Exodus to Exodus to Exodus

“O people of Zion, who live in Jerusalem, you will weep no more. 

How gracious he will be when you cry for help! 

As soon as he hears, he will answer you. 

Although the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, 

your teachers will be hidden no more; with your own eyes you will see them. 

Whether you turn to the right or to the left, 

your ears will hear a voice behind you saying, 

‘This is the way; walk in it.’ 

Then you will defile your idols overlaid with silver and your images covered with gold…. 

The moon will shine like the sun, and the sunlight will be seven times brighter, 

like the light of seven full days, 

when the LORD binds up the bruises of his people 

and heals the wounds he inflicted. 

See, the Name of the LORD comes from afar, 

with burning anger and dense clouds of smoke….

He shakes the nations in the sieve of destruction… 

And you will sing as on the night you celebrate a holy festival; 

your hearts will rejoice as when people go up with flutes 

to the mountain of the LORD, 

to the Rock of Israel. The LORD will cause men to hear his majestic voice 

and will make them see his arm coming down 

with raging anger and consuming fire, 

with cloudburst, thunderstorm, and hail. 

The voice of the LORD will shatter Assyria; 

with his scepter he will strike them down. 

Every stroke of the LORD lays on them with his punishing rod 

will be to the music of tambourines and harps, 

as he fights them in battle with the blows of his arm…” 

(Is. 30:19-32). 

In many ways, Exodus was the defining of Israel. It formed them as a nation, a people, a holy priesthood, the treasure of the Lord (Ex. 19:4-6). It revealed to them the character of God--the God That Saves, the Redeeming God, the God Slow to Anger, Abounding in Love, the Jealous God. 

In Isaiah 30, it seems to me that the prophet takes the Exodus imagery and uses it as the basis of a promise, a picture of a redemption on as grand and miraculous scale as the Exodus. 

Can you not hear the allusions to Exodus as God delivers his message through Isaiah? When did God first hear a cry of the Israelites and responded? Where did God provide bread and water for the first time? Where did the Lord guide them, telling them which way to turn? Where did he come against a golden idol in Israel? Where was the Lord first seen in dense clouds of smoke? Where did the Lord first come against a nation (Egypt) for Israel’s sake? On what occasion did they first celebrate a holy festival? Where did they first see the mountain of the LORD (although Zion was also referred to the mountain of the Lord)? Where did the LORD speak to men in thunder and trumpets? Where did they see fire and storms and thunder? And was it not in Exodus 15 that the Israelites sang with tambourines to celebrate the Lord’s fighting for them against Egypt? (In fact, Ex. 14:14 says specifically that the Lord fights for them; even the wording is reminiscent in English at least)...

So what? The Lord is promising, “I will redeem you again! I will bring about another event just as significant as the Exodus. I will form you to be my people again, in a better way. I will fight for you again, provide for you again, destroy your enemies, just as I did. Just wait!!! See what I will do for you!!!!! And you will turn to me.” The Exodus was radical and completely forming as an identity of a people—and the Lord is promising something more radical when he comes to redeem his people again. When he forms a new covenant with them. 

And we? 

Do we not have a mediator with God, who gives us bold access to go to the throne of grace and find help in our time if need? (1 Tim. 2:5; Eph. 3:12; Heb. 4:16)

Do we not have the bread of life?  (John 6)

The Holy Spirit who tells us, "This is the way, walk in it"?

Are we not a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God? (1 Peter 2:9-10)

Yet, there is more...

"And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.'

"He said to me: It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life. He who overcomes will inherit all this, and I will be his God and he will be my son. But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.'

^"I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendor into it. On no day will its gates ever be shut, for there will be no night there. The glory and honor of the nations will be brought into it" 

(from Rev. 21).

Amen. To the God That Saves, the Redeeming God.