Sermons

Moses commands the people to remember the day they came out of Egypt. Scripture records plainly that this was an event accomplished by the power of God. Yet the world would rather treat it as myth or literary imagination.

Scholars rest their case on the record of the building of the city of Rameses. On that basis they fix the Exodus in the reign of Rameses II, and because nothing from that period fits, they dismiss the Bible as myth. Yet the actual archaeological evidence (a settlement of foreigners, remains that appear to be the tomb of Joseph, Semitic names preserved in a list of slaves, a city abandoned in haste along with traces of burials, the writings of an Egyptian sage, and the Israel Stela) all points to the Middle Kingdom, an age earlier than that of Rameses. Having placed the event in the wrong period, they have then claimed there is no evidence for it.

Once the evidence is set in its proper period, it agrees remarkably with the biblical record. The suggestion that the Exodus be read not as history but only as metaphor and moral lesson is attractively packaged, nothing more. Take away the historical ground of Scripture, and the theological truths built upon it fall with it. The Exodus is a historical fact, planned from the time of God’s covenant with Abraham, and it is the foundation both of Israel’s identity and of knowing who God is.

The road the Israelites took out of Egypt was an eleven-day journey, yet they wandered its course for forty years. The traditional sites of the Red Sea and Mount Sinai fail to match the biblical text at several points. The Gulf of Suez is shallow and narrow, so it is hard to picture a people who had left in haste crossing there. The mountain on the Sinai Peninsula is no more than a site the Church in Rome designated on conjecture in the sixth century.

Scripture describes the Yam Suph as great, deep and wide waters that stood like a wall on either side. Off Nuweiba in the Gulf of Aqaba, the width and depth of the sea, its gentle slope and even the remains of chariot wheels found there all fit that account. On the far shore, Jabal al-Lawz likewise has what Mount Sinai ought to have: a scorched summit, stone pillars for the twelve tribes, traces of the altar Aaron built for the golden calf, a flowing stream and a cave.

These events lie 3,500 years in the past, so none of this can be settled for certain. Yet such traces bear witness to God at work in real history, not in a parable on paper. Even so, as Jesus said to Thomas, “Blessed are those who have not seen, and have believed.” In the end faith is not produced by evidence. It is received only when God gives it as a gift.

Even as he was being stoned to death, Stephen’s face was as calm as an angel’s. Solomon, once he became king, ruled his people harshly, and only when he saw himself giving way to the years did he realize that a life of obedience to God is true wisdom. Obadiah, though he served in King Ahab’s court, risked his life to hide a hundred of the Lord’s prophets in caves and so kept them alive.

The face shows the state of the heart just as it is. Solomon’s face, fierce in his pride, became gentle and radiant after he repented. The commands of God, who is King, are not to be kept only when one feels like it; and because human beings are frail creatures who can determine neither what lies ahead nor the day of their death, they must live leaning on the One to whom their life belongs.

Those who obey the Word can discern the right time and the right way, and so they do not fall into misfortune. Obedience must spring not from fear but from faith in Christ, offered freely as an act of devotion. Christians whose sins are forgiven and who have been saved need not dread the end; they are free to live wisely now, giving thanks to God.

Solomon was a man who governed his people by the wisdom God had given him and handed down judgments famed for their insight. Yet as his power grew, he took foreign women as wives and lent his ear to flattery, until his wisdom came to smell of pride and lust.

This was the result of mistaking grace for his own righteousness. The moment a person sets the heart on human praise, grace is pushed aside, and where God has been abandoned, greed and idols move in where discernment once stood. Solomon himself later came to see that those years had been in vain.

God’s people must not set their hearts on what others say, but look to God alone. Whoever pleases God can escape what is evil, while the one who forsakes wisdom is caught in a snare of their own making. Before frost settles on their heads, now that they have heard the word, they need to turn back.

As the years go by, a child who has studied faithfully over a long time and a child who crams only to scrape through exams come to lead lives of a different quality. So it is with life. There are times when hard work does not bring what one hoped for, and those who have lived honestly may find themselves the more discouraged.

To say that the former days were better than these is not wisdom. A faith that dwells on the past instead of living fully in the present is itself unbelief. That God has set prosperity and adversity beyond human reckoning means that life, in the end, rests with him.

Counting oneself overly righteous or overly wise, and being overly wicked or foolish, alike lead a person to ruin. Salvation comes not through one’s own righteousness but through the merit of Christ and God’s election. The wise are those who acknowledge their weakness and live in humble reverence for God.

Solomon built the temple, and after it his own palace. The palace was twice the size of the temple and took twice as long to build, yet Scripture gives it a mere twelve verses, set in the middle of the account of the temple’s construction.

Measured by size or by time, the palace was the greater undertaking, but what Scripture keeps at its center is the temple, not the palace. The furnishings of the temple were made by Hiram, the son of a Jewish mother and a Tyrian father, who grew up without his father. God, who does not judge by outward appearance, made this man the one in charge of the temple’s building. The two pillars raised at the temple entrance, Jachin and Boaz, likewise declare that it was established not by man but by the power and authority of God, and the bronze Sea and the basins show that only after being washed clean could anyone enter the holy place, filled with gold.

Temple and palace alike are nothing more than instruments, given so that God’s people might fulfill the calling he has entrusted to them. Just as the temple, not the palace, was meant to stand at the heart of Israel’s history, so God, not self, must stand at the center of our lives. When the work of God comes first, we come to live a life that God himself establishes and fills.

Moses shrinks from God’s call in fear. He would have to contend with Pharaoh and prevail, and trials he might have borne on his own grew far heavier now that he had to answer for the faith of the people as well. Yet the people, having come through the ten plagues and the miracle of the Red Sea, treat that grace as something of their own, and then complain against Moses over a mouthful of water.

The most dangerous moment comes just after great grace has been received. Those who are not thankful will keep pressing for something more. Moses could not release that people from his heart, and so he grew angry; tripped by his hurt, he did not in the end enter the Promised Land. The apostle Paul, by contrast, confesses even in prison that he has learned to be content in whatever circumstances. He kept his own suffering apart from his calling to preach the gospel, and released that suffering from his heart.

It is love for God’s people that makes one stumble before them, not a lack of it. Yet one who cannot compose those feelings will fail in everything. Those who bear their calling in humility receive strength and peace from God, and come to the confession that they can do all things in him who gives them strength.

Solomon begins building the temple four years after he becomes king. Yet the text dates this moment alongside another fact: it was the four hundred and eightieth year since Israel came out of Egypt. The tabernacle had wandered through the wilderness, and now it was becoming a temple settled in one place. The promise God had given Israel through Moses was fulfilled only after all those long years.

Neither the tabernacle nor the temple is itself God. Each is simply the place God appointed for meeting his people, and no amount of human devotion can confine him within its walls. God said the same to Solomon once the temple was finished. What matters is not the building but obedience that keeps his statutes, and he will never go back on the promise he made to David.

The faithful God always brings to pass what he has spoken. The same promise of his presence runs from the tabernacle to the temple, then to Jesus Christ, and on to us, his people. Even when we are troubled and weak, we can lean on the faithful God and go forward one step at a time. That is the way of faith that shines to the very end.

Joshua obeyed, the walls of Jericho fell, and his name became known among the nations. Until the shout went up, the people made no sound at all, and after that obedience God himself raised Joshua’s name high.

A name carries a person’s faith, character and the years they have lived. God honors the name of one who has lived according to his will, but service offered to win human praise, however splendid it may look, bears no fruit. Just as the fragrance of costly perfume lasts only a moment, so an empty name that exalts people soon fades away.

Greed and bribery bring down even the wise and discerning. The pride that set out to make a name for itself is left at last as ashes, but whoever lives for the name of God comes to be named alongside it. The word calls believers to use their own names for good, for the sake of that name, the most beautiful in all the world.

John said he loved Jesus, yet at the cross fear drove him to betray him. Only later, when he saw with his own eyes Christ seated on the throne and the book of life, did he come to recognize his sin and the faith he had failed to show that day.

Sin is not forgotten as time passes; the more faith grows, the more clearly it comes into view. The quarrel between Euodia and Syntyche arose for the same reason. Each put her own judgment and pride first, saying, “This is for the work of God,” while underneath lay an unwillingness to bend her own will.

The church is not a place where matters are settled by worldly knowledge and self-assertion. Where salvation is not at stake, those who give way, leave the matter to the Holy Spirit and quietly bear with it will find that God resolves it in his own time. A life lived with such forbearance is recorded just as it was in the book before the throne, and God is watching that life.

Uzziah became king at sixteen and feared God. He won his battles and made the nation great and strong. But as his fame spread as far as the border of Egypt, he slowly began to change, and came to regard his success as the fruit of his own wisdom and strategy. In the end he went into the temple to burn incense himself, an offering only the priests could make. Azariah the priest pleaded earnestly with him, but he would not listen.

Pride does not arrive in a single moment. Wealth and power that can be seen, and the praise of others, gradually cloud a heart that once gave thanks to God. Refusing to heed the priest shows that the heart has already passed over to Satan. Uzziah was struck with leprosy on his forehead as judgment. He was shut away in a separate house until the day he died, unable to enjoy a king’s authority, and was not laid in the royal tomb.

However great the grace someone has received, if they forget to give thanks and grow proud, they cannot enjoy it and it is taken from them. God did not cast Uzziah aside from the beginning; it was his own choice that damaged the relationship. Those who treat the grace they have received as a debt and live in thankfulness remain God’s people to the end.

Only two months have passed since the first leaves appeared on the hills, and already the trees and flowers are in full growth. In that season the congregation gathers for an outdoor service. The word worship carries two meanings: the homage of bowing down before God, and the service and ministry offered to one another.

The peace offering of the Old Testament and the Lord’s Supper of the New hold both meanings together. They speak not only of a relationship with God restored but also of the meal and fellowship shared among God’s people. Worship, then, is not merely taking one’s place at the appointed hour; it is the whole of a life spent loving one’s brothers and sisters and giving oneself for them.

Christians labor not for their own honor but for Christ, and so they must lay down their own will and work together. Loving and serving one’s brothers and sisters is no condition for gaining salvation; it is the fruit of the salvation already received through the cross, made visible in daily life. To love and respect one another sincerely, here where the church has gathered today, is itself the worship offered to God.