The Old Testament reading is Exodus, Chapter 6:28 – Chapter 7:13. And this is the inerrant and infallible word of God. On the day when the Lord spoke to Moses in the land of Egypt, the Lord said to Moses, “I am the Lord. Tell Pharaoh, king of Egypt, all that I say to you.” But Moses said to the Lord, “Behold, I am of uncircumcised lips. How will Pharaoh listen to me?”

And the Lord said to Moses, “See, I have made you like God to Pharaoh. And your brother Aaron shall be your prophet. You shall speak all that I command you, and your brother Aaron shall tell Pharaoh to let the people of Israel go out of his land. 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. Then I will lay my hand on Egypt and bring my hosts, my people, the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great acts of judgment. The Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring out the people of Israel from among them.”

Moses and Aaron did so. They did just as the Lord commanded them. Now, Moses was 80 years old and Aaron 83 years old when they spoke to Pharaoh. Then the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “When Pharaoh says to you, ‘Prove yourselves by working a miracle.’ Then you shall say to Aaron, ‘Take your staff and cast it down before Pharaoh that it may become a serpent.'” So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and did just as the Lord commanded. Aaron cast down his staff before Pharaoh and his servants, and it became a serpent. Then Pharaoh summoned the wise men and the sorcerers, and they, the magicians of Egypt, also did the same by their secret arts. For each man cast down his staff, and they became serpents. But Aaron’s staff swallowed up their staffs. Still, Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, and he would not listen to them, as the Lord had said.

Our New Testament reading is Romans 9:14-24. So Romans 9:14-24. What shall we say then? Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means. For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God who has mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose, I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed and all the earth.” So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.

You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?” But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” Has the potter no right over the clay to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction in order to make known the riches of his glory? For vessels of mercy which he has prepared beforehand for glory, even us, whom he has called not from the Jews only, but also from the Gentiles. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.

Let’s turn back to Exodus, chapter six and seven for our passage this morning. Many years ago, when I was a new Christian, a brand new Christian, one of the first books that I read about the Christian faith and theology was a book that I’m sure many of you are familiar with, a book called Knowing God by J.I. Packer. I imagine that some of you have read that book. If you haven’t, it is a classic, and I certainly commend it to you. And you can gather from the title of the book, Knowing God, that the theme of it is just that, how we can come to a true knowledge of God, the Creator, the living God, how we can come to know him as he makes Himself known to us in His Word and in His Son, Jesus Christ.

And at the beginning of the book, Packer writes about how there is no greater cause or no greater endeavor or purpose that we can devote ourselves to than seeking to grow in the knowledge of who God is, His nature, his character, his purposes. And Packer writes this at the beginning of the book. He says the highest science, the loftiest speculation, the mightiest philosophy which can ever engage the attention of a child of God is the name, the nature, the person, the work, the doings and the existence of the great God, whom He calls His Father. And I believe that is 100% true, that there is no greater work that we can do than to grow in the knowledge of God.

But one of the challenges that we face when it comes to knowing, thinking about the nature of God, the character of God, is that we tend to focus only on particular aspects of God’s character. And usually it’s those aspects of his character that appeal to us most. And so we often think of God almost exclusively in terms of his love, his grace, his mercy. And of course, there is everything right about dwelling upon the mercy, the love and the grace of God. Because God is love. He is gracious. He is the author of our salvation. He is abounding in steadfast love and mercy. And I hope that every Lord’s day that we will leave here with a joy in our hearts, having been reminded of the love and the mercy that God has for us in Jesus Christ.

But the book of Exodus reminds us that God is not only a God who works salvation for those whom he loves, but he is also a God who brings awful judgment upon those who are unrepentant in their sin and unbelief. He judges those who refuse to submit to him and to respond by faith in the truth that he reveals. So God is not only a God of love and mercy and grace. He is, but he is also a God who is just, a God who is holy in all his ways. And Exodus reminds us of this because it tells us the story not only of how the Lord and His mercy brought this great salvation to his beloved people, the people of Israel, but how he brought these terrible judgments upon the people of Egypt because of their sin, their unbelief, their rebellion.

As we go on in the book of Exodus, we’ll read about these terrible judgments that God brings upon the land of Egypt, the 10 plagues, the destruction of the armies of Egypt in the Red Sea, and so on. These were all acts of God’s righteous judgment. The one Egyptian in particular who was the special object of God’s righteous wrath and judgment is Pharaoh, the king of Egypt. And Pharaoh will stand for all time as the preeminent example of the judgment of God that falls upon the one who refuses to believe in him, who rejects the testimony of God about himself. And in showing us God’s dealings with Pharaoh, the Book of Exodus reveals to us aspects of God’s character that we must understand and appreciate, even as we understand and appreciate the love and the mercy of God. And those other aspects of God’s character include his justice, that he is perfectly just, his holiness, that God is uncompromisingly holy, his sovereignty, that he is absolutely sovereign over the hearts of men, both those who believe and those who do not.

And as we look at this passage this morning, we’re going to consider what we might call one of the hard teachings of Scripture, and that is God’s hardening the heart of the unbeliever. This is not a subject that we would want to dwell upon every Sunday, but it is something that we need to wrestle with a truth that we need to think about, because the Scripture teaches it. It is part of the whole counsel of God that the Lord has given to us in his word. And so, as we look at this passage this morning, we’ll focus on the Lord’s dealings with Pharaoh, especially his hardening of Pharaoh’s heart. And first, we’ll consider what it means that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart. And secondly, we’ll consider what that looks like. What does the hardened heart of Pharaoh, how does that show itself?

And so first, we’ll consider what it means that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart at the beginning of our passage. In verses 28 and 29 of chapter 6, the passage begins with a reminder of what we read earlier in chapter six, which we read last Sunday. And that is, the Lord commanded Moses to go to Pharaoh to tell him to let the people of Israel go. And Moses’ response to that commandment is something less than ready obedience. He says in verse 30, Moses says to the Lord, “Behold, I am of uncircumcised lips. How will Pharaoh listen to me?” We might expect that the Lord would respond to Moses’ reluctance by rebuking him for his unbelief. But God’s response is very patient, very gracious. And his response is what we read in verses one and two of chapter seven. And it’s essentially this. The Lord says to Moses, “Moses, I am sending you with the full backing of my own divine power and authority. You will represent me to Pharaoh. In fact, you will be God to Pharaoh. You will go in my name and with the full backing of who I am as God that it is, though you are yourself God to Pharaoh, and Aaron will be your prophet. He will speak for you.” And so, in this way, the Lord reassures Moses that because he is going at God’s command, because he is the Lord’s servant, that his errand, his mission, will ultimately be successful, no matter how hesitant or reluctant he may be at that moment. And so the Lord reassures Moses that he will go in God’s name and with his, and with his authority and power behind him.

And then, after those words of reassurance and encouragement, the Lord reminds Moses of what he will do to Pharaoh. Namely, he will harden Pharaoh’s heart. He will make it so that Pharaoh will not listen to Moses, he will not obey the words of Moses, he will refuse to let the people go. And so the Lord says to Moses in verses three and four, “But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart. And though I multiply my signs and wonders in the land of Egypt. And Pharaoh will not listen to you.” Now I say that God here reminds Moses of what he will do to Pharaoh in hardening his heart. Because back in chapter four, the Lord already told Moses that that is what he plans to do to harden his heart. In Moses, or rather in Exodus, chapter 4, verse 21, we read this. “And the Lord said to Moses, ‘When you go back to Egypt, see that you do before Pharaoh all the miracles that I’ve put in your power. But I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go.'”

And this truth reoccurs throughout Exodus as we go on. In reading Exodus, as we go on through the 10 plagues, we will see time and time again. The Scripture will say that the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart. And so that raises the question, well, what does that mean? What does it mean that the Lord hardened his heart? Well, basically, it means just what it says. In some way, in a way in which the Scripture does not explain to us, but in some way, God will so act upon Pharaoh’s heart that he will stubbornly refuse to obey the word of the Lord. He will refuse to let the people of Israel go. God will act to ensure that Pharaoh will continue in his unbelief, his wickedness, despite the fact that he will receive testimony after testimony of the truth of who God is and the signs and miracles that he will do, despite the fact that he will hear again and again the word of the Lord through Moses, and God will harden Pharaoh’s heart so that he will dig his heels in, and he will refuse to obey the word of God. He will not let the people go.

And when the Lord says this, when the Scripture says that God will harden his heart, the question that comes to our minds is this. If God hardened Pharaoh’s heart, does this not suggest that God is at least partly responsible for Pharaoh’s sin and his unbelief? Does this not implicate God somehow in the sin of Pharaoh and make him, that is God, somehow the author of sin? Well, we know the answer to that question. The answer is obviously no. That is not the case. Because it is impossible that God, who is infinitely holy, God, who is righteous, who is just, who does no evil, and it is impossible for him to be the author of sin or the source of sin in any way. God does not tempt anyone. God does not directly or immediately cause anyone to sin.

And in order for us to preserve this truth, that God is incapable of sinning, that he is in no way the author of sin, we might say what it means when God hardened Pharaoh’s heart is that he simply allowed Pharaoh to harden his own heart. In other words, we might say that God took a purely laissez faire or hands off approach when it came to his dealings with Pharaoh. By his inaction, by his passivity, God permitted, or he allowed Pharaoh to harden his own heart. And there is much truth to that that is not altogether false, but there is truth in that, as we’ll see in Exodus, the Scripture tells us that not only did the Lord harden Pharaoh’s heart, but that Pharaoh himself hardened his own heart. And so Pharaoh, not God, bears the responsibility, the guilt for his own stubbornness, an unbelieving heart and his sin. And so whatever else is true here, Pharaoh himself and not God, is to blame for his own hard heart. And so, yes, it is true that Pharaoh hardened his own heart.

And it’s also the case that elsewhere in the New Testament, the Bible describes God as giving up sinners to their own sin. In other words, as an act of judgment for sin and unbelief that is already present in the heart of the sinner. God may simply allow that sinner to continue in his natural course, which is of course to become more and more entrenched in sin. And in this way God brings, or in this way, God brings his judgment down upon the person by giving him over, giving him up to his sin. However, in this case, to say here that the Lord’s hardening Pharaoh’s heart was only or merely allowing Pharaoh to continue in his unbelief doesn’t really do justice to what this passage tells us. It doesn’t do justice to the plain meaning of the words that we hear here in Scripture, and that is that the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s hearts. Remember, before we even read of Pharaoh hardening his own heart, or before Pharaoh even hears the word of God, God promises Moses that he will harden Pharaoh’s hearts. And so, although yes, Pharaoh was a sinner by nature, although he hardened his own heart, God’s act of hardening his heart wasn’t purely in response to Pharaoh’s own sin, but in some way, God took an active initiating role in that hardening of his hearts.

And so we have to say, as difficult as it is for us to accept, according to our human wisdom and reasoning, that the teaching of Scripture here is not that God simply gave Pharaoh over to his sin, or that he simply permitted or allowed him to continue to harden his own heart, but that in some way, by God’s initiative, by his predetermined will he and his sovereign power pardon the heart of Pharaoh. And this is consistent with what the New Testament teaches us as well. This is why we read from Romans chapter 9. This is some divine commentary on what takes place in Exodus. The Apostle Paul says in Romans in his dealings with Pharaoh that God sets Pharaoh as an illustration, an example of his sovereign dealings with his sovereign will in accomplishing what he will in the hearts of the lives of individual human beings. And so Paul says in Romans 9:18, “So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.” And so Paul looks at what the Lord does to Pharaoh in Exodus. He ascribes it to the sovereign purposes of God, that he is merciful to whom he will, that he will harden whom he will.

As chapter nine goes on in Romans, Paul answers the questions that he knows that will inevitably be raised. When he says that God has mercy on whomever he wills, and that he hardens whomever he wills, Paul tells us that the question that will be raised is this. In verse 19 of Romans 9, “You will say to me, ‘Then why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?'” And you’ll notice that in his answer to that question, Paul does not appeal to the justice of God. He does not appeal to the fact that God’s hardening Pharaoh’s heart was a work of justice. Rather, what Paul says is this. He says, “Who are you, O man, to question God’s ways?” In other words, Paul doesn’t say the reason why God. The reason why we cannot find fault with God is because he is just in giving Pharaoh over to his sin. But rather, what Paul says is God is sovereign. He can do what he wants. “Who are you to answer back to God?” And so in verses 20-21, Paul says, “But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what does molded say to its molder, ‘Why have you made me like this?’ Has the potter no right over the clay to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use?” And so what Paul sees is the right of God as God the creator of all, as the Lord, who is perfectly good and wise and just in all his ways, his sovereign divine right to do what he will with his creatures, to have mercy on whom he wills, and to harden whom he wills.

Still, we’re left with the question, does that not mean that God is somehow responsible for Pharaoh’s sin and unbelief? Again, it cannot mean that. If the Bible is clear about anything, it is clear that God is holy and righteous. It is absolutely impossible that he would be the author of sin or evil in any way. And so what we are confronted here is with a mystery, the mystery of God’s sovereign dealings with this creature. Because on the one hand, in a proactive way which the Bible does not divulge to us, but in some active way, God is hardening the heart of Pharaoh. But on the other hand, Pharaoh is guilty, and sinners are guilty before God for our unbelief, for our sin. It’s a mystery that’s somewhat along the same lines of the mystery of how can a good and holy and just God ever allow for the existence of evil in his creation? How can he ever allow for the intrusion of evil into what he has made? There is mystery to that, and there is mystery to how God can harden the heart of a sinner. And yet that sinner is 100% responsible for his own sin and unbelief.

But what isn’t a mystery is God’s ultimate purpose in his sovereign dealings with man. And that is whether it is in salvation or whether it is in judgment, even in hardening Pharaoh’s heart or hardening a sinner’s heart. God’s purpose, his ultimate aim in all of that, is to bring glory to himself, to magnify his greatness, to exalt him as God, worthy of glory and honor and worship. In Romans 9:17, Paul quotes from Exodus 9:16. “For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, ‘For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.'” And so God’s purpose in hardening Pharaoh’s heart, as hard as that is for us to read, as hard, impossible as it is for us to understand how this all fits together, God reveals this to us, that God does his sovereign will. He carries out his purposes upon Pharaoh for this purpose in order to bring glory to himself, to show that he is God, that He is the great and almighty God worthy of our worship. And you see that right here in our passage in Exodus. In verse four, the Lord says, “Then I will lay my hand on Egypt and bring my hosts, my people, the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great acts of judgment.” And then he says, why he will do this in verse 5, “The Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring out the people of Israel from among them.” In other words, God is saying, “I will rescue my people. I will bring my people out with these great signs and wonders, even in the judgments that I will bring upon the people of Egypt, so that they will know that I am the Lord, so that they will acknowledge me as God, so that I will receive the glory.” And so here is God’s purpose and in all of this that he might be acknowledged as the true God, worthy of worship.

Now, one lesson that we can take from this teaching of Scripture, this teaching that God has mercy on whomever he wills, that he hardens whomever he wills. One lesson that we can take from this is that if God is absolutely sovereign in all his dealings with all people, what it means then is that as a Christian, it means that your salvation is absolutely dependent upon. It is the result of God’s grace and mercy. It is because of God’s sovereign will, because it pleased him, not because of anything good in you, not because of anything that he saw in you that was worthy of salvation, but simply because it was God’s will, His purpose for you. To show you mercy, to be gracious to you, to bring you to Christ, to not harden your heart, to not give you over to your own sin and unbelief, but to be merciful and to bring you to salvation. Even your faith, especially your faith, is a gift of God’s grace. If this passage teaches us anything, it is that we would not believe in the word of God. We would not believe in Christ, we would not come to him for salvation. If God does not open our heart and give us mercy and show us the truth concerning Christ, that we may come to him for salvation. So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills. And so that’s the first lesson that we’ll take from this passage. The meaning of God’s hardening Pharaoh’s heart.

The second is, the second lesson is, what does that look like? What does Pharaoh? How does he show himself to be one whose heart is hard? In verse nine and chapter seven, the Lord tells Moses and Aaron that Pharaoh will demand proof that their word, that their message is truly a word for from God. And the proof that they are to give Pharaoh is one of these signs that the Lord gave to Moses and Aaron that they were to show in Egypt to demonstrate, to prove that they were truly sent by God. And that is, the staff of Moses would turn into a serpent when it was thrown to the ground. Now, there’s a reason why the staff of God would become a serpent. And I suppose it could. God could have made it become any kind of creature. He could have made it become a worm or a caterpillar or something like that. But there’s a reason why the staff of God became a serpent. And that’s because for the Egyptian pharaohs, the serpent, the snake was a symbol of their power, of their royal authority. In fact, the serpent was a symbol of the supposed deity of Pharaoh himself.

I’m sure you’ve seen pictures, maybe some of you have even seen the real thing, but at least you’ve seen pictures of the mask of King Tutankhamun. I think it’s in an Egypt or in a museum somewhere in Egypt. But you remember, if you can picture that mask, that above Tutankhamun’s head, there’s a cobra. There’s a cobra, looks like it’s poised to strike. And the reason for that, of course, is because that was a symbol of his royal dignity and authority and even of his deity as the king of Egypt. And so what God was doing here as he causes this staff to turn into a serpent, the Lord was declaring to Moses. Well, actually, he was declaring to Pharaoh. The Lord was declaring to Pharaoh, “I am God. I am the one who can control creation. I am the one who could turn a staff into a serpent and a serpent back into a staff. It is not you, Pharaoh. It is not your gods, O Egyptians, but I am the true God.” And so the Lord gave Pharaoh this amazing testimony of his truth, this miracle, before his very eyes.

But Pharaoh didn’t believe. Rather, he called his wise men his sorcerers. Together. The text refers to them as the magicians of Egypt. And by their secret arts, they somehow performed the same miracle. Now, the passage doesn’t tell us how these wise men and sorcerers were able to seemingly perform the same miracle of turning their staffs into serpents. But there can be no doubt that what was at work here was the power of the evil one. That there was demonic power that was used by these magicians in order to somehow give the appearance of a true miracle, of turning the staff into a serpent. Satan, he cannot do a true miracle. Satan has no creative power. He can only do something counterfeit. He can only deceive. He can only do something fake.

In the last book of C.S. Lewis’s Narnia series, The Last Battle, I believe that’s the last book, but it was my favorite when I read through that series. But if you remember that book, there’s the antagonist. The bad guy in that book is an ape, an evil ape by the name of Shift. And Shift comes across the hide, the skin of a lion, and he decides that he’s going to trick all the animals in Narnia by placing this lion’s skin on top of a donkey and then telling all the animals that this is Aslan, this is the true lion, the true king of Narnia. And of course, because a donkey covered in a lion skin is a poor imitation of the real thing, deception only works in the dark or in a little light when it’s almost dark. And so when the animals can barely see the fake lion, then they’re deceived into thinking that this is truly Aslan. But that is an illustration of the way that Satan operates. He deceives with lies and falsehood. He is, and he was a liar from the beginning. The New Testament says in Second Corinthians that Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. Satan doesn’t appear on the scene with pointy tail and pitchfork and all of that, but he comes as an angel of light. He comes in a figure of goodness, righteousness. Second Thessalonians says the coming of the lawless one is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing because they refuse to love the truth and so be saved.

And that’s exactly what Satan is doing in this passage here, through these magicians. The magicians seem to be doing a work of God, that they are turning their staffs into serpents. But their work was only what Thessalonians calls false signs and wonders, wicked deception in order to deceive those who saw it. And Second Thessalonians says that those who are deceived by the work of Satan are deceived because they refused to love the truth and so be saved. And so those who are deceived by the deceptions of Satan are deceived because they are willingly deceived, because they refuse to love the truth, because they reject the testimony of God before their eyes. And that’s exactly the case here with Pharaoh. Here’s what a hardened heart looks like. This is what it looks like when someone has been given over by God, or God hardens someone’s hearts. He refuses to believe the clear testimony of the truth that God reveals concerning himself. And Pharaoh’s unbelief is only intensified the more revelation that he receives.

Aaron’s staff, when it becomes a serpent, it swallows the other serpents. And could there be any clearer testimony to Pharaoh that the staff of God, the staff of Moses and Aaron, the spokesman of God, that this is truly God’s, these are God’s People, this is God’s work? His serpent swallowed up all the serpents of the magicians. And yet in verse 13 it says, “Still Pharaoh’s heart was hardened. He would not listen to them.” As the Lord has said, this is what someone with a hardened heart, this is how he responds to the testimony, the revelation that God gives about himself. No matter how plainly it is given, no matter how clearly it is given, he will not believe the truth.

We’re taught that in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus that Jesus taught in, in Luke’s Gospel, when the rich man is suffering in Hades, he begs Abraham to send Lazarus to his brothers to warn his brothers about the torments of hell. And Abraham says to the rich man, “They have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them.” And the rich man says, “No, Father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.” And Abraham says, “If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced that someone should rise from the dead.” Even if someone should rise from the dead, they will not be convinced. They will not believe. And how true that was. And of course, Jesus was looking ahead to the resurrection of himself from the dead. And when Jesus was raised from the dead, still there were so many who refuse to believe the truth, who refused to come to him as the Son of God, who continued in their sin and unbelief.

And it’s the same today. A person whose heart is hardened against the truth of God will not believe in God. He will not believe in Christ, no matter how powerful, how clear that testimony is. And God has testified to himself in so many ways that he is God, that he is good, that he is wise and powerful. He reveals us to us through all that he has created. The creation itself declares to us the glory of God. God reveals himself to us in his word and in the testimony of Jesus Christ, his Son. God makes himself known to us in the preaching of the Gospel. God reveals himself to us even in the life of the people of God. And yet, for the unbeliever, this is not enough. None of this is enough. He will continue in his unbelief and sin and in his rejection of the truth of God.

The British atheist and philosopher Bertrand Russell, at one point he was asked what he would say if God met him after his death and demanded to know why he would not believe. And according to Russell, his response to God would be, “Sir, why did you not give me better evidence?” I have a feeling it didn’t quite work out that way. But the problem for the Atheist is never that. There is a lack of evidence for God and for Christ. The problem is that he refuses to receive, he refuses to accept the clear, the abundant testimony and evidence that God gives of himself and of his Son, Jesus.

What this means is that unbelief, the failure to come to Christ. This is not an intellectual failure. It is not a lack of information or lack of apprehension or ability to grasp the truth. But to fail to respond to God by faith in Christ is a moral failure, a spiritual failure. It is a heart issue. It is a heart that refuses to come to God, no matter how clear that testimony is. One minister that I met, a phrase that he would repeat is “the heart of the problem is the problem of the heart.” And that is so true here with Pharaoh. And it is true for everyone who refuses to come to Christ.

And again, one lesson we need to take from all this and we are dwelling upon the unbeliever. And yet, as Christians, what does this mean for us? It means that if you believe in Christ, if you have responded to the gospel, if you have come to faith in Jesus again, that is the fruit of God’s grace, that is the work of his mercy, the fruit of his love to you, that you have come to know him. Because by nature we are all born with a heart that will refuse, will continue to refuse, will reject the truth, will not believe. Pharaoh. Here is a terrifying portrait of what we are apart from the grace of God. No matter how many signs and miracles, no matter how clear the testimony of the word of God, we would refuse to come to the truth. We would refuse to come to Christ apart from the grace of God.

And so if you believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, if you believe in your heart that he came into the world to die for your sin, that God raised him from the dead, that he is exalted to the right hand of the Father in heaven. If you believe this, if you trust in Christ as your Savior, again, this is a gift of God’s grace. He has been merciful to you. And so the story of Exodus, then it’s a revelation of both the mercy and the judgment of God. This one event in the scripture, such a clear revelation of the character of God, both in his mercy and in his judgment. Here we see the mercy of God for his people Israel, and the awful judgment against Pharaoh and the Egyptians. And in the very same way, the coming of Christ into the world was a revelation of the mercy, the love of God, but also a revelation of the justice, the judgment of God. On the one hand, the coming of Christ into the world was the supreme act of God’s love and mercy.

John 3:16, 17. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” “For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him.” What a gracious and merciful God we have, that when he saw us, when he saw the world in our sin and rebellion and wickedness, he did not send His Son to us to condemn us, but that through faith in him we might be saved, that we might be forgiven. He sent His Son into the world to save us.

But for those who refuse to come to him as a Savior, the coming of Christ will become the occasion. The reason for God’s judgment to fall upon them right after John 3:16 and 17 is John 3:18. “Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.” And what this means for you and me is that when our life in this world is over, when we come to meet our Creator, our God, the only question that will matter then, the question that will determine whether you will spend eternity in heaven or in hell is was the coming of Christ for your salvation or was it the occasion for your condemnation? And that question depends on did you believe? Did you respond in faith? Did you come to Jesus and submit to him as your Lord and Savior, as the gift of God’s love to you? Or did you refuse to come to Christ because your heart was hard? It’s just so.

Ask God to give you a soft heart, a tender conscience, an openness to his word. Perhaps for somebody here, perhaps your prayer should be for a new heart that God would enable you to believe, to come to Christ by faith and to trust in Him. And know that by faith in him, by trusting in him, your sins are forgiven, you have received the gift of eternal life. And that’s the reason why God gave His Son to us, that we may come to him for salvation and for life. And so let’s ask the Lord that He would always give us a heart that believes, receives the truth of the Gospel, and trusts in Christ as our Savior. Let’s pray.

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The Old Testament reading is Exodus, Chapter 5:22 through 6:27. 5:22 to 6:27. This is God’s infallible and inerrant word. Then Moses turned to the Lord and said, “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.” But the Lord said to Moses, “Now you shall see what I will do to Pharaoh. For with a strong hand, he will send them out, and with a strong hand, he will drive them out of his land.”

God spoke to Moses and said to him, “I am the Lord. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as God Almighty. But by my name, the Lord, I did not make myself known to them. I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, the land in which they lived as sojourners. Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the people of Israel, whom the Egyptians hold as slaves. And I have remembered my covenant. Say therefore to the people of Israel, ‘I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from slavery to them. And I will redeem you with an outstretched arm, and with great acts of judgment, I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God. And you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. I will give it to you for possession. I am the Lord.'”

Moses spoke thus to the people of Israel, but they did not listen to Moses because of their broken spirit and harsh slavery. So the Lord said to Moses, “Go in, tell Pharaoh, king of Egypt, to let the people of Israel go out of his land.” But Moses said to the Lord, “Behold, the people of Israel have not listened to me. How then shall Pharaoh listen to me? For I am of uncircumcised lips.” But the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron and gave them a charge about the people of Israel and about Pharaoh, king of Egypt, to bring the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt.

These are the heads of their fathers’ houses: the sons of Reuben, the firstborn of Israel: Hanoch, Pellu, Hezron, and Carmi. These are the clans of Reuben. The sons of Simeon: Jimeuel, Jamin, Ohad, Jacob, Zohar, and Shaul, the son of a Canaanite woman. These are the clans of Simeon. These are the names of the sons of Levi according to their generations: Gershon, Kohath, and Merari. The years of the life of Levi being 137 years. The sons of Gershon: Libni and Shimei by their clans. The sons of Kohath: Amram, Izhar, Hebron, and Uzziel. The years of the life of Kohath being 133 years. The sons of Merari: Moli and Mushi. These are the clans of the Levites according to their generations.

Amram took as his wife Jochebed, his father’s sister, and she bore him Aaron and Moses. The years of the life of Amram being 137 years. The sons of Izhar: Korah, Nepheg, and Zechariah. The sons of Uzziel: Mishael, Elzephad, and Sithrai. Aaron took as his wife Elisheba, the daughter of Amminadab and the sister of Nahshon, and she bore him Nadab, Abihu, Eleazar, and Ithamar. The sons of Korah: Uzer, Elkanah, and Abiasaph. These are the clans of the Korahites. Eleazar, Aaron’s son, took as his wife one of the daughters of Putiel, and she bore him Phinehas. These are the heads of the father’s houses of the Levites by their clans. These are Aaron and Moses, to whom the Lord said, “Bring out the people of Israel from the land of Egypt by their hosts.” It was they who spoke to Pharaoh, king of Egypt, about bringing out the people of Israel from Egypt. This Moses and this Aaron. On the day when the Lord spoke to Moses in the land of Egypt, the Lord said to Moses, “I am the Lord, and tell Pharaoh, king of Egypt, all that I say to you.” But Moses said to the Lord, “Behold, I am of uncircumcised lips. How will Pharaoh listen to me?”

You can keep your place there in Exodus 5. And the New Testament reading is Romans, chapter 8, verses 28 through 30. These are very familiar, very comforting words for us. And of course, these words were not written in the time of Moses, but had they been, surely Moses would have found them very comforting at several points in his life and ministry. And this passage from Exodus has to do with one such time in Moses’ life when he needed to know that the Lord is working out all things for good.

So let’s hear from Romans, chapter 8, verses 28 through 30. “And we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.”

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. You may turn back now to Exodus, chapter five. And this will be our text for this morning.

In your life as a Christian, have you ever dreamed a big dream about how wonderful something was going to be, only to discover later that the reality seriously fell short of the dream that you had? For example, you were about to get married, and you think to yourself, “I love my fiance so much, and my fiance loves me so much. And we both love Jesus. And we know other married couples have fights and arguments and disagreements, but we will be different. Every day will be peace and harmony.” And then you get married and you find yourself in a very difficult conflict with your spouse. Or you’re expecting your first child, and you think, “My children will not turn out like the children of other families. I will train them to be obedient and respectful. Each day, I will patiently teach them the Bible. They will listen attentively. They’ll be the most mature, the most godly children the church has ever seen.” But then your child throws a temper tantrum at the grocery store, and everybody is staring at you like you are the worst parent in the world.

Or you’re about to start a new stage in your schooling or start a new job, and you think, “I’m confident. I trust that the Lord will bless my efforts. I know that I’m going to do a great job. I’m not going to make mistakes.” But then you find yourself in danger of failing a class, or you commit a huge blunder on the job. Well, I wonder what dreams Moses had as he set out to bring the deliverance to the people of God that the Lord had promised them. Of course, on his way to Egypt, he knew that it would not be easy. He knew that Pharaoh would refuse to let the people go, and so he was prepared for that challenge. But perhaps Moses thought to himself, “Well, Pharaoh won’t be all that difficult to deal with.” After all, Moses had the promise of God. He was given the staff of God in his hand to do the amazing signs and wonders that God would do through him. So how tough, how difficult would it be really to deal with Pharaoh, how much trouble will he really cause? And did Moses think that the people of Israel would be so devoted to him as their leader that they would always give him their undying support and loyalty at all times in everything that he did, that every day would be Pastor Appreciation Day? I think that Moses, being human like us, probably had thoughts like that. He dreamed dreams of what he would do when he got to Egypt and came with a message from God to deliver the people of Israel. If that’s what Moses was thinking, he was in for a rude awakening.

Last week, we saw how Moses was confronted with two unexpected challenges, two things that surely took him by surprise. First of all, in response to Moses’ request to Pharaoh to let the people of Israel go, Pharaoh not only refused, which of course, Moses knew that he would, but Pharaoh doubled down on the oppression that he was with which he was dealing with the Israelites. He made their lives even worse. He took away the straw that they needed to make bricks, and so he made their misery all the greater. Surely Moses didn’t see that coming. And the other punch to the gut was the response of the Israelites to Moses and Aaron. You’ll recall from the passage that we looked at last Sunday that the Israelite foremen, after they were beaten by their Egyptian taskmasters because they were not making bricks, they complained to Pharaoh, but then they turned against Moses and Aaron. They accused them, the leaders of Israel, of bringing all of the troubles upon the people. In verse 21, they say to Moses and Aaron, “You have made us stink in the sight of Pharaoh and his servants. You have put a sword in their hand to kill us.”

Now, these things weren’t supposed to happen. This wasn’t part of the plan. And it surely wasn’t what Moses envisioned as he set off to Egypt to liberate the people of God from their Egyptian taskmasters. After all, Moses was being obedient to the Lord. He was being faithful. He was doing what he was supposed to do. And yet everything, now that he got to Egypt, everything’s going haywire. Pharaoh was having his evil way with the people. He was only making things worse. The people were rebelling against Moses, and things were going from terrible to somehow even more terrible. And what had happened to God’s promise of salvation? So you can imagine how disappointed, confused, and upset Moses was. His dream of success in rescuing his people from Egypt was being dashed before his very eyes. And surely it seemed to Moses, “The more faithful I am, the worse things are getting. It’s not supposed to happen this way.”

And out of his discouragement, Moses, the man of God, he does what he should have done, is that he prays. He prays to the Lord, which is good. But when you read his prayer there in verse 22 and 23, it really sounds more like a complaint than a prayer. He says in verse 22, “O Lord, why have you done evil to this people?” It sounds like Moses is accusing the Lord of doing wrong to the people of Israel. Moses, I don’t believe, is accusing God of that, but he is certainly looking to God, the one who is sovereign. “Why are you allowing this? Why is this happening, Lord?” And Moses also asked God why he had even sent him in the first place. Verse 22, “Why did you ever send me? I told you, Lord, I was the wrong guy for the job.” And finally, in verse 23, and we can only suppose that this is with great discouragement, exasperation on the part of Moses, “You have not delivered your people at all.” “I don’t even see the beginnings of this great salvation that you have promised that you would bring to the people of Israel. In fact, the Israelites, they were better off than when I came to rescue them.”

But what are we to make of this prayer? Well, first of all, Moses was right to go to the Lord in prayer. He took his perplexity, his discouragement to the Lord, and he prayed. He didn’t walk away from the Lord. He didn’t throw in the towel. He was obedient to his calling as the Lord’s servant. He prayed. One lesson to take from this is that prayer is always the right thing to do. It is never wrong to pray. In whatever circumstances, no matter how difficult, confusing, discouraging, we always should pray to God. That should be our instinct, our reflex.

And secondly, although the prayer of Moses was a complaint, it was a prayer of faith. It was a prayer of faith. Moses looked to God. He still believed that the Lord was the one in control. He still believed in the promise of God to bring salvation to his people. He just couldn’t understand how these terrible things that were happening, how they fit into God’s purposes and his plan. And so this prayer, in essence, is the same prayer that the saints of God so often in Scripture lifted up to the Lord in times of great affliction. And that is a prayer that begins with the word “why?” “Why, Lord, is this happening?” Job, “Why do you hide your face and count me as your enemy?” David prayed this prayer in Psalm, “Why, O Lord, do you stand far away? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?” Even Jesus himself prayed this prayer as he hung on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And for whatever particular struggle that you may be going through right now, this may be your prayer: “Why? Why, Lord, are you bringing this into my life?”

But in his response to the prayer of Moses, God does not answer the “why” question. And when your dreams of great things in the Christian life seem to come crashing down around you, when God brings into your life some unexpected hardship or challenge, when God seems to be making the circumstances of your life worse, even as you are sincerely, as far as you know, your heart seeking to obey him and be faithful to him, but things keep getting worse, you find yourself praying the same prayer, “Why, O Lord?” And you know that God doesn’t give you an answer. He doesn’t say, “Well, here are the reasons why.” But if your heart is open to hearing the word of God, you know that God’s response to your prayer is not silence. It is not silence. He does answer because he answers Moses here. He doesn’t respond to Moses with silence. He doesn’t tell him why. He doesn’t explain to Moses what Moses humanly couldn’t understand anyway. How in the infinite wisdom of God, that these circumstances are taking place in order to bring him all the more glory. And exactly how that is happening. God doesn’t tell Moses that, but he does remind Moses of two truths to give him strength. Strength to carry on in his service to God and in his walk with the Lord. And these are the two lessons from this passage that we’ll consider today.

First of all, in answer to Moses’ “why” prayer, the Lord reminded Moses of who he is. He reminds Moses of who he is. And secondly, the Lord reminded Moses of what he would do for his people. So first of all, God reminds Moses of who he is. And so the very first thing that the Lord says to Moses in response to his prayer is simply to confirm what he’s already told Moses. The people of Israel will be brought out of Egypt. Pharaoh would indeed drive them out with a strong hand. They will be taken away from Egypt. But then in verse two, God reminded Moses of who he is. He says in verse 2, or the text says, “God spoke to Moses and said to him, ‘I am the Lord.'” “I am the Lord.” If you were here two or three Sundays ago, we went into a little bit of depth into what that name means, “the Lord.” This is God’s personal name. This is the name that he revealed to Moses at the burning bush. In Hebrew, it is Yahweh, and the name Yahweh, or the Lord, it expresses the self-sufficiency of God, that God has in himself infinite life, existence, power, blessedness. He needs nothing from his creation. But it also speaks of the eternality of God. He is the great I am, from eternity to eternity, from everlasting to everlasting. He is the Lord. “I am who I am.”

But the real significance here for Moses to be reminded by God that his name is the Lord, is this: that as the Lord, that this God, the God of Israel, he alone is the true and the living God. He is not like the gods and the idols of the nations and the Egyptians who are lifeless, who are impotent, who cannot deliver their people. But he is the Lord, the true God. The God who revealed himself to Moses at the burning bush. The God who spoke to Moses, who gave him these miraculous signs of power. He reminds Moses, “I am the Lord. Look to me. Remember who I am.” And as the Lord, the one true God, he possesses all power and ability to fulfill all his holy will, including what he has revealed to Moses. His will to redeem his people from their bondage in Egypt. And so God was telling Moses in his response to his prayer, “Why, Lord? Why is this happening?” God’s answer was, “Moses, don’t forget who it is that has called you to be my servant. Don’t forget who it is who has sent you to Egypt to do my will. It is me, the one who can and will accomplish all that I set my heart to do. I am the Lord.”

And as a believer in Jesus Christ, this God is your God. This God who revealed himself to Moses as the Lord, the God who created the heavens and the earth by the mere utterance of his word, he is your God. And because he is the living and true God, because he is not an idol, he is not a false God, he will fulfill every promise and every purpose that he has given to you in his word. In Jesus Christ, he is the Lord.

Now, if you are a careful listener as we were reading this passage, and I hope you caught this, but you will have noticed something in verse three. Verse three, the Lord says to Moses, “I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name, the Lord, I did not make myself known to them.” “Wait a minute.” If you caught that, you’re thinking, “Wait a minute. Isn’t the name Lord in Genesis?” In fact, it is, over a hundred times we find that name in Genesis. In fact, Genesis says, “At that time people began to call upon the name of the Lord.” And Abraham prayed to God in Genesis, “O Sovereign Lord.” So what do we make of this? Well, strictly speaking, God did reveal his name as the Lord, as Yahweh, to the patriarchs, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. But what is meant here, what he is saying here, is that the fullness of all that that divine name means, the fullness of all that is contained in that name, the Lord, that was not made known to the patriarchs in the way that it is now being made known to Moses and to the people of Israel. God gave the patriarchs great promises. But it wasn’t until Moses and the Israelites in Egypt that God began to bring those promises to fulfillment by his mighty acts of salvation. And so for that reason, God could say to Moses that he had not revealed his name as the Lord to his people in times past, because it wasn’t until Moses and the Israelites that they really experienced, that they knew firsthand, that they saw with their own eyes all that is meant by this wonderful name, the Lord. And so in that sense, the Lord says, “By my name, the Lord, I did not make myself known to them.”

God also reminds Moses here of what that name the Lord means, what else it means? It means that he is the God who has set his love and affection upon his people. In other words, he is a God who enters into covenant. He is a God who keeps his covenant promises. He says in verse four, “I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, the land in which they lived as sojourners.” And God goes on to say that because he is faithful to his covenant, he doesn’t say this in so many words, but because he is a God who cannot go back on his word, because he is true and faithful, because he is God, he will keep his commandments. He will remember his covenant. He will bring his people salvation. He will bring them out of Egypt and into the promised land that he gave, that he promised to give to his people. And although the covenant promise that God made with the people of Israel was that he would give them this land in Canaan, this promised land, a land flowing with milk and honey, nevertheless, that was not the heart, that was not the true blessedness of this covenant promise. But God’s greatest promise in that covenant is not just to give them this land, but to give them himself to be their God, to bring them into that communion and fellowship with him as their God. You see this promise in verse 7: “I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God.” Oh, this was a greater promise than all the land in the world. That God would be their God. They would possess him and all the blessedness that is found in him.

This is the heart of the promise that God makes to you as well as a believer in Jesus Christ. If your trust is in the Lord Jesus, know that you belong to God and he belongs to you. He is your God, and he makes all kinds of wonderful promises to you. He doesn’t promise to give you some real estate in the Middle East somewhere, but he gives you greater promises. The forgiveness of sins, eternal life. But again, like with the Israelites, most fundamentally, God’s covenant promise is this, that he gives himself to you to be your God, that you might know him. And in knowing him, communing that communion that you have with him, that you might find eternal life, life abundant, everlasting joy, peace, and life.

And so the first thing that God reminded Moses was of who he is: that he is the Lord. He is the God who has entered into covenant with him. And again, this is the same God who enters into covenant with you and me through his Son, Jesus Christ. We could say this, that God says to us now, ever since the coming of his Son into the world to accomplish our salvation, God says to you and me, he says, “By my name, Jesus, I did not make myself known to the Israelites,” but now he does make himself known to us, to the world by his name, Jesus. Do you know this Jesus? Have you put your hope and faith in him as your Savior from sin and death? Have you repented of sin? Have you submitted to him by faith as your sovereign Lord? In Jesus Christ, God has revealed to us the fullness of his character as a God who is love, full of compassion, full of mercy, patient, gracious, kind. In First John, we read that God is love. God is love. And we would not know what that means if God had not sent his Son into the world. We would not know the fullness of all that that means that God is love, if he did not reveal that to us and manifest that to us in the giving of his Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus was the gift of his love, the revealing of his love, that his only begotten Son, that he gave him up for us all. And in laying down his life for us through that sacrifice, we have eternal life, forgiveness of sins. And so God says to you and me now, through his Son, Jesus Christ, “I am the Lord. I am the Lord who loves you. I am the Lord who loved you even from before the creation of the world. I set you apart in love. I am the Lord who loved you by sending my Son to you. And this is what you must hear. This is the answer that God gives to you when you cry out to him, ‘Why, Lord? Why is this happening to me? Why am I suffering in this way?'” God’s answer to you is not, “Well, let me explain to you the details of my providential workings.” No. He says, “Remember who I am. I am the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. I’ve loved you with an everlasting love, and my love for you is not one bit less now than it ever has been or ever will be. Even though you are going through things that are extremely difficult, this is not a reflection of my heart towards you. But know that I love you and I have a purpose for you in this that is good, good that is for your blessedness, not for evil.” That’s God’s answer, his first answer to your prayer when you cry out to him, “Why?”

And in the second thing that the Lord tells Moses, we hear God’s second answer to that prayer of “why?” And that is, the Lord declares to Moses what he would do for his people. So in verses 6 through 8, God commands Moses to declare to the people of Israel all the things that he is going to do for their salvation. And you’ll notice that when you read verses six through eight, all of these things, or virtually all of them, are things that the Lord has already told Moses that he would do for the people of Israel. And so what God is doing here for Moses, he is not telling him new information, but he is reminding him, bringing to his remembrance the things that he has already declared to him. Apparently, Moses and the Israelites were forgetful. They needed to hear these promises again. And how true is that for you and me? How true that is for us? Our problem as Christians is not that we don’t intellectually know the promises of God. And what he will do for our salvation is that we forget them. We need to hear them over and over again. We need to be reminded of them again and again. That’s a huge part of the ministry of preaching and teaching the people of God. It is to remind them of truths that they have already heard. That’s not every sermon; it’s not 100% new information you haven’t heard before. It might be very little new information, maybe no new information, but simply a reminder. “Remember, this is what God will do for you.”

Well, what does the Lord remind Moses that he will do for his people, Israel? Well, there are seven things here in verses six through eight, and they all begin with the declaration, “I will.” And I’ll just go through them. Verse 6: “I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians.” Verse 6: “I will deliver you from slavery to them.” Verse 6: “I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment.” Of course, that refers to the ten plagues, the mighty signs and wonders that the Lord was about to do. Verse 7: “I will take you to be my people.” Verse 7 again: “I will be your God.” Verse 8: “I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.” Verse 8: “I will give it to you for possession.” And so here God reveals himself not only as the great I am, but he is the great I will. “I will do this for you.”

And these are the “I wills” that God declares to you as believers in Jesus Christ: “I will never count your sins against you. I will be with you always in this life and in the life to come. I will give you grace to meet every difficulty that you face in this world. I will fill you with my Holy Spirit to produce in you the fruit of the Spirit. I will enable you to believe and obey my word. I will see to it that your prayers and labors for my sake are never in vain. I will cause all things, even the suffering and struggles in your life, to work out for good. I will give you victory over sin and death forever. I will raise you from the grave just as I raised Jesus Christ from the grave. And I will bring you to the heavenly home that I prepared for you.” These are the promises that God makes to you in Christ.

And notice how in this passage in verses 6 through 8, at the very beginning of all these “I will” statements of all these promises, and then at the very end of all these promises, in verse 8, God says, “I am the Lord.” And so he bookends all the promises that he makes to his people with his divine name. And by doing this, the Lord was saying, “Only I can promise you salvation and fulfill it and deliver it.” The idols, the false gods that the Egyptians worshiped, that the nations in that day worshiped, they made promises of salvation, but they could not deliver because they were false gods. They had no power. And it’s the same today as well. There are all kinds of idols and false gods that make all kinds of promises to us if we will only devote ourselves to them and their promises. “If you devote yourself to the pursuit of money or success or pleasure, you will receive joy, contentment, and peace, and life.” But we know that these promises of these false gods, these idols, are lies, because these things can never deliver the joy, the life, the contentment, the fulfillment that our hearts desire. Idols cannot deliver on what they promise, but the Lord can. He does. The Lord Jesus Christ, he alone can deliver on his promise of life, blessedness, forgiveness, resurrection. Only Jesus can fulfill his promises to you. And so the Lord also reminded Moses of all the good things he promised for his people.

As we read on in this passage, we learned that things didn’t immediately turn around for Moses. Moses, in obedience and faith, he tells the people all that he was supposed to tell them. And verse nine says this: “They did not listen to Moses because of their broken spirit and harsh slavery.” And this is where Moses just about reaches the end of his rope. He’s just about ready to throw in the towel again. He tries to convince God that he is not qualified. He says, “If the Israelites hadn’t listened to me, how can I expect Pharaoh to listen to me?” And surely what he is telling the Lord is, “Lord, I told you, I’m a man of uncircumcised lips. I’m not good at public speaking. You should have sent someone else.” And at this point, the prayer very nearly crosses that border between a godly cry of “why” to an ungodly, rebellious complaint. It’s very close, if not over that border. But that is how discouraged and dispirited Moses is. But notice the patience of God. God is so patient with his servant. He doesn’t rebuke Moses. He doesn’t say, “Moses, I’m finished with you. I’m raising up another Israelite who will be faithful to me.” But rather, the Lord repeats his command that he and Aaron are to bring the people of Israel out of Egypt. And of course, what that implies is that they will succeed in that, in God’s timing.

God is patient with you as well. When you come to the end of your rope, when you are ready to throw in the towel, to say, “I can’t go on in faith anymore, God is so absent. I don’t understand what’s happening, what’s going on.” God is patient. He’s patient with you in your struggle. And he’ll give you the grace to learn to trust in him. And it’s a lifelong lesson to trust in him despite all the difficulties he brings into our lives, and to trust that he will work them out for good.

The great reformer John Calvin, there was a point in his life when he felt the same way Moses did early on in his ministry. Calvin served for a time in the city of Geneva, Switzerland. Eventually he was forced out of that city because of theological and political conflicts that were very trying, very difficult for him. And Calvin was more than happy to be full from Geneva. He didn’t want to go back there. He had suffered so much there. But at some point, the city leaders came back to Calvin. They begged him to come back to Geneva, to minister there, to lead the church there. And I believe it must have, if we can read between the lines a bit, it must have seemed to Calvin this was the will of God. Yet the last thing he wanted to do was go back to that city. And so he wrote about that. He said, “Rather would I submit to death a hundred times than to that cross on which I had to perish daily a thousand times over.” Calvin, tell us what you really think of going back to Geneva. Don’t beat around the bush, but tell us what you think. That was serious reluctance on his part to do the will of God. But he did return to Geneva, and the rest is history. As they say, God used him mightily there. But despite his own reluctance, he was faithful, and just as Moses, despite his reluctance, he, by the grace of God, was faithful. And no doubt later, Moses could look back on the troubles that he experienced in Egypt, and he could see with hindsight that it was all part of God’s plan. He could see how God worked even through the disappointments, the dashed hopes, the frustrations, in order to accomplish his purposes. And that is true for you as well. This is the lesson that suffering, disappointment, hardship, confusing things, that these are not contrary to the purpose of God for you, but this is part of God’s purpose. Purpose to use them for your ultimate happiness in him.

I want to finish by reading a quote from C.H. Charles Spurgeon. This is from his devotional Morning and Evening, and we’ll conclude with this quote. He said, “Yesterday I could climb the mountain and view the landscape and rejoice with confidence in my future, future inheritance. Today my spirit has no hopes, but many fears, no joys, but great distress. Is this part of God’s plan for me? Can this be the way in which God would bring me to heaven? Yes, it is. Even so, the eclipse of your faith, the darkness of your mind, the fainting of your hope, all these things are just parts of God’s method of making you ready for the great inheritance which you will soon enjoy. These trials are for your testing and for the strengthening of your faith. They are waves that wash you further upon the rock. They are winds that steer your ship more quickly toward the desired haven. What David wrote then will be true of you: ‘He brought them to their desired haven.'”

Let’s pray.

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The Old Testament reading is Exodus 5:1-21, and this is the inerrant and infallible word of God. 

“Afterward, Moses and Aaron went and said to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may hold a feast to me in the wilderness’. But Pharaoh said, ‘Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, and moreover I will not let Israel go’. Then they said, ‘The God of the Hebrews has met with us. Please let us go a three days journey into the wilderness, that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God, lest he fall upon us with pestilence or with the sword’. But the king of Egypt said to them, ‘Moses and Aaron, why do you take the people away from their work? Get back to your burdens’. And Pharaoh said, ‘Behold, the people of the land are now many, and you make them rest from their burdens’. The same day, Pharaoh commanded the taskmasters of the people and their foremen, “You shall no longer give the people straw to make bricks, as in the past. Let them go and gather straw for themselves. But the number of bricks that they made in the past, you shall impose on them. You shall by no means reduce it, for they are idle. Therefore, they cry, let us go and offer sacrifice to our God. Let heavier work be laid on the men, that they may labor at it and pay no regard to lying words’.

So the taskmasters and the foremen of the people went out and said to the people, ‘Thus says Pharaoh, I will not give you straw. Go and get your straw yourselves, wherever you can find it. But your work will not be reduced in the least. So the people were scattered throughout all the land of Egypt to gather stubble for straw’. The taskmasters were urgent, saying, complete your work, your daily task, each day, as when there was straw. And the foremen of the people of Israel, whom Pharaoh’s taskmasters had said over them, were beaten, and were asked, ‘Why have you not done all your tasks of making bricks today and yesterday, as in the past’? 

Then the foreman of the people of Israel came and cried to Pharaoh, ‘Why do you treat your servants like this? No straw is given to your servants, yet they say to us, make bricks. And behold, your servants are beaten, but the fault is in your own people’. But he said, ‘You are idle, you are idle. That is why you say, let us go and sacrifice to the Lord. Go now and work. No straw will be given you, but you must still deliver the same number of bricks. The foreman of the people of Israel saw that they were in trouble when they said, ‘You shall by no means reduce your number of bricks, your daily task each day’. They met Moses and Aaron who were waiting for them as they came out from Pharaoh. And they said to them, ‘The Lord look on you and judge because you have made a stink in the sight of Pharaoh and his servants and have put a sword in their hand to kill us’. Then Moses turned to the Lord and said, ‘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’. 

You can keep your place there for the sermon. But first, let’s hear the New Testament reading, which is Romans 6:1-11.

Romans 6, 1 through 11, and then we’ll turn back to Exodus Chapter 5.

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means. How can we who died to sin still live in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried, therefore, with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. 

For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died to sin has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again. Death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died, he died to sin once for all, but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. 

The grass withers, the flower fails but the word of our God will stand forever.

One of the last things that Jesus said to his disciples after he was arrested and tried and crucified was this. He said to his disciples, “In the world you will have tribulation”. And of course, these are words that our Lord speaks to us as well as his disciples today. He does not promise us as his followers that we can expect a life of ease and pleasure and comfort. But rather, as Christians, we are to expect in this life some measure of affliction and hardship. 

The apostle Paul, he said the same truth when he said, “Through many tribulations, we must enter the kingdom of God”. And that really is the theme of this passage from Exodus this morning. Although God promised his people Israel that he would bring them out from under their bondage in Egypt, that he would rescue them from their affliction there, the Israelites, they would only reach their destination of the promised land by going through many tribulations.

The specific troubles that we heard from Exodus 5 that the Israelites experienced in Egypt were, of course, unique to the people of God when they were slaves to Pharaoh. However, the things that they suffered are examples or types of the very same kinds of afflictions and tribulations that the people of God have always had to endure living in this fallen world and we can identify three kinds of tribulations that the Israelites suffered here in this passage that we as the people of God today to one degree or another also experience or should expect to experience in this world. First of all, the first tribulation is opposition from an unbelieving world Secondly, the power of sin. And the third tribulation that is pictured for us here is the presence of conflict in the church. So opposition of an unbelieving world, the power of sin, and the presence of conflict in the church. 

First we’ll consider opposition from an unbelieving world. The church suffers from this. At the end of chapter four, and that’s where we left off last Lord’s Day but at the end of chapter four things were looking pretty good for Moses as God’s appointed one to deliver the Israelites out of Egypt. Despite the fact that Moses was afraid that the people of Israel would not listen to him, that they would not believe the message that he would give to them, that the Lord had raised him up to deliver them from their bondage to Egypt, that he would lead them into the Promised Land, a land flowing with milk and honey.  Despite that, despite Moses’ fears that they would not listen, the people of Israel did in fact listen to Moses and they believed. And they even proved their faith in the Lord and their trust in the message that Moses brought to them by bowing down their heads and worshiping God.

And so things were looking not too bad. But the Israelites, if they thought that the way to the promised land from here on out, if it would be smooth sailing, they were in for a very rude awakening. At the beginning of our passage in chapter 5, Moses and Aaron, they go to Pharaoh. They go to him to deliver that message that the Lord gave to them to give to Pharaoh.

And so they say in verse one, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, let my people go that they may hold a feast to me in the wilderness”. And Pharaoh’s response to that was about as friendly and receptive as you might imagine from this tyrant who ruled his people with an iron fist. He says in verse two, “Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, and moreover, I will not let Israel go”.

So already, here at the very first occasion, when Moses and Aaron speak to Pharaoh, we see the hardness of the heart of Pharaoh, his arrogance, his stubborn refusal to believe the truth of the Word of God that was proclaimed to them by Moses, or proclaimed to him by Moses and Aaron. And there’s something ironic in what Pharaoh says here in his response to Moses and Aaron, if you consider carefully the words that he says. On the one hand, although he doesn’t say it explicitly in so many words, Pharaoh basically claims here that he doesn’t believe in the existence of the Lord, of such a God. Who is the Lord, he says? I’ve never heard of him. I don’t believe in him. As far as I’m concerned, he doesn’t exist. 

But on the other hand, Pharaoh is passionately adamant in his assistance that he will not obey the voice of the Lord. That is, the Lord whom he professes, we can infer, the Lord whom he professes not to believe in. If Pharaoh really doesn’t believe in the existence of the Lord, then why is he so worked up about refusing to obey Him? And you see a similar response today on the part of the atheist when it comes to the existence of God. The atheist will deny that there is such a thing as God. He will say, God is a fairy tale. It is a superstitious relic from a bygone era, not fit for our enlightened reason today. God is simply the figment of man’s imagination, a crutch for weak people, and so on and so on.

Basically, the atheist says, “Who is God? I don’t know God. He does not exist”. And yet, at the same time, that same person will become very intense, very passionate in his denial of the truth of God. He will become very adamant that he will never submit to such a God. And that raises the question, why is he so worked up in his opposition to something that he professes does not even exist? And the reason is, the Bible gives us the reason for that. The reason is that even the atheist has, in fact, a true knowledge of the true God. 

The Bible tells us in Romans 1 that all people have received true knowledge of God. All people have been given by God a knowledge of Himself because God reveals Himself to all people in the things that He has made. The unbeliever suppresses that knowledge of the truth of God in his heart, he suppresses the truth in unrighteousness. So he knows the truth, he has true knowledge of God and yet he denies it. He suppresses that truth, yet it is there, deep down it is there. And so for the atheist, his atheism, his denial of God, is not just an abstract intellectual opinion about the question of the existence of God.

Rather, no matter how he may couch it in sophisticated philosophical terms or intellectual terms, his atheism is truly the outward expression of a heart within that is raging against God, that is an act of rebellion against the God whom he knows is the creator of all things and who is his judge. It’s been said that the atheist will say two things about God – “One, I don’t believe in God, and two, I hate him”. And that’s essentially what Pharaoh is saying here in this passage. I have no idea who the Lord is, but I hate him and I will not submit to him. 

Now, Pharaoh’s unbelief, and he gives us a striking picture of the unbelief of man. His unbelief would have been for him just a very serious personal problem were it not for the fact that he was Pharaoh. He was the sovereign king over Egypt and he was the one who ruled the people of Israel and therefore his unbelief was not just a personal problem for Pharaoh but his unbelief meant a tremendous suffering for the people of Israel. When Moses and Aaron came to Pharaoh, Pharaoh did not merely dismiss them as a couple of religious eccentrics, but his response was to ratchet up the intensity of the misery and suffering of the Israelite slaves. And he did this by forcing them to go and to find their own straw in making bricks. And so, Pharaoh’s unbelief became Israel’s problem. It became the source of their misery and affliction in Egypt. 

And here we have a picture of what has been true for the people of God and for the church, for the Christian church ever since the very beginning of the church. And that is Christians have suffered tribulation in this world because so often they have been ruled by people who do not believe in the word of God and whose hearts are hard against the truth of God’s word as that is revealed to us in the scriptures and in Jesus Christ.

If a government, if the rulers of a nation deliberately reject the truth about God and Christ revealed in His Word, then sooner or later, inevitably, they will actively oppose those who do believe in the true God and who seek to serve and worship God as He is made known to us in Christ. It will take place. And the reason for that is because it is an issue of authority. It is a question of authority. Whenever the authority of God is deliberately rejected, then the authority of man must take its place. And rule based on the authority of man, sooner or later, will not tolerate the service and the worship of a competing authority, which is, for us, God. 

And this is exactly what happened here with Pharaoh. At heart, he would not tolerate anyone, God or otherwise, who claimed a greater authority than his over the people of Israel. In his mind, God, the Lord, was not the God of the Israelites, but he was. You’ll notice that Moses and Aaron came to Pharaoh with a message from God, thus says the Lord. And what does Pharaoh do? He sends out his henchmen to the people of Israel with a very different message, “thus says Pharaoh”. And in a modern secular worldview, the highest authority will not be God, but the highest authority will reside with those whoever happened to hold the reins of power at the time. And so the powers that be will say, not “thus says the Lord, but thus says the state, thus says the party, thus says the leader”. 

And so Pharaoh here represents not just the unbeliever, but he represents all human authority and power that exalts itself to the place of God. And again, human power that exalts itself to the place of God must and will oppose anyone that claims the true God, the God of the Bible, is the only God that is to be served and worshipped. Now, we can give thanks and praise to God that, though we know this is true, we personally have not experienced this to the same degree as so many Christians in the history of the Church have experienced it, and as so many Christians in the world today experience it. We have been very blessed to live in a society and a nation in which we have not suffered this degree at least of persecution or opposition from the government or from society, and I pray that we will continue to be so blessed.

However, if God and His providence should ever bring us into a time in which we face more intense opposition or even persecution because of our faith in Christ, let’s not forget, we must remember that suffering opposition for the sake of the gospel is really, historically speaking, the normal state of affairs for the people of God in this world. Listen to what Peter tells us – 1 Peter 4.12, “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you as though something strange were happening to you”.

Peter’s saying that what is strange is not the fact that you may suffer persecution. What is strange is if you are not suffering opposition in some way. Now, another lesson that we can take from this is what we are to do as the people of God, as the Church, in this world in which there is the unbelief or the opposition of the unbelieving world. The first priority for the Church in this world of sin and unbelief, when there is opposition, our first priority is simply to be the Church, to do what Christ has called us to do, as the Church.

You’ll notice when Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh, You’ll notice that they did not demand of Pharaoh legislation for better working conditions. They did not demand a referendum to recall Pharaoh. They did not protest Pharaoh in asking for higher tariffs on imported bricks. What they insisted on was simply this, that they must go to worship and serve their God.

And in our situation today, living as we are in a society that is increasingly becoming more pagan in character. We must never lose sight of our primary calling as the church and as Christians, and that is to worship and serve the Lord Jesus Christ according to his word. That is what Christ calls us to do. And so, if we are faithful to gather week by week to worship God by faith in Jesus Christ, if we are faithful to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ, to believe that gospel, if we are faithful to pray, to pursue holiness, to repent of sin, if we are faithful to love and serve one another out of love for Christ, if we are faithful to instruct our children in the truth of the Christian faith, If by the grace of God we are faithful to pursue these things as the church, as the people of God, this is not only pleasing in the sight of God because this is what He requires of us, but also in the long run, by the Lord’s blessings, I believe we will be far more effective in bringing any kind of genuine change to this world. We would be far more effective in simply being the church in this world than we would be if we were to focus all our energies on whatever happens to be the pressing political or social issues of the day. And so our number one priority today as the people of God was the same priority of the Israelites living under the the yoke of Pharaoh and that is to worship God, to serve the Lord, to worship him according to his word that he gives us and how we are to please him and worship him.  And so, just as Moses and Aaron faced the wrath of Pharaoh and his unbelief, so we as Christians, if we are faithful to God and his word in one degree or another we will face the opposition of unbelief and that is one of the tribulations through which we must enter the kingdom of God. 

A second kind of tribulation that we experience that is pictured for us here in this passage is the power of sin, the power of sin. After Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh, they made their request to sacrifice to the Lord in the wilderness. Pharaoh, in his twisted mind, he reasoned to himself that obviously the problem with these Hebrews is that they were just plain lazy. Never mind the fact that they were literally working like slaves, because they were slaves. Never mind the fact that Pharaoh could see with his very eyes the cities that were being built up with these bricks that the Israelites were making every day. In his mind, the people were idle.

The solution to that problem was to make them work even harder. And so he says to himself, “OK, no more Mr. Nice Guy”. And so he gave the Israelites an impossible burden. From then on, they would no longer provide any straw for the Israelites in making their bricks. But of course, they would have to keep making the same number of bricks every day. The straw in the bricks reinforced the strength of the bricks like we would put rebar in concrete to reinforce that concrete. Apparently, archaeologists have discovered from this time period in Egypt, bricks that actually have straw on them, just like they are described for us here in Exodus. And so from now on, the Israelites would have to find their own straw. They’d have to keep making the same number of bricks every day. But this was too much for the Israelites to bear. It was impossible, humanly impossible. They could not keep making the same number of bricks and find their own straw.  They went out all over the place. They were gathering whatever stubble they could find for straw, but they failed to meet their quota. And since they failed, the foremen of the Israelites, and these foremen were Israelites themselves, they were Jews themselves, they were beaten by their Egyptian taskmasters. And so Pharaoh, in response to Moses and Aaron, not only refuses to let them go to worship the Lord, but he makes their lives all the more miserable.

And we have here, pictured for us, the power of sin as sin exercises dominion and tyranny over the one who is under its power. The Pharaoh here represents the power of sin to enslave, to hold in bondage. and that’s exactly what sin does. Sin exercises a total dominion over a person that is apart from grace, apart from Christ. Just as Pharaoh ruthlessly ruled over his slaves, Jesus teaches us that everyone who commits a sin is a slave to sin. Not just an occasional party to it, not just influenced by it, but everyone who commits sin, which is everybody, is a slave to sin. 

And you can see this in the lives of people. Sometimes this is demonstrated very clearly in the lives of people whose lives are ravaged, destroyed by the power of sin, the bondage that they are held in. You see it in those who are addicted to alcohol or drugs. Their lives literally can be destroyed. You see it in the man who cannot, he cannot stop looking at pornography. You see it in the person who cannot control his anger or her anger. And these may be more obvious examples. But apart from Christ, even the person who seemingly has his life all together, who seems to be in control of himself, even that person is enslaved to one kind of sin or another. It may be something like pride or self-righteousness or something like that. But everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin.

And just as the Israelites would have been destroyed by Pharaoh’s bitter yoke, so sin will not lighten its grip on a person until that person is destroyed by the death and the judgment of God that comes upon that person for his sin. That is the condition in which we are born. That is our state as those who inherited sin from Adam. We are born in this world as sinners. And not just sinners, but slaves to sin, bond servants to the power the dominion of sin over us and that’s why the gospel of Jesus Christ is such good news to us because Jesus Christ came in order not just to help us to be better people, not just to give us a little bit of grace so that we can pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and become moral righteous people, but Jesus came to do what we could not possibly do, and that is to liberate us, to free us from this bondage to sin. 

When the Son of God died upon the cross, he not only took away from you the guilt of sin, so that you are no longer guilty before a holy God, but he also took away from you the power of sin that reigns over you. And so in Christ you have been set free – set free from the dominion of sin. The truth is that Jesus does not give you some kind of absolute freedom from everything, but he makes you his servants. You become a slave to Christ, to serve him. However, that is true freedom. That is true freedom. The only kind of freedom that is genuine freedom is the freedom that God gives us in Jesus Christ that we would serve Christ and be His slaves. That is the freedom that brings joy, that brings life. That is the freedom that fills our hearts, that is true freedom, and that is what Christ came to do for us. And so as Christians we are free from the dominion of sin. However, We have been set free from sin’s enslaving power. Nevertheless, even as believers in this world, we still experience and wrestle with the power of sin. There is still a power that sin can exercise in our hearts, not an enslaving power, but still a power. 

Perhaps we can look at the Israelites as an example, as a picture of what I’m talking about here. I’m looking ahead now in the book of Exodus, but you’ll remember from your own reading of Exodus that when the Israelites were brought out of the land of Egypt and they began to suffer in the wilderness, what did they do? They started to look back to Egypt as though that was where they had it made. They began to complain to God and to Moses that they were better off in Egypt. And so, apparently, The Israelites will look back to this time of abject misery and slavery in Egypt as a time of, “this was the good old days”. And in the very same way, sin can deceive us. Sin can attract us to itself to entice us to return to its sinful ways and habits. It always has that appeal, that attractiveness to us. It promises us freedom and happiness. Well, how do we deal with that? The solution is to remember the truth of what you are in Jesus Christ. You belong to Christ. You are his servant. You have died with him in his death. You have been raised up with him in his resurrection. So you are a new creature in Christ Jesus.

You are no longer a slave to sin, but you belong to Christ. Romans 6:13-14 do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life and your members to God as instruments for righteousness for sin will have no dominion over you since you are not under law but under grace sin no longer has dominion over you but you have been raised up with Christ to belong to Him and the more that you have this understanding of who you are in Christ, the more that this is absorbed into your heart and your mind, the less attractive and appealing a sin will be for you.

And so the Israelites, they were in bondage to Pharaoh and his cruel tyranny, and this is a picture again for us as the people of God, of the power of sin, and that that is one of the tribulations that we must go through in order or on our way to entering into the kingdom of God. 

The third kind of tribulation that the Israelites suffered was conflict among them and often we have to endure conflict in the church. Maybe the saddest part of this whole chapter is what happens after the Israelite foremen seek to appeal to Pharaoh Israelite foremen, they go to Pharaoh and of course they get nowhere with him. He accuses them of being lazy, orders them to go back to their brick making, and that of course completely demoralizes the foremen because they knew they couldn’t possibly make the same number of bricks as before. All they had to look forward to at this point was more beatings. And you would think that the foreman would put all the blame for their miserable circumstances where it belonged. That was on Pharaoh, on his wicked rule over them. He is the one to blame. He is the enemy of the people of Israel. But what did the foreman do? They run into Moses and Aaron, their leaders, and they blame them instead.

They say in Exodus verse 21 Chapter 5, “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”. Was this fair? Was this a just thing that they said to Pharaoh or to Moses and Aaron? Of course not. It was not fair at all. Moses and Aaron, they were faithfully carrying out the Lord’s commands. They were his faithful servants, and yet, even as they served the people whom God gave to them to help and to liberate from Egypt, they faced criticism, hostility from these very people that they were seeking to help. And there is a truth here. It is certainly true for those in positions of leadership in the church, but it can be true for all believers in Christ, and that is, so often, as you are genuinely seeking to honor Christ in serving others, in helping others, there will be times when your motives are questioned, when your actions are questioned, when you are criticized and accused of this or that. That will sometimes be the case among the people of God, as long as we are in this fallen world. 

But this is the saddest part of the chapter because the people of God here, they should have been united. They should have been one in heart and mind. They should have all agreed that Pharaoh was the problem, not Moses and Aaron. And they should have all shared the same hope and assurance that the Lord was truly working salvation through his appointed servants. But sadly, they were not united. And that can only be the work of the devil, the evil one.

And when there is division in the church, to be sure, when there is division in the church, humanly speaking, there will always be sin as the cause of it. One person may not be responsible at all for it, or he may be mostly responsible for it, but whatever the case may be, there will always be sin as the cause of division and conflict in the church.  But even beyond that, underlying that, ultimately, that conflict is the work of Satan. It is his will to sow seeds of division among the people of God.

And this is one of his most effective weapons in his war against Christ and his people. And the lesson that we ought to take from this passage is that we must never lose sight of who the true enemy of the Church really is. And so when we are in disagreement with our brothers and sisters in Christ, or worse, when we are in conflict with our brothers and sisters in Christ, and let me be clear, I’m not talking about those in the church who may be wolves in sheep’s clothing or heretics in the church, but I’m talking about those who we have every reason to believe are genuine Christian people, brothers and sisters in the Lord.

But when we are in disagreement or even conflict with them, what we are tempted to think is that they are the enemies. They are the bad guys, we are the good guys. And we lose sight of the fact that the real enemy, the true enemy of the church is the evil one. It is the devil, Satan.

When the foreman left Pharaoh, when they saw Moses and Aaron, they forgot that their enemy was Pharaoh, not these two servants of the Lord. And so when we have disagreements in the church, when we are in conflict with one another, we must seek to work that conflict out according to the Bible, to seek reconciliation, restoration. But we must never lose sight of who the true enemy is. We must never lose sight of the fact that it is the evil one who is seeking to grow this conflict.

And when we lose sight of that, then Satan has accomplished his purpose just as he did here in Egypt to bring division to the people of God. And so the third tribulation we often suffer as we enter the kingdom of God is the pain, the grief that comes with conflict in the church. And so in this passage the Israelites, having received this message from Moses that the Lord is about to bring them out of Egypt and into the Promised Land, they learn the hard way the meaning of the words that Jesus spoke later when he said, “In the world you will have tribulation”.

And Jesus not only taught this lesson with the words that he spoke, but he demonstrated the truth of this in the life that he lived in his coming into the world for our salvation. Jesus showed us that the road to redemption, the path to salvation is one of affliction and suffering. In order for him to purchase our redemption our Lord first had to suffer. And in the Lord’s Supper this morning we have pictured before our very eyes the suffering that our Savior had to endure in order to bring salvation to us. His body was broken upon the cross for our sin. His very blood was poured out for our sin. He suffered nothing less than death and the curse of God in order to bring us forgiveness and eternal life. Now the suffering of Jesus was unique in the sense that only the suffering of Jesus could purchase our redemption. Only the suffering of Jesus could save us. 

However, he set an example that we who would follow in the steps of our Lord, we also will suffer. After Jesus warned his disciples that we will have tribulation in the world, he told them, but take heart, I have overcome the world. Jesus overcame Satan, sin, and death by his death and resurrection from the grave.

And if your faith is in Christ today, his victory is your victory. And so by faith in Christ, even as you go through affliction and tribulation in this world, you know that the outcome of all of it is not uncertain or unsure. Just as for the Israelites here, the outcome of what was going to happen was never in question. It was certain that the Lord would fulfill his promise to bring them out of Egypt and into the promised land.

And in the same way, the outcome of your faith and hope in Jesus Christ is certain. That is salvation, resurrection, entrance into glory. Just as God would certainly rescue His people from Egypt and bring them into the promised land through many tribulations, so your Savior, He will most certainly bring you into that true promised land, that eternal promised land that is yours. He will do so through many tribulations, but you have the promise and the assurance that He will bring you to that promised glory.

Let’s pray.

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The Old Testament reading is Exodus 4:18-31. And this passage describes what takes place after Moses’s encounter with the Lord at the burning bush. So we’ll read from 18 to 31. And this is the inerrant, the infallible word of God.

“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 are still alive. And Jethro said to Moses, go in peace. And the Lord said to Moses of 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. And the Lord said to Moses, when you go back to Egypt, see that you do before Pharaoh all the miracles that I’ve put in your power. But I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go. 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. If you refuse to let him go, behold, I will kill your firstborn son. 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 let him alone. It was then that she said, A bridegroom of blood, because of the circumcision. The Lord said to Aaron, Go into the wilderness to meet Moses. So he went and met him at 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. 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.

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.”

You can keep your place there. We’ll hear now from the New Testament.

Our New Testament reading is Romans 8:12-17. And this passage speaks of one of the greatest blessings that is ours in Christ. And that is that we have been adopted as the sons, the daughters of God. And that truth of our sonship is one of the themes that we will consider this morning.

So Romans chapter 12, Romans chapter 8, Romans 8 verses 12 through 17. 

“So then brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die. But if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.

For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry, Abba, Father. The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and of children, then heirs, heirs of God, and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.”

If you noticed in the bulletin, the title that I’ve chosen for this sermon is “Holy Father”. And I hope that didn’t make anybody nervous. I’m not going to preach a sermon about the new Pope, but I took the term “Holy Father” from the high priestly prayer of Jesus in John chapter 17. In that chapter, Jesus is praying to his Father, and at one point in that prayer, our Lord addresses God, His Father, as “Holy Father”.

And this term that He uses to address God is a striking term because it combines two truths about God. On the one hand, God is a Father to His people. He is kind, He is loving, He is patient towards us who are his children and so he is our father but he is also holy. He is infinitely – he is uncompromisingly holy and righteous. He is so holy that he cannot abide with anything or anyone in his presence who is impure or unrighteous in his sight. So he is “Holy Father”. Jesus also brought these two truths together when he taught his disciples to pray, and he taught us to pray in that same way, and that is that we are to begin our prayers with “Our Father in heaven”. Our Father in heaven. 

He is our Father, and yet he dwells in the holy habitation of heaven. In this passage in Exodus chapter 4, we have here a series of loosely connected events that tell us what took place from the time that Moses left the burning bush until the time that he set out for his journey to Egypt. And there are several different lessons that we can learn from this passage, but what I want to zero in on with you today is this juxtaposition or this combination of these two truths concerning God that are brought together in this term, “Holy Father”.

First of all, God is the father of his beloved people. He calls Israel here his firstborn son. So he claims Israel as his children and himself as their father. And secondly, we see in this passage that God is a God of absolute righteousness. He is holy. And so this passage reveals to us that truth that Jesus expressed when he addressed God as “Holy Father”. So first, as we look at Exodus Chapter 4. We’ll consider what this passage teaches us about the fatherhood of God, and then we’ll consider what this passage teaches us about the sonship, or rather the holiness of God. So first, the fatherhood of God, and then secondly, The Holiness of God.

So those will be our two lessons this morning. So first of all, the fatherhood of God. When verse 18 begins, Moses has already left the burning bush. He has had this amazing encounter with the Lord there at the burning bush. And then sometime after that, we don’t know how much longer, but sometime after that, Moses goes back to Midian. Of course that’s where he lived, and he goes to visit his father-in-law Jethro, and he asks Jethro for permission to go to Egypt. And he says that he wants to go there in order to see if his relatives are still alive. Of course, Moses had a commission from God. He was commanded by God to go to Egypt, so it’s not as though he needed permission from his father-in-law to go there.

Nevertheless, Moses, in his humility, he does the courteous and the respectful thing, and he asks for his father-in-law’s permission. After all, he was not just his father-in-law, but he was his employer, he was also his friend. And in verse 18, We read what Jethro says in response to Moses’ request. He blesses him. He says, “Go in peace”. Go in peace. And with that, Moses is all set to go to Egypt to carry out this call that he received from the Lord to be the one who would bring deliverance to the people of Israel. However, apparently Moses still needed a little more encouragement from God here at the beginning of his trip. In verse 19, the Lord tells Moses that he does not need to fear his status as a fugitive from justice when he returns to Egypt. He says that that will not be a problem because all the people who were seeking his life are dead. 

And so, then with that encouragement, Moses gathers his wife and his two sons, and most importantly, he takes in his hand the staff of God. We considered that last Sunday. This is the staff, this humble shepherd’s staff that the Lord would use through Moses to perform these incredible signs and wonders that he will do in bringing salvation to his people.

At some point along the way, the Lord speaks again to Moses, and he tells Moses that these miracles that he gave him to do, the staff turning into a serpent, his hand turning leprous, the water of the Nile turning into blood, we looked at those signs last week, but the Lord tells Moses to perform those signs before Pharaoh and before the Egyptians. And that was to testify to them that Moses was sent by God in order to bring his people freedom from the Egyptians. But the Lord says in 21 that Pharaoh will not be so receptive to Moses and to his demand that the people of Israel be set free.

He says in verse 21 to Moses, “I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go”. So the Lord tells Moses what he’s going to do in Pharaoh’s heart. He’s going to harden his heart. Later, as we go on in our study of Exodus, we’ll give more consideration to what this means, that the Lord will harden the heart of Moses. We’ll consider all that that means, but for now, Just notice that the Lord will harden his heart, that this will be an act of God to increase in Pharaoh his own stubborn unbelief. Now Pharaoh, of course, he alone bore the guilt of his sin, he alone is responsible for his hardened heart. The Lord is free to do whatever He will with His creatures and He does take an active role in hardening Pharaoh’s heart. Again, we’ll go into that more deeply at some other time in the future.

But the important thing for you and me to see here for now is that this declaration of the Lord that he will harden Pharaoh’s heart, that this tells us that everything that will take place in the Exodus, everything that will happen from here as Moses is sent to Egypt, as he will do these signs before Pharaoh, as Pharaoh’s heart will be hardened. All of this is the unfolding of God’s sovereign purpose and plan to rescue his people from Egypt. In other words, God was perfectly sovereign. He ruled with absolute power and authority over all that takes place in Egypt and the salvation of the people of Israel, even the hardening of Pharaoh’s hearts. and we can of course apply that to us as Christians. We have been redeemed by God, we have been saved by Him because of His power, His sovereign rule over all things, over us and over everything that He has made. And so here is a reminder to us that our salvation is the result of God’s absolute rule over all things to accomplish for us that salvation that He has determined for us, that He has planned for us from all eternity.

And so, again, the Word of God testifies to us that as those who have been saved by Jesus Christ, our salvation is a result of God’s sovereign grace. And so we give all praise and thanks to Him. He does all things for our salvation in Christ. Now the Lord tells Moses that when Pharaoh refuses to let his people go, that Moses is to respond to Pharaoh by saying this – and this is verses 22 and 23.

“Moses is to 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. If you refuse to let him go, behold, I will kill your firstborn son.”

This is the very first time in the scriptures now that we encounter what is such a beautiful, fundamental truth about God’s dealings with us as his people, and that is this, that God is not just our God whom we are called to serve and to worship, but he is our Father. He is our Heavenly Father who adopts us as his children. We are his sons and daughters. And so as Christians, as those whom God has loved and adopted, we call him our father. We are his children. Again, this is a very bedrock truth that the scripture tells us about our salvation – that God has made us, he’s brought us into his family. Now there’s a sense in which it’s not untrue, at least it’s not completely false to say that all people are in a sense the offspring of God just by virtue of the fact that all human beings are created in God’s image and so we are his offspring or

we are his children in that sense and that applies to all people. However, only in this very special way can we say that we are the children of God. We are those whom God has chosen to belong to Him. We, in Christ, we are those whom God has set apart in eternity, that we should be His special people, that we should be His children.

And so it is particularly, especially those who belong to Christ that have the right to say, I am a son of God, I am a daughter of God. An unbeliever cannot say that. And just as a human father is filled with love and concern for his children, so the heart of God is filled with love and tenderness and kindness and compassion towards his children, his adopted children, his spiritual children. And in our passage, the Lord testifies to his love for his children Israel when he calls them his son. “They are my firstborn son”. The Lord is declaring here that he loves his people because they are his children. In that light, then, when we consider what Pharaoh is doing here, we can see just how heinous and wicked his sin is. He is not just preventing a people from giving worship and service to their God. He is doing that, but he’s doing so much more. He’s attempting to separate the people of God from their father in heaven who loves them. He is attempting to separate God’s people from the love that God has for them. And of course, that is impossible. That will never happen. But because Pharaoh will attempt to do this, according to God’s perfect justice, it would cost him the life of his own firstborn son. It would cost the Egyptians the lives of their firstborn. But when we view the Exodus in light of this truth that God is bringing to himself his people, his children, this cast, it gives us a different perspective of viewing all that takes place here.

One author has said that the Exodus is not just a story of liberation, but it is a repatriation. That is to say, it is a story of the reunion between God the Father and the people whom he loves and calling them out of Egypt and bringing them to himself that they may know him and serve him and worship him and love him as his people in the wilderness and ultimately in the land of Canaan. And this understanding that God is our father, this is so extremely important. This is so vitally important for us to know based on what the scripture teaches us, based on what our Lord has taught us. When he taught us to pray, the very first words out of our mouth when we pray are to be our “Father” – “Our Father”. And it’s been said that this is the mark of a true Christian, because in a time of great crises or in an emergency, the unbeliever may call out to God. Even the atheist in the foxhole will call out to God, but he’ll say, “Ooh God, save me, help me!”

But the Christian who has come to know God as his Father, instinctively, naturally, when he is in a crisis or an emergency, he calls out, “Father, help me. Oh, Father, save me!” And as Christians, we naturally call out to God as our Father, because according to what we read in Romans Chapter 8, God has given us His Spirit, the Spirit of Sonship, and it is by the Spirit of God that we cry out to Him, “Abba, Father”. And so as Christians, this is one of the glorious truths of our salvation, that we have come to know God, not only as God, as the creator of heaven and earth, as the God whom we are to worship and serve and adore, but more than that, we have come to know Him as our Father. The father who loves us, takes pity on us, is patient and compassionate towards us as our father. 

And one very practical implication of this is that if God is a father to his children, it means that if you are a father, that you as a father are called to reflect the same character of God and his divine love for his children. You are to reflect that in the way in which you love your children. You are to show forth in your love for your children as a father. You are to show forth the character of God in his dealings with his children as our Heavenly Father. The most wonderful illustration that I’ve ever come across of a human father showing forth the divine love of God for his people in the way in which this human father loved his son is what I read, a passage that I read in the autobiography by John Payton. I don’t know if you know who John Payton is, but he was a missionary from Scotland in the 19th century. He served in what was called then the New Hebrides Islands in the South Pacific Ocean. It’s called now Vanuatu, it’s a nation state now. But in his autobiography, Peyton writes about the day when he, as a young man, he left his hometown or his village to go off to divinity school. And he and his father walked together to the train station until John’s father had to turn back to go back to his home.

And here’s how John Peyton describes their parting. And it’s a bit long, but well worth hearing, so this is a quote from John Payton’s autobiography. He says, 

“My dear father walked with me the first six miles of the way. His counsels and tears and heavenly conversation on that parting journey are fresh in my heart as if it had been but yesterday. And tears are on my cheeks as freely now as then, whenever memory steals me away to the scene. For the last half mile or so, we walked on together in almost unbroken silence. His lips kept moving in silent prayers for me, and his tears fell fast when our eyes met together in looks for which all speech was in vain. We halted on reaching the appointed parting place. He grasped my hand firmly for a minute in silence, and then solemnly and affectionately said, ‘God bless you, my son. Your father’s God prosper you and keep you from all evil’. 

Unable to say more, his lips kept moving in silent prayer. In tears we embraced and parted. I ran off as fast as I could, and when about to turn a corner in the road where he would lose sight of me, I looked back and saw him still standing with head uncovered where I had left him, gazing after me. Waving my hat in adieu, I rounded the corner and out of sight in an instance. But my heart was too full and sore to carry me further, so I darted into the side of the road and wept for time. Then rising up cautiously, I climbed the dike to see if he had yet stood where I had left him.

And just at that moment, I caught a glimpse of him climbing the dike and looking out for me. He did not see me, and after he gazed eagerly in my direction for a while, he got down, set his face toward home, and began to return, his head still uncovered and his heart, I felt sure, still rising in prayers for me. I watched through blinding tears till his form faded from my gaze, and then, hastening on my way, vowed deeply and oft by the help of God to live and act so as never to grieve or dishonor such a father and mother as he had given me.” 

Here’s a picture of the kind of love that a father may have for his son, that this love, this longing, the tears that he wept, what an expression that God, the love that God has for us as his children.

He loves us with this kind of love. This is the love that he had for his people Israel. And this is the same heart that God has for his people who are in Christ, for you and me as believers in Jesus. And if your faith is in Jesus Christ, this is the love with which God loves you. He is your father in heaven. He provides for you. He protects you. He cares for you. He instructs you. He leads you. He disciplines you, but always for your good. And what a tragedy it is that there are so many people in this world that, for whom the idea of God as a father is an entirely negative thought, or they cannot conceive what it means that God is a father. And that’s because so many people have not known what a father is supposed to be. Maybe they simply didn’t have a father. Maybe he was absent. Or maybe they had a father who was harsh and unkind. And I wonder how many of the social ills and the pathologies that plague our society today can be largely traced back to this one primary cause that there have been too many men who are fathers of children who have not truly been fathers to their children. But we have in God a perfect father. And even if you grew up with a father who was cold, distant, absent, or perhaps harsh, even abusive, nevertheless, by faith in Christ, you have a true father, a father who was tender, tenderhearted, who was kind, who was faithful, who was always present, who has loved you from all eternity, who loves you now, will love you forever. You have a perfect father in God by faith in Jesus Christ. 

And so just as God was a father to the Israelites, so he is your father. And just as nothing would stand in the way between God and his people, his children, not even Pharaoh and all his chariots and armies, not even Egypt and all their might could stand in the way between God and his love for his people. The Bible assures us that there is nothing in all creation that can keep God and His love from us in Jesus Christ. There is nothing that can separate the love that God has for you in Jesus Christ. 

So God is a Father to His people, but He is at the same time a holy God. And this is the second lesson that we’ll take from this passage this morning, the holiness of God. And Moses learns this lesson in the hard way. He learns it in what happens next. And what happens next, in verses 24 and 26. “These are the verses in which the Lord seeks to kill Moses. And this is one of the most perplexing passages in all of Scripture. Why does God, we’ve just been talking about, the love of God, His love for his children. He has just spoken to Moses at the burning bush. He has just sent him off to Egypt. He’s given him these signs. He will be the one who will deliver the people of Israel from Egypt. But then, all of a sudden, abruptly, out of the blue, the Lord appears to kill Moses. And so this is very strange. And as you might imagine, There have been many explanations offered to give some sense to this passage, and all of them are very debatable. But let’s look at these verses briefly and venture an explanation of what they’re saying, what the Lord is speaking to us through them.

So Moses and his family, they’re on their way out of Egypt, and then all of a sudden, with no warning at all, we are told that the Lord sought to kill Moses. He sought to put him to death. But then the wife of Moses, right after that, Zipporah, she takes out a flint and she circumcises one of their two sons. Now, there are two sons with Moses.

We don’t know which one she circumcised. It doesn’t really matter. Then Zipporah takes the foreskin from her son and she touches Moses’ feet with it. And when Zipporah does that, she says to Moses, surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me. Now, what is this all about? Well, I believe that this passage, the key to understanding this passage is to see how this passage is similar to other passages that are given us in scripture, other accounts of when the Lord puts someone to death for transgressing His commandments. For example, in Leviticus, when Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, when they offered unauthorized or strange fire before the Lord and worshiping Him, immediately they were struck down dead. Fire came from heaven and they were burned up in an instant.

Or, in the New Testament in Acts, you remember that accounts, I forget which chapter, but in the early part of Acts, when Ananias and Sapphira, part of the early church, first Christians, they lied to the apostles and the Holy Spirit about the property that they had sold. And because of that lie, they immediately were struck down dead. And what these passages have in common is that they both took place at a time at the beginning of a new era or a new phase in God’s redemptive dealings with his people. And so Nadab and Abihu, when they offered strange fire to the Lord, this was right at the time when the sacrificial system was being inaugurated.

When Ananias and Sapphire were struck down at the, when they were struck down dead by God, this was at the very beginning of the Christian church, the very beginning of the gospel. And here in our passage, we are at the very beginning of what is the Old Testament gospel. That is the Exodus, the great deliverance of the people of Israel from Egypt. And here, seemingly out of the blue, the Lord appears to put Moses to death.

And the lesson in all these accounts, including ours here in chapter four of Exodus, is that the Lord was teaching his people at this crucial juncture in redemptive history, the Lord was teaching his people that he is deadly serious about obedience to his commandments. The people of God had to understand that the Lord’s commands were not to be trifled with. Nadab and Abihu, it was the sacredness of the sacrificial system. They were not to bring to the Lord a sacrifice of their own imagination, what they thought would please Him, but they had to obey God’s command and worship Him according to His word.They didn’t and they were struck down dead. 

With Ananias and Sapphira, the early Christians had to learn that although as Christians, as those who have come to Christ by faith, their sins were forgiven, they were redeemed, they were justified, nevertheless, the God who saved them was a God who still hated sin. And dishonesty, especially lying to the Holy Spirit, was something that his people must not do. And so, as an example to them, they were struck down.

And here now in Exodus Chapter 4, the issue is circumcision. And somehow the wife of Moses, Zipporah, somehow she was able to connect this imminent death of Moses that the Lord was about to bring upon him. She was able to connect that with the fact that Moses, till now, he had failed to circumcise his son. And so she did it for him. And by touching Moses’ feet with the foreskin that she cut off from her son, she was in effect attributing to Moses that act of circumcision as though Moses had done the circumcision that he had failed to do. And that’s why she says to him, surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me. What she’s saying to Moses is, as my husband and the father of our sons, it was you who should have performed this rite of circumcising our son, this rite that involves the shedding of blood. And you’ll notice that when Zipporah touches the feet of Moses with the foreskin that she had cut from her son, that the text says, so He let him alone. So the Lord relented. He did not put Moses to death. In other words, because Zipporah circumcised their son on behalf of Moses, the Lord relented. He did not carry out his intent to kill Moses.

And so Moses’s failure to circumcise his son was such a serious sin, even though he was the servant of the Lord, even though he was the one whom the Lord was going to use to bring the Israelites out of Egypt, nevertheless, the Lord was prepared even to put Moses to death because of his transgression. And so the lesson that Moses learned here, the lesson that he learned almost at the cost of his life, was the holiness of God. That the Lord is a consuming fire, and were it not for His grace, He would immediately and justly destroy the one who sins against Him.

And that’s a lesson that you and I, even as Christians, we must take to heart. As much as we must remember and rejoice in the fact that God is loving, kind, compassionate, forgiving, we must never forget that He remains and always has been, always will be, a God who is holy, infinitely righteous, of purer eyes than to behold evil, and that we are sinners before Him in ourselves, apart from that covering of Christ’s righteousness. We are sinners. And so God is holy. 

Now, most people, and speaking of just people in general, believers, unbelievers, most people like the idea of God as a loving father. That’s a wonderful thought. God is our father. Most people will resonate with that. But the idea of God, that he is morally pure, that he is perfect in righteousness, this is much harder for most people to accept, to stomach. Because people don’t want a God who is holy. And that’s because a holy God is opposed to the sin and the evil that we embrace and that we love as unbelievers, as those apart from Christ.

And until we know Christ, we hate the idea of a righteous God who condemns the sin that we love. And as long as we love our sin, we will only want to flee from such a God who reveals himself as a God who is righteous and holy. And even for us as Christians, the holiness of God, this can be a frightful thing. We read a passage like this and it may trouble us.

What if I, one day, am going about my daily business, and because of some sin that I’ve committed, the Lord strikes me down dead on the spot? Now certainly God is holy, and if He ever wills for any reason to strike down dead someone because of sin, He’s within His rights to do that. But this passage is not meant to tell us what God ordinarily does with us. This is not how God ordinarily deals with us. But this passage is meant to illustrate the truth about the character of God, that He is holy, that He is righteous, that we always need to remember that, to keep that in mind. That when we come to Him, yes, we call out to Him as our Father in heaven, but we are coming into His presence with reverence and awe. And the truth is that as a Christian, the holiness of God should actually be an encouragement to you, even a comfort to you. As even there is that aspect of that the truth that God is perfectly righteous.

Nevertheless, there is something encouraging in that and that is this. The part of the holiness of God is that he will be faithful and true to his word. Because God is pure, because he is righteous, because he can do no wrong, he will absolutely not go back on what he has promised to us. He will fulfill every covenant promise that he makes to us in Jesus Christ. And that’s why in the Bible, we see in the Bible so often that the righteousness of God and the salvation of God often go hand in hand. For example, in Psalm 98:2, “the Lord has made known his salvation. He has revealed his righteousness in the sight of the nations. Psalm 71:2, “In your righteousness, deliver me and rescue me, incline your ear to me and save me. In your righteousness, save me.” 

Because God is righteous, we know that he will fulfill every promise that he makes to us. Because he is holy, we know that he cannot deny himself or be untrue to himself. He cannot break his promises. And the fact that God will keep his promises to bring salvation to his people, that’s demonstrated in our passage by what happens next in the later part of our passage. Basically, all that God told Moses that would happen, happens. Aaron came to meet Moses just as God promised. Together they gathered the elders of Israel. Aaron spoke for Moses to the people just as the Lord said that he would. And then either Aaron or Moses or both of them, it’s not clear, they performed these signs that the Lord had given to Moses to do in front of the people of Israel. And just as God promised what would happen, happen, the people of Israel believed. They believed the signs that Moses had done for them. And they bowed their heads and they worshiped. And so out of his righteousness, God faithfully brought to pass all that he promised Moses. And so the holiness of God means that God will be faithful. He is true to every word that he has spoken, every promise that he’s given you in Christ.

And so we can put it this way that your salvation in Christ is assured not in spite of the holiness of God, but because of the holiness of God. So God is not just the Father to his people, but he is our Holy Father. And Moses learned these two truths in the various dealings that God had with him. And for you and me, the best way to learn these truths is to look to the cross of Jesus. It is at the cross, especially at the cross, that we see the depths of the perfect, the absolute holiness of God in the way in which He must respond to sin. Because it was at the cross that the sinless Son of God, that Jesus Christ, that there He died for you and me. And we can see in that unspeakable agony and suffering of Jesus as He bore the wrath of His Father upon the cross. We can see just how a holy and righteous God must deal with our sin, our rebellion, our unrighteousness. We see in the suffering of Jesus upon the cross how a holy God thinks of our sin. But at the same time at the cross of Jesus, we see the depths of the fatherly love that God has for us. God so loved his children. He so loved his adoptive children, that’s you and me, that he gave up his natural son, his only begotten son, to suffer the penalty that you and I deserved for our sin. What a testimony, what a revelation of the depths of the love that God has for us. He did not withhold his only beloved begotten son, but gave him up for us all, that by faith in him we might be forgiven, and welcomed into the embrace of our Heavenly Father forever.

And so just as God was to Moses and to the Israelites, so to you as well. He is your Holy Father. And just as Moses and the Israelites did, your response as the children of God is to love and to adore Him as your Heavenly Father, and also to serve and to worship Him as your Holy God. Let’s pray.

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The Old Testament reading is Exodus 4:1-17. And this is the inerrant and infallible word of God. 

Then Moses answered, “But behold, they will not believe me or listen to my voice, for they will say, ‘The Lord did not appear to you’”. The Lord said to him, “What is that in your hand?” He said, “A staff”. And he said, “Throw it on the ground.” So he threw it on the ground, and it became a serpent, and Moses ran from it. But the Lord said to Moses, “Put out your hand and catch it by the tail – so he put out his hand and caught it, and it became a staff in his hand, “that they may believe that the Lord, the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob has appeared to you”. Again, the Lord said to him, “Put your hand inside your cloak”. And he put his hand inside his cloak, and when he took it out, behold, his hand was leprous like snow. Then God said, “Put your hand back inside your cloak”. So he put his hand back inside his cloak, and when he took it out, behold, it was restored like the rest of his flesh. “If they will not believe you,” God said, “or listen to the first sign, they may believe the latter sign.  If they will not believe even these two signs or listen to your voice, you shall take some water from the Nile, and pour it on the dry ground, and the water that you shall take from the Nile will become blood on the dry ground.” 

But Moses said to the Lord, “O my Lord, I am not eloquent, either in the past or since you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and of tongue.” Then the Lord said to him, “Who has made man’s mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth, and teach you what you shall speak.” But he said, “Oh my Lord, please send someone else.” Then the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses. And he said, “Is there not Aaron your brother, the Levite? I know that he can speak well. Behold, he is coming out to meet you. And when he sees you, he will be glad in his heart. You shall speak to him and put the words in his mouth. And I will be with your mouth and with his mouth and will teach you both what to do. He shall speak for you to the people And he shall be your mouth, and you shall be as God to him. And take in your hand the staff with which you shall do the signs.”

And now let’s turn to 2 Corinthians. I changed my mind since I printed the bulletins instead of 1 Peter. The New Testament reading will be 2 Corinthians 12:7-10. 2 Corinthians 12, 7 through 10.

And the Apostle Paul, in this passage, he learns the lesson that Moses would need to learn, and that is that in our weakness, God’s grace is sufficient for us. His power is made perfect in our weakness. So 2 Corinthians chapter 12:7-10. 

So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, my grace is sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. 

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. 

Turn back to Exodus chapter four, since this is our sermon text for this morning. When you hear the name Moses, one image that may come to your mind is the image of the actor Charlton Heston.

And I suspect that for some of you, you may have never heard of Charlton Heston. He was actually a little bit before my time. But he played Moses in the great epic movie, The Ten Commandments. And the Moses that he portrays in that movie, at least the little bits that I have seen, is a man who is imposing, powerful, determined.

But the Moses that we see in this passage is far from such a strong and confident figure. In fact, this Moses that we see here is rather fearful and unsure. He is unsure of the promises of God. He is unsure of his own abilities, his capabilities.

He’s hardly a picture of imposing fortitude and confidence. But this Moses, the Moses that we find in the Bible, true Moses is a Moses that you and I can easily identify with when it comes to our own obedience to Christ and to his call and his commandments because we also can be that God is pleased to work through in accomplishing His holy, wise, and redemptive purposes in this world. And that truth that God works through weak vessels, even those who struggle with unbelief, that truth is demonstrated in this passage, in this conversation that we heard between the Lord and Moses.

This is the conversation that took place at the burning bush when the Lord appeared to Moses and in this passage Moses gives God reason after reason why he can’t do what God called him and commanded him to do and that is God’s command on Moses, his call was to go to Egypt and to lead the people of Israel out from Egypt to rescue them from their bondage there and each time Moses gives a reason why he can’t do this He shows his weakness, his imperfections, even his lack of faith and trust in the Word of God. However, each time Moses gives God a reason for not sending him, God responds with an answer, an answer that reveals God’s grace towards Moses, his patience, but also his power, that he will be sufficient for Moses. He will be the one who will enable Moses to be faithful. And so he proves to Moses that all that he needs to be faithful to the Lord is the Lord himself and his promise to be with him. And what I want to see from this passage, what I want you and I to see from this passage is that God has already answered for you and me as well every time we tell ourselves, every time we tell God that we are incapable, unqualified, inadequate, unable to obey His call to carry out His commandments. God speaks to us in His grace and tells us why that is not true, but by His grace we are able to be faithful to Him. 

And so the first reason then, and there are three reasons that Moses gives to the Lord why he shouldn’t be the one to deliver the people of Israel out of Egypt. And the first reason that Moses gives to God is that the people won’t believe him when he tells them that the Lord appeared to him at the burning bush.

I’m sure you’ve had this experience when you have told somebody something and then in response they say something that makes you wonder if they even heard a single word that you have said. I know my wife has had that experience a couple of times and Moses here sounds like that person here who does not listen by what he says at the beginning of our passage. If you go back to the passage that we looked at last time in chapter 3 verse 18 we hear there God declaring to Moses very plainly, in plain Hebrew, declaring to Moses that the people of Israel will listen to his voice. So he assures him, the people will listen to you. And yet, despite that assurance, Moses acts as though he didn’t hear a word that God had said. Because he says to the Lord in verse 1 of chapter 4, he says, “but behold, they will not believe me or listen to my voice, for they will say, the Lord did not appear to you”. 

Now it’s easy for us sitting here today to criticize Moses for his failure to listen to the Lord, to believe the very clear words of assurance that God gave to him that the people of Israel would listen to him. But before we criticize Moses, we need to look at ourselves and realize that Far too many times we have done the very same thing. We have been just like Moses. How many times have you caught yourself thinking or acting in a way that betrays the fact that you simply are not believing the Word of God? You’re simply not believing what God has promised and has revealed to us in the Scriptures. Maybe you find yourself wracked with anxiety.  You’re overcome with fear, with uncertainty about your future. You don’t know how things are going to work out. You don’t know how ends are going to meet. And then you realize that you have failed to remember and believe the promise that God makes to you in his word, that he will provide you with all that you need. The Lord said, seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be added to you. 

Or maybe you’re facing a situation where you know that there is something you must do that is right, that is pleasing to God and yet that obedience in that matter is very fearful because there will be consequences. Consequences that are difficult, perhaps even painful, perhaps a difficult conversation you have to have with somebody or refusing to do something that someone expects of you because of your faithfulness to Christ, whatever it is, at that point you’ve forgotten that God promises that He will be with you, He will protect you from any harm –  that is anything that could harm you eternally or truly.

And so we find ourselves so often that we too, like Moses, act like we haven’t heard a word that God has spoken to us. We struggle with unbelief. Like the man who cried out to the Lord, Lord, I believe, help my unbelief. We believe and yet so often we find ourselves disbelieving. But this is why we should be encouraged by the response of God to Moses here. God doesn’t rebuke him for his failure to believe. He doesn’t denounce his unbelief, but he gives him grace. He gives him grace to increase his faith. And he does this by way of giving to Moses three signs, three miracles that he will do before the people of Israel. And these signs that the Lord gives to Moses, on the one hand, they are signs that will foster faith in the hearts of the people of Israel. So these are signs that will help the people of Israel to put their trust in the message that Moses preaches to them.

But at the same time, because Moses himself is struggling with unbelief, these are signs that will minister to Moses as well. These are signs that are meant to strengthen his faith and trust in the Word of God. And so we’ll look briefly at these signs. 

The first sign was this, the staff of Moses that turns into a serpent. And so when Moses throws the staff on the ground at the command of the Lord, it becomes a serpent. and just as any sane normal person does when a snake slithers into his path Moses is startled, he’s fearful, he begins to run the other way but then God commands Moses to pick up the snake and when he does so Moses proves to himself that he really does have faith in the Word of God because he does what God commands and notice the Lord commands him to pick it up by the tail this would be the most dangerous way to pick up a snake and yet Moses does so and it turns back into a staff. 

The second sign was the hand of Moses that became leprous. He puts his hand into his cloak. He pulls it out. It’s white as snow. It is leprous, a terrible disease. But then the Lord tells him to put his hand back into his cloak. And when he does and pulls it out again, it is restored. It is healed.  

And the third sign that God gave to Moses here is a brief glimpse of what will take place when the Lord will send his plagues upon the people of Egypt. And that is when Moses draws water out of the Nile and pours it on the ground, it will be turned to blood. 

And what all three of these signs have in common, and they seem to be unrelated to one another in many ways, but what all signs, what all these signs do have in common is this, that each one of these signs in its own way was a demonstration of the almighty power of the God of Israel, of Yahweh, the Lord, Moses’ God, his power specifically, his supremacy over all the kings and the gods of Egypt. 

For example, the first sign was the sign of the staff being turned into a serpent. The serpent, the snake, in Egypt was a symbol of royal sovereignty, power, and kingdom. If you can think of, you’ve seen pictures of the masks of a pharaoh and there’s always that cobra that’s on top of his head that symbolizes his kingly power and yet it is God who can turn a staff into a serpent and turn it back into a staff again. 

As for leprosy, this was not a disease that was unique to Egypt, of course. This was a terrible disease that afflicted people throughout that part of the world. But the Egyptians would have believed that it was incurable, and so this sign declared to the people of Egypt, what god of yours can cure leprosy, can inflict leprosy and take it away in a moment? 

As for the Nile River and the water of it, the Nile was the very source of life and prosperity and strength for the Egyptians. They depended upon it for their national welfare. And any god that could change its water to blood would be a god that could have complete mastery and control over the fate of Egypt, either for good or for ill. And so these signs were particularly meaningful for the Israelites living in slavery in Egypt because it testified to them that the Lord, their God, the God who sent Moses to them, that this God had absolute sovereign control and power over their captors, over the Egyptians, that he was Lord over their enemies. 

At the same time These signs were a testimony of the patience, the kindness of God towards His people and their unbelief. Not only the unbelief of the people of Israel, but the unbelief of Moses as well. God was patient with His people. He was patient with Moses. He did not need to provide any signs whatsoever.

His word alone, His promise alone should have been sufficient for Moses and the people of Israel to believe in Him and to entrust in Him as their Lord and Savior. But God graciously gave them signs to help their unbelief. And His kindness, His goodness in this is magnified by the fact that He gives them not one but three signs. And the signs worked.

The Lord used these signs. We read later at the end of chapter 4 that when Moses did these signs before the people that they believed, they believed in Him. And so God used these signs to authenticate, to testify to the truth that the message that Moses proclaimed, that the Lord had sent him to bring them salvation, that this was truly from God. And God did the very same thing when the greater Moses appeared, when Jesus the incarnate Son of God when he came from heaven into the world he also like Moses had a message to proclaim he came preaching a message of good news the coming of the kingdom of

God he called upon people to believe his message that in him, in himself, the Son of God that the kingdom of God had at last arrived for the people of Israel but he not only preached But God in his mercy and patience with his people, he worked through Christ to give signs and wonders to testify to the truth of the message that Jesus preached. Of course, unlike with Moses, Jesus himself worked the miracles that he worked. He did the signs by his own power because he is and was God in the flesh, God incarnate.

But he did these signs, not just to impress the Israelites, not just to show that he was powerful, but he did them in order to work faith in their hearts, to confirm his teaching, to authenticate his message. Jesus said to the Jews who refused to believe in him and his preaching, he said, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, believe the signs, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me and I am in the Father. And so both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament we see God graciously accommodating the weakness of his people, patient with their unbelief, giving them signs to testify the truth of the message that Moses preached and later that Jesus preached. But that raises a question for us today.

What about signs and wonders in our time? Why doesn’t God give us such signs today so that people will come to believe in Christ? Oh, I wish I had a staff that I could throw onto the ground and it turns into a snake and I could pick it up again and it turns into the staff. Wouldn’t that be a tremendous help in bringing people to faith in Christ and say, this preacher, this message is truly from God?

Well, God could do that, of course. It would be a testimony to His grace, but today, It is the will of God that people believe upon the Son of God, that people believe in the Lord Jesus Christ simply on the basis of the preaching of the gospel, on the basis of the preaching of the Word of God. It is God’s will today that the gospel itself should compel people to come to faith in Christ.

This is what Romans 10:17 says, “So faith comes from hearing, not seeing. Faith comes from hearing. in hearing through the Word of Christ.”

And so we live in a different time in which it is the preaching of the gospel that God uses to testify and to even to testify to His truth and to compel faith in Christ. However, even having said that, it’s not as though God has not given us any signs to confirm the truth of His Word. There is one great sign, one great miracle that God has given to us as confirmation, testimony to the truth that he has revealed to us concerning salvation in Christ. And that sign is this.

It is the empty tomb, the resurrection of Jesus Christ. When Jesus spoke with the Pharisees and the scribes, they demanded of him that he would perform miracles and signs to prove that he was the Son of God. He told them this, he said, “an evil and adulterous generation seeks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.” Of course, referring to just as Jonah was delivered from the belly of the whale after three days, so the Son of Man will emerge from the belly of the earth in three days, victorious over sin and death.

That is the sign that God gives us that we might believe in his gospel message. And the truth of the matter is this, that if a person refuses to believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ, if he refuses to come to faith in Christ, if he refuses to repent of his sins and embrace Christ as his Savior, if he refuses this simply after hearing the testimony of the Word of God, after hearing the gospel, that same person He will also refuse to believe in God and in his gospel, even if God should do a thousand miracles in his sight.

So it is God’s will, not that we would believe because of signs and miracles, but that we should believe the gospel of Christ as it is proclaimed to us from his word. But in Moses’ day, he did show his grace, his patience, and that he gave these signs to Moses. He gave them to him to strengthen his faith and to instill faith in the hearts of the Israelites. And so first, Moses tells God that the people not listen to him. 

The second reason that Moses gives to God why he shouldn’t send him is because he is not a good public speaker. He is inadequate when it comes to speaking. In verse 10, Moses says, “Oh my Lord, I am not eloquent, either in the past or since you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and tongue”. Literally, Moses says this, “I am not a man of words. I am heavy of mouth and heavy of tongue”.

Perhaps you have had occasion to speak publicly before a group of people and you felt that your tongue was heavy. It wasn’t working for you. And that’s a common experience. In fact, I think Moses ought to be the patron saint of all preachers, unless a man is extraordinarily gifted like a Charles Spurgeon or a George Whitefield, he’s going to feel the same way that Moses did. I am not an eloquent man. I’m slow of speech. I’m slow of tongue.

Notice here that the text doesn’t say that Moses had some kind of physical speech defect. This has been a popular understanding of what Moses says here, but there’s no evidence in the passage that he had some kind of speech impediment. After all, Moses will go on to do a lot of public speaking, but what Moses is expressing here with these words is his total lack of confidence in his verbal skills. He is convinced that he simply doesn’t have the ability, the capacity to speak publicly to the people of Israel.

And so he, quote, “informs the Lord of this”. And what is God’s answer for the reason that Moses gives him here? Why he can’t be the one to lead the Israelites because he’s not a good speaker? Again, the Lord’s answer is gracious. He doesn’t rebuke Moses for his failure to trust and obey his word, but he reminds Moses of the truth of who he is as the Lord, and that as he is the sovereign God who creates and sustains all things by his power, by his word, he makes one hear, he makes another deaf, he makes one see, he makes another blind, he creates the mouth, he creates the ear, And if God is the sovereign Lord and creator of all things, if he is the one who gives all things and is able to take away all things, then he’s telling Moses how easily I am able to accomplish my purposes through you, Moses, no matter what limitations you may think that you have. And notice how the Lord doesn’t argue with Moses on this point. He doesn’t say, “Moses, you’re just being humble. I’ve heard you speak. You’re a really good public speaker.” No, what the Lord says to Moses is, “yeah, you may not be the most gifted speaker, but there’s nothing that’s impossible with me. If I have called you, to speak to the people of Israel, I will give you the grace to do so. I will equip you to do so. My power will enable you to do what you cannot do on your own”. 

And therefore, the Lord is telling Moses, you must simply trust me and obey my call. In verse 12, he says, now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak. And a very important truth here is this, that because God is sovereign, because He is the Lord of all, He is able, and in fact He does, He works through even the most ordinary of people. He is able to do far beyond all that we think or imagine, even with the most humble of gifts and talents and abilities. Because when it comes down to it, it’s not really a matter of the giftedness, the abilities, the talents of man and how he might use them to serve God.

But when it comes down to it, it’s all about the grace and the power of God working through an imperfect instrument to accomplish his holy will. And God gets the glory. The more imperfect the instrument, the more glory that God receives. 

Of all the seminary professors I had, there was one in particular who was a very gifted preacher. But he had this very distinctive facial twitch whenever he spoke or taught, and it was very noticeable. You couldn’t help but see it. And a story that I heard was that when this professor was himself a student, he preached a sermon in his preaching class. The professor at the time was so distracted by this constant twitch that the professor told him that he should seriously consider becoming a radio preacher. Quite a backhanded compliment it sounds. But thankfully, my professor didn’t follow that advice and I can testify that despite the physical problem, despite the fact that it could be distracting, He was a very effective speaker and preacher, and I have no doubt that the Lord used him greatly in his ministry, preaching and teaching, despite that limitation. 

And as a believer in Jesus Christ, God calls each one of you to serve Him in some way. He calls you to serve Him. And I don’t have to tell you that we can be painfully aware of our own limitations, our own weaknesses, our shortcomings. But that is no reason at all not to obey the Lord and to serve him as he calls us. As the Lord reminded Moses, he is sovereign. He will use you, despite your limitations and weakness, to further his work in the world if you will but trust in him, obey him, and go forward in faith. And again, insofar as you are weak, this is only so that God can receive the glory.  As the Lord said to the Apostle Paul in our New Testament reading, my grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.

So the second reason that Moses gives to God why he should not send him is because he is not a good public speaker. The third reason why Moses gives to God, or the third reason that Moses gives why he shouldn’t send him to Egypt is because surely there is someone better to send. And so Moses says in verse 13, oh my Lord, please send someone else. Surely Lord, there is some other Israelite that is going to do this better than me.

I like the way that one commentator kind of captures the essence of this passage with the title, “Here I am, Lord, send someone else”. And that’s so often the stance that we take. Here I am, Lord, send someone else to do this work. But now with this, Moses, he crosses a line.

He’s no longer simply being weak in faith, failing to trust in the Lord as he should, but now hears an outright rejection of the command that God has laid upon them. And for that reason, the text tells us that the Lord became angry with Moses. And yet, what’s remarkable here is that even in his anger, God is gracious to Moses.

Again, he doesn’t condemn Moses, he doesn’t rebuke him, he doesn’t abandon Moses and just brushes him off and finds another Israelite who will do this job better than Moses, but he provides help to him. He says to Moses that “Aaron your brother is coming out to meet you. He will be the helper in what I command you to do.” And so what God sets up then with Moses and Aaron is a prophetic relationship between the two. Aaron would be the mouth of Moses and all that God spoke to Moses, Moses would speak to Aaron and then Aaron would be a mouthpiece of Moses. So Aaron would be Moses is prophet, so to speak, and Moses would be like God to Aaron in that way. 

Verse 16, “He shall speak for you to the people and he shall be your mouth and you shall be as God to him”. And so again, in all three ways that Moses objects to this call, the Lord responds in a gracious and patient way. Even this last call, or this last reason that Moses gives, “send someone else”, the Lord responds graciously. Here’s a help to you, here’s Aaron, your brother. 

As we bring this to an end, I want to consider a moment with you, the very last words that the Lord says to Moses at the burning bush. What would we think that the Lord would say to Moses as sort of parting words from the burning bush?

This is one of the great episodes in the whole Bible. God appears to Moses out of this mysterious bush that keeps burning. He commissions him to go to Egypt to save the people of Israel. I would think that the last words would be something like, “Moses, I am the Lord, the God of your fathers. Now go in my name and bring redemption to my people” – something dramatic like that. But rather the Lord says something to Moses that almost sounds like an afterthought, almost like a throwaway line. He says in verse 17, “And take in your hand this staff with which you shall do these signs.” It’s almost like when you were a kid and you’re about to run out of the house and your mom says to you, hey, don’t forget your jacket. You know, Moses, don’t forget your staff. 

And so why did the Lord make these the last words to Moses at the burning bush? If you think about it, it’s not likely that Moses would forget his staff. He’s been shepherding for 40 years now. The staff is probably more like an extension of his arm than it is something separate from Moses. It’s more likely that Moses would forget the sandals lying in the sand beside his bare feet. But the reason that the Lord spoke of the staff in these last words to Moses is because the staff would become the focal point of the power of God at work in Moses. It would be the constant reminder to Moses that the Lord is with him in all that he will do as the leader and the Savior of Israel. The staff. This would be the instrument by which Moses would accomplish God’s purposes. It was with the staff that Moses would bring the ten plagues upon Egypt. It was with the staff that he would part the Red Sea. It was with the staff that he would strike the rock and water would flow from it for the people of Israel in the wilderness. 

And so the simple shepherd’s staff became the means of Israel’s salvation. And it was not because of the power of the one who held it, Moses, but because of the power of the one who was with Moses, that is the Lord. In fact, the staff became so much the instrument of God in the hands of Moses for God to do all that he would do for his people Israel, all the signs and the miracles and the things that he would do that the staff is no longer even referred to or at least in one place, it’s no longer even referred to as Moses’ staff, but later in the chapter it’s called the Staff of God. This is now the Staff of God. God will use this lowly shepherd’s staff to bring salvation to his people.

And this was a reminder to Moses of the truth that he himself was no more than a staff. He too was just a mere instrument in the hands of Almighty God. If you think about it, Moses was in many ways nothing more extraordinary than a shepherd’s staff. Yes, he had an extraordinary education. He was brought up in Pharaoh’s household and all of that, but for the last 40 years he has been doing nothing but shepherding sheep out in the wilderness. He has no standing with the people of Israel. In fact, they were ready to accuse him of murder before he fled. We have seen he was weak and imperfect, and yet God used this Moses to be the instrument by which he would accomplish his purposes. 

And there are two lessons that we can learn from this truth that God worked through Moses. The first is this, this shows us Christ. Now, of course, Jesus was perfect. He was not weak in the sense of being unrighteous or sinful or distrustful of God’s Word, but he was weak in the sense that according to the world’s definition of power and authority and strength, Jesus had none of that. His weakness was a voluntary weakness. Though he was God, he made himself man. He set aside his divine prerogatives as the Son of God to manifest his infinite power and glory and instead he came to us in the form of a servant, a mere man.

As a man he had no armies to conquer the world, he was no king, he was no ruler, but he was obedient to the will of his Father, even to the point of submitting himself to the cursed death of the cross. But it was there, in that display of weakness, the object of human hatred, absorbing the wrath of God in himself, bearing the shame and the pain of the cross, that weakness and that shame that was his, it was at that very place that Christ conquered death and hell and sin forever, where he exercised divine power in conquering His enemies and our enemies. And so it was through the, quote, weakness of Jesus that God exercised His power that brings us salvation.

And the great principle here is that in His saving work, God uses that which the world considers weak in order to overcome all that the world considers strong. 1 Corinthians 12:7, “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. He used this lowly shepherd staff to perform his wonders in Egypt.

He used a very weak and humble Moses to deliver his people to Israel. And he used the cross of Jesus Christ to overcome all our enemies. And he continues to use weak means to accomplish his powerful purposes, the preaching of the gospel, the mere preaching of the Word of God in all of its weakness, according to the worldly understanding of strength. God uses that for salvation.

Secondly, the fact that God uses Moses despite his weakness shows that God can use even you to accomplish his purposes. The Lord said to Paul when he prayed that God would take away his thorn in the flesh, whatever that was, he said, my power is made perfect in weakness. And really this is the answer that the Lord gave to Moses in every one of his objections. Moses, don’t tell me about your weakness, your limitations, your frailties, but focus on my word. I will be with you. It is my power that is made perfect through your weakness. My grace is sufficient for you. Trust and obey.

And the Lord says that to you and me as well. I want to end this morning by reading a quote from a sermon that was preached by Francis Schaeffer, a wonderful title of the sermon, “No Little People, No Little Places”. And in this passage he refers to the staff of Moses. I’ll read this and we’ll end with that.

Consider the mighty ways in which God used a dead stick of wood. God so used a stick of wood can be a banner cry for each of us. Though we are limited and weak in talent, physical energy, and psychological strength, we are not less than a stick of wood. But as the rod of Moses had to become the rod of God, so that which is me or so that which is me must become the me of God. Then I can become useful in God’s hands. The scripture emphasizes that much can be done from little if the little is truly consecrated to God. 

Let’s pray.

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The Old Testament reading is Exodus 3:13-22, and this is the word of the Lord. 

Then Moses said to God, if I come to the people of Israel and say to them, the God of your fathers has sent me to you, and they ask me, what is his name, what shall I say to them? God said to Moses, I am who I am. And he said, say this to the people of Israel.

I am, has sent me to you. God also said to Moses, say this to the people of Israel. The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob has sent me to you. This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations.

Go and gather the elders of Israel together and say to them, The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, has appeared to me, saying, I have observed you and what has been done to you in Egypt, and I promise that I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt to the land of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, a land flowing with milk and honey. And they will listen to your voice. And you and the elders of Israel shall go to the king of Egypt and say to him, the Lord, the God of the Hebrews has met with us.

And now please let us go a three days journey into the wilderness that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God. But I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go unless compelled by a mighty hand. So I will stretch out my hand and strike Egypt with all the wonders that I will do in it. After that, he will let you go.

And I will give this people favor in the sight of the Egyptians, and when you go, you shall not go empty. But each woman shall ask of her neighbor and any woman who lives in her house for silver and gold jewelry and for clothing, you shall put them on your sons and on your daughters, so you shall plunder the Egyptians. 

And now for our New Testament reading, let’s turn to John’s Gospel, John 8:53-59. John 8, 53 through 59.

In this passage, Jesus is disputing with the leaders of the Jewish people over his identity, over who he is. And he’ll say something to the Jews that will be so shocking to them that they are ready to stone him to death right there on the spot. John 8, beginning of verse 53. 

Are you greater than our father Abraham who died? And the prophets died. Who do you make yourself out to be? Jesus answered, if I glorify myself, my glory is nothing. It is my father who glorifies me, of whom you say he is our God. But you have not known him. I know him. If I were to say that I do not know him, I would be a liar like you. But I do know him and keep his word. Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad. So the Jews said to him, you are not yet 50 years old, and have you seen Abraham?

Jesus said to them, truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am. So they picked up stones to throw at him, but Jesus hid himself and went out of the temple. 

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. 

You may turn back to Exodus chapter 3 now, since this is our sermon text this morning.

First of all, Adam has already said this, but I would also like to say Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms here. Thank you for your sacrificial, loving care for us, for our children. And know that the Lord will bless you as you serve him in that way. It is good to be back here at Mount Rose.

I am grateful that Elder Joe Horvath filled the pulpit in my absence. Reverend Bob Herman was supposed to be here to preach last Sunday, but he and his wife, Jean, became sick, and so they weren’t able to come. But I did talk to Bob on the phone this past week, and he is feeling much better. So he does want to come out again sometime to worship with you all and to fill the pulpit here. So we’ll try to make that happen sometime. 

So it’s been two weeks then since we’ve been in the book of Exodus and two weeks ago we learned what happened to Moses. One day as he was out tending the sheep of his father-in-law in the wilderness of Midian, the Lord appeared to him. God appeared to Moses in the most remarkable way in this bush that was burning and yet it never burnt up.

And the Lord spoke to Moses. He called him. He commissioned him to be his servant, to lead his people Israel out of the land of Egypt where they were in bondage to Pharaoh. And Moses was to bring them into the land of Canaan, a land flowing with milk and honey. And if you remember when the Lord gave this commission or this call to Moses to lead his people out of Egypt, Moses was less than enthusiastic about that prospect. He said to the Lord in verse 11, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?”

And the Lord’s answer to that question was basically this, “Moses, it doesn’t matter who you are. What matters is who I am. And I am the Lord God Almighty’. And he says, “I will be with you.”

That was the Lord’s promise to Moses. I will be with you. And he doesn’t say this, but what’s implied is, Moses, that is all you need to know to be assured that you will be successful in this call that I’m giving you. I will be with you.

But still, even after hearing that, Moses was not 100% sure of his success in fulfilling this commission. And so he asked the Lord a follow-up question, and you could say that it was a very practical question that Moses asked the Lord. He says in verse 13, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, the God of your fathers has sent me to you, and they ask me, what is his name, what shall I say to them?” 

This was a very practical question because Moses could envision what could happen, how badly things could go if he were to just show up in Egypt among the Israelite people out of the blue and suddenly announce to them something like, “Hey, good news, everyone! God appeared to me out of a burning bush. And God has appointed me to be your leader, to lead you out of Egypt and into the promised land”. He could just envision the people of Israel saying to Him in response to that, wait a minute, who is this God you are talking about? And tell me again, He appeared to you, how? In a burning bush? Tell us exactly who this God is. What is His name? If we are to believe you, you need to tell us a little bit more about this God who spoke to you.”

And not only that, but they would say something like, “By the way, you look familiar. You look familiar. Didn’t you grow up in Pharaoh’s palace? And furthermore, weren’t you the guy who had to flee from Egypt because you murdered an Egyptian?”

So you can see why the Israelites might be skeptical of Moses and this announcement that he would make to them that God appointed him to be their leader and Moses knew that and so for him to have any credibility with the people of Israel he had to tell them the name of God who spoke to them. 

Now in response to that question the Lord God does tell Moses what his name is, but not only that, he goes on to tell Moses much more about himself and about his plan of salvation and in these words that God speaks to Moses that take up the rest of chapter 3, what God is doing is he is equipping Moses with these promises, with these words. He is enabling him. He is equipping Moses to carry out that commission that he has given to him to lead the people of Israel out of Egypt.

Later, as we’ll see, the Lord will also equip Moses with signs, with wonders that he will do that will confirm his testimony that he has been sent by the Lord, but here in chapter 3, it is the word of God. It is the promises of God that the Lord equips Moses with in order to fulfill his call. And the Lord equips Moses in three ways by his word. First of all, he reveals to Moses his name. Secondly, he affirms to Moses his love for his people Israel, And thirdly, he declares to Moses his plan of salvation for his people. 

So we’ll look at those three ways in which the Lord equips Moses in this passage. First of all, God reveals to Moses his name. So Moses asks the Lord, what is your name?

And this is what God says to him in response. In verse 14, he says, “I am who I am. And he said, say this to the people of Israel, ‘I am’ has sent me to you”. And then in verse 15, God also said to Moses, say this to the people of Israel, the Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob has sent me to you. This is my name forever and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations. 

So what is God’s name? Is it ‘I am who I am’? Or is it ‘I am’? Or is it the Lord? There’s a sense in which all three are the name of God. Only the last one, the Lord, is properly speaking his true name. But that takes a little bit of explaining.

So look at verse 15 again. God also said to Moses, say this to the people of Israel, the Lord, the Lord. So the word that’s translated there, ‘the Lord’, this is a word that in Hebrew, it’s a word that is made up of four letters, four Hebrew letters. And for that reason, sometimes this word is called the tetragrammaton.

If you want to impress your friends, you can use that word, the tetragrammaton. That refers to the four Hebrew letters that make up the word that is the name of God. Now, because the Hebrew of the Old Testament was written only in consonants, because there are no vowels in the Hebrew of the Old Testament, no one knows for sure exactly how this word, which is God’s name, was pronounced by the people of Israel when they did pronounce it. As we’ll see, the Jews tried not to pronounce His name ever.

But the scholarly consensus is that the word was pronounced something like Yahweh. Yahweh. So those four Hebrew consonants, if we add vowel sounds to them, sound something like Yahweh. And that is also the basis for which we get the word Jehovah. So when we sing hymns that speak of Jehovah, that’s just another version of the name Yahweh. 

But that is God’s name. So the creator of heaven and earth, the Lord who sustains all things, the true and living God, He has a name and He has given us His name in the scriptures. And His name is ‘Yahweh’. And that word is very similar to the words that are translated in verse 14, as ‘I am’. ‘I am’. If you look at the Hebrew, the words for ‘I am’ or the letters for ‘I am’. and the letters for Yahweh are very similar and so Yahweh means something, the meaning of it has something to do with to be or to exist and so it means something like ‘He is’ or ‘He causes to be so’. Yahweh and ‘I am’ are very similar in their meaning, both point to the existence of God, His being In the Old Testament, the name of God is usually given to us as Yahweh, but as you know from your Old Testament reading in your English translations, you never come across, unless you have a particular English version, but most of our English versions do not actually print out the name Yahweh in the Old Testament.

And the reason for that is because of an ancient custom among the Jewish people that they would not pronounce the name of God for fear of breaking the third commandment, that is, do not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. And so if they do not pronounce God’s name, they cannot take His name in vain. So the thinking went. And for that reason, when the Jews translated the Hebrew Old Testament into the Greek language, and they did that about 250 years before the coming of Christ, but when they translated the Hebrew scriptures into Greek, instead of writing out in Greek letters a word that would be equivalent to Yahweh, they substituted another word entirely for Yahweh, and the word they substituted for Yahweh was the Greek word ‘Kyrios’, which means Lord. And so for that reason, in our English Bibles, carrying on this custom, the English Bibles translates God’s name, Yahweh, as Lord. And that’s why in verse 15, it says, in verse 15, ‘God also said to Moses, say this to the people of Israel, the Lord, the Lord has sent you.” But notice in verse 15, if you look at your Bible, If you look at that word “Lord” carefully, you’ll notice that every letter in that word is a capital letter. It is capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D. That’s not a typo. It’s meant to be that way. And what that means is, this is the way that the English translators of the Bible are telling us that that word Lord, capital L-O-R-D, is a translation of the Hebrew name of God, which is Yahweh.

And so when you see in the Old Testament, Lord with a capital L, but then a small O-R-D, that is translating a more generic Hebrew word that just means master or Lord. But anytime you see Lord in all caps, that is Yahweh. And that is God’s name. And in the Bible, and according to the biblical worldview, the name of a person was so much more than just a mere handle that he went by, more than just a word that you might respond to because it’s your name. But in the Bible, names are often considered representative or expressive of the character or the significance of the person who bore that name. For example, King Solomon, his name means ‘peace’ or ‘peaceful’. And, the reign of King Solomon was a reign of peace and prosperity over the nation of Israel. And so his name has everything to do with what he did as the king of Israel, reigning in peace.

A negative example would be a name that we find in 1 Samuel 25. A great name, but not a name that you would ever want to name your son, and that is the name ‘Nabal’, and that means ‘fool’. And if you remember from 1 Samuel, Nabal was truly a fool. He lived up to his name, or he lived down to his name. And so, a name signifies something important about the character, or what that person would do. 

And it’s the same with God. It’s the same with God in His name. And what does His name tell us about Him? Well, first of all, His name expresses the truth that God is eternal. God has no beginning. He has no end. As the psalmist says, He is from everlasting to everlasting. There was never a time ever in which God did not exist. He has always been. And so His name is not, “I became”, or “I was not, but then I came into existence”, but simply his name is ‘I am who I am’, or ‘I am’. God is the I am of the past, the present, the future.

And so his name signifies his eternality, that God always exists. And also the name of God expresses his absolute self-sufficiency as God. ‘I am who I am.’ And this is something that distinguishes God from you and me and from every other creature that God has made. It is God who gives us existence. I am. I exist because God has made me. You are. You exist, you have being because God has made you.

And for both you and me, we would cease to exist the moment God decided that he would no longer uphold and sustain our existence. And so we are dependents. Even in our very being, we are dependent upon God. But that is not true of God himself. His existence is derived purely from himself. He exists in himself. He is not dependent on anything outside of himself to have his being. And so he is, ‘I am who I am’.

Matthew Henry said, he put it this way, he said, “the greatest and the best man in the world”, he’s speaking of Paul, of course, “he must say, by the grace of God, I am what I am. But God says, absolutely, I am who I am. And so we can say, by God’s grace, I am what I am. But God says, absolutely, I am what I am”.

I am who I am. His existence depends on nothing outside himself. The symbol for the French Protestant Church in the days of the Reformation, the Huguenot Church, their symbol was a picture of the burning bush. And then imposed on that burning bush were the four Hebrew letters that make up the name ‘Yahweh’.

And that symbol shows us this relationship between the self-sufficiency, the self-existence of God, and how that was expressed in the burning bush. The bush kept burning, the flames kept burning, although the bush did not burn up. It could go on forever. And in the same way, God exists in Himself. He is self-sufficient perfectly. And so his name expresses that truth about who he is. 

And now that we know that God’s name in the Old Testament is translated as ‘Lord’, with that in mind, we can appreciate the incredible significance it is when the New Testament refers to Jesus as the Lord. More often than not, when the New Testament authors refer to Jesus as the Lord, they are implicitly, but truly, they are applying the name of God to Jesus.

And so what they are saying in that way, when they call Jesus the Lord, is that Jesus, he possesses the same name as God possesses in the Old Testament. And what that means, of course, is that Jesus is equivalent to God. Jesus is God. He is God who has come in the flesh, the God-man.

And Jesus himself spoke of himself in the same way. He affirmed this truth about him as well. And we saw this in John chapter 8 in the course of this dispute between Jesus and the leaders of the Jews. The Jews asked Jesus in verse 57, “you are not yet 50 years old and have you seen Abraham”?

In verse 58, Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, ‘I am’”. And this was a breathtaking claim on the part of Jesus because he was clearly applying the very language that the Lord used to speak of himself here in Exodus chapter 3 in the burning bush, Jesus was applying that to him. And he was telling the Jews, “I am. I am the Lord who appeared to Abraham.

Yes, I have seen him before Abraham was, in fact, I am. And so Jesus was saying, I am the Lord. I am Yahweh. I am God who has come to you in human flesh.”

So he testified to his deity in that way, and of course the Jews knew exactly what he was saying. They understood what Jesus was saying, but rather than bowing down to Jesus as their Christ, as their Lord, as the God who has come to them, as the Lord in the flesh, rather than doing that, what these Jews heard in their unbelief, what they heard from the lips of Jesus was a damnable, was a wicked blasphemy, because this man was right before them claiming to be God. And that’s why John tells us they picked up stones to throw at him. They were ready to put him to death on the spot for that blasphemy. But it was only, it would only be blasphemy if it wasn’t true. But what Jesus claimed was true, that he is the great I am. He is the Lord Yahweh.

And so Jesus, we can say, this is the new name that God has given to us, that we may call him by this name, that we may address him with this name. Acts 4:12 says, “And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. There is no other name given among men under heaven by which we must be saved”. And for that reason, the only confession of faith which can save a person from eternal death and destruction, the only faith which can save a person from the judgment of God is faith and trust in the Son of God, in the name of Jesus, the name of the Lord who has become flesh, Jesus Christ. 

Romans 10:9 says, “because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, He is God who has come to us for our salvation”. Is that your confession this morning?Is that the confession of your lips and the confession of your heart that Jesus is Lord? 

And so God reveals to Moses his name. Secondly, God affirms to Moses his love for his people. In verse 15, just after God reveals his divine name as Yahweh or Lord, He identifies himself in this way.

He says, “The God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob”. And then in verse 16, when the Lord tells Moses to go and gather the elders of Israel, he has to tell the elders, “The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob has appeared to me saying, I have observed you and what has been done to you in Egypt”. Now by identifying himself in this way, God not only tells Moses, and through Moses he will tell the people of Israel that he is the same God that their fathers worshipped. He is the God of the patriarchs, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He is the same God who created all things, who called Abraham, who formed a people out of Abraham. He is their father’s God. But not only that, In saying these things, the Lord is affirming to Moses his love for his people.

This covenant in which God declares himself to be the God of his people, Israel. This covenant is an expression of the divine love that God has for his people, Israel. And at the heart of God’s covenant with his people is his promise of his love. I will be your God.You will be my people. That is a bond in which God pledges His never-ending love for His people. And this is the love that God has for you and me in Jesus Christ. His love for us in Christ is the same covenant love 

that He has pledged Himself to us. He has promised us, I will be your God. You will be my people. He is our God. We are His. In Jesus Christ, God adopts you into His family. He claims you as His own. He makes you His son, His daughter and He promises to be your God both in this life and in the life to come forevermore. Just as He was the God of the patriarchs, and the God of Moses, and the God of the Israelites, so God, He is your God. And in Jesus Christ, He is your loving, gracious, heavenly Father. And just as God had mercy and compassion on His people then, and delivered them from their bondage to Pharaoh in Egypt, so God has had mercy and compassion on you through the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Through this, he has delivered you from your bondage to sin, from your slavery to sin and death. And there’s a wonderful passage or a wonderful detail in this passage that also testifies to the wonder, the beauty of the love of God that he has for us as his people. In verse 18, when Moses and the elders are to go to Pharaoh to ask for freedom, they are to say to Pharaoh, in verse 18, ‘The Lord, the God of the Hebrews’, has met with us. Now think about how that would sound to Pharaoh when Moses comes to him and refers to God as the God of the Hebrews. It would sound absurd to Pharaoh. He would think to himself, “What kind of God would be the God of this people, this despised, this contemptuous, this enslaved people, this wretched people? What kind of self-respecting God would align himself with a people such as this? 

God was not ashamed to be their God. He declares to Moses, I am the God of the Hebrews. And God is not ashamed to be our God, despite our own wretchedness, our sin, our ugliness, despite the many ways that we fail him, despite our weakness and insignificance in the eyes of the world, the God of the Hebrews is our God as well in Jesus Christ. And the scriptures tell us that Jesus is not ashamed to call us his brothers.

And so God affirms for Moses his love for his people. 

Thirdly, God declares to Moses his plan of salvation for his people. And much of this passage is taken up with the Lord telling Moses what he will do for the people of Israel. He not only tells Moses what he must do, but he tells him what will happen. At first, he repeats to Moses the promises that he had already made to him, that he would lead his people out of their affliction in Egypt, that he would bring them into a land flowing with milk and honey. Then he says to Moses that the elders that he will gather, that they will listen to him, that they will go to Pharaoh and that they will request from Pharaoh a three-day pass to go into the wilderness to worship him. Just as an observation, just as a side note here, notice how Moses is to go to the elders of Israel. And what we have here in the Old Testament, we have the roots, the foundation for what is the biblical way of governing the church, and that is ruled by elders. So this is not something that is new to the New Testament. It was true of the people of God back in the Old Testament. This is the first mention of the elders of Israel in this context, that they are the rulers of Israel. And so this is just another, well, what we call this is ‘Presbyterianism’.

The Old Testament Israel, in this sense, because they were elder-led, they were Presbyterian. And I’m sure when Moses gathered the elders together for that first time, as good Presbyterians, they formed a committee, “The Exodus From Egypt Committee”, and they went on from there. But the Lord tells Moses that the king of Egypt will refuse to let them go. In verse 20 he says, “So I will stretch out my hand and strike Egypt with all the wonders that I will do in it.After that he will let you go”. And of course these wonders that the Lord is referring to are the ten plagues that he will bring upon the people of Egypt. 

This was the original shock and awe campaign and it would bring complete devastation to the land of Egypt. In verse 21 the Lord describes how the people of Egypt would give the Israelites their valuables on their way out of Egypt and many of these materials, especially the gold and the silver jewelry, would later be used in the construction of the tabernacle in the wilderness. And as we go on in Exodus, we’ll see how all of that takes place. And the fact that these people would give to the Israelites their gold and silver shows the power and the sovereignty of God over all of this. That He would make the Egyptians, who hated the people of Israel, who enslaved the Israelites, who even took part in killing the Israelite children, that the Lord would make them desirous and even willing to give them their gold and silver. And so the Lord is showing His sovereignty in how He would bring His people out of Egypt. But there’s even more in this passage than that that speaks of the victory of the people of Israel.

In the last words of Chapter 3, God says to Moses, “so you shall plunder the Egyptians. So you shall plunder the Egyptians”. Plundering, this is what a nation did to another nation after they had thoroughly defeated them militarily. They would plunder them. They would take all of their goods and take them for themselves. So what the Lord is describing here is not just a mere escape from the land of Egypt, but what He’s describing is that the Israelites would gain a complete and total victory over their enemies. They would plunder them. And since the Exodus is a type of the salvation that Christ has accomplished for you and me, what we see here is a picture of the absolute destruction, the absolute defeat of our enemies that Christ has brought about for us through His death and resurrection.

Christ has not given us merely an escape from death, from the powers of hell, but in Christ we are conquerors. We are conquerors over sin and death forever. Romans tells us we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. And the plunder that we receive is not the material goods of our enemies, but the plunder that is ours in Christ is all the blessings, the gifts that the Ascended Lord Jesus Christ gives to us as his people, not the least of which, the greatest of which, is the gift of the Holy Spirit. 

And so our victory in Christ is a total victory, a complete victory over our enemies. But the significance of God in telling Moses all of this at the burning bush, all that he would do, all that would happen for the people of Israel was to show that when God reveals his plan of salvation, there is absolutely no possibility that it will fail to come to pass. And that’s because of who God is. He is the sovereign Lord of all. He not only decrees All things that will come to pass, but by his sovereign power he brings about his purposes and his plans. None can stay his hand. Not even the mighty Pharaoh and all his chariots and all his armies can overturn the will of God to bring salvation to his people. And in fact, all that the Lord describes here for Moses and all that will take place in the Exodus, this was in fulfillment of a promise that God had already made to Abraham so many centuries before. In Genesis 15:14, “the Lord said to Abraham, I will bring judgment on the nation that they serve, that is Egypt, and afterward they shall come out with great possessions”.

 So God had already planned this salvation from Egypt for His people Israel and in the same way but in a far greater way God has always had a plan of salvation for you and me in His Son Jesus Christ not just from many centuries ago but from all eternity and for that reason just as Moses could be certain of God’s saving purposes for him and the people of Israel so you can be certain of God’s saving purposes for you in Christ, and that’s because your salvation is not your plan. Your redemption is not something that’s based on what you have decided or what you will to do, but your salvation is grounded in the will of God, the decision of God in all eternity that he would set you apart in Christ for salvation. And so your hope of eternal life lies not in yourself, but in the unchanging and the sovereign purposes of a loving God. So Moses heard the word of God. He heard the name of God. He was reminded of God’s love. He heard of God’s plan of salvation. And he believed. And as we’ll see as we go on in Exodus, Moses was faithful. He was faithful to the Lord to carry out this call that the Lord had given to him at the burning bush. 

And like Moses, God calls you to serve him in this world. He doesn’t speak to you, of course, out of a burning bush, but in the gospel, he calls you to himself, to faith in Christ. And in that same call, he calls you to serve him as a follower of Christ. He calls you to be faithful. But that is no easy thing, is it? It is not easy to be faithful to Christ in this world. The world wants you to conform to its own practices, its values. The devil wants you to think that obeying Christ is just a big waste of time. And our own sinful hearts want us just to live a life of pleasure, of pleasing ourselves and doing what we want to do. And for all of these reasons, the call of God to us to follow Christ, to obey his commandments, this at times seems impossible.

Perhaps it seems as impossible as God’s call to Moses seemed impossible to him, that he was to go to Pharaoh to bring his people Israel out of Egypt. And sometimes that call to follow Jesus, to walk in his steps, to obey his commandments seems just as impossible to us. But the Lord equipped Moses. He equipped him to be faithful by speaking to him his words. He revealed his character, his love, his plan of salvation. And God equips you in the very same way, that is with his word, with his promises, with the scripture. You don’t have to have a burning bush experience. You don’t have to have an extraordinary revelation of God to you personally.

But God has spoken to you. He speaks to you in the scriptures, in the Bible. Here is where we hear the voice of God today. And all you need then, the grace of God is a humble and believing heart to receive the Scriptures as the very Word of God, because here in the Bible, this is where God reveals to you and me His character. He reveals to us His name. That He is the Great ‘I Am’. He is the Everlasting One. That Jesus Christ is the Lord. He is our Lord. Here’s where you learn about the love that Christ has for us, that He is the Good Shepherd, who laid down His life for you, that you may live forever. And here, in the Scripture, is where you learn about the plan of God’s salvation for you.

That from all eternity He has decreed that His Son, Jesus Christ, would die for your sins, that He would be raised from the dead, that He would give you the gift of faith, that you would be united to Christ, so that in his death and resurrection you enter into salvation. This is God’s plan of salvation all given to you in the scriptures. So these are the truths that the Lord gives to us in his word by which as you believe them God will equip you to be faithful to him, to serve him, to fulfill that call, that commission that he’s given to you to be a follower of Christ just as Moses was equipped by the Lord to be faithful to Him. Let’s pray.

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Today’s sermon was written by Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899-1981), a respected Welsh evangelical minister who preached at Westminster Chapel in London from 1939 to 1968. Known for his deep Bible teaching in the Reformed tradition, he delivered long series on books like Romans, Ephesians, and John. His sermons, available in audio and book form, continue to influence many evangelical leaders today. This message is read for us by Elder Joe Horvath, carrying on Dr. Lloyd-Jones’s commitment to biblical truth.

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The Old Testament reading is Exodus 3:1-12. Exodus 3, 1 through 12, this is the inerrant and the infallible word of God. 

“Now Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. And Moses said, I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.

When the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, Moses, Moses. And he said, here I am. Then he said, Do not come near. Take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground. And he said, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God. Then the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters.

I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. And now, behold, the cry of the people of Israel has come to me, and I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppressed them. Come, I will send you to Pharaoh. that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.

But Moses said to God, who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt? He said, but I will be with you. And this shall be the sign for you that I have sent you. When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.” 

Keep your place there and turn to 2 Timothy 1:8-12 for our New Testament reading. We’ll go back to Exodus after we hear from 1st Timothy. 1st Timothy 1 verses 8-12. I’m sorry, 2nd Timothy. 2nd Timothy 1, 8-12 is our New Testament reading.

“Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God, who saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works, but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, and which now has been manifested through the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel, for which I was appointed a preacher, an apostle, and teacher, which is why I suffer as I do.

But I am not ashamed, for I know whom I have believed, and I am convinced that he is able to guard until that day what has been entrusted to me.” 

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. 

We’ve all had days in our lives that started out in a very ordinary way, and then something unexpected happened. Something took place that was completely unanticipated, but it’s something that ended up changing our lives forever. Maybe for you, as you think back on days like that, maybe it was something wonderful. Perhaps you can remember the day when you first met your now husband or wife.

Or maybe you can remember the day when you first found out that you were expecting a baby. Or maybe you’ve had days where the unexpected event was not wonderful at all, but something very grievous, and yet it was still just as life-changing Perhaps you suddenly lost a loved one and although the day started out as an ordinary day, suddenly your life has been turned inside out. And so whatever that may be, we’ve all had days like that. You wake up that morning expecting just another Tuesday or Wednesday or whatever day it is, and then all of a sudden your life is turned upside down.

And in our passage this morning, that is the kind of day that Moses had. That is what happens to Moses here. His day started out as just another ordinary day in Midian, tending the sheep. But then he saw a most unusual sight. He saw a bush that was burning, and the fire just kept burning and burning and burning, and the bush was not consumed. And that’s led to a most extraordinary encounter with God. And Moses’ life from that day on was not only changed and his life took a completely different direction, not only that, but this became a pivotal point in the history of God’s working out salvation for his people.

At the beginning of this passage, Moses is living in the land of Midian. And if you remember, he is there because he had to flee from Egypt. Pharaoh wanted to kill him. He was a fugitive because he had killed an Egyptian slave master. While he was a Midian, he married into a shepherding family. His father-in-law was Jethro, the priest of Midian, but he also kept sheep. And so, for those long years of Midian, we know from other scriptures that Moses was there for 40 years, but for those four decades of Midian, Moses was a shepherd, humbly tending the sheep of his father-in-law Jethro.

Now Moses already knew that somehow God had some special task for him. That was already impressed upon him by the events that had taken place earlier in his life. He knew somehow that God had appointed him to be the leader of Israel. Perhaps he even knew that he would be the one who would bring Israel out from their bondage under Pharaoh. But now he had been in Midian for so long, surely he began to wonder about that. Surely he began to wonder, perhaps God had not given up on him after these 40 years. Maybe in the meantime, God had found a better person to lead the Israelites out of Egypt.

After all, Moses was now an old man. He was 80 years old. And instead of leading the people of Israel, instead of preparing an army to take on the Egyptians, he’s out in this faraway place in the wilderness, Midian, tending sheep, following the flock day after day. But then Moses had one of those days in which everything changed, in which his life was turned upside down. In verse one, we read that one day, Moses was leading his father-in-law’s sheep, and in verse one, it tells us that he was, or he led them to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God.

Moses had no idea what was happening, but as he was leading the sheep, he was being led. He was being led by the Lord, and he was being led to this specific place, to Horeb, Horeb is called here the Mountain of God this is the same mountain that the Bible calls elsewhere Mount Sinai and of course we’ll read a lot about Mount Sinai as we go on in Exodus Mount Sinai is the place where the Lord descended from heaven where he gave his law to the people of Israel with thunder and darkness and terror and all of that that’s the same mountain so here Moses is at Mount Horeb or Mount Sinai And as he walked about the mountain, a very unusual, really an amazing sight caught his eyes.

He saw a bush on fire, but the bush didn’t burn up. It just kept burning and burning and burning. And because this was such an extraordinary thing, so unusual, Moses did the most natural thing in the world, and that is he walked closer to get a better look, to see this strange thing. And that’s when Moses heard a voice calling to him from out of the bush. The voice was God’s and the message that God had for Moses was this, I am calling you Moses to lead my people out of Egypt. And so this passage is God’s call or his commission to Moses to be the one who would lead the people of Israel out from under Pharaoh out of Egypt.

And today we’ll take a closer look at the details of this passage. And as we do so, as we consider this encounter that Moses has with the Lord, I want you to think about your own calling from God. Because as a believer in Jesus Christ, God has called you. We read from 2 Timothy about how God has called us with a holy calling. You too have been called by the Lord. You have been called to belong to Jesus Christ, to salvation in Christ, but He has also called you to serve Him, to be His servant, just as Moses is called here to be the servant of the Lord.

Now I’m guessing your calling didn’t come in quite the same dramatic fashion. I don’t think any of you have told me about a burning bush experience like Moses had, but nevertheless, it is the same God, it is the same living Lord that called out to Moses from this burning bush that calls you to Christ for salvation and to be his servants. And as we consider this passage then, in Moses’ calling, there are three truths about God’s call upon you and me that we can learn from this passage. First of all, you are called into the presence of a holy God. Secondly, you are called into the fellowship of a loving God. And thirdly, you are called into the service of a sovereign God. So those will be our three lessons this morning. 

First of all, you are called into the presence of a holy God. Well, let’s begin as we look at this passage by considering this bizarre sight that Moses saw in the wilderness, the burning bush that didn’t burn. It didn’t burn up. As you know from scripture, fire is symbolic of God, of His nature, of His character. God is even called a consuming fire. A fire represents the intense, the blazing majesty of God, His holiness.

It also represents the fact that God is light. So fire is both heat and light. God is holy. He is truth. Fire symbolizes this dangerous holiness or righteousness of God, just as everything that the flame touches, it consumes. So in the same way, the holiness of God, all that comes into contact with it that is not pure, is consumed by that righteousness, that inherent holiness that belongs to God. and the fact that this fire does not burn out represents something about the nature of God and that is that God alone unlike any of us unlike anything in his creation God as the creator he is in himself perfectly self-sufficient and self-sustaining God possesses all life, all power, all energy.

In himself he is the fountainhead of all existence. He exists in himself in a way that none of us do. Fire, of course, depends upon oxygen and fuel to keep burning but here’s a fire that kept burning on its own. The bush was not supplying the fuel but it just kept burning and burning of itself and that represents this nature of God that in himself he is all-sufficient. He is able in himself to possess life and to exist and so that is one attribute of God that is represented here in this burning bush. And I believe that there’s even more in this burning bush that tells us about God.

And that is this, that this revelation that God saw, this appearance of the Lord that Moses encountered in this burning bush, that this was really an appearance of the Son of God. of the pre-incarnate Jesus Christ. Notice how in verse 2 it says, it is the angel of the Lord who appears to Moses in the flame. But later in the passage, in verse 6, the angel of the Lord, he calls himself God. He says, I am the God of your father. And in verse 7, it is the Lord. the Lord himself who speaks to Moses.

And so here God reveals himself to Moses on the one hand as someone who is distinct from God, the angel of the Lord, and yet at the same time he reveals himself to Moses as the one who is himself God. He is the Lord. And for this reason the church has long taught and believed that This is not just a theophany, that is, an appearance of God to Moses, but what we have here in this passage is a Christophany, that this is an appearance of the pre-incarnate Son of God. That God the Son, who would take on flesh, who became man in Jesus Christ, before that He appeared here in the burning bush to Moses.

So this is none other than Christ, who made Himself known to Moses in the burning bush. Now, when the Lord saw that Moses drew near to the bush to see what this remarkable sight was all about, he called out to Moses from the midst of the flame. He said, Moses, Moses. And Moses answered the voice he heard. He said, Here I am. Moses knew that this was the voice of the Almighty. And so he presented himself to God as his obedient servant, as his willing servant, “here I am. Here I am, Lord. I am ready to hear your call, to obey your call. I am ready to do your will.” 

And the first thing that the Lord says in response to Moses’ presenting himself, here I am, is not what we might have expected. We might have expected the Lord to say, good, you are my willing servants. Now come nearer, come closer that I may declare to you what I will have you to do. But what the Lord says to Moses in verse five is, do not come near. Moses, stop. Don’t come any closer. Stop right where you are. And the reason why Moses gave this command, or why the Lord gave this command, was for Moses’ own good.

Because Moses had come into the presence of God. And God is, above all else, a God who is holy. He is holy. And this searing holiness, this overwhelming, overpowering holiness of God would have consumed Moses in an instant if he had come one step closer. And so he stopped in his tracks. The Lord commanded Moses to take off his sandals because he said, the place on which you are standing is holy ground. Was it right for Moses to wear his sandals in the presence of the Lord? He had to be barefoot. And then God said to him in verse six, he says, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.

Perhaps after all these years, Moses had begun to wonder, not only had the Lord maybe forgotten him, no longer was going to use him, but perhaps the Lord had forgotten his promises to the people of Israel, those covenant promises that he had made to Abraham and to his descendants to be their God and they would be his people. After 40 years, perhaps God had forsaken Israel, but no, the Lord is reminding Moses here that he is still the God of his people. He is the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, the God of his father.

He has not forgotten his covenant promises. And as we’ll see, the Lord is about to act on those promises because he has seen the suffering and heard the cries of the people of Israel. But notice how Moses responds to what God says to him. Although these are words of encouragement and hope, it says in verse six that after the Lord said these words to Moses, Moses hid his face for he was afraid to look at God. Out of the terror that he felt, the dread that he felt of being in the presence of Almighty God, the Holy One, after hearing the majestic voice of the Lord speak to him from this burning bush, Moses hides his face and that’s exactly what you and I would have done had we been in the place of Moses at the burning bush. We too would have hid our faces in terror before the presence of Almighty God. And that’s because of the holiness of God.

Throughout the scriptures whenever God appears to man, when he makes himself known to man in some sort of appearance or vision, almost always the response on the part of the one to whom God reveals himself is a response of terror, fear, dread. And you know the the classic example of this that is given to us by the prophet Isaiah in Isaiah chapter 6 when he is in the temple he beholds the glory of the Lord he beholds the Lord himself filling the temple with his glory and he cries out woe is me for I am lost for I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips for my eyes have seen the King the Lord of hosts.

 Well, what is it about the holiness of God? What is it about this character of God, the nature of God, that He is infinitely holy? What is it that fills us with such dread? That whenever He appears to someone, it overwhelms them with fear and terror, this holiness. What is it about that? Why did Moses hide his face? Why did he shrink back in fear? Well, first of all, the holiness of God refers to the fact that God is absolutely distinct. He is absolutely separate from all His creation. He is something, or He is one who transcends all that He has created. He is no part of His creation whatsoever. He is wholly distinct from us and from all that He has made. The words of our confession put it this way, He is a most and that in itself is enough to fill us with fear because when we come into the presence of the one who is transcendence, who is infinite in holiness, who is not part of this creation whatsoever, instinctively that fills us with dread because we are creatures. We are creatures in the face or before the face of our creator. So this other worldliness of God, this absolute transcendence of God, this is something that overwhelms us.

The infinite power, the majesty, the authority of God, this is a frightful thing. But the holiness of God also refers to His absolute righteousness and His moral purity. He is not only holy in the sense that He is distinct from us as the creator, as a most pure spirit, but he is holy in the sense that he is perfectly pure, infinitely righteous. There is not even a shadow of sin or impurity with God. Habakkuk says that he has purer eyes than to behold evil. He cannot look at wrong. And this also is why the holiness of God is a terrifying thing for us, because we are not only creatures, but we are also sinners.

And just as Isaiah felt, so surely Moses felt that he too was undone by being in the presence of this holy God, because he too was a man who was unclean. And we would feel the same way if we were in Moses’ place here. And not only this dreadful absolute transcendence and majesty of God would overwhelm us but the fact that He is infinitely righteous, infinitely pure, and we are not. This too would cause us to hide our face before Him. 

And this points to the great dilemma that faces all of us as sinners. This is the question. This is the most important question that each one of us face as those whom God has made and yet we have rebelled against him and that is this, how can I, how can I a sinner, one who is not pure, one who is not righteous, how can I be in the presence of this holy God and not be destroyed? Well the answer of course is the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ. that God has provided the way for us to come into his presence that he has given us his son that Jesus, when he died, that curse of death upon the cross, he took upon himself our guilt. He absorbed into himself that wrath that would naturally come upon us for our sin and guilt. And he has taken away our sins. So in Christ, we can come before God. That is the good news of the gospel, that we can have that righteousness of Christ as our own, our sins forgiven. So even with boldness, we can come into the presence of almighty God. Yes, he is still God. There is nothing less about him in his majesty and glory. And yet because of Christ, we can come to him knowing that he receives us. He accepts us. He loves us in Christ. We can even call him Father, Abba Father. 

Now God did not just bring Moses near to him, just to overpower him with the sense of his holiness but the Lord revealed himself to Moses in this way because this was part of God’s training, part of his preparation for Moses to prepare him to be the man who would lead the people of Israel out of Egypt. Before Moses could go out and serve the Lord first he had to experience this holiness of God. When Moses beheld the glory of God in all of his perfections and majesty and holiness although it filled him with fear it had a transformative effect on him and we know that it had a transformative effect on him because the scripture tells us that when we behold the glory of the Lord and you and I we behold the glory of the Lord by faith in the face of Jesus Christ, but when we do so, when we look to Christ by faith and see there the majesty, the greatness, the holiness of God revealed in His Son Jesus Christ, it transforms us. It has a transformative effect so that we are changed by that. 

2 Corinthians 3:18 says, we are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another, that is, as we behold the glory of the Lord in the face of Christ. And so this was part of Moses’s preparation by the Lord. He had to come into the presence of a holy God before he would serve him in the way that the Lord had appointed him to serve. And it was not only transformative for Moses, but this knowledge of the majesty of God, the weightiness of God, the glory of God. This is what would enable Moses to carry out the ministry that the Lord called him to carry out as his servant. 

Remember, who is Moses going to confront? Who is Moses going to come before in Egypt? He’s going to come before Pharaoh. the king of Egypt, perhaps the most powerful man in all the world, a man of authority and power and majesty who could destroy whomever he will. And if Moses did not remember that the God he served, the God who called him, the God who was his, if he did not remember that this God was infinitely more mighty, more majestic, more powerful than Pharaoh, He could not have come before Pharaoh. He could not have stood before him. 

And there’s a great truth here for you and me, and that is this. The people who have come to know, people who have come to know the holiness of God, who have felt, by faith in Christ, that weight of his glory, his greatness, who have been impressed by the splendor and the majesty of God, those people become great servants of the Lord. That was true for Isaiah. It was only after he was nearly undone in the temple by this appearance of the Lord in all of his glory that Isaiah would go out then to be the great prophet to preach the words that God gave him to speak to the people of Israel.

The same was true for Peter before Peter could serve Jesus as one of his great apostles, his great servants. Peter first himself had to be undone in the presence of the righteous man, the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. And in the history of the church, the same was true for Martin Luther. the path that led Luther to truly understand with his heart and to truly love the gospel of free grace in Jesus Christ, the gospel of justification by faith alone. That path took him first through this understanding of the righteousness of Christ, even a fear of Christ and his righteousness.

And the same is true for every servant of Christ who faithfully does God’s will in this world. To be faithful to Christ in this world must begin with a genuine encounter with God and His holiness. And what this means is a deep conviction of the majesty, the glory of God as revealed in Christ, a deep conviction of our own utter sinfulness and unworthiness before this God. But it also means a profound wonder and joy at the grace of God, a joy of knowing that you are forgiven, that by the blood of Christ shed for you, you are covered with the holiness of Christ. And so no one who thinks little of the glory, the holiness, the greatness of God will do much good for Christ in this world. But it’s the one who has been most impressed, the one who has been most convicted of the greatness of the God who calls us to himself. It is that one who does the most good for Christ in the world. And so as a Christian, like Moses, you are called into the presence of a holy God. 

Secondly, you are called into the fellowship of a loving God. At this point in our passage that we’re considering, or actually at this point anytime when An angel of God or the Lord himself appears to someone in the scriptures and that person is shrinking back in fear and dread and being in the presence of this divine majesty.

This is the point at which the angel of the Lord always says to that person, do not fear, do not be afraid. Now, the Lord doesn’t say that to Moses, but he says basically what is the equivalent of that. He says in effect, Moses, I am for you. I am for your people. I have seen their affliction. I have heard their cry. I know their suffering, and I have come to save them. Moses, I have compassion on my people. I love them, and I am about to deliver them as I have promised. And so Moses was not only given a revelation here at the burning bush of the unspeakable majesty of God and his holiness, which caused him to hide his face in fear, but he is also given a revelation of the marvelous depths of the divine love and compassion that God has for his people.

And if the splendor of God’s glory left him hiding his face in fear, then the words of God’s love, his care, must have melted the heart of Moses. This God, he sees his people in distress. He hears their prayers. He cares for his people. He loves his people. He is a holy God at the same time, he is a merciful compassionate Savior and this same wonderful combination of this of the character of God that he is one at the same time of God before whom we come with reverence and awe, a God who is a consuming fire, holy, majestic, but a God who is compassionate, merciful, and gracious, a God of love.

The same combination that we see here at the burning bush as God reveals himself to Moses was displayed, and was manifested most perfectly at the cross of Jesus Christ. Because first of all, the death of Jesus shows us like nothing else can show us that He hangs there, not only suffering the indignity, the torture that he received at the hands of men, but even more so, receiving in himself the wrath of God. God having turned his face against him, pouring out the judgment that is due to you and me for our sins. When we see Jesus hanging on the cross, what we must see there is what God thinks of our sin. This is what God thinks of our sin. We take it so lightly, but God does not. This is what your sin and my sin deserve. But at the same time, when we behold Jesus on the cross, we see not only a revelation of the holiness of God and what he must do against sin, but we see a revelation of the indescribable grace and love of God. Because Jesus suffered for us. Jesus was a sacrifice. because God gave him up for us so that we would be set free from that condemnation. And so what an amazing revelation of God’s love for you and me and Jesus Christ.

Just as he had compassion on the Israelites and their bondage to Pharaoh, God has had mercy, he has had compassion on us in our bondage to sin and death. He has given us a son that we might be saved through him. and God continues to have compassion on you. Just as God saw the suffering of his people and heard their cries at this time, when Moses stood before the burning bush, so today the same God, he has a heart of compassion, mercy towards his people. He hears your cries. He sees your suffering. God cares. And just as it must have seemed to the Israelites, after all these years in bondage, century after century, living under the heavy hand of Pharaoh, suffering all of the cruel ways in which he afflicted the people of Israel, it must have seemed to them that God did not care for them, that he had forsaken them, abandoned them to this cruel tyrant.

Where was God? Did he not see? Did he not hear? No, God heard. He saw. But in the same way, you go through affliction, you suffer, and sometimes it seems interminable. It never stops. It keeps going. It is relentless. And you begin to ask, is God there? Does He hear my cries? Does He see my suffering? Does He care? Has He forsaken me? And the answer is no, He has not. He does see you. He does hear your cries to Him. He has compassion, He sees your affliction, and He will save. He will show forth His mercy, His grace in His way and in His timing, not in ours.

But He will bring deliverance to you one way or the other from all that afflicts you in this world. One day, in one way or the other, it could be by bringing you to glory. but he will save you from the affliction of this world. Because he is merciful, he is compassionate, he is a God of love, and so as one who belongs to Christ, you have been called into the fellowship of a loving God. 

Thirdly, and finally, you are called into the service of a sovereign God. We saw how Moses was terrified at the realization that he was in the presence of this holy Lord in the burning bush, but what the Lord said to him in verse 10 must have been as equally terrifying to Moses because Moses says to him in verse 10, come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel out of Egypt. And Moses says, I am ready. When can I pack my bags? When can I go? I can’t wait to meet Pharaoh. No, he says, who am I? Who am I? Oh Lord, that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt. 

Now some commentators have said that Moses was being humble here. And of course we know from, um, the Scriptures that Moses was the most humble person in the world but I believe that there is not just humility here at work but that on the part of Moses there is some genuine fear and trepidation and not unblameable but out of a lack of faith, out of unbelief he’s fearful to do what God commands him to do here. In other words, his faith falters. To him, God was demanding the impossible. Me? Lord, you want me to go back to Egypt? I’m a fugitive. I’m wanted for murder. Remember, I was the guy whom the Israelites rejected when I tried to help them. You want me to go to Pharaoh, the most powerful man on earth? A man who is not a nice individual? You want me to go to this Pharaoh? I have been tending sheep here in the desert for 40 years. I’m 80 years old. I’m way past the age of retirement. You want me, oh Lord, to go to Pharaoh?

But notice what the Lord says. He doesn’t rebuke Moses for his fear, his lack of faith, his failure to trust in God, but the Lord gives Moses the greatest possible encouragement here. He says to him in verse 12, but I will be with you. I will be with you. If you have a friend who confides in you that he has been given some impossible task, something that he does not feel qualified for, or she is just not ready to do, how would you encourage that person, that friend? You would say to them, you can do this. I know you can do it. You’ve got brains, you’ve got talent. I’ve seen you do things that I have perfect confidence in your abilities to do this job. That’s not what God says to Moses. He doesn’t say, come on Moses, you can do it. You’ve got a great education. You’re smart, you’re experienced. I know you have it in you to lead my people out of Egypt. No, the Lord doesn’t say that at all. He says, I will be with you. I will be with you. And that’s all that Moses needed to know. The presence of the Lord would go with him.

Matthew Henry says this, “God’s presence puts an honor upon the worthless, wisdom and strength into the weak and foolish, makes the greatest difficulties dwindle to nothing, and is enough to answer all objections.” How is God calling you to serve him in a way that seems impossible.? That you feel like you just can’t do it. It’s not in you. Perhaps it’s some matter of service that he’s calling you to engage in. Perhaps it’s a matter of obedience. You know what the right thing to do is, but you’re afraid because it seems so hard. No matter how daunting, no matter how impossible it seems, your hope is not what’s in you, your inherent abilities or courage or talents, but that promise that the Lord made to Moses, he makes to you as well, that I will be with you.

And he doesn’t call you to anything in any form of service or any matter of obedience in which he does not also promise to be with you in that, to sustain you, to give you grace, to enable you to do what he calls you to do. Maybe you’re afraid of the future. Maybe it’s something like the next level of school. I remember when I was growing up that that was a fearful thing, going to high school. Or maybe it’s a new job. You’re just not sure if you’re going to be able to do that. Or perhaps it’s simply a difficult conversation. A hard conversation you know you’ve got to have with somebody. You’ve got to confront them with something or tell them something you know that will be hard to talk about. Maybe it’s because you’re afraid to say no to your friends. Oh, you want to please others. You want to go along and yet you know that you can’t go along with that. Well, whatever way in which God calls you to obey Him or to serve Him in this world, the task can seem impossible. In this promise that the Lord makes to Moses to be with him, this helps resolve something in this passage that at first may seem a little confusing or perplexing, even maybe paradoxical, because first in verse eight, the Lord declares this. He says, “I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land”. 

And so God promises that he will deliver his people. But then in verse 10, he says to Moses, come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel out of Egypt. So who is it that is going to deliver the Israelites out of Egypt? Is it the Lord, or is it Moses, whom the Lord will send?

And of course, the answer is, it is God. It is God and His sovereign power who will deliver His people out of Egypt. But He would do it through his servants. He would use Moses as his instrument in order to accomplish what he alone can do. And so God would receive rightfully all the glory, all the credit, all the praise for the Israelites’ redemption from Egypt, and yet he would accomplish that through this man Moses. A man who was very imperfect, like you and me, very weak. A man whose faith falters, and yet God would use him to accomplish his purposes.

And that is the way in which God works in the world as he carries out his work of salvation through the church, through his people. God uses weak and even sinful people like you and me to be his instruments to accomplish his sovereign will. And this ought to be an encouragement to us. because we feel in ourselves our own inadequacies, our weaknesses, but no matter what weaknesses you may feel that you have or think that you have, no matter how inadequate you think you are, no matter how old you may be or how young you may be or how limited you may be in some way, no matter the fact of how you have failed God in the past, No matter all of that, as a Christian, God, He has called you to serve Him in some way.

And He, through that service, He will accomplish His sovereign purposes in your life and in the lives of others through your service to Him. We can put it this way. God does not need you. God did not need Moses. He wasn’t depending on Moses to free his people from Egypt. God does not depend upon you. He doesn’t even need you. But he uses you. It is his will to use you. To do what he has willed to do for the salvation of his people, for the good of his people. And so you are called into the service of a sovereign God.

Well, as we’ll see, Moses goes on to serve the Lord faithfully. He becomes one of the greatest saints that we have in the Old Testament. I don’t need to remind us that we are no Moses. Moses was one of the great ones. But Moses would have given anything to trade places with you and me. Moses was given this extraordinary revelation at the burning bush. A bush that kept burning, the voice of God, God in the fire, appearing to him. But as wonderful as that revelation that God made to Moses in the wilderness was, it pales in comparison to the revelation that God has given to you and me in His Son, Jesus Christ. He is the image of the invisible God. In Him the fullness of the deity indwells bodily. He is the Word who was with God and who was God who became flesh. To behold the face of Christ is to behold the face of God. And Moses, he did not see that. Not in the fullness that we have seen it with the coming of Christ into the world. And it is through this gospel of Jesus Christ. It is through the gospel, this good news that Christ has come into the world for our salvation. It is through that that God is calling you to himself.

To have an even greater knowledge than Moses had of the Son of God and therefore of God. To have a greater understanding, a greater knowledge of the Savior who has accomplished not just a salvation from slavery and in Egypt, but a salvation from eternal death and judgment. Have you heard the call of God to you in the gospel of Jesus Christ? Have you heard and have you answered that call? Believe in Christ, repent of your sin, turn to Him, commit your life to serving Him, to worshiping Him, And that is how you answer the call of God today.

Let’s pray.

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The Old Testament reading is Isaiah 25:6-9, and this is the infallible and inerrant word of God. 

On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wine, of rich food full of marrow, of aged wine well refined, And He will swallow up on this mountain the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death forever. And the Lord God will wipe away tears from all faces, and the reproach of His people He will take away from all the earth. For the Lord has spoken. It will be said on that day, behold, this is our God. We have waited for him that he might save us. This is the Lord. We have waited for him. Let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation. 

And now let’s turn to the New Testament. Mark 15:40 through chapter 16:8. And this is our sermon text this morning as well. Mark 15:40 through 16:8. 

There were also women looking on from a distance, among whom were Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James, the younger, and of Joseph, and Salome. When he was in Galilee, they followed him and ministered to him. And there were also many other women who came up with him to Jerusalem. And when evening had come, since it was the day of preparation, that is, the day before the Sabbath, Joseph of Arimathea, a respected member of the council, who was also himself looking for the kingdom of God, took courage and went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Pilate was surprised to hear that he should have already died. And summoning the centurion, he asked him whether he was already dead.

And when he learned from the centurion that he was dead, he granted the corpse to Joseph. And Joseph bought a linen shroud, and taking him down, wrapped him in the linen shroud, and laid him in a tomb that had been cut out of the rock. And he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb. Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of Joseph saw where he was laid. When the Sabbath was passed, Mary Magdalene married the mother of James and Salome, bought spices so that they might go and anoint him. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb.

And they were saying to one another, who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb? And looking up, they saw that the stone had been rolled back. It was very large. And entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe, and they were alarmed. And he said to them, do not be alarmed. You see Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified. He is risen. He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee.

There you will see him just as he told you. And they went out and fled from the tomb for trembling and astonishment had seized them. And they said nothing to anyone for they were afraid. 

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. 

Today, of course, we are celebrating the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ from the dead. But before there could be a resurrection, Jesus had to die. And our passage this morning begins with the death of Jesus, not the actual Crucifixion itself, Mark describes that for us in the verses before our passage, but in the immediate aftermath of his death, and particularly, he describes for us what we must assume was a profound sense of regret, not regret, but sorrow, pain, grief, on the part of those who knew Jesus, who loved Him, they felt as we feel at the death of a loved one, sadness, grief, loss.

Mark tells us about the group of women who had followed and served Jesus during His earthly ministry, and they loved Jesus. They loved Him as their teacher, their rabbi, their Lord, One of the women was Mary Magdalene. Jesus had rescued her from the awful oppression of seven evil spirits. Mary, the mother of James and Joseph, we can’t say for sure, but it’s possible. This is actually Mary, the mother of Jesus. And she too, of course, loved Jesus. She loved Jesus as a son. And these women, they did not just hear about the death of Jesus secondhands, but they watched him die.

And they watched him die, not just a natural death, passing from life to death on a bed in a hospital, but they watched him die the most horrific death imaginable, death by crucifixion on a Roman cross – torture he suffered, the humiliation of the cross, the profound injustice of all of it. All of this would have only compounded the intensity of the grief, sorrow, the pain that filled the hearts of these faithful women. But what could they do? What could they do but grieve? It was all over. Jesus was dead. They saw with their very eyes his lifeless body hanging on the cross.

Death leaves us feeling so helpless and hopeless, at least in terms of bringing someone back from the dead. There’s nothing we can do. They are gone forever, seemingly, from our world, from our lives. But in the wake of death, at least we can care for the body of the deceased. We can honor the memory of our loved one with a memorial service, a funeral. These things, of course, don’t take away the grief that we feel, the pain, the loss, but they do give us some way to deal with the reality of death, to bring some sense of closure, and to help us prepare for what is the unavoidable truth, fact that life must go on even after we lose a loved one life must go on and that is what the followers of Jesus are doing here in this passage they knew that there was nothing they could do to bring him back he was gone, he was dead but at least they could care for the body at least they could give Jesus, a decent and honorable burial.

They could put his body to rest and hopefully that may bring some bit of comfort to their anguished souls. And the fact was that as horrific, as unjust as his crucifixion was, it was all over now and life would have to go on somehow. And this is how the story of the resurrection of Jesus begins. It begins in a very ordinary way. People doing what people do, what they can do to somehow deal with the death of one whom they loved and adored, whom they will miss so much. But of course, what these followers of Jesus did not know is that God was about to turn their world upside down.

And life for these followers of Jesus would not just  “go on”, but their lives would never be the same again. And indeed, this world would never be the same again. So as we look at this passage of the resurrection of Jesus, we’ll consider three lessons. First of all, how the followers of Jesus dealt with the body of Christ. Secondly, the wonder of the empty tomb in chapter 16. And thirdly, what all of this means for us, our resurrection life in Christ. So first of all, the followers and how they dealt with the death of Jesus.

So in this passage, it’s very characteristic of Mark. He’ll tell us about one thing, then he’ll move on to tell us about another thing, and then he’ll go back to that original thing that he was describing for us. So here, he first talks about the women, how they watched from a distance, Jesus being crucified, then he tells us about Joseph of Arimathea and what he does, and then he goes back to tell us what the women do in the aftermath of the death of Jesus. And so we’ll first take a look at Joseph, Joseph of Arimathea.

We meet him in verse 43. Mark tells us that he was not just a member, but a respected member of the council. And the Council, this was the Sanhedrin. This was the ruling body of the Jews, the Jewish people, the Pharisees, the Scribes, the Sadducees, the chief priests and so on, these religious leaders. And it was this council or Sanhedrin that had condemned Jesus and sent him off to be crucified and Joseph was a member of that body and yet we know from the Gospel of Luke that Joseph did not approve. He did not consent to their actions; he was against what they did to Jesus. We also know that he actually believed that Jesus was the Messiah he believed in Christ. In verse 43, Mark tells us that he was looking for the kingdom of God.

And Joseph demonstrated his faithfulness to Jesus by asking Pilate for the body after Jesus died. And this was not an easy thing for anyone to do. Mark tells us in verse 43, he took courage. He took courage and went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Remember, Jesus had just been executed by Pilate as an enemy of the state. And by asking for the body, Joseph is putting himself at risk that in the eyes of Pilate, he might be associated with this rebel, this enemy. Then Pilate grants Joseph his request, which probably indicates that Pilate probably didn’t really believe that this was a rebel or an enemy of the state.

But he grants Joseph his request. And so Joseph can begin the process of taking care of the body of Jesus. And there wasn’t much time to do that. Jesus was crucified on a Friday, what Mark calls in verse 22, the day of preparation. And so when the sun set that Friday evening, the Sabbath day would begin and of course, the Sabbath day was the day in which the Jews did no ordinary work, and that included even the work of taking care of a body, preparing the body for burial. And so there was not much time for Joseph to do what he could do in order to prepare Jesus, his body, for burial.

And so there was just a few hours, but in that short time, Joseph bought a burial cloth, which Mark calls a linen shroud, Joseph took down the body, probably he cleaned the body, and then he wrapped the body of Jesus in the linen shroud, and then he laid him in the tomb, and then he rolled the stone in front of the mouth of the tomb. And this whole process was hurried, but at least it was a respectful, a decent burial. And no doubt it gave Joseph a little bit of comfort knowing that at least the body of Jesus would not undergo any further humiliation and disgrace.

At least the body was resting in its grave. And now the women who also were grieving and mourning as Joseph no doubt was. They were doing what they could do to deal with the death of Jesus. As soon as the Sabbath was over, which would be Saturday evening at sundown, the Sabbath officially ended, the women went out and they bought spices in order to anoint the body of Jesus so that when the daylight came, when the sun rose on the first day of the week, they could be at the tomb to properly anoint the body of Jesus for his burial.

The spices were probably some kind of oil or ointment, and they used spices to anoint a dead body, not in order to embalm it, as the Egyptians did, to keep it from decaying, but they did it for a very practical reason, because the decomposing flesh would put off such a terrible odor. The spices would help mask that odor. Now, so far as we read this in Mark, there’s really nothing too extraordinary about what Mark has told us here. Joseph, the women, they’re simply doing what they had to do, what they could do to give Jesus a decent and honorable burial.

Again, no matter how terrible and unjust, no matter how awful the death that he died, they had to go about the rituals, the practices of the funeral because life would have to go on. They had to accept that Jesus was dead. And if the Gospel of Mark ended here, this would be no gospel. There would be no good news here. In fact, all of this would be just another sad story of the pain and the grief that fills the hearts of those who lose a loved one. They’re doing what they can do, what they have to do in the wake of death to try to bring some closure, some comfort, And this is the story that has been told over and over and over again throughout all of human history.

The pain of death, the grief of the loss, the mourning, the sorrow experienced by those who are left behind. And of course, the need to deal with it and to prepare to go on living. But praise God, this is so much more than just another story of death and loss and sorrow. Everything changes. Everything changes in the dawning rays of the sun on that first Easter morning. What began with the heartbreaking sadness of the death of Jesus ends with the greatest discovery that has ever been made or that ever will be made, and that is the discovery of the empty tomb.

And that’s the second lesson that we’ll consider from this passage. The Wonder of the Empty Tomb. Mark tells us in verse 3 of chapter 16 that, as the women were on the way to the tomb, they said to one another, who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb? Now that was a very good question for the women to ask. Most likely the stone was a large disk carved out of solid rock. It was covering the opening it tells us, and this is also very characteristic of Mark, he loves to give us these little details that add color to his gospel account, but he tells us, it was very large. This stone disk was very large. It was too large for two or three women to move. And apparently in the midst of their grief, as they had set out for the tomb, they realized that they had forgotten about this very important detail. How in the world will they even get into the tomb? But when they arrived to the gravesite, their question was answered because when they looked up at the tomb, the stone had been rolled back. And when the women entered the tomb, what they saw was not the body of Jesus resting as it had been laid there three days ago, but instead they found what Mark calls a young man sitting in the tomb, dressed in a white robe.

Mark calls this person a young man, but there’s no question as to what he really was. His white clothes are the garments of heaven. This was an angel of God. And now the women, standing in the tomb, seeing this strange young man, all dressed in white, they’re beginning to wonder what in the world is going on, and they are terrified. And the angel says this to the women do not be alarmed you seek Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified. He has risen. He is not here. He has risen. He is not here. We are so familiar with the truth of the resurrection of Christ we are so familiar with these words, “he has risen”, that we fail to feel the force of these words and the way that the women would have felt these words when they were first announced to them by this angel from heaven.

He has risen. He is not here. Think about what these women have come to do. They came to the tomb to care for the dead body of Jesus, to prepare the body to decompose, to decay, to eventually become nothing but a pile of bones. Essentially, they were going to the funeral of their friend. And what they might have expected to hear from this strange person in the tomb, whatever he was, whoever he was, would be the words that you expect to hear at a funeral. You would expect them to hear something like, “I’m so sorry for your loss”. “He was a good man”. “We’ll all miss him so much”. 

But this angel didn’t show up to a funeral. This angel didn’t come to give words of comfort or consolation to this woman. He was there to declare a message, to proclaim to them good news, that the Lord whom they sought, “He is risen. He is not here. He is alive. He lives”. And all of a sudden, this is no funeral anymore. This is no burial service. This is not just another sad story of the death of a loved one and the survivors coping with it as best they can.

No, this is now the story of the glorious work of God of conquering death forever and ever. This is God doing the impossible of bringing life from the dead, of raising the dead to new resurrection life. This is the resurrection of Jesus as the first fruits of all who belong to Christ. We also will be raised up with him. And so when God raised his son Jesus from the dead, he brought about for us an entirely new reality in the face of death. And that is we now have in the face of death, we have the hope, the promise of victory over the grave.

We have now in Christ the death of death, the promise of the hope of resurrection life. And so the empty tomb is not just the good news that God raised Christ from the dead. It is certainly that, but there’s more to it than that. The empty tomb is the good news that whoever comes to Jesus by faith, whoever belongs to him, by trusting in him, whoever believes that he is the Son of God, whoever submits to him as Lord and Savior, that that person also will be raised from death to life. 

John tells us the words of Jesus, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.” 

This is our hope. This is your hope in the face of death. And what other hope is there that we could possibly have? There is none. Death conquers all. Death overcomes us. We are helpless and powerless in the face of this great enemy. But Jesus Christ has given us victory over death. There is no other hope except in Christ. And people will try to do something, anything, to try to overcome death. But it is all vain. It is futile. 

There are some people now spending millions of dollars to try to pursue some technologies that somehow will stave off death for them. There are people who make arrangements so that when they die, their bodies will be deep frozen in some crypt somewhere, and with the hopes that medical science someday, somehow, will find a way to bring life to the dead. It’s a desperate hope, if you can even call it a hope. But apart from Christ, what other hope is there? For resurrection life, to conquer death, there is no other hope but in Christ you have a true and a certain hope. 

One day, unless the Lord comes again, one day you and I will also go to our grave. We will meet death, death will come to us. And yet, though we must die in these perishable bodies, God has promised you as a believer in Jesus Christ that he will raise you up in a body that is imperishable and glorified, a body in which you will live forever and ever, a body without sickness, without aging, without deterioration, without dementia, a body in which there will be no cloud of death hanging over you and me as it does in this world. And so as a believer in Jesus Christ, the empty tomb of Jesus is the guarantee that one day the tomb or the grave that your body will occupy will be emptied as well. It too will be an empty tomb. 

When the Lord comes again from heaven, when Jesus comes with the shout of the archangel, the shout of the trumpet, and he calls the dead to life, and he will call you out of your grave, and you will be risen to live body and soul in a new heavens and new earth forever and ever. That is the hope that Christ gives you and me as a result of the empty tomb because he was raised. You too will be raised up with him. And the question that confronts us today is, is this your hope?

Again, every single one of us will face death. What is your hope? Is it the Lord Jesus Christ? That he will give you victory over the grave? And so that is our hope for the world to come, but it’s not as though the resurrection of Christ has nothing to do with us in this life. Quite the opposite. As a believer in Christ, You have been given a life in which the power of the resurrection of Christ is already at work in you. And that’s the third lesson that I want us to consider from this passage.

Our resurrection life in Christ. First of all, the resurrection of Christ means that your sins are forgiven. Your sins are forgiven. I once spoke with a woman who had been to Israel. If I remember right, she had been there several times. She was interested in the fact that I was a pastor. I believe she was a Christian, I’m not sure, but her husband spoke Hebrew and she thought it was interesting that I had studied Hebrew in seminary. She was telling me about how great it is to visit Jerusalem and to see the various sites that are described in the Bible.

And she told me that you can see the tomb where Jesus is buried. And I thought, maybe she didn’t mean to say that. Maybe that was just a slip of the tongue on her part, but it really caught my attention. She said, you can see the tomb where Jesus is buried. Not, you can see the tomb where Jesus was buried. And I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt. She just slipped. But what a big difference one little word makes. Because if there is some tomb in Jerusalem, if there is some cave somewhere, where the bones of Jesus are still interred, they’re still there, that’s not just some interesting fact, but it changes everything.

It changes everything. If Jesus is still dead, you and I are still under the condemnation of God. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15:17, “and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins”. He goes on to say this, “if in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied”. We can put it this way. The death that Jesus died on the cross, the sacrifice he made upon the cross when he bore the wrath of God for our sin, It would have no saving value. It could not redeem us. It would not be anything good for us at all if Jesus remained in the tomb, if he is still dead. because if Christ is still dead, that means he is still under the curse of sin and death. And if Christ is still under the curse of sin and death, it means that we are still under the curse of sin and death. And therefore we would be not only under the judgment of God, the condemnation of God, because we are still in our sins, but we would be the most pathetic people, the most pitiable people in all the world, because we would be worshiping a dead savior.

And what’s more, what we are doing here today, what we do here every Sunday, worshiping God in the name and by faith of his son Jesus Christ, all of this would be a colossal waste of time. This would be a supreme act of folly. If Christ is still in the grave and therefore we are still in our sins, what are we doing here? We might as well be out in the world. It’s a beautiful day out there. We might as well be enjoying that. We might as well be trying to get all of the profit and the pleasure that we can possibly squeeze out of this short life that we have in this world until we die and enter into the judgment of God.

If there is a tomb in Jerusalem in which Jesus is buried, we are without hope. But praise God that Jesus has been raised. He has given the testimony of the truth of the resurrection in his word. His word is true. What the women saw is true. An empty tomb. They heard the words of God from the angel. He is risen. And so when God raised Christ from the dead, he not only demonstrated that he is the victor over death and the grave, but the resurrection of Christ was God’s way of proclaiming to the world, my son has satisfied my justice.

His sacrifice is satisfying to me. It is sufficient to atone for the sins of my people. I am pleased with my son. He bore the sins of my beloved people, and it is over, and life is His, and life belongs to all that I give to Him. And so the resurrection of Jesus is the guarantee that His death was truly a death that takes away our sins forever. And for that reason, then, the empty tomb is the guarantee, along with the crucifixion, that you are forgiven. 

That’s why we rejoice today on Easter Sunday. That’s why we rejoice and give thanks to God every Lord’s Day because both of his crucifixion and resurrection we know that our sins have been taken away from us for all time, for eternity. God counts them against us no more. Now Mark doesn’t tell us all of this in his gospel. However, there is a story of forgiveness here, a beautiful story of God’s mercy and forgiveness. Notice what the angel says to the women in verse 7. He says, “but go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going before you to Galilee”. He doesn’t just say, tell his disciples, but the angel goes out of his way to say, tell his disciples and Peter to go and meet him in Galilee. 

The last time that Mark tells us about Peter, it is such a grievous sight that he gives us. Peter is a broken man. He is weeping bitter tears. He has done the very thing he vowed so foolishly that he would not do, he denied knowing Jesus as his Lord. And all he could do was weep. But the angel had a message from Jesus for Peter, from the risen Lord. And the message is not what we might think it would have been, “Go and tell Peter that traitor. Go and tell Peter who denied me, who rejected me in this way. Go and tell him that I am alive and I am coming after him.” That’s what we might expect to hear.

But the message from Jesus was, tell Peter that he too must come to meet me. In other words, Peter, the dark night of your guilt and sin is forgiven. It is over. You are forgiven. I love you. You are my servant. I have a mission for you. Come and meet me in Galilee. Yes, even you, Peter. And in the same way, if your hope is in Jesus Christ, the resurrection of Christ is God’s message to you as well. You are forgiven. Your sin against me, your guilt is taken away. Christ says to you, I love you. You are mine and come meet me. Come to me. You are my servant. I have a mission for you. And so the resurrection is God’s guarantee that our sins are forgiven in Christ. Secondly, the resurrection of Christ means for you today, the power to live a new life, the power to live a resurrection life. There was never a greater display of the almighty power of God than on that first Easter morning when Jesus was raised from the dead. God is infinite in power. And this is a manifestation of the power of God that is perhaps even greater than His power that was displayed in creating all things of nothing.

Imagine a God creating all things from nothing. What kind of power is that? But here is an even greater power, that God can bring life out of death, that He can raise the dead. And if you belong to Christ by faith, then that same divine, almighty resurrection power is at work in you by the same power with which He raised Jesus from the dead. The Spirit of Christ is at work in you to enable you to walk in new life, new obedience, resurrection life. And isn’t this something we so desperately need? We can try to change our habits, we can try to change and reform our lives, but we cannot live by faith, we cannot live in obedience to the Word of God, we cannot enjoy walking with Christ apart from the resurrection power that Christ gives to us by His Spirit. And that’s the power He gives you. 

Romans 8:11, “if the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his spirit who dwells in you”. 

And so this resurrection life that Christ gives to you by his almighty spirit, this is a life of overcoming sin, of living to righteousness, dying to sin, growing in obedience, becoming more and more like Jesus himself. You are called to be like Christ, but you cannot apart from the power of the Spirit at work in you, the power by which Jesus was raised from the dead.

And so the empty tomb means not only that your sins are forgiven, but it means you have the Spirit of the risen Christ at work in you to further and further conform you to the image of Jesus, who is the true image of God. Mark ends his gospel with the women fleeing from the tomb. He says that they were seized with trembling and astonishment. They’re too afraid to say anything to anybody. You’ll notice in your English Bibles that verses 9 to the end of chapter 16 that those verses are bracketed off and there’ll be some footnote or explanation saying why.

Most likely this longer ending in Mark was not part of the original gospel that Mark wrote, so that’s why we’re ending the passage on verse 8. But when the passage ends at verse 8, it seems a little strange that the gospel ends that way. It’s not a note of joy and triumphant faith and rejoicing in the resurrection, but the women are terrified. They’re trembling. And whatever else that may mean. Mark is making at least this much clear. The women were totally unprepared for what they encountered in the empty tomb. The sheer magnitude of what they experienced, the angel, the declaration that Jesus had risen from the dead, all of that left them stunned and speechless and terrified.

And one thing is for sure, that after going to the empty tomb, life would never be the same for these women. They went there that morning to make the best of a horrible situation, to cope as best as they could with the profound grief and sorrow that they felt, to deal with the body of their beloved teacher, to anoint his body, give him a decent burial. But they left that morning with the awesome realization that God was doing something in their midst that was more wonderful and magnificent than anything they could have imagined in their wildest dreams.

And the question that I want to leave you and me with is this. Have you been to the empty tomb? And I’m not talking about the actual tomb in Jerusalem. We don’t even know if we know where that is exactly. But have you by faith come to Jesus Christ as the resurrected Son of God, who died for your sin, who was raised to give you eternal life like these women like the disciples after them, and like so millions and millions of people after them, everyone who comes to the empty tomb leaves a different person, a changed person, a person who has now new life and hope in the resurrected Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.

Let’s pray.

The post He Is Risen! appeared first on Mt. Rose OPC.

The Old Testament reading is Exodus 2:1-10 and this is the word of the Lord. “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. 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. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her servant woman, and she took it. 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 women 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. When the child grew older, 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.” 

And now let’s turn to Hebrews 1:23-28 for the New Testament reading. Hebrews 11:23-28, but keep your place there in Exodus. So as you know, Hebrews 11 is the hall of fame of faith, a list of all of the saints who walked by faith and who were obedient to the Lord by faith.

And verses 23 through 28 concern Moses and his faith, which really began with his parents. The first part of this is really talking about his parents’ faith. So I’ll read verses 23 through 28. “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. By faith, Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin.

He considered the reproach of Christ greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking to the reward. By faith, he left Egypt, not being afraid of the anger of the king, for he endured as seeing him who is invisible. By faith, he kept the Passover and sprinkled the blood so that the destroyer of the firstborn might not touch them.’

The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever. 

When we left off a couple of weeks ago in Exodus, at the end of chapter one, at that point, the people of Israel in Egypt, they were in dire straits. They had grown so numerous that they became a threat to Pharaoh, and so he began a series of steps in order to decimate the population of Israel and we considered those a couple of weeks ago and all of that culminated in Pharaoh’s edict to all the people of Egypt that they were to drown all the Hebrew baby boys that were born to the Israelites and so in that way he would control the population, control the people of Israel, that they could remain his slaves. 

So at the beginning of Chapter 2 here, the circumstances for the people of Israel are very bleak. Pharaoh, the enemy of God’s people, really the enemy of God, he seems to be on the brink here of destroying the nation of Israel. But it’s right now at this time that in the wisdom of God, the perfect wisdom of God, and under his sovereign lordship over the whole world, it was just at that time that the low point, the nadir of the sufferings of the people of Israel, that the Lord acts. When things were at their darkest, when all hope seemed to be lost, God was at work to raise up a man who would bring salvation to his people.

And that’s what this passage is all about. It’s about the birth of Moses, the great leader of Israel, who would lead his people out of Egypt, out of their bondage to Pharaoh, and bring them into freedom. And ultimately, not Moses, of course, but Joshua, would bring them into the promised land. But this is the account of his birth.

I said a few weeks ago that the Exodus is the gospel of the Old Testament. The exodus of Israel out of Egypt this is the great salvation event that the Old Covenant Israelites that they celebrated as the the preeminent act of God in bringing deliverance to them and if the gospel of the New Testament begins with the birth of the Savior Jesus then the gospel of the Old Testament begins with the birth of Moses And as we consider this account of the birth of Moses, we learn some things about the way in which God works out his saving purposes for us in Christ.

And so we’ll take three lessons from this passage about God’s saving work for us. First of all, as we’ll see, salvation is entirely the work of God. Secondly, salvation is deliverance from the judgment of God And thirdly, salvation is yours by faith in God. So those are the three lessons that we’ll take from this passage this morning. First of all, salvation is entirely the work of the Lord, not our work, but God’s work. And one way we can see how that is true from this passage is to consider the condition of the Israelites, the position that they were in.

They were hopeless. As chapter 2 begins, the Israelites are in bondage to Pharaoh, and humanly speaking, they have no hope of deliverance. There is nothing in their situation to make us think that even though they are a numerous people, that they have any real possibility of freeing themselves from the bitter yoke of Pharaoh. They were hopelessly enslaved to the Egyptians. And their bondage here is meant to be for us a picture of the bondage that we are in by nature because of our sin. As sinners, you and I are born into a situation in which, like the Israelites, we are hopelessly enslaved.

But of course, our enslavement is not to some Egyptian taskmasters, but our enslavement is to the sin that indwells in us. that reigns over us apart from the grace of God. Jesus said as much. He said, truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits a sin, and that is, of course, everyone, everyone who commits a sin is a slave to sin. Now, as slaves to sin, we are willing slaves. We have sold ourselves into slavery, but nevertheless, we are helplessly, hopelessly in bondage One of the reasons why we so often don’t have a greater appreciation, a greater love of the gospel, of the truth, of what God has done for us in Christ, there’s the reason why we don’t appreciate that or understand it as we should is because we don’t truly comprehend just how helpless just how hopeless our condition is as those who are enslaved to sin we choose to sin to be sure but because we are sinful by nature because from the moment we are born our hearts are corrupt We have inherited that original depravity, that corruption from our first parents, Adam and Eve, and for that reason, although we choose to sin, we will always choose to sin.

Again, apart from the grace of God, the only course we will take is to rebel against God, to pursue our own sinful desires, to hate Him, and to flee from Him, and to have nothing to do with Him. that is bondage, that is slavery. It is just as a miserable helpless condition as the Israelites were here in Egypt. Not only are we enslaved to sin, but we are dead in sin. There is no life in us. It is against the background of that truth of what we are apart from Christ, before the grace of God, it’s only then that we can begin to appreciating, to give thanks to God for how marvelous, how wonderful His grace is to us, that He has set us free from that sin, that He has made us alive in Christ.

And this is the sovereign work of God in our salvation. This is the truth that we are saved by God’s work, by His action, by His initiative and power and not by our own, not even by helping God a little bit. It’s not as though God saw that we had stumbled and fell and he lends us a helping hand if we will only reach up to him to grab that hand. You’ve all heard the saying, God helps those who help themselves. That’s actually one of the most popular Bible verses that’s really actually not even in the Bible.

I just read the other day that apparently 75% of Americans believe that that is a Bible verse. God helps those who help themselves. But that is not in the scripture and it’s certainly not true when it comes to our salvation. God doesn’t help those who help themselves because there’s no one who helps themselves to free themselves out of their bondage to sin. Just as a corpse does not help himself to become alive, we cannot help ourselves to free ourselves from this bondage, that God in his sovereign power, looking upon us in mercy and pity, he delivers us from our bondage.

He makes us alive together with Christ. And so that’s one way in which we have a picture here of this truth that for you and me as Christians, salvation, we always need to remember that salvation is the sovereign work of God. But there’s another way in which this passage shows us that salvation is entirely God’s work, and that is the amazing providence of God. This passage just is a wonderful testimony to God’s providence, that is, His rule over all things that take place in all creation. In verses one and two, we read this. “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.” By the way, we learn later in the Old Testament the names of Moses’ parents. His mother’s name was Jochebed. His father’s name was Amram. And for some reason, Jochebed, Moses’ mother, she was able to keep it a secret that she had given birth to a baby boy for about three months. And so she was able to somehow keep his crying from alerting The Egyptians that there was a child, an infant in this house, possibly a boy that they of course would be commanded to drown. She was able to do this for three months. Probably after that time as babies do, they grow, their cries become louder it became impossible to hide him any longer.

 And so it says in verse 3 that she “took for him a basket made of bulrushes, endowed it with bitumen and pitch. She put the child in it and placed it among the reeds by the river bank.”

A bulrush is apparently a kind of a grassy plant that grows in the water. Another name for it would be a papyrus reed. And the bitumen and pitch, they were either tar or some kind of a tar product that was used to seal this basket to make it waterproof so that it would float. and we’ll have more to say about this so-called basket later, but probably the idea here was that Moses’ mother would put Moses, the infant, in the basket and set it on the Nile River to hide it during the day, then at night she could go to her son in the basket, take him out, hold him and nurse him, and in that way she would be able to keep him alive.

And so God used the craftiness of Moses’ mother to keep him alive at least for a time. But then something happens here that was completely out of the control of the parents of Moses. God intervenes in the most remarkable way. One day, as Moses is floating in his little basket on the Nile River, it just so happened, quote, unquote, coincidentally, that the daughter of Pharaoh went to that very place that day to take a bath. This was the daughter of the very king who had decreed that every baby boy of the Hebrews should be murdered.

But God had given this girl a different spirit. A different spirit than that of her father. She had a sense of humanity, of compassion. And so rather than carrying out her own father’s decree that this baby should be drowned in the Nile, she took pity on this baby boy in the basket and she saved his life. If you think about it, this is the providence of God because there was probably only one person of all the Egyptians who could get away with disobeying Pharaoh’s decree. That would be his own daughter. She would be the one person that he would not put to death for disobeying his commands.

But she is the one who comes and happens upon this basket with Moses inside of it. And not only that, but God used the sister of Moses as well to save him from death. Again, we know elsewhere from the Bible that the sister of Moses, her name is Miriam, and Miriam’s part in all of this was to stand at a distance and to see what would happen. And it wasn’t the case that she was just standing there to watch him if he dies, but she was standing there in case there was a situation in which she could protect her baby brother.

And indeed she can. And Miriam, She had the intelligence and the courage to go up to Pharaoh’s daughter and she says to Pharaoh’s daughter, “shall I find a Hebrew woman to nurse her for you?” We might fill in the lines a little bit. Maybe she said something like, I know just the perfect woman to nurse this baby boy. She would be ideal for the job. Of course, she’s thinking about the baby’s mother, her own mother too. And so Miriam brings her baby brother, or she brings Moses’s mother to Pharaoh’s daughter, and then Moses’s mother is able to take Moses, her son, home to care for him, to nurse him in perfect safety.

And she even gets paid for it. And I’m sorry to say this, moms, but probably in the history of the world, this is the first and only time that a mother ever got paid to take care of her child. But the point here is the way in which this all worked out so providentially. Moses was kept alive through these extraordinary events and under the lordship, the rule of God over all these things. And the Lord not only preserved the life of Moses, but in his absolute control of all things, he saw to it that Moses would be perfectly equipped to be the one who would lead the people of Egypt or the people of Israel out of Egypt.

First of all, Moses, the baby, would be taken care of. He would be nursed and loved by his own mother and father. And so he was with his parents during the most formidable or the most formidable or formative rather. He was with his parents during the most formative, the most impressionable years of his life. He would have been nursed in that day and age probably until he was three or four years old. And by that time, a love of his family, a love for his people would have been indelibly impressed upon his heart because of the love that he received from his mother and his father and his family.

And so already he has been by the providence of God to identify with the people of Israel as his people. These are his people. This is his family. And then later, of course, again, in God’s providence, Moses is raised up in Pharaoh’s household. And there he received what would have been a world-class education, world-class training. He would have studied linguistics, mathematics, astronomy, architecture, music, medicine, law, and diplomacy. And all of that education and training would have formed the bind of Moses to be the perfect person to lead the people of Israel out of Egypt and to lead the people of Israel in their wilderness wandering for 40 years.

And of course, that very education in Pharaoh’s court was also what enabled him to write the first five books of the Bible. But all of that is in the future. For the present, at this time, in this passage, the parents of Moses, all they knew was the suffering, the anguish that they were enduring Knowing that despite their best efforts to preserve the life of their son, he very likely could have died in the waters of the Nile. He could have been discovered by any other Egyptian who would have drowned him. And no doubt at this time, the parents of Moses were wondering, thinking to themselves, why?

Why did God allow this? Why are we living under these circumstances? Why is our son, our precious son, our baby boy, why is he living under a death sentence? But of course, as we’ve seen, God had a purpose, even in this desperate situation. He was preparing Moses to be the deliverer of Israel. My parents and sister and I, we once knew a young lady who had to have a bone marrow transplant. Actually, she was going through a bone marrow transplant at the same time my sister was. And so they got to know each other and we got to know her a little bit. They both had leukemia, so they had to have this transplant. and sadly she did not live very long this, my sister’s friend, this young girl that she met she didn’t live very long after the transplant but at some point during her treatment she came to saving faith in Christ she was probably in her late teens, early twenties and she said to my sister something that sounded pretty amazing at the time or maybe even perplexing to someone who didn’t understand what she meant. But she said to my sister, I can see now how all of the pieces of my life are starting to fall into place for me.

Now, on the surface of that, from a human perspective, that sounds just absurd. Here she was, a young woman, again, probably in her early 20s. She’s been diagnosed with this deadly disease. She’s dying from this disease. How could it be possible that all of the pieces of her life are starting to fall into place? But of course she was speaking of her life, not in terms of whatever life she would have in this world, but she was speaking of her life in terms of eternity, in terms of salvation, in terms of her standing with God.

And she came to understand, after she came to faith in Christ, that this also was in the providence of God. that he allowed her to be diagnosed with this cancer that he was pleased to use this disease in her life to bring her to faith in Christ and that’s how all the pieces were falling into place for her that God in his providence was using even this terrible disease, this terrible circumstance to bring her to that salvation that he had appointed for her and chose her for even from before the foundation of the world and I believe that she is in glory with Christ now.

But what if she hadn’t gotten sick? What if she had lived a healthy life? She would still be alive now, probably. But would she know Christ? This was the way in which he brought this beloved soul to himself. So God works even through suffering to bring about his redemptive loving, saving purposes for his people. And there are times when you and I suffer. And we have no idea why this is taking place. Why are we in these circumstances? Why is this happening to me? And when God has allowed you to experience that, to suffer in that way, some loss, some affliction, some inexplicable, some incomprehensible turn in your life, You don’t see how it all fits together, but one day you’ll see how all the pieces are falling into place according to God’s ordering all things for your good, for your salvation.

Even those things that afflict us, the painful things, the grievous things, the suffering, he uses that too to bring about that salvation that he has given you in Christ. So salvation is entirely the work of God. 

The second lesson is salvation is being saved from the judgment of God. So in verse three, when it says that Moses’s mother built him a basket, the word that is used there for basket in the original Hebrew, the word in Hebrew is the word that is translated ark. and the only other place in the Bible where this particular Hebrew word for ark appears is in the story in Genesis of Noah and his ark.

And that’s significant because what that means is we are supposed to read this passage in the light of what we read back in Genesis of Noah and his ark. And they are both stories of God’s salvation, his saving work for his people. With Noah, God saved a tiny remnant of humanity from drowning in the floodwaters by preserving their lives in the ark. And here in Exodus chapter 2, God saves Moses from drowning in the Nile, or from being drowned in the Nile, with an ark. And if Noah’s Ark was the means of salvation from the floodwaters of God’s judgment, then the Ark of Moses was also pointing to a salvation that would be a salvation from the judgment of God.

In this case, it is that Moses was saved by an ark so that he could later save God’s people from God’s judgment. As we’ll eventually get there, but as we look ahead in Exodus, you’ll recall that The Lord brought ten plagues upon the people of Egypt, and that tenth and final plague, the worst of them, was the death of every firstborn in all the land of Egypt. And that’s when the angel of the Lord passed over the entire land of Egypt. He struck down every firstborn of man and beast. And the reason why the Israelites were saved from that awful judgment was because God had commanded the Israelites to sacrifice a lamb that very evening, to smear the blood of that lamb on the doorposts of their home, on the lintels of their doors.

And when the Lord saw the blood of the lamb on the house of the Israelite families, He would spare those families from the judgment of the death of the firstborn in that home. And so in this indirect way then, even here in the infancy of Moses as he’s placed in an ark, the Holy Spirit is indicating in this way that God is going to bring salvation to his people Israel, a salvation from the judgment of God that would fall upon the entire land of Egypt. Now as Christians, part of our Christian vocabulary, the language that we use is we talk about how we are saved.

We might talk about, I remember the year or the day, maybe, when I was saved. Or we might talk about a friend. I don’t know if he’s saved. But how often do we consider exactly what are we saved from? What did Jesus come to deliver us from? What is our salvation all about? Well, Jesus didn’t come to save us from suffering. We would love that, wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t we? Jesus had come to save us from all suffering, but that’s certainly not true. He didn’t come to save us from poverty or illness or physical death. He didn’t come to save us from unpleasant, uncomfortable circumstances, but he came to save you and me from the wrath of God.

He came to save you and me from that judgment that we have brought upon ourselves because of our guilt and sin before God. He saves us from everlasting condemnation, from everlasting death, from the penalty of hell. That is the salvation that Christ has worked for you and me. And, there are so many blessings that we receive from the hand of God through Jesus Christ and we rejoice in them, we give thanks to every spiritual blessing that He gives to us. But the question we want to ask ourselves is this, do I rejoice, do I give thanks to God most of all for the greatest gift that He has given me?

Not for the I mean, yes, I give thanks to God, I rejoice in the blessings He gives me, these blessings I enjoy in this life of health and family and friends and pleasant experiences and so on, but do you rejoice and give thanks to the Lord for His greatest gift of all, that He has given you His Son, the true Passover Lamb, to rescue you from the judgment that was rightfully yours, to deliver you from that condemnation that was upon you because of your sin and guilts? is that what causes your heart to be filled with the most thanksgiving and gratitude to the Lord to praise Him for this gift that He has delivered you from that wrath, from that judgment.

So salvation is being saved from the judgment of God. 

The third lesson is this, salvation is yours by faith in God. We’ve already seen in this passage how God’s saving work is a work that belongs entirely to Him. That was true for the Israelites in their deliverance from bondage to Pharaoh. That is true for you and me in our deliverance from sin and guilt. The work of salvation is the work of God, the triune God. The Father planned it, the Son accomplished it, the Spirit applies it, and so we give Him all credit for our salvation.

But for that same reason, salvation is yours and mine only by faith. We don’t contribute to our salvation by our works, but it’s by faith. Faith alone. Trusting in Christ. Resting in Him. Not leaning upon your own works or goodness or righteousness, but by faith alone. And yet the faith that saves you and me is never alone. It is never isolated from a life that is bearing fruits of obedience to the Lord for this gift of salvation. And so the person who has true saving faith in Christ will, by the grace of God, show forth his faith or her faith in works of love and righteousness.

James says in James 2:18, ”show me your faith apart from your works and I will show you my faith by my works.” My faith is demonstrated, it is manifested in the works that God enables me to do. And part of the story here in Exodus Chapter 2 is the, it’s not only the sovereign work of God in bringing salvation to the Israelites, delivering them from their slavery, but it’s also about the actions of people whom God used as instruments in preserving the life of Moses. This passage tells us about the boldness, the faithfulness of the mother of Moses, how she built this basket for him to ensure that he would not be killed by being drowned in the Nile.

And as we heard from our New Testament reading in Hebrews, that was an act of faith. So Hebrews 11:23, by faith, Moses, and really it’s referring to parents of Moses, their faith, “but 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”. 

Now let’s ask the question, why was it that Moses’ parents, why did they go to these lengths to protect their child, to save his life? Now obviously they had a natural love for their son and so any parent would do whatever it took in order to save him from death. But according to both Exodus and Hebrews there was something more here even beyond their natural love for their child. There was something about the appearance of Moses that was extraordinary, remarkable. The Hebrew is vague as to exactly what it says, or means, different translations say that he was a fine child. That’s the English Standard Version. The King James Version says he was a “goodly child”. That’s not a typo in the bulletin, but that’s a phrase taken from the King James Bible. He was a “goodly child” or a beautiful child. Probably the sense that is meant here is best expressed by the New International Version.

It says that they saw he was no ordinary child. He was no ordinary child. There was something different, remarkable about this baby boy. Now, I’m sure there isn’t a mother or father in the whole world who, when he first laid eyes upon his son or her son, did not say, this is no ordinary child. This is a fine child, a beautiful child. But again, it wasn’t just the natural bias of the parents at work here. There was something special and unique about this baby boy that somehow suggested that he was set apart for God’s service.

And for that reason, because of their faith in God, not just because of their love for their son, but because of their faith in God, they hid him at home and then they hid him in the basket among the reeds of the Nile. Their faith was in the Lord, but more specifically their faith was in the Lord who had made promises to their forefather Abraham. And those were his covenant promises, the promises that God made to Abraham and to his descendants, which would have included the parents of Moses. And that is, that Israel would become a great nation, that they would inherit the promised land, the land of Canaan, that through a descendant of Abraham all the world would be blessed, Of course, it’s impossible to say for sure exactly how much of these promises the parents of Moses were familiar with.

But at the very least, they knew that they were the people of God. They knew that they belonged to the Lord. And they knew, at the very least, that the promises of God were promises of salvation, of redemption. And it was out of that hope in God’s promised redemption that the parents of Moses hid their son from the Egyptians. They had a hope of something greater for themselves, for their people, for the people of God. Hebrews 11.1 describes faith in this way. It is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

Somehow by faith, the parents of Moses knew that this child was part of God’s plan to bring about the things hoped for. Perhaps they even had a sense, they knew somehow that he would be a deliverer for Israel. And so by faith in the promises of God and the salvation of God, their faith in the Lord, they hid him. And that faith is yours as well, as a believer in Jesus Christ. That is the faith that God has given you. The assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. Again, We receive many blessings, many gifts of God’s grace in this world, but those are not the things hoped for or the things not seen.

But as a Christian, your hope is in what is to come. It is in the blessings of the resurrection of your body from the dead, the entrance into eternal glory, the new heavens and the new earth. the ultimate banishment of sin, of death, of sorrow, of pain forever in a new creation. All of these are part of your hope. This is what your hope consists of, things not seen. And if that is your hope by faith in Christ, if you are convicted by the grace of God of the reality of the things not seen, then you also will walk by faith, you will live by faith.

For Moses’ parents, this meant that they would hide this child in this basket in the Nile. For you and me, to walk by faith means obedience to the Word of God, obedience to God’s commandments, living faithfully the life that God wills us to live, seeking to grow in holiness, seeking to grow in righteousness, conformity to Christ and His character. It means worshiping Christ on the Lord’s day with the people of God. It means loving others in the body of Christ. It means all kinds of things, but the bottom line is this, that if you have faith in Christ, if you possess in your heart that hope that you are longing to be realized, that in Christ, All things will be made new that you will have eternal life and glory in Christ.

If that is your faith, if that is your hope, you will show forth the reality of that faith by your obedience to the Word of God. It will bear fruit in your life by obedience. Again, here, James, James 2:18, “show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works”. So salvation is yours by faith in God, namely, faith in Christ. And like with Moses’ parents, you demonstrate that faith by obedience to the word of God or the will of God. So salvation is entirely the work of God.

Salvation is being saved from the judgment of God, and salvation is yours by faith in God. And as we reflect on this passage, just a final thought, God works in remarkable ways in accomplishing his purposes in the world. Who would have thought at this time that this baby boy floating in this little basket among the reeds of the Nile, that one day he would become the great deliverer of Israel, who would bring his people out from their bondage to Egypt. But even more amazing, even more remarkable, who would have thought that 1500 years later, in some obscure corner in the world, a baby would be born to a young girl that no one had ever heard of, that he would be born, that the baby would be born, rather he would be placed in a manger, in some sort of animal stable, that this baby, that this child, would be God’s Son.

That He would be the one that He would raise up, not just to deliver a nation from bondage to another nation, but to deliver sinners from bondage to slavery. That He would be the Savior of the world. That He would be the King and Lord of all creation. And that’s how God works. He works in remarkable ways. And He does so, so that all praise and glory Go to Him for accomplishing that salvation, accomplishing His purposes in a way that magnifies who He is, His power, His glory. And so put your hope in Jesus Christ as your Savior and praise Him and thank Him always for the great work of salvation that He has done for you.

Let’s pray.

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