Who is the LORD?

I don't know what you think of Star Wars.  It's not really important I suppose in the grand scheme of things.  But as I was preparing for this sermon Star Wars analogies just keep coming, so if you hate Star Wars, well please forgive me.

When the first movie starts a space ship flies overtop of the camera and you get a sense of this massive ship; then a much, much larger space ship flies over and it dwarfs the first and you realise you had no idea of the scales involved.  We're immersed in a world that is bigger than we thought possible.  Then at the start of The Empire Strikes Back we meet another one of those enormous space ships – and then immediately look up to see a ship that is so impossibly big that it dwarfs what we thought of as enormous as comprehensively as it dwarfed the earlier ship.

George Lucas is messing with our minds…  He's saying to us I've got a vision for a universe that surpasses all of your expectations.  This is massive – much, much bigger than you can comprehend.  Take the biggest thing you can imagine, now imagine something that dwarfs that big thing, then think of something that dwarfs that and so on and so on, after a while you will begin to come close to comprehending how big this is…

In a lot of ways that what the Bible does to us: the bible keeps saying to us – you think you've got a handle on God, but your God is too small.  Take what you think you know about God; now imagine that God was 100 times bigger again than that.  Now imagine that God is 100 times bigger again.  And keep repeating that process.  No matter how many times you do you will never come to a point where you imagine God is too big.  God is infinitely bigger and more powerful that you or I could possibly imagine…

That's is one of the big messages that we get from the book of Exodus – your God is too small, you need to realise that God is bigger and better than you think.  And in our passage this evening we find that we're not the only ones who need to re-evaluate our view of God.  To different degrees Moses, Israel and Pharaoh all need to re-assess their view of God.  In every case God says to them your god is too small – I'm infinitely bigger and more powerful, and more worthy, than you realise.

We're going to look at it in four sections, under four headings.  They will be:

Who is the LORD?  Two Lords lay claim to Israel (5.1-5)

The Lord of Egypt asserts his claim (5:6-14);

The LORD's people crumble to the false Lord (5:15-23); but

This contest will reveal the LORD's power, his authority and his love (6.1-7.7).

So let's get into the first point:

Who is the LORD?  Two Lords lay claim to Israel

Look with me at verse 1:

NIV Exodus 5:1 Afterwards 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 desert.'" 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." 3 Then they said, "The God of the Hebrews has met with us. Now let us take a three-day journey into the desert to offer sacrifices to the LORD our God, or he may strike us with plagues or with the sword." 4 But the king of Egypt said, "Moses and Aaron, why are you taking the people away from their labour? Get back to your work!

In the earlier chapters of Exodus the story is framed as a rescue.  God has heard the cries of his people and he has come to rescue them from their slavery to Pharaoh. 

But here we find the same events being framed in a different light.  The exodus will be a rescue, but it will also be something more.  It's framed as a contest between God and Pharaoh.

You'll remember if you were here a couple of weeks ago that as soon as Moses heard the message from God he started to get nervous – maybe this isn't going to go so well… You'll remember if you were here that Moses response to God was 'please send someone else'.

Moses tried no less than 7 times to convince God to send someone else.  Why was he so reluctant?  Ultimately we have to say that it came down to doubts over God's ability to pull it off – Pharaoh was a mighty, mighty King, and God was… well was God really up to the Job?

Well, Moses had his doubts, but God compelled him to go.  Now he finally speaks to Pharaoh.  And we find that he wasn't wrong - Pharaoh is not impressed with this plan.  Of course Pharaoh wasn't going to be happy to lose his slave labour – a whole nation of slaves – Moses is about to decimate the Egyptian economy.

So we see a contest developing – there are two Lords both claiming the people of Israel as their own; God and Pharaoh.

But the contest goes deeper than that.  Remember what Pharaoh said: Who is the LORD that I should obey him… I do not know the Lord and I will not let them go'.  He's saying 'This God that you worship – I don't recognise his authority, I don't believe that he has any jurisdiction over me – he has no power here Moses.'

We can see how Pharaoh would be a bit cynical about Israel's God – Pharaoh's have been abusing and mistreating Israel for generations; surely if they had a God who cared for them he wouldn't have allowed these things to go on… the very fact that they've been enslaved and mistreated and killed without mercy said everything – either the LORD doesn't exist, or he doesn't care what happens to Israel, or he is utterly powerless to stop them getting beaten up again and again and again.

People say the same thing today don't they – if God is both all powerful and all good then there should be no suffering anywhere, and the fact that there is suffering in the world says that either God isn't good and just doesn't care about our suffering, or that God isn't powerful to do anything about it.

No doubt tyrants all over the world convince themselves that there is no God and no one will ever call them to account for the terrible things they do.  Pharaoh certainly wasn't expecting God to actually do anything for Israel.  But God was about to do something about Israel's suffering… but we'll come to that in a moment. Because this contest is actually sharper and clearer than we might see from our distance so many years later.  The contest is sharper because Pharaoh was himself revered as a god.  The Egyptians believed that their god established the nation of Egypt with himself as their first King.  Every subsequent King or Pharaoh was descendent from god – was himself divine, a god–man ruler.

Pharaoh doesn't recognise the God of the Hebrews because as he sees it they already have a god – and it's him.  They're already serving their god as they slave away for him to do his bidding.  He doesn't recognise the LORD because he thinks he is the Lord.

So this leads to our second point:

The Lord of Egypt asserts his claim over Israel

How does Pharaoh respond to the idea that there might be a rival for his job?  Let's just say he doesn't welcome the idea with an open mind!  Have a look at verse 6:

NIV Exodus 5:6 That same day Pharaoh gave this order to the slave drivers and foremen in charge of the people: 7 "You are no longer to supply the people with straw for making bricks; let them go and gather their own straw. 8 But require them to make the same number of bricks as before; don't reduce the quota. They are lazy; that is why they are crying out, `Let us go and sacrifice to our God.' 9 Make the work harder for the men so that they keep working and pay no attention to lies.

Pharaoh ratchets the suffering up another notch.  It's a quite deliberate response.  It's designed to put a stop to this talk of another God.  He's deliberately making the work harder for them so that they will have no time or energy to pay attention for Moses and Aaron.  See vs 9: 'Make the work harder so that they will keep working and pay no attention' to – what? – 'to lies' – what lie?  To the 'lie' that Moses and Aaron have met with the God of the Hebrews; to the lie that there is another God and he is going to rescue them.

Pharaoh's asserting his power, his claim over the people of Israel, and more fundamentally his claim to the title 'Lord' or god.  In this contest the ownership of the people of Israel is an expression of a deeper and more fundamental claim – the claim to power and glory, the claim to worship.  Pharaoh is asserting his claim to be Israel's only Lord.

The ironies abound.  But we can understand how Pharaoh could fall for his own publicity.  Surely if God was really there he would have put a stop to him years ago.  No, there's certainly no higher power, no calling to account.  Pharaoh rules in Egypt and there is no other.

There's an advert that's gone viral in Australia, my sister sent me a link last week.  It features a little boy in full Darth Vader outfit trying to master 'the force'.  He goes around the house trying to move random objects – the dog, the washing machine, his little sister's doll.  And he becomes visibly more and more disappointed as time after time he fails to do anything.  And then dad pulls up in the driveway in shinny new Volkswagen Passat and our would be dark Jedi tries one last Jedi trick.  As his parents watch on from the kitchen he attempts to control the car … and dad presses the remote lock and the car flashes its indicators.  And the little lad is shocked.  He looks at his hands, he looks at the car, he looks at his hands again.  He's completely ignorant of the fact that it was his Father who made the lights flash.  He thinks he's mastered the force and he's on his way to world domination.

And that's no different what we're seeing from Pharaoh.  He has no idea that he is under the control of a God much more powerful than he is.  He sees the vast might of Egypt, this great empire and it's immense wealth, he sees the power that he has to order life and death, to control men and to use them for his own glory and honour.  And he things that it's all his, as if he has this power in and of himself.  He fails to see that all that he has comes from God.  That he is no more god than the least of the slaves that he despises, and that his power doesn't belong to him, it has been 'lent' to him by God… And God can call him to account for his use of it.

It doesn't take much thought to see that Pharaoh is acting here in exactly the same way that Adam and Eve did in the garden – asserting his own authority to do his own thing in his own way.  It doesn't take much to see that things have got a lot worse than they were back then – now a mere man claims the right to abuse and kill, not just one to one, not just occasionally as a pragmatic measure in a difficult situation, but to systematically use, abuse and even destroy a whole race of people.

It's also not much of a jump from Pharaoh to Pilate and the High Priests almost 1500 years later – the enemies who asserted their rule over the son of God and had him put to death.  As Psalm 2 puts the nations rile against God, but the Lord enthroned in heaven laughs.

In Pharaoh we see the dark heart of humanity as it stands in rebellion against God.  As someone once said 'power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely' – well it corrupts people anyway.  Sadly Pharaoh is far from unusual in history.   There have been innumerable despots and emperors and self made rulers who've set themselves up as little gods to use and abuse the people who God has made.  Right now there are many nations, even just in Africa, where might is right.  Across the middle East the and South East Asia hundreds of millions are held in bondage under the iron fist of Islam, a man made religion that preaches destruction to it's enemies and death to converts.

What do we think when we see those evil empires, those dictators and manipulators and the power they wield – it's tempting to think that they are getting away with it – isn't?  We fall for that old equation - since there's suffering there can not be an all powerful, all good God.

What do we say in the face of that sort of evil?  Well one possible answer is illustrated for us by the Israelites in the next few verses as we look at our next point:

The LORD's people crumble to the false Lord.

Look with me at verse 15:

NIV Exodus 5:15 Then the Israelite foremen went and appealed to Pharaoh: "Why have you treated your servants this way? 16 Your servants are given no straw, yet we are told,`Make bricks!' Your servants are being beaten, but the fault is with your own people." 17 Pharaoh said, "Lazy, that's what you are--lazy! That is why you keep saying,`Let us go and sacrifice to the LORD.' 18 Now get to work. You will not be given any straw, yet you must produce your full quota of bricks." 19 The Israelite foremen realised they were in trouble when they were told, "You are not to reduce the number of bricks required of you for each day." 20 When they left Pharaoh, they found Moses and Aaron waiting to meet them, 21 and they said, "May the LORD look upon you and judge you! You have made us a stench to Pharaoh and his officials and have put a sword in their hand to kill us." 22 Moses returned to the LORD and said, "O Lord, why have you brought trouble upon this people? Is this why you sent me? 23 Ever since I went to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has brought trouble upon this people, and you have not rescued your people at all.

Look what they say – we're your servants, your servants, your servants – implication: 'you are our master, our Lord'.  They're ready to concede before the contest has even begun.

We need to be careful here – it's easy to look at Israel and, knowing how the story ends, to condemn they for their lack of faith.  And they did lack faith.  But that's no excuse for us to look down on them, because the reality is that we would most likely behave in exactly the same way.  In fact we often behave in exactly the same way.  If Pharaoh reveals the black heart of humanity in full rebellion against God, Israel reveals the weak heart of humanity trying to follow God – they're constantly holding a mirror up to our hearts.  Don't be quick to condemn them, but as Matt encouraged us from Malachi last week, don't be like them.

What's really going on?  God is contesting for the hearts and minds of his people.  But his people have long ago lost sight of a God of power and love.  Sure they've retained a cultural memory of their ancestors and the promises they received from God and the things that God did to help them.  But they've no experience of God's power, and no confidence that God will help them in this situation.  They might profess faith in God, they might not.  But whether they call on God in prayer and praise him in worship or not – it's clear that they don't expect him to look after them.

I don't know if you've ever been bullied, or suffered from any sort of abuse, if you have you'll have a sense of their experience – when you're constantly at the mercy of someone more powerful, someone unpredictable and vicious, it's easy to begin to think that there is no solution, that you have no way out.  I looked it up this week and the figures show that at least 16 children each year commit suicide in Britain because they're being bullied and can't see a way out of it.  It's very unlikely that there was absolutely nothing that could be done.  But when we're under someone else's power we can easily begin to see them as greater and more immovable than they actually are.

Here in Egypt God's people face a great and mighty tyrant – a tyrant who has bullied them to their absolute physical and psychological limits.  And his response to Moses and Aaron – to God – is to tighten his grip, to push them further, to try to crush their spirits irrevocably.

And it works.  Their confidence is paper thin, and the first set back is enough to send them into despair.  They turn on Moses and Aaron – look what they say in verse 21 'May the Lord look on you and judge you – you have made us a stench to Pharaoh and have put a sword in his hand to kill us.'

Do you see how illogical that was?  They appeal to God, not to save them, but to curse; curse who – not their enemy Pharaoh, no, their rescuers Moses and Aaron.   Pharaoh is a malicious tyrant, but who's fault it that – why it's Moses and Aaron's fault!  They drove him to it – don't they remember that Egypt's rulers have been systematically abusing them, even killing them off for decades?

But can we blame them?  Would we have done differently?  They can't see God at work, but they can certainly see Pharaoh at work.  They don't know God's power, but they can certainly see Pharaoh's power.

They're in the same place as everyone who struggles with suffering and wonders if God is really there at all, and if he is there if he lacks the strength to help them, or the will… It's been 80 years since Moses was rescued from the bulrushes, that's at least 80 years of brutal repression.   Surely God couldn't still be with them could he?  Could he?

And even Moses is drawn into their pity party – he hears their complaint and he feels the force of it – and he goes back to God and says in verse 22 – 'is this why you sent me? Is this all that's going to happen – it's getting worse, God – you haven't saved your people at all…'

Don't you feel like that sometimes – your prayers aren't going anywhere.  You thought God was on your side, but things are going from bad to worse.  What do we say in the face of that?

Well the Bible doesn't give us a tightly argued response to our problems, much as we'd like it to.  But what it does give us is real action that demonstrates the truths that we are tempted to doubt.  And that's what God is about to provide for Moses, for Israel, for us, and for Pharaoh.  He's going to prove that he is there, that he is powerful to change our circumstances, and that he does care about the state of his people.  That's our fourth point:

This contest will reveal the LORD's power, his authority and his love.

Have a look with me at 5.22ff

NIV Exodus 5:22 Moses returned to the LORD and said, "O Lord, why have you brought trouble upon this people? Is this why you sent me? 23 Ever since I went to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has brought trouble upon this people, and you have not rescued your people at all." 6:1 Then the LORD said to Moses, "Now you will see what I will do to Pharaoh: Because of my mighty hand he will let them go; because of my mighty hand he will drive them out of his country." 2 God also said to Moses, "I am the LORD. 3 I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name the LORD I did not make myself known to them. 4 I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, where they lived as aliens. 5 Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the Israelites, whom the Egyptians are enslaving, and I have remembered my covenant. 6 "Therefore, say to the Israelites:`I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. 7 I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the LORD your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. 8 And I will bring you to the land I swore with uplifted hand to give to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. I will give it to you as a possession. I am the LORD.

Pharaoh has had his turn.  He's asserted his claim.  And at first it looks pretty impressive… He's got armies, an organised system of suppression and slavery and work camps and instruments of war.   But it's not going to be enough.  This is not a contest that Pharaoh can win.

God is using this scenario to demonstrate that he is Lord, and for all his power and might Pharaoh is nothing but a small instrument in the hand of his creator.

And notice that God is going to demonstrate this to Moses – verse 1 'now you will see what I will do… and God is going to demonstrate this to Israel – verse 6 'therefore say to the Israelites 'I am the LORD and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians…

God is gracious, he knows how we struggle to trust him, especially in the light of the things that challenge or threaten us.  So he creates a situation where things are as bad as they could possibly be – and shows that even in that situation he is able to look after his people.

You know how it is – it's only when you've been to the very edge of endurance that you know what you're capable of.  People who climb a mountain or survive natural disasters often say I had no idea I could do that… A lot of you will know the story of Aron Ralston – he's the rock climber who cut off his own arm to escape a rock climbing accident, you might have seen the movie 127 hours.  Apparently you don't want to see the scene where he actually cuts through his arm… I've heard him interviewed lots of times since his story first came out in the media.  Do you think that if he'd been asked before hand he would have said that there were any circumstance where he would be able to cut off his own arm?  Would you?  And yet, when the need arose, when the choice was 'keep your arm and die a slow painful death, or cut it off and live without it' – well he did what he had to do.

Well this is one of those times, but the lesson is not what Israel can do.  They won't find in themselves inner reserves of strength and resilience that they had no idea about up until this point.  No, they'll find something far better.  They'll find that the God they only dimly knew, the God who seemed so far off and so impotent to actually help them was with them after all.  Even though it seemed that they were trapped between the proverbial rock and a hard place – now when they were had no help and a pitiless tyrant, and later when they were trapped up against the sea with no escape, and later when they were in the desert with no water, and no food – no matter how dire their circumstances, how impossible the rescue was, God would do it, again and again and again.  God was going to demonstrate that he actually was God.  That he was powerful and that he was good and that he was their God.  God orchestrates these events for the good of his people – so that they will be rescued, yes, but even more than that so that they would know his power to save.  It's for them, and for every generation of his people to follow that we would know how great our God is.

And God was also going to show it to Pharaoh, and to all Egypt.  That's what he goes on to say in chapter 7.  There he repeats the same theme as at the start of chapter 6, but this time the audience is not Moses, or Israel, but Pharaoh and Egypt.  Have a look:

NIV Exodus 7:1 Then the LORD said to Moses, "See, I have made you like God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron will be your prophet. 2 You are to say everything I command you, and your brother Aaron is to tell Pharaoh to let the Israelites go out of his country. 3 But I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and though I multiply my miraculous signs and wonders in Egypt, 4 he will not listen to you. Then I will lay my hand on Egypt and with mighty acts of judgment I will bring out my divisions, my people the Israelites. 5 And the Egyptians will know that I am the LORD when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring the Israelites out of it." 6 Moses and Aaron did just as the LORD commanded them. 7 Moses was eighty years old and Aaron eighty-three when they spoke to Pharaoh.

God's acts of rescue were also acts of judgement.  To those who acknowledge him he shows himself kind.  But to those who rise up in opposition him he shows himself powerful.  Both will see his power and be amazed – Israel as they escape from under the hand of their oppressor, Egypt as they pay the prize for their pride.

God's acts of power are often like that – lifting up the oppressed, but throwing down the oppressor, lifting up the humble, but humbling the proud.

Both friend and foe will learn that there is only one who can claim the title Lord.  Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the God who rescues, he is the LORD and there is no other.

I said at the beginning that the Exodus is a bit like that effect in Star Wars where the space ships just get bigger and bigger - we're told that things are bigger and more powerful and more fantastic than we can comprehend.  Those scenes worked by a trick of the lens – you put a tiny model very very close to a camera and it looks enormous.  Put two models the same size in the right place and one appears to tower over the other one.  You can keep repeating the illusion over and over again to create the impression that you've gone from a massive space ship to an impossibly large space station that dwarfs a planet.

But God doesn't rely on a camera trick.  He really is that massive.  A lot of people have read Exodus and said – impossible, they must be folk legends or magic tricks.  They said the same about Jesus.  But no, that's not what's going on here.  What's happening here is that the God who made everything we see and the things that are currently beyond our comprehension, pulls back the curtain of reality for a moment and reveals himself to us.

Consider with me the sheer size of God's works – The planet we live on is about 6, 400 km in radius – it's relatively small in our solar system.  The sun is about 109 times it's size.  Light from the sun travels at approximately 300 000 km a second – that's 671 million miles an hour to you – and at that speed it still takes more than 8 minutes to arrive at the surface of the earth.  Our solar system is estimated to be as much as 150 000 times the distance from the earth to the sun.  That's about 2 light years – 2 years of travel a 671 million miles an hour.  We're talking unimaginable distances.

But our solar system is just a small part of our galaxy – the milky way.  The milky way is measured at 100 000 light years across, and estimated to contain 200 – 400 billion stars.

And the Milky way is just a small part of the known universe.  Estimates vary, but Wikipedia says the upper estimates say there might be 100 billion galaxies in the known universe.

Those numbers are astonishing.  They may have been exaggerated for philosophical reasons.  Or we may find that they are only a small proportion of all that God has made.

Either way the universe is massive beyond our comprehension.  And the God who rescued the Israelites from Egypt made all of it.

And it was easy for him.

In the Christianity Explored video's Rico Tice says he holds it all together as we might hold a contact lens on the tip of our finger.  All that we see; the great unimaginable expanse of the created universe – it's immense beyond our imagination, and it's insignificant next to God.

It doesn't matter how big and powerful and wonderful you think God is – he's bigger than you think.  We will never exhaust the depths of the wonders and glory of our God.  We will never over estimate his power or might.

See we're supposed to learn from the Exodus.  There's all sorts of things we're supposed to learn, and we'll see a great many of them unfold as we get into the details of what God actually did to rescue his people.   But if we learn nothing else we must see this.  God is big enough to look after us.

There's any number of reasons why we doubt it day to day.   We're confronted with all kinds of things that seem so big and powerful and we're aware that we're small and powerless.  We meet people who really don't like us.  Some of us make enemies and meet opposition; the friend who would never become a Christian, the evil empires that will never fall; the religious hegemony of Islam, or of Buddhism, or Hinduism or what ever other religions hold nations captive; The work place that can never change, the habits of a lifetime that we're stuck with, the family that drives us to despair; the slide of England away from Christianity and into moral relativism; the culture of bullying at school; the promotion of sex outside of marriage and homosexual lifestyles in our schools; the free availability of abortion and consequent death of  the totality of suffering in the world; environmental disaster; the list goes on and on.  We know ourselves small in a big and dangerous world.  But our God is bigger and more powerful that we realise.  We can trust him to look after us.

God isn't impotent, powerless to help us.  God isn't unconcerned about our lives.  The exact opposite is true.  God is all powerful. And God is all good.  God is intimately concerned about you.  And about me.  And we can trust him to look after us, every one of us.  Let's pray.