God has a master plan for all of His creation. His teachings, commandments, and examples are to show us how to avoid obstacles and pitfalls along our way and how to access His presence and His power to overcome the struggles we endure. So we can successfully arrive at His appointed destination at the appointed time.
God’s plan is seen in a repeating pattern throughout the Bible. God’s people always enter into captivity, and escape the captivity only to wander in the wilderness until God graciously shows a way into a promised land.
This pattern is seen from Genesis through Exodus, repeating itself through the arrival of Jesus and up to this very day. And it’s not over yet.
This has been God’s pattern and His plan since before time began, and it seems like this is appearing again, once again we have wandered into the wilderness on our own. This pattern can even be seen in our individual lives.
Perhaps if we really understood God’s plan, purpose, methods and ways where all this is leading, and why it is this way, we could find the motivation and strength to endure the end and enter the final and permanent promise land.
I began seeing this when I began doing to a Bible study that began three years ago. It began as a 6 week Bible study on the basics for new people in my church. And has been going on because no one wants it to end.
In the story about God, delivering the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, a pattern emerging an exodus pattern that repeats over and over again throughout the Bible. The pattern involves God, providing people with the way out of bondage and oppression, a way through a period of challenge or testing And away into a new life.
The exodus way is a biblical pattern rooted in the story of Israel’s departure from Egypt that expands throughout scripture to describe a way of life out of enslavement through transformation, and into freedom. God works with Moses to liberate Israel, out of oppression, through the wilderness, and into the promised land. Eventually, Jesus arrives as new Moses reading a new exodus. He rescued humanity out of slavery to sin and death, and needs them through transformation, into God‘s better world -This is the Exodus way.
The Exodus story involves epic showdown between pharaoh and Moses that includes 10 intense plagues, a massive group of escaping slaves who safely walk though the Red Sea’s chaotic waters, and freedom for Israel on the other side. But the story continues will be on the showdown and escape to establish a three part pattern in scripture so often that it becomes harmonic.
It’s the way out of slavery, way through a wilderness transformation, and a way into abundant life that God offers in the promised land.
The first people to walk the path of Jesus actually called themselves followers of “The Way.” They entered the water baptism as assigned that they were following Jesus out of slavery to death, through the transforming wilderness experiences of learning to trust God in the middle of fear and uncertainty, and this dark world, and into the restful peace that God has promised. That place of peace involves both a new way of life with Him and an entirely new cosmos, one no longer suffering under any form of oppression
Jesus followers still under corruption and death as they continue on a path through the wilderness. But ultimately God provides everything we need for this difficult journey. And we can walk confidently, knowing that Jesus’s path will one day lead us into the reunion of heaven and earth, where love, joy, and peace saturate everything.
In this patterned theme, the exodus way extend well beyond Moses and Israel, reaching his climax in the story of Jesus and His followers.
Jesus is the way out, the way through, and the way in.
From Pity to Praise 