Getting Egypt Out of Israel: The Exodus Plagues as Spiritual Formation (Avery & Wadholm) Ep. #230

Dru Johnson (00:00)
What if God’s plagues on Egypt weren’t just meant to crush Egypt? Join me in this episode where I talk to Dr. Rick Waldum, who is an Old Testament scholar, and then also Dalton Avery, who is a pastor who co-wrote a book called Plagued by Faith, where they discuss the role of the plagues beyond merely punishing Egypt, but actually forming Israel.

as a people and how Christians might be able to benefit from all the subtle things that are going on from the use of the river and rain and water in that story of formation and also even things like how God interacts with the gods of Egypt in ways that are expected and unexpected. Stay tuned.

Dalton Avery (00:47)
in the introduction of the book I write ⁓ just regarding, you know, I started this preaching series. I’m an expository preacher ⁓ verse by verse and I was preaching through the book of Exodus and I arrived at the plague narratives and Exodus 7 and it’s kind of the…

the way the text flows, way the messages flow, we arrive at something, and I title it, Plagued by Faith, and kind of taking the plagues as a little bit more of a formational, as opposed to ⁓ judgment-oriented. And so, like, know, simultaneously, both of those aspects. a few weeks into the series, ⁓ Rick invites me to coffee and says, so…

⁓ I think I think this series is as good as worthwhile ⁓ It’s provocative and I think that there should be a book written about it and I think that you should write it and so ⁓ You know me as a pastor as opposed to a writer is a little shocked and so I said ⁓ on one condition you have to you have to co-write and guide the process and so that was about a year or two years ago now and ⁓

Rick Wadholm (02:05)
Yeah, a little bit

too.

Dalton Avery (02:07)
And

so, yeah, we’ve just kind of gone through this process of synthesizing and wrestling and then Rick adding, you know, theological reflection and, you know, some prayer prompts and different things. And so a book popped out.

Dru Johnson (02:24)
what a professorial thing to do is say, hey, you should write that book. Like, I don’t want to do it, but yeah, yeah.

Rick Wadholm (02:28)
I’m not helping you. Literally I was like, Duncan,

Dalton Avery (02:28)
Hehehehehe

Rick Wadholm (02:33)
you should write that book. And he was like, I’m not gonna do it unless you do it. And I’m like, I have enough things. You can do this. And he’s like, no, no, I’m gonna only do it if you do it. was like, okay, well, let’s do this thing. Yeah.

Dru Johnson (02:34)
It’s one of the gifts of being a scholar. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

I’m constantly telling

people the books they should be writing, and they never listen to me. ⁓ I have a constant stream of like, ooh, that would be a good book. I don’t want to write that, but that would be a great book. ⁓ Rick, so I think off the face of the bat, I think most people are going to say Jesus and the 10 plagues, they have nothing to do with each other, Or

Rick Wadholm (02:49)
Yeah!

Mm-hmm. Totally.

Dalton Avery (02:56)
Mm-hmm.

Rick Wadholm (03:08)
Yeah. Yeah.

Dru Johnson (03:08)
If they do have anything to do with each other,

Dalton Avery (03:08)
You

Dru Johnson (03:10)
it’s Jesus brought a new kinder, gentler world about so that God, the angry God of the Old Testament, it doesn’t have to do that plaguing stuff anymore. Can you help reconcile some of the basic pieces here?

Rick Wadholm (03:13)
⁓

Dalton Avery (03:22)
Mm-hmm.

Rick Wadholm (03:23)
Well, I mean the reality is the book doesn’t tackle through all of that. ⁓ Even though, you know, we get at it sort of slant, right? ⁓ Without necessarily taking it head on. ⁓ To behold this God, who with relentless love pursues his people for the sake of redeeming all people. Right, like that’s really this story. This God in, ⁓ just, he’s consumed as it were.

by his love for his people that aren’t a people yet, right? That there are people, they’re not a people. Like it’s both and, and including the nations, there are people not a people yet. ⁓ So yeah, so I think that, ⁓

Dru Johnson (03:56)
Mm-hmm.

Rick Wadholm (04:09)
without just making it like, Jesus is casting down hailstones of love upon the Egyptians. Zap! Love, zap! It’s not read in that way, but somehow as this ⁓ prolonged, continuous call, the revelation actually of people throughout this, including Israel.

Dru Johnson (04:14)
Hmm.

Rick Wadholm (04:34)
is essentially not faithfulness despite the faithfulness of this God. ⁓ It just requires these ongoing plagues or ⁓ demonstrations, these demonstrations of his power as sovereign over the gods and over any conceivable power that somehow he is over all of these things. He’s not restricted by space or time.

Dru Johnson (04:39)
Mm-hmm.

Dalton Avery (04:40)
Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Rick Wadholm (05:04)
any other quantity or idea or anything. So, beholding the face of Jesus in this as the one who, again, we offer this without it just being direct this at every point. Beholding what God has done for us in Christ Jesus who in fact suffers these very things on behalf of a world that still is needing to be behold this God who loves relentlessly. ⁓

Dru Johnson (05:34)
Yeah, so there are some very standard tropes ⁓ when it comes to the plagues. the last Exodus movie I saw was the one where Christian Bale was Moses. And I think all the lead actors were white or Western European. ⁓ So yeah, which had a very interesting take on the plagues. don’t know if you saw it. I think it was called Gods and Kings or something like that. But it did have a very interesting take on the plagues, ⁓ like what they were.

Rick Wadholm (06:00)
huh. Yes.

Dru Johnson (06:04)
There’s these attempts to kind of naturalize them and say, well, these things just kind of happened anyway. Which again, the text of Exodus is kind of at pains to show you that this was not a natural occurrence. This is something very specific and special. But that issue that it’s God Yahweh, the God of Israel, showing his power over the gods. I’ve also seen people try to line up every plague with a particular Egyptian God, and that never seems to work out so well. So what do you guys mean when you say it’s God against the gods?

Rick Wadholm (06:07)
Ha

Dalton Avery (06:17)
you

Rick Wadholm (06:29)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Dalton Avery (06:34)
Sure, ⁓ a couple of things. There are obviously some parallels ⁓ of Yahweh elevating and exposing His nature in contrast with the gods of Egypt. ⁓ But it’s not a perfect parallelism, and I think that’s a silly way to approach it. ⁓ But there is some overlap there. ⁓ But there’s this idea that… ⁓

this theme of deconstruction that ⁓ the Lord is somehow deconstructing ⁓ creation in response to the wickedness and the evil ⁓ of the Egyptian people and Pharaoh against Israel. ⁓ there’s sort of this, you know, I’m going to…

do physically what your actions and your idolatry is posturing spiritually. You know, kind of this de-evolution of good creation. And within that, and as Rick referenced, of lifting up of this identity of the God of Israel, but the plagues, kind of, in our framing, they function as not just as Yahweh’s judgment against Egypt,

⁓ not just deconstructing and decreating ⁓ that world ⁓ that is a blessing to them, but ⁓ it’s detaching Israel from the false gods and the false securities that they’ve learned in occupation, in captivity, in slavery. And so we kind of come from the angle that Israel had come to benefit from the systems and

Dru Johnson (08:28)
you

Dalton Avery (08:28)
they’d

come to benefit from the religious frameworks, or they’d come to rely on the religious frameworks, at least, of Egypt. And so the plagues were judgment against Egypt, but they were also ⁓ detaching of the heart of Israel from the Egyptian way, the Egyptian worldview, the Egyptian ⁓ system of viewing reality and cosmology and all of those things.

Dru Johnson (08:57)
okay. this, a, ⁓ this raises all kinds of questions for me. good ones, but, I, I detect a little bit of Terence Freitheim’s critique, that this is, this is God deconstructing and, and de-creating that these are, ⁓ certainly, ⁓ when I was tracing out issues of scarcity across the Torah, it hit me brand newly, ⁓ this is going after Egypt’s economy, right? Like this destroys every part of their economy.

Rick Wadholm (09:02)
You

Dru Johnson (09:27)
⁓ as well. ⁓ And then you have the false god worship. Correct me if you think this is wrong, but I always say the plague of darkness would have been the one that would actually freaked out the Egyptians the most. Because if you know the Atumrah cycle of the sun, that’s the one that just with the story doesn’t work. But that issue of false gods… ⁓

Rick Wadholm (09:41)
Hmm.

Hehe.

Dru Johnson (09:53)
Well, help us out because if you’re reading, remember when I read Exodus for the very first time and I would call this mutual friend of mine and Rick’s John Ragsdale, who was a pastor at the time. And I would say, John, what the heck? What am I? What did I just read? This doesn’t make any sense. And I remember one of the first one of those ⁓ in Exodus was crossing the Red Sea and Moses singing, who is like our God amongst the gods? What do you think he means in that song?

Rick Wadholm (10:02)
Yes, John.

Yeah.

That is a big question. The whole story though is rooted in some notion of people who are convinced of the reality of gods. You’re not having to persuade anyone to believe that there are gods. They just are. There’s no reasoning towards that. So if there are gods, as indeed there appear to be, Yahweh is not like them.

Dru Johnson (10:35)
Mm-hmm.

Rick Wadholm (10:52)
And I think that gets at the heart side. There’s some sense, we don’t, again, we don’t detail out what gods are being addressed because there’s only some that seem to match. mean, Dalton was kind of mentioning this, so it’s almost more generalized. But there are some that are so specific, right? Amun-Ra with the darkness, but also ⁓ the river, right? The river is the very life of this people. They only exist because of this river.

Dru Johnson (11:03)
Right.

Mm-hmm.

Dalton Avery (11:17)
Hmm.

Rick Wadholm (11:20)
Right? it’s like from beginning to end, is direct threat to all of life. It’s the undoing of life.

Dru Johnson (11:27)
Hmm.

Rick Wadholm (11:30)
Yeah, Yahweh among the gods, and the story gets a little weirder, right, because ⁓ Yahweh says to Moses, I’m gonna actually make you a god to the Pharaoh, right, and Aaron, your brother’s gonna be your prophet. And so it’s like, yeah, what is going on here if Moses suddenly is also a god? Yeah.

Dru Johnson (11:42)
Right. It’s a great scene. Yeah.

It tends to make one think that Elohim means more than just a divine being or a God that has a wider range of meaning than something like that. Yeah, I think most people…

I mean, okay, let’s be honest. Most biblical scholars who work in Exodus don’t think the Exodus ever happened. They don’t think the Israelites were ever in Egypt. They think this is all just a fictional Hebrew fiction to kind of instantiate these people in the land and to give them a great backstory. It’s a really weird way to give a backstory. It’s not a glowing backstory. I might write a better one for myself. But what you’re doing seems to say like, well, let’s imagine that these people were actually there and they live there and they were part of that society.

Rick Wadholm (12:31)
Mm-hmm.

Dru Johnson (12:34)
And even if they believe Yahweh was their God and the most powerful, they’re still going to be picking up, like if you’re an American, you can be a Christian in America, but you, all these bits of the Americanism bleeds into your Christianity as well, right? So that you might think your individual freedom is the most important thing in your life. And then you open scripture and like, ⁓ maybe, maybe it’s not. Maybe I’m called to be a slave actually. ⁓

Dalton Avery (12:56)
Hmm ⁓

Dru Johnson (12:59)
So what elements do you see specifically that really need to be addressed amongst the Hebrews that helps them kind of, as I say, God got the Hebrews out of Egypt, but he had to get the Egypt out of the Hebrews kind of a thing. What elements do you think are most important in this text?

Dalton Avery (13:17)
Sure, well I think first off ⁓ is the river. ⁓ The formation of Egypt as a people group. ⁓ The book starts off just talking about how Egypt emerged from this time period where the Sahara was in the desert. was green and lush.

Rick Wadholm (13:27)
Hmm.

Dalton Avery (13:46)
climate change occurred on some level and ⁓ the and just the world shifted, you know, became a desert from, know, from a a prairie type environment, you know, with with lots more, you know, irrigation and it was just a different culture. And so as a result, ⁓ the people had to find a source of life, had to find a source of of of gathering. And so the river kind of became

the Nile River kind of became this place where the people gathered and the annual flooding and all of that. And so it kind of created this hub ⁓ for this kind of this scattered nomadic people group ⁓ to gather in the Nile Delta. so Egypt kind of emerged as this nation that really revolved around the river. The rhythms of the river were the rhythms of this nation.

their agriculture, ⁓ their worship, all of these different aspects of their society really hinged on ⁓ the river. ⁓ so that’s the first strike that Yahweh ⁓ takes ⁓ in the plagues, is that he attacks the river, turns it into blood. And our argument is really that it’s likely that Israel had

had also kind of attached their sense of security and safety and livelihood ⁓ with the river and ultimately with their relationship with their captors ⁓ and the worldview of their captors that seem to be elevating this nation over other nations and so ⁓ they sort of adopted this

Dru Johnson (15:28)
Hmm.

Dalton Avery (15:42)
Even though they were still Israelites, even though they were still, you know, monotheists in some sense, they entertained the idea of the power of Egypt’s gods and they gave themselves over to this belief that if Egypt was succeeding militarily, succeeding economically, ultimately in conquering and oppressing them, then there had to be something to their worldview.

that this first surgical strike, this attack on the river was intentional to disconnect and start to break down Israel’s belief that their oppression, that Egypt’s their looming large in the world stage was due to the legitimacy of their gods.

So Yahweh is trying to show them, no way, I’m the one and only God. ⁓ So it was really apologetic in nature, in a sense.

Dru Johnson (16:45)
Hmm.

Okay, that might be the most unexpected answer to the question. I think for a lot of people, they were not thinking the river was going to be, but I’m really, really glad. I’m actually going to Israel later this week ⁓ to go into the Negev as well and spend some time in the desert wilderness side of Israel. Because now I can see some things lining up. God brings them out into the wilderness. One of the first things he has to deal with is water, the source of water, which would have been

Dalton Avery (17:20)
Mm-hmm.

Dru Johnson (17:22)
If you’re raised on a river and you’re now no longer near the river, or what archaeologists sometimes call Egypt is the green gash that cuts down the middle of the desert, water is going to be a real issue for you. It’s an issue for everybody, but the idea that you go from abundant water to now no water, and then the irony that he brings them into the only infertile part of the fertile crescent, where God is now responsible for bringing the water and promises to bring the water like…

Rick Wadholm (17:44)
You

Yeah.

Dru Johnson (17:51)
All of this is adding up, starting with the river. And I think there’s even an Egyptian text that talks about the weird Asiatics to the north whose Nile is in the sky, meaning that rain is, you they’re so Egyptocentric.

Rick Wadholm (17:53)
So.

Dru Johnson (18:05)
that even rain itself is considered the Nile. The river in the sky can’t be changed. That connects a lot of dots, I think, for the story of Israel. But I think that’ll be surprising for a lot of people, what you just said. In fact, I think that would be entirely unexpected for most people. All right, so Rick, keep us going, then. What else?

Rick Wadholm (18:25)
You

kind of knit together so like for instance plague 10 we actually have two chapters right so there’s 11 chapters in a 10 plague ⁓ text

right? And not because it’s an introductory chapter, but because the death of the firstborn is sort of introduced in chapter 9, sorry, chapter 10, but then chapter 11 is about Peshach, about Passover, as this ⁓ specific resetting of the very calendar, the very life. So what are the cadences of this community supposed to be? They’ve been stripped of everything.

Dru Johnson (18:47)
All right.

Rick Wadholm (19:07)
Right? So when, when do you harvest when you buy all of that’s removed from you, you’re not even planting or harvesting. And so like it, it’s, ⁓ there’s just this undoing this total commitment to a new way of being in the world, a new calendar, a new everything.

Dalton Avery (19:25)
Mm-hmm.

Dru Johnson (19:25)
Okay, so we got River and Calendar. Again, I think Calendar’s gonna be very surprising. But in the ancient world, like if you really wanted to get in a fight with somebody, you argue with whose calendar is best or right. And even today, right, we talk about which holidays should be celebrated, when they should be celebrated. I mean, everybody, nobody thinks about the calendar, but if you said, hey, we’re starting a new civilization, they’re like, well, we’re gonna have Christmas. No, no Christmas, Christmas gone, right?

And they’ll be like, well, wait, wait. I don’t know how to organize my life if I don’t have post-Christmas bloating in the factor. ⁓ Yeah, so calendar is kind of how you think about creation or how you think about the nature of the universe itself, starting with the weekly Shabbat cycle, introducing a seven-day cycle in there. Yeah.

Rick Wadholm (19:53)
Yes.

That’s the whole basis of community. Community is driven, relates to one another through this calendar, observance of this calendar and its identity forming.

Dru Johnson (20:25)
Yeah, so what I’m hearing you guys say is, so far at least, is that ⁓ instead of looking at this as like plague, plague, plague, like nuclear missiles being dropped down on Israel, ⁓ there’s actually this formative side too, that where it’s important for Israel to see these things, but it’s also just as important for them to understand that that calendar in Israel or in Egypt is no longer going to work for them. That water is not going to be there in the same way. There’s going to be this new

Dalton Avery (20:52)
Mm-hmm.

Dru Johnson (20:55)
Sorry, I’ll make the cheap pull, living water ⁓ that God himself is now responsible for bringing because it’s mostly water. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with Jim Hoffmeyer, James Hoffmeyer’s work on Egypt, he goes through kind of the ⁓ ceremonial rituals and points out there are all these Egyptian loan words in there as well, even like the name for the turban of the high priest is, I think,

Rick Wadholm (20:59)
Yeah

Dru Johnson (21:26)
I don’t remember if it’s the turban or the vestment is actually an Egyptian loanwords of Egyptian origin. So I hear you saying they’re getting them out of Egypt, but they’re still like lingering bits of Egypt, even in the way they speak, where there’s not hardly any Egyptian loanwords in the later Persian period, I guess. So how much do you think, ⁓ maybe what’s good from Egypt?

Dalton Avery (21:43)
Hmm.

Dru Johnson (21:49)
that they can pull forward, because certainly there’s priesthood and things that they would recognize in some way that we could compare between these two cultures.

Dalton Avery (21:57)
Go ahead, Rick.

Rick Wadholm (21:59)
Yeah, was going say, I don’t think that, I don’t recall addressing anything necessarily positive. I think this could have been said in that way. It’s just not. Right? ⁓ Yeah. I mean, we do take it a step further too as well. This isn’t just for instruction for Israel, but also for Egypt, which seems strange enough, right? This is meant to be a word also to them about this God.

Dalton Avery (22:10)
Mm-hmm.

Good night.

Dru Johnson (22:20)
Right. Yep.

Rick Wadholm (22:27)
and their gods and their life somehow and then the retelling, thinking of the retelling within Israel who once they’ve entered the land and they’re telling that’s the function, supposed to be function of these stories and how are they hearing these as formative though they weren’t there, they were there which Paul also picks up on

Dru Johnson (22:38)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, what were you gonna say, Dalton?

Rick Wadholm (22:51)
Go ahead, Dalton sir.

Dalton Avery (22:51)
Mm-hmm.

You know, I think there are a few things, although they’re not explicitly addressed in the book, that Israel could draw from Egypt. I think the sensitivity to and the relationship, not in idolatrous sense, but in kind of just in rhythm with creation sense.

You know, they were in rhythm with the river and and that is not in essence, you know wrong or bad or idolatrous ⁓ You know just being you know, utilizing creation for a way that causes flourishing causes life And there’s this really interesting tension in the book where we really bring out and emphasize you know the the the river as the source of life the river as the source of

you know, of this society’s rhythm and rest and work and agriculture and all of that. ⁓ But then, you know, they utilize the river then as a tool of genocide, you know, and, you know, which, you know, the Lord responds to that misuse of creation, that misstewarding of good creation in such a way. And then, you know, they use this thing that is

meant to be a gift of life as a tool of death and the Lord judges that, he brings justice against that and he returns that with the death of the firstborn. It’s just a powerful picture of the Lord teaching and exposing the heart of a nation and their corporate culpability, their corporate responsibility for how their nation has acted and behaved. ⁓

Dru Johnson (24:24)
Hmm.

Dalton Avery (24:48)
in regard to other nations, other peoples, ⁓ those weaker than them.

Dru Johnson (24:54)
Yeah, that’s a great point is that the river gets used for genocide. And then the irony that, you know, ⁓ it’s almost like God was like, ⁓ you want a Hebrew boy in the river? I’ll put one in the river for you. And he’s going to go downstream and he’s going to come back. ⁓ You know, he’s going to come back with my street cred, right? So be careful what you wish for. in that case, ⁓ yeah, I I’m thinking in terms of

Rick Wadholm (25:04)
Hehehe. Hehehe.

Dalton Avery (25:06)
Hehe.

Mm-hmm.

Dru Johnson (25:22)
that corporate responsibility because then God is going to immediately turn around once they’re across the Red Sea and he begins instructing them. I’m thinking of Exodus 21 through 23. He’s warning them, hey, I better not catch you doing what those people did to you. And I should say, I better not catch y’all doing what those people did to you, y’all. And so that’s gonna be a hard line to make. So I wanna go back to one.

Rick Wadholm (25:42)
Yeah.

Dru Johnson (25:51)
kind of data point that I think a lot of people miss that I’m sure you guys don’t, but that there are some Egyptians along the way who like listen to reason. They put it together and they’re like, Moses becomes their prophet and they start listening to him. And presumably those are some of the people who would have gone out with Israel as well ⁓ into the wilderness. like the…

Dalton Avery (25:59)
Mm-hmm.

Rick Wadholm (26:01)
Mm-hmm.

Dalton Avery (26:03)
Mm-hmm.

Rick Wadholm (26:05)
Yeah.

Dru Johnson (26:16)
Are you suggesting that these people should have risen up against ⁓ disobeyed orders as the conversation is going on today in America? Should soldiers have risen up? Is that what you see with the midwives? mean, it’s unclear, unless you know something, I don’t, whether the midwives were Hebrew or whether they were midwives to the Hebrews from Egypt, right? The latter would be more juicy if that were true. ⁓

Rick Wadholm (26:29)
Mm-hmm.

Mm.

Dru Johnson (26:41)
But yeah, what do you see in the rising up? And maybe I can shift the focus back to that first two chapters or three chapters that it’s, ⁓ well, let’s go with the first four chapters. It’s these women who are the ones who are standing up and civilly, they’re protesting the authorities against some morality that they think is superior to what the Pharaoh has done. So how do you see, it’s an odd beginning that you have four or five women who are the heroes there.

Rick Wadholm (26:57)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Dru Johnson (27:09)
not a

man to be found standing up doing anything. yeah, what do you make of that protest?

Rick Wadholm (27:11)
home.

Dalton Avery (27:16)
You know, it’s really prophetic in nature. know, I personally, you know, just kind of come into the assumption that these midwives were in fact Israelites. ⁓ But, you know, the idea that there was so much complicity ⁓ within the culture, there were so many people who looked the other way.

⁓ As kids were being thrown in the river so many people who looked the other way when when an entire people group were being enslaved and ⁓ You know, you know, obviously Moses and Aaron, you know, they they respond with prophetic Fervor, you know, they respond with prophetic You know resistance ⁓ But yeah, it’s interesting the Hebrew midwives ⁓ are really some of them some of the some of the only

⁓ individuals in the narrative that really stand out ⁓ outside of Moses and Aaron that act righteously, that act in a way that honors Yahweh. And it’s striking that in that particular culture when there was so much power attached to the throne, so much power attached ⁓ to the title of Pharaoh that

those who have the power seem to be, from a sociological standpoint, maybe some of the lowest, but their actions have the greatest influence, and maybe even a or a great influence, maybe not greater, but at least on some level, on par with Pharaoh’s actions, with affecting the outcomes of the narrative. It’s pretty powerful.

Dru Johnson (29:04)
Hmm.

Yeah, you even have, ⁓ well, Pharaoh’s daughter also goes directly against the house of Pharaoh. ⁓ You also have this weird story. ⁓ shouldn’t say, I don’t know. Maybe it’s not that weird. Yeah. The words you never want to hear in a hospital is we’re doing it in emergency circumcision, right? But it’s non-Hebrew women in that case. And if Shifra and Pua are not Hebrews, it makes it even more interesting. ⁓

Rick Wadholm (29:12)
All right

Dalton Avery (29:16)
Mm-hmm.

Rick Wadholm (29:28)
Yeah, right.

Mm-hmm.

Dru Johnson (29:37)
You have Zipporah in this case, know, the language mirrors in the Pharaoh sought to kill Moses when he learned of it. And it’s in the second case, it’s in Yahweh sought to kill Moses, right? It’s almost a cut and paste phrase there verbatim. ⁓ And it’s yet a foreign woman who somehow sees what’s going on, does the emergency circumcision and saves his life. So there’s all these very interesting.

Rick Wadholm (29:51)
Huh.

Mm-hmm.

Dru Johnson (30:04)
like pushbacks, right? And all the, you’re trying to figure out what’s going on inside these people’s heads. What do they know that we don’t know? And why, how do they see it that way? What did they understand? Which to me kind of reinforces the premise of what you said at the very beginning, which is the setup for the book is people are, people are a certain way.

Rick Wadholm (30:07)
Mm-hmm.

Dru Johnson (30:27)
And then we’re trying to figure out, how did these people become this way that is so heroic and bold and in these lowly positions but did some of the most powerful things in the history of humanity as we might see as Christians? ⁓ And so we’re getting examples of that at the outset. And it doesn’t matter whether you’re a Hebrew or an outsider, ⁓ anybody can stand up and do these things. OK. ⁓

Rick Wadholm (30:44)
Mm-hmm.

Dru Johnson (30:49)
So let’s then think about Jesus. Let’s do some really, let’s play a game called Really Obvious Ties to the Exodus when it comes to Jesus. So let’s, and I say it’s really obvious, but for some people, maybe they’ve never thought about it before that these things are directly, you know, like there’s some direct echoes and parallels here. What would be some obvious ones for you guys?

Rick Wadholm (30:57)
⁓ okay.

Dalton Avery (30:59)
You

Rick Wadholm (31:11)
Yeah, I mean, there’s the obvious of this firstborn that is offered. But I think the less obvious for most folks is that the firstborn of Yahweh is actually Israel, my son who I’ve rescued with my strong and mighty arm. Right? That this becomes the rescue of the son. ⁓ And yet, we find the handing over of the son ⁓ to death.

Dru Johnson (31:24)
Right. Right.

Rick Wadholm (31:39)
like this strange sort of mixing. ⁓ Of course, we talk about the application of the blood or the consumption of the Pasha lamb. Like, okay, keep the lamb in the house. Okay, now we’re all gonna eat it, so kids don’t name it. But like this lamb and you gotta eat the whole thing, the tie in with the bread that becomes so significant New Testament usage, This ⁓ non-yeasted bread, the quick bread.

that’s supposed to make the children, at least in Torah, supposed to make them say, why do we have to eat this horrible bread? And it’s supposed to remind you of the affliction, but also, right, it speaks to the suddenness of the deliverance, right? Like, even though, yes, we know it’s coming, we don’t know when it’s coming. So I think these speak to, again, that coming of Messiah, that coming of Yahweh, the suddenness of this, be ready about this, the way of Yahweh will lead.

Dru Johnson (32:13)
I’m

Rick Wadholm (32:36)
out of here to where he has promised. think those are the low-hanging fruit. ⁓

Dalton Avery (32:39)
Mm-hmm.

Dru Johnson (32:40)
And that Jesus, yeah,

Dalton Avery (32:42)
Yeah, we emphasize the…

Dru Johnson (32:42)
and Jesus takes the Passover and makes it, he re-ritualizes it into the Lord’s Supper, right? Yeah. Sorry, Dalton.

Rick Wadholm (32:45)
Right. Yeah.

Yeah.

Dalton Avery (32:48)
No, you’re good.

We really emphasize in the book Jesus as the true and final Exodus ⁓ You know not just you know, not just little images of Jesus ⁓ You know peppered throughout the story but but Jesus as the fulfillment of the whole story and and the rhythm and the narrative that You know, the even even branches out beyond the plagues, you know into the into the entire Exodus, you know and really

the entire formation of Israel as a people. But Christ and the New Covenant as this true and final, this better Exodus, this separation from sin, the separation from the patterns that we are immersed in in the world.

and sort of this adopting a new calendar, a new rhythm, a Sabbath rhythm, ⁓ a sacrificial ⁓ image, of course, as Rick referenced, the firstborn reference. I think at one point we do some comparison and contrast with Pharaoh depicting Jesus as a foil. ⁓ Pharaoh sort of clings to power and he

And he brings death and ⁓ he lords over those he’s entrusted with. But Jesus, he releases power. He empties himself. instead of bringing death, he brings life. And so there’s sort of these ways of seeing Christ, not just as sort of vignettes.

within the text, broader, more narrative theology ⁓ that Jesus embodies as he emerges later in Scripture.

Dru Johnson (34:59)
Yeah, and those don’t seem to be too chintzy of parallels when you consider that some of the gospels open up with Jesus, know, a king who wants to do away with someone who might usurp his throne. ⁓ And so he has the, you know, the sons killed in order to find her. And then Jesus goes down into Egypt. You know, it’s not.

Rick Wadholm (35:04)
Thank

Dru Johnson (35:20)
probably not accidental as a refugee into Egypt and returns only to do the very thing that King Herod worried that would happen. ⁓ So you get that kind of mirroring of what they call the ancient infant exposure motif. ⁓ So in Jesus, if he is the final Exodus, I think this is what the author of Hebrews makes this case that he is the final rest that we were trying to enter. ⁓ We do have this lingering issue.

Rick Wadholm (35:22)
Mm-hmm.

huh.

Hmm.

Dru Johnson (35:47)
I hate to bring it up. feel like Columbo. Just one more. One other thing I didn’t understand is that the plagues actually don’t stop in Egypt. They continue on in various forms and God keeps threatening, you don’t do these things, then I’m going to put onto you the plagues that I put onto Egypt. And then he invents new ones like fiery serpents, which is super fun. ⁓ And it’s still…

Rick Wadholm (35:50)
You ⁓

Uh-huh.

Dru Johnson (36:15)
impossible for me to think of a way in which all you had to do was look at a lifted staff and yet some people still died in that day. I’m like still trying to figure that one out. But what do you make of the storyline of Israel immediately out of Egypt and yet ⁓ God is sending plagues upon them?

Rick Wadholm (36:25)
Yeah.

Yeah, and of course, you know, ⁓ much of that gets expounded at length, of course, in numbers, right, in the larger flow of although there’s enough drama and troubles in Exodus itself as a text.

Dru Johnson (36:52)
Mm-hmm.

Rick Wadholm (36:54)
Yeah, and it really fits actually with, again, what the series is meant to be addressing, that this is an ongoing thing, and it’s not enough that they’ve physically been removed back to, you know, the way that you have flipped that, that I’ve heard before, right? He got Egypt, Israel out of Egypt, but now he needs to get Egypt out of Israel. That’s a journey.

Dru Johnson (37:14)
Hmm.

Rick Wadholm (37:15)
And like, they’re not ready for it, right? As far as in the narrative flow, they don’t realize there’s 40 years of getting it out of them. And getting it out of them means they’re dropping dead in the wilderness, right? 605,000 approximately of fighting men. Yeah. Yeah. Bye bye.

Dru Johnson (37:27)
Yeah, you know, there’s one way to get Egyptian culture out of a group of people is kill them all

or wait until they die.

Dalton Avery (37:36)
Hmm.

Rick Wadholm (37:37)
But in the same way right in the same fashion It’s the ongoing mercies of the God of Israel who doesn’t just wipe them out like the fact that he rescues them Even though they’re not for him. He’s for them Right, even though they they don’t they don’t understand his ways as who he is his character and they don’t align with it that they’re needing to learn this but it just reveals again the hardness of hearts

that Israel herself will harden her heart as Pharaoh had done, right? This call to not be like this. And that’s the sort of persistent message throughout the book is where’s your heart in all this? Like where’s your will, your desire? ⁓ Are you open? Are you yielded to this God who desires your good, your blessing? ⁓ He seeks this, but you harden yourself against this and trying to unlearn those habits, creating new patterns.

Dalton Avery (38:11)
Hmm.

Rick Wadholm (38:34)
creating new ways of being in the world. So that’s very much the structure of the book, the flow of the book.

Dru Johnson (38:37)
Yeah, that’s

a great point too, that a way to get Egypt out of Israel is to let them die off. But the truth is that actually doesn’t do it because they had children and parents burn their sins into their children as well. ⁓ And so that becomes some of the animating drama ⁓ going forward. I just now thought of it though, there’s another parallel there on the gospels and that’s…

Dalton Avery (38:53)
Hmm.

Dru Johnson (39:03)
that the Israelites are eventually described as having hardened hearts, stiff necks and eventually hardened hearts when they do the same things that Egypt does. And then in the New Testament, it’s Jesus’s 12 disciples who are described as having hardened hearts against them several times. And so ⁓ the idea that having a hardened heart doesn’t mean you’re done for as well, even in the gospels, that you’re still useful ⁓ if you can finally get on board the bus.

Dalton Avery (39:18)
Mm-hmm.

Rick Wadholm (39:25)
huh.

Dalton Avery (39:32)
Hmm.

Dru Johnson (39:32)
which apparently is just a lot harder to do than it looks like. So what’s the greatest hope? This is a book we’re talking about. It’s Plagues and, what’s the name of it? Plagues and, Plagued by Faith, that’s a great hook. Why did I not remember it? It didn’t overcome my ADD apparently.

Rick Wadholm (39:33)
Yeah.

Dalton Avery (39:36)
Yeah.

Rick Wadholm (39:43)
plagued by faith.

Dalton Avery (39:44)
plagued

by faith.

You

Dru Johnson (39:54)
Yeah, plagued by faith. So what’s the best outcome for a book like this? This is written to lay people, right, as well as I assume pastors. So what are you hoping will happen in the church?

Rick Wadholm (40:02)
huh. Right. Yeah.

Dalton Avery (40:02)
Mm-hmm.

You know, personally, I can’t speak for Rick, I feel I would love to see this be a tool for the lay person who’s wrestling with the brutality of the plague narrative. ⁓ Somehow see it not just as gratuitous violence of an angry God, but sort of this formative heart of Yahweh for God’s people in it. And that the Lord

is not out here ⁓ just doing violence for no reason, but there’s redemptive heart, there’s redemptive intent in every action of the Living God. that people who wrestle again with the brutality would just see it as God teaching, God shaping, God forming.

and I think I’d love to see it in the hands of people skeptical of Old Testament, ⁓ you know, miracle literature, ⁓ people skeptical of a violent Old Testament God. I would love to see it in the hands of pastors seeking to teach through a portion of text that’s often, you know, preached in a reductionist way.

but to be preached with little bit of narrative, understanding, narrative flow that God was doing something much broader than just punishing an evil leader or an evil nation but he was forming his own nation, his own people and ultimately that’s fulfilled ⁓ in Christ so that people would see Jesus through it

Rick Wadholm (41:56)
Yeah, really just to capture a vision of the God of Israel. The God and Father of Israel, who is the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And beholding the Father, seeing the face of the Son. Which sounds really bizarre, right? Behold the face of God who sends plagues. Like it just doesn’t work in our contemporary context.

Dru Johnson (42:24)
Mm-hmm.

Rick Wadholm (42:24)
except for people who seem to me sadistic. ⁓ These are, even the, as horrifying as it sounds, even the ⁓ animals losing lives or people losing lives are people who themselves are already being destroyed, butchered in other ways.

⁓ not justifying the Lord doing this right, like I’m not seeking to be his advocate. ⁓ Instead, think, well, at least how I heard this when I heard Dalton preaching it, ⁓ sitting there in the pew and thinking, you know, ⁓ this is, it makes me think of Karl Barth’s statement about John the Baptizer as the pointing finger to the lamb who takes away the sins of the world. And like,

I don’t have to justify, I don’t have to defend, there’s explanations, we can talk through some of this. The reality is, I want them to behold this God. And somehow to offer a re-visioning of these stories as revealing this God.

Dru Johnson (43:34)
Yeah, and I think you said for contemporary people, we find it hard to deal with this God who might send plagues. I might adjust that and say for contemporary Western, the weird people, Western educated, industrialized, rich and democratic people, because there are many of our brothers and sisters around the world who actually fully understand the desire to ask God to smash the government that oppresses them and kills them. so in some ways it might also be worth

Rick Wadholm (43:45)
Yeah, Western. Yeah. Yeah.

Dru Johnson (44:03)
pairing this discussion with ⁓ our sisters and brothers who are writing this stuff. And, you know, I think of Langham Press as a great place that’s putting out lots of majority world scholarship from that perspective of, let me tell you why we can sing an imprecatory Psalm ⁓ against our government and not feel bad about it and actually feel like we really do want God to answer this in some real way. ⁓ So, yes, we all got to grow on this front ⁓ of meeting this God.

Rick Wadholm (44:11)
huh.

Uh-huh.

Dru Johnson (44:34)
Well, Rick and Dalton, thank you very much for your wisdom. look forward to When is the book out?

Rick Wadholm (44:40)
Lord willing in a week. It will be very soon.

Dru Johnson (44:42)
OK, so we’re close. All right. Look

forward to getting my hands on a copy of this book. Thank you guys very much for your wisdom.

Rick Wadholm (44:49)
See you soon.