Gooding, David: 2 - The Process and Goal of Liberation (2)

In our first session this afternoon, I suggested to you that the book of Exodus is composed of eight major sections, eight major movements of thought. We then set ourselves to consider those movements and to ask how they are related one to the other, and what is the function of each one and its contribution to the message of the book as a whole. And we proceeded to notice that before the great event of liberation, there are two movements that, by definition, are the preludes, therefore, to liberation. There are two movements, and they put the case from two opposite points of view. The first is the basis of appeal on the ground of Israel's privilege. They are God's firstborn. Secondly, the ground of demand before Pharaoh is God's sovereign rights as the creator of the world. Now we come to movement three, the actual liberation itself. And we should notice at once how that li- liberation is affected. Not, of course, by the Israelites themselves joining in some protest movement. The liberation is affected by God himself, and directly so, without intermediary. Secondly, we should notice that when God interposes to deliver Israel, he does not now, uh, interpose on the ground of privilege, that Israel are special. In the plagues, God made the difference between Israel and Egypt, particularly in the second the- series of plagues, to make a particular point to Pharaoh. Now, when God rises up, uh, to liberate, there is no difference between Israel and the Egyptians. Because, notice next, the method of liberation is the judgment of God upon Egypt. To which judgment, the slaying of the firstborn, Israel were subjected equally with the Egyptians. When God rises up to judge, then there is no difference, by definition. For all have sinned and do come short of the glory of God. Oppressors are sinful, oppressed are sinful. And when it comes to deserving the judgment of God, then there is no difference. The reason why, when God judged Israel, the reason why Israel was delivered, or at least the method how they were, is that God provided a sacrifice for them. And the blood of that sacrifice being sprinkled upon their doorposts, and the Israelites hiding behind it. When the destroying angel passed through, God passed over them and protected them. Now let us notice that just as there were two movements in the prelude, so there are actually two movements in the actual liberation. For in movement three, they are liberated, but as you see in movement four, likewise and again needing to be liberated. So we have to ask ourselves, why should two movements be devoted to the discussion of liberation? And one could give a whole series of reasons, surely. Notice that in movement three, while it results in deliverance from Pharaoh, the actual protection is from the wrath of God. The deliverance that Israel is primarily given in movement three is deliverance and salvation from the destroying angel. That is the first thing that Israel had to be delivered from. And of course, that speaks volumes over the question of liberation as Exodus understands and portrays it. It is in movement four that Israel is eventually and finally delivered from the power of Pharaoh. When Israel came out of Egypt and arrived at the Red Sea, Pharaoh tried to pursue them and to bring them back. Theologically, I suppose, if you wanted to sum it up, you would say that in movement three, they were saved by the blood of the Passover lamb. They were saved by blood. In movement four, they are saved through water. And of course, throughout the whole of scripture, you will find here and there that same expression of salvation, that it consists of two parts, salvation by blood and salvation by water. When we come, as we shall have to, to study the tabernacle, the building of which is described in Exodus, we shall find that in its court, on the road of approach to God, there were two major vessels, the large copper altar and then the copper laver. Both of those vessels offered cleansing. The first, the altar by blood, the second, the laver by water. The New Testament will likewise talk to us of both types of cleansing, of course. Epistle by John, the first thereof, chapter one and verse seven: the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanseth us from all sin. Whereas Paul in Ephesians five remarks that Christ loved the church and gave himself for her that he might sanctify her to himself, having cleansed her by the washing of water through the word. This is he, says John in one John five, that came by water and blood, and not by blood only, but water and blood. This is one of the leading themes connected with redemption in Holy Scripture. But before I go off in that direction, let me restrain myself and come back to the book of Exodus. Eh, movement three and four then stand as twins, not only historically, but theologically as well. But in addition to being saved and delivered from, uh, the power of Pharaoh, you can put it this way, if you like, to yourself, that movement three tells us how God got Israel out of Egypt. Movement four tells us how he kept them from going back into Egypt. For that you will see, we shall see when we come to study Movement four. that more than once Israel, having been delivered, weren't quite sure that they wanted to be delivered after all, and felt in re- in looking back over affairs that life would have been pleasanter had they stayed in Egypt. And Moses had an enormous task to persuade them to continue with their liberation and not give it all up and go back to Egypt. This is a true to life story, this is. And therefore, put it this way again, if you like, in movement three, God was getting Israel out of Egypt. In movement four, God was getting Egypt out of Israel. One of its leading stories in movement four will be the lesson that God taught them about their attitude to their daily bread. It will be at that literal level, their daily food, and how they should be provided, and so forth and so on. The lesson of the manna, in other words. And how they should regulate their work week. They who had earned what bread they got in Egypt by their hard service and slavery. Now God had them in the wilderness, he must teach them what is the true attitude to daily work and the question of earning our daily bread. So that we don't go about our daily work as unregenerate slaves, but learn this basic lesson in life, how the earning of our daily bread, our daily work, and so forth, is to be done in true and godly fashion of the free sons and daughters of God. Now we come to the second half of the book, to the second four movements. We earlier noted, uh, the narrative device, of course the thing is history as well, but the narrative device, how that the setting of the second half echoes, is a mirror image of the setting of the first half. Israel are now liberated, and Moses has managed to keep them from going back to Egypt. But liberated for what? What is the goal of liberation? And here, if we were not thinking too carefully, we could easily jump to the conclusion that the goal of liberation was for Israel to exchange the bitterness of Egypt, the poverty and the slavery of Egypt, for the enjoyments and pleasures of Canaan. Earlier chapters have told us how God informed Moses that he had come down to take Israel out of Egypt and to bring them into the inheritance he had promised to Abram and the patriarchs. Shall we not say, therefore, that the goal of redemption is the great inheritance in Canaan? Uh, if we fell into that mistake, we should stand in danger of vitiating the whole purpose of liberation, as the second half of the book of Exodus is now to show us. God did not wait until Israel had crossed the wilderness before he came and made himself known to them. God did not set them free from Egypt and say, now look here, Israelites, um, I, I prepared, uh, Canaan for you, I, uh, if I were you, journey steadfastly, and when you get there, uh, call on me and I'll meet you when you arrive. No. They had only been a few months out of Egypt when the transcendent Lord troubled to come down and stand on Sinai to meet Israel and to declare to them what the goal of their liberation was. You have seen, says he, chapter nineteen, what I did to the Egyptians, how I bear you on eagle's wings and brought you to myself. Now, if you will obey my word and keep my covenant, then you shall be a peculiar treasure to me, for all the nations are mine, and you shall be a kingdom of priests to me. Go down the mountain, says God to Moses. Prepare the people and bring them forth to me. And there follows that heart moving spectacle. When Moses took the redeemed people of God and brought the people out to meet God. Later rabbis talked of this event as Moses being the middle man or the groom's man that took the bride and introduced her to her husband. No more exalted ministry is possible, is it? To introduce a man or woman personally to their creator. This is the goal of redemption. It is the goal of life. And if you'll permit me, without having argued my authority, to run off into, call it what you will, typology, allegory, or any other desperate thing, uh, it is so with our redemption too, isn't it? Why are you saved? All sorts of reasons could be given, couldn't they? Among the humblest of them all, to escape from hell, and that's a good and valid reason. We are to flee from the wrath to come, as John the Baptist put it. We are to flee for refuge to take hold of the hope that is before us. Valid as is the reason to escape from the pains of hell, it's not the highest reason, is it? Why would you want to go to heaven anyway? We'll say, according to the well-founded rumors going around, heaven is going to be so delightful, golden streets instead of pothole tarmac. Why should we want to go to heaven? If God made us the offer that he made to Moses, Moses, look here, I've had enough of these Israelites, and if you refuse my offer to you that I shall destroy them and make a nation of you, and you refuse to survive their destruction, all right, Moses, I grant you your point, you can have them, uh, I shall allow the nation to continue, Moses, they can have Canaan as well, uh, take them there by you. I shan- I shan't go with them. What would you have said? Well, now that's a pity, Lord. We were looking forward to spending a few days, any rate, when we got home to Canaan with you, at least once a week. Uh, but uh, on the other hand, if you feel obliged not to come with us and you decide not to, Lord, well, we're sorry about that. But then on the other hand, it's a good place, so we're here, and there's a have a bungalow of our own there, and a cow, and three acres, and flowers, and honey, and things. It would be, I mean, we're sorry you can't come, but we look forward to enjoying it, and thank you very much for it. Would you want to go to heaven if God weren't there? What What is is the goal? And the magnificent message of, uh, the book of Exodus is that Israel didn't have to wait until they actually entered into their promised inheritance before they could begin to realize the goal of their redemption. For God himself came down on Sinai in the wilderness and proposed himself as the goal of that redemption. I have brought you to myself, and now you have the option. Would you care to be my peculiar treasure, to serve me in that privileged role of being my priests. A later section will show us movement number seven, The terrible disaster that befell Israel. When they got, uh, muddled up into their minds about this very matter of what the goal of redemption was. So movement five then is the manifestation of the name of God on, um, Sinai, his proposal to the people, and the conditions for that proposal to be realized, namely their willingness to, um, obey- obey his word and keep his covenant. And in consequence, the laws, some of the laws at least, involved in that covenant are then set out in detail, regulating la- what you might call largely, most of them regulating secular life. But notice the ar- the goal of re- uh, of redemption, of deliverance, as now movement six puts it, complementing Movement five. God proposes that they build a sanctuary where he may dwell among them, where from between the cherubim on the ark, he may meet them and speak with them. And in response, Aaron, Israel's great high priest, may lead Israel's worshipful service of the Lord. The goal of redemption beginning to be realized while Israel are still in the desert and before they have got to their great inheritance. Now, finally, the last two movements, and you'll see at once how they are related to movement five and six. Well, movement seven t- tells us how Israel at one stage and very soon, while Moses still hadn't come down from the mountain, rejected the goal that God had put before them. We'll say, says the historian in his simple narrative art, when the people saw that Moses delayed to come down from the mountain, they said to Aaron, up, make us gods to go before us. I don't know who the young gentleman was who first proposed it. I think he must have had a PhD at least. And he pointed out to his neighbor, you'll see, he said, have you considered, uh, just this, this recently, in this last week or so, what an impossible situation we are in. Here we're sitting at the bottom of a mountain in the middle of the desert, waiting for this Moses fellow to come back. Well, he's been gone four or five weeks, and when he went, he had no visible means of support. I mean, he can't have survived up. He must be dead. We're sitting here twizzling our thumbs, quickly getting nowhere at all, waiting for this fellow to appear again. And that's an impossible situation to be in. You can't spend life sitting at the bottom of a mountain, twizzling your thumbs, going nowhere. We must have some goal to aim at, something to lead us on, to make our way through the wilderness. Make us gods to go before us. You do have to have a goal in life, don't you? You can't sit still. You've got to be aiming at something, else you'll go around in circles. What will you aim at? Though they covered it up using the same name of Jehovah for the idol they made, they now proposed to themselves quite a different goal and began to follow it. It brought upon them God's great discipline. And as we saw earlier, eventually through God's discipline and Moses' intercession, Israel were brought to repentance, and God forgave them. And in his grace, returned and allowed them to achieve the goal that he had put before them. And the tabernacle was built, and God came down and dwelt among them. That at least, gentlemen, is how I would construe, in my simplistic fashion, the relationships between the eight major movements of this book. And I try to make the point that, in my estimation, Exodus is not a, a patchwork quilt of odd sources put rather clumsily together, and every now and again contradicting each other. Exodus is a narrative that has been exceedingly carefully planned, arranged, and constructed, in which each movement plays its, uh, uh, peculiar function, or cannot remove one of the movements without rending this most beautiful garment. And my next contention would be that this is not a matter merely of seeing literary patterns in the narrative of scripture, though literary patterns they are, of course, but that the very literary structure of the book itself is an integral part of the message the book is getting across. And therefore, to observe the literary structure of the book is of great practical benefit to those of us who preach, so that in using the details, we may preach them in that particular proportion, in that particular function that the Holy Spirit himself designed. I trouble you to stay a little bit longer on this matter of structure, just to put down now side by side, instead of one after the other, side by side, the four major movements of the book, and perhaps somebody will be so kind as to give out that sheet. On the second sheet, gentlemen, all I have done is to list the, uh, eight movements, four of them on the one side, the other four on the other, side by side this time. And from each movement I have drawn a few details, doubtless you could think of many more, that show there is a certain relationship between, uh, the first and second half of the book. It is not simply a question either of playing crossword puzzles with Holy Writ. But in observing connections to, uh, be prompted to see what things should loom large in our expositions and our applications. In movement one, on the left hand side, you'll see prominent there God's self-revelation to Moses in the flames of the burning bush, and God's asseveration that Israel's deliverance is to be based on his covenant with Abraham. Movement Mormon balances that with the revelation of God in the flames of Mount Sinai, where not Israel's deliverance, but Israel's status, role, and behavior are made to be dependent not on Abram's covenant, but on the covenant that God now proposes and has made at Sinai. The very arrangement of the material in the history will drive us to ask, what is the relationship between those two covenants? And are they simply variations on the same theme of no particular significance. Would it have upset you, gentlemen, from a theological point of view, if deliverance from Egypt had been made dependent upon keeping the covenant I s- I made at Sinai? Are they the same or are they different? Or if you'd like to come down to movement three, that, as you'll see, is the section dealing with the Passover. And as we observed in our earlier session, in giving Moses the directions for the Passover, God emphasized that they were to keep the Passover a feast to the Lord forever. The word for feast is Chag, Arabic equivalent of the Hajj. So even before Israel were delivered, even before the angel of destruction had stalked through the land, while as yet Israel hadn't begun to keep the Passover, and we're only at the stage of direction, and the liberation hasn't taken place, God insists with Israel to make this point, Moses to Israel, that once they have been delivered, they are to keep this for a memorial regularly throughout their generations. Why all the fuss? How would Israel ever forget how they came out of Egypt? Well, look at movement seven on the other side. Where Where the the goal. gold that Israel took from the Egyptians as they came out on that memorable night of Passover, they now turn to the making of a golden calf. And they said, these are your gods that brought you out of Egypt. How was it possible that they forgot so soon? And Aaron had it broadcast over the news in the morning. Tomorrow is a feast, chach, to the Lord. The opposition of movement seven to movement three in the course of the narrative, is not just a little artistic device. It is pressing home directly and violently the seriousness of what was done when they made the golden calf. The seriousness, gentlemen, of allowing the people of God to forget what exactly it was that brought them out of Egypt. If God ordained that the Passover was to be a memorial for the Israelites as to how they got out of Egypt. Then we as Christians cannot help remembering, can we, that our blessed Lord instituted the taking of bread and wine, that we might be reminded how we were delivered. Why the need, you say, of it? Let none of us suppose we are wiser than our Lord. It is so desperately possible for the people of God, a few miles down the road of experience, to forget exactly what it was that delivered them. The distinctions, the differences that came in, I just mentioned them briefly here, and we'll come round to mentioning them on another occasion. The gold and the gems and the silver and whatnot that Israel got when they came out of Egypt were what you might call the byproducts of redemption. It wasn't the gold and the silver that brought them out of Egypt. That was only a result of their being redeemed. But at this stage in the wilderness, they took the byproducts of redemption and declared that they were the very means that got them out of Egypt. Then they took the byproducts of redemption and made them the goal, instead of making God the goal. In doing it, they used the same language. They still talked about Jehovah. But when now they talked about Jehovah, they didn't mean exactly the same as the term really meant. So then, all I wish to argue here, and I don't wish now to go into any more detail about that, is that if we take the two halves of the book and put them side by side and notice their similarities and contrasts, we shall once more be led to the conclusion that the book of Exodus is an exceedingly carefully constructed book. I mention it and emphasize it, gentlemen, because, as you know, it has been current theory this last one hundred and fifty years, that Exodus is a patchwork quilt of all kinds of sources. Well, so it may be. But when it is added that they are put together in rather unsatisfactory fashion, and all over the place you can see the unequal joins and the contradictions, and thus and thus and thus, then one wonders where they who propose such things learn the art of literary criticism. In my humble estimation, at any rate, the book is a very carefully constructed literary whole. Why does that matter? Because many people will tell you, and I come back to where we began, that, uh, certain parts of Exodus are early, and they are valid, and other parts come from later sources, and they're not valid. You will notice the liberation theologies, uh, theolo- theologians, uh, are tempted towards that kind of solution when they have chosen parts that seem to favor their particular theology, they will openly reject other parts as being later additions and rather degenerate additions to the original pure stock. There are other theologians who take directly the opposite view. The late, the early bits are primitive. The later bits are more sophisticated. I want to s- uh, suggest to you, by means of this literary analysis, that whatever material Moses may have used in the construction of the book, the book as a book as it comes before us is a carefully integrated literary whole. And if we believe that the Holy Spirit's inspiration lay behind the human author, then to come at the Holy Spirit's message, we must be prepared to allow the book to be the whole that he constructed it to be. And we suggested that the sensible thing to do is to start with Exodus and what it has to say about the history of God's liberation of his people. And at that level, we can bring many a lesson to ourselves by s- use of the simple means of analogy. But now I want to begin to say some things about those other levels at which scripture indicates we should try and understand the Exodus event. And I say that into the general context that has brought a certain amount of uncertainty to preachers and others over this past twenty years and more. Very early on in the church, the stories of the book of Exodus were allegorized, if that's the right word to use about them, by people like Origen and Augustine. And that kind of interpretation of scripture with- has not been without its practitioners in the ages that have followed. It has been taken to such extremes that in more recent centuries people have reacted strongly against allegorizing interpretations. So much so that the very word typology in more recent years and decades was enough to make a true theologian turn pale. It was left, was it not, to a liberal theologian, Louis Gopelt, in large measure to restore the honor and validity of typological interpretation of Old Testament. Nonetheless, it is laid down in some quarters nowadays as a canon of interpretation that we should not say anything in the Old Testament is a type, unless the New Testament explicitly says it is a type. If the New Testament does not say that a particular thing is a type, then we should keep as far away from a typological interpretation as we can possibly get. So how are we to proceed when it comes to the book of Exodus? May we or may we not say that certain things are types, and what are types anyway? I want, therefore, to make a range of observations. We shall start this evening, and it will have to continue tomorrow a little way before we eventually get down to considering, uh, the detailed exposition of the text. Passover in Israel, if I may start with Passover, as we have just considered, was from the very fast- first said to be, uh, said by God to be an event that Israel must remember. So it was a memorial, and celebrating it each year all down the centuries, Israel have looked back to that great deliverance, and they have also felt that they themselves as a nation have benefited from that, uh, uh, prime deliverance. And because they have benefited from it, when they celebrate the Passover, they like to feel that somehow they were involved in that original Passover. Just as we Christians have been taught to remember our Lord in breaking the bread and drinking the cup of wine, and to believe and know that we are the beneficiaries of that great redemption that was accomplished and procured for us so long ago. But as the centuries went by in Israel, they not only looked back to the Passover. It is evident in many places in the Old Testament that they began to see that the Passover back in history formed for them a picture, a precedent of an even greater deliverance that was to come. And they pictured that coming deliverance in terms of the original historic deliverance. Let's immediately go to some passages in Isaiah. Isaiah chapter eleven, for instance. Isaiah eleven verses fifteen and sixteen. Talking of God's future deliverance of the nation, Isaiah says, Isaiah eleven fifteen, and the Lord shall utterly destroy the tongue of the Egyptian sea, and with his scorching wind shall he shake his hand over the river, and shall smite it into seven streams, and cause men to march over dry shod. And there shall be an highway for the remnant of his people which shall remain from Assyria, like as there was for Israel in the day that he came up out of the land of Egypt. And if it does no more, it presents a parallel between the original Passover and deliverance and crossing of the Red Sea, between that and this future deliverance that God will accomplish for them. Nor is it an isolated and unique text. Let's look at Isaiah fifty one and verse 9 to eleven. Nine to eleven. Awake, awake, put on thy strength, O arm of the Lord. Awake as in the days of old, the generations of ancient times. Art thou not it that cut Rahab in pieces, that pierced the dragon? A reference to ancient Israel, uh, Egypt and God's deliverance of Israel at the Exodus. Art thou not it which dried up the sea, the waters of the great deep, that made the depths of the sea a way for the redeemed to pass over? And if God did that in history in the past, and God is consistent with himself, then he will do it again in the future, and the ransomed of the Lord shall return and come with singing unto Zion, and everlasting joy shall be upon their heads. Again, one could quote Isaiah fifty three— Sorry, sixty three. Isaiah sixty three, verses eleven following. Then he that is God remembered the days of old, Moses and his people saying, where is he that brought them up out of the sea with the shepherds of his flock? Where is he that put his Holy Spirit in the midst of them, that caused his glorious arm to go at the right hand of Moses, that divided the water before them to make himself an everlasting name, that led them through the depths as an horse in the wilderness, that they stumbled not. And now, on the basis of God's action in the past to deliver, the prophet is looking forward to God's great deliverance for Israel in the future. The historic event, therefore, becomes in the prophet's mind a prototype, if not a type of the coming future deliverance. Now let us turn from that to our Lord and his interpretation of Passover. Already, as you'll see, Passover has come- become a kind of a prophecy, if you like, in the Old Testament. Of the great future messianic deliverance. Let's look at what our Lord said in the Gospel by Luke, chapter twenty two. Luke twenty two fifteen sixteen, he said unto them, with desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer, for I say unto you, I will not eat it until it be fulfilled in the kingdom of God. So here is our Lord commenting upon Passover and indicating that Passover is about to be fulfilled. And that immediately raises the question, in what sense is our Lord using the word fulfill? For after all was said and done, Passover was the memorial of a historic event. It wasn't, at least it wasn't originally a prediction, was it? Not like, I say, a prediction in Isaiah, a virgin shall conceive and bring forth a son. There's a prediction. Was Passover ever a prediction? No, uh, not in the normal sense of that term. If Passover then was not a prediction, how can it be fulfilled? Unkindly critics have made merry, haven't they, with some of the passages in the New Testament that claim that such and such an event in the life of our Lord is a fulfillment of an Old Testament passage. Matthew, for instance, his quotation of the prophet in his chapter two, when our Lord was taken by his parents down to Egypt to escape the wrath of the Herod, you'll see, and when Herod was dead, an angel of the Lord summoned Joseph and Mary back, uh, to Palestine, you'll see, and told them, uh, that it was safe to come, and they brought back our Lord out of Egypt into Palestine, and Matthew says that this happened that the prophetic scripture might be fulfilled, out of Egypt have I called my son. As I say, unkindly critics have had a field day over Matthew's, what they consider Matthew's unfortunate move. Their theory is as follows, that Matthew had the basic conviction that, uh, every prophecy in the Old Testament was by definition to be fulfilled in the life of Christ. So Matthew went hunting around for prophecies of Christ in the Old Testament and collected a number. He then looked around into the life of Christ and picked out events that he thought were fulfillments of those predictions. He came across a prophecy that said, out of Israel have I called my son. He looked around for something in the life of Christ that should fulfill that prophecy too. Didn't find one. At least he didn't find one in his sources. So he thought that this was too bad, he better make up a story for it. Surely it was true that the prophecy was fulfilled, so that he made up a story of our Lord's flight to Egypt and his return from Egypt, and he recorded the story and, uh, remarked that this fulfilled the Old Testament prediction. Wiser head than Matthews at last got working on the Bible and read Hosea and found out that the original statement, out of Egypt have I called my son, was never a prediction in the first place. It was but the record of a fact, an historical fact, that when Israel as a nation was in its infancy, God called them out of Egypt. And they said, poor old Matthew. Yes. He- he- he's been caught out, you see, caught at his job, poor old boy. He thought it was a prophecy, and it wasn't. He made up a- a fulfillment at last for something that never was printed. Poor old Matthew. And if you hold that view yourself, I suspect you have felt, uh, some problems about the divine wisdom. Why on earth didn't he rush into things and get Matthew to record the life of Christ? Why didn't he delay the coming of our Lord until wiser heads were around to record the event more appropriately? But perhaps then the error is in the misunderstanding of what the word fulfillment means. It is true that the Bible uses, the New Testament uses the term fulfillment, eh, in one sense of the fulfilling of a prediction, but obviously in a larger sense than that. In James chapter two, for instance, James is talking about the necessity that we justify our profession of faith by our works. And further to encourage us along that line, he cites the experience of Ab- Abraham and says, James two twenty one, was not Abraham our father justified by works, and by works was faith made perfect? For he was justified by his works in that he offered up Isaac his son upon the altar. Verse twenty three: and the scripture was fulfilled, which says, and Abraham believed God, and it was reckoned unto him for righteousness. But come now, the scripture in question is Genesis fifteen six, where it says Abraham believed God, and it was counted for him for righteousness. That as far as I can make out, wasn't a prediction either, was it? That was a statement of a fact. God justified the man there and then. How can the record of that fact, and Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness, righteousness, be fulfilled Fulfilled. when When subsequently subsequently. Abraham offered Isaac upon the altar. The answer, it seems to me, lies in understanding what indeed was happening when Abraham offered Isaac on the altar. When Abraham was justified by faith, as Paul subsequently explains in Romans three and four, Abram was putting his faith in God, and solely in God, in a God who could bring life out of death, and out of the dead body of Abram and Sarah, bring a new life, the promised seed. Abram's faith was in God. In the intervening years, Abram's faith wobbled a bit, did it not? But when at last that faith was ready for the ultimate test, God put that faith to the test. So when Isaac was given and now grown up, God comes to Abram and says, in effect, now Abram, regarding your future and all the blessings I have promised you, in what does your faith rest for the fulfillment of those promise- those promises? Does it rest in me? Or in Isaac? And Abram, of course, said, well, oh, oh, you of course not, Isaac, you, you. Right, says God, shall we now just demonstrate that, Abram, if you wouldn't mind? Give me Isaac. And as the writer to the Hebrews pertinently remarks, there was Abram, the great patriarch, taking Isaac, in whom were vested all the promises of God. Humanly speaking, they were all in Isaac, and he was offering up Isaac on the altar to God, to stand there, bereft of Isaac, with only Only God God live. left. Demonstrating by his works that his faith was in God and in God alone. And what had already been true in Exodus fifteen six, that Abraham believed God, was now exemplified and demonstrated at that higher level, and his faith was shown to be the true faith that it was. James comments that Genesis fifteen six six, Abraham believed God, and it was counted for him for righteousness, was fulfilled on Mount Moriah. Here then is our Lord saying, I must keep this Passover with you, gentlemen, before I suffer. I will not eat it again until it be fulfilled in the kingdom of God. I take that to mean simply this, that when God delivered Israel out of Egypt, there was manifest in his deliverance of them certain basic principles of redemption. They were demonstrated at that lowly level, but they were real. There was the wrath of God against sin. Both oppressed and oppressor were sinners, subject to the wrath of God. If Israel were ever to be delivered, they needed first deliverance from the wrath of God, and only secondly, deliverance from Pharaoh. God provided that deliverance in the form of the blood of a Passover lamb. Basic principles of redemption expressed at that lowly historical level. Repeated in the memorial ceremonies all down the century, until the Lord came. Then when our Lord Jesus died, those same basic principles of redemption were then expressed and carried out at an infinitely higher level, and thus were fulfilled. To describe that kind of thing, and the New Testament abounds with examples of that kind of fulfillment, I use the term, not typology, I use the term prototype. Forgive its crudity, uh, you'll see I'm not a theologian, I'm a do-it-yourself student, and you'll say I use the term prototype. We'll say I've observed that, uh, the first aeroplanes that ever flew were very humble and curious machines, bits of paper glued on with spit to pieces of wood and strung together with pieces of string. Yet somehow they flew because, crude as they were, they incorporated certain basic, uh, principles of aerodynamics. Now, of course, you will see the great jumbo jet going across the sky way above the bright blue. In that gigantic flying machine, there are those same basic principles of aerodynamics incorporated, plus much more, of course, and much more efficiently at that high level. So it seems to me, on the basis of the New Testament's comment, has God done in history. Preparing the way for the coming of our Lord and the redemption that is through him, God began to redeem his people in ancient time and demonstrated these principles of redemption at a lowly level. Now, in the coming of our Lord, we see it, uh, uh, fulfilled at the highest level. Why bother then to trace out those levels? What good does it do? We shall all wa- be immediately aware how sometimes the New Testament takes advantage of those Old Testament story- stories and draws the parallel. It uses a simile. Peter reminds his fellow believers, you were redeemed not with silver or gold, you were redeemed with the precious blood of Christ. And the dear man could have left it there, couldn't he? And none of us would have had any grounds of complaint. Redeemed with the blood of Christ. Peter is not content to leave it there, but now adds on a simile, as of a lamb without spot. Why add on the simile? And where does he get the simile from? Well, of course, there's no doubt where he gets it from. Every Sunday school scholar knows it. When he says as of a lamb, Peter is thinking how his ancient forefathers were redeemed by the blood of a woolly lamb, uh, in the days of the Passover at Egypt. Now we're redeemed with Christ as of a lamb. That is elementary, and I didn't stay on it any longer. But you'll say sometimes the New Testament has allusions and parallels with the Old Testament that are not necessarily made explicit. And just before we finish tonight, and we're going to finish in a few moments, I want to observe, remind you what doubtless you've already seen, how that throughout the gospel by John, John constantly alludes to the Passover story. Though, more often than not, he doesn't stop to tell us he is alluding to the Passover story. So let me write down here on the left hand side some things, some features from Passover story, and then write down on the right hand side John's parallels with that. You start, of course, with Egypt and its prince, or was the Pharaoh, of course. And Israel were in bondage to this prince, so Moses was sent. Well, of course he was, you say. Yes, I guess I know. But that is part of the story, as we shall see when we come to it. God sent him. But when I come to the Israelites and they say, God has sent me, perhaps they won't believe that you have sent me, says Moses. And so, pray God, when I come to them and I say, the God of your fathers has sent me, how can I prove it if they don't believe it? So God gave Moses, was given signs to do, so that Israel should believe that God had sent him. As we said earlier, it would be vital in the process of getting Israel out of Egypt that the Israelites should be brought to believe Moses. If they didn't believe Moses, they wouldn't budge a centimeter out of Egypt. All right, uh, says Moses, but God now, when I come to all the Israelites, uh, and say the God of your fathers has sent me, um, and they say, what is his name? What shall I say? So Moses was given, told to declare the name of God. It turned out to be I am, actually, or something of the sort, I will be that I will be, or I am that I am. So Moses went off, and of course he kept the Passover. And in the regulations according to chapter twelve, no bone may be broken. He got them out into the wilderness, and there they were fed with manna from heaven. And of course, the light of God's presence guided them. Well, so we could go on, but let's come back because the time is escaping us. In the fourth gospel, as our Lord comes towards the end of his ministry, you will begin to get a concept that you do not get thus explicitly in the other three gospels, namely the world. As our Lord, for instance, prays to his father, John chapter seventeen, he observes that his disciples are not of the world, even as he himself is not of the world. It is not that their God would take them out of the world, but should keep them from the evil one. And I have given them thy word, he says, and the world hated them because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. In addition, he several times uses the phrase, and no one else tells us about it, of the prince of this world. Now is the judgment of this world. Now shall the prince of this world be cast out. The prince of this world comes, and he has nothing in me. And thus, and thus. Of course, it is every Sunday school child that knows that in the fourth gospel, Christ is the sent one of God. So much is that a typical title, a description of our Lord, that when John records the miracle of the blind man receiving his sight in John chapter nine and observes how our Lord sent him to wash in the pool that is called Siloam, and then he would come see, John nudges you in the ribs, doesn't he? He says, you happen to know what Siloam means? Huh, you don't? It means, uh, sent, you know, S-E-N-T, sent. And of course we say, yes, John, but you're not going to be so fanciful as to tell us that names mean anything, are you? So we pass it by. But there it is, uh, you'll see, uh, Christ is the sent one. Well, yes. And John, as he comes to the end of his gospel, reports how Christ did many other signs that are not written, but these are written that you may believe. And even more important is the Lord, our Lord's own ministry as he describes it. End of John seventeen, he says to his father, I have made known unto them thy name, John seventeen twenty six. and will make it known that the love wherewith thou lovest me may be in them and I in them. So here too, the declaration of the name. Turns out, of course, to be I am. If you believe not that I am, you shall die in your sins. John is the only writer who, in his record of the crucifixion, records that Passover regulation and says no bone of him was broken. That the scripture might be fulfilled. John chapter eight and in John chapter 9, our Lord says, I am the light, he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness and have the light of life. And so you might go on. What becomes apparent is that there are some very vivid parallels between the story of Exodus and the gospel by John. Some are explicitly mentioned as being parallels, for instance, the manna and the bread from heaven. The bread from heaven is not as your fathers did eat the manna in the wilderness, and actually it wasn't Moses that gave it to you anyway, but my father gives you the true bread from heaven. That is mentioned. But most of them? John doesn't even stop to call your attention to the fact there is a parallel. I think he takes the view that if you can't see it's a parallel, perhaps you oughtn't to be reading his gospel or something, I don't know. My colleagues who are learned in Byzantine literature, poor ears, um, count it their crowning joy and glory if they can trace out parallels between these later authors of the Byzantine period and the earlier authors of classical Greek. I was brought up in a classical school anyway, you'll see. How would it ever be wrong of us students of God's word if we sought out parallels between the New Testament and the Old? And you'll say, but we should need, sir, we should need something more than just literary pursuits to satisfy the rather empty minds of Byzantine literary historians. We, we want sober exposition. Yeah, why not? Because, do let's observe the importance of this type of thing. If there is this deliberate parallel, and in the end a parallel organized by God himself, then s- the parallel itself will serve an exceedingly important, uh, uh, purpose, practical purpose. Here are obvious, our Lord, Moses did signs, our Lord did signs, Moses was sent, Christ was sent, the signs are there in both cases that the people might come to believe. You'll say in both cases, Moses declares the name of God, Christ declares the name of God. But look at these things at the top here. If our Lord says we are not of the world, what on earth does he mean by the term world? I don't know how you find it, gentlemen. I find it extraordinarily difficult sometimes to put across to young people what the Bible concept of the world is. When John exhorts us that we are not to love the world, neither the things that are in the world, pray, what does he mean by the term world? In some circles, it has been interpreted in a very puritanical way, so that you end up historically with dear Christian people that will not use modern clothes or modern motor cars and still keep to their horses and buggies because they will not use anything of the world, as though the horses and buggies weren't of the world. You will say, ha. What is the world that we are not to love? What this does here on the left hand side is to give us not only history, but a thought model. Well, just as a scientist, when he's investigating the insides of an atom, is led by his mathematics to such curious results that he feels he must try and represent it to himself somehow, as to try conceivably. And so he makes himself thought. And the technique has been very useful, hasn't it? Because having constructed thought models, the, the, the, the, the, uh, physicists have then looked at their model and said, hey, in this position in the model, there ought to be a particle according to our model. Well, now let's go and look at reality and see if there is a particle in that position. And very often, astonishingly, when they have looked following the indication in the model, they have looked to reality, they have found the particle there. Using a thought model to analyze a situation is an exceedingly important method, as I understand it, in modern scientific investigation. When God talks to us about our blessed Lord, the Prince of this world, and what the world is, and how his son is sent to deliver us from the world, how are we going to understand the terms world? God in his wisdom has given us a thought model. Just as in the obvious thing with Passover. What would be the use of telling me that Christ died for my sins? If that is all that was ever said. If that's all I knew, that Christ had died for my sins, I should want to ask, in what sense did he die for my sins? Does he die as a result of my sins? My sins killed him, and that was a vast tragedy. Did he die as a protest against my sins? It wouldn't be altogether helpful, would it, if that were all we were told. So Paul is instructed to tell us that Christ died to our sins according to the scriptures. And one of the thought models that is given us in the New Testament to help us analyze the significance of the death of Christ is, of course, Passover. It's a model to think with. And tomorrow we may, uh, as we get time, just, uh, concentrate a little bit more on that for a few moments to see how the thought model of Exodus can help us analyze the New Testament doctrines. And merely as a matter of, um, preaching, gentlemen, we have to put across the abstract, I nearly said theoretical, but theological terminology to people of limited education. We would be very wise men indeed to use the models that God has given us. Allow an old crusty old age pensioner to remark, we might not be wise, in our fear of the excesses of typology, to deny the validity of all typology. We mightn't even be wise to lay it down to the young and tender that nothing is a type, unless nothing is to be regarded as a type in the, uh, Old Testament, unless the New Testament explicitly says it is a type. Look at that array of details that are not explicitly said to be types. So then tomorrow, let's see how that could be profitably used. And what I'm doing at this stage, therefore, is to, uh, prepare the way for our detailed studies, because in the course of our detailed studies, we shall want, in one place, to draw the lessons from the historical situation at that same level by simple analogy. In other passages, we shall find it profitable to consider the significance of the story at a higher level, the level of fulfillment in that New Testament sense of a prototype and its fulfillment at a higher level. And then tomorrow also briefly, before we get down to detail, I should like to observe how not only the Old Testament, but also the New will use the Exodus story prophetically, just like Israel in the time of Isaiah looked back to the Passover and used it prophetically of the coming great deliverance. So we shall find the New Testament using the Passover imagery, and in particular that of the tabernacle, to picture for us the events at the end of the age that shall precede the coming of our Lord. And if I can first convince you that, uh, I have biblical authority for saying that the book of Exodus has significance at all these different levels, then you will not find it too hard, even though you find it, uh, irksome, when in the course of the next days I jump from one level to another and back again, somewhat like a bouncing ball.