Matt Chandler - Our Story in Exodus

Well, if you have your Bibles, go ahead and grab those. We’re going to be in Exodus chapter 1. I don’t think I need to say anything else — I could just pray, and we could be done, as the first 15 chapters were done beautifully for me by our comm team. If you don’t have a Bible with you, grab one; there should be a hardback black one somewhere around. You’re going to read quite a bit of text today, and I want you to be able to follow along with us as we do that.

I want to start right out of the gate by answering why in the world we’re going to look at the book of Exodus for the next 9, 10, or 11 months. Because if you are like me and you’re looking at all that is going on in the world and maybe even all that is going on in your own life and relationships—what you’ve got going on at work, what you’ve got going on in your finances—you might be wondering, «Why in the world wouldn’t we do like 10 weeks on marriage?» That would make sense, right? Not 11 months on Exodus! So what in the world does Exodus have to do with you and me here in 2016?

Now, I was hoping you would ask that; here’s my answer. The book of Exodus is ultimately about God. That’s what the book of Exodus is about. A right understanding and a right view of who God is shapes and affects every felt need we can imagine. So if you’ve come and you’re thinking, «Gosh, I really would have appreciated a series on anxiety,» or «I really would have appreciated a series on how to overcome addiction, what to do with fear, or how to address doubt,» what I want to say to you is that Exodus is going to help us get underneath all of that and give us a view of God that can transcend those issues and instill confidence in the God of the Bible. A poor understanding of God leads to so many of the ills in our hearts and in our relationships with one another, so a right understanding of who God is must be the primary pursuit of those who are serious about life.

With that said, let me tell you a little bit about Exodus. Exodus is the second book of five books called the Pentateuch. Now, you’re probably not going to say that much this week, so let’s try to repeat that real quick. Say «Pentateuch» for me — just like a bunch of scholars. Alright? So, Pentateuch literally means «book of five.» What’s happening here is that this is the second of five books that is meant to be taken as a singular narrative; Exodus isn’t a story unto itself but actually a chapter of a bigger story. I would contend that the more you proof-text or pull just 10 verses out of this or two verses out of that, the more you unintentionally misrepresent or malign the nature and character of God. Anytime you hear an unbeliever or someone who is aggressive towards the Christian faith point out the supposed wickedness of God in the Old Testament, they have always, always, always proof-texted. They have pulled an event outside of a massive story and tried to highlight that event to imply something about the nature and character of God that, when placed inside the larger narrative, simply cannot be true.

I would explain it like this: The Bible was not primarily written to be read in 10-verse chunks. We have cut the Bible down to size. Now, obviously, there are some parts, like the Psalms and some passages like the Book of James, that are written in very short bursts, but most of the Bible — including Paul’s letters and certainly the Gospels, as well as great books like Isaiah — is meant to be read to be experienced, the way you experience a symphony. Imagine if you were at a concert and you got the first 10 bars of Beethoven’s Fifth, and then the conductor turned around and said, «Okay, that’s all for this week. Come back the same time next week and we’ll continue with the next 10 bars.» You would think, «Wait, what?»

What I’m lamenting is the way that we read our Bibles and miss out on the beauty of the narrative arc of what God is accomplishing. That’s why we gave you, a couple of months ago, a reading list for Genesis so you could begin to read through the book of Genesis, which is so tied to Exodus. In fact, Exodus begins with the word «now,» or «and.» Right? Who begins a book with «now» or «and»? It’s because it’s viewed as the second part of five parts of one story. Ultimately, if you haven’t read Genesis, no need to panic; it’s still there. You can go back and grab that at another point. I’ll tell you what we did for you because we love you: We provided an overview of Genesis in your Exodus guide, because we think it’s hard to understand Exodus fully without understanding some of what occurred in Genesis, if not all that happened in Genesis.

So let me tell you how we plan on kind of tackling this book, in the good sense of that word «tackling.» We are going to spend this time through Advent, so through the…