"How Shall Pharaoh Heed Us?"

The Lord’s Covenant Faithfulness and Moses’ Discouragement

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.

Go.

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.