Friday, October 3, 2008

Let My People Go

Here is the sermon for this week. It walks through Exodus. Enjoy.

We are out of Genesis this week, and will be continuing our journey through the rest of the Bible. Now unfortunately, I will be referencing parts of Genesis today that we didn’t cover. It is unavoidable when we look at Exodus, I apologize for that. You are just going to have to go back and read the Bible on your own if you don’t believe what I am saying, or you get really into it and want to know more. Many of you are probably familiar with Exodus, at least a little. This is the book that Moses is introduced in, and there have been some pretty famous movies about it. I thought about just showing the movie, but it is wildly inaccurate, and I do get paid to preach, so I thought better of it. Instead there will a sermon today covering the first half of the book, and a sermon next week coving the last half, as well as Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, and the first half of the book of Joshua, maybe. I haven’t written it yet, so it is hard to say.

Before we look at much text, we need to catch up to speed on Hebrew history up until this point. We left off last week knowing that Abraham had a son, Isaac. Well God comes to him many times and also promises him that he will make a covenant as well. And then Isaac has 2 sons, Esau and Jacob. They are twins, but Jacob is the younger, and so we would expect that Esau is going to continue the line for Abraham. But we read that God loved Jacob, and as God continually does, he make his covenant with the one he “is not supposed to”. Jacob is kind of a jerk, his name means deceiver, and like, Abraham, he too has many lessons to learn about trust, lying, marriage, and God. He eventually wrestles God, at which point God touches his leg, and for the rest of his life he has a hobble. Jacob has many sons, one of whom is named Joseph. He has a colorful coat, and a musical named after him. His brothers are all really jealous (of the coat, not the musical, in fact if they had known Andrew Lloyd Weber was going to eventually immortalize their brother in song and dance, I imagine they would have had pity on him, and all of Hebrew history would be different.) Joseph rubs it in their face that he is Jacob’s favorite. Eventually they have enough, and they sell him into slavery.

At this point Joseph is in Egypt, and he is a slave. But he also has a gift from God- he can interpret dreams. This gift eventually gets him to the highest levels of Egyptian courts, sitting at Pharaoh’s side. Also because of his gift he knows a famine is coming, so Egypt prepares itself. A famine does come, Egypt is saved, and so are many others who travel to Egypt to buy food, among these people are Joseph’s family. He saves them, they all reconcile, and the story ends very happily. Joseph says to his brothers, “What you intended for evil, the LORD has used for good.” They apologize, he apologizes, there is crying, it is all very sentimental.

And since Joseph is very wealthy and has a good job, they all settle in Egypt. Which works out well for them for a while. They have good standing with the Egyptians and subsequent kings for saving the kingdom, but then we read in the beginning of Exodus:

6 Now Joseph and all his brothers and all that generation died, 7 but the Israelites were fruitful and multiplied greatly and became exceedingly numerous, so that the land was filled with them.

8 Then a new king, who did not know about Joseph, came to power in Egypt. 9 "Look," he said to his people, "the Israelites have become much too numerous for us. 10 Come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous and, if war breaks out, will join our enemies, fight against us and leave the country."

11 So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor…

The Israelites become slaves. And things go from bad to worse. Even though they are slaves, they are still increasing in number. Pharaoh decides that this is a great way to have a civil war. To avoid this, he orders that the midwives kill any baby that is a male, so the Hebrews won’t have a fighting force. Now we are told that the midwives were God fearing woman, and they wouldn’t kill babies, so Pharaoh gets mad with them, and asks them why they haven’t been killing the boys as they were instructed. They tell him that the woman give birth before they get there, and so don’t have the ability to kill them as ordered. Pharaoh them tells the entire kingdom to kill any Hebrew babies they see by throwing them in to the Nile.

This is what Moses is born into. His mother hid him for as long as she could, we read 3 months, and then put him in a basket hoping someone would take him in. She doesn’t abandon him though. She waits by the basket. Pharaoh’s daughter sees the child, takes pity on him, and adopts him. But the thing about Egypt in those days is they didn’t have formula, so if you were to raise a child, you needed a wet nurse. Moses mother is right there, and she gets the job, being taken into Pharaoh’s home as well. This is where Moses is raised. He is considered Egyptian royalty, but his mother is there along side him while he is in his youth. She is teaching him about God and his people, and everything else.

And then the following happens. Turn with me to your programs. We read in Exodus 2

11 One day, after Moses had grown up, he went out to where his own people were and watched them at their hard labor. He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people. 12 Glancing this way and that and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. 13 The next day he went out and saw two Hebrews fighting. He asked the one in the wrong, "Why are you hitting your fellow Hebrew?"

14 The man said, "Who made you ruler and judge over us? Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian?" Then Moses was afraid and thought, "What I did must have become known."

15 When Pharaoh heard of this, he tried to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in Midian, where he sat down by a well. 16 Now a priest of Midian had seven daughters, and they came to draw water and fill the troughs to water their father's flock. 17 Some shepherds came along and drove them away, but Moses got up and came to their rescue and watered their flock.

18 When the girls returned to Reuel their father, he asked them, "Why have you returned so early today?"

19 They answered, "An Egyptian rescued us from the shepherds. He even drew water for us and watered the flock."

20 "And where is he?" he asked his daughters. "Why did you leave him? Invite him to have something to eat."

21 Moses agreed to stay with the man, who gave his daughter Zipporah to Moses in marriage. 22 Zipporah gave birth to a son, and Moses named him Gershom, saying, "I have become an alien in a foreign land."

23 During that long period, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. 24 God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. 25 So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them.

This is Moses middle years, all in one short paragraph. Let’s look at it in a few chunks. First we have Moses killing an Egyptian. The entire scene is funny, if not for the murder. We read he looked this way and that. I imagine a cartoon guys looking around a corner, this way, and then that way, and then he kills him. Now I want to say that Moses reaction to what he saw was right, but his actions were not. Moses saw injustice and he wanted to do something about it. This is good. We should not be content to let injustice go on. Murder is not good though. There are limits on what we can do to fight injustice.

The next thing we see is Moses also trying to get involved in injustice between his people. Moses is considered by the Jewish religion to be the greatest of all the Prophets. Now prophets in the Bible have many functions. We today often think of Prophets as people who tell the future, and there certainly is some of that in the Old Testament Prophets, but it was not necessarily their only or primary role. One of their main functions was to call people back to God. They often did this by pointing out what was wrong. As we shall see in the sermon in the series on Prophets, very often they just pointed out injustice and sins. They are that friend that always tells the truth and so no one likes them or asks them for advise. I am very often that person. I find it hard to be sympathetic, especially when I see someone’s trouble brought on themselves. I am the guys telling them where they messed up, not taking them out to make the feel better. Be warned if you come to me, though I am better about it now than a few years ago. I am letting you know now. My wife is the compassion person. This is what Moses is doing here. He sees injustice and he has to act. He is a Prophet, but a Prophet in the raw. Later we will see him reacting differently to wrongdoing. He still calls a spade a spade, but he is a little more delicate about it, and he doesn’t kill anyone again in cold blood.

Now the ironic thing about this mans question is that soon God is going to appoint him Judge over all the Hebrews. Anyway, Moses flees, unlike the movie where he is banished, and he ends up running into some woman who are also being wronged. He helps them out, which pays off in the end, because he gets a wife out of it. Guys, the lesson here, help out the women; they may be your wife. While all this is going on in Midian, there is a parallel story still in Egypt. There is a new Pharaoh because the old one died, the murder and Moses has seemed to blow over, and the people are being worked harder than ever. God hears their groans though, listens to their prayers, and he remembers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. If we remember last week, as I read one of the covenants that God made with Abraham, he let him know all this was going to happen. He said that Abraham’s descendants would be in slavery for 400 years, and then God would free them. This has all been foretold.

We pick up the story in Exodus 3

1 Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the desert and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2 There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bush. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire it did not burn up. 3 So Moses thought, "I will go over and see this strange sight—why the bush does not burn up."

4 When the LORD saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush, "Moses! Moses!"
And Moses said, "Here I am."

5 "Do not come any closer," God said. "Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground." 6 Then he said, "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob." At this, Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God.

7 The LORD said, "I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. 8 So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey—the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites. 9 And now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. 10 So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt."

Moses has a nice little life for himself in Midian. He has a wife, a son, a great father in law. A quick aside on the father in law, Jethro. He is pinnacle to Moses story. He is a worshiper of God, and as Moses story continues, he is going to be Moses surrogate and spiritual father. Moses will come to Jethro for advice and aid many times as the story goes on. Moses most likely wouldn’t be the same man without him. As we read the beginning of Moses story we see his sister, mother, adopted mother, but a father figure is missing. There is no guy to show him how to really be a guy. That is until Jethro. We are going to see this be a reoccurring theme through the Bible. There are going to be great men who will stand on the shoulders of other great men who take them under their wings. We will see it with Joshua, the guy to takes over for Moses, with David who has Samuel to help him, with Elijah and Elisha, Paul and Luke, and Timothy. The theme is rampant.

It has also been true in my own life. I was raised by a single mother, and throughout my life God had raised up other Godly men to train me in the ways of being a godly dude. Part of who I am today I owe to Robert, the pastor of MERCYhouse, and he owes it to a guy named Tom who lives in Oklahoma. God has done thins in many people’s lives even here, bringing spiritual advisors and fathers into lives where they were lacking. And he does it for Moses too.

Moses is out taking care of his father’s sheep and he sees a strange sight. He sees a burning bush that won’t go out. So he decides the best thing he can do right now is to check it out. It is a good thing he was not in a horror movie, because he would have been toast. You know, the bush would have grown arms or something and jumped at him and he would burn, and then the camera would zoom to he sky and we would see smoke and hear screams, and then the title would come up and we would know that we are indeed watching a B movie made for the SciFi channel called Burning Man are The Unquenchable Flame. Anyway, he checks it out, and it is God.

And God calls to him, and he answers. This calling is familiar, is it not? We saw it with Abraham. God called, “Abraham, Abraham.” And he answered, “Here I am.” And we see it again, and we will continue to see it. This is the answer of almost everyone who is called by God. “Here I am.” It is short, but it says so much. It is the answer we must give God when he calls us too. It is all he is looking for. This is the answer that gets you on God’s team. Nothing else. There are no other pre-requisites. Just tell him you are there.

After Moses answers, God goes on to tell him His plan. He says I remembered my people. I hear their cries. It is time for my promises to be fulfilled. And he tells Moses he is going to be the agent by which all this is to be fulfilled. Because of time we can’t go very far in depth on these passages, though we will at house church, which, if you are not already in a small group, I would encourage you to be a part of. What I do want to do is tell you a few things about what happens next.

The next thing that happens is Moses asks how he is going to prove this to the Israelites. And God answers that they will come back to this mountain and worship, and that will be the sign. This isn’t a very convincing sign is it? I mean, put yourselves in the Jew’s position. A murderer who is on the run come back to you while you are a slave and tells you he talked with a burning bush which happened to be God on a mountain, and that you should follow him. Your question has to be, “Prove it.” And then the guys says, “Well the proof is that we will worship on the mountain that God talked to me on.” I would be skeptical to say the least. But this is the sign God says he is going to give.

Moses objects again and says who should I say sent me. Remember that in the ancient world if you knew the God’s name, you had power over them, or so they believed. And God answers Moses, I am that I am, or I will be what I will be. He is telling Moses both his name, but also letting him know he doesn’t go in for all that control things. The game is played on his terms.

And then Moses objects again. He says they won’t believe me. God gives him a staff that can turn into a snake and does many other things as well, and also gives him, and then cures him of leprosy. Moses still objects. He says that he can’t speak all that well, and God, getting noticeably more aggravated answers that he knows Moses. He reminds him that he created him, and has been with him since the day he was conceived, and he chose him nonetheless. Moses objects one more time, and God, very angry at this point, tells him to take Aaron, his brother along for the ride, and let him do all the talking. Moses finally agrees and leaves.

He goes and talks to Jethro, who gives him his blessing and Moses and his family head off toward Egypt. And when we see the movie, the next thing that happens is he is in Egypt saying “Get your hands off me you damn dirty ape.” I mean, “Let my people Go.” But in between this, there is a very convoluted and interesting story. We read it in Exodus 3

24 At a lodging place on the way, the LORD met {Moses} and was about to kill him. 25 But Zipporah took a flint knife, cut off her son's foreskin and touched {Moses'} feet with it. "Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me," she said. 26 So the LORD let him alone. (At that time she said "bridegroom of blood," referring to circumcision.)

And the question should be asked, “Whaaaa?” What is going on here. Well, we need to go back to Abraham. Remember that at one of the conversations Abe had with God, God told him that all the men should be circumcised? Well he did. And remember too that Jethro was a follower of God, and would have known this command. Moses also met God on a mountain a few verses before. Yet Moses kid was not circumcised. I believe what is happening is what often happens to many of us. We, after our conversion, think we are all set. That we are favored and liked by God and so don’t need to follow all those pesky rules. This happened to me. My freshman year at Umass I was following God, joined a campus fellowship, started my own Bible study and got a Christian girlfriend. The fellowship decided that I should be in the leadership group because I had lead some people to Christ and was very righteous. As this was happening I decided that it would be okay for me to sleep with my girlfriend because I was needed by God and he would just have to let some things slide.

I think we all do this. Moses did it. God had just told him that he will be the one to lead the Jews to freedom for the Egyptians. I imagine that Moses was thinking pretty highly of himself. And that circumcision law was pesky and for a different age. He was enlightened and knew that it was written over 400 years ago when things were different. He didn’t need to follow it. And what happens. God is about to kill him. God is telling us that although we are called, we are not that special. If he was going to kill Moses, don’t think any of us can get away with deliberately disobeying him. As for me, God released his hand of Grace and my life was like a death for years. There are consequences for not obeying God once we have decided to follow him. We need to keep that in mind. Luckily Moses had a very upstanding righteous wife and she does the right thing. This has also helped me many times over the past few years as well.

And then Moss makes it to Egypt. Many conversations happen, the Pharaoh decides that he is going to work the Hebrews harder as punishment for asking to be free, more conversations happen, and then something called the plagues start. I suppose some of you are familiar with them. We will go through them very quickly and then speak about them. In chronological order they are:

1. River of Blood- Nile, Hapi, god of Nile

2. Frogs- Heket, god of frogs

3. Gnats- Geb- god of the earth

4. Flies- Khepri, god of insects

5. Death of the Livestock- Hathor, goddess of cows, milk and Apis (Menvis) god of bulls

6. Boils- Bast, goddess if health, Thoth god of medicine

7. Hail- Baal, god of weather, Nut, god of the sky, and Set

8. Locusts- Renenutet, goddess of harvest, Anbis, god of crops, Isis protector from locusts

9. Darkness- Re, (Ra, Amen-Ra) god of the sun

10. Death of the Firstborn- Pharaoh reincarnation of Horus

One thing we need to know as we read all these plagues. Every plague is in fact a god of Egypt beginning with the Nile, which was the God Hapi. Hecket the god of frogs, Hathor was god of livestock, the god of hail was Baal, god of harvest Renenutet, god of the Sun, Re, and Pharaoh was the reincarnated Horus, a god unto himself, and the most important god to the Egyptians. As we read the plagues what is going in behind the scenes is God is showing his supremacy over Egypt’s gods. As the people of Egypt prayed to their gods for protection, God was destroying them. He is showing, even in this, His supremacy over all. We are not going to look more in depth at all the plagues at this moment, but we do need to talk about the last one more. All of the other plagues happen in Exodus chapters 8-11. And then there is an entire chapter, 12, dedicated to the last and final plague.

1The LORD said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, 2 "This month shall be for you the beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year for you. 3Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month every man shall take a lamb according to their fathers’ houses, a lamb for a household. 4And if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his nearest neighbor shall take according to the number of persons; according to what each can eat you shall make your count for the lamb. 5Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats, 6and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight. 7"Then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. 8They shall eat the flesh that night, roasted on the fire; with unleavened bread and bitter herbs they shall eat it. 9Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roasted, its head with its legs and its inner parts. 10And you shall let none of it remain until the morning; anything that remains until the morning you shall burn. 11In this manner you shall eat it: with your belt fastened, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. And you shall eat it in haste. It is the LORD’s Passover. 12For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the LORD. 13 The blood shall be a sign for you, on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you, when I strike the land of Egypt.

21Then Moses called all the elders of Israel and said to them, "Go and select lambs for yourselves according to your clans, and kill the Passover lamb. 22Take a bunch of hyssop and dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and touch the lintel and the two doorposts with the blood that is in the basin. None of you shall go out of the door of his house until the morning. 23 For the LORD will pass through to strike the Egyptians, and when he sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the LORD will pass over the door and will not allow the destroyer to enter your houses to strike you. 24You shall observe this rite as a statute for you and for your sons forever. 25And when you come to the land that the LORD will give you, as he has promised, you shall keep this service. 26And when your children say to you, 'What do you mean by this service?' 27you shall say, 'It is the sacrifice of the LORD’s Passover, for he passed over the houses of the people of Israel in Egypt, when he struck the Egyptians but spared our houses.'" And the people bowed their heads and worshiped.

the people of Israel went and did so; as the LORD had commanded Moses and Aaron, so they did. 29 At midnight the LORD struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of the livestock. 30And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he and all his servants and all the Egyptians. And there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house where someone was not dead. 31Then he summoned Moses and Aaron by night and said, "Up, go out from among my people, both you and the people of Israel; and go, serve the LORD, as you have said. 32 Take your flocks and your herds, as you have said, and be gone, and bless me also!"

And the final plague comes. This is so important to both the Jewish and Christian faiths. Up to this point as I already said, God was taking out the Egyptian gods. There was judgment on the land. For many of the plagues, God did not distinguish between Jew and Egyptian. When it come to the livestock and harvest, God does distinguish, but frogs were everywhere. Everyone’s Nile was turned to blood. Everyone felt darkness and had hail. God also deals first with the minor gods and works his way up. We see him beginning at the bottom of the food chain, and only taking on one god at a time. By the end though, he is fighting multiple very powerful gods and rocking the Egyptians world view. The god of frogs was no where near as important as the Sun, since without sun everything would die, but without frogs some kids can’t catch frogs. By the time he gets to the death of the firstborn, he is taking on Pharaoh himself, the greatest god in the land.

Something else in new about this plague. If we were to read the text, which we had to skip because of time, we would see that God just did the other plagues. There was no action needed from the Jews. They just were. Here though, God tells them to do something. They are to sacrifice a Passover Lamb and spread its blood on the doorpost. Only this would save them. If they didn’t have the blood, or they left their house, they too were as good as dead. Also, there is nothing to say that any Egyptian who put blood on their house would not be spared. This plague was different than all the rest. This plague required the people to do something. This plague required a sacrifice. This plague required some obedience. This plague required faith.

And the Hebrews listened to Moses, the obeyed God and they were spared. And God went through Egypt and he killed every firstborn male. Every one. And Pharaoh’s house is hit. And Pharaoh’s kid is killed. And the final god is toppled.

Last week we took communion. Jesus instituted this at what we today call the last supper. It was a Passover meal. Every year, every year, Jews from around the world would, and still do, remember this night. Before 70 AD they would sacrifice a lamb at the temple, just as a lamb was sacrificed to this night. They tell the story of Exodus. How God freed them from slavery. How he beat all the other Gods. How he himself redeemed them. And they would look forward to the day the Messiah would come and free the world. In the Gospel of John we read that Jesus too was sacrificed at Passover, becoming our spotless lamb. It is through his blood that we are allowed to live. It is because he has set his protection about us through the shedding of His blood that we too can enter the Promised Land and be free forever, being slaves no more.

The Exodus story continues. What happens next is that Pharaoh decides to let the Hebrews go finally. And they plunder Egypt and begin the ling walk to the Promised Land. Pharaoh though, has a change of heart, and chases after the Hebrews. The Hebrews see Pharaoh coming, and panic. They cry out to Moses that it would have been better for them to live as slaves than to die in the wilderness. They are afraid of the guy who was just smacked down by God. Like Abraham, we see that after the call, there is an obedience, but an almost immediate lapse of faith. God ask why they are worried. Don’t you remember all those plagues I just did, and then tells Moses to part the Red Sea. He does, the Hebrews walk across, the Egyptians follow, at which point their chariots get caught in the mud, the water comes back in, and they all drown. The Hebrews rejoice, celebrate God, and we should assume that the next thing we see is them in the Promised Land.

First though, they need to make a quick pit stop. Remember the first sign that God told Moses to tell the people, that they would worship him on the mountain that he met Moses on. So that is their first destination. And if you know your Exodus story, you will know it doesn’t go as planned. Moses goes up the mountain, talks with God for quite some time, God giving him His laws ad statutes. While he is up there, the people panic and decide that they should make an Idol to worship, melting all their gold and jewelry to make a Golden Calf. God tells Moses this, sends him back down the mountain, Moses sees it, and gets so mad he destroys the tablets God gave him with the law on it. He then has to re-write all of these by his own hand.

This wasn't the first or last lapse of faith of the Hebrews either. Before this happened they complained that they would stave to death and so God gives them food from heaven. They complain that the have no water, so God tells Moses to hit a rock with his staff, and water comes out. Repeatedly the Hebrews say that it would be better for them to have never been freed and longing for the slavery of Egypt.

And so God makes them wander the desert for 40 years, until all the unbelieving people who worshipped the Calf were dead. He wasn't going to allow any of them to see the land he promised their ancestors and heirs. And so they walk in giant circles all over the wilderness. And even Moses isn’t allowed to enter the Promised Land, for he too doubts God and his plan during this time. They arrive at the doorstep of Canaan and Moses is allowed to see it, and then he dies. He passes off his legacy to his protégé Joshua, and the Jewish story of Redemption continues.

You may ask why I end my sermon here. It would have been very nice to end at the Passover, right. Talk about sacrifice and freedom. End on a high note. Instead we are at a place where all the people (except Joshua and Caleb) who were in the original Exodus are dead, Moses is punished and doesn’t get to live in the place he as brings his people to, and everyone has been screwing up royally. Now, remember I am dramatically oversimplifying the end of Moses life, and next week we will pick up with him alive and well, but I think this is where we need to end tonight. Moses story, Israel’s story ends incomplete, and so must we tonight.

Israel’s story really is ours. We have been freed from slavery, yet form some reason we continue to doubt. I know I do. Over and over God shows himself faithful, giving me water from rocks and bread from heaven, and over and over I cry out that it would have been better for me to stay in slavery. And I think it is all of us too.

How many of us have run back to our old lives when things get tough. When we see danger approaching, Pharaoh’s army on the horizon, how many of us long for our old life back. We remember how good it used to be, how satisfying it was to have food and be in slavery. How predictable it was. How many of us, after accepting the sacrifice of our Passover Lamb wish that we could go back to the way things were. I imagine it is not just me. I know that sometime late at night I think that I didn’t screw my life up that much drinking. That it was really fun. I forget the pain, the self mutilation, the wanting to die. I forget the slavery and remember only Egypt. And so I erect my own god, worship my own Golden Calf, and cry out that it would have been better for me never to have left.

And through it all God is still faithful. He gives bread from heaven, he gives water from rocks. He brings the Hebrews to the Promised Land. He doesn’t abandon them or forsake them. They are still his people. Sure there were consequences, and there are consequences sometimes for us today, but we are still his children. He still has a plan for us. He still was our spotless sacrifice.

If you are here today and you want to be freed from slavery and death, I tell you the sacrifice has been made. As he hung outside the city gates, Jesus became the only sacrifice we need. He died that we might live. He bled his blood so that the wrath of God might be turned away from us. Whether we are Hebrew or Egyptian, grew up in church or have never been before, we can find refuge under his lentil. He did not save only the Jews, but all those who put their faith in His Sacrifice. And the same is true today. Just being a church kid, just coming here doesn’t mean you are safe, you to need the blood. And if you have never heard this before, if you are worshipping other gods, all God asks of you is to believe and enter His house. There are no other pre-requisites. He is the Savior for all.

If you are here today and you have lost faith, you are longing for Egypt, know also, that he is calling you back to himself. His promises are still there for you. He wants you to continue to faith in him. This is not a one time thing. We must continually rely on God not just to free us from slavery, but to bring us to the Promised Land. He who has given you his only son, how will he not give you all things? Cry out to him. He is there. He is still giving you bread from heaven.

The message for tonight is trust in God. Whether it is the first time we are taking the blood and putting it over our doors, or we have been walking in a desert for 40 years, we need to trust in God. God only asks this of us. Last week we saw a man called righteous, Abraham, who slept around, prostituted his wife, and lied more times than we could talk about. Yet God called him, an eh went, and he was called righteous because of this. This week, we see yet another man God should not hang out with walking with him. Moses was a coward, a murderer, and had a terrible temper. He 5 times in the face of the LORD tells him to choose someone else. He 5 time tries to get out of his relationship with God. We see God saving people who don’t want to be saved, who complain about him all the time, who worship false gods right under His nose. And yet we still see God initiating with them. He still provides food and water, even as the wander for 40 years.

God initiated with all these, and he is still initiating today. He is here asking you to have a relationship with him. Asking you to follow him. All he demands, all that is required is that we say “Here I am.” He is calling you, maybe not form the top of a mountain, but he is calling. How will you answer. Remember, we need not be perfect to answer him, only willing.

Let us Pray.

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