Free Daily Bible Study Podcast

Exodus 13 | Luke 16 | Job 31 | 2 Corinthians 1

It is important to recognize that Yahweh liberates Israel not to give them total freedom but so that Israel could be Yahweh’s people and so that Yahweh could be Israel’s God. In other words, Yahweh redeemed Israel. The word redeem means to purchase something back for oneself, and Yahweh had acted to reclaim Israel from Egypt’s unlawful possession of them.

In Exodus 13, then, Yahweh instructs Israel to consecrate all their firstborn, whether human or animal (Ex. 13:2). Israel would sacrifice to Yahweh every firstborn male animal, but for every firstborn human being, Israel would offer a sacrifice to redeem back the life of that person.

In this way, Israel would regularly remind themselves about how Yahweh had redeemed them out of Israel: “For when Pharaoh stubbornly refused to let us go, the LORD killed all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both the firstborn of man and the firstborn of animals. Therefore I sacrifice to the LORD all the males that first open the womb, but all the firstborn of my sons I redeem” (Ex. 13:15).

But Yahweh isn’t creating mere busywork for Israel, formalities to be observed for every firstborn. Yahweh’s larger concern is much greater than that—he wants to communicate the nature of his relationship to them. Yahweh’s intention was to take a people to himself (Ex. 6:7) so that they would be his people and he would be their God. This language is marital language: just as a man “takes” a woman to be his wife, so also Yahweh has “taken” Israel to be his bride through covenant.

The regular redemption of the firstborn is not the only way Yahweh communicates his covenant relationship with Israel, though. Yahweh also starts to communicate the nature of his covenant intimacy with Israel at the end of Exodus 13, when he begins to dwell near to Israel, leading them as a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night (Ex. 13:21–22). During this time, Yahweh’s presence never departed from his people.

Remember that, in the beginning, Yahweh dwelt in the midst of his people in the Garden of Eden until sin fractured that perfect relationship. Here, Yahweh is working toward re-establishing that intimacy.

But what comes to the forefront in Exodus 13 is that covenant intimacy always comes with a price. Just as the blood of the lamb had to be shed for Yahweh’s judgment to pass over Israel’s firstborn sons on the night of the tenth plague in Egypt, so now Yahweh continues to require sacrificial blood to redeem every new firstborn son in Israel.

And when Yahweh sends his own firstborn Son into the world, the Lord Jesus Christ will shed his own blood so that we can enjoy covenant intimacy with God, dwelling with him forever in the new heavens and the new earth.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Exodus 12 | Luke 15 | Job 30 | 1 Corinthians 16

By the time Pharaoh lets Israel go out of Egypt, his country has come to great ruin. As a result of Yahweh’s terrible plagues, fish from the Nile have died (Ex. 7:21); a legion of frogs has come, died, and stank (Ex. 8:14); the livestock has died (Ex. 9:4); all Egypt has been afflicted with boils and sores (Ex. 9:10); and all the crops have been decimated through hail (Ex. 9:25) and locusts (Ex. 10:12).

And in the tenth and final plague, Yahweh leaves all Egypt mourning the deaths of all their firstborn sons, from the firstborn of Pharaoh himself all the way down to the firstborn of those in prisons and the firstborn of the livestock (Ex. 12:29).

Pharaoh, who had hardened his heart at every turn against letting Israel go from his country, is so broken that he tells the Israelites to leave his country immediately along with their flocks and their herds and he pleads with Moses, “and bless me also!” (Ex. 12:32). It isn’t only Pharaoh who is terrified of the God of the Hebrews, though. When Israel asks the rest of Egypt for silver, gold, and clothing, the Egyptians are eager to give the Israelites whatever they want: “Thus they plundered the Egyptians” (Ex. 12:36).

But we shouldn’t imagine that Yahweh’s only purpose through this was to devastate the Egyptians while rescuing his people. Justice certainly required that Yahweh pour out judgment on the Egyptians, but Yahweh also had a gracious purpose in mind—even for the Egyptians themselves.

In fact, there are strong suggestions that some Egyptians went out of Egypt along with Israel. First, we read that “a mixed multitude also went up with them” in Exodus 12:38, meaning that some Egyptians themselves departed Egypt with Israel. And even the instructions given at the end of Exodus 12 concerning Passover have explicit provisions for who may partake of it—foreigners and hired servants were not allowed to eat Passover, unless they circumcised all the males in their midst (Ex. 12:48).

Yahweh’s judgment does not exclude mercy. As Yahweh dismantled Egypt, he did so in part to call some individuals out of Egypt to become sojourners (and therefore no longer foreigners; Ex. 12:45, 48) in Israel. Just as Yahweh had promised hundreds of years before, Yahweh here begins to bless the whole world through the offspring of Abraham, even in the midst of bringing judgment.

And what Yahweh begins in Egypt, he continues to do even more so today through the ultimate offspring of Abraham, the Lord Jesus Christ. In Christ, all the nations of the earth are blessed along with Abraham, even as the church warns the world about the coming judgment when Jesus returns to redeem his people from the oppression of this world in order to bring them into their promised inheritance.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Exodus 11 | Luke 14 | Job 29 | 1 Corinthians 15

Exodus 11–12:21 narrates the final showdown between Yahweh and Pharaoh. Again and again, Pharaoh has hardened his heart against Yahweh, exalting himself against the God of the Hebrews, and in today’s reading, Yahweh finally brings this story to a close.

Despite Moses’s warning that Yahweh himself will go out into the midst of Egypt to strike down every firstborn in the nation—including even the firstborn of Pharaoh himself—Pharaoh does not listen. Yahweh again hardens Pharaoh’s heart so that Yahweh’s “wonders may be multiplied in the land of Egypt” (Ex. 11:9). Pharaoh has pridefully exalted himself against Yahweh, brutally dealing with Yahweh’s beloved people, and now Yahweh will redeem his people out of Egypt with a strong hand and a mighty, outstretched arm.

But because of the nature of Yahweh’s judgment in this plague, the Israelites are not automatically exempt—the firstborn of Israel are also in danger since they too live in the land of Egypt. So, Yahweh makes provision to protect his people through ordaining the Passover feast, a feast that Israel shall keep throughout their generations (Ex. 12:14). Through sacrificing a Passover lamb and smearing the lamb’s blood on their houses, Israel’s firstborn will be protected. When Yahweh sees the blood, he promises to pass over his people so that they will not be harmed along with the firstborn of Egypt (Ex. 12:13).

In this story, we see at once Yahweh’s judgment and Yahweh’s mercy. Where Yahweh pours out his judgment on the rulers of this world who wickedly defy him by oppressing his people, Yahweh at the same time provides for the protection of his people so that through the blood of a sacrifice, Yahweh passes over his people.

Over the course of the rest of the story of the Bible, it becomes very clear that the Passover had always pointed forward to Jesus Christ. At the crucifixion, Jesus became the ultimate Passover lamb for the people of God. And because we are covered in the blood of Jesus, the judgment of Yahweh simply passes over us, just as Yahweh passed over the Israelites when they were in Egypt. Paul even explicitly calls Jesus “our Passover lamb” (1 Cor. 5:7).

But there’s another aspect to how this story points forward to Jesus that is sometimes overlooked. It is not only that Jesus became our Passover lamb, sacrificed to protect the people of God with his blood, but Jesus also became the ultimate firstborn Son whom Yahweh struck down in judgment. Just as every firstborn in Egypt was struck down, so also the firstborn Son of Yahweh himself was struck down at the cross.

Of course, these two aspects are related. Jesus acted to protect his people by receiving the judgment that they deserved, and in doing so, he became our once-for-all Passover lamb, whose dying protected our living.1

1 I borrow this phrase from Kara Tippetts, “Dear Brittany: Why We Don’t Have to Be So Afraid of Dying and Suffering That We Choose Suicide,” October 8, 2014. Accessed October 20, 2014. <http://www.aholyexperience.com/2014/10/dear-brittany-why-we-dont-have-to-be-so-afraid-of-dying-suffering-that-we-choose-suicide/>

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Exodus 10 | Luke 13 | Job 28 | 1 Corinthians 14

Although we are not quite to the end of the war between Yahweh and Pharaoh, there are several indicators in Exodus 10 that the battles are moving increasingly in one direction. Yahweh’s glory continues to shine brighter in the face of the false gods of Egypt, and Pharaoh seems to be wearying of fighting God Almighty, the Creator of heaven and earth.

At the beginning of Exodus 10, Yahweh insists once again that he himself is hardening the heart of Pharaoh so that Pharaoh will not let the people of Israel go, giving this explanation for doing so: “that I may show these signs of mine among them, and that you may tell in the hearing of your son and of your grandson how I have dealt harshly with the Egyptians and what signs I have done among them, that you may know that I am Yahweh” (Ex. 10:1–2). As we discussed in yesterday’s meditation, the judgment Yahweh is pouring out on Pharaoh is for the sake of the gospel—so that the people of God (as well as their children and grandchildren) may know that Yahweh alone is God.

And on Pharaoh’s side of things, it seems that the world’s most powerful king is coming to grips with Yahweh’s power as well. Pharaoh’s servants certainly understand that they are outmatched, so they beg Pharaoh to let Israel go before things get even worse for Egypt: “How long shall this man be a snare to us? Let the men go, that they may serve the LORD their God. Do you not yet understand that Egypt is ruined?” (Ex. 10:7).

Even Pharaoh himself begins to use shockingly humble language to describe his own rebellion against Yahweh, acknowledging that he has “sinned” against Yahweh (Ex. 10:16) and expressing a willingness to let Israel go into the wilderness to worship Yahweh (Ex. 10:8, 24). Nevertheless, Yahweh carries out his promise to harden Pharaoh’s heart (Ex. 10:20, 27), and even though Pharaoh comes close to letting Israel go, he refuses every time at the last possible moment.

Pharaoh knows that he has nothing. His magicians have failed. His gods have failed. Even he—the mighty pharaoh of Egypt—has failed to restrain the God of the pitiful Hebrews from bringing the great Egypt to ruin and destruction.

This place of devastation is a point that God brings all of us to in our lives. The difference between life and death, then, is not whether God brings us to destruction, because he certainly will. Rather, the difference between life and death is found in whether we, like Pharoah, harden our hearts against the word of God in the gospel of Jesus or instead repent from our sins and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation and redemption.

The setting is different, but God requires the same obedient faith from us that he did from Pharaoh.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Exodus 9 | Luke 12 | Job 27 | 1 Corinthians 13

As the plagues keep coming in Exodus 9, Moses continues to preach the word of Yahweh to Pharaoh. Every time they meet, Moses gives a bit more of Yahweh’s word, and in Exodus 9 we come upon one of the more interesting speeches that Yahweh makes through Moses when he explains why he is sending the plagues:

“For by now I could have put out my hand and struck you and your people with pestilence, and you would have been cut off from the earth. But for this purpose I have raised you up, to show you my power, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth.” (Ex. 9:15–16)

We looked briefly at verse 16 in our meditation for Exodus 7, but there are a few other points to which we should focus our attention.

First, God raised Pharaoh up specifically to display his power through him. All the power and wealth that God gave to Pharaoh—which Pharaoh misunderstood as evidence of his own glory and not as the gracious generosity of God—served only to underscore God’s defeat of Pharaoh. If not even the most powerful king in all the earth can stand against Yahweh, who possibly could?

Second, even though God’s purpose was to exalt himself over Pharaoh, he nevertheless displayed a significant amount of grace toward Pharaoh. God explains that if he had wanted to, he could have already cut off all Egypt from the earth. Yes, God is bringing judgment against arrogant Pharaoh, but there is nevertheless a significant amount of grace in prolonging that judgment and in preaching to Pharaoh his need for repentance before Yahweh.

Third, we should recognize that God’s judgment and his grace are not opposed to each other. It isn’t that God has dualistic sides to his personality, so that the “grace” side is constantly battling with the “judgment” side and that each side gets its victories from time to time. Not at all—in fact, we should recognize that God is bringing judgment on Pharaoh precisely because he wants to extend grace to the whole world.

You see, the purpose behind God’s bringing judgment on Pharaoh is “so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth” (Ex. 9:16). In other words, the purpose behind God’s judgment is to glorify himself so that the world may come to believe in him for salvation.

And in this, we see a shadow of the purpose behind God’s pouring out his righteous judgment and wrath for our sin on the head of Jesus Christ, his beloved Son. God did not send judgment for judgment’s sake, but rather he sent judgment for the sake of extending grace to the world, so that all who repent of their sins (unlike Pharaoh) and believe on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ will be saved.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Exodus 8 | Luke 11 | Job 25–26 | 1 Corinthians 12

In yesterday’s reading from Exodus 7, we encountered the first plague, when God turned the water of the Nile into blood. For today’s meditation, we will explore what God is doing through these plagues, which are at the heart of the theology of Exodus.

To start, we should recognize that God’s plagues all demonstrate his own superiority over the gods of Egypt. Allen Ross writes this:

The plagues all undermine the religion of Egypt. The Nile was venerated as the source of life; but it was turned to blood, the symbol of death. Frogs were considered a force of bounty, or evil spirits; and this superstition was stacked high in the land til it stunk. Lice and flies were detested by the Egyptians who loathed pestilences; and so God brought it on them in abundance.1

Pharaoh has exalted himself and the gods of Egypt against Yahweh, so as God sends plague after plague, he systematically exposes the falseness of Egypt’s religion.

But at the same time, it is interesting to note that the magicians of Egypt’s false religions were able to perform two of the plagues—turning water into blood (Ex. 7:22) and summoning frogs upon the land of Egypt (Ex. 8:7)—but from the plague of the gnats onward, the Egyptian magicians were not able to imitate the power of Yahweh by their secret arts. I find this part of the story helpfully instructive, as very often the world is able to imitate something of the gospel up to a point. So, the followers of certain religions may exhibit an incredible level of self-control or they may articulate a compelling kind of wisdom or they may show an extraordinary degree of kindness and compassion toward others.

The gospel, however, accomplishes something fundamentally different. To judge the power of the gospel, we can’t really compare ourselves to other people—instead, we need to compare ourselves to our former selves to see the progress that Jesus is making in our lives. It is only there that we can recognize “the finger of God” (Ex. 8:19) at work in our lives.

The book of Exodus exalts the wisdom and power of God above every man-made religion in this world. In Exodus, we see God covenanting himself with the lowly in the world while crushing the powerful. We see God magnify himself against the false gods who would blasphemously steal his glory.

And today, when those who are mighty in this world scoff at the message of Jesus Christ, Exodus speaks forcefully to them as they cling to an illusion of power: Regardless of the false gods you serve, the day is coming when Jesus Christ will return in glory to overturn everything you believe to be your strength.

Today, repent and believe the gospel. When he returns, Jesus will have no more mercy on our false gods than he did on Egypt’s.

1 Allen P. Ross, “Unit 11: The First Blow: The Plague of Blood (Exodus 7:14–25),” p. 8. <http://www.christianleadershipcenter.org/exod.11.pdf>

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Exodus 7 | Luke 10 | Job 24 | 1 Corinthians 11

As Yahweh helps Moses regroup before confronting Pharaoh again, Yahweh repeats a strange promise from Exodus 4:21, saying, “But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and though I multiply my signs and wonders in the land of Egypt, Pharaoh will not listen to you” (Ex. 7:3–4). Yahweh’s promise to harden Pharaoh’s heart raises multiple questions that profoundly affect biblical theology.

To begin, we should note that the meaning of “I will harden Pharaoh’s heart” is straightforward. Yahweh is speaking plainly: he will cause Pharaoh to stiffen his resolve against obeying the word of God by letting Israel go. Yahweh is sovereign, capable of shaping the decisions of the world’s most powerful people. Proverbs 21:1 is instructive on this point: “The king’s heart is a stream of water in the hand of the LORD; he turns it wherever he will.”

So, the more pressing question is this: Why would Yahweh want to harden Pharaoh’s heart? This is, of course, a more difficult question to answer, but Yahweh gives his own explanation in Exodus 9:16: “But for this purpose I have raised you up to show you my power, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth.” It is important to understand that Pharaoh is not innocent in all of this. He has blasphemously exalted himself against Yahweh, the Creator of heaven and earth. So by hardening Pharaoh’s heart, Yahweh demonstrated to all the nations of the world that he alone is God.

But what about all the places where Scripture tells us that Pharaoh’s heart “was hardened” (e.g., Ex. 7:13, 7:14, 7:22, 8:16, 9:7) or where Pharaoh hardened his own heart (e.g., Ex. 8:15, 8:32, 9:34)? In fact, there is a mystery here into which we cannot see very deeply. Yahweh insists that he hardens Pharaoh’s heart, but at the same time, Pharaoh isn’t a passive puppet in God’s hands. Rather, Pharaoh is guilty for his own sin of hardening his heart against Yahweh. God is sovereign even over our sin, but at the end of the day, we are responsible for the ways that we reject God and his word.

This meditation doesn’t provide anywhere close to enough space to tease out all the implications of God’s sovereignty with human responsibility, but we should come away from passages like Exodus 7 with this thought: God’s ways are higher than our ways, and his thoughts are higher than our thoughts. He does whatever he wishes in heaven and on earth, but he cannot sin, and he is never the author of anyone’s sin.

And furthermore, let those hear who have ears to hear: do not harden your hearts against Yahweh. He is sovereign over your heart, but by no means does his sovereignty reduce your own responsibility to respond to the gospel of Jesus Christ in faith, love, and obedience.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Exodus 6 | Luke 9 | Job 23 | 1 Corinthians 10

In Exodus 5, we saw that the pressure of leadership was beginning to get to Moses. In frustration, Moses asks why Yahweh has done evil to Israel by sending him, since Pharaoh had only increased his cruelty since Moses had come. While Yahweh’s response in Exodus 6 doesn’t immediately resolve the conflict with Pharaoh, Yahweh nevertheless answers Moses’s prayer by giving him all the assurance that he was seeking—and more.

Yahweh insists that he will absolutely send his people out of the land of Pharaoh with a strong hand (Ex. 6:1). Yahweh hasn’t gotten distracted or changed his mind. He proclaims his perfect resolve to do exactly what he said he would do. Really, this was all Moses was asking to know.

But the second thing we see in Exodus 6 is that Yahweh says more. In fact, Yahweh gives an insight that he had not given anyone before—not Abraham, not Isaac, and not Jacob. Specifically, Yahweh tells Moses his name.

Now to be clear, it isn’t as though none of the patriarchs who went before Moses had heard the name Yahweh. There are many reasons to believe that all the people of God knew the name of Yahweh, including the fact that the name of Moses’s own mother was Jochebed (Ex. 6:20), which means “Yahweh [Yah] is glory [chebed].”1 All the patriarchs knew that God’s name was Yahweh.

More importantly, however, we should see that Yahweh doesn’t say, “I did not make my name known.” Instead, he says, “by my name Yahweh I did not make myself known to them” (Ex. 6:3). In other words, Yahweh didn’t reveal the significance of his name in practical terms. In the Bible, “name” is more than what someone is called. Instead, “name” refers to someone’s character. We say the same thing when we talk about “clearing my name.”

Moses was going to see the character of Yahweh in action. He was going to see Yahweh’s outstretched arm redeem Israel out of Egypt with signs, wonders, and “great acts of judgment” (Ex. 6:6). Even more, Yahweh would take Israel as his people and be God to Israel. The word “take” in Exodus 6:7 is the word that would describe the way a man “takes” a woman to be his wife—Yahweh is entering into an intimate, covenantal relationship with Israel.

But while Moses saw Yahweh’s covenantal love partially through the redemption of Israel out of Egypt, we have a better vision. We get to see that Yahweh, out of covenantal love for his people, took on flesh, died on a cross, and rose from the dead, redeeming his people from sin, death, and the devil.

And so it is that through the great acts of God’s redemption in Jesus we come to know the significance of Yahweh’s covenant—keeping name—until he returns to reveal himself to us fully, face to face.

1 Allen P. Ross, “Did the Patriarchs Know the Name of the LORD?” in Giving the Sense: Understanding and Using Old Testament Historical Texts, ed. David M. Howard and Michael A. Grisanti (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel, 2003), 323–39.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Exodus 5 | Luke 8 | Job 22 | 1 Corinthians 9

When Moses proclaims to Israel all that Yahweh has called him to do to lead Israel out of Egypt, we read that “the people 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” (Ex. 4:31). Moses had accomplished the hardest part of his task by getting the people of Israel on board with the mission, right?

Not quite.

Moses, you see, did know that Pharaoh would refuse to let Israel go (Ex. 3:19), and Moses even knew that God would harden Pharaoh’s heart against letting Israel go (Ex. 4:21). What Moses didn’t know, however, is that Pharaoh would turn the tables on Moses by making the Israelites’ work harder by requiring them to gather their own stubble instead of providing them straw, arguing that the people of Israel were idle. And in fact, it is very possible that the people may have stopped working as hard (or perhaps they might have even stopped working completely) as they waited to be liberated.1

So, the Israelites attacked Moses and Aaron with harsh words after they had emerged from a disappointing conversation with Pharaoh: “The LORD look on you and judge, because you have made us stink in the sight of Pharaoh and his servants, and have put a sword in their hand to kill us” (Ex. 5:21). Moses and Aaron had done everything God had asked them to do, and they faced opposition not only from Pharaoh himself but now also from the people who had been so encouraged the night before.

What do you do, then, when you have sought to obey Jesus, but you find yourself in a worse set of circumstances than before? Moses’s response to this situation is instructive: he prays. In fact, we don’t read that he prayed the sweet, sappy, angelic prayer of a saint who is troubled by nothing in this world—instead, we see one of the angriest prayers against God in the whole Bible in Exodus 5:22–23: “O Lord, why have you done evil to this people? Why did you ever send me? For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has done evil to this people, and you have not delivered your people at all.”

What we must see in this story (which we will pick up tomorrow) is that God doesn’t rebuke Moses for this prayer—quite the opposite, actually. Instead, God responds right away to Moses’s angry prayer by assuring him that now (Ex. 6:1) is when God would act to save his people.

God hears our angry prayers, and he answers them. The question isn’t whether God can handle your venting to him—the question is whether you trust him enough to pray to him what you are actually feeling.

1 Douglas K. Stuart, Exodus, TNAC, vol. 2 (Nashville: Broadman and Holman, 2006), 162–63.

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Exodus 4 | Luke 7 | Job 21 | 1 Corinthians 8

We should not judge Moses too harshly for his fear of confronting Pharaoh to declare God’s word. Moses makes up a variety of excuses in Exodus 4:10 about being less than eloquent and slow of speech, but even when Yahweh reminds Moses that he himself is the one who created the mouth in the first place, Moses finally pleads simply, “Oh, my Lord, please send someone else” (Ex. 4:13).

Yahweh refuses Moses’s request, but we should recognize from this story that the fear of inadequacy is a real experience for those called to serve the living God. What, then, can we learn about our fear from Exodus 4?

First, we should recognize there are good reasons for us to be frightened when God calls us to follow him. In this story, Moses is called to do nothing less than to rebuke the most powerful king on the planet by demanding that he free thousands of his enslaved workforce. What person wouldn’t be afraid of undertaking a mission like that?

Second, we should also keep in mind that, while the world may threaten us to some degree, we face the greatest danger by disobeying God, not by defying the world. In this passage, God holds Moses to a higher standard because of Moses’s call to be the leader of God’s people.

So, even after Moses begins to obey and starts his journey toward Egypt, we read that Yahweh meets “him” to put “him” to death (Ex. 4:24). The language is ambiguous, so that the “him” being put to death could refer to either Moses or a son whom Moses had not circumcised. God had commanded that every male in Israel be circumcised, and when God’s leader failed to circumcise his son, God actually comes to put him (Moses or Moses’s son) to death, and he does not relent until Moses’s wife, Zipporah, circumcises the child (Ex. 4:25–26).

Shouldn’t the people of God be terrified, then, when God calls us to serve him? Yes and no. On the one hand, it is a serious and weighty thing to serve the living God, and we should not take such a calling lightly.

But on the other hand, we should notice in this story the way that God graciously provides a helper and a companion to Moses in Aaron. God is compassionate toward us to meet us where we are even when we struggle to believe that we can do what he asks of us.

More than that, God promises to walk with us every step of the way, providing for us everything needed for what he requires us to do—even when he sends us straight into danger and persecution. Meditate on the words of Jesus: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me….And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matt. 28:18, 20).

Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.