Exodus 12:24-28: Remember.

Presented to Swift Current Corps of The Salvation Army, 01 July 2012*

By Captain Michael Ramsay

I heard a harrowing story this week. Dave, a member of the Rotary club here in town, told this story of a family vacation that he took to Acapulco in 1968. Dave and his wife are on holiday down in Mexico. They check into their hotel and there are these little lizards - Geckos or something else – climbing all up the walls; so they speak to the hotel and ask to be moved as far away from the lizards as they can, up to the top floor. They do move up to the top floor. That turns out to be a mistake. In the middle of the night, they are woken up as people are running through the halls screaming. Some girls from Quebec tell them what was happening: the hotel is on fire. The stairs, they are concrete for the top few floors and then wood beneath and they are ablaze. The girls from Quebec jump over the railing from the 10^th storey or more up and plunge all the way down. Dave and his wife and their two sons, aged six and nine, are trapped. Without thinking they run to the elevator but the door closes with people inside it just before they get there. Actually I think Dave got his hand in the closing door but they didn’t catch the elevator, which is good because we know what happens to people in elevators in a fire. Dave and his family are trapped. They try to tie sheets together to scale down the outside of the building but as Dave is heading over a balcony, it is good that he has an arm linked through the railing because someone unties the sheets. He then climbs down the side of the balcony and swings onto the balcony below. His wife then drops one of his children for him to catch and then the other and then she scales down as far as she can, then falls and Dave catches her legs and pulls her in. They do this until the third storey or so of the building when they ran out of balconies. Dave then throws one child down onto a straw thatched roof, hoping that it will break his fall. He sees the boy fall through the roof and run away so he throws the other son down who makes a new hole as he crashes through the thatched roof. He too runs to safety. His wife jumps next and Dave is able to scale a palm tree to the bottom. They are injured but they survive. It was quite a tale to hear recalled. They survived by the grace of God but others on their floor, those who leapt over the railing or those who took the elevator, did not.

What had happened was, apparently there was a dispute between two ownership groups – one local and one foreign – the foreign group was residing in the hotel on that day and some local people attacked the building with Molotov cocktails – hoping to collect insurance, I believe.

It was quite something to hear this story. I don’t think many of us in Rotary knew about this incident in Dave’s life at all. There is more to his story too. One of his sons had a piece of the thatched roof he fell through stuck into his foot. The other had a twig protruding from his neck with blood spurting out. They were okay though. As well as their salvation, there was another miracle in this story. (Dave and his wife do recognize this as a miraculous salvation.) When Dave and his wife were climbing down the balconies to escape the flames, they left somewhere her straw purse with their passports, money, plane tickets, and the like. The next day Dave went back and began looking in this burned-out hotel building for this straw purse. God saved it for them. It was on a balcony on a burned-out floor but this straw purse and its contents were still there pretty much unscathed. It was fine. God protected it and God protected them. God was there for them in the midst of this ordeal. They remember and they’ll never forget.

It is the same with the Hebrews in our text today. Those of us who have been keeping up with our reading the Bible plan, will have read the stories of the plagues as recorded in Exodus this week. These plagues are quite something with each one becoming more terrifying and awe-inspiring than the previous one:

1. The Nile River turns to blood (7:14–25)
2. Plague of frogs (7:25–8:11)
3. Plague of gnats (8:12–15)
4. Plague of flies (8:20–32)
5. Plague on the livestalk (9:1–7)
6. Plague of boils (9:8–12)
7. Plague of hail (9:13-35)
8. Plague of locusts (10:1–20)
9. Plague of darkness (10:21–29)

We may have gotten a little taste of hail and darkness this past week here in Swift Current. I don’t know how many of us were outside Tuesday at about 11:30 a.m. or noon. That darkness that swept over a corner of the city was really quite something. I have not seen anything like that before. I heard people refer to it as an ‘ominous presence’ or a ‘fear-provoking experience.’

This blackness is steadily approaching at mid-day; you can see blue skies fleeing from its presence. We leave to pick up Rebecca from school for lunch at that time. There is a tornado warning. The school has just announced that the children are not to go outside because of this. Some students, of course, are pressed up against the windows to see what is happening, others are in tears hiding safely under their desks.

These feelings of fear and awe, of terror and wonder, that people were having here this past Tuesday are probably a but fractional reflection of the intensity of the emotions that would be swirling around the Israelites as they are experiencing the power of God through the first nine plagues and the Hebrews now are, I imagine, in a metaphorical, emotional funnel cloud of shock, awe and terror themselves as they prepare for the final plague, the tenth plague: The Angel of Death (11:1–12:36).

It is in the context of the children of Israel huddled in their houses preparing for Death’s arrival that our pericope today is found. In the opening 13 verses of this chapter, God tells Moses and Aaron exactly what is about to happen. Just like a Tornado alert: ‘Get ready’, God warns them, ‘the Angel of Death is coming’. And just like we have emergency disaster plans that we are to follow for the city and for The Salvation Army when disaster strikes, God here is giving Moses and Aaron their instructions as to how to save their families when the Angel of Death strikes at Goshen in Egypt, killing the first-born sons. I don’t know if anyone here has ever huddled in a storm cellar or has been forced to take shelter on the open prairie or has had to head beneath deck on a boat being tossed about in a storm but I imagine that this is the same feeling. The people take all the prescribed steps and now they are just waiting and hoping and praying for the storm of the Angel of Death to pass, leaving them unharmed.

I have binders and binders full of the city’s and the Army’s plans of what to do in the event of a major disaster: a flood, a fire, a tornado strike… God, in Exodus here, gives Moses and Aaron a disaster preparedness plan to share with the Hebrews in Egypt for the impending strike by the Angel of Death. It looks like this - picture this with me: You and your family, you have received your disaster preparedness plan from your leaders. Disaster is going to strike, you are fearful (like the school children hiding under their desks) and you are in shock, awe, and maybe even terror, as you await the Angel of Death who is coming to claim many from the country where you live on this very night. On this very evening as Death is approaching, this is the plan:[1]

1. You are to take a lamb or a kid to share as a meal with everyone in your household. If there aren’t enough of you in your household to eat a whole lamb, you must share it with your closest neighbour (12:3-4);
2. The animal must be 1 year-old and without defect (v.5; cf. Leviticus 22:20-25, Malachi 1:8);
3. You have already been taking care of the animals for 14 days in preparation for this day – now everyone in town is to go and slaughter the lamb at twilight (v.6);[2]
4. You will then – this is important – take some of the blood and put it on the sides and the tops of the doorframes of the houses where you will eat the lambs (v.7);
5. Then you will eat the meat roasted over a fire with bitter herbs and bread without yeast and you must eat it all. You may not leave any of it until morning! If there are leftovers, you must burn them (vv. 8-10; cf. Exodus 23:18, 34:25 and Deuteronomy 16:4);
6. When you are eating this meal, you are to eat it with your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on, and your staff in your hand (v. 11; cf. Deuteronomy 16:3). In other words you are supposed to it on the run. In our language today: you are to have your coats, your hats and your shoes on and your car keys in your hand. You are to be ready to go. You are to eat it in haste because it is the LORD’s Passover.

God is there for them. They are to be ready. God tells Moses and Aaron that as the people follow this plan they will survive the impending strike by the Angel of Death. Then God tells them they must never forget this night. They must remember how He saves them. I imagine this evening must be as clear to those who experienced it as the images were to Dave and his wife, 40+ years later, of that night climbing down the side of the building – and Dave’s wife, she’s afraid of heights. I imagine that every time they think about this night, they remember every feeling that was racing through their heart and mind and I imagine that they’ll never forget it.

I remember when I was in Nipawin and the building exploded right behind The Salvation Army Ministry Centre downtown. My office shook. It felt like a truck had struck it. With others, I headed outside to see what had happened, I saw injured or dead or dying people lying on the ground as the flames began to engulf part of the downtown. My children and everyone else around on that day have stories surrounding those moments. I imagine each of us have had times like these that will never leave our minds. God is there for us and there are many stories of salvation, His mercy and miracles in the midst of tragedy.

The thing with these events as real as they are to us, they are not as real to people who don’t actually experience them and as time passes, people tend to forget the important lessons that come from them. I had the honour of speaking at the D-Day memorial again this year. For those hundreds of thousands of soldiers present on June 6 in 1944 that is a day they will never forget but if I were to guess I would say that this year across our country less people came to services to remember that anniversary than the number of those that lost their lives for us on the beaches on that one day. On Remembrance Day, the Legion and the surviving WWI and WWII veterans remind us of God’s salvation in the midst of the horrors of war, lest we forget. It is no coincidences that since the Cold War has ended and as more and more of our veterans pass away that there are more wars in our world now than ever before. Did you know that from the end of the Cold War -1989 or 1990, until the end of the twentieth century there were more wars in that one decade than there were in the whole rest of the century prior? As people choose to forget God’s salvation, they are not ready and so they seem to put themselves in the midst of calamity. It appears that another generation is cursing itself to experience anew the same horrors and calamities from which the LORD has saved previous generations. 

As the Israelite families are sitting in their houses awaiting their impending calamity, God warns Moses that they are never to forget this day.[3] They are to remember it forever. They are to tell their children and their children’s children. This should a permanent feature in the school curriculum, so to speak. They are to incorporate some of their Emergency Disaster preparedness plan into a ceremonial dinner and they are not to have any yeast in the house at all for seven days prior and then they are to eat only unleavened flat breads (Exodus 12:17-20, Deuteronomy 16:3). God tells them, Exodus 12:24-27:

“Obey these instructions as a lasting ordinance for you and your descendants. When you enter the land that the Lord will give you as he promised, observe this ceremony. And when your children ask you, ‘What does this ceremony mean to you?’ then tell them, ‘It is the Passover sacrifice to the Lord, who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt and spared our homes when he struck down the Egyptians.’” Then the people bowed down and worshiped.

A main reason that the Israelite people are to remember this is so that they will not forget what the LORD has done for them in the past and another reason is to wait for a future deliverance. As this Passover ceremony developed over the generations, it came to incorporate an act of ceremonially ‘looking for Elijah’. This is because tradition later stated that Elijah must return before the Messiah is to come. The Passover isn’t just looking back to God’s deliverance of the Israelites from the Angel of Death; it is also looking forward to God, through Jesus, delivering all of mankind from Sin and Death (cf. Exodus 34:25; Leviticus 23:5-6; Numbers 28:16-17; Deuteronomy 16:16; 2 Chronicles 30:13, 21; 35:1, 17; Ezekiel 45:21; Ezra 6; Ezekiel 45:21; Matthew 26:17; Mark 14:12; Luke 22:1, 7; John 2:13, 23; 6:4; 11:55). Biblical Scholar Norman Theiss reminds us “Jesus construed his last supper with the twelve disciples as the fulfillment of God's plan to inaugurate a new Passover meal.”[4] Jesus, when He is celebrating the Passover with his disciples, generations later, utters the very important words, “Do this in remembrance of me.” (Luke 22:19, 1 Corinthians 11:24).[5] This is, I think, a big reason why God wanted the Passover ceremony etched so deeply in the minds of humanity for so long because just as the when the Egyptians gave up their firstborn sons, God saved His people through the blood of the Passover lamb; so also when God offered up His firstborn son –Jesus Christ – He provided salvation for us all (May we all we choose to accept it!), through the blood of the Lamb (cf. John 3:16; cf. also TSA doc. 6).

This is the most important event in the history of the whole world: The death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. God, through the giving of His only begotten Son has made it – just like with Exodus and the Angel of Death – so that none of us need to perish but each of us can experience salvation through Christ Jesus our Lord. This is important to remember. Jesus pointed out that the Passover ceremony points to Himself (Matthew 26:27-30, Mark 14:12-26, Luke 22:7-28).[6] The early Christians would celebrate Christ’s death and resurrection and the fact that Christ has saved us from Sin and Death with a meal every time they came together (1 Corinthians 11:17-34, cf. 2 Peter 2:13, Jude 1:12). Later the churches summed up this meal of remembrance with a ceremonial act of eating a piece of bread or a wafer and of drinking some wine or grape juice from a common cup or little personal cups. They would do this to remember that Christ saves us from Sin and Death just like He saved the Israelites from the Angel of Death. In The Salvation Army, traditionally, we have held that every meal should be a meal held in remembrance of Christ. As such, we used to always not only ask the Lord’s blessing at the commencement of the meal but we used to return thanks at the conclusion of the meal just as Jesus and his disciples would have done when they participated in Seder meals in the first century C.E. In The Salvation Army, we also have the Mercy Seat and the Holiness Table. When you see people come forward here, it is our way of remembering the salvation that Christ has provided for the whole world (It can also provide a venue for someone to take advantage of that offered salvation for the very first time!) Coming to the Mercy Seat is an act of remembering what the Lord has done for us.

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Today, We are going to do something a little bit different. Instead of singing a concluding song before we leave, Susan is going to play the piano quietly here and I am going to invite everyone up to the Mercy Seat or Holiness Table on this Canada Day to take a card with a verse on it, in remembrance of Christ and what He has done for this nation and what He has done for us. There are three cards.

q       One with John 3:16 –the ultimate Passover verse- on it,  “For God so loved the world, that He gave his Only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

q       One with Hebrews 11:16, the verse from the Order of Canada, “But now they desire a better country, that is, an heavenly: wherefore God is not ashamed to be called their God: for He hath prepared for them a city.”

q       And one card with the verse from Canada’s Motto, Psalm 72:8, “He [The LORD] shall have dominion also from sea to sea, and from the river unto the ends of the earth.”

I ask us as we exit the sanctuary now to stop at the Mercy Seat or the Holiness Table, pick up a card, and read it quietly or pray it back to the Lord. Then take it with you as you leave and put it in your wallet or somewhere else and every time you see it this week, I encourage you to remember what the Lord has done.

Jesus says, “do this in remembrance of me.” God asks us to remember. Our Lord tells us not to forget, so I encourage each of us to come forward to the Mercy Seat, take a card, read or pray a verse, thank the Lord for His mercy and for the price He paid on our behalf. Now please come, take one of these little verses in remembrance of Jesus and how God has saved us all from Death, just like He saved the Hebrews so many years ago.

In Jesus’ Name, Come.
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* Click here to read a condensed version of the homily by Captain Michael Ramsay presented to Swift Current corps of The Salvation Army, 06 July 2014: http://sheepspeaks.blogspot.ca/2014/07/exodus-1224-28-remember-today.html

[1] Cf. Walter C. Kaiser Jr., The Expositor's Bible Commentary, Pradis CD-ROM:Exodus/Exposition of Exodus/I. Divine Redemption (1:1-18:27)/E. The Passover (12:1-28)/1. Preparations for the Passover (12:1-13), Book Version: 4.0.2. for more detailed list.

[2] R. Alan Cole, Exodus: An Introduction and Commentary. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1973 (Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries 2), S. 113: In the evening: literally ‘between the two evenings’. Jewish scholars are not agreed as to the exact meaning. The phrase is also used of the time for the regular evening sacrifice (Exod. 29:39) and of the time for lighting the lamps in the meeting-tent (Exod. 30:8). The orthodox piety of Pharisaic Judaism understood the meaning as being between the time in the afternoon when the heat of the sun lessens (say 3 or 4 p.m.) and sunset. Other groups preferred the time between sunset and dark, or other similar explanations.

[3] Thomas W. Mann, “Passover: The Time of Our Lives.” Interpretation 50, no. 3 (July 1, 1996): 240-250. ATLASerials, Religion Collection, EBSCOhost (accessed June 28, 2012), 241-242: The Passover narrative is arguably the most important section of the entire book because it is primarily here that the experience of exodus is communicated not simply as a moment in historical time (in the past) but as a perennially recurring moment in the present life of those for whom the story is sacred.

[4] Norman Theiss, "The Passover Feast of the New Covenant." Interpretation 48, no. 1 (January 1, 1994): 17-35. ATLASerials, Religion Collection, EBSCOhost (accessed June 28, 2012), 17: In the eyes of the first three evangelists and Paul, Jesus construed his last supper with the twelve disciples as the fulfillment of God's plan to inaugurate a new Passover meal. In this new meal, Jesus interpreted his death as a new Exodus in which the new people of God were liberated from all that enslaves them and freed to serve God in holy living.

[5] Leon Morris, Luke: An Introduction and Commentary. Downers Grove, IL : InterVarsity Press, 1988 (Tyndale New Testament Commentaries 3), S. 320: Strictly the feast of Unleavened Bread was distinct from the Passover (Num. 28:16f.). But the two occurred together and they could be regarded as the same festival. Josephus sometimes speaks of them as distinct but, like Luke, he can give the same name to both (Antiquities xiv. 21). Walter C. Kaiser Jr., The Expositor's Bible Commentary, Pradis CD-ROM:Exodus/Exposition of Exodus/I. Divine Redemption (1:1-18:27)/E. The Passover (12:1-28)/2. Preparations for the Unleavened Bread (12:14-20), Book Version: 4.0.2 : The OT uses both names to refer to the same feast: "Passover Feast" in Exodus 34:25; Ezekiel 45:21; and "Feast of Unleavened Bread" in Deuteronomy 16:16; 2 Chronicles 30:13, 21; Ezra 6:22. Yet the two rites are treated separately, even if in sequence, in Leviticus 23:5-6; Numbers 28:16-17; 2 Chronicles 35:1, 17; Ezra 6; Ezekiel 45:21 (likewise the NT uses this twofold designation for the same feast: pascha in John 2:13, 23; 6:4; 11:55 et al., while azymos is used in Matt 26:17; Luke 22:1, 7; cf. Mark 14:12).

[6] Norman Theiss, "The Passover Feast of the New Covenant." Interpretation 48, no. 1 (January 1, 1994): 17-35. ATLASerials, Religion Collection, EBSCOhost (accessed June 28, 2012); Cf. RCH Lenski, The Interpretation of St. Mark’s Gospel, (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Augsburg Publishing House, 1964), 613.

Exodus 3-4: “Go!”

Presented to Swift Current Corps of The Salvation Army, 24 June 2012 (15 June 2014) by Captain Michael Ramsay

Click here to read 15 June 2014 version:  http://sheepspeaks.blogspot.ca/2014/06/exodus-31-416-go.html

We have just had Fathers’ Day (last weekend) and I have certainly been blessed with three of the greatest children for whom a father could ask. On Father’s Day two of my girls made me nice cards. One of them gave me this great coffee cup reading “World’s Greatest Dad” and she gave me a Mars Bar to go along with it. The two oldest girls then came and helped out at the Soapbox Derby as per The Salvation Army’s tradition here in Swift Current. We topped off the evening watching an old 1930s movie and eating homemade ice cream sundaes. It was a good day and I have good daughters.

Sometimes, however, I must admit that my children listen better than they do at other times. I can remember the other week: I remember telling them that we would have to walk home when they arrived at my office. I told them that we would have to walk home because mom couldn’t come pick us up. I told them to make sure to put their coats on because it was raining and we would be walking home. I told them not to bring too many things home from the office because we would be walking home. We then head outside and immediately one of the children asks, where’s the car?

My girls can do so much and can be at times quite confident in their abilities. Rebecca, I remember, even as a three year-old, sang this amazing impromptu solo at a talent show (or something like that) in front of maybe hundreds of people that was absolutely captivating for all who were present. Sarah-Grace played the villain in the school play just this year and she did a spectacular job. Many people have commented on her performance. And this past fall and the one previous she won a prize for her confident ability to sell chocolates for her school. My children, they can be quite confident in their abilities at times.

Moses, in our pericope today, may lack some of this confidence that my girls have at times displayed but Moses appears to listen in very much the same manner as my girls did this past week. Moses, in our story today, as he stands before God, sounds a little like a scared child and as the reader nears end of the pericope, he actually sounds a lot like an obnoxious child as he keeps refusing to just do what he’s told.[1] Here is a brief paraphrase of the text we read earlier today.

Exodus 3:8: The LORD says to Moses, “I have come down to rescue the Israelites from the hands of the Egyptians…” 3:10, “Now go, Moses, because I am sending you to Pharaoh.”

Moses: Exodus 3:11, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?”

Exodus 3:12: the LORD speaks. It’s not about you. “I will be with you. I have sent you…”

Exodus 3:13, Moses: “Well … suppose I go and…? If I go, who should I say sent me?”

Exodus 3:14-17, the LORD: “I am who I am! Tell them I am sending you! Go and tell them that I am the one who will deliver them.” Exodus 3:16, the LORD says: “I have watched over you…” Exodus 3:17, the LORD says: “I have promised to bring you up out of your misery…” Exodus 3:18 and so on, God says: “I will strike the Egyptians” God says, “I will perform wonders among them…” God says, “I will make the Egyptians favourably disposed to My people…” God says, “I will do it!”

Moses, Exodus 4:1: “But what if they do not believe me…”

God then provides Moses with all kinds of signs, wonders and miracles that God performs… Exodus 4:2-3:

Then the Lord said to him, “What is that in your hand?”

“A staff,” he replied.

The Lord said, “Throw it on the ground.” Moses threw it on the ground and it became a snake, and he ran from it.

God then turns it back into a staff and then the LORD gives Moses leprosy and cures it and then He tells Moses that He, God, will do all this and more for him in front of Pharaoh. God will even turn the Nile River to blood, He says.

Then, Exodus 4:10, Moses says to God: “I can’t do that…I am slow of tongue…I can’t…. I can’t”

Exodus 4:11, the LORD, who might be getting a little ticked off at this point, I know I would be, He says: “Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or who makes him mute? Who gives him sight and who makes him blind…” In essence the LORD is asking, “Who? Moses, who? Who’s the one who does all of this? I am!”, He says. Exodus 4:12, God says: “Just go! I will do the rest! I will tell you what to say. Just Go! ^[2]

Exodus 4:13, Moses: “No, Please send somebody else…”

By Exodus 4:14 God is getting really upset by this disobedient adult child. Exodus records that, ‘Then the LORD’s anger burned against Moses… “Get Aaron to help you; he can speak; I will help you both speak and teach you what to do.” God does it (cf. Genesis 26:3, 24; 31:3; Exodus 4:12, 15; Deuteronomy 31:23; Joshua 1:5; 3:7; Judges 6:16).

God still does everything that God says God is going to do. God delivers Israel;[3] He does it but He is angry with Moses. Actually, a few verses later, Exodus 4:24, it says that God is more than a little upset with Moses. God, it records, is even going to kill Moses but Moses’ wife – who isn’t even an Israelite – she knows how satisfy the LORD and she saves her husband life and/or possibly even her own son’s life.

Now Moses ultimately, we know, does wind up forfeiting his right to enter the Promised Land and he does die on the outside looking in. After a later display of his lack of faith in God, Moses earns this consequence and maybe even more than that. The Biblical story cares a lot about one’s descendants and we don’t know much about what happened to Moses’ sons at all (1 Chronicles 23:14). God may have even effectively ended Moses’ family line (Numbers 3:1, 27:21 but cf. 1 Chronicles 23:14; see also Midrash Tanchuma, Pinchas 11).[4] At any rate, God certainly removes them from any prominence in posterity. The priesthood descends through Aaron’s line – not through Moses’ or his sons. The next political leader is Joshua, not one of Moses’ sons. Moses dies on the outside of the Promised Land looking in and in our pericope today, Exodus 3:1-4:31, Moses angers God through his lack of faith and faithfulness and he really is blessed simply to escape with his life.

How about us? Jesus asks the same thing, in essence, of us that He asks here of Moses. Just like God, from the bush, asks Moses to point His people to the salvation that He has provided for them from slavery, if we flip in our Bibles to Matthew 28:18-20, you will notice that Jesus asks us to do the very same sort of thing. Jesus asks us to point everyone to eternal salvation. Jesus says, Matthew 28:19-20a: “…go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you….”

Just like with Moses, God wants to bless us as instruments of His salvation. Do we ever think of reasons why we can’t do that? Do we ever relentlessly question God –ignoring His repeated responses- like Moses does in Exodus Chapter 3? Do we ever doubt God in our ignorance like it appears that Moses is doubting God here in Exodus Chapter 3? Do we ever ignore God when He is telling us that He will do something through us? Do we ever argue instead that we can’t possibly live up to what God wants us to do? If so, then, like Moses, we have probably angered God. And if this is the case then we will be blessed to simply escape with our lives.

God has asked each and every one of us to point people to the salvation that is available for everyone through Christ Jesus, our Lord (Matthew 28:18-20; cf. TSA docs 6, 10,11). Do we do that or do we argue with God -refusing to lead others to salvation- as if it is us that need to die for their sins? Do we ever, like Moses, offer to God and ourselves a litany of excuses and reasons why we can’t obey Him in pointing everyone we meet to salvation? Do we ever, like Moses, come up with lame excuses as to why we can’t obey God’s great commission? Do we ever, like Moses, say that we are not good enough speakers to lead people to salvation? Do we ever, like Moses say, “What if they don’t believe us?” Do we ever, like Moses say, “Who am I that I should be the one to do it?” Do we ever like Moses say, “Please God, send someone else?” Do we ever decline the opportunity; do we ever decline the command and do we ever decline the commission to lead people to the salvation that is found in Jesus Christ?

I have told the story before of a friend of mine who was a car salesman. He felt the prompting of the Lord to lead a friend to Christ - as I believe each of us will who serve the Lord. He felt that the LORD was telling him to tell an employee or a co-worker about the Lord. He felt that he was supposed to point someone to salvation through Christ Jesus our Lord. He knew that the Lord was commissioning him to share the gospel. He didn’t do it. The very next day -I believe- he found out that his employee, his co-worker, his friend had died.

Today, all of us here worshipping the Lord together are like Moses standing before God at that burning bush. God has asked us to point others to His salvation. The question is, will we do it?

Moses did. God is a loving God and God is a patient God. God waited for Moses. God waited 400 or more years actually (Cf. Genesis 15:14).[5] God waited those many years to use Moses to point God’s people to salvation. God did not give up on Moses. Even though Moses tried God’s patience, pushing God seemingly to the limit, God persisted and God used even Moses – taking Moses from this position of a doubting coward who was seemingly afraid more of pointing people to salvation than of defying God (Matthew 10:28), to the point where Moses is remembered today as the great lawgiver whom God used to lead a whole nation out of slavery and into a life for service to the LORD (cf. also Deuteronomy 30:11-20, Judges 21:25, Ps 56:13, Proverbs 11:19, 13:14, 14:27, 18:21, Jeremiah 21:8, John 5:24, Hebrews 13:6, Romans 2:1-16, 6:13, 1 John 3:14).[6]

My friend, the car salesperson: He never forgot the lesson God taught him that day. He went on to be an evangelist, a pastor, and a preacher – probably the best preacher that I have ever heard actually. God did not give up on him (Romans 3:3,4; cf. Deuteronomy 31:6, Joshua 1:5, Hebrews 13:5). Even though he may have tried God’s patience, pushing God seemingly to the limit, God persisted and he used even my friend – taking him from this position of a doubting coward who was seemingly afraid more of pointing people to salvation than of defying God (Matthew 10:28), to the point where he is remembered today by me as great preacher whom God has used to lead many people out of slavery to sin and into a life of service to the LORD. It was in my time knowing this man that the Lord drew even me towards Officership in The Salvation Army.

It can be the same with all of us here today. We are all standing before God, like Moses at the burning bush. God is asking us to point others out of slavery to sin and towards this glorious salvation in Christ Jesus. The question for us today is will we invent excuses as to why we can’t obey God’s great commission? Will we tell our Lord that we are not good enough speakers or that we don’t know enough to lead people to salvation? Will we doubt God and ask, “What if they don’t believe us?” Will we question God saying, “Who am I that I should be the one to do it?” Will we plead, “Please God send someone else?” Or will we – like Moses eventually does – follow God in leading our friends and our family to salvation in Christ Jesus our Lord?

In just a few minutes we are going to join the Baptists in a community barbeque. Their youth and our youth handed out flyers to the homes in the neighbourhood in preparation for this event. There may be some people that we are going to meet in the next hour or so that have never met Jesus; so I encourage us to ask anyone we don’t recognize if they attend the Community Baptist Church or some other church in town. If they don’t (or even if they do), pray silently, then ask them if they know the Lord - and who knows, if they don’t yet, maybe in our obedience to God, maybe even this afternoon, maybe God will use even us to lead someone to salvation.

Let us pray.

http://www.sheepspeak.com/

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[1] But cf. Kathy Beach-Verhey, "Exodus 3:1-12," Interpretation 59, no. 2 (April 1, 2005):180-182. ATLASerials, Religion Collection, EBSCOhost (accessed June 20,2012). 181.

^[2] R. Alan Cole, Exodus: An Introduction and Commentary. Downers Grove, IL : InterVarsity Press, 1973 (Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries 2), S. 74: Moses, unlike his early days in Egypt, has learnt to distrust himself so thoroughly that he will incur God’s anger (Exod. 4:14). Self-distrust is good, but only if it leads to trust in God. Otherwise it ends as spiritual paralysis, inability and unwillingness to undertake any course of action. Moses, like Elijah (1 Kgs 19), is a picture of a man who has had a ‘nervous breakdown’, and is now unwilling to work for God at all.

[3] Cf. Walter Brueggemann, The Book of Exodus, (NIB I: Abingdon Press: Nashville, 1994), 712.

[4] Cf. Rabbi Menachem Posner, Ask the Rabbi @ The Judaism Website, “Do we know anything about Moses’ descendants? Did they enter the Land of Israel with everyone else?” On-line at http://www.chabad.org/parshah/article_cdo/aid/1530929/jewish/What-Happened-to-Moses-Descendants.htm (viewed 19 June 2012)

[5] Walter C. Kaiser Jr., The Expositor's Bible Commentary, Pradis CD-ROM:Exodus/Exposition of Exodus/I. Divine Redemption (1:1-18:27)/B. Preparations for Deliverance (2:1-4:26)/5. Answering inadequate objections (3:11-4:17)/b. What if they ask what your name is? (3:13-22), Book Version: 4.0.2

[6] Cf. Fredrick Carlson Holmgren, "Exodus 2:11-3:15," Interpretation 56, no. 1 (January 1, 2002): 73-76. ATLASerials, Religion Collection, EBSCOhost (accessed June 20, 2012), 76.
[7] Cf. Dr. Angus Patterson, "Turning the World Upside down," The Expository Times 122, no. 10 (July, 2011), 497-500. She uses the bush as an object lesson explaining how the divinity of Christ and the humanity of Christ are intertwined.

Genesis 6:5-7: This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you.

Presented to Swift Current Corps of The Salvation Army, 10 June 2012

By Captain Michael Ramsay

 

In the old days, spanking used to be a common way of disciplining – not so much any more. Though it was banned in BC public schools before I ever earned the right to receive a backside blessing, I remember friends of mine who attended other places recalling their displeasure at the strap. In that regard it was a real blessing growing up when I did that I lived in British Columbia: did you know that BC was the first province to ban corporal punishment; they did so in the early 1970s, 16 years before the next province or territory. It was the only place in Canada where I could possibly grow up where I was guaranteed not to get the strap. Saskatchewan here only banned corporal punishment in 2005.

Leaving the schools aside as well as what discipline I may or may not have deserved in elementary grades especially. I have a question for you pertaining to parents and spanking their children: Now I am not going to ask how many of us here have ever earned a backside blessing from Mom or Dad but there is the classic phrase that a parent would stereotypically utter before striking her child; does anyone recall what that might be? …”This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you.” Has anyone uttered or heard this before? I saw one comic along those lines that I thought was particularly amusing; here it is:

In preparation for today’s talk, I was listening to one speaker recount an episode from her own childhood where her mother was about to strike her and was uttering just those words, “This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you.” To which the girl responded, either in fact or fantasy, “No, I’m pretty sure it’s going to hurt me more… but, if you disagree, I think have a solution that would help us both…”

Now, of course, there is some truth to the saying: “This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you” as far as parental discipline is concerned. I can remember in my own experience as a parent around discipline, not spanking in this case, but discipline nonetheless. There was a sporting event - a Broncos game - that I was really looking forward to going to with one of my daughters. She had already received a warning about a particular behaviour earlier in the evening and that should she repeat that behaviour, missing this event would be the consequence; she then immediately acted out again and she missed the hockey game. That was a consequence of her actions; she missed the game but – as the truth is known – I doubt that she even remembers that now. I do. I was really looking forward to spending some special daddy-daughter time with her but because of her actions and her blatant defiance, that just couldn’t happen and the consequence -I can tell you- hurt me a lot more than it did her. I still remember it.

“This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you.” That, I believe, sums up God’s sentiment behind the whole flood narrative in the scriptures.[1] Genesis 6:5-7:

The Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. So the Lord said, “I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth—men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air—for I am grieved that I have made them.”

The Lord is grieved, it says.[2] The Lord is pained, it says. The Lord created the earth and everything in it and it was good (Genesis 1:1-2:3). Now His creation’s heart is ‘only evil all the time’ (Genesis 6:5). God is not going to withhold his children’s well-earned consequence but in delivering it, He might just be saying, “This is going to hurt me a lot more than it hurts you.”

God loves us. We remember the creation story, right? On the first day, God the Father makes day and night and then on the fourth day He lovingly places the sun, moon and stars and in the day and the night that He created. Then on the second day He makes the sky and the sea and on the fifth day He places sea creatures, every bird, and winged creature in this environment that He has lovingly prepared for them. On the third day He creates the ground. Then on the sixth day He creates every animal that walks upon the ground. And our Heavenly Father creates humankind in His own image and He places us in the world that He has lovingly prepared for us. God loves His creation. He loves us. Creation is then finished and it is good. [3] God blesses this day, making it holy and then He rests (cf. also Psalm 33:6, Psalm 93; Isaiah 45:12; John 1:1-3; Colossians 1:15-17; Hebrews 11:3). God makes this beautiful world, that He loves and it is good and He creates good people –Adam and Eve- to look after it, but sin creeps in and breaks God’s heart; so He needs to remove people from the land He put us in.[4] In giving us this time-out, the saddened Father might here say, “This is going to hurt me a lot more than it is going to hurt you,” for even as He is disciplining humankind, He gives Adam and Eve new clothes and a new start. But again, humankind hurts her Heavenly Father.

This time Cain falls prey to sin, killing his brother and becoming further removed from the Lord and the land he is working (Genesis 4). God loves us so much that He even warns Cain before Cain succumbs to sin. He tells him, Genesis 4:7b, “But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it.” Humanity nonetheless defies God and falls prey to sin again and so God might very well say, “This is going to hurt me a lot more than it is going to hurt you,” as again humanity needs to be removed from the land that was entrusted to us. God still loves His creation. He gave us, His children, this responsibility to look after His creation for Him and twice now, with Adam and Eve and with Cain, He has had to give us a time-out and twice now He has removed us from the land that He had asked us to look after on His behalf.

Now, it is only a few chapters further along in the story, the years have gone on and God has many more children whom He loves and they are still being disobedient, even with the examples of those before them. As a matter of fact, they are worse than ever. They need a time-out or they need a spanking (depending on your societal and/or generational reference point). Genesis 6:5-6: “The Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The Lord was grieved that He had made man on the earth, and His heart was filled with pain.” This makes our loving God very sad.[5] A parent hopes that at some point His children will learn their lesson but alas that time has not yet arrived for the Lord’s children and God the Father in essence must be saying to the children and all His creation that was good and that He still loves as He is about to send the flood, “This is going to hurt me a lot more than it is going to hurt you.”

What about us? This side of the cross… what about us? In this country… what about us? Generations and generations later… what about us? Are we any better? In Canada here, God loves us, like He loves people in the world at the time of Noah. God loves us.

Our forefathers when they were founding our nation decided to take a stand in for God, for King, and for country. So, instead of focusing on individualistic liberties and the selfish pursuits of personal happiness at the expense of others, the Canadian Fathers of Confederation focused on peace (Jesus is the Prince of Peace), order (God is a God of order not disorder), and good government (cf. Isaiah 9:5-7, Psalm 72).

Canada’s motto, “A Mari usque ad Mare” is Latin for “from sea to sea.” It comes from Psalm 72, in the Bible. Where, in verse 8, it declares, “He shall have dominion also from sea to sea.” That is a key underpinning of our society and of our founding identity, the idea that God himself, shall have dominion from sea to sea. It is not some accident or coincident. It is intentional. Our country was intentionally founded on the Word of God. God loves us. We loved God.

And even as recently as the 20^th Century, the Christian Reverends JS Woodsworth (of Manitoba) and Tommy Douglas (Premier of Saskatchewan from 1944-61) and many others intentionally sought to bring about peace and justice through distributing the Lord’s provision to the poor and the needy.[6] We loved God. God loves us.

God saw what He created in Genesis 1-2 and said that His creation was good. God loves this world and God loves this country. God has used this country of Canada to do so much good in the world. But we seem to be changing now; I fear that for us not unlike Genesis 6:5-6: “The Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The Lord was grieved that He had made man on the earth, and His heart was filled with pain.”

In Canada today, because He loves us, I imagine the Lord is grieved, that His heart is filled with pain; the crime rate now is higher than it ever used to be as we do unto our neighbour what we would never ever want done to ourselves (Matthew 19:19, 22:39, Mark 12:31-33, Luke 10:27, Romans 13:9-10, 15:2, Galatians 15:14, Ephesians 4:25, James 2:8, cf. also Exodus 22, Leviticus 19, Deuteronomy 5, 19-17, Proverbs). According to the CCVF, crime is so bad right now that many people are losing faith in the authorities abilities to stop it that -in many cases- charges aren’t even being filed anymore.[7] Even economic crime is on the rise in Canada with Reuters reporting that 56 percent of companies surveyed recently (more than half of them) reported falling prey to white-collar crime.[8] And – of course – there is pornography, which horribly is North America’s most lucrative pastime. In the United States, pornography revenue is more than all money made from professional football, baseball and basketball combined. The money made by US pornography exceeds the combined revenues of all their major TV networks (6.2 billion) Child pornography alone generates $3 billion annually.[9]

“This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you.” That, I believe, sums up God’s sentiment and it may be what the Lord is telling us here today as we prepare to meet our much-deserved discipline preceding the echaton. Genesis 6:5-7:

The Lord saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The Lord was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. So the Lord said, “I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth—men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air—for I am grieved that I have made them.”

We can just picture the tears running down the Lord’s face: “This is going to hurt me more than it does you.” We are God’s loved creation. There are consequences for our sins. In Genesis 3, we see that the ground is cursed and Adam and Eve are removed from the garden for their sin. In Genesis Chapter 4, we see that the land is cursed for Cain and he becomes a wanderer. In Genesis Chapters 6-9, we see that the ground is cursed with a flood to cleanse the world of our sin.

In Canada today and probably the rest of the so-called Western World, the so-called First World, too, it seems that every inclination of the thoughts of our hearts is drifting towards that same evil that we have been reading about in Genesis – and we should know better. Our culture looks like it is standing before the Lord, He with paddle in hand or -if you prefer- a time-out chair in the corner saying, “This is going to hurt me more than it does you.” And He is right.

Again I think of my daughter and how much I really wanted to spend some quality time with her at the hockey game. I was longing for that. I was looking forward to that. I really wanted to spend quality time strengthening our relationship and getting to know her better. I love my daughter and I was looking forward to spending that time enjoying her company, but she acted out in a way (even when she was warned not to) that resulted in her losing the privilege – and I lost the privilege. I am not sure if she even remembers the incident but it grieves my heart to this day. “This is going to hurt me more than it does you.”

It is the same with us in this world today and it is sad but there is good news. After the flood, God makes a covenant with Noah. God blesses Noah and his sons, saying to them, Genesis 9:1, like He told Adam and Eve in the garden in the beginning “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth” (see Genesis 1:28) and Genesis 9:7, “...be fruitful and increase in number; multiply on the earth and increase upon it” (see Genesis 1:28).[10] And Genesis 9:8-10:

Then God said to Noah and to his sons with him: “I now establish my covenant with you and with your descendants after you and with every living creature that was with you—the birds, the livestock and all the wild animals, all those that came out of the ark with you—every living creature on earth.

And we know what the sign of that covenant is, right? The rainbow. And God too makes a covenant with us through the later sending of His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, that whosoever of us believes in Him shall not perish in the eternal floodwaters but shall have everlasting life. Friends, make no mistake: God loves us and the eschaton is coming. The end is near. It is coming soon and Matthew tells us about the end time, that it will be, Matthew 24:37-39 (see Luke 16:26-27):

As it was in the days of Noah, so it will be at the coming of the Son of Man. For in the days before the flood, people were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, up to the day Noah entered the ark; and they knew nothing about what would happen until the flood came and took them all away. That is how it will be at the coming of the Son of Man.

We cannot forget though that God’s story of the flood actually speaks to correction for the purpose of salvation rather than to mere judgment[11] and 2 Peter 2:5,9: “if [God] did not spare the ancient world when he brought the flood on its ungodly people, but protected Noah, a preacher of righteousness, and seven others; ... if this is so, then the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to hold the unrighteous for punishment on the day of judgment” (cf. TSA doc. 11). And this applies to us today. God loves us and has provided for our salvation from the impending crisis.

So today, the end is near; the eschatological flood is coming and if you have not yet boarded that ark of eternal salvation, if you have not yet picked up your ticket for that eternal cruise, if you have not yet walked up that gang plank, look around you: the metaphorical animals are already marching up two by two to eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. As this is the case, let us all now hop aboard that ark of eternal salvation. It is easy to do. If you haven’t made that reservation yet, please speak to the Lord and if you would like help booking your spot let me know, we can help; and once you have secured your seat, come tell me and everyone else here so that we can welcome you aboard. And for those of us here who have already made this commitment, for those of us here who already reserved our seats, even if it was a long time ago, please let us invite everyone else we know to come and join us aboard as well. This cruise of eternal salvation is real and I guarantee you it will be the ride of your life.

Let us pray.

http://www.sheepspeak.com/

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[1] Cf. Terence E. Fretheim, The Suffering of God, (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984),112.

[2] Cf. T. Desmond Alexander, “Genesis 6:6-7” in The ESV Study Bible, ed. Lane T. Dennis (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway Bibles, 2008), Available on-line: http://esvstudybible.org/

[3] Cf. Walter Brueggemann, Interpretation: Genesis, (John Knox Press: Atlanta, Georgia, 1982), 74

[4] Cf. John H. Sailhamer, The Expositor's Bible Commentary, Pradis CD-ROM:Genesis/Exposition of Genesis/I. Introduction to the Patriarchs and the Sinai Covenant (1:1-11:26)/D. The Story of Noah (5:1-10:32)/4. The Flood (6:5-9:17)/a. The decree (6:5-12), Book Version: 4.0.2 for a good discussion of the influence of the eating of the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil on this story.

[5] Cf. Derek Kidner: Genesis: An Introduction and Commentary. Downers Grove, IL : InterVarsity Press, 1967 (Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries 1), S. 91

[6] Cf. Bill Blaikie, The Blaikie Report: An Insider's Look At Faith And Politics (Winnipeg, MB: United Church Publishing House, 2012)

[7] Lorrie Goldstein, Canadian Crime Victim Foundation (Toronto: Oct 25, 2009), cited November 22, 2009. Available on-line:http://www.ccvf.net/articles.cfm?pageID=articles&subpageID=news&viewID=75 : Every five years, Statistics Canada conducts the General Social Survey. It asks a representative sample of Canadians, among other things, whether they have been crime victims. From the last survey in 2004 (the next one is being conducted now, with the findings to be released next year) Statistics Canada reached the following conclusions. First, progressively fewer Canadians who are crime victims are reporting the crime to police -- only 34% in 2004, compared to 37% in 1999. Second, based on the GSS, an estimated 92% of sexual assaults were never reported to police, 46% of break-ins, 51% of motor vehicle/parts thefts, 61% of physical assaults and 54% of robberies.

[8] Economic crime rate rises in Canada, report says (Thu Nov 19, 2009 3:14pm EST) cited November 21, 2009. Available on-line: http://ca.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idCATRE5AI52E20091119 : "Some 56 percent of companies surveyed reported falling prey to white-collar crime during the period, the 2009 PricewaterhouseCoopers' Economic Crime Survey showed. That's a 10 percentage point increase over 2003 and a 4 point increase from two years ago."

[9] Christian Technology Solutions, Pornography Industry Statistics. Cited 21 November, 2009. Available on line: http://christiantechnologysolutions.com/content/view/18/24/

[10] Cf. W. Sibley Towner,  “Genesis 9:8-17.” Interpretation 63, no. 2 (April 1, 2009): 168-171. ATLASerials, Religion Collection, EBSCOhost (accessed June 4, 2012).

[11] Terence E. Fretheim, The Book of Genesis, (NIB I: Abingdon Press: Nashville, 1994),389.