The Exodus and The Gospel with Stuart Peck

In this episode, Stuart Peck and Wes McAdams discuss the Exodus account and its relationship to the Gospel. They discuss how understanding the historical and cultural context of the ancient Israelites can deepen our appreciation for scripture and make it even more relatable to our lives today. Biblical characters grappled with very real issues in their specific historical setting, which can mirror our own struggles if understood properly.

The post The Exodus and The Gospel with Stuart Peck appeared first on Radically Christian.

In this episode, Stuart Peck and Wes McAdams discuss the Exodus account and its relationship to the Gospel. They discuss how understanding the historical and cultural context of the ancient Israelites can deepen our appreciation for scripture and make it even more relatable to our lives today. Biblical characters grappled with very real issues in their specific historical setting, which can mirror our own struggles if understood properly.

As Stuart and Wes discuss the Exodus, they reflect on the ways it is used as an archetype throughout the New Testament to illustrate the gospel message. The hosts dive into how the Exodus foreshadows Jesus’ deliverance of God’s people from bondage to sin, the wilderness testing period, and ultimately being led into the promised land. They examine how New Testament writers frequently drew parallels between Jesus and Moses, as well as Jesus and the nation of Israel itself, to show Jesus as the fulfillment of the Exodus story.

The guest for this episode is Stuart Peck is the co-founder and CEO of Appian Media. He leads a team of creatives who make videos, podcasts and printed study material about the Bible. Their latest documentary “Out of Egypt” digs into the world of ancient Egypt and the culture that surrounded the Israelites as they were slaves in Egypt. The documentary follows a possible route out of Egypt to the border of Israel. Through their journey they explore the concept of the Exodus story being our story today.

Links and Resources

Watch this episode on YouTube

Appian Media

Out of Egypt – Premieres March 16, 2024

Following the Messiah

Searching for a King

Freed Hardeman University Graduate School of Theology

Transcript (Credit: Beth Tabor)

Welcome to the Radically Christian Bible Study podcast. I’m your host, Wes McAdams. Here we have one goal: Learn to love like Jesus. Today we’re going to talk about the story of the Exodus, how God brought the people of Israel out of Egyptian slavery and brought them to the Promised Land so that he could dwell with his people. We’re going to talk about how the Exodus story points forward to Jesus and how it teaches us what the gospel is all about and our place in the story of God and his people. 

I’m going to be talking with Stuart Peck, who is the co‑founder and CEO of Appian Media. He leads a team of creatives who make videos, podcasts, and printed study material about the Bible. Their latest documentary, “Out of Egypt,” digs into the world of ancient Egypt and the culture that surrounded the Israelites as they were slaves in Egypt. The documentary follows a possible route out of Egypt to the border of Israel. Through their journey, they explore the concept of the Exodus story being our story today.

I know that you will be blessed and encouraged by this conversation, but before we get there, I want to read Deuteronomy 18:15. This is Moses speaking to the people of Israel, and this promise points forward to Jesus. Here’s what Moses said. He said, “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers. It is to him you shall listen.” I hope that you enjoy this conversation, and I hope it helps all of us learn to love like Jesus. 

WES: Stuart Peck, welcome to the podcast, Brother.

STUART: I am so glad to be here. Thanks, Wes. 

WES: Man, it’s great to have you. I’m excited about everything that Appian Media does. You guys came out to our house several years ago and interviewed my son because my family has really enjoyed the ministry that you guys have, the work that you guys put out for a long time, but I want to hear about this new project that you have going on. Tell us about what’s new.

STUART: Yeah. I would love to see your sons now. I’m sure they are a lot taller. 

WES: Yeah, my oldest is taller than I am now, so…

STUART: Oh, my goodness. Yeah, so this has been about a two‑year process, but we actually created a documentary called “Out of Egypt,” and it basically looks at the biblical account of the Exodus, and it’s kind of an exciting piece because it’s new for Appian Media. And I’m not sure if your listeners are familiar with Appian Media, but we have typically made documentaries going to the Bible lands and looking at the places where these events occurred. And while you can do that with the Exodus, there isn’t a lot ‑‑ or any material evidence of the Exodus when you go to Egypt or when you go to the Sinai Peninsula, so that kind of made it an exciting adventure. But we follow one of the possible routes that the Israelites took out of Egypt through the Sinai Peninsula to one of the locations that is believed to be Mount Sinai and then up into Jordan, and then we ended at Mount Nebo, looking into the land of Israel. 

So it was an exciting journey, and we hit our own roadblocks along the way. It’s trivial compared to what the Israelites had to endure when they were in the wilderness, but it really helped open our eyes, and we hope it helps open the eyes of our viewers to the fact that, you know, we all have our own Exodus story, and that’s a powerful motif that we see in scripture and, I think, one that we just ‑‑ we can’t overlook when we talk about the Bible. The Exodus is such a huge, pivotal moment in this nation’s history, and it’s a pivotal moment in our history, too.

WES: Yeah, for sure. So I want to come back to some of that, but let’s just kind of ‑‑ real generally speaking, it’s not just maybe about the Exodus project that you’re doing now, but even with all the things that Appian Media has done over the years, why do these kinds of projects and how do they help us to understand scripture better? I think one of the goals of this podcast is that we be better students of scripture, and I know that that is one of your goals, as well. So how does history and culture and location and all of the things that go into what you’re communicating to people ‑‑ how does that help form us and shape us into better Bible students?

STUART: Yeah, that is such a great question, and it all points back to scripture. And, you know, I can talk about my personal journey over the time that I’ve been working with Appian Media is ‑‑ you know, I read the Bible the way I think a lot of Western Christians read the Bible. We read the words and we see the stories and we, in our heads, make mental pictures of what that looks like. And while that’s fine, you know, sometimes those mental pictures can be inaccurate, especially being separated by an ocean and, you know, 2,000, 3,000‑years‑plus difference in different cultures and all of these things. And so it’s helpful, I think, to get to these places and show people these things so that way, they can hopefully have a more accurate mental picture. 

And we hear all the time from people ‑‑ for all of our content, whether it’s our series on the life of Jesus or the united kingdom ‑‑ that they never pictured it that way or it’s changed the way they see ‑‑ you know, fill in the blank, and, to me, that’s exciting to see because what it is is it’s helping people get a more intimate knowledge of their Bible. And you flip through the Bible and, on any page, you get these little windows into the world that surrounded these people and these cultures, and, to me, that’s where I like to go. I like to go down those rabbit trails and explore these different places and these different cultures. And what it does is it helps us get a more well‑rounded picture of who these people are, whether it’s the first‑century Christians who are living under the Roman government, or whether it’s the ancient Israelites who are living in a land full of deities ‑‑ you know, the Egyptian deities. 

I think ‑‑ having this picture that helps show us the surroundings of the Bible, I think, helps us ‑‑ it helps make it more relatable to us, and for a long time, what I was noticing is that people, you know ‑‑ and, specifically, I was looking at high school students when Craig and I first started Appian Media. We were seeing that people were disconnected from the scripture. They weren’t studying it for themselves, and they were kind of looking at it as like, why does this even matter to me? Like this is so removed from my life and my culture. And we want them to see that, no, no, no, these people are very much like you and they have the same struggles. They have the same things that you are enduring. It’s just that we’re told their story, and it’s ‑‑ I don’t know, it’s quite fascinating. And so I think ‑‑ you know, to answer your question, I think that having these videos and creating these images for people to see the Bible in this way helps build a more intimate relationship with their Bible, or that’s what we hope anyway.

WES: You know, it’s interesting, as you were talking, it made me realize that there’s almost a paradox here in that I think that sometimes, when it comes to scripture, we’ve had this tendency to just read it devotionally and jump so quickly to application without interpreting it in light of the culture and the time and the history that was going on when it was written, what did this mean to the original audience, and then, and only then, trying to apply it to our lives. And so we’ve almost tended to read the Bible, at times, as sort of being this cultureless document, as if it just dropped down out of heaven from God and landed in our lap and here it is. 

But ironically, reading it that way actually makes it less relatable to us because nobody is cultureless. Nobody is languageless. Everyone is deeply enculturated. We live in a culture. And even though the biblical characters, the people in scripture, they lived in a different culture than ours ‑‑ they spoke a different language, they had different things going on ‑‑ it does become relatable when you understand that they had very real problems. They had very real questions. And even though their problems and questions may be different than ours, like us, they also had problems and they also had questions and there were things going on in their place and in their time. 

And I think, so often, when we don’t appreciate that, we don’t understand scripture, and then it becomes less relatable. And it really ‑‑ we can get into it when we understand that this is a real nation. You used that word earlier. This is a real nation, a real ethnic group that God chose. Now, if we were writing the Bible, we might choose a different way, but God chose to work through a very specific people at a specific time and to walk alongside them in this very real story.

STUART: Yeah. I like to tell people the Bible was not written to us. It was written for us, but it was not written to us. And context ‑‑ I mean, that is so key in any passage in the Bible, is what is the context of that passage. And, you know, one of the most dangerous things I think we can do as Christians today is pluck a verse out of context and use it and in some ways weaponize it because we think that this applies to me in my current cultural context. Well, the Bible was not written in our current cultural context, and so we have to make sure that when we do look at the Bible ‑‑ I mean, I hold it up as this is a historic document, and we hold this document to be true and inspired. But there’s other documents out there that even were written around the same time and they were written by different nations or different cultures, and the Bible, in some ways, falls into a category of that historical document. And I think if we can look at it that way and then look at those people and see how we are similar to them, it can really help us relate to them, as you said.

WES: Yeah. In a lot of ways, it’s much like the incarnation in that Jesus is fully divine ‑‑ he is 100% God ‑‑ but he is also fully human ‑‑ he is 100% human, he is 100% man. And the Bible is both a divinely inspired collection of writings and it is a human‑written collection of writings, and sometimes we don’t appreciate both aspects of that. Some people don’t appreciate the divinely inspired aspect of it, and some people don’t appreciate the human aspect of it, that these are people that were speaking a language and having a conversation with their contemporaries that would have been understood by their contemporaries. They had a specific agenda of what they were trying to accomplish, the questions they were trying to answer.  And the more we can understand that time and place, the better we can apply it to our time and place and understand, okay, if that was true for them, and this is what God was doing with them and for them and, you know, through them, then what does that mean for us in our place and our time?

STUART: Yeah. You know, we were talking before the podcast that, you know, those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it, and it’s kind of that way in the sense that, like, we should be looking at the Bible and looking at the historical validity of it and the stories and go, okay, I need to learn from this group of people or this nation, or whatever the case is, and so that way, I don’t make those same mistakes, because there’s nothing new. Like we’re not in a new time. And I think that a lot of people think, oh, this is the worst time it’s ever been. No, no. If you look at history, if you look at the Bible, there is a lot of times where things were really bad, and we need to be able to glean from that, but also realizing that this is a historical document, so yeah.

WES: Yeah. Well, to that point, I think it’s interesting how the Exodus specifically is used as an archetype, and throughout the New Testament they draw on this picture of what happened, what God did in the Exodus in liberating the people of Israel out of slavery and bringing them to the Promised Land, and there’s so many pictures in the New Testament that are drawn from and using language and images that are drawn from this story of Israel. In fact, even ongoing generations, of course, of Israel celebrated, and continue to celebrate, the Passover. So this story of the Exodus is incredibly pivotal, not only for the people of Israel, for the Jewish people, but for us as Christians and in understanding our story in light of that story. 

So how would you say that this project that you guys are doing, or the Exodus story itself, can help us understand the gospel better?

STUART: Well, so the Exodus story ‑‑ it’s such a beautiful story, and, you know, I think ‑‑ I’m also currently teaching a class on the law of Moses, which, you know, when you really dig into the law of Moses, you see Jesus throughout the law, and it’s amazing. And so I think, in the documentary, we really work to bring out these points of God delivering his people from slavery and into ‑‑ where did they go? They went into the wilderness and they had their testing in the wilderness before they were actually led to the Promised Land, and how for us today, you know, we ‑‑ all of us, at times in our life, are enslaved to sin and we have to be delivered from that, and only God can do the delivering from that. And that doesn’t mean we’re going to be on easy street. It doesn’t mean that all is going to be well. We’re going to have to go through our wilderness testing. And then, you know, if we make it through, we’ll see that Jesus is there to lead us into the Promised Land. And so I think those themes, they resonate in the documentary and in the story of the Exodus. 

And then, we don’t get into it quite as much in the documentary, but I think, you know, we’re talking about making some other ancillary videos to kind of go along with it, but the discussion of the law and the giving of the law at Mount Sinai, it is very, very detailed and very, very intricate in that ‑‑ you know, everything from how the tabernacle is to be constructed, to the sacrifices, to the feast days, all of that. But when you dig into it, it all points toward a Messiah, and this theme that comes out is God’s desire to dwell with his people, and that is such a powerful thing that I think we all need to hear today, is that God isn’t distant. He’s not up in the sky looking down on us. He wants to be here with us. He wants to dwell among us. And that’s what the tabernacle was for. That’s what Jesus did when he came to Earth, was he wanted to dwell amongst the people. And

that is a powerful, powerful message for people who are feeling alone and lost in a world that is just seeming to get more and more dark.

WES: Yeah, yeah. No doubt. Beautifully said. I think often about the way that Matthew wrote his gospel account and how it seems like that’s exactly what he’s doing, is drawing these parallels not only between Jesus and Moses, but even Jesus and Israel, and how Jesus is born in a very similar situation as Moses was born, in that the children ‑‑ in order to try to kill Jesus, the children in Bethlehem were killed, much like the baby boys were killed in Egypt. And it’s interesting that Jesus flees to Egypt. He and his family flee to Egypt rather than fleeing from Egypt.  But they flee to Egypt, and then he comes out of Egypt, and just like Israel is brought out of Egypt ‑‑ in fact, that line that God called his son out of Egypt refers to Israel, and it’s almost as if Jesus is the embodiment of Israel and he’s brought out of that. And the next thing that we see is he crosses through the water, he’s baptized, and then he goes out into the wilderness and he’s tested there for 40 periods of time. It’s almost shocking that I missed that for so many years of my life, not realizing, oh, this is almost, beat by beat, a picture of the Exodus.

STUART: Yeah, it is. And I’m the same way as you. Like, you know, I grew up in Bible class and we learned the stories. We learned the parting of the Red Sea and, you know, the Ten Commandments and all of those things, but I didn’t learn as much the connections between Jesus and these stories in the Old Testament. And I think that’s really important as we’re training our kids, as we’re studying the Bible, is to make sure that we see these shadows of the Messiah everywhere we look in the Old Testament and see how they point forward. And, to me, that’s the inspiration in scripture, is the fact that over, you know, thousands of years in different parts of the known world at that time, people were writing pieces of the Bible that all connected. And it’s not like they got together on a Zoom call and said, “Hey, what are you writing over here? Okay. Well, I’m going to write this part over here. Let’s get it together and let’s make sure” ‑‑ and it’s just absolutely amazing to see all that. And I think it helps ‑‑ when you do see that, it helps you appreciate the Bible that much more.

WES: I’m going to throw this at you, Stuart. I didn’t put this in my notes to you, but as I was preparing, I thought about something that my youngest son asked me maybe a few months ago. It’s interesting, when your kids ask you questions, you think automatically, okay, this is what I would have always said, or this is what I was taught growing up, and then you realize, I don’t know that I believe that anymore. But he asked me ‑‑ he was studying about the Exodus, and he asked, “Why were pharaoh’s magicians able to do what they did? Why were they able to turn, you know, staffs into snakes? Why were they able to turn water into blood? And why is it that they did these things? Were they just doing, you know, sort of magic tricks?” 

And I remember back to the explanations I got to that question, because it seems like a natural question for kids, but for some reason, adults just kind of get to the point where they’re like, “I don’t know; that’s just what it says.” And I just kind of was dismissive of it, that it was just a trick ‑‑ you know, it was just some sort of a trick, and maybe that’s the case, but I think now that it’s an indication that there were very real powers ‑‑ I would say demonic powers behind Egypt, and that these forces that they were worshiping as gods ‑‑ that there is something there. There is a demonic power and force there, but God ‑‑ but Yahweh is more powerful and that God demonstrates his authority and power over these forces of evil. And, again, I think this picture pointing forward to the gospel in the New Testament and the liberation that we experience by the blood of Jesus liberating us from very real forces of darkness and evil is part of the story that’s always been part of the story. I’m curious to hear your thoughts on that, if you have any. Again, I apologize. I’m just throwing that at you.

STUART: No, it’s a great question, and it’s one that I’ve read before, too, and been like, okay, wow, that’s interesting. And I think, similarly, I’ve probably either heard or tried to find ways in my head to normalize it or to kind of write it off and be like, eh, it wasn’t real. But you’re right. I think that there’s a whole spiritual world out there that we see little bits and pieces of. You go into the book of Daniel or even like ‑‑ you know, I love the story ‑‑ was it in II Kings with Elisha and his servant, and they ‑‑ all of a sudden, his eyes are opened and he sees the army. I mean, like there’s so ‑‑ there’s a whole spiritual world out there that is operating without us being able to see it. And, you know, who knows if that was part of the power that Pharaoh’s magicians had. I mean, you know that there were some dark magics or some dark works happening because you go even into the period of the united kingdom, and that was ‑‑ it was the ‑‑ what is it, the magicians or the conjurers, they were kind of outlawed. And so it’s like there was a whole group of people that was able to do things, whether it was, you know, have a conversation with somebody who had died or ‑‑ you know, that was not even allowed to be part of the culture in Israel. And so that kind of points to, okay, there’s something maybe even slightly sinister here that is kind of beneath the surface. 

But yeah, I don’t have an answer for that specific question, but I think that it’s a valid one. And to your point, I think that Pharaoh seeing his magicians be able to do some of the things that he thought that God was able to do, it maybe even bolstered himself even more and said, “Oh, look at me. I really am a god because I can do the same things that your God can do.” But, of course, we know the story, that very quickly God’s power went way beyond what the magicians could do, and even the magicians themselves said, “Hey, I’m out. I can’t.” And so that right there is a telling story of just the power of God above anything that may be in the world that we think is ‑‑ oh, you know, that’s real power. No. God’s way more powerful.

WES: Yeah, no doubt. And I think it’s telling that, plague by plague, God shows his superiority over these other false gods or other gods or demonic powers, however you want to frame that ‑‑ that God shows his power over these things. And that even when you think about the way that Moses ‑‑ that God, but through his chosen instrument of Moses, the way that he confronts these powers of evil and darkness and the way that he demonstrates his superiority is so similar to the way Jesus does, that he doesn’t attack Egypt with chariots, with human armies, that it’s not the way that you would think. 

I mean, when you think about the story of the Exodus, here you have this nation of slaves, and there’s a shepherd who comes into the world’s most powerful empire and tells the world’s most powerful king to let God’s people go, and that he’s approaching this battle with nothing but a staff ‑‑ a shepherd staff in his hand and that God uses this lowly shepherd to liberate his people and defeat the world’s largest empire and army ‑‑ it is exactly what we have in Jesus, times infinity, that we ‑‑ as Paul says in Ephesians 6, we’re not wrestling against flesh and blood and that we don’t approach things with these carnal weapons, but we have faith, we have the word of God, we have prayer, and that through these things, and through our lowly shepherd who gave his life for us, our Passover lamb, the forces of evil and darkness cannot stand against God.

STUART: Amen to that. Yeah. And we live in a culture now where nations ‑‑ they flex their muscles by the weapons they do have and the ability that they do have, and so it becomes easy for us to really start to feel secure in our own place and time and our own nation, or whatever the case might be, and forget that God is in ultimate control. And we look around and we see the powers of darkness just kind of closing in, and we go, what’s happening here? Like, where is God in this whole situation? And it’s helpful to know, you know, he’s still here. He’s still here. We may not be able to physically see him, but he is still here. He’s still working. He still has a plan, and we can go back to scripture and look at what God’s plan is, and that’s a really important thing. 

You know, it’s funny because, like, when you put it that way, like you just stated, you can see why Moses was a little bit hesitant at the burning bush, to go, are you sure about this? Like, you know, you do realize who Pharaoh is, don’t you? Because he sees what we all see, and that is the world’s most powerful nation and the world’s most powerful person in Pharaoh at that time. And God is wanting me to go in there and say, hey, let your workforce go? I mean, you know, all of a sudden, it sounds a little bit more daunting than for us who can read the whole story, so…  

WES: Yeah. But to that point that we keep coming back to, that the New Testament writers continue to draw on these stories to bolster their faith ‑‑ you think about chapters like Hebrews 11 that draw from this and from other stories ‑‑ but to remind them that God delivers his people by faith, that when God’s people trust him, they’re loyal to him, they give their allegiance to Yahweh, that they have nothing to be afraid of, that all we have to do is trust him. You know, you have Moses, you have Noah, you have the people marching around the city of Jericho, that God will deliver his people. You just have to continue to trust him and to follow his lead. 

But to that point, I kind of want to shift gears just a little bit in that the stories of the Exodus that the New Testament writers draw from aren’t always the positive ones, that you have the wandering in the wilderness of the people of Israel, and that whole generation, not only do they ‑‑ you know, they receive the law at Sinai and then they go and spy out the land, and then, of course, they say, “Okay, this nation is too big. These people are too big.” Ironic because they just were delivered from much bigger people, much, much more daunting powers, but they’re afraid of the Canaanites, and because of that, they wander in the wilderness for 40 years. And the New Testament writers continually draw on that story of the wilderness wandering to remind people that just because God has saved you and delivered you doesn’t mean that you can’t fall and ultimately be destroyed just as that generation was, and it’s a warning against apostasy, against falling away once they’ve been delivered. I wonder, is that something that y’all explore, the period of wandering in the wilderness for 40 years, or is it primarily about the Exodus itself?

STUART: No, we definitely do explore the wilderness, and it was quite stark. You know, we couldn’t go stand in the spot and say this is where they camped; this is where the tabernacle was. But you can go into the wilderness, especially in the Sinai Peninsula, and you can see how starkly different it is from the lush green of the Nile Delta and the Nile River. And so all of these passages where the Israelites are talking about, “Why did you bring us out here to die? We had plenty of food in Egypt,” it’s because they’re literally standing in a desert where they have nothing. No food, no water, nothing. And so they are ‑‑ their hand is forced. They have to rely on God’s provision, and that was really, really evident, and it became a beautiful thing.  

As we sit back today and we reflect on the fact that we want so badly to rely on what we know, we want so badly to go back to what is comfortable for us, but when God calls us out of slavery, we have to rely on him and we have to rely on his provision to get us through. And it’s a ‑‑ we all have our wilderness wanderings, and I think that that’s something that maybe us as Christians, especially in some place like the United States of America, need to really kind of sit and meditate on because we live very comfortably here. And while that’s not a bad thing, we need to really think about where are we putting our reliance? Are we really putting our reliance on God and his provision, or are we putting our reliance on Egypt and its provision for us? And when we really look introspectively at ourselves, hopefully that elicits change in our lives and really helps us to focus on, “I need God. I need God when I’m wandering in those wildernesses.”

WES: Yeah, amen. Well, I think it really illustrates that sort of ‑‑ what scholars call the “already and not yet” aspects of the kingdom in that Israel was already delivered. They were already saved. They were already liberated. They were already rescued from slavery, but they were not yet in the Promised Land, and so they had that period of living in the wilderness, and it’s a period of waiting and a period of testing, a period where they had to practice perseverance and endurance and faith and trust in the Lord. And there were some ‑‑ there was always a remnant of people who were trusting in the Lord, but that period of being in the wilderness ‑‑ and I can’t help but imagine that, for y’all, being in that wilderness makes that so much more real, and I can’t wait to watch the documentary so that we can see what that’s like, to be in the wilderness as a reflection on where many times we are spending our life and in being in this wilderness and a reminder to follow Jesus, who was faithful in the wilderness, rather than be like the generation who grumbled and complained and didn’t trust the Lord.

STUART: I know, and it’s so true. And as you mentioned earlier, it’s like Jesus ‑‑ he went through the water and immediately went into the wilderness and he was presented with a lot of the same temptations that the Israelites were, and, honestly, that we are today, and that is, look out for myself, look out for me, make sure I’ve got what I need, which is, you know, my bare necessities, but also power and control. And every time, Jesus says, uh‑uh, I’m not relying on those things; I’m relying on God. And that’s exactly what the Israelites didn’t say, and it’s also sometimes exactly what we don’t say, but it’s what we should be really focused on.

WES: Yeah, no doubt. I love how Jesus, in that account of the temptations, how he quotes from Deuteronomy. All three of the temptations, he responds with quotations from Deuteronomy, which, for those that are listening that may not know, Deuteronomy is this reminder of the law, “the second law” it literally means. And so the new generation that’s about to leave the wilderness and go into the Promised Land are reminded this is what it means to be faithful to Yahweh. This is what it looks like to keep covenant. And so they’re being told, hey, if you don’t want to end up like your fathers who died in the wilderness, here’s what you have to do. Here’s how you have to live. And Jesus is proving that he is the faithful son of God. He is the faithful Israel, and quoting “This is the way that I’m going to live. I’m going to live faithful to the covenant with Yahweh,” not only to save us, but as an example to us, as well.

STUART: Yeah, absolutely.

WES: So let’s kind of tie back into the theme of this podcast, which is to love like Jesus. We’re trying to learn to love like Jesus. So how do you think that the story of the Exodus, and even this documentary, can help us to better love like Jesus?

STUART: I think that, with the story of the Exodus, we can see that Jesus ‑‑ he is our perfect lamb, and that was such a big part of when they went into the wilderness and when they were presented with the law, was this idea of a sacrificial system that was created and this idea of atonement for sins, and that was all brand‑new to these Israelites.

They come out of a land where that was ‑‑ I mean, they still had sacrifices, but they were to these deities of Egypt, and so now they’re learning that sacrifice is different. Sacrifice in the ancient world, a lot of times it was you sacrificed to appease the god or the gods, and “I hope that I do enough in order to make the god give me something.” That’s very opposite to the way sacrifices are in Israelite culture and Jewish culture. It’s about God gifting us this opportunity to become ‑‑ to be with him, and so we see that through the Day of Atonement. In Leviticus we see that, all the way up to Jesus. And he gave his son, he gave us this gift, he gave us the sacrifice, so that way, he could be with us. And it’s just a ‑‑ it just shows the love. And, like, I would much rather worship and serve a God that is like that than a God who’s like, “Just keep giving to me, just keep giving to me, and I might ‑‑ I might have something for you.”

WES: Wow. Yeah, so well said. Stuart, why don’t you tell us a little bit more about where we can find out more about “Out of Egypt” and everything that Appian Media has done and is doing?  

STUART: Okay, yeah. So AppianMedia.org is our website, and if you go there, we have all of the content that we’ve produced, all the documentaries available on our website, and there’s a lot of stuff out there. And so we’ve got a lot of people who are using ‑‑ whether it’s “Following the Messiah,” which is on the life of Jesus; we have a series on the united kingdom of Israel. We did a series ‑‑ or we did an episode on ‑‑ “Trial and Triumph” is what it’s called, but it’s on the seven churches in Revelation. But “Out of Egypt” is going to release March 16th and be available after that. And, yeah, I mean, AppianMedia.org is really the place to go.

WES: Awesome, awesome. Well, thanks for the work that you’re doing and thanks for this conversation, Brother. This has been rich.

STUART: Thank you. I appreciate it, Wes. Thank you.

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