Moses: Deliverance

‌Good morning. It is so nice to be here with you again; welcome to week four of The Story. As we journey through what God has been doing and is doing and is going to do, with us, with His people, with the world, beginning with creation. So, we’ve compared the Bible to a mural in that it tells a single story. Still, it takes some work on our part to read it that way, to make it so much more than simply a good book, but to understand God’s story and begin to find our place within it. So, we started out in a garden, and now God is going to work with the Nation of Israel.

Today is the first of three weeks of looking at Moses. Today is Deliverance, later CH Hornbaker will take you through the rest of the book of Exodus, through which we see God’s covenant with His people, His commandments for holy living, and the following week he’ll finish off the Pentateuch, which means, “the five,” referring to the first five books of the Bible, the most significant books to God’s chosen people, the Israelites.

The first seven chapters of Exodus provide a broad overview of the Israelites’ enslavement in Egypt and their growth in numbers, which eventually leads to their oppression by the Egyptians.

Transition:

But first, I want you to think about something. What is it that you hope for? Not only what do you hope for, but what is it that you are doing right now to work towards that hope? Does anything come to mind? And maybe it’s simply to not be here anymore! But you have to be somewhere, doing something; what does that look like? Now, I’m betting you’ve thought of that, but most people, and perhaps even some of you, struggle with finding hope; we’re not even talking about pursuing it yet.

I propose that fear rules our subconscious. It’s the most basic instinct, right? Survival, fight or flight. We don’t even have to think about it. Your brain is wired for it; you could be shown 50 images flashed for the same amount of time, a kid, car, snake, sun, rock… but too quick to process; if you could identify any of them, it’s always going to be the ones your brain perceived as a threat.

Left unchecked, it replaces your pursuit of fulfillment. You’re not thriving; you’re just in survival mode. That’s a pretty bleak existence. That’s not what we’re created for. In my experience, most people aren’t aware of their hopes. They are, however, intimately familiar with their fears. Interestingly enough, they’re usually inversely related, but again, the saying goes that “you hit what you aim at, so if you aim at nothing, you’ll hit it every time.” So don’t focus on your fears, focus on your hopes.

Illustration:

Smoking is a classic example of something people do that is bad for them. Rather than quitting, some people choose to continue smoking, opting for a quick and easy fix, taking the temporary relief to their stress or boredom, ultimately causing long-term harm to their bodies instead of facing the difficult task of finding a permanent solution. People continue to smoke despite knowing the harmful effects it has on their health and well-being.

Some people find their comfort in junk food. Eating because they’re sad, soon enough, they’re sad because they eat instead of routinely exercising and eating healthily. Others take painkillers instead of exercising to relieve physical pain. Instead of addressing root causes, people routinely choose the easy route; temporary alleviation of their symptoms. Each of these examples not only fail to solve any issues in the long term but also exposes us to addiction and second and third-order effects.

Point:

The list goes on and on. The point is that we are, at times, our own worst enemy if we’re not consciously making the choice to pursue our hope, suffering some sort of Stockholm syndrome, thwarting our own joy because we’re comfortable with the devil we know.

Transition:

If you were here last week, same thing today, and really throughout this series, 17 chapters today, so we have to move quickly, and there’s so much, but in order to really capture the meta-narrative and not lose sight of the forest through the trees so to speak, I want to use the New Testament account, because it also provides interpretation, and that’s just less work for us to do.

Scripture:

Beginning in Acts 7: 17 “As the time was approaching to fulfill the promise that God had made to Abraham, the people flourished and multiplied in Egypt 18 until a different king who did not know Joseph ruled over Egypt. 19 He dealt deceitfully with our race and oppressed our ancestors by making them abandon their infants outside so that they wouldn’t survive. 20 At this time Moses was born, and he was beautiful in God’s sight. He was cared for in his father’s home for three months. 21 When he was put outside, Pharaoh’s daughter adopted and raised him as her own son. 22 So Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in his speech and actions.

23 “When he was forty years old, he decided to visit his own people, the Israelites. 24 When he saw one of them being mistreated, he came to his rescue and avenged the oppressed man by striking down the Egyptian. 25 He assumed his people would understand that God would give them deliverance through him, but they did not understand. 26 The next day he showed up while they were fighting and tried to reconcile them peacefully, saying, ‘Men, you are brothers. Why are you mistreating each other?’

27 “But the one who was mistreating his neighbor pushed Moses aside, saying: Who appointed you a ruler and a judge over us? 28 Do you want to kill me, the same way you killed the Egyptian yesterday?

Transition:

Now this is a story all about how

My life got flipped—turned upside down

And I’d like to take a minute, just sit right there

I’ll tell you how I became the prince of a town called Bel-Air.

I just want to plant that seed; I’ll come back to it, but you’ll have to hear me out now.

Exposition:

You see, Moses had tried to hide what he had done. He was afraid now because his secret had become known. I don’t know what his hope was; that’s not the point. Given his actions, he’s probably experiencing some sort of identity crisis, trying to find himself—but he hasn’t met God yet. He’s operating out of fear. And don’t get me wrong, fear has its place. It’s not a great place. I wouldn’t pitch a tent, camp out, plant a flag, and die on that hill kind of place, but if it helps you realize your predicament, if it keeps you alive, great. But let’s call it what it is, survival. This is not thriving.

You know, the discovery channel has this show that I’ve caught a lot of reruns of, “I (Almost) Got Away With It,” anyone familiar with it? A fairly central theme I’ve been able to discern throughout many of the biographies is a sense of relief when the fugitive is caught. Fear is a sign. It’s a decision making itself known to you. What you with it is what we assign objective value to. Taking the back roads, avoiding all the signs, that’s not the same thing as maturation. That’s what I mean when I say fear has its place. If you simply aren’t fearful of something, that doesn’t mean you’re living a fulfilling life, experiencing God’s joy. But it is an opportunity.

Scripture:

Exodus 2: 23 After a long time, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned because of their difficult labor, and they cried out, and their cry for help because of the difficult labor ascended to God. 24 God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.

There’s a parallel process going on here. Last Sunday, the Israelites were 12 people—now a nation clearly raised with an identity of faith, are drawing to their roots as Moses is going through his own deconstruction/conversion.

Lots of time is passing, our Scripture is moving pretty quickly too. In verse 17, the daughters of Jethro meet Moses, in 21, Zipporah is marrying him. Scholars put Moses around 40 when he kills the Egyptian and that he spends the 40 years after that in Midian with Jethro, his father-in-law, a priest.

This, along with Jesus’ time in preparation, both at the Temple as well as the 40 days of temptation before his Baptism, prior to the beginning of his public ministry, Paul’s time with Gamaliel, are all often cited as precedent for vocational training, seminary, what have you, before ordination.

So, Moses is called. Chapter three recall’s God’s appearance to him from the burning bush, and Moses receives purpose and hope. Also, lots of fear, but he makes the right choice this time. He tells Moses to assemble the elders, God’s going to deliver us from Egypt.

Verse 19 says, however, that the “king of Egypt will not allow you to go, even under force from a strong hand.” This is a pretty hard sell for Moses. He doesn’t have a great track record with the Hebrew people. Last time they questioned his authority. So in chapter four, he’s rightly worried about the prospect of trying that again. This is what I planted the seed for; remember in my intro, Fresh Prince? Moses isn’t Will Smith. No, no, he’s Carlton Banks. Carleton, like Moses, didn’t grow up the same way Will and the Hebrews grew up. He doesn’t have a whole lot of street cred, does he? No. But he’s had time now, learning and living as a Hebrew, but he’s still nervous about it, so God sends him a Will—his brother, Aaron, as an aid, the mouthpiece of his administration, and they set out to meet Pharoah with both wit and smarts.

So, their confrontation is recorded in Chapter five; as God said, Pharoah’s heart was hardened. Now, we’re entering into a portion of the Bible that gets problematic, to say the least. Why did God harden Pharoah’s heart? Why did God say to kill all the inhabitants, man, woman, and child of the land he is leading them to… Many scholars have weighed in; I suppose we’ll know one day, but the point is God is righteous. So much so that he doesn’t simply “make” arbitrary rules. In fact, the salvation we receive from the sacrifice of Jesus is done as a result of his strict adherence to the covenant they receive. It has permanent effects for him too. The hypostatic union, the putting on of flesh upon Christ’s nativity in Bethlehem, is forever. Jesus, God himself is now and forever, fully God, fully man.

But what did Moses and Aaron ask of Pharoah? Exodus 5:3 says, “please let us go on a three-day trip into the wilderness so that we may sacrifice to the LORD our God.”

So, the Israelites got their quotas increased.

Look with me in chapter five: 11 “Go get straw yourselves wherever you can find it,” the overseers said.

You see, they were allowed to worship, they had, up to this point, downtime, but in response to being asked to go worship, for three days, mind you:

“There will be no reduction at all in your workload,” verse 11 says.

So now, straw, a critical ingredient in brick making, isn’t going to be given to them.

12 So the people scattered throughout the land of Egypt to gather stubble for straw. 13 The overseers insisted, “Finish your assigned work each day, just as you did when straw was provided.”

That escalated quick. I mean, that hardly seems like a proportionate response to a request for a weekend retreat, right?

Chapter one, verse 10, sheds some insight, ”come, let’s deal shrewdly with them; otherwise, they will multiply further, and when war breaks out, they will join our enemies, fight against us, and leave the country.” Leaving the country is compared to war, fighting against them, or even joining their enemies. Why? They need workers. Nobility is only nobility so long as the peasantry remains peasantry. If the strength of your nation is people, you can’t have them walking away.

And that’s Pharoah’s response, right? Chapter 5, verse 5, we get this picture of them up on a porch or a courtyard with a view over the city, “Look, the people of the land are so numerous, and you would stop them from their labor.”

So, in verse 20, after the Israelite foremen are in trouble for not meeting their quota,

“they confronted Moses and Aaron, who stood waiting to meet them. 21 “May the LORD take note of you and judge,” they said to them, “because you have made us reek to Pharaoh and his officials—putting a sword in their hand to kill us!’”

There was, of course, a second reason that God allowed Pharoah to oppose His people or even hardened his heart, one that benefitted Moses and Aaron’s purpose and that was inspiring the Israelites’ resolve.

Because they’re smoking, eating junk food, and popping Motrin. They’d rather be comfortable than fulfilled. Right now, they are their own worst enemy, suffering from a Stockholm syndrome with the devil they know. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? But this story doesn’t have another 40 years to develop, at least not here.

Their anger is misplaced, sure, but they’ve been increasing in number, blessed by God amid Pharoah’s order to the midwives to abandon Hebrew boys. God has heard the cries of His people; Carleton is their answer, Moses, sorry. But God has to ensure that they’re willing to do just about anything to escape their Mizraim, that’s the Hebrew name given to Egypt, meaning “distress,” but right now, they’re upset at Moses and Aaron.

So, in chapter six, we see that they’re willing to submit to the labor, as long as it’s not, like, really hard labor; we see this in spite of hearing the message from God that he plans on delivering them from slavery. Stockholm syndrome. They cried out to God! Not willing to do anything about it. Don’t bother us—certainly don’t get God involved!

This is a lot like a story of a healing found in the book of Acts, chapter 16.

Paul and Silas are in Philippi, a city in Greece. After coming across a slave girl possessed by an evil spirit, they cast it out! A good thing, right? Unfortunately, she was being used by her owners to make money as a fortune-teller. Because they couldn’t make money from her “gift” anymore, they had Paul and Silas beaten and thrown into prison. Goofy town, am I right? But is this any different from what’s going on in Egypt?

People can be resistant to the message of salvation, even when it benefits them. In the case of the slave girl, her owners were more concerned with their own financial gain than her well-being. Here in Egypt, it’s about comfort. So, God takes away their comfort. That’s an interesting way to show love, right? But that’s what it is. And the people get miserable.

Though they had been convinced that it was probably time to leave, it was really only because there were a bunch of plagues going on. It’ll blow over, right? I mean, it isn’t good, but it’s three hots and a cot.

So, chapter 13, verse 17:

God did not lead them along the road to the land of the Philistines, even though it was nearby; for God said, “The people will change their minds and return to Egypt if they face war.” 18 So he led the people around toward the Red Sea along the road of the wilderness. And the Israelites left the land of Egypt in battle formation.

Last week, 12 brothers. With families in tow, Genesis 46:27 says 70, this week, 430 years later, “about six hundred thousand able-bodied men on foot, besides their families. A mixed crowd also went up with them, along with a huge number of livestock, both flocks and herds.” (Exodus 12:37)

You, of course, know the rest of that story. God shows up in a big way. Before—the serpent from the staff, even Pharoah’s magicians could do that. Parlor trick. The plagues, I mean, coincidence? Walking through a corridor with walls of water? That’s where they drew the line, I guess.

Chapter 13, verse 4 says:

Today, in the month of Abib, you are going out.

This corresponds to April, round about. If you’ve ever wondered how Easter wanders so much, it’s because they’re using a lunar calendar. This is why Sabbath starts at sundown. If you want to be technical about it, it’s the first Saturday after the first full moon after the spring equinox. So, April.

5 When the LORD brings you into the land of the—land, I’m going to skip a little, you must carry out this ceremony in this month. 6 For seven days you must eat unleavened bread, and on the seventh day there is to be a festival to the LORD. 7 Unleavened bread is to be eaten for those seven days. Nothing leavened may be found among you, and no yeast may be found among you in all your territory. 8 On that day explain to your son, ‘This is because of what the LORD did for me when I came out of Egypt.’ 9 Let it serve as a sign for you on your hand and as a reminder on your forehead, so that the LORD’s instruction may be in your mouth; for the LORD brought you out of Egypt with a strong hand. 10 Keep this statute at its appointed time from year to year.

It’s not summertime until you’ve had your Ballpark, and you’re not a people until you’ve got your own holiday!

Transition:

God demonstrates His power and provides for His people. They’re thirsty, God provides water; hungry, here’s Mana. The Lord provided for his fledgling people during a famine by delivering them to Egypt. The Lord built them into a mighty nation amidst a king’s order to diminish their population by outlawing the delivery of male children. The Lord brought to fruition a promise to deliver them to the land promised to their forefathers after they had the numbers, the food, and the resolve required to meet the adversity they would face. That’s what today’s upper story is about; God revealing himself, both his identity and power. The acute events recorded in chapters 1-17 play important roles in this larger narrative by providing context and demonstrating God’s power and commitment to his people.

Connection:

The story of the Israelites’ deliverance from slavery in Egypt is just as relevant for people of faith today. Exodus serves as a source of encouragement, inspiration, and guidance for His people, reminding us of God’s power and love, and inspiring us to trust and follow him. God hears the cries of his people, God is both willing and able to help those who call upon him, He fulfills his promises, and has the power to deliver.

This is a significant story in the Jewish tradition. It’s their roots, so it’s no surprise that early Christian authors, who are, mind you, still Jews, interpret what God is doing through the lens of this mosaic.

Mark 1:4 And so John the Baptist appeared in the wilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. 5 The whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem went out to him. Confessing their sins, they were baptized by him in the Jordan River.

So, you’ve got the whole countryside in the wilderness, walking through a river. They’re remembering their roots, rededicating themselves.

7 And this was his message: “After me comes the one more powerful than I, the straps of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop down and untie. 8 I baptize you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.”

The sandals, what Moses was told to remove because he was on Holy ground, a task John says he is not worthy of.

Even the Gospel of John starts using the creation narrative, its authorship attributed to Moses. Jesus, the new and better Moses, is the ultimate fulfillment of the story of the Israelites’ deliverance from slavery. Jesus is represented as the ultimate deliverer who comes to set people free from sin, death, and oppression.

Application:

Three things we learn from this passage. First, the importance of obedience to God’s commands is a reminder that our relationship with God is not just about receiving His blessings but also about following His ways. As Christians, we are called to be obedient to God’s word and to live lives that reflect His character and values.

Secondly, the faithfulness of God in fulfilling His promises gives us comfort and assurance in our own lives. Just as God fulfilled His promise to Abraham and his descendants, we can trust that God will fulfill His promises to us, regardless of our circumstances.

Thirdly, the story of Exodus reminds us of the power of God to deliver us from the slavery of sin. Just as the Israelites were oppressed by the Egyptians, we, too, can be enslaved by sin and darkness. However, through faith in Jesus Christ, we receive the power of God, who is a bondage breaker, and even in the midst of slavery or even incarceration, we walk in the light of His truth.

Close:

But we have to be willing to pursue fulfillment and not find satisfaction in comfort. No thwarting our own joy because we’re comfortable with the devil we know. Joy is not simply the absence of oppression. If we avoid adversity, it is not the same thing as having joy. We have to be willing to face difficulty, receiving our fulfillment rather, on the other side of it. That’s the price of experiencing God’s blessings in our lives, obedience to His commands.