A humble calling (apologies for a few breaks in the speaking)

Transcript

Exodus As The Old Testament Cross

SPEAKER_00 0:20

All right, all right. Welcome to Biblically Wired. I am really, really jazzed, if that's a word, today, because we are getting into Exodus. Exodus, the cross of the Old Testament. Exodus means the way. And we know Jesus is the way, and he is reflecting on the process of the Exodus because people are released from slavery, just like us, because we are slaves to sin, right? And they go through the water of the Red Sea and they're in the wilderness, and this is the process we go through. Exodus is the cross of the Old Testament. Moses is probably the most important character in the life of a Hasidic Jew to this day. We read more about Moses in the New Testament than even Abraham. It's Moses said this and Moses said that. So what do we need to know about Moses? So we're just going to go over some basics because I get certain common questions about Exodus quite often. And what I want to do here is touch down on the stuff going on prior to the Red Sea. We're not going to spend a lot of time on the Passover because we already just did a podcast on all of that, and it was really, really fun. But we're going to just open up to chapter one. And before we do, I got to say Genesis was 2,300 years of history. Exodus is 211. Moses is now penning his own eyewitness story. Can you imagine the relief? Okay, I can I can write about myself. The seed promise update. The seed is now going through Judah, which is an interesting note because if you've read that last part of Genesis, during the time of Joseph, you see Judah had sex with these temple prostitutes. And notice we don't really hear a lot about the other 12 and their sins. As a matter of fact, some of them we don't hear anything about. But what is God doing here? God is showing us that the innocent man Adam cannot avoid sin. He cannot be our segue to the Father. Abraham, what a great guy. But he also sinned, right? Noah right away shows us a sin. So why is he highlighting Judah's sin? Because Judah's going to be the seed carrier. And we can't also think that our forefathers save us. I can imagine. Some people are like, well, I've always been a Christian. My parents were Christians. My grandparents were Christians. We're not saved from that kind of legacy. We are only saved through Jesus Christ. Now, okay, so now we find ourselves in Egypt. We know they came through Joseph during famine. And we talked about famine in the last teaching. Opening up to chapter one, there's a couple key things that I want to highlight about ancient writing. The first is verse 8. Now a new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph. Whenever there's a new king, there's a new the whole country can get turned upside down. A new king comes with all their ways and they're swaying their hips and they're making big moves. And a new king has all the power in the world. The Pharaoh of Egypt would have had the greatest power in the world. He was the supreme court, solo supreme court. And now suddenly there's a new king in town. And we know that the Israelites had some favor with the Pharaoh over Joseph. It doesn't really make sense, and the math is not correct if you go from 1 Kings backwards to this time. Well, rabbis say the 400 years started ticking when Isaac was born, because Isaac would have been that generations of Abraham that were wandering in the wilderness. That's who Isaac was. That's how they lived. In that kind of math, the Israelites were in Egypt for 260 years, and it is believed they were enslaved around 130 years. So this was not 400 years of slavery, but at the same time, very hard, very, very hard for the people in that day. Now in verse 7, we're going to read about some propaganda the new Pharaoh is putting out there. It says in verse 7, the sons of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly and multiplied and became exceedingly mighty, so that the land was filled with them. Another word is swarmed with them. So this king said to the people, Behold, the people of the sons of Israel are more and mightier than we. All right, that is such a lie. Egypt was the mightiest army in the world. The Israelites, I mean, what did they have? Some corn stocks? They didn't even have weapons. They were not trained. They were shepherds. But what this king or Pharaoh is doing is he is deciding he just wants to get rid of them, their riffraff. He doesn't need them around. He can't stand them for some reason. And what he is doing is he's starting this them against they mentality. And that is where we turn a group of people into one personality or one person. And this is the same thing Hitler did. So what this guy is doing is he's spreading propaganda so that all these Israelites will look like one annoying nuisance to the Hittites and the Egyptians. Another thing we have to note is why? Why Egypt, God, why are they in Egypt? Well, the Egyptians couldn't stand the Hittites, the Hittites couldn't stand the Egyptians, and neither of them could stand the Hebrews. And one day I was on a walk and it occurred to me that, oh my gosh, Lord, they would not have intermarried. There is really no chance of intermarrying when everybody hates the other group. Very interesting how God pulls so much off, it's impossible for us to keep track. A big question that I get, and you might have a college student who's asked these kind of questions. Why don't we know the name of the Pharaoh? Wouldn't that be so easy if we knew it was uh Ramses 1 or Ramses 2? That kind of question, why wouldn't Moses pen that so we could have this verified? There's a couple reasons. I've looked into this. First of all, there's more than one pharaoh in the first few chapters. There could be up to three pharaohs in the process of the plagues. Another thing is, let's say we did know the name of the pharaoh. Let's say his name was Cicero. I'm just making something up. And we knew that was the pharaoh Cicero, and we knew when he was in charge, so we could pin that date of the Exodus. Odds are Cicero would have had nothing in his history regarding the Israelites because the pharaohs tended to make very rosy proclamations and journal entries. They wouldn't have entered anything about the Israelites, the slaves, taken off. There's a really there's a really another thing about ancient writing is when people are named, there is a purpose. In this first chapter, the two characters that are named are the midwives. God honors them. The Pharaoh wants all the boys to die. Let's get rid of these Israelites. The Hebrew midwives do not do that and they honor God. And they are honored. Their names are in this chapter. Moses is like, no, we're gonna introduce at the start of Exodus probably the biggest story to any Israelite. We are going to introduce first two midwives. And what I love about this in Moses' story, we don't even meet Moses yet. What I really love about this is it reminds me of Jesus. When Jesus comes, his announcement goes out to the shepherds, to the lowest people. They're honored to be at the bedside of the baby Jesus. So chapter two, just a few things. Moses burns down the Nile in this basket. The tar and pitch they put on it is the same stuff they put on the ark. This little basket is considered a type of Christ because it's delivering Moses. It's a rescuer, and it's similar to the ark. There's going to be a new start. If there was such things as God has a lot of new business going on prior to this time, God was quiet. We don't know much about the time the Israelites had in Egypt. And for the uh Israelites, they got very good about following the Egyptian gods. They got very, very well practiced in Egyptian gods, and they were very well schooled in idolatry. And that never goes away. That never goes away. That is rooted in them, and that is going to stay. We see that all through the Old Testament. Now, Moses is raised in two places. Now, let's just move back a bit and look at what God is doing here. God is trying to bring about a deliverer in this nation of the world that is so great. The Israelites have zero chance of leaving Egypt on their own. Zero chance. And this is such a salvation story because we have zero chance of loosing our binds to the sin of to the slavery of sin. We have zero chance outside Jesus Christ, too. So the Israelites are sitting there, they're enslaved, and there is no chance they're going to be saved miraculously. Not gonna happen. So God is going to use Moses as the segue, and he's all about it. He's got a lot of stuff planned out. And we see Moses grows up. So Moses is part of two groups. He's a Hebrew and he's an Egyptian. Now, because he is both, he is a Hebrew, so he can be the leader of the Hebrews walking out, but also he is trained like an Egyptian. He understands their language, he was schooled in all subjects as he was raised up in the royal family. He has been part of the wealth of Egypt. He has eaten off the table of the king, he is understanding of their laws, their rhetoric, their history, he can read, he can do all the good stuff. In Acts 7, it says that Moses was schooled in everything. Now the Israelites did not have that. So if God was going to create this person and equip this person for what he has to do, he has this miraculous way of raising a Hebrew in the royal family. I mean, only God can do that. Only God can do that. So we watch Moses perform the biggest murder, the big no mystery murder, right? So the reader then figures out who Moses is. Now it's no surprise that right after meeting Moses, we find out he murdered an Egyptian. He is 40 years old. He's part Hebrew, part Egyptian. In verse 11, what we see is Moses goes from being mostly Egyptian to mostly Hebrew. And he takes out an Egyptian. And he is just humming along in Midian for 40 years. And then in chapter 2, verse 24, it says, God heard the groaning of these Israelites, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I reiterate this a lot, but that word remembered means he is taking action. And in verse 25, God saw the sons of Israel, and God took notice of them, the sons of Israel. All the sons of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the generations going forward. And now the view is moved back to Moses. And just in verse 1, we have all these interesting points in verse 1, chapter 3. Moses was pastoring the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. Now, first of all, Moses is pastoring whose flock? Not his own flock. He is pastoring his father-in-law's flock. Moses does not have a bunch of money. In those 40 years, Moses has been humbled. Moses is a simple shepherd. Okay, the second thing that I think is really key hermeneutically is that Moses includes the word west. The reason he is saying is he led the flock to the west side of the wilderness. I mean, does it really matter if he's going west or east at this point? What Moses is revealing here is he was walking with God. Going west is going towards God. And what he's trying to reveal here is he was humble and he was a different man 40 years later. So the first 40 years, Moses is in Egypt, mostly, mostly in Egyptian. The next 40 years, he's in the family of Jethro. And the last 40 years, he's going to be the leader of the Israelites. Another thing to note is there is proof here in verse 1 that this is taking place in the wilderness. And remember, everything that happens in the wilderness is for the world. So the call to Moses is also in the wilderness on Mount Horeb, the mountain of God. The reason he is calling Mount Horeb the mountain of God is because this is the same mountain of as Mount Sinai. This is the same mountain as Mount Sinai. So what we see here in the see in this burning bush moment is the Trinity. It says in verse 2 that the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a blazing fire from the midst of a bush. Okay, how did the angel of the Lord appear to him in a blazing fire? Well, I'm not sure how that works, but we know the angel of the Lord is Jesus Christ. We know the fire is a symbol for the Holy Spirit. And Moses looked and behold, the bush was burning with fire, yet the bush was not consumed. So Moses said, Gosh, I gotta look at this marvelous sight. And when the Lord saw that he turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush. So we've got the angel of the Lord in the blazing fire. We've got the fire of the Holy Spirit, and now we have God speaking to him. Look at how God introduces himself here. He introduces himself as in chapter 3, verse 6: I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. I never see God introduce himself as the God of your father along with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Why is God using four names here? He is using four names, just like in the story of Isaac, because he is showing us that he is about the world. There is some sort of foundation going on here. There is some sort of big move that God is making for the benefit of the entire world. So what does he say? He says, Moses, Moses, and Moses says, Here I am. This double name is the same thing that happens with Abraham. Remember? Abraham, Abraham. And Abraham is stopped from slaughtering his son. Moses is going about his business, and God says, Moses, Moses. Later, we will see Apostle Paul on the road to Damascus. He's Saul at the time, and he is set on bringing Christians back to Jerusalem to be stoned or whatever, jailed, or whatever it takes, because they are preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. He is out looking for the people of the way. And what happens? Jesus comes to him and he says, Saul, Saul. Now we know Apostle Paul had a lot of the Old Testament memorized. There was no doubt in my mind he knew what Jesus was saying with Saul Saul. It is the same call right here as Moses, Moses. Now the Lord goes on to say, He's seen the affliction of his people. He has come down to deliver them, and he's heard their cries. And this is the same kind of verbiage he used for Sodom and Gomorrah. There is a certain time when God has had enough. He is so long suffering. The reason they're here so long is not only so they could grow in number, but because the time of the Egyptians was not up. God was giving them time to repent. And now a big part of what God's going to do is reach out to Egypt. He wants the Egyptians to know, and many Egyptians will see that. Now God says to Moses, because Moses is like, oh wow, I don't even know your name. How would I explain your name? And God says, I am who I am. I have it in all caps here because it is the name of God, and it is I am who I am. And he says, goes on to say, I am has sent me to you. Okay, wait. He goes on to say, tell them or say to them, the sons of Israel, I am has sent me to you. So that's what Moses is to say. If you're wondering who's given me these words, who gave me this job, it is the great I am. Now I am is such an interesting name. I am who, I am what, when we're thinking about it. But what God is doing is He's covering all the bases. He is so indescribable. And I mean, he gave us a language, but he didn't give us a language to encapsulate his being. Mere words from a human could never encapsulate who he is. But I want to go on to say that Jesus took the same title upon himself. Look at John 8 24. Therefore, I said to you that you will die in your sins. For if you do not believe that I am in all caps, you will die in your sins. This is a divine title, you guys, that he is taking on. And this is why they wanted to stone him. Then Jesus said to them again in 828, When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am, and that I do nothing of myself, but as my father taught me, I speak these things. Again in chapter 8, 58, Jesus says to them, Most assuredly I say to you, before Abraham was, I am. He didn't say before Abraham was, I was. John 13, 19. Now I tell you before it comes that when it does come to pass, you may believe that I am. And this is my favorite, John 18, 4 to 6. Jesus, therefore, knowing all things that would come upon him, went forward and said to them, Who are you seeking? They answered him, Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus said to them, I am. And Judas, who betrayed him, also stood with them. Now, when he said to them, I am, and look at what it says next. They drew back and fell to the ground. They knew what Jesus is saying. Jesus is this I am, this I am that talked to Moses and gave Moses his role. Jesus is God. There's a lot of talk about Jesus never saying he is God, but it is all over, especially the book of John. Now we know Moses goes on, he's very worried. God gives him this big role, and he's going to be sent to Pharaoh along with his brother Aaron. And Moses is basically told, you know, this is what you're gonna say, and you're gonna do this, and this is what's gonna happen. And Egypt is going to see that I am the only God, etc. And it almost seems like Moses thinks, all right, this is one and done. This is gonna be fine, right? So, chapter five. Afterward, Moses and Aaron came and said to Pharaoh, Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, let my people go, that they may celebrate a feast to me in the wilderness. I want to explain that within the text of this story through the plagues, the plagues are an 11-month process. In that text, there is five cycles where Moses says, Let my people go, or that God said, Let my people go. The Pharaoh might agree or might not, and then the Pharaoh's heart is hardened. Five, we know, is mercy and grace. Who is God extending mercy and grace to? The Pharaoh, right? He is giving them time. God knows what the Pharaoh is going to do. So in our next talk, I'm gonna quickly go through charts and charts of my charts. It's not it's not much, but it's very important to know how many times did the Pharaoh harden his heart? How many times did God harden his heart? And at which points? Who or why did God pick these ten plagues, and why did he kill all the animals, etc., etc. There's a lot of answers in our next teaching of a lot of questions that I get. But we're gonna go on here in chapter five, and we're gonna look at chapter six before we close. So we're getting there. We've got Moses, and he is going to this pharaoh and he is telling them what he wanted to say, and basically it's not gonna go good. The work of the slaves is gonna be increased. This pharaoh, he's like, your god? Like I care about your God. And Moses is mad. Moses gets mad at God, and he just he just can't believe that it didn't go well. In chapter 5, verse 22, Moses returns to the Lord and he says, Oh Lord, why have you brought harm to this people? Why did you ever send me? Why did you ever send me? Ever since I came to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has done harm to this people, and you have not delivered your people at all. So there are times in our life where we feel like we have this big call of God, and maybe we get some prophecy about this eventual destiny that we're looking forward to, and it starts to feel like God is putting a lot of pieces together. Maybe there's donors, maybe someone gave us a building and all this stuff, but then everything goes south because we forget that these things that God is calling to us to is part of sanctification. So we know now Moses' heart sees God as an equal. He basically kind of sees God as an equal. He's just like, Where were you? What were you doing? And I wish you didn't do it at all. Why did you even ask me to do this? Now, God could have chastised him. He could have told him, you know what? I'm done with you, I'm done talking to you, look at your attitude. But instead, he goes on to explain and he uses covenantal language, again, bringing up references to the Abrahamic covenant. And he says to Moses, chapter 6, verse 1, Now you shall see what I will do to Pharaoh. For under compulsion he will let them go, and under compulsion he will drive them out of his land. God spoke further to Moses and said to him, I am the Lord. That was his answer. I am the Lord, I am holy, I am sovereign, I am. I've told you my name. I don't make mistakes. And in verse 3, I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as God Almighty. But my name, Lord, I did not make myself known to them. He is telling Moses, he is showing Moses a little hint here. He is going to make himself known to Moses more than Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob. He goes on in verse 4 I established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, the land in which they sojourned. Furthermore, I have heard the groaning of the sons of Israel, because they're in bondage. I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and then I will deliver you from their bondage. I will also redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great judgments. Then I will take you for people for my people, and I will be your God, and you shall know I am the Lord who brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. He goes on to say, I will bring you to the land. In this little portion, chapter six, verses one through eight, you guys, God gives seven promises that he will do. But what's fascinating in your Bible, it's not gonna probably show what's actually going on here. You guys, those verbs are past tense. What God is saying is, I am the Lord, I brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I delivered you from their bondage. I also redeemed you with an outstretched arm and with great judgments. I took you for my peach people, and I am your God. These are past tense verbs. I don't know why they're not translated in that way, but that's what Moses understood. This is a checked box already. This is already in motion, and this is done. This is what God is about to do. So next we are going to get into chapter seven and start the plagues, not verse by verse, not detail by detail, but we're gonna look at the 10 plagues and figure out what God was teaching the Egyptians through each one. And we're gonna see the hand of God move in such a miraculous, powerful way. It's absolutely dumbfounding. It's it's unexpressible. There's not words to explain his power. We basically almost see this decreation of his creation over Egypt, and we see mercy and grace. So when I talked about the five times of mercy and grace, remember there are five books in the Torah. Matthew divides his book in five portions. The Jewish people is his audience. The book of Matthew is written to the Jewish people, and he is showing them that Jesus was the deliverer, just like Moses. And you can see it in the way he divides his book. He uses more math in his book than any other book, and it's super incredible. Also, in the book of John, you can I love in the book of John, there are seven I am statements from Jesus. Not I am, I am God. It's I am the way, the truth, the life, the gate. Jesus says seven things that he is. In the book of Matthew, he is on seven mountains. We're finding him here in the burning bush on Mount Sinai. It's just pattern after pattern after pattern. God is not predictable, so to speak, but we can look at this story and say, yeah, that's God. That is the God of Abraham. Even because he brings up Moses' murder. That's kind of like we we there's an intro, and then now Moses is murdering someone, but then he doesn't go on to mention all his other stuff. He just makes sure it's settled that we can't be saved through someone like Moses. That's settled. And you'll see in the book of Hebrew, the author they're not even sure, but in the book of the Hebrews, I like to say Apostle Paul because I'm so used to it. He knocks down any belief that you can be saved through forefathers, angels, Moses, the law, etc. We can only be saved through Jesus Christ. We don't stand a chance. We are chained to our sin until Jesus breaks that bind we have with sin. His blood is the power that released us from slavery, just like the Egyptians. And we're leaving this story right now with all of them in slavery, with no chance to get out of there. And who are they? They are the nation that God promised Abraham. What's gonna happen next? Super exciting stuff. See you in the next teaching. Can't wait. Keep your chin up. Go ahead and read the chapters if you want, but we're flying through, but we're gonna sit on Mount Sinai.