Deliverance From The Authority Of Darkness

You notice that the book which goes by this name - Exodus - begins with the names of the sons of Israel, the names of the elect race, and then out of Egypt God calls His son collectively as one son, the sons in the son. 

He leads them out and what a rich fulness of meaning that gives to a little statement with which we are so familiar in John's Gospel - "He calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out" (John 10:3). 

The names all mentioned, the chosen ones; He leadeth them out, He makes the exodus for His own sheep.

It says this, that those who were in Judaism, as it was in the days when our Lord was here on earth, were in something which had become bound up with the kingdoms of this world from which they had to be delivered by the death of the Lord Jesus and it was a very religious thing.

We are getting very near to the heart of things.

Our deliverance from the authority of darkness may have to be wrought, not only in our separation from this world as we think of it, it may have to be wrought in a religious sense to get a people out into a heavenly place, even from Christianity, as a religion of this world, something which has become bound up with this world and its kingdom.

This deliverance of the Cross is an utter thing...that is what we are getting at.

~T. Austin Sparks~