Exodus Chronicles : Part 4
Pastor Rollan Fisher
Focus: God places his finger on everything not submitted to him to bring you into a life that is truly new in Christ.
What We Think We Need
What We Really Need
Who We Really Need
What We Think We Need
What we think that we need is that which we think will make us happy, but often enslaves us.
We must allow God to develop our theology of judgment to understand why I can't just live to get what I want.
Exodus 3:19-20
But I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go unless a mighty hand compels him. So I will stretch out my hand and strike the Egyptians with all the wonders that I will perform among them. After that, he will let you go.
Someone is going to be on the throne of your life - either the benevolent Jesus or a harsh taskmaster with whom you thought you could make peace, but has actually enslaved you.
Many times we remain in a place of sin and slavery as long as we are getting some measure of what we think that we want.
“To put it another way, pain is God's megaphone to rouse a deaf world. Why must it be pain? Why can't he rouse us more gently, with violins or laughter? Because the dream from which we must be wakened, is the dream that all is well.”
― William Nicholson, Shadowlands
Exodus 8:6-7
So Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt, and the frogs came up and covered the land of Egypt. But the magicians did the same by their secret arts and made frogs come up on the land of Egypt.
*We ignore the immediacy/urgency of our need to repent because the world produces counterfeit solutions to our problems - until they don’t.
Things like government programs, self-help books and dating apps can all be helpful but have their limits.
When we get a bit of respite from our nagging, gnawing desires in temporary outlets, we, like Pharaoh, return to a hardness of heart to govern our own lives rather than allowing God to do so.
Exodus 8:13-15
And the Lord did according to the word of Moses. The frogs died out in the houses, the courtyards, and the fields. And they gathered them together in heaps, and the land stank. But when Pharaoh saw that there was a respite, he hardened his heart and would not listen to them, as the Lord had said.
We know that things don’t quite smell right, but we put up with substitutes for God’s goodness because it is that to which we’ve become accustomed.
*Stop settling for counterfeits.
Counterfeits ultimately disappoint in the end because unlike God, they don’t care about you (Taylor Swift and Tim McGraw song), can not hear your cries or answer your need for deliverance.
Exodus 8:18-19
The magicians tried by their secret arts to produce gnats, but they could not. So there were gnats on man and beast. Then the magicians said to Pharaoh, “This is the finger of God.” But Pharaoh's heart was hardened, and he would not listen to them, as the Lord had said.
The problem was not that Pharoah didn’t see that he ran out of solutions, but that he thought his solutions were found only in temporary/momentary change/repentance.
Exodus 8:25-28
Then Pharaoh called Moses and Aaron and said, “Go, sacrifice to your God within the land.” But Moses said, “It would not be right to do so, for the offerings we shall sacrifice to the Lord our God are an abomination to the Egyptians. If we sacrifice offerings abominable to the Egyptians before their eyes, will they not stone us? We must go three days' journey into the wilderness and sacrifice to the Lord our God as he tells us.” So Pharaoh said, “I will let you go to sacrifice to the Lord your God in the wilderness; only you must not go very far away. Plead for me.”
*Idols deceptively perpetuate and simply relocate your bondage from one place to another - often through your internal dialog and negotiation.
“An idolatrous attachment can lead you to break any promise, rationalize any indiscretion, or betray any other allegiance, in order to hold on to it. It may drive you to violate all good and proper boundaries. To practice idolatry is to be a slave.”
― Timothy Keller, Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope That Matters
God brings his judgements out of his mercy and kindness so that we will no longer long for that which is enslaving and killing us.
This is what he was doing not only for the Israelites, but for Pharaoh and the Egyptians.
We see this in the seventh plague - the destructive hail coming upon the land.
Exodus 9:20-21
Then whoever feared the word of the Lord among the servants of Pharaoh hurried his slaves and his livestock into the houses, but whoever did not pay attention to the word of the Lord left his slaves and his livestock in the field.
So again, affliction can act as a merciful and loving wake-up call in our lives - to help us clearly distinguish what is right and wrong, what is of God and that which is not.
Psalm 119:67
Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep your word.
We need to invite objective, godly counsel into our lives to allow us to see clearly what the deception of our sin and circumstance will not.
Pharaoh thought that because he was the high ruler of the known world at the time, there would be no recompense for his pride, self-centeredness or rebellion against Yahweh, the Hebrew God of all creation.
Like Pharoah, we often think that because we don’t experience the immediate consequences of our disobedience, that there will not be a day of reckoning.
Pharaoh learned this was not true for him, nor will it be for us.
Just as God called to account the way that Pharaoh treated his people, so God will also call to account how we have stewarded what is ultimately his - our time, treasure and talent.
We live as if our lives are our own, but the Scripture makes it clear that when you belong to Christ, there is a new expectation in every area of your life.
1 Corinthians 6:19-20
Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.
What We Really Need
What we really need is the life and freedom that can be provided by God alone.
God makes a distinction between his people who trust and obey him and the world who fends for themselves to show what we really need.
*Focus on the genuine article
This includes things that Jesus modeled that are at times counterintuitive to our culture:
Sacrificing for children that those who come behind you might know the Lord and his ways.
The joy of giving and not just hoarding or spending your resources on yourself.
Laying down your reputation and comforts that others might have life.
The land of Goshen shows how God makes his distinction in the lives of those who look to him - not in the absence of pain, but in the midst of it:
Exodus 9:4
“But the Lord will make a distinction between the livestock of Israel and the livestock of Egypt, so that nothing of all that belongs to the people of Israel shall die.”’”
When you see the people of God prospering as a result of obedience to God (I.e. - in blessed marriages, child-rearing, financially, etc.) it is meant to be a provocation in the kindness of God to draw you to repentance.
It also shows you that to which you are looking instead of God as your idol.
“Idols give us a sense of being in control, and we can locate them by looking at our nightmares. What do we fear the most? What, if we lost it, would make life not worth living? We make “sacrifices” to appease and please our gods, who we believe will protect us.”
― Timothy J. Keller, Counterfeit Gods: The Empty Promises of Money, Sex, and Power, and the Only Hope That Matters
Yet again, idols ultimately fail us.
Exodus 9:25-27
The hail struck down everything that was in the field in all the land of Egypt, both man and beast. And the hail struck down every plant of the field and broke every tree of the field. Only in the land of Goshen, where the people of Israel were, was there no hail. Then Pharaoh sent and called Moses and Aaron and said to them, “This time I have sinned; the Lord is in the right, and I and my people are in the wrong.
It is not that Pharoah in the struggle to hold onto everything that he controlled and held dear didn’t know that he was sinning, but he convinced himself that if he just held out, if he just fought hard enough, ignored the judgements and held on, he would eventually have his way.
In the end, however, there is no plan or purpose that will outlast or avail against the Lord (Proverbs 21:30).
Proverbs 21:30 (NIV)
There is no wisdom, no insight, no plan that can succeed against the Lord.
We will either humble ourselves in trust and obedience to God, or be humbled in the judgement.
“In the same way a Christian is not a man who never goes wrong, but a man is enabled to repent and pick himself up and begin over again after each stumble--because the Christ-life is inside him, repairing him all the time, enabling him to repeat (in some degree) the kind of voluntary death which Christ Himself carried out." - Mere Christianity
The real road to tragedy was paved with this fact:
*Pharaoh continually had an uncommitted response to God that dissipated once there was relief to his pain.
This is the proclivity of all human beings - to do the bare minimum until we get what we want, and then resort to the familiar manner of living, requiring no change.
Exodus 9:33-35
So Moses went out of the city from Pharaoh and stretched out his hands to the Lord, and the thunder and the hail ceased, and the rain no longer poured upon the earth. But when Pharaoh saw that the rain and the hail and the thunder had ceased, he sinned yet again and hardened his heart, he and his servants. So the heart of Pharaoh was hardened, and he did not let the people of Israel go, just as the Lord had spoken through Moses.
What would it take to go from Thor yelling at kids playing Fortnite:
To Love and Thunder Thor?
A daily commitment to God’s ways and healing are required for lasting change - where Jesus is finally Lord of all of our hearts and lives.
This is why Jesus said that we must remain in the pain of sacrifice to be his disciple - bearing our cross daily lest we return to selfishness (Luke 14:25-33).
“My own experience was something like this. I am progressing along the path of life in my ordinary contentedly fallen and godless condition, absorbed in a merry meeting with my friends for the morrow or a bit of work that tickles my vanity today, a holiday or a new book, when suddenly a stab of abdominal pain that threatens serious disease, or a headline in the newspapers that threatens us all with destruction, sends this whole pack of cards tumbling down.
At first I am overwhelmed, and all my little happinesses look like broken toys. Then, slowly and reluctantly, bit by bit, I try to bring myself into the frame of mind that I should be in at all times. I remind myself that all these toys were never intended to possess my heart, that my true good is in another world, and my only real treasure is Christ. And perhaps, by God's grace, I succeed, and for a day or two become a creature consciously dependent on God and drawing its strength from the right sources.”
“But the moment the threat is withdrawn, my whole nature leaps back to the toys. Thus the terrible necessity of tribulation is only too clear. God has had me for but forty-eight hours and then only by dint of taking everything away from me. Let Him but sheathe that sword for a moment and I behave like a puppy when the hated bath is over – I shake myself as dry as I can and race off to reacquire my comfortable dirtiness, if not in the nearest manure heap, at least in the nearest flower bed. And that is why tribulations cannot cease until God either sees us remade or sees that our remaking is now hopeless.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain, 93.
What God requires is a DAILY denial of self, a DAILY picking up of the cross and a DAILY choosing of him over all else.
Exodus 10:8-11
So Moses and Aaron were brought back to Pharaoh. And he said to them, “Go, serve the Lord your God. But which ones are to go?” Moses said, “We will go with our young and our old. We will go with our sons and daughters and with our flocks and herds, for we must hold a feast to the Lord.” But he said to them, “The Lord be with you, if ever I let you and your little ones go! Look, you have some evil purpose in mind. No! Go, the men among you, and serve the Lord, for that is what you are asking.” And they were driven out from Pharaoh's presence.
How often do we wait until it’s too late before we repent of our sin?
There would be no turning back from the death of the firstborn.
Who We Really Need
Who we truly need is Jesus, the Son of God who died sacrificially to bring us into the life that is truly life.
God ultimately strikes the firstborn to show who we ultimately need for salvation in our present and future.
*Find real life in Christ.
In the book Mere Christianity, published in 1952, but adapted from a series of talks Lewis gave during World War II, Lewis discussed the influences “Satan” and “God” have had on humankind:
“What Satan put into the heads of our remote ancestors was the idea that they could "be like gods […] And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history—money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery—the long terrible story of man trying to find something other than God which will make him happy. The reason why it can never succeed is this. God made us: invented us as a man invents an engine.”
― C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
The solution to this endless search was that God sent his only Son to reconcile us to God in Christ.
In Egyptian culture, posterity held your hopes and the firstborn sons were the first sign of your strength.
Just as God struck down in judgement the false hopes and dreams of a people that would attempt to live fulfilled without him, so he sacrificed his only Son at the cross for the very same people who, if they would but turn to him in repentance and faith, might find the life that is truly life.
There would be redemption when God gave his own firstborn son, Jesus Christ, in sacrifice for the life of the world.
Every provision that you need for life and worship God will provide as you leave your slavery in faith.
(My story about changing my work schedule as a young man multiple times to be able to attend church)
Exodus 11:1-3
The Lord said to Moses, “Yet one plague more I will bring upon Pharaoh and upon Egypt. Afterward he will let you go from here. When he lets you go, he will drive you away completely. Speak now in the hearing of the people, that they ask, every man of his neighbor and every woman of her neighbor, for silver and gold jewelry.” And the Lord gave the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians. Moreover, the man Moses was very great in the land of Egypt, in the sight of Pharaoh's servants and in the sight of the people.
This is what God had promised when he said:
Exodus 3:21-22
And I will give this people favor in the sight of the Egyptians; and when you go, you shall not go empty, but each woman shall ask of her neighbor, and any woman who lives in her house, for silver and gold jewelry, and for clothing. You shall put them on your sons and on your daughters. So you shall plunder the Egyptians.”
You will come out of your time of slavery with what you need to worship and create a generational legacy of expectation of God’s faithfulness, his deliverance for all those that follow.
2 Corinthians 5:17-21
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Second City Church - Pastor Rollan Fisher