The Making of a Mediator [Part 1]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright. What are you going to do on your vacation? And this, no lie, this is what he was going to do. He was going to go to a small Eastern North Carolina town where he'd never been before, spend the whole week just wandering around a little town so that people would stare at him and wonder who he was and go in the barbershop and talk to people and just try to get to know people in the little town. And I said, that's going to be your vacation? Yeah, I just love that.

Most of us aren't that way. That's Pastor Alan Wright. Welcome to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new light. I'm Daniel Britt, excited for you to hear the teaching today in our series called Moses, as presented at Reynolda Church in North Carolina. If you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program, I want to make sure you know how to get our special resource right now. It'll be yours for your donation this month to Alan Wright Ministries.

So as you listen to today's message, we encourage you to go deeper as we send you today's special offer. Contact us at PastorAlan.org. That's PastorAlan.org. Or call 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. More on this later in the program. But now, let's get started with today's teaching.

Here is Alan Wright. You ready for some good news? Jesus experienced loneliness and alienation. The prophet Isaiah had prophesied that the Messiah would be despised and rejected of men. And He did this so that you would never be alienated from God ever again.

He became alienated so that you could be accepted. We're in a new series on Moses, and we began with several messages from the story of the Red Sea, which is at the heart of our New Year's blessing. And now it's time to go back to the beginning of the story and start walking in the very place that Moses walked to let your heart be engaged with what's going on in his life so that through seeing Moses' life, you'll see Jesus. This is our conviction that the way that we read the Bible is not primarily to look at stories and teachings and take morals from them or even just simply take instructions. But instead, all of the Word of God is pointing to Jesus, who the Bible says is the author and finisher of our faith.

And that in seeing Christ, that everything is transformed in our lives. So we're studying Moses, but we're proclaiming the gospel of Jesus Christ. And today, we're in Exodus chapter 2. Exodus is the second book of your Bible.

Exodus means exit. It is all about the people exiting Egypt, leaving their bondage, going to freedom, moving towards a promised land. And today, we're going to pick up reading at the very end of chapter 1 at verse 22.

And there's no way that I can figure out to take excerpts out of this. So we're actually going to look at all of chapter 2 today because it all relates to these early years in Moses' life and what it was like for Moses. So here we are at verse 22 of Exodus chapter 1. When Pharaoh commanded all his people, then Pharaoh commanded all his people, every son that is born to the Hebrews you shall cast into the Nile, but you shall let every daughter live. Paul said to say what had happened was that the new Pharaoh who remembered not Joseph had a fear of how plentiful, how numerous the population of the Hebrews were growing. And so they enslaved them or used them as a slave labor force.

But then he became concerned that they seemed to be flourishing so much that it would be too plentiful that they might on some future occasion ally with an invading nation against Egypt. And so it's because of this fear that this edict has come forth, that all of the sons that are born to the Hebrews shall be killed by being drowned in the Nile River. An absolutely gruesome and horrific edict that was put into place. Chapter 2 verse 1. Now a man from the house of Levi went and took as his wife a Levite woman. The woman conceived and bore a son and when she saw that he was a fine child she hid him three months. When she could hide him no longer she took for him a basket made of bulrushes and daubed it with bitumen and pitch and she put the child in it and placed it among the reeds by the riverbank.

And his sister stood at a distance to know what would be done to him. Now the daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river while her young women walked beside the river and she saw the basket among the reeds and sent her servant woman and she took it. And when she opened it she saw the child and behold the baby was crying. She took pity on him and said this is one of the Hebrews children. Then his sister said to Pharaoh's daughter shall I go and call you a nurse from the Hebrew woman to nurse the child for you? And Pharaoh's daughter said to her go. So the girl went and called the child's mother and Pharaoh's daughter said to her take this child away and nurse him for me and I will give you your wages. So the woman took the child and nursed him and when the child grew up she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses because she said I drew him out of the water.

Let me pause here and just make sure that you're you're thinking with me about the layers of irony that are taking place here. That the first irony is that there was an edict that every child would be thrown into the Nile and in fact of matter what Moses' mother does in a sense is the actual thing. Moses was put into the Nile but he wasn't drowned he was put in a little basket that was made into a little boat. And then the irony builds from there that Pharaoh's daughter has compassion upon this child that her father has said must be killed. But instead of killing the child she decides she wants to adopt the child so that this child who is supposed to have been killed by the edict of Pharaoh is being saved by Pharaoh's own daughter. Furthermore Moses' sister Miriam is very wise here and has a thought in mind that if I offer to get a nursing mother to be able to feed this child until the child is weaned then maybe it could be my own mother, Moses' own mother. And indeed this takes place so that Moses' own mother then is able to nurse him and keep him for the early years of his life. And then the additional irony is that Pharaoh's daughter pays her to do that even though she's a slave and even though her son was supposed to have been drowned in the Nile.

Now she's being paid to do the very thing that she would have most in all of life wanted to do. And so it's irony upon irony in this story of how God's providence is working out. Now we pick up reading in verse 11. One day when Moses had grown up he went out to his people and looked on their burdens and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his people. And he looked this way and that and seeing no one he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. And when he went out the next day behold two Hebrews were struggling together. And he said to the man in the wrong, why do you strike your companion?

He answered, who made you a prince and a judge over us? Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian? Then Moses was afraid and thought, surely the thing is known. When Pharaoh heard of it he sought to kill Moses. But Moses fled from Pharaoh and stayed in the land of Midian and he sat down by a well. Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters and they came and drew water and filled the troughs to water their father's flock. The shepherds came and drove them away but Moses stood up and saved them and watered their flock. And when they came to their father Reuel he said, how is it that you've come home so soon today? And they said, an Egyptian, speaking of Moses because he had become so Egyptian-like, you see, an Egyptian delivered us out of the hand of the shepherds and even drew water for us and watered the flock. And he said to his daughter, then where is he?

Why have you left the man? Call him that he may eat bread. And Moses was content to dwell with the man. And he gave Moses his daughters Zipporah. And she gave birth to a son and he called his name Gershom for he said, I have been a sojourner in a foreign land. Moses has been born under an edict of death, escaped his death through miraculous means, shown compassion by the daughter of Pharaoh, raised in the Egyptian court, identified so much with the people that were his own people that he had compassion on them and defended them, fled for his life under another edict of death, finds his way into exile as a fugitive in Midian, and there he is content to dwell with the man, the priest in Midian, marries one of the daughters Zipporah and has a son. And so just envision all of this with me, Moses, all that he's been through up to this point in his life and then he has this son. He's not in Egypt. He's not amongst the Hebrews.

He's out in Midian, away from everybody and everything that he's ever known in his life. And he and his wife have a baby boy. And imagine he holds up this little boy towards the heavens and he does as every Hebrew father had been trained to do. He begins to bless that child. He begins to speak wondrous things over the future of that child's life and and visions and faith, wonderful things. And I can just envision him saying, son, you're no ordinary boy. You're extraordinary.

You're different than all the rest. And I thank God for you and I bless you and I'm going to take care of you and I'll do all I can to see to it that life goes well for you. And I'm going to call you Gershom.

Because Gershom means a sojourner or an alien. That's Alan Wright. And we'll have more teaching in a moment from today's important series. Pastor Alan Wright's new book, The Power to Bless, which quickly became an Amazon number one bestseller after its recent release.

Until now, the hardcover book has only been available through retail sales. But this month, Alan Wright Ministries wants to send you the book as our thank you for your donation. Make your gift today and discover the power to bless. The gospel is shared when you give to Alan Wright Ministries. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support.

When you give today, we will send you today's special offer. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Alan Wright Ministries. Call us at 877-544-4860. That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, PastorAlan.org.

Today's teaching now continues. Here once again is Alan Wright. And at first that might not even seem like, what kind of a name is that? How could that be a blessing for your name to mean alien? But he named his son as a reflection of his own heart and his own life. Because all of chapter two is describing Moses just this way. Is that he was an alien. He was never really at home in one place. He was a Hebrew, born amongst the Hebrew slaves, but he wasn't raised as a slave. He was an Egyptian in the royal court, but he wasn't Egyptian. He was exiled to Midianites, amongst the Midianites, but he wasn't Midianite.

They thought he was Egyptian. Everywhere he went, what happened to Moses was that he didn't really belong there. And so he never was inducted into anybody's system.

He never had a place in which he was entrenched amongst the people. He experienced loneliness. He experienced alienation. And all of this happened for a grand purpose that ultimately enabled him to serve the people of God. Hebrews, the letter Hebrews, looks back in its great chapter on faith, and looks back at Moses to describe what was so faithful about Moses. And one of the things the writer of Hebrews says is it was by faith that Moses did not did not count the the pleasures and the the luxuries of Egypt, something that he held too dear. But instead, he forsook all that in order to defend his own people, and to be with his own people.

And I just love that you get to the end of this chapter, too, and you read all of this. And you think about Moses, and now he's come to Midian. You're talking about a man who in Egypt, when his chariot would come through, people would bow their knee. You're talking about he lived in a palace, and he had all of the greatest luxuries that the known world could offer a man. And now, he's away from his mother, his father, his sister's brother. He's away from the Egyptian palace and all of its comforts. He's in Midian, and the text just says he was content to dwell with the man.

This is where I am, and I'll be content to dwell here. I want to show you today how all of this points to the amazing mercies of God and Jesus Christ. Isaiah the prophet said that he was despised and rejected of men. He experienced an ultimate alienation, so that you and I would be accepted. And there's a way in which everything that happened in Moses' life was setting him up to be the great mediator of the old covenant. And there's a way in which everything that happened in Jesus' life was setting him up to be the mediator of a much better covenant and a new covenant.

And that's what I want to show you today. I want to think together, therefore, about how Jesus ministers to us in our loneliness, but something that we don't know about in our lives. He ministers to us in our loneliness, but something even greater than that. How it is that because of the gift of Christ that we never have to be lonely ever again.

That we never have to be alienated from God, but we're reconciled unto God forever. You know, there are some people that are able to just be comfortable in many different settings. And I would not consider myself one of those people.

I would say I'm more of a homebody. And so it's why it's good for me to get on the mission field sometime and just be a foreigner, be a minority, be in an uncomfortable place. Well, my daughter and I had a chance to go to Papua New Guinea this past summer and make our way over to this little island that had very, very seldom seen anybody other than people from that island, except for a couple of missionaries that have been there.

It was some spectacle to have us Westerners with our white skin and all just come walking down their beaches and their little villages that were dotted along the beach. And one of the things interesting about Papua New Guinea is that in their culture, it is not considered impolite to stare. You know, in our culture, you stare at somebody and we're like, what? But not in Papua New Guinea, it's just normal to stare.

And so that was basically, I would sum up, you know, how did the people respond to you? I'd say basically they stared at us. Everywhere you go, they just stare at you. You go up, you walk down the beach and they just, every single night, they just stare at you like this and you're just kind of like, hi.

You don't have any words to share or anything like that. And to me, that's a very uncomfortable feeling because I want to, I like the feeling of being at home. I think most people like that.

You know, it's the place where you know you belong. But some people, they're just comfortable with everyone. My mom's like this. My mom is amazing in that she's still this way. She's always been this way. She should just be comfortable with any group of people at any place at any time. And she just has a basic assumption that people will help you. And that why couldn't you just go up there and get along with those people or whatever.

And it makes her just sort of fearless and shameless about things. And it used to really embarrass us as kids because, well, mom would just go up and talk to strangers or do things. And we're just kind of hiding like, oh, mom, the ultimate expression of this is that our annual trek to the beach. This was back in the day that you didn't stop and eat at Arby's or something on the way. In the first place, there weren't hardly any restaurants of any sort and even fast food on the way to the beach. You could ride down through the countryside.

The second place, there's no way we were going to spend money when you could take a perfectly good Mater sandwich. And so my mom would pack up, slice up tomatoes and take some bread and some mayonnaise. And we'd always stop down there near Rockingham and have a little picnic at the rest area. That's why we'd always do that on the beach trip.

Well, one year, just trying to give you how comfortable my mom is with people. One year, she hadn't sliced up the tomato and she forgot she didn't have a knife. And she didn't have anything to spread mayonnaise with or anything else. And she said, what are we going to do? And she said, I'm just going to go up here and ask these people for some. What people? People up at that house over there. So my mom goes up, knocks on somebody's door and says, listen, could I borrow some utensils so we could have a picnic lunch? You know, people are kind of surprised by this, but you'd be amazed.

People will help you out in situations like that. She's always been that way. And I think the reason she's that way is because she grew up the daughter of a Methodist minister and they moved every four years. She never lived anywhere more than four years. In some places, she only lived a couple of years.

So she was just accustomed to just pick it up and moving. There's a lot of growing body of research, actually, on kids that are called third culture kids. This wouldn't really be my mom, but it would describe some military kids or missionary kids, or even now with this global economy of some kids of business families that move a whole lot. And a third culture kid is one who grows up in a culture that is not his or her parents' own culture of origin. And so it's a very unusual upbringing for those kids.

And I heard one of them recently speaking about this and what it's like. And it has some huge benefits because what happens with these kids is that they have a global, broad worldview that very few other kids have. Most of us are kind of our little worlds like this. But when you grow up in a culture that's not your own, it just expands your horizons and it makes you feel like you're more comfortable in the world. Interestingly, these kids, according to this growing body of research, also tend to be more highly educated than other kids.

They tend to be very comfortable in a variety of settings. And what's interesting about it is that the place that they're uncomfortable is often in their parents' own country of origin. That sometimes they feel displaced there and unsettled there. And it can lead to some problems and depression in these kids. It's a very interesting group of people and it's a growing number of kids that have experienced this. I don't know if you've ever known anybody like this, but people that just, they have a capacity to just go and relate because there's something different about how their soul has been forged. When I was first in ministry and doing youth ministry, one of the things I did was I helped to launch a Young Life program at a high school. And as part of this, when we didn't have any students really that we knew yet, and part of what you do with Young Life is wherever a school will grant you permission, you like to come onto the campus, again with the school's permission, and get an opportunity to just maybe hang out at lunch, talk to some students, get to know them, and eventually invite them to Young Life, maybe develop a relationship with them, and ultimately for the opportunity to share the love of God with them. And so this is what we call contact work.

This is just going and making relationships. I'm not comfortable doing that. In fact, I remember one of the first times that I went and I was going, and it was a buddy of mine, we were going onto the campus, and right as we were trying to make our way into the school, the school fire alarm went off, and every student had to come and file out of the thing. Well, we didn't know where we were supposed to be.

Are we supposed to line up with one of the student groups or whatever? I just remember just feeling so awkward. Well, there were a few people, though, that I knew that worked and volunteered with Young Life that were just absolutely fantastic at this because they just loved doing this. And one fellow, I hadn't seen him in forever, he was a young man, volunteered with Young Life, and he was the best. He was, when you truly say never met a stranger, could just go and just be with anybody, this was the fellow. And I remember one time asking, he was getting ready to take a week of vacation.

He was a single man. And I said, what are you going to do on your vacation? And this, no lie, this is what he was going to do. He was going to go to a small eastern North Carolina town where he'd never been before, spend the whole week just wandering around a little town so that people would stare at him and wonder who he was. And go in the barbershop and talk to people and just try to get to know people in the little town. And I said, that's going to be your vacation? And he said, yeah, I just love that. Most of us aren't that way.

Most of us like the sense of belonging somewhere and we want to fit in. And the reason I'm saying all this is that Moses was a third culture kid. I just don't want to rush past chapter two and getting into the story of Moses without inviting you to think about this, of how it was that Moses grew up.

It was brutal. Allen Wright and today's teaching on the making of a mediator. Unlock the power of blessing your life. Discover God's grace filled vision for your life by signing up for Allen Wright's free daily blessing. If you want to fill your heart with grace and encouragement, get Allen Wright's daily blessing.

It's free and just a click away at PastorAllen.org. Ever feel like something's holding you back as if you lack an important key that could change everything? Is there someone you love who seems stuck? You'd like to help them, but how?

What's missing? Blessing. We all need a positive faith filled vision spoken over our lives. You can learn how to embrace the biblical practice of blessing through Pastor Alan Wright's new book, The Power to Bless, which quickly became an Amazon number one bestseller after its recent release.

Until now, the hardcover book has only been available through retail sales. But this month, Allen Wright Ministries wants to send you the book as our thank you for your donation. Make your gift today and discover the power to bless. The gospel is shared when you give to Allen Wright Ministries. This broadcast is only possible because of listener financial support. When you give today, we will send you today's special offer. We are happy to send this to you as our thanks from Allen Wright Ministries. Call us at 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. Or come to our website, PastorAllen.org. Allen, as we are really cranking into this series on Moses, why did you feel it was so important to go back in for a lot to say way back into the Old Testament to find hope for today through this character in the Bible, Moses? Yeah, well, you know, Moses is prefiguring Christ over and over to us. So Jesus is the better Moses. And Moses is a mediator because he can relate to both the Egyptians and the Hebrews. He was a Hebrew who was raised in Egyptian court. So what a picture this is, Daniel, that where he is Egyptian and he's Hebrew. And in other words, to be our mediator, Christ needs to be both God and man. Because he links us. And so we're examining the role of Moses as mediator because it points us to Jesus, who's the better mediator.