EAST OF EDEN (Exodus 15-17, 32)

Freedom will only come when we stop blaming others and surrender to what God has done to win our freedom from sin.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

We're pausing our study of Daniel because I wanted to honor America's 250th birthday. I began last week in a series I've entitled The Rebirth of Freedom, and we looked at the recipe of freedom last week. Much of what I'm sharing stems from some work done by a man named Oz Guinness who wrote a book, The Magna Carta of Humanity, Sinai's Revolutionary Faith, and the Future of Freedom. I heartily recommend it. Today I want to talk with you about the topic East of Eden. You'll see why I've entitled it this way here in just a little bit. I came across a poem the other day that helps introduce what I'm trying to say. I didn't have potatoes, so I substituted rice. I didn't have pepper, so I used another spice. I didn't have tomato sauce, so I used tomato paste. A whole can, not half. I don't believe in waste. A friend gave me the recipe, she said you couldn't beat it. There must be some something wrong with her. I couldn't even eat it. You know, in some recipes, you can't substitute things. And freedom is one of them. In honor of America's 250th birthday, July 4th this year. We're looking at the rebirth of freedom. Freedom does not just happen, it is a recipe with indispensable ingredients. And if something's left out, lasting freedom will not happen. Our forebears based the American Revolution on the Exodus Revolution. Now I'm talking about the book of Exodus in your Bible. This book, Exodus, is the pattern, the blueprint, the Magna Carta, if you will, the DNA of freedom. And in the Exodus Revolution, there are no less than seven principles of freedom that are outlined. In this revolution, God engineers Israel's freedom from 400 years of Egyptian bondage. The first two of these principles in Exodus are that freedom comes from faith in God alone, that's number one, and number two, obedience to his rules. These are the first two vital ingredients in the freedom recipe. The assumption here is that God knows how to build a free, prosperous, and happy nation. And to the degree that we experience freedom, prosperity, and happiness, those are blessings that come from God. The Bible says, blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, Psalm 33, 12. And that promise is true for Israel, but it's also true for any nation. Now I'm going to get into principles three and four here in this message. And the first of these, principle three, is that freedom must be realistic. Freedom comes from faith in God alone, that's number one. Obedience to his rules, that's number two, and freedom must be realistic. This is the third principle in Exodus on freedom. Let me explain what I mean by that. Some people do not see anything wrong in the world. They get up every day, they live each day hoping that we'll have freedom and health and liberty and happiness and those types of things, and they largely have them, and they just sort of mosey on. There are other people who see horrific evil and injustice, imbalance in our world. Our enemies are the evil ones, and we and our friends are the good ones. And we live then to right the wrong and bring in the utopia, whatever that means. I want you to understand that neither of these is a realistic view. This is not reality. The reality is that there is a line separating good from evil, and that line cuts through all nations, classes, parties, churches, and all human hearts. Even mine and yours. When you ask what's wrong with the world, the utopian warrior will say they are. But when you ask the Christian, he will say, as G.K. Chesterton once said, I am. The world is messed up, but so am I. So are we, so are you. Our problems are not just with Egypt's taskmasters. Our problem is inside each of us as a Hebrew slave. The world's problem is sin, and Scripture forever steers our focus towards that and indicts us. Solomon said in 1 Kings chapter 8, there is no one who does not sin. Later in Ecclesiastes 7, he says, Surely there's not a righteous man on earth who does good and never sins. Paul says, Romans 3.23, all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. You've heard that before. John chimes in in 1 John chapter 1. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. It is sin that brings disease and decay and death into our lives. A problem is not only the evil and chaos out there, it is the evil in chaos in here, in us. Shortly after drying off from the spray of the Red Sea, Israel complains because they have no water. And we read these words in Exodus chapter 15, which is right on the heels. They have just left the Red Sea. The people grumbled against Moses, saying, What shall we drink? And so God leads them water. A few days later they grumble again. Chapter 16. They say, Would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full. For you brought us out of this out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger. You know what they're saying? They want to go back to Egypt. And they remember the meat pots, ate bread to the full. They failed to understand that they ate the slop that was given to them by the Egyptians. And not only was terrible, they never had enough. And so what God does is he gives them manna. Later on in chapter 17, Israel accuses Moses. This is before they ever come to Mount Sinai. On and on the grumbling goes. And in time after the events of Mount Sinai, they worship a golden calf, party, get drunk, and fornicate. Moses is coming down out of the mountain from which God has given him the tables of stone, which contain the Ten Commandments. He throws the stones down, breaks breaks them in two, grinds the calf into powder, throws it into the water, and makes the people drink it. You remember that story? All of that is in Exodus chapter 32. And then he asks Aaron, why he did this? And you know what Aaron says? The people said that you're gone too long, Moses. And so I said to them, Let any who have gold take it off. So they give it to me, and I threw it into the fire, and out came this calf. Exodus 32, 24. Aaron threw their gold into the fire, and then out pops this calf? Really? Are you buying that? Like I've never done that before. What's the real reason they do this? What's the real reason they make this golden calf? And Aaron participates. I'll tell you why. That's the way the Egyptians lived. The Egyptians worshiped golden calves. And the way the Egyptians lived lives in them. Friends, listen, we cannot put anything right in our world unless we understand what's really wrong. And what's really wrong is that we are not real about who we are. What I noticed today is that revolutionaries always tend to focus on things like racism or sexism or the economy or inequality. And these are problems, to be sure, but they're not the problem. They are the symptoms of the problem. Everybody talks about systemic sin. Where does systemic sin come from? It comes from individual sin. God did not just come to free Israel from Egypt. I'll tell you what he came to do. He came to free Israel from its need for Egypt. All of the chaos, all of the injustice and suffering come from personal sin. Our sin makes us the saboteurs of our own freedom. A saboteur is someone who sabotages something. We shoot ourselves in the foot. We think if we can just get rid of God, God's rules, religion, tradition, duty, our history, truth, the nuclear family, marriage, we will be absolutely free to do what we want when we want, with whom or to whom we want, and as often as we want. And the outcome, the more we play God, the more subhuman we become, and the worse the world gets. The more enslaved we are, and we grumble and complain, not knowing where the problem is. And here's what Aaron does here in Exodus 32. He shifts the blame to the people. And we shift the blame to others. Just like Adam blamed Eve or Eve blamed the snake. Here's what happens. We want to be free, we just don't want to be responsible. And freedom and responsibility can never be separated. They go hand in hand. Responsibility means shouldering the consequences of our choices. You know what life is? Life is our response to the hand that God dealt to us. Every one of us gets a hand. And your hand is different than my hand. The cards that are dealt to you differ from the cards that are dealt to me. Now I can look at my hand and the cards that God has given to me, and I can curse my hand and act like it doesn't exist. Or I can forfeit what I have. Instead, I think what God is expecting from each of us is to learn how to play the hand that He's given to us. That means that we have certain choices to make. Freedom leads to choice, and choice leads to consequences, and consequences lead to responsibility. And today we want the freedom without the consequences. In today's world, we choose to have sex and then kill the baby. We blame others, sue others, excuse ourselves, plead that we're victims. I mean, we hear people say, well, I'm born this way, or I'm hardwired this way, we're genetically predisposed this way. It's my parents who made me do it. It's the world's fault. It's the culture that I was raised in. Everyone else is to blame. You know, when Adam and Eve sinned, you know what God does in Genesis chapter 3? The Bible says God drove out the man. He drove him out. Out of where? Out of the garden. And at the east of the garden of Eden, he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life. And apparently God drove them out to the east of the garden. He put an angel there who refused to allow them to re-enter. Adam and Eve are exiled east of Eden. And as they're exiled, evil spreads. Their own son kills his brother. And he's exiled even further. As time goes on, God is forgotten. And obviously, the world is not as it should be. Their problem is not out there. It's in here in the human heart. The injustice and the evil we hate most in the world is inside us too. And we fight the monster we are. The greatest enemy of freedom, my friends, is freedom. Why is that? Because freedom opens the door to the possibility that you and I can choose wrong or choose exercise or choose a license to sin, which in turn enslaves us even further. This is why the Apostle Paul says, do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh. Peter says, do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil. Absolute freedom is not realistic. Absolute freedom, where you get to do just anything you want to do, anytime you want to do it, with anyone or to whom anyone, with whom anyone you want to do, as long as you want to do it, is not realistic. Because what you want will get into the space of other people, and what other people want will get into your space. Here's the paradox of realistic freedom. It's not absolute freedom. We're talking about realistic freedom. And the paradox of realistic freedom is that we cannot handle freedom without God's rules, and we further cannot handle freedom without God's empowerment inside. Freedom must be realistic. Principle number four. Freedom has to be one. The Exodus Revolution shows that freedom is based on vital ingredients. This is what I'm saying. To sum up at this point, freedom number one comes from God. Number two is based on God's rules. Number three, admits the reality of our own sinful condition. And number four, freedom must be won. What do I mean by that? It's not given. It's not a right. It doesn't come by chance. It's not merely wished for. It is not something you're entitled to. It is hard fought. And there will be a fight. You see, Exodus is war. The revolution is war. Yahweh has come to fight. Exodus is nothing more than a titanic showdown between God, who is I am who I am, and Egypt's overlords and the gods who empower them. Yahweh liberates Israel from one of the most ruthless and enduring powers in human history. Ancient Egypt is more formidable than most of us can imagine. You think back. Think of Egypt, ancient Egypt. What do you normally think of? The pyramids, the sphinxes, the pharaohs. The Great Pyramid at Giza that you've seen pictures of? Still standing today? It already stood a thousand years before Moses ever got there. For nearly four thousand years, the pyramid at Giza was the tallest man-made structure on earth until the building of the Eiffel Tower. This pyramid is made of two million stones, each of which weigh from one to sixty tons. It was built over twenty years' time. Tremendous structure. This has to be a very advanced and sophisticated culture that can engage in such an engineering feat. As far as wealth is concerned, Egypt had so much metal and silver and gold and copper, alloys, and gemstones that a lot of those were buried with their kings. This is the might of Egypt. More could be said. But it was might that made right in ancient Egypt. And now, with the coming of Yahweh, it's no longer might that makes right. I am who I am, makes right. God makes right. Might crumbles before Yahweh's crushing power. The war in Exodus is not between Moses and Pharaoh, or even between Egypt and Israel. The war is between Yahweh and all of Egypt's false gods, and they had a bunch of them. Each of their gods, whether the sun, the moon, the stars, the river, storms, harvest, you name it, each of them has their role and sphere of authority. Even Pharaoh is deified. He is seen as a God. And as God, he knows nothing of Yahweh, but he will. Moses and Aaron go to Pharaoh and tell him, Yahweh says, Let my people go, Exodus 5.1. And Pharaoh answers in verse 2, Who is the Lord that I should obey his voice and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, and moreover, I will not let Israel go. But he will. And when God stretches out his hand over Egypt to free his people, it will be as the Lord said, The Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord. Exodus 7 and verse 5. What God is saying is that they will know that I am who I am. They will know I am not one God among many. They will know that I am not the not just the supreme God. I am the only God. That's what they'll know. They will know that I am the sovereign over all. They will know that no one tells me what to do, that I am not limited in power or by territory, that I, they will know, am absolutely and totally free, and I will free whom I will. You remember the plagues of Egypt? The ten plagues? It is by these plagues that Yahweh defies Egypt and he defies their gods. Yahweh bloodies the Nile god Hapai. He sends frogs to insult the fertility god Het, depicted by a frog's head. He sends gnats, or if you prefer, mosquitoes, to dethrone Gib, the earth god. He sends flies to defy Kepride, a god of rebirth, and to blaspheme the cow god Hathor, he inflicts cattle, the cattle with disease, to dominate the healing god Sekhmet, he strikes the Egyptians with painful boils, to attack the sky goddess Newt. Yahweh unleashes destructive hail. To defy the crop goddess Serapia, he sends locusts to consume all the green vegetation, and to challenge the sun god Ra, he plunges Egypt into darkness. To fight the Pharaoh God, he strikes his firstborn, and then he strikes the firstborn of all of Egypt. The Egyptians can build forty-story pyramids, but they cannot create or defeat a single gnat that God sends. Yahweh is at war, and he will win. You see, revolution is war. It is war for change. One of the things I noticed about godless revolutionaries today is that they assume that they will do better than the ones that they're replacing. And that people will fall in line, they'll work together, they'll play nice, and human potential will lead to this utopia that they're always talking about. They say to themselves, if we can just remove the tyrant in power, we'll do it better, we'll be free. This time we'll get it right. And history, my friends, laughs at you if that's what you're saying. Over and over again, it has been established that those who seek to replace oppressors become worse oppressors. Napoleon was twice as dictatorial as Louis XVI. Lenin and Stalin made Hitler look like a pussycat. They were far more brutal than the Russian czars that they replaced. And Chairman Mao was far more murderous than the worst of Chinese emperors that he revolted against. But you see, when God fights, the change is real, the change is positive, and the change is lasting. Another thing about godless revolution. Revolutions is that they rely on social manipulation and violence to enforce the change. Did you notice how God fights in the book of Exodus? Oh, he's at war all right, but he doesn't force. Why is that? But because even at war, and even with Pharaoh, God expects change and he respects free will in effecting the change. One of the things you'll notice is that God sometimes in the scriptures, throughout history, he intervenes to change physical nature. We call that a miracle. But to my knowledge, he does not intervene directly to change human nature by force. He uses degrees of pressure, yes, but not force. And after Pharaoh is humiliated ten times, he in the end releases a slave labor force of millions. How does he do this? He just lets them go. By his own free will, he lets them go. You said, but wait a minute, Jeff. Don't you realize that God hardened Pharaoh's heart? Wasn't God usurping Pharaoh's freedom in the process? Not at all. For you see, Pharaoh was the first to harden his own heart. And only after Pharaoh had hardened his heart does God help him in the process. And God simply, with each plague, leaves Pharaoh to face the outcome of his own choices. And these come in the form of stronger and stronger judgments as time goes on. Each of these judgments is designed to get Pharaoh to back off, but he never does. You see, freedom is one. It's one over time, not by force. I want you to think about something. Liberation is not liberty. Liberation is off and sudden, but liberty takes time. You see, when Israel left Egypt, were they free? Well, yes and no. They were free outside, but not inside. And we know that because as we've seen today, they kept grumbling to go back. They were more attached to Egypt than they knew. Someone noticed it took God one day one day to get Israel out of Egypt, but he took 1,500 years to get Egypt out of Israel. We're enslaved. And it's inside of us, not just on the outside. We're enslaved outside collectively because we're each enslaved inside individually. And the reason for our being enslaved is not because of God. It's not that other people are the cause or the reason. It's not even that our history is the cause. It's our own sin. And to free us in daily life, God must first free each of us individually from sin. And for that to happen, you've got to stop doubting God and trusting in yourself and blaming your taskmasters for your problem. Freedom apart from God severs you from Eden and it leaves you far east of Eden in Egypt. You see, Yahweh, God is the sole architect of what's called the Echodos, Exodus. It literally is the going out. And God knows how to get us out of Egypt, but he also knows how to get Egypt out of us. And he will walk with us and be patient with us, endure us and sustain us the long way to the promised land. He will not leave us or forsake us. Freedom must be won. The cost of America's freedom is the blood of countless men and women. The cost of Israel's freedom was the blood of Egypt's firstborn. And the cost of our freedom individually from sin is the blood of God's only born. His only born is a new Moses, leading us not back to Eden, but to God Himself and to a country far better than Eden. And I hope that's a journey that you yourself personally are making.