September 17, 2007

• Discovering God’s Character
  
  
  
  Exodus 3 & 4 – Moses’ Commission

  Life sometimes seems to pass day after day for us, doesn’t it?  It did
  for Moses just like it does for us.  In Exodus 3, we see Moses tending
  to his daily work, helping Jethro, his father in law, who was the
  priest of Midian shepherd his flocks.  Now one day as he was on the
  west side of the wilderness, he came to the mountain of God, called
  Horeb. Now this day was going to be like no others that he had
  experienced and we are going to learn a lot about God’s character and a
  bit about Moses’ as well.

  The angel of the Lord appeared to him as a blazing fire in the midst of
  a bush that was not consumed. The Lord knew what would catch Moses’
  attention and it worked. Moses went to see what it was all about. When
  he did, God called out to him and Moses responded. He was told to take
  his sandals off because he was standing on holy ground. God introduces Himself and Moses covers his face so as not to look at God.

  God gives some background to help Moses understand the reason for the
  “visit”. God cares about His people, about their suffering, affliction,
  and oppression they are experiencing.  God tells Moses He is going to
  do something about it.  God is going to deliver them from the Egyptians
  and give them a land of their own which He identified as the same land
  as He promised Abraham and his descendants. He then reiterates to Moses
  what He just told him.

  Everything seems to go well until God tells Moses that He is sending
  Moses to lead His people out of Egypt. Before we go any further, we
  must notice that God tells those whom He has chosen to be leaders what His intentions are and what He intends
  to do with that person in leadership. We can read that God tells Moses
  the overview of exactly what will happen when Moses obeys and does what
  He is telling him to do. He even indicates that when Moses will
  approach Pharaoh, he will do so respectfully. When God does this, he
  gives us automatic confirmation of what God has said is true as the
  events transpire.

  Moses now makes all the mistakes that we all make when we are
  confronted with God’s calling and we are unwilling to do it.  They are:

  1.    The “Who am I to do such a thing?” objection. It is not who we are. It is who He is that validates what we    
         do.
  2.    The “I don’t have any authority” objection. Our authority comes
  from the Word of God itself and direct
         leading from God that will be
  accordance with what He has already said in that Word.
  3.    The “Who will believe me?” objection. No one will believe us in
  ourselves but when God puts His stamp on
         what we do, people will
  believe.
  4.    The “They won’t believe me without proof” objection. God makes
  sure that those He sends will be heard
         even if it means that miracles
  are required.
  5.    The “I’m no good at communicating” objection. God tells Moses to
  remember Who made his mouth and
        Who know how to run it and Who knows
  what words should be said.
  6.    The “God, send somebody else” refusal. It is here that God gets
  angry. Its not a good thing to tell God what
         one is capable of doing
  since He can do anything with us and make us do things that we couldn’t
  even
         imagine.

  The conclusion we come to here is that when God calls us to a task, we
  are to listen and do what He has told us to do. It is most likely that
  we are not able to do what He has asked but that’s not a problem for
  him. He wants us to watch what He can do with us and learn that we can
  do anything He wants us to do in His power. In the end, we know for
  sure it was not of our own ability.  Yet we must understand, our
  inability is no excuse for refusing to do what God has clearly told us
  to do.

  God may be angry with Moses but He gives Moses his brother, Aaron, to
  help him speak and Aaron will accept Moses words as those that God had
  indeed given him to say. God has taken all of Moses’ objections away
  and tells him to get going and take his staff with him because he’s
  going to need it.

  So Moses’ gets permission from Jethro to go visit his people in Egypt
  to see if they are still alive. Jethro tells him “Go in peace.”  Right
  after this, God tells Moses that all the people that sought after his
  life are dead. It is interesting that the Lord keeps encouraging Moses
  to go ahead and follow through with the plan.

  So Moses leaves Midian with Zipporah, his wife, and begins the return
  to Egypt.  The Lord reminds Moses to perform the signs He gave him to
  do before Pharaoh. In addition, He tells him again that Pharaoh won’t
  listen to him and He will harden his heart and not let Israel go.  It
  is here that God adds more information about what is going to happen. Since Pharaoh will not let “God’s firstborn” go, God will kill his
  firstborn.  This seems to have a double meaning as we will see.

  At a lodging point along the way, apparently on the way to Mount Horeb, we find
  that Moses neglected to perform circumcision on his son. Per Genesis
  17, circumcision is a sign of God’s covenant to Israel and an
  uncircumcised male is to be cut off from his people because he has
  broken God’s covenant. So God meets him there and sought to put Moses
  to death (or Moses’ son, the antecedent is unclear). Zipporah has the
  sense to circumcise her son and threw the foreskin at Moses’ feet
  almost as if saying “I had to do it since you didn’t.”  She calls Moses
  a bridegroom of blood because of the circumcision.  At this point, God
  leaves his son alone.

  Now the Lord tells Aaron to meet Moses in the wilderness and they get
  together at Mount Horeb.  Just as the Lord had told him, Aaron is so
  glad to see Moses that he kisses him. Moses sits down with Aaron and
  tells him everything that God told him and showed him the Lord’s signs
  which had been given to him.

  Moses and Aaron went on and assembled all the elders of the sons of
  Israel and Aaron told them what God had told Moses and Moses performed
  the signs in the sight of all the people.

  Exodus 4 closes with an interesting statement. The people believed when
  they saw the signs. Yet when they heard that the Lord was concerned
  about the sons of Israel, that He has seen them enduring affliction,
  suffering, and oppression, they bowed low and worshipped. With the signs, they believed and their minds were engaged. When they
  knew the Lord cared about them, then what the mind had told them with
  the signs combined with what their heart told them about their God’s
  care for them, made all the difference.

  Worship is the result when our mind tries to comprehend the magnificent
  power and might of God and our heart tries to comprehend the awesome
  compassion, mercy, and love of God together in one being. People may
  preach of a God of power and judgment. People may preach of a God of
  love. Yet when such a God as ours is both, this is the truth about our God… and
  when it finally “hits home”, we, too, will worship him.  Mr.Vee

  • 10:33 pm
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