What do you sing for? We sing songs in church, but often forget to think about why we sing the things we do. In today’s passage, we read of Moses and Miriam’s song. This isn’t just another song about how a lover feels for his or her beloved. This is a song that expresses gratitude and affection for salvation! 

Exodus is all about God’s glory, His glory in saving His people and defeating their enemies. He reveals His glory to His people and to their enemies. God wants His people to remember and trust this. God also wanted them to remember His deliverance. When God’s people forget and fail to remember who God is and what He has done, sin comes in and distorts their relationship with God. Exodus also gives us the framework to fully grasp the full extent of Christ’s completed work on the cross and shows us ourselves, our helplessness and how God acts. 

Do you struggle with trusting God today? Have you doubted his goodness in your life, his wisdom in your struggles? Have you wondered why did God let this happen to me? Our struggles are real, and they do hurt, and many times, we are left questioning where is God, what can he be doing in this circumstance. Today’s passage seeks to assure us of God’s commitment to his people.

The Passover was instituted by God for His people. This is some sort of a routine, and we realise here that routines are revelatory. Routines reveal things about the people doing the routine, as well as the entity that enforces the routine. In a similar way, the Passover reveals something about the people doing it, as well as the God who gave them these instructions.

Today’s text is special as we will be achieving two goals: a macro-goal that has to do with the structure of Exodus 11-13, and a micro-goal more specific to the text that explains the importance of “the Exodus”. How are chapters 11-13 designed, Why does this event have a special name that control the entire book, and how does it relate to the New Testament?

Today's passage is frankly quite foreign to our time and place. We are aliens coming to this, and to understand, we need to ask ourselves this question: what do God’s people have to value? It is substitution. God’s people were taught before they left that they need to value substitution. It doesn’t just shape Israel, but all gospel believing Christians. The question therefore we all need to have at the back of our minds is: so what? 

By this time, we've read of so many plagues. Put yourselves in the shoes of the Israelites. They are a people trapped in slavery. What do you think is their biggest problem? Is it Moses who made their lives worse in Exodus 5:21? They led bitter lives in their slavery (Exodus 1:13-14). Is it Pharaoh who refuses to let them go? These could all be problems, but they pale in comparison to a larger problem: their sin and God’s righteous judgment of it. Today, we see what God does for his people in his terrible judgment of sin.

What is God like? We are used to reading Exodus for the actions, but tonight, as we look at this passage, we’re looking at the details and seeing the God that it describes. Be like the man in Ps 1 – meditate on the Lord that you may bear fruit.

Our study in Exodus continues in the plagues, and in this study, we'll take a look at plagues 7-9. Those of us that grew up in church might have read this passage or heard it retold many times. But what does it really mean? If plagues 7-9 are understood biblically, they are reasons to be scared and for us to tremble. Have you ever considered how the plagues are scary, and that God is actually scary? Let's keep that in mind as we slowly unpack the meaning and significance of the plagues. 

What do you think about God’s revelation of Himself through His acts of judgment? Does it show us the fruit of a successful anger-management program, where the wrathful God of the Old Testament learns to take deep breaths and count to 10 before He becomes the loving God of the New Testament? Today’s passage combats such faulty notions by showing us that God acts consistently, and His acts of terrible judgment and loving salvation both serve the common purpose of making Himself known, and bringing glory to His name. The theme of Pharaoh’s hardened heart is also threaded through this passage. We might be tempted to jump to theological squabbles about election and free will, but doing so would be to miss the point of the passage. How do we make sense of these issues? Read on to find out more! 

We begin part 2 of our series in Exodus under the theme of "Mighty to Save". In our previous study, we read about Moses, the man God chose to carry out His promises to deliver His people. Moses was no hero, but he was weak and fearful.