075 - He Has Seen Our Affliction

You pick up your Bible and wonder, is there more here than meets the eye?

Is there something here for me? I mean, it's just words printed on paper, right? Well, it may look like just print on a page, but it's more than ink. Join us for the next half hour as we explore God's Word together, as we learn how to explore it on our own, as we ask God to meet us there in its pages.

Welcome to More Than Ink. Hey, everybody knows about that story at the Burning Bush we just talked about, but what do you think happened afterwards? We never talk about that. We know the Burning Bush, but then right after that?

No, and we actually have some details. We'll talk about it today on More Than Ink. Well, good morning, this wonderful New Year's morning. I'm Jim.

And I'm Dorothy. And we're glad you're back with us on this brand new 2022. I mean, this is January 1st. We just hope you're up.

Well, that's true too. We're up. For a lot of people, it's a miracle to be up this time on New Year's Day.

But this is New Year's Day, and we're glad you're with us. And we are proceeding through Exodus, the great rescue. And we got up to the point last time where Moses went through all of his objections. And God patiently put up with him.

And now we're at this point that he seems to have gotten over the willingness hump, and now he's going to act. So today, it was right in the middle of chapter 4, Moses decides, okay, here we go. Remember, he's been out at what was called the mountain of God, right?

Which is another term for Mount Sinai, the region where Sinai is. And so he's a little ways from home, and he's got to go back and talk to his father in law. Right, right. So in a very respectful, courteous way, he begs the leave of his father in law, who all this time for decades, Moses has been tending his sheep.

He just became part of Jethro's household. Yep, yep. And now it's time to pull up stakes and go back to Egypt, according to God's instruction. So that brings us to chapter 4, verse 18. And Moses is going to take his first baby steps back to Egypt.

So you want to read for us? Yeah, I'll just read this couple of verses. Moses went back to Jethro, his father in law, and said to him, Please, let me go back to my brothers in Egypt to see whether they're still alive. And Jethro said to Moses, Go in peace. And the Lord said to Moses in Midian, Go back to Egypt, for all the men who were seeking your life are dead. So Moses took his wife and his sons and had them ride on a donkey and went back to the land of Egypt. And Moses took the staff of God in his hand. Yes, stopping place. Let's stop there.

Couple things here. Yeah, I mean, I'm kind of impressed by the fact that Moses doesn't try and pull rank on Jethro, his father in law. He actually goes and asks permission to leave, which to me seems like a small thing.

But that kind of courtesy, that kind of respect shows me something about the humility that has been brought into Moses through all this time. Remember, when he left Egypt, he was part of Pharaoh's household. I mean, he could he could command anyone to do anything.

Here he is with a Midianite father in law saying, Please, can I go? Okay, that's true. But remember that Jethro was identified as a priest.

Yes, that's true. And because of his ancestry from Abraham, he has some knowledge of the one true God. And we will see later in Exodus that he actually comes and advises Moses. He does, yeah. He comes back. Out there in the wilderness when he's being followed by a couple of million people. And Moses follows his advice.

Right. So Jethro must have been a godly man. But it's a nice respectful thing. I mean, if I had just seen God in the desert, I'd come back to Jethro and say, I'm on a mission from God. I've seen God, and I'm leaving because God told me to, and you can't stop me.

You know, you would kind of, but you just see humility and respect. I don't know. I think that's a 21st century reading.

Yeah, it might be. Anyway, anyway, so yeah, so he has to leave and wants to go back and see if his brothers are still alive. Yeah, but now has anybody ever thought about the fact that Moses had children?

Right, right. We hear very little reference to them. But here, we already know his wife's name was Zipporah. But here we have his sons. Sons, plural. And later on in Exodus, we'll learn their names. Right, that's right. Yeah.

So they actually. Actually, it's during the time when Jethro comes back. Right, because Jethro brings Zipporah back. He brings the two sons and Zipporah. Because there is a point in the story, and it might be what's coming up here, when Moses decides not to take his wife with him to the rest of the way to Egypt. He sends them back to Jethro.

Yeah, so it's kind of interesting. But here, he puts them on a donkey and lets them ride and heads back to Egypt. Heads back to Egypt with him.

And Zipporah's never been there. Right. So it's not going back for her. She's a Midianite.

This is foreign travel for her. Yeah, yeah. And the two sons as well.

Well, let's push on. Oh, and by the way, as I mentioned last time, the famous staff. Right. And Moses took the staff. The staff of God.

Okay, so what's with the staff, right? It's a symbol of authority, a symbol of identity. Right. And God had said, now take this staff, your staff, and that's the means by which you're going to do these things that are going to cause the people to believe.

It's going to be a vehicle of authority because the signs that God will do associated with it. However, it's also a nice double meaning because there is a scepter that a king uses. Right.

And it's always very ornate and very big and very imposing looking. And this is just a stick. But Moses is using it kind of in that same sort of way and God wants him to. Well, and it had been at the beginning of the story, God said, now take the staff that's in your hand. Right. It had been Moses' staff. Yeah. But now it's the staff of God.

Right. In Moses' hand. It's the staff of God now and God's going to use this common thing like the common man Moses to do an extraordinary thing. Well, should we push into verse 21?

I'll read from there. And the Lord said to Moses, when you go back to Egypt, see that you do before Pharaoh all the miracles that I have put in your power. But I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go. And then you shall say to Pharaoh, thus says the Lord, Israel is my firstborn son. And I say to you, let my son go that he may serve me. And if you refuse to let him go, behold, I will kill your firstborn son.

Okay, so would you not be quaking in your boots? I mean, that's a pretty in your face threat. Totally. God says, here's the words I want you to say. Let go of my son or I'll kill yours. What? It's clearly, you know, it's a challenge to power to Pharaoh.

Absolutely. Like who is your God? And he might just want to call his bluff, which he sort of does when this happens and it goes down. So when you go back to Egypt, see that you do before Pharaoh all the miracles and then you tell him. So the miracles will actually authenticate Moses in terms of coming from God and having a message from God and God's authority in bringing his people back.

These are God's people. So you start with a sign which brings you the authority and then you lay out the challenge. The challenge is, let my firstborn go or your firstborn will be in danger. Yeah. You want to talk about firstborn for a second?

Go ahead. I mean, firstborn is an important idea. Yeah, it's important because in the ancient world, the firstborn was kind of the continuity of the father in many respects. His will and his inheritance and the future and stuff like that. The future of the family is tied up in firstborn. Right. In fact, that firstborn before the father died can actually make contracts on behalf of his father. So there was this identity.

So here when God looks at Israel and calls him his firstborn, he's basically saying this is the continuity of my purpose, the continuity of who I am, the inheritance of my purpose, where I'm going, everything. The future. This is the future in these people and they embody that for me. Well, and he's saying to Pharaoh, these people don't belong to you. They belong to me. They are my future heritage and will carry my name forward. I have a plan and a purpose for these people.

And you see them just as slaves to wash dishes and build buildings, but that's not what they are. They are my people. So they are my firstborn son. And that's a very big deal. To kill the firstborn son of somebody is a huge affront.

And so he's saying, look, if you have designs on my firstborn son, I have designs on your firstborn son. So it's chilling is what it is. And it also explains why it is that the last plague was what the last plague was.

And you lose sight of that as the plagues go on later on. So this is just a big deal. This is really throwing down the gauntlet from God to Pharaoh and challenging Pharaoh's authority and his position and his ownership of God's people and his power to resist the God.

I mean, it's boom. It's in your face right here at the very start. And God says right here, I will harden Pharaoh's heart. You need to say this to him, but I will harden his heart so that he won't let you go. Which is interesting because he's saying to Moses, you can do the signs and you can say what you're going to say, but you know what? He's not going to pay.

Right. Nothing you say is going to change his mind. It reminds me when God raises some of the prophets, you know, the major prophets and says, this is what I want you to do and I want you to say, but they're not going to listen to you. That's what he's saying about Pharaoh.

You can do all these things, but he's still not going to listen. So don't be surprised when that happens. Did you want to talk about the hardening of the heart?

Well, we're going to get to that in the next couple of weeks as it happens over and over and over again. And I would just encourage our listeners to start paying attention whenever this phrase comes up, the hardening of the heart. Because the heart in Hebrew thinking is the whole inner person. It's the mind, the will, the inner self from which your outer actions proceed. And so we're not talking about just Pharaoh's emotions. We're talking about his whole inner self. Yeah, the inner you that drives your initiatives and sets your purposes.

I mean, everything is about that. And there is kind of an ongoing question that people have when they read through Exodus about this hardening. And this is what you can be clued in to watch for is the fact that so who did the hardening? Here it says God hardened, but then in other passages it says that Pharaoh hardened his own heart. And then in other places where it says Pharaoh's heart was hardened kind of passively. So it'll go back and forth.

And so you always ask the question, so who did the hardening here? Well, that's a good question to keep asking. But that will unfold a little bit as the story unfolds. But it's very clear that God is sovereignly directing the direction of hearts, right? Proverbs says that hearts of kings is like water in the hand of the Lord. He directs them wherever he will. God's doing something bigger than just dealing with Pharaoh here. That's right.

Well, let's push on. Verse 24. Okay, so this little segment in 24 to 26 is a mysterious, strange thing. And from our modern understanding, it's just a weird story. Let me just read it and then we'll make a few comments.

Yeah, 24. At a lodging place on the way, the Lord met him and sought to put him to death. Then Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son's foreskin and touched Moses' feet with it and said, Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me.

So he led him alone. It was then that she said, A bridegroom of blood because of the circumcision. So there's something going on here that we don't fully understand. And by the way, we have no clues anywhere else in Scripture about this. No, I mean, it just raises a ton of questions. But before we ask the questions, maybe we should talk just a little bit about circumcision.

Yeah, what does it mean? Do you want to start into that? You probably have your comments there, too.

Well, I've got some, too. This is something that's been in place for God's people for hundreds of years at this point. I mean, it started with Abraham in Genesis 17. And it was an outward sign of the fact that you were God's people, that you belonged to him. Right, it was an actual mark made in the human flesh of a man that indicates that they belong to God. And so presumably even when they went to Egypt way back centuries ago and they were still living there amongst the Egyptians, presumably they were still doing circumcision. It was a way of showing that I belong to God. I'm part of God's people. And God was very adamant that the fathers circumcise the sons. And even the sons of the servants that live there.

So it was a big deal. This is a way of God saying, You're my people and this is how you show it outwardly. So the fact that it looks like we get here in the midst of going back to Egypt and Moses' sons are not circumcised?

That's crazy. Well, and back in Genesis 17 when God had given the sign of circumcision to Abraham, he said, Now, an uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, that person shall be cut off from my people. He has broken my covenant.

So if your brain is rattling around in your head in verse 24 when it says, On the way the Lord met him and sought to put him to death. Well, I wonder, is that not because he's carrying along his uncircumcised son? Moses himself has disregarded the stipulation of the covenant by not having his son circumcised. And God can't have Moses going back to retrieve his firstborn son and not have his son marked as one of the people.

So it begs the question, why did he fail to circumcise his son? Yeah, this is where speculation is everywhere. I know we don't have an answer, but that's a question.

It's just lingering. Yeah, the best speculation is that Zipporah being a Midianite, she was resistant to the whole process. But they also were descendants of Abraham. They were, but yeah, so that's all speculation. We don't know. We don't know. But we do know she's a little freaked out about the fact that Moses' life is in danger right here.

God's going to put him to death. So Zipporah picks up the flint knife and takes the action herself. So she knows that it was an issue. Right. That this is the thing. She's got it figured out. Right. But she has to take the action instead of Moses, which is fascinating.

And you can think about this for weeks. The scripture doesn't explain it. It's a head scratcher.

Yeah, it's really a head scratcher. But what we do know is that God was not going to allow them to go back into Egypt and bring back God's people. Right. If part of Moses' household were not marked as God's people. Right. Weren't going to do that.

So that's very clear here. Why Zipporah is the one who takes initiative. Why Moses failed to up to that.

We don't know the answers to any of that kind of stuff. And we find out later, many chapters later, that she had, that Moses had sent her away. Sent her away, yeah.

And we wonder if this is not the event that caused that. Yeah, because there's nothing about her from here, I think. Right. Until she shows up again. Until she comes back, Jethro, her father, is bringing her back. Like Exodus 18.

Yeah, it's way after this. So she just disappears from the narrative at this point. So maybe this is what caused that.

We don't know, but it's an interesting thing. You're not going to go retrieve my people unless you're marked as my people. So it might also be helpful that we know from Exodus 18 the names of the sons. The first son was named Gershom, which translates as a sojourner, right?

That fits. Because that son was born, Moses is still feeling acutely that he's a stranger in a strange land. He's an outsider, yeah. And then the second son was named Eliezer, God is my help. So we don't know how old these young men were at this point. Old enough to be shocked by circumcision, I'm quite sure. And this is a fascinating picture where Zipporah takes that blood and marks Moses with it. So there's some tension and some cultural stuff going on here.

We don't understand. This is a little bit of turmoil here, but God's serious about making sure that the circumcision happens. So the other question that lingers in my mind, and maybe we need to take a minute or two about this, is what was the deal with circumcision?

Why is it so important? Because that is a picture that comes clear forward into the New Testament when we're told that in Christ we are circumcised and separated from our body of flesh. That physical circumcision is no longer required.

Right, right. But it comes out strongly as a metaphor for separating us from the flesh. And the flesh is an image for the sin that inhabits us. It's a separation from that. Yeah, so even God way back in Deuteronomy number says, you know, what I was interested in is that your heart be circumcised. Your heart.

Yeah, actually I have it open in front of me, Deuteronomy 10, 11, and 12, or 16, when Moses says, circumcise then your heart and stiffen your neck no more. Right. Right. So he, by that time, he clearly understands.

They knew what it meant. We're talking about a heart issue. Yeah, it's a heart issue. It's a heart issue of being separated from the contamination of sin and being wholly devoted to God. So I wonder if, you know, God is sending Moses back to Egypt to bring out his covenant people, the people who are marked as his own, and yet Moses has been living in disregard of the covenant. Scripture says God remembered his covenant, but Moses apparently didn't. While he was way off in Midian, but God's people are way off in Egypt. They're both in the wrong place. And so that remembered means not, you know, that they forgot about it, but they weren't commemorating it.

Yeah, yeah. That it was not, had not been important enough to Moses to follow through on that particular stipulation of the covenant. And, you know, you mentioned last time that we see the growth of Moses through the intelligence story. And this is interesting because you always think that Moses is like this super guy. He's got everything right from the very beginning, but no.

He sure didn't. Here's another example of that. It's just fascinating. It's just fascinating. Well, let's push on to 27 because things get really, really fun here.

Okay. So the Lord said to Aaron, go into the wilderness to meet Moses. So he went and met him in the mountain of God and kissed him. And Moses told Aaron all the words of the Lord with which he had sent him to speak and all the signs that he had commanded him to do. Then Moses and Aaron went and gathered together all the elders of the people of Israel. And Aaron spoke all the words that the Lord had spoken to Moses and did the signs in the sight of the people. And the people believed. Believed. And when they heard that the Lord had visited the people of Israel and that he had seen their affliction, they bowed their heads and worshiped. I love that. Yay, the fulfillment of Exodus 3.18.

They will listen to your voice. And there it is. Now they had as yet no clue how things were going to appear to go from bad to worse for a very long time. But at this initial presentation of the Redeemer, the promise of God's redemption being fulfilled, they believed and they worshiped. And they worshiped. You know, I think for generations they had been in Egypt and things went from bad to worse. For close to two centuries they were enslaved.

Things were really bad. And you wonder, aren't we God's people? Aren't we God's people? What happened to God? Does he see our affliction? Does he know what's going on? Maybe he's forgotten all about us. So this good news that comes to them through Aaron and Moses that God has visited his people.

He's seen your affliction all along. And so they became thankful about the fact that this God still loves us and cares for us and he hasn't forgotten us. And so their automatic response is worship. They bowed their heads and they worshiped. And we've been told a couple of times already in only these first three chapters of Exodus that God saw them, God heard them, he knew their suffering and he came to their rescue. Yes, yes.

I have come down to deliver them, he said to Moses. Yeah, so God sees. And you know, we as creatures of time, we're easily prone to conclude that if something in our experience which is bad is prolonged and goes on for a long time, that somehow God has forgotten about us or God's not seeing or something's wrong. I mean, that's our temptation.

Because the pain and the suffering is acute. But God never stops seeing and he never overlooks where you're at. And his heart is always to rescue us out of those things.

And that's exactly what happens right here as well. Well, and you know, they should have, if they were really keeping the word that had been delivered to them through Abraham, they should have known the Deliverer is coming. Deliverer is coming. God had told Abraham in Genesis 15, your people are going to Egypt and they're going to be enslaved there for 400 years, but I will bring them back. Right, right. And even Joseph, you know, as he was the CEO of Egypt, near the end talks about his bones when he dies.

Right. Okay, that was many years before, that was 400 years before this. Exactly, but even Joseph says to them, you're going back to the promised land, so take my bones when you go.

You're going back, take my bones with you. So it's always been in the back of their minds that this was going to happen, they just wondered when. Yeah. So, yeah. So here their response is, God has visited us. He's visited us. God has come. Yeah. They've seen us, he's seen us and they've bound their heads in worship.

Yeah, yeah. It's nice too that God affirmed for Moses in the process of going back to Egypt, having Aaron come out, because remember he told Moses, you know, you're going to meet your brother and he's going to be happy to see you. He's going to be glad to see you. And then God independently goes to Aaron and says, you need to go out and meet Moses out there. And so, you know, what a wonderful scene that is to have Aaron and Moses meet each other after all these years, probably about four decades. But to have Moses say, you know, God put this plan in action and step number one was I was going to rendezvous with Aaron in the desert and look, it happened. And here we are.

Yeah. And it's a great encouragement just at the beginning of the thing that God's got this thing going and he's in control of all this. And he can actually go ahead of me and he's already gone ahead of me in having Aaron come out. I just think that's a marvelous thing on God's part, just to encourage Moses a little bit that things are going according to plan. Well, and here we see it working, right? It says Aaron, in verse 30, spoke all the words that the Lord had spoken to Moses.

Yeah. And did the signs in the sight of the people. Who did the signs? Did Moses or did Aaron? It's a little ambiguous.

It's ambiguous. Because Aaron, remember, God had said to Moses, I'll give you the words. I'll put the words in your mouth and you'll be like God to Aaron. Right. Right. And he'll speak the words that you give him, the words that I give you. So, you know, here the system is working. Yeah.

Yeah. Because Moses may have claimed that he didn't have the lips and God said, well, Aaron does. I'm going to be with both of you anyway. He's plenty eloquent. But interestingly enough, regardless of who speaks, the content is going to go from God to Moses and Moses to Aaron. So, that's why he says, you know, he spoke the things that Moses had told him.

So, yeah, that's kind of cool. So, things are working out. Now, we haven't met with Pharaoh yet, but we have met with all the people of Israel. And they're in. They're actually completely on board right here. They're ready to go and they don't see this as a rescue of Moses. They see this as a rescue from God. And that's exactly the right position we've got to be in at this point in the story. Because when we turn the page into, you know, the next time we meet, you know, you turn the page, now it's time to confront Pharaoh. But all of Israel is on board. And remember, Moses' biggest problems when he was talking to God in the previous chapter was, you know, they're not going to follow me. They're not going to believe me. And Moses' last experience with his own people were them saying, so what are you going to do?

Are you going to kill me too? Right. Who do you think you are?

A ruler. Right. And so in just a couple of verses, we're past that threshold.

It's all behind us now. So the people of God are on his side and they're willing to follow. And they're willing to go with the plan that's been revealed by God to Moses. And now Moses threw Aaron to the people and they're saying, we're in.

We're totally in. Yeah, because it's been a generation. And conditions have gotten much, much worse.

And they're going to get more worse. Exactly. Yeah.

So they're ready to go. And the initial generation that remembered Moses as a murderer and whatever he did was either gone or no longer active. Yeah. He had a pretty bad reputation when he left.

And here he's back four decades later. Yeah. So it's actually going according to plan. You had something else to say real quick?

No. They're very receptive. I'm marveling at that a little bit. I know. Here comes Moses out of nowhere. It just happens in such a few verses.

It's just astonishing to me. But this is the hand of God moving through the plan. So next time we get together and we want you to come back, we're going to have our first confrontation with Pharaoh. And these are the famous confrontations. And interestingly enough, I'm going to give you a plot spoiler. At the end of this first confrontation, Moses has second thoughts about ever getting involved in this plan.

Can you believe that? So you're going to want to come back and find out why. Because things just don't go quite the way Moses had expected them to.

And he even tells God, is this a good idea? Yeah. Is this the way this was supposed to go? So we're back to the first confrontation with Pharaoh. And there will be more after that. So I'm Jim.

And I'm Dorothy. And we want you to join us next time as we adventure our way through Exodus and look at this great rescue executed and designed by God using Moses as the man to help them come out. We'll see you next time on More Than Ink.

More Than Ink is a production of Main Street Church of Brigham City and is solely responsible for its content. To contact us with your questions or comments, just go to our website, morethanink.org. We'll just try it and see what happens. You want to lead it? Okay. Yeah, I don't know. We'll see what happens. We'll see what happens.