Claimed
Sermon Notes
The road ahead
Our name “Canopy” is certainly descriptive of the church and the people that we want to be.
I know I wasn’t here when Steakhouse (another name loaded with meaning) became Canopy, but I have heard some of the reasons behind the change.
There was a sense of family on a shared journey
A sense of an inviting, compelling community that extends the Canopy to others.
And a sense of being covered and led by the Presence of God
And, for those reasons, one of the dominant images that arose in this community was out of the book of Exodus, where that’s exactly what we see.
So, now we turn to the book of Exodus to lay claim to our name.
Where we’re heading
3 weeks of vision
Orphan Sunday
Advent
Exodus
There will be a reading plan to accompany all of this
The Backstory
Abraham and the covenant with God
Isaac – Jacob and Esau
Jacob – 12 sons
Joseph and the technicolor dream coat
Slavery
Provision
Redemption and reconciliation
Exodus opens with God delivering on His promise but also a new king in Egypt
People were prosperous
They went from welcomed guests to feared and unwanted.
So, the new Pharaoh sent slave masters over the Israelite cities and converted them into “store cities” for the Egyptian Empire.
They were living in a place they thought of as their own.
Doing pretty well families growing and prospering.
When one day, a bunch of soldiers show up and say, “Pharaoh has claimed this city, this land, and all of its inhabitants as his. You now work for him, and everything you produce belongs to him.
They were put in charge of building store cities where Pharaoh kept his excess wealth.
The values of Empire.
They are self-serving. The aim of Empire is not to serve the people but to grow the Empire. Driven by greed and hubris
They are exclusive. The beneficiaries of Empire are the 1%. In an Empire, there is a very small, select group who are served by the efforts of the masses.
They are never satisfied
They are, therefore, oppressive and dehumanizing
This continued for generations
The work got harder and harder
But the harder it got, the larger the nation grew
So, Pharaoh ordered the Hebrew midwives to kill any male children born to Hebrew women.
They defied and outsmarted him.
So, Pharaoh ordered all male Hebrew children to be thrown into the Nile.
The people cried out to God for deliverance, and He raised up Moses
Mother risked her life to save his by floating him down the river in a basket
Found by Pharaoh’s daughter and raised in Pharaoh’s house
Killed and Egyptian who was oppressing an Israelite
Ended up out in Midian where he ran across a burning bush (more to come on all of this)
God told him that he would be the means by which God would lead His people out of Egypt.
And, He sent him back to Egypt. And that’s where the short passage that we’re going to focus on today takes place. This is Moses’ second commissioning:
God also said to Moses, “I am the LORD. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name the LORD I did not make myself known to them. I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, where they resided as foreigners. Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the Israelites, whom the Egyptians are enslaving, and I have remembered my covenant. Therefore, say to the Israelites: ‘I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. 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, to Isaac and to Jacob. I will give it to you as a possession. I am the Lord.’” (Exodus 6:2-8)
The freedom of being claimed by God: in this passage, God spells out what He has in store for His people, His vision of freedom for them, and it involves three pieces.
Freedom from slavery
We all know the story and will discuss it in more detail in the new year, but the gist is that God Himself would wage war against Pharaoh and all the gods of Egypt, the oppressive powers of the Empire and would deliver His people by triumphing over them.
And, this is often where the stories end, the Exodus.
And, this reveals our postmodern understanding of freedom where the highest good an individual can experience is self-definition and self-actualization. This is what we tend to think of when we think of freedom: liberation.
But, this isn’t the biblical picture of freedom. God doesn’t save them from Egypt simply to release them into their own vision for their lives. He ransoms them to Himself and His vision for their lives. That’s the second stage in God’s plan. Free them from slavery in Egypt and then free them to worship Him.
Freedom to worship
This is the part of the story that the movies always overlook. We have these visions of Charlton Heston commanding Pharaoh, “Let my people go.”
The problem is that’s only half of the verse.
The other half says, “…so that they might worship me.”
In other words, God was not interested in setting His people free so they could do whatever they wanted. He wanted to set them free to worship Him.
That word, worship, is an interesting one. It literally means, “Serve, do work.”
God liberated His people from slavery in Egypt that they could experience a life of worship/service to Him.
For us, this is counterintuitive, exchanging one slavery for another, but there’s a good reason for it.
They had no idea how to live free.
They were born slaves; their people had been slaves for generations. They had no frame of reference for freedom.
They had no capacity to envision life beyond the Empire, let alone life in God’s Kingdom (evidenced by the fact that they were constantly trying to go back to Egypt).
If God had released them to their own vision for their lives, what would they have done? Recreated Egypt. How could they not? It’s all they knew.
It is easy to get people out of slavery; it’s much harder to get the slavery out of the people.
His picture, however, was a holy nation, not another Empire but a redemptive Kingdom that would subvert the values of the Empire and model a new way of living.
This is why God led His people not directly to the Promised Land but first to Mount Sinai where He initiated a covenant with them, He took them as His people and offered Himself to them as their God. Both components are vital.
My people = serve and obey me.
Not because God is needy.
So that you can discover life as it was made to be lived, learn life from the Maker).
Your God = God serves His people
Throughout the Old Testament, God is referred to (and refers to Himself) as Israel’s “Helper”
In other words, to be God’s people, to be “claimed” by God, is not simply to serve God, but to be served by God. His people are invited into a two-way (covenant) relationship, which God initiates and sustains Himself. In fact, the defining attribute of God in both the Old and New Testament is the Hebrew word hesed, which means something like “covenant love,” “loyal love,” or “unconditional love.” He takes responsibility for the covenant relationship with His people on His own shoulders.
He is a King who exercises His power to serve.
Freedom for intimacy
The telos, the purpose of all of this deliverance is not simply the Promised Land but is intimacy with God.
Yahweh says that He will do all of this so that His people will know Him.
In the Hebrew mindset, “know” is not intellectual but experiential and relational.
In other words, God’s ultimate vision of liberation for His people is relational intimacy with Him.
Moses really grasps this in Exodus 33, a passage we’ll be talking about in a few weeks, when he begs God to either go with them into the Promised Land or to let them stay with Him in the wilderness. He says famously, “If your Presence doesn’t go with us, do not send us up from here.”
He had begun to understand the truth that, to be the people of God is not simply to receive blessings from God but to be in relationship with God.
Knowing God is the meaning of life. Intimacy with Him is the good life.
Our story
Life in the Empire – the Exodus story is just as relevant today as it ever has been.
An empire that is oppressive and dehumanizing
Cries for deliverance
And then a radical and dramatic rescue. In Luke 4, as Jesus began His public ministry, He announced His purpose with these words out of the book of Isaiah:
“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:18-19)
He was on a rescue mission. He saw Himself as a liberator.
This defined the ministry of Jesus.
But, again, it was not simply freedom from, but freedom to.
He does not simply walk into the slave market and emancipate us. He purchases us for Himself.
He did not describe Himself simply as the doorway to life. He called Himself the Life.
His vision for the lives of those who followed Him was obedience (again, not because He needs it but because it is good for us) and relational dependence.
I am the vine. You are the branches.
Apart from me, you can do nothing.
This is the opposite of the self-definition/self-actualization message.
The self is the most demanding tyrant of all.
Our souls bear the muscle memory of slavery. We need to learn how to live free.
And He does all of this so that we can know Him, so that we can be in intimate relationship with Him.
Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace. The mind governed by the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so. Those who are in the realm of the flesh cannot please God. You, however, are not in the realm of the flesh but are in the realm of the Spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, they do not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, then even though your body is subject to death because of sin, the Spirit gives life because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you. Therefore, brothers and sisters, we have an obligation—but it is not to the flesh, to live according to it. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live. For those who are led by the Spirit of God are the children of God. The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory. (Romans 8:1-17)
Response: come and receive from the One who…
Ransomed you from slavery
Who makes you His own and offers Himself to you.
Who loves you and is with you.