Lessons From the Exodus Story (Part 2)

I did want to add a comment. I thought Mr. Arner's sermon was very fascinating, very interesting. That's an incredibly interesting period of history when all of this transition was taking place.

I did just want to comment briefly. He mentioned the last item he talked about. There was the Council of Laodicea, 363 to 364 AD. On our trip to Turkey for the feast several years ago, Laodicea was one of the places that we visited. They have done an awful lot of archaeological excavation there in recent years. We actually didn't see this until we were driving away, but there was a large shelter that had been put up over a what was obviously an important find there that they were excavating. I asked one of the guides about it. He commented that was actually the basilica there from the city of Laodicea. As it turns out, putting two and two together, that was probably the basilica that they met in to issue this edict here forbidding the Sabbath day. We went within about a hundred yards or so of this structure. It wasn't part of our tour there at the site. Another interesting thing, I did some research on the Council of Laodicea after that. As Mr. Arner showed on a slide, there were 60 different edicts issued there at that council of the bishops. One of the others that I remember looking at was banning people from buying bread from the Jews. I got to thinking about that. That's a really odd eating. It finally dawned on me what they were banning was them buying unleavened bread from the Jews for celebrating the Feast of Unleavened Bread coming up here. That was obvious from the context there. I don't remember what the other edicts were. There were all kinds of them all over the map. But it was very significant. What that proves, or actually disproves, is the common belief that the early church abandoned the Sabbath first Sunday, by early, I mean first century. Because people pick and choose among scriptures there in the New Testament to justify and say the early church was no longer observing the Sabbath. They were keeping Sunday. And yet, we have the council of Laodicea and the late 300s AD having to outlaw keeping the Sabbath. And outlaw people buying bread, unleavened bread, from the Jews were keeping the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which obviously shows that Christians were keeping the Sabbath and keeping the Feast of Unleavened Bread.

Centuries after it was supposedly done away. So another interesting tidbit there from history.

It is a rather interesting, very, very fascinating, interesting study here.

So today I'm going to continue with a series of sermons here on the story of the Exodus and some of the lessons that we can draw from this. Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread are about two months away. And with those events, it is a good time of year to review the story of the Exodus with that coming up. And this year I've made it a point to really study that background more, which I haven't done for several years. And I've picked up a lot of different details and lessons from that that I want to share with you in the sermon last week and today. So today, the very imaginative title for this sermon is Lessons from the Exodus Story Part 2 here. So to begin with, I'll catch us up, get us up to speed a little bit because we went through chapters one and two and part of chapter three last time with commentary and discussion points of a lot of that. Don't have time to review that. But I did want to do a quick review of the first few verses of chapter three that we did cover. But before we did that, I want to kind of help us visualize where and the environment in which what we'll be reading about takes place.

This is taking place, as best we know, somewhere in the Sinai Desert of Egypt, a very, very inhospitable area. I have not been in it, but I have flown over it a couple of times, and it makes the surface of Mars look absolutely lush by comparison. It is just very rugged, very rocky.

If you recognize much about geology, you'll recognize these mountains here as being volcanic basalt there, the dark blackish brownish color there. Just very dry, very inhospitable. This is the area around traditional site of Mount Sinai, what it looks like there. And this is where, as we left off last time, Moses is near somewhere in this general area is apparently where God appears to Moses at the burning bush. And this is the kind of terrain in which these events take place, this conversation between God and Moses. So this just kind of helped frame the setting here to help us understand what's going on. So just quickly go through here the verses of Exodus 3 and verse 1 that we covered last week to kind of get us up to speed.

Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the back of the desert and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. Horeb's another name for Sinai, Mount Sinai. And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire from the midst of a bush. So he, Moses looked, and behold the bush was burning with fire, but the bush was not consumed. Then Moses said, I will now turn aside and see this great sight, why the bush does not burn? So when the Lord saw that Moses turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here I am. This is one of the examples of Rimes that we talked about last week. There are four different examples of Rimes there that appear in the first few chapters of Exodus. Then God said to Moses, Do not draw near this place. Take your sandals off your feet, for the place where you stand is holy ground. Moreover, he said, I am the God of your Father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hit his face, for he was afraid to look upon God. And the Lord said, I have surely seen the oppression of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows. So I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites.

Now, therefore, behold, the cry of the children of Israel has come to me, and I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppressed them. Come now, therefore, and I will send you to Pharaoh, that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt. But Moses said to God, who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and that I should bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?

So God said, I will certainly be with you, and this will be a sign to you that I have sent you. When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain, again there at Sinai. So we covered up to this point in last week's sermon, and gave a lot of background. So now we'll pick up the story here at this point, and dig deeper into the background of what happens next. And what happens next in the story is quite important here. God makes a particular revelation to Moses. Then Moses said to God, indeed, when I come to the children of Israel and say to them, the God of your fathers has sent me to you, and they say to me, what is his name? What shall I say to them? And God said to Moses, I am who I am. And he said, thus you shall say to the children of Israel, I am has sent me to you. So we see here that Moses is a reluctant leader, you might say, because when God first appears to him here, what is Moses' response? Who am I to do this, to do this job, to carry out this mission that you're giving me to do? So his first objection is, who am I? I'm a nobody. And God doesn't let him off the hook with that.

So now he raises, you might say, another objection. Okay, who am I? But who are you? Who are you to do this? How are you going to do it? Who are you? And Moses' question here indicates that the Israelites have strayed so far from their faith that they have lost who and what their God is. They don't know His name. They don't know His characteristics. They don't know much of anything about Him. And this is reflected in Moses' comments here. He does not know God's name at this point. After all, why should He or why would He? Moses has grown up from birth in the household of Pharaoh until he reached adulthood and then, as we covered last time, murdered the Egyptian and had to flee. And now he spent some amount of time, we're not exactly sure how many years, out as a shepherd tending sheep and goats out in the deserts there. So how would He know anything about the true God? He sees this is his first encounter, his first knowledge about the true God, other than perhaps a little bit that his mother might have taught him as his nursemaid when he was a very young child. We don't know anything about that. But he just doesn't know who this God is who is appearing to him here. And why does Moses ask God's name? That is quite of an odd question. If God appeared to us today, what is your name would not be the first question we would ask Him. We need to understand that in the ancient world names had a lot of significance. We talked about that a little bit last time, but a name was much more than just an identifying label. Your name was your essence. It was essentially what you were all about.

Your identity rather than just your identification. As we saw earlier, for instance, Moses' name, Moshe in Hebrew, still a very common name in Israel to this day, Moshe or Moses meant drawn out.

And that had great significance for Moses because he was drawn out of the waters of the Nile. He was rescued from the waters from being drowned as was happening to the other Hebrew baby boys. But he was also drawn out for a particular mission. And what was that mission? That mission was to draw out the Israelites from slavery in Egypt to draw them to the Promised Land, to lead them to the Promised Land in fulfillment of the promises that had been made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

So, for Moses to ask God, what is your name, was to ask, what are you all about? What do you stand for? What are you like? So that's really the question that Moses is asking, not just, who are you, what is your name? But it's, what are you? What are you all about? What kind of God are you in comparison to the Egyptian gods and the Midianite gods and so on? And then at that point, God says to Moses, I am who I am. And he said, Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, I am has sent me to you. And this is one of the great moments in the story here because God identifies himself with this name, I am who I am. Or as it could be translated, I will be who I will be. I'm going to get a little technical on you here for a few minutes to explain the background of this a little bit more because you'll come across explanations that may confuse you about what this means here. There's something really peculiar about the Hebrew language that's fairly rare, and that is in Hebrew, you do not have the verb to be or the equivalent to be or to exist. For instance, that's a way of saying that in Hebrew there is no word for am or is or are. So for instance, for Moses to say, I am Moses, in Hebrew he would say, on the, which is Hebrew for I, Moshe, on the Moshe. I, Moses, he wouldn't say I am Moses because there isn't a word am in Hebrew. That tense, that expression just doesn't exist in Hebrew. I'm actually giving Kirsten a Hebrew lesson here because she's, if you haven't heard, Kirsten's going to Israel to study for several months, October into January, studying over there overseas. So you might check with her after that. Very, very happy and very jealous, but I'm not going to talk about that. So anyway, yeah, short, short Hebrew lesson for Kirsten here. So this is a peculiarity of the Hebrew language. It also exists, it's also that way in Arabic and oddly enough Russian. They also do not have words for am or are or is. So what this literally says in Hebrew is, I will be who I will be.

Now the translators wrestle with this and they chose to translate it, I am who I am because for God to say, I will be who I will be in English, if you tell somebody I will be, that implies that you're not that right at this moment. So if you say, I will be who I will be, that kind of implies that you're not existing now. And of course, that's obviously not true of God because he does exist and he will exist. It's just a, again, a peculiarity of the Hebrew language, but it's not something to get all wigged out about or anything like that.

It's just simply the way it is and the translators put it this way to make it make sense in English the way we would understand it. So it's not that it's incorrect, it's not technically correct, but it does convey the sense of God saying, I am who I am or I will be who I will be.

So that's what is going on. Now, it's interesting this particular formulation, I am who I am or I will be who I will be, is never again mentioned in the books of Moses, the five books that Moses writes. So this suggests that God is giving Moses an answer just for Moses because Moses doesn't go to the Israelites and tell them, or God is, I am who I am or I will be who I will be.

He doesn't. So this is the one time this term appears here. So Moses then gives a shorter version of that name, which we see on the last line here, I am. Or this is actually, this is the most common name for God that appears in the Hebrew Bible. And it is essentially the verb to be, which is why it's translated I am.

And it's composed of the Hebrew letters YHWH there, which is near as we can tell would be pronounced Yahweh, or something close to that. Hebrew, the books of the Hebrew Bible, did not have vowels in there. It's just all consonants run together. And they also did not have spacing between the words, so all you've got is just a string of consonants. So that's why some translation issues are quite a challenge when it comes to translating Hebrew.

So what we have there for God's name is YHWH in Hebrew. For years people thought it was YHVH, but there was not the V, or excuse me, JHVH, but the J sound did not exist in Hebrew. So but that's where Jehovah came from, which is incorrect there. It should be Yahweh or something close to that as near as we can tell. Now the Jews, in obedience to the Third Commandment against taking God's name in vain, substituted Adonai, wherever YHWH appeared in the Hebrew Bible, they substituted Adonai, which is Hebrew for Lord or Master, and they put that in there.

And as a result of that, the actual pronunciation has been lost through history. We don't know how to pronounce God's name. We just simply don't. So the Adonai is wherever you see in the Bible, Lord in small caps here. That's Adonai or Yahweh in the original there. Just again, fairly technical explanation, but I did want to cover that briefly here in case anybody have any questions about that.

So who is then this being who refers to himself as I am? Well, we might assume that this is God the Father speaking, but that would not be correct. And there are several different proofs. Scriptures that prove this is not the case. Let's do a little digression and cover this. Who is this being who identifies himself as I am? Five different passages here. I want to read to you this first one. Jesus Christ is speaking John 5 in verse 37. He says, And the Father himself who sent me has testified on me. You have neither heard his voice at any time nor seen his form.

So Jesus Christ is no one has ever seen the Father. You've neither heard his voice at any time nor seen his form. Again, next chapter, John 6 in verse 46, Christ again is speaking, Not that anyone has seen the Father except he who is from God. He has seen the Father. He's referring to himself. He is the one from God and he is the only one who has seen the Father.

And then John 1 in verse 18, this is the Apostle John writing, and he says, No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten son who is in the bosom, this bosom meaning a very close relationship with the Father, he has declared him or he has made him known, as other versions put it. But again, very clear, no one has seen God at any time.

John also writes later, 1 John 4 in verse 12, No one has seen God at any time. Exact same phrase again. And the Apostle Paul writes in 1 Timothy 6 in verse 13, I urge you in the sight of God, the blessed and only potentate, the King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, dwelling in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see, to whom be honor and everlasting power. So we have these five very clear statements from Scripture that no one has seen God the Father at any time, or actually no one has seen God at any time. So the only way we can make sense of this is to understand that all of these verses are talking about God the Father. Because obviously, individuals did see Jesus Christ when he was in human form. But let's notice several very clear statements that Moses and other individuals did see God. So who was it they were seeing?

Exodus 3 in verse 6, which we just read a few minutes ago. Moreover, God said, I am the God of your Father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.

And this is at the burning bush again, and Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look upon God.

So God is there manifesting himself in physical form, and Moses covers his face. So he doesn't see God. Let's notice another passage later on. This is a familiar passage.

We're, well, let's just go ahead and read through it. Exodus 33, 18, and into 34 and verses 5 and 8 through 8. And Moses says to God, Please show me your glory. Then God said, I will make all my goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before you. I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.

But God said, You cannot see my face, for no man shall see me and live.

And the Lord said, Here is a place by me, and you shall stand on the rock. So it shall be, while my glory passes by, that I will put you in the cleft of the rock, and will cover you with my hand while I pass by. Then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen. And then skipping down, basically what this is describing is Moses wants to see God in his glory, and God says, No, you can't. But I'll make a compromise with you. I'll hide you in a cleft in the rock, and I'll cover that with my hand, and I will pass by, and then you can look at my back as I pass by. But you cannot see my face. And then this describes how that transpires. Now the Lord descended in the cloud, and stood with Moses there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. And the Lord passed before him, Moses, and proclaimed, The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression in sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and the children's children to the third and the fourth generation. So this is God as he is passing by. And then the conclusion, so Moses made haste after God has passed by, and bowed his head toward the earth and worshipped. It's not explicitly stated that Moses saw him, but God said he was going to, so we can assume that is the case. A few others, Exodus 33 and verse 11, this is a summary of the relationship that the Lord had with Moses, and notice this. So the Lord spoke to Moses face to face as a man speaks to his friend. And finally, one more. This is after God has given the Ten Commandments to Moses and to Israel at Mount Sinai.

And a common way of ratifying a covenant or agreement then was to have a covenant meal.

And this is what is described here after the giving of the Ten Commandments, Exodus 24, 9 through 11.

Then Moses went up by went up, they're going up Mount Sinai. Also Aaron, Moses's brother, Nadab and Abihu, and 70 of the elders of Israel, and they saw the God of Israel.

And there was under his feet, as it were, a paved work of sapphire stone, and it was like the very heavens in its clarity. But on the nobles of the children of Israel, he did not lay his hand.

So they saw God, and they ate and drank. So earlier, I went through five passages that says that no one has seen God, and now we have multiple places where it says very clearly that Moses and Aaron and the others did see God. So the only way we can reconcile this is to understand that no one has seen God the Father at any time, and that the being who there appears as the Lord, as the I am, is none other than the one who would become Jesus Christ. As we read about there in John 1, with his coming to earth, becoming born as a human being. So he is born in the flesh as Jesus of Nazareth. And Jesus himself confirms this on a number of occasions. Let's compare Exodus 3 and verse 14, which we've left off here. God said to Moses, I am who I am. And he said, Thus you shall say to the children of Israel, I am has sent me to you. Jesus Christ explicitly states he is this being. This is breaking into an incident. This is a debate between Jesus and his enemies. And Jesus says to them, Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day. And he saw it and was glad. Then the Jews said to him, You're not 50 years old and you have seen Abraham.

Abraham lived about 2,000 years earlier. And they say, You're not even 50 years old and you're claiming you have seen Abraham. And Jesus said to them, Most assuredly I see to you, before Abraham was, before Abraham existed, I am. And he uses the name here, I am, applying it to himself.

And did they get the point? Did they understand what he was claiming? Well, they did because the very next verse says, Then they took up stones to throw at him. But Jesus hit himself and went out of the temple, going through the midst of them and so passed by. What this is saying bluntly is they were going to stone him to death. But he hid himself as it says here. Apparently there's some type of miracle that takes place. It is explained that he is able to escape that crowd and avoid being stoned to death for blasphemy because he is claiming to be the I am, the Yahweh of the Old Testament there. Several other places where Jesus says he is I am, it's obscured by the way the King James translators put this. One is John 8, 24, Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins. For if you do not believe that I am, now in the King James, in New King James, they insert he here, but that's in italics in your Bible, it does not belong here. What Jesus says is if you do not believe that I am, you will die in your sins. Similarly, just a few verses later, 28, then Jesus said to them, When you lift up the Son of Man, when you crucify Me, in other words, then you will know that I am, and that I do nothing of myself. But as my Father taught me, I speak these things. Two others, John 13 and verse 19, Now I tell you before it comes that when it does come to pass, you may believe that I am. Again, the he was added by translators and shouldn't be there. And John 18 and verse 4, Jesus, therefore, knowing all things that would come upon him, went forward and said to them, Whom are you seeking? This is when he is arrested there at Gethsemane. They answered him, Jesus of Nazareth. And Jesus said to them, I am.

And you may remember the rest of the story. They fall over backwards at that point. So here are four different statements where other statements where Jesus identifies Himself as the I am.

There's also an unusual set of three of them, where again it is translated differently. It is translated as it is I, but in the Greek it's the exact same words that are the I am that in the other passages we've just read. Incidentally, this is at where Jesus walks on water.

And we remember the story. Peter gets out of the boat and starts walking toward him, and Jesus rescues him, keeps him from drowning. But when they see Him walking on the water, they cry out. Do you remember the story? It's a ghost, or it is a spirit.

And Jesus' response is recorded by Matthew, Mark, and John here.

Matthew, but immediately Jesus spoke to them, saying, Be of good cheer. I am.

Do not be afraid. It's Matthew 14, 27. Mark 6 in verse 50 says, For they all saw Him, and were troubled. But immediately He talked with them, and said to them, Be of good cheer. I am. Do not be afraid. And John's account, John 6 in verse 20, but He said to them, I am. Do not be afraid.

And it's interesting, at the conclusion of this, Matthew is the only one who includes this, but at the end of this story when Jesus and Peter get back to the boat there, then those who were in the boat came and worshipped Him, saying, Truly, you are the Son of God.

Now, interesting side point, preview of coming attractions. This is a Rimes. I just came across this a couple of months ago. Jesus walking on the water is a Rimes.

To actually three different passages. Job 9 in verse 8. You know, that just sounds odd to us.

Why does Jesus get out and walk on the water in the middle of the night as the disciples are rowing across the Sea of Galilee? Why does He even do this? I mean, that's just a rather bizarre thing to do. Well, it's a Rimes. It's an acted-out Rimes. To three different passages. Job 9 in verse 8. All of these refer to the Lord doing this. He alone spreads out the heavens and treads on the waves of the sea. What is Jesus doing? Walking on the waters of the Sea of Galilee. He is treading on the waves of the sea. Showing He is the Lord. Psalm 77 verse 19. Your way or your path was in the sea, your path in the great waters. Referring again to the Lord. And also Habakkuk 3 in verse 15. You walked through the sea with your horses, through the heap of great waters. So here are three different Old Testament passages that talk about the Lord Yahweh walking on the sea.

Why does Jesus walk on the sea before His apostles? Because He's the Lord. He is doing a Rimes to show them who He is. And of course, it's only natural in this setting that Jesus would say that He is the I AM. He is the Lord. He is Yahweh who, as those three verses say, walks on the waters of the sea. And then it's at the conclusion of the account of Jesus walking on the water and seeing and telling them I AM, then the apostles bow down and worship Him as we see. So there are many, many other scriptures we can go into, but this is not the subject of the sermon. But I did want to help make this clear for us to keep in mind that as we read through this story, and we see God interacting with Moses and with the Israelites and with the Egyptians, to understand who this being is. It is the one who would come in the flesh as Jesus of Nazareth, as these and many other scriptures make clear. So again, many other examples we could talk about, but we won't for lack of time. So I hope we are all clear on this here. So I'm just including this brief overview to show you again who this Lord is, who the Lord is, who appears to Moses and tells them I AM who I AM, and tell them I AM has sent me to you. So continuing then, back to Exodus 3 and verse 15 with the story flow.

Jacob appeared to me saying I have surely visited you and seen what is done to you in Egypt.

And I have said, and I have said, I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt to the land of the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Amorites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites to a land flowing with milk and honey. Then they will heed your voice and you shall come, you and the elders of Israel, to the King of Egypt and you shall say to Him, the Lord God of the Hebrews has met with us. And now please let us go three days journey into the wilderness that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God. A couple of interesting things to pick up from this passage here. One is how God tells Moses to identify himself to Pharaoh. He says to refer to him as the God of the Hebrews because that was the term that Pharaoh would understand. They weren't known as the Israelites. They were known as the Hebrews at that time. So also, to identify he is the God of the Hebrews, in the ancient world of this time, it was very common.

The way they viewed gods and goddesses were there was no such thing as a universal God as we understand God to be. The gods that people had or worship were gods of their clan or of their tribe or of their nation on a larger scale. So the Egyptians had their set of gods and goddesses that they worshiped. The Midianites had their sets of gods and goddesses, the Hittites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and Canaanites. They all had their individual gods. That's why occasionally you'll read in the Old Testament you'll see a god like Baal Zephon. That means Baal of Zephon. Zephon being a particular town or area. You'll see—well, don't have time to get into that—but yeah, he's identifying himself as the god of those people, of the Hebrews, who were enslaved, again, because there's no concept of a universal God. So God chooses to tell them to reveal himself in terms that Pharaoh will understand that he is the god of the Israelites.

And the idea of one universal God was what was actually a thought that is being introduced here, that there is one God for all of mankind. That was a God that would be introduced through the story that we read about here in Genesis and Exodus, rather, introduced through the Israelites, that there is one God for all mankind. Notice also here that initially God doesn't tell Moses to ask for the complete freeing of the Israelites from slavery. That's not what God tells him to go, to let my people go. That doesn't come till later in the story. Why? Well, because presumably, Pharaoh's never going to agree to that up front, which indeed is exactly what happens. Moses is told to ask Pharaoh to let the Israelites go into the wilderness for three days' journey, and to make their sacrifices, and then three days' journey back there. So that's what is initially requested, that Moses is told to request a Pharaoh. And also another point here is that let's see, let me, yeah, that we may offer sacrifice to the Lord our God here at the end.

The Egyptians, as we'll talk about a little bit more, they worship all kinds of animals as gods.

They worship cats. They worship crocodiles. They worship all kinds of things. One of the most popular animals they worship was the ram, or sheep, as we would call it. And if you ever go to the city of Luxor in Egypt, this is one of the sites you'll see here, there's this large avenue with hundreds of these ram-headed sphinxes lining this avenue to the major temple of ancient Egypt there at Luxor. This is about 300 miles south of Cairo. But this shows the kind of veneration they had for the rams. And here's the other side of the street going up and approaching this massive temple complex here.

So God in essence tells Moses to tell Pharaoh to let us go into the desert so we can slaughter hundreds of this animal that the Egyptians worship. Now if you're Moses, that's going to make you a little bit nervous going before Pharaoh and telling him this. But that is what is taking place. This becomes even more prominent in the story when the Israelites are told to do what?

To slaughter an animal the Egyptian worships and spirits blood on their doorposts and door-lenols so that all of the Egyptians will see. I mean how's that going to make the Israelites feel? There's a lot of faith involved in that story because you're a slave people and you're going to slaughter one of the Egyptian gods and just to tell them what all you did, smear the blood all over the entrance to your house. So again, a lot of stories of faith in here. We'll get into that more later on.

Continuing back with the story in verse 19, but I am sure that the king of Egypt will not let you go, no, not even by a mighty hand. So God tells Moses up front that Pharaoh will only free the Israelites after Pharaoh is confronted by a divine show of force from himself. So I will stretch out my hand and strike Egypt with all my wonders, which I will do and it's missed, and after that he will let you go.

So in the final analysis, we see God telling Moses up front, yeah, I'm telling you to go do this, but it's not going to happen. It's not going to happen. And Pharaoh is only going to free the Israelites after these great plagues, these great miracles are inflicted on Egypt. But they do have to at least offer him the option up front to save his nation and to spare him and his nation from all of this suffering.

So God does, we see, act justly and he makes this offer to Pharaoh up front to prevent all of this suffering, but Pharaoh does not accept it. Continuing, next verse 21, and I will give this people, the Israelites, favor in the sight of the Egyptians, and it shall be, when you go, that you shall not go empty-handed. Go, here mean go out of Egypt, leave Egypt.

You will not leave empty-handed, but every woman shall ask of her neighbor, namely of her who dwells near her house, articles of silver, articles of gold and clothing. And you shall put them on your sons and on your daughters, so you shall plunder the Egyptians. And so again, notice how just God is, even though the Israelites have been treated horribly unjustly for several centuries. God says, he doesn't say go and take your neighbor's jewelry and all of that, which they're entitled to, because after all they've been working as slaves for the Egyptians, unpaid for all of these many, many decades, generations.

And God doesn't tell him to go take it. He says, go and ask. Go request of your neighbors these things, which are a form of recompense for all the decades and generations of labor that the Israelites have provided there. So a lesson to learn from this is, even if you're a victim, you still have to act ethically.

You still have to act righteously. Just because you're a victim doesn't mean that you are entitled to go out and ask and demand payment from those who have oppressed you here. That is another one of the great lessons of the Exodus story that is relevant to the time in which we live. Ironically, this will come up later in the story, but where do the Israelites get the gold to build the golden calf? Well, here's where they get it from.

They get it from their neighbors. They get the gold and the silver jewelry, which will later be used to build the golden calf and also to make the golden utensils for the tabernacle later on. Continuing on now into chapter 4, then Moses answered and said, But suppose they will not believe me or listen to my voice. Suppose they say, The Lord has not appeared to you. So now Moses raises another objection. He says, Okay, first, who am I to go? He didn't consider himself just a shepherd there in the desert, the appropriate person to go see Pharaoh. So he brings that up in Exodus 3 and verse 11.

And then he objects by saying, Well, who are you? What kind of God are you? So that's his second objection. We saw that. We just covered that in Exodus 3 and verse 13. So now he gives a third objection. What if they say, No, what do I do then? What if they don't believe me? How can I prove to them that you really are the one who has sent me? And now God gives a demonstration of how he will prove the doubters, both among the Israelites and the Egyptians, both his presence and power. So the Lord said to him, What is that in your hand? Moses said, It's my shepherd's rod. It's my staff here. So God has Moses confirm what it is. It's just an ordinary staff here. And God says, Throw it on the ground, which Moses does.

And so he cast it on the ground and it became a serpent. And Moses, the brave man that he is, fled from it, as it says here. He fled from it. And then the Lord said to Moses, Reach out your hand and take it by the tail. And he reached out and grabbed it by the tail.

And if any of you have ever handled snakes, not that that's something we'd normally do, but you know when you pick up a snake, where do you grab it? You grab it right behind the head, because you grab it in the middle or at the end, what's going to happen? It's going to swing around and bite you somewhere. So God tells him to grab it where the snake, presumably this is a cobra, can turn around and strike him. And so there's a test of faith there with God's instruction to Moses here. Pick it up by the tail. And Moses reached out and caught it and it turned into a solid rod again there in Moses' hand. And he says, that they may believe that the Lord God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob has appeared to you.

Let's see. Okay, verse 6, continuing on, Furthermore, the Lord said to him, Now put your hand in your bosom, or within your cloak, your garment there. And Moses put his hand in his bosom, and when he took it out, behold, his hand was leprous, like snow, white, which is what leprosy does to the body.

So it's likely, well, I shouldn't say likely, but it's possible that God tells Moses to do this.

This may be a subtle way of warning Moses. I'm getting a little bit tired of your whining, your excuses here. And I've just shown you that your hand can be made leprous. Well, you know, would it make an impression if all of you became leprous here? That seems to be kind of an unwritten, unwritten warning there to Moses to remind him that God has the power to punish him if he doesn't obey. And verse 7, God said, put your hand in your bosom again. So he put his hand in his bosom again and drew it out, and behold, it was restored like his other flesh. So God has now given Moses a second miracle to prove that he is divine, that he is there to help Moses in this task. He makes his hand turn leprous and then restores it back to normal there. Continuing in verse 8, then it will be that if they do not believe you, nor heed the message of the first sign, that they may believe the message of the latter sign. And it shall be, if they do not believe even these two signs, or listen to your voice, that you shall take water from the river, from the Nile, and pour it on dry land. And the water which you will take from the river will become blood on the dry land. Now the first two signs, the staff turning into the snake and the hand turning leprous, Moses can see. This third sign, God promises, is something that Moses can't see, because after all he's in the desert there. Sinai desert, he's days and days walk from the Nile River. So Moses has to take that sign on faith that God can turn the river's waters to blood.

Then Moses said to the Lord, O my Lord, I am not eloquent, neither before nor since you have spoken to your servant. But I am slow of speech and slow of tongue. So Moses comes up with yet another objection. Here he says he's just not a good speaker, so God should send somebody else to do the job. And what is God's response? So the Lord said to him, Who has made man's mouth?

Or who makes the mute, the deaf, the seeing, or the blind? Have not I, the Lord? So God is not impressed with this latest excuse either here. And he says, now therefore go. And the Hebrew here, according to some commentaries, is very strong and very direct. In essence, God says, Moses, get going.

That's essentially what he's being said here, the way it comes across in the Hebrew. It doesn't come across that way in English, but he says, get going, do the job. And then he says, letter part of verse 12, I will be with you in your mouth and teach you what you shall say. So God says, I'll take care of it. You just do the job that I'm sending you to do. And so Moses, this is, well, let me go on to the next verse and then I'll comment on that. But Moses said, oh, my Lord, please send by the hand of whomever else you may send. So after these four excuses Moses comes up with, he finally admits the truth and he just doesn't want to do it. He just doesn't want to do it as the bottom line here. Please send by the hand of whomever else you may send by the hand of whomever else you may send. Let somebody else do it. I'm just not the man. I'm just not the one to do this.

He doesn't want this mission that is dangerous and that will forever alter his life here.

It's kind of like those with children here. How many excuses have you heard from a kid who doesn't want to do his homework or her homework? All the excuses and you can run through and listen to all the excuses and rebut them. The bottom line is the kid just doesn't want to do his homework or do the chores or mow the lawn or shovel the snow or whatever. That's what's going on. Moses finally admits he just doesn't want to do it. It's interesting here and the point I want to bring out here is this sets apart the Bible from all other supposed holy books there because the Bible is hard on its heroes. The Bible is hard on its heroes. The Bible records people making stupid mistakes, doing dumb things, committing great sins, acting stupidly, lacking faith. You name it, it's all laid out in there in the lives of people like Moses here. Who's writing this? Moses! He's writing this about himself to record how dumb and stupid and lacking in faith he was. There's nobody else there witnessing this. He's telling this about himself. All the excuses he came up with and God finally has to tell him, shut up and get going. Do the job I've called you to do.

And later on in the story, we won't cover this in these sermons, but we find the Israelites continually lacking faith in God, even in spite of incredible miracles that they have seen. We find them later in the period of the Judges and the Kings abandoning God, turning their back on God.

We get into the Gospels and we read about the disciples lacking faith again and again.

And again, we read about even after Christ is crucified, they go back to fishing.

There they write that about themselves. There. So the Bible records the good and the bad and the ugly. And in this case, about one of Israel's greatest heroes. Moses records how he he wide and tried to come up with excuse after excuse after excuse. And God finally has to tell him to get going. But we also see something else that is brought out in the Bible and that is that God chooses the weak and the foolish things of the world to confound the mighty and the wise and the strong. And in this sense, Moses is an ideal leader because he doesn't want the job.

You know, the problem with so many leaders is they want the job. They want the power. They want the control over other people. And where does that lead? All too often it leads to disaster.

I mean, just look at all the people who've announced their want to run for the presidency.

You look at their agendas. What do they want? They want to control. They want control. They want to tell you how to live your life. They want to control how much money you get, what you spend your money on, how you live your life, how you what you set your thermostat to, what you eat, whether it's politically acceptable or not, this kind of thing. But Moses wasn't like that because he didn't want the job. And throughout history, so many leaders wanted to be powerful, wanted to be rich, wanted to be famous, wanted to be influential. But Moses just seems content to lead the simple life of a shepherd out there in the desert with a sheep and its goats.

There is another factor here, and that is probably that he he feared returning to Egypt because, again, he's committed homicide there.

And he knows that he is subject to the death penalty. We talked about this a little bit earlier last time, and God says, I'll take care of you. I'll be with you. So don't worry about that.

So finally, verse 18, so the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses.

So God is, again, fed up with the excuses. And he says, is not Aaron the Levite your brother? I know that he can speak well. And look, he is also coming out to meet you. When he sees you, he will be glad in his heart. So we see that God just finally loses patience here with Moses' excuses. And although he does offer a compromise solution, okay, you say you're not a good speaker.

Well, we'll let your brother Aaron do that. And verse 15, now you shall speak to him, to Aaron, and put the words in his mouth. And I will be with your mouth and with his mouth, and I will teach you what you shall do. So he shall be your spokesman to the people, and he himself shall be as a mouth for you, and you shall be to him as God. And you shall take this rod in your hand with which you shall do the sign. So it's interesting, God tells Moses to take this rod with you to Egypt. And he essentially says with that one rod, that one stick that you're going to take in your hand, you are going to defeat all of the might and the power of the nation of Egypt with this. Sorry about that. Get a little too carried away there.

But how many of us would be brave enough to do that? It's kind of reminiscent of the story of David, who goes up against the giant Goliath nine feet tall, and what does he take with him?

He takes five rocks and a sling against an armored giant with an armor bearer, with helmets and chain mail and shield and spears and sword and this kind of thing.

So there again is a great lesson of faith there. You know, God tells us to do something. He will be with us. He's got our back. He's got us covered there. So he tells Moses to take that rod with him, that it will accompany him, and possibly is a reminder of this encounter here at the burning bush. And a reminder that now he's got a new job. He's going to take his rod because he's still going to be a shepherd. But now his shepherd isn't a bunch of sheep and goat out in the wilderness.

It's the nation of Israel. God's chosen people. So he's called to lead a battle of wills against Pharaoh, and his only weapon is the shepherd's staff and his faith. His faith and trust in God. So again, show some bravery. Verse 18 here, so Moses went and returned to Jethro his father-in-law and said to him, Please let me go and return to my brethren who are in Egypt and see whether they are still alive. And Jethro said to Moses, Go in peace.

And there are two possible explanations for why he goes and seeks Jethro's permission, or asks him. It doesn't necessarily say he's asking permission. But it's possible because he's told to take his wife Zipporah and his sons there. So it's possible that that would have been required since he's working for his father-in-law to take his daughter, Jethro's father, and his girdled children there. But in all likelihood, it's just a matter of good manners here that he's going to take Jethro's daughter and his grandchildren away. And who knows how this is going to turn out. So he doesn't, interestingly, he doesn't explain that he has just talked to God in the desert, and God has told him to go bring the people out. That's not part of his conversation with Jethro, at least not that is recorded here. So we do see that throughout the Exodus story, it pops up a few times, that Moses is very close to Jethro, his father-in-law, and asks his advice later on.

So several other interesting things there. Verse 19, And the Lord said to Moses in Midian, Go, return to Egypt, for all the men who sought your life are dead. So presumably does this to reassure Moses that Moses knows he's subject to the death penalty, but he tells him, Don't worry about that. That generation is dead. They've all died off. So God reassures him, he doesn't have to fear for his life. And returning to Egypt. Verse 20, Then Moses took his wife and his sons and set them on a donkey, and he returned to the land of Egypt. And Moses took the rod of God in his hand. And the Lord said to Moses, When you go back to Egypt, see that you do all those wonders before Pharaoh, which I have put in your hand, but I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go. I want to talk about hardening Pharaoh's heart here for a few minutes here, because the Pentateuch refers 20 times to hardening Pharaoh's heart. And it's interesting because half of those are attributed to God hardening Pharaoh's heart, and half are attributed to Pharaoh hardening his own heart. So, which is it? Does God harden Pharaoh's heart or does Pharaoh harden his whole heart? If God hardened Pharaoh's heart, is it fair to punish Pharaoh for hardening his heart? Well, several things to consider here, and answering this question. First of all, first of all, God knows Pharaoh and the Egyptians deserve to be punished. We talked about that quite a bit last time, because after all, what are they doing? They're committing genocide by throwing the Hebrew baby boys into the Nile to drown or be eaten by the crocodiles here. So, the whole nation has participated in that genocide against God's people. So, had Pharaoh relented and freed the Israelites early on or after the first plague, would the Egyptians have been adequately punished for their evil? Well, not really. They would have gotten off very easily had it happened that way. So, God is going to carry out his punishment on Egypt.

Another point to consider is this a matter of free will if God hardened Pharaoh's heart? Well, actually strengthening Pharaoh's heart, helping or allowing Pharaoh to do what he really wanted to do, this is really what it boils down to, what did Pharaoh really want to do in his heart?

By God hardening his heart, he actually allowed Pharaoh to exercise free will, what he really wanted to do. Because if Pharaoh only lets the Israelites go after X number of plagues, it's like the Godfather. I'll make him an offer he can't refuse! If you remember the story there, it's like holding a gun to Pharaoh's head and forcing him to act against what he really wanted to do. What Pharaoh really wanted to do is he'll see again and again as he changes his mind again and again, and then finally after the Israelites do leave, what does he do? He sends his army after them, after all of these plagues, sends his army after them to go bring them back and to re-enslave them. So that shows what Pharaoh wanted to do the whole time. And God's hardening his heart is just simply allowing Pharaoh to do what he really in his heart of hearts really wanted to do that whole time. And that is to refuse to give up the slaves. Verse 22, then you shall say to Pharaoh, then you shall say to Pharaoh, thus says the Lord, Israel is my son, my first born.

And Israel is called the first born here because they are the people through whom God introduces himself and starts working through here. So I say to you, let my son go that he may serve me, but if you refuse to let him go, indeed I will kill your son, your first born. So here we see that the killing of Pharaoh's first born son, which doesn't take place until the 10th plague is mentioned by God even before the first of the plagues takes place. So it's interesting. We'll see Moses does not tell Pharaoh this up front. Maybe Moses is afraid that Pharaoh will kill him as a result of that statement. So that raises the issue of trust or faith in God. And actually, this is, I'd hope to make a little further through this, but this is a gets into a fairly lengthy discussion about the difference between faith and trust and belief. And we'll just pick that up in two weeks at Combined Services here. I'll be out of town back in Cincinnati next week, so we'll pick up the story then. So I hope you all have a great rest of the Sabbath!