New Sermon Series! Exodus: From Darkness to Light

"The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world." (John 1:9)

On December 3^rd, the first Sunday of Advent, we will begin a new sermon series at Redeemer: Exodus: From Darkness to Light. The Book of Exodus will serve as our scriptural home base for worship and preaching across the next four months, from Advent leading up to Holy Week, as we trace the arc of God’s mercies to his people in delivering us from slavery into freedom, from death to life, from darkness to light, from wilderness weariness to true rest.

I began writing this piece while holding my precious infant granddaughter, Mary Jane. She cries in the background as I continue to piece my thoughts together. And now her mother, and her aunt, comfort her. This is where Exodus begins: with God rescuing the lives of little children through the efforts of brave, faithful women. Midwives, a mother, and a sister; to some extent, even Pharaoh’s daughter and her servants. And one very special baby boy is born, through whom God will bring deliverance for multitudes.

God himself is the light in the darkness in this story — with Moses at the burning bush, in the light of day in Goshen during the plague of darkness over Egypt, in the pillar of fire that led Israel through the wilderness, in the glory cloud that filled the tabernacle as it was consecrated, and as he met Moses in the Tent of Meeting and caused his face to shine.

We will make our own Exodus journey, marking time through the church calendar alongside Israel of old:

• During Advent, we will await final deliverance and blessing as we remember the Babe who was miraculously born and protected from an evil king.
• In Epiphany, we will wonder at the glory of God appearing to save his people and to let us see him in worship.
• For Lent, we will acknowledge our wandering, our grumbling, and our need for the Lord to forgive and renew us, and to take us all the way into the fullness of his promises.

Jesus is all over the pages of Exodus, in the special birth of a baby boy who has to be spared a tyrant’s wrath making a journey down into and back out of Egypt to deliver a people. The New Testament alludes to us that Jesus is the rock that gave water for the people, the bread from heaven that fed them, the One in whom they were baptized at the Red Sea, our God who tabernacles among his people. All the glory of God is bound up in the person of Jesus, and all our faces can shine, as we journey from glory onto glory before his face. We will look for him there. And we will worship him there.

RPC Co-Lead Pastor Matt Beham and I cannot wait to share these messages with you from Exodus.  Please join us. Come and see the light of Jesus in Exodus. We will make the journey together. May the light shine in our darkness, and the darkness not overcome it. May new freedom and joy be ours in Jesus, the new and greater Moses, who delivers us, now and forever.

Rev. Paul Hahn is Lead Pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church.