Digging in Deeper: Exodus 11:1-3

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“The Lord said to Moses, ‘I will bring one more plague on Pharaoh and on Egypt. After that, he will let you go from here. When he lets you go, he will drive you out of here. Now announce to the people that both men and women should ask their neighbors for silver and gold items.’ The Lord gave the people favor with the Egyptians. In addition, Moses himself was very highly regarded in the land of Egypt by Pharaoh’s officials and the people.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

If you are a parent, have you ever finally gotten so frustrated with your child’s refusal to do something you wanted them to do that you finally lost it and shouted something silly like, “You’re going to do it, and you’re going to like it too!”? Pharaoh didn’t want to let Israel go. The very idea of his doing that was ludicrous to him. He had subjugated them, not the other way around. Why on earth would he accede to their God’s demands to release them? He was clearly the more powerful god or else he wouldn’t have been able to do that. As God prepares to give Moses the instructions for the final plague to share with Pharaoh, He basically says, “Pharaoh is going to let you go, and he’s going to like it.” Let’s talk about what’s going on here.

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A Simple Matter

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This week we are wrapping up our series, The Story of Us. This final part won’t take us to the end of Luke’s narrative of the early church in Acts, but rather to the halfway point. From here his focus shifts from the church itself to Paul and his missionary journeys. This halfway point marks what is perhaps the most significant moment in the story. The question on the table was frightfully important: just how complex a thing was following Jesus going to be? The debate was fierce, but in the end, they decided to follow Jesus in making it a very simple matter. Let’s see together how this all unfolded and what exactly it means for us. Thanks for reading and sharing.

A Simple Matter

Have you noticed that things tend to get more complicated over time? If you haven’t, perhaps some examples would help. Let’s start with the tax code. The original 1913 income tax law was 23 pages long and took about 400 pages to explain. Today, the tax code comes in at about 70,000 pages of text. No wonder politicians from both sides of the aisle regularly promise to reform and simplify things! Or consider a business. Apple started with two computer nerds in a garage. Today it is the most valuable company in the world, employing thousands of people, and is vastly more complex than it was in 1976. Or perhaps consider…churches. Most churches begin very simply. They have a vision and a message. Then over time they add programs and committees and policies and by-laws and buildings and furniture pieces and ministries all of which become enshrined both in structure and in placement such that the message and vision become a mere sideshow to the main event of tradition. And tradition is a complex thing. 

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Keeping the Main Thing the Main Thing

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A little something different for you this Friday. I had the chance to see Disney’s new movie, The Haunted Mansion, last weekend, really enjoyed it, and will plan to review it next Friday, Lord willing. Today, though, I wanted to share with you a bit of inside baseball. Yesterday I was invited to deliver a message to our local Baptist association’s monthly pastor’s gathering. It gave me the chance to say to a bunch of pastors some things I think a bunch of pastors needed to hear. I shared with them some thoughts on how to go about keeping the main thing of the church (the Gospel) the main thing of the church. What I had to say may not be what you expect. Read on to find out what three suggestions I had with the help of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthian church.

Keeping the Main Thing the Main Thing

Karl Barth was one of the giants of Christian theology in the 20th century. That doesn’t mean he was always right—he very often was not—but in terms of the people who shaped Christian theology in a profound way and whose influence absolutely cannot be ignored when taking stock of how the world thinks about God today, Barth sits on a very short list. Now, in spite of that, I’ll be the first to admit that my knowledge and understanding of Barth’s theology is pretty limited because his influence tended to be much stronger outside the evangelical world, but neither was he simply a theological liberal. He carved out his own space on the theological map. 

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Digging in Deeper: Exodus 10:27-29

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“But the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he was unwilling to let them go. Pharaoh said to him, ‘Leave me! Make sure you never see my face again, for on the day you see my face, you will die.’ ‘As you have said,’ Moses replied, ‘I will never see your face again.'” (CSB – Read the chapter)

We’ve danced around this idea several times now over the course of our talking through the various plagues God unleashed on the Egyptians because of Pharaoh’s refusal to let the Israelites go worship in the wilderness. (Have you noticed that a three-day trip to the wilderness to worship God is still all Moses has been asking for and not total emancipation?) Today, it’s time to tackle it head on. This is a deeply uncomfortable idea, but it has been repeated now several times. What does it mean that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart? Did Pharaoh harden his own heart? What is going on here? Let’s see what kind of sense we can make of out this.

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Digging in Deeper: Exodus 10:21-24

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“Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Stretch out your hand toward heaven, and there will be darkness over the land of Egypt, a darkness that can be felt.’ So Moses stretched out his hand toward heaven, and there was thick darkness throughout the land of Egypt for three days. One person could not see another, and for three days they did not move from where they were. Yet all the Israelites had light where they lived. Pharaoh summoned Moses and said, ‘Go, worship the Lord. Even your families may go with you; only your flocks and herds must stay behind.'” (CSB – Read the chapter)

The summer after we moved to where we live now, there was a total solar eclipse that was almost fully visible from here. You had to go a bit further west to experience the moment of actual darkness, but it was pretty cool to look at through the special lenses we had. And the dimming of the light of the sun was wild. It was an interesting reminder of just how powerful the sun is. A great majority of it was blocked out and yet it was still mostly light. The penultimate plague God brought to the people of Egypt was darkness. It has always seemed to me to be a bit out of place as compared with the others, especially the ones that came just before it. Let’s talk about what is going on in this second-to-last plague, and why it was almost effective enough by itself to accomplish God’s purpose.

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