Mt. Rose OPC

The Old Testament reading is Exodus chapter 13 verse 17 through chapter 14, 14. And this is the inerrant, the infallible word of God.

When Pharaoh let the people go, God did not lead them by the way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near. For God said, lest the people change their minds when they see war and return to Egypt. But God led the people around by the way of the wilderness toward the Red Sea. And the people of Israel went up out of the land of Egypt equipped for battle. Moses took the bones of Joseph with him, for Joseph had made the sons of Israel solemnly swear, saying, God will surely visit you, and you shall carry up my bones with you from here.

And they moved on from Sukkoth and encamped at Etham on the edge of the wilderness. And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them along the way and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light that they might travel by day and by night. The pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night did not depart from before the people. Then the Lord said to Moses, Tell the people of Israel to turn back and encamp in front of Pi-Hahiroth between Migdol and the sea in front of Baal-zaphon. You shall encamp facing it by the sea.

For Pharaoh will say of the people of Israel, they are wandering in the land. The wilderness has shut them in. And I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and he will pursue them. And I will get glory over Pharaoh and all his hosts. And the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord. And they did so.

When the king of Egypt was told that the people had fled, the mind of Pharaoh and his servants was changed toward the people. And they said, what is this we have done? That we have let Israel go from serving us. So he made ready his chariot and took his army with him and took 600 chosen chariots and all the other chariots of Egypt with officers over all of them. And the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and he pursued the people of Israel while the people of Israel were going out defiantly. The Egyptians pursued them, all Pharaoh’s horses and chariots and his horsemen and his army, and overtook them and encamped at the sea by Pi-Ahirath in front of Baal-Zaphon.

When Pharaoh drew near, the people of Israel lifted up their eyes, and behold, the Egyptians were marching after them, and they feared greatly. And the people of Israel cried out to the Lord. They said to Moses, Is it because there are no graves in Egypt that you have taken us away to die in the wilderness? What have you done in bringing us out of Egypt? Is not this what we said to you in Egypt? Leave us alone that we may serve the Egyptians. For it would have been better for us to serve the Egyptians than to die in the wilderness.

And Moses said to the people, Fear not. Stand firm and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again. The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent. You can keep your place there in the Bible. We are continuing our series of sermons through Exodus, so we will return to that passage.

But let’s go to John’s Gospel for our New Testament reading, John chapter 10, verses 27 through 30. John 10, 27 through 30. The subject that we are considering this morning is the Lord’s guidance of his people. And in these verses, these words of Jesus, we hear that one way in which the Lord guides us is through his word, through his word, and specifically through the voice of our good shepherd, through Jesus, as he speaks to us through the scripture.

So John chapter 10 verses 27 through 30. My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me. I give them eternal life and they will never perish and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My father who has given them to me is greater than all and no one is able to snatch them out of the father’s hand. I and the father are one. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.

A few years ago, as a congregation, in our Sunday school class, we worked our way through the classic book, The Pilgrim’s Progress, by John Bunyan. Many of you were not here at that time. That was about four or almost five years ago. And one lesson above all else that that book impresses upon our hearts and it’s obvious from the title of the book is that the Christian life can be characterized as a journey pilgrimage there are many ways to think about our lives as Christians but this is one primary way that the scripture gives us this home is not our world we are exiles here we are sojourners here and we are on a pilgrimage and of course just like The hero of the book, Christian, you are also on a pilgrimage to a better world. For Christian, it was the Celestial City, which of course is a way of describing heaven. We are on a journey through this world to our heavenly destination.

And though your journey as a Christian may seem lonely at times, the good news is that as a believer in Christ, you can know that you are never truly alone. But God has promised to be with you throughout this life and to guide you, to direct you throughout your pilgrimage through this world. In our passage this morning from Exodus, it gives us a picture of how the Lord guides and directs his people in our earthly sojourning, our pilgrimage.

We are at the point now in the story of Exodus when the Israelites have just escaped from Egypt. You’ll remember from the passage that we looked at last Sunday on the night of the Passover, the Lord went through the land of Egypt and he killed all the firstborn of all the families of the Egyptians and even of their livestock. And Pharaoh, the wicked, the hard-hearted king of Egypt, who refused to let the people go despite all the destruction that the Lord had brought upon the nation of Egypt in the first nine plagues, finally, after the tenth plague, after the Lord killed the firstborn in every home, finally, Pharaoh relented, and he let the people of Israel go, that they may serve the Lord.

And now that the Israelites are out of Egypt, now that they have fled from the land, they are out from under the tyranny, the grip of Pharaoh, the very first thing that Moses tells us is that they were being led by God. He says in verses 17 and 18 in chapter 13, and I’m paraphrasing, but Moses tells us that God did not lead the people in this particular direction, rather he led them in this other direction. And that’s a way of saying that the most fundamental reality, the thing that was most true or most important of the Israelite people at this time, as they are escaping from Egypt, is that God was leading them. The Lord was directing their paths. They knew that their destination that the Lord would lead them to ultimately would be the land of Canaan, the land that had been promised to them, to their forefathers, the patriarchs, a land flowing with milk and honey. And yet God did not drop them a map from heaven that they might find their own way to the promised land, but it was His will that He would guide them there, that He would lead them there. He led them each step and every day along the way.

And as we look at this passage today from Exodus, as we consider the Lord’s leading the people of Israel, there are four truths that are demonstrated or illustrated here concerning how God guides us as his people today. As Christians, how does the Lord direct our paths? And we’ll consider four ways that we can learn from this chapter how the Lord guides us. And the first is this, that God guides us according to his perfect wisdom. God’s guidance is always in accordance with what is wise and good according to his perfect understanding and knowledge.

On the night of the Passover, as the Israelites were leaving Egypt, fleeing from Pharaoh, if Moses had had a smartphone at the time and he opened up his Google Maps app and he typed in Canaan, the way that he would have been told to go would have been northeast through the land of the Philistines. That would have been the quickest, the most direct route. If they had gone that way, they would have been in the Promised Land in a matter of a couple of weeks. But, he had a much better GPS. He had the Lord’s guidance and the Lord led them in a different direction. In verse 18, we are told that God led them around by the way of the wilderness toward the Red Sea. And God had a reason and a purpose for that, we are told. If the Israelites had gone on that direct route through the land of the Philistines, They would have encountered not only the Egyptian military who had a presence there, but they would have also ran into the Philistines, and both of these were peoples who were experienced in war and prepared for war. The Israelites were not yet prepared for war.

You’ll notice in verse 18 it does say that the Israelites were equipped for battle, but that means that they were organized into military-like units. It doesn’t mean that they were really ready to wage war. And so the Lord knew that if the Israelites went that way, they faced the Egyptians, they faced the Philistines, they saw war, that they immediately would have made a U-turn and headed right back into Egypt.

And we can safely say that according to the Israelites’ understanding and wisdom, such as it was, that going that roundabout way to the Promised Land, going south instead of north, probably, most certainly made no sense to them. They probably thought to themselves, why would God bring us into the wilderness when obviously there is a much quicker way to go into Canaan? We do know for sure that the Israelites were second-guessing the Lord’s guidance later in our passage. They were not happy about the way that the Lord was leading them.

Beginning in chapter 14, after the Israelites have already gone south toward the wilderness, the Lord tells them that they are to turn around, they are to head back north, and go, kind of backtrack, and go in the direction that they came from. And the place, according to chapter 14, where the Lord was leading them was, according to human wisdom, the very last place that they wanted to be. They were in the wilderness. They ended up in a place where they were surrounded by wilderness, except right behind them was the Red Sea, the ocean. And so if you were to choose for Israel the one place where they would be the most vulnerable to defeat by Pharaoh’s armies, it was right there where the Lord led them. They were like sitting ducks surrounded by the wilderness with the water of the Red Sea behind them. There was no way, humanly speaking, there was no way that they could escape from Pharaoh there.

And not surprisingly, once the Israelites saw the Egyptians bearing down on them, after Pharaoh changed his mind again and decided that he didn’t want his slaves to leave Egypt after all, he sent his chariots, his armies after the Israelites. And once the Israelites saw them coming towards them, they let Moses know just how absurd it was, how foolish it was that he led them there. He said, they say to Moses in verse 11, chapter 14, what have you done to us in bringing us out of Egypt? Moses, what in the world are you doing? Why have you led us here to this place where we will certainly die? And of course, they are complaining against Moses, but really, in their hearts, they were complaining against the Lord. So they say, Moses, Were there no graves in Egypt to bury us in? There was plenty of cemetery space there. Why did you lead us into the wilderness for us to die out here?

Well, you know, because you know the story of Exodus, and I know, that the Lord knew exactly what he was doing in leading the Israelites to that very spot. He was preparing for their deliverance. He was preparing for the destruction of the Egyptians in the most spectacular fashion in a way that would bring him the most glory in causing the Red Sea to part and then to come crashing down on top of the Egyptians. And so we know that the back and forth movements of their march as they came out of Egypt, these were a ruse to get Pharaoh to think that they were confused and helpless in the wilderness. And that of course encouraged Pharaoh to try to go out to recapture his slaves but ultimately it was the Lord’s will that the Egyptians would be put to death and the Israelites, his people, he would save them. And so the Lord was leading his people according, not to human wisdom, not according to what we think would have been best, but according to his own purposes, his redemptive, his saving purposes for his people. It was inexplicable to the Israelites why they should be led to this place next to the Red Sea, surrounded by wilderness, where they were so vulnerable to the Egyptians. But the Lord, of course, knew exactly what he was doing.

And so often, in our own lives, the circumstances, the events, the places where the Lord and his providence brings us seem to us to be inexplicable. They don’t always make sense, do they? Why has God brought me into this place where I’m struggling so much? Where I’m suffering? Why has God allowed my child to be afflicted with this sickness or this disease? Why has God not opened the door of employment for me? I’ve been praying to Him for this open door and it has not appeared. Why did God permit my husband or wife or my brother or sister to die so young when they should have had so many more years of life to live?

Well, there was a reason why the Lord had the Israelites backtrack and put themselves in an apparently hopeless and impossible situation. And there is a reason why God guides you and leads you in the way that he does. Even when he leads you, through seasons of pain, suffering, and circumstances that are perplexing, confusing. God has reasons for leading you the way that He does. And His reasons, although He does not reveal them to us, we know that His reasons are perfectly wise, they are infinitely good, they are even loving. What to you and me is inexplicable, confusing, is to God all part of his perfect, his well-ordered plan for all things, which includes preparing us for that heavenly destination that he has for us, an eternity of joy in his presence. He is causing all things to work towards that for our good.

And there are times when, with the benefit of hindsight, Things begin to make more sense. There are times when you can look back on your life and see how the Lord brought you through a season or through circumstances that at the time seemed so confusing and yet it seems to make a little more sense. That was certainly the case with the Israelites. At this point in the story, their backs are against the Red Sea. They are completely baffled why the Lord would lead them there. They were easy prey for Pharaoh’s chariots. If Psalm 23 had been written at the time, I doubt they would have found much comfort in it. He leads me beside still waters. That was not the verse that would have encouraged them at that time. But on the other side of the water, when they saw the Egyptian armies drowned in the Red Sea, it all made perfect sense. God had led them there not to destroy them, but to destroy their enemies and to deliver them all in a way that would bring him glory and praise.

And when it comes to the confusing and sometimes seemingly senseless circumstances that God leads you and me through, he may or may not make things clearer with the passing of time. But when Christ returns in his glory, when he brings his kingdom and fullness, when you and I have entered into that heavenly glory that he has promised us, when we are enjoying the fullness of life and joy in the presence of Christ, I believe that in some way we will have perfect hindsight then. We’ll be able to see what we do not see now, that God in all the circumstances of our lives, even the most painful circumstances. He was there. He guided us there and he led us through that in order to fulfill his purposes for us, which again are good and loving and wise. In the meantime, though, he calls us to walk by faith. And part of that means yielding to the will of God, accepting that these circumstances, I don’t like them, they are difficult, nevertheless, it is God’s will that I should be here. He led me here. We yield ourselves to the providence of God, to His divine guidance, His sovereign work over us and over our circumstances.

This is why we read responsibly Psalm 25, verse 10 says, All the paths of the Lord are steadfast love and faithfulness for those who keep His covenant and His testimonies. All the paths of the Lord, not just the good paths, not just the enjoyable paths, but all the paths of the Lord are steadfast love and faithfulness.

So God guides us by His perfect wisdom. The second truth is this, God guides you and me with his presence, with his presence. In chapter 13 verses 21 and 22, Moses describes how the Lord led the people of Israel with this pillar of cloud and fire. And let’s listen to those verses again. Verses 21 and 22 of chapter 13. And the Lord went before them by day in a pillar of cloud to lead them along the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light, that they might travel by day and by night. The pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night did not depart from before the people.

Now this wasn’t two separate pillars, this was one pillar. And by day it appeared as a towering pillar of cloud in the sky, and by night it was a pillar of fire, so it lit up the sky. And it was by this pillar of cloud and fire, or we could put it this way, it was by the presence of the Lord Himself, as He was present in that pillar, that He led the people of Israel throughout their entire wilderness wanderings.

Now there is one way in which there is a huge difference between how the Lord led the people of God then and how the Lord leads us today as Christians. And there is one way, when we consider this pillar of cloud and fire, in which there is a great similarity in how the Lord led the people of Israel then and how he leads us today.

First, let’s consider the difference. Unlike with the Israelites in the days of Exodus, the Lord does not lead you and me today with such a visible sign that makes it obvious the direction that we are to go, that gives clear and unmistakable guidance in all the decisions that you face in the course of this life. The Israelites didn’t have to discern somehow the direction that God would have them to go or whether they were to simply remain camped where they were, but the pillar of cloud and fire told them or at least led them and indicated them explicitly what they were to do. And not only that, but this kind of direct guidance from the Lord, this direct revelation from God continued for the people of Israel. God often provided guidance for the nation or for even individuals through the prophets who spoke the word of the Lord. Sometimes they received guidance from the Urim and the Thummim. Once God gave guidance to one individual through a dew-soaked fleece.

And as Christians, when we Read the Old Testament, and even parts of the New Testament, but when we read about how the Lord led his people in this way, with direct revelation, explicit guidance and direction, we are tempted to become a little jealous, aren’t we? Wouldn’t it be great if God were to guide us with specific answers to our specific questions? Knowing his will for us, the direction we should go, wouldn’t that be so much easier?

Some of you, when you were little, perhaps, you may have had, or perhaps one of your friends had, a toy called a Magic 8 Ball. I’m not approving of this toy, by the way. Don’t buy one. Don’t buy one for your kids. There’s actually some real pagan ideas mixed up with this. But anyway, the Magic 8 Ball, I had one. But the reason you buy one is supposedly it tells you what you should do. And so you ask it a question. And you might say, for example, shall I eat at McDonald’s today? And you shake the Magic 8 Ball, and you look into this little window on it, and an answer would pop up. It would say something like, yes, definitely. or my reply is no.

And when you face a difficult decision and you just don’t know what is the right direction to go, what is the right way to choose, that’s when you think, I wish God would give us something like a magic eight ball where I could ask him a question and receive a definite answer. Lord, shall I major in engineering? The answer, outlook not so good. Lord, shall I ask this young lady to marry me? Answer, as I see it, yes. Lord, if I move to another state, will you provide a job for me? Answer, you may rely on it. Wouldn’t that be nice?

But that’s not the way that the Lord guides and directs us today. Rather, he leads us in a different way. He leads us by giving us His Word, by giving us the Scripture, by giving us His Spirit, and by His Word, by His Spirit, He gives us wisdom and enables us to make decisions that are in accordance with what He wills. And as part of that, He calls you and me to pray for our decisions. Part of that involves going to the Scriptures, learning His Word. Is there any guidance? Has God revealed anything in the Scriptures that bears upon this decision that I need to make? We are to seek godly counsel and advice from others. In a multitude of counselors, there is safety. We are to carefully weigh options. We are to consider how this direction or that direction may be a better use of our abilities or resources or gifts in order to serve Christ and His Kingdom. And these are the ways in which we are to seek guidance from God. Again, He doesn’t give us an explicit, direct answer. But when we seek His guidance in this way, prayerfully, going to His Word, using the wisdom that He has given us, God gives us the assurance that when we do so, He will guide us. He will bless us in that. Proverbs 16.3 says, commit your work to the Lord and your plans will be established.

You can put it this way. The difference between how God led his people then and how he leads us now as Christians is the same difference between how a child is led and how an adult guides his way. When you were a child, you were led by your parents. Literally, they led you by the hand. They made your decisions for you. But when you became an adult, you had to make your own decisions. You had to use the discernment, the wisdom, the judgment that hopefully you have gained over the years. Here in Exodus, under the Old Covenant, God led the Israelites by the hand, as it were, with this pillar of cloud and fire. But now He directs you in a different way. He enables you to use, by His Spirit, by His grace, to use that discernment and wisdom that He gives to you through His Word in order to direct your paths.

That’s the difference between then and now, but there is one way in which the Lord’s guidance is very much the same when we consider the Israelites and when we consider our situation, and that is this. Just as the Lord was truly with the Israelites, just as his presence was there in that pillar of cloud and fire, just as God Almighty was with his people in all the ways in which they went, so the Lord is with us today. Christ is with us. And with the coming of Christ into the world, with the exaltation of the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, with His ascension to the right hand of the Father, with His pouring out His Holy Spirit on His church, there is an even more glorious way that the Lord is with us today, more glorious than the way in which He was with His people then. And that is this, that Christ Himself, He dwells in us. He is no longer merely above us or next to us in this pillar of cloud and fire, but he says he dwells within us. He and the Father make their home in us by the Spirit. The Lord dwells within, within our hearts. And what this means is that no matter where God guides you, no matter how arduous and difficult the path may be, down which he calls you to walk in this world, no matter how isolated or lonely you may feel at times, you can know with certainty that Jesus is there with you. He is with you every step of the way because, as he promises, he will never leave you, nor forsake you, and he has made his home within you. within your hearts.

And so God guides us with his presence. The third truth we see here in this passage concerning how God leads us is this, God guides us for his own glory. In chapter 14 verse 4, the Lord says this, And I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and he will pursue them, and I will get glory over Pharaoh and all his hosts, and the Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord. and they did so.

Notice how according to this verse that one of the purposes of the Lord in directing and guiding his people in the way that he did was that the Egyptians might know that he is the Lord. Of course the Egyptians would not come to know him as the Lord in a saving way they came to know him as the Lord, as their judge, their destroyer But they would acknowledge that the Lord is the true God. They would have no choice but to confess, to acknowledge, even if not with their lips, with their hearts. Pharaoh is not God. The gods of the Egyptians are no gods, but the Lord alone is God. They would come to know him. They would give him glory in that way, and that’s how the Lord would give glory over Pharaoh.

When I was a brand new Christian, and some of you may have had a similar experience, but when I was brought to saving faith in Christ out of a real unbelieving, out of unbelief and a kind of agnosticism, it’s not atheism, I made this wonderful discovery by the grace of God that I, me, that I was known to God. that the God who created all things, the sovereign Lord, almighty God who upholds and sustains all things, that he knew me, that he knew me, that he loved me, that at least in part for me, he sent his son into the world to die, to take away my sin and guilt. That was a remarkable, life-changing discovery.

But it wasn’t long after that that, by the grace of God, I made an equally wonderful discovery, and that is this. That although, yes, I was known by God, although God did send His Son to die for me, for my sin, that that did not make me the center of the universe. That God, God was the true center of the universe. And therefore, the most important thing for God, the thing that was His goal, The object of His will and His purpose and all that He did in the world was not my salvation or the salvation of anyone for that matter, but His glory. And think about that. God has brought you to salvation in Christ for something greater than your salvation. For something greater than that you can enjoy the glories of heaven and escape the terrors of hell. But God has saved you for an even greater purpose than that, and that is to bring him glory, to bring him the glory, the praise of all creation, that he would be known as God and worshipped as God.

In addition to Pilgrim’s Progress, many of you are familiar with another book about a person who goes on a long journey, and that is The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. Pretty sure all of you, if not all of you, most of you know the story of the Hobbit, but in case you don’t, the hero of the Hobbit is a small, humble, man-like creature called a Hobbit. His name is Bilbo Baggins. And in the story, Bilbo is taken on this incredible adventure. He plays a key part in defeating a terrifying dragon, winning a great battle against the enemies, the forces of evil against the enemies of all that was good. And at the end of the book, Bilbo Baggins, he learns that all that took place in his adventure was actually in fulfillment of certain prophecies that had been written, ancient prophecies. and he asks his friend Gandalf about these prophecies if they have really come true in the things that he participated in. And this is what Gandalf says to him. He says, of course. And why should they not prove true? Surely you don’t disbelieve the prophecies because you had a hand in bringing them about yourself. You don’t really suppose, do you, that all your adventures and escapes were managed by mere luck for your sole benefit? You are a fine person, Mr. Baggins, and I am very fond of you, but you are only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all.

And as a Christian, in the providence of God in your life, in all the circumstances that he has ordained and fashioned for you, in all the ways in which the Lord leads you in this life, it is not all for your soul benefits, but it is all for his glory. As a Christian, God has been merciful to you. He loved you. He gave you his son. But like Bilbo Baggins, you are only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all. The real story of God’s guidance is how he will receive the praise, the adoration, the glory that is due to him. And he will receive that for what he has done for you. So God guides us for the sake of His own glory.

Now having said that, the wonderful thing about all of that is that what glorifies God for us as believers, what glorifies God is what is good for us. And the salvation that He works for you and for all His people, that is what brings God’s glory. And that’s the fourth and final truth that we’ll consider this morning. God guides you for your salvation.

After the Israelites vented all their frustration and anger against Moses, saying that they should have just stayed in Egypt, why did Moses have to lead them into the wilderness to die there? Weren’t there plenty of graves in Egypt that they could have been buried in? After hearing all of that, Moses doesn’t do and say what we would have done and said. We would have said to the Israelites, okay, Okay, you bunch of whiners and losers. If that’s the way you feel, then go find a leader to take you back into Egypt. I quit. I’m out of here.

But instead, Moses says this in verses 13 and 14. He says, Fear not. Stand firm and see the salvation of the Lord, which he will work for you today. For the Egyptians whom you see today, you shall never see again. The Lord will fight for you and you have only to be silent. and you know the rest of the story. And we’ll look at the rest of the story, Lord willing, next week. But the Lord parted the Red Sea, he led his people through on dry land, and then he destroyed all the Egyptians as they attempted to go through the Red Sea. So he led them to their salvation. And the Lord leads you, as a believer in Jesus Christ, for your salvation.

First, he guides you to the cross of Jesus Christ. Anyone whom the Lord is truly leading and guiding, anyone who is following the Lord, the very first place where He guides is to the cross of Jesus Christ. Because it was at the cross that the Son of God laid down His life for you and me, for sinners who were guilty of sin and deserving of that wrath that He endured for us. If your hope and trust is in Christ, His death means for you the forgiveness of sins, eternal life.

And there’s something that Moses says here at the very end of our passage that was true for the Israelites then as they were helpless before their enemies. It is true for you and me today. In verse 14, Moses says, the Lord will fight for you and you have only to be silent. Your salvation is not the result of your fighting, your doing, your acting. but it is by resting, it is by trusting, it is by faith and trusting yourself to the Son of God, to the Savior who fought for you, who died for you, who by His work, by His actions, you have been saved. You only have to be silent, rest in Christ, And that is how we come to receive the forgiveness of sins, eternal life.

And if you have not yet entrusted yourself to Jesus Christ and have not rested in Him, if you are relying somehow upon your own doing, your own working, come to Jesus, entrust yourself to Him, and you will receive that salvation, eternal life, the forgiveness of sins that we cannot attain by ourselves.

And once God in His grace leads us to the cross for our salvation, He leads us throughout our lives, again, throughout this earthly pilgrimage, throughout our sojourning, He leads us to that final salvation, our promised land, not Canaan, but heaven, that glory that He has promised and He has prepared for us. And so as a Christian then, the lesson that we can take from this passage is that it is the Lord who leads us, who guides us. Even your circumstances now, he has brought you into them, and he will direct and guide your path from here and forevermore. But all the ways and the paths that the Lord leads us down, both the pleasant and the painful, they are for your eternal good, for your salvation.

Let’s pray.

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The Old Testament reading is Exodus 12, 29 through 42, in chapter 13, verses 1 and 2, 11 through 16. So first, Exodus 12, verses 29 through 42. And this is the word of God.

At midnight, the Lord struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon and all the firstborn of the livestock. And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he and all his servants and all the Egyptians. And there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house where someone was not dead.

Then he summoned Moses and Aaron by night and said, Up, go out from among my people, both you and the people of Israel, and go, serve the Lord, as you have said. Take your flocks and your herds, as you have said, and be gone, and bless me also. The Egyptians were urgent with the people to send them out of the land in haste, for they said, we shall all be dead. So the people took their dough before it was leavened, their kneading bowls before, or being bound up in their cloaks on their shoulders. The people of Israel had also done as Moses told them, for they had asked the Egyptians for silver and gold jewelry and for clothing. And the Lord had given the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they let them have what they asked. Thus they plundered the Egyptians.

And the people of Israel journeyed from Ramesses to Sukkoth, about 600,000 men on foot, besides women and children. A mixed multitude also went up with them, and very much livestock, both flocks and herds. And they baked unleavened cakes of the dough that they had brought out of Egypt, for it was not leavened, because they were thrust out of Egypt and could not wait, nor had they prepared any provisions for themselves.

The time that the people of Israel lived in Egypt was 430 years. At the end of 430 years, on that very day, all the hosts of the Lord went out from the land of Egypt. It was a night of watching by the Lord to bring them out of the land of Egypt. So this same night is a night of watching kept to the Lord by all the people of Israel throughout their generations.

And then going down to chapter 13, verses one and two. The Lord said to Moses, consecrate to me all the firstborn. Whatever is the first to open the womb among the people of Israel, both of man and of beast, is mine. And then beginning at chapter, verse 11 of chapter 13.

When the Lord brings you into the land of the Canaanites, as he swore to you and your fathers, and shall give it to you, you shall set apart to the Lord all that first opens the womb. All the firstborn of your animals that are males shall be the Lord’s. Every firstborn of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb, or if you will not redeem it, you shall break its neck. Every firstborn of man among your sons you shall redee2m. And when, in time to come, your son asks you, what does this mean, you shall say to him, by a strong hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt from the house of slavery. For when Pharaoh stubbornly refused to let us go, the Lord killed all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both the firstborn of man and the firstborn of animals. Therefore, I sacrifice to the Lord all the males that first opened the womb, but all the firstborn of my sons I redeem. It shall be as a mark on your hand, or frontlets between your eyes, for by a strong hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt.

And now let’s turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 6, verses 18 through 20 for our New Testament reading. 1 Corinthians 6, verses 18 through 20. And the Apostle Paul here declares a truth that is also very much evident in the passages that we read from the Old Testament, and that is that as those who have been saved by the Lord, saved by Christ, we belong to Him. We are not our own, but we belong to Christ.

So 1 Corinthians 6, verses 18 through 20. Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you? The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.

You may turn back to Exodus chapter 12 for our text this morning. If you are visiting this morning, we are working our way through the book of Exodus. And last Sunday, as we looked at the 10th and final plague, that the Lord brought upon the people of Egypt and that is the plague in which he killed all the firstborn of every Egyptian family and even the firstborn of the livestock and as we considered the Passover lamb whose blood saved the Israelites from that terrible plague the main lesson that we took from all of that was that as Christians our salvation is specifically a salvation from the judgment of God that we deserve because of our sin and guilt and we are delivered from that judgment by not the blood of a lamb smeared upon doorposts but we are delivered from that judgment by the blood of Jesus that was shed for us upon the cross.

So that was the lesson that we took from the Exodus last Lord’s Day and this morning as we continue to look at the Exodus and specifically the events of that final plague, the Passover, the killing of the firstborn, The main lesson that I want us to take from our passage today is this, that we have been saved by Christ. We have been delivered by Christ in order to belong to Christ, that we may be his, that we may no longer belong to ourselves, but that we may belong to him. And so we are not our own as Christians. We are not our own, but we belong to the Lord.

And we’ll proceed this morning by going through this passage and considering the details of what each section in this passage describes for us, and then we’ll give some thought to our overall lesson, which is that as Christians, we belong to Christ as our Savior and Lord. So first of all, in chapter 12, verses 29 through 32, we read about that terrible plague of killing the firstborn that the Lord brought upon the people of Egypt. and just as he promised that he would do, at midnight the Lord passed through the land of Egypt and he struck down all the firstborn of the families of Egypt. There were no exceptions. All the families of Egypt, all the way from the royal family of Pharaoh down to the family of the prisoner languishing in a dungeon, every single family was stricken with this most grievous judgment, and that is at midnight the firstborn in that family was killed, was struck down.

And the scene that Moses describes for us as we hear how he paints this picture, it’s a picture of utter sorrow and grief and misery In verse 30, he says, there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house where someone was not dead. What an awful judgment that the Lord brought upon the nation of Egypt, one by one, as each family woke up that night to discover that their father or son or mother or sister was dead. The anguished cries of one family joined to the cries and the wailing of all their neighbors until the whole land of Egypt was filled with the sound of pain and grief as they mourned the loss of these firstborn.

Several years ago, Robin and I had to go to the emergency room. I don’t even remember what it was for at this time, but we were being checked in by the admitting nurse, and while she was checking us in, she got a call on her phone, and she looked very concerned and said something like, What do you mean? What kind of complication? What’s the matter? And she abruptly left us and then about a minute later we could hear the sound of a grown man sobbing very loudly in a couple rooms from us. And of course we didn’t need to be told what happened. His sobbing told the story. Death had come to his family that night in the hospital. Imagine that sad scene multiplied by thousands and thousands as every family and an entire nation experienced the sudden death of at least one person in their home. Who could even bear to hear that sound, that wailing? What an awful tragedy.

And finally after this 10th plague, after this most terrible plague of all, finally Pharaoh gives in. He finally breaks. He can no longer refuse the Lord’s demand that he let the people of Israel go, that they can leave the land of Egypt. In fact, Pharaoh does not just let the people go, but he He urges them to go. He commands them to go. He says to Moses and Aaron in verse 31, up, go out from among my people, both you and the people of Israel, and go, serve the Lord as you have said. And then rather pathetically, at the very end, Pharaoh says to Moses and Aaron, he begs them to bless him. His last words to them in verse 32 are, and bless me also.

What a different Pharaoh than the Pharaoh we were first introduced to earlier in Exodus. That Pharaoh was proud, he was arrogant, he was defiant against the Lord. I do not know the Lord, he said. And now here he is, desperately begging the servants of the Lord that he might be blessed. And so here is that arrogant king of Egypt, suddenly reduced to nothing, begging Moses and Aaron to leave, begging him, begging them to take the people of Israel out of his nation, and to please bless me on the way out.

I would like to say that this brokenness on Pharaoh’s part was representative of a real change of heart. that he was a different man, that this was the fruit of a man who was genuinely repentant, but sadly we know that that is not the case. His heart was too hardened for that. As we’ll see, no sooner did the Israelites leave Egypt than Pharaoh changes his mind and he sets out after them with his army and chariots. He doesn’t want the people to leave after all. They’re too valuable. He wants his slaves back. Even the most painful Severus’ personal tragedy would not truly break his heart and draw him to the Lord. For some people, that’s true of them as well. Not even a tragedy as awful as what Pharaoh experienced will bring them to God, to consider the truth that they are accountable to Him, that they must respond by faith in Him.

But here’s a picture in the heart of Pharaoh of the dreadful power of sin over the human heart, what the heart is capable of that is hardened, that is not overcome by the grace of God. It will remain defiant and in rebellion against God even in the face of the most tragic circumstances. And as we consider the bigger picture here, this picture of wailing and sorrow, here is a picture of the grief, the pain, the endless sorrow that will overtake every person who refused to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ in this life, and who therefore will be condemned and lost on the day of judgment when Christ comes to judge the worlds.

And just to remind ourselves of the lesson that we learned last week, that this judgment upon the Egyptians, it is a picture of that final judgment that will take place when Christ returns. And we see in the Exodus what our only hope of salvation is. The only thing that saved the Israelites from that judgment was the blood of the Lamb that was smeared on the doorposts and the lentils of their houses. And in the same way, the only thing that will save you and me from the judgment that is to come is the blood of Jesus, the blood of Jesus that was shed upon the cross. and that blood is yours. You are covered in that blood if your faith is in Christ, if you are resting in him by faith as your savior from sin and death.

In verses 33 and 36, moving down in chapter 12, after Moses describes the 10th plague, he goes on to tell us in those verses, 33 through 36, he tells us what happened when the Israelites finally left Egypt. He says in verse 33, the Egyptians were urgent with the people to send them out of the land in haste, for they said, we shall all be dead. The Egyptians were urgent. They were forcing the people to leave. And so the Israelites had no time to prepare their bread in the usual way. They did not leaven their bread. They took the unleavened dough as it was, they slung their kneading bowls and bags across their backs, and they hurried on their way out of Egypt. However, they did have time to plunder the Egyptians of their silver and gold and clothing. And so again, this was in fulfillment of what the Lord had promised. The Egyptians willingly gave their treasures over to the Israelites. This was not theft, this was not robbery, but the Lord put it on the hearts of the Egyptians to give them these things. Perhaps the Egyptians were hoping to avert even worse calamities by giving these kind of peace offerings to the Israelites. Maybe this was the Lord’s way of finally forcing the Egyptians to pay for all this free slave labor that they’ve had all this time. But in any case, in this way, the Lord was providing for his people. He was providing for them for the wilderness years that lay ahead. And he was also providing for the people of Israel the materials, in part at least, that they would need in order to build the tabernacle of the wilderness.

And then moving on in our passage in verses 37 to 39, Moses tells us about the Exodus itself. He tells us that 600,000 Israelite men started out on their journey to the promised land. And this does not include the Israelite women and children. and it does not include what Moses calls a mixed multitude of people who went with them. These were people of other nations, people of other races, perhaps they were also slaves with the Israelites in Egypt. But in any case, the total number of people who escaped from Egypt that night was probably somewhere closer to two million people. And finally now, the Israelites are seen the fulfillment of all that they hoped for, the deliverance of God from Egypt. They had been there for 430 years. Just as the Lord had promised, the day of their salvation had come. They were leaving Egypt for freedom. Freedom from Pharaoh’s tyranny and freedom to serve and to worship the Lord as his people.

And so in the Exodus, the Lord was not only freeing his people, but he was taking them to himself. He was becoming the Lord, the master of his people in the fullest sense. He was freeing them from being slaves to Pharaoh in order that they would be his servants and worship him and serve him.

And that brings us to chapter 13 verses 1 and 2. And in these verses the Lord tells Moses that the Israelites were to consecrate all their firstborn both of man and beast to the Lord because they belong to the Lord. So look at verses 1 and 2 of chapter 13. The Lord said to Moses, consecrate to me all the firstborn. Whatever is the first to open the womb among the people of Israel, both of man and of beast, is mine. To consecrate means to set apart and to devote to the Lord. And so the Israelites were to devote their firstborn child, specifically their firstborn son, to God. And we have a famous example of this in the New Testament when Mary and Joseph, when they travel to Jerusalem with their firstborn son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and they present him to the Lord there. When they did so, they were doing so according to this commandment in chapter 13.

And then Moses goes on to give more instructions about this consecration of the firstborn in verses 11 through 16. First, in verse 12, Moses says that all the firstborn of your animals that are males shall be the Lord. So all the firstborn of the animals that belong to the Israelites they belong to God. And so they were to give them to God through sacrifice. And we know it was by sacrifice that they were given to the Lord because in verse 15, the Israelite father says to his son, I sacrifice to the Lord, all the males that first opened the womb.

But you’ll notice that there was a different rule for the donkey. The donkey was not a clean animal, and therefore, being unclean, a donkey could not be sacrificed to God. It either had to have its neck broken, or it could be redeemed with a lamb. And so that means that if the owner of this firstborn donkey wanted it to live and to serve him, he had to sacrifice a lamb in the place of the donkey. And by this redemption, by the price that was paid in the blood of the lamb, the donkey was spared death and it became the property of the Israelite who then owned it and used it.

And you’ll notice that not only an unclean animal like a donkey needed to be redeemed, but so did every firstborn of the Israelites. Every firstborn son of the Israelites was to be redeemed. and it had to be redeemed rather than sacrifice or the baby had to be redeemed instead of sacrifice because according to God, child sacrifice, sacrificing a child to the Lord was an abomination. That was the evil practice that the pagan nations around the people of Israel engaged in for their gods, but the people of Israel were never to sacrificed their children to the Lord. Nevertheless, despite that, God still demanded that the Israelites acknowledge that this firstborn son was not theirs, but he belonged to God. He was the Lord’s. And the way that the Israelites acknowledged that was by redeeming their firstborn sons. And so when a firstborn son was born, The parents would redeem that son with money in order to acknowledge that the son belonged to God. But it was also a reminder of a far greater redemption. This individual redemption of the firstborn son was meant to remind the Israelites of the far greater redemption that took place on the night of the Exodus. The entire Exodus event was one great redemption. Back in chapter six in Exodus, the Lord told Moses that he was going to redeem his people out of Egypt. He used that word specifically, redeem. And so we think of Exodus in terms of deliverance or liberation. The people of Israel are set free from the tyranny of Pharaoh, and that’s what it was, of course. But it’s important to see that it was more than a mere deliverance. It was more than a mere liberation from their captors, but it was a redemption. a price had to be paid for the lives of the Israelites so that they could belong to God, be brought to Him and become His. And the price that was paid for the Israelites was the blood of the Lamb that was slain. That blood that was smeared on the doorposts that saved them from the plague of the death of the firstborn.

Earlier the Lord told Moses that he was to say these words to Pharaoh In Exodus chapter 4, we read this, verses 22 and 23, And so Israel was God’s firstborn son, and therefore the Exodus was God’s act of redemption redeeming his firstborn son from Egypt with the ransom or the redemption price of the blood of the Lamb and so again when the Israelites redeemed their firstborn sons they were reminded of this truth that they were all God’s firstborn son the entire nation was the firstborn son of Israel or the firstborn son of God whom the Lord redeemed from Egypt In Exodus chapter 13 verses 14 and 15 when his son asked his father what was the meaning of this redemption of the firstborn the father would explain that when the Israelites were rescued out of Egypt the Lord killed all the firstborn of Egypt and in the same way he laid claim to all the firstborn of the people of Israel in fact he laid claim to the entire nation they are my firstborn and for that reason the Israelites were to redeem their firstborn sons.

Let’s put this together and let’s draw from it the main lesson that I want us to take from all of this and that is this that in the Exodus, God was redeeming His people with the blood of the Lamb in order that they would be His, that they would belong to Him, that they would be the people who are the Lord’s, that they might worship Him, that they might serve Him in the land that He promised to give them. Again, their salvation from Egypt was not mere freedom in order that they could do whatever they want or serve whoever they will. but it was freedom from Egypt in order that they would serve the Lord, that they would worship Him, that they would be His servants.

And as Christians, the Bible tells us that our salvation is just the same. Your salvation as a believer in Christ is also a redemption. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses according to the riches of His grace. Of course, as a believer in Christ, you have been redeemed by something far more precious, far more valuable than the blood of a lamb. You have been redeemed by the blood of the Son of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. This is what Peter calls the precious blood of Christ. Can there be any conceivable price more costly, more valuable than the blood of the incarnate Son of God the blood of Jesus Christ of course there cannot be this is the most costly most precious thing imaginable that the son of God the son whom God loved from all eternity that he became man and his blood was shed his life was laid down in order that we might be redeemed that was the price that God paid for our redemption and it testifies to the unfathomable depths of the love of God for us as his people, that he did not withhold his only Son, he did not shrink back from the shedding of the blood of his dear beloved Son for us, for our salvation. He gave him up as a ransom for us all.

And because you have been redeemed by Christ, Because you have been purchased with nothing less than the blood of Jesus Christ, then therefore, as a Christian, you are not free to live however you will. You have not been set free in order to be your own person, to follow your own desires, but you have been set free in order to belong to Christ, to serve and to worship Him. And so as a believer in Jesus Christ, you belong to him, not only because he is the one who has created you, and that in itself is enough for you to worship and serve the Lord, but you belong to Christ because also he has redeemed you. He has made you his own by his death.

And that is the main truth and the lesson that I want us to take from this passage, that as a Christian, you are not your own. In fact, the entire lesson of the Exodus can be summed up in the words of the Apostle Paul in Romans 14, seven and eight. For none of us lives to himself and none of us dies to himself. For if we live, we live to the Lord. And if we die, we die to the Lord. So then whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord’s.

This is not the message that we hear from the world around us. The world around us proclaims to us in so many different ways a message that is opposite of what the message of the scriptures is, and that is this. You are your own. You belong to yourself. You are the captain of your soul, you are the sovereign lord of your life, and therefore you do live to yourself. And since you do live to yourself, since you belong to yourself, it is foolish and wrong for you to deny any desire that you might have to pursue. For example, this idea, this lie, lies at the very heart of our society’s wrong and false ideas about human sexuality. The world says your body belongs to you and you have a right to do with it what you will with whom you will. No one has the right to tell you what you can do with your body. And that idea that I have personal sovereignty over my body, that is the justification for so much sexual sin that has caused so much pain, misery, and destruction in our world today. In fact, it is with that particularly in view that the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 6, he is speaking especially with sexual sin in view that he says that we are not our own. And so what the Bible is saying is the very first thing that we need to understand when it comes to our sexuality is this, that our bodies belong to Christ. They are not our own. You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. Your bodies belong to Christ because you have been purchased by the blood of Christ. So glorify God in your body.

But we can take this truth beyond that one aspect, this idea that we are sovereign over our lives, this becomes justification to living an entire life in every aspect merely to please myself. And this is the heart, This is the cry of the heart of the one who claims this autonomy, this sovereignty over self. I can live my life as I please. It is my life. No one can tell me what to do. If I want to devote my life to making money, then that’s my business and you have no right to tell me not to. If I want to live my life to satisfy my desires, that is my business. It’s my life. I will live it how I please. And for many people, The idea of a successful life is that they are able to come to the end of their life and to be able to say with Frank Sinatra, I did it my way. No one told me what to do. I forged my own path. I was my own Lord. I did it my way. That’s a powerfully seductive message. Our hearts respond. We’re attracted to that message. Be who you want to be. Live your life according to your desires. But like all of Satan’s lies, to believe it, to live a life according to that idea is to walk down the path that leads only to eternal death and destruction.

And as Christians, it may be easier for us to see among the unbelieving world how this idea that we belong to ourselves, that we are sovereign over ourselves, leads to such evil and sin. But let’s bring this closer to home. As Christians, we know that we belong to Christ, that we are his servants, but does your life reflect that truth? Are you devoting yourself entirely, every part of your life, to the service, to the worship of Christ? Do you live in such a way that you acknowledge that there is no compartment, no part of your life that does not belong to Jesus Christ, over which he is sovereign? or do you have some secret part that you are keeping for yourself, some area in your life that you are withholding from Christ, that you are sovereign over that little section of your life because you do not want to submit to His reign in that. As a Christian, that cannot be. The truth that you have been redeemed by the blood of Christ means that all that you are, all that you have belong to God. Everything, your body, your time, your money, your relationships, your online activity, your very life is not your own, but belongs to the Lord who redeemed you by his blood.

One Christian in history who lived his life as one who knew that he belonged to Christ was the great reformer John Calvin. And when you consider the amount, the intensity of the work that he did as a servant of Christ, it’s extraordinary. He was utterly devoted to serving the Lord with all the abilities and talents that God had given him. He was, of course, the pastor, the leader of the church in Geneva. He often preached daily throughout the week and twice on Sundays. He wrote commentaries on most of the books of the Bible. He wrote, of course, major theological works. He carried on correspondence with other reformers throughout Europe. The sheer volume of his labor is mind-boggling. When I compare myself to him, I’m 55 years old. I’ve already lived one year longer than John Calvin, but when I look at my own life, all I can say is I’ve dabbled in the ministry. I’ve served God rather half-heartedly. You look at someone who was devoted to Christ like he was. He did the work of three or four lifetimes of men. And of course Calvin did all this not because he was some kind of sick workaholic, but he did all that he did out of his devotion to Christ. And that devotion to his Savior is illustrated by his personal seal and motto. And that seal was a hand that was holding a heart. And the words next to the hand that was holding the heart in Latin said this, promptly and sincerely in the work of God. In other words, Lord, here is my heart. I give it to you promptly and sincerely. I devote, I consecrate myself to you entirely. And that should be the model, not just of some reformer from the 16th century. That should be the model of every believer. Every Christian should live by these words. Lord, here’s my life. Here are my abilities. Here are my gifts. Here is the strength, the energy, the time, the opportunities that you give them. I devote them all to you. I commit myself entirely to you, promptly and sincerely for your service, for obedience, for worship. You may do your good work in me and through me.

So the lesson of the Exodus, one lesson at least, is that we have been saved by Christ that we would belong to Him. We are His to serve Him. We are to consecrate ourselves to Him. But there’s also another truth that is here as well in that we belong to Christ and that is this. There is tremendous comfort. There is unspeakable comfort and encouragement knowing that we are the Lord’s, that we are God’s. and because we have been redeemed by the blood of Christ, because we have been purchased by Him, we are His and nothing will ever separate us from the love that He has for us. Nothing will ever snatch us away from the hands of Christ in whom we dwell securely.

One of the great catechisms of the Reformation, the Heidelberg Catechism, the question and answer number one of the Heidelberg Catechism could almost be a commentary on what we’ve seen in the Exodus, on the spiritual significance of the redemption of the people of Israel. And I’ll just read the first question and answer, and as we prepare to come to the Lord’s table, I’ll conclude with that. So this is question one. What is your only comfort in life and death? That I am not my own, but belong with body and soul, both in life and in death, to my faithful Savior, Jesus Christ. He has fully paid for all my sins, with his precious blood a3nd has set me free from all the power of the devil. He also preserves me in such a way that without the will of my Heavenly Father not a hair can fall from my head. Indeed, all things must work together for my salvation. Therefore, by his Holy Spirit, he also assures me of eternal life and makes me heartily willing and ready from now on to live for him. Let’s pray.

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The Old Testament reading is Exodus chapter 12, verses 1 through 28. And this is God’s inerrant and infallible word. Exodus 12, 1 through 28. The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, this month shall be for you the beginning of months.

It shall be the first month of the year for you. Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the 10th day of this month, every man shall take a lamb according to their father’s houses A lamb for a household, and if the household is too small for a lamb, then he and his nearest neighbor shall take according to the number of persons. According to what each can eat, you shall make your count for the lamb.

Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male, a year old. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats, and you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of this month, when the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill their lambs at twilight. Then they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and the lentil of the houses in which they eat it. They shall eat the flesh that night, roasted on the fire.

With unleavened bread and bitter herbs they shall eat it. Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roasted, its head with its legs and its inner parts. And you shall let none of it remain until the morning. Anything that remains until the morning you shall burn.

In this manner you shall eat it, with your belt fastened your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand and you shall eat it in haste for it is the Lord’s Passover for I will pass through the land of Egypt that night and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt both man and beast and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments I am the Lord the blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you are and when I see the blood I will pass over you and no plague will befall you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt this day shall be for you a memorial day and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord throughout your generations as a statute forever you shall keep it as a feast seven days you shall eat unleavened bread on the first day you shall remove leaven out of your houses for if anyone eats what is leavened from the first day until the seventh day, that person shall be cut off from Israel.

On the first day you shall hold a holy assembly, and on the seventh day a holy assembly. No work shall be done on those days, but what everyone needs to eat, that alone may be prepared by you. And you shall observe the feast of unleavened bread, for on this very day I brought your hosts out of the land of Egypt. Therefore, you shall observe this day throughout your generations as a statute forever.

In the first month, From the 14th day of the month at evening, you shall eat unleavened bread until the 21st day of the month at evening. For seven days, no leaven is to be found in your houses. If anyone eats what is leavened, that person will be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he is a sojourner or a native in the land. You shall eat nothing leavened.

In all your dwelling places, you shall eat unleavened bread. Then Moses called all the elders of Israel and said to them, Go and select lambs for yourselves according to your clans, and kill the Passover lamb. Take a bunch of hyssop and dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and touch the lintel and the two doorposts with the blood that is in the basin. None of you shall go out of the door of his house until the morning.

For the Lord will pass through to strike the Egyptians, and when he sees the blood on the lintel and on the two doorposts, the Lord will pass over the door and will not allow the destroyer to enter your houses to strike you. You shall observe this right as a statute for you and for your sons forever. And when you come to the land that the Lord will give you, as he has promised, you shall keep this service. And when your children say to you, what do you mean by this service?

You shall say, it is the sacrifice of the Lord’s Passover. For he passed over the houses of the people of Israel in Egypt when he struck the Egyptians, but spared our houses. and the people bowed their heads and worshipped. Then the people of Israel went and did so.

As the Lord had commanded Moses and Aaron, so they did.

You can keep your place there and turn with me to the New Testament for our New Testament reading, 1 Corinthians 5, verses 6 through 8. 1 Corinthians 5, verses 6 through 8. The best Old Testament commentary is the New Testament.

And in this passage, the inspired Apostle Paul tells us the significance of the Passover lamb, that it was a type of the coming Christ who would be sacrificed for us. So 1 Corinthians chapter 5, verses 6 through 8. Your boasting is not good. Do you not know that a little leaven leavens the whole lump?

Cleanse out the old leaven that you may be a new lump, as you really are unleavened. For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed. Let us, therefore, celebrate the festival, not with the old leaven, the leaven of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth. The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.

You may turn back to Exodus chapter 12, the last Lord’s Day, In our look at the book of Exodus, we consider the 10 plagues as a whole or a unit. And this morning and next Sunday, Lord willing, we’ll give our attention, we’ll zero in on this 10th and final plague. Of course, this was the plague of the death of the firstborn in the land of Egypt. And so today and next week, we’ll focus on all the events surrounding this 10th and final plague.

And this morning our focus will be on the Passover, the Passover. So the word Passover actually refers to a couple of different things in this passage. First of all, it refers to the Lord’s going through the land of Egypt on that night and killing all the firstborn of the families of the Egyptians and killing all the firstborn of the livestock of the Egyptians. Of course, that is the tenth plague and instead of killing the firstborn of the Israelite families, when the Lord saw that there was the blood of the Lamb smeared on the doorposts and the lentils of their houses, he passed over that house and the destroying angel did not kill the firstborn in that home. And so the Passover refers both to that judgment against the Egyptians and to the salvation of the Israelite firstborn by the blood of the Lamb. But the Passover also refers to the celebration of that event, the ritual celebration that the Israelites were to have every single year. It was an annual commemoration of what God had done for them in bringing them out of the land of Egypt.

And so in our passage in chapter 12, we see a description of both aspects of the Passover. both the actual event itself, when the Lord passed through the land of Egypt, but Passover, the Israelite homes, and the institution of that annual celebration, that ritual meal that the Israelites were to have each year. So the night of the first Passover, this was the great work of God’s salvation for His people in the Old Testament. Someone has described the Exodus event as the gospel of the Old Testament.

This is what the Israelites looked to when they praised God for their salvation. In particular, this last plague, this Passover, when the Lord destroyed the firstborn of the Egyptians and brought his people safely out of the land of Egypt. That was the night when they were truly set free from the bondage to Pharaoh. And as we look at the details of this passage, both of what it tells us about that Passover event itself and the ritual meal that the Lord describes for us in this passage, we’ll see that this passage sheds light upon the far greater salvation, the far greater work of redemption that God has done for us in His Son Jesus Christ.

And so as we look at this passage, we’ll see what light it sheds for understanding that that greater work of deliverance that God has accomplished for us. And as we proceed this morning, we’ll consider three major parts of the Passover. We won’t be able to explore all of the rich symbolism of everything that’s described for us in this passage, but we’ll consider three parts of the passage or the Passover.

First, the lamb. Secondly, the shed blood of the lamb. And thirdly, the holy meal. And so first, let’s consider the lamb, the lamb that was to be sacrificed.

After the ninth plague, which was the plague of darkness, the Lord said to Moses that there was yet one more plague. And he said that this final plague would be the one that would at last force Pharaoh to let the people of Israel go. In chapter 11, verse 1, the Lord says, when he lets you go, he will drive you away completely. And so this will be the plague that will finally break the back of Pharaoh and the Egyptians.

This will be the one that is too much. Not only will they let the people go, but they will force them from the land. They will drive them away. And what is it that made this plague, unlike the earlier ones, so awful, so terrible, that Pharaoh would finally let the people go?

It was in this, that this plague, unlike the previous ones, this plague would bring death, would bring death on a large scale to the people of Egypt. In chapter 11 verses 4 through 6, Moses says to the people, thus says the Lord, about midnight I will go out in the midst of Egypt and every firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die. From the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on his throne, even to the firstborn of the slave girl who is behind the hand mill, and all the firstborn of the cattle. There shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as there has never been, nor ever will be again.

And so this plague will bring such devastation, such sorrow, such destruction upon the people of Egypt that finally they will let the people go. Every single firstborn will be destroyed. They’ll all be struck down dead in one night. Think of all the people you know who are firstborn.

They would all be dead. I myself, I would be dead. Robin’s not a firstborn, so you would still have her, so you have that consolation. But think about it.

Every family has someone in it who was the firstborn, and they would be struck down. And just like some of the earlier plagues, this final plague would strike only the Egyptians. The Israelites would be spared. However, unlike the earlier plagues in which the Lord spared the people of Israel from that plague.

In this particular plague, the Israelites would have to do something. The Lord calls them to take part, in a sense, in what He is doing in order that they may do something that He commands them in order to be saved from this plague. And what they would do is that they would sacrifice a lamb, they would smear the blood of the lamb on the doorposts and the lentils of their houses. The lintel, in case you’re not familiar with that term, that’s the frame that’s above the doorway.

And so the three parts of the frame of the doorway would be smeared with blood, the two doorposts and the lintel. And so when the Lord went out through the land of Egypt, he would see the lamb’s blood on the lintel and the doorposts of a house, and he would not allow the destroyer, probably an angel in the Lord’s service or perhaps the Lord himself, But the Lord would not strike down the firstborn in that home. And at the beginning of chapter 12, the Lord gives detailed instructions to Moses and Aaron about the lamb that they are to sacrifice and how they are to go about sacrificing this lamb.

And the most outstanding feature, the most significant feature of this lamb that was to be sacrificed was that it was to be a perfect specimen. There was to be no blemish on it, it was to have no defect. Chapter 12, verse 5, your lamb shall be without blemish, a male a year old. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats.

And of course we know, as we have already heard from God’s own inspired commentary from 1 Corinthians, that this Passover lamb was a type, it was a picture of the coming Messiah, the coming Christ, who would be sacrificed for our salvation. John the Baptist, of course, understood this because when he saw Jesus, he said, behold, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. And just as the Passover Lamb had to be without blemish, had to be perfect, so too Christ, the Lamb of God, had to be without sin. And so he was.

Jesus was true man and yet by virtue of the fact that he was true God he was the incarnation of the Son of God by virtue of that and by virtue of the fact that Jesus as man was conceived not by man but by the power of the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary because of those things unlike every other human being who has ever lived Jesus was throughout his life entirely free from sin. He was morally pure. He was perfectly righteous.

Without even so much as a hint or shadow of imperfection, morally or spiritually, he was perfectly righteous. I mean, think about that. That’s something that’s almost impossible for our minds to truly grasp because in our own experience We have lived with sin in ourselves, we live with others who are sinners, this is all that we know from experience and yet here was a man, here was a human being whose every word, whose every action, whose every desire of his heart, whose every inclination of his heart was nothing but perfectly righteous and pure and holy.

He was truly a lamb without blemish. And part of the wonder of the gospel is that when God looks upon you as one who belongs to Christ by faith, because God has given you that righteousness of Jesus as your very own, when he looks at you As you are covered with Christ, He does not see your sin, your guilt, your impurity, and moral blemishes, but what He sees is the perfect righteousness of His Son, Jesus Christ. He sees you as you are in Christ, without blemish, holy, undefiled, innocent, unstained, morally, spiritually pure, even as Jesus is pure.

That Passover lamb without blemish was not only a picture of Jesus who would be without blemish, but also it was showing us that we in Christ would be without blemish as well. And so that is the lamb.

Let’s consider secondly, the blood of the lamb, the lamb’s blood that was shed. Once the Israelites had their lambs chosen on the night of the Passover, they were to slaughter the lamb and they The blood would be collected in a basin, and they were to take a bunch of hyssop.

A hyssop was a kind of shrub, and they would dip the hyssop into the blood in the basin, and then they would smear that blood on the doorposts and the lintels of their house. And so when the Lord went through the land of Egypt that night, He would see the blood of the lambs smeared on the doorposts of the Israelites’ houses, and He would pass over their homes. And the point of the blood was not because it was not that because blood is a bright red color that it would enable the Lord to see the blood on the house and to identify it as the house of an Israelite. The Lord didn’t need a visible mark to know that this particular house belonged to the Israelites.

But the point of the blood was to show that a death was necessary in order for the Israelites to be saved from this coming judgment of God. There had to be a death if they were to be spared the judgment of the death of their firstborn. And so the blood of the Lamb then in this way was indicating to the Israelites that their sin, their guilt could only be atoned for, they could only be forgiven, they could only escape the righteous judgment of God by the loss of life, by the shedding of blood. There had to be a life that was destroyed if they were to be saved.

Hebrews 9.22 says, without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins. And in this way, the Holy Spirit was indicating to the Israelites, and we see it clearly now in the light of the New Testament, that the Holy Spirit was showing forth by these types and shadows that the coming Messiah would bring them salvation. He would bring them salvation from the judgment of God by the shedding of blood, by the shedding of the blood of Christ himself. And of course, that’s just what Christ did when he came into the world.

He died for us. He died for sinners, for us. His blood was shed. And that’s why Paul calls Christ our Passover Lamb who has been sacrificed for us.

And notice that the only thing that saved the people of Israel from the destroyer who from the destroyer who brought death to the firstborn of every house of the Egyptians. The only thing that saved them was the blood of the lamb that was smeared on their doorposts. The Lord didn’t pass over the houses of the Israelites and then think, oh this house belongs to an Israelite family, I will pass over it simply because they are Israelites. No, the blood had to be there.

It wasn’t because the Israelites had better morals than the Egyptians, or that they were somehow less prone to idolatry. It wasn’t because they were inherently more righteous than the Egyptians. There was no reason in the Israelite people themselves, not even the fact that they were Israelites. that caused the Lord to pass over their homes on that night of the Passover.

But it was the blood. It was the blood that was shed by the Lamb and smeared on their doorposts. That was what caused the Lord to pass over their homes and spare them that judgment. And the same is true For you and me, as believers in Jesus Christ, what separates you and me from the world that is perishing in their sin is not anything that is inherently in us, such as our own superior morality or our righteousness or that we are wiser than others or better than others or even that we have grown up in a Christian family or grew up going to church.

The Bible is clear that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. There is only one thing that separates you from the world that is perishing in sin. There is only one thing that saves you from your sin and guilt before God and that is the blood of Christ shed for you.

You are covered by His blood. That is the only thing by which we are saved. And so the blood of the Lamb taught the Israelites that if they are to be saved from the judgment of God, the blood had to be shed and they had to be covered with that blood. And so they were.

The third part of the Passover we’ll consider is this meal, the Passover meal, the Holy Meal. As you know, this week is the 4th of July. It’s coming up. And for our nation, the 4th of July is our Independence Day.

We celebrate as Americans the day that we proclaimed our independence from the tyranny of the King of England. And of course, we celebrate our Independence Day with fireworks. That’s our national tradition. People of Israel had their own Independence Day as well.

It was the night that they were set free at last from the tyranny of the king of Egypt. And God not only gave them salvation that day, but God also gave them the specific way in which they were to commemorate that salvation, the way in which they were to celebrate that salvation. It wasn’t with fireworks, but he gave them a holy meal, a meal that they were to repeat year after year after year to remember and give thanks to God for their deliverance. And every part of the meal would remind the Israelites of their experience in Egypt, their suffering, and of the salvation that the Lord worked for them.

The lamb of the blood would remind them of the blood that they smeared on their doorpost. The unleavened bread would remind them that they left Egypt in a great hurry that night. The bitter herbs would remind the Israelites of the bitterness of their suffering as slaves under Pharaoh. And so the Passover meal testified to the Israelites of what the Lord had done for them, what he had rescued them from in Egypt.

And the Lord wanted the Israelites to remember that year after year after year. That’s one thing that’s impressed upon us as we read this chapter, as we read this passage that God intended the Passover event and the whole exodus along with it to be remembered, to be celebrated, and to be remembered by his people from that time forth and far, far into the future. In knowing that, then, this explains kind of a curious feature about this passage.

And that is this, that right here, in the middle of the ten plagues, the exodus and all of that, right here in the midst of God’s dealings with Pharaoh and the Egyptians, He gives Moses, he gives the Israelites these detailed instructions about the yearly observance of the Passover. Starting in verse 14, the Lord gives instructions on how the Passover was to be prepared. He gives instructions about the Feast of Unleavened Bread, that week-long feast that followed the Passover, how it was to be observed year after year. And when you read it, it seems kind of out of place.

Later in Exodus, we’ll read about all kinds of ceremonial laws that the Lord gave to Moses, and of course, later in the Old Testament. There’s all kinds of ceremonial ritual laws that the Lord gave to Moses. But here are these instructions right in the middle, right at the peak of the Israelites about to be, you know, all that they’re experiencing in the ten plagues, and they’re about to be delivered from Egypt, and yet he gives them these instructions right here. We can almost imagine Moses saying something like, Can’t all these instructions wait until later?

We have our plate full right now. We just want to get out of here alive. But the Lord wanted to impress on his people in the strongest, strongest possible way that the salvation that he was about to accomplish for them that night, that they were to remember it as a people, that they were to commemorate it, that they were not to fail to celebrate the Passover with this Holy meal year after year after year.

And so the Lord instituted this ritual meal. So year after year, decade after decade, century after century, the people of God would celebrate the Passover just as it was dictated to them by the Lord through Moses. But the Passover meal was never meant to continue to the end of time. And that’s because it was not only a commemoration of what God did for his people in bringing them out of Egypt, but the Passover was also anticipatory.

It was looking forward to the greater work of salvation that the Lord had always planned to accomplish for his people through the coming Messiah, the Christ. And for that reason, then, it was at the Passover meal, when Jesus, on the last night, on this earth before his crucifixion. He was having that last supper, the Passover meal with his disciples. And he says to his disciples, after he picks up the cup, he says, this cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood, the new covenant in my blood.

From that point on, the saving grace of God for his people would no longer be mediated or shown forth through the blood of a lamb but from that point on there would be a greater sacrifice there would be greater blood that would be shed for the people of God by which God would bring salvation to his people there would be a greater covenant that God would enter into with his people and that is through his son Jesus Christ from that point on it would be the blood of Jesus the blood, the only blood that can truly take away our sin and our guilt forever. And so God, from that point on, with the coming of Christ, has entered into a greater covenant with us by the blood of his son Jesus.

And so as Christians then, as those who have been saved by the blood of Christ, as those who belong to this new covenant, we don’t celebrate the Passover meal. but we have entered into the reality of everything that that meal was pointing forward to with the coming of Christ but we do celebrate a ritual meal we do have a sacred meal that God has given to us and that is the Lord’s Supper that is the sacraments of the body and blood of Christ that saves us from our sins that we are to remember to celebrate as the people of God today one of the functions of the yearly remembrance of the Passover was that it was meant by God to confirm the Israelites in their identity as God’s people, to sustain them in that, that they were truly the people of God.

They were God’s chosen, beloved people. They were not like all the nations around them, but they were special. They belonged to the Lord. and this Passover ceremony even had built into itself a way in which this identity as the people of God would be passed on to future generations.

Moses instructed the people at this Passover meal in verses 26 and 27, When your children say to you, What do you mean by this service? You shall say, It is the sacrifice of the Lord’s Passover. For He passed over the houses of the people of Israel and Egypt when He struck down the Egyptians, but spared our houses. And so God gave the Israelites this yearly Passover feast, this holy meal, to shape them in their identity as the people of God, to confirm that they belong to the Lord, that they were saved by His grace, and to pass along that identity to future generations.

And the Lord’s Supper serves a similar purpose for us as the people of God today. It is a means, or one means, that God has given to us to remind us, to confirm to us who we are as believers in Christ, that we belong to Christ, that we are saved by the death of Christ, that we are the Lord’s, that we are not of this world, but that we belong to our Savior Jesus. And so God gives us the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper to confirm to us, to remind to us over and over and over again who we are, that we are the chosen, the beloved people of God whom he has saved through his son Jesus.

Another lesson that the Passover meal teaches us is about the nature of faith, of true saving faith in the Lord. The Israelites, they were saved from their bondage to Pharaoh by believing in the Lord, by entrusting themselves to Him, by believing His promises, we could say that they were saved by faith apart from works. That is very true. However, they demonstrated the genuineness of their faith and hope in the Lord by their obedience to His commandments.

Again, with this plague, The Lord gave the Israelites something that he required them to do. They were to kill this lamb, to smear the blood on their doorposts. And so they did this by faith. By faith they sacrificed the lamb, by faith they smeared the blood on their homes.

Hebrews 11.28 speaks of this faith. It speaks of Moses saying, by faith he kept the Passover and sprinkled the blood so that the destroyer, the firstborn, might not touch them. The Israelites were given very detailed instructions that they were to obey regarding the Passover meal, right down to the unleavened bread and the bitter herbs that they were to eat with the lamb. And Moses tells us that the Israelites were obedient.

They did what the Lord commanded them. In verse 28 we read, Then the people of Israel went and did so. As the Lord had commanded Moses and Aaron, so they did. They went and did so, and that was by faith, by trusting in the Lord they went and did what the Lord commanded.

And so, again, the Israelites were saved entirely by the grace of God, but they received that salvation by a faith that was shown or a faith that produced or resulted in the fruits of obedience. Think of what would have happened had the Israelites presumed upon the grace of God, had they failed to do what the Lord told them to do. If they did not kill the Passover lamb, if they did not smear its blood on their doorposts, what would have happened? The Lord would have passed over Egypt, or passed through Egypt, and he would have destroyed the firstborn of the Israelites as well.

They would have suffered the same judgment of God that the Egyptians did. and in the very same way as a believer in Jesus Christ, your salvation is entirely by the grace of God. You have been saved by the sovereign work of Christ and his shedding his blood for you that you might be redeemed. And that salvation is yours as you put your faith, your trust, your hope in the Lord Jesus Christ as you rest in him as your savior.

But that faith in Christ that saves you is a faith by which you will also seek to obey the Word of God. And there are so many ways that God calls us to obey Him. He calls us to hear His Word, to hear the preaching of His Word, to take part in His worship with the people of God, to pray, to repent of sin. God gives us His holy commandments that we are to obey.

The faith of the Israelites was proved by their obedience to God’s Word, and by that faith they were saved, and your faith as well in Christ. You are justified by faith apart from works, but that faith is demonstrated, it is shown forth in obedience to the Word of God. Not perfect obedience, but a sincere obedience from the heart. And that is the nature of the faith that saves us, the faith in Christ that brings us salvation.

And so the Israelites in the Passover show us the true nature and character of the faith that brings salvation to us. It responds to the word of God with belief and obedience. Now at this time, if you happen to be in Egypt at this time, and if you asked a typical Israelite who was about to be saved from Egypt, if you were to ask him, what is it that you need to be saved from? That Israelite would look at you, probably, like you were asking the dumbest question in the world, and he would say, what do I need to be saved from?

Isn’t it obvious? We are in this miserable condition as slaves to Pharaoh. He is a despot. He is a tyrant.

He has murdered our children. He has made our lives intolerable. We need to be saved from Pharaoh and from this terrible situation that we’re in. And of course, mostly, he would be correct.

But when you think about it, the Israelites’ plight as slaves doesn’t really explain the Passover. If slavery was their biggest problem, then why the blood of the lamb? Why the killing of the lamb, the shedding of its blood? Why smearing the blood on the doorposts for the Lord to see?

In all of these things in the Passover were meant to teach the Israelites this lesson that though yes the Lord was about to deliver them from their bondage to Pharaoh, he was about to rescue them from their miserable slavery, he was going to show them good in doing that. However, their greatest problem, the greatest problem that the Israelites had was not their slavery to Pharaoh, but their slavery to sin. They needed redemption above all else, from sin, from guilt, from the judgment of God that was coming.

And this is the main lesson I want to leave with you today from this passage of Exodus. And that is, as a Christian, to be saved is to be saved from sin and death. As Christians, we naturally speak of salvation. I have been saved.

The Lord has saved me. Sometimes we need to ask, from what? From what have we been saved? And the answer is, we have been saved from the judgment of God that is ours by nature because of our sin.

And we need to hear that because just like the Israelites at that time, when we think about our lives and what we want salvation from, the first thing that often comes to our mind is that we want to be saved from whatever suffering or affliction or hardship or maybe even inconvenience that we are struggling with in this world. But just as the Israelites’ slavery and misery was awful and as horrible as it was, it was not the thing from which they needed salvation most of all. So what you and I need to be saved from above all else is not whatever affliction or hardship or suffering we might endure in this life, but our greatest and most urgent need is to be delivered from the tyranny of sin, to be saved from the judgment of God that comes as a result of sin.

We need to be made right with God, to be brought to God, to be delivered from the power of sin, from the guilt of sin. And when you come to see that, when you come to see that salvation that Christ came into the world to accomplish for us, You really see then the truth of the gospel and the wonder of the gospel and the glory of the gospel. And you see more clearly that it is good news.

It is the best news that we could possibly hear. That Jesus Christ, the Son of God, that he gave himself up for us all, that he willingly offered his body upon the cross to be broken, his blood to be shed, that our sin might be taken away, that we might be forgiven, that God in His wrath and His judgment might pass over us, that we might be covered by His blood. And this is the salvation that Christ came to give us.

This is why we praise God for His love, His mercy, His compassion, because He has forgiven our sins. He’s given us new life. and he has done this because he has given us the true Lamb of God, the true Passover Lamb, the one who takes away the sins of the world. Let’s pray.

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Our first passage from Exodus is Exodus, Chapter 7, verses 14 through 25. Let’s give our attention now to the reading of God’s holy and inerrant word.

Then the Lord said to Moses, “Pharaoh’s heart is hardened. He refuses to let the people go. Go to Pharaoh in the morning as he is going out to the water. Stand on the bank of the Nile to meet him, and take in your hand the staff that turned into a serpent. And you shall say to him, ‘The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, sent me to you, saying, Let my people go, that they may serve me in the wilderness. But so far you have not obeyed.’ Thus says the Lord, ‘By this you shall know that I am the Lord. Behold, with the staff that is in my hand, I will strike the water that is in the Nile and it shall turn into blood. The fish in the Nile shall die, and the Nile will stink. And the Egyptians will grow weary of drinking water from the Nile.'”

And the Lord said to Moses, “Say to Aaron, ‘Take your staff and stretch out your hand over the waters of Egypt, over their rivers, over their canals and their ponds and all their pools of water, so that they may become blood. And there shall be blood throughout all the land of Egypt, even in vessels of wood and in vessels of stone.'”

Moses and Aaron did as the Lord commanded. In the sight of Pharaoh and in the sight of his servants, he lifted up the staff and struck the water in the Nile. And all the water in the Nile turned into blood. And the fish in the Nile died, and the Nile stank, so that the Egyptians could not drink water from the Nile. There was blood throughout all the land of Egypt. But the magicians of Egypt did the same by their secret arts. So Pharaoh’s heart remained hardened, and he would not listen to them, as the Lord had said. Pharaoh turned and went into his house. And he did not take even this to heart. And all the Egyptians dug along the Nile for water to drink, for they could not drink the water of the Nile. Seven full days passed after the Lord had struck the Nile.

And now turn to chapter 11, verses 1 through 10. Chapter 11, verses 1 through 10. The Lord said to Moses, “Yet one plague more I will bring upon Pharaoh and upon Egypt. Afterward, he will let you go from here. When he lets you go, he will drive you away completely. Speak now in the hearing of the people, that they ask every man of his neighbor and every woman of her neighbor for silver and gold jewelry.”

And the Lord gave the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians. Moreover, the man Moses was very great in the land of Egypt and in the sight of Pharaoh’s servants, and in the sight of his people. So Moses said, “Thus says the Lord, ‘About midnight, I will go out in the midst of Egypt. And every firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die. From the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on his throne, even to the firstborn of the slave girl who is behind the handmill. And all the firstborn of the cattle. There shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, and such as there has never been nor ever will be again. But not a dog shall growl against any of the people of Israel, either man or beast. That you may know that the Lord makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel. And all these your servants shall come down to me and bow down to me, saying, Get out, you and all the people who follow you.’ And after that I will go out.”

And he went out from Pharaoh in hot anger. Then the Lord said to Moses, “Pharaoh will not listen to you, that my wonders may be multiplied in the land of Egypt.” Moses and Aaron did all these wonders before Pharaoh. And the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he did not let the people of Israel go out of his land.

And now let’s turn to the New Testament for our New Testament reading. This is Second Thessalonians, chapter 1, verses 5 through 12. Second Thessalonians 1, 5, 12. As we’ll see, the ten plagues are a picture of the day of judgment that will take place when Jesus returns. It will be a day of judgment for those who have not repented and come to faith in Christ, but a day of salvation for those who belong to Christ. And our chapter or our passage from First Thessalonians describes that to us. So, First Thessalonians or Second, I’m sorry, Second Thessalonians, chapter 5. Second Thessalonians, chapter 1, verses 5 through 12. Second Thessalonians, Chapter 1, verses 5 through 12.

“This is evidence of the righteous judgment of God that you may be considered worthy of the kingdom of God for which you are also suffering. Since indeed God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you and to grant relief to you who are afflicted, as well as to us. When the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus, they will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might when he comes on that day to be glorified in his saints and to be marveled at among all who have believed. Because our testimony to you was believed to this end. We always pray for you that our God may make you worthy of his calling and may fulfill every resolve for good and every work of faith by his power, so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.”

“The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever.” Let’s turn back to Exodus, Exodus, chapter seven. This will be the main passage that we’ll focus on this morning.

When I was a kid, one of the constant jokes that I heard, a joke that I got tired of really fast, was that some kid would come up to me and he would say, “Beam me up, Scotty.” And if you have no idea what I’m talking about, probably you’re under the age of 40 or so. But “beam me up, Scotty” was a phrase from the old TV show Star Trek. When somebody from the crew of the spaceship USS Enterprise was out visiting a planet or some other place and he needed to get back to the spaceship, he would open up his little radio transmitter and he would say to the spaceship’s engineer, whose name was Scotty, he would say, “Beam me up, Scotty.” And that person would be instantly transported from wherever he was back to the spaceship.

Now, God is all powerful and he can do anything that he wills. And we might wonder why, instead of these ten plagues, God simply didn’t beam up his people or beam them away into the wilderness, or perhaps even beam them straight into the promised land. That certainly would have caused or would have saved the Israelites a lot of trouble. It would have saved the Egyptians a lot of misery. And God certainly could have done that. God is omnipotent. That would have been no problem for him at all.

But the Lord has an infinitely wise and a holy and good purpose for all that he does and for the way he does what he does. And we know what his purpose was in delivering his people from the land of Egypt through this means, through these 10 terrible plagues that he inflicted on the Egyptians. We know what God’s purpose was in doing this. Because throughout this passage, or throughout the account of the ten plagues, the Lord declares over and over again what his purpose is. And that is that the Egyptians would come to know that he is the Lord, that He will make Himself known in this way.

For example, in chapter 7, verse 5, the Lord says this: “The Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring out the people of Israel, Israel among them, that they will know that he is the Lord.” Back in chapter five, verse two, Pharaoh said to Moses and Aaron, he 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 him go.”

And so Moses at first, or rather Pharaoh at first, he declares that he does not know the Lord. But by the end of the 10 plagues, Pharaoh receives quite an education in the knowledge of God. And he comes to know the Lord. Sadly for him, not in a way that brings salvation, but in a way that forced him to acknowledge that the Lord, that he is the true God of heaven and earth, and he is the true king and ruler over the Egyptians and over all people. The Israelites as well would come to know the Lord better as a result of the 10 plagues. They would come to know the Lord as their powerful and gracious savior. And God’s will in the 10 plagues was not just that the Pharaoh and the Egyptians then, and the Israelites then, that they would come to know the Lord, but his purpose was that all people at all times and all places would know that the Lord, the God of Israel, that he is the true God. He is the maker of, and ruler and judge of heaven and earth.

And so God was making himself known to all people through these 10 plagues. And you see that purpose of God in the words that the Lord spoke to Moses in chapter nine, verse 16. I’ll read that verse. The Lord says, “But for this purpose, I’ve raised you up.” He’s speaking to Pharaoh. “But for this purpose, I’ve raised you up to show you my power so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth.”

In other words, the Lord is declaring, here, I have raised up Pharaoh. I have hardened his heart so that I would bring all of these terrible plagues upon him and his people. So that, so that all the earth from this time forth and forevermore may know my name, that I am the Lord. And so these plagues are recorded for us here in Scripture. That you and I today may know better the character, the purposes, who God is.

And in particular, there are three truths concerning God that are revealed to us in these ten plagues. One, the Lord alone is God of heaven and earth. Secondly, two, the Lord will judge sin and unbelief. And three, the Lord will save his people. So we’ll consider those three truths about God, how he reveals those to us in these 10 plagues. But before we get to these three truths, let’s summarize what happens during the 10 plagues. Let’s just look at what happens here as an overview to see, to understand the context of these truths that the Lord reveals to us.

So let’s first set the stage. We’ve been going through Exodus, so you’re familiar with what’s happening here. But at this point in the history of God’s people, the people of Israel, they have been in Egypt about 400 years. They are in abject slavery to the Egyptians. They are suffering intensely. And the current king of Egypt, Pharaoh, he has made their life even more miserable because he was afraid that the people of Israel would continue to multiply and that they would even become a threat to the Egyptians. Probably his main concern, that they would become a threat to his own rule. For that reason, Pharaoh decided to institute a policy that by which he would decrease the number of the Israelites, and that would be by murdering the baby boys that were born to the Hebrews. Of course, this proved to be a vain effort. The people kept multiplying.

Later, Pharaoh laid on the Israelites an impossible burden. He would no longer give them straw to make bricks, but they had to continue to make the same number of bricks as they were always forced to make. But now they had to go out and get their own straw. And inevitably, when they failed to meet their daily quota of bricks, Pharaoh’s taskmasters would mercilessly beat the Israelite foreman. And so the suffering of the Israelites was extremely severe under this Pharaoh.

In the meantime, God had spoken to Moses. He had commissioned Moses and his brother Aaron to be the leaders who would bring the people of Israel out of Egypt. They were to lead God’s people out of Egypt, and ultimately they would be led into the promised land, into Canaan, a land flowing with milk and honey. And there they would worship and serve the Lord as a free people. And at the time that Moses or that God first spoke to Moses at the burning bush about this deliverance, that he would work for his people. The Lord declared to Moses that he would force Pharaoh to let the people of Israel go only after he had done his wonders in the land of Egypt. And so the Lord said to Moses in Exodus 3:20, “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 so these wonders are what we call the ten plagues. And so it had been God’s purpose. It had been his will this whole time to bring his people Israel out of Egypt as a result of these 10 plagues or these wonders that he would inflict upon the Egyptians.

Perhaps some of you have memorized the 10 plagues. I don’t know if anyone here has ever done that. Perhaps you still remember what they are, but if not, I’ll refresh your memory. First of all, there was the first plague. The Nile was turned to blood, and we’ll consider that a little bit this morning. Secondly, the second plague. Frogs covered the land. They were in the houses, the bedrooms, even the beds of the people. If I was an Egyptian, that’s about the time I would have started to pack my bags after that plague. But there was more. The third plague was gnats. The fourth was flies. The fifth plague was death upon the livestock of the Egyptians. God sent a plague upon them so that they died. With the sixth plague, the Lord now touches the bodies of the Egyptians. They are afflicted with painful boils that break out on their bodies. And also they also afflict the remaining livestock in Egypt. The seventh plague was hail. I suppose if you’ve ever lived in Texas or Oklahoma, the thought of a plague of hail would cause you to tremble. The eighth plague were locusts. And here is a plague that we’ve seen, in a sense, repeated throughout history at different times. Sometimes you hear about in some place in Africa or somewhere where massive numbers of locusts will descend upon some area. They’ll eat every green thing in sight, then they’ll fly away. And almost invariably, the word that’s used to describe that is biblical because it conjures up this image of this plague of locusts that destroyed Egypt. The tenth plague, or the ninth plague rather, was three days of absolute darkness, a darkness that can be felt. The Bible describes it to us. And then finally, the 10th plague, the worst plague. This is when the Lord brings death to the people of Egypt. Every firstborn and every family of Egypt, every firstborn of all the animals of Egypt is struck down when the Lord or the angel of the Lord passes over Egypt.

Now, the Bible uses different words to describe these plagues. In fact, the word plague is just one of the words that it uses. But the most important thing about these plagues is that they are referred to as wonders, as we’ve seen, or signs and wonders. And that indicates that these were plagues that were brought about directly by the hand of God upon the people of Egypt. So some people have denied that. Some people have read the 10 plagues in the Bible, and they have attempted to come up with natural explanations for the 10 plagues, natural events that they say were interpreted by the Israelites as a supernatural work of God. For example, with the first plague, the Nile turning into blood, they say there was sediment in the Nile river. And the Israelites, when it turned red, the Israelites mistook that for blood. But the only way that a person could believe that sort of naturalistic explanation is to deny what the scriptures plainly declare to us about each one of these plagues. And that is this, that it is God who brings them. It is God who caused them to come to the land of Egypt. He did it by his supernatural, by his divine power.

And really that’s the whole point, that’s the message, or at least one of the points, that the Lord is communicating through these plagues. And that is this, that he is God. He is the one who contains the power, the might to inflict these plagues upon the Egyptians. He can do whatever he wills with his creation because he is the Creator and the Lord of all. And that truth leads us, or that leads us to the first truth that the Lord reveals concerning himself through these plagues. And that is this, that the Lord alone, God alone, is the God of heaven and earth.

One of the most important things to understand about the 10 plagues, to really understand what is going on here, is this, that these were not just disasters that God inflicted upon the people of Egypt in order to cause them suffering and misery, which they did, of course. But these plagues were specifically designed by God to impress upon the Israelites and the Egyptians that the God of Israel, that he was infinitely superior to and more powerful than the so called various gods of the Egyptians. In other words, God was not just defeating the Egyptians through these 10 plagues, but he was bringing to nothing the gods of Egypt, the gods who truly were nothing because they were false gods.

This is the Bible’s own interpretation of the ten plagues. In Numbers 33, 4 we read this, “The Egyptians were burying all their firstborn whom the Lord had struck down among them on their gods. Also the Lord executed judgments.” So this was a judgment not only against the people of Egypt, but against their gods. And he was demonstrating through these plagues just how empty, how powerless, how vain were all the gods of the Egyptian pantheon. And at the same time, just how powerful, how almighty was the one true God, the God of Israel, the Lord.

It appears that even the magicians of Egypt came to recognize this truth despite themselves. After the third plague, the plague of gnats, the Egyptians were not able to reproduce that plague with their secret demonic arts. And they said to Pharaoh, “This is the finger of God.” We recognize. This is the work of the true God.

Now, in this first plague, this plague that the Lord turned, where he turned the waters of the Nile into blood. The fish died, the water became undrinkable. The water stank because of the rotting corpses of the fish. In this plague, God was declaring his superiority over the gods of the Nile that the Egyptians worshiped. The Egyptians, of course, depended upon the Nile for their livelihood, for their existence. And so they ascribed the powers of the Nile river to give them life. They ascribed that to certain gods of the Nile. And one God in particular was the God Hapi. And they considered him to be the one who somehow produced the Nile river for them. And of course, when God made the Nile river turn into blood, he was demonstrating, not Hapi, but I, the Lord and the true God of the Nile.

In the second plague, when the Lord brings millions of frogs into the land and then he takes them away, he was demonstrating his power over a particular goddess that the Egyptians worshiped, the goddess Heqet. H. E. Q. E. T. She was a fertility goddess. She was portrayed in the form of a frog. And so with the second plague, the Lord was showing his power over this goddess. The plague of darkness was a defeat of the Egyptian sun God, Ra or Re. And more examples could be given of all of the various gods that the Egyptians worshiped. That each one of these plagues, plagues, one way or the other, was showing the Egyptians that these gods are powerless to do what you claim that they can do.

After the Exodus, when the Lord gave his ten commandments to the people of Israel at Mount Sinai in the wilderness, the very first commandment that he declared to the people was, “You shall have no other gods before me.” And all of the people that heard the voice of the Lord say that from the mountain, they could have said amen. Because they saw with their very eyes that the gods of the Egyptians, the idols, that they were no gods, that only God the Lord was worthy to be worshiped, that there should be no other gods before him. And so the God not only brought destruction to the Egyptians, but he, humiliated, he brought to nothing their gods when he brought his people out of Egypt.

And one lesson that the 10 plagues has for us today, with all of that in view, is that the one true God who had made himself known in these plagues to the Egyptians and Israelites, that he has made himself known in one way today, that is, through his son, Jesus Christ, that Jesus Christ, he as the Son of God, as God himself, He is the Lord. He is the true God. And a day will come when Christ will openly bring to nothing all the false gods of the various religions and worldviews of our world today.

The 10 plagues, they show just how false the notion is that every religion or every worldview is equally valid. And that there is no particular religion or God or worldview that can claim an absolute, that can claim to be absolute and true for all people. That’s a popular idea today. But that notion should have been put to rest forever in Egypt with the 10 plagues, because the Lord showed that he was the one who was truly God, not the gods of the Egyptians. And today, Jesus Christ, he is the one true and living God. He may not be confessed and acknowledged by atheists or Muslims or Jews or Hindus, but just as the Lord was the God who ruled over Egypt despite all of their gods that they worshiped and served, just as it was the Lord who was the true God over Egypt, so Christ is the Lord. He is the true God who rules over all people, whether they are atheists or Muslims or Jews or Hindus. He is truly God. And this will be acknowledged to all one day when the the Lord Jesus Christ returns from heaven to be the judge of all people, he will make it known that he is truly the Lord.

But there’s a way in which he makes this known to us even today. A way that is very different from the judgment that is to come. And that is that Christ, he alone gives life and peace and joy to all who come to him in faith. And only Christ can do this. There is no God, the God of our own making, the God of a false religion. There is no idol. There is no worldview. There is no philosophy that can bring us everlasting joy, peace in life. There is no other way that our sins can be forgiven except through Christ. There is no other way for us to attain eternal life except through Christ. And only Jesus can do this, because only Jesus is the true God. Only he is the Lord.

And so the same Lord who revealed himself to the Egyptians through these 10 plagues as the one who is God over all. We see him now, today, by faith in Jesus Christ. He is the true God of all. And he is the only God who can forgive our sins and give us eternal life. And so the Lord reveals himself as the true God of heaven and earth in these plagues. And the next truth that the Lord shows himself in these, that the Lord reveals in these plagues is that He Will judge sin and unbelief.

One of the themes that runs throughout these 10 plagues is the hardness of Pharaoh’s heart. And we, we considered that Last Lord’s Day. So we won’t spend a lot of time on that this morning. I’ll just say a few words about it. You’ll remember from Last Lord’s day that it was the Lord who hardened Pharaoh’s hearts. But at the same time, when we read through the account of the ten plagues, the Lord hardened his own hearts. And the plagues were an increasingly severe judgment against Pharaoh and against the Egyptians for their continued hardness of heart. In other words, Pharaoh and the Egyptians, they, they were guilty for hardening their own hearts. And as they responded in unbelief to these plagues, their hearts became hardened. They became more guilty of their unbelief. And so the Lord, through Moses and Aaron, he would demonstrate his power. He would testify to the truth of who he was through each successive plague. But without fail, Pharaoh would refuse to let the people go. He would not bend, he would not soften his heart. He would not accept the truth.

Sometimes he would say in the midst of the plague that yes, he will let the people go. At one point at least, and maybe more, he even admits that he had sinned. But then, as soon as the plague stops, he changes his mind and he continues in his stubborn ways. And so each plague was a judgment against Pharaoh for his hardness of heart, for continuing in his unbelief, despite the testimony that he was receiving from God of the truth of God.

And what is so tragic today is that you see this very same thing repeated. You see it on a national level. A nation, a people, will be struck with a great calamity or tragedy. And rather than turning to God with repentance and belief and father faith in Christ, they will continue in their sin, they continue in their unbelief. And until God in his mercy brings true repentance, that sin and unbelief will only increase until the final judgment comes. This dynamic is true on an individual level as well. An unbeliever, one who has not embrace the truth of the gospel. He is struck with a terrible sickness or personal tragedy, and yet he refuses to turn to Christ. In humility and repentance he hardens his heart.

Some of you will remember the atheist Christopher Hitchens. He died of cancer. But he said in the course of that cancer, he said that if he became a Christian, then we would know for sure that the cancer had spread to his brain. At that point he, as far as we know, he never repented, softened his heart toward the gospel. But sadly, that is the attitude of many who suffer. They will not allow their suffering to bring them to a place where they acknowledge that they are but creatures, God, that they are accountable to him, that they must repent of their sin and come to Christ in faith. But rather they harden their hearts, they become proud. Some who have faced death have rallied their hearts with a poem by William Ernest Henley, a poem called Invictus. Part of how the poem goes is, “It matters not how straight the gates, how charged the punishments, the scroll. I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul.”

At the final judgments when there is no more possibility of repentance, when the day has passed for someone to turn to Christ, they will discover to their horror, as Pharaoh did, that they are not the master of their faith, they are not the captain of their souls. And that is one of the key lessons that we must learn from the ten plagues. And this is the truth that we must communicate to the world. Speaking the truth in love, but speaking the truth that God will bring unrepentant sinners into judgment. There is truly a terrifying and awful and an eternal consequence for sin and unbelief, and that is that the one who dies in his sin will suffer God’s wrath forever, what Second Thessalonians calls the punishments of eternal destruction. That is a truth that we as Christians, as the Church, have come to believe. And that is a truth that as the Church, we must communicate to a world perishing apart from Christ.

One of the hallmarks of unbelief is to deny that reality, to deny the reality of a coming judgment that God will bring into judgment every person who has ever lived, and that the outcome of that judgment will be heaven or hell. And I believe that one reason why biblical Christianity is not real popular in our day and age, in our cultural time, is because we have convinced ourselves as a people that there is no coming judgment. Somehow we have convinced ourselves that that is just a fiction, that there is no judgment to come. Or perhaps we have simply distracted ourselves sufficiently so that we do not think about it or reckon with it. But whatever the reason, we are not moved by the prospect that one day there will be a judgment for each one of us. And for someone who has denied that reality, for someone who refuses to accept that truth, their thinking is, if there is no judgment, then why do I need a savior? And sadly for many people, that is the way that they think.

But the 10 plagues are a reminder to us that there is a judgment to come. And as the church with that in view, our message to the world is not just that sin is wrong. Of course that is true. Sin is wrong. It disbelieves pleases God. But our message is not just that this particular activity or that particular activity is sinful. Of course we communicate that. But the whole message is this, that our sin is not just wrong, but it brings upon us the judgment of a holy and righteous God. That our sin will bring down upon us the wrath of God if we do not repent and turn to Christ. In other words, the problem of sin is not just that it is immoral, it is but sin is self destructive because the result of sin is judgment, eternal death. And we have to view the gospel terms of that reality as well.

The Gospel is not the good news that God has given up on judging sinners, because God cannot do that. The Gospel is not good news that God now simply looks the other way and does not consider our sin to be worthy of condemnation. But the Gospel is the good news that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, that He took upon himself this judgment that you and I deserve because of our sin. In the 10 plagues we get this unforgettable picture of the wrath of God. The wrath of God poured out upon a people because of their sin and wickedness and unbelief. And it is that wrath that Jesus himself bore upon the cross. He died the cursed death of the cross. He received in himself that judgment of God, not because of his sin, because he was sinless, but for the sin of all who come to him in faith and put their trust in him. And this is the good news for you as a Christian, that if your trust is in Jesus Christ, it is not that your sin has not been dealt with, but the good news is that your sin has been dealt with. Your guilt has been judged and condemned. But Jesus took it for you. And that God gives you the righteousness, the innocence, the purity of Jesus as your very own.

One of the great things about the biblical account of the 10 plagues is the that even as God was bringing down his judgment upon Pharaoh in Egypt with these disasters, that along the way he tempered his judgments. He tempered his judgments with mercy and patience. And you see this in the way that the plagues gradually increase in intensity. The first plague, to be sure, it would not have been a picnic. The Nile river is turned to blood. All the water in Egypt has turned to blood. But you’ll notice that the people did find water by digging into the ground near the Nile. So God showed his mercy in that it was not an absolute plague that destroyed them. But gradually the plagues became worse. The first plague we might consider to be a major inconvenience, but it’s followed by plagues that are much worse. Misery of having frogs crawl all over the land, and then gnats and flies. The fifth plague, the livestock is killed. The sixth plague, the Egyptians are struck with boils. And then finally, worst of all, the 10th plague. Every single family experiences the death of the firstborn.

And after every plague, there was a pause. There was a pause in which Pharaoh could have repented. The Egyptians could have repented. And because God is just and righteous, had Pharaoh repented and turned from his evil ways, he would have relented, the plagues would have stopped. But there’s a lesson here for us in this, and that is when God in his providence, when he brings about a great tragedy in the world, a tragedy such as a tsunami or an earthquake that brings death and destruction, the thousands of people, that is a picture in time of the coming judgment of God. But at the very same time, it is God graciously sending a message to the world. And that is this. Be warned, world, be warned by this that a greater judgment is coming. You haven’t perished. And while you live and have breath, there is still time for you to repent, to come to God by faith in Christ. Jesus taught this. He taught about the tower of Siloam that fell on 18 people and killed them. And Jesus said, “Do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you, but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.” And so, even in a horrific calamity that the Lord in his providence brings into the world, there is still a stream of mercy and grace that goes alongside of that. For those who are not destroyed by it, God has a purpose, a message in it. And it is this. There is still time. Repent. A greater judgment is coming. You yet one more plague is coming. But there is still time to come to me. And so the 10 plagues teach us that the Lord will judge sin and unbelief.

And the third truth that the Lord reveals here in these plagues is that the Lord will save his people. And so we have been focusing on the judgment, the plagues that the Lord brought upon the people of Egypt. But that’s only part of the story. The other part of the story is a story of redemption that the Lord worked through these plagues to Bring the people out of Egypt, his people, and ultimately into the promised land. About halfway through the plague, starting with the fourth plague, the plague of flies, the Lord begins doing something different. He makes a distinction between the Israelites and the Egyptians. And so that only the Egyptians are afflicted with the plague, and the Israelites are not afflicted at all. They’re untouched. And by doing that, the Lord was declaring that his people were different, that the people of Israel were His beloved people, his chosen people, and that his purposes for Israel were not destruction, but salvation. And so the very plagues that destroyed Pharaoh and the Egyptians would be the means by which God would bring deliverance to his people.

And the remarkable thing about that is this, that the Israelites in themselves, inherently, they were no more righteous, they were no more morally pure or holy than the Egyptians. They were sinners, too. Joshua, later on in the Scripture, he would say to the Israelites, “Now, therefore, fear the Lord and serve him in sincerity and faithfulness. Put away the gods that your fathers served beyond the river and in Egypt, and serve the Lord.” So it wasn’t just the Egyptians who were serving idols in Egypt. It was the Israelites as well. But God set them apart. He was merciful to them. He set them apart to be his beloved, beloved people. And therefore he saved them from his judgments. And so the Lord made Himself known to the Israelites as their gracious Savior. And in the gospel of Jesus Christ, God has made Himself known to you and me as our gracious savior from sin and death.

As much as the Lord is glorified in these works of judgment, the ten plagues, his righteousness is glorified, his power is glorified, and all of that is true. But the works that God has done in salvation, his works of mercy, his grace, his compassion, this brings God all the more glory because it reveals God to be a God of love, of grace, a God who saves. And he has shown you his love and grace in Christ, not only that you may know him and in knowing him, have life, but that you may give to him both in this life and the life that is to come, the adoration, the worship that belongs to him. Because he is the true God who is worthy of your worship and your praise. Let’s pray.

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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.

The post The Great I Will appeared first on Mt. Rose OPC.

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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