THE 1310 Lecture 13

« previous | Friday, September 27, 2019 | next »

"Let My People Go"

• Fatherhood of God Revealed in Exodus 4
  • "Israel is my son, my firstborn"
• freedom not a rescue/humanitarian mission
  • for the sake of encountering God in the wilderness
  • restoration of creation to its proper order
• First reaction of Israelites is to believe, but they drift away later
  • Pharaoh gives more work when asked to let them go
    • views them as "lazy" - he wants them to be cogs in his construction machine
    • deprives them of even more time they would've otherwise had
  • God reinstates covenant promise
    • people are dejected and don't listen (Ex 6:9)

Plagues

• God will exercise his authority over all things
• This is a battle between demons and God with his angels
  • Pharaoh's magicians do some supernatural stuff: "dark forces"
  • Unable to keep up at a later point
• God kills off each of the Egyptian gods one by one
  • Establishing a hierarchy of right-ordered worship
• Last of the plagues
  • darkness: defeat of Ra, the sun god
  • death of firstborn: defeat of Pharaoh himself
    • not enough to strike down Pharaoh, but he had to watch his lineage die
    • battle over the firstborn: Israel

Passover

God will "execute judgment over all the gods of Egypt" (Ex 12:12)

• Finale of the plagues, everything culminates to this
• Instructions
  • Find a 1 yr old male lamb without blemish
  • Slaughter it
  • Apply its blood to doorposts and lentil
    • hyssop, the branch re-used throughout scripture for sprinkling and "being made clean"
  • Eat its flesh with unleavened bread and bitter herbs
    • "Not a bone of it shall be broken"
• Communal act
  • Established as part of identity
    • no one may partake unless circumcised
  • "day of remembrance" forever—not just until the Messiah (Ex 12:14)