Biblical Foundations of Salvation: The Crux of the Exodus

Last week, we talked about starting our journey of salvation at the very beginning—with the creation of the universe. God created life out of the wild and waste, and it was so very good. His grace is made known to his creation through the gift of life.

This week, we must talk about the critical importance of the Exodus. The redemption of the cross holds little significance until we understand the redemption offered to a beaten-down, enslaved people.

But wait! You might say. What about the Fall?

Ah, yes. We do not end up in slavery without first tearing apart the goodness that was created.

See, humanity decided that the grace of God’s breath of life wasn’t satisfactory; they listened to the wily schemes of the serpent, who promised them eternal knowledge. They decided that perhaps they could be like God, knowing all good and evil. Perhaps their way might be better than the vast created good. Maybe they could represent themselves instead of bearing the image of their Creator.

It didn’t go well.

Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series begins with a single man’s rebellion against all that is good and right, resulting in violent death and a physical upheaval of the land known as the Breaking of the World. Mountains shoot up into the sky, chasms drop into the earth, and rivers change direction, resulting in wastelands where previously there was life. It’s a depiction of what happens to the world when someone chooses power and selfish ambition over the Light of relational harmony, peace, and the moral good.

It’s an apt analogy for what happens in the biblical story. While our physical earth was not broken by the choice to eat the fruit, humans experienced a spiritual death that separates them from the Source of all Life. The consequences of their rebellion include physical death and relational brokenness between one another, between themselves and the creation, and between themselves and their Creator.

The plot has thickened, the tension has been introduced; will humanity be doomed forever, or will there be redemption and restoration?

By God’s grace, God does not give up on them.

God plucks a single man and his family from the irrigated lands of the Euphrates River and commands him to travel west to a land that will be given to him and his descendants. Thus, God’s grace interacts again with humanity, proclaiming to Abram,

“I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you and make you famous, and you will be a blessing to others. I will bless those who bless you and curse those who treat you with contempt. All the families on earth will be blessed through you.” (Gen. 12:2-3)

The journey is not smooth, and the details of Abraham’s covenant with God and his descendants’ interactions with God are for discussion another time.

The point at which I want to linger is some four hundred years later in a land much farther south, the reigning dynasty of the ancient world—Egypt. Abraham’s family has, indeed, become a nation. The opening lines of Exodus tell us this.

But their descendants, the Israelites, had many children and grandchildren. In fact, they multiplied so greatly that they became extremely powerful and filled the land. (Ex. 1:7)

The population had become so large that the ruling Pharaoh felt threatened, so naturally, he enslaved them all as manual production labourers.

Pharaoh said to his people, “Look, the people of Israel now outnumber us and are stronger than we are. We must make a plan to keep them from growing even more. If we don’t, and if war breaks out, they will join our enemies and fight against us. Then they will escape from the country.”

So the Egyptians made the Israelites their slaves. They appointed brutal slave drivers over them, hoping to wear them down with crushing labor. They forced them to build the cities of Pithom and Rameses as supply centers for the king. But the more the Egyptians oppressed them, the more the Israelites multiplied and spread, and the more alarmed the Egyptians became. So the Egyptians worked the people of Israel without mercy. They made their lives bitter, forcing them to mix mortar and make bricks and do all the work in the fields. They were ruthless in all their demands. (Ex. 1:9-14)

Slavery. It’s one of the most horrific acts a person can do to another. Slavery perceives other humans as little better than animals, existing for the sole purpose of trade, domesticity, and commerce. The image-bearing creation no longer resembles their Creator in any sense; their rebellion has distorted them into creatures of the wild and waste who manipulate other creatures for their own self-serving purposes.

Egypt, the pinnacle of the ancient world, resembles the serpent far more than their Creator.

Israel, the people chosen by God to be a blessing to the nations, is utilized for labour like cattle.

And so, we enter the book of Exodus at a vastly different place from where we left Genesis. Israel sought refuge in Egypt from famine and drought, and they were rewarded with severe oppression. Has their Creator forgotten them?

The Israelites continued to groan under their burden of slavery. They cried out for help, and their cry rose up to God. God heard their groaning, and he remembered his covenant promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He looked down on the people of Israel and knew it was time to act. (Ex. 2:23-24)

God hears. God sees. God is aware of their suffering under the yoke of cruel slavery.

Then, God responds.

God chooses a saviour, a man named Moses, to redeem Israel. God acts within the words and actions of a mediator to display the power of the Creator-God over the realms of polytheism and the reign of the self-proclaimed man-god, the king of Egypt.

One by one, one plague after another, God knocks down the powers of Egypt, defeating Hapi the god of the Nile, Heqet the frog-goddess of fertility, Geb the god of the earth, Khepri the god of creation who was depicted with the head of a fly, Hathor the goddess of love who was depicted with the head of a cow, Isis the goddess of medicine, Nut the goddess of the sky, Seth the god of storms, and finally Ra, the sun god whose avatar was Pharaoh, the king of Egypt.1

The Creator wars against the distorted powers of his creation, but of course even this statement is laughable, for how can a Creator lose to the things into which he has breathed life?

God could have wiped Egypt out from the face of the earth with earthquakes and floods. He doesn’t.

Instead, God peels back the layers of Egypt’s polytheism, persistently persuading them of the supremacy of the One God, YHWH, the God of the Hebrews.

God’s grace is in action, even to the most hardened heart. Five times, Pharaoh hardens his heart against the plagues wrought by God through Moses’ outstretched hand. After the sixth plague, we read, “The Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and just as the Lord had predicted to Moses, Pharaoh refused to listen.” (Ex. 9:12)

It seems that there is a tipping point where God takes sovereign action when his creation stubbornly refuses to bow the knee.

Rabbi David Fohrman, in The Exodus You Almost Passed Over, states

If, somehow, Pharaoh could be convinced on the truth of the Creator—God’s existence, and come to see himself as a subject in that Creator’s kingdom—well, there could be no more elegant, nor speedier, way to cause the evil of Egyptian slavery to simply melt away, as if on its own.2

God is in the business of inviting his creation to participate with him in stewarding and ruling the land; God has not given up on the vision of his image-bearing people, rebellious though they may be. Overturning the institution of slavery is one piece involved in turning the creation back to its original created intent.

Does Pharaoh relent?

Eventually, yes, though it takes the decimation of the Egyptian pantheon and economy to do so. It requires the blood of a lamb to protect the firstborn of Israel, and without this protection, the firstborn sons of Egypt die.

The Passover becomes the single most important festival for the new nation of Israel as they march forth from their oppressors with the plunder of Egypt on their backs.

“These are your instructions for eating this meal: Be fully dressed, wear your sandals, and carry your walking stick in your hand. Eat the meal with urgency, for this is the Lord’s Passover. On that night I will pass through the land of Egypt and strike down every firstborn son and firstborn male animal in the land of Egypt. I will execute judgment against all the gods of Egypt, for I am the Lord! But the blood on your doorposts will serve as a sign, marking the houses where you are staying. When I see the blood, I will pass over you. This plague of death will not touch you when I strike the land of Egypt. This is a day to remember. Each year, from generation to generation, you must celebrate it as a special festival to the Lord. This is a law for all time.” (Ex. 12:11-14, emphasis mine)

Christians tend to read the Exodus account, particularly the Passover, through a Christological lens—that is, the Passover is only as significant as it points toward Christ as the fulfillment of the Passover lamb.

Without skipping too far ahead in the biblical story, let me simply say this: The Passover is sufficient to describe salvation all on its own.

How? You might ask. We need Jesus’ sacrifice to turn away the wrath of God! Animal sacrifices weren’t enough.

That, my friend, is a decidedly medieval interpretation of salvation based on Anselm’s satisfaction theory (which was based on the medieval legal system of serfdom). This interpretation, excluding the primary issue of pitting ‘the God of the Old Testament’ against ‘the Christ of the New’ (as if that isn’t a massive theological problem), also presumes that God’s intervention wasn’t sufficient for anyone who lived prior to the death of Jesus of Nazareth. It assumes a God who casually toys with his people, dropping hints of reconciliation in a Saviour to come, but never making this reconciliation possible for the people living in the ancient world.

How horrific.

No, I posit that God was active and working toward reconciliation with his creation from the moment that they chose rebellion against him.

God chose Abraham and his descendants as the nation by which this redemption would be made known to the world.

God acts through Moses, his chosen mediator, to declare his mighty hand of power over the ruling Egyptian pantheon by effectively wrangling Pharaoh into voluntarily releasing the enslaved populace, destroying Egypt’s agricultural and architectural backbone.

God declares his power over life and death, setting up the expectation of sacrificial blood as sufficient for protecting the life of the firstborn against the Angel of Death.

What is salvation but life from death and freedom from slavery?

Salvation was made known to Israel as they marched out of the land of their oppression with unleavened bread and Egyptian gold on their backs. Salvation was made known to the Egyptians as they gladly “gave Israel whatever they asked for,” and some even joined the Exodus, marching alongside their new brothers and sisters (c.f. Ex. 12:36-38).

What is salvation but a humbling of the oppressor and liberation of the oppressed?

In the Exodus, the Creator-God reveals himself as more than Creator; this God is now Redeemer and Rescuer. This is a God Who Hears, a God Who Intervenes. Centuries before the Incarnation, this God began the story of redemption, inviting his created images—Egyptian and Israelite alike—back into relationship with him.

What do you think? Does this change how you have typically thought about salvation? Drop your thoughts below in the comments, subscribe to stay in the loop on this conversation, or share it with your friends!

Footnotes

1 “Ten Egyptian Plagues For Ten Egyptian Gods and Goddesses.” Accessed Apr. 25, 2025. https://www.stat.rice.edu/~dobelman/Dinotech/10_Eqyptian_gods_10_Plagues.pdf

2 David Fohrman, The Exodus You Almost Passed Over, (Alpha Beta Press, 2016), Kindle edition, 64.