Exodus 9:1-9

Transcript

[00:00:00] Clint Loveall: Hey everybody. Welcome back. Thanks for starting another week with us as we move through Exodus in the 19th chapter Today. I’m gonna read a few verses, um, kind of one section we’ll center on. And let me read through it and then we’ll come back and, and have some discussion on the third New moon. After the Israelites had gone out of the land of Egypt on that very day, they came to the wilderness of Sinai.

They had journeyed from refer, entered the wilderness of Sinai, camped in the wilderness. Israel camped there in front of the mountain. Then Moses went up to God. The Lord called him from the mountain and. Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob and tell the Israelites, you have seen what I did to the Egyptians, how I bore you on Eagle’s wings and brought you to myself Now.

Therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all the peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me, a priestly kingdom and a holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the Israelites. So Moses came down. Some of the elders of the people sat before them.

All the words the Lord had commanded him, the people answered as one. Everything the Lord has spoken, we will do. Moses reported the words of the people to the Lord. The Lord said to Moses, I’m going to come to you in a dense cloud in order that the people may hear when I speak with you, and so trust you ever after.

So kind of a lot of things going on here, Michael. Classic Moses. He is the mediator, speaking to God, speaking to the people, speaking to God, speaking to people, telling the God what the people said. Uh, just going back and forth in that role. Um, some interesting. Language here we’re about three months, three new moons call that 28 days.

So roughly we’re three months out. And the, the most interesting part of this for me comes toward the latter part of it. I’ve borne you on. Eagle’s wings. I’ve kept the co. If you keep my covenant, you shall be for me a priestly kingdom. This is one of those kind of take a breath moments in the story. We will get these occasionally where we’ll go through some narrative and then we’ll get this moment where, God and the people kind of recenter their relationship.

Restate the expectations, uh, and then we’ll continue with the story. It’s one of those here, um, a kind of a recommitment moment. Um, these are important, I think, in the flow of the story, both on, in the character of God and in the character of the people. And I, you know, this one doesn’t have any real value in it, Michael.

And what I mean by that is, Positive or negative. It doesn’t say anything that there seems to be the best of intentions here on the part of God and the people. Um, we know that that’s going to change, but mostly these kind of texts are positive, I think,

[00:03:02] Michael Gewecke: in their effect. Yeah, and I want to recognize this is in some ways a building tax, Clint.

I think it’s building up to some of the things that are going to be very instrumental in the identity of the people. We’re gonna have fleshed out what keeping the covenant looks like, for instance, and we’re going to follow that with some very. Guide rails that the people are expected to follow if they’re going to be this priestly nation.

So this text in many ways, I think is the front bookend of so many things, which are to come and we’ll, we’ll get to that both in the nature of where we go in those texts and we’ll also, You know, talk a little bit more about that as we go on today. But before we get there, I wanna just quick look backward and, and remind us Moses’ role has been addressing these ongoing concerns of the people.

Lots of complaining, lots of quarreling. We’ve had some fighting now some actual military conflict. We’ve introduced Joshua, who we know is gonna be important later, and then we recognize the. For Moses to restructure, to get things set up in a new way, to to have some sort of institutional efficiency so that he doesn’t have to handle all of the people’s concerns at all.

The same time. Right now, we see that there’s this kind of transition where God is beginning to speak about the core identity of this new nation. Now that we’ve had some of. Yeah, rocking of the boat. Some difficulty. We’ve had some military victory at God’s power, at God’s ability. Now here we have some very beautiful language and and language that ties back to our study in Genesis.

You know, we talked about Abraham and we talked about the forming of this covenant that God would. A nation here, we have that language of covenant being brought back in, but it’s gonna be fleshed out in more detail. And in many ways, Clint, I think that one could read this as an introduction to a new chapter of God’s promise keeping.

He is now speaking to the people through Moses. He’s bringing this cloud so that there can actually be sort of people overhearing it. And there’s this sense at which God, I wanna be very careful here cuz I think you could push back. I, he is, in many ways he’s not creating a new covenant that in some way gets rid of the old one.

But there’s a setup happening here, I think to renew this promise that has been made and, and it’s only gonna continue going forward.

[00:05:40] Clint Loveall: Yeah. You know, tomorrow. We’ll look at a passage, Michael, that is, is titled The People Are Consecrated and, and there is a sense, I think in which this is a transitional moment that, that the threat of Egypt is over.

We’ve seen the grumbling, we’re not done with that completely, but they’ve been on the way to somewhere. And when they get to Mount Sinai, that is by and. A location that ha is of significant importance. It’s, it’s not simply on the path the way that the other places have been. This is a holy. Moment for them and, and there’s, this is an optimistic moment.

God’s saying, I’m gonna make you a holy, I want you to be a holy nation. You’re going to be my, my prime possession. You’re going to be my prize possession. The people are saying, you know everything. The Lord has spoken. We will do. They haven’t done anything, the Lord has spoken yet. But in this kind of optimistic worshipful moment, they really, with the best of intentions.

Commit themselves to that. It, it is a, I think this is a, you know, not, I don’t mean this as a pun, but it is a mountaintop kind of moment and um, and the next things that happen in the story, you know, the consecration and then we get the 10 commandments and the giving of the law. There is a certain hopefulness to this that it’s going to work.

And, and I think the story though, it knows, we know other. Has done a, a good job of trying to bring us into that optimism, trying to share with us that feeling that at least in this moment, there really is a, a positive movement and a, and a genuine commitment. To one another to honor the various sides of the covenant.

And you know, sometimes it’s easy to miss those things cuz you know that you’re, the story’s not going to stay there. And once you know that, it’s easy to read past this with that. But I, I think this is a pretty, I think this is a pretty special moment in the story.

[00:07:54] Michael Gewecke: I think that we recognize if this is a bookmark, that anticipates what’s gonna happen in the future.

I also think in some ways it closes up some narratives that we’ve. And of course when we had the narrative of crossing the Red Sea, we talked about how God was bringing the people out of another worldly power that the Pharaoh who set himself against God was shown to be the puppet and not the master.

He was shown to be the one who would ultimately be weak. And God who’s the ultimate victor in that story. But here, I just wanna point out, uh, we’re looking at verse, um, Four here, well let, let’s go back to three. You shall say to the house of Jacob and tell the Israelites you’ve seen what I did to the Egyptian.

And how I bore you on Eagle’s wings and brought you to myself. Then there’s this talk to verse six, you shall be for me, a priest, the kingdom and the holy nation. I, I think it’s really important. It’s intentional. It’s not on accident that we come to a text like this and we discover that God is saying, That you are mine.

You are no longer pharaohs, you are no longer subject to these other nations, even the ones who have already wared against the people of Israel. In the midst of this ongoing story, there is a kind of claiming happening here that rejects the, the previous claims that have been on the people. And you wants me to, a comment that I think is really helpful as we continue on through this study that it, it’s one thing to take the people out of.

It’s another thing to get Egypt out of them. And I think that’s part of what we see happening here is there is this clear line that’s been drawn in the sand. God has claimed these people as his own a royal priesthood. It’s a beautiful image. And though we do snicker a little bit, when in verse eight here, the people say everything the Lord spoken will do.

Mm-hmm. . That’s not gonna happen. I mean, not even close, but there’s something beautiful about God. Claiming and the people responding and, and ultimately that movement between God’s first action and our response to it remains a central part of even the Christian understanding of God’s interaction with humanity.

We understand that God has acted and then we respond with grateful hearts for the grace that has been given for us. So I think there’s a beautiful. Image in this. It’s not just the narrative setting up what’s to come next, though, you’d be excused for thinking that if you just read this in a quick, uh, moment or if you read through it in a hurry.

But I think Clint, in many ways, this is mirroring a. A, a thoroughly contemporary understanding of how God has chosen to interact with people who, if we’re honest, struggle to be faithful. I mean, we struggle to keep the promise that we seek to make, uh, but God is always faithful to be the one to claim us from the beginning.

[00:10:57] Clint Loveall: Yeah. I don’t have an exact location, Michael, but it’s, it’s near the end of Exodus that we are going to leave. This physical location, the, the people are going to be at Mount Sinai for a significant duration, you know, close to half of this book. And I, I think that’s the first we’ve really seen of this. As the people arrive here, there is, for the first time in the story, a little bit of permanence, the idea that they are a people that they have been rescued, they’re, they’re secure.

They have a place, Mount Sinai is going to be significant. All of the things that happen there. And we get the first glimpse of Israel as the beginning of a, of a nation and not just some people who, who got away from Egypt and are moving through the wilderness. And I, and I think that, That anchors the story a little bit from this

[00:11:56] Michael Gewecke: part out.

I think we got a quick address of detail that I think people are gonna find interesting, Clint verse nine, where the Lord says, I’m going to come to you in a dense cloud in order that the people may hear when I speak with you, and so trust you ever after. That’s an interesting note here, and it plays back into this theme we’ve seen so many times before of Moses as intermediary.

Yeah. And here there’s this fun little. I, it’s really not a contradiction of that theme. It’s, it’s really just sort of a, a small aside to say in a moment, the folks are going to hear God’s voice to Moses, who’s the intermediary. God’s not speaking directly to the people, but he’s letting them overhear. And the idea here is so that they will trust Moses all the more.

That’s a fascinating. For the text to lay that out. Yeah.

[00:12:47] Clint Loveall: I, from here on out, Moses is going to, Moses’ role as leader is going to be even, um, higher pitched. He, Moses is going to have. The, now there’s this movement of going up the mountain or going into the tent. Moses is going to have a more direct audience with the presence of God than we’ve seen in the past.

And, and I think we’ll see that starting tomorrow. But, um, Moses’s role doesn’t change, but the intensity of it. I, I think, ramps up a little bit in the next part of the story.

[00:13:21] Michael Gewecke: Well, and if you know Exodus, you also know that the people are about to make some major missteps in the promise that they’re making in this day.

So while this moment in the story is a hope-filled one, it is a. Uh, maybe an image of the people at their best, uh, because we’ve had quarreling before. And, and if you know what’s to come, you know, it’s not gonna be long before the people start searching for their own gods. But here in this moment, Moses does have this beautiful kind of connection between himself, who’s in between, but God who’s speaking and, and the people hearing there.

I, that’s an interesting way that you say that, Clint. There’s an interesting. Uh, kind of maybe almost ordination ish. I mean, you would say that happened at the burning bush, but there’s a, there’s an ongoing con of honor and calling here on Moses. He just had this organization and, um, now he’s being s.

Still affirmed as the one that the people should look

[00:14:26] Clint Loveall: to. He’s still a go between, but I think there is a difference of leading on the way somewhere and then being a leader once you get there. And, and I think that feels different in the story. You know, we can circle back to this. This would be a pretty good sermon title I think when, when you’re in the wilderness.

Perhaps. We’ve seen that the danger, the temptation is complaining when you settle somewhere. The danger becomes complacency. And, and Israel is living out both of those realities. We’ve seen one, we’re going to see the other. So,

[00:14:58] Michael Gewecke: seems like a great last word. Uh, thanks for being with us here today, friends, uh, hope that there’s been something in it.

Uh, certainly stick with us here cuz there’s some really interesting things that are going to be coming this week and beyond. Uh, if you found this helpful, give the like, uh, comment if you got questions or concerns, and we will see you tomorrow. Thanks everyone.