Lessons From the Exodus Story part 3

Thanks, Randy! Good afternoon, everybody! Good to see all of you here. It's nice to be out of snowy, very cold Ohio. It was very, very cold the last two weeks when I was out there. A lot of days didn't get out of the 20s or low 30s, so it's very good to be back in Colorado and thaw out. Of course, I understand we had some snow here last Sabbath, obviously. Okay, any of you have received the latest Beyond Today yet?

You received any? Nobody? Nobody yet? Okay, yeah, I picked this up copy of the home office this week where it just arrived. Actually, what started me on this particular sermon series on the Exodus—I didn't expect it to go as long as it's going—was researching this. The lead article is about the Exodus plagues and how they were judgments on the gods of Egypt. I was doing some more digging into that, researching this article, and kept finding so many other interesting facts about the Exodus that I hadn't noticed before that started making a sermon series out of this.

I was anticipating it going three, and now it's probably going to be five. I'll try to finish squeezing these in here. It did uncover a lot of good, interesting information I hadn't really thought about or discovered before, so I did want to share that with all of us, particularly in this time of year leading up to the Passover and the Spring Holy Days.

So, I've given two previous sermons in this series, so today we'll pick up the story with part three of Lessons from the Exodus Story. Last time we talked about, we covered the remainder of chapter three and part of chapter four, and I showed photos like this to help us visualize where the events are taking place when Moses interacts with God at the burning bush. They're somewhere in the Sinai Desert. We went through where this God who appears to Moses identifies himself as, I am who I am, or simply I am for short, and then went through five passages in the New Testament where it is stated very clearly that God the Father had not appeared, had not been seen by any human beings before that time, and then went through, I think it's eight different passages, where Jesus Christ says that He is the I AM, that He is the being who appeared here to Moses at the burning bush. And then we went through the miracles that God demonstrated to Moses, turning the staff into a serpent, and turning Moses' hand leprous, and then restoring it new and whole again, and also the promise that He would turn water to blood, which He was not able to demonstrate to Moses since they're in the middle of a desert there and did not have the water.

So then we went through Moses making a lot of excuses as to why he should choose somebody else rather than God to carry out this commission of bringing the Israelites out of Egypt. And now finally God just says, Get going! Do the job I've called you to do. No more excuses. And He promised He would send Aaron along as a spokesman for Moses. And then we discussed also what it means to harden Pharaoh's heart. And now at that point we finished and cut off, and now we'll pick up with a continuation of the story. But I want to back up just a little bit to pick us up into the story flow beginning in Exodus 4 and verse 22, where God then tells Moses what to say to Pharaoh. Then you shall say to Pharaoh, Thus says the LORD, Israel is my son, my firstborn. 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 firstborn. So here even before the first of the plagues, before Moses is even in Egypt, God tells what is going to happen in the 10th plague, the final plague, that Moses' son will be killed if he continues to persist and refusing to let the Israelites go. So with that, we'll pick it up where we left off last time. So Moses starts traveling with his wife Zipporah and his sons to Egypt. And it's his and it came to pass on the way at the encampment, there camped out somewhere along the way, that the LORD met him and sought to kill him. And it's actually ambiguous in the Hebrew whether the him here is referring to Moses or to his son or sons. And because we see what follows next, verse 25, then Zipporah took a sharp stone and cut off the foreskin of her son and cast it at Moses' feet, and said, Surely you are a husband of blood to me. So God let him go. Then she said, You are a husband of blood because of the circumcision. And all we know about this incident is what is recorded here, so I'm not going to get into speculation or explanation because none are given, but it does clearly have to do with Moses having not circumcised his sons. And as we've seen before, it is sons plural. He has more than one. We don't know whether it's two or three or more.

But it is interesting. We live in a time now when circumcision is under attack by people. It's being described as child mutilation and things like that. And it's just one more thing that is under attack by people who are of an anti-religious, anti-God, anti-Bible mindset. And this episode does, however, remind us of how seriously God takes his command about that, that he gave to Abraham in Genesis 19—excuse me, Genesis 17, verses 9 through 12—that male children were to be circumcised as part of the Abrahamic covenant.

And I'll just read it quickly. And God said to Abraham, As for you, you shall keep my covenant, you and your descendants after you throughout their generations. This is my covenant which you shall keep between me and you and your descendants after you. Every male child among you shall be circumcised, and you shall be circumcised in the flesh of your foreskins, and it shall be a sign of the covenant between me and you. He who is eight days old among you shall be circumcised every male child in your generations. He who is born in your house or bought with money from any foreigner who is not your descendant. And of course, we know from New Testament writings the kind of true circumcision that God really wants. It's not a matter of the foreskin of the physical flesh, but something much deeper and impactful. Notice even Deuteronomy, even here in the books of Moses, what are we told? Twice, Deuteronomy 10 and verse 16. Therefore, circumcise the foreskin of your heart and be stiff-necked no longer. So, God is looking for a different kind of circumcision, not the foreskin of your flesh, but the foreskin of your heart.

He wants a humble and converted heart. And also Deuteronomy 30 and verse 16.

Prophetically, in the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul that you may live.

So again, even this far back, we see that this is a physical act pointing to something of a deep spiritual significance, of conversion, of God converting and changing our hearts through receiving His Holy Spirit, that we would love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul. And as a result of that, we might live. And also the Apostle Paul writes about this in Romans 2 and verse 29. He says, He is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is that of the heart and the Spirit, not in the letter. So today we do understand and practice circumcision of the heart, which is what God wanted all along. As we see going back there to Deuteronomy, circumcision of the foreskin was a sign of the covenant with Abraham. And today we are part of a different covenant, a new covenant, a spiritual covenant. And the spiritual parallel of circumcision is repentance and being baptized and receiving the laying on of hands to receive God's Spirit.

So one who is led by God's Spirit is then a part of that covenant. And this is the new covenant that we are called to take apart or have a part in today. So going back now to Exodus 4, verse 27, we continue with the story. And the Lord said to Aaron, so now God is addressing Aaron, brother of Moses, go into the wilderness to meet Moses. So Aaron went and met him on the mountain of God and kissed him. And it's been many, many years since they've seen each other at this point, but they do know who who's who and recognize each other. And this mention here of the mountain of God seems to indicate that Aaron and Moses meet at the place of the burning bush where God had appeared, the I Am had appeared to Moses, as we previously covered back in Exodus 3. Verse 28, so Moses told Aaron all the words of the Lord who had sent him and all the signs which he had commanded him. Then Moses and Aaron went and gathered together all the elders of the children of Israel. So here the account is telescoped. Moses and Aaron go for meeting. Moses describes the signs or the miracles that God had shown him. And now, without further explanation or description, they go immediately to Egypt. And now they appear to the elders of Israel.

And continuing the story in verse 30, and Aaron spoke all the words which the Lord had spoken to Moses. Then he did the signs and the sight of the people. And this is interesting that, well, two aspects. One, Aaron is now acting as the spokesman or spokesperson for Moses because he is the one who addresses the elders of Israel. And this would also make sense from the standpoint that Aaron is going to be known among the elders of Israel, too. Moses, they haven't seen or heard anything of Moses for many decades. And so it stands to reason that Aaron would be the one who would be speaking directly to the elders of Israel. It's also interesting, as it says here, that Aaron performs the miracles that God had shown Moses at the burning bush. He turns the rod into a serpent. He repeats the miracle there of the hand becoming leprous and then restored. And the transformation of water into blood. And does this to the people, or before the people, as proof that God is with them and can perform the miracles that He has promised? Verse 31, So the people believed, and when they heard that the Lord had visited the children of Israel, and that He had looked on their affliction, then they bowed their heads and worshiped.

A couple of things to point out here. It says they bowed their heads and worshiped. This word worshiped, what is really being talked about here is they bow their heads in homage. It doesn't mean they literally worship God because after all they don't know the God of Israel at this point.

They weren't worshiping Moses either. They weren't really worshiping anyone. They're just bowing in homage to what is going on here. They don't know anything, they know very little, if anything, about the true God of Israel at this point. Because, as we saw earlier with Moses, previously, Moses doesn't know the name of God or anything about him. Again, it's been generations since they've been generations removed from the sons of Jacob and Joseph and those who did know God, and they've been enslaved for a couple of centuries there. So, that is the reality. They really don't know God at this point. And that's part of the problem with the story of the Israelites as we go through the account. It is interesting that they, it says here that the people believed after they saw the miracles. And I'd like to digress a little bit here and talk a little bit about what does belief in God mean. Because this is a theme that shows up again and again in the story of the Exodus, and that is their lack of faith and their lack of belief.

And this particular statement to say they believed in God has two distinct meanings.

In English, it can mean, I believe God exists. It can also mean, I trust in God.

And the first meaning is the most common, that people believe that God exists. But it is nowhere near as important as the second meaning, which is I trust in God. Those are two very different things.

To believe that God exists, but not to have faith and trust in Him, is kind of the same thing as believing that another person exists, but doesn't mean you have faith or trust in that person. A passage that ties in very much with this is James 2, verses 19 and 20, very familiar, where James says, you believe that there is one God. You do well. That's commendable, in other words. But then he says, even the demons believe and they tremble.

But do you want to know, O foolish man, that faith without works is dead?

So, we see two critical facts brought out here. One is that faith alone, believing that God exists, is not enough because the demons believe, and what good does it do them? They still rebel against God. They still dislike God and are still allied with Satan against God. So, just believing that God exists, believing that there is a God, doesn't amount to a hill of beans in the vernacular. What matters is what you do with that belief, and that's brought out in the second verse. O foolish man, that faith without works is dead. It's useless. It's worthless because it doesn't do you any good just to believe. It doesn't do anybody else any good. It doesn't do God any good. So, it's worthless. It's useless. So, the point here is that belief in God, if it's not accompanied by actions, is dead. It doesn't do anybody any good. So, the point James is making here is that our belief in God has to be accompanied by actions that demonstrate that belief. And this, again, is demonstrated throughout the Exodus story time and time again. So, a good way to summarize this would be to say that belief in God must change your life. Or it's worthless. It's useless if it doesn't change us. It doesn't change what we are inside. And this is part of a major change that is transforming our society these days. The importance of trust in God has been a foundational part of our nation's fabric in its early days. People came to the United States, or what would become the United States, came to the new world, desiring freedom to be able to practice their religious beliefs. And in the early days of the United States, we had a national motto, E Pluribus Unum, out of many, one.

E Pluribus Unum. And another motto that came into usage in the 1800s was, In God we trust.

In God we trust. And these mottos were carefully chosen there. In God we trust has been engraved on our nation's currency for a number of years here. This is a quarter, but it's on our other coins as well. In God we trust. And on our paper currency as well. So what does trust in God mean?

Does it mean that God, does it mean trusting in God? Does it mean, as many people assume, that God is there to help us out whenever we're in trouble? Well, we know from experience that's not always the case. It doesn't always happen that way. It doesn't work out that way. Countless people have trusted in God, but have not been helped or have not been delivered when they were in trouble. If God always intervened in the way that we wanted, when we wanted, and how we wanted, there wouldn't really be much suffering in the world, would there? Obviously not, but there is a lot of suffering, a lot of evil, a lot of death, things like that. So a more accurate definition of trust in God would be that we believe God cares about us, that He loves us, as a loving Father does His children, and that in His own timetable and according to His own plan, He will ultimately reward us. And of course, that in turn means that there must be an afterlife since we're not going to receive that reward in this life. There has to be an afterlife, a resurrection, a time when God will indeed reward us, as we see again and again throughout the Bible.

But trust in God also is more than just that, more than just believing in an afterlife. It also means believing that God is working out His plan and His purpose here. And that involves things like the founding of the United States and establishing this great nation with its many, many blessings that He has bestowed on the nation as a result of the obedience of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and the promises to them. It's very interesting that these thoughts and ideas were very common at the time of the American Revolution. Some of you may be familiar with the inscription on the Liberty Bell, the famous Liberty Bell. It quotes a Bible verse, Leviticus 25 and verse 10. And this is one reason why it's called the Liberty Bell. You shall proclaim liberty throughout the land for all its inhabitants. They quoted a Bible verse and engraved it on the Liberty Bell.

Cast it on there, I should say, rather. And incidentally quoting not from the New Testament, but from the Old Testament, from Leviticus, proclaim liberty throughout the land.

And what are we seeing in the nation today? We're seeing a radical transformation in society that a large section of society is now actively hating those very values on which the country was founded. We're literally seeing lawsuits to remove the phrase in God we trust from our currency and things like that. We're seeing statues of the nation's founding fathers torn down, removed, things like that going on, secretly removed at night, seeing the names of our founding fathers taking off buildings, schools, streets, things like that. And history books were written, frankly, to erase a lot of these things, to erase that early faith and trust and believe that they had in God. Here. And it's all because of the bottom line that people just simply hate the idea of God.

They don't want to be answerable to a more powerful being. And the lesson of the Bible is what? Put your trust and hope in God. In God we trust those who believe in God. And the lesson of Satan the devil and his values is there is no God to trust. And believing in God is dangerous and stupid. There was a famous atheist, a militant atheist, several years ago said basically, if you believe in God, you are probably evil. I don't remember his exact quote, but that's the way he characterized Christians. You're stupid and probably evil. And you probably need to be sent to government reprogramming to straighten out your thinking. And that is more and more the mindset that we see with Christian values. Let's continue on now, chapter 5. Continue with the story here. Now things are about to get quite serious as we'll see in chapter 5. Moses and Aaron are about to go see Pharaoh. So, verse 1, afterward Moses and Aaron went in and told Pharaoh, Thus says the Lord God of Israel, let my people go, that they may hold a feast, celebrate a festival to me in the wilderness. Now, we won't go back and reread this, but we saw earlier that God actually told Moses to ask politely to let for Pharaoh to ask politely for permission to leave for a brief period.

And instead, what we see here is Moses and Aaron simply demand that Pharaoh release the Israelites and let them go. And they also don't specify that it's only for a short period of time which God originally instructed. It's let them go. Take them out of Egypt. This is not to say that had Moses followed God's directive initially that Pharaoh would have let him go. We know that's not the case, because as we discussed the hardening of his heart last time. Verse 2, and Pharaoh said, Who is the Lord that I shall obey his voice to let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, nor will I let Israel go. Since these two men come from very different places, we have Moses who will read, actually we won't get there, but he is described as the meekest man on earth.

A very humble man. He just doesn't want to lead Israel. As we talked about a lot last time, he just wants to be left alone to tend to sheep and goats out there in the desert. That's his comfort zone there. And what is his response? Who am I to lead this people?

And what is the response of Pharaoh on the other hand? Pharaoh is coming from a very different place. He responds, Who is the Lord that I should pay attention to what he says? Moses sees himself as a very simple, humble man, and Pharaoh sees himself, as the Egyptians do, as a divine being. As a divine being, because Pharaoh was one of the gods that the Egyptians worshipped. And his arrogance shows up in his contemptuous response. Who is the Lord that I should obey him and let my slaves go? And this arrogance and defiance is what will have to be crushed at great cost to Pharaoh and to Egypt and the people. And actually, as we see, it is never fully crushed. Verse 3 continuing, So they said, The God of the Hebrews has met with us. This is Moses and Aaron. Please let us go three days journey into the desert and sacrifice to the Lord our God, lest he fall upon us with pestilence or with the sword. And now Moses and Aaron are rewording the request in doing what God originally told them to ask of Pharaoh. So they get it right this time. They use the name that God instructed them to use, or the title, the God of the Hebrews, rather than the God of the Israelites, because that's what Pharaoh knows the slaves as.

And also, instructs also gives a shorter time period here. And he also says, please, please.

So, and then he also adds at the end, lest God punish us with pestilence or the sword.

So this is a threat not really to the Egyptians, but to the Israelites, that they will be punished if they don't obey God and do what God is instructing them to do. But of course, it does also threaten Pharaoh with a work stoppage if the Israelites are struck down with disease or with a sword in that way. So it's a kind of a dual threat there. Then verse four, then the king of Egypt said to them, Moses and Aaron, why do you take the people from their work? Get back to your labor. So Pharaoh blames Moses and Aaron for the punishment that he is about to inflict on the Israelites. And as we'll see, the Israelites will also blame Moses and Aaron for what follows. Verse five, and Pharaoh said, look, the people of the land are many now, and you make them rest from their labor. So he's essentially accusing Moses and Aaron of trying to stir up the Israelites and maybe create a work stoppage or the equivalent of a labor strike or something like that, which is an overstatement on Pharaoh's part because they're actually only asking for a few days off work to go into the wilderness to offer sacrifices. So what happens next? So the same day, verse six, Pharaoh commanded the taskmasters of the people and their officers saying, you shall no longer give the people straw to make brick as before. Let them go and gather straw for themselves. And you shall lay on them the quota of bricks which they made before. You shall not reduce it, for they are idle, they're lazy. Therefore, they cry out saying, let us go sacrifice to our God. And he says, let more work be laid on the men that they may labor in it and let them not regard false words as those that Moses and Aaron are giving them. So Pharaoh issues this decree, what this is saying here, Pharaoh issues this decree on the very same day that Moses and Aaron come to him. And he makes it clear that Moses and Aaron are the ones to blame for this increased workload. He's trying to divide the Israelites from Moses and Aaron so that they will get the blame. And that is indeed what happens. Verse 10, and the taskmasters of the people and their officers went out and spoke to the people, the Israelites, thus says Pharaoh, I will not give you straw. Go get yourself straw where you can find it and none of your work shall be reduced.

The straw this is talking about is the leftovers in the fields after they've harvested the wheat and the barley and so on. There's a lot of husks and straw left out on the field. So this is what is going on. So the people were scattered abroad throughout all the land of Egypt together stubble instead of straw. And brick making was very hard work, particularly in this hot and humid Egyptian climate. And here's actually a painting. There are a lot of these in the tombs of Egypt, which have a very dry climate. And some of you have been in some of the tombs there and seen wall paintings like this. And the painting looks like it's maybe a couple of decades ago, not 4,000 years. And this is illustrating brick making. I want to show you a little bit of what's going on because it ties right in with the story here. We have here, here's an Egyptian style hole or digging tool. And these men are digging dirt, which is shown as mounds here. They're loading it into baskets like here. And then this man over here has a wooden form. It's a rectangular form. And what they do is they, well, here they're mixing it with water and so on. And here he's taking this soft mud, putting it in a wooden form and shaping the bricks. And they would have been roughly this big, about four or five inches thick. And you can see he's made a lot of bricks, and they're laying out in the sun and drying. And this is called mud dried brick. And this is very common not just in Egypt, but in Israel as well. If you go to Israel, a lot of people are kind of surprised because they see these stone walls that are only maybe a foot high or so.

And they think, where's the rest of the wall? Well, the answer is pretty simple. The rest of the wall was mud brick. And after 2,000 years, the mud brick is now dirt and doesn't exist anymore. But the walls, the foundation, are still in place. That's why you have so many walls in Israel that are only about a foot high. Mud brick was built on top of that there. So this is an illustration of what is going on and what this process looked like. It doesn't show them gathering and mixing straw in, but they clearly did. Here's a couple of photos I'll show you of some of the ancient brickworks from Egypt that have been excavated. And they made millions and millions of bricks in ancient Egypt. They had plenty of dirt, plenty of mud to work with there, plenty of water from the Nile River and its canals and all of that. And they made many enormous structures out of mud brick, which you can visit to this day. Here's another wall that's quite well preserved there, where the sand has been excavated around it. Some of us have been to different sites and seen things like that. And it's interesting you examine some of these walls and what do you see? You see straw. See these little white twiggy things sticking out all over. They still make bricks in the exact same way that they were making them 4,000 years ago. And I've looked at ancient bricks and some of the temples here, and you can still see the fragments of straw in them, which is another supporting evidence of the biblical account. So this is the way it was done. But it was very, very hard work there. The climate in Egypt is very hot, very humid along the Nile River Valley. And for them to have to now go out, not just to make the bricks, but together the straw to mix in as well, is going to involve a lot more walking, a lot more wasted time doing that, and frankly makes their quota impossible to reach. Verse 13, continuing the story, and the taskmasters forced them to hurry, saying, fulfill your work, your daily quota, as when there was straw. So they have to make just as many bricks as before, even though now they have together their straw as well. It's interesting, another moving over a little bit from that illustration I showed you earlier. Here's a guy who's building a mud brick wall. Here they are loading up bricks with and carrying them. And notice here, here's an Egyptian foreman, or taskmaster, as the scripture calls it. And he's got a rod in his hand for those who don't work diligently enough or fast enough or hard enough, and they're going to be beaten with rods, exactly as we read about in the biblical account here. So again, this is a picture of what is going on there, what it would have looked like at that time. Continuing, verse 14 again, Also, the officers of the children of Israel, whom Pharaoh's taskmasters had set over them, were beaten and were asked, Why have you not fulfilled your task in making brick both yesterday and today as before? And what this is referring to, officers of the children of Israel. That's a bad translation, but it's basically talking about the head of the work gangs, foremen, we would call them. So the Egyptian overseers are beating the Israelite foremen who are responsible for supervising the work of the Israelites. So again, it's dividing, creating this division between Moses and Aaron and the people to turn the people against the leadership of Moses and Aaron.

Verse 15, Then the officers of the children of Israel came and cried out to Pharaoh, saying, Why are you dealing this way with your servants? There was no straw given to your servants, and they say to us, Make brick! And indeed your servants were beaten, but the fault is in your own people. They're not going to say, It's your fault, Pharaoh, for giving the edict, but we're doing all we can. In other words, we're making as many bricks as we can, but it's just impossible. We don't have enough hours in the day to do everything.

It's interesting this uses the phrase servants here. It's the same Hebrew word for servants or slaves. So you have to read the context, know that it's actually talking about slaves, not not servants. And this is also clear from their very subservient position to the Egyptian overseers as well. They're not servants, they are slaves.

That's what it's being talked about here. Continuing verse 17, But Pharaoh said, You are idle, idle. Therefore, you say, Let us go and sacrifice to the Lord. In other words, you've got enough time you think you can go take off and go offer sacrifices to your God. Well, if you've got that extra time, you can sure as heck go out in the fields and gather straw and make brick here. So therefore, go now and work for no straw shall be given you, yet you shall deliver the quota of bricks. And let's see, let me go ahead and read verse 19 and then comment. And the officers, the foremen of the children of Israel, saw that they were in trouble after it was said, You shall not reduce any bricks from your daily quota.

And it's interesting here, we see this is a sad commentary on human nature, but throughout history, we see that slaves have been basically treated as subhuman. No rights at all. No privileges at all. And actually, that wouldn't change up until earliest time. I know of it changing is in in the Roman Empire when slaves are finally given a degree of legal rights.

But before that, you had no legal rights whatsoever. None whatsoever. And they are here, as we see, subjected to great cruelty. The Egyptians give them an impossible quota to meet, and then when they don't meet it, they're beaten. So, yes, sad, sad situation.

No wonder they get angry at Moses and Aaron. Verse 20, Then as they came out from Pharaoh, so these foremen come out for meeting with Pharaoh, they met Moses and Aaron, who stood there to meet them. And they said to Moses and Aaron, Let the Lord look on you and judge because you have made us abhorrent in the side of Pharaoh and in the side of his servants to put a sword in their head to kill us. So, their anger is completely understandable. They've had their workload increased. They can't do it. They're being beaten. And they're saying, We just wish you guys had never shown up. Why don't you mind your own business and not bring this trouble, this persecution on it?

All you've done is make matters worse. So we see that Pharaoh has indeed made the Israelite foremen hate Moses and Aaron. So, verse 22, Moses returned to the Lord and said, Lord, why have you brought trouble on this people? So Moses witnesses their suffering and he cries out to God. He's in a predicament here because he wants to obey God, but all that's happened is it's made the lives of the Israelites more miserable and made their suffering even worse.

But in reality, it's not God who's made it worse or Moses who's made it worse. It's Pharaoh who's made it worse because of the hardness of his heart and his stubborn tendencies there. And later part of verse 22, Moses said, why is it you've sent me? He's already winded and didn't want the job. And then he says, why did you send me anyway? Why did you do this? So he criticizes God for making his mission unsuccessful. It didn't work. You didn't free the slaves. And now everybody's mad at me. But actually, God has already answered that because God told him at the burning bush, Pharaoh's not going to let the Israelites go. And essentially, God doesn't get angry at Moses for the outburst here.

He understands it in the face of great evil like this, that it can be difficult to trust and have faith in and understand that God is working things out according to his timetable. This doesn't mean that Moses now doubts God's existence. He doesn't because he's seen the miracles twice to himself at the burning bush. And then when they demonstrated the miracles again, they're before the elders. But he's just angry. He's frustrated.

Everything he's done is just made matters worse. And we might, you know, we run into feelings like this at times when this seems like no matter what we do, try to resolve a situation, it only gets worse. And this is what Moses is going through here. So here's a lesson for us. Be patient. Be patient. Let God work things out as he's going to. Don't start blaming God. Don't lose faith that God isn't working when he doesn't answer in the time frame or in the way or how we want to expect him to.

We are not going to be able to do that. We are not God's boss. You're not the boss. So keep that in mind. Verse 23, Moses continues, for since I came to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has done evil to this people. Neither have you delivered your people at all. So again, he hasn't learned the value of patiently waiting on God to carry out his purpose and plan there. And again, this is a reinforcement of the lesson we need to learn to wait on God for him to carry out his plan and purpose. Now we move into chapter six.

Then the Lord said to Moses, now you shall see what I will do to Pharaoh. So God kind of hears Moses, let's invent for a while. He says, okay, now you're going to see. Now you're going to see my hand for with a strong hand, Pharaoh will let them go. And with a strong hand, Pharaoh will drive them out of his land. So God doesn't respond to Moses' accusations, but he does respond to give Moses some confidence and trust and faith and hope here and promises more emphatically to deliver on what he has promised. So he says, now, now you're going to see. Now things are going to start moving. Verse two, and God spoke to Moses and said to him, I am the Lord. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as God Almighty. But by my name, Lord, I was not known to them.

Why does God interject this in here? Well, as we covered in Exodus 3 and verse 15 at the burning bush, God reveals his name YHWH to Moses. Yahweh is near as we can understand it was pronounced.

Why didn't he reveal that name to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? He says, by my name, YHWH, I was not known to them. Well, the answer is really, really pretty simple. If you know much about history of that time, presumably, well, Yahweh is Hebrew. It's Hebrew word, I am, or I am that I am, or I will be what I will be. Do Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob know Hebrew? Probably not, because Abraham is from Ur, and that he probably spoke whatever the language was in Ur, which was not Hebrew, would not have been Hebrew. The Hebrew language does not seem to have come along until sometime later, after Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. There's no record of it anywhere near that time. Incidentally, the movie, the documentary I've mentioned a couple of times about Moses, I understand gets into this. This is kind of a side point, but in the last 10 years or so, archaeologists have found four different inscriptions from various places in the Holy Land and the Sinai Desert that are, for lack of a better term, they're calling it Proto-Hebrew.

Kind of an ancestral Hebrew, an origin of Hebrew. It's not Hebrew. It's older than Hebrew.

They don't know how to classify it. And they're thinking. It's interesting, these things date from around the period of the Exodus and the couple of centuries after that. And I haven't heard what they'll say in this documentary movie here about Moses, but the thinking seems to be that the Hebrew language and alphabet, and the Hebrew alphabet is an ancestor of the alphabet we use today, that is being developed in this time. And that's what Moses would have used to write the first books of the Bible. Again, can't prove that, but that seems to be... I know there are some scholars leaning in that direction, and I'll leave it at that, having not seen the movie and how they will go into more detail on that. Continuing, God says, I have also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, the land of their pilgrimage in which they were strangers. And I have also heard the groaning of the children of Israel, whom the Egyptians keep in bondage, and I have remembered my covenant. So again, God assures Moses that he has remembered, and in this case it doesn't mean remember as we think of it, but remembered in the sense that now it is time for him to act, and he will carry out his plan and his purpose for the Israelites and deliver them. Verse 6, Therefore, say to the children of Israel, I am the Lord. I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. I will rescue you from bondage, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great judgments. I will take you as my people, and I will be your God. It's interesting the promises here in these in these two versions. You may have heard before that at the Passover, the Jews traditionally drink four cups of wine. Where do they get those four cups? Well, those four cups represent these four promises that show up in these verses. I will bring you out. I will rescue you. I will redeem you, and I will take you as my people. It's interesting also, these verses are very reminiscent of an ancient Jewish marriage contract where a man takes a woman to be his wife, and the woman accepts his proposal. This is actually found in a prophecy, Hosea 2, verses 19-20, where God describes the relationship he wants to have with ancient Israel. We know that God was married to ancient Israel. It's repeated in a number of scriptures. We don't have time to go into, but I did want to read this one because the language is so close to what God promises he will do for Israel there in the book of Exodus. Notice what God says here. I will betroth you to me forever. Yes, I will betroth you to me in righteousness and justice, in loving kindness and mercy. I will betroth you to me in faithfulness, and you shall know the Lord.

And again, this thought and concept of God having this marriage covenant with Israel goes all the way back here to the period of Exodus. It's very, very similar language here. Continuing in Exodus 6 and verse 7, notice here too it says, you will know that I am the Lord. Then you shall know that I am the Lord your God who brings you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. And I will bring you into the land which I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and I will give it to you as a heritage. I am the Lord. So Moses spoke thus to the children of Israel, but they did not heed Moses. They did not listen to him because of anguish of spirit and cruel bondage.

So then the Lord spoke to Moses saying, Go in, tell Pharaoh, king of Egypt, to let the children of Israel go out of his land.

So God no longer tells Moses to speak to Pharaoh politely or to request permission to go and offer sacrifices for about a week. Instead, he tells Pharaoh, let them go, period. Let my people go. Verse 12, And Moses spoke before the Lord, saying, The children of Israel have not listened to me. How then will Pharaoh listen to me? For I am of uncircumcised lips. So Moses again starts with his objections that we saw earlier that the Israelites won't listen to him, Pharaoh won't listen to him, and he doesn't speak well. Then the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron, and gave them a command for the children of Israel and for Pharaoh, king of Egypt, to bring the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt. And this time, notice here, God speaks to Aaron as well, not just Moses, but Aaron is included in this. And then it goes into a section listing the genealogies of Moses and Aaron. And we're not told why they are included at this point, but here they are. And I'm actually going to skip over that and get down to chapter 7 for lack of time. One thing I will draw your attention to in verse 23, it does mention Aaron's sons, but does not mention Moses' sons. And why is that? We read earlier that Moses does have sons, plural. So there are at least two. What's going on? Well, probably what's going on is Moses' sons just simply did not amount to much.

They're kind of written out of history. They're not even named. Except, well, I take that back. One of them, actually they may have been named in the earlier account, but they're not listed here. Essentially, nothing is said about them other than the very early mentions of them. And there's another lesson in here for us, too. And that lesson, the silence of the Bible on the children, the sons of Moses, is an important reminder to all parents. You can be successful as Moses was, but don't let that success move your children. Remove your children from your life. You're still obligated to give them the time, the attention that they need.

They need to feel that they have a special place in your hearts, in your minds, and thoughts also.

And no matter how important the responsibilities of the parent are, you need to always make sure you find time for them. And this is another lesson. It's not spelled out. Most of the lessons in here aren't spelled out, but we see it from the circumstances in what is told us here. So make sure your children don't get left out of the story, as Moses' sons are left out of the story. So continuing then with Exodus 7, So the Lord said to Moses, See, I have made you as God to Pharaoh, and Aaron your brother shall be your prophet. Moses here is told he will have such command over Pharaoh that he will be in effect playing the role of God. He is God's representative there before Pharaoh.

And this is significant because who does Pharaoh see as God? Well, he sees himself as God, not Moses. It's interesting also, this Hebrew word translated prophet here is a navi, a navi in Hebrew, and it actually is probably better translated spokesman.

And it's actually probably better when we read about the Hebrew prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, the minor prophets, and so on.

What is their primary role? Is it always to foretell the future? Not really.

A lot of the book of Isaiah is history. It's history as it was taking place at that time.

And the role of the prophets, we tend to think they're always foretelling the future, but that's clearly not always the case. And with Jeremiah as well, lamentations, a lot of times what they wrote is not prophecy, but rather they aren't functioning and acting as God's spokesman. They are warning, they are telling the nation what is happening, what is taking place, what is going to take place, and why it's going to take place.

So Aaron has this role, not necessarily as a prophet, to foretell the future, although in the plagues, in the coming of the plagues, he is doing that to some extent. But basically he's acting as the spokesman for Moses and for God, transmitting the words, God's instruction to Pharaoh.

Verse 2, You shall speak all that I command you, and Aaron your brother shall speak to Pharaoh, to send the children of Israel out of his land. And I will harden Pharaoh's heart, and multiply my signs and my wonders, my miracles, in other words, in the land of Egypt, but Pharaoh will not heed you, so that I may lay in my hand on Egypt, and bring my armies and my people, the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt, by great judgments.

And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I stretch out my hand on Egypt, and bring out the children of Israel from among them.

So here God again reassures Moses that don't grow dismayed when Pharaoh doesn't let my people go, because God will have strengthened Pharaoh's heart, hardened his heart, as it's worded here. So Moses shouldn't feel that he's a failure, because Pharaoh doesn't let the Israelites go. It's just not time for that to happen yet. God is working things out according to his timetable. And as we see mentioned here, the judgments that he will bring. And here we see three purposes for the judgments, the plagues that are brought on the Israelites.

And the first, and the most obvious here, is to force Pharaoh and the Egyptians to release, to free the Israelites from their slavery. So that's the first one that is mentioned here.

And the second one is to punish Pharaoh and the Egyptians by great judgments, it says, for the terrible suffering they have inflicted on the Israelites, for the genocide of the Hebrew baby boys over several centuries, the way they have treated other people. It's not just the Israelites, too. The ancient Egyptians were a very warlike people. They conquered many other peoples and enslaved them. The Israelites were not the only ones. By any means, you can look at the tomb paintings like I saw earlier, and many different peoples, ethnic groups, are depicted there as slaves of the Egyptians. They were pretty brutal, pretty cruel, so it's not just the Israelites that are being punished for as well. And a third purpose we see is to demonstrate to the Israelites and the Egyptians that God, not the god of Pharaoh, not Pharaoh himself, not the gods and goddesses of Egypt, is the real God. And that's why, as we'll see, the plagues are directed against specific Egyptian gods to show that they are powerless in the face of the one true God.

Last few minutes here, I want to talk a little bit because this is something I wanted to bring up, and this would be a good spot to discuss it. And that is the concept of collective guilt. Why does God punish all of Egypt for the sins of Pharaoh?

Specifically, was it right to punish all of the Egyptian people for the sins of their leader, Pharaoh? And in short, the biblical answer is yes, because the evils that the Egyptians inflicted on the Israelites weren't done by just a handful of people. They were done by the Egyptian population as a whole, at large, over the course of many generations, over several centuries.

It's not just the Egyptians at that point in history who are guilty. They've been doing this for several generations, have treated the Israelites brutally as slaves. And the Exodus account makes the collective nature of the Egyptian participation in the enslavement and torment, and murder of Israelites clear in the very first chapter of Exodus. When we read verse 22, so Pharaoh commanded all his people, saying, every son who is born, you shall cast into the river, and every daughter you shall save alive. So the Egyptian people collectively are guilty of carrying out this directive of murdering the Hebrew babies.

And let me interject a thought here, too. The Bible makes it clear when it comes to individual choices, individual crimes, choice to participate in crimes, as opposed to national crimes, which is the case here, that when it comes to individuals, they're only to be punished on an individual level. And that's why there's a biblical principle, or law, that an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. And we tend to view that in the wrong way. What that is actually doing is showing not to go beyond that in punishing people. If somebody, you get in a fight, gouge out your eye, you're not allowed to kill the other person for that. You can't go beyond what he did. So an eye is gouged out for an eye. A tooth is knocked out for a knocked out tooth. You can't go beyond that and execute the man in that circumstance. Yes, if he kills somebody else, yes, you can. But that's the purpose behind the law, and a lot of people have misunderstood that over the years. It is actually limiting the amount of retribution or punishment. And God's laws are spelled out in much more detail in various circumstances about that. But that is one of the great moral principles that is enshrined there in God's law. That is seldom understood, that the punishment must be equivalent to the crime and not greater than that. And even beyond that, too, it doesn't extend to the criminals' other family members. His parents can't be killed for his crime. His brothers can't be killed for his crime. His tribe or clan members can't be punished for his crime. It is that individual, and not others. But what about then when it comes to a national crime, as is the case with the Egyptians, and the genocide that they have perpetrated, and the slavery that they have perpetrated on the Israelites for many generations? Just because not every single individual was guilty, does that mean the whole nation should be let off the hook? Well, as we see from the plagues, the biblical answer is no.

The whole nation is collectively guilty, the whole nation is collectively responsible, and the whole nation is collectively punished. What about other examples of that? Well, we have a very powerful one in our national history, and that is America's history of slavery. Since we're talking about slavery, the whole American nation paid a terrible price for the national sin of slavery. It started back in the 1600s, ended in 1865 with the Civil War. And the nation fought over the Civil War, the Civil War over the issue of slavery.

And in this one war, more Americans died in all of our wars put together.

700,000. 700,000, more than all of our other wars put together.

And what's particularly striking is the population of America in 1860 was only 31 billion. So 700,000 out of 3,100 are killed. That's one. I didn't average it out, but one out of about every 36, 37 people dies in that war. It was a national crime and a national tragedy.

And of course, as is the case in nearly every war, some of those people who most deserve the punishment managed to escape it. Like, for instance, some of the kidnappers, the people kidnapping the slaves, the slave traders themselves who bought and sold human beings here, a lot of them got away with their crimes and weren't punished because they were so wealthy they could escape that.

In fact, Exodus 21, 16, you might write this down in your notes. I didn't project it up here, but Exodus 21, 16 says, anyone who kidnaps another person, what's the punishment for that?

It's death. It's death. The punishment for kidnapping is death. Because why did you kidnap somebody in that? You didn't kidnap people for ransom in that time. You kidnapped people to sell the mislaves to another people. It shows what God thought about slavery. At least slavery in that form. Again, there are other types of servitude, indentured servitude, where you're paying off a debt or something, and we're not talking about that. But to kidnap somebody to sell them as a slave was punishable by death. The person was executed if they were caught.

So, I want to touch on something. This isn't to justify slavery, but to explain history that many African tribes fought against one another, and enslaved one another, and sold their captives to slave traders. And this is an exclusive to Africa. It's been going on for thousands of years. The Babylonians did it. The Assyrians did it. The Egyptians did it. The Sumerians did it. The Hittites did it. Every, every ancient people did that because in warfare it was kill or be killed, or enslave or be enslaved. If you didn't kill or enslave them first, that's what they were going to do to you. So, it's very common in the ancient world. So common it didn't, it didn't end until, oddly enough, it was the British and the Americans who put an end to slavery. The British, starting in the early 1800s, and abolished, did what they could to abolish the slave trade, and then America fought a civil war over it. But much of the American slave trade, this is history, and I'm giving this just as a history lesson, not to justify it, but just to explain. A lot of that slavery was prompted by Islam because Islam was enslaving Africans, buying African slaves from others, and selling them to the slave traders who brought them to the New World, to Latin America, to North America, to South America. These are illustrations. Here's one of a slave market. This is a cartoon, Sudan, I believe. This is from the 1870s, well after the British and Americans had abolished slavery, and here the Arabs still trading in slaves at that point. And it's a... the news media won't talk about that, but slavery is still common in the Muslim world. ISIS. Slavery was very common. I've sent a number of news articles about women, the Yazidis and other like that, minorities who are captured by ISIS and are sold as female slaves, often sex slaves, to ISIS fighters and so on. It's an ugly story, and you won't hear it mentioned because it's politically incorrect to do so. But this all ties in with this notion of collective guilt and God's punishment for that. It's interesting that two of America's greatest presidents commented on this. Thomas Jefferson said, wrote, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just, that his justice cannot sleep forever. It's a universal truth, but he was talking specifically about slavery in that context that God will not forever allow the nation to go unpunished for this national crime. And Abraham Lincoln wrote, fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet if God wills it, it continue until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, punishment of slaves, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword in the deaths on the battlefield. As was said 3,000 years ago, so it must be said, the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. Abraham Lincoln, to briefly summarize what he's saying, is we're in the middle of a civil war because the judgments of God are true and just and righteous, and that's why people are dying in this civil war. It's punishment for the lash, for enslaving other human beings. So it's interesting that both of these men intuitively knew that there would be national punishment for slavery. And again, it was universal. That's just the way it was. Fast forward a bit. In history up to the period of World War II, and what happened?

The German peoples met the German leadership, but many of the German peoples were complicit in the bombing of civilian areas like London during the Blitz, the bombings there, indiscriminate bombings in Poland, Russia, elsewhere, the annihilation of two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population, billions of other innocent people.

And most of the German population supported that, and actively supported and gave support to slave labor in the Nazi factories, making ammunition and guns and tanks and planes and things like that. And as a result of that, the Western democracies didn't see any problem with reciprocating and indiscriminately bombing German cities, because that's what they had done to others. There was a general sense that it wasn't just the Nazis that were responsible for that, but all of the people. And as a result of that, one of the first orders that General Dwight Eisenhower, when they started coming across the slave camps, the extermination camps, what did he order?

He ordered the local German population in the nearby towns, marched them to the concentration camps, and made them help dispose of the bodies. And a big bread for the starving prisoners and things like that, and to provide burial for the thousands of corpses. Eisenhower clearly believed the German people as a whole were guilty and rubbed their noses in it. And similarly with the Japanese, the Japanese were very cruel, horribly treated the Chinese, the Koreans, other people in the lands that they captured, murdered civilian prisoners on massive scale, were notorious for their cruelty and sadism, the way they treated prisoners of war, things like that. And this was a factor in the decision of dropping the atomic bombs on Japan and killing tens of thousands of civilians, because actually that would have saved hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of casualties the Allies had to physically invade Japan near the end of World War II and bring the war to an end. So the atomic bombs actually saved, horrible as they were, they saved millions of lives.

So is there collective guilt, according to the Bible, with the Egyptians? Yes. Is there collective guilt for our national crimes today? Yes.

Was there collective guilt for the crimes of Judah and Israel? Yes. Yes, there is.

And it's a sad fact. It's a sad reality. But we see that playing out here in the plagues of Israel, and we see it played out in Bible prophecy as to what will ultimately happen to our nation as well. So wrapping this up, we'll stop at this point with these last few verses. Verse 5, God concludes here, The Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord when I stretch out my hand on Egypt and bring out the children of Israel from among them. Then Moses and Aaron did so just as the Lord commanded them. So they did. Moses was 80 years old and Aaron 83 years old when they spoke to Pharaoh. Then we'll pick it up next time with a continuation of the plagues when they start to strike Egypt.