Exodus: A New Redemption Story

I remember exactly where I was when I first began to realize that there was more going on in Exodus than just a wild story about burning bushes, plagues of frogs, and parting seas. I had been leading one of our pastoral students through an overview of the Old Testament and I took some time to drop in at my favorite coffee shop and prep for our meeting. The morning air was cool, the coffee was hot, and my brain was on autopilot. I took a sip and read Exodus 32. The text seemed like it’s usual self: complacent and nonchalant. Then out of nowhere one series of passages began to stir up trouble.

³⁰ The next day Moses said to the people, “You have sinned a great sin. And now I will go up to the LORD; perhaps I can make atonement for your sin.”  ³¹ So Moses returned to the LORD and said, “Alas, this people have sinned a great sin. They have made for themselves gods of gold.  ³² But now, if you will forgive their sin- but if not, please blot me out of your book that you have written.”  ³³ But the LORD said to Moses, “Whoever has sinned against me, I will blot out of my book. (Exodus 32:30-33)

The passage was very startling for a number of reasons. For starters, Moses is offering himself as a penal substitute for the nation of Israel. What an absurd idea! Moses doesn’t necessarily have any basis for doing this, the sacrificial system itself had not even been established (although surely sacrifices are at least an occasional reality in the worship of Yahweh). But even more outlandish is the fact that God does not seem to rebuke Moses for this offer. God doesn’t respond, “What are you talking about, Moses?” No, instead God states plainly and matter-of-factly, “Whoever has sinned against me, I will blot out of my book.” Sin must be dealt with and yet God does not deny outright the offer of a substitute. There is very real sense in which all of this is foreshadowing a better substitute. Namely, Exodus 32 anticipates the offer of Jesus to die for his sheep. This mind-blowing example is only one among many that flow across the pages of Exodus. Exodus is not just a continuation of the story of redemption as begun in Genesis; it is also pointing us forward to the new Exodus associated with the church.

We have said that a very simple way to summarize the major content of Exodus is through the three themes of Creation, Law, and Worship. This summary applied to the book of Genesis shows the correlation between the story of redemption begun there and the continued in Exodus. When applied to the New Testament we see how the themes in Exodus are pointing us forward to their realization in the church of Jesus Christ.  A quick look at each of these themes will reveal the relationship.

Exodus parallels the creation account in Genesis in several ways, as we saw last week. The reality of course was that though God had called a people for himself out of Abraham they had hardly been his people yet. After all Exodus opens up with the trope of Israel’s slavery to Egypt, a bondage they have experienced for generations. So in Exodus we find God creating his people afresh through the exodus event itself (Ex. 6:7), and in the giving of the law (19:5-6). Here the story takes a new and fresh beginning it seems, and yet when we get to the New Testament creation happens again. For here Paul tells us that “not all Israel is Israel” (Romans 9:6), and that in Christ we are a “new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Again we see that creation must take place for the people of God to be established. Israel’s national identity is not enough to ensure them a right relationship with God. God will create his people again by means of the death and resurrection of Jesus. Paul even calls alludes to the exodus when he says we have been transferred from “the kingdom of darkness and brought into the kingdom” of God’s beloved Son (Colossians 1:13). A new exodus has taken place to create God’s people.

An important and pronounced difference has occurred in the New Testament when we consider the theme of law. There is far too much that one needs to discuss when we consider the role of the law in the New Testament, far more than I can do justice to in this post. But I do want to point to one key development. In the book of Hebrews the author points to the important distinction that in Christ there is a new covenant and the law is now written on the minds and the hearts of God’s people. This law continues but in a way distinct from the Old Covenant. Hebrews 8:6-13 reads:

⁶ But as it is, Christ has obtained a ministry that is as much more excellent than the old as the covenant he mediates is better, since it is enacted on better promises.  ⁷ For if that first covenant had been faultless, there would have been no occasion to look for a second.  ⁸ For he finds fault with them when he says: “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will establish a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah,  ⁹ not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt. For they did not continue in my covenant, and so I showed no concern for them, declares the Lord.  ¹⁰ For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.  ¹¹ And they shall not teach, each one his neighbor and each one his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest.  ¹² For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.”  ¹³ In speaking of a new covenant, he makes the first one obsolete. And what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away. (Hebrews 8:6-13)

The law given in Exodus is taken developed in amazing ways in the New Testament.

Finally, worship continues to shape the people of God in the New Testament, ultimately finding a true and earnest realization among the elect. We see routinely in the Old Testament the prophetic condemnations of ritualistic worship that did not please God (Isaiah 29:13). In the New Testament, however, Paul describes the church’s worship as a way of life. He says, “whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all to the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31). New Testament worship does also carry over some of the themes we see in the Old Testament. Particularly as they relate to the people gathered at the Tabernacle and the Temple. But here in the New Testament it refers to the worship of the gathered church (1 Cor. 14:23-32). The New Testament also takes the theme of universal worship hinted out throughout the Old Testament and makes it clear.  Revelation 5:9-10 describe the worship of God as coming from a people from every tribe, tongue, and nation. And these people, John tells us in that text, are described just as the people in Exodus were, as a kingdom of priests. Worship found in Exodus builds in the New Testament, and when applied to the church we see how the authors routinely draw from Exodus to develop their story of Redemption.