Gooding, David: 3 - Exodus as a Thought Model

Yesterday, in our beginning studies, we fell to discussing, gentlemen, the various levels at which we may apply the message of the book of Exodus to ourselves. We thought necessarily first of the historical level, the need to take the story as straightforward history of what happened some many centuries ago. And to see therein the principles that were involved in God's historical deliverance of Israel from their literal Egypt. Taken at that level, of course, the historical story provides us with many an important and profound and practical lesson. Then we moved on to observing that not only was that deliverance in the form of Passover celebrated annually in Israel as a reviving of the memory of the past, it became for them a prophecy of what God would do again in the future. So reading the story as prophecy is not something that some peculiar Christians invented. It is a something that 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, but the deliverance that God will effect for Israel in the future will bear striking resemblance, so the prophets say, to what he did in the first historical liberation. And then we noticed in the next place how our Lord referred to Passover and talked about its fulfillment. In as much as Passover in itself was not a prediction, but a record of something that had actually happened in the past, we were obliged to inquire what the term fulfillment would mean in this kind of context. How was an historical Passover somehow fulfilled in Jesus Christ our Lord? And to help us understand that, we use the term prototype. My little illustration, forgive its crudity, but your lives depend on it, gentlemen. Eh, early aircraft were crude affairs. They succeeded sometimes, but as the theologians would say, the type broke down. Well, I mean the prototype broke down, uh, you'll see, because they were made largely of string, uh, you'll see, and paper and glue and spit. But, uh, there were certain basic principles of aerodynamics that were already being expressed at that lowly level. They are nowadays expressed at much higher levels in the sophisticated, uh, jumbo jets that fly aloft. You will pardon the crudity of the analogy. When God set his hand to redemption, he redeemed Israel out of Egypt. There were certain basic principles of redemption that there were there expressed, that were later on expressed at the highest possible level in the redemption, uh, accomplished by our Lord as the great Passover lamb of God. Then we notice that in addition to explicit reference to, uh, the Passover being fulfilled at this higher level, there are allusions to the story of Exodus in parts of scripture. Sometimes those allusions are explicit, but very often the illusions are not explicit, they are implicit. The New Testament writer will expect that you know the story of Exodus upside down, inside out, and like the proverbial back of your hand, and therefore he won't stop to point out that he is alluding to the New Testament. He won't remark that the things that he is telling you about the Lord Jesus and his work bear a striking resemblance to things that happened in the story of the Exodus. We cited last night as an example of that, the many parallels that there exist between the story given us in the gospel by John and, uh, to the story given in the book of Exodus. And we notice that the study of those parallels is not just a literary occupation given to the idle and the sophisticated in university literary departments. It provides us with a thought model by which to analyze the spiritual concepts of the New Testament. And I called attention last night to two of those elements in the Gospel of John that are reminiscent, parallel to the story of Exodus. Namely, that in Exodus we are presented with the story of Egypt, the house of bondage for Israel. Egypt presided over by its evil prince, the Pharaoh, and how God delivered his people from that Egypt and from that Pharaoh. The counterpart in the Gospel of John, as we saw last night, the counterpart to Egypt is what that gospel terms the world. Presided over by what, again, our Lord refers to in that gospel by the prince of this world. We shall recognize at once what a major topic this is in the writings of John, both in the gospel and in his epistles. However, that presents us with a practical problem. How are we to understand what John means by the world? And how, when we have understood it, 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 Christian people that they are not to love the world, neither the things that are in the world. But then, how is that meant to apply to daily life? Mustn't you love cucumbers or, or, or, or, or sunsets, or... What do you mean by the world? We'll see. I'm going to suggest this morning that the story of the Exodus provides us with a thought model to help us grasp at least one of the concepts associated with the term world in the New Testament. It also supplies us with a vivid illustration to use for our congregations when we are preaching to them. You gentlemen, by definition, are blessed with sophisticated brains that can easily deal with abstract concepts. Pray do remember that many of the people to whom you preach have not necessarily that same facility for dealing with abstract concepts. In the wisdom, kindness, and compassion of God, God has given us not only the abstract theological concepts in his word, he has given us divinely inspired stories. They are true to history, but they also become pictures by which people can grasp the significance of otherwise rather abstract and difficult concepts. Let us not neglect, therefore, this picture side of God's communication of truth. You will, of course, remember from your study of the first epistle of John that there are different aspects to this matter of what is the world. In one John chapter two, for instance, John warns us against loving the world. His words are, love not the world. This is one John two verse fifteen. Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the vainglory of life, is not of the Father, but of the world. Here then is the world in all its attractiveness. The world and the things in the world that will appeal to a believer's heart and attempts to captivate his love. And John, it feels it necessary to warn us as Christians against this attractive side of the world, warn us how easily it can invade our hearts and take our love of the Father away from the Father and attract our love instead of loving the Father to loving the world. In his chapter three, John presents a completely different aspect to the world. One John three, He is telling us that we ought to love one another. And not be as Cain, who was of the evil one and slew his brother. And then he adds, one um John three thirteen, Marvel not, brothers, if the world hates you. This is another face to 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. Of course, it's a world engineered by the evil prince of this world. See it, says John, expressed in Cain. Cain, while engaged in apparently religious exercises, was filled with murderous hate against the child of God, Abel, and slew him. Why did he do it, says John? Because he was of the evil one. The prince of this world filling a religious man's heart with hostility against God and the children of God. That is a very sad and sorry, but all too real aspect of the world. Very different from the charming world that would compete for our love and affection. In chapter five of one John, John presents another aspect of the world. Here he is pointing out to us that true love of God means loving God and doing his commandments. For this is the love of God, he says, one John five verse three, that we keep his commandments, and his commandments are not grievous. They are not a burden to us. Why are they not a burden? Because whatsoever is begotten of God overcometh the world, and this is the victory that has overcome the world, even our faith. So now it's not the world as being very attractive, stealing our love. It is not the world now as necessarily hostile to the children of God. It is the world that becomes for a believer an enormous weight, a burden. When a believer would do, wants to do the will of God. When a believer sets himself to keep the commandments of the Lord, then he finds the world as a colossal weight against his doing it. Not because the world is necessarily hostile, but because the world is not organized so as to facilitate doing the commandments of God, and if you haven't had experience of that, try entering the stock exchange in London. You'll see the world is organized to make money, but it's not organized necessarily to help a Christian stockbroker keep the commandments of God. It's a sheer dead weight that makes it very difficult. So that if a believer is going to keep the commandments of God, he will have to overcome this dead weight. That might sound a daunting task, says John. It isn't really. Keeping the commandments of God not, is not a grievous burden. Working for Pharaoh in Egypt was, of course. God's deliverance of them set them free to serve him and to keep his commandments in a way that those commandments should not be a grievous, slavish burden. And the secret of it, John says here, is our faith, faith in particular, that Jesus is the Son of God. We shall have to come back to that observation in the epistle by John, as in a moment we turn to examining the first part of the book of Exodus. Just before I do that, let me remind you of what has been familiar to you for many years. The way that Peter and other apostles, but Peter takes up the language of the Exodus event, uses it as simile and as metaphor. I say it because I am conscious of dim voices in the background, that if I am not careful, might even, uh, accuse me of being allegorical and having joined the allegorists. And I don't like joining the allegorists, not at least before lunch on Thursday mornings, you'll say. And I would want to protest vigorously that neither I nor Saint Peter, uh, is an allegorist, you'll say. But there he is, he's a good poet, isn't he, whatever else he isn't, is Peter, you'll say. God give us more theologians that can talk in such delightfully poetic language as Peter talks in. Uh, and he reminds us, as I said last night, you'll say, that we're redeemed not with corruptible things like silver and gold. We're redeemed by the blood of Christ, but the dear man can't leave it there. He has to add a simile, as of a lamb. And the simile is not there simply to make his sermon a little bit brighter than otherwise it would have been and more entertaining. The simile is meant to evoke in the mind of his readers all they know of that wonderful Passover story. He's not concerned merely with the simile. He starts using Exodus as metaphorical language, and metaphor is an allegory, gentlemen. Metaphor is metaphor. He says that, uh, we've been begotten unto a living hope by the resurrection of the Lord Jesus from the dead, unto an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for us. Why use the terminology? Well, of course, it is Exodus terminology. 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, and I shall bring you into that glorious inheritance that I covenanted with Abram to give to him and to his seed. Peter, as you may remember, opens that very epistle by addressing his fellow believers in these terms, that they are elect sojourners, elect resident aliens, do see. Elect unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus. And if we pay close attention to his terms, we shall once more hear an echo of the Exodus story, because when God brought Israel out of Egypt, he brought them very speedily to Sinai, where he offered them his special covenant, offered them a special role of being a kingdom of priests, on the condition that they obeyed and kept his covenant. When Israel had heard the terms, and the terms had been written in a book and read to them, then with one heart and mouth they responded, all that the Lord has commanded we will do and be obedient. At which point the covenant sacrifice was offered, and Moses took the blood and he sprinkled it on the altar, and he sprinkled it on book and people, and holding the basins of the blood before them, he said, and this is the blood of the covenant which God hath made with you. Elect unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ, says Peter, reminding us that we too, having been redeemed, are called to a life of obedience. Granted that the covenant upon which our blessed Lord Jesus, under which our blessed Lord Jesus, uh, calls us, is a different covenant. It is a new covenant. Yet its principles are the same, are they not? A new covenant in which he gives us his laws, not merely as precepts written up on a bit of cold stone, but a covenant according to which his laws are written on our very hearts, written there by the Holy Spirit and his gracious work of regeneration, but a covenant that is meant to lead to obedience. Hence our blessed Lord, as he passed from hand to hand the cup of wine, said, this cup is the new covenant in my blood. And following on that, uh, evoking of the atmosphere of Passover, Peter subsequently exhorts his fellow believers, does he not? That being redeemed with the blood of Christ and having an inheritance to go to, and therefore a living hope in their hearts placed there by the resurrection of our Lord from the dead. We believers must prepare ourselves to do rigorous thinking and work out the logical implications of our hope. And once more, he borrows a metaphor from the Exodus experience. Gird up the loins of your mind, says he, or at least that's what he says in the original language of Old English, in which the Bible, some people say, was written. Uh, anyway, that's what it always used to say, until these modern translation things got at it and took the metaphor out of it, because modern Englishmen have gone a little bit weak in the head and cannot cope with such metaphors, so they have to be removed, and rather, um, ordinary and somewhat poverty-stricken speech is introduced in their state, we'll say. Prepare yourself for rigorous thinking. Oh, well, that will do, I suppose, eh, for that's what it means in the end, we'll say. But Peter, being a poet, he couches it in delightful language, doesn't he, uh, we'll say. And if you knew the Exodus story, what a marvelous plus that would be, what an added time men- mention to your preaching. There were those Israelites, you'll say, and they were about to be delivered when Moses says, but you can't eat this Passover just anyhow, gentlemen. You, you must eat it roast with fire, you'll say, your staff in your hand, your shoes on your feet, and your loins girded. 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 in this fashion, all dressed up and ready for the journey. You will see, if there was anything in this Passover sacrifice at all, 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 that came to Moses and said, now look here, Moses, old thing, uh, Dulce, um, I believe in this, uh, 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 so I could go and tour the pyramid. But, you know, this other thing, this um, slogging it out across a wilderness, that doesn't appeal to me. Now, that may appeal to some people of the ascetic sort, you'll see. But I would buy into the first element of redemption, but not the second, if you don't mind. So I'll eat the Passover lamb, but not in that rather ridiculous posture with my loins girt and 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 gurt up my loins. And Moses would have said, I'm sorry, sir, but you can't have one without the other. You cannot partake of the benefits of the sacrifice of the Passover lamb and refuse to start the journey and continue the journey towards your great inheritance. More of that when we come to section three 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, uh, the story of Israel's inheritance, mm, as a metaphor for our great inheritance. That was a rather lengthy speech to come at that simple point, wasn't it? Uh, you'll say, but, uh, there we are. Uh, we have to give attention to what the theologians say, and so I must say these things. Eh, I want to use Israel's inheritance as a metaphor of our great inheritance that lies ahead. But with that, we come back to the first section now of the book of Exodus to study it in a little bit more detail. And we have in mind, in particular, the emphasis that the Gospel of John has put upon the question of the world. What is the world? And secondly, a matter that will profitably engage us is why is it so that the declaring of the name of God is 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 recorded for us in chapter uh six. And similarly for us, as we saw last night, our Lord's, in our Lord's prayer, he speaks to the father of those whom God has given him from the world, prays that the father should keep them from the world. They are not of the world, he says. Father, keep them from the evil one, that evil prince who dominates and controls the world. And he finishes his prayer with this observation. I have declared to them thy name and will declare it. What has declaring the name of God got to do with delivering people from the world? I ask it not merely as a question of, uh, biblical study. I raise it, gentlemen, as a question that we all ought to ask ourselves as preachers. Should you suspect that your own heart is growing worldly? Suppose you feel that the church in which you are, or whatever sphere it is that God has called you to minister in, that the people of God are growing worldly. How would you set about curing worldliness? Would you take the big stick of exaltation? Would you take a big whip and snap it around their heels? That's a technique that 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 our method, our ways of delivering God's people from the world, is to declare to them the name of God. In so doing, we shall follow our Lord's own example. But pray, what does it mean to declare the name of God? We start then with Exodus chapter one and, uh, verse one. Now these are the names of the sons of Israel which came into Egypt. Every man and his household came with Jacob. Verse five, Joseph was already in Egypt. Joseph died, and all his, uh, brethren and all that generation, and the children of Israel were fruitful and increased abundantly and multiplied and waxed exceeding mighty, and the land was filled with them. The remark that this tiny extended family came into Egypt with Jacob is meant, of course, immediately to turn our memories back to the records of the book of Genesis. It was Jacob who took the momentous step in Genesis forty six, recorded there. The tremendous step, the tremendous responsibility of taking the patriarchs and their families from the land of Canaan down into Egypt. It was a momentous step. It was, of course, a step that Isaac had been forbidden to take. God had told Isaac, when he succeeded to the headship of the extended family upon the death of Abraham, God had told Isaac, now stay in this land. Don't go elsewhere. Old Abraham, good old soul, but he had developed this curious habit of going down to Egypt now and again when things got tough. And God told Isaac, Isaac not to do that, but to stay in the land. Now there came a time when God's purpose demanded that the extended family be taken down to Egypt, and so Jacob was told expressly in a vision and a communication given to him explicitly that God was behind this move. He was to take the people down into Egypt, and in the same breath God ad- added he would bring them back out of Egypt to Canaan. That in turn takes us back, of course, to the plan of God for Israel that God had manifested to Abraham. Abraham, being justified, was also promised inheritance of the land of Canaan. God not only promised it, but covenanted with a covenant signed, sealed, and settled, that he would give this land to Abram and to his seed for an inheritance. 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, to be saved from the rigors of famine, to be nourished, so that when the time could come, they might leave Egypt as now a large nation and proceed to the destiny that God had for them and to 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 to plan when there arose a Pharaoh who knew not Joseph. And fearing the numbers of the Israelites, he oppressed them and tried to destroy them. He made their life a misery with hard, slavish work. He died. Another Pharaoh arose, and by this time the groans of Israel were coming up before God, and he heard them, and he heard their sighing, and he took, saw the Israelites, and he took notice of them. And the time came for him to come and deliver them. He sent Moses to tell Pharaoh, the great prince of the land, Israel is my firstborn. Let my people go that they may serve me. And Pharaoh said, nonsense, I never heard this twaddle. What do you say? God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. You don't expect me to believe that old-fashioned stuff, do you? You are idle. What are you doing with your irresponsible attitude to 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 there was any such dimension to life in the present. To be allowed to these Israelites as to worship God. All that dimension of life was not to be there for them. All those glorious, heavenly, spiritual realities that God encoded for Israel in the tabernacle that they eventually built in the wilderness, Pharaoh was denying to them. And as for the story that out there in the blue somewhere there was inher- an inheritance that God was going to give them, Pharaoh pawn- poured utter scorn on the whole business. For the Israelite in Egypt, life was to consist of work and eating your cucumber, melons and garlic, if that was your tool taste. Sleep. Sleep, eating, work, eating, sleep, work, 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 with a past. There was a future designed by God even before they came into Egypt. They stay in Egypt for practical purpose of multiplying the extended family into a nation was never intended to be anything more than temporary, as long as it lasted. It was a stepping stone from that past to that future. And what at first Moses was sent to ask was for a dimension of service of 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 that, and of course he repudiated this. And he made Egypt a prison house, a house of bondage for Israel. If that is one aspect of the world, that is, if we may take that as a thought model of one aspect of the world, it's not easy to to, it's not difficult to see, is it, what aspect of the world in which we live now has in recent, uh, years, this last century, become a very small place, hasn't it? There were days when to get from London to Paris was a matter of a couple of days' journey at least, I suppose. Paris was a long way off. Now, in one day you can be to the opposite side of the Earth if you want, or to Australia. You're a little bit more adventuresome, or can step into a space capsule and go round the whole world as many times in an hour as you can. The world is getting a very small place. But it is in the other sense that world fashions of thought make the world an exceedingly tiny place for many people. Now this world, say some, is all there is. There was no past, as far as you're concerned. There will be no future. There is no other world, no world out there. No transcendent Lord Creator, with whom even now in this life you could have spiritual fellowship. According to them, he doesn't exist. And as for a future, a future that lies ahead, an eternal inheritance, incorruptible and undefiled, that fades not a word, they stoutly deny that there is any such thing. And people live their lives in a very tiny world, limited dimensions of sleep, eat, work, Gaza and the football, and uh, holidays in Spain, and of course the cultivated arts, as Egypt, uh, cultivated them in such a glorious way. But beyond that, nothing. What a tiny world that is, and 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, in a future and a heaven when 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 even in even on the temporal? Here then is God come to deliver his people. And first, it is not a question of convincing Pharaoh. That'll be dealt with later. The man will never be convinced, he'll have to be destroyed. It was a mistake that Moses found difficult to get in, to rid his mind of. He thought Pharaoh was going to be convinced, and in particular by his speaking, and he had to be disabused by bitter experience. Pharaoh would never be convinced. He would have to be destroyed. Now, the first great objective would have to be convincing the Israelites that there was, so to speak, this other dimension and this other world. It is that that God sets himself to accomplish through Moses as he sends him to his people Israel in this first section of the book.