The Exodus

All right, we're in a series right now called Cover to Cover.

We're looking at the Bible 15 weeks, looking at it completely.

We're certainly not going to be able to get into all the granular specifics of the Bible, but what I'm trying to do is set you up for success in your study of God's Word, that wherever you find yourself in the Bible, you sort of understand how it fits into the overall big picture of the Bible.

What's important to think about with the Bible is a lesson actually I learned earlier.

Well, I learned about the first 10 years of marriage.

I learned that my wife and I often would miscommunicate, and it might be because, let's say, for example, she says something, and when she said something, I heard something.

And so later on in the conversation, I bring up, well, you said such and such, and she's like, I didn't say that.

And I'm like, excuse me, you did say that.

And we end up in this argument over he said, she said.

But really, he said, she said doesn't mean much.

What really matters is he meant, she meant.

That's what it means.

Because she might have said something and I heard something, but that's not what she meant.

So I'm holding her accountable to what she said, but really what matters is what she meant.

So I learned over time to say, you know, what I heard you say there was this, and she could go, funny you should mention that.

That's not what I meant.

And then she can clarify her meaning, and marriage gets a lot better.

That's free, has nothing to do with cover to cover, other than the Bible's the same way.

The Bible says, mm-hmm, the Bible says this.

Okay, the Bible says something.

The question is, what does the Bible mean?

And if you're going to be able to understand what it means, you're gonna have to look at it as a literary, a piece of literature, you're gonna have to look at it as history.

Understanding those elements will help us go just from what the words said and make us uh keep us from the the reality that we're prone to miscommunication, even with the Bible, just like we are with our the people close to us.

So, how do we fight for that meaning?

Well, we dig deeper in understanding um what words like exegesis, understanding the study of what did the original hearer hear, and then move to hermeneutics, which is then how do we interpret this into our lives and all the communication gets better?

Um, there's some foundational things that I want to kind of revisit quickly uh with you so that we can continue to build on them.

One is uh the meta narrative of the Bible, right?

Meta meaning the overarching storyline of the Bible.

So go ahead and bring that up.

Uh we find this in Genesis 1 through 3, by the way.

It's I can't say it loud enough.

The first three chapters of the Bible are critical, are essential for understanding the Bible as a whole.

In fact, throughout this series, we're gonna take an event in the Bible.

We're gonna reach back into the garden, into Eden.

We're gonna reach forward to Jesus and then through to us.

That's just a good path to take.

Anytime you're reading the Bible, reach back to the garden.

Why is the garden so significant?

Well, it's significant because we understand the world the way God intended it.

So when you hear things like God wants to bless the world, or what is God's will for the world, okay, that's all connected to what God intended when he created the world, and we see that God created humans in his image, that means we know who we are, our identity.

We have affirmation from heaven.

I don't have to wonder what God thinks about me.

He declares them very good.

That they have a healthy relationship, okay, complementary relationship with each other.

So peace with God, peace with each other, meaningful work, okay, the work that mattered and they were good at, they were built for, and then appropriate pleasure.

The the trees were beautiful to look at, the text says, and tasted good, so appropriate sensory experience, and then also self-confidence.

They were vulnerable, they were naked, but they were not ashamed.

And so this is like this is the way life was intended to live.

And so what happens over time, in the you know, they their flesh leads them into free will decisions, and sometimes our flesh can be impulsive because we're app we have a bunch of appetites.

Sometimes I can make uh rash decisions that are selfish.

Sometimes I'm just flat out confused.

I thought I was gaining wisdom, but I was trying to get the right thing in the wrong way.

And sometimes I'm I'm uh impacted by other people's fall or fleshly decisions.

And so when that happens, ultimately it's not the end of the story because God loves to, he's long-suffering, he's patient, he loves to bring grace.

And so there's a redemption process.

This is why, even no matter how bad we fail, we know that God is eager to give grace and to help us heal and to forgive.

And so we just never fall into despair after a fall.

It's not the end of the story.

We we we walk through a process of redemption and then restoration.

Sometimes restoration doesn't mean go back to the garden, it means you've lost the garden because that's a consequence of a bat of the fall.

But now we're gonna go into chapter four to a new place, to a new beginning, to a new opportunity, a little bit wiser than we were a few days ago.

So we're gonna learn and move forward.

So that's the meta-narrative of the Bible.

Um, we introduce a word that I want to just keep putting in front of you.

It's the word shalom.

This shows up in Genesis 15, but it's it's hundreds of times throughout the Old Testament.

And shalom, get you got to get the range of meaning.

So shalom does it means peace, but it doesn't just mean peace.

Often it's translated in English into peace, but it has a range of meaning.

It means prosperity.

When you hear prosperity in church, people start twitching because they think it's like name it, claim it, grip it, rip it, dip it, pistol whip it, and flip it, and then God will give it to you.

If you love him and he loves you, you're gonna be rich.

That's not what the Bible teaches.

That's hogwash gospel, that is not theologically accurate.

But what is true is that if you are using your God-given gifts for God's glory and you're healthy, healthy things grow.

So you may not 10x, but both um uh quantitatively and qualitatively, there will be growth in your life.

And you see this in the garden, right?

When they were, uh it says, be fruitful, multiply.

So uh completeness, wholeness, satisfaction, safety, fulfillment, contentment, okay, this is what shalom means.

And so this is what I want to have top of mind for you.

We start looking in Genesis when as you know, as human humans developed and grew, and and and there were more people and cities and empires began to develop.

Now people begin to develop technology, and the same technology they used to make garden equipment, to be fruitful, they used to make weapons and to be uh go to war and to kill.

And so you have uh essentially described in the first part of Genesis the chaos of the world.

And so God says, I'm not giving up on my plan, I've not given up on people.

I I want to bring shalom to earth.

And so he raises up a nation.

He says to Abraham, Through your family, I'm gonna create a nation that will bring shalom to the earth.

And I'm gonna give you land and I'm gonna give you law, and it's gonna be through your family, but don't get it twisted.

This isn't just to set you apart so that everyone will envy you.

This is to set you apart so you can demonstrate my will in the world, and then other nations will see this happening.

Wow, that shalom thing, that's yeah, that makes sense.

And so you bring this to the earth, and then the whole world will be blessed through you.

So we looked at that last week.

Today, what we're gonna do is we're going to look at the Exodus.

Okay, so if you kept reading Genesis, you would see Abraham, the family of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and eventually Joseph.

It's a lot of good text.

We're not going to go into it today.

I've preached on them before.

You can go back and listen to all that.

What we're going to do is sort of move from the family of Abraham into the uh nation being in Egypt.

So all you need to know about that is through these generations, when it gets to Joseph, through Joseph, the family of Abraham ends up in Egypt.

All right, and while they're there, it says in Exodus chapter 1, it says verse 6, now Joseph and all of his brothers and all that generation died.

Exodus 1 · chapter mention

But the Israelites were exceedingly fruitful, they multiplied greatly, increasing in numbers, and became so numerous that the land was filled with them.

Alright, this is supposed to go ding ding-ding ding-ding.

You're supposed to be like, that reminds me of something.

What does it remind you of?

Back to Eden, back to Genesis 1 in the garden.

God blessed them and said in verse 28, be fruitful, increase in number, fill the earth, and subdue it.

Be fruitful, multiply, and replenish the earth.

So what the statement that's being made here in Exodus 1 is that while they were in the region of Egypt, they were in a land called Goshen.

They were shepherds.

It was a rich land, fertile soil.

They were doing the work that God had given them to do, kind of like shalom.

They were in good relationship, they were being fruitful and multiplying.

They were ultimately, they caught a little shalom here on earth.

Things were going well.

And yet, back to the meta-narrative, creation, shalom, fall.

In Exodus now 1.8, it says, Then a new king to whom Joseph meant nothing, came to power in Egypt.

Look, he said to his people, the Israelites have become far too numerous for us.

Come, we must deal shrewdly with them, or they will become even more numerous, and if war breaks out, we'll join our enemies, fight against us, and leave the country.

So here we have a fall that is similar but different from the fall in Eden.

In Eden, you have free will Eve and Adam, who decide to not be content with the world God made them and their work, so they take.

And they take because they weren't content, but they also take.

But this was all decisions that Adam and Eve made.

In Exodus 1, we see actually that the people, uh, the family of Abraham, they're minding their own business.

They're in Goshen, just doing the shepherd thing, having babies, living life, good relationship with God, themselves and each other.

They found a little bit of paradise.

And having nothing to do with them, you have Pharaoh who gives in to his flesh.

Pharaoh, who has his own fall, Pharaoh, who has his own, we see it explicitly in the text, his own fear.

And he looks and he's intimidated that these people are having a little too much shalom and they're growing too quickly, and he starts to extrapolate the potential of what could happen.

He starts to do the math.

If these people keep multiplying like this, all right, they're a little too happy, they're growing too fast, eventually they will become a threat to us.

And so now in his fear, his fall now impacts them.

And this friend is what the real world looks like, unfortunately.

Sometimes the fall is you took something you weren't supposed to have, and sometimes the fall is you were minding your business in Goshen, and Pharaoh, in his insecurity and his fear, was threatened by your prosperity, and so now he turns on you and attacks you.

And what it says in Exodus 1 15 is Pharaoh says to the Hebrew midwives who would deliver in the babies, when you're helping the Hebrew women during childbirth or the deliver on the delivery stool, if you see the baby as a boy, kill him, and if it's a girl, let her live.

And so you're going to see now again, this this becomes very much a real-world scenario, and that we see that now the children of Israel, now we have the family of Abraham, goes from Shalom, not because of anything they did, but because of something someone else did, and now they are living in bondage.

It says later in Exodus that they their time in Egypt was 430 years in total.

And that includes their time in Goshen, but certainly their time in bondage and slavery.

So now Pharaoh starts to uh again not only kill their baby boys, and many boys died, but you have Moses, who ultimately kind of becomes the main character in Exodus.

He escapes, okay, his mom and sister, and long story short, God spares him.

He comes through and he's he's spared, and he grows up in the home of Pharaoh.

Eventually he ends up uh killing someone, going out into the wilderness in the desert and hiding out.

But ultimately, um things go from bad to worse, and now you have the nation living in the bondage of the fall of an insecure, afraid Pharaoh.

And it says in Exodus 3, 7 and 8, that the people of Israel, in their bondage, in their oppression and in their pain, they cry out to God for mercy and help.

Lord, back to the meta-narrative, Lord, redeem us, restore us, deliver us.

And so God takes this unlikely character, okay, Moses, and ultimately calls him and raises him up to go back and to deliver the people.

But look what it says.

This is this is one of the best texts in the whole Bible.

I just wish we could just sit here for two hours and just stare at this text and think about it.

Exodus 3, 7 and 8.

The Lord said, I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt.

I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering.

So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land.

God in Exodus demonstrates who he is, and he says, I am the God who is not ignorant of suffering.

I am the God that sees the misery of the one who is being impacted by wicked decisions of powerful, insecure people.

I am the God who sees misery, who hears the cry, who cares about suffering, and who shows up to deliver.

And I'm speaking to somebody today who maybe you are in a season of life where you're like, man, I was minding my business in Goshen.

I was just trying to raise my kids, man.

I was just trying to use my gift for God's glory, man.

I was just trying to do my job.

I was trying to live in shalom, and I was actually in a pretty good place.

And outside of my decision making, I don't know what happened, some complicated whatever, some Pharaoh in my life has come, and now they are creating, making my life more difficult.

They have come and they have attacked me, and now they put me in a situation I didn't ask for.

And so maybe you're in a place of misery and it feels like nobody like gets it.

And maybe you're in a place where you're crying at night.

You hold it together in front of everybody because you don't want to be falling apart.

But when once the lights go out, and once you put the kids to bed, and once you shut the door and you're by yourself, the tears start to flow, and you wonder: does anybody know?

Does God even see?

God is the God who sees the misery, who hears the cry, who cares about suffering, and ultimately shows up to deliver.

God begins to announce his character in Exodus.

In fact, I'm gonna jump ahead to a text that's gonna be after they're already delivered.

In fact, this is gonna be a private conversation with Moses up on the mount on Mount Sinai.

And in Exodus 33, Moses is gonna say to God, Hey God, I'm glad to be your spokesman, but I want to know you better.

I want to see you.

Who are you?

Tell me who you are.

And look at this.

In Exodus 34, 6 and 7, God says to Moses, I'm Yahweh the Lord.

Look at this.

The God of compassion and mercy.

I'm slow to anger.

I'm filled with unfailing love and faithfulness.

I lavish unfailing love to a thousand, don't miss this, get all these details.

I lavish unfailing love to a thousand generations.

I forgive iniquity, rebellion, and sin.

Now he says, but I do not excuse the guilty.

I lay the sins of the parents upon their children and grandchildren.

The entire family is affected, even children in the third and fourth generations.

Now, if you opened up like the Bible app and that was the reading for the day, and you're sitting there reading that and you're like, What do I do with this?

Because it almost feels like a contradiction, right?

In the first part, he's waxing poetic about his character.

I love to lavish love.

I love uh to a thousand generations.

There's a disparity in the generational count.

So he says, My mercy and my love and my compassion, I forgive rebellion and iniquity.

I'm eager to give grace, I'm slow to anger, he says, to a thousand generations.

And then over here he says, but don't get it twisted.

If you're guilty, there is justice, okay?

There is a I what I can't do is be the parent who only tells you about the benefits without telling you the real world consequences of sin and fall and fear and flesh ultimately lead to downline consequences.

So what so we go, okay, how do we interpret this?

We have the discipline to step back and go, what is being said?

So a couple things are being said here.

It's it is a it's inviting us to hold the tension between God's grace and his slow to anger and how how eager he is to lavish mercy, at the same time, he he's holding out justice.

That God is a God of justice.

That is important.

That if we take that away, all we think about are the benefits and we don't think of the consequences.

That when you start ordering up the death of baby boys, you're you're bringing a lot of fall and a lot of pain and a lot of brokenness into the world, essentially.

So he's giving you both of them, but he's also giving a disparity between the thousand generations and then the three or four generations.

So what do I make of that?

Because it says that he he lays the consequences on three or four generations.

Does that mean that if I sin today, that God is going to hold it against my great grand my great grandkids, and that they're not gonna get a fair shake?

And when they come out of the womb, as pure and innocent as they are, and they're trying to do good, like, sorry, your grandpa was a scumbag.

You know, I'm sorry, I gotta hold it against you.

I said it in Exodus.

No, okay, this is what you have to understand.

In the ancient world, the concept of using a literary term like three or four generations, was the idea of giving you the full picture of a family.

So, for example, my family took a picture at Christmas, a photo.

My parents were in the picture, my sister and I were in the picture, all of our kids were in the picture, and then my sister's son has two twin boys.

So, in one family photo, we have four generations.

Here's the reality the the flesh or the fall of Mimi and Papa are going to impact all of us.

Okay?

Now, even if Mimi and Papa mean well, okay, we all do, even all of a lot, all of us probably, most of us could say, hey, my parents, good folks, but I'm still trying to sort this stuff out because you're passing stuff down behaviorally, psychologically, it makes its way down.

So all of us in some way are trying to sort of piece some stuff together from great grandparents who may or may not even know their name, but it did impact you, right?

For better or for worse.

A lot of it's really good, and some of it isn't so good.

So what he's ultimately saying is justice, okay, when you fall, when you sin, when you take according to your flesh, or you're a part of that, it's going to have an impact on this snapshot, this family picture.

Make your decisions wisely.

When you're deciding today, just realize your great-grandkids are going to be trying to sort it out for better or for worse.

Let's do our best, right?

So essentially, but what the big point that's being made in the disparity between a thousand generations of his lavish love and mercy and the three to four generations of the guilt, okay, he's showing how eager God is in his temperament, in his character, how eager he is to bring healing, how eager he is to bring forgiveness and to forgive rebellion and iniquity.

Does that make sense?

So we see now, again, we cannot we cannot cancel out the conversation about justice, and we see how it fleshes out in Pharaoh's life.

So let's go back to bondage.

They're in the uh Egypt, and and God raises up Moses.

Moses goes to Pharaoh and he says to Pharaoh, uh, listen, Yahweh, uh, Yahweh is the one true God.

And I know you all have like a bunch of idols, and these idols are like kind of distorted images of him.

They're not even real.

He's real.

He said, Let his people go.

Pharaoh says, No, I'm good.

Uh they've actually been doing a lot of good work.

They're building my uh story, my distribution centers and Pitham and Ramses, and I kind of like the arrangement.

And Moses is like, you might want to think that through because God said he's not playing around about this, and if so, he's going to show you how powerful he is.

So don't harden your heart, soften your heart, and just get with the program.

And Pharaoh says, No, I'm gonna harden my heart and I'm Because I'm Pharaoh, I'm the man.

He's like, fine.

And so what you have are nine plagues, and each of those plagues is symbolic of each Egyptian false God idol.

And what is God doing?

But he's demonstrating his power.

He's saying, Okay, you've put your faith in this God.

Watch this.

Boom.

And so he is ultimately showing, I am the one true God.

These are distorted images of me.

And I'm going to give Pharaoh nine chances.

Nine chances to learn.

Nine.

And each time, instead of him going, you know, I might be wrong on this one.

You know, I might want to rethink this.

I might want to humble myself and repent and get with the program and learn from my ways, he hardens his heart harder and harder and harder until it gets to the tenth plague.

And he says, the tenth plague is going to remind you of what you did back in Exodus 1.

If you don't, if you don't turn now, soften your heart now, repent now, what's going to happen is just like you took the firstborn of these innocent people, I'm going to take the firstborn of everybody unless you do this now.

What I'm going to do, God says, is different than what you did.

You didn't give anybody a chance for grace.

I'm going to give you a chance for grace.

If you take the blood of the lamb and you put it over the door, I will pass over that door and I will demonstrate my grace.

But if you harden your heart, then today you're going to get justice.

And it's going to hit in the third and fourth generation.

And so what happens, Pharaoh hardens his heart, doesn't listen.

He thinks I'm Pharaoh, I know better.

And everybody who put the blood of the lamb over the door, again, this is the beginning of the Passover feast.

This is what's being celebrated is the mercy of God, of God passing over the door.

And so in that process, Pharaoh hardens his heart, his firstborn dies, and he says, Fine, get these people out of here.

So this is where Moses now leads them out of Egypt, okay, gets to the Red Sea.

The Red Sea's there.

Pharaoh changes his mind.

You'll go get them.

His army's bearing down, and this is where God parts the Red Sea.

They cross the Red Sea.

Their enemies drown in the Red Sea, and now they're in the wilderness.

So what we have, when you think of Exodus, think about the deliverance of God.

God's ability to deliver.

He's the God who sees your misery, He's the God who hears your cry.

He's the God who cares about your suffering, and He's the God who shows up to deliver.

But what happens is in the story, they go through the Red Sea and now they're in the wilderness.

And in the wilderness, for the next 40 years, we are now going to get a multidimensional view of what actual real-world bondage looks like.

Because you would think if I get out of Egypt and I get away from these oppressive people, and I get now into the wilderness on my way to the promised land, you would expect that now I'm free.

But what you're going to see over 40 years is a lingering psychological bondage that the nation remains in.

Even though their bodies are free from Egypt, their minds are still bound in psychological and theological and spiritual bondage.

And so that's with that 40 years, what's going to happen is a series of experiences are going to happen that ultimately could either train the nation out of their psychological bondage and theological bondage or drive them further into it, and you're going to see this really get weird and ugly.

Okay, let's talk this through real quick.

What psychological bondage were the children of Israel in during the wilderness years?

Alright?

The first one is they were in the psychological bondage of discontent.

The way this shows up is in grumbling, right?

So you're gonna see it Exodus 16, they grumble against Moses and Aaron, and they're still grumbling in uh Numbers 14, and they're saying, if only we had died in Egypt.

Uh or even if we had just died here in the wilderness.

In other words, we're better, we're better off dead than alive.

And so what happens is they begin to, it gets to a place where they had thought, if I could just get out of Egypt, I would be happy, but now they're actually in, they're out of Egypt, they're through the Red Sea, they're in the wilderness, and they cannot find joy or contentment or shalom where they are.

And when we we see grumbling, a lot of times I think we think a little too petty about it.

We go, well, they were complaining, and you know, God feels about complainers like we do, and somebody's whining, you're like, just shut up.

You know, would you just stop?

And we think that's what God's doing, but it's it's it's a little deeper than that.

Because if if you think about it, like, you know, everybody who expresses uh frustration with a bad situation, that doesn't just make you a complainer.

Right?

Sometimes I think in in certain environments, anytime someone brings up something negative, we're like, stop being a complainer, well, sometimes it's appropriate to put the skunk on the table and to talk about what is the problem here, what's going on.

It wasn't that they said negative things to Aaron, Moses, or God.

The issue was they had a deep sense of discontent that wherever they were, they were not able to find uh contentment where they were.

They were always pushing it somewhere else.

In fact, what you're gonna find is eventually they're going to get to the promised land, and guess what?

They're gonna be discontent there as well.

So think about this now.

You're in the you're in the wilderness.

At some point, you may be frustrated where you are, but you've got to be able to psychologically go, hold on a second.

What just happened?

We were in bondage, crying out to God, miserable, and God heard our cry, and he raised up a deliverer, and he sent ten plagues on our behalf, and he passed over our homes, and he helped us exit this awful place.

He even parted the Red Sea on our behalf.

We saw it, we lived it.

We crossed over onto dry land, he neutralized our enemies, he led us into the wilderness, free as a bird.

We were hungry, he fed us, we were thirsty, he gave us water, and we have a future hope of a promised land.

Life is good.

I mean, yeah, I'm excited to get to the promised land someday, but that's kind of cool.

I've got something I'm looking forward to, but I'm not going to defer my contentment to the promised land.

I'm able right here, right now, even in the wilderness, to go look at what God has brought us through, look at his faithfulness.

This food is good enough for today.

But they look back and they, you know, they long for the food of Egypt and they long for what they had in Egypt.

And so, because of that, it created an attitude of discontent.

And this is the big issue with this.

We're gonna talk more about this in three weeks.

We talk about why God has such a short fuse about idols, is what happens is this discontented attitude opens them up to temptation for idol worship because these idols are promising an immediate gratification to something that God wants to do slowly over time.

But it's not giving you the real thing.

See, God, it's sometimes some things take time, good things take time, and so God's taking you on a process because you got to unlearn some stuff and learn some new stuff.

And so, so that attitude of discontent creates an impatience.

When Moses went up on the mountain to get the good law of God that would come to show them shalom, peace with God, peace with each other, and peace with yourself, Moses goes up and they're like, Where is this guy at?

Where are you at, bro?

He's not here.

And so, and instead of being patient, trusting God, they build an idol.

They build this uh golden calf, they begin to worship it.

And in the same way, this is where it gets really relevant for us because you're probably not gonna worship a golden calf.

But what if we live in impatience and discontent and not trusting God, ultimately we become very vulnerable and prone to sales pitches.

We become very prone to buying things that will give us something quickly that God might want to take a little bit of time to give you deeply.

Sometimes the deep lesson takes a while.

So while we may not bow to a golden calf, we tend to spend money we don't have to buy things we don't need to impress people we don't like, because I'm trying to fulfill a sense of peace and fulfillment and security in myself instead of looking to God to trust his plan, to trust his character.

So, in the same way, these this this is psychological bondage that they still had of insecurity and impatience and discontent.

Alright, just five more minutes, I swear, and then be nice to the 12 o'clock.

They're about to get bad news about their service, is gonna move back 30 minutes.

They're gonna be brokenhearted, so don't do them dirty out in the lot, alright?

This is the last thing.

Okay, so we look forward to Jesus.

Matthew writes the gospel of Matthew, written to Jewish people.

He speaks shorthand, and now you're gonna get it because you know more.

You we just looked at Genesis and Exodus, so go ahead and bring this up.

In Matthew, Matthew 2 through 4, look what he does.

He he's using Israel and Jesus.

Jesus is the new Israel.

So why did God create a nation?

Because I want to bless the world through you.

I want to bring Shalom to earth.

What it what was Jesus?

The prince of Shalom, coming to earth to fulfill what God wanted to do through the nation.

Jesus is faithful where Israel wasn't.

And so Jesus is the new Israel, go to the next thing.

The children of Israel, okay, Jesus is the Son of God, go to the next thing.

Um, we we see that Pharaoh is like Herod.

Herod's like Pharaoh.

What did Pharaoh do?

He said, I'm kill all the baby boys.

What did Herod do when Jesus was born?

Kill all the baby boys, the king of the Jews.

What happened?

Moses was able to, Moses' mother, you know, got him out.

What happened to Jesus?

Jesus was spared just like Moses.

Jesus is the new Moses, leading us into deliverance, leading us into Exodus.

Go ahead and look at the next thing: the Red Sea.

The Red Sea.

They take the children go through the Red Sea.

God does a miracle to bring them through the Red Sea.

What does Jesus do?

He passes through the waters of baptism.

When they came through the waters of the Red Sea, where did they go?

Wilderness.

How long?

40 years.

Jesus comes through the waters of baptism.

Where does he go?

Wilderness, how long?

40 days.

The nation was unfaithful, was disobedient, was bound in psychological bondage because they didn't know who they were.

They lost their sense of identity.

They became impatient and they took quickly.

They were discontent.

I want what I can have.

What did Jesus do?

Faithfully endured temptation.

He walked through temptation and was obedient to God, even though he was tempted in the same way.

Will you turn these rocks into bread?

Discontent.

No, I'm good.

Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.

If you'll bow to me, I'll give it to you right now.

Trying to capitalize on his impatience, Jesus says, No, I'm good with that.

I'm going to trust the plan of my heavenly Father.

I'm not going to bow to you.

I don't bow to anybody but God.

And if he wants to take a long time, we're going to do it.

And if you if I go to the cross, that's what I'm going to do.

I'm going to do whatever God is leading me to do because I trust his plan, because I trust his character.

And so what Matthew is doing in Matthew to the Jewish audience is he's showing them what God intended to do through the nation and through our complicated history is now being fulfilled in Jesus.

And he's using these symbols and he's showing them and he's taking them on a journey, which now leads to us, right?

Leads to us.

I want you to think about today what we've talked about.

Some of you, depending on where you're at in your life right now, you might be in a place where you wonder if anybody hears your cry.

If anybody sees your misery.

Let's pray together.

Lord, we come to you in Jesus' name.

Lord, just like we saw with the children of Israel, you did what only you could do with things like the Red Sea and the plagues, but there was still work that they had to do to be willing to deal with their minds, to have their minds renewed.

We're not bystanders to our minds being renewed.

We are participators.

So I pray, Lord, today, no matter how stuck or in bondage someone may feel, that today, Lord, even through the language of tears, even through a broken heart, even through a season of misery, Lord, that you come to our rescue.