Sermon Tone Analysis

Intro: Reading the Old Testament

We are studying the Old Testament book of Exodus this Autumn as a way to learn more about this God we claim to worship, and to learn more about how to live as the people of God in our current world.

The Exodus is the defining event of God’s people until Jesus’ life, death and resurrection.

Exodus is the most quoted, the most referred to event in the scriptures…

It’s in Exodus that God makes himself known and shows the humans what its like to live as his people on the earth.

These are all things we desperately need to learn and apply to our lives today.

Today we are in chapter 2 – on page ???

When we read this chapter, what kind of literature are we reading?

You intuitively realize that you read all sorts of literature differently, right?

We don’t read—poetry, prose, textbooks, a science or psychology journal, a song lyric, a text from a friend—the same.

I like the way our friends at the Bible Project have talked about what we’re reading as Meditational Literature.

What does that mean?

Here’s a little video that explains it better than I can…https://bibleproject.com/explore/video/bible-jewish-meditation-literature-h2r/

with that in mind, I want to read Exodus 2 and then make some application to our lives today…

Read the passage:

We are part of a much bigger story

The writer of Exodus is leaving all sorts of literary clues to remind us that we are part of a much larger story…

Remember the Exodus simple begins like this, “and these are the names…”

Another thought: we are used to the chapter and verse divisions, we think of the bible as broken up into small bits of information; but the scriptures weren't written in that way.

Those helpful divisions came along much later in the process.

Early writers and readers used other methods to organize their thoughts, and to highlight of differentiate parts of the text.

Throughout this series are are going to draw your attention to repeating themes and patterns to watch for, key thoughts that keep reappearing…and each time they do these repetitive patterns are both reminding you of what came before, and point you to what's coming.

Realizing how God has worked in the past helps us to say "yes" to what God is inviting us into today.

Moses’ birth story is just one example of a common Old Testament theme.

At various crucial junctures the birth of a child is instrumental to God’s plan of delivering his people from a dire situation… this points into the future, to the incarnation, as Mary, the mother of Jesus recognizes, yes, this is exactly how God works in our lives.

recognizing how God has worked in the past helps us to say yes, to actively participate in what God is doing today.

I think studying through this as a community will help to prepare us to say yes to whatever God may lead us into in the coming days…

There is a sovereign designer who can be trusted

I want us to notice a repeating theme in this chapter: A marriage, a son, a cry, and a rescue

In the first third of the chapter, there is a marriage, a son is born, and the cries of a baby are heard by a princess, whose compassion leads to a rescue.

In the closing scene, there is a marriage, a son is born, and the cries of a whole people are heard by God, whose compassion will shortly lead to a rescue.

When you notice a pattern like that, you begin to notice the designer behind the pattern.

And all of these repeating patters highlight for me that there really is a designer behind all of this whom I can trust.

What if your story, your experiences, your very life isn’t only about you?

What if all the tiny bits of your story is more intimately connected to the story of God, the story of the people of God then you might ever have imagined?

What if?

We often experience the events of our world as chaotic and out of control…who can tell when or where the next heartbreaking tragedy is going to take place?

When we say that God is sovereign, we’re saying that he has the ability rule over every single part of creation—all-knowing, all-powerful, and absolutely free—not held back by any limitations.

And God is designing it all,

Because of all of this, he can be trusted

We can be in the world without being of the world

We are being invited into a whole different way of life…

its a way of living that is highlighted in the first couple of chapters in scripture…

Its a way of life we see in Jesus as he announces and demonstrates what he calls the “kingdom of God”

Its a way of life that brings what I’ll call “resurrection newness” from the future, right into the present.

Throughout history, when the people of God have gotten this wrong, we’ve either retreated from culture, or we’ve fought against culture.

What if we used an approach more like Christ, who through the incarnation, enters into our culture and lives differently, to the point of laying down his life for those who would consider him the enemy…what if?

this world as we know it, is not our home.

It does not own us.

We are strangers, or as Peter call us…

1 Peter 2:11–12 “11 Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul.

12 Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.”

…foreigners and exiles, on this earth the way it currently is.

But we look forward to the day, and we are participating in it right now, when the earth will be made new, recreated, a new creation that will be redeemed, renewed, cleansed and healed…that is our true home!

Hebrews 11:10 “10 For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God.”

Moses shows us how to live in this reality – in Egypt by adoption, in Midian by marriage, yet belongs to neither (naming of his son)

Living with “one foot raised”

always ready to respond to emerging opportunities.

The leaders must rid himself of ingrained habits, prejudices, cultural preferences, "always done it this way" attitudes.

God shows his strength by meeting us in the depths of our despair and working those circumstances for ultimate good

Pharaoh tries to abort God’s plan by putting infant boys into the Nile river.

God saves Moses through the Nile river, bringing him to be raised in Pharaohs own household.

EXTRA MATERIAL…

I’m so excited!

We are studying through the Old Testament book of Exodus together.

and there is so much wonderful material, so much we can learn about what it means to be the people of God in our current world, so much about the nature of God, the character of God in these pages… I’m so glad that you’re here with us today.

I quickly highlighted last week how this Old Testament literature is written as meditational literature.

What do I mean by that?

Bible project video…?

For me, the first three chapters of the bible are my absolute favorite part, because in these chapters we see the beginnings of what we will see throughout the entire narrative/story of scripture.

In Genesis 1–3 we see a pattern, a sequence of events that gets repeated again and again:

“God does something good (starting with creation itself);

then human beings turn to something evil and thwart God’s good plans (starting with the story of the fall).

Only the last two chapters of the Bible have no such sequence.

In the end, God wins, evil is defeated, never to return, and the goodness and blessing of the new creation will be eternal and unbroken.

In Exodus 1 we see this sequence in verse 7, with its description of how the people of Israel were fruitful and multiplied and filled the land (a clear echo of the blessing that God intended for his creation and of the promise he made to Abraham)

And then a chilling new reality in verses 8–10: a new king arises who sets out to thwart the work of God by stopping the growth of God’s people.

It’s the same story with Noah, Abraham, Gideon, David, Solomon,

it is typical of the way the Bible shows the constant interplay between God’s plans and actions on the one hand, and human evil, rebellion, and opposition on the other.

That theme is woven through the whole Bible story until the climactic resolution when God caused human evil to be the very means of its own destruction (at the cross) and when God will finally eliminate all evil from his good creation (at Christ’s return).

The Hebrew storyteller often provides hints and resonances of the earlier narratives.

The effect is not only to remind us that we are in the flow of a single and connected large story but also to keep our attention focused on the main character whose story it is—the God who acts in consistent and characteristic ways across many generations.

Saved by water…a picture of death and destruction: the chaos before creation, the waters of the flood, baby boys being tossed into the Nile

Women at wells: Rebekah at a well with the servant looking for a wife for Issac; Jacob and Rachel; Moses sits at a well and 7 women appear.

Jesus at the well in John 4…and an entire Samaritan village comes to believe in Messiah Jesus.

God hears and remembers.

A cry goes up (from cruelty and suffering and oppression), and God comes down: Sodom and Gomorrah, from the blood of Abel

Let’s begin reading the chapter…

the first of three daughters in the first part of teh chapter and one of ten daughters in the entire chapter; and the story of God depends on them all

Mom is apid to nurse her own son by the daughter of the man who ordered him killed

So, in the first third of the chapter, there is a marriage, a son is born, and the cries of a baby are heard by a princess, whose compassion leads to a rescue.

Here, in the closing scene of this chapter, there is a marriage, a son is born, and the cries of a whole people are heard by God, whose compassion will shortly lead to a rescue.

THE DESPAIR AND apparent hopelessness of chapter 1 are “interrupted” by the report that a child is born to a Levite household

He is born, hidden, abandoned, found and adopted

The menace and vile poison of Pharaoh’s attempt at genocide yields to the story of the birth of an innocent child.

What we do have is a presentation of history that is firmly at home in the literary conventions of the ancient world

what about how this story is so similar to other ancient stories?

This in no way diminishes the truth of the Word.

Rather, the eternal Word becomes “incarnate”; it enters into the very lives of God’s people.

Christ himself is the Word of God incarnate (John 1:1–14).