My daughter is learning in elementary school about recognizing a story’s theme or purpose. She moved past identifying characters, setting, storyline, and plot, and now she’s learning to identify key themes within a story or the larger purpose of it.
It’s not only something we’ve done with stories she reads or movies we watch, but it’s something I ask on the drive home after church on Sundays. For both kids, they can retell me what their Sunday school teacher talked about, but it’s often harder for them to answer the why behind it. Yes, the walls of Jericho fell, but what’s the greater point being taught? The kings of Israel worshipped false gods, but what’s the purpose of the story being told?
It’s a helpful skill for reading books, watching movies, or listening to sermons and lessons.
In most passages of Scripture, you can boil the overarching point of a story or passage by answering these two questions. What is God revealing about Himself? How are we meant to respond to God in light of that revelation?
The Point of Exodus 6-14
Our church is preaching through the ten plagues. This week, I’m preaching on Exodus 12-13 and the Passover (the final plague). The Passover and the Red Sea Crossing should be held together as one event—similar to the cross and resurrection of Jesus. But all of Exodus so far has been leading to this moment. It is the culmination of God’s command to Moses to confront Pharoah and demand he set Israel free (Exodus 6).
The plagues that then take place not only bring judgment on Pharoah, Egypt, and their false gods, but they are a demonstration of God’s unrivaled power and glory. The plagues prove God is the true and living God. They humble the hardened Pharoah until he finally fears Israel’s God enough to let them go.
The section of narrative from Exodus 6-14 restates the purpose behind the plagues, the Passover, and even the Red Sea Crossing multiple times. You don’t have to be a mastermind of literature to notice the repetition. God lays out clearly the overarching, ultimate purpose of it all.
God does all these things, so that:
- Israel will know that I am the LORD your God (Ex. 6:7)
- Egypt will know that I am the LORD (7:5, 17; 14:4, 18)
- Pharoah may know there is no one like the LORD our God (8:10)
- Pharoah may know that I am the Lord in the midst of the earth (8:22)
- Pharoah may know that there is no one like me in all the earth (9:14)
- To show God’s power and so His name may be proclaimed in all the earth (9:16). [Romans 9:17-23 highlights God’s divine purpose of magnifying His glory through Pharoah, the plagues, the Passover, and Red Sea Crossing.]
- Pharoah may know that the earth is the Lord’s (9:29)
- Israel may know that I am the LORD (10:2)
- Pharoah may know that the LORD makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel (11:7)
- I will execute judgments; [demonstrating] I am the Lord (12:12)
- I will get glory over Pharaoh and all his host, and the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord (14:4, 18)
The phrases vary slightly, but they’re all saying that God put His glory and power on display so that all people would know that He alone is God.
God judges Pharoah and Egypt and sets Israel free. He teaches Israel about their need for God’s gracious gift of a sacrificial, spotless lamb to die in their place. He calls them to live by faith, to trust God completely, to believe His promises, and to follow Him out of Egypt into the freedom He provides. But in all these things, God proclaims and displays His glory. His glory is revealed in His judgment and salvation.
Jim Hamilton writes in God’s Glory in Salvation through Judgment, “In the book of Exodus, all things find their place with relationship to the central revelation of the glory of Yahweh in salvation through judgment.”
God is no distant Maker who created the world and set in motion but remains aloof and uninvolved. He is no puny Being who sees problems in the world but His hands are tied and He can’t do anything. He is no genie who exists merely to grant us wishes to make our lives easy, comfortable, and trouble-free. He is Yahweh, the Great I Am, the God of unparalleled might and mercy, the God of just judgment who punishes sin, the sovereign God with the authority and power to take down rulers and nations who oppose Him, the God who rescues His people by His grace, the God who keeps every promise and is faithful to His Word, the God who shows steadfast love to His people despite their stubbornness, the God who writes the story and oversees every character and chapter so that it works out for our good and His glory, the God who carries and keeps His people through every trial and adversity, the God who loves us enough to provides His Son as the perfect and sinless substitute to save us from our sins and bring us to Himself, the God who not only sets us free from our past and the world and our sin but He claims us as His own people and calls us to walk in His ways, the God who parts the waters and leads His people to new life, the God of thunder at Mt. Sinai who gives His people the Law, and the God who raises the dead from the grave and offers resurrection life for eternity.
Exodus reveals the glory and grace of God to us so that we might respond in faith, obedience, worship, and joyful gratitude.
Same Book, Same Message
We should not be surprised this is the purpose of this section of Exodus, or Exodus as a whole, because it’s the consistent message from the first to last page of the Bible. God later told Moses that His purpose—in creation, for mankind, and throughout now and eternity—is that “all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord” (Num. 14:21).
As the prophets look forward to a coming Messiah and King who would one day bring about God’s eternal kingdom, the purpose was stated this way in both Isaiah 11:9 and Habakkuk 2:14: “For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”
When we get to the New Testament and Paul unpacks the amazing riches and the countless spiritual blessings that belong to us in Christ in the masterful sentence that is Ephesians 1:3-14, he repeats the ultimate purpose in God’s salvation of us multiple times:
- “to the praise of His glorious grace” (1:6)
- “according to the riches of His grace” (1:7)
- “to the praise of His glory” (1:12)
- “to eh praise of His glory” (1:14)
Paul makes crystal clear that underneath or standing over all the blessings we have in Christ and all that Christ has done for His people, it all points to one larger purpose: the praise of God’s unrivaled glory and grace.
When Paul wraps up Romans 1-11, maybe the deepest and richest section in all the Bible, at the tip-top pinnacle of that mountain he shouts, “Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and how inscrutable His ways!… For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be glory forever. Amen” (Rom. 11:33, 36).
And when you get to the very end of the Bible, which points to what the focus of all eternity will be, what do we see? Jesus will bring Heaven down to a renewed Earth where He will dwell with His resurrected people forever and ever. John wrote, “And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. 23 And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb” (Rev. 21:22-23).
Jesus, the image of God and Son of God, will fill the entire Earth with the glory of God like the waters cover the sea, meaning there will not be one square inch of the new creation where God’s glory is not fully and majestically displayed and seen in reveled in.
You must see how from beginning to end this is the point of the Bible, the point of creation, the goal of eternity, and this is why you exist as a human being in God’s image today. All of it exists to proclaim the glory, grace, and goodness of God so we would see and savor Him in His glory by worshipping Him, trusting Him, delighting in Him, living for Him, and finding our hope, joy, and peace in Him.
See this larger point in Exodus and see it in all of Scripture so you continually remind yourself not to live for simple pleasures, petty distractions, or lesser purposes. Don’t live merely to live out your dreams, to make money or be successful, to have a happy family, to live for the approval of man, or to live for yourself. Instead, live with your eyes and heart open to the glory of God so that it gives your life lasting purpose, satisfies your soul’s deepest hungers, sets you up for eternal pleasure and peace, sustains you through the ups and downs of life, and enables you to face hope in knowing that death is just a doorway to more immediate and intimate access to what you were made for, the glory and goodness of God.
God saves you by His grace through Christ, not only to forgive you, adopt you, change you, and reconcile you to Himself, but in all these things He wants you to rest and rejoice in His kindness, compassion, power, mercy, grace, goodness, and love. The glory of God is not just the point of the story, but seeing and treasuring the glory of God is the greatest good in your life.
indycrowe 