SPEAKER_01: Welcome to the City Covenant podcast.
SPEAKER_01: We are a warm, welcoming church located in downtown Spokane, dedicated to practicing the way of Jesus in the heart of the city.
SPEAKER_01: Please join us as we dive into the Word of God together.
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to City Covenant.
SPEAKER_00: We are going to continue in worship as we worship with our minds, we worship with our hearts, as we hear the gospel proclaimed in the book of Exodus.
SPEAKER_00: Go ahead and if you brought a Bible, turn with me to Exodus 5.
SPEAKER_00: We're looking at parts of Exodus 5, 6, and 7.
SPEAKER_00: If you don't have a Bible with you, there's a Bible right in front of you in the pew.
SPEAKER_00: You can go to page 51.
SPEAKER_00: What we're looking at today is the ultimate question of the book of Exodus.
SPEAKER_00: Who is the Lord?
SPEAKER_00: This is the question that Pharaoh asks, and then God answers through his prophet Moses.
SPEAKER_00: And we're looking at this.
SPEAKER_00: This is the question that determines not only Pharaoh's life, but our life.
SPEAKER_00: This is what determines how you approach the world.
SPEAKER_00: It determines how you act, it determines how you feel.
SPEAKER_00: This question of who is the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Ultimately, for us to understand our own identity, first we have to understand the Lord's identity.
SPEAKER_00: And so we're at in page 51.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to, here's what we'll do.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to look at this quick line in Exodus 5.2.
SPEAKER_00: Then we're going to go and we'll read 6.1 through verse 8.
SPEAKER_00: And then we'll finish at chapter 7, verses 2 through 5.
SPEAKER_00: Feel free to hop through there, or you know, obviously you can just listen as well.
SPEAKER_00: This is what we're going to do is we'll read it and then we'll pray and we'll we're going to look together at the story.
SPEAKER_00: This is what Exodus says.
SPEAKER_00: Pharaoh said, Who is the Lord that I should obey him and let Israel go?
SPEAKER_00: I don't know the Lord, and I will not let Israel go.
SPEAKER_00: And in verse chapter 6, then the Lord said to Moses, Now you will see what I will do to Pharaoh.
SPEAKER_00: Because of my mighty hand, he will let them go.
SPEAKER_00: Because of my mighty hand, he will drive them out of his country.
SPEAKER_00: God also said to Moses, I am the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: I appear to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as God Almighty.
SPEAKER_00: But by my name, the Lord, I did not make myself fully known to them.
SPEAKER_00: I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, where they resided as foreigners.
SPEAKER_00: Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the Israelites, whom the Egyptians are enslaving, and I have remembered my covenant.
SPEAKER_00: Therefore, say to the Israelites, I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians.
SPEAKER_00: I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment.
SPEAKER_00: I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God.
SPEAKER_00: Then you will know that I am the Lord your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians, and I will bring you to the land I swore with uplifted hand to give to Abraham and to Isaac and to Jacob.
SPEAKER_00: I will give it to you as a possession.
SPEAKER_00: I am the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And then moving to chapter 7, verse 2, you are to say everything I commanded you, and your brother Aaron is to tell Pharaoh to let the Israelites go out of his country.
SPEAKER_00: But I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and though I multiply my signs and wonders in Egypt, he will not listen to you.
SPEAKER_00: Then I will lay my hand on Egypt, and with mighty acts of judgment, I will bring out my divisions, my people, the Israelites, and the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: When I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring the Israelites out of it.
SPEAKER_00: Friends, this is the word of the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Let us pray.
SPEAKER_00: Father, this is a story of oppression of a people that are enslaved by Egypt, and you do not persist with this type of injustice.
SPEAKER_00: You're a God who remembers, you're a God who sees, you're a God who, even though you you love everyone in Egypt, you're unwilling to let this sin persist.
SPEAKER_00: And so, Lord, we thank you that you are a God of justice.
SPEAKER_00: We ask this morning, who is the Lord?
SPEAKER_00: God, we want to see your face.
SPEAKER_00: We want to know you.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, help us in our hearts so that we might ultimately know you because we see the face of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: And it's in Christ's name we pray.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so we're gonna look at this story and try to understand, right, Pharaoh's big question, right?
SPEAKER_00: Who is the Lord?
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that a wild question?
SPEAKER_00: By the way, just real fast, there are a couple times throughout scripture that you just look and say, uh-oh, like watch out, um, don't be like him, right?
SPEAKER_00: Um, one of them, you guys might remember this little moment in Genesis where Abel um asked this question, right, where God is talking to Abel and said, Abel, where's your brother Cain?
SPEAKER_00: And Cain asks God a question of, I don't know, am I my brother's keeper?
SPEAKER_00: And you're like, uh oh, time out, don't ask God questions like that.
SPEAKER_00: You know, this is very much like a parent moment.
SPEAKER_00: Uh-uh.
SPEAKER_00: You weren't supposed to, you, you that you said the wrong thing.
SPEAKER_00: Don't do that, right?
SPEAKER_00: This is very much Pharaoh, same deal.
SPEAKER_00: Where he's like, well, I don't know, who is the Lord?
SPEAKER_00: I'm not, I'm not obligated to follow him.
SPEAKER_00: Also, where you look and say, like, everyone who's around is saying, uh-oh, stay away from Pharaoh.
SPEAKER_00: This is a bad move.
SPEAKER_00: He gave the wrong, you know, he asked the wrong question.
SPEAKER_00: Um, so what we're gonna look at is for a minute, we're gonna we'll look at these four points.
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna look just for a second at Pharaoh's defiance, right?
SPEAKER_00: Pharaoh says, Who is the Lord that I should follow him?
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't, he's not in charge of me, right?
SPEAKER_00: And the second thing we're gonna see is God answers this question.
SPEAKER_00: It's God's self-revelation.
SPEAKER_00: God says, I am the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if you noticed this when we read that.
SPEAKER_00: Um, in Exodus, just in Exodus six in particular, in those eight verses, five different times, God says, I am the Lord, right?
SPEAKER_00: He, I mean, that it's answering the question.
SPEAKER_00: Who is the Lord?
SPEAKER_00: God steps in and says, I will tell you who is the Lord, and then I'm gonna show you, right?
SPEAKER_00: And so we see we start at Pharaoh's defiance.
SPEAKER_00: We move to um Pharaoh saying, Who is the Lord?
SPEAKER_00: God says, I am the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And and then we see these two ways we can respond, right?
SPEAKER_00: We can either move towards submission, right, or we can move toward resistance.
SPEAKER_00: And then ultimately we're gonna see that the ultimate answer of who is the Lord is found in Christ Jesus Himself.
SPEAKER_00: And so as we read this, um, we're we're looking at this and we see Pharaoh, right, with this ultimately bad um response, right?
SPEAKER_00: When he says, Who am who is the Lord that I should obey him and let Israel go?
SPEAKER_00: I don't know him.
SPEAKER_00: This is the biggest question in Exodus, right?
SPEAKER_00: Um We told you a little bit about it the last few weeks, right?
SPEAKER_00: Um, about the nature of the gods in the ancient world, right?
SPEAKER_00: It was the belief in the ancient world that particular gods of certain nations only had power in those localities, right?
SPEAKER_00: And we'll we'll keep talking about that.
SPEAKER_00: We'll talk about it more.
SPEAKER_00: Um we see, for instance, if you think about it throughout other Bible stories that you probably have read before, right?
SPEAKER_00: Remember, you have people like Rahab.
SPEAKER_00: Rahab understands um that somehow the God of Israel is very powerful, and that um in that Rahab in Jericho decides, hey, I should actually submit to the God of Israel, right?
SPEAKER_00: Um we see other people, like in the story of Jonah, and we're going through this in our small group at our house on Tuesday nights right now.
SPEAKER_00: And we have this group of people as we're studying the book of Jonah.
SPEAKER_00: What's interesting is in the book of Jonah, you have these sailors, right?
SPEAKER_00: Remember when Jonah gets thrown off the boat and um and then gets eaten by a whale and all that, you know that story.
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, what's fascinating is before Jonah gets thrown off the boat, you have these other folks that are not Israelites.
SPEAKER_00: They are very spiritually sensitive.
SPEAKER_00: They know somehow the God of Israel must be very powerful, right?
SPEAKER_00: He's the maker and sustainer of all things, right?
SPEAKER_00: Um, same thing, the Ninevehites.
SPEAKER_00: God, uh, the God of Israel, people in Nineveh are like, boy, that God must um have power here too.
SPEAKER_00: I tell you all that because there are some people that are spiritually sensitive and spiritually aware that say, this is the like the real God of the universe, this God of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: He's really something.
SPEAKER_00: I need to listen, I need to pay attention, right?
SPEAKER_00: Other people resist, other people dismiss him, right?
SPEAKER_00: Pharaoh's one of them.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: So who is the Lord?
SPEAKER_00: Um, well, God is the Lord, right?
SPEAKER_00: If if God is the Lord, even Pharaoh knows that um if Pharaoh knows that, then Pharaoh would need to obey him, right?
SPEAKER_00: So here's the thing, there's no such thing, guys, just you know, throughout all of scripture, there's um this idea of listening in Hebrew is the same as obeying.
SPEAKER_00: There's actually get this, there's no word in Hebrew for obey.
SPEAKER_00: You know why?
SPEAKER_00: Um it's simply listen.
SPEAKER_00: If you hear God's voice, the expectation, I know this sounds crazy, you've read it in the Old Testament, and you it says obey.
SPEAKER_00: No, it's actually because it's connected to listen and hearing God's voice.
SPEAKER_00: The expectation in in Hebrew, like in the Old Testament, is that if you hear God's voice, uh, of course you would obey.
SPEAKER_00: So when God says hear me, listen to me, uh, we translate it into English as obey God.
SPEAKER_00: You know why?
SPEAKER_00: Because of course you would.
SPEAKER_00: If you hear him, if you listen to him, the only logical thing you could do, he is the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: You have to submit to him, right?
SPEAKER_00: Pharaoh says no.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: So there is no such thing, right, as a as a Lord who you don't listen to, right?
SPEAKER_00: It's why we when we say Jesus is my Lord and Savior, you can't be like, Jesus is my Lord and Savior and go out doing all these bad things and still say Jesus is my Lord and Savior, right?
SPEAKER_00: Because we would look and say that'd be some form of cheap grace, right?
SPEAKER_00: If you look and say, Jesus is my Lord, but I don't actually obey him, you would look and say, Oh, well, friends, it's very simple.
SPEAKER_00: Then Jesus isn't your Lord.
SPEAKER_00: You have some type of intellectual ascent of maybe about the actions that he did.
SPEAKER_00: You have some type of intellectual ascent about the cross and the resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: You have an intellectual ascent about the miracles, you have an intellectual ascent about the virgin birth.
SPEAKER_00: But if you don't obey him, even though you look and say, he might be the Lord of heaven and earth, he's not actually your Lord, right?
SPEAKER_00: I I know that sounds like a hard start to this sermon, but stick with me, okay?
SPEAKER_00: It gets nice.
SPEAKER_00: Um here's what happens.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think about a story like this.
SPEAKER_00: Because the reason you obey God, the reason God is the Lord, is because he is the Lord of heaven and earth, because he's the maker of heaven and earth.
SPEAKER_00: He knows how these things are supposed to work.
SPEAKER_00: That's why you can trust him.
SPEAKER_00: He says, I created, I engineered this whole setup, right?
SPEAKER_00: And because I created heaven and earth, I know how they're built to function.
SPEAKER_00: And so you should trust me and follow me because when you live in my ways, actually it's going to go better for you.
SPEAKER_00: Amen?
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: I mean, this is actually, in some ways, it's kind of simple.
SPEAKER_00: So I think about it like this.
SPEAKER_00: Um, some of you guys have heard me talk, there's this like magical area.
SPEAKER_00: If you go to the far western section of Montana, it's hard to get to.
SPEAKER_00: But if you go to Glacier National Park, okay, anyone have been to Glacier before?
SPEAKER_00: There's a spot that I think might be like the most remote part of like the lower 48 states.
SPEAKER_00: And here's how you get there.
SPEAKER_00: And it don't worry, it'll still be remote even if all of us go.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so you can go.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not, I'm not, you this isn't like me telling you about the Chinkaterra in Italy and now it's ruined, right?
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
SPEAKER_00: So um what you do is this you go to the base of Glacier National Park, and rather than going into West Glacier, you hang a left, and you go on a dirt road for 30 miles, and there's no electricity, and their car is going to be very, very dusty.
SPEAKER_00: And you get to this area called Pole Bridge, Montana, and Pole Bridge is 30 miles from electricity, um, and it's it's this far entrance to Glacier National Park.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so I just want, and it's this beautiful, amazing area.
SPEAKER_00: You can see the mountains so well.
SPEAKER_00: Um, they're, you know, it's dead silent, it's amazing.
SPEAKER_00: And there's a place you can get an Elkburger, which is if you're not a vegan, it's really gonna be something, right?
SPEAKER_00: So, okay, but I just want you to imagine for yourself.
SPEAKER_00: I just want you to imagine for a second.
SPEAKER_00: You're in Polebridge, Montana, it's incredibly remote, and you and your friends go hiking, right?
SPEAKER_00: And you're hiking and hiking and hiking, and you're going further and further into the wilderness, the most remote part of the lower 48.
SPEAKER_00: And something happens.
SPEAKER_00: You stumble upon this area deep in the wilderness.
SPEAKER_00: And as you're in this area, in the deep wilderness, all of a sudden you start seeing things, and you can tell you're no longer in the wilderness.
SPEAKER_00: And and you start seeing, let's say, you see some grape vines, right?
SPEAKER_00: And then you see some um some fruit trees, right?
SPEAKER_00: And then you see vegetables growing on the ground.
SPEAKER_00: And then as you keep walking, you look and you realize, oh my goodness, there's a small cabin.
SPEAKER_00: There's a small cabin.
SPEAKER_00: And the doors open.
SPEAKER_00: And you walk into the door, into the cabin, and you meet the host, and the host is very hospitable.
SPEAKER_00: And and he welcomes you in, and you find out he's he's planted all this, he's manicured all of it, he made it all, he built the cabin himself with his own hands.
SPEAKER_00: And then you look and you say, Oh my gosh, we've been hiking for a week, and I'm so incredibly dirty.
SPEAKER_00: Look, there's a sink, there must be running water.
SPEAKER_00: And you walk over to the sink, and he says, No, hold on, hold on.
SPEAKER_00: There's a a way that you don't know about.
SPEAKER_00: The way I've engineered this, the way I've designed this, the sink doesn't turn on like you would expect because I had to use different materials out here in the wilderness in Polebridge, Montana.
SPEAKER_00: And you say, No, I've got it from here, trust me, I know about sinks, I don't need your help.
SPEAKER_00: You have, you're at a crossroads of sorts.
SPEAKER_00: You can either trust the person who is the maker and now sustains this little land in this cabin and this sink.
SPEAKER_00: Or you can say, no, I've got it from here, I know how sinks work.
SPEAKER_00: The problem is, if the sink is designed in such a way that the water doesn't turn on in the way that you'd expect it to, if you keep doing the things that you do, the water will never turn on.
SPEAKER_00: The challenge with Pharaoh is Pharaoh thinks this is his cabin.
SPEAKER_00: He really thinks he's in charge of it.
SPEAKER_00: And Pharaoh lives under this false delusion in a way, almost not only that Yahweh is not the maker of this whole thing, somehow Pharaoh has deluded himself into believing he's really been the maker of it.
SPEAKER_00: He's the one who's in charge of it, right?
SPEAKER_00: And so he's the one that everyone should listen to, right?
SPEAKER_00: So Pharaoh is defiant as he says, Who is the Lord?
unknown: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Because he says, it certainly is not this God of Israel.
SPEAKER_00: Even though the God of Israel is not just the God of Israel, in the words of Jonah, he's the one who made, you know, made the sea and the dry land of the whole earth, right?
SPEAKER_00: And so you have to, so you listen to him because he's the Lord, because he's the Maker.
SPEAKER_00: So why doesn't Pharaoh listen to the Lord?
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't listen because he thinks he's the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: He thinks that he's in charge.
SPEAKER_00: So with all that, God says, then I will tell you about myself.
SPEAKER_00: See, God is a God of self-revelation, just so you know.
SPEAKER_00: As Christians, we don't believe that Christian theology starts from a point of creativity.
SPEAKER_00: We believe that Christian theology starts from a point of revelation, right?
SPEAKER_00: We believe that how we understand God is because God reveals God's self to us.
SPEAKER_00: That's how we understand Him.
SPEAKER_00: We believe that God ultimately shows Himself in Jesus Christ, the person.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: That when we see the face of Jesus, we see the face of God.
SPEAKER_00: So when we ask, who is the Lord, our question, our starting point isn't wondering, it's not groping around in the dark.
SPEAKER_00: Ours is from a starting point that says, everything we understand about God is because God has told us this.
SPEAKER_00: God has acted certain ways and that we can discern who He is.
SPEAKER_00: God says, I will show you my power, I will show you my authority.
SPEAKER_00: Look at what he says in verses six, five through eight.
SPEAKER_00: He says, I will bring you out.
SPEAKER_00: He has all these actions that he's gonna do.
SPEAKER_00: I will bring you out, I will free you, I will redeem you with an outstretched arm, I will take you as my own people, I will, I will be your God, and I will bring you to the land.
SPEAKER_00: These statements, if you follow along from five through eight, what you see, guys, this is the whole story of Revelation.
SPEAKER_00: God has just summarized in his actions the way he functions in the world and the way he's telling the story of all of Exodus.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: This whole story of Exodus is not simply just, hey, some people were slaves, we got to get them out of there, help them be free.
SPEAKER_00: No, the story of Exodus is a story of deliverance, right?
SPEAKER_00: It's a story of covenant, it's a story of a land of promise and hope, right?
SPEAKER_00: And of abundance that God's bringing them to.
SPEAKER_00: But just as we learned last week, they can't hear all of this hope because they're so despondent, right?
SPEAKER_00: Just like Mickey's prayer request, right?
SPEAKER_00: They have this type of depression over them, right?
SPEAKER_00: Where things have felt so hopeless that they can't see hope any longer.
unknown: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Their spirits were broken.
SPEAKER_00: And so they no longer have the ability to hear the truth of who God is and what God's gonna do.
SPEAKER_00: I'll tell you though, you have to know this.
SPEAKER_00: It was true for Israel and it's true for us.
SPEAKER_00: Even if they didn't believe it, even if their hearts can't rise up to that level of hope.
SPEAKER_00: God is still who God says He is.
SPEAKER_00: God is still true and good, whether you can perceive it in this very moment or not.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Because this is the thing.
SPEAKER_00: Our feelings actually often are fickle, right?
SPEAKER_00: They actually come and go.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we have eyes to see, sometimes we don't.
SPEAKER_00: God is still the same yesterday, today, and forever, regardless of how we presently feel.
SPEAKER_00: This is really, really important for us to know as Christians, when you know, when you take an honest look at life and you read the Psalms, for instance, you read the Psalms, and some of the Psalms are like incredible, like happy, wonderful like times, right?
SPEAKER_00: We're like, God, you're amazing.
SPEAKER_00: You know, all the sorry, this is why I don't write poetry, right?
SPEAKER_00: It's very right, I would say it's very, I would say overly simple things.
SPEAKER_00: I would just, right, if I wrote the Psalms, um, all I would say is, God, you're nice and I like you, right?
SPEAKER_00: And the what's amazing about reading other people's poetry, about reading other people's songs, is it gives you better words, right?
SPEAKER_00: And so in the Psalms, we have all of these incredible songs of praise, but then we have all these incredible songs of lament.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because sometimes life is really brutally difficult, right?
SPEAKER_00: So some of you guys right now are in a moment where you say life is brutally difficult.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you are in a time in your life where praise is really easy, right?
SPEAKER_00: Both these things are part of the human experience.
SPEAKER_00: And as Christians, what's incredible is God welcomes you in with both and more.
SPEAKER_00: Amen?
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: And so you are, we we're not somehow asked as Christians to check lament at the door.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: So Israel is in this moment of lament, right?
SPEAKER_00: And they they are so brokenhearted, they might not even be able to say when they're asking that when they're asking the question of who is the Lord?
SPEAKER_00: They might look and say, boy, it doesn't even feel like God is the Lord, yet he still is.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: So some of us today, even, you look and say, boy, you need to hear, yet he still is, right?
SPEAKER_00: In your own life.
SPEAKER_00: So who is God?
SPEAKER_00: What's he like?
SPEAKER_00: What's God say about himself?
SPEAKER_00: Well, one of these things, you know what he says, he says, I'm the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.
SPEAKER_00: You know what that means?
SPEAKER_00: If God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, that means God is a God who is long suffering.
SPEAKER_00: And here's why.
SPEAKER_00: Because he's dealt with these same people who keep making the same type of mistakes over and over and over.
SPEAKER_00: And God doesn't leave because he's a God of long suffering, that's a God of covenant, he's a God of commitment, he's a God who is faithful, right?
SPEAKER_00: He's a God who says his relationship with his people don't primarily depend on their response to him as much as it depends on his own covenant faithfulness toward them.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because his people, including us, are often unfaithful to him.
SPEAKER_00: And what happens?
SPEAKER_00: God responds to our unfaithfulness with even more of his faithfulness.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: That's how the covenant keeps going, right?
SPEAKER_00: It's because God is the one who sustains the covenant.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: He says at the end of 6.5, it says, God says he remembers.
SPEAKER_00: He remembers Israel.
SPEAKER_00: Think about these little moments throughout the Old Testament when God remembers, right?
SPEAKER_00: Um, God remembers Noah in Genesis.
SPEAKER_00: And what happens when God remembers Noah, the waters recede, right?
SPEAKER_00: God remembers Hannah in the book of Samuel, and you know what happens?
SPEAKER_00: Life begins.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: God remembers Israel here, and liberation comes.
SPEAKER_00: Human beings, we constantly, right, we constantly forget.
SPEAKER_00: We have a very short attention span and a very bad memory.
SPEAKER_00: But God doesn't.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: We forget who we are.
SPEAKER_00: We forget God's faithfulness, right?
SPEAKER_00: We forget that suffering is not the end of the story.
SPEAKER_00: But God remembers.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: He was God then, and he's still present, and he's still unchanging, and he will keep being our God forever.
SPEAKER_00: Oh, and there's one thing you need to know for the book of Exodus God is the type of God who is unwilling to let injustice persist.
SPEAKER_00: That's this one little piece that you must know.
SPEAKER_00: Because it animates all of the actions in the book of Exodus, where God says that Israel is his firstborn son, in the same way that we will later see that ultimately Jesus is his true firstborn son, right?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is the ultimate Israel.
SPEAKER_00: And God says, I'm so faithful to my children that it will not let them suffer forever here in Egypt.
SPEAKER_00: That I will deliver them out of captive slavery.
SPEAKER_00: Friends, you have to know this about the God of the Bible.
SPEAKER_00: The God of the Bible is not neutral.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: This is challenging, and at least it should be challenging for us.
SPEAKER_00: Because, on a very simple level, you have to acknowledge this about yourself.
SPEAKER_00: Is as much as God is the God of justice, and God is the one who is not just advocating for those that are brokenhearted, but he is the one who is rescuing them.
SPEAKER_00: Who is he rescuing them from?
SPEAKER_00: He's rescuing them from people who are doing wrong to them.
SPEAKER_00: Well, guess what?
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we're the ones doing wrong.
SPEAKER_00: Well, then we better be careful.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Where we start asking, we we rather than starting just to think always about God, is that God's on our side.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, we have to line ourselves up and say, asking the question, am I on God's side?
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: And so because God is a God of justice.
SPEAKER_00: So there's two responses.
SPEAKER_00: The two responses you can now make if we're following along in this, right?
SPEAKER_00: Because first Pharaoh asks, who is the Lord?
SPEAKER_00: God says, I'll tell you who's the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: I'm the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: He says it five times in Exodus 6.
SPEAKER_00: And then what's the expectation?
SPEAKER_00: The expectation is Pharaoh will now respond correctly.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Is the expectation is Pharaoh would essentially put on sackcloth and ashes and say, oh my goodness, I cannot believe how wrong I was.
SPEAKER_00: I can't believe what I did to you, God.
SPEAKER_00: That's what he could do.
SPEAKER_00: He's have humble contrition, right?
SPEAKER_00: Humble submission.
SPEAKER_00: Or he could have what he does, which is essentially hardened resistance, right?
SPEAKER_00: You know in mere Christianity, you know, C.S.
SPEAKER_00: Lewis says, he says that every time you make a choice, you are turning the central part of you into something a little different from what it was before.
SPEAKER_00: And all your life long, you are slowly turning the central thing either into a heavenly creature or a hellish creature.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: The thing is with Pharaoh, is Pharaoh, the central thing of him is becoming more and more hellish.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Pharaoh becomes incapable of surrender to God because he worships power.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: And this, here's the thing, you have to recognize, this all matters to us today, thousands of years later, this story does, because modern people, we often imagine freedom as absolute self-determination, right?
SPEAKER_00: Rather than freedom being that we're we have freedom, so now we are built to worship.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Scripture says we become what we worship, right?
SPEAKER_00: If we worship power like Pharaoh, what happens?
SPEAKER_00: Our hearts become hard.
SPEAKER_00: If we worship consumption, we actually become empty, right?
SPEAKER_00: If we worship image, we become anxious.
SPEAKER_00: If we worship control, we become fearful.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever we worship forms us.
unknown: Right?
SPEAKER_00: It's why it, it's so incredible that we get to come together every week as Christians and worship the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: You know, and some of you guys have heard me say this before, but I'm just gonna, I'm going off my notes for just a second.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna tell you my base level ecclesiology, and it's made me love church even more.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what it is is you come together to worship every week in a church in a Christian church.
SPEAKER_00: And you know what's funny?
SPEAKER_00: And for some of you guys, you this is your first time you've ever been at City Covenant.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: But here's what's amazing about church you show up at a church, and by and large, most churches, you're gonna come in, and there's gonna be people, some of them are gonna be kind of friendly, some of them won't, right?
SPEAKER_00: And you you grab a seat, right?
SPEAKER_00: You hear some music done, right?
SPEAKER_00: And dependent on the week, sometimes it's really good, sometimes it's not that good, right?
SPEAKER_00: That's just that's church, right?
SPEAKER_00: Then you you get up there and you hear this person, you know, this gal or this guy talk.
SPEAKER_00: And by and large, most of these people cannot, would never be able to give a TED talk, right?
SPEAKER_00: These are not folks that you're subscribing to like on YouTube or podcasts, right?
SPEAKER_00: They're just normal people, and they're doing their best to like point you back toward Jesus, right?
SPEAKER_00: So what you you listen talk, that's okay, the music's okay, and the people might not even be that nice.
SPEAKER_00: And then sometimes we do this prayer with the people thing, and then as we're doing the prayers with the people, you know what happens?
SPEAKER_00: Is somebody inevitably raises their hand and says, Hey, I need to pray for my neighbor's dog, you know, tripod.
SPEAKER_00: It only has three legs, and now they need to cut off another one of its legs, and we could just we could pray for the dog, you know.
SPEAKER_00: And and this is church.
SPEAKER_00: And you look and say, that's not what I signed up for.
SPEAKER_00: I thought it was gonna be incredible.
SPEAKER_00: But you know what's amazing about church is this seems to be the institution, the means of grace that God has used, that He slowly, slowly, slowly transforms individual lives, He transforms families, He transforms communities, right?
SPEAKER_00: He transforms cities, right?
SPEAKER_00: He transforms countries, and he transforms the whole world.
SPEAKER_00: Slowly, slowly, slowly.
SPEAKER_00: This is what happens.
SPEAKER_00: So that eventually we all say, holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty who was and is and is to come.
SPEAKER_00: Amen?
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: That's actually the church.
SPEAKER_00: That's what happens when you gather together to worship consistently.
SPEAKER_00: Probably on any given week, it might not seem as amazing as you expected it to be.
SPEAKER_00: But give it time, and something happens.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, that's church.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, now we're gonna get back to Exodus.
SPEAKER_00: Sorry.
SPEAKER_00: Don't worry, I'm ahead of schedule.
SPEAKER_00: So in um, I'm reading this book in, I'm in this like book club for pastors, and we read this book about Christians and art by some guy with the last name Ramsey.
SPEAKER_00: I don't think it's Dave Ramsey's brother, but in it he quotes this book.
SPEAKER_00: Sorry, that's a Christian joke.
SPEAKER_00: Um, because I know Christians like Dave Ramsey, sorry.
SPEAKER_00: Just explaining the joke.
SPEAKER_00: Um, so we've been reading this book, some last name Ramsey, and he's an artist.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and in the book, he talks about this artist that I've never heard of before, that some of you guys who are actually into art and know about, named Vermeer.
SPEAKER_00: Vermeer did this thing in Europe that was different than everyone else.
SPEAKER_00: He used um he used um some type of like lenses so he could paint differently than any artist had ever painted before, so that he could actually see things better, and so that all of us in his paintings could see the world better.
SPEAKER_00: And here's um here's where it kind of comes from.
SPEAKER_00: Um in this book, Eye of the Beholder, that was quoted in the book.
SPEAKER_00: That I'm okay.
SPEAKER_00: This is what happens.
SPEAKER_00: Pastors read books only to get quotes and illustrations, okay?
SPEAKER_00: Sorry, again, another joke that we read for other reasons, but that's part of it.
SPEAKER_00: So Laura Snyder in her book Eye of the Beholder says that what happened in the scientific revolution is it proved something to humans.
SPEAKER_00: You know what it was?
SPEAKER_00: It it proved that the scientific revolution proved that there is more to the world than what the naked eye can see, right?
SPEAKER_00: Through both microscopes and telescopes, we could now see way, way more than we ever knew existed.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: And so Vermeer used these so that in his paintings could paint and show things that no one had ever been able to see in paintings, right?
SPEAKER_00: This is the same thing that I, as I read this, what occurred to me was, oh my gosh, that's like our spiritual eyes.
SPEAKER_00: We go through the world and we just see the surface of things.
SPEAKER_00: We don't see, if we don't have eyes to see it, if we're not using like a spiritual microscope or a spiritual telescope, we kind of miss the fact that there's so much more happening than we might expect.
SPEAKER_00: I think Pharaoh needed like a spiritual microscope or a spiritual telescope to realize there was more to the world than what Pharaoh could see.
unknown: Right?
SPEAKER_00: And because he didn't, because he didn't have eyes to see God, all he saw was was you know just dirt.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: But if you if you want, if you want to be able to submit to God, right, if you want to be able to have a heart that sought for God, you have to ask God and pray to God that God would give you new eyes to see him.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: You have to pray and actually ask God, God, would you give me ears to hear you?
SPEAKER_00: Right, and eyes to see you.
SPEAKER_00: Because we realize like in the natural world, that there's so much about him that we miss.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: If you want to be like Mary, right, Jesus' mom, who says, Behold, I am the Lord's servant.
SPEAKER_00: That's the mission, right?
SPEAKER_00: Well, how was she able to do that?
SPEAKER_00: She did that because she had this spiritual openness, right?
SPEAKER_00: Because she had spiritual eyes and she realized there's more happening in the world than what I can see.
unknown: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Those are those two responses.
SPEAKER_00: You can be like Mary, right?
SPEAKER_00: I am the Lord's servant.
SPEAKER_00: Or you can be like Pharaoh, who is the Lord?
SPEAKER_00: I don't know the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: No, you look and say, Who is the Lord?
SPEAKER_00: The Bible has a line from Genesis to Revelation that's going in one direction that set where God says, I will show you who the Lord is, and his name is Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: That's the story of Scripture, right?
SPEAKER_00: Um, in Colossians 1.19, the Apostle Paul says that in Jesus, all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.
SPEAKER_00: He's the ultimate revelation of God.
SPEAKER_00: The you know what the shortest, the earliest Christian creed was, it was very simple.
SPEAKER_00: It was Jesus Christ is Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus Christ is Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus means God saves.
SPEAKER_00: The word Christ is Jesus is God's anointed one, and he is ultimately the Lord, and that he's both the Lord of heaven and earth, and it that was also in contradiction to say no one else is Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Caesar is not ultimately the Lord, Pharaoh is not ultimately the Lord, Nebuchadnezzar is not ultimately the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: There is one Lord, and his name is Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: And from that, um, you know, I mean, you just start looking.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, what's amazing about the way that the early church saw Jesus is you move from virgin birth to Jesus' life to like let's say in Jesus' amazing teachings, like the Sermon on the Mount, right, the miracles, right, the cross, the resurrection, and the way the early Christians reflected on Jesus and they realized so quickly Jesus changed everything.
SPEAKER_00: That when we see the face of Jesus, now we're realizing we're seeing the very face of God.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: You see the way the apostle Paul wrote, right?
SPEAKER_00: And Paul, as a first century Jew that was so careful, right?
SPEAKER_00: First century Jews were so careful in the way that they talked about God, right?
SPEAKER_00: Um, this is the same people whose descendants, even in English, will still not even write the whole name of God.
SPEAKER_00: It'll say G-D, because the name of God is so holy that we must be so careful to talk about him.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, that type of guy, like Paul, now uses God our Savior and Christ our Savior interchangeably, right?
SPEAKER_00: That Paul quickly realizes I can use language about Jesus the way I used to only be able to use language about the Father.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because the Father and the Son are united.
SPEAKER_00: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in Trinity.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: That God was made manifest in flesh, right?
SPEAKER_00: He was vindicated by the Spirit, He was beheld by the angels, He was proclaimed amongst the nations, right?
SPEAKER_00: He was believed on in the world and he was taken up in glory.
SPEAKER_00: And like we said, Paul said that in Christ all the fullness of deity dwells in bodily form, right?
SPEAKER_00: All the maker of heaven and earth was squished into one person.
SPEAKER_00: And you have to wonder for a second, when we ask, who is the Lord?
SPEAKER_00: Is it when you saw the transfiguration in the Gospels?
SPEAKER_00: Did they just happen to see, just for this little moment, with all of God's glory in the person of Jesus Christ, it just getting squished out for a moment.
SPEAKER_00: It just couldn't stay in there because it was so magnificent.
SPEAKER_00: And we see God's glory in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: So when you see the face of Jesus now, you see the face of God.
SPEAKER_00: So Dorothy Sayers, um, some of you guys know, she is a 20th-century author.
SPEAKER_00: Um in 1915, she graduated from Oxford.
SPEAKER_00: She, you might know her because she was friends with C.S.
SPEAKER_00: Lewis and J.R.
SPEAKER_00: Tolkien.
SPEAKER_00: Um she wrote 11 mystery novels.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what's amazing about um her, though.
SPEAKER_00: There was this main character in the book.
SPEAKER_00: And this guy was um this incredible um detective, except there was one thing about him.
SPEAKER_00: He was all alone in the book.
SPEAKER_00: And so Dorothy Sayers writes in into the story, this companion to the main character in her whole series.
SPEAKER_00: And what's amazing about this character that she writes in is this character is exactly like Dorothy Sayers.
SPEAKER_00: What Dorothy Sayers did is she wrote herself into the novel to come in and actually rescue this guy that even though he did all this good stuff, he still needed something else.
SPEAKER_00: So we look and we try to make sense of the incarnation.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe Dorothy Sayers, in her ability as an author, just gave us this little bit, this little tidbit of knowledge, when we realize God himself wrote himself into the story of creation.
SPEAKER_00: God as the author of everything.
SPEAKER_00: God writes himself in as a character.
SPEAKER_00: Why?
SPEAKER_00: Because the rest of the story was missing one.
SPEAKER_00: The rest of the story, the rest of the book that was being told, still needed someone that would complete it.
SPEAKER_00: It needed someone that would rescue them.
SPEAKER_00: It needed someone that would abide with them, right?
SPEAKER_00: It needed someone that would take on all the brokenness and hurt and shame of all the rest of the characters of the book.
SPEAKER_00: And ultimately, so that everyone there would understand who he really is and make himself known.
SPEAKER_00: That's what God does in the person of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_00: So when we ask the question of who is the Lord, we look and say, we only know about who the Lord is because God told us who the Lord is.
SPEAKER_00: That's what Christians believe.
SPEAKER_00: Is that God loves you so much that he didn't want to leave you guessing.
SPEAKER_00: That God loves you so much and has committed so much to you, that God said, I will come toward you.
SPEAKER_00: Because I know you could never come toward me.
SPEAKER_00: Not on your own, never far enough.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: God broke this dividing wall between created and creator.
SPEAKER_00: And that changes everything.
SPEAKER_00: He's the ultimate Lord.
SPEAKER_00: He's one who came in and rescued us, he's the one who loves us.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: We see all of the stories of the Old Testament ultimately pointing toward him, but what we really see in that is all these stories point toward this one ultimate story, and it's the person of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Friends, isn't that life-changing?
SPEAKER_00: When you look and say, wow, God loves you so much that he was willing to leave his throne in heaven, to say, I will come down with mortals and endure all of the challenges that you deal with now.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Having to have diapers changed, and having to be hungry sometimes, right?
SPEAKER_00: And and for Jesus, right, to to go all the way to the cross.
SPEAKER_00: And God says, I I want to make myself known to them, and this is the only way that it could ever be able to work, is for me to come down to mortals so they might know me, and so we might have true relationship, right?
SPEAKER_00: And that I would, and that God says that he would take on even all of our brokenness.
unknown: Right?
SPEAKER_00: He came in and endured all of the brokenness of the cross so that we could have all the glory of the resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_00: Father in heaven, you sent your son Jesus Christ, you empower us by the Spirit, Holy Trinity, you are the Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And so, God, with that knowledge, would you help us so that our lives would be reoriented around you, Lord, because we know the world is built through you and for you, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: And so we want to join the chorus that praises you because you're what the world is ultimately all about.
SPEAKER_00: And we want our lives to be in harmony with you, so we could live the way you built us to live.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for showing us yourself.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for answering the ultimate question as who is the Lord, so that we might know who we are, Lord, because now we can be with you.
SPEAKER_00: Thank you for that, God.
SPEAKER_00: In Christ's name we pray.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for listening.
SPEAKER_01: Please join us in person for community worship, the breaking of bread, and prayer.
SPEAKER_01: We are located at 512 South Bernard Street, Spokane, Washington.
SPEAKER_01: 59204.