Exodus - Part 8
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Welcome...
Introduce self...
Pray...
Heavenly Father, we worship you this morning for you sovereign power and immeasurable goodness. We thank you for being with us through all our hurt and brokenness. Please open our ears and our hearts to your word this morning. Please give me grace as I deliver the good news of your gospel.
In Jesus’ name, amen.
I’m excited for the book of Exodus:
Key Themes:
Redemption
Worship
Pilgrimage
Covenant
Rest
Recap:
Introduced to Moses:
Moses, when he is an incapable/undeserving baby, is saved out of the Nile to serve God’s purpose (because God is gracious)
Right from the start of this story, we see God’s mighty hand and his providence working
Moses grows up and tries to take matters into his own hands.
Kills Egyptian, but he gets caught and has to flee Egypt
Moses is a shepherd, where he learns to care for sheep, but where God is preparing him for something far more significant (to care for the flock of Israel)
God hears his people, and he cares for them:
During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel—and God knew.
He hears you
He remembers his promises to you
He sees you
And he is concerned for you.
[[SLIDE]]
“In Exodus God moves from being perceived as a distant deity to becoming a God who dwells in the midst of His people.”
R.C. Sproul
Burning bush and God’s charge:
Moses was keeping his sheep and he sees a bush that is burning but it’s not consumed.
God speaks to Moses out of the bush:
Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.”
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 reveals himself as the ultimate sovereign power of the universe.
I AM WHO I AM
I exist by my own, I’m perfect, I’m not developing
God Gives Moses Signs:
God gives Moses signs, one of which is to throw his staff on the ground and it becomes a snake.
Moses returns to Egypt
Moses and Aaron gather the elders of Israel and they believed God.
Moses asks Pharaoh to let the people go:
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.”
And this kicks off the ultimate battle of Good versus Evil
We have the YHWH going agains the god of this world to establish dominance.
But I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go unless compelled by a mighty hand.
The people are discouraged:
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.
Moses spoke thus to the people of Israel, but they did not listen to Moses, because of their broken spirit and harsh slavery.
So at this point, the Pharaoh won’t listen to Moses, now the people won’t listen to Moses, all seems lost.
And this is where we pick up the story in chapter 7:
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.
Moses will have authority to speak to Pharaoh, Aaron will communicate that authority.
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.
[[SLIDE]]
“This is a difficult concept to grasp, complicated by the fact that whereas in English the idiom “to be hard-hearted” implies that one lacks compassion, in Hebrew it implies that one is determined or resolved to do something, not necessarily with negative connotations. At no point does God cause Pharaoh to act contrary to his own desires. On the contrary, He actually gives Pharaoh the courage to remain stubbornly committed to his initial plan. Remarkably, God does not use force to manipulate other people to do His will.”
R.C. Sproul
OR - “in order that I might multiply.”
God will accomplish his purposes.
Our God is GREAT!
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 eighty years old, and Aaron eighty-three 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.
The main idea of this text is that Yahweh, I AM, the God is Israel is superior and sovereign over Pharaoh and the gods of the Egyptians...
The “magicians” were really the priests of the Egyptian gods. They were the mediators between their gods and the people...
“The rods represented the authority and power of the gods in the Egyptian culture, so Yahweh accommodates to this custom to demonstrate his superiority in a palpable way to the Egyptians.”
The staff is significant throughout the Exodus story.
Moses’ staff was initially used by God as a sign for Moses, then for Moses to show the people, and now for Moses to show Pharaoh.
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—
God will use this staff for more than one sign:
And take in your hand this staff, with which you shall do the signs.”
And look at the significance given to the staff in verse 20:
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.
[[SLIDE]]
Pastor Marc Sims points out:
The staff is then used repeatedly throughout the plagues (7:15, 17, 19-20; 8:5; 8:16-17; 9:23; 10:13; cf. 17:5) and climactically at the parting of the Reed Sea (14:16).
Staff were popular in ancient Egypt, even held by Pharaohs, to denote divine authority and power. They were also certainly used by the “magicians” of that time period.
I want to read a long quote, again from Pastor Marc Sims:
“The emphasis on Moses’ staff in the Exodus account now becomes clearer—and why it receives a divine appellation, “the staff of God,” (4:20). It appears that Yahweh is employing dramatic irony in his confrontation with deities of Egypt, represented by Pharaoh and his magicians. Yahweh takes Egypt’s own symbol of authority, power, and divinity (the staff) and turns it on its head, using it to confront their religious claims of superiority. Even the transformation of the staff into a snake itself appears to fall in line with this divine mockery.
The Egyptians both loved and feared snakes, and often associated them with the gods. Pharaoh’s very crown, similarly believed to possess and represent the power of the gods, was a dilated hood (meant to represent a cobra) with twin snakes wrapped around, facing forward. The serpent goddess, Wadjet, and the vulture-goddess, Nekhbet, manifested their power and sovereignty in the front of the king’s crown where a figure of an enraged cobra sat. Sometimes, Pharaoh’s staff itself took a serpentine form.
That a Hebrew (the slaves of Egypt) representing a God Pharaoh had never heard of, would present itself in the very form the Egyptians loved and feared so much—only to devour the staffs/serpents of the magicians—would have been a severe blow to Pharaoh’s pride and apparent divine rule. It was, in sum, a means of divine mockery—taking the gods of Egypt head on and beating them at their own game. This is why in the confrontation with the magicians in Exodus 7:8-13, rather than saying that Aaron’s snake devoured the magicians’ snakes, the text states that Aaron’s staff devoured the magicians’ staffs (Ex 7:12b). The author is conveying that the God of Moses and Aaron is superior to the gods of Egypt; Yahweh alone possess ultimate sovereignty.”
All the way from here, the middle of chapter 7 through the middle of chapter 12 is a continuation of this.
God is making a mockery of the Egyptian Gods and beats them down over and over and over.
So, I was thinking “How does this apply to me and my congregation?”
For that I want to zoom out and remember the large theme of redemption the story of Exodus provides.
Exodus is a picture of redemption for us.
Just like Israel was slaves in Egypt, we were slaves to our sin.
Just like Israel found themselves discouraged and hopelessly lost, we too find ourselves discouraged and hopelessly lost.
God has to rescue us from the false gods of the world… They dig their hooks into us...
It made me think of the parable of the sower...
And he told them many things in parables, saying: “A sower went out to sow. And as he sowed, some seeds fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured them. Other seeds fell on rocky ground, where they did not have much soil, and immediately they sprang up, since they had no depth of soil, but when the sun rose they were scorched. And since they had no root, they withered away. Other seeds fell among thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and produced grain, some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.
“Hear then the parable of the sower: When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart. This is what was sown along the path. As for what was sown on rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy, yet he has no root in himself, but endures for a while, and when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, immediately he falls away. As for what was sown among thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and it proves unfruitful. As for what was sown on good soil, this is the one who hears the word and understands it. He indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.”
What are the gods of our present age?
“the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches...”
If you want to know the gods of the world, all you have to do is look at social media...
And the magicians are “influencers” selling us gods...
Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.