THE LIVES OF THE PATRIARCHS #103 | THE LIFE OF MOSES #85
Pastor Christopher Choo
Lesson 3787
THE LIVES OF THE PATRIARCHS #103
THE LIFE OF MOSES #85
Lesson from the Red Sea Crossing #7
THE SALVATION OF THE ISRAELITES UNDER MOSES AND OUR SALVATION IN CHRIST.
The Old Testament is the N.T. concealed.
We may read about the Red Sea Crossing like a historical event and miss the big picture - how it is actually a prophetic picture of the work of Christ.
In so many words, the Exodus from Egypt, though a real, historical event, prefigures the saving work of Christ for His people.
What God did through Moses was to provide physical salvation from physical slavery. What God does through Christ is provide spiritual salvation from spiritual slavery.
However, our slavery isn’t like that of the Israelites in Egypt.
The Israelites were slaves in Egypt, but we are all slaves to sin. As Jesus said to the Pharisees, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (John 8:34, 36).
The passing through the Red Sea is used as a symbol of the believer’s identification with the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The apostle Paul says, “For I want you to know, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ” (1 Corinthians 10:1–4).
Paul is giving the Exodus from Egypt a Christological reading; he is making the connection between the Exodus from Egypt and salvation in Christ.
Notice how Paul says “all were baptized into Moses.” Just as the Israelites were “baptized into Moses,” so too are Christians baptized into Christ: “We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4).
So the parting of the Red Sea not only finalized God’s redemption of His people from slavery in Egypt, but it also prefigured the greater spiritual reality of God’s redemption of His people from slavery to sin through the work of Christ.
