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The Manner in Which Christ Saves His People (1)
Exodus 3:7-8
Good News From The Redeemer
Sermon by Pastor Daniel Parks
Radio Message #309 ~ March 4, 2000
Christ is named Jesus because "He will save His people" (Matthew 1:21). He saves His people in a two-fold manner: from both spiritual and physical oppression.
A foremost example of the latter is found in the well-known account of Moses at the burning bush (Exodus 3:1-4:17). God appeared to Moses in the person of the second member of the Holy Trinity, God the Son and Jesus the Christ, here identified as the "Angel of Jehovah" (3:2). Christ on this occasion described the manner in He would save His people (3:7f): "And the LORD said: 'I have surely seen the oppression of My people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows. So I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Amorites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites.'"
Christ saves His people from spiritual oppression in the same manner in which He saves them from physical oppression.
I. "I have surely seen the oppression of My people who are in Egypt." This oppression arose following the death of Joseph and his generation, and the rise of a pharaoh who did not know him (1:6-14ff). Christ as God was cognizant of both the oppressors and the oppressed, because "The eyes of the LORD are in every place, keeping watch on the evil and the good" (Proverbs 15:3). Our present text in the Hebrew has Christ here saying "in seeing I have seen." That is, Christ had not merely glanced at the situation. Rather, He had been watching it from its inception, and was aware of every aspect of it.
The same is true with regard to Christ's salvation of His people from spiritual oppression. They are, by virtue of their fall in Adam (Romans 5:12ff), born in "the snare of the devil, having been taken captive by him to do his will" (2 Timothy 2:26). And they are, in a spiritual sense, "in Egypt." In this sense, Egypt is a type of the world, associated with the gross perversions of Sodom and identified as "where our Lord was crucified" (Revelation 11:8). It also was a place infamous for its idolatry (Ezekiel 20:7).
But Christ has seen this spiritual oppression. Indeed, in His prescience He foresaw it even before it occurred - even before the foundation of the world. We are assured of this because "He indeed was foreordained before the foundation of the world" to be the Savior of His people (1 Peter 1:18-20). He is therefore "the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world" (Revelation 13:8).
II. "I have heard their cry because of their taskmasters." Although Christ in His omnipresence and omniscience hears every thing, He disregards the cry of the self-righteous (Job 35:1-14) and the wicked (Micah 3:1-4). But "the eyes of the LORD are on the righteous, and His ears are open to their cry. … The righteous cry out, and the LORD hears, and delivers them out of all their troubles" (Psalm 34:15,17).
This is as true in the spiritual realm as it is in the physical.
III. "I know their sorrows." Christ was not merely aware of the sorrows of His people. Rather, He knew them (2:23-25)! And His knowledge was not that of being merely well-informed of the sorrows. Rather, He knew them in the sense of being sympathetic toward the sorrowful! And since Christ is "a God full of compassion, and gracious," He will not turn a deaf ear to their prayers for deliverance (as in Psalm 86:14-17).
In regard to the spiritual salvation of His people, Christ will not be merely sympathetic toward them. Nay, he would be even empathetic! In order to manifest His love toward His people and to deliver them from their sorrows, He Himself would experience their sorrows! God would become "a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief" (Isaiah 53:3). His people therefore would be able to acknowledge that "we do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but was in all points tempted as we are, yet without sin" (Hebrews 4:15).
"Hallelujah! What a Savior!"
(In the next message we will observe: IV. "I have come down ….")
Your servant for Jesus' sake.
Address all questions to pastor
Daniel E. Parks (2 Corinthians 4:5) e-mail RedeemerBC@aol.com
Pastor, Redeemer Baptist Church
2801 Cleveland Boulevard, Louisville, KY 40206 / 502.899-9205
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