There is God. And there are images of God. And some people don't see any difference between the two.
A capable, good-hearted, and devout servant by the name of Felicite from Gustave Flaubert's "A Simple Heart" fell prey to this confusion between God and God's images. She was alone and unappreciated, and her parrot Loulou became "almost like a son, a lover to her", so much so that, when he died, she had him stuffed. Soon the gospel's image of the Holy Spirit as a dove began to merge with her stuffed parrot, and she fell "into the idolatrous habit of saying her prayers on her knees in front of the parrot". Finally, Flaubert wrote, as she breathed her last, "she thought she saw, as the heavens opened, a gigantic parrot hovering over her head."' Abandoned by others, she transferred her love to the parrot, transforming it into a god. An earthly image morphed into a divine reality.
Most people who fuse God's image and God's reality aren't nearly so naive. Some, like great critics of religion, argue that God is simply a projection of human ideals onto a heavenly screen; that God is, as Karl Marx thought, a reflection of the human need to be consoled in misery and to cope with weakness. For them, God doesn't exist as a reality independent of human beings. "God" is the name that the foolish, the miserable, and the weak give to what is nothing more than a useful figment of human imagination.
I will leave these critics aside here, and instead focus on what is perhaps the most troubling confusion between God's reality and God's image, which falls somewhere between the naive Felicite and the shrewd Marx. It's believers who fall prey to this confusion. We don't see them kneeling before parrots. Neither do they trumpet, "God is a human projection." They don't brazenly say, "God doesn't exist; only images of God do." To the contrary, they piously affirm, "God is a reality independent of our minds" and "God is nothing like a parrot, or any other creature."
And yet they worship idols without even knowing it. Unlike Felicite's parrot, their gods are not made of the hard matter of this world and don't sit elevated on sacred pedestals. Instead, they dwell in their worshipers' minds and are made of the soft stuff of their own cherished ideas. They simply assume that who they believe God to be and who God truly is are one and the same. God is as large (or as small) as they make the Infinite One to be, and none of the beliefs they entertain about God could possibly be wrong.
But in fact, our images of God are rather different from God's reality. We are finite beings, and God is infinitely greater than any thoughts we can contain about divine reality in our wondrous but tiny minds. We are sinful beings, and God is different from what we conceive in our selfishness and pride. Finite and self-centered as we are, we often forget God's warning through the prophet Isaiah: "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts" (55:9). When we forget that, we unwittingly reduce God's ways to our ways and God's thoughts to our thoughts. Our hearts become factories of idols in which we fashion and refashion God to fit our needs and desires.
Yet the most powerful and seductive images of God are not the ones we craft in the privacy of our hearts. They are the ones that seep into our minds as we watch TV, read books, go shopping at the mall, or socialize with our neighbors. Slowly and imperceptibly, the one true God begins acquiring the features of the gods of this world. For instance, our God simply gratifies our desires rather than reshaping them in accordance with the beauty of God's own character. Our God then kills enemies rather than dying on their behalf as God did in Jesus Christ. To use Flaubert's metaphor, the dove of the Spirit becomes the parrot whose plumage bears a striking resemblance to our culture's values.
To worship God rather than idols of our own making, we must allow God to break apart the idols we create, through the Spirit's relentless and intimate work within our lives. First, we need to know where to look for knowledge of the true God. It would be a mistake to seek that knowledge primarily in the world around us. God is not an object in this world. There's no map that says "X marks the spot." Whatever we find in the world will be ... the world, and not God. Neither can we find God in the infinity that lies beyond the cosmos. God is not an unnamed something on the other side of the temporal and spatial edges of the universe. Rather, as Christians, we find God in Jesus Christ, God's Word incarnate as witnessed in the Scriptures, God's written word.
It's not enough, however, to know where to look for God. We also need eyes and ears that can recognize the true knowledge of God when we come across it. For it could be that even as we look at Jesus Christ and read Scripture, as the prophet Isaiah put it, we "keep listening, but do not comprehend" and "keep looking, but do not understand" (6:9). Think of people who observed Jesus teach and heal and embody the life of God - and they saw nothing but a "false prophet" or a "political rebel". Our eyes and ears need a heart ready to receive the truth of God's reality rather than one that longs for the comforts of false gods.
Finally, even when we look in the right places with a ready heart, we still might miss the one true God. We need to be willing to let our very effort to know God slide out of our hands, opening them to God's continued and unexpected self-revelation. Otherwise, like the dog from Aesop's fable, we may end up dropping the real piece of meat in order to grab its reflection in the water.
(Miroslav Volf, Free Of Charge, pp.21-23)
Sunday, 4 June 2006
How to Know the Truth
Jesus' words in John 8:31,32 seem to speak of an epistemology of faith and obedience:
Knowing the truth is consequent to holding to his teaching, honouring him with our faith and obeying him as his disciples. Even if the kai in v.32 is simply translated as 'and' and not 'then', there still seems to be a progression in what he is saying, that knowing follows the doing of faith and obedience.
Of course, we ought to expect just this in the light of the wisdom of the Book of Proverbs, that
A genuine reverence for the LORD which results in changed thoughts and actions is the precondition for knowing - truly knowing.
The implications of this must surely be significant, both pastorally and evangelistically.
If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. (TNIV)
Knowing the truth is consequent to holding to his teaching, honouring him with our faith and obeying him as his disciples. Even if the kai in v.32 is simply translated as 'and' and not 'then', there still seems to be a progression in what he is saying, that knowing follows the doing of faith and obedience.
Of course, we ought to expect just this in the light of the wisdom of the Book of Proverbs, that
The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge (Prov. 1:7a)
A genuine reverence for the LORD which results in changed thoughts and actions is the precondition for knowing - truly knowing.
The implications of this must surely be significant, both pastorally and evangelistically.
Saturday, 27 May 2006
Sermon on Exodus 5:1-21
Everything has gone well for Moses so far on his return to Egypt, with the Lord’s commission in his heart. He has been met by Aaron and the elders and favourably received. The plans for their release from the oppression of Egypt seem ready to unfold neatly before them. But life is never straightforward, as we’ll see, and it is often true in spiritual terms that things get worse before they get better.
1. Boldness & Confrontation (vv.1-5)
Moses and Aaron go boldly in to see Pharaoh (but without the elders – see 3:18). In the light of Moses’ encounter with the Lord and the people’s warm and worshipful response, they no doubt feel confident that the Lord’s word will come to pass and quickly. Moses is displaying the spirit not of timidity but of love, power and a sound mind (2 Tim 1:7).
It is entirely right that we should be confident in the Lord, that we have assurance his word will be fulfilled and his will be done. We need have no diffidence in standing on God’s Word and acting in the light of it. Moses who began so very timidly in Midian now walks boldly into Pharaoh’s presence, strengthened in the Lord.
And, in boldness, Moses demands the release of the people, using a term that leaves Pharaoh in no doubt that they will no longer be under his rule.
But his boldness is not met by an immediate humbling of Pharaoh and the release of the people. The response is, rather, one of stark unbelief and rebellion: “Who is Yahweh?” Here is the uncovering of the essential issue in the whole storyline of the Bible – sin is the de-godding of God, the refusal to honour him. This is why the whole creation is groaning under the curse, this is why humanity knows decay and death.
And this is what we see all around us – the steadfast and persistent refusal to give God his due, to honour him with lives of grateful praise and adoration.
Moses and Aaron seem rather taken aback by Pharaoh’s response and try again in v.3, adding their own thoughts to the Lord’s clear command (the threat to strike them with plagues). They are clearly rattled by what has happened.
How should we respond to such outright rejection of the Lord and of his message? Clearly we will feel a sense of outrage that the God of glory should be so slighted, the kind of distressed anger that Paul felt when he walked around Athens and saw their idols. But how should we deal with the mixture of anger and sadness?
I think we need to be careful that we understand the situation for what it is and see where the answer lies. We should not be surprised by the sinful rejection of God that we see so clearly, nor should we think that the appropriate response is to organise social resistance (which is a tempting option in a society that was once nominally Christian).
What is the solution? Let me read you some wise words from a helpful commentator: “our reaction should be one of godliness and patience, knowing that the message belongs to the Lord and he will set things aright. We must rise above the fray, the plans and schemes of humanity, with a godly confidence that comes only from knowing God and being known by him. (Exodus, NIVAC p.167f)
Godliness and patience: just the answer that Peter gives in his first letter to an oppressed church. Let’s ask God to help us to display such attributes ourselves in difficult days.
2. Outright rejection leads to oppressive retaliation (vv.6-16)
Pharaoh is quite definite in his response. He takes his stand against the Lord and his people; he opposes the one true God, setting himself up as an anti-God figure, leading the fight for the forces of sin and evil.
In that role he immediately orders that the people be oppressed further (v.6ff). And notice that his word finds an immediate response – what he says is done and done quickly. He has real power; sin has real power.
The Lord has called Moses to lead the people out of Egypt; he has promised his presence with his people. But that reality of his presence does not remove the reality of suffering. The people who have been oppressed are further oppressed and harried by the Egyptians.
A real struggle is developing here over the release of the people from Egypt; they suffer very much at the hands of the Egyptians and that raises a troubling and important question: why does the Lord allow this? Why wasn’t Pharaoh humbled straight away? Why can’t the people be spared some of this additional burden of pain?
Those sorts of questions are never easy to answer but I think we can say at least this: sin is a real power; evil as a reality has a certain strength. We should never forget that. Satan has real power and with that power he has blinded the minds of unbelievers. He does all he can to thwart the Lord’s plans to rescue his creation from the dominion of sin and death.
This reality is something Paul was aware of in his ministry, too. In 1 Thes. 2:18 he says he had been wanting to visit the church “but Satan stopped us”.
Now, some might ask if Paul doesn’t know that the Lord is sovereign? And of course he does. But he is also working with the reality of sin and evil and it does us no good to deny that sin is a real power, that Satan has genuine power.
Yes, the Lord is sovereign and all opposition to his purposes will be overcome; that is not in doubt. But what we are seeing in this passage is that the overthrow of sin and evil will take real effort on the part of the Lord. Not because he is weak or only just sovereign but because of the real power that exists in sin.
Our perspective as we engage the world must also be a fully and truly biblical one – the all-sufficiency of the Lord and his power and the real power of sin. Holding those points together will stop us from taking wrong turns and coming to wrong conclusions. It will also prepare us to endure the sufferings of this life in the sure hope of eternal life that is in Jesus Christ our Lord.
3. The Blame Culture (vv.17-21)
One of the upshots of this kind of oppression is that it often splits apart the community it is directed against. And the germs of that are seen here in v.20 – when the Israelite foremen leave Pharaoh they meet Moses and Aaron and turn on them.
When we experience something of the difficulties of living and witnessing in a hostile world, we can all-too-easily find ourselves drawn inwards into conflict within the church and a blame culture begins to establish itself. ‘People aren’t being converted because the pastor is a poor preacher’; ‘people aren’t being saved’, says the pastor, ‘because people don’t invite their friends to the services and don’t live attractive lives before them’.
The church under pressure from the world splits into factions – and each faction blames the other for the problems: ‘if you were more with-it we’d have lots of people – young people! – coming along’. ‘Yeah, and if you were more faithful to God’s Word we’d be in a better state’. And so it goes.
How can we guard against that? How can we ensure infighting does not take place? By grasping what we have already seen here: that sin is a powerful foe, that the tactic of the enemy is to divide and rule, that we serve a God of power and might whose word will not fail.
1. Boldness & Confrontation (vv.1-5)
Moses and Aaron go boldly in to see Pharaoh (but without the elders – see 3:18). In the light of Moses’ encounter with the Lord and the people’s warm and worshipful response, they no doubt feel confident that the Lord’s word will come to pass and quickly. Moses is displaying the spirit not of timidity but of love, power and a sound mind (2 Tim 1:7).
It is entirely right that we should be confident in the Lord, that we have assurance his word will be fulfilled and his will be done. We need have no diffidence in standing on God’s Word and acting in the light of it. Moses who began so very timidly in Midian now walks boldly into Pharaoh’s presence, strengthened in the Lord.
And, in boldness, Moses demands the release of the people, using a term that leaves Pharaoh in no doubt that they will no longer be under his rule.
But his boldness is not met by an immediate humbling of Pharaoh and the release of the people. The response is, rather, one of stark unbelief and rebellion: “Who is Yahweh?” Here is the uncovering of the essential issue in the whole storyline of the Bible – sin is the de-godding of God, the refusal to honour him. This is why the whole creation is groaning under the curse, this is why humanity knows decay and death.
And this is what we see all around us – the steadfast and persistent refusal to give God his due, to honour him with lives of grateful praise and adoration.
Moses and Aaron seem rather taken aback by Pharaoh’s response and try again in v.3, adding their own thoughts to the Lord’s clear command (the threat to strike them with plagues). They are clearly rattled by what has happened.
How should we respond to such outright rejection of the Lord and of his message? Clearly we will feel a sense of outrage that the God of glory should be so slighted, the kind of distressed anger that Paul felt when he walked around Athens and saw their idols. But how should we deal with the mixture of anger and sadness?
I think we need to be careful that we understand the situation for what it is and see where the answer lies. We should not be surprised by the sinful rejection of God that we see so clearly, nor should we think that the appropriate response is to organise social resistance (which is a tempting option in a society that was once nominally Christian).
What is the solution? Let me read you some wise words from a helpful commentator: “our reaction should be one of godliness and patience, knowing that the message belongs to the Lord and he will set things aright. We must rise above the fray, the plans and schemes of humanity, with a godly confidence that comes only from knowing God and being known by him. (Exodus, NIVAC p.167f)
Godliness and patience: just the answer that Peter gives in his first letter to an oppressed church. Let’s ask God to help us to display such attributes ourselves in difficult days.
2. Outright rejection leads to oppressive retaliation (vv.6-16)
Pharaoh is quite definite in his response. He takes his stand against the Lord and his people; he opposes the one true God, setting himself up as an anti-God figure, leading the fight for the forces of sin and evil.
In that role he immediately orders that the people be oppressed further (v.6ff). And notice that his word finds an immediate response – what he says is done and done quickly. He has real power; sin has real power.
The Lord has called Moses to lead the people out of Egypt; he has promised his presence with his people. But that reality of his presence does not remove the reality of suffering. The people who have been oppressed are further oppressed and harried by the Egyptians.
A real struggle is developing here over the release of the people from Egypt; they suffer very much at the hands of the Egyptians and that raises a troubling and important question: why does the Lord allow this? Why wasn’t Pharaoh humbled straight away? Why can’t the people be spared some of this additional burden of pain?
Those sorts of questions are never easy to answer but I think we can say at least this: sin is a real power; evil as a reality has a certain strength. We should never forget that. Satan has real power and with that power he has blinded the minds of unbelievers. He does all he can to thwart the Lord’s plans to rescue his creation from the dominion of sin and death.
This reality is something Paul was aware of in his ministry, too. In 1 Thes. 2:18 he says he had been wanting to visit the church “but Satan stopped us”.
Now, some might ask if Paul doesn’t know that the Lord is sovereign? And of course he does. But he is also working with the reality of sin and evil and it does us no good to deny that sin is a real power, that Satan has genuine power.
Yes, the Lord is sovereign and all opposition to his purposes will be overcome; that is not in doubt. But what we are seeing in this passage is that the overthrow of sin and evil will take real effort on the part of the Lord. Not because he is weak or only just sovereign but because of the real power that exists in sin.
Our perspective as we engage the world must also be a fully and truly biblical one – the all-sufficiency of the Lord and his power and the real power of sin. Holding those points together will stop us from taking wrong turns and coming to wrong conclusions. It will also prepare us to endure the sufferings of this life in the sure hope of eternal life that is in Jesus Christ our Lord.
3. The Blame Culture (vv.17-21)
One of the upshots of this kind of oppression is that it often splits apart the community it is directed against. And the germs of that are seen here in v.20 – when the Israelite foremen leave Pharaoh they meet Moses and Aaron and turn on them.
When we experience something of the difficulties of living and witnessing in a hostile world, we can all-too-easily find ourselves drawn inwards into conflict within the church and a blame culture begins to establish itself. ‘People aren’t being converted because the pastor is a poor preacher’; ‘people aren’t being saved’, says the pastor, ‘because people don’t invite their friends to the services and don’t live attractive lives before them’.
The church under pressure from the world splits into factions – and each faction blames the other for the problems: ‘if you were more with-it we’d have lots of people – young people! – coming along’. ‘Yeah, and if you were more faithful to God’s Word we’d be in a better state’. And so it goes.
How can we guard against that? How can we ensure infighting does not take place? By grasping what we have already seen here: that sin is a powerful foe, that the tactic of the enemy is to divide and rule, that we serve a God of power and might whose word will not fail.
Wednesday, 24 May 2006
More
wise words from Peter Enns:
It remains an inescapable fact that our world today is no more receptive to God's will than the Egypt of Pharaoh's day. Our reaction to opposition should not be outrage, as if we are the ones offended, or surprise, as if American hearts are somehow less rebellious toward God. Rather, our reaction should be one of godliness and patience, knowing that the message belongs to the Lord and he will set things aright. We must rise above the fray, the plans and schemes of humanity, with a godly confidence that comes only from knowing God and being known by him. (Exodus, NIVAC p.167f)
Tuesday, 23 May 2006
Sermon on Exodus 4:24-26
There are a number of passages in the Bible that perplex us and stretch our faith. We might think of them as problem passages that cast doubt upon the scriptures, but that isn’t really the case. In fact, if the Bible was merely a human document it is more likely that such passages would have been dropped from sight long ago.
But that still leaves the passages in all their strangeness. And among them is the one we’re looking at tonight. Just what are we to make of this? In v.19 Moses is told that those wanting to kill him are dead and then, in an ironic twist, it seems that the Lord is out to get him in these verses.
This almost seems like the stuff of nightmares; what’s going on?
1. The need to obey
It seems from what happens here that the Lord’s anger is directed at Moses because he has failed to circumcise his son. But is that such a big deal? Why not just gently remind him of the fact? Surely it’s got to be about more than that?
That might not seem like a big deal to us but we need to remember the significance of the rite in biblical terms: it was a sign and seal of the covenant that God had made with Abraham for the sake of the world. It was a sign that marked-out the Jews as the Lord’s people.
And, so, for Moses to fail to administer that sign was not about outward religion; it was something that went to the heart of what the Lord was doing. It was to be the sign that showed Moses and his family were dedicated to the Lord, that they belonged to him and were under his lordship.
As we read in Genesis 17, those who failed to submit to this rite were to be cut off from their people, not considered as part of the family of God. It wasn’t just about a badge that they wore but what that badge meant. To fail to circumcise was to be openly defiant of the Lord and to oppose what he was doing in the world.
In that light, it becomes a little easier to see why the Lord should act against Moses in this way here. He is to be the leader of the people that the Lord will work through to rescue the world from sin. If he is not interested in obeying the Lord, he cannot expect not to forfeit everything.
But what about us? Where does this hit home for us? The NT makes it clear that what really matters is having hearts that are circumcised, by which it means that we are made new and committed to the Lord. The only way that can happen, the only way for our past to be atoned for and for our hearts to be made new is through faith in Jesus.
In a very real sense, faith takes the place in the NT of circumcision in the OT, as that which marks out the people of God. And, as Paul wrote in Col 2, when we come to faith in Jesus our flesh is cut away, we are owned as belonging to God through being joined to Jesus in his death and resurrection.
And all who refuse to be joined to Jesus are warned in the clearest terms by God through his word that there is no other way, that although there is a way that seems right to a man it ends in death. There is only one way to life, only one saviour of all people and the only way to receive from him is through faith in him.
But the faith that receives God’s mercy is not mere intellectual assent; it is a trusting faith, a faith that demonstrates it is genuine through deeds of love. We are to be saved by faith, not works – yet the faith that saves is a faith that works.
Do you have that faith? Are you trusting in Jesus? Is that trust at work in deeds of love? If you are far from Jesus then this passage and many others warn you of your danger and you need to take that very seriously indeed.
2. Space to repent
But while it is sobering to see how serious the Lord is about our turning decisively to him in genuine faith and obeying his words, it is helpful to notice that, where the Lord deems it necessary to act in discipline, he gives room for the situation to be put right, he gives space for repentance.
We aren’t told how Zipporah knew things were amiss and that they were in danger but what is clear is that the Lord was allowing them space to act, to put the matter right; he was “about to kill him” (v.24). As someone has said, “The divine move is thus a threat, not an attempt to kill that God fails to pull off”.
It was a threat that provided an opportunity that Zipporah took with two hands (and one knife).
Her action speaks powerfully to us: if things are wrong, they need to be put right. And they can be put right; the Lord gives room for repentance and for setting things right. He is patient and is not willing that any should perish.
So whether you’re not yet a Christian or if you’ve been one for many long years, know that God is merciful and kind, even when he moves to act in severe discipline. He gives space for putting things right. When he sent Jesus into the world it wasn’t to condemn but to save and so Jesus’ ministry began with the call to repent.
What is vital is that we don’t show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience which lead us towards repentance. He wants us to sort things out; he wants us to come out of the shadows and into the light of his loving grace. The fact that Moses comes out of this alive should not be interpreted as the Lord not being serious about the need for obedient faith but rather that he is serious in giving every opportunity to repent.
Zipporah used that space wisely; will you do the same? Whatever the situation, whatever the shame, however long you may have turned from his mercy, even tonight you can come back to him, and come back for good.
3. Jesus: The Obedient Servant
The Lord is utterly sovereign, as we have seen, yet he has purposed to work through people and demands obedience from his servants. Moses is seen here to be a man whose obedience is flawed – in fact, it’s his Midianite wife, Zipporah, who displays more spiritual nouse (and, again, a woman keeps things moving forward).
Moses is going to be a great servant of God but he is a deeply-flawed man, lacking not only at times in faith but also in obedience to the commands of God. Here is a man who stands in need of large swathes of mercy.
God’s work does not depend on one person alone. He is quite prepared to remove Moses from the equation. What would have happened had Zipporah not acted so wisely and so quickly? We don’t know but we can say that the sovereign Lord would not have been hindered from achieving the rescue of his creation.
He is not dependent on one person and yet obedience is going to be essential to the progress of the Lord’s work of salvation. But as we see here, the best of men are men at best. Moses is a great hero of the faith but he is almost taken-out by God because of his lack of obedience. If obedience is going to be essential in the rescue of the human race, where will it come from?
The writer of Hebrews tells us that, just as the builder of a house has greater honour than the house itself so Jesus has been found worthy of greater honour than Moses. And the same writer stresses in many places the obedience of Jesus’ life and his sacrificial death in our place.
Zipporah interceded for Moses with blood and, in a very vivid way, points us forward to Jesus who stands in the gap for us, who was slain for us and by whose blood we can be saved.
That’s where all our hope lies: in Jesus, the Son of God, who was obedient to death, even the death of the cross. Is he your hope tonight?
But that still leaves the passages in all their strangeness. And among them is the one we’re looking at tonight. Just what are we to make of this? In v.19 Moses is told that those wanting to kill him are dead and then, in an ironic twist, it seems that the Lord is out to get him in these verses.
This almost seems like the stuff of nightmares; what’s going on?
1. The need to obey
It seems from what happens here that the Lord’s anger is directed at Moses because he has failed to circumcise his son. But is that such a big deal? Why not just gently remind him of the fact? Surely it’s got to be about more than that?
That might not seem like a big deal to us but we need to remember the significance of the rite in biblical terms: it was a sign and seal of the covenant that God had made with Abraham for the sake of the world. It was a sign that marked-out the Jews as the Lord’s people.
And, so, for Moses to fail to administer that sign was not about outward religion; it was something that went to the heart of what the Lord was doing. It was to be the sign that showed Moses and his family were dedicated to the Lord, that they belonged to him and were under his lordship.
As we read in Genesis 17, those who failed to submit to this rite were to be cut off from their people, not considered as part of the family of God. It wasn’t just about a badge that they wore but what that badge meant. To fail to circumcise was to be openly defiant of the Lord and to oppose what he was doing in the world.
In that light, it becomes a little easier to see why the Lord should act against Moses in this way here. He is to be the leader of the people that the Lord will work through to rescue the world from sin. If he is not interested in obeying the Lord, he cannot expect not to forfeit everything.
But what about us? Where does this hit home for us? The NT makes it clear that what really matters is having hearts that are circumcised, by which it means that we are made new and committed to the Lord. The only way that can happen, the only way for our past to be atoned for and for our hearts to be made new is through faith in Jesus.
In a very real sense, faith takes the place in the NT of circumcision in the OT, as that which marks out the people of God. And, as Paul wrote in Col 2, when we come to faith in Jesus our flesh is cut away, we are owned as belonging to God through being joined to Jesus in his death and resurrection.
And all who refuse to be joined to Jesus are warned in the clearest terms by God through his word that there is no other way, that although there is a way that seems right to a man it ends in death. There is only one way to life, only one saviour of all people and the only way to receive from him is through faith in him.
But the faith that receives God’s mercy is not mere intellectual assent; it is a trusting faith, a faith that demonstrates it is genuine through deeds of love. We are to be saved by faith, not works – yet the faith that saves is a faith that works.
Do you have that faith? Are you trusting in Jesus? Is that trust at work in deeds of love? If you are far from Jesus then this passage and many others warn you of your danger and you need to take that very seriously indeed.
2. Space to repent
But while it is sobering to see how serious the Lord is about our turning decisively to him in genuine faith and obeying his words, it is helpful to notice that, where the Lord deems it necessary to act in discipline, he gives room for the situation to be put right, he gives space for repentance.
We aren’t told how Zipporah knew things were amiss and that they were in danger but what is clear is that the Lord was allowing them space to act, to put the matter right; he was “about to kill him” (v.24). As someone has said, “The divine move is thus a threat, not an attempt to kill that God fails to pull off”.
It was a threat that provided an opportunity that Zipporah took with two hands (and one knife).
Her action speaks powerfully to us: if things are wrong, they need to be put right. And they can be put right; the Lord gives room for repentance and for setting things right. He is patient and is not willing that any should perish.
So whether you’re not yet a Christian or if you’ve been one for many long years, know that God is merciful and kind, even when he moves to act in severe discipline. He gives space for putting things right. When he sent Jesus into the world it wasn’t to condemn but to save and so Jesus’ ministry began with the call to repent.
What is vital is that we don’t show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience which lead us towards repentance. He wants us to sort things out; he wants us to come out of the shadows and into the light of his loving grace. The fact that Moses comes out of this alive should not be interpreted as the Lord not being serious about the need for obedient faith but rather that he is serious in giving every opportunity to repent.
Zipporah used that space wisely; will you do the same? Whatever the situation, whatever the shame, however long you may have turned from his mercy, even tonight you can come back to him, and come back for good.
3. Jesus: The Obedient Servant
The Lord is utterly sovereign, as we have seen, yet he has purposed to work through people and demands obedience from his servants. Moses is seen here to be a man whose obedience is flawed – in fact, it’s his Midianite wife, Zipporah, who displays more spiritual nouse (and, again, a woman keeps things moving forward).
Moses is going to be a great servant of God but he is a deeply-flawed man, lacking not only at times in faith but also in obedience to the commands of God. Here is a man who stands in need of large swathes of mercy.
God’s work does not depend on one person alone. He is quite prepared to remove Moses from the equation. What would have happened had Zipporah not acted so wisely and so quickly? We don’t know but we can say that the sovereign Lord would not have been hindered from achieving the rescue of his creation.
He is not dependent on one person and yet obedience is going to be essential to the progress of the Lord’s work of salvation. But as we see here, the best of men are men at best. Moses is a great hero of the faith but he is almost taken-out by God because of his lack of obedience. If obedience is going to be essential in the rescue of the human race, where will it come from?
The writer of Hebrews tells us that, just as the builder of a house has greater honour than the house itself so Jesus has been found worthy of greater honour than Moses. And the same writer stresses in many places the obedience of Jesus’ life and his sacrificial death in our place.
Zipporah interceded for Moses with blood and, in a very vivid way, points us forward to Jesus who stands in the gap for us, who was slain for us and by whose blood we can be saved.
That’s where all our hope lies: in Jesus, the Son of God, who was obedient to death, even the death of the cross. Is he your hope tonight?
Sermon on Exodus 4:18-31
Life in the in-between
Moses has had the most significant encounter with the Lord at the burning bush. He has been commissioned to go back to Egypt in order to lead the people of Israel out from there. His initial response was to raise all sorts of questions and to protest his unsuitability for the job. His final reply is to ask God to send someone else, at which the Lord’s anger burns against him and he tells him he will allow Aaron to help him.
We might imagine that the next significant moment is going to be when Moses gets to Egypt but that is far from being the case. This section is an in-between stage in the story but it is full of meaning and relevance. I think the point is clear, that the times in life that we might see as ‘in-between’ and therefore lacking in some way may very well turn out to be times of great significance for us.
We might view the next few months as being ‘in-between’ times for ourselves as a church; in some ways they clearly are. But it would be foolish and wrong to conclude that the Lord had suspended his purposes; we need to be alert to all that says to us and ready to act upon it.
1. Moses going back (vv.18-20)
The first thing that might strike you about Moses here is that, having incurred the anger of God by his pleading for the Lord to send someone else, when he speaks to Jethro he doesn’t mention anything of what the Lord has said but simply says he wants to go and see if his people are still alive.
That seems quite odd because if they weren’t alive, why would the Lord be sending him back to them? Does he distrust what the Lord has said? Is he wary of what Jethro might say? Is it another example of Moses’ insecurity and lack of confidence?
The fact is, we aren’t told – the text simply raises the question without answering it. What we can say is that Moses doesn’t come across as someone supremely sure of himself and his commission. There is something rather fragile about him here.
But the Lord hasn’t given up on him. He had told him to go back, that those who wanted to kill him were dead. And in response to that, Moses has rather uncertainly spoken to Jethro and then goes and saddles up the donkeys and sets off with his family.
And despite the sense of fragility that there is about Moses, the last sentence in v.20 is very telling: “And he took the staff of God in his hand.” That staff was a reminder of his commission and a symbol of the Lord’s power. He may seem unsure but he’s going; he may not be thinking completely straight and have all sorts of questions and concerns but he is going and he is going with the staff in his hands.
I think that says a lot about Moses and is a real example to us. Low self-esteem, lack of self-confidence and previous failures are no reasons not to follow where the Lord leads. What matters most is not our innate wisdom and abilities but his wisdom and power.
We don’t have a staff to carry but we do have a message of a cross that speaks of the wisdom and power of God, even as it seems to be just so much weakness and foolishness to the world. It is with confidence in God and in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ that we can and must go forward.
2. God at work! (vv.21-23)
Moses is on the way back to Egypt. When he gets there, he is to perform the various signs not just before his own people but before Pharaoh – that is where the action is going to be. Moses was worried about how his own people would receive him but the Lord is moving things onto a different plane.
But the terms in which he does that might be quite unsettling to some. He doesn’t say that Pharaoh will oppose Moses but that he will harden Pharaoh’s heart with the upshot that Pharaoh will not let the people go.
What this ushers us into is the relationship between the sovereignty of God and human responsibility. When we come to the chapters where Pharaoh opposes Moses, we’ll see that he hardens his heart and that is followed by the Lord hardening it also. But the emphasis here is on the Lord taking the initiative to harden Pharaoh’s heart.
How are we to understand this? Does it make the Lord the author of evil? Does it remove Pharaoh’s responsibility and guilt?
I want to read a passage from a commentary on Exodus that reflects on this issue. I’m going to read a fairly lengthy section because I think it deals with the issue in a very wise way…..
There is a lot of helpful comment there but the one thing I want to pick up and deal with is the point that is made about the context in which God’s sovereignty is spoken about. The context here is quite clear: we are dealing with God’s action to redeem Israel. And he will act to redeem Israel in order that his saving blessing might be known in all the world.
The Lord loves Israel but he also loves Egypt. In fact, his love is for the whole of his creation. His choice of Israel is for the sake of the whole world and, thus, his action in Egypt and with Pharaoh is not to be seen as hatred of Egypt but rather is to be set within that larger context of God’s love.
In terms of Pharaoh himself, again the text here is helpful. There is a clear conflict being played out between the Lord and all that stands opposed to him, symbolised here in the person of Pharaoh. The Lord will act to redeem his firstborn and in the process will slay the firstborn of Egypt. We are dealing here not with abstract theology and philosophical questions but the concrete action of the one true God to rescue his creation from sin. Pharaoh stands opposed to that as, in a sense, the spokesman for the kingdom of darkness, and he will be dealt with in power and might.
Whilst we may not be able to sort all the issues out (and Peter Enns is right to counsel us not to think that we need to) what we must get straight here is that the Lord is God and he is in absolute control. Sin will not win; Satan will not prevail; Pharaoh will not foil God’s plans.
There is great comfort for us in knowing that because we live in a world in which the same warfare is being fought. Our confidence is to be the same as that of Moses: the Lord of hosts.
3. God at work (vv.27-31)
The focus thus far has been very much on Moses and his work as the leader of his people but, as we know, the Lord agreed that Aaron could be his mouthpiece and in vv.27,28 he enters the situation and that is quickly followed by a meeting (vv.29-31) with the leaders of the people of Israel.
Maybe there are times when situations loom that we fear very much, that we are anxious about and that we imagine will be extremely complex and perhaps lead to very difficult problems. That’s how Moses had seen his return to Egypt and his meeting with the people. He thought they wouldn’t believe him, that they would reject him for a second time and so on.
When we are afraid and concerned, we might feel that we have history on our side – we’ve been here before and it was difficult, things were tricky. No doubt Moses also felt that way. But look what happens: Aaron tells them what the Lord has said to Moses, the signs are performed and the people believe. Not only so but they bow down in worship, knowing that the Lord has seen them and heard their cries. No fuss, no arguments, no strife.
God is at work. He is taking forward his plans and, while that does not mean there will be no dark days for Moses (there will be), it does mean that what Moses feared would not necessarily come to pass and that what the Lord promised could be believed.
William Cowper speaks of the clouds we dread being full of mercy and breaking in blessing upon our heads. That’s just what Moses discovered when he followed where the Lord was leading. And that is what we can also expect as we seek to walk closely with the Lord in obedience to his call to serve him in this our day.
May he grant us grace to believe and to do, for his name’s sake.
Moses has had the most significant encounter with the Lord at the burning bush. He has been commissioned to go back to Egypt in order to lead the people of Israel out from there. His initial response was to raise all sorts of questions and to protest his unsuitability for the job. His final reply is to ask God to send someone else, at which the Lord’s anger burns against him and he tells him he will allow Aaron to help him.
We might imagine that the next significant moment is going to be when Moses gets to Egypt but that is far from being the case. This section is an in-between stage in the story but it is full of meaning and relevance. I think the point is clear, that the times in life that we might see as ‘in-between’ and therefore lacking in some way may very well turn out to be times of great significance for us.
We might view the next few months as being ‘in-between’ times for ourselves as a church; in some ways they clearly are. But it would be foolish and wrong to conclude that the Lord had suspended his purposes; we need to be alert to all that says to us and ready to act upon it.
1. Moses going back (vv.18-20)
The first thing that might strike you about Moses here is that, having incurred the anger of God by his pleading for the Lord to send someone else, when he speaks to Jethro he doesn’t mention anything of what the Lord has said but simply says he wants to go and see if his people are still alive.
That seems quite odd because if they weren’t alive, why would the Lord be sending him back to them? Does he distrust what the Lord has said? Is he wary of what Jethro might say? Is it another example of Moses’ insecurity and lack of confidence?
The fact is, we aren’t told – the text simply raises the question without answering it. What we can say is that Moses doesn’t come across as someone supremely sure of himself and his commission. There is something rather fragile about him here.
But the Lord hasn’t given up on him. He had told him to go back, that those who wanted to kill him were dead. And in response to that, Moses has rather uncertainly spoken to Jethro and then goes and saddles up the donkeys and sets off with his family.
And despite the sense of fragility that there is about Moses, the last sentence in v.20 is very telling: “And he took the staff of God in his hand.” That staff was a reminder of his commission and a symbol of the Lord’s power. He may seem unsure but he’s going; he may not be thinking completely straight and have all sorts of questions and concerns but he is going and he is going with the staff in his hands.
I think that says a lot about Moses and is a real example to us. Low self-esteem, lack of self-confidence and previous failures are no reasons not to follow where the Lord leads. What matters most is not our innate wisdom and abilities but his wisdom and power.
We don’t have a staff to carry but we do have a message of a cross that speaks of the wisdom and power of God, even as it seems to be just so much weakness and foolishness to the world. It is with confidence in God and in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ that we can and must go forward.
2. God at work! (vv.21-23)
Moses is on the way back to Egypt. When he gets there, he is to perform the various signs not just before his own people but before Pharaoh – that is where the action is going to be. Moses was worried about how his own people would receive him but the Lord is moving things onto a different plane.
But the terms in which he does that might be quite unsettling to some. He doesn’t say that Pharaoh will oppose Moses but that he will harden Pharaoh’s heart with the upshot that Pharaoh will not let the people go.
What this ushers us into is the relationship between the sovereignty of God and human responsibility. When we come to the chapters where Pharaoh opposes Moses, we’ll see that he hardens his heart and that is followed by the Lord hardening it also. But the emphasis here is on the Lord taking the initiative to harden Pharaoh’s heart.
How are we to understand this? Does it make the Lord the author of evil? Does it remove Pharaoh’s responsibility and guilt?
I want to read a passage from a commentary on Exodus that reflects on this issue. I’m going to read a fairly lengthy section because I think it deals with the issue in a very wise way…..
(1) We must remember that election, or sovereignty, is never an abstract notion. Common arguments against election that I have heard include, 'I guess God predestined what kind of tie I would put on today,' or, 'Are you trying to tell me that God predestined that crack in the sidewalk and that I would trip over that crack!?' As the old joke goes: What did the Calvinist say after he fell down the stairs? 'I'm glad that's over with!' Of course, most of these objections are not meant to be taken wholly seriously, but the basic thrust remains: How does God's sovereignty actually, practically, play out in the details of our lives?
This is a question that the Bible does not address. The Bible is not concerned to reveal fully the mysteries of God's dealings with his creation. The notion of God's sovereignty in the Bible is always connected specifically to one issue: the deliverance of God's people. Although this raises a host of other concerns (e.g., are we saved by God's choice without any input on our own?), understanding the salvation context of sovereignty at least puts us on the proper starting point for discussing the issue and how it might affect our lives. Burdening our hearts and minds with abstract implications of sovereignty, something the Bible itself does not entertain, will unnecessarily detract us from the focus the Bible gives to the issue.
(2) However uncomfortable we all feel from time to time with election and its implications, we must remember that the biblical writers do not seem to share that feeling of discomfort. Though the issue is mysterious, it is not presented as a burden in the Bible. This is not to say that it is easily accepted. Paul's protracted argument in Romans 9 may indicate that not only his readers but perhaps Paul himself felt the need to engage the issue more closely. For Paul, the end result of any such internal struggle with sovereignty results in praise (11:33-36). For Job, it ends in humility (Job 42:1-6). Sovereignty is a blessing rather than a hindrance. I am not saying that understanding how sovereignty works is a blessing, but that it is a blessing regardless of how little we understand.
The Lord holds us in his arms. He is the truly loving Father who cares for us, his children in Christ. Can we really hope for anything better than this? What recourse do we have? Partial sovereignty? It is good to be under the Lord's care. What such an understanding of sovereignty engenders in us is actually a sense of freedom, the knowledge that we are God's children and that we are somehow under his sovereign gaze - no matter what. Sovereignty means that in our everyday lives, we can go forth and act boldly without fear that our constant missteps or imperfections will catch the Lord by surprise and tear us away from him.
(3) However much we try to make sense of sovereignty and incorporate it into our theological systems (as I have just tried to do!), we must remember that it is ultimately a great and humbling mystery. To understand how it works is to peer into the heart of God. I remember so little of my college years, which is no one's fault but my own, but one conversation stands out in my mind. An older classmate and I were discussing the issue of sovereignty and free will and I said, "At the very least we have to accept the basic notion that either one or the other is true. Both cannot be right." My wiser friend responded, "Why?" I blurted out a comment or two about God needing to be logically consistent, or something like that, but that response seemed as shallow then as it does now. We should not forget the tension that Exodus and other portions of Scripture set up. We should not assume that God conforms to our ways of thinking.
Is this not a recurring theme in the Bible that God's ways are not our ways? Perhaps part of the value of the tension between predestination and free will is not found in solving the problem, as if it is a riddle God put in Scripture to occupy our intellectual energy, but in our standing back in awe of a God who is so much greater than we can understand. The hope is that we would go forth with this knowledge (or better, lack of knowledge) and live humble lives, trusting in the Lord all the more because of the depth of the riches of his wisdom and knowledge.
(Peter Enns, Exodus, NIVAC, p.148f)
There is a lot of helpful comment there but the one thing I want to pick up and deal with is the point that is made about the context in which God’s sovereignty is spoken about. The context here is quite clear: we are dealing with God’s action to redeem Israel. And he will act to redeem Israel in order that his saving blessing might be known in all the world.
The Lord loves Israel but he also loves Egypt. In fact, his love is for the whole of his creation. His choice of Israel is for the sake of the whole world and, thus, his action in Egypt and with Pharaoh is not to be seen as hatred of Egypt but rather is to be set within that larger context of God’s love.
In terms of Pharaoh himself, again the text here is helpful. There is a clear conflict being played out between the Lord and all that stands opposed to him, symbolised here in the person of Pharaoh. The Lord will act to redeem his firstborn and in the process will slay the firstborn of Egypt. We are dealing here not with abstract theology and philosophical questions but the concrete action of the one true God to rescue his creation from sin. Pharaoh stands opposed to that as, in a sense, the spokesman for the kingdom of darkness, and he will be dealt with in power and might.
Whilst we may not be able to sort all the issues out (and Peter Enns is right to counsel us not to think that we need to) what we must get straight here is that the Lord is God and he is in absolute control. Sin will not win; Satan will not prevail; Pharaoh will not foil God’s plans.
There is great comfort for us in knowing that because we live in a world in which the same warfare is being fought. Our confidence is to be the same as that of Moses: the Lord of hosts.
3. God at work (vv.27-31)
The focus thus far has been very much on Moses and his work as the leader of his people but, as we know, the Lord agreed that Aaron could be his mouthpiece and in vv.27,28 he enters the situation and that is quickly followed by a meeting (vv.29-31) with the leaders of the people of Israel.
Maybe there are times when situations loom that we fear very much, that we are anxious about and that we imagine will be extremely complex and perhaps lead to very difficult problems. That’s how Moses had seen his return to Egypt and his meeting with the people. He thought they wouldn’t believe him, that they would reject him for a second time and so on.
When we are afraid and concerned, we might feel that we have history on our side – we’ve been here before and it was difficult, things were tricky. No doubt Moses also felt that way. But look what happens: Aaron tells them what the Lord has said to Moses, the signs are performed and the people believe. Not only so but they bow down in worship, knowing that the Lord has seen them and heard their cries. No fuss, no arguments, no strife.
God is at work. He is taking forward his plans and, while that does not mean there will be no dark days for Moses (there will be), it does mean that what Moses feared would not necessarily come to pass and that what the Lord promised could be believed.
William Cowper speaks of the clouds we dread being full of mercy and breaking in blessing upon our heads. That’s just what Moses discovered when he followed where the Lord was leading. And that is what we can also expect as we seek to walk closely with the Lord in obedience to his call to serve him in this our day.
May he grant us grace to believe and to do, for his name’s sake.
Sermon on Exodus 3:13 - 4:17
“This is your mission, should you choose to accept it” – I think Moses must have felt a bit like the folks in Mission Impossible when he encountered the LORD in the desert. To go back to Egypt and lead Israel out of there? To win over his own people and then take on the Pharaoh, with all of Egypt’s might against him? No wonder Moses asked “Who am I?”
As we saw last time, the Lord assured him that he would be with him; Moses would not be going alone – but still he has questions and concerns. We’re going to see that Moses responded to the Lord’s call with 3 questions in the passage before us.
But before we do, let’s just notice 2 general points: firstly, the LORD is big enough to allow us to ask him questions. Some people in powerful positions can’t stand to have their instructions questioned – but not the Lord. You can dialogue with him; he’s not interested in getting us to cringe before him and to do his will in abject terror. He calls us to be his children and to serve him in that relationship. And as our Father in heaven, he can handle the questions.
Secondly, while Moses’ call was unique, we can rightly think through his situation with a view to our own. We are called by God: called to belong to Jesus Christ; called as his church to go and make disciples; and we are called personally to be servants of the Most High God, in a whole variety of ways. It may well be that, in the light of those multiple callings, we also have questions we’d like to ask.
1. Who shall I say has sent me?
The first question Moses asks in v.13 shows that he is concerned about the reception he might get from his own people: if they ask me who sent me, what shall I say?
The answer he is given has been the subject of great debate for many years now: just what does God mean? What is his name? And was this name unknown to Abraham and the other patriarchs?
While we let the scholars sort those issues out, the main point is clear: the God who is speaking to Moses declares, “I am who I am”.
He is not some local tribal deity; this is the eternal ever-living God who is sending Moses back to Egypt. This is the great I AM who is declaring his intent to rescue the Israelites from their bondage and, through them, to further his purposes for the whole world.
“I am who I am” doesn’t seem to be the name itself; that comes later and is now generally translated as Yahweh. What v.14 does is impress on Moses the being of God, the reality that the living God, the eternal I AM is the one who is sending him. No commission could come with greater intensity or authority.
It is the same God who is revealed in Jesus of Nazareth and who has also commissioned the church. We are not peddling an opinion about God as we share the gospel; we are rather taking the words of the eternal God and speaking them to needy men and women.
While that may make us feel even more unworthy, it also gives added strength to our task as the Lord’s people.
2. What if they don’t believe me?
But Moses is still not convinced: “What if they do not believe me?” (4:1). What is he to do then? The Lord’s response is to ask Moses what he has in his hand – a staff – and then to throw it to the ground. It becomes a snake! Pick it up by the tail – it turns back into a staff. Now put his hand into his cloak and take it out again – it’s turned leprous! Put it in and out again – it’s healed.
Signs – signs of power and authority. The snake was a symbol of Egypt’s power (think of those headdresses) but Moses would demonstrate a greater power. The leprosy sign would speak of the Lord’s power to afflict and to heal. And a third sign is told to Moses – he could pour out water from the Nile onto the ground and it would become blood, a foretaste of one of the plagues.
The Lord who is sending Moses is more than able to demonstrate his power and authority. Moses need have no qualms about that!
But what if your friends and colleagues don’t believe you? What signs can we expect the Lord to show to them? Let me just say 2 things on this point.
Firstly, we have in the gospel records all the evidence that we or anyone else needs. Remember what Jesus himself said in Lk 16 to the rich man who was in Hades: it isn’t more signs that they need. And when he spoke to Thomas in the upper room he tells him and us that it is possible for people to believe without seeing signs – and that it is a blessed thing when they do.
That doesn’t mean that the Lord won’t in some ways give some people various signs of his power; that is entirely up to him. But what it does say is that we can go out with his word in our hearts confident that he can and does work through the gospel message, calling people to himself. We don’t need to be hung up on the issue of signs.
Secondly, there is a sense in which our lives function as a sign to others. Paul writes to the Corinthians about their lives being like a letter that all people can read – a letter that bears clear testimony to the gracious, saving power of God. And our lives are to be that too – lives that had been marked by sin and evil now showing the forgiving and renewing grace of God.
Let’s pray that the reality of his saving power will be seen in us and indeed be a sign to others.
3. But I’m not a good speaker!
So the eternal God is sending Moses and will work powerfully by signs and wonders to confirm his status as the Lord’s messenger. But still Moses is unsure. He doesn’t really feel up to the task – “I am slow of speech and tongue” (4:10; which sounds like some kind of speech defect).
Reading Acts 7:22 it doesn’t sound like Moses had a problem with speaking but maybe this is Moses lacking confidence because of what happened in the past. And if truth be told maybe many of us have thought similar things when faced with God’s call on our lives – not necessarily in terms of our speech but simply our fitness for certain tasks. Is that a valid point to bring to the Lord?
It seems not. The Lord’s response is to remind Moses that he is the one who created Moses!
When we feel our weakness and frailty, we must remember that those things are not surprises to God; he does not call us to serve him because he thinks we’re superhuman! The one who calls us into his service will enable us to serve him, despite all our foibles and weaknesses.
Do you notice something that is common to all 3 questions that Moses raises? He constantly thinks in terms of himself going to Pharaoh and not the Lord going with him. It is all a case of ‘I’ and that’s a trap we can fall into. The battle is not ours; it’s the Lord’s – he sends, he equips, he authenticates.
Now, I said that we were going to look at the 3 ways that Moses responds to the Lord’s call in this passage but, actually, there are 4 points to notice. But the fourth isn’t a reasoned response; it is a blunt refusal to do what the Lord has said. Having asked his questions and having received such gracious responses from the Lord, Moses simply says in 4:13, “O Lord, please send someone else to do it.”
At this, the Lord is angry with Moses. Yes, we can dialogue with him and ask our questions and voice our insecurities but, having received his genuine and gracious promises of help and support, to ask him to send someone else is to refuse to trust him. It is sheer rebellion, however much its origin is in our fears.
And, yet, notice once more how gracious our God is. He is rightly angry with Moses but he doesn’t cut him off; he doesn’t dump him but rather accommodates even this response from him. He tells Moses that his brother Aaron is on the way and the Lord will make them into a team – he will give his words to Moses and Aaron will then act as spokesman.
We should not see this as letting us off the hook, as it were. It is never right to refuse our God; it is never wise to anger him through our unbelief. But even when we have done so, even when we are faithless, he remains faithful for he cannot deny himself.
What great encouragement to serve him where we are and to say with the hymn-writer, “What he says we will do, where he sends we will go, never fear, only trust and obey.”
As we saw last time, the Lord assured him that he would be with him; Moses would not be going alone – but still he has questions and concerns. We’re going to see that Moses responded to the Lord’s call with 3 questions in the passage before us.
But before we do, let’s just notice 2 general points: firstly, the LORD is big enough to allow us to ask him questions. Some people in powerful positions can’t stand to have their instructions questioned – but not the Lord. You can dialogue with him; he’s not interested in getting us to cringe before him and to do his will in abject terror. He calls us to be his children and to serve him in that relationship. And as our Father in heaven, he can handle the questions.
Secondly, while Moses’ call was unique, we can rightly think through his situation with a view to our own. We are called by God: called to belong to Jesus Christ; called as his church to go and make disciples; and we are called personally to be servants of the Most High God, in a whole variety of ways. It may well be that, in the light of those multiple callings, we also have questions we’d like to ask.
1. Who shall I say has sent me?
The first question Moses asks in v.13 shows that he is concerned about the reception he might get from his own people: if they ask me who sent me, what shall I say?
The answer he is given has been the subject of great debate for many years now: just what does God mean? What is his name? And was this name unknown to Abraham and the other patriarchs?
While we let the scholars sort those issues out, the main point is clear: the God who is speaking to Moses declares, “I am who I am”.
He is not some local tribal deity; this is the eternal ever-living God who is sending Moses back to Egypt. This is the great I AM who is declaring his intent to rescue the Israelites from their bondage and, through them, to further his purposes for the whole world.
“I am who I am” doesn’t seem to be the name itself; that comes later and is now generally translated as Yahweh. What v.14 does is impress on Moses the being of God, the reality that the living God, the eternal I AM is the one who is sending him. No commission could come with greater intensity or authority.
It is the same God who is revealed in Jesus of Nazareth and who has also commissioned the church. We are not peddling an opinion about God as we share the gospel; we are rather taking the words of the eternal God and speaking them to needy men and women.
While that may make us feel even more unworthy, it also gives added strength to our task as the Lord’s people.
2. What if they don’t believe me?
But Moses is still not convinced: “What if they do not believe me?” (4:1). What is he to do then? The Lord’s response is to ask Moses what he has in his hand – a staff – and then to throw it to the ground. It becomes a snake! Pick it up by the tail – it turns back into a staff. Now put his hand into his cloak and take it out again – it’s turned leprous! Put it in and out again – it’s healed.
Signs – signs of power and authority. The snake was a symbol of Egypt’s power (think of those headdresses) but Moses would demonstrate a greater power. The leprosy sign would speak of the Lord’s power to afflict and to heal. And a third sign is told to Moses – he could pour out water from the Nile onto the ground and it would become blood, a foretaste of one of the plagues.
The Lord who is sending Moses is more than able to demonstrate his power and authority. Moses need have no qualms about that!
But what if your friends and colleagues don’t believe you? What signs can we expect the Lord to show to them? Let me just say 2 things on this point.
Firstly, we have in the gospel records all the evidence that we or anyone else needs. Remember what Jesus himself said in Lk 16 to the rich man who was in Hades: it isn’t more signs that they need. And when he spoke to Thomas in the upper room he tells him and us that it is possible for people to believe without seeing signs – and that it is a blessed thing when they do.
That doesn’t mean that the Lord won’t in some ways give some people various signs of his power; that is entirely up to him. But what it does say is that we can go out with his word in our hearts confident that he can and does work through the gospel message, calling people to himself. We don’t need to be hung up on the issue of signs.
Secondly, there is a sense in which our lives function as a sign to others. Paul writes to the Corinthians about their lives being like a letter that all people can read – a letter that bears clear testimony to the gracious, saving power of God. And our lives are to be that too – lives that had been marked by sin and evil now showing the forgiving and renewing grace of God.
Let’s pray that the reality of his saving power will be seen in us and indeed be a sign to others.
3. But I’m not a good speaker!
So the eternal God is sending Moses and will work powerfully by signs and wonders to confirm his status as the Lord’s messenger. But still Moses is unsure. He doesn’t really feel up to the task – “I am slow of speech and tongue” (4:10; which sounds like some kind of speech defect).
Reading Acts 7:22 it doesn’t sound like Moses had a problem with speaking but maybe this is Moses lacking confidence because of what happened in the past. And if truth be told maybe many of us have thought similar things when faced with God’s call on our lives – not necessarily in terms of our speech but simply our fitness for certain tasks. Is that a valid point to bring to the Lord?
It seems not. The Lord’s response is to remind Moses that he is the one who created Moses!
When we feel our weakness and frailty, we must remember that those things are not surprises to God; he does not call us to serve him because he thinks we’re superhuman! The one who calls us into his service will enable us to serve him, despite all our foibles and weaknesses.
Do you notice something that is common to all 3 questions that Moses raises? He constantly thinks in terms of himself going to Pharaoh and not the Lord going with him. It is all a case of ‘I’ and that’s a trap we can fall into. The battle is not ours; it’s the Lord’s – he sends, he equips, he authenticates.
Now, I said that we were going to look at the 3 ways that Moses responds to the Lord’s call in this passage but, actually, there are 4 points to notice. But the fourth isn’t a reasoned response; it is a blunt refusal to do what the Lord has said. Having asked his questions and having received such gracious responses from the Lord, Moses simply says in 4:13, “O Lord, please send someone else to do it.”
At this, the Lord is angry with Moses. Yes, we can dialogue with him and ask our questions and voice our insecurities but, having received his genuine and gracious promises of help and support, to ask him to send someone else is to refuse to trust him. It is sheer rebellion, however much its origin is in our fears.
And, yet, notice once more how gracious our God is. He is rightly angry with Moses but he doesn’t cut him off; he doesn’t dump him but rather accommodates even this response from him. He tells Moses that his brother Aaron is on the way and the Lord will make them into a team – he will give his words to Moses and Aaron will then act as spokesman.
We should not see this as letting us off the hook, as it were. It is never right to refuse our God; it is never wise to anger him through our unbelief. But even when we have done so, even when we are faithless, he remains faithful for he cannot deny himself.
What great encouragement to serve him where we are and to say with the hymn-writer, “What he says we will do, where he sends we will go, never fear, only trust and obey.”
Sermon on Exodus 3:1-12
Moses is a man who is profoundly aware of his Hebrew ancestry. Although he was brought up in the palace of Pharaoh, he has taken his stand with the oppressed Hebrews. He is also a man with a passionate concern for justice; he has shown himself to not only be willing to intervene on behalf of his people but also on behalf of others (Reuel’s daughters).
He seems like just the right sort of man to lead the Hebrews out of the oppression of Egypt, yet his initial attempt to act as a kind of leader of his people was swiftly rebuffed. And here we find him, some 40 years later, miles away from the action, living as an exile in Midian, tending his father-in-law’s sheep.
If Moses is to be a significant player in the history of his people he clearly needs to get back to Egypt. But he has an even greater need that must be met before ever he can lead his own people out of slavery: he needs to meet God. This is God’s world, God’s story, and the Hebrews are God’s people, chosen for the sake of the whole world. Moses needs to be prepared for how God will use him and he needs to directed clearly by the Lord.
That’s what we’re going to see in these verses. As we do so, our eyes will be inevitably (and wonderfully) drawn to think not only of our place before God but of the fact that while he spoke through Moses, the full unveiling of his heart and plans is seen in Jesus.
1. The presence of God
The chapter opens in a quite mundane way – Moses is looking after some of his father-in-law’s sheep and takes them “to the far side of the desert”. Nothing too significant in that – but there is: he “came to mountain of God at Horeb”. Did Moses know it at this stage as the mountain of God? Most likely not; it is probably being called that now from the perspective of hindsight. To Moses, there’s no special reason in play to explain why he chooses to go there.
But in God’s hands, the most mundane place can take on a new and special significance. And the way that happens here is through a very strange sight: Moses sees a bush on fire that isn’t burnt up.
He would often have seen bushes ablaze but they would soon have been consumed; what gets his attention here is that this one doesn’t. This is the Lord himself, getting Moses’ attention. Fire is a sign of the divine presence (and will be on the journey Israel makes from Egypt) but the Lord is not present in order to harm but to heal: the bush is not consumed.
Moses, a broken sinful man, is going to stand in the presence of God and not be consumed, because the purpose of God is to deal with sin and to reconcile humanity to himself. The means for that had not yet been revealed but we have gladly sung of how the sons of ignorance and night can dwell in the eternal light – an offering and a sacrifice, a Holy Spirit’s energies, an advocate with God.
When he calls Moses, the first thing the Lord tells him is to take off his sandals because the ground he’s standing on is holy – and it is holy for no other reason than that the Lord is there. His being there changes everything; Moses is in the presence of greatness, of the Creator, the One who has promised to heal and save. Nothing less than absolute reverence is appropriate here. Moses covers his face, afraid to look at God and he is right to do so.
The God who is appearing to Moses in this strange way then discloses to Moses who he is: “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God if Isaac and the God of Jacob.” There is a real note of continuity here and the hope that promises made long years before will now be taken up and fulfilled.
All of these points that confront Moses here converge in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. When he comes, he can tell his disciples that if they have seen him they have seen the Father; he is the personal presence of God in the world, the only one who by rights can look into the face of his Father without flinching, without irreverence.
Peter falls at his feet because he sees in Jesus something of the awesome holiness of God. Yet Jesus’ aim is not to consume Peter but to commission him. He has come so that all the promises of God might be ‘yes’ in him.
But that isn’t all. He commissions not just the 12 but all his people. We, too, are confronted in the most mundane places and on the most ordinary of days, with the startling discovery of the presence of God. He takes the initiative and calls us to faith in his Son and then service for his Son.
What qualifications do we need to serve him? What can prepare us to live for him? Strangely, a sense of our utter inability to do so, the keenly-felt sense that we are unworthy, that in the presence of genuine holiness we are, as Isaiah puts it, “undone”.
2. The concern & commission of God
But why is the Lord calling to Moses now? “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt”. That almost reads as though it is a response to an unspoken question. Maybe that’s what’s been going through Moses’ mind as he shepherded the sheep in the desert these long years: where is the Lord? What will become of his promises to Abraham?
If those questions were indeed in Moses’ mind, if they had been in his prayers, the answer is given with great clarity and strength of purpose: “I have heard…I am concerned…I have come down to rescue…and to bring them up”. Everything God promised Abraham has not been forgotten or shelved; the divine purpose was being worked out down these long years and now is the time for him to act.
Do delays indicate that the Lord is uncaring and ready to break his promise? Never; Peter reminds us that the Lord is not slow in keeping his promises but he works to his own timetable. His ways are above ours and hard for us to comprehend but what should never be in doubt is his concern for his people and for his plans to rescue this world from sin.
3. The promise of God
In the light of this extraordinary call to go back to Egypt as the Lord’s agent in the deliverance of his people, Moses’ response is to say in v.11, “Who am I?” His response may not be overflowing with faith in God but it at least shows a commendable humility – far better than if he’d said ‘Well, I’m your man!’
With his past history in Egypt no doubt in mind (both in terms of the Pharaoh and the Hebrews), Moses stands in great need of reassurance from the Lord. His question is met by a gracious and powerful promise: “I will be with you”.
The life-history of Moses shows just how fully that promise was answered. It also discloses that the sign promised here also came to pass as Moses returned to Horeb with the people when they had left Egypt.
The God who calls us to be his partners in the work of the gospel can be trusted to the full. The promise given to Moses was reiterated by the Lord Jesus Christ to his disciples (and, so, to his church) in Mt. 28:20 – “I am with you always”. Emmanuel; God with us. It’s what Moses was promised, it’s what we also discover to our delight.
If the Lord was going to be with Moses, how much more was he with Jesus in his role as Messiah. All the way through his life, Jesus was conscious of the presence of his Father. We see in him no sign of the hesitancy that Moses shows here – “I stand with the Father who sent me” (Jn. 8:16); “the Father, living in me…is doing his work” (Jn. 14:10).
But a day did come in his experience when the presence of his Father was painfully absent and Jesus felt utterly alone and forsaken. Yet, in the strange but wise purposes of God, that was the very moment when prisoners were set free, when the guilty obtained their pardon, when evil was defeated and God’s plans to save were delivered.
At the end of the day, the presence of God, his concern for his people and his promise to help are all summed up in Jesus and made real in and through him.
As we consider our call to serve God in our day, personally and collectively, it is vital that we fix our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. He calls and he equips; he humbles and he heals; he makes real both the presence and the power of God. That is ever our greatest need and it is fully met in Jesus.
He seems like just the right sort of man to lead the Hebrews out of the oppression of Egypt, yet his initial attempt to act as a kind of leader of his people was swiftly rebuffed. And here we find him, some 40 years later, miles away from the action, living as an exile in Midian, tending his father-in-law’s sheep.
If Moses is to be a significant player in the history of his people he clearly needs to get back to Egypt. But he has an even greater need that must be met before ever he can lead his own people out of slavery: he needs to meet God. This is God’s world, God’s story, and the Hebrews are God’s people, chosen for the sake of the whole world. Moses needs to be prepared for how God will use him and he needs to directed clearly by the Lord.
That’s what we’re going to see in these verses. As we do so, our eyes will be inevitably (and wonderfully) drawn to think not only of our place before God but of the fact that while he spoke through Moses, the full unveiling of his heart and plans is seen in Jesus.
1. The presence of God
The chapter opens in a quite mundane way – Moses is looking after some of his father-in-law’s sheep and takes them “to the far side of the desert”. Nothing too significant in that – but there is: he “came to mountain of God at Horeb”. Did Moses know it at this stage as the mountain of God? Most likely not; it is probably being called that now from the perspective of hindsight. To Moses, there’s no special reason in play to explain why he chooses to go there.
But in God’s hands, the most mundane place can take on a new and special significance. And the way that happens here is through a very strange sight: Moses sees a bush on fire that isn’t burnt up.
He would often have seen bushes ablaze but they would soon have been consumed; what gets his attention here is that this one doesn’t. This is the Lord himself, getting Moses’ attention. Fire is a sign of the divine presence (and will be on the journey Israel makes from Egypt) but the Lord is not present in order to harm but to heal: the bush is not consumed.
Moses, a broken sinful man, is going to stand in the presence of God and not be consumed, because the purpose of God is to deal with sin and to reconcile humanity to himself. The means for that had not yet been revealed but we have gladly sung of how the sons of ignorance and night can dwell in the eternal light – an offering and a sacrifice, a Holy Spirit’s energies, an advocate with God.
When he calls Moses, the first thing the Lord tells him is to take off his sandals because the ground he’s standing on is holy – and it is holy for no other reason than that the Lord is there. His being there changes everything; Moses is in the presence of greatness, of the Creator, the One who has promised to heal and save. Nothing less than absolute reverence is appropriate here. Moses covers his face, afraid to look at God and he is right to do so.
The God who is appearing to Moses in this strange way then discloses to Moses who he is: “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God if Isaac and the God of Jacob.” There is a real note of continuity here and the hope that promises made long years before will now be taken up and fulfilled.
All of these points that confront Moses here converge in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. When he comes, he can tell his disciples that if they have seen him they have seen the Father; he is the personal presence of God in the world, the only one who by rights can look into the face of his Father without flinching, without irreverence.
Peter falls at his feet because he sees in Jesus something of the awesome holiness of God. Yet Jesus’ aim is not to consume Peter but to commission him. He has come so that all the promises of God might be ‘yes’ in him.
But that isn’t all. He commissions not just the 12 but all his people. We, too, are confronted in the most mundane places and on the most ordinary of days, with the startling discovery of the presence of God. He takes the initiative and calls us to faith in his Son and then service for his Son.
What qualifications do we need to serve him? What can prepare us to live for him? Strangely, a sense of our utter inability to do so, the keenly-felt sense that we are unworthy, that in the presence of genuine holiness we are, as Isaiah puts it, “undone”.
2. The concern & commission of God
But why is the Lord calling to Moses now? “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt”. That almost reads as though it is a response to an unspoken question. Maybe that’s what’s been going through Moses’ mind as he shepherded the sheep in the desert these long years: where is the Lord? What will become of his promises to Abraham?
If those questions were indeed in Moses’ mind, if they had been in his prayers, the answer is given with great clarity and strength of purpose: “I have heard…I am concerned…I have come down to rescue…and to bring them up”. Everything God promised Abraham has not been forgotten or shelved; the divine purpose was being worked out down these long years and now is the time for him to act.
Do delays indicate that the Lord is uncaring and ready to break his promise? Never; Peter reminds us that the Lord is not slow in keeping his promises but he works to his own timetable. His ways are above ours and hard for us to comprehend but what should never be in doubt is his concern for his people and for his plans to rescue this world from sin.
3. The promise of God
In the light of this extraordinary call to go back to Egypt as the Lord’s agent in the deliverance of his people, Moses’ response is to say in v.11, “Who am I?” His response may not be overflowing with faith in God but it at least shows a commendable humility – far better than if he’d said ‘Well, I’m your man!’
With his past history in Egypt no doubt in mind (both in terms of the Pharaoh and the Hebrews), Moses stands in great need of reassurance from the Lord. His question is met by a gracious and powerful promise: “I will be with you”.
The life-history of Moses shows just how fully that promise was answered. It also discloses that the sign promised here also came to pass as Moses returned to Horeb with the people when they had left Egypt.
The God who calls us to be his partners in the work of the gospel can be trusted to the full. The promise given to Moses was reiterated by the Lord Jesus Christ to his disciples (and, so, to his church) in Mt. 28:20 – “I am with you always”. Emmanuel; God with us. It’s what Moses was promised, it’s what we also discover to our delight.
If the Lord was going to be with Moses, how much more was he with Jesus in his role as Messiah. All the way through his life, Jesus was conscious of the presence of his Father. We see in him no sign of the hesitancy that Moses shows here – “I stand with the Father who sent me” (Jn. 8:16); “the Father, living in me…is doing his work” (Jn. 14:10).
But a day did come in his experience when the presence of his Father was painfully absent and Jesus felt utterly alone and forsaken. Yet, in the strange but wise purposes of God, that was the very moment when prisoners were set free, when the guilty obtained their pardon, when evil was defeated and God’s plans to save were delivered.
At the end of the day, the presence of God, his concern for his people and his promise to help are all summed up in Jesus and made real in and through him.
As we consider our call to serve God in our day, personally and collectively, it is vital that we fix our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. He calls and he equips; he humbles and he heals; he makes real both the presence and the power of God. That is ever our greatest need and it is fully met in Jesus.
Sermon on Exodus 2:11-25
1. Moses preserved
Moses was a special child, a “fine child”, one through whom all the indications are that the Lord will act to save his people and, so, to bring blessing to the world.
But who is Moses for such a task? And look where he is – adopted as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. There’s very little chance now that he will ever be what he could have been. He’s been under the influence of Pharaoh’s lot, learning their ways, being “educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians” and, under their tutelage, he had grown to be “powerful in speech and action” (Acts 7:22).
So that’ll be the end of him then. With that kind of life he’ll be Egyptian through and through. He won’t remember his early days as a Hebrew, let alone want to be known as one. That’s what happens when people get abandoned to a godless system.
Or is it? In v.11 we’re told that when he was older (and Acts 7:23 tells us he was 40 at this point), he decides to go out to where his own people are and sees them at their hard labour. Twice in this verse the Hebrews are described as “his people” and his action in defending the Hebrew being beaten shows that this is how he sees things – they are his people.
However it has happened, the Lord has preserved Moses through those long years, has preserved within him a sense of identity with the Lord’s people. That’s quite remarkable.
Jesus has purposely left us in the world. He knows how dangerous a place it is; he knows how strong and subtle our spiritual foe is. Yet he is confident that we can and will be kept by the power of God. That isn’t making light of the dangers but it is recognising that what really counts is the Lord’s ability to keep us.
We may not be able to change the situation – for ourselves or our children – but we can have confidence that the Lord will keep us. It will no doubt mean, on our part, hard work to take every thought captive and to learn the ways of the Lord but he is able to help us.
2. Moses prepared
But although he has been preserved during those long years in the palace, many long years of preparation for his work as the leader of his people still lie in front of him. Moses already has a clear sense of justice; he is already marked-out as someone who acts to rescue others, but those traits need honing.
That preparation takes many forms but, before we look at the details, notice that this is often how it is with us in our walk with the Lord and our service for him. He takes and uses what we go through to refine us, to mature us and to equip us to be more useful in his service.
Precisely how that might be worked-out for us won’t necessarily be immediately obvious; we need to trust the Lord, since he knows what he’s doing. In his wisdom, he will cause all things to work together for our good, for the blessing of his people and his work in the world.
i) Conflict with Egypt – Moses has been kept by God down the long years of childhood, adolescence and into full adulthood. He knows whose he is, who his people are and takes his stand for them.
But the very act of taking that stand puts him on a collision course with the royal family of Egypt with whom he has had such close acquaintance over the years. Moses kills an Egyptian who was ill-treating a Hebrew and, in return, the Pharaoh seeks to take his life, presumably because Moses’ act has shown whose side he is on.
This is an early indication of the struggle that Moses will go through with the Egyptians. The same pattern emerges in the life of Jesus, the true Saviour to whom Moses points. From his birth, our Lord was opposed and his life under threat. But he came “to destroy the devil’s work” (1 Jn 3:8). It was not a battle that he was going to shun; rather, he was ready for our sakes to take his stand.
We may not be called to significant positions of leadership but taking your stand for the Lord will impact your life by bringing you into the struggle between good and evil, between the Lord and Satan. It is never wrong to take that stand but it must be taken with our eyes open. And it is worth remembering that early battles often set the tone for what is to come, helping to prepare us for it.
ii) Rejection by his people – The next aspect of Moses’ preparation probably came as a real shock to him. Having saved a Hebrew, he intervenes in a fight between two Hebrews but his leadership is not welcomed. The short exchange in v.14 prepares both Moses and us for the rejection he was often to suffer at the hands of his own people. His leadership of them, although ordained by God, was not going to be without its difficulties.
How much we see that in the life and ministry of Jesus. John tells us that he came to his own but his own did not receive him. The Saviour of the world was despised and rejected by the very people who ought to be waiting for him.
This alerts us to a fact that we may know very well: life within the family of God is not necessarily going to run smoothly. But even the bumps in our relationships can work good things in us – Num. 12:3 tells us that “Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth”. How did he come to possess such humility? No doubt in part through such experiences as this in Ex. 2:13f.
In God’s hands, hard times within the family of God can lead to real spiritual fruit, but only if we submit ourselves to the Lord.
iii) Suffering & Sympathy – Notice also how Moses seems to embody in his own experience what Israel is going through and will also later experience. He is in conflict with Egypt, as we’ve seen; he flees to Midian and is like an alien in a strange land, much as Israel is in Egypt; he will encounter God in the desert and is there for 40 years.
Moses is being prepared by the Lord to be a faithful and sympathetic leader. Such suitability is not achieved overnight. There is great wisdom in the Lord’s preparation of Moses.
And even more is that seen in the life and ministry of our Lord Jesus. The writer of Hebrews tells us that he learned obedience through suffering and in that way was equipped to be merciful and faithful high priest. In God’s hands, the same became true for Paul (2 Cor 1) and can also be true of us.
3. God remembers
Moses has been preserved and is being prepared to be the Lord’s servant in the rescue of Israel. Things are not hopeless for the people but the grounds for that hope are not mere inferences from the text; in vv.23-25 we are directly told why there is hope for Israel – “God heard their groaning and remembered his covenant”.
These are tremendously important words, not just for Israel but for the whole world in every age. The God who called Abraham and promised to make him a blessing to the nations, who has promised to be the God of his people and to be in intimate relationship with them, has not forgotten them. Judged by sight alone, it might be thought that he has forgotten them but that is far from the case.
His promises and purposes stand and stand for all time, however dark the situation. He is the God of compassion, of genuine, loving concern. His people’s distress matters deeply to him and he will act to deal with it; his desire to rescue the world is so deep and profound that he will let nothing stand in its way.
Just as Moses has been prepared for his future service, so these verses prepare us for the Lord to take centre stage and act. Thus far, he has been working things out from behind the scene; in ch.3 his presence will be made known to Moses in the most dramatic way.
But as well as preparing us for that, these verses give us much to mull over in terms of our own experience as his people. His promises stand and so we can take our stand upon them. Our suffering is not hidden from him; he is not too busy to care, nor too distant to see.
And he remembers not only the covenant he made with Abraham, Isaac and with Jacob but he ever has before him the new covenant made in and through his own Son and sealed by his blood on the cross. Can the Lord fail to help us? Can he forget his church? Can he refuse to hear our cries? Only if he can ignore the shed blood of his Son – which he cannot and will not ever do. Whether our tears flow easily in public or whether our distress is profoundly personal and private, the Lord sees and cares. We can, therefore, commit all our way to him, with great hope and in eager expectation.
Moses was a special child, a “fine child”, one through whom all the indications are that the Lord will act to save his people and, so, to bring blessing to the world.
But who is Moses for such a task? And look where he is – adopted as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. There’s very little chance now that he will ever be what he could have been. He’s been under the influence of Pharaoh’s lot, learning their ways, being “educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians” and, under their tutelage, he had grown to be “powerful in speech and action” (Acts 7:22).
So that’ll be the end of him then. With that kind of life he’ll be Egyptian through and through. He won’t remember his early days as a Hebrew, let alone want to be known as one. That’s what happens when people get abandoned to a godless system.
Or is it? In v.11 we’re told that when he was older (and Acts 7:23 tells us he was 40 at this point), he decides to go out to where his own people are and sees them at their hard labour. Twice in this verse the Hebrews are described as “his people” and his action in defending the Hebrew being beaten shows that this is how he sees things – they are his people.
However it has happened, the Lord has preserved Moses through those long years, has preserved within him a sense of identity with the Lord’s people. That’s quite remarkable.
Jesus has purposely left us in the world. He knows how dangerous a place it is; he knows how strong and subtle our spiritual foe is. Yet he is confident that we can and will be kept by the power of God. That isn’t making light of the dangers but it is recognising that what really counts is the Lord’s ability to keep us.
We may not be able to change the situation – for ourselves or our children – but we can have confidence that the Lord will keep us. It will no doubt mean, on our part, hard work to take every thought captive and to learn the ways of the Lord but he is able to help us.
2. Moses prepared
But although he has been preserved during those long years in the palace, many long years of preparation for his work as the leader of his people still lie in front of him. Moses already has a clear sense of justice; he is already marked-out as someone who acts to rescue others, but those traits need honing.
That preparation takes many forms but, before we look at the details, notice that this is often how it is with us in our walk with the Lord and our service for him. He takes and uses what we go through to refine us, to mature us and to equip us to be more useful in his service.
Precisely how that might be worked-out for us won’t necessarily be immediately obvious; we need to trust the Lord, since he knows what he’s doing. In his wisdom, he will cause all things to work together for our good, for the blessing of his people and his work in the world.
i) Conflict with Egypt – Moses has been kept by God down the long years of childhood, adolescence and into full adulthood. He knows whose he is, who his people are and takes his stand for them.
But the very act of taking that stand puts him on a collision course with the royal family of Egypt with whom he has had such close acquaintance over the years. Moses kills an Egyptian who was ill-treating a Hebrew and, in return, the Pharaoh seeks to take his life, presumably because Moses’ act has shown whose side he is on.
This is an early indication of the struggle that Moses will go through with the Egyptians. The same pattern emerges in the life of Jesus, the true Saviour to whom Moses points. From his birth, our Lord was opposed and his life under threat. But he came “to destroy the devil’s work” (1 Jn 3:8). It was not a battle that he was going to shun; rather, he was ready for our sakes to take his stand.
We may not be called to significant positions of leadership but taking your stand for the Lord will impact your life by bringing you into the struggle between good and evil, between the Lord and Satan. It is never wrong to take that stand but it must be taken with our eyes open. And it is worth remembering that early battles often set the tone for what is to come, helping to prepare us for it.
ii) Rejection by his people – The next aspect of Moses’ preparation probably came as a real shock to him. Having saved a Hebrew, he intervenes in a fight between two Hebrews but his leadership is not welcomed. The short exchange in v.14 prepares both Moses and us for the rejection he was often to suffer at the hands of his own people. His leadership of them, although ordained by God, was not going to be without its difficulties.
How much we see that in the life and ministry of Jesus. John tells us that he came to his own but his own did not receive him. The Saviour of the world was despised and rejected by the very people who ought to be waiting for him.
This alerts us to a fact that we may know very well: life within the family of God is not necessarily going to run smoothly. But even the bumps in our relationships can work good things in us – Num. 12:3 tells us that “Moses was a very humble man, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth”. How did he come to possess such humility? No doubt in part through such experiences as this in Ex. 2:13f.
In God’s hands, hard times within the family of God can lead to real spiritual fruit, but only if we submit ourselves to the Lord.
iii) Suffering & Sympathy – Notice also how Moses seems to embody in his own experience what Israel is going through and will also later experience. He is in conflict with Egypt, as we’ve seen; he flees to Midian and is like an alien in a strange land, much as Israel is in Egypt; he will encounter God in the desert and is there for 40 years.
Moses is being prepared by the Lord to be a faithful and sympathetic leader. Such suitability is not achieved overnight. There is great wisdom in the Lord’s preparation of Moses.
And even more is that seen in the life and ministry of our Lord Jesus. The writer of Hebrews tells us that he learned obedience through suffering and in that way was equipped to be merciful and faithful high priest. In God’s hands, the same became true for Paul (2 Cor 1) and can also be true of us.
3. God remembers
Moses has been preserved and is being prepared to be the Lord’s servant in the rescue of Israel. Things are not hopeless for the people but the grounds for that hope are not mere inferences from the text; in vv.23-25 we are directly told why there is hope for Israel – “God heard their groaning and remembered his covenant”.
These are tremendously important words, not just for Israel but for the whole world in every age. The God who called Abraham and promised to make him a blessing to the nations, who has promised to be the God of his people and to be in intimate relationship with them, has not forgotten them. Judged by sight alone, it might be thought that he has forgotten them but that is far from the case.
His promises and purposes stand and stand for all time, however dark the situation. He is the God of compassion, of genuine, loving concern. His people’s distress matters deeply to him and he will act to deal with it; his desire to rescue the world is so deep and profound that he will let nothing stand in its way.
Just as Moses has been prepared for his future service, so these verses prepare us for the Lord to take centre stage and act. Thus far, he has been working things out from behind the scene; in ch.3 his presence will be made known to Moses in the most dramatic way.
But as well as preparing us for that, these verses give us much to mull over in terms of our own experience as his people. His promises stand and so we can take our stand upon them. Our suffering is not hidden from him; he is not too busy to care, nor too distant to see.
And he remembers not only the covenant he made with Abraham, Isaac and with Jacob but he ever has before him the new covenant made in and through his own Son and sealed by his blood on the cross. Can the Lord fail to help us? Can he forget his church? Can he refuse to hear our cries? Only if he can ignore the shed blood of his Son – which he cannot and will not ever do. Whether our tears flow easily in public or whether our distress is profoundly personal and private, the Lord sees and cares. We can, therefore, commit all our way to him, with great hope and in eager expectation.
Sermon on Exodus 2:1-10
At the end of Romans 11, Paul declares,
God’s ways are full of mystery and glory. Here in Exodus 2 we see something of that. His people, Israel, are oppressed in Egypt. The Lord has staked the future of his creation on his plans to save through them but they are in deep trouble: the new king is working them ruthlessly, has tried to make sure their male children don’t survive (and been thwarted by the Hebrew midwives) and, finally, orders that all male children be thrown into the Nile.
The scene demands that we ask, ‘What will the Lord do now?’ Are his plans to save and heal his creation going to drown in the Nile?
1. The LORD will save through a special child
The beginning of ch.2 suggests that the Lord is not finished yet. A child is born to a Levite family and is straightaway marked out as a potential deliverer of the people, in at least 2 ways.
i) His mother sees that he is a “fine child”. But doesn’t every mother think her baby is lovely? This is something more. The phrase “she saw he was a fine child” is very reminiscent of the statements in Genesis 1 that the Lord saw that it was good (fine = good).
ii) And that point is further stressed when we’re told that his mother hides him in a pitch covered basket and puts into the Nile. What is very significant here is that the word translated ‘basket’ only occurs elsewhere in Genesis 6-9 where it is usually translated as ‘ark’.
The link back to Noah is very clear and deliberate and says to us that this child is destined to be rescued from the water and, just as with Noah’s deliverance, it will have significance for all humanity.
But that significance will only ultimately be realised in and through another special child marked-out by God as the deliverer, as the saviour of the world. Noah and Moses were never really capable of taking on sin and evil and overcoming them; Jesus could and did.
2. The strange ways of the LORD
This child is marked-out as a potential deliverer of his people. How will the Lord preserve him? Where will he be hidden until his time arrives? Who will train him in God’s ways, ready for that role?
The great irony is that Moses is drawn from the water by Pharaoh’s daughter and is given back, for a time, to his mother. But then, when he is older, he is taken into Pharaoh’s household and grows up there as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter
Not only is this deeply ironic but it seems intensely fragile, too. What if Moses is discovered to be a Hebrew? He’s in Pharaoh’s palace, right at the centre of the evil opposition to the Lord’s purposes of mercy and grace. You can’t get much more vulnerable than that.
Here is the Lord who works in surprising ways, whose ways are higher than ours, whose plans often seem to be at risk and yet whose power is made perfect in weakness (remember the cross).
How much the church must always remember this – her situation is often very weak (even when it seems strong). On the margins, lacking strength, in a hostile world – but the Lord knows what he is doing. He can be trusted, as he works all things together for good for his people and for his plans of salvation.
3. The Real Deal
Moses’ situation seems unique but, in terms of literature, it isn’t. As more discoveries of other literature from the Ancient Near East have been made, it’s been noticed that there are many stories of children being born and exposed to the elements - take, for instance, The Legend of Sargon:
Now, if there were other well-known stories of this type and if those stories were known to be legends and myths, why is the Lord doing this with Moses? Why not cause him to be delivered in a way that doesn’t resemble those myths?
The fact that this story has similarities with other accounts doesn’t detract from its power and relevance. In fact, it heightens it. You see, the Lord is showing that he is the real deal and makes that point in ways that people can readily connect with and in ways that directly challenge their thinking about the world.
Paul does something similar in his preaching in Acts, as he sees what is around him and what stories the people tell and how they see the world. He uses it to tell the real story of God and his Son.
And, of course, we see this most wonderfully in the incarnation of Jesus – the Lord coming to where we are, living our lives, speaking our language (as it were), sharing in all our joys and sorrows.
The challenge for us as the church is to learn from the ways of the Lord. He is the real deal and we need to be able to show that in ways that are readily accessible to those we speak to. That means being attentive to their lives and the stories they tell about the world and its meaning. That’s a demanding but necessary task because it involves what John Stott has called ‘double listening’ – to the world (to understand it) and to Scripture (to confront the world).
4. People in God’s place
I’ve been speaking about what the Lord is doing here through the birth and deliverance of Moses but it might be fairly asked, where is the Lord? He gets no name-checks in these verses, not until 2:23 in fact; so how can we speak of his work here?
Firstly, he is at work through Moses’ mother. She gives birth and because she sees he is “a fine child” she decides to hide him and then to put him aboard his mini-ark. Moses’ mother is being reported as acting in the place of the Lord, doing his will, furthering his plans for the whole creation (yet without actually being conscious of that).
The second person through whom the Lord is at work is Pharaoh’s daughter. In vv.5,6 she comes down to the Nile, sees the baby, hears his cries and takes pity on him. Fast forward to 2:23-25 and 3:7,8 and it becomes clear that she is acting just as the Lord does with his people. Her actions regarding Moses are paralleled by the Lord in his actions for Israel.
The Lord who could have chosen to act in some spectacular and supernatural way to rescue his people Israel is, instead, remaining behind the scenes for now and acting through Moses’ two mothers (birth and adoptive).
This is something that happens consistently through the Bible and is equally as true today. The Lord acts to further his purposes of blessing through people like us. We may not at times realise it but just knowing that he works in that way invests the whole of life with the deepest significance. As Paul tells us, our work for the Lord is not in vain because Jesus was raised from the dead.
Briefly, there are two other points that flow from these observations.
5. Women in God’s service
Up to this point in Exodus, all the Lord’s work has been carried out through women – first the midwives, then Moses’ mother and sister and then Pharaoh’s daughter. That is significant.
Some people read the Bible as being very negative in its view of women and their place in God’s service. Others say that Jesus improved the situation but that the OT was dreadful. Yet all the way through the Bible the Lord shows the highest regard for women and all along uses them in profound ways to further his saving purposes.
It is true that the Bible identifies different roles in the home and in the church but in no way are those differences of role intended to suggest that women are lesser subjects in God’s kingdom or that they have a minor role to play in his saving purposes for the world. That simply is not so and passages like this show us how deeply valued by and valuable to the Lord women are.
6. Pagans in God’s service
But notice something else about one of these helpers. Not only is Pharaoh’s daughter a woman (obviously!) but she is also a pagan, a worshipper of false gods. And yet she is capable of acting with genuine compassion, taking her stand against the evil designs of her father (and how risky that must have been) and is singularly used by the Lord to further his work through rescuing Moses.
What does all this tell us? It reminds us that the Lord is sovereign in who he chooses to use to further his plans and it also reminds us that the Lord’s people do not have a monopoly on good behaviour. Pharaoh’s daughter is not acting out of love for the God of Israel but the very fact that she acts in line with his will shows that he is at work in her life in what is termed common grace.
That is a valuable lesson for us to learn as we live in a world that is hostile to God and frequently to us also. Not all people will be so; they may even be used by God both to help us and to challenge us in terms of our own compassion (or lack of it). Listen to how one writer puts this point:
As much as we need to take to heart that we’re in a battle, we need also to take to heart this point and learn to see the world and our life in it through the multi-faceted lens of Biblical revelation.
God’s ways – surprising, yet wise and powerful. He is worthy of our love, our trust and our service
Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable his judgments, and his paths beyond tracing out!
"Who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor?"
"Who has ever given to God, that God should repay them?"
For from him and through him and to him are all things.
To him be the glory forever! Amen. (Romans 11:33-36; TNIV)
God’s ways are full of mystery and glory. Here in Exodus 2 we see something of that. His people, Israel, are oppressed in Egypt. The Lord has staked the future of his creation on his plans to save through them but they are in deep trouble: the new king is working them ruthlessly, has tried to make sure their male children don’t survive (and been thwarted by the Hebrew midwives) and, finally, orders that all male children be thrown into the Nile.
The scene demands that we ask, ‘What will the Lord do now?’ Are his plans to save and heal his creation going to drown in the Nile?
1. The LORD will save through a special child
The beginning of ch.2 suggests that the Lord is not finished yet. A child is born to a Levite family and is straightaway marked out as a potential deliverer of the people, in at least 2 ways.
i) His mother sees that he is a “fine child”. But doesn’t every mother think her baby is lovely? This is something more. The phrase “she saw he was a fine child” is very reminiscent of the statements in Genesis 1 that the Lord saw that it was good (fine = good).
ii) And that point is further stressed when we’re told that his mother hides him in a pitch covered basket and puts into the Nile. What is very significant here is that the word translated ‘basket’ only occurs elsewhere in Genesis 6-9 where it is usually translated as ‘ark’.
The link back to Noah is very clear and deliberate and says to us that this child is destined to be rescued from the water and, just as with Noah’s deliverance, it will have significance for all humanity.
But that significance will only ultimately be realised in and through another special child marked-out by God as the deliverer, as the saviour of the world. Noah and Moses were never really capable of taking on sin and evil and overcoming them; Jesus could and did.
2. The strange ways of the LORD
This child is marked-out as a potential deliverer of his people. How will the Lord preserve him? Where will he be hidden until his time arrives? Who will train him in God’s ways, ready for that role?
The great irony is that Moses is drawn from the water by Pharaoh’s daughter and is given back, for a time, to his mother. But then, when he is older, he is taken into Pharaoh’s household and grows up there as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter
Not only is this deeply ironic but it seems intensely fragile, too. What if Moses is discovered to be a Hebrew? He’s in Pharaoh’s palace, right at the centre of the evil opposition to the Lord’s purposes of mercy and grace. You can’t get much more vulnerable than that.
Here is the Lord who works in surprising ways, whose ways are higher than ours, whose plans often seem to be at risk and yet whose power is made perfect in weakness (remember the cross).
How much the church must always remember this – her situation is often very weak (even when it seems strong). On the margins, lacking strength, in a hostile world – but the Lord knows what he is doing. He can be trusted, as he works all things together for good for his people and for his plans of salvation.
3. The Real Deal
Moses’ situation seems unique but, in terms of literature, it isn’t. As more discoveries of other literature from the Ancient Near East have been made, it’s been noticed that there are many stories of children being born and exposed to the elements - take, for instance, The Legend of Sargon:
Sargon, the mighty king, king of Agade, am I.
MY mother was a changeling, my father I knew not.
The brother(s) of my father loved the hills.
My city is Azupiranu, which is situated on the banks of the Euphrates.
My changeling mother conceived me, in secret she bore me.
She set me in a basket of rushes, with bitumen she sealed my lid.
She cast me into the river which rose not (over) me,
The river bore me up and carried me to Akki, the drawer of water.
Akki, the drawer of water lifted me out as he dipped his e[w]er.
Akki, the drawer of water, [took me] as his son and) reared me.
(from The Legend of Sargon (c.2300BC)
Now, if there were other well-known stories of this type and if those stories were known to be legends and myths, why is the Lord doing this with Moses? Why not cause him to be delivered in a way that doesn’t resemble those myths?
The fact that this story has similarities with other accounts doesn’t detract from its power and relevance. In fact, it heightens it. You see, the Lord is showing that he is the real deal and makes that point in ways that people can readily connect with and in ways that directly challenge their thinking about the world.
Paul does something similar in his preaching in Acts, as he sees what is around him and what stories the people tell and how they see the world. He uses it to tell the real story of God and his Son.
And, of course, we see this most wonderfully in the incarnation of Jesus – the Lord coming to where we are, living our lives, speaking our language (as it were), sharing in all our joys and sorrows.
The challenge for us as the church is to learn from the ways of the Lord. He is the real deal and we need to be able to show that in ways that are readily accessible to those we speak to. That means being attentive to their lives and the stories they tell about the world and its meaning. That’s a demanding but necessary task because it involves what John Stott has called ‘double listening’ – to the world (to understand it) and to Scripture (to confront the world).
4. People in God’s place
I’ve been speaking about what the Lord is doing here through the birth and deliverance of Moses but it might be fairly asked, where is the Lord? He gets no name-checks in these verses, not until 2:23 in fact; so how can we speak of his work here?
Firstly, he is at work through Moses’ mother. She gives birth and because she sees he is “a fine child” she decides to hide him and then to put him aboard his mini-ark. Moses’ mother is being reported as acting in the place of the Lord, doing his will, furthering his plans for the whole creation (yet without actually being conscious of that).
The second person through whom the Lord is at work is Pharaoh’s daughter. In vv.5,6 she comes down to the Nile, sees the baby, hears his cries and takes pity on him. Fast forward to 2:23-25 and 3:7,8 and it becomes clear that she is acting just as the Lord does with his people. Her actions regarding Moses are paralleled by the Lord in his actions for Israel.
The Lord who could have chosen to act in some spectacular and supernatural way to rescue his people Israel is, instead, remaining behind the scenes for now and acting through Moses’ two mothers (birth and adoptive).
This is something that happens consistently through the Bible and is equally as true today. The Lord acts to further his purposes of blessing through people like us. We may not at times realise it but just knowing that he works in that way invests the whole of life with the deepest significance. As Paul tells us, our work for the Lord is not in vain because Jesus was raised from the dead.
Briefly, there are two other points that flow from these observations.
5. Women in God’s service
Up to this point in Exodus, all the Lord’s work has been carried out through women – first the midwives, then Moses’ mother and sister and then Pharaoh’s daughter. That is significant.
Some people read the Bible as being very negative in its view of women and their place in God’s service. Others say that Jesus improved the situation but that the OT was dreadful. Yet all the way through the Bible the Lord shows the highest regard for women and all along uses them in profound ways to further his saving purposes.
It is true that the Bible identifies different roles in the home and in the church but in no way are those differences of role intended to suggest that women are lesser subjects in God’s kingdom or that they have a minor role to play in his saving purposes for the world. That simply is not so and passages like this show us how deeply valued by and valuable to the Lord women are.
6. Pagans in God’s service
But notice something else about one of these helpers. Not only is Pharaoh’s daughter a woman (obviously!) but she is also a pagan, a worshipper of false gods. And yet she is capable of acting with genuine compassion, taking her stand against the evil designs of her father (and how risky that must have been) and is singularly used by the Lord to further his work through rescuing Moses.
What does all this tell us? It reminds us that the Lord is sovereign in who he chooses to use to further his plans and it also reminds us that the Lord’s people do not have a monopoly on good behaviour. Pharaoh’s daughter is not acting out of love for the God of Israel but the very fact that she acts in line with his will shows that he is at work in her life in what is termed common grace.
That is a valuable lesson for us to learn as we live in a world that is hostile to God and frequently to us also. Not all people will be so; they may even be used by God both to help us and to challenge us in terms of our own compassion (or lack of it). Listen to how one writer puts this point:
What is our proper posture toward an unbeliever? There is more than one biblical model. The model of "opposition" is certainly well known and has ample biblical precedent. This model, however, is not deserving of universal application. We share with others the love of Christ, who was a friend to sinners. In doing so, we bring the good news to them in many different ways, which is something that God's people are called to do. But do not be surprised if in the process the Lord uses these same people to change you. Our neighbors, coworkers, and relatives are not so much projects to be won, notches on our salvation belt, but people who are created in God's image and whose lives are in God's hands. They, too, may be his instruments for purposes we cannot fathom. It is his will to employ many facets of his creation for his sake and for his glory. (Peter Enns, Exodus, NIVAC, p.76)
As much as we need to take to heart that we’re in a battle, we need also to take to heart this point and learn to see the world and our life in it through the multi-faceted lens of Biblical revelation.
God’s ways – surprising, yet wise and powerful. He is worthy of our love, our trust and our service
Sermon on Exodus 1:8-22
The Lord’s great project to rescue his fallen creation from the baneful effects of sin did not cease with Joseph and his brothers. Ex. 1:1-7 has shown us that the Lord was with the people of Israel in creational blessing in order to achieve his saving purposes for the whole world.
But nothing is ever quite so straightforward. Everything looks to be in place for the deepening and widening of that blessing and for the liberation of the creation from its bondage to decay but, hold on, not so fast. There’s a great problem looming in v.8.
1. The cosmic conflict
A new king is on the throne, “who did not know Joseph”, which also means he did not know the Lord and was not in tune with the Lord’s purposes. The Pharaoh of Joseph’s day welcomed his whole family and knew, to some degree, that God’s blessing centred on this people. But this new king knows nothing of that and the upshot of his ignorance is going to be trouble.
Sin and evil are not going to be overcome without a great struggle. And whether his new king is aware of it or not, that struggle is of cosmic proportions and is going to be centred, in earthly terms, right under his nose in Egypt.
The Lord has blessed his people and is determined to make them a blessing to the whole world. But sin is not going to go quietly; Satan is not going to lie down and be a good boy. The very reason why there is a need for redemption – the presence of sin and evil in God’s good creation – will mean the most intense battle and a great burden of pain and suffering.
In just a few words, the opening of this book has set the scene for the rest of the Bible story. We’re dealing with a broken creation that is under the power of sin and death. To loosen that grip and rescue the creation is going to mean the LORD God doing battle with all the forces of evil and chaos.
And it is at the point where that clash takes place that the church ever finds itself. We need to understand that the battle has come a long way since those days in Egypt; in fact, the most decisive victory has been won by Jesus on the cross and nothing has ever been the same since. But until his return in glory, the war will continue; the outcome is not in doubt but still there is a fight to be fought and a race to be run.
We said last time that this opening chapter raises the issue of identity for us and here it is again. As the Lord’s people we are engaged in a holy war, in a cosmic struggle to see his good and gracious purposes for the world enacted. That means an approach to life that is ready to engage, appropriately, in the struggle.
2. Cursing those who are blessed
So, because he did not know Joseph, the new king feared the people of Israel and began to oppress them, enlisting the help of his own people against them. The battle lines have been drawn.
In vv.11-14, life got very uncomfortable for the people of Israel. They found themselves at the eye of the storm in the cosmic battle and suffered as a consequence. It is not possible to be the Lord’s agents of blessing in the world and not be called upon to suffer in order to take forward those gracious purposes.
Israel discovered that and were often reluctant to shoulder the burden. But the greatest pain was born by our Lord Jesus and not unwillingly. It was in him that the pain reached its most intense expression, it was in his life and ministry that the conflict came to be seen most clearly (just look at the number of demons he encounters).
Yet the calling to be agents of blessing in the world does not end with Jesus: “as the Father sent me, so I am sending you” he tells his disciples. And in his ministry Paul is conscious that he is filling up in his body what was lacking in the sufferings of Christ for the sake of his body (Col. 1:24). We shouldn’t be surprised, then, to find the same being true in our own experience.
As the Lord blesses us as his people and seeks to further his purposes both in and through us we will find that trouble seeks us out, because the world, like this new king, does not know the Lord and does not know his people (as John tells us in 1 John 3:1).
But this trouble for Israel doesn’t thwart the Lord’s purposes back there in Egypt. Their almost miraculous growth in numbers was both the sign of his blessing on them and a signal for the battle to commence. And when the heat came down, he continued to bless them – “the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread” (1:12).
Trouble will not cause the Lord to leave the field or go soft on his purposes. As Israel was oppressed, so she grew. How often that has been seen in church history and can be expected to be seen in our own day, too.
3. Delivered by midwives!
But, as you might expect, the continued blessing of God on the people of Israel leads the new king to ‘up the ante’. He goes to the Hebrew midwives and orders them to kill the boys they deliver but to spare the girls. Again, the nature of this threat to life shows us that this is a conflict that has at its heart the very future of the creation and God’s purposes for it.
No doubt the new king made his point to the midwives with all the eloquence of power and intimidation, but they were not cowed. We aren’t dealing here with skilled politicians and diplomats but normal everyday women – but women of faith. When the Lord’s purposes are being challenged, it doesn’t necessarily require a national leader to sort things out; what counts more than anything is faith in God. That’s what we need to have.
Well, these valiant ladies refused to obey the king and allowed the boys to live. When the king demanded to know why they told him that the Hebrew women were so strong they’d got it all sorted before they could get there (they were lying, of course).
So, the battle is plain for all to see and so, too, are the tactics the Lord’s people are to use: deception. Really? Well, the Lord certainly blessed Shiphrah and Puah, giving them families of their own.
No doubt there are many who would want to take issue with what I’ve just said. Surely lying has no part to play in furthering the Lord’s purposes in the world? Are we to lie to potential converts and tell them that following Jesus is a pain-free experience?
What are we to say about this incident? Isn’t lying wrong? Shouldn’t they simply have told the truth and trusted the Lord to save them? I think there are a number of things to bear in mind here. This is what we might call a no-win situation for the midwives and they choose to do the lesser of two evils. The reason they do so is out of reverence for life, which is a reverence for the Lord of life.
They weren’t told by the Lord to lie but, in this complex and highly pressured situation, it was, in its own way, an expression of their faith in the Lord. The same would later be true of Rahab when she lied about the spies and was commended for her faith.
It’s all too easy at this distance and in our safe and cosy environment to debate the rights and wrong of this sort of behaviour but there are times when life is very complex, when we are faced with less than attractive options on all hands. What we must not fail to see in these women is their genuine commitment to life because of a genuine commitment to the Lord. The fight is sometimes very messy and we may as well acknowledge it.
But there’s only so much these women can do; the battle is far bigger, far more intense. Although we can see that the Lord has been active in blessing his people, so far he has stayed firmly behind the scenes. The question could fairly be asked, where is the Lord? And that becomes even more urgent when in v.22 Pharaoh orders that “every boy that is born you must throw into the Nile”.
What will become of his people now? The stage is nicely set for a deliverer to arise and for the Lord to show himself clearly in the lives of his people. Just as in the fullness of time, he sent forth his son to be born of a woman...
But nothing is ever quite so straightforward. Everything looks to be in place for the deepening and widening of that blessing and for the liberation of the creation from its bondage to decay but, hold on, not so fast. There’s a great problem looming in v.8.
1. The cosmic conflict
A new king is on the throne, “who did not know Joseph”, which also means he did not know the Lord and was not in tune with the Lord’s purposes. The Pharaoh of Joseph’s day welcomed his whole family and knew, to some degree, that God’s blessing centred on this people. But this new king knows nothing of that and the upshot of his ignorance is going to be trouble.
Sin and evil are not going to be overcome without a great struggle. And whether his new king is aware of it or not, that struggle is of cosmic proportions and is going to be centred, in earthly terms, right under his nose in Egypt.
The Lord has blessed his people and is determined to make them a blessing to the whole world. But sin is not going to go quietly; Satan is not going to lie down and be a good boy. The very reason why there is a need for redemption – the presence of sin and evil in God’s good creation – will mean the most intense battle and a great burden of pain and suffering.
In just a few words, the opening of this book has set the scene for the rest of the Bible story. We’re dealing with a broken creation that is under the power of sin and death. To loosen that grip and rescue the creation is going to mean the LORD God doing battle with all the forces of evil and chaos.
And it is at the point where that clash takes place that the church ever finds itself. We need to understand that the battle has come a long way since those days in Egypt; in fact, the most decisive victory has been won by Jesus on the cross and nothing has ever been the same since. But until his return in glory, the war will continue; the outcome is not in doubt but still there is a fight to be fought and a race to be run.
We said last time that this opening chapter raises the issue of identity for us and here it is again. As the Lord’s people we are engaged in a holy war, in a cosmic struggle to see his good and gracious purposes for the world enacted. That means an approach to life that is ready to engage, appropriately, in the struggle.
2. Cursing those who are blessed
So, because he did not know Joseph, the new king feared the people of Israel and began to oppress them, enlisting the help of his own people against them. The battle lines have been drawn.
In vv.11-14, life got very uncomfortable for the people of Israel. They found themselves at the eye of the storm in the cosmic battle and suffered as a consequence. It is not possible to be the Lord’s agents of blessing in the world and not be called upon to suffer in order to take forward those gracious purposes.
Israel discovered that and were often reluctant to shoulder the burden. But the greatest pain was born by our Lord Jesus and not unwillingly. It was in him that the pain reached its most intense expression, it was in his life and ministry that the conflict came to be seen most clearly (just look at the number of demons he encounters).
Yet the calling to be agents of blessing in the world does not end with Jesus: “as the Father sent me, so I am sending you” he tells his disciples. And in his ministry Paul is conscious that he is filling up in his body what was lacking in the sufferings of Christ for the sake of his body (Col. 1:24). We shouldn’t be surprised, then, to find the same being true in our own experience.
As the Lord blesses us as his people and seeks to further his purposes both in and through us we will find that trouble seeks us out, because the world, like this new king, does not know the Lord and does not know his people (as John tells us in 1 John 3:1).
But this trouble for Israel doesn’t thwart the Lord’s purposes back there in Egypt. Their almost miraculous growth in numbers was both the sign of his blessing on them and a signal for the battle to commence. And when the heat came down, he continued to bless them – “the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread” (1:12).
Trouble will not cause the Lord to leave the field or go soft on his purposes. As Israel was oppressed, so she grew. How often that has been seen in church history and can be expected to be seen in our own day, too.
3. Delivered by midwives!
But, as you might expect, the continued blessing of God on the people of Israel leads the new king to ‘up the ante’. He goes to the Hebrew midwives and orders them to kill the boys they deliver but to spare the girls. Again, the nature of this threat to life shows us that this is a conflict that has at its heart the very future of the creation and God’s purposes for it.
No doubt the new king made his point to the midwives with all the eloquence of power and intimidation, but they were not cowed. We aren’t dealing here with skilled politicians and diplomats but normal everyday women – but women of faith. When the Lord’s purposes are being challenged, it doesn’t necessarily require a national leader to sort things out; what counts more than anything is faith in God. That’s what we need to have.
Well, these valiant ladies refused to obey the king and allowed the boys to live. When the king demanded to know why they told him that the Hebrew women were so strong they’d got it all sorted before they could get there (they were lying, of course).
So, the battle is plain for all to see and so, too, are the tactics the Lord’s people are to use: deception. Really? Well, the Lord certainly blessed Shiphrah and Puah, giving them families of their own.
No doubt there are many who would want to take issue with what I’ve just said. Surely lying has no part to play in furthering the Lord’s purposes in the world? Are we to lie to potential converts and tell them that following Jesus is a pain-free experience?
What are we to say about this incident? Isn’t lying wrong? Shouldn’t they simply have told the truth and trusted the Lord to save them? I think there are a number of things to bear in mind here. This is what we might call a no-win situation for the midwives and they choose to do the lesser of two evils. The reason they do so is out of reverence for life, which is a reverence for the Lord of life.
They weren’t told by the Lord to lie but, in this complex and highly pressured situation, it was, in its own way, an expression of their faith in the Lord. The same would later be true of Rahab when she lied about the spies and was commended for her faith.
It’s all too easy at this distance and in our safe and cosy environment to debate the rights and wrong of this sort of behaviour but there are times when life is very complex, when we are faced with less than attractive options on all hands. What we must not fail to see in these women is their genuine commitment to life because of a genuine commitment to the Lord. The fight is sometimes very messy and we may as well acknowledge it.
But there’s only so much these women can do; the battle is far bigger, far more intense. Although we can see that the Lord has been active in blessing his people, so far he has stayed firmly behind the scenes. The question could fairly be asked, where is the Lord? And that becomes even more urgent when in v.22 Pharaoh orders that “every boy that is born you must throw into the Nile”.
What will become of his people now? The stage is nicely set for a deliverer to arise and for the Lord to show himself clearly in the lives of his people. Just as in the fullness of time, he sent forth his son to be born of a woman...
Sermon on Exodus 1:1-7
We’re beginning to study the book of Exodus together this morning. It is a very significant book, both in terms of the OT and also the NT. Not only is it the book in which we discover many famous stories but many key biblical themes emerge in the course of it – the redemption of God’s people, the forming of the nation, the nature of God, the worship of God, the place of the law and so on.
Any decent Bible dictionary will give you a whole list of such themes. It’s a long book, complex in some ways, with much that needs to be pondered carefully. We begin today by taking the first 7 verses.
1. Back to the future
The opening of the book of Exodus forms a very deliberate link to what has gone in Genesis. In Hebrew, the book opens with the word ’and’, showing that it’s a continuing narrative that we have here, another chapter in the story rather than a completely new one. And that point is made even more strongly in the opening words which are a direct copy of Gen. 46:8.
A book that has a great story to tell, and is always moving forwards, starts with a backward look. It reminds us how Israel got to be in Egypt but, more than that, it raises issues of identity and purpose.
One of the great advances in technology in our day has been the ability to remain connected wherever you are. The opening of this great book teaches us that we live connected lives, that the story of God’s plan with this world is single, not multiple.
They were not – and neither are we – the first generation of God’s people. They were not – and nor are we – a discrete generation, unrelated to the past and disconnected in the present. There is a much larger picture to see and to live within. Exodus is one part of a larger story and so are our lives.
We must, therefore, learn to both think and pray in terms of that larger reality. It would be all too easy to simply see our Christian experience as something that makes us happy, helps us to get through life and guarantees us a home in heaven come the end.
But the opening of this book, and the Bible as a whole, condemn that kind of approach to life as a Christian. Our thinking, living and praying must not be parochial. We need to see the larger picture – by which I don’t just mean what God is doing now in other places but rather the whole sweep of Bible history as it unfolds God’s purposes.
Does that figure in how you approach life as a Christian? Is that how you see your life and the life of the church? Does it show in your praying?
This is the point Jesus makes when he tells us to make God’s kingdom our first concern and not to worry unduly about life’s necessities, to let him give us what we need as we need it.
So, remember your connection to the larger picture and begin to understand your life and the life of the church in that light.
2. Connected to the God of creation
That Exodus continues the story begun in Genesis is quite clear and these opening verses make that point in no uncertain terms. But the connection with Genesis is more explicitly a connection with the God of Genesis who is the great creator. And that point is made here too, again with great clarity.
Look at vv.6,7 – Joseph and all his brothers died (a bit like the reports back in Gen. 5) but that wasn’t the end of the Israelites in Egypt – far from it. In an almost miraculous way, they increased and “became exceedingly numerous”.
The terms for population growth compete for space in verse 7, there’s just so many of them. And what is especially notable is that those terms directly relate back to what we read in Genesis – check out 1:28; 9:1 and 1:21; 8:17 (for ‘swarm’).
What is this meant to convey to us?
i) Blessed by the creator – This note about the amazing growth of the people of Israel in Egypt is clearly meant to say that the Lord was with them and was blessing them.
His blessing was not limited to the former generation who we learn had died, nor was it limited by their location in the pagan land of Egypt. Egypt had its fertility gods but true fertility is seen to come from the LORD alone.
The people of Israel belong to the Lord who made both heaven and earth. That is a key point in the whole Bible storyline that, sadly, we often neglect and fail to do justice to. If you check out the main statements of faith of evangelical churches, there is very little about creation. That’s a great shame because everything flows from that starting point. We can talk in great detail about what the Lord has done to save but who is the Lord that saves? The great Creator God!
The whole thing starts with creation and ends with new creation; the God who saves is the God who made everything in the first place. And he was clearly present in power and blessing with his people in Egypt.
Their story is the story of the Creator God promising to bless them and to make them increase in number – that certainly is coming true in these verses. But the promises also included land which is yet to be fulfilled and so the stage is set in these verses for the exodus from Egypt and the journey to the promised land.
ii) Purpose – But this connection with God’s purposes in creation that these words deliberately echo also says something else to us. It makes the point that “what God is doing with Israel’s descendants has meaning for the whole family of humankind.” That is a vital note to grasp.
I heard someone speak not so long ago on a part of the Joseph story where Joseph was managing the food crisis in Egypt. The speaker made the point that Joseph was placed there for the sake of Israel, which is exactly what Joseph himself said (Gen. 45:5-8). But the speaker went on to say that God didn’t care about Egypt, he was only interested in Israel, that the Lord’s great concern in this world is with his elect people.
Now, I’m a great fan of the biblical doctrine of election – I don’t think it’s anything to be shy about – but I do question those statements.
Election has at its heart being chosen in order to engage in mission (do a study of the biblical material and you’ll see what I mean). Did God care for Egypt? Yes, most certainly – check out what God says through Isaiah at 19:16ff – it’s a remarkable statement of intent and of genuine care and concern.
And this passage before us makes the point that God’s purposes for all creation are going to be fulfilled through his people Israel (which ultimately is what happens in and through Jesus). Why was Abraham chosen? To be a blessing for the whole world. And here are Abraham’s descendents in Egypt, swarming over the land in creational blessing.
At this time, there is going to be a great struggle and the need for a great deliverance from Egypt but, ultimately, that redemption is going to result in Egypt, too, sharing in the Lord’s mercy.
The Lord who we will see redeeming his people from Egypt in this great and profound book is the Creator of heaven and earth. One writer expressed this point very helpfully: “Because God is a God of life and blessing [as seen in creation] God will do redemptive work should those gifts ever be endangered or diminished.” And so, “Israel is God’s starting-point for realising the divine intentions for all.”
We need to see that as our purpose, too. We’re in the world for the sake of the world, a light for the nations, a city set on a hill – not to thumb our noses at the nations but to invite them to come under the shade of the Lord’s shelter. That’s why you’re in your family, in your workplace, in your neighbourhood.
This grasp of our identity and purpose as the Lord’s people must shape and sharpen our thinking and praying.
May the Lord bless us and make us a blessing to others.
Any decent Bible dictionary will give you a whole list of such themes. It’s a long book, complex in some ways, with much that needs to be pondered carefully. We begin today by taking the first 7 verses.
1. Back to the future
The opening of the book of Exodus forms a very deliberate link to what has gone in Genesis. In Hebrew, the book opens with the word ’and’, showing that it’s a continuing narrative that we have here, another chapter in the story rather than a completely new one. And that point is made even more strongly in the opening words which are a direct copy of Gen. 46:8.
A book that has a great story to tell, and is always moving forwards, starts with a backward look. It reminds us how Israel got to be in Egypt but, more than that, it raises issues of identity and purpose.
One of the great advances in technology in our day has been the ability to remain connected wherever you are. The opening of this great book teaches us that we live connected lives, that the story of God’s plan with this world is single, not multiple.
They were not – and neither are we – the first generation of God’s people. They were not – and nor are we – a discrete generation, unrelated to the past and disconnected in the present. There is a much larger picture to see and to live within. Exodus is one part of a larger story and so are our lives.
We must, therefore, learn to both think and pray in terms of that larger reality. It would be all too easy to simply see our Christian experience as something that makes us happy, helps us to get through life and guarantees us a home in heaven come the end.
But the opening of this book, and the Bible as a whole, condemn that kind of approach to life as a Christian. Our thinking, living and praying must not be parochial. We need to see the larger picture – by which I don’t just mean what God is doing now in other places but rather the whole sweep of Bible history as it unfolds God’s purposes.
Does that figure in how you approach life as a Christian? Is that how you see your life and the life of the church? Does it show in your praying?
This is the point Jesus makes when he tells us to make God’s kingdom our first concern and not to worry unduly about life’s necessities, to let him give us what we need as we need it.
So, remember your connection to the larger picture and begin to understand your life and the life of the church in that light.
2. Connected to the God of creation
That Exodus continues the story begun in Genesis is quite clear and these opening verses make that point in no uncertain terms. But the connection with Genesis is more explicitly a connection with the God of Genesis who is the great creator. And that point is made here too, again with great clarity.
Look at vv.6,7 – Joseph and all his brothers died (a bit like the reports back in Gen. 5) but that wasn’t the end of the Israelites in Egypt – far from it. In an almost miraculous way, they increased and “became exceedingly numerous”.
The terms for population growth compete for space in verse 7, there’s just so many of them. And what is especially notable is that those terms directly relate back to what we read in Genesis – check out 1:28; 9:1 and 1:21; 8:17 (for ‘swarm’).
What is this meant to convey to us?
i) Blessed by the creator – This note about the amazing growth of the people of Israel in Egypt is clearly meant to say that the Lord was with them and was blessing them.
His blessing was not limited to the former generation who we learn had died, nor was it limited by their location in the pagan land of Egypt. Egypt had its fertility gods but true fertility is seen to come from the LORD alone.
The people of Israel belong to the Lord who made both heaven and earth. That is a key point in the whole Bible storyline that, sadly, we often neglect and fail to do justice to. If you check out the main statements of faith of evangelical churches, there is very little about creation. That’s a great shame because everything flows from that starting point. We can talk in great detail about what the Lord has done to save but who is the Lord that saves? The great Creator God!
The whole thing starts with creation and ends with new creation; the God who saves is the God who made everything in the first place. And he was clearly present in power and blessing with his people in Egypt.
Their story is the story of the Creator God promising to bless them and to make them increase in number – that certainly is coming true in these verses. But the promises also included land which is yet to be fulfilled and so the stage is set in these verses for the exodus from Egypt and the journey to the promised land.
ii) Purpose – But this connection with God’s purposes in creation that these words deliberately echo also says something else to us. It makes the point that “what God is doing with Israel’s descendants has meaning for the whole family of humankind.” That is a vital note to grasp.
I heard someone speak not so long ago on a part of the Joseph story where Joseph was managing the food crisis in Egypt. The speaker made the point that Joseph was placed there for the sake of Israel, which is exactly what Joseph himself said (Gen. 45:5-8). But the speaker went on to say that God didn’t care about Egypt, he was only interested in Israel, that the Lord’s great concern in this world is with his elect people.
Now, I’m a great fan of the biblical doctrine of election – I don’t think it’s anything to be shy about – but I do question those statements.
Election has at its heart being chosen in order to engage in mission (do a study of the biblical material and you’ll see what I mean). Did God care for Egypt? Yes, most certainly – check out what God says through Isaiah at 19:16ff – it’s a remarkable statement of intent and of genuine care and concern.
And this passage before us makes the point that God’s purposes for all creation are going to be fulfilled through his people Israel (which ultimately is what happens in and through Jesus). Why was Abraham chosen? To be a blessing for the whole world. And here are Abraham’s descendents in Egypt, swarming over the land in creational blessing.
At this time, there is going to be a great struggle and the need for a great deliverance from Egypt but, ultimately, that redemption is going to result in Egypt, too, sharing in the Lord’s mercy.
The Lord who we will see redeeming his people from Egypt in this great and profound book is the Creator of heaven and earth. One writer expressed this point very helpfully: “Because God is a God of life and blessing [as seen in creation] God will do redemptive work should those gifts ever be endangered or diminished.” And so, “Israel is God’s starting-point for realising the divine intentions for all.”
We need to see that as our purpose, too. We’re in the world for the sake of the world, a light for the nations, a city set on a hill – not to thumb our noses at the nations but to invite them to come under the shade of the Lord’s shelter. That’s why you’re in your family, in your workplace, in your neighbourhood.
This grasp of our identity and purpose as the Lord’s people must shape and sharpen our thinking and praying.
May the Lord bless us and make us a blessing to others.
Wednesday, 17 May 2006
The LORD is Righteous
Is God's righteousness an ethical quality or his faithfulness to his covenant? That question is at the heart of a considerable debate. Without wishing to engage that debate in all its contours, it strikes me that Psalm 129 is of some merit.
The psalm laments the fact in vv.1-3 that, since their youth, Israel has been persecuted by the nations. Yet, as v.4 makes plain, they have not been abandoned:
Notice that it is YHWH who is declared to be righteous and that in the context of rescuing his people, Israel. Whilst the term 'covenant' fails to put in an appearance here, the whole context is so clearly covenantal. And YHWH's righteousness is seen in his acting to rescue his people as the outworking of that covenant.
Is he also being ethically righteous in rescuing the oppressed? Without doubt; but the emphasis, in terms of salvation-history, is on covenant faithfulness. Righteous is what righteous does - and YHWH in righeousness delivers his own, for the sake of the world.
The psalm laments the fact in vv.1-3 that, since their youth, Israel has been persecuted by the nations. Yet, as v.4 makes plain, they have not been abandoned:
But the LORD is righteous;
he has cut me free from the cords of the wicked.
Notice that it is YHWH who is declared to be righteous and that in the context of rescuing his people, Israel. Whilst the term 'covenant' fails to put in an appearance here, the whole context is so clearly covenantal. And YHWH's righteousness is seen in his acting to rescue his people as the outworking of that covenant.
Is he also being ethically righteous in rescuing the oppressed? Without doubt; but the emphasis, in terms of salvation-history, is on covenant faithfulness. Righteous is what righteous does - and YHWH in righeousness delivers his own, for the sake of the world.
Tuesday, 16 May 2006
Checking Out; Cheering On
There are passages in Acts dealing with the early church sending various people into other situations that are worth comparing.
In Acts 8 we learn that
Presumably this sending was in order to authenticate the work going on in Samaria, to give this expansion the apostolic imprimatur. Then, in Acts 11, when the gospel is breaking new ground among the Greeks in Antioch we learn that
Why send Barnabus? Not to authenticate the work but to encourage the church. For
What great vision the church in Jerusalem showed at this point. Having worked-through the reality that the Lord was indeed saving Gentiles (notice how this follows so closely the incident with Peter and Cornelius and the church's consideration of that) they felt no need to send people to check out the work but rather chose someone they knew would cheer on those involved in it.
No doubt there is much for us all to learn from their example.
In Acts 8 we learn that
When the apostles in Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to Samaria.
Presumably this sending was in order to authenticate the work going on in Samaria, to give this expansion the apostolic imprimatur. Then, in Acts 11, when the gospel is breaking new ground among the Greeks in Antioch we learn that
News of this reached the ears of the church in Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas to Antioch.
Why send Barnabus? Not to authenticate the work but to encourage the church. For
He was a good man, full of the Holy Spirit and faith, and a great number of people were brought to the Lord.
What great vision the church in Jerusalem showed at this point. Having worked-through the reality that the Lord was indeed saving Gentiles (notice how this follows so closely the incident with Peter and Cornelius and the church's consideration of that) they felt no need to send people to check out the work but rather chose someone they knew would cheer on those involved in it.
No doubt there is much for us all to learn from their example.
Thursday, 11 May 2006
Wise words
Commenting on the interplay of divine sovereignty and human responsibility in Exodus 4:18ff, Peter Enns makes the following salient points:
(1) We must remember that election, or sovereignty, is never an abstract notion. Common arguments against election that I have heard include, 'I guess God predestined what kind of tie I would put on today,' or, 'Are you trying to tell me that God predestined that crack in the sidewalk and that I would trip over that crack!?' As the old joke goes: What did the Calvinist say after he fell down the stairs? 'I'm glad that's over with!' Of course, most of these objections are not meant to be taken wholly seriously, but the basic thrust remains: How does God's sovereignty actually, practically, play out in the details of our lives?
This is a question that the Bible does not address. The Bible is not concerned to reveal fully the mysteries of God's dealings with his creation. The notion of God's sovereignty in the Bible is always connected specifically to one issue: the deliverance of God's people. Although this raises a host of other concerns (e.g., are we saved by God's choice without any input on our own?), understanding the salvation context of sovereignty at least puts us on the proper starting point for discussing the issue and how it might affect our lives. Burdening our hearts and minds with abstract implications of sovereignty, something the Bible itself does not entertain, will unnecessarily detract us from the focus the Bible gives to the issue.
(2) However uncomfortable we all feel from time to time with election and its implications, we must remember that the biblical writers do not seem to share that feeling of discomfort. Though the issue is mysterious, it is not presented as a burden in the Bible. This is not to say that it is easily accepted. Paul's protracted argument in Romans 9 may indicate that not only his readers but perhaps Paul himself felt the need to engage the issue more closely. For Paul, the end result of any such internal struggle with sovereignty results in praise (11:33-36). For Job, it ends in humility (Job 42:1-6). Sovereignty is a blessing rather than a hindrance. I am not saying that understanding how sovereignty works is a blessing, but that it is a blessing regardless of how little we understand.
The Lord holds us in his arms. He is the truly loving Father who cares for us, his children in Christ. Can we really hope for anything better than this? What recourse do we have? Partial sovereignty? It is good to be under the Lord's care. What such an understanding of sovereignty engenders in us is actually a sense of freedom, the knowledge that we are God's children and that we are somehow under his sovereign gaze - no matter what. Sovereignty means that in our everyday lives, we can go forth and act boldly without fear that our constant missteps or imperfections will catch the Lord by surprise and tear us away from him.
(3) However much we try to make sense of sovereignty and incorporate it into our theological systems (as I have just tried to do!), we must remember that it is ultimately a great and humbling mystery. To understand how it works is to peer into the heart of God. I remember so little of my college years, which is no one's fault but my own, but one conversation stands out in my mind. An older classmate and I were discussing the issue of sovereignty and free will and I said, "At the very least we have to accept the basic notion that either one or the other is true. Both cannot be right." My wiser friend responded, "Why?" I blurted out a comment or two about God needing to be logically consistent, or something like that, but that response seemed as shallow then as it does now. We should not forget the tension that Exodus and other portions of Scripture set up. We should not assume that God conforms to our ways of thinking.
Is this not a recurring theme in the Bible that God's ways are not our ways? Perhaps part of the value of the tension between predestination and free will is not found in solving the problem, as if it is a riddle God put in Scripture to occupy our intellectual energy, but in our standing back in awe of a God who is so much greater than we can understand. The hope is that we would go forth with this knowledge (or better, lack of knowledge) and live humble lives, trusting in the Lord all the more because of the depth of the riches of his wisdom and knowledge.
(Peter Enns, Exodus, NIVAC, p.148f)
Thursday, 4 May 2006
So who's to blame?
When Israel sent 12 leaders to spy out the land, 2 brought back a favourable report; 10 did not. The upshot was that Israel refused to try to enter the land and incurred God's wrath. So who was to blame?
Clearly, the 10 who talked up the issues involved with entering the land and making it their own -
Leaders within the church have a solemn duty to exercise faith and to encourage faith in others. It is so easy to discourage, to dampen and to damage. And it is no refuge to say 'I'm a natural pessimist and it's just how I am'; unbelief needs to be named for what it is.
But the account in Deuteronomy shows that the people as a whole were also at fault for listening to the bad report and refusing to act on the advice of Joshua and Caleb, for failing to believe God:
Interestingly, it had been their idea in the first place to send the spies, a suggestion that Moses recognised as God-given (cf. Dt. 1:22f & Num 13:1). But, sadly, that doesn't guarantee a faithful response.
The community needs to evaluate what it hears and follow advice that is both wise and faithful.
Clearly, the 10 who talked up the issues involved with entering the land and making it their own -
But the men who had gone up with him said, "We can't attack those people; they are stronger than we are." And they spread among the Israelites a bad report about the land they had explored. They said, "The land we explored devours those living in it. All the people we saw there are of great size. We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them. (Numbers 13:31ff; TNIV)
Leaders within the church have a solemn duty to exercise faith and to encourage faith in others. It is so easy to discourage, to dampen and to damage. And it is no refuge to say 'I'm a natural pessimist and it's just how I am'; unbelief needs to be named for what it is.
But the account in Deuteronomy shows that the people as a whole were also at fault for listening to the bad report and refusing to act on the advice of Joshua and Caleb, for failing to believe God:
But you were unwilling to go up; you rebelled against the command of the LORD your God. You grumbled in your tents and said, "The LORD hates us; so he brought us out of Egypt to deliver us into the hands of the Amorites to destroy us. Where can we go? Our brothers have made our hearts melt in fear. They say, 'The people are stronger and taller than we are; the cities are large, with walls up to the sky. We even saw the Anakites there.' " (Deuteronomy 1:26ff; TNIV)
Interestingly, it had been their idea in the first place to send the spies, a suggestion that Moses recognised as God-given (cf. Dt. 1:22f & Num 13:1). But, sadly, that doesn't guarantee a faithful response.
The community needs to evaluate what it hears and follow advice that is both wise and faithful.
Thursday, 30 March 2006
Mid-stream
Psalm 78 is a recital of the history of Israel and their yo-yo relationship with YHWH. Some days they were up, some days they were down; and when they were down, they were almost out. Their obedience was flimsy and their love vapid. Yet the Lord persevered with them, alternately disciplining them through their enemies then rescuing them from their enemies.
The psalm ends on a positive note:
So, all's well that ends well. Except it doesn't. The psalm only goes so far; it cuts off the history mid-stream. Knowing the rest of the story makes for depressing reading: even David was mired in sin and shame. Is there no answer? Is there no deliverer? Is the story destined to always remain the same? Is there no hope?
The psalm ends on a positive note:
He chose David his servant...to be the shepherd of his people Jacob...And David shepherded them with integrity of heart; with skilful hands he led them. (v.71f; TNIV)
So, all's well that ends well. Except it doesn't. The psalm only goes so far; it cuts off the history mid-stream. Knowing the rest of the story makes for depressing reading: even David was mired in sin and shame. Is there no answer? Is there no deliverer? Is the story destined to always remain the same? Is there no hope?
Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! (Rom. 7:25 TNIV)
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