Is Reluctant Obedience, Still Obedience (Exodus 4:18-31)
Many believers are reluctant to obey the Lord, and I am using the term “obey” very advisedly, they are simply reluctant, not disobedient, just reluctant to be obedient. Now there are no doubt many different and on a human level understandable reasons for that, but regardless of the reason it produces a similar result. For example, they may be fearful of doing what they know God wants them to do, Apprehensive perhaps hesitant.
So, what does it take to get someone who is reluctant to obey to the place where they would step out in faith. I think we have an answer to that in the life of Moses. Because when the Lord told him that he wanted him to do something we’ve looked at those objections that he gave, and the Lord answered every one of them.
This Lord at one point got a little frustrated, even angry with him in the process, but you would think that after answering five objections, one after the other, that Moses would be ready and willing to go and do what the Lord says. At this point he is still, and I’m going to use the word reluctant, he’s still hesitant to do what the Lord said. In fact, he did not even now immediately go off and obey. So, what I want us to do is look at his reluctance and how the Lord dealt with it. So, with that in mind I’ll read to you exodus chapter 4 and we’re going to pick up where we left off last time this time at verse 18.
18 So Moses went and returned to Jethro his father-in-law, and said to him, “Please let me go and return to my brethren who are in Egypt and see whether they are still alive.” And Jethro said to Moses, “Go in peace.” 19 Now the Lord said to Moses in Midian, “Go, return to Egypt; for all the men who sought your life are dead.” 20 Then Moses took his wife and his sons and set them on a donkey, and he returned to the land of Egypt. And Moses took the rod of God in his hand. 21 And the Lord said to Moses, “When you go back to Egypt, see that you do all those wonders before Pharaoh which I have put in your hand. But I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go. 22 Then you shall say to Pharaoh, ‘Thus says the Lord: “Israel is My son, My firstborn.
(Exodus 4: 18-22)
Now there’s more to the story which we’ll look at in a moment but at this point I’d like for us to begin by just looking at just this first section of this story. What you need to know is that at this point Moses has been told to go to pharaoh and Moses has objected and he gave five reasons why he should not be the one to do what God asked, and the Lord answered them all.
So, verse 18 picks up after the Lord has answered these five objections and we are told that at this point Moses went back to Midian. So, he’s in the Sinai Peninsula in Midian and he goes to his father-in-law Jethro and says, can I go back to Egypt and see whether they people I knew are still alive.
Now at this point he's been out of Egypt for 40 years, so he doesn’t know whether his relatives are dead or alive back in Egypt. So, he goes to his father-in-law and his father-in-law says go in peace.
Therefore, he seeks permission from his father-in-law for whom he has worked, tending his flock, but what comes next seems to indicate that he's reluctant to really go at all.
Did you notice in the passage I just read, the Lord said to Moses, GO! Return to Egypt for all the men who were looking to kill you are now dead. Now why would the Lord bring that up, he’s told him to go, and Moses instead has gone to his father-in-law and his father-in-law said, yes, go . So, I think, verse 19 seems to imply that he was reluctant. It seems to indicate that he’s still worried about the fact that he killed this man in Egypt, back in the day, and if he goes back, they’re still might want to execute him. The Lord is dealing with his hesitation, his reluctance by encouraging him to go, by confirming that those who sought too kill him are now all dead. Moses takes his wife and family and they returned to the land of Egypt, and he took the rod and the staff that God had said would be used to demonstrate his authority to Pharoah, and off he goes.
Remember, the Lord says let me remind you that when you do get back there, you are going to do all the miracles before pharaoh. So again, the Lord is encouraging Moses by reminding him that when he speaks to Pharoah, he is going to miraculously work things out, but he also adds a little detail, out of the blue, but I’m going to harden Pharoah’s heart, so he won’t let people go. As a matter of fact, for many people these verses are a major problem in the book of Exodus, for it says God hardens Pharaoh’s heart. What does that mean. Does that mean that pharaoh didn’t have a choice, and God hardened his heart so that he couldn’t choose to let the people go. Why would God do that?
This becomes a huge problem for some people, and we are going to meet this sort of thing over and over and over again not only In the book of Exodus but several times throughout the Old Testament, so this must surely tech us something about how we should respond when we meet this sort of resistance in life. So let me address it first here, now in the book of Exodus. We are actually told ten times in the book of Exodus that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart. If we laid all of those on the table and looked at all these references this is what we would discover that pharaoh had hardened his own heart long before God hardened, it. So, this verse is a prediction of what God would do during the process. He is looking at the conclusion of what’s going to happen down the road, he’s not looking at the process, he’s looking at the ultimate end result of God repeatedly offering warning to turn from his ways and Pharoah repeatedly failing to respond. It becomes evident that pharaoh hardens his heart, and then every time he does, God steps in and says alright, and makes it a little harder, to see if he will respond and turn to God, but he doesn’t.
I think this is a prediction of what God will do throughout the process, so when God said he would harden pharaoh’s heart he was not saying that Pharaoh would have been unable to choose, he could have softened his attitude at any stage and released the children of Israel, but that God by his actions made pharaoh’s heart progressively hardened as the king willingly chose to disobey God’s will. This is not a perspective I’ve just invented Paul refers to this in Romans Chapter 9 in verses 14 through 18. I quote, this time from the message translation.
Are there grounds for complaining that God is unfair? Not so fast, please. By way of example, God told Moses, “I’m in charge of mercy. I’m in charge of compassion.” Compassion doesn’t originate in our bleeding hearts or moral sweat, but in God’s mercy. The same point was made when God said to Pharaoh, “I picked you as a bit player in this drama of my salvation power.” All we’re saying is that God has the first word, initiating the action in which we play our part [in free will] for better or worse.
Someone has also noted that if the text, “After the first five miracles the hardening is represents as wholly Pharaohs own response, it is not until after the 6th plague that it is stated that the Lord hardened pharaoh’s heart.
Looked at in this way we see can see that it was pride which flowed from pharaoh sin and the continuous hardening of his attitude came through an ever-increasing abuse of the freedom of the will, which is innate in all people because free will always involves the possibility of resistance to the will of God or even resistance to the chastening of God, even onto death. A famous 19th century author gives an illustration that is often used to these days as relating to this, he said something along the lines of, “When the sun shines the force of heat can be responded to in different ways. Heat can moisten and melt wax but can also dry clay, softening the one and hardening the other.
It is possible for the will of God can produces opposite responses to the same demonstration of power. But not just Pharoah here, nearly 4000 years ago, some today respond in good and others with evil to the power and presence of God in their lives. Some are softened and others are hardened. So here the power of God shone, so to speak, and pharaoh’s heart was hardened. The nature, the posture of Pharaohs heart made it harder and harder and as the light of God grew stronger his heart hardened. If he had a different kind of heart, he would have melted.
What the Lord is saying to Moses, is look I’m going to work miracles, but he’s going to refuse to let you go, but don’t worry about that. I’m going to work miracles anyway. Put these two things together in this message and you will see that what the Lord is doing is encouraging a reluctant Moses to go. When Exodus says that the Lord hardened Pharaohs heart it is predicting what will ultimately happen as the story unfolds and got reveals that truth prophetically to Moses before it happens to encourage Moses to go anyway. Pharaoh’s posture of heart was tilted against God anyway, his heart was hard before Moses even got there. The posture of his heart was set already, but then the Lord progressively hardens his heart by the actions that he takes. I hope that little explanation will serve us well as we go through the book of Exodus because we’re going to see it over and over again, this whole thing about hardening of the heart.
23 So I say to you, let My son go that he may serve Me. But if you refuse to let them go, indeed I will kill your son, your firstborn.” ’ ”
(Exodus 4: 23)
So, the Lord says to Moses, you have my favour, just go, and tell Pharoah to “let may people go so that they may serve me”. The first-born comment is having a double meaning here, Israel is pictured as a son and he’s saying Israel is my first-born son as these are the first who will born of humanity who will have revealed to them how to worship me in Spirit and in truth. In ancient times the first born was the one who received honour, as a matter of fact, the mosaic law comes along later and statutes that he gets a double blessing, a double portion of the inheritance, so this is a way of God saying this is my special son and I’m going to honour him. In the context of the conversation with Pharoah it’s about saying, if you don’t let him go let my first ones, go I’m going to kill your first born, and as we know that’s openly exactly what will happen.
All of this is a prediction of exactly what’s going to happen between Moses and Pharaoh and God is telling Moses in advance because he knows he is hesitating, and God wants to encourage him throughout the whole process. Moses, up to this point probably considered himself a failure, I killed somebody, and they’re going to kill me he likely thought. He probably considered the task that God has given him impossible at this point. To try and even get to a point of standing before the king, let alone . What it needs is a leap of faith, and because of his reluctance the Lord comes to him and reminds him of what he has already said is going to happen, to reassure him and encourage him to be obedient, but also join the dots a bit, so to speak about how the future will work out.
So, to answer the question I asked at the beginning today, how does the Lord deal with the reluctant servant, and the answer is he reassures them, by what he says, which in our case today means he will re-assure us by his word. He says, look, I’ve already told you this, I already gave you my prophetic word, so he's reminding him of what he has said, and for us that means we also should go to his word to gain reassurance that he will never leave us, nor forsake us, and that all things work together for good. And there are literally 100’s of all kinds of promises that God uses in his word to encourage. All right phase two of this story is in verse 24 to 26.
24 And it came to pass on the way, at the encampment, that the Lord met him and sought to kill him. 25 Then Zipporah took a sharp stone and cut off the foreskin of her son and cast it at Moses’ feet, and said, “Surely you are a husband of blood to me!” 26 So He let him go. Then she said, “You are a husband of blood!”—because of the circumcision.
(Exodus 4: 24-26)
What in the world is that all about. Many bible commentators think that if the phrase translated sought to kill contains the idea that he made him physically disabled to a point that his illness or developmental deficit would likely have produced death. Now that softens it a little bit, but the question still remains why the Lord would do that, and the only way we know the answer to that is that the next verse tells us that his wife Zipporah circumcised their son. ses had son’s plural, apparently he circumcised one of them at birth, but he didn’t circumcise the other and that’s the clue as to what’s going on here.
God instituted circumcision back in genesis 19:14. So, the reason the Lord made him ill is because Moses was not being obedient, and the Lord is rebuking him by allowing this illness to take its natural course.
This is a rebuke of Moses; I think it’s interesting that throughout the passage Moses is still reluctant in every area of his life to follow the prompting of God. He still hasn’t made it to Egypt, he’s dragging his feet on this and other issues as well apparently. I think there might also be a suggestion that he didn’t do this because of the initial resistance from his wife, because in Midian the custom was for a man to get circumcised two weeks before the wedding night, thereby becoming what was called, “A bridegroom of blood”. So, on two fronts the Lord comes and reassures him with his word and rebukes him with this child’s illness. The phrase, “The Lord “let him go” in verse 26 means he restored the child, but the point is his wife didn’t like this at all, but she does this and angrily calls him a husband of blood. When she calls him a, “husband of blood,” perhaps some say it’s a reference to that custom and that she wasn’t happy that this needed to be done to the son because he wasn’t ready to get married. Perhaps Moses didn’t have him circumcised earlier because of that custom, and pressure from his wife. I think that’s a rather interesting turn of events, but clearly the wife wasn’t happy.
There’s another little twist to the story. Apparently at some point she gets sent back to daddy and some who study Exodus closely have concluded that it was at this point that Moses sent her back to her father. We know that because in chapter 18:2, she greets him when he gets back to Sinai, so apparently, she wasn’t with him during his time in Egypt. Another possibility is that he sent her back when things got really dangerous in Egypt and sent her back to protect her, but some say, she wasn’t happy, and she went home to dad at this point. I’m not sure which is the case except when you get to chapter 18 verse two it’s clear that she wasn’t with him up until then. But what I am sure about it the fact that in the passage is Moses is still grappling with the simple issue of being obedient to God.
First the Lord first reminds him of what he said in his word to reassure him, and then he rebukes him with an illness. I think in the context of this passage what’s going on here is Moses is dragging his feet he is reluctantly going to Egypt. So, it’s not full out disobedience, but it’s hesitation, its reluctance, fuelled by fear and lack of confidence. There’s one more phase to this story and that’s begins in verse 27.
27 And the Lord said to Aaron, “Go into the wilderness to meet Moses.” So, he went and met him on the mountain of God and kissed him. 28 So Moses told Aaron all the words of the Lord who had sent him, and all the signs which He had commanded him. 29 Then Moses and Aaron went and gathered together all the elders of the children of Israel. 30 And Aaron spoke all the words which the Lord had spoken to Moses. Then he did the signs in the sight of the people. 31 So the people believed; and when they heard that the Lord had visited the children of Israel and that He had looked on their affliction, then they bowed their heads and worshiped.
(Exodus 4: 27-31)
Now the mountain of God is another name for Mount Sinai and later after they do leave Egypt they go back to this spot, and this is where the Lord gives him the 10 commandments and that’s why it’s called the mountain of God.
What’s going on here is a simple reunion, he hasn’t seen his brother in 40 years, so the Lord brings Aaron out to the wilderness and they greet each give each other a brotherly kiss and Moses then tells Aaron all that the Lord had told him and about the signs he performed, and they go together and they gather all the elders the leaders in Israel and Aaron speaks to them. By the way remember that was the arrangement God made when Moses objected that he was not eloquent with words. God said, ok, we will get your brother to speak for you. Here we have reluctant Moses and Aaron speaks for him and apparently Moses does the miracles, yet still one of Moses concerns is will the people believe him. This passage says they did in deed believe him, and they not only believed, they worshipped God because of it. They bowed their head and thanked God that he had come on the scene again. Ever reluctant Moses got to see his brother again and his brother helped him do what he was supposed to do, and that is the way God dealt with this reluctant servant.
Let me close now by trying to tie up any loose ends and make a rather simple observation. In order to get the reluctant Moses to be fully obedient the Lord used, reassurance, then rebuke and then prophetic encouragement and a reunion with his brother. The Lord will use the same sort of things when a lack of confidence or fear applies to our situations. What does the Lord use when we are reluctant today? The same thing he used in this passage. He uses his word.
The first thing that happens is he comes to Moses, and he reminds him of what he had said and what he promised, so God uses his word.
The second thing he did is he rebuked him, and from a New Testament point of view we clearly see that God sometimes allows trials to come into our life, to teach us to be obedient.
The ultimate purpose of trials in the Christians life is that they be conformed to the image of Christ, but that only comes about when we respond by being obedient to the Lord, so the Lord doesn’t hesitate to allow trials to come to teach us.
What also almost jumps off the page is the other thing the Lord used is other people. In Moses case it was his own brother who came and assisted him. The people believe, which was one of his greatest fears and was his main objection to doing what God asked him to do. I submit to you, he was no doubt encouraged when he saw these other people saying, we’re with you, let’s go do this. In New Testament terms, what the Lord uses to encourage reluctant believers is sometimes hard times, difficult trials. Of course, we need to be in the word, under it, in it, and we need to be sensitive to all the trouble in our lives in case the Lord is trying to teach us things from it. Which means we need to be rubbing shoulders with fellow believers, so we can be encouraged by them. Now I started out saying that Moses was reluctant, and I suggested that possibly some of his reactions to that were things like fear, apprehension, hesitation, maybe even downright disobedience, and that when you are reluctant those are the things that happen to you.
Now we’re at the end of this part of the story so how would you imagine he felt now. Do you think he would be encouraged; I mean once again in the company of his brother and his people I submit to you that all of that reluctance and hesitation and discouragement fear got replaced an attitude of, we can do this together.
I submit to you as a study in the way God deals with one of his reluctant children even to this day. I submit to you that’s what happened to Moses is what might happen to us, so God through this passage is encouraging us to lay aside the reluctance and just simply do what the Lord tells us to do, for he will be with us always.