We Need a Bigger Boat

SUMMARY

Karl Ihfe opens his sermon with references to the movie Jaws and the dramatic Thai cave rescue to illustrate his central theme: God's rescue operation requires "a bigger boat" because it encompasses far more than individual salvation. Using Exodus 3 as his foundation, Ihfe demonstrates how God heard the collective cries of the Israelites in Egypt and came down to rescue them as a people, not just select individuals. He emphasizes the communal language throughout Scripture, noting how God says "my people" and uses plural pronouns when describing His rescue mission.

Ihfe argues that Western Christianity has become too individualistic, focusing primarily on personal salvation and private relationships with God, while missing the broader communal aspect of God's rescue plan. He points to Jesus' teaching of the Lord's Prayer with "our Father" and "give us our daily bread" as evidence of this communal focus. The sermon connects the Exodus story to Christ's mission, explaining how Jesus came not just for individuals but for the whole world, as stated in John 3:16. Ihfe concludes by challenging the congregation to ask not only "God, rescue me" but "God, rescue us" - addressing collective bondage in their church, community, and culture, including issues of poverty, injustice, racism, and division.

TRANSCRIPTION:

If you have your Bible with you today, I invite you to turn over to Exodus 3, the passage that Jenny read for us a moment ago in the summer of 1975. I know last century, this movie came out called Jaws. And for those of you who aren't quite old enough to remember 1975, that was a long time ago, but it changed forever how people approached going into the ocean when they were at the coast. But it's the story of a shark that was preying on the people outside of Martha's Vineyard. But there's at one point, the sheriff is played by a guy named Roy Schneider, Sheriff Brody, or Chief of Police Brody.

He goes and hires this guy to take him out to hunt this shark down. And he's out in the boat, and you may remember the scene, but he's kind of chumming the water, trying to attract the shark, and he's looking away. And the shark suddenly appears. And he looks over and in his response to the boater, to the sailor who was taking him out, he says, we're going to need a bigger boat. He realizes the problem is a little bigger than I thought it was this morning.

That's where I got this title from. But my hope is, as we enter into the story that we're captured once again by the problem that we face, it's a little bit we're going to need a bigger boat. But not only that and that the rescue is not just for one person or one town, but it's for the whole world. And so we're gonna need a bigger boat, a bigger understanding, a bigger view of God's rescue. Some of you may, to pull us back into this century.

Some of you may remember the story in Thailand of the rescue from the Tham Luang cave. It was 13 or 12 soccer boys about boys on a soccer team about 12 years old. This is a picture of them before they actually went into the cave that day. But they went into this cave that's an enormous cave. It's kind of in the north part of the country, but between them and the neighboring region, there's this expanse of caves.

They walked about two and a half miles back into the cave. A pretty amazing thing. Well, it was during the monsoon season, so rains had fallen and they had raised the level of water in the cave. Well, while they were in the cave, rain began to fall again, and it began to fall rapidly. So much so that they were trapped inside the cave.

They were facing rising water and lowering oxygen. They were in pitch darkness. They had some lights, but eventually those Wore out for days. No one knew where they were. And this story captured the world's attention.

It was pretty amazing story. It wasn't just one family trying to get their child out. It was all these families trying to rescue all of these children and their coach. And what was fascinating was it became this global effort that you saw folks from the Thai Navy SEAL program, you saw American military personnel. There were British divers.

In fact, it was the British divers who eventually found these young men. This is a picture of the rescue team after they had been on site. I think the search lasted somewhere around 13, 14 days. Thankfully, every single child and the coach was rescued. If you go back and read the account of this, it was pretty amazing story.

They brought the two divers in and they would take one child and they would have to both swim this child all through the two and a half miles it would take to get out of the cave. It was this unified effort, right, this global mission to say we're going to come together and rescue this group of people. I think it's a beautiful metaphor for the rescue operation that God has set in since Genesis 3, that he's trying to bring his people to come together, that all nations and all peoples would be rescued together. Not just one, but certainly all. As we saw, God wants to save.

Not only Andrea and Camden and Holden, those last few baptisms we've gotten to view personally, but every one of us. God wants to save every one of us. That's the picture, I think, a beautiful picture of his church. You see, we often think of salvation as God reaching down and saving me and rescuing me. And absolutely that is true.

But from the very beginning of Scripture, what we begin to hear if we're listening closely, is God's rescue has never been merely about just individuals. It's personal, but it's also corporate that that God wants to rescue communities, whole groups of people. And so he forms this community and he creates belonging and then he calls it his church. And he says, I want you to be my little ambassadors out into the world, working together all over the world. Not simply a collection of individuals who all happen to be believe the same thing, who just happen to show up here every Sunday at 10:30 for worship service or 9:30 for Bible class.

But this group of people who have been rescued and brought out to. And so I want us to take us back to this maybe first grand rescue story that we get to see. Jenny, read this passage a moment ago in Exodus 3. I want to read a couple of verses and just help us notice a couple of things. I hope it'll be encouraging for you this morning.

In verse 7 we read God's response. I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers and I am concerned about their suffering. So I've come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of the land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey. Did you hear that communal language, my people?

I've heard their cries. I understand. And familiar with their suffering. God doesn't say, I noticed a few spiritually mature Israelites have talked to me or I've noticed there's a few morally upright ones over here. He says all of them.

Israel wasn't just spiritually confused, they were systematically being oppressed. Generations had been in slavery, babies had been thrown into the Nile river, back breaking labor. They had no political power, they had no freedom, no ability to rescue themselves. And so God says, I see it and I hear it and I'm gonna do something about it. I'm going to come down and rescue them.

You see, God's not distant from oppression. He's not silent when it comes to injustice. He's not unaware of suffering. And so the rescue begins. Not because Israel strategized their way out.

They figured out a plan and worked it. Instead, God heard their cry. And so here's a truth. I think we need to recover and I hope through this Lenten season will be borne out in our lives once again. That sin is not only personal, but it can be communal.

Bondage is not only internal, it can also be communal. Yes, we struggle individually and we've talked a lot about that, but there are also shared patterns of struggle, aren't there? Shared wounds, shared systems that enslave groups of people, addiction patterns in families or cycles of violence in neighborhoods, economic injustices, racial division, cultural fear, even churches divided by politics. God doesn't just save isolated souls out of broken systems, he does that, but he also moves to, to confront those systems themselves and save his people. You see, he rescues people.

Let's fast forward just a couple of chapters. In the book of Exodus, we discover there that as Moses has gone into Egypt, that God is sending plagues and he sends 10 of them and nine of them don't work. But the 10th seems to have worked. The killing of the first child. And that's where our Passover story comes from.

We celebrate each week this idea of, of God rescuing us by blood. Well, Pharaoh allows the Israelites to go, but Then he changes his mind. And so he sends his army after them. What have I done? So he goes out after them, sending his army, and they catch up to him.

And so Israel finds themselves trapped between a body of water, the Red Sea, and the coming Egyptian army. What are they going to do? No weapons, no boats, and it seems, no options. The panic starts to spread. Not just in one person, we're told, but in everybody.

Chapter 14, verse 10. As Pharaoh approached, the Israelites looked up and there were the Egyptians marching after them. And they were terrified and they cried out to the Lord. Moses response to the people. He says, do not be afraid.

Stand firm and you will see deliverance from that the Lord will bring to you today. The Egyptians you see today you will never see again. The Lord will fight for you. You need only to be still. Again, this communal plural language.

The Lord will fight for you. You see, Israel didn't split the Red Sea with positive thinking. They didn't organize a defense strategy and put it into place. They didn't negotiate a truce with Egypt between Moses and Pharaoh. No.

God fought for them. And he walked them through together. You see, that's the amazing thing about this story. When the sea parts, it doesn't create this single file escape route. Everybody stand behind one another.

No, we're told the sea split wide open and this entire group of people walked through into freedom on the other side. So here's where I think this can challenge us. We live in a culture, and too often a church culture, that is radically individualistic. It's all about my faith or my quiet time or my salvation or my personal relationship with Jesus. And remember, those things matter.

It's not that those things don't matter. It's just that if we reduce our faith in who we are into this individualistic concern, we, we miss out on a big part of the story. You see, scripture's primary language is communal. It's God's desire to save all people. Right?

When Jesus taught his followers to pray, he taught them to pray our father, not my Father, our Father, and give us our daily bread. Help us to be your kingdom here on earth. You see, when we reduce salvation to a private, transactional type of situation between me and God, we shrink the scale down of all that God is doing. See, he's forming a people who will trust him, that will then partner with him, that he can then use to battle and face obstacles on the edge of a mighty, impossible sea. I know some of us come this morning and we're facing our own Red Sea moment, aren't we?

We're facing a health crisis where we feel trapped or maybe it's a financial concern that we have, or there's some kind of relationship or family tension that's going on in our lives and we, we feel the weight of that moment. But the truth is we're also facing Red Sea moment here as a church and as a people, as a society. Anxiety is at an all time high in our world. Loneliness, in fact is now being called an epidemic in our world. As I said a moment ago, we discover churches are politically polarized.

Our communities are facing all kinds of racial tension and unrest and fragmentation. And it feels a little bit overwhelming, like we're being torn apart. We can't figure out how do we solve this on our own, what do we do, how do we respond? I love revisiting God's call through Moses to the people. Stand firm.

Watch what the Lord will do. Watch what the Lord will do with us together. You see, the Exodus from Egypt was real, but it wasn't final. It was a preview. As we talked last week, some Israel's biggest enemy wasn't Egypt.

Their biggest oppressor wasn't Pharaoh. It's sin and death that ultimately those are true not only for Israel, but for us even still today. And so centuries later, we read these words telling the story of Jesus coming to earth that when John tells us why Jesus came, he uses this for God so loved the world. God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

See, Jesus didn't just come for individuals. He did. He came for all individuals. He came for the world. In fact, Paul would write to the church in Rome a little bit later as he was explaining this.

He says it like this. He says, if God is for us, who can be against us? I mean, he who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for us all, how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Do you hear that communal language, that thread that started back in the early chapters of Exodus? We see it woven all through God's story of rescue to his people.

It's why Jesus came. That's what Paul reminds the church and says, this is what we have in store for us, that God came for us all. The God who came down from in Exodus is now the God who has come down in flesh of Jesus, the God who fought Pharaoh, fight sin and death. The God who parted the Red Sea is the same God who tore that veil in the temple. You see, the logic of Romans 8 is this.

If God has already given us the most precious gift, gift that he could give his one and only Son, we could trust him for everything necessary for our freedom, not just our individual forgiveness. Certainly it's that. But also for the healing of his people and the renewal of communities and the restoration of what's broken. See, the cross isn't merely about getting individuals into heaven. It's about getting heaven into God's people here, that we might bring heaven onto earth, forming us a reconciled people to be his hands and his feet.

Paul will tell the church in Ephesus, he says it this way, but now in Christ Jesus. You remember we got our West Texas translations. That's y'. All. Y' all who were once far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

For He, Jesus himself is our peace, who has made the two groups into one group. And he's destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations. His purpose was to create in himself one new humanity out of the two. That communal language continues going, he says this rescue plan that began back in Exodus, it's been his plan from the beginning. The church is meant to be a living witness, that red seas still get parted, that enemies become family, that addicts find freedom, that lonely find belonging, that the divided find reconciliation.

So let me ask you this morning, as you think about your understanding of salvation, has it mostly been about you, your guilt and your prayer and your blessed assurance, again, that matters. But what if God's doing not just that, but even more. What if that's not the only thing God is doing? What if he rescued you? He wasn't just saving you from something, but he was saving you to something.

Or maybe into something, into a people, into a family, into a mission that might join him. You see, the church is not a weekly gathering of people. It's a redeemed and reconciled community. And we cry out and we walk through seas and we worship on the other side, all together. So here's a question for us all, and maybe this one can guide us as we head out into our week this week.

But where are we, not just individually, but collectively in bondage? Where are things not the way they're supposed to be? As you look out into the world around you, as you listen to the friends that you talk with, as you walk into your workplace and you engage either customers or fellow workers. When you're in a grocery store or when you're watching the news online, where are we collectively in bondage in our church? Do you think about our church?

Where are we collectively in bondage in our church? Are there patterns of fear or hidden sin or divisions among us? Where are we in collective bondage? God, would you rescue us? What about our community?

Where has poverty become normalized? Or where children have to face abuse and neglect and are afraid to even go in their own home? Or where do we see economic injustice? Where there's a group that have and a group that doesn't have and they don't have access? God, would you rescue us?

Or maybe where are we collectively in bondage in our culture with cynicism and rage and exhaustion and racism? God, where are we in bondage? Would you rescue us? What if instead of only praying, lord, fix me, fix my life? What if we prayed more regularly?

God, would you rescue us? Would you rescue our church? Would you rescue our city? Would you rescue our nation? God, would you rescue our world?

Whatever is broken among us, you see, because the same God who heard Israel's cries, he still is listening. And the same God who fought at the Red Sea, he's still fighting for his people. The same God who sent his son is still sending his people. That rescue mission has continued going and see, here's the good news church. If God is for us, who can be against us?

God. May that be a verse on our hearts this week as we walk out into the world and we see the brokenness, the division, the hate, the anger, the racism, the economic injustice. God, would you give us open hearts and open eyes and open ears that we would cry out not just on our own behalf, but on behalf of all people, maybe especially those who we see furthest from you and our tendency is to want to judge them. But God, would you change our hearts? That you so loved the world, Jesus, that you were not willing to sit idly by and watch it go to hell.

But you came, you gave your life for us, that you might rescue us to be your people once again? God, would you help us to be those people this week? We recognize, Lord, for that to happen, for that Red Sea to part, that you are going to have to show up in a big way?

And so, God, would you do what only you can do? Would you change hearts? Would you open eyes and ears? Would you create opportunities for us to have important conversations? Would you bring that reconciliation back once again to us, help us to be your hands and your feet And God, in those moments when we, like the Israelites, find ourselves trapped between two evils, when we find ourselves at the end of our rope with no options, God, may we cry out to you.

Would we remember that you're a God who listens, a God who hears. You're a God who fights on behalf of your people and who continues to send out forces to bring out rescue. And like those sweet boys that were rescued from that cave, God, would you rescue us from the sin and death that we find ourselves in all the time? And God, as we find ourselves rescued, may we in turn reach out a hand to the next one. Help us, God.

Help us not to keep that story to ourselves this week, Lord, as we encounter our city, our workplace, our school, our friends, our families, whatever it may be, remind us once again that your rescue isn't just for individuals, it's for whole people. Help us to be about that great work. Help us to be your church here in this place. Thank you for your amazing love, Jesus. Thank you for rescuing us.

Would you help us to join you in that great rescue mission in your name, in Jesus name, amen.