I. The Crocodiles of the Nile 00:00
Lord, we come together this morning, each of us seeking to encounter you, seeking to glorify your name. I pray that as we do this, as we open up your word, you would transform us, give us the joy, the peace, the righteousness that you have promised, and make us more like you, that we might love those around us. In Jesus’ name, amen.
So this morning we get to continue our journey in Exodus. We started last week, and we talked about tyranny. Exodus is kind of a dramatic book. We start with an evil, wicked king killing the male children of the Hebrews, throwing them into the Nile to be devoured by crocodiles. At the surface, because we are so exposed to such hypersensationalized media and movies and ideas, we can even think, “Wow, what a crazy idea, throwing the babies to the crocodiles.” But just imagine the horror of this situation: living in a place where your brand-new baby gets fed to the crocodiles.
And we made some connections here, not only to the difficulty of the mother in that particular circumstance, who is attacked, assaulted, forced to give up her baby to the tyrannical forces of her day, but also to the absolute attack on the fathers in our culture today. Remember that we talked about things, and I’m just going to give you a quick list. I think your ears will perk up as you hear this, and you might start making connections between the crocodiles of the Nile and the forces of this day and age that are once again seeking to devour the fathers and the mothers that God wants to raise up to build his kingdom. There’s divorce rampant in the land, homosexuality, transgenderism, hookup culture enabled by easy access to birth control, Netflix, social media, iPhones, the addictions of our day and age, online companionship, I’ll say, as I censor myself: places where people go to be surrogate fathers and mothers through their fulfillment online.
Video games are a great example of that. What is the father supposed to do? He’s going to go out and take dominion. He’s going to establish his household. Well, in Skyrim, one of the most popular games on the planet, which I happen to love, you go out and make a name for yourself, you establish your household, you become one of the most powerful in the land, and you get this surrogate feeling that you are fulfilling some calling in your life. And I think you can make that connection with all of these things. We watch these wonderful romantic comedies where the girl falls in love with the smashing gentleman, the guy who at first is a bit rough around the edges, but by falling in love with this girl, she transforms him into the prince. All of these stories are calling out to us in our culture to capture our attention, to capture our hearts, to lead us in a way that we’re actually called to live out in our life.
I’m wandering a little bit as I think about all the different ways the tyranny of our culture does not dictate to us, “You will do this and you will do that,” so much as it whispers to us, “Come, enjoy yourself, relax, take a load off, go sit and be entertained by this massive industry.” What it does, though, like the cutting of Samson’s hair in a later story in this book, is drain us of the vigor and strength that God has given us to go out and conquer the world. That’s our job, right? Our job is to bring this world into the kingdom of our God. We are born to be conquerors, men and women both, fathers and mothers establishing the kingdom of God on earth. And with all of these things coming at us, you almost need a special pair of spiritual glasses to put on. We need our eyes opened, because we’re so blind to all the different pathways the enemy is seeking to use to take away your God-given purpose.
So we talked about the Egypt that Moses and the Israelites were facing, that tyranny, and we made a link between that and the various subtle ways we are being tempted to enslave ourselves in this day and age. I could go on and on about this. It’s one of my favorite subjects, actually. I’ve listened to books, I’ve done podcasts on how the psychology of our age is completely different because of the introduction of technology. Anxiety is up, depression’s up, loneliness is up. Fatherhood is way down, abysmally down, catastrophically down. The birth rate is plummeting. People are not becoming the fathers and mothers in their households because of all these different things.
II. God Has a Plan 05:18
But what we learned last week is that, just like the Israelites who were enslaved by a wicked tyranny, God had a plan, and God still to this day has a plan. So today what we’re going to learn about is God’s plan to free Israel from Egypt. We left off last week with the worst slavery, where they’re increasing the demands on their work, they’re killing the male children of the Hebrews, they’re upping the ante of oppression. And yet God continued to multiply the Hebrew people in that time: a little bit of hope that even in the midst of a wicked tyranny, God can accomplish his purposes in our life. And we left with Moses being drawn up out of the river by Pharaoh’s daughter to be raised in the household of Pharaoh. God was preparing, even at that point, a savior for Israel.
Now here’s the part where we get a little reality check. Between that point and what we’re talking about today, the beginning of Moses’s life that we get to hear about, is forty years. Imagine how angry we are when for four years we have to deal with a candidate in the presidency we may not like. We get angry at that. And yet God’s salvation for Israel, while they’re dealing with a tyrannical king who’s literally killing their children: forty years. God had a plan of deliverance for them. God works on a different time scale, but there is always salvation in God.
So as we start today, let’s keep that in mind. We’re forty years later as we look at where Moses has now been raised as a prince of Egypt. We’re going to start in Exodus chapter 2, beginning in verse 23:
23 During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. 24 And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. 25 God saw the people of Israel—and God knew. Exod 2.23–25
When you’re in suffering, I don’t know if there is a more comforting idea than that: the God of the universe knows your suffering. It doesn’t take away the suffering, but it puts the suffering in an eternal context, that the good God who is working all things for our good and his glory knows your suffering. He knows where you’re at. And so that verse preps us: it’s all going to change. Just watch, just hold on, God knows. Wherever you’re at in your life, just watch, just hold on. God knows, and he is acting on your behalf.
III. Moses Takes the Call into His Own Hands 07:56
So we have Moses, raised as a prince. He’s forty years old at this point, raised in a life of luxury, power, influence. He’s an influencer in Egypt, and he thinks, “You know what would be really great? If I went out and rescued the Hebrew people, my people.” Okay, I’m speculating a little bit here, but we know from the text that he’s about forty years old, and he goes out to see the burdens of his people. And you can just imagine. I’m not even thirty yet, and I already think I’ve got this whole game figured out. I already think I’m the bee’s knees. I already think I know what I’m doing. He’s forty years old, a prince of Egypt. He knows what he’s doing. He’s going to go out and rescue the Hebrew people.
Now, there’s a fascinating idea here, in my speculation: that God had given Moses, in his heart of hearts, the call to be the rescuer of the people of Israel. But just like any one of us, when he feels the call to rescue these people, he goes out, he sees the burden of the Hebrews, he sees an actual person, an Egyptian, beating one of his people. He thinks he’s going to do the right thing, he’s going to step in and save the day, and he kills this Egyptian man whom he sees beating a Hebrew slave. And just like that, the enemy turns that God-given call in his heart, to rescue, to save, to be the instrument of God’s redemption, to murder.
Keep that in mind as you think about your own life. You have a God-given call, maybe as a husband to provide for your family. And so you go out and get that really nice car or couch or TV, because “God gave me a call to provide for my family.” But in so doing, you don’t listen to what God wanted you to spend your money on, or you get yourself into a burden of debt: another extremely potent method of slavery in the modern tyranny of the United States of America. There is more debt now than there has ever been in the history of the world, and specifically in the history of the United States. It has grown exponentially. There are ways the enemy would like to enslave you.
And this moment happens in Moses’s life, and if we were writing the story, the story’s over. He’s a murderer now. Not only is he a murderer, he tried to hide the body. As far as we know, he had no regret over this. He kills the man, hides the body, and the only reason his life changed is that somebody found out about it, and now Pharaoh is out to kill him. Now he is actually identified with the Hebrew people, like he should have been all along. He’s once again the Hebrew male who must be killed. He’s under the same burden, the same edict he escaped when he was a child. By his own actions he has gotten himself into this mess.
But of course we know, and this is the good thing about God, that that was all a part of what God wanted to happen in his life. Not that he wanted Moses to go and murder somebody, but God’s not dumb. He looks at us, he sees our mistakes, and he works out his plan over the course of our lifetime.
IV. The Desert, the Scouring Place 12:26
So he runs away to the desert. And where else to learn to be who God wants you to be but the desert: the scouring place, the difficult place, the hard place, the dry place. This is where God shapes his people. Now, we live pretty close to a desert. When we were driving across the country, we went through the Mojave Desert, which is unbelievably hot. It was like 110 degrees. I can’t imagine escaping into the desert. It doesn’t feel great. But God knows how to bring a desert into your life without actually geographically moving you to that place. Every one of us has been in a wilderness experience, a desert experience.
So as we see Moses going out here, we can all identify with that place. And you know what? I think his wilderness was a heck of a lot worse because of the burden of sin and guilt and shame in his life. He went from thinking he was going to be all that, an influencer, a prince in Egypt, to being a murderer, a fugitive on the run. This is not a fun place to be. But God was using this to shape Moses in this time.
We’re going to breeze through some of this. He flees to Midian. He marries a woman named Zipporah. Oh, beautiful Zipporah! I don’t know, it’s an odd name, but let’s just imagine that it was beautiful at the time. So Zipporah becomes his wife. He ends up having a wonderful father-in-law, Jethro. You remember him from The Prince of Egypt: “Look through heaven’s eyes.” He’s got that great, wonderful presence. We do know that later on he helps Moses a lot with his wisdom. So that’s a good note for you young men and women: you want to marry into a good family. Let me just tell you, it makes a difference when you marry into a good family. I learned a ton from my wife’s grandfather, who really is the reason she’s a Christian today, because of his Christian witness, and it made a difference in my life. So that’s a side note, maybe a bonus lesson: if you’re looking for a husband or wife, look at their family. It matters.
So he marries into this great family, and he’s in the wilderness for forty more years. This is a theme in this guy’s life. You know what’s around the corner: even the Israelites, after they escaped Egypt, another forty years in the desert. I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t choose to trade with Moses if I had the option. I’d rather live in Southern California, where it’s like 85 and we’re like, “Oh my gosh, it’s so hot.” No, this guy lived forty years in the desert watching over cattle, one of the most boring jobs in the history of the world, at least the way I’ve heard it described. And yet that was the place where God could use Moses, after forty years in the desert. And we get really frustrated when, five years later, God hasn’t fulfilled his promises to us, or God hasn’t gotten me to this job or this vocation I knew I was called to do. Let’s just get on God’s time. Let’s get on God’s time.
And so for forty years this guy is completely changed, transformed, by his job as a nomad in the desert, shepherding. He’s been broken down, all of those tyrannies he had. Now, this is a reading I got from some of the ancient church fathers: Moses had to escape the tyranny of Egypt and go through the desert before the Israelites could escape Egypt and go through the desert. You see, he’s the model. He had to go through it so that he could lead Israel through it. God was actually creating this amazing symmetry in his life, so that he could be the one who says, “No, I understand. You leave Egypt, and there is a desert. That’s not a mistake. It’s part of the way God is moving in us.” So we see this great symmetry in this story.
V. The Burning Bush 15:32
And then the burning bush. Now, there is so much to talk about with the burning bush, and we are just not going to get to it. So for those of you out there who are hoping for a real deep theological dive into every word, we’re just not going to do it. We’re going to do a broad brush over the bush.
So here it is, this burning bush. But there’s something weird about it. Apparently it’s not that odd for bushes to be on fire in the desert. I read this too: out there it can get so hot that bushes will actually spontaneously catch on fire, which just sounds awful to me. Why would anybody live there? But he finds out that this bush is actually not being burned. Well, that’s odd. That’s unusual. And that’s where we pick up this story. It says that he sees the bush, he notices it’s not being burned, and he decides he’s going to stop and see this great sight. And then it says the Lord sees that Moses has turned to check out the bush, and then he starts talking to him (Exod 3.3–4).
So what’s happening here? We’re almost told the same information twice. Moses says, “I’m going to stop and see the bush.” God sees that Moses is going to stop and see the bush, and then God’s able to start talking. What are they trying to say here? It’s actually important that Moses stopped to look at the bush. That’s something we need to pay attention to. That’s why it’s repeated. Because thank God Moses didn’t have an iPhone. Candy Crush probably would have distracted him from the fact that there was a burning bush that wasn’t being consumed. There was something in Moses in the desert where his eyes were open to see God at work. He was ready to hear God’s instructions.
If God really is in all of creation, then what bush isn’t a burning bush, filled with the glory of God? Now, I do think there are significant moments where God appears. In particular, this burning bush is a foreshadowing of the incarnation of God in the flesh in Jesus. There’s something special going on here. But there’s also a lesson to be learned about opening our eyes and seeing the glory of God in the world he has made. And so Moses stops, he’s able to see, he’s going to look at this burning bush, and that’s where God starts talking to him.
VI. The Name of God 18:50
Now, what do we know the burning bush for? The most famous part of this burning bush thing is that we actually hear the name of God. He gives him a name: “I am that I am,” or “I am who I am.” There are a lot of different ways of saying Yahweh, sometimes translated in other places Jehovah, but we think Yahweh is more accurate. Yahweh, the name of God.
What’s the point of making a big deal about a name? We were already calling him Elohim. We had other names for him. Why is Yahweh important? Well, in fact, Yahweh and the naming of God is the central theme of the entire book of Exodus. A couple of verses, just to show you where we’re coming from here. In Exodus 6 God says:
2 “I am the Lord, Yahweh. 3 I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty, but by my name the Lord, Yahweh, I did not make myself known to them.” Exod 6.2–3
So this is God explaining what he’s doing here. The reason it’s significant is that the people of Israel need to know who God is. After four hundred years in Egypt, they’ve forgotten the name of the Lord. So what does that mean? I’ve got other verses here. I’m actually just going to skip them. You don’t have to trust me: the name of God will come up a bunch of times as we go through this book. Why does he deliver Israel out of Egypt with his mighty hand? So that the name of the Lord will be known, not only to the Israelites but to Pharaoh and to the whole earth.
Man, God is a megalomaniac, huh? He has to do all this stuff so that people know who he is. Is he obsessed with fame? No. There’s something he wants the world to know about who he is. Because what happens after the garden, after the temptation, after the fall, is this. There’s this great line from a book I read: “I’ve forgotten the face of my father.” That’s what you say when you’re sorry because you’ve done something shameful or abysmal: “I’ve forgotten the face of my father.” All of humanity has forgotten who God is.
VII. More Than a Name 21:05
Now, I have a little story to illustrate what’s going on here. Let’s say some girl walked through the door of this church, some beautiful young lady, and my brother Christian, who I get to pick on because he’s up in the broadcast room right now (he could probably turn my mic off up there, but not down here), so Christian looks and he’s smitten by this young lady. She’s just beautiful. She walks in with this presence. And what does he do? He goes up to somebody: “What’s her name?” “It’s Zipporah.” Because it’s in the book, so we’ll call her Zipporah. And he has this awe and this wonder at the name of this girl, and he starts building up this idea of who she is based on nothing but a name. That’s all he has. It’s not enough. Then he has to get to know who she is.
So why do I bring that up? I think we get lost when we focus so much on the one name of God, Yahweh. As important as it is, it isn’t a magic talisman that tells you who God is. It’s conceivable that you could think of Yahweh, the name, and imagine a completely different person. Let’s say he comes to find out that Zipporah doesn’t like football, and he’s just over it. This girl I made up, who walked into the church, who’s beautiful, who doesn’t like football: who could imagine? There’s a name of God, but he actually says more in the burning bush than just “My name is Yahweh.” And we miss some of that because we focus so much on “What does he mean, ‘I am that I am’?” This cool moment, and you see it in the cartoon, where it’s this big glowing moment: “I AM THAT I AM.” Sorry, I’m editing on the fly here, because there’s just too much to talk about.
But what does he say he wants them to know when he says what his name is? We’re going to skip ahead to Exodus 3:13. God basically told Moses, “I’m going to send you to Egypt, and you’re going to tell Pharaoh to release my people, and the elders are going to go with you, and I’m going to use you to deliver them out of Egypt.” So Moses has a lot of questions here. This guy who was a murderer, a fugitive, ran away to the desert and has been a shepherd for forty years, somehow doesn’t think he has the capability to convince the people of Israel that God sent him, and to accomplish the deliverance of Israel from the most powerful king in all the land. I wonder why. If he’s a reasonable person, he might be afraid of this task God has given him. So he has a list. There are like ten questions he asks God. Here’s one of them:
13 Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” 14 God said to Moses, “I am who I am.” And he said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I am has sent me to you.’” 15 God also said to Moses, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘Yahweh, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.” Exod 3.13–15
So what’s going on here? God gives them a name, a name by which to know him. But more than that, he says, “You shall know me by this: I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” So what’s happening here? He’s saying, “My name is only a signifier. Who I am is the God who saved, promised, delivered Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” And you know what? After Exodus, you know how God’s known? Not only by Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but then he’s known as the God who delivered us from Egypt, who did all these things with his mighty hand, who brought us to the promised land.
So what’s the point here? What does the name of God matter? It matters to remember who God has been to us. That’s what God wants the Israelites to remember: that God has a relationship to them, that he is known by the way he has interacted with them for generations, that he is known by the promises he made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. So during the burning bush, what is God telling Moses? He’s saying, “Remind Israel that I’m the God who has already done miracles for them. I set them up. I have promises to fulfill in them.” That’s how God makes himself known to us.
In fact, if you think about it, that’s really how we get to know anybody. How do you know each other? By your interactions with one another. You can only learn so much from a name. You can only learn so much from even a description. In fact, I would say that the challenge to us is this: if you’re going to know God, you need to know him by what he has done. That’s why we’re looking at the book of Exodus. But also by what he has done with you. You need to actually relate to him. You need to have history with God. His name is so much more than just a name. It’s a reference to who he is and how he has revealed himself to us.
VIII. The Promise and the Mighty Hand 26:33
So we’re going to move forward a little bit in this story. What’s happening here is that Moses is having this conversation with God, and he’s objecting over and over again to what God’s asking him to do. He frames them as questions, but each one of them is an objection: “Well, what should I even say? How are they even going to know that I’m coming from you?” Let’s go to verse 18.
So God told them, “This is how you’re going to introduce yourself.” And now God’s going to say, “This is what’s going to happen when you go to the elders of Israel.” That’s the funny thing about God: he actually knows what’s going to happen when he tells you to do something. So when God tells you to do that crazy thing, like, I don’t know, “Why don’t you go give five dollars to that lady at the checkout line,” he already knows what he wants to accomplish at that point. And so there’s a comfort in this. He gives Moses the promise in these verses, but if you listen carefully, he also prepares him for the challenge. So he tells him his name, with which to introduce himself to the Israelites to get them on his side. That’s the goal here: you’re going to get the elders to go with you to confront Pharaoh. And now he’s going to tell him the promise, this is what’s going to happen:
18 “And they will listen to your voice, and you and the elders of Israel shall go to the king of Egypt and say to him, ‘The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, has met with us; and now, please let us go a three days’ journey into the wilderness, that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God.’ 19 But I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go unless compelled by a mighty hand. 20 So I will stretch out my hand and strike Egypt with all the wonders that I will do in it; after that he will let you go. 21 And I will give this people favor in the sight of the Egyptians; and when you go, you shall not go empty, 22 but each woman shall ask of her neighbor, and any woman who lives in her house, for silver and gold jewelry, and for clothing. You shall put them on your sons and on your daughters. So you shall plunder the Egyptians.” Exod 3.18–22
Okay, so Moses just went from “Get the people of Israel out of Egypt” to “Also rob the Egyptians while you’re there. On your way out, you’re going to take all the things.” Moses is a little scared of what’s going on here, and rightly so. And God kind of buries the lead. He says, “I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go unless compelled by a mighty hand,” which is really nice speak for “He’s going to be murderously angry with you, and I’m going to have to bring the ten plagues,” the big, scary, bad things that are going to come, the things that are literally talked about to this day as an example of the wrath of God, in order to accomplish this thing. But he’s giving Moses the promise that this is going to happen.
So then Moses starts his list of stringent objections. After all of this that God has said, Moses basically says, “But the Israelites aren’t going to believe me anyway.” God told him they’re going to go with him, and Moses is like one of us: “But God, it doesn’t work that way.” It’d be like God saying to one of us, “You should just stroll into the house of the governor and tell him, ‘Hey, Gavin Newsom, you need to do these things, and you need to make a tax cut, and you need to provide whatever legal thing.’” He could give you a list of demands, and he’s expecting you to walk into the palace of the governor or the office of the president. And Moses has some problems with that. Not only that, but among the Hebrew people he’s known as a murderer, and he’s been gone for forty years. And he’s going to go back, and this murderer is going to come and say, “Yeah, your God, who hasn’t been doing much for you as far as you can tell, showed up to me, and you’re going to be on my side, and we’re going to go confront the guy who’s basically killing your people with work, and literally killing their male children.”
IX. Three Signs 30:14
And so God says, “Okay, I understand your objections, Moses. Let me help you out with this one.” And he gives him three signs for the Israelites. The first one is the staff. He says, “Throw your staff on the ground,” and it becomes a snake. Now, this is really fascinating, and I don’t have a lot of time to get into snake imagery, but what does a snake remind you of? Oh, the garden, the enemy. I told you before that this has always been read as a parable of our own spiritual journey from the slavery of sin to the kingdom of God. And so first he has the sign of the serpent, and then God gives him the power to pick up the staff, conquering the serpent. It becomes his staff of authority, by which the miracles are going to be done: power over the enemy.
What was the promise in Genesis? That man and the snake would have an enmity, and that he would crush your head and you would bruise his heel (Gen 3.15). And Jesus, of course, is our ultimate fulfillment of the power over the snake, the enemy. Well, we get a prefiguring of that in Moses. God says, “Throw your staff down,” and there’s a deadly snake, and he says, “Grab it by the tail,” and it will become the symbol of “my authority in you,” the conquering of the snake. That’s a good challenge for us, the sin God has redeemed you from. “Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world” (1 John 4.4) is the authority by which we can walk as Christian men and women. The staff of Moses is a symbol of our victory over sin and death. The enemy has no more power. God has robbed that from him.
And so you see this beginning sign, and then we see the next one: the leprosy healed. Not only is God giving us the power to conquer sin, but he is also healing us of our affliction. Moses puts his hand into his coat, he takes it out, and it’s leprous: the scary example of death, of our decaying bodies. And yet God has the power to reverse death, to raise us up from even the grave, to rescue us from the power of sin and death. So there are these symbols within the signs. I always thought growing up, “I wonder why he chose those ones.” These are the reasons. He’s giving them symbols and metaphors and ideas, typology. He’s giving them types of what God will do in the salvation of Jesus in our life. God operates the same way today as he did back then. These are all hopes and signs for us today, to have faith that God can conquer sin in our life: the snake of sin, the leprosy, the symbol of death in our bodies.
And then his last one: the water of the Nile will become blood. The Egyptians worshiped the Nile as a god, but God transforms the Nile. It’s both a picture of the slaying of that god and of that blood which covers all of our sins. All of these things are symbols and metaphors that bring us closer to understanding what God is doing in this story. God’s not random. He’s pretty cool, with his ability to weave things that were completely dissonant into a symbol of his salvation. And we see that throughout this entire story.
X. Who Made Man's Mouth? 34:40
And Moses is literally seeing these signs happen, these miracles, right in front of his face, and just like one of us, he has more objections: “Wait, but God, I’m not a public speaker. I’m not really good at talking. I am slow of speech” (Exod 4.10). And at this point you can hear in God’s voice a level of… I don’t know if you can accuse God of being impatient, but there is something here: God wants Moses to remember who he is. Because what does God say when Moses says, “But I’m slow of speech”? (Some people think maybe he had a stutter.) He says, “Who made man’s mouth? Is it not I?” (Exod 4.11). Like, what do you mean, Moses?
But you know what? He fell for the classic blunder. He thought that the salvation of the Jews, the Hebrews, the Israelites, had to do with him. He fell for the classic blunder. No, it’s God’s mighty hand throughout the entire thing. Moses is just an instrument in the hands of God.
And then I love this, the last one, where we’re ending with Moses today. We’re just going to get through this. He says, “Oh Lord, please send someone else” (Exod 4.13): the last refuge of the rebellious heart. “Lord, please, not me.” And it says God gets angry at him. And this is what I love. God gets angry at him, but this is what God says: “Is there not your brother Aaron, the Levite? I know that he can speak well. Behold, he is coming out to meet you” (Exod 4.14). So God’s angry, but he didn’t tell Moses that Aaron was on his way until this point. He already had a plan for Moses’s ineptitude. He already had a plan for Moses’s lack of desire to be the one. He had things in motion to provide for him, and he wanted Moses to trust him. That’s what we keep singing about: “I will call upon your name and keep my eyes above the waves.” He wanted him to look to God and his power. But Moses just kept pushing, and so God said, “Well, I’ve already provided even for that.”
I like this one. What does he say? “Is there not your brother Aaron, the Levite? I know that he can speak well.” It’s like, God can make anybody speak well, but he’s playing: “I’ll play your silly game.” That’s what he says to Moses. “I’ll play your silly game. I’ve provided even for your fear of speaking out.”
So Moses then has no more objections, which, praise God. As stubborn and intransigent as he might seem in this exchange, he went to Egypt, he went before Pharaoh, and he never stopped doing what God told him to do from that day on. You can read his entire life. They sing his praises in the New Testament, and they say he was a type of Christ, because when the rubber met the road, he did what God asked him to do. He made mistakes, he went overboard; those are some of the most fun stories with Moses. But ultimately we can look at this man and say: if he, a murderer with a stutter, as some people think, or slow to speak, could lead the nation of Israel from the tyranny of Egypt, how much more can Christ in us lead us from a tyranny into the promised land? Christ has no deficiencies and no objections to leading us out of our own darkness and into his marvelous light.
So just around the corner is the showdown between the tyrant and Yahweh, and we’ll pick that back up next week. Amen.