SPEAKER_00: The Book of Exodus, a sermon series by Reverend Stephen R.
SPEAKER_00: Martins, is brought to you by Sevilla Chapel.
SPEAKER_00: Journey through one of Scripture's most foundational books as we explore God's deliverance of his people from bondage in Egypt, his covenant faithfulness, and the unfolding story of redemption that ultimately points us to Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: As many of you know, Pastor Lawrence has been working our way through the letter to the Ephesians by the Apostle Paul the past couple of weeks.
SPEAKER_01: And I think it'd be accurate to say we've been savoring every word of Paul's theological exposition.
SPEAKER_01: There's a lot there to understand, to delve into.
SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of overlap, there's a lot of repetition, but it's good.
SPEAKER_01: Paul's intention was to make clear the very revelations he had received by the Holy Spirit according to his understanding of the scriptures.
SPEAKER_01: This morning, however, we've recently, every time I've been here at the pulpit, I've led you through the book of Jonah, and we've completed that book a couple of weeks ago.
SPEAKER_01: And this morning we're beginning a new series.
SPEAKER_01: We're turning the clock back several years in biblical history.
SPEAKER_01: So if we were in Jonah, we're going further back than that in the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_01: We're turning several pages back, several books, back to the second book of the Bible, the second book of the Pentateuch, the second book of the Torah, the book of Exodus.
SPEAKER_01: And Exodus is a most marvelous book because it not only recounts a great story that almost everyone knows, but it also provides much of the foundation from which we can fully understand the gospel.
SPEAKER_01: A believer who knows the gospel only as it is revealed and preached in the New Testament, though it is more than sufficient for salvation, they in truth only know the gospel partially.
SPEAKER_01: And a reading of God's first great redemptive act in the book of Exodus provides us both with a fuller knowledge of the gospel and of our Lord Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And I believe there is much value in understanding that.
SPEAKER_01: Because as we look at the text, as we look at the gospel accounts, and we were to say, if all we received were the gospel accounts, would we have a full understanding of the gospel?
SPEAKER_01: We would probably say, no, not quite.
SPEAKER_01: There's a lot here that tends to turn and point towards the old, the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_01: And if we don't have a full understanding of the old, it's difficult for us to have a full understanding of the new.
SPEAKER_01: And that is why it's important for us as believers to study Scripture from the beginning to the end, for the Old and the New.
SPEAKER_01: There's a movement amongst the Christian community of simply unhinging ourselves from the Old Testament, from not turning our eye towards that at all, saying that it's irrelevant or not important.
SPEAKER_01: But no, God, in his sovereign will reveal to us progressively from Genesis to Revelation His will.
SPEAKER_01: And when we look at the old, we are to interpret it under the light of the new.
SPEAKER_01: Now, having said that, um, I don't intend to preach through all 40 chapters of the book of Exodus without breaks or intervals.
SPEAKER_01: I know some of you are kind of wondering, this is gonna be a long time.
SPEAKER_01: Well, I actually I actually plan first to exposit chapters one through fourteen as the first major section of the book, and then we'll visit other portions of scripture before returning again to it, uh, because a 40 chapter book would actually take us several years to work through, and there are other portions of scripture that I'd like to open before you.
SPEAKER_01: I know many of you remember how long it took us to study the gospel according to Matthew.
SPEAKER_01: I think it was almost three years.
SPEAKER_01: Exodus 2 will take us much time, if not more, but we're gonna make it more bearable for you, so to speak, by visiting other portions of Scripture along the way while we chew and digest what has already been served before us.
SPEAKER_01: Well, this morning I want to provide an introduction to the book of Exodus before we begin expositing the first chapter, because we do need to understand its context, its background, its historicity.
SPEAKER_01: Exodus may be the second book of the Bible, but it is just as foundational as the book of Genesis, the first book.
SPEAKER_01: For while in Genesis we learn of the creation of the world, the creation of the universe by the word and will of God, in the book of Exodus we learn of the rise of a nation that God willed to call his own.
SPEAKER_01: Another word that might be used to describe the book of Exodus is the word epic.
SPEAKER_01: The Exodus is an epic.
SPEAKER_01: Now, generally, an epic can refer to a long heroic poem.
SPEAKER_01: You think about Homer's Iliad and the Odyssey and perhaps even Paradise Lost by Milton.
SPEAKER_01: An epic could be a grand story, it can be even a large body of work.
SPEAKER_01: But in this particular case, it is a grand story, a massive story, a true to life grand story.
SPEAKER_01: And by that I mean that it's also a real history.
SPEAKER_01: It's not some sort of myth, it's not a legend that has been exaggerated over the centuries.
SPEAKER_01: No, it's real history, just as the opening chapters of Genesis are real history.
SPEAKER_01: And this story takes place in Egypt, under the shadows, you could say, of the Great Pyramid, so to speak, and in close proximity to, if not within, the Nile Delta.
SPEAKER_01: And it's the story of two great nations.
SPEAKER_01: You have the nation of Israel, although not yet recognized as a nation-state because they're not in their own territory, so to speak, that is in a future time.
SPEAKER_01: And then we have Egypt.
SPEAKER_01: We have a story here that's these two great nations are led by two great men, historically speaking, that is.
SPEAKER_01: You have Moses and you have Pharaoh.
SPEAKER_01: The one is a svific hero, a liberator, so to speak, the other a belligerent and enslaving villain.
SPEAKER_01: And in this story, we encounter all the familiar scenes known to us through the recounted tales of the Jews and through our own Western culture, the baby hidden and cast away in a basket, the burning bush from which God speaks to Moses, the river turning to blood, the numerous plagues that afflicted Egypt, the angel of death visiting every home to take the life of the firstborn, except for those whom it passed over, the crossing of the Red Sea, or perhaps the Reed Sea, we'll discuss that when we get there.
SPEAKER_01: The manna in the wilderness, the water that sprang from a rock, not once, but twice, and the thunder and lightning upon Mount Sinai, and of course, the Ten Commandments.
SPEAKER_01: There's more.
SPEAKER_01: Much more, of course, but all of this is revealed or accounted for us in the book of Exodus.
SPEAKER_01: One might ask, why the name Exodus?
SPEAKER_01: Why the name Exodus?
SPEAKER_01: And how did the title first come about?
SPEAKER_01: Well, the term originates from the expression that Israel had gone out of the land of Egypt in Exodus chapter 19, verse 1.
SPEAKER_01: That's why we read that this morning.
SPEAKER_01: When the Hebrew scriptures were translated into the Greek in the centuries before Christ, to think of the Septuagint, the expression for going out, going out from Egypt, going out was rendered with the Greek word exodus.
SPEAKER_01: Exodus.
SPEAKER_01: And so we adopted the term, the name uh Exodus.
SPEAKER_01: Eventually, the word came to be used as the title for the entire book.
SPEAKER_01: And what the title communicates then is that this is a story of going out.
SPEAKER_01: It's a story of departure.
SPEAKER_01: It's an epic that recounts deliverance from slavery unto salvation.
SPEAKER_01: There is a going out from slavery into liberty, into salvation.
SPEAKER_01: Now, there are a few things we need to consider as we approach the book of Exodus.
SPEAKER_01: Firstly, we need to recognize Exodus not simply as one of many epics in the history of ancient literature.
SPEAKER_01: I've already referenced Homer's Iliad and the Odyssey and so forth, and you'd be saying, Oh, yeah, these stories, you know, they're not real, they're not historical, but they do share quite a lot about the culture of the in the time in which they were written.
SPEAKER_01: No, these are not just, well, you know, Exodus is not just one epic out of many.
SPEAKER_01: It's a biblical epic.
SPEAKER_01: That's to say, it's God's inspired word, God's breathed-out word.
SPEAKER_01: It's authoritative, it's living.
SPEAKER_01: And this is important for us to get right at the very outset because Exodus, just like the rest of the Pentateuch, which is the five first five books of the law, Genesis through Deuteronomy, Exodus has been subjected to a lot of scholarly scrutiny.
SPEAKER_01: You might reference Exodus in public, and people say, I know this story mainly because of the movies that I've seen or the pop culture references and so forth, or just because I may know a Jewish neighbor and whatnot.
SPEAKER_01: But historically speaking, Exodus has significant problems, they would say.
SPEAKER_01: And that is the public consensus.
SPEAKER_01: When I first studied uh survey of the Old Testament at Tyndale University, this was many, many years back, I had a professor by the name of Dr.
SPEAKER_01: Driver.
SPEAKER_01: And he taught us, I remember that, I was a freshman, had never been exposed before to liberal theology, had no idea what to expect.
SPEAKER_01: I came from, admittedly, a charismatic background, which is very strong and upholding the authority of God's word, though there were other shortcomings.
SPEAKER_01: But that was one particular strength was really embracing the authority of God's word and not questioning its integrity.
SPEAKER_01: And being a freshman there, he taught us that Exodus, together with the rest of the Torah, from Genesis to Deuteronomy, should be understood as a collection of writings composed by different authors and later cobbled together and edited together.
SPEAKER_01: So, more specifically, the theory he taught proposed four distinct source documents, commonly labeled JEDP.
SPEAKER_01: J meant Yahweh.
SPEAKER_01: It uses the divine name Yahweh, portrays God in sort of anthropomorphic terms, and it's thought to have originated in the southern kingdom of Judah around the 10th century BCE.
SPEAKER_01: East stood for Eloist or Elohist.
SPEAKER_01: It uses the divine name of Elohim that emphasizes dreams and prophets, and it's thought to have originated the northern kingdom of Israel around the 8th century BCE.
SPEAKER_01: And then you had the Deuteronomist, which emphasizes centralized worship and covenant obedience.
SPEAKER_01: And then you had the priestly, and that emphasizes priestly concerns and ritual purity and genealogies, and this is more so dated to the Babylonian exile and post-exilic period, whereas the Deuteronomist is more the 7th century BCE.
SPEAKER_01: All in all, it comes down to this.
SPEAKER_01: Moses did not write the book of Exodus, nor did he write the entirety of the Torah.
SPEAKER_01: And this theory is known as the documentary hypothesis.
SPEAKER_01: So it totally just completely rejects Moses as the author of Exodus and dates its composition to much later.
SPEAKER_01: Now, there is a slight hint of truth here in that it is probably true that Moses did not sit down and write all five books of the law in a single sitting.
SPEAKER_01: Admittedly.
SPEAKER_01: And I don't think any one of us would ever try to sit down and write five books in a single sitting.
SPEAKER_01: He most certainly wrote, but portions of the Torah in which Moses is referred to in the third person may have been written by other scribes, but under Moses.
SPEAKER_01: Under Moses' supervision.
SPEAKER_01: In other words, whether or not Moses himself penned every single written word, the Torah was composed under Moses' authorship and under his editorial purview.
SPEAKER_01: And we believe this because God instructed Moses on numerous occasions to record what had taken place.
SPEAKER_01: God told him in Exodus chapter 17, verse 14, and likewise in chapter 34, verse 27.
SPEAKER_01: And Moses, in contrast to most of the Hebrews at the time, certainly knew how to write because he had been trained in Pharaoh's court.
SPEAKER_01: The Hebrews could have known how to write, that's not entirely certain, but it's also probable that many did not because of the fact that they had spent years in slavery.
SPEAKER_01: But in any case, the book of Exodus is attributed to Moses.
SPEAKER_01: Another hint of truth that we can discern in the documentary hypothesis is that Exodus does contain distinct literary sections.
SPEAKER_01: There is, for example, a notable difference between Exodus chapter 1 to 14 and Exodus chapters 15 to 40, which may suggest that the material was composed or arranged in major parts and then brought together as one book.
SPEAKER_01: But that doesn't really cast any doubt upon mosaic authorship.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, for example, I happen to know this because of my experience in writing and publishing and editing and working with other authors.
SPEAKER_01: You could sit down and write several sections and decide this would actually look what would work really well together as a single book.
SPEAKER_01: I'm going to edit it together.
SPEAKER_01: I've authored each of them, and I'm sure if someone were to actually analyze what I've written, they'll be able to tell there's different literary sections here, but I'll edit into one book.
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't question my authorship.
SPEAKER_01: No one's gonna come by and say, well, Stephen wrote this part, this literary section, but someone else must have written this literary section because we notice that it's somewhat different from the first section that he wrote.
SPEAKER_01: Well, that that this is very common, but liberal scholars tend to exaggerate this and make this seem like this is a bigger problem.
SPEAKER_01: Well, no, it's it's it's not a problem.
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't cast doubt on mosaic authorship.
SPEAKER_01: But it what this does demonstrate as we're talking about these little hints of truth in this documentary hypothesis, is how liberal theories can contain elements of truth.
SPEAKER_01: It demonstrates how often these liberal theories have little hints and traces and threads of truth, which makes it enticing and persuasive for most Christians then to begin to believe it.
SPEAKER_01: And that's usually how it works.
SPEAKER_01: You don't start out with a blatant lie, you start out with a mixed half-truth, half-lie.
SPEAKER_01: And when that's presented in the form of a theory, that allows you then to start diluting your understanding of scripture and your respect and your reverence for the word of God, and you begin drifting from the way of truth.
SPEAKER_01: But the most authoritative reason we have for saying with certainty that the book of Exodus, together with the rest of the Torah, is Mosaic, is that Jesus himself refers to the books of the law as the writings of Moses.
SPEAKER_01: If Jesus attributed these writings to Moses, then who are we to question what he says?
SPEAKER_01: We ought to do the same.
SPEAKER_01: He is the incarnate Son of God, he knows what was revealed to whom he is God.
SPEAKER_01: And if he says that this was written by Moses, then it end of story.
SPEAKER_01: It was written by Moses.
SPEAKER_01: Now, something else we need to also consider as we study the book of Exodus is its historicity.
SPEAKER_01: Because you'll find several arguments made against Exodus based on that fact alone.
SPEAKER_01: In other words, Exodus is not some mythological retelling.
SPEAKER_01: It's not a fictitious or fabricated narrative.
SPEAKER_01: It's not saying, well, yeah, maybe they spent some sort of uh uh time as a workforce in Egypt, and then they were able to uh cease their employment, so to speak, and then move on to another country.
SPEAKER_01: And then over time this story began to become more grandeur, more uh more grand and more elusive and more exaggerated and more uh uh legendary until we have what we have today.
SPEAKER_01: That's not the case.
SPEAKER_01: Exodus, as it is written, is a real story, it's a real history, and because it is, we need to understand its relationship to the history of the ancient world.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we can't talk about the Exodus, we can't talk about the plagues, we can't talk about Pharaoh if we don't know which Pharaoh, where in Egypt, what period of time this is exactly.
SPEAKER_01: And again, this is another area where liberal scholars have taken aim because if they can undermine the book of Exodus, they can actually undermine the whole redemptive narrative of Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: You see, Exodus is sort of like the gospel of the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_01: And if they can do away with that, then there really is no foundation upon which the gospel can stand.
SPEAKER_01: It's very similar to how they seek to undermine the first eleven chapters of Genesis, because if the foundation is broken, the whole structure begins to fall.
SPEAKER_01: Well, what then are some of the objections raised concerning the events of Exodus?
SPEAKER_01: Well, in the scriptures we learn that Solomon, the son of David, and the king of Israel, prior to the division of the kingdom, began building the temple in Jerusalem 400 years after the people of Israel were delivered from Egypt.
SPEAKER_01: This is in 1 Kings chapter 6, verse 1.
SPEAKER_01: So they began building the temple in Jerusalem, and the date we're given is 480 years after the people of Israel were delivered from Egypt.
SPEAKER_01: So if Solomon began building the temple around 966 BC, that would place the Exodus at approximately 1446 BC.
SPEAKER_01: But this is where liberal scholars have often raised the red flag and said, wait a minute, wait a minute, where's all the extra-biblical historical evidence in Egypt that such an event ever took place?
SPEAKER_01: I mean, this was the same claim that they made about there's no extra-biblical evidence that King David actually existed, and that there actually was a house of David, a dynasty of David, until they found a stella, which is a monument that actually referenced a couple of years after his reign, the house of David, and it was written by one of Israel's enemies.
SPEAKER_01: And then they had to recount that.
SPEAKER_01: They had to uh go back on that, recant on that.
SPEAKER_01: Well, the same argument is made against Exodus.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we're talking about plagues that resulted in the Nile turning to blood, darkness covering the land, the death of the firstborn sons.
SPEAKER_01: And then you have the crossing of the Red Sea.
SPEAKER_01: You would think that would be recorded somewhere, among many other extraordinary events.
SPEAKER_01: You might expect to find something written about all of this.
SPEAKER_01: And yet the surviving Egyptian records say nothing explicitly about these events.
SPEAKER_01: You open any history book on Egypt, on ancient Egypt, and on the pharaohs and on the dynasties, and you actually don't find any explicit mention of these events.
SPEAKER_01: And so some then conclude then this has to be all a massive fabrication.
SPEAKER_01: It was made up, it's a made-up story.
SPEAKER_01: How can we believe what is written here, they ask, if we find no Egyptian inscription, for example, recounting Hebrew slaves escaping Egypt, devastating plagues overtaking the land, or even the destruction of Pharaoh's forces at the Red Sea.
SPEAKER_01: As one liberal scholar put it, no physical trace has been found of the Israelites' 40-year nomadic sojourn in the Sinai wilderness.
SPEAKER_01: There's not even any indication outside of the Bible that Moses existed.
SPEAKER_01: So you have liberal scholars that are willing to go to such an extent to say, well, Moses was not a real historical person.
SPEAKER_01: Well, let me address some of those concerns.
SPEAKER_01: Let's begin with the statement that the temple was built in Jerusalem 480 years after Israel's deliverance from Egypt.
SPEAKER_01: The problem for many historians is that going back 480 years does not actually seem to provide a good, convenient fit with their reconstruction of ancient Egyptian history, or so they say.
SPEAKER_01: And it's actually quite complicated.
SPEAKER_01: But that problem can actually be approached in one of two ways.
SPEAKER_01: We can understand the 480 years as an approximation rather than a strictly literal number, or we can affirm the 480 years as literal and then ask where exactly this fits within Egyptian chronology.
SPEAKER_01: So first, we should consider the following.
SPEAKER_01: The 480 years given to us in Scripture could therefore possibly be understood as symbolic.
SPEAKER_01: It could be symbolic in the sense that 480 is a round number representing 12 generations.
SPEAKER_01: After all, 480 is the product of 12 times 40, and 40 years is often used in scripture to represent a generation.
SPEAKER_01: You find this in Judges chapter 5, verse 31.
SPEAKER_01: You find this in Psalm chapter 95, verse 10.
SPEAKER_01: Generally, when it's referred to the time lapse or time duration of a generation, it's 40 years.
SPEAKER_01: However, actual generations in biblical times were often closer to 25 years apart rather than 40, which means that there could be some flexibility in determining precisely when the exodus took place.
SPEAKER_01: So, for example, if we factor a 25-year generational span into the calculation, and there were 12 generations between Moses and Solomon, that would amount to roughly 300 years rather than 480.
SPEAKER_01: And this would give us an approximate date for the Exodus of around 1260 BC.
SPEAKER_01: But if we understand the 480 years of 1 Kings chapter 6, verse 1 more straightforwardly, if we're saying no, it's not symbolic, it's literal, then the Exodus would be placed considerably earlier in approximately 1446 BC.
SPEAKER_01: So why does this matter?
SPEAKER_01: It matters because we need to understand when exactly these events took place.
SPEAKER_01: Who was the Pharaoh, as I mentioned?
SPEAKER_01: Where were the Israelites located?
SPEAKER_01: What was life like at the time?
SPEAKER_01: So if we go with the 1260 BC date, which we're going to call case A, and I did have slides up to help you kind of differentiate the different time periods I'm referring to, then the Pharaoh who first oppressed the Hebrews may have been Seti I.
SPEAKER_01: Seti I, who established his royal residence in the eastern Nile Delta.
SPEAKER_01: Now, the Nile Delta was a very wet environment.
SPEAKER_01: You kind of think of Egypt, you think of the sand, you think of dry period, a dry uh scenario and landscape.
SPEAKER_01: You don't really think about lush green gardens and anything like that.
SPEAKER_01: But the Nile Delta was a very wet environment.
SPEAKER_01: So the preservation of papyrus documents and other organic materials which could possibly serve as evidence was far more difficult here than any of the dry regions of Upper Egypt.
SPEAKER_01: And when we refer to Lower and Upper Egypt, just kind of remember that for whatever reason, Upper Egypt is actually on the south and Lower Egypt is actually on the north.
SPEAKER_01: So it can be a bit confusing when you're studying Egyptian maps.
SPEAKER_01: So the Nile Delta was a very wet environment.
SPEAKER_01: And this is important when considering why relatively little archaeological evidence has survived from the Delta generally, including evidence we might hope to find concerning the Hebrews.
SPEAKER_01: Seti I also undertook major building projects, and Egypt regularly employed large labor forces for these sorts of projects.
SPEAKER_01: And who succeeded Seti I?
SPEAKER_01: Well, I'll give you a hint.
SPEAKER_01: His name is familiar from the movie The Ten Commandments and even the children's film The Prince of Egypt.
SPEAKER_01: Anyone want to give it a try?
SPEAKER_01: Who succeeded him?
SPEAKER_01: Starts with an R.
SPEAKER_01: Yes?
unknown: Ramses?
SPEAKER_01: Ramses.
SPEAKER_01: Ramses II.
SPEAKER_01: Ramses II succeeded Seti I as Pharaoh over Egypt.
SPEAKER_01: And Ramses II undertook enormous building projects and established this great royal capital, Pi Ramses, in the Eastern Nile Delta.
SPEAKER_01: So his reign is therefore often associated with a reference in Exodus chapter 1, verse 11, to the store cities of Pithon and Ramses.
SPEAKER_01: For this reason, those who favor case A place the Exodus sometime in the 13th century BC, during or around the reign of Ramses II.
SPEAKER_01: Now, if we go with the date of approximately 1445 BC, which we can refer to as case B, we've already looked at case A, Sati I and Ramses II.
SPEAKER_01: We're looking at case B now.
SPEAKER_01: Case B, if we go with the date of approximately 1445 BC, which is the literal date of 480 years, then the Exodus took place even earlier than case A.
SPEAKER_01: And this is the literal 480 years before the construction of Solomon's temple.
SPEAKER_01: And this date gives us a different set of pharaohs.
SPEAKER_01: It gives us Thutmos III, who may have been the pharaoh who enslaved and oppressed the Hebrews, while his successor was Amenhotep II.
SPEAKER_01: And that would have been the pharaoh under whom the Exodus took place.
SPEAKER_01: So similarly, Thutmos III engaged in major building projects, including activity in the Nile Delta.
SPEAKER_01: And the mention of the city of Ramses does not mention that it had been named after Ramses II many years afterwards, but because the name Ramses is actually a very common ancient name, so it may have been named after someone else.
SPEAKER_01: Now, which date should we go with?
SPEAKER_01: Should we go with case A, which places the Exodus in the 13th century BC, or should we go with case B, which places the Exodus in the 15th century BC?
SPEAKER_01: Well, I would argue for case B for a number of reasons.
SPEAKER_01: In the book of Judges, Jephthah states that Israel had been in the land for 300 years by his own day.
SPEAKER_01: Judges 11, verse 26.
SPEAKER_01: And in the book of Acts, the Apostle Paul speaks of a period of approximately 450 years in recounting Israel's history from Egypt through the period of the Judges.
SPEAKER_01: And that's in Acts chapter 13, verses 19 to 20.
SPEAKER_01: So both scriptural references support case B, particularly when taken together with the explicit 480 years of 1 Kings 6, verse 1.
SPEAKER_01: So I'm saying let's not go with symbolic, let's go with literal, the literal interpretation of what that says.
SPEAKER_01: Now, what other evidence can we find for the Exodus as it relates to this particular date?
SPEAKER_01: Well, in an ancient Egyptian text known as the Laden papyrus 348, dating to around actually the reign of Ramses II to the 13th century BC, so this is this is this would be a case A, but it's not in support of case A, okay?
SPEAKER_01: So the evidence is during that reign, but it's actually going to serve as evidence that the exodus happened earlier.
SPEAKER_01: Instructions are given in that papyrus for the distribution of grain rations to slaves who were dragging stones for a major construction project.
SPEAKER_01: The actual term that is used is a grand pylon for whatever that might mean.
SPEAKER_01: Could be a pyramid, could have been something else.
SPEAKER_01: And this suggests that Egypt already had a very well-established system of forced labor associated with its massive building projects.
SPEAKER_01: Now, again, someone might say that this is clear evidence that the exodus happened during the reign of Ramses II, as we've seen in popular movies.
SPEAKER_01: But not long afterward, the Israelites are already reported to live to be living in Canaan.
SPEAKER_01: Because after Ramses II, the next pharaoh to take the throne was Merneptah.
SPEAKER_01: And on the famous Merneptah Stele, which is a black granite monument more than seven feet tall, Merneptah boasts that Canaan is plundered with every hardship.
SPEAKER_01: Israel is laid to waste, the seed is not.
SPEAKER_01: So what we're seeing here is in the first case of the Leyden papyrus, we have Egypt already having a well-established slave force, which means that that's been going on for a long period of time.
SPEAKER_01: But then we have the Merneptah Stele, which is of his successor, this black granite monument, and it's referring to Israel as a nation.
SPEAKER_01: So this means that, well, how could they have gone from here to here so quickly?
SPEAKER_01: You know, never mind the exaggeration of the Egyptian monument because they're saying that Israel was totally wiped out and God's people were never to be seen again.
SPEAKER_01: That actually didn't happen.
SPEAKER_01: But this is classic Egyptian propaganda, and this is one of the reasons why you'll never find Egyptian inscriptions of the Exodus, because it does not serve their Egyptian propaganda.
SPEAKER_01: They will never show themselves in an unflattering way.
SPEAKER_01: This is always the case in Egyptian archaeology.
SPEAKER_01: So never mind the exaggeration here.
SPEAKER_01: The important point is that Israel was already recognized as the distinct people living in Canaan.
SPEAKER_01: So if the Exodus had taken place during the reign of Ramses II, which is case A, how did Israel go from slavery in Egypt to an established people in Canaan so quickly?
SPEAKER_01: The Hebrews didn't immediately leave Egypt and enter the promised land.
SPEAKER_01: We know that.
SPEAKER_01: There was a 40-year period of wandering in the wilderness as a result of their sin.
SPEAKER_01: And so this makes a 13th-century Exodus very difficult to accept and actually gives more support to an earlier Exodus in the 15th century BC.
SPEAKER_01: Also notable is the ancient Egyptian text known as the admonitions of an Egyptian sage.
SPEAKER_01: We talked about how there's no explicit mention of an Exodus, but that doesn't mean that we won't find hints of the events of the Exodus.
SPEAKER_01: And in this the Ipure papyrus, there's a recounting of cataclysmic, world, almost world-ending events, catastrophic events that sound very familiar to the biblical plagues.
SPEAKER_01: And this provides another piece of evidence when considered alongside the biblical account.
SPEAKER_01: And there are, in fact, several pieces of evidence for placing the Exodus earlier in the 15th century BC, but most principally, we affirm this date, because it's what the chronology of Scripture itself reveals.
SPEAKER_01: And Scripture must interpret Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: We cannot bring our own presuppositions, our own extra-biblical understandings or findings, and allow that to speak into the text of the Bible.
SPEAKER_01: It needs to be the other way around.
SPEAKER_01: Scripture is the word of God.
SPEAKER_01: Scripture is the breathed-out word of God, is the inspired word, and therefore we are to interpret history in light of Scripture.
SPEAKER_01: Now that we have the history out of the way, I'm sorry if that was dense, or maybe just a little preview of what it's like in seminary, we have one more consideration to bear in mind, and that's the Christocentric approach that we ought to have to the book of Exodus.
SPEAKER_01: The same professor who tried to convince his students, including myself, that the Pentateuch, the five books of the law, was not written by Moses, but rather by several authors, also tried to convince us to read and study Exodus strictly as an ancient Jewish document.
SPEAKER_01: Not merely in the sense of just acknowledging its historical context, but in the sense that we should not read the text in light of what the New Testament has to say and teach.
SPEAKER_01: And I've encountered many professors who do often say this.
SPEAKER_01: And it's not because they just want you to identify these certain cultural characteristics of the time or trying to examine what the views of the author was back in those times.
SPEAKER_01: It's just very common in the world of scholarship to be able to just say, no, you can't take the New Testament and read it into the old.
SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm saying that's wrong.
SPEAKER_01: Don't listen to them.
SPEAKER_01: That's that they're not teaching you how to study scripture properly.
SPEAKER_01: While there may be academic value in studying Exodus from a strictly Jewish framework, that's not how we ought to read and study Exodus in general.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Because to do so, if we were actually to do that, to do what a lot of these scholars are teaching us to do, it would mean placing a veil over our eyes so as not to see what the New Testament reveals more fully in the text of Exodus.
SPEAKER_01: It's like saying, no, no, no, don't be a Christian when you read this text, be a Jew who has no understanding of what's coming afterwards.
SPEAKER_01: In other words, we are to understand that the New Testament illuminates the old.
SPEAKER_01: If you speak with an unbeliever and you give him the Old Testament, you don't give him the new, good luck.
SPEAKER_01: He's gonna read this and he's gonna say, I don't understand.
SPEAKER_01: How is this relevant to me?
SPEAKER_01: But if you give him the New Testament first and he reads it, and then he begins to, oh, I really want to know my Bible, and he starts going into the Old Testament, everything starts to make sense because he's seeing things under the light of the New.
SPEAKER_01: You see, the New Testament reveals more fully that which was hidden to those living in Old Testament times, and through it we come to understand more clearly the place of Exodus within the redemptive history of God.
SPEAKER_01: Because this is not ultimately man's story, it's not ultimately Moses' story, it's not ultimately Israel's story, it's God's story.
SPEAKER_01: And this means that the hero of the story is not Moses, as I've mentioned, it's God.
SPEAKER_01: The deliverer here is not Moses, it's God.
SPEAKER_01: The lawgiver is not Moses, it's God.
SPEAKER_01: It's not Moses who opened the Red Sea, it's God.
SPEAKER_01: It's not Moses who gave the Ten Commandments, it's God.
SPEAKER_01: The one who humiliates Pharaoh and the Egyptian pantheon of gods is not Moses, it's God.
SPEAKER_01: He is the great I am, as he reveals himself in this very book.
SPEAKER_01: He's the one who hears the cries of his people in slavery.
SPEAKER_01: He's the one who turns the water of the Nile into blood.
SPEAKER_01: He's the one who blots out the sun over Egypt.
SPEAKER_01: The one who calls Moses and raises him up to be a leader and a prophet, the one who opens the Red Sea and he leads his people through it while drowning Pharaoh's army behind them.
SPEAKER_01: The one who gives his people his law and enters into covenant with them, the one who speaks from Mount Sinai and fills the tabernacle with his glory, the center of the story is God.
SPEAKER_01: And okay, let's say you want to concede just a little bit to these liberal scholars, and which they say, oh no, the grand opening of the Red Sea was not actually the Red Sea.
SPEAKER_01: It was a Reed Sea, which would have been very, very shallow, and then it would have been a dry season which they could pass through.
SPEAKER_01: And if we were to just concede that, okay, fine, we'll grant you that if that were to be the case.
SPEAKER_01: But how great is our God that He was able to drown Pharaoh's army with a Reed Sea.
SPEAKER_01: And because the center of the story is God, and because the New Testament illuminates the old, for it is likewise God's revelation, we ought to read Exodus in light of God's progressive revelation of the course of redemptive history.
SPEAKER_01: And that means that we ought to see how Christ can be discerned throughout Exodus.
SPEAKER_01: In what way?
SPEAKER_01: Well, consider, this is just scratching the surface, how Exodus establishes a pattern that's later fulfilled in the earthly ministry of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: Like Moses, Jesus was born to be a savior and a liberator.
SPEAKER_01: The difference, of course, is that Moses represented God, the deliverer, while Jesus was and is God.
SPEAKER_01: Moses was preserved from a murderous king who sought the lives of Hebrew children.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus likewise was preserved from the murderous intent of King Herod.
SPEAKER_01: Moses returned to Egypt.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus was taken into Egypt and later came out of Egypt when the time had come.
SPEAKER_01: Remember the words of Hosea, chapter 11, verse 1, out of Egypt I called up my son.
SPEAKER_01: Think also of the crossing of the Red Sea.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus too passed through the waters of baptism.
SPEAKER_01: And think of Israel wandering in the wilderness for 40 years.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus fasted and was tempted in the wilderness for 40 days.
SPEAKER_01: Compare also God revealing the Ten Commandments through Moses at Mount Sinai with Jesus delivering his sermon on the mount.
SPEAKER_01: There's so much depth here for us to consider, but the point is this that I want to make.
SPEAKER_01: The thread that unites all of Scripture, from Genesis to Revelation, from the books of the law to the very final apocalyptic book of the Bible, the common thread that unites everything together is Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And we're going to see this in the book of Exodus.
SPEAKER_01: So as we prepare ourselves for the study of the book of Exodus, which will be continuing next week, prepare your hearts.
SPEAKER_01: Because in this book, you're going to see God.
SPEAKER_01: You're going to see a reflection of who we are in light of a holy and just God.
SPEAKER_01: Believe me, there are times where I read through Exodus and I look at my own whining complaining and the whining complaining of my own children, and I say ourselves, we're really not that different from the Israelites.
SPEAKER_01: We're going to see where we came from.
SPEAKER_01: What God has done for us, but we're also going to see what we're called to do.
SPEAKER_01: In the slavery of the Hebrews in Egypt, we see our own former slavery to sin.
SPEAKER_01: In the deliverance of God's people, we see our deliverance in the Son of God.
SPEAKER_01: In the wandering of Israel in the wilderness, we see God's faithfulness in spite of our own unfaithfulness today.
SPEAKER_01: And in the entrance into the promised land, we see God's promise fulfilled in the opening of the gates to his kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: Not only inviting us into the kingdom of God, but making us his people, his children, and citizens of his great kingdom.
SPEAKER_01: And it's a kingdom that we recognize is both here and not yet.
SPEAKER_01: A kingdom that will be fully realized in all of its resplendent glory and God's resplendent glory on that day when Christ returns for his people.
SPEAKER_01: And so to develop a fuller and more appreciative understanding of the biblical gospel, we are undertaking this and doing this well to study the book of Exodus, what we might call the gospel of the Old Testament.
SPEAKER_01: So next week we'll begin with the first chapter.
SPEAKER_01: In the meantime, let's be thankful, not only for the great deliverance that we've received in the Son, but for the deliverer himself.
SPEAKER_01: Because if you think about it, we're not just saying, oh, you know, I've been liberated out of Egypt, but now I'm in the wilderness out to die.
SPEAKER_01: No, no, that's not our case.
SPEAKER_01: For we have not only been saved from slavery and destruction, we've been brought into fellowship with God, into the fullness of life that is found in Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: And to that we say glory.
SPEAKER_01: Let us pray.
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