Like Jesus, Moses rescued the people from the bondage that was caused by their sin. The bondage of Israel is supposed to give us a picture of what sin does to us. Sin starts with enjoyment and pleasure, but Eventually turns to monotony. and eventually it turns to outright destruction. Happy New Year and welcome back to the Summit Life podcast with JD Greer.
I'm Molly Vitovich. Before we jump into our teaching today, let me tell you about one of the best ways to stay connected to this ministry, our weekly email newsletter. Each Tuesday, we'll send you the latest teaching from Pastor JD, including links to recent radio messages, this podcast and videos, along with updates on new resources and encouraging stories from listeners just like you. It's a simple way to stay grounded in gospel-centered truth throughout the week. And as a thank you for signing up, you'll also receive a free digital download designed to help you reflect on God's truth through scripture and prayer.
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Now, I can't think of a better way to spend our first program of January than kicking off a brand new teaching series. Consider these three words. Rescue. Salvation. Deliverance.
These are the themes that shape the book of Exodus. Today, Pastor JD launches into the opening chapters of this book, showing how God's power to save works both on a grand scale as well as in the small details of our own lives.
So let's launch into 2026 with a brand new message titled Melody. All right, if you got a Bible this morning, and I hope that you do, take it and open it to Exodus chapter 1. Exodus chapter 1, we are starting this morning. A deep dive study of the book of Exodus. That is going to last several weeks.
The book of Exodus defines. salvation.
Some of you know that after seminary, I lived for a few years in Indonesia where I served as a missionary and had to learn the language on location after I got there. The International Mission Board gave me a whopping one week of language training before just dropping me off in a city 100 miles away from the nearest English native language speaker. I'm seriously, the first night, as I've told you this before, as I lay there in bed, I thought, you know, the only three phrases that I really feel confident in saying are, hello, my name is JD. Where's your bathroom? My house is on fire.
That's the only things that I know. The rest of the language, I learned on location. If you've ever learned a language like that, you know. It's really easy. It's really easy to make a lot of embarrassing mistakes because a lot of words have nuances and usage rules that aren't really communicated by the dictionary definition.
For example, I heard somebody use the word chiyum, and so I wrote it down in my little notebook because I carried around a little notebook and I'd write down words that I heard and didn't understand. And then I looked the word up later and saw that it meant to sniff or to smell.
So I wrote down beside the word chiyum, I wrote down, you know, to sniff or to smell. And then I looked for opportunities to use the word.
Well, that very evening, the Lord provided an opportunity. I was with a friend who had given his daughter some perfume for her birthday. And when she walked into the room, it was obvious she was wearing that perfume. And so trying to be polite and trying to make conversation, I said, your daughter, chiyum, very good. But when I said that, I noticed his whole expression change because the word chiyum used like that means kiss.
Sir, your daughter kisses very well.
So then he and I had this weird conversation trying to figure out what I was trying to say and eventually he figured it out, got the biggest kick out of it. In fact, from that point on, whenever he introduced me to somebody, that was the story that he used. Or I think at the time I was trying to say the word sneeze, which in Indonesian is brasin. But instead of saying brsin, I said brsina, which doesn't mean sneeze, it means commit adultery. I do not think it is fair to make two words so different in meaning, so similar in sound.
I'm not even going to tell you the awkward situation that mistake created for me, but whatever you can imagine, I promise you, the real story is worse.
Okay? One other word that did not really translate well into Indonesian was the word salvation. Salvation, and that's primarily because they were Muslim and they didn't really have a concept of salvation. They had a word for rescue, but even that word implied different things than our understanding of salvation.
So every time you use the word, you would end up having to give two or three sentences of explanation along with it. The book of Exodus is the story form of what salvation is. In fact, did you know the first time the word salvation is used in the Bible, it's in Exodus 15. And when Moses uses the word, he is expecting you to understand it based on the stories of Exodus. The book of Exodus depicts our salvation in two different ways.
The first 19 or so chapters of Exodus illustrate salvation through the story of the Exodus. The second 20 or so chapters reveal salvation through the instructions that Moses gave to Israel regarding the holiness laws and the sacrifices for sin and the temple. Or to change the metaphor, Exodus establishes for us the melody of salvation. A melody that we are going to hear repeated over and over and over for the rest of the Bible. Exodus, of course, is chronologically the second book in your Bible.
It's not just the second book in your Bible. It's also in time, the second book. And so from that point forward, whenever God wanted to remind people of his salvation or he wanted to promise them future salvation, he would point them back to the Exodus. Y'all listen, the Exodus is the single most often referred to event in the Bible. Do a search later and you'll see the Exodus is referred to more than any other biblical event.
And so we're going to study the book of Exodus and we're going to see what God is doing in the world and then what He's doing in your life. By the way, You always have to study those two things together. And I say that because a lot of people want to jump right to what God is doing in their lives because we're little narcissists, even when we come to the Bible. And they never stop to think about what God is doing in the world. But you can only understand what he's doing in your life, small picture, if you understand what he's doing in the world, big picture.
So here we go. Chapter 1, verse 1. Here's how Exodus opens. These are the names. Of the sons of Israel, or Jacob, who came to Egypt with Jacob, each with his household: Reuben, Simeon, Levi.
And Judah, and then a bunch of other names, some of which are hard to pronounce, so I'm going to stop right there. Exodus opens up with a genealogy. Which is not a super exciting way to open a book. I'm finishing up writing a book manuscript right now, and not one of my editors has ever said to me, you know, you really should consider starting this book with a genealogy. I will say, for those of you looking for baby names, this particular list has some really good ones in it, like Asher and Judah, Simeon.
It's got a few others like Gad and Naphtali, which are not as popular, but maybe they're due for a comeback. Pretty sure, if you want your kid to hate you forever, name him Gad or Naphtali. But here is why the book opens with a genealogy. The previous book, the book of Genesis, started its conclusion with a genealogy. And the author is establishing this book, Exodus, as the sequel to Genesis.
So it takes the handoff. This book, Exodus, is how God fulfills his promise. to the central human character of Genesis, which was Abraham. Genesis tells the story, you see, of how God made a promise to an old, sterile man named Abraham to bless him and make him a great nation. And he and his wife struggled for a long time with this promise because they were both old and they'd never been able to have kids.
But God worked a miracle and he gave them a son in their old age. But then that son, Isaac. also struggled with infertility. But eventually God miraculously gave him two sons, Jacob and Esau. And then Jacob had twelve sons, and each of those twelve sons had a big family.
And soon, by the time you get to the end of Genesis, the Abrahamic clan was quite sizable. But then, just when things are looking up for Abraham's descendants, a huge famine strikes the land where they live, and they were all about to starve. But luckily, luckily, Jacob's sons had sold one of their brothers, Joseph, into slavery. And through a crazy series of events, he'd ended up as the vice president of Egypt. And from that position, he was able to save the rest of his brothers and their families from starvation.
And they all had moved to Egypt, where Joseph was basically in charge. And they lived there. Their descendants lived there for a few hundred years.
So verse 7, chapter 1, the people of Israel were fruitful in Egypt. And they increased greatly there. They multiplied and grew exceedingly strong, so that the land of Egypt was filled with the sons and the daughters of Abraham. But. Verse 8, now there arose a new king over Egypt.
who did not know Joseph. For years, you see, Abraham's descendants had been protected there in Egypt by pharaohs who either knew Joseph or they at least knew about Joseph's role in saving Egypt. And out of gratitude and loyalty to Joseph, they had protected the children of Israel. But then a Pharaoh arose who didn't know Joseph. He hadn't paid attention to history class or whatever.
And he said to his people, verse 9, behold, the people of Israel are too many and too mighty for us. Come, let us deal shrewdly with them. lest they multiply. And if war breaks out, they join our enemies and fight against us, and they escape from the land. Therefore, they sent taskmasters, slave masters over them to afflict them with heavy burdens.
They built Porphyro, store cities, Pithum and Ramesses. This is the basketball capital of the ancient world, by the way. Historians have found this hashtag printed everywhere as they've dug out the city. I'm just kidding about that. That is not true.
Verse 12, verse 12: But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied, and the more they spread abroad. And the Egyptians were in dread of the people of Israel.
So they ruthlessly made the people of Israel work as slaves. And they made their lives bitter with hard service and mortar and brick and all kinds of work in the field. Then the king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shipra and the other Pua. I can still remember sixth grade Sunday school class reading this and being sure that my teacher said Shiprach and Pui. That's how I remember that.
Shipra and Pua. He said to them, when you serve as midwife to the Hebrew women and you see them on the birth stool, if it's a son, you shall kill him. But if it's a daughter, she shall live. But the midwives feared God rather than Pharaoh, and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them. But instead, they let the male children live.
And so the king of Egypt, Pharaoh, called the midwives and said to them, Why have you done this? Why have you let the male children live, even though I commanded you not to? And the midwives said to Pharaoh, Because The Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women, for they are vigorous, and they give birth before the midwives come to them. By the way, I love that. The Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women.
They're vigorous. And when they go into labor, they just pop them out like Jiffy Lube before we can even get there. When Veronica was in labor with our third child, Raya, we almost did not make it to the hospital. About 5:30 in the morning, she woke me up and she said, I think it's time.
Now, based on my experience with our first two, I figured we had at least four or five hours before we were seeing a baby.
So, on the way to Durham Regional, I thought, you know, I wonder if I can talk her into stopping off at the Starbucks. Because you know, that would make my morning go a lot better. But then I looked over at her and thought immediately better of that suggestion. It's a good thing, too, because the hospital records us entering at 5:45, and at 5:55, I was holding my third child, Raya, in my arms. That is because my wife is vigorous, okay?
Maybe she's got some Hebrew blood in her somewhere. I don't know. But either way, verse 20, God dealt well with the midwives for their obedience, and the people multiplied, and they grew very strong, even in slavery. God continued to fulfill his promise to Abraham. Verse 22, then Pharaoh commanded all his people, since the midwives won't listen to me, every son that is born to the Hebrews, all of you, you people, you cast them into the Nile, but you shall let every daughter live.
Again, since the midwives are not cooperating with this genocidal plan, he commanded every Egyptian in the land, if you see a Hebrew infant boy, he said, any of you, all you Egyptians, you ever see an infant boy, you take him and throw him in the Nile River. He tries to make all of Egypt complicit in his murderous plan. Chapter 2. Chapter 2. Let's keep working.
Now, a man from the house of Levi. went and took as his wife, a a Levite woman, in the middle of this kind of genocide. The woman conceived and she bore a son. Uh-oh. And when she saw that he was a fine child, by the way, In Hebrew, that literally says a beautiful child.
Which is kind of funny when you consider that Moses was the one who was writing this passage. Moses was like, hey, I was a pretty good looking kid, all right? Don't hate to play her, right? But when Moses' mom saw that he was a beautiful child and strong and good-looking, she hid him three months. When she could hide him no longer, she took for him a basket made out of bulrushes and daubed it with bitumen and pitch.
She put the child in the basket and placed it among the reeds by the riverbank. And his sister, it's Miriam, stood at a distance to know what would be done to this baby.
Now the daughter of Pharaoh just so happened to come down to bathe at the river. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her servant woman and she took the basket. And when she opened it, she saw the child, and behold, the baby started crying. The baby was crying. She took pity on the baby.
And she said, Well, this is one of those Hebrews children.
Well, just then Miriam pops out of the bushes and is like, hey, you know, Pharaoh's daughter, shall I go and call you a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you? Verse 8, Pharaoh's daughter said to her, Yeah, that sounds like a good idea. Why don't you go find a midwife?
So the girl went and called the child's mother. And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, Take this child away and nurse him for me, and I will give you your wages.
So the woman took the child and nursed him. How is that for irony? Moses' mom not only got her baby restored to her, she got paid to raise him. All right, verse 10: When the child grew older, she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter. And he became her son.
She named him Moses. Because she said, I drew him out of the water. And that's literally what Moses means. The rest of the chapter describes how Moses grows up with his feet in two different households, in a Hebrew household nursed by his own mother, but then also as the adopted child of Pharaoh's daughter in her household, learning all the ways of Egypt. When he comes of age, he struggles to know which house he most identifies with.
Then one day, he sees an Israelite being abused by an Egyptian soldier, and something in his heart stirs. He feels personally provoked, and he kills the Egyptian soldier.
Well, when Pharaoh hears that, he is scandalized. That Moses has taken the side of an Israelite over against an Egyptian soldier, and he puts a death sentence on Moses' head. But the Israelites, they also don't want anything to do with Moses. He's kind of dangerous at this point. Plus, he feels way too Egyptian for them with his Egyptian clothes and his Egyptian accent and his Egyptian chariot and all that.
So Moses is now a man without a home. And he flees into the wilderness where he lives in isolation for the next 40 years, tending the sheep of a man named Jethro. For 40 years, the plan of God seems to stall as the children of Israel groan under their oppression and their slavery. But the chapter ends this way: verse 24. But God heard their groaning.
And God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel. And God knew. That's a phrase, by the way, that you're going to see over and over and over again in Exodus. God saw.
God heard. God remembered. And God knew. So there's two questions I want to consider from these first two chapters in our opening message on the book of Exodus. Question number one.
What do we learn from these two chapters about our Salvation. Let me just get right to it, okay? Skip all the front matter and go right to this. It is hard for me to imagine. A clearer illustration.
of our salvation. than what you see presented in Exodus 1 and 2. If you're taking notes, You should write this down. Number one. Like Jesus.
Moses rescued the people from the bondage. that was caused by their sin. The bondage of Israel is supposed to give us a picture. of what sin does to us. Sin starts with enjoyment and pleasure, but...
Eventually it turns to monotony. And eventually it turns to outright destruction. Let's start with monotony in verses 13 and 14 of chapter 1. The words that we translate as work and service and slave, they're all one Hebrew word, just one word, abad. Moses is using a literary device.
That are designed to give these verses a monotonous tone. You should read verse 13 like this.
So they ruthlessly made the people of Israel abad as abad and made their lives bitter with abad and mortar and brick and all kinds of abad in the field. The word is going to be repeated seven times in those verses. You see, sin almost always starts out. enjoyably But it turns into monotony. It never fully delivers on what it's promised, whether we're talking about pornography.
Or pursuing success. Or we're talking about extramarital affairs. It always starts out with an initial high. But then it turns into drudgery. Like an appetite that eats more and more to deliver, like a drug.
that you need a bigger and bigger hit to get the initial high that you used to have and then And then eventually it just turns destructive. Pharaoh, Israel's captor, starts to literally murder them. And that is designed to show you where sin leads. Pornography starts as a secret habit that you're just ashamed of. Then it becomes an addiction that you can't control when you find yourself sneaking around your house or up late at night after everybody's gone to bed because you can't say no.
Then it destroys your relationship with your spouse. Then it starts to change how you see people of the opposite sex.
Some of you look at your life right now. You look at the pornography habit or the mess. that your incessant drive for success has created in your family. But you started living with him, thinking that this is what you were looking for in life. And you're now in a place that you're not quite sure how you got there.
It's a new year with new challenges and opportunities on the way. But how will this year truly look different from the last? Carrying God's Word daily in your heart just might be the answer. After all, the Bible encourages us to live in obedience, fight temptation, renew our minds, and conform more to the person of Christ. It also gives us the strength to share these same truths with those we love and be a light in a dark and confusing world.
Our world is filled with lies. Every day we are bombarded by false promises about what will make us happy, false hopes about what will bring us security. We need a weapon to fight back, and the best one available is God's Word. After all, the best way to confront a lie is to know the truth. The word of God is light.
It is life. It is salvation. It was by a word that Jesus gave sight to the blind. By a word that he healed the sick, by a word that he overcame temptation. It was by a word that Jesus was raised from the dead.
By a word, God will destroy the works of the enemy and eventually make all things new. The Word and the Word alone prepares us to stand up to every challenge we face with courage and certainty. The Word is our life. If you want to carry God's promises in your heart in a new way this year, our new Summit Life memory verse cards make it easy to memorize scripture. You can keep these cards or share them with others.
They're small enough to put on the fridge, stick in your wallet, or give away in a greeting card. Place on a bulletin board or a mirror for daily encouragement. They're an inspiring reminder that God is always with you. He is always enough, both now and in the days to come. Request your pack of cards when you give to support the Ministry of Summit Life.
Give us a call at 866-335-5220 or go to jdgreer.com and request this resource today. Jesus said it very plainly. The thief comes to kill. And to steal and to destroy. He didn't lead with destruction, of course not.
No hunter leads with destruction, you lead with bait. That's why over the years I've compared Satan Satan's use of sin in our life. I've compared it to. to how they kill a wolf in Alaska. And some of you hate this illustration.
And the reason I use it is because you hate it. Because it's supposed to make you viscerally react. The way they kill a wolf in Alaska, they say, is they. Take a sharp two-edged knife and they coat the outside blade in blood, seals blood. And they do that multiple times and let it freeze so that at the end you got basically a blood pop sickle stick.
Then they bury that knife in the snow up to the hilt so that it's only the blade that's sticking out. And then the wolf comes along and gets a sniff of the sneal's blood. and begins to go over to it and begins to lick the seal's blood because a wolf loves seal's blood. But as that wolf licks it, it's numbing its tongue.
So eventually by the time it gets down to the blade, it can no longer feel anything its tongue. And it doesn't realize that the blood that is now pooling at the ground beneath its mouth is no longer the seals blood, but the blood that is flowing freely out of its mouth from that lacerated tongue. And yes, I know you hate that illustration, but I'm telling it to you because I want you to feel the revulsion that Jesus is telling you to feel when it comes to your sin. You enjoy it for a while. Listen, I am not so detached or removed to know that sin is not enjoyable.
Like my old pastor used to say growing up: you know, if sin ain't fun, you ain't doing it right. I know it's fun. But your soul becomes numb to the wounds it inflicts upon you as it lacerates your soul to shreds. And the reason I use that is because it causes that reaction in you. I want you to feel what sin does to you.
I know it seems enjoyable. I know it seems innocent. I know it feels like it's not hurting anybody. I know it feels like you're getting away with it. Yo, listen, I just sense that I'm talking to somebody this weekend, right now.
You've been doing something for a while. Whatever it is, I don't know, but I'm telling you, there are changes happening in your soul. Because the thief comes to still, to kill, and to destroy.
Now I got great news. We got a delivering God. That's what Exodus is all about. But the story starts in slavery. Show in our captivity to sin.
He said, well, wait a minute, wait a minute, Pastor, hold up. That slavery sounds pretty unjust. You're making it sound like their slavery was their fault.
Well Hear me out. In one sense. It was their fault. The sons of Israel were in Egypt after all because they'd sold Joseph into slavery. That act represents how all of us end up in bondage to sin because we fail to trust and obey God and we substitute something out for obedience to him.
But but I will concede that on a human level, this slavery was unjust. But see, that just reveals another aspect of our salvation, number two. Like Jesus, Moses rescued the people. from the oppression of Pharaoh. You see, some of you have suffered in this room, listening at one of our campuses.
You've suffered. because of things done to you. Horrible things. Abuse, neglect. At the hands of your parents.
A friend, a teacher. An older brother, a spouse.
Somebody harmed you. And I want you to hear me. Listen, I'm not saying it was.
Okay, what that person did to you? I'm certainly not saying it was your fault. I'm not saying it wasn't that bad. or that you should get over it, or I'm not saying that that person should not be held accountable. Pharaoh, you're going to see, he gets punished mightily for his oppression of the Israelites.
I'm just saying there is a God who is ready to lead you out of the captivity of oppression also. He's ready to redeem you and heal you and set you free. You can walk in freedom this morning and in the newness of life and in blessing, but you've got to accept God's offer to do so. You don't have to play the victim your whole life. You listen to me.
It wasn't your fault. It wasn't your fault what that person did to you, but it is your choice. Whether you're going to let it keep you down in the future, whether it's going to make you stay in Egypt. You see, God has given us, Peter says, God has given us all that we need. For life and godliness.
All you need to walk in freedom and victory to get rid of your shame and your oppression and your captivity, all of it's in Jesus. and whom the sun sets free is free indeed.
So see whether you're in bondage because of your sin. Or whether you're in bondage because of what somebody else has done to you. Today can be your day of freedom, and that's good news for everybody. Amen. Amen.
Write this down. God delivers us not only from the bad things we've done to ourselves. He can deliver us from the bad things that others have done to us. and whom the Son makes free is free indeed. Number three.
Number three, like Jesus. Moses was born during a season. When the king had declared death for all infants, When Moses was born Pharaoh declared that all infant boys had to be murdered. Who else does that remind you of?
Well, when Jesus was born Herod had made a decree that All Hebrew babies under the age of two should be killed. And do you remember? Where Jesus parents fled with him to escape that death sentence. Where'd he go? Egypt.
You ever wonder why all these random little details are in Jesus' life? It's because he is recreating the path of Moses. Number four, Moses the deliverer, like Jesus. Came through water. He was rescued out of the water.
That's literally chapter 2, verse 10, what Moses' name means: saved through water. By the way, Moses' salvation through water is supposed to remind you of how God saved his people through the ark. during Noah's flood, that's recorded in Genesis 6. By the way, want to know something amazing? The Hebrew word that's used for the little basket that Moses was put in, verse five?
Was Teva? And that literally means arc. The author literally calls Moses' basket an ark. There's only two times in the Bible that word is used. Once is that Noah's ark.
And the other is right here in Exodus chapter 2. The salvation through water theme is going to come up again in Exodus 14 and 15 when Israel is delivered from the Egyptian army through the Red Sea. And the Apostle Paul, the New Testament writer. is going to say that that event. Being delivered through the Red Sea prefigures the baptism with water.
that starts out our Christian life. It's one of the reasons we put people under the water, because like they went through the Red Sea, they didn't just, you know, stand on the side and have the Red Sea sprinkled at them. Right, it's all supposed to tie together. Number five, like Jesus, Moses was rejected by his own people. He was rejected by his own people.
We see it already in chapter 2. We're going to see it even more explicitly in later chapters, and that's just like Jesus also, who John said came into his own, and his own received him. Not. Number six, like Jesus, Moses was more than a lawgiver. Jesus was a deliverer.
Moses didn't just come preaching a new approach to life. Moses first led Israel out of captivity through signs and wonders. Only then, after delivering them, Did Moses go up into a mountain? Remember Mount Sinai? And he came down from that mountain with what?
A new law, which we now call the Ten Commandments. And then after that, he laid out the pattern for a blood sacrifice that would forgive them when they broke those commandments. And then after that, He would give them the pattern for a temple where they could meet with God. And then After Israel had sinned and failed to hold up their end of the covenant, Exodus 34, Moses... Is going to intercede on their behalf on top of that mountain to keep God from destroying them.
Moses was more than a lawgiver, he was a deliverer. Who does that remind you of? You ever noticed, again, that Jesus walked the same path as Moses? To give his first and biggest and greatest sermon, where did Jesus go? Up on the mount.
Sermon on the Mount, that's why we call it that. Jesus in that sermon gives his own version of the law. You ever notice? That the phrase he repeats most often in that sermon is, you have heard it said, talking about the law of Moses? But I say unto you, You ever notice that's what he says first?
Referring to his law. What he is saying is basically, I'm redoing the Moses story. Moses engraved his law on two stone tablets. Jesus, through the Holy Spirit, Paul says, engraves his law on our hearts. Like Moses, Jesus talked about the need for blood sacrifice to forgive sins.
But beyond Moses, Jesus didn't point us elsewhere for that. Jesus became that sacrifice in himself. Like Moses, Jesus provided a temple where we could meet with God. But beyond Moses, Jesus didn't merely give us plans to build that temple. Jesus became that temple where we could encounter God's presence.
He became the altar where we find forgiveness of sins. Like Moses, Jesus now intercedes on our behalf at the right hand of God, but beyond Moses, he pleads his perfect obedience in our place so we never have to worry about judgment or condemnation. Number seven, before bringing salvation, like Jesus. Before bringing salvation, Moses wandered in the wilderness for 40 years. Moses had to do that because he killed a man.
This parallels the 40 years that Israel would have to wander in the wilderness before going to the promised land because of their sin. More importantly, it parallels Jesus' wandering in the wilderness for 40 days before he began his ministry of deliverance. Again, I want you to consider how closely Jesus' life mirrors Moses' life. After Jesus' baptism, coming through water, like Moses was pulled out of the Nile. Jesus was driven into the wilderness for 40 days to be tempted by Satan directly.
But unlike Moses and Israel, Jesus didn't wander in the wilderness because of his sin, he wandered because of ours. And in that wilderness, he was tempted by Satan directly. And unlike Moses and unlike Israel, Jesus resisted Satan completely every single time. Number eight, Moses, like Jesus, Moses didn't just save us from something, he saved them to something. He didn't just lead him out of slavery and each him.
He led them to a promised land that was flowing with milk and honey. The book of Exodus is arranged in this really interesting way. The first 19 chapters are all about their deliverance from Egypt. The second 20 or so chapters give them the rules of worship. It's about half and half.
And that's because God was not just saving them from something. God was saving them to something, from Egypt, to worship and joy in the Christian life. I know, I know that in all the movies. That depicts Moses confronting Pharaoh, whether we're thinking of the Charlton Heston version or the Val Kilmer version. I know that Moses always stands up and says, let my people go.
That's not actually what he said. What he actually said is, let my people go. That they might worship me. They're not just being saved out of something, they're being saved to something. They're going from the bondage of captivity to the joy and freedom of worship.
Well, in the same way, Jesus said, I came not to just set you free from sin. I came not just to give you life. I came to give you life more abundantly. His objective was not just to keep you out of hell, but to put the joy of heaven in you. And some of you have never experienced that part of the Christian life.
That's why your Christian life lacks joy. That's why you don't love worship. It's why you don't love your time with God. That's why you don't get up and read your Bible. It's why, honestly, you don't like the Christian life.
You just do it because you're like, well, I don't want to go to hell, and that's the only alternative. Listen, if you're gonna do this thing. Do it all the way. Don't just focus on what you're saved from. Dive into what you're saved to.
Charles Furgeon used to say there's nobody more miserable than the half-committed Christian. If you're going to be saved, be saved 100%. Be saved all the way. You see, and I say this because it's the new year. And a lot of you have made a decision to come back to church.
But let me just go ahead and tell you right up front, church is a terrible hobby. You got to get up early on a Sunday morning. You got to get showered and get dressed and fight your way through that chaos we call a parking lot. You gotta smile and act like you're happy. Which is why some of you are gonna do this for a couple of weeks and say, eh.
I was gonna stay home. I'll check it out online every once in a while. Do not make the Christian life a hobby that you add in on Sundays. It's a terrible hobby. If you're going to follow Jesus, go all in.
Put them at the center of your life. Learn his word, fellowship with him, find joy in him. I mean, how miserable would they have been if they'd left Egypt and said, you know what, that's good enough. Let's just wander around the wilderness for a while. No, that was a promised land for them, and there's a promised land for you, and it's the presence of God.
NT Wright. NT Wright, the theologians said there are two liberation journeys in Exodus: two. The first is to get Israel out of slavery. And the second is to get slavery out of Israel. And the second is much more important than the first.
Okay, there you go. I just gave you eight ways. Eight. That these two chapters set up salvation. Does that make my point?
All my preaching professors say never have a sermon that's longer than four points. I just gave you eight sub-points in one point, okay? But see, that leads me to a second question. It's a much shorter question. What do we learn then about God's leadership in our lives from that?
You see, Moses illustrates several things. about how God works in our lives individually. And they're always in light of the salvation that he's working in the world. That's why I got to warn you again. Listen.
Everybody wants to jump right to this part. What's all this mean for my life? Make it practical, Pastor. What does this mean when I go to work on Monday? In fact, I'll be honest, most sermons I've heard on Moses focus only on this part right here.
I look through my library. And most sermons I have on Moses had titles like, and I'm not going to make any of these up, Holy Moses, God uses stammerers too. Or Moses, the original water bender. or three ways to lead like Moses. But you want to know how this applies to me, but please don't do that.
Because, like I said at the beginning, you can't understand God's will for your life until you understand the bigger picture of what God is doing in the world. Many of us say, I want to know God's will for my life, but the more important question is: how does my life fit into God's will? Or the way I heard Louie Giglio say at a passion last week: it's not God's will for my life, it's my life for God's will. That's where you should start. What's his will?
He's working salvation in you and through you. He's bringing you through an Exodus into a promised land of faith and obedience where you trust God, where you learn to be satisfied by his presence alone. He's not just taking you out of Egypt, he is getting Egypt out of you.
So, you got to always interpret everything he's doing in your life through that lens. And here's two quick lessons. that we learn about God's work in our lives from these opening chapters.
Okay? Here's the first one. They're going to be fast. Even when it seems like God's not working. Yes.
If you think the whole point of everything here is to make your life prosperous and problem-free, You're going to be disappointed with God. I'm just going to go ahead and tell you right now. But if you understand what God is actually doing in the world and in you, He's trying to get Egypt out of you and heaven into you. You're going to see that even when it doesn't seem like He's working, He actually is. Y'all, this theme is so familiar to us here at Summit, so common a refrain of God's melody in our lives, that I'm not going to spend much time on it today.
But in all these places in Israel's story where it seems like God is absent, he's not. Even though God's name is not mentioned. Was it just an accident that Moses' sister happened to put the basket into the Nile at the very place where Pharaoh's daughter would be the one to find it? Was that just an accident? Was it an accident?
Say it. Say no. No. No. Yeah.
Was it an accident that this girl was one of the few people in Egypt? Who was willing to defy Pharaoh's command? Was that just an accident? Yeah. God was there guiding the currents, protecting the baby Moses, controlling that girl's plan that day so that she would be at the right place at the right time.
By the way, the Nile is one of the worst places in the world for crocodiles. God shut all those crocodiles' mouths so that she would find him and not them. Was it pure accident that Moses would grow up in Pharaoh's house where he would form the relationships and gain the knowledge to save Israel one day? You see, because he was raised in Pharaoh's house, he was get military training where he would learn how to organize large groups of people and that would come in handy. And because he was raised in Pharaoh's house, he would have learned to read and write, which most Hebrews couldn't do.
So he would be able to systematize God's laws and write five of the most influential Bible books, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Was that pure accident? No. No. See, friend, in the same way, he's always been quietly at work in your life doing the same kinds of things.
In the pain, in what felt like chaos, his invisible hand has been writing a story, and it's time you woke up to the story. See? What do you see in your life right now is random? What do you see as chaos? What do you see is just unfair.
I'm not saying it wasn't unfair. I'm not saying that God somehow delighted in your pain. I'm just saying that even in the chaos and even in the pain, you've got a redeeming God, the God of Exodus, who is writing the story that will transform all of it. if you let him. Stop blaming God for your brokenness and come to God for healing from your brokenness because He's the only one who can heal you from it.
Yeah, lament what happened to you. Learn from it wherever you can. Confront. wherever you need to, but do not stay wallowing in Egypt. It is not your fault.
that that thing happened to you, but it's your choice. It's your choice whether you stay in bondage in Egypt. A God stronger than Pharaoh. is ready to lead you to a promised land of blessing and it's time for some of you to go. Here's the second thing.
God saves through weakness. Not strength. Y'all summit, this is another theme. that is so common and other refrains so dominant in the melody that God plays in our lives. But again, I'm just going to mention it briefly.
But in this story, God uses none of the things. That the world considers strong or impressive as part of his salvation plan. Did you notice? Did you notice that all of the heroes in this story so far. Have been women.
That's not to take away. From the role that godly, brave, male hero type leaders are going to play in God's plan. I mean, you're going to see Moses become a man's man. He's going to be brave. He's going to be strong.
He's going to be humble. He's going to have everything that the Bible says a man should be. But here at the beginning It's all about women. And back then, women were unquestionably considered second class. And they're not just any old women either.
They're slave women. And not just slave women, they're midwives. Historians tell us that women became midwives because they couldn't have their own kids. Which is why you might have noticed this in chapter 1, verse 21. It says it was only after their obedience that God gave them families, because up until then, they didn't have families.
That's why they were midwives. God took two childless slave women. You couldn't get more at the bottom of the pile than these two women. And he made them the heroes of his story. We even learned their names.
Not shipwreck and pui like I joked, but shipra and pu-wa, which actually mean beautiful and sparkle. Two beautiful, sparkling women overlooked by everybody else, but mightily used in this story. By contrast, we're never even told Pharaoh's name. Did you notice that? He's the most powerful man in the world, but he's unnamed in God's universe.
While two faithful, obedient slave midwives are known, celebrated, and memorialized forever. And then you got Pharaoh's daughter. An Egyptian woman, a Gentile woman. Part of the bad guys team who finds Moses and saves him. God brought salvation through poor, infertile women and a Gentile woman.
Don't you see how significant that is? See, even when we get into the life of Moses. It's not the advantages. that Moses had experienced in Pharaoh's house that become the means of salvation. In fact, if you look real quick, back in verse 20 in chapter 1.
You'll see that Moses in writing his biography Skips over. The entire experience of growing up in Pharaoh's household. He never even mentions it. Y'all listen, if I had been a poor adopted immigrant kid, who was rescued off the street. By the President's daughter.
and grew up in the White House. And I was writing my own autobiography one day, I would definitely include a few chapters about that. In fact, I'd probably put it on the cover, Lessons I Learned in the White House or something like that. Yet Moses never even brings it up. He never even brings it up.
It's his insignificant time in the wilderness that Moses talks about. Because see they're in the wilderness Not in Pharaoh's house. In the wilderness is where he learns something much more important than the arts of Egyptian power. In the wilderness is where he learned to walk with and trust in God. And Moses said, That's what's valuable in my life.
Moses, looking back many years later, said, That's what's valuable, not all this other stuff. not my degrees, not my skills, not my riches, all that. That's what's valuable to me. This is a melody you're going to hear all throughout the Bible. God uses the weak and he saves through weaknesses.
It was the melody first established in Genesis. God used a sterile old man and woman to found a great nation, not once, but twice. Isaac was also sterile. Then he chooses Jacob, the weak second one, not Esau, the strong older son, to bring the blessing through. Then of Jacob's two wives, he chooses Leah, the ugly one.
Don't hate on me for saying that. That's what the Bible says. He chooses Leah, the ugly one, over Rachel, the beautiful one, and gave to Leah, the ugly sister, the messianic line. And now to start off Exodus, we got a series of midwives and slaves and Gentiles in the salvation story. Moses' advantages come to nothing, but the weaknesses of the wilderness is where Moses meets God, and that's what's important to him when it's all said and done.
Make this the year that you seek and know God, like Moses did. Stop spending your morning scrolling through social media and your evening staring at the television. It's time to discover what God has for your life. You need to meet him every day. Reach for your Bible in the morning, not your phone.
Reach for your Bible to see what God is up to. That's more important than what all your idiot friends are saying. That's the most important thing that's going on in your life.
So, here's what I'm asking you to do. I'm asking you to start a quiet time, a time every morning that you meet with God. You winned? You in? I want you to bow your heads.
If you would, at all of our campuses, bow your heads. In Exodus 1 and 2, you see the picture of our salvation.
Some of you You've never received Jesus as Savior. And as we start the book of Exodus, you need to start your journey with Jesus. If you're ready to do that and you never have, or you're not sure that you have, Right now, you can just say to him, right now. Lord Jesus, I surrender to you. I receive you as my Savior.
Say to him, I surrender to you and I receive you as my Savior. The God who saw, heard, and knew in Exodus is the same God walking with you into whatever comes next. As you think about today's teaching, we pray that it continues to shape your week. Everything we do at Summit Life is made possible through your generosity. This month, your gift equips us to keep sharing gospel-centered teaching.
And as a thank you, we'll send you our brand new set of scripture memory cards. It's a practical way to start 2026 focused on what matters most. Take a look and reserve your set with a gift by visiting jadycreer.com. We'll see you next time. Today's program was produced and sponsored by JD Greer Ministries.
