Tawa Baptist

Sharing Christ

Scripture: John 7:37-39

Title: Sharing Christ

Structure:

  • Introduction
  • Open wells
  • We are the cup
  • Grace & truth
  • Conclusion

Introduction:

Today, because we have welcomed people into church membership, we take a break from our series on Moses to focus on one of our members’ pledges:

 

To share with other people the gospel of Jesus Christ our Lord.

 

To some people sharing their faith comes naturally, but not to all of us

  • For many of us sharing the gospel of Christ feels anything but natural
  • It feels awkward or difficult or scary
  • And while there is risk involved in sharing our faith we need not be afraid

Looking more closely at that statement on the wall, the word ‘gospel’ simply means good news

  • We Christians are not being asked to share bad news
  • We have something positive to share, something life-giving

And the good news we have to share is about a person, ‘Jesus Christ’

  • Sharing the gospel isn’t primarily about passing on ideas or rules or doctrines (although it does include those things)
  • Sharing the gospel is first & foremost about sharing a relationship – introducing others to Jesus, our friend

Open wells:

One of the best illustrations of what it means to share Christ with others is found in John chapter 7 – page 128 toward the back of your pew Bibles

To put you in the picture, Jesus is in Jerusalem for the festival of shelters

  • This is an 8 day festival held at the end of autumn
  • Autumn, in the Middle East, is usually a dry time of year and the people are looking to God to provide rain
  • On each of the first seven days of the festival the priest draws water from the pool of Siloam, then leads a procession to the Temple, where he pours the water onto the altar
  • The people are reminded of God’s provision for Israel in the wilderness after leaving Egypt – particularly the way God made water pour out of a rock in the desert
  • Words from Isaiah may be read as part of the water pouring ceremony
  • “With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation” [1]
  • Or, “You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail.” [2]

It is against this background that Jesus makes His statement

  • From John 7, verse 37, we read…

[Read John 7:37-39]

 

May the Spirit of Jesus refresh us today

On the wall here is a picture of the fresh water springs at Petone

  • Most of you would have been to this spring I’m sure
  • Water bubbles up through the ground naturally – and as it passes through the sand and gravel the water is purified
  • Even though people could easily get water by turning a tap on at home they still come to the spring to fill up bottles to drink

 

In John 7, Jesus uses the water symbolism of the feast of shelters to talk about the living water He will bestow

  • The land is dry and the people are thinking of rain and of their own physical thirst [3]
  • Jesus turns their attention to the deep need of the soul and to the way he would meet that need – with the gift of Himself, the gift of His Spirit
  • Jesus is like a fresh water spring (or a well) – and the water He offers is God’s Holy Spirit

With this in mind, sharing the gospel of Christ is best understood as introducing others to Jesus – the one person who can satisfy the thirst of the soul

  • In sharing the gospel, therefore, we are showing thirsty people where they can get a drink
  • More than this though we actually become the means through which Jesus delivers His water

 

Jesus says…

  • “Whoever believes in me, streams of life-giving water will pour from his [or her] heart”

In other words, those who believe in Jesus (those who trust Him and are committed to Him) will become a vessel for God’s Holy Spirit

  • Wow – that’s pretty incredible

A fresh water spring or a well works by being accessible and open

  • People are drawn to a well and they draw from a well

One of the keys to sharing our faith is simply being open & honest with people

  • Listening carefully to what people are saying & letting them enquire of us
  • We don’t need to try and make something happen
  • God will create the opportunities naturally – we don’t need to force anything – but we do need to be open and available

If you look at our organ pipes here you will see they have holes in them

  • Holes in either end and a hole in the front
  • The pipes make a sound precisely because they are open
  • If we were to block up the holes so the air couldn’t pass through then there would be no music
  • Each of us is like one of those organ pipes – we must stay open to strike the right note
  • But as organ pipes we don’t provide the air
  • God is the organist and the wind of His Spirit passes through us

Christian believers are like organ pipes and water wells – we work best when we are open – open to God and open to others

Openness to God and to others could mean accepting an invitation to dinner

  • Or, if someone asks you what you did on the weekend you include the fact that you went to church
  • Being open might mean being interruptible enough to listen to someone or help them with something
  • Those who volunteer to help support a refugee family to relocate in our area (if that is needed) are showing an openness to God & to others

Other times openness means allowing people to draw the water of grace & truth out of us by answering the questions they ask, openly and honestly

Not that we must always wait to be asked what we believe – sometimes it is appropriate for us to take the initiative

  • If you can see someone is thirsty, then why not put a cup of water directly into their hands

We are the cup:

Okay, time for a practical demonstration

  • I need a volunteer to come up the front on the stage with me
  • This would especially suit someone who doesn’t like me that much
  • [Wait for volunteer]

On the table over here we have a bowl of water and a cup

  • I want you [the volunteer] to fill the cup with water from the bowl and stand ten steps away from me
  • Now I’m going to open my mouth and I want you to try and throw as much water as you can from the cup into my mouth, without moving from the spot

[Volunteer throws water, I get wet and dry myself]

 

[To the congregation] what would be a better way to get the water into me? [Wait for people to respond]

  • That’s right, pass the cup to me and let me drink from it myself
  • [Get the volunteer to do that – then ask them to sit down]

For the purposes of this illustration I want you to imagine…

  • The bowl is Christ
  • The water is the gospel – the good news of salvation
  • And you are the cup

As the cup you have no ability to manufacture the water by yourself

  • The most you can do is be filled with the good news about Jesus so that others can drink from you

Sharing Christ, sharing the gospel, doesn’t really work from a distance

  • It doesn’t work to throw the gospel at someone
  • You have to get close to people to share your faith
  • Introducing others to Jesus is an intimate thing
  • It will inevitably require us to make ourselves vulnerable

Making yourself vulnerable means demonstrating trust in others

  • In Luke 10, when Jesus sent out 72 of his followers to share the gospel, He said to them, “Go! I am sending you out like lambs among wolves. Do not take a purse or bag or sandals… When you enter a house… stay in that house eating and drinking whatever they give you…”
  • In other words, don’t go in strength, go in weakness
  • In that situation, Jesus wanted his disciples to trust themselves to the mercy and hospitality of strangers
  • Talk about making yourself vulnerable

If you go up to someone cold, on the street, and say to them…

  • ‘You’re going to hell unless you repent and accept Jesus’
  • Then that’s not making yourself vulnerable
  • That’s like throwing water in their face
  • I guess God could use that as a wake-up call for some people
  • But I expect most people would be turned away from Jesus by that sort of approach – it would just make them feel angry and like you’re trying to manipulate them

We need to be careful with the way we represent Christ and His gospel

  • Yes, there is a judgment which we must all face one day
  • And yes, there is a hell which we want to avoid
  • And yes again, Jesus is our hope of salvation
  • But trust needs to come first – faith is the foundation
  • And it’s a far stronger foundation than fear and guilt

We are the cup, we are the container – we don’t manufacture the water, we simply hold it for others to drink

  • But people quite often need to trust the cup before they will drink its contents
  • If the cup is dirty then people will be less inclined to drink from it
  • We need to keep the cup of our soul clean

So what does it mean then to keep the cup clean?

  • Well, in a word, integrity

What we do needs to match what we say

  • It’s no good speaking about faith in Jesus and then ignoring those in need
  • As James says, ‘What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, “Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.’ [4] 

We need to share Christ with our words and our deeds

Integrity (or keeping the cup clean) also means keeping our motives pure

  • Our motivation for sharing Christ with others needs to be love
  • Love for God and love for our neighbour
  • If your motivation is fear or guilt or self-interest then people are less likely to trust you
  • They won’t want to drink from your cup
  • Even if you what you have to say happens to be true

Grace & truth:

There’s a wonderful movie which came out a few years ago called ‘The Bucket List’, starring Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson

  • Carter, the character played by Freeman, is a believer
  • But Edward Cole, played by Nicholson, is not
  • Carter is always trying to put the cup in Edward’s hand, but Edward is reluctant to drink

 

You can put the cup of water into someone’s hand but you can’t make them drink – people need to be thirsty before they will drink

One of the things I like about Freeman’s character in this movie is that he is honest – there is truth in his conversation with Edward – truth with grace

  • Freeman’s character (Carter) does not deny his faith in any way – he accepts Edward without bending to accommodate him too much
  • Carter is honest about who he is and what he believes – and through that honesty trust grows between the two men
  • Then, as the trust grows, Carter begins to challenge Edward
  • Because Edward is actually very thirsty – he just doesn’t know how to satisfy that thirst

Although Nicholson’s character (Edward) is closed to God at first, Carter helps Edward to find the joy in his life

  • In the end Edward’s heart is opened – opened by truth and grace

As we have already noted, the living water Jesus talked about in John 7 is the Holy Spirit of God

  • The key characteristics of the Spirit are truth & grace
  • When the Spirit of Jesus is in us, our words and actions will communicate grace and truth

In John chapter 4 Jesus encounters a Samaritan woman at a well

  • He does the culturally inappropriate thing of asking the woman for a drink of water
  • The woman answers, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan – so how can you ask me for a drink?” (Jews won’t use the same cups as Samaritans)
  • The woman is taken aback by the grace Jesus shows here – the grace of acceptance

And Jesus replies with truth, “If only you knew what God gives and who it is that is asking you for a drink, you would ask him and he would give you life-giving water… ”

As the conversation progresses Jesus asks the woman to go and get her husband

  • But she says, “I haven’t got a husband”
  • And Jesus agrees, “You are right when you say you haven’t got a husband. [The truth is] you have been married to five men and the man you live with now is not really your husband.”

By saying this Jesus reveals that He is a prophet

  • And as a prophet Jesus has put His finger on an inconvenient truth – the woman has a chequered past and is currently living in sin
  • But the woman stays in the conversation with Jesus, even if she does change the subject to talk about where God should be worshipped
  • In the end though Jesus reveals that He is more than just a prophet – He is the Messiah
  • The woman believes in Jesus and tells those in her town about him – many of whom believe also, because of her testimony
  • She has become the first missionary to the Samaritans

 

Conclusion:

To share with other people the gospel of Jesus Christ our Lord.

  • This is one of the most important reasons for us being here

The good news is about a person, ‘Jesus Christ’

  • Sharing the gospel is first & foremost about sharing a relationship – introducing others to Jesus, our friend

In sharing Christ we are not selling anything – we are giving something away, by keeping ourselves open and accessible to God and the world

  • We are not trying to prove something
  • We are putting the cup of the gospel (a cup of grace & truth) into people’s hands and letting them decide for themselves

Let’s pray…

[1] Isaiah 12:3

[2] Isaiah 58:11

[3] Leon Morris, NICNT ‘John’, page 373.

[4] James 2:14-17

Tawa Baptist

God Heals

Scripture: Exodus 15:19-27

Title: God Heals

Structure:

  • Introduction
  • God heals the waters, naturally
  • God heals the people, conditionally
  • Conclusion

Introduction:

Please turn with me to Exodus chapter 15, page 75, near the beginning of your pew Bibles

  • This morning we continue our series on Moses
  • Last week we heard how God & Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt and through the Red Sea
  • This was a journey from triumphalism, through terror, to trust
  • Today Moses & God lead the people from victory, through bitter disappointment to healing & refreshment

From Exodus 15, verse 19, we read…

[Read Exodus 15:19-27]

 

May the Spirit of Jesus illuminate this reading for us

In this Scripture God heals through Moses

  • God heals the bitter waters, naturally
  • And God heals the people, conditionally

 

God heals the waters, naturally:

If we were to make a movie of the Exodus (and people have of course) then the end of chapter 14 would be the perfect place to finish

  • The Israelites (who are the underdogs) have just passed through the Red Sea to safety
  • God (the hero) has won the day and the bad guy (Pharaoh) has been defeated
  • Now the Israelites can ride off into the sunset and live happily ever after
  • The audience can leave the theatre with Miriam’s song of victory ringing in their ears and reality can be avoided for another day

But what if the movie kept going?

  • What if we went past the climax of the story and into ordinary life beyond the happy ending?

This is what happens in Exodus 15

  • After the victory over the Egyptians at the Red Sea, Moses leads the people off into the desert
  • And after three days of walking into the sunset the people are thirsty

You can imagine their disappointment when they do eventually find some water, only to discover it was too bitter to drink

  • This is life after the end credits

Terence Fretheim observes…

  • “It is not enough for the people of God to sing, they must also listen to their God and follow the divine leading” [1]

The people were understandably happy to be delivered from the Egyptians and it was right that they responded to God with songs of praise

  • But the best way to give thanks to God is by listening to what he says and following His lead

Jesus told a parable (in Matthew 21) of a man who had two sons

  • He went to the elder one and said…
  • ‘Son, go and work in the vineyard today’
  • And the elder son replied…
  • ‘Na. Don’t want to’, but later he changed his mind and went
  • Then the father went to the other son and said the same thing
  • The younger son said, ‘Yea sure Dad, be happy to’, but he did not go

The first son says the wrong thing but then he does the right thing

  • The other son says the right thing but he does the wrong thing

It is not enough for the people of God to sing the right words, they must also listen to God and follow His leading

I said last week that passing through the Red Sea was a kind of baptism for Israel

  • Baptism is a new beginning
  • It is not the end of all your problems – it is the end of an old way of life and the start of a new way of life

Shortly after Jesus was baptised the Spirit of God led Him into the wilderness to be tested by Satan

  • It was similar for Israel
  • After their baptism in the Red Sea, God led the people into the wilderness to test them
  • The people needed to learn not just to say the right thing but also to do the right thing
  • Because it is in listening to God and obeying Him that we are healed (spiritually)

Verse 24 of Exodus 15 tells us the people said the wrong thing – they complained to Moses, asking, ‘what are we going to drink?’

Moses models the example of the right thing to do in a situation like this

  • Moses prays earnestly
  • This means both calling on God and listening for His response
  • As Moses listened the Lord showed him a piece of wood (a tree) which Moses threw into the water – to make it drinkable

This is interesting

  • The fact there is a tree here which can be used to heal the bitter waters shows us that God had prepared a solution a long time in advance
  • God is not taken by surprise, even if we are
  • God goes ahead of His people not to remove all obstacles but rather to provide the remedy for the problem

God could have arranged for the tree to fall into the water before the people came to Marah – that way the water would be ok to drink when they arrived

  • But God didn’t do it like that
  • He waited to be asked before helping
  • It’s not that God can’t do anything unless we pray
  • It’s more that we need to be reminded not to take God for granted
  • If things always go our way, or come too easily for us, we will begin to think we did it ourselves and we won’t learn to rely on God

It’s also interesting that God resolved the difficulty with something in nature

  • God doesn’t wave a magic wand or snap His fingers to fix the problem
  • He doesn’t do anything miraculous here
  • God simply uses what’s at hand naturally, in creation, to help His people
  • The point seems to be, if you have a problem, don’t just look up, look around – the solution might be right in front of you

God’s healing of the bitter waters at Marah is perhaps an acted out parable of the healing God intended for Israel

  • Years of oppression and brutality at the hands of the Egyptians was bound to leave its mark
  • God wanted to remove the bitterness caused by this hurt

Okay then, God heals the bitter waters, naturally

  • And, God heals the people, conditionally

God heals the people, conditionally:

The last part of verse 25 tells us that, there (at Marah) the Lord gave them laws to live by

  • We tend to have this idea that God only gave the Law in one place – at Sinai – but God gives the law in a variety of places
  • Which means, “Israel will need to be attentive to the will of God in every life situation, knowing that the body of law given at Sinai may not speak directly to the issue at hand.” [2]

Jesus seemed to understand this

  • He realised that you can’t legislate for every possibility in life
  • You can’t anticipate rules to cover every situation that might arise
  • But you can be attentive to the will of God
  • Because Jesus was listening to God all the time, He was able to see behind the letter of the law to find its spirit – that is, to understand what God’s will was in that particular circumstance
  • The Pharisees, on the other hand, were not listening to God (they were listening to themselves) and so they often missed the point

Now it’s all very well for me to say, ‘we need to listen to God’, but hearing Him clearly is often difficult in practice

  • How do we know if we’ve heard God accurately?
  • Well, one clue is that God reveals His will (or gives His law) to heal people

Yes, healing can come in miraculous ways – like when Jesus restored sight to the blind or when He enabled the lame to walk

  • And healing can come in natural ways too – like when God directed Moses to throw a certain tree into the bitter waters at Marah
  • But God’s healing is also something we participate in through our obedience to the Lord – by the changes we make to our lifestyle
  • The people had to learn God’s laws – His way of living – a new lifestyle, in order to be healed of bad habits – in order for their soul to be restored

When I was younger – a teenager – I injured my back

  • It wasn’t so bad that I couldn’t walk, but it was pretty painful all the same
  • We were new to the Christian faith at that stage
  • My mum asked one of her friends to pray for me and when she did I fell into a deep sleep
  • When I woke up the woman who had prayed for me was gone and my back was healed
  • I had no more pain and I had freedom of movement – it was wonderful
  • A small miracle – But miracles are for beginners

Years later, when I became a pastor, I did a sermon series on Job and during that time, while I was sitting down to plan the series, the pain in my lower back returned – the timing was interesting

  • On this occasion God did not heal me miraculously like He did when I was young
  • This time God showed me through physiotherapists how to change my posture and do exercises to heal & strengthen my back
  • It was like God was teaching me to take better care of myself
  • Now, if I revert to those old habits of not holding myself in the right position, the pain returns
  • But as long as I keep good posture and avoid using my back like a crane it’s fine

In verse 26 God says to Israel…

  • “If you will obey me completely by doing what I consider right and by keeping my commands, I will not punish you with any of the diseases that I brought on the Egyptians. I am the Lord, the one who heals you.”

 

God gives His law (He reveals is will) to heal us

What we notice here, in verse 26, is that this is a conditional statement by God

  • ‘If you obey me I won’t punish you’
  • This does not mean that all sickness is a punishment from God
  • In the context of Exodus 15, God is talking about Himself as a healer,
  • And so we should take this statement positively, as a promise of good things

But even if we take it positively, the promise is still conditional

  • God is not saying, ‘You will enjoy good health no matter what’
  • God is saying, ‘You will enjoy good health if you obey me’
  • It’s like with the physiotherapist, ‘your back will get better if you do the exercises’

Now some of us might struggle with the idea that God’s promise of good health & healing (in this context) is conditional on Israel’s obedience

  • It seems to contradict a belief held by many people today that God’s love is unconditional

To say that “God’s love is unconditional.” (full stop), is misleading

  • It gives some people the impression that they have licence to do whatever they want and get away with it
  • Some use it to claim diplomatic immunity from God’s judgement – like a get out of jail free card

Well, that kind of thinking presumes too much

The Bible does talk about God’s steadfast love & faithfulness

  • It talks about Him being slow to anger and rich in love
  • The Lord is gracious and gives freely to all
  • He causes His rain to fall on the just and the unjust alike [3]

God’s virtue is not interested in reward

  • God loves us because of who He is – not because of what we do
  • God doesn’t stop loving us when we sin – His love for us remains steadfast and true
  • He doesn’t switch His love off and on, like a light
  • His love stays on permanently

But that doesn’t mean we have a licence to do whatever we want

  • The Bible also talks about God punishing those who do wrong
  • Over the last few weeks we’ve heard how God has punished the Egyptians for oppressing the Israelites

You see, love is not licence

  • Love seeks the well-being of the other person
  • And it’s not always in the other person’s interests to give them everything they want
  • Sometimes the most loving thing to do is to impose certain restrictions and certain conditions

A recovering alcoholic needs very firm restrictions & conditions

  • You can’t say to an alcoholic, ‘You’re allowed a drink on special occasions’
  • You have to say, ‘You can never have a drink of alcohol again. And if you blow your wages on booze, I’m not going to come to your rescue
  • I’m not going to buy you groceries because that would just be enabling you to destroy yourself’

Other times imposing conditions is not appropriate and grace is what is needed

So for example, babies need a lot of grace – they don’t need a lot of conditions

  • Babies are completely dependent on their parents to take care of them
  • It’s no good saying to a new born baby…
  • ‘Look you’re going to have to start pulling your weight around here. If you don’t take your turn with the household chores there’s no breast milk for you.’

The goal with babies is to teach them basic trust and we do that by providing a consistent person in their lives – someone who loves them and takes care of them without thought of reward or reimbursement

Of course, as the child develops, they reach a point where they need some conditions placed on them – otherwise they won’t grow up psychologically

  • And so it’s appropriate to say to your 12 year old…
  • ‘If you want pocket money this week then you need to help with the vacuuming or putting the dishes away or mowing the lawns’

Sometimes we experience God’s love unconditionally, as pure grace, no strings attached – but not always

  • There are other times when we experience God’s love with conditions

God’s healing of my back when I was young – that was unconditional, no strings attached, pure grace

  • But God’s healing of my back in mid-life is conditional on the choices I make about how I use my back
  • I don’t think God has stopped loving me because my healing is conditional
  • He’s just loving me in a different way now – by teaching me to take better care of myself

God’s promise to Abraham, to make him the father of a great nation was unconditional

  • Israel did nothing to earn God’s favour
  • Their selection as God’s special people was pure grace
  • As was their deliverance from slavery in Egypt

But God’s healing of their soul, by giving the law, was conditional on the choices they made – whether to listen to God and obey Him, or not

God’s grace – His giving things to us unconditionally, for free – makes it possible for us to live by faith – to trust Him

  • It should also make us think twice about imposing unreasonable conditions on other people

But as well as grace, we also need God’s restrictions & conditions

  • His conditions help us to grow up – they teach us responsibility
  • And His restrictions show us our limits – they give us firm and healthy boundaries, which make it possible for others to trust us
  • If God didn’t impose certain restrictions & conditions on us we would become spoiled and develop an ugly attitude of entitlement
  • Which would make living with other people pretty difficult

Whether we experience God’s unconditional grace or His restrictions & conditions, it is still love – He always has our well-being at heart

Conclusion:

Verse 27 tells us how the people next came to Elim, where there were twelve springs and seventy palm trees; there they camped by the water.

Twelve and seventy – these are numbers representing perfection, completeness

  • God and Moses led the people to a place of rest
  • God does not test us beyond what we can endure
  • Yes there are challenges along the way but there are oasis’ too
  • God wants us to enjoy these pleasant places and be refreshed by them for the journey ahead

God heals the bitter waters, naturally (with what is at hand in creation)

  • God heals the people, conditionally (with His law)
  • And God heals through rest

Let us pray…

Our Father in heaven

  • You are our home,
  • We belong to You

Hallowed be Your name

  • Your integrity is perfect,
  • Your reputation is sacred
  •  

Your Kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven

  • You alone have the wisdom to heal our world
  • We want You in charge

Give us this day our daily bread

  • Nourish and strengthen us for what each day holds
  • You know our needs

Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us

  • Release us from bitterness, resentment and hate
  • Set us free to love our neighbour

Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil

  • Help us God not just to say the right thing
  • But also to do the right thing. Amen.

[1] Terence Fretheim, Exodus, page 176

[2] Terence Fretheim, Exodus, page 179

[3] Matthew 5:45

Tawa Baptist

Israel’s Baptism

Scripture: Exodus 14:5-31

Title: Israel’s Baptism

Structure:

  • Introduction
  • Israel’s baptism
  • Moses’ leadership
  • Jesus’ identity
  • Conclusion

Introduction:

Please turn with me to Exodus chapter 14, page 72 in your pew Bibles

  • Today we continue our series on Moses
  • By this point in the story God has struck Egypt with the tenth plague – the death of the first born
  • Pharaoh has sent the Hebrew people away and they are making good their escape
  • We pick up the story from Exodus 14, verse 5…

[Read Exodus 14:5-31]

 

May the Spirit of Jesus illuminate this reading for us

Impressionist - Starry Night

 

On the wall here is a painting by Vincent Van Gogh

  • Can anyone tell me what style this is painted in? [Wait]
  • Yes – that’s right, ‘Impressionist’ (or post-impressionist)

Impressionism is not interested in capturing a scene with photographic accuracy

  • Impressionism is about capturing the light and movement of a scene
  • This painting is called ‘Starry Night Over The Rhone’
  • You can see how Van Gogh is trying to give the impression of the star light reflecting on the rippling waters of the river – light and movement

Some would describe the account of Israel crossing the Red Sea as impressionistic [1]

  • It recalls a real historical event, perhaps not with photographic accuracy, but certainly in a way which conveys the light & movement of that night

 

We see a real movement for Israel in Exodus 14

  • Not just in the geographical sense of moving from one location to another
  • But in a spiritual sense as the people move from terror to trust – from fear of death to faith in God
  • In fact, as Christians looking back at this, we get the overall impression that Israel (as a nation) went through a kind of baptism when they passed through the Red Sea
  • This was a conversion experience, an internal change took place for them

Israel’s baptism:

Verse 8 of Exodus 14 tells us the Israelites were leaving Egypt triumphantly

  • They were full of confidence and bluster in other words

Triumphalism is the counterfeit of true faith

  • Triumphalism feels like what we imagine faith should feel like, but it actually isn’t faith

Triumphalism insulates us from reality

  • Faith exposes us to reality

Triumphalism is the advertisement

  • Faith is using the product

Triumphalism is maxing out our credit card and telling ourselves we will pay for it later

  • Faith is waiting until we can pay for it by cash

Triumphalism is telling ourselves we don’t need to prepare for exams – we just need to pray

  • Faith is studying

Triumphalism is the illusion (or the fantasy) that we cannot fail, that we are bullet proof, that we are always right and this will be easy

  • Faith is waking up from the fantasy, realising from experience that we can fail, that we are not bullet proof, that this life is difficult in practice

Triumphalism is what young men feel when they enlist in the army to go to war – “We’ll be home by Christmas”, they said

  • Faith is surviving the battle and learning respect for our enemies

Triumphalism is falling in love

  • Faith is the commitment to tough it out through the hard times

Triumphalism is what we Christians sometimes feel on a Sunday morning when we sing heroic songs to God, surrounded by people who think the same as us

  • Faith is Monday to Saturday when we are out in the world at work or school surrounded by people who think differently to us
  • Faith is also when we are at home struggling with grizzly children or at home by ourselves struggling with loneliness

We could go on but you get the point…

  • Triumphalism has no foundation – it is based on illusion
  • Faith has a firm foundation – it is based on reality

The Israelites left Egypt triumphantly, not realising their confidence had no foundation – it was based on a passing feeling

  • God was about to give them a firm foundation though – the reality of experiencing His salvation

From verse 10 of Exodus 14 we read…

When the Israelites saw the king and his army marching against them, they were terrified and cried out to the Lord for help. They said to Moses, “Weren’t there any graves in Egypt? Did you have to bring us out here in the desert to die? …It would be better to be slaves there than to die here in the desert.”

 

Their bubble of triumphalism has been burst

  • We shouldn’t be too hard on the Israelites though
  • Their backs were against the wall at this point
  • They were trapped between the devil and the deep blue sea
  • Or more precisely between Pharaoh’s army and the Red Sea
  • So they had good reason to panic

In that moment of terror, as they feared for their lives, and all trace of triumphalism had been drained from their hearts – it probably felt like they were a long way from faith

  • But in actual fact, the Israelites were closer to faith when they were scared than they were when they left Egypt triumphantly
  • The terror of the Egyptian army purged the Hebrew people of all illusion
  • The reality of their mortality wiped the slate clean to make room for faith
  • Fear is like a wind which blows the fog of fantasy away

You see, it is our thirst which makes us drink

  • It is our need which brings us to God
  • And it can be fear which brings us to our senses, clearing the way for faith

At God’s command Moses raised his hand and the Lord parted the sea so the people could walk through

  • Their walking through the sea was an act of faith
  • Faith isn’t just what we say we believe in the safety of church
  • Faith is what we do both in the ordinary moments of our lives and in those moments of utter desperation
  • Through the night the nation of Israel made its way on dry ground while God held back the water and the Egyptians

At the end of chapter 14, when the Israelites have made it through safely to the other side and they see the Egyptians lying dead on the seashore, we read how they [the Hebrew people] had faith in the Lord

  • The experience of God’s salvation has changed the Israelites
  • An internal shift has taken place within them
  • God has taken Israel from triumphalism through terror to trust
  • He has brought them from fantasy through fear to faith
  • The past is dead on the seashore – the future is open before them

It’s not that their faith is made perfect yet – baptism is just a beginning – the people still have a long way to go before they reach the Promised Land

  • But it is a start – the experience of God’s salvation has given Israel foundation for their faith

Okay, having heard about Israel’s baptism into faith, let’s now consider Moses’ leadership in this situation…

 

Moses’ leadership:

Although Moses is Israel’s leader, verse 31 describes him as The Lord’s servant

  • Moses is the original servant leader
  • Moses does not exercise leadership for his own benefit, as Pharaoh did
  • Moses exercises leadership in service to God’s agenda
  • He takes his direction from God and the people follow Moses
  • This serves both God’s purpose and the well-being of the people

One of the qualities required of leaders – and particularly of servant leaders – is differentiation

Differentiation is a term coined by the psychologist Murray Bowen

  • ‘Differentiation’ refers to a person’s capacity to “define his or her own life’s goals and values apart from the pressures of those around them” [2]

To put it another way, ‘differentiation’ is the ability to hold on to yourself, while staying connected to others

  • Holding on to yourself means holding on to who you are
  • Holding on to your beliefs and values – your integrity
  • Sticking to what you know is right and not being too easily swayed by other people’s feelings or opinions
  • Staying true to yourself, in other words

People who can differentiate in their relationships are able to stay calm, manage their anxiety and avoid blaming other people 

Rudyard Kipling has a famous poem – the opening lines of which describe differentiation. It goes like this…

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating…

                                  …you’ll be a man, my son!

 

Good leadership requires the emotional intelligence to differentiate – to hold onto yourself like this

Now this concept of differentiation or ‘holding onto yourself’ is not new – it’s been around for thousands of years

  • When our core beliefs and values (our true self) is informed by God, differentiation goes by the term: ‘Fear of the Lord’
  • “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom”
  • It sets you free from the fear of lesser things – like the fear of man

To fear the Lord is to not be swayed by the opinion of others

  • So when people think you are a bit simple for believing in God
  • When they say that science is the answer to everything
  • And that religion is the opiate of the people
  • You don’t go along with that – you hold onto yourself
  • You stick to what you believe in your heart – that God is real and that one day, every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that Jesus is Lord
  • But you’re not offended either – you don’t just walk away
  • You simply smile & ask them what they believe & quietly pray for them

To fear the Lord is to stay calm in a crisis, even when people are saying the crisis is your fault

  • So when the boss is swearing at you at work because things didn’t go well that day
  • Or you are the boss and your team is not talking to you because you had to make a hard decision that they can’t understand
  • Or you’re at home and your kids are telling you it’s not fair and you’re the worst parent in the world
  • Or you’re on the sports field and some clown is yelling at you from the side lines because they are frustrated with their own lives
  • In those situations, to fear the Lord, means remembering that God is your judge – no one else
  • Not your boss, not your teacher, not your work mates, not your parents, not your children and certainly not the random armchair critics

Fear of the Lord, in the specific sense of remembering that God is our judge, enables us to hold onto our perspective and not take the criticism personally

  • It helps us to turn the other cheek and stay in the conversation
  • To listen without reacting and to communicate without antagonising

Differentiation, fear of the Lord, holding on to yourself, whatever you want to call it – if you can do that, you have the makings of a servant leader

Moses could do that

  • In verses 10-14 Moses demonstrates a high level of differentiation
  • Moses holds onto himself under extreme pressure

The entire Egyptian army is bearing down on them

  • They have nowhere to run and Moses has brought them to this cul-de-sac of death
  • Over a million people are terrified and blaming him saying things like…
  • “Did you have to bring us out here in the desert to die? Didn’t we tell you this would happen?”

And how does Moses respond?

  • With a message of good news
  • He doesn’t get angry with the people
  • He doesn’t turn the blame back on them or give in to their fear
  • Nor does he walk away

Moses holds onto himself, while staying connected to the people

  • He keeps his perspective and he sticks to what he believes, saying…
  • Do not be afraid
  • Stand your ground
  • You will see God’s salvation

Stay calm – be still – wait for God

This is not triumphalism – this is an invitation to faith

For Moses to respond in this way (with a message of good news), under these circumstances, required a high level of differentiation

  • Moses feared the Lord, more than he did the Red Sea or the Egyptians
  • Moses was more concerned about God’s opinion than he was the opinion of the people
  • Moses was able to define and differentiate what he believed & felt from what the people believed & felt
  • And he was able to hold onto his personal conviction without letting go of his connection with the people
  • So he was not swamped or knocked over by the tidal wave of criticism coming his way

As I said earlier, the experience of God’s salvation changed the Israelites

  • Verse 31 again, When the Israelites saw the great power with which the Lord had defeated the Egyptians, they feared the Lord
  • In other words, they began to learn to differentiate
  • They began to learn to hold onto themselves
  • Or, as Terence Fretheim puts it…
  • “Israel’s perspective will now be shaped by what God does, not by what the Egyptians do…”  [3]

It’s fair to say that, at this point, Israel has not mastered differentiation by any means – but it is a start

  • By saving Israel, God has strengthened the nation’s identity as His people

Jesus’ identity:

Strength of identity is key when it comes to holding onto ourselves

  • Those who have a clear understanding of who they are and who they are not, are less likely to lose their shape or identity around others

Jesus had a strong sense of identity – He knew in His heart of hearts (through & through) that He was God’s Son

After His baptism in the Jordan River, by John the Baptiser, God said of Jesus,

  • “This is my own dear Son with whom I am pleased” [4]
  • With this clear sense of identity Jesus was able to differentiate – to hold onto Himself throughout His ministry

So when the Devil tempted Jesus in the wilderness saying, ‘If you are the Son of God’, do this, that and the other thing [5]

  • Jesus was able to refuse, saying in effect…
  • ‘I have nothing to prove. I am not defined by what I do or what I own or what other people think of me. I am defined by God.’

Jesus held onto Himself in His confrontations with the religious leaders too

  • Like when He broke their man-made traditions by healing on the Sabbath
  • Or when He stood up for a woman caught in adultery [6]

Sticking to your principles in the face of an enemy is one thing but, in many ways, differentiation is more difficult when it comes to family & friends…

Like when Jesus’ mother and siblings came to take charge of Him – to bring Him home with them – because they doubted Him

  • Jesus was able to stay true to God’s purpose for Him and say,
  • ‘Anyone who does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother, my sister, and my mother’ [7]
  • Sometimes our family make it hard for us to leave home – but Jesus feared God more than His mum

He also feared God more than His friends – like when Jesus predicted His own death & resurrection and Peter took Jesus aside to rebuke Him

  • Jesus defined His purpose as different from Peter’s purpose, saying…
  • ‘Get away from me Satan… These thoughts of yours don’t come from God, but from man.’ [8]

We could go on but you get the point…

  • Jesus had a strong sense of identity grounded in His relationship with God
  • And from this firm foundation he had a tremendous capacity to stay true to God’s purpose for Him through all kinds of circumstances

Conclusion:

Differentiation, fear of the Lord, holding on to yourself, whatever you want to call it – it’s difficult to learn

  • None of us are quite at the level of Moses or Jesus (least of all me)
  • But that’s okay – we are all on a journey with this stuff
  • We don’t need to beat ourselves up about not being perfect
  • We do need to know that God’s grace is sufficient for us
  • And we also need to know what we’re aiming for

The temptation for us may be to try and manufacture our own identity…

  • Perhaps by what we do in racking up a long list of achievements,
  • Or by what we accumulate in terms of possessions,
  • Or maybe by pretending to be what we are not

Authentic identity cannot be manufactured

  • It can only be received as a gift from God

By the experience of God’s salvation the Israelites learned to fear the Lord and to trust Him as well

  • And through this process their identity as the people of God was strengthened

By the experience of Christ’s salvation of us we learn to fear the Lord and trust Him as well

  • And through this process our identity as members of the body of Christ is formed

Let us pray…

[1] For example, Terence Fretheim in his commentary on Exodus, page 158

[2] Quoted in Peter Scazzero’s book, ‘Emotionally Heathy Spirituality’, page 82

[3] Terence Fretheim, Exodus, page 156

[4] Matthew 3:13-17

[5] Matthew 4:1-11

[6] John 8:1-11

[7] Matthew 12:46-50

[8] Matthew 16:21-28

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

Meek Moses

Scripture: Exodus 9:8 to 11:10

Title: Meek Moses

Structure:

  • Introduction
  • God’s Grace
  • Moses’ Meekness
  • Conclusion

Introduction:

Please turn with me to Exodus chapter 9, page 67 in your pew Bibles

  • Today we continue our series on Moses
  • Last Sunday we covered the first five plagues that God brought on Egypt – blood, frogs, gnats, flies and death of animals
  • This morning we will cover the remaining five plagues – boils, hail, locusts, darkness and the death of the first born

Our message today is a sermon of two halves

  • The first half focuses on God’s grace in bringing the plagues
  • And the second half focuses Moses’ meekness

We don’t have time to read chapters 9 through to 11 in full, so I’ll just read the account of the sixth plague to put you in the picture and then pick the eyes out of the rest

  • From Exodus 9, verse 8 we read…

[Read Exodus 9:8-12]

May the Spirit of Jesus illuminate this reading for us

God’s Grace:

Things aren’t always what they seem

  • On the wall here we have a picture of a rough looking homeless man and a sweet looking girl
  • We might be more inclined to trust the girl but when we take a second look behind their backs – we see the man is holding flowers and the girl is holding an axe

Things are not always as they seem

  • At first glance the plagues on Egypt make God appear mean and cruel
  • But when we take a closer look we find the plagues actually point to God’s grace

The sixth plague (of boils) is the most personal and painful the Egyptians have experienced so far

  • The first four plagues were a significant inconvenience
  • But the sixth plague directly affected the Egyptians’ health

Pharaoh’s magicians were unable to stand before Moses because they were covered in sores – they have been publicly humiliated, shown up as frauds

Verse 12 of Exodus 9 says, the Lord made the king stubborn

  • God had predicted, right at the beginning, that He would make Pharaoh stubborn
  • But God doesn’t actually do this until the sixth plague
  • Up till now (with the first five plagues) it has been Pharaoh who has hardened his own heart
  • It is only after the boils that God starts to harden Pharaoh’s heart
  • Why is this?

Well, the Lord is gracious and compassionate – slow to anger and rich in love

  • By the end of the fifth plague God has given Pharaoh at least seven opportunities to repent – to admit he is wrong & let Israel go
  • Two chances before the plagues and then five more with the plagues
  • But Pharaoh hardened his own heart and missed the opportunities for grace that God offered

Sometimes in life there is a point of no return – a point at which we might realise our mistake but are unable to avoid the consequences of our actions

  • Like going too fast around a corner and losing control of your car – there comes a point when you just know it’s too late for you to do anything to correct the problem and the car is going to leave the road
  • Or like swimming in the ocean and getting caught in a rip – there comes a point when you realise the current has got you and there is nothing you can do to fight it

Other times we might not realise we have gone past the point of no return and still try to fix the problem ourselves

  • When it says that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart, it means that God prevented Pharaoh from realising he had gone past the point of no return

It’s like God had given Pharaoh (the driver of Egypt’s car) plenty or warnings that a corner was coming, so he should slow down

  • But Pharaoh ignored the signs and when he lost control on the bend he tried to fix the problem by going faster
  • Of course the faster you go the bigger the mess

Or to use the metaphor of getting caught in a rip…

  • God had given Pharaoh plenty of warnings of a strong current but Pharaoh ignored the signs and when he got caught in the rip he wore Egypt out trying to swim against it

From the sixth plague onwards, Pharaoh has gone past the point of no return and so God gives Pharaoh over to the consequences of Pharaoh’s own actions

  • By repeatedly refusing to let the Hebrews go Pharaoh sealed his own fate
  • Now God is committed to finishing the cycle of plagues

The seventh plague is hail – not just little pea sized hail, like we might be used to, but pieces big enough to kill livestock and break branches off trees

  • With this plague God makes it clear that Pharaoh deserves to die for his crimes – indeed God could have killed Pharaoh with the boils
  • But instead God is keeping Pharaoh alive and prolonging the plagues
  • Why is this?

Well, the Lord is gracious – He has compassion on all that He has made

Now you might think – how is it gracious & compassionate to prolong Egypt’s suffering?

  • If Pharaoh has gone past the point of no return wouldn’t it be kinder to simply end it and put him out of his misery?
  • No – that would not be the kindest thing in this situation

God’s purpose is not to destroy Pharaoh or to make him suffer

  • God’s purpose is to reveal Himself to the whole world

From verse 15 of Exodus 9, God says to Pharaoh (through Moses)…

  • “If I had raised my hand to strike you and your people with disease, you would have been completely destroyed
  • But to show you my power I have let you live so that my fame might spread over the whole earth”

God could have completely annihilated the Egyptians – He could have wiped them off the face of the earth so the nation of Egypt no longer existed

  • But He didn’t – God, in His grace, withheld the full force of His power
  • God wants all people everywhere (including the Egyptians) to know His name – to know His character – to know His love

This isn’t God blowing His own trumpet to make Himself look good

  • This is God making all people of the earth aware who the Lord of creation is so that we might be saved from the futility of idol worship
  • God isn’t doing the plagues for Himself – He is doing them for the well-being of the human race

As a token of His grace God instructs Moses to tell the Egyptians to stay indoors so they are not harmed by the coming hail

  • It is clear that God doesn’t want to see people or animals suffer
  • Some people heed the warning and are saved
  • Others ignore Moses and pay the price

The other point to note with the hail is that the Israelites in Goshen were not affected – once again God makes a distinction

The eighth plague is locusts – probably the most well-known of the plagues

  • What the hail didn’t destroy the locusts did
  • Now Egypt’s economy was ruined and the people faced a famine

What isn’t so well known from our distance in history is that the Egyptians worshipped Senehem, a god who supposedly protected Egypt’s crops from insects [1]

  • The plague of locusts were a clear sign that Senehem (the god of insecticide) was a false god
  • Whenever the Egyptian gods are put to the test they prove unreliable
  • It isn’t just Pharaoh’s injustice which is being judged and found wanting
  • Egypt’s whole religious system is rotten too

We could say the locusts are a sign against out of control consumerism

  • Just as the locusts stripped the plant life bare so too Egypt was stripping bare the environment and the Hebrew people
  • And just as the locusts were eventually driven into the Red Sea, so too the Egyptian army would be driven into the sea
  • The locusts are a warning to all societies to keep consumerism in check

With the locusts Pharaoh’s own advisors tell him to let the Hebrews go but still Pharaoh won’t listen

  • It seems everyone understands the situation except the king
  • Pharaoh thinks he is right when he is actually wrong
  • Hardness of heart is blindness

The ninth plague is a darkness over the land that was so heavy it could be felt

  • The darkness lasted for 3 days everywhere in Egypt, except where the Israelites were
  • This plague is a blow against Amon-Re, the sun god – Egypt’s chief god [2]

It is also a sign that God is on the cusp of a new creation

  • With the darkness God takes Egypt back to primordial chaos [3] – before the first day of creation when God had said ‘Let there be light’
  • Just as God separated light from darkness in the beginning – so now he is about separate Israel from Egypt
  • God’s grace is seen in the way He brings order to the chaos – the way He restores the moral order
  • It’s like God is pressing the reset button to make things new again

By this ninth plague (of darkness) Pharaoh was livid – in anger he threatened to kill Moses if he ever came back

  • Moses wasn’t worried though – he did come back – at least one more time to warn Pharaoh about the death of the first born
  • In verse 6 of Exodus 11 Moses predicts…
  • “There will be loud crying all over Egypt…”
  • Just as Israel had cried out under the yoke of slavery, so too all Egypt would cry out in grief with the death of their first born

You might say, ‘Where’s the grace in that – in killing children?’

  • Well, grace is when we are treated better than we deserve
  • As terrible as the death of the first born was, Egypt was still escaping full punishment
  • At least two Pharaoh’s had a policy of genocide against the Jewish race
  • By that measure, if Pharaoh and the Egyptians were to get what they truly deserved, they would have all been killed and Egypt wouldn’t exist today
  • God’s grace is seen in that He withheld the full force of His judgement and allowed the nation to survive
  • So even with the death of the first born Egypt was being treated better  than it deserved

Pharaoh could have had more of God’s grace if he wanted but he was too proud and rejected it

  • Like Pharaoh, we all have a choice
  • We can choose God’s grace or His judgement
  • We can humbly receive God’s mercy or we can proudly insist on justice
  • We can put our trust in Jesus or we can rely on our own deeds

As for the children who died – I am inclined to believe they were better off in heaven with God than they would have been with their parents on earth

Verse 8 of Exodus 11 tells us that Moses left the king in great anger

  • It gave Moses no pleasure to see the Egyptians suffer – he was angry that Pharaoh was bringing so much bloodshed and grief on his own people

So that’s the first half of the sermon

  • Things are not always as they seem
  • A closer look at the plagues reveals God’s grace
  • Now let’s turn our attention to Moses himself

Moses’ Meekness:

What we notice with the last five plagues is that Aaron fades out of the picture

  • We hear about Aaron less and we see Moses in action more

Numbers 12, verse 3 says that Moses was a meek man – the meekest on earth

  • So what does that word meek mean anyway?
  • Well to help us understand this I need two volunteers
  • This is not difficult or embarrassing – in fact if you like eating brownie you might find it quite enjoyable

[Select two volunteers and give them a piece of brownie each – ask them to taste the brownie and try to guess the ingredients]

 

Ingredients:

  • Cocoa
  • Chocolate bar (white / raspberry & dark / hazelnut chocolate)
  • Sugar
  • Flour
  • Butter
  • Vanilla essence
  • Eggs

Now obviously there are a number of ingredients which go into making a brownie – a brownie isn’t just one ingredient

  • So it is with meekness
  • We can’t describe or define meekness with just one word
  • Meekness combines a number of qualities in just the right proportion

The main qualities or ingredients which go into the mix of a meek character include…

  • A good measure of humility
  • A healthy self-awareness coupled with self-restraint
  • Patience
  • Inner strength or back bone
  • A capacity for long suffering
  • And respect for others

Putting these ingredients together we might say, a meek person will put aside their own ambitions and desires for the sake of someone else

Or said another way, meekness is the readiness to restrain one’s own power in order to make room for others

By this definition a meek person has power and the ability to exercise it – they simply choose to restrain their power for the well-being of others

We see God’s meekness in dealing with Egypt

  • Although Egypt deserved to be wiped out altogether, God (in His grace)  dialled back His power and allowed the country to survive

In this sense meekness is close to mercy, but not exactly the same

  • With mercy someone uses their power to help someone else
  • But with meekness it’s the opposite – they hold back their power to help someone else

So for example, a meek person won’t rush in to take the last piece of cake

  • They will wait to see if someone else wants it first

Or, if there is a lolly scramble a meek child won’t grab as many lollies as they can without regard to others

  • A meek child will hold back a little to let the younger kids get some lollies

A meek person makes room for others in a conversation by listening

Turning the other cheek when someone strikes you and not seeking revenge is another example of the self-restraint of the meek

  • Likewise, when we forgive someone we make room for that person to change and we also make room for God to sort them out

Recently, in the lead up to our AGM, we invited members of the congregation to put themselves forward for the role of deacon or to nominate someone else for the Deacons Board

  • We were one person short of the minimum number of deacons required
  • So either there are lots of meek people in this church (all wanting to make room for others) or hardly anyone wants to be a deacon

It is interesting that God called Moses to be Israel’s leader

  • God chose a man who is the very definition of meekness to lead His people – someone who was powerful and yet ready to restrain his power in order to make room for others

Moses had all of the ingredients of meekness and we see them on display through his interaction with Pharaoh, who is the opposite of meek

  • The light of Moses’ meekness shines brightly against the darkness of Pharaoh’s greed

[Stop displaying slide 3]

 

Moses demonstrates patience and long suffering with Pharaoh

  • And Moses makes room for Pharaoh to turn to God by repeatedly forgiving Pharaoh whenever he asks for help
  • Four times in the cycle of ten plagues Pharaoh asks Moses to pray for him and each time Moses prays, the Lord removes the plague
  • But Pharaoh’s repentance is shallow – it has no roots – for as soon as the plague is lifted the king goes back on his word

Many people today equate meekness with being quiet and submissive or easily imposed on by other people

  • They see meekness as the sign of a weak or limp personality – sort of the opposite of assertiveness
  • But meekness is not weakness.
  • Meekness requires an uncommon degree of inner strength
  • Meekness does not mean giving in to everyone all the time
  • As well as being meek Moses is also discerning – he knows when to give way and when to stand his ground

When Pharaoh tries to negotiate with Moses, Moses does not compromise

  • For example, with the plague of flies Pharaoh says, ‘your people can sacrifice here in Egypt – but they can’t leave the country’
  • And Moses says, ‘No, we must travel 3 days into the wilderness’
  • Then with the locusts Pharaoh says, ‘the men can go but the women and children must stay’
  • But Moses doesn’t budge – they all leave or none of them go
  • And then with the darkness Pharaoh agrees to let the women and children go, but says the Hebrews must leave their livestock
  • Once again Moses is uncompromising saying, ‘No, we will take our animals with us’

I imagine it would have been very tempting for Moses to give in to Pharaoh – to make concessions for him

  • Moses would have been under incredible pressure
  • All these people suffering and he could potentially end their suffering by negotiating with Pharaoh
  • But compromising with the king would mean disobeying God
  • God has said all the people must travel 3 days into the wilderness to worship Him and Moses won’t change what God has said
  • By standing his ground and insisting on what God has asked for Moses makes room for God

Meekness is not weakness – meekness is humility

  • Moses doesn’t presume to know better than God
  • Moses walks in humble obedience to God’s word

Conclusion:

Jesus is our model in meekness

  • We see this most clearly in the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus wrestles with God’s request that he go to the cross
  • Jesus says, ‘Not my will Father, but Your will be done.’
  • Jesus had the power to walk away but he didn’t
  • Instead Jesus restrained his own will to make room for God and for us

In doing this Jesus was practising what he preached when he said…

Blessed are the meek for they will inherit the earth.

In other words…

  • Blessed are those who restrain their own power to make room for others
  • Blessed are those who walk in humble obedience to God
  • Blessed are those who are patient and suffer long without taking revenge
  • Because when we make room for God and for others, God makes room for us – it is the meek (not the greedy & grasping) who inherit the earth

The Lord is gracious & compassionate – His is the power of meekness

Let us pray…

[1] Alec Motyer, Exodus, page 124

[2] Alec Motyer, Exodus, page 125

[3] Terence Fretheim, Exodus, page 129

Tawa Baptist

Striking Signs

Scripture: Exodus 7:14-25 (followed by 8:1-9:7)

 

Title: Striking Signs

 

Structure:

  • Introduction
  • Striking
  • Signs
  • Conclusion

 

Introduction:

Please turn with me to Exodus 7, page 65 near the beginning of your pew Bibles

  • This morning we continue our series on Moses in the book of Exodus
  • Moses & Aaron have, by this stage, met with Pharaoh twice and both times the king refused to let the Israelites go
  • Now come the plagues

 

There were 10 plagues altogether – this morning we will cover the first five: blood, frogs, gnats, flies and the death of animals

  • For the sake of time I will only read the account of the first plague in full and then give you a brief overview of the next four plagues
  • From Exodus 7, verse 14, we read…

 

[Read Exodus 7:14-25]

 

May the Spirit of Jesus illuminate this Scripture for us

 

So that was the first plague God brought on Egypt – turning water to blood

 

The next plague was an infestation of frogs

  • Frogs everywhere – all through the house, in people’s kitchens, bedrooms, pantries, toilets, you name it
  • As with the first plague Pharaoh’s magicians were able to replicate it – although this would be the last plague they could copy
  • But unlike the first plague Pharaoh said to Moses, pray to the Lord to take away the frogs and I will let your people go
  • So, the next day Moses prayed and the frogs all died leaving a terrible stench in the land from rotting flesh
  • Sadly, Pharaoh went back on his word and refused to the let the people go

 

 

The third plague was to change the dust of Egypt into gnats

  • We are not sure exactly what type of insect is meant by a gnat but it was something annoying and disgusting like mosquitos or fleas or lice
  • Unlike the first two plagues, Pharaoh’s magicians were not able to replicate gnats and admitted, “God has done this”
  • But still the king refused to release the Israelites

 

 

The fourth plague was swarms of flies – once again an incredibly annoying and disgusting plague

  • The main difference here is that God makes a distinction so that only the Egyptians are affected while the Israelites in Goshen have no flies
  • Pharaoh tries to negotiate with Moses at this point saying, ‘you can offer sacrifices to your God here in Egypt but you can’t leave’
  • Moses doesn’t compromise though
  • So Pharaoh says, ‘Okay, I’ll let you go, just don’t go too far’
  • Moses prays and the next day the flies leave
  • But the king remained stubborn and went back on his word a second time

 

The fifth plague was a disease which killed all kinds of animals – horses, donkeys, camels, cattle, sheep and goats.

  • As with the fourth plague the Israelite’s animals were not affected
  • And yet still the king refused to let the Israelites go

 

All these plagues are both a striking of Egypt and a sign to Pharaoh at the same time

  • First let us consider the plagues as a striking of Egypt

 

Striking:

We are going to have a little quiz now – it’s multi-choice so it’s fairly easy

First question:

  • What was Moses’ job before he encountered God at the burning bush?
    • A.) Camel salesman
    • B.) Preacher
    • C.) Shepherd
    • D.) Farrier
    • [Wait]

Yes – that’s right – C.) Shepherd 

Okay – next question, something slightly harder this time:

  • What two shepherd’s tools are mentioned in the fourth verse of the 23rd Psalm?
    • A.) Slingshot & knife
    • B.) Slingshot & shears
    • C.) Rod & spear
    • D.) Rod & staff              [Wait]

Yes – that’s right – D.) “Your rod & staff they comfort me”

 

Now, one more question. This one is a bit tricky though:

  • Which one of these diagrams best resembles a shepherd’s rod?
    • A.) or B.)?
    • [Wait]

The shepherd’s rod is A.)

  • B.) is a picture of a shepherd’s staff (what we might call a shepherd’s crook)

 

A shepherd’s rod is basically a weapon – like a mace or a club

  • The shepherd’s rod is shorter than a staff with a lumpy heavy round bit on the end for hitting predators with
  • The shepherd uses their rod to protect the sheep from wild animals
  • They use the staff for gently bringing the sheep back into line and steering them in the right direction
  • For this reason both the rod & the staff are a comfort to the sheep – because they make the sheep safe

 

When it comes to the plagues and God striking Egypt we need to be careful to remember the character of our God

  • Some people are frightened by the plagues and come away with faulty ideas of a God who is always violent and angry and out to punish people
  • That perception of God is quite unfair

 

It is more accurate and more helpful to think about the Lord as a good shepherd who cares for His sheep

  • This includes protecting His flock (Israel) from predators like Pharaoh.
  • The shepherd does not want to kill the wolf but if the wolf is attacking his sheep, and won’t be scared off, what choice does the shepherd have?

 

As Israel’s shepherd the Lord God takes His rod and strikes Egypt with plagues in order to protect His flock

  • What we notice though is that the first four plagues (blood, frogs, gnats and flies) are not calculated to hurt anyone, but rather to make life unpleasant
  • It’s not until the sixth plague (of boils) that God actually strikes people
  • So in protecting His flock from the big bad wolf (that is from Pharaoh) God does not go in for the kill straight away
  • God tries to warn Pharaoh off first

 

In God’s hand the rod of the plagues is both an instrument of judgement and an instrument of salvation at the same time

  • In general terms, the rod means judgment for Egypt & salvation for Israel
  • We see this pointed to in the fourth plague, where flies trouble the Egyptians but not the Israelites,
  • And in the fifth plague, where many of the Egyptian’s animals die while the Hebrew animals live
  • God makes a distinction you see – He doesn’t use His rod on His own sheep – God only uses the rod on those who threaten His sheep
  • So while the plagues are terrifying to the Egyptians they are a comfort to the Hebrews because they demonstrate that God is doing something to help His oppressed people – thy rod & staff comfort me

 

Now at this point I need to make it clear, just because God was behind the plagues in ancient Egypt, it does not automatically follow that all natural disasters, pandemics, famines and pestilence can be attributed to God

 

New Zealand suffers from a pestilence of opossums, which threaten our natural environment, but that is not God punishing us

  • The opossums were introduced by man in 1837 to establish a fur trade
  • God didn’t plague NZ with opossums – our ancestors did

 

I don’t believe the earthquakes in Nepal were a punishment from God

  • As far as I know the Nepalese people are not oppressing anyone like the Egyptians did
  • Earthquakes are caused by the movement of tectonic plates
  • If you live on a fault line you have to expect earthquakes from time to time – but that doesn’t mean God is striking you

 

Not every bad thing that happens in the world can be thought of as a divine punishment

 

Signs:

If something is a plague from God then usually there is some kind of relationship between the plague and the problem

  • The plague serves as a sign (or a clue) as to what the evil is

 

So when God turns the River Nile to blood we see how this points to the crime

  • Pharaoh once decreed that Hebrew babies be thrown into the Nile to drown or be eaten by crocodiles
  • By turning the river to blood God is reminding Pharaoh of what he has done – Pharaoh has spilled innocent blood in the Nile
  • But Pharaoh ignores the sign

 

The first two plagues (of blood and frogs) both caused an awful stink

  • Perhaps God was saying here, ‘Pharaoh, your injustice stinks – it is an offensive stench to me – if you get up my nose I’ll get up yours’

 

The other thing the first two plagues share in common is that Pharaoh’s magicians were able to replicate them

  • They were able to turn water into blood and produce more frogs
  • The irony is, this only made matters worse
  • If the magicians had any real power they would have used it to reverse the plagues – surely
  • The point is: the magicians of Egypt are part of the problem – Pharaoh should get rid of them

 

The third and fourth plagues of gnats & flies also give a clue to what the problem is

  • Generally speaking the Egyptians were scrupulously clean – they shaved off all their hair and they showered 5x a day in order to pray to their idols
  • So you can imagine what a horror it was for them to be covered with lice and fleas and mosquitos and maggots and flies
  • It would have interrupted their religious rituals
  • Perhaps the Lord was saying to them here, ‘You may pride yourself on cleanliness but in reality your deeds are filthy – if you won’t let the Hebrews go to worship me, I will interrupt your worship’

 

The fifth plague (the death of animals) also highlights a problem

  • Animals of all kinds were sacred to the Egyptians [1]
  • We see this in verse 26 of Exodus 8 where Moses says the Egyptian people would be offended by our sacrificing animals to the Lord
  • While animals are important to God they are not as sacred as human beings, who are made in God’s image
  • The irony is, the Egyptians had more respect for their livestock than they did for the Hebrew people and that is wrong
  • Not that our world is much better today
  • You know there’s something wrong when cattle are fed corn while human beings go hungry

As well as pointing to the problem the plagues also point to God, who is the solution

 

Back in chapter 5, when Moses first confronted Pharaoh, asking him to let the people go, Pharaoh said…

  • “Who is the Lord? Why should I listen to him? I do not know the Lord and I will not let Israel go.”

 

So, in verse 17 of Exodus 7, Moses says to Pharaoh…

  • “Now your majesty, the Lord says that you will find out who he is by what he is going to do…”
  • The plagues are striking signs (or clues) designed to communicate something about God to Pharaoh and the whole world

 

Okay – so what do the plagues say about God?

  • Well, essentially that Yahweh (the God of the Hebrews) is Lord of all
  • He is Lord over creation
  • He is Lord over time
  • And He is Lord over life & death
  • Taken together the plagues make it clear to everyone that God is in charge, not Pharaoh and not any of the so called Egyptian gods

 

The Egyptians worshipped the Nile [2] because it provided so much of what they needed for survival – water for drinking, fish for food and irrigation for crops

  • The Pharaohs took credit for the Nile as their own creation [3]
  • By turning the river to blood God shows clearly that He is in fact the creator of the Nile – not Pharaoh
  • Therefore the Egyptian people should be worshipping the Lord God – for He is the one who sustains life

 

If Pharaoh had let the Hebrews go after the first sign he would be admitting that he wasn’t creator of the Nile – which means he would lose face with the people

  • Better to lose face though than to ruin the nation

What about the frogs – what’s the connection there?

  • Well, the frogs were associated with the Egyptian god Hapi and the goddess Heqt who the ancient Egyptians believed assisted at child birth [4]
  • So frogs were a fertility symbol in ancient Egypt

 

By making the frogs prolific and then killing them Yahweh was demonstrating that He is Lord over life & death – not Hapi and not Heqt

  • And by making frogs a pest Yahweh was also saying, ‘these false fertility gods you worship are actually a nuisance – you don’t need them’

Incidentally, with the frogs, Pharaoh became so fed up with them that he called for Moses and Aaron and said…

  • “Pray to the Lord to take away these frogs and I will let your people go”
  • And Moses replied, “I will be glad to pray for you. Just set the time when I am to pray… then you will be rid of the frogs”
  • The king answered, “Pray for me tomorrow”
  • So Moses did and, when he did, the frogs died

 

This shows us Yahweh is in control of events and indeed is Lord of time

 

Pharaoh went back on his word though – so the plagues continued

 

The plagues are striking signs

  • They point to the problem of injustice
  • And they point to the solution of God
  • They also point to the future outcome for Egypt

 

Okay – now for something different

  • Who remembers playing pass the parcel when you were a kid?
  • If you haven’t played pass the parcel in a while let me remind you how it goes
  • As long as the music plays you must keep passing the parcel to the person next to you
  • So in this case you would pass it along the pew and then when it gets to the end of the pew you pass it to the pew behind you and they pass it along their row and so on
  • But when the music stops – so does the parcel
  • And the person left holding the parcel opens just one layer of paper

 

You need to open the paper carefully though because the underside of each sheet has a clue written on it – a clue to the gift inside

  • Whoever unwraps a layer must read out the clue and we’ll see if anyone can guess what’s coming

 

Okay – here’s the parcel

  • Music please – play the song Yahweh by U2 – track 11 on CD

 

  1. 33% cocoa – that’s the first clue
  2. 50 grams net – that’s the second clue
  3. 24 Mohuia Cres
  4. Peanuts

 

Okay can anyone guess what’s underneath?

  • Yes – that’s right

 

Sometimes our lives are a bit like pass the parcel

  • We carry along our merry way, moving to life’s music, but every now and then we are stopped, we take a layer off and we go deeper
  • We discover something new about ourselves and about God – something which changes our outlook
  • It might be a pleasant realisation, like when a child is born
  • Or it might be a difficult realisation, like when we face our own mortality
  • But we keep going and with each layer we get closer to the core, closer to the truth, closer to God

 

As I keep saying the plagues are signs – signs with clues attached

  • Put all the clues together and you get an idea of what’s coming
  • Unfortunately for Pharaoh it wasn’t a nice surprise

 

Blood in the water, dead fish, dead frogs and dead animals – all pointed toward Egypt’s future – when the first born would die and thousands of Egyptian soldiers would drown in the Red Sea

 

So how do we interpret our clues – how do we read the signs of our times – to know what is in store for us?

  • Well, appearances can be deceiving
  • Misfortune now is no indictor of calamity later
  • In fact suffering now can mean peace later

 

In Matthew 5 Jesus says…

  • Blessed are the poor in spirit for the kingdom of heaven belongs to them

 

 

The poor in spirit are those who have come to the end of their own resources and they know it

  • This first beatitude describes the Hebrew people in slavery in Egypt
  • Despite appearances, God had good things in store for Israel

 

Generally speaking, in the west today, we think the opposite to Jesus

  • We think, blessed are the self sufficient
  • Blessed are those who win
  • And blessed are those who get even
  • Jesus’ interpretation of the clues is as counter cultural for us as it was for his original listeners

 

So does that mean powerful countries in the West today are like ancient Egypt – on track for disaster?

  • Not necessarily – we all have a choice

 

Jesus went on to say…

  • Blessed are the merciful for they will be shown mercy

 

  • The merciful are, by definition, those in a place of power – because you can’t show mercy unless you have some kind of power
  • Pharaoh had power and he could have used it to show mercy to Israel
  • If he had, things would have turned out a lot differently for Egypt
  • They would have received the peanut slab instead of rotten tomatoes
  • It is similar for powerful countries and powerful individuals today – those who use their power to help others will be shown mercy by Christ
  • The measure we use for others is the measure God will use for us

 

Perhaps the plagues were God’s way of bringing Pharaoh & the Egyptian people to the end of their own resources?

 

Conclusion:

This morning we have looked at the first five plagues in Exodus chapter 7 through to chapter 9

  • These plagues are striking signs from God
  • God doesn’t want to hit Egypt with them but as Israel’s shepherd He must use His rod to protect His flock against Pharaoh the wolf

 

More than punishment though the plagues are signs (or clues) which point to…

  • The problem of Egypt’s injustice,
  • The solution in God (who is Lord of all)
  • And the future outcome for Egypt

 

While the plagues spell disaster for Egypt they are a comfort and a hope to Israel

 

Let us pray…

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/egyptians/animal_gallery.shtml

[2] Alan Cole, Exodus, page 97

[3] Ezekiel 29:3

[4] Alan Cole, Exodus, page 98

Tawa Baptist

Communion is Union

COMMUNION IS UNION

 

Last month, when we celebrated communion together, I talked about how communion is about remembering Jesus

  • And that remembering is a past, present and future remembering
  • Remembering what Christ did on the cross 2000 years ago
  • Remembering that Christ is present with us now by His Spirit
  • And remembering that Christ will return in glory one day

 

More than simply remembering though, communion is union

 

Desmond Tutu once said, “We are only lightbulbs and our job is just to remain screwed in”

 

In John chapter 14, the night before his crucifixion and death Jesus said…

  • ‘I am in the Father and you are in me, just as I am in you’
  • Then he went on to talk about how he is the vine and we are the branches and the only way to be fruitful is to remain in him
  • Desmond Tutu’s lightbulb metaphor is a modern day take on this

 

Jesus was talking about our union with him and with God

 

In taking communion (into ourselves) we are reminded of our union with Jesus

  • The bread we eat represents the body of Christ and the grape juice (or the wine) represents his blood
  • When we eat or drink something it becomes a part of us – it sustains us
  • Sort of like electricity sustains the lightbulb so it can give off light
  • Or like the sap from the vine sustains the branches so they may bear fruit

 

There is a certain mystery associated with our union with Christ and with communion itself

  • In some sense, which can’t be explained scientifically, Christ is in us and we are in Him

 

Communion is union and when we have union with God through Christ it is possible to face all manner of suffering with hope & joy

 

Tawa Baptist

God Wrestles

Scripture: Exodus 6:28-7:13

Title: God Wrestles

Structure:

  • Introduction
  • God wrestles with Moses – trust
  • God wrestles with Pharaoh – despair
  • Conclusion

Introduction:

Please turn with me to Exodus chapter 6, page 65 toward to front of your pew Bibles

  • Today we continue our series on Moses
  • Last week we heard how Moses & Aaron confronted Pharaoh for the first time and Pharaoh refused to let the Israelites go
  • This week Moses & Aaron go back to ask Pharaoh again
  • Our reading this morning begins at verse 28 of Exodus 6 and continues to verse 13 of chapter 7…

[Read Exodus 6:28-7:13]

 

May the Spirit of Jesus illuminate this reading for us

I’ve given this morning’s message the title: God Wrestles, because in today’s Scripture passage we catch a glimpse of the way God wrestles with human will

  • Both Moses’ freewill and Pharaoh’s freewill

God doesn’t programme people to do what he wants, like robots or computers

  • God gives human beings genuine choice and he respects our choices
  • This doesn’t mean God just stands back and lets us have what we want
  • Sometimes God challenges our will – sometimes he wrestles with us
  • But God’s purpose in wrestling is not to overpower us with brute force
  • His purpose is to train our will – to make it stronger and better informed so we will make better choices
  • Wrestling with God exercises our faith

First let us consider how God wrestles with Moses…

God wrestles with Moses – trust:

Just prior to this morning’s reading, in the second half of Exodus 6, the narrator gives us Moses’ & Aaron’s family tree, going back to Jacob

  • Jacob is famous (among other things) for wrestling with God

In Genesis 32, as Jacob was preparing to return home and face his brother Esau, a man came and wrestled with him until just before daybreak

  • When the man saw that he was not winning the struggle, he struck Jacob on the hip and it was thrown out of joint.
  • The man said, ‘Let me go; daylight is coming’
  • ‘I won’t, unless you bless me’, Jacob replied
  • ‘What is your name?’ the man asked
  • ‘Jacob’, he answered
  • ‘Your name will no longer be Jacob. You have struggled with God and with men and you have won; so your name will be Israel’
  • Jacob said, ‘Now tell me your name’
  • But he answered, ‘Why do you want to know my name?”
  • Then he blessed Jacob
  • Jacob said, ‘I have seen God face to face and I am still alive.’

Moses is like his ancestor Jacob (aka ‘Israel’)

  • Moses doesn’t give in to God’s requests too easily
  • He shows some resistance, so God must wrestle with Moses’ will
  • But God’s wrestling is not violent where Moses is concerned
  • God doesn’t force Moses – God works with him gently to strengthen trust
  • This isn’t WWF or On the Mat, it’s more like Tai Chi – slow and graceful

The first thing God does to strengthen the bond of trust, is to say…

  • ‘I am the Lord’ or ‘I am Yahweh’ in other words
  • It’s interesting that while God did not reveal his name to Jacob – he did reveal it to Moses
  • By sharing His name God is opening up to Moses in vulnerability and intimacy
  • It’s like God is saying, ‘Here I am sharing something personal about myself, something I didn’t even share with your ancestor Jacob, so you know you can trust me Moses’

The next thing God does to create trust is to ask Moses to do something for him

  • He says to Moses, ‘Tell the king of Egypt everything I tell you’
  • Be my spokesman to Pharaoh
  • By asking Moses to speak for him God is trusting Moses with His reputation – when someone shows trust in you it helps you to trust them

Furthermore, God doesn’t beat around the bush in making his request

  • God is open and up front with Moses about what he wants so Moses isn’t left second guessing God’s motivation
  • There is no hidden agenda, no manipulation, no smoke screen
  • Honesty goes a long way in building trust

Moses responds to the Lord by saying…

  • ‘You know I’m such a poor speaker; why should the king listen to me?’
  • This is dejavu – Moses has already had this conversation with Yahweh, at the burning bush
  • It shows us that Moses is still reluctant to do what God says

In reflecting on Moses’ resistance to God’s will, Terence Fretheim observes…

  • “God is clearly not in absolute control of Moses. For all of God’s powers, Moses is not easily persuaded to take up his calling… [but] God relates to Moses in such a way that his will is not overpowered”  [1]

Just as God did not overpower Jacob in the midnight wrestling match, so too God does not overpower Moses in this verbal wrestling match

  • To the contrary, God further strengthens trust by listening to Moses
  • God takes Moses’ concerns seriously and adjusts His plan to accommodate Moses by allowing Aaron to help

The Lord goes on to say to Moses…

  • “I am going to make you like God to the king and your brother Aaron will speak to him as your prophet. Tell Aaron everything I command you and he will tell the king to let the Israelites leave his country”

There is a real tone of affirmation in what God says to Moses here – just as there was affirmation for Jacob

  • God raises up the lowly and humbles the proud
  • Moses is lowly and Pharaoh is proud
  • Moses may not have much faith in his own ability
  • But God certainly believes in him
  • God gives Moses a dignity and a status greater than that of Pharaoh

God wrestled with Moses’ will in a firm but gracious way

  • God did not bellow orders at Moses, nor did He try to manipulate Moses
  • God essentially built trust with Moses
  • And He did this in four main ways…
  • By revealing something personal about himself – His name
  • By asking Moses, in an honest & direct way, to do something for Him
  • By listening to Moses’ concerns and providing Aaron as a helper
  • And fourthly, by raising Moses up with words of affirmation – ‘you will be like God to Pharaoh’
  • In all these ways God showed Moses He was trustworthy and Moses responded by doing what God asked of him

God used a different approach, however, in wrestling with Pharaoh’s will and this is because Pharaoh was stubborn and hard of heart

God wrestles with Pharaoh – despair:

The prophet Amos describes God’s justice like a river

  • Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream [2]

The image of God’s justice flowing like a river is multi-faceted

  • A river is a source of life for the land and creation generally
  • Sometimes the river of God’s justice is flat and calm, moving slowly
  • Other times it is wild and rough, moving quickly
  • Always though it is powerful and deserves respect

In verses 3 & 4 of Exodus 7 the Lord God says to Moses…

  • But I will make the king stubborn, and he will not listen to you, no matter how many terrifying things I do in Egypt. Then I will bring severe punishment on Egypt and lead the tribes of my people out of the land.

If we read that (in isolation) we could come away thinking that God isn’t being fair to Pharaoh

  • Because it sounds like God is determining Pharaoh’s response
  • That would be a false conclusion

As I keep saying, God respects the freewill of human beings – he doesn’t force people against their will

  • So how are we to understand this statement about God making the king stubborn?
  • Because, as we read through the cycle of plagues, we will keep hearing how God hardens Pharaoh’s heart – it comes up again and again

Well, the first thing to say is that the text describes the stubbornness of Pharaoh (his hardness of heart) in three ways…

  • Sometimes it says that God hardens Pharaoh’s heart (e.g. 7:3)
  • And sometimes it reads like Pharaoh hardens his own heart (e.g. 7:14)
  • Then there are other times again where the text couches it in more passive or neutral terms by saying that Pharaoh’s heart was hardened (e.g. 7:13)

This tells us that both Pharaoh himself and God have a hand in the hardening of Pharaoh’s heart – so we can’t attribute Pharaoh’s stubbornness entirely to God

  • Pharaoh must take some responsibility also

Put up your hand if you’ve been to Huka Falls

  • Just above the falls there is a gorge which runs for about 800 metres with some pretty significant rapids in it
  • And just above the gorge there is a large wide flat area of relatively slow moving water, so if you are a kayaker you can easily avoid going into the gorge if you wish – but once you enter the gorge there is no turning back
  • The only way out is through the chaos of white water and over the falls

Terence Fretheim makes the point that…

  • [Pharaoh’s situation] …is not unlike a boat on a fast moving river, headed for a gorge or a waterfall. As often in history, human decisions… can bring human affairs to a point where there is no turning back, no possibility of getting the boat to the shore before it goes over the waterfall.
  • In such cases, history’s possibilities are… narrowed to a single one.  [3]

Pharaoh entered the gorge of his own freewill

  • No one forced him to attempt genocide against the Israelites
  • No one forced him to abuse the Hebrew people
  • But once Pharaoh had committed himself to that course of action – there was no turning back – he effectively narrowed his options to a single one
  • Pharaoh was in for a rough ride, but he could have avoided it by treating his subjects with fairness

Okay – so Pharaoh brought this on himself because he was hard hearted in the first place

  • But isn’t God making it worse by hardening Pharaoh’s heart even more?
  • Well, yes and no – first let me explain what hardness of heart is

Hardness of heart is spiritual blindness – spiritual deafness

  • The hard of heart cannot see God’s presence in the world
  • Such blindness results in pride, haughtiness and arrogance
  • To make matters worse those with hardened hearts are not aware of their spiritual blindness and so they are unable to repent and recover [4]

Jesus (quoting the prophets) described the hard of heart in this way saying…

Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing they do not hear or understand

  • In them is fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah:
  • You will be ever hearing but never understanding
  • You will be ever seeing but never perceiving
  • For this people’s heart has become calloused;
  • They hardly hear with their ears
  • And they have closed their eyes
  • Otherwise they might see with their eyes, hear with their ears, understand with their hearts and turn and I would heal them [5]

[Set out one jug of water and two empty glasses on a tray – one glass open and the other covered over with tin foil]

 

Imagine these glasses represent the human heart

  • This glass without the tin foil on it is an open heart
  • And this one with the tin foil over the top is a calloused hard heart
  • Over here I have a jug full of water
  • Imagine that the water in this jug represents understanding

What happens if I pour the water of understanding into the open heart?

  • [Pour the water in from a jug]
  • It goes in – the water of understanding God’s Word fills the open heart

Now what happens if I try to pour the water of understanding into the closed hard heart?

  • [Pour water on the tin foiled glass]
  • It doesn’t go in
  • No matter how much understanding I try to pour into the hard heart, the glass remains empty

Many of the Pharisees had ‘calloused’ hardened hearts

  • They saw Jesus’ miracles and they heard Jesus preach but they still didn’t get it – they couldn’t see that Jesus was from God
  • They misunderstood Jesus so thoroughly that they thought he was the devil

The Jewish theologian, Abraham Heschel, said…

  • “The opposite of freedom is a hard heart” [6]
  • And he was right

We tend to think of freedom as the ability to do whatever we want

  • But that is not freedom – that is just licence

If a hard heart is spiritual blindness, and the opposite of freedom is a hard heart, then it follows that true freedom is spiritual sight

Freedom is the open glass – the one without the tin foil which allows understanding of God’s Word to fill the human heart

So the truly free soul is ‘fit and pliable, open to truth and sensitive God’ [7]

  • The truly free soul recognises God’s presence in the world

By that definition Pharaoh is not free – and the tragedy is he doesn’t realise it

  • Now this may come as bit of a mind bender to many of us
  • We tend to think of Pharaoh as the most free because he gets to boss everyone else around
  • But actually he is the most blind and therefore the least free
  • Pharaoh has a thick layer of tinfoil over his heart

When God says to Moses, I am going to make Pharaoh stubborn – I’m going to harden his heart

  • What it means is that God is going to take away what little freedom (what little sight or understanding) Pharaoh still has
  • As Jesus said, Be careful how you listen; because whoever has will be given more, but whoever does not have, even the little he thinks he has will be taken away from him [8]
  • In other words, if you listen to God’s Word with a hard heart (with the tinfoil on), no understanding will get in and so God will stop pouring
  • But if you listen with an open (sensitive) heart, God will keep pouring the understanding in

God is going to make Pharaoh even more blind so that he won’t be able to see or understand that God is behind the plagues

  • Pharaoh won’t be able to join the dots between his abusing people and God punishing him

As I asked before, how is that helpful?

  • Isn’t God making it worse by hardening Pharaoh’s heart even more?
  • Yes and no

You see, in some cases, the only thing that cures hardness of heart – the only thing that removes the blindness of pride – is despair

  • We think of despair as a bad thing
  • And, to be fair, it is not a pleasant experience
  • But sometimes God uses despair for our salvation
  • Despair is a kind of chemotherapy for the soul
  • Despair restores our sight by killing the cancer of pride
  • (Despair causes the tinfoil to come off the glass of our heart so the water of understanding can get in)
  • Unfortunately despair also kills joy – and so freedom (or spiritual sight & understanding) comes with a price

God loves Pharaoh and wants to set Pharaoh free – which means that God has little choice but to make things worse for Pharaoh

  • Pharaoh has hardened his own heart – now, in order to cure Pharaoh of his blindness and pride, God must make that hardness complete
  • God must bring Pharaoh to the place of utter despair so that Pharaoh can see reality as it is and be free

 

Abraham Heschel puts it this way…

  • It seems the only cure for wilful hardness is to make it absolute. Half –callousness, paired with obstinate conceit, seeks no cure. When hardness is complete, it becomes despair, the end of conceit. Out of despair, out of total inability to believe, prayer bursts forth. [9]

I don’t know how he does it – I only know that he can

  • God can make something out of nothing
  • God can bring order out of chaos
  • God can cause prayer to burst forth out of total dis-belief

“When all pretensions are abandoned, one begins to feel the burden of guilt. It is easier to return from an extreme distance than from the complacency of a good conscience.” [10]

God had to make things harder for Pharaoh so that he would ‘feel the burden of guilt’ and repent

The prodigal son discovered this didn’t he – that it is easier to return from an extreme distance than from the complacency of a good conscience

  • The prodigal son didn’t come to his senses until he hit rock bottom, a long way from home, in total despair
  • Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven  [11]
  • The older son, who never left home – well, his hardness of heart remained because he never tasted despair
  • He was blinded by the complacency of a good conscience
  • Woe to you when all men speak well of you… [12]

The hard truth is: God sometimes wounds us in order to save us

  • He sometimes hurts us in order to heal us
  • It is painful to remove the tinfoil or callous from a heart

As if to prove the point of Pharaoh’s blindness our Scripture reading this morning finishes with Aaron’s stick turning into a snake

  • Pharaoh’s magicians do the same trick, only Aaron’s snake eats their snakes
  • The message couldn’t be clearer – the best Egypt has to offer will be swallowed up, consumed
  • But Pharaoh doesn’t get it – he can’t get it – his hardness of heart prevents him from seeing

If we oppress people and abuse people, like Pharaoh did, we will lose our freedom, we will lose our spiritual sight

  • We will find ourselves in the gorge of God’s justice unable to turn back, quite oblivious to the fact that a pummelling waterfall awaits us

The king remained stubborn and eventually the first born of Egypt died and Pharaoh’s army was swallowed by the (waterfall of the) Red Sea

  • Only then did despair do its work so that Pharaoh’s eyes were opened and the tinfoil was removed from the opening of his heart

Conclusion:

God wrestles, both with Moses and with Pharaoh – although his strategy with Moses is significantly different from his strategy with Pharaoh

In wrestling with Moses, God creates trust

  • He shows faith in Moses and helps Moses to see that He (Yahweh) can be relied on

In wrestling with Pharaoh though, God creates despair

  • The kindest thing God can do with Pharaoh is to remove his pride and conceit so that Pharaoh is free to see reality as it really is

Trust and despair are not God’s only strategies in wrestling with people

  • He has other ways of dealing with people too
  • But however he may deal with us we can be assured, God’s ultimate goal is our healing and salvation – our freedom

[1] Terence Fretheim, ‘Interpretation Commentary on Exodus’, page 102

[2] Amos 5:24

[3] Terence Fretheim, Interpretation Commentary on Exodus, page 101

[4] Abraham Heschel, The Prophets, page 244

[5] Matthew 13:13-15

[6] Abraham Heschel, The Prophets, page 243

[7] Abraham Heschel, The Prophets, page 244

[8] Luke 8:18

[9] Abraham Heschel, The Prophets, page 244

[10] Abraham Heschel, The Prophets, page 246

[11] Matthew 5:3

[12] Luke 6:26

Tawa Baptist

Bricks Without Straw

Scripture: Exodus 5:1-6:1

 

Title: Bricks without Straw

 

Structure:

  • Introduction
  • Being & having
  • Pharaoh’s having
  • God (& Moses’) Being
  • Conclusion

 

Introduction:

Please turn with me to Exodus 5, page 63 near the beginning of your pew Bibles

  • Today we continue our series on Moses
  • Moses & Aaron have managed to convince the leaders of Israel that God means to deliver the people from their slavery in Egypt
  • Now they confront Pharaoh
  • From verse 1 of Exodus 5 we read…

 

Read Exodus 5:1-6:1

 

May the Spirit of Jesus illuminate this reading for us

 

Being and having:

In 1970 Richard Bach published his classic novella Jonathan Livingston Seagull about a seagull who rejects the routine of daily squabbles over food in search of freedom in flight

  • While the rest of the flock compete for scraps of food, Jonathan finds joy in being a bird and simply flying
  • Eventually Jonathan’s unwillingness to conform results in his expulsion by the elders

 

There is a quote in the book which says…

 

“You will begin to touch heaven, Jonathan, in the moment that you touch perfect speed. And that isn’t flying a thousand miles an hour, or a million, or flying at the speed of light. Because any number is a limit, and perfection doesn’t have limits. Perfect speed, my son, is being there.”

 

Unlike his peers Jonathan the Seagull is more interested in being than in having

  • I suppose Richard Bach’s story isn’t so much about seagulls as it is about humankind
  • In competing for resources – in trying to have more than our neighbour – we have somehow lost meaning in life

Being and having – they are two different things

 

To have something is to possess it, to own it, to consume it

  • Some things can’t be had though – or were never designed to be had
  • For example, you can have a car but you can’t have a marriage
  • You can only be in a marriage – you can’t own a husband or a wife
  • Marriage is a relationship and a relationship is a state of being
  • This means a perfect marriage (or a perfect relationship) is not about having all your expectations met
  • A perfect marriage is about being there – with and for one another

 

Or to use another example, you may have money or the ability to sing or something else to offer God but you can’t have worship

  • Worship is not a possession – worship is a state of being
  • This means perfect worship is not about hitting all the right notes or experiencing some magical feeling or giving just the right amount of money
  • Perfect worship is about being there – with and for God
  • Perfect worship could happen here on a Sunday morning or it could happen out in the world during the week

 

This dichotomy between being and having is an ancient tension

  • It goes right back to Adam & Eve in the garden

 

Before eating the forbidden fruit from the tree of knowledge Adam & Eve were able to be with God

  • But they couldn’t resist the temptation of having knowledge and so they ate the fruit God warned them against
  • They chose having over being (as we all have) and they suffered the consequences

 

Having is about power & control

  • Being is about truth & freedom
  • God is all about being
  • While Pharaoh is all about having
  • God wants to be in right relationship with his people – the Hebrews
  • Pharaoh, on the other hand, just wants to have the Hebrews – to possess and control them as slaves, as human tools

 

The problem with making having our goal is that we never really have enough

  • But when being is the goal, God finds a way to throw having in
  • Being is a two for one deal

 

Pharaoh’s having:

Pharaoh is used to having things his own way

  • The ancient Egyptians believed their Pharaoh was the son of a god and it seems Pharaoh himself believed this too

 

Despite Pharaoh’s elevated status Moses & Aaron were quite blunt in their approach to the king of Egypt

  • They simply said, “The Lord, the God of Israel, says, ‘Let my people go, so that they can hold a festival in the desert to honour me.’ ”
  • The Lord God had instructed Moses & Aaron to take the leaders of Israel with them when they confronted Pharaoh, but for whatever reason it appears Israel’s leaders didn’t come
  • It makes little difference though because Pharaoh is all about having and he doesn’t know this God of Israel who is about being
  • Just as God predicted, Pharaoh refused to let Israel go

 

So Moses & Aaron ask again saying, “Allow us to travel for three days into the desert to offer sacrifices to the Lord our God. If we don’t do so, he will kill us with disease or by war”

  • Now that last part about God killing Israel by disease or war – God didn’t actually tell Moses & Aaron to say that
  • Moses & Aaron made that up – perhaps as a way of trying to persuade Pharaoh
  • Maybe they thought Pharaoh would be more inclined to let the people go temporarily if he thought he might lose his free labour permanently
  • But Pharaoh was unmoved – he is not inclined to let go
  • Having and letting go are opposites
  • Pharaoh won’t forgive – he would rather accumulate

 

That same day the king commanded the Egyptian slave drivers and the Israelite foremen:

  • “Stop giving people straw to make bricks. Make them go and find the straw themselves. But still require them to make the same number of bricks as before… Make these men work harder and keep them busy, so they won’t have time to listen…”

 

Straw was used to reinforce the mud bricks – to hold the bricks together and give them strength

  • Without the straw the mud bricks were more brittle, more likely to fall apart from lack of integrity

 

Pharaoh is a pretty smart dictator – in a variety of ways he takes the straw out of the bricks of Hebrew resistance

 

As Terence Fretheim points out…

  • Pharaoh is running a pyramid scheme whereby the few benefit from the labour of the many
  • By depleting the energy of the oppressed, the threat of organised resistance is lessened
  • One of Pharaoh’s strategies is to keep the people so busy they don’t have the time for complaints or rebellious thoughts
  • By making the work harder Pharaoh is getting the people to think their well-being depends on his goodwill – so don’t mess with the system [1]

 

Another part of Pharaoh’s strategy is to use the Hebrew foremen to create internal divisions among the people

  • Some say the Hebrew foremen were essentially collaborators
  • They served as walking examples of the opportunity to improve your standard of living by supporting Egypt’s system of exploitation [2]
  • Oppressors of every age and culture do this in one way or another
  • The Romans of Jesus’ day used Jews to collect taxes from fellow Jews

Pharaoh also tries to turn the people against Moses & Aaron

  • After being beaten for not meeting their quotas the foremen say to Moses & Aaron, ‘God is going to punish you for making the king hate us’

 

Martin Luther King, Jr. made the observation that…

  • The Pharaoh’s had a favourite and effective strategy to keep their slaves in bondage: keep them fighting among themselves. The divide-and-conquer technique has been a potent weapon in the arsenal of oppression. But when slaves unite, the Red Seas of history open and the Egypt’s of slavery crumble [3]

 

The other thing Pharaoh does, to take the straw out of the bricks of Hebrew resistance, is to blame the Israelites

  • When the Hebrew foremen complain to Pharaoh that they can’t meet their quotas because he has taken away their straw Pharaoh says…
  • ‘No – it’s not my fault. It’s your fault because you are lazy’
  • Of course it is not true that the Israelites are lazy and the Israelites themselves know it’s not true but the Egyptian people will believe Pharaoh’s lie because it serves their purpose
  • It enables them to have the moral high ground (at least in their own imagination)
  • We call this ‘scapegoating’ – blaming the Jews for the problem – getting the Egyptians united around the lie that the Hebrew people deserve what is happening to them because they are lazy & dishonest
  • Scapegoating is quite convenient for dictators really – just blame other people for your mistakes
  • Hitler did this with the Jews just last century

Tiring the people out with busy-ness

  • Creating internal divisions among the people
  • And blaming the Hebrews for their own misfortune
  • These are the three main ways that cunning old Pharaoh tries to undermine the Hebrew resistance
  • These are the strategies for having and keeping what you have

 

God (and Moses’) Being:

It’s interesting isn’t it – that we are not called ‘human havings’, we are called ‘human beings’

  • Being is somehow integral to our humanity

 

Being real, being honest

  • Being loyal, being a friend, being an enemy
  • Being alone, being in community
  • Being in prayer, being pregnant
  • Being on holiday, being wise
  • Being present
  • Being hungry, being warm, being cold
  • Being tired, being sick, being well, being happy, being angry
  • Being alive

 

Being puts us in touch with life – with what is real and true

  • Consequently, being comes with feeling
  • Not superficial feelings (like infatuation or adrenalin) but deep down feelings (like rage and fear and joy and the will to be free), which are always there like tectonic plates of the soul moving underneath to change the landscape on the surface

 

Moses is certainly in touch with some deeper emotion in verse 22 of Exodus 5 where he says to God…

  • “Lord, why do you ill-treat your people? Why did you send me here? Ever since I went to the king to speak for you, he has treated them cruelly. And you have done nothing to help them”

 

Now some people might criticise Moses at this point for complaining to God

  • After all, God did tell Moses more than once that Pharaoh would be stubborn and refuse to let the Israelites go
  • Well, in Moses’ defence, Pharaoh hasn’t just refused to let the people go – Pharaoh has actually made things considerably worse for the people, which I’m not sure Moses was told about

 

In any case, I don’t think we should be too hard on Moses

  • It is one thing to be told you are in for some rough weather
  • But another thing entirely to actually go through the storm

 

The words of the foremen to Moses & Aaron would have really hurt – salt in the wound of failure

  • Just as Pharaoh had blamed the foremen for failing to meet the quotas, so too the foremen pass the blame onto Moses & Aaron
  • It would not have been easy for Moses to hear criticism from the lips of men who collaborated with the Egyptians
  • But Moses allows it – he doesn’t defend himself to them, even though their words are unkind and unfair
  • Leadership can be a pretty lonely experience, especially when things go wrong

 

Another thing to say, to Moses’ credit, is that (unlike Pharaoh and the Hebrew foremen) Moses does not take his frustrations out on other people

  • Moses takes his complaint to God who is big enough to handle it
  • And that in itself is interesting isn’t it
  • Who we complain to says something about who we believe is in charge
  • By taking their complaint to Pharaoh the foremen seem to be acknowledging on some level that Pharaoh is in charge
  • But Moses takes his complaint to God, which tells us that Moses believes God is in charge

 

God is not at all like Pharaoh – and we can see that quite clearly in the contrasting ways in which God & Pharaoh respond to complaints

 

As we’ve already heard, Pharaoh does not want to accept responsibility for the complaint

  • When the Hebrew foremen criticise his policy of withholding straw Pharaoh puts the blame back on them by saying they are lazy
  • The message is: No criticism is allowed under Pharaoh and so you are not free to express how you truly feel
  • If you live under Pharaoh then you must meet certain expectations and behave in a certain way in order to be accepted (or at least not abused)
  • The problem with this is that it creates a kind of false reality because no one feels able to be honest with you

 

Unlike Pharaoh, God is into being and that includes being honest – allowing others to criticise him (even if their criticism isn’t entirely accurate or fair)

  • When Moses complains to God, God allows it
  • God does not disagree with Moses
  • He lets Moses express what he is feeling
  • After all, feeling goes hand in hand with being
  • By the same token God doesn’t give Moses an explanation either
  • Just like he didn’t give Job an explanation for his suffering
  • God doesn’t normally explain our suffering – but he does share it
  • He allows himself to be in the situation with us – he feels our pain

So I reckon Moses is on the right track here

  • By making his complaint to God, Moses is acknowledging that God is in charge
  • And by being honest with God, Moses is relating to God on a being level – not a having level

 

As painful as it was, the foremen’s criticism of Moses & Aaron actually had a positive affect

  • Their rebuke revealed the truth of Moses’ motivation
  • No one could say Moses was in this for public adulation or the glory of it
  • Those foremen did Moses a favour in a way – they took the ego trip out of it for Moses
  • And in so doing they inducted Moses into a deeper dependence on God

 

This is often how God uses failure & disappointment in our life – to purify our motives and strengthen our integrity

  • If things come too easy – then we might think we did it ourselves
  • And if all we hear is praise – then we should be concerned – it could mean we are behaving like Pharaoh and not allowing criticism

 

In verse 1 of Exodus 6, after listening to Moses’ complaint, the Lord responds by saying…

  • “Now you are going to see what I will do to the king. I will force him to let my people go. In fact, I will force him to drive them out of his land”

 

This translation is unfortunate I think

  • It’s not accurate to say that God forces people to do things
  • God doesn’t trample over freewill.
  • A better translation might read…

 

“…Because of my mighty hand [Pharaoh] will let them go; because of my mighty hand he will drive them out of his country.”

  • Which means God isn’t forcing Pharaoh to do something – rather he is creating a situation in which Pharaoh will choose to let the people go
  • God will bring Pharaoh to the point of wanting to be rid of the Israelites

Now, God’s personal message to Moses, in all of this, is quite surprising

  • Traditional wisdom says, ‘lower your expectations’
  • Don’t get your hopes up because then you risk being disappointed
  • But God effectively tells Moses to risk hope and raise his expectations

 

What an incredible thing to say to someone who has just tasted failure and disappointment

  • But that’s God for you – God dares us to risk it all, not when we are feeling confident, but when we have lost confidence

 

Returning to Jonathan Livingston Seagull for a moment – it’s like God is saying to Moses…

  • “Don’t believe what your eyes tell you. All they show is limitation. Look with your understanding. Find out what you already know and you’ll see the way to fly.”
  • There is a wisdom in all of us – if only we could unlock it
  • What does Moses already know?
  • That with God nothing is impossible.

 

Conclusion:

Jesus is all about being

  • He wasn’t into having so much

 

In the first instance he was about being human – fully human and all that entails, including being vulnerable

 

When Satan tempted Jesus in the wilderness – he tempted Jesus with having

  • Turn these stones into bread so that you will have something to eat
  • Jump from the roof of the temple so you will have fame
  • Bow down in worship to me so you will have power
  • But Jesus wasn’t interested in having
  • Jesus was satisfied with being God’s Son

 

Much of Jesus’ ministry was about setting people free from having

 

Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us

  • That’s about not having to be right – not having the moral high ground
  • That’s about letting go of our hurt and our hate and simply being

 

Come to me all you who are weary and burdened and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

  • That’s about not having to perform – not having to meet Pharaoh’s quota
  • That’s about learning how to be in a relationship with God – finding our fit in his will

 

In Luke 10 when Martha was complaining to Jesus about all the work she was having to do, demanding that Mary help her, Jesus responded…

  • Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better and it will not be taken away from her.
  • Mary chose being over having and Jesus supported her in that choice

 

We could go on but you get the point…

  • God is about being and Pharaoh [the Satan] is about having
  • Jesus invites us into being with God
  • So choose being – choose the way of Christ

 

[1] Terence Fretheim, Exodus, page 84

[2] Ibid, page 85.

[3] Martin Luther King, Jr. ‘Where do we go from here? Chaos or Community’, page 124.

Tawa Baptist

Moses Returns

Scripture: Exodus 4:18-31

 

Title: Moses Returns

 

Structure:

  • Introduction
  • Assurance
  • Briefing
  • Correction
  • Deployment
  • Conclusion

 

Introduction:

Make peace with your past so it won’t mess up your present

 

Please turn with me to Exodus chapter 4, verse 18 – page 63 toward the front of your pew Bibles

  • Today we continue our series on Moses
  • A couple of weeks ago we heard how God spoke to Moses through a flame in a bush, calling him to confront Pharaoh and lead the Israelites out of slavery
  • This morning Moses returns to Egypt in obedience to God
  • By returning to Egypt Moses is facing his past

 

From verse 18 of Exodus 4 we read…

 

[Read Exodus 4:18-31]

 

May the Lord meet us in this reading

 

Please turn with me to the back of your newsletter

  • We could think of Moses’ return to Egypt in four parts – A B C D
  • Assurance, briefing, correction & deployment
  • First let us consider how God gives Moses assurance in verses 18-20…

 

Assurance:

When Robyn and I were in our last year at Carey College training for ministry Tawa Baptist called us

  • Robyn & I are not from Wellington – most of our family live in the Waikato & Bay of Plenty
  • We were leaning toward coming to Tawa but hadn’t fully decided – there was still a significant element of faith involved both for us and the church
  • I remember driving along the southern motorway into Auckland around that time and the car in front of us had a personalised number plate which read, ‘2tawa’
  • What are the chances of seeing that on the Auckland motorway?
  • Now we didn’t base our decision to come to Tawa solely on that number plate but it was one thing that gave us assurance to proceed
  • God does things like that at certain crossroads in our lives
  • We might feel like we’ve heard from him but we doubt ourselves a bit and so he (in his grace) gives us assurance – he guides us in the direction we should go

Assurance is different from insurance

  • Assurance is something we can rely on – it will definitely happen
  • By contrast, insurance covers something that may or may not happen
  • So we have car insurance just in case we have an accident and need to replace the car
  • But we have life assurance, because it is certain that we will die one day and when we do our loved ones will get a pay out

 

In verse 18, after Moses has talked with God, he goes back to Jethro, his father-in-law, & asks permission to return to Egypt to see if his relatives are still alive

  • Jethro is Moses’ insurance
  • God is asking Moses to do a big thing here and Moses doesn’t know how the future will pan out
  • He needs to keep his relationship with Jethro good because if everything turns to custard Moses will need a home base to return to
  • So Moses takes care of the relationship by asking Jethro’s permission
  • Moses doesn’t burn his bridges

 

In verse 19, while Moses was still in Midian, the Lord spoke to him again saying: Go back to Egypt, for all those who wanted to kill you are dead

  • God gives Moses assurance
  • You will remember how Moses had left Egypt in a hurry, after killing an Egyptian slave driver
  • God knew that Moses was a bit anxious about returning to Egypt because of this – Moses was concerned his past might catch up with him
  • So God effectively says to Moses, ‘Now is a good time to return to Egypt, you are no longer an outlaw – no longer a wanted man’

 

Sometimes making peace with our past is simply a matter of time

  • Sometimes we just have to be patient and wait – time has a way of washing away ill feeling

 

With God’s assurance, Moses packs up his family and returns to Egypt on a donkey

  • This reminds us of another holy family travelling by donkey in the opposite direction, from Egypt back to Israel (Jesus, Joseph and Mary)
  • In that story God gave Joseph assurance by sending an angel in a dream to say Herod was dead and it was okay to go back home.

 

Returning to Exodus 4. At the end of verse 20 we are told Moses was carrying the stick God had told him to take

  • This stick is a tangible reminder of God’s assurance to Moses
  • It’s an assurance that Moses can literally hold on to
  • We also have these little tokens of assurance, don’t we
  • Perhaps a favourite Bible that we take with us everywhere
  • Or a cross on a necklace, or prayer beads, or some other physical reminder that we don’t travel alone – God goes with us

 

Briefing:

Every day around the world 11 or 12 people are either killed or injured because of land mines or other explosives left behind after war [1]

  • There are literally hundreds of millions of unexploded mines and bombs, in the world, left over after past wars, just waiting to be disturbed
  • The work of de-miners is a very practical way of making peace with the past so it doesn’t mess up the present

 

Sometimes making peace with our past is simply a matter of time

  • Time heals some wounds but not all wounds
  • There are some things which need special attention
  • Some things which don’t go away with time but in fact become more dangerous – like unexploded bombs
  • Part of the problem is that people don’t always remember where these ordnances are buried
  • If we forget our past then we may find ourselves walking through a mine field in the present
  • Pharaoh forgot Egypt’s past and consequently he led his people into danger

 

After giving Moses assurance to return to Egypt, God then briefs Moses, in verses 21-23

  • In this briefing God tells Moses the plan and what to expect
  • Unfortunately the briefing doesn’t make a lot of sense

 

God says to Moses, you do all the miracles

  • And I will make Pharaoh stubborn so that he won’t let the people go

 

Now, I imagine Moses scratching his head at this point thinking

  • Isn’t the whole idea to get Israel out of Egypt safely?
  • Why is God going to make Pharaoh stubborn so that he won’t let the people go? Hmmmm?

 

Well, it’s like St. Augustine said in the fifth century:

  • “If you understand it, then it is not God”

 

We will explore what it means for God to make Pharaoh stubborn when that comes up again in a few weeks

  • For now it is enough to know that God is giving Moses a heads up that things are not going to flow smoothly
  • He is in for a trying time with Pharaoh
  • God is giving Moses fair warning so he doesn’t become discouraged at the first hurdle

 

God goes on to say to Moses…

  • When the Pharaoh digs his toes in and refuses to let my people go I want you to say from me, ‘Israel is my first born son. I told you to let my son go, so that he might worship me, but you refused. Now I am going to kill your first born son.’

 

That doesn’t sound very nice – why does God want to kill Egypt’s first born?

  • Well, I don’t think God wants to kill anyone
  • The problem is Pharaoh has made some decisions which have limited God’s options

 

Pharaoh isn’t able to make peace with his past because he has forgotten the past

  • He has forgotten how Joseph (a Hebrew) saved Egypt from starvation and made the country rich during a famine
  • For Pharaoh to make peace with his past he would have to admit the injustices of his regime and make reparation
  • Pharaoh’s injustices lie scattered over the land like unexploded mines
  • But Pharaoh doesn’t want to face his own failure as a leader which means God doesn’t have much choice
  • God’s only option is to remind Pharaoh of Egypt’s injustice by visiting on Pharaoh the same treatment he has dealt out to Israel
  • The only way that Pharaoh is going to get the message is if God explodes some of the mines

To make peace with the past we must first remember the past – not as we would have liked it to have been, but as it actually was

 

Two aspects of good news we shouldn’t lose sight of here…

 

Firstly, Israel is God’s son – not Pharaoh’s son

  • Israel belongs to God – not to Pharaoh
  • Pharaoh has no right to hold Israel prisoner

 

Secondly, Israel is not an only child

  • Israel is God’s first born
  • Other nations will (and actually have) become God’s children too, through Christ

 

So the question for us is, ‘whose son, whose daughter, are we?’

  • Do we belong to Pharaoh or do we belong to God?
  • I believe we belong to God – although not everyone realises it
  • You are not the property of the bank or the company or the government
  • You are not a slave to market forces or technology or the opinion of others
  • You belong to God, as his child, and God wants you to be free of Pharaoh
  • (Whatever form Pharaoh may take)

 

Having given Moses assurance to proceed to Egypt

  • And having briefed Moses on what to do and what to expect in Egypt
  • God then corrects Moses in quite an alarming way

 

Correction:

What do you reckon – is one person by themselves better at remembering or are all of us together better at remembering?

 

[Wait for people to respond]

 

Yes – I agree with you – all of us together are better at remembering

  • We remember better together

 

In verse 24 of Exodus 4 we read how the Lord met Moses [on his way to Egypt] and tried to kill him

  • Whaaat? God tried to kill Moses?
  • Why would God do that when he has gone to so much trouble in sending Moses to Egypt to set Israel free?

 

 

Well, Moses’ wife Zipporah seemed to understand

  • Before Moses can face the future he must first make peace with his past
  • Moses needs to get his own house in order before he tries to sort out Pharaoh’s house because it seems Moses has forgotten his past too
  • Fortunately for Moses, Zipporah remembers

 

In Genesis 17 God made some promises to Abraham saying…

  • “You also must agree to keep the covenant with me, both you and your descendants in future generations. You and your descendants must all agree to circumcise every male among you. From now on you must circumcise every baby boy when he is eight days old…”

 

Apparently Moses had not circumcised his own sons as God had instructed the descendants of Abraham

  • Circumcision was the sign of the covenant
  • A covenant is a sacred agreement – it is more than a contract
  • You put your signature on a contract but you cut a covenant
  • Hence the cutting of the foreskin as a sign of the covenant

 

Perhaps another reason God chose circumcision as a sign of the covenant is that the men at least would be regularly reminded of the covenant – every time they went to the toilet or had a bath

  • Perhaps the women didn’t need such regular reminders

 

In any case, God’s covenant with Abraham was incredibly important

  • And, as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, God doesn’t like it when we mistreat or ignore or forget what he considers sacred and important
  • By not circumcising his sons Moses had forgotten God’s covenant and God was not pleased – he tried to kill Moses

 

We don’t know exactly what this means – perhaps Moses became really sick and was close to dying

  • The fact that God didn’t kill Moses instantly shows us God’s grace
  • “God leaves room for mediation, [he] allows time for Zipporah to act,” [2] to save Moses – which she does
  • Zipporah cut off the foreskin of her son and touched Moses’ feet with it
  • In this way Zipporah made peace with the past by keeping the covenant
  • And so the Lord spared Moses’ life
  • This is not the first time Moses has been saved by the quick witted courage of a woman

 

Terence Fretheim makes the following observation of Moses’ near death experience…

  • This is a divine demonstration of the seriousness of the matter upon which God & Moses are about to embark: a life-and-death struggle in which Israel’s very life will be imperilled. That Israel or Moses will emerge unscathed is not a foregone conclusion. Israel will be dependent upon God’s decision and action on its behalf, yet Moses’ own obedience is integral to the divine mission. [3]

 

In other words our salvation is a serious matter and we can’t afford to take God for granted

  • Yes, he loves us, but that doesn’t mean anything goes
  • We are dependent on God to save us but at the same time the choices we make matter

 

As Christians we are under a different covenant

  • Ours is not the covenant of Abraham, so we don’t have to be circumcised
  • Ours is the new covenant established by Jesus
  • Later in the service we will share communion and you will hear me talk about the cup of the new covenant
  • We take communion to remember the new covenant with God made possible by Christ’s sacrifice
  • Or said another way, communion reminds us how Jesus enables us to make peace with our past and peace with God – so that we can have hope for the future

 

One of the cool things about communion is that we take it together, or more accurately we remember together – memory is more reliable that way

 

We don’t take communion lightly – it is a serious matter and God is not pleased if we misuse it. As the apostle Paul writes in his letter to the Corinthians…

  • It follows that if anyone eats the Lord’s bread or drinks from his cup in a way that dishonours him, he is guilty of sin against the Lord’s body & blood. So then, everyone should examine himself first, and then eat the bread and drink from the cup. For if he does not recognise the meaning of the Lord’s body when he eats the bread and drinks from the cup, he brings judgement on himself as he eats and drinks. [4]

 

God has assured Moses it is okay to return to Egypt

  • God has briefed Moses on what to expect when he confronts Pharaoh
  • And God has corrected Moses on his way to Egypt
  • Now God deploys Aaron to go with Moses to Egypt
  • A B C D

 

Deployment:

Verse 27 of Exodus 4 reads…

  • Meanwhile the Lord had said to Aaron, “Go into the desert to meet Moses.” So he went to meet him at the holy mountain; and when he met him he kissed him.

 

Sometimes making peace with our past is a difficult thing – like defusing an unexploded bomb or some other life & death struggle

  • Other times it is a joyful thing – as it was when Aaron and Moses were finally reunited after probably about 40 years apart

 

Making peace with your past can also mean re-doing things again – only this time properly

  • The first time Moses had tried to save his people he had acted alone – without God and without the people themselves
  • This time though Moses goes with the Lord and with Aaron
  • And he involves all the leaders of Israel – he takes the people with him

 

Aaron does the talking and Moses performs the miracles

  • The people believe and bow down in worship to the Lord for he has come to them and seen how cruelly they are being treated
  • It’ a beautiful thing when God lets us know that he understands our pain
  • Knowing that God understands goes a long way in helping us to make peace with our past

 

 

Conclusion:

This morning we’ve heard that making peace with our past can mean different things

 

Sometimes it means simply letting go – not chasing after the past but allowing time to do the work of healing

  • Waiting for the enemies of bitterness and revenge to die

 

But time won’t fix everything

  • There are some things which need special attention
  • Some things which don’t go away with time but in fact become more dangerous – like unexploded bombs
  • In those cases, to make peace with the past we must first remember the past – not as we would have liked it to have been, but as it actually was
  • If we forget our past (as Pharaoh did) then we may find ourselves walking through a mine field

 

The other thing to keep in mind when it comes to making peace with our past is, we don’t have to do it alone

  • Moses had help to face his past
  • Zipporah helped him to remember the covenant and put things right with God
  • And Aaron helped Moses to approach the task in a proper way, involving the leaders of Israel
  • Moses & Aaron & the Lord worked together to restore hope to the people

 

 

 

 

[1] http://www.maginternational.org/the-problems/landmines-and-unexploded-ordnance/#.VZcQ3xHAKM8

[2] Terence Fretheim, ‘Exodus’, page 79.

[3] Fretheim, page 81.

[4] 1 Corinthians 11:27-29