Exodus | Redemption

Drake Daniels continues a series called Heart of God. 

Transcript

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Uh hey, happy flag day for my Mavericks friends. Happy Cooper Flag Day, I believe. Uh they're gonna bring an NBA championship home one day. Uh hey, if you have your Bibles, go ahead and open them up to the book of Exodus. Okay, the book of Exodus is where we are going to be. Uh we are in week two of our sermon series that we started last week going through um the heart of God. Uh which which of you were here last week, you kind of found out the heart behind this heart of God series is uh that every single summer we're going to be uh taking a few weeks and we're just going to be opening up the Bible and we're going to be taking one passage from every single book, okay? So 66 books, one passage from each of those books. Uh, and what we're gonna do is just systematically go through the Bible, and whether it's a verse or a passage or a theme or an individual, we want to see the heart of God displayed in every single book. And so if you're trying to do the math, you can uh think through, man, this is gonna take 10, 12, 17 years or so to get through this book, depending upon how many weeks in the summer uh we go through it. And so by then, man, we will see multiple World Cups and the USA will win a World Cup. Okay, I'm confident it's going to happen by the time we get through this Heart of God sermon series. So um, man, yeah, this summer we are going through though the first five books of uh the Old Testament, otherwise known as the Pentateuch, Penta Five, the Pentateuch. Uh, some people just call them the books of Moses because he is the human author. And so it's important to acknowledge, at least just from the jump, that we are jumping in to book two, really, of a kind of a five-part series uh in the Bible. And so we at least just have to acknowledge that. Like the best way that I am thinking about this is just to be thinking about the Marvel universe, okay? Uh the Marvel movies, they are all connected in some type of way, and so to make sense of one is really to try and make sense of the whole. And so what we saw in the book of Genesis, or movie one per se, uh, is that we saw uh last week that God's heart for humanity. So we saw uh Adam and Eve and how God created them uh to know him and love him and walk with him. And yet we saw that Adam and Eve sinned, they disobeyed God. And so what we uh saw from there is that then uh fra sin entered into the world, entered into the cosmos, it fractured everything. And so God goes to this man named Abram, who we know as Abraham, in Genesis 12 and says, Hey, through your family I'm going to fix everything that went wrong in the world. And so the rest of Genesis really is tracing this family. And so we get introduced to uh Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, the patriarchs of the faith, and then we get introduced in Genesis 37 uh to uh Jacob's 11th son, uh Joseph, who through this crazy story rises to prominence uh in Egypt, becoming only second in command to only Pharaoh himself. And with this famine that was going on that um Abraham's family was dealing with, they ended up getting to Egypt to escape uh this famine, and they were in basically the safe haven of Egypt. And so that's how the people of God end up in Egypt, and yet Exodus opens with uh sort of this problem, okay? There is a new Pharaoh. It's been about 400 years or so since the time of Joseph, and there's a new Pharaoh who does not know Joseph and therefore does not know Joseph's God and does not like these people. Okay, this we little family of 70 people or so, now estimated 400 years later, many scholars will estimate at least about a million people of God's people are living in Egypt, and Pharaoh sees them as a threat. Okay, he does not like God's people, and he does not like how much they multiplied. He sees them as a threat, and so what does he do? He enslaves them. And because God always has and God always will hear the cries of his people, he responds, and God appears to this man named Moses and in Exodus chapter three with the burning bush, and he says, Moses, through you, I'm going to use you to let my people go free. Okay, there's just one problem is that surprisingly, when Moses brings this up to Pharaoh, Pharaoh's not really on board with that. Like, no, I'm I'm I feel pretty good about having uh you guys just be my slaves still. You guys are still gonna stay here. I'm not really on board with letting you guys go. And so what happens next is a showdown of sorts, okay, WWE style between Pharaoh and God. And this is where God is going to send plague after plague upon Egypt. All right, which just makes sense to me. Okay, God loves his people. He calls Israel his firstborn earlier in the book, and so he loves these people, he cherishes these people, he wants to defend these people. All right, so for even someone like me, someone, I'm not a fighter by any stretch of the imagination, okay? I love like lattes and air conditioning and soft pillows. Like, I'm not a fighter at all. But I'll tell you this, man, like if you come after Tatum, my firstborn, with intent to harm, man, I'm gonna run you down, I'm gonna punch you in the throat, okay? Like there's just I've seen enough Jason Bourne, I've seen enough Mission Impossible to know that's in me if needed. Right? And so uh that's what God, God is going to defend his people, and the dads in here know that, right? Like God's heart for his kids. And so we don't have time to get into the weeds of all these ten plagues, but basically these plagues that we see of God sending upon Egypt, they were really a systematic dismantling of all the little g gods of Egypt. And he says, You are not gonna mess with me, and you're not gonna mess with my kids. I'm coming after you and your gods. I'm defending my people. Okay, and so today we are jumping into the tenth plague, the climactic moment in the plague narrative, and really honestly, one of the climactic moments in all of the Old Testament. Okay, you could you could make a good argument that Exodus chapters 11, 12, and 13 or so, this Passover time, uh, is really one of the most significant events, the climactic moment in all the Old Testament outside of maybe Genesis 1 and 2. Okay, because just like for us in the New Testament, for us, we look back towards the cross as our redemption and our salvation, and amen. For these people, what they were doing in the Old Testament, they were looking back to this moment in Exodus chapter 12 to see what they were redeemed from, to see their Exodus. Okay, this is a significant moment for these people because I don't I don't know if you've thought about it, but there's there's actually another Exodus type of moment in the Old Testament. Okay, the other Exodus moment is just as big numerically as this one. The entire people uh of uh Israel were enslaved in Babylon at the time, and God just lets them go. Right? And Babylon was even further away than Egypt at this point, but uh, and they were carried off for a whole generation. But that exodus, it doesn't quite make the headlines like this one does. All right, like this one, we have the Ten Commandments movie. Okay, we have the Prince of Egypt movie about it. Am I right for the younger people? We love that movie. The soundtrack's amazing. We make movies about this moment, but we don't about the the Exodus that we see a little bit later, right? And it's just because God, all God did for that Exodus is that he just goes to the to the king, the the king of Persia, Cyrus, and he just says, Hey, you're gonna let my people go. And he just tweaked his heart, and the king was like, Yeah, that sounds good. All right, I'll let the people go back. Right? It wasn't a very climactic moment, that exodus. It wasn't a very climactic moment. God didn't have to send plague after plague, he didn't do all these like incredible things through there. And so, why didn't God just do that here? Well, God could have easily done that, he has enough power, his arm is not too short to save. He could easily have done that in this moment right here. But what I think, why all the drama, why is he doing it this way, is here's what we need to see in this moment is that God, he isn't just trying to get his people out of Egypt. Okay, what God was doing is he's actually teaching them and he's teaching us something about how he saves. Okay, you see, in many ways, Israel's story is our story that God is going to make a big moment, a big deal of this story, of this moment, because in it we are supposed to see our own story. You see, in this moment, God is actually peeling back the curtain so that we can see how redemption actually works. We're gonna see what the Passover means for these people, and ultimately, Passover is gonna teach us three things about God's saving power. Here's what we're gonna see today, as we are going to see what we are redeemed from, what we are redeemed by, and ultimately we're gonna see what we are redeemed to. What we're redeemed from, by, and to. But let's look at the first one. What we are redeemed from. Let's look at the tenth plague. Actually, if you're in Exodus 12, go back just quickly to Exodus chapter 11, verses 4 and 6. That's where we're gonna begin this morning. Exodus 11, 4 and 6 says this. So Moses said, This is what the Lord says. About midnight I will go throughout Egypt, and every firstborn male in the land of Egypt will die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on his throne, to the firstborn of the servant girl who is at the grindstone, as well as every firstborn of the livestock. Then there will be a great cry of anguish throughout all the land of Egypt, such as never was before or ever will be again. Okay, so God sets up this Passover type of moment in chapter 11, and we need to see what is God doing? What is he trying to show us in this moment? Okay, he's trying to show these people then and us now what we are redeemed from, and he's teaching us some really crucial things that is happening in chapter 11. And the first thing that we see is this is that death is coming to everyone. Okay, death is coming to everyone. You see, if you read the text really quickly, you'll realize that God isn't just talking about one type of person here. Okay, we see it. This is going to impact Pharaoh's own son, this is going to impact the servant girl, right? Everyone, rich, poor, famous, unknown, blue-collar, white-collar, it doesn't matter. Everyone who is in the land of Egypt will experience this plague of death. Okay, and you might be thinking, well, man, why is God picking on the firstborn then? Like, how many firstborn sons are out here? Anybody else? Anybody else a firstborn son? Yes. Okay, this would have been a bad night for us, guys. Okay? Like, you might so you might be thinking, man, how is it fair that the firstborn sons take the fall for all of Egypt? Well, that's a great question. Let me just answer a few things really quickly. Is that this plague, the death of the firstborn son, is going to be a repayment of sorts in many ways. Okay, we we had to skip over it, but earlier in Exodus, Pharaoh and the rest of Egypt basically tried to attempt this national genocide of all the Hebrew boys by throwing them in the Nile River. And so this was almost God's way of saying, hey, I know what happened. You don't get away with it, you don't, you don't go after my people. Okay, but there was something else at play here, is that firstborn sons, they represented in those days really the identity of the family. Okay, all the hopes and the dreams of the family. Really, the family was the firstborn. Okay, he was the family in many ways. And so God picking the firstborn here, this wasn't arbitrary. Like if this happened again, it wasn't like if this happened again, God wouldn't just be like, you know what? Let's go after the youngest. They always get away with anything, anyways, you know? No, he he wouldn't do that. This wasn't random. Okay, the firstborn is a representative of the entire family. And so to pronounce death on the firstborn is really to bring everyone under the umbrella of the firstborn, the representative of the family, and in one moment show, hey, death is coming to everyone. Okay, and that seems harsh. We don't like that. That I don't like that part of the story, right? But the second thing that we need to see at this moment is that not only is death coming to everyone, but everyone is guilty. Okay, death is coming to everyone, but everyone is also guilty. See, it wasn't just Pharaoh in this moment who was guilty. No, every single person was guilty. That all of Egypt, every single person in some way had dismissed God, had gone against him, whether it was worshiping other gods in Egypt or even just participating in the enslavement of God's people. But it wasn't just Egypt, it was also all of Israel as well. Okay, Israel's not going to be able to escape this either, because this flushes itself out more in chapter 12, but we're gonna see that Israel has participated in many of the same sins as Egypt. And so God is gonna be going to Israel and saying, Hey, you've also dismissed me, you've also worshipped other gods. There's nobody innocent, every single person is guilty. Okay, because here's what's interesting. God shows how every single person is guilty, because if you notice the plague the plague narrative is that so much of the plagues, they were actually directed only towards Egypt. Okay, if you if you think about um the fourth plague, which with a bunch of flies, the flies, they are only going uh into uh the Egyptian neighborhoods, okay, completely going uh around Israel's neighborhoods at this point. Or you or you think about the hailstones in the seventh plague, and same thing, right? Israel is experiencing blue skies and sunshine, and then like right across the street, the Egyptians are experiencing hailstone after hailstone after hailstone. Same thing with the ninth plague. But with this plague, the slaying of the firstborn, God says, Hey, this one's going to apply equally to everyone. Why? Why does this plague focus on both the Jew and the Egyptian alike? Well, it's because of this, we're seeing a universal truth here. This wasn't just true for them, but it's true for everyone. Is that the debt of sin was not something only the Egyptians owed to God, is that the Israelites were guilty of much of the same sins as the Egyptians. Okay, and so the Bible is going to make this abundantly clear that in Romans 3 23, for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Okay, and so see the problem in this moment, it wasn't nationality. Okay, that's why the question on the table is it isn't, are you Egyptian? No, the question on the table for everyone is how do we stand before a holy and righteous God when we're guilty? That's what's going on here in this moment, and we got to wrestle with that too. Okay, because just like in Exodus, every single person in this room is guilty. And we don't like that we're guilty. It's like me, no, I'm not guilty. Don't like that word, don't like what that does. Like occasionally I'll do some things wrong. We just don't like that. And and who who judges the standard of guilty, anyways? By what standard? All right, well, I love what Russian author Alexander Soltsenitsyn said. It's an odd name. But he said it like this if only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and they were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. It's like, wouldn't that be great? Like all the evil people over there, they're doing these clear bad deeds. Let's just get rid of them from society. Like, we we'd all agree to that. That sounds amazing. Get rid of those people. But then he said, But the dividing line between good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being, and it lives in me. And Alexander Solzanitsyn is just saying what the Bible has said for so long, and what the Bible tells so much of, because we see the first three chapters in the book of Romans, it's going to go to great lengths to tell us that every single person is guilty. Romans 3, all have sinned. Romans 2 is talking about how even the Jewish people, the one those who were left with the oracles of God, those who were religious in many ways, still sinners. Uh Romans 1, the pagans are sinners. Uh Isaiah, the book of Isaiah is going to say how even our best deeds are like filthy rags. Jesus is going to say in the gospels that no one is good except God alone. And so if if God's goodness, if perfection was on the ring of a ladder up to God, we wouldn't even reach the first ring of the ladder. We wouldn't reach it. And God's standards, we wouldn't even reach it. And so the Bible takes what we are seeing in this moment, these two ideas that we are all guilty and death is coming, and it combines them. It combines them. Just says the wages of sin is death. And so we have to know what we are redeemed from, that death is coming to everyone guilty, and everyone is guilty, and so judgment is coming. And this is a terrible heart of God sermon series right now. I don't like this message. This message is just is depressing. But here's the gray part, and this is where our story begins to turn. Because the God who brings judgment is also providing the way of escape. Okay, don't miss that. The same God who is announcing judgment is the same God offering and providing salvation and redemption. Okay, because here's what we are about to see. The turn in this moment is that the way to escape death. Death is coming. The way to escape death is actually through death. The way to escape death is through death. And so look at chapter 12. Here's the big moment. Here's what we've been waiting for. Chapter 12. It says this. Verse 1. The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, This month is to be the beginning of months for you. It is the first month of your year. God is literally rewriting the entire calendar for them based off of this event. Verse 3 Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month they must each select an animal of the flock according to their father's family, one animal per family. If the household is too small for a whole animal, that person and the neighbor nearest his house are to select one based on the combined number of people. You should apportion the animal according to what each will eat. You must have an unblemished animal, a year old. You may take it from either the sheep or the goats. You are to keep it until the fourteenth day of this month. Then the whole assembly of the community of Israel will slaughter the animals at twilight. They must take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses where they eat them. So this is what God is telling Israel to do right here. He is saying, Hey, I need you to take an unblemished, pure lamb in the prime of its life, and I need you to kill it. I need you to drain the blood, and I need you to put the blood on the doorpost of your house. And that's what he's telling Israel to do. Here's what God is going to do. Jump down to verse twelve. This is God, He's saying, I will pass through the land of Egypt on that night and strike every firstborn male in the land of Egypt, both people and animals. I am the Lord, I will execute judgments against all the gods of Egypt. The blood on the houses where you are staying will be a distinguishing mark for you that when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No plague will be among you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt. So God, he is predicting what he is going to do, but then he executes it. Let's see it down, verse 29. Now at midnight the Lord struck every firstborn male in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne, to the firstborn of the prisoner who was in the dungeon, and every firstborn of the livestock. During the night, Pharaoh got up, he along with all his officials and all the Egyptians, and there was a loud wailing throughout Egypt, because there wasn't a house without someone dead. The Passover. And it's interesting, some different translations at the end, it won't say there wasn't a house without someone dead, it'll say someone or something. That there wasn't a house in Egypt without someone or something dead. And what it's saying is either there was a lamb dead on a table or there was a firstborn son dead on a bed. And how did God determine it? What would like what was going on here? How would like when the destroyer comes through Egypt, how is he going to determine it? Is he going to look inside every single house and see who's worthy? Is he going to try and divide it economically? Like, do you have a little bit more money you can actually provide some value for us? Is he going to determine it politically? No. Well, maybe morally, then, like, right? Like maybe maybe if I'm a little bit better of a person, maybe if our house here in Egypt, maybe if we're a little bit better of a house than the houses around us, then the destroyer won't actually strike us. No, the destroyer will only look for the blood of the lamb. That you get under the banner of the blood of the lamb by faith in your house, and you will be passed over. That you won't have to experience it. Every single house with the blood on the doorpost will be passed over, will be saved, and every single one without it will come under the curse of death. There is only one way. There is only one way in this moment to be saved, and people don't like that. Okay, we we don't like that in general, right? Like when you talk to people about Jesus and Christianity, people are fine in general with this, like, yeah, I'm I'm fine with Jesus, I'm fine with Christianity, until you bring up this idea of the exclusivity of Jesus. That Jesus, yes, he is loving, he is forgiving, he welcomes anyone to the come to the table, but there is only one way to the Father. And people don't like that. As soon as you start making exclusive claims, people don't like it. Okay, there was an old um Baptist preacher named Adrian Rogers who went on Larry King Live. Is there anybody in here who actually watched Larry King Live? Multi-generational. Come on, Jim, let's go. This is great. Uh, and and he went on Larry King Live, and uh Larry was trying to press in on this idea about the exclusivity of Jesus. And so Larry says, Pastor Rogers, are you saying that good Muslims and good Jews won't go to heaven unless they place their faith in Jesus? And Pastor Rogers just looks at him and he says, Larry, my own kids won't get to heaven unless they place their faith and repent and put their faith in Jesus. Even my own kids. What is he saying? That there's only one way to the Father. What Jesus had already said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. Which maybe for some of us, that idea of there's only one way that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and only the blood of a substitute can save us. Maybe for some of us that feels extreme. Like, isn't God all powerful and isn't he all loving? Can't he just wave this magic wand and all of us will be forgiven? Like, why does he have to do all of this? And I thought you said that God was fully loving. Like, what's going on here? This doesn't seem like a loving story. Well, yes, God is absolutely fully loving, but we can't maximize one attribute of God at the expense of another. Because while God is fully loving, he is also fully just, and unless he was fully just, he actually wouldn't be fully loving either. See, I think I think Tim Keller does the best job at explaining this because he brings together both the love and the justice of God when he points out this fact is that forgiveness, forgiveness always involves the absorption of debt. Okay, forgiveness always involves some sort of the absorption of debt. Like if you come up to me after this sermon and you were like, Drake, that sermon stunk, and I didn't like it at all. In fact, I'm gonna break your iPad as a result. Here's what could happen there's two options either I could make you pay for it, which would feel like a good thing, or I could. To forgive you and just say, you know what, don't worry about it. I'll take it. Like you don't have to worry about it, which I don't know if I'm godly enough to do. Don't try it afterwards, please. But but see, here's the deal. Even if you came up to me afterwards, you break my iPad, and I say, you know what, don't worry about it. There is still a debt that has to be absorbed of some sort, right? Because even if you aren't paying for the debt, I'm gonna have to, because either I will not have an iPad anymore, or I'm gonna have to use my own money to buy an iPad. But either way, because I'm forgiving you, I'm absorbing the cost of your debt, of your sin in that in that moment, right? That's what forgiveness is, is you are absorbing the cost for someone else's sin. Someone else always pay. And the story of the Bible is that God has been teaching this truth to his people over and over and over again. Okay, you think about it. In the Garden of Eden, again, Adam and Eve, they were created to walk with God and love him and be in a relationship with him. And when they severed a connection with God, God had said, If you do this, surely you will die. And yet what happens when they do that is that God comes to them and does he kill them? No. He sacrifices an animal for them on their behalf and then covers their nakedness with that animal. And then you see it again a few chapters later in uh in Genesis where Abraham, God asks Abraham to offer up his only son Isaac, and Abraham trying to be obedient as he can, he is willing to do it. He's willing to go on the mountain and offer up his own firstborn son, and as he's about to do it, God says, No, no, no, no, no, no. Like uh child sacrifice is not going to happen in my kingdom. That doesn't happen. I'm gonna provide a way out for you. And what do they see? They see a ram, they see a lamb caught in the thicket. Someone else is going to pay for that. We get to this moment in Exodus chapter 12, and what is happening? You see an innocent, spotless lamb die at the expense of the sins of other people, so that when this animal dies, the people will walk free if they place their faith in this symbol of the blood of the lamb. And God is going to, in the next chapter, say, Hey, I need you to do this every single year so that you can physically see, hey, the innocent will pay so that the guilty can actually go free through faith in him. And then we make it to the book of Isaiah, the prophet Isaiah, and he's looking forward to the day where this man who is going to be like a lamb comes, that this man will be like a lamb, like a lamb led to the slaughter, and by faith in this man, this man is going to be pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities, on the chastisement of him will actually bring us peace, and by his wounds we will be healed. Okay, then you fast forward to the New Testament, and all of a sudden this weird guy named John the Baptist who eats honey and locusts, and he's just preaching about the kingdom of God, and he's saying, Hey, the kingdom of God is near. Like God is about to come back and make everything right again. And as he's preaching this message, he sees Jesus walking by, and all of a sudden, what did he say? He says, Behold, the what? The Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. He's like the lamb that we saw back in Exodus 12, the lamb that we keep sacrificing every single year, that lamb, the ultimate lamb, he's here. He's here. He's about to make everyone, everything right, that every sacrifice that we had made is pointing to him. Okay, and the Bible, the Bible has gone to great lengths to tell us that in Jesus' final moments of his life. In fact, if you read the book of Luke, all of Luke, it says that he pointed his face towards Jerusalem. And for like the last half of Luke, we just see Jesus set his face towards Jerusalem, and he's going to get their win on the Passover. And he's going to come on the Passover. And for 1,500 years, Jewish families had sat around a table remembering Exodus chapter 12, that every year, every generation, every single Passover was remembering the lamb. They were remembering the sacrifice, they were remembering the blood. And now Jesus is with his disciples at this own Passover meal. And we had skipped this part in chapter 12, but the Israelites in this Passover meal, what they were supposed to do was they were actually supposed to roast the lamb in a certain type of way, and they were supposed to take the lamb and ingest it and eat it. And it's interesting, the gospel writers, they write a lot about the Passover, but they never mention anything about the disciples and Jesus actually eating a lamb on that night. Okay, and this is totally conjecture, but I think it's probably because some commentators have pointed out that most likely the gospel writers were trying to get this fact ingrained in our heads that the Passover lamb on that night, it wasn't going to be on the table, it was presiding over the table. Because what Jesus was doing in this moment is he was taking this bread which for 1,500 years at this Passover meal they would have held up, and he said, This is the bread of our affliction in Egypt. But that's not what Jesus says on that night. What Jesus said on that night is this is my body about to be broken for you. Do this for the forgiveness of your sins. Do this in remembrance of me. And he takes and he takes uh the cup and he says, This is the cup of the new covenant covenant, do this in remembrance of me. You see, guys, Jesus, he did not come just to be a good teacher. He did not come to be a good healer, he did not give us that option to only be those things. He came to be the substitute. See, because a few hours later he would go to the cross, and the cross is the ultimate picture of forgiveness. Because what we talked about before, what is it? Forgiveness is absorbing the cost of someone else's sin. And that's what Jesus did on the cross. Rather than us paying for our own sin, forgiveness looks like Jesus absorbing the cost for us. Okay, see, here's the reality. It's a sobering reality, but there's only two ways that you can pay for your sins. Either you are going to pay for your sins by being eternally separated from God in hell, or you can pay for your sins by placing your faith in Jesus, and he took the punishment of your sins for you. Those are the only two ways. Either you are going to stand before God on your own merit, and it's not going to be good, or you are going to stand before God under the blood of the Lamb. Those are the only two options for us. And that's what Passover is teaching us is that God is a great king who provides a way out. We are redeemed by the blood of the Lamb. Okay, and there's one more thing that we need to see. It'd be easy to stop here, but the Passover, it wasn't just this climactic event in itself. No, the Passover always had a purpose. Okay, there was always a purpose behind the Passover for the Israelites and for us. And we need just to see not just what we're we were redeemed from and by, but we also need to see what we were redeemed to. What are we redeemed to? You see, the goal was never simply just freedom, the goal was always fellowship. The goal was always worship of God. The goal was fellowship with God. And you see that in the very first confrontation between Moses and Pharaoh. Okay, it should be up on the screen, but this is the very first confrontation between Moses and Pharaoh, Exodus 5.1, it says this. Later, Moses and Aaron went in and said to Pharaoh, This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says, Let my people go so that they may hold a festival for me in the wilderness. Okay, Exodus 7.16 says this. Guys, we're not going to go every single through every single one, but ten times in this plug narrative, five chapters, ten times, we see God tell Pharaoh the same thing, let my people go so that they may worship me. It's not just let my people go. No, it's let my people go so that they may worship thing. And so the last thing that we need to see this morning is not just what we are redeemed from or what we are redeemed by, it is what we are redeemed to. You see, we've been redeemed to something. And so let me just say this to two groups of people here. Is the first one is for any non-believers in the room, I just want to say this. I want to point out this is that Christians, the Christians in the room, we're not people who have just ascribed to the teachings of Jesus. We're not just ones who think that he's a good moral teacher and we're gonna work really hard to try and ascribe to this, just like he's equal to like Gandhi or some other type of religious system. No, we're not saying that. What we are saying, especially from this passage in Exodus chapter 12, the Christians in the room are those who have says, I am guilty. I am guilty. I know that death is coming. I know that I do not deserve freedom, but by but by faith and the blood of the Lamb, I can actually go free. The Christian is the one who says, I know I deserve punishment for my sins, but I'm trusting in the blood of Jesus to save me. And so I just I beg anyone who is not a believer in the room, anyone who's not a Christian to consider a God who is just enough and uh to punish evil and loving enough to actually take the punishment. Okay, because Jesus, he is the just one and he is the justifier. That is our king. See, one of my favorite parts of the story, it says that after the Passover, and as Israel was leaving Egypt, it says this in chapter 12, verse 38. It says, A mixed multitude also went up with them. A mixed multitude. You know what that means? It means that a bunch of Egyptians, too. A bunch of Egyptians followed these Israelites, that a bunch of Egyptians heard this, saw this, saw an amazing king, saw a God that would do that type of thing, a God who could save, and they said, I want that. I'm gonna follow these Israelites, because that king, that king is worthy of my worship. You see, because anyone who applies the blood of the Lamb, not anymore to a doorpost of their home, but actually applies it to the to their heart, can be saved. It is for anyone. God's arm is not too short to save. Jesus can save anyone, and to follow a king like that is worthy of our worship. And man, when you realize what you've been saved from and what you've been saved by, man, you can see that worship is the only natural response to that type of king. And so that's to the non-believers, but to the Christians in the room, here's what I'd say. What are we redeemed to? Two things, really quickly, is this. Number one, don't stay in Egypt. Don't stay in Egypt, and number two, be ready to move. Okay, don't stay in Egypt and be ready to move for the first one. Christians, don't stay in Egypt. And here's what I mean is that God, He didn't redeem Israel so that they could do whatever they wanted. No, he redeemed them so that they could belong to Him. You see, Pharaoh for those 400 years was saying, Hey, I need you to serve me, but God is saying, Hey, I'm freeing you. It's nothing, no cost to you. I'm freeing you, but now you should come and serve and worship me. Right? Israel wasn't redeemed so that they could belong to themselves. Israel was redeemed so that they could belong to God. You see, many of us, I think, believe this message that God has saved us and set us free, but we still live as slaves in so many ways, right? Like we still want to live in Egypt, like knowing that we are free from condemnation. Romans 8:1, there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ, but still so much of us are defined by our past sins and our present hurts and our past idols. And man, I think the tragedy for many Christians is that we've been redeemed from Egypt, but we keep looking back towards Egypt. Right? Like all these Israelites, they get free, and what do they do? Man, maybe Egypt, maybe it was better for us in Egypt. And I just think that that's so many of us is that we keep looking back towards our old life, that we've been set free from sin, but we still flirt with it in so many ways. That we've been rescued from these dark things of our past, but we still look back to them and try to live in them. Right? We we we've been bought out, we've been bought with a price, but our part of our heart still wants to go back. We've experienced what they say is like the holiday at the sea, but we still go and keep going back to the mud pies. And the call of Exodus is don't go back. Don't go back, you've been set free. So that's number one. But number two is this is be prepared to move. Okay, be prepared to move. Let me one more time, let me go back to the Passover meal, verse 11. This is God telling them how they should actually eat the Passover meal. And here he says in verse 11 here's how you must eat it. You must be dressed for travel, your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand. You are to eat it in a hurry. It is the Lord's Passover. Okay, the Passover meal. And God is telling them what to wear. Why is he doing that? Well, he's saying, guys, eat with your shoes on, eat with a staff in your hand, eat ready to move. Why? Because Israel, they weren't just free just to do nothing. No, Israel was headed towards the promised land, that God was taking them somewhere, forming them into some type of people, that he was going to lead them, and they were called to follow. And they were to eat unleavened bread. That was because unleavened bread, it didn't have time to rise. There was a sense of urgency in them. Don't wait for the bread to rise. We got to go. God is on the move. Are you coming with me? Guys, and I think there should be that type of, there was an urgency for them. There should be that type of urgency in us. That Israel, yes, they were headed to the promised land. Guess where we're headed? We are called to head towards Christ-likeness. We're called to head towards holiness, right? Towards holiness, towards mission, towards obedience, towards eternity. That so many of us, I think that we can just get caught up in this almost like sort of spiritual slumber, and we don't realize, man, eternity's at stake. Like life is short, death is certain, and what we do with our lives is going to impact eternity. Okay, I love what C.T. Studd said. Only when life will soon be passed, only what's done for Christ shall last. There is, man, there's a call to us to wake up from this spiritual slumber and realize, man, I bet like average, we got 75, 80 years in this life. And what we do right now is going to matter for eternity. The question is, are we ready to move? Are we ready to follow God in whatever areas he would call us to? Like there should be an urgency in us. Like God is freeing us absolutely. We have this settled confidence and the assurance of our salvation and love and goodness and the grace of God. But let's go, right? Like not, let's not just stay behind in Egypt. No, we're going somewhere. And I want King's Church to be a place where we're going somewhere. We're trying to reach the people around here. We're trying to reach our campuses. We're trying to reach Denton. So much is at stake here. Like, I don't want us to settle for this like, yes, Jesus has saved me. And, you know, I'm just gonna be content to settle for that. No, I want the type of salvation that's gonna say, man, let's go. Let's be a people who are ready to move, ready to follow God anywhere. Does that mean on a church plant? Maybe. Does that mean going overseas with a long-term missionary? Maybe. Does that mean just going across the street and sharing a meal with our neighbors? Maybe. Does it mean sharing the gospel with some of our coworkers? Man, I hope so. Does it mean lifting our eyes just to see, man, there's so much going on that we are called to be people of the light? We know what's happening in eternity right now. We know that this is not just the physical realm. It's not just all that we have. We are fighting for eternity right now. Guys, are we on the move? There is a sense of urgency here in this passage. Be ready to move. Do you have a staff in your hand? Do you have shoes on your feet? Are you ready to go and move towards Christ-likeness and holiness for the sake of the gospel and for the sake of the people around you? That is what we see at the very end of Exodus. Exodus. It's a story of redemption. We're going to have one word with every single one last week. Genesis, humanity, this week, redemption. That's what Exodus shows us. What we are redeemed by, what we are redeemed from, and ultimately what we are redeemed to. Let's be a people who remember that. And we're going to remember that even right now because we're about to take communion together. And so the band is about to come up. I'm going to pray for us to remember this moment, and then we're going to take communion together. Well, Lord, I'm so thankful for the book of Exodus. I'm thankful for your word, how sweet it is. And Lord, I'm thankful for the Passover. I'm thankful for the story, what it still means to us today. And Lord, I do pray, even in this moment, as we're entering into communion, I pray that this would be a time of reflection. To remember what you did for us, not just an unblemished lamb in Exodus chapter 12, but the true, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. And so, Jesus, we're so thankful that you would come and you would save us. That you would come and you would redeem us. That the gospel is so free, that the gospel's free to us because it came at a cost for you, that you absorb the penalty of our sin. You were the Lamb, so that we could go free. So, Lord, even right now in this moment, would you help us to think through maybe there's people in the room who are not yet believers. And Lord, I pray, pray even right now that you would make it clear that the way to salvation is not through working harder. It's not through being a better person, it's not through doing all these external deeds. Because we know that the wages of sin is death, that all of us have fallen short of the glory of God. And so, Lord, in this moment, would you just press upon how sure the blood of the Lamb is? And Lord, for those who are believers in the room, would you show us where we might still be living in Egypt? Maybe what sins we keep going back to and looking back to, and what sins we can even look at, things in our life that we think maybe are better than you. Lord, would you give us great assurance that the blood of the Lamb, you cover us? There's no condemnation for those who are in Christ. And then Lord, I do pray that you would give us a sense of urgency. Life is short, death is certain. Lord, I want to make an impact for you. That you didn't just call us just for freedom. You called us to yourself, for service and worship to you. So, Lord, help us to do that. In your name we pray. In Jesus' name. Amen.