Negotiating With the Fire

Chris Holm | MAY 31, 2026

Categories: The Gospel and Salvation, Freedom and Deliverance, Faith and Trust

Sermon summary

There is a moment in Exodus where Moses asks God for a name, and God refuses to give him one. "I AM WHO I AM." It is less an answer than a declaration that God cannot be categorized, cannot be placed on a shelf next to the other options. That refusal sets the whole story in motion.

We follow Moses back into Egypt, where Pharaoh asks a question that sounds ancient but lands close to home: "Who is the Lord that I should obey?" The ten plagues are God's answer. One by one, every power Egypt trusted to keep the world stable gets exposed. The Nile. The sun. The livestock. The gods the empire had named and organized and counted on. All of them fall silent.

But God was not just making a point to Pharaoh. He was making one to Israel. Four hundred years in Egypt had shaped the way those people thought about safety, ident

ity, and survival. God was not simply getting his people out of Egypt. He was working to get Egypt out of his people.

We look at the Passover and find something that cuts through every religious instinct we carry. Two households. Two very different people. Both covered by the same blood. The safety of the house did not depend on the quality of the faith inside it. It depended on the blood of the lamb on the door.

That image reaches all the way to the cross. Jesus, the lamb without defect, painting the wood with his own life so that our record reads covered. Not the Sunday morning version of us. The Tuesday afternoon version. The one who is still figuring it out.

So we are invited to audit what we are actually trusting. To stop bargaining with the burning bush. And to leave, even before the bread has time to rise.