Get On, Get Off, or Get Out of The Way  Exodus 2:1 - 10

David Dimmick, our Director of Community Relations and chairman of the Board of Directors of FaithCentre, constantly reminds me of a proverb, “If you want to see God laugh, tell God your plans.” We human beings work out all kinds of scenarios for what our lives will look like, what our career successes will be, how we are going to change the community in which we live, and how we are going to lead our church to greatness. We have it all figured out to the minutest detail. But we forget to let God in on the planning. In fact, we forget to
let God do the leading and tell us what God’s plans are and how God wants us to participate in God’s plans. And then we wonder why nothing works out they way we planned. We have to find out what God is thinking first, because God is the one who will make everything happen and make it happen successfully.

The Pharaoh of Egypt in our scripture passage this morning had that same problem, and what made it worse, Pharaoh didn’t know the God of Israel, nor did he take the God of Israel seriously when he was introduced to him. All Pharaoh knew was that he had the power and he thought he himself was a god who could
exercise that power. Boy, did God turn the tables on him.

The story of Exodus begins when Egypt receives a new dynasty of kings who don’t honor the old allegiances. Suddenly the Israelites, who had been a favored people in a foreign land, had their favoritism repealed and they ended up as slaves. When they complained, Pharaoh didn’t give them all of the resources they needed to do their job yet expected them to produce their quota. Life was impossible, and the people were disillusioned and complaining.

The king of Egypt was scared of the Israelites. He saw them as a threat and he was afraid that if they became too numerous, they would outnumber the Egyptians and perhaps overthrow the Egyptian leadership. So Pharaoh decided to control this overpopulation and decrease it. He ordered the midwives who assisted in
child birth to kill all male babies. But God intervened, and the midwives didn’t follow Pharaoh’s instructions, and the Israelites increasd further in population. Then Pharaoh got really scared and angry, so he told the Egyptians
to throw all Israelite male babies into the Nile River to kill them. What did God do but intervene once again. To a certain family, a boy was born, and before the baby was discovered, the mother put him into a basket and floated the basket down the river with the baby’s older sister watching over the baby from the bank. Who ended up finding the baby? This is where God’s sense of humor shined through. None other than Pharaoh’s daughter, who immediately adoptd the baby boy, named him Moses, and unwittingly ended up hiring the
baby’s birth mother as his nanny. Pharaoh was trying to kill any threat to his throne, and he ended up welcoming into his own house as a family member the one who would some day lead the Israelites to freedom, crippling his country, his economy, and his family. Don’t you just love a God who always wins, who always
succeeds, and humorously if not fairly? I guess if you’re not Egyptian, you might love God.

Reminds me of a joke my wife heard from some Lutheran pastors who were avid golfers. It seems that one day in heaven, Moses, St. Peter, and Jesus are getting a foursome together to play 18 holes. Only they can’t find a fourth. Finally, a little old man offers to join their golf outing, and since they really want to play, they agree to include him.

Now the golf course in heaven is just out of this world, nothing like it here on earth. However, the course is not easy to play, so the first hole has a water hazard that you have to hit over to reach the green. St. Peter tees off first and the ball drops right in the middle of the water, so he has to tee off again using a second ball. Moses tees off second and plops the ball right into the water. He walks down to the water, the water parts, and he walks to his ball, then hits it onto the green. Jesus tees off and also drops his ball in the water. He walks across the water to the ball and manages to chip it onto the green. Then it’s the little old man’s turn.

The little old man takes a mighty wind up and clobbers the ball. It goes high into the air and falls into the water, only as it touches the water’s surface it hits a rock and bounces sideways where it ricochets off of a tree trunk, shoots up into the air where it lands on the back of an eagle just passing by. As the eagle passes over the green it banks to one side letting the ball roll off its wing onto the green and into the cup for a hole-in-one. St. Peter looks at Jesus and says in disgust, “I hate playing with your father.”

If you remember nothing else about this sermon for the rest of your life, remember this one point: God always wins. God always wins, and to God’s opponents, it doesn’t seem fair, but to God’s faithful followers, it always
gives us a chuckle.

I have a retired colleague and friend who was my district superintendent several years ago. His hobby is trains and model trains. As he talked about change and making disciples in the Church, his favorite saying was, “The Gospel train is coming. Either get on, get off, or get out of the way, because it’s not stopping.” People like Pharaoh always think that they can step in front of God and stop God from doing what God has planned to do. Every person that I have ever seen try to stop God has gotten run over just like Pharaoh. Personally, I have never tried to step in front of God, but I have been a little slow sometimes in getting on, getting off, or getting out of the way and have had to nurse a few bumps and bruises.

You see, God won’t be side tracked or defeated. God has a plan for the world, and for you and me. And that plan is called salvation. Right from the beginning when the first human beings disobeyed God and committed sin, God developed and put into practice this plan called salvation. It was a plan that allowed us human beings to find our way back to the God that we had rejected, disobeyed, and from whom we had become lost. God has offered all kinds of ways for this plan to work, ways that people could come back to God, receive a new
start, and look to a new future with a perfect relationship with our creator and savior God. But for every method that God used, people kept rejecting God’s salvation and love.

Then God got tough. God didn’t send us a Moses, but once again did the unexpected. God wrapped the divine in flesh and came among us in the form of a human being whom we could see and understand, Jesus the Christ. Through this one man, God showed us what God is like and how humans should respond to and become intimately involved with God. And when the world still didn’t get it and killed Jesus, God turned the tables on the world. When the world thought that it had disposed of Jesus, God turned death into life. God resurrected the defeated and dead Jesus into new life so that not only would Jesus live again, but so would the rest of us who accepted Christ as Lord and Savior.

I’ll bet that you didn’t know that in the Greek Orthodox tradition, the day after Easter, Easter Monday, in olden times was devoted to telling jokes. You know why? The Orthodox Christians felt that they were imitating the cosmic joke that God pulled on Satan in the Resurrection. Satan thought he had won, beaten God and killed his Son once and for all, and he was smug in his victory, smiling to himself, having the last word. So he thought. Then God raised Jesus from the dead, and life and salvation became the last words. God had the last
laugh. The very last one because not only is Jesus the final answer, Jesus is the trump card that wins the game. In Jesus, God has provided the ultimate victory, and the battle between sin and salvation has been won for all of eternity. I’ve just never understood why people continue to follow sin since it’s a losing battle. The war has been won in Christ. God is the victor. It’s done.

Having said that, I say to you that God is active in this world in a way which is always victorious. Sin and evil cannot possibly win. They try to make the rest of us think they have power, but it’s an illusion. God’s plan of
salvation continues to be at work in this world and like a train, it is gathering steam and barreling full speed ahead. And the question for each of us is, the Gospel train of salvation is moving forward to fulfill God’s plans.
So are you going to get on and join God’s victory lap? Some people actually do want to reject God and God’s love and grace. I don’t know why, but they do. They need to get off. And for those who have their own ideas and agendas and think they can stop God, watch out. God’s not only always wins, but has already won through Christ, and you will get run over if you don’t get out of the way.

My own advice is get on the Gospel train. Go for the ride of a lifetime and for eternity. Some of us don’t like to see new things, go new places, try new experiences, but that’s what the Christian life is all about. It’s going where God chooses to lead us. God has a place for us and Christ has invited us to see and to live in eternity with God. Will you accept the invitation? The train is leaving and it’s time get aboard.