Dethroning the gods | Journey Up the Mountain [2 of 9] | Nathan Lawson

Jesus for a while. We hope this helps you take your next step.

It was my junior year of high school when we decided, despite an incredible

lack of experience, to go on a backpacking trip with myself and two classmates.

And we had no idea what we were doing, but we were quite certain that we were strong enough.

And plus, what strategy do you need when you hike? I told my parents,

put one foot in front of the other, repeat until you meet your destination.

Like, what other strategy is there.

And when we packed for it, we had some people looking at what we were going

to take and saying, I don't know, man, that looks like pretty heavy.

And we're like, well, I guess it would be too heavy for you.

So we were, we were ready to take off on this. Now we didn't have an REI close

or, you know, it couldn't order from Amazon.

So, I mean, I had Denty more beef

stew in there, you know, I had all the things that I like to snack on.

And so the weight of this backpack was beyond heavy, but I was convinced that

I really desperately needed everything in it.

Have you had one of those people that were just convinced that,

you know, you have all the essentials you're going to need while backpacking,

you're not going to be lacking in anything, but at some point as we were, oh, I got hooked up.

At some point, as we're taking off, and you start to go uphill day after day,

and it's just cutting into your shoulders, you realize there are things that

you can't take with you if you want to go on a long journey.

There are things that maybe at one season it could have worked under the right

context, but now it is doing nothing but holding you back.

And we're going to talk today about how easily that can happen.

How a good thing, ambition, or trying to achieve academically,

or wanting to start a family, these can be good things.

But when we try to put more and more weight on them, eventually they can become

the very thing keeping us from journeying toward God that we're going to talk about in this series.

Many years ago, when I was first doing a series through Exodus,

I was talking to one of my children who does watch YouTube.

And so we will not mention their name to protect the not so innocent.

And they were old enough at this point to have stolen and not on accident.

This isn't the, oh, I forgot to tell mom about it.

This was the kind of thing where you hid it under the bed and they were so embarrassed

and we had to pray through it.

And they talked about how they had covered it up for a while.

And we were going through that list of 10 commandments, how God expects us not

to lie and God doesn't want us to steal or to want things that we haven't earned.

And we were going through that.

And then they looked with that sense of confidence that said,

look, I may not have kept every commandment, but there's one commandment I certainly have kept.

And that is I have never bowed down to an idol.

Not one time in my entire life. I've got that one. Check.

And as the family's theologian slash preacher, I just couldn't help but smile

internally because of all the things to say, that is the commandment that they

had probably broken the most frequently, myself included.

In fact, if we're going to take a step back and realize that idols aren't just

those embarrassing things that people used to do when they were superstitious.

There are places in the Bible that would probably make the same kind of jokes you would about an idol.

Isaiah 44 is going to say So let me get this straight You cut down a tree And

half of it cooks your lunch And the other half's a god How do you know which half has the magic?

I'm just kind of curious And which half is the steak cooking half?

Jeremiah will make a joke that said So this god is so powerful But yet you have

to carry him from location to location Like he doesn't have any legs And you

have to kind of tell you what he's saying Because no one can understand that

he can't speak either So you have to be his mouth Doesn't sound very powerful

That's less powerful than a toddler Right?

And as you go through it, you start to say, yeah, that is true.

That system of religion in the ancient world doesn't happen today.

But it is true that many of the things in our society that are good things can

become a replacement for God.

As Martin Luther will say that, in fact, it's impossible to break any command

until we break that one first.

Because why would you tell a lie if it wasn't to protect an image of yourself

that you're now convinced it needs to be in society for you to have worth and significance.

Like why would you lie to get ahead at work if it wasn't to achieve some level

of wealth and status and ambition that you've convinced yourself this is what

a safe life looks like. I just have to sacrifice for it.

You see, there's a way in which ambition is a good thing and work is a good thing,

but there are people who have worked so hard and so long because they got convinced

that this was the only way to make sure my life would be safe and have significance,

to prove that I'm worthy of respect.

And the problem with putting that kind of weight on something is you're trying

to ask a job to do what a job cannot do.

Even a thing like a family where C.S. Lewis will draw this out,

that the love of a mother to a child, how could that ever be wrong?

And the answer is, get between any mama bear and her cub, and you'll see that

it isn't always magnanimous.

That some parents so desperate for their children to be successful.

The father who wants his kid to succeed in sports, they don't just want them to succeed.

They need them to succeed because it validates that my parenting is really good after all.

It tells world what kind of person I am. And suddenly you want a child to kind

of give your life purpose and significance that you were struggling with before.

And no child can bear the weight. You see, a good thing can suddenly become a lot like an idol.

So that's the text we're going to be looking at today. It's going to be Exodus

Exodus 5:5

chapter 5, verses 5 through, really through all the way through 12.

So it's a lot of chapters, more than we can deal with on a Sunday morning.

But if you get the opportunity, I would recommend when you're listening to larger

sections of the Old Testament, there's a lot of value in something like the

New Living Translation or the Message,

because it's going to help some of those idioms that maybe are a little bit

tough to get, because it's an ancient Near Eastern Hebrew book.

And it's really most important that you follow kind of the story of Scripture

before you get into all the details.

Or to quote one writer, you don't want to kind of miss the forest because you're

so zoomed in on the trees. You want to see, what about this story?

Did God say for all time, I want this story told about what slavery looks like

and then that path toward freedom?

So we're going to open up today in Exodus chapter 5, and we're going to look

Exodus 5 · chapter mention

at verse 1. This is right after the chapter where Moses has been commissioned.

We talked last week about how Moses was recruited by God, but not as a young,

zealous, young, up-and-coming, educated person, but after he was very old and kind of settled in life.

He was married. He had a wife named Zipporah and a child named Gershom.

But we talked about how that child's name, Gershom, which means a wandering

foreigner or stranger, And now that was always a sign for Moses saying,

yeah, yeah, I know, I've lived 40 years in Midian, but this is not where I belong.

I belong back with the people that are underneath the yoke of Egypt.

And he still feels this burden there, enough to call his own child.

Don't get settled in this location.

So if you missed that last week, or if you're doing the study along with us,

you can, this is an easy way to, if you're not a reader and you've been having

this study book and it's difficult to get through,

each week we're going to release the reflections for that week so that you can

listen to it wherever you happen to be this summer on vacation,

if that's your preferred way of kind of thinking through this story.

Because what we want to do is equip you to be people who can read and understand

what God wanted to communicate about this story.

Here's what it says in Exodus chapter 5, verse 1.

Exodus 5:1

Afterwards, Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said, this is what the Lord, the God of Israel says.

And I want everyone to read this next part using your best Charlton Heston impersonation

here. So let's give it a good swing. And what does he say?

Let my people go. I mean, we know this.

This is like part of our cultural imagination, like let my people go.

Except for that's not all of what it says.

Let my people go so that, there's a last half here.

It's interesting that we are in a culture that celebrates freedom, and rightly so.

The history of this nation is one where suddenly when the church was not tried

to tie together with political systems, but was free to operate,

I think, more the way that God designed it,

that that's how communities that are thriving were creative and have flourished for hundreds of years.

But at the same time, it would be easy to say we celebrate freedom because freedom

is good and not freedom is not good.

And yet Exodus is going to be a little more specific to say,

yeah, but the only way to maintain freedom is going to be to draw close to God.

That's the only way that freedom is going to continue to exist.

Not just that slavery is bad, although God's going to say repeatedly that the

yoke of what the Egyptians do is terrible.

But this the way we're going to have it is let my people go so that they may

hold a festival to me in the wilderness It's a book about worship.

When Moses was commissioned, he hides his face from God.

But by the time we get to the end of the series, he's going to go up the mountain

to commune with God and say, show me your glory.

And this was to be a sign. You're to lead the people back to the very place

where Moses started in an act of worship.

That this is what God's going to communicate to the world, what freedom looks like.

It is to come close to the source of life itself.

Well, he gives this pitch to Pharaoh, followed up. Pharaoh now follows up with a question.

Who is the Lord that I should obey him and let Israel go? I don't know this God.

Hey, hey, magicians, you got any record of a Yahweh on your books?

We got a lot of them. I maybe forgot that one in school.

We got one for the Nile. We got some for storms. We got some for this,

that, and the other thing, but we got one for luck. But I don't remember that one.

Nope. So whatever regional God you're talking about, he doesn't have jurisdiction here.

I do not know, and so I will not let Israel go.

Everything about this story that follows in Exodus 5 to 12 is answering that

question that Pharaoh just said. Who is the Lord?

In fact, every plague is a series of three plagues that we'll talk about in

a second is going to open with the statement that he is going to say,

so that they'll know this is the Lord. As if Pharaoh said, so who is the Lord?

And God is saying, I'm glad you asked. Allow me to demonstrate.

Everything that's going to happen is really not just to show Pharaoh that he's

wrong for what he's doing, but also to communicate to future generations of

God's people that these are areas where God has dominion and sovereignty.

This is revealing about God's own power.

So we're going to look at these. These plagues are campaigns.

They're in a cycle of three, and all of them are going to kind of accumulate

and teach different aspects. some are tied to an Egyptian god, some aren't.

They're just part of the way of life in Egypt, but they are in sets of three.

And it is good, I think, to kind of notice that this sometimes is how the Old

Testament teaches something, is they'll.

Verb clues inside of it so that it's easier to remember sets of three.

Now, why is three so much easier to remember?

Maybe God baked into us since the beginning of time that sermons should be three

points because they're more memorable and they're better sermons when they are.

I can't say for sure this is a five-point sermon, so take that as you will.

But the cycles of three, they're going to have some markers in the text so that

we notice that they're three.

The first is the first one in every cycle of three will say, in the morning.

In the morning, he goes down to Pharaoh and this is what's gonna happen.

You're gonna go tell him to tell this to Pharaoh.

Let my people go. This thing's gonna happen so that you'll know.

I am the Lord. The second one in each cycle is going to have a directional question,

a location question for Pharaoh.

Go to Pharaoh, go into Pharaoh, go down to Pharaoh. It's gonna specifically

have Moses tracking Pharaoh down somewhere.

And the third one in each cycle will have no warning at all.

Like there's no warning. It's just like that last plague didn't work.

We're not even going back to Pharaoh. We're just launching the follow-up plan.

And so each time you're going to have this progression in the morning,

this message, track Pharaoh down and tell him this.

And if he doesn't listen, then we're upping the ante without warning and qualification.

So three times you have this turning up of the intensity about what God is communicating.

Three sets of three. And then that last plague, the death of a firstborn.

So these three are going to target specific areas of life.

Here he has this encounter where they're in there and talking,

and Moses and Aaron are talking, and he uses the same thing that happened when

Moses was in the mountain by himself.

His staff changes into a snake.

But then it says the magicians, their staff also changes into a snake.

And the text is going to say that Aaron's staff, or Aaron's snake,

because it was Aaron that threw down in this scene, swallows up the other snakes.

What we're going to see here is no matter what Egyptians claim to power is,

that it is going to be swallowed up by that which is more real and more authoritative.

Well, when that miracle doesn't work.

What it's going to say next is I'm going to change the Nile into blood.

You see, the Nile is the source of life for Egyptians.

Like it was really their secret sauce to why they had power over most of the other nations.

In order for Egypt to experience a drought, it can't just be one region that doesn't get rain.

It would have to be over a thousand miles of area that also doesn't get rain.

It happens a few times in history, but not many.

And so every other nation could be struggling with this drought and the other

thing, and Egypt is doing just fine. Thank you very much.

They didn't have to worry about it because every year, about this time of year,

June to October, the Nile floods.

Because it doesn't just bring water, it brings all this nutrients from the mountains

and fish and crocodiles and who knows what else in there, and it puts stuff into the field.

So it floods and saturates the fields with things that will bring life and make

it able to continue to be harvested in the same field year after year.

Then after around November, it's going to start to recede and they'll start

planting and there'll be a harvest time that will go February until again,

the floods will go until that following June.

This is a yearly cycle and they look at the Nile and they are grateful for it.

But what can happen is the very thing that was meant to be a gift,

that was meant to display God's goodness in creation, instead becomes the very

thing keeping us from God.

That instead of worshiping the one who made the Nile, they begin to worship

the Nile itself, that the Nile is what gives us life and the Nile is what protects

us and the Nile is what keeps us safe and puts fear in the heart of our enemies.

It's a little bit like if a woman were given an engagement ring and what it's

meant to do is point the woman back to the guy that she's gonna see it and remember

that I am my beloved's and he is mine, that she is loved and cared for.

But just imagine that a woman is given a very, very nice ring.

I mean, it is huge and it is gorgeous and she likes the ring a lot.

Walking into a room and just careful, no matter how you're putting your hand,

to just display it in oh so careful of a manner to make sure that people see

just how expensive and how nice this ring is.

Letting everyone know, you know, not everyone has this kind of status.

This helps me to get seen in restaurants to let people know the kind of person

that they're dealing with here.

Now, imagine that continues for such a time that eventually someone asks, that's a nice ring.

So obviously you said, yes, when's the date? And just looking confused, you said, what?

You know, didn't that an engagement ring? And she said, oh, yeah,

yeah, that guy, that guy.

Yeah, no, we're kind of seeing as it goes. I don't know yet.

And it would seem off to us.

Like, that's not the way it's supposed to be. You're supposed to be head over

heels in love for this guy. The ring is just a sign that points to something else.

And the Nile is going to be part of God's gracious representation of himself,

of his blessing in nature.

But for a lot of people, it becomes the thing that is a distraction.

That we look at the blessing, the gift, whether it is wealth or our own talents.

And instead of looking up and saying, man, I can't believe that God saw me so

blessed to let me work in a place like this.

And he made me intelligent so I can use my gifts to make a difference in the

world. and your creator delights when you get to use your gifts to make a difference.

But along the way, we can start to look at that gifting and say,

I'm not going to say it out loud, but I do work harder than most people.

I mean, I get more, but I deserve more because think about the kind of person

you're dealing with here.

I'm smarter than the average person, harder working than the average person.

In fact, I don't hang out with just anybody because they would want to take some of what I have.

I need to separate myself away from them. So the very gift that is meant to

be a blessing to your community and draw you closer to others becomes the very

thing keeping you away from others, because I know what those kind of people are like.

The Nile was the source of life for Egypt, and in just a moment,

it's changed into blood, which represents death itself.

There is no life and no provision, and everything in Egypt is in chaos oh so

briefly, and suddenly Pharaoh's in a panic.

Send that guy back, the old guy, the old guy and his brother.

Bring him back in here. Bring him back in here. Bring him back in here.

You got to change it back.

You got to do whatever you're supposed to do to put it back the way it was,

and I'll give you what you want.

And it changes, and then Pharaoh's like, well, well, was it that bad?

I mean, really? Like if you can change it in a heartbeat, I mean,

how dangerous was it, right?

You see, what happens is even though the alarm bells are going off,

that God is in control, there's a way of explaining it to yourself that suddenly

says, I'm not saying I'm not going to repent ever, just right now.

I mean, can you imagine the cost of that? Can you imagine the embarrassment of that?

In fact, I'm basically in control the whole time. I don't have to have this. It's just enjoyable.

And Pharaoh changes his mind again and again. So we've got the Nile into blood,

frogs and gnats in the first cycle.

Now, frogs are a symbol for a goddess in Egypt, the goddess Heket, H-E-K-E-T.

And she is the goddess of fertility because I know when you look at a pregnant

woman, you obviously think of, no, that's not right. Don't say that.

But it's frogs. And the reason for that, again, goes back to the Nile.

If you are in a season where it's been desolate, it's kind of been drying up

a little bit, and then suddenly there's lots of rain. And so there's lots of

water coming down the Nile.

And what's the first sound you're going to hear when it's flooding?

And now there's lots of life coming back in the Nile. You're going to hear frogs, right?

Frogs became associated in Egypt with the sign that blessings coming, that life is coming.

And so it does become actually the goddess of childbearing.

The very thing that Pharaoh's actually worried about, that God's provision by

helping the Israelites to be fruitful and have many, many children that live

to adulthood becomes the thing that is keeping Pharaoh away from God.

And so in order to show this, that he has power even over fertility and families,

God himself sends frogs and there are frogs everywhere.

There's a wonderful scene in the text where Moses, where the magicians are there

and they look at Pharaoh and they say, we can make frogs too.

And they do something and more frogs come out and they say, see,

we made more frogs. And you can just imagine Pharaoh going, that's not really

the trick I was looking for.

I was sort of hoping for a vanishing act. We don't need more frogs.

Bring Moses back in here.

And Moses makes the frogs go away.

And the last one in this first cycle is gnats.

That no-see-ums are the fastest way to make a place of Virginia miserable more than anything else.

You can put up a curtain for the sun. You can add a fan for the heat.

You can do a lot of things for a lot of things.

You can do a lot to avoid getting eaten by a shark, but a no-see-um,

when the breeze isn't blowing, will find your vacation.

And it doesn't matter if you are in a million-dollar home or if you are in a

Motel 6. If you are outside with no-see-ums, it is not fun.

These first set remind us that it is God who has power over pleasure and life itself.

For the blessings that God gives, God is over it.

And God wants us to take joy in his creation. God expects us to.

He looked at the garden that he created for Adam and Eve and said it was good.

And he gave them every fruit-bearing plant and said, enjoy it and cultivate it and use your diet.

And instead of drawing us closer to people, it's drawing us farther away.

And we could find ourselves in a situation where what was meant to be a blessing

like the Nile becomes the very thing that keeps us from hearing God's voice

and forgetting who he is.

Well, the next three are dealing with, the first one is flies and then it's

gonna be livestock and boils.

And all three of these plagues are dealing with economic factors in Egypt.

Flies would be around anytime something is rotting or kind of going off.

When you have meat or fish hanging in a market, flies are what would make it inedible.

And so you have that going on, and cattle are what get all the work done.

Long before trucks were measured in horsepower, ancient people thought in terms of cattle power.

It pulled everything, every grain of wheat that is ground.

It's a cattle pulling the wheel that crushes and makes flour.

It is cattle that haul water to the locations.

I mean, cattle are doing all of the work, and if they are getting sick,

the economic engine of Egypt comes to a halt.

And there's a lot of conditions you can work through where the workers could

continue to show up, but boils is not one of them.

So not only does it take livestock out of the economic equation,

but God, and remember this last plague is without any warning whatsoever.

There is no follow-up with Pharaoh.

He just tells Moses, send on the boils. And now the workers are being kept out of the workplace.

You thought COVID was bad. Think about everyone covered in boils,

how those Zoom calls would go.

I don't think I would do a video call if there's boils as a plague going around.

And yet each of these areas are meant to attack wealth creation,

the ability of Egypt to make money and to prosper.

And now God is going to be shown to have power over the market,

over the way that we provide for our families.

And it is at God's own pleasure and power that it takes place.

And the plagues say each time, and so you will know that I am the Lord.

It is a sad thing when ambition, which is a gift from God, The drive that you

have to do great things is a reflection of God's image in you,

that God wants you to use your gifts,

but we can use them as a way to instead miss out on what it means to be a person,

what God put us here to do.

The statistics are disappointingly high for the amount of men who the day that

they retire starts a clock over their head that is far too short until they

leave this world because they couldn't imagine a world where I'm not paid and

clocked in and clocked out.

That's how I know that I'm worthy of respect. And they're sitting at home saying,

who am I now without this?

That was my everything.

And they fall into bitterness, anger and isolation and wealth, which was a gift.

Your ability to have it was what God gave you instead becomes the very thing

that robbed your life of what it was meant to have.

Well, the last set of three that we're going to see here are,

you're going to see hail mixed with fire coming down and destroying any of the

crops that are in the field.

And those that are not destroyed are taken out by the locusts.

And time and again, Moses is coming back in to confront Pharaoh.

Something interesting happens in this text, which is worth noticing.

That you remember when Moses was commissioned by God, you're going to go and talk to Pharaoh.

And Moses' excuse was, I don't talk well. And you remember what God said?

You can use your brother, Aaron?

Well, that's what happened. In the first three cycle, Aaron does all the talking.

Aaron goes in and, you know, he does, puts his little smooth whatever on.

I guess he speaks better and he tells him how it is. And Pharaoh responds with no.

And the middle set of three, it's not clear who's talking.

It just says, and God said this and God said this. But in the last set of three,

something different happens because Moses does all the talking in the last three.

I want you to notice that this book isn't just about God rescuing the Israelites.

God wants you to notice the change that's happening in Moses' own life as an

invitation for your life.

That Moses was asked by God to go talk to Pharaoh, and he said,

I can't, I can't, I can't.

But by the time you get to the last set of three plagues, I don't know if it

was the frogs or the boils, but somewhere in there, Moses starts to feel a little

more confident and say, maybe I could tell Pharaoh how it is.

That doesn't look so bad. I think I could. And he goes in and does the very

thing that God asked him to do in the first place But of course,

you know pharaoh says I can't understand you because you don't speak well and

this is confusing That's not what happens.

He does the exact same job He does fine, but he imagined in his head that it

would have been terrible Isn't it and yet god when he asked moses in the first

place go I want you to serve in this capacity Well, who'd have thought god was correct?

It would have been fine if moses had just gone in the first place But god and

his mercy allows moses to grow in his confidence to do the very thing that God

wanted him to do in the first place.

He finds himself able to speak in a courtroom of Pharaoh that I think when you

go back to chapter four, he could never have imagined happening.

Moses is changing. As Moses is learning to trust God in the midst of all of

it, he finds his own voice and his own calling.

Well, these last three things that happen are each targeting aspects of creation

itself, and particularly the last one, darkness.

If any of these plagues were targeting a god in Egypt, that last one is almost

certainly, because it's the last of these cycles of three, and perhaps the highest

assault on the power systems of Egypt.

Because this last one is the God Ra in Egypt is the God over the sun,

right? He's the God who's putting all the day and makes plants grow and makes

everything at peace and the one who gives us power and order.

In fact, Pharaoh claimed that he was the son of Ra.

He was the one keeping order where order is not possible. He is a divine representative

on this world. And I speak for Ra.

And while he's saying those kinds of statements, God flicks the light out and

said, we'll see about that.

The one thing that Pharaoh at least has a claim to is, I have control over the

sun. And if you haven't noticed, the sun is out a fair amount of the time in Egypt.

But even that, Pharaoh has no control over it.

And he has to live in darkness until he calls back Moses, so that you'll know that I am the Lord.

God uses his name throughout this text.

It says the Lord, and if you notice in your Bibles, it's got the capital L,

the all capital L-O-R-D, and that isn't a typographical error.

You see, the word Lord in English just means master, ruler.

We translate it in the Old Testament, melech, which is just any type of king,

leader, mayor, chief, all the same word, guy in charge.

And that's what the word Lord means. It means person in charge.

It's not a religious term. It's just a person who is running things.

But when it's in all capital letters, it isn't just the word for ruler.

Instead, it is God's personal name. The one that he used back in Exodus chapter

Exodus 3 · chapter mention

3, when Moses says, Who am I to say sent me?

And he says, Tell them I am sent you.

It's four letters in Hebrew.

It's Yod-Heh-Vav-Heh. We're pronounced Yahweh.

You see, God is giving a personal name to clarify from all the other claims of authority.

This is going to be his, what we might call his covenant name,

that there are gods out there who say this, but Yahweh, this person who revealed

himself to Abraham and is telling the story of creation, this is his ongoing

relationship with his people.

The name is, literally says, existing to exist.

Some translations will put, I am that I am.

That's not a bad translation, a little bit like Popeye, but it's not a bad translation.

It means that I exist, but a better translation, if we weren't concerned for

space, is I am being that causes other things to being.

That's kind of what it's saying. I am so that all else is.

Or said in another way, everything that exists, I am the existence that makes that existence happen.

Anything that's an is. I am the is that makes all the ises exist that have ever been.

I am. I am being itself. And this is how God chose to reveal himself.

I am the essence of all that exists.

Everything that you're doing is an extension of the fact that I have made it

and called it into being.

It is a claim that goes far beyond the gods of Egypt.

But it is easy for us as Christians sometimes to retreat back into a definition

of God that's a bit small.

That sometimes you'll see Christians,

well-meaning, who want to defend the existence of the God of the Bible.

And they'll try to do it by anything we can't explain.

Well, that must have been the God force. You know, the God thing in the world

must have done that thing, wherever there's a gap.

And so back when people didn't understand the weather, well, that's God.

God does the weather. We don't know how it works. It's just really difficult.

But as we figured out more about the weather, we're like, well, that can't be God then.

I mean, that's not God with the weather. This is God is over at something else,

sickness for a long time.

Well, God is over sickness, but then we understood about germs and cancer.

And now that we understand more things, well, God isn't operating in those.

And some people will still want to find in creation some gap that can't be explained

and say, that's the God force.

That's that part of the universe that points to God. That is never how God reveals himself.

God is all of it. when we understand the weather, all of it that exists,

including the weather that we understand, we understand it because God allowed us to understand it.

And it exists because God has allowed it to exist.

That it doesn't say the heavens declare your glory, just the parts that don't

work very well, and they need a magic hand to hold them up.

No, the heavens as they exist now declare the glory of God.

That everything that is, whether it is the smallest part of DNA that we look

with an absolute awe and wonder at the cell's ability to repair and replicate itself.

All of it is a reflection of the fact that God's claim is over everything that

has been and that will be.

That God is not just existing in those places we don't understand, but in all the ones we do.

In fact, in your own, in your very life, this is what God wanted Pharaoh to realize.

The things you thought you had figured out, the sun, the river,

this, that, and the other thing, I'm just telling you, I'm over all of it.

All of those things, whether you figured it out or you haven't figured it out,

I am revealed in all of it.

But Pharaoh says no. And over and over again, opportunity after opportunity, Pharaoh says no.

And so we get to what is a hard text.

I don't want to shy over this. It's easy, I think, even at this point in the

message, to talk about how God offers a forgiveness in a way that will echo

the story of the Passover. But if you didn't grow up in church,

this is a harder text than it sounds.

Because nowhere in the Old Testament does God say it's okay to harm a child.

In fact, God's story with Abraham and Isaac and his ongoing commandments make

it very clear that God does not want a child harmed in the name of religion.

He says it repeatedly. He's going to judge.

One of the whole nations of Israel will fall because God sees a king called

Manasseh, this is many, many years later, who allows child sacrifice.

And a prophet is sent that said, because of what Manasseh did to children,

that's not acceptable. I am taking down this throne. It's gone.

It's over. That's how big of a deal this is, repeated throughout the Bible.

And yet, in this story, God's gonna allow a hand of judgment to fall on children?

I mean, it's not children saying no to God, it's Pharaoh.

What do you do when you read a hard text? I can tell you, if you wanna read

the Old Testament well, you're gonna have to learn how do you wrestle with some of those tough places.

You're not gonna be served well by just skipping over anything that seemed a

little bit confusing. You are going to be blessed and benefit when you find

a way to say, but how has the church read this historically?

How does this point to Jesus?

What does this teach us about what God wanted to know about sin and humanity?

I can promise that there are so many college students who were surprised by

things in their own Bible that a well-meaning church never pointed out.

And they got to college and they were shocked. And it almost felt like the church's

refusal to bring it up is because the church was embarrassed.

You are not the first generation to realize that hurting kids is not good.

That has been the whole time. Every church father wrestles with this part of the Bible.

Every person who's been following Jesus for 2,000 years has brought this up saying, how can this be?

I don't have all the answers, but let me give you a couple. It's in the back

of the program, the study we're going through, how to read hard text.

So if you don't remember all of this, you can walk back and pray through this later.

But one is to remember that what God is doing is he's challenging what Pharaoh

has said at the start of this story.

I am the source of morality. I determine what's right and what's wrong.

And Pharaoh says, you want to know if it's right to kill Hebrews?

It's right if I say it's right, because I'm the representative of God on this planet.

And so if I write the laws, I'm telling you to obey the law is what I declare

it to be because I write the laws.

So if I said it's good to kill them, he is legal in his own society.

What he is doing is perfectly legal.

It's in the legal code. And so he's

saying it can't be immoral because I'm following the laws, which I write.

And God doesn't feel the same way about it.

He's challenging Pharaoh to say, there is a law above the law that you have

that you will be held accountable for no matter what you say and no matter what systems you have built.

God is going to intercede repeatedly on the side of the oppressed.

But even more than that, Pharaoh ordered all the Hebrew males to be killed that were going to be born.

And what's going to happen is that he said, well, that's only going to apply

to the Hebrews, but God is going to allow Pharaoh's own command to sentence

children to death, to fall back on his own household.

The command that Pharaoh sent out, God is going to say, we're going to allow

it to go, but it won't stop at the boundaries you said it will.

We're going to have it apply to every single person.

So part of what makes this story so painful is the fact that Pharaoh had started

saying, I'm gonna kill them because they are other.

And God is going to say, the very thing that you did will now fall back on your own house.

And you will realize that what you have done is absolutely atrocious in the

eyes of God. he will point out the utter depravity and self-destruction of sin.

But we also learn in a story like this, that it is the reason that if there's

anything about the Old Testament, that God wanted us to see the horror of sin

and human rebellion and the death that follows from it, that the final word is the person of Jesus.

That when we look at the New Testament, he's going to clarify that that was

never an ongoing moral edict.

In fact, what happens in that story breaks God's heart.

But it's also true that if God shows up and judges, He is not going to show partiality.

That God doesn't come down and say, I'm gonna judge them because they are the bad guys.

Instead, God's gonna say, if I bring judgment, it will be for every household that has sin in it.

And it doesn't matter if the Hebrew people pray the right kind of prayers or

their theology is a little better.

If God is being fair, then every household will feel the weight of his presence and his judgment.

The mercy in this story is that if God brings justice, which of us could stand under it?

The mercy of this story is the fact that God allows some to still survive despite

our own rebellion and distance from God.

The fact is that the Israelites are not more deserving.

The reason that they're going to be spared is because God said,

I'm going to allow in your household a substitute, take a lamb,

a perfect lamb, and you are to kill that lamb and put the blood on the doorpost

as a sign that you are part of my people.

And that one day God is gonna provide a sacrifice that that blood was pointing

to so that every reason that your household would have for falling under the

judgment of God, that judgment will still happen.

The firstborn is still going to be killed, but God's gonna take that punishment upon himself.

Thanks for listening. If you're near Yorktown, we'd love to see you in person.

Services are Sundays at 9 and 10.45 a.m.