Out of Egypt

Bible passage Exodus 15:1-21

Series on being saved.

Section 1 - What are we saved from? – sin – the desire in us to steal God’s glory. We need a  helper to set us free, and we can’t do that ourselves.

Section 2 – Saved by grace – saved by the action of a loving God.

Start here in Exodus – most remarkable story of salvation – God taking a whole racial group, setting them free and giving them a land.

God said he chose the Jewish people just because he loved them. Not because they were loveable but because he was loving. He saved them because he chose them and he chose them because he loved them.

Poem by Ogden Nash: proper poem: it rhymes and it scans but it only has eight syllables – the shortest poem ever written: “How odd of God to choose the Jews”.

Joseph had been taken to Egypt by force and his family had joined him because Joseph had heard God’s warning about the famine. At first it was good place to be: prosperous, fruitful – very fruitful – and the Hebrew people, descendants of Jacob grew in number until they became a threat to Egypt. They were made slaves and treated unfairly, and they cried out to God.

The Bible doesn’t say the Hebrew were faithful to God in the generations that had passed since Joseph, but at least a memory of God had remained – the God who had made a promise to an ancestor of theirs called Abraham, and they cried out to him for help. In response God took an Egyptian prince called Moses, whose birth parents were Hebrews and showed Moses his living presence in a burning bush, and told Moses he was going to save them. He sent plagues to persuade the rulers of Egypt and eventually Egypt let them go. They left with what they could carry and escaped Egypt’s army by God’s control of the waters of the Red Sea.

The story is familiar to all of us, but the story is also our story. Egypt represents the hold that sin has on us. The word the Bible uses for what God did in the Exodus is deliverance or liberation, the Hebrew word is yasa. It’s the word the OT uses for salvation.

Used for Noah and his family being saved from the flood. Used when Jonah us saved from the big fish. Used when Daniel wasn’t scoffed by the lions. Word means getting someone out of danger and into a place of safety.

When we talk about God saving us from our sins this is the word and the concept that lies behind it – God rescues us, delivers us, sets us free. Just like Daniel and Jonah. Just like the Exodus.

Important point about these stories of deliverance is that God always takes the initiative. Not that the Hebrew people had faith and God was persuaded by their faith to save them – it was God’s actions that caused them to have faith.

Ex 14:31 “when the Israelites saw the great power the Lord displayed against the Egyptians, the people feared the Lord and put their trust in him.”

Look more closely at what God did and what he does for us in v. 2

“The LORD is my strength and my song; he has become my salvation”

Three things in this “song of Moses and Miriam”

 General one first: The Lord is my salvation

God saved Israel – God personally became their salvation. Their salvation wasn’t a thing or an event, it was a person. Jesus didn’t say I will show you the way and the truth and the life, he said “I am the way the truth and the life”.

Salvation, being set free, is invested in a person. Read v 6-8a – God did it.

Watch we don’t depersonalise salvation. Saved by God, not be faith. Sometimes we say, “I couldn’t survive without my faith” or “my faith means everything to me”. No – who we have faith in that matters! – Jesus means everything.
Or we say: prayer is a wonderful thing. Prayer gives such peace, prayer really changes things. No! God changes things – often through prayer, but we mustn’t lose the personal aspect of salvation.

The Lord is my strength

Read vv 4-5 – very graphic description of watching the Egyptians drown before your eyes. Sounds brutal, but what was happening was not warfare over power or land – spiritual battle of evil against the holy people of God.

v. 1 “who among the gods is like you” – battle ofd the gods – battle to see who is the true God, the gods of the Egyptians of the God who showed himself to Moses. Defeat of the Egyptian army is a declaration of the unique strength of God – he alone is God.

Jesus is the powerful saviour – our strength. Jesus showed his power over evil spirits by casting them out of people. When Jesus defeated sin on the cross where he gave up his life as a sacrifice, he triumphed over the powers of evil. Paul says in Romans 7, “who will rescue me from the body of death? Thanks be to God - through Jesus Christ our Lord”. Jesus is our strength – strong to deliver and save.

The Lord is my song

This song in Ex 15 – first one in the Bible – music and singing before, first song or hymn to be written down in the Bible. God is my song, and my reason for singing.

God saves us for the purpose of his glory- that his glory will be shown and sung about. The exodus is to the glory of God – it’s not a drama but a musical. The Israelites were saved to give glory to God and they did so in singing.

We are also saved to give God glory. We did it in the way we live and the people we are, but we express it in our worship, and since the exodus worship has always been associated with singing.