Do you know who JaMarcus Russell is? Diehard Raiders fans may remember the name. He was the overall first pick in the 2007 NFL draft. Russell could “throw the ball over a building” one scout reported. But Russell hated conditioning, which made it hard for him to stay in shape. He also didn’t like studying game tape. He was once given a DVD containing plays to take home and critique. The next day he came back and told his coach that he was on board with everything he had seen. The DVD, however, was blank. Oops. After starting 25 games and going 7-18, the Raiders cut Russell. The final straw was when the quarterback showed up to training camp weighing 290 pounds—20 pounds over his playing weight.
When we watch professional athletes, we might surmise that what they do is easy for them because, well, they’re extremely athletic. But any successful athlete will tell you that it’s not easy being and remaining a star. It takes constant hard work—even if you were the first pick in the draft.
Likewise, being God’s man or woman is never easy. While Moses was God’s pick to lead the Israelites out of Egypt, events didn’t unfold as Moses thought they should. He ran into a brick wall rather quickly. As we continue this sermon series to see how Moses and we are made for more, we’ll learn that we shouldn’t expect our lives as God’s children to be easy. We’ll also learn how God helps us through the dark and difficult periods.
After God appeared to Moses at the burning bush, Moses, together with his older brother Aaron, set out for Egypt. Their first stop? Convince the Israelites that God had heard their cries for mercy and was about to do something about their slavery. The Israelites believed Moses and worshipped the Lord in anticipation of their long-awaited rescue.
The second stop didn’t go nearly as well. Moses and Aaron boldly strode into Pharaoh’s palace, perhaps like gunslingers in a Western, and communicated the Lord’s demands that Pharoah let the Israelites take a 3-day break to worship in the wilderness. But Pharaoh sneered: “Who is the Lord, that I should obey him and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord and I will not let Israel go.” (Ex. 5:2) With apologies to Packer and Lions fans, Pharaoh’s response was not unlike what Green Bay thought before their final game this season with Detroit. “The Detroit Lions? Who are they? Perennial losers. That’s who they are. They won’t stand in our way of making it to the playoffs.” Of course, much to the delight of Detroit fans, the Lions soundly defeated the Packers. And God would in time show the arrogant pharaoh who he was when all of Egypt suffered through the Ten Plagues.
There’s a warning for us here, isn’t there? Although we may never say out loud: “Who is the Lord that I should listen to him?” do we reveal that attitude with our actions? When we ignore our parents and mock them for their weaknesses, we’re telling God that the Fourth Commandment, which bids us to honor those in authority, doesn’t apply to us. When we tell others about all the dumb things our coworkers do, we tread on the Eighth Commandment like it’s nothing more than hiking trail dirt. If these commandments were so important, wouldn’t God let us know every time we broke one of them—the way you’re sure to get a shock every time you stick a finger in a live outlet? Oh, but God will show his displeasure to all who think that he and his commandments are nothing. Judgment may not come right away, but it will come. It will also be relentless as it was for Pharaoh. Friends, let us humble ourselves before the Lord daily and ask for his forgiveness for all our acts of rebellion lest he treat us as an enemy as he did Pharaoh.
Pharaoh continued his mocking when he insisted that if the Israelites had time to whine about their work, they had time to do more of it. While demanding that they still make the same number of bricks as before, Pharaoh decreed that the Israelites would now have to first find their own straw to do it. Imagine a restaurant boss saying to the kitchen staff: “We will no longer provide water for you to wash the dishes. You’ll have to haul in your own water, and we still expect you to stay on top of providing the serving staff with clean dishes.” As you can imagine, the Israelites were not able to complete their quota of bricks under the new system. So the Egyptian taskmasters beat the Israelite foremen. Not surprisingly, the same Israelites who had earlier rejoiced at Moses’ news that God had heard their cries for mercy, now angrily shouted at Moses and Aaron: “May the Lord look on you and judge you! You have made us obnoxious to Pharaoh and his officials and have put a sword in their hand to kill us.” (Ex. 5:21) Moses in turn complained: “Lord, why have you brought trouble on this people? Why did you send me? Ever since I came to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has brought trouble on this people, and you have not rescued your people at all.” (Ex. 5:22-23)
Things were not going as planned for God’s first-round draft pick. If Moses, or you and I were writing the story of Israel’s exodus, it would have gone like this. Chapter 1: The Burning Bush—God pumps up his chosen servant for his mission. Chapter 2: The Fracas with Pharaoh—Moses puts the despot in his place and leads the Israelites out of Egypt while frequently showing off his barrel chest and six-pack abs. Chapter 3: The Land of Milk and Honey—Moses enjoys retirement at Club Med, Canaan.
Isn’t that the story we want for our lives too? God finds and saves us. God then fills our life with people who pump up our ego, who never question our judgment, who fill our needs, and who help us sidestep every hardship. (Reed Lessing – adapted) But Moses’ life was not like that, and I doubt your life is like that either. Rather, God allowed Moses to stand bewildered in the dark shadows of uncertainty and failure. Why?
Tell me, why do they shoot off fireworks at night? Why not do this during the day when more people are awake and alert? When we lived in Alberta, they didn’t shoot off their July 1, Canada Day fireworks until 11 pm! My daughters can tell you how much I loved staying up for that (eyeroll). Fireworks are of course displayed at night so that their colorful flares and streaks are more pronounced against the dark backdrop of a nighttime sky. The true God too wants to make sure you can see well his brilliant love for you—a love which blazes forth most clearly against the dark backdrop of confusion and uncertainty. God put it like this to Moses: “Now you will see what I will do to Pharaoh: Because of my mighty hand he will let them go; because of my mighty hand he will drive them out of his country. …I will free you from being slaves…and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. 7 I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. 8 And I will bring you to the land I swore with uplifted hand to give to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. I will give it to you as a possession. I am the Lord.’” (Ex. 6:1, 6-8)
What a pronouncement! But that’s all the Israelites received...for the moment. God didn’t slap his forehead and say, “Oops. That’s right, Moses. I was supposed to send Gabriel and an army of angels to support you with a campaign of shock and awe against Pharaoh. I’ll get right on that. Tell the Israelites to pack their bags. They’ll be moving out tonight!”
No. A repeated promise. That’s all the Israelites received, and unfortunately “…they did not listen to [Moses and the Lord] because of their discouragement and harsh labor.” (Ex. 6:9) Like seed that fell on the rocky ground in Jesus’ famous Parable of the Sower (Matthew 13), the joy the Israelites had experienced for a few days withered under the searing heat of trial. (Lessing)
The Israelites must have felt like the psalmist Heman (not to be confused with Haman the villain from the book of Esther). Heman wrote what might be the most depressing psalm—a psalm that reads in part: “Why, Lord, do you reject me and hide your face from me? 15 From my youth I have suffered and been close to death; I have borne your terrors and am in despair. 16 Your wrath has swept over me; your terrors have destroyed me. 17 All day long they surround me like a flood; they have completely engulfed me. 18 You have taken from me friend and neighbor—…” While many other psalms end with at least a word of hope, Heman’s final words are: “…darkness is my closest friend.” (Psalm 88:14-18)
There is no way to avoid darkness in this sin-filled world. Bosses are often overdemanding. Co-workers and friends disappoint. Pandemics wreak havoc. The strength and vigor we enjoyed in youth leave us. Loved ones die. Like Heman said, darkness is our closest friend—a constant companion. Or is it? The Apostle John flips on a switch when he writes: “In him [Jesus] was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines [present tense: keeps shining] in the darkness...” (John 1:4-5)
In the person of Jesus, God’s fireworks of love blazes across our darkness. When God said to Moses: “I will redeem Israel with an outstretched arm...” (Ex. 6:6) his point was, “Moses, I know it looks like I’m sitting on my hands, but I’m not. In time I will stretch out my arm and clobber Egypt with a blow they’ll never forget.” God’s declaration reminds me of another great act of redemption he secured with “an outstretched arm.” Is that not how Jesus literally saved us? He stretched out his arms on the cross to gather the world sins to himself and sink into hell, the way a swimmer holding on to cannonball would sink. And because he has done that, Jesus’ arms remain outstretched to you—to pronounce forgiveness, to embrace and to encourage, to gather you to himself so that you will one day enter the heavenly promised land.
In the meanwhile, how do you deal with those days of darkness when it seems as if God is absent and uncaring? The architecture in Eastern Orthodox churches gives us a good idea. At the front of these churches, you’ll see a screen or wall that separates the nave where the congregation sits from the chancel where the altar and cross are placed. You can see the altar and the cross through an opening in the screen, but that’s all you can see. What else is behind the screen, you wonder, just as you want to know what God has exactly in store for you tomorrow, or what he is up to when he lets hardship dominate as Pharaoh seemed to dominate the Israelites. But God hasn’t revealed those details. They’re not necessary for you to know that God loves you and is in the business of saving you. For that truth, focus on the cross of Christ. That truth alone assures us that all is well with us, and all will be well with us no matter what we have to suffer here and now. (Bradford Scott - adapted)
Moses came to understand this truth. Shortly before the Israelites took their final step into the Promised Land 40 years later, he reminded them: “…the Lord took you and brought you out of the iron-smelting furnace, out of Egypt, to be the people of his inheritance, as you now are.” (Deut. 4:20) You may be in an iron-smelting furnace right now dealing with all kinds of challenges and hurts. This is not evidence that God doesn’t care about you. Quite the contrary. He’s refining you for your home in heaven because you are his people, his family. So even though being God’s man or woman is never easy, it’s always worth it and it’s something that we never have to do on our own.
We agree with Luther who wrote: “Faith does not despair of the God who sends trouble. Faith does not consider him away or an enemy. Faith rises above all this and sees God’s fatherly heart behind his unfriendly exterior.” (AE: 14:59) How exactly does faith rise above the darkness to see God’s fatherly heart? Like an enterprising 3-year-old who stacks his storybooks and then stands on them so he can see and grab any treats that might have been left on the kitchen counter, so we stand on the Word of God—on those many promises God has been whispering to us since we were infants. This divine talk will one day lead to divine action on our behalf, action that you’ll see and perceive, even as Moses and the Israelites would see and perceive in God’s dealings with Pharaoh. Find out how when you join us again next Sunday to keep learning how we are made for more even if being God’s man or woman is never easy. Amen.
SERMON NOTES
(pre-service warm up) Today’s sermon text is too long for Pastor to read out loud before the sermon. Do so now on your own and underline passages you find puzzling and circle those you find comforting.
Compare Moses’ and Aaron’s first stop in Egypt with their second stop.
Pharoah mocked: “Who is the Lord that I should listen to him?” What two examples did the sermon give of how we might be guilty of the same sinful attitude? Now describe one more example.
Pharaoh not only rebuffed Moses’ demand that the Israelites be freed from work, how did he also make their work more difficult? What was the result?
If Moses or you and I were writing the story of Israel’s exodus, it would have gone like this. (Fill in the blanks and add explanatory notes to each chapter.)
Chapter 1: The _________ Bush
Chapter 2: The ___________ with Pharaoh
Chapter 3: The Land of __________ and Honey
Why did God allow Moses (and why does he allow us) to stand bewildered in the dark shadows of uncertainty and failure?
In what seemingly disappointing and weak way did God seek to encourage Moses and the Israelites?
The Israelites must have felt like the psalmist Heman who wrote what might be the most depressing psalm—Psalm 88. The final words of this psalm are: _________________________.
Darkness is everywhere in this sin-filled world. But according to the Apostle John, who is the light that KEEPS shining through this darkness?
(2 questions) What was God’s point when he said to Moses: “I will redeem Israel with an outstretched arm...” (Ex. 6:6)? How does that wording remind you of another saving act of God’s?
When it seems as if God is absent and uncaring during the dark days of your life, how can picturing the architecture inside an Eastern Orthodox church set you right again?
We agree with Luther who wrote: “Faith does not ____________ of the God who sends trouble. Faith does not consider him away or an ______________. Faith ______________ above all this and sees God’s ________________ heart behind his _________________ exterior.”
How can we practice the kind of faith Luther describes?
(to ponder at home) In the first question of this review, you were to read the sermon text and underline puzzling passages. Perhaps you underlined how God said: “I am the Lord. 3 I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name the Lord I did not make myself fully known to them. 4 I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, where they resided as foreigners.’” (Ex. 6:2-4)
The patriarchs did in fact know the name of the Lord because they used that name to worship (cf. Gen. 12). Either we have a mistranslation and God was saying, “Didn’t I also make myself fully known to the patriarchs as the Lord? Didn’t I even an establish a covenant with them?” (John Jeske, WLQ V. 93:2, p. 138)
Or, if the translation is correct, then God is saying that the Israelites of Moses’ day would come to know him even more clearly than the patriarchs did. Like an eye doctor who cycles through a series of lenses until he finds the right prescription for you, God was going to bring Israel’s understanding of his love and faithfulness into sharper focus with every exodus promise and miracle. What promise of God’s brings his love for you into sharpest focus?
