Sermon Supplements – Page 35

It’s Easier to Split an Atom (Exodus 6:1–27)

The recipe of redemption:

Take God’s covenant with Abraham.
Cut along the present dividing the covenant past (Exodus 6:3–5) from the covenant future (Exodus 6:6–8). [NOTE: This step is impossible, God’s covenant faithfulness in the past cannot be separated from our present, not the future, but just pretend.]
Add Yahweh at the beginning, end, and in-between. [NOTE: Again, this is just a mental exercise. God is the beginning, God is the end, and when you make your imaginary split between the past and the future, you’ll find that God is already there too.]

God’s name (Yahweh) and His covenant are linked together. In Exodus 6:3–8 if God isn’t saying “I am Yahweh,” He is saying something that regards His covenant. Four times, at the beginning, end, and betwixt all the covenant talk, God declares, “I am Yahweh.” God’s name speaks to who God is in Himself. Yahweh is the I AM, He has aseity, is immutable, incomprehensible, and holy just for starters. But His name isn’t merely tied to who He is, it also concerns what He does. God’s name is part of God’s redeeming covenant love. He redeems His people to Himself to know Him, and to know that all that He is, He is for them. They are redeemed to know that Yahweh is their God and that their God is Yahweh.

When God tells His people who He is, the definition isn’t theoretical and abstract, but practical and concrete. Yahweh delivers and redeems His people (Exodus (6:6), and then takes them to be His people, adopts them, so that they might know He is Yahweh their God (Exodus 6:7).

The patriarchs didn’t know God by his name, but in the title “God Almighty” (El Shaddai). This isn’t to say that they didn’t know God’s name, but that they didn’t know God in His name. If you looked in their mental dictionary the entry “Yahweh” was there, followed by a pronunciation guide, but the definition was blank. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob called upon the name of Yahweh. They knew the name, but God had not made Himself known in His name. Now God is giving the definition, and the definition isn’t a short one. God’s was just getting warmed up at the burning bush. God’s elucidation of His name continues throughout the whole of Exodus. Look up “Yahwah” in the dictionary, and the entire text of Exodus follows.

But even then God isn’t finished showing us how His name and covenant are forever linked. The definition isn’t really filled out until we come to Jesus, the Greek variant of Yeshua, meaning “Yahweh saves.” In the name and person of Jesus, we see God’s name and covenant fully intertwined and inseparable.

Thus Says Yahweh (Exodus 5:1–23)

“Thus says Yahweh…,” so chapter six of Exodus begins; by the end, everyone doubts this. There are several conversations in chapter 6: Moses and Aaron speak to Pharaoh (vv. 1–5), Pharaoh speaks to the taskmasters and foremen (vv. 6–9), the taskmasters and foremen speak to Israel (vv. 10–14), the foremen speak to Pharaoh (vv. 15–18), the foremen speak to Moses and Aaron (vv. 19–21), Moses speaks to Yahweh (vv. 22–23). Everyone is talking, no one is listening—to God. Yahweh speaks, men ignore; well, at least, they try. By the end of the book, no one will doubt Yahweh has spoken; well, at least for a while.

Pharaoh’s refusal cannot silence Yahweh’s word’s of judgment. Israel’s grumbling cannot hush Yahweh’s words of grace. Thus says Yahweh. YHWH has spoken. It will be done. “Who is Yahweh?” Pharaoh asks. He will receive an education. Israel has not listened, but God still hears His prophet intercede for His people. He hears Moses’ prayers (Exodus 5:22–6:1ff), He hears His people’s groaning (Exodus 6:5). Pharaoh has not listened to Yahweh, nor does he hear the Hebrew’s cries (Exodus 5:15–19), but God has spoken and God listens.

“Thus says Yahweh,” those words will not fall flat. They may fall as quiet snowflake, but it is the snowflake that starts the avalanche. Yahweh’s words don’t dissipate, they swell. His voice does’t just carry, it’s self-amplifying. They are words so loud they will make the hearing deaf and the deaf hearing.

Yahweh has spoken words of judgement and grace. There’s a lot of talk, and little listening. Yahweh speaks, men ignore, or so they try. By the end of the book, when the author has finished speaking the tale of this age, when His words have swelled to the point that a new heaven and a new earth are on the verge of being, no one will doubt “thus says Yahweh.” On that day, no one will doubt the words of the One whose word holds them together. If He didn’t speak they would not be; recognizing this, all heads will be bowed, with mouths silent and ears attentive, to His words of judgment and grace. Thus says Yahweh.

Unless YHWH Is YHWH (Exodus 4:18–31)

God hardened Pharaoh’s heart.

Pharaoh hardened his heart.

Pharaoh’s heart was hard.

Which one is it? Yes. Perhaps you’d like to pretend that these things were happening at different times and that it all started with Pharaoh hardening his own heart; that God only steps in to further harden that which is already irreparably hard. Make God’s hardening pointless—that’ll solve our problems? Nope. Can’t do that. These are synonymous. These are all happening at the same time; and over them all, God is sovereign. God declares that this is His intention from the beginning (Exodus 3:19, 20; 4:21) , and He tells Pharaoh why, “For by now I could have put out my hand and struck you and your people with pestilence, and you would have been cut off from the earth. But for this purpose I have raised you up, to show you my power, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth (Exodus 9:15–16).” YHWH could have made quick work of Pharaoh, but that won’t do. God want’s wonder upon wonder to fall on Pharaoh so that His renown might echo through the earth.

How’s that for a truth to make palatable? More sugar please? This makes no sense, unless YHWH is YHWH. Own that, and you’ll bow. Jonathan Edwards got this (by got, I mean received; and by received, I mean by grace).

He hath mercy on some, and hardeneth others. When God is here spoken of as hardening some of the children of men, it is not to be understood that God by any positive efficiency hardens any man’s heart. There is no positive act in God, as though he put forth any power to harden the heart. To suppose any such thing would be to make God the immediate author of sin. God is said to harden men in two ways: by withholding the powerful influences of his Spirit, without which their hearts will remain hardened, and grow harder and harder; in this sense he hardens them, as he leaves them to hardness. And again, by ordering those things in his providence which, through the abuse of their corruption, become the occasion of their hardening. Thus God sends his word and ordinances to men which, by their abuse, prove an occasion of their hardening.

There it is. YHWH is YHWH. God is God. Because of the curse, for soil to grow hard and wild, nothing need be done but let it alone. So it is with man’s heart. So it is because of man’s heart. Dirt is a parable (Matthew 13:1–7). Soil isn’t self-softening. The Farmer doesn’t just spread the good seed, He preps the soil. We’re rocks. God restrains. If He did not, we would plunge into darkness. Down. Down. Down. This is our sinful trajectory. We are totally depraved. Sure, we’re not as wicked as we could be, but we are totally, altogether wicked. None does good. Any “civil virtue” we may exhibit is really “pretty idolatry.” In unbeliever’s every “good” act, something is being worshipped, and it ain’t Jesus, or they wouldn’t be unbelievers. Wickedness is in every crevice of our being: will, affections, desires, thoughts, inclinations, et cetera. We’re not a sin blackout, but every part is shaded in. We’re not naturally good. We’re subdued, limited, restrained, and most importantly, graced. Should God let the rocks fall, it would be nothing but an act of justice; a holy, righteous judgment on every son of Adam.

YHWH is YHWH. This is His prerogative. “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The LORD.’ And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy (Exodus 33:19).” “The LORD,” meaning YWHW, and YWHW, in part meaning, “I will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.” Some receive mercy. Some receive justice. No one receives injustice. Behind all of this: YWHW. “You will say to me then, ‘Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?’ But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, ‘Why have you made me like this?’ Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory (Romans 9:19–23).” Justice justly falls on some to magnify the graciousness of grace. “But we all deserve grace!” Isn’t that a contradiction? Further, if we’re not in hell, we’re all experiencing some degree of grace (common, non-salvific grace, but grace nonetheless) and spurning it, thus proving, we don’t at all, all deserve grace.

Moses is a sinner. Praise God, Moses, by the Spirit, paints Moses as Moses was. In chapters two through six Moses beats everyone else to the punch and roasts himself. God is the hero. Pharaoh sins again and again and finds justice. Moses, along with Israel, sins again and again, and finds grace. The only thing that makes the difference, is YHWH, the covenant God of unfailing love for His elect people. YHWH is YHWH. Realize this, and you don’t choke on the thought of sovereign justice; you get choked up thinking about sovereign grace.

Not a Dainty Grace (Exodus 4:1–17)

As Moses’ sinful questions mutate into brazen objections, God’s grace grows more firm. God’s grace isn’t fragile. It isn’t a dainty grace. When God sets His covenant love on sinners, sinners’ sins don’t change His covenant love; God’s covenant love changes sinners. We’re told Moses’ sins aroused God’s anger, and what do we see next? Preplanned grace (4:14). God’s grace is always preplanned. To put a spin on Spurgeon, if God didn’t love His people before the foundation of the world, it’s certain He’d never see cause, in them, to love them afterward.

God’s grace isn’t a dainty grace. You can’t shatter it. It’s child proof; indestructibly designed by a Father who knows us. You can’t break this grace. It breaks you. This isn’t the kind of grace that sweeps sin under the rug, but propels us out the door. This is persistent and insistent grace that covers and refuses our objections.

God’s grace throws us in the deep end and then is there to keep us from drowning. Remember Jonah? God’s firm grace got Jonah to Nineveh. The book ends with Jonah rebelliously pouting. Or does it? Who wrote the book of Jonah? I believe it was Jonah. The book ends then as Jonah’s expression of the ugliness of his sin and the beauty of God’s grace. Good parents often make their children do things they’re fearful of and the children are often thankful after the fact. I’m sure, once Jonah set his pen down, it was with a contented sigh of thankfulness that God threw him in the deep end and was there to keep him from drowning, even in his own sins. Once Moses returned to Sinai, certainly, he too was thankful that God’s grace was made of adamant.

There is grace for those who are ambassadors of grace. Not a grace that excuses our sins, but a grace that leaves us without excuses.

God’s Name (Exodus 3:13–22)

But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?” He said, “But I will be with you, and this shall be the sign for you, that I have sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.” Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” —Exodus 3:11–13

Moses: Who am I?

God: But I will be with you.

Moses: Ok. Not me. You. Got it. …Who are you?

God: I AM WHO I AM.

God has addressed Moses by name. Moses has not returned the favor. Was God’s name not known up to this point? No. The name of God is YHWH or Yahweh, represented every time we see the all caps “LORD” in the Old Testament. Knowing this, we see that Abraham knew this name (Genesis 12:8), as well as Isaac (Genesis 26:25), and Jacob (Genesis 28:16). We can go all the way back to the third generation of man (Genesis 4:26). God’s name was known.

Has Moses been baking in the wilderness too long? Or has the 400 year bondage caused him, along with all Israel, to forget? A better answer is found in a couple of verses that may initially cause us more puzzlement. “God spoke to Moses and said to him, ‘I am the LORD. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty, but by my name the LORD I did not make myself known to them (Exodus 6:2-3).’” So was Genesis mistaken? Did the patriarchs not call upon YHWH? They knew the name YHWH, but YHWH wasn’t known by His name. God had appeared and made himself known as God Almighty, but His name YHWH was a mystery to them. Now, God is revealing Himself in His name to Moses so that he might give it to His people.

Biblically, names are revelatory. They’re meaningful. God’s name communicates His aseity, immutability, incomprehensibility, transcendence, simplicity, and holiness. But His name also represents His condescension. In giving this name, God is stooping and lisping to His children. To know God’s name isn’t just to know Him, but to know Him intimately. This is God’s covenant name that His people are to remember Him by (Exodus 3:15).

It’s a shame that we’ve forgotten it. We read that Abraham “called upon the name of the LORD,” and think of a title, “Lord,” instead of a personal name, “YHWH.” It’s a great shame that we don’t call upon this name. It’s a greater shame that we forget Who it is this name says we call upon. Pray to your Father, but do not forget that it is YHWH—the self-existent, transcendent, holy, immutable I AM come down in covenant love—that you call upon as Father.

By God’s grace we do better than we know. Anytime we call upon the name of Jesus, truly knowing Him as the supreme revelation of God, we are leaning upon the truth revealed in God’s name—the Holy one, come down in covenant love to redeem His people. “Jesus” is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew “Joshua” or “Yeshua” which means “YHWH is salvation.” The angel commanded Joseph “to call his name Jesus for he will save his people from their sins (Matthew 1:21).” God told Moses that God would deliver His people (Exodus 3:8). Unlike Moses, with Jesus, God isn’t simply delivering His people through a man; Jesus is God come to deliver His people. He is YHWH, and so He says, “before Abraham was, I am (John 8:58).” Knowing the name of YHWH helps us to better understand the name of Jesus. May we never forget, throughout all our generations.

With Every Turn of a Page (Exodus 3:1–12)

Perhaps the most masterful thing C.S. Lewis does in his Narnia series is to create a longing in you for Aslan the lion. Aslan is the central figure in the books, yet, notice how sparse his appearances are. You turn each page hoping it to be the one in which he comes into the story, and yet, you know that he is on every page. Every story is his story.

And so it is with our Lord. Mistakingly we can think that theophanies were as thick as June-mosquitoes following heavy May-showers in Oklahoma. They were not. They were more rare than horny toads. The first chapters of Exodus give us a clearer picture. God gives the brave midwives families in chapter one, then He hears the cries of His people in chapter two, but these are things we only know because of the narrator. Israel was ignorant of these things as the events themselves unfolded. But, because of the subtle narration, because of the genealogy, because we’ve read the promises in Genesis, because we’ve recalled the covenant, we see that God has been on every page.

It was God who brought His people down to Egypt according to His word. There they were afflicted as He told Abraham. There God multiplied them and made them into a great nation as He promised Jacob. God’s covenant faithfulness hasn’t failed. Even so, longings have been stirred. Israel, by her bondage cried out for the manifest covenant love of her God. We, by the Spirit’s Lewis-surpassing craft, long for God to manifest Himself. We’ve seen glimpses, and they are glorious, but we hunger for more. So we come to chapter three. We turn the page. There He is! The Holy and Humble one, the great I AM come down to bring His people up. The transcendent God has come down in immanent covenant graciousness to redeem a people out of bondage to a land flowing with milk and honey. Our hearts leap, for this story isn’t limited to one book of the Bible. This is the story of the Bible. This is our story: the holy transcendent God come down in immanent covenant grace to save a people to Himself. May our expectation grow with every turn of a page.

Reading Backwards for Greater Comprehension (Exodus 2:1–25)

The immediate audience Moses intended Exodus for wasn’t reading it blind. They experienced the events blind, but now, through this narrative, they are allowed to revisit their recent history and see things as they really were. Like reading a great novel a second time, they’re able to see images, metaphors, symbols, and foreshadowing they missed because now they know the ending. “The providence of God,” says John Flavel, “is like Hebrew words—it can only be read backwards.”

The people of Israel are crying out to God for deliverance. God has already raised up the deliverer, from the Levites, who will act as their mediator, and though whom they will receive instructions concerning a tent. Israel will be delivered from the bondage of building store cities for Pharaoh, to the freedom of building a tabernacle for God, with the spoils of His victory, so that He as their king might dwell in their midst.

By faith, we read this story not only looking back, but looking forward. The true and better Moses has come. He has defeated the serpent tyrant and released us from our bitter bondage to sin and death. We’re sojourners, but, we can be sure that He will lead us all the way home. We know the ending, but one day, when this present age is past, we’ll read backwards with even greater clarity and see that God never forgot His covenant and we will ask our Father to tell the story again and again.

Satan: God’s Good Farmer (Exodus 1:1–22)

God was faithful to His covenant; in Egypt He made of Jacob a great nation (Genesis 46:3–4), and, in Egypt, they were afflicted (Genesis 15:13–14). Affliction and multiplication were both His brushstrokes. He steps back from the canvass saying, “Very good!” God’s blessing brought persecution; both were part of His plan.

The multiplication led to the oppression, but that isn’t what Moses says in v. 12. He doesn’t say the more they multiplied the more they were oppressed, but, the more they were oppressed the more they multiplied. The serpent tries to stomp out the seed but his stomping is God’s sowing. The people of God are like cells that when you cut them they don’t die, they multiply. God writes blessing bigger than the serpent’s eraser. He also puts a pencil lead into Satan’s eraser. The greater his rage, the more marks there are. The more marks there are, the greater his rage. Repeat cycle. God turns the serpent’s eraser into a pencil to tell His tale.

It always works this way. When the serpent bit the heel of the Seed of the woman, the Seed did die, but He sprouted from the ground the Firstfruits of the harvest. When death tried to kill Life, Life wasn’t extinguished, it was multiplied.

The serpent tries to stomp the seed of Abraham plural. He only makes it more plural. Cells are split, the body of Christ grows. The church caught on quickly. “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church,” says Tertullian. Satan still rages, meaning, he still writes—God’s story. In 1920 the church in China comprised an estimated 2.3 million souls. Now, some say conservatively, thanks to hostile communism, there are 100 million. One could say that the persecution was a brutal as the growth was exponential, but the persecution came first. The more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied. As punishment for his sin against man, God is making Satan write Exodus 1:12 on the board a trillion times, and then, hell to follow.

God has not forgotten His covenant. He is multiplying His people still. He is using the serpent still. Don’t get comfortable in this world, find peace in God’s covenant. We’re in Egypt. God is multiplying, but we’re not home yet. The greater Moses has come, and is sure to return.

The Genesis of Exodus

“These are the names of the sons of Israel who came to Egypt with Jacob, each with his household: Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin, Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher. All the descendants of Jacob were seventy persons; Joseph was already in Egypt. Then Joseph died, and all his brothers and all that generation. But the people of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly; they multiplied and grew exceedingly strong, so that the land was filled with them.” —Exodus 1:1–7

Thus begins Exodus. Or, does it? That intro sounds very Genesis-y doesn’t it? Exodus isn’t stand alone. It’s volume two of a five volume work by Moses. To read Exodus rightly, start with Genesis. It’s only our familiarity with the stories that makes us think we know what’s going on. Ever been with friends who are watching the second or third film in a trilogy of which you haven’t viewed the preceding titles? You have all kinds of questions. “Who are these people? Why are they doing that? How are they related? What is the backstory?” Likewise Exodus. “Who is Israel? Why are they in Egypt? Who is YHWH? What is the covenant He made with Abraham and how does it relate to these people?”

Inversely, to read Genesis well, you must understand it as the preface to Exodus; a prequel that came out later. We often read Genesis as though it were recorded by an automaton in real time as the events unfolded, handed down from one patriarch to the next. Not so. The events recorded in Genesis were received by Moses for the people of God at the time of the Exodus, far removed from the events recorded there.

Why the time delay? Because what happens in Exodus has its roots in the foundation of the earth. The seeds of the exodus were planted before God made the dry land appear on the third day. Sin didn’t catch God by surprise. All through Genesis you’re waiting for a child. A seed of the woman to crush the head of the serpent and bring redemption—God’s people in God’s place under God’s rule—shalom, very good. Again and again, the children of the serpent seek to crush the children of the promise. The children of the promise endanger things with their own sins, but from the refuse of man’s sin God causes grace to grow. Children are born, but repeatedly, they disappoint. They’re only shadows.

Then, Exodus. Once again the serpent is trying to kill the seed. A child is born. He catches his mother’s eye. He is saved. He grows old. He delivers God’s people, leads them to a mountain to receive God’s rule, and from there, to God’s place. But he too is only a shadow. Millenia later the Seed of the woman would be born of a virgin. A small king again would try to eliminate the Seed, but He would escape, to Egypt. He would be the greater Moses, the greater Passover, the greater Deliverer, the Lord of the greater Exodus. Because of Him, God’s people, in God’s place, under God’s rule—shalom, very good.

On Fasting at the Feast (Isaiah 25)

The Lord’s Supper is a feast. Too many come to the table as if to a wake instead of a wedding; a funeral instead of a festival. In this age we do fast, but the Lord’s Supper is a breaking in of the future, and thus, a feast (cf. Matthew 9:14–17).

This is why I don’t consider the issue of wine non-consequential to optimally partaking of the Supper. There’s no getting around it, the wine of the kingdom is wine (Isaiah 25:6). Drunkenness is certainly a sin, but wine is a blessing. Can we abuse wine? Of course. But as Luther quipped, we can abuse women; shall we abolish women? The best abuse prevention is a holy joy in the gift as a blessing from God. Isaac blessed Jacob saying, “May God give you of the dew of heaven and of the fatness of the earth and plenty of grain and wine.” Israel’s covenant obedience meant vat’s bursting with wine (Deuteronomy 7:13, Proverbs 3:9–10).

Wine was not only a symbol of blessedness, but of man’s joy in that blessedness. “You cause the grass to grow for the livestock and plants for man to cultivate, that he may bring forth food from the earth and wine to gladden the heart of man, oil to make his face shine and bread to strengthen man’s heart (Psalm 104:14–15).” God gave wine, and He gave it to gladden man’s heart. “Bread is made for laughter, and wine gladdens life (Ecclesiastes 10:19).” Oh that that verse would infect and ferment our coming to the Lord’s Table. If ever there were a bread made for holy laughter, tis the Bread of life. If ever there were a wine to gladden life, tis the blood of the new covenant.

The inverse of all this is seen in Isaiah 24:11, “There is an outcry in the streets for lack of wine; all joy has grown dark; the gladness of the earth is banished.” The curse means no wine, no joy, no gladness. At the Lord’s table, blessedness has swallowed up the curse. Wine and bread abound again. Wine isn’t inconsequential because it testifies that the Lord’s Supper is a feast and that our joy should be full. As we come to the table, let us sing like victors, eat like the married, and raise the glass in honor of the King.