Sermon Tone Analysis

This morning, I want to ask you to access some of your long-term memory.

Ready?

Think of who you are today in your faith journey… Are you the same person today that you were when you first came to Christ?

Now, if you recently came to Christ, that answer might be yes.

But if you came to Christ a pretty significant time ago… hopefully the answer is no… I’m not the same person.

And that’s because, over the course of your life as a Christian, there have been some times where it seems like you entered into the fast lane in your relationship with God.

Many times, the Christian life can just seem kind of… steady.

But then, there are other times that your faith just explodes… and you surge ahead 100% in your faith journey!

So when were those moments in your life… when you just seemed to surge way ahead in your faith journey?

What happened that caused your faith to strengthen?

What caused that surge forward?

What were the circumstances surrounding that surge?

Seriously… I want you to think about it for a moment.

I can’t say this is always, always true… but most of the time, those big surges in our faith are surrounded by big events.

For instance, when I became a father, I surged ahead in my faith.

Becoming a parent teaches you a different kind of love… one where you have someone else that is completely and totally dependent upon you.

I learned a lot about God’s love by becoming a parent.

With that said… most faith surges happen, not just among big events… but most faith surges are surrounded by crisis.

Did you ever notice that?

I’ve told you my dad’s story many times over.

He was a man that tried his hardest to keep his wife and kids from attending church… he didn’t like the idea of God at all… then tragedy struck… and through that tragedy, he became a faithful follower of Jesus Christ.

There was a faith surge surrounded by crisis in his life.

I can tell you this… many of my personal surges in faith have come from having a family member with a disability.

Having a child with type 1 diabetes has taught me a whole other level of dependence upon God.

Faith surges surrounded by crisis.

And I would almost bet, that if you were to take some time and think back over your life… those times when your faith grew exponentially, chances are, there was a crisis surrounding most of them.

The reason is because life stage changes will change your relationship with God.

And thinking back on those moments of crisis that I’ve had in life, I can look back and see God at work… but I couldn’t see it in the moment.

And you can probably do the same.

As we continue our series through the book of Exodus… I want to talk about these crisis moments that we all have.

You might be in the middle of one now… they come as a result of a transfer, a career change, kids growing up and leaving home, retirement, loss of a loved one… there’s a host of things that create these life stage changes.

And in these life stage changes, we often find ourselves having a crisis moment.

So, if you have your Bible, and I hope that you do, turn with me to Exodus chapter 5.

I want to suggest this morning that Exodus 5 and 6 deals with these kinds of crisis moments.

And I think we might find that the Bible really doesn’t say what we expect it to say about these crisis moments.

We’re going to see a crisis moment that Israel had and see how God works in and through that moment.

Actually, I know I had you turn to chapter 5… but let’s back up to chapter 3 very quickly, and remind ourselves of the conversation Moses had with God leading up to chapter 5. Look at chapter 3, verse 13…

So, Moses says… Who are you?

And God says… my name is I Am.

Now, I’m going to give you a small English lesson here that you don’t actually want, but perhaps you’ll be able to recall.

In the English language, we have word tenses… right?

We have past tense, present tense, and future tense.

In this particular mode of Hebrew speaking, past, present, and future tenses don’t actually exist.

So, what God is actually saying in this moment is all 3 tenses simultaneously.

What God is saying is… I was who I was… I am who I am… and I will be who I will be.

But in context, what He’s saying isn’t just about His existence… a better translation would be… I was present with you… I am present with you… and I will be present with you.

It’s about His presence, not just about His existence.

So, we have to get the sense right off the bat… no matter what we go through, as God’s people, we can take comfort in the presence of God… because He is the I AM.

God has been with us… God is with us… And He will always be with us.

The question then becomes… In what way is God with us?

And this is a particularly relevant question this morning.

If you’re in the middle of a crisis moment… or if you’ve ever had one and not quite recovered from it… in what sense is God with you?

Now, we’ll go into our text this morning in chapter 5… and here, things take a bit of an unexpected turn.

If you don’t remember from last week, chapter 4, God has a conversation with Moses… and Moses reluctantly agrees to go to Pharoah.

That’s where we pick up the story.

Chapter 5, verse 1…

This is the central question of the story.

Who is the Lord.

Who is the I AM? Moses asked that question… Now Pharoah asks the question.

Who is this I AM fella?

I don’t know Him! Well… Pharoah is going to learn who He is through the plagues a little later.

But what I want to draw your attention to is this.

IF God is present with Israel… And what God wants is that Israel is released from their slavery… Wouldn’t you think that God would just make that happen?

I mean… what we would think would happen… what we would hope would happen… God speaks… Boom.

Things were bad… God speaks… Boom… things are way more betterish now!

That’s just what we expect.

God is present… God speaks… Boom… Things are going to get better now.

But notice what happens.

Skip ahead to verse 6…

Did you catch the significance of what just happened in the text?

God told Moses… I’m going to get my people out of slavery… you go tell Pharoah to let them go… Moses says… Ok… I guess… Pharoah… the I AM says let my people go… Pharoah says no… and then, Pharoah makes their work as slaves twice as hard!

Not only are they making bricks… but now, the material that they need to make the bricks isn’t going to supplied to them… they have to go get their own supplies… AND… they still have to make the same amount as they were before.

There is no… God is present… God speaks… Boom… everything gets better.

No… it gets decidedly worse.

In fact, if you read the whole chapter… you’d find that things get very bad for Israel.

So… Serious question that we’ve got to wrestle with… In what sense is God present with His people?

Let me ask you… let’s get personal about this… When you go through crisis moments, have you ever felt like Israel here?

You pray to God… hoping that when He speaks, things will get better… only to find… that they get worse?

If we’re honest with ourselves… in those moments, we ask ourselves… where is God in all of this?

What’s He doing?

So here’s how I imagine this happening.

Israel shows up to make bricks in the morning… they look around, and they say… where’s the straw that you want us to make bricks with?

And the Egyptian slave drivers tell them… they aren’t supplying the materials any more… but they still have to make the same amount.

Israel’s foremen say… that’s not possible… so these foremen go make an appeal to Pharoah.

We see that in verses 15 through 18. Let’s pick it up in verse 19…

Moses waits for the meeting between Pharoah and the foremen of Israel… and they come out blaming Moses.

You said you would make things better and things are decidedly worse now!

This is a crisis moment for them!

So, what does Moses do?

He approaches God.

Let’s read that in 22…

Moses indicts the way of the Lord… fairly explicitly.

Let me just say this very quickly.

This is the kind of relationship that I want you to have with God.

No… I don’t mean that I want you to chew God out when He does something that you don’t like… but what I do mean is this… Be honest with God.

So many times we stand on pretense with God.

Look… do we not realize that God knows our hearts?

Do we not realize that God knows what we’re feeling?

If you’re upset… confused… perhaps even if you’re angry… tell God! God wants you to have the kind of relationship with Him that you’ll talk to Him about everything!

The good, the bad, and the ugly!