Essentials of Exodus - Lesson 4

Welcome back. We are partway through, halfway through thinking about key themes in Exodus. We've already looked at four ways that we encounter the God of Israel in the pages of Exodus.

Now we're going to look at four ways that Israel discovers their identity and purpose on the pages of this book. And it's always a little bit tricky to talk about this issue because when I'm to Christians, I want you to know this is your story. This is about what God does for you.

And this has to do with your identity and purpose. But I have a way that I got there that I guess it would be good for us to talk about first, so that you can see that the justification for reading ourselves into the Exodus story. So if you turn in your Bibles to 1st Peter chapter two, this is, I think the clearest place where I can see that the Sinai covenant is our covenant, even if we're not Jewish.

Peter is writing to a mixed audience of Jewish and Gentile followers of Jesus who are scattered throughout Asia minor. And these people are experiencing some kind of persecution. They are struggling to figure out how to be faithful in their following of Jesus.

And in chapter two, he says this, but you are a chosen people, a Royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people, sorry, God's special possession that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

This is remarkable because Peter is using the titles that God first gave to Israel at Mount Sinai that were indications of their covenant status. And he's applying them to a mixed audience that includes Gentiles who've not been circumcised, who don't follow the old Testament food laws, probably have never been to the temple before. And he's telling us that they are God's chosen people, God's holy nation.

So by applying those titles to the church, Peter is indicating that when we believe in Jesus, the Jewish Messiah, we are incorporated in with believing Jews into God's covenant family. And that the covenant God made with Israel at Sinai then becomes our covenant. So that's the reason, and there are other places we could go in the New Testament to see this, but that I think is the quickest way to show you that Sinai is relevant for the church today.

So as we talk about how Israel is discovering their identity and purpose in the book of Exodus, we can make that leap to talk also about how we discover our identity and purpose in this book. And the first thing that we see is that God is with us. We've already talked about how when God commissioned Moses in chapter three, Moses was concerned about his own inabilities, his own lack of qualifications to go to Pharaoh.

And God's response is, I will be with you. And that promise of his presence is what carries Moses through all of the chapters that come. It's really obvious that God is with his people when they defeat Pharaoh at the sea in a way that is outside the realm of human ability.

It's really obvious that God is with them as they're giving this testimony to Jethro, the Midianite father-in-law of Moses. But let's take a moment to think about what happens at the sea, because when they are stuck at the edge of the Sea of Reeds and Pharaoh is bearing down on them, the people are terrified. And they say to Moses, was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us up to the desert to die? If Egypt has anything, it's graves, like tombs everywhere.

They capitalized on decoration of tombs. What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? Didn't we say to you in Egypt, leave us alone, let us serve the Egyptians? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert. They feel so trapped, they have no way out, and they're desperate.

And Moses answered the people, don't be afraid, stand firm, and you will see the deliverance Yahweh will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today, you will never see again. Yahweh will fight for you, you need only to be still.

His presence is there, not just making them feel better about themselves, but they're fighting for them. And that presence is what carries them through the most difficult experience that they've had up to this point. In chapter 18, when Jethro visits Moses in the after they've left Egypt, Moses tells them all the stories of what God has done for them in Egypt.

And they greet each other, he tells them all the news. It says, he told them everything Yahweh had done to Pharaoh and the Egyptians for Israel's sake, and about all the hardships they'd met along the way and how Yahweh had saved them. And we hear Jethro was delighted to hear about all the good things Yahweh had done for Israel in rescuing them from the hand of the Egyptians.

He said, praise be to Yahweh, who rescued you from the hand of the Egyptians and of Pharaoh, and who rescued the people from the hand of the Egyptians. Now I know that Yahweh is greater than all other gods, for he did this to those who had treated Israel arrogantly. There's a question mark in chapter three, in chapters two and three, when Moses goes to Midian, and he becomes the son-in-law of a Midianite priest.

I at least have a question, priest of who? Is Jethro a follower of Yahweh, or does he worship another god? And there's really no indication about who he's worshiping. We have a little clue in Genesis that this could be, that he could be worshiper of Yahweh, because Abraham has another wife. Presumably after Sarah dies, he takes a wife, Keturah, and one of their sons is Midian.

And so the Midianites are descendants of Abraham, so it's possible that they've retained a knowledge of Yahweh, and that he would see himself as a priest of Yahweh. But it's really not clear from the biblical text in chapter two. When we get here to chapter 18, it's very clear that Jethro is signing on to Yahweh's team.

He's saying Yahweh is the greatest of all gods. And that testimony is because he sees the evidence that God has been with his people all the way through. When God says that he is with us, it's not just a sense of psychological reassurance.

It has tangible benefits. God is with us means there's manna to eat and water to drink. God is with us means our enemies are defeated and we're walking in freedom.

And so God being with Moses ends up, although there's hardship, it ends up in success. The second part of this theme that I want to highlight is that we belong to God. I already mentioned in the previous session, Exodus 4.22, where God first calls Israel his firstborn son.

There's a family relationship between Yahweh and the Israelites. The Israelites are called his firstborn son. And then later he says, chapter six, verse seven, I will take you as my own people and I will be your God.

In chapter 19, he adopts the people as his treasured possession. So all the way through, there's a clear sense that the people belong to God. This is whose they are, and that is going to inform everything about their mission going forward.

I want to make a claim now that it gets even more specific than this, that the fact that they belong to God is expressed in particular ways in that they, we bear his name. So in chapter 19, Yahweh calls them his segillah, his treasured possession. In chapter 19, verse five, that right there is a treaty, a technical term used in treaty contexts.

To be a segillah means that of all the potential treaty partners that God could have had, he's choosing Israel as the one that he wants, especially to represent him to others. So in the ancient world, there were different kinds of treaties that could be made. Some were parody treaties.

They would be between social equals, like two kings of two small kingdoms making an alliance with each other. Hey, I've got your back if you've got mine. All right.

Yeah. Let's not fight against each other. Let's help each other.

If anyone attacks us, that would be a parody treaty. There were also unequal treaties between a suzerain and a vassal. So that would be a greater king and a smaller, like a king of a smaller kingdom or a chieftain or something.

And those were unequal and they would operate by the greater king. The more powerful would say, yes, I will come protect you. I'll send my army to protect you if you get attacked.

But in exchange, you need to send me, you know, a hundred bushels a year of wheat or, you know, 50 gallons of olive oil, fine olive oil every year. So there would be some kind of tribute that cemented the relationship and showed that the two are faithful to each other. So obviously when God invites Israel into a covenant relationship with him, it would not be a covenant of equals.

It would be an unequal relationship where God is expecting the loyal worship of his people, but he is also promising to give them land and to protect them. And in the ancient world, whenever treaties were made, they were set in stone on two stone tablets. And many times people think of the 10 commandments, the stone tablets as well, we got these and then they didn't all fit on here.

So we've got the overflow on this one, but it was common practice in the ancient world to make it when you made a treaty to have two identical copies and each party would take one home and they would put it in the most holy place of their God. And it was a way of saying they would actually, some of these have been found with a hole right in the base of it, where it would sit on a peg. So you would have it right in front of the idol of the God in the most holy place so that the God could read it every day.

And he's watching you to see if you have held up your end of the bargain. And if you haven't, then he'll smite you with all the things he's supposed to smite you with. You know, there would usually be some kind of self imprecation in the treaty.

Like if, if I fail to keep this treaty, may my crops not grow and my children die and be taken by enemies or whatever bad things. So when God makes this covenant with Israel, he calls them his segala because out of all the nations he has relations with Israel is the one that he feels is his best representative. He's putting all his eggs in this basket, if you will, that this already implies a vocation.

So we don't usually think of chapter nine as 19 as being vocational, but to call Israel as God's treasured possession, kingdom of priests, holy nation means that God is sending them on mission to carry out his will among the nations. The other nations are going to watch Israel to find out what God is like. This becomes clear as the text continues.

And I think the clearest place we see this is in chapter 20 verse seven. This is the famous command not to take the Lord's name in vain. Most of us probably grew up being told that this means if you're driving down the five, or that's what we say down here in California.

If you, if we're, if you're driving down I five, if you're in Washington state or somewhere else, you were driving, driving down the freeway and somebody cuts you off. You shouldn't say all Yahweh or use the Lord's name as some kind of a curse word towards somebody or in a moment of anger. But the fact is that ancient people didn't do that.

They weren't accustomed to using the names of deities in such a way. So that's not at all likely to be what it means. The Hebrew reads, you shall not bear or carry the name of Yahweh your God in vain or falsely.

And most translation committees have come to this verse and said, well, we don't, we don't carry names. So this must be a figure of speech for how God's name is, is to be said or not said. And so all these proposals out there, I've counted 23 different, no, 24 now different interpretations of what this command might mean.

And 22 of them have to do with saying God's name in a certain way. And I don't think that's actually what is going on here. You shall not carry the name of Yahweh your God in vain has to do with the idea that God puts his name on what he owns, just like we would do it.

I could put my name on the front of my Bible to say, this belongs to Carmen and then you'd know it's mine and not yours. We put our names on things when they belong to us. And so at Mount Sinai, God is saying, I will be your God and you will be my people.

I'm going to stamp you with my name. You are now going to carry it everywhere you go. And as you go among the nations, you will be representing me.

So don't misrepresent me among the nations to bear God's name in vain is to misrepresent God by saying I belong to Yahweh, but living no differently than the Egyptians or the Canaanites or the Midianites. So this command then flows into all kinds of different ways through the rest of the Bible. Once you catch on to this idea that Israel is the people who bear God's name, you'll find it in almost every book of the Bible.

It comes up in all sorts of places. For example, Psalm 23, he leads me in paths of righteousness for his namesake. Well, how is me walking in the right path have anything to do with God's name? Well, if I bear his name, then I'm his representative.

If I walk in the wrong path, that's going to be a poor reflection on Yahweh and his character. So his name or his reputation will suffer because of how I have chosen to live. And we don't have to think very hard for examples of people who claim to be Christians who then are caught in sin and it's, you know, front headlines of the news.

This is when we fail to live in God's way. This is a way that we bear God's name in vain. Let me show you because we're tracing things in Exodus, not the rest of the Bible.

Let me show you where this comes up in chapter 28. In chapter 28, we're right in the middle of the tabernacle instructions. And 28 is about the priestly garments that they're supposed to create for the high priest to wear.

And it says in 28 verse 9, take two onyx stones and engrave on them the names of the sons of Israel in the order of their birth. Six names on one stone and the remaining six on the other. Engrave the names of the sons of Israel on the two stones the way a gem cutter engraves a seal.

Then mount the stones in gold filigree settings and fasten them on the shoulder pieces of the ephod, which is the special apron that Aaron the high priest will wear as memorial stones for the sons of Israel. Aaron is to bear the names on his shoulders as a memorial before the Lord. So he's literally carrying the names of the tribes as an indication that he represents them when he goes into the most holy place and he sprinkles blood on the Ark of the Covenant or burns incense when he sets out the loaves or lights the candles or anything that he does.

There are not candles, they're lamps filled with oil. When he lights those, everything he does in the tabernacle, he's doing on behalf of these 12 tribes, he represents them. On his head, he wears a turban and on the turban, actually, let me one more, one more place where it says verse 29, when Aaron enters the holy place, he will bear the names of the sons of Israel over his heart.

So he has the 12 names on his shoulders, six on each, and he also has a pouch on his chest with the 12 tribes engraved on gemstones. And this too says he will bear the names of the sons of Israel over his heart on the breastpiece of decision as a continuing memorial before Yahweh. So this carrying the names, the bearing the names, this is the same phrase we get in Exodus 20, for you shall not bear the name of Yahweh in vain.

He also has on his, on his head a turban and in verse 36, it says, make a plate of pure gold and engrave on it as a seal, holy belonging to Yahweh and fasten a blue cord on it to attach it to the turban. It's to be on the front of the turban. It will be on Aaron's forehead and he will bear the guilt involved in the sacred gifts for the, that the Israelites consecrate, whatever their gifts may be.

It will be on Aaron's forehead continually. So they will be acceptable to Yahweh. So he literally bears God's name on his forehead.

And because God has already called Israel a kingdom of priests, I don't think it's a stretch for us to look at the priest, the high priest as a visual model of what's true of every Israelite. They are the people who bear God's name and he's asking them to bear it well. One more passage outside of Exodus that I want to point out that I think in case you're not quite convinced of this reading of the command, this one makes it more clear.

Numbers chapter six is where we get the priestly blessing that Aaron's supposed to pronounce over the people. And number 622 says, Yahweh said to Moses, tell Aaron and his sons, this is how you are to bless the Israelites. Say to them, may Yahweh bless you and keep you.

May Yahweh make his face shine on you and be gracious to you. May Yahweh turn his face toward you and give you peace. Verse 27 reads, so they will put my name on the Israelites and I will bless them.

So it's quite clear here that when the high priest pronounces the blessing, he's putting the name on everybody. There's like an invisible tattoo happening or a verbal brand happening on all the people that they are, the people that Yahweh has said, these are mine. They belong to me.

And belonging to God means bearing his name. And that's why he tells us don't misrepresent me. Don't bear it in vain.

And that's, this comes right at the beginning of all of the other laws, because all of the laws, if we obey them, help us bear God's name well. And all of them, if we disobey are a function of, of misrepresenting God. So these laws that help Israel fulfill their mission begin with bearing his name.

And they, they're fleshed out in carrying out God's mission. The mission of God begins, I think here with the 10 commandments and particularly the command not to bear God's name in vain, but they also express themselves in, in every other command. One more example that I want to lean into that helps to carry, helps us carry out his mission and sets us apart from the nations.

And that is the Sabbath command. In Exodus 20 verse 8, it says, remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work.

But the seventh day is a Sabbath to Yahweh your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. For in six days, Yahweh made the heavens and earth, the sea and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day.

Therefore Yahweh blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. So this command is often one that Christians will say to me. So this is the one we don't have to keep, right? We don't need the Sabbath anymore.

And I think for, for a generation of American Christians, Sabbath became something that felt legalistic. These are all the things we don't do on Sundays, but we're allowed to do on other days. And we just have to sit here and be bored.

And so there was a kind of movement away from it and a movement away from what was perceived as legalism. A number of years ago, I had an opportunity to visit the nation of Israel. And I walked around on the Sabbath day to kind of, and it's, it's really interesting because the entire city just shuts down.

It's like everybody is on pause. And what I expected was it to, was for it to feel legalistic. And it did not at all.

It felt joyful. It's like, oh, we get a day off and we're with our families. And as you walk down the street, you can hear singing coming from their homes as families gather around the table together and sing and thank God for his blessings.

I have come to believe that without Sabbath, our lives are unsustainable. That we actually need one day a week at minimum to unplug and to stop the ceaseless production that we can get caught up in if we, if we don't keep Sabbath, think about it. Remember you were slaves in Egypt.

Pharaoh forced them to work all the time, and now they have a new master and he says, you all get a day off. So we first encounter the Sabbath in chapter 16 in the wilderness, when God is providing manna for his people on a Sabbath schedule. So before he even tells them you have to stop working on the Sabbath, he provides for them in such a way that they can keep this command and he begins training them.

It's like training wheels towards this rhythm of Sabbath observance that starts already in the wilderness. And if they collect too much on the, on a regular day, it will just rot by morning. Manna is not the kind of thing you can store up and get really rich and start your own sort of manna business on the side.

You can't get rich off of God's provision. He just gives you enough for each day. If you try to keep it, it'll spoil.

So in other words, don't hoard it, make sure everyone gets what they need. But then on the sixth day, miraculously you can collect two days worth and it doesn't rot. And so they eat it on the seventh day.

And if you go out on the seventh day and try to collect manna, there won't be any. So God's miraculous provision is on this cycle. And so then in chapter 20, he says, keep this rhythm.

This is the rhythm I established at creation. When I made the world, this is how I did it. And so the account of God's creation in Genesis chapter one is providing a model or a template for us to follow.

This is going to be the rhythm of us carrying out God's mission. And then precisely at the place where you would think, well, surely we don't have to keep the Sabbath when we're doing God's work, when they're going to build the tabernacle, the tabernacle instructions, as I've mentioned, are divided into two parts. There's the seven chapters of instructions of how to do it.

And then the six chapters of instruction of report that they did it. But the very last speech Moses makes in the instructions is in chapter 31, verse 12. Then Yahweh said to Moses, say to the Israelites, you must observe my Sabbaths.

This will be a sign between me and you for the generations to come so that you may know that I am Yahweh who makes you holy. Observe the Sabbath because it's holy to you. Anyone who desecrates it is to be put to death.

Those who do any work on that day must be cut off from their people for six days work is to be done. But the seventh day is a day of Sabbath rest, holy to Yahweh. Whoever does any work on the Sabbath day is to be put to death.

This is serious business. This is not just, you know, kind of like you do you like find something that works for you. God, when God institutes his holy nation, he says this day is going to be a day when everybody rests.

Because what happens when one person does not follow this instruction? One person is out there working on, you know, producing more of something so that when the market opens on on, I guess it would be Sunday morning would be the day after the Sabbath for the Jewish people, so that when the markets open, they've got more stuff to sell. And then everybody else is like, Oh, no, now I'm getting behind. Now I should be producing something on the Sabbath.

One person who doesn't rest ends up perpetuating a culture where nobody feels like they can rest. Have you ever had a boss who emails you on Sundays and asked for stuff to be done? Or have you ever been that boss where you're working all the time? And so people are getting dings in their inboxes at a time when God has asked us to set aside time to rest. When we don't rest, it creates conditions for other people not to rest.

Did you notice in chapter 20 that it's not just the head of household who gets to rest. It's you and your son or nor your son or daughter, nor your male or female servant, nor your animals, nor any foreigner residing in your towns. The entire household is given the opportunity to rest, even the animals.

I wonder if that applies to our washing machines and our dishwashers. Like, should we even let our machines have a day of rest? Because if they're working, it means that we worked to get them started and to, you know, change the load and empty them and all the things that we have to do. God is serious about Sabbath, not only because he knows you need a rest, because he doesn't want you to be like Pharaoh, extracting labor out of everybody else all of the time.

And so Sabbath is not just about me getting a break. It's about me making sure other people get a break, even when we are collectively doing God's work. So Sabbath is the last command in the tabernacle instructions, and it's the first command Moses gives the people as they begin work on the tabernacle.

Chapter 35 says, Moses assembled the whole Israelite community and said to them, these are the things Yahweh has commanded you to do. For six days work is to be done, but the seventh day shall be your holy day, a day of Sabbath rest to Yahweh. Whoever does any work on it is to be put to death.

Do not light a fire in any of your dwellings on the Sabbath day. Don't rev things up and get ready to produce. You need to be resting.

I've recently become convinced that Sabbath is a dress rehearsal for Jubilee. If you're familiar with Jubilee, it doesn't talk about Jubilee in the book of Exodus, but if we go on to the book of Leviticus in chapter 25, God is instituting all of these different festivals for his people. They're supposed to have a Sabbath year every seventh year where their land rests for a year, and they don't plow it.

And then after seven sevens, they have a bonus year of Jubilee where debts are canceled, slaves set free. It's like a giant reset button for the entire community. People return to their ancestral homeland.

They're able to restart again. And anything that made the economy out of whack, where people were disadvantaged or impoverished, it all gets evened out in the year of Jubilee. It would be incredibly disruptive to the economy to actually do Jubilee.

But God gives his people practice every seventh day when he says, learn to let go of your need to produce constantly. Learn to receive what I'm providing for you and learn to create the conditions for people around you to be able to rest so that everyone can enter into my provision and enter into my rest. Jubilee is impossible if we've not been practicing Sabbath because we haven't worked the muscles that need to be worked that help us to unclench our fists and let go of our need to make more and have more and be more.

So we carry out his mission by bearing his name and by living according to his rhythms that he's established. And if there was any time that breaking the Sabbath would seem like it's okay, it would be in building the tabernacle. But even then, the people are strictly supposed to take a day off.

So I don't think there's anything outside of God's invitation for us to rest. So this is these four things. God is with us.

We belong to God. We bear God's name and we carry out God's mission. These are things that we learn about ourselves, about our identity and our purpose in the book of Exodus.

Do you have questions that you'd like me to comment on or comments you want to add? So just regarding the topic of Sabbath and of rest, we see in Hebrews, like it talks a lot about rest, entering God's rest, that we can enter God's rest through faith and then entering God's rest, we abstain from works. Yeah. So in that context, I guess, how do you relate the idea of the Israelite, you know, complete day of rest, complete day of Sabbath with how we now apply it in light of the rest we receive in Christ and in God's promises? Yeah, actually applying Sabbath rest today seems a little complicated to me because we're not living set apart all as believers in a theocracy anymore.

It's not like the nations can like see that obvious thing. But I do think that our rhythm should match like that. We aren't fundamentally different kinds of people that somehow don't need rest anymore.

And so that God has our God's invitation to rest hasn't expired. So I think to enter into that rest will look maybe different for different people in different communities. It might even be, I'm open to being persuaded on this one, it might even mean choosing a different day, like maybe your whole church community isn't Sabbathing on the same day.

So across history, it was Jewish people were resting on the seventh day, which would be our Saturday. But typically, Christian churches think of Sunday as the Sabbath. And that's probably because Jesus rose again on Sunday.

And that sort of like instituted a new special day of commemoration. So I know Christians who are very, very convinced that we should still be resting on Saturday. And others who say no, we can rest on Sunday.

And others who say it doesn't really matter what day of the week it is. Choose a day that works for you with your work schedule, but make sure that your family has this kind of rhythm. It's a little tricky when not everyone in the household is picking the same day, because it's a little hard to rest when other people around you are doing chores, or kind of having the frenzy of daily work.

So I think my gut feeling is that we probably all need to embrace Sabbath more than we have. And that for each of us, that might look a little differently. I have my doctoral advisor, Dan Block, loves to garden on Sundays, because all week long, he'd be sitting at his desk, teaching in the classroom, like doing brainy stuff.

And so for him, it was really restorative to be out in his garden. But if you're a landscaper, I would not recommend gardening on Sundays, right? That's not a, that's not going to be the Sabbath rest kind of thing. It's like your work.

So it might look different for different people. And all of it should be with the acknowledgement that Jesus has given us, he's invited us into eternal rest, so that even our work is done in a restful way, like even our work is done, resting in the provision of God. That's something I've been trying to lean into this semester.

Instead of just feeling stressed about all the things there are to do, just taking each day as one day, Lord, what are you asking me to do today? And how can I enter into that restfully, instead of being frenzied? Because life can very easily get frenzied. Great question. Yeah.

Doesn't it say in the New Testament that Christ is our Sabbath? Yes, it does. Do we have two different definitions for rest? Hmm. I think Christ is our Sabbath in the sense that he is the key to entering into that rest fully, like he's providing the rest for us and we can rest in what he's accomplished.

But I don't think that means, okay, we don't need a physical rest anymore. We can just work 24 seven. I have had Christian friends, even mentors and bosses who like, I don't believe in Sabbath.

I think that's done and gone. The Old Testament law doesn't apply to us anymore. And I'm convinced that when Peter applies the covenant titles to us, he's saying this law is for you.

We have to think about how does this get translated into a different cultural context on the other side of the cross? So it might not look all the same that it did for ancient Israel, but I think the principle of one day of rest in seven still applies.