Pastor Darren: You'll remember last week we uh had the passage visiting the uh burning bush, and uh this week we find ourselves all the way to the passage where uh Sober begins God's Passover of the Jewish people so that they can escape.
Pastor Darren: Uh in the middle time catching you all up is this grand dramatic interplay between uh Moses and Aaron, Pharaoh and God, with Moses or with God telling Moses, all right, get back to Pharaoh and say he's gotta let those Israelites go.
Pastor Darren: And Moses and Aaron showing up there and saying, Hey, our God says you gotta let us go, and Pharaoh saying, No, God hardening his heart over and over again.
Pastor Darren: Uh, and uh this happens over cycles.
Pastor Darren: There are ten punishments or plagues that God delivers unto the Egyptians, unto Pharaoh, in order to get Pharaoh to understand how important this is to God.
Pastor Darren: Ten plagues, including uh uh the final one, which is that the firstborn are going to die of all the Egyptians, including Pharaoh's own son.
Pastor Darren: So heavy, heavy times uh stories designed to uh help us understand God's power, God's strength.
Pastor Darren: But that story lands on our passage for today.
Pastor Darren: And again, it's the passage that introduces Passover, right?
Pastor Darren: Where God is going to pass over the is uh the houses of the Israelites when he does this final plague.
Pastor Darren: Now, uh, for you guys who are exegetical heads, how many do we have out there?
Pastor Darren: How many of you have no idea what I just said?
Pastor Darren: How many of you like to really dig into your Bible and understand what was going on historically, critically, and all that other?
Pastor Darren: For those of you who are into that, we needed Stephen here.
Pastor Darren: He's my guy.
Pastor Darren: And evidently Michael, I learned as well.
Pastor Darren: He'll dig the he'll take a deep dive every now and again.
Pastor Darren: Yeah.
Pastor Darren: Well, so a couple of things here, right?
Pastor Darren: We have this passage.
Pastor Darren: It uh is an interesting passage.
Pastor Darren: As you read through it, you're starting to go, wow, God does this, God does that.
Pastor Darren: Okay.
Pastor Darren: Uh, so first thing, it's a uh this the passage is important because it becomes a new way of living.
Pastor Darren: All of those Israelites being enslaved had a whole different understanding of how to live life, guided by their the Egyptians who are controlling all of them.
Pastor Darren: And so God's coming to them and saying, this is going to be a whole new way to live your life with with my guiding your behaviors and guiding them in a particular way.
Pastor Darren: And those are going to be behaviors that need to get established.
Pastor Darren: They need to become the way you live so that you can know the fullness of life and know the fullness of God.
Pastor Darren: And so you'd probably notice that if you were paying attention, there were a lot of instructions there in that passage about what they were supposed to do to get ready for this Passover.
Pastor Darren: Uh some of it, just realistically, pragmatically, they were going to go take a long, long walk.
Pastor Darren: Best get some protein, yeah?
Pastor Darren: Right?
Pastor Darren: So there's a lot of it that was that way.
Pastor Darren: It was just a lot of instruction.
Pastor Darren: But secondly, and maybe uh more importantly, I think metaphorically, is that it became time for the Israelites to put some blood on the door.
Pastor Darren: Right?
Pastor Darren: Uh you might think, well, why was this important?
Pastor Darren: Why is God asking them to mark their homes?
Pastor Darren: Doesn't God know who's who?
Pastor Darren: Isn't an omniscient God going to know who lives there?
Pastor Darren: But then as you think about it, you go, oh, but that's not the point, is it?
Pastor Darren: To me, the point is it's a symbol, it's an action that marks the Israelites' need to make a commitment to God.
Pastor Darren: You've probably heard the phrase, skin in the game.
Pastor Darren: He's got to get some skin in the game.
Pastor Darren: Well, this is blood on the door.
Pastor Darren: He's got to have some blood on the door, some way of making some commitment to God, some openness to what God has in mind for them.
Pastor Darren: So, with this event, as I said, Pharaoh finally breaks, especially with his son dying, and he allows the Israelites to leave.
Pastor Darren: The quick summary of the rest of the story through today the Israelites leave.
Pastor Darren: Pharaoh's heart is hardened once more, and he starts to chase them.
Pastor Darren: The Israelites are led right to the Red Sea where they're kind of stuck.
Pastor Darren: Pharaoh and his army are on their way looking to uh deliver unto them some bad news.
Pastor Darren: And then God has Moses use his staff to open the Red Sea, and the Israelites are able to cross.
Pastor Darren: Once they get across, the waters converge, takes Pharaoh's army away, and the Israelites are finally free.
Pastor Darren: Yay! Right?
Pastor Darren: I mean, that's kind of where we're getting at with this story, the dramatic release.
Pastor Darren: Now they are free.
Pastor Darren: So two issues worth playing with just a little bit.
Pastor Darren: First of all, why does God Pharaoh harden Pharaoh's heart?
Pastor Darren: Did you ask yourself that?
Pastor Darren: We asked it on Wednesday in Bible study.
Pastor Darren: You know, in a way, does it seem fair that God is hardening Pharaoh's heart?
Pastor Darren: That Pharaoh maybe isn't making his own decision, and so these plagues keep coming because God is uh kind of stacking the deck a little bit.
Pastor Darren: I don't know, maybe you didn't go there.
Pastor Darren: We did a little bit on Wednesday.
Pastor Darren: Uh part of what's going on here is that in many ways our scriptures are a mix of the historical, but adding in some human involvement in there too.
Pastor Darren: Uh they call it uh uh in one of the podcasts I uh suggested you might try, they talked about it as mythologizing history.
Pastor Darren: So you're taking this historical event and kind of adding to it, and in that adding, maybe there's some projection onto God about who God is.
Pastor Darren: Uh and in this case, with the Israelites having been oppressed for so long, it was probably pretty easy and maybe even a little joyous to have a God who was going to deliver some justice, right?
Pastor Darren: And come and say, all right, you've been oppressed a long time.
Pastor Darren: I'm coming to save you, I'm coming to even the score.
Pastor Darren: So that's one question people will wrestle with with this passage.
Pastor Darren: Uh, and in many ways, there are in our Bible, we're trying to emphasize God's power in a specific example of that.
Pastor Darren: The Egyptians used a lot of snakes in their identity and their storytelling, serpents, right?
Pastor Darren: We have the American eagle.
Pastor Darren: Egyptians had these snakes, had these serpents.
Pastor Darren: So when you see Moses's serpent that God created out of his staff eat their serpents, you don't have to be like a genius to figure out what is trying to be said here.
Pastor Darren: All right, my God is more powerful even than your serpents, which you worship, the snakes that you have all over the place.
Pastor Darren: And that's really what they're trying to get across.
Pastor Darren: Our God is so strong, he will out serpent you, then he will outlocust you, he will outfrog you.
Pastor Darren: Some of you know your plagues.
Pastor Darren: Those are some of the things I had said.
Pastor Darren: Anyone got them memorized?
Pastor Darren: I did not.
Pastor Darren: Extra credit.
Pastor Darren: Nats?
Pastor Darren: Yeah.
Pastor Darren: Locust, we got the locust.
Pastor Darren: Oh, yeah, bloody water.
Pastor Darren: Yeah, all right.
Pastor Darren: Well, Pastor with the bad ears is gonna end it there because somebody's gonna say something, and I'm gonna go.
Pastor Darren: I better move on from that thing.
Pastor Darren: Well, second question you might have with this passage, as we're kind of playing around with it a little bit too, is is God really this way?
Pastor Darren: Is this the way God operates?
Pastor Darren: It seems even though the Israelites were oppressed, and one would say there was some justice to all of that, it sure comes off God as this aggressive, maybe even vengeful presence in our Old Testament scriptures.
Pastor Darren: What I will say to you on that one is part of our journey of faith as Christians is looking to understand God better, including the perceptions, the descriptions of God in our scriptures.
Pastor Darren: So we have to do that unpacking for ourselves and with our own faith.
Pastor Darren: And frankly, that's not the sermon for today.
Pastor Darren: So I'm not going there.
Pastor Darren: So I will tell you, hey, enjoy that journey of asking that question on your own of is that who God is?
Pastor Darren: Is that who God has been for you?
Pastor Darren: But where I really wanted to get to with this passage, because you you've heard the story, the theme I'm getting to, this journey of faith, this journey to faith that Exodus models.
Pastor Darren: Uh I land there, and that's really where I wanted to focus.
Pastor Darren: Because we now have these Israelites, and they are free.
Pastor Darren: They are free from their enslavement.
Pastor Darren: The Israelites they put blood on the door and God saves them.
Pastor Darren: But what does that mean?
Pastor Darren: What does it mean that they are saved?
Pastor Darren: We Christians, we are pretty comfortable with that phrase saved, aren't we?
Pastor Darren: We use it in a lot of ways, right?
Pastor Darren: And and we sing it in our songs, right?
Pastor Darren: We've all probably come to some sense of how we understand our lives as being saved by God.
Pastor Darren: And yet, what do you think or how do you feel when you hear somebody preaching about being saved when you're out in the public square, when you're at the park, and somebody's handing out the leaflets, and they come to you and they say, Are you saved?
Pastor Darren: Well different, right?
Pastor Darren: You know, it's you know some of us would be like, Well, heck yeah, I'm saved.
Pastor Darren: All right.
Pastor Darren: Maybe even take the flyer.
Pastor Darren: Some of us will go, Well, I don't really want to get into this, just take the flyer and keep walking.
Pastor Darren: Anybody in all right?
Pastor Darren: Still others of us, you know, there be in that conversation, and you think, oh, am I saved?
Pastor Darren: I don't know that we would agree on what saved means, right?
Pastor Darren: And you think, oh, am I going to get into that kind of conversation?
Pastor Darren: We might not agree on what salvation even is supposed to be happening there.
Pastor Darren: I personally I get kind of cautious when we start using a lot of saved talk.
Pastor Darren: I feel like it starts us and it starts me down a path of giving ourselves permission to begin to judge others.
Pastor Darren: Oh, okay.
Pastor Darren: So so some of us are saved, and some of us are not.
Pastor Darren: Some are in, some are out.
Pastor Darren: Aren't we all a mix of both of the things?
Pastor Darren: Aren't we a mix of the good and the not so good?
Pastor Darren: Sometimes I'm really good.
Pastor Darren: I trust in God, I do what God wants.
Pastor Darren: Sometimes I'm not.
Pastor Darren: You know, I'll be trusting in something else.
Pastor Darren: I'll be worshiping at the altar of the chocolate chip cookie.
Pastor Darren: Right?
Pastor Darren: All of us have our thing.
Pastor Darren: A lot of times when we are worshiping this other thing, it's not something in tune with God.
Pastor Darren: It's not something that God would have us do.
Pastor Darren: And we talked about that small things, but bigger things too.
Pastor Darren: So when we start talking about being saved, underlying all of that is this assumption that we're in and they are out.
Pastor Darren: Am I wrong?
Pastor Darren: We start down that pathway and we start kind of categorizing sheep, goat, sheep, goat.
Pastor Darren: It's kind of like um kind of like Noah's Ark.
Pastor Darren: Where everybody had a chance to get on or to not get on.
Pastor Darren: Right?
Pastor Darren: And those uh who got on, we're loving being with them, or you know, we're loving all those folks that are in there on the ark with us, we're walking around.
Pastor Darren: Hey, what do you need?
Pastor Darren: Hey, they're serving drinks on the Lido deck.
Pastor Darren: Just make sure you don't step in anything, right?
Pastor Darren: It were real comfortable, and then those who didn't get on that ark, uh, so what do I really owe you?
Pastor Darren: You had a choice, you didn't get in.
Pastor Darren: To me, that saved language, it can be a really a slippery slope to that that kind of hubris of giving ourselves permission to decide what is good and what is not good, what is in and what is out.
Pastor Darren: I prefer that level of humility, of doing the best I can and trying to offer love in the many ways that I can.
Pastor Darren: Now, some of you may disagree with me and think, oh, that's not what's going on in the world, and that's fair too, but I would say I would love for you to explain to me today's political and cultural climate.
Pastor Darren: Because to me, we are in that thick of everybody having decided for everybody else, including ourselves, what's in and what's out.
Pastor Darren: These people are gonna bring on the end of things.
Pastor Darren: That was my impression of both sides.
Pastor Darren: Right?
Pastor Darren: Do you feel that?
Pastor Darren: I know I feel it.
Pastor Darren: Friends, I don't think it works if we all feel like we're the ones who are saved.
Pastor Darren: That we're the ones on the good side of the sea, not just because of the overlooking of our own imperfections, our own sin, but because we've also put ourselves in the position of assuming the sins of others, not to mention assuming their salvation or not salvation.
Pastor Darren: So, with all of that, it brings me back to the question.
Pastor Darren: So, what does it mean to be saved?
Pastor Darren: What does it mean for these Israelites who are now free?
Pastor Darren: Personally, I think that God is interested in reaching every single one of us.
Pastor Darren: Paul tells us in his letter to the Ephesians, for by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God, not the result of works, so that no one may boast.
Pastor Darren: Again, for by grace you have been saved through faith.
Pastor Darren: God's grace.
Pastor Darren: God's uncommit unconditional love is ours through faith.
Pastor Darren: In other words, God's love is always there.
Pastor Darren: But it's our but it's our faith that makes it real for us.
Pastor Darren: Believing in God's love opens our hearts to that love.
Pastor Darren: Maybe the promise of salvation, like grace, is already ours.
Pastor Darren: We are already saved.
Pastor Darren: We are saved, or it becomes real to us when we make that commitment of faith, when we open our minds and our hearts to the idea that it might be true.
Pastor Darren: God saves us when we put some blood on the door.
Pastor Darren: And isn't this the journey of faith that we're on?
Pastor Darren: It involves the joy and often the challenge of accepting what's already true.
Pastor Darren: Allowing it into our minds, allowing it into our hearts, allowing it into our souls.
Pastor Darren: What would that mean to live like that is true?
Pastor Darren: Have you ever done something with little more than the trust that God is real, that God's love is real?
Pastor Darren: I mean, that's what the Israelites did.
Pastor Darren: In fact, they did a lot of it because God gave them a lot of instructions, and they did every single one of them out of their faith and trust.
Pastor Darren: And in doing so, that saving grace became theirs.
Pastor Darren: That's been the Exodus journey so far.
Pastor Darren: The Exodus journey that to me we are on.
Pastor Darren: It starts with our recognizing that to a certain extent we live as if we're in this basket on a river.
Pastor Darren: We're floating around among these different influences and pressures and temptations, and then amidst that God comes to us with a better way to live.
Pastor Darren: God comes to us in some powerful way and says, There is a better way to do this.
Pastor Darren: And at this point, it starts to uh come to us.
Pastor Darren: It starts to be up to us.
Pastor Darren: Are we going to trust in that better way?
Pastor Darren: Are we going to make a commitment?
Pastor Darren: Are we going to put blood on the door?
Pastor Darren: Wouldn't that be the craziest place to end us end a sermon?
Pastor Darren: Amen.