The Whole Deal in a Nutshell

In the beginning, God created all things good, but humans didn't live according to how God meant them to live. They rebelled against God, and we call this rebellion "sin." When sin entered the world, it began to grow, fracturing our relationships and communities, eventually building an empire of itself. But God did not abandon his creation to destruction and decay, and promised to restore this broken world. As part of this promise, God chose a people, Abraham and his descendants, to represent him in the world. He blessed them and instructed them to use that blessing to bless others. It is Abraham's descendants who we find enslaved in Egypt. One of the greatest events in this redemptive story is the Exodus, when God rescued the Israelites from their slavery under an Egyptian empire.

The Egyptians oppressed the Isrealites as slaves and ruled over them ruthlessly in order to protect the empire. The Egyptians placed slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor. This is a key example in the Biblical story of sin manifesting itself in the form of empire. God heard the cry of the Israelites and liberated them from their oppressor. He took them out of Egypt and into the desert. This liberation from oppression under Egypt is a central, defining moment in history where God inaugurated his plan for restoring the world.

God brought the Israelites to Mt. Sinai out in the wilderness, where he spoke to them and came to dwell among them as a husband dwells with his new bride. God chose this group of people to become his flesh and blood, calling them to become a kingdom of priest and a holy nation where they would use their blessings to bless others. He did this so the whole world might come to know the one true living God.

The Jewish people reached Jerusalem, the land which God had promised them, and built a temple to honor God. For a while, God dwelt in the temple, they lived out their mission to bless others with their wealth and influence, and they upheld justice and righteousness. The Jewish people eventually misconstrued their belssing with favortism. They misused their wealth to preserve their kingdom, allowed foreign gods into the land, overlooked the poor, and mistreated foreigners. God sent prophets to call the Jewish people to look at how they were treating the oppressed and marginalized as in indicator of how they were living out God's will while calling them to repentance for their sin of misusing their blessing. The Jewish people didn't listen.

Because of their sin, the Jewish people were attacked by foreign empires and were taken as exiles to Babylon. In Babylon, they were again oppressed by a foreign empire. While they were exiled in Babylon, the Jewish people started to imagine, "What would it be like if we could be given all our wealth and influence back? What if we actually used our priviledge to bless others as God intended? What if we could get it right?" They repented of their sin, and soon afterward they were given the chance to return to Israel. They returned to Israel and immediately went to work rebuilding the temple; however, they were still under the rule of foreign empires. During this time, their hopes began to center around a messiah who would lead a New Exodus, re-establishing their kindgom.

So the Old Testament comes to a sputtering stop with a group of people crying out for a messiah to come. But God didn't respond right away. He was silent. But that silence was filled with expectancy that God would send a messiah who would lead a New Exodus. That was what the Jewish people were expecting and hoping for during the time of Jesus. The New Testament then picks up with stories about the birth of Jesus. Then Jesus began his public ministry as a Jewish rabbi. And at the ouset of his ministry, Jesus' main message was that "the kingdom of God is here." This statement was obviously loaded for the Jewish people, and they heard him saying that he would liberate them from foreign rule, that he would lead a New Exodus. He promised that a New Jerusalem would someday come when God will wipe away every tear from our eyes and restore all of creation. There will be no more crying out from oppression.

Today, Egypt can be seen as a picture of what we're all born into. We're all born into oppression by sin. We're born with a sinful nature that pulls us, distorts things and takes us in directions that are destructive to us. Every single human being is born into bondage to sin. God wants to liberate us from sin, and he has a plan to do this. In the same way that the Jewish people were called by God to use their wealth and influence to bless those who need it most, so God has called the Church to do the same, to be his flesh and blood - his body - in the world, so the Church is called the Body of Christ. When we begin to use our resources, energy and power to preserve our own comfort and empire, we are sinning. Eventually, our sin will cause us to lose our power, wealth and influence. And God's plan for blessing the world will be lost for a time.
The reason we study the Exodus is because we want to understand who Jesus is and what he's doing. He wants to liberate the world from physical, spiritual and cultural bondage. Most of us have been given great wealth, talent and energy. And God wants us to share it with others who don't have enough. What if the Church began to understand that God wants to fix this entire planet?