By Tim Vasby-Burny
Jesus and Exodus
Who is the hero of the Bible? Who is the Bible all about? Well, I don’t know of any verses that answer
those questions, but there are verses that answer the question, “Who is
the Old Testament about?” Luke
24:25-27; John 5:39-40, 45-47; Acts 2:30-31; Acts 3:18,24; Acts 10:36,43;
Acts 17:11; Acts 26:22-23; Romans 10:6-17; 1 Corinthians 10:1-10; 1 Corinthians
15:3-4; Galatians 3:16-19; 2 Timothy 3:15; Hebrews 4:2,6; 1 Peter 1:10-11
and Jude 4-5 could all be called upon to give the same answer: Jesus
Christ is the hero of the Old Testament.
It is and always has been about him.
The book of Exodus shows us this very clearly. Exodus 3:2 makes it clear that the
LORD, the great “I AM” of the (non) burning bush is the Angel of the
LORD. Anyone who has read Genesis
knows immediately who this is, but it may be worth a quick refresher
course.
Genesis 16:9-13 The
Angel of the LORD personally blesses Hagar, and is “the God who sees me”.
Genesis 22 After
Abraham’s en situ enactment of
the gospel, the Angel of the LORD is the LORD who provided the ram.
Genesis 31:11-13 The
Angel of God is the God of Bethel who appeared to Jacob in chapter 28.
Genesis 48:15-16 The
Angel is the God before whom Abraham and Isaac walked, and the One Jacob
wants to bless his children.
It is clear then that the Angel is both God, yet distinct from
God. The word ‘angel’ bothers some,
but the word means ‘messenger’ or ‘sent one’, so the Angel of God is God
sent by God. His identity is thus
transparent: the Angel is the pre-incarnate Christ, the eternal Son of
the Father. Jesus frequently
designates himself as sent from the Father (e.g John 3:34, 8:23-29). In John 1:51 he identifies himself
with the God of Bethel, and thus the Angel of the LORD. Hosea 12:3-4 makes it clear that the
God-man with whom Jacob wrestled was the Angel. See also Judges 13 and Malachi 3:1 (‘Angel of the
covenant’).
The identity of the LORD of the burning bush is thus abundantly
clear: he is the Son of God, the Word of the Father.
After the plagues, the LORD who moves in the pillar of cloud is
seen to be the Angel (Exodus 13:21 and 14:19). Christ is the one against whom the people grumble in
chapters 15-17. It is the LORD in
the cloud who descends on Mt Sinai so that the smoke will obscure the
coming of the LORD who cannot be seen (chapter 19). The Angel of the LORD is the LORD who
Moses would speak to face to face in the tent of meeting (see also
Numbers 14:14 ‘eye to eye’!)
Some commentators and teachers recognise the Angel to be Christ,
but seem to consider that revealed truth not to be of great
significance. Obviously that is a
bad case of framework being imposed against scripture, and when we see
how the Bible looks at the Exodus events, we see how clear the Bible
wants us to be about the hero of salvation.
Judges 2:1-4 The Angel
of the LORD is the Person who brought Israel up out of Egypt and led them
into the land. See also Joshua
5:13ff.
Psalm 95 The LORD who
was tested in the desert is also known as ‘The Rock’.
Isaiah 63:9 The Angel
of God’s presence saved Israel.
John 8 and others:
Jesus is ‘I AM’.
1 Corinthians 10:1-10
That Rock was Christ. The people
tested the Lord (verse 9), and in Pauline terminology the Lord is Jesus
Christ. I think the KJV says that
the people tested Christ.
Hebrews 11:26 Moses
suffered disgrace for the sake of Christ.
Jude 4-5 “Now I want to
remind you, although you once fully knew it, that Jesus, who saved a people out of the land of Egypt,
afterwards destroyed those who did not believe.” (ESV)
There can be no other conclusion: Jesus is the hero of Exodus, as
he is sent by the Father in the power of the Spirit to rescue his
people. To say that ‘God in
general’ rescued his people is to fail to read the text properly, and
reveals a dodgy doctrine of God which imagines that God can be considered
in any way apart from the three Persons who together are the one God.
If, in our teaching of Exodus, we don’t make clear that the LORD
who led the nation is Jesus Christ, we are failing in our exegesis and
failing to handle the Bible as the Bible does. There is no indication that the New Testament writers are
looking at the events of the Exodus through ‘Christian eyes’ and adding
meaning: no apostle would do that (Acts 17:11 and 26:22)!
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