ROUGHLY EDITED COPY CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY EDUCATION NETWORK EXODUS DR. DAVID ADAMS #63 Captioning Provided By: Caption First, Inc. 10 E. 22nd Street Suite 304 Lombard, IL 60148 800-825-5234 *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. *** >> Thank you so much for this class, Dr. Adams. May I ask a summary question? Could you highlight again for us the themes present in Exodus that will be useful for us to share with our parishoners when we become pastors? How do we share the message in Exodus with our churches today? >> That's very kind of you, Joshua. I've enjoyed being with you in this class. And I always enjoy talking about the book of Exodus in particular and the theology of the Old Testament in general. And so I hope, if nothing else, I've been able to show you that there's a lot of Gospel in the Old Testament and. Of course, especially the book of Exodus since that's what we've been examining. So I hope that as you preach the Gospel in your congregations that you serve throughout your ministry, that you won't neglect to preach the Gospel that's found in the Old Testament, as well. And I think that's what I would like to wrap up with when you ask how do we share the message of Exodus with our churches today. I think the simple answer here is to preach the text. The whole Gospel is present in the book of Exodus. It contains the central redemptive event in the Old Testament, the Passover and deliverance of God's people, which anticipates the deliverance of God's people in the New Testament. It's a type of the victory of Christ over sin and death and the Devil, which is fulfilled in the cross in the empty tomb. But it also teaches Israel what it means for them to live as the people of God. And this is important, you know, for us, too, as we live as the people of God today. So if we preach the text and preach the whole Gospel that's found there, we'll be doing a tremendous service to our parishioners I think. So you know, I guess we have to ask in the end, what is the Gospel that's found in the Bock of Exodus? I think from our review of the drama of redemption in the first part of the book, you can see that the Gospel is that redemption is God's work alone. Israel contributed nothing to their salvation. And we contribute nothing to our salvation. This is God's work for which he should be glorified and in which we should rest and receive his grace in faith. But that's not all that we learn in the book of Exodus, as we've seen. In the second part of the book we learned that remaining a Christian, that is to say the life that we have in Christ, this is also God's work. Like Israel, despite our best intentions, we're unable to keep the law of God perfectly. We might -- as we confess our sins each Sunday in church and are determined to live a faithful Christian life in the week that comes, we inevitably fall short of our desire to be the perfect Christian, you know, that we might like to be. And so we return in penance and come to God seeking his grace and mercy and in the confident assurance that God is gracious. That he has revealed his presence to us in word and sacrament and communicates his grace to us as he is present among us in those ways. So that even though we're unable to keep the law of God perfectly, our relationship depends upon God's kesid, his gracious disposition toward us. Just as Israel's did. And so by seeing the message that -- or the lesson that Israel learned, we, too, can learn what it means to live as the people of God. And finally, I think if there's something that bears emphasis in our day in particular, it's this: That like Israel, we must learn that God's grace liberates us from a life that is driven by purpose or by anything else and calls us to a life of peace and rest in the grace of God. And I think that's probably where we should end. If we recognize that our lives as Christians are to be lived in peace and in rest in the grace of God, then we are set free from the need for a driven life. And we can find our peace and our rest in Christ and in Christ alone. *** This text is being provided in a rough draft format. Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings. ***