“18 Then Moses went back to Jethro his father-in-law and said to him, “Let me go back to my own people in Egypt to see if any of them are still alive.” Jethro said, “Go, and I wish you well.”
19 Now the Lord had said to Moses in Midian, “Go back to Egypt, for all the men who wanted to kill you are dead.” 20 So Moses took his wife and sons, put them on a donkey and started back to Egypt. And he took the staff of God in his hand.
21 The Lord said to Moses, “When you return to Egypt, see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders I have given you the power to do. But I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go. 22 Then say to Pharaoh, ‘This is what the Lord says: Israel is my firstborn son, 23 and I told you, “Let my son go, so he may worship me.” But you refused to let him go; so I will kill your firstborn son.’ ”
24 At a lodging place on the way, the Lord met Moses and was about to kill him. 25 But Zipporah took a flint knife, cut off her son’s foreskin and touched Moses’ feet with it. “Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me,” she said. 26 So the Lord let him alone. (At that time she said “bridegroom of blood,” referring to circumcision.)
27 The Lord said to Aaron, “Go into the desert to meet Moses.” So he met Moses at the mountain of God and kissed him. 28 Then Moses told Aaron everything the Lord had sent him to say, and also about all the miraculous signs he had commanded him to perform. 29 Moses and Aaron brought together all the elders of the Israelites, 30 and Aaron told them everything the Lord had said to Moses. He also performed the signs before the people, 31 and they believed. And when they heard that the Lord was concerned about them and had seen their misery, they bowed down and worshiped.”
“At the beginning of our life with Jesus Christ, we were sure we knew all there was to know about following him. It was a delight to forsake everything else and to throw ourselves before him in a fearless statement of love. But now we are not quite so sure. Jesus is far ahead of us and is beginning to seem different and unfamiliar… There is an aspect of Jesus that chills even a disciple’s heart to its depth and makes his entire spiritual life gasp for air.”
That’s Oswald Chambers from his classic devotional My Utmost for His Highest. That devotional is available in 39 languages and has never been out of print. If you want a copy, I’ll give one to you. The quotation in question is from an entry entitled The Discipline of Dismay and that’s where Moses finds himself in our passage today; “the Lord is far ahead of me now and is beginning to seem different and unfamiliar… There is an aspect of him that chills my heart to its depth and makes my entire spiritual life gasp for air.” Perhaps you know what that is like. The Lord calls us into the unfamiliar and to trust Him in the middle of it. That’s how it was with Moses and that is how it will be for us as well and that’s the claim of this sermon: the Lord calls us into the unfamiliar and to trust Him in the middle of it.
We will study this in three points. First: going back to Egypt. Second: a warning shot. Third: the first step. First, in verses 18-23, we see Moses and family going back to Egypt. Second, in verses 24-26, we see God’s warning shot. Third, in verses 27-31, we see Moses and Aaron’s first step.
We see the beginnings of the move from familiar to unfamiliar in our first point: going back to Egypt. Last week we saw that Moses did not want to go back to Egypt. “Lord, please send someone else,” he asked. The Lord was emphatic that Moses was going, which brings us to verse 18, ‘Then Moses went back to Jethro his father-in-law and said to him, “Let me go back to my own people in Egypt to see if any of them are still alive.” Jethro said, “Go, and I wish you well.”’
Moses continues to seem evasive, doesn’t, he? He doesn’t tell his father-in-law why he is going to Egypt. He doesn’t seem like a man on a mission, and it’s hard to believe that Jethro wanted him to go. Moses was, by now, an essential part of the ranch. It’s even harder to believe that Jethro wanted his daughter and grandchildren to move to a foreign country. We learn something, though, about Jethro in his response. He said “Go, and I wish you well,” and he meant it. When the patriarch Jacob left his father-in-law Laban’s ranch, Laban made it exceedingly difficult. Jacob and his family had to run in the middle of the night and Laban chased him down. Jethro responded differently. He would continue to be a big help to Moses. There was grace for Moses even in his exile.
Moses is ready to leave and we are told in verse 20 that, “he took the staff of God in his hand.” Notice whose staff it is. It is called “the staff of God.” Moses calls it the staff of God. To this point it has been called Moses’ staff so whose is it? It’s both. Who led Israel out of Egypt. The Lord did. Moses did. Who put Jesus on the cross. The Lord did. The Jewish leadership did and the Romand did. That’s the compatibilism we will see throughout this book and that’ show life with the Lord works—it really is us and it is totally Him—Moses’ staff, the Lord’s staff.
The Lord involved Moses in something Moses wanted to see happen—the salvation of his people. It would be a bumpy ride; verse 21, ‘The Lord said to Moses, “When you return to Egypt, see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders I have given you the power to do. But I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go.”’
This is an overview of the plagues before the plagues happened. Moses would tell Pharaoh to let God’s people go, but Pharaoh wouldn’t. Pharaoh’s refusal opened the door for the Lord to break Pharaoh and Egypt for what they had done to the Hebrews. It was going to be a bumpy salvation that wouldn’t be accomplished until Pharaoh had done everything he could to stop it.
You have an unstoppable force—the Lord—and an immovable object—Pharaoh; verse 22 tells you where it will lead, ‘Then say to Pharaoh, “This is what the Lord says: Israel is my firstborn son, and I told you, ‘Let my son go, so he may worship me.’ But you refused to let him go; so I will kill your firstborn son.”’ Pharaoh considered the Hebrews his slaves. The Lord considered the Hebrews His children. Pharaoh considered himself to be the child of the gods. The Lord considered the Hebrews to be God’s children—children Pharoah had abused. They can’t both be right. Either Pharaoh is the child of the gods or the Hebrews are the children of God. The Exodus shows us which is the case. The Lord will make clear who is genuine and who is false. That’s the Exodus. That’s the final judgment. That’s a call to be His children.
This process also shows just vengeance—an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. ‘I told you, “Let my son go, so he may worship me.” But you refused to let him go; so I will kill your firstborn son.’ The Lord will bring justice—slower than we would like but He’s got a perfect track record in this regard and His slowness, as in the Exodus, will prove perfect.
The Lord is always working everything out perfectly. We see that in our second point as well: a warning shot. This is the most confusing section in what we will study in Exodus and likely the most confusing part of the whole book of Exodus. Victor Hamilton helpfully laid out the nine unknowns that make this strange story so complicated; that’s nine big unknowns in three verses—usually you have maybe one in a passage; these verses have nine. First, is that it’s up for debate as to who God is seeking to kill. Is it Moses? Is it one of Moses’ sons? Second, if God is trying to kill Moses, why try to kill the man You just tasked with going back to Egypt? Third, what exactly did Moses do to anger God? Fourth, what in the world does it mean for God to try to kill Moses? Can’t God do whatever He wants? Fifth, how does Zipporah, who is a Midianite, know what’s happening or how to fix it? Sixth, whose feet does Zipporah touch with the flesh she circumcised and why? Plus, is it the feet or is that just a euphemism? Seventh, what exactly does the phrase, “bridegroom of blood” mean? Eighth, who is the “you” in her words, “you are a bridegroom of blood to me?” Ninth, what is it about Zipporah’s action that stops the Lord’s assault?
The NIV cleans up some of these questions by giving assumed answers but the Hebrew is remarkably ambiguous on these matters which is why we must make decisions, and each of the decisions we make impacts the others. Dealing with these nine is like putting cultured stone on a chimney. The placement of one stone drives the placement of the others which means if you want to pull a stone down, you’re going to wind up taking five or six off.
So what you will get now is the chimney already completed as best I can. If you have questions about the nine questions I listed, I will be happy to answer what I can, but in a sermon the goal is to give the complete picture as simply as possible. This means we will deal with what I consider to be the most fundamental unknown here, which is, “what does it mean for the Lord to try to kill Moses?” because it seems to me that Moses is the one in danger; the NIV assumes that too with verse 24, “At a lodging place on the way, the Lord met Moses and was about to kill him.” If the Lord wanted Moses dead, Moses would be dead. This is the Exodus. It’s all about the power of God. He can do whatever He wants, and if He was bent on killing Moses, Moses would have died which is why I think Moses didn’t die because this was a warning shot from the Lord. This was a call to straighten up and fly right as you see with Jonah and the great fish.
Moses had been evading obedience. He offered up excuse after excuse to the Lord as to why he shouldn’t go back to Egypt. He was cagey with his father-in-law about why he was going back. What we see here is another evasion. Moses, who apparently wanted nothing more than to be part of God’s people, had not circumcised his son. We saw how utterly central circumcision was to being a child of Abraham when we studied Abraham in the evenings. Circumcision was the mark of being in. It was following the Lord 101 and Moses had evaded that responsibility. What we see in this story is a shot across Moses’ bow to start taking his responsibilities as a man of God seriously. It is a purposeful near-miss designed to shake Moses into action. As a friend of mine put it this, “near-miss is sheer love. The near-miss is holy love. The near-miss is the call to repentance and unswerving radical obedience to God by us.”
Moses has done wrong, but someone steps in to save the day. Now, who has stepped in so far in this book of Exodus to save the day? Women. This is the sixth woman who saves the day in this book about salvation. There were the two midwives who saved the Hebrew babies. There was Moses’ mother, Moses’ sister, and his adoptive mother. Each of these women just did the very sensible thing in front of them and the Lord used that in His plan. What’s more—this woman today, Moses’ wife, wasn’t even a Hebrew, but she knew the path forward. That’s not an obstacle. It’s a reminder of how it often goes in Scripture and in life—the old guard is outdone by the joiners. That’s a warning shot to us who grew up in the church not to think we are somehow by nature superior.
Zipporah, like the other women, does what was right in the situation in which providence placed her. It’s simple acts of obedience. She does what Moses should have done by circumcising her son. Simple acts of obedience is what it’s about. The first Hobbit film makes this clear with Gandalf saying, “Saruman believes that it is only great power that can hold evil in check but that is not what I have found. I have found that it is the small things—everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keeps the darkness at bay,.” We really have no idea how God’s world works, but that’s okay because our role isn’t to keep it running but, like Zipporah, to trust and obey.
This strange story is designed to show us how little we understand about God’s ways. As Luther put it after reading this story, “Isn’t that a foolish way to get something started? So [the Lord] commands Moses to undertake an important work here, and yet He wants to kill him before it is done.” It makes no sense, but it winds up right. That’s how this whole story of salvation will go. It will not make human sense at any juncture, but the foolishness of God is wiser than the wisdom of man and the weakness of God, is stronger than the strength of man to quote Paul. “I, too, often think that I know a lot,” wrote Luther, “but it is not true.”
The Lord’s salvation whether it be in a warning shot like this, in the plagues, in the cross, in repentance does not seem wise to our flesh, but it is the way; it can be no other way because it is God’s way and this is his world, not Pharoah’s world, and not your world or mine.
So now that the Lord has saved Moses through his wife, he comes to Egypt and meets with the leaders of his enslaved people. This is the first steps in the plan and that’s our final point for this morning: the first step. We studied the Lord’s conversation with Moses at the burning bush. Now, the story takes us back before the burning bush to the Lord’s conversation sending Aaron. Ancient texts do that. They aren’t as linear as we westerners might like, but to understand the Bible you need to let an ancient text be an ancient text; so back we go in verse 27, ‘The Lord said to Aaron, “Go into the desert to meet Moses.”’
Here we are reminded that the Lord sent Aaron even before He met Moses at the burning bush and Moses asked for someone else to go. In this turn back in time you see the dance of divine sovereignty and human responsibility which is all over the Exodus and all over my life and yours. Moses’ decision to ask for someone else to go truly mattered and the Lord already had it planned. Your life choices are consequential but the Lord’s will is determinative. Moses’ attempts to weasel out of obedience had real consequences for him and for Aaron and it was all going to go the way the Lord wanted it all to go before Moses and Aaron were born. That’s how it works in my life and your life; our choices matter and the Lord’s choices determine.
That’s helpful because some of us carry the weight of the universe on our shoulders. This picture of divine sovereignty says, “calm down. You are nowhere nearly as essential as you think. There are hundreds of variables you will never consider and even more than you can’t control. It’s not about you making it happen.” That’s also helpful for those of us who fall off the ditch on the other side of the road into fatalism and laziness. This text says, “God works through human decisions and actions. You’re a human. Make decisions. Act.”
Moses asked for someone else to go for him and we see how the Lord works this request out through Aaron; you see it in verse 29, “Moses and Aaron brought together all the elders of the Israelites, and Aaron told them everything the Lord had said to Moses.” This is fulfillment of the way the Lord said it would go; “you shall speak to [Aaron] and put words in his mouth; I will help both of you speak and will teach you what to do. [Aaron] will speak to the people for you, and it will be as if he were your mouth and as if you were God to him.” Moses tells Aaron what to say and Aaron says it. Moses tells Aaron what to do and Aaron does it. Moses will see how horrible it is when Aaron does otherwise. Moses will learn how horrible it is when he himself does otherwise regarding the Lord. The Lord has a way of teaching us what our obedience and disobedience is like by putting us in somewhat analogous relationships with others. Moses is as God to Aaron and so Moses learns what it is like to be before God. Parents learn what the character of God is like through experience of playing His role; so do judges; so do doctors and nurses; so do teachers. The Lord is teaching us what life is like if only we will learn.
To this point, one fear of Moses’ has been dominating the story. He’s afraid that the people will reject him and the Lord. That’s actually the story of the rest of his life in many ways. That’s the fear the chapter ends on; verse 31, “they believed. And when they heard that the Lord was concerned about them and had seen their misery, they bowed down and worshiped.”
Moses’ fear wasn’t fulfilled. The people would at times live up to his fears, but not now. Fear doesn’t determine the future. People’s choices and the Lord’s sovereignty make it all much more complicated than what goes on between our ears. All we can do is respond in the moment in which the Lord has placed us and in this moment, the Hebrews “believed. And when they heard that the Lord was concerned about them and had seen their misery, they bowed down and worshiped.”
What about you in this moment? You don’t know how the rest of your life will go. You don’t know the entire drama of your salvation. You do know it will be unexpected and you do know at times the Lord will seem far off, but will you trust that the Lord is concerned about you as He was about the Hebrews? Will you trust that the Lord loves you enough to warn you as He warned Moses? Do you trust that this same God is at work in the world today?
As you walk with Him, the Lord might not seem the way you expected. You, like Jesus’ original disciples, might find him to quite different than before, but will you trust that it’s still him and that he still cares and knows what’s best for you. This whole book is given to convince you that he does. Believe it. Believe Him. Amen.