I hope your new 2024 year is off to a great start!  I am excited to get back into the book of Exodus, and we will begin this year by taking a deep dive into the 10 Commandments.  Several years ago, when I was in youth ministry, one of our students had one of the…

We will continue our focus on Joy and look at Philippians. And our theme this week will be the connection between peace and joy. Those are two words you hear every Christmas season, but how do they relate? How can you have them? To help us unpack this, we will think about the Goal of joy, and…

When I was a kid, we used to sing a song:  I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart!     Where? Down in my heart!      Where?Down in my heart!  We don’t really sing that song much anymore. Maybe it is a little too silly? Or maybe we are a little…

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving filled with family, friends, and lots of really good food!  This Sunday, we finished the first major section of Exodus and point forward to our Advent series on Joy.  Fittingly, we arrive at the institution of the first Passover meal, which could be the original Thanksgiving meal. And central to…

Marketers tell us that the before and after photos are among the most powerful tools to motivate change and sell products.  We love a dramatic before and after photo.  And in Exodus 2 through 11, we see a dramatic before and after.  We begin with an overconfident, impulsive Moses who dramatically acts and drastically fails, which leads to a…

As we journey through Exodus, we come to the Ten Plagues.  The plagues run from the stomach-turning discomfort of spoiled water, to the cringe-inducing invasion of frogs to the exasperating annoyance of the lice and flies, to the economically damaging animal sickness, the personally debilitating pandemic of boils, to the environmentally disastrous hail and locusts,…

As we move through Exodus, we have come to the point where Moses must confront his fears. He claims he is afraid that neither the people nor Pharaoh will listen to him, and he will fail.  But is that what he is really afraid of? Or is there something deeper?   If I asked you: What are you…

As we move into the final section of the introduction to Exodus, it might be helpful to get a basic map of where we are and where God wants us to go.   There are two basic movements from 4:18-7:7. First, we have Moses’s arrival back in Egypt and his first encounter with Pharaoh (4:18-5:21). This…

The character of Moses lives in the memory of both Jewish and Christian believers as a towering figure. He is remembered as a mighty leader, a great teacher, and a colossal man.  But it is important to remember where he started. In chapters 3 and 4, we encounter a Moses who is deeply insecure, uncertain…

The stories in the early part of Exodus speak to us in our times of greatest and most urgent need. They speak to us when we are tempted to say: God has forsaken…God has forgotten…Why me? Why? Why now? This doesn’t make sense… Exodus 1-6 quietly reminds us that these feelings are not true. In fact,…