Today’s talk explores how God acted in the lives of his people the Israelites, hearing their cry and bringing them out of slavery to freedom. And helps us to explore how God is still active in our lives even today.
We’ve been looking at the story of Moses and how God has been using Moses to act in the lives of his people. I thought it would be good to recap The Story So Far as we’ve been going quickly through
Last week we were at plague one and this week we’re at plague ten
Before we dig in let’s pray…..
As I said God is active throughout the whole story of Moses . I wonder if like me sometimes when you read a bible passage or hear a passage of scripture read thoughts and questions come to mind….
Thoughts like what?!?! Questions like why is that included here?
In our passage today from Exodus I wonder what questions we had when we heard this? We’re not Egyptians or Israelites living back then so What does this passage say to us?
In Exodus, we discover that the Israelites are living in Egypt, and are in slavery disliked by the Egyptian pharaoh and were in slavery, crying out to God for 450 years God acted at the perfect time in order to rescue his people. And we get this encounter between Moses and God, when God appears to Moses and the burning bush.
Moses is given a message by God. God tells Moses to go to pharaoh, and give a really simple message – let my people go. It’s not a difficult command. It’s quite understandable. Let my people go and yet pharaoh didn’t. So we then get this account of pharaoh hardening his heart, and not listening to God. Colin touched on this last week when we looked at the first page of blood. This plague was God’s response to the rebellion of pharaohs heart. he didn’t listen to God, didn’t realise that God was the king of the whole world bigger than pharaoh himself. We get all these plagues, which is a sign of gods judgement and part of his plan to bring his people out of slavery to freedom.
These plagues began with the plague of blood followed by plagues of frogs gnats, flies, livestock, boils, hail, locusts and darkness. And still Pharoah would not let Gods people go.
He’s plagues, devastated the land of Egypt causing pain, suffering, loss of livestock loss of land and crops.
We get to this point in the story, the passage read today where got ACTS He predicts, telling Moses to go to Pharoah and say that they’ll be one final plague. In a passage today, it helps us to think of God acting in specific ways is very to completely drive out God’s people from Egypt.
In v1 God says to Moses, this will be the time as a result of this last plague that pharaoh will let you go. And not even just an okay he’ll give in and let you all go in a gentle way but it says pharaoh will drive you out completely. A final and complete separation. Full of animosity. Which is echoed in v 8 where God tells Moses Pharoah’s officials will bow down before him, humbling themselves to him and begging them to leave.
Secondly God acts in this story and Gives favour to his people – they have possessions to take with them. Imagery associated with a bride being sent off from her family home to begin a new life. The bible is full of language about Church being God’s bride. Israelites were being given stuff so that they could begin fresh in the new land. Be prosperous.
Thirdly we see how Gid acts and pla Brings judgement – there will tragedy. There will be blood and mourning and grief at the loss of every first born through the whole of the Egyptian society and there will be a contrast between the Egyptian camp and that of the Israelites as one commentator put it – ‘Against such a tragic backdrop, the Israelites will remain unharmed and undisturbed. Not even the empty snarl of a dog will interrupt the quiet of the Israelite settlement, while among the Egyptians the air will be torn by the piercing cries of lament.’
The quiet of the Israelite camp indicates the God makes of waiting for redemption for his people.
Call performs all these acts, and wonders to make himself known to show that he is the king of the universe.
What does that mean for us? that is a story that happened long ago? We see God acting to cause pharaoh to completely drive his people out of Egypt. We see him giving favouritism to his people, bring judgement and make himself known.
What happens next? God says that the Israelites will be saved. when the Egyptians are grieving, the Israelites camp will have no sound in not even a dog snarl will be heard. The reason for this is because they’re told to take some lambs and put the blood of the lambs around the door posts. They were to gather and enjoy the roast lamb and at midnight, the angel of death would pass over Egypt but will not come to the houses that are marked with the blood of the lambs.
This happened, the angel of death came, and all the Egyptian firstborns from pharaohs Palace to the servant maid, to the livestock and animals died. Utter tragedy happens.
And pharaoh, orders the Israelites to go.
In the book of Exodus God’s actions made a difference to the lives of the Israelites. Before they were in slavery, they were beaten, they were oppressed. Their children were killed, and then God brought them out of that he had to cry he brought them through to the other side. God made a difference in their lives.
But what about us? What difference does God mean to our lives? How was he at work to help us?
We are going to use a bit of an illustration. who has heard of gravity?
Do we believe that gravity is working right now? Do we understand how gravity works?
Gravity pulls all objects “downward” toward the centre of the planet.
So if I pour out this water we expect it to flow out completely from the bottle. We might not realise it’s gravity at work but it is.
Taking a step, standing here, when we sat up and got out of bed this morning, buttered our toast, poured out the cereal and milk, gravity as at work
Issac Newton described gravity as a mysterious action at a distance.
We don’t always think about gravity being at work but when gravity is eliminated we notice what it does.
In the story the Israelites put the blood on the door in the case of us we can know God’s redeeming love through the action of Jesus’ death on the cross.
When I tip up this water we expect it to gush out we sit up and pay notice.
Just like gravity God is at work in the world and often we might not be aware or see him at work. Sometimes extraordinary circumstances get us to see God at work because something happens differently to what we expect. We finally understand what Jesus has done for us. When we stop and look at our lives my bet is that we can see God at work.
In our lives, we are sometimes faced with all sorts of difficulties and different circumstances, but we can trust that God is with us, he’s still at work in these difficult times. This is the same God, who worked in the lives of his people who were in slavery in Egypt.
Where can we see God making a difference in our lives where has he made a difference where is he making a difference and where would we like to see him make a difference.
The Israelites cried out to God for help, they cried out in anguish, and he acted.
we can cry out to God
In our lives, we have allsorts of things going on. God knows. God longs for us to draw near to him – he does make a difference.
St. Luke's Church Ramsgate 