© Rev. Lance Carrithers, all rights reserved.  Permission required to copy any portion of this message by any means. Email for permission: lance@firstchurchdc.com

Series: Through the Bible in Eight Great Stories

#3 God's Deliverance

"Liberty and Justice"

        We closed out last week with Jacob wrestling with God, having God change his name to Israel, and his homecoming to reunite with his brother Esau and settle once again in the land of promise.  We’ve got a lot of story to cover today, so let’s get going:

          Jacob and Rachel brought 12 sons into the world.  The next to the youngest was Joseph, and he was a dandy, his daddy‘s favorite.  The older 10 were hard workers, and Joseph used to antagonize them with his dreams, where he imagined the 10 of them bowing down to worship him.  To make matters worse, his daddy made him a fancy coat with lots of colors and long sleeves, not the sort of coat you’d wear out to work in the fields, so he got out of a lot of work.

          Joseph’s brothers were jealous. To make a long story short, the older brothers grabbed Joseph one day, almost killed him, but instead, decided to make a buck and sold him off into slavery.

          Little Joe ended up in Egypt, and went quickly from slave to servant to the Pharaoh, to governor in charge of preparing for the upcoming famine he’d predicted from Pharaoh’s dreams.

          The famine came, not only to Egypt, but also to Canaan, the land of promise.  Joseph’s brothers come to Egypt to try to purchase grain, as Egypt, under Joseph’s direction, had stored up food to last through the famine.   Joseph eventually reveals himself to his brothers, forgives them, sees God’s hand in bringing him to Egypt, and invites his family and his father to Egypt to weather out the lean times.

          The descendents of Israel multiplied over the generations in Egypt.  Long after Joseph’s death, a new Pharaoh arose over Egypt, who did not remember Joseph--did not remember Joseph’s service to Egypt, did not remember the story.  The new Pharaoh only saw a bunch of foreigners, who seemed to be more numerous and more powerful than the Egyptian people. 

          So Pharaoh conscripted the Israelites into forced labor, building the great cities and monuments of Egypt.   And with their enslavement came terrible treatment, as the Egyptians became ruthless taskmasters over the Israelite people.

          Eventually Pharaoh, in an effort to reduce the number of Israelites ordered the murder of all the baby boys born to the Israelite women.   They were to throw the baby boys into the Nile as food for the crocodiles.

          Moses is one of the boys thrown into the river,  but is placed in a tar basket and floated in front of Pharaoh’s daughter, who retrieves him from the river and raises him in the Egyptian palace.  Moses grows up, living the life of a prince, but all the time, aware of his race as an Israelite. 

          Upon witnessing the mistreatment of an Israelite slave, he is filled with rage and murders the Egyptian and buries him in the sand and flees from the country, out into the wilderness of Midian, where he meets a Midian priest, marries his daughter, and tends to his new father-in-law’s sheep.

          That’s where he is when God gets Moses’ attention.  He’s 80 years old, tending sheep, and God calls his name from within a burning bush.   And God tells Moses, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” 

          God says to Moses, I have observed the misery of my people in Egypt and have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters.  Notice something here…God did not say, “I have heard the cry of the slaves.”  God did not say, “I have heard the cry of the people.”  God says, “I have heard the cry of MY people.”  Hear it?  The relationship that God still maintains with the descendents of Abraham.  Abraham, to whom God made the promise, the covenant, I will be your God and you will be my people.  MY people.  

          Exodus is the story, THE story of what it means to be God’s people.   For out of that relationship, God will come to do some mighty, mighty things on behalf of His own.   The Exodus has been the formational story for the Jewish people through thousands of years.  Is it any wonder that the churches born out of early American slave camps found their voice to sing in hope of God’s deliverance out of this story?   “Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,” go the words of the great James Weldon Johnson hymn that became the unofficial anthem of the civil rights movement.  It’s the Exodus story that moves the hearts of those who know what it means to have been in slavery.  It is the Exodus story that gives birth to new meaning for every people who long for liberation.   The Exodus story is the story of God coming to the rescue for God’s people.   

          It takes a bit for God to persuade Moses that he’s the fellah to help God in the great plan to deliver God’s people out of Egypt, and get them back into the land of the promise.  Canaan. 
          Moses will be the instrument, but make no doubt; it is God who is the deliverer.  Plagues will fall upon Pharaoh and the Egyptians to convince them to let God’s people go.   A bloody river, frogs, gnats, flies, livestock diseases, boils, hail, locusts, darkness, and the worst of all, the death of the firstborn of each Egyptian household.  The Israelite households will be passed-over by God’s angel of death, and they will eat a quick meal of unleavened bread before they are invited to leave the country by Pharaoh.   That’s right, invited to leave.  God’s plan has worked, and the slaves ready themselves to go.

          But Pharaoh thinks he must be losing his mind, and decides to pursue them with his army and chariots, when, in a scene worthy of a Cecil B. DeMille movie,  God parts the waters of the sea so that God’s people can pass through on dry land, and then brings the waters together to cover Pharaoh’s chariots as they enter the sea bed. 

          They are free.  ”Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty we’re free at last.”  Those great words of Martin Luther King Jr. are but an echo of the great deliverance the people of Israel have experienced at the hand of God.

          But freedom isn’t always appreciated.  The people become frightened, in the wilderness, what will they eat?  What will they drink?   Surely they have followed Moses out into the desert to die!  “It would be better,” they complain, “if they were slaves with food to eat, than free people starving to death in the wilderness.”

          Fickle people of God.  Do you doubt God?  Do you truly think God would bring you out of Egypt, only to be lost here in the wilderness?   How could God forget you, you are God’s own.  You are the ones he made the promise for.  You are the ones he dreamed about when he showed Abraham the stars in the sky.  You are the one he had in his heart when he made old Sarah laugh with such an outlandish promise.  You are the ones he rescued from the altar on the mountain when the knife was at Isaac’s throat.  You are the ones he was thinking of when he wrestled through the night with Jacob.  You are the ones.  You are the people of God, and not just you--all of your descendents.  Every descendent of the promise yet to come.   Every descendent of every son of Israel, every descendent of every tribe, every descendent, generation, through generation, through generation.  Every descendent eventually purchased through the blood of Christ.  Fickle people of God, do you doubt?   That a God this invested in this relationship would ever fail you?  Could ever fail you?

          God brings water from a rock, and sends bread each morning from heaven.  Manna they called it, literally that means, “Whatzit.”    Here in the wilderness, they will eat and drink because God will provide it.  Quail will fall exhausted to the desert sand to be gathered up by the people.  God will provide for them, care for them, and see them through the wilderness.  God will even fight their enemies.  Pharaoh will not be the last to be defeated at the hands of God.  There will be others out here in the wilderness, and always, God will fiercely protect these people he has called his own.

          And God will begin to shape them.  They have been slaves too long.  To be God’s people, they will need more than numbers and land.  They will need order.  They will need boundaries.  They will need law.

          Moses climbs the mountain to receive the laws of God.   Ten rules to live by, to obey, to help shape them into the citizens of God’s people.  Ten rules that begin to shape relationship—with God and with each other.

          First of all, “I am the Lord God who brought you out of Egypt.  No one else will do.”

          Second, “You shall not worship any other idol.” 
          Third, “You shall never misuse God’s name for your own gain.  That’s taking my name in vain.”

          Fourth, “Remember the Sabbath, keep it holy.”

          Fifth, “Honor father and mother, and care for them.”

          Sixth, “Don’t murder.”

          Seventh, “Don’t commit adultery.”

          Eighth, “Don’t steal.”

          Ninth, “Don’t falsely accuse your neighbor and lie as a witness against them.”

          And tenth, “Don’t covet, that is, hanker after things that are not yours, it’ll only lead to trouble.”

          Ten rules, ten laws to get them on their way.

          This time in the wilderness will be a test for them.  40 years, wandering around, learning what these laws mean and being shaped, for a couple of generations by God’s boundaries.
          They will also discover other rules.  Rules about their life together, about their diet, their health, and their worship.  Ah--God’s people are people who worship.  There, in the wilderness, God’s people learn to worship.  They build a tabernacle, a house of God, a large tent where they symbolize there in the desert their relationship with God.   Let me say that again.  The people symbolize in their worship, their relationship with God.    They offer animals to God as a way to say thanks.  They mark sacred time with special days, songs, and rites.   A few are set apart by God to serve the people in their rites and worship, and the people agree to provide for their priests.

          Forty years is a long time.  I’d like to tell you it always goes well.  It does not.  The people forget why they are out here in the wilderness in the first place.  They break God’s heart by worshiping a calf made of the gold God had given them.

          But Moses, God’s own, is faithful through it all.    When he is 120, God invites Moses to climb yet one more mountain.  And there, in the valley below him, he sees what God has been telling him of all these years.  He sees the land of milk and honey.  As Moses looks over the valley, he is told he will not get to cross over into this land.   He will die and be buried here, in Moab.   And we sometimes make the mistake that that means Moses will not get to receive the promise.

          You know…the promise God made to Abraham.  The promise God renewed with Isaac and Jacob.  The promise that has kept them all going these past forty years.  The promise--oh, it was so much more than just  land.  Remember?  The land was just simply something to make sure the promise would come through.    There would be land, and there would be descendents.  But those were to help assure that the promise would be fulfilled.  The promise?  What have we learned this past couple of weeks?   Remember?  It was so simple.

          “I will be your God, and you will be my people.”   Ah—the relationship.  Creator and created. 

          Moses won’t get to cross into Canaan, but the promise…well, there’s no doubt in my mind.  Moses lived the promise.  In relationship with the God who made all things. 

          Joshua is Moses’ lieutenant, and will take over the reins of leadership.  He’s more of a military strategist anyway, and that will be needed when they come into the land of milk and honey. 

          And the people will settle.  And they will have lots of enemies to contend with.  But they will remain God’s people.  And God will be their God.    They will be different from anyone else.  They will be peculiar.

          Next week, we’ll find the people really want to be just like everyone else, though.   And that’s going to eventually lead them into trouble.

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