Abraham’s Exodus from Egypt

Today we begin our summer series on ‘The Exodus Way’. The entire theme and idea behind all of it was created by the Bible Project which is a nonprofit who’s mission is to share the story of the Bible and show how it is one unified book that leads to Jesus. As I was thinking about what to do this summer for a series, I decided to have a look at the Bible Project website and right there on the front page was their newly finished series on ‘The Exodus Way’. I read up on it and I thought, “oh that’s interesting” and then I looked some more into it and found that the number of podcast episodes on the series was exactly the same number of weeks that I would need for the series. Taking that as a sign I began to create a sermon series based on this theme.

The reason this series is called The Exodus Way is that there is a pattern for the Exodus story we find in the book of Exodus. The pattern has a threefold movement, the actual exodus, which is the Israelites going out from slavery, the Israelites traveling through the wilderness, and then entering into the promised land. So the Exodus Way helps us to see how this movement actually occurs throughout the entire Bible and when we see it in the Bible we can then see how this same pattern occurs in our own lives.

Many of you might be thinking, “wouldn’t it make the most sense to start the series at the Exodus story since this is about the Exodus?” And yes that does seem like a logical step to take, however, we already see the pattern of the Exodus happening before we get to Moses and the Israelites in Egypt. And to be completely honest, if we took a look at all the scriptures that have the exodus pattern I think we would be on this sermon series for many months, so instead we are going to look at the most significant scripture passages that have this pattern. And I don’t know about you, but I think it is actually very cool that even before the actual Exodus proper we have the exodus pattern already showing up.

And what made this even more exciting for me, was that as I was studying this text about Abram is that the commentaries I read also reinforced our theme and what I have been studying through the Bible Project. The Word Biblical Commentary calls this story about Abram and Sarai’s trip to Egypt as a mini exodus that foreshadows the Exodus that will happen with Moses and that it is even reinforced by another text that we’ll be looking at in a few weeks.

So as we heard in our scripture today, Abram has been asked by God to leave his home and go to the land that God has promised to him and all his descendants. Abram goes to this land and begins to travel through it and worshipping God. Unfortunately as soon as a famine hits the land Abram travels to Egypt to avoid it. The initial problem is that Abram doesn’t trust God to help him through the famine in the land that was promised to him. The second problem is that he lies and tells everyone that Sarai is his sister not his wife. But because God had just literally made a covenant with Abram to bless him and curse his enemies, God has to side with Abram and he brings plagues to Pharaoh. I think we can see the obvious parallels here of famine bringing God’s people to Egypt and then God sending plagues to show Pharaoh that he is in the wrong. We even have Pharaoh getting so upset at what is happening that he orders Abram and everyone who is associated with him to “go” which is what Pharaoh does when the final plague during the Exodus happens. He is so grieved by the death of the people in his land that he just wants the Israelites gone.

So we have the pattern of the actual Exodus seen here in the story of Abram, but we also have another exodus happening within this text which I started to allude to earlier. Abram doesn’t trust God when the famine hits, and because of that Abram actually puts himself into his own metaphorical exodus. Abram actually expels himself from the promised land. Which I think we can all agree if the aim is to go into the promised land, expelling yourself from it is not the ideal. And even though Abram thrives in Egypt, both he and Sarai, though I would say more Sarai than Abram are in slavery. And to be honest if we think about the actual Exodus story we see that the Israelites grumbled after they left slavery in Egypt because they remembered all the good things they had while in Egypt. So it makes sense that Abram thrived in that sense, while at the same time being enslaved to Pharaoh.

And this metaphorical Exodus is what I hope that we can see throughout our journey through this series. I believe that there are times in our lives where we go through an exodus journey. Times where we need to find out how to leave the slavery that we are in, whatever that may be. We need to be willing to leave it however comfortable it may be, to then groan and grumble our way through the wilderness. Because if we are honest with ourselves we are groaning and grumbling people and leaving things that are comfortable even though they are bad for us are hard and it is a whole lot easier to just stay in the mess than to get out of it. Hopefully as we wander through the mess and the heat and the boring food, we can find the promised land.

I hope that as we continue to look at various stories throughout the Bible that you will see this pattern of The Exodus Way, that one of the scriptures won’t just make sense to you, but will actually click with you. That one of these weeks it will touch your heart and connect you to the pattern of The Exodus Way so that you can journey through whatever may be going through your life. That you recognize that you are not the only person on that journey, that there are countless others walking a similar wilderness path, and that in every part of your journey no matter where you are on it, that you know that God is with you, Jesus is beside you, and the Holy Spirit is nourishing you the whole way. For with God there is no journey we cannot undertake and come out better when we go through it. Amen.