Exodus 3:1-15 • Holy Ground

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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)

 
 Special thanks to our musicians who had such a huge role last week for the Grace 150 celebration. That celebration is a journey of God's unlimited grace, as we have titled it. And it's that journey that we continue to consider in Exodus chapter 3.



 As the journey continues, it has not begun in kind or gentle circumstances.



 After all, what led to the children of Israel being in Egypt was a famine that resulted in brothers coming to meet a brother that they had sold into slavery by betrayal.



 Following the famine and the betrayal is the multiplication of the people of God in slavery so much that Pharaoh decides to engage in ethnic cleansing and murder the male children. The consequence is that one is rescued by a providential hand of God sending a boat into the bulrushes where the princess of Egypt is. But even though Moses is raised in her home, he becomes a murderer, flees to the desert,



 and is now under death sentence from Pharaoh.



 Hardly a journey of blessing that we would expect God to use, but He does.



 Exodus chapter 3, let's stand and honor God's Word as we continue the journey, verses 1 through 15 of Exodus chapter 3. Now Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian. And he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, another name for Mount Sinai, the mountain of God.



 The angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush.



 He looked and behold the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed.



 And Moses said, "I will turn aside to see this great sight why the bush is not burned."



 When the Lord saw that He turned aside to see, God called to Him out of the bush.



 Moses, Moses. And He said, "Here I am."



 Then He said, "Do not come near.



 Take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground."



 And He said, "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.



 Then the Lord said, "I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and I have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey to the place of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. And now, behold the cry of the people of Israel has come to me. And I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them. Come, I will send you to Pharaoh, that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.



 But Moses said to God, "Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?"



 He said, "But I will be with you, and this shall be a sign for you that I have sent you. When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain."



 Then Moses said to God, "If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, the God of your fathers has sent me to you, and they ask me, what is His name?



 What shall I say to them?"



 God said to Moses, "I am who I am."



 And He said, "Say this to the people of Israel, I am has sent me to you."



 God also said to Moses, "Say this to the people of Israel, the Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob has sent me to you. This is My name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations." Please be seated.



 Many of you will know that Kathy and I ministered for 30 years at Covenant Seminary in St. Louis, a great blessed time in our life where we were involved in the training of pastors and missionaries and counselors and teachers. It was a wonderful time for us, but not without question at times about what we were doing and where we were doing it, and even the appropriateness of everybody who was there.



 At times, we were surprised when we would be on the campus and there would be a stranger walking through the campus, or maybe somebody from a local church who really wasn't supposed to be there with the other students. And if I or a security officer were to come across that person, we would always ask, "Can I help you?" Which is just a polite way of saying, "What are you doing here?"



 And often the answer was, "Well, I'm facing a difficult decision in my life, or my marriage is in trouble, or I've got a health issue that I just want to talk to the Lord about, and so I want to have that conversation with the Lord on holy ground."



 Now as I said, we were at Covenant Seminary a long time, and we knew not only the nature of the grounds, we knew the nature of the people who walk them, sometimes saints and sometimes sinners, sometimes noble and sometimes petty.



 There were more than just holy things that went on at Covenant Seminary. And when at times I would come across those people who were saying, "I just want to be on some holy ground when I talk with the Lord," it might have been at a time that I had just come out of a difficult budget meeting, or maybe a time that I had just come out of a meeting on student discipline.



 Or maybe I just answered a letter from some angry constituency in the denomination, and when somebody would say, "I just want to be on some holy ground," I would think, "You need to find another place."



 But then there was a time when I myself was wrestling in mind and spirit about a difficulty,



 and I was just walking in the woods that are around the campus, and I came across a little clearing in the woods. I knew the campus well enough to know that clearing had never been there before.



 And in that little clearing was this little scrap of carpet and little stand to hold a book and a candle.



 And I recognized that somebody had made a little clearing in the woods to talk to God. And in that moment, I needed that place.



 And I recognized for me right then it too had become holy ground.



 We long for it, don't we? We long for that place where we can be close to God and believe that He is close to us, that there's been a clearing made in our circumstances, in our worries, in our crisis, where God is close and we are close to Him. We long for the holy ground.



 And my goal in this message is simply to tell you, we can still find it.



 Now, let me say, wait a second. I have not seen any burning bushes in my neighborhood lately, at least not ones that burn and are not burned up.



 So how can we find holy ground today?



 By recognizing what God reveals in the places that are holy ground.



 If we will learn to recognize the marks of what God is revealing, then we'll recognize the holy ground on which He is revealing it. After all, what is God revealing to Moses on this holy ground that we still long for? God is first revealing about Himself that He is a holy God. Verse 2 is so plain to us. The angel of the Lord appeared to Moses in a flame of fire out of the midst of the bush. It is that great symbol of holiness that appears over and over again in the Bible. Right now, it's just a flame in a bush. But later, when the people of Israel returned to Horeb to Mount Sinai, the whole mountain will be lit up in lightning and flame as God will declare, "I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. I am the holy God of Israel, and I dwell in this place."



 And it will happen over and over again. We remember that moment when later Isaiah will be in the temple of God. And in ways that we don't quite understand, the roof opens above Him, and He sees up into the heavens itself where God is seated in His glory. And above God on all sides are the seraphim. The heavenly host who very name means burning ones as God Himself is surrounded in flame. Not just surrounded. Later we will read in Daniel how God Himself sits on a throne of flames, a throne that not only is based in flames, but has wheels of fire, as though this holiness not only is all around God, but He can take that holiness wherever He intends to fill up the entire earth. So much that Ezekiel will later tell us that God's glory appears in flames of fire. And then in the book of Revelation, we finally see it when Christ returns in His glory. And when He returns, we are told even His eyes are flames of fire. Here is this image of fire consuming, cauterizing, purifying, as if to say when God is present in all of His holiness, it burns away every other impurity, every other stain of earth is gone in the purifying holiness of God. He is the holy, holy, holy God of Israel, and He is the holy, holy God of all time. It is His purity that is on display before us. And it's not merely in image, it is in the very words that are being declared.



 Verse 4 and 5, "When the Lord saw that Moses turned aside to see, God called to Him out of the bush.



 Just just the reaction to the holiness.



 Take off your sandals, why?



 It's more than a matter of hygiene. I mean you get it? If you're a shepherd in the desert and you take off your sandals, your feet are still dirty.



 No one's washing them. Why take off your sandals?



 Because if you take off your shoes, you're not going any other place.



 This becomes the priority. This holiness of God is attracting and focusing.



 Sometimes the reason we are not on holy ground is we're still going about our business. God, I'll get back to you later.



 I've got this contract to think about. Lord, I'll get back to you later. This game is right ahead of me right now. Lord, I'll think about this when I'm a bit older and I'm not concerned for the people that I'm trying to get to approve me right now. Lord, I'll get back to you. When you take off your shoes, you are saying, "This is what I'm focused on."



 The holiness of God is my priority, and it drives every other concern out of my life. That holy fire is consuming the distractions because the holiness of God holds me.



 But it does something else. Reveal in verse 6.



 And God said, "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, and Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God." We get it. If God were to appear before us in this very moment in the flames of glory, we would fall on our faces, and at the same moment, we would look away. God, I can't look at you.



 God calls out Moses, Moses, and Moses hides his face, and something deep in our hearts recognizes the same. If God were to not name Moses but say, "Brian, Brian, Mark, Mark, Karen, Karen, Tom, Tom," we would say, "What, Lord?"



 And we would cover our faces.



 For like Isaiah, even a prophet, when he saw God reveal in all of his glory, his first comment was, "Woe is me. I am ruined.



 For I'm a man of unclean lips. I live among a people of unclean lips, and I've seen the Lord."



 And when that glory is revealed, it radiates the taint and the sin and the iniquity in us. When we recognize if we were to ever hear out of the burning glory of God our own names, our first reaction is precisely this reaction we would want to hide. "Oh, God, don't look at me. I don't want you to see this. I don't want you to know me. I don't want you to know what I have done."



 But right in the same passage, it's not just the mark of the great purity of God that would drive us away.



 There is the mark of the great compassion of God.



 Verse 2, "The angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of the bush. He looked and behold, the bush was burning.



 Yet it was not consumed."



 The writer of Hebrews just says plainly, "Our God is a consuming fire.



 So we're in dread, and we hide, and we turn away." And then there is this mark from the burning bush. It burned, but was not consumed.



 And for that reason, it becomes as attractant to Moses.



 We understand whenever there's great display of fire, think of the volcanoes that are in the news these days, you know that people are fleeing and the rest of us say, "I would like to see that."



 And it draws us somehow. And when God is making clear to Moses, not only is His holiness this consuming fire,



 but there is a nature in the same moment that keeps the object from being consumed.



 We begin to recognize there may be some hope for those who ought to be consumed.



 The image of the burning bush has been used various ways in the history of Israel and the history of the church. Even now, if you go to Israel, the symbol of the nation that appears at times in flags and images and symbols is of a burning bush.



 Because the nation of Israel thinks of itself as having been burned in persecution through the centuries and yet surviving, burned and not consumed.



 The early church often used the image of the burning bush to indicate the church itself. We have been persecuted but not destroyed. Sometimes the burning bush is used to present who a believer is, those who deserve the wrath of God for their sin, and yet we are not consumed.



 God in His compassion preserves those who ought to be consumed. But perhaps there's no better way to think about what that burning bush represents than to think in detail of who is being represented in the burning bush by who is speaking and how He is speaking.



 The words of verse 2 throw us a bit. The angel, the Lord, appeared to Moses in a flame of fire. We, because of our Western tradition, we think of an angel with wings and long flowing white hair and I don't know, playing a harp somewhere.



 But the word angel in Hebrew just means messenger. There is a messenger of God who is speaking out of that burning bush. And what else do you learn about Him? Verse 4, "When the Lord saw that Moses had turned aside, God called to Him out of the bush." There is a messenger of God who is identified as Jehovah and speaks for God.



 Are you thinking of anyone?



 He is a messenger of God, identified as God, and speaks for God. It becomes even more clear when you get to verse 6, unusual language. And he that is God said, "I am the God of your Father." Note the singular, "I am the God of your Father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob." Every other time in this chapter when God is referring to Himself, He says, "I am the God of your fathers," plural, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But in this place where He's explaining who He is, He said, "I am the God of your Father,



 Abraham, speaking to you out of this bush."



 Why is that important? That the focus would be on Abraham when somebody is speaking out of a bush. If you think of Abraham in a bush, what do you think about? You think of that time that Abraham believed he was going to be honoring God by sacrificing his son Isaac on the mountain.



 And when he lifted his knife to sacrifice his own son, what did God say?



 "I will provide the sacrifice."



 And in a thorn bush was a ram of God's provision.



 It would not be the last time that God would speak out of thorns. After all, the word for bush in this particular place is a word for brambles or thorn bushes.



 And even the mountain that is sometimes identified as Sinai is identified as such because throughout the mountain there are mineral deposits you would recognize as dendrites, but which appear to be burning bushes or bushes of thorns. There's a picture that we'll try to get on the screen here. Not Mount Sinai, even now, there are limestone rocks that appear to have thorn bushes going through the mineral deposits within. Here is one. This is from Mount Sinai. Stephen Shin, I'm going to ask your help. Stephen's going to just pass this around to various people. This is a rock from Mount Sinai and you'll see that even in the rock there are images



 of a bush of thorns.



 It's not the last time that God will speak from a thorn bush. When is the next time?



 But when He will be on a cross and wear a crown of thorns and He will say beneath the crown of thorns, "It is finished."



 As God provided the ultimate sacrifice from those thorns, "For you and for me." As God is saying, ultimately what we must recognize is when we want to hide our face and run away from Him, He is not just showing us His holiness. He is showing us His provision, His purity and His provision. He is showing His compassion and His wonderful care for us so that I begin to hear my name in different ways.



 If only I hear His holiness, I hear the threat, "Brian, Brian," and I want to run.



 And then I recognize out of the bush He has spoken of the provision that He will make, even where the throne of God was appearing in thunder and lightning on the Mount of Sinai. He was at the same moment saying, "I will make provision."



 Brian, Brian, Karen, Karen, Tom, Tom.



 Come unto Me all you who labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.



 And it is speaking to us when we have turned aside from our thoughts and our ways and our crises and our distractions and our priorities and seek Him, we begin to hear the voice of a God who is teaching us who He is. Yes I'm holy, but I'm not just holy in my holy standards. I am holy in a good heart.



 And that good heartedness of the righteousness of God is made clear as God is not only saying this passage, "I am holy, but I am here."



 And here for you, verse 8, as God is explaining who He is, He says in verse 8 to Moses, "I have come down to deliver them," that is the people of God, "out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey." We hear the words and forget their impact. Here is God saying, "I'm here.



 I could be holy and removed, separate, untouched by earth's taint, but I have come down and I'm here for you." Who's you?



 God is here for a terrible people.



 Why are they in slavery in Egypt?



 Yes, they came to get relief from famine, but they get relief because a brother was sold into slavery by betrayal.



 And those brothers multiply now. Yes, they multiply now, but by the time they begin to worship God, they forget the practices of God and they forget who their God is, and the great evidence of that is Moses himself. Moses, remember, spent early years in his mother's house among the Hebrews who had learned to love them, but he did not learn much about God.



 Now he's being called to go back, and he's already married outside the covenant in this pagan land. And as he begins to come back to lead God's people, not only does he not worship God, he's not dedicated his children to God. None of his children have been circumcised. So while he is going back to lead the children of Israel, God actually says, "I'm going to have to kill you." What?



 You're trying to lead my people without me.



 We learn that Moses, the very one being chosen, is himself not just a murderer. He's one who has abandoned his God and he's being called back. God comes down to a terrible person. He comes down at a terrible time. The children of God are not prospering. They're slaves. They're in an awful condition. He comes to a terrible place. This God of all glory, he should be coming to some palatial palace temple.



 And he comes to a desert mountain out in the crags of the wilderness.



 That's all he's got.



 And yet this is holy ground.



 What are we learning about holy ground?



 The ground is not made holy by the people, or by the time, or by the place.



 The ground is made holy by the presence of God.



 Wherever God is, that is holy ground.



 But now the problem is, of course, but where is God?



 And God has made it clear.



 I was in the bush with your father, Abraham, generations ago. I was in the bulrushes when you were launched upon the Nile to find a way to survive. I am in the bush now and you will have the sign. You'll go to Pharaoh and you'll come back here to this mountain. I'm going to be there when you get there. I'm going to take the people into the land of milk and honey. And I will be remembered forever. I'm the God behind you.



 And I'm the God ahead of you.



 And I'm the God with you.



 I'm the God of all times. I'm the God of all places.



 Wherever I am, that's the holy place.



 And I am everywhere.



 Moses isn't getting it. The people aren't going to get it for a while. They have to learn what it means for God to lead them by pillar of fire at night, pillar of cloud by day, to recognize that in that tabernacle that travels with them is the presence of God in the ark, which means wherever they go, God is with them. And God is making clear over and over again what is ultimately going to happen when the Apostle John tells us that Christ came to tabernacle among us because ultimately his name is Emmanuel, God with us. When?



 Always everywhere, which means the holy place if it's identified by the presence of God, not by people, not by place, not by timing, but by the presence of God. Where is the holy place?



 Here and at your home.



 And in the hospital room.



 In the moment of crisis and in the moment of anger and in your marriage and in your sin. I mean, every one of those places, despite our weakness and fault and frailty and doubt, is the holy place of God.



 It makes a difference when you begin to see the world that way.



 My wife Kathy's sister is a hospice nurse.



 And she has sometimes rather amazing posts on her Facebook of what it means to see and understand God in the difficult, difficult spaces of life.



 She wrote this last Christmas, "Being on call on Christmas weekend as a hospice nurse is a bummer.



 Even more so when it is the first Christmas after my mom died.



 For the first time since she moved here nine years ago, there will be no blueberry pancakes followed by a long drive through the mountains with mom whistling Christmas carols.



 So I was not in the best of moods when the call came.



 We have sent your patient to the ER because she fell and hit her nose.



 Those patients are not supposed to go to the ER, especially not on Christmas Eve.



 Christmas Eve, bah, humbug. I grumbled the whole way there.



 But then I met her.



 She was confused and afraid.



 No one was there for her, no family, nobody.



 So I sat with her for hours. She was lost in her confusion and dementia.



 The ER cacophony did not help. Loud voices, monitors blaring, shouted expletives from an angry patient, sounds of somebody throwing up, overhead pages. She began having hallucinations.



 I bunched up a blanket which became her puppy that she could pet. She named him Barney.



 He was furry white and missing a tooth.



 Then I mentioned it was Christmas Eve and her banged up nose now made her look like Rudolph.



 Her face lit up with joy and she began singing Christmas carols at the top of her lungs. Joy to the world, the Lord is come. Away in a manger, no crib for his bed. Oh holy night. She made a few creative words for that song.



 But she continued to sing for an hour.



 In her wobbly 96 year old voice I admit I was embarrassed at first but then, then, then,



 I realized some of the staff were starting to sing along.



 I heard voices coming from other rooms.



 Patients and families were joining our choir.



 We became an odd, holy Christmas choir. I should have taken off my shoes because the icky, germy, ER floor had become holy ground.



 When she was finally going into the ambulance to go back home, she raised her arms into the air and said, "I am so full of joy."



 Christ was there, swaddled in dementia.



 The word became flesh and dwelt among us and this was holy ground.



 You begin to see your world different where you see wherever God is, that is holy ground.



 And I perceive more and more by the hand of God's word and work in the world that He's just everywhere.



 Where His people love Him and recognize His hand at work and do His service and hear His words in a place where people are depressed or hurting, where the family crisis is intense, or you're praying for your child in a hospital room or you're praying for your parents in a hospital room.



 Where you can hardly imagine what God has planned for tomorrow, where your disappointment is great, where you're just in the desert of your own soul.



 And you say, "Lord, where are you?"



 And then you get the wonder of recognizing, He says, "I'm here.



 I came down, remember?



 I came down despite the people and despite the place and despite the… I came down and I'm here."



 So what? He's here.



 He says in this holy place, "I'm not just here, I'm here to help."



 I mean, that's the message of Exodus 3 as well, right? There's this amazing declaration of verse 7. The Lord said, "I've surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt. I have heard their cry because of their tassels. I know their suffering." It's a theme that will get repeated over and over again in Exodus. "I've seen, I've heard, I know, and I remember my covenant. So I will bring about what is right and best and good for my people. And by the way, because I will do that," verse 8 says, "I have come to deliver.



 I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians." Sounds great. The Lord has seen and heard and He knows and He's come to deliver. One little problem, verse 10.



 God says to Moses, "Come, I will send you."



 No, Lord, who am I that I should deliver the people of God from the hand of Pharaoh?



 It's really just a realistic question and the wrong question and the right question all at the same moment.



 It's realistic. Who am I that I should go? I remember Pharaoh's after my hide and I'm guilty of murder and I'm just a shepherd out here in the field.



 I mean, there's all kinds of realistic reasons to say, "Who am I that I should deliver the people?"



 Of course, there's all kinds of wrong reasons that Moses is asking the question, "Who am I that I should deliver?" Because he's going to say in the very next chapter, "Remember, God, you're sending me, please.



 Where am I?



 Send Aaron.



 Anybody but me."



 Which is in many ways the very right thing.



 I'm not capable. I'm not able. I'm not the one you should pick.



 And so Moses, when he is saying, "Who am I?" is actually confessing, "I am not able."



 Which sets up the very best question. So Lord, who are you?



 I am.



 I'm not able.



 I am.



 As God is establishing who he is, it's this wonderful gospel presentation of verse 11 as God keeps saying over and over again, "Understand." Moses said to God, "Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of God out of that place, out of Egypt?" But at the same time, verse 14, what happens?



 After Moses asked God, "What's your name?" Verse 14, "God said to Moses, "I am who I am." Say this to the people of Israel, "I am has sent me." Now, for the theologians, this is the heavyweight stuff. What does it mean, "I am who I am?"



 It's not a lot of sense in Hebrew or in English, but you get it. It's saying, "I'm not identified by my parentage. I am not the son of somebody.



 I'm not indicated by my place. I'm not Saul of Tarsus, John of Damascus. I'm not indicating who I am by my profession.



 You know, I'm John the butcher, Jake the candlestick maker.



 I just am who I am." As God is saying, "I just be.



 I don't have origin.



 I don't have end. I cannot be contained in words. I cannot be contained in a profession. My power is beyond expression. I am who I am." And when he says that, he's establishing, "I am the forever God. I was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and I'm the God who will be remembered forever without beginning or without end. I'm the God of your forefathers." But ultimately he's saying, "I am the God for now.



 I came down to deliver you. You confessed to me. You are not able." And God simply says, "I have no limits.



 I have all power, and I will be remembering my covenant forever.



 I am who I am, and I will deliver you."



 Why do we need to hear those words?



 This whole message I was getting ready for this very moment right now.



 Because we are the ones who say, "I'm not able.



 I got these other things to do, or I've got these things that disqualify me."



 And God is saying, "Am I not with you?



 Is this not holy ground? Forever I am, isn't that holy ground? And if this is holy ground, and I am with you, then I'm sending you.



 I'm not capable, Lord.



 Oh, but I am."



 As Jesus would say it over and over again, "I am the light of the world.



 I am the bread of life. I am the good shepherd. I am the way, the truth, and the life." Here is Christ saying, "I know you're not capable. I am."



 And we need that even as a church at a time of legacy.



 Why? We look backwards. We say, "Wasn't it great in that rail car that somebody was willing to say, "We need to help the children?" The great calling card of Presbyterians throughout history is going back to John Knox, our forefather, who said, "Give me Scotland or I die."



 There was somebody at a rail car who said, "Give me the children or they die.



 Give me Peoria or I die." And if we are being faithful to that legacy, it is still our cry, our responsibility. "Lord, give us the children or we die." They have souls that need to hear about Jesus. They have lives that need help from people who are not as distressed as their families and their backgrounds and their difficulties. As you have rescued us, make us rescuers. And Lord, we know that we have iniquity and difficulty and pride and arrogance and all kinds of things that distract us. But Lord, if you marked iniquity, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness. That's the message that I know, and these children need to know it too.



 It's about saying there's somebody who says, "I've been sent because I'm on holy ground."



 And on this holy ground, God has called a people to claim the children of God.



 I'm not able.



 He says what?



 I am and I'm with you.



 This is holy ground. Let's ask God to bless it. Father, would you work in the hearts and the lives of our people? That not only would they rejoice in the great blessing of a God who is holy and compassionate at the same moment for people like us who are so often dismayed by our own sin and weakness, by the turning of our priorities to ourselves rather than to you.



 And so we disqualify ourselves from your work.



 Claim us again. Claim our hearts again that we might claim the children of this city for Christ.



 Help us, we pray, to be the people of God who know you are the great I AM even when we say we're not much.



 Such people you can use. You did and you will. We pray for your help and praise you for it. In Jesus' name, amen.
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Exodus 5-6 • Building Without Bricks

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Exodus 1-2 • Hope in a Small Package