"3 Reminders, 7 Promises" (Exodus 6:2-9) | 2/26/22
Exodus 6:2-9 | 2/26/23 | Will DuVal
Polly & I don’t pay for cable anymore, so when we go on vacation, we take the opportunity to catch up on a few of our old favorite TV shows. And one of them, that’s now become a FAMILY favorite is “Man vs. Wild”, with Bear Grylls. And this past vacation, we discovered his SPIN-off show - “RUNNING Wild” - where Bear takes famous CELEBRITIES out in the wild with him. And one of my favorite MOMENTS from the show was watching Zac Efron “commando crawl” across a 40 or 50 foot chasm on a rope suspended between two trees, some 150 feet above the ground. So Bear went across first, and he had tied a “safety rope” between the two of them, and before Zac crossed, Bear reminded him of two important things: “If anything goes wrong, just remember: you’re attached to ME. And second: whatever you do, DON’T LOOK…” [DOWN!] Just keep looking AHEAD.
Well, as we resume our study of the book of EXODUS this morning, Moses must feel like he’s stuck on a tightrope 150 feet in the air, between a proverbial rock and a hard place, because God had CALLED Moses to confront Pharaoh and demand that the Israelites be set free from their bondage in Egypt, in order to worship the Lord. But last week in ch5, when Moses DELIVERED that message, Pharaoh’s response was essentially to LAUGH in his face, and DOUBLE the Israelites’ workload! So now on TOP of Pharaoh’s rejection, Moses is being blamed and rejected by his OWN people, as well.
Opposed by Pharaoh, opposed by the Israelites, where is Moses to TURN?
To his credit, ch5 ENDED with Moses “turn[ing] to the Lord”, CRYING out: “God… WHY?!” WHY are you letting Pharaoh oppress us… WHY did you send me in the first place… Why haven’t you RESCUED your PEOPLE?!”
And we concluded last week with God’s reply, as ch6 opens: “But the Lord said to Moses, “Now you shall see what I will do”.
And this morning, God will continue His response to Moses, by offering him THREE reminders, and SEVEN promises. 3 reminders, and 7 promises. But SPOILER ALERT: they essentially ALL boil down to Bear’s advice: “1) God’s gonna REMIND Moses: ‘You’re attached to ME; and 2) God will PROMISE him that safety lies just ahead, on the other side; so just keep looking AHEAD, to me.”
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And friends: that’s what God wants to tell US this morning as well. Remember: the Bible isn’t just HISTORY (“HIS - story”); it’s OUR-story as well. In fact, it may be your present REALITY, for some of us, isn’t it?
Maybe you feel like Moses this morning - like you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place, dangling 150 ft. up in midair. And given the circumstances swirling around you, it feels IMPOSSIBLE to follow Bear’s advice: “DON’T LOOK DOWN!” Truth is: you’ve been spending a whole LOT of your time lately looking DOWN, at your present predicament, your current concerns. So it’s no WONDER you’re so anxious… so scared… you’re PARALYZED! And perhaps this morning YOU need to hear God’s reminders… YOU need to hear His promises once again… to lift your eyes UP instead, ahead of you, to the hope that lies just before you on the other side.
SCRIPTURE: I invite you to stand… Exodus 6:2-9:
“God spoke to Moses and said to him, “I am the Lord. 3 I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty, but by my name the Lord I did not make myself known to them. 4 I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, the land in which they lived as sojourners. 5 Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the people of Israel whom the Egyptians hold as slaves, and I have remembered my covenant. 6 Say therefore to the people of Israel, ‘I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from slavery to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment. 7 I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God, and you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. 8 I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. I will give it to you for a possession. I am the Lord.’” 9 Moses spoke thus to the people of Israel, but they did not listen to Moses, because of their broken spirit and harsh slavery.”
This is the word of God… Let’s pray…
Now before we dive into our exposition of the text, I want to make explicit for you an interpretive connection that thus far in our study has remained mostly IM-plicit. Most Sundays so far in Exodus, I’ve ended the sermon - just the last 2 or 3 minutes or so - by attempting to show you how that passage points us to JESUS. In John 5:39, Jesus declared that the OT Scriptures “bear witness to [HIM]!” In Luke 24:27, Jesus encouraged his disciples on the road to Emmaus by “beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, [and] interpret[ing] to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.” According to Jesus, all of the OT is intended to point us to HIM; so if I DON’T make the “Christ connection” somewhere in the Sunday sermon, I have missed the point of the passage.
But that connection is more clear - more OBVIOUS - in some texts than others. And in THIS text, for THIS morning, it oughta hit us like a TWO-by-four! Because these 8 short verses in ch6 function almost like an OUTLINE for the entire book of Exodus (Wiersbe, Exodus, 147).
God’s promise in v6 to “DELIVER” Israel is essentially the narrative plotline of the first 18 chapters of Exodus.
His promise in v7 to “TAKE Israel” as His people: that summarizes chs 19-24, in which God will reestablish his COVENANT with them.
And God’s promise to “BE their God”: that previews chs26-40, where God instructs Israel in their WORSHIP of Him, AS their God.
So this short passage invites us to ZOOM OUT this morning, and consider the overarching story of the Exodus as a WHOLE. And when we DO that, we need to realize that this story is an ALLEGORY. It is a “symbolical narrative”. The Exodus story points us BEYOND itself, to another, even more central and important story: the GOSPEL story.
Now, it’s not JUST allegorical. Exodus is also historical, and it is monumentally important in its OWN right. So it’s MORE than allegory; but it’s not LESS than that. Exodus points us AHEAD to the even GREATER story of an even GREATER deliverance that God worked for us through an even greater SAVIOR: His son JESUS.
Here’s the allegory, to make it absolutely clear this morning:
God = God (in BOTH stories; He is unchanging!)
Israelites, God’s people in the OT = now the CHURCH, in the NT
Pharaoh = Satan (oppressing)
Egypt = SIN (slavery)
Moses = JESUS (the BETTER Moses, Heb 3 calls him)
So we’re not gonna WAIT this morning until the very end to tie it all back to Jesus; I think these 3 reminders God offers Moses - and ESPECIALLY all 7 of these promises God makes to him - they are ALL intended to point us DIRECTLY to Jesus! 2 Corinthians 1:20 says that “all the promises of God find their Yes in [Christ]”.
Alright, reminder #1 that God offers Moses, right off the bat, in v2: “I am THE LORD”. “God spoke to Moses and said to him, “I am the Lord.”
I am YAHWEH; anytime you see the word “LORD” in all caps in your Bible like that, it’s CODE for God’s personal, revealed name: YAHWEH.
Now, I’m calling this a “reminder”, because this is NOT new information for Moses; you may recall the PIVOTAL conversation God had with Moses 2 weeks ago in ch3, at the “burning bush” encounter, when God commissioned Moses, and Moses asked him, “If they wanna know who SENT me, what should I say? What’s your NAME”, and God answered him: ““I am who I am.”... “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I am has sent me… God also said to Moses, “Say this… ‘YAHWEH , the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever” (3:14-15)
My name is Will… OUR name is West Hills… GOD’S name is Yahweh.
Now, your Bible doesn’t SAY “Yahweh”, because the Jews who WROTE and COPIED and eventually TRANSLATED the OT for us believed that God’s name was so HOLY, it was literally “ineffable”; God’s name is not even to be SPOKEN out of RESPECT for its sacredness. As a matter of fact, we had a young man join us just last Sunday, who is a friend of some of our WashU students, and who I believe runs the Hillel house on campus, the Jewish club, but he’d NEVER stepped foot in church before, and I think I may have already run him off, first week, because he couldn’t BELIEVE that I would DARE to utter the holy name of God: YAHWEH.
But MY hope and prayer is that hearing me call God by His personal, revealed name, in church, WITHOUT getting struck down by lightning, might stick with that young man, perhaps even BOTHER him, until he eventually realizes, “Wait a minute, THESE people - these CHRISTIANS - they’ve got a relationship, a PERSONAL relationship, with the God of the Bible (the Almighty God of the UNIVERSE!), that until now I never even knew was POSSIBLE! They were praying to Him as “FATHER”! Who does that?!”
I’ll tell you who: God’s CHILDREN do that. Yahweh’s adopted sons and daughters DARE to call him “Father,” and we DARE to use God’s name, because OUR Father invites us to get PERSONAL with Him.
Listen: my kids don’t call me “Pastor”. Prince Harry and William - I’m guessing they don’t address King Charles as “KING”. I’m guessing they just call him “DAD”.
And friends: because of what JESUS has done for us, to RECONCILE us to God our heavenly Father, Galatians 4 declares, we have now “receive[d] adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” So you are no longer a slave [AH HA! Does that sound familiar?!], but now you’re a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.” (vv5-7)
But I’m getting ahead of myself; let’s get back to God’s reminder here: “I am YAHWEH”. What is God trying to convey to Moses here?
V3 helps clear it up: “I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty [El Shaddai], but by my name - YAHWEH - I did not make myself known to them.”
Now, pause, cuz things are actually gonna get MURKIER here before get clearer. There’s a PROBLEM with v3 here; NAMELY, that God’s personal name “Yahweh”, WAS in fact used prior to his revealing it to Moses in Exodus ch3. As a matter of fact, the name Yahweh appears over ONE HUNDRED times throughout the book of Genesis, and a few of those times, the patriarchs - Abraham, Isaac, Jacob - they actually ADDRESS God as “Yahweh”. So is God LYING here, when he tells Moses that he didn’t previously make himself known as “Yahweh”?
Here’s how Philip Ryken explains it (Exodus, 168-9): “Some scholars say that this is the kind of contradiction we should expect in a book written by more than one fallible human author. But this view is unacceptable to anyone who receives the Bible as God’s inerrant Word. Another suggested possibility is that when the name ‘LORD’ appears in Genesis, it is an anachronism. As Moses wrote the book of Genesis, he simply used God’s later name to tell an earlier story. After all, he was still writing about the same God. Probably the best explanation, however, is that the patriarchs did not fully understand the meaning of God’s proper name.”
Remember from our study of Genesis a couple years ago… or from our ADVENT series - “And His Name Shall Be Called…” - just this past December: that names MEANT something, in the Bible.
Gen 3:20 “Adam called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living.” (Eve means “living”)
Gen 17:5 - God said to him “your name shall be Abraham,[c] for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations.” That’s what the name “Abraham” MEANS.
Matt 1:21 “you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”” Yeshua means “He SAVES”.
So even though Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob knew God’s name “Yahweh”, they DIDN’T know it's MEANING: “I am who I am”. And what does it mean
Commentator Christopher Wright explains (118): “The tense of the repeated Hebrew verb - ”eh-YEH ah-SHER eh-YEH” - carries both a present and future sense… It would be equally possible to translate: ‘I am [now] what I will be [forever]... There is, then, a note of dependability or faithfulness in the phrase. Yahweh is and always will be the God you can know and trust, now and into the future… The name Yahweh [is associated, then] with the covenant that God make[s]. Yahweh is the God of covenant promise and covenant faithfulness - for that is who he is and who he will be forever.”
Did you GET that? That’s REALLY important. THAT’S what God is reminding Moses of here, when he repeats His name YAHWEH. He’s effectively saying: “Moses - I revealed myself to your ancestors as EL SHADDAI - the ALMIGHTY God who MAKES covenant promises; but NOW I’m revealing myself to you as YAHWEH - the FAITHFUL God who KEEPS covenant promises.”
See, God can MAKE big, audacious promises - to give Abram a people, a place, and a pledge of blessing: to make this old, impotent man into a nation as NUMEROUS as the stars… then to give that nation their own LAND, flowing with milk and honey… and then to USE that nation to bless every OTHER nation on earth - MASSIVE promises! God can make them, because He is El Shaddai, “ALL-mighty God”, the ALL-sufficient One. That’s who he is in vv3-4 here: the covenant-MAKING God; “I established my covenant with [your fathers] to give them the land of Canaan...”
But a promise is only any good if it’s KEPT, right? I think of that great Seinfeld episode, where Jerry’s trying to pick up the rental car he reserved at the airport, and they tell him they’re all out of cars, and he says: “I don’t understand; I have a reservation… So you must know how to TAKE a reservation, but apparently you don’t know how to HOLD the reservation. And that’s REALLY the most important PART of the reservation… anybody can just **TAKE ‘em…”
It’s the same thing with PROMISES: “anyone can just… **MAKE ‘em”; but the most important part of the promise is the KEEPING. And THAT’S what “Yahweh” means: “‘I am [now] who I will be [forever]” - I’m DEPENDABLE, I’m FAITHFUL; “Moses - if I promise it, you can take it to the BANK; it’s as good as DONE.”
THAT’s v5 here, when God says: “I have remembered my covenant.”
That verb “remember” in Hebrew - zakar - it doesn’t mean “to temporarily forget but then later recall back to mind”; it really means to KEEP or to HONOR. God’s saying, “I MADE my people a promise; now the time has come to KEEP it, to HONOR my promise.”
Now, we’ve gotta move on, cuz we’re still only on point #1 of 10. But please don’t MISS this: that there is a very real sense in which we could say not just of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, but of Moses, and of ALL the OT saints, that “by his NAME - Yahweh - God did NOT make himself KNOWN” to them. Not FULLY. Because “all the promises of God find their Yes…”, ultimately… WHERE?? In JESUS!
When God promised Abraham descendants as numerous as the STARS, he didn’t just have the ISRAELITES in mind; No, Galatians 3 says: “in Christ Jesus [we] are [now] all sons of God, through faith. 27 For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Greek… for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise.” (vv27-29) That means God’s promise anticipated OUR adoption, as His beloved children as well!
When God promised Abraham the LAND, he didn’t just have CANAAN in mind; No, Hebrews 11 says: “[Abraham] was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose designer and builder is God… they [were] seeking a homeland. 15 If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out [CANAAN], they would have had opportunity to return. 16 But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one… [And God] has prepared for them a city.” God’s promise anticipated a BETTER “Land” - HEAVEN!
And when God promised to BLESS every nation THROUGH Abraham, he certainly didn’t mean that the Israelites were going to have symbiotic, great relationships with all their OT neighbors; No - the apostle PETER explains that promise to his fellow Jews in Acts 3: “You are the sons… of the covenant that God made with your fathers, saying to Abraham, ‘And in your offspring shall all the families of the earth be blessed.’ God, having raised up his servant, sent him to you first, to bless you by turning every one of you from your wickedness… This Jesus[a] is the stone that was rejected by you… which has become the cornerstone.[b] 12 And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men[c] by which we must be saved.”” (3:25-26; 4:11-12)
God’s promise of BLESSING anticipated His greatest gift of ALL: salvation through repentance and faith in His Son JESUS.
Friends: when you and I hear God say “I am YAHWEH” here, the God of covenant faithfulness, we cannot HELP but be reminded that ALL of God’s covenant promises find their ultimate and utmost fulfillment in CHRIST. The BETTER Moses, who freed us from our enslavement to SIN, and its otherwise ETERNAL consequence: HELL. As Zechariah the priest announced on the eve of Jesus’ birth:
““Blessed be YAHWEH - God of Israel,
for he has visited and redeemed his people
69 and has raised up a horn of salvation for us
…to show the mercy promised to our fathers
and to remember [HONOR, KEEP] his holy covenant,
73 the oath that he swore to our father Abraham, to grant us
74 that we [might] be delivered
…to give… salvation to his people
in the forgiveness of their sins” (Lk 1:68-77)
Friends: Jesus Christ is God’s PROOF that He is YAHWEH, the covenant-KEEPING God!
Reminder #2: “I am THE LORD”, YHWH.
God repeats it AGAIN, in v6. In v2, God reminded MOSES; now in v6, God calls MOSES to go remind the rest of the ISRAELITES: “Say therefore to the people of Israel, ‘I am YAHWEH”.
And anyone wanna guess what God’s THIRD Reminder is? In v8?
“I will give [the land that I swore to your fathers] to you for a possession.” WHY?!
Because “I am YAHWEH”. The covenant-keeping God.
Don’t forget: the “you” HERE, who receive God’s gift of the land, are NOT the Israelites of v6, who Moses is sent to remind of YAHWEH; remember: that entire generation who fled Egypt is gonna DIE OUT in the wilderness. What’s the point?
That MOSES needed to be reminded of who God is…
God’s people in MOSES’ DAY needed to be reminded of who God is…
And God’s people for ALL OF TIME need to be reminded of who our God is: YAHWEH.
Oh, and if something is repeated TWICE in OT, it’s important; if it’s repeated THREE times (like: God is “holy, holy, holy”), or HERE, God is “Yahweh, Yahweh, YAHWEH!” then it is SUPERLATIVELY important!
And actually, God is gonna repeat this statement - “I am Yahweh” - more than a DOZEN times, total, throughout Exodus. Including, in case you missed it, a bonus FOURTH repetition, sandwiched here in v7: “then you shall know that I am YAHWEH, your God, who has brought you out of Egypt…”
Is it starting to sink in yet? You say: “Oh my GOSH, YES; Pastor, PLEASE move on; you’ve basically said the same thing for THIRTY MINUTES now, you’ve repeated the same bullet point THREE TIMES now… I think we GET it already!”
But do we REALLY, brothers and sisters?
When you get that phone call tomorrow, with your biopsy results, and the doctor tells you it’s cancer: will you remember that God is YAHWEH, or will you start to question his covenant-keeping?
When you get laid off work this week: will you start to wonder whether Yahweh is TRULY a covenant-keeping God?
When your boyfriend breaks up with you…
When your wife CHEATS on you…
When your parent dies…
When your CHILD dies… will you still remember that YAHWEH is a covenant-keeping God? That he has not only the POWER - as El Shaddai - to MAKE you that wonderful promise from Romans 8:28 - that He’s working ALL things together for your good - but that he is FAITHFUL - as YAHWEH - to make GOOD on that promise? WILL WE REMEMBER?
God’s gonna give us 7 REASONS to remember, 7 reasons to TRUST in His covenant-keeping faithfulness this morning. God gave these to MOSES as PROMISES - 7 future-tense “I will”s - of God’s promised salvation.
But what Moses had to receive by FAITH, has now been turned into SIGHT, for you and me; we already know how the story ends… how BOTH the stories end! That God CAME THRU on all SEVEN of these promises… NOT JUST ONCE; not just 3,500 years ago in Egypt… but a SECOND and even more CRUCIAL time 2,000 years ago on a CROSS outside Jerusalem. Because the Exodus story points us ahead to the GOSPEL story, and God’s 7 promises of salvation here apply not just to Israel’s deliverance from physical bondage in EGYPT, but to OUR deliverance from SPIRITUAL bondage to SIN as well.
We’re gonna go quick, to cover God’s TWO-fold fulfillment, of all SEVEN promises:
Promise #1: “I will BRING YOU OUT” (v6a)
For ISRAEL, it was “out from under the burdens of the Egyptians”; God’s gonna bring them out DRAMATICALLY a few chapters from now, when they cross the Red Sea…
But for US, God has now brought us “OUT of [spiritual] darkness into his marvelous light” (1 Pet 2:9). “We have passed OUT of [spiritual] death into [eternal] life” (1 Jn 3:14)
We weren’t just SUFFERING under the “burden” of SIN; friends, we were DEAD! Eph 2:1 “you were dead in [your] sins”.
Until JESUS came, and brought us OUT. Like he did Lazarus, already rotting in the tomb, when JESUS said to him: “Lazarus - come OUT!”
Will: come OUT… Barbara: come OUT…
And our dead hearts began to BEAT.
Jesus brings us out of spiritual DEATH.
Promise #2: “I will DELIVER YOU” (v6b)
For ISRAEL, it was “from slavery to [the Egyptians]”.
But WE have now been delivered from slavery to SIN. Romans 6: “you who were once slaves of sin have… been set free from sin… and have become slaves of God… lead[ing] to ETERNAL LIFE” (vv17-22).
See, it’s one thing to be BROUGHT OUT of sin; it’s another thing to be truly DELIVERED from it… set FREE. The picture we’re gonna get in a few weeks of Israel crossing the Red Sea is a telling one, because Egypt’s not gonna go down without a FIGHT. And guess what: neither will your SIN; it’ll try and chase you down. But God didn’t just “bring Israel out” by helping them out-RUN the Egyptians; he brought the walls of the SEA back down on Egypt! There’s a giant body of WATER now separating Israel from Egypt; they have been truly, decisively DELIVERED, set FREE.
1 Jn 3:5 says “[Jesus] appeared in order to take away sins” - Jesus didn’t just bring US out of darkness; he takes the darkness out of US. How? Because 1 Pet 2:24 “[Jesus] himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, [the CROSS,] that we might die to sin”.
Rev 1:5 - “Jesus… has freed us from our sins by his blood”.
Jesus paid it ALL! Not just the PENALTY for our sin; He has defeated sin’s POWER as well: “sin will no longer have dominion - MASTERY - over you” (Rom 6:14). Brothers and sisters: We’ve got a NEW Master now. “[God] has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son,” Jesus (Col 1:13).
…IN whom, we now have… REDEMPTION!
Promise #3: “I will REDEEM YOU” (v6c)
To “REDEEM” means to “buy back”. In antiquity, “it was used to describe the release of a slave by the payment of a ransom” (Ryken, 173).
Now, this is where the allegory, the metaphor, starts to break down a bit. Because Egypt had enslaved Israel ILLEGALLY; they had no rightful CLAIM of lordship over Israel. So when God sets them FREE, who pays the price of Israel’s REDEMPTION? v6?
God makes EGYPT pay! “I will redeem you… with great acts of judgment”. The PLAGUES, that we’ll kick off next week.
But friends: you and I DESERVED the death that was coming for us, because we VOLUNTARILY submitted ourselves to the yoke of SIN. We CHOSE sin and its bondage!
And YET, while we were yet SINNERS, rebelling against God, rejecting HIS rightful lordship over our lives - “Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8). WE were ransomed, 1 Pet 1:18 says, “not with perishable things such as silver or gold - no amount of MONEY could have purchased OUR freedom, paid OUR sin-debt… - but rather with the precious blood of Christ”. In HIM, Eph 1:7 declares, “we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our sins”;
Promise #4: “I will TAKE YOU” (v7a)
“I will take you to be my people”, God promises Israel in v7.
And God takes US as well; 1 Pet 2:9 - “you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession”.
Remember: we’re not just freed for ANARCHY - to have NO ruler - or freed for SELF-rule; no - we’ve been freed to FOLLOW! To be ruled by CHRIST!
And Philip Ryken explains that (174): “The [Hebrew] word ‘take’ [here] really means ‘to adopt’.” THAT’s how God “took” us; He ADOPTED us into his heavenly family, and JESUS paid the PRICE of our adoption:
Gal 4:5 “God sent forth his Son… to redeem [us], so that we might receive adoption as sons.”
1 Jn 3:1 “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.”
Promise #5: “I will BE YOUR GOD” (v7b)
God is PREVIEWING for Moses here, his adoption ceremony, where he will covenant to TAKE Israel as His people, and pledge to BE their God, later in ch19 at the foot of Mt Sinai.
When Polly and I adopted our son Elijah, we had to stand before a judge and promise to raise him just like we would if he were our own biological child; I took an oath to BE HIS FATHER.
Friends: in His word, God tells us that He has made that same promise to US now, as HIS adopted children; that we now have all the rights and privileges that SHOULD belong to JESUS alone - God’s only begotten Son! Galatians 4:7 “you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God.”
And what is our INHERITANCE? Promise #6: “I will BRING YOU INTO” (v8a)
God promised Israel a “land flowing with milk and honey”.
But Jesus promises US a home with no more DEATH, no more TEARS, no more SICKNESS or SADNESS; “I will bring you into PARADISE!” he says.
And what MAKES it paradise? Because HE’S there: John 14:3 “I go to prepare a place for you, [but] I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also. ”
But it gets even better than that. Because God’s final promise to us, prefigured in his seventh promise to ISRAEL is: “I will GIVE IT TO YOU” (v8b)
God not only promises to bring Israel INTO Canaan; that’s great, but ABRAHAM had lived there, but only as a sojourner. ISAAC had lived there, but only as a pilgrim. No, NOW God promises He will GIVE THEM the land.
Do you realize that we’re not just going to Heaven as VISITORS? As TENANTS - No! It’s part of our inheritance! It’s gonna be our HOME!
Don’t you love Extreme Home Makeover, where they take some poor, altruistic family, who run an orphanage rescuing kids from the streets, and they’ve adopted like 37 kids, and they’re all living in a 1,500 sq ft house, and they send them to Disney world for a week so they’ve got time to DEMO the house and build one back TEN TIMES BETTER in its place. But the best part is always the END, when they hand the family the KEYS: it’s YOURS! It’s all PAID FOR - you don’t owe a PENNY!
Friends: that’s exactly what Jesus has done for US, in giving us HEAVEN, giving us ETERNAL LIFE: 1 Pet 1:4 says “According to his great mercy, [God] has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 4 to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you,” (1 Pet 1:4)
That’s how Jesus welcomed our brother WARREN home, on Friday morning. He gave him the tour of Heaven… the pearly gates… the golden streets… and then he finished by handing him the KEYS: it’s YOURS! This is your HOME now!
Now, that’s all AMAZING. Because God’s promise - his FULFILLED promise, His work of SALVATION, on our behalf - is amazing. But our reading didn’t conclude there, did it? We get this Twist Ending in v9: “Moses spoke thusly to the people of Israel, [Moses OBEYED God’s calling, and went and DELIVERED God’s message to His people…] but they did not listen to Moses, because of their broken spirit and harsh slavery.”
Maybe that’s how YOU feel this morning. Like “Pastor, this all sounds great… but it sounds TOO good to be true! God couldn’t POSSIBLY forgive me - you don’t KNOW the things I’ve done! God couldn’t POSSIBLY free ME - you don’t KNOW the kind of “harsh slavery” I’m in bondage to… the addiction I suffer from… the crippling DEBT I’m under… the broken marriage I’M stuck in… Everyone knows there’s no such thing as a FREE LUNCH in this life - but here you’re trying to tell me that I can get God’s FORGIVENESS, freedom from SIN, I can get Heaven and Eternal Life… for NOTHING? I don’t owe a PENNY?! Jesus paid it ALL?! Too good to be true.”
I love how this passage ends in v9, with Israel’s REJECTION of God’s promised salvation. Because it is such HOPE to those of us who STILL struggle and doubt God’s promise. Does God BACK OUT on his promise and plan to save them? Was his plan CONTINGENT on their believing Him? No - He’s gonna save them ANYWAY, in the weeks to come!
Likewise, 2 Tim 2:13 promises us today - “if we are faithless, he remains faithful - for he cannot deny himself.” His own NAME - YAHWEH - “Covenant Keeper”.
Bear: “If anything goes wrong, just remember: you’re attached to ME. And second: whatever you do, DON’T LOOK…” [DOWN!] Just keep looking AHEAD.