What or Who do you Trust?

Good morning. I am glad that we can be here together to celebrate this morning. It is always a pleasure and joy to be in worship together.

If you can’t see by the question today the question is about trust. Have you ever really thought about it. Trust is a tough thing for many of us when it comes to life. We don’t trust in a lot of things and we also trust in a lot of different things and people. It got me thinking about two different ideas of trust.

The first story i wanted to share with you is trust in an object.

Trust the Harness

One of the jobs that i have held in my life was working overnight stocking at home depot. It was one of the more challenging jobs i remember because it was a pretty demanding job. I was in charge of the plumbing aisles. This was an interesting area to be responsible for. See one of the challenges with stocking is we were expected to complete so many pallets a night to restock the store. The real challenge came in plumbing. See plumbing had two types of pallets. Many of my pallets were often Water heaters and other large bulky items. Those pallets were incredibly easy. Doesn’t take long to clear a pallet when it has four water heaters on it. The other type of pallet was well lets say horrible.

My other type of pallet was pipes and fittings. If you can’t imagine pipes and fittings created a lot of challenges because you had to find the exact spot purely by observation and memory. I laugh at this now because i know that retail inventory management has improved since then and now days there are scanning systmes that know the exact location of the item in the plans and this pallet would not be nearly as challenging. Those pallets always took awhile though.

Now you might be asking what this has to do with trust and a harness. Think back to those water heaters. While the store i worked at was a very busy one we sold a lot of water heaters almost everyday. Contractors, home improvement, whatever it might have been the stock was constantly needing filled. The problem is the lower bay only holds so much. The way we had to store excess water heaters though was in the upper bays. This required the use of a machine to get them up there. The particular machine that was used had a bay that we drove it in and then the entire bay plus a platform would raise up with you. This was where we placed the product we would lift up. There was a harness that the driver would be in and as you rose up it was always a scary and interesting experience.

The bay and the machine would sway and it was always a challenge to move water heaters from the platform to the upper shelves. I was relying on this harness that kept me attached to this machine as i moved around 15 to 20 feet in the air. It was a moment that i had to learn to trust in the harness to keep me safe.

Trusting People

The trusting people is a little more simple. I remember in youth group growing up we went and did a rope challenge course as a group. One of the challenges that we had to do was the classic trust fall. If you know what i am talking about you already have an image in your mind. For those who don’t know This is where a group of people stand below a higher platform and hold out there arms and promise to catch the person who is falling backward into their arms. I have always been a bigger guy so you can imagine i was a little worried about the strength of the other teenagers and their ability to catch me. Thankfully when i fell they were able to catch me with no problem.

Both of these things required trust in both objects and the people in my lives. It is here that I started to connect to the position of who or what we are trusting in the scriptures. Thinking of Moses and the story of the Hebrew people and there had to be a lot of questions.

The Story so far...

We talked about Moses last week and God calling him to go and free his people. Moses goes back and a lot of things happen but many of us know them as the plagues.

The Plague of Blood—Turned the Nile to blood

The Plague of Frogs— this was a hopping good time

The Plague of Gnats—Can you really think of a more annoying plague than this one

The Plague of Flies—Where are those frogs when you need them

The Plague of Live stock—No more hamburgers tonight

The Plague of Boils—Umm Gross

The Plague of Hail—Anyone have a strong umbrella

The Plague of Locusts—Are we done with the bugs yet.

The Plague of Darkness—Every young child's worst nightmare

Then we get to the last plague and one of the most powerful ones. It is the plague that finally sets the people free and it came at a high cost.

In short God has warned Moses there is one final plague and this is the one that will get the Pharaoh to set the people free. This is the plague of the First born.

Exodus 11:5 NIV

5 Every firstborn son in Egypt will die, from the firstborn son of Pharaoh, who sits on the throne, to the firstborn son of the female slave, who is at her hand mill, and all the firstborn of the cattle as well.

The First born sons of Egypt are going to die. This leads to the protection that God is going to provide to his people to prevent the loss of life amongst the Hebrews.

Thus we have the Passover and the Festival of the Unleavened Bread

Exodus 12:1–11 NIV

1 The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in Egypt, 2 “This month is to be for you the first month, the first month of your year. 3 Tell the whole community of Israel that on the tenth day of this month each man is to take a lamb for his family, one for each household. 4 If any household is too small for a whole lamb, they must share one with their nearest neighbor, having taken into account the number of people there are. You are to determine the amount of lamb needed in accordance with what each person will eat. 5 The animals you choose must be year-old males without defect, and you may take them from the sheep or the goats. 6 Take care of them until the fourteenth day of the month, when all the members of the community of Israel must slaughter them at twilight. 7 Then they are to take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the doorframes of the houses where they eat the lambs. 8 That same night they are to eat the meat roasted over the fire, along with bitter herbs, and bread made without yeast. 9 Do not eat the meat raw or boiled in water, but roast it over a fire—with the head, legs and internal organs. 10 Do not leave any of it till morning; if some is left till morning, you must burn it. 11 This is how you are to eat it: with your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand. Eat it in haste; it is the Lord’s Passover.

Passover

The Hebrew People are given a very specific set of instructions. Let me give you the highlights. They are to celebrate this in the first month of their year.

This is usually March to April in our calendar today.

One lamb per household, if a household is too small for a whole lam they will share with their neighbor.

Year old male with no defects

14th day of the month slaughter them at twilight

spread some of the blood on the sides and top of the doorframes where they are to eat the lamb.

Roast the meat over fire as a whole animal

Eat some bitter herbs

bread without yeast

Don’t leave any leftovers (burn whats left)

Eat with your cloak tucked into your belt and sandals on your feet

Eat in haste

The people were to come together as a community in this meal and to share the responsibilities of making it happen. They were to work together and make sure each person had all they need. They were to be ready to Go because God was going to call them out of Egypt. All this was to be done because of this

Exodus 12:12 NIV

12 “On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn of both people and animals, and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the Lord.

Judgement

God is bringing down Judgement on two groups here. When we read this plague we often only focus on the fact that the first born is to be taken. Yes this is a powerful and painful plague that deserves our attention. I thought about this plague for awhile and there are many that would say this is a really severe punishment from God.

Why would God do this?

I want to remind you of this.

Exodus 1:22 NIV

22 Then Pharaoh gave this order to all his people: “Every Hebrew boy that is born you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live.”

While many of these boys made it i can only imagine that many of them were also killed. That this was a heavy toll on the people of Israel. Yet when we are reminded of the pain and hardship and suffering that the pain of the loss of the first born is in many ways a sense of justice.

Judgement

Judgement doesn’t just come though for the Egyptian people it is coming for their gods. We often miss that part of verse 12 and realize that God is not only about to break the spirits of the Egyptians but he is going to embarrass their belief system. Not only is he going to thoroughly show that their gods have no authority over life but the have no power through all the plagues.

God has been showing that their gods are meaningless and that only God has the authority over creation and life this whole time. Their Gods will be destroyed and they will have no power to save them and be shown to be the false idols that they are.

Trusting in False gods

The problem the Egyptians faced is they were trusting in their idols and false gods to save them throughout the plagues. The final night broke them of this. There was no more hope left. They looked to their gods and they had nothing. God had shown his justice and authority.

It is this trust in the idols that had me thinking. How often are looking to our own idols and views of God that are not in line with who he is.

There is an old quote from Elton John that helps us best understand this.

“Jesus was a compassionate super intelligent gay man.”

That was the view of Elton John.

What I find very interesting is right now you might be going through your mind and saying.

How dare he call Jesus Gay!

Yet, that isn’t the most egregious thing he did in that statement. Don’t get me wrong thats a serous thing but the truth is the real problem is that he did something far worse.

He shaped God the way he wanted to see him instead of God showing Him who he is.

We too often shape God how we want him to be. Only accept the parts of faith that we want. Only except the truth of our faith that we want to hear.

In many ways we put our self needs over the things of God.

Today’s Idols

Today’s Idols are more in the self, then on the shelf.

did you hear that. Let me tell you again.

Today’s Idols are more in the self, then on the shelf.

We look to our own pleasure and worship it.

We look to our own wants and worship it.

We look to our own needs and worship it.

We are called to worship the one true God.

To look to his scriptures for who he is. to know what he wants of us. We are called to serve him. We are called to honor him. We are called to a life that is giving and longing for his desires.

At this point God was breaking the idols of the Egyptians showing who he was to his people and setting them on a path of following him.

They had no idea where they were going. The Journey began though.

The Journey led to Jesus. To him dying on the cross. To him giving of himself so that we could be free of our sins.

The Passover feast

The passover feast is a reminder of the cost and the blood that was shed for the people of Israel. The blood painted on the door. The community aspect of the meal. The hope and the justice that comes in the price being paid.

Jesus did that for us. He did that on the cross. He did that so that we could be free. We are reminded of that. That is why we celebrate communion.