When the Israeli foreman heard that their people had to now find their own straw to make bricks because of Moses and Aaron, they were fit to be tied. In a confrontation with their spiritual leaders they said they hoped the Lord would judge Moses and Aaron for making their lives miserable. What is Moses to do, now?  We find out quickly as the deliverer of Israel, confused if not downright angry, confronts the Lord. Life is hard, we all know that, and we can learn what to do and what not to do by considering Moses’ reaction. 

“Then Moses turned to the Lord.” Ok, that’s a good start. Moses had just been rebuked by the foremen, but instead of blasting the foremen, he turned to the Lord. Good job, Mo. I admit that when someone is critical with me, my first response is too often to defend myself rather than accept the correction with grace. Moses did not do that but notice what he did: he questioned the great I Am, he complained to him, he even accused him. These appear with words he spoke to God which include, “Why have you, why did you, you have not!” 

His first question for God was, “Why have you done evil to this people?” We know the Lord God cannot do evil. But the same word used here is used in Numbers when Moses said to God, “Why have you dealt ill with your servant?” I don’t think Moses is questioning God’s righteousness, but he is asking that age-old trope, “Why are you allowing bad things to happen to good people?”  The second question is a complaint: “Why did you ever send me?” Moses seems to be making this about himself and questioning God’s wisdom at the same time! I told you I wasn’t the right person to do this and I told you they wouldn’t listen, so… why did you send me in the first place?

The third thing that came out of Moses’ mouth was an accusation: “You have not delivered your people at all.” Moses heard God’s promises and now he is questioning God’s credibility, because God has not followed through and delivered on Moses’ timetable. Wow. I am tempted to ask, “How is Moses not a greasy spot before all those words even finished falling out of his mouth?” Simply this: God is not afraid of our questions. “The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.” 

I also think we see Moses here becoming like that grain of wheat Jesus talked about, falling into the ground to die, so that he could bear much fruit. Moses had to die to himself, his pride, his thinking that he knew best and that this deliverance ministry God gave him should be easier. But no. Life is hard. We all understand that.

Do you have questions? Turn to the Lord. Ask him questions. Search the Scriptures. Life is hard. But there is hope in the Lord, in his word, and in those who know him. Ask people who have walked with the Lord longer than you have who have evidence of good fruit in their lives. Moses didn’t have anybody on the planet like that. But you and I do.

When it comes to our relationship with the Creator of the universe, there really are no dumb questions. Just plenty of dumb and deadly assumptions.

When Moses and Aaron first walked into the palace to confront Pharaoh, they knew they were meeting with a man who thought he was a god. Truth be told, he did have unimpeachable authority to have them drawn and quartered on the spot, without question. But these men confronted him anyway. They were ordinary men upon whom the grace of God was abundantly poured out for such a time as this. Notice how Pharaoh responded.

He said, “Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice?” That’s a question for the ages! A question every single one of us, every person who has ever lived has had to answer. Or will eventually answer with the truth. Who is the Lord? Why should I obey Him? The Pharaoh had the wrong heart but he asked the right question. And every single person on the last day, the day of judgment, will either enter into heaven because he or she has bowed the knee by faith to Christ and obeyed His voice, or will enter into eternal damnation after he or she has bowed the knee to Christ. The Bible says, “Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”

The Pharaoh then says, “I do not know the Lord…and I will not let Israel go.” It is an honest answer. At least the Pharaoh knows what he doesn’t believe. How many people know that? The hardest people to reach with the Gospel are the people who think they believe in Christ but really do not. They are cultural Christians who know about Jesus and may even go to church, but they do not know Him. Their lives do not bear the marks of repentance and faith and obedience to Christ.

Moses and Aaron persisted and told Pharaoh they spoke for the Lord, the God of the Hebrews. They asked him again to let the people go worship God, and added, “lest he fall upon us with pestilence or the sword.” This first warning was given to the Pharaoh to let him know there would be consequences for his disobedience. Again, the courage and confidence of Moses and Aaron to confront Pharaoh is critical here, and it comes from their relationship with God. Moses was just a man, but a man who had been with God, had heard His voice and seen His power, and now was ready to do God’s will. It was the same with the Jesus’ disciples.

They were ordinary men and we can easily catalogue their selfishness and sinfulness and betrayal in the Gospels. But these same men, filled with the Holy Spirit, would stand before rulers and leaders of Israel and astonish them with their boldness. “They were uneducated, common men…(but the rulers of Israel) recognized that they had been with Jesus.” You and I, too, have been with Jesus. Though we have not seen Him, we know Him and we are in Christ, and He is in us. When Spurgeon preached on the life of Moses, he had this to say to his listeners: “Do you still stutter? Are you still slow of speech? Nevertheless, go on. Have you been rebuked and rebuffed? Have you had little else than defeat? This is the way of success.… Toil on and believe on. Be steadfast in your confidence, for with a high hand and an outstretched arm the Lord will fetch out his own elect, and he will fetch some of them out by you.”

Ordinary men and women who know and are known by our extraordinary God: that is who we are. Go, speak in His name and with His authority!

“It is time to go.” How many times do we use that phrase in our daily lives? “It is time to go on vacation” makes us happy. “It is time to go home from vacation” is a mixed bag. Some are deeply saddened by that, but some are overjoyed that they can go home and rest. How about, “It is time to go to work?” Or, as I heard last week from a young couple, “It is time to go to the altar and get married.” I One of my favorites is, “It is time to go to church.” I love that one. As the Psalmist said, “I was glad when they said to me, ‘Let us go to the house of the Lord!’” 

It came time one day for Moses to go. Back to the land of the pyramids and the Pharaoh. Back to the slave drivers and the people they are oppressing. Back to Egypt. God had work for him there. 

God’s call on his life took precedence over everything else for Moses, as it does for you and me. Jesus made that clear to us when he said in essence that anyone who loves his father or mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters more than he loves Jesus is not worthy to be his disciple. Moses was commissioned by God to go; that meant he could not stay in Midian. But…it was important for him to leave in the right way. The first thing Moses did was speak to Jethro with great respect. He asked him for permission to leave, and he did so because this was his father-in-law and his employer. Moses told him he needed to go back to see his brothers. He may have looked like an Egyptian when he first arrived in Midian, but Moses clearly understood who he was and who his people were. Jethro spoke a blessing over Moses, telling him to go in peace. 

Moses packed his bags and took his family and the staff of God with him on the journey, which represented God’s presence and divine authority. This is a wonderful reminder that we who are in Christ travel through life as a family. Even if you are a spiritual orphan as far as blood relatives go, you are part of a universal family of brothers and sisters in Christ. And more importantly, you are part of a spiritual family in a local church, or should be, where you know your family members and are known by them, and you are known by your heavenly Father and his Son. You are not alone. 

Moses was not alone, either. He went to meet with his brother, Aaron, for the two of them were being sent to the Pharaoh. We serve a sending God! They met at the mountain of God, a long way from Egypt. One of the questions I had was, “How did Aaron get out of Egypt?” I mean, he didn’t have any vacation days as a slave. The answer is simply, God made it happen. 

Moses was 80 and Aaron was 83 so here they are, two octogenarians, but still in their prime. Let it be so for me, Lord! And look at this: they kiss. Their brotherly affection was restored after 77 years of absence from one another. Moses didn’t add this because it was embarrassing but I’m pretty sure that after Aaron kissed his younger brother, he put him in a headlock and gave him a noogie. Because that’s what big brothers do! This moment of affection and brotherly love was deeply needed, because these two were headed into the hornet’s nest. Only by the grace of God would they, or we, be able to do what is required.

Let’s go!

“Oh my Lord!” That was how objection #4 started. I cannot do this, Moses said, because I am not a good speaker. I am not eloquent. I am slow of speech and of tongue. Much has been written about what he meant by this, and the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, says that Moses stuttered and stammered. We simply don’t know. I am glad we don’t, because it really doesn’t matter. Moses’ excuse is one of the most prevalent among Christians since the cross first came up as a matter of conversation. When it comes to proclaiming the truth of the Gospel, we say we cannot do it, we are not confident, we don’t know what to say, we don’t know how to answer objections, we aren’t wise or powerful or noble or… “Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?… For consider your calling, brothers: not many of you were wise according to worldly standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong…” That is how God responds to us.

In Moses’ case, God answers his excuse with a question, a deeply theological one: “Who made man’s mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?” Profound truth here, that our abilities, our inabilities, and our disabilities are all ordained by God. But not one of them is a problem for God, just for us until we reconcile them with the sovereignty and the mercy of God. It reminded me of John 9 when the disciples asked why the man born blind was born blind. Was it his sin? His parents’ sin? Surely someone is to blame for this! Jesus said the man was born blind “that the works of God might be displayed in him.” 

I am God, the Lord said to Moses. I made each person as I made them. No mistakes. Donald Grey Barnhouse used to tell the story of a pastor’s wife he knew who had given birth to a baby with Down’s Syndrome. And the pastor was deeply ashamed, devastated, and he told Barnhouse the news and said that his wife didn’t know yet. The nurse had only told the father the news. He said, “I don’t know what I am going to tell her.” Pastor Barnhouse said to him, “My friend, this is of the Lord.” He turned to this same chapter in Exodus and read to him this text. “Who made man’s mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord?” The he said, “My friend, you know the promise of Romans 8 that all things, including this child with Downs Syndrome, work together for good for those who are called according to his purpose.” The man returned to the hospital and told his wife, “My darling, the Lord has blessed us with a child with Downs Syndrome.” After she cried, she asked him where he got that from and he shared with her the same passage from Exodus 4. Later when she called her mother, she shared the news, “Mother, the Lord has blessed us with a baby with Downs Syndrome.” Word spread in the hospital of the pastor and his wife rejoicing over this gift from God and the next Sunday more than 70 nurses from that hospital attended this pastor’s church, and thirty of them came to faith in Christ that day. 

Who made your mouth, and mine? The Lord God did.

Every living thing grows. That’s why we have to keep our grass mowed in the summer time, lest we
lose small children in the backyard. God created the earth and started civilization in a garden, one
that was already growing when man was created. You plant seeds in your garden, and you water
them with the expectation of growth. Otherwise, what’s the point? But, let’s be honest: you and I can’t
make the tomato plant grow. Only God can. Jesus said it himself: “The kingdom of God is as if a man
should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and
grows; he knows not how.” Gardens grow, and so do people. We started life as a zygote, a fertilized
ovum. After we were born, our parents took care of us as we grew from an infant in arms to a baby
trying to turn over and to crawl. We learned to crawl, and then to walk. That is expected growth and
maturity. If you walked by a church nursery and saw a few babies crawling around in diapers, you
wouldn’t think twice about it. Babies do that sort of thing. But if you glanced in there and saw a
couple of the adult leaders sitting on the floor and wearing onesies, pacifiers in place, playing with
toys, you would have every right to be alarmed. Babies in the nursery are normal. Fully functioning
adults in a nursery? That’s tragic.
There is an expectation of growth because God, the creator of all things, made us to grow up. We
expect it. We also desire it. Though some of us might like to go back to our childhood and have the
energy of a ten-year old, none of us wants to go back and have the stature of a ten-year old. Or the
wisdom of a 5-year old. It is natural and normal for a child to want to grow up to be a teenager, and
it is normal for a teenager to want to grow into an adult. Yes, ‘adulting’ is hard, but God created us for
growth and maturity. We do not want, nor should we want, just to maintain the status quo. Even
worse, we do not want to regress, to go backwards in our growth. Stephen Um writes, “Now the only
thing more fearful than stasis (not growing) is regression, decline, and death. We go to great lengths
to hide the ways in which we decline and regress. What is clearly known in the universe is that the
principle of decay clearly exists. As it has been said, ‘Gravity isn’t just physical, it’s also historical.’”
Growth is part of God’s plan. So is regression and decay of all things physical. Every living thing has a
growth cycle and then it begins to move towards death, quickly if it’s a fly, and very slowly if it’s an
oak tree. You want to hear some really good news? Incredible news? That is not the case with our
spiritual being. Paul wrote, “So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner
self is being renewed day by day.” Continual spiritual growth for the Christian is as much the plan
and purpose of God as the life cycle of an apple tree. Our bodies may break down, and they do, but
our life with Christ grows stronger every day.
This is why Paul wrote his first letter to the Corinthians. The church there was a spiritual nursery.
Instead of growing to maturity, the church was filled with jealousy and strife and factions. The people
were fighting like 3-year-olds, and Paul asked them, “Are you not of the flesh and behaving only in a
human way?”
God hard-wired us for growth, so we do not have to be ‘merely human.’ In Christ, we can grow into
spiritual men and women, fully equipped to do all that God has created us to do.
So, how’s it growing, church?

When God called Moses by name out of the burning bush, Moses answered “Here I am!” But when God told Moses He was sending him to Pharaoh, Moses said, “Who am I?” I love the honesty of Moses. Because you and I can relate to it, right? We have each had a “Who am I” moment when confronted with something we believe God is calling us to do. I ask that question of myself often, and am comforted by the fact the Paul, the mighty apostle, asked the same thing. He said, “But thanks be to God, who in Christ always leads us in triumphal procession, and through us spreads the fragrance of the knowledge of Him everywhere.” We are sent to spread the fragrance of the knowledge of God. Then Paul asks, “Who is sufficient for these things?” What’s the answer? Christ is! It is Jesus who leads us in triumphal procession as His sent ones. Yet we often say like Moses, “Who I am?” 

The good news is that Moses was asking GOD that question. Listen, dear reader. If you have a “Who am I” moment, have it with God. He will answer and has answered that question clearly in His word. I believe what we see in Moses’ story is true for every believer. We are called first to faith (salvation) and second to service. We work out our salvation with fear and trembling because as Paul said, “It is God who works in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.” 

It is God who works in you, not you who work for God. Notice that God didn’t say in response to Moses’ concern, “Oh no, no, you can do this, Moses. You were born a Hebrew and you clearly love your people. And you were raised in Pharaoh’s house and have clearly learned how to be a prince of Egypt and speak truth to power. You are the perfect man for this. Not feeling it? Here, Moses, read this book I found at the bookstore on how to imagine yourself into a way of feeling powerful. ‘Cause it is in you, man!” 

No. God said, essentially, “You are dead right, Moses. You cannot do this. And good news, you’re not doing this. I am.” God said, “I will be with you.” You are being sent but I am going with you. And it is I who work in you both to will and to do. We can start every day that way because God does not change, so we say with confidence, “God is with me.” The call of service to God is always accompanied by the promise of God’s presence. One of my favorites is where God said to Isaiah (and you and me), “Fear not, for I am with you; be not dismayed, for I am your God; I will strengthen you, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.” 

“Moses,” God said, “I will be with you.” And then he gave Moses a sign! “When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.” Think about that one. Moses may have thought, “Hey, wait a minute. Whoa. God, are you saying I will know I can do this when all the people of Israel are here, free, serving you on this mountain?” “Right.” “But, but, that’s not a sign is it? I mean, that’s a sign I won’t see until…” Shhh, yes, Moses. What I am telling you to do is to believe My word. To trust. Me. 

Moses was still not convinced so he said, “What if they ask me the name of the God who sent me, what do I say?” Moses went from “Whom am I?” to “Who are you?” He was still trying to deal with his own fears of inadequacy instead of trusting in God’s all powerful sufficiency. 

Now, not to be too hard on Moses, we all struggle with the same questions at times. But here’s the positive side of what Moses was doing. In his trembling before God, he was working out his salvation, not working it in or working for it, but working it out. He was wanting to know the God of the universe. Who are you, God? It is the most important question we can possibly ask. And God delights in answering that question. Our God has made Himself known to us. 

Who are you? God. My King and my Lord. Who am I? I am yours.

When at the age of 40 Moses went out to see his people, who were slaves, he witnessed an Egyptian beating a Hebrew. Moses took matters into his own hands, killing the slave master and burying him in the sand. Almost as though he had decided right then to deliver his people from bondage, one at a time. But that was not God’s will at the time, and not God’s way at all. 

One of the keys to growing up is learning from our mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes, each one of us, and with regularity. But do we learn from them? Not just that we did something wrong. More importantly, are we willing to recognize what we did wrong and then change accordingly? Otherwise we are like people Paul wrote about who were burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, but were always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth. Moses had to flee Egypt and the Pharaoh because he committed murder, a crime of passion fueled by his anger and his overblown reaction to injustice. Will he learn from that? Will he change? God gives him an opportunity almost as soon as he arrives in Midian and rests near a well.

While Moses sat there, seven daughters of the priest of Midian came to water their father’s flock, but shepherds also showed up and started to run the women off. Apparently, this was a daily occurrence, but Moses was there this time. We have seen this movie before, haven’t we, where Moses sees oppression taking place and he takes out the oppressor? But this day was different. He stood up when he saw the aggression and took care of the shepherds himself. We don’t know how many men there were, but it didn’t matter. Moses’ skill and training was more than a match for them. How do we know that Moses learned from the last time he responded to oppression? He didn’t kill the shepherds! The story of rescue was told to their father, Reuel, when the seven daughters got home and he asked how they could possibly have gotten the flocks watered so quickly. An Egyptian protected us, ran off the bad guys and then watered out flocks! 

They were as amazed that Moses watered their flocks as they were that he protected them from the shepherds. This just was not done. For a man to serve a woman in those times and in such a way, drawing water for her flocks, was unheard of. This is Moses pointing us to a greater prophet, the greatest of all. Jesus taught his disciples, and you and me, that we are not supposed to be like the Gentiles who lord it over the people, “But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be slave of all.” Then while the disciples were scratching their heads over that one, Jesus added, “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” Like Jesus, when confronted with evil, Moses stood, saved, and served. 

When Reuel heard this from his daughters, he rebuffed them for leaving their rescuer in the wilderness. So they found Moses and fetched him to the house. He stayed for a meal. Then he stayed for a good night’s sleep. Then he stayed for a wife, as Reuel gave him his daughter, Zipporah, to marry. She then gave Moses a son. And Moses, the prince of Egypt and one-day deliverer of God’s people became a shepherd for 40 years. Perfect training for what lay ahead.

What can we learn from this event in Moses’ life? God’s plan and timetable are perfect, but they often do not match ours. We want it now. We want it easy and convenient. We want it our way. But God patiently prepared this man as he cared for sheep and learned how to live in the wilderness and learned how to protect his flock and learned how to lead stubborn sheep even when they didn’t want to follow. Hmmm. Sounds like God was preparing Moses for what would happen in the last 40 years of his life.

Hey, young people, don’t be in a hurry to figure out your whole life. But do not delay in preparing your heart to follow God. Commit to doing hard things. Commit to reading the Bible and listening to God’s voice as he speaks through his word. Commit to serving others. Hey, older people, the same is true for us! It is never time to sit back and say, “My work here is done.” Or to believe that God cannot use you and your time, talents, and gifts in his service.

The Pharaoh issued a hit on every Hebrew baby boy. If anyone in Egypt found one, they were to throw him in the Nile. Serve him up to the crocodiles. Genocide was on Pharaoh’s mind, and Amram and Jochebed were living in the kill zone. One cry and one vigilant neighbor who heard and investigated would result in the death of their baby, Moses. Here is where we see the first act of a mother’s faith. “She hid him for three months.” That’s 90 days and over 2,000 hours, every one of which could have been Moses’ last. Why did she risk it? 

Because this was her son, flesh of her flesh. But she also knew because this was a critical time for Moses to be nursed by his mother, to bond with her, to be held and comforted by her, not to mention all of the physical and cognitive development that would take place in those first few months. This boy was being raised by faith and make no mistake: all godly parents raise their children by faith. We may not be living under the edict of a tyrant, but we are about the business of raising godly children in an ungodly world. We can only do that by faith and by the grace of God. But no matter what, we must do that. Each child and each day is precious. 

The writer of Hebrews wrote, “By faith Moses, when he was born, was hidden for three months by his parents, because they saw that the child was beautiful, and they were not afraid of the king’s edict.” Stephen mentioned the same thing in his sermon before he was stoned to death, that Moses “was brought up for three months in his father’s house.” This mom and dad cherished every moment with their son, not knowing how long they would have him. The same is true for us, Mom and Dad. 

 The next act of faith was also born out of tremendous pressure: Jochebed knew that she could not hide Moses forever. So she prepared a basket for him, an ark, made of bulrushes, and covered it with pitch. The word in Hebrew for this little boat is used only one other place, in the book of Genesis when God told Noah to make an ark…and cover it with pitch. The readers of Exodus in the wilderness and later generations would certainly recognize the symbolism. God saved his people through an ark in Noah’s day. God delivered his people by sparing the deliverer in an ark many years later. The Bible says that Moses’ mother “put the child in (the basket)…among the reeds by the river bank.” Philip Ryken said she must have put her heart in there as well. She “placed” the basket in the water. The word means, “gently placed.” With a mother’s love and courage born of faith in a loving God, Jochebed gently turned her child over to God. Hannah did the same with Samuel but she was just giving him over to Eli the priest. Jochebed was turning her son over to the elements, but she knew, by faith, that she was placing Moses in the arms of God. 

You know the rest of the story. God did protect Moses. He used five women in the birth narrative to make sure the deliverer of His people would be able to grow up and do just that. We owe so much to Shiphrah, Puah, Jochebed, Miriam, and even the unnamed daughter of the Pharaoh. She raised Moses in the seat of power, where he was “trained for Pharaoh’s overthrow right under Pharaoh’s nose!” (James Hoffmeier)

God is good, and our children are precious.

The new Pharaoh did not know Joseph, except perhaps by reputation. What he did know was the people of Israel living in Egypt were growing and were strong. The ruler of the most powerful nation on earth said of the Hebrews, they are “too many and too mighty for us.” He was afraid of these people he did not know, who came from a different land, and his fear of them rising up against him led him to take drastic and wicked actions. His first act was to command the Israelites be made slaves. Their freedom to live in a foreign land disappeared over night, as taskmasters were appointed to rule over them with whips. God told Abraham this would happen, many years before: “Know for certain that your offspring will be sojourners in a land that is not theirs, and will be servants there, and they will be afflicted for 400 years.” 

But the more the Hebrews were oppressed, the more they multiplied. These were God’s people, devoted to him and free in him, even while enslaved. Their suffering did nothing but cause them to lean more into God by faith as they “groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help.” The same holds true today and always has: the greatest growth of Christianity happens in times and places where it costs something to follow God and trust Jesus. “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.”  

What happened in Egypt? When the oppression of slavery didn’t work, the king took steps to eliminate a race of people by destroying the male seed. He commanded the midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, to put to death every Hebrew baby boy as soon as he was born. 

The Pharaoh’s new edict threatened to eliminate the birth of the one who would lead God’s people out of bondage. But Shiphrah and Puah stood in the gap, as their reverence for God and life led them to refuse to do what the Pharaoh had commanded. Included in the number saved was Moses, the deliverer of Israel. 

These women are clearly heroes of the faith in the Bible, the first two “pro-life heroines” in history. Shiphrah means “beautiful one” and Puah means “splendid one,” and they were true to their names. These two effectively said to Pharaoh, long before Peter and John said to the rulers and elders in Jerusalem, “We must obey God rather than man.” 

Do you see the contrast between Pharaoh and these two women? Fear of man can cause us to do unspeakable things, as the Egyptian ruler did. But a love and reverence for God leads us on the path of righteousness, no matter the cost, as these two godly women illustrate for us. They must have understood the consequences of disobeying the Pharaoh. But the Bible and the history of Christianity are filled with examples of people who were willing to offer themselves as living sacrifices for the sake of obedience to the call of faith in Jesus.

Finally, the irony cannot be missed. The Pharaoh was worried about boys becoming men, but his plan was blown up by two women.

You know the old joke, “How do you eat an elephant?” One bite at a time. How do you eat the book of Exodus, 40 chapters, nearly 26,000 words, packed full of amazing stories of the redemption of God’s people? One bite at a time. I hope to spend most of the next two years walking through this book with the family of believers at Antioch. Why would we do that? Because we meet God in Exodus, as the hero of the story, just as he was in Genesis. God makes himself know to Moses and to the children of Israel, and to us, in this book. The Bible itself is the story of creation, the fall, redemption, and restoration. Exodus is the greatest story of redemption in the Old Testament. The book was first called “Names” in Hebrew because of the first few words, “These are the names.” But when the translation into Greek happened in the third century B.C., the Septuagint, it was renamed “Exodus,” which means “departure.” The first time that word occurs in the Greek is chapter 19: “On the third moon after the people of Israel had gone out of the land of Egypt…” 

This book is not about a people in Egypt, not primarily. No, they went out. This book is about the departure of God’s people by God’s mighty hand out of Egypt. It is not about residence; it is about exodus. And it is about God’s intervention in the affairs of men. In honor of our nation’s history and our celebration of Independence Day last week, I offer this story, which many of you know, about God’s intervention in our nation’s history before our nation ever came to be.

In 1755, during the French and Indian War, 23-year-old Colonel George Washington was one of 1,400 British troops under the command of General Braddock marching to capture Fort Duquesne, near Pittsburgh, when they were attacked by a French and Indian force. During the battle, “Braddock was killed and every officer on horseback was shot, except Washington.” The young colonel later wrote to his brother, “But by the All-Powerful Dispensations of Providence, I have been protected beyond all human probability or expectation; for I had four bullets through my coat, and two horses shot under me, yet escaped unhurt, although death was leveling my companions on every side of me.” A Native American who fought in the battle later stated, “Washington was never born to be killed by a bullet! I had seventeen fair fires at him with my rifle and could not bring him to the ground.” 

Sounds like a miracle to me. But it pales in comparison to what we read in Exodus.

 “The exodus,” Philip Ryken wrote, “was the great miracle of the Old Covenant.” There is only one greater act of redemption in the whole Bible, the greatest of all time, and that was the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. 

Psalm 66 invites us to study Exodus: “Come and see what God has done: he is awesome in his deeds toward the children of man. He turned the sea into dry land…Bless our God, O peoples; let the sound of his praise be heard…” The exodus shaped the whole Bible, and there are over 120 references to it in the Old Testament alone. Psalm 77 tells us who God is:

“Your way, O God, is holy. What god is great like our God? You are the God who works wonders;
you have made known your might among the peoples. You with your arm redeemed your people,
the children of Jacob and Joseph. Selah When the waters saw you, O God, when the waters saw you,   they were afraid; indeed, the deep trembled…Your way was through the sea, your path through the great waters; yet your footprints were unseen. You led your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron.”

I am looking forward to every bite of this wonderful testimony of God’s providence and love.