Sermon Tone Analysis

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Let’s quick catch up to where we are today by tracing where we left off last week.
We looked at a poem from the Old Testament prophet of Isaiah about how it is the servant of the Lord would take the transgressions of others upon himself through his own suffering.
And we made the point last week that this first layer of meaning we see in the cross is a layer of meaning that has implications not only for our future, but also changes our present world.
All of this sets us up for what comes next today.
Because we can rightfully ask the question, “How does that work?”
How does the suffering of Jesus on the cross change anything about my present world?
Is that a fair question?
I think so.
If we are going to make the claim that the cross changes our world, then we should be able to give a few specifics of how this shows up, of what that change looks like.
So, let’s keep going today by backing up one more step.
Last time we looked at this poem from Isaiah in Isaiah 52-53.
Let’s back up one more step and begin today with the view surrounding that poem.
Listen to the verses in Isaiah 52 that come immediately before what we read last week.
Isaiah 52:10–12 NIV
10 The Lord will lay bare his holy arm
in the sight of all the nations,
and all the ends of the earth will see
the salvation of our God.
11 Depart, depart, go out from there!
Touch no unclean thing!
Come out from it and be pure,
you who carry the articles of the Lord’s house.
12 But you will not leave in haste
or go in flight;
for the Lord will go before you,
the God of Israel will be your rear guard.
So, while the words of Isaiah 52-53 which we read last week are so often seen as pointing forward to Jesus and his suffering on the cross, these are words which Isaiah also uses to point back to another event in Israel’s history.
It is the event of the exodus from Egypt, remembering here that Isaiah is also writing to a group of Jewish people who are living in a time of exile away from their homeland.
The original audience would have been a group of people who were asking the question, “When will God come and rescue us again like that, like he rescued his people back in the time of Egypt?”
By pulling these events together and also pointing them forward to the cross, we see that Jesus is doing something that he intentionally means to be seen as a rescue of God’s people.
But there is much more we need to say about that in order for us to walk away today with any kind of understanding of what the cross means today—how it changes our world yet today.
*The plagues of Egypt*
Let’s go back in the story to the time of Egypt—a time when the nation of Israel lived as slaves under the Egyptian ruler, Pharaoh.
For some here today, this may be a very familiar story.
Others may know of this story from other places.
There is the epic 1956 film The Ten Commandments with Charlton Heston and Yul Brynner.
As recently as 2014 Ridley Scott directed the movie God’s and Kings which also was based upon the exodus story from the Bible.
So, chances are, whoever you are here today, you know at least a little something of what I’m talking about when we reference the exodus.
The Hebrew people are held as an entire nation of slaves.
And through a series of events which we won’t go through today, one of the Hebrew people—Moses—becomes called especially by God to confront the Pharaoh and deliver the message of God: Let my people go!
If you know the story, then you know Pharaoh of course says no, and the narrative continues with the outpouring of ten plagues upon the land of Egypt and the Egyptian people.
This is where we will peek into the story today and look at just a few verses from the Old Testament book of Exodus.
This comes from Exodus 9. Let me give some surrounding detail so you understand what’s going on here.
I’m not going to go through all ten plagues.
But here is a quick explanation of how those plagues are grouped which may help to explain why I’m picking out these few short verses today from right in the middle of the sequence.
The tenth and final plague sort of stands separate by itself.
And in fact, next week we are going to look at just that one by itself.
So, the first nine plagues, if you were to examine the details, can be grouped together in triplets.
The first three plagues stand as a group.
The fourth, fifth, and sixth plague forms a group.
And the the seventh, eight, and ninth plague are the concluding triplet.
I’m picking a few verses from Exodus 9 which come within the seventh plague.
Or in context, this is the introduction to the final triplet of plagues.
This is not random.
The story hits something of a crescendo right here with the final triplet being announced.
Exodus 9:13–16 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, 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.
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.
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.
Let my people go, so that they may worship me.
The command to Pharaoh from God comes with a purpose.
There is a specific reason God gives for Pharaoh to release the people.
Certainly, we could argue that slavery is an awful and unjust institution, and God’s command to Pharaoh was a command against the evil of slavery.
We could also argue that God had made a covenant promise with Abraham so many centuries before, and now he was stepping to in to keep his word and free the people in order to hold his covenant promise.
While this is certainly true of God, the explicit reason God gives here is not about justice, nor is it about his covenant promise to Abraham.
It is about worship.
While slaves in Egypt, the people of Israel would have been brought up to believe that the Pharaoh was himself a divine god.
It was the divine right of the pharaoh to hold authority and act as he pleased.
It was also the divine power of the Pharaoh which provided for the needs of all the people.
In some very real sense, since the Pharaoh held all the authority, then it also meant that any provisions the people received at all were granted to them by the Pharaoh.
Even though they were slaves, their houses and food and every other basic provision needed for survival was owed to the Pharaoh.
He was their god.
He was the source of all power.
The Pharaoh was for them—and always had been—placed before them as the object of their worship.
And so, when God tells Moses to go to Pharaoh and deliver a message to let the Israelites go, it is a message that comes loaded with other meaning.
Moses is telling Pharaoh, we will no longer worship you.
You, Pharaoh, are no longer going to be the object of our worship.
You will no longer be the one to whom we look for provision.
We will no longer live in dependence upon the Pharaoh.
We have been called instead to worship YHWH—the LORD.
We will look to the LORD for provision.
We will live in dependence upon the LORD.
It is a showdown between the LORD and Pharaoh.
The plagues that we read about here in Exodus are not a series of punishments for the Egyptians.
They are not a game through which God must somehow convince Pharaoh to let the people go.
After all, if we truly believe that God is all powerful, he could have just snapped his fingers and made it happen.
This whole thing with the plagues has but one purpose.
It is meant to show—to demonstrate for all the world to see—where our true worship should be directed, where our true provision comes from, the one on whom we are truly dependent for all our needs.
And here’s the thing.
This was not just a lesson for Pharaoh.
It was not just a lesson for the Egyptians.
It was not just a lesson for the surrounding nations.
After 400 years of slavery to the Egypt, the Israelites needed to learn this lesson too.
God’s very own people needed to witness the unfolding spectacle of the plagues before them so that they too would be reminded again where to turn in their worship, where to turn in their allegiance, where to turn for their provision, where to turn in their dependence.
The plagues were just as much a demonstration from God to the Israelites as they were a demonstration to Pharaoh.
It is in this story of the Plagues that we see God taking the initiative before he sets his people free from their slavery to powerfully demonstrate before them a very tangible, very physical reminder that the LORD is always to be the center of their worship.
And it is in the cross of Jesus that we today are still given a very tangible, very physical reminder the LORD is always to be the center of our worship as well.
*We were made to worship*
When we talk about worship, that may bring many different things to mind for each person here.
When I say worship, some might immediately associate that word with specific things we do as a church.
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