Among Us, All Is Grace
Sermon Notes
The relevance of Exodus
Conversation with Canopy staff about direction for teaching: what’s most relevant in this time?
Everyone agreed that the answer is to keep doing what we’re doing.
God put us on this journey for a reason.
I’m not sure what your belief is about the sovereignty of God, but I don’t think He’s surprised by all of this, meaning, He knew that our road to freedom would lead through coronavirus.
If ever there was a need for a community to embody freedom it’s now.
When the natural impulse is fear, the gift of a community that’s free from fear, knowing who God is and who they are.
When the natural impulse hoarding, the gift a community that’s actively giving itself away.
When the natural impulse is to hope for a return to normalcy, the gift of a community who, while wanting the restoration of health, has been inspired by the surprising gifts God has given in this time and does not want to return to the status quo, wants to remain forever changed.
When the world is experiencing increasing isolation, the gift of a community defined by Presence.
In this context, a community learning to live free is truly a shining city on a hill.
And, it strikes me that the community we’re studying in this Exodus was itself born out of adversity. That its own freedom came through plague and hardship.
All that to say, Canopy is a family of house churches learning to live free in the middle of the coronavirus.
So, let’s continue our journey with Exodus 16.
Now, before I read this week’s passage, a bit of recap is probably in order.
Because it’s been a while
And, because the last time we talked Exodus, we ended with chapter 11, meaning we’re skipping 5 chapters that have some pretty important stuff in them (we will come back to the important stuff in a few weeks during Easter).
Recap
People of Israel ended up in Egypt at the end of Genesis because of the Joseph story (famine across the land)
Started out as a good thing.
Turned bad as they went from being guest of Pharaoh to slave under another Pharaoh.
The oppression got so bad that the people began to cry out for help, and God heard their cries and raised up a deliverer.
Moses, a Hebrew, saved from Pharaoh’s wrath (killing boys under 2) by the courage of his mother, ended up being raised in Pharaoh’s court by his mother.
Later in his life, Moses had to flee from Egypt because he killed an Egyptian who was abusing a Hebrew slave.
He went into the wilderness, got married, and raised sheep.
Then, came the burning bush.
God revealed Himself to Moses
Called him to deliver His people from slavery
Sent him back to Egypt
He went back and called on Pharaoh to let the people go.
Pharaoh was understandably disinclined to acquiesce to their request (10 points if you know the movie reference). He didn’t want to lose His workforce.
So, he clamped down, more bricks with less straw, the motto of Empire.
What followed was a showdown between Yahweh and the gods of Egypt.
A series of plagues that systematically picked off each of the Egyptian gods (if you missed that sermon by Todd and Marc, I highly recommend going back and giving it a listen).
The plagues ended with the death of the firstborn.
A plague that reached all the way into Pharaoh’s household.
But from which all of the Israelites were exempted, as they observed their first Passover.
After this, Pharaoh relented and let the people of Israel go.
At least a little way.
Then, he changed his mind and went after them with an army.
The whole showdown culminated with an epic battle at the Red Sea.
The Israelites with their backs against the sea, let Moses have it for an ill-conceived rescue plan.
Moses responded with this epic line:
“Do not be afraid. Stand firm and you will see the deliverance the Lord will bring you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still.” (Exodus 14:13-14)
Then, God told the people to keep marching.
Uh, where Lord? Egyptians that way, water this way.
God’s answer, through the water.
Now, this is a story that we’re not going to come back to, so allow me a couple of minutes for two observations.
The challenge of leading the way into freedom will often involve being in over your head and risking looking like a complete idiot. Can you imagine what was going through Moses’ head as he walked out into the water and held out his staff. Probably something like: “The people ask me for decisive leadership in a time of impending crisis and God tells me to go hold this stick over the water. God, if you don’t show up, they’re going to kill me. My people, not the Egyptians.”
The fire that was traveling in front of them moved behind them. (Rear guard?)
Anyway, it winded up being a pretty lopsided showdown. Pharaoh’s army ended up at the bottom of the sea, and the people of Israel walked away singing.
And then things got bad. And, that brings us to Exodus 16:
1 The whole Israelite community set out from Elim and came to the Desert of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the fifteenth day of the second month after they had come out of Egypt. 2 In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron. 3 The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.”
4 Then the Lord said to Moses, “I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. In this way I will test them and see whether they will follow my instructions. 5 On the sixth day they are to prepare what they bring in, and that is to be twice as much as they gather on the other days.”
6 So Moses and Aaron said to all the Israelites, “In the evening you will know that it was the Lord who brought you out of Egypt, 7 and in the morning you will see the glory of the Lord, because he has heard your grumbling against him. Who are we, that you should grumble against us?” 8 Moses also said, “You will know that it was the Lord when he gives you meat to eat in the evening and all the bread you want in the morning, because he has heard your grumbling against him. Who are we? You are not grumbling against us, but against the Lord.”
9 Then Moses told Aaron, “Say to the entire Israelite community, ‘Come before the Lord, for he has heard your grumbling.’”
10 While Aaron was speaking to the whole Israelite community, they looked toward the desert, and there was the glory of the Lord appearing in the cloud.
11 The Lord said to Moses, 12 “I have heard the grumbling of the Israelites. Tell them, ‘At twilight you will eat meat, and in the morning you will be filled with bread. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God.’”
13 That evening quail came and covered the camp, and in the morning there was a layer of dew around the camp. 14 When the dew was gone, thin flakes like frost on the ground appeared on the desert floor. 15 When the Israelites saw it, they said to each other, “What is it?” For they did not know what it was.
Moses said to them, “It is the bread the Lord has given you to eat. 16 This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘Everyone is to gather as much as they need. Take an omer for each person you have in your tent.’”
17 The Israelites did as they were told; some gathered much, some little. 18 And when they measured it by the omer, the one who gathered much did not have too much, and the one who gathered little did not have too little. Everyone had gathered just as much as they needed.
19 Then Moses said to them, “No one is to keep any of it until morning.”
20 However, some of them paid no attention to Moses; they kept part of it until morning, but it was full of maggots and began to smell. So Moses was angry with them.
21 Each morning everyone gathered as much as they needed, and when the sun grew hot, it melted away. 22 On the sixth day, they gathered twice as much—two omers[b] for each person—and the leaders of the community came and reported this to Moses. 23 He said to them, “This is what the Lord commanded: ‘Tomorrow is to be a day of sabbath rest, a holy sabbath to the Lord. So bake what you want to bake and boil what you want to boil. Save whatever is left and keep it until morning.’”
24 So they saved it until morning, as Moses commanded, and it did not stink or get maggots in it. 25 “Eat it today,” Moses said, “because today is a sabbath to the Lord. You will not find any of it on the ground today. 26 Six days you are to gather it, but on the seventh day, the Sabbath, there will not be any.”
27 Nevertheless, some of the people went out on the seventh day to gather it, but they found none. 28 Then the Lord said to Moses, “How long will you[c] refuse to keep my commands and my instructions? 29 Bear in mind that the Lord has given you the Sabbath; that is why on the sixth day he gives you bread for two days. Everyone is to stay where they are on the seventh day; no one is to go out.” 30 So the people rested on the seventh day.
31 The people of Israel called the bread manna. It was white like coriander seed and tasted like wafers made with honey. 32 Moses said, “This is what the Lord has commanded: ‘Take an omer of manna and keep it for the generations to come, so they can see the bread I gave you to eat in the wilderness when I brought you out of Egypt.’”
33 So Moses said to Aaron, “Take a jar and put an omer of manna in it. Then place it before the Lord to be kept for the generations to come.”
34 As the Lord commanded Moses, Aaron put the manna with the tablets of the covenant law, so that it might be preserved. 35 The Israelites ate manna forty years, until they came to a land that was settled; they ate manna until they reached the border of Canaan.
36 (An omer is one-tenth of an ephah.)
At the end of ourselves
The first thing to notice is that this story takes place a month after they left Egypt, which, as it turns out is about enough time for the food to run out.
Want to call attention to the fact that this is becoming a recurring theme in the book of Exodus. The power of God shows up at the end of themselves.
When they cried out to God following Pharaoh’s persecution
When Pharaoh ordered more bricks with less straw
When they found themselves with their backs against the Reed Sea.
It occurs to me that this is how God tends to work, that the power of God often begins at the end of ourselves.
God is powerful, but He rarely overwhelms us with His power; He instead invites.
God so values human sovereignty that He almost never overrules it. If we want to be in control of our lives, He will generally allow us. He does not take the reigns; we must lay them down.
This is why we so often find God at the end of ourselves because He has graciously allowed all of our illusions of control to collapse around us, and then we cry out for help. Then, we surrender.
The power of God begins at the end of ourselves.
When I started writing this sermon almost a month ago the question I was going to ask was: “When is the last time you reached the end of yourself?”
And, assuming that it would have been a long time ago for many of us, I was going to counsel strategies that would help a satisfied people find the end of themselves. But, now, the situation has changed.
Simultaneously, in less than two weeks, all of our illusions of control have collapsed.
All of the gods of our empire have been unmasked and shown to be nothing but worthless idols
All of us have come to quickly and abruptly to the ends of ourselves.
Now, the question is not have you been to the end of yourself but what will you do now that you are at the end of yourself? The whole world is grappling with this question right now, and there are all sorts of common sense answers that people are throwing around. It occurs to me that there were common sense answers back then too.
It occurs to me that there are three common sense answers, all of which are attempted by the Israelites in this passage, all of which make sense in the empire, but all of which are completely irrelevant in the Kingdom.
Common sense (for the end of ourselves – the world’s answer vs. YHWH’s response)
A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush (aka. better the devil you know than the angel you don’t)
The basic idea here is that the known, even if it is awful, is better than the unknown.
Epitomized in the Israelite’s response to running out of food.
This was a people who had experienced horrible things in Egypt for 20 generations.
And had experienced great things from God for the last month or so.
So, faced with a crisis, what did they do?
Went back to the known.
They idealized life in the empire
Endless pots of meat
Forgot the hardship, the killing of their sons, the forced labor, the more bricks with less straw
There is an axiom here: we tend to be path of least resistance people. We choose the sure thing rather than risking an adventure of faith.
God’s response to the bird in the hand
God has this conversation with Moses to tell Him what He’s going to do: He will rain down bread (that is, food) from heaven.
Moses and Aaron assemble the community and tell them what God said: He will bring meat in the evening and bread in the morning (we’ll come back to that in a moment)
And, then God told Moses and Aaron to have the people stand before Him.
I love what happens next. Listen to verse 10:
While Aaron was speaking to the whole Israelite community, they looked toward the desert, and there was the glory of the Lord appearing in the cloud. (Exodus 16:10)
Here’s what I love about that: when common sense called for a return to the known of Egypt, God appears even further out in the desert. He calls them, in the words of C.S. Lewis, “Further up and further in.” The glory of God will not be found in Egypt. It can only be found in the desert.
Yes, we can return to Egypt and have a measure of control over our lives. We will probably have enough food. We will probably know what’s going to happen day in and day out. But we will be enslaved.
Or, we can follow God into the desert, into a crazy adventure of faith, not really sure what’s going to happen from one day to the next, and there eat bread directly from the hand of God.
God does some of His best work in the desert.
It’s where He builds character. Character is never formed in abundance but in lack – Count it pure joy when you encounter trials.
It’s where He reinforces identity.
Notice, that their impulse was to return to Egypt and align themselves with the Egyptians. God called them Israelites, but they were still Egyptians in their mind. God had to work the Egypt out of them
This would have rendered them useless as God’s distinct people and His plan for saving the world. The only way to build the identity that He wanted them to have was in the wilderness.
It’s where He reveals Himself in the most profound ways. My family and I wouldn’t really know who God is if we hadn’t walked with Him in the dark. Most of our most profound revelations of God come in pain.
One of the things that most sticks out to me about this passage is that the phrase, “Then, you will know that I am the LORD (YHWH)” appears 3 times in fairly rapid succession.
In other words, the most important thing that God’s wants His people to understand in this whole starvation in the desert thing is who He is.
Again, “What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” -Tozer
In other words, job #1 for us in the desert, is not seek food or seek water or seek shelter. It’s to seek God.
It’s an interesting phrase, though, isn’t it: “Then, you will know that I am the Lord.” I mean when I meet someone, I just introduce myself once. I don’t go around telling them, now you will know that I am Josh. I just kind of figure that they got that when I said, “Hi. I’m Josh.”
But, if you remember a couple of months ago when we were talking about the whole burning bush thing, we talked about how the name of God is not just what you call Him. It’s an indication of His character. And, this name in particular—I am that which I am; I will be that which I will be—is an invitation to a journey. If God calls Himself, “I will be what I will be,” then the way we know Him is by following where He leads and learning about His character by what He does. It’s almost as if God said, “My name is ‘Come and see.’”
And, in that light, the phrase, “Then, you will know that I am YHWH” must mean something like, when you see what I do, then you will learn something new about me.
In the plagues, they had come to know that YHWH meant power and liberation, as Todd and Marc said, greatness and goodness.
Now, in the desert they were going to learn something else that YHWH meant: provision.
God led them into the wilderness so that they could learn that He is the God who feeds His people with bread from His hand. Now, this is where we run into our second common sense problem. Did God do it right?
Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.
Wouldn’t it have been more effective in the long run to teach them how to find food in the desert? Well, yes, if God’s goal had been for them to live in the desert. But, that wasn’t His goal. The desert was to be for them a useful place (a place of character and identity), but they weren’t supposed to build permanent homes out there. His intention for them was global impact in the Promised Land as they reflected His character to the world.
And, to do this, effectively, they needed to know Him as Provider. In a world defined by famine and hunger, one of the most powerful revelations of the character of God is that He is a God who feeds the hungry with bread from His hand. He is God of the feast.
The gracious feast. Though they had done nothing to deserve it, could do nothing to earn it, He fed them. He spread a table on the ground for them every day. The point here is not their capacity to feed themselves. It is their willingness to trust in a God who says, “I will feed you.”
This is the opposite of teach a man to fish.
Three tests of this:
Everyone took as much as they wanted, and in the end, they all had what they needed. There are a couple of ways to look at that:
The people who were greedy were foiled in their greed.
Or, what I think is happening here, the people who went above and beyond to earn were shown that it was not their earning that fed them.
Don’t save anything (another piece of common sense – a penny saved is a penny earned):
Maybe I’ll just have a bit less for dinner and then tomorrow will have some extra?” Seems reasonable, even wise. A penny saved is a penny earned. But, what’s the core point of this passage?
God wants to you to know that He is Provider, not you. Why? Because then there would be a temptation to think that they had provided for themselves, that they had because they saved. Whereas, the truth of the matter is that they had because God gave.
Sabbath: do you trust my provision enough to rest in it?
The lesson here: Among you, all is grace. (Lewis’ line from The Great Divorce)
When you put all of this together, what do you have?
Contrasting values:
In the empire, the values are certainty, self-sufficiency, and saving for a rainy day.
In the Kingdom, the values are adventure, grace, and trust.
The question we have to ask ourselves and answer honestly is this: would you rather be able to provide for your every need, never be uncertain, never uncomfortable, or would you like to see the power of God? I’m not sure we can really have both. Now, I’m not saying if you’re well-fed or well-off you’ll never see the power of God, but I am suggesting that if you don’t need to, you probably won’t. God will not overwhelm. He will simply stand at the door and knock. If you don’t need God (or think you don’t), there’s a very good chance you won’t see Him. If you don’t seek Him, you won’t find Him.
That’s, I think, what Jesus was talking about when He said it’s hard for someone who is rich to enter the Kingdom of heaven. It’s hard for the rich to enter the Kingdom of heaven, the space where God is sovereign and His will is done, because the wealthy are used to building their own kingdoms, being their own sovereigns, seeing their own will done.
God is being very gracious to us right now in this time of coronavirus. There are all sorts of theological opinions about the sovereignty of God. My belief is that this situation is not something that God caused, but that God is working in it. That He is working even this for the good of those who love Him and have been called according to His purpose. In other words, God didn’t do this; it is not inherently good. But God is good and is bending this to His will, is directing it for our good. He is using it to change us. He has led us into the wilderness into the adventure of the desert. There He is break our addictions to the idols of empire, idols of materialism and self-sufficiency, and we are relearning the truth that every good gift comes from His hand. We are learning to eat bread from heaven. He is using coronavirus to set us free.
This should forever change us.
A bird in the hand is not better than two in the bush if God is calling us into the bush. Let’s never again long for safe and comfortable and certain Let’s always choose the adventure of radical trust.
It is not better for God to teach us to fish than to give us a fish. Let’s never again make the mistake of thinking that our talents or our efforts have provided for us.
A penny saved is not a penny earned. Let’s never again think that the wisest decision is hedging our bets when God is calling us to give ourselves away trusting that, in His presence, there is always enough.
I’m just like everyone else in wanting to get out of this house and back to the stuff that I enjoyed doing before all of this hit. But, once we arrive, we should look back with a sense of longing and loss on our time in the wilderness.