The book of Exodus

• It's the second book of the Bible.
• One of the more important books to understand.

if you're going to understand the rest of the Bible.Now it's a pretty long book but its structure is pretty straightforward but before we dive into the story and structure of Exodus let's get a quick overview of some of the themes that we're going to see in Exodus.

Exodus shows us a lot about who God is.We're going to see his faithfulness how God keeps his promises to his people we're also going to learn about Israel's origins and its really their theological origins remembered in Genesis.

We saw the ancestral origins of Israel and we saw some of the promises that God made to the ancestors of the people of Israel but now we're going to see Israel emerge as a nation. We're also going to see a little bit about God protecting his name and his reputation. 

He's a very powerful being in the Bible the most powerful being in fact and so God really cares about How his people treat and respect him and also How the gods of the other nations and How the other nations interact with him so that's going to be an interesting thing for us to see in the book of Exodus.

Then we also have the law now the first five books of the Bible are collectively called the law or the law of Moses and Exodus gives us the introduction of How Israel came to have a law that came from God now beyond those themes. We also have a core tension that we're going to see not only in the book of Exodus but also in the rest of the Old Testament.

That tension is between God the people of Israel and then the other nations and their gods throughout the rest of the Old Testament we're going to see God calling the people of Israel to be loyal to him and to obey Him and to reflect his goodness to the rest of the world but we're also going to see Israel being drawn to mimic the other nations and worship their gods in ways that run contrary to what God's expectations are for his people and then of course that creates conflict between the Israelites God and the gods of the other nations.

That's the divine love triangle of the Old Testament if you will now as far as the book of Exodus goes although it's a very long book it's structure is really straightforward Exodus is 40 chapters long and the first half deals with God rescuing the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt and then the second half deals with how God forms a new relationship with the people of Israel in the wilderness.

It's pretty easy to remember because the rescue story goes from chapters 1 to 19 and then the relationship story is chapters 20 to 40 so if you just remember the second half starts at 20 and runs to 40 then you have a pretty good idea of the general arc of Exodus and then once you get into that second half there is some interesting parallelism happening.

The first half opens with this prologue if you remember in Genesis the people of Israel which was a small family group moved down to Egypt during a famine because one of Jacob's or Israel's sons was a leader in Egypt who had found a way to store food and save a lot of lives because of it so Israel moves down to Egypt and they are honoured guests but a couple generations later the Pharaoh of Egypt says I don't remember Joseph I don't know what these Israelite are doing here but there sure are a lot of them so let's enslave them and then kill all their baby boys so that they can't rise up against us.

Not a nice guy but there's one baby that escapes this genocide and that's Moses you probably heard the story of how Moses mother put him in a basket and set him adrift in the river and then he was found by Pharaoh's daughter well that plays out in the second chapter of Exodus so Moses escapes this genocide and then he grows up and he sees some of the Israelites being mistreated so he tries to save the Israelites on his own.

It doesn't go so well and Moses is exiled in that second chapter but that's really just the opening to the story because in the next section God calls Moses in the wilderness and he sends him to the people of Israel he says go to Egypt and tell Pharaoh let my people go very famous line from the Bible and Moses does that he goes to Egypt and he tells Pharaoh to let his people go now.

Pharaoh doesn't just give in right away so God sends a series of ten plagues on the Egyptians now this is a really interesting part of the Bible because God says that he is going to be executing judgement on Pharaoh and the other gods of Egypt the Egyptians considered Pharaoh their King to be a God himself.

God says that Pharaoh has taken Israel hostage and God wants to bring Israel back.God talks about Israel as his firstborn son and so Pharaoh has gods son. God is fighting Pharaoh and the other gods of Egypt to get his family back to rescue Israel so that's what's going on with these ten plagues and God ends up overpowering.

Pharaoh and the other gods of Egypt and allowing Israel to go free and so you have that really dramatic sequence of Israel walking through the Red Sea God parts the water so those chaotic waters and the people of Israel come through safely to the other side and then God meets the people of Israel in the wilderness. 

God is on a mountaintop and the people are down below that's where the first half of Exodus ends now while the first half of Exodus ended with ten plagues the second half of Exodus opens with Ten Commandments another very famous passage in the Bible and it's interesting because God gives these Ten Commandments to the people from the mountaintop what's happening here is that God is giving his laws to his people and he's initiating what we call a covenant.

Now a covenant is like a treaty God is saying I am gonna be your God and you're gonna be my people and then I have expectations for my people and if you keep them you will get my blessings if you don't then I'm going to discipline you and so that's what God's doing when he's laying out those Ten Commandments and at the end of giving some details around those Commandments Israel agrees they say everything that the Lord has spoken we will do and so it's a done deal God says great so now I'm going to because I'm your God I'm going to give you a way to to meet with you I'm going to come and dwell in your midst and so he gives Moses plans to make a portable temple which is called a tabernacle.

It's a tent that they would carry around with them in the wilderness and this was a holy place this was a place where the divine realm and the physical realm could meet it's a place where God could meet his people and so very exciting that God is giving Moses plans to make this place for him to meet with his people but once those plans are done Moses comes down the mountain and sees Israel worshipping another god so well in the first part of this section God made laws in the next part we see Israel breaking those laws they're breaking the first two of those Ten Commandments right off the bat and that doesn't go so well for the people but God gives them a second chance and by doing that the people are actually able to build that Tabernacle.

God does come down from the mountain and fill that tent he fills it with his glory we see that pillar of cloud moved down and rest on top of a tent and fill that holy place but there's a problem in nobody can go into this Tabernacle not even Moses can enter so what do you do when you have a very powerful being living in your presence and no one can approach him directly well that's what the next book of the Bible is all about that's the Book of Leviticus.