To A Thousand Generations
September 19, 2021
Preached by Benjamin Vrbicek
Scripture Reading
Exodus 34:6-8
6 The Lord passed before [Moses] and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, 7 keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children's children, to the third and the fourth generation.” 8 And Moses quickly bowed his head toward the earth and worshiped.
This morning has a lot of hustle and bustle. The time, number, and location of our worship services changed. We have three baptisms at the start of the second service and the Lord’s Supper at the end of each. This morning we launch our Community 101 class. After church we’ll host a picnic. Last week children’s and youth ministries launched with some improvements to make them better. Tonight, the small group Bible study my wife and I attend begins. Our church has lots of hustle and bustle.
But why? We are trying to prevent a tragedy. You and I—all of us together—participate in averting a tragedy that has often occurred, is occurring, and will occur among the people of God. Let’s pray first, and I’ll explain what I mean. “Dear heavenly Father . . .”
To a Thousand Generations: A Prologue to Exodus
When I was a younger man, not-net-married but wanting to show who I hoped would be my future my father-in-law that I was in fact a good man for his daughter, I bought him, what I thought was, a nice Father’s Day present. I bought my future father-in-law a giant contraption to smoke meat. Now, I don’t know why I did this. I had neither seen him spend significant time barbequing nor talk about smoking meat. I knew he liked to eat meat, but he had never talked of his desire to smoke the meat himself. Perhaps I projected upon my father-in-law the kind of present I would have wanted to receive were I in his station in life. Regardless, that was June, and when late November came, he decided that Thanksgiving would be the perfect time to smoke his first meat. Indeed, we would smoke our Thanksgiving turkey for all the family to behold. Because it needed to smoke for something like 12 hours and we planned to eat an early lunch, my mother- and father-in-law took turns getting up throughout the night to add water to the smoker to keep our dinner tender.
At first light, I took my first shift. Bruce and I went outside to the back patio, which swirled with a freezing, bitter Iowa winter wind. But we had a plan for the cold: He would lift the lid, I would pour the water, and he would close the lid. Now, mind you, this was first light, so no one had really seen the turkey in 7 or 8 hours. When Bruce lifted the lid, we beheld a turkey that formerly weighed well over 20 pounds but now was the size of a football and the color of soot. I froze. Do you know what my father-in-law said to me in a stern voice? “Hurry up; you’re letting out all of the heat!”
I thought to myself, Someone should have done that 6 hours ago, since, apparently, the temperature was something like 375◦, not 175◦. So, I poured the water, he replaced the lid, and when we went inside, I hid in the basement, and Bruce went upstairs to tell his wife that he must now go to the store to buy lunchmeat for turkey sandwiches.
Now, if I were a better preacher, I might be able to turn that story into a dazzling metaphor about the beauty of the Lord Jesus Christ and what it means to know him and enjoy him and walk with him and belong to his church. But I’m not that good.
I can tell you this, though. That story is a true story. It happened thus. I wouldn’t say, however, that the story has any deep truth within it. Maybe you can think of some way to make it about Jesus. But I can say this: we keep that story alive, we keep that story fresh, by retelling it to one another. Most Thanksgivings, especially when we’re with that side of our family, we talk about the time I let all the heat out of the meat smoker.
And that is the connection I want to make. God has given his church true stories that do have deep truth, and he means for us to keep them alive, that is, for us to keep the truth fresh in our hearts and lives by retelling the story to one another. In Pastor David’s stand-alone sermon last Sunday from Romans 15, we just so happened to read in v. 5 these words: “For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.” Whatever stories God told, whatever his authorized spokesman wrote down, he spoke and they wrote, for our good that we might have hope, according to Romans 15:5. But only if we continue to tell the true stories and their deep truth.
So what does this have to do with hustle and bustle and preventing a tragedy? This fall we are studying the book of Exodus, but to set the stage, let me read one verse from the book of Judges. Chronologically, the book of Judges begins something like 50 to 75 years or so after the book of Exodus. Look at what this key verse says,
And all that generation also were gathered to their fathers. And there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel. (2:10)
The generation who died was the generation of Joshua and the followers after him. Joshua was the leader of God’s people after Moses. And Moses was the leader of God’s people during the book of Exodus. Let me read Judges 2:10 again.
And all that generation also were gathered to their fathers. And there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel.
Just two weeks ago I stood in front of a group of 100 upper school students at a Christian school. They had asked me to preach a few messages. I read that verse, and I told them that this verse and the verses around that verse explained why a tragedy had happened in Israel, was happening in Israel, and would continue to happen for years to come. Generations were growing up, by and large, who did not know the Lord, and that was a tragedy that produced a thousand problems for the people of God. So I preached my messages, and they went well enough, and I went home.
Then something happened. I did something. And then I did it again a few days later, and I realized that when I said Judges 2:10 talks about a tragedy, I had no idea how significant it really was. And I already thought the tragedy was pretty significant.
What happened? On Thursday I preached Judges. On Friday morning, in the office at church, I printed out the book of Exodus, hole-punched it so I could take notes, grabbed a pen, and read through the book of Exodus to prepare for the fall. Then I did it again on Monday. And I thought, Man, I had had only a glimpse of the gravity. Here is why.
There’s a phrase in the book of Exodus that is so central to the book, so often repeated, so weighty and prominent, that theologians have given the phrase a name. They call it the “recognition formula.” Don’t worry, no algebra is required. The recognition formula goes like this: “then he will know” or “then they will know” or “then you will know.” God says, “When I do this, and when I do that, then you will know.” Know what—what will we know? “Then you will know,” God says, “that I am God.”
Everything God is doing in the book of Exodus is so that people would recognize that God is God. All of the events in Exodus—from the baby in the basket floated down the Nile River, to a fiery bush that doesn’t burn, and to Moses and to the plagues and the angel of death passing over the homes with door jambs painted in blood and to the parting of the Red Sea and the closing of the Red Sea, the food on the ground called Manna, the pillar of fire and the 10 Commandments, and the building of the all that would be built for the proper worship of the God who is who he is—all of this was done so that people would know God is God. This recognition formula occurs nearly twenty times. Let me give you a taste with a few of them. First, note what Pharoah says to Moses in Exodus 5.
But Pharaoh said, “Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, and moreover, I will not let Israel go.” (5:2)
Pharaoh says he does not know the Lord. Now, hear what the Lord says later:
13 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Rise up early in the morning and present yourself before Pharaoh and say to him, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of the Hebrews, “Let my people go, that they may serve me. 14 For this time I will send all my plagues on you yourself, and on your servants and your people, so that you may know that there is none like me in all the earth. 15 For by now I could have put out my hand and struck you and your people with pestilence, and you would have been cut off from the earth. 16 But for this purpose I have raised you up, to show you my power, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth. (9:13–16)
In other words, not only will Pharaoh know, but the whole world will know.
In chapter 6, God says to Moses that Moses should encourage the people with these words:
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. (6:7)
Later in the book, as the Hebrew people fled Egypt, Pharaoh and his soldiers had a change of heart and pursued the Hebrew people to kill them. Imagine how afraid you would be. Fathers, you stand there looking off in the distance and see the soldiers on the horizon and hear the rumble of chariots and the stomp of horses shakes the ground. Without a single weapon of your own, you bend over to pick up a rock here and a rock there and tell your family to either run or get behind you or hide or something. But this is what actually transpired in Exodus 14:
13 And Moses said to the people, “Fear not, stand firm, and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again. 14 The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent.” 15 The Lord said to Moses. . . . 18 the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I have gotten glory over Pharaoh, his chariots, and his horsemen.” (14:13–15, 18)
I could keep going. And we will go on for the better part of the next nine months so that we know this Lord. Do you remember what Judges 2:10 said? “And there arose another generation after them who did not know the Lord or the work that he had done for Israel.” All of Exodus—the hellfire and brimstone rained down on the enslavers of God’s people, the provision of food and water for God’s people and the gracious provision of God’s law to his people, and the cloud of the glory of God’s presence that descends upon them in the final few verses of the book—is done so that Pharaoh would know, that Egyptians would know, that Israelites would know, that the whole world would know, indeed that you and I would know that God is God. What a tragedy for it not to happen. “For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope” (Rom. 15:5).
Which is why I said at the start of the sermon that all our hustle and bustle ain’t for show. In our calls to worship, in our singing, in our church baptisms, in our collecting of tithes and offerings, in our reading of Scripture, in our receiving the preached Word, in our participation in the Lord’s Supper, in our fellowship at a picnic, in the launching of children’s, youth, small group ministries and a membership class, in all this and more, we are preventing a tragedy. We are keeping a true story alive in our hearts and in our lives by retelling it to one another. This is what baptism is, a retelling of our sin and our Savior. That is what the Lord’s Supper is, a retelling of our sin and our Savior. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 11, “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes” (v. 26). Thus, your participation in the life of the local church is not optional. Participation in the church is not a luxury for extra-committed Christians but a necessity for all who are weak, wounded, and wayward and know they need the living Savior. And we do need a savior. One of the things that comes out in the book of Exodus is not just that the people are enslaved in Egypt but as the book goes on you see the way Israelites need to be saved from Israelites. You need to be saved from you. You need to be saved from God and by God.
And oh, do they have a savior. Oh, do we have a savior. Before the sermon we read Exodus 34:6–7, and I’ll read it again. When we know the Lord, this is who we know:
The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, 7 keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin.
If you don’t know the Lord, you can know him. And if you don’t know him as you ought to know him, which is all of us to one degree or another, let us together press on to know him. Let’s pray . . .
Family Discussion Questions
The book of Exodus has two famous clusters of ten—ten plagues and ten commandments. How many of each can you name?
What stories are you most familiar with in the book?
Do you consider Moses a good leader or a bad leader? Why?
Benjamin talked about keeping the story of God alive in our hearts and lives. What are some ways your heart has grown cold to God’s story and how might you become “warm” again to God?
We are calling this series “the gospel according to Exodus.” Do you think that is helpful or unhelpful? Why?
