Texts: Exodus 3: 1-8a, 13-14; 4:13

THE STORY SO FAR

Jacob—Israel—has 12 sons, ten of whom are pretty rotten. They resent their father’s favoritism for the youngest two—Joseph and Benjamin.  They throw Joseph down a well before selling him into slavery in Egypt. In Egypt, Joseph rises to the top power of the known world, feeds his brothers and in time forgives them. The whole family moves to the Goshen region, which is nice, and there they thrive for several generations.

They are called Hebrews, a word which comes from the name Abraham, as in the children of Abraham living in Goshen.

Along comes a Pharaoh who doesn’t much care for history or Joseph, and he feels that Egypt has too many Hebrews who could revolt, so he sets vicious taskmasters over them and turns Goshen into a forced labor camp, but the Hebrews thrive, so Pharaoh goes out to kill all the male babies. 

MOSES IN EGYPT

Moses is born to a Levite couple (the tribe who will later be the priestly class of Israel). They hide Moses for three months and then put him in a basket and float him down the Nile. A daughter of Pharaoh rescues the baby, feels sorry for him, and reconnects him with his mother for nursing. Later, Moses becomes the adopted grandson of Pharaoh.

While walking his beat in the Goshen neighborhood, he sees an Egyptian beating a Hebrew man, so Moses kills the Egyptian. Since murder is murder in every society, Moses runs away—goes on the lam into the desert.

While sitting at a well, he seems some men harassing a group of young women who are there to water their flocks. Moses comes to their aid, and is rewarded by their father, Jethro, a pagan priest. He gives Moses his daughter Zipporah for a wife.

BURNING BUSH

Moses seems perfectly content to settle down into the pastoral life of a Midian shepherd. But one day, while he was minding his own business tending sheep, he sees a burning bush that isn’t actually burning. When he checks it out, The Lord speaks to him: “I am the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob, and I have something for you to do.”

Moses seems glad for the plan in general, but when he realizes he will have to do some public speaking—which terrifies him—he asks whether or not God might have the wrong number.  God simply tells him, “I will be with you.”

Moses isn’t convinced. When God lays out the plan, Moses tries to give God the third degree: “Lord, if I’m to do this, I need some serious authorization. If I, a stranger [and a murderer, don’t forget], tell them all this, they’re going to ask for my credentials. How shall I tell them about You and who You are? Who am I to tell them about You and Who You are?” It is as if Moses didn’t even hear the “I’ll be with you” part.

Moses goes for broke: “Give me your name so I can use it to authorize myself. So…what is it?”

God sighs. “Moses, I AM WHO I AM! God reveals himself to Moses as the one, true GOD in the midst of a pagan world of manmade idols. Moses says, “Okay, exactly how do you spell I AM WHO I AM?” and, I think, God sighs again. After this, Moses makes his faith clear: “Please Lord, can’t you ask somebody else?”

THE TEN PLAGUES

God puts Moses in place to rescue the Hebrews from slavery in Egypt, but Pharaoh is a tough sell, to say the least, so God applies ten plagues to Egypt in demonstration of the seriousness of the matter.

Actually, the plagues are more than magical leverage; they are in fact recriminations of the pagan gods of Egypt. The ten plagues represent the defeat of ten of the major, Egyptian, pagan, deities.

1.  Nile –––>Hapi (god of the Nile)

2.  Frogs –––>Heket (goddess of Fertility)

3.  Lice –––>Geb (god of the earth)

4.  Hailstone ––>Nut (goddess of the sky)

5.  Boils ––>Isis (goddess of medicine and peace)

6.  Flies –––>Khepri (god of creation and rebirth)

7.  Livestock –––>Hathor (goddess of love and protection)

8.  Locusts ––>Seth (god of the storm and disorder)

9.  Darkness ––>Ra (the sun god)

10.  Firstborn ––>Pharaoh (Ultimate power in Egypt)

This last plague is the most significant, because it establishes the last straw—-the tipping point—in liberating God’s people.

PASSOVER

Passover is the event which defines Judaism over any other. In it, they remember all God has done for them. More significantly, the meal points toward a future  rescue and redemption they cannot yet imagine. Consider the details:

1. The lamb of sacrifice had to be a year-old (in their prime) without defect.

2. No bones were to be broken.

3. Hyssop was used like a paintbrush.

4. Blood was painted on lintel and sides of door.

5. The lamb’s blood caused death to pass over.

6. All marked with blood were spared death.

7. Nothing of the lamb could be left overnight.

Parallels

1. Jesus was without sin or defect.

2. None of Jesus’ bones were broken during crucifixion.

3. Hyssop was used as a sop for the sour wine that was lifted up to him on the cross.

4. Jesus’ blood was “painted” onto the wood of the cross.

5.Christ’s blood causes death to pass over us.

6.All marked by Christ are spared death.

7.Jesus was taken down from the cross (unusual). Furthermore consider:

Moses’ life was threatened in infancy.

Jesus’ life was threatened in infancy.

Moses was a shepherd of Jethro’s sheep.

Jesus’ was a shepherd of his Father’s sheep.

Moses said, “Send somebody else, please.”

Jesus said, “Let this cup pass.” ‘

Moses turned the water into blood.

Jesus turned water into wine, and wine into blood.

The hyssop painted blood on the wood.

The hyssop raised bad wine up the cross.

The lamb’s blood saved the Jews from Death.

The blood of Christ saves his people from Death.

Jesus is the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world; by his blood we are rescued and spared Death.

THE EXODUS

When the air clears, Egypt is devastated and the Hebrew people leave town for the wilderness—back toward the mountain where Moses saw the burning bush. The people seem to be—almost immediately—dubious of the plan. It doesn’t take them long to begin their griping, like junior higher in long car trip:

“Are we there yet?”

“What are we having for lunch?”

“Moses, do you have any idea where we’re going?”

When they come to the Red Sea, the griping intensifies:

“Oh, this is great! What’s the matter, Moses? There aren’t enough cemeteries in Goshen? And here come the Egyptians! Great plan, Moses, let’s get slaughtered out in the middle of nowhere instead of at home!”

The Lord drives back the water all night until it is walling up on either side. The people—still griping, I imagine—begin walking though. All the people pass through, but Pharaoh and his armies were destroyed as the water is released upon them. Horse and rider are drowned in the sea.

The people sing for joy, but as soon as they catch their breath, they ask, “So what are we going to eat out here? I’m thirsty, too.”

MANNA AND GRIPES

God provides. Every day, when the Hebrew people awake, the ground is covered with what looks like frost, but the people gather it, make cakes with it, and they are sustained. Its name is manna, which translates to another adolescent gripe: “Eww, what is it?”

The people are cared for, but soon say, “We’re tired of this vegan stuff; we want some meat!” God, who has a sense of humor, says through Moses, “You want meat? I’ll give you meat until you vomit it from your nostrils.” And the people get meat, until they vomit it from their nostrils.

REMEMBER

One of the key ways faithfulness is expressed in the Old Testament is through the word “remember.” To remember how God has worked in the past is a key to maintaining present faithfulness.

No sooner are the people rescued, liberated and given new life than they begin to obsess over the problems of the moment. Our own gripes can come from that place that fails to remember how God has always provided for us. 

In our story this week, it is God who does the remembering; specifically, he remembers his covenant with Abraham. It is God’s faithfulness to his own covenant that determines how he will act in the future. Of the things we can say about the God of the Old Testament is that he always keeps his promises; he always remembers his covenant. It is because he remembers his promises to Abraham—specifically, to number his descendants like stars in the sky and grains of sand on the seashore—that he will be faithful to Israel, even when they are disobedient. As we read through the Bible, keep your ear tuned for the word remember.

When we remember, we are taken out of our present anxieties to see the grand movement of God throughout all of history. We can take courage because we know—and we can always proclaim—that God is always faithful to his promises.

We stand on those promises, and when we remember, we find empowerment to trust, follow, and obey.†

Texts: Genesis 12:1-3; 22:1 -14

ABRAHAM CALLED

No one really knows when the story of Abraham was first written down, but we know it was hundreds of years prior to the birth of Jesus.  We know that in 250BC it was translated into Greek for the first time, but the stories themselves stretch back into prehistory—2100-2000 BC. Let’s call it 2018 BC just to keep things interesting. This is important because of what today's narrative actually reveals.

Consider Abram: not great or mighty by the world's standards—originally a kind of drifter.  Mesopotamian, not Hebrew, from Ur, which is today in either Iraq or Kuwait. I imagine Abram looking rather unimpressive, for God’s strength is revealed through human weakness. I think of Woody Allen: kind of a wimp, kind of a nerd, and no saint by any stretch.

Four millennia ago, out of all the people in the ancient world, God selects him, Abram, and tells him he's won the cosmic lottery. God chooses Abram to be…chosen. “Your descendants will by like stars in the sky.  Though you and Sarah are already old, she will bear you a son, a people, and a chosen race.  You, little Abram, are the one I choose.”

He walks back into town with his head held high, brushing the shoulders of taller, buffed-out pagans (picture Arnold Schwarzeneggar).  They say to him, "Little Abram—what's gotten into you?"  And he says most superiorly: "It's Abraham now, thank you, and the One True God has chosen ME above all to father a chosen nation—a nation of priests—through whom all the world will be blessed." 

The laughter is deafening.  The pagans stifle it enough to ask, “And just who is this God of yours?” Abraham furrows his brow and scratches his head. “Well-l-l-l, he didn't really say."  More laughter.  “And what does he look like?  What form does your God take.” Abraham sputters out, "He has no earthly image—he is. . .invisible.”  The pagans double over laughing as they leave Abram to himself.

Abraham goes home to tell Sarah.  She asks him what he ate today and wonders whether or not he picked any strange berries or mushrooms during his walk. She's probably doubtful, but loves and supports her husband. Faith has the humblest of beginnings.   It is always out of weakness that God brings strength, out of barrenness that God brings fruition, and out of improbabilities that God grows faith.

PATIENCE

Abraham and Sarah wait into their nineties. Their nineties, and still nothing.  How many times along the way did they give up expecting God to provide?  How many times, say in their early eighties, over morning coffee, did Sarah say: “Alright Abe, tell me again.” And Abraham, credibility spent, still has the weight of conviction in his narrative.  “It happened Sarah--it is true.  Don't disbelieve--God will provide.”  Sarah may have laughed under her breath as she did in her 70s when she heard those three visitors announce that she would bear a son.

At a point, it seems the waiting—the patient trusting in God’s work in God’s time—was too much. Sarah hands over Hagar, her maid, to bear her husband a son. That must be it, right? We’re in our 80s, come on! 

I remember being a child on a field trip to a dairy farm. What sticks in my mind was watching chickens hatch from their eggs. These poor little baby chicks looked weak and pathetic, slimy with egg goo, and barely  able to move even the lightest bit of shell. What was my instinct? What did I want to do? I wanted to help them. I wanted to crack the egg a little or just move some of the shell out of the way. They seemed so intent upon emerging that I wanted to help them emerge. Of course the teachers wouldn’t let us touch them, wisely, but it still didn’t make sense to me. They wanted out and I wanted to let them out—why not help them?

Similarly, in our classroom that year we had been watch a couple off cocoons. We’d seen the educational movie of a caterpillar attaching itself to the underside of a twiggy branch, splitting its skin and exuding a what would become its cocoon. We all knew there was a butterfly inside but why was it taking so long? The day came and the butterfly began to emerge. We watched and watched. I was thinking, “What’s the matter with everyone—why don’t we let it out? For Heaven’s sake—there’s a butterfly trapped in there trying to get out. Why can’t we help it out?”

The answer to both instances is the same: that struggle—the long, slow wrestling with the encasement—is absolutely necessary for the development of strong limbs and wings. Were we to help them out, they would perish every time.

Abraham and Sarah wavered in their trust of God. They doubted that he would provide. So they took the job into their own hands. They rushed things along. They picked away at the eggshell and attempted to peel back the chrysalis.

SACRIFICING SONS

Sarah may have laughed when she first received the promise of a child, but when she bore a son in her 90s she laughed out loud—so hard and resounding that they couldn't name hime anything else.  Isaac, for those of you who may have forgotten, means laughter. Out of barrenness, weakness, and improbability: Laughter, provided by God.

And now God comes to Abraham again—this time he asks him to sacrifice it all: all the promise, all the faithfulness, all the waiting, all the future inheritance—all the future.  Abraham, who loved Isaac, his only son, will have to make a human sacrifice of Isaac to prove his faithfulness. What greater act of faithfulness can we possibly imagine?

Sacrifice is proof of integrity and sincerity.  Every “natural” religion made by human beings involves some kind of ritualized sacrifice.  Consider why.  Early pagans, believing in some manner of God or gods, see their fortune tied to the gods' good will towards them.  Calamity hits—a flood, a drought, or an earthquake—so they feel they need to appease and be right with the gods.  They take something they value—something good and pure and precious—and they take it to a high place  and offer it.  Animals are killed, blood is spilled, and a virgin is cast into the angry volcano—through the destruction a statement is made:  "We give you our best keeping nothing of it to ourselves, to appease your anger and secure  your favor." Appeasing the anger of the gods in order to restore a broken relationship. Every culture in the history of the world has expressed its religious longings through sacrifice, reinventing it time and  again.  It is part of the natural language of human beings towards the divine.  It says, we really mean it.  It is how we communicate our faithfulness, through sacrifice. 

Now Abraham is asked to make the ultimate sacrifice. To take his son, his only son Isaac whom he loves, and make him the sacrifice.  Listen to the details, and remember this was written hundreds of years before Good Friday.

Quoting the text:

God said, "Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love, and Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on  the mountain."

6 Abraham took the wood for the burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them went on together, 7 Isaac spoke up and said to his father Abraham, “Father?”

“Yes, my son?” Abraham replied.

“The fire and wood are here,” Isaac said, “but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”

8 Abraham answered, “God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son.” And the two of them went on together.

9 When they reached the place God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. 10 Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. 

Can you see him?  Can you see the fear, the rage, the faithfulness all combined?

Can you see his son’s face saying, “Father! Father, why?”

11 But the angel of the Lord called out to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!”

“Here I am,” he replied.

12 “Do not lay a hand on the boy,” he said. “Do not do anything to him. Now I know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your only son.”

13 Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a ram[a] caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering instead of his son. 14 So Abraham called that place The Lord Will Provide. And to this day it is said, “On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.”

Now, if you were listening, and I know you were, you know why Genesis 22 is prophetic.

1. •Father Abraham is our image of God the Father.
   
2. •He too had a son, an only son, whom He loved.
   
3. •And after riding a donkey up to Moriah—the main hill of Jerusalem,
   
4. •he too put the wood of the sacrifice upon His son
   
5. •and His son carried the wood up the mountain.
   
6. •and The Son was bound to the wood,
   

but when God the Father raised the knife over Jesus, his only Son whom he loved—who cried out “Father! Father, why?”where was the voice to cry, “Stop! Don’t do it!”

There was no higher voice. The only voice was that of Humanity, which said, “Do it! Crucify him!”

We demanded blood,  and as there is no higher power than God himself, there was no one to stay his hand—none to cry, “Stop!”

As such, the prophecy of Genesis 22 was fulfilled.  On the Mountain of the Lord, God did provide. He provided the lamb on the mountain as a sacrifice, and in doing so, God reverses the order of the universe. So get this:

In our own language--the language of human religion—God speaks back to us.  While it is in our nature to sacrifice something to appease God's anger, in Christ it is as though God makes a sacrifice to us—even as though we were above him and he needed to secure our favor. Using our own language, he says to us:  “Be not angry—I so wish to be in right relationship with you.  Here is my son, my only Son—a clear, pure, spotless lamb who is worth more to me than all the universe—I sacrifice him to you.”

APPEASEMENT

What greater act of faithfulness can we possibly imagine?

“Are you appeased?” asks the Spirit,

•“What more can I do to prove my sincerity, my integrity?"

•”What more could I give to let you know that I really really mean it? 

•”I really do love you and want you to be in good relationship with me"

• "People of the world, please accept this sacrifice as a sign of my faithfulness.  Be not angry, but be appeased and let us be reconciled."

Every culture, every people, and every  individual should be able to hear this loud and clear: God so loved us, that he gave his only Son whom he loved.  Whoever accepts and receives his sacrifice will have the eternal inheritance God intends for us all.

Four thousand years ago, the man who was met by God and blessed to be a blessing for the whole world named that hill “God will provide.” Not “God did provide” or “God once upon a time provided,” but in the future tense, “God will provide” as in “God will provide the lamb for the sacrifice.”

God did indeed fulfill that prophecy two millennia later—two millennia ago—by walking his Son, his only Son whom he loved, up that hill carrying the wood of the sacrifice. That lamb was slain, once and for all, in order that our anger be appeased and we be permanently reconciled to the God who loves us so unspeakably, unimaginably much..†