If you know the story of Cain and Abel, it’s an infamous passage in the Bible where an older brother takes the life of his younger sibling. Because Cain becomes such an infamous figure, it’s easy to let his reputation precede his story. But when we do that, we miss out on some important nuance to Cain’s story: namely the great hope that was placed in him.
Tag: gospel
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East of Eden – Genesis 4:1-16
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The First Gospel – Genesis 3
It’s hard to even imagine what a world without sin would look like. Since the fall of man, every aspect of life and of our world has been affected by sin. As we’ve studied creation, sin has loomed over the story of God’s good world. In today’s passage, we look at the downfall of man and the first sin. But it’s a passage which is also hopeful. While there are severe consequences, it is the first place in the Bible that tells us of the gospel and of a future offspring of the woman who will finally and forever crush the serpent.
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Sermon: The Garden of Heaven – Genesis 2:4-17
From the beginning, God has been making a sacred space for people to dwell in his presence. Humanity was created in God’s unmitigated presence in Eden. Because of the fall, we were cast out. The story doesn’t end there. Throughout the Bible and human history, God is using the creative elements of Eden to continually point back to himself and to his gospel and our ultimate hope through Christ.
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Sermon: Studying the Exodus plagues – Hail. Exodus 9:13-35
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Sometimes we ignore warning signs.
Pharaoh was given several.
A person ignores the check engine light, ignores something a doctor tells them.
CEO’s ignore warning signs of issues in their companies.
Cyber security experts warned Equifax that their data was vulnerable and could be easily breached. They didn’t listen and they were hacked. The data breach compromised the data of 145 million Americans.
Companies like General Motors and Toyota have been warned about safety issues in cars and ignored whistleblowers.
Pharaoh has seen his kingdom turned upside down by a series of plagues and yet continues to resist the one thing that has brought the promise of relief.
Sending the Israelites into the wilderness.
We’re continuing in the plagues of Exodus. This morning, we look at the seventh. Hail.
In many ways, a tremendous hailing thunderstorm SEEMS like the stereotype for a good plague. The heavens opening up and unleashing destruction.
And with that, we’ll jump right into our passage this morning.
- Pharaoh warned
Beginning in verse 13:
13 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Rise up early in the morning and present yourself before Pharaoh and say to him, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of the Hebrews, “Let my people go, that they may serve me.
So as we saw in the first and the fourth plagues, Moses is instructed to confront Pharaoh in the morning.
There’s actually a pattern to the plagues where they go in three cycles, each consisting of three plagues.
And across the plague cycles, there are similar patterns to the first plague in each of the three cycles. There are similarities to the second plague in each of the three cycles. And there are similarities to the third plague in each of the three cycles.
So the first nine plagues are in these cycles of three. The tenth and final plague is totally separate from what comes before it.
As we’ve talked about various creation themes in the Exodus, I also think it’s interesting how much order there is to the plagues. Genesis gives an orderly creation. Exodus gives an orderly uncreation.
Before we continue in our text, I have a question.
Why?
Who has this all happened?
What’s this all been for?
This is the seventh plague.
There will still be three to come.
Ten divine judgments from the Lord upon Egypt.
Why?
Why didn’t God just free the Israelites?
Why didn’t he just teleport them from Egypt to the promised land?
Why didn’t he just strike Pharaoh dead and have a new Pharaoh who would be more sympathetic?
Why didn’t he just start with the last plague first and have Israel freed then?
So often, I hear people ask why God does the things he does.
A person praises God for being healed of a disease.
Someone else asks “why’d God give it to you in the first place?’
A person talks about God’s protection in being rescued from a natural disaster.
Someone else asks why God allowed that to happen in the first place.
So often, we want to ask why God allows any bad things, but we never question why a God gives sinful people in a fallen world any good things.
Whenever we look to why God does something for his people, a person can always ask why God didn’t do things differently.
But verse 15 says something very important.
15 For by now I could have put out my hand and struck you and your people with pestilence, and you would have been cut off from the earth. 16 But for this purpose I have raised you up, to show you my power, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth.
Let’s not overlook this.
I want to read it again. This is what the Lord had said to Pharaoh.
I could have put out my hand and struck you and your people with pestilence, and you would have been cut off from the earth.
God is saying “I could have wiped all of you out.”
Verse 16 begins: But for this purpose…
But for this purpose all of this is happening.
But for this purpose I haven’t wiped you out.
But for this purpose I’ve brought these plagues.
The Lord says: But for this purpose, I have raised you up, to show you my power, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth.
God is doing all of this to show his power and for the glory of his own name.
Is that vain to do?
The gods of our age
The Egyptians had their pantheon. They had their gods for various areas of life.
They had gods for the things that they valued. The river was central to their lives, so they had gods of the Nile. Family was important, so they had fertility gods. They cared about the afterlife too so they had gods of life and death. Their agriculture mattered to them so they had gods of the crops, gods of the livestock.
Our world makes up gods too.
We think we’re so different from ancient peoples.
Everyone, regardless of if you’re the most devout person of faith or the most ardent atheist, everyone has something that they value above all other things.
And whatever that thing is is your god.
In our day, we can worship family, money, success, accomplishments, pleasure, leisure, possessions, security, health, politicians, celebrities, and sports. Just to name a few.
Those are the areas where we can put our hope, where we can try to get our meaning, and the things and people that we can glorify.
None of those things are bad in themselves.
But they all make bad gods.
And so God has kept the Egyptians alive, he’s kept Pharaoh alive for the purpose of his own glory.
Because in the Exodus, God is glorified both in his redemption of the Israelites, in his signs, in his sparing of the Israelites, in parting the waters of the Red Sea, in leading the Isrealites in their wanderings, in being faithful to his covenant promises.
God is glorified in all of that.
But he is also glorified in his judgment against Pharaoh.
God’s name is proclaimed throughout the whole earth because of these plagues.
Why ten?
Ten is pretty hard to ignore.
One could be ignored.
Two might be thought of as a coincidence.
But God brings ten blows upon Egypt and upon Pharaoh leaving no doubt that he is the Lord.
We’ve talked a lot about how the plagues confront the Egyptian pantheon of gods. In doing ten plages, that gave God even more opportunities to show his power over the false gods of Egypt.
So in both his redemption of the Israelites and in his judgement upon Egypt, God’s name is being proclaimed, God is being glorified.
All men will bring God glory in the end. You will bring him glory through being an example of his grace or you will bring him glory through being an example of his righteous and holy judgement.
And so yes, God could have crushed Pharaoh right from the start but he has not because he is concerned about his glory.
God’s concern for his glory is something that some people don’t like.
If God is infinite, why does he care about his name going out in the world?
Isn’t that insecure?
C.S. Lewis gives some helpful insight in his book “Reflections on the Psalms.”
This is a long excerpt, but I think it’s incredibly powerful and helpful.
C.S. Lewis
Lewis says:
“The miserable idea that God should in any sense need, or crave for, our worship like a vain woman wanting compliments, or a vain author presenting his new books to people who never met or heard of him…”
Lewis goes on to say:
“Even if such an absurd Deity could be conceived, He would hardly come to us, the lowest of rational creatures, to gratify His appetite. I don’t want my dog to bark in approval of my books….”
“But the most obvious fact about praise – whether of God or anything – strangely escapes me. I thought of it in terms of a compliment, approval, or the giving of honour. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise unless (sometimes even if) shyness or the fear of boring others is deliberately brought in to check it.”
“The world rings with praise – lovers praising their mistresses, readers their favorite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favourite game – praise of weather, wines, dishes, actors, motors, horses, college, countries, historical personages, children, flowers, mountains, rare stamps, rare beetles, even sometimes politicians or scholars. I had not noticed how the humbles, and at the same time most balanced and capacious minds, minds, praised most, while the cranks, misfits and malcontents praised least…”
I’ll pause from the quote for a moment.
So what Lewis is saying is that he used to think of God like a woman needing to be complimented, but he realized that truly enjoying anything ultimately results in praise.
We praise what we love.
Lewis says:
“I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completed the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed. It is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not to be able to tell anyone how good he is; to come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it no more than for a tin can in the ditch; to hear a good joke and find no one to share it with.”
Lewis says that “the worthier the object, the more intense the delight.”
And one final quote from a few paragraphs later, Lewis says “The Scotch catechism says that man’s chief end is ‘to glorify God and enjoy him forever.’ But we shall then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy him.”
The byproduct of knowing and loving an infinite, almighty, eternal, holy, and righteous God is that we glorify him.
Because to glorify anything else is to glorify something less than God. That is first of all sin, but it is also aiming short of what is greater. ,
Verse 17, the Lord says to Pharaoh:17 You are still exalting yourself against my people and will not let them go. 18 Behold, about this time tomorrow I will cause very heavy hail to fall, such as never has been in Egypt from the day it was founded until now.
Once again, we see God’s power that he can predict the timing of this plague.
But even in this warning, the Lord tries to give some gracious advice.
- The Egyptians warned
19 Now therefore send, get your livestock and all that you have in the field into safe shelter, for every man and beast that is in the field and is not brought home will die when the hail falls on them.” ’ ”
So they’re warned about the great hailstorm that’s coming and also warned to bring the livestock into some sort of shelter.
It’s also ironic that the passage tells them to “send” their livestock into shelter.
We saw in a previous plague that Pharaoh sent people to investigate the effects of one of the plagues in Egypt yet he wouldn’t send the Israelites into the wilderness.
Here, he’s told to send his livestock into shelter.
But still he won’t send the Israelites into the wilderness.
They’re all continuing to use the same Hebrew word for send.
Verse 20:
20 Then whoever feared the word of the Lord among the servants of Pharaoh hurried his slaves and his livestock into the houses, 21 but whoever did not pay attention to the word of the Lord left his slaves and his livestock in the field.
It’s interesting that among Pharaoh’s servants, some do believe in the Word of the Lord here. Some take the advice and do bring in the animals.
Now the phrase that they feared the word of the Lord is found only here in the entire Old Testament.
The Bible talks a lot about a fear of the Lord.
But here, it talks of a fear of the Word of the Lord.
Does that mean that they had faith?
I don’t know if the text gives us enough to say that definitively, but as I’ve pointed out before, Exodus tells us that there were at least some Egyptians who did become followers of the Lord.
When the Israelites prepare to leave Egypt in Exodus 12, the passage refers to a mixed multitude.
Exodus 12:37 mentions the Israelites:
37 And the people of Israel journeyed from Rameses to Succoth, about six hundred thousand men on foot, besides women and children.
But then the following verse says:
38 A mixed multitude also went up with them, and very much livestock, both flocks and herds.
The point is that there are people who are not ethnically Jewish who are part of the Exodus.
And there will be other references to non-Israelites.
Exodus 12:48:If a stranger shall sojourn with you and would keep the Passover to the Lord, let all his males be circumcised. Then he may come near and keep it; he shall be as a native of the land. But no uncircumcised person shall eat of it
So what that’s saying is that if a non-Israelite male wants to become Jewish, once he’s circumcised, he will be treated just like any other Israelite.
And then there are people who are not Israelites that we see elsewhere in the Bible.
Melchizedek, Caleb, Rahab, Ruth, the Queen of Sheeba, the Samaritans, among others.
Even in the Old Testament, when you have a defined people of God in Israel, there is still a message for the world that God can redeem them.
The New Testament has much less emphasis on a specific land, but instead focuses on a gospel that is for the whole world.
And it’s possible that we get one of the earliest glimpses of this in Exodus 9 as some of Pharaoh’s people begin to take seriously the Word of the Lord.
In following his instruction, it does show a certain deference to God.
So some Egyptians take the word seriously. Their livestock is protected.
Others disregard the warning of a storm.
Keep in mind that the threat of a thundering hail storm would seem just about as probable in the middle of Egypt as we would feel about being told a volcano was going to erupt and cover us all in ashes.
That might be a slight exaggeration, but not by much.
The part of Egypt that the Exodus events are taking place in receives on average far less than an inch of rain per year, and sometimes no rain.
So our idea of a big summertime thunderstorm is pretty rare there.
But with seeing the other plagues, even as improbable as a hailstorm might have seemed, some took it seriously.
We come to our third scene.
The plague.
Seventh plague: hail
Verses 23-26:
23 Then Moses stretched out his staff toward heaven, and the Lord sent thunder and hail, and fire ran down to the earth. And the Lord rained hail upon the land of Egypt. 24 There was hail and fire flashing continually in the midst of the hail, very heavy hail, such as had never been in all the land of Egypt since it became a nation.
25 The hail struck down everything that was in the field in all the land of Egypt, both man and beast. And the hail struck down every plant of the field and broke every tree of the field. 26 Only in the land of Goshen, where the people of Israel were, was there no hail.
Incredible destruction.
Thunder.
The passage says lightning ran down from heaven. I take that to mean lightning.
And hail.
I once saw a hailstorm when I was at Trinity basically cover the ground in a couple minutes.
It was unlike anything I’d ever seen before.
A few things to note about this seventh plague. Hail is often seen in the Bible as a sign of divine judgment. We see that in books ranging from such as Joshua, Psalms, Isaiah, and Ezekiel.
The passage says that the hail destroyed crops, but it’s actually the same Hebrew word for vegetation that’s used in creation, once again showing the uncreation that is happening in the plagues.
And as we again have seen in other plagues, this is an attack on various Egyptian deities over the sky and over weather.
The Lord is showing his power over all of them.
Pharaoh wants to talk to moses.
Verse 27:
27 Then Pharaoh sent and called Moses and Aaron and said to them, “This time I have sinned; the Lord is in the right, and I and my people are in the wrong.
Now that’s very significant. Pharaoh acknowledges sin.
Now we will see that this is short-lived, but it’s interesting that he even begins to acknowledge that his own actions are wrong.
Repentance matters.
But just saying sorry or saying you’re wrong is not repentance.
Repentance also involves a change.
Pharaoh asks Moses to plead with the Lord to stop the storm. He says I will let you go, and you shall stay no longer.
In verse 29, Moses says that he will plead with the Lord.
“As soon as I have gone out of the city, I will stretch out my hands to the Lord. The thunder will cease, and there will be no more hail, so that you may know that the earth is the Lord’s.
Moses does this.
And the chapter ends in verse 34-35:
34 But when Pharaoh saw that the rain and the hail and the thunder had ceased, he sinned yet again and hardened his heart, he and his servants. 35 So the heart of Pharaoh was hardened, and he did not let the people of Israel go, just as the Lord had spoken through Moses.
Pharaoh had indicated that he was repentant but when it came to putting that repentance into action, we see that he again reneges on the deal.
Conclusion
The Lord does not desire empty words or meaningless repentance.
He doesn’t want empty acknowledgement while we’re still totally going to do what we want and continue in sin.
He desires followers who will come before him in worship and reverence.
He desires faith.
God wants us to recognize our sin and our need for his grace.
As David said in Psalm 51:17:
17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
And the good news of the gospel is that Jesus welcomes us to come to him.
Though we have hard hearts, he promises to remove the heart of stone and give us a heart of flesh.
Jesus welcomes us to find grace, and life, and forgiveness in him when we come to him.
Thanks for listening. I hope this sermon was a blessing. If you liked it, please share and subscribe!
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Why John the Baptist’s purpose is our purpose too. Exploring John 1:29-34
John the Baptist came to point to Christ, to witness to Christ, to be the bridge between BC and AD.
In John 1:29, John the Baptist sees Jesus.
The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
It’s very possible that John himself did not realize the full magnitude of what he was even saying when he uttered those words.
But it’s impossible for a Christian to miss the meaning. Behold, John commands. Look to Jesus. Look upon the lamb who takes away the sins of the world. A profound theological statement about Jesus and what he did.
Sacrifice and the lamb
Jesus is the perfect and spotless lamb who is sacrificed for sins. It’s a theme that we will see throughout John’s Gospel.
Many of the Old Testament sacrifices call for a lamb. Isaiah 53 has a passage of the suffering servant and talks of a perfect lamb being led to slaughter. There’s the Passover sacrifice where the Israelites scarified lambs before the Exodus and where it was an annual holy day.
And here Jesus is called the Lamb of God.
The ultimate and greater sacrifice. He’s the lamb who takes away the sins of the world. It’s not that sin is just written off or no longer matters. Just the opposite. Sin matters a great deal but it is Jesus who takes away sin, takes away the penalty for our sins.
He takes away the sins of the world. That’s not saying that he takes away the sins of every individual person. John talks about “the world” several times in his gospel and other writings. It is Jesus who bears the penalty for a fallen humanity and for everyone who believes in him.
John the Baptist continues speaking in verse 30: This is he of whom I said, ‘After me comes a man who ranks before me, because he was before me.
This is similar to verse 15. There John said: ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.’
And what John is doing is looking back at his early prophesy, as pointing to one who was greater than him and he sees Jesus, and he says “this is that man.” John gets at his specific purpose.
Verse 31: I myself did not know him, but for this purpose I came baptizing with water, that he might be revealed to Israel.”
Where John says he did not know Jesus, don’t get too caught up in that. The point isn’t that John the Baptist literally did not know Jesus but that he did not previously know Jesus for who he was: the promised messiah. John was called to baptize so that the savior of the world would be revealed. That’s not primarily about John, it’s about the Lord and the divine plan.
John’s call to repentance, John as the voice of one in the wilderness, John as a witness to Jesus, all of this was part of the divine plan for John’s ministry and purpose in the world as the forerunner to Jesus.
Verse 32: And John bore witness: “I saw the Spirit descend from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. 33 I myself did not know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, ‘He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’ 34 And I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God.”
This is referring to when Jesus was baptized.
All four gospels agree that John was a witness to the Holy Spirit descending on Jesus. The Holy Spirit is another significant theme of the Gospel of John. Jesus promises to give the Holy Spirit to his believers in John chapters 14, 15, and 16.
In the Old Testament, there were passages that talked of the Spirit being with God’s anointed one.
Isaiah 42:1:
Behold my servant, whom I uphold,
my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my Spirit upon him;
he will bring forth justice to the nations.
There are others, but just to give a sense of it. John sees that moment. We see Jesus: fully God and fully man having the Spirit descend on him. I used to think “why would Jesus need the Holy Spirit when he’s God?
But I was asking the wrong question. “Why wouldn’t Jesus need the Holy Spirit?”
All three persons of the Trinity are God. All three of them work in perfect unity. They are all equal in eternity, holiness, glory, and power.Again, Jesus is both fully God and fully man, but it is because he is fully man that he needs the Spirit.
And just as he enjoyed fellowship with God during this ministry, because Jesus is also fully God, it makes sense that Jesus would likewise enjoy the fellowship of the Spirit during his ministry.
John sees this moment. He’s a witness to the Spirit descending upon Jesus. And John says in the text that He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.’
The same Spirit who filled Jesus during his ministry is given to all people because of Jesus’ ministry. The Spirit equips us with gifts, convicts us of sin, sanctifies us to God.
Romans 8:16 says that the Spirit bears witness that we are children of God.
The Spirit bears witness to those who believe. The one who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than John the Baptist. Because we’re blessed to have more of the story.
We have the risen lamb.
Believe in the lamb. Turn away from sin. Point others to him.
Final thought
John the Baptist had a ministry to do for a time in history.
He was not perfect. He was just a man. He lived a shorter life than Jesus. Much of his life was spent in seclusion.But he was faithful.
Yes, we don’t have the ministry that John the Baptist had.
He had a once in history ministry. He was the forerunner to Jesus.
But just because someone has a different ministry or a different way to serve, that doesn’t mean that the ways you can serve the Lord are insignificant. No one would know who John the Baptist was without Jesus. Jesus is the thing that gives relevance and meaning to his life.
But for anyone who’s a follower of Jesus, that’s the case. It’s Jesus who gives meaning. John’s ministry was to point people to Jesus. But that’s the ministry in which every follower of Jesus still shares in.
Pointing people to Jesus in word and deed. Following where the Lord leads. Walking in faith. Standing up for the truth of God.
Those things are a call which all Christians share.
In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus talks of John the Baptist and says:
I tell you, among those born of women none is greater than John. Yet the one who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than he” (Luke 7:28).
No one before John was greater than he.
Yet Jesus says that for those who come after, the one who is least in the Kingdom of God is greater. The reason isn’t because we have anything great in ourselves.
It’s because we have a fuller picture of who Jesus is and a fuller picture of God’s revelation to the world.
John did have a once in history ministry to fulfill but he didn’t live long enough to see the fruition of Jesus’ ministry. He never heard about the resurrection or saw the risen Christ.
What are you doing to serve the Lord today? It can be tempting to think that we don’t have what it takes to serve God.It’s not about your own abilities and your own power. John the Baptist was an effective minister without a lot of resources.
You don’t have to have a lot of money to serve God faithfully. John the Baptist certainly did not have that. He came from the wilderness. Other gospels tell us that John wore a garment made of camel’s hair.
You don’t have to have all of the degrees and credentials. John the Baptist didn’t have that….he came. from. the wilderness.
You might think you’re too old. John the Baptist had a ministry that was shorter than Jesus’s. His public ministry was incredibly short lived. You don’t have to have decades of ministry to have a ministry that matters.
You just have to follow the Lord, to love the Lord, to serve the Lord.
What are you doing to serve the Lord? What are you living for?
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