This morning, I would like to
turn to Jeremiah chapter 32 for our text. I would like to attempt to preach
the entire book of Exodus to you in about 30 minutes, if the
Lord would allow me to do that. That may seem odd, but the entire
book is the believer's life. That's what the Lord did in salvation
of his people, bringing them out of their bondage and bringing
them across the wilderness into The promised land, the entire
book is literally the Lord Jesus Christ and his finished work
for his people. In this book, as all the books
of the scripture, the Lord tells us his purpose. First of all,
God purposes, that's where it starts. God purposed to save
a people. And then he tells us of his purpose. Then he performs his purpose. And then he tells us what he's
did. And that's the glorious news of the gospel is you and
I didn't have any part of it. The Lord purposed it. And he
told us what he was going to do. Then he did it. Then he tells
us, that's what I did for you. That's the hope of the gospel.
That's the rest for the believer. So in Jeremiah, chapter 32, we
see what the Lord purposed. It says, the great, the mighty
God, the Lord of host is his name, which has set signs and
wonders in the land of Egypt, even until this day, and in Israel,
and among other men, and has made thee a name as at this day,
and has brought forth thy people Israel out of the land of Egypt,
with signs and wonders, and with a strong hand, and with a stretched
out arm, and with great terror, and has given them this land,
which thou didst swear to their fathers to give them, a land
flowing with milk and honey. The Lord's telling us what he's
done. But before he ever told us what he's done, he told us
what he had purposed. Then he told us what he was going
to do. Then he did it. And now he's
reminding us his people. And yes, this is a physical Israel
that he's talking about. But the deliverance of Israel
is a type and shadow, as I've mentioned already, of the believer
of our life, of being held in bondage to sin and to the law,
of being in captivity and not able to be set free of our own
power. And yet the Lord does. The book of Exodus begins in
chapter one by saying a new king was raised up. A new king was
born and came into power over Egypt, which knew not Joseph. So we see the children of Israel
have came down to Egypt because of the famine that had taken
place. You remember the account that the Lord gives us that Joseph
was the one that enabled by the Lord was enabled to save his
brethren, to save the nation Israel from certain destruction
in the famine. So he brings his entire family
down, his father, Jacob and his brothers. Now Jacob has passed
away. His brothers have passed away.
Joseph passed away and time has went on several years, hundreds
of years. And a new king was over Egypt
at this time that did not know Joseph. The children of Israel
were afflicted. They were placed in hard bondage,
the scripture says, and he used them as slaves working for him
to build his palaces to build the things that were in Egypt
at that time. He did it off of the backs of these Israelites.
That's who he did it by. You and I brethren have been
afflicted with hard bondage as sinners by birth. We were born
in captivity. We were born in bondage. The children of Israel that were
born at this time were born into that captivity and had no hope
of getting out of that captivity. They were born into it. You and
I were made sinners by the Lord Jesus Christ by mercy, but we
were born into being in bondage of our sin. This king tells,
makes a decree. He makes a decree to kill all
the male babies that are born of Israel. He notices they are
populating very quickly or they have became abundant and they've
increased and he sees them as a threat now to what to his position,
to his power, that they could overthrow him if they had the
mind to. And so he says, kill all of the male children. And
so during this time, you can imagine the desperation of the
mothers, what they would be feeling if they had a, how relieved would
they be to have a baby girl knowing that she was fine and what, how
fearful they would be to have a boy. They would take the males
and they would, they would kill them. Moses was born during this
time, after this proclamation had taken place. And the thing
about the Hebrew children was that a son would be born to one
of them futuristically, starting with Eve. Every woman that had
a male child believed that the possibility was there that it
was going to be the Messiah, that it was going to be literally
Jesus Christ. That was the hope. Eve saw Cain
as such. She believed that Cain was the
promised one that would deliver them. We know that that's not
the account, is it? That's not what happened at all.
That's just her own foolishness, I suppose we could say that way.
So these women were not only desperate to hide their babies
because of the natural love that they had, they were desiring
to have the babies because they knew the Messiah would come through
there, not just the physical Messiah of their hard bondage
that they were in, but the Lord Jesus Christ, the deliverer of
their sin, the promised one, the one that would reconcile
them back to God. This is what the promise came
to Abraham, the promise that came to Abraham of this. So his
mother, Moses's mother, knowing these things, takes Moses and
puts him in a basket of bulrushes and puts him in the water by
the bulrushes, and she pitches it with pitch, the scripture
said. And I was reminded it's the same word as atonement. You
can go and look in the book of Genesis, chapter six, where the
Lord comes unto Noah and he says, I want you to build an ark. And
what does Noah do? He builds the ark, of course,
but he pitches it with pitch on the inside and on the outside. The word literally means atonement.
What is the Lord saying here about this atonement, about this
ark, or about this basket that was weaved? If you were in the
ark, you were saved. If you were in this basket, nothing
could get to you because of the atonement of the Lord Jesus Christ.
He had put away your sin. That's the hope of the gospel.
And so Moses certainly was spared from certain death by being put
into this basket and sent down the river. And I love the way
the scripture says in the book of Ruth, and it happed that she
lighted upon Boaz's field. You know, like it just, it doesn't
just so happen, does it? It was purposed. We know that.
And it just so happened that Moses lands on the doorstep of
the daughter of Pharaoh. And she sees Moses and takes
him. Now the wonderful, Something else that's miraculous, I guess
I should say, is that she had Moses's mother to nurse him. She literally paid Moses's mother
to nurse Moses. You talk about wonderful providence,
glorious purpose and all of it. It's just, it's beautiful to
see how the Lord takes things that we think is gonna be so
bad. She had to let go of Moses by trusting that God was gonna
protect him. He's literally floating on the
river. His sister Mary is following after, but she can't help him.
He's out in the water, whatever. And he ends up down at Pharaoh's
house, the house of the king. And then his own mother is paid
to nurse him. That's glorious, isn't it? So being a son of the king, Moses
was raised, no doubt. He probably had a lot of pride.
He had a lot of arrogance about himself, I would imagine. So
he had to know that he was a Jew because he sees later on, he
sees a man smiting one of his fellow Israelites and he kills
him on purpose. I'm thinking that Moses, we don't
have confirmation of this in the scripture, but I'm thinking
Moses thought he was the liver at this point. And he took matters
into his own hands by slaying this Egyptian. As soon as Pharaoh
found out about it, he sought after to kill him, so Moses had
to run for his life. So whether Moses at this time
thought he was gonna be the deliverer or he didn't think he was gonna
be the deliverer, either way, he was not ready to be the deliverer
at that time. He had to go flee unto Midian. The Lord made him, the Lord humbled
Moses by causing him to herd sheep on the backside of a desert
for 40 years. You know how the Lord prepares
his preachers? He makes them herd sheep. And I mean, you can
think about all the men that the Lord's called, even in scripture,
the afflictions that they had, the burdens that they had to
endure, that Paul was, they tried to kill him. How many times?
The Lord keeps his servants humble, doesn't he? The Lord knows how
to humble his people. And the Lord knows how to humble
his preachers. He keeps us humble by not letting us think too highly
of ourself. He shuts us up to Christ. After
40 years, We just heard the message about the burning bush. He's
in his father, Jethro's house. He's married. He's had children
and he sees the burning bush in Exodus chapter six and he
goes, or Exodus chapter three rather. And he goes at this time
to set aside and goes and approaches this bush. And he sees the Lord
Jesus Christ in it. As we heard the first hour, he's
called upon to go deliver the children of Israel. Now, whether
he was, hotheaded and that's what caused him to slay the Egyptian.
We know not, but we know at this time, he's definitely not sure
of himself because he says, Lord, you got the wrong guy. I can't
go down. Who am I? I'm slow of tongue.
I can't talk right. And as he continues to talk,
Moses makes three excuses to the Lord as to why he's not qualified
to go down to Egypt. I can't tell you the excuses
I made before I came up here. I'll tell you the truth about
it. The Lord changed my heart and he made me made a need in
my heart to be here, and that's why we're here. The Lord made
Moses go down, and the Lord makes us declare him, and therefore
he gets all the glory in it, doesn't he? He gets all the glory
in the building of his house. He gets all the glory in his
gospel. Now, it's important that we understand
that the bondage of the children of Israel at this time represents
sin, represents the bondage that we are in by nature under the
law. And we also have to understand
that the Lord's promise is that he will save his people from
their sin. So how does he save them? Well,
as soon as Moses gets down to Egypt, he's met with confrontation
immediately, isn't he? Immediately. The Lord tells him
to take the rod that's in your hand and cast it down before
Pharaoh and the magicians and everyone and it will become a
serpent. That's part of the conversation that they had just had when he
was telling the Lord why he wasn't qualified. The Lord, and I'm
gonna say something on that, the Lord does not call the equipped,
he equips the called. If you're called of the Lord,
he gives you everything you need in the Lord Jesus Christ. And
he gave Moses this rod. He said, take it down there to
Pharaoh. What does the rod represent? That's the gospel. That's the
Lord Jesus Christ in written form. That's what that rod represents.
Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me. So he sets the rod down before
them and it becomes a serpent. And the magician said, we've
got a gospel too. We've got good news also. And
they set their rods down, don't they? And they become serpents
as well. But what happened after that?
Moses' rod, ate up the other ones. There's only one gospel.
There's only one good news that the Lord Jesus Christ died for
his people and successfully put away their sin. There's only
one good news. There's not many gospels. There's
just one. After this, the Lord calls 10
plagues to take place in Egypt. 10 plagues. Every plague represented
a mockery of the God that was in Egypt. Every single one of
them. What the Lord was doing was saying, there is no other
God beside me. I am the God, the Lord Jesus
Christ. He was declaring who he was by
giving these signs and giving these wonders and showing with
a mighty hand how he was going to deliver his people. And the
Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh many, many times, didn't he?
We see that the very last plague that took place is the one that
caused Pharaoh to release the children of Israel from their
bondage. And what was that plague? It was the Passover lamb, was
it not? It was the death angel that came by seeking to see who
had the blood applied upon the doorposts and upon the lintel.
And the ones that had the blood applied, the scripture says,
and the death angel passed them by. He didn't say, when I see
your works or I see your attempts or your good deeds, he didn't
say, whenever I see your lifestyle or whenever I see what you haven't
done and what you have done, he said, when I see the blood,
there's the gospel brethren, when I see the blood, I will
pass by you. We know that the blood only can
be applied by the Lord himself and it's only applied to his
people. The good news is, is if he died for you, you are seen
in Christ and his blood hath put away your sin. The Lord puts the blood upon
the doorpost and lintel of the hearts of his people and gives
them a new heart, a new song in their mouth and praise unto
the Lord. Everyone that had the blood applied, was delivered
out of the bondage of Egypt. The scripture says in Exodus
11, verse seven, but against any of the children of Israel
shall not a dog move his tongue. What is the Lord telling us?
That when the Lord sets you free, there is nothing that can cry
that you're unclean anymore. There is nothing that can say
that you're a sinner, that you're lost in utter darkness forever.
Now don't misunderstand what I mean by that. We know that
we're sinners and the Lord came to save sinners, but when it
comes to the God's law and God's justice, they don't declare that
we're sinners. They declare that we're perfectly
righteous before him, that we have a righteousness not of ourself.
We have his righteousness, robe in his righteousness. So the
law has to release us from whatever bondage that it was holding us
in because it has been satisfied. That's the type in picture here.
You can imagine the great deliverance that came, the excitement, everybody,
they're finally free. They're able to leave Egypt. They're able to go into the wilderness
and worship God. And they are traveling. The excitement
is very short-lived because Pharaoh comes right up behind them to
try to kill them again, doesn't he? You know, our adversary would
love to kill us. He would love to kill all the
elect of God, but Satan cannot touch us. Satan is God's devil. and the Lord does with him whatsoever
he will. As they approach, we see that
Christ himself opens up the Red Sea for his people and brings
them safely across. So what we've seen thus far is
Christ Jesus came into the earth born of a man, born under the
law. That's what we see in Moses. Moses was born in this bondage. Christ Jesus was born under the
law, under the same bondage that you and I had. Christ Jesus died
and applied his precious blood to his people and put away their
sin. We see that he went into the
Red Sea of death for his people and brought them safely to the
other side. He brought his people safely
back to the Father, birthed by his Spirit, baptized by his Holy
Spirit, the scripture says. As soon as they were crossed
the Red Sea, they sung a song of praise in Exodus 15. After
they sung the song of praise, the scripture says they came
to a place after three days journey, they had no water. They came
to a place called Mara. That's the word bitter. You remember
whenever Ruth and Naomi and Orpah, after their husbands had died,
Naomi said, I'm gonna go back to Bethlehem. And she met her
brethren, her sisters. And they said, how art thou Naomi?
She said, don't call me Naomi, call me Mara, bitter. That's what that means, bitter.
So we see here that the children of Israel have been delivered
from their bondage. They've been brought across the
Red Sea. They've been made perfectly righteous, if I can say it that
way. And all these are types and shadows of this. And now
they're in the wilderness. So the Lord saved his people.
The work's already finished. We've already been brought, but
now we're in the wilderness. And what do we have? We have a bitter
well that's in front of us, bitter waters. This is the believer's
life that I'm describing to us right now. As we're going through
this wilderness of sin, Literally, that's what the wilderness is
called here. It is the wilderness of sin. We are given this bitter
water. We're so full of unbelief all
the time. But the Lord Jesus Christ, what
does God tell them? And some of this, all of this
is types of what he does for his people. He showed them a
tree. The Lord did. He said, take that tree and put
it into the bitter water and it will become sweet. What does
that tree represent, brethren? That's the tree that the Lord
Jesus Christ hung upon for his people. He's the one that drank
the bitter dregs of God's wrath. He's the one that the wrath of
God was poured out. So now what we drink is, oh,
taste and see that the Lord is good. Now we drink of his living
water. We drink of him. That's what
he's showing us in Exodus 16. In Christ, we have abundant life.
We no longer drink of the bitter water. We drink of the sweet
water of Christ because of his finished work. Sometimes life can be overwhelming
to us as believers, and so often we feel left to ourself and we
feel the unbelief that is predominant in our life. Maybe we've received
something and we think that it's bad news. Scott Richardson said
one time, there is no bad news once you get the good news. Once
you get the good news, there is no bad news. Yes, there's
going to be afflictions. Yes, there's going to be trials.
Yes, we are false and full of sin and full of unbelief. But
the good news of the gospel is the sweetness of his water is
he's put it away. He's put away our sin. He's given
us life, everlasting, abundant life in the person of the Lord
Jesus Christ. As they wander through this wilderness
in Exodus 16, we find that the Lord gives them manna from above.
He feeds them. So not only has he given them
the water of life freely, but now he's given them the bread
of life that fell from heaven. Christ mentioned that to the
Pharisees. You did eat of the manna that fell from heaven,
the bread that fell from heaven. He said, I am that bread. This is the
picture here that we have so clearly of the Lord feeding His
people. Well, where does He do that? He does that under the
sound of the gospel. When the gospel is declared,
we feast upon the Lord Jesus Christ, the bread of life and
the manifolds again and again, day after day. The Lord did tell
them that on the seventh day, you cannot work, you cannot go
and glean. What is that a picture of? The
Lord is our Sabbath. The Lord is the one that fulfilled
the law. He kept the Sabbath. He is our Sabbath. He is the
one that we flee to. We feast upon Him and look to
Him as the fulfillment of the law. They continued on their
way in Exodus 17. You remember whenever Moses smote
the rock? The children of Israel, they
murmur and they complain from the time that they left Egypt
to the time that they made it through the Promised Land. They
murmured and complained. What do we do? Are we any different? Do we murmur and complain all
the time? You better believe it. We certainly do. But the
Lord knows them that are His. And the Lord keeps them that
are His. That's our hope. Lord, turn us
again. Lord, have mercy upon us again. We are in our circumstances
like the children of Israel. We feel like we're in a desert.
We have no water. This is where the water will
be found. The Scripture says that the Lord told Moses, smoke
the rock. smote the rock and it gave forth
water. The children of Israel were angry
because they didn't have water and they wanted to kill Moses.
And Lord tells Moses to smote the rock and forthwith came water.
And the children of Israel had water to drink. Well, if that's,
all that happened, and we don't elaborate on that. That's a nice
account, but do we understand that Moses there represents the
law of God, smoting the Lord Jesus Christ? And the water that
came forth was from his side. Forthwith came blood and water
whenever they pierced his side. That's what we drink of, brethren.
That's how it came to be. The law had to smoke Christ prior
to us being able to have the fountain of living water. Christ
is all throughout Exodus. The Lord Jesus Christ is all
throughout Exodus. The Lord Jesus Christ hath put
away the sin of His people by His own death and give us that
water that came forth." In that same chapter, we find
that they go up against a nation called Amalek. Amalek represents
our old man. Our old man. They came and they
fought. And you probably remember the account. It was the one that
as long as Moses' hands were held up, they would win. But
as soon as his hands begin to fall, then they would lose. And he had to have help, didn't
he? Help holding it up, upholding the law. What better news to
know that the law was upheld by the Lord Jesus Christ. That's
the declaration of the gospel there. The law was upheld and
the Lord's people got the victory. Now, Amulek does represent our
old man and our new man because he tells us that from generation
there'll be war, from generation to generation, so as long as
we're in this wilderness, and I've already mentioned that the
wilderness name literally is sin in Exodus. That's literally
the name of it. We're in this wilderness of sin.
We're going about our daily lives. We're begging for the Lord to
give us his water, to give us his manna. We're begging him
for that, and we're warring with Amalek every day, our old man,
our unbelief, our falseness. Yet, as we continue in the warfare,
so to speak, We see that the arms of Moses is being held up.
The law was kept by the Lord Jesus Christ and he hath got
the victory for us. So Amalek cannot harm us. This flesh will die and go back
to the ground from whence it came. Christ Jesus put away our
sin in the flesh for his people, conquering it. We can't conquer
it, but he did for us. That's our hope. After this, the children of Israel
In Exodus 19, they arrive at Mount Sinai. Mount Sinai. The Lord tells Moses, tell the
elders not to come near to Mount Sinai. Don't touch it, for if
you touch it, you will die. God is unapproachable, brethren,
without a substitute. We must have the Lord Jesus Christ
as our substitute who touches God on our behalf. We cannot
touch him and live, but he did. Looking unto Christ is how we
are able to approach the Lord. The Lord tells us something of
worship here, how holy He is, how unapproachable He is. He tells us that the wages of
sin is death, and we know that death passed upon all men because
of Adam. So the only way that we can approach
God is not having our own righteousness, but having a righteousness in
Him, having our sin put away, that's how we worship Him. The
law was given by Moses in order to show us our sinful condition,
to show us what we are, not so that we can have life. Did you
know that the law of God never brought life to anyone? The law
didn't save anyone. The Lord Jesus Christ did. Him
fulfilling the law for His people, Him putting away their sin is
what satisfied God. Exodus chapter 25 through 40
talks about erecting the temple, building the temple of God, the
place where men can worship him. After they had been given the
law, they were shown how holy God was. Then he says, you can
worship me, but you must worship me this way. He gives them the
mercy seat. He gives them the priests and
the ceremonies. He tells them that it's all by
blood. It's not by what you do. It's by the blood of the lamb.
If you're going to approach me, He gives them a place to worship. Brethren, it's a type and shadow
of what the Lord has done for his people in putting away our
sin and allowing us to worship him in spirit and in truth, approaching
by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, giving us all that is
required to approach him. We've been given the body of
Christ as the sanctuary that we worship in. we have been given
the body of Christ as what we look to for our salvation. The
Lord sees the blood and communes with us. Now, lastly, turn with me to
Exodus chapter 40. Exodus chapter 40 and verse 35. Exodus 40, 35 says, and Moses
was not able to enter into the tent of the congregation because
the cloud abode thereon and the glory of the Lord filled the
tabernacle. And when the cloud was taken up from over the tabernacle,
the children of Israel went onwards in all their journeys. But if
the cloud were not taken up, then they journeyed not to the
end that it was taken up. For the cloud of the tabernacle
was upon the tabernacle by day, and fire was on it by night in
the sight of all the house of Israel throughout all their journeys. Moses finished the work in verse
35. Look at that again. So Moses
finished the work. If Moses' work was finished representing
the law, the only way that his work could be finished is if
it was satisfied. That's what the Lord's saying.
In order to worship Him, the Lord gave them a tabernacle.
And the Lord tells them, I'm going to meet you here. But Moses
could not enter that tabernacle. When we enter into the place
of worship by the blood of Christ, the law cannot enter and say
anything against the elect of God. It just says satisfied. Don Fortner put it this way.
He said the law doesn't even frown at the child of God, doesn't
even frown, because the Lord put away our sin. It has nothing
to reply against the child of God. The law, Christ is the end
of the law for righteousness' sake. So we see from the very beginning
that Exodus is all about the Lord Jesus Christ. We see that
the Lord came to earth, born as a man, born under the law,
to redeem them that were under the law. He did so by His own
blood, He did so by enduring the wrath of God for His people,
brought them over the Red Sea, brought them through the wilderness
of sin. Even though we're fighting constantly with our old man,
the Lord is bringing us unto Him safely. And He tells us right
here, the very last four words, throughout all their journeys,
He has kept them. He kept them. He kept them all
the way till they got to the land flowing with milk and honey,
the promised land, as we heard from Jeremiah. The Lord did the
work. The Lord saved his people. That's
what Exodus is telling us, that the Lord gets all the glory and
the salvation of his people, that the Lord did put away their
sin. He led them by a cloud by day and a fire by night. He said,
thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path. The
Lord has given us these things, bringing us unto him, causing
us to beg of him, feeding us manna from heaven, giving us
the fountain of living water, Leading us all the way to the
promised land. Leading us all the way to himself.
Amen. Father, we pray that you would
bless your word. Thank you for leading us. Calls us to rest
in Christ. Thank you for allowing us to
see you in Exodus and throughout all scripture. Pray that you
would keep us. In Christ name we pray. Amen.