Sermon for Lenten Midweek 3: "Out of Egypt I Called My Son"

 + Lenten Midweek 3 – March 10, 2021 +

Exodus 14

Beautiful Savior Lutheran

Milton, WA

 

 

In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. 

 

And the people of Israel cried out to the Lord. ¹¹ They said to Moses, “Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done to us in bringing us out of Egypt? ¹² Is not this what we said to you in Egypt: ‘Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians’? For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.”

 

It’s easy for us sitting here, separated by thousands of years and thousands of miles, to wag our fingers and shake our heads at Israel? If we were out there in the wilderness, surely we would’ve done better, right? Surely we’ve never grumbled as they did.

 

Who are we kidding, of course we have. The truth is, we have the same same prideful, ungrateful, sinful blood flowing through our veins. 

 

If Israel wasn’t complaining about the water, they were bickering about the manna. And if they weren’t bickering about the manna, they were whining about the terrain. And if they weren’t whining about the terrain they were grumbling and criticizing Moses himself. Sound familiar? It should. We are Israel. And like Israel, our only hope in this wilderness, the only way out of our exile in this fallen world, is God our Savior. 

 

What he has accomplished for Israel, he has accomplished for you. Down into Egypt the Lord sent Moses, staff in hand, as his chosen man. But the Lord did not send down Moses to save you. No, if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself. So the Lord himself came down into this world, not just to do things right, but flawlessly. Perfectly. Not as an eighty year old man like Moses, but as a baby, born of our own flesh and blood, born of Mary for you. 

 

The Lord brought 10 plagues against Egypt before Pharaoh let the Israelites go. Yet Jesus did not come to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. The only one plagued when Christ came was the pharaoh of hell, whom Jesus attacked again and again. Not with hail or locusts, but with his living word. In the 9^th plague against Egypt, three days of darkness engulfed Egypt, followed by the 10^th plague, when the firstborn of Egypt died. But when our Lord Jesus came to rescue and free you, he endured three hours of darkness on the cross, followed by his own death = he who is the firstborn of the Father.

 

The Lamb of God takes away the sin of the world. He let Israel’s sin. Egypt’s sin. Our sin. All of it rained down on him as he became the Passover Lamb to set us free. His blood now marks not our the doorposts and lintels, but our very own lives – soul and body. For we are baptized into his bloody death and resurrection. Jesus feeds us a new Passover meal of his holy body and blood. Jesus is the Lamb of God who sheds his blood that death would Passover us and onto him. 

 

In this way, Jesus leads us, not out of slavery in Egypt like Israel of old, but out of captivity to the grave, a bondage of sin. He has shoveled back the 6 feet of dirt that covered our graves. He has smashed open the coffin in which we lay. And filled our lungs with the life giving Spirit of God. In Jesus we are dead to sin, and alive in Him. Jesus has loosed our bonds. Defeated sin, death, and the devil. Set you free.

 

Our fathers, the Israelites, were all under the cloud, and all passed through the Red Sea; all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea – as St. Paul says; all ate the same spiritual food and all drank the same spiritual drink, for they were all drinking from the same spiritual rock that followed them, and that rock was Christ.

 

But you, the new Israel of God, have received far greater gifts in Christ. In Jesus, the Father has lavished his goodness upon you. For you are all under the Spirit as well. You have passed through the Red Sea of the font, where you were baptized into Jesus by water, word, and the Holy Spirit. We eat the food of the Spirit, the food Jesus gives that is his own body hidden in the bread, his blood hidden in the wine. All of this, not from the rock in the wilderness, but from the rock who is Christ.

 

Out of Egypt God called Israel. Out of Egypt God has called you as well. Out of Egypt. Out of slavery. Out of darkness and into his kingdom. Where you are his treasured people. His holy people. Where you are a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. The dark days of exile have come to an end. The day of salvation has dawned in Jesus crucified and risen for you, a day that shall never end.

 

In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.