Reading Exodus as a Template for Discipleship

We began our sermon series on the Book of Exodus last Sunday with an overview of the broad themes in the book. Taking a page from Joe Godwin’s playbook, I have been doing my own personal reading in Exodus, and I am also listening to a podcast that dives deep into the book.

Something I heard Joe say the other day has resonated in my mind: he said that you could almost see the Exodus narrative as the story of the Christian life. I’ve thought about that, and I think he’s onto something.

My own history with Exodus is spotted.

As a boy, more than once my Bible-reading plans crashed and burned in the second half of the book. After all the fire and fury of the Ten Plagues, the miracle of the crossing of the Red Sea, and the thunder and lightning on Mt. Sinai, it was hard for me to settle down into the tedious instructions about the Tabernacle in the second half of the book. I can remember more than once right then and there abandoning my plans to read the Bible all the way through, setting my Bible aside, and never resuming my reading plan.

But now, as I read and re-read Exodus itself and as I read and hear what others are saying about the book, I’m beginning to see there’s so much more to Exodus than I thought.

Which brings me back to Joe’s observation that the Exodus narrative provides an interesting template for understanding the Christian life.

It’s true.

The narrative opens with God’s dramatic rescue of His people from their bondage in Egypt, a rescue they did nothing to earn. Yahweh, the God who had made lavish promises to Israel’s patriarchs, puts on a fearsome display of His power, a kind of “shock and awe” attack on the might and arrogance of mighty Egypt. In short order, with the nation of Egypt smoldering in ruins behind them, the Hebrews are expelled from the land of their misery.

Why did God rescue them? Did He see some potential in them that made Him want to bring them out of their bondage? No, He delivered them because He heard their cries, and He remembered His promises to their fathers.

In the same way, God in Christ delivers the Christian from his or her bondage to sin. And that act in itself is a display of awesome power: how He invades a human heart that is bound up in rebellion, makes that hard heart tender, draws it to repentance, and brings about nothing less than an entirely new birth into a new life.

If you’re like me – that is, if you came to faith at a tender young age – you might not sense the terrific power that was at work in your salvation. After all, I was only five years old, and I hadn’t yet developed any bad habits that had to be broken, I hadn’t yet committed any vile deeds to repent of.

So where’s the power in the conversion of a young child? I can remember when I was a teen and would hear someone’s dramatic testimony; I actually wished that I had such a testimony, I wished that I could tell of awful, dark sins from which God has saved me.

That was foolish, of course, because I didn’t understand how powerful my childhood conversion actually was. As a man who’s lived more than six decades, I can more clearly see now how deeply God’s power has changed the course of my life. Now I have a better sense now of what kind of man I might have been if the Spirit hadn’t changed the trajectory of my life early on. I know my weaknesses and my tendencies, and I can imagine how miserable I would be, how miserable my family would be, if God’s Spirit hadn’t altered the trajectory of my life when I was young.

So, yes, my entrance into the Kingdom of God was an act of sheer, awesome power on God’s part. He brought me out of bondage just as dramatically as He brought the Israelites out of Egypt.

But what about the rest of Exodus, the part that made me want to give up?

If the dramatic episodes of Exodus are analog to my being born again, the rest of the book is about how God slowly shapes me into the kind of person He wants me to be.

You can imagine the Israelites after their narrow escape from the Egyptian army at the Red Sea. Just think what they had witnessed in the span of a few weeks! They had seen God ravage the Egyptian economy with the plagues while He protected the crops and livestock of His people; they had seen the 600 chariots of Pharaoh’s army bearing down on them.

Now all those chariots lie at the bottom of the sea, the army destroyed, and they are safe on the other side, blinking in wonderment at all they’ve seen.

But now what?

Who are they as a people?

Where are they to go?

How do they get there?

In the months that followed their deliverance from Egypt God would use His Law to shape their identity as a people, to fit them for their new home in the Land He promised to their fathers. The laws of Exodus (along with the Book of Leviticus) are given to help them understand the terms of their covenant with Yahweh and show them how they are to interact with Him and with one another as the holy people of God.

So, yes, the second half of Exodus is less spectacular than the opening pages, but it is just as important in shaping the communal and spiritual life of the fledgling nation of Israel.

So it is with my Christian life. In one dramatic moment God rescued me from sin and death in Christ. Now over time, year by year, His Spirit patiently bends the trajectory of my life toward holiness, fitting me for my new home with Him in the Kingdom.

Sanctification is anything but spectacular. Like the Law God gave Moses on Sinai and Israel’s long sojourn in the wilderness, sanctification is pains-taking and sometimes tedious. Fortunately, the Spirit is patient and thorough, and He has promised that He will finish the task of preparing me for my heavenly home.

Persevere,
Paul Pyle
Pastor of Discipleship