Gooding, David: 1a - The Process and Goal of Liberation

Topic for the year, as you know, is the book of Exodus, and I take comfort in this that all of us will know a great deal about Exodus even before we come this week, so that when we come to the very difficult pieces, uh, I shall be allowed myself, so I understand, I have not asked permission for this from the organizers, but I take this liberty that as well as receiving questions from you in our set periods of questions, I am to be allowed to put questions to you. I gather we have one lawyer here. If others were a bit more honest, they would have confessed it too. And, uh, Exodus being a book that is concerned in some parts very much with the law, we look forward to hearing from the lawyers in the, uh, question and consultation periods. Exodus, of course, supremely, as you will know, is a book that is ablaze from one end to the other with the manifested glory, uh, o- of God. As God, on many occasions and in very different circumstances and very different surroundings is pleased to declare his name and manifest his power and his glory. Pray with me, my brethren, that as we study the written word of God this week, that same living God may be pleased in the context of Fairmile Retreat House to manifest himself to us and declare his name. It is the Lord Jesus in his prayer, you remember, declared, I have made known thy name to those whom thou has given me out of the world, and I will make it known. Pray with me it may be so. We consider God revealing his glory and his name in the thorny bush, one of a million of prickly, thorny bushes in the desert, and lighting it up with an inextinguishable glory. Or at the other extreme of the book, no longer in a, in an old thorn bush symbol of the curse, but in the sophisticated glories, sophisticated craftsmanship, sophisticated wealth of gem and gold and silver in Israel's tabernacle, built to God's design and honored with the descending fire of his glory. God grant us that as we're together, we in spiritual vision might take that same journey on seeing God's glory in a thorn bush of our troubled world, and seeing glimpses of a glory that shall yet be when the great tabernacle of God shall descend from the new heavens towards the new earth, and the nations bring their glory unto it. Well, there again, the glory of God, as you know, and the power of God and the name of God, seen in the plagues upon Egypt. They were severe judgments. They were certainly not the last series of judgments that this world will see. The last book of the Bible, we remember, promises us that there will be judgments very reminiscent of the plagues of Egypt before this world comes to its end. They will be solemn things, therefore. We shall be thinking together of the wrath of God. God help us to see the glory of God in the rot of God. Sometimes we're inclined to be a little bit apologetic on God's behalf, you know, like we are from our friends who know Tom. Well, he's a nice chap, really, blows his top and makes a fool of himself and so on, and, uh, you know, but he gets over it and not much damage is done in the end, you'll say. And if we're not careful, we shall treat the wrath of God like that as a something that we have to apologize for before the public. It is not so, is it? The wrath of God is both glorious and in its way beautiful. Or there again, we shall be standing, shall we not, at the edge of the wilderness, like the Israelites stood after the Red Sea. They had seen God's glory in the cloud of smoke and pillar and fire that had come between them and the Egyptians and brought them their salvation. But now they stood on the rim of the desert, perhaps not having realized quite so much before what it would mean to enter and live through a desert. And there, as the sun shone on the glass like sand, shimmered, and scarce a blade of grass inside, the men began to wonder what kind of fools they had been to bring wife and family out to a desert like that, to have to cross it. And they thought of bread and butter and financial affairs. Where would they get water for the kids? And how would they survive? You know, if you don't survive, it's very difficult to be spiritual on this earth if you don't survive, isn't it? Uh, you know, how will they get the wherewithal to survive? And as they thought of those things, they saw the glory of God come down in the middle of that waste-hugging wilderness. It may be that as we come to this week, some of us have left difficult home situations, and the rigors of the Lord's work might even have left some of us short of cash. May we find peace in him. Remember on the boat across the Sea of Galilee, when our Lord wanted to teach the apostles a lesson about leaven and said, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees et al. The very word, mention of the word leaven set their minds thinking about their daily bread, how they hadn't got enough bread ordered from the baker to put before the preacher. And the rest of the sermon that our Lord was about to deliver was in danger of being completely obliterated in their minds by the swelling up of concerns about mundane things. And our Lord reminded them of what had happened when he had fed the five thousand and the seven thousand and said, gentlemen, if I did it before, could you not rely upon me to do again what I've done before? Because if you could so rely, then your mind will be clearer to learn these vastly more important things. We shall stand with the Israelites, shall we not, at the base of Sinai. We may get special permission to be allowed to go up alongside of Moses, uh, to say, to the top, if we keep ourselves well hidden. To see the glory and the majesty of God. As he comes to make his covenant with Israel, the glory of God revealed in the giving of his law. And I dare say, as we so do, we shall begin to think in terms of that greater glory that is given to us in our ministry for the Lord. When Moses came down from the mountain with the restored tables of the law in his hands, it is said that his face shone. You will remember how Paul quotes that incident in two Corinthians chapter three and bids us sense the exceeding, uh, glory of our ministry, the ministry of the new covenant God has put in our hand. The old covenant that Moses administered, says Paul, was in the end a ministry of condemnation and death, and for all that it was glorious. Who would want a God who soft-pedaled the seriousness of sin? There could be no glorious heaven, if heaven's God compromised with evil. On the other hand, whereas to Moses was given the ministry of condemnation and death, we are given the ministry of justification and life. God fill our hearts as we take rest, well-deserved rest, from our arduous labors for the Lord in our different fields. God give us a renewed sense in our hearts of what it means that our sufficiency of God, who has made us capable as ministers of the new covenant. God, grip us again and light up our hearts with the excellency and the wonder of the new covenant that, uh, God has entrusted to us. There's Paul, you know. It's comparatively speaking an easy thing, isn't it, to write on tables of stone, given a sharp enough chisel and patience and accuracy enough to write on stone a message that lasts is comparatively easy. You try writing a message on the fluid substance of the human heart and personality, and make it last. But praise to God, says Paul, that's what, uh, God has done with me in Corinth City. For the risen Lord, using me as his pen and the Holy Spirit as his ink, has written his letter on your heart, a message that shall never fade away. So may God encourage us. So that before this, these days are out, we may be bold like Moses to pray Moses' prayer. Lord, as we study your word, show us your ways. You will have had many dependent upon you spiritually, people that you were trying to lead from this garish world to the genuine glories of the eternal city and tabernacle. And sometimes you may have felt near despair. How shall I ever get them there, like Moses felt in the wilderness? Lord, he says, if you're going to tell me to lead this people to the promised land, pray, would you not be realist enough to tell me your ways? How do you propose that I do it there? And when he saw that God was willing, in his mercy, to come and show him the way of getting people to glory, then said Moses, and add this if you would, show me your glory. It falls to us all at times, does it not, to play the part of the exhorter, indeed sometimes the rebuke. Important as that ministry is, it is scarce sufficient. If we are going to lead people from earth to glory, when it would seem sometimes that every little buttercup glinting in the sun is enough to distract believers to all kinds of irrelevances and by paths along their Christian way. Sometimes they appear to have forgotten the goal that God has set before them, and the attractive glories of this present age so tug at their hearts. How shall we overcome those fatal attractions and get God's people committed to our charge, manfully moving forward to the eternal glory? Said Moses, as he considered the problem, Lord, show me your glory. May God show, so show us again the glory as he puts us in the cleft of the rock and covers us with his hand, that we in turn, as we go out, may be men who impart not merely information to the pre- people to whom we preach, important as information is, but men whom God can use to communicate a sense of the very glory of God as we preach his word to them. So join with me in your prayers that God, by the end of this week, will so appear to us that our very faces shall shine. I would like to begin by outlining what I hope and aim to do, particularly in the first two or three lectures. A book like Exodus, as I say, is a very well-known book. All of us are aware that it is the book in Holy Scripture that stands for liberation and for freedom. It is the record of God's interposing in the affairs of Egypt to let his people go free. The book of Exodus, therefore, is a book from which all of us will want to preach the glorious gospel of freedom. The main question, however, to be settled is, at what level and in what sense are we meant to apply that message of freedom? Obviously, we ought to start with the historical events and the inspired record of those events that are given us in Holy Scripture. But if we say, yes, let's take the historical meaning and then try to work out its significance for us today, how shall we go about determining that significance? Is this story of liberation in Holy Scripture, as the liberation theologians would have it, is it there to tell us that in Moses' day, God encouraged his oppressed people to get together and to overthrow and break the political structures of that day that kept them in bondage and to assert their rights as human beings and lay claim to justice, since justice is the birthright of every man and woman that breathes on planet Earth. And that therefore, that, that being the meaning in Moses' day is the proper application to us that we too should be concerned with those who are oppressed politically and economically the world through, and should do our best to conscientitize them as Moses conscientitized his Hebrews in the brick kilns of Egypt, make them aware that they have a right to justice, lead them in protests, subversion if need be, and activity at any rate, until they too break the political structures that hold them in bondage, thus setting themselves free, both politically and economically. Is that the message? Uh, is that the level at which we should be applying the historical story of Israel's liberation? Or should we say that the real a- application of the historical story is the significance we arrive at when we allow the historical exodus in all its details to become for us a type of the great liberation and redemption obtained for us through Jesus Christ our Lord. It is obvious, isn't it, even in the casual reading of the New Testament, that the New Testament frequently uses the events of the Exodus as some kind of type or prototype of the work of Jesus Christ, our Lord. I remind you of Paul's famous statement that Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed for us, therefore let us keep the feast, not with the old leaven of malice and hypocrisy, but with the unleaven of sincerity and truth. Or again, Saint Peter's word in his first epistle, chapter one. we are to remember that we have been redeemed not with corruptible things as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ as of a lamb. So shall we say then that when we have read the history, the actual facts of the historical story, that their true application to us is via typology, taking these things as a picture of the work of Christ. There is, of course, not necessarily any, uh, uh, choice, one or the other. We may decide that both ways are truly legitimate. My contention would be, nonetheless, that our first duty would be to determine what the book of Exodus is saying itself as it stands. Now, I know that some people will have objection to that approach. Our friends, the liberation theologians, will tell us that it is false method to start with the Bible, just as the story at least is written on the page. They will maintain to us that the original thing to which we must go back is the historical event. It was in the historical event that God made himself known, that the Bible record of that event is a secondary thing, a later comment on the event. And that later comment is already colored, if not prejudiced, prejudiced by through a- because it comes through the minds of those that were used to write down the story. And that our duty, therefore, is to work back to the actual event itself, you'll see, and see what its significance was there. But even from a practical point of view, I can't see how you will manage to work back from the story given us in Exodus to the historical event if you don't first start with the story. You, if you're going to work back, gentlemen, from the record to the event, pray first of all decide what the record is. Else, if you don't know where you're starting from, you are in grave danger of not knowing, uh, how to work back from it to whatever it is you want to work back to. Secondly, our good friends, the Liberation theologians, would tell us that if we come simply to scripture, we shall come with the prejudices of our own particular level of society. And we shall read the story, uh, uh, we shall look at the story through the spectacles of our own class prejudices. Moreover, the danger will be that reading the story and thinking we have got hold of its meaning, we shall merely confirm our prejudices and end up with a very intel- interesting intellectual, uh, construct, uh, that may beguile an afternoon or even a whole terms course in a university on theology, but, uh, will become barren and arid because it doesn't lead to practical behavior. So our liberation theologian friends would tell us that the true preparation for understanding the book of Exodus is first of all the actual experience of life. We must be engaged, we must be actively engaged in the struggle for the oppressed. And when we have thus begun the struggle for the oppressed, then when we come to scripture, we shall see it through that partic- from that particular vantage point and be able, uh, rightly to interpret what the record is saying. But it seems to me that if we do that, we shall not get rid of our prejudices, we shall only adopt perhaps a different kind of prejudice. Because, as granted, we all ought to be involved in the struggle for the oppressed, yet if that is simply the background from which we come, when we come to the book of Exodus, we shall be in danger of interpreting everything in the book of Exodus from that particular angle. I argue, therefore, it would be safer to start, recognizing we all have prejudices, but to start with the book as it stands, to see what the book itself is saying, insofar as we can, and then, and only then, to proceed with the application of its message. How should anybody then make up his mind as to what the book itself is saying? What I propose to do in that direction is to run through now with you the actual text of Exodus, to try to determine what are its major movements of thought, its thought. We look to see whether the book is one undifferentiated whole, starting from verse one and ending at the last verse of chapter forty in one breathless, uninterrupted gallop. Or whether it is composed of sections or movements of thought, just like, for instance, to borrow language from another field, a great work of music is made up of different movements, slow movement, fast movement, and in between movements, and so forth. Though each movement contributes to the meaning and effect of the whole. We shall look, therefore, now at the book of Exodus to determine its, uh, content, its major thought flow. And having done that, we shall be asking ourselves how the major movements of thought in the book are related one to another. So let's start without further theorizing into the actual practicalities of tracing the thought flow through Exodus. And we start in chapter one, and we notice that we start off with a list of names of the people that came with Jacob into Egypt. The names going down to verse 5, and then we're told that Joseph died, and all that generation, and the children of Israel were fruitful and increased abundantly and multiplied and waxed exceeding mighty, and the land was filled with them. So here they come in, and they are a small bunch, but lo and behold, they begin to increase, and the narrative is going up, you'll see, isn't it? We're tracing the flow of it. But at that point, when the nations increased somewhat, there arose a Pharaoh who didn't know Joseph, and he began to oppress the people, and we begin to go downhill. He made them serve with rigor, says verse thirteen, and they made their lives bitter with hard service in mortar and in brick, and on all manner of service in the field, all their service, wherein they made them serve with rigor. But verse twelve informs us that the more, uh, they afflicted them, the more they multiplied. So we're a little bit going uphill again. So in verse fifteen, the king of Egypt spake to the Hebrew midwives, and he ordered them to kill, uh, the men children at birth, you see, so we're down again pretty badly. But the two widwives feared God, and, uh, they refused to do any such thing. Good souls. We say that's, that's marvelous. We're moving uphill now. They're making a stand, uh, against the old king. We're going uphill. And when the, that trick didn't work, verse twenty two says that Pharaoh adopted a third, and Pharaoh charged all his people, saying, every son that is born you shall cast into the river, and every daughter you shall save alive. That was terrible bad and started to go downhill again. But notice the connection of thought between one and two. That very command of the king that they were to kill the male children when they were born, throw them into the river, was the very thing that caused Moses to be put by his parents into the ark among the bulrushes, where he was discovered by, uh, Pharaoh's daughter. Whoops. Straight into the palace, you'll say, or nearly straight, after his mother had weaned him and, uh, suitably schooled him. You say we're going uphill now, isn't that marvelous of God? You typically God, you say, that that that that's marvelous, you'll say. Tiny little nation, and they begin to multiply, and the great old grim Pharaoh comes after them and tries to oppress them, but no, they're like a jack in a box, you can't keep it down, and it multiplies under the hard service. So then he tries to order the midwives to kill the male boys, but they don't do any such thing. Then he tries to have the males thrown into the river, and oops. You say the Israelites are soon going to be freed. Now, if you've got a God like that, obviously he can turn the very wrath of man and Pharaoh to his own advantage. So here's the deliverer. They will soon be free. Yes, and then... notice how quickly the narrative passes over, uh, Moses' lifetime and his long years of education in the palace, and tells us in chapter two verse eleven, and it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown up, that he went out unto his brethren. First he delivered, uh, uh, uh, uh, one of them from an Egyptian taskmaster by slaying the Egyptian. The next day he came and found two Israelites quarreling, says the text, and rebuked them for it. And they turned on him and said, who made thee a judge and deliverer, a judge, a a a prince and a judge over us? Will you kill us as you killed the Egyptian? And Moses took pride and ran off, when Pharaoh heard of it, ran off to Midian. It's a good story, isn't it, gentlemen? You have to agree. It isn't just they were in trouble and they prayed and God sent them a deliverer and he brought them out and they lived happy ever after. It's a good exciting. lifts you up, and then the appropriate moment brings you down to the depths. And there he married, what didn't he? And got himself anchored in this foreign country, you'll see, and you say the whole case is lost now. Moses, the great deliverer, is lost to Israel. Then, uh, of course, God, uh, uh, appeared to him, and we begin to come up. The great revelation in the bush, the declaration of the name of God, God affirming that he'd remembered his covenant, uh, and now he commissions Moses. Moses is to be sent back to deliver Israel. Moses puts every possible objection in the way, and uh, they're all of them failing. Chapter uh, four and the second half tells us how that Moses came back. And, uh, met Aaron. Together, Moses and Aaron collected the elders of Israel together, told them that God had appeared, did the signs that God had given him to do, and notice the tremendous climax of chapter four thirty one: and the people believed when they heard that the Lord had visited the children of Israel and that he had seen their affliction. Then they bowed their heads and worshiped. Oh, you say tremendous. So now, here the people who rejected Moses, now Moses has come back and the people have believed. Well, see, if you're going to get the people out of Egypt, you not only have to overcome Pharaoh, you must first of all get the people to believe in Moses, as they're not going to follow him out of Egypt. So good, tremendous climax. All it needs now, as chapter five says, is for Moses and Aaron to go into Pharaoh and demand in the name of the Lord that he let the Israelites go. So chapter five says, in he goes. Demands authoritatively in the name of the Lord that Pharaohs let the people go. And Pharaoh thought Moses had gone absolutely crazy. And instead of letting the people go, he ordered the taskmasters to make their slavery ten times worse. Now, instead of being given straw to make bricks with, they have to go and scrabble around to get stubble, if you please, and yet deliver the same amount of bricks every day. When When the the form foremen of the Hebrew workers heard this, according to chapter five, they heard it from the taskmasters, they couldn't believe their ears and sent a deputation to His Majesty themselves to say, look here, we're being beaten more than ever by these unreasonable fellows who demand that we go and get our own straw for the bricks, and the fault is theirs, not ours. They haven't given us any. They thought there was a mistake somewhere. Pharaoh said, your idle get backs, you won't do. There shall no straw be given you. And in that terrible moment, I realized that the command came from no, not less than Pharaoh himself. While beaten and crushed, they went out from the presence of Pharaoh. As they came out, Moses and Aaron were waiting for them, and they came near to cursing Moses and Aaron. Look at verse twenty one of chapter five. And they said unto them, The Lord look upon you and judge, because you have made our Savior to be abhorred in the eyes of Pharaoh and the eyes of his servants, to put a sword in their hand to slay us. And now we've gone downhill. And And Mo- Moses went to protest to the Lord about it. Look at the end of five. Moses returned, verse twenty two, unto the Lord and said, Lord, wherefore hast thou evil intreated this people? Why is it that thou hast sent me? For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in thy name, he hath evil intreated this people, neither hast thou delivered thy people at all. And the Lord said unto Moses, now shalt thou see what I will do to Pharaoh, for by a strong hand he shall let them go, and by a strong hand he shall drive them out of his land. And God spake unto Moses and said unto him, I am Jehovah. And now there comes the second declaration of the name of God. It'll be a task of ours on another occasion to ask why in this particular part of Exodus there have to be two declarations of the names of God. But here it is. God assuring the Israelites that he has remembered his covenant and he's going to bring them out. Says God to Moses, go and tell the people this. So in verse nine of chapter six, Moses spake so unto the children of Israel, but they hearkened not unto Moses for anguish of spirit and for cruel bondage. Whereas Whereas the the earlier earlier thing said that they believed, now Israel themselves can no longer find the power in their hearts to believe this promise of liberty. So verse ten says, the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, go and speak unto Pharaoh, king of Egypt, that he let the children of Israel go out of his hand. And Moses spake before the Lord, saying, Behold, the children of Israel have not hearkened unto me. How shall then Pharaoh hear me, who am of uncircumcised? And now it's not only Israel that have lost heart. Now it's Moses himself, and he'll come to the abyss. And with that, we're told, verse thirteen: the Lord spake unto Moses and Aaron and gave them a charge in the- unto the children of Israel and unto Pharaoh, king of Egypt, to bring the children out of the land of Egypt. And now there comes simply a long list of... First major movement of thought in the book of Exodus. From the high expectations of deliverance with which it began, after many ups and downs, it has landed us in the abyss of despair. So, let's rub out that modern art stuff, and uh, let me suggest to you... movement one, going from name, that list of names to that list of names. And you are apparently worse off at the end than you were at the beginning. So now here comes movement two. Chapter six, verse twenty eight: and it came to pass on the day when the Lord spake unto Moses in the land of Egypt, that the Lord spake unto Moses, saying, I am the Lord, speak thou unto Pharaoh, king of Egypt, all that I speak unto thee. And Moses said before the Lord, Behold, I am of uncircumcised lips, and how shall Pharaoh hearken unto me? And the Lord said unto Moses, See, I have made thee a god to Pharaoh, and Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet. Thou shalt speak all that I command thee. Verse three, And I will harden Pharaoh's heart and multiply my signs and my wonders, but Pharaoh will not hearken unto you, and I will lay my hand upon Egypt and bring forth my hosts, my people, the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great judgments. And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I stretch forth my hand upon Egypt and bring out the children of Israel from among them. And Moses and Aaron did so as the Lord commanded them. So did they, and Moses was fourscore years old, and Aaron fourscore and three years old, when they spake unto Pharaoh. And God advises them that when they go into Pharaoh and Pharaoh asks them to show a wonder, they shall cast down the rod and it will become a serpent, and that is what in fact they do. Their rod became a serpent. The Egyptian magicians cast down their rods, they became serpents. Aaron's rod swallowed up their rods. But Pharaoh's heart was hardened, and he hearkened not unto them, as the Lord had spoken. Thereupon we get the plagues. So here, eh, into Pharaoh leads to the plagues. The mere request in movement one, the mere demand to Pharaoh that he let them go has achieved nothing. Now Moses and Aaron are sent in to do their signs, and when Pharaoh doesn't believe the first sign, then come the plagues. There are nine plagues. three groups of three plagues. In the course of which, you will get the same kind of thing. At first, Pharaoh will not believe. Second, uh, plague, he asks for mercy, and you think things are going to happen? He says he's going to let them go, but when the plague is removed, uh, he doesn't let them go. And so on, and so on, and so on, and so on. We needn't now go into the detail. The fluctuation of Pharaoh's response to God as the various plagues come upon him. Kind of mirror image of the fluctuation of Israel's faith and fortunes in the first movement. Coming to the last of the nine, let's read how it is. Chapter uh ten, verse twenty seven. but the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he would not let them go. And Pharaoh said unto him, get thee from me, take heed to thyself, see my face no more, for in the day that thou seest my face, thou shalt die. And Moses said, thou hast spoken well, I will see thy face again no more. So the second movement ends in what appears to be failure. Isn't accurate? It appears to be, just like the first movement did. The first movement, having built up Israel's faith, finds it at last sunk in the absolute abyss. Not only Israel doubting, but Moses himself saying it's useless. Now the second movement ends us after much fluctuation in Pharaoh's complete hardness of heart and his refusal to let them go. You may argue perhaps that, um, the tenth plague ought to be included in this second movement. The one more plague. Look at chapter eleven verse one: Yet one more plague will I bring upon Pharaoh and upon Egypt. Afterwards he will let you go hence. You'll say, why don't you include that one final plague along with the nine in section two? And, uh, the... you may well be right, perhaps you ought to include it here. For the moment, at any rate, I prefer to take it as the beginning of the next section. And the reason I do that is simply this, that there's one more plague is, of course, fundamentally and essentially different from all the other plagues. In this one, Moses doesn't lift up his rod or wave his hands toward heaven or throw up ashes into the air, nor does Aaron say anything. He doesn't even appear. This final plague is what the Lord says it's going to be. It's going to be his judgment, the execution of judgment, and in its nature it is different from the other nine. So just let's look at that two again. What did it start about? Well, it starts, as you notice, uh, go back to chapter six, verse, um, uh, twenty eight, twenty nine, and thirty. And God said to Moses that he had to go and speak to Pharaoh. What he had to say is, I am the Lord. I am the Lord. He had to go and announce the name of God to Pharaoh, and throughout this section you will find many occasions when that motif is repeated. Uh, for instance, just look at a few of them, Seven seventeen, Thus saith the Lord, in this thou shalt know that I am the Lord. Eight chapter ten, that thou mayest know that there is none like unto the Lord. Eight twenty two, to the end, that thou mayest know that I am the Lord in the midst of the earth. Chapter nine verse fourteen, that thou mayest know that there is none like me in all the earth. Chapter nine verse sixteen, but in very deed for this cause have I made thee to stand, for to show thee my power, and that my name may be declared throughout all the earth. Chapter nine, verse twenty nine, end of the verse, that thou mayest know that the earth is the Lord's. So running through all this, these demonstrations before Pharaoh, is the declaration of the name of the Lord, that is, of course, of Yahweh or Jehovah or however you pronounce it. We needn't spend so much time over detail now as we move on to the other sections. We start, therefore, as I understand it, in chapter eleven, to movement number three. This is going to be the tenth play, one more play, different from all the others. It is the visitation of God's wrath on Egypt. And now you will notice a difference between this plague and all others that preceded it. In the plagues in movement two, God put a difference between Israel and the Egyptians. From the fourth plague onward, Israel did not suffer any inconvenience or loss as the result of the plague. Explicitly, it is said, God advises Pharaoh, I'm going to do this plague now, but I'm going to put a difference between you and my people, that you may know I am the Lord in the midst of the earth. None of those plagues, therefore, fell on Israel. But this time, when the destroying angel walked through Egypt on that terrible night, then it is clear that Israel's firstborn would have perished, along with the Egyptian firstborn, had not God provided for them the sacrifice of the Lord's Passover. I mention that simple fact because when we come in detail to this, to, to consider these movements, we shall need to notice this ve- essential difference between this judgment and the plagues that had gone before. Notice, therefore, how movement three begins. Uh, yet one more plague I will bring upon them, speak to the ears of the people, borrow their jewels, ask from them jewels, and so forth and so on. Verse four, and Moses said, thus saith the Lord, about midnight will I go out into the midst of Egypt, and all the firstborn will die. This is concerned with the killing of the firstborn. There follow the directions to Moses and to Israel how their firstborn can be saved.