Sermon Tone Analysis

As we go through Hebrews you are going to have to get accustomed to rather lengthy scripture introductions, because it is so steeped in Old Testament thought that we need to get that background just so we can get into the mind of the author of Hebrews.

So today, I think it helps us to go back a little bit to the Israelites during the Exodus and their wilderness wanderings.

It’s okay if you’ve never heard that story, I’m going to tell you the short version this AM.

The second book of the Bible is called Exodus.

It tells the story of God’s deliverance of the Israelite people.

You see the book of Genesis ends with God’s people moving to Egypt because of a great famine.

The end of Genesis is all about a guy named Joseph and how God provided for his people through him.

He was a great leader.

But at the start of Exodus though we see that their leader didn’t know anything about Joseph.

He’d forgotten all about him and so the Israelites were just another people group that they ruled over.

And so he ends up making them slaves.

We see in that they are afflicted with heavy burdens, it says that the Egyptians “ruthlessly made the people of Israel work as slaves and made their lives bitter with hard service”.

You’re going to have to get acc

Last week we looked at the Exodus—the great deliverance that God brought about of the Israelite people under Egyptian slavery.

Look with me briefly at what the Lord had delivered them from.

We see in that they are afflicted with heavy burdens, it says that the Egyptians “ruthlessly made the people of Israel work as slaves and made their lives bitter with hard service”.

Don’t gloss over this.

What does it mean to have a “bitter” life?

It means that you hate to wake up every morning.

There isn’t much hope.

There’s no hope of retirement on the horizon.

No weekends off.

No pay.

No life of your own.

And so life becomes bitter.

The sunrise doesn’t bring you joy—it ticks you off.

Your sense of humor, if you’ve even got one becomes dark and sarcastic.

Your heart becomes cold and calloused.

And every day it only deepens.

They are enslaved with no hope of this just being a rainy day.

This is life.

I haven’t even gotten to the fact that the Egyptians enact a policy which ensures the death of your child, if he is a boy.

If there was any hope to be had—any sunshine on the horizon—it might have been having a son.

A young man that can perpetuate your family name, perhaps someday he’ll taste freedom.

Perhaps you can have some sort of “life” through him and his children.

Perhaps.

Not anymore.

Your wife is pregnant.

It’s supposed to be a time of joy, instead it’s a time of great fear.

If he’s a boy then you can consider him gone.

If she’s a girl, likewise she’ll end up having her identity stolen by Egyptian men.

This is a terrible terrible situation and one that doesn’t seem to have much hope.

They have such a broken spirit that in that aren’t even able to listen to Moses when he tells them that God is indeed going to deliver them.

Do you hear it?

Do you hear the bitterness?

Do you hear the sunrise causing anger?

That’s what happens when hope is deferred for so long that your heart becomes very sick.

But God does deliver them from the Egyptians and it is beautiful.

Their broken spirit turns to joy and worship in .

They sing a song.

And this isn’t a song of lament.

This is a song of joy.

A song that hadn’t been on their lips in years.

And they sing with all their hearts because the days of bitter slavery are over.

No more threat on the life of your children by a wicked Pharaoh.

No more pointless working for another.

Those days are over.

You are free!

So look with me at .

Miriam and all the women with tambourines are singing and dancing and praising the Lord.

It’s a time of great joy.

Then there is a twist in verse 22.

Moses leads the people away from the Red Sea and they go into the wilderness of Shur.

And there are three days without drinking water.

They finally find a place but they can’t drink the water because it is bitter.

And so they grumble to Moses.

“What are we going to drink?”

Here we are given a clue as to what is about to come.

They’ve just seen the Red Sea part in two.

The Red. Sea.

Part.

In Two.

They clearly are being led by a God that is sovereign over the waters.

But they don’t get it and so they grumble.

“How are we going to get water”.

Moses cries to the Lord and Moses throws a log in the water and it becomes sweet and able to drink.

And here the Lord teaches them.

“If you listen to me, if you trust me, then I won’t do to you what I did to the Egyptians…for I am the LORD, your healer”.

And then they come to an oasis in the desert.

And they encamp there.

But see what happens in .

It’s shocking.

And here the people of Israel are traveling into the wilderness and listen to verse 2-3.

“Would that we had died by the hand of the LORD in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full, for you have brought us into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”

In other words, “we’d rather be dead in Egypt where at least we knew that we had food.”

And certainly it’s intentional that this statement comes right on the heels of what God said in .

Here the Israelites are saying that they’d rather be identified with the Egyptians—the dead ones in the Red Sea—than to be living in freedom in the wilderness.

We’d rather die by your hand than be delivered by your hand.

This won’t be the last time they say this either.

They’ll say something similar in before God provides water from a rock.

They’ll say it again in after they leave this Sinai wilderness.

“Now the rabble that was among them had a strong craving.

And the people of Israel also wept again and said, “oh that we had meat to eat!

We remember the fish we at in Egypt that cost nothing, the cucumbers, the melons, the leeks, the onions, and the garlic.

But now our strength is dried up and there is nothing but this manna to look at.”

And they’ll say something similar in .

They’ve now seen the Promised Land.

The place that God promised.

God has brought them all this way.

He’s brought them out of Egypt with all of the plagues, the crossing of the Red Sea, the water made sweet, the manna from heaven, the quail, the water shooting out of a rock, the pillar and cloud following them, the Law given to them on Sinai, grace after the stupid Golden Calf incident, victory over Amalek, and a million other things of provision along the way.