The Gospel According to Exodus
Our Story
Exodus 1
9.17.06
Why? Why are we going to be looking at the book of Exodus, besides the fact that there are some pretty cool stories in it? The real reason is that I'm convinced that the book of Exodus is our story. When my wife and I were first married, we lived in Missouri. We were living in St. Louis, Missouri, but I was a part-time preacher at this little church out in the country. You ever go driving through the countryside, abandoned roads essentially, and you're driving along and you see this little white building over to the side, and there aren't any houses anywhere? And you kind of go, "Who goes to church there?" Well, that's the church that I served. We had about 45 people on Sunday morning. The average age was somewhere in the seventies, I believe. And for three and a half years, I had the privilege of going out there and being part of that congregation.
One of the things I loved about it was that this little congregation had been around since the 1840's. All their ancestors had come from...it wasn't even Germany yet, it was Prussia. They'd all come from Prussia and had settled in this part of the hills of Missouri. And there was this history there.
They had this certain part of the building where they had tons of pictures up -- pictures that went back as far as the 1880's. I just loved to go stand in front of that wall and look, because most of the people who lived there had been raised there...and their great-grandparents settled there...and they still had names like Oberg and Kuhlmann. And I could see so-and-so, and I could see that this was his great-grandfather, and say, "Yeah, well, that's clear. You can see it even three generations later." And there were all these pictures of these classes that they had had through the years...and kids with no shoes. There were people I knew in that congregation who were 80 and 90 years old, and I could look back at that picture in 1912, and there they were.
I just loved going and looking at that -- just seeing how things had changed and how they were still the same. And one of the great things was that, as we got to stay there for three and a half years, we got to stay there long enough that by the end of our time there, there were pictures of the Woodard family. Right there at the end. Classes I had taught. Kids I had taught. And I thought, That's it...part of something bigger than myself. I became a part of the story at St. John’s church and they became a part of my story. And our lives will never be the same because we served that little congregation out in the middle of nowhere.
That’s why we’re studying Exodus -- because, believe it or not (and many of you don’t), this is our story. The story of Exodus is our story, if you have anything to do with following Jesus. I hope you are asking, “What does it mean to be a people of God?” One of the answers is the book of Exodus. In fact, throughout the rest of the Bible, whenever they replay the history, push the rewind button, go back to the beginning, they always go back to the Exodus. The Exodus is a real story, it’s real history, and in fact every year archaeologists and historians are finding more evidence for it. But it’s more than history. It becomes a metaphor for God’s people. Who are we? We’re the people that God brought out of slavery. This is our story.
I don’t know why you’re here this morning, but you believe a storyline about your life. Sometimes when we introduce ourselves we even ask, “Hey, what’s your story?” “Well, I’m from so-and-so and my parents were this,” and things come to mind. Some of you are trying to escape your story -- you’re off at college and you’re wanting to leave that old person behind and start a new story, or you're trying to get away from your family, from your high school -- but it still affects you. There are silly ways we can see this idea of stories shaping us. Think about Uncle Rico from Napoleon Dynamite. What’s his story? His story is the Glory Days, the Big Game, being a quarterback. It’s stupid things like that. But for some of us, it’s much more serious things than that. Some of you were abused in childhood right here in this room, and you’ve interpreted the rest of your life in light of that traumatic event. That has become the thing that has shaped your story.
We all have a storyline that we are a part of, and God is entering into that (in fact, he's saying, "Enter into my story"). This is our story. Who are we? The people that God has brought out of slavery. What about Redeemer? What are we going to be when we grow up? It tells us that as well. Let me ask you, if you’re a skeptic, to put a pause on your skepticism and consider for the next few minutes and maybe for the next few weeks whether this story in the Bible, so ancient, could not explain a lot of things about your life.
Exodus, chapter 1, is God speaking to us -- no small thing. Exodus 1, beginning in verse 1...hear the word of the Lord:
These are the names of the sons of Israel who went to Egypt with Jacob, each with his family: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah; Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin; Dan and Naphtali; Gad and Asher. The descendants of Jacob numbered seventy in all; Joseph was already in Egypt.
Now Joseph and all his brothers and all that generation died, but the Israelites were fruitful and multiplied greatly and became exceedingly numerous, so that the land was filled with them.
Then a new king, who did not know Joseph, came to power in Egypt. "Look," he said to his people, "the Israelites have become much too numerous for us. Come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous and, if war breaks out, will join our enemies, fight against us and leave the country."
So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites and worked them ruthlessly. They made their lives bitter with hard labor in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their hard labor the Egyptians used them ruthlessly.
The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah, "When you help the Hebrew women in childbirth and observe them on the delivery stool, if it is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live." The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do; they let the boys live. Then the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and asked them, "Why have you done this? Why have you let the boys live?"
The midwives answered Pharaoh, "Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women; they are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive."
So God was kind to the midwives and the people increased and became even more numerous. And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own.
Then Pharaoh gave this order to all his people: "Every boy that is born you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live."
This is God's holy, inerrant, and life-giving word to us. Thanks be to God.
So what is the story? How does it shape us? These are the two questions we are going to look at today. What is this story that I keep referring to and how does it shape us? The first thing you notice as you look at this story is that God’s people are in exile. Look at verse 1: “These are the names of the sons of Israel who went to Egypt with Jacob....” Now, you may not know how they got there. Four-hundred-plus years earlier, before Exodus, there was a famine in Canaan, no food to be had. Joseph was in Egypt. He was an Israelite sold into slavery by his brothers, and his brothers needed food, so they went to Egypt and they stayed. Four hundred years later they’re still there. In fact, if we were reading this in Hebrew, the very first word of Exodus is “And.” And. What’s the point? The point is this: You end the book of Genesis, you turn the page...And. The story keeps going. And the first thing this tells us is that if you want to understand the present, you have to look back. If you want to understand Exodus, you have to look back at Genesis. If you want to understand your life, you have to look back.
What do we see when we look back at the book of Genesis? We see one central concept that governs the book of Genesis and the whole Bible: the concept of covenant. A covenant is when God decides to be friends with certain people and reveals himself to them in a unique way, and he says he will keep his promise to them even when they break their promise to him. When Adam and Eve break their promise to God, God keeps his promise by preserving their lives. Yes, there are consequences, but God preserves their lives. When Noah shows up, he and his whole family are under the umbrella of God’s promise. Abraham and his whole family are under the umbrella of God’s promise. Even when Noah doubts, even when Abraham lies, God keeps his promise. And here is the first point that you need to understand: There is only one promise keeper, and you ain’t it.
In the mid-90's there was a movement among men in Christian circles called “Promise Keepers.” It was a good movement -- there was nothing wrong with it -- but the premise was that “we make promises to God and then we keep them.” The problem is that we are in the habit of breaking our promises. There is one promise keeper and it is God. God keeps his promises to his people. That’s the first thing you see in the Bible, that God is preserving people who really don’t deserve to be preserved. The covenant. And, we’re in exile. We’re in Egypt, slaves. Do you understand that it’s both/and? Both that God is a covenant promise-keeping God and that his people sometimes experience exile? You say, “Well, I’m not in exile; I live in a free country.” Oh really? A free country that has more addictions than any other country in history. Are we really that free? Are we not living in exile? And it begins so much earlier. Think about Adam and Eve: What happened when they went their own way and said, “God, we’ve got a better way of doing it”? Exile. They exiled themselves from blessing and from a wonderful place, and they brought it on themselves.
Listen, you and I live with the effects of it; you know this is true. Do you not sense in your soul that something’s not right? Something’s not right with me, with the world, with the universe. That’s right. You know why? Because something’s not right; because you get it. The Bible says that we live in a state of exile. Think about it this way: Have you ever had that nagging sense that you never quite feel at home here? “I’ve got a house, I’ve got a home, I’ve got a residence, but I never quite feel at home.” You know why? Because you’re not. Do you ever say, “I wish I could be defined by something else than what other people think about me"? "I wish I could be defined by something other than my accomplishments." "I wish I could be defined by something else than the bad things that have happened to me." "I wish I could be whole, physically." "I wish I could be whole, sexually.” You know why you feel that way and long for something more? Because the Bible says that we live in a fundamental state of dislocation from who we were meant to be. From who God made us to be. We live in exile. And so we’re never quite at home with ourselves; we’re never quite at home with other people. We’re never quite comfortable with God, because exile is a part of our experience.
So Exodus is not just a nice campfire story with neat things going on, and plagues, and seas parting. What it is is our story. It’s the fundamental metaphor for my life: that I live in a place of exile. Does that explain anything? And if that’s true, there’s also opposition that comes as a result. Look at verse 8 and see the opposition: “Then a new king....” Remember that they’re in Egypt. They were brought down there, and they were friends with the king at first, but "Then a new king, who did not know about Joseph, came to power in Egypt. 'Look,' he said to his people, 'the Israelites have become much too numerous for us. Come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous and, if war breaks out, will join our enemies, fight against us and leave the country.' " And what you see -- the very first thing you see -- in Exodus 1 is opposition. And that tells us something. That tells us that part -- not all -- of what it means to be God’s people is to experience suffering and opposition. It’s right there; I’m not making it up -- it’s right there. And it’s part of what it means, that Pharaoh makes them slaves and he works them and he works them and he works them, and he works them! And that’s not enough; he’s got to kill them! And we’re surprised when things are hard?
See, part of what this means is that we’ve got to do church differently. We have got to quit believing that it is spiritual to pretend that everything is all right, that being able to pretend that everything is ok is a mark of spiritual maturity. If opposition and exile are fundamental to part of our experience in this world, why are we ignoring it when it happens? Why doesn’t it become part of our corporate identity, the way we think about ourselves? And you know, it has to some degree. We did it today; we do it every Sunday -- even in our worship service we have a time when we confess our need and sin, and it’s a sober time. It ought to be because what that time means is this: “I’m not who I want to be, I’m not who I should be, I’m in exile, I confess my sin to the Lord.” And then, we have times of praise. Why? Because it’s both/and. And because we experience both, and that needs to shape the way we do church, we need to quit lying that things are ok, quit putting on a stoic front that we don’t struggle with anything. I guarantee you that there’s no stoicism in Egypt. “God, where are you??!!”
Let me say something to our children. Part of what this means is that we hurt because Jesus hasn’t brought us home yet. We hurt. There are people who are opposed to the people of God. What do we do with that? Our three-year-old gets more boo-boos than anyone I’ve ever seen in my life. From time to time we will sit on the couch together and catalog from toe to head every single boo-boo on her. Most of them I can’t see, but some of them are legit. And we just sit there and go up the body, and certain ones she asks me to kiss and other ones she needs a Band-Aid. And we think, Oh, isn’t that cute and silly? But you know, that’s really the picture of what we ought to be doing -- crawling up in our Father’s lap and saying “I hurt” every Sunday morning. And he doesn’t just put a Band-Aid on; he really heals. And we affirm the reality that there are some here this morning suffering greatly, and there’s nothing necessarily wrong with you. Welcome to exile.
But it’s not just that, not just exile, and dread, and horror, and opposition. Because there’s also something blooming in this text: there’s redemption. Look at verse 11 (this is wonderful): “So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites....” You see? The more the clamp gets turned on God’s people, the more they prosper. Why? Because they have a covenant-keeping God. Not because of them, but because of his promise, because of his power, because he is faithful. It’s not just redemption you see in this passage; it’s not just God restoring his people. By the way, what’s God’s mission statement, purpose statement? Well, he doesn’t have just one, but one of them is to redeem a people. But there’s more that’s going on here than just the Israelites and Egypt.
Did any of this story sound familiar to you? Had you ever heard a story about a king who decides that children need to die because it’s been rumored that there’s a deliverer among them? Does that sound like the magi coming to King Herod and saying, “We followed the star,” and he freaks out and says, “Where?” and they say, “Bethlehem.” And so King Herod says, “Let’s kill all the kids under two years old in Bethlehem.” And have you heard a story that sounds similar, where Moses is going to go out into the wilderness, and he’s going to lose everything, and there he’s going to be anointed. He’s going to be set apart for a task and come back and lead his people, kind of like Jesus being baptized, going into the wilderness, coming back and being a deliverer. Do you understand that Exodus is not just a neat story with big fireworks? It’s a sneak preview; it’s a movie trailer for the real deliverer. You see, Moses is going to deliver his people at the risk of his own life. Jesus is going to deliver his people at the cost of his own life. That’s why Exodus is a metaphor. Here’s the deliverer, here’s the real Moses, here’s the one that Exodus is pointing to. And he’s coming for his people. Why? Because God is a God who keeps his promise to people who break theirs. And that's for all of the promise-breakers who are sitting in this room and standing up front.
What do we do with that? What do you do with that? Well, here’s one thing I want to encourage you to do. If you come from the school of thought that says that Christianity is for good, moral people and therefore the goal is to be a good, moral person or at least not to get caught being immoral, you need to flush that view down the toilet. Good, moral people don’t need a deliverer; people who aren’t in chains don’t need someone to come and rescue them. In other words, people who aren’t sinners don’t need a savior. Fundamentally, what it means is that if you think your relationship with God has to do with how you perform…how well are you doing? Are you keeping everything up? You doing well? Is that what keeps God happy with you? Is that what pleases the Lord? Is it your commitment or his? The Bible says it’s not yours; it’s his that matters. If you think it’s how well you are committed to the Lord, then you are your own Moses. You’re your own deliverer. And you don’t need Jesus. But fundamentally, the story of the scriptures is that here are a people desperately in need of deliverance, and I’ll send one. There's redemption.
Now, how does this shape us? If this is your story, or if you are thinking about making this your story, or if you’re wondering about what these crazy Christians believe, how does this change us? Four things:
First, it will make us people who move beyond the moment. You know what the first word of the book of Leviticus is? Guess. “And.” You understand? There’s more to the world than this moment. Now, you don’t really believe that. And neither do I. You know how I know that? Because when things get tough we immediately say, “God has abandoned me. Why is this happening to me? I can’t see any good reason why I’m in pain, why I’m hurting, and therefore there can’t be any good reason.” Is that not where you go? If we’re honest, that’s where we go. And we immediately think this moment is the only thing that matters. Now listen, this moment matters. How you live your life, every minute of every day...the choices you make matter. But what this big story tells you, if your picture is on that wall amongst millions of other pictures...it lifts your chin and says, “Look, there’s more going on in the universe than what you feel right now.” And this conviction that there’s more than just this moment animates all of history, all of the Bible. Think about it for a second. Think about it. Here’s Abraham: He has waited 100 years for his son Isaac, and then he’s told he’s got to sacrifice him. And they’re walking up this mountain, and he says, “We’ll be back.” How could he say that? Because he was gripped with the conviction that God is doing more than the moment. That’s how he could say that. When Moses saw his people dying in the desert, he was gripped with the truth that God was doing something in the past, God is doing something in the present, God will be doing something in the future that will outlive me. And that’s very good news. And it will outlive this moment of pain that I’m feeling right now. And the best example is what? Mary and the disciples watching the promised one die, feeling that there’s got to be more to the world than this moment. And there was.
Now, what does this mean for us? Here’s what it means. Let me ask your soul some questions. Are the promises of God powerful enough to lift your eyes from whatever is going on in your life right now? I’m not saying what’s going on isn’t hard, but are they powerful enough to see beyond the immediacy of what’s broken in your own soul? The broken relationships, even the addictions that we struggle with in this room. Are they enough? When you’ve broken another promise to God and to yourself, are the promises of God to your soul enough to lift your head? When you are single and you ache so desperately to be married. When you can’t have children and you ache so desperately to have biological children. Are the promises of God enough to lift your head and say, "There’s more than this moment"? When you’re in a marriage that zaps all of your energy. The promises of God give you perspective when you’re doing a job that you hate, a task that you hate. For my wife, she hates unloading the dishwasher: “All I do all day every day is unload and reload.” The things that we do in our lives that are monotonous. Does the big picture give you any perspective, does it help you to see that this actually matters? When you feel your exile acutely, do you hear the promises of God? Do you become a person who lives beyond the moment?
Second, we become people who see that suffering is not senseless. Suffering is not senseless for God’s people. It is for people who aren’t God’s people -- it’s completely irrational. We don’t see the name of God until verse 17 -- does that mean he’s on vacation? No, he’s working, he’s protecting, he’s watching them multiply, he’s keeping his promises, but you don’t always see it. And here’s the principle: Sometimes when things seem the worst, that’s when God is most active in your life. Think about the next chapter: Moses does something really kind of dumb and he loses everything, flees to the wilderness and ends up herding sheep in the middle of the desert, the absolute worst job you can get. And it’s there that God finds him. Do you ever notice how many times in the Bible people find God and are found by him in the desert? And some of you this morning are in the desert, and you think God has abandoned you, and you may be teetering right on the edge of God finding your soul. Suffering doesn’t become senseless because of the ultimate suffering of Jesus. Think about it. Jesus dies and hell starts to laugh, “Finally we’ve got him! Millennia we’ve been waiting to get this guy! Finally, we win.” And you can hear the cackles of hell fade to echoes of horror three days later when the stone is rolled away, when Jesus comes out the king and the victor. Do you see the big picture? Suffering is not senseless for God’s people; he’s at work.
Third, we become people who are no longer little. Many of you think you’re little people. You know whose name doesn’t appear in the book of Exodus? Never appears. Pharaoh. That’s his title, not his name. That’s why we have trouble dating when the Exodus happened. It’s as if God says, “I know you’re the most powerful guy in the world. I know everybody around you thinks you’re a deity, but I’m just not that impressed by you. In fact, I’m not impressed enough to remember your name.” Whose name is remembered? Look at verse 15 (I love this): “The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah....” I love that. Midwives usually were at best useless. You can’t have children of your own, so what good are you? I guess you can help me have mine, but I spit on you. And at most they were considered cursed by God. But God, in verse 21, actually blesses them because they honor him. And here’s the beautiful thing: The people who are lower than low are the very ones whose names God engraves on the wall. Shiphrah! Puah! Heroes forever. Oh, yeah, and there’s the guy in Egypt; I don’t remember his name.
The Bible is always subversive of our cultural norms. It’s not the older brother, Esau, who gets the blessing; it’s the younger brother, Jacob. It’s not the pretty daughter, Rachel, that gets the line of the covenant; it’s Leah, the one that everybody thought was ugly. It’s not the young and pretty; it’s old, wrinkled Sarah who becomes the mother of the covenant. And God always takes what culture thinks is valuable and turns it upside down and says, “I’m just not impressed with what you people are impressed with. I know you’re the most powerful man in the world, but you’re so insignificant I don’t remember you.” And what does that mean? Again, let me speak to our children. You’re not a nobody; you’re not insignificant in this congregation or in God’s view. But let me speak to the rest of us who think we’re nobody. You’ve been told, you’ve believed, things have happened to you in your life, you’ve never been quite as good as other people, you’ve spent your whole life comparing yourself to other people and falling short. And you’ve begun to believe that you're a nobody. And God says, "You’re the very sort of people that I bring the blessing through, the sort of people whose names I enshrine in heaven. Your name will last; you are not a little person." Not because you look at your soul and go, “Have more self-esteem, have more self-esteem, have more self-esteem.…” You’ve been doing that all of your life and it’s not working. And Jesus says, “I esteem you greatly!” And that should change your life.
There’s one other group I want to speak to -- you may be followers of Jesus or you may not be, I don’t know. You are spending so much energy trying to make a name for yourself. You are spending your life, every waking moment, trying to matter. Your name will not last; it cannot last. You need to have the honesty to admit that. The Bible says people who believe that they are nobodies can receive God’s grace. Anybody can receive God’s grace, but it tends to go to people who think they’re nobodies. If you’ve been loved that way -- if you’ve said, “God, you love me? Jesus, you would die for me and engrave my name on your hands?” -- you will begin to love other people that way. You won’t look at other people and go, “Well, she’s just a nobody.” You’ll say, “She's a nobody! That must mean that she’s important, that God must be very fond of her (or him).” You won’t be little people anymore.
Finally, we will be people who worship the one worth worshipping. You ever read through Genesis, and it’s full of good stories and it keeps your attention for a while? And then you get into Exodus and the stories are even better there. I mean, there are just all sorts of fireworks going on, up until chapter 20 and you hear the brakes come on. In chapter 20, and for 20 chapters after that, you know what Exodus is about? It’s about how the purple cloth ought to be twisted in the tabernacle, and exactly how the lampstands should stand up in the tabernacle, and what the priests should wear in the tabernacle. You get to that and go, “Golly, that is boring!” Page after page after page of that sort of thing. If they ever make a movie about the book of Exodus, they won’t include this stuff. And they don’t. When Cecil B. DeMille made The Ten Commandments, they stopped right there at chapter 19. When Dreamworks made The Prince of Egypt a few years ago, they stopped right there. They stopped short of worship. Don’t you stop short of worship.
The book of Exodus culminates in worship for a reason. Here’s an acid test for your soul. You want to know if you’re part of this story? Some of you are teenagers, and you’ve been raised in Christianity, and you’re not sure if you really believe this, if it’s your faith or your parents’ faith. You’re not really sure whose it is. Here’s an acid test for you: Do you worship? Do you sing? Do you show up when the sermon starts because the rest of that stuff doesn’t really matter? Do you come and lay your life before the Lord? Because if you are part of the story, you will worship. That’s the point of 20 chapters vs. 20 chapters. If you’re part of the story, you will worship the Lord. And the important thing is that you are worshipping something this morning. Americans have convinced themselves that they don’t worship anything because they don’t go to church. “I don’t go to church; I don’t worship things.” No, I just worship the internet, and money, and sexuality, and achievement, and freedom, and having fun, and all sorts of chemicals. Oh, no, I don’t worship anything. And the reality is this: Whatever makes your heart beat faster, whatever you get excited about, whatever you spend mental and emotional energy on, that’s your God. And we need to have the honesty to admit it, that we are worshipping almost every moment of every day. And here comes “I AM.” Who should I say sent me, Lord? “I AM sent you.” That’s the one worth worshipping.
Let me finish with this question:
What’s your story?
