Exodus directly challenges the idea that God does everything for humanity’s sake. Humans are not the ultimate purpose of creation. God’s own glory is!

God’s Work in Exodus

On Sunday mornings at our church, we generally study smaller sections of Scripture than an entire book like Exodus. But some things can only be seen from a great height. So from time to time we divert from spending multiple weeks in one book in order to have what we call “overview sermons.” Right now, we are in a series of five such studies on the first five books of the Bible. Here, we look at the second book, the book of Exodus. We will not consider just one text in Exodus, but we’ll jump around the book, taking in as much as we can. In order to help us, I offer a thesis sentence that has arisen from my own reading of Exodus over this last week and that will give focus to our investigation. This study has three points and, as you’ll see, each point will provide a part of our thesis sentence and will state something positively about God’s work. We will also find that each point challenges some misconception that people often have about God.

1. God Works Sovereignly

We begin with point one: God works sovereignly. In essence, Exodus challenges the common notion that God is passive. How many times have you heard God presented as a resource or power for improving your life, should you decide to use him? God is not a passive God at all. In Genesis, he creates the world out of nothing. He judges the world through the Flood. He calls Abraham and then fulfils his promise to give Abraham children, despite age and barrenness. And then the amazing story of Joseph occurs. Do you remember Joseph’s statement to his brothers? “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good” (Gen. 50:20).

In Exodus, the great story of God working sovereignly continues. We see this in many ways throughout this book, but perhaps we see it most clearly in the lives of the book’s two main human opponents: Moses and Pharaoh.

2. God Works Sovereignly to Save a Special People

But that is not all of what we are supposed to observe. We are also supposed to observe that God works sovereignly (now let’s add a little bit to the sentence to make our second point) to save a special people. That is transparently what God is doing in this story.

Exodus challenges the common notion that God treats all people in the same way, or that God is a committed egalitarian. No, that is not the story in Exodus. God is certainly fair; he is the standard of justice. But God does mysteriously and graciously choose to extend mercy to some. And no one can require mercy from him. It is his mercy. From a foundation of utter fairness, God chooses to extend mercy.

God works sovereignly to save a special people. That is what this book says. I hope you see that. But we will not finally understand the message of Exodus unless we see one more crucial point.

3. God Works Sovereignly to Save a Special People for His Own Glory

God works sovereignly to save a special people for his own glory. Above all else, throughout Exodus, God aims to display his own glory. But you will learn this only by reading the book itself. Every popular retelling or movie about the Exodus, from Cecil B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments to The Prince of Egypt, misses this entirely. Usually, the Hebrew people are presented as types of American colonists or African-American slaves. Moses is some combination of Washington and Jefferson, Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln, liberator and lawgiver, concerned above all else for human liberty. But this story is not primarily about human liberty. It may have a few implications that tend in that direction, but that is not the point of this book.

In fact, Exodus directly challenges the idea that God does everything for humanity’s sake. Humans are not the ultimate purpose of creation. God’s own glory is!

The Main Point

Let’s take one more quick tour through the book to make sure that you get its main point. The whole book, you could say, is about God establishing his own fame! You see it everywhere. If you have never noticed these statements before, I think it will change the way you read Exodus, and perhaps your whole Bible.

Why does God call Moses to bring the Israelites out of Egypt in the first place? “I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians” (Ex. 6:7). God’s purpose is for the Israelites to recognize Yahweh as their God.¹

Why does God harden Pharaoh’s heart, causing him to oppose God’s own plans?

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