The Story - Part 4 - Deliverance

This Sunday I tried to preach from a less full script and I think it worked ok. Rather than retrospectively bulking it up for the sake of the blog, I've just uploaded my notes for the day. Hopefully it'll ring bells for those who were there, and still communicate for those who weren't.

Paul

1.     Very rarely remember my dreams. Experts - First sign of madness!

a.     Ones that are most vivid – feel exposed and in danger.

b.     Exam room – usually maths – cold sweat!

c.      Another one – public place and realise you’ve got no clothes on!

d.     Being exposed – stuff of our nightmares.

 

2.     Something in Scots psyche that makes us particularly susceptible to those kinds of fears. (Include N. Irish  -  Scots just Irish who could swim)

a.     Scared of being found out, or found lacking in some way.

b.     Scared to try and do new things in case it becomes clear that we can’t do them.

                                                              i.      Kids – table tennis. “I’m rubbish”. You’ve just started! Nobody expects you to be brilliant!

                                                            ii.      We think that same way too – expect ourselves to be able to do things straight away, and if we can’t we don’t try because we don’t want to be exposed.

c.      Fewer entrepreneurs in Scotland – rather be safe with what we have than take a risk and aim higher. Deep in our psyche.

3.     Think Moses might be a kindred spirit because when God says “Go” – Moses’ response is: “Pardon your servant, Lord. Please send someone else”.

a.     We’ll look at that more closely in a moment.

4.     Last week – Joseph’s family down to Egypt; now 400 years later – memory of Joseph has passed.

a.     Israel a threat – so enslaved them, kill baby boys.

b.     One Hebrew mothers hides Son – leaves him in a basket on the Nile, found by Pharaoh’s daughter – takes pity, Moses mother ends up being paid to raise her own son!

c.      Time comes – had to give him over. Raised in Pharaoh’s family. Didn’t forget his ancestry.

d.     Anger – Murder – Flight

e.     Left it all behind. Far away as he could get.

f.       Midian, marriage, settled down to life as a shepherd.

5.     That’s where we picked things up in our reading

 

6.     While tending sheep – sees strange thing. Bush that was burning, but not burning up.

a.     We know about that – C of S logo. But hold the image.

b.     Imagine a bush that’s burning but not burning up.

c.      Something’s protecting and preserving that bush. Can’t resist flames on its own. There’s some power at work here.

                                                              i.      Is that a picture of what God is going to do for Moses, in Egypt?

                                                            ii.      Is that a picture that can help us, when we feel like we’re in danger of being consumed by the things going on around us and within us?

                                                          iii.      God knows about those things – he knows them because he knows us.

d.     From the bush, God calls Moses  - calls him by name.

                                                              i.      Reminds us - God’s call is always personal.

                                                            ii.      Moses, Paul, Ravi, Maureen, Ed, Joan, John.

1.     Scriptures: Names engraved on palms

2.     Hairs on our heads are numbered

3.     Knows us better than we know ourselves.

4.     Knows our hopes, fears, desires, history, future.

5.     Our names are safe on his lips, because unlike anyone else he knows us completely

e.     And the place of our meeting with him, wherever it might be, is holy ground…

                                                              i.      …whether scrubland, front room, labour ward, mountain top, ploughed field or church pew.

                                                            ii.      It’s the meeting with him that makes a place holy.

 

f.       So from the bush, God speaks –

g.     “I am the God of your father; the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. And I have seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey. So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt.”

 

7.     “Go” says God. And what’s Moses’ first response? “Who am I that I should go?”

 

8.     There’s that self-doubt creeping in. That fear of exposure

a.     On human level- can understand it.

b.     Nobody in right mind take on Egypt, let alone someone like him – murderer and fugitive.

c.      What guarantee was there that his own people would even accept him – brought up in the palace!

d.     Not a great public speaker.

                                                              i.      Survey recently – only thing people fear more than death is having to speak in public!

e.     All these reasons stacking up – dead obvious. I am not the right guy!

9.      But the real question Moses needed to ask, and indeed did ask, wasn’t “Who am I”, but “who are you?”. Who is this God who is speaking to me?

 

a.     God of your fathers – good start –

b.     For first time, God discloses his special name – YHWH.

c.      Translations differ – “I Am who I Am. Or “I will be who I will be”.

d.     And it’s a brilliant name because it points to the mystery at the very heart of God.

e.     In the ancient world, people tended to think of the gods as being tied to places or particular activities. God of the mountains, or the valleys, or the seas. The Gods of war, of fertility, or wisdom.

f.       But by taking this name, Israel’s God is saying “I am far and beyond all of your naming. I just Am. The High God over all; all peoples, all times, all places. I am who I am, and I will be who I will be….

 

10.                         “Moses, the issue is not “are you able to do this”, but “am I able to do this”?” and I can tell you now – I AM.

a.     I don’t need your ability. I need your availability.

b.     You are not doing this alone - “I will be with you”

c.      So ‘GO’! I am sending YOU.

11.                          And I wonder if this is where we need to pause for a moment and let those words come home to our hearts.

12.                         You see, deep down, Moses knew what needed to happen. He’d seen the oppression of his people. He’d killed a man in his anger because of it. But the very thought of going back to Egypt made his stomach churn with fear.

13.                         Moses was called, in faith, to take what we might call the path of nausea. The path that we intrinsically know is right, but which takes us to the very place we don’t want to go.

14.                         Is there something you know that you need to do? Something that you know is the right thing to do, but the thought of doing it fills you with dread? That’s your path of nausea. And I’ll tell you now, it’s also the path along which you will grow, and where you’ll find blessing.

 

15.                         Doesn’t have to be a big thing –

 

a.     Naturally shy – taking the initiative with new neighbour or colleague rather than waiting for them to do so.

b.     Naturally controlling person – learning to take your hands off a wee bit and trust others. Accepting their efforts, even if they’re not perfect

c.      Naturally proud and independent, but experiencing difficulties of some kind - might be asking for help.

d.     An apology you need to make? A relationship that you need to mend? A responsibility you feel called to, but reluctant to take on because you’d rather someone else did it.

e.     That’s your Egypt. That’s your Pharaoh.

 

16.                          Is God saying “Go” this morning? Is your stomach churning at the thought of what he might be asking you to do? Then take your courage in your hands and go and do it – knowing that you don’t go alone. “I will be with you”.

 

17.                         1500 years after Moses  a young Galilean took his courage in his hands and chose to walk his path of nausea. It took him not just into trouble, but into the very jaws of death.

 

18.                         And the apostle John tells us that at the very same time as they were hanging him high on a cross, people across the country were slaughtering lambs in readiness for the annual Passover festival.

 

19.                        They were getting ready to remember that evening when Israel had daubed the Lamb’s blood on their doorposts and lintels to mark themselves out as God’s people and save themselves from his wrath.

 

20.                         Little did they know that Christ was becoming our Passover Lamb – the Lamb of God whose shed blood would take away the sin of the world.

 

21.                         The path that leads to his cross is also a path of nausea for us, because it forces us to go to a place where we have to admit that we’re sinful and we cannot save ourselves. And that is a hard blow to our pride.

 

22.                          But the path that leads from his cross is a path of freedom, because the man or woman who’s bowed the knee to Christ knows in the depths of his or her heart that the story isn’t centred on us and our limitations. It’s centred on God and his sustaining power.

 

23.                         On that strange day, out in the desert, the bush burned but it was not consumed. And neither was Moses in Egypt. And neither will we be in our trials– if we place our trust in God.

The Story - Chapter 3 - Joseph

I know Christians are supposed to be forgiving and all that, but I have to say there’s nothing I like better in a movie than when the baddies finally get their come-uppance.

All ideas of redemption go out of my head when I’m watching a film! NO grey areas – no nuances. I want to see the bullies get what’s coming to them and nothing pleases me more than when they get a taste of their own medicine.

Whether it’s the Prison Warden in the Shawshank Redemption, Scar in the Lion King or good old JR Ewing getting a bullet in the guts, we all like a bit of revenge now and then.

And if there were ever a story set up for a bit of revenge, it’s today’s instalment of the Story.

Years after he was beaten up, thrown into a pit and sold into slavery by his 'loving' brothers, Joseph now has them in the palm of his hand. Why doesn’t he just crush them and live out those revenge fantasies he must have nurtured over the years?

Answering that question is probably the most important work we can be doing this morning.

Joseph’s story begins with his family; and as we all know, family dynamics are rarely straightforward. Joseph was his father Jacob’s favourite son. And rather than be discreet about it, he singles Joseph out for special privileges – including the famous coat of many colours.

Joseph, being a young lad and rather full of himself, doesn’t understand why his brothers are so narked about this. Or why they get angry about these dreams he’s having, where the whole family end up bowing down to him in one form or another.

You might have thought that Jacob would have had more sense. But of course, he himself was a favourite son. And his father, Isaac, was a favourite son. For three generations, bad blood had been created by parents overtly showing favouritism to one child over another.

And as an aside, I don’t think that’s ever wise. Even if there is disparity in how you feel about your kids because of their temperament or behaviour, it’s not wise to show it. You can’t favour one all the time without drastically affecting how the others will think and feel. Parents, take note!

But what about these brothers? Were they any better? Getting irritated by the silly indulgence of an old man, and the immature boasting of an adolescent boy? Weren’t they bigger than that?

Well sadly, too often, we’re not bigger than that. We all know that we can let these little things fester ‘til they get all out of proportion and end up skewing our perspective.

How else can you explain Jacob’s sons turning on one of their own with a view to murder, and then thinking they’d been kind by only selling him off into slavery?

But that’s what they did; and just as Jacob deceived his father to gain his brother’s birthright, now his sons are deceiving him to hide their part in their brother’s disappearance. Happy families, eh?

And meanwhile, Joseph’s carried away on this rollercoaster ride that sees him taken from pit, to slave caravan, to auction – and then work in Potiphar’s estate. And just when things seem to be improving, there’s the harassment from his master’s wife ending in a false accusation, and two long years spent in prison for something he didn’t do.

Dreams of sun, moon and stars bowing down to him must have felt like a cruel joke by that stage.

If he were looking for outward signs of God’s blessing, he’d have been hard pressed to find them; all the signs suggested the very opposite – that God had abandoned him.

And yet nothing could have been further from the truth.

When we looked at the creation story a few weeks ago, I emphasised that the whole purpose behind it was that God might be with us, and that that desire of God hasn’t changed, despite the fall. He still wants to be with us, even in the middle of the mess that the Lower Story becomes sometimes.

Here, in Joseph’s story, at two of the worst points – when he’s sold into slavery and when he’s thrown into prison – we read these specific words – “the LORD was with him.” Interestingly, we don’t read them anywhere else in this chapter.

At the points when Joseph could have felt most abandoned, God was most with him – bringing hope and opportunity where Joseph had seen neither.

This painful journey from despised adolescent to revered Egyptian leader had taught Joseph that even when the Lower Story seems like an awful mess, God – in the Upper Story – is working things out on another level.

Joseph learned that the Lower Story isn’t the only story in town, even though at times it may feel like it. For the man or woman of faith, God is always doing something more.

Maybe now we’re in a place where we can understand why revenge wasn’t on the menu when years later his brothers came to beg for grain.

I’m not saying it was easy to forgive them. All the pantomime around giving them grain and planting their silver back in their saddlebags and keeping hostages suggests that Joseph was wrestling within himself about what to do.

But in the end, grace won. And it won because Joseph was now a man with sufficient God-given perspective to get some distance from everything that had gone before. He was going to define his life by what God was doing in the Upper Story, and not by what had happened in the Lower. From that wide, spacious place of God’s generosity, he found himself able to be generous towards his brothers.

And maybe that’s our word from God for today.

Are you stuck in the Lower story?

Has something that happened in the past come to define you, for the time being?

Some loss, or sadness, or fall-out?

Some injustice, or worry?

Is there some fear or situation that’s looming large in your imagination just now? Is it taking up more room in your heart and mind than it should?

Are you enmeshed in the painful complexity of family dynamics?

And do you find yourself wondering where God is, in all of this? Why a loving God would allow this to happen to you?

Know, first of all, that you are not alone in thinking that way. All of us have spells in our lives when we feel like that.

But know too, that the circumstances you’re experiencing aren’t the only story in town. God is always doing more than we can see or know and if we can find it within ourselves to stay open to him, we will know his help and guidance.

We will see that behind the challenges and disappointments of life, God is always working for the good of those who love him.

“Don’t be afraid” said Joseph to his brothers as they cowered at the foot of the dias. “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.”

Bad things happen in life – that’s part of living in a fallen world. But our God can bring good even out of the worst of circumstances.

And as I prepared for today, it struck me not only that the cross is the supreme example of that, but how readily these words spoken by Joseph could be found on the lips of the crucified Christ.

“Don’t be afraid. You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.”

Once again, in the story, we’re hearing an echo in the past of a Messiah who’s still to come.

The Story Part 2 - God Builds A Nation

In between two of the most important archaeological sites on Orkney – The Stennes stones and the Ring of Brodgar, there’s a narrow strip of land called the Ness of Brodgar. And for the past ten years, experts have been painstakingly uncovering what’s probably the most significant Neolithic site, not just on Orkney, but in the whole of the UK.
 

What they’ve found, over a site that’s as big as five football pitches, seems to be a huge temple complex with a series of discrete ceremonial buildings, and a protecting wall that’s ten feet high and encircles the entire site.

 

For generations, historians and archaeologists have puzzled over the purpose of the standing stones on Orkney. Now they’ve got even more to be scratching their heads about.

How much they’re going to glean from the rubble remains to be seen, but the sheer scale of these developments is a measure of how seriously our ancestors took these religious rituals; and sacrifice of one kind or another was almost certainly a part of what went on in these hallowed places. 

That’s how the ancient world was – and that’s the world in which this disturbing story of Abraham preparing to offer Isaac as a sacrifice took place. But more of that later.

We’re on Chapter 2 of the story and if you were here last week you’ll remember that the story begins with a God who creates, and who creates human beings with a special endowment of consciousness – an ability to think and choose and love which mirrors his own. In that sense, like no other creature, we are made in God’s image. Made so that we could enjoy him and be with him for ever.

 

But according to the story, our ancestors chose badly. They made the same mistake that all creatures with a conscious self are prone to make. They placed themselves and their desires at the centre of things and pushed God to the margins. And so sin enters the story, and with it comes a breakdown in our relationship with God.

But for all that, God’s intention doesn’t waver. He still wants to be with us, even though our choices have made that more difficult. He determines to find a new way to make himself known and restore our relationship with him. And that’s where today’s story begins, because this new way involves God forming a people to whom and through whom he will make himself known to the nation

As he says to the people of Israel later on through the prophet Ezekiel – “They will know that I am the Lord, when I show myself holy through you, before their eyes”.

God’s plan is to form a nation. So what better place to start than with an elderly couple who can’t have kids and live in a far away country where they worship other gods?

 

Hardly the most likely candidates! But this is the start of a trend. Time and again we’ll find God choosing the least likely candidates for the job. Why? So that people will be in no doubt that it’s God who’s really in charge.

He chooses Moses to deliver Israel from Pharaoh, even though he’s a useless public speaker.

He chooses Deborah to lead her people to military victory, even though she’s never wielded a sword.

He chooses Matthew as a disciple, even though tax collectors are universally despised.

And he chooses Paul as an apostle, even though he’d been instrumental in persecuting churches and killing Christians.

 

From very early on in the story, we start to discover that God can and does use anyone to accomplish his purposes. And rather scarily that ‘anyone’ includes you and me.

So the call comes to Abram and Sarai – “leave your homeland, your people and your father’s house and go to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation, and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you”.

 

And this is crucial – right at the beginning of Abram’s story there’s this promise that through him all the nations, not just some, will be blessed. We need to carry that thought with us, because the next few chapters of the Story are going to be very bloody in the Lower Story.

But in the Upper Story, God’s plan from the beginning, was that all the nations would be blessed through Abram’s offspring. And that didn’t mean his son, Isaac, or his grandson, Jacob. But the one who generations later would be born in a stable in Bethlehem and who – in time – would become known as the saviour of the world.

We’re only in chapter 2; we’re two thousand years before Mary and Joseph and shepherds and angels. But already we’re being pointed toward Jesus. He’s the one to whom the story is already bending.

So with God’s promises before them, and in spite of their age and their infertility, Abram and Sarai set out for the promised land together. As the apostle Paul wrote, many years later, Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness. In other words, he trusted God and that made him right with God.

 

Now those of you with a good memory will remember all the ups and downs of this story from last year. But in the end, many years after they left Haran, a son called Isaac was born to Abraham and Sarah. And it’s just when they think things are finally working out that the story takes another unexpected turn.

 

“Abraham” says God. “Take your son, your only son whom you love – Isaac – and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain that I will show you.”

It comes out of nowhere. Only it doesn’t, really, when you think about it, because the world Abraham lived in was one where sacrifice to the gods was a way of life. It was common to all ancient cultures, and I want to talk about that in general terms for a few minutes before getting back to Abraham and Isaac.

No-one can say when or where the practice of sacrifice began, but it doesn’t take much imagination to guess how it all started.

The ancients lived at the mercy of the rainfall and the sunshine and the turning of the seasons. If the rain didn’t fall, they had no crops and they starved. If the sun grew too hot, their crops withered, and they starved. It was a short step from that to the belief that there were powers who chose whether to send rain or not. Whether to make the sun shine, or not. And those powers, they thought, must be appeased. So they would make offerings, of crops or animals, to keep the unseen powers happy.

But here’s the insidious thing about any unregulated sacrificial system. And remember that Israel’s, in later years, was closely regulated. In a unregulated system, how do you know when you’ve given enough?

If you have a good year, you’d better offer a bit more in thanks to the gods to recognise their bounty. You end up giving more.

And if you have a bad year, maybe the gods are angry at you for some reason. Maybe you didn’t give enough last time. So now you need to give more.

 And if you give more, and the rains still don’t come, maybe that’s a sign that they’re still angry, and that you still haven’t given enough. So you have to give more.

 So before long, things ended up in a vicious cycle. If things go really well- need to offer more. If things go poorly – need to offer more!  You never knew when you’d given enough. And this produced a deep anxiety in the primal psyche. You never know where you stand with the gods.

“I’ve offered everything I can except what we need to live on! What else can I give?”

That’s the point at which they upped the ante.

 Some would cut themselves to show how serious they were.

I’ve given everything I can – all I can do now is harm my body.

Cybele was a fertility goddess worshipped in the near middle east. The centre of Cybele worship was the town of Sardis in modern Turkey and at her great festival male devotees by the thousand would go the whole way and seek her favour by castrating themselves and offering their bodily parts as sacrifices on her altar.

 As recently as 1487, Aztec records show that over 80,000 human souls were offered up in four days at the re-dedication of the great temple in what is now Mexico City. They were seeking the favour of the gods of war and agriculture through human sacrifice.

And in the Hebrew Scriptures we read about the pagan god Molech who demanded the sacrifice of the firstborn. The worship of Molech was common in Caanan, and Caanan was the land where Abraham had settled – he would have known all about it.

Maybe now we’re beginning to understand why, when this command to sacrifice Isaac comes to Abraham, he doesn’t stop in his tracks and question it as any sane person would today. This – in his culture – is how the gods are. They demand everything. Is his God any different?

Well on Mount Moriah, he finds out just how different his God is. Molech might require child sacrifice, but Abraham’s God doesn’t. Abraham’s God provides.

As the old man and his beloved son had made their way up the hill, Isaac had been confused. “We have the fire and the wood, Father, But where’s the lamb for the sacrifice?”

“God himself will provide the lamb”

And indeed he did – and still does.

The prophet Isaiah tells us that that descendant of Abraham we spoke of, the one who would be a blessing to all nations, was led like a lamb to the slaughter. God himself provided the lamb. We might even go so far as to say that God himself was the Lamb – the eternal son of God offering himself up for your sake and for mine.

Our ancestors placed more and more on the altars saying – is this enough, is this enough, is this enough?

Christ put an end to all of that by offering himself on the cross for your sin and mine, and saying ‘it is finished’.

Nothing more needs to be offered. All we need to do is accept his self-giving with the profound gratitude that it deserves.

In the ancient world, people would lay the most costly thing they had on the altar to appease the gods. But our God is different. Because he loves us, our God provides.

“This is love” says the apostle John. “Not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins”.

What greater offering could there be, for your sin and mine, than the life of Jesus Christ?  Could God have done any more to show us the extent of his love and his desire to be with us? Because, as we said last week and will keep on saying, that is what this story is all about.

Years after Abraham, the prophet Micah wrote these words which have stayed with me from the first time I read them and which felt especially relevant today.

With what shall I come before the Lord and bow down before the exalted God?
Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old?
Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of oil?
Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you?
To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.

The Lord doesn’t require thousands of rams, rivers of oil, or our firstborn children. He never has and he never will.

What he does require is the one thing we find even harder to give. The humility that recognises our need of a saviour.