another captain of their salvation and be baptized to Moses. The analogy is simple: we are set free to accept our blessed Lord as the captain of our salvation.
But when it comes to the matter of baptism, Paul enlarges on it in Romans 6, which is perhaps one of the principal passages in the New Testament that talks about delivering us from bondage. Let’s briefly look at it again, familiar though it is. From verse 12 of chapter 5 onwards, Paul turns to deal with the wreckage of sin. In the early chapters he puts before us two reasons why people need to be saved.
THE WRATH OF GOD
The first reason begins in chapter 1. We need to be saved because as unregenerate people we stand under the wrath of God (1:18). Paul shows us how, and comes to the great climax of that part of his Epistle: ‘Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God’ (5:9).
Salvation is guaranteed—absolutely sure and certain. If we have been justified, then it is much more certain that we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Christ and through his death on our behalf.
THE EFFECTS OF THE FALL
The second reason begins in 5:12. We need to be saved not only from the wrath of God, but also from the wreckage consequent upon Adam’s disobedience and fall. That initial disobedience of our first parents has brought three slavish dominions.
- Sin. ‘Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned’ (5:12). And the verse in chapter 6 that we are about to consider comforts us with the thought that sin shall not have dominion over you: ‘Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body’ (6:12). By the very terms that are being used, you sense the slavery and tyranny that Adam’s sin has introduced among us.
- Death. ‘Death reigned’ (5:14). Through our blessed Lord, we are comforted to know that now that he has risen again, death has no more dominion over him (6:9).
- The law. If you say, ‘But why can’t that sad state of affairs be relieved by introducing people to the law?’—according to chapter 7 the brief answer is that the law itself forms another dominion (v. 23). We cannot keep it perfectly, therefore it condemns us to death, and far from solving our problem it only magnifies our slavery.
WE ARE DELIVERED BY GRACE NOT BY THE LAW
How are we to be delivered from this bondage to sin, death and the law? Romans 6 is going to use the language of baptism. But let us now go to verse 14, to see the first step in this deliverance: ‘For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace’. Here is the secret of breaking the dominion of sin, and it seems to me that we are wise to recognize that it is not always clear to many a convert. Even when we’re being very clear in our exegesis, sometimes we have to spell things out more simply than we think we have to.
How shall sin not have dominion over us? Because we’re not under law! I take it that Paul is referring to the principle of law. The Hebrew word for law is torah, and torah means instruction, etymologically at any rate. But the law of God is more than instruction, isn’t it? God’s holy law did not come alongside us and say, ‘Now, this is a moderately good idea and I should do it if I were you—“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might, and you shall love your neighbour as yourself” (Deut 6:5; Lev 19:18). See how you get on with it.’
That’s not the principle upon which the law works. The law says, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might, and you shall love your neighbour as yourself, and if you break those commands, I will curse you’.
I could never gain heaven by being under that law, since even if I kept seventy-five per cent of it, which is about the limit on my best and holiest days, that wouldn’t be enough. If I were now under law as a principle, how should I fare as a believer struggling to get free from the habit of sin?
I picture myself lying in bed one Monday morning, and there is the apostatized law leaning over me. ‘Wake up, Gooding, and get out of bed. This is the programme: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might, and you shall love your neighbour as yourself; and if you come short, I shall curse you”.’
What would you do if you were me? I think some of you would get up and have a go because you’re sizeably holy. I couldn’t. Knowing myself, I would say, ‘That’s useless’. And if I were under law, that would be the end, wouldn’t it? It’s no good my saying, ‘Well, sorry, Law, I made a mistake; I’ll be better later on’. The law would say, ‘You won’t have any later on: you’ve broken the law and must suffer its penalty’.
In his mercy, God has not only forgiven our guilt and saved us from the wrath of God, but now the first step in being released from the dominion of sin is that we’re not under law but under grace (v. 14). When I fall and fail as a believer it’s not the end. Praise God, I can get up and have another go! If you should say to me, ‘You’re making light of sin in the believer’s life’, I’m not. But I am saying that God has paid the expenses of my spiritual education in advance. There is no possibility of belittling the importance of a believer’s sin, but God has foreseen it and his holy Son has paid the penalty for it. Therefore, ‘If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness’ (1 John 1:9).
WE ARE DELIVERED FROM THE DOMINION OF THE LAW
But before we leave it, let’s ask our passage how we got out from under the dominion of the law. We have died to it! How and when? ‘We died with Christ’, says Paul. But what does that mean? Paul explains:
We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. (Rom 6:9–11)
The passage is telling us that we died with Christ—when Christ died, we died. It is saying that we died in the same manner as he did—‘he died to sin once’, so we died to sin once. In what sense, therefore, did Jesus die to sin? Was it that he was constantly faced with sin and battled daily with a struggle against it? It was a fearful struggle, and at last, thank God, he was allowed to die, which put an end to the struggle and he died to sin? Well, it’s almost blasphemous to mention that possible interpretation, isn’t it? Jesus died to sin—legally died to sin—and bore its penalty and died once and for all. It is in that sense that we are asked to consider ourselves to be dead to sin; for if we are dead to sin, it is simply because we died with Christ. He died ‘once for all’. How many times did we die then? Well, once for all. Death no longer has dominion over him; the life he now lives he lives to God; and in that sense we are to reckon that we too have been raised from the dead to ‘walk in newness of life’ (v. 4).
You say, ‘But what has this legal thing to do with it? I wish you wouldn’t emphasize legal things so much. Surely we ought to be talking about practical things.’
But legal things are important, even in practical living. ‘For he that hath died is justified from sin’ (Rom 6:7 RV). The Greek term that is translated in this verse as justified, so upset some commentators and early translators that they didn’t translate it literally in that way. But the term is justified, for Paul is still thinking in legal terms.
How is that practical? Well, let me reminisce, as is the privilege of old men. I remember in my boyhood hearing from my father how in that part of England in those far-off days, when certain Suffolk men would be supporting the bar in a country pub or down in the town, in would come the colour sergeant, recruiting men for His Majesty’s army, and he would offer them a shilling to enlist. When the men became sober the next day, they found they had accepted the king’s shilling and were now in the army. If now they tried to run away, the law would be after them and they would be in prison. So, off to the army they had to go, to be driven round the drill squares by this sergeant.
So imagine a country boy, from Suffolk like me, and he’s in the army. His Aunt Emelina comes home from America and enquires after him, and she finds he’s in the army. Taking pity on the poor man, she goes along to the authorities and buys him out of the army, as you could do in those days. She pays the price, and he is legally free. He’s walking down the town centre one day when here comes the sergeant major. ‘What are you doing here?’ he says. ‘Who told you to come out here? Get back!’ So he runs back as hard as he can to the exercise square, because the long conditioning of his reactions to the old sergeant major has not yet been broken.
Now comes Aunt Emelina, and she says, ‘What are you doing here?’. ‘The sergeant major told me I had to come.’
‘But you don’t have to. I’ve bought you out and you’re legally free’, she says.
Oh, what a gospel message we have! When Satan comes to us, and all those hidden complexes that years of sinning have produced tempt us to think that we must yield and obey them, what a wonderful thing it is to hear the gospel that we are legally free. We can stand clear, knowing ourselves to be forgiven in spite even of our fallings and failings as believers.
This is where our freedom begins, and we symbolize it in baptism. We have been buried with Christ and raised with Christ (v. 4). And, of course, there is the second part of it: ‘in order that . . . we too might walk in newness of life’. That is not the expression of a wish; it is the symbolizing of a fact. Not only are we legally free, but God has given us new life in union with Christ, and with it new powers and the grace of his Holy Spirit.
Assurance of entering into their inheritance
If that is so, just let us notice one or two other things. When the Israelites got to the other side and saw their enemies dead and that they were at last free, they broke out in spontaneous singing to the Lord (Exod 15:1–21). And that is a common reaction, isn’t it? When people realize that not only have they been forgiven from the guilt of the past, but they also sense the reality of the Saviour’s power to deliver them from the domination of sin, the reality of salvation provokes in them an instinctive assurance. ‘Yes, we shall at last arrive in our glorious inheritance and be brought into the eternal dwelling place of God.’
Delivered to serve God
But there’s another little piece to the story, just after they had stopped singing:
Then Moses made Israel set out from the Red Sea, and they went into the wilderness of Shur. They went three days in the wilderness and found no water. When they came to Marah, they could not drink the water of Marah because it was bitter; therefore it was named Marah. And the people grumbled against Moses, saying, ‘What shall we drink?’ And he cried to the LORD, and the LORD showed him a log, and he threw it into the water, and the water became sweet. There the LORD made for them a statute and a rule, and there he tested them, saying, ‘If you will diligently listen to the voice of the LORD your God, and do that which is right in his eyes, and give ear to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you that I put on the Egyptians, for I am the LORD, your healer.’ (15:22–26)
Backed home by the demonstration of our Lord’s healing powers, he promised the people that he would not put upon them the plagues and diseases that he had recently put upon the Egyptians. But that promise was conditional on whether they would hear his voice and keep his commandments. If, on the other hand, they didn’t hear his voice and didn’t do his commandments, then they might expect from this very announcement that God would deal with them, and the consequences could be painful.
Isn’t this a lesson that we too need to learn? In fact, Paul enforces it (Rom 6:15–23). What is salvation, what is conversion?
‘Well,’ says Paul, ‘you were once slaves of sin . . . and, having been set free from sin, have become slaves of righteousness.’ It means taking your members and yielding them to God so that you might serve God. That is true conversion. Whereas we used our members to serve sin, now we deliberately use our members to serve God. ‘Be warned,’ said Paul, ‘if you present yourselves to anyone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey, either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which leads to righteousness’ (see v. 16). As believers, if you yield your members to sin, you will enslave yourself.
Here Paul is talking of consequences, just as God was talking to the Israelites about the consequences of sin: ‘If you keep my commandments I will not put upon you the diseases and plagues I put upon the Egyptians, but if you break my commandments there will be consequences and all kinds of plagues’.
That is still true, isn’t it? And it has appealed to me over many years that we need to be careful about how we preach the gospel. On the one hand, we must preach that there is no penalty. All penalty is gone; Christ has paid it: ‘There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus’ (Rom 8:1). But there are consequences.
If I drink a whole bottle of methylated spirits every day, I can argue as much as I like that there’s no penalty because I’m redeemed and Christ has paid the penalty. But that fact won’t stop the consequences of drinking the methylated spirits. ‘God is not mocked,’ says Paul to the Galatians, ‘for whatever one sows, that will he also reap’ (Gal 6:7). It is true of believers as of anybody, if we abuse our freedom, disobey the Lord and sow to the flesh instead of sowing to the Spirit, we shall from the flesh reap corruption (v. 8). It is a balance of the truth that we’d do very well to remember constantly, and remember to teach, lest believers grasp the gospel that there is no penalty but fall to the other extreme and think that they may sin with impunity.
God tells me to sow a field of wheat, but I say to myself, ‘I could make a lot more money sowing a field of barley’, and in disobedience to the Lord I sow barley. When it comes towards harvest and I see what I’ve done, if I get down on my knees and confess my disobedience and beg the Lord’s pardon, he will pardon me, won’t he? But if I say, ‘Lord, please change this barley into wheat’, do you suppose he will? No, what a man sows, he reaps.
That is not to discourage anybody, but as we make our decisions in life it is a solemn thing to remember that we shall reap what we sow. Those sad consequences of former disobediences can’t perhaps be removed. When we are truly contrite and repentant, God can use those very consequences in our further training and turn them to our perfection in holiness (2 Cor 7:1); but the law remains, what we sow, we reap.
‘Keep my commandments,’ said God to the delivered Israelites, ‘and I will not be obliged to put plagues upon you; break them, and consequences must inevitably follow.’ The Lord give us wisdom in our preaching of the gospel to know when to apply the one message and then the other.
Lessons from the early days of freedom
According to the narrative of Exodus, there were three other lessons that God taught Israel in this particular part of their desert progress. One major lesson was associated with the down-to-earth matter of daily food (ch. 16). Two further lessons are given in chapter 17, neither of them so important, perhaps, but important in their way—Israel’s experience at Massah and Meribah, and then their experience in the war against Amalek. We have time only to deal with these things briefly, so please excuse the fact that my exposition must of necessity be inadequate.
Deliverance from Egyptian principles of living
The right attitude towards daily bread
The first lesson, therefore, was a lesson about daily bread and daily work. As they went through the desert, God fed Israel by raining down manna (bread) from heaven.
You say, ‘That’s a delightful story, but who could believe it? Wouldn’t life be marvellous if God did that kind of thing now? I mean, all you’d have to do is go out in the morning and God rains your sausages and bacon down from heaven. You are fed, you don’t have to work, and you’re free just to enjoy yourself. That would be a kind of paradise, but surely it is so unreal that we couldn’t believe it.’
But perhaps you’re not reading the same story as I am. That bit about them not having to work isn’t true, is it? Even though God miraculously rained down manna from heaven every day, they had to work quite hard to collect it as it lay on the ground. They had to go out and gather it early in the morning, and because it was very small it would take a lot of gathering. Bending down under a sun that was becoming hot was wearying work. When they collected it, they had to take it home and cook it. There wasn’t all that much difference between that and going to the supermarket, loading your trolley, bringing it all home, and then cooking and preparing it and so forth. There was a lot of work involved.
You say, ‘But for all that, the source was miraculous. This manna was coming down from heaven—that bit was miraculous, surely?’. Yes, but what about you? You eat your shredded wheat and your cornflakes. Tell me, how did that ear of corn come to be in your earth? Do you know anybody who can make an ear of corn? I haven’t heard of them yet, unless there are a few Egyptian magicians around! So, for the very basic things of our survival, namely our daily bread and food, we are still dependent upon this yearly miracle of the growth of a plant: the production of an ear of corn or wheat or barley at the end of a stalk, a process that we still cannot produce by ourselves.
Why did God feed them that way? First of all, he allowed them to hunger, much to their displeasure, and then he fed them by giving them the manna. Later on he explained to them why he did it:
And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD. (Deut 8:3)
Their idea of food was the meat pots of Egypt (Exod 16:3), which was the Egyptian way of looking at it. Now they had to be taught a different attitude towards their very daily bread and the matter of living.
That is still a basic question, isn’t it? What is happening when we sit down to our breakfast and eat our muesli or our cornflakes? What is the significance of that in life? For the atheist it can be enjoyable, if the muesli is good of course; but then, as far as he is concerned, his food is a battle against impersonal nature. When he sits down he has nobody to thank, apart from his dear wife. Sitting by himself at a table with his cornflakes, all he has is cornflakes, and you can’t thank impersonal nature for them, can you? She’s not there to be thanked and she doesn’t listen anyway. Because he doesn’t believe in a God or creator, and doesn’t believe that the food comes from a divine hand, he sits alone.
‘What’s wrong with that?’ you say.
Well, listen to our Lord repeating the passage in Deuteronomy, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God’ (Matt 4:4). That is not God being stingy and peevish, saying, ‘You shan’t live at all if you don’t listen to my word’. No, this is the Lord pointing out the lovely dimension of our food in daily life. Do you want to live? Well, you’ll need the old cornflakes to keep your physical frame going. But there’s a bigger dimension even to eating cornflakes, and that’s to sit at the table remembering that they ultimately come from God, so that the eating of my daily food is an experience of God and God’s generosity. If you miss that dimension to your daily bread, you’ve missed the most significant part of living and food, and I’m not sure how long God is prepared to put up with it.
You see, suppose for some reason or other you decided that I was a bit of a lonely figure, and you would invite me home to dinner and honour me with your friendship. And so you prepare a beautiful banquet and invite me to come and sit at your table. When the hour comes I sit down, and you put me in the position of honour by your side. As I begin the soup, you say, ‘It’s been a very pleasant day’, and I take no notice. ‘Hmm,’ you say to yourself, ‘not very well brought up, that man.’ A little bit later, as we come to the fish, you say, ‘Where did you go on holiday this year?’ But I bury my mouth in the fish, and I take no notice. ‘Seriously, something is wrong with this chap,’ you think to yourself. A bit later, as we come to the sweet, you ask, ‘Have you read any interesting books recently?’. I lift my mouth from the sweet and wipe the cream away, and I say, ‘Look here, there is something I’d like you to know. I think this food of yours is gorgeous, the presentation is exquisite, and that Rembrandt you have on the wall is the last word of aesthetic perfection. I’ve enjoyed it immensely. But I want to tell you straight, I am not interested in you. In fact, I very much doubt if you exist.’ What would you do? You would probably say, ‘Do you know what that is on the door over there? It’s a handle, and that’s the way out.’
The great Creator gives me physical substance. He yearly performs and sustains his miracle to provide me with my cornflakes and invites me to come and sit at his creatorial table to eat my food and begin to learn what life is. But in the very giving of it, he holds out his hand so that he might introduce himself to me as my friend and lead me on into a friendship that shall become permanent. When the cornflakes have disappeared, I shall live with God forever. Oh, the wonder of it!
But if I should turn round and eat the food and not be interested in the giver, how long will God put up with it? Millions of men and women rob themselves of that dimension in the ordinary basic things of life.
The right attitude towards work
So God taught Israel the significance of daily bread. And according to our passage he linked to it his repetition of the command to keep the Sabbath (16:5, 22–26). They were told that when they went out on ordinary days they were to gather enough for one day and not attempt to hoard it (vv. 19–20). Contrariwise, on the Friday they were to gather twice as much because on the Saturday there would be no manna. They would have to rest, and therefore God would supply twice as much on Friday to tide them over, thereby linking their food to the observance of the Sabbath. Why was that? God wanted them to cease from the work necessary to produce or collect the food, because the first and basic consideration of the Sabbath was to sit back and contemplate that God is the creator.
We injure our souls if we allow work to become such a driving force, so filling our lives that we have no time to contemplate our Creator. Work then becomes a slavery, which God never intended it to be. Of course, I know that when mankind fell, God put upon them the rigours of a much more difficult working life, with thorns and thistles to contend with. It’s no good pretending that life is completely a gentleman’s occupation; it’s a struggle, and a hard struggle for many. But that said, it’s not meant to be servitude or slavery. God therefore invites us, indeed he commands us to sit back from time to time and contemplate him as our creator. It will lift the burden and save our lives from becoming a drudgery.
Learning a different mindset
The other thing that happened was this. Different people had different abilities, so some gathered more and some gathered less. But, as the New Testament points out, it all came to the same thing in the end, and ‘whoever gathered much had nothing left over, and whoever gathered little had no lack’ (2 Cor 8:15).
You say, ‘Was that a miracle?’
I think perhaps it was a miracle of God’s grace in their hearts. Learning that the manna came from God and there would be a supply tomorrow, they were not afraid to share. So God was beginning to teach his people a new attitude, which was so different from when they were slaves in Egypt.
That would transform our attitude towards daily work and the profits that accrue from it. If I lose the sense that the food comes from God and get it into my head that it’s as a result of my cleverness and strength, then my work will turn into an unholy competition.
Deliverance from sinful attitudes and a slave mentality
Two other lessons were taught to them, according to chapter 17. They are two shorter stories this time, and we shall notice what they have in common from a literary point of view.
In the first story about the provision of water from the rock, they eventually called the name of the place Massah and Meribah because of the quarrelling of the people of Israel and because they tempted the Lord (v. 7). The naming of the place at the end of that story was so that they might preserve in their memory the significance of what happened there.
In the second story about the war with Amalek, Moses built an altar and called the name of it Jehovah Nissi, meaning the Lord is my banner, or the Lord is my military standard (v. 15), so that once more they might record the significance of what had happened there. When we look at those two things, we shall find there is a difference.
The right attitude to trials and difficulties
In naming the place Massah and Meribah, they were recording a discovery that they had made about themselves, their own wicked and rebellious hearts. It must have been a terrible surprise to them when they thought about it afterwards.
When they had stood on the further banks of the Red Sea with the Egyptians dead on the seashore, Israel experienced the delivering power of God and they sang until their very lungs were fit to burst (Exod 14:30–15:1–19). They felt that heaven was so near; another little effort and they would already be into their great inheritance. We heard them talking about how God would lead them in, and how he had in fact brought them to his holy habitation (15:13 KJV). Then a few weeks down the road, they were questioning whether there was anything in it at all, quarrelling with Moses and testing the Lord to the point where they talked of stoning Moses. It teetered on the edge of an outright rebellion. I think it must have been a horrible surprise to them later when they contemplated what they had done.
But, you see, isn’t that the pathway to holiness? Why did God lead them through this difficult wilderness and allow them to be hungry and thirsty? He did it to prove what was in their hearts, so that God might know them and they might come to know themselves.
How shall I ever become holy if I’m never made to face myself? Becoming holy is not an automatic process. It means that from time to time God has to allow or even force me to face myself: my weaknesses, my nasty temper and my rebellion. I’m sometimes not the holy man I think I am. Catch me at my prayers in church, catch me singing or listen to what I’m saying, and you’d think I’m the greatest saint on earth. But next Monday, when things have gone wrong at work, you’ll discover what is still inside. How shall I ever be holy if God doesn’t allow circumstances to come round that make me face myself, so that I have a chance to repent and seek the grace and power of the Holy Spirit to deliver me from it?
So it was by God’s own leading that Israel came to this difficult circumstance. They took their journeys according to the commandment of the Lord, and this indeed was what made it so difficult to bear. I imagine that if they had set out in their own self-will, choosing their own path, when the water ran out they would have said, ‘We’ve nobody to blame but ourselves’. But it wasn’t like that. They’d taken their journey by the commandment of the Lord. They actually believed that the Lord was leading them to a veritable paradise, to a land flowing with milk and honey. They journeyed under his direction, and it led them to such painful thirst that they became all confused about this business of the Lord’s leading.
I wonder if you’ve noticed a little thing, at least about those of us who are weaker? When we relate some glorious circumstance, we say, ‘The Lord must have been in that’. Then we record difficulties and trials with no mention of the Lord. My brother, my sister, is it the mark of the Lord’s leading only when things go well, or sometimes can it not be that life’s desperate trials are also the leading of the Lord?
So when they came to this difficult place and ran out of water, their disappointment sparked a hidden rebellion. They quarrelled with Moses and tested the Lord by saying, ‘Is the LORD among us or not?’ (17:7). They didn’t get down on their knees and have a united prayer meeting. They didn’t say, ‘We don’t know how this has happened to us. Perhaps we’re out of the will of the Lord: let’s seek the Lord. Perhaps he isn’t able to show us the grace of his presence because we are displeasing to him. Where have we gone wrong? Let us repent.’
No, they came defiantly to Moses, saying, ‘Look here, Moses, we’ve had enough of this. We very much doubt if there’s anything in it at all. All this talk of salvation, the Lord’s presence, the Lord’s leading: look where we are now. Listen to those cows bellowing their heads off because they’ve no water to drink. Look at our wives and little children, with their lips beginning to crack. What’s the use of your talking about the leading of the Lord? We very much doubt whether the Lord is among us or not.’
So they flung down the challenge to God and put God himself on trial. ‘They tested the LORD.’ One of the meanings of that term is that you tell God to his face, ‘You’ll do this, and if you don’t, we will not believe you anymore’. So the Israelites were saying to God, ‘You’ll come up with the water, or we’re not prepared to follow you’.
Tempting or testing the Lord is a very serious business. Let us remember it when we begin to think that, because of our circumstances, God doesn’t love me today. My brother, if God doesn’t love you today, he has never loved you and never will love you. For a God who would love you yesterday and forget to love you today is useless. In fact, he doesn’t exist.
So they rebelled, and our interest now lies in how the rebellion was cured. It is a dramatic story, and if at this late point in the day my imagination gets the better of me, you are so generous-hearted that I’m sure you’ll forgive me.
How the rebellion was cured
Confronted with these rebels, God said to Moses,
Pass on before the people, taking with you some of the elders of Israel, and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb, and you shall strike the rock, and water shall come out of it, and the people will drink. (17:5–6)
You say, ‘I can see what’s going to happen now. God is coming down to hold court. He’ll stand there on the rock and become the executor of his judgment with the staff that turned Egypt’s waters to blood. He’ll stop these rebels with their complaints against him, and who can tell what disaster will fall upon them?’
No, he did not. God collected the rebels, stood upon the rock and said to Moses, ‘Strike the rock, and water shall come out of it, and the people will drink’ (v. 6).
You say, ‘Well, that’s just a natural geographical feature of the desert. Recently some soldiers in the Sinai Peninsula found that you can suddenly find water bubbling out of the rocks. It was no miracle at all.’
Well, not knowing that, if I’d been Moses I would have been a bit afraid to take my staff and smite the rock on which God stood, wouldn’t you? On one of these big occasions when they erect a platform in Hyde Park and Her Gracious Majesty comes and stands on it, if somebody came out of the crowd with a big stick and started to hit the platform, what do you suppose the police would say about that and its significance?
‘Go on, strike the rock on which I’m standing,’ says God. ‘You might as well, for what do you think you’ve been doing with your tongues? You’ve been complaining against me, so go on and hit the rock.’
‘Do not murmur,’ says Paul (see 1 Cor 10:10). Sometimes that is a hard injunction to follow, isn’t it? Consider how our murmurs and complaints must sound in heaven; they are a challenge to the very throne of God.
Moses lifted up his staff and struck the rock, and the water gushed out of it. Here is where I get more fanciful than ever. How does God cure our rebellions, simultaneously providing us with the water that we need, and guarantee that we shall have it all the way through life until we get home to glory? The answer is: ‘He who did not spare not his own Son . . .’ (Rom 8:32). Jehovah lifted up his rod, and the wonder of the story is that it didn’t fall on the rebels, but on God incarnate. While we were still sinners, while we were enemies kicking against God, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son (Rom 5:8).
Is that not the way God heals your wounds and brushes aside your murmuring? In this sorry world with all its pain, suffering and complexities, is that now how God convinces you that he loves you? ‘He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?’ (Rom 8:32). As we walk through life’s desert, our supplies do not depend upon chance but are guaranteed by the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, where the rod of God’s judgment fell upon his Son. How, then, will he not also with him graciously give us all things?
When you come through an experience like that, it’s not a bad policy to name it, lest we forget. When Israel got to the end of their journey and were about to go into the promised land, Moses exhorted them to remember—and not just all their victories, but how foolish they had been. There is good psychology in the exhortation, ‘forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead’ (Phil 3:13). It’s no good consuming yourself with fruitless regret, is it? But on the other hand it is a wise thing to remember how God intervened when things were difficult, and when I came to the verge of murmuring against him he showed me his love, subdued my enmity and I came through.
Mark the spot! Put it in your diary, store it in your memory and on your heart: ‘This is where I rebelled and God proved himself by a renewed sense of the love of Calvary’. Then the next time it comes round, with the help of memory you’ll be able to say, ‘What God did in the past, he will do again’.
Engaging with the Lord in the battle
But now we come to the final lesson in this particular part of the book. ‘Then Amalek came’, says the historian, vigorously turning from one subject to another (Exod 17:8). But actually I’m not sure that he was turning to another, because if you start rebelling against God you’ll soon find the arch rebels behind you, volunteering to join in. The Amalekites constantly hindered the progress of the Israelites across the desert, thereby opposing the purposes of God by trying to destroy the Israelites.
It was at this precise moment that the great rebel Amalek came. It was a good thing he didn’t arrive earlier, when the Israelites were still complaining and quarrelling with Moses and tempting the Lord. Mercifully, at this point they had got over it, but now they must be told that they have to fight. It’s not now, ‘Stand firm, and see the salvation of the LORD’ (Exod 14:13); or, as some say, ‘let go and let God’. This time they must be taught to fight and face the old enemy, who would oppose the purposes of God in their progress across the wilderness. They had to learn to fight that enemy themselves, and so must we. It’s not that the Lord automatically works certain victories in me, and reduces me to a machine. I must learn to fight and take my side with God against the slanders and insinuations of the enemy. God is not content to leave me as a slave; he wants to develop me into a freeborn son and a warrior for him.
But what provision would he make for his people as they fought? First of all, there was good old Moses on the top of the hill holding up the staff of God in his hand (17:9). What do you think that is a picture of? There have been many suggestions.
Some people say that he was interceding—Moses was good at that. Others say, ‘No, he was a symbol of the law’.
Praise God for Moses and his law, holding up his holy hands in defiance of the Amalekites, the enemies of God. In the battle against sin, I need both Moses’ intercessions and his warnings to strengthen me. I need him with his staff, to nerve me to the fight by the commandments of God’s holy law; and certainly I need his intercessions.
But Moses has long since gone home to glory. We have a greater than Moses, both to exhort with his holy law, and to intercede by his gracious intercessions on high (see Heb 3:1–6). Down on the plain there was Joshua, captain of their salvation, leading the hosts of Israel.
And you say, ‘What are you going to say Joshua is?’.
Well, I’m going to say that he represents Christ as well.
‘There you are,’ you say, ‘it all comes round to Christ. Isn’t that arbitrary?’
No, I have the blessed Lord on high, and I have him as the captain of my salvation down here in the desert in the thick of the battle.
As the final encouragement, the battle is not mine; ultimately it is the Lord’s. They called the place Jehovah Nissi—the LORD is my military standard; the LORD is my banner.
In Hebrew, I know the final words of the story are difficult, and various translations have been suggested. Let me content myself with this: ‘The LORD has sworn—write it in a book—the Lord will blot out the memory of Amalek’ (see 17:14; 16). The Lord will eventually obtain the final victory, for the war is the Lord’s. The standard and the colours under which I enlist are not mine. The Lord conducts the war, but he invites me to join up under his military standard and comforts me with the assurance that the ultimate victory is assured.
Conclusion
This is the second part of Israel’s deliverance from Egypt. Thank God, there was not just one part—salvation from the wrath of God. There was a second part—salvation from bondage to Pharaoh. Salvation and deliverance from sinful attitudes, a slave mentality and Egyptian principles of living.
9: Movement V: The Giving of the Law on Mount Sinai: Exodus 18:1–24:11
We come now to the second half of the book of Exodus, and in particular to Movement V, which has as its central theme the giving of the law on Mount Sinai. We have already spoken on several occasions about this great event, and I shall not need to repeat what I have said. We have noticed, for instance, that the very design of the book enforces on our consciousness that liberation from bondage does not mean we are left free to do as we please.
The appointment of judges
Very early on in Movement I, Moses tried to put right the misbehaviour of the Egyptian, and then of his fellow-Israelites. His brethren rejected him from being a prince and a judge (Exod 2:14), and he fled to Midian where he married the daughter of Jethro the priest.
Now, at the beginning of Movement V things go into reverse. Jethro brings Moses’ wife and his two sons to the wilderness where Moses was encamped (18:5). First of all, Jethro acknowledges the Lord as greater than all the gods, and Jethro, Moses, Aaron and all the elders of Israel solemnly eat bread together before God (v. 12). Then, under Jethro’s advice, Moses organizes the judiciary in Israel, giving wise and experienced men the responsibility to sit in court and hear minor cases, using such wisdom, natural gifts and knowledge that God has given to them. On the other hand, Moses will take the difficult cases to God himself, and indeed, as the following chapters show us, Moses is to be the intermediary of the law.
God spoke to Moses face-to-face (33:11) and inscribed the table of the law with his divine finger. That is to say, a distinction is made between what the elders of Israel did and what Moses did (see 24:2, 18). The elders of Israel administered what law was made known to them, but Moses received it by direct inspiration and self-revelation from God.
An important distinction
That is an exceedingly important distinction, for it extends not merely to the giving of the law but to the inspiration by which all holy Scripture is given. It is God’s self-revelation; not merely good advice that learned and God-fearing men have come up with after prayer and cogitating within themselves, and we are reverently expected to believe that somehow they were inspired in the process.
There is a chasm of difference between what the elders of Israel did when they expounded the law that was given to them and applied it to individual cases after prayer and due consideration, and Moses and the great prophets, who were given God’s direct revelation by divine inspiration.
That is an exceedingly and fundamentally important distinction that we must preserve in our day and generation. We no longer have anyone like Moses to go up and see God face-to-face; we have been given a ‘faith that was once for all delivered to the saints’ (Jude 1:3). We must not confuse that original process of inspiration with what is the task of any one of us, which is to take God’s revealed and inspired word and apply it to the people of God as need requires, according to the natural and spiritual wisdom given to us.
Christian and Jewish distinctives
Chapter 18, then, forms the prelude to this august and majestic event—the giving of the law on Mount Sinai. As Christians, I suppose it would be true to say that there is scarcely a place in all the Old Testament where we shall feel some of the discontinuities between Christianity and the ancient regime more keenly. We have it clearly in our minds that we are not justified by the law: ‘yet we know that a person is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ’ (Gal 2:16). And, as we were reading again this afternoon, we cannot be sanctified under the principle of law; that is, law taken as command plus prohibition plus penalty. Law in that sense can neither justify nor sanctify.
On the other hand, having observed that discontinuity, we shall surely wish to emphasize the continuity. While we cannot be justified by the law, and while the law as a principle is not the motivating stimulus nor the power by which believers live holy lives, it is the express purpose of God that, being filled and led by his Holy Spirit, we should so behave that ‘the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit’ (Rom 8:4). We have to learn, therefore, to keep the balance between the continuities and the discontinuities.
In that respect, we may enlarge a little upon what we have already said about chapter 19. There God met with Israel to explain to them the goal of their redemption, which was God himself. He put before Israel his offer that they should be to him a ‘treasured possession’; he would make them ‘a kingdom of priests and a holy nation’ (19:5–6). In addition to their freedom, he would give them this special, privileged role of being a kingdom of priests to him. The rabbis feel that this was the time that God came down to woo and court his people, so to speak. God refers to it in the writings of one of the prophets:
Go and proclaim in the hearing of Jerusalem, Thus says the LORD, ‘I remember the devotion of your youth, your love as a bride, how you followed me in the wilderness, in a land not sown’. (Jer 2:2)
What condescension on the part of the transcendent Lord, that he should meet a company of ex-slaves so recently come from Egypt, and feel they were worthwhile courting and attracting to himself with his divine charms: ‘I remember the day of thine espousals in the wilderness’ (KJV). And what a lovely scene, as Moses the middleman led out the potential bride to meet her divine husband. It was an extraordinary courtship, for the proposed bridegroom came down in the flames of Mount Sinai, with the very loud trumpet blast and thunders and lightning, so much so that even Moses said, ‘I tremble with fear’ (Heb 12:21). And the people pleaded that the voice should no longer speak with them but that they should be allowed to retire to a distance, and Moses would be their intermediary between them and God (see 20:18–19).
You say, ‘What a gracious difference there is between that and Christianity’.
What difference were you thinking about at that point, for what we have come to now is infinitely more solemn?
For you have not come to what may be touched, a blazing fire and darkness and gloom and a tempest and the sound of a trumpet and a voice whose words made the hearers beg that no further messages be spoken to them. For they could not endure the order that was given, ‘If even a beast touches the mountain, it shall be stoned.’ Indeed, so terrifying was the sight that Moses said, ‘I tremble with fear.’ (Heb 12:18–21)
If you have not come to a mountain like that, what have you come to?
You say, ‘A positive Disneyland—a fairyland of bright lights and endless charm’.
Have you really?
But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God, the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. See that you do not refuse him who is speaking. For if they did not escape when they refused him who warned them on earth, much less will we escape if we reject him who warns from heaven. At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, ‘Yet once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens.’ This phrase, ‘Yet once more’, indicates the removal of things that are shaken—that is, things that have been made—in order that the things that cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire. (vv. 22–29)
I don’t know how to put that point across better than in the words of Scripture itself. How could I possibly express the majesty and awe of the God whose voice summons us to meet him, the one whose voice shook the earth at Sinai? Presently he shall speak, the earth and all that is temporary and can be shaken shall disappear, and we shall find ourselves introduced to the new heavens and new earth, to the eternal city and the tabernacle of almighty God. The implication of that is that we must seek grace to serve God with reverence and godly awe, for our God is a consuming fire. May God help us in our days of over-familiarity and cheapening of the gospel, not to undercut the very glories of heaven and redemption by reducing God to some benevolent Father Christmas. May he maintain in us the awe of what it means when the divine voice summons us to come and meet him and touch the very environs and outskirts of the eternal city.
The covenant was based on them keeping the law
Having said that, we notice that God not only proposed a law that Israel should follow; he offered it to them as the basis of a covenant. It had certain penalties attached if they broke it, and blessings if they kept it. And so, when the law had been given, chapter 24 relates how the covenant itself was made. When the people said they would obey all the stipulations, they were then written in a book and read out in front of them, so that they might see what they were agreeing to. ‘Behold the blood of the covenant that the LORD has made with you in accordance with all these words’ (v. 8). Moses had written down all the words of the Lord in this book, and then it was proposed to them not merely as a book of instruction but as the basis of a covenant that should be made between them and God. Their role and function as a kingdom of priests would depend upon them keeping this covenant.
The difference between the old and new covenants
We notice here again the great discontinuity between God’s treatment of Israel and our Lord’s treatment of us. It is explicitly stated in the New Testament, ‘For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second’ (Heb 8:7). But the very fact that God has now instituted a new covenant shows that in his estimation the first and old covenant is ‘obsolete’, done away with (v. 13).
Yet, in spite of that, many theologians feel there is some great continuity between the old covenant and the new, and it would be false for us to magnify the difference between them. In particular, they argue that the old covenant was as much a covenant of grace as the new covenant is a covenant of grace, for was it not gracious of God to give it to them in the first place? Even before Moses had time to bring the tablets of the covenant down from Mount Sinai, they had broken the covenant in startling fashion. But after some discipline and consequent upon Moses’ intercession, God repeated the covenant and renewed it. Was that not a spectacular demonstration of his grace?
Moreover, were the sacrifices that went along with the old covenant not another exhibition of the grace of God? Granted, not every sin was so covered, but did God’s grace not provide a priesthood and a sacrifice through which they could find forgiveness, and the covenant still remain workable? Therefore some theologians say, if this was all of grace why try to make out that there is such a chasm between the old covenant and the new?
I think it would be helpful to review those well-known passages that specify what the difference is in the words of the New Testament itself, and the locus classicus in the matter is, of course, Hebrews chapter 8.
But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises. For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second. (vv. 6–7)
There was something unsatisfactory, then, about that first covenant, for had it been totally satisfactory and adequate, God wouldn’t have scrapped it and introduced a second. Why was it unsatisfactory?
For he finds fault with them [not now with the covenant, but with the Israelites] when he says: ‘Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt’. (vv. 8–9)
Why not make it after the same style and according to the same principles? For this reason: ‘For they did not continue in my covenant, and so I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord’ (v. 9).
As you will know, there is a translational difficulty between the Septuagint and the Masoretic text at this point, but the late hour of the night and my poverty of time oblige me just to accept, for the moment and for the point of the argument, the actual statement of the matter as given by the inspired writer to the Hebrews, with whom I think you are not disposed to dispute matters. ‘For they did not continue in my covenant’—that’s why it was unsatisfactory—‘and when they did not continue in my covenant, I showed no concern for them.’ They broke their side, and therefore God ultimately scraps the covenant.
And now the writer spells out again the terms of the new covenant, ‘For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord . . .’ (v. 10). Wherein lies its difference? In my simplicity, I want first of all to observe this difference between the old covenant and the new: the old covenant was a two-party covenant; the new is a one-party covenant. I think it is very important here that we notice that at Sinai it was not merely that God gave the people a law, but on the basis of that law he entered into a covenant with Israel, and Israel with him.
Forgive my descending to lowly matters, but suppose now there was a charming gentleman and an even more charming young lady, and the charming young gentleman proposed marriage to the charming young lady, and she accepted, and they got married. I suppose it is conceivable, in some world other than this, that when the charming young husband gave his wife her wedding present and she opened it, she would find it was the very last word of a cookery book. Not, of course, an ordinary cookery book, but a cookery book such as the one they produce that gives pictures of cakes and roast beef such as no mere mortal has ever met on the face of the earth. He gives this expensive cookery book with pictures to his wife, with all its ten thousand and one recipes, and she kisses him on the cheek and says, ‘Thank you very much, my darling. I’ve always wanted a cookery book like this.’ Then she adds, ‘Is there a slight hint here? Are you sort of diplomatically saying you would like me to follow these recipes?’
‘Well, my dear,’ he says, ‘if you could find it in your heart, out of your consummate love for me, to attempt some of these recipes, I would be delighted.’ And the dear wife goes off to slave in the kitchen out of her love for her newlywed.
That’s one situation. I can’t imagine it ever taking place; still less can I imagine a second possibility. When the charming young gentleman comes to propose marriage to the charming young lady, he brings the cookery book and says, ‘Now, my dear, first let me read you these recipes here. They’re written in a book, you see. Have you understood them? Now my proposal is this: not merely that you keep these recipes, I’m proposing something a bit more. If you can guarantee to me now that from now on you will keep all these recipes, then on that basis I offer you my hand in marriage, and I’m prepared to accept you as my wife and enter into a covenant. As long as you proceed to carry out the recipes, the covenant can remain. I’m prepared to overlook an occasional burnt potato, but woe betide you if you mess up the meringues, for then I should have to review this covenant that I am now proposing.’ Tell me if you’ve ever met a young lady under the face of the sun who would accept a young gentleman, however charming, on those terms.
And yet, if I have read it aright, the covenant that God made with Israel was a covenant like that.
God said, ‘Now my proposal is this: if you keep my covenant you shall be my people and occupy this privileged role. Have you understood the laws that constitute the basis of the covenant? Read them, and on condition that you keep them, I shall offer you this covenant of marriage.’
The people listening to the terms replied, ‘Yes, all that the Lord has commanded us, we will do and be obedient’ (see 24:3).
I, for one, quake in my shoes as I hear the distant echo of their voices coming down the centuries, and I say, ‘But there’s excuse for them, for they didn’t know the long story of the centuries that we know’. When they so grievously offended that covenant by making the golden calf, God eventually, after discipline, forgave them and renewed that covenant. It was an act of his grace. But even a covenant like that, renewed by God’s grace, would prove inadequate in the end, and it is not I but the Holy Spirit making his comment as to why God found fault with that old covenant as well as with his people, Israel—they could not keep their side of the bargain.
What then of the new covenant? It is different. It is not like that old covenant in this very particular: it is not a two-party covenant with me promising to do certain things and God promising to do others. One only has to read the terms of the new covenant to observe that it is a one-party covenant in which God does it all.
But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts. (Jer 31:33)
That is what God will do, and the result will be: ‘I will be their God, and they shall be my people’. Israel were to be God’s special people on condition that they kept the covenant. Says God, ‘Under the new covenant, I’m going to write my laws on their hearts and minds, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people’.
God’s law written on hearts and minds
What does it mean that God writes these laws on our minds and on our hearts? It is not merely that God makes a vivid impression on our memories so that we remember the laws. Paul describes it in 2 Corinthians 3, where he contrasts the writing of the old covenant with the writing of the new. There was nothing wrong with the directives of the law, but they were written simply on stone. The writing on that stone told you what to do, but it couldn’t give you the puff and the strength to do it. It could tell you what not to do and forbid you to do it, but it couldn’t give you the strength not to do it. It was an external thing. ‘Here is the difference, and here is the glory of the new covenant,’ says Paul. ‘It is not just an external set of commands but a writing on the fleshy tablets of the heart, produced by the Holy Spirit himself writing God’s laws on our minds and on our hearts.’ This is the great work of redemption. Just as the laws of our physical being are written on the genes that control our physical growth, and to some extent our behaviour, so, by his infinite grace and wonder, God’s laws have been inscribed on our hearts in that new nature, which is the very divine nature that God has implanted in every believer. God has done it; the result is that we are his people and he is our God.
Direct and immediate knowledge of God
We shall not, therefore, need intermediaries between us and God:
And no longer shall each one teach his neighbour and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD’, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. (Jer 31:34)
Some people take that to be a description of heaven, and if it is I welcome it in some sense. Wouldn’t it be nice if we never had to preach another sermon? Well, I don’t know; perhaps we shall like preaching sermons when we get home to heaven. But this is saying something different, isn’t it? In the giving of the old covenant, the people pleaded with Moses to allow them to retire, and for Moses to be their intermediary so that they didn’t come to God direct. In the tabernacle that God erected, no Israelite got anywhere near the immediate divine presence. It was kept at two stages of removal, and in normal life they only knew and saw God through an intermediary who went between them and God. But now that intermediary is done away with and every believer may know God direct.
You say, ‘Isn’t our blessed Lord the intermediary?’
Of course he is, but he is God. And even the humblest and simplest believer can know God through direct intuitive experience. What a marvellous thing it is—the end to the mysterious priestly class that tells the people they can’t know God and must depend upon the intermediaries. By virtue of the new birth and new nature, the fulfilment of this gracious new covenant brings every believer into direct and immediate knowledge of God. The little baby in the arms of its mother knows its mother directly, and in that sense it doesn’t need me to come between them. This is not to say that we do not need Christian teachers. The New Testament everywhere asserts that we need teachers, but under the terms of the new covenant this personal knowledge that spells salvation is direct.
Sins no longer remembered by God
And the final and wonderful clause of God’s grace in verse 34 is:
For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.
That is so wonderful that perhaps, though we know it so well, we ought to pause and just reflect upon what that does not mean, and what it does mean. And then why that clause comes at the end of the stipulations of the covenant instead of at the beginning.
It is quite commonly said that God is so wonderful in his forgiveness that he doesn’t remember our sins anymore. In fact, he positively forgets them and casts them into the depths of the sea. If you went to God and said, ‘What about my sins?’ he’d say, ‘I don’t seem to have heard of them. What are you talking about? I can’t remember.’ And people say, ‘Isn’t that marvellous?’
Well, I suppose it might be if it were true! But if I put the proposition to you, that when you get home to heaven and you see the marks of Calvary in the hands and feet of our Lord, will you suppose that God has forgotten what caused them? Shall God say, ‘I can’t remember now what caused those wounds in the body of my Son’? Well, if God has forgotten, the heavenly choirs will remind him. According to Revelation 5, they fall down before the Lamb and sing, ‘Worthy are you . . . for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God’ (v. 9). Heaven shall never forget why Jesus Christ, God’s Son, died, and neither will you. When you see those marks of Calvary in the blessed Lord, you will not find yourself saying, ‘How did he come by those?’.
Then what does the phrase mean, ‘I will remember their sin no more’? It is a quasi-legal term, is it not? In the ancient world, monarchs and potentates had a court official who was called the recorder, or the remembrancer in ancient English, and sundry equivalents in Hebrew and Greek. The job of this remembrancer is shown to us in the book of Esther and such like literature. If His Majesty was having a sleepless night or something, he could call his recorder and demand that the books be brought and opened. The recorder would read out the things that people had done, and the king would say, ‘What about Tom there? Has he done anything in particular?’
‘Yes, he did this and this and this, from which Your Majesty has benefitted.’
‘Has he been rewarded yet?’
‘No.’
‘Well, then go hastily and reward the man—say that he may ride on one of my horses. And what about these chaps here?’
And the remembrancer would read out the list of their heinous crimes.
‘Have they been punished yet?’ says His Majesty.
‘No.’
‘Well, you’d better look sharp and get about it then.’
That is what the Bible means by calling people’s sins to remembrance. And when in Revelation we hear that God has called Babylon’s sins to remembrance (Rev 18:5), we must not be surprised that there immediately follows a deluge of God’s judgment on Babylon. To remember sins is a judicial term, which means to bring them before the memory of the judge for him to assess them and then to pronounce the appropriate condemnation and penalty.
If this is what it means, what marvellous joy and wonder that is for us: we are guaranteed by the blood of the covenant that God will never call our sins before his courts. He will never pronounce our guilt and assign to us the penalty and condemnation that those sins deserve. It is written into the very terms of the covenant that he won’t do it. The blood by which this covenant is sealed is the token that the penalty of our sins has already been paid. God will never call it up for judicial judgment for the penalty to be pronounced and inflicted again. Is that enough to make your heart leap for joy in the security that God gives to all who accept this covenant? We are blessed with new life and a new nature, and because of a realistic new power we can begin to learn to keep God’s laws and thus fulfil the role he assigns to us. And God in his realism knows we are still imperfect in many things and we still come short, so he has written into the covenant, ‘I will remember their sin more’.
You say, ‘If that were true, would it not lead people to abuse God’s grace? If the covenant terms assure me that I shall never come into condemnation, would I not become careless in the end, and say, “If I carry on sinning, it doesn’t really matter after all”?’
No, it won’t lead to that. Listen to Paul’s argumentation in 1 Corinthians 11:17–33 where he is instructing the Christians about the celebration of the Lord’s Supper. Solemnly he reminds them, ‘This cup is the new covenant in [Christ’s] blood’ (v. 25). The covenant says that God guarantees not merely to give people forgiveness but to write his laws on their hearts. As the gracious Lord hands the cup to me and says, ‘This, my child, is the cup of my new covenant, by which I pledge to write my laws on your heart,’ what happens if I take it and say, ‘Well, Lord, I’m interested in the forgiveness bit, but I’m not particularly interested in the other thing—you know, about keeping your laws. What did you say? Writing your laws on my heart? I’m not particularly interested in that; I don’t think it really matters.’ What do you suppose will happen?
You say, ‘Christ will break his covenant’.
That he will never do. He’ll keep his covenant and write his laws on my heart—with my cooperation if he can, but if he can’t, he’ll still do it.
Says Paul, ‘In the light of this, and what Christ did in dying to endure the penalty of your sin, before you come to that sacred memorial supper you must first judge yourself. Indeed, not merely judge yourself when you’ve sinned, but examine yourself’ (see v. 28). You see, I know that there are wrong attitudes and wrong behaviour patterns in me, and if I can’t see them, my friends certainly can. I am not to take it for granted that I’m completely okay. Let me examine myself in the light of God’s holy word—not morbidly introspective but engaging in serious spiritual discernment—and see where I still come short; what needs to be confessed before God, and what still needs to be put right.
‘Oh,’ you say, ‘I become morbid when I do that. I feel I’ve behaved so wretchedly during the week that I am not worthy to come to the Lord’s Supper, and therefore I keep away.’
That’s strange logic. In the very moments when your heart is moved with contrition, and you say, ‘How unworthy I have been, Lord; I sometimes despair of making any progress to become like you,’ how much better it would be to take the cup from his hand and hear again his divine covenant and promise, ‘I will write my laws on your heart’.
But suppose I don’t bother either to examine myself when I do wrong or to judge myself and see where I need to be put right (v. 31). If I come carelessly and take those sacred emblems and continue to live sinfully, what will he do then? He’ll still keep his covenant and write his laws on your heart, says Hebrews 8:10. If it means that he has to judge and chasten you he’ll stop at nothing, if need be. ‘That is why,’ says Paul, ‘many of you are weak and ill—physically weak and sick, and some have died’ (see 1 Cor 11:30). This covenant is real, and Jesus Christ our Lord, the mediator of the new covenant, will keep his covenant with his people. He is determined to make them holy.
If the Lord has to chastise somebody, are they lost? Let us settle that point with the explicit words of Scripture. ‘But when we are judged by the Lord,’ says Paul, ‘we are disciplined so that we may not be condemned along with the world’ (v. 32). How marvellous this new covenant is: it is the basis of our relationship with the Lord. It is God’s scheme to do effectively what the old covenant could not do. So then, let us give thanks in our hearts to the Lord.
Discussion
The implications and relevance of the Old Testament law to Christians
DWG: Some people say, ‘These laws were a mixture. Some were moral laws, so you will keep them; others were ceremonial laws that have since been scrapped, so don’t keep them.’ But would that be a sufficient guide for me to interpret the implications and relevance of these chapters?
They say, ‘You could take it as a yardstick that the Ten Commandments are all moral laws and permanent’.
Are you sure they’re all moral laws? Leave aside for the moment whether they are permanent; are they all moral because they’re all inscribed on the tablets? What about the one concerning the Sabbath? I confess to having a few difficulties there. When our Lord was justifying his disciples before the Pharisees for working on the Sabbath by plucking and rubbing the ears of corn, he said, among other things, ‘Have you not read in the Law how on the Sabbath the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath and are guiltless?’ (Matt 12:5). So the Sabbath can’t be a moral law, can it?
How would it sound if we substituted any of the other genuinely moral laws? For example, ‘Have you never read how the priests in the temple commit adultery and are guiltless?’. Well, that might be a vivid description of certain periods in Christendom, but something has gone amiss there, hasn’t it? Or, ‘Have you not read how the priests in the temple covet, steal and murder and are guiltless?’.
No, I’ve got lost somewhere there, haven’t I? I take comfort in the fact that we have many lawyers here. What a special gift it is for Christian lawyers to understand these things about law. The commentaries indulge in very learned terms; they say that some of these are apodictic laws, and others are casuistic laws.8 I’m sure that is so; but what does that mean, and how does it affect my understanding and application of these things?
So gentlemen, don’t be shy. What help can you offer me in my understanding of this important part of Scripture? Don’t be afraid of simplicities if that’s the level at which I need to start; you can then proceed to more profound things.
AUDIENCE: The other nine of the Ten Commandments are repeated in the New Testament to measure the conduct of the Christian, for example in James 2. It would certainly mean that these other nine commandments are binding on us.
DWG: Yes, that is important. We are expected to fulfil them. We haven’t time now to expound on each of those nine, but we take that point.
AUDIENCE: As you say, the Sabbath commandment goes back beyond the giving of the law on Sinai to the creation, and the need for a seventh-day rest is built into mankind’s creative nature (Gen 2:2; Exod 31:17).
DWG: That sounds very sensible to me. As I’ve read Exodus again for the purpose of this conference, I’ve been impressed to notice how frequently the Sabbath is mentioned.
AUDIENCE: I take exception to that. If we’re talking about the law, I’m not under any of it. But if we’re talking about righteousness, I’m under all of it. There has got to be some difference here; at least Paul seems to think so.
DWG: Do you mean to say that what you’re under is guidance, or direction or something—I don’t know what word to choose—and that is not law, as such?
AUDIENCE: No. As you expounded earlier, the bite of the law is taken away, so that it’s got to be more of the guidance of the Spirit leading us to righteousness as a reality than any observance, or even requirement of observance. These are fine shades of difference, but in the things that have been said in previous comments, people are using the word law; and as long as they do that, I’m going to disassociate myself from that identification. I’m going to not use that word for good reason.
DWG: Hold that position hard and dig your heels in! I mean that seriously because you have verses you would want to quote, such as, ‘But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law’ (Gal 5:18). Is that kind of thing you mean?
AUDIENCE: For righteousness, yes.
DWG: For righteousness?
AUDIENCE: We are under the demand to be righteous, but not necessarily any particular law as a law.
DWG: Oh, I see. You’re saying that the general requirement is that we shall live righteous lives?
AUDIENCE: Yes, and that must be a Spirit-led decision as to what that means.
DWG: But when it comes to the details, let the Spirit of God guide us rather than a set of guidelines or rules?
AUDIENCE: Guidelines I can accept; rules I can’t. DWG: Right, guidelines then?
AUDIENCE: A rule is not a rule unless there’s a consequence. A guideline is a guideline; it’s not quite law.
DWG: I think our brother is about to come back on you, and then this other good gentleman here.
AUDIENCE: In the new covenant, if the Holy Spirit is going to write his laws on our minds and in our hearts, and we’re talking about the standard, how do you measure righteousness? For when we talk about righteousness, we need to talk about a standard of righteousness. Do you measure it in ohms9 or feet or yards, and say that here’s a measurement of righteousness, and it’s God’s wish to write the law on my heart and my mind? Certainly, the law would be fulfilled under the guidance of the Spirit. The reference to the ‘righteous requirement of the law’ (Rom 8:4), where both of these terms, righteousness and law, are put together, is certainly something done in the power of the Holy Spirit.
DWG: Let this good man here have his turn, and then there are others queuing up.
AUDIENCE: I would say that when we speak of law or legality as the way to righteousness, ‘Christ is the end of the law’ (Rom 10:4), so that in him the righteousness of God may be fully met in us (see 8:4). Paul says to the Galatians, ‘Why then do you give yourselves to these yokes of slavery again, from which you have been freed?’ (see Gal 5:1). And so, in honouring God in the new covenant of walking by the Spirit, it’s completely the will of God that is written in our hearts. What if you are in a situation when you would not be permitted to keep the Sabbath, a soldier in the army for instance, and you are going to be convicted on circumstances that are beyond your control? Or, if you are in the hospital and cannot go to the temple and one of your bosses says that you must honour God by going to the temple? Then you’ll be labouring in convictions of legality, from which Christ has set us free. For me, I believe that Christ is the end of the law. It’s simple to me.
DWG: Yes, thank you. Now, our brother at the back was wanting to comment.
AUDIENCE: Hebrews 7:12 says, ‘For when there is a change in the priesthood, there is necessarily a change in the law as well’. And the new covenant is connected with the proclamation of the new law, as opposed to the Old Testament, because, normally, a covenant is connected with the promulgation of a law. As the mediator of the new covenant, Christ was also a lawgiver, and because he is superior to Moses, he could take some commandments from the Old Testament, which he sharpened in the Gospel of Matthew. So, in fact, Christians have a new law—the law of Christ—that consists of some Old Testament precepts that were acquired by the new lawgiver. So we have a new covenant and a new law.
DWG: Thank you. I know there is somebody else in the queue, but could I test that out on you?10 If our good friends were to use the term commandment instead of law, would you be happy about that? I’m thinking of our Lord’s phrase in John’s Gospel, ‘A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another’ (13:34). This is a new commandment in some respects, yet it is the old commandment of Leviticus 19:18, ‘love your neighbour as yourself’. Would you accept our Lord’s term as a commandment?
AUDIENCE: Certainly the term commandment is a New Testament one; but the whole of the law hangs on this, that you love the Lord your God and you love your neighbour as yourself; and in this, all the law is fulfilled (see Luke 10:27; Gal 5:14). So there is a sweeping away of a law book as a law book, and it’s these basic principles of righteousness instead. We can sweep away all the details of the law, so we don’t need Christian lawyers because the Holy Spirit is teaching us righteousness.
DWG: I think some of your friends would like to come back at you on this point.
AUDIENCE: Oh, they’d love to!
DWG: I know they would, and I’m sure as a Christian gentleman you would graciously face all their tidal waves. But in Britain years ago we lived through a period when we had John Robinson, the Anglican Bishop of Woolwich, who taught that love is the answer. In his view, if you really loved a woman, under certain circumstances it might be quite okay to commit adultery, so long as you were motivated by love—by the Spirit, so to speak. That caused an outrage and led many people to say, ‘But wait a minute, you’re misreading Romans 13:10 if you say that love is the fulfilling of the law, and you mean that, so long as you love, it doesn’t matter what else you do, you have fulfilled the law’. No! Love is the fulfilling of the law because, if somebody genuinely loves with the love of God, it will lead to the fulfilment of the law. That is distinct from what the Bishop said: ‘I’m led by the Spirit and the love of Christ, and therefore my actions are okay so long as I do it out of love, even if I commit immorality’. Would you say, ‘No, that’s a slander on me; I’m not saying what the Bishop of Woolwich said’?
AUDIENCE: I absolutely disagree with the bishop.
DWG: Yes, of course you do, and now I come back to my terms. For true love to express itself, it needs some guidelines or commandments or something. I’ve broached an enormously big subject, which won’t be settled tonight. Perhaps I ought not to have said anything at all.
AUDIENCE: Isn’t it actually important that the purpose of, or motivation for, keeping those things has changed from the Old Testament to the New Testament? Maybe I’m wrong, but weren’t the laws kept in order not to go to hell, and now the commandments are kept out of obedience to Christ? We are his disciples and we keep his commandments. Isn’t that actually a different approach?
DWG: Well, I’m going to say yes, but two men in front of you are writhing in their seats, so I’ll get them to answer you in a critical fashion.
AUDIENCE: The logical end to that argument would be a dichotomy or even a trichotomy. The fact is that the commandment of the Holy Spirit can’t be much different to the commandment of God the Father, if God himself is going to be consistent, which we believe he is. And thus, how can we continue . . .
DWG: I would come back in there and say that Paul does use the argument that God in ancient times treated Israel like children and put them under a pedagogue (Gal 3:23–25). Parents do that. It’s not inconsistency in their character, but they find different methods of dealing with their children from how they would later in adult life. Under the law Israel were under a pedagogue to lead them to Christ. I think some people would argue with you about that.
AUDIENCE: I would ask for the different functions of different laws in Exodus.
DWG: Oh, marvellous man!
AUDIENCE: I think there are some laws whose function is to reveal the character of God; others are meant to identify Israel as over against the other nations; and there are some laws regulating ceremonial life. So I think that we should differentiate between ceremonial law and moral law, not in order to make it easy for us to be able to transgress laws but to understand their function. And I think there are certain functions of the law that are no longer valid because Christ has fulfilled them. And also, as far as laws relating to the role of Israel and what happened to Israel are concerned, those laws also don’t apply to us, at least as the church. So I would say that those laws are abrogated, whereas laws that reveal the character of God, the ethical side of God, and what God’s people should be like in reflecting him, must still be guiding us with our behaviour.
DWG: Yes, I think that remains very important, and you could quote, and I would want to quote with you, our Lord’s remarks in Mark 7 regarding the food laws: ‘(Thus he declared all foods clean)’ (v. 19). In other words, to start with he is cancelling the food laws of the Old Testament. With the covenant being changed, there’s a change also of the law—the law relating to the priesthood has gone, and the law relating to those sacrifices is finished. Lots of ritual laws have gone—what you might call ‘food laws’ and things like that. Isn’t that the explicit statement of Holy Scripture?
You’ll recall in Acts 10 when God sent Peter to Cornelius, and the vision was given to Peter of the letting down of the sheet full of creepy crawly things. God told Peter to rise and eat, but Peter objected because he was brought up to believe that God had instituted those food laws. When Peter hesitated, God didn’t say, ‘Now, come on, Peter, don’t be so old-fashioned. You don’t have to take any notice of those funny laws in the Old Testament.’ Of course not. God himself had instituted them but he was now abrogating them. So yes, I would want to say they’ve been abrogated.
I’m going to be very selfish now that the seconds are ticking away, and I’d like to ask you a question. When you’re expounding Exodus and you’ve gone patiently through all the chapters, what do you say when you come to chapters 21, 22 and 23? What about these groupings of laws? Forgive me for saying such a thing about inspired holy writ, but they do seem to be a little muddled up. One minute there comes what seems to be a serious thing, and suddenly I’m told, ‘You shall not boil a young goat in its mother’s milk’ (23:19). I’m all at sea, and I couldn’t preach a series of sermons on them to save my life. What about these learned terms, apodictic laws and casuistic laws? Is it all right to take notice of that distinction? I appeal to the lawyers; do tell me, please.
AUDIENCE: We’ve learned from our teacher that we leave this matter until almost the end of the evening and skim over it quickly, and then go to bed!
DWG: You are learning the technique quickly!
AUDIENCE: I think there’s one more problem in splitting ceremonial laws and the moral laws because there are some laws that are quite difficult to categorize or put into a diagram (i.e. are they more moral laws, or are they more ceremonial laws?). So it almost needs a lawyer to decide whether a particular law is a ceremonial law, or a moral law to be kept.
DWG: I’m glad I’ve got somebody to agree with me at last! We need these lawyers, don’t we?
AUDIENCE: The casuistic laws would be those that are established with ‘if’, and those are conditional laws—‘if this happens, then this’. If a man builds a house, and by mistake it falls on his neighbour and his neighbour dies, he’s culpable for this act; and in that kind of a situation, it’s casuistic laws that apply. In apodictic laws, it would be laws that are direct. The Ten Commandments are not casuistic; they are laws that are direct. For example, ‘You shall have no other gods before me’ (Exod 20:3), and all these are in a category without general conditions.
I would say again that in the book of Exodus we need to come with that openness, that human element that says there will be things I cannot understand; things that are too mysterious for me to expound. That simplicity or that sincerity is necessary sometimes; for example, when you say, ‘Explain what it means to not boil the young goat in its mother’s milk’. It’s beyond my understanding, but Moses understood it when God gave it to him. After many years, if God still hasn’t revealed to me what it means, then I need to admit that there are certain things I cannot understand, and they are not any less the will of God because I cannot understand them. Nor are they things that need to be chopped off because I cannot understand them. There are things that God has not revealed to us.
DWG: Thank you for that comment. It seems to me to be important. Some people take the view of that particular thing, that it was aimed at suppressing a heathen practice that Israel were in danger of engaging in, but we don’t need to know about it because we’re not in danger of falling into it. There may be some things that were given to Israel, and we don’t need to understand them because they aren’t relevant to our situation.
It also raises the big matter as to whether these laws were a complete compendium of law given at that time. Were they, and are there enough of them there to cover the life of Israel? Were these meant to be a complete compendium of law, or were they a representative selection? Do they cover in principle every department of life, or are they not even that? Is it that Israel already had a lot of laws that they got from the normal Middle Eastern milieu at that time, by which they had previously been conducting their normal business? Some were from the Code of Hammurabi and other such legal codes, and was God content to let Israel carry on with principles of natural justice that they had learned from them? But in these particularly casuistic laws, was he now either correcting or supplementing what they already had, which is the reason why these appear not to be a complete compendium? It’s this question of selection that troubles me sometimes. Why select and mention these laws? In a sense, I agree with you that we don’t have to understand it, but . . .
AUDIENCE: I would say it’s like the law of your cow goring and killing your neighbour. How were you to know that your cow would gore your neighbour? But if it then gored another neighbour and killed him, now it is not a culpable homicide, it is murder. You knew that it had killed before, and you should have taken care of your cow; which means that casuistic laws were followed up with incidents. The first incident was not considered to be murder, but the same incident the second time is now murder because you were negligent with your cow, which you knew was goring people. You should have taken care of it so that it wouldn’t do those things again, so it’s murder now.
DWG: You seem to me to be saying that there is a law built upon experience of things that have happened, and then adapting to those happenings. That’s a very interesting thing. I would love to ask you if you think that we learn anything from penalties? Are the penalties still in force or not? But I mustn’t do that because one or two hands are up, and I must draw this to a close.
AUDIENCE: I think we must not neglect the fact of the level of maturity of the person. When we think back to the argument in Galatians, we see that the law was given for a certain time until the sons reached maturity. Using a similar illustration, if I say to my son, ‘You should not come into the room without wiping your feet on the doormat, and if you do it I’ll discipline you’, then it’s a law and it’s suitable for a four-year-old. When he’s twenty-one, he has enough sense himself not to do it; it’s written on his heart. But if he is twenty-one and his mother is falling unconscious as he comes in from of the garden, he can run with his muddy shoes through the room, even though he would normally take his shoes off. He’s transgressing the law—in fact, even a law that’s written on his heart—but the urgency would allow him to do so.
I think the principle of law is gone anyway. We don’t live by law in the sense that we are punished for transgressing laws. But the law is written in our hearts, which in some ways—as with a mature grown-up person—allows us sometimes in certain cases even to transgress it without suffering any kind of consequence, if you understand what I mean.
DWG: Yes, thank you. Now, just one or two comments.
AUDIENCE: We’ve just had a subcommittee meeting.
DWG: On this matter of the law? Oh dear!
AUDIENCE: We feel that this idea of the three-way split in the law is quite helpful in understanding the function; but the problem is that in the New Testament you just get that term the law, which is a ‘slab’ term that seems to apply to the Torah, the law. And the other thing we were thinking of is how Christ is said to have ‘fulfilled the law’, in the sense that he was a perfect man—he lived a perfect moral life. He was a perfect Jew too, and we find him living an upright ceremonial and national life. So he fulfils the law, not just bits of it. So for myself, I have a problem with the idea of pushing that split idea through all the way.
DWG: I see, yes.
AUDIENCE: Also, in the way they are grouped, the laws are all mixed up.
DWG: Yes, I know.
AUDIENCE: So I think it’s a good way to analyse, but maybe not a great way to expound.
DWG: And that’s a very important distinction you’re making.
AUDIENCE: I wanted to say that there is no basis in the New Testament to say that only the ritual law was abrogated, because, if we take Hebrews 7:12, ‘For when there is a change in the priesthood, there is necessarily a change in the law as well’—which some people interpret as a law concerning only rituals or the priesthood—then we have to understand that this very change means to supersede something by something else. So if the law concerning the priesthood was abrogated or changed, then it means that there must be a new law concerning the priesthood.
But there are no such regulations about the priesthood in the New Testament. There are sections about the universal priesthood of believers, but there are no legal regulations. There are teachings, but no regulations. So we have to understand and remember that the law in the Old Testament was an integral unit, and this division into ritual, civil and moral law was only a theoretical one. And then we have to understand that Hebrews is speaking about the law in general; so if it is written there that with the change of the priesthood there must be a change of the law, it means that the whole law was changed by the lawgiver. And at the same time we have to remember that the lawgiver had the freedom to take some principles from the Old Testament and apply them to the New Testament situation.
DWG: Thank you very much. Well, just one or two more comments, for time is running away and some of you want to get round the fire.
AUDIENCE: I’m thinking of another mountain that we read of in Isaiah 2, from which the law is in fact given, when the mountain of the Lord’s house will be exalted above the hills: ‘For out of Zion shall go the law, and the word of the LORD from Jerusalem’ (v. 3). And then my mind is travelling to Zechariah 5, where we have this curious flying scroll, and we’re told this is a curse that is going to go through the whole earth (vv. 1–3). I’m wondering what the future role of the Torah is. And the picture Isaiah has there in chapter 2, he’s obviously borrowed from Exodus with some modification, so there’s got to be a future role for the Torah, but not in the same manner as in Hebrews 8. I’m really looking for help on that.
DWG: When you talk of Torah in the Old Testament, I think you might know better than I do that perhaps it is not always in the sense of our modern term law plus penalty, but instruction, as its name means. So that might be a help.
AUDIENCE: In the Old Testament law, wasn’t having a constitution a factor for this nation? I’m not a specialist in constitutions, but I could imagine that there are different concepts of constitutions, and certain things are foundational and certain things are explanatory. I’d also like to ask what the difference is between the basic laws, and those laws that regulate the national aspect of the people group, because it was not only a spiritual people but also a nation with many other countrymen.
DWG: Yes, surely, and it was a theocracy at that, which Britain isn’t in spite of appearances.
AUDIENCE: Just to address the question of how we should preach the law, I think we should preach the way Paul did. I think of a passage like 1 Corinthians 9:8–14, where Paul says about the law concerning muzzling the ox: ‘those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel’.
DWG: I think I must stop you and ask, ‘Have you a vested interest?’!
AUDIENCE: Paul was saying in that passage that God wasn’t just concerned for the ox; he was concerned for us. And I think he was saying that there is a principle behind that law. Even if the application to our society will not be perpetual, there is the whole issue of those who labour being worthy of their hire, and so he argues both in 1 Corinthians 9 and 1 Timothy 5 that the full-time worker should be fed through his work. The principle that he sees behind the law is that it’s a reflection of God’s will and God’s nature for all of his people at all times. And you can apply that also when the question of church discipline comes up: the law says that two or three witnesses are required (see Matt 18:16; 2 Cor 13:1). It’s a different context, but the principle applies.
And so I think we see how Paul and various New Testament books have applied the law, saying that behind cultural-bound expressions there are principles about God’s will and God’s nature that go beyond culture. For example, making your roof secure. While we don’t have flat roofs in all of our countries as they did in New Testament times, it still means that you have a responsibility, as a reflection of the command ‘thou shalt not kill’, to use safety devices as a responsible person, because God is concerned for all life. There are principles that are a part of God’s eternal unchanging nature which will apply even though the constitutional nature of the law for a theocracy no longer applies to us.
I just wanted to make one comment on what was said earlier, because if I’ve understood it right, it bothers me a lot. I don’t think one can make any case from the Old Testament or from the New Testament that the purpose of the Old Testament law was the salvation of the Old Testament believer.
DWG: No, surely it wasn’t.
AUDIENCE: You didn’t say anything like that, but I didn’t want it left unclear.
DWG: It was a misunderstanding of the law on Israel’s part to think that keeping it was for salvation. Nobody in any period of history has ever been justified by the deeds of the law, but I’m grateful for that comment.
Now, sir, you’re getting near my own heart and interests. Paul quotes the law about muzzling an ox, and in so doing he treats it as what I would term a legal paradigm. David Daube, the great rabbinic lawyer, argued that this was the nature of the Greek and Roman jurists, and probably the Jewish as well. For instance, when the Roman jurists came to consider the twelve tablets that were their basic laws governing Roman society, of course those basic laws did not deal with every particular situation that could ever conceivably arise. But the Romans and the Greeks took the view that the ancient lawgivers didn’t intend they should, and they wrote certain laws that were expressions of principles that could be applied in all sorts of other situations, and they would have called that a kind of legal paradigm.
The rabbis of New Testament times seem to have followed that principle of jurisprudence regarding the laws of Moses as an expression of certain basic principles which could be applied to all sorts of situations. If this is what Paul is doing by quoting ‘You shall not muzzle an ox when it is treading out the grain’ (Deut 25:4), it is very interesting in how it shows God’s attitude. The commandment is not written directly to the ox—oxen find it difficult to understand these things!—it’s written for the consideration of the ox’s owner and the people who use the ox. It is saying that if they get profit from what the ox does, they must see to it that the ox likewise benefits in due proportion from its own labours. That principle goes far beyond farming, and Paul is applying it to Christian workers, as you have pointed out.
I was hoping that the lawyers would be able to delve into more of the laws in the way we have just done with this one, but there hasn’t been enough time. If you ever get round to writing a book on it, sir, I would very much like to know.
AUDIENCE: I won’t!
DWG: Suppose the whole law is ditched. My view of inspiration is that God gave those laws only once. What did he do it for? Was there rhyme and reason behind God’s giving the law, or was it composed of a lot of arbitrary civil service regulations to make life difficult for people? Did God have principles in mind when he imposed these laws on his people? Even if they were all scrapped now, what were the basic principles?
If you say there’s evidence that these laws expressed God’s character, I begin to think of the great section of so-called casuistic laws that begins in Exodus 21, with a whole lot of them devoted to the treatment of slaves. Apparently the Hebrews were allowed to have slaves, which is interesting in a book like Exodus, isn’t it? So the casuistic laws are concerned about the treatment of slaves, and the first one sounds a little bit like what various people have been saying tonight. If slaves wanted out after seven years or so, they were to be allowed to go. But if a slave should say, ‘I love my master’, that changed the whole situation. Now he would serve out of love and free will, and that’s a different story (see 21:1–6).
In a book that has been concerned with delivering Israel from slavery in Egypt, if they’re going to be priests to God among the nations of their time, obviously their behaviour has got to be consistent with the role that God has given them. Therefore, their attitude towards slavery ought to reflect something of the divine wisdom in that particular situation and in that particular bit of history. As our friend said, their attitude to business, their concern that damage is not done to their fellow citizens and all that kind of thing, was surely an expression of God’s mind, and important for Israel to observe in their business life, farming life, social life and whatnot. And that general principle is going to continue to apply, isn’t it? If we are called upon to be priests to God—a kingdom of priests—even if we’re not governed by particular laws, are they not going to affect our basic attitudes to the way we conduct ourselves in business and show concern for people’s feelings, for their security, and in our care not to do damage to them and so forth?
Well, gentlemen, thank you very much. I only wish I had said less myself and got the discussion going earlier. But thank you for participating, and if you have further insights before you go, or you subsequently come across books that would be helpful to me, please be so kind as to drop me a letter.
10: Movement VI: The Context and Message of the Tabernacle: Exodus 24:12–31:18
We come now in our studies to Movement VI of the book of Exodus, which is concerned with the details given by God to Moses for the building of the tabernacle. And then for the clothing and equipment of the priests so that they might exercise their ministry of priesthood in the tabernacle and lead the nation in their service of God.
From a point of view of the proportions of the narrative, you will see how tremendously important this matter of the tabernacle and priesthood was to the author of the book of Exodus. Chapters 25 to 31 inclusive are concerned with the directions for building it. If I’ve counted it right, that is seven long detailed chapters. And then chapters 35 to 40 inclusive, another six long chapters, are concerned with the carrying out of those instructions in detail—the actual building of the tabernacle and the making of the priestly vestments and all the instruments they needed for their service. Moreover, in regard to the flow of thought, the book comes to its tremendous goal and climax with the tabernacle built and the glory of God descending by his grace to dwell in it. This was God fulfilling his gracious promise when he told Moses to make it:
There I will meet with the people of Israel, and it shall be sanctified by my glory . . . I will dwell among the people of Israel and will be their God. And they shall know that I am the LORD their God, who brought them out of the land of Egypt that I might dwell among them. I am the LORD their God. (29:43–46).
So, merely from the point of studying the literary composition of the book and following its climaxes—minor climaxes, major climax, and its final ultimate climax, we must of course pay due and proportionate attention to the building and functioning of the tabernacle and the priesthood.
Physical details of the tabernacle
If we would be honest expositors of the book of Exodus, we cannot afford just to dismiss those thirteen large chapters about the tabernacle with a cursory odd statement or two and then pass them by as if they were irrelevant to us in our day and generation. So, let us remind ourselves of some of its physical details.11
Many people have attempted to draw accurate plans, diagrams and pictures of the tabernacle; but of course they don’t all completely agree in detail because not enough information is given in the Old Testament narrative for us to see exactly how it was. It stood in a large court and the building was made of frames which had curtains spread over them. As I would read the Hebrew, it would have been in the manner that a pall is spread over a coffin at funerals; not with a high-pitched roof as sometimes it is represented in literature. Some people hold that the external coverings of skin were pegged out so as to form a kind of colonnade around the structure, where the priests might perform their duties.
The pictures I am showing you here12 are of a more recent attempt by a British architect to reconstruct the tabernacle that was published in the Royal Journal of the British Institute of Architects.13 He is a great enthusiast. Among other things, he holds that the proportions that are basic to good design were taught by God to Moses long before the classical people were inventing their marvellous temples and other buildings in Greece. Architecture students in Britain are taught that the classical temples of Greece were the first to lay down the classical proportions that should be followed in the construction of a building, which has had a tremendous influence in Europe in terms of architectural standards and ideals. But that’s by the way.
He holds that the extra curtains were pegged out, and he gives the roof a little bit of pitch, which I presume he thinks would help the water to run off. Those things are debatable, of course, and we need not stay on them. But we should perhaps notice the view that he takes—and it’s a view that I would take too—that, as to its wooden structure, the tabernacle was not composed of solid planks but of open ladder-like construction. That is important for many practical reasons. Solid planks would be a colossal weight to transport across the wilderness, and if you had solid planks they would seem to frustrate the purpose for which the glorious tabernacle curtains were made.
Technically speaking, you may remember that the term tabernacle, or mishkan in Hebrew, is sometimes used to refer to the whole structure. In the narrower and more exact technical sense it refers to the set of curtains that were draped over the wooden structure. Those ten curtains were magnificently detailed and adorned, and they themselves formed the mishkan: they are the dwelling place of God. Over them went another set of curtains, which were called the ohel. They were not made of linen but of woven goats’ hair, and their function was to protect the tabernacle curtains themselves. The frames were there to support those curtains, and if they had been solid boards, when you entered the building all you would have seen of the tabernacle curtains was the embroidery of the curtains in the roof. Down the sides, their beautiful embroidery and symbolism would have been hidden. So, from that point of view too, it is much more likely that the wooden surround frame was composed of open ladder-like structures.
When you entered the tabernacle, then, you would have seen the open ladder-like frames overlaid with gold, allowing the beautiful colours and symbolic figures of the tabernacle curtains to appear all around the sides as well and not only in the roof. Whatever else they are—Scripture elsewhere calls them living creatures—those cherubim surrounding you at every inch, so to speak, would at least have reminded you that you were entering the house of the living God.
The historicity of the tabernacle
We’ll consider more of that kind of thing later on, but if that was the construction, it is interesting from another point of view. In the older days that are happily now disappearing (though not as fast as they should), liberal critics of the Old Testament assured generations of students in theological colleges and universities that this tabernacle never existed.
They said, ‘In the first place, the tabernacle instructions don’t come from the Yahwist source, nor in particular from the Elohist source.14 They come from the priestly source of late exilic or post-exilic times. People like Ezekiel expressed their devotion to God with this kind of detailed attention to all sorts of ecclesiastical and ritualistic details. They meant well, but it was rather a late phenomenon in developing Judaism.’ That was the start of their argument.
And then they said, ‘If you constructed a building according to the details given in the Old Testament passages, it would have collapsed when, on the odd occasion in the Sinai Peninsula, there was a cloudburst—once in about a year and a half. In such a building, with curtains put over a flat roof, the rain would have collected and caused the coverings to sink in the middle. The weight of the rain would have brought the building in and it would have collapsed completely. It is an imaginative idealization of something that wouldn’t have worked, so it never really did exist in history.’ With such arguments, they used to think they had proved their point that this part of the book of Exodus comes from a very late source and is not historical.
As far as I’m aware, all kinds of reasons are now leading scholars to say that that view was highly exaggerated, if not completely mistaken, and there was indeed a tabernacle built by Israel in the wilderness. Far from being technically impossible, portable buildings in such forms had already been known for a thousand years and more; long before Moses and the Israelites came out of Egypt. They were built with an open framework with curtains draped over. In the building itself, there were various pieces of furniture for the use of the monarch. To say, therefore, that the description of the tabernacle is technically inadequate—‘a building like that couldn’t have worked and wouldn’t have been known’—is against the evidence of history. If such buildings were in Egypt, certainly the Israelites could have had them in the wilderness. For the moment, that is enough about the historicity of the tabernacle.
The literary context for the tabernacle
But now, in order to put it into its original context before we proceed to ask about its meaning for us, let’s go back for a moment to our literary study and I’ll just remind you of what I was suggesting.
The book of Exodus is in two parts, and there are four major movements of thought in each part:
The book of Exodus
| Part 1: | Part 2: | |||
| Movement I (1:1–6:27) | Movement V (18:1–24:11) | |||
| Movement II (6:28–10:29) | Movement VI (24:12–31:18) | |||
| Movement III (11:1–13:16) | Movement VII (32:1–34:35) | |||
| Movement VI (13:17–17:16) | Movement VIII (35:1–40:38) |
You’ll remember that there are very significant similarities and differences if we come across sideways. For instance, in Movement I there is the story of God revealing himself to Moses in the flame of the thorn bush on Mount Horeb; and in Movement V there is the story of God revealing himself in flames from the top of Mount Sinai. Perhaps it was the same mountain, who knows?
The relationships between the movements
The covenants: Movements I and V
More significant is the mention in Movement I of God’s covenant with the patriarchs, and the mention in Movement V of the covenant at Sinai. If the very arrangement of the book of Exodus obliges us to consider what the relationship is between those two covenants, it has done us an exceedingly important service. As I was saying last night, there is a very important difference between the Mosaic covenant at Sinai and the new covenant, under which we are related to God. But that is not merely so, for there was also a very big difference between the covenant at Sinai and the earlier covenant with the patriarchs.
The covenant mentioned in Movement I is the covenant God made with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, as recorded in the book of Genesis; the covenant at Sinai was a very different covenant indeed. If one goes back to Genesis 15, the covenant described there was what we call a one-party covenant that followed the symbolic practice of the ancient world. When covenants were made, they had a covenant sacrifice. The victims were slain, divided into their pieces, which were put into rows, and then the parties to the covenant who had something to fulfil and wished to bind themselves by this covenant would ceremonially walk between the two rows of pieces. If both parties had something to promise and something to perform, then both parties walked through the pieces. On the other hand, if it was a one-party covenant, only the party who had something to promise and something to perform walked through them.
When you read the story in Genesis 15, it is evident that when God made a promise to Abraham15 to give him possession of the land and guaranteed his promise by a covenant, only God walked through the pieces. Abraham arranged the pieces, and when birds of prey came down he chased them away (see vv. 10¬–11). But when it came to the actual ceremony of walking through the pieces, Abraham was in a deep sleep and had a vision (vv. 12–17).
Even so, had he been a party to that covenant, he could have seen himself walking through the pieces, as John in his vision saw himself sometimes in heaven; now and again back to earth; and then up in heaven again (see book of Revelation). In his vision, Abraham did not see himself walking through the pieces. When it came to the covenant ceremony, the only thing that passed between the pieces was the great smoking furnace and a light, which were the symbols and evidence of the divine presence (see Gen 15:17). It was God making a one-party covenant with Abraham to give him the land.
When you then read about the covenant at Sinai in Movement V, it was not a one-party covenant; it was a two-party covenant. Notice the exact description of the history of the actual ceremony of making the covenant (Exod 24:3–8). The people were assembled and the terms were read to them from the book written by Moses. When they were asked if they would be willing to promise that they would keep these terms, each person responded, ‘All that the LORD has spoken we will do’ (v. 7). It was on those terms that God had covenanted himself to do his part, and Moses was to tell the people of Israel, ‘if you will indeed obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession . . . you shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation’ (19:5–6).
Why is that important? Well, it’s important historically for this reason. On the basis of which covenant, and what kind of covenant were Israel brought out of Egypt? Was it on the basis of the Sinai covenant? Certainly not, of course, and history gives us the answer at once. How important is the difference theologically? Did God come down to this race of slaves and say to Moses, ‘I know the people are in terrible bondage and here is my proposal. If they will keep my covenant and obey all these precepts, I will deliver them’? Well, no, not a breath of it. When the people were reduced to utter despair and scarcely found it possible to believe the message that Moses had been commissioned to give them, God announced the grounds and the basis of the covenant through which he was going to deliver them. ‘I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. I will give it to you for a possession I am the LORD’ (Exod 6:8). He would stand by that one-party unconditional promise.
I would appeal also to the well-known argument by the Apostle Paul in Galatians 3. Quoting these two covenants, he points out that the covenant with the patriarchs was made four hundred and thirty years before the one at Sinai, and legally you must not add the terms of the Sinai covenant and make them a condition for the fulfilment of that earlier covenant with the patriarchs. That’s a thing no lawyer would ever think of doing anyway, but it mustn’t be done, says Paul. The great promises of inheritance were pledged to Abraham and his seed; not on the basis of the Sinai covenant but the earlier covenant (v. 17). All further deductions that Paul makes are on the basis of the difference between the two covenants.
In the actual terms of the Sinai covenant you will notice that God doesn’t say, ‘Now if you keep my covenant, I will give you the land’. God couldn’t have done that without contradicting the covenant with the patriarchs, and he didn’t, of course. Under the terms of the Sinai covenant what he offered Israel was a privileged role: ‘You shall be my treasured possession; you shall be a kingdom of priests’.
I want to say no more about that. I’m simply observing that this is not just a literary structure; the literary structure itself is exceedingly full of the most far-reaching implications.
The feasts: Movements III and VII
We noticed previously that in Movement III, when God was giving directions for the Passover, he said in the very first set of directions that they were to keep it as a memorial, an annual chag in Hebrew (feast) all down their generations, lest they forgot the means by which they came out of Egypt (12:14). And we’ve already pointed out that, standing opposite it in Movement VII, and therefore gaining tremendous kick and punch from that very literary fact, is the story of how Israel had another chag and danced round their golden calf, of which they said, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’ (32:4).
The tabernacle and priesthood: Movements II and VI
If that is true, then we’ve got to ask ourselves about the significance of the tabernacle plus priesthood in Movement II, and the tabernacle plus priesthood in Movement VI. The thought model, the literary structure, will prompt us to ask, ‘Is there any connection of thought between those two movements, and any important connection between Movements IV and VIII?’.
Of course, one immediate, obvious and simple thing occurs between Movements II and VI, doesn’t it? In Movement II, we hear the repeated demand from God through Moses to Pharaoh, ‘Let my people go that they may worship me’. And if that was the purpose of the deliverance of Israel, here in Movement VI the purpose is now being realized. God’s demand was genuine. It was not just a trick to get Israel out of Egypt, to pretend that they had a special service to perform; it was the very purpose for which they had been delivered. From a practical perspective, the emphasis in Movement II was that they were to take with them the spoil from the Egyptians, who gave them their silver and gold jewellery and clothing’ (12:35); and here in Movement VI is how a great deal of that wealth was to be employed.
The effect of deliverance: Movements IV and VIII
Let’s leave that just for a moment and come to Movements IV and VIII. Is there any connection of thought? I’d like you to look at the great song of victory in Exodus 15. As Israel stand on the further banks of the Red Sea and celebrate the victory that God has just achieved, they say,
You have led in your steadfast love the people whom you have redeemed; you have guided them by your strength to your holy abode. (v. 13)
Then again,
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. (v. 17)
In verse 17 they are obviously thinking far and away beyond the tabernacle that was made in the wilderness. This is a prophecy of what God’s objective would be: he would bring them into the land, and there the great sanctuary would be built. Ultimately it was built, and the historian in the first book of Kings dates it to so many years after the exodus (6:1; 38). So the connection of thought between Movements IV and VIII is, of course, the ultimate effect of that deliverance—the smashing of Pharaoh and the drowning of him in the Red Sea, which finally set the people free to achieve this eventual objective.
Until they came to the building of the great permanent temple in the land, they were to anticipate it and all its glory. Even while they were on their journey and had not yet arrived, they could already enjoy in some measure the blessings and the experience of what that final temple of God would be.
Incidentally, that talks to us as Christians, doesn’t it? According to the book of Revelation, the great and ultimate goal will be when we see the new heavens and the new earth. The glorious city, the new Jerusalem, shall come down from the opened new heavens, and a voice shall declare, ‘Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men’ (Rev 21:3 KJV). When all the battles have been fought and every mile and kilometre of the journey covered, when all the defeats have been turned into victories and this world is no more, we shall stand on the brink of eternity hallelujahing, because the devil and his works and all opposition of that old serpent have been defeated. If we were to ask what God has achieved from the ages of time, the answer would be in the symbolic terms of the tabernacle.
Gentlemen, we can’t afford to neglect the study of the tabernacle. As it was Israel’s objective, so it is the objective of the Creator himself for his new heavens and new earth. But we don’t have to wait for the coming of the new heavens and the new earth; we may know some of its glories now, may we not? To borrow Paul’s terminology from the Epistle to the Ephesians, we are being built together even now into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit (see 2:19–22). Here on our pilgrim pathway to the great eternity, we may anticipate and know and enjoy what it is to have the presence of God within his church.
The historical context for the tabernacle
I want now to appear to wander from the subject. Sometimes when I appear to wander from the subject, I am. But there are other times when I’m not really! So, staying with these two Movements—IV and VIII—we come back to the song. Here were Moses and the Israelites standing on the further bank of the Red Sea, singing their praise: ‘For [the LORD] has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea’ (15:1). The Lord had triumphed over Egypt, and therefore over Pharaoh. Let me quote the passage in Isaiah 51, where Isaiah is referring to this great event:
Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the LORD; awake, as in days of old, the generations of long ago. Was it not you who cut Rahab in pieces, who pierced the dragon? (v. 9)
That kind of language has led many scholars to think that the real background to the story of the exodus and the crossing of the Red Sea is Canaanite mythology. Many of their early myths talk of the rebellion of the sea, the great vast waters of the flood. There was a struggle between the lower gods of the sea and the superior gods of the sky, and the great heavenly gods overcame the sea and put it back in its place. The sea is referred to as Tiamat, the great dragon of the deep that rose up in rebellion against the superior gods and had to be subdued and put in its place. There is a tremendous amount of literature on that Canaanite mythology. Scholars have said that, in order to understand the tabernacle and the story of Israel coming out via the Passover lamb and then crossing the sea, you should see its origin in this mythology. Look at the terms in Isaiah, such as ‘piercing the dragon’, which is the monster of the deep. They say that this is ancient mythology that has been kind of sanitized and then used in the Old Testament.
A protest and answer to idolatrous interpretations of the universe
That is a very important question for us to face, for in Movement II, which stands opposite the tabernacle in Movement VI, we were talking the other night about what was involved in the plagues. We thought of it as a power struggle between the gods of the Nile and Jehovah.
What view of creation, or what view of the forces of nature, do we have in Movement II, and what view of creation is in Movement VI? Let me elaborate on that. For instance, in the tabernacle in Movement VI, we have a lampstand on which at night seven lamps were put on the top bit of the six branches (see Exod 25:31–40). Don’t get upset about the shape of the lampstand: if you like it with the branches all level, you can have that—it’s irrelevant for our purposes now. What does it represent? Is it mythological symbolism? Is it astrology à la Canaanites, a symbolic representation of the lights—the sun, the moon and the stars? What is it?
So we come back to the verse in Isaiah about cutting Rahab in pieces, and other such things. What is Isaiah talking about? If he’s talking about the event in Exodus 15, let us notice at once that Exodus 15 is not mythology; it is offered to us as history. There is a literal Red Sea, geographically located, and a strong, historic, very literal east wind that divided the sea. Israel went over it, and the waters of the sea being composed of their normal chemicals drowned Pharaoh and his host. It is not offered as mythology. According to the Hebrew narrative this is history, and it is dated history. It tells you when they came out of Egypt and gives you dates to place it within history.
You say, ‘Why then did Isaiah use terms like Rahab and the dragon of the deep?’.
The answer that many evangelical and conservative scholars would give is perhaps as follows. Let me take an example from English. In England we happily eat cereals for breakfast, but actually the word comes from Ceres in Latin, the goddess of agriculture. Cerealis, therefore, and all those Latin terms were originally connected with the mythology of the god of food, the corn goddess, and so on. Poets would use these exalted terms in their poetic fashion for ordinary bread and food, and presently they lost all their mythological background and became ordinary words for food. Many an honest Englishman eats his cereals at breakfast, calls them cereals, and he hasn’t the ghost of a notion that there was ever any mythology connected with them.
So, when Isaiah says, ‘Was it not you who cut Rahab in pieces, who pierced the dragon?’ (Isa 51:9), he’s talking about a historical event. If indeed he is using terms that had their origins in mythology, it’s not their origin that counts. The important thing, surely, is how Isaiah is using them and what he is using them for.
To stray even further, in these last decades many scholars have pointed out that, when you come to the story of creation in Genesis 1, far from being mythological it is directed at denying Canaanite and Akkadian mythology. In the story of the creation in Genesis 1, the stars are not gods, nor are the sun and moon. They are just light-bearers; physical things that God made for their respective purposes. As for the stars, they’re dismissed in a couple of syllables, so to speak.
This is not mythology. In fact, there is some force in the observation that the very story of creation denies the perverted views of God’s creation that developed in those eastern mythologies down the centuries. Having originally known God as creator, men and women had suppressed that knowledge of him and fashioned those deities, worshipping the creature rather than the creator. In so doing, they were slipping into an idolatrous interpretation of the universe (see Rom 1:18–23). Now God takes his people out from Egypt and begins again, and when the prophets write the story of creation under his inspiration, they are concerned to deny the idolatrous and mythological interpretations of the universe current among their contemporaries.
That is a very important thing, and when we turn to consider Movement VI and the building of the tabernacle, it becomes even more relevant. The tabernacle is the place where God comes and dwells. Historically, how did those ancient Israelites conceive of this? In Movement II, we have the Egyptians with their idolatrous interpretation of the universe where the forces of nature are thought of as gods. The Nile is a god, the sun is a god, and at length, if you please, Pharaoh is a god.
In Movement II God so deals with Pharaoh to make it clear that he really is God in the midst of the earth. He’s not some absentee landlord; he can poke his finger into the course of nature. But he makes it abundantly clear that he is not one of the forces of nature: he’s not the god of the Nile, nor the god of hail or trees. He’s not one amongst those forces, not even the biggest of them. The Scriptures state and God demonstrates that he is the transcendent Lord, the author of the creation, but not a part of its forces (see Heb 11:3).
The difference between those two views is exceedingly important and potent. Under the New Age Movement in our modern world we have the upsurge of those hoary old idolatrous, animistic interpretations of the universe that God is in the natural forces of the universe, in the trees, streams, etc. Also the pantheistic interpretation that God is in all creation, including human beings: human beings are God, or a bit of God.
As our Western world develops these old false interpretations, what we are being told in Exodus continues to have more and more significance and relevance to our modern situation. It makes it all the more important, therefore, to understand what the tabernacle is saying. Yes, God came down and dwelt among them, and he remains the transcendent Lord in the midst of his people.
As you know, this topic has exercised the rabbis, and still exercises them. They’re not interested in the tabernacle as a typological representation of Jesus Christ or Christianity, but they are concerned with this very serious and basic element: does the tabernacle compromise God’s transcendence? And what is Exodus saying when it says that God made his throne above the cherubim? What are cherubim? Is this a hangover from old mythological ideas about the forces of the universe? I want to say that the answer to that is no. If we’ve properly understood Exodus, far from having to apologize for it as a hangover from the old mythological age, it is a positive statement of the truth and goes quite counter to the mythology.
A copy and shadow of things in the heavens
Let’s take a hint at this point from the New Testament explanation. In Hebrews 8 we are informed that Moses was instructed by God on the mountain, and shown a plan of what God wanted him to build. It was to serve as ‘a copy and shadow of the heavenly things’ (v. 5). Take just one example of that from the lampstand. According to the New Testament, it is not a symbolic representation of the sun, moon and stars—the luminaries. In terms that we can understand, it is bringing down the great realities of the invisible world. As we noticed the other day, the lampstand was in the form of an almond tree, with roots, a central trunk and branches. From those branches came the buds, the blossoms and then the fruit—three stages of life all at the same time. Carol Meyers has done a great deal of work and has produced a very interesting monograph on the lampstand. She traced the iconography of lampstands like this in the Middle East and the connection between the lampstand and the form, showing quite clearly that it is both a vehicle of light and a representation of the tree of life.16 Commenting on that symbolism, the New Testament talks to us about the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God (Rev 2:7).
According to Hebrews 8, what was happening in the tabernacle in the wilderness was that, in coming down to dwell amongst his people, the transcendent Lord brought symbols that would bring the great realities down to earth. We can take another cue into this from John 1, where what is stated in Exodus in the symbolic terms of the lampstand is now stated literally. In talking to us about the person of Christ, John is also talking about him as creator:
All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. (John 1:3–4)
It’s an interesting collocation of ideas. First of all, Christ as the ancient in creation—‘All things were made through him’; and immediately in that context—‘In him was life’. It is talking about the vast teeming life of the created world around us. If we ask where that life came from, or where the creator got the life from to make all these things, the answer is that he didn’t get it from anywhere. He is the source: ‘in him was life.’ This is a statement of his ‘creatorhood’—he is the source of all created life, and that life becomes the light of men.
The message of the tabernacle to the historic and modern world
I’m not unaware that many scholars, even conservative Christian scholars, feel that while there may be some general analogy in that God came and dwelt among the Israelites and now by his grace he comes and dwells among us, that’s about as far as you can go in the study and certainly in the use of the tabernacle. Many feel that any attempt to expound its details is grotesque, and it has been so abused in times past that nowadays it’s not the kind of thing the normal, sane, healthy, balanced theological mind would do. In their view, any scholar who attempts it must be a little bit schizophrenic—partly attached to the pursuit of rigorous theology and partly to wild typological exegesis.
Some of my friends say, ‘Well, I’ve never preached the tabernacle myself. I’m engaged in evangelism, and preaching it would be hopelessly inappropriate. Fancy sitting an atheist down in front of the tabernacle and starting to preach the gospel from it. It could and should never be done.’
I take that general point, but a year or so ago I unexpectedly found myself giving a series of lectures on the tabernacle, when a friend of mine, who’s a professor of computers, artificial intelligence and all that kind of thing in the local university, brought some of his PhD students to the lectures. They happened to be mainland Chinese, all atheists, and I was put on the spot to know what I should talk about from the tabernacle.
‘I’ve surely got to preach the gospel’, I thought, so I began by saying, ‘We have here a representation of a very ancient temple; but why on earth would modern people be interested in it? Haven’t we had millions of temples—millions too many temples—in the world? Wouldn’t it be better to scrap all such things? Why would anybody in the scientific world be interested in an ancient temple?’ And then I said, ‘Well, for the first reason that when it existed this tabernacle was unique among the nations of the Middle East, because the Israelites had no image of their God in it. It conveyed their concept of God, and that very difference between them and the surrounding nations was exceedingly eloquent.’
Secondly, I went to the ark, the very heart of the tabernacle, and pointed out that one of its main functions was that it should be the container for the tablets of the law. This is therefore what the tabernacle stands for and one of its major functions. So I went on to refer to the law and some of its main contentions. ‘Keep the Sabbath, for in six days God made the world and rested on the seventh’—the doctrine of creation. This was vastly different from all other theories of the universe. The nations around them at that time had sunk into an idolatrous interpretation of it, with the deification of the forces of nature, while Israel stood for the transcendent Creator.
I said, ‘What does it matter?’ I pointed to the elevated view of mankind that is contained in the early books of Moses—man and woman were made in the image of God to be God’s viceroys, to rule for God over the material universe. This was in contrast to the theories of the ancient world, that we were made as grovelling slaves to fulfil the lusts and desires of the gods. And then I speedily came to its application: ‘That difference between Israel and the ancients is still relevant, isn’t it? Nobody nowadays in our sophisticated scientific world would fall down and worship idols.’
If you were to ask your atheist friends, ‘What are the ultimate powers [we don’t need to call them gods] that produced us and control our lives, and will bring us to our end?’, they would have to say that these are simply the physical forces and the material that the universe is made of. That is, the weak atomic power, the strong atomic power, gravity, electromagnetism, and if there is antigravity or whatever it is, these are the things that control us. They brought us into existence and they will eventually destroy us and our world.
As far as I can see, they’re saying nothing different from what the ancient idolaters said. When Egypt worshipped the god of the Nile and the god of the sun and all these other things, they were deifying the forces of nature and saying that they ultimately control things. Behind them were the dark forces of fate and chance, and when Israel were in Egypt they found that idolatrous society to be a house of bondage and slavery from which they needed to be delivered.
Of course, this modern view is just as idolatrous as the ancient view. If there is no transcendent Lord Creator and our gods are simply the impersonal forces of the universe, then it seems quite evident to me that we too are in a desperate prison house and somehow we need to find an escape from planet Earth to another planet that some people talk of.
Scientific experts tell us that our planet is doomed one day to be destroyed one way or another. Long before it comes to that, what about me as an individual? Am I merely the product of blind, mindless forces working by chance, the victim of conflicting cosmic forces? I may do my best to appease and control them, but in the end they will get the mastery and that will be the end of me. One day a little virus will enter my body. It won’t have two pennies’ worth of sense in its head, but it’s going to destroy me—my aesthetic sense, my intelligence, my body, everything. I shall be able to see what it’s doing, but have no power to stop it, for I am its victim, its prisoner. Is that, then, our concept of mankind and creation?
But there is the other side to the tablets of the law that were in that ark. God was speaking about the sense of right and wrong that we all have. Where does that sense of morality and justice come from? Behind it is the personal God, who is the creator, author and vindicator of the authority of that moral law. But what happens if there is no creator, or if the forces of the universe are amoral or as immoral as the ancients themselves were?
Our humanistic friends try to get out of it by saying that, as human intelligent beings, we can come to a moral contract with one another. One of my humanist philosopher friends used to say, ‘You see, we don’t need God in order to have a workable morality. It’s simple. If you poke your finger in my eye, I shall poke my finger in yours. But that’s not a sensible way to live, so we’ll come to an agreement that will work. You won’t poke your finger in my eye, and I shan’t poke my finger in yours.’
But will it work? I said to my friend, ‘What happens if my name is Adolf Hitler, and I’m proposing to put my finger in your eye in a very firm way? Will you say to me, “If you do, I shall put my finger back in your eye”? No, you won’t,’ I said, ‘because when I’ve slaughtered six million Jews and you come after me I shall shoot my brains out. I’ve enjoyed my time on earth, and because there’s nothing beyond it I’ve got away with it.’
What shall we say to the victims? Suppose we were visiting the concentration camp and they cried out, ‘We demand justice’, what would you tell them? Would you say, ‘Now, look, do be grown up. You’re not going to get justice in this world, I’m afraid, and because there is no God and no afterlife there’s no justice there either’? The social theory contract of justice breaks down, leaving morality and justice as a mere rope of sand.
We are contending for everything when we contend for the lessons that were enshrined in that ark and its voice against the idolatrous civilizations of the ancient world. Subsequently there came to be a pot of manna in the ark, and I went on to preach to the Chinese students the lesson that we derive from it. We discussed it yesterday when we considered the origin of what our attitude should be to our daily bread. What is the correct understanding of the whole phenomenon of work and eating our daily bread? Is it merely a struggle against impersonal nature? Do we sit alone eating our breakfast, or is there a personal God behind it? In my kind of context, it seems to me to be a message that still needs to be propounded loud and clear, and will become more necessary as Western society reverts to being pagan.
Now we come to a historical question. Where did Israel get this doctrine of creation that was enshrined in the law inside that ark? In my youth the social anthropological theory used to say that the doctrine evolved among the Israelites. Like anybody else, they gradually started off with animism perhaps, worked up through polytheism, and proceeded to henotheism—that is, one particular god per tribe or nation. From that they went on to monotheism, and beyond that to atheism of course.
As far as I’m aware, subsequent social anthropological research has not proved that point. There is no clear evidence that people have evolved in that sense; and as far as Israel is concerned, the historical evidence goes the other way. Israel were forever departing from this doctrine of creation and compromising with the idolatrous interpretations of the universe around them. Far from evolving to it, they were moving away from it. They were constantly being pulled back by their prophets and warned to stop compromising with these idolatrous interpretations of creation. They appealed to them to come back to the true God, the true transcendent creator who had revealed himself to them through his word.
So let that do for the moment. I’m making the point that, when we study the background and context of the building of this tabernacle and what it has to say about God vis-à-vis creation, far from being irrelevant it is the true interpretation as against the false, and at that level it has a loud voice and relevance to our modern society.
But then, because of the course of history and Christendom, it has another big relevance too, and I’d like to talk about that after we’ve had a break for fresh air.
The message of the tabernacle to Christendom
We have been considering the relevance of what the tabernacle stood for, not only as a message to Israel’s contemporaries in those far-off days but as a message to our modern world in its increasingly idolatrous interpretation of the forces of the universe. I now want to say some things about the relevance of the message of the tabernacle to Christendom as a whole and Christendom historically. I base my remarks upon what I think I find the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews is saying, particularly as he develops the idea of perfection.
The call to press on to perfection
Let’s turn to Hebrews 6 as our starting point for this consideration. ‘Wherefore,’ he says, ‘let us cease to speak of the first principles of Christ, and press on unto perfection’ (v. 1 RV). The question naturally arises, what does he mean by perfection? Is he talking to Christian people who have entered into the blessings of forgiveness and regeneration? Now they are beginning to make progress in their spiritual pathway, with the hope that one day they shall arrive at total sinless perfection, which will not be on earth, of course, but at the coming of the Lord Jesus. Meanwhile they are pressing on to perfection, in the sense that Paul talks of it in Philippians 3:
Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own. . . . But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on towards the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. (vv. 12–14)
Is that what the writer to the Hebrews is saying: ‘You are all good Christian people; now go on from your elementary stage of Christianity towards perfection’? It seems to me that when we follow the recurrence of this idea of perfection through the chapters that follow, it becomes apparent that that is not what he is saying. What he is saying is this. These people to whom he was writing had begun life as Jewish people. They were believers in God, following the traditions that had been handed to them from God and mediated to them through the Old Testament prophets as best they knew how. That’s a very good beginning. Naturally, that beginning was shared by Christianity; but now these people who have professed faith in the Lord Jesus are called upon to leave their imperfect stage of Judaism and press on to full-blown Christianity.
For instance, let’s look at the things he describes as foundational. ‘Wherefore let us cease to speak of the first principles of Christ, and press on unto perfection; not laying again a foundation [now here comes the foundation] of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God, of the teaching of baptisms [notice the plural] and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgement’ (Heb 6:1–2 RV).
As you will observe, there is nothing particularly Christian in that list. These are all elements that any good Pharisee would have subscribed to in the time of our Lord, and any Pharisee who still rejected Jesus as Lord and Messiah could nonetheless subscribe to. These are not the foundational doctrines of Christianity, are they? If they were, where is there any talk of the deity of the Lord Jesus? Where is there any talk of his atoning death or of his resurrection? Certainly, they are foundational; but they’re not the foundational doctrines of Christianity, strictly so-called. These are the foundations that God laid in Judaism, and the foundations that the people who then professed faith in Jesus as Messiah had. But, having professed faith in Jesus as Messiah, now they are called upon to advance from their Judaism and its good but imperfect things to full-blown Christianity: to perfection in that sense—not to sinless perfection.
The perfect priesthood
But then let’s take examples of what he means. In chapter 7, he describes the high priesthood of Aaron and says that it was according to the commandment of God. Generations of Israelites had approached God through that God-ordained medium of an earthly high priest as an intermediary between them and God. When this letter was written, the high priests existed in the system of Judaism, and many of these Jews would still be attached to the worship of the temple in Jerusalem, with a high priest dressed up in his gorgeous robes mediating between them and God. The writer is now urging these Christians to leave that imperfect system and press towards the perfect priesthood.
For on the one hand, a former commandment is set aside because of its weakness and uselessness (for the law made nothing perfect). (7:18–19)
He is thinking in particular of the law pertaining to the priesthood. It made nothing perfect, and therefore it has now been replaced. What is the perfect priesthood? God has brought in the true and perfect priest, our blessed Lord Jesus, who was made a priest no longer after the order of Aaron but after the order of Melchizedek (v. 17). His priesthood is the perfect priesthood. We are to move from the old priesthood of Judaism, which was good for its time but imperfect, to the perfect priesthood of our blessed Lord.
Come into chapter 8 as he pursues the argument. He mentions now that the tabernacle Moses made was ordered by God, and like the law it was a shadow of the heavenly things (see v. 5). Glorious as it was, it was not perfect, was it? It was established by the old covenant, which he goes on to say is being done away with and replaced, as we saw last night. And now he is asking them to move on from the old covenant to the new covenant.
Having dealt with the new covenant that made the first one obsolete, he comes back in chapter 9 to the question of the tabernacle, which was an expression of that old covenant. He says, ‘Now even the first covenant had regulations for worship and an earthly place of holiness’ (v. 1). It had a sanctuary in this world, and a system of sacrifices to go with it, but it wasn’t the ideal, and it wasn’t perfect. Please notice that there were two compartments in that ancient tabernacle; and whereas God came and dwelt in that second compartment on the throne [the ark of the covenant], the people were not allowed into it. Indeed, they weren’t even allowed into the first compartment; only the priests could come into it, and the people had to stay outside. Among the priests themselves, only the high priest could ever go behind that veil into the immediate presence of God, and then only once a year [on the Day of Atonement], to come and stand in the presence of God on behalf of the people.
The architecture of the tabernacle was not accidental; it was deliberately designed by the Holy Spirit to convey a message:
By this the Holy Spirit indicates that the way into the holy places is not yet opened as long as the first section is still standing (which is symbolic for the present age). According to this arrangement, gifts and sacrifices are offered that cannot perfect the conscience of the worshipper. (vv. 8–9)
And so he goes on to talk about those rituals and those sacrifices, coming to the climax of his argument in chapter 10:
For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come instead of the true form of these realities, it can never, by the same sacrifices that are continually offered every year, make perfect those who draw near. (v. 1)
Now the writer is not denying that the Israelites received forgiveness when they came according to this tabernacle system under the laws of the old covenant, offered their animal sacrifices and confessed their sins. They did receive forgiveness. Leviticus explicitly says that when they came with their animal sacrifice, laid their hands on its head, slew it, and the priest offered its blood upon the altar, whatever their sin was it was forgiven. The writer to the Hebrews is too much of an expert in the Old Testament to say that they didn’t get forgiveness. Ah, but their conscience was not made perfect. ‘. . . the law . . . can never . . . make perfect those who draw near’, he says (10:1).
What does he mean by ‘make perfect’? Well, he tells you what he means:
Otherwise, would they not have ceased to be offered, since the worshippers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have any consciousness of sins? (v. 2)
If those worshippers had once been thoroughly cleansed as to their consciences, then the sacrifices would have ceased. Under the law, no Jew can have a conscience made perfect because they constantly have to come and offer more sacrifices to get further forgiveness. The matter is never settled; they’re always paying.
It’s like when you have a mortgage on your house, you’ve got to pay it back. As the month comes to its end, you wrack your brains to find a few extra coppers in your bank account. Have you got enough? By squeezing everything, you manage to come up with the money and get the cheque off in time. That’s that month, and that night you go to bed and sleep happily. But, alas, another month comes round, and the same old business occurs all over again, all down the dreary months of the long years. And though you paid the bank today, your ‘conscience’ is not clear yet, for there are a lot more payments to be made. Then comes the day when you pay the last payment and the house is yours—you sleep the sleep of the just! When the next month comes round, do you say to yourself, ‘Now, what about the mortgage? I think I’ve paid it, but just to make sure I’ll go and pay it’? No, you don’t, do you? If it has been completely paid, there’s no more paying.
But in Israel, though they’d offered their sacrifice and got forgiveness, next year they came and paid it again, and again and again, which showed that their conscience was not yet made perfect. The writer is not urging them to move on from elementary Christianity to a more advanced Christianity; he’s asking them to move on from Judaism and its system of constant offering of sacrifices into real Christianity that presents the perfect sacrifice that has been made once and for all. According to the new covenant, it has secured for us such complete forgiveness that there is no more offering for sin. You don’t need to continue the practice of offering sacrifices to get forgiveness of sins; you have such complete forgiveness under the new covenant that the Holy Spirit witnesses to you that there is no more need for a process of constantly offering sacrifices.
And so he is urging them to move on from the inadequacies of Judaism and from that old tabernacle to full-blown Christianity.
But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect [tabernacle] (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption. (9:11–12)
Once more we notice what the contrast is. He is not saying that early Christians had rather humble churches, and it wasn’t much good meeting in upper rooms and places like that. They really were not dignified enough for the general public, and now they’d be wise as Christians to develop much more ornate tabernacles. No, no, that is not the contrast he is making. Moses’ tabernacle was glorious. It was magnificent in its colour and symbolism, and rich with its vestments and ornate gold, silver and precious stones, and its incense. It was full of mysticism, art and aesthetic appeal. But the writer is saying they are to move on from that, because it was only a shadow of the real thing, and go in for that greater and more perfect tabernacle, the heavenly tabernacle, the great reality of which Moses’ tabernacle was but a copy. It is that tabernacle in which our blessed high priest himself, Jesus Christ our Lord, sits at the moment, and it is through him that we draw near to God.
And here comes the glorious bit of our Christian gospel that arises because of the magnificence and complete adequacy of the sacrifice of Christ. I never cease rejoicing when I think about it, and there’s something in me that wants to burst out preaching it. Listen to the climax of this argument in chapter 10:
Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin. Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water. (vv. 18–22)
So what the ancient people could not do in this earthly tabernacle, nor the priests, and what the high priest himself could do only once a year—that is, they could not come into the Most Holy Place within the veil and stand in the presence of God—we are invited and urged to do. And what is more, when this verse tells us that we have boldness to enter the holiest of all, it is no longer referring to the back room of an earthly tabernacle; we have boldness in spirit to enter the immediate presence of God in heaven. Christianity is glorious, isn’t it? Who wouldn’t want to move on from good Judaism, which was God-given, but inadequate and temporary—only a shadow, into the glories of full-blown Christianity?
Christendom’s reversion to Judaic practices
But, gentlemen, I remind you of a sad thing that happened early in Christendom. I suppose it was in part because at first many Christians only had the Old Testament Scriptures and studied them more, perhaps, than they did the New Testament authors. But presently, as you know, Christian folks reverted to Judaism along many lines.
Meeting places built after the form of the Jewish temple
They began to build their meeting places after the form of the ancient Jewish temple, and their churches had a first division where the people could come, and then a more sacred part where only the priests and perhaps the choir members could come. Sometimes they built great screens across the chancel to keep the people out; sometimes they even built complete walls right across from floor to ceiling, with a few doors. The people could come to the first division and only the priests could go into the second. In other words, they had returned to the kind of thing seen in the tabernacle—they were reverting to Judaism. Is it any wonder that the result of that perpetual visual impact upon the people was to give them the impression that they could never be sure of getting to heaven? It must be left uncertain. They couldn’t even come into the most holy part of the church, let alone be sure that they would have access into God’s heaven at last. It became utterly unthinkable to them that they had access into the immediate presence of God now.
When some of my good friends in Ireland find out that I believe I’m sure of salvation, they say, ‘Tut, tut!’. They’re very patient with this man who has funny ideas, but they say that I can’t be sure I’m going to be in heaven.
And then, being awkward and even simplistic, I say, ‘I’ve been there today’.
‘What do you mean, you’ve been there today? Don’t talk nonsense.’
‘Well,’ I say, ‘what does the Epistle to the Hebrews mean when it says that we have boldness to enter the holiest of all? Which holiest of all? Isn’t it the holiest of all where our great high priest has entered?’
And the glory of our Christian gospel is this: you don’t have to wait until the eternal tabernacle to know whether or not you’re going to be admitted into the holiest of all and into God’s presence. Here on the desert sand, so to speak, on our pilgrimage towards the eternal city, we have liberty to enter in spirit into the holiest of all.
What a delightful message that is! I sometimes think it would be worth building a whole tabernacle model, if only to get that message across to our contemporaries and point out to them the significance of that great event that happened when our Lord was crucified. He cried, ‘It is finished,’ and the veil of the temple was rent. God was finished with Judaism and its practices, and showed simultaneously that the way is open into his immediate presence. What a glorious gospel!
The Eucharist offered to obtain forgiveness
But then Christendom did other things, didn’t it? It not only invented church buildings after the measure of Judaism, but then it took the memorial feast of the Lord Jesus and turned it into a sacrifice that had to be constantly offered to obtain forgiveness of sins, get people out of purgatory and whatnot. So people have been taught that as they offer this blood sacrifice, which is the body of Jesus Christ, they get forgiveness. That is a complete reversion to Judaism. When people constantly think that they are offering the Eucharist to get forgiveness, it’s no wonder they don’t have a conscience made perfect. Of course they don’t! Anybody who continues offering the Eucharist in order to get forgiveness comes under the description in Hebrews 10:1. If they had a conscience made perfect, they wouldn’t offer anything. ‘Because we have complete forgiveness,’ says the Holy Spirit, ‘the glory is that there is no more prosphora’—that is, there is no more process of offering. The practice of constantly offering the so-called body and blood of Christ in order to get forgiveness is not Christianity; that is Judaism.
A priesthood established after the order of Judaism
Then, in order to have people offer this supposed sacrifice, they invented a priesthood after the order of Judaism as well, didn’t they? I think it was Augustine who thought it was a very good idea. So you have a high priest like Aaron and minor ranks of priests in their positions and their robes, all of them distinct from the ordinary laypeople, like it was in Israel. In thus reverting to Judaism they contradict a basic doctrine of Christianity that all believers are priests and there is no distinction between some consecrated Christians and others. That’s Judaism, and having made this distinction they end up with a curious anomaly. In Judaism, they only had one high priest; but in many quarters of Christendom they now have two high priests—one on earth and one in heaven. Odd, isn’t it? But it’s not so innocent. We mustn’t be tempted to say, ‘What’s wrong with that? It’s a lovely little sort of antiquarianism.’ No, it isn’t; it impinges on people’s approach to God and their sense of acceptance with him.
And it’s not a question of pushing one narrow denominational view and interpretation; this is basic Christianity. What a magnificent joy it is to come alongside people who have never had their consciences made perfect. They are unsure of salvation and unsure of a final welcome in the presence of God. What a magnificent privilege it is, then, to come beside them and point out from these Scriptures how they may have immediate access into the presence of God now through the one sacrifice of Christ, and can be sure of entering into heaven at last.
If it’s only for the purpose of helping Christians to get their feet under them and establishing and rooting them in the true Christian gospel, wouldn’t it be worth using the illustration of the tabernacle as a basis from which to expound the Epistle to the Hebrews? I don’t really know how you could expound the Epistle without first taking the tabernacle seriously, for true Christianity is in stark contrast to Judaism, its tabernacle and its high priesthood.
11: Movement VI: Shadows of Christ in the Rituals and Furnishings of the Tabernacle—Part 1: Exodus 27:1–8; 30:1–10; 30:17–21
Our study of the tabernacle so far
Good morning, gentlemen. Yesterday I tried, first of all, to put the subject of the tabernacle into its literary context in the book of Exodus, and then to put it into its historical context of the situation in Egypt. I tried to point out how the tabernacle, and what it stood for in the revealed law of God housed in the ark, was a protest and answer to the false and idolatrous interpretations of the universe that were current in Egypt and the surrounding nations in the second millennium BC.
I tried also to make the point that we don’t have a symbolic representation of the forces of nature in the tabernacle. The lampstand, for instance, has nothing to do with astrology; nor is it a representation of the planets or such like things that the ancients worshipped; deifying the forces of nature as though they were gods. As we saw in the Epistle to the Hebrews, the tabernacle was a copy of things in the heavens. It was, so to speak, a bringing down of the transcendent Lord to our world, and if Pharaoh’s world out there was the world of nature, this was the world of grace. The lampstand was not deifying the forces of nature; it was a humble, gracious, symbolic representation of the transcendent Lord, who is the source of all life.
Then I moved on this morning to talk about the relevance of the message that God was preaching to the pagan, idolatrous society in Moses’ day, as well as to his people and to our modern world. While our Western world doesn’t bow down to literal idols, very often it is just as idolatrous in its interpretation of the universe around us: absolutizing the blind, impersonal forces of nature as though there were the ultimate powers that control humanity. With that idolatrous interpretation they deliver humankind into a slavery and poverty more grinding even than that of Egypt, for they reduce the significance of human intelligence and personality and make them prisoners of these forces of nature. And so at that level it holds a message for our modern society. When such things as the New Age Movement reintroduce animism and Hinduism into the West, they still need the protest that God was making when he had Moses build this tabernacle and enshrined his law there.
I moved on then to say how the tabernacle can become a starting point for a message that is exceedingly relevant to the history of Christendom. Christianity was meant to be a moving on from the basic foundational things that God taught in Judaism, to the maturity that is in Christ. But alas, from time to time and in many places in the course of history, Christendom has reverted to Judaism. Particularly in its worship and approach to God, it has adopted features that were really Judaism and never Christianity at all. Therefore, the tabernacle has a message for Christendom and can help to deliver us from these old reversions to Judaism and bring us back into the glories and freedoms of full-blown Christianity.
I want to proceed now to the other uses of the tabernacle, which may appear to be humble, but they are biblical.
The tabernacle as a copy and shadow of heavenly things
The Epistle to the Hebrews says that the tabernacle had two functions; or at least it describes two of those functions. We have already met one in chapter 8, ‘They serve a copy and shadow of the heavenly things’ (v. 5). That is, the tabernacle was designed as a copy of heavenly things, which would have conveyed meaningful spiritual truth to the Israelites of the day and taught them basic principles of the worship and service of God.
It also had a second function. Chapter 10 says, ‘For since the law has but a shadow of the good things to come . . .’ (v. 1). And of course those ‘good things to come’ were Christ and his great saving work. We read in chapter 9, ‘But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come . . .’ (v. 11). This is referring to good things that during the Old Testament centuries were yet to come, but with the advent of our Lord they actually came. The tabernacle was designed by God, then, to be a shadow of those coming good things.
Someone says, ‘What’s the point of that? Did the Jews in Moses’ time and onward realize that it was a shadow of the coming good things?’
And you say, ‘Well, probably not’.
‘That didn’t do them any good then. Now that the reality has come in Christ we don’t need the shadow, and we don’t need the tabernacle either. So why bother with it?’
Well, for two good reasons. The first is its function as evidence. If I were a Jew, how would I know that Jesus is the Messiah and that the gospel he preached is the very gospel of God? There is only one answer to that, but it is very important: you can check his claim to be the reality against the features God gave us in the shadow.
Let me use a simple analogy. Suppose I’m away in some foreign continental hotel. My business is finished for the day, and I go looking round the city. I come across three or four magnificent buildings, and wonder what they are. ‘Now, is that building the palace, or is it the post office? Is this the House of Parliament? It is such a magnificent building.’ There’s nobody about to ask, so I get out my tourist guide and look up the street. ‘Oh, look at that beautiful picture’, I think to myself. I compare the picture with the building, and it’s the picture that tells me what the building is. The picture, as you know, is only a bit of colour on paper; it isn’t the building itself but it helps me to identify the reality.
The tabernacle is a shadow. I can take Christ, the reality, and compare him with the shadow, and when I find the exact correspondence it is evidence that Jesus is that high priest of the good things to come. It has evidential value, and not only for Jews. Over many years of talking about this tabernacle to a great variety of people, I have found that it is not merely possible to illustrate much Christian doctrine from it, but when they see how accurately the reality matches the shadow, without having to tell them they instinctively see that the tabernacle must have been inspired by God.
Secondly, as I have said on many occasions, it acts as a thought model to illustrate doctrines that otherwise appear to be abstract. With the use of a thought model like this, it is possible to make the doctrines clear and easy for people to grasp. If you have never thought of using the tabernacle for such a purpose, it is in that way that I will use it this afternoon in an attempt to encourage you to see that it is a valid and biblical way to do so without fancifulness and to good effect in getting people to understand their good Christian birthright.
The altar of burnt-offering, the laver and the altar of incense
Vessels for cleansing
We shall be thinking again shortly of the way that God established his presence in the ark at the back of the tabernacle, but would you care now to look in the court, and observe that there are two vessels standing there and not just one. They were both there for cleansing: the altar of burnt-offering was for cleansing by blood, and the laver for cleansing by water. We shall find that in Christianity too, of course. The New Testament speaks of cleansing by blood and cleansing by water. I have often asked people why we need both types of cleansing. If we’re cleansed by the blood of Christ, why do we need any further cleansing? The very fact that the two vessels are here in the Jewish system forces our attention more closely on our Christian salvation and how it talks about both types of cleansing.
The altar and its cleansing by blood (27:1–8)
Let’s briefly consider the altar of burnt-offering and its cleansing by blood.
I remember many years ago speaking in the Christian Union at Cambridge. They had asked me to give a series of lectures on the historical books of First and Second Kings. After one evening’s lecture, a student came up and said, ‘You know, it moves me very much to hear my Old Testament Scriptures being preached and interpreted. Why don’t our rabbis do it? In our synagogues we very rarely hear the Old Testament expounded.’
‘Oh,’ I said, ‘that’s a pity. I’ve often wondered why your Jewish rabbis don’t preach to us Gentiles on the gorgeous stuff in Isaiah—that denunciation of idolatry and idolatrous interpretations of the universe. We need that more than I can tell you. Why don’t they?’
Well, he didn’t know. We had dinner together on two or three occasions, and in the course of talking, I said, ‘As a Gentile, I am very impressed by your law of Moses and the voice of Israel in those ancient times, that behind the law, behind morality, stands God the creator, and I am impressed to find it in your tabernacle. In the Greek world, you wouldn’t have gone to the priests in the temple to learn about morality; you would have gone to the philosophers. In classical Greece the priests in the temple weren’t much concerned with morality, and the gods they taught about were as immoral as any Athenian could manage to be. But in the Jewish ritual system, God the creator is the authority behind the morality, as expressed in the two tablets in the ark.’
He said, ‘Yes, yes!’—he was feeling pretty good.
I said, ‘You see, that impresses me as a Gentile, but I have a bit of a problem. I haven’t kept the moral law; I’ve broken it, and what can I say about that? Can I take the view that it doesn’t really matter, and just say to God that I’m sorry and he brushes it under the carpet and we start at square one again? That wasn’t so in the ancient tabernacle or the temple, was it? When the people sinned, they were taught by your Old Testament ritual to bring a bullock, a ram or a sheep or something, and confess their sins over its head and sacrifice it there at that altar. God was teaching them very serious things about sin and guilt. You cannot say that sin doesn’t matter. It must be atoned for and the penalty of sin must be paid.’ And my Jewish student said, ‘Yes, well, there you are.’
I said, ‘Tell me, did those animal sacrifices and their blood actually take away sin?’
‘Well, no,’ he said, ‘technically they didn’t.’
I said, ‘That’s impossible, isn’t it? As one of our Christian writers has put it, “it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins” (Heb 10:4). Dear me, what does a poor old cow know about sin? They’re nice creatures to talk to, but they look a bit dumb if you broach the subject of sin, don’t they? They’re mere animals, and it’s one of the glories of being an animal that you don’t go to bed at night with a bad conscience. But it’s the curse of being human that sometimes we do. (Or is that one of its glories?) Under your law in that tabernacle, what am I to do about my bad conscience, since those animal sacrifices couldn’t put away sin? Were they symbols, then?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
I said, ‘Symbols of what?’
‘No, no,’ he said, ‘don’t press me further, for that would spoil our friendship. But I’ll tell you something. We had the chief rabbi down here to talk to our group (he belonged to a very liberal left-wing group in Judaism), and the topic of his lecture was that we Jews must find a substitute for the doctrine of the atonement.’ Yes, indeed they must!
I was in La Granja in Spain some years ago, having Bible studies on the Gospel of Luke. One of the dear Spanish Christians, a very vital girl who was keen to witness for the Lord, went out in the intervals to the streets and gave away tracts. She came across an Israeli, who was a practical astronomer working down in Ramon on the telescopes there, and she persuaded him to come and join us. Whether he was coming for a cheap place to stay for two nights, I don’t know, but he stayed on for the studies as well and I had lengthy conversations with him. He said that his name was Zvi.
I said, ‘That’s interesting, to start with.’
He said, ‘Yes, because my rabbi told me that it was an acronym for “the just shall live by faith”’.17
‘Oh,’ I said, ‘that’s very good.’
He said, ‘I believe that’s the basic principle in life—the just will live by faith; faith in yourself. You’ve got to believe in yourself. We don’t want any intermediary, no Messiah coming in as an intermediary between us and God; just faith in yourself and your own ideals.’
I said, ‘That’s marvellous, but what happens when you fall short of your ideals? Have you ever done so?’
Well, yes, he had sometimes, and I said, ‘What then?’
He said, ‘Our rabbi taught us that we don’t need those sacrifices anymore; we’ve scrapped them’.
I said, ‘Yes, that’s an interesting difference between Judaism and Christianity, isn’t it? In AD 70, when the Romans smashed the Jewish temple, the Jews couldn’t offer their sacrifices in the temple any longer, and the leading rabbi at the time did a deal with the Romans. They allowed him to set up his rabbinical school at Yavne,18 and he had the difficult task of adapting Judaism to a post-temple era. The Jewish books explain that there were a lot of adjustments to be made, among them the question of sacrifices for sin.’
And my friend told me, ‘Yes, well, our rabbi told us it was okay to scrap the sacrifices.’
I said, ‘That’s very interesting. That’s the difference between your rabbi and Jesus, isn’t it? Christians don’t carry on the sacrifices of animals either, but there is this difference: you scrapped them; Christ fulfilled them.’
‘Did he?’ he said. ‘What do you mean?’
I read to him further from the Gospel of Luke about our Lord fulfilling Passover (22:15–16).
You see, it was impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to put away sin—how can animals know anything about sin? But our Lord came, says the Epistle to the Hebrews, and if you’re talking to Jews you can say, ‘See what your own Old Testament says in Psalm 40’. That’s a technique used by the writer to the Hebrews, isn’t it? If a Jew is going to listen to anything, he’s going to listen to his own Scriptures; he’s not going to listen to you as a Christian. So, use the Old Testament, and Psalm 40 is a psalm inspired by God that says, ‘Sacrifices and offerings, you have not desired, but a body you have prepared for me. I have come to do your will, O my God, and your law is within my heart’ (see Ps 40:6–8; Heb 10:5–9).
Here we see the glory of our Lord, the Messiah, and his great sacrifice for sin. With a perfect understanding of both the holiness of God and the horror of human sin, he offered his body as a perfect sacrifice. He perfectly did the will of God and in the light of that sacrifice God can forgive us.
Our modern society needs to hear the message too, doesn’t it? If you deny the importance of sin, you’ll have to be very careful that you don’t end up living like an animal. Conscience is the mark of a human being: as I’ve said, it is our glory. What shall we do with a conscience when it witnesses that we’ve broken God’s law and deserve the penalty? Christ has the answer to that basic need: ‘The blood of Jesus, [God’s] Son cleanses us from all sin’ (1 John 1:7), or, to use the language of Hebrews, ‘How much more shall the blood of Christ . . . cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?’ (9:14 NKJV).
In some evangelical circles, you’ll hear the blood of Christ spoken of as though it were a kind of holy detergent or mystical magical charm, the smell of which is disliked by the devil. That is not the concept of the blood of Christ in the New Testament. The blood of Christ cleanses our conscience from guilt. How does it do that? Well, our conscience is witness to the fact that we’ve broken God’s law and deserve its penalty. The blood of Christ is the token that he has paid that penalty, and when I see it and believe it, my heart is cleansed from an evil conscience.
We were talking this morning about the fact that when a Jew came and offered his sacrifice on the altar, he was given forgiveness. Leviticus actually states it; but let me make it really clear what I meant. I was not saying that when the man got forgiveness, he got it because the blood of the animal cleansed his conscience. The blood of the animal did no such thing, of course, for that was impossible. Nonetheless, the man got forgiveness. But how could God give him forgiveness, if the blood of the animal couldn’t actually suffice to cleanse his conscience? The answer is to be found in the fact that this was a shadow of the coming good things. It was an IOU, as we say in English ‘I owe you’. For instance, you borrow £1,000 from your friend, and you write him a little note, ‘I owe you £1,000’. Even though you’ve written it on that bit of paper and given it to him, that hasn’t paid your debt, has it? One day, you’ll have to honour that IOU and actually pay him.
You see, those Old Testament sacrifices were so many IOUs given to God. One day they would have to be honoured and paid. The learned rabbi in AD 70 just took the IOUs and scrapped them; but Christ honoured them and paid them. Hebrews says that ‘a death has occurred that redeems them from the transgressions committed under the first covenant’ (9:15). In other words, Christ has paid the debt of all the believers of all the centuries past—the collective IOUs.
Or, to change the analogy, it was like toy money. When I was a child, my parents provided their children, and me among them, with a game to keep us amused on wet Monday afternoons. It was a toy shop with toy money and toy sweets. Even at the advanced age of five, I knew it wasn’t real money because the sweets weren’t real sweets. My sisters looked so learned as they dished them out, asked us for the money and gave us the change, but I knew it wasn’t real. My parents gave it to us to keep us quiet, of course, but it also had the beneficial effect of teaching us early on that sweets cost money and you have to pay for the basic things in life. That was a good thing to learn wasn’t it? And it was a very good thing to teach Israel in those baby stages that sin costs. The sacrifices were analogous to toy money. One day the debt of sin would have to be paid, and it was paid by the death of Christ.
The laver and its cleansing by water (30:17–21)
But why do you have to have two vessels in the court of the tabernacle? In Christian terminology, why isn’t the blood of Christ enough? Why do you have to have water as well? Well, because the blood of Christ deals with one side—the guilt of sin. Now we need deliverance from the power of sin—from the blots, wrinkles and blemishes of our personalities. For instance, as Paul tells us in the figurative language of Ephesians 5,
. . . Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendour, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing . . . (vv. 25–27)
Notice the terminology—spots, wrinkles and any other such blemishes and blotches. Christ has cleansed us from them so that he might present the church to himself in all her glory. Paul is not talking now about guilt; he’s talking about those defamations of character and personality that lead to all sorts of behaviour disorders. You see, Christ can forgive my acts of pride, but he doesn’t forgive pride; he’s determined to do away with that. Forgiveness is only one side of the story, isn’t it? A full gospel needs to preach the other side —deliverance from the power of sin. So the laver was in the court, and the priests came and washed in its water.
I am tempted to suggest how I might use this if I were talking to a Jew, but I’ve recently been using it with others in remote parts of southern Ireland. On one occasion we had our model of the tabernacle in a hotel, and along came a couple of priests. They looked at it and said, ‘It looks so much like our religion’.
I said, ‘Does it? That’s very interesting.’
They asked, ‘Where would the mass fit into this?’
So I looked to see, and said, ‘Well, I can’t quite think’. We got talking about the function of items in the tabernacle, and when we came to the laver—cleansing by water—I said, ‘It was only a symbol, wasn’t it? Do you remember what our Lord said to the Pharisees when they insisted that the people should wash their hands before they ate, and all that kind of thing?’ (I was now preaching just as I would to the Jews, if you please!) ‘Our Lord said, “Water only cleanses the skin, but the real defilement comes not from the skin but from the heart” (see Mark 7:1–23). However holy it is, water can’t cleanse your heart. It’s superstition to suppose that literal water can cleanse your heart.’
What can cleanse my heart from those evil dispositions from which flow so many defiling thoughts and deeds? To answer that, I would start with John the Baptist and his marvellous proclamation, ‘Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!’ (John 1:29). That’s the equivalent of the altar, isn’t it? And then he said, ‘I baptize with water, but among you stands one you do not know; he it is that baptizes you with or in the Holy Spirit’ (see John 1:26; Matt 3:11).
Of course, if you were talking to Nicodemus yourself, you’d say what the Lord said, ‘Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God . . . Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things?’ (John 3:5, 10). And so said Ezekiel, that great ancient prophet. When Israel is restored, two things will be in their restoration, says the Lord. Firstly, ‘I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean’ (Ezek 36:25). Ezekiel wasn’t talking of literal water being sprinkled on the whole nation, was he? And secondly, ‘“Prophesy to the breath [Hebrew ruach] . . . Come from the four winds, . . . and breathe on these slain, that they may live.” So [Ezekiel] prophesied . . . and the breath came into them, and they lived and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army’ (37:9–10). The dead bodies lived, being born of water and of the Spirit.
Our Lord talked about it (see John 3:5), and I needn’t detain you; you know it better than I do. But you get my thesis, don’t you? The tabernacle is a thought model for preaching, so don’t be ashamed to use it.
There were two washings at this laver. When the priests were brought at their induction, they were bathed all over at the door of the tabernacle (Exod 29:4). Some people dispute whether it was at the laver or not; but never mind, it was somewhere around the door where there was a lot of water. If not in the laver, it was somewhere nearby and they were bathed all over. Thereafter they only needed to rinse their hands and feet when they came to do service before God (30:17–21). And didn’t our Lord preach the same great gospel through this humble symbol in John 13? ‘The one who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but is completely clean’ (v. 10). According to our Lord, in our great sanctification there is a once and for all bathing all over, which is being ‘born again’ (John 3:7), that never needs to be repeated. The other washing is that constant rinsing.
Paul says the same thing in his letter to Titus. When it comes to the irregularities of our personalities, and hence of our conduct, he quotes the Cretans of his day. And talking to Titus, he said, ‘You know, the Cretans are a pretty rum crowd; ‘One of their own prophets said, Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons’ (see 1:12). How would you deal with a pack of them in the church?
You say, ‘They’d need to get converted—really converted’.
How is that done? Paul says, ‘Well, Titus, remember how you were yourself, and I myself for that matter. “At one time we too were foolish, disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures. We lived in malice and envy, being hated and hating one another” [see 3:3]—horrible creatures! How did God save us?’
Notice at that stage Paul does not say, ‘by the redeeming blood of Christ’. That would be irrelevant here, wouldn’t it? The blood of Christ saves us from guilt, but not from perversions of character. How did he save us, then? ‘He saved us through the washing of rebirth’—the great once and for all thing when we are born again; ‘and [constant] renewal by the Holy Spirit’ (see v. 5).
Summing up that kind of argument, Hebrews says how we can come right into the holiest of all as our Christian privilege. In the parable or shadow, that is into that division of the tabernacle where the ark of God stands with its propitiatory cover and the cherubim. How can we come? Notice the exceeding accuracy of the writer to the Hebrews (he knows his stuff!).
. . . let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies [bathed] with pure water. (10:22)
Notice the terminology. In Hebrew thought, you’d never wash anybody in blood. If it’s blood, you’re sprinkled with it. So, when the writer speaks of our hearts being ‘sprinkled clean from an evil conscience’, that means with the blood of Christ. And our bodies? Here comes the same verb that our Lord used in John 13:10, bathed—totally bathed all over. We can draw near, ‘our bodies [bathed] with pure water’—bathed once and for all by the washing of regeneration. What a beautifully simple, vivid and easy-to-be-grasped illustration of the basic gospel message!
The altar of incense (30:1–10)
Once you come through the gate of the tabernacle, past the altar and the laver, and go through the door, if you follow the ‘road’ straight into the presence of God there are two pieces of furniture. The lampstand is on the left-hand side, and the table is on the right. Then, standing in front of you, there is a little altar (not to be confused with the big altar in the court).
For all sorts of practical and theological reasons, this little altar stood directly in front of the veil, which in turn was directly in front of the ark and mercy seat. The priests would stand at that altar one at a time, offering incense at the hour of prayer. As they did so, they were addressing themselves to the presence of God, who was pleased to locate himself between the cherubim on the ark. So this was the altar of prayer and intercession, where a priest offered the incense daily.
You’ll remember when John the Baptist’s father, Zechariah, was ministering before God at that altar of incense during the hour of prayer, all the people were gathered outside and the angel appeared to him and said, ‘Zechariah, your prayer has been heard’ (Luke 1:5–13). It talks to us about prayer in general, of course; but when we Christians hear about that, we do not think merely of our own prayers but also of the prayers of our great high priest himself.
The Epistle to the Hebrews comments that under Judaism they had Aaron as high priest, who, among the other priests, would intercede for the nation. We have a different high priest who is after the order of Melchizedek, and the writer reminds us that it is because we have such a priest that we can be utterly and completely and altogether certain of salvation (see Heb 7:24–25). Isn’t that glorious?
Paul states in Romans 8,
Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. (v. 34)
Or, in the terms of the writer to the Hebrews,
The former priests were many in number, because they were prevented by death from continuing in office, but he holds his priesthood permanently, because he continues for ever. Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them. (7:23–25)
The intercession of Christ, then, is an integral part of God’s provision of salvation, and we may think of many areas in which his intercession is effective. I want to give one basic illustration of that, which is our Lord’s intercession on Peter’s behalf, because that goes right to the root of this question of whether we can be certain of salvation or not.
Luke tells us that in the Upper Room our Lord informed them that Satan had asked to have all twelve apostles, to ‘sift [them] like wheat’ (22:31). It’s interesting that he had to ask permission. Satan is not allowed to attack believers just as he wills; he has to ask permission, as he did regarding Job. So our Lord is indicating that Satan had asked and received permission, which is the force of the Greek word. Now he had permission to attack all twelve apostles. But then our Lord turned personally to Peter and said, ‘But I have prayed for you’—singular you, or thee in some older translations. What for? ‘That your faith may not fail’ (v. 32). And the word faith was chosen deliberately, wasn’t it? Our Lord did not pray that the man’s courage wouldn’t fail, for that failed miserably. Our Lord did not pray that his testimony wouldn’t fail; it was blown sky-high. Our Lord prayed that in that terrible experience, Peter’s faith wouldn’t fail. And that’s absolutely basic, isn’t it?
You see, you tell me that I’m justified by faith and not by works. And I say, ‘Thank you very much, that’s marvellous. So it’s not by works; it’s by faith?’
‘Yes.’
‘So did I get it right that because I’m a believer I have eternal life and shall never perish?’
‘Yes, that’s what the Bible says. Everybody who believes the Bible believes in the eternal security of the believer. Simply put, the Bible states that “whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).’
But is it true that once you’re a believer, you’re always a believer? What should happen if such a severe test came that it broke my faith so that I wasn’t a believer anymore? It would be useless to talk about the eternal security of the believer then, wouldn’t it?
A tornado of an attack from the very mouth of hell came against Peter, and our Lord prayed for what is absolutely basic and strategic and fundamental, for if this goes everything will be lost. He prayed for him that his faith should not fail, and added, ‘Peter, when you are restored’ (own translation)—not if, you notice, but when—‘when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers’ (Luke 22:32). Did it work, gentlemen?
You say, ‘He denied the Lord’.
So he did, and he also lied. When they asked him if he was a Christian, he said ‘No’. If you’d been standing there and someone had asked if you knew Peter, you’d have said, ‘Yes, I do’. If they’d said ‘Is he a believer?’, you’d have had to say, ‘I thought he was, but if he says he isn’t, well, what can I say?’.
You couldn’t have read his heart, could you? In those desperate moments he was lying. He was a believer, and do you know that when he denied the Lord for the third time, he was a stronger believer then than he was before? Oh yes, he was.
You see, in the Upper Room when the Lord turned to Peter and said, ‘You’re going to deny me,’ Peter said, ‘You’ve got it wrong, Lord. It’s unthinkable that I should deny you. I’m ready to go anywhere with you; I’d never deny you.’ Peter wouldn’t have it. But his faith was not as mature and perfect as it should have been, was it? Our Lord said, ‘I tell you, Peter, the cock will not crow this day, until you deny three times that you know me’ (v. 34). To Peter’s utter dismay and confusion he did deny the Lord three times, and when the cock crew and Jesus turned and looked at Peter, in that moment he believed Christ as he’d never believed him before. He didn’t have an option, did he? Christ was true, and he now believed what he’d refused to believe before. As he went out into the dark, his heart was broken for his gross unfaithfulness; yet up and up and up there surged within him the conviction that if that bit was true, the rest would be true also: ‘I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail, and when you are restored . . .’. So he was going to be restored, and his faith didn’t fail.
That is a magnificent sentiment, isn’t it? In my little pastoral experience I’ve met many folks who put a brave face on their Christian faith, but underneath they’re haunted with doubts as to whether at last they will be saved at all.
Just as there were three items on the road to God in the tabernacle, so there are three parts to this great salvation: the blood of Christ, regeneration by the Spirit, and the intercessions of our risen Lord. Because he has no favourites, he who prayed that Peter’s faith shall not fail will pray for every believer that their faith shall not fail; and because he ever lives, he’s able to save to the uttermost all that come unto God through him (see Heb 7:25).
There’s an interesting little detail that I’d like to point out. Most times when I’m talking about the tabernacle, I keep strictly to Scripture interpretation, but with that privilege granted to old age I sometimes allow myself a little fancifulness. It doesn’t do any harm, and if people see that it’s fanciful they’ll reject it forthwith. Concerning these three vessels—the altar of burnt-offering, the laver, and the altar of incense—look at the simplicity of their order.
It would have made little practical difference if the laver had been over in a corner, or if it had been put behind the tent out of the way so that the priests could do their ablutions in privacy. It wouldn’t have made any practical difference worth talking about, but it would have made a colossal difference to the accuracy of the historical shadow. What were these three vessels shadows of? First, the Lamb of God and Calvary (the altar of burnt-offering); second, the risen Lord baptizing his people in the Holy Spirit (the laver); and third, his present ministry of intercession at the right hand of God (the altar of incense).
How did dear old Moses know to get them the right way round?
Question
Can you comment on the translation by Hieronymus19 of Hebrews 10 as it relates to Christ’s sacrificial offering for sin?
DWG: When he came to Hebrews 10, Hieronymus translated it in a way that looks as if he meant that our Lord sits in heaven offering a sacrifice. The Latin word he used for offering is offerens; it’s a present participle. Now, it is debatable whether in the Latin of his day that present participle, offerens, really implied a present and continuous action, but multitudes in the generations that followed took the Vulgate to mean that our Lord sits in heaven offering a sacrifice. From that stemmed their support for the doctrine of the mass. But he doesn’t still offer a sacrifice, does he? He offered one sacrifice for sins forever, and he sat down. He offers no more sacrifices. He ministers at the great altar of intercession, but no sacrifice is offered there.
Conclusion
The analogy of the tabernacle is exact, gentlemen. I didn’t make it up; it was inspired by God himself and we are required to believe it. But what a brilliant illustration it is, and how delightful it is to watch folks—I don’t speak despisingly—with simple intellectual gifts being able to grasp these great eternal truths that God has presented so beautifully in these humble illustrations. Simply as a homiletic or practical device for teaching, the tabernacle is extremely effective.
12: Movement VI: Shadows of Christ in the Rituals and Furnishings of the Tabernacle—Part 2: Exodus 25:10–40, Leviticus 16:1–34
The sufficiency of Christ’s once for all sacrifice
The writer to the Hebrews had a problem in explaining to his contemporaries something about Christian forgiveness. People generally find that difficult, and for all I know your contemporaries might find it equally so. The difficulty is expressed in Hebrews 9: how can the once and for all sacrifice of Christ cover all our sins—and does it? How can you have forgiveness for all your sins and not need to offer another sacrifice? He points out the parallel:
And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgement, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him. (9:27–28)
Notice the recurrence of the idea of once. It starts from the observation that human beings die once, not twice—you normally only die once, yes? Then the question arises, when does the judgment come? According to this verse, it comes after death. That is, God doesn’t hold court on our lives every day of the week; ‘It is appointed to men once to die, and after that’—it’s then, and only then—‘comes judgment’. So, it is at the great judgment that the whole of our lives comes up before God for review. In view of that one judgment and the whole of life, so ‘Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many’. Not once upon a time, but once and for all—his one sacrifice covers the whole of our lives in view of that one judgment.
Christ’s three ‘appearances’ for salvation
But having explained it by that analogy or comparison, let’s turn now to this bigger argument that extends from 9:23 to the end of the chapter, and includes the verses we’ve already noticed. You may care to observe once more the three appearances of our Lord that are mentioned here.
Thus it was necessary for the copies of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites, but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own, for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgement, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him. (vv. 23–28)
Chronologically, we are told that the first appearance was when he appeared or was manifested in our world to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself; secondly, he now appears in the presence of God for us; and thirdly that one day he will appear a second time on our planet. He will appear again at his second coming, now not for the question of the putting away of sin but to finalize our salvation.
The shadow of Christ’s appearances in the tabernacle and Judaic ritual
That is a plain, straightforward statement of Christian doctrine. But if you were preaching it to Jews, what a lovely ready-made illustration you would have, not only in the tabernacle, but in the greatest and central ritual of the Jewish religious year.
It used to be that Passover was the beginning of the Jewish religious festivals every year, but as you know, Yom Kippur has taken its place in modern Judaism. Passover is introduced by the Festival of Trumpets and followed by the great Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur, which eventually leads to the Festival of Tabernacles. Yom Kippur was when the nation had to assemble themselves and afflict their souls before God; it was the great day of national contrition, repentance and confession (see Lev 23:26–32). Serious Jews still carry on that spiritual exercise at that time of year.
In ancient Judaism, when they still had the tabernacle or temple, there was a most elaborate ceremony and the high priest actually went in and out several times (see ch. 16). It was the one day in the year when the high priest dressed up in his plain linen vestments, not in his garments of beauty and glory (it was after all a day of contrition), and went into the holiest of all at the rear of the tabernacle, into the presence of God. I’m not forgetting that he went in and out several times, but for the sake of time let me concentrate on the central ritual of that day, which involved three appearances of the high priest.
With the crowd all gathered round, and the elders of the tribes assembled to act on behalf of the people, the high priest appeared. He came out of the temple and stood before the people by the altar of burnt-offering, and then they selected two goats and cast lots on them—one goat for the Lord and one as the scapegoat. The elders came near and confessed their sins over the head of the goat; the goat was then killed, its blood was shed and the high priest took the blood in a basin. The high priest had appeared before the whole assembled throng to put away sin by the sacrifice of this goat. That being done, with the blood in a basin the high priest retreated and disappeared behind the door that was hanging there out of sight. But not only there, pulling the veil aside he went into the very presence of God in the Most Holy Place and stood at his throne, as symbolized by the ark.
The ark was an oblong box made of acacia wood, overlaid inside and outside with pure gold. On top of it was a slab of pure gold, which was the mercy seat. Two cherubim were beaten-out, one at each end of the mercy seat, with their wings overshadowing it (see Exod 37:1–9). We don’t know what form those cherubim took, whether as hominoids or not. They may have been like animals, as in the book of the Revelation, where the throne of God is supported by four living creatures. One is like a lion, the second like an ox, the third with the face of a man, and the fourth like an eagle in flight (Rev 4). And similarly in the marvellous vision of the throne in Ezekiel 1.
The cover on the ark where propitiation was made is called the propitiatory cover—in Hebrew, kapporeth; in Greek, epithema hilasterion. So the high priest came into the Most Holy Place one day a year to stand in the presence of God, first with his incense and then with the blood. As far as we know, nothing was said. He was not to speak or say anything, nor offer any prayers, as in the profound silence and tenseness the incense went up and covered the ark. It shrouded that miserable sinner from the sight of the most holy God, and he took the blood and swished it first on that golden propitiatory cover and then before it.
What was he doing? He was appearing in the presence of God on behalf of the people who were outside. The symbolism that he carried through was exceedingly eloquent, wasn’t it? Inside that ark was God’s holy law, which every man and woman in the nation had broken. There was no one in the nation who did not deserve its penalty. When the high priest came in to appear in front of God as the representative of the people, there was one thing he certainly did not do. He didn’t say, ‘We have done our best to keep your law’. He didn’t make any verbal confession; he took the blood of the sacrifice and silently sprinkled it over and in front of that propitiatory cover (Lev 16:15). The ritual itself was eloquent. It was saying, ‘We have sinned, we have broken God’s holy law and we deserve its penalty. But in the mercy of almighty God and by his own provision the penalty has been paid. The life has been laid down and the blood here is a token that the law’s sanctions have been upheld.’
So it was that the high priest appeared in the presence of God for the people. Having done that, he had several other duties inside the Holy Place—to make atonement for the pieces of furniture and so forth; but we’ll omit that and cut the story short. He turned round and eventually came out and appeared to the people the second time. This time they took the other goat and the elders once more confessed their sins over its head. Then a man who had been specially chosen, took the goat and led it out of the gateway and beyond the camp of Israel into a desert place, and shooed it away so that it should never come back again (vv. 20–22).
Assurance of acceptance by God
These were the three appearances of the high priest, and it is against the background of that ceremony that the writer to the Hebrews talks to us about the great reality that we have in Christ (9:24–28). He says that we can have utter assurance of our standing before the very throne of God. Taking it chronologically again, first of all because Christ appeared on our planet at the consummation of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself (v. 26). Through those years the psalmists and prophets had waited, until at last the Saviour came. God incarnate appeared on our planet, his cross was spiked into the earth and he put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. Following the shadow and matching it to the reality, he now appears in the presence of God for us. This is a delightful thing. Our blessed Lord has entered heaven not merely for himself, he has entered heaven on our behalf as our representative (v. 24).
The Jews had an interesting little legend and tradition. It wasn’t true, of course, but Jews like such things, and it will do us no harm to consider it. They said that on the Day of Atonement, when the high priest went into the presence of God with the blood and stood in front of the ark, they took the precaution of first tying a rope round his waist and trailing it outside. ‘What would happen,’ they said, ‘if he got into the presence of God with the blood, and God found the sacrifice inadequate?’ At that moment the high priest would perish, and finding him delayed the people would be obliged to pull him out. Well, it’s a yarn, but it points to a very serious thing, and it can raise a question in us as Christians.
Christ appeared at Calvary to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself and now he appears in the presence of God—for us. He has gone into the presence of God as our representative, and we can ask, as the Jews asked of their high priest, ‘Is God going to accept him?’ Forgive my naiveté, gentlemen, but the thing that concerns me is this. When Christ entered the glory of the immediate presence of God, did God know that he was appearing on behalf of a chap called David Gooding?
You say, ‘Why do you want to know that?’
You see, if Christ was merely entering the presence of God for himself, it’s no wonder that God said, ‘Come, sit at my right hand’. But if God was aware that Christ was coming as my representative, that’s another question altogether. What would happen if I arrived at heaven’s door and God said, ‘What are you doing here?’.
And I said, ‘Well, you accepted my representative’.
And God said, ‘Who are you? I never knew he was representing you, because if I’d known that, it would have been a different story’.
Did he know? When the blessed Saviour ascended into the courts of heaven, did God know that the Saviour had entered for me—that he was my representative? In the ancient world, the way the representative was treated was the guarantee of how the person would be treated. And if that was known clearly in heaven, then what God has done with Christ, God will do for me. That’s a magnificent thing, isn’t it? Contemplate it until your hearts so burn that you must go out and tell somebody that the blessed Saviour not only died at Calvary for you but entered heaven as your representative before God. Knowing that, God has accepted his Son and bidden him to sit at his own right hand in glory and he’s not been asked to budge a centimetre all these nineteen hundred years. Magnificent, isn’t it? We are accepted through Christ who now appears in the presence of God for us, and sophisticated Europe still needs to hear that gospel.
Final salvation
The high priest eventually came out and appeared the second time, and so in the great reality Christ our blessed Lord, who appeared at Calvary to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself, shall appear the second time. ‘This Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as [the apostles] saw him go into heaven’ (Acts 1:11). But now here comes a distinction. Whereas, when the Jewish high priest came out, he had to take the sacrifice and still deal with the problem of sin, the writer to the Hebrews now draws the vivid contrast that when our Lord appears, it will not be to deal with sin (Heb 9:28). He shall appear apart from the question of sin; without any sin offering. There is no need to repeat what was done at Calvary. Then, what shall he appear for the second time? ‘[He] will appear a second time . . . to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.’ Save them in what sense? Well, our final salvation, the very redemption of our bodies. And he shall take us home bodily to the Father’s house on high. What a glorious thought!
It’s a gospel as simple as A, B, C. But isn’t it a delight and a privilege for us to preach to lost men and women what the highest archangel would gladly do!
The ark of the covenant
Let’s have a look again at the ark (Exod 25:10–22). Following God’s example, in my preaching I also descend sometimes to simplicities, and I stand beside my model of the tabernacle and hold up the ark and say, ‘Do you know that this is a picture, a symbol, of the throne of God?’
Some rabbis would say that it was the footstool of God. They imagine that God was invisible above the ark, for it says in Exodus 25: ‘There I will meet with you, and from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim that are on the ark of the testimony, I will speak with you’ (v. 22). If God was enthroned above the cherubim, the ark was his footstool. But the footstool of an oriental throne was part of the throne, so it comes to the same thing. The ark, then, was the symbol of the throne of God, and in it was God’s law.
Christ the propitiatory sacrifice
Then I would say to my audience, ‘Just as surely as you can now see this model of the throne in my hand, one day you shall stand before the actual throne of God. On what grounds can you stand there and know yourself to be accepted? Is it on the grounds of having kept God’s law?’
And then I read the lesson of Romans 3, which you all know: ‘For by works of the law no human being will be justified in his sight, since through the law comes knowledge of sin’ (v. 20).
‘The law is like a thermometer: it tells you how sick you are, but you don’t suck a thermometer to get better. The law condemns me, so now, says Romans 3, God has found a way apart from the law of declaring us just, “through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith”’ (see vv. 21–25).
‘You may think my interpretation here is a bit fanciful, but wait a minute before you respond. Do you see this covering on the ark? In Hebrew, it was called kapporeth. When the Septuagint translators came to the Hebrew word kapporeth, they scratched their heads and didn’t quite know how to cope with it. Because the root word in Hebrew, kaphar, meant to cover, they thought that it was a kind of lid, so they used the Greek word epithema, meaning something placed on top. But then they observed that the Hebrew word kaphar has theological connotations about atonement and things like that, so they put an adjective alongside it and called the covering the epithema hilasterion, where hilasterion, which means propitiation, is an adjective agreeing with the noun epithema. So, when the high priest came into the Most Holy Place, he came in not on the basis of the law but with the blood that was then sprinkled upon the epithema hilasterion—the propitiation cover.’
‘But there’s something else about the usage of this term. Whereas on the first occasion, the Septuagint puts the noun epithema followed by the adjective hilasterion; not wanting to repeat the mouthful, they subsequently simply say ‘hilasterion’, and even though it was originally an adjective, it now comes to serve as a noun—the propitiatory.’
‘Paul says, “You cannot be justified on the grounds of the law, so there’s another way completely, which is by the redemption that is in Christ Jesus”. It is through faith in Christ and by his blood, for God has set him forth as hilasterion. “It is there,” said God, as he gave Moses the instructions to make this covering, “that I will meet with you.” What magnificent words of the transcendent, thrice-holy God, condescending to meet with fallen, sinful man.’
There I will meet with you, and from above the mercy seat, from between the two cherubim that are on the ark of the testimony, I will speak with you . . . (Exod 25:22)
And as I proceed to preach, at this stage I can afford to forget the model. I’m dealing with a sinner who needs to meet a thrice-holy God, and meet him now while there’s time to be right with him.
‘Where can a lost person come and meet their God? “There will I meet with you [above that hilasterion]”, said God to Moses. And there is a place where we may meet God still. God has set forth Christ [that’s how I understand the Greek verb protíthemai] as the meeting place between fallen man and a thrice-holy God at that blood-stained mercy seat [what the Germans used to call the gnadenstuhl].’
That too is a magnificent gospel. For people who find the systematic theology of Romans a little difficult, what a brilliant illustration the tabernacle is.
The golden lampstand and the table of showbread
Now we backtrack for a moment and come outside the Most Holy Place. While the vessels that we have been considering lay on the direct line of approach to God, there were two others out in the Holy Place. The lampstand stood on the left-hand side (25:31–40), and the table stood on the right (25:23–30). They stood one opposite the other, and they are a pair. They are mentioned as a pair in Leviticus 24, for instance, because it’s not difficult to see that they were related both practically and symbolically. From a practical point of view, the lampstand gave light in the evenings, and if you wanted to come to the table (or to the altar of incense) at night time, you’d need some light. So, both the lampstand and the table had a practical function and relationship, but obviously they are also rich in symbolism.
The source of life
As we were saying this morning, the lampstand was made to be a tree of life, and again I would recommend Carol Meyers’ book. We don’t know the shape of the base, but in early drawings and graffiti, it is done like the roots of a tree. The lampstand was meant, therefore,20 to look like a tree. It is not a seven-branch candlestick, that’s a misnomer; it’s a six-branch lampstand, actually, with no candles. There was a base, a central shaft and six branches—three coming out of one side and three out of the other. It was not only a tree, but a stylized tree, in which all three stages of life were simultaneously present. There was the bud, the flower and the fruit, made like arms—that’s at least how I read the Hebrew.
Obviously it was a stylized tree, for we don’t know life like that down here on earth, do we? At least I don’t. I’ve often wished you could have all three stages of life at once: the bud with its potential, the flower with its beauty, and the fruit with its maturity. I watch the little children, and life is in the bud with them. All the potential is there, but they haven’t got the sense to use it, poor things—endless energy going to waste! Now that I’ve grown up, I’ve got the maturity, but I don’t have the energy. As for the beauty—well, I was beautiful once but of course that’s gone. I hope I’ve got a little fruit, but the beauty has disappeared.
Is there a world where all stages of life are simultaneous—a world that’s unchanging, not subject to the old pressures of time and its decay? A world with an eternal potential, where youth is still a reality, beauty never fades and wisdom is already complete? Is there such a world, or is it a fairy story?
I mustn’t repeat all we said this morning about the interpretation of the world vis-à-vis and contra to Canaanite myths, but this isn’t a deification of the forces of nature. The lampstand was a shadow, a symbolic representation of the reality, which is our blessed Lord as the source of life. He the source of all life, every kind of life—himself not being part of the creation. John states it in mighty terms: ‘All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life . . .’ (John 1:2–4). He is the source of life; he didn’t have to get the life from anywhere. He’s the great source of the universe, transcendent and apart from it. ‘In him was life, and that life’—notice the article in the Greek at this point—‘and that life, was the light of all mankind’ (John 1:4 NIV).
How can created life be the light of mankind? Because, gentlemen, simply put, light’s one of those things, isn’t it? If you’re walking up a dark lane on a dark night and suddenly a shaft of life appears through the hedge and your friend says to you, ‘Where has that light come from?’ would you normally reply, ‘It doesn’t have to come from anywhere’? Light is a phenomenon in our world, and we normally ask where it comes from. To make sense of life, and if you want to have light on life, you must trace life to its source.
The means of life
But there’s more than that. If the lampstand represents the source of life, look now at the table in the Holy Place that had twelve loaves of bread on it—one each for all the tribes of Israel. Bread isn’t the source of life, is it? It’s a means of life.
There is a difference, of course. If I were to ask how you got your physical life, you’d scarcely reply, ‘I got it by eating bread and butter,’ would you? That isn’t normally how people get life; you have to get life from your parents. Strictly speaking, they’re not the source either; it comes from God. But for the sake of this limited analogy, your parents are the source of your life.
‘So you don’t need to eat bread and butter then?’
You say, ‘Yes, I do’.
So you need two things: a source of life, and once you’ve got life, the means of life to keep it going. That is clear in the physical world, and it’s true also at the spiritual level.
In the Gospel of John chapter 5 our Lord is presented as the source of life. He heals the sick man without using any means whatsoever. He doesn’t need to use means. God had graciously provided means for the invalid to get well—an angel troubled the pool or something happened to stir up the water, and whoever stepped down into the pool first got healed. Yes, God in his mercy has placed all kinds of means, such as medicine, in our world that people can use to get better; but when our Lord came by that day and said to the man, ‘Do you want to be healed?’, the man had his mind so focussed on that pool thing that he didn’t really listen to the question. And when he was asked, ‘Do you want to be healed?’, he said, ‘Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up’. Christ didn’t need any pools. He simply said to him, ‘Get up, take up your bed, and walk’. He just spoke the word as he did in creation, and the man was well (vv. 2–9).
When the Pharisees came round complaining, our Lord said, ‘For as the Father has life in himself’—he is the source of life—‘so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself’ (v. 26). Our blessed Lord is the source of life, and that is why, of course, he can give you eternal life instantaneously.
‘. . . an hour is coming, and is now here,’ he said, ‘when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live’ (v. 25). And since he is also the judge, he has authority and can pronounce the final judgment over you now. ‘The Father judges no one, but has given all judgement to the Son . . . whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me’—and here the judge speaks—‘has eternal life. He does not come into judgement, but has passed from death to life’ (vv. 22–24). He could say that because he’s the judge, and his sentence is final.
Because he’s the source of life (he has the life of the ages now, eternal life), he gives it to us and pronounces his eternal sentence: ‘Whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgement, but has passed from death to life.’ Happy are they who have thus made contact with the very source of life. And what is more, ‘An hour is coming, and is now here,’ says Christ, ‘when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live’.
Scripture is sometimes more accurate than we think! John 5, then, speaks about Christ being the source of life, and John 6 is about Christ as ‘the bread of life’—the means of life. You can tell me that’s accidental or fanciful, but you’ll take a long while to convince me that it is. He is the source of life and the means of life. ‘Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die’ (vv. 49–50). Magnificent words! Having received life from the risen Lord, who is the fount of all life, we still need that life to be maintained. Christ is the maintainer of our life: he is the bread of life.
I want to know about that reference to the people in the wilderness who died. Being naïve, I find it troublesome, because they did eat the manna. It came down from heaven—‘man ate of the bread of the angels’ (Ps 78:25). They were redeemed by the Passover lamb and had the pillar of fire to lead them. Every day, except the Sabbath, they had manna rain down from the sky; yet that first generation didn’t get into the promised land. Why not? They sinned in the wilderness and they died, notwithstanding the manna.
Could it happen to me? Having received life from the source of life, I am redeemed by the blood of Christ, born again of God’s Holy Spirit, with a high priest to intercede for me. I’m still on my journey; heaven sometimes seems a long way off, and I’ve still got a long way to go before I’m home. Can I be sure that I shall reach the goal at last? You say, ‘Yes, the Lord Jesus is the manna from heaven. He’s not only the source of life; he’s the food of life, the means and the maintainer of life. Eat him.’
But the Israelites ate manna in the wilderness, and they died. Could I eat the manna that has come down from heaven and still perish? Mercifully, I don’t have to depend on any speculation, and neither do you. The blessed Lord pronounced, ‘I am the bread that came down from heaven, not as your fathers ate manna in the wilderness and died. Not like that! I am the bread of life. He that believes in me and eats of me shall never die’ (see John 6:49–51).
You say, ‘What’s the difference then?’
Well, the manna came down from heaven, and that was sizeably miraculous. But it wasn’t living bread, it was only so much stuff. The bread that we eat is not only bread from heaven; it is living bread—none other than the person of Jesus Christ our Lord. Oh, how magnificent! To use his vivid metaphor, he gives himself so that I may eat his flesh and drink his blood until, in a sense, he becomes part of me.
It’s a literary fact that John 6 gives you the story of the manna; the feeding of the five thousand; and then the exposition at the spiritual level of the bread from heaven. In between, there’s the story of a journey, where the apostles were told to get into a boat and cross the sea while our Lord sent the crowd away. Then our Lord went up a mountain to pray. The apostles were in this boat, and we see them journeying across the sea.
You say, ‘What’s that got to do with this topic? Is it just a little amusing interlude or something?’
‘It was Passover time,’ says John (v. 4), and as we’ve seen many times, Passover was about being redeemed and then taking a journey. And here they were told to take a journey across the sea. In those days the only known way to do that was in a boat, using oars. You had to use the appropriate means and row as hard as you could. It was good for the muscles, of course, but they could get pretty sore. So they were using the oars to get the boat to their goal, but the wind was contrary and so stormy that it seemed like it was one mile forward and two miles back. When they nearly despaired of ever reaching the goal, they saw someone walking towards them. At first they were frightened, but then they discovered that it was the Lord himself. He wasn’t in any boat! He didn’t need a boat to cross the sea. He doesn’t need our means, for he is the Lord of creation who made the sea. Sometimes it is good that we have to use means; it develops our muscles, spiritually and otherwise. But he doesn’t have to use means. When they realized that it was the Lord, they asked him into their boat, and ‘immediately,’ says John, ‘they were at the land’ (see v. 21).
For the apostles, it happened in the dark of night, when fancy is high and the imagination runs riot. On our journey home to glory, we have to use the means—the bread of life. But we shall also have to exercise our spiritual muscles. We don’t just ‘let go and let God’; we have to journey towards the great goal. Haven’t there been times in your life when the opposition has been fierce and the journey tough, and you just despaired of ever reaching the goal? But at that moment, the Lord has fulfilled his promise, ‘I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you’ (John 14:18). He has appeared to you, and you’ve invited him into your ‘boat’. At that moment, you sensed that you were as good as home to glory, for if Christ is in the boat the end is guaranteed. ‘. . . those whom he justified he also glorified’ (Rom 8:30)—he is both the source of life and the means of life.
The table of showbread
What about that table in the tabernacle? I knew a learned scholar one time, who had to write on the tabernacle. He said, ‘I’ve not said much about the table, because there’s no way of telling what it stood for; it doesn’t say in the text’.
So, if I come into your dining room I won’t know what the table is for, because you haven’t got a notice on it to say, ‘This is where we eat dinner’? God expects us to have a modicum of experience and intelligence, and a table is a table is a table! If there are loaves of bread on it, presumably they are to be eaten. What is more, the regulation said that they were to put twelve loaves on it and leave them for a week in the presence of God for his benefit. Then the priests would come in at the end of the week, take away the old bread and put new bread on the table. They were allowed to eat the old bread—in a holy place, of course (see Lev 24:5–9). So in that ancient time, they fed at God’s table.
That’s simple enough, isn’t it? God was offering humans his fellowship. It’s a simple illustration of those ineffable marvels that John talks about in his first epistle. ‘That eternal life which was with the Father has been manifested to us and I’m writing to you so that you too may have fellowship with us. We actually saw him and handled him, this word of life’ (see 1 John 1:1–4). You can see how excited John’s pen is beginning to go!
God has deigned to share him with us, but there are conditions, aren’t there?
If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practise the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. (1 John 1:6–7)
Tell me, what does it mean to walk in the light?
You say, ‘That’s easy: it means you behave in a respectable fashion’.
I see. So if you behave in a respectable fashion, you may come and share this eternal life. Is that the condition on which you share eternal life? How respectably do you have to behave?
You say, ‘Surely you can’t just behave as you like? If you’re going to have fellowship with God, you must try and walk like Christ.’
Yes, there is a later verse in 1 John that talks about that: ‘whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked’ (2:6). If I understand the grammar, that’s how you walk. How ought I to walk if I’m a believer?—I ought to walk in the same way as he walked.
But you’ll notice that in chapter 1 it is not about how we walk at all, is it? Listen again to the condition of having fellowship with God in that great eternal life: ‘If we walk in the light . . .’ (1:7). It’s not how we walk, but where we walk.
In the tabernacle, there’s an illustration of these difficult things. Imagine that here comes a priest on an evening when he’s off duty. He’d like to have fellowship with God, so he draws aside the curtain into the Holy Place and comes in. Where is he walking? (This easy illustration makes a very good Sunday school lesson, if you ever get called upon to take Sunday school.) He’s walking in the light of the lampstand. If he says, ‘I have fellowship with him,’ and he’s walking out in the darkness, he’s lying, isn’t he? But if he walks in the light of the lampstand, he can see the table with the bread. It’s where he walks that determines whether he can have fellowship.
You say, ‘But if I come into the light, it will expose me’.
It certainly will! By definition, you’ll feel worse in the light than you felt in the dark. The nearer you get to the light, the more it will expose you. Notice therefore what the condition of having fellowship with God is. It doesn’t say, ‘If you come to the light, you may have fellowship with God’. It says, ‘If you walk in the light’.
The Bible gives us a very important illustration of the difference between those two. In John 8, the very chapter in which our Lord says, ‘I am the light of the world’ (v. 12), John the evangelist says that when they heard the words that Jesus spoke, ‘many believed in him’ (v. 30). Then he said to those Jews who believed in him, ‘If you abide in my word, you are truly my disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free’ (vv. 31–32).
They said, ‘What do you mean by free? Free from what? We’re not slaves.’
‘I was talking about sin,’ said our Lord, ‘freedom from sin. I mean, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. I was talking about being progressively free from the practice of sin.’
They said, ‘Do you know who you’re talking to? We are Abraham’s offspring. We’re children of God, we’ll have you know.’
And as the Light of the World stood talking to them, the light began to expose them, and presently our Lord said, ‘You are not children of God; you are of your father the devil’. On that, they picked up stones to throw at him and put the light out (see vv. 31–59). They had come to the light, but when it exposed them they were not prepared to walk in the light, and retreated into their darkness. The condition of having fellowship with God is not coming to the light; it’s walking in the light and allowing that light to expose you.
You say, ‘I’ll feel so miserable that I shan’t feel like having fellowship with God’.
Then listen to the rest of it: ‘But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin’ (1 John 1:7). So we may stay in the light and confess our sin, and know that he is faithful and just to forgive our sin, and our fellowship and enjoyment of eternal life will carry on.
Imagine again a young priest coming in for the first time. He knows what a solemn and holy thing it is to come to that holy table. He comes walking into the light, and presently he’s so flustered, his toe catches in the hem of his big robe and he falls flat on his face. Well, he has fallen, hasn’t he? Where has he fallen?
‘Well,’ you say, ‘he’s fallen in the light.’
That’s right, and now he can get up and say sorry. Does he get expelled? Thank God, no! We have eternal life, and John says, ‘I’m not saying this to give you an excuse for sinning, “But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous”’ (see 1 John 2:1). There were not two, but three vessels in the Holy Place—the lampstand, the table, and the altar of incense. It was at the altar of incense that the high priest made intercession. The blood of the atoning sacrifice was smeared on the horns of that altar, symbolizing the power of that intercessory altar. What a lovely trilogy of fellowship it is—the source of life, the means of life, and a table of fellowship with God with its condition of walking in the light. When anyone sins and confesses it, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1:9); and we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous (2:1). Thus our fellowship in eternal life is maintained by the gracious provision of God himself.
13: Movements VII and VIII: The Goal of Liberation Rejected, Restored and Achieved: Exodus 32:1–40:38
Part 1
Gentlemen, I say with the utmost sincerity that I have been greatly enriched by your company and fellowship these few fleeting days. I shall take back home a glowing memory; and the thought of the riches of God’s ways with you, and what he is doing and will yet do through you, will be a cheer throughout many a winter month on my distant western rock in the middle of the Atlantic.
When you have given so much, it might be ungracious of me to ask for more; but if any of you do issue either prayer letters or occasional letters of information, I should be very grateful to have them from you. I would love to be able to follow what the Lord is doing through you. I cannot guarantee to answer those letters. If you send them and I don’t answer because of the multitude of letters I get to answer, don’t give up. I am genuinely interested, and I read them and pray about them. Some of my very, very kind friends also send me photographs of themselves. I have what is a kind of rogue’s gallery in my home. I promise not to show them to the police, but I have an array of photographs and they also enrich my life, as I think of the many delightful people that God has brought to enrich me. If you were ever disposed to send me yours, please write on the back your name and country, and so forth. I should be very grateful indeed to be thus reminded of you from time to time as I go around my house.
Moreover, any written works, studies and articles that you think I ought to know about—and particularly any bearing on Exodus that you have found particularly helpful and important, and you say to yourself, ‘That Gooding man—it’s a pity he hadn’t known about that when he talked to us’—if you can find the time and the grace to do it, please jot down the author and so forth on a card, and send it to me.
This morning, I need not detain you very long. There are two whole movements of the book of Exodus remaining, but one way and another we have already talked quite a bit about them, and I need not repeat it all here. All I wish to do now, therefore, is to briefly run through some of the main ideas in these two movements with the minimum of application, and to point out how the structure and the inter-relationship between these two and the movements that have gone before, point the way, both to our understanding of them and also to the way that we could apply and preach them in our own ministry.
Movement VII: The False Festival of the Golden Calf
Exodus 32:1–34:35
As we have frequently seen, Movement seven in chapter 32 is the false festival (chag) of the golden calf. It stands opposite the true memorial festival of the Passover in chapter 12, which was aimed at reminding all the subsequent generations of Israel who it was that brought them out of Egypt and how he did it. So, let’s now go over its three main falsities.
The false goal
First of all, the Israelites took the riches that were the by-products of their redemption and set them up as the goal. That is always a danger.
Sometimes it happens that people, who have got their lives in a mess and are poverty-stricken, come to the Saviour and the Lord cleans up their lives. They no longer spend money on drugs, tobacco and booze and become more wealthy, and rightly use their wealth for the good of their wives and children, and so forth. But, instead of this greater wealth and affluence being thankfully received as a by-product of their redemption, sometimes they set up the wealth as the goal of redemption, and it becomes a false god.
The false means of redemption
Secondly, they not only set up this wealth as a false goal; they also set up this golden calf made out of their wealth as a false means of redemption. They danced around it, saying, ‘These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!’ (32:4).
That has happened in my country where, first of all, there was a great emphasis on the social benefits that come from redemption, and rightly so; but in some quarters, little by little, the gospel was abandoned, and we were told that the way to save people is by education, social engineering and psychological advice. These good things became not merely a goal but were advertised and preached as the means of redemption.
I remember when I first went to live in the northeast of England, I was tremendously impressed by the vast work that God did through Wesley and the Methodist movement—there was a great evangelical revival in that part of the world. With its emphasis subsequently on social justice, it proved a tremendous benefit to the downtrodden coal miners. When one realizes the sufferings that those miners went through at the hands of unscrupulous mine owners, it was a cause of great thanksgiving to God that, along with the evangelical awakening, there went a sense of social justice and responsibility.
When I first arrived, I discovered a highly intelligent gentleman who was living across the street from me. He was in the Ministry of Education, and had been brought up in Methodism but soon abandoned it. During the war he went to sea on the convoys to Russia and came back from those terrible experiences as a hard-boiled atheist. He told me that, after being an atheist for many years, he was in his room one night when over the radio came Billy Graham preaching from Hebrews 2:3, ‘how shall we escape if we neglect such a great salvation?’. He said, ‘David, I was overwhelmed with a sense of God speaking to me that he had something for me, which if I neglected or rejected I might lose forever. There and then, I bowed down and believed.’ He said, ‘I went to bed wondering whether it would last until tomorrow’. As soon as he woke up he was anxious to know, and apparently it had. But he decided he could be a Christian without going to church—he much disliked churchianity. So he persevered and began to read the Bible and went on with the Lord. Then one day in his reading he came across the verse, ‘not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some’ (Heb 10:25). So he said to himself, ‘Oh, then you do have to go to church, so I’d better obey’. So, what church? Well, what other than the church of his boyhood? So one Sunday morning, dressed like a respectable citizen, he went to church. The elders on the door nearly had a heart stoppage when they saw what they thought was this towering atheist coming along, and politely they said, ‘What brings you here?’.
He said, ‘I’ve been saved’.
‘No, no,’ they said, ‘there’s nothing in that; that’s a flash in the pan.’
He said to me, ‘David, would you come with me to our meeting? All they want to talk about is not prayer and the Bible; they want to have little talks on the General Post Office.’
How sad. The movement that had made social justice and all that kind of thing the means of redemption had now lost its hold upon the true means of redemption.
The false terminology
And finally, it is to be noticed how deceptive their terminology was. When they built their calf and danced around it, they said, ‘Tomorrow shall be a feast to the LORD [Yahweh, Jehovah]’ (32:5), but while they retained the same name, it no longer meant the same thing.
What a lot of double talk there is in modern theology. You can ask some leaders and teachers, ‘Do you believe in the virgin birth?’, and they will say, ‘Yes’. If you know enough to ask them, ‘But do you believe in the virgin birth as a historical event?’, they’ll say, ‘No’. They hope you don’t ask them, but if you do, they’ll say, ‘No, it’s not a historical event; it’s a myth that the church made up to express the church’s view that Jesus Christ is somehow special’. If you ask them, ‘Do you believe in the resurrection?’—‘Yes’. ‘Do you believe in the resurrection as a physical and historical event?’—‘No’. They use the same terminology, but what they mean by it is something completely different.
God’s reaction
We come now to the reaction of God and the reaction of Moses. Let us notice the seriousness of God’s reaction, for he said to Moses,
I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stiff-necked people. Now therefore let me alone, that my wrath may burn hot against them and I may consume them, in order that I may make a great nation of you. (32:9–10)
From this reaction, we see God’s interpretation of what they had done. As you might expect, there are some exceedingly fine Jewish commentaries on the book of Exodus. I personally find the commentary by the late Umberto Cassuto very helpful. But you will see that they play down the gravity of what Aaron did, which goes against the evidence of God’s reaction, for he immediately threatened to consume them. Before God had time to write it down, so to speak, they had not only broken the covenant that they had solemnly promised to keep, but they broke it at its chief point: ‘You shall have no other gods before me’ (20:3). It was a personal affront to God, a desecration and perversion of the very name of God, and God threatened to consume them.
Moses’ reaction—his first intercession
What follows is a delightful story of Moses’ intercessions. I am amazed that God condescended thus to speak to Moses, and that he also speaks to us in terms that we as humans can understand. He allowed Moses to argue with him, and was persuaded to turn from his original statement. For God in the end to grant all that Moses pleaded for, is a demonstration of the name of God that leaves me aghast at his condescension.
He pleads on the grounds of God’s name and reputation
Before he went back down to the people, Moses’ first intercession was spiritually very ‘clever’—but that’s not quite the word, is it? He pleaded God’s own name and reputation:
O LORD, why does your wrath burn hot against your people, whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand? Why should the Egyptians say, ‘With evil intent did he bring them out . . .’? (32:11–12)
Wasn’t that very astute? Its implication is staggering. Having put his hand to bringing Israel out of Egypt into their inheritance, God had committed his own reputation to that project. If now he destroys it, what will the Egyptians say? What a magnificent insight that is, when I think of us. The Apostle Paul said: ‘And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ’ (Phil 1:6). God began the work in you, gentlemen, and he has committed his name before heaven, earth and hell to complete the project.
Says Moses, ‘If you don’t complete it, consider your reputation and what the Egyptians will say. Not merely that you must be a tuppence-ha’penny god, who couldn’t achieve what you set out to do; they will also get the impression that you are a malevolent god, and the reason why you brought them out of Egypt was to destroy them. You nearly wrecked their country and destroyed their firstborn, and now that you’ve got your people out, you destroy them as well.’ Moses pleads the name and the character of God, and surely we may be emboldened to plead with God on that same ground.
His faithfulness to the Israelites
Consider also at this juncture Moses being faithful. Said God, ‘Get out of the way, Moses. Leave me alone, and I’ll destroy them. I will make of you a great nation’ (see Exod 32:10). If I had been Moses, that would have been a colossal temptation for me. Think of all the murmurings of the Israelites against him, the way they came near to stoning him, and their gross ingratitude. I would have said to God, ‘Yes, I take your point, and in a sense I can understand your frustration. I’ve felt like that myself and tried to overcome it; but now, Lord, they’ve gone too far. I think it is a hopeless job, and perhaps it would be a good idea to start again with me.’ And God would have still been fulfilling his promise to Abraham, to raise up a nation of his seed.
There was an extra bit of temptation that I should have yielded to. I’d have been hesitant to argue down on the plain among the people; but Moses was up the mountain and the people would never know what he’d said. By the time he got down, they’d all be destroyed. Nonetheless, up there, unseen by the people he remained faithful to them.
I don’t know how you are disposed to translate Hebrews 3 and its early verses. Verse 1 exhorts us to ‘consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession, who was faithful to him who appointed him, just as Moses also was faithful in all God’s house’. As you probably know, in Greek this is an indirect statement construction, and the verb is a present participle. It is open, therefore, for a translator to translate it into English as a present participle, though it can also be translated as a past in English idiom. I am very tempted to translate it as a present participle: ‘consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession,’—not ‘who was faithful’, but ‘consider him at this moment up in “the mountain” interceding for us with God; and though we cannot see him, consider him this very moment being faithful to you’. In view of all our faults and failings on the journey towards our destiny, isn’t it something in our quieter moments to sink back into our armchairs and consider the blessed Lord being faithful, just as Moses was?
He gains God’s remission of the punishment
And so Moses pleads the covenant, and the Lord repented (KJV). ‘And the LORD relented from the disaster that he had spoken of bringing on his people’ (Exod 32:14)—that’s a condescension, I presume, to our way of thinking. Where had Moses learned these things? Wasn’t it in Movement I, when God had announced that he was going to deliver the Israelites? Even when Moses had despaired of it all, God had said, ‘I have remembered my covenant with Abraham, and I will deliver’ (see 6:2–8).
He addresses the fault with the Israelites
But now, having gained God’s remission of his punishment, when Moses comes down the mountain there’s no soft, flabby sentimentality in his dealing with the people. He didn’t say, ‘It doesn’t matter’. And now we’re treated to what Moses did to make the people aware of the seriousness of their fault.
First, he smashed the covenant completely. This is not some little aberration; they have broken the covenant, and if they are ever to be restored it will be utterly by the unmerited grace of God.
Secondly, he took their golden calf and ground it to powder, scattered it on the water and made the people drink it. That must have been bitter stuff—bitter medicine. It has to be done sometimes, doesn’t it? When faced with insipient apostasy, there is no use being sentimental. People must taste the bitterness of what they have done. How will they repent if they’ve never realized the seriousness of their attitude and action?
Then there came something sterner. The people were challenged to demonstrate their devotion to God: ‘then Moses stood in the gate of the camp and said, “Who is on the LORD’S side? Come to me”’ (32:26). We have an old-fashioned English hymn, which could be sung with great gusto. I won’t sing it to you, as this is meant to be a decent Christian meeting, but it runs like this, ‘Who is on the Lord’s side? Who will serve the King?’.21 It’s often used at the end of a devotional appeal to young people, or for missionaries to go out to the heathen. It’s not often pointed out that its opening lines were originally written as a challenge to deal with apostasy.
Moses was saying, ‘Who is on the Lord’s side, as distinct from this idolatry of the golden calf? Who is on the side of Jehovah against this new-fangled idolatrous reinterpretation of the great fundamental facts of the faith?’
This is a challenge that needs to be preached in our university departments of theology and in our Bible schools. I was in an ordination college recently—I won’t tell you where it was—and many of the believers came to me and said, ‘You know, David, it’s a hard job to survive here in this college, and particularly to maintain your faith in the Old Testament. Sometimes people don’t manage to do it.’ Oh, what a sorry thing. ‘Who is on the Lord’s side?’—this is a challenge that needs to be preached pre-eminently in theological circles.
Aaron the high priest doesn’t come out of it very well, does he? What a weak-kneed chap he was!
‘Well, Moses,’ said Aaron, ‘it wasn’t really my fault. I just got this stuff and threw it into the fire, and out came this golden calf’ (see 32:24). ‘With you having gone up the mountain and the people being so clamorous, if I hadn’t given in to them we were in danger of losing all the people.’
So you keep the people by indulging and permitting a little bit of idolatry, do you? What good is that?
Discontinuity with the Old Testament
When Moses called, ‘Who is on the Lord’s side?’, the Levites strapped on their swords and executed the disciplines of God (v. 28). This is a part of Scripture where we shall most keenly see and feel the discontinuity between the Old Testament and the New Testament, and failure to see that discontinuity has brought scandal down the centuries. Christendom imagined that it was the continuation of Israel and set itself up as a sacral state, just as Israel was a sacral state. Christendom therefore used political power to persecute heretics literally with the sword. What scandals were perpetrated in the name of Christ—the Christ who forbade his followers to either defend him or propagate his gospel by the use of the sword.
It is very dangerous for Christians to get it into their heads that they are a continuation of Israel, and that nowadays our countries ought to be theocracies. They’re not. This is not the old covenant; we live under the new. ‘The weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh’ (2 Cor 10:4). But for all that, we do have to fight. ‘Fight the good fight of the faith,’ said Paul to Timothy, when Timothy was likewise surrounded by all kinds of false doctrines that were in danger of perverting the truth (see 1 Tim 6:12).
There can be no compromise
Let me point out once more that this is Movement VII, which stands opposite in the symmetry to Movement III, the great Passover. One of the strong emphases of that Passover movement was this: since the firstborn of Israel had been spared by the blood of the sacrificial lamb, the firstborn must be consecrated to God. Now we read of another consecration: the demonstration of devotion to God by men who are prepared to stand and be on the Lord’s side.
In its application to us, it’s not for the sake of narrow-minded little things of indifference that we must be prepared to bring godly discipline into the church, but for the fundamental doctrines pertaining to the person of God, the deity of our Lord and the very foundations of the gospel. How can we permit false doctrines that deny the deity of the Lord Jesus and his resurrection and insult the divine majesty of God to carry on unrebuked in our churches?
Who is on the side of Yahweh? Then let them show their consecration to the Lord. This cannot be a matter of compromise.
Moses’ second intercession
Having done that, Moses returned up the mountain for his second intercession. ‘So Moses returned to the LORD and said, “Alas, this people has sinned a great sin. They have made for themselves gods of gold. But now, if you will forgive their sin—”.’ But it was an aposiopesis—he didn’t finish the sentence. It was almost an impossible thing to ask of God because the sin was so great. Then, says he, ‘but if not, please blot me out of your book that you have written’ (32:31–32).
I suppose two interpretations are possible here. The one that I feel is better may not for that reason be right. Moses was saying, ‘O God, if it’s so grievous that you can’t forgive them, then I don’t want to survive them—please blot me out of your book’. He’s talking about the physical book of life, and he says, ‘If you’re now going to destroy this nation physically, please destroy me physically as well and blot my name out of the book of those who are physically living, for I don’t want to survive.’ Moses’ refusal to be separated from his people, sinful though they were, gives us the other side of the story, doesn’t it? He has the people of God in his heart, and he was never more like our blessed Lord than when he stood thus identified with his people.
God said, ‘Moses, I will judge whom I will judge’. Yet in general, he granted Moses’ point and said,
‘But now go, lead the people to the place about which I have spoken to you; behold, my angel shall go before you. Nevertheless, in the day when I visit, I will visit their sin upon them.’ Then the LORD sent a plague on the people, because they made the calf, the one that Aaron made. The LORD said to Moses, ‘Depart; go up from here, you and the people whom you have brought up out of the land of Egypt, to the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, “To your offspring I will give it.” I will send an angel before you, and I will drive out the Canaanites, the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey; but I will not go up among you, lest I consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people.’ When the people heard this disastrous word, they mourned, and no one put on his ornaments. For the LORD had said to Moses, ‘Say to the people of Israel, “You are a stiff-necked people; if for a single moment I should go up among you, I would consume you. So now take off your ornaments, that I may know what to do with you.”’ Therefore the people of Israel stripped themselves of their ornaments, from Mount Horeb onwards. (32:34 –33:6)
Moses would later take up the very words that God had used, and question God’s phraseology. But meanwhile, what first steps could be taken to repair the damage?
The tent of meeting
Now Moses used to take the tent and pitch it outside the camp, far off from the camp, and he called it the tent of meeting. And everyone who sought the LORD would go out to the tent of meeting, which was outside the camp. (33:7)
Source critics have apparently found this a difficult thing. They feel that it is a survival from some other earlier source, when the tabernacle was a little thing that Moses and his one-man assistant Joshua could take and pitch themselves outside the camp (see vv. 7–11). They say that the other story of an elaborate tabernacle full of furniture, gold and silver and whatnot, which took an army of young Levites to cart around and put up and take down, is a later imaginary exaggeration of the original. They laugh and say that this proves their evolutionary theory and so forth, but as usual this is perverse.
This ‘tent of meeting’, real though it was, was never meant to be the same thing as the tabernacle, as you will see from its function. With the tabernacle, the people stood outside or came into the Holy Place; the Lord came down, ‘and the glory of the LORD filled the tabernacle’ (40:34). In this little tent, it was the other way round. The tent was pitched, Moses went inside and the Lord came down and stood outside the door. It was similar in function to the cave that Elijah got into on Mount Horeb. When Elijah was in the cave, the Lord came and passed by the front of it. Elijah came out to the mouth of the cave, and the glory of God was revealed to him there (1 Kgs 19:13). The tent of meeting had a completely different conception from the tabernacle; it was an individual tent for Moses and his assistant that they pitched outside the camp.
Do remember that the people are not yet free from the terrible sentence that God has put upon them, so Moses deliberately takes this tent and places it far outside the camp. One day the tabernacle itself would be erected right in the centre of the camp (see Exod 40), but for the moment Moses takes his personal tent—the tent of meeting—outside the camp, and when he was inside the glory of the Lord would come down to Moses personally. And as that dear man and faithful servant of God would go into his tent and God came down to speak with him, it says that the Israelites, each at his tent door, stood awestricken by the sight of a man of God conversing with his God, ‘as a man speaks to his friend’, and the sight of the glory moved the people to come out and seek the Lord (33:7–11).
May God raise up more men and women amongst us who are known to be people to whom God manifests his glory, for the issue at stake is: are we going to serve God or a false god, the real Jehovah or a golden calf? In the end, the way you will attract people to the true God is when you help them to see his glory. Very often that will have to be through the spiritual experience of one person, one servant, when people begin to perceive the difference between the glory of the true God and the miserable fake glory of any golden calf. It’s not just in the denunciation of heresy that people are brought to repentance; it is by the attractiveness of the exceeding glory of God. May God help this to be predominant in all our varied ministries. It doesn’t merely have to be the preachers, does it? Many washerwomen have walked in close fellowship with the Lord, and it has been visible to all who have known them that the glory of God has filled their lives.
Moses asks the Lord to show him his ways
And then, as Moses was visited by God from time to time, Moses began to speak to the Lord and picked up what God said:
Moses said to the LORD, ‘See, you say to me, “Bring up this people”, but you have not let me know whom you will send with me. Yet you have said, “I know you by name, and you have also found favour in my sight.” Now therefore, if I have found favour in your sight, please show me now your ways . . .’ (33:12–13)
He had said, ‘I will send an angel before you’ (33:2), but Moses was being a little bit crafty.
‘You tell me to bring up this people, but you’ve not exactly explained to me who it is that you’re going to send with me—you haven’t told me your ways. I mean, if you don’t mind me enquiring for a little bit more detail, how do you get people from the wilderness up to the promised land? How’s it to be done? Please show me your ways a little bit more extensively. What way would you suggest, Lord?’
So now, defining further what he’d meant by the angel, the Lord said, ‘My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest’.
‘That’s marvellous,’ says Moses, ‘for to tell you the truth, if your presence didn’t go with us, we wouldn’t want to go anyway’ (see 33:14–15).
We were thinking about it the other night, weren’t we? Suppose God promised you heaven and all its glories, five or six archangels to be your personal servants and attendants, an endless fleet of heavenly Mercedes-Benz, and all that you could wish for. But if he added, ‘When you get there, I shan’t be there’, would you want to go, gentlemen? And it’s not only if he’s not there when we arrive, but if his presence doesn’t go with us now, would we still want to go? God forbid that we should ever be like Mary and Joseph—and they weren’t really to blame, were they?—when they returned from the festival at the temple and went on their journey, supposing that the Lord Jesus was among them, and he wasn’t (Luke 2:41–45).
So Moses says to the Lord, ‘If your presence goes with us that’s marvellous, because that’s what makes us distinct from every other people on the face of the earth. If we don’t have your presence, we’re just like the Egyptians’ (see 33:16).
And if our churches know nothing of the presence of God and his glory in them, how different are they from any other religion under the sun?
Moses asks the Lord to show him his glory
Moses was emboldened, and he said, ‘Lord, show me not only your ways, but show me your glory’ (see 33:18). Ultimately there is no other way of getting people to their promised inheritance. As we journey, our little hearts are deflected, like children going off after this attraction and that attraction. We are tempted to love the world and the things that are in the world, and there are ‘By-path Meadows’22 galore. The only thing that will get us to glory at last is the sight of the glory of God now, in such radiance that it will overpower all other attractions.
God brought Moses up the mountain and put him in a cleft of the rock. There the LORD proclaimed his name, which made it all the deeper, more profound and moving, because even after such a dreadful insipient apostasy it showed that he was compassionate still and willing to show mercy (33:19–23).
God’s mercy over the mistakes in our Christian lives becomes an added motivation for moving on to glory.
Moses asks the Lord to go in the midst of them
And then Moses—forgive the terminology—played his ‘last card’. ‘Lord,’ he said, ‘if you’re compassionate, and if now I have found favour in your sight, please let the Lord go in the midst of us’ (see 34:9). He was not content to have the Lord go with them in advance, leading the way; he asked that he should go in the midst of them. Now notice the next astounding thing he said, ‘for it is a stiff-necked people’.
God had originally said, ‘Moses, my angel will go in front of you to protect you and lead you, but I will not go up among you, lest I consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people’ (see 33:2–3). Now Moses says, ‘If now I have found favour in your sight, O Lord, please let the Lord go in the midst of us, for it is a stiff-necked people.’
What’s the logic behind that bit of argumentation? How else would you get a stiff-necked people home to glory? There’s only one power on earth can do that. The Lord should have to come and dwell in the very midst of them. That would have been dangerous except for the fact that God had just declared his name to be a God of compassion and forgiveness.
ILLUSTRATION FROM JOHN’S GOSPEL IN THE STORY OF THE WOMAN CAUGHT IN THE ACT OF ADULTERY
John 8:1–11 is reminiscent of this very scene. When evil men came to our Lord quoting Moses—‘Now in the law Moses commanded us to stone such women’—Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. He was the very same one who had originally written the first tablets of the law of Moses. Then he lifted himself up and said, ‘Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her’. As they were making up their minds, he bent down for the second time and wrote on the ground. They stood for a second or two, but then they went away one by one, for they had found a light that was more powerful to expose them than the law of Moses ever was. They could stand there quoting Moses, exposing this poor wretch, and feel themselves safe and very righteous, but in our blessed Lord they had found the lawgiver incarnate, who was able to expose them more profoundly than Moses had ever done.
And when he stood up, he said to the woman, ‘Where are they? Has no one condemned you?’
She said, ‘No one, Lord’.
And he said, ‘Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more’.
He wasn’t saying that from now on adultery was okay. Nor that in our more enlightened Christian age adultery is not to be regarded as a sin but only a falling short of the ideal, or something. He was saying that here was a guilty woman, a self-confessed and self-condemned sinner. In her desperation, she was unable to flee and had nowhere to flee to. Should the sentence of Moses’ law be carried out upon her? The second writing showed that God, the lawgiver, was the God of infinite compassion, and the sentence shall not be carried out on her.
But you say, ‘How was that just? How did that honour Moses’ law?’
Because presently he went to Calvary and paid the penalty that Moses’ law had imposed. In other words, the law that he himself had imposed.
The glory of God mediated through the face of Moses
As wretched sinners, who had not only sinned before we got converted but have failed the Lord since, we also stand in the cleft of the rock, hidden by the hand of God from the danger of the glory of his holiness. It is as we stand there, that we see the extreme glory of God’s name and then have a gospel to preach that ought to make our faces veritably shine.
When Moses came down from the mountain, the skin of his face shone, and the people got scared because it was so aglow. But he called them to him, and after he had talked with Aaron and all the leaders the people came near. There was nothing for them to fear in the glow of the glory of God mediated through the face of Moses. So they came and heard all that the Lord had spoken on Mount Sinai: the marvellous message of their forgiveness, the re-inauguration of the project, and the assurance of having the almighty God dwell among them. But when he had finished speaking with them, Moses put a veil over his face. When he went in to speak to God, he would remove the veil. The batteries recharged, so to speak, his face was shining again, and he always put the veil over his face until the next time he went into the Lord’s presence (34:29–35).
You’ll remember what Paul makes of that as he takes up the story and applies it in 2 Corinthians 3. Let’s look at it from verse 7 onwards.
Firstly, says Paul, Moses would put a veil over his face, so that the Israelites might not gaze at the outcome of what was being brought to an end—the fading glory of the old covenant. One day, of course, the glory of the old covenant would fade away completely and be replaced by the glory of the new covenant (vv. 10–11); but it wouldn’t do for Israel to see then that the covenant now being offered to them was only a temporary thing, would it? ‘It had been glorious, but it was a glory that would fade, so he hid from them the fact,’ says Paul, ‘that the glory was fading’ (see v. 13).
‘For to this day,’ Paul says, ‘when [my Jewish fellow nationals] read the [law], that same veil remains unlifted . . .’ (v. 14). The Greek becomes difficult here. It means something like ‘because it hasn’t been revealed to them,’ and could be translated, because the veil is done away in Christ, or because the old covenant is done away in Christ. I prefer the second reading.
You can see that as you read the Old Testament with God-fearing Jews. They read it, but the veil is still there. They don’t see that the glory of the old covenant was destined to pass away and give place to the glory of the new. They think that the Old Testament rituals of the law and whatnot are still in force, and so the veil remains.
What a tremendous mercy it is to have seen the glory of God, not in the face of the law but in the face of Jesus Christ: ‘for the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ’ (John 1:17).
And then Paul continues with his second point. When Moses returned to the Lord, he took the veil off and his face was recharged, so to speak. That could also be applied to our situation, says Paul, for when Israel turns to the Lord they shall see him with unveiled face. The veil shall be taken off their hearts, because not only is it true that it was veiled from Israel that the old covenant was temporary and passing, but there now lies a veil on their hearts that obscures the true revelation of God.
How can that be removed? ‘It shall be taken away if they will return to the Lord, as Moses did,’ says Paul (see v. 16). ‘The Lord is the Spirit’ (v. 17). He too is Lord, is he not? And it is as Israel themselves turn to the Holy Spirit, given by the risen Christ, that they shall see the true significance both of the Old Testament and the greater glory of the New Testament.
And then Paul adds, ‘And we all, with unveiled face . . .’—again the Greek is difficult again here (it can be a bothersome language!)—‘beholding [as in a mirror, or reflecting as a mirror] the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit’ (v. 18). I don’t know which translation you prefer, but when I’m confronted with a choice like that, I’m greedy and take both. You see, I’ve observed with mirrors, that if you put a mirror to a light, the mirror beholds the light; but being a mirror, it also reflects the light.
What a delightful little illustration of our ministry as servants of the Lord! We stand with our faces to the Lord and behold his glory; and whether we know it or not, the glory is reflecting on us so that others may see it. Servants of God have one advantage over mirrors. If the mirror is looking at the light, it reflects it; but if you take it away you’ll find that the mirror hasn’t changed. Whereas when we behold the glory of the Lord and transmit and reflect it to others, we ourselves are being transformed.
Oh, my brothers, let’s give ourselves ever more diligently to the ministry, for in doing so we not only save others, we also save ourselves. As you seek God and his glory and reflect it to the world, God is doing a marvellous thing with you. He’s changing you, and what a glorious encouragement that is in all the hard work of our Christian ministry.
Part 2
Movement VIII: Construction of the Tabernacle: Exodus 35:1–40:38
The work and the workers
So the tabernacle was built. That is the story of the final movement of Exodus. We needn’t repeat all the detail, and perhaps you say to me, ‘Why on earth is all that detail here? Isn’t that a waste of space in holy Scripture? I mean, having already given the directions for the building of the tabernacle, why didn’t these last chapters just say, “And so the tabernacle was built according to the specifications laid down in chapters 25 to 31?”. It would save us reading the whole thing through again, wouldn’t it?’ Perhaps that’s how you treat it, and you don’t bother to read it.
You say, ‘Oh, well, it’s going to be the same again and it’s enough to know that they did it.’
So, why does God’s Holy Spirit spell it all out at length in great detail, and tell us that they actually followed all the details as they were told? Well, I suppose one literary reason is because this is not just cold literature! If you’ve any sense of the magnitude of the emotions that were involved, can you just put a full stop and go home and turn on the TV? God had threatened to destroy the people and ditch the whole scheme of building the tabernacle. When you’ve come through that flood-tide of emotion to the point where Moses’ intercession gained a point with God, and God agreed to come amongst them, surely your heart would be absolutely leaping? So the inspired writer has got to give some sense of proportion to the wonder of it.
It’s like a Greek tragedy, but I don’t know if you’re a connoisseur of Greek tragedies. If you open the book and just sit down and read it calmly, you’ll come to the end—when some great disaster has happened and Oedipus has put his eyes out, or some other such dramatic gesture—and you’ll say, ‘Well, that’s the event over’.
But not in the theatre. You can’t just say, ‘So Oedipus blinded his eyes—end of the play’. No, no. The audience must be helped to feel the tremendous emotion of it, and so there is the kommos, the lament.23 It goes on forever with curious words and all sorts of lamenting and dirges and what have you. There will be dancing on the stage, conveying the emotion of the situation, and the play has to be proportionate enough in length to get the point across.
Oh, gentlemen, I hope you don’t find the end chapters of Exodus dull. God yielded to the intercession and the tabernacle was made, down to every tiny detail as it was originally proposed. What a magnificence!
In Movement VI, the details were given as to how it should be done, so what is different here? Well, here the emphasis is on the fact that it was done, and on the workers who did it. It shall be to their eternal credit that they did it in gratitude to God for having spared them the judgment they deserved. When they brought it to Moses, it had been done as the Lord commanded, down to the very last tiny detail. What else would be an appropriate response to the mercies of God than carrying out his work in faithfulness to his word?
Regulations for the Sabbath
The final movement is introduced by a paragraph on the Sabbath (35:1¬–3). It is of great importance to notice that. In Movement IV, there was a long chapter about the institution of the Sabbath in relation to their daily work of gathering the manna and eating their food (16:22–30). Now, once more, the Sabbath is given prominence as it begins the section on the actual making of the tabernacle: this time in relation to the work of the Lord in its spiritual sense. It seems to me to be nothing other than sanity itself for the Sabbath regulations to be stated afresh at the beginning of working for the Lord.
First of all, it’s practical, gentlemen. If we have any sense of gratitude in our hearts for the Lord’s mercy and the wonder of our call to lead God’s people in their spiritual work in building the very tabernacle of God (Rev 21:3), there could be a danger that we forget to take a sabbath. If we’re not careful, we could allow ourselves to be so head over heels into the work that we end up with a nervous breakdown. If there needs to be a sabbath in our daily work to replace our energies, so there does in the work of the Lord, though it needn’t be held legalistically on a certain day of the week.
When we take a sabbath in our daily work, we think of God as the creator (Gen 1:1; 2:2–3). He started the whole thing going, you know, and it’s he who sustains us. As his creatures, he allows us to work with him in producing the crops, or producing the computers; but he started it all and he gives us the materials and the abilities. He never designed work to be such a crushing burden that it would grind us into the ground. If it does, we must have different goals to what the creator designed. Now that we’re redeemed and it’s been given into our hands to do the sacred work of the Lord, it would be a mean man or woman who didn’t want to give themselves utterly to it. But again we must remember the Sabbath, and ultimately that it’s not our work.
And what is more, the Sabbath is a time for contemplating God and his great work. I like the emphasis at the end of Isaiah, don’t you? Israel had stood for centuries for the truth of the one true God to distinguish them among the nations. They were God’s witnesses and they kept the literal Sabbath, but they found the task of their witness too great. They compromised the truth and went down into the darkness of exile. When God brings them back out of exile and supports them with glowing promises, he reveals himself to them as the creator, who not only created the world but is now going to create them as his witnesses. In their work of witnessing for the Lord, they are to experience the very doctrine of the creator that they had propounded theologically before.
‘For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works’ (Eph 2:10). When it comes to the work of the Lord and we preach salvation to men and women, if we’re going to do it effectively we shall need to ponder the wonder of the Creator God who has made us as his witnesses, lest in our devotion we forget his creative power. If we merely use our human energies, we shall drive ourselves into the dust.
The work is finished
So they made the tabernacle out of gratitude, and when they’d made it all according to the commandment they brought it to Moses. I don’t know whether they feared Moses as being a little bit pernickety and insistent on too many small details, but the record says, ‘Then they brought the tabernacle to Moses . . . And Moses saw all the work, and behold, they had done it; as the LORD had commanded, so had they done it. Then Moses blessed them’ (39:33; 43).
The work was finished. As the Lord commanded Moses, so they had done. I suspect Moses heaved the biggest sigh of relief that he’d ever heaved in all his days. ‘They’ve actually done it! For once, these Israelites have actually done as the Lord commanded. What a tremendous achievement.’ You’re not a pastor if you don’t sympathize with Moses at that stage. They’d done it as the Lord commanded Moses; it passed Moses’ review and he blessed them. Moses erected their work, and when he’d finished, the glory of God came down and filled the tabernacle (40:33–34). And then the glory of God led them through the wilderness (v. 38).
At that point, we pick up the emphasis from yesterday. In Movement IV, when they stood on the banks of the Red Sea and celebrated God’s victory, they began to talk of the time when God would bring them into his permanent dwelling place on his holy mountain in the land (see 15:17). See them now setting off from Mount Sinai with the glory of God leading them in the tabernacle, and ask them where they’re going. They’re going to the land and the great sanctuary of God that shall be built on the mountain of his holiness (Ps 48:1).
God’s eternal tabernacle is being prepared
The material is ‘being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit’ (Eph 2:22). That’s us, isn’t it? The Lord sends us out now to build; he invites us to bring the material and to work it—the wood, the precious gems and the cloth. We may have that dimension of life even now in the desert, as the unconverted are being converted, the lost are being saved, sinners are justified and saints are carved, polished and assembled.
Even in this time of pilgrimage we can know the Lord’s presence. And where are we going to, gentlemen? We’re going to the great habitation—God’s eternal tabernacle. One day we shall bring the wood and the gold that we have prepared and quarried and shaped and worked on and polished to the ‘greater than Moses’ (see Heb 3:3). We shall stand before the judgment seat of Christ and the fire of that day shall test all our work, of what kind it is. If the work abides, we shall receive a reward. In fact, we shall receive two rewards. By God’s grace, for all eternity we will see the results that we were able to achieve here on earth for God, and our contribution to the great eternal tabernacle shall last eternally.
But if anyone’s work is burned up as being shoddy and unsatisfactory, he shall suffer loss. Who can measure it? A loss that is irreplaceable for all eternity, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire—because salvation was never dependent on works (1 Cor 3:12–15). May God help us so to work that in the coming day, like Paul, we shall be able to say of the people whom God has used us to lead to himself or to help on the Christian pathway, ‘For what is our hope or joy or crown of boasting before our Lord Jesus at his coming? Is it not you? For you are our glory and joy’ (1 Thess 2:19–20).
We have sat here over these few days and reviewed the work that God is doing in our hands all around Europe, Africa and other places in the world. And just as certainly as we have thought of it, one day we shall stand together and see the blessed Lord erect the eternal tabernacle of God. How shall we contain our joy to think that he allowed us to take part in its construction?
Thank you for your patience. That sheer determined, deliberate resistance to the pain of sitting on hard seats for so long and listening to such a preacher is clear evidence of your Christian grace, and it has been a great encouragement to me. May God’s blessing be on you all.
Footnotes
1 See Appendix and click on the link to our website.
2 New audio recording begins here.
3 See Appendix: 2. Some Comparisons of the Two Halves of Exodus.
4 Nickname for a professional footballer (Paul Gascoigne).
5 Latin phrase, meaning ‘which was to be demonstrated’. QED may appear at the conclusion of a text to signify that the author’s overall argument has just been proved.
6 Edited by John Hick, London: SCM Press, 1977.
7 Selected Political Speeches of Cicero, Translated by Michael Grant, Penguin Books, p. 165 ff.
8 Two types of law are noted in the Hebrew law codes: (1) casuistic, or case, law, which contains a conditional statement and a type of punishment to be meted out; and (2) apodictic law, i.e., regulations in the form of divine commands (e.g., the Ten Commandments). (Ligonier.org)
9 The ohm is the standard unit of electrical resistance in the International System of Units (SI).
10 Dr Gooding is directing the question to the earlier speaker who expressed the view that Christians are not under law.
11 Please refer to the Appendix, Note 1. See also David Gooding, ‘Drawing Near to God’: available to purchase, or read online: https://www.myrtlefieldhouse.com/online-books/dntg
12 Unfortunately, we cannot trace these pictures.
13 The link to this Journal suggests: ‘The Construction of the Tabernacle’, Ephraim M. Epstein, The Monist, Vol. 21, No. 4 (October, 1911), pp. 567-623 (57 pages). Published by Oxford University Press.
14 Different names for God: Yahweh and Elohim.
15 Abraham’s name was ‘Abram’ at the time of the making of this covenant.
16 Carol L. Meyers, The Tabernacle Menorah: A Synthetic Study of a Symbol from the Biblical Cult, published by Scholars Press in American Schools of Oriental Research Dissertation Series (Number 2), 1976. Reprinted by Gorgias Press 2003.
17 The consonants in the name Zvi are the initial Hebrew letters of the phrase ‘the just shall live by faith’ (2 words in Hebrew). As a rabbinic abbreviation it would be pronounced Tsiv or Ziv.
18 Also known as Jabneh (2 Chron 26:6). This historic city lies about 15 miles south of Tel Aviv (see britannica.com for more details).
19 Ancient Greek name; Latin, Jerome.
20 See Talk 10.
21 Frances R. Havergal (1836–1879), ’Who is on the Lord’s side?’ (1877).
22 Quoting from John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress.
23 The meaning of kommos is a lament in Greek tragedy sung in parts alternating between chief actor and chorus. (www.merriam-webster.com). Britannica links it to ‘commotion’!