Tawa Baptist

Passover

Scripture: Exodus 12:1-14

Title: Passover

Structure:

  • Introduction
  • Passover is about deliverance (God’s commitment)
  • Passover is about new beginnings (letting go)
  • Passover is about the gathered community (everyone counted/included)
  • Conclusion

Introduction:

Please turn with me to Exodus 12, page 69 in your pew Bibles

  • Today we continue our series on Moses
  • By this stage in the story God has struck Egypt with nine plagues and Moses has warned Pharaoh of a tenth plague to come – the death of the first born
  • This morning we hear God’s instructions for the Passover festival
  • From Exodus 12, verse 1 we read…

[Read Exodus 12:1-14]

 

May the Spirit of Jesus illuminate this reading for us

This morning we will consider the meaning of the Jewish Passover festival

  • Passover is about deliverance
  • It’s about new beginnings
  • And it’s about the gathered community

Passover is about deliverance:

Passover – it’s an interesting word

In Kiwi culture a ‘pass-over’ can refer to a road or a bridge which enables people to pass over some kind of obstacle safely

  • For example, the foot bridge by the Tawa railway station, enables pedestrians to safely pass over the railway lines

Another way we hear the term ‘pass over’ used is in relation to work when someone says, ‘I was passed over for promotion’ – meaning I missed out on advancing in my career

So, depending on the context, the term ‘pass over’, in the English language, means either…

  • A safe passage
  • Or to miss out on something

These two English meanings of pass-over actually find a connection with the meaning of the Jewish Passover

For the Hebrew people ‘Passover’ is a religious festival (similar to our Easter)

  • It remembers Israel’s safe passage out of Egypt
  • And it also recalls how they missed out on the death of the first born
  • Put those two things together – being given safe passage and missing out on judgement – and the primary meaning of Passover is deliverance

The Passover celebrates God’s deliverance of Israel from slavery and death

  • So it is an annual party to celebrate God’s gifts of life and freedom

One of the things we notice in God’s instructions to Moses is, the blood of the lamb or kid goat is to be painted on the doorframes as a sign

  • Verse 13 in the NIV translates God’s words saying…
  • “The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are; and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt” 

Blood, of course, symbolises life and in the ancient world shedding blood was a way of making a solemn commitment – a way of ‘sealing the deal’

  • The blood, therefore, is a sign of God’s solemn commitment to protect Israel from the tenth plague [1]
  • The blood tells the abused & oppressed Israelites that God is for them
  • It’s not that the blood had some magical property which protected them
  • It’s more that the Israelites needed to perform an act of faith to acknowledge they accepted God’s commitment to them
  • And that act of faith was painting the blood on their door posts

The other thing we should note here is, the blood of the Passover is not about the forgiveness of sins

  • Sin is not mentioned in today’s Scripture reading
  • Later on, when the Law is given at Sinai, God would stipulate other kinds of sacrifices for atonement of sin, but not at this point with the Passover
  • The blood of the Passover lamb is not for God’s benefit
  • It is not for appeasing God in some way
  • The blood of the lamb is for Israel’s benefit
  • It is a sign of God’s commitment to protect Israel from judgment

The Passover finds its ultimate meaning in the person of Christ

  • Jesus, who was crucified during the Passover festival, is the perfect sacrificial Lamb
  • And as the perfect Passover Lamb, Jesus’ blood shed on the cross is the sign of God’s commitment to humanity
  • A commitment to deliver us from judgement
  • A commitment to set us free to serve and enjoy Him forever

Now most of us here come from a Protestant / evangelical church tradition

  • So we tend to associate the blood of Christ with the forgiveness of sins – end of story
  • And while it is true that Jesus is the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, [2] that is not the whole truth
  • As I keep saying, the first Passover wasn’t really about forgiveness or atonement
  • In this situation the Jewish people were not the sinners – they were the ones who were sinned against
  • The Egyptians were the sinners and they didn’t get forgiveness, they got judgement

The typical protestant approach to evangelism is to say to people something like

  • ‘You are a sinner, but the good news is you can be forgiven and avoid hell if you accept Jesus’
  • And that might be okay for some people, but it doesn’t fit for everyone
  • In fact, if you tell someone who has been abused badly or experienced terrible suffering & injustice, that they are a sinner and need to repent to be forgiven, you would most likely turn them away from God

The oppressed don’t need forgiveness – they need release

  • The abused don’t need to be threatened with judgment – they are already going through hell
  • The oppressed & abused need a sign (some kind of evidence) that God is committed to their well-being and is going to deliver them from the injustice they suffer

To the abused and the oppressed we can say…

  • Jesus has suffered as you have suffered
  • He understands injustice and He understands your pain
  • Jesus’ blood, shed on the cross, is the sign of God’s commitment to you
  • It is a commitment to deliver you from oppression and death
  • It is a commitment to set you free to serve Him and enjoy eternal life
  • That’s good news for the poor

I’m not saying the abused & oppressed are perfect and don’t need forgiveness

  • I’m just saying we must be careful not to turn people away
  • People need to hear and feel that God is for them
  • Grace must come first and then repentance can follow

As well as being about deliverance for the oppressed the Passover is also about new beginnings

Passover is about new beginnings:

It’s August at the moment – technically the end of winter

  • Come September we will officially begin spring
  • By this time of year most of us are a bit weary and a bit sick of the wet and cold
  • We are starting to fantasise about summer and going on holiday and being warm
  • With the first signs of spring (blossoms on the trees, pine pollen on our cars and daffodils in our gardens) we start to see light at the end of winter’s tunnel

In verse 2 of Exodus 12, God says to Moses…

  • “This month is to be the first month of the year for you…”

This means the Passover was like a New Year’s celebration

  • Passover happens in March / April each year – which is spring time in the Northern hemisphere – sort of like August / September for us
  • God wants Israel to be different from the other nations around them and celebrate the New Year at the beginning of spring
  • In many ways this makes better sense, for spring is a new beginning

Passover then, is about new beginnings

  • It celebrates both the beginning of a New Year and a new beginning for Israel as a nation
  • This new beginning is not by Israel’s own strength but by the hand of God who has the power to make all things new
  • It comes when the Israelites are tired and low, after a very long winter of oppression

Of course, new beginnings usually require a letting go of something – or a sacrifice in other words

Sometimes we find it hard to let go but really we needn’t feel this way because letting go is built into the natural rhythm of our lives

Think about your breathing

  • You draw breathe in and you let it go, without even thinking about it
  • If we try to hold on to our breathe it starts to hurt
  • Not letting go pains us

The NZ poet Glenn Colquhoun has a poem called, The trick of standing upright here [3]

 

The last four lines read…

 

The art of walking upright here

is the art of using both feet.

 

One is for holding on.

One is for letting go.

If you hold on with both feet you don’t go anywhere

  • And if you let go with both feet you fall over
  • To walk without falling we need to hold on with one foot while simultaneously letting go with the other

For Israel to make a new beginning – for Israel to learn the art of walking with God by faith – they needed to use both feet

  • One for holding on
  • One for letting go
  • Sacrifice is about letting go

God instructed Israel to select a one year old male lamb or kid goat, without blemish, on the 10th day of the month

  • Then on the 14th day, four days later around dusk, everyone in Israel was to slaughter their animals

Imagine that for a moment

  • You take one of the best animals in your flock, one with most of its life ahead of it and you set it apart from the rest
  • Perhaps you and your children become a little attached to this cute lamb – like a family pet – and then you have to kill it
  • I imagine that would be difficult – killing something young, innocent, healthy and loved – so why do it?

Verse 11 has God saying…

  • “…It is a Passover festival to honour me.”

The way to honour God is to give Him the best we have to offer

  • It’s not so much that God needs us to pay homage to him
  • He’s not insecure
  • He doesn’t need our reassurance and He doesn’t need to be appeased
  • In fact He doesn’t need anything from us
  • It’s more that we need to honour Him
  • We need God so our lives will have meaning and purpose
  • God is the ground of our being – without God there is no point

If we make something else (like a lamb or a goat or our work) more important than God then our meaning & hope depend on the animal

  • And that is a very insecure position to put yourself in
  • But if God is the most important then nothing can threaten our meaning and our hope so we have a real sense of security

Honouring God with our best is really for our benefit

  • The obvious practical benefit for the Israelites in making a sacrifice was the people ate the meat as nourishment for the journey ahead

Beyond this, sacrificing the Passover lamb was an acted out parable for Israel

  • If we think of the sacrificial lamb as representing the Hebrew people:
  • Up till this point in their history the nation of Israel had been like a child (like a yearling lamb) – powerless and bullied in Egypt
  • Now God was saying, it is time to grow up, time to leave your childhood behind and follow me into adulthood

So killing the young innocent lamb was kind of like a ‘rite of passage’

  • A ritual for letting go of one stage of the nation’s development in order to transition to the next phase
  • They were transitioning from being slaves to being free
  • From being told what to do (like children) to learning how to handle freedom & responsibility (like adults)

Rituals to recognise transitions in life are everywhere

In Vanuatu, for example, the transition from boyhood to manhood is demonstrated by land diving (which is sort of like bungy jumping)

  • The jumper’s goal is to launch off the platform and brush his head on the ground – if he survives he is a man

For the people of Israel, growing up and leaving Egypt was a little bit like land diving

  • It meant taking a risk – stepping out in faith, letting go of the platform

The killing of the lamb or kid goat also represented a letting go of what the people themselves wanted

  • It was a way of saying, ‘Not my will God, but Your will be done’

There’s a song we sometimes sing called All for Jesus

  • One of the verses goes like this…

 

All of my ambitions, hopes and plans

I surrender these into Your hands

For it’s only in Your will that I am free

For it’s only in Your will that I am free…

Sacrificing the young lamb or goat was a way for the Hebrew people to demonstrate that they were surrendering their ambitions, hopes and plans into God’s hands

  • It was a real and physical way of reminding themselves that it is only in God’s will that they are free
  • Leaving Egypt in itself isn’t freedom
  • Walking with God is freedom

Passover is about new beginnings

  • It’s about being ready to let go, ready to make the transition to the next stage in our life – the next stage in God’s will for us
  • That’s why the people had to eat the meal in a hurry, dressed and ready to leave with staff in hand

As Christians we don’t celebrate Passover but we do have other rituals for marking new beginnings:

Baptism, for example, is a new beginning – it is the letting go of our old way of life and stepping out, in faith, to follow Jesus

Marriage is another new beginning – when we let go of single life and find a new kind of freedom (a new kind of intimacy) with our partner in marriage

Dedication of a baby and his or her parents is also a new beginning

Transitions and new beginnings can happen all through life, and we don’t always have a ritual to celebrate them, like…

When you hit 40 and realise your life is more than half over so you’d better make the most of what’s left

Or when you turn 65 and become eligible for a Gold Card and a pension

  • Now you have a new found freedom with your time

Or when someone returns to the church and Christian faith after spending years away – except on returning their faith is different

  • So they are now more comfortable with mystery,
  • Not needing an answer for everything,
  • Not needing to prove themselves right,
  • Happy to trust themselves to God’s grace

We don’t have a Passover festival as such but we do have Easter and Lent

  • Lent (the six weeks leading up to Easter) is a time of sacrifice – a time of fasting or letting go – when we surrender afresh to God our ambitions, hopes and plans
  • Easter weekend itself is a time when we remember Jesus and the new beginning of resurrection
  • For Christians, Easter is the equivalent of a New Year celebration

Passover is about deliverance and new beginnings

  • Passover is also about the gathered community, everyone counted

Passover is about the gathered community:

John, can you tell me how many people are here this morning?

  • Thanks John

 

Every Sunday when you come to church someone greets you at the door and gives you a newsletter

  • Then, when everyone is seated (and before the kids go out) one of the door stewards does a head count and writes the number in attendance in the blue book in the foyer
  • It’s not exactly like taking the roll at school – we don’t put a tick by people’s names or anything like that – but we do keep a track of totals

John said there were about 150 odd here this morning

  • If everyone who attends Tawa Baptist were to turn up at the same time there would be over 200 people here
  • So that tells me there are about 60 or 70 people away this morning

I’m not saying this to make you feel guilty if you miss a Sunday

  • I’m saying this so you know you count

The Passover festival was something the Jewish people were to do at the same time, together, as a gathered community – verse 4 says…

  • If his family is too small to eat a whole animal, he and his next door neighbour may share an animal, in proportion to the number of people and the amount that each person can eat.

As a general rule of thumb it was thought 10 people could finish off a beast

  • So if there were five in your family then you could get together with some of your neighbours to share an animal

The point is, Passover was designed to bring communities together

  • It was designed to include people – not just those in your own family but also those who worked for you, those who couldn’t afford their own sacrifice and anyone else who happened to be travelling through
  • It wasn’t an exclusive meal – it was a meal which required the host to account for everyone

We all have a responsibility for each other

  • If you have noticed someone missing from our gathered worship for a while, it might be appropriate to give that person a call – not to reprimand them but simply to ask how they are, show you care, show they count with you and are not forgotten

Conclusion:

I suppose there is much more we could say about the Passover but that’s probably enough for today

For us, as Christians, the main thing is Jesus

  • Jesus is the ultimate Passover Lamb – the perfect sacrifice
  • Jesus’ blood is a sign of God’s commitment to deliver us from judgement
  • Jesus’ death & resurrection makes a new beginning possible for all of us
  • And Jesus is the one who draws us together as a gathered community – the one who counts us among God’s people

Let us pray…

[1] Refer Terence Fretheim, Exodus, page 138

[2] John 1:29

[3] Glenn Colquhoun, “The Art of Walking Upright”, page 33.

Tawa Baptist

Miniature Moses

Scripture: Exodus 1:22 – 2:10

Title: Miniature Moses

 

Structure:

  • Introduction – Exodus means leaving
  • Moses infancy tells the story of Israel’s deliverance
  • When God is silent we wait in hope
  • Conclusion – Moses points to Jesus

Introduction:

On the wall here is a picture of an Exit sign

  • It’s one of the new ones with a stylised person running out of a door
  • I guess many of our signs are in picture format now to overcome any language barriers in our increasingly global environment

Please turn with me to Exodus chapter 2, page 60 near the beginning of your pew Bibles

  • Today we begin a new sermon series on Moses in the book of Exodus
  • Exodus basically means to leave or to exit
  • Moses is sort of like Israel’s exit sign
  • He is the one God chose to lead Israel out of Egypt

 

We will begin our reading from verse 22 of Exodus chapter 1 and continue to verse 10 of Exodus chapter 2…

Read Exodus 1:22 – 2:10

 

May the Spirit of Jesus illuminate this reading for us

 

Moses’ infancy tells the story of Israel’s deliverance:

On the wall here is a picture of a Russian doll – also known as a nested doll, because the little dolls nest inside the larger dolls

  • There is a technique sometimes used in story telling where the writer nests a smaller story inside a larger story as a way of reinforcing or explaining the larger story
  • If people aren’t able to grasp the bigger picture then the same story on a smaller scale helps them to access the meaning of the larger story
  • Exodus 2 is a nested story – a smaller story inside a larger history
  • In this passage three daughters deliver one son who, in turn, grows up to deliver a whole nation

 

The King of Egypt (also known as Pharaoh) was afraid of the Israelites

  • They had grown in number and he was concerned they might take over the country so he oppressed them with slave labour
  • This strategy didn’t really work so he ordered the Jewish midwives to kill the male babies when they were born
  • The midwives managed to avoid doing this so Pharaoh issued a command to throw every new born  Hebrew boy into the River Nile
  • Pharaoh was basically instigating a policy of genocide or ‘ethnic cleansing’ against the Israelites

It is in this context that Moses’ mum took a basket made of reeds, covered it with tar to make it watertight and set it out on the waters of the Nile with her baby in it

  • She was obeying the letter of Pharaoh’s law, but not the spirit
  • She couldn’t hide her baby any longer – his growing and his crying would soon give him away and some Egyptian soldier might kill the boy
  • But nor could she simply throw her precious child into the river to drown
  • So she found a way to keep hope alive
  • She gave her son a chance to live and she gave God an opportunity to act
  • This is what faith does – it leaves room for God

It’s interesting that the Hebrew word used for basket in verse 3 is the same as the word used for Noah’s ark

  • Moses is parallel to Noah [1]
  • A little story nested within a larger story
  • Just as God used Noah to save a remnant of creation from drowning in the chaos of the great flood
  • So too God would use Moses to save the people of Israel from being overwhelmed by the chaos of Pharaoh
  • Moses is the new Noah
  • And baby Moses is also a miniature Israel

 

On the wall here we have three pictures

  • One of a model train set
  • Another of a dolls house
  • And a third of a miniature dentist’s surgery made out of a shoe box

What seven letter word could we use to describe all of these things?

  • Wait for people to respond
  • Do you need a clue? It begins with ‘D’ – Wait
  • Yes – that’s right, ‘Diorama’

A diorama is a miniature (or a model) of something

  • Like a smaller story nested inside a bigger story

 

Moses’ life is a diorama of Israel

The name ‘Moses’ is actually an Egyptian name probably meaning ‘son’

  • But it sounds like the Hebrew word, ‘to draw out’
  • Just as Pharaoh’s daughter drew Moses out of the Nile, so too God will draw Israel out of Egypt
  • The smaller story of Moses helps people to grasp the bigger story of God

It’s interesting that in the story of baby Moses, God is parallel to Pharaoh’s daughter – an Egyptian princess

  • Now I don’t know about you but I wouldn’t naturally associate God Almighty with a princess – much less a princess who’s Dad is a homicidal maniac
  • And yet this is exactly what the book of Exodus does

Verse 6 tells us that when the princess opened the basket (or the miniature ark) and saw the baby crying, she felt sorry for him

  • This ‘feeling sorry for him’ goes deeper than superficial sentimentality
  • There is a depth to this princess’ feelings
  • Her feelings are actually grounded in compassion, justice and courage
  • For she takes the risk of going against her father’s command and makes a long term commitment to care for Moses
  • Not all the Egyptians were as bad as Pharaoh

At the end of Exodus 2 we read how the Israelites cried out to God under their slavery and the Lord heard their cry and was concerned for them

  • Just as the princess was moved with compassion by the cry of the Hebrew baby so too God is moved with compassion by the cry of his people
  • And just as Pharaoh’s daughter was faithful in protecting & providing for Moses as he grew up, so too God will protect and provide for Israel
  • Baby Moses’ deliverance by the hand of Pharaoh’s daughter is nested in the larger history of Israel’s deliverance by the hand of Yahweh

Of course, it isn’t just Pharaoh’s daughter who delivers Moses – his mother and his sister also had a hand in saving him

  • And so we actually have two women and a girl standing in parallel with God Almighty

So often in history ‘The courage of women is the beginning of liberation’ [2]

On the wall here is a picture of Harriet Tubman

  • Born a slave in the 19th Century in the southern states of America, she endured the harsh existence of a field hand, including brutal beatings.
  • In 1849 she fled slavery, leaving her husband and family behind in order to escape.
  • Despite a bounty on her head, she returned to the South at least 19 times to lead her family and hundreds of other slaves to freedom via the Underground Railroad.
  • People nicknamed her ‘Moses’  [3]

The courage of women is the beginning of liberation

Who can tell me the name of this first lady?      [Wait]

  • Yes – that’s right. Eleanor Roosevelt – wife of U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt
  • Eleanor was vocal in her support of the African-American civil rights movement
  • She opposed her husband on this issue by becoming one of the only voices in the Roosevelt administration insisting that benefits be equally extended to Americans of all races.
  • She also broke with precedent by inviting hundreds of African American guests to the White House.

 

God’s deliverance often comes from unexpected quarters

  • And, from a human perspective at least, God’s deliverance is often a slow train coming

 

When God is silent, we wait in hope:

There are times when God is silent

  • Evil seems to have the upper hand and God appears to be doing nothing
  • This was Israel’s experience in ancient Egypt
  • We can’t be sure how many baby boys were killed but whatever the number it is awful stuff – Pharaoh’s policy was genocide
  • But it wasn’t quick and clean – it is was slow and agonising

By killing the sons, Pharaoh was crushing the people’s hope

  • With no Hebrew boys to marry, the Hebrew daughters would be assimilated into Egyptian culture
  • Pharaoh was taking away Israel’s ability to imagine any future for themselves
  • He was making their lives so miserable they would prefer death to life

We might ask, ‘why did God allow this to happen in the first place?’

  • Wouldn’t it have been easier if God had arranged for someone to throw Pharaoh in the Nile as a baby?

Well, Yahweh doesn’t give the Israelites any explanation for their suffering

  • Like Job they suffer without knowing why
  • As Alex Motyer puts it, “Experience without explanation, adversity without purpose, hostility without protection – that is how life will always appear for the earthly people of God” [4]     

After the death of his wife, C.S. Lewis wrote a book called, ‘A Grief Observed’ in which he says…

 

“Talk to me about the truth of religion and I’ll listen gladly. Talk to me about the duty of religion and I’ll listen submissively. But don’t come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don’t understand.”

When it feels like God is absent – when we really want to hear from God but all we get is silence, our faith is not a consolation – it is a burden (something we feel we must prop up – something we feel obliged to carry)

  • It is extremely difficult to maintain a belief in the goodness of God when bad things are happening to you and God doesn’t appear to be doing anything about it

This feeling that God is absent or has abandoned us is actually common for most Christians

  • It won’t happen all the time but it will probably happen at some point
  • We need to accept (without blame or guilt) that a feeling of God’s absence is part of the journey

As Eugene Peterson puts it…

  • …this seemingly unending stretch of the experience of the absence of God is reproduced in most of our lives, and most of us don’t know what to make of it. We need this ‘Exodus’ validation – that a sense of the absence of God is part of the story, and that it is neither exceptional nor preventable nor a judgment on the way we are living our lives.  [5]

In other words, if you feel like God is absent or silent then it’s not necessarily a reflection on you

  • God doesn’t give people the silent treatment as a punishment

Sometimes we suffer without explanation

  • Not everything in this life gets resolved
  • Not everything has an answer
  • God is not obligated to explain himself
  • Sometimes we must simply wait in hope – without answers

To wait in hope means to remain faithful to God – not to give up on Him, even if it feels like he has given up on us

  • When he was on the cross Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me”
  • In doing this he was not only describing his own personal experience but also giving voice to the collective experience of God’s people through the ages

Waiting in hope is not the same as sitting in depressed silence

  • Waiting in hope may well involve crying out to God in anger
  • Letting God know how we feel – showing him our anguish
  • That’s what many of the psalms are about
  • If God is not speaking then he must be listening
  • And if God is listening then we should pour out our heart to Him – even if the contents of our heart aren’t all that pretty

Quite often God’s deliverance is only recognisable in hindsight

  • This was Israel’s experience
  • Although they had not heard from God, Yahweh was actually very present and very active, quietly sowing the seeds of their salvation
  • Seeds which (in Israel’s case) grew and bore fruit at just the right time

Many wild plants have seeds that can remain dormant for years before birthing a plant

  • For example a 2000 year old date palm seed, found in Israel, actually sprouted when it was planted back in 2005  [6]

 

As for why some seeds can lie dormant before sprouting, scientists reckon it’s mainly a survival technique

  • If a plant’s seeds sprout as soon as there is a little rain and warm weather, then a late frost or subsequent lack of rain will kill it
  • You sometimes hear farmers complaining about this – they get a bit of rain (enough to germinate the grass seed) but then there is no follow up rain so the grass dies before it gets established
  • Plants whose seeds lie in wait until conditions are more stable have a better chance of surviving and of colonizing new territory

Perhaps this is what God was doing with Israel – waiting for the time to be right before drawing his people out of Egypt and planting them in the Promised Land

  • Perhaps this is also what God is doing in your life when He seems absent

The Lord begins his work of redemption quietly, unobtrusively, under the radar, often through the courage of those we least expect

  • In Israel’s case, God sowed his seeds of salvation through women
  • I guess this proves God has a sense of humour for there is considerable irony in Pharaoh’s policy of killing the sons and preserving the daughters
  • As it turned out the daughters were more dangerous than the sons

For those who can’t see, this is a picture of irony – a crocodile eating a pair of crocs (the shoes)

What about this one – a picture of people using an elevator (and not the stairs) to go to the gym

 

And then we have the ultimate irony – a fire hydrant on fire

There is quite a bit of cosmic irony in the book of Exodus, the seeds of which are sown in chapter 2

  • Cosmic irony feeds on the notion that people cannot see the effects of their actions, and sometimes the outcome of a person’s actions may be out of their control

A classic example of cosmic irony is the Titanic, which was promoted as being 100% unsinkable; but, in 1912 the ship sank on its maiden voyage.

  • Or at a ceremony celebrating the rehabilitation of seals after the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, two seals were released back into the wild only to be eaten within a minute by an orca whale

Pharaoh is the butt of cosmic irony in Exodus

  • As Terence Fretheim points out, although Pharaoh had ordered the Hebrew sons to be thrown into the Nile, “the river provides the very setting for the rescue of the baby Moses. Again Pharaoh provides for the defeat of his own policy in its formulation. He ends up becoming an instrument for God’s saving purposes [when he didn’t intend to]…
  • The policy is ironic in that it [predicts] the way in which Pharaoh’s successor and his armies will meet their end, namely by drowning
  • Pharaoh’s own decree sets a chain of events in motion that, in effect, have him signing his own family’s death warrant.” [7]

It’s like Jesus said, ‘The measure you use for others is the measure God will use for you’

  • Cosmic irony, a smaller story nested inside the bigger story of God’s justice

Conclusion:

This morning we have heard how Moses’ story of deliverance anticipates Israel’s deliverance

  • Moses’ story also anticipates the Jesus story – the biggest story of all
  • Like Moses, Jesus was born to save God’s people
  • And just as Pharaoh tried to destroy all the Hebrew sons
  • So too Herod slaughtered Hebrew babies in a vain attempt to kill the Christ
  • But neither Pharaoh nor Herod succeeded – you can’t win in a fight against God

After Jesus’ death and resurrection he ascended to heaven with the promise of returning in glory one day

  • Like the Israelites, we Christians sometimes suffer without explanation
  • And when God is silent, we wait in hope for Christ to return, at just the right moment, to complete our deliverance

Let us pray…

[1] Refer Terence Fretheim, Interpretation Commentary on Exodus, page 38.

[2] Refer J.C. Exum, “You Shall Let Every Daughter Live: A Study f Ex. 1:8-2:10” Semeia 28:63-82 (1983).

[3] http://www.history.com/topics/black-history/harriet-tubman

[4] Alex Motyer, BST Exodus, page 28.

[5] From Eugene Peterson’s book, ‘Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places’, page 153.

[6] http://indianapublicmedia.org/amomentofscience/dormant-seeds/

[7] Quoted in Fretheim’s Interpretation commentary on Exodus, page 35.