Exodus - God's Call and Our Response
Heavenly father, we thank you. We thank you for your word, and we thank you for our brother and servant and pastor, pastor Luke, as he brings the word this morning. Lord, we pray your blessing over him. We pray, father, for a clarity of mind and a clarity of speech. We pray, father, that your word, would move powerfully in our lives to transform us as we respond to it in faith.
Pastor Cameron:In Jesus name. Amen.
Pastor Luke:Well, good morning, everybody. Morning. I'm really excited to open the word with you today in Exodus. We're gonna be in Exodus chapter four. We're gonna be picking up the narrative there.
Pastor Luke:So go ahead and if you want, you can open up your Bibles or your notes there. If you don't have a Bible, there should be one in the pew in front of you. So Exodus, we're kind of going through this whole book. We're gonna be spending, you know, a good portion of time this year going through this series. And Pastor Cameron, the first week that he started talking about the book of Exodus, he highlighted what are sort of the four key themes or ideas that we're emphasizing as we go through the book of Exodus, and they all focus around God.
Pastor Luke:So those four themes of Exodus are God's promises, God's faithfulness, God's moral law, and God's presence. And these four themes are just absolutely all the way throughout the book of Exodus. And we're gonna we've been talking about God's promises and how he's been faithful to Israel despite their existence in slavery. God's faithfulness is tied deeply into that, and then when we're gonna get to later in the book, we'll start talking more about God's moral law and more about God's presence, and even today, we're gonna be talking quite a bit about God's presence and its significance to us and our lives. And so as we're kind of reading the book of Exodus, one of the reasons we're doing the book of Exodus is that it is in some sense, it's the book that gets repeated and referenced.
Pastor Luke:It is such an important story, just to the Jewish people or to the Old Testament, but even to ourselves as Christians today. The thing about the Bible is sometimes we kind of like the way we treat the Bible, we put it on Instagram posts, social media things, it gets hung up on posters, we memorize short little verses. We have a tendency to kind of chunk the Bible into small little bits and pieces, and so what that means is that we tend to kind of see the Bible as kind of isolated from each other at times. But really the fact of the matter is is that the Bible is almost hyperlinked together. It it kind of rhymes in a sense, not in like roses are red and violets are blue kind of rhyming, but it rhymes with its ideas.
Pastor Luke:It has patterns that repeat over and over again. There are stories and situations that when we read that, we're supposed to go, oh, that kind of reminds me of this. And that's the way the whole Bible is connected in the book of Exodus is one of these archetypal core stories that gets repeated over and over throughout the Bible. We're gonna hear a little bit about that today. But if you think about just general, the general idea, because the book of Exodus and its main storyline is generally pretty well known, right?
Pastor Luke:The idea is that Israel is in slavery underneath an evil king. They're underneath pharaoh. What happens? There is a conflict, a deliverer, an intermediary comes and says, let my people go. There is a conflict between God and this evil king.
Pastor Luke:The evil king is overthrown. The people come to the Red Sea, and then they pass through the water and they are saved. They come to a mountain where they meet God in His presence. And then they're given this moral law. They're given a sort of a commission to go and be His people.
Pastor Luke:They travel through the wilderness for forty years before entering into the promised land. That's the general gist of the story in like thirty seconds. But what if I told you that that whole story that's going to take over the place of the whole book of Exodus has already happened once in the four chapters we've already read. See, one of the things is that that small little exodus, that big exodus, has already happened in a small way. Moses has already gone through his own exodus.
Pastor Luke:If we think about the story so far, Moses himself was born underneath an angry king who wanted to kill him. There were some women who acted as an intermediary and helped save him. He was placed into a river of reeds, and he was floated and he was found. And then he later, as an adult, he again angered Pharaoh because he killed an Egyptian. And he what?
Pastor Luke:He had to flee. And where did he go? To the wilderness. And he spent how long out in the wilderness? Forty years.
Pastor Luke:And then what happens, and this is where we got to last year, he came to a mountain, the same mountain that will end up later in the in the book, and he comes and he meets God's presence. And what is he given? He's given a calling. He's given a commission, a word from the Lord. Moses has already gone through his own mini exodus in the story, And he's this archetype.
Pastor Luke:He's the one who has gone before through this process, and then he's going to become we'll see by the end of this sermon that he's become transformed in a way, and he's going to come and he's going to lead the people of Israel through their own exodus, through a place that he has already gone until they get to that mountain where they're given the 10 commandments. So this is what I mean when I say that the Bible rhymes. It's got its own sort of sense and logic. The story is meant to repeat and echo itself. And so even today, as we'll read some parts, even some strange parts of this story today, it's there because it echoes and it rhymes with other parts of the story that will come later.
Pastor Luke:So we're kind of picking up this story in the middle of the story today. We're in Exodus four, and Moses is already he's left Egypt. He's on the mountain. He's encountered this bush that is burning but not consumed, and God has called to him and he's talking to him, and God has given him his name, and then God is about and is in the middle of giving Moses a task, a calling. But I wanna start before we pick up at that moment, I wanna start with a question.
Pastor Luke:Who in the world is Moses? Like, not not like, who is he? Like, like, like, but like, what's his identity? How does he think of himself? Who like, if you were to sit down and and kind of answer, you know, we all have these kind of conversations all the time.
Pastor Luke:You might have a couple of them today. You say, oh, hello, my name is oh, what do you do for a living? Oh, I do this for oh, are you from here? Oh, no, I'm from da da da da da. Right?
Pastor Luke:Those kind of things that we kind of conceptualize ourselves as like, what are the things that I think of myself as? Who in the world is Moses? Moses was born right to Jewish parents, but not primarily raised by Jewish parents. He grew up primarily there's some element that he did grow up a little bit in a Jewish home and has some of his Jewish heritage. But then he was educated and he was part of the royal pharaoh family because he was the adopted son of pharaoh's daughter.
Pastor Luke:So he's the most part of the most important family in the entire kingdom. So is he Jewish? Or is he Egyptian? Even a question that I'll come back to later is which of those two languages does he speak better? Does he speak Hebrew better?
Pastor Luke:Or does he speak Egyptian better? Who is Moses? He comes to a place where he's an adult, and he sees a Hebrew man being beaten because he's a slave. And Moses kind of makes this decision to kill the Egyptian slave driver. And and you gotta ask yourself, what was Moses thinking?
Pastor Luke:Like, what was he hoping was going to happen? Was he hoping that the Hebrew man that he saved would go and perhaps slowly Moses would become a rebel leader? Because that didn't happen, actually. The Hebrew man went and told a whole bunch of other Hebrew people, and those Hebrew people eventually told the Egyptians because Pharaoh eventually found out. And so he wasn't really necessarily in like, he came and tried to even mediate this argument later, right, between these two Hebrew men.
Pastor Luke:Says, Oh no, no, no, why are you fighting one another? And they threatened him. They almost blackmailed him and said, What are you going to do? Kill us like you killed that other Egyptian? So Moses wasn't accepted as this kind of rebel leader that perhaps he was trying to be, maybe, maybe not.
Pastor Luke:And then what does he do? He runs out. He goes into a foreign land, a place that is neither Hebrew nor Egyptian, And he becomes a shepherd of someone else's sheep. Right? He doesn't even own the sheep he's watching.
Pastor Luke:Who is Moses? Is he a shepherd of someone else's sheep? Is he part of Pharaoh's royal family? Is he a Jewish revolutionary? Is he just an orphaned Jewish boy?
Pastor Luke:Who in the world is Moses? How does he think of himself? Who Moses is called to be is going to determine the obedience that he's called to. If he's just a shepherd, well then what's he going to do? He's going to shepherd that sheep.
Pastor Luke:If he's part of the royal family, what's he going do? Well, he's going to uphold the kingdom of Egypt. If he's Hebrew, does that mean he needs to be a slave? Who Moses is, his identity determines his calling. And here's the thing is that when we're talking today primarily about Moses about God's calling on Moses' life, The thing is is that I believe that God has a calling on your life.
Pastor Luke:God is calling you too to an identity and to an obedience. Yep. Right? This is the core of the message here today. I'm telling you this up front so that when we read the passage, you can hear this in your own life.
Pastor Luke:God has an identity that He is calling you to, and he has an obedience that is going to flow out of that identity. And I want to make a couple things kind of clear about that before we move on and dig into this. Because if the God of the universe has a calling on your life, you need to hear it, and you need to hear it clearly. But I want to make some just brief, like, comments here. And the first one is just to say that you aren't Moses.
Pastor Luke:So I've heard this passage preached a number of times and particularly this particular part of the passage. And sometimes we like to put ourselves in the Bible as kind of a heroic, kind of like, great space and kind of consider ourselves in that sort of way. And so you might be tempted to to kind of come away from this and say, oh, well, God's gonna make me have me do this great thing. He might. But I want to clarify that Moses didn't actually want to do any of this.
Pastor Luke:We're going to read this, and Moses was not looking to be a revolutionary. He was very reluctant. He did not want to do this. This was an obedience he was not happy about. So you're not necessarily Moses, and that's not like a diss on you because nobody else in the Bible was Moses either.
Pastor Luke:Moses was top tier. He was the goat. The only other prophet or person in the Old Testament that kind of comes close to Moses' position and role with God is maybe Elijah. But everybody else who comes after Moses is like, yeah, I might be a prophet of the Lord, but I sure am not Moses because Moses was something else. Right?
Pastor Luke:So I I don't say that to belittle you. I just say that to recognize I don't think there's probably any Moseses in the room. That doesn't mean that God's calling on your life is any less important, significant, or changing. I think that God's call on our life has the impact to has the potential to impact our whole community, to change the whole direction of your family, to change the longevity of faith in our in your family and in our community. These are significant things.
Pastor Luke:So hear that. So don't I make all of this to say is that, like, Moses wasn't I don't want you to hear this passage and to say, sometimes, sometimes what we do is we will use the Bible or we'll use scripture or we'll say, God told me, in a way that we use it to justify what our heart already wants. So that's what I'm saying here, is don't misunderstand my sermon as an opportunity to say, Oh, I was already wanting X, Y, and Z. The desires of our hearts are not inherently bad, But I'm saying, don't take this as a way to justify something that is maybe just something you want and attribute God's word to it. You're not interacting with a burning bush.
Pastor Luke:But then here is finally to say is that God's identity and his obedience for you is actually probably not something you're gonna have to decipher today. My prayer right now in this very moment is that the Holy Spirit would just make very clear to you, what is that obedience that God's calling you to? What is that identity He's calling you to? I want you to hear that very clearly. It is likely something you are very aware of, but you've maybe perhaps just been pushing down and silencing.
Pastor Luke:So let's examine the pattern of Moses' exodus and calling so that we might prayerfully hear God's own call on our lives today. Can we do that? We're gonna start in verse one of chapter four, and we're gonna read this interaction. God has God has already said, Moses, you're gonna go lead my people. You're gonna go and say to Pharaoh, let my people go.
Pastor Luke:And this is Moses's response. Then Moses answered, but behold, they will not believe me or listen to my voice for they will say, the Lord did not appear to you. The Lord said to him, what is in your hand? He said, a staff. He said, throw it on the ground.
Pastor Luke:So he threw it on the ground, and it became a serpent, and Moses ran from it. He runs away from it. But the Lord said to Moses, put out your hand and catch it by the tail. So he put out his hand and he caught it, and it became a staff in his hand. That they may believe that the Lord, the God of their fathers, and the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob has appeared to you.
Pastor Luke:Again, the Lord said to him, put your hand inside your cloak. And he put his hand inside his cloak, and when he took it out, behold, his hand was leprous like snow. Then God said, put your hand back inside of your cloak. And he put his hand back inside his cloak, and when he took it out, behold, it was like the rest of his flesh. It was restored.
Pastor Luke:If they will not believe you, God said, or listen to the first sign, they may believe the latter sign. If they will not believe even these two signs or listen to your voice, you shall take some of the water from the Nile, pour it on the dry ground and the water that you take from the Nile will become blood on the dry ground. But Moses said to the Lord, oh my Lord, I am not eloquent either in the past or since I have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and of tongue. Then the Lord said to him, who has made man's mouth? Who makes him mute or deaf or seeing or blind?
Pastor Luke:Is it not I the Lord? Now therefore go and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak. Okay. So Moses' reaction, right, he said first he says, Lord, how if I go to these people, how are they gonna know? The Lord gives Moses his name.
Pastor Luke:And then Moses is like, even if I show up and I say, this is your name, they're still not gonna listen to me. And he begins to give these three different signs to Moses, each more miraculous than the next. The turning of the staff into what we can presume is probably a deadly snake because Moses ran away from it. And then he comes back over and I here's here's something about me you don't maybe or maybe don't know. I don't like snakes.
Pastor Luke:I I I don't like reptiles. Like like, yeah, like, it's like even even friendly ones. I don't like them. Like, they creep me out. Like, they're just like, their skin just kinda moves.
Pastor Luke:So, like, I don't know that I I don't know. Like, knowing that there's a deadly snake there and going and grabbing it by its tail, which is not a smart thing. Right? And Moses does and performs this sign, and then he's given this other sign where he's able to essentially allow his hand to become afflicted with an incurable degenerative disease of some sort. It may be leprosy or may not.
Pastor Luke:The word leprosy can refer to a lot of things in the Bible. But he's able to heal it and experience it on command by sliding his hand in and out of his cloak. And then finally he's given the miracle of taking the water from the Nile, which like Egypt is centered around the Nile. Like this is their lifeblood. This is where their crops, their whole civilization depends on the lifeblood of the Nile, that water.
Pastor Luke:And Moses, simply by scooping some out and pouring it on the ground, able to turn it into actual blood. So these miracles that God gives to Moses are significant because they will speak to the people of Israel, but they'll speak even louder to Pharaoh and saying, this is not just any mere magician. This is a threat to you because and so these are significant. And Moses is still like, I don't know. Like, you know, he's just like, sure, like, those are signs I can do those now because I just did them.
Pastor Luke:But like, what what am I gonna do with like, my tongue? Even as we read that, I love the way this verse this verse is even more cumbersome. Verse 10, in the Hebrew, the English makes it a little bit more eloquent. But Moses said, oh, my Lord, I am not eloquent, either in the past, or since I have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and tongue. He's kind of like, neither today or now or in the future or in the past am I able to speak well, like or good, I should say.
Pastor Luke:You know? So he's just like he's not very good at speaking. It's kind of cumbersome. And a lot of people sometimes think there's couple options we have here. A lot of people suppose that Moses perhaps had a stutter or had some other speech impediment.
Pastor Luke:Now I was actually talking about this passage a little while ago with my brother-in-law. His name is Dima and serves at a church in Erie. And he I think he taught on this passage one Sunday, and he said, you know, he thought that perhaps Moses just simply knows Egypt knows Egyptian much better than he knows Hebrew. Because he grew up in the Egyptian house, and he did not speak Hebrew as kind of his day to day language. If you know anybody, or if you yourself speak multiple languages, there's one language that you're going to be better at usually, unless you've worked really hard at it, and the other in which you're not going to feel quite as competent in.
Pastor Luke:And so Hebrew might be the language that Moses knew as a small child, but it's not the one he spoke the most of as an adult. And so now he's going to go and lead a whole bunch of Hebrews, and he's going be expected to be a Hebrew and speak the language. And he's like, I don't speak so good. So that's one option I think is interesting that I think perhaps is another option there. So Moses says, he's like, I'm not gonna speak well.
Pastor Luke:I can't be your mouthpiece to the people if I just can't even speak what you've given me to speak very well. And notice how God responds to every one of these obstacles. God's answer to all of that is to say, I'm going to be with you. I'm going to be with you. I'm gonna give you these miracles to perform.
Pastor Luke:I'm going to be with your mouth even is what he says. God's answer to Moses' objections is is to offer his own presence. Here's something for us to note is that God's presence matters more than the obstacles. We can get so so fixated when it comes to the obstacles where she's like, oh, you know, I'm really busy that day. You know, like, I'm just not very good at that.
Pastor Luke:I'm not very comfortable with that. What if this happens? What if that happens? I can't control that. I did that once before.
Pastor Luke:It didn't go very well. We're the masters of identifying obstacles and hurdles that are in front of us. We're so good at it. When we do that, we're just getting into this place where we're ignoring and just assuming that like, well, that's gonna stop me. I can't there's no way I can get around that.
Pastor Luke:And God's answer isn't necessarily to make the obstacle go away. His answer is to say, yeah, but I'm gonna be with you. And me being with you means that that obstacle is not that big of a deal. My presence is going to be with you. We're going to figure it out together.
Pastor Luke:Yeah, maybe that obstacle is going to come into play. Maybe it won't. But no matter what happens, I'm going to be with you. That's God's promise to Moses. I think this is important.
Pastor Luke:This is key. Because so often we get into this place where we just want things to just work out magically. It makes me think of the storm on the Sea Of Galilee, the the the disciples in the middle of this storm so scared as they're on this boat, and then they see Jesus, and Jesus is walking out on the water. And what does he do? Does he calm the storm and then invite Peter out?
Pastor Luke:Or does he invite Peter out in the middle of the storm? That Christ's presence, his being with his disciples, was more significant than the raging storm that was going on all around them. And it's true here. So Moses has kind of given these objections, and God has been patient. God has been kind.
Pastor Luke:He's been saying, he's been very affirming, and he's been saying, here are the things I'm going to give you to help you overcome these obstacles. And then what happens? Does this kind of assuage Moses' fear? Does this help Moses go, okay, God's going be with me. I need to not focus on these obstacles.
Pastor Luke:I need to keep my eyes up on him. What does he say in verse 13? He says this instead. But he said, oh my Lord, please send someone else. Then the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses, and he said, is there not Aaron, your brother, the Levite?
Pastor Luke:I know that he can speak well. Behold, he is coming out to meet you, and when he sees you, he will be glad in his heart. You shall speak to him and put the words in his mouth, and I will be with your mouth and with his mouth. Notice God saying, where is he gonna be? I'm gonna be with your mouth.
Pastor Luke:I'm gonna be with his mouth. It's all about his presence. And I will teach you both what to do. Verse 16, he shall speak for you to the people, and he shall be your mouth, and you shall be as God to him. And take in your hand this staff with which you shall do all the signs.
Pastor Luke:God is gentle with Moses' doubts and anxieties, but is very firm with his stubbornness. God is very gentle. Moses is like, But God, I can't do that. What if they don't believe me? What if my tongue stumbles all over the place?
Pastor Luke:God is gentle. He is affirming. He's letting Moses know, I'm gonna be with you through all of that. He's not dismissive. God never says, Just get over it.
Pastor Luke:God's gentle and kind and patient with him until it gets to the moment where Moses just says, I don't want to go. Send someone else. All of a sudden, the text says, and God's anger was kindled against him. God became angry because Moses put his foot down and said, No, like a kid. Honestly, we do that, don't we?
Pastor Luke:We are stubborn people. I know I'm a stubborn person. And so God is gentle, but he is firm when it comes to a stubbornness or a hardness of heart. That is when the Lord begins to say, no, no, you you're you're you're gonna go. And he gives one final concession.
Pastor Luke:He says, okay, if you are still so concerned that my presence with your tongue is not enough, I'm gonna give you Aaron. And then he affirms his presence again. I'm gonna be with your mouth, I'm gonna be with his mouth, I'm gonna give you words to speak, you're gonna speak them to him, and he's gonna speak them to the people. It's kinda complicated, but I guess you want it that way. And so this is God's promise, and he says this is another provision, another way we're gonna help make this obstacle not such a big deal.
Pastor Luke:So God, even in his anger, gives yet another concession, another grace onto Moses again and again. But again, the primary promise is his presence, is him being with him in the midst of his calling, in the midst of this immense call. I don't wanna make it sound like Moses had no reason to be fearful because Moses did. Right? Moses is one guy who is later in life by this time, and he was a refugee.
Pastor Luke:He was a fugitive from Egypt, and Egypt was in no like, in short terms was just the world superpower of the time. You did not have a bigger nation of more impact than Egypt. For crying out loud, we still have all of their buildings. We still go and dig them up. This world superpower built things that we still haven't even found all of them because they're underneath the sand.
Pastor Luke:So this huge empire, and Moses is going to go up to the king of this empire, who is thought and believed to be a god, and say, Hey, you know all of us Hebrews and the people who are building all these things for you, you're going to let us go, right? And he's nervous about it. That's understandable. It's a big calling that God has given Moses. But there's something even bigger than the calling and bigger than the superpower of Egypt, and that's God's presence with Moses.
Pastor Luke:That's the thing that puts all the obstacles, the bigness of the calling, it puts it down into perspective because God is going to be with him. So this is the calling, this is the identity. You're going to be my spokesperson. You're going to be part of the people of Israel and you're going to lead them out. Now then what's going to happen next?
Pastor Luke:If you've been reading ahead the book and you've been reading here, you might be wondering what I'm going to have to say about this, but I promise I've got something to say about it. So we're going to pick up in verse 18, and we're gonna read this next section. And we're gonna see that Moses' heart is maybe not all the way in on this calling yet. So verse 18 of chapter four, Moses went back to Jethro, his father-in-law, and said to him, please let me go back to my brothers in Egypt to see whether they are still alive. Makes me wonder if Moses doubted whether his brother Aaron was alive or not, even though God said that he would be.
Pastor Luke:And Jethro said to Moses, go in peace. And the Lord said to Moses and Midian, go back to Egypt for all the men who were seeking your life are dead. Meaning that he's going back to meet a new pharaoh, the pharaoh who had chased him out previously is dead. So nobody is alive who would remember Moses' crime. Verse 20, so Moses took his wife and his sons and he had them ride on a donkey and went back to the land of Egypt, and Moses took the staff of God in his hand.
Pastor Luke:Notice this is a small note, but notice that that shepherding staff is now called the staff of God. God's presence changed what that was.
Pastor Cameron:Yeah. Yep.
Pastor Luke:Right? It's it's it's not it's it's not that it was magic to begin with or something like that or hocus pocus, but God's presence changed the quality of that staff. So it's no longer called Moses' staff or it's no longer called a shepherd's staff. It's God's staff. Just as Moses is God's man.
Pastor Luke:Okay. Verse 21. And the Lord said to Moses, when you go back to Egypt and see what you do before Pharaoh, all the miracles that I have put in your power, but I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go. Then you shall say to Pharaoh, thus says the Lord, Israel is my firstborn son. And I say to you, let my son go that he may serve me or worship me.
Pastor Luke:If you refuse to let him go, behold, I will kill your firstborn. Verse 24, at a lodging place on the way, the Lord met him and sought to put him to death. Then Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son's foreskin and touched it to Moses' feet with it and said, surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me. So he let him alone. It was then that she said, a bridegroom of blood because of the circumcision.
Pastor Luke:K. I promise all of that has something to do with the story. K. So first, there's kind of two key things here I wanna talk about. First is what I'm gonna say is Pharaoh's disobedience.
Pastor Luke:We got to that phrase, and it's gonna come up later in the story, where it says, God hardened Pharaoh's heart. Now you and I, we might all sit there and say, well, sounds really harsh of God. To harden Pharaoh's heart. To kind of like make it sounds like God is making Pharaoh choose disobedience and the consequences of that. K?
Pastor Luke:Okay. So what does what does that mean? Now this is the way that I think I understand it, and I think makes most sense of what is God's character and of what's and honors what's in the scripture. And that's to say is to kind of illustrate it with this this quote or this saying that was popular among the Puritans. This is a Puritan quote.
Pastor Luke:And that is to say that the same sun that melts the ice also hardens the clay. The same sun, right? You've got a sun up in the sky, it melts the ice. It makes it get soft and become water. That same sun doing the same thing can also harden clay.
Pastor Luke:And the idea here is that God's love, God's patience, God's call to obedience, even this very sermon that I'm giving you, as I am prayerfully opening the word and saying this is what God says, you're all hearing the same message, but you're all left with a choice. Do you listen to it? Are you softened by it? Or do you say, I don't buy what this preacher's saying? Are you hardened by it?
Pastor Luke:It's the same thing, But what's happening in your heart is a different thing altogether. There's these two sort of options. As we go through the rest of the story of Exodus, we're gonna get into the plagues next week. But Moses comes time and time and again to Pharaoh, and he says, Pharaoh, let my people go. And Pharaoh says, no.
Pastor Luke:And then a plague comes, and then the whole thing starts over and over again. And Pharaoh is given abundance, exactly nine plagues, nine different times to heed God's call and warning to let the Israelites go. And before that last one is where this passage comes into play. And then it says, and God hardened Pharaoh's heart. Didn't harden his heart at the beginning of the story.
Pastor Luke:It was after a consistent choice by Pharaoh to over and over again disregard, not heed, and disobey the word of the Lord. God's hardening is the affirming of Pharaoh's persistent choice of disobedience. God's hardening of Pharaoh's heart is just saying, alright, Pharaoh, you've made your choice clear because you've said no nine times, and so I am just going to affirm what you seem to have persistently chosen. We hear this similar kind of language when we talked about in the book of Romans last year. At the beginning of the book, there are those whose hearts become hardened and darkened because they choose sin over and over and over.
Pastor Luke:Not heeding the word of the Lord, they become hardened until they no longer feel the conviction, no longer hear the call of the Lord towards obedience. Remember, we're talking about a call of identity from the Lord that leads to a call of obedience. And so here, Pharaoh has heard a call to obedience, to let the people go, and what has he done? He has ignored. He has disregarded.
Pastor Luke:He has disrespected. And his heart becomes hardened as a result of his own choice and God's affirming of that choice. So that's one thing that we can say there, and I think that's important for us to recognize of what happens when we get to a place where God has given us a call and we've ignored and ignored and ignored. It's a warning for us. Now, the second part of the second story where we come to Moses stopping for the night, he's at a camp, a lodging place, and the Lord met him and sought to put him to death.
Pastor Luke:And Zipporah took a flint and cut her son's foreskin and touched it to Moses' feet and said, surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me. And so he let him alone, and it was then that she said a bridegroom of blood because of the circumcision. Alright. This is probably one of the most confusing and complicated passages in the entire Bible. And, like, I barely scratched the surface in, like, reading and researching on this passage.
Pastor Luke:It there's tons here. I could spend a lot of time, which I just simply don't have, giving you a bunch of options and walking you through the nuances because the thing is is that even though it sounds really obscure, like if you notice just how many indefinite pronouns are in this passage, right, at the beginning at the lodging place, the way the Lord met him, who's him, and sought to put him to death. Right? In English, it's not very clear. In Hebrew, it's even less clear.
Pastor Luke:So we're in this place of how do we understand this passage? And we've got a ton of options, but rather than walk you through a whole bunch of details and make an argument and say, oh, it could be this, it could be this, I wanna make sure you understand what's clear from the passage. I want you to understand that what is primarily clear here is you don't need a magic Hebrew word for me to give you. You don't need something to understand this passage. The clues that are important are right here.
Pastor Luke:What did God just finish talking about when He was talking to Moses about? He was talking about the final consequence of disobedience, which was the plague that would kill all firstborns in Egypt. So a death of the firstborn. What then comes here? Death.
Pastor Luke:Because why? A firstborn was not circumcised. At least we're going to assume. And so you come to this place where a child or Moses, one of the two, is in danger from the Lord's wrath because of disobedience. Circumcision was the core element of what?
Pastor Luke:Of identity. How did the Jewish people know they were God's people? Because all of their males were circumcised. This was the thing that set them apart from all other cultures. It was the thing that was given to the father of the nation, Abraham, to set them apart.
Pastor Luke:Says this will be a sign between me and your people. This is the way of saying that you are my firstborn, and that's how God describes Israel as his firstborn son. And so you are not to do this, and so Moses knows this. Moses is going to Egypt, and one of his sons, probably his firstborn son, is not circumcised. Didn't we just talk about how Moses is having this wrestling with his identity?
Pastor Luke:He would who is he? Is he Egyptian? Or is he Hebrew? Here he is. He's not acting like a Hebrew.
Pastor Luke:He's not acting like one of God's chosen people. And instead, for some reason, whether by oversight or stubbornness or reluctance, his child isn't circumcised. And then it comes into this place where God's like kind of confronts him in this kind of way. We see this happen with Jacob, where Jacob wrestles with God. We see these kinds of stories where these important and key characters are going through a wilderness.
Pastor Luke:They've had an experience. They are coming back, and then God encounters them and says, Are you going to hang in there with me? Are Are you going to be obedient all the way? And here, Moses wasn't being obedient. He hadn't taken care of his household.
Pastor Luke:And so his wife had to step in and be what? A mediator of sorts. How many times have women showed up as key important people who have saved Moses in this story? A lot. And again, his wife shows up, and she circumcises their son, and God relents for the obedience of that.
Pastor Luke:So what is clear from this confusing passage is simply to say this, that the lack of circumcision displayed a lack of obedience to calling an identity. There might be questions of just exactly what the who's, who, and why, and how's this all playing out. But what we see is clear is that there was a lack of obedience that was happening. We were talking about Pharaoh. We're contrasting in the story with Pharaoh.
Pastor Luke:Pharaoh who's going to be disobedient and disobedient and disobedient until his heart is hardened. And here Moses is still being disobedient, but there is grace and then there is an opportunity and then God is gracious and moves on. And so this is the goodness of God here. God wants his man, Moses, to be all the way in. So often we can get so excited.
Pastor Luke:Maybe we feel like God is calling us to something that feels big, feels important, feels exciting, but then we neglect what is ordinary, common, expected obedience. And we expect God to bless this big thing we feel like we need to do, but we've neglected just simple obedience in this part of our life. I think that's a good word for us as well. So that's the story in Exodus. That's God's call to Moses.
Pastor Luke:I wanna turn and I wanna begin to allow us to kind of think more here and now, more you and me. We're not at a burning bush. God hasn't told any of us, I think, to go and free a bunch of people from a pharaoh. What is God's call? I said that I believe God has a call and identity on your life.
Pastor Luke:That's what I started the sermon with. What is that call and what is that identity? Jesus makes several calls and invitations. He makes more than we're going to be able to cover today. I just want to highlight two key ones, I think.
Pastor Luke:Jesus is constantly inviting people in the gospels. He's constantly saying, come. I have a calling to you. He goes to his disciples, and he says, come and follow me. We too are expressed and given that same invitation from Jesus.
Pastor Luke:Come and follow me. Jesus says this in Matthew chapter 11 verse 28 through 30. He says, come to me all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.
Pastor Luke:Do you hear that call? That invitation? Jesus says, Come to me, all you who are burdened, who are weary, who are heavy laden, because I want to give you rest. I'm going to put a different yoke on your shoulders, one that is light and easy. It's not that don't don't mishear because Jesus doesn't say I'm gonna take nothing all of it off your shoulders and put nothing back there.
Pastor Luke:He does put a yoke back, but it's a different type of yoke, a different type of burden. One that is light, that is easy, that is life giving to us. We live in a world that is busy, hurried, and frantic. We need to hear this call to Jesus to come and receive his rest, the rest of the gospel and of grace. Jesus similarly gives another call in John seven thirty seven.
Pastor Luke:On the last day of the feast, the great day, Jesus stood up and cried out, 'If anyone thirsts, come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. Jesus elsewhere said that he is the bread of life. Come and eat from me. Jesus' invitation over and over again to his disciples is to come taste and see that the Lord is good.
Pastor Luke:He's saying, come and know me. Come to the cross and experience an identity shift. We all here are born into this world, and we are given identities by our parents, by society, by our own imaginations. But Jesus says, I have an identity for you. I am calling you towards an identity where you are no longer your own, but you become a son, you become a daughter of a good, good father.
Pastor Luke:You are now changed. Who you are is different. You are no I am no longer Luke from Columbus, Chicago, and now Jamestown. That's not my story. My story is I'm Luke, a sinner saved by grace and redeemed for the Lord's glory.
Pastor Luke:That becomes the story of you When you heed God's calling in his identity as he calls you to be a follower of him, that's the invitation that everyone is extended. It's the invitation extended in this message. But it's up to you to heed that invitation, to heed that call. So that's the identity that we are called towards. But we're also called towards a life of obedience.
Pastor Luke:Matthew chapter 16 verse 24 through 26 says this, says, then Jesus told his disciples, if anyone would come up after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his soul? Or what shall a man give in return for his soul? Jesus is asking this rhetorical question.
Pastor Luke:He's saying, What is the cost of your soul? What is the cost of eternal life? What is the point if you get to be Lord of your life, but at the end of it you have lost everything? Jesus says, Come follow me, and by becoming not the Lord of your life anymore, becoming obedient, picking up your cross and following after the way of Jesus, living like Jesus, loving like Jesus, and serving like Jesus. When we do that as obedience out of our identity, hear me, this is key, is that the identity comes first.
Pastor Luke:The identity comes first. If you're just like, oh, I can do all those good things. I can be like Jesus. I can smile and be nice, and I can give to people. That's great.
Pastor Luke:But if if you don't know the father, the father doesn't know you. You you you have to have a relationship with God. You have to understand that those good things, that living like Jesus, that obedience earns you nothing in the economy of God. Those are things that we do because of who we are, who we've become. Not in a way to become that person.
Pastor Luke:There are tons of great people out there who just simply don't know God. The cosmic world, God does not operate with these magic scales. We all kind of think, Well, I'm going to get to heaven, and on one side of the scales is all the bad things I did and all the good things. As long as it's kind of mostly even or there's a little bit more good than bad, I'll get into heaven. And that's not the gospel.
Pastor Luke:That's not Christianity. That's moralism. That's cultural Christianity. That is a lie that so many people believe. The truth is that it doesn't matter how good you are if you don't know God.
Pastor Luke:What is broken is not our behavior. What is broken is our relationship with God. Sin is the thing that does break that relationship and does have an impact on it, but God is gracious. God is forgiving. Moses messes up so many times.
Pastor Luke:Moses was not perfect, but God was gracious. God was kind. God had a relationship with Moses. Jesus is inviting you into an identity that outflows into obedience, not the other way around. One last verse I want to run to, and that is Hebrews chapter four, verse one.
Pastor Luke:This is key because this is referencing Exodus. Notice the Bible is rhyming. It says, therefore, while the promise of entering his rest, talking about both the rest of Sabbath but the rest of the promised land, says, The rest still stands. Let us fear lest any of you should seem to have failed to reach it. For good news came to us just as to them, but the message they heard did not benefit them because they were not united by faith with those who listened.
Pastor Luke:It goes on in verse seven. It says again, He appoints to a certain day today, saying through David so long afterward in the words already quoted, Today, if you hear his voice, don't harden your hearts like Pharaoh. For if Joshua had given them rest, God would have not spoken of another day later on. So then there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God that's you and I, for whoever has entered God's rest has also rested from his work as God did from his. Let us therefore strive to enter that rest so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience.
Pastor Luke:For the word of God is living and active and sharper than any two edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joint and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him whom we must give count. What is this passage saying? He says, There is another promised land. There is another rest that you and I are promised.
Pastor Luke:See, you and I, we're in the middle of the Exodus story. We're just in the wilderness right now. We're walking through the wilderness because there was another Moses. There was a greater Moses who was obedient when God's call came. Jesus met with God in a garden, and there he wrestled with God because he knew that in front of him was the cross, was Good Friday, was his death and crucifixion, and his burial was in front of him.
Pastor Luke:And Jesus wrestled with God. He said, Lord, if there's any way for this to pass, let there be another way. But what does he say that's different than Moses? Let not my will, but your will. Jesus was here to come and be a greater Moses because you and I in this whole world were underneath the pharaoh of this world, underneath sin, underneath captivity.
Pastor Luke:We needed redeemed. We needed a conflict. We needed the ruler of this world and sin and death to be overthrown. Jesus was called and was submissive to the Father's will to do exactly that. When he did that, he freed you and I.
Pastor Luke:You have been freed from slavery to sin. You have been freed from the darkness of this world. That was bought by the blood of Jesus on the cross and then promised and given to us in fullness in his resurrection from the dead three days later. That is where our faith stands. That is where our identity starts.
Pastor Luke:That is the gospel. God is calling you to a life defined by the gospel. Don't harden your heart to that call. All what I'm trying to do here is just explain the gospel in the story of the Bible here, is simply to say that you're not your own anymore. You're being called.
Pastor Luke:The Lord has said, it has invited you to come and know him, be in relationship with him so that you might have a new identity, and that new identity might live to a new way of life. So there are some of you here who are hearing this call and you're resistant because you don't aren't really sure. You don't really want to listen to this. There might be a whole lot of struggle and turmoil inside of you because you're just like, Christianity has hurt me in the past. Or maybe I'm just Can't I just come to church and do good things?
Pastor Luke:Actually need to really buy into this? Christ invites you to come taste and see. Come and know him. Lay off the burden that is heavy. Pick up the burden of grace and freedom.
Pastor Luke:Some of you have said yes to that identity. You've said yes to the calling, but there is something on your way through the wilderness, on your way to the promised land, that you're still holding onto, that you're not being obedient in perhaps. It could be that perhaps you're not being obedient in surrendering your finances to the Lord. Maybe you're not being obedient in speaking up. Maybe you feel the nudge of the Lord to speak the gospel to somebody, but you're just like, Oh, it'd be awkward.
Pastor Luke:Maybe you're feeling the nudge and the calling on your life to step into a greater level of ministry, whether that is to simply serve, whether that is to take more intentionality and say, Lord, how can I serve your church? How can I serve your kingdom more than my own? And maybe you're reluctant. You know that's what God's calling you to, but it's inconvenient. You're fearful.
Pastor Luke:There are a ton of things that keep us from saying yes to God's call. Maybe you're simply at a place where you're just like, I know the Lord has more for me than Sunday morning attendance, but I don't know or I'm afraid. And let me just make something very clear. If anybody here is afraid or is nervous to follow or say yes to the Lord's call, whatever that thing of obedience that I pray so clearly has been made clear on your heart today, if it is your past keeping you from that, let me just say that that past has been put to death, that you've been freed from it. Moses had a past.
Pastor Luke:God called him out of that past. We've all got stories that are complicated, that are messy, that aren't pretty, but God has called you through grace. That's why the gospel is such good news. It's not about what you do, it's about what God has done for you and who you are now because of that. You're not defined by your shame, your guilt, your past, your mistakes.
Pastor Luke:You were defined by the grace of God and that alone. So today, my urging for you is whatever the call is that the Lord has placed on your heart today, is you would heed it today. You would not say no to it. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, Lord, I ask again that you would in this moment make it very clear the call of identity and the call of obedience that you have put on our lives.
Pastor Luke:Lord, I ask that you would make it clear that you have called us with your gospel, with your good news, that we are no longer who we once were, but we are new creations in the blood of Jesus. And Lord, I ask that you would make it clear to us where you are inviting us in deeper, where those of us who have claimed the name of Jesus, believe in faith that he has indeed died for our sins, that he has given us new life, that we live under grace. Lord, I pray that you would help us to see how that grace affects how we live our lives now. That we might hear the call that you are giving us, Lord, into greater obedience to tackle that thing we are afraid of, that we might set aside those obstacles of excuse, that we might recognize that it's ultimately your presence with us, not the fear, not the shame, not the inconvenience, not the obstacle, whatever it is in front of us, that doesn't matter. What matters is that you are with us through it no matter what.
Pastor Luke:Lord, I pray that you would press your presence and that promise upon us today. Lord, we ask that you might do all of this for your glory. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen. Amen.
Pastor Luke:Heavenly father, you are more than worthy of our whole lives poured out as a living sacrifice to you. Lord, make that so. Pray again that we would hear your call, that we would heed it, that we, your church, would be built into a holy temple for you dwell among us. Conduit, as we go from this place, I pray that wherever God's call leads you, that you would know his presence is always with you. Go in peace and amen.
