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Exodus: The Great Escape
Name-changes were common in Bible times, and Jacob had one: his name
became Israel. That made his twelve sons the ‘children of Israel’ and it
was these, with their families, who moved down to Egypt during the famine in
Joseph’s time. When the famine ended, they stayed on.
They were prolific breeders and, with the passing of the years, became a
nation big enough to worry the latest Pharaoh. Concerned that they might
seize power, he launched a pre-emptive strike, making them slaves and
appointing armed Egyptian taskmasters to keep them in line. Unable to free
themselves, the Israelites were still a slave-nation four centuries after
Jacob first moved his family to Egypt.
But change was in the offing. God now raised up Moses to get them out of
Egypt and lead them to Canaan—the land promised long before to Abraham and
his descendants. Commissioned at the burning bush, Moses went to encounter
Pharaoh who, in spite of nine plagues that struck his people, refused to let
the Israelites go.
The tenth and last plague was to be the worst of all: God’s destroying
angel would pass through the land at midnight to kill every Egyptian
firstborn. In each Israelite house, however, preparations were in hand to
avoid the angel’s intrusion there. A defect-free lamb had been killed. It
would soon be roasted and eaten, but in the meantime its blood was painted
round the door to show that, at that house, death had already taken place.
God promised, ‘When I see the blood, I will pass over
you.’ [1]
Thus this great event was dubbed the ‘Passover’.
On the big day—it was around 1300 BC—with the blood round the door and
the firstborn safely inside, each family ate their roast lamb. Everything
was packed for travelling. At midnight a great wail went up from the
Egyptian homes. It was the last straw for Pharaoh. At last he let the
Israelites go, and around two million trekked north-eastwards from their
slave-quarters, heading for Canaan. When he changed his mind and came after
them, the miracle of the Red Sea crossing cut them off for ever from him and
the land of their former bondage. This was the exodus—which means ‘way
out’—the nation’s great escape.
You may be surprised to know that this wasn’t the first Jewish exodus.
Some 700 years earlier their ancestor Abraham had left pagan Ur of the
Chaldeans. [2]
For him it had been a personal exodus, but the destination had been the
same: the promised land. And the connection between the one exodus and the
other is real, not imaginary. God spoke to Abraham one night during his
journey to Canaan and said: ‘Know for certain that your descendants will be
strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and
mistreated four hundred years. But I will punish the nation they serve as
slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions.’[3]
Here’s a map to show the routes: 1 is Abraham’s journey from Ur, and 2 is
the Israelites’ journey from Egypt.
But if the exodus from Egypt was not the first, neither was it the last,
because God enjoys being a rescue specialist. Centuries after the Israelites
left Egypt and settled in the promised land Jeremiah was prophesying a
further exodus. God’s people were set on a sinful course that would end in
exile to Babylon. Once again they would be away from their homeland. But
this time it would not last four centuries but a mere seventy years. After
that, Jeremiah announced, a small number of Jews—a ‘remnant’—would return to
Canaan.
He used ‘exodus terminology’ to describe it: ‘"The days are coming,"
declares the LORD, "when men will no longer say, ‘As surely as the LORD
lives, who brought the Israelites up out of Egypt,’ but they will say, ‘As
surely as the LORD lives, who brought the Israelites up out of the land of
the north and out of all the countries where he had banished them.’ For I
will restore them to the land I gave their forefathers."’ [4]
Sure enough, when the seventy years of exile were up,
Jeremiah’s prophecy was fulfilled in the return of a remnant to the land, in
several waves under Zerubbabel, Ezra and Nehemiah, starting around 530 BC.
This was exodus number three, shown on the map.
But believe it or not, there was to be yet another! This one was to be
the greatest of them all, and it would not be geographical but spiritual. It
concerns Jesus, whose first coming was the great hinge of history, changing
for ever the way God related to people.
Before Jesus, God worked in a localised way; after Jesus, he began
to operate globally. God’s purpose, for example, had been focused on
the land of Canaan; now it grew to embrace the whole earth.
God had addressed one nation, the Jews; now he addressed all people
everywhere through the preaching of the gospel, beginning in Jerusalem, then
expanding to all Judea, to Samaria and to the ends of the earth. [5]
God had dwelt in a localised temple in Jerusalem; now he began to
dwell in the ‘living temple’ of his people, and wherever they were, God also
was. God had operated through the Levitical priesthood; now all
who believed were priests, with direct access to him.
It’s no surprise, then, that the final and greatest exodus burst out of
Jewish limits and bore no relation to territory in the Middle East. For this
one was the global exodus from slavery to sin and Satan in which every
believer takes part, and the ‘Moses’ who leads us out is none less than
Jesus himself.
All the Old Testament exodus events were merely ‘types’ of this, the
greatest exodus of all. Now, a better Passover lamb than the lambs of Egypt
has been sacrificed—Jesus, the Lamb of God. [6]
A nation far exceeding the two million who marched out of Egypt has come out
of slavery to sin and the devil. ‘It is for freedom that Christ has set us
free,’ declares Paul, adding, ‘Do not let yourselves be burdened again by a
yoke of slavery.’[7]
The real Israel is now seen to be the church, who take Old Testament
promises for themselves as ‘the people of God’,[8]
who have passed through the baptismal ‘Red Sea’,[9]
and of whom Paul insists, ‘It is we who are the circumcision, we who worship
by the Spirit of God, who glory in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence
in the flesh.’[10]
This one is the real exodus. That’s why Jesus arranged for the
Lord’s Supper—Christian communion—to supersede the Passover meal. It’s not
that salvation in Christ just happens to echo the exodus story. On the
contrary, salvation in Christ is the ‘reality’ of which those events were
merely the ‘shadow’. [11]
Jesus, his church and salvation by grace through faith are what it’s all
about, the end to which, in God’s eternal purpose, the ancient exodus events
were merely the means. All the Old Testament, in fact, is really
about Jesus and his great act of deliverance.[12]
Luke records an interesting fact about the conversation Jesus had with
two Old Testament characters—Moses and Elijah— on the Mount of
Transfiguration. Do you know what they talked about? Luke tells us: ‘They
spoke about his departure, which he was about to bring to fulfilment
at Jerusalem.’ [13]
The word ‘departure’ here is literally ‘exodus’. Jesus was going to
Jerusalem to die, to rise again and to ascend to heaven. He would go under
the slavemaster’s whip for us at Calvary. Then, rising beyond death and
Satan’s reach, he would strike at the heart of ‘Pharaoh’s’ kingdom and
rescue us believers from slavery. This he did, and by faith we have left
behind our chains and misery for a better future in the land of promise. We
are the liberated folk of Christ’s ‘new nation’ that knows no racial or
territorial bounds! This is the greatest escape of all, and the goal of
God’s programme.
Some, of course, would claim yet another exodus—that of Zionism: the
return of Jews to the state of Israel since 1948. I believe this is a
mistake, a return to pre-Christian thinking that pushes God back into
localised operation, into politics and Middle Eastern geography, an
inglorious retreat from the splendid spiritual realities that have for ever
taken their place. Let Christ remain supreme!
In that connection, the exodus holds some pointed lessons. It teaches us
that salvation is costly: ‘When I see the blood, I will pass over
you.’ Our liberation cost Jesus everything—his very life-blood. It teaches
us, too, that there’s no going back. When the ‘onions and garlic’ of your
old life tempt you to return to Egypt, remember that the Red Sea of your
baptism has cut you off for good from that way of living and has left you on
the other bank with only one viable option: to press on to the promised
land.
As we travel, meanwhile, we feed on Christ. The lamb whose blood saved
the Israelites at the Passover was also the food that sustained them on
their journey. At the communion, in particular, we ‘feed upon Christ in our
hearts by faith’, and we are thankful.
And what is the ‘promised land’ to which we direct our steps? In this
life it is victorious Christian living, engaging in spiritual warfare and
coming out on top. And in the life to come it will be that blessing beyond
description which is as sure as the promises of God.
Through Christ we have had a part in ‘the great escape’, the great and
ultimate exodus. Who wants to go back to Egypt? ‘It is for freedom Christ
has set us free.’ A brighter future beckons. Let’s be grateful. Let’s be
glad!
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