Christ Church

God led his people into the wilderness to test them, with the kind of test that reveals what is in their hearts. What was revealed was grumbling, yet God provided for their needs out of his grace. Through his testing and provision, God was teaching his people to trust him. Jesus Christ went through the wilderness test, too; and what was revealed was not grumbling, but perfect trust. Jesus is the better Israel, the better Moses, the...

In Exodus 15:22–27, Israel’s quick turn from praise to grumbling in the wilderness reveals the deeper danger of the Christian life: not external enemies, but the sinful tendency of the heart to doubt God’s goodness when trials come. Their bitter waters at Marah expose both the reality of suffering and the temptation to respond with grumbling rather than lament. Yet God provides a remedy when he shows Moses a tree that turns the bit...

From Israel’s desperate moment at the Red Sea, this sermon highlights that salvation is entirely God’s work from start to finish: he takes the initiative, he fights the battle, and he brings his people through from death to life. The crossing is portrayed as a new-creation event—dark waters divided, dry land appearing—showing that just as God created the world without help, so he saves sinners by sheer grace. Israel contributed not...

The Feast of Unleavened Bread teaches God’s people that they are both sustained by him and defined by him. Israel ate unleavened bread first because they left Egypt in haste and then because God was training them to depend daily on his provision as they journeyed with him. That pattern finds its fulfillment in Christ, the true Bread from heaven, on whom we must feed by faith for eternal life. At the same time, the removal of leaven...

This sermon argues that the Passover meal in Exodus 12 was not merely about the lamb’s death, but about restored fellowship with God, as Israel ate in his presence because judgment had been dealt with through substitution; that meal functioned as proclamation (confessing past deliverance, present identity, and future hope), participation (real communion with God and one another), and presence (safely eating before God without fear)...

God’s holy presence is a danger to people stained by sin and death, and no sincerity, effort, or moral improvement can make us fit to stand before Him. In the Passover, God teaches that only the blood of a substitute life can cleanse what death has defiled, so that judgment passes over and God can dwell without destroying. This same logic is fulfilled in Christ, whose blood both saves us once for all and continues to cleanse us as ...

In the first Passover, God did not save his people because they were good but because He is. Each household took a lamb, brought it into their home, and then watched as that lamb died in place of their firstborn. The blood on the door was a simple, visible confession: “The lamb died instead of me.” That night taught Israel — and now teaches us — that salvation is not earned, but received through substitution. This is the story Jesu...

The firstborn stands as the representative of the whole, showing that all humanity is implicated in sin and justly under judgment, for God does not owe life to anyone. Yet the same God who judges also provides a substitute: his own Firstborn, Jesus Christ, who bears the judgment we deserve so that death might pass over us. The story of Egypt’s firstborn ultimately points us to the cross, where justice and mercy meet, and where thos...

Mary’s song shows that God delights to lift the lowly and confront the self-exalted, and that his mercy is received only with empty hands. She praises God because he has looked on her nothingness, filled the hungry, and scattered the proud—revealing the very shape of the gospel. Our problem is that we choke on this good news, grasping for our own glory instead of receiving it from God. Yet in the incarnation, the Lord of Glory goes...

Psalm 142 shows us how to pray when life feels like a cave—dark, lonely, and overwhelming. David models biblical lament: turning to God honestly in prayer, naming the real pain we carry, and deliberately choosing to trust God’s character and promises even when our emotions say otherwise. Lament is God’s gift for weary people; it moves us from despair toward confidence that the Lord will deal bountifully with us. As Christ entered t...

This sermon traces the Exodus plagues as a cosmic “dragon-slaying” narrative: Pharaoh is portrayed as a chaos-dragon like the mythic Leviathan, humiliated when Aaron’s staff-dragon swallows his magicians’ staffs and finally vanquished when he is swallowed by the sea. The pattern prefigures Christ’s greater victory—Jesus, the true Dragon Slayer, humiliates the devil through his ministry, disarms him at the cross, and empties death’s...

The plagues were not random punishments but deliberate judgments revealing Yahweh’s supremacy over Egypt’s gods and over all spiritual powers. The plagues expose false order and false mercy by unraveling Egypt’s Ma’at and showing that only Yahweh brings true order, light, and life. Through the chaos He sends, God displays His grace—holding creation together by His word; His mercy—sparing His people not because they deserve it but b...