Sermon Tone Analysis

Communion:

Introduction:

Welcome to the Vineyard this morning!

We are continuing a series of messages from the Old Testament book of Exodus.

The exodus story is so central to Israel's history, that you can't talk about being an Israelite without this story.

This isn't just a parable.

It's the most quoted story throughout the rest of the bible.

The Exodus is such an important moment in biblical history that it literally makes the people of Israel—where Israel becomes Israel.

The Israelites even marked time based on the exodus event…

1 Kings 6:1 “1 In the four hundred and eightieth year after the Israelites came out of Egypt, in the fourth year of Solomon’s reign over Israel, in the month of Ziv, the second month, he began to build the temple of the Lord.”

…the way we do after the birth of Jesus.

It's a giant big deal!

This thought impacted me this week.

In my story I distinctly remember a few evenings in 1976 as I was first encountering the living God… I was going through my own "exodus", leaving a way of life I had learned over my first 17 years, and stepping into a completely different way of life following Christ.

I was leaving a way of life where I was in bondage to my longings and desires, a way of life where i only had the resources I brought to the table, a way of life where i felt pretty alone.

And I found myself being invited into a very different way of life…a life that was much bigger, it was way more beautiful, a life connected to a creator who dearly and deeply loved me, and who was inviting me into an adventure I'd never ever heard about before.

What about your story?

Do you have a before / after story of encountering the loving faithfulness of God? Do you have a story of exodus in your own life?

The reason I'm here, the reason I'm a pastor/artist in this community (the Vineyard and the Twin Ports) is because I want to help you learn about and live into a completely different kind of story.

The book of Exodus is crammed full of extremely helpful pointers as we live into this new way of life.

We are at the end of chapter four today, and there's a transition coming in the story.

The first part is the saga of Moses being delivered from Egypt, and the second is of Israel being delivered from Egypt.

The first story becomes a paradigm for the second story…

As you remember, the story starts off with Pharaoh and he is very concerned about the proliferation of Hebrews, and he's feeling threatened, and so he orders that all of the baby boys be thrown into the Nile River.

And Moses' mother puts him in the Nile, but she places him carefully in a basket.

She floats him into the reeds.

And from there, he is rescued by the daughter of Pharaoh.

So this is chapter 1 and the first half of chapter 2 where God delivers Moses through the reeds from Pharaoh.

Then as an adult, Moses crosses the wilderness and ends up at Mount Sinai where he meets God in the flames of a bush.

That's chapters 3 and 4. God reveals himself to Moses and then he commissions Moses into his service.

God says, "I have a plan for you.

I'm gonna send you back to Egypt."

And so those events prefigure what we see in the rest of the book.…

…where again, we have a murderous Pharaoh who is despises the Israelites and while trying to destroy them, is also trying to get what free labor he can out of them.

And then God brings the people through the sea of reeds, he splits the water, and they come out on the other side into the wilderness.

So we have Moses being delivered and commissioned, and then we have the Hebrews being delivered and commissioned.

Moses meets God at Sinai, and they meet God at Sinai, and God brings them into covenant, comes to dwell among them, and commissions them to become his representatives among the nations…perhaps offering all people an exodus

There’s beautiful symmetry between the saga of Moses, and the saga of the whole nation.

Today I want to tackle a difficult passage that often gets ignored, left out of the story, and its right in the middle, the transition between these two sagas.

What do we do with difficult passages?

When we encounter difficult things in the bible, what do we often do?

I don’t know if you’ve tried reading the bible yet, but there are loads of sections that are a bit difficult to understand at first pass.

Sometimes we ignore them, read right past them, brush them aside.

“I don’t know what to do with this, so I’m just going to pretend its not here…la-la-la I can’t hear you!”

Or sometimes we hyper-focus on the difficulty and use it as a reason to disregard the rest of the text that's easier to understand.

What do we do with difficulties in our lives?

What do we do with difficult things in our own lives?

Don't we kinda do the same things?

we want to move on, to get over, get past the difficulty, or we ignore the problem, sweep it under the rug, try to pretend no one can see it

sometimes we hyper-focus on the difficulty to the extent that we miss really good stuff in our lives, sometimes we even throwing some of the good stuff to make a change…which doesn't really fix anything

I want to suggest that what might be more helpful is to ask God to meet us and walk right into the difficulties, head on…

This passage, the entire book of Exodus that we’re studying together, the exodus event for Israel addresses something we all wrestle with at different points of our lives: our identity.

Who are you, really?

Who am I? Who are we?

In this passage, Moses’ identity becomes more secure than it’s ever been.

In this story God is revealing his identity—his name and his character—to Moses, to the Hebrews, to the entire world.

Throughout the events of the exodus, Israel is invited into a new identity, to become a people who bear God’s name to the rest of the world.

My hope is that in looking at this difficult passage, God does something in you, and I’m praying that he solidifies your identity as a follower of the resurrected Christ a bit more.

Let’s pray…

Read the passage:

Exodus 4:18–5:2 (NIV)

18 Then Moses went back to Jethro his father-in-law and said to him, “Let me return to my own people in Egypt to see if any of them are still alive.”

Jethro said, “Go, and I wish you well.”

19 Now the LORD had said to Moses in Midian, “Go back to Egypt, for all those who wanted to kill you are dead.”

20 So Moses took his wife and sons, put them on a donkey and started back to Egypt.

And he took the staff of God in his hand.

21 The LORD said to Moses, “When you return to Egypt, see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders I have given you the power to do.

But I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go.

22 Then say to Pharaoh, ‘This is what the LORD says: Israel is my firstborn son, 23 and I told you, “Let my son go, so he may worship me.”

But you refused to let him go; so I will kill your firstborn son.’ ”

24 At a lodging place on the way, the LORD met Moses and was about to kill him.

25 But Zipporah took a flint knife, cut off her son’s foreskin and touched Moses’ feet with it.

“Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me,” she said.

26 So the LORD let him alone.

(At that time she said “bridegroom of blood,” referring to circumcision.)

27 The LORD said to Aaron, “Go into the wilderness to meet Moses.”

So he met Moses at the mountain of God and kissed him.

28 Then Moses told Aaron everything the LORD had sent him to say, and also about all the signs he had commanded him to perform.

29 Moses and Aaron brought together all the elders of the Israelites, 30 and Aaron told them everything the LORD had said to Moses.

He also performed the signs before the people, 31 and they believed.

And when they heard that the LORD was concerned about them and had seen their misery, they bowed down and worshiped.

5:1 Afterward Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said, “This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘Let my people go, so that they may hold a festival to me in the wilderness.’

” 2 Pharaoh said, “Who is the LORD, that I should obey him and let Israel go?

I do not know the LORD and I will not let Israel go.”

If this is God solidifying identity, if he’s helping us to answer the question: who am I really?

Here’s the first thought…

First: Rest in the purposefulness of God

Overview: I love the way that Dr. Carmen Imes identifies that these four scenes are a tightly constructed literary unit with an important literary function.

First we have Moses & Jethro, then its God & Moses, next its a strange emergency circumcision, and then Aaron & Moses meet up and head back to Egypt.

Sometimes we might be tempted to think the author didn't know what to do with these little bits and so they just tossed them in here willy-nilly.

And you might write the story like that!

But what if this author was more purposeful?

Can I just give us a bigger picture for another moment?

What if God is way more purposeful in your life than you often give him credit for.

What if he's up to something beautiful in every single moment of your life.

I think Jesus showed us that he is.

In every single moment there is an opportunity to participate with this is a totally different way to live our lives, and its what discipleship to Jesus is really all about.

So why do people think these four stories are an important literary unit meant to accomplish a specific purpose.

Well remember that these authors wrote in such a way that every phrase mattered…papyrus was expensive!

This ancient Hebrew literature is known as meditational literature, it’s meant to be read over and over again.