EXODUS: YHVH the Dragon Slayer • Echoes of Exodus

Automated transcript, lightly edited for readability. Scripture appears as spoken; the video is the authoritative teaching.

Stories Within Stories

Have you ever watched a movie? A good movie that you went back and watched again because you saw stuff that you never saw the first time you watched it? The first time you watched the movie, you were focused on the story, the characters, the action, the twists. But you go back and you rewatch the movie, and it's like, wait a second, I didn't notice that detail before or that theme before. It's kind of interesting. Any good story has that element in it: sub-stories, subthemes, and within the themes, motifs that exist, right? I think one of the best movies ever directed is a movie by the name of Interstellar, directed by Christopher Nolan.

All right, we got one person. Anybody ever seen Interstellar? A couple people? Enough of you. Fantastic for the example. It's a movie about, essentially, a suicide space mission to restart humanity because Earth is going to die in the future, right? And it is mindbending because the main inspiration of the movie orbits around Einstein's theory of relativity. And I think they just did a great job in how they illustrated that in the story. So I watched it the first time, and I'm just floored. This was the most beautiful thing. Even the score, it was just beautiful. And we've got to go back and watch this again. A couple months later, Jenny and I sat down and watched it again, and I started noticing different themes throughout the movie.

The Language of Humility

Those of you who have watched it remember Matt Damon's character, right? His character was named Man. His last name was Mann, M-A-N-N. His character is also referred to as the bravest human ever to live by Cooper, the protagonist—a remarkable man, right? And he was one of the last surviving members of the Lazarus missions. Man represents the best of humanity, the best of mankind. Yet, as his story unfolds, when you see the scene where he enters the story, it's revealed that despite the appearance and the pursuit of goodness on his part, he gave it away for corruptness and cowardness. Man is capable of goodness, but he is also subject to evil if man exhibits pride and lacks humility.

In contrast, in the story we have the protagonist, Cooper—Matthew McConaughey. All right, all right, all right. And he's admittedly a very flawed character in the movie. He has struggles. He's not so sure of himself all the time. Sometimes he makes the wrong decision just trying to hold on. And he admits he's very flawed. But he emerges as a hero who saves mankind where Man does not. It's the irony, if you will. And the director, Christopher Nolan, was telling the story of Interstellar, but he injected this theme for a bigger point—a bigger point for the audience, for us to stop and say, wow, humility and goodness saves while pride and corruption destroys.

He didn't have to put that in there. He could have just said, hey, they went to space, and then they did this thing with the black hole, and yeah. I'm not giving it away. But Christopher Nolan wanted to tell a story that was bigger than the story. He wanted it to have an even bigger impact. He wanted the audience to be able to go back and yearn to meditate on the story even more and find the bigger points and the wisdom within it.

Hidden Symbols in Film

Before the main character, Cooper, launches on his mission piloting the ship named Endurance —I just never noticed that before, that was a new one—he has a daughter named Murph. She's named after Murphy's Law. That was intentional. Cooper's daughter gets in trouble at school. She didn't get in trouble for fighting, but she got in trouble for telling the kids in class that we really did go to the moon. She was showing them pictures from old school books that had been banned. And so Cooper arrives to meet the principal, where they explain to him that she's in trouble for showing pictures of astronauts who landed on the moon.

And he is just in shock because he's a NASA pilot—an ex-NASA pilot. He's like, what are you talking about? And the school has deemed that, listen, this is reeducation and this is what we think is appropriate because we're teaching that the system asserts that the United States government fabricated the Apollo missions as a way of bankrupting the Soviet Union, right? Restructuring the education kind of reminds you of George Orwell's book 1984. And that's the scene—he's just in shock. I know we all love good conspiracy theories here. That's fine. That's cool. Whether we did it or not, it's not about the moon landing.

What the director is showing here is how propaganda works. It starts in the schools. Truth always triumphs as Cooper launches into space in the story and not only passes the moon but goes interstellar.

Reading the Deeper Message

To further this point, those of you who've seen the movie remember Murph's bedroom where they had the dust design and the lines? Now, I knew my bedroom when I was a teenager and I had lots of electronics and stuff. And I still had a lot of toys when I was her age. Lots of junk. Anyone else have junk in their room? Lava lamps, black light posters, and all this stuff. Inflatable couch, 90s. No? Okay. Murph didn't have any of that in her bedroom, if you remember. She had a desk, a bed, a little laptop, and she had a Rubik's Cube on her nightstand. But what was the big thing in her bedroom that we missed the first time? The obvious big thing: the wall-to-wall bookshelf system that went from ceiling to floor, from left to right, filled with hundreds and hundreds of books. Hmm. Sends a message. Obviously, these were books that weren't banned in school.

That's why she was able to have the knowledge to overpower the propaganda that the government was pushing out in the story.

Themes Beneath the Surface

Different themes, different stories that are hidden. And I dare say—I dare say—that there are themes embedded in the story being told by the biblical authors in the Bible, and they are directing the greatest story ever told. That is the story about God and you, right beneath the surface. As we discussed last week, we saw the echoes of Exodus in Genesis, preparing the reader to enter into the story. It's beautiful, beautiful. And so today, we're going to talk about dragons—dragon, not lizard. Doesn't do the— And I want to show how the biblical authors appropriated the myths of other nations as polemic toward them, but also to exalt Yahweh as God.

Do you think the biblical authors had the audacity to do something like that? Guess what the answer is? Yes, absolutely. And they do this by dropping breadcrumbs known as a motif throughout the story and the stories. And so when we go back and reread the Exodus account, we begin to notice things. Again, just like last week, Noah entered into this vessel that carried him safely through the waters of death, and that vessel in Hebrew is known as the Teva, and it's covered in pitch. A Teva is a really weird word. We don't really know what it means. It's difficult to translate. It appears in only one other place in the entire story.

When Moses is placed into a vessel that carries him through the waters of death safely, that vessel is the word "teva," and it is also covered in pitch. It's a hyperlink. They're trying to connect the story of the undoing of creation and new creation to a different event that is going to undo creation and renew creation for a whole people exiting Egypt. We also notice when we reread the Exodus with these lenses, we notice that the entire narrative of Egypt is literally bracketed, bookended, with water. Exodus chapters 1 and 2—water shows up. It's a big theme. Now, this is the beginning of Exodus. It's where they throw the babies.

You're going to throw the babies. Throw all of the male children into the waters—waters of death. And then in chapters 14 and 15, we also have the theme of the waters of Egypt. They are still the waters of death, but they're waters of death that have been overpowered and manipulated. God separating the waters and bringing forth dry land. Where does that appear? That sounds familiar. It's a new creation. It's the creation story again, but it's a new creation for his people. But he also made the waters come back together onto the Egyptians and Pharaoh's army. In a literary sense, Egypt is surrounded by water in the story.

Surrounded. Surrounded. How appropriate is it that the first two signs, the plagues of Egypt, have to do with water? First one is the staff is held over the water of Egypt and they turn into blood. Then we move on and the staff is held up over the water of Egypt and creatures come out. Frogs come out, right? And not just any water, all of the waters—the streams, the rivers, even the water in the reservoirs in your house. Names them all. All of the water. Frogs were a sign of the underworld. So you have blood equals death. Frogs were a symbol of the underworld, and they overtake Egypt. Egypt is being depicted for the reader as not just some land that's west of Israel.

It is depicted as Sheol, as the underworld itself for the people enslaved there. We have a theme. Passover is not simply a story of when God rescued his people from Egypt. It's also a story of when God rescued his people from death in the grave. It's no wonder that Yeshua is portrayed as the Passover lamb and the new Moses leading a greater exodus in the New Testament, because it's the same story. It's just bigger.

Water: Chaos and Death in the Ancient World

Okay, so what's so significant about the water? Well, in the ancient world—and when I say ancient world, I mean all the neighbors around Israel, the ancient Near East—water symbolized chaos and death in myth and symbolism. Water, what do you mean? Water is nourishment. We drink it. That's great now in 2023. They were scared of the water 3,000 years ago. Where do you go if you want to die? Certain. Certain death. Certain. Two places. Out in the desert wilderness or into the water. Well, you'd sink, right? "Hey, guys, let's go for a nice little swim in the middle of the sea." No. Dead. It was seen as a portal to the underworld.

How do you know that? That's what Jonah says. In Jonah chapter 2, when he's in the belly of the fish writing the poem, it's beautiful, right? He doesn't write that he is in the belly of a fish in the point. He says that I'm in the realm of the dead. I'm in the realm of the dead and the waves have overtaken me and I've sunk below the roots of the mountains and I am now barred in. I am imprisoned in the deep abyss underneath where even the mountains connect, barred. But I cried out and God rescued me from the pit, the grave. The grave. See, the deep abyss is seen as a portal to the underworld, symbolically.

Wasteland and water. Two places surely you don't want to be. And that's why Genesis 1 starts out the way it does. "Now the earth was wild and waste and darkness was over the watery deep." That's how I believe it should be translated. In Hebrew it's tohu vavohu, the waste and wild. It's chaotic and it's filled with death, nothing but death. And then God intervenes and separates the waters. That's a big, big God. So we have death water.

Dragons in the Chaos Waters

And what do you think, in the ancient world broadly, lives in the death water in myth and symbolism? Sharks. I like it. I like it. So we have lots of stories from Sumer, ancient Mesopotamia, Babylon, and the Canaanite areas as well, where they speak of primordial waters of death. And there was something that lived in them. I'll give you a hint. Not a lizard—a dragon, a serpentine sea monster. Now, in Canaanite myth, it was known as Lotan. I think we have a picture of one of them. Which one do I have up here? What's the first one? Lotan—a seven-headed dragon. I know what you're thinking: "My kindergartner could draw a better seven-headed dragon than that.

What in the world?" This was a cylinder seal. I might actually be Tiamat, but regardless. Sevenheaded dragon, Lotan. I think the next one—what's the next one that we have? Tiamat. Okay, this is Marduk in Mesopotamian myth, and he's chasing the dragon figure Tiamat, which was also associated with water. He shot an arrow down her throat and then ripped her in half to create the world in their myth. Make a pretty cool movie. What else? What's the next one? Here we go. Here's another depiction of Tiamat on a cylinder seal that we found. Dragon, serpentine sea monster. We also have later in Greek myth, Zeus versus Hydra, another watery monster.

And then I think we also have Thor versus—I think the Germanic people have one as well. Jormungandr, is that how you say it? Another monster. Even in Christian myth and legend, in the fourth century, we have the famous St. George story where he pierces the dragon, right? We love some good dragon slayer stories, humans, don't we? Don't we? You're scared to say yes? Yeah, we love a good dragon slaying story.

Leviathan in Scripture

Psalm 74, verse 12: "For God is my king from of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth. You divided the sea by your strength. You broke the heads of the sea monsters in the waters. You broke the heads of Lotan—I mean, Leviathan—in pieces, and gave him his food to the people inhabiting the wilderness." Leviathan and the heads of the sea monsters. This is a section of Psalm 74, and it goes on to infer right after this how God created the world. It's a poem in Psalm 74. And it's making a mockery of the Babylonian Canaanite myth, where their gods defeated the chaos evil dragon and brought forth creation.

And here the psalmist is just making a mockery of them. He's like, no, Marduk didn't do that. Belhadad didn't do that. Yahweh did that, not your gods. But it also has Exodus language. Did you see that? He's the one who split the sea and killed the dragon. And something about chopping up Leviathan and feeding him to the inhabitants of the wilderness— debatable what the context of that is. But notice there are two terms in this verse in Psalm 74. If you can go back and look at those two terms, what makes this passage so special is that it associates these terms together. They're kind of synonymous. We have sea monster, which is the Hebrew word Tanin—I say Tanin, it means sea monster.

That's what it means. Sea monster, like on a mythological scale. And you also have Leviathan— primordial dragon imagery that is shared by most of the nations in the ancient Near East. Hmm. Literal sea monster. Some translate it as sea serpent. What is—is that any better? I don't know. Let me see. Serpent. Anaconda? Big. The Amplified Version actually associates it with Egypt. I love this—Amplified Version: "You crushed the heads of Leviathan," meaning Egypt, "you gave him for food and the creatures of the wilderness." I wonder why the Amplified Bible seems so confident to put Egypt there, because when we turn to Ezekiel 29, we have the same language of the dragon being used and placed on Pharaoh: "Speak and say, 'Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I am against you, Pharaoh, king of Egypt.

The great Tannin, the great dragon, that lies in the midst of the streams. It says, "My Nile is my own; I made it for myself."'"

A Greater Exodus to Come

Isaiah 51:9—what's he talking about? The Exodus event. This is actually one of the verses that refers back to the original Exodus with the metaphor of the great dragon, but it's also speaking about a greater Exodus that's going to come to the future that's going to be even bigger and larger in scale than that one. Yahweh has pierced the dragon. He cut Rahab into pieces. He crushed the heads of Leviathan. Rahab is also another phrase that is associated with this type of language of dragon and monster. Job uses it a lot. Yahweh has pierced the dragon. If Egypt represents death and the grave, then God has to defeat the dragon of the sea, right?

To show the power over the sea to bring forth life and new creation to those enslaved there. Man, I just can't wait till we get in the New Testament next week. You guys want to see a little nugget, one of those breadcrumbs that we don't normally see in the English? And it's kind of hidden. And when we do find it, there's a lot of debate over it because it's like, well, how does that work here? And this is why I lean towards the author telling a very real story, very historical story, but also allowing it to be more than history if we look under the dirt just a little bit.

Moses's Staff and the Serpent

And this takes place in Exodus 4. You guys remember in Exodus 4 when God tells Moses to toss his staff from the ground? And it turns into what? A snake, a serpent, right? Hebrew word for snake is nakash. And here we go, Exodus 4:3. "The Lord said, 'Throw it on the ground.' So Moses threw it on the ground. It became a snake, and he ran from it. So every one of you, every one of us—bah. Then the Lord said to him, 'Reach out your hand and take it by the tail.'" Okay, so Moses reached out, took a hold of the snake, and it turned back to a staff in his hand. Cool. Moses is going to be encouraged to go before the courts of Pharaoh and do this as a sign.

Throw the staff down. Turn to a snake. Look at that. Four chapters later, we have this face-off between Moses and Aaron and Pharaoh and the magicians. And it starts in verse 8 of Exodus chapter 7, and here's what it says: "Then the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, 'When Pharaoh says to you, Prove yourselves by working a miracle, then you shall say to Aaron, Take your staff, cast it down before the Pharaoh, and it will become a serpent.' So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and did just as the Lord said. Aaron cast down his staff before Pharaoh and his servants, and it became a serpent. Then Pharaoh summoned the wise men and the sorcerers, and the magicians of Egypt also did the same with their secret arts, for each man cast down his staff and they became serpents.

But Aaron's staff swallowed up their staffs." Okay, I mean, that's pretty neat. Got snakes or whatever—copperhead, cobra, I don't know—but well, let's take a look at some other translations here. So we have the King James Version—we know this one—"When Pharaoh speaks to you, says, Take the rod, cast it down, and it shall become a serpent." The Literal Standard Version: "Take your rod, cast it down before Pharaoh, and it shall become a dragon." How about the Aramaic Bible in Plain English, as well as Young's Literal Translation: "It will be a dragon. Sea serpent. It becomes a monster." I wonder why they're translating it so far away from the obvious serpent.

Because the word here, unlike earlier when Moses demonstrated this, is not nakash. It is tanin. Tanin. The authors are laying breadcrumbs. I submit. And I don't think the story is supposed to change just because a theme is injected into it. No, they're serpents. But for a moment, as the reader, you're supposed to see dragons. Dragons. Giant Godzilla-looking ferocious beasts battling one another. The epitome of the primordial monsters that every nation is scared of in their myth.

The Imagery of Dragons

And it makes me chuckle because it makes it so much more interesting, that imagery of it. Right? Almost like a Pokemon battle. Leviathan, I choose you, right? But notice a few things. Moses is not running away, which is more significant if you put on the lens of the theme that's injected into it, because God's with him. But also, this taunts Pharaoh. And again, the subtle theme is not depicting Pharaoh as having some magicians that didn't have strong snakes. It's depicting Pharaoh as the weak dragon itself. And Aaron's dragon gobbles up the other dragons, swallows the dragons—that's what it says. Significant.

The word for swallow there is bala, and it also appears in Exodus in the song of Miriam after they crossed the Red Sea and she began singing. And the song describes Pharaoh being swallowed up by the earth beneath the waves. Swallowed. This dragon fight inferred in Pharaoh's court was a foretelling that God has complete sovereignty even over the biggest dragons. And just like the dragon of God swallowing the dragons of Pharaoh, so too the sea will swallow Pharaoh in defeat. He has no power. He has no power. I think that's beautiful. Beautiful. Now there are some that disagree and say, yeah, it means the same thing exactly.

Okay, that's fine. But if it's there as a theme to follow, as we've seen the biblical authors using in Job and Psalm and Isaiah and Ezekiel and into the New Testament, wow.

The Serpent Crown

It is said that Pharaoh was known for wearing a raised-up serpent donned on his headdress as a crown. It's an image of the goddess Wadjet. It's reared back like a cobra, symbolizing divine authority and supreme power in ancient Egypt. All of his hosts, his army, with their mighty chariots and horses are chasing down Israel as they're crossing the Red Sea. Pharaoh's demise culminates within the deep of the sea in Exodus 14. How appropriate that Yahweh's final clash with Pharaoh and his army involved the splitting of the sea as well as the destruction of the hosts of Egypt. And the theme here is simple: Yahweh, the man of war, is what he's referred to in Exodus. Yahweh, the man of war, the warrior, the one who fights for his people, Yahweh the dragon slayer, is what it culminates to.

The Dragon Slayers

And as cool as that is, Egypt was not the last place of slavery for God's people when we continue in the story of the Bible. Nor was Pharaoh the last dragon. There were many more. These dragons or serpents or seed of the serpents begin popping up all over the place. They are the enemies of the seed of the woman in Israel. The leaders in Canaan and Moab are depicted poetically as being defeated, as having their heads crushed, just like Yahweh crushes the heads of Leviathan. The evil Abimelech's head is crushed from the stone the woman threw off the tower. "Please just put me out of my misery. I don't want it to be known that I died at the hands of a woman."

The woman crushed your skull, which is the prophecy of Genesis 3.15. It's at the seat of the woman. The woman will bring forth the one that will crush the skull of the serpent, the head of the serpent, the head of the dragon. Saul crushes the Ammonite head. And it was an evil Ammonite, enemy of Israel. His name was Nahash. King David crushes the skull of a giant named Goliath, whose name root is skull. And he's described as being covered in scales on his armor. And the word there for scale only occurs seven times in the Bible. It's used to describe scales on fish in the water, as well as the scales of the tanin, the dragons.

And he's also described as wearing a bronze helmet, a bronze armor, a bronze javelin, and bronze leg coverings. Bronze, bronze, bronze on the same verse—wants to get your attention. What is this? Why so much? He had bronze armor—why so much repetition? Well, the word for bronze used here is nakashet—one consonant off of nakash. He looked like a giant dragon. He looked like the serpent, and his head was crushed and then cut off. The king of Babylon is also referred to as a tannin, the serpent that will be destroyed. There's a theme in the Bible that gets our attention.

The Serpent in the New Testament

And so when we go to the New Testament and John looks at the Pharisees and the Sadducees— the corrupt leadership of Israel that is using their own piety and righteousness and knowledge of the Bible to control, manipulate, judge, put down others so that their self-described or selfmanifested righteousness can be esteemed. "Brood of vipers? Seed of the serpent, your father the devil." Paul refers to those who have a habit of taking the Bible and using it as a weapon to demean others, to make themselves feel smarter, feel more righteous, feel like God's chosen one, feel like the saints. And they manipulate the word of God for their benefit at the expense of others. He refers to them as serpents. Not just any serpent. He says you're just like the serpent that was in the garden that sneaks in like it belongs there. And the only mission, the only thing that he can justify doing is to deceive, to fabricate lies in order to manipulate others before opening its jaws as the dragon it really is.

The Code Revealed

Just like the Egyptian narrative has bookends around it with the waters of death, Exodus 1 and 2, and then 14 through 15 when they leave Egypt, the Bible itself has these pseudo bookends as well. And they involve a dragon. They involve a dragon. The first appears in the garden with the serpent. But Revelation 12, let's read a chunk of Revelation 12 here. Starting in verse 1, John has this apocalyptic vision of the reality of things that have taken place and are taking place. "A great sign appeared in heaven. A woman clothed with the sun, the warrior queen, with the moon under her feet and the crown of 12 stars above her head.

She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she gave birth. Then another sign appeared in heaven. It was an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his head. Its tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth so that it might devour her child the moment he was born. She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all nations with an iron scepter. And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne. And the woman fled into the wilderness to a place prepared to her by God where she might be taken care of for 1260 days.

Then the war broke out in heaven. Michael and his angels fought against the dragon, and the dragon and his angels fought back. But he was not strong enough, and they lost their place in heaven." Oh, there's so much there, and I think we might have time to dive in a little bit more. That's fine. The code has been revealed! Thank you, John! The code is revealed! The theme has been unlocked to a bigger picture. This whole time we've been fighting this dragon. Thinking that if we kill Pharaoh, we've killed the dragon. Or if we kill Goliath, we got the dragon. Or if we kill Babylon. But John here, he reveals the truth.

And the truth is, we have had this enemy since the very beginning. The serpent in the garden. The one who has always been the one that likes to whisper the lies to you. But also the one that is destined to have his head crushed. His head pierced. And here in Revelation 12, John proclaims it's happened. He's been defeated. He's been defeated.

The Woman and the Dragon

In Revelation 12, the vision is of a woman who gives birth to a son. Revelation is apocalyptic literature. It is a type of storytelling that comes in the form of explosive metaphor, and it's beautiful. And so the woman is Mary, but it also represents Israel, I believe. It's both because they mimic each other, right? The one for where the seed came forth from. And this child king is born to rule all of creation. And then the king is somehow brought up to heaven as a result and assumes sovereignty over creation. And somehow this causes the red dragon—Satan—to lose all of his power. Right? What is this the story of?

It's the story of Yeshua, right? Israel finally, the prophecy of Abraham finally comes through Israel through a no-name girl from Nazareth named Mary. I love some Mary. We'll visit Mary again. The gospel writers portray Mary very subtly, but portray her as a warrior—in the songs that are sung about her through Elizabeth as well, but also her own song, the Magnificat. She's the culmination of all of the prophetesses and the female warriors of the Bible, culminating in this one little girl who gives birth to the skull crusher. I love some Mary. But we know the story in the Gospels. Mary gives birth to a son, and right off the bat, we have a king who is scared because his system is being threatened.

So he wants to kill all of the male children. This isn't Exodus. This isn't Pharaoh this time. This is another dragon. It's King Herod, right? And somehow, miraculously, the child gets saved from that. But then this child grows, and this child assumes authority. And the child, one day at the end of his life, has proclaimed king, but not in the way that people thought. He is crowned. He is exalted up. And a proclamation in all languages is put above his head that he is king forever. And he assumes his throne on the cross. Revelation 5.

Revelation 5: The Lion and the Lamb

Revelation 5 is a vision that I believe portrays what takes place as soon as the water mixed with blood hits the dirt and he cries out. John is in the throne room of Yahweh, the center of the cosmos. All of the elders, all these creatures, all the just. And there's the throne room of God and everybody's chanting of this victory that has taken place. But they're also mourning because there's this book—what's gonna happen now? No one's worthy of unsealing this book. And he hears a voice, he says, fear not for the Lion of Judah has triumphed. The Lion of Judah we've been waiting for has conquered. Claws and big fangs and just conquered.

And then John turns around to see the big, muscular, blood-covered lion with claws and teeth. And there is no lion. He sees a little lamb in the center of the throne room of Yahweh, the center of the universe orbiting it. And the lamb has seven horns. He has all authority given to him. But it's a little lamb covered in blood with his throat cut. He has conquered. He has overcome. He is worthy. The king has conquered. The dragon is defeated and has lost its power. And I love the symbolism there. Love it.

The Dragon Slayer's Victory

And so Revelation 12 is repackaging all of that, except we've shifted to a different camera angle into the heavens where the dragon has now lost all of his power, all of his hold, all power. Because the king was lifted up on a hill called the Skull, pierced through with a wooden stake. Just like Yael pierced the enemies of Israel's skull with a wooden stake. Golgotha, right? And there's so much power in just this section. Forget the whole motif of the dragon. Just right here. And I'm here today to tell you and remind you that if you proclaim Yeshua your king, the dragon has been defeated. There is nothing the dragon has that he can throw at you if you're under the domain and dominion and sovereignty of Yeshua.

And it's just really cool to see how the Bible tells a story within a story. And it's really neat to see the imagery that is tucked away there. And it's awesome to have this realization that the Bible is really about a warrior that slays a dragon to rescue his bride. That's the story. And not just one biblical author contributed to this underlying theme, this tradition; it was all there, not just to be something cool either. We like little nuggets, right? Not one of these same biblical authors thought for a second that that was going to be the absolute takeaway for us—oh, cool, I got some more knowledge, dragons, that's pretty neat, mythological, Babylon, that's cool. No.

Tools for Understanding Reality

I believe this is all throughout the Bible. I believe the authors wanted you to use this as a tool so when you walk outside, you see the reality—to see that Egypt is not a place as much as what you give your allegiance to. It's allegiance to a Pharaoh that keeps you enslaved to him. In Revelation, it speaks about those who give their loyalty to the dragon and the minions that he unleashes on the earth. And this motif was to help you realize that you can walk on dry land, that you do not have to stay in a place of sin, a place of death, the grave, because there's a dragon slayer that has been victorious, and you can walk through the water on dry land. That is what Passover reminds us of. And so during this time, as we prepare to take the unleavened bread and the wine from the cup and remember Yeshua, we not only remember what he did, we remember what he did for us.

The Waters Are Open

And so I don't know where you're at today. I hope, at minimum, I've reminded you of something about the character of the God that loves you. And on top of that, I hope that you're encouraged to go back and read your Bible and dive into this beautiful Holy Spirit-inspired library that we have. It's awesome. But I hope you have a realization that, in this journey of faith that we're on, the waters are open for you. All you have to do is walk through them. Leave Egypt behind. Leave it behind. Leave the bitterness behind. Leave unforgiveness behind. Leave the lifestyles, the gossip, the yearning to want things you shouldn't yearn to have, the yearning to hate others to esteem yourself, the yearning to manipulate and exploit any and all situations for your own gain at the expense of others.

Leave it behind. It was the first thing that God warned Israel about after they came to the mountain and got the 10 commandments. And he kept talking—if you ever notice, he didn't just stop talking after 10. He kept talking for a couple chapters. And I believe it's Exodus 22. He says, "Now remember, you're slaves in Egypt. Keep that humility. Keep that humility because I am the God that sees and I am the God that hears the cries of the oppressed."

God Hears the Cry of the Oppressed

He saw it with the violence of that which sent the flood. He heard it with the outcry of those who were oppressed because of the actions of Sodom and Gomorrah. He came down and heard the cries. He heard the cries of Ishmael after Hagar didn't know what else to do and left him in a bush and everyone was about to die, dehydrated in the wilderness and she had to walk away because she couldn't care to watch her son die. And he heard him crying and came to their rescue. And he heard the crying of those oppressed in Egypt and he heard the crying of the oppressed, the poor, the enslaved of weaker nations at the hands of Israel and Judah later in the story when they became the very thing they were freed from, which led them into exile. God warns us. He says, "Do not lose your humility. Do not think you're better than anyone else, and I will make you a kingdom of priests, those that mediate heaven and earth. I will be revealed through you to the world." My only yearning is to show you the beauty of this amazing book, the story of God that you're called to be a part of.

Time of Worship

And so we conclude services with the time of worship, the time of meditation. You're free to pray in your seat. You're free to sing, free to do nothing. If you would like someone to pray with you today, we have a prayer team on either side of the stage more than welcome to take advantage of that. And some of us like to do symbolic stuff, so we have the front of this little stage here as kind of a dedicated pseudo altar. If you just want to come up and leave something here symbolically, you can do that as well. Avinu Malkeinu, our Father, our King. Father, we thank you for this time of worship that we come together on your Shabbat where we are reminded of what your rest feels like in the arms of Yeshua.

Father, I ask that you would allow us to embrace the dragon slayer status that you revealed, so that we can recognize ourselves as free. The chains are gone and celebrate as Miriam did. And maybe we're in a place where we like the things of Egypt. Father, I ask that you would give us the strength, wisdom, and boldness to navigate that so that we can leave that behind as well. We thank you, Father, in the name of Yeshua, our King, the dragon slayer. We pray, amen. Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one. Blessed is the name of his glorious kingdom for all eternity. Now may the God of patience and encouragement grant you to be likeminded with one another in the manner of Messiah so that together with one voice you glorify the God and Father of our Lord Yeshua the Messiah.

And may the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. And may the Lord lift up his countenance towards you and give you his peace. And behold, I have given you authority to trample upon serpents and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy. Nothing will harm you. So go forth in the peace and the power of the mighty Holy Spirit and be who God has created us to be in the earth for his glory and his kingdom purpose. Hallelujah. Amen. Amen. Shabbat Shalom. Shalom.

Ministry Closing

We pray this message has blessed and encouraged you and your relationship with God. And we hope that it has made the Bible more beautiful and more powerful in its impact in your life. Founded in Truth Fellowship exists to build a community that bears the image of God and lives the redeemed life only Yeshua gives. If this message has blessed you or if you see God working in and through this ministry, we invite you to prayerfully consider partnering with us so that the message of Yeshua and the truth of God's word continues to reach all nations. If you would like to take part in this mission, then you can do so at foundedintruth.com/give or you can scan the QR code on the screen.

These offerings go toward providing resources for both our local fellowship as well as our online ministry, but also our many outreach ministries, including our foster care and adoption ministry, local charity outreach ministry, our international online children's ministry, and any future ministries that the Lord would allow us to walk through and walk in to impact the world around us with his love and the love of God and the bold proclamation of the gospel of King Yeshua. We thank you for your continued support and we look forward to seeing you next time. Shalom. For more on this and other teachings, please visit us at: