Due to technical difficulties, the opening minutes of this session are missing. We appreciate your understanding.

GYC 2025: Seeing the Invisible

<p>Due to technical difficulties, the opening minutes of this session are missing. We appreciate your understanding.</p>

<p>Free sharing permitted under the Creative Commons <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/">BY-NC-ND 3.0 (US)</a> license.</p>

Generation. Youth. Christ. (GYC)

Conversations on Exodus

Thando Amankwah

Sikhu Daco

Esther Kim

Michel Lee

Amy Ratsara

Redeeming Egyptian Education for God’s Cause

Hope and Perseverance Between Egypt and Eternity

So the Exodus story, which by the way, involves more than Moses, right?

Like here it's referring in the plural, and we've talked about some of those people like Miriam and Shifra and Pua.

Those things were not just written for Wikipedia factual accuracy, but they were written for our instruction.

So what are some of the things that stand out to all you ladies from this passage of things that we can take?

Not necessarily on the things we can take but just another observation broadly.

1 of the things that I like, love about the New Testament is, you know we talk about the Bible interprets itself.

1 of the things like reading the New Testament and seeing how New Testament authors interpret the Old Testament is 1 of the ways you learn how to read the Old Testament.

Just kind of like reading Spirit of Prophecy is a way to learn how to read Scripture.

And here, Paul is writing and the way that he interprets the experiences that they went through, and he's like, you know, they were baptized with the same baptism, and they were baptized?

And he's like, no, when they went through the Red Sea, It was like a metaphor for their baptism experience.

Also, like when you read in the Old Testament, there's kind of, like seeing how they interpret in the New Testament, the experiences that the Israelites went through were actually experiences with Jesus.

You know, like the experiences that we go through with Jesus.

So then now when we're reading the Old Testament, when we're reading the Israelites' experience, we can with confidence relate that to our experience because we have an example of that in the New Testament.

I thought it was a fun, hermeneutical piece.

Yeah, no, it's cool to watch an ancient people interacting with a more ancient text, and they're like, it's cool to see how they're using it, and then you zoom in and you're like, oh, I can do the same thing that those New Testament early church people were doing.

Other things that stand out to you, Esther?

Yeah, 1 of the things I noticed, especially in this passage, it talks a lot about transgressions, right?

We know that the story of Exodus should be being free from oppression, right?

Being free from the things that they were tied down.

And this tells us that freedom is not just being free, but it also exposes a part of them, a part of us, right?

So a lot of, I think a lot of times we think of God freeing Israelites from Egypt just to gain freedom, but I think there's a repeat of this that you see in Exodus, God brings it up over and over again, you know, let my people go so that they will serve me in the wilderness, so that they will celebrate this first spring in the wilderness.

So to kind of think of that in a way, it also kind of affects our society too.

We want to fight for freedom, we want to advocate for freedom, but what is the intention behind it?

Is it because just freedom is going to expose the dirty parts of our society?

Yes, Freedom from ourselves versus freedom from institutional structures.

So kind of moving in the direction of like, okay, we want freedom, but at the same time being prepared to receive that and to serve God in the wilderness.

And I love as well how it centers Christ and really brings us back to their experience with Jesus in the Exodus as well.

You know, so they ate the same spiritual food.

And, you know, when Jesus speaks about the manna in the wilderness, As your fathers ate manna in the wilderness, I am the bread of life." Right?

Even those parallels that Jesus draws between their wilderness experience and our experience, that manna they ate, that was pointing to Christ, the bread of life, right?

They drank the same spiritual drink, that rock was Christ, right?

And so just their experience, the bread they ate, the water they drank, all of that was Christ sustaining them.

And that those lessons of how it is that Jesus, you know, is the bread of life and is the 1 who sustains and carries us.

I think that that's just so powerful how that Exodus Christ was with them as well and that's the same way that he walks with us and is our sustenance as well in our own journey through.

Yeah I think what we're getting at is that we also are people on an exodus, right?

And that we have this example of someone doing a group of people, like an entire ethnic group, going through something literally that we are now going through.

We are also going through it literally, but symbolically as well.

And the Exodus represents our journey on this earth.

I can think as a historian of many other people who have viewed themselves as being on some sort of Exodus, and I think that just shows the power of the Exodus story.

In our notes, we talked about Harriet Tubman and enslaved black people in the antebellum South who often used Exodus and mosaic wording to talk about the journeys that they would take to freedom, and Those were often codes even for where to go and when to go there.

Martin Luther King Jr., someone else who advocated for civil rights and for freedom and equality, used language from Exodus.

The Jewish people have referenced Exodus as a marker of identity, as a marker of their history, not a marker as their history.

Latin American liberation theology, we think of people, various oppressed people groups throughout history have used Exodus language.

How can we learn the themes of testing, perseverance, obedience, trust in God's leading from particular parts of the exodus?

How might the Exodus story encourage us in times of testing, perseverance, obedience?

I think we're getting there already, but I'm inviting the panel to say more on that.

Just talking about the Red Sea experience, if I could start there.

The first thing that comes to mind, like chronologically, it wasn't the first thing that I thought of, but chronologically is the first thing, is when God redeems Israel and brings him out of Egypt.

Deuteronomy chapter 7 says how 7 verse 7 There.

The Lord did not set his love upon you nor choose you because you were more in number than any people, for you were the fewest of all people.

But because the Lord loved you and because he would keep the oath which you had sworn unto your fathers, that he brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you out of the house of bondmen from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt.

That, I guess, prefacing the whole Exodus experience is why God selects the Israelites, like why these are his special people, and the way that Deuteronomy phrases it is don't be tempted to think that you're something that you're not, right?

Like, you are God's special people, but not because you're something special.

And he said, and in terms of thinking of the examples for us, and I know you talked about us going through perplexity and trials, but I think just having a right conception of who we are, a right perspective on our identity as we go through, whether they're victories or trials, whether they're successes or failures, just having the right outlook on our identity as we're going through these things.

And I thought of that because you're referencing the people groups who have seen the exodus as part of their narrative, which it is part of our narrative.

Like the first premise in that is that God chooses us for salvation not because we're amazing, right?

But because, actually, because we're whack, right?

And I don't want to end up in slummer mode, but I remember Eugene Pruitt way, way back when I was going through a missionary program.

Eugene Pruitt is a missionary, like he goes and he does mission work all over the world, and he was teaching a class and he said, 1 of the things to think about when you think of the great controversy is God had Lucifer right next to him.

And he put Lucifer right next to him knowing that this is, because God knows, right?

Knowing that this is going to be the seed of what we're in right now.

And he's like, not that this is a conclusive answer, but probably part of the puzzle.

That God knowing this, puts Lucifer right next to him to give him the greatest opportunity for salvation.

Like the best possible chance for him not to rebel would be to know God as intimately as you could possibly know him.

And he was saying that to say when God puts you in a position of authority, of responsibility, it's not because you're amazing.

It's because if he doesn't do that, you're probably the 1 who will be the first to fall.

Like this is God's best attempt at your salvation, is to draw you the closest to him.

So when you see the president of GYC, he's not here, okay.

When you see him, it's because he's the worst of us.

Like the way that God, when God draws us close to him, God is like, I chose you not because you're the best, but because you're the smallest, you're the weakest.

Series

Conversations on Exodus

Hope and Perseverance Between Egypt and Eternity

Transcript

Description

Parent Series

Parent Conference

Sponsor

Recorded

Adventist Apologetics: Complex Issues, Adventist Answers

2. The Adventist Worldview: What’s Distinct

1h

Total Member Involvement

6. Moving The Ship

1h

What's in Your Hand? "Called to Lead with What God Gave You"

04 The Staff Abused

44m

Adventist Apologetics: Complex Issues, Adventist Answers

4. Worst Decision Ever: Why God Permits Evil?

47m

InVerse 1st Quarter 2026: Apologetics

06 Jesus and Buddhism

29m

Plenary

Lost Identity

1h 46m

Devotions For Decisions

2. Where Did You Find That?

54m

Advising Love: From Attraction to Anniversaries

5. Advising Love’s Giving: Parenting and Family Life

1h

The War for Your Mind

02 How to Avoid Deception

47m

True Love: Mission or Myth?

The Gateway

1h

GYC 2011 Seminar: Revival & Reformation

Revival & Reformation: God’s Way, Part 1

53m

Health Evangelism

The Hour of Victory- Part 2

1h 54m

Sound Doctrine