Have you ever noticed the similarities between the Exodus of Israel and the Resurrection of Jesus? Where the Israelites looked to the Exodus story as the moment God save them, Jesus came and made a new salvation story, one that set all of humanity free from sin and brought us into an eternal promised land with Jesus as our King!
I love the hope and excitement of Easter and its focus on life and salvation! Good Friday is dark and ominous, but Easter is a VICTORY CELEBRATION! Our God has defeated our enemy, Satan, and his sin and death! We can be Free at Last!
Today we finish our ten-week series in Exodus with the story of the Red Sea crossing. I planned this series to end today, on Resurrection Sunday, even though you may wonder what the Red Sea has to do with Easter. Today we’ll see how Jesus’s resurrection from the dead and walking out of his tomb is an Easter Exodus, a departure from death to eternal life.
Over the past nine weeks we have seen how God faithfully multiplied Israel into a great nation, just as he had promised Abraham over 400 years earlier. We watched as God heard the cries of his oppressed people and responded by calling Moses to lead them out of Egypt. We have seen how God controlled the entire story, including Pharaoh’s heart, to set the stage for the ten plagues leading to the utter defeat of the Egyptians and the release of the Israelites into freedom to worship their God.
Exodus and Red Sea Crossing
The story of the Israelites’ actual late night departure from Egypt appears in Exodus chapter 14. God does not take them directly to the land of Canaan. He feels they won’t be ready for warfare against the people who currently reside in the Promised Land. He has more lessons to teach them.
God leads the Israelites with a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire at night. To bait Pharaoh, He leads them in circles for a while, turning them back toward where they came from. They camp beside the Red Sea.
Pharaoh’s messengers tell him of the Israelites’ wanderings, and he changes his mind about letting them go free, He can’t believe he let all those slaves go, and he leads his powerful military forces off to bring them back.
When the Israelites see the chariots of Pharaoh approaching, they respond like we have come to expect: with instant dread and regret.
Exodus 14:11 – They said to Moses, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to this desert to die?”
However, God didn’t bring His people this far to lose them in the desert! He moves His presence from the front of the group to the back, protecting them from the rear. He causes darkness for the Egyptians and light for the Israelites. As the Egyptians find themselves in total darkness, unable to continue their pursuit, do you think any of them saw the similarity to the ninth plague?
In this moment, God has Moses raise his staff. The waters part. The land is dry. The Israelites cross. God then removes his protection from the rear of the column and the Egyptians pursue the Israelites. They get more than they asked for! God causes chaos in the middle of the sea. The chariots that so terrified the Israelites begin to come apart. Wheels fall off. The soldiers finally realize the truth of the situation.
Exodus 14:25 – “Let’s get away from the Israelites! The Lord is fighting for them against Egypt.”
But it is much too late! God has Moses raise his staff again. The waters return, creating a watery grave for all the Egyptian army. This is another reminder of the watery grave Pharaoh created for countless Israelite babies years earlier.
And that’s the account of how God utterly humiliated and defeated Israel’s enemy. He provided full salvation for His firstborn child. The story concludes with these verses:
But the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground, with a wall of water on their right and on their left. That day the Lord saved Israel from the hands of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians lying dead on the shore. And when the Israelites saw the mighty hand of the Lord displayed against the Egyptians, the people feared the Lord and put their trust in Him and in Moses His servant.
Exodus 14:29-31
I’m sure we all came to church this morning expecting to hear an Easter message. Are you still wondering how Exodus and Easter are connected? Let’s look at the life of Jesus and listen for the similarities between His life and the Exodus account of the freeing of Israel.
God sent His son, Jesus, to this earth because He saw that all humans were slaves to sin. We were oppressed by our enemy, Satan, who, like Pharaoh, wants us to worship him as a god.
Jesus is set apart to lead the Israelites into the truth that the Kingdom of God was near. At His baptism the miraculous voice of God confirms that this is His Son, whom He loves. It may not be a burning bush as it was with Moses, but God has clearly appointed His chosen deliverer.
Early in His ministry Jesus calls His twelve disciples – a rag-tag group of guys who follow Him around but who often miss what He is doing (exactly like the Israelites). While Jesus has the big picture in mind, the disciples see only what is right in front of them.
The Israelites were finally saved once and for all when Moses raised his staff and parted the Red Sea, creating a way of escape for them. We experience salvation once and for all because Jesus’s body was raised up on a cross, making a way for each of us to cross over from a life of bondage and slavery to sin to a life of freedom and abundance.
This cosmic battle between Jesus and Satan, much like the battle between God and Pharaoh, comes to a grand climax in the arrest, trial, and death of Jesus, the firstborn Son of God.
This Easter Exodus carries a tremendous amount of grief and pain. As Pharaoh experienced the death of his son in the final plague, God watches as His Son takes on the sin of the world and is murdered.
God intended this connection between the Exodus (the story of God’s power for over a thousand years, described over a dozen times in the Old Testament) and Jesus’s Easter Exodus through His death and resurrection.
Jesus Himself tied these events together. At the famous Transfiguation, when Peter, James and John saw a glimpse of the heavenly realm and heard Moses and Elijah talking with Jesus, this is what they heard:
Luke 9:31 – They spoke about His departure, which He was about to bring to fulfillment at Jerusalem.
The word used here for “departure” is the same word used for “Exodus.” The Apostles’ ears must have perked up when Jesus spoke of the Exodus He would soon bring to fulfillment.
At our Good Friday service, as we remembered those dark days, we saw how Jesus’s disciples felt like all their hopes were dashed when their rabbi was hanged on a cross. The Israelites felt the same way when their requests for freedom were repeatedly denied. But in both cases, God had planned a surprising victory! They didn’t know God was using a horrible moment for His own glory.
Just as God baited Pharaoh into pursuing the fleeing Israelites, He gives Satan a sense of victory when Jesus is murdered on the tree. I’m sure there was much rejoicing in Hell on Friday and Saturday. But, on the third day, God turns the tables on Satan when Jesus emerges from the grave!
He has set all who died before Him free to enter the eternal promised land. He has split in two the huge curtain that hangs in the temple to separate people from the presence of God. He has allowed us all to now enter into God’s presence for ourselves. He has made a way for us to have confidence that we, too, will pass from life to eternal life as we follow our Savior, Jesus Christ.
Jesus, in His Easter Exodus, does much more than Moses did in leading the Israelites out of Egypt! He leads all of humanity from the slavery of sin and the oppression of death into an eternal promised land of life with our Savior and King. We look forward to the day when we follow Jesus into the next life – one filled with peace, joy and love.
The Israelites passed their Exodus story down to their children for generations. The story is fulfilled and extended in Jesus; so now, each Easter, we tell our children this bigger story of God saving us.
One Smaller Story Inside the Grand Story
We all have now heard about the incredible, miraculous, saving hand of God working on our behalf. The question is, how do we respond? Do you remember the Israelites’ reaction to God’s saving work?
Exodus 14:31 – And when the Israelites saw the mighty hand of the Lord displayed against the Egyptians, the people feared the Lord and put their trust in Him and in Moses His servant.
They chose to put their trust in God and in His representative, Moses. We have a similar but slightly different decision to make after hearing about the resurrection and Jesus’s Easter Exodus to an eternal promised land. Will you trust in the Lord and in Jesus, His servant?
Some of you decided long ago to follow Jesus through the empty tomb to salvation. I urge you never to grow tired of the story of God’s salvation for us. The Israelites sang songs of praise to God for His deliverance; we sing over and over again in our churches about the resurrection of Jesus. We keep reminding ourselves of God’s amazing miracle of salvation through His Son.
Others of you have to decide whether you will stay where you are, comfortable in what you know, or get out of your rut and cross into the life Jesus has made available to you. When the Israelites thought they were goners, rather than looking forward, they wondered if maybe they should have stayed in Egypt! Many people aren’t willing to leave what is familiar even though they know their lives are not working. Perhaps your journey with Jesus has looked a little like the Israelites wandering in the wilderness – moving back and forth, toward God and away from God. It’s not uncommon for many of us to travel a similar path as God delivers us from our mess.
If we are brutally honest with ourselves in our quiet hours, most of us realize that life on our own terms is not working out. We recognize we are stuck, reliving patterns that fail to lead us to lasting joy. So we cry out – sometimes to God, and sometimes we don’t know who we’re calling to. We just know we need help.
Here’s what you need to know: God hears your cries for help. He heard the Israelites, and He responded. He knew the Jews of Jesus’s day were crushed by the obligations of the Law. And He knows you, too, are helplessly in need of something more than you can produce for yourself.
The problem is that so often, after you take small steps toward God, something happens that derails you. Let’s be honest; we’ve all been there. We’ve all felt like we were walking toward God and then something made us veer wide right. Pharaoh repeatedly crushed the Israelites’ dreams of freedom. After Jesus was arrested, Peter denied him three times.
We all have our low moments, but none of that derails God’s plans. He was going to set the Israelites free. He was going to defeat death through His son, Jesus. And God accepts your faith, small as it may be, because He loves you and wants to spend eternity with you.
Easter is all about salvation. The Exodus was a moment of salvation for the Israelites; and Jesus’s resurrection offers a moment of salvation for all humanity – for you and me. In both instances, God defeats the enemy. He crushes Pharaoh and the Egyptians and takes the power of sin and death away from Satan. Our victorious God sets us Free at Last!
Each of us needs our own moment of salvation – that moment of decision when we recognize that our own power is too small and we need the power of God to work in our lives. Praise God for His magnificent power! The waters parted. The tomb opened. God has graciously done all the hard work. All you have to do is accept the invitation to follow Jesus.
That’s what the Exodus and Easter are all about: God’s redeeming work to set His people free!
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