Exodus: Understanding One of the Bible’s Major Themes

00:00:00.000 | "Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, let my people go."

00:00:06.200 | Such a classic movie moment from Charlton Heston playing Moses in the 1956 movie The

00:00:11.240 | Ten Commandments.

00:00:13.480 | The exodus of Israel out of Egypt is the greatest redemptive event in the Old Testament.

00:00:21.440 | Let that sink in for a moment.

00:00:24.000 | If our publishing age is marked by the cross, it is because the cross is shorthand for the

00:00:28.680 | death and resurrection of Christ.

00:00:30.800 | His cross marks the centerpiece of redemptive history as we know it.

00:00:34.720 | But before the cross, there was the exodus.

00:00:37.600 | And so if the world of publishing today talks a lot about the cross-centered life and the

00:00:41.160 | cross-centered church, it would seem that a fitting analogy would be perhaps to imagine

00:00:45.520 | the Old Testament era saints to have had the impulse to write and publish books on the

00:00:50.040 | exodus-centered life and the exodus-centered synagogue.

00:00:54.280 | It's a major key to understanding the Old Testament and it's a major key to unlocking

00:00:57.920 | the meaning of the entire biblical plotline.

00:01:01.600 | To explain, I called Dr. Don Carson.

00:01:04.120 | On occasional Fridays, I call him up as part of our relationship with our friends at The

00:01:07.600 | Gospel Coalition.

00:01:08.760 | Carson is the co-founder and president of The Gospel Coalition and also the editor of

00:01:13.120 | the NIV Zondervan Study Bible, which is the study Bible version of what we're doing in

00:01:17.120 | these occasional Friday podcasts.

00:01:19.560 | I called up Dr. Carson, asked him to explain the exodus.

00:01:22.880 | Here's what he said.

00:01:24.360 | The exodus is simultaneously the escape of the people of God, the Israelites, from Egypt,

00:01:34.360 | the land of slavery.

00:01:35.560 | They exit out of slavery into the promised land.

00:01:41.920 | It's the exodus.

00:01:43.200 | And at the same time, it's a one-word way of referring to the events surrounding the

00:01:49.320 | exodus.

00:01:51.080 | That includes, therefore, the judgment of God on the Egyptians, the plagues.

00:01:57.160 | It includes also, eventually, the giving of the law, the years of wilderness wanderings,

00:02:03.920 | and eventually, entrance into the promised land.

00:02:06.800 | So sometimes when people speak of the exodus, they are referring to the narrow event of

00:02:12.280 | the escape.

00:02:13.920 | And sometimes they're referring to the much larger event that includes, for example, the

00:02:19.640 | giving of the law and the revelation of God at Sinai, and the whole Mosaic Code.

00:02:25.520 | So one has to be careful as to how the word is used in a particular theological context.

00:02:32.400 | What is clear is that in the Old Testament, the exodus is bound up with at least two huge

00:02:40.080 | controlling themes.

00:02:41.920 | The first is that in some ways, this is the reconstitution of the Israelites.

00:02:49.240 | The beginning of the Hebrew-Israelite heritage is, of course, with Abraham.

00:02:55.960 | And God makes a covenant with him, which we have subsequently called the Abrahamic Covenant,

00:03:02.040 | which itself could be nicely traced through the Old Testament and into the New in a variety

00:03:06.840 | of ways.

00:03:07.840 | But at that point, the land promises, for example, are still referring to things way

00:03:16.440 | off in the future.

00:03:18.280 | And even when Abraham does finally have a son, and the son begets two more sons, and

00:03:25.080 | one of them begets 12 patriarchs and so forth, yet this fledgling people is not in any sense

00:03:32.880 | a nation.

00:03:33.880 | And before they become a nation, they end up in Egypt at the time of the famine, where

00:03:40.760 | in the providence of God, Joseph provides all the food they need, until hundreds of

00:03:45.400 | years later, they are enslaved, and they have never been a nation.

00:03:48.680 | So the exodus then reconstitutes them, as it were, but this time making them a nation.

00:03:55.280 | So this is not only an exit from slavery and from Egypt, it is reconstituting the people

00:04:01.480 | with a new covenant, the Sinai Covenant, or the Mosaic Covenant, or the Law Covenant,

00:04:06.400 | as it's variously called, and gaining entrance into the Promised Land and the beginnings

00:04:12.120 | of their pilgrimage as a nation.

00:04:14.680 | That's the first thing that is obvious right on the surface of the text.

00:04:18.440 | The second thing that is stunning is how the exodus controls a great deal of the discussion

00:04:27.800 | of the entire rest of the Old Testament.

00:04:30.080 | And for example, the way the Ten Commandments begin in Exodus chapter 20, "And God spoke

00:04:36.720 | all these words, 'I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land

00:04:42.640 | of slavery.'

00:04:43.640 | And then the commandments begin, 'You shall have no other gods before me.'"

00:04:48.200 | So although the commandment to worship God and adhere to him is sometimes grounded in

00:04:54.040 | creation, God's sovereign, providential, kingly rule, he is their maker and their judge.

00:05:00.760 | Here, in this case, it's grounded in their redemption, that is, their redemption from

00:05:06.120 | slavery.

00:05:07.540 | And that becomes the basis for a very large number of prophetic appeals for psalmic meditation

00:05:15.300 | and so on.

00:05:16.760 | And it's striking that God has freed them, he has led them out, and on that basis, then,

00:05:25.120 | he then gives them law and instruction.

00:05:27.600 | It's not that he gives them instruction and if they obey the law adequately, then God

00:05:32.280 | will spare them.

00:05:33.620 | He reaches down sovereignly and saves them, in fact, from slavery and leads them out.

00:05:39.720 | And in the course of doing so, then, says, "I am the God who has freed you from the land

00:05:44.640 | of slavery.

00:05:45.640 | Here, then, is the covenant I impose.

00:05:49.160 | Here is the contract, as it were, the covenant that I make."

00:05:56.040 | And that way of thinking returns again and again and again.

00:06:01.320 | In every part of Scripture, I have in front of me literally scores of passages that I've

00:06:07.040 | accumulated over the years on that point.

00:06:11.200 | Let me pick up just a couple of them so that you can get a feel for this.

00:06:16.360 | Here is Psalm 77, beginning at 13.

00:06:19.520 | "Your ways, God, are holy.

00:06:22.400 | What God is as great as our God?

00:06:24.680 | You are the God who performs miracles.

00:06:26.820 | You display your power among the peoples.

00:06:29.680 | With your mighty arm, you redeemed your people."

00:06:32.400 | That's a reference to the Exodus.

00:06:33.920 | "The descendants of Jacob and Joseph.

00:06:36.520 | The waters saw you, God.

00:06:37.920 | The waters saw you and writhed.

00:06:39.400 | The very depths were convulsed.

00:06:41.520 | The clouds poured down water.

00:06:42.960 | The heavens resounded with thunder.

00:06:44.800 | Your arrows flashed back and forth.

00:06:46.440 | Your thunder was heard in the whirlwind.

00:06:48.640 | Your lightning lit up the world.

00:06:49.960 | The earth trembled and quaked.

00:06:51.880 | Your path led through the sea.

00:06:54.460 | Your way through the mighty waters, though your footprints were not seen.

00:06:58.900 | You led your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron."

00:07:04.720 | The specificity of Moses and Aaron and leading the people through the mighty waters and that

00:07:09.600 | sort of thing is transparently referring to the crossing of the Red Sea and the like.

00:07:14.280 | And that sort of thing happens again and again and again.

00:07:16.640 | That's Psalm 77.

00:07:18.440 | Psalm 78 has a similar passage.

00:07:21.400 | But then prophetic warnings can be cast with reference to the Exodus likewise.

00:07:28.680 | For example, in Jeremiah 7, 21, this is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says,

00:07:34.920 | "Go ahead, add your burnt offerings to your other sacrifices and eat the meat yourselves.

00:07:40.300 | For when I brought your ancestors out of Egypt and spoke to them, I did not just give them

00:07:44.720 | commands about burnt offerings and sacrifices, but I gave them this command, 'Obey me and

00:07:50.320 | I will be your God and you will be my people.

00:07:53.600 | Walk in obedience to all I command you that it may go well with you.'

00:07:57.060 | But they did not listen or pay attention.

00:07:59.380 | Instead they followed the stubborn inclinations of their evil hearts.

00:08:02.540 | They went backward and not forward.

00:08:04.500 | From the time your ancestors left Egypt until now, day after day, again and again, I sent

00:08:09.300 | you my servants, the prophets, but they did not listen to me or pay attention.

00:08:13.700 | They were stiff-necked and did more evil than their ancestors."

00:08:17.100 | And so on and so on.

00:08:18.580 | You find similar passages in Isaiah and Ezekiel and in the minor prophets and so forth.

00:08:23.800 | And then later on, when it's a question of coming back from the exile, the exile being

00:08:29.080 | a kind of, the return from exile being a kind of mini-Exodus all over again, then in the

00:08:35.040 | prayers of confession in Nehemiah, for example, Nehemiah chapter 9, again there's reference

00:08:42.440 | back to the Exodus as the great redemptive turning point in the people's history from

00:08:46.960 | which they have strayed.

00:08:48.680 | So the Exodus is the greatest redemptive event in the Old Testament to which all subsequent

00:08:56.400 | Old Testament revelation points again and again and again.

00:09:01.480 | And sometimes it's, the references are in elusive language.

00:09:08.520 | There's the very famous passage, of course, from Hosea chapter 11, "Out of Egypt I called

00:09:13.560 | my son."

00:09:14.720 | The first reference there, of course, is quite clearly to Israel.

00:09:19.360 | As early as Daniel chapter, as Exodus chapter 4, God says, "Israel is my firstborn son."

00:09:27.400 | And I say, "Let my son go."

00:09:29.340 | That is in the Exodus, that he may worship me.

00:09:32.800 | And then centuries later, Hosea records God's words, "Out of Egypt I called my son," looking

00:09:38.940 | back on the event.

00:09:40.560 | So that's all part of the background that dominates the Old Testament storyline before

00:09:45.960 | you get to the New Testament.

00:09:48.000 | Then in the New Testament, it's not long before this is picked up.

00:09:51.560 | In Matthew chapter 2, for example, Jesus is transported down to Egypt by his mother and

00:09:59.440 | his stand-in father, escaping the wrath of Herod, and then eventually returns.

00:10:05.760 | And this, we're told, fulfills the word, "Out of Egypt have I called my son," referring

00:10:11.560 | to Hosea chapter 11.

00:10:14.320 | And what is being established there is what might be called an Israel typology.

00:10:21.400 | The ultimate Israel is Jesus himself.

00:10:26.480 | And that's why, for example, in Matthew chapter 4, when Jesus is led by the Spirit into the

00:10:32.480 | desert to be tempted by the devil, he quotes Deuteronomy two or three times.

00:10:39.880 | In one passage, for example, he says, "Man does not live by bread alone, but by every

00:10:44.280 | word that proceeds from the mouth of God."

00:10:46.160 | That, of course, is directly from Deuteronomy chapter 8, given to the people of Israel.

00:10:51.500 | The people of Israel heard that word, but unfortunately did not value God's word even

00:10:57.440 | more highly than their own food.

00:10:59.400 | But Jesus, the ultimate Israel, does.

00:11:03.560 | And so Jesus turns out to be, in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the ultimate Adam, but also

00:11:09.320 | the ultimate Israel, and also the ultimate David.

00:11:13.040 | And on the Israel side, then, quite clearly to apply Hosea chapter 11, 1 to him, means

00:11:21.440 | that the son language is purposely being used in a slightly different way.

00:11:26.880 | Or the most striking passage is perhaps Luke chapter 9, verse 31.

00:11:32.280 | This is the account in Luke's Gospel of the Transfiguration, Luke 9, 28 and following.

00:11:40.400 | And as part of that spectacular event, we're told, "Two men," verse 30, "Moses and Elijah,

00:11:48.280 | appeared in glorious splendor, talking with Jesus.

00:11:51.200 | They spoke about his departure."

00:11:54.920 | The word is exodus.

00:11:58.180 | And there are other ways of talking about departure.

00:12:00.800 | To speak of this as the exodus is meant to be evocative.

00:12:06.240 | It's meant to call the biblically literate reader's mind back to the exodus.

00:12:11.280 | So Jesus, as the ultimate Israel, is going to depart.

00:12:18.120 | He's going to leave.

00:12:19.880 | He's going to exit.

00:12:24.400 | And we begin to see what it means to bear 20 verses later, when in 9.51 we read, "As

00:12:30.840 | the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven," that's his departure, "through

00:12:36.920 | the cross, the burial, the resurrection, and the ascension."

00:12:41.440 | Taken up to heaven.

00:12:42.440 | As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for

00:12:46.880 | Jerusalem.

00:12:47.960 | And then from there on, and this is chapter 9, you're barely a third of the way through

00:12:52.000 | the Book of Luke.

00:12:53.600 | From there on, you're reminded five times that Jesus has resolutely set his face to

00:12:59.400 | Jerusalem.

00:13:00.400 | It's sometimes called Luke's travel narrative.

00:13:03.000 | And that is put in your face again and again and again until he arrives in Jerusalem in

00:13:08.320 | chapter 19.

00:13:10.000 | And so that everything that is said and done, all the parables, all the miracles, everything

00:13:14.380 | that is said and done is under the impending, anticipated exodus.

00:13:23.480 | His travel to Jerusalem means he is heading for the cross, the resurrection, the ascension.

00:13:31.160 | His exodus as the true Israel, taking his people, as it were, in triumphant array into

00:13:38.160 | the new heaven and the new earth.

00:13:40.300 | So this becomes part of the way of thinking of Christ as the one who effects our exodus,

00:13:51.260 | likewise from sin and judgment, and bringing us into the promised land.

00:13:56.100 | And that's why, without even pausing for a blink of an eye, the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians

00:14:02.460 | 5, 6 and following, can say, "Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed for us."

00:14:08.860 | Well, the Passover, of course, is what takes place at the time of the exodus.

00:14:15.180 | The people of God are instructed to sacrifice the Passover lamb, put the blood of the lamb

00:14:20.660 | on the doorposts and the lintel.

00:14:22.860 | Those in the house are safe, but everywhere else, families lose their firstborn son.

00:14:29.260 | Now Christ is our Passover in that he is guaranteed that the angel of wrath, the destruction of

00:14:35.460 | right judgment, passes over us because Christ is born in our place.

00:14:40.300 | This is an exodus theme.

00:14:43.100 | And then sometimes the exodus theme plays out slightly differently.

00:14:46.540 | In 1 Corinthians chapter 10 and in Hebrews 3, 7 and following, we discover that the people

00:14:56.800 | of God at the time of the exodus, the Israelites, constitute a kind of moralizing lesson for

00:15:02.380 | us.

00:15:03.380 | They escaped from, but they did not get into.

00:15:08.700 | That is, God rescued them from the land of slavery.

00:15:12.820 | But that first generation, 20 and older, they died in the desert because of unbelief and

00:15:18.300 | disobedience.

00:15:19.940 | So they never did get into the promised land.

00:15:22.680 | It was the next generation that got into the promised land.

00:15:25.660 | And so both 1 Corinthians 10 and Hebrews 3 draws an applicable moralizing point for the

00:15:32.340 | people of God today.

00:15:33.740 | Make sure that you persevere to the end.

00:15:36.020 | Don't fall away for lack of perseverance.

00:15:38.860 | Hebrews 3, 14 goes so far as to say that we are made sharers in Christ.

00:15:44.260 | We are truly Christians if we hold our beginning confidence, our beginning conviction, our

00:15:49.420 | beginning faith steadfastly to the end, which is precisely what so many of the Israelites

00:15:55.460 | did not do at the time of the exodus.

00:15:58.200 | So there are all of these sorts of connections.

00:16:00.380 | But now, of course, the New Testament Christians look back at their great redemptive event,

00:16:09.060 | even greater by far than the event of the first exodus, namely the cross, resurrection,

00:16:15.900 | and ascension, which is the exodus of Jesus himself as the ultimate Israel in whom we,

00:16:22.580 | the people of God, Jew and Gentile alike, are caught up.

00:16:26.260 | Let me mention two things.

00:16:32.420 | This theme shows up in not only specific texts like the ones I've mentioned, and I've mentioned

00:16:38.180 | only a small handful of them, but in subtle ways.

00:16:43.120 | For example, in Mark's Gospel, there was for many, many decades an ongoing, lingering debate

00:16:53.380 | about whether Mark constantly refers elusively to the exodus of the Old Testament.

00:17:01.140 | And one side said, "Yes, yes, the themes are transparently there.

00:17:04.500 | They're on the surface of the text."

00:17:06.680 | And the other side said, "Yes, but every time that he seems to be talking about these exodus

00:17:13.340 | themes, in fact, he could use the language of the Old Testament, the Greek Septuagint,

00:17:20.200 | he could use that language, but in fact, he seems almost to avoid it.

00:17:27.460 | He writes his own way, choosing his own words.

00:17:32.080 | If he really wants to make an allusion to the Old Testament exodus narrative, why doesn't

00:17:36.100 | he use the actual words drawn from exodus?"

00:17:38.740 | And so the debate went back and forth.

00:17:41.140 | But a friend of mine nailed it.

00:17:42.540 | It was about 20 years ago now.

00:17:44.740 | He did a doctoral dissertation at Cambridge.

00:17:47.100 | His name was Ricky Watts.

00:17:49.180 | And what he shows, in my view, very convincingly, is that the exodus themes are truly there,

00:17:58.640 | but the language is Isaiah's.

00:18:00.780 | That is, Isaiah picks up on the exodus theme again and again and again, sometimes referring

00:18:06.540 | to it in the past, and sometimes using it as a way of talking about the impending exile,

00:18:16.620 | where because of sin the people are going to be cast out of the land again and be drawn

00:18:19.740 | back by God.

00:18:21.340 | This is all exodus motif, but now in Isaiah's words.

00:18:25.780 | And when Mark refers to the exodus themes, he does so repeatedly, using Isaiah's words.

00:18:34.220 | And what that suggests, then, is that, born along by the Spirit of God, Mark, in writing

00:18:40.120 | Scripture, is thinking profoundly, he's thinking in a way that we would call biblical theological.

00:18:48.820 | He's seeing the trajectories in Scripture himself, and he's choosing to use the words

00:18:53.860 | of Isaiah, knowing full well that they're referring back, in the first instance, all

00:18:58.380 | the way to the exodus itself.

00:19:02.540 | And that becomes the matrix out of which he talks about what Christ is doing.

00:19:07.380 | In other words, these trajectories that we find through Scripture, by the time you get

00:19:11.120 | to the New Testament, you find again and again that the New Testament writers themselves

00:19:17.020 | have seen the trajectories and are working from them, thinking about them, using language

00:19:22.660 | that reflects them, and so on.

00:19:24.780 | So that all of these things become ultimately a spectacular way of anticipating and pointing

00:19:29.980 | to the greatest redemption from slavery imaginable, as God's people are prepared by Christ's

00:19:37.220 | exodus to enter into the promised land of the new heaven and the new earth, the home

00:19:41.380 | of righteousness.

00:19:42.740 | The last thing I'll mention is that this exodus theme has, in the last 40 years, been

00:19:48.180 | used in another way that we should at least be aware of.

00:19:51.300 | It's not nearly as dominant now as it once was, but in an era of global theology, it's

00:19:56.700 | still pretty important.

00:20:00.360 | About 40 years ago, there was, first of all in Latin America, then it spread elsewhere,

00:20:05.000 | the rise of what came to be called "liberation theology."

00:20:08.660 | It was promulgated by a number of Spanish-speaking, occasionally Portuguese-speaking, largely

00:20:19.260 | Catholic, somewhat liberal theologians.

00:20:24.060 | They saw the injustices in the land, the extreme poverty, the corruption, and so on, and they

00:20:30.700 | looked for biblical warrants to escape all of this, and they settled on the exodus.

00:20:40.540 | This included people like Gustavo Gutierrez, a chap called José Bonino, and a number of

00:20:46.860 | others, some of whose works were eventually published in English, although some of them

00:20:52.500 | remained only in Spanish.

00:20:54.340 | They started Bible studies and action groups and so on, largely in the Catholic Church,

00:21:01.680 | in terms of what they call themselves "liberation theology," a theology of liberation.

00:21:06.700 | What they meant by this was that the account of God saving his people from slavery at the

00:21:15.500 | time of the exodus ought to become a kind of paradigm event for the people of Latin

00:21:21.020 | America to escape their oppression and slavery at the hands of endless, petty dictators and

00:21:27.980 | corrupt politicians and governments and so on.

00:21:31.300 | And if you ask them, "What warrants you choosing that particular story?

00:21:35.940 | Why are you basing all of your theology on the exodus account?"

00:21:39.420 | Then their argument was what they called "praxis."

00:21:42.580 | That is, this is where we are in our life, and the demands of where we are must be aligned

00:21:50.580 | most closely with a biblical account that gives us hope and a pattern for escape.

00:21:58.100 | And so the ultimate control of what story prevails to warrant liberation theology is

00:22:04.180 | itself not shaped by reading Scripture as a whole, but shaped by the experience of the

00:22:10.060 | people by praxis.

00:22:12.660 | And eventually, evangelicals were a little late to get into that discussion, but eventually

00:22:17.740 | there was some serious reflection upon it.

00:22:20.320 | The question can be raised, "What warrants that story?"

00:22:22.940 | as opposed to, let's say, the story that's taking place at the time of Jeremiah, where

00:22:26.980 | what God is telling the people through the prophet Jeremiah is, "Stay where you are.

00:22:32.620 | Don't rebel.

00:22:33.940 | The Babylonians that are oppressing you and taking over, they are God's messengers to

00:22:40.980 | chastise you.

00:22:41.980 | Don't rebel against them, because then the destruction of Jerusalem will be all the worse."

00:22:46.740 | And so the question then becomes, biblically, what warrants choosing the Exodus account,

00:22:53.020 | where you end up with liberation, versus the Jeremiah account, where you end up being told

00:22:59.340 | to stay where you are, and if you head for liberation, you're rebelling against God

00:23:02.500 | Almighty.

00:23:03.500 | And the answer again and again was simply praxis.

00:23:07.380 | But what was seen eventually by a lot of evangelicals who were wrestling with these things was that

00:23:15.180 | the Exodus account needs to be put within the framework of the entire biblical storyline,

00:23:20.900 | a whole biblical theology.

00:23:23.660 | And the ultimate liberation is achieved by that to which the Exodus points, namely, Christ

00:23:30.620 | himself.

00:23:31.860 | Otherwise, one can go through the Scripture and pick up a story that seems to fit best

00:23:38.540 | my circumstances and merely apply it without further thought, without seeing what other

00:23:42.820 | stories might apply that seem to run in a different direction.

00:23:46.220 | In other words, the stories of Scripture have to be fit within the context of the Bible's

00:23:50.500 | storyline itself.

00:23:51.980 | Otherwise, we're constantly controlling Scripture by focusing on our situation and

00:23:58.260 | randomly taking passages and applying them to ourselves.

00:24:04.780 | So in this connection, the proper use of Exodus is shaped not only by how Exodus functions

00:24:12.220 | in the Old Testament, but how it's picked up and is completed by what is disclosed in

00:24:18.340 | the New Testament.

00:24:19.500 | Even in the Old Testament, however, the Exodus account looks a bit different from what Gutierrez

00:24:26.020 | and Bonino were arguing for.

00:24:28.940 | After all, God takes action for his people in the Exodus.

00:24:32.940 | They seem rather slow to latch on.

00:24:35.060 | Every time there's a discouragement, they're ready to abandon ship.

00:24:40.700 | It's not as if the people were incited to revolution and revolt and thus kick off into

00:24:50.260 | some new adventure and seek out a promised land.

00:24:52.980 | Rather, God reaches down and saves them, which is not exactly what Gutierrez and Bonino had

00:24:58.980 | in mind.

00:24:59.980 | So, in other words, they were domesticating the Scripture, admittedly for the sake of

00:25:04.940 | the freedom of the people, but nevertheless the cost of domesticating Scripture was far,

00:25:12.740 | far, far too high, and it ended up never pointing to Christ and the liberation that we have

00:25:18.180 | received from him.

00:25:21.260 | We have to remember that people have done this sort of thing with Scripture many, many,

00:25:25.980 | many times.

00:25:26.980 | At the time of the American Revolution, of course, there was a lot of usage of Scripture

00:25:31.640 | to justify the American Revolution.

00:25:34.500 | It was understandable, but it is an ironic fact that those who didn't want to revolt

00:25:45.260 | but who chose instead to remain faithful to the crown—they were called United Empire

00:25:49.900 | loyalists who traveled north into Canada to stay there instead—they had their sermons

00:25:55.620 | and tried to justify their abandoning the American cause and escaping into Canada by

00:26:00.960 | appealing to a whole lot of Scripture again, which reminds all of us that we must be careful

00:26:07.060 | in our application of Scripture to work first and foremost within the Bible storyline to

00:26:12.300 | see how things come to Christ before we draw applications that sometimes are shaped much

00:26:18.620 | more by praxis than by a humble and attendant reading of the Word of God.

00:26:23.660 | Amen.

00:26:24.660 | That is so good.

00:26:26.860 | From his home office, that was Dr. Don Carson, the co-founder and president of the Gospel

00:26:31.160 | Coalition and editor of the NIV Zondervan Study Bible, which is a study Bible version

00:26:35.500 | of what we're doing in these podcasts, which is generally called Biblical Theology.

00:26:40.740 | And if you want more on how Mark uses Exodus language to explain the life and the work

00:26:45.800 | of Christ, the work of Rick Watts was mentioned here.

00:26:49.740 | Rick wrote the notes in the Gospel of Mark in the NIV Zondervan Study Bible that I mentioned

00:26:55.140 | earlier, and those notes are really great and it's an affordable, easy way to go deeper

00:26:59.260 | into the fascinating theme of how the Exodus terminology from Isaiah gets worked out as

00:27:05.020 | Mark explains the life and work of Christ.

00:27:07.660 | Check it out.

00:27:08.660 | Well, next week is special for us because we have a pile of questions on the topic of

00:27:12.860 | transgenderism.

00:27:14.820 | It is growing in political momentum in the West.

00:27:17.660 | So where did it come from?

00:27:19.280 | How should we respond?

00:27:20.280 | I'll attempt to bring 10 of the best questions I have on the topic and we will talk with

00:27:24.420 | a leading pastor and theologian who is looking into the transgender movement today.

00:27:29.660 | You don't want to miss it.

00:27:30.660 | That's all next week on the podcast.

00:27:32.140 | For now, I'm your host Tony Reinke.

00:27:33.980 | Have a great weekend.

00:27:35.020 | [END]

00:27:35.520 | 1.

00:27:36.520 | Is there a difference between a transsexual and a non-transsexual?

00:27:37.520 | 2.

00:27:38.520 | Is it a political decision to be transsexual?

00:27:39.520 | 3.

00:27:40.520 | Is it a political decision to be non-transsexual?

00:27:40.520 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Exodus: Understanding One of the Bible’s Major Themes

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