Exodus and the Feast of Flight

Life in Sabbath is Freedom and life, but Life without Sabbath is death and slavery.

Exodus 1:11 ESV

11 Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with heavy burdens. They built for Pharaoh store cities, Pithom and Raamses.

Exodus 1:

One of the central themes of the Sabbath is that it represents freedom and liberty.

The Sabbath is when God was free from work.

Mankind becomes free from labor on the Sabbath as well.

The exodus story is the opposite of Sabbath.

In the garden of Eden, man and woman experienced freedom through the Sabbath, but when we come to the exodus, they are experiencing life without the Sabbath slavery.

Pharoah works the children of Israel to death.

Their savior is a prince who rises out of the waters to speak God’s words to all people. ( A little bit of Jesus)

The 10 plagues in Egypt are a reverse of the 10 words in and 2.

God is uncreating the Egyptian reality and the Bible wants us to know that our only hope is when we go back to Sabbath and Edenic rest.

Exodus plagues:

Water turned to Blood

Frogs (5 day of creation Genesis 1:20)

Gnats

Flies

Egyptian Livestock Die (6 day of creation Genesis 1:24)

Boils

Hail

Locusts (day 3 vegetation sprouted up Genesis 1:11)

Darkness (1st day of light and darkness Genesis 1:3-5)

Death of Firstborn (6th day of creation )

The Israelites flee form a life of work (Egypt) into a life of rest (wilderness) where they can be in God’s presence away from all the distractions of the world.

But before they would experience Sabbath rest in the wilderness they would first have to experience Sabbath in the Passover.

Exodus 12:1–2 ESV

1 The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, 2 “This month shall be for you the beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year for you.

Exodus 12:1-

Hebrews started their year with the passover.

Exodus 12:14–19 ESV

14 “This day shall be for you a memorial day, and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord; throughout your generations, as a statute forever, you shall keep it as a feast. 15 Seven days you shall eat unleavened bread. On the first day you shall remove leaven out of your houses, for if anyone eats what is leavened, from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel. 16 On the first day you shall hold a holy assembly, and on the seventh day a holy assembly. No work shall be done on those days. But what everyone needs to eat, that alone may be prepared by you. 17 And you shall observe the Feast of Unleavened Bread, for on this very day I brought your hosts out of the land of Egypt. Therefore you shall observe this day, throughout your generations, as a statute forever. 18 In the first month, from the fourteenth day of the month at evening, you shall eat unleavened bread until the twenty-first day of the month at evening. 19 For seven days no leaven is to be found in your houses. If anyone eats what is leavened, that person will be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he is a sojourner or a native of the land.

Exodus 12:14-

The passover is many things:

Celebration of no more work.

Celebration of deliverance from slavery.

A week long Sabbath.

Celebration that God is bringing us back to Eden.

All of this should give us a better understanding of Sabbath.

Sabbath isn’t simply about rest, but about depending on God.

God had promised that He would provide for his people. He asks his people to eat unleavened bread and have their bags packed in anticipation of deliverance.

In the same way, we celebrate Sabbath in anticipation of God delivering us from sin, from work, so that we can come into his perfect, sustaining rest.

Sabbath is the wilderness and the Passover.

Passover because it is deliverance or stop from work.

Wilderness because they get to be in God’s presence and worship him once again.

This Sabbath think about how it is a deliverance from work and a chance to be in God’s presence.