As I mentioned on Sunday, you probably recognize why we took a break from the series in Mark during Advent, as an especially challenging and lengthy passage about coming judgment and the end of the world doesn’t quite meet people’s expectations for the Christmas season!

As such, we instead spent 5 weeks surveying the book of Exodus, noting many of the parallels between:

• the birth of Israel’s savior and the birth of our Savior;
  
  
• Moses delivering the Israelites from their earthly bondage and Jesus delivering us from our spiritual bondage;
  
  
• the earthly lives of the firstborn of Israel being spared by the spilling of the blood of a Passover lamb and our eternal lives being spared by the spilling of the blood of the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world;
  
  
• Moses leading Israel on a long journey through the wilderness to the promised land and Jesus leading us on a long journey through the wilderness of life in a broken world to our eternal home.

If you missed any installment in that five-part series, I’d encourage you to go back and listen to it. The preceding chapters of Genesis all build toward the Exodus – the moment when God began to reverse the curse of humanity’s exile away from His presence in the garden of Eden – and every subsequent book of the Bible refers back to it (if not explicitly, then to the major themes it established).

One scholar put it this way: “As we think about who we are as the church today, we cannot have an accurate grasp of our identity without having a firm understanding of the events that the book of Exodus records for us.”

1. The Birth of a Savior (Exod 1:1–2:10; Lk 2:1-7; Mt 2:1-21)
   
   
2. Take Heart (Exod 2:11–6:30; John 16:33)
   
   
3. Light in the Darkness (Exod 7–14; 1 Pet 2:9)
   
   
4. God with Us (Exod 15:22–17:7; Mt 4:1-10; Jn 6)
   
   
5. Face to Face (Exodus 17:8–40:38; Rev 21:1-3; 22:3-5)

Blessings in Christ,

Pastor Evan