More With Less

More With Less

Now What? - Part 3

Sunday, August 27, 2023
Exodus 5:6-20, Luke 9:1-6, Philippians 4:19 

Pharaoh replied, “You are lazy bums, nothing but lazy bums. That’s why you say, ‘Let us go and offer sacrifices to the Lord.’  Go and get back to work! No straw will be given to you, but you still need to make the same number of bricks.”                                                                         -                                                 

Exodus 5:17-18

Jesus called the Twelve together and he gave them power and authority over all demons and to heal sicknesses.  He sent them out to proclaim God’s kingdom and to heal the sick.  He told them, “Take nothing for the journey—no walking stick, no bag, no bread, no money, not even an extra shirt.  Whatever house you enter, remain there until you leave that place.  Wherever they don’t welcome you, as you leave that city, shake the dust off your feet as a witness against them.”

Luke 9:1-5

Listen to this Week’s Sermon here:

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Most of us have heard Pharaoh’s words echoing through various seasons of our lives and certainly in our culture.  Work harder!  Produce more with less!  And of course we know all that is produced goes back up to pad the pockets of those at the top.  Meanwhile, the laborers pay double and triple the rent on salaries that are lower than they were 20 years ago.  When they struggle to make ends meet, we all become Pharaoh’s declaring - “You are lazy… get back to work!”

Sadly this same mentality seeps into the church world.  When our churches struggle to pay the bills or attract new members, we feel like we are not “producing” what we should.  And there are countless “church growth gurus” selling overpriced quick fix programs that make us feel like we are lazy and good for nothing if we don’t have all the same programs as the mega church down the road.  Pharaoh’s voice is prolific and his words haunt us everywhere we turn.  We think of ourselves as hard workers, but in the end, we find ourselves like the slaves in Egypt, working ourselves into the grave in every area of life with very little to show for our efforts while Pharaoh continues to make us feel like we haven’t done enough.

Then we turn to the gospels and find Jesus, our kind our loving master.  Finally, we’ve gotten Pharaoh off our backs and we can live under the gift of mercy and grace.  But wait… Jesus tells us to go out with nothing as well.  Like Pharaoh, it appears at first glance that he expects the disciples to make bricks with no straw, to heal the sick and cast out demons without even so much as a guaranteed place to sleep at night.  Is Jesus just another hardened task master making impossible demands on our lives?

If we look a bit closer we find that Jesus does give them one thing Pharaoh did not, and it’s the thing that makes all the difference.  Luke 9:1 tells us that Jesus gave them all the power and authority needed to do the work he called them to do.  Matthew’s gospel ends with a reminder that Jesus will go with them, that he will be present with them even to the end of the age.  In Philippians 4:19, Paul tells us based on his own experience that God will provide for our every need. 

What if we took Jesus’ command to take nothing with us seriously? 

What would happen if we trusted in his power, his authority, and his presence more than we trusted in our own limited resources? 

What if the greatest power of all comes from the humility of dependence rather than independence? 

What if we stopped working for Jesus and started letting Jesus work through us?

A Mother's Heart

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A Mother’s Heart
Let the Children Come - Part 2
Sunday, August 14, 2022
Exodus 1:8-2:10

“When you are helping the Hebrew women give birth and you see the baby being born, if it’s a boy, kill him. But if it’s a girl, you can let her live.” Now the two midwives respected God so they didn’t obey the Egyptian king’s order. Instead, they let the baby boys live.

 Exodus 1:16-17 (CEB)

Listen to this week’s sermon here:

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For the Jew, the Exodus out of slavery in Egypt is the single most defining event in their historic identity as God’s people.  We typically associate the Exodus story with images of God’s power and strength.  We see Moses in the face of Charlton Heston standing over the Red Sea with his staff raised as the waters rise into great protective walls at his command. 

In all the demonstrations of God’s mighty power throughout the Exodus story, I wonder if we miss something very important about the way it all began. 

Just as God’s redemption of the world through Christ did not begin with the power of the resurrection, but with Jesus taking on the weakness of humanity and surrendering himself to death, even death on a cross, so in the same way the Exodus story of deliverance does not begin with Moses’ strength over Pharoah, but with the revolutionary compassion of four unsuspecting women, two Hebrew midwives, a Hebrew mother, and an Egyptian princess with a mother’s heart.

Without Moses, there is no Exodus and without these four women, there is no Moses.  Isn’t it just like God to begin the work of salvation not in a show of power and glory, but in the quiet faithfulness and love of a mother’s heart, not only for her own children, but for every child, no matter the cost.

Shiphrah and Puah knew all to well the cost for defying Pharoah.  If caught saving the lives of male Hebrew babies against Pharoah’s orders, they certainly would have been killed.  But their compassion for the children was greater than their fear of death.

Moses’ mother knew the consequences for allowing a baby boy to live, and yet she not only gave her son a chance at life by floating him down the river, she boldly followed and manipulated the circumstances so that she would not only get to raise her beloved Moses, but that he would also have the full protection and privilege of a member of the royal household.

And Pharoah’s daughter knew full well her father’s hatred of the Hebrew slaves, and yet her compassion for this child floating in the river was greater than the murderous racism of her extremely powerful family.  The daughter of Pharoah came to love this foreign child as her own.

It is not the power of an eternal king or authoritarian judge or even an overprotective father that saves, but the mother heart of a God who loves her children no matter the cost.