Thanksgiving was quite good for us. I was anxious about it, which was not the right approach. Anxious over the food and over the mix of personalities. I am wondering if I am going to host it and make all that food again next year! What was your holiday like?
Has Thanksgiving become “the holiday” for us as Americans? Why? One podcaster I listen to says that the two American holidays are Fourth of July and Thanksgiving, and one is political and the other spiritual.
The literature from LifeWay, the Gospel Project, now moves into Exodus after not really enough time in Genesis. Keep in mind that we do not study these people because they were good models on how to live. They did have faith and that was what God wanted and used. Mostly, they were a part of the redemptive story of the gospel that leads to Christ’s birth. Today is the first day of advent, so we can start a journey toward the day we celebrate the birth of Jesus, knowing it’s not the real day but a day we commemorate and celebrate that He came in the flesh.
If you have the little app that we were supposed to use for reading the New Testament this year, it has an advent reading plan.
I like to have one special event I do every year for the Christmas season. A special concert or play or outing. This year I am going to lunch at the Tate House in Jasper, GA, with two writer friends I’ve met over the years. Are you doing something?
But back to Moses. What do we know about Moses? List as many things as you can. Read lists. We know a lot of facts about Moses, and Pastor Curtis recently did a series on Exodus, but he didn’t focus on Moses. Moses seems to be the central point but he is not. Moses is kind of a mess sometimes, too. God uses messes, but only He can. Humanly speaking, we are what He has to work with. We don’t know how big a mess we are. And we don’t get to say, Well, I am a mess and proud of it, I am going to revel in it. That is not humility. We just need to trust God and obey and not let the world’s idea of what we should be overwhelm God’s view of us. We are His child, beloved, in Christ, saved, redeemed, and so much more. Feeling down on yourself because something about us is not photo-perfect is a big waste of time and energy and not God’s will.
Exodus, we know, means a journey out of Egypt, but not an arrival elsewhere. Egypt is a place where we are called from. Figuratively, this world is Egypt and God calls us out of it, but it’s still there and we live in it. But it is also a place to which we flee in times of danger. So Exodus shows part of the picture of rescue. I want to look at the first 4 chapters.
Exodus 1:5 is called a contradiction because when Stephen was addressing the Sanhedrin in Acts 7, he said 75 came out instead of 70. He was Greek and using the Greek translation called the Septuagint that said 75, counting Joseph’s grandsons. Source: https://biblethingsinbibleways.wordpress.com/2020/08/31/how-many-came-to-egypt-70-or-75-genesis-4627-and-acts-714-contradiction-did-stephen-get-it-wrong/#:~:text=Immediately%20we%20see%20the%20difference,people%20in%20the%20Hebrew%20Scriptures.
Were the Israelites slaves? Not in the sense of pre-Civil War. We don’t have a record of them being bought and sold. But they were an oppressed class, much like the kind of slavery or human trafficking we see today even in this country. They were stuck in that situation for 400 years. After the Pharoah or Pharaohs that knew and respected Joseph died, they were in enforced labor. They didn’t have a way out of their situation. Not paid enough to barely live, in bondage economically and politically. This kind of life situation was very common in the ancient world. In the Roman empire slaves were about 20% of the population. They could be of any race or background; they became slaves because of debt, crime, or their country being conquered.
Some sources on the Internet will tell you that they were never in Egypt. Some things you will read on the Internet say they did not exist in Egypt and the account in Exodus is all just made up to make them look good and explain Jewish history. Sources will say King David didn’t exist, but in the last five to ten years archaeologists have found clear evidence that David was king around 1000 years before Christ in Jerusalem. Most of the time the historians just haven’t found the evidence that they want. I think it would be odd for the Bible to have this very definitive account without it being true that the Hebrews were in Egypt and Pharaoh “expelled them.”
The Israelites were perhaps not faithful to the LORD God at this time as well. It is not clear they all worshiped Him, but they were called out and rescued. They wanted rescue on their own terms, perhaps.
Genesis 1:15-22 tells an interesting story that is contradicts our ideas of ethics. The midwives just plain lied and saved the babies. It is acceptable to lie when someone’s life is in danger. The same with Moses parents, hiding him and Miriam not telling the truth. The same with Pharoah’s daughter taking a Hebrew child into the palace. The same with Rahab lying about the spies. Abigail was the wife of a man who insulted King David and David was going to kill him, and she did not go along with it. She tried to make peace with David to save her family and servants, and he married her after the husband died. I Samuel 25. (Odd story for us.) There are many other instances of women in the Old Testament lying and “getting away with it.” They were deceptive. (Tamar) Do not take narratives in the Old Testament as “normative” or “advice on life.” They are mostly what not to do. But in the New Testament we only have one example of a woman lying and she is struck dead for it. What I do get out of this is that it is easy to lie to get out of situations where there might be punishments. This is not what Christ expects or wants.
In Exodus 2 we have the account that we all learned from childhood, but again there is a lot of subversion here. Pharaoh's daughter isn’t obeying her “father.” She doesn’t just see that he is saved, she brings him into the palace. Then in verses 12 on we see Moses as an adult and how he exiles himself in the desert as a shepherd with Midianites, gets married and has children. Back at the ranch, though, God is moving. Exodus 2:23.
Why Moses? He seems the most unlikely person to lead Israel out of Egypt. And he feels that way, too. He feels like a loser and failure and kind of is. We do not know how faithful He is to the LORD God in his life before Exodus 3, which is like when God spoke to Abraham to get the redemption story started.
Moses sees a bush that does not burn up; fire is supernatural, like Pentecost.
Goes to investigate, hears the voice of God.
Take shoes off; Asian and Middle Eastern customs. In verses 7-10 God explains the mission.
Moses gives reasons why not. He taxes God’s patience, and he gets his questions wrong:
1. Who am I to do this?
2. Then he asks who God is. What is your name. 3:14 and 15. God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM,” and he said, “You shall tell the children of Israel this: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” He explains the mission again.
3. They won’t listen to me (it’s a them problem). So Moses will do miracles. Moses ran away from the snake. He’s a fearful person; he has hidden himself away. He really is not a person to do this job. I think God often picks a person who is qualified; but really, none of us is qualified to serve God and it has to be with His Holy Spirit. Otherwise we will be frustrated, angry, and unwise.
4. I am not a good speaker. Like God’s words to Job, that’s my business. I make people who they are and what their gifts are.
5. Please send someone else. Oh, my. He’s gone too far in his complaints, but he is not going to change God’s mind. Aaron will talk for you. Moses did need a helper, so his brother went with him. The rest of the chapter is interesting because obviously it’s going to take a while to get all this accomplished. But he and Aaron make it to Goshen, meet with the elders of the oppressed people, and they believe him.
Belief is ongoing. Like Love. Old joke about the man who said he didn’t need to tell his wife he loved her because he did it once and if he changed his mind he would let her know. That’s cruel. Love needs to be stated and reinforced everyday. Belief does too. They believed him but didn’t act like it. They needed hope in that moment, but if it was just based on Moses, it wouldn’t be enough.
Moses obeyed, but it took him a while. We can see ourselves in his excuses: I am not qualified or gifted. I don’t understand the power of God to do this; it’s not about me. The others just won’t accept me or my credibility or calling. I am not just unqualified; I’ve got major flaws. I’d rather not go, please send someone else.
"I am too old. Too sick. Too much debt. Don’t have the training." God speaks to us to serve in small ways all the time, and we still make excuses. We are not being called to deliver hundreds of thousands of people out of bondage! We are not all being called to go to the mission field. We are being called out of our comfort zones, out of our daily existence to serve beyond ourselves, and we are not too old for that.
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