February 23rd, 2025 - "Obeying God and Not Pharaoh" - Rev. Dr. Michelle Morris

Matt Nelson: Welcome to the sermon podcast from First United Methodist

Church in downtown Bentonville.

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Rev. Dr. Michelle Morris: Welcome to First United Methodist Church!

I'm Pastor Michelle Morris, and it is a joy to be with you today.

We are in our next to last in our stewardship series.

And today we are looking at the challenge of what it means to

serve God versus serving Pharaoh.

So to get us in that frame, we are going to hear this passage

from the book of Exodus.

The king of Egypt spoke to two Hebrew midwives named Shephra and Puah.

When you are helping the Hebrew women give birth and you see the baby

being born, if it's a boy, kill him.

But if it's a girl, you can let her live.

Now the two midwives respected God, so they didn't obey

the Egyptian king's order.

Instead, they let the baby boys live.

So the king of Egypt called the two midwives and said to

them, Why are you doing this?

Why are you letting the baby boys live?

The two midwives said to Pharaoh, Because Hebrew women aren't like Egyptian women.

They're much stronger and give birth before any midwives can get to them.

So God treated the midwives well, and the people kept on

multiplying and became very strong.

This is the word of God for the people of God.

Thanks be to God.

Let us pray.

Lord, open our hearts, our minds, and our eyes, that we might see and know

the word you have for us this day.

In your holy name we pray.

Amen.

So, when I was in 10th grade, I was facing what I considered a really

high stakes flagline tryouts in band.

I was excited about flagline, loved the flagline, and I was helping get

ready for the tryouts, so I had gone in the band room and gone past the band

director's office and into the storage room and gotten the things that we needed.

And as I was turning, coming out of the storage room, I was within

earshot of the band director's office, but he could not see I was there.

And it was at that moment that I heard the band director instruct

the two judges that were there to judge the flagline competition.

Make sure that the fat girl and the black girl don't make the line.

Only he didn't say black.

I froze.

I knew what he had said was wrong.

I knew that those girls deserved as much an opportunity to

be on the flagline as I did.

What he was ordering the judges to do made my blood boil

and I was panicked because that particular year I was up to be captain

of the flagline and I'll just be honest.

In bands and concert season, I played the saxophone.

And I am a terrible saxophone player.

I, you know, one time made it to first chair in my whole

career as a saxophone player.

One time I was first chair and otherwise I was either 6th or 7th out of 7 saxophones.

So I was not the best saxophone player and because of that my grade

was always teetering on trouble.

So I always made up for it by doing things like being on the flag line

and I was set to be the band vice president the next year and I was

just, I was very excited about band, I was just a terrible musician.

But I knew that my band grade could threaten my GPA.

And I knew it was me against three adults.

What should I do?

I've just told you a story of choices.

And I am certain that the story that I shared with you is not that

different than some of the choices that you have faced in your life.

There have been times when you have been faced with a situation in which

you knew something was wrong, but you had limited power to change it.

You knew that if you stood up, there was great risk.

I have a friend who always says in choices between right and wrong,

right is rarely the easy choice.

Shephra and Puah had such a choice, and the pressures on them were immense.

It was Pharaoh who had given them that order to kill the baby boys.

So the choice that is before them is to choose Pharaoh, to choose their

people, they are Egyptians, these are Hebrews, to choose their life and

their livelihood, or to choose what is right, to choose love and life.

It was an ethical decision that was before them.

Ethical decisions are decisions in which we choose between right and wrong.

When we choose between greed and generosity.

When we choose between being selfish or selfless.

Sometimes when we choose between life and death.

They are choices.

Between God and Pharaoh.

And that's often what ethical choices are.

It's a decision.

Are we following God?

Or are we following Pharaoh?

Before we get any deeper into this, let's answer the question,

who is God and who is Pharaoh?

Well, who is God?

God.

God is God.

In our denomination though, we would say specifically that God is love.

That God is life.

When you choose love and you choose life abundant, not just

for yourself, but for all of those around you, you have chosen God.

So who is Pharaoh?

Well, Pharaoh would be any force opposing that love and that life,

opposing the freedom to have that ability to love and to live.

Any power that's trying to usurp God's authority over life and livelihood.

And who wants the best for Pharaoh's self at the expense of everyone else.

Pharaoh shows up in a lot of ways.

Sometimes it's that friend who only takes and takes and puts you

down and makes you feel lesser.

Sometimes it's a job, it's a company that continues to cut a workforce

and still expects that you'll pick up extra work without extra pay.

And it's getting harder and harder and the weight is heavier and heavier.

Sometimes it's political realities that are crushing down upon people.

There's all kinds of ways that Pharaoh shows up.

So that raises the question, what does Pharaoh want, and

what does God want, right?

Well, Pharaoh wants as much as Pharaoh can take.

Whatever that is.

Whoever Pharaoh is.

Pharaoh will take and take and take.

Pharaoh drives from a position of fear and scarcity.

The idea that there is never enough, and so, Pharaoh must

accumulate to protect Pharaoh.

God, on the other hand, wants what you choose to give.

Technically, everything is already God's.

God doesn't have need.

But God invites us.

Invites us into a place of giving.

It is not coercive.

It is not demanding.

And it drives from a perspective of trust and abundance, that there will be

enough, especially if we would all share.

Now, God does have a specific ask in this book, and that is the tithe.

Now, there's a lot of confusion around the tithe, so we're going to take a

little bit of time and learn about it.

And it's, it comes up, um, particularly in the Old Testament when God is saying

bring 10 percent of the yield of your crops and your livestock to the temple.

I don't know exactly how they figured out what that 10 percent is.

It's pretty easy to count animals, but I don't know how you

figured out 10 percent of grain.

But anyway, you bring your 10 percent there and dedicate it to

God, and from that it's dispersed to those who need to be provided for.

Now, for us, that 10 percent is usually understood as Money, 10 percent of what

you earn, but 10 percent figured how?

Some people figure the 10 percent as the gross of what you earn before taxes.

Some people figure the 10 percent as the net of what you earn after you've rendered

unto Caesar what is Caesar's, right?

After taxes, what's left?

You give 10%.

Some people figure the tithe off of after you've paid your taxes and

paid all of your bills, what's left?

You give 10%.

I'm not going to answer the question for you.

It is a journey between you and God and it is even a journey between

you and God as to whether you are at the point where you want to tithe,

where you feel called to tithe.

I'm just telling you how people figure it and where they are.

I can tell you that a few years ago, the Arkansas Conference moved

from apportionments to the tithe.

And I'm gonna explain a little bit of the difference, and I see it

as a move more in line with God and less in line with Pharaoh.

So, now, whenever you give, when the plate comes around and you give, or when

you go online and you give, at the end of every month, whatever has been given to

this church, we take 10 percent of what was given and send it to the conference.

And what that does is it supports the conference ministries, it

supports the work of the bishop's office, and the districts.

It also supports all of the things that the United Methodist Church

does, like the General Board of Higher Education and Ministries,

so the colleges that we support.

It supports the United Methodist Committee on Relief, which is why when you give to

a need that UMCOR has, 100 percent of it goes to fulfilling that need because We

cover the administrative costs of UMCOR.

It helps support our mission and our ministry all around the world.

And it is just a flat 10 percent every month.

We cut it and send it on.

What it used to be was a very complicated formula that figured both a church's

expenses and income based on what had happened two or three years prior.

Well, a lot can happen to a church in two to three years, and especially I've served

churches that are farming communities.

Farming communities could have a really big year and then some really hard years,

but they were having to pay the conference based on those really big years.

It was a little bit more like meeting the demands of Pharaoh

instead of meeting what God asked.

Now what we have learned as a conference as we have gone into this tithe

is that it takes some discipline.

There were cuts that had to be made because the conference has to move

with what happens to the churches.

And we've had, you know, as a denomination, a hard couple of years.

So the conference has had to shrink down and live within those means.

It is a discipline.

But it is also a reorientation.

It is taking that amount.

And knowing it goes to God, beyond us, and it serves God and we're

going to be at peace and trust in the abundance that God has in that.

And we do that as a church, but it is also something that we as

people are called to do as well.

What we do with our money is an ethical choice.

How we choose to spend it and what we choose to spend

it on is an ethical choice.

Every time.

And it's always made within a context.

And that's something else I want to bring up about the tithe.

Because God gives the people the tithe not while they're in Egypt.

God gives the people the tithe when they are free.

When they are no longer enslaved.

The tithe also does not come up in the New Testament at all.

Because the New Testament is entirely written to a people that's under

the thumb of the Roman Empire.

Instead, God calls them to give with a cheerful heart what they can.

It matters as to how much pressure you're under from Pharaoh.

It matters.

Now, my very first year here, some of you were not here at the time

when we did our stewardship campaign.

As part of my discipline, I shared with you all my journey into the tithe.

So I'm going to share that with you now.

Didn't use to tithe, but when I went into seminary, I thought

there's gonna be sermons where I have to talk about the tithe.

Spoiler alert, I'm gonna have to talk about the tithe.

From time to time, there's gonna be those sermons, and if I'm gonna stand

in front of a group of people and tell them that this is a discipline to

invite them into this discipline that God has put before us, I'm gonna do it.

I'm gonna know that I'm tithing before I ask that of my people.

So, started tithing in seminary, and it worked out great until 2008 and

2009, when there was a bit of a change in society, and um, my husband who

was in the tech industry lost his job, and our annual income went from 120,

000 a year to 20, 000 a year, at which point I went to the accountant at the

church that we were at and said, we're gonna have to make an adjustment.

I'm not actually gonna be able to give.

At this time, I need every cent to buy groceries.

And she understood, but I kept her record.

And after we recovered, I went and paid back what we couldn't do at that time.

And, so you can see in my journey that I had to make an adjustment

because of the pressures.

But also now, I've simplified my life quite a bit.

I recognize there are other people around me that are under pressure.

And that calls me, not just to tithe, but To a little bit more so

That first year I stood in front of everybody and filled out the card I'm

not going to bother writing the card.

I'm just going to tell you.

This is my salary as public knowledge.

If anybody wants to know it, we have it in paperwork in the church office.

It's open and available to anyone who wants to see it.

But I will be committing in this next year to 12 percent of my

salary going to this church.

And to the 2nd Street Pantry.

Because the pantry has seen their clientele double in

the last couple of months.

So some of it will go to the second street pantry, but the remainder will come into

the church, which comes to about 21, 000.

Just so you know, full disclosure, because that is the discipline that

God has called me to model for you.

That is what I share with you.

It's not what I expect Ray to do or any of the other staff.

It's not what we expect you to do.

You don't have to stand up and tell me what you're given.

But I feel as though as your leader.

If we're going to talk about this, you ought to see how it's lived out.

Shifra and Pu'ah also had to make a choice.

They had to choose how they were going to give of their gifts of midwifery.

Were they going to choose hate and anger and fear and death?

Or were they going to choose love, trust, joy?

Abundance and life.

They chose God and out of that came so much more abundance.

So I suppose you all are wondering how that band story ended.

I'm not going to tell you.

Instead I'm going to say this.

How would you end the story?

Put yourself in the moment.

What would you do?

It is a choice between God and Pharaoh, and they're not easy choices.

But because we serve a loving God, A God of freedom, an invitation.

The choice is yours.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.

Matt Nelson: Thanks for listening to the Sermon podcast from First United

Methodist Church in downtown Bentonville.

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