Sermons: Walkthrough: Exodus

Have you ever tried to quit a habit?  Something you do not by choice, but simply as part of your daily ritual, because its what you do?  For me, one thing like that is fried food.  French fries, fried dough.  A few months ago, Kath and I went to Concord NH, and I took her to Long John Silvers for the first time, where they sell one of my favorite childhood foods, these onion fritters known as Hushpuppies.  The fritters are fried, then they serve them with batter drippings that you stick them in after you've broken them open.
    I know very well how bad that food is for me.  I know how it hinders my performance on the bike, which is actually kind of important to me.  But nevertheless, though Id choose otherwise, I keep on eating this junky unhealthy food.
    Its not easy to quit these things, is it?  Whether were talking about food we shouldn't eat, or relationships we know we shouldn't be in whether its with friends or significant others, or destructive physical habits we know we shouldn't be doing that hurt our bodies, or mental habits that we fall into like cynicism or racism, we each know how hard it is to quit something we've done for a long time.
    We are certainly not slaves, thank the Lord that none of us has ever felt what that would feel like.  Well never fully understand that.  But in addition to these habits, maybe some of us have been in a job that we needed to leave, but couldn't afford to?  A job that ate away at self-esteem, or our joy of living, but that we needed because it payed the rent?  That may be as close as you and I get to the feelings that Israel felt living in Egypt.   And as I said, we can thank God for that.  But nevertheless, we can take those examples and try to understand them.

    Last week, I spoke to you about how we can choose either to look at the world through a microscope, or from a scenic ridge.  These are the two extremes.  I mentioned that this is how were going to work our way through the Bible this summer and fall.  It-ll be like were standing on a ridge, looking out at the scenery, and marking which landmarks are in our view.
    As we moved along a week ago, we talked about the family that most of that book of Genesis concerns itself with- the family of Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph.  That family goes from living in the land of promise south to Egypt, and they do it because of a time of famine.  And at first they live in Egypt in luxury, since Joseph is in a place of power.  But we see in Exodus that things get worse, much worse, as the story continues.  Eventually, conditions result in slavery, and it is from that slavery, and the family's escape from it, that the book gets its name.

    There are some major landmarks to see in this book of the Bible.  The burning bush which burned with flame but the Bible says was never consumed, The 10 plagues God sent on Egypt, The parting of the red sea made famous by Charlton Heston, the cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night that led the people across the wilderness, and the giving of the 10 commandments.  All of them come from this book.   Except for Jesus' works in the NT, this is the time of some of God's greatest wonders in the Bible.

    We all have family stories.  Each one of our individual families has things they talk about around the Thanksgiving table.  For some of us, they're stories of a long time ago, for others, they are stories that are being written as we speak, and for still others of us, they're soon to come.  But everyone here has those experiences, whether they be happy memories like family vacations, or bad things that have happened, we all have moments that bring us together, and give us a common life.  I remember camping trips or impromptu picnics with my Mom.  Kathy thinks of family movie nights.  Eileen and I were talking yesterday about their family's trip north to Parc Safari.  What are the landmarks of your unique family history?  Take a quick moment and think about that.

    For the nation of Israel, The book of Exodus contains many of those landmarks.  Remember when we were enslaved, but then the Lord God sent Moses, the miracle-worker, to rescue us from Pharaoh?  Remember when God parted the waters so that we could escape the Egyptian army?  But its something more, as well.  Its not just the family story, or happy memories,  but also a faith story.  Where have I seen the Lord work?  What did I see Him do?
    Have any of you celebrated Passover, with a Jewish friend?  I know Pastor Bob and Jean Decker have, I know Kathy has, but perhaps some of the rest of you have as well.  The celebration of Passover is a celebration of Israels deliverance.  And here's how it happened.
    As I said, the family of Jacob started out in good graces in Egypt.  The Pharaoh who had put Joseph into power was of course still alive and welcomed his family.  He had seen what God did through Joseph, had seen JosephÕs God-given wisdom save his country.
    But as the years went by, that Pharaoh passed away, and Joseph passed away, and the memory of what Joseph had done for Egypt passed away as well.  As that was happening, God was also blessing these Israelites with great fertility, and the native people began to talk.  Why were these people, these Israelites among them?  What did they intend?  Why were they growing so fast?  Just having knowledge of our OWN country's history, you know how immigrant groups can be treated, especially immigrant groups whose population is exploding.
    So out of this fear, the people of Egypt enslaved the Israelites, and it was not a benevolent enslavement, if there is such a thing, but an abusive, angry time.      But the God who was blessing these people, who had chosen these people, who was growing this nation, looked down and saw what was happening, and was moved to save the people of Israel from their slavery,  much like he later looked down on our slavery to sin and decided to save us.
    Because, you see, the story of Exodus is ours as well.  As I said last week, I think that many of these OT landmarks, these stories, are idea-seeds, which will blossom and become fully grown in the person of Jesus Christ in the NT.
    But back to the ancient story.  Yahweh, as that family knew him, needed someone to send as his ambassador.  Someone whose very weakness would contrast and highlight Yahweh's strength.  He found exactly the man he needed in Moses.  He seems to have stuttered, seems by Biblical accounts to have had no confidence in himself, even though he was called by God himself, he still needed his brother Aaron to speak for him, when he did the miracles God gave him.  Yahweh appeared in the famous flaming bush, before Moses, in what academics call a Theophany- a physical manifestation of God- and told him his job, his calling.
    The second section of Exodus begins as Moses appears before the Pharaoh, a person who he very well might have grown up with, having been raised by Pharaoh's daughter as if he were her own son.
    With Aaron s assistance, Moses demands again and again that the people of Israel be released, and is denied each and every time, until the crowning plague of them all.  Every firstborn in Egypt is struck down by Gods chosen angel of death, everyone except those children of Israel, who are passed over.
    After this, the Israelites are not only allowed to leave, but are driven from Egypt, given gifts as they left.  But then, when Egypt recovered just a bit from its grief and realized it had lost its servants, the Egyptian army pursued the people to bring them back.  But God was very much in control, and wiped out that army in a huge miracle- parting the red sea while Israel walked across, then drowning the pursuing army.
    From there, Israel made its way to the mountain where Yahweh would meet them, Mt. Sinai.  God gave to Moses there a set of stone tablets, written with His own finger.  But as Moses descended the mountain to deliver these God-written tablets, he saw that in the few days heÕd been on the mountain, his brother Aaron had made for the people a false God-in the form of a golden calf- and they were bowed down worshiping it. In rage, Moses throws the tablets and they smash.  Thankfully though, Yahweh gives him another set, and the people begin to follow another theophany: the cloud by day, which becomes a pillar of fire at night.  God leads them toward the promised land.
    The last part of Exodus concerns an even bigger  development.  God is not only the Lord of these people, has not only sent them his ambassador, has not only delivered them from slavery, but decides that he will now come and live with them.  The way this will happen is through a traveling house of the Lord, called the Tabernacle.  Of its 40 chapters, Exodus uses 15 to tell about the plans for and the building of, the Tabernacle.  Almost half of the book.  That is how important it was that God would dwell among these people.  And the building that results is therefore the first church building in our faith.  The tent-like tabernacle would become the Temple, which would eventually become this church building you sit in right now.

    Now drift back to the modern time, to today.  What then are we to take from the story of escape from slavery?  There are three things I believe we should concentrate on as we think about the book:
    When we think about Exodus today, when we look at it from this scenic ridge, we should think about slavery and redemption- about the way we are saved from the dictatorship of sin in our lives; how we are saved from that contrast which the Apostle Paul so eloquently talked about in the NT- that hunger to do the right thing, but finding ourselves doing the wrong thing.  Just like those ancient slave auctions, God comes before the slave trader which is sin, and buys us back.
    Israel was saved from physical slavery to Egypt.  But sometimes they were happy to be saved, and sometimes they wished they were still in predictable Egypt where yes, they were slaves, but at times, things weren't so hard.  They thought just like we sometimes are tempted to, those times when we wish we could have fun like those outside the church do , or so we think.
    And when were thinking about slavery, we should also think about Passover.  Through our faith in the Lord, imperfect as it is, we are saved from Gods judgment and wrath.  Its just like how the Israelites action of putting a mark of blood on their door, though it was done for various motives I'm sure, was a mark of faith in the Lord, and saved them from the angel of death.  In our case, God passes over as well.

    Secondly, Exodus makes us think about our weakness.  In the story of Moses, we see how God is made strong through a weak instrument.  There was no doubt that it was God doing the miracles, because Moses was so obviously weak.  In speaking and in personality, Moses seems to have fallen short.  But that just makes it more sure that God was truly working through him.
    And in the people of Israel, we see a second kind of weakness.  Though the God of all creation is on the top of Mt. Sinai, they are at the bottom worshiping a false god, a golden calf.  That indicates a serious lack of trust.  If were honest, well see ourselves in both of these idea-seeds.    At best, we are a plain vessel  that makes Gods love look all the better, but at worst, at our weakest, we are just like the Israelites, sinning in plain site of God and not even thinking about how much it must anger Him.  And if well give this even a small amount of thought, we have to admit that we do this, just like they did, because we don't trust.  Don't actually believe that God is there, or that he is on our side.  Its not that the people didn't think God was on the mountain, they simply believed that Moses had been taken up, killed, or somehow taken from them since he'd been gone for some time.  Obviously, they thought, God wasn't interested in THEM anymore.  How wrong they were!  We, too, should keep that in mind.

    Finally, we learn from Exodus the roots, the beginnings of our church, our gathering here this morning.  Until this point, God was being worshipped by this one family, in various mountain top sort of ways, various life-highlights like Jacobs ladder.  But with the covenant of the 10 commandments and the tabernacle, we begin to see organized faith, a place where Israel can go to meet with the Lord, a code of conduct which they are required to follow. And what would we do without that?
    So that is the book of Exodus, the great acts of the Lord which saved Israel from slavery and brought them to the edge of the land that God had been promising to their family for generations.  Next week well see what happens as they enter into the land that God has chosen for them.