The sayeth the Lord, God of Israel. Let my people go."

Such a classic movie moment from Charlton Heston playing Moses in the 1956 movie, The Ten Commandments,

the exodus of Israel out of Egypt is the greatest redemptive event in the Old Testament. Let that

sink in for a moment. If our publishing age is marked by the cross, it is because the cross

is shorthand for the death and resurrection of Christ. His cross marks the centerpiece of

redemptive history as we know it. But before the cross, there was the Exodus. And so if the world

of publishing today talks a lot about the cross-centered life and the cross-centered church,

it would seem that a fitting analogy would be perhaps to imagine the Old Testament era saints,

to have had the impulse to write and publish books on the Exodus-centered life and the Exodus-centered

synagogue. It's a major key to understanding the Old Testament and it's a major key to unlocking

the meaning of the entire biblical plotline. To explain, I call Dr. Don Carson. On occasional

Fridays, I call him up as part of our relationship with our friends at the Gospel Coalition. Carson

is the co-founder and president of the Gospel Coalition and also the editor of the NIV's

Andreven Study Bible, which is the study Bible version of what we're doing in these occasional

Friday podcasts. I called up Dr. Carson, asked him to explain the Exodus. Here's what he said.

The Exodus is simultaneously the escape of the people of God, the Israelites, from Egypt,

the land of slavery. They exit out of slavery into the Promised Land. It's the Exodus. And at the same

time, it's a one-word way of referring to the events surrounding the Exodus. That includes,

therefore, the judgment of God on the Egyptians, the plagues. It includes also eventually the

giving of the law, the years of wilderness wanderings, and eventually entrants into the Promised Land.

So sometimes when people speak of the Exodus, they are referring to the narrow event of the escape.

And sometimes they're referring to the much larger event that includes, for example,

...