"Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, let my people go." Such a classic movie moment from Charlton Heston playing Moses in the 1956 movie The Ten Commandments. The exodus of Israel out of Egypt is the greatest redemptive event in the Old Testament. Let that sink in for a moment.

If our publishing age is marked by the cross, it is because the cross is shorthand for the death and resurrection of Christ. His cross marks the centerpiece of redemptive history as we know it. But before the cross, there was the exodus. And so if the world of publishing today talks a lot about the cross-centered life and the cross-centered church, it would seem that a fitting analogy would be perhaps to imagine the Old Testament era saints to have had the impulse to write and publish books on the exodus-centered life and the exodus-centered synagogue.

It's a major key to understanding the Old Testament and it's a major key to unlocking the meaning of the entire biblical plotline. To explain, I called Dr. Don Carson. On occasional Fridays, I call him up as part of our relationship with our friends at The Gospel Coalition. Carson is the co-founder and president of The Gospel Coalition and also the editor of the NIV Zondervan Study Bible, which is the study Bible version of what we're doing in these occasional Friday podcasts.

I called up Dr. Carson, asked him to explain the exodus. Here's what he said. The exodus is simultaneously the escape of the people of God, the Israelites, from Egypt, the land of slavery. They exit out of slavery into the promised land. It's the exodus. And at the same time, it's a one-word way of referring to the events surrounding the exodus.

That includes, therefore, the judgment of God on the Egyptians, the plagues. It includes also, eventually, the giving of the law, the years of wilderness wanderings, and eventually, entrance into the promised land. So sometimes when people speak of the exodus, they are referring to the narrow event of the escape.

And sometimes they're referring to the much larger event that includes, for example, the giving of the law and the revelation of God at Sinai, and the whole Mosaic Code. So one has to be careful as to how the word is used in a particular theological context. What is clear is that in the Old Testament, the exodus is bound up with at least two huge controlling themes.

The first is that in some ways, this is the reconstitution of the Israelites. The beginning of the Hebrew-Israelite heritage is, of course, with Abraham. And God makes a covenant with him, which we have subsequently called the Abrahamic Covenant, which itself could be nicely traced through the Old Testament and into the New in a variety of ways.

But at that point, the land promises, for example, are still referring to things way off in the future. And even when Abraham does finally have a son, and the son begets two more sons, and one of them begets 12 patriarchs and so forth, yet this fledgling people is not in any sense a nation.

And before they become a nation, they end up in Egypt at the time of the famine, where in the providence of God, Joseph provides all the food they need, until hundreds of years later, they are enslaved, and they have never been a nation. So the exodus then reconstitutes them, as it were, but this time making them a nation.

So this is not only an exit from slavery and from Egypt, it is reconstituting the people with a new covenant, the Sinai Covenant, or the Mosaic Covenant, or the Law Covenant, as it's variously called, and gaining entrance into the Promised Land and the beginnings of their pilgrimage as a nation.

That's the first thing that is obvious right on the surface of the text. The second thing that is stunning is how the exodus controls a great deal of the discussion of the entire rest of the Old Testament. And for example, the way the Ten Commandments begin in Exodus chapter 20, "And God spoke all these words, 'I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.' And then the commandments begin, 'You shall have no other gods before me.'" So although the commandment to worship God and adhere to him is sometimes grounded in creation, God's sovereign, providential, kingly rule, he is their maker and their judge.

Here, in this case, it's grounded in their redemption, that is, their redemption from slavery. And that becomes the basis for a very large number of prophetic appeals for psalmic meditation and so on. And it's striking that God has freed them, he has led them out, and on that basis, then, he then gives them law and instruction.

It's not that he gives them instruction and if they obey the law adequately, then God will spare them. He reaches down sovereignly and saves them, in fact, from slavery and leads them out. And in the course of doing so, then, says, "I am the God who has freed you from the land of slavery.

Here, then, is the covenant I impose. Here is the contract, as it were, the covenant that I make." And that way of thinking returns again and again and again. In every part of Scripture, I have in front of me literally scores of passages that I've accumulated over the years on that point.

Let me pick up just a couple of them so that you can get a feel for this. Here is Psalm 77, beginning at 13. "Your ways, God, are holy. What God is as great as our God? You are the God who performs miracles. You display your power among the peoples.

With your mighty arm, you redeemed your people." That's a reference to the Exodus. "The descendants of Jacob and Joseph. The waters saw you, God. The waters saw you and writhed. The very depths were convulsed. The clouds poured down water. The heavens resounded with thunder. Your arrows flashed back and forth.

Your thunder was heard in the whirlwind. Your lightning lit up the world. The earth trembled and quaked. Your path led through the sea. Your way through the mighty waters, though your footprints were not seen. You led your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron." The specificity of Moses and Aaron and leading the people through the mighty waters and that sort of thing is transparently referring to the crossing of the Red Sea and the like.

And that sort of thing happens again and again and again. That's Psalm 77. Psalm 78 has a similar passage. But then prophetic warnings can be cast with reference to the Exodus likewise. For example, in Jeremiah 7, 21, this is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says, "Go ahead, add your burnt offerings to your other sacrifices and eat the meat yourselves.

For when I brought your ancestors out of Egypt and spoke to them, I did not just give them commands about burnt offerings and sacrifices, but I gave them this command, 'Obey me and I will be your God and you will be my people. Walk in obedience to all I command you that it may go well with you.' But they did not listen or pay attention.

Instead they followed the stubborn inclinations of their evil hearts. They went backward and not forward. From the time your ancestors left Egypt until now, day after day, again and again, I sent you my servants, the prophets, but they did not listen to me or pay attention. They were stiff-necked and did more evil than their ancestors." And so on and so on.

You find similar passages in Isaiah and Ezekiel and in the minor prophets and so forth. And then later on, when it's a question of coming back from the exile, the exile being a kind of, the return from exile being a kind of mini-Exodus all over again, then in the prayers of confession in Nehemiah, for example, Nehemiah chapter 9, again there's reference back to the Exodus as the great redemptive turning point in the people's history from which they have strayed.

So the Exodus is the greatest redemptive event in the Old Testament to which all subsequent Old Testament revelation points again and again and again. And sometimes it's, the references are in elusive language. There's the very famous passage, of course, from Hosea chapter 11, "Out of Egypt I called my son." The first reference there, of course, is quite clearly to Israel.

As early as Daniel chapter, as Exodus chapter 4, God says, "Israel is my firstborn son." And I say, "Let my son go." That is in the Exodus, that he may worship me. And then centuries later, Hosea records God's words, "Out of Egypt I called my son," looking back on the event.

So that's all part of the background that dominates the Old Testament storyline before you get to the New Testament. Then in the New Testament, it's not long before this is picked up. In Matthew chapter 2, for example, Jesus is transported down to Egypt by his mother and his stand-in father, escaping the wrath of Herod, and then eventually returns.

And this, we're told, fulfills the word, "Out of Egypt have I called my son," referring to Hosea chapter 11. And what is being established there is what might be called an Israel typology. The ultimate Israel is Jesus himself. And that's why, for example, in Matthew chapter 4, when Jesus is led by the Spirit into the desert to be tempted by the devil, he quotes Deuteronomy two or three times.

In one passage, for example, he says, "Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God." That, of course, is directly from Deuteronomy chapter 8, given to the people of Israel. The people of Israel heard that word, but unfortunately did not value God's word even more highly than their own food.

But Jesus, the ultimate Israel, does. And so Jesus turns out to be, in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the ultimate Adam, but also the ultimate Israel, and also the ultimate David. And on the Israel side, then, quite clearly to apply Hosea chapter 11, 1 to him, means that the son language is purposely being used in a slightly different way.

Or the most striking passage is perhaps Luke chapter 9, verse 31. This is the account in Luke's Gospel of the Transfiguration, Luke 9, 28 and following. And as part of that spectacular event, we're told, "Two men," verse 30, "Moses and Elijah, appeared in glorious splendor, talking with Jesus. They spoke about his departure." The word is exodus.

And there are other ways of talking about departure. To speak of this as the exodus is meant to be evocative. It's meant to call the biblically literate reader's mind back to the exodus. So Jesus, as the ultimate Israel, is going to depart. He's going to leave. He's going to exit.

And we begin to see what it means to bear 20 verses later, when in 9.51 we read, "As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven," that's his departure, "through the cross, the burial, the resurrection, and the ascension." Taken up to heaven. As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem.

And then from there on, and this is chapter 9, you're barely a third of the way through the Book of Luke. From there on, you're reminded five times that Jesus has resolutely set his face to Jerusalem. It's sometimes called Luke's travel narrative. And that is put in your face again and again and again until he arrives in Jerusalem in chapter 19.

And so that everything that is said and done, all the parables, all the miracles, everything that is said and done is under the impending, anticipated exodus. His travel to Jerusalem means he is heading for the cross, the resurrection, the ascension. His exodus as the true Israel, taking his people, as it were, in triumphant array into the new heaven and the new earth.

So this becomes part of the way of thinking of Christ as the one who effects our exodus, likewise from sin and judgment, and bringing us into the promised land. And that's why, without even pausing for a blink of an eye, the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 5, 6 and following, can say, "Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed for us." Well, the Passover, of course, is what takes place at the time of the exodus.

The people of God are instructed to sacrifice the Passover lamb, put the blood of the lamb on the doorposts and the lintel. Those in the house are safe, but everywhere else, families lose their firstborn son. Now Christ is our Passover in that he is guaranteed that the angel of wrath, the destruction of right judgment, passes over us because Christ is born in our place.

This is an exodus theme. And then sometimes the exodus theme plays out slightly differently. In 1 Corinthians chapter 10 and in Hebrews 3, 7 and following, we discover that the people of God at the time of the exodus, the Israelites, constitute a kind of moralizing lesson for us. They escaped from, but they did not get into.

That is, God rescued them from the land of slavery. But that first generation, 20 and older, they died in the desert because of unbelief and disobedience. So they never did get into the promised land. It was the next generation that got into the promised land. And so both 1 Corinthians 10 and Hebrews 3 draws an applicable moralizing point for the people of God today.

Make sure that you persevere to the end. Don't fall away for lack of perseverance. Hebrews 3, 14 goes so far as to say that we are made sharers in Christ. We are truly Christians if we hold our beginning confidence, our beginning conviction, our beginning faith steadfastly to the end, which is precisely what so many of the Israelites did not do at the time of the exodus.

So there are all of these sorts of connections. But now, of course, the New Testament Christians look back at their great redemptive event, even greater by far than the event of the first exodus, namely the cross, resurrection, and ascension, which is the exodus of Jesus himself as the ultimate Israel in whom we, the people of God, Jew and Gentile alike, are caught up.

Let me mention two things. This theme shows up in not only specific texts like the ones I've mentioned, and I've mentioned only a small handful of them, but in subtle ways. For example, in Mark's Gospel, there was for many, many decades an ongoing, lingering debate about whether Mark constantly refers elusively to the exodus of the Old Testament.

And one side said, "Yes, yes, the themes are transparently there. They're on the surface of the text." And the other side said, "Yes, but every time that he seems to be talking about these exodus themes, in fact, he could use the language of the Old Testament, the Greek Septuagint, he could use that language, but in fact, he seems almost to avoid it.

He writes his own way, choosing his own words. If he really wants to make an allusion to the Old Testament exodus narrative, why doesn't he use the actual words drawn from exodus?" And so the debate went back and forth. But a friend of mine nailed it. It was about 20 years ago now.

He did a doctoral dissertation at Cambridge. His name was Ricky Watts. And what he shows, in my view, very convincingly, is that the exodus themes are truly there, but the language is Isaiah's. That is, Isaiah picks up on the exodus theme again and again and again, sometimes referring to it in the past, and sometimes using it as a way of talking about the impending exile, where because of sin the people are going to be cast out of the land again and be drawn back by God.

This is all exodus motif, but now in Isaiah's words. And when Mark refers to the exodus themes, he does so repeatedly, using Isaiah's words. And what that suggests, then, is that, born along by the Spirit of God, Mark, in writing Scripture, is thinking profoundly, he's thinking in a way that we would call biblical theological.

He's seeing the trajectories in Scripture himself, and he's choosing to use the words of Isaiah, knowing full well that they're referring back, in the first instance, all the way to the exodus itself. And that becomes the matrix out of which he talks about what Christ is doing. In other words, these trajectories that we find through Scripture, by the time you get to the New Testament, you find again and again that the New Testament writers themselves have seen the trajectories and are working from them, thinking about them, using language that reflects them, and so on.

So that all of these things become ultimately a spectacular way of anticipating and pointing to the greatest redemption from slavery imaginable, as God's people are prepared by Christ's exodus to enter into the promised land of the new heaven and the new earth, the home of righteousness. The last thing I'll mention is that this exodus theme has, in the last 40 years, been used in another way that we should at least be aware of.

It's not nearly as dominant now as it once was, but in an era of global theology, it's still pretty important. About 40 years ago, there was, first of all in Latin America, then it spread elsewhere, the rise of what came to be called "liberation theology." It was promulgated by a number of Spanish-speaking, occasionally Portuguese-speaking, largely Catholic, somewhat liberal theologians.

They saw the injustices in the land, the extreme poverty, the corruption, and so on, and they looked for biblical warrants to escape all of this, and they settled on the exodus. This included people like Gustavo Gutierrez, a chap called José Bonino, and a number of others, some of whose works were eventually published in English, although some of them remained only in Spanish.

They started Bible studies and action groups and so on, largely in the Catholic Church, in terms of what they call themselves "liberation theology," a theology of liberation. What they meant by this was that the account of God saving his people from slavery at the time of the exodus ought to become a kind of paradigm event for the people of Latin America to escape their oppression and slavery at the hands of endless, petty dictators and corrupt politicians and governments and so on.

And if you ask them, "What warrants you choosing that particular story? Why are you basing all of your theology on the exodus account?" Then their argument was what they called "praxis." That is, this is where we are in our life, and the demands of where we are must be aligned most closely with a biblical account that gives us hope and a pattern for escape.

And so the ultimate control of what story prevails to warrant liberation theology is itself not shaped by reading Scripture as a whole, but shaped by the experience of the people by praxis. And eventually, evangelicals were a little late to get into that discussion, but eventually there was some serious reflection upon it.

The question can be raised, "What warrants that story?" as opposed to, let's say, the story that's taking place at the time of Jeremiah, where what God is telling the people through the prophet Jeremiah is, "Stay where you are. Don't rebel. The Babylonians that are oppressing you and taking over, they are God's messengers to chastise you.

Don't rebel against them, because then the destruction of Jerusalem will be all the worse." And so the question then becomes, biblically, what warrants choosing the Exodus account, where you end up with liberation, versus the Jeremiah account, where you end up being told to stay where you are, and if you head for liberation, you're rebelling against God Almighty.

And the answer again and again was simply praxis. But what was seen eventually by a lot of evangelicals who were wrestling with these things was that the Exodus account needs to be put within the framework of the entire biblical storyline, a whole biblical theology. And the ultimate liberation is achieved by that to which the Exodus points, namely, Christ himself.

Otherwise, one can go through the Scripture and pick up a story that seems to fit best my circumstances and merely apply it without further thought, without seeing what other stories might apply that seem to run in a different direction. In other words, the stories of Scripture have to be fit within the context of the Bible's storyline itself.

Otherwise, we're constantly controlling Scripture by focusing on our situation and randomly taking passages and applying them to ourselves. So in this connection, the proper use of Exodus is shaped not only by how Exodus functions in the Old Testament, but how it's picked up and is completed by what is disclosed in the New Testament.

Even in the Old Testament, however, the Exodus account looks a bit different from what Gutierrez and Bonino were arguing for. After all, God takes action for his people in the Exodus. They seem rather slow to latch on. Every time there's a discouragement, they're ready to abandon ship. It's not as if the people were incited to revolution and revolt and thus kick off into some new adventure and seek out a promised land.

Rather, God reaches down and saves them, which is not exactly what Gutierrez and Bonino had in mind. So, in other words, they were domesticating the Scripture, admittedly for the sake of the freedom of the people, but nevertheless the cost of domesticating Scripture was far, far, far too high, and it ended up never pointing to Christ and the liberation that we have received from him.

We have to remember that people have done this sort of thing with Scripture many, many, many times. At the time of the American Revolution, of course, there was a lot of usage of Scripture to justify the American Revolution. It was understandable, but it is an ironic fact that those who didn't want to revolt but who chose instead to remain faithful to the crown—they were called United Empire loyalists who traveled north into Canada to stay there instead—they had their sermons and tried to justify their abandoning the American cause and escaping into Canada by appealing to a whole lot of Scripture again, which reminds all of us that we must be careful in our application of Scripture to work first and foremost within the Bible storyline to see how things come to Christ before we draw applications that sometimes are shaped much more by praxis than by a humble and attendant reading of the Word of God.

Amen. That is so good. From his home office, that was Dr. Don Carson, the co-founder and president of the Gospel Coalition and editor of the NIV Zondervan Study Bible, which is a study Bible version of what we're doing in these podcasts, which is generally called Biblical Theology. And if you want more on how Mark uses Exodus language to explain the life and the work of Christ, the work of Rick Watts was mentioned here.

Rick wrote the notes in the Gospel of Mark in the NIV Zondervan Study Bible that I mentioned earlier, and those notes are really great and it's an affordable, easy way to go deeper into the fascinating theme of how the Exodus terminology from Isaiah gets worked out as Mark explains the life and work of Christ.

Check it out. Well, next week is special for us because we have a pile of questions on the topic of transgenderism. It is growing in political momentum in the West. So where did it come from? How should we respond? I'll attempt to bring 10 of the best questions I have on the topic and we will talk with a leading pastor and theologian who is looking into the transgender movement today.

You don't want to miss it. That's all next week on the podcast. For now, I'm your host Tony Reinke. Have a great weekend. 1. Is there a difference between a transsexual and a non-transsexual? 2. Is it a political decision to be transsexual? 3. Is it a political decision to be non-transsexual?