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 PrintableVersion The message of ExodusThe great escapeTHE MESSAGE OF EXODUS This is one of the most valuable of the excellent BST series both for its subject and its treatment of that subject. Alec Motyer writes as both an Old Testament scholar and an evangelical theologian and pastor, giving due weight to one of the most important of the Old Testament books and seeing its place in redemption-history. He never forgets that he is being read by members of the congregation as well as by the clergy. His scholarship is not only believing but pastoral too. For instance, there is rich sermon material in the pages on ‘Moses’ chronic insecurities’ (pp.59-66): ‘He [God] gets his own way not by bulldozing Moses into the ground but by nursing him along’ (p.60). Moses’s position was: ‘Look, I’m not up to the job. You shouldn’t have picked me’. The Lord’s reply was, ‘Of course you are not up to the job, I knew that when I chose you for it. The point is not your ability but mine!’ (p.66). This is followed by a moving application (pp.79-83) on ‘the sovereign magnificence of God’ over our failures. There are stirring pages on the self-revelation of God at the burning bush (pp.68-74) and the section on the plagues is very good too (pp.117-123). Later he shows that ‘As an illustration of the sheer oddity of life under divine leadership, Exodus chapters 13 to 17 can hardly be beaten’ (pp.178-186) and again he moves from Israel to the believer, from then to now, and above all from life’s perplexities to the God of sovereign purpose, from ‘God’s curious ways’ to ‘God’s purposeful ways’. He shows the huge importance of the Sinai event and the place and value of the law but always in the context of another mountain and the law of grace (Hebrews 12.18-24). It would be too easy to drown the testimony of Exodus with the clearer revelation of the New Testament, but he never does this. Nevertheless, the tabernacle is surveyed as ‘one of God’s picture galleries’ (pp.250-264) and its priesthood too (pp.265-280) with its rich New Testament fulfilment in Christ. Among memorable and insightful statements is this one to do with the atonement cover (kapporet) or ‘mercy seat’, the slab of pure gold on the top of the ark of the covenant which ‘did not long retain its pristine purity. It soon bore the stains of the shed blood of sacrifice’ (Leviticus 16.13-14): ‘It was not, therefore, the sacred box of the ark as such that was central to the tabernacle, nor even the law which it housed, but the triumph of mercy over wrath, of forgiveness over offence, of admission over exclusion, and of the unmerited working of grace over well-deserved judgment’ (pp.267-8). Peter Lewis,
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