WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:07.000 that take place in the Old Testament. And as we do so, we want to learn more about what happened at these big moments. 00:00:07.000 --> 00:00:19.000 We want to try and explain how these fit together across the Old Testament. And above all else, we want to see how they're all pointing forward towards Jesus Christ in the new. 00:00:19.000 --> 00:00:28.000 Our title today is Slavery and Exodus, and we can read again at verses 13 and 14 from the passage we read. 00:00:28.000 --> 00:00:36.000 Moses said to the people, Fear not, stand firm and see the salvation of the Lord which he will work for you today. 00:00:36.000 --> 00:00:45.000 For the Egyptians whom you see today you shall never see again. The Lord will fight for you and you only have to be silent. 00:00:45.000 --> 00:00:52.000 We're going to look at this together under four headings. What's the story so far? What's the story at this point? 00:00:52.000 --> 00:00:57.000 What's the bigger story? And what does it mean for your story? 00:00:57.000 --> 00:01:02.000 So first question, what's the story so far? This is the fourth sermon in our series. 00:01:02.000 --> 00:01:13.000 We started off at creation and we saw that God created the universe. And as he did so, he created it as a wonderful homeland for humanity, 00:01:13.000 --> 00:01:19.000 where we could enjoy a wonderful relationship with God and with one another. 00:01:19.000 --> 00:01:35.000 It's a place of beauty, order, purpose and potential. A place where humanity has both the amazing privilege and the profound responsibility of bearing the image of God. 00:01:35.000 --> 00:01:45.000 But from that beautiful starting point, tragedy follows. In Genesis chapter 3, humanity rebels against God by sinning. 00:01:45.000 --> 00:01:52.000 And the result is that creation becomes disordered, humanity becomes disorientated and dysfunctional. 00:01:52.000 --> 00:02:08.000 Harmony and community are replaced with suffering and hostility. And above all else, that close communion with God that humanity first enjoyed is lost. 00:02:08.000 --> 00:02:22.000 That means that by the time you reach Genesis 4 in the Old Testament, humanity and indeed the whole of creation are beautiful and broken. 00:02:22.000 --> 00:02:37.000 That means that from Genesis 3 through the rest of the Bible and in fact the whole of history, everything is now in the context of a conflict narrative. 00:02:37.000 --> 00:02:47.000 The kingdom of God is being opposed by the kingdom of evil and humanity is totally caught up in the midst of that conflict. 00:02:47.000 --> 00:02:55.000 And that of course is the reason why that for every human who has ever lived, life is a struggle and a battle. 00:02:55.000 --> 00:03:01.000 In that conflict, there is no neutral ground. 00:03:01.000 --> 00:03:10.000 Humanity is either in fellowship with God or in rebellion against him. There is no third option. 00:03:10.000 --> 00:03:18.000 As you read through Genesis 4 to 11, you see the awful consequences of all that's happened. 00:03:18.000 --> 00:03:29.000 Humanity becomes horribly hostile towards God and towards one another and becomes both the victim and the cause of terrible suffering. 00:03:29.000 --> 00:03:42.000 The story of Genesis 1 to 11 is that everything is broken. The beautiful homeland of Genesis 1 and 2 is now a battleground. 00:03:42.000 --> 00:03:51.000 But the story of the rest of the Old Testament is that God is not giving up. 00:03:51.000 --> 00:03:59.000 And from Genesis 12 onwards, God begins to implement an amazing plan of restoration. 00:03:59.000 --> 00:04:11.000 That plan begins with Abraham, who we looked at last week. Abraham is chosen by God. He is called to a new life and he's given wonderful promises by God. 00:04:11.000 --> 00:04:21.000 Central to those promises is a family, as you have in these verses in Genesis 1 to 3. Abraham is called by God. 00:04:21.000 --> 00:04:33.000 He's promised that he will have a child. He's promised that through that child, his descendants will grow into a great nation through whom the whole world is going to be blessed. 00:04:33.000 --> 00:04:47.000 And throughout all of God's dealings with Abraham, the great emphasis on the promises that Abraham receives is that he has done nothing to deserve any of it. 00:04:47.000 --> 00:04:54.000 The promises are all grounded on the grace of God. 00:04:54.000 --> 00:05:08.000 Grace is foundational to God's dealings with Abraham and we call these promises of grace that Abraham receives. We call that a covenant of grace. 00:05:08.000 --> 00:05:14.000 But what's happened between Abraham and this chapter that we read in Exodus 14? 00:05:14.000 --> 00:05:17.000 Well, two key things have taken place. 00:05:17.000 --> 00:05:29.000 First, the family has grown into a nation. So you can look at that diagram there. It's just really a very simple family tree. 00:05:29.000 --> 00:05:38.000 Abraham did eventually have a son, Isaac. He actually had other sons, but Isaac was the first one born to Abraham and Sarah. 00:05:38.000 --> 00:05:42.000 He was the one promised by God. 00:05:42.000 --> 00:05:54.000 Isaac had two sons, Esau and Jacob. Jacob is the figure that Genesis focuses on and God gave Jacob a new name. He called him Israel. 00:05:54.000 --> 00:06:02.000 Jacob went on to have 12 sons, as you can see on the diagram there, and they went on to have sons and descendants. 00:06:02.000 --> 00:06:15.000 And they were all soon part of one big family nation that was named after Jacob's other name. They were called the Israelites. 00:06:15.000 --> 00:06:30.000 So by the time we reach Exodus, the Abraham, Isaac, Jacobite family is huge. It's become a nation. But we must not forget, it was still a family. 00:06:30.000 --> 00:06:41.000 So when we hear the word Israel today, we tend to think of a political nation. But when you read the word Israel in the Bible, we are primarily talking about a family. 00:06:41.000 --> 00:06:47.000 This family has grown so big, it is a family nation. 00:06:47.000 --> 00:06:57.000 The second key thing that's happened though is that the family has gone from prosperity to slavery. 00:06:57.000 --> 00:07:05.000 Abraham was a very wealthy man. He had flocks and herds, gold and silver, male servants, female servants, camels and donkeys. 00:07:05.000 --> 00:07:17.000 That prosperity continued through Isaac and Jacob. And Joseph, one of Jacob's descendants, he actually reached the very top of the civil service in Egypt. 00:07:17.000 --> 00:07:28.000 And so in many ways, the family was very successful. But towards the end of Jacob's life, there was a severe famine in the area where they lived. 00:07:28.000 --> 00:07:38.000 And so the family moved en masse to Egypt to settle in an area called Goshen. And that takes us right up to the end of the book of Genesis. 00:07:38.000 --> 00:07:49.000 And at that stage, everything looks pretty good. However, Exodus chapter one tells us what happened over the next 400 years. 00:07:49.000 --> 00:07:53.000 And I'll just read it quickly for you. 00:07:53.000 --> 00:07:57.000 These are the names of the sons of Israel who came out of Egypt with Jacob, each with his household. 00:07:57.000 --> 00:08:03.000 Reuben, Simeon, Levi and Judah, Issachar, Zebulon and Benjamin, Dara, Naftali, Gad and Asher. 00:08:03.000 --> 00:08:10.000 All the descendants of Jacob were 70 Persians. Joseph was already in Egypt. 00:08:10.000 --> 00:08:18.000 Then Joseph died and all his brothers and all that generation. But the people of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly. 00:08:18.000 --> 00:08:23.000 They multiplied and grew exceedingly strong so that the land was filled with them. 00:08:23.000 --> 00:08:33.000 Now there arose a new king over Egypt who did not know Joseph and he said to his people, behold, the people of Israel are too many and too mighty for us. 00:08:33.000 --> 00:08:42.000 Come, let us deal shrewdly with them lest they multiply and if war breaks out, they join our enemies and fight against us and escape from the land. 00:08:42.000 --> 00:08:48.000 Therefore they set taskmasters over them to afflict them with heavy burdens. 00:08:48.000 --> 00:08:57.000 They built for Pharaohs, Storsities, Pithom and Ramesses. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and the more they spread abroad. 00:08:57.000 --> 00:09:07.000 And the Egyptians were in dread of the people of Israel. So they ruthlessly made the people of Israel work as slaves. 00:09:07.000 --> 00:09:15.000 This slavery had actually been anticipated by God right back in the days of Abraham. 00:09:15.000 --> 00:09:28.000 You see that in Genesis 15, he says, no for certain that your sojourners will be offspring, will be in a land that's not theirs and will be servants there and will be afflicted for 400 years. 00:09:28.000 --> 00:09:34.000 But I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve and afterwards they'll come out with great possessions. 00:09:34.000 --> 00:09:54.000 The rest of Exodus tells us the dramatic account of how God did indeed judge that nation and how he raised up Moses who confronted Pharaoh and brought the Israelites out of slavery and into freedom. 00:09:54.000 --> 00:09:59.000 So that's the story so far. What's the story at this point? 00:09:59.000 --> 00:10:08.000 We've heard from Exodus 14, which describes one of the most famous and most dramatic moments in the whole Exodus from Egypt. 00:10:08.000 --> 00:10:17.000 After a long struggle between Moses and Pharaoh and the awful plagues that were provoked by Pharaoh's resistance, the Israelites finally escaped. 00:10:17.000 --> 00:10:26.000 But no sooner had they left that Pharaoh changed his mind and he sent his army in pursuit of them. 00:10:26.000 --> 00:10:32.000 In Exodus 14, the Israelites are cornered. The Red Sea is in front of them. 00:10:32.000 --> 00:10:44.000 The Egyptian army is caught up behind them and in the midst of this impossible situation, God saves them by parting the waters of the sea. 00:10:44.000 --> 00:10:50.000 The Israelites are able to escape. The Egyptians are drowned as they try to pursue them. 00:10:50.000 --> 00:10:58.000 It is an amazing moment. God miraculously intervenes to save his people. 00:10:58.000 --> 00:11:12.000 I want to just look in a little bit more detail at verses 10 to 14 because these verses highlight three very important truths about how God's saving plan works. 00:11:12.000 --> 00:11:20.000 First of all, we see that the people saved by God are helpless. 00:11:20.000 --> 00:11:31.000 Verse 10 highlights that very clearly. When Pharaoh drawn near, the people cried out to God and they were terrified. 00:11:31.000 --> 00:11:39.000 As we said at the start, the whole of the Old Testament is a conflict narrative between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of evil. 00:11:39.000 --> 00:11:49.000 That spiritual conflict frequently manifests itself in the physical conflicts that are common throughout the Old Testament. 00:11:49.000 --> 00:11:59.000 And that threat of conflict is very much apparent here. You have the most powerful army on earth bearing down on a bunch of runaway slaves. 00:11:59.000 --> 00:12:06.000 And on the face of it, the Israelites look doomed. Egypt is incredibly powerful. 00:12:06.000 --> 00:12:19.000 Israel is utterly helpless. That means that God does not save them because they're strong. 00:12:19.000 --> 00:12:29.000 Secondly, we see in verses 11 to 12 that the people being saved by God are not just helpless. They're also foolish. 00:12:29.000 --> 00:12:36.000 They said to Moses, is it because there's no graves in Egypt that you've taken us to die in the wilderness? What have you done in bringing us out of Egypt? 00:12:36.000 --> 00:12:46.000 Is this not what we said to you when we were in Egypt? Leave us alone that we might serve the Egyptians, for it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness. 00:12:46.000 --> 00:12:51.000 Faced with this seemingly hopeless situation, all Israel's confidence vanishes. 00:12:51.000 --> 00:13:01.000 So much so that they start thinking that they will be better off back in Egypt, and that's a pattern that repeats itself throughout the Exodus journey. 00:13:01.000 --> 00:13:10.000 When faced with difficult circumstances, they keep thinking that they would have been better off staying as slaves. 00:13:10.000 --> 00:13:24.000 And in doing so, they are incredibly foolish. They always seem ready to choose permanent slavery over temporary challenges. 00:13:24.000 --> 00:13:38.000 And the point that this emphasizes is that the Israelites whom God rescues out of Egypt are not a godly, pious, impressive religious nation. 00:13:38.000 --> 00:13:46.000 They're a mess. Abraham was a man of great faith, but his descendants are nothing like him. 00:13:46.000 --> 00:13:55.000 They were constantly doubting God. They were desperate to find idols that they could worship, and they were forever making very foolish choices. 00:13:55.000 --> 00:14:03.000 That means that God does not save them because they are worthy. 00:14:03.000 --> 00:14:11.000 So we see that the people being saved are helpless. The people being saved are foolish. 00:14:11.000 --> 00:14:19.000 The third thing we see is that the people being saved by God don't actually do anything. 00:14:19.000 --> 00:14:24.000 I want you just to imagine for a moment that you were among the Israelites in this chapter. 00:14:24.000 --> 00:14:30.000 You've been walking day and night. You've had the excitement of escaping Egypt, but now reality is setting in. 00:14:30.000 --> 00:14:36.000 What's going to happen? Where do we go? All the time you're thinking, what if the Egyptians catch up with us? 00:14:36.000 --> 00:14:41.000 You come to the sea. You've got your family, your relatives and friends all around you. 00:14:41.000 --> 00:14:47.000 You're tired. You're hungry, and you're thinking, okay, we're at the sea. What are we going to do now? 00:14:47.000 --> 00:14:58.000 And then in the distance, you hear rumbling, and over the horizon you see Egyptian chariots appear. 00:14:58.000 --> 00:15:06.000 And quickly you realize that there's hundreds of them swarming towards your location near the shore. 00:15:06.000 --> 00:15:11.000 And you can imagine what people around you would start to say. They would be like, let's get out of here. 00:15:11.000 --> 00:15:16.000 But which way do we go? We're stuck. We can't go this way. We can't go that way. Let's try and fight. 00:15:16.000 --> 00:15:27.000 No, let's run. What are we going to do? And Moses stands up and he says, you don't need to do anything. 00:15:27.000 --> 00:15:34.000 Fear not, stand firm. See the salvation of the Lord, which he will work for you today. 00:15:34.000 --> 00:15:43.000 For the Egyptians whom you see today you shall never see again. The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent. 00:15:43.000 --> 00:15:50.000 The Israelites don't do anything. God does it all. 00:15:50.000 --> 00:15:57.000 And reading on from verse 15, we see how God miraculously delivers these people. 00:15:57.000 --> 00:16:09.000 If you had been standing in the Israelite camp, watching the Egyptians hurtling towards you, you'd have said to yourself, we're dead. 00:16:09.000 --> 00:16:19.000 But the outcome is that it's the Egyptians who perish. The Israelites are saved, and it's entirely down to what God does. 00:16:19.000 --> 00:16:23.000 And it's all summed up beautifully at the end of the chapter in verses 31 and 32. 00:16:23.000 --> 00:16:27.000 Thus the Lord saved Israel that day from the hand of the Egyptians. 00:16:27.000 --> 00:16:35.000 And Israel saw the Egyptians dead on the seashore. Israel saw the great power that the Lord used against the Egyptians. 00:16:35.000 --> 00:16:41.000 So the people feared the Lord, and they believed in the Lord, and in his servant, Moses. 00:16:41.000 --> 00:16:52.000 God is the one who acts. That means that the Israelites are not saved through anything that they do. 00:16:52.000 --> 00:17:01.000 So the people saved by God are helpless, they're foolish, and they don't actually do anything in order to be saved. 00:17:01.000 --> 00:17:10.000 And it's essential to recognize this because it is showing just how broken humanity is. 00:17:10.000 --> 00:17:19.000 It's very easy to think that sin has left humanity kind of a wee bit spoiled, a bit less than ideal. 00:17:19.000 --> 00:17:22.000 But if we get our act together, then we can put things right. 00:17:22.000 --> 00:17:26.000 And that of course is what many of the world's religions say. 00:17:26.000 --> 00:17:33.000 And looking at the Old Testament, it's easy to think, well, the Israelites, they're kind of the good guys, aren't they? 00:17:33.000 --> 00:17:43.000 So yes, they had their issues, but obviously they weren't as bad as the other nations. So they're the ones that God liked best because they weren't too bad. 00:17:43.000 --> 00:17:55.000 It's so easy to think like that, but we must recognize that that is a totally inaccurate understanding of both the Israelites and humanity. 00:17:55.000 --> 00:18:03.000 The Israelites in the Exodus and in the whole of the Old Testament were a broken mess. 00:18:03.000 --> 00:18:08.000 They were not the best of a bad bunch. They were not pretty good with just a few wobbles. 00:18:08.000 --> 00:18:14.000 They were not a model of faithfulness or godliness. They were a broken mess. 00:18:14.000 --> 00:18:19.000 And that's because the whole of humanity is a broken mess. 00:18:19.000 --> 00:18:25.000 And the Israelites were no different. Sin has wrecked humanity. 00:18:25.000 --> 00:18:40.000 And the horror of things like famine and slavery and deception, violence, conflict and all the other terrible things that have happened between Genesis 3 and Exodus 14 are all showing us that humanity is in an awful state. 00:18:40.000 --> 00:18:50.000 And if you stretch things from Genesis 3 right through to Scotland in 2021, it's still the same. 00:18:50.000 --> 00:18:58.000 The result of that is that humanity desperately needs to be rescued. 00:18:58.000 --> 00:19:11.000 And it's at this point we see that Exodus 14 is revealing another crucial aspect of what makes God's saving plan possible. 00:19:11.000 --> 00:19:17.000 With Abraham, you remember we said a moment ago that there's this wonderful emphasis on grace. 00:19:17.000 --> 00:19:23.000 God initiates a plan of salvation. Abraham does nothing to deserve it. 00:19:23.000 --> 00:19:29.000 With the Exodus, there's the same grace because the Israelites aren't worthy of anything. 00:19:29.000 --> 00:19:37.000 But alongside the grace of God, there's another crucial aspect of what makes God's saving plan possible. 00:19:37.000 --> 00:19:44.000 And it's in verse 31. Can you see it? 00:19:44.000 --> 00:19:48.000 It's power. 00:19:48.000 --> 00:19:55.000 If anyone is going to be rescued from danger, these two things are absolutely essential. 00:19:55.000 --> 00:19:59.000 Grace and power. 00:19:59.000 --> 00:20:09.000 So imagine that you're stuck in a storm at sea, your boat is capsized, you're hanging on and suddenly the helicopter windchman reaches you. 00:20:09.000 --> 00:20:17.000 At that moment, he doesn't say, can you just clarify that you deserve this rescue and that you're going to be able to cover all the costs? 00:20:17.000 --> 00:20:20.000 He doesn't say anything like that at all. 00:20:20.000 --> 00:20:27.000 He just comes to you because of grace. 00:20:27.000 --> 00:20:36.000 He doesn't ask any questions about what got you there, about what you deserve, or about who's going to pay for it. 00:20:36.000 --> 00:20:42.000 And when he reaches you, he doesn't shout, here's a rope. I hope you're strong enough to climb it. 00:20:42.000 --> 00:20:52.000 No, he just grabs you, puts a harness around you and then 5000 horsepower of helicopter hoists you to safety. 00:20:52.000 --> 00:21:00.000 If you are going to be saved from that situation, your rescuer needs the grace to be willing to save you. 00:21:00.000 --> 00:21:04.000 And they need the power to be actually able to do it. 00:21:04.000 --> 00:21:12.000 That's how a rescue works. And that is exactly what God does here. 00:21:12.000 --> 00:21:19.000 He rescues the Israelites because he's a God of grace. It's got nothing to do with what they deserve. 00:21:19.000 --> 00:21:29.000 And he delivers them to safety in an amazing demonstration of his power. 00:21:29.000 --> 00:21:35.000 But all of that can still leave us wondering, well, why does this matter so much? 00:21:35.000 --> 00:21:38.000 And why is it just the Israelites that get saved? 00:21:38.000 --> 00:21:48.000 And why is the liberation of this relatively small and insignificant tribe in North Africa so important? 00:21:48.000 --> 00:21:54.000 Well, that's where we need to ask our third question. What's the bigger story? 00:21:54.000 --> 00:22:04.000 As we've been saying, the Old Testament, the story of the Old Testament is a conflict narrative between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of evil. 00:22:04.000 --> 00:22:10.000 The events of Genesis 3 brought humanity under the grip of sin and evil. 00:22:10.000 --> 00:22:16.000 And from there, humanity is on a downward trajectory. 00:22:16.000 --> 00:22:25.000 So when you think of the whole story of the Old Testament, the general thrust is downward. 00:22:25.000 --> 00:22:29.000 It's not positive. It's negative. 00:22:29.000 --> 00:22:35.000 But in the midst of all of that brokenness, God does not give up. 00:22:35.000 --> 00:22:42.000 So within that downward trajectory, there are moments of hope. 00:22:42.000 --> 00:22:46.000 And we could draw it a wee bit. That's a very, very simple drawing. 00:22:46.000 --> 00:22:53.000 But a wee graph line like that captures, I hope, what I'm trying to say. 00:22:53.000 --> 00:23:00.000 It's generally going down, but all the little upward bits are moments of hope. 00:23:00.000 --> 00:23:07.000 And these wee upward bits are actually the bits that we're highlighting in this series. 00:23:07.000 --> 00:23:16.000 So the first was Abraham, where God places family at the heart of his saving plan, and he gives precious promises of grace. 00:23:16.000 --> 00:23:21.000 So Abraham was a really positive moment. But after Abraham, things went downhill again. 00:23:21.000 --> 00:23:25.000 The family grew, but they ended up as slaves. 00:23:25.000 --> 00:23:29.000 So the next kind of moment of hope is Moses. 00:23:29.000 --> 00:23:32.000 The family are rescued from slavery. 00:23:32.000 --> 00:23:44.000 But even in that rescue, they doubted God. And as we'll see next week, I think, it does not take them long to abandon God, despite everything that he's done for them. 00:23:44.000 --> 00:23:47.000 And that's the pattern that continues throughout the Old Testament. 00:23:47.000 --> 00:23:53.000 There are these positive moments, but the general direction is downward. 00:23:53.000 --> 00:23:58.000 The pull of sin is too strong. 00:23:58.000 --> 00:24:11.000 In the great Old Testament conflict between the kingdom of God and the kingdom of evil, it's not the kingdom of God that's winning. 00:24:11.000 --> 00:24:16.000 And you can easily think to yourself, well, that doesn't really sound very good. 00:24:16.000 --> 00:24:20.000 But none of that should actually surprise us. 00:24:20.000 --> 00:24:30.000 Because in the Old Testament, God is not trying to give us a series of successes. 00:24:30.000 --> 00:24:36.000 He is giving us a series of signposts. 00:24:36.000 --> 00:24:46.000 All of these moments are pointing forward. They're pointing forward to Jesus Christ. 00:24:46.000 --> 00:25:06.000 And that means that just as it was with Abraham as we saw last week, so it is here in Exodus, that everything before us in this chapter and all these great events, all of that is a sign pointing us forward to what God is doing through Jesus. 00:25:06.000 --> 00:25:14.000 Slavery in Egypt is pointing us to the fact that we are slaves to sin and we desperately need to be rescued. 00:25:14.000 --> 00:25:23.000 The weakness and foolishness of the Israelites is showing us that we cannot save ourselves. 00:25:23.000 --> 00:25:41.000 But the extraordinary power demonstrated in Exodus 14 is telling us that when it comes to saving you, Jesus will do whatever it takes. 00:25:41.000 --> 00:25:48.000 And so when Moses says, the Lord will fight for you, you have only to be silent. 00:25:48.000 --> 00:25:53.000 That is exactly what Jesus has come to do. 00:25:53.000 --> 00:25:57.000 He's come to reach us and to rescue us. 00:25:57.000 --> 00:26:01.000 And it's described beautifully in Hebrews 2 where it says, 00:26:01.000 --> 00:26:11.000 Since therefore the children shed in flesh and blood, he himself likewise particular same things that through death, he might destroy the one who has the power of death. 00:26:11.000 --> 00:26:16.000 That is the devil. That's conflict language. He's come to destroy the enemy. 00:26:16.000 --> 00:26:25.000 And he has also come to deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. 00:26:25.000 --> 00:26:35.000 The Exodus is just a shadow of that deliverance from slavery that Jesus has come to give us. 00:26:35.000 --> 00:26:46.000 And in the death and resurrection of Jesus, the conflict narrative changes forever. 00:26:46.000 --> 00:26:57.000 Because the kingdom of evil is defeated. The head of the serpent is crushed. The risen exalted Jesus is king overall. 00:26:57.000 --> 00:27:11.000 And every broken, fearful, enslaved human who trusts in him is set free. 00:27:11.000 --> 00:27:20.000 But last of all, what does it mean for your story? 00:27:20.000 --> 00:27:35.000 Exodus 14 happened about 3400 years ago or so. Does that story of what happened way back then have any relevance to the story of your life? No. 00:27:35.000 --> 00:27:44.000 Well, I really hope that you can see that it does because Exodus is showing us the inescapable reality of our situation as humans. 00:27:44.000 --> 00:27:50.000 And it's showing us the fundamental truths of how salvation works. 00:27:50.000 --> 00:27:59.000 And I hope that you can see all the implications of this because it's teaching us some of the most important lessons we can ever learn. 00:27:59.000 --> 00:28:09.000 It's teaching us that we need to recognize that you can forget about religious neutrality. 00:28:09.000 --> 00:28:13.000 It does not exist. 00:28:13.000 --> 00:28:17.000 The whole of human existence is a conflict narrative. 00:28:17.000 --> 00:28:24.000 We are either with God or against him. We're either in Christ or outside of him. 00:28:24.000 --> 00:28:29.000 We're either safe or lost. There's no third way. 00:28:29.000 --> 00:28:38.000 Spiritual neutrality can never be your story. 00:28:38.000 --> 00:28:46.000 We also need to recognize that sin is not a bit of fun or a moment of kind of naughty indulgence. 00:28:46.000 --> 00:28:51.000 Sin is brutal slavery. 00:28:51.000 --> 00:29:01.000 So when the devil dangles an attractive sin in front of you, whether that's to do with money or power or sex or gossip or drink or status or revenge, 00:29:01.000 --> 00:29:06.000 whenever he does that, he's not doing it to give you a wee bit of pleasure because following God is dull. 00:29:06.000 --> 00:29:10.000 He is doing it to enslave you. 00:29:10.000 --> 00:29:20.000 But one of the best tactics that the devil uses to enslave you is to make you think that you are the master. 00:29:20.000 --> 00:29:27.000 So he dangles pride or bitterness or lust or greed in front of you. 00:29:27.000 --> 00:29:33.000 And he says, you can just have a bit of this and then you can put it down again later. 00:29:33.000 --> 00:29:36.000 Isn't that exactly what happens? 00:29:36.000 --> 00:29:44.000 So we think, well, I'll just have that. I'll have one more drink or I'll have another look at that website. 00:29:44.000 --> 00:29:58.000 Or I'm just not going to forgive this time. And we think that we can kind of just pick these things up and put them down because the devil is convincing us that we are the master. 00:29:58.000 --> 00:30:11.000 But if you cannot go a day without satisfying a sinful habit, if you can't encounter someone else's mistakes without getting angry or bitter, 00:30:11.000 --> 00:30:17.000 if you can't work with someone without having the urge to prove that you're better than them, 00:30:17.000 --> 00:30:27.000 if you can't control these sins that you think that you can pick up and put down, then you have to ask yourself, 00:30:27.000 --> 00:30:34.000 am I the master or am I the slave? 00:30:34.000 --> 00:30:40.000 There's a very solemn lesson from Paul about this, which relates directly to Exodus 14. 00:30:40.000 --> 00:30:49.000 He says, I don't want you to be unaware, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud and all passed through the sea and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea 00:30:49.000 --> 00:30:53.000 and all ate the same spiritual food and all drank the same spiritual drink. 00:30:53.000 --> 00:30:57.000 They drank from the spiritual rock that followed them and the rock was Christ. 00:30:57.000 --> 00:31:02.000 Nevertheless, with most of them, God was not pleased for they were overthrown in the wilderness. 00:31:02.000 --> 00:31:15.000 Now these things took place as examples for us that we might not desire evil as they did. 00:31:15.000 --> 00:31:22.000 We also need to recognize that Jesus is offering you freedom. 00:31:22.000 --> 00:31:29.000 Jesus wants you to be free, free from sin, free from fear, free from death. 00:31:29.000 --> 00:31:36.000 Because freedom doesn't mean just doing whatever you like, because freedom is never, it never means doing whatever you like. 00:31:36.000 --> 00:31:44.000 The freedom that Jesus offers you is freedom to be everything that God created you to be. 00:31:44.000 --> 00:31:51.000 And one of the best illustrations I ever heard of this was to think of a steam engine. 00:31:51.000 --> 00:31:59.000 A steam engine is an incredible piece of engineering, they're just magnificent when you see them in all their glory. 00:31:59.000 --> 00:32:08.000 But if you took that steam engine and thought, I'm going to use this steam engine to go along a beach 00:32:08.000 --> 00:32:15.000 and you put it on the sand and you think I'm going to fire it up and I'm going to get the boiler billowing 00:32:15.000 --> 00:32:21.000 and we're going to go along this beach because I want to go wherever I want and I want to go along this beach. 00:32:21.000 --> 00:32:28.000 If you tried to run a steam engine along a beach then it's a very feeble site. 00:32:28.000 --> 00:32:39.000 But if you put that steam engine onto the rails that it's made for, then it thrives 00:32:39.000 --> 00:32:47.000 and it can roar through the countryside in magnificent freedom. 00:32:47.000 --> 00:32:59.000 And the point of that illustration is to say that humanity thrives when we live to be what God created us to be. 00:32:59.000 --> 00:33:04.000 And that makes perfect sense because if you think of all the great achievements of humanity, 00:33:04.000 --> 00:33:13.000 they're actually all examples of humanity simply doing what God tells us to do in Genesis 1 and 2. 00:33:13.000 --> 00:33:19.000 So the brilliant examples you see of someone who champions community or someone who cares for the environment 00:33:19.000 --> 00:33:25.000 or someone who makes an amazing discovery or someone who is astonishingly creative in art or music, 00:33:25.000 --> 00:33:29.000 they are simply doing what God has created us to do. 00:33:29.000 --> 00:33:38.000 And one of the great goals of Christianity is to redeem and restore all of that wonderful potential in humanity. 00:33:38.000 --> 00:33:46.000 And it's a great reminder that Christianity is not slavery. 00:33:46.000 --> 00:33:53.000 And any presentation of Christianity that implies that it is, is a counterfeit. 00:33:53.000 --> 00:34:01.000 So as a Christian, that means that in everything that you do this week, whether that's as a student, a parent, a colleague, a boss, 00:34:01.000 --> 00:34:09.000 a member of this church, God does not want you to be a slave. He wants you to thrive. 00:34:09.000 --> 00:34:16.000 But perhaps the most important thing that we need to recognize from this whole story is this. 00:34:16.000 --> 00:34:27.000 That no matter who you are, no matter how bleak your circumstances, no matter how great and numerous your mistakes, 00:34:27.000 --> 00:34:36.000 God has enough grace and enough power to save you. 00:34:36.000 --> 00:34:44.000 Do you feel weak and helpless? Do you feel foolish? Do you feel like an idiot with all the things that you've done and that you regret? 00:34:44.000 --> 00:34:54.000 Do you feel like you've got nothing to offer? The people around you or this church or God, do you feel like you're just, 00:34:54.000 --> 00:35:01.000 that you just mucked up so much? There's nothing you can do. 00:35:01.000 --> 00:35:07.000 Well, if you feel like that, right now, God is saying to you, 00:35:07.000 --> 00:35:16.000 I will fight for you and you have only to be silent. 00:35:16.000 --> 00:35:24.000 And in that silence, look at the cross where Jesus died. 00:35:24.000 --> 00:35:36.000 Because on the cross, you will see just how much Jesus will fight for you. 00:35:36.000 --> 00:35:45.000 And all you have to do to be saved is hold out your empty hands to Him. 00:35:45.000 --> 00:35:56.000 And in His abundant grace and in His immeasurable power, He will do the rest. 00:35:56.000 --> 00:36:03.000 Amen. Let's pray. 00:36:03.000 --> 00:36:16.000 Father, we thank you so much for your grace and for your power, for the salvation of the Lord that you have accomplished. 00:36:16.000 --> 00:36:25.000 And we pray that in every way we would just lean on you and look to you. 00:36:25.000 --> 00:36:33.000 And instead of thinking that we know best and instead of doing our own thing, that we would remember your great words, 00:36:33.000 --> 00:36:39.000 that you are the one who will fight for us and we have only to be silent. 00:36:39.000 --> 00:36:58.000 In that silence, help us to see more of you, Lord Jesus. Amen.