Exodus: Furious Justice, Furious Love

All right, so this week uh I was watching the news and at the I watched NBC News every night.

Don't know where you get your news.

Uh NBC every night is where I watch my news.

And so this week there was this little story.

It was like a little 30-second story coming back from a commercial.

And our president Obama, he had just finished a round of golf.

Let me remind you the president is, by the way.

His name's Obama, because we forget that at this point, at the end of somebody's term, right?

And so he doesn't get a lot of media coverage.

He actually got a little media coverage, took it from Donald Trump, an amazing feat to do.

And so he had finished this round of golf, and I think he was in San Diego or something, and he finished his round of golf.

And on the 18th, anybody see this?

Some few of you, okay.

So he he finishes on the 18th green, he walks across the 18th green, and a couple had just gotten married.

And so he walks over and he talks to them and he hugs them and he gets a picture with them.

And then he goes on his way.

Okay, so a pretty unbelievable moment for this married couple.

The president of the United States.

I mean, this is the most powerful man in the world, still, even though we don't hear a lot from him at this point in his term, still he holds the nuclear weapons, the greatest subnuclear weapons in the world.

He still holds the power over the greatest military in the world.

I mean, he is still the most powerful man in the world, and he had places to go and people to see, mind you, but he takes the time to cross the 18th green and to take a picture just with some people, just some common folks like me and you.

Nice.

I played golf on Friday.

We had the Redeemer Cup.

Brian organized it.

It was very thrilling.

There was about 15 or 20 of us.

And so I I finished my round of golf at the uh there at um City Club Marietta or whatever it's called.

And so I get to the end of the 18th, and actually we got a picture taken.

Somebody took our picture, all the guys, and there there were some people taking a picture.

I think it might have been a wedding maybe the next day or something, and there they're taking a picture.

Now imagine I had walked over to this group and offered myself to be in this picture with them.

I actually they would have been like, can you move a little to the left, a little more to the left, a little more to can you actually just don't talk to us?

Now, why would that well of course that would be that way because I'm not this powerful man of influence coming into their common world, right?

There's something about when a powerful person comes into a common world and it is um it resonates.

It means something, right?

So here's a way to think about it when it comes to God.

It's this is that the love is great because the power is great.

The love is great because the power is great.

It's like this is great because that is great.

And see, this is where we're at coming into Exodus chapter 7, right?

Exodus 7 · chapter mention

Remember?

I mean, six generations of slavery for these people, the Israelites in Egypt, six generations, Moses and Aaron have been raised up.

Go to Pharaoh, go to the king of Egypt, go to him, and say, Hey, you know, free these people, and Pharaoh's not having any of that.

And so they're requesting on on behalf of God, you need to release the people, like you don't know what's coming.

And then we get to this point in the story because Pharaoh is still resistant, he's not letting the people go, and then the plagues start.

Nasty, horrific plagues.

And maybe you're here, and this is you go, this is this is actually just the type of story that makes me go, like, I don't believe that.

Like, I don't, that's where the Bible, I'm not into the Bible, is because of that.

Because on one side you have God that is so absolutely for an oppressed people, and then on the other side, it's just like he's it feels like he's so against these other people.

I mean, I read this and I have a lot of questions, and I've been reading this story for a long time.

But he's doing something.

And that's what I want us to see this morning, is that he's doing something.

Because the story, this story, difficult, difficult story, this story is a part of a grander story.

So let me reread what Courtney read for us, because I like to read it.

It helps me within my sermon if I can read it, so just bear with me.

Exodus 7, 8 through 13.

Then the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, when Pharaoh says to you, prove yourselves by working a miracle, then you shall say to Aaron, Take your staff and cast it down before Pharaoh, that it may become a servant.

So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and did just as the Lord commanded.

Aaron cast down his staff before Pharaoh and his servants, and it became a serpent.

Then Pharaoh summoned the wise men and the sorcerers, and they, magician, the magicians of Egypt, also did the same by their secret arts.

Now I'm not quite sure, like legit, not legit, tricky, not like David Blaine, tricky, or like real, like, you know, demonic stuff.

I I don't know.

I'm open to either.

I'm totally open to either.

You can be open to either as well.

But this is what's playing out, and then here's what happens is for each man cast down his staff and they became serpents, but Aaron's staff swallowed up their staffs, right?

I mean, just basically God saying, like, uh-uh, like, like I'm bigger than you.

Like, like your gods, your ways, your things, I'm big.

I just swallow it up.

Yet still Pharaoh's heart was hardened, and he would not listen to them as the Lord had said.

So Pharaoh's still resistant, right?

I mean, he sees this, he's still resistant.

And then this is when the story just gets really rough.

These ten plagues.

I have ten two points, not ten points, oh Lord, that'd be rough for you.

Uh two points this morning.

And the first is this is the the furious justice of God is seen in the ten plagues.

The furious justice of God is seen in the ten plagues.

And the second point is the furious love of God is seen in God's actions in history.

So, point number one, let's work our way through this so we can understand this.

It's difficult to understand.

The furious justice of God is seen in the ten plagues.

Well, Monday I sat down and I opened up my Bible, next chapter, what's coming next.

And you're like, oh, joyful, ten plagues.

What a great week, right?

Like, I can't wait to spend my week studying the ten plagues.

This is going to be a wonderful, how exciting.

I mean, even yesterday uh we were at a pumpkin patch, we're on like a hay ride, and you know, it's fall, and it's crisp outside, and the sun is shining, and we're sitting in the hay, and there's like this little part of my brain went to the sermon, and I'm like, ten plagues.

Like, well, that's that's that's so exciting, right?

I mean, there's just not a lot of excitement around the ten plagues.

And yet, yet, there's still so much for us in this story.

So much for us.

So this week I dare to do something I had not done before, and that was like, maybe maybe I'll step back from viewing this story as a 36-year-old post-Enlightenment Western American Christian raised in the Southeast, conservative Christianity person.

Maybe, maybe step back and maybe just look at it, and what was this story like for the Egyptian mom?

Same story.

I mean, imagine this.

You you have children to feed, care for, it's hot out.

You're in Egypt, by the way, it's hot out.

And then all the water in your village turns foul and bloody.

Kills all the fish, ruins drinking supply.

So there's no water to water the crops, there's no water for your livestock.

I mean, livestock, maybe maybe they have a little bit of wine to drink, maybe have a little bit stored up.

They're burning with thirst, so eventually they drink the blood.

They have no choice.

Maybe one of the children becomes sick and dies, and then frogs come.

Second plague.

All the frogs come.

Frogs are everywhere, they cover everything, they're in the tents, they're in beds, they're dying, they're rotting in the sun, it smells horrible.

And then this brings gnats.

Gnats come like they've never seen before.

The air is thick with them, getting in their mouths, and then their ears, and their children's mouths, and their children's ears, up their children's noses.

I mean, they're air, they can't get away from them.

I mean, the mother's just barely surviving, getting by, just barely short of insanity here.

And then flies come and cover all their food, the livestock go berserk, and then a plague kills all the livestock, and then nobody will eat the meat of the livestock because they're scared that there's something wrong with the meat.

I mean, the mother, the children, these people, they're being broken like never before.

And then sickness strikes them.

They get boils all over their bodies.

I mean, they can't stand, they can't sit, they can't lay down, they can't do anything without being miserably uncomfortable.

And then hail comes, maybe it kills her last goat that they were using for milk, maybe it crushes their barley.

What's left is eaten by the locusts, anyway, because they come next.

And then the skies go black.

Just darkness.

Middle of the day.

It goes dark.

And then finally, in case that wasn't enough to break you, the firstborn of every family dies.

And they're left with nothing.

Except a question.

Who is causing this?

Because we had a God of the Nile, and we had a God of fertility, and we had a God for the crops, and we had a God for the rain, and we had a God, we had created a God for everything, and we were sacrificing them, and we were working for them, and apparently they're powerless.

Who is causing this?

And so the Israelites see this, and the Israelites they go, Oh, I get it.

I get who this God is.

He is unbelievably powerful, and the Egyptians are left going, who is this?

And it can seem pointless to us at this point in history.

We're so modern.

It can seem, but at this point in history, the tribal gods, a god for this and a god for that, perhaps just this is part of the story of God of him laying out for humanity who he is.

I always think back, and maybe I even shared the story.

I can't remember, I'm getting old like that.

I always think back to one night Christy was gone, and I said I had all three girls, and and we're we're gonna watch a movie, and so I decided, well, we're gonna we're gonna watch, we're gonna watch Annie, the original Annie.

That'd be so great.

We're gonna eat pizza, we're gonna watch the original Annie.

And you know, I just not thought this through.

I have these three little girls, these little sweet, sensitive hearts.

And the original Annie, I mean, it's it's like she's an orphan, right?

I mean, so right away you're explaining like an orphan and an orphanage, and the lady in the orphanage is not real nice.

I mean, so we get through that, and I'm like, hang in there, hang in there, you know, like we're gonna be okay.

You know, why are they all crying?

You know, like we'll be okay, we'll be okay, and my girls are crying, we'll be okay.

You know, like there's more to the story, there's more to the story, is all I keep saying.

And we get to the end of the story.

Do you remember the end of the original Annie?

I don't know about the new Annie, but the original Annie, like the drawbridge goes up.

There's a scary man chasing her.

She's crawling up this drawbridge at the end, she's hanging, right?

Like she's hanging at the top, and like her rich future dad is on the helicopter coming in, and my girls are like crying, and she's gonna die, and the scary man, and I'm like, no, like hang on, the story's coming, the story's coming.

And this is sort of what I feel like when I read these stories in the Old Testament and the stories about justice and the wrath of God, and you're going, like, yes, it's true, yes, it's but it's part of the story.

There's more to the story.

It's going somewhere.

It's going somewhere.

He is saying something about his justice, but it's going somewhere.

And we can pretend like we don't care about justice.

You can pretend like that.

Like you can pretend like all you care about is love and all that, but you can pretend like that until you are hurt and you are wounded, and then all of a sudden you're all about justice.

Point number one: the furious justice of God is seen in the ten plagues, but it's not the end of the story.

Because you have point number two, the furious love of God is seen in God's actions in history.

The plagues are a lesson of love for both the Israelites and the Egyptians.

Now you might think I'm crazy saying that based on the Egyptian mother.

Maybe I am crazy for saying that.

Doesn't mean it's not true.

But see, each plague is, every single one of them is dismantling a false God that they held, that they had created.

Whether it be that God of the Nile, the fertility god, or whatever God it was, I mean, every single plague was dismantling a God that they created.

And if you want to know about suffering, real suffering, then live under the slavery of a false God.

And we know about that.

And our culture is just different.

Right?

It's not frogs, it's not a god of a Nile.

We're way too, you know, we're way too smart for that.

For us, it's just like the God of approval, God of comparison, wealth, materialism.

And it doesn't give you freedom.

You know it doesn't give you freedom.

You do it just like I do it.

It doesn't give us any freedom.

Actually, what it does is the same thing that these Egyptians, the slavery they were living under, it demands of you more and more and more and more.

More sacrifices, more sacrifices, more sacrifices.

And then, like, like that's the promise.

Like, and then it'll give you rain or sunshine or happiness.

That's suffering.

Like, that's the unseen suffering.

Like, see, in this story, we see the seen suffering.

And that's usually what we respond to, right?

Like, that's the thing that we in our humanity, we have so much legitimate difficulty with in this story, is we read the ten plagues and we see all this suffering, legitimate suffering, and it's seen suffering, but we don't consider is all the unseen suffering.

And that is their day-to-day life, worshiping false gods that are exhausting them bit by bit by bit by bit.

And God, in an act of justice on that idolatry, he reveals this to everyone.

Listen, God is on a ruthless mission.

A ruthless mission in all of our lives and all of humans to reveal to them that life outside of his grace and sovereignty is slavery.

So after all this, right?

All these plagues, all of this, Pharaoh's seeing all this, he's experienced all this.

And then we get this Exodus 10, 27 through 29.

But the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart, and we've talked about that.

I won't repreach it, although I really want to.

The Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart, and he was not willing to let them go.

Pharaoh said to Moses, get out of my sight.

Make sure you do not appear before me again.

The day you see my face, you will die.

Just as you say, Moses replied, I will never appear before you again.

Now, though there was that last plague.

Right, I mean, incomprehensible pain and loss for Egyptians.

I mean, uh the to lose the firstborn.

And see, this is a judgment on ISIS.

This is its God that protected children.

Not too good of a God.

And here's how this worked.

It was different than all the other plagues.

The other plagues just came.

This plague, it required something of the people because here's what it said.

Here's how this played out.

It said, hey, take an unblemished male lamb and kill it.

Every Israelite family, take an unblemished male lamb, kill it, take the blood of the lamb and smear it on your doorposts, on the sides and on the top, and then take that lamb and roast it and eat it.

And every family that did that, when this angel came through and killed the firstborn of every family, and he saw the blood, he would pass over that house.

This is where we get the term Passover.

The only protection was the blood.

And then Pharaoh finally lets him go.

I mean, we hear these stories, and you just have you have a lot of questions, right?

I mean, you just have a lot of questions, but it doesn't mean it's not true, and it doesn't mean we shouldn't receive what it means for us.

So I sort of got toward the end of the week of studying this and thinking about it and going, like, how do I, how do we think about this?

And so I just like to draw things, draw things out, it helps me, I don't know if it helps you, and so I I just sort of worked this up, just kind of you know, just trying to get away to think how do I think about this?

So you have this furious justice of God, and the acceptance is conditional, you have to make the sacrifice, you have to smear the blood.

It's your sacrifice, and God is known as Yahweh, and God is known as Jehovah, He's known as mighty, He's known as just.

And what we see in the scriptures, because in 1 Corinthians 5 7, what it says is that Christ is the final Passover.

That's incredible, unbelievable news.

So all this furious justice goes into Christ on the cross, and coming out of the cross, what we have is furious love.

And the acceptance is unconditional because it's his sacrifice, not our sacrifice.

And then in the New Testament, unbelievable, right?

In the New Testament it says, oh yeah, I'm still Jehovah, I'm still Yahweh, I'm still just, but you can now know me as Father.

Oh, actually, by the way, you can know me as Abba, like dad.

See, that's how big the cross is, that it handled the justice.

See, you don't have to keep putting your hope in secular ways of deifying frogs and beetles and the Nile or work or relationships or status to bring you hope and relief.

You also don't have to place your hope in your ability to keep making the sacrifices.

Because in his love, he humbled himself, right?

Can't take you back to the golf course?

Like in like he crossed over and just became a part of the common person.

The most powerful maiden the world walks over, takes a picture with common folks.

Let me explain it this way.

So this past week they filmed a movie on our street, very exciting, by the way, for everybody on our street.

And so it was filmed at the house, kind of diagonal across from ours, and they were there for probably a week or a little bit more, but the filming was for three days, Monday through Wednesday of this past week, and they just took over.

Like we had to move our cars, like we couldn't drive in and out, and they just took over.

They filmed in our neighbor's front yard and then on the street.

And so we would all go out in the afternoons and the evenings and just line our chairs up on the sidewalk across the street, and everybody'd have a beverage and kids are playing, and then when you know, action, you know, action, everybody get perfectly still and quiet, and they'd shoot.

It was an Owen Wilson movie, so he's out in the front yard acting, and then Andy from the office is the other guy in the movie, and so he's there, and they're just like 15 feet away, and they're doing their scene, and then they go back to you know, the set, reset, and all that stuff's going on.

There's like a hundred people making this thing happen in the street, and then you have all of us morons on the sidewalk lined up in our lawn chairs, right?

And so the whole week um we're working toward can we get a picture with Owen Wilson with all of our children?

I don't know if you realize that, but he's he's the voice of one of the cars and movie cars.

I didn't even know this because we got girls, we don't do transportation apparently, we just do other forms of movies.

So uh all the kids the last day have on t-shirts, a car's t-shirt.

I mean, we're lined up on the sidewalk, we're ready.

I mean, we're just, you know, we know like how long does this take?

It doesn't take that long, right?

I mean, you just walk across the street, you take a picture.

I'm talking I'm thinking maybe if we time this thing out, it's maybe 60 to 90 seconds.

Like, this is how long it takes.

And we're working toward it, it's gonna happen.

We hear it's gonna happen, you know.

Andrew, our contact, he's making it happen.

Things are gonna happen, it's in the works.

Owen Wilson's gonna cross the street, and then uh, you know, his scene ends and he goes and he gets in his car and he leaves.

Now, maybe he had a flight to catch, maybe there's a contract issue and he needs to leave, maybe there's something we don't know about.

But I I I do just wonder like how groundbreaking, right?

Like for him to take 60 to 90 seconds across the street.

And just say, hey guys, thanks so much for letting us dominate your life for the past three days and tell you that you can't stand in your own front door in the front lawn and you can't talk on your street.

Thank you for letting us do that.

Can I get a picture with your kids?

Can can I do that?

I would love to do that.

Right?

To have this mighty power that obviously the whole thing is just circles.

Around him, I mean, to have this mighty power humble himself.

For the powerful to become accessible, we would still see his power.

We'd still see the justice, but we would know the love.

We would still see his power and influence, but we would know some, we would know the tenderness.

See, this is great because that is great.

See, Tim Keller, author, pastor, the guy I like to read, here's what he always says is that we know the extent and depth of his, of God's love for us because of what it cost him.

So all this justice in God, perfect justice, all this justice in God is demanding to be satisfied, and he loves us so much that he crossed the street, he crossed the 18th green, he humbled himself on the cross rather than endlessly demanding us to be perfect.

I read a quote this week, I was doing my devotions and I read this, and I was like, oh man, this ties in, or at least I thought it did.

And it's a quote by Brendan Manning, great, late, fantastic author.

He says, In the God I've come to know by sheer grace, the Jesus I met in the grounds of my own self has furiously loved me regardless of my state, grace or disgrace.

And why?

For his love is never, never, never based on our performance, never conditioned by our moods of elation or depression.

The furious love of God knows no shadow of alteration or change.

It is reliable and always tender.

The awesome love of our invisible God has become both visible and audible in Jesus Christ, the glory of the only Son filled with enduring love.

See, the voice of love is always at work.

Even in the most difficult of stories that we read in the scriptures, the voice of love is always at work.

See, that Passover, tenth plague, that Passover is to help all people get to the final Passover.

And it points us to who God fully is, not a tribal God, not just a God of the Israelites.

I mean, this would have been mind-blowing at the time.

We don't even think about it at this point in history.

This would have been mind-blowing at the time for them to think that a God might be inclusive of every tribe, every nation.

This is what he's moving them toward.

He's moving them toward the final Passover, his sacrifice for them.

So, brothers and sisters, may you understand his furious justice as to be more enamored of his furious love for you.

Let's pray together.

God, thank you that you are both just and loving, and that in the cross we do not live in the wake of just your justice.

For in our brokenness and idolatry, we have no way to stand before you.

And yet, in the cross and in your sacrifice for us, you humbled yourself.

And in Jesus, we are ushered in to a relationship with you that's not based on our work, but based on your work.

Relieved of the slavery that we still toil with.

And yet our position sealed.

We are your children.

You want to move us toward freedom.

You want us to know you as Jehovah and as Yahweh, but you also want us to know you as Father and Abba.

Help us to understand your justice more as to know your love in greater ways.

In your Son's name we pray.

Amen.