Sermon Tone Analysis

Welcome...

Introduce self...

Pray...

Heavenly Father, we worship you this morning for you sovereign power and immeasurable goodness.

We thank you for being with us through all our hurt and brokenness.

Please open our ears and our hearts to your word this morning.

Please give me grace as I deliver the good news of your gospel.

In Jesus’ name, amen.

I’m excited for the book of Exodus:

Key Themes:

Redemption

Worship

Pilgrimage

Covenant

Rest

Recap:

Introduced to Moses:

Moses, when he is an incapable/undeserving baby, is saved out of the Nile to serve God’s purpose (because God is gracious)

Right from the start of this story, we see God’s mighty hand and his providence working

Moses grows up and tries to take matters into his own hands.

Kills Egyptian, but he gets caught and has to flee Egypt

Moses is a shepherd, where he learns to care for sheep, but where God is preparing him for something far more significant (to care for the flock of Israel)

God hears his people, and he cares for them:

He hears you

He remembers his promises to you

He sees you

And he is concerned for you.

[[SLIDE]]

“In Exodus God moves from being perceived as a distant deity to becoming a God who dwells in the midst of His people.”

R.C. Sproul

Burning bush and God’s charge:

Moses was keeping his sheep and he sees a bush that is burning but it’s not consumed.

God speaks to Moses out of the bush:

God reveals himself as the ultimate sovereign power of the universe.

I AM WHO I AM

I exist by my own, I’m perfect, I’m not developing

God Gives Moses Signs:

God gives Moses signs, one of which is to throw his staff on the ground and it becomes a snake.

Moses returns to Egypt

Moses and Aaron gather the elders of Israel and they believed God.

Moses asks Pharaoh to let the people go:

And this kicks off the ultimate battle of Good versus Evil

We have the YHWH going agains the god of this world to establish dominance.

The people are discouraged:

So at this point, the Pharaoh won’t listen to Moses, now the people won’t listen to Moses, all seems lost.

And this is where we pick up the story in chapter 7:

Moses will have authority to speak to Pharaoh, Aaron will communicate that authority.

[[SLIDE]]

“This is a difficult concept to grasp, complicated by the fact that whereas in English the idiom “to be hard-hearted” implies that one lacks compassion, in Hebrew it implies that one is determined or resolved to do something, not necessarily with negative connotations.

At no point does God cause Pharaoh to act contrary to his own desires.

On the contrary, He actually gives Pharaoh the courage to remain stubbornly committed to his initial plan.

Remarkably, God does not use force to manipulate other people to do His will.”

R.C. Sproul

OR - “in order that I might multiply.”

God will accomplish his purposes.

Our God is GREAT!

The main idea of this text is that Yahweh, I AM, the God is Israel is superior and sovereign over Pharaoh and the gods of the Egyptians...

The “magicians” were really the priests of the Egyptian gods.

They were the mediators between their gods and the people...

“The rods represented the authority and power of the gods in the Egyptian culture, so Yahweh accommodates to this custom to demonstrate his superiority in a palpable way to the Egyptians.”

The staff is significant throughout the Exodus story.

Moses’ staff was initially used by God as a sign for Moses, then for Moses to show the people, and now for Moses to show Pharaoh.

God will use this staff for more than one sign:

And look at the significance given to the staff in verse 20:

[[SLIDE]]

Pastor Marc Sims points out:

The staff is then used repeatedly throughout the plagues (7:15, 17, 19-20; 8:5; 8:16-17; 9:23; 10:13; cf.

17:5) and climactically at the parting of the Reed Sea (14:16).

Staff were popular in ancient Egypt, even held by Pharaohs, to denote divine authority and power.

They were also certainly used by the “magicians” of that time period.

I want to read a long quote, again from Pastor Marc Sims:

“The emphasis on Moses’ staff in the Exodus account now becomes clearer—and why it receives a divine appellation, “the staff of God,” (4:20).

It appears that Yahweh is employing dramatic irony in his confrontation with deities of Egypt, represented by Pharaoh and his magicians.

Yahweh takes Egypt’s own symbol of authority, power, and divinity (the staff) and turns it on its head, using it to confront their religious claims of superiority.

Even the transformation of the staff into a snake itself appears to fall in line with this divine mockery.

The Egyptians both loved and feared snakes, and often associated them with the gods.

Pharaoh’s very crown, similarly believed to possess and represent the power of the gods, was a dilated hood (meant to represent a cobra) with twin snakes wrapped around, facing forward.

The serpent goddess, Wadjet, and the vulture-goddess, Nekhbet, manifested their power and sovereignty in the front of the king’s crown where a figure of an enraged cobra sat.

Sometimes, Pharaoh’s staff itself took a serpentine form.

That a Hebrew (the slaves of Egypt) representing a God Pharaoh had never heard of, would present itself in the very form the Egyptians loved and feared so much—only to devour the staffs/serpents of the magicians—would have been a severe blow to Pharaoh’s pride and apparent divine rule.

It was, in sum, a means of divine mockery—taking the gods of Egypt head on and beating them at their own game.

This is why in the confrontation with the magicians in Exodus 7:8-13, rather than saying that Aaron’s snake devoured the magicians’ snakes, the text states that Aaron’s staff devoured the magicians’ staffs (Ex 7:12b).

The author is conveying that the God of Moses and Aaron is superior to the gods of Egypt; Yahweh alone possess ultimate sovereignty.”

All the way from here, the middle of chapter 7 through the middle of chapter 12 is a continuation of this.

God is making a mockery of the Egyptian Gods and beats them down over and over and over.

So, I was thinking “How does this apply to me and my congregation?”

For that I want to zoom out and remember the large theme of redemption the story of Exodus provides.

Exodus is a picture of redemption for us.

Just like Israel was slaves in Egypt, we were slaves to our sin.

Just like Israel found themselves discouraged and hopelessly lost, we too find ourselves discouraged and hopelessly lost.

God has to rescue us from the false gods of the world… They dig their hooks into us...

It made me think of the parable of the sower...

What are the gods of our present age?

“the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches...”

If you want to know the gods of the world, all you have to do is look at social media...

And the magicians are “influencers” selling us gods...