Exodus: The Melody of Exodus

Intro
Good morning! Today we want to introduce our new series: a deep dive into the Book of Exodus. Just as songs like Vanilla Ice's "Ice Ice Baby" or Ed Sheeran's "Thinking Out Loud" borrow from earlier melodies, the Bible has a recurring melody line: the Exodus story. It’s a deliverance archetype that influences the entire biblical narrative, from Genesis to Revelation, making it essential to understand.
Scripture References
Exodus (all of it), Deuteronomy 31:9, Numbers 12:3, Luke 24:25-27, 1 Corinthians 10:1-13, John 1:14, Matthew 10:28-29, John 20:21
Key Points

• Exodus is the Bible's Foundational Story:
  • An Archetype for Deliverance: The Exodus story—God’s rescue of Israel from slavery in Egypt—is a pattern for every major story of deliverance and redemption in the Bible. It's not just a standalone account but the source material for the whole biblical symphony.
  • Jesus's Exodus: You cannot understand Jesus without knowing Exodus. His baptism, wilderness temptation, teaching on a mountain, and death during Passover are all intentional echoes of the Exodus narrative.
  • Re-hitching the Testaments: We must reject the heresy of Marcionism, which separates the Old and New Testaments. Understanding Exodus provides the context that makes the New Testament "technicolor" and helps us appreciate God's holiness and love.
• Seven Goals for the Series:
  1. See Exodus Echoes: Recognize the themes of creation, bondage, redemption, and renewal woven throughout the Bible.
  2. Re-hitch the Testaments: Grasp that the Old Testament is essential to understanding Jesus and our faith.
  3. Understand the Sacraments: See baptism as a re-enactment of the Red Sea crossing and communion as a memorial of the Passover Lamb.
  4. Grasp the Law's Missionary Heart: Understand that God gave the law not as a set of arbitrary rules but as a distinct way of life to showcase His wisdom to the nations.
  5. Grasp God's Holiness: Appreciate the profound privilege of God's presence dwelling in us.
  6. Find True Freedom: Recognize that true liberation isn't found in a life without a master but in a "blessed bondage" to God. Like a fish in water or a train on tracks, our freedom is found in our created purpose: to worship Him.
  7. Find Yourself in the Story: The story of Israel's journey is an example and warning for us (1 Cor 10:11). Just as they were led from slavery to a wilderness, we have been delivered from the dominion of darkness into this life. We must learn to trust God through its trials, not mistaking the wilderness for the promised land.

Conclusion

The Exodus story is our story. We were once enslaved to sin and death, but have been delivered by Jesus into the "wilderness" of this life. Though the journey may feel like it takes 40 years instead of 11 days, we have hope for the Promised Land.

Calls to Action

• Find Yourself: Ask God to reveal where you are in the Exodus story this week.
• Trust: Pray for a heart to trust God in the "wilderness" of your current life.
• Worship: As we continue our worship, let's sing about our chains being broken, recognizing that our ultimate freedom is found in Jesus.

Transcript

Let's kick it! Ice, ice, baby.

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Ice, ice, baby. Alright, stop. Collaborate and listen. Ice is back with my brand new invention. Something grabs ahold of me tightly. Flow like a harp, daily and nightly. Will it ever stop? Yo, I don't know. Turn off the lights and I'll glow. To the extreme I'll rock a mic like a vandal. Light up a stage and wax the chump like a candle.

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It's...

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It would be impossible to overstate how important that song was to 11 year old Travis.

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I don't know how old I am. I can't remember my own kids names.(...) But I have the lyrics to this song memorized.(...) And so do you. Thank God my musical tastes matured.

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Later on in high school I would get to watch Wayne's World. Not at my house. At a cousin's house.

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I would get to watch Wayne's World. I would be introduced to Saturday Night Live kind of humor.(...) And the band Queen.

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So I spent high school listening to Queen.

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And imagine how shocked I was. When I heard "Under Pressure".

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Can you play that song for me?

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The day I discovered my whole life was a lie.

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Freaking listen.

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So...

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Vanilla Ice is not the only person to do this.(...) Ed Sheeran he won a Grammy for his song "Thinking Out Loud". And then he faced a lawsuit.(...) Because they claimed he stole Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get It On". We'll let you do the forensics on this. Play the clip.

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(Music)

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(Music)

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Marvin Gaye lost this lawsuit. Partially because he's dead. You know?

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Whoever was representing him lost this lawsuit. But he won this one. He won 5.3 million dollars. Because someone stole this song.(...) Let's see if you can recognize it. This is "Gotta Give It Up" by Marvin Gaye.

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(Music)

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Pharrell and Robin Thicke had to pay him 5.3 million dollars. Because blurred lines.(...) Maybe he had blurred some lines. They had borrowed...

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They had borrowed heavily.

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Is it influence?

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Is it alluding to something?

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Is it plagiarism?

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Or is it paying homage to an artist that you've listened to your whole life?

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I start the sermon this way because there's a melody line that goes throughout the whole Bible. And we want you to be able to recognize it. To understand its source.

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And the Bible introduces these, let's call them melodies, early on. And they're repeated.

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And when they're repeated, they're expanded upon.(...) And eventually they reach full crescendo in the New Testament in the book of Revelation. And it's actually not like plagiarism.

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It's not.

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It's more like a symphony that introduces a melodic line early on and then repeats it. Or like a soundtrack that introduces a song but then comes back to it. Until it reaches its dramatic end. The echoes of the Exodus are all throughout your Bible.

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And we want you to be able to recognize them and not think, "Oh, Vanilla Ice came up with this." It's all throughout. In fact, the Exodus becomes a sort of deliverance archetype that the rest of the Bible builds on. Even the greatest deliverance of all, the cross, which saved us from sin, intentionally builds upon this Exodus shape, this Exodus story. What's an archetype? It's a pattern. A pattern that reoccurs across cultures and across time periods and embodies a common human experience or emotion.

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One commentator says, "While some of these great Biblical truths are foreshadowed in Genesis,(...) Exodus pulls them all together,(...) giving them a shape and a definition that the rest of the Bible will not alter.

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Under the simplest of forms and by many fascinating stories, Exodus reveals fundamental truth and is in fact one of the Bible's great building blocks." So as we study the book of Exodus together, we don't just want you to understand this book. We want you to understand the book.

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The good book has this melody, this borrowed melody throughout it. And it's meant to enhance our understanding of the Scriptures.

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Many of us, I know it's not a hard sell to say we're studying Exodus. I know it's a favorite for some, at least the first half of it anyway.(...) But we know this story. Maybe we've seen the Prince of Egypt, but we've certainly heard about this story that starts in Egypt. We're fascinated with that empire, right? The story starts with infanticide, the Pharaoh deciding to kill Israelite boys.

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Moses is of course put into the water hoping to save his life. He's taken into the Pharaoh's household and raised there. His name means drawn out of the water.(...) Moses ends up later in life murdering an Egyptian who's mistreating an Israelite. And then the Scriptures say that he spends 40 years, not just in the desert, but in the back of the desert. And it's in the back of the desert that he encounters what?

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Burning bush.(...) And he takes his shoes off and he turns aside and he listens and he meets Yahweh. And Yahweh reveals himself to Moses because he's about to reveal himself to the Israelite people and to the nations. He does that through some monstrous plagues that we love. You know, frogs, locusts, denial, turning to blood. And of course, Pharaoh finally lets him go because the firstborn in each Egyptian home is taken. And Pharaoh says, "Get out of here." And either he hardens his heart or God hardens his heart. We don't know, but we'll work that out when we get there. And they cross over the Red Sea, but of course they're not delivered right into the Promised Land. They're delivered into the wilderness where they wander for some time. And they're led by a fire and a cloud by day, a fire by night, right? And they're fed manna in the wilderness and water comes from the rock. And they meet with God at Sinai and they get the Ten Commandments, right? And eventually God tabernacles with them. They create space for Jesus for the presence of God right in the center of their camp. So this story's got all the goods.

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And we've heard many of these before, but I'm really excited to go back again,

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see what God would want to say to us as we study Exodus.(...) Author and date are surprise, surprise, debated.

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The work of not just Exodus, but the first five books of the Bible, the Torah, is attributed to Moses.

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It's not just, again, an argument over Exodus. There's an argument over the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible. They're very clearly a series or a set of books. Here are some good reasons to think that Moses wrote it. The first is that's what Jesus thought.

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So it's hard to argue with that, but some Germans have found a way to argue with that.

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For if you believed Moses, you would believe me. For what he wrote, for he wrote of me, but if you do not believe his writings,(...) how will you believe my words, Jesus would say.

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When Jesus encounters those on the road to Emmaus who are walking away so discouraged because of the crucifixion, he said to them, "How foolish are you, and how slow to believe all the prophets have spoken. Why does not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory? And beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he explained to them what was said and all the scriptures concerning himself."

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Another good reason to believe that Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible is that the Bible says that he did. Deuteronomy 31.9, so Moses wrote down the law. So his writings, I think it's safe to attribute those writings to Moses. Here's a few verses that suggest that at least in their final form, maybe another author or contributor was involved. Numbers 12.3 says, "Now, Moses was very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth." Right?(...) Either Moses wrote it or Trump wrote it.

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Is it possible to, under the inspiration of the Spirit, call yourself the most humble person who ever lived? Or does that statement kind of cannibalize itself?

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Another one that tips us off that the material might have been compiled or edited by a scribe is this one. "So Moses, the servant of the Lord, died there in the land of Moab." Pretty safe to say that he didn't write that verse.

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So at least in their final form, we think that some editors or contributors are involved. The date is also debated,(...) variously dated between the 15th century and the 12th century B.C. But again, fiercely debated and not necessarily worth our time. I'll read a quote from one scholar. "We've accepted the evidence, debated as it is, for a 15th century Exodus, rather than, as others have argued, for a 13th century Exodus. We don't argue the case for any of these conclusions definitively."(...) And that's the conclusion of my study.

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Exodus is part two of the book of Genesis. I know this for sure.

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The book of Exodus actually starts with the Hebrew word "and."

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You're meant to read straight through Genesis chapter 50 right into Exodus. It starts with an "and." It's meant to be seen as the second part of a set of five, and we know that for sure. And just as you wouldn't start by watching Fast and the Furious 9, you would go back and watch the first Fast and the Furious to get up to speed. You don't start with the book of Exodus. Actually, you start with Genesis. You start with God's promises to Abraham, and then you see the rescue of the Israelites as a part of his covenant to these people that have found themselves in captivity. So Exodus should be seen as a part of the series. And so if you've got time to read 50 chapters of Genesis before we dig into Exodus, that would be awesome.

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So this is one Torah. This is one series. This is one set, and Exodus is the second part of that set. Here are seven goals that we have as we've been studying for our time in Exodus. We'll be studying the book of Exodus for September, October, November. We'll take a break December and January. We'll pick back up February, March, and May, and we'll be done with the book of Exodus before the summer starts next year. So we're giving considerable real estate to this book, and there are some reasons why. And I just want to catch you up in and get you excited, because I'm excited, and I've been reading a lot. So here are seven goals that we have for this series. And the first we've already touched on, but it's that you would see the echoes of Exodus throughout the rest of Scripture,

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that you're able to understand this biblical motif and this melody line that appears throughout your entire Bible.

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Northrop Fry, who is a literary critic, said this, "Exodus is the only thing that ever happens in the Bible."

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And I think that that's overstated, but when you start to spot this, it kind of ruins you, because you can see this melody line throughout the whole book. In fact, there's almost like four chords. You get a lot of grief in worship music for only knowing four chords. But the Bible plays these four chords under everything.

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Creation, enslavement,(...) redemption, renewal,(...) creation,(...) bondage, redemption, renewal. They keep playing throughout the entire Bible, and we want you to be able to recognize it, because it's thrilling to see that this is one big story that God's weaving together.

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Ruth is an incredible book.(...) It's got an Exodus shape.

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So it's not just about Ruth and Boaz and Naomi. It's the story of Israel told through the book of Ruth.

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Psalms, I know some of us are like, "Man, I don't know where to read, and I don't know how to read the Bible." So every morning we wake up and we end up in the Psalms.

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Psalm 77, 78, 99, 105, 106, 114, 135, 136, all retelling the Exodus story.(...) Isaiah and Jeremiah, they're major prophets, and major prophets point to things that are to come. But do you know how Isaiah and Jeremiah point to the future?(...) By reminding people of what he did in the past.

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And so they talk incessantly about the Exodus, and then they start saying, "There's a new Moses coming, and there's a new Exodus coming." When you see it, it really helps you to read those books. Matthew, when he starts his retelling of the Jesus story, he starts not with Jesus teaching or healing or casting out demons, but Jesus in a time of testing. He goes into the wilderness. Jesus goes into the wilderness for 40 days and succeeds in all the ways that Israel failed. He's, again, living into this story. John opens his gospel with this. "The Word became flesh and made His dwelling among us. We've seen His glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father full of grace and truth." This word means like tabernacled.

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Jesus camped with us. He was in our campground.

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We camped with Him. We beheld His very presence. Again, borrowed language from the Exodus story. Paul, if you've read any of his letters in the New Testament, you know a huge theme for him is what we just sang this morning.

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Slaves becoming sons.(...) Slaves who were in bondage to sin and death becoming sons with a glorious inheritance. It's all throughout his writing. I'm telling you, it is vanilla ice. It is borrowed. It's borrowed language. He's building upon, again, not plagiarism,

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a sort of paying homage and returning to this melody line and motif that's made sense of what God's doing.

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1 Peter alone has 46 allusions or quotations to the Old Testament in it. That's one for every two verses in 1 Peter. Revelation, if you've read it, you've probably been confused by it, but one thing that you'll probably pick up on is the theme of redemption, judgment, and inheritance.

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Redemption, judgment, and inheritance. All throughout the book it talks at length about saints who've been freed from a world that was subjected to Satan, and they've been freed by what? The blood of the Lamb. And now they've become a kingdom of priests having gone through this great trial, this wilderness, this persecution.

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All throughout the book of Revelation.(...) That's one of our goals is that you would read your Bible and go, "I've heard this before. I recognize this melody."

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2. Our goal is that you would re-hitch the Old Testament and the New Testament, and you would enjoy the Bible that Jesus read.

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Andy Stanley, he's a famous pastor for good reason. He's an incredible communicator and quite an innovator as well. He recently got in some trouble for inviting his church to un-hitch their faith from the Old Testament.

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He said, "The early church leaders un-hitched the church from the worldview value systems and regulations of the Jewish Scriptures, and my friends, we must do this as well."

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And before you get on your high horse and throw stuff at some mega-church leader, can you just admit that you've been tempted to do the same thing? That the Old Testament for many people is something of a stumbling block. That it's difficult to know what to do with divine violence. And it would be easier maybe to turn away from the wrathful God of the Old Testament and just embrace this "love your neighbor Jesus" character in the New.

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We've all been tempted towards this, but the un-hitching of the Old Testament is not a solution. It's actually a heresy. A very, very old Christian heresy.

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So, Marcianism is that heresy and people have been invited for centuries to un-hitch from the wrathful, violent God of the Old Testament and get with hippie Jesus in the New Testament. And there's not a distinct movement today, but there is an influence in Christianity.

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The influence is towards a selective reading of Scripture to skip the hard parts. It's to downplay the Old Testament. It's to only focus on God's love and neglect His judgment and His wrath.

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And to even think that the Old Testament is irrelevant or maybe incompatible with Christianity.

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Dr. Carmen Imms, who wrote an awesome book on Sinai and the significance of Mount Sinai today, encourages a re-hitching. I loved it. She's like, "You've got to re-hitch the Old Testament to the New Testament if you want to understand Jesus, who He was and what He came to do. You have to re-hitch yourself to this story. It can't be understood any other way. It is the context and it is the backdrop of His life, death and resurrection. And it comes in technicolor when you understand the context of it.

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Number three, we hope that your understanding of the significance of the sacraments grows.

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You may have come from a Catholic church where you had many sacraments and the Protestant church. Only two are, I would say, universally recognized, and that would be baptism and communion.(...) Baptism finds its source, not in John the Baptist, but it finds its source in the people of God crossing the Red Sea.

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That's where baptism begins for us. That these people who were enslaved, stuck in their sin, living under this Pharaoh, this taskmaster that they couldn't get out from under, cross through the waters and into the Promised Land.

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This is the beginning of us understanding baptism. When we come to the table at the end of our service, we take the cup and we take the bread. This didn't start at the cross.(...) This starts with the first supper. This starts with the Passover. This starts with doorposts marked with the blood of the Lamb so that you avoid God's judgment and wrath.

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And it's only when we understand this first supper that we understand the Last Supper and we now understand the cross that's been marked with the blood of Jesus.

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And now we live out from under God's righteous judgment.

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Got it?(...) Number four,(...) I'm hoping that you grasp the missionary heart of the law. The whole book of Exodus has a missionary heart. God wants to reveal himself.(...) That's what's happening in Exodus. But in particular, it's also happening in the law, not just in the burning bush,(...) but in those Ten Commandments. So Exodus has got this theme of like God coming saying, this is my name. This is who I am. This is what I'm like. This is what I'm not like. And it's not just that God's revealing himself to Moses. He's obviously revealing himself to the Israelites and to Egypt as well. How many know that Egypt found out some things about God as well?

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So when God comes to reveal himself to an individual or to a remnant of people, it's always because he's choosing this particular people to reveal himself universally.

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He wants the world to know what he's like, who he is, what he does, what he doesn't do, why he doesn't. And this is what Exodus is all about, even the law.

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And I've picked up on like an attitude in the church,(...) like this kind of like rules. And there's so many sermons that come forward. Like it's not about the rules. It's not about rules. It's not about rules. It's about relationship. It's about relationship. And I get it. I understand the heart of that. But that's not how the Israelites related to these rules.

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And these rules given by God were meant to reveal something about him. And as the people of God lived separate lives, like they were set up like a city on a hill. They were distinct from the surrounding nations so that the nations would be drawn to them. And that's how they related to the law. Just listen to this passage and let it confront your attitude towards rules.(...) I don't know if it's an American thing or just a human thing, but it's like, what's with all these rules?

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Moses says, "See, I've taught you decrees and laws as the Lord my God commanded me so that you may follow them in the land you're entering to take possession of it. Observe them carefully, for this will show your wisdom and understanding to the nations who will hear about all these decrees and say, "Surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people. What other nation is so great as to have their God near them the way the Lord our God is near us whenever we pray to him? And what other nation is so great as to have such righteous decrees and laws as this body of laws I'm setting before you today?" That's kind of wild, huh?(...) These laws and the way you'll begin to live is going to evoke jealousy in surrounding nations.

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And you may be going like, "Dang, I don't know why my dad's got so many rules.(...) I don't know why my parents are so strict." But your buddies are going to come and say, "I wish that my dad had rules.(...) I wish that my dad cared about that."

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That's what's going to happen when you live under this law and with this law.

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Number six, five,(...) I want you to grasp the significance of God's holiness.

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That he dwells in unapproachable light. That we want to start that there. That God,(...) you will always be holy.

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We're starting there. God's unique. He's separate. He dwells in unapproachable light. No one can stand in his presence. When we start there, then it becomes very significant that he would dwell with us.

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But when we start in the place of, "Jesus is my homeboy and he loves me,"(...) his presence with us is lost.

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Because who wouldn't want to be with us? We're amazing.(...) We're so lovable.

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Of course he would want to go to lunch with us. Why wouldn't he take up residence in me? There's all this good in me.

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I have a good heart.

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Let's start here. Woe is me. I'm a man of unclean lips. What the heck are you doing dwelling with us? What the heck are you doing camping here with us? What the heck are you doing saying, "I'm going to live inside of you. I'm going to make my presence known to you. I'm going to fill you with my very presence." It becomes profound when and only when we realize that he's holy. He's unique. He's separate. He's distinct. There's no one like him. So that he wants to come to lunch with us is a big, stinking deal.

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Number six,(...) our hope is that you would have true freedom and liberation in a blessed bondage.

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And let me explain what I mean by this.(...) Actually, I'll let Christopher Watkin explain.

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In Exodus, freedom is always unto something.(...) Let my people go is from time to time quoted in the media and political circles so that they may worship me hardly ever.

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But the second part of the command is crucial. It shows that God's liberation of his people has a particular purpose and view. God frees his people not so that they can serve no Lord, but so that they can serve the true Lord.(...) So hear me again, Americans.(...) Freedom is not ultimate.(...) It's actually not what we're going for.

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We want to be free and we want those chains off our hands so that we can worship the true living God so that we can get our hands and our hearts moving towards him. So the liberation and the freedom that comes is unto something, right?

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Jesus famously says in Matthew 1028, he says, "Come to me, all who are weary and heavy laden and all will give you rest," which is a huge invitation.

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And so verse 28 is all about rest and the salvation of Christ. But the very following verse in 29 is an invitation to rest in submission to Christ.

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And it says, "Take my yoke upon you. Learn from me, for I'm gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls." I find that we often want verse 28, "Let my people go,"(...) but we don't want verse 29, "so that they can worship me in the desert," so that they can serve me and serve me only.

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"Come unto me, all who are weary and heavy laden and all give you a heavy wooden thing that is meant to keep two oxes together."

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We want to rest in the salvation and the rescue that comes from Christ. We don't necessarily think that there's rest to be found in submission to him, because we see rest as doing what we want to do when we want to do it.

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We'll finally be rested when we get to do what we want to do when we want to do it. And the Bible would say something a little bit different than that.(...) The means by which he gives us rest is by giving us a yoke,(...) one that's easy, one that's not ill-fitting. And he lifts our heaviness by giving us a burden. It's really wild.

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And I know that you know how this works. I can't necessarily explain it, but I know everyone's like, "Yeah, I know that. I know what that's like."

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Freedom and life are found in bondage to the duty for which things have been created.

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A sort of blessed bondage, right? We would never look at a fish that was out of water and be like, "It's so free, no longer bound by the lake." Look at it, you know?

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We would never do that. It's not free.(...) It's meant to live in connection with the thing it was created for. We would never look at a tree that's been uprooted and think like, "It was so strapped down before this. It wasn't free to do its tree thing, so I'm so glad it's been liberated from the dirt." We would never look at a train that's not on the tracks and be like, "Oh, that was so narrow. Those cramped its style. It needed to express itself."

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No, we'd be like, "That train was meant to be bound to those tracks, and it's not itself, if not bound."(...) And so it's not just about, "Let my people go." It's about, "So that they may worship and serve the living God and serve me only." There's rest and salvation found in serving the one and only true God.

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The last point that I'll make,(...) maybe worship team, you guys could come,(...) is that you're supposed to find yourself in this story.

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That this is our story, and we want you to find yourself in it. I think that's what Paul wants when he writes 1 Corinthians 10.

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Oh, you know what?(...) You guys are going to block the screen, but... No, you can stay there.(...) Okay. 1 Corinthians 10, Paul writes, "I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. No problem, Paul. We've all seen Prince of Egypt.

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They were all baptized into Moses, in the cloud and in the sea. They all ate the same spiritual food and drank the same spiritual drink, for they drank from the spiritual rock that accompanied them, and that rock was Christ.

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Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them. Their bodies were scattered in the wilderness.

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Now these things occurred as examples to keep us from setting our hearts on evil things as they did. Do not be idolaters, as some of them were. As it is written, the people sat down to eat and drink and got up to indulge in revelry. We should not commit sexual immorality, as some of them did, and in one day 23,000 of them died. We should not test Christ, as some of them did, and were killed by snakes.(...) And do not grumble, as some of them did, and were killed by the destroying angel. These things happened to them as examples, and were written down as warnings for us, on whom the culmination of the ages has come. So if you think you're standing firm, be careful that you don't fall. No temptation has overtaken you, except that which is common to mankind. And God is faithful. He will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear, but when you're tempted, He will also provide a way out so that you can endure it.

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These things aren't written about us, but they're recorded for us.(...) We're meant to learn from the mistakes that were made, and to see ourselves in the story. Just as every history teacher has reminded us in an attempt to keep us engaged, those who cannot remember the past, they're condemned to repeat it.

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And that's why these lessons are recorded. You're supposed to see yourself in the story. Washington, DC, there's a museum of the Bible, and they have an exhibit of the slave Bible.(...) And the slave Bible was a Bible given to slaves by the slave owners, and guess what? It had been edited.

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Can you guess what's been edited out? It starts with Exodus 19.(...) So it stops with Genesis 50, starts with Exodus 19.(...) Why did the slave owners do that?(...) They didn't want those slaves seeing themselves in the story.(...) More importantly,

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than reading it and going, "Hey, wait, we could be free."

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They didn't want those slaves reading the story and finding out that God is on the side of the oppressed.(...) And He hates injustice, and He loves justice.(...) They didn't want them to know that, because they knew, if they know that, we've got some problems on our hands. So they edited out. In fact, Harriet Tubman, who worked to free slaves with the Underground Railroad, was called Moses.

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And in fact, she would sing a song called "Go Down, Moses" to let slaves know that the coast was clear. It was their code word to one another, was to sing this song.

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This story is not about us, but it is recorded for us. And we're meant to see ourselves in the story. So where are you in this story?(...) This story becomes something of a lens or like a paradigm in which we see our lives. And I think it makes incredible sense of what we've experienced.

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Deliverance from bondage. I know we were singing it, and there were many of us, there was a rise in our hearts, like, "Yeah, we have been delivered."(...) We were bound by sin and death, and we've been set free.

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We all know what it's like to have bondage in our lives, right?(...) To not be very free. We all know what it is to have a family, and have success, and have approval, and have a career. We all know what it is to have hobbies. We all know what it is to have sex. And then we also know that there's a fine line between those things having us.(...) And now approval has us, and success has us, and your career has you, sex has you, substance has you. We all know what it is to tip over into being bound. And you're not very free.(...) You're now being used by these things, and you're stuck. You need to be rescued, ransomed, delivered. You need to be redeemed.

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Well, good news.(...) God does redeem, and we've experienced that. What's really interesting is they come through the Red Sea, not right into the Promised Land, right? They come into the wilderness.(...) And in the wilderness, they're tested, they're tried. In the wilderness, they learn to trust God.

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In the wilderness, they learn to turn from idolatry. It's commonly been said that it took just days to get Israel out of Egypt, but then it took 40 years to get Egypt out of Israel.(...) They're still operating like slaves. And so it's in the wilderness that they come to know who God is, come to trust Him, come to worship Him, right? I think it's so amazing that a journey that should have taken 11 days took like 40 years.

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I think that's amazing because that's what I hear every time I sit down with someone for lunch for like a pastoral meeting. They look at me and they say, "Pastor, what should have taken 11 days took 40 years."

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This is our story.(...) And you want to know why it took 40 years? Because we were struggling to trust.(...) We didn't really know who God was. We ran back to our old ways. We worshipped things that were made by man. We complained, we grumbled, we didn't get the big idea.(...) And what should have taken 11 days took 40 years. This is our story.

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By the way,(...) just to remind you again, because advertisements are bombarding you with a message other than this,(...) this life is not the promised land.

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And to hope in this life to deliver all that you desire is to be disappointed.(...) We're wandering.(...) And we've seen some miracles and God's fed us daily bread.

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And we're coming to know Him more and more. But please don't think that this life and anything that this life has to offer is the promised land. We're sojourners here. We're aliens.(...) But that's not all of our story, is it? Because this train is bound for glory.(...) This train. Would you stand with me?

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Exodus is the only thing that ever happens in the Bible.

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Jesus,(...) we just want to ask as our new Moses, as our leader, would you continue to lead us out and lead us in?

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We want to leave behind bondage and old taskmasters.(...) We want to be this kingdom of priests.(...) We want to know you. We want to understand what it is to stay close to your presence and to be led by you, Lord.(...) So we're just asking for a new Exodus.(...) Like do it again. Do it again in our lives. Do it again in our church.(...) In Jesus' name, amen.