Exodus Old and New is a remarkable, compelling and deeply insightful exploration of the Exodus theme in Scripture. Dr Morales demonstrates that the exodus is a central theme in the Bible; it is foundational to redemptive history: the storyline of the Bible from Genesis to Revelation is a story of exile and exodus. He shows that the exodus of God’s people from Egypt is the pattern for the second exodus―that is, the salvation accomplished by Jesus the Messiah. That salvation is for all God’s people, both Israel and those from among the nations; it culminates in God’s people living in God’s presence in a new creation.
This book bridges the gap between books written at an introductory and popular level and those aimed at advanced students and at scholars. The book is relatively brief (around 200 pages) and accessible. The text is accompanied by footnotes, and there’s a small list of books for further reading at the end. Dr Morales’ book brought home to me, in a new way, how fundamental and pervasive the theme of exodus is in Scripture. His book is a rich feast of Biblical truth that both edifies the mind and stirs the heart, and I unhesitatingly commend it. In his preface, the author writes, “My hope and prayer is that this book may in some small way lead readers through their own “sort of exodus,” closer to God.”
Read this review supplemented by a summary of the book (including a summary of each chapter) HERE.
This book is the second volume in the Essential Studies in Biblical Theology (ESBT) series, edited by Benjamin L. Gladd. This series explores the central themes of the Bible’s storyline from Genesis through the whole of redemption history. The series aims to provide accessible introductions to the themes, and to apply these themes to Christian life, ministry, and worldview.
L. Michael Morales is professor of biblical studies at Greenville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in Taylors, South Carolina. He is the author of Who Shall Ascend the Mountain of the Lord? A Biblical Theology of the Book of Leviticus (in the New Studies in Biblical Theology series, edited by D.A. Carson) and The Tabernacle Pre-Figured: Cosmic Mountain Ideology in Genesis and Exodus.
I thank IVP Academic for kindly providing me with a review copy of this book. This did not influence my thoughts regarding the work.
‘Pharaoh’s army engulfed by the Red Sea’, by Frederick Arthur Bridgman (1847-1928)
The Exodus is a foundational theme in the Bible. God delivered His people Israel from Egypt through an Exodus. Jesus, too, saves people through an Exodus.
The Exodus from Egypt was the key saving event in Israel’s history (see, for example, Deuteronomy 4.32-40, 6.20–25, 1 Samuel 12.6–8, Psalm 105.26-45, Jeremiah 32:20–21). But the prophets told God’s people there would be another Exodus. That second Exodus was – at one level – fulfilled in the return from Exile. But the prophets also saw another Exodus – an Exodus more far-reaching than the return to the Promised Land, an Exodus that would eclipse even the Exodus from Egypt.
This new Exodus is prophesied in a number of places (for example Isaiah 11.10-16 and Isaiah 43.14-21). God was going to rescue people from a slavemaster far worse than the Egyptians. He was going to rescue them from bondage to sin and Satan. That Exodus would be accomplished by the Messiah, Jesus Christ. The Messiah would deliver people from sin and Satan through His death, resurrection and ascension to His Father in heaven.
The first Exodus
It was preceded by a sacrifice
Before the Exodus, Passover sacrifices were to be offered (Exodus 12.1-14,21-27,43-49). The Passover animals (lambs or young goats) died; the Israelites’ firstborn sons were spared. The Passover animals died instead of the firstborn, who collectively represented all Israel.
That sacrifice formed the main part of a meal. This meal – the Passover meal – affirmed the covenant relationship between God and His people. It was a covenant meal. Israel was to celebrate the Passover every year.
It was a baptism
The first Exodus was a baptism. Paul writes: “all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea” (1 Corinthians 10.2).
It released Israel from bondage
Through the first Exodus God delivered Israel from bondage in Egypt. The pursuing Egyptians perished in the overflowing waters.
It was a new creation – it brought a nation into being
At the Passover and Exodus, God’s people Israel were born. It was their birthday. For the very first time, we read of “all the congregation of Israel” and “the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel” (Exodus 12.3,6). Accordingly, God appointed the month in which Passover occurred as the first month of their calendar year (Exodus 12.2). Just as every year we celebrate our birthdays, God’s people celebrated their national birthday annually at the feast of Passover and Unleavened Bread (see Exodus 12.14,17,24-27).
In Isaiah 43.1,7 Isaiah prophesies about how God brought His people into existence – and he does so using creation language that echoes Genesis 1 and 2. God “created” , “formed” and “made” His people. These are the three words used to describe God’s creation of mankind. In Genesis 1.26, God said “Let us make man . . . .” ; in the following verse, we read “So God created man . . . .” and in Genesis 2.7, “the Lord God formed the man . . . .” . Israel was a new creation, a new mankind made in His image, made to live in fellowship with Him, created for His glory.
There are links, too, between the Exodus and the original creation. God sent a “wind” (Hebrew rûach) over the sea (Exodus 14.21). This reminds us of how His Spirit (Hebrew rûach) moved over the Earth at the beginning (Genesis 1.2). Dry land appears where once there was sea – reminding us of the appearance of the dry land recorded in Genesis 1.9-10). The light and darkness (Exodus 14.20) reminds us of God dividing the light from the darkness on the first creation day (Genesis 1.3-5). God was creating again. God was creating a new people, and He was going to bring them into a new Eden – the Promised Land.
The second Exodus
Just as Moses led God’s people through the first Exodus, so Jesus the Messiah takes people through a second Exodus.
It was accomplished by a sacrifice
At His transfiguration, Jesus talked with Moses and Elijah about His “his departure, which he was about to accomplish at Jerusalem” (Luke 9.31). The word “departure” here translates the Greek word exodos. Jesus’ Exodus was His death and resurrection – with the emphasis on His death.
Before the first Exodus, Passover animals were sacrificed. Our Exodus happened because of a sacrifice – the sacrificial death of our Passover Lamb, Jesus (1 Corinthians 5.7).
The first Exodus was preceded by a meal. Jesus’ Exodus was preceded by a meal, too – the Last Supper. This meal celebrated the new covenant that Jesus was about to inaugurate through His sacrificial death. It was a covenant meal.
Israel was to celebrate their covenant meal – the Passover – annually. We are to celebrate our covenant meal – the Lord’s Supper – regularly, too. In fact, the early church seems to have celebrated it every time they met together as a church.
It was a baptism
The first Exodus was a baptism. Jesus’ Exodus was a baptism, too. He said “I have a baptism to be baptized with, . . . .” (Luke 12.50). His baptism was His suffering and death.
And everyone who believes in Jesus shares in His baptism of death. Paul writes: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” (Romans 6.3-4). As believers, we died with Christ and were buried with Him. When Jesus died, so did our “old self” that was enslaved to sin. Our “old self” was “crucified with him” (Romans 6.6, and see Colossians 3.9). And we rose with Him into resurrection life (Ephesians 2.6, Colossians 2.12).
It releases people from bondage
Through baptism in the cloud and the sea, Israel was released from slavery. The nation crossed over into a new life. Through sharing in Jesus’ baptism, we are released from slavery to sin and cross over into a new life with God. We have “crossed over from death to life” (John 5.24 NIV and see 1 John 3.14). The Father “has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son” (Colossians 1.13). We have been raised with Christ into a new life of freedom from bondage to sin.
It is a new creation – it brings a new humanity into being
The Passover and Exodus brought a nation into being – God’s people Israel. Jesus’ sacrificial death brought a new humanity into being. He has fulfilled the terms of the New Covenant promised to His people Israel (Jeremiah 31.31-34) and gathered both Jews and Gentiles into His new humanity, the Church. We are “one new humanity” (Ephesians 2.15 NIV).
Paul writes, “. . . if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” (2 Corinthians 5.17). Believers are new people, and participate in the new creation inaugurated by Christ’s death, resurrection and ascension into heaven – a new creation that will be consummated in the New Heaven and Earth.
The beginning of our natural life was through natural birth. The beginning of a Christian’s new life is a spiritual birth. Our natural conception and birth made us part of the old sinful humanity ‘in Adam’. New birth makes a person part of the new humanity ‘in Christ’. Once they were Satan’s offspring (see 1 John 3.10 and compare John 8.44). At new birth, they become God’s children (John 1.12-13, Romans 8.14-17, Galatians 3.26, 4.4-7, 1 John 3.1-2). They now have the right to call the Father, “Abba! Father!” (Romans 8.15, Galatians 4.6). God Himself comes to live in them; He gives them His uncreated, eternal life (see Romans 6.23). They are “born . . . of God” (John 1.13).
The Bible describes this new birth in a variety of ways: they’re “born again” (John 3.3,7) – or to use William Barclay’s rendering of John 3.7, “reborn from above” . They’re “born anew” (1 Peter 1.23, J. Ramsey Michaels’ translation), they’re regenerated (Titus 3.5). New birth is, in John Stott’s words “a deep, radical, inward transformation” . God’s children have a new disposition, a new inward inclination to obey God. In Oswald Chambers’ words, they bear “a strong family likeness” to their Father. And it’s only when someone is born into God’s new family, that they really become fully human as God created us to be. Ole Hallesby put it this way: “. . . if I were to tell you why I became a Christian and were to give my answer quickly and in one short sentence, I think that I would have to state it thus, to be as simple and as clear as possible: I did it to become a man.”
In this final session of The Journey, we’ll begin by looking at the emergence of the Antichrist and the final rebellion against God that will occur at the end of this age.
And at the end of this age, Jesus will return to Earth. We’ll look at everything that happens when He comes – the destruction of Antichrist and the evil world system under his control, and the resurrection and final judgment, and how the present heaven and earth will be transformed – a process that we can compare to the emergence of a beautiful butterfly from a caterpillar. We’ll also look at the apostle Paul’s picture of the seed to explain how our present mortal bodies will be transformed into the new glorious bodies we’ll possess in the new creation.
We’ll also take a moment to look at what the Bible tells us about Hell – where Satan and his evil angels, and every human who has rejected God will exist for eternity.
And we’ll look at the wonderful description of the New Heaven and Earth that we read in the final two chapters of the Book of Revelation. We’ll explore what life will be like there, and what believers will do there. There will be Heaven on Earth for all eternity. God’s people will live in God’s paradise in God’s presence for ever.
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Leader’s Guide for group study
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Question 1 In Session 1, we saw several things in both the first two chapters of Genesis and the final two chapters of Revelation. What do we find in the new creation that we do not find in Genesis? What does this tell us about our future lives in the new creation that we look forward to?
Bible passages to read Revelation 21.1-4, 22-27, 22.1-5.
In our first session, we highlighted four things found both in the original creation described in Genesis and in the new creation described in Revelation:
●Heaven and Earth. In Genesis, God creates Heaven and Earth (Genesis 1.1). In Revelation He creates a New Heaven and a New Earth (Revelation 21.1).
●Light. In the beginning, God created light (Genesis 1.3-5). In the new creation, God is its light (Revelation 22.5, see also 21.23-24).
●A river. A river waters the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2.10). In Revelation, we see a river flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb (Revelation 22.1).
●The tree of life. There’s a tree of life in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2.9). In Revelation 22.2 we read that “on either side of the river” is “the tree of life” .
The most obvious difference between the original creation and the new creation is this: in the original creation there was a garden – the Garden of Eden; in the new creation there’s a city – a garden city. This city is the New Jerusalem. It’s where God lives (Revelation 21.1-3,22). New Jerusalem is a real place, of course – though it won’t be like any city we’ve seen here on Earth. But it also symbolises something. What is a city? A city – any city – is an interdependent community. God’s people – God’s community – live in New Jerusalem. God lives there with His people. In the city is “the river of the water of life” and “the tree of life” . New Jerusalem is a garden. This city is a picture of God’s people living in God’s presence in God’s paradise – in other words, the Kingdom of God. New Jerusalem symbolises God’s perfect world.
There’s something else that distinguishes the new creation from the Garden of Eden. God is present in both the garden and the new creation. In the garden He is “walking” (Genesis 3.8). But in New Jerusalem He is enthroned. God reigns there in all His glory. There’s no temple in the city (Revelation 21.22) – “its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb” . The whole city is the temple, the dwelling-place of God. God’s presence fills the entire city. The city’s shape tells us that. It’s a cube (Revelation 21.16). That’s like the Most Holy Place, both in the Temple (1 Kings 6.20) and in the Tabernacle (this can be calculated from the description in Exodus 26.1-37). The Most Holy Place was the innermost sanctuary, the place of God’s immediate presence (see Exodus 25.22, Numbers 7.89). The whole city is the eternal Most Holy Place, where God lives on Earth. So everyone in the city is in the Most Holy Place, too. Once, only one man could enter the Most Holy Place in the Tabernacle and the Temple, and only under the strictest conditions. Now all God’s people live there in His immediate presence!
Question 2 Jesus has justified us believers; our names are written in “the book of life” . Nonetheless, “each of us will give an account of ourselves to God” (Romans 14.12 NIV). How should this impact our priorities in life, and what we think, say and do?
Bible passage to read Romans 14.10-12, 2 Corinthians 5.10, 2 Peter 3.11-14, Revelation 20.11-15.
After we die, we will all stand before God’s judgment seat. In Revelation 20.11, John does not say whether the Father or the Son is seated on the “great white throne” of judgment. But we know that the Father has handed over all judgment to the Son (John 5.22,27, Acts 10.42, 17.31, Romans 2.16). It’s reasonable to conclude that Jesus will be our Judge.
Why has God given Jesus this role? One reason is surely this: because Jesus is not only God, but a human being like us. People can’t say to Him: “You have no right to judge us; you don’t know what it’s like to be human – you’ve never suffered like we have, you’ve never been tempted” . He has. In life as well as in death, Jesus suffered more than we could ever know. He was tempted just as we are (Hebrews 4.15).
When Jesus returns we will all stand before Him. Each one of us “will give an account of ourselves to God” (Romans 14.12 NIV). Sam Storms comments: “Is it not sobering to think that every random thought, every righteous impulse, every secret prayer, hidden deed, long-forgotten sin, or act of compassion will be brought into the open for us to acknowledge and for the Lord to judge? And all this, we are reminded, without any ‘condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus’ (Romans 8.1).”
We are accountable for our lives. In the end, none of us can blame heredity or environment, or what others have done to us, for the kind of person we are. It’s our reactions – what we have thought and said and done in response to the circumstances of life – that makes us what we are at the moment of death.
Our childhood years were our ‘formative’ years. Our present life on Earth, too, is like a childhood. These are our ‘formative years’, a period of training and maturation that’s preparing us for our life in the world to come. We will reap what we sow (Galatians 6.7-9).
God is laying a foundation in our lives, and we must co-operate with Him. How much do we allow God’s Spirit to mould us into the image of His Son (see 2 Corinthians 3.18)? Are we presenting our bodies “as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God” (Romans 12.1)? Are we allowing the Spirit of God to transform us by the renewing of our minds (Romans 12.2)? Are we allowing Him to refashion the way we think, to come to see things as God sees them – so that we discern what His will is, agree with it and do it?
Have we yielded our lives fully to God? Have we walked in the Spirit, rather than in our own strength? Have we resolutely trusted God, come what may?
Our faith is proved by acts of obedience (James 2.14-26). Have we obeyed God – in the small things that other people don’t see, as well as the big things? Have we overcome temptation, compromise and persecution for Jesus’s sake? Have we loved? Have we forgiven?
Question 3 We have a glorious hope of heaven – that is, living in the New Heaven and Earth with all God’s people in God’s paradise in God’s presence. How has this session helped you in your understanding of heaven? How should the hope of heaven affect how we live?
Bible passage to read Romans 8.18-25, Colossians 1.3-5, 1 Peter 1.3-9.
We need to remind ourselves – and each other – often that our eternal home will be the New Heaven and Earth, where we will see God and be part of His royal priesthood, sharing in Christ’s rule over creation and serving God and other people in unimaginably wonderful ways – as we saw in the video. In fact, that is the world that God made us for.
We should keep “the hope laid up” for us “in heaven” (Colossians 1.5) at the centre of our thinking and allow it to mould our lives – our relationship with God, our ambitions, our friendships, how we spend our time and money, and how we treat other people.
Keeping our minds on the world to come gives true perspective to our present lives. C.S. Lewis wrote, “A man who has been in another world does not come back unchanged.” When we see what the Bible teaches about the world to come and allow these truths to sink in to our minds and penetrate our hearts, we will not be unchanged.
The hope of heaven has a special impact on how we view the struggles and disappointments and sufferings that we experience in our present lives. Peter writes, “In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials“ (1 Peter 1.6; the phrase “in this” refers back to the whole of the previous verses 3-5, in other words, “a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ . . . an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, . . . .” ). Randy Alcorn, in his excellent book Heaven, writes, “Anticipating Heaven doesn’t eliminate pain, but it lessens it and puts it in perspective. . . . . . . . suffering and death are temporary conditions. . . . . The biblical doctrine of Heaven is about the future, but it has tremendous benefits here and now. If we grasp it, it will . . . radically change our perspective on life. This is what the Bible calls ‘hope’, a word used six times in Romans 8.20-25, the passage in which Paul says that all creation longs for our resurrection and the world’s coming redemption.”
Image from Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Online Catalog. No known restrictions on publication. Image edited from original.
Early photograph of Jerusalem taken from the Mount of Olives (taken around 1890-1900). From Luke 24.50 and Acts 1.12 we learn that Jesus ascended on the Mount of Olives, in the vicinity of Bethany. The place where this photograph was taken is perhaps close to where the ascension took place. Certainly this view, taken around 120 years ago before the development of the modern city of Jerusalem, is the kind of scene that Jesus and His disciples would have been familiar with. Of course, in Jesus’s day, the great Temple rebuilt by Herod would have dominated the view of the city, rather than the Dome of the Rock which stands on the Temple mount today.
Jesus’s ascension is not a subject we perhaps think about very much. If we do, we may perhaps think of it as a postscript to His incarnation, life, crucifixion and resurrection. Yet, as Nick Needham makes clear in this article, His ascension is hugely important.
When Jesus returned to His Father at His Ascension He didn’t stop being a Man. Being human wasn’t just a temporary condition that He assumed whilst on Earth and divested Himself of on His return to Heaven. He is still a Man, and will remain so for all eternity.
There is now a Man in heaven – a Man with a physical body. Jesus’s body is glorious, incorruptible, perfect. But it is a true physical body nonetheless.
This has staggering implications for each of us individually, and for our human race as a whole – implications that Dr Needham brings out in his article.
Firstly, Jesus’s continuing humanity in Heaven tells us that God is for us. Dr Needham writes: “The eternal Son, the second person of the majestic Godhead, the Creator and sustainer of the universe, he is the human being, a son of man, a child of humanity. . . . . He has the same nature as us. He is flesh of our flesh and bone of our bone. . . . . You may know how it is when you feel lost and alone in a strange place among unknown people and then suddenly you discover someone from your own country or your own city speaking your own language, maybe your very dialect. An instant bond springs up between you and your compatriot. Well, look up to heaven. You won’t just find angels there in all their alien angelic nature; you’ll find a man there; you’ll find a native of your planet who speaks your language.”
Secondly, Jesus’s resurrection and continuing humanity in Heaven is guarantees that we, who believe in Christ, will be resurrected as well. Dr Needham writes: “There is a man in the glory. The dust of the earth has entered the highest heaven. . . . . That has the most profound and the most wonderful significance for us. I’m human and in Jesus Christ humanity has ascended into heaven and lives in glory and so that means the way is opened for me as well and if I, in my humanity, am united to Christ, in his humanity, by the Holy Spirit, human on earth united with human in heaven, then the presence of the ascended Jesus in glory becomes the unbreakable pledge and promise that I will follow him there and I will share his glory.”
Thirdly, Jesus’s continuing humanity in Heaven means a Man – a Member of our own human race rules the Universe. That is an astonishing thought. Dr Needham asks: “Who is on the throne of the Universe? Who is King? God we say instinctively, God is the reigning King of the Universe. Our God reigns and that is true, but the New Testament adds a further truth. The man Christ Jesus is on the throne of the universe. . . . . There is a man on the throne of the universe.
This, in turn, has implications for our own destiny. God gave Adam and Eve dominion over this world, saying: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” (Genesis 1.28 ESV). But now, as Dr Needham explains “The destiny that Adam lost has been restored and has been more than restored in the second Adam victorious over death. Humanity in Christ has been exalted to be the lord of the entire cosmos, with heaven as well as earth bowing beneath his feet.”
Finally, Jesus’s glorified human nature defines what God intends for our own human nature in the world to come. Dr Needham says: “In other words, it is the man Jesus in his final condition, ascended, glorified, exalted who finally stands before us as the perfect definition of humanity. It is only in the exalted Christ that human nature comes to its full bloom, its full flowering, its final development of powers and capacities. If I want to see what human nature is ultimately capable of I do not look at my own stunted twisted deformed, diseased, shattered and pathetic shell of humanity. No, I look at the man Christ Jesus, risen from the dead and exalted to the right hand of the Father. That is real humanity, human nature according to God’s final definition and purpose. . . . . And that’s the pattern according to which God the Father intends to mould you and me. . . . . Our human nature is going to be lifted up and augmented to heights of perfection that currently, frankly, we can only dream about. Our powers and capacities will be wondrously enriched and expanded in ways that are utterly beyond our present understanding when we are glorified.”
He concludes: “Now if all of this is the case, how can you and I be satisfied with earthly pleasures? How can you and I settle down contentedly here, our horizons limited by the activities and ambitions of life on earth; how can we do that? I say this with reverence. We’ve hardly been born yet. For the Christian life on earth is like being in the womb. The real life is yet to come and the ascended exalted Christ is the measure and the pledge of that glorious life.”
I urge you to take a few moments to read this article – and be edified and encouraged.
Rev Dr Nick Needham holds the degrees of BD and PhD from the University of Edinburgh. He has published several books, including three volumes of a projected five-volume series on Church history entitled 2,000 Years of Christ’s Power (see the publisher’s description HERE). He teaches Church History part-time at the Highland Theological College, Dingwall. He recently accepted a call to a pastorate in Inverness.
Creation to New Creation - a Bible Overview 
