February 2 I Saturday

Exodus 29-30

Matthew 21:23-46

“So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land…”   —Exodus 3:8

The story of the exodus is the most repeated story in the Bible. Exodus means “the road out,” and from beginning to end, the Israelite journey out of Egyptian captivity into freedom is a foreshadowing of the Christian life. Under the leadership of Moses, God liberates in excess of two million people from one of the most fortified cities in the world. After 400 years of bondage, the Hebrew people leave the shackles of slavery behind and walk into freedom. Historically and spiritually, the miraculous exodus of God’s chosen people draws remarkable parallels to our lives today.

  Historically, the exodus is a documented record of a particular people in a place and time. Spiritually, it is about God’s intervention in liberating men, women and children from the bondage of sin. It is the story of Israel and their release from slavery, which depicts our lives today and our release from sin. It is about a journey into Canaan, a land flowing with milk and honey, which is a portrayal of our journey into the fullness of our inheritance in Christ.

  God provides not only a road out, but a road in—deliverance from something to something and for something. One picture that Scripture commonly gives of the natural state of human beings is slavery. Our real problem is not what we do, but what we are, which is embodied in the old sin principle called “the flesh.” It is the corruption of the human heart which, apart from God, drives the way we live and act.

Through Jesus Christ, we are given the road out and the road in. God’s purpose for Israel was to bring His people into a land flowing with milk and honey where they would enjoy the riches of Canaan under His sovereignty. This illustrates what we experience when Christ is Lord of our lives. Canaan represents the resources we are given in a loving and wholesome relationship with Christ. It was a land of rest, but like Israel, we may fail to enter it. It was an 11-day journey from Egypt to the Promised Land, but it took Israel 40 years of wandering in the wilderness to get there. The people trusted God to deliver them from, but they did not equally trust Him to deliver them to.

Perhaps some of us feel we are also wandering like Israel. We are thankful for the road out of slavery to sin that Jesus’s death on the cross provides, yet we fail to walk the road in to His sufficiency and rest. The exodus of Israel is a phenomenal story, but it is an even greater reminder of the freedom and life to be found in Christ.

Prayer: Almighty God, You are my deliverer. Thank You for bringing me out of bondage to sin, and help me rest in your sufficiency. In Jesus’s name.