A Lesson in How Not to Repent
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Introduction:
We believe that the bible is extremely important for our faith in Christ—all of the bible—the approximately 77% that makes up the Old Testament and the 23% that makes up the New Testament.
We believe that the entire bible tells one cohesive/unified story that leads us to Jesus. So you'll notice as you attend most of what we do, that we look at and study together and work to practically apply the bible to our real daily lives. We want to practically live out the reality of what the scriptures teach in our real lives.
So last week we gave Bibles to our 3rd graders!
We want to encourage them to begin reading the bible on their own, for themselves, at this pivotal point in their development. I want to encourage us all to read, to personally interact with the scriptures daily.
Here's a text I received from a parent this week… It came with this picture…
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…and they wrote, "We are encouraging him to highlight what he likes… apparently chapter 4 is really good."
Well done! All of it is really good! Let’s keep reading it!
Today, we are continuing our study through the the Old Testament book of Exodus…
Israel had been enslaved in Egypt for many generations, nearly four hundred years. There were the old stories of how God had led their ancestors—Abraham, Issac and Jacob—generations ago. But for the past few centuries Israel had lived under the rule of the Egyptian leaders and their gods. They had very little insight into God's character, very little knowledge of how he interacted in the world of humanity. The relationship between God and Israel had mostly gone silent.
In Exodus we see a move from the absence to the presence of God among the community of Israel. Throughout these well known stories God is revealing himself, teaching them his name, giving clear guidelines about how to live with one another and with their neighboring communities. He reminding them how they got to where they are and giving vision for a flourishing future. All along the way God stresses the vital importance of aligning their lives and priorities around himself.
Today, we have the need to learn the same lessons. In our current cultural context, we need the God of the scriptures to reveal himself to us. It's so easy to confuse the God of the scriptures with the gods of our age. It's tempting to allow our lives to be shaped by the cultural norms we live in, rather than allowing our lives to be shaped by the one we claim to worship.
Last week John introduced us to the plagues God brought on the Egyptians… we looked at the plagues through the lens of de-creation, how God is allowing their leader's hardness of heart to undo the order, safety and provision of original creation.
Today I want us to look at those same plagues through the lens of idolatry—God is confronting the idolatry of the Egyptians, and honestly, of all of us.
And why does God confront our idolatry so strongly? Because he loves us dearly and he wants us to see how our idolatry, our worship of anything other than him, actually destroys our lives.
When you read through the gospels, and the rest of the New Testament, you'll notice that Jesus is living, and inviting his followers into, a completely different way of life. The apostle John wrote it like this…
John 1:4–5 (NIV) 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
In Jesus was a kind of life that it lights the way for all of humanity
John 10:10 (NIV) 10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full.
Here's the ultimate contrast—there is one who is intent stealing, killing and destroying; but Christ comes to give the fullest life imaginable.
John 20:31 (NIV) 31 But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
The life of Jesus is available to you and I through faith in Christ.
The entire reason the Vineyard church exists is that you would discover the kind of LIFE Jesus, and the apostle John, are talking about. And in reorienting your life around Jesus, you would begin to actually experience the kind of life God invites us all into.
The biggest thing that gets in the way of this LIFE is all of the other things we cling to for life instead of God himself—things that we think will make us happy, fulfilled, successful, and secure—the bible calls all the other things IDOLS.
Now, the word idolatry may bring up thoughts of primitive people bowing before statues or totems. Let me suggest that each culture, every family is dominated by its own set of idols. Every society has its own shrines (places of worship) where sacrifices must be made in order to procure the blessings of the good life and to ward off disaster—whether office towers, our university campuses, or shopping centers, or sports stadiums, or gyms or studios.
We may not kneel before the statue of Aphrodite, but many young women, and men, today are driven into depression and eating disorders by an obsessive concern over body image.
We may not actually burn incense to Artemis, but when money and career are raised to out-of-whack proportions, we definitely perform a kind of child sacrifice, neglecting family to achieve more wealth, prestige.
Colossians 3:5 “5 Put to death, therefore, whatever belongs to your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed, which is idolatry.”
The Apostle Paul wrote "greed is idolatry" (Colossians 3:5).
Today I want to look at the "plagues" as God confronting the idolatry of Egypt and its Pharaoh, and I want to allow God to confront the idolatry in each of our lives. Ready‽
Setting the stage: A few weeks ago I read a portion of the story from chapter 5
Exodus 5:1–2 (NIV) 1 Afterward Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said, “This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘Let my people go, so that they may hold a festival to me in the wilderness.’ ” 2 Pharaoh said, “Who is the LORD, that I should obey him and let Israel go? I do not know the LORD and I will not let Israel go.”
Pharaoh is saying, “I don’t give a rip about who this Yahweh is.” He refuses to acknowledge the God of these immigrants he's enslaved. And as a result of this request, he increase the pressure of their slavery.
The plagues are God's way of introducing himself to Pharaoh, to encourage him to pay attention to Yahweh’s request to quit mistreating Israel.
And today we're going to pay close attention to two different things going on at the same time…
God is going to confront everything Pharaoh, and the Egyptians hold onto for security
And, watch how Pharaoh seems to soften just enough to allow the difficulty to pass, and then immediately reverts right back to his destructive ways.
He walks on the edge of repentance, but never crosses over. Turns out, if you want the kind of LIFE God offers, real repentance is key.
Let's begin with the first miraculous act that Moses and Aaron do in front of Pharaoh… we talk about the ten plagues, but there were actually eleven miraculous acts… [PAGE #]
Exodus 7:10–12 (NIV) 10 So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and did just as the LORD commanded. Aaron threw his staff down in front of Pharaoh and his officials, and it became a snake. 11 Pharaoh then summoned wise men and sorcerers, and the Egyptian magicians also did the same things by their secret arts: 12 Each one threw down his staff and it became a snake. But Aaron’s staff swallowed up their staffs.
In this first miraculous sign, the staff changing into a snake and swallowing up all the other snakes, we see the beginning of one of the greatest confrontations of all history: the reigning human power on earth, Egypt—and its autocratic leader, Pharaoh—versus the God who promised to rescue his people from that power and the miseries that leader had imposed on them.
Pharaoh was often depicted with a shepherd’s staff and a snake headdress… Moses arrives on the scene with a shepherd's staff the becomes a snake.
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Snakes in Egypt were associated with royal authority. Right at the very beginning of this confrontation, God confronts the gods of Egypt.
And, remember that Genesis and Exodus are a form of Hebrew meditational literature, there's meant to be links to what's come before and what coming after…
We're meant to reflect back on another snake… the deceiver in the original garden from Genesis chapter 3.
The first snake is the one who leads humanity to believe we don't need God's wisdom to decide what’s good and bad—we can make our own decisions, apart from God, about what's good and what evil.
As God confronts Pharaoh, he’s also confronting our desire to be completely in charge of our own lives.
God is using ten plagues to teach the Egyptians that he is sovereign and that their gods are of no account—to hammer home to the Egyptians that he is firmly in control of the entire process, and of them and their nation, to the extent of controlling their environment, which they so completely admired and worshiped in their pantheism. God turned the things they believed to be the specialty of their gods, against them, and showed himself in control of all events and powers.
The 1st Plague: The Nile river turns to blood… (7:14–24)
It's a demonstration of God’s sovereignty over the river that was Egypt’s greatest landmark, their special source of life…the river was a god.
In their pantheistic view of the universe, the divine lived in everything, and things that moved, like water were the essence of the divine.
The only true God, Yahweh, begins with the humiliation of the Nile. The great waterway and source of life was made into a source of death (7:18), demonstrating Yahweh’s the sovereign power.
Plagues 1,4,7 all begin in the morning – 3 groupings of 3…and this lasts for seven days… the destruction is planned and going to be thorough—the idols of Egypt are going to be crushed.
The 2nd Plague: Lots of Frogs (7:25–8:15)
The frogs get into everything! …no person, place, or thing is immune from the frog infestation. Even kneading troughs and the bake ovens were infested
It’s interesting that the Egyptian magicians are able to replicate by some sort of magic, on a small scale, what God had done on a nationwide scale in both the first two plagues. In their magic they provide a way out for anyone, like Pharaoh, who already wants to doubt the exclusive power of Yahweh.
If you're looking for a way to not have faith in God, you can easily find it. You don't have to look far. A little trickery will get you there.
But eventually, the trickery fades away when you can't even cook your food or turn over in bed without finding more frogs!
Pharaoh's reaction in 8:8 – he begged for relief.
Exodus 8:8 (NIV) 8 Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron and said, “Pray to the LORD to take the frogs away from me and my people, and I will let your people go to offer sacrifices to the LORD.”
An interesting focus of this story is that Yahweh allows Pharaoh to choose the time of the frogs’ removal.
Think about it, its kind of brilliant: if the king could say when the frogs would go away, he personally knows that the timing was not due to some natural force, or that the Egyptian god's stepped in, but asking the sovereign God of Israel to step in.
This was a point at which Pharaoh should have been able to admit that there was a true, powerful God behind Moses' request.
His refusal to believe is not due to the evidence or lack, it's clearly due to stubbornness.
You realize, of course, this is true for all of us, right‽ The logic of placing your faith in the resurrected Christ is irrefutable. Hello… the resurrection‽ When we refuse to place our faith in Christ, it's almost never based on a lack of believable evidence.
The 3rd Plague: Mosquitoes or Gnats (8:16–19)
What is notably different about the third plague is the failure of the magicians. They had been able to make it look like their staffs became snakes (but then all their staffs were gobbled up!), it looked as if they could change water into blood and produce frogs by their magical arts.
But what magician has ever done a trick with mosquitoes?
The magicians confessed publicly that this plague (and by implication the others so far) was not a trick but a divine miracle
Exodus 8:19 (NIV) 19 the magicians said to Pharaoh, “This is the finger of God.”
The magicians are recognizing God's sovereignty over everything
The 4th Plague: Swarms of Flies (8:20–32)
Again in the morning… A huge infestation of swarming insects, so enormous that the insects would be everywhere, indoors and out, and constantly on everyone, to the extent that you won’t even be able to put a foot down without stepping on lots of them.
And especially significant in this plague is that God would not do to his own people what he would do to the Egyptians
So Pharaoh offers his first concession: go take a religious holiday but stay inside Egypt (8:25)
Pharaoh was offering a real, clearly defined option to the Israelites in exchange for relief from the flies. But Pharaoh knew from the beginning that was not at all what they were asking for… its Pharaoh's attempt to save face, let them go worship, but not let them leave.
Bargaining with God is more about alleviating pain than finding real life.
The tendency to try to bargain with God, to give the bare minimum of ourselves, to try to “save face” is often about more about alleviating pain than finding life to the fullest extent possible.
Then we see Pharaoh offer a second concession: a temporary trip into the wilderness (8:28–29)
Exodus 8:28 (NIV) 28 Pharaoh said, “I will let you go to offer sacrifices to the LORD your God in the wilderness, but you must not go very far. Now pray for me.”
Moses could've thought, Finally, we've got a deal!" Moses had no real idea how far this plague thing was going to go.
Pharaoh’s words, “now pray for me,” in v. 28 suggest that this plague had touched him personally to an extent that the prior three had not—people were being “driven crazy” by the swarms of flies, life had become intolerable!
But immediately, after the flies are gone, Pharaoh reneges on his promise(8:30–32)
I wonder how often we make a promise to God in the middle of difficulty, and then renege in much the same way?
The 5th Plague: Death of Livestock (9:1–7)
These animals were a treasured, valuable asset. They were closely interrelated to the welfare of humans. And they were carriers of the divine presence!
For them to have lost livestock while the Israelites retained all theirs represented a nationwide humiliation.
And in this plague, God sets the time…wait…remember the 2nd plague where God allowed Pharaoh to set the time…
In the mist of this economic disaster, Pharaoh decided to find out for himself whether or not the same sort of thing had happened to the Israelites. All over Egypt the bodies of cows, horses, and other animals were rotting in the sun—but not where the Israelites lived!
Continuing to resist was the most foolish thing Pharaoh could do, but by now his heart was so hardened that he couldn't do anything else.
Have you ever found yourself doing, saying exactly what you know is the wrong thing to do…and yet do it anyway?
Well-worn paths of disobedience, of ignoring God's voice, well-worn paths of worshipping anything other than God eventually become impossible to leave/deviate from.
And we're only half way through, this is going to get much worse!
The 6th Plague: Festering Boils (9:8–12)
This is the last plague in which the magicians appear; they are not mentioned again in Exodus or the entire Pentateuch for that matter. Why here?
Maybe for two reasons. The first is to show that Pharaoh probably used the magicians as advisors. For them the magical, the medicinal, and the miraculous were closely linked. Anything the magicians could do to alleviate the effects of a given plague or to show it to be something that they themselves could also do (on a small scale) would help bolster Pharaoh’s resistance to Yahweh.
The second is that if the physicians couldn't heal themselves, then the power of God over their powers was obvious. Their tricks were proved impotent in the face of real power. They’re no longer part of the conversation.
I wonder how our ways of ignoring or side-stepping, our tricks are eventually show to be worthless?
The 7th Plague: Hail (9:13–35)
In the morning… here is the beginning of the third set of three (Plagues 1–3; 4–6; 7–9)
Exodus 9:13–21 (NIV) 13 Then the LORD said to Moses, “Get up early in the morning, confront Pharaoh and say to him, ‘This is what the LORD, the God of the Hebrews, says: Let my people go, so that they may worship me,
In the morning again…
14 or this time I will send the full force of my plagues against you and against your officials and your people, so you may know that there is no one like me in all the earth.
the intensity is getting turned way up…
15 For by now I could have stretched out my hand and struck you and your people with a plague that would have wiped you off the earth.
The sovereign one couldn't wiped you off the face of the earth at any time!
All the earlier plagues, hard as they were, were actually examples of restraint!
16 But I have raised you up for this very purpose, that I might show you my power and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.
Yahweh is making his name, reputation know…he's introducing himself is a big way
17 You still set yourself against my people and will not let them go.
This a confrontation between the only Divine one, and a human who is pretending to be divine, and mistreating Yahweh's people.
18 Therefore, at this time tomorrow I will send the worst hailstorm that has ever fallen on Egypt, from the day it was founded till now.
This is a bad a storm as will ever be…
19 Give an order now to bring your livestock and everything you have in the field to a place of shelter, because the hail will fall on every person and animal that has not been brought in and is still out in the field, and they will die.’ ”
Yahweh is giving a way out to those who will listen to him!
20 Those officials of Pharaoh who feared the word of the LORD hurried to bring their slaves and their livestock inside. 21 But those who ignored the word of the LORD left their slaves and livestock in the field.
Here's a example of believing that God is about to do something, and taking precautions, without putting your faith in God.
Exodus 9:26 (NIV) 26 The only place it did not hail was the land of Goshen, where the Israelites were.
As a result we see a momentary, albeit insincere repentance of Pharaoh
Exodus 9:27–28 (NIV) 27 Then Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron. “This time I have sinned,” he said to them. “The LORD is in the right, and I and my people are in the wrong. 28 Pray to the LORD, for we have had enough thunder and hail. I will let you go; you don’t have to stay any longer.”
Without going into too much depth, nothing in what Pharaoh says indicates that he actually was sorry for his sins and seeking forgiveness from Yahweh. Rather, under the pressure of the worst, most damaging storm they'd ever encountered, he’s asking for relief.
And when the storm had let up…
Exodus 9:34–35 (NIV) 34 When Pharaoh saw that the rain and hail and thunder had stopped, he sinned again: He and his officials hardened their hearts. 35 So Pharaoh’s heart was hard and he would not let the Israelites go, just as the LORD had said through Moses.
Real repentance means that we actually change. when we keep doing the same things, repentance hasn't actually taken place.
Pharaoh's heart is so calloused, so hard that he can no longer take a smart/wise course of action—just let them go and prevent the further destruction of your land and possessions. God is using the hardness of their own hearts against them—using their pride, their willfulness, their cultural assumptions, their emotional tendencies—who is enslaved now?
The 8th Plague: Locusts (10:1–20)
Exodus 10:3–7 (NIV) 3 So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said to him, “This is what the LORD, the God of the Hebrews, says: ‘How long will you refuse to humble yourself before me? Let my people go, so that they may worship me.
This rhetorical question, “How long will you refuse to humble yourself before me?” highlights the arrogance and pride which had characterized the Egyptian attitude toward Israel since chapter 1.
4 If you refuse to let them go, I will bring locusts into your country tomorrow.
And it's going to be horribly devastating!
7 Pharaoh’s officials said to him, “How long will this man be a snare to us? Let the people go, so that they may worship the LORD their God. Do you not yet realize that Egypt is ruined?”
They're saying that Moses had become a means by which the Egyptians were denied their freedom and trapped in a situation they did not want to be in.
Those who had enslaved the Israelites, keeping them trapped and denying them their freedom, were now “getting a taste of their own medicine;” they were themselves being held against their wills by their opponent.
What God did to Pharaoh, the Egyptians in general, and to Egypt’s gods was to show them powerless and helpless, to expose their pride as empty arrogance, and to shame them forever in the process—that is, to humiliate them.
And at the end we see Pharaoh beginning to get the point: he realized that the plagues were leading to death, not merely inconvenience or temporary hardships. And yet, Pharaoh’s enslaved by his own hardness of heart.
The 9th Plague: Darkness (10:21–29)
To fully appreciate this we'd have to turn off the lights!
If we were to have three days without light (v. 23), widespread panic would ensue.
Everyone would realize that the natural order had been overturned and that a basic fact of life on the planet had been removed. Long before the three days were up, people would begin to understand the consequences: “If this keeps up, there will be no food because plants need sunlight to live; all animals will die because the food chain requires plants; we will die because everything we live on will be gone.”
Deep, total darkness would also cause sensory deprivation, leading to disorientation and psychological distress. This is way worse than a few cloudy days! A sense of doom would pervade everyone of us.
As John highlighted last week; "Let there be darkness!" is the exact opposite of creation's "Let there be light!"
So how does Pharaoh respond?
Exodus 10:28 (NIV) 28 Pharaoh said to Moses, “Get out of my sight! Make sure you do not appear before me again! The day you see my face you will die.”
Rather than addressing the issues, we try to shut the messenger up.
Pharaoh's response is similar to what we often do… he doesn't address the issue, he just doesn’t want to hear from Yahweh anymore! “I'm not going to pay attention to what God wants, stop talking to me about it!”
The first nine plagues are God showing his sovereignty over Egypt—over its king, over its people, over its environment, and over its gods. There is one sovereign God, and Yahweh is his name. There is one deserving of our worship, and Yahweh is his name.
And in the person of Jesus, we see Yahweh step onto our planet and show us how dearly loved we are, how deeply treasured we are, how completely cared for we are—and what it looks like to live a life in submission, fully surrendered to his love.
It’s so interesting to me to contrast this with how the apostle John talks about the life Jesus offers us…
John 1:4–5 (NIV) 4 In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
John 1:9–12 “9 The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. 11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. 12 Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.”
Don't go the way of Pharaoh. Don't let that hardness of heart to enslave you and destroy you. Rather, humbly come to the one who can set you free from yourself as you surrender to his love and power.
Over and over I watched people dip a toe in the water of repentance and get a moment of relief…only to jerk their tow back out as soon as the current crisis ended. And before long, they are right back at an even worse place.