What is the book of Exodus all about? 

“I will dwell among the Israelites and be their God. They will know that I am the Lord their God, who brought them out of Egypt so that I might dwell among them. I am the Lord their God.” (Exodus 29:45-46)

The second book we come to in the Bible is Exodus – the story of God’s people rescued from being slaves in Egypt and taught how to live as God’s redeemed people. It’s a powerful narrative of God’s infinite saving and sustaining power, alongside some intricate instructions on worship designed to show God’s infinite perfection.
 

What do we need to know to read Exodus?

 

The first half (chapters 1-18) are the story of God’s saving power.

This is the part with all the stories we know:

• the evil Pharaoh who wants to kill off all the Israelite babies, and how Moses was saved by being put in a basket of reeds (a vivid call-back to God rescuing Noah and his family through the ark!); Moses growing up in the palace after being rescued from the river by none other than Pharaoh’s daughter;
• Moses’ flight to Midian after killing an Egyptian slave-driver; Moses meeting God in the burning bush on Mount Sinai and being sent back to be His voice to Pharaoh;
• the Ten Plagues and the Israelites’ eventual escape from Egypt; their crossing through the Red Sea and entry into the wilderness, where God fed them with manna and quail from heaven and water from a rock

Time and time again we see God’s “mighty hand” (see e.g. Exodus 6:1, 13:14) at work. The Ten Plagues are not just signs of God’s power, but signs of His supremacy over the things the Egyptians worshipped (like the sun and the river Nile). And we see something of God’s deeper purpose at work, especially in the final plague (the death of the first-born). A new festival is instituted (the Passover) to remind people that God allowed a lamb to die as a substitute in the place of the first-born son of each Israelite family. Naturally we can see how this symbolism prepares us for the arrival of Jesus, the true Firstborn (Colossians 1:15) who also dies in our place as the sacrificial lamb without blemish (John 1:29, cf. Exodus 12:5) whose blood would be shed but whose bones would not be broken (John 19:36, cf. Exodus 12:46).

 

This begins to set us up for the second half (chapters 19-40), which are the story of God’s perfections.

These chapters include some familiar territory, like the giving of the Ten Commandments in chapter 20 and the people’s idolatrous worship of a golden calf in chapter 32. In between those key points we find several chapters expanding on the laws by which God expected His redeemed people to live, and giving a (very detailed) description of how the Tabernacle (the “temple tent”) was to be constructed and arranged. It can become easy to get bogged down in this descriptive section, and even more so when the majority of it seems to be repeated in the final quarter of the book(!), but the point is clear: it really really matters how we worship God. God’s people had to learn that they didn’t get to decide who they thought He was: He would show them – like when He reveals something of His eternal unchanging character in the burning bush (calling Himself “I AM” in Exodus 3:14) and when Moses saw a glimpse of His glory on the mountain (the wonderful self-description of God’s character in Exodus 34:6-7). And God’s people had to learn that they needed to come to Him on His terms, not their own. These are both still live issues in the Christian church today, and so Exodus is just as relevant as ever!

Finally, we need to see the arc of the book’s storyline: God hears His people’s cry, He rescues His people, and He gathers His people to Himself. That is the goal, just like it is in every other book of the Bible: God is calling us to be His people, and promising to be our God. We see this in one of the book’s key verses: “I will dwell among the Israelites and be their God. They will know that I am the Lord their God, who brought them out of Egypt so that I might dwell among them. I am the Lord their God.” (Exodus 29:45-46)
And then we see this again at the end of the book, as God descends on the finished Tabernacle in a cloud of glory, to take up residence right at the heart of His people. Just think of how awe-inspiring it will be when we get the full and final version of that in the New Creation! “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Look! God’s dwelling-place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God.” (Revelation 21:3)