Exodus — Sunday Class, August 3
Editorial note: This is a transcript of an audio recording of a Sunday Bible class discussion. It has been lightly edited by Claude AI for readability: spelling has been corrected, paragraphs and sentences have been formed from the spoken flow, and scripture quotations have been highlighted. Conversational banter, interjections, and off-topic exchanges are marked as such. The content and meaning have not been altered.
The Pillar of Cloud and Fire — Who Got It?
So to pick up with this: which people got the pillar of cloud and pillar of fire? Who got the pillar of cloud and pillar of fire?
[Class responds: the Israelites.]
Yes, very good. So the Israelites got it. That means the Amorites didn’t get it. And who else didn’t get it? Can you think of any other nations from the time?
[Class suggests: Philistines, Egyptians, Canaanites, Amalekites, Moabites, Ammonites.]
Yes — lots of nations. According to Velikovsky, he reckons it was the Amalekites who took over Egypt after it was broken, or who plagued Egypt — I don’t know the full history there. But yes, lots of other peoples. The point is: one people got it, and the others didn’t.
Sovereign Grace Versus Egalitarianism
Well, that’s not very democratic, is it? That’s not very democratic. We have a system whereby if you earn too much you get slapped by the taxman — the more you earn, the greater the percentage they take. They’re trying to equalise everybody across the board. If you’re uneducated and don’t work, well, they’re going to take from the productive people and by force give to those people. There’s a word beginning with “EQ” — or sometimes “EG” — a school of thought that seeks to equalise everybody, to treat everybody equally, as it were.
[Class responds: Egalitarianism.]
Egalitarianism — thank you. That was one of the principles of the French Revolution: liberté, égalité, fraternité — or death. Those were your options. That was the full phrase: liberty, equality, fraternity, or death. So that’s the DEI of today. Boys and girls, men and women — they’re all the same, and you can just move between them, no problem. Same, same, same.
So it’s an impulse that is very deeply embedded, and it is a very wicked impulse, and it runs against the will of the Lord — who says, “I will favour one person, one group of people, for as long as I like, for as short as I like. I will give them what I want, and it is only my will that determines this.” And a lot of people don’t like that. Theologically, that is called sovereign grace.
God’s sovereign — what’s another word for sovereign?
[Class responds: King.]
Rushdoony argues very strongly that sovereignty is an attribute of God alone. Whereas because of the history of Europe, kings were considered a species of divinity, and they somehow shared in the sovereignty of God and were therefore called “sovereigns.” But yes, we have it in our money — a gold sovereign representing the king or the queen.
So this is something we have to come to grips with. Why am I X and the other person is Y? Why am I short and somebody else is tall? Why am I white and another person is black? Why am I rich, why am I poor, why am I whatever it happens to be? We deal with it on a personal level. Some people are better looking, some people are better speakers, some people seem to have an easy life. And we’ve got to say that although we want to put our best foot forward, we have to say — God determines. I immediately go to Acts — the boundaries of the habitations of the nations of the earth. He determines. He just does as he pleases. He never does wickedly, because he can’t — because he’s good by nature. He defines good. But he certainly does as he pleases.
Rating This Generation — The Desert Wanderers
Now, we don’t want to fast-forward too much, but we’re going to have to draw information from after this story. What can you tell me about this generation of people? If you were going to scale them, give them a review like they were an Airbnb — would you give them five stars? What kind of criteria might you use? Drawing from your knowledge of what this generation was like, how did they behave?
[Class member responds diplomatically.]
I probably wouldn’t give them a very high rating.
[Banter: “That is quintessential Britishness right there. I’m teaching Tiffany subtlety. British understatement — if it was an Airbnb it would be like that Airbnb that Steve and I went to — goodness me — for that conference. Oh boy, it was absolutely — it was a psychopath, it was literally looping zero stars, there was a whole investigation about it. Just the weirdest thing ever.”]
Okay, so these people — tell me some of the things they did in the desert.
[Class responds: they complained constantly.]
Exactly. They were like that all the time. “I want to speak to the manager, I’m not happy.” All the time.
[Aside: “I’m sorry, I was doing a complaining voice. I wasn’t mimicking you — you have a very sweet, clear voice. Just to be clear.”]
Boy, God hates complaining. What else did they do?
[Class responds: they wanted to go back to Egypt, they rebelled again and again.]
And so therefore — did God take away the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire? Did he do that?
[Class responds: No.]
So even though they were a rebellious and stiff-necked people who were always up to no good — like a sheep trying to kill itself, just absolutely rubbish, zero stars — God never took the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire away. Does that tell you something about God and his nature?
Are you telling me that God is free to bless that particularly bad generation — more than other generations that were perhaps much better — with an actual twenty-four-hour-a-day visible representation of his presence, which also protected them? It was a perpetual, forty-year miracle in two forms. Are you telling me that God is so sovereign and so unmoved in his will that he can just bless a people who are entirely undeserving of it? This is almost the textbook entry — the encyclopaedia entry — for obnoxious. Goodness me. Well, this should tell you something about God.
God’s Nature Does Not Change
Does God’s nature change?
[Class: No.]
That’s right. Is the church today perfect? Do you go around these churches and find that they basically know everything they should know? Are they at 99% of what’s in the Bible, just going for the extra 1%? Are we like that? Do we sometimes complain? Are we at the 99% level of obedience?
[Class: No.]
Probably not, no. So without wanting to be too vague, we can say that we must be very careful not to declare that because the church cannot see that it is under judgement — or because the nation is at war with God’s law — that God’s presence and grace are therefore withdrawn. The nation is under tremendous judgement; it has basically gone to war with God’s law. And this could, at certain stages of our lives, have described us as well.
God can be so gracious as to be present with a people and do all the things he did for them. This tells us something about what God can do and what God may well do in our own generation. The people of our time are probably not as bad as those folks in the desert — they’re not complaining all the time — but they do rather like Egypt. And yet God can still work a tremendous miracle of his abiding presence and protection, despite any provocation on their part.
Now we do know that that generation’s bones were bleached in the desert because they refused to do what God asked them to do. We know that. But still, they had that abiding miracle. So we need to be very careful about imagining in our hearts that because the church at the moment is not this or that, God will therefore do this and that — because that’s what X, Y, and Z church or person deserves. God is sovereign. He does as he pleases. And whatever he does is just. That should give us hope — but it should also be a tremendous warning to us, to seek the grace and courage to enter in to where God would have us enter in.
We must bite our tongues when we say, “God is going to withhold blessing from this group.” We just don’t know. God doesn’t operate arbitrarily, but he operates according to his sovereign will. His presence didn’t mean his approbation of their wicked ungratefulness — that we can say — but as regards taking them places, that’s a different story.
We could also turn it around and note: these people had a twenty-four-hour, seven-day-a-week, twelve-months-a-year miracle, and they were still unbelieving. We should note that. What we see with our eyes is never going to be the definitive thing. That’s what the rich man said in the parable of Lazarus — “Send somebody back from the dead and they will definitely believe.” But it is not really what we believe with our eyes that matters.
The heart is the seat of religion.
Our hearts need to be changed. Our hearts need to believe. It’s the changing of belief in our heart — worked through our head, the renewing of our mind — which works faith in our hearts and changes our behaviour and changes the outcome of our life. It’s all by God’s grace. But that’s where the change comes. Even the most tremendous miracle and sign of God’s grace: without a changed heart, it won’t mean anything.
Their Time in Egypt
All right — tell me about their time in Egypt. What can you tell me about it?
[Class: They were slaves. They lived separately, in Goshen.]
That’s right. They lived in the land of Goshen. Does anyone remember the number of years they were there?
[Class: 430 years.]
That’s right — 430 years. And they weren’t slaves to start with. They gradually came to be slaves. There’s something about that trajectory — the loss of faith generation by generation.
Rushdoony has a line somewhere — I won’t find it now — about slavery: the slave who is not inwardly a slave will find a way to escape no matter how many manacles they slap on him. But a slavish people will seek slavery. The more slavish a people is, the further they are from the true expression of the Christian religion.
Were they faithful during their time in Egypt — in their worship of Jehovah — judging by their behaviour afterwards?
[Class: No.]
That’s right. So they had 430 years in one place. They were fixed. They had houses. Their forefathers had been moving around, but in God’s providence they were brought to a place where they were steady — and then there was a big change.
We can think of other phases in their history: the conquest, the time of the judges, the period of settlement, the time of David when Jerusalem was taken and the Philistines were put to tribute. There are different phases in the history of God’s people.
Why the Pillar of Cloud and Fire — and Why Then?
Did they need a pillar of cloud and fire in Goshen? Why didn’t they need it there?
What do the verses tell us about the function of the pillars?
Exodus 13:21 — “And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, so as to go by day and night.”
They were out of Egypt and going places. When they were in Egypt — fixed, settled — they didn’t need it. The patriarchs before them: God led Abraham. He said, “Get out of the land. Go.” Abraham said, “Where to?” God said, “I won’t tell you — I’ll show you.” The Lord spoke to Abraham as to a friend.
Isaac and Jacob were led more circumstantially, though Jacob certainly communed with God — he met God at Bethel, received a special promise, received assurances. But when they were on the move, they needed the pillar. When they were settled, they didn’t.
So: they got it by grace — but they got it also because they needed it.
Our Needs Today
And do we have needs right now? Are there things we actually need — not just want?
[Banter: “I want a purple bean bag. A six-foot-square purple bean bag. We’d all want that, I’m sure. But we don’t need a purple bean bag — unless you’re a purple bean bag seller who doesn’t want to sell out. But really, they could sell something else.”]
We have real needs. A spouse visa. Starting a business. A camper van for the road. What would have happened to Israel without the pillar of cloud and fire? What they said would happen to them would have happened — they would have died in the desert.
So if God didn’t abandon his people — who were called by his name, who were so disobedient and rebellious — do you think he’s going to abandon us?
[Aside: “Oh — I forgot about the Beyoncé. No, of course not. Christ — no, that’s not how he operates.”]
Of course not. That should be a consolation to us.
Egypt After the Ten Plagues — An Analogy for Today
Now, tell me about Egypt immediately after the exodus. What would the nation have looked like? What would the mood have been after the ten plagues?
[Class: Broken, grieving, depressed.]
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the United Kingdom.
What is the national mood here? Where am I going to get the money from? Look at the prices in the supermarket. There’s just a feeling. The King we have now — embarrassment. He had this pagan ceremony this week.
[Aside: “I don’t know if you saw that or not. And our elected leaders — one is dead, representative government has broken down, people wear shorts to church — all sorts of things have gone crazy. Half a joke — I don’t know, maybe in Africa you wear shorts to church. I would doubt it.”]
Why were the Egyptians so broken? Because God judged the nation — and because God was judging it, it was thoroughly judged. There was no mistaking it. Some things, when they happen, you know they’ve happened. And they said themselves — was it from the fourth plague, or the third? — “This is the finger of God.” Even the experts had to admit it.
We don’t know where we are along the line of judgement. Nobody does. But we can say that Christians are being hounded out of the public space — encouraged not to be Christian in public life. And I think the two are analogous. You had a long time of stability — things gradually got worse — and they ended up as slaves. We pay, what, 40%? 60% tax? If you add everything up including inflation, you’re pretty much 60% slaves. We are effectively the property of the government. It seems we have no real legal protection, there’s no law to defend us — we’re pretty much in that category.
Then came the ten plagues — a radical discontinuity. A judgement of God. And they were asked to go places they had never had to go before. God said: “This is the time.” 430 years to the day — let’s go. And they were out. There was no more time for compromise between the world and God’s people. And we see this worldwide.
We don’t know what the change ahead of us will be. Maybe not physical — maybe we don’t go anywhere physically. But we are going to have to change the way we do business, change the way we operate. The point is: with a time of judgement comes a time of dislocation. But God is there. He is there in a way you could say he wasn’t in our seasons of comfort. He is there in a special way because he knows we need special help. He made us for this time. He knows we have a special need in the daytime, and he knows we have a special need in the nighttime — when we’re lying awake thinking: Where is the money going to come from? What about this bureaucrat? He’s there in the nighttime as well. What a comfort that is.
We were made for this time. This is a time of dislocation. We’re going to have to make movements even before we go in and occupy our particular field. But God is not leading us from behind — he is leading us from the front. He went before them. We know that God was in the cloud and in the fire. And he may well say: “You are going to stay here for what seems like an absurdly long time.” They were in Kadesh-Barnea, waiting — wait, wait, wait — 38 years. Other times, it was go — now, in the night.
[Banter: “Like we had to get out of bed for the tornado warning. What are we getting out of bed for at this hour? That’s ridiculous.”]
So it could be: “Let’s go, everyone go.” Or it could be 38 years. But during this time of transition and judgement, we have a brother born for adversity.
Proverbs 17:17 — “A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.”
What a comfort. He’s here with us, and he’s given us his word as a guide constantly.
[Tiffany’s point:] “We have his word — we don’t have the pillar of fire and cloud, but we have his word.”
That’s right. And it’s important to understand the time we are in. It is a time — and we can all feel it. The commentators of the world sense it too. There is a mood. Something has changed. It’s never going to be the same again. And it wasn’t the same again for them either.
With Abraham, he didn’t know where he was going next. God said,
Genesis 12:1 — “Get out of your country, from your family and from your father’s house, to a land that I will show you.”
We are in that same position. We don’t know the land God is going to lead us to. But he says, “It is a land that I will show you.” We are asked to have a special faith for the time — and we are given a special presence for the time.
A Holding Pattern — and Moses’ Prayer
And don’t forget: God spoke to the people from that special place of presence. Now God speaks to us — he can lay things on our hearts, he can speak however he speaks — but primarily through his word. And it may be that through whatever means, he leads in very specific ways.
In this time where the whole world structure is falling into the heart of the sea, where the mountains are being shaken, where the stars are falling out of the sky — to use biblical language — we can say: this is the work of God. We know from the movies what an apocalyptic wasteland looks like, but God through sovereign grace has a special love for his people. Our fate is not the fate of the world. He has a special favouritism that he shows to his people.
So we can be sure in this time. The door behind us seems shut — we can’t go back to the old times of stability and compromise, where even the world would say, “Oh, you’re a Christian? That’s great, I used to go to Sunday school.” That compromise is wrecked. That doesn’t mean we despair at the closed door behind us. We can say: God has this way mapped out for us, and it is a way leading us — or perhaps the next generation after us — into a place of inheritance.
We can very legitimately place ourselves alongside the children of Israel, because remember: the instructions for the Passover were that it was to be observed as if you yourself were taken out of the land of Egypt. So somehow we are included there, having been delivered ourselves — as strange as that might seem for us.
And Tiffany earlier pointed to a scripture — I think it was Exodus 33 — about Moses saying to God, “If your presence will not go with us, then we cannot go forward.”
Exodus 33:15 — “And he said to him, ‘If Your Presence does not go with us, do not bring us up from here.’”
So let us hold that as we face the challenges ahead. By faith — not imagination, but faith — let us see that God’s presence is with us. Let us not run ahead of his guidance. Let us move with his presence.
And for some of you who have been in a holding pattern for longer than you planned — and perhaps for me as well — let’s remember to be very careful when we make predictions about what God is or is not going to do based on how this or that group is performing. Let us remember all of those things.
Closing Prayer
Lord, we want to honour you and thank you for the time in which you have chosen to place us. Thank you for the fact that you have chosen the day of our death, the day of our birth — and more importantly, the times in which we live, the stage we are at: whether we be young, teenagers, in our twenties or thirties, or whatever it happens to be. We thank you that all of that is ordained, all in your hand, Father. We are exactly at the point you have had for us.
Lord, we do thank you for the excitement of what you are doing in the world at this time — judging nations, bringing these mighty empires down, these once-great nations that have abandoned you. Father, I pray that in this time of great shaking we would not lose heart. Though the mountains give way and fall into the heart of the sea, may we have a faith in the Maker and Sustainer of the world — who owns fire, who with every flame sets the bounds of that flame, who with every cloud sets the bounds of that cloud, moment by moment keeping the clouds in the sky by your ordination and not by any natural law.
We want to say by faith, and acknowledge by faith, that you are with us — especially in these times of transition, especially in our needs. You know the route we are to go, even when we do not. We thank you that moment by moment, day by day, month by month, year by year, decade by decade, you are there guiding us.
Lord, help us by faith — like the young man who was with Elisha — to see by faith the chariots of the Lord, to see by faith your very great presence with us, that we may not be confounded, that we may not lack courage in this time which requires so much courage of us. Lord, help us to know your victory this week as we listen to you and walk in your ways. Help us in all our days. In Jesus’ name, and for his sake, forgive us our sins, we pray. In Jesus. Amen.
Post-Class Discussion
[Personal testimony from a class member:]
You know, 2020, when things became unstable and we didn’t know what was going on, I was just desperate to go back — back to the stability that was before. But honestly, it wasn’t all that long before I realised that not only was there no going back, I didn’t want to go back. What was back there? And actually, when I think about it now, it’s ridiculous — because I was exceedingly mediocre in terms of my Christian life. I knew my theology. I was frustrated by my theology. But I was completely absorbed and immersed in it. I didn’t know there was another way of thinking, another eschatology that was biblical.
And obviously I’m in a different situation now. In some ways I’m worse off — but only in very surface ways. I don’t have a job, I don’t have a fixed income. But what has replaced that? For me, COVID is the gift that keeps on giving. God has used that situation to work something very powerful in me. COVID has given me all of you — I didn’t know any of you in 2020. I’ve got a lot of people in my life who have come into it directly because of COVID — and also the theology I’ve learned through yourselves, and through Steve Layfield.
I feel like before 2020 I was in Egypt, and I guess now I’m in the wilderness. But even I recognise that the wilderness is better than Egypt. And that is such a privilege.
[Nathan:]
Praise the Lord. Glory to God for the fact that he’s working. We praise the Lord. We’re very grateful to know you ourselves now as well. But it’s a hard lesson, isn’t it? And if you know something that others don’t, if you’re a few years ahead of other people, that probably means you’re to help folks when they need help. There are a lot of people who are going to need help — and who presently need help.
[Closing banter: discussion about purple bean bags, going to Zambia, driving a BMW estate car versus a Massey Ferguson tractor — referencing “the first man to circumnavigate Africa in a tractor.”]
Scriptures Referenced
| Reference | Text / Context |
|---|---|
| Exodus 13:21 | The Lord went before Israel by a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, to lead the way and give light |
| Exodus 33:15 | ”If Your Presence does not go with us, do not bring us up from here” — Moses to God |
| Genesis 12:1 | God’s call to Abraham: “Go to a land that I will show you” |
| Acts 17:26 | God determining the boundaries of the habitations of the nations |
| Proverbs 17:17 | ”A brother is born for adversity” — cited as comfort in difficult times |
| Luke 16:19–31 | Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus — the point that signs do not change hearts |
| Psalm 46:2 | Mountains giving way and falling into the heart of the sea — used in prayer |
| 2 Kings 6:15–17 | Elisha’s servant and the chariots of fire — seeing God’s presence by faith |