The Church Emancipated – 4/26/2009
Sermon Series: The Church: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
Title: The Church Emancipated
Text: Exodus 19:1-6
Theme: This message will highlight God’s work to make a people into a nation and give them a political identity. Though still connected by covenant these people are moved to accomplish a task of kingdom proportion as God’s set apart people.
Introduction: Have you ever found yourself somewhere that you never thought you would be. Since Teresa and I have moved from our home in Idaho where we had lived for three decades or so we have found ourselves in that position several times. There have been a lot of times that we just kind of stop and say: “whoa, did you ever think that this is where you would be.” I remember when I took the job preaching at the little Church in El Dara Illinois, the week before we were supposed to go over there the first time we decided to drive over there so that we would know where we were going. We were living in Moberly at the time and so we went east on 24 and then on 36 through Hannibal and into Illinois. I remember driving across the bridge the crosses the Mississippi river there and being in kind of awe. Not because the river was so big but because it was not only a major landscape marker for this country, it also marked a major change in our lives. I was going to take the first paid preaching position that I had ever had. The reality of God’s movement was so clear in my mind. Everything had changed all that we had known was now in a cloudy past and the horizon of a world dominated by service to the Lord was so huge in front of us.
Transition: I imagine that the people of Israel gathered at Mt. Sinai had similar and more powerful feelings as they had been shepherded to that place by God to accept the mantle of a nation which God intended to use to further His purpose for mankind.
Moses has completed the first stage of the mission which God has set for him to accomplish. It was on this very mountain where they are standing that God had confronted Moses in the burning bush and He had informed Moses that he was to go and get His people from eEgypt and bring them back to this mountain to serve Him.
It has taken them exactly three months to travel to this point and here is where God will change them from a group of slaves to His kingdom of people. They will remain here for a year.
In this passage that we have read this morning we see a purpose statement for these people. The slaves of Egypt have been set free, they are emancipated so that they can be God’s people and serve His purpose.
In this address we find some principles for a people that have been called by God.
1) Remember
a) They are told to remember two things
i) Yahweh reminds them of the power out of which they have journeyed to this place. – Examples of Yahweh’s power
(1) Plagues
(2) Pillars
(3) Punishment
ii) They are also told to remember the care that God has taken over them.
(1) He bore them up on eagle’s wings. This image is one that is used by the Old Testament to emote extreme care for people.
(2) Deuteronomy 32:9-11″But the Lord’s portion is his people, Jacob his allotted heritage. “He found him in a desert land, and in the howling waste of the wilderness; he encircled him, he cared for him, he kept him as the apple of his eye. Like an eagle that stirs up its nest, that flutters over its young, spreading out its wings, catching them, bearing them on its pinions,” (Deuteronomy 32:9-11, ESV)
b) As God’s new covenant people we are told to remember as well. One of the main focuses of our worship service is the Lord’s Supper. Turn with me to
i) 1 Corinthians 11:23-26
(1) The institution of the Lord’s supper is intended for new covenant believer. It is a ceremony that anchors us to the reason and the hope that is the center part of our lives.
(2) This ceremony of remembrance has taken many forms over the years.
(a) Originally, like the Passover meal it was celebrated in the midst of another meal and a loaf was separated out and broken and shared to remind us of Jesus’ suffering on our account. A glass of wine was then shared to bring to mind the blood which is the mark of the new covenant that we now share in.
(b) Because there are practically no guidelines in the exact manner in which this ceremony is to be celebrated, one thing is clear. For two thousand years the New Covenant people of God have gathered around a table and prayed and shared in this acted out sermon which anchors us to that reason and hope for our lives.
2) Obey
a) Covenantal relationship is based upon obedience to the covenant.
i) This is something that I don’t think we like to think about much anymore; the idea that we need to be an obedient people. Oh we will worship and we’ll label ourselves as Christians and we will even prioritize a portion of our lives to God, but obedience for the believer goes deeper than that.
ii) In the OT we see a pattern over and over again where people become disobedient to God’s law and then fall away completely.
iii) God would then hand them over for discipline and usually they would once again humble themselves and come back to Him.
b) Under the New Covenant there is no longer acres of tedious regulations that govern the moments of our lives, instead now we are to accept God through a faith in Jesus. IN this process we are given the Holy Spirit to come and live and move in our lives. As we mature in our faith we open more and more of our lives up to Him and He slowly begins governing our actions and attitudes.
i) So now it is no longer about following rules 1, 2, 3, instead it is about becoming more sensitive to the movement of God in our lives.
3) Identify
a) A people who have been imbued with a specific identity.
i) Kingdom
(1) A political body. A group that is governed by a specific set of rules.
ii) Priests –
(1) All of the people of Israel were never priests. This title instead indicates their position among all of the other peoples.
(2) The people of Israel are called to be a spiritual influence to the entire world that they exist in.
iii) Holy Nation
(1) Finally they are to be set apart. Have different values then the world is occupied with.
b) As New Covenant people we are given similar instructions.
i) 1 Peter 2:9
(1) We too are chosen, but now we are a royal priesthood. We are adopted members of God’s family and have become royalty. –(The sons of Adam and the daughters of eve in the Chronicles of Narnia.)
(2) As a Holy nation we too operate by a different set of rules.
