Exodus: Bricks and Liberators

So last winter and spring, we went through the book of Genesis.

We hopped our way through different stories in Genesis, and then we went and we did some other things in the New Testament, and in this last four or five weeks, somewhere around there, we went through some kingdom parables in Matthew 13.

Now we're going back to go through another book of the Bible.

That's sort of our default is to go through books of the Bible.

And we're going to do our way through Exodus kind of like we did Genesis.

So what we're going to do is we're not going to hit every verse, every single maybe little story, but we're going to hit all the big ones.

So at the end of this thing, we get the story of Exodus.

We understand the book of Exodus.

And what we see is maybe you're with us for Genesis, the book of Genesis.

Genesis is the background for Exodus.

So we get Joseph finally at the end of the book of Genesis.

Joseph ends up in Egypt, and God had created this family in the book of Genesis.

And of that family, that family slowly becomes a nation, and all these people finally end up via Joseph in Egypt, outside their land, and they're in another land.

And so this story picks up, and Joseph's in Egypt.

Joseph done this really incredible stuff at the end of Genesis for Egypt.

Like he basically saved them.

And you can read that.

I'm not going to re-preach a sermon, but he had done all this incredible good.

But then what happens here is this king comes to reign in Exodus chapter 1, and this guy doesn't know the story about Joseph.

Exodus 1 · chapter mention

All he sees is he sees this people group that is growing and they're big and they're culturally different than him and his people.

And he's looking out and he's saying, well, if an enemy ever came in to take us over, these people could flip on us.

They could flip on us, they could join them, and we're gone.

So he gets threatened, he feels threatened, and so what does he do?

He reacts and he enslaves the Hebrews.

He enslaves these people.

So we get this story.

We get the story of Exodus, God's people, how they're enslaved, but then they become liberated.

And see, this is a story about faith.

This is a story about what the Christian faith is, about liberation from that which is enslaving you.

Whatever has you in bondage and oppression.

So Sam read a whole bunch of the passages from us.

We're going to reread a few verses here and there so we can pull out some meaning from them.

So jumping into Exodus 1, verses 11 through 14.

Exodus 1:11–14

So this king, these people, what they do is therefore they set taskmasters over them, the Hebrews, to afflict them with heavy burdens.

They built for Pharaoh store cities, Pithum and Ramsis.

But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied, and the more they spread abroad.

So it's not working out.

Hebrews just keep multiplying, good for them.

And the Egyptians were in dread of the people of Israel.

So, what did they do?

Here they enslaved them.

So they ruthlessly made the people of Israel work as slaves and made their lives bitter with hard service and mortar and brick and all kinds of work in the field, and all their work they ruthlessly made them work as slaves.

So they made the Hebrews make bricks.

Quotas of bricks.

Every day a quota of brick.

And not like a brick like our little bricks, right?

Like when we think bricks, we just think our little like maybe three inches by seven inches or whatever it is.

Not that kind of brick.

This is like a mud brick, like a little bit bigger, and it had hay in it to make it stronger.

Um, because in Israel they didn't have like a lot of firewood.

So they didn't have a lot of fuel for fires to heat the bricks, so they created different ways.

How do we make a brick that's strong?

And so that's why they used the clay and then they baked it in the sun.

And every day, these people, over and over and over again, they made bricks.

Now, to make one brick wouldn't be that bad, right?

You go, that's not too bad.

I mean, to make bricks, that's not too bad.

Even to make a hundred bricks wouldn't be that bad.

Maybe, maybe to make bricks for a week wouldn't be that bad.

But this is over and over and over again, brick after brick after brick after brick in the Egyptian heat, to a quota of which you will not live up to, and then you will be exhausted and you will be beaten.

Bricks and bricks and bricks and bricks.

And it's that feeling that this, this will never get any better.

And there's your quota, and the next day's the same thing.

Never a change, never an improvement, just enslavement.

See, this is the definition of despair.

This is enslavement, and this becomes the great picture in the scriptures of a life ruled by bondage, a life ruled by slavery, or to be even more precise to the Bible, a life ruled by sin.

This becomes a great picture for us.

Now remember, sin includes all those behavioral sins that harm us and harm other people, but it also includes just the fact that deeper condition of us, and this is the strangest thing about it, that we would actually that we actually choose Egypt.

Like in this weird way, in our in our self-centeredness, we actually choose the thing that harms us.

So what that means is we will try to rescue ourselves from making bricks by making more bricks.

Right?

Like we think we are rescuing ourselves, but we are really beating ourselves into greater slavery and exhaustion.

So that's all pretty metaphorical language, and I'm gonna be a little metaphorical all the way through because Exodus is pretty metaphorical as a story, but hopefully it'll become clear as we go.

But here's point number one, and it's pretty metaphorical just to let you know.

Point number one, the narrative of Exodus and of the scriptures, is Exodus is this picture for us of the scriptural story.

The narrative of Exodus is a story of our rescue by God from our enslavement to bricks and quotas and taskmasters.

That's what the storyline of Exodus is, it's the storyline of the scriptures is.

So this king is treating them ruthlessly, and he takes the Hebrews, he makes them slaves, and in verse 14 we get this word Avav.

A V A V.

And it's not just to work, it's not just to labor, because it's actually deeper than that.

It means to serve a master.

So the literal translation says something like this that they're gonna make their lives bitter and hard service in clay and in brick, and in every uh in every kind of service in the field, all their service in which they have served with rigor.

So that kind of sounds silly because it reads like this service in the field, all their service in which they have served.

Well, we would never write it like that.

It's just it's just too many serves, right?

I mean, like more synonyms.

Give me a few synonyms, we'll round off the sentence.

We would never write it like that, but there's a reason why it's written like that.

And the point is that slavery is about service.

You are a slave when you serve a lesser master.

Maybe you're here and you think, what an antiquated story.

Like, what does slavery, what does slavery have to do with me?

I mean, this has nothing to do with me, but but listen to what the story is saying.

Because we know the feeling of being owned.

Like, don't you know the difference between owning something and something owning you?

I I can remember when I applied for my first like big job.

I don't know if you remember this, if you've gotten to that.

I applied for my first big important job.

And I had like a big interview.

I think I had one suit that was like three sizes too big, which isn't hard for a suit to be three sizes too big for me.

And so I have that interview, and I have another one, and another one, and a lunch.

I'm like four or five interviews in.

I have an interview with a psychologist.

I mean, I am way into this thing.

And it's at the point in this where I'm I'm just waiting for the I'm waiting for the phone call.

I'm waiting for the email.

Right?

And all along this process, it's like, um, you know, Lord, whatever you want, you know, I'm I'm open to whatever direction you have.

But by the end of the process, I am neurotically checking my email every three minutes, like the the voicemail, like just keep pulling the phone out.

Has anybody called yet?

Has anybody called yet?

Right?

And so clearly a shift, and we know this shift, so clearly a shift between I was owning this process, and now this process owns me.

And I was being owned, what was I being owned by?

Well, by the end of it, I was being owned by uh wanting a position that would give me approval, make me feel like I am somebody because I was feeling like nobody or some some need for ambition.

And we know this.

We know what we know the difference between owning something and being owned, right?

You know it with your you know it with your phone.

When you sleep with it by your bed, when you're anxious, it's not around you, when you need to keep checking it, keep checking it, keep checking it, but you're checking nothing.

There's nothing there.

You just checked it, right?

You know that, but you check it again, you check it again because it owns you.

When I do this, it's owning me.

And we can be owned by all sorts of things.

Like when you get that new car, it's so great.

I mean, you love that new car.

And you own it because it's great.

You bought it, but then it got a scratch on it, and you're destroyed.

Well, you're destroyed because the car owns you.

I mean, I haven't even mentioned like shameful things, right?

Like fanatical self-obsession about weight or exercise or food or the itch to look at one more image online.

The addiction to that one comment that makes the other person look bad and makes you look good.

Right?

And this is this that you have this thought that you are above that, bothering you like that, but then the thing that you thought you owned really owns you.

And you just didn't think that was gonna happen.

But it does.

And we know it when it happens, and if it owns you, you are serving it, and if you are serving it, you are enslaved to it.

And you're making a brick.

That's what you're doing.

You're making a brick.

So this king of Egypt, he's upset, he's afraid, he's defensive, he enslaves them, and then he goes to the midwives, like Sam read.

We heard it, he goes to the midwives and he says, Hey, hey, let we gotta cut down on this reproduction, and so they're gonna keep reproducing.

So, what we're gonna do is we're gonna cut off the male children, and so any male child that's born, that's it.

Kill the child, and then it says this, and we jump in in verse chapter one, verse sixteen.

When you serve as midwife to the Hebrew women and see them on the birthstool, if it is a son, you shall kill him.

But if it is a daughter, she shall live.

But the midwives feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but let the male children live.

So then the king comes back, right?

The king comes back and says, Hey, what have y'all been doing?

Wasn't that clear?

It's a pretty clear statement.

Like when if a boy's born, just look, look down, it's a boy, kill him.

Like that was the direction, that was it.

Just execute that plan, and we're we got it going on.

And I love this lie, by the way.

This lie the midwives came up with is just fantastic.

Laugh out loud.

And they just say, and you know, the king's gotta be like, well, I don't know about that stuff.

You know, I mean, they came up with a lie that he would have no knowledge of how all this works.

And so they say, Well, you don't understand, you know, the Egyptian women, you know, they take their time with the birth.

These Hebrew women, the Hebrew women, they just they just let the baby, the babies just come on out.

And so he's like, Well, I'm not getting into that.

I don't want to go and observe and do a research study.

And so he just lets it go.

And then we read in verse 22, then Pharaoh commanded all his people, every son that is born to the Hebrews, you shall cast into the Nile, but you shall let every daughter live.

So he goes from the midwife taking care of the problem, and he's saying, Hey, this is this is just a rule, this is a law.

So then in chapter 2, we get this Hebrew couple, a Levite couple, and they have a little boy, and this mama decides that she's not doing it.

And so she hides her baby boy and she nurses that little boy for several months, and eventually just comes to the point where she can't keep this baby.

I mean, it's just gonna become known of what's going on, and so what she decides to do is she decides to wrap this little baby up, and she wraps the baby up, puts him in a basket, lays him in the reeds down by the river, and then the little baby's sister kind of hides off over in the woods somewhere.

Mama heads back into her home, and the daughter of the king, of the pharaoh, who made the rule, the law about killing all the boys, the daughter comes down to bathe, finds this little baby in a basket, has sympathy, pity on the baby, and here comes sister walking up.

You know, sister, she you know, she's so happy for this moment, walking up, like, well, what have you found here?

You know, and she says, the daughter says to the sister, hey, I found a little Hebrew baby.

Do you know any Hebrew women who would nurse this baby?

You know, and sister's going, Well, I think I could probably round somebody up.

And so she goes and gets her mom, right?

Baby's mom goes and gets baby's mom, comes back, and what a great plan.

Now, uh, baby's mom is now getting paid to nurse her own child, which a lot of you are going, amazing, because I've just been scrolling Instagram while I've been nursing my child just like over to get paid for that.

What an amazing scenario here.

And so now this mom is getting paid to nurse her child, and when that little boy grows up and becomes a child, that child went and lived in Pharaoh's house with the daughter of Pharaoh, and that child's name is Moses, which means I drew him out of the water.

Now, spoiler alert, if you don't know it yet, Moses is the liberator.

I'll just go ahead and tell you.

This little boy, this child is the liberator of these people, but he's not perfect.

He's far, far from perfect.

And he grows up, and one day he's out, he's an adult, and he's out, and he's uh he sees the burden of his people and he's overwhelmed by it, and he sees an Egyptian beating one of his people, and he snaps.

I mean, that's just he just can't take it.

He snaps and he beats that Egyptian.

He hits him, he beats him, and he kills him.

And then he buries him.

And he thinks it's probably gonna work out.

Probably not too many people saw that, or nobody saw it.

He thinks it's gonna be fine, no problem.

I'll kind of, this will just go smooth over.

But then the next day he's out, he sees two Hebrews fighting each other, and he steps into the situation and says, Hey, why are y'all fighting each other?

Like y'all are brothers, what's going on?

Stop fighting each other.

And one of them makes a wise crack to him about, oh, like you have never hurt anybody or you never killed anybody, and he realizes, oh, word is spreading about this, and he starts to sweat this.

And so he takes off, Moses takes off, and he heads east to Midian.

And he ends up out there and he marries and he has a son, and all during this time, his people, God's people, the Hebrews, are making bricks every day, all day, with a quota they can't live up to, the exhaustion and the beating, brick after brick after brick, and then finally we get to this turning point in this story in Exodus 2, 23 through 25.

During those many days, the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help.

I mean, it's been generations, gener 400 years in this slavery in Egypt.

Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God.

And God heard their groaning.

And God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.

God saw the people of Israel and God knew.

So the people are exhausted, they're tired, they're barely hanging on, nothing is left.

They have nothing left to offer, and they're just crying out we need out, we need outside rescue, is what we need.

We need something from outside of us to rescue us.

And this is our second point.

Point number two, three-point sermon, by the way, today, proud of myself.

Uh it was last week I had no points.

I think it was like a running, just random amount of thoughts.

This week I'm organized.

Point number two, the heart that rests in God's grace and relief is painfully aware of their brickmaking, of their slavery.

This leads us to point number three very quickly, which point number three, um, ironically, sort of, or interestingly, is that we should remember point number one.

The narrative of Exodus and of the scriptures is a story of our rescue from our enslavement by God Himself.

So, what this means, we put point number two and point number three together, it means this the narrative of your life, the narrative of your life should be one of being painfully aware of your brickmaking, your slavery, and joyfully aware of his rescue.

So, Christy and I have days, like most of you, if you're married, or maybe you have a boyfriend, or maybe you have a girlfriend, uh, maybe you're gonna be married one day, you're gonna know these days, and these are the days that aren't the great days.

Like they're just the days you get through the day.

And I created one of these days a couple weeks ago by my own, you know, being a moron and being distant and being preoccupied and being stressed, and just sort of I created the day.

And we get to the end of the day, just barely hanging on throughout the day, because we don't want our children to see that how like angry we are at each other all day.

And we get to the end of the day, and I just I just I'm sorry, I did that.

I I did that to this whole day, just by me being distant and preoccupied and not engaged.

Like, I did all of that to this day.

And she told me what, you know, just in Christy fashion, she says, Well, I just wish you would have like gone off, just like go off for two hours and like get whatever, centered, reset, whatever that's called for you at peace, and then come back, like whatever that, whatever needs to happen, go do that, right?

And then she said, I love you.

You're like, whoa, like what like what's that?

Like how like how how could you love me in this situation?

Because what I have done, and I've lived up to none of what I should be this day.

I've actually made this day rotten and miserable.

Right?

And like in a modern society, in individualistic relationships, where all the relationships based on I will be what I will be as long as you are what you should be, and then I'll be what I'll be, but I'll only be it if you're gonna be what you should be.

And if you're not what you should be, I'm not gonna be what I should be.

And this is different.

This is I will be what I should be, even though you aren't being what you should be.

And this is the difference between a modern personal relationship and a what would be called a covenantal relationship.

So a covenantal relationship says that I will be what I should be, whether you are what you should be or you're not.

And this is scary, right?

This is scary for us, this is risky for us, but this is the most beautiful of relationships when both people, when both people carry this attitude into it.

Because you're secured and you are loved.

Now, all I knew about a relationship with God for most of my life was a personal relationship.

Right?

I don't know if you've been around church long enough to, you know, people would come up and say, Do you do you have a personal relationship with God?

I can remember the first time I got asked that, I was on the beach in Panama City with my family, and I think my sister and I are like walking down the beach and I'm like sixth grade, and I didn't know at the time, but it was like Campus Crusade, you know, witnessing, and that's great.

Like I'm nothing against that.

But that was the question.

Do you have a personal relationship with God?

And but it just ended there.

And so what that became was is, and to be honest, the answer most days is yes.

But there's a lot of days where I'm going, I don't know.

Like that seems like abstract sometimes, and sometimes it just seems like I'm messing the whole thing up.

Um, sometimes I don't it personal relationship can become extremely self-oriented and consumeristic if it's not rooted in a covenantal relationship.

Because it's personal, and if it's personal, it means you need to maintain it.

And it can become unbelievable, overwhelming.

But if it's personal, yes, if it's personal and rooted and covenantal, this is a totally different thing.

And all I knew for so long of my life was just personal.

But when you begin to tap into the fact that it is personal and it's rooted in the covenantal, this is huge.

This is changing, and this is what God is remembering in this story.

That he remembers the covenant, the promise he made.

Not the promise these people made to him, but the promise he made to them.

And in Genesis 15, we get this story.

This story of what the heart of a covenant is from God to us.

And back then, and this is like my one uh joke in a wedding, and it hits good every time.

I've done a few people's weddings.

I've probably told this joke in a few of y'all's weddings.

It I have two jokes in weddings, and I just know like they they just hit, they're perfect.

This is one of them.

So, but what I do is I hold up the wedding ring and I say, you know, this is the wedding ring, this is the symbol of the covenant and our culture.

Back in biblical times, people would make a covenant by splitting apart animals and they'd line them in two rows, and you'd walk in between the rows, and that's how you'd make your covenant, and I would say, Aren't we glad we don't do that today?

And everybody laughs.

I don't know, it's not funny here, none of y'all laugh, but in a wedding, I think, you know, it's the wedding can be so stiff, you know, that it's like this great moment of laughter.

And so that's my joke.

But that's what how a covenant was formed.

Rip apart animals, two rows, walk in between the rows, and what you're saying is if I don't live up to this relationship, may I be like these animals.

May I be torn in two.

In Genesis 15, we get this interesting story with God and Abraham, and this relationship is beginning to form about how God will deal with humanity.

And Abraham rips these animals and he lines them up in two rows, and then this strange, mystical, crazy stuff starts happening, and a black pillar smokes like something at a loss.

Like a black pillar of smoke comes down and a flaming torch and it crosses, it goes through the two rows of animals.

It is God going through the two rows of animals.

It is God saying, if I don't live up to this relationship, may I be torn in two.

See, usually the servant does this.

And the most interesting thing about this story is that Abraham's never asked to walk through.

God just walks through.

And God is saying to us, I will be torn to pieces if I don't live up to this relationship, but I will also be torn to pieces if you don't live up to this relationship.

And that sounds really familiar.

Because that's exactly what happened.

We don't live up to the covenant, we don't live up to the relationship, and God is torn into on the cross for us.

And this changes everything, and this liberates us because it is not us maintaining a personal relationship, it is us having a personal relationship because it is rooted in a covenantal relationship.

Now back to the bricks.

Back to the bricks.

I have a drawing again this week.

I've just gotten into drawings lately.

I don't know.

I'm just getting so visual and artsy on you guys.

So we're making bricks, right?

And had have you ever have you ever thought you were building one thing?

And I know my drawings are ugly, but you have to work with them.

Have you ever thought you were building one thing?

And and and and maybe it was, I'll just go on a few dates with that person.

I would never marry that kind of person.

And then five years later, you're going, what did I do?

Or maybe you thought you were uh creating a network of friends and colleagues, and then you feel incredibly judged by them by what they have and you don't have.

Or maybe you were working so hard for that job that you were making sacrifices to your family, and you were building, you thought you were building one thing, like a great career, but actually you were building another thing.

And so it's what's what's easy to happen is without you realizing it, you st you can build things with uh control, you can build things with ambition, you can build things with the need for approval.

You can even think you're building a life that honors the Lord, but you have no idea about covenantal relationship.

And without knowing it, you've actually built a building of self-righteousness.

And with you think you've built this, but really you have built, without knowing it, you have built a prison with your brickmaking.

And it's all bondage.

And what we need is, well, we're stuck, right?

Like that's what happens.

We're stuck.

We're stuck in this.

And what we need is we need an outside source.

We need something to come into us because this is what we're creating.

We're just sort of going back and forth here.

And what we need is we need the covenantal relationship to come toward us so we might be able to go toward him.

And it's so easy to end up stuck in slavery and bondage and in prisons that we never thought we would build.

We never thought we were even, we'd even know we were building when we were building them, and all of a sudden you get there with your job and your addiction to work and your family is horrible, and all of a sudden your job owns you, or that relationship owns you, or that addiction owns you, and you never thought you were gonna end up there, your religion owned you, never thought you would end up there, and without knowing it, you thought you were just making little bricks, but you had built a prison, you didn't even realize it.

And what you need is what I need is we need an outside power to save us.

And you don't need Moses, and this is what we're gonna see in the story of Exodus.

You don't need Moses, although the story is all about Moses.

You don't need Moses.

What you need is the one Moses points to.

We've always needed an Exodus, right?

That's what this is.

That's what this is about.

I mean, this is like Egypt, this is Canaan, this is what this is.

And we have always needed an Exodus.

We have always needed saving.

And this is the story of the scriptures.

Every book, every story, every verse, it's all pointing to God Himself providing the covenant for our weary, exhausted, beaten hearts that do not live up to the quota.

And God Himself, Jesus, torn in two for us, taking the death we deserve, so the covenant relationship can occur for us, so we can live and rest in us.

So, brothers and sisters, may you forever see your Christian faith as secure and amazing.

Not as another prison and another form.

May you see your brickmaking with clearer eyes and receive his liberation, the work of Jesus with the open hands of faith.

Let's pray together.

God, we thank you that you form the relationship, you formed the covenant, you engage us, your grace is greater than our sin.

We confess this morning that we make bricks.

We often choose Egypt, choosing to deny so many parts of it that enslave us.

And that is the sin in us.

Help us to see in a greater way how we do this so we might confess, we might become free in your grace toward us and your forgiveness toward us.

Help us to rest not in our work to work ourselves out of this, but to rest in your work for us, which is the good news, which is the gospel, and that you are enough for us, though we're not enough for ourselves.

Help us to rest in the work of Jesus in His name.

Amen.