Sermon from August 15, 2010
"Divine Election"
Exodus 19-24

Christianity is exquisitely for imperfect people. It is very near the truth to say that the Church is not for people who finally got good enough to get in but for people who finally realized they were bad enough to get in. Jesus said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” We should expect a steady stream of people saying, “My life is a mess. Can I please come to church?”

There’s a fly in the ointment. The bad people who come to Christ start to act better, and then they start to think they are better. It’s always risky for people like us to think we are better, because it’s really easy to take the next step and think, “We are better than the people who are still acting badly.” That’s how we make the Church into a place you have to be good enough to get into; and the faith that is exquisitely designed for imperfect people is saddled with the reputation as a haven for hypocrites.

I see only one way to get the fly out of the ointment. We who have come to Christ and started to act better have to realize that we are capable and will be capable as long as we live of doing the most awful deeds. We are moral earthquakes waiting to happen.

The story of Exodus that we read today illustrates what I am talking about. Maybe it will help us to shed our reputation as a haven for hypocrites. 

The Grumpies
The water of the Red Sea had flowed back and covered the chariots and horsemen – the entire army of Pharaoh that had followed the Israelites into the sea. Not one of them survived – Exodus 14:28. The children of Israel on the other hand looked back, and Egypt was behind them. The sea was behind them. “Free! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, free at last!” The desert was before them. The future was before them. Ah, yes! Tricky thing the future! Tricky thing, freedom!

The realities of freedom hit the Children of Israel soon and hard, says Exodus 15:22b: For three days they traveled in the desert without finding water. Verse 23 says that when they came to Marah, they could not drink its water because it was bitter. (That is why the place is called Marah – a Hebrew word that means bitter.) So the people grumbled against Moses, saying, “What are we to drink?”The grumbling was unpleasant, but the thirst was real. Moses cried to the Lord, and the Lord provided water. But their thirst frightened them. They had never experienced thirst before. They didn’t like it.

They moved on. Exodus 16:2-3 tells what happened a month and a half into their journey. In the desert the whole community grumbled against Moses and Aaron.  The Israelites said to them, “If only we had died by the Lord’s hand in Egypt! There we sat around pots of meat and ate all the food we wanted, but you have brought us out into this desert to starve this entire assembly to death.”

First, they were thirsty. Now they are hungry. Egypt looked inviting by comparison. But what about the forced labor? What about your groaning to God all those years? What about the killing of your baby boys? What about the plagues, the Passover, the miracle at the Red Sea?

Hey! If the alternative is death by starvation, we’ll take Egypt. Wouldn’t you? We wanted to be free, but we didn’t ask for this? What kind of freedom is this?

God provided food for them – quail and thin flakes of bread they called manna (see verses 14 & 31). But the food came with a catch. Verses 19-20: Then Moses said to them, “No one is to keep any of it until morning.” However, some of them paid no attention to Moses; they kept part of it until morning, but it was full of maggots and began to smell. So Moses was angry with them.

And the food came with a second catch. Verse 26 “Six days you are to gather it, but on the seventh day, the Sabbath, there will not be any.” Nevertheless, some of the people went out on the seventh day to gather it, but they found none.

Then the Lord said to Moses, “How long will you refuse to keep my commands and my instructions?”

Life after Egypt was not all sweetness and light. It was tough. Necessities were hard to come by, and the Lord had funny ideas about how they were supposed to live. The restrictions God imposed were irksome, and efforts to get around them angered Moses and displeased God.

The Birth of a Nation
Grumpy and headstrong as they were, the Israelites made it to Mount Sinai, where the nation of Israel was about to be born. Exodus 19:3-6 takes us to this major milestone in the history of the world. Then Moses went up to God, and the Lord called to him from the mountain and said, “This is what you are to say to the house of Jacob and what you are to tell the people of Israel: ‘You yourselves have seen what I did to Egypt, and how I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself.’”

Let’s stop a minute. It’s important to notice something. What God was about to ask Israel to do for Him was based on what God had done for Israel. In verse four God says, “I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself.” “I set you free.”

On that basis, God says in verse five: “‘Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.’”

That is the divine election of Abraham’s descendants to be out of all nations what God calls my treasured possession. It also fulfills God’s original promise to Abraham in Genesis 12:3: “I will make you into a great nation.” God also said, “You will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”

A priest is a mediator between God and Man. Israel in a unique way was and is to represent the Creator of heaven and earth to the rest of humanity, and also to represent the rest of humanity to God. And they were to be a holy nation. What did it mean to be holy? They were about to find out.

Verses 7-8: So Moses went back and summoned the elders of the people and set before them all the words the Lord had commanded him to speak. The people all responded together, “We will do everything the Lord has said.” Oh, boy! Their answer is right in there with: “I promise to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth,” and “for better, for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part.” People who say such things spend a lifetime finding out what they just promised. The Israelites said it. So Moses brought their answer back to the Lord.

The rest of chapter 19 is taken up with preparations for the awesome moment when Moses would bring down from the mountain the terms of the covenant by which God would bind Himself to Israel, and Israel would bind itself to God forever.

The Covenant
The New Testament epitomizes God’s election of the Church in this memorable statement: You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your body – I Corinthians 6:19-20. The same ideas are at work in Exodus 20.

Exodus 20:1-2: And God spoke all these words: “I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery.” “I set you free. Now, here’s how you are to honor me. Here’s what it means to be holy.”

“You shall have no other gods before me.”  “You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God.”

Israel must have had some inkling that they were the only people on the face of the earth, who were commanded to worship one God and not make an image of Him. It took the Lord a thousand years to knock the lust after other gods out of the hearts of His people, Israel. There would be critical times when it seemed that only a handful of Jews obeyed the first two Commandments.

Verse seven: “You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who misuses his name.” “You misuse my name, when you worship other gods and presume to come into my presence and call me by my name. You misuse my name, when you fail to keep the Sabbath. You misuse my name, when you steal and kill and lie and covet and commit adultery and presume to come into my presence and call me by my name.”

Verse eight states the Fourth Commandment. “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.” The middle of the next verse says: On it you shall not do any work – no one, nada, nunca! You can only make this day holy by filling it with something besides work. Now, here’s something interesting.

Verse 11 gives the motive for Sabbath observance. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the seventh day. Later, in Exodus 31:12-13 the writer offers a second motive for Sabbath observance. Then the Lord said to Moses, “Say to the Israelites, 'You must observe my Sabbaths. This will be a sign between me and you for the generations to come, so you may know that I am the Lord, who makes you holy.’”

God rested on Day Seven; you rest on Day Seven. This affinity between you and your God is a sign for all to see that you have a covenant with your God.

The first four Commandments defined Israel as distinct from other nations by defining Israel’s God as distinct from all other gods. The last six commandments are found generally among the human family, but within Israel’s covenant with God they were made central and given special sanction. We do not obey them well, but these six feel right at home in our souls.

“Honor your father and your mother. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor. You shall not covet.”

Later, when God formally constituted Israel as His people by blood sacrifice, Exodus 24: 7 says that Moses took the Book of the Covenant and read it to the people. They responded, “We will do everything the Lord has said; we will obey.”

The Pastoral Center of Gravity
However gung-ho the people were, who said, “We will obey,” their inability to measure up became obvious with appalling speed and a flagrant breach of the Second Commandment. But I’m glad they said yes to God. When they said yes, the Ten Commandments defined them as a distinct people with a mission to bless all nations on earth. Their disobedience never canceled that mission. It has even expanded the blessing.

Jews have blessed the world by transmitting the Ten Commandments through the Church to hundreds of nations. The Commandments reveal the will of God for the spiritual and moral life of man. Imperfect people like us need to be told what is the will of God. Israel on a small scale, the Church on a global scale do that.

Second, the Ten Commandments are not stand-alone rules. They are embedded in two communities, Israel and the Church. Both thrive on powerful religious symbols: circumcision, scripture, synagogue, and festivals for Jews; baptism, Communion, the Bible, Christmas, and Easter for Christians. These symbols place a powerful mystical aura around the Commandments. Imperfect people benefit from that, because the symbols give us strength to obey the Commandments better than we could without them.

That’s how the Church offers us protection from evil. The Church doesn’t vaccinate anyone against evil. We are tempted just like everyone else, and you will find the same failures among Christians as among other people. But the life of God works here as a powerful restraint on the dark side of our nature. We need that restraint in our world in which restraints on the dark side of human nature are being loosened in frightful ways. That’s another exquisite way Christianity is designed for imperfect people.

But we still fail.

Yes, we do.

So, we just need to try harder.

Let me tell you one of the great truths of the Christian faith. The people who try the hardest will be the first to tell you that they are still capable and will be capable as long as they live of doing the most awful deeds. They are moral earthquakes waiting to happen.

That sounds pessimistic.

But it’s not; it’s the truth.

So why try to be moral?

Because Commands us to be holy as He is holy.

But we fail over and over – the very same sins.

And that is what Exodus 25-31 and Exodus 35-40 are all about. We find those chapters tedious to read, but they describe the provision God gave Israel for its inevitable moral and spiritual failures. They describe the design and construction of the Tabernacle, which later became the Temple in Jerusalem. At its very center was the Altar of Incense. There once a year Aaron shall make atonement on its horns. This annual atonement must be made with the blood of the atoning sin offering for the generations to come. It is most holy to the Lord – Exodus 30:10.

Here’s the Christian counterpart to that. God commended His love toward us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us – Romans 5:8. When we fail, we can confess our failure and find forgiveness and start again – over and over. That is the most exquisite way Christianity is designed for imperfect people.

How aware are you of how easily you could fail morally? Did you fail last week? Do you find yourself failing the same way over and over? Have you come within a cat’s whisker of doing something really stupid that could put your family, your job, and your reputation at risk? Did you get away with something years ago, except that you know? What are you hiding out of shame?

Human beings are so beautiful, capable of so much good; and yet at our core, something is twisted that threatens our happiness and causes us to do awful things.

Christ died for your sins. His death made atonement for your sins. The salvation of humanity depends on that. Have you taken that to heart? Have you said, “Lord Jesus Christ, be merciful to me, a sinner?” Have you said, “Thank you, Lord Jesus Christ, for dying for my sins to rescue me from the present evil world?” Whether you are saying it for the first time or the millionth time, let’s say it together now as a deliberate act of faith. If you are saying it for the first time, it is the beginning of your participation in a new life. Be sure you tell a friend. Be baptized here and tell all of us. Get involved in this church or another church and learn what is involved in this new life. I’d love to hear.