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Preacher: Ross Macdonald Scripture: Exodus 6:10-30
Well, this morning we complete chapter 6, which we began last week with verses 1 through 9 as the second part of knowing the Lord. We had begun talking about knowing the Lord through His righteous judgment.
Then last week we saw how the Lord God answered the discouragements of His servant Moses. We saw that God answers His people's discouragements with His Word. His Word, of course, is His revelation first and foremost of Himself, of His character, of His purpose and plan, of the great work of His salvation.
And as He did with Moses, so He would do with us even today by His Word, renewing our focus, renewing our conviction, renewing our call by His Word, answering our needs, our desires, and our hopes. Calling back to chapter 3, we saw how the Lord responded to Moses.
First of all, He mentioned that He was the God who had appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. That is, He is the God of the covenant, the God who has been faithful to the fathers of Israel. He said, I have established my covenant.
He also says that not only is He the God of the covenant, but He's the sympathetic God of the covenant. He says, I've heard their groaning. He has an eye to the afflictions of His people. Therefore, as He says, I've remembered my covenant.
And then in the verses that followed, we saw these great I Am's, the sort of refrain throughout this whole passage, indeed, this whole chapter. I am the Lord. That, of course, calls back to the burning bush theophany where God revealed Himself as the great I Am.
And then also we had seven statements of what God would do.
I will.
And so a four-fold I am, a seven-fold I will, the perfect presentation of God as the covenant-keeping and faithful Lord and Creator. Now, this morning, as we begin verses 10 through 30, we're going to see that we're bookending the complaint of Moses.
And then in the middle, we have this genealogy. And it's been some time since we've seen a genealogy. So let's start with verses 10 through 13. The Lord spoke to Moses, saying,.
Go in.
Tell Pharaoh, king of Egypt, to let the children of Israel go out of his land. And Moses spoke before the Lord, saying, The children of Israel have not heeded me. How then shall Pharaoh heed me? For I am of uncircumcised lips.
And the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron and gave them a command for the children of Israel and for Pharaoh, king of Egypt, to bring the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt. So notice first that we begin with this charge from the Lord.
Go in. And then, of course, part of what they're going in to say is for Pharaoh to let the people go out. And we're going to see this interplay of the word go and this dynamic of inside and outside throughout the rest of Exodus, not only in terms of Pharaoh's court, but even in terms of the tabernacle.
Of course, that first word go is a very common command that's given by God. It's already something that has been given by God already up to this point, and it's something that will continue to be given by God.
Go.
That's a command that God gives to His people still today. What's Matthew 28, 19 say? But go. And we constantly need to be reminded, as Moses needs to be reminded, that we have a given command.
We have a charge from God to go as well. And so, a lot like Moses, we must go in and go out. We must go, therefore, for the work that God has tasked with us to do. For Moses, that task is to tell Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, to let the children of Israel go out of his land.
And I think John Gill is right to say that this command is repeated again to Pharaoh because God is about to act in judgment. In other words, it's already been established that the Lord God is approaching Pharaoh out of the desire for His people to be gathered in worship.
And that command by God is being repeated now because God is about to bring His judgment upon Pharaoh. And as we move to chapter 7, we'll see even further God will harden Pharaoh's heart for this very purpose, as Paul will say in Romans 9, that He might show His power in him.
Now, in verse 12, Moses responds to this charge from God. God says, go. God says, speak to Pharaoh. And Moses says, the children of Israel haven't heeded me. And if the children of Israel haven't heeded me, how is Pharaoh going to heed me?
I'm of uncircumcised lips. Now, that phrase is a very difficult phrase to understand. We have it here in the New King James. Same thing in the King James. I am of uncircumcised lips, N-I-V. Since I speak with faltering lips, N-A-S-B.
Since I'm unskilled in speech, C-S-B. Since I'm a poor speaker, N-E-T. Since I speak with difficulty. You get the idea. Every translation sees the uncircumcised lips as Moses' way of referencing his disability.
And again, this is all largely familiar from chapter 3. The great I am theophany and Moses' response.
How can I speak?
I'm not able to go to Pharaoh and speak.
I lack eloquence.
And here again, sort of deja vu. It's the same discouraged report. I'm of uncircumcised lips. Now, we assume that's what this reference is. I think that's right. Calvin, for instance, says, I refer this to his stammering.
If any prefer to understand it differently, I make no objection. In other words, he's like, that's the best I can do. You got something better, let me know. I think it's right, though. The lips certainly is metonymous for speech.
Often, you can use something as a symbolic value to represent an act. And so, lips here represent speech, specifically the speech of Moses. And they're uncircumcised. This is making a comparison between his speech and the way that Israel is perceiving him, the way that Pharaoh might perceive him.
And largely, this is saying that his speech, his ability to speak, won't be accepted. It's unprepared. It's useless to God. Because we have that same imagery in Jeremiah 9. For instance, a heart is described as, basically, unable to receive anything because it's uncircumcised.
In Jeremiah 6 .10, the ear is unable to receive things rightly because it's uncircumcised. And so, the idea is it's not able to function properly.
It's useless.
And that's what Moses is saying in this manner of speaking.
I have useless speech.
I'm not eloquent. I'm a stammerer. I'm afraid. I'm going to break down. I'm going to freeze up. I'm going to stutter my way through. You have no use for me to speak to Pharaoh. And I think John Gill's right to say, some think Moses expected to now have this obstacle removed.
In other words, he'd already brought it up in chapter 3. And God answered to him then, not in the way that perhaps Moses wanted. He said, I'm sending you even now Aaron, your brother. He will be your mouthpiece.
Maybe the prospect of that has really weighed heavily on Moses. Maybe, for good or bad reasons, he doesn't want Aaron to be involved. And so he brings this up again to the Lord and hopes the Lord is going to answer and say, oh yeah, you know what, I guess it's about time that I do something with that.
I'm going to give you all power in speech. All wisdom in speech. You will now roar like a thunderclap and have the eloquence of the brightest orators in Pharaoh's court. Everything that Moses would have wanted to feel better equipped.
But notice,.
The Lord doesn't answer Moses in this way. In fact, he doesn't answer Moses at all. If John Gill's right, and this is Moses essentially going to the Lord and saying, please remove this thorn from me. This is now the second, maybe even the third time I've asked, will you please remove this thorn from me?
And God is in a non-answer, answering, my grace is sufficient for you, Moses. Essentially, God says, moving on, go speak to the children of Israel and speak to Pharaoh, king of Egypt. And I just want to point that out because we often repeat the obstacles that the Lord has put in our lives and we keep bringing that up to the Lord.
We try to submit to it for a little while and then we bring it up again. Will you please remove this, Lord? And it seems that the Lord does not address it at all. It's just, no, keep on going the way that I've called you to go.
We're saying, do you realize how hard that is because of this thorn in my side? But notice that just like Paul and just like Moses and perhaps just like you this morning, God prefers not to take away the weakness, but rather to work through it.
I think that's a lesson that every Christian has to learn at one point or another in their life. God prefers not to take away the weakness, but rather to work through it. Verse 13, the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron and gave them a command for the children of Israel and for Pharaoh, king of Egypt.
Notice that Moses and Aaron, speaking of God's revelation, must speak not only to the children of Israel, but also to the king of Egypt. We're going to talk about this toward the end this morning, but I just want you to notice that the revelation of God is not exclusively for the church.
The revelation of God is not something that's designated for the ears of the Israelites only. You have My revelation. Go speak it not only to the children of Israel, but also to Pharaoh. Go speak it not only to those who are believers, those who are gathered unto My Word, but those who refuse to listen to My Word, who refuse to recognize My authority.
I have a charge for you, both to Pharaoh and to the children of Israel. Then in the second part of chapter 6, beginning in v. 14, we have genealogy. I won't take the time and interest of our time this morning.
I have something at the end I really want to get to. I won't take the time to read it. Partly, you all did so well pronouncing those names, especially our brother Tony. That was wonderful. It has been a while since we've read a genealogy at any length.
You remember how important genealogies were in Genesis. What we call the Toledoth. Another way of saying the generations. These are the generations of Noah. These are the generations of Shem. These are the generations of Jacob, and so forth.
Now the Toledoth structure is not as important as a structural device in the narrative of Exodus, but it is certainly important in terms of the continuity of what God is doing in history. There's a covenantal continuity that is shown forth in these generational tables.
It comes across as almost an awkward imprint within the narrative. It seems like we were just getting the ball rolling, and then Moses has this charge from God, and now why are we talking about all these names all of a sudden?
It's a major digression from the narrative. Certainly, it belongs here. It wasn't copy and pasted in by some later redactor because we have a sort of breaking off of the narrative, and then it's resumed as we get to the end of the genealogy.
And so we're kind of back on a level playing field, which begs the question, why this digression? Why now? Well, in part, chapter 6 in this genealogy marks the end of the first literary unit of the book of Exodus.
And the next major literary unit begins in chapter 7 through chapter 11, the plague narratives. And essentially, before we head into the plague narratives, we're given this genealogical table that belongs to Moses and Aaron, both where they came from, and then particularly with Aaron, who descends from him, particularly the Levites that would enter into priesthood when God delivers his people.
So it's a digression, but it makes a very important point. Well, first, just taking a look at the names and perhaps some significant aspects of it, we begin with an identical quote from Genesis 46, verse 10.
It begins essentially connecting the dots between the end of Genesis here to chapter 6 in Exodus. And we begin with the first sons of Jacob, Reuben, Simeon, Levi. When we get to Levi, there we have the descent of Moses and Aaron, so we go no further with the children of Jacob.
But we're reminded that Reuben had committed incest with his father's concubine in Genesis 35, and therefore he lost his allotment. Simeon and Levi were both guilty of that massacre at Shechem in Genesis 34.
And of course, we recognize that while Simeon also had consequences to that outrage and the blessing of Jacob, that Levi had been largely redeemed. And even here we see a testimony of that redemption in the descendants of Levi.
What had been given as a curse was now turned into a blessing. And this avenue of blessing through the priesthood would become a genuine blessing to the people of God in their time and foreshadowing to the great priesthood, which is the kingdom and type of the church and of course our great heavenly high priest.
And so in this great blessing of the privileged and exclusive service at the sanctuary of God, that's given to the tribe of Levi. We're also reminded that Aaron is the older brother of Moses. And a lot like Genesis, God's blessing and God's covenantal promise proceeds to the younger rather than the older.
Rather than following the ancient Near East custom of primogeniture, God moves to the lesser, to the younger, to the one who should not receive the blessing, that's who he desires to bless. And this is all to establish that God is the one who calls, God is the one who chooses, God exercises his sovereignty, not based on rights, not based on privileges, not based on merit or flesh or blood, but rather on his grace.
And we see that in the life of Moses. And this passage not only tells us about the ancestors of Moses and Aaron, but also of the descendants of Aaron. Nadab. Abihu.
Eleazar.
Phinehas. Names that we ought to know because of the mighty acts they did. We're also reminded of the stains of failure generationally. Korah. You get to number 16 and you read of Korah's rebellion. And so we're foreshadowing events from the book of Numbers, even here in Exodus 6, even as Exodus 6 causes us to look back at Genesis.
And you see how this is all part of the unified storyline of Genesis. And that unity comes through the covenant purpose of God. Within this we see, first, individuality. Individuality. H .L. Ellison says, when we look at history as a whole, we don't see the unnamed millions who lived and toiled in this world, whose very names were swept away by the onward march of time.
It's one of the great tragedies, isn't it, of being time-bound creatures. At the very end of our life, our whole entire life is summarized in the span of a few minutes. And then within the next generation, maybe only our name is remembered, and beyond that generation, our name is entirely lost to history.
Remember going to the monument, the memorial at the footprint of the Twin Towers. Of course, a very moving, beautiful monument where inscribed all along the imprint of those towers are the names of all those who were lost.
It's just a wall of names. Within each six-inch span of a name is the almost boundless complexity of a given day, of a given week, of a given month, of decades of life lived and people loved and desires fulfilled and unfulfilled.
And all the complexity and diversity and uniqueness, the peculiarity of that individual is now frozen on a plate that people walk by and there's no connection at all. Kind of like when we're reading this genealogical table, and most of these names are just names that we sort of smile at because we find them hard to pronounce.
They mean nothing more to us than that. But behind that little span on the page is a life that was lived with all sorts of diverse pressures and challenges and wonders and blessings. The peculiarity of an individual now, as Ellison says, lost in a sea of names.
It's a reminder to us that every person plays his or her part in the story of God. And therefore, every name is known by God. We may not know these fathers, but they're known to the Lord. We see here that an individual's life derives its greatness from the call of God.
History will not remember those names. Eternity will not remember those names unless their greatness has been established by God. Think about the peasants and the widows and the slaves whose names history has remembered forever.
And eternity will recount forever because they're written quite literally in the book of life. And then when we read the Scriptures, we recount their name and remember their faithfulness or their legacy.
When the powers that be are now collecting dust in the memories of civilization. So we see first and foremost individuality. And the call to recognize that greatness comes from the call of God and the work of God.
I want to connect that again at the end this morning. We also see communality. So individuality, communality. I mentioned that the sons of Simeon basically quote Genesis 46 .10. We're meant to see Genesis in line with Exodus 6.
And I love what Calvin says on this point. It's not without cause that Moses reasserts that their office was assigned to himself and his brother by the command of God. So that the Israelites would perceive they were rescued from their deep abyss by divine grace.
This wasn't Moses' great plan that he came up with one night out by the campfire in Midian. You know what I might do? Maybe this would work, you know? It sounds crazy, but I'm going to do it. It wasn't like the Doolittle raid on Egypt.
This was something that God had foretold, something that God had promised. And therefore, here we have the genealogy showing us that God is being faithful to His promise. So Calvin says, their minds were to be recalled to God's ancient covenant, that they might acknowledge their father's hope was not in vain.
And that's what this genealogy is doing. These are the fathers. And they lived in hope and they died in hope. And that hope was not in vain. The Deliverer, chapters 1 -6, has come. Prepare yourself for the deliverance, chapters 7 -15.
And so, as Psalm 77, verse 20 says, this shows that God led His people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron. It's God who's leading His people, both in 430 years of servitude and in the great liberation of the Exodus.
God leads His people like a flock. Then in verses 28 -30, we have the repetition of how we began, verses 10 -13. It came to pass on the day the Lord spoke to Moses in the land of Egypt, that the Lord spoke to Moses saying, I am the Lord.
Speak to Pharaoh, king of Egypt, all that I say to you. But Moses said before the Lord, Behold, I am of uncircumcised lips. How shall Pharaoh heed me? Now here, I don't think we're meant to see this as the next subsequent act where God is again reminding Moses to go, and Moses is again replying with the same complaints.
I think we're led by verse 28 to see this as simply catching us up to speed with where we had left off before the genealogy. Now why does the narrative do that? Because this is a contrast that must be held together with chapters 7 -11.
That we leave off the identity of the deliverer, Moses, basically in a situation of weakness and doubt. The last word to close out this literary unit is simply Moses' complaint, I am of uncircumcised lips.
How shall Pharaoh heed me? And now we anticipate the responsive act of God in chapters 7 following. So this is a refrain, a repetition of the earlier part of chapter 6. It sets up and emphasizes Moses' fear, and therefore we will sit back as chapter 6 began, and God says, I will show you what I am going to do to Pharaoh.
Now we, like Moses, sit back and wait for the hand of God to strike. But as we see even here, God is ultimately the one that is going to speak to Pharaoh. Now Moses is his mouthpiece. We start chapter 7 and he says, you will be as God to Pharaoh.
The repetition of the divine name here, however, underscores that it is God who is speaking. God who is confronting. Notice, it came to pass on the day the Lord spoke to Moses in the land of Egypt, right?
Referencing that earlier time. The Lord spoke this to Moses saying, I am the Lord. Speak to Pharaoh. So we establish that identity. I am, therefore, speak. Because of who I am and what I've promised and what I'm about to do, therefore, you speak.
And this is setting up a major confrontation in chapters 7 -11. Every new episode in these chapters will begin with the Lord saying to Moses. Every plague. The Lord said to Moses. The Lord said to Moses.
So the Lord is the one that is speaking through Moses to Pharaoh. Of course, Moses had already done that. Chapter 5 was Moses going into Pharaoh and speaking as from the Lord to Pharaoh. And what was Pharaoh's response?
Who is the Lord that I should heed his voice? That was the response of Pharaoh. Who is the Lord that I should obey him? And so we're left off at the end of chapter 6 anticipating God's response. Who is the Lord, Pharaoh says, that I should obey his voice?
And I want you to notice something very important. Pharaoh understood exactly what Moses was trying to get across. He doesn't say, who is the Lord that desires these Hebrew people to worship him? What is his name that my priests may inquire, that my diviners may consult the oracle?
No.
What does he say? Who is the Lord that I should obey his voice? So we have a showdown of absolute authority. Pharaoh, who is as a living God in the land of Egypt, recognizes if I in any way respond to the claim of Moses, I am essentially submitting to the authority of the God of Moses.
Who is that God that I should obey Him?
That's the issue.
So he sensed that Moses coming to him was a demand by the God of Moses for Pharaoh to obey. And that is the point he saw in this little three-day request that Moses was dancing around. Pharaoh saw right through that.
Am I such a one that must submit to the living God, the God of the covenant, with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? And of course, chapter 6 ends with the despair that chapter 5 ended with. Pharaoh hasn't listened to us.
And how is Pharaoh going to listen to us?
That's the refrain.
How shall Pharaoh heed me? And that's our question this morning.
How is Pharaoh,.
How are the powers that be,.
How is Caesar,.
In whatever manifestation he takes, how is Pharaoh going to heed us?
As God's mouthpiece.
As the church that wears the prophetic mantle and says, thus says the Lord. How is Pharaoh going to heed us? How does our mission prepare us and what does it require of us to confront Pharaoh in this way?
That's what we want to focus on.
Now let me say this.
In some ways, we're just ice skating across the surface of this question. We're going to be occupying and entertaining this question from chapters 7 -11. So I'm just laying down the first few building blocks.
I'm not exhausting the answer to that question. How shall Pharaoh heed us? This is more suggestive. This is more of an appetizer for the next four chapters. Let me lay down three things about our mission.
First of all, the nature of our mission, and then what that mission requires. Three points. First, the nature of the mission, and then two requirements of the mission. And again, this is just initial thoughts, initial steps toward this larger question.
The first point, the nature of our mission, I want to say this. Our mission is unchanging because God is unchanging. Our mission is unchanging because God is unchanging. If we've seen anything in chapters 5 and 6, we've seen the seesaw of Moses' conviction.
He's ready to go. He comes barreling out of Midian. He marches right up to the steps of Pharaoh. And as soon as he's dejected and he stumbles out of the palace and then he's rejected by the Hebrew foreman,.
He's done.
And now we see him again building up some conviction. God charges him to speak to His people. And there he goes to them and they still reject him. And he comes stumbling back again. And he begins to cry out to God again saying, I have uncircumcised lips.
You're sending the wrong guy.
This isn't going to work. Moses has already changed four different times in two chapters. But guess what? The mission hasn't changed. God's promise hasn't changed. We have no new information, no new plan, no new strategy that God lays down here at the end of chapter 6.
It's simply repeating what He had already given Moses to do. Now let me tell you, Christians, we have a great commission as well. And we, like Moses, seesaw between conviction to carry it out and setback from the discouragement, rejections from both without and within, and we stumble back and we say, Lord, is it time for plan B yet?
Let's try a different ministry.
Let's switch things up a little bit.
And we all need to know the plan hasn't changed. The mission hasn't changed. God does not change.
Notice how we begin this whole charge.
I am the Lord.
The great I Am bids us, brings us into His purpose, shows us and pulls back the curtains on the whole flow of global history. And He gives us a mission that corresponds from the very beginning of creation to the eschaton itself, from the very beginning of man and woman in the garden communing with God until that's realized in Revelation 22 at the very end of time history when God's people are gathered as a bride to dwell with Him in that Edenic bliss forever.
Within the span of that,.
God has a mission. God has a purpose. And it has not changed. Nothing has altered God's charge. Moses and Aaron are coming for new directions, new orders. Is there a way to wiggle out of this? And God still gives them the same charge.
Moses wanted to quit after the first setback, but notice that even in this, God is working in the heart of Moses. Not only is God preparing Moses to confront Pharaoh, God is also preparing Moses to lead His people through the discouragement of the wilderness.
And God is always working in the hearts of His people as they encounter rejection and setback both within and without. So it's not that the plan or the mission has changed so much as the opposition often changes.
And our levels of conviction and discouragement often change. And the way that God works in and through both of those things often changes. But it all corresponds to the unchanging plan of God. The singular purpose of God that was laid down in eternity past before the foundations of the world.
Moses is sent on his original mission despite the discouragement. We have been sent on our commission despite any discouragement we face. That commission does not change. We don't 2 ,000 years on say, well, the nature of the world is such.
The nature of news media and globalized economy is such. The technological sophistication of Caesar is such that it's time for a plan B. Suffer hardship with me, Paul tells Timothy. Like a good soldier of Christ Jesus, no soldier in active service entangles himself in the affairs of everyday life so that he may please the one who enlisted him as a soldier.
Soldiers have a mission to fulfill. There's all sorts of obstacles, all sorts of sufferings and hardships that come in the way of the mission. But the mission doesn't change. HQ doesn't say, what? You're facing an enemy?
Oh, well, abandon the mission. Oh, what? There's an obstacle in your way? Well, forget it. Let's just come back and we'll just rethink it all. No, the mission is the mission. Soldiers suffer casualties,.
But that's the calling of a soldier.
And Paul likens a Christian to a soldier, and particularly the way that soldiers must suffer for the sake of the mission. And so he invites Timothy, suffer hardship with me, Timothy. Suffer with me, Timothy.
One of the things that I've been ruminating about lately, and I think it's more complex, because when we're thinking about engaging the civil sphere, thinking about Christ's relationship to Caesar, it's easy to make a point that is an attempt to find the balance and have people who are on the extreme either reject that point or cheer for that point when you're not necessarily lined up with either extreme.
And I think especially, I realize I'm speaking somewhat ambiguously here, but I want to highlight what Paul invites Timothy to do as a good soldier. He doesn't say, Timothy, like a good patriot, pick up that musket and go take back our rights before they're lost forever.
I just want you to notice that he says, Timothy, suffer with me. Suffer with me. Now I'm weary of an extreme that I disagree with, cheering that sentiment on. Because in cheering it on, they mean, yes, yes, you've got it.
Circle the wagons, put your head in the sand, and suffer like a good soldier. I say, well, no, that's not really suffering like a soldier at all. If you're suffering like a soldier, it's because you're fulfilling the mission, and as you're fulfilling the mission, you're facing intense opposition.
So suffering is not a call for inactivity or passivity. Suffering is actually what comes as we're faithful to engage. But I simply want to highlight this cruciform picture that Paul invites Timothy to partake of the suffering that soldiers must face if they are to be faithful.
He says, don't be entangled with the everyday affairs of life. If you think in that way, if your weeks are preoccupied with everyday affairs, you're not thinking about the kingdom and the righteousness of God as a priority.
Don't be entangled by these things, he says. And what will it look like if you disentangle yourself from these kinds of thoughts? It will look like you're suffering like a faithful soldier.
He enlisted you, he says.
Make it your aim to please Him. That's where we're going in a few weeks at Camp Manadnock to consider this larger theme of pleasing God. Pleasing God. Make it your aim, he says, to please Him. So first point, the nature of our mission.
The mission is unchanging because God is unchanging. So what is this mission going to require? Again, just laying down initial building blocks. We're going to go a lot deeper and further in weeks to come.
But I want to highlight two things that I think are organic here in chapter 6. The first thing involves the genealogy. The mission is bigger than any individual or generation, but it requires individuals and generations.
That's the second point. The mission is bigger than any individual or generation, but it requires individuals and generations. There's something to say about the individuals within the genealogy and their faithfulness to lay down the promises of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and be faithful to that hope even though their whole lifespan was falling short of its fulfillment.
There's also something to say about that successive generational legacy that Moses is uniquely aware that he stands within. He traces down his lineage looking back to the faithfulness of his forebears so that he can look forward and seek to be faithful moving forward.
I was talking about this very point with Marty yesterday as he anticipated a sort of meeting of generations and we're outside New Life in the parking lot speaking to this. And I said something like looking back enables us to look forward.
Looking back to those who have come before us. Not speaking here necessarily of flesh and blood lines, though it may overlap if your forebears are believers, but speaking more of our spiritual descendants.
We look back so that we can look forward. We look back to their faithfulness and what they endured and where they persevered and also where they failed so that we can look forward in greater faithfulness with greater constancy.
We don't want to have a hope that is occupying this life only. We want to have a hope that goes beyond this life into the next generation. That has to curtail all sorts of secular middle class distractions.
Put another way, being mindful of our past encourages us to be faithful looking forward. We open the service with Psalm 106. We looked at verses 1 -5. Let me look at verses 6 -7. Because in the great call, in the great call to faithfulness, the psalmist then turns to a prayer of repentance.
We have sinned with our fathers, he says.
We've committed iniquity. We've done wickedly.
Our fathers did not understand Your wonders in Egypt. They did not remember the multitude of Your mercies. Just those two verses, what do you notice? First of all, there's an identity between the son and the father.
There's an identity between the generations. We have sinned with our fathers. In other words, the very areas that they failed, we have failed. Their sins are much like our sins. Like they committed iniquity, so we have committed iniquity.
We have done wickedly. So they're looking back to gain a sense of where they are. How did you speak of them in the past? How did you deal with them in the past? When we're no different from them in the past.
Then he says, our fathers did not understand Your wonders in Egypt. They did not remember the multitude of Your mercies. So again, we're brought into this generational cascade where the fathers are to Deuteronomy 6, tell their sons from the time they rise to the time they lay, and all along the day, and by the way, they're to speak of God, and to speak of His covenant promise.
But they did not remember the multitude of His mercies. So you have this dynamic of the forgetfulness of the past, the forgetfulness of the fathers, and the remembrance of God. Look at verses 4 and 5.
Remember me, O Lord, with the favor that You show to Your people. Visit me with Your salvation. Those things are equivalent. To be remembered by God is to be visited with God's salvation. That I may see the good of Your chosen.
That I may rejoice in the gladness of Your nation. That I may glory with Your inheritance. So the psalmist recognizes God is viewing these things successively. Your people, Your chosen, the nation, the inheritance.
This is language of succession. This is language of genealogy. And he says, remember me in the midst of it. Don't let me be forgetful. Let me look back and remember what You did. Let me consider what You've promised and what that means for my future.
And in the midst of me attempting to remember in both directions, Lord, remember me. Visit me with Your salvation. So what does that put on us? If Pharaoh is to heed us, well, it means it's not going to be putting weird khakis and blue polos and white scars over our face and marching, which seems very...
I don't know if you understand what I'm referencing. That seemed to be a plant or something fake. I don't see a lot of recognition. That's okay. You'll probably hear about it later this week. It doesn't mean we have to organize ourselves in a one-time march to the capital of D .C. and think, we did it!
We did it! It means individuals matter. Generations matter to this unchanging mission of God in the world. And though at unique times individuals and certain generations experience profound movement on God's redemptive purpose, for the most part, human history is a record of a faithful laying down and preparing of the next generation to face the greater threat with greater faithfulness.
That means that if Pharaoh is to heed us, we must be thinking generationally. We cannot be thinking, everything depends on what we can do in the next three years. We need to be thinking in terms of the next 300 years as much as we think of the next three years.
That doesn't mean, again, that we put our heads in the sand and circle the wagons. It just means that like the genealogy has shown us, God is very patient in the way that He rises up empires and topples them down.
Generations are like a breath to Him. The problem for the church is generations are like a breath to us too. We just don't even really think about it. We don't really endeavor or put a lot into the next generation.
It's no wonder that the church is decomposing from within even as it's being forced by the sort of barbarians from without. It's because of this very thing. We thought it would be one politician. We thought it would be one act, one movement, one revival that would bring about permanent change.
And we forgot that it's the generations that God uses in His unchanging mission in the world. How is Pharaoh going to heed us? Part of the answer is, He's going to heed our children and our children's children as we're faithful to Him.
How is Pharaoh going to heed us? Do we recognize that every household here on Mother's Day has the potential to be a quiver filled with arrows for the use of the Lord? That quiver is not to land you a program on TLC.
That quiver is meant for kingdom warfare. That quiver is meant for kingdom faithfulness, kingdom priority. It's not to have a larger version of the American Dream. What is the great hope of the persecuted church in the world today?
It's not some political leader. It's not some movement. It's not some uprising. It's preparing the next generation to prepare the next generation to prepare the next generation, all saturated with fasting and prayer and a beseeching of God to show forth deliverance.
It's just like the story of Exodus. And as American Christians, if we don't learn that lesson from Exodus, that lesson from our afflicted brethren, we will find the bondage to be very severe and cruel.
Our children are arrows. Something about the American Dream makes our children more like foam darts out of a toy gun. Our children are arrows. Little Johnny doesn't need to go off and find himself and decide what he wants to do with his life.
Little Johnny needs to be sharpened like an arrow in the hand of God. So the problem is, sometimes in our circles, we focus on making arrows but never sharpening the arrows. We've got ten kids and they're all dull arrows and they bounce off every target.
That's not good.
Don't have kids that you can't disciple. Be thoughtful about this. Having a quiver full of dull arrows is as useless as having one sharpened arrow or even no sharpened arrows in your quiver. We need quivers with sharpened arrows.
Now I'm not speaking necessarily to every family having as many children as there are. There's many ways to fill your quiver. The early church understood how to fill quivers with adopted children, orphaned children, unwanted children.
How to free slaves and sharpen them as arrows in this way. And the church needs to be thinking in these ways as well. This is not about curtailing a tick-talkable... Did I get it right this time? A tick-talkable version of the American dream.
We need to make arrows and sharpen them rather than make arrows that we never sharpen. Secondly, we need to sharpen them in order to send them. If we're thinking generationally in this way, we can't have a homeschool enclave here in the foothills of Barry and our children know the My Father's World curriculum from cover to cover and they're trivia geniuses and they've got all their T's crossed and their I's dotted because they write beautiful cursive because we're recovering the lost art and they're about as sharp as you could possibly be.
They can answer any theological dilemma from church history. They know how to speak confidently and assertively about any task. They're very sharpened but they're never sent. You have sharpened arrows in the quiver so that they can be sent out of that quiver for the kingdom purpose of God.
So making arrows without sharpening them is a problem. Sharpening arrows without sending them is a problem and be very mindful about what that sharpening involves then. The Romans were very good. They built their javelins, what they called the pilum in Latin, with sort of a narrow neck so it had a heavy wooden handle brace and it was bolted on with a rather thin iron neck with the spearhead affixed to it and the whole point was once that was thrown by the legionary, as it made impact, hopefully on one of the enemy soldiers, that iron neck would bend and it couldn't be picked up and thrown back.
And what I see with this term nowadays, exvangelical, are you familiar with this term, exvangelical? Those are a lot of sharpened arrows that are being sent back against the church and it's a fundamental failure of discipleship at the home level that we put any effort at all in having arrows to sharpen only to have them sent back at us.
And so we need to be very thoughtful about what that sharpening looks like which means it's not about having the next Fortune 500 COO. It's not about having well-accomplished young men and young women which is a cancer in the homeschooling circles.
It's the American dream baptized. Look what little Johnny did. He went and got his advanced degrees and he's very successful as an entrepreneur. That's wonderful. His fortune and his business perish with him.
He was not sharpened to be an entrepreneur. He was sharpened to be a faithful soldier of the Lord Jesus Christ to advance that kingdom to the end of the earth. That means that as soon as we are sharpened arrows, we look to find quivers that may produce arrows to be sharpened because we realize that Pharaoh must submit to the yoke of God.
Of course, recognizing that this is all the Lord's work. I'm simply speaking to what was obvious for two millennia of Christian history. But the lostness and blindness and spiritual darkness of modern life has alienated the very simple, natural, organic outflow of kingdom advance in this way.
There's a reason that we have Ephesians 5 and Ephesians 6. There's a reason that we have Colossians 3. This is how the church is meant to operate. Let us not be surprised that our nation is in the state it's in when these very things are being willfully ignored.
Now all of this is God's working. You may have a quiver if God chooses to give you that. You may have sharpened arrows in that quiver that are being sent. And it may be that even those faithfully sharpened arrows being sent into the very halls of Pharaoh's power do not have the intended effect.
They are not prayers that are answered, but rather, as we'll see in chapters 7 through 11, there's a hardening and there is judgment and judgment and judgment. You have still been faithful to what God is doing in terms of His mission even then.
I love what Vance Havner says on this point. It is not our mission to make the message acceptable, but to make it available. We're not to see that they like it, but that they get it. Send the arrows and leave the results to God.
Be faithful and leave the results to God. Faithfulness is not some lever machine that we can get the results we want. God is the one who's hardening and softening as He sees fit for His sovereign purpose in the world.
And that means, and please hear this, the mission is bigger than any individual, bigger than any generation, but the mission needs individuals and generations. Third point and last. The mission requires patience, prayer, and the mark of the cross.
Patience, prayer, and the mark of the cross. Sometimes persecution and hostility get so intense that we cannot speak, but we can always pray. That means that our prayer lives, and especially our corporate prayer life as a church here, needs to be more than a weekly medical report.
We won't be thinking through the week about kingdom priorities or the entanglements of everyday life if we're not praying together in a kingdom-minded, kingdom-oriented way. That's not to say that it's not a time to pray for health concerns.
It is.
And I love, sometimes I wonder, like, I'm feeling better. Who was praying for me? Like, I'm feeling okay today.
Who's been praying for me?
It's a good way to think. God encourages us to pray, and we have examples of prayer in this very way. So I'm not in any way saying we need less of that. What I'm saying is we need more of global, kingdom-minded, kingdom-oriented, civil sphere-engaging prayer.
That's the least we can do for the next generation, is to show that we care enough to even pray about it. The mission requires prayer in this way. At the NERF meeting, David Green, I had talked to him a few months ago, and I knew that he was going to do this, and I was very excited.
You've heard me mention Wang Yi, the now-imprisoned pastor of Early Rain Covenant Church in China, who's probably about halfway through his nine-year prison sentence. The authorities, of course, had forbid them gathering to worship, and all the saints there in Chengdu with their bright, visible name tags gathered.
The authorities came in. They took a crane to knock off the cross from the top of their building, and they arrested many leaders, including Wang Yi, and they arrested them under charges of state subversion.
So David Green introduced this book that I had mentioned a few months ago to the NERF group and highlighted sections from one of the essays that Wang Yi wrote, an address he wrote that he wasn't able to give in Jakarta, called History is Christ Written Large.
I want to read you some chunks from this because I find it so helpful.
He says,.
I was once arrested and brought to the police station. The officer there asked me, Have you ever engaged in activities that try to subvert state power? I asked whether praying counted as subversion, because I often pray to the Lord saying, Oh, Lord, we have been oppressed so hard.
Will you extend your arm and overthrow this regime tonight? Or are you going to harden the heart of Pharaoh so that your glory and power will be shown in the future? And I pray this way, Oh, Lord, you have millions of children in China, and we're all waiting eagerly for this day to come.
And so I asked the police officer whether prayers like this counted as subversion of state power. He thought for a moment and said,.
Then I said, Well, then there's nothing else, because prayer is the only weapon of the church. It's the atomic bomb of the church. It is because God has given us the power and channel of prayer.
That he calls us to be obedient,.
Even to unjust authorities. And then I recited Colossians 1 .16. The whole address was based on Colossians 1 .15 -17. Just where we end our memorization. You can keep reading the next three verses. For by him all things were created in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones, dominions, rulers, authorities.
All things were created through him and for him. David Green, I remember almost everything David Green says when he's speaking sort of extemporaneously, because I'm so moved by his faithful example and wisdom.
And he paused at this point and he said, Our lack of prayer is why we're pygmies. And I think he's right. I think that's true of me in my life. That's true of this church. And our church has a bigger weekly prayer meeting than most churches I'm aware of.
Churches three times this size. Our lack of prayer is why we're spiritual pygmies in this land. So then he goes on to talk and unravel the significance of Colossians 1 and the centrality of Christ. Remember, the address is history itself is all about Christ.
History is Christ, His person and work writ large. That's the point. But he's addressing it to the regime in China and the persecution of the church in China and also the compromising state-sanctioned churches in China.
C .R. Wiley made this point a few weeks ago. He said in the West here, even in our nation, the split we see between the state churches in China, the so-called T .S .P .M. churches in China, which are approved by the state as an official regime-approved version of Christianity where pastors are meant to study not only the Bible, usually an edited Bible, there's things you can't speak, but also the speeches of President Xi Jinping.
That's what the pastors are called to study. And they have to beat drums and sing patriotic songs, and so it's a harlot. It's no true church, and Wang Yi's all over that. But C .R. Wiley raised the point, here in the West we're going to see a similar divide, we're already seeing it, between the sort of culture-sanctioned Christian churches and those that are faithful and will not compromise the Word of God.
There'll be a culturally-approved form of Christianity here in the West, and there'll be the off-scoring, the enemies of the state, the people that don't really represent true Christianity. Not all Christians are like that.
What group are we in? If an individual is essentially ruled by a king who has resurrected from the dead, then what does it matter if he is now under an unjust government? This is still part of what Wang Yi is saying to this police interrogator.
I want to highlight for you again, and I'm going to come back to this in a moment, it's so significant, and I've noticed this throughout his writings, several of the essays that I've read from Wang Yi, he's always speaking about the resurrection, sometimes just almost effortlessly in a sentence.
He'll say, well, you know, no governor in China can raise me from the dead. He'll speak like that, and he thinks like that. The centrality of the resurrection for what he's facing and what he encourages from the pulpit is vital, and I want to come back to that point in a moment.
If an individual is essentially ruled by a king who has resurrected from the dead, what does it matter if he's temporarily under an unjust government? Just as a godly wife, who is essentially the bride of Christ, has a personal, real, and living relationship in life with the Most High, well, what loss does she have if in this temporary life she has to submit to an unreasonable husband on earth?
Since this light momentary affliction cannot impair that eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, then even the most unjust government over us in this lifetime is but a mosquito bite. 10 ,000 years are too long, so the world tries to seize the day, even the hour.
All the dreams of this world must be fulfilled before death. That's why the culture produces prophets of doom. Climate change now, there was some interview, this is what our public education system is producing, two teenagers on a sidewalk conversation saying, what we must do now is stop all farming, because that's driving climate change.
It's like, oh boy, Lord have mercy, stop all farming so that we don't die.
Woo, okay.
10 ,000 years are too long, the world is trying to seize the day and the hour, all the dreams of this world must be fulfilled before death. But Christ's love for us is more than 10 ,000 years. Only those who have been crucified with Christ on the cross may therefore live in humility.
Patience, prayer, mark of the cross, and yet in that humility have honor beyond all comparison. Live in poverty and yet be exceedingly rich. They can even live in death instead of being dead while living.
Do you notice how He's constantly sewing in the resurrection and the way He thinks and speaks about being afflicted as a Christian in China? He recognizes that not just believing the cross in terms of its atonement, that all sin, all guilt, the curse of the fall is removed and we have a righteous standing before God under the blood of the Lamb.
But recognizing that that's not the whole Gospel. It's not just Good Friday, but it's Resurrection Sunday, it's the empty tomb. And He puts His hope mostly in the resurrection when He speaks about being persecuted in China.
We don't speak about the resurrection in these ways. Probably because we're not persecuted. So our biggest affliction is the guilt we feel. And we highlight the cross and forget about the resurrection.
Better to understand all of that and keep the cross central but then see beyond the cross there's the hope of the resurrection. That's what's driving His ability to withstand all sorts of persecution.
To be patient, to be humble, to recognize that even if you kill me, I will yet live. Military veterans, they do these MilSim games. When they get back, they find it fun to use their training so they get paintball guns or airsoft guns and they create this little CQB environment and they do MilSim.
And I bet you they don't fight the same way when there's not real lead flying on the battlefield and real casualties in front of them, real shrapnel, real danger when you put your head around the corner.
If it's just a paintball, you might even be foolishly brave. You might do things you'd never dream of doing on a real battlefield. You might actually go and charge the front gate. You might run into the room almost recklessly.
Why? Because it's just a paintball. And if you get hit, you sort of respawn. And that's what Wang Yi is recognizing. There's no scenario in which you can defeat me. Kill me, I respawn. I have bravery, untold bravery.
I can run into the front gate now because the worst you can do to me just causes me to be resurrected anyway. The power of death has been removed now. Therefore, there's nothing, nothing that you, Pharaoh, can do to threaten me, ultimately speaking.
And then he says this. This is probably the most impactful thing I heard from this essay. The cross has shattered the curse that all dreams must be fulfilled before death. That's something we need to hear.
Do you have dreams?
Of course you have dreams.
It's not like we here in the affluent West have ambitions and desires, seek after comforts, certainly want to live a good and godly life, but also want to just live a good life, to be honest. Want to have what we need when we need it.
Want to enjoy our relationships and find blessing. We want to be successful. Do you think it's any different for our afflicted brethren? Do you think somehow they're born and they have no ambition, no desire for comfort, no desire to live a peaceable life, just to have good things, to not have to bear the cross?
Don't you think they're just like us? But do you see what this pastor is saying to them?
Look at what the cross has done.
It's shattered the curse.
That all your dreams have to be fulfilled in this life. It's okay to let your life go.
Because you'll get it back.
A hundredfold, a thousandfold, ten thousandfold. There's nothing that can be taken from you that won't be restored. We have ambitions. We have dreams. Jesus going to the cross says our dreams and our desires don't have to be fulfilled in this life.
We can bear the cross even if it's just because of the joy that's set before it. We sang it in the fourth stanza this morning. I wonder if it stood out to you in the way it did to me. The beginning of the fourth stanza from Trust and Obey.
But we never can prove the delights of His love until all on the altar we lay. We can't prove the delights of His love. We don't see them as delights if it's an altar. If there's an altar involved in this, there's going to be no delight.
Not only can we not prove it, we won't experience it. We won't experience it. Whatever dreams and ambitions and desires for comfort some of these men and women in Chengdu have had, I bet you they know something we do not know about the delights of His love.
The worship of state, government, and political leaders in our land has never been broken by the worship of Christ. This is in a section where he's reflecting on the difference between China as a nation and other nations, particularly America and the U .K.
And what he sees as the outflow of the Reformation and the first great challenge to monarchical power and the creation of constitutional republics. And he's saying China has never experienced anything like this.
We've never actually had the worship of Christ, even if it was just momentary, break the power of Caesar. And then he says this, I would go so far as to say even among the house churches in China, the faithful churches, we're still not convinced by Colossians 1, 15 -17.
So we still have fear and resentment of the Communist Party as our rulers. And not only binds the state approved churches, it also binds us. He says we have real fear. We're not thinking through Colossians 1, 15 -17 rightly.
For more than half a century we have obeyed the rulers, but our obedience has been less out of a free conscience in Christ. Kill me and I resurrect. My obedience to You is strategic. And he says even among our house churches, the suffering that we've borne, the obedience that we've shown, has not come from a free conscience in Christ, but out of the same fear and concern for our flesh as the rest of the nation.
Likewise, the hatred, the indifference in us is just like the rest of the nation. And it stops us from preaching the gospel with a fervent heart. And because we have a crazy ruler, few of us are crazy about the gospel.
In fact, he says, this is two years before he was imprisoned. In fact, not enough Christians have been imprisoned in China. Not enough of us have lost our jobs for believing in Jesus. Too few of us have been jailed for preaching.
Too few churches have been shut down by the government for meeting and worshiping in public. The number of the martyrs has yet to be fulfilled. The will of our inner man is not yet strong enough. The Chinese church has suffered too little, he says.
What do you think he would say about the American church? The Lord has given us too much, but we have given Him too little because the gospel has not completely removed our worship of Pharaoh. Just let us go back to slavery when things are a little bit easier.
We'll gather straw. This passage shows us that Christ as creator rules over everything, but Christ as our Savior was humbled to death.
And so between these two things,.
In His saving love, God provides the world a place where these things exist.
Two orders.
One is the order of God. The other is the order of Satan. And wherever and whenever these two orders are reflected in the world, one is the order of Christ, and the other is the order of Pharaoh. And the cross is the boundary between these two orders.
It's the only way that God in heaven connects to the present world and to the future of the world. Again, Christ is history written large, and the cross is the center of that. I'm coming to the end of my quote here, and to the real meat.
Beginning with the Exodus, every expansion of God's kingdom and history has corresponded to the most powerful empire on earth. In China, this pharaonic order that denies the sovereignty of God has never collapsed.
God has spent more than 100 years with unprecedented revolutions,.
Disastrous wars,.
Rises and falls of several regimes to break this ancient and sinful nation. But today, the order of Pharaoh is still very powerful, and it dominates the hearts of the people with its spirit-controlling power.
As a matter of fact, brothers and sisters, it gravely weakens our ability to preach the Gospel. And yet, God is still patient with us, so why can't we not be patient? Ultimately, we do not belong to our own countries.
We belong to the eternal power of God. Yes, we belong to a kingdom that is built on the blood of Christ on the cross. A kingdom that will reconcile all things to God. And the true mark that shows we belong to this kingdom of Christ is not our success, not our wealth, not our reputation, but the mark of the cross of Jesus on our bodies.
A mark that cannot be rubbed away, wiped off, or erased. For this reason, it's good for some of us to make money for the Lord, but it's better for others to be imprisoned. And it's good for many of us to live for the Lord, but it's better for others to die in the Lord.
At the end of presenting this essay, David Green said, the Lord has been so good to me, I don't know anything about suffering. To my knowledge to this day, I have not lost anything for the sake of the gospel.
What does Jesus say in John 12? Unless a seed falls to the ground and it dies, it is unable to bear forth fruit. Here in the American church, we don't need patriots to pick up the proverbial musket and reclaim what has been taken away.
We need Christian soldiers to partake of suffering and to bear the cross, and for many of them to fall into the ground and die like seeds so that fruitfulness can begin to emerge. Where these things are heeded, patience, prayer, and the mark of the cross, fruitfulness will abound.
We have not suffered, and we can't manufacture our suffering.
All we can do is be faithful.
With the kind of faithfulness that will bring suffering, and in that suffering will bear much fruit. And so my challenge to you is to not speak in some abstract generality like all on the altar lay. Because we go home and we don't lay anything on the altar because it's too hard to think about something so abstract.
Or we say I have laid everything on the altar. And we assuage our conscience when we've laid nothing on the altar. So my challenge to you is to think this day and this week concretely about something in your life, some use of your time, some privilege of resource, something that is right, maybe even good for you to have.
Is it something that you can put on the altar for the sake of the kingdom? Maybe it's something relatively small. Do it in a way that your children see it. We want children that grow up learning that the Christian life is a life of entering into hardship and sacrifice that's not begrudgingly torn away from us,.
But is freely given.
So that we can be faithful in forming generations that think sacrificially and look at their resources sacrificially and are kingdom-oriented in the way that they live their lives. We don't want sharpened arrows to stay in the quiver.
We don't want entrepreneurs and high IQ and high standardized tests completing homeschool kids. We want the order of Pharaoh to collapse. We want the curse to be removed. We want God in His fullness to be all in all.
Amen? Let me close in prayer with the prayer that our brother Wang Yi who's imprisoned this very morning prayed in 2017 when he closed out this essay. O Lord, may You grant this society to Your church, or else allow me to leave this world and be with You.
O Lord, may You grant a great revival to Your church, and if not, let my tongue stick to the roof of my mouth. O Lord, raise up a large number of servants who are faithful to Your kingdom to face a new round of persecution or make them lose their churches and their high positions within them.
O Lord, may You choose and call innumerable missionaries, planters, evangelists who work in and out of season going into the cities and the villages until the Gospel fills every prison and jail. Or take away our properties.
Take away our degrees. Take away our middle class lifestyles. Lest one day we come to meet You only with these things. Lord, enable us to give money when we have money to give. To give lives while we still have lives to give.
Let us be passive and non-cooperative in society, but active in preaching of the Gospel. Let us not envy the wicked nor fear the powerful. Let us not sing the songs of Babylon nor worship the image of Nebuchadnezzar nor wink at sins whether theirs or ours.
Lord, hear this urgent yet imperfect prayer of Your child in the holy name of our Lord, Jesus Christ.
Amen.