The Life of Moses, ch. 5

Intro

The life of Moses is often associated with the miraculous activity of God

>Yet without recognizing the historicity of these events, they are just fables, just myths

Patterns of evidence: Avaris

HAVE SOMEONE READ GENESIS 47:11

Moses as a type of Christ

The story of chapters 3-4 springs off the end of chapter 2

God has a promise to keep (in the fullness of time)

Genesis 15:13–14 NKJV

Then He said to Abram: “Know certainly that your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs, and will serve them, and they will afflict them four hundred years. And also the nation whom they serve I will judge; afterward they shall come out with great possessions.

Genesis 15:

The people of God have been waiting for a savior, and God appears absent

The intertestamental period (the “400 silent years”)before the coming Messiah.

—>Don’t miss some of the remarkable connections to Christ

The killing of the babies

Moses is a beautiful child

The 400 silent years

Moses as Mediator/Christ as mediator

Moses and the Law (Mt. Sinai)/Christ’s exposition of the law (Mt. Beatitude)

Moses in the wilderness for 40 years/Christ’s trial in the wilderness for 40 days

By the way, what does Moses fail to do in the wilderness?

What does Christ perfectly do in the wilderness?

And so while Moses is a great man and even an OT “type” for Christ, he merely anticipates the future Savior

Hebrews 11:24–27 NKJV

By faith Moses, when he became of age, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin, esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt; for he looked to the reward. By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king; for he endured as seeing Him who is invisible.

Hebrews 11:

Back in …in the fullness of time, God heard his people and remembered His promise, and now He will bring about their salvation from Egypt.

God calls himself the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob

and that he will bring his people into a land of pagan peoples 3:8

This is to reiterate his covenant faithfulness

The revealed name of God

I AM

John 8:

John 8:53–59 ESV

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 I 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 fifty 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.

What does this name tell us about God?

He is eternally self-existent one

He is the uncaused cause

“The greatest and best man i the world must say, By the grace of God I am what I am; but God says absolutely—and it is more than any creature, man or angel, can say—I am that I am.” -Matthew Henry

What does that tell us about the authority of God?

God is self-sufficient

His existence is not dependent on another

His sovereignty does not depend on human action

How does this set God apart from the other “gods”?

God is unchangeable

He is immutable

His promise can be trusted and his character known

How does this give us comfort in life and death?

How does this affect progressive theology?

God is simple

God is not complex, that is composed of individual attributes that together comprise his divine nature

Instead God is simple in his being, and all the attributes are sourced in him as the source of being

Why does this matter?

Moses’s Objections:

“They will not believe me” (4:1)

Yet God will control even the heart of Pharoh

God demonstrates his power to Moses

“I am not eloquent” (4:10)

God’s self-sufficiency makes this complaint irrelevant

Moreover, Moses will not be accomplishing this in his strength

He is still thinking as the man who killed the Egyptian

“Please send someone else.”

Like Jonah, this is a mission the messenger wants no part of

But Moses has been prepared for this moment?

God gave Moses a clear mission. Do we have a clear mission from God?

In what ways do we make objections to prevent us from doing what we know God has called us to do? (and I am not talking about nebulous “calls” but what God has commanded us to do in His Word)