Getting Out

by Timothy Keller

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If there is one Old Testament passage that the New Testament invites us to read in a Christ-centered way as a paradigm of Christ’s salvation, it’s the exodus.

I’ll never forget nearly forty years ago sitting in R. C. Sproul’s living room in Stahlstown, Pennsylvania. Alec Motyer, a British Old Testament scholar I had never heard of, was visiting. I was on the floor with a bunch of other college and seminary students, and Sproul said to Motyer, “Tell us about the connection between the Old and New Testaments.” Motyer replied something like this:

Think about it. Think of what an Israelite would say on the way to Canaan after passing through the Red Sea. If you asked an Israelite, “Who are you?” he might reply, “I was in a foreign land under the sentence of death and in bondage, but I took shelter under the blood of the lamb. And our mediator led us out, and we crossed over. Now we’re on our way to the Promised Land, though we’re not there yet. But he has given us his law to make us a community, and he has given us a tabernacle because we must live by grace and forgiveness. And he is present in our midst, and he will stay with us until we arrive home.

Then Motyer added, “That’s exactly what a Christian says—almost word for word.” And my twenty-three-year-old self thought, “Huh.”

What can we learn from the Red Sea crossing about Jesus and our salvation? Three lessons: salvation is about getting out, but it’s about

what we’re getting out of: bondage with layers;
how we’re getting out of it: crossing over by grace;
why we can get out of it: the Mediator.

That’s how the story of the exodus connects with the rest of the Bible. We would not make these connections without the rest of the Bible, but the connections are clear when we look at the Bible’s sweeping story line.

1. is the ultimate getting-out, the ultimate exodus.
2. Jesus is the greater Moses; Moses points to Jesus (Heb. 3:1–6).
3. “By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as on dry land; but when the Egyptians tried to do so, they were drowned” (Heb. 11:29). The Egyptians drowned because they didn’t have faith. Hebrews 11 talks about Christian faith, and it uses the Red Sea crossing as a paradigm for Christian faith.
4. “For I do not want you to be ignorant of the fact, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud and that they all passed through the sea. They were all baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea. . . . Now these things occurred as examples to keep us [i.e., us Christians] from setting our hearts on evil things as they did” (1 Cor. 10:1–2, 6).

If there is one Old Testament passage that the New Testament invites us to read in a Christ-centered way as a paradigm of Christ’s salvation, it’s the exodus.

I’ll never forget nearly forty years ago sitting in R. C. Sproul’s living room in Stahlstown, Pennsylvania. Alec Motyer, a British Old Testament scholar I had never heard of, was visiting. I was on the floor with a bunch of other college and seminary students, and Sproul said to Motyer, “Tell us about the connection between the Old and New Testaments.” Motyer replied something like this:

Think about it. Think of what an Israelite would say on the way to Canaan after passing through the Red Sea. If you asked an Israelite, “Who are you?” he might reply, “I was in a foreign land under the sentence of death and in bondage, but I took shelter under the blood of the lamb. And our mediator led us out, and we crossed over. Now we’re on our way to the Promised Land, though we’re not there yet. But he has given us his law to make us a community, and he has given us a tabernacle because we must live by grace and forgiveness. And he is present in our midst, and he will stay with us until we arrive home.

Then Motyer added, “That’s exactly what a Christian says—almost word for word.” And my twenty-three-year-old self thought, “Huh.”

What can we learn from the Red Sea crossing about Jesus and our salvation? Three lessons: salvation is about getting out, but it’s about

1. what we’re getting out of: bondage with layers;
2. how we’re getting out of it: crossing over by grace;
3. why we can get out of it: the Mediator.

That’s how the story of the exodus connects with the rest of the Bible. We would not make these connections without the rest of the Bible, but the connections are clear when we look at the Bible’s sweeping story line.

SALVATION IS ABOUT WHAT WE’RE GETTING OUT OF: BONDAGE WITH LAYERS

Salvation is about getting us out of bondage. That’s what the word redemption means.

“When the king of Egypt was told that the people had fled, Pharaoh and his officials changed their minds about them and said, ‘What have we done? We have let the Israelites go and have lost their services!’ ” (Ex. 14:5). “Services.” What a nice way of putting it. Why didn’t the Egyptians simply go out and hire someone else? No, they lost their entire slave labor force. The Israelites were slaves.

Pharaoh said, “We’re gonna go get ’em. We let them go, but we’ve changed our minds. Let’s go get ’em. We’re gonna bring ’em back or kill ’em.”

The old slave masters, who had released the Israelites, got in their chariots and chased down the Israelites. When the Israelites saw them coming, They were terrified and cried out to the LORD. They said to Moses, “Was it because there were no graves in Egypt that you brought us to the desert to die? What have you done to us by bringing us out of Egypt? Didn’t we say to you in Egypt, ‘Leave us alone; let us serve the Egyptians’? It would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the desert!” (14:10–12)

The Israelites claimed that when Moses had said, “Let’s go,” they had replied, “It’d be better to stay. We like it here.” But is that really what they’d said? Let’s see:

Moses and Aaron brought together all the elders of the Israelites, and Aaron told them everything the LORD had said to Moses. He also performed the signs before the people, and they believed. And when they heard that the LORD was concerned about them and had seen their misery, they bowed down and worshiped. (Ex. 4:29–31)

That’s not quite what the Israelites remembered. And this wasn’t the last time the Israelites would do this.

In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the LORD’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.” (Ex. 16:2–3)

There is no more basic word in the Bible than redemption. The Greek word for redemption means to loose. Redemption means to be released from bondage. The very heart of our understanding what salvation is all about is release from bondage.

The Israelites are a picture of us. They were in bondage. But this bondage had layers. The Israelites got out of bondage, but even though they were out of bondage, the slave masters said, “No, we want you back.” Not only were the Israelites objectively free from bondage and yet now the slave masters wanted them back, but inside, subjectively in their hearts, they were not free from bondage. They still operated as slaves. You can take the people out of slavery, but you can’t take the slavery out of the people as easily. Throughout the Bible, there are layers to the bondage from which God redeems his people. Here are four of them.

CHRISTIANS WERE OBJECTIVELY IN BONDAGE TO THE LAW BUT ARE NOW FREED FROM IT

We were objectively in bondage to the law. We were under guilt and condemnation. We have sinned. We do not love God with our whole being or love our neighbor as ourselves. We were under God’s wrath, which is his settled, judicial opposition to evil and sin. God’s wrath is objective, and our guilt is objective. We were in bondage to the law that brought condemnation. We were under the law.

But through Jesus we got out. “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1). “Sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace” (Rom. 6:14). That is objective freedom.

But there are more layers.

CHRISTIANS ARE SUBJECTIVELY IN BONDAGE TO THE LAW, AND THEY DEFAULT TO WORKS-RIGHTEOUSNESS

The whole book of Galatians is about people who, from what we can tell, were objectively freed from guilt (i.e., they seem to have really believed in Jesus), but were going back into a form of works-righteousness. Why? This is a bit of a speculation, but as a pastor over the years and as a human being, I think that deep down inside—maybe it’s because of the image of God—everyone knows that he or she should be perfect. We all know that we should be perfect.

Parenting can affect this basic intuition. Some parents aggravate it by being very cruel, impossible to please, maybe abusive. Their kids grow up needing to prove themselves or hating themselves.

Another kind of bad parenting is self-esteem-ism. Parents tell their children over and over again, “You can do anything you want. You can be anyone you want.” Right: “I’m twenty-three years old. I’m 5'3". I’m 123 pounds.” “If you want to be an NFL linebacker, you just have to go for it with all you’ve got. You must climb every mountain, ford every stream, follow every rainbow.” When you do that to kids, they grow up with an incredible sense of entitlement, and it’s almost impossible for them to feel ashamed or guilty about anything.

I don’t think you can erase what all human beings intuitively know: we should be perfect. We should love God and our neighbor.

When I’ve been with people—no matter who they are or how they’ve been parented—when they are dying and they start to open up to me, it’s like they are on a boat that goes out to sea at night. The person on the boat watches the lights dim slowly as the boat gets further away from shore. And when the last light goes out, there’s almost a sense of regret: “I haven’t lived the life I should have lived.”

We all know deep down that we should be perfect. Someone may tell us, “Now that you believe in Jesus, all your sins are forgiven. There is no condemnation for you. God accepts you.” But simply being told that a few times doesn’t solve our problem. We go right back to works-righteousness (that’s the natural, default mode of the human heart), and we subjectively stay in bondage to the law even though objectively we are no longer in bondage to it.

CHRISTIANS ARE IN BONDAGE TO THEIR SIN NATURE

“Sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace. What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means!” (Rom. 6:14–15). It’s very possible to not be under the law (i.e., one is objectively free from the law) but to be a slave to sin in practice. That is why Paul says, “Don’t be a slave to sin!” Why? W. G. T. Shedd argues that sin is the suicidal action of the human will against itself.

Sin contains an element of servitude,—that in the very act of transgressing the law of God there is a reflex action of the human will upon itself, whereby it becomes less able than before to keep that law. Sin is the suicidal action of the human will. It destroys the power to do right, which is man’s true freedom.2

Sin is the slow, and sure, and eternal suicide of a human will.3

In other words, when you commit a sin, you make it much easier to do it again and much harder to avoid and resist. Every time you sin, you are destroying your ability to resist that sin. Every single time. “Sin is the suicidal action of the human will.” Sin does not go away right away when you become a Christian. Even after you receive Christ and Christ accepts you and objectively removes your guilt, you are still tremendously in bondage to sin subjectively because that’s how you have habitually lived.

CHRISTIANS ARE IN BONDAGE TO IDOLS4

If you love anything more than God, even though you believe in God, if there is anything in your life that is more important to your significance or security than God, then that is an idol—a kind of pseudo-god, a false god, a covenant master—and it will continually say, “Serve me or die,” like Pharaoh. Objectively, Pharaoh was no longer the master of the Israelites. He said, “Go,” and the Israelites left. But then Pharaoh said, “I want you back.” This happens to all of us.

This can be true for your career, children, or ministry. If you want to be a good minister, that’s fine. If things go wrong in your ministry, you’ll be sad. If someone gets in the way of your doing a good job, you’ll be mad. If there is a threat to the future of your ministry, you’ll be afraid. That’s normal.

But if your success in ministry is more important to your self-image than what God says about you, then it is functionally an idol. It’s more important to you than God. You think, “I know that I’m an important person, that I’m valuable, because I’m a successful minister.” Then when something goes wrong in your ministry, you’re not just sad, but you melt down and completely lose it. When someone gets in the way of your ministry, you get not just angry but incredibly and vehemently angry. When there is a threat to the future of your ministry, you’re not just afraid or worried but you’re absolutely petrified and paralyzed with fear. Those emotions eat you up. Why? Those are your former covenant masters coming back, even though they are no longer your master. They come back to you and say, “Serve me or die. You need me. You can’t live without me.”

And that’s the point. There is still slavishness in the Israelites’ hearts. What you thought you were free from (and in one sense you are free from it) is still present to some degree. It comes back and rattles its sabers.

Years ago when I was trying to understand this, I read sermons by David Martyn Lloyd-Jones on Romans 6, and a particular illustration was illuminating.5 Imagine, Lloyd-Jones said, that you were a slave in the southern United States before the Emancipation Proclamation. That means that you couldn’t vote; you had no power; and somebody could beat you up and probably kill you. You didn’t have rights. So if you were in town and some white person told you to do this or that and was abusive to you, you were very frightened and did anything he said.

Now it’s ten years later, and the Emancipation Proclamation has been issued. You have rights. But you walk into town, and a white person starts to yell at you. Even though you know with your head, “Hey, I have some rights here,” you’re still scared and acting like a slave.

That actually is the condition of every Christian. You know, but you don’t know. You know that you’ve been saved from slavery to sin and that you should be free. If you really believed in your heart what you know with your head (i.e., that there is no condemnation for you because you are in Christ Jesus, and God regards you as perfect because of Christ’s righteousness), then you would not still be a slave in your heart to success or to what other people think of you. Technically and objectively, you’re not a slave. But God has freed you from sins that you are still enslaved to.

We learn this in systematic theology class:

1. Justification (past): We are free from the penalty of sin.
2. Progressive sanctification (present): We are getting free from the power of sin.
3. Glorification (future): We will be free from the presence of sin.

You’ve heard that, but that is abstract. The exodus story models it. It’s a picture of where we are. Redemption is about getting out of bondage, and it has layers. That is why the great songs talk about this. For example:

Long my imprisoned spirit lay
Fast bound in sin and nature’s night;
Thine eye diffused a quick’ning ray,
I woke, the dungeon flamed with light;
My chains fell off, my heart was free,
I rose, went forth, and followed thee.6

That is true. We have those experiences, and yet every so often we find our hearts not free. Not free yet.

So salvation is about getting out. It’s about getting out of bondage, and the bondage has layers. But what do we do about that?

SALVATION IS ABOUT HOW WE’RE GETTING OUT: CROSSING OVER BY GRACE

The Red Sea story is not just about what the Israelites get out of (bondage with layers) but also about how they get out (crossing over by grace). Here’s how Moses replied to the fearful, complaining Israelites: “Moses answered the people, ‘Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the LORD will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still’ ” (Ex. 14:13–14).

On the one hand, the principle of grace could not be clearer: “Stand still. God’s going to do your fighting. Watch. You can’t do it. You can’t contribute to it. You can’t do a thing. God’s going to do the whole thing.” When Moses says, “The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still” (14:14), he sounds like Paul: “to the one who does not work [cf. “be still”] but trusts God who justifies the ungodly, their faith is credited as righteousness” (Rom. 4:5). “Be still.” Don’t look at your works. Receive a complete salvation or deliverance, based not on your works but solely on Christ’s works.

So that’s the principle. But the exodus story also illustrates how that grace operates. It operates by crossing over. On one side of the Red Sea, the Israelites were within reach of their old false masters. They were under the sentence of death. Pharaoh said, “We’re gonna get ’em or kill ’em.” When the Israelites were on that side of the sea, they were reachable. They were still under the sentence of death. But when they tried to cross over—they succeeded in crossing over, yet when the Egyptians tried to cross over, an invisible warrior stopped them—the minute the Israelites crossed over, they crossed over from death to life. They crossed over from being under condemnation and the sentence of death to freedom.

This is one reason that our religion is absolutely and utterly different from every other religion. I’ve been saying this for over thirty years, and I regularly look at other religions to make sure that someone won’t pull a “preacher gotcha” on me: “What about this religion over here?” and I’d have to say, “I haven’t heard about that one. Let me read about it.” No, every other religion is like building a bridge. You build a bridge by putting pylons down, and then you build the bridge over the pylons. And if you run out of money, it’s the bridge to nowhere. There are a few like that. That is what every other religion is like. It’s a process in which you are trying to get over to the other side. You never feel like you have arrived, but you’re trying. In every other religion, people are trying to work their way across.

Not with Christianity. One minute you’re not regenerate and the next minute you are. One minute you’re not adopted and the next minute you are. Either you are regenerate and adopted, or you aren’t. There’s no process. Either you’re in the kingdom of darkness, or God has brought you into the kingdom of the Son he loves (Col. 1:13). Think of all those statements and images that make Christianity unique: you either are a Christian or are not. “Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life” (John 5:24). Maybe John didn’t actually have the exodus in mind, but Isaiah did:

This idea of crossing over—going from death to life immediately—is something that Martyn Lloyd-Jones used to use as a little test or analogy. When he was talking to individuals and trying to get a sense of where they were spiritually, he would ask them, “Are you a Christian?” If they said, “Well, I’m trying” (and many people said this, especially British people, who want to be modest), then Lloyd-Jones would proceed to explain that their answer indicated that they had no idea what Christianity is about at all. Not in the slightest. What makes one a Christian is a change in status.

1. You were in that kingdom, and now you’re in this kingdom.
2. You were out of the family of God, and now you’re in the family of God.
3. You were not born again, and now you’re born again.
4. You were under God’s wrath, and now you’re justified.

Bang! It happens like that. Do you know the power of this? Here is Paul, who has killed people, and according to Romans 7, somehow at some point, God’s law seems to have broken through his self-righteousness: “sin . . . through the commandment put me to death” (Rom. 7:11). We’re not quite sure just what this autobiographical account means, but it seems like Paul began to realize what he had done.

Cate Blanchett acted in a 2002 movie called Heaven. It’s not a very well-known movie, but Cate Blanchett is one of the best actresses out there. It’s a movie about a normal woman who is upset about how a drug dealer is ruining the lives of children in a particular part of the city. The police won’t listen to her, so she decides to detonate a bomb in a drug dealer’s office and kill him. But a night watchman takes the bomb out, having discovered it in a waste basket, and puts it into an elevator where it explodes and kills four people, including children. When Blanchett’s character, a woman who loves children and is doing this for the sake of children, learns that she has killed children, she collapses. Because Blanchett is such a great actress, you can see her collapse physically and emotionally. She is a smoking wreck. In one sense she goes into a hell of guilt and shame, and she never gets out of it.

Paul sensed that same guilt and shame, and yet he wrote, “There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1). How could he say such a thing? Paul crossed over. He didn’t say, “Well, I’ve got a lot to atone for in my life.” That is the way the heart works for a person who is in bondage to the law. But Paul was unbelievably humble about who he was, and it wasn’t false modesty. Why? Because he crossed over. He knew where he stood. Of course, Paul had only begun to change on the inside, but he knew where he stood with God. It’s astonishing.

Somebody says, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’re saved by grace apart from works and your moral effort. But you’ve got to believe, don’t you? And you’ve really got to believe with all your heart because salvation is by faith.” Don’t do that. Do you know what you’re doing? Even this text tells us something about that: “The waters were divided, and the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground, with a wall of water on their right and on their left” (Ex. 14:21–22). The Israelites all crossed over, but that doesn’t mean that they all crossed over with the same disposition.

• Some walked through marveling at the walls of water: “Wow! Look at that! God is on our side! Eat your heart out, Egyptians! The Lord is fighting for us.”
• Others were probably walking through like this: “I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die, I’m gonna die!”

Yet they all crossed over. Individual Israelites had different qualities of faith, but they were all equally saved. They were equally delivered. Why? Because you are not saved because of the quality of your faith. You are saved because of the object of your faith: the Redeemer, the God who is fighting for you. Everything about this text says, “Grace, grace, grace, grace. Crossing over is by grace.”

Charles Spurgeon preached on Moses’s saying, “Stand firm . . . . be still” and let God fight for you (Ex. 14:13–14). When you try to add to God’s salvation, you subtract. If you try to merit God’s salvation, you haven’t believed in God at all; you are trusting yourself, even if you try to do only a little bit. At one point Spurgeon says:

I dare say you will think it a very easy thing to stand still, but it is one of the postures which a Christian soldier learns not without years of teaching. I find that marching and quick marching are much easier to God’s warriors than standing still. It is, perhaps, the first thing we learn in the drill of human armies, but it is one of the most difficult to learn under the Captain of our salvation. The apostle seems to hint at this difficulty when he says, “Stand fast, and having done all, still stand.” To stand at ease in the midst of tribulation, shows a veteran spirit, long experience, and much grace.7 If you’re a Christian, you’ve already crossed over. God has dealt with sin and death, and all of your other problems are merely flea bites in comparison. That’s how you deal with your flea bites—by not looking at them as massive problems. Look at what God has already done for you.

So the Red Sea story illustrates that salvation is about getting out of bondage by crossing over by grace. But on what basis can we get out of bondage?

SALVATION IS ABOUT WHY WE CAN GET OUT: THE MEDIATOR

Why is it possible for us to get out? The Egyptians went through the Red Sea and were devastated. But the Israelites crossed over. Why did the Israelites cross over safely?

Flood waters are significant. Most commentaries on Noah’s flood say that God could have judged the world in many ways but that water is significant. Why? Go back to Genesis 1.

When the Spirit of God hovered over the waters, he brought order out of chaos. Water, not only in the Bible but also in many of the ancient cultures surrounding Israel at the time, represented chaos. Water was chaos and death. And yet God’s creative Spirit came across the face of the waters, and he brought order out of chaos.

Therefore, when God used the flood to destroy the world in the time of Noah, what he was actually doing was making an appropriate judgment—what some people have called “de-creation.” It was a reversal of creation. If you turn away from the Creator, you actually turn away from the goodness of creation. That unleashes disintegration and chaos.

If a husband hurts his wife, the wife may decide, “I am not going to forgive him.” She might not say that, but she is so bitter and angry that she refuses to forgive. In a very small but very noticeable way, that unleashes chaos into their marriage until they obey God. The wages of sin is disintegration, which is another way of saying death.

What God was doing in the flood was unleashing the forces of chaos, which was a justifiable judgment. It was an appropriate judgment because when you turn away from the Creator you turn away from the goodness of creation and bring into your life de-creation and disintegration—the reversal of creation.

Many people have pointed out that that’s what the plagues were. Just before the crossing of the Red Sea, God visited Egypt with plagues. But what were those plagues? The same thing. Pharaoh resisted the Creator, and Egypt experienced de-creation and disintegration such as darkness. The Red Sea could be called the eleventh plague because Egypt’s sin unleashed the forces of chaos. God was judging Egypt. The flood waters represent what happens to you when you turn away from God.

We don’t mind that because it happened to the Egyptians: “They got punished. Fine. The Egyptians were bad people, but the Israelites were good people.” If you think that, you haven’t read your Bible very carefully. You see Israel’s childishness and petulance right here. They were not just fools; they were murderous fools. They simply did not have the same power as the Egyptians. They could not commit genocide right then because they did not have the power and technology. They were no better than the Egyptians.

The real question is why God’s waters of judgment were standing up on both sides for the Israelites but crashing down on the Egyptians. Why didn’t they come down on the Israelites?

Answer: the Israelites had a mediator. “Then the LORD said to Moses, ‘Why are you crying out to me?’ ” (Ex. 14:15). Commentators go two ways here.

1. Moses was crying out in rebellion like the Israelites earlier (Ex. 14:10–12), and God was rebuking Moses. This possibility is unlikely because the text does not indicate that Moses was rebelling. Some commentators argue, “Of course, Moses must have been rebelling, or God wouldn’t have rebuked him,” but why? Just before the Israelites crossed over, “Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and all that night the LORD drove the sea back with a strong east wind and turned it into dry land” (Ex. 14:21).

2. Moses was one man who was so identified with the Israelites that their guilt was upon him, and he was so identified with God that God’s power was coming through him. He was a man in the middle. He was so identified with the people that God rebuked him for their sin, and he was so identified with God that he was a vehicle for God’s saving power.

But guess what? I know a better Mediator. And we don’t have in Jesus Christ merely a mediator who is fully man and close to God. He is fully man and fully God. Not only that, we don’t have a mediator whom God rebuked for any sin.

Here is what Jesus Christ understood. When Jonah was in the boat and the storm of God’s wrath was about to sink the boat, Jonah turned to all the sailors and said, “This is a storm of God’s wrath, and the only way you’ll be saved is to throw me in. Throw me in, and you’ll be saved.” And the sailors threw Jonah in and were delivered. Jesus had the audacity to say, “Now something greater than Jonah is here” (Matt. 12:41). Jesus was talking about himself. Jesus Christ on the cross was thrown into the ocean of God’s wrath. Jonah said, “I have been banished from your sight” (Jonah 2:4), which meant that he was hidden under the waves, and he felt forsaken by God. But when Jesus said, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46), he was being put under an ocean of God’s wrath. All the plagues came down on Jesus. Darkness, for example, came down. Jesus was being de-created so that you and I could be re-created. Jesus received the reality that all these judgments such as flood waters point to.

That’s why all the other things that we’re talking about are possible. It’s why we can be brought out. It’s why we can keep going back to the well of Jesus’s salvation to deal with layer after layer after layer of bondage. At one point Moses as the mediator went to God when God essentially said, “I’ve had it with these people.” And Moses said, “Please forgive their sin—but if not, then blot me out of the book you have written” (Ex. 32:32). Yet God did not blot him out. But with our Mediator, Jesus, God did. Jesus is the ultimate Mediator, and it’s why you and I can cross over.

CONCLUSION

Where are the children of Israel going? Sinai. One of the easiest ways to explain the gospel to somebody using the Old Testament is to say: “It wasn’t that God gave them the law, and once they started to obey, he brought them out. He brought them out and then gave them the law. That’s the gospel.” It’s not this: “Because I’m obeying God, now I’m saved.” No, it’s this: “Because I have been saved by God’s free grace, now I want to obey God.” Having been delivered, the Israelites were on their way to Sinai.

More than that, God said to Israel, “I am the LORD, who brought you up out of Egypt to be your God; therefore be holy, because I am holy” (Lev. 11:45). The more you meditate on what God has done and see the flood waters go over Jesus’s head, the more holy you will be.

Sometimes people say to me, “Well, I know I shouldn’t be doing this or that. But I know God forgives me.” They don’t know the first thing about forgiveness. Nobody who understands the grace of God would ever take sin lightly. The more you deal with the free grace of God and work it into your heart and understand that it has nothing to do with how you behave, the more radically that will change your behavior. God brought his people out of Egypt to take them to Sinai and give them the law so that they would be holy.

Why do you sin? Sometimes you sin simply because it’s the easiest way. Let the gratitude you should have for God fill your hearts with so much joy that you say, “I’m not going to do that.” But a large reason that we sin is our idols. We sin because we’re being controlled by idols like fear. But the grace of God frees us from idols.

Some will then say, “It’s all free and has nothing to do with my works or even the quality of my faith, so it doesn’t matter how I live.” If you think that, then you haven’t even begun to come to grips with the grace of God. “Sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace. What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means!” (Rom. 6:14–15).

When God says, “I brought you out of Egypt, so you should be holy,” that’s the same thing as, “We’re saved by faith alone, but not by a faith that is alone.” You’re saved by faith apart from works, but if your works do not grow out of faith, then you don’t have genuine faith.

That is found throughout the exodus story, too. It’s amazing. It’s the gospel.

Moses and Paul could have written the old hymn verse:

Well may the accuser roar
Of sins that I have done.
I know them all and thousands more,
Jehovah knoweth none.

Or Martin Luther’s line: “What, have we nothing to do? No! Nothing!”8 Be still, and realize that all your salvation is in Jesus. Be still. You have nothing to contribute at all. Look at him, and that will make you holy. And if you’re not a Christian, it will make you a Christian.

Nathan Cole became a Christian listening to George Whitefield preach in Middletown, Connecticut, in 1744. He was practically illiterate, but he wrote about what it was like to hear Whitefield preach and how he became a Christian: “My hearing him preach gave me a heart wound. By God’s blessing my old foundation was broken up, and I saw that my righteousness would not save me.”9

If that’s beginning to happen to you now, go on and don’t stop until you know what this means: “The blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin” (1 John 1:7).

2 W. G. T. Shedd, Sermons to the Natural Man (New York: Scribner’s, 1871), 202–3; cf. 229.

3 W. G. T. Shedd, Sermons to the Spiritual Man (New York: Scribner’s, 1884), 343.

4 Cf. Timothy Keller, Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope That Matters (New York: Dutton, 2009).

5 D. M. Lloyd-Jones, “Sermon Two,” in Romans: An Exposition of Chapter 6—The New Man (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1972), 25–26.

6 Charles Wesley, “And Can It Be?,” 1738.

7 “Direction in Dilemma,” in Charles Spurgeon, Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, vol. 9 (Pasadena, TX: Pilgrim Publications, 1969), 649ff.

8 Cited in The Journal of the Reverend John Wesley (London: Epworth, 1938), 1:476.

9 Quoted in George Leon Walker, Some Aspects of the Religious Life of New England with Special Reference to Congregationalists (New York: Silver, Burdett and Co., 1897), 91.

Getting Out is chapter 2 from the book The Scriptures Testify About Me. Posted with Permission. Also available in Kindle format.