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Redeemer Women's is a discipleship ministry of Redeemer Community Church. We exist to help women celebrate and declare the gospel of God as we grow in knowing and following Jesus Christ.
For more information about our church, visit rccbirmingham.org. To get in touch with our team, send a message to women@rccbirmingham.org.
Alright. Okay. That was that was really good. Good morning. It is so good to see all of you this morning.
Krystal Brummitt:I I say I'm gonna say a lot of things that I say all the time, especially if you've been here. We're like, you're gonna we've heard you say that. But I always have such a hard time asking you all to stop talking because it makes me so excited. And I was telling Jenna, was like, a little bit feels like the first day of school. Like and you're like seeing all your friends again.
Krystal Brummitt:That maybe you've seen a little bit through the summer. Maybe you haven't. You're meeting new friends who are in your class, and so I love all of the excitement that is generated in being back here together this morning. And so I'm gonna I'm gonna fly through some stuff in here so that you can get more of the catching up and the getting to know one another on the back end of our time together. But before I go any further, I do wanna introduce myself if I haven't met you.
Krystal Brummitt:My name is Crystal. I serve on staff at Redeemer as the director of women's discipleship, and I have the the immense privilege and joy of getting to do this as my job, of getting to walk alongside women who are part of Redeemer or who are friends of Redeemer and who are coming in to study the Bible with us, and I really can't think of anything I would rather be doing or any place I'd rather be than here with you this morning. So I'm excited to get to know those of you who are newer to our Bible study and continue hanging with those of you who've been around for a while. I'm gonna pray for us. I'm gonna let you know kinda what our time together this morning is gonna look like, and then we're gonna jump in at a at a pretty quick paced pace head first.
Krystal Brummitt:So let me pray. God, thank you so much for this morning. God, I thank you for each and every woman who is here, the ones who are part of this study but couldn't be here today, and the joy and the excitement that is overflowing as we get to gather together over the next eleven ish weeks to study your word, but God, not to study your word alone or in isolation, but in community with one another. God, we thank you that you have not asked us, you have not mandated that we walk with you alone, but you have given us your church. You have given us spiritual family to pursue you alongside of.
Krystal Brummitt:And, we are hopeful and we are expectant for all that you have for us in your word in our study of Exodus this semester. We pray that you would meet us in the pages of your scripture, and we pray with confidence because we know that you will. And pray all these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Okay.
Krystal Brummitt:So what this morning is gonna look like is I'm going to share just a little bit about how our bible study works here at Redeemer. For many of you, this will be a review, a refresher, especially coming out of the summer, jumping into the fall. And then I know many of you are joining us for the first time, and so this will, especially be for you so that you know how we structure our study, what the expectations are, what we hope will be the outcome of our time together. And then I'm gonna do an introduction to the book of Exodus so that we can plant our feet in this book together as we begin studying it this week. Hopefully, you know that we're studying Exodus.
Krystal Brummitt:Everyone yeah. I one semester, I gave someone a book and they're like, oh, Genesis. Cool. I was like, surprise. That's where we are.
Krystal Brummitt:But if you haven't grabbed a workbook, they're in the back. Caitlin's back there at the table with the workbook. Make sure you have one of those and something to write with as we jump in. So we're going to take this at a fairly decent pace this morning just because I do want to make sure that you have time on the back, and you're going to go to your small groups and catch up and get to know one another there before we wrap up at eleven. So first things first, a little bit of formatting and logistics for women's Bible study here at Redeemer.
Krystal Brummitt:Our bible studies have three components. There are three important pieces. They're all equally important for our study of God's word together. The three components are, first, your personal homework. This is gonna be your personal study of the scripture passage for the week.
Krystal Brummitt:The second is gonna be your small group discussion. So following today, every Thursday morning when you come to Redeemer, you won't come here first. You're gonna go straight to your small groups, and you're gonna discuss what you studied that week with the with your workbook guide and with the passage of scripture for the week. And then the third part of our study is gonna be a large group teaching. So following your small group time, you will come into here, and myself or a couple other women I'll share about in just a minute will teach on that particular scripture passage for the week.
Krystal Brummitt:And so all three of those components make up how we do Bible study here at Redeemer, and I'm give gonna just a little bit of an overview of what each of those what the purpose of each of those is. So first, personal homework. So everyone has a workbook, and this workbook is intended to be your guide and your companion through the scriptures, through Exodus over the course of this semester, and then again in the spring. We'll split it up. You'll notice we're only doing 18 chapters, and then we'll finish the book in the spring.
Krystal Brummitt:And if you've been around Bible study, you're very familiar now that we continually choose curriculum that is written by Jen Wilkin. And it's not just that we're Jen Wilkin fangirls, although I'm very thankful for her and her influence on women and bible literacy and studying the bible. But the reason that we come back to these workbooks again and again is because they are specifically written and designed to get us as close to the scriptures as we possibly can. And you'll I'm sure many of us did different studies this summer that you have used curriculum that are wonderful. They have amazing writers, teachers, video components, and often they have additional curriculum stories written into them, and that's not a bad thing.
Krystal Brummitt:It just doesn't quite serve the purpose that we have for our time together during the spring and the fall semesters. And so you'll notice, if you're new, that there's hardly any, rarely ever, additional commentary written into your studies. It is gonna be you, your Bible, and your workbook companion working through the scriptures. And these workbooks take us through a learning process of understanding God's word, and there are three primary components to that. We're going to look at what does the Bible say.
Krystal Brummitt:We're gonna be asked questions in our workbook of of what does the text say, purely observation, making sure that we're comprehending what the author of the text is saying. And then we're gonna be guided through questions that are gonna ask us, what does this mean? What do you think the author meant by this? What do you think was intended when God said this? And, this is gonna be where we are beginning to interpret the scripture.
Krystal Brummitt:This is where it gets a little bit harder for us. I'm gonna come back to that in just a minute. And then we're gonna be asked, okay, then how does this change my life? You know, we're gonna look at application because if our time is purely spent for, like, intellectual knowledge knowledge or intellectual gain, and it is then not transforming our hearts and our lives, then we're gonna miss the point of our studying God's word. So we're gonna look at application as well.
Krystal Brummitt:This workbook is gonna hold your hand through this learning process. It's gonna put tools in your tool belt for studying. So you're gonna do things like repetitive reading. You're gonna summarize. You're gonna cross reference.
Krystal Brummitt:We'll do that a lot in our study of Exodus, and we'll talk about why in just a little bit. You're gonna read in other Bible translations that might help us better understand what a particular verse or passage is saying. You're gonna find repeated words, repeated ideas because the author is using those intentionally. And then everyone's favorite, you're gonna paraphrase. Who loves paraphrasing?
Krystal Brummitt:No one. But it's important. What did she say? Oh, yeah. No one does.
Krystal Brummitt:But it's an important skill to be able to read, to comprehend, to understand, and then to be able to put it into our own words, and that's when we know that we really understand something. So don't skip your paraphrasing. And then an important note is I want you all to hear me say that using a workbook, having a guide and a companion, the goal is not to come out on the other side having the right answer. No one's gonna look at your workbook. There's no pop quiz.
Krystal Brummitt:I actually really encourage you to be okay not having the right answer. I want to encourage you to be okay taking a stab at something. You're like, I don't know what this means. I don't understand what God is doing here. And you're gonna wrestle with that, and then we're gonna bring that into our small group time together.
Krystal Brummitt:It's okay to have the wrong answer because the beauty and the benefit of bible study is that we get to work these things out in real time together, not alone. We say every single semester when we get together, if you don't like workbooks, that's okay. I am almost as type a as they come. I love structure, and so I thrive with the workbook. I love like a guy a guided tour and a companion, and I have really close friends who are like, I would rather do anything else than utilize a workbook.
Krystal Brummitt:And so, I just want you to know there's a place for all of us in Women's Bible Study at Redeemer. And I would encourage you that if you would prefer not to answer those questions, but you want to study and you want to get as close to the text as possible, study the text. Read the text. I have here this is a scripture journal. I'm sure many of you have seen these.
Krystal Brummitt:This Exodus, and this is it is just the scripture with a blank page next to it. Grab one of these. Use this as your guide and your companion and and read and reread and utilize those tools and come to your small group prepared to discuss. And I also want to offer another encouragement. I have several, just little nuggets of encouragement for me this morning as we begin, is to to to spend your personal time with God and his word.
Krystal Brummitt:That is gonna be a really important aspect of our study together. It's It doesn't stop there. We get to bring that into community and our small groups, but I I do want to encourage you. What you put into this study is what you will get out of it. It is.
Krystal Brummitt:And, I almost want to be like, money back guarantee. If you tell me, Crystal, I studied, I read the scripture, I listened to it, I did my workbook, I don't like workbooks, I read the scripture, and it didn't make a difference in my bible study. I'll give you your money back because I just don't think that is the case. I have a lot of confidence. God tells us that his word will not return void, and I also know that life happens.
Krystal Brummitt:I'm I'm single. I'm not married. There are like minimal variables that affect my everyday life, but there still are some. Things come up. Things happen.
Krystal Brummitt:Sometimes my time has to change, and I can't always do everything that I intend to do from one week to the next. And so if that's you, especially I know for many of you that you're moms and you have kids and you're you're doing the shuffle, or they might get sick, or you're working a job that has different requirements of you. That will happen. Still come. So if there's a week where you're like, I just couldn't quite dive in as much as I wanted to, or as much as I intended to this week, please come.
Krystal Brummitt:But I encourage you for that not to just be the norm. So don't let not being able to do everything you would want to do prevent you from coming to your small group, but strive and do with grace driven effort as much as you can. Part of our method of study is avoiding any commentary while you are personally working through the text or while are personally working through the workbook. And so, we It's always been pretty easy to find information out there. It probably has never been easier to read your study notes, listen to your favorite pastor, pull up your favorite podcast, and please, please, please, do not ask AI what it thinks about Exodus.
Krystal Brummitt:AI is a terrible theologian. It doesn't know. It's pulling from a million different sources only what has been fed to it. So resist that urge. Just resist.
Krystal Brummitt:Ask the Lord to help you. Put your phone away for for all of those things, not only AI as you study because you're gonna be asked things you're like, I don't know, and that's okay. That's part of our process. That's part of our bible study process. And then there's gonna be a place for you to go and do additional study, and I'll come back to when where that fits in in just a few minutes.
Krystal Brummitt:And my last encouragement when it comes to your personal study is this, is in a in a room this size, as I think about other women who will be joining us in our Monday night study, that we are all coming in at various places of our journey and our walk with the Lord. I know that there are women in this room who have probably studied Exodus, who have probably read the cover to cover multiple times, and I just want to say to you, there there are treasures for you. There are things for you. And Exodus, it there's a huge call to remember. That's so much of what the author is saying is remember who your God is.
Krystal Brummitt:Remember what he has done. And if that is like the the very least that happens in your study of what might be a familiar book, that's a good thing. And I know that there are those who are coming, and you're like, this is my first bible study, and I'm a little nervous, and I'm not sure what to expect, and I've never done this before. And, I just wanna say this is for you. This is for you.
Krystal Brummitt:The Bible is for every single one of us, no matter where we are in our walk with the Lord. The Bible is for everyone. It is the story of who our God is, what he has done, and who we are his or as his people. And, every theologian, every bible scholar, every pastor that has ever been an expert or had knowledge on any passage of scripture has had two things. They have had the word of God, and they have had the indwelling presence of the spirit of God as his people.
Krystal Brummitt:And, I just wanna tell you, do you know what every single one of you who is a follower of Christ has? The word of God. Cole said in sermon on Sunday, God's breath on a page, and you have the spirit of God. So, I will be your biggest cheerleader, your biggest champion. You can do it.
Krystal Brummitt:And, it might not be easy, but it's gonna be worth it, and I'm really excited to see all that that comes. So personal study. I'll speed up through the rest of these. Small group time, second part of our study, and this probably is everyone's favorite part of bible study, and I I support it. I am not offended by it.
Krystal Brummitt:I encourage it. Our small group leaders are the bread and butter. Our small group time is the bread and butter of bible study. It's what I prayed when we opened that we get to study, we get to grow in Christ alongside one another. And, that's what makes like the chatter and the gathering and the hugs and like all of the pep that we're bringing in this morning so fun and exciting because we're like, we're back together.
Krystal Brummitt:We're back to studying God's word, and I am increasingly more convinced that this is what God intended when he gave us the church, and this is what God intended when he gave us one another. And so, this is where you get to bring your personal study, your time in the scripture passage for the week into community, that we get to grow and we get to process, and we get to ask our questions, and we get to bring our wrestlings alongside one another in real time. And you get to learn from your sisters, and you get to share. And I encourage you to, as you study, as you have questions, mark those in your workbook. Mark those in the text.
Krystal Brummitt:Come ask your small group. Like, what did you guys think about this? Because honestly, if you wrestled with something, there's probably a chance that someone else wrestled with it also. And if you were encouraged by something, I know that as I when I've been in small groups in the past, I'm like, oh my goodness, like I didn't even notice that. And then like my eyes are open to this whole other thing in the text that the Lord revealed to one of my friends in my group.
Krystal Brummitt:So this is what what I think makes our Bible study here so sweet, so special, so enjoyable, and us wanting to continue coming back from one semester to the next. And so I want to offer the same encouragement here to stick with it. I know life is gonna happen. I know that you might have to be home with your kids, or I know that people's work schedules can be different, it might take you in and out. And I just want to say I'm glad you're here.
Krystal Brummitt:Be with us when you can. And then, you know, guard your Thursdays as Thursday mornings as best as you can. Block it off on your calendar. I'm not gonna go to the dentist on Thursday mornings. Right?
Krystal Brummitt:Save that for another average day of the week, not bible study day. And then lastly, and I have to say this, just try to be on time if you can. I know sometimes there are like text messages thrown around, they're like, two eighty is crazy or thirty one is a madhouse. But we have just like such limited time together in the mornings that as best as you are able, try to show up. We start at 09:30.
Krystal Brummitt:You're welcome to come anytime. I'm just like always here by myself on Thursday mornings. You can hang out with me. I'll be here by 08:30. But the doors will open at nine.
Krystal Brummitt:We'll have coffee. Try to be on time. And then the last component of our bible study is the large group teaching. So following your small group time, you will come in here and you will hear a teaching from myself or say Elliot or Chase Abel who I get to teach alongside. And I don't know real quick if we've ever actually shared explicitly what our hope is or why we do the large group teaching time in particular, we know that you all have You have done your personal studying.
Krystal Brummitt:You've come to your small group, and you've talked, you've discussed it. And so as we are prayerfully studying and prayerfully preparing to teach, what we're trying to do is to help bring understanding and clarity to parts of the text that we know might be confusing or where we know there might be questions or more natural parts of the scripture where we know there may be some wrestlings. We we want to alleviate that, so we we are studying. We are praying hard, asking God to help us to do that. And then, we wanna we wanna set the story and the whole story of scripture in Exodus.
Krystal Brummitt:We're gonna see a lot of how the shadows in Exodus are pointing to the substance that is Christ, and so we we want to bring you those, and that's why we gather in here together for a large group teaching time. And after we do that, after we gather together, that's when you are free to go listen to your favorite pastor, to go look at your favorite commentary, to pull up your favorite podcast on Exodus, whatever that is, but not AI. That's not okay. Still a bad theologian even after you've done your study. So then, like, you want to excavate and dig more, please do that.
Krystal Brummitt:And so, wrapping up this portion of our of our time together studying individually in small groups and then with a collective large group teaching, I just want to offer like what we hope happens as we do this, that as our minds are informed, as we are engaging our minds in our study of God's word, that then our hearts would be transformed. I said it a moment ago. We're really gonna miss the point if it's purely like, I wanna master Exodus. I really just wanna know all of this, and and that's a good aim, and that's a good desire to be excited learners and students, but we want that to then transform our hearts and our lives, so our minds informed that our hearts would be transformed. So, I'm gonna pray that we would all be diligent students, diligent students of God's word, diligent in our study, and that we would be dependent on God as we go because He He will illuminate His word to us.
Krystal Brummitt:So how wonderful that we get to do it together. If you have any questions about any of that process, your small group leaders are gonna be a great resource for you, other people in your group. I'm always happy to talk about anything that you would like to talk about ever. So if you have a lingering question that I didn't quite cover, you can talk about that with your leaders. But now, I'm going to transition, and for the next few minutes before we go into our small group is we're gonna talk about Exodus.
Krystal Brummitt:And earlier this week, I was eating lunch with some people at Redeemer as we often do, and we were just chatting, and it came to our attention that tomorrow marks a significant milestone in the life of our country. Who knows what it is? Nine eleven. That's exactly right. Tomorrow, it is the twenty fifth anniversary of 09/11/2001.
Krystal Brummitt:Who in here could tell us right now where you were at approximately 8AM on 09/11/2001? Raise your hand. Yeah. So many. Allison, where were you?
Krystal Brummitt:High school chapel. High school chapel? Yeah. Lauren, where were you? Southern Living.
Krystal Brummitt:Working at Southern Living? Yeah. Corley, I saw you raise your hand. Where were you? A scene.
Krystal Brummitt:Math class. That's exactly right. I was in eighth grade, and I remember being in science class. Like, most of us in this room can remember exactly where we were because the events of September 11, they marked us when the World Trade Centers came under attack. I remember sitting in my eighth grade science class when my teacher, she was on her computer and she just blurted out that they had hit the second tower.
Krystal Brummitt:And, I didn't know what that meant in that moment, but I certainly would come to know that in time. Tomorrow marks the twenty fifth anniversary, and the majority of us in this room can remember. Now, if I were to ask you where you were on 09/03/2001 at approximately 8AM, who could tell me? Yeah. Not as many people or not anyone, actually.
Krystal Brummitt:You wouldn't have as much confidence because the events of 09/11, they changed us. They changed our country. They changed what it was like to be an American and how we view the world. And, it's pretty amazing that so many of us can raise our hands because of how an event can be so seared into our memories, can be so seared into our minds because they changed our lives. And, if I know we probably have some people who weren't quite born then, but I bet you've heard your parents talk about it.
Krystal Brummitt:I bet they have shared about the events of nine eleven with you. And so, in a similar but exponentially greater way, the events of the Exodus marked the people of God in the Old Testament, marked the nation of Israel. And it is difficult to overstate the impact that the Exodus events had on the psyche of the Hebrew mind. And it's not only how it marked the people of God then, the Exodus marks the people of God now, and we're gonna discover that during our time together this semester. The Exodus story shapes the entirety of the biblical story.
Krystal Brummitt:This book is foundational to the whole bible, and once we've studied it, and I know many of you have studied it, you begin to see the echoes of Exodus through all of scripture. This story is told and retold over and over again from Moses in Exodus all the way to Revelation. And many of you have studied Revelation with us either this past summer or a couple summers ago, and we spent as much time reading Exodus as we did reading Revelation because of how significant these events are in the life of the people of God. And with every retelling, God's purpose in the Exodus events is made more and more clear that he is to be made much of. The name of God is to be glorified, and that is mainly going to be through the person and work of his son, Jesus Christ.
Krystal Brummitt:And so this semester, we're gonna take a detailed look at how God delivers his people in Exodus so that we can then better understand how God will always deliver his people. And what we will discover in that in grasping the book of Exodus is that the entirety of our Bibles is gonna open up to us in a new way. And so we're gonna answer the questions there on page 14 in your workbook. I know some of you have already turned there. You're like, we're ready.
Krystal Brummitt:Pencils up. Pens up. We're gonna get there. Give me just a minute. I promise.
Krystal Brummitt:I will let you know once we get to that first question. But before we specifically answer those context questions, I want to give us a hot flyover of of how we get to Exodus. So we're gonna do a quick, very quick, brief summary of the book of Genesis. So if you think of the first five books of the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, think of them like a series of books. Genesis serves as the prequel.
Krystal Brummitt:It is it is setting up the themes. It is setting up the narratives for what is going to come after it. And Exodus is the main event. It is the main story, and Genesis sets it up. And then if you think of Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, they're they're the epilogue.
Krystal Brummitt:They're everything that takes place after the Exodus events. And in the Hebrew Bible, the first word in Exodus is the word and. So you have Genesis, and then it says and because it is a continuation of what happened in Genesis. And so we need the prequel to know where we are when we get to Exodus. So in Genesis one, chapter one, it begins with, in the beginning, God.
Krystal Brummitt:And so it opens up to this powerful, beautiful, always existing, uncreated creator God, and God is triune in His nature. He is one God who exists in three persons. He is God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. And God exists in perfect harmony. The Godhead exists in perfect harmony and perfect unity.
Krystal Brummitt:And so, God the Father, out of the overflow of His love for God the Son, He creates the world through the spirit, and there is beauty, and there is order, and there is a garden that he creates that is filled with abundance and life. And, the crowning glory of everything beautiful and wonderful that God creates is humanity. He creates Adam and Eve, and they are created in his very image, in the image of God, and no nothing else in creation can say that. In humanity, Adam and Eve, are given a role in the garden. They are to be fruitful and multiply.
Krystal Brummitt:They are to multiply fellow image bearers of God in the world, and they are to rule, and they are to subdue on behalf of their God and reflect him. But we only make it through two chapters of beauty and flourishing before everything spins out of control. In Genesis chapter three, rather than humanity living into their God given identity, into their God given role in abundance, they choose their own path. They rebel against their God. They want their own way.
Krystal Brummitt:They are rebels against their God, and the world spirals out of control. But in Genesis chapter three verse 15, there is this tiny glimmer of hope. We would miss it if we weren't looking for it, and we read that there is one who will come to crush the enemy. There is one who will come from the offspring of Eve who will crush the head of the serpent. And so it is it is this hope, it is this rescuer that we begin looking for throughout the rest of the story.
Krystal Brummitt:But following Genesis chapter three, it it just opens wide up in chapter four and following to violence and destruction and corruption and evil. There is no hope. There's no glimpse of this rescuer to come. And that brings us up to Genesis chapter 11 where God then scatters his people. They wanted to make a name great for themselves rather than God.
Krystal Brummitt:And so here in the story, we're left with this lingering question of what is God going to do to rescue this people? Where is the one God has promised? How is he going to redeem the world? Will he? Will he?
Krystal Brummitt:Will one come who will crush the serpent? And in Genesis chapter 12, we are introduced to a man named Abram who will then be renamed Abraham. And in Genesis chapter 12, this is really important. God makes a promise to this man, a promise to Abraham, and this is going to set up a whole new movement in the biblical story. God calls Abraham to leave his homeland, and he says, I'm going to take you to a place.
Krystal Brummitt:He's gonna take Abraham to Canaan, and he makes Abraham a promise that consists of three things. He promises that he is going to give Abraham offspring. He says, I'm going to give you a family. I'm going to give you an inheritance of people that will far outnumber the stars in the sky or the sand on the seashore. And he says, and I'm going to take you to a place.
Krystal Brummitt:I'm going to give you a place for you and for your offspring. And he says, and I'm going to bless you. I'm gonna bless you and your family. And the blessing of God to Abraham and his offspring wasn't intended to terminate on Abraham and his family alone. He says, I'm going to bless you to be a blessing.
Krystal Brummitt:Abraham and his offspring were gonna be blessed by God that they might then show the nations around them something true, something of who their God is. And so he gives them this promise, and you can almost hear this echo of be fruitful and multiply. Your family is going to multiply, and God was going to bless the world through them. And so the key here, the thing that I I want us to see is that God's plan is to rescue and bless the rebellious world through Abraham's family. That's important for us to understand, and that's gonna be important for us to take into Exodus, that God's plan is to rescue and bless the rebellious world through Abraham's family.
Krystal Brummitt:And this is why the rest of Genesis and the biblical story really focuses in on this one family. And they are going to grow, and they are going to grow, and they are gonna multiply so much that they become a nation. They become the nation of Israel. And God is going to use Israel to show other nations what he is like. From Israel will come God's promised savior, will come God's promised rescuer.
Krystal Brummitt:And so, in Genesis, we watch this family grow. Abraham has his son Isaac. Isaac has his son Jacob, and then we zoom in on Jacob's 12 sons. So this family begins to grow and to multiply, and one thing that unites each of these descendants, each of these sons and grandsons and great great grandsons of Abraham and then their families, is God's faithfulness despite their repeated failures. If there's one thing that just ties them all together, God's faithfulness despite their repeated failures.
Krystal Brummitt:God is faithful. He remains faithful to his unfaithful people because God made the promise, and it didn't depend on Abraham or his family and their ability to obey. And at the end of Genesis, we see out of an act of jealousy that Jacob's 11 sons sell their brother, the twelfth son, Joseph, into slavery. And this is important as we get to Exodus because Joseph is then taken to Egypt. And if you remember from our study in Genesis, many of are with us that when we read about Egypt in the Bible, it's like bad news.
Krystal Brummitt:Egypt, not a great place. But God is with Joseph. We read that again. We read that again and again. God orchestrates Joseph's release.
Krystal Brummitt:God orchestrates that then he becomes second in command of pharaoh, which is the the godlike king in Egypt, and he's elevated to second in command. And while he's there, Joseph plays a really significant role in preserving Egypt through a famine. And so he has a lot of favor with Pharaoh, and Pharaoh then, as a token of his gratitude, allows Joseph to bring his own family into Egypt, and he gives them a safe haven there. And this is where we're gonna pick up in Exodus, the people of God in Egypt. And so here again, we see the faithfulness of God to the offspring of Abraham just as he promised.
Krystal Brummitt:And we end with I think one of the most hopeful passages in scripture and especially the old testament where Joseph tells his brothers that what you meant for evil, God used for good. God continued to be faithful to his unfaithful people. And then, we read when Jacob gives a blessing to his sons that through his son Judah, through the tribe of Judah, the the nation of Israel's royalty will come. Their kings will come, and there is gonna be a king that is gonna come who is gonna rule the world, who is gonna lead God's rule God's kingdom and who is gonna lead God's people into obedience to him, and they will be a blessing to the other nations. Jacob dies.
Krystal Brummitt:Joseph dies. His brothers die, and this family is just left in Egypt for four hundred years. And again, all of those promises, all of those like little glimmers of hope that we saw in Genesis are are just kind of left hanging in the balance. Where is God? Where is the rescuer?
Krystal Brummitt:And, that's where we pick up in Exodus. And, this is where God gives us this story that is gonna be echoed throughout all of scripture, a story so foundational that it is mentioned over a 120 times in the Old Testament and referenced the Old Testament events referenced the most in the New Testament. And Exodus is gonna show us that despite God's personal guidance, that the family of Abraham is gonna continue to rebel. They're gonna continue to want to to follow their own way and live on their own terms, but we're gonna see over the course of this semester that God's promises cannot fail. They didn't fail in Genesis, and they won't fail in Exodus.
Krystal Brummitt:They are gonna be fruitful and multiply, and we're gonna see this family grow into the nation of Israel. And so that's where we pick up in Exodus. And the last thing that we're gonna do to more this morning over the next couple of minutes before we wrap up is answer those questions on page 14 in your workbook. And so we've seen the prequel, how we got here, and so now we're gonna we're gonna step into Exodus, and we're gonna get the context of this book in particular. And it's through the the prequel of Genesis, the promises of God that are there, who the people of God are, and then the context of Exodus.
Krystal Brummitt:This is the lens with which we're gonna start reading and studying this week. And we begin by answering these same questions at the beginning of every Bible study, every semester because when we answer the who questions and the what questions, these help us have context for then how we read this particular book of the bible. Every book of the bible has a human author. It is inspired by the holy spirit, and so with its human author, it was written with a purpose to a particular group of people at a particular time. And so the bible is more than a book, but it's certainly not less than a book.
Krystal Brummitt:So it was written to them then, and it's written to us now, but we first have to understand the written to them then piece. So first question for Exodus. Who wrote it? Who wrote it? Moses.
Krystal Brummitt:Alright. You're already off to a great start. Yes. Moses wrote the book of Exodus. This is not explicitly stated in Exodus.
Krystal Brummitt:It's not like when we see, you know, Paul or Peter write a letter where they identify themselves in the New Testament. It's somewhat debated, but we see New Testament authors and people refer back to Moses having written these books. Jesus himself does it in Luke chapter 24. So when in doubt, we can trust the words of Jesus. Moses wrote it.
Krystal Brummitt:It. And what do we know about Moses? There's probably no bigger name or more significant person in the Old Testament than Moses. He is the spiritual father of Israel. There's this young fledgling nation of Israel, and he is their spiritual father.
Krystal Brummitt:He is who they are looking to. He is their deliverer. He calls Israel out of slavery in Egypt. This is the Exodus. It's exactly where we're headed this semester, he is gonna give them the law.
Krystal Brummitt:We'll look at that next semester. Moses is a prophet and a judge, and we know that he's an author because he wrote these books. The first five Exodus and the other first five books of the Bible. To whom was it written? To whom was written?
Krystal Brummitt:Exodus was written to the generation of Israelites who had been wandering in the wilderness for forty years, and they were just about to enter into the promised land, not under the leadership of Moses, but under the leadership of Joshua. If you know the story, Moses has kind of a bad day in the desert, and he he disobeys God, and as a result, he is not permitted to lead Israel into the promised land. And so there is another leader who was raised up in Joshua, and so Moses is writing Exodus to prepare Israel before they enter the promised land. And I want us to think about then if that if that's why, if he's writing to this group of people about to enter into the promised land, what is it that he wants to tell him tell them? What does he want his essentially his parting words to them to then be?
Krystal Brummitt:He's not going with them. So what do they need to know? What do they need to remember on their journey? And so Moses gives them their history. He gives them their history.
Krystal Brummitt:He gives them their identity, and he gives them their destination. And perhaps more important than anything else, he reminds them who their god is, the one true God. Israel is coming out of Egypt where there were many false gods who were worshiped, and they are heading into a land where there are gonna be many pagan gods. And so Moses is saying, remember Yahweh. Remember your God.
Krystal Brummitt:Remember what he has done. He is preparing them for where they are headed. God, through Moses, he is revealing himself, and he is making his splendor and his glory and his majesty and His power and His holiness known to this nation. And this book serves as a reminder of what God has done, what God has brought them through, and where He is taking them, and that God will go with them. He will go with them.
Krystal Brummitt:It is meant to encourage them, and it is meant to encourage us today as believers in Christ to know and remember our one true God. Know and remember our one true God, and it is meant to show the church, the big c church, how to live as God's people in God's world, how to live as God's people in God's world. In what style was it written? Exodus is written it is a historical narrative. And so as a historical narrative, it is meant to be taken as fact, but not simply objective fact.
Krystal Brummitt:New Testament authors, they had an intended purpose. And as with any history book, there's always bias. There you might there just always A bias with the author there trying to make an intended point, and the new the biblical authors are not ashamed of that. They're not afraid of that. And so as we come to these ancient texts, a helpful question for us to then ask is, what's the point?
Krystal Brummitt:What's the point of what Moses is writing? What is he trying to get across? And we can also remember that this is under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. And so Moses' point in retelling these events is this, that there is one true God, and he will be glorified, and his name will be great among the nations. There is one true God, and he will be glorified, and his name will be great among the nations.
Krystal Brummitt:And then our last question, what is the central theme of the book? And I kind of cheated here because I'm gonna give you a one sentence theme, and then I'm gonna unpack it in three points, and then we're gonna wrap up. So the central theme is God's revelation in faithfulness, grace, and power. God sorry. God's self revelation.
Krystal Brummitt:That's important. God's self revelation in faithfulness, grace, and power, especially as it's gonna come to his supremacy over false gods. God is faithful. He is faithful. The personal name of God is revealed in Exodus.
Krystal Brummitt:It is Yahweh. It is a covenant name for his people. And we see this in our Bibles. It is when you see all capitalized Lord in scripture. It is meant to to intend to Yahweh.
Krystal Brummitt:And Yahweh is a form of the Hebrew verb to be, and this meaning will become very clear to us throughout Exodus. The Lord is the God who will be with His chosen people. He will be with His chosen people. He will be with them to enable them for the task He puts before them. He will be with them to enable them for the task He puts before them.
Krystal Brummitt:He is the God who will be who he is. He is I am. He is the God who will be who he is, meaning he is unchanging. He is self existent. He is the God who always has been, who always will be, faithful to his character, faithful to his promises.
Krystal Brummitt:And he is the Lord God who will be sufficient in his people's moment of crisis. He is the God who will be sufficient in his people's moment of crisis. He is faithful, and God is gracious. He is gracious. In the middle of the people of Israel rebelling, Moses wants to see the glory of God, and God reveals himself, and he says in Exodus chapter 34, he says, I am merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving transgressions and sin.
Krystal Brummitt:He says, I am merciful. I am gracious, and God is powerful. We are gonna see the power of God on full display. He is the one true God, the king of the earth. He is the he is the most powerful over the most powerful gods, air quotes intentional, because they have no power at all.
Krystal Brummitt:We're gonna see a stunning display through pillars of smoke and fire and plagues and parting of seas and thunder on the mountain. He is powerful. The Exodus I mentioned just a minute ago is referenced over a 120 times in the Old Testament and in the New Testament. And when it is referred to, it is a call to remember. It is a call to remember who God is, remember what God has done.
Krystal Brummitt:The people of Exodus, often like us, they are forgetful people, and they need to be reminded to remember their God, remember His power. And that is what we need to be reminded of as well, that we might know the name of the promise keeping God, and that his name would be known, and that he would be glorified here and among the nations. Exodus is the story of Exodus is a story of salvation, and it is our story of salvation. The people of Israel we are gonna see were redeemed by the Passover lamb. They were brought out of slavery through the Red Sea and are going to a promised land.
Krystal Brummitt:And we are people enslaved to sin, experiencing the difficulties and suffering, rescued by the shedding of the blood of the lamb of God, brought through the waters of baptism, coming to a place of safety and inheritance, and we are anticipating a day when we will one day arrive in a land flowing with milk and honey. So we will see that this is also our story. Israel's deliverance in Exodus anticipated the deliverance of God's people through his son, Jesus Christ, and I'm excited to get to dig into that together. Let me pray. God, I pray just that, that you would show us who you are, that you would remind our hearts who you are as our God, your faithfulness, your graciousness, your power, and God, the ways that we see the coming of your son, Jesus Christ, from a book that was written thirty five hundred years ago.
Krystal Brummitt:We pray that you would be with us in our study, be with us in our community, in our time together. We pray all these things in Jesus' name. Amen.