Exodus: Who Is the LORD?

Last week we looked at the surface of the text of Exodus 14. There we saw God's stated plan to get glory over Pharaoh, and how He carried it out by shaking off the Egyptians into the Red Sea. This evening, I want to take a different approach to the text. Instead of looking at the surface of the text, the stated actions and intentions and lessons, I want to look at the themes of the text, and speci...

In eleven rounds now Yahweh has landed a knockout blow on Egypt's king. Forget best of 13; the record is 11-0. And God is now going to make it an even dozen. A dozen times in a row, He will beat down Pharaoh in order to demonstrate His own glory.

Dearly beloved congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, the final part of Exodus 13 describes the guidance of God through the barren land. It is here, properly speaking, that Israel's wilderness wanderings begin. The passage highlights for us God's guidance, His faithfulness, His choice of destination, and His presence. If you're struggling with divine guidance and knowing what God's will for you is...

Dearly beloved congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, we Protestants fought and died 500 years ago to liberate the church from bondage to rituals. In those days, it was virtually assumed and taught by the Roman Catholic Church that the proper performance of prescribed rituals was the best and safest way to Heaven. In reaction against this ridiculous teaching, some of us have veered into the ditch...

Dearly beloved congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, the chapter before us continues to present ritual truth, along much the same lines as the previous chapter. This is a way of thinking, and a way of communicating truth, in which we have little experience. Even the very word "rite" or "ritual" conveys to us the impression of hackneyed, stale, going-through-the-motions religion. Ritual is, in the...

Dearly beloved congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, this seminal chapter (Ex. 12) concludes with a short legal appendix relating to who can eat the Passover and how it must be eaten. Notice that there are seven laws — an important number, and one that indicates that Moses has "covered the subject" by addressing it with the perfect number of rules. We'll see from these laws that Passover presuppo...

Pharaoh has successfully completed a degree at the great school of the power of God. He has been taught that God is going to win. He refused to believe it, even after the punishing hail of the seventh plague, even after the soul-crushing darkness of the ninth plague. But now that he has seen his own son lying dead, he believes it. Pharaoh learned a lesson in the tenth plague. He learned that Yahwe...

Dearly beloved congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, this is one of the longest chapters in Exodus, and it is one of the most important too. We've already seen the basics of Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread. Now we hear more. The point is to emphasize the key events of Passover, particularly killing and eating the lamb and teaching your children about why we kill and eat the lamb. The f...

Dearly beloved congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, our sermon tonight is on a rather short text. We're going to look at Passover's less-famous cousin, the feast of unleavened bread. What is this feast? Well, it is a week-long period when Israel eats no leaven. Part of the origin of this feast is the haste with which we left Egypt. We were unable to take the time to let our bread rise, so we mad...

Dearly beloved congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, we saw last time the announcement that a plague was coming that would be so bad that it would crack even Pharaoh's stony heart. That plague was the death of the firstborn, and it was scheduled for the beginning of the first year of Israel's national existence. We are going to spend five Sundays (counting today) looking at the teaching on Passov...

Dearly beloved congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, the book of Proverbs informs us that by wisdom — the fear of the LORD — are riches, honor, and life. To have been a slave for Pharaoh for eighty-some years probably didn't feel like riches, honor, or life to Moses and his people. But here in this chapter, as the final plague is announced, we finally see riches transferred from the masters to th...

Dearly beloved congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, obviously the tenth plague is the worst. There is no doubt about that. But what about the ninth plague? Is it really worthy to stand as the penultimate plague, the one almost the worst but not quite? Of course it is, for reasons we will discuss in one moment. This plague, the second-worst of all the plagues, teaches us that Jesus is the light o...

Dearly beloved congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, the seventh plague was climactic in many ways. But the eighth plague is surely a match for it: Locusts come up on the land and devour absolutely every last green thing. Whatever was not smashed by the hail is inhaled by the locusts. Pharaoh's courtiers are openly shaken, and even Pharaoh appears to genuinely consider meeting God's demands. Yet...

Dearly beloved congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, if you have ever wondered about what is commonly known as "Calvinism" — in the popular understanding, the belief that God is ultimately in charge of everything, and that whether a particular human person is saved or lost comes down to God's choice to save that person, or not — how Calvinism can possibly be reconciled with your lived experience...

Dearly beloved congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, Pharaoh saw the seventh plague, the plague of hail, and he got scared. He didn't get scared enough to permanently turn to Yahweh, of course. But he did get scared enough to temporarily turn. What he did — temporarily backing down, paying lip service to the majesty and correctness of God — is what I call temporary repentance. It was not the real...

Dearly beloved congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, one thing we have consistently seen throughout Scripture is the authors' creative usage of the number 7. It is the number of perfection. Thus, we have everything from 14 miracles in the book of Acts to 14 mentions of God's throne in Revelation 4 to seven days of creation and a stone with seven eyes representing the seven spirits of God. Well, a...

Dearly beloved congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, we come tonight to the sixth plague. The third in each of the three plague cycles is narrated very tersely, and tonight's text is no exception. What I hope to show you from this text is God's power to punish those who hurt His people, and also His power to strengthen the hearts of those same oppressors so that they stubbornly persist in their s...

Dearly beloved congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, I was listing to one of you the other day the tangible financial benefits that being part of this congregation has brought to his life. They were really pretty impressive, and by some measures actually kept this fellow out of homelessness. As cool as that is, though, I bring it up not because it's cool but because it points to the same truth th...

Dearly beloved congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, we come this evening to the fourth plague, the plague of flies. We have already seen that in every plague, God is revealing Himself to Pharaoh, and that Pharoah is consistently looking the other way and saying, "Can't you tell I'm ignoring you? Go away and leave me alone." Well, God is not fazed by being ignored. He is not going to give up and...

Dearly beloved congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, the third plague is soon told. It came without warning, stayed for an indeterminate period of time, and, like the other 9, hardened Pharaoh's heart. Yet this plague contains an important lesson for us — not that lice are nasty (for we already knew that), but the truth that even when God's power is unequivocally displayed as greater than any mag...

Dearly beloved congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, the ten plagues are the curriculum in the great school of the power of God. Yahweh was going to teach Pharaoh who He was. As we saw, He sent warning after warning through the mouths of Moses and Aaron. He had His messengers present credentials that proved themselves to be greater than the Egyptian magicians. And as we saw last week, He turned t...

Dearly beloved congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, we come tonight to the first plague, or first strike, with which God smote Egypt in the days of Moses and Aaron. That plague, of course, was the one in which water was turned into blood. We will look at Moses' account of what went down on that Egyptian morning, perhaps in late summer. And we will see what the text is interested in showing us. P...

Why did God smite Egypt with all those plagues? The answer, brothers and sisters, was first of all to teach Pharaoh a lesson — and then, by extension, to teach that lesson to the Egyptians and to the rest of the world. God wanted the king of Egypt to know His identity, His location, His uniqueness, His ownership of the earth, and His discrimination between Egypt and His own people — and God wanted...

Dearly beloved congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, last time we saw God reiterate His promise to reveal Himself through delivering His people from Pharaoh. This time, God dispatches Moses and Aaron into Pharaoh's presence to do a final pre-plague sign. It's one final warning, a final invitation to Pharaoh to turn before he actually feels the weight of Yahweh's heavy hand on him and his nation....

Dearly beloved congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, the dialogue between God and Moses was interrupted by the genealogy in ch. 6 last week. We were reminded that Moses and Aaron were ordinary people in whom God's promise and provision ran rampant. Well, this Sunday, we are reminded once again of just how large God's promise and provision really are. We have a way of forgetting what God has told...