Sword. Unsheathing the EXODUS. Christopher R. Dodge and Janette L. Dodge. An exciting overview of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation

Transcription

1 Sword Unsheathing the Unsheathe "the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God." Ephesians 6:17 EXODUS An exciting overview of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation Christopher R. Dodge and Janette L. Dodge Awake US Now Ministries

2 PASTOR CHRIS DODGE is the teaching pastor for Awake Us Now ministries in Richfield, Minnesota. After earning his Master of Divinity degree from Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, Missouri in 1979, Pastor Dodge served in parish ministry for over thirty-four years at churches in Michigan and Minnesota. Pastor Dodge believes that God still speaks today, and that God is calling His Church to repentance and recommitment in order to lead this nation to a knowledge of Jesus Christ as Savior. Awake Us Now ministries was established in 2013 to use the developing technologies to further that call of God. Chris and his wife, Jan, have been married more than forty years and have two married daughters and several grandchildren. Pastor Dodge can be contacted at Awake Us Now mail@awakeusnow.com. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Both Chris and I (Jan) would like to thank the staff and volunteers at Awake Us Now whose prayers and love have gotten all of us through some challenging times. We especially thank our good friends who have spent countless hours turning the raw transcript into the right words rather than software sound alikes, and who have shared their expertise regarding grammar, theology, and life. We thank our daughters and sons-in-law who are often our sounding boards, even in the midst of their busy schedules. And we give glory to God and thank Him for bringing the two of us to this wonderful season of life together. SCRIPTURE quotations taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV. Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. COVER PHOTO of sunrise at the Sea of Galilee. All photos were taken by the author and are copyrighted Christopher R. Dodge For questions, contact Chris or Jan Dodge (mail@awakeusnow.com). Awake Us Now office phone: Website: Christopher R. Dodge You are permitted to reproduce and distribute this material provided that wording is not altered in any way, no fee of any kind is charged for the material (including reimbursement for reproduction costs), and Pastor Chris Dodge and Awake Us Now are clearly acknowledged as the source of the material. Copyright and contact information must be clearly cited on all copies. 1

3 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction...3 Prayer...4 Overview of Exodus...4 Dating the Exodus...5 Archaeology, Jericho, and the Bible...7 From Joseph to Moses...8 Moses in Midian...10 Tetragrammaton...11 The Four Cups of Passover...13 Ten Plagues...14 The First Passover...15 From Egypt to the Red Sea...16 Where is Mount Sinai?...18 The Appearance of the Lord...19 The Ten Commandments...20 The Golden Calf...22 Worship of God...23 Where Did They Wander?...25 Exodus in the New Testament...26 Prayer...28 Resources...29 Exodus Study Guide

4 INTRODUCTION Unsheathing the Sword is a Bible study taught weekly by Pastor Chris Dodge over a period of fifty-two classes which began in the fall of It is an overview of the Bible in hour-long sessions. Videos and podcasts are available free of charge at Some books of the Bible were taught over a period of weeks and others were grouped together. Therefore, the books in this series vary widely in length. The classes have been transcribed and edited from the lecture format to a text format in order to read more easily. This series is in no way intended to be a definitive work containing all of the meat of the Scriptures. Rather, this material is meant to give a good overview of God s plan of salvation which we find in every book of God s Word from Genesis to Revelation. Information is brought together from a variety of sources and covers interesting and often unique information, while not contradicting the written Scripture. This work is written in language for all audiences rather than just the academic community, although many of the sources are academic readings. The goal of every aspect of Pastor Dodge s ministry is to lead everyone into the Word of God in order to see God s Son, our Savior, Jesus, through the power of the Holy Spirit. May God bless your study. 3

5 PRAYER Heavenly Father, how we praise Your glorious name. We rejoice in You. We thank You that You are not only the God of the universe, You are near to every one of us. We thank You that You are concerned about us, that You know our needs, and that You have provided for them in our Lord Jesus. We thank You that throughout the ages You have revealed Yourself and called Your wayward children back to You. We pray that You would reveal Yourself in a powerful way to each and every one of us as we dig into the book of Exodus. Lord, help us not only to know the story line, but to know You, who are truly the heart of this story and the one who has a heart for us and for Your people of all ages. Guide us now, open our minds to understand the Scriptures and to see our Lord Jesus as He is powerfully portrayed in this mighty book. We ask it in Jesus name. Amen. OVERVIEW OF EXODUS Exodus is one of the foundational books of Scripture. It lays out the fundamentals of worship of the one true God, who He is, how He works, what He does, and what that means for us. Genesis ends in a graveyard with the death of Joseph, but Exodus ends with the glory of God coming down on the Tabernacle as God s people are in the wilderness, following His leading and guiding. It has powerful teaching and powerful descriptions of God. When we talk about the book of Exodus, it s important for us to understand that this is a title that human beings put on this particular book written by Moses. This is the second of the five books of Moses, the Pentateuch, and the title that we use today in our English Bibles, Exodus, actually comes from the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures. The Jewish people knew this book by a different name, Sh mot. The book of Exodus begins with the phrase, These are the names (in Hebrew, sh mot ). These are the names of the individuals whom God brought through the time of trial into the land of the promise. In Exodus we see God moving in a powerful way to save His people and to deliver them from bondage. But more than that, what we have in Exodus is something that we see throughout the Old 4

6 Testament Hebrew Scriptures. As God moves in history and as He reveals Himself, there are profound instances where He makes Himself known in ways that are absolutely overwhelming. Simultaneously, those things always point to an even greater reality. In the case of the book of Exodus, we have the story of Israel s deliverance from bondage in Egypt also pointing to an even greater deliverance to come the deliverance that will be accomplished by our Lord Jesus Christ. As we look at Exodus (and all the Hebrew Scriptures), we look with the expressed intent of seeing Jesus clearly portrayed in its pages and in its events. One thing ought to be said right up front about this book. There is controversy surrounding the book of Exodus. The controversy is primarily a chronological one. Many people, including some very devout people, differ regarding the dating of these events. In recent years people in much of the Christian world, and even the Jewish world, have questioned the traditional dating of this book and the dating of these events. They have tried to make sure that what they teach goes along with what secular historians are saying. DATING THE EXODUS Let s tackle the dating issue very briefly. Many ancient dates are very hard to pin down. We have in our history books that such and such happened at such and such a time, but very often people have no idea of how slender the thread of evidence is for many of the traditional dates of various events in antiquity. There are only a few particular events that we can date categorically. However, if we follow a clear expression of the Hebrew Scriptures, it s pretty easy to date the Exodus. In order to see the calculation of the dating of the Exodus it s important to take a look at the book of I Kings. This is during the reign of King Solomon as he is building the temple. David, King Solomon s father, had wanted to build the temple, but God had told David that he was not to be the one to build it because he had too much blood on his hands. It would be the job of David s son, Solomon, to build the temple because he would be a man of peace. In 1 Kings 6:1 we read these words, In the four hundred and eightieth year after the Israelites came out of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon s reign over Israel, in the month of Ziv, the second month, he began to build the temple of the LORD. In that one verse we have a clear description of how many years after the Exodus the temple was begun. We have a pretty good idea of the years of King Solomon s reign. Historians are generally of one mind that the fourth year of his reign was the year 966 BC. We have some solid anchors that we can base that on. By this description in 1 Kings 6, it means the Exodus took place 480 years earlier, in the year 1446 BC. That has been the traditional date that biblical scholars and devout Bible students, Jewish and Christian alike, have adhered to. In more recent times, however, that has come under quite a bit of scrutiny and has been rejected by many, including much of Hollywood. For instance, in The Ten Commandments Charlton Heston portrays Moses, and everything that is described in the book of Exodus is treated with respect. But there are some editorial decisions made in that movie. One is the decision to portray Moses as living in the time of the great Egyptian pharaoh Rameses II, also known as Rameses the Great. If you watch that movie when it is shown every year at Passover and Easter, you will notice that Rameses is in a contest not only with Moses, but with God. However, from what we know of Rameses, the length of his reign, and what we speculate on with Egyptian chronology, Rameses comes far too late to be the pharaoh of the Exodus. 5

7 The theory that Rameses was the pharaoh of the Exodus is based on one verse in the first chapter of Exodus. In Exodus 1:11 we read, So they put slave masters over them, (meaning the Israelites) to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh. Today there are many Bible students and teachers who will point to that verse and say that the Exodus must have taken place at the time of the great pharaoh Rameses II, because his name is mentioned here in Exodus 1:11, and surely they wouldn t have built a city named after Rameses before Rameses was even born. Rameses lived in the 13 th century before Christ, approximately 200 years after the traditional dating of the Exodus. This mention of the city of Rameses and the fact that the dating for Rameses fits in with the prevailing understanding of ancient chronology are the reasons many have gone with Rameses as the pharaoh of the Exodus. The view is widely held in Christian and non-christian circles that if the Exodus did indeed take place, it took place during the time of Rameses. What that view fails to recognize and acknowledge is first, there is a growing body of evidence suggesting that Rameses may not simply be the name of a pharaoh. It may be a place name and a name that was widely used in Egyptian society long before there was ever a pharaoh of that name. Secondly, it ignores the possibility that the dating system widely accepted in the 21 st century is wrong. You will notice that the difference between these two dates is a gap of approximately 200 years. Over the last 30 to 40 years one thing that has captured the attention of a number of historians and archaeologists is that we see this 200 year gap elsewhere in the ancient historical record. What it may imply is that our dating of history is off and could be off by a couple of hundred years or more. It s one of those narrow areas of study that not many people are interested in, but it is very fascinating. Let s take a look at what is at the root of it. Egyptian chronology is the chronology that is used to date most of the ancient world. Because we have Egyptian records and because scholars have been so fascinated with Egypt, our entire chronology of antiquity is largely based on ancient Egypt. What is not acknowledged is that our understanding of ancient Egypt and the resources we have are somewhat limited. Basically, our understanding of Egyptian dynasties, even the basic understanding that there were 30 Egyptian dynasties, all rests on the writings of one Egyptian priest who lived approximately 250 years before the time of Jesus. His name was Manetho, and he is the one who defined the 30 different dynasties of ancient Egypt and wrote a description of the great kings and history of Egypt. One of the problems with Manetho is that we don t have most of his writings. They have disappeared and we only have excerpts of them. Another problem is that he was writing with an obvious agenda. He wanted to make sure that Egypt had a glorious history that surpassed that of the Greeks and of the Hebrews. So as he described the great pharaohs, he made it very clear in what we have of his writings that the early pharaohs were actually gods and not just people who thought they were gods. There is much in what we have of Manetho that causes many who have studied him to say we need to be very careful. It is the only information that we have of any substance, but we need to evaluate it rather carefully before we proceed much further. If you go to a bookstore today and want to find a listing of the pharaohs and when they ruled, you will find a number of good books on ancient Egypt. As you pick up one of them you will find a neat chronology of the pharaohs of each of the dynasties and the intermediate periods. It will give you all sorts of dates and appear nice and precise, and it will seem that way until you look at a second book, because you will most likely find that the numbers don t match between the two. Sometimes there are rather substantial differences not just the difference of a year or two, but substantial differences. You will find that the Old Kingdom, the Middle Kingdom, and the New 6

8 Kingdom in the First, Second, and Third Intermediate Periods don t always match in these lists. The reason is that there is still a good deal of information we are lacking. There are some brilliant scholars, particularly in England, who about 30 years ago began questioning the chronology that we are using today. One of the questions they had was regarding the issue of dark periods in the histories of many civilizations of ancient peoples. For instance, when you study the ancient Sumerians you find that they had a period of approximately 200 years when nothing seemed to be happening. When you study the ancient Greeks you find there is a dark period in Greek history where for about 200 years nothing seemed to be happening. Then, as you study the Hittites a civilization that up until the 1900s no one other than Bible students even believed existed you find out that from what we read in the Hittite records there seems to be a 200 year period where nothing seemed to happen. Finally, a number of historians and scholars sat down and theorized that what we may have here is not dark ages in each of these civilizations, but rather the result of basing everything on the accepted chronology of Egypt. Maybe we have arbitrarily said all these civilizations must have had a dark age, when the answer is actually that we have misunderstood Egyptian history and have been forcing everything into an Egyptian chronology. ARCHAEOLOGY, JERICHO, AND THE BIBLE If it is true that we have misunderstood Egyptian history, and there is some very powerful evidence to suggest that it is, it also answers many of the objections to the biblical narrative. Let me use the classic illustration of Jericho. The battle of Jericho took place 40 years after the Exodus. According to the biblical record in Joshua 3-6, Joshua and the Israelites cross the Jordan when the Jordan stops flowing up at Adam. They surround the city of Jericho and for six days the army marches around it once with trumpets blowing. Joshua tells them in Joshua 6:16 that on the seventh day they are to march around the city seven times while the trumpets blow, and then Shout! For the LORD has given you the city! The wall falls down. The Israelites move in. They conquer the city. They completely destroy it and burn it to the ground. That s what the Bible has said for 3,500 years. When archaeologists began working in the site of ancient Jericho in the early 20 th century, what they discovered was radical. John Garstang in the 1920s and 1930s began excavating Jericho and discovered as he dug through these ruins that this city fell not just fell to an opposing power, but the wall actually fell. And it fell outward just as the Bible describes it. Not only that, but what he uncovered in the ruins was a testimony to what we read in the sixth chapter of the book of Joshua that the city was burned and the wealth was burned with it. One of the things that Garstang and others saw that astounded them was the remains of grain in storage bins in the lower levels of the city. Grain was precious in the ancient world. It was the equivalent of cash, yet whoever took this city torched the grain. That s exactly what is described in the book of Joshua. In the early 1900s, when these findings started coming out, people said these findings proved the biblical record correct. However, along came the 1950s and another brilliant archaeologist by the name of Kathleen Kenyon. Kenyon reevaluated what Garstang had done. She came away maintaining that what Garstang saw is indeed accurate, but it s not at the right time in history. As a result, today it is widely held that Jericho was uninhabited at the time when the Israelites are alleged to have entered 7

9 the land. However, when you go back and reevaluate Egyptian chronology and do it with the chronology of other ancient peoples, all of a sudden it compresses time and Jericho falls at exactly the time the Bible says it did, around 1400 BC. While it is one of those little things that s of interest to only a few, it has implications for many. I believe what we read in the book of Exodus is real and true. I believe what we discover in the remains of ancient civilizations has, will, and is confirming what we see in the biblical record. I also believe we need to make sure that we are not simply accepting what others have said without critically examining it, and it s here that I believe the biblical record is one of the most underestimated records in all of antiquity. There is nothing like the Bible in terms of describing in detail events that took place. It is not portrayed in hearsay fashion. Some ancient historians say they heard it from so-and-so or that they are recording a rumor. In contrast, the Bible says in such and such a year, during the time of so-and-so, on the twelfth day of the fifth month, and so on. The Scripture is very methodical in the way it lays things out, and as a result what we have in Exodus is real, genuine, and true. And it is absolutely life-changing. Something else worth noting in the book of Exodus is that Pharaoh is mentioned frequently, but his name is never mentioned. We have no record in Exodus of the name of the pharaoh. All sorts of speculation has been made. The Jewish historian Josephus posited one particular explanation. Many theologians and historians have suggested others. Personally, in light of the evidence that we have to date, I believe it is still a guessing game. But what we see the pharaoh doing is very consistent with what we know of the ancient Egyptians and of their rulers. The Egyptians believed their pharaohs were godlike beings. In the book of Exodus we see God revealing Himself not only to the people of Israel, but also to the Egyptians, showing them that their gods are false and there is only one God, the true God. FROM JOSEPH TO MOSES What is described in Exodus 1 is a series of events that took place after the death of Joseph. At the end of the book of Genesis Joseph is second only to Pharaoh in Egypt, and the Israelites, the children of Jacob, are warmly received into the land and given the best part of the land, the land of Goshen in the Nile Delta region. Exodus tells us that after Joseph s time there arose a pharaoh who did not know Joseph. Originally the children of Israel were welcomed guests, but by the time of Exodus they find themselves on the outside looking in. The Egyptians have seen the Israelites grow and multiply. The words that are used here in the opening chapter of Exodus remind us of what we read in Genesis when God created our first parents. He told Adam and Eve in Genesis 1:28, Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth. In very similar language Exodus 1:7 says, but the Israelites were exceedingly fruitful; they multiplied greatly, increased in numbers and became so numerous that the land was filled with them. The Israelites grow in number from a group of 70 people who came with Jacob down to Egypt to see Joseph. By the time we get to the book of Exodus there are 600,000 men, not counting the women and children, a population of approximately 2,000,000 people. It went from 70 to 2,000,000 in a matter of several hundred years so you can understand how the Egyptians would have been rather fearful of this group. The Israelites are not like the Egyptians, and what we read in Exodus is that the Egyptians feared that the Israelites would turn against them and support enemies who might come against Egypt. 8

10 As a result, an order is given by the pharaoh that from now on the Israelite midwives are to kill any boys born to the Israelites. The girls are allowed to live, but the boys are to be killed. We are told that two of the midwives in particular, Shiphrah and Puah, refuse to obey those orders and they are brought up on charges. They are brought before Pharaoh and he asks them why they aren t killing the baby boys. Their answer is inspired. They say that the Israelite women aren t like Egyptian women. They tell Pharaoh that by the time the midwives are called to assist with the delivery the women have already had their babies and there s nothing the midwives can do about it; that Israelite women are not like wimpy Egyptian women, instead, they are healthy specimens who give birth quickly so there s nothing the midwives can do. We read in Exodus that God blesses those midwives and gives them families of their own. But the pharaoh then issues an order that all Hebrew newborn boys are to be thrown into the Nile. Then we come to the story of one man who is at the heart of this book and at the heart of what follows in the Pentateuch. That one man is Moses. We are told that he was born from the tribe of Levi, one of the twelve sons of Jacob. The Levites would later become the priests. His father s name was Amram and the name of his mother was Jochebed. Amram and Jochebed had at least three children, and of the three Moses was the youngest. We know that his brother Aaron was three years older than Moses and his big sister Miriam was older still. Amram and Jochebed have Moses, and when they look at this boy they realize this is a special kid and not just because he is theirs. There is something in this child that they see. So they concoct a scheme to protect him. We re told that they make a basket, coat it with pitch, put the baby in the basket, and then set the basket in the rushes along the edge of the Nile River. They send Miriam, Moses older sister, to watch the baby and make sure that nothing happens to him. What s fascinating is that the word used for basket here in Exodus is the same Hebrew word that is used in Genesis 6:14, when God tells Noah to build an ark and coat it with pitch inside and out. It s the same phraseology, the same word that we have here in Exodus, and I don t believe that is accidental. The author of the Bible ultimately is God Himself, and there are no accidents with God. Everything He does is deliberate, intentional, and brilliantly planned. For someone reading the Hebrew Scriptures, especially for the first time, what would strike them is that God 9

11 once commanded one of His followers to save the world by building an ark, coating it with pitch, and putting his family and all living creatures inside, and now God is going to save His people by an ark coated with pitch, through which He will protect a deliverer who will save His people. There are no accidents here. Moses is discovered by, of all people, Pharaoh s own daughter. She decides that this is a boy that she can have as her own son, but she needs somebody to raise him. So she talks to the little girl who is near the basket, and Miriam offers to find someone who might be able to take care of this child, nurse him, and raise him until he is old enough to be brought to the palace. Miriam goes and gets her mom Moses mom. Pharaoh s daughter evens offers to pay Jochebed to care for Moses. Don t you love that? How good God is to have Jochebed raise her son and receive payment for it also. Today in 21 st century America we think that it means just a matter of months that Jochebed would nurse her son before weaning him and giving him back to Pharaoh s daughter. However, in the ancient world and still today in much of the world, weaning does not take place in the first few months or even the first year of a child s life. Children are nursing when they re three and four years old in much of the world, and that has been true throughout the ages. And so, Moses would have been raised by his own mom and dad and would have been taught the truths of God s word as a young child. Moses took it in, and even though he would later be raised as an Egyptian, he never lost his heart for God and never lost his heart for his people. We know a bit about Moses from Exodus. We also have some rather tantalizing clues about him from other authors. One author who is especially noteworthy is the Jewish historian Flavius Josephus who lived shortly after the time of Jesus, in the latter part of the first century. Josephus tells us in his book The Antiquities of the Jews that Moses was actually in line for the throne, and more than that, at one point in his early life he was a general in the Egyptian army who led an attack against Ethiopia. According to Josephus, Moses was an accomplished tactician and a brilliant soldier. The Old Testament doesn t give us that bit of information. We don t know if that s indeed true, but Josephus has given us an awful lot of material that is trustworthy and true, so it is at least worth considering. What we do know is that by the time Moses is 40 years old he has a passion for his own people and it gets him in trouble. He ends up killing an Egyptian, and word gets out. The Israelites are not willing to accept his leadership and he has to flee for his life. MOSES IN MIDIAN When we get to Exodus 3 Moses has fled Egypt. We are told that Moses fled from Egypt to Midian, and here it s important for us to picture these geographic locations on a map. We will be referring to this again later on. Today scholars around the world are pretty much in agreement that Midian, ancient Midian, is modern day Saudi Arabia. Most people accept that without a whole lot of questioning, but there are some implications once we agree to that. Traditionally, it is believed that Moses met God at Mount Sinai, located somewhere in the southern part of the Sinai Peninsula, part of modern-day Egypt. But if you take the Scriptures literally, Moses was in Midian when he went to the Mount of God, also known as Mount Horeb or Mount Sinai. If our understanding is indeed accurate, it means that Mount Sinai is in Saudi Arabia, not the Sinai Peninsula. That matches what we see in the New Testament. In Galatians 4:25, the Apostle Paul talks about Mount Sinai and says, Mount Sinai in Arabia. I believe that has some very fascinating applications for us. One of them is purely historic. Wouldn t it be amazing if Mount Sinai is located somewhere other than where we ve traditionally believed it to be? 10

12 Moses lives in Midian, and for the next 40 years this man who has been taught by the Egyptians and given the best education in the world at that time now takes care of sheep. He serves as a shepherd for 40 years. It s hardly what you would call an exciting and challenging job, offering new opportunities for growth every day and with the prospect for advancement. It s same old, same old all the time. But by taking care of sheep Moses is learning how to shepherd the flock of God. At the age of 80 he goes to the mountain known as Horeb or Sinai and sees something that captures his attention. It s a bush on fire. What is so unique about the bush is it s burning, but it s not being consumed by the fire. As Moses gets close, he hears an audible voice call his name from the bush and say, Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground (Exodus 3:5). For Moses it is a life shattering experience. So often when we read the Bible and see events like this where God intervenes in a person s life and confronts them in a dramatic way, our reaction is to think it s awesome and wonderful. But in reality what we see in Scripture and what we see in history is when those things happen, it is usually devastating for the individual involved. It brings them to a point far past anything they ever expected. This challenges everything they believe and understand, and Moses is faced with that here. God tells Moses that He has chosen him to bring His people out of bondage in Egypt. Moses has one excuse after another. If it weren t so real it would be comical. Moses says that he doesn t even know God s name, and God responds (Exodus 3:14), Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh in English I AM WHO I AM. I will be what I will be. Moses is overcome by this and comes up with more excuses. He says, Pardon your servant, Lord. I have never been eloquent... (Exodus 4:10). Moses tells God that he has difficulty talking in front of a group. He wasn t eloquent before meeting God and nothing has changed since God spoke to him. Finally Moses comes up with the ultimate explanation of why he can t do this. Moses simply doesn t want to. But God will not let Moses refuse. God tells Moses that He will give Moses his brother Aaron, and Aaron will be the one who will assist Moses and speak to Pharaoh. So the Lord calls Moses, and Moses goes. TETRAGRAMMATON Moses returns to Egypt, meeting his brother Aaron along the way, and they begin the negotiations with Pharaoh. In chapter 6 Moses has another dramatic encounter with God. Exodus 6 is one of the most important chapters of the Scripture and it s also one of the most overlooked. We read the following in Exodus 6:2-3, God also said to Moses, I am the LORD. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name the LORD I did not make myself fully known to them. The word translated the LORD is a single word in Hebrew. It s called the tetragrammaton, which is Greek for four letters. This is the Hebrew name God gives to Himself. It appears over 6,000 times in the Old Testament. We don t know how it was pronounced. The way that many suggest today is Yahweh or Yahveh. There has been some manuscript evidence recently uncovered that suggests the pronunciation may have been Yehovah. A friend of mine who is working with an Israeli Dead Sea Scrolls scholar is firmly convinced that this last pronunciation is the way the name was pronounced. In the Old Testament God says that His name will be spoken to the people of Israel and blessings will be pronounced on them in His name. However, we know that for the last 2,000 years or so the Jewish people have not spoken that name. Some of the evidence we have from the 11

13 latter time of the second temple (which is the temple that was there when Jesus lived) suggests that only the high priest would speak the name, and only on the Day of Atonement, Yom Kippur. God tells Moses that He is Jehovah, or Yahweh. He appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as God Almighty, in Hebrew El Shaddai, but by His name, Jehovah, He did not make Himself fully known to them (6:2-3). Many people have looked at this verse and said it doesn t make sense because all through the book of Genesis God calls Himself by this name. He speaks to His followers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, and He declares His name. How can it be that He didn t make Himself fully known to them as the NIV translates it? The answer most likely is linked to the Hebrew language itself. Hebrew is a very vital, active, and powerful language. It is not the language of a philosopher where you sit back and speculate. It s all about action, about involvement, about things happening in powerful ways. The Hebrew word translated here as fully known is the Hebrew word ya-da meaning to know. But to translate it merely as know in English does it an injustice. In Hebrew ya-da, to know, means to understand and experience something. It s not merely a matter of head knowledge. I know that 2+2 is four, is rather I have experienced 2+2. It s an experience. It s more than mere head knowledge. It is personally experiencing what is going on. So, what God is saying is, I revealed Myself to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, but by My name, as the God who keeps His promises and keeps His covenant, I did not make Myself fully known to them. They had only a glimpse of what was to come. You are going to see it all. And that s what happens in Exodus. We behold God s glory. We behold God s power. We behold God s nearness. He is an active, intervening God. That s what He is telling Moses, and through Moses that s what He is telling the children of Israel. Think of it this way. God told Abraham hundreds of years earlier that his descendants would be living in another land for 400 years and would ultimately be slaves. God made it very clear that He was going to give them the land that He had promised Abraham, but Abraham died without ever seeing that. Abraham only owned the burial site of his wife. He had no other property that was his. But here in Exodus Moses and the children of Israel are now going to experience God keeping His promises and His Word. They will know Him as Jehovah, the One who is, the One who really does keep His promises. That s stamped all over the pages of Exodus. 12

14 THE FOUR CUPS OF PASSOVER As we go on in Exodus we see something else. In Exodus 6 we find Moses crying out to God and asking why things have gotten worse rather than the children of Israel being rescued. In God s response are two of the most important verses in all of the Bible for Jewish people. For Christian people, they ought to be some of the most important verses in the Bible, but by and large the Christian world has ignored these words. Therefore, say to the Israelites: I am the LORD [Yahweh, Jehovah], and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God (Exodus 6:6-7). That is the promise God makes to the children of Israel. A part of the Passover meal is based on these two verses of Scripture. For the last several thousand years the Jewish people have used a series of four cups in celebrating the Passover meal. Exodus tells us about the origin of the Passover, when God delivers the Israelites after a series of ten plagues. Here in Exodus 6 we have the origin of the four cups of Passover. The Jewish people during the times of the kings, in Jesus day, and even today, still celebrate the Passover with four cups. The first cup was called the cup of sanctification sanctification in the sense of God setting us apart for service to him. So with that first cup God says, I will bring you out. I am the one who reaches in. This is not something you achieve on your own. It s not something you did on your own power. I came in and I set you apart for Myself. Cup number two is called the cup of wrath or the cup of plagues. I will free you from the Egyptians. How does God free them? With a series of ten plagues. Cup number three is called the cup of blessing (KJV) or the cup of redemption. I will redeem you. What will God do? He will redeem them through the blood of an innocent Lamb who sheds His blood for the people. This is the cup that Jesus used to celebrate the Lord s Supper. Paul writes in I Corinthians 10:16, Is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks a participation in the blood of Christ? What Paul is saying is that Jesus used that third cup. Jesus celebrated the Passover and gave communion, as we call it, with the third cup, but as He gave it to them He said, 13

15 Truly I tell you, I will not drink again from the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God (Mark 14:25). Jesus says He will drink it with us at the time when everything is made new, which leads us to the fourth cup. The fourth cup is called the cup of praise or, traditionally, Elijah s cup. The Old Testament prophets end with Malachi saying that Elijah the prophet will return before the time of Messiah and therefore, Elijah s cup has always been seen as the fulfillment of all God s promises. In Jewish tradition the fourth cup is always poured, but not always used. There are some Jewish people who to this day do not drink the fourth cup, and even those who drink it recognize it talks about future fulfillment. Jesus, in saying that He will not drink this again until it finds its fulfillment in the kingdom of God is saying that the next time He is with us it is going to be a celebration that will last forever because it will be the fulfillment of all things. We already see that here in Exodus in the origin of the four cups of Passover. Jesus, the Passover Lamb, is stamped all over the pages of Exodus. TEN PLAGUES God intervenes in powerful ways in the lives of not only the Israelites, but also the Egyptians. What we see happening is a series of ten plagues that at first impact both the Egyptians and the Israelites, and then only the Egyptians. The first plague is the plague of blood. God tells Moses and Aaron to go to Pharaoh and tell him to let the people go. If Pharaoh doesn t release the Israelites, then Moses and Aaron have instructions to follow which will turn the Nile to blood. They go, Pharaoh refuses, the water turns to blood, and the reaction of Pharaoh is that his heart is hardened. His religious advisors and magicians are actually able to duplicate this. They, too, can somehow turn water into blood. The second plague comes and it s the plague of frogs. Suddenly frogs are everywhere. Keep in mind all of these plagues are not just physical phenomena. They are religious phenomena as well. The plagues not only bring financial ruin on the Egyptian Empire, but they devastate 14

16 Egyptian religion. The ancient Egyptian people were incredibly religious. They worshiped a multitude of gods and goddesses, things and animals. Among the deities that the Egyptians worshiped was the frog god. Years ago, I actually got to go and see an ancient temple along the Nile that was dedicated to, among others, their frog god. With this second plague these frogs that the Egyptians hold to be sacred frogs are coming out of the woodwork. Everywhere you turn there are frogs, and to make it worse, they re dying. The book of Exodus describes people waking up in the morning and finding dead frogs in their beds. They are everywhere. Can you imagine what it would be like in the climate of Egypt to suddenly have millions of dead frogs and you have to shovel them up? They are going to reek fast. Right there the Israelites are shown that God is God and the very things they worship are now dead and smelling to high heaven. Everything changes with the next plague. It s the plague of gnats. Up until this time the Egyptian religious advisors and magicians were able to duplicate for Pharaoh the very things that Moses and Aaron had said and done. With the plague of gnats the magicians say that they are not able to duplicate this, and they tell Pharaoh in Exodus 8:19, This is the finger of God. I love that line, This is the finger of God. The plague of flies adds another wrinkle. For the first time the plague will only impact Egyptians and not the Israelites. God says He will send these flies, but He will exempt the land of Goshen, and only the Egyptians living throughout the rest of the country are going to be inundated with flies. Flies are everywhere. After that is the plague against the livestock and again only the Egyptian livestock are afflicted by the plague, not the Israelite livestock. Then come the plagues of boils, hail that destroys crops, and locusts. According to Exodus, it is the worst locust plague in all of Egyptian history and it devastates every green thing. A hoard of locusts devours everything in its path. By this time the Egyptian economy is on the rocks. Then comes the ninth plague the plague of darkness. This one is particularly ominous. Exodus describes it as a darkness you can feel. But for the Israelites living in Goshen, it s all sunshine. THE FIRST PASSOVER Then comes the final plague, the plague of the firstborn. The firstborn of Egypt die, from the firstborn of a lowly prisoner in an Egyptian cell to the firstborn of Pharaoh. However, the Israelites are told their firstborn will be preserved if they follow the instructions given by God. They are to take a year-old lamb, a perfect specimen, a male lamb without any blemishes. A year-old lamb is a mature lamb. They are to kill it and pour its blood into the basin in front of the door of their home. The word that is used here is saf in Hebrew. In Exodus 12:22 we read that God instructs Moses, and Moses instructs the people. He says, Take a bunch of hyssop, dip it into the blood in the basin and put some of the blood on the top and on both sides of the doorframe. God gives a very clear description of how they are to do this. There is little rain in Egypt and they would dig a small trench in front of their doors so that if rain suddenly did come, it wouldn t come running in underneath the door, but would fill the trench. The Hebrew word saf describes that basin or trench. They were to pour the lamb s blood into the trench. They were to take a stock of hyssop plant and dip the stock in the blood. They were to smear the blood on the top and on the sides of the door frame. As they painted up and down the sides, and across the top, their motions would make the sign of the cross. That is not just interesting or a nice coincidence. I would suggest there is nothing coincidental about it. God gives very clear direction. 15

17 Before the time of Jesus, as Jewish scholars copied the Dead Sea Scrolls, they marked the passages that refer to the Messiah with a cross. Ask yourself why. We may have the answer here with the Passover. On that first Passover night the Israelites were saved when the blood was placed on the cross piece and the uprights of the door frame just as Moses had instructed them. With their actions they were making the sign of a cross. Later, that cross symbol was used by men of God as they marked passages of Scripture that point to a coming Messiah who would save. That Messiah, the Lamb of God, would come and sacrifice Himself. God has such wisdom. He is giving us a picture all along the way. FROM EGYPT TO THE RED SEA It is the loss of the firstborn which convinces Pharaoh to allow the Israelites to leave Egypt. As we read the account we re told that it took the Israelites two months after the Passover on the 14 th day of Nisan to go from Goshen to Mount Sinai. As we look at distances from Goshen we see that 200 miles will take us to the traditional site of Mount Sinai and 250 miles or so will take us to the alternative site in Saudi Arabia. It is very possible for people to walk that kind of distance in a two month period. We also know from the book of Exodus that as the Israelites traveled they were not confined to just the daylight hours. The book of Exodus specifically says that God led them by a pillar of cloud during the day and by a pillar of fire at night, which enabled them to travel even during the hours of darkness. It may well be in those first days that they moved very quickly to get as far away from the Egyptians as they possibly could. It would allow them to travel quite a distance if they followed the route that has been proposed, following the trade route and then heading down to a dead end. In ancient times, once you got to a site known today as Nuweiba, there was nowhere to go. You could not go north. You could not go south. All you could do was go through the mountain pass. It would help explain why Pharaoh and his troops were saying they had the Israelites trapped, and it s at that point that God intervenes in a powerful way with the miraculous crossing of the Red Sea. In the book of Exodus, God tells Moses that he and the Israelites are not to take the Way of the Philistines, or the Way of the Sea, an ancient trade route that goes along the southern coast of the 16

18 Mediterranean Sea and then goes up through Israel and into Syria. The Lord said they were not to take that route because they would encounter the Egyptian army and there were many Egyptian fortresses built along the route. God said the Israelites would be frightened, they would be terrified of war, and they would not go forward. So instead the Lord says they are to take a different route. The route that some are suggesting today as the one they would have taken is an ancient trade route that cuts across the Sinai Peninsula. That route is still visible even to this day. It follows some very flat areas of land and it is relatively easily traversed. It has been an ancient trade route for not just centuries but for millennia. What some propose is that the Israelites traveled across the Sinai Peninsula and then followed that trade route where it drops down and comes to a point along the western coast of the Gulf of Aqaba. That seems to fit the biblical description of what happened to the Israelites as they got to the waters of the sea. In the Old Testament the Yam Suph, often translated Reed Sea or Sea of Reeds, may be the sea of the boundary, or the furthest sea. The Bible specifically describes an Israelite port at the very tip of ancient Israel as being on the Yam Suph. This helps us identify what that body of water was in ancient times. At the site of Nuweiba, there is a huge sandy peninsula that juts out into the Gulf of Aqaba. It could hold a couple of million people. It is accessible only by way of a mountain pass that comes down from the north, and if the Israelites were there, their backs would have been up against the sea and all they could have done was tread water or face the Egyptian army. That s pretty much the way the Scripture describes it. One of the things that researchers have discovered is a land bridge that goes across at Nuweiba over to Saudi Arabia. It is a very wide land bridge. It actually follows U.S. government guidelines for building interstate highways. The slope is such that it could be walked. It is covered by a couple of hundred feet of water, but if indeed this is the site, it would help us understand how a strong east wind could blow the water so that on either side there is a wall of water with Israel marching through the middle. They would have been able to go through in very rapid fashion because it s a couple of miles wide. It gives you a wide berth to go through over to the other side. As the Israelites begin moving away from the Red Sea, we are told that they very quickly start grumbling. God s people have had a history of grumbling and complaining, even in the face of overwhelming miracles. The Israelites grumble that there s no water, and God provides water from 17

19 the rock. They grumble that there s no food, and so God provides food from heaven manna. The Hebrew word manna means What is it? and God provides it for them every day. They are told to take what they need for the day. Jesus would incorporate that into the great prayer which He taught, Give us this day our daily bread what we need for today. We do not live worrying about the future. We live receiving the blessings that God gives every day. WHERE IS MOUNT SINAI? As mentioned earlier, there is debate regarding the location of Mount Sinai. The Saudi Arabia location which has been more recently suggested is far from the traditional site on the Sinai Peninsula. The Bible is very consistent in declaring that Moses dwelt in the land of the Midianites when he fled Egypt. Bible students, scholars, professors, and researchers are unanimous in their agreement that the land of Midian is the area on the eastern side of the Gulf of Aqaba and the Red Sea, an area that we today know as Saudi Arabia. The book of Exodus depicts Mount Horeb or Mount Sinai as being in the land of Midian, and the Apostle Paul in his letter to the Galatians says very clearly Mount Sinai is in Arabia. However, the traditional site has always been located at the southern end of the Sinai Peninsula. St. Catherine s monastery was built at the site. Over the centuries many visitors have accepted it as the site of the real Mount Sinai. You may think that the traditional view is an ancient one, but it s not as ancient as most people think. As best I can track it, the view that Mount Sinai was located in the southern part of the Sinai Peninsula has only been around for about 1,700 years, since the time of Constantine, the first Roman Emperor to embrace Christianity ( AD). The person who was instrumental in setting the traditional site of Mount Sinai was none other than the Emperor Constantine s mother, Helena. Somewhere around 325 AD she said that location was revealed to her as the spot where Moses met God in the burning bush and where he took the Israelites to receive the Ten Commandments Difficulties regarding the traditional site include the fact that in 1967, after the Six-Day War when the Israelis conquered all of the Sinai, Israeli archaeologists went to the traditional site of Mount Sinai and did quite a bit of excavating. They did that with the intent of uncovering evidence of the Israelites camping out there for over a year. They found absolutely nothing. The archaeologists came back with no evidence whatsoever of a large encampment of as many as 2,000,000 people in that area. In addition to that, the physical setting of that place does not seem to match what we have in Exodus when it gives us the description. What is on the other side of the land bridge at Nuweiba, across from the traditional site of Mount Sinai, has attracted the attention of many people in the last two decades or so. Circumstantial evidence has emerged to support the location of the real Mount Sinai in the land of Midian, in what we today call Saudi Arabia. The mountain that some have suggested may well be the original Mount Sinai is called Jebel al-lawz and it is the highest mountain in that part of Saudi Arabia. What is so fascinating about it is both the physical features of the mountain and archaeological remains that are found there. It is blackened at the top. A very dark top and a light lower portion are very evident in pictures. You can climb up it without a great deal of difficulty. It also possesses something that the Old Testament speaks of in relationship to Mount Sinai. Near the top of the mountain is a very ancient cave where a person could have spent time, meditated, and hidden out. We re told that s exactly what the prophet Elijah did when he fled from Jezebel 18