Untitled Sermon (26)

This morning we’re going to begin a new series called Hope in the Midst of Cynicism. If you prefer a less nerdy term we could call it Hope in the Midst of Outrage Culture.

This morning we’re going to look at a story in Exodus…but first I want to tell you about a guy named Ken Bone.

12 seconds.

That’s all it took for Ken Bone to become an icon. In the 2016 Presidential debate the mustachioed, red-sweater wielding, Bone stepped to the microphone to ask his question:

“What steps will your energy policy take to meet our energy needs, while at the same time remaining environmentally friendly and minimizing job loss for fossil power plant workers?”

How could such an innocuous question lead him to become an internet meme? It certainly wasn’t the question itself. For one brief moment in time Ken Bone gave us hope for civility. There was something about this “huggable, likable guy in the middle of a really nasty and divisive debate” that united us. Perhaps his red sweater reminded us of Mr. Rogers and we were reminded of a time when the concept of a neighbor was a tighter bond than political affiliation.

But Ken Bone was not Mr. Rogers. It didn’t take long before Ken Bone became the latest canceled “hero”. Seeking to give his new fans a peek into his life, Bone sat for a Reddit Ask Me Anything (AMA). Users quickly linked his StanGibson18 handle to distasteful comments about Trayvon Martin, Jennifer Lawrence, pornography involving pregnant women, and a host of other unappealing remarks. No, Ken Bone was not Mr. Rogers.

It’s not my desire here to comment on the character of Ken Bone. Rather, my point is to highlight our ever-predictable cycle of outrage. A hero emerges and sparks a cheery optimism. When this hero is exposed, we resort to the cold safety of cynicism. George Carlin was certainly correct when he said, “Scratch any cynic and you will find a disappointed idealist.”

We’re going to see something similar in Exodus 6. Let me set the stage for you...

The Israelites had lived many years in bitter slavery. We see in Exodus 1 that they are afflicted with heavy burdens; it says that the Egyptians “ruthlessly made the people of Israel work as slaves and made their lives bitter with hard service”.

Don’t gloss over this. What does it mean to have a “bitter” life? It means that you hate to wake up every morning. There isn’t much hope. There’s no hope of retirement on the horizon. No weekends off. No pay. No life of your own. And so, life becomes bitter. The sunrise doesn’t bring you joy—it ticks you off. Your sense of humor, if you even have one at this point becomes dark and sarcastic. Your heart becomes cold and calloused. And every day it only deepens. They are in despair-- enslaved with no hope of this just being a rainy day. This is life.

That would be hard enough, but the Egyptians have also enacted a policy which would ensure the death of your male children. If there was any hope to be had—any sunshine on the horizon—it might have been having a son. Some hope could be had that perhaps a young man in your lineage could someday taste freedom. Perhaps you can have some sort of “life” through him and his children. Perhaps. Not anymore.

When you read in the Bible that God heard their cries, be sure to picture anguished laying on the floor soaked in tears type of crying. And it was against such a backdrop that God sent Moses. In the midst of all of this darkness God sent a deliverer. And he came with an eye-opening and far-reaching promise. Listen to these life-giving words: Exodus 6:1-8

Exodus 6:1–8 ESV

But the Lord said to Moses, “Now you shall see what I will do to Pharaoh; for with a strong hand he will send them out, and with a strong hand he will drive them out of his land.” God spoke to Moses and said to him, “I am the Lord. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty, but by my name the Lord I did not make myself known to them. I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, the land in which they lived as sojourners. Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the people of Israel whom the Egyptians hold as slaves, and I have remembered my covenant. Say therefore to the people of Israel, ‘I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from slavery to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment. I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God, and you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. I will give it to you for a possession. I am the Lord.’ ”

Now what are you expecting here…what will their response be?

Exodus 6:9 ESV

Moses spoke thus to the people of Israel, but they did not listen to Moses, because of their broken spirit and harsh slavery.

Where did that come from? Why respond that way? That’s what we’ll look at this morning...

PRAY

Sermon Introduction:

Exodus 6 wasn’t the first time they had heard of these magnificent promises of deliverance. They’d already heard them in Exodus 4 and they were accompanied by signs of God’s power through his chosen deliverer—Moses (and Aaron). So what happened between the vibrant worship of Exodus 4:31 and the gloomy despair of Exodus 6:9?

When Moses went to Pharaoh, they didn’t get the speedy redemption they were anticipating. Instead their labor and pain doubled. That word of redemption led to them “stinking in the sight of Pharaoh and his servants”. Believing in a brighter future only made their troubles deepen. Moses speaks for the people when he says, “For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has done evil to this people, and you have not delivered your people at all.”

Do you see the pattern? Moses told them of God’s rescue. They filled in the blanks and developed a narrative of what that redemption would look like. They trusted in the story they had developed from the promise. And when that story didn’t come true, their view of reality became cynical. “We believed you. Things are worse. Things are always going to be worse.” As the story continues, we don’t see a people who are growing in hope but rather a people who are deepening in despair.

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Let me show you this visually.

CROUCH SLIDE

In his book Strong and Weak, Andy Crouch introduces this picture.

Crouch believes that when wrestling with the paradoxes of life, and the faith, we must stop thinking in a linear fashion. If we think of authority OR vulnerability we will be stuck between a false choice. The goal, for Crouch, is to be in quadrant IV where both authority and vulnerability intersect. This means the worst place to be is in quadrant III. Crouch sums up his quadrant this way:

We tend to think that our lives have to lived along the line of false choice, the IV-II line. But actually the deepest question of our lives is how to move further and further away from quadrant III and more and more fully into quadrant I. The III-I axis is the one that matters the most—the one that leads from a life that is not worth living to the life that really is life. (Crouch, 18)