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This morning in John 13:31–38, we considered how Jesus speaks of His coming crucifixion as the beginning of His glorification. What the world would see as humiliation and defeat would actually reveal the character and glory of God with amazing clarity. At the cross, we see our need for forgiveness, God's mercy toward sinners, His justice satisfied in Christ, His gracious gift of salvation, and above all His holy, self-giving love. Jesus then tells His disciples that this same love will distinguish His people: "By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another." Yet Peter's confident promise of faithfulness immediately demonstrates that this kind of life cannot be produced through human determination or self-confidence. God gives His people the Holy Spirit, through whom His love is poured into our hearts and His fruit is produced in us. As believers receive the undeserved love of Christ and that love overflows through them, the character and glory of the unseen God are put on display in the world.

The Israelites stand at the base of Mt. Sinai as God continues to arrest their attention with shocking sights and sounds. There is thunder and lighting. There is fire and smoke. There are many sounds of loud trumpet blasts. The mountain is quaking...and the people are quaking too. In that intimidating and impressive environment, God articulates His righteous ten commandments. These commandments outline what relating rightly to Him and others looks like. With great fear and trembling, the people receive the commandments and begin reckoning with God's standards and their accountability for them. This passage provides another brilliant foreshadowing of the Gospel as it begins to outline the Law through which God's people will be both governed--according to the enforcement of it--and exposed as in need of deliverance--since they will all be in violation of it, in one way or another. They need a substitute, one who can keep the Law, not just the letter of it, but the spirit of it. They also need one who can absorb their penalty for failing to keep it. They need an "Exodus," a "Way Out," and that way out is Jesus. As Galatians 4:4-5 says, "When the fulness of the time came, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, so that He might redeem those who were under the Law." Jesus is the fulfiller of the Law and the one who sets us free from its demand and curse. He is the one we can trust as we endeavor to love God and others and yet fall short over and over again. He is the Commandment Keeper.

The wilderness journey continues as God's people move on from Rephidim and settle at the base of Mt. Sinai. It is a large, impressive, and intimidating mountain. There is thunder, lighting, quaking, and the loud blasting of trumpets. In that awe-inspiring and fear-inducing environment, God will meet with Moses and begin setting forth the conditions of the Old Covenant. If His people will obey Him, they will be His special people, a kingdom of priests, a holy nation, representing Him to the outside world. If they do not, they will surely die. In this passage, God not only continues guiding and providing for His people, He also continues revealing their need for a kind of deliverance that goes deeper than the natural realm. It is more significant than merely deliverance from Egypt. At the deepest level, they need deliverance from themselves, from their unbelief, and their own false confidence in their ability to save themselves. They need another mountain, different from Sinai, a mountain characterized not by distance and death, but by access and life. They need Mt. Zion where Jesus reigns supreme as the One who meets all the conditions, who provides full consecration, and who grants eternal life as a gift of grace. In the Exodus story, God is preparing them, and us, for this greater provision in Christ.

In Luke 12:13–34, Jesus shows that covetousness and anxiety often grow from the same root: the desire to secure our own lives. We clutch possessions, plans, and temporary things because we fear we may not have enough, but Jesus redirects our attention to the faithful care of our Heavenly Father. He feeds the birds, clothes the grass, knows exactly what His children need, and delights to give them His Kingdom. Because our lives are held securely in His hands, we are free to seek His Kingdom, hold earthly possessions loosely, and give generously rather than allowing temporary concerns to consume our time, minds, and hearts. Ultimately, the greatest evidence of the Father's care is the gift of His Son. If God did not spare His own Son but gave Him for us, we have every reason to entrust ourselves, our families, our futures, and all our lesser cares to His wise, loving, and capable hands.

The Israelites have survived one life-threatening challenge after another. They are now entering a quieter season in which they will enjoy a semblance of relief from the surrounding threats. They have food; they have water; and they are not currently under attack. For a time, all too brief, they celebrate the goodness of God to them in providing for their needs and protecting them from their enemies. Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, brings Moses' wife and children to rejoin them at the camp, and he and Moses enjoy a time of worship together as they reflect togheter on all God has done to redeem His people. Sadly, even as the external stresses are easing, the Israelites immediately begin experiencing internal, intracommunal stresses of personal conflicts with one another. As for Moses, he finds himself in another difficult predicament as he is tasked with presiding over these quarrels. From morning till evening, the people bring their greivances to Moses. It goes on and on. Seeing the taxation this was already inflicting upon Moses, Jethro pleads with him to divide up the work of judgment. Through all this, God is introducing a new challenge. Even when our circumstances are favorable, humans will find reasons to be discontent and to fight with one another. The hardships of life in a fallen world are seemingly limitless. Meanwhile, God remains devoted to His people and will once again provide for them in His way and time, by providing help for Moses, by giving the Law on Mt. Sinai, and by eventually rescuing His people from their inability to fulfill the Law...through Christ. It is another beautiful picture of our need for the Gospel.

The journey continues for God's people as He meets their basic needs and guides them forward through the desert. While they have what they need, they are not thriving nor amassing power. They are not settling down, or building cities, or developing a powerful army. They are impoverished and vulnerable. And, once again, they face a hostile foe and another threat of death, as the Amalekites look on with a determination to whipe them out. Thankfully, God will come through for them yet again and will grant them victory through supernatural means. It is yet another pointer to the good news of the Gospel and the victory that Jesus secured for us on the cross. What the Amalakites were to the ancient Israelites in the natural world, sin is to God's people in the spiritual world, a threat of death. And as God came through for His people back then through His leaders, Moses and Joshua, God later came through for His people through His Son, the greater Moses and the greater Joshua. Jesus won the war we could never win. He paid for and conquered our sin. He redeemed us. We are free.

The Israelites proceed forward through the rugged desert wilderness and experience life-threatening thirst once again. God has been faithfully providing for them along the way, but the Israelites have suffered; they have felt their weakening bodies and their grumbling souls. Every time they show themselves faithless, God shows Himself faithful. In this scene, it plays out the same way as God miraculously causes water to gush from a rock to satisfy the thirst of every single person and animal in the caravan. As explicitly mentioned by Paul in 1 Corinthians 10, this story features another type of Christ who is the rock from which we drink and experience life for our souls.

As they wander through the wilderness, deprived of normal sources of water and food, the Israelites continue wrestling with God and His plan for them. This is not the liberated existence they envisioned. Feeling the frailty of their bodies and the uncertainty of their future, they repeatedly grumble and complain against Moses and against the Lord. And God repeatedly and distinctly provides for them. He gives them miraculous bread from heaven and sanctified rest from labor. He prescribes Sabbath rest whereby they are to do no work on the last day of the week but are simply to rest and receive from the provisions of the previous day. It will be a holy, set apart day for them to reflect on the difference of living life by the provisions of God alone rather than by their own efforts. Once again, it all points forward to the ultimate provision of God through Christ, from whom we receive for our souls, both bread, spiritual sustenance (Jn 6) and relief, spiritual rest (Heb 4) for our souls.

When we left off, the Israelites were on top of the world. God had rescued them from certain death by parting the Red Sea, ushering them through, and drowning all their enemies. In celebration of this miraculous victory, they sang a song of salvation to their God. What a triumphant moment! If we were writing the story, many of us would have stopped it right there. The words "The End" would come up and the credits would roll. But, in God's story, that was not the ending. Instead, God's people went directly from this triumph into a trial, from this amazing high to a significant low. They soon discover that they are without their most basic necessity; there is no water. Once again, they are facing certain death, and once again, they are utterly dependent upon God to provide for them what they do not have. And once again, God will show Himself faithful. He will turn a bitter providence into a sweet one.

In one quick and decisive act, God ushered His people from danger to safety, from death to life, and from slavery to freedom. Miraculously, He parted the Red Sea and brought the Israelites through on dry ground. Then, once the last Israelite was safely on the other side, and once the last Egyptians soldier had entered the Red Sea floor, he brought the waters back in upon them and drowned every one of them. The enemy was destroyed, the threat was eliminated, and the Israelites were relieved. They stood on the other side, looked over the dead bodies of their enemies, breathed a sigh of relief, and sang for joy. Exodus 15 contains Moses' song of deliverance whereby he led the people in singing praises to God for the great victory He had granted. It is a song of salvation, much like the ones we sing because of the great deliverance God has provided for us through Jesus.

God is fighting for His people. They could not fight for themselves, and they could not free themselves. If they were to be rescued, it would have to be God's work, in God's way, and in God's time. He had already unleashed the 10 deadly plagues and had begun pursuading Pharaoh to let the people go. Now, He will lead them out of Egypt...but direcly into a trap. They will be penned in with mountains around them and the Red Sea before them and--once he changes his mind--with Pharaoh's army baring down on them. From a human perspective, it appeared to be a trap and a hopeless situation for Israel. They are like sitting ducks. Surely the Egyptians will massacre them. Thankfully, God will not allow that. He is up to something profound that requires challenges along the way, not just smooth sailing. At the perfect time, He steps in and miraculously parts the Red Sea so that His people may pass through to the other side safely. As for the Egyptians, they will continue in hot pursuit and once they all enter the passage way through the water, God will bring the water in on them, killing them all in an instant. God fought and won for His people. They were free! The same God fights for us today, in the deepest and best of ways. He has freed us not from some external enemy, but from the internal one. He has, through Jesus, freed us from sin. His death and resurrection enables us to pass from death to life, to go from separation from God to a relationship with Him. And in that relationship, we are free!

God has begun the work of setting His people free, by unleashing ten deadly plagues on the Egyptians. The tenth and final plague is the most devastating of all as God sends His angel of death to kill the first-born sons and animals of every household. There is only one way to avoid certain destruction: A spotless lamb must be killed and its blood applied to the doorway. For those households, the angel will pass-over and the people and animals will be spared. The lamb will have taken their place in death and saved their life. It is another awesome picture of Gospel truth, foreshadowing the coming of Jesus, the spotless lamb of God who "takes away the sin of the world" (1:29). Because He died for us, we are set free to live in the provisions of God.

In Luke 4:14–30, Jesus publicly reveals Himself as the Spirit-anointed Messiah promised by God through the prophets. As He announces the arrival of God's Kingdom, He offers forgiveness, freedom, healing, and restoration to those who recognize their need. Yet many who heard Him were impressed by His words without embracing Him as their Savior. This passage reminds us that Jesus is not merely a great teacher or one solution among many—He is the One and Only Savior who has come to reconcile us to God. The question is not whether Jesus is impressive, but whether we truly trust Him as our Savior

Pharaoh has no intentions of letting the Israelites go. He will not cut them loose; he cannot let them be free. The status of his reputation and the advancement of his kingdom depend upon their slavery. If it were up to the Israelites, they would be stuck, completely incapable of liberating themselves. They have no resources and no strength to make their way out. God must intervene...And He will. In chapters 7 through 12, God begins the process of deliverance by unleashing 10 deadly plagues on the Egyptians. Through one miraculous plague after another, God shows His superiority to the gods of the Egyptians and His sovereignty over death and life. In no time, He turns Egypt into a barren wasteland. By these judgments and acts of power, God persuades Pharaoh to let His people go. As He ravages the Egyptians with death, He also preserves the lives of His people, protecting them and leading them out of slavery. Thousands of years later, He will send Jesus to bring about the ultimate exodus whereby we are brought from death to life through union with Him and His crucifixion and resurrection.

In hearing that the Israelites wished to break from their labors in order to worship their God, Pharaoh was incensed. Rarther than granting them freedom, he turned up the heat even more. Not only would they need to keep fulfilling their quota of work, going forward they would also have to gather their own supplies. He wouldn't let them go; instead, he commanded them to "Work harder!" The desperate plight of the Israelites has only worsened. Under the tyranical hand of Pharaoh, their suffering is intensifying. And they are powerless, utterly powerless, to save themsleves. There is nothing they can do. They are dependant upon God. He is the only One who can set them free. Only God's liberating hand can overpower Pharaoh's enslaving hand. As we move from chapter 5 into chapters 6 and 7, God repeatedly reassures Moses that He will indeed, by His saving hand, set His people free. Israel may be no match for Pharaoh, but Pharaoh is no match for God. He will set His people free. He will not be stopped.