The Lord Visits Sinai -- Exodus 19:20-25

The Lord came down on Mount Sinai, to the top of the mountain; and the Lord called Moses to the top of the mountain, and Moses went up.  Then the Lord spoke to Moses, “Go down, warn the people, so that they do not break through to the Lord to gaze, and many of them perish.  Also let the priests who come near to the Lord consecrate themselves, or else the Lord will break out against them.”  Moses said to the Lord, “The people cannot come up to Mount Sinai, for You warned us, saying, ‘Set bounds about the mountain and consecrate it.’” Then the Lord said to him, “Go down and come up again, you and Aaron with you; but do not let the priests and the people break through to come up to the Lord, or He will break forth upon them.”  So Moses went down to the people and told them.
 

I love the opening sentence of this passage – “The Lord came down, to the top of the mountain, and He called Moses up to the top of the mountain, and Moses went up.”  What a perfect scene it is.  God comes down to meet man and invites him up to Him.  And notice the text says that God came down to the top of the mountain signifying His position above all the earth.  And Moses accepted the invitation of God.  That is God’s plan for each of us.  That is His heart.  But so many are too busy with things that do not matter as much in the big scheme of things, to accept His invitation.  It takes discipline to ‘put the urgent aside for the important’.

And when man accepts the invitation, God speaks to him.  In the case of Moses here, God tells him to go down again to warn the people not to break though the barriers in order to get a closer look at Him.  God did not want any of the children of Israel to die as a result of disobedience.  Had not God already warned them?  Had He not already given instructions to Moses to give to the people?  Did He not know that Moses had obeyed and had taken the necessary precautions to prevent the people from getting too close to God?  Of course He did.  But is it not like our loving God to give people a second chance, a second warning, to hear His word?  Consider how many warnings you and I have had. 

And there was another reason for God to repeat His instructions.  It appears the priests of Israel thought they were already consecrated enough and did not have to go through it again when God had sent the instruction to do so through Moses, earlier in this chapter (verse 10).  So God says to Moses now, “And also get the priests to consecrate themselves.”  I love that word “also” as if to say, “Who do they think they are, not consecrating themselves?”  The message is very clear to pastors and Christian leaders, when it comes to the instructions of God, no man (or woman) is above them.  No one gets a special pass.  It was not beyond God to “break out against” the priests if they thought that by their position, they were above others and thus God’s instructions did not apply to them.  Woe to spiritual leaders today who think they are.  Not only is God no respecter of persons (Acts 10:34), but I also believe He is no respecter of titles.

Now something most interesting occurs next.  Moses actually tells God there is no way that the people will come up the mountain because “we heeded your warning and we set bounds as you instructed”.  Instead of the normal immediate obedience that we were getting used to expecting from Moses, we get some push back to God.  What was going on here?  Surely God was aware of all that had been done.  Matthew Henry believes that Moses was pleading that no further action was necessary, as all the God-given instructions had been followed.  To this Henry says, “But God, who knew their willfulness and presumption, and what was now in the hearts of some of them,” hastens Moses down with this charge, that neither the priests nor the people should force the lines that were set to come up to God.

Many a times we feel that we obeyed all of God’s commandments as to how we should live and we still are not being blessed. In fact, sometimes some of us feel we have been abandoned by Him.  We have clung on to God for His blessings rather than for Who He is.  We want to see more from God.  Our text, as Henry implies, suggests that God knows our presumptions and what wrongful attitudes are now in our hearts.  But He does not let go.  He sends the instructions again and warns us.  He is looking for a change in our hearts.  He wants us to love Him for Who He is, not for what he may not allow to happen to us.

So here God tells Moses to “go down and come up again, bring Aaron, but keep the priests and the people away”.  Only Moses and Aaron could come up the mountain for their hearts were right and God was delighted to honor them.

Of interest also is that Moses talks about the mountain being consecrated.  We have no earlier mention in the text of that being part of what God had asked for.  However, with it being part of the inspired Word of God, we must accept its validity.  Moses was basically saying, “Because you God were to come to the mountain, we understand the need to consecrate it.”  Are we asking God to visit us in our places of worship, in our homes, at our workplace? If so, have we consecrated these places in preparation for His presence?

Bible commentator Matthew Henry ponders what God was really forbidding the priests and the people to do.  He suggested it was the ability to ‘gaze’ at Him.  He was willing to let them ‘see’ enough to awaken their consciences, but not enough to allow them to gratify their vain curiosity.  Henry writes:

“They might see, but not gaze. Some of them, probably, were desirous to see some similitude, that they might know how to make an image of God, which he took care to prevent, for they saw no manner of similitude . . . Note, In divine things we must not covet to know more than God would have us know; and He has allowed us as much as is good for us. A desire of forbidden knowledge was the ruin of our first parents. Those that would be wise above what is written, and intrude into those things which they have not seen, need this admonition, that they break not through to gaze.”  And Henry continues, “The restraints and warnings of the divine law are all intended for our good, and to keep us out of that danger into which we should otherwise, by our own folly, run ourselves. It is at our peril if we break the bounds that God has set us, and intrude upon that which He has not allowed us; . . . And, even when we are called to approach God, we must remember that He is in heaven and we upon earth, and therefore it behooves us to exercise reverence and godly fear.”

The points are well made.  We need not add anything here with respect to what Henry expounded on.

On a separate note, I did find it interesting that both in verse 21 and again in verse 24 of this chapter, God speaks to Moses about Himself in the third person, “the Lord” and then God adds, “He will break forth”.  It is as if, from our human and limited perspective (our Hellenic minds) there are too entities here – the ‘Lord God’ Who loves and protects and cares and wants none to perish, and the ‘Lord He’ whose judgment may befall us.  However from a divine perspective (and the Judaic mindset), there is no such division – it is One Lord, One God.  It is us that have to get comfortable with that, or at the very least to accept it.

As a result, I have also often wondered about our approach to the Almighty God.  We seem to do it with so little reverence at times.  There is indeed a time for closeness with God, a time of intimacy or even familiarity perhaps through Jesus Christ, our Brother and Best Friend.  I am neither denying nor objecting to that need.  However, when we approach the Almighty God on His Throne of grace and wisdom and judgment and truth, can we give Him any less respect than He seems to give Himself?

The passage ends with Moses, seemingly understanding where God was coming from, obeying and going down and telling the people again what God expected of all of them, including the priests.

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“Now I Know The Lord Is Greater Than All.” -- Exodus 18:10-12

So Jethro said, “Blessed be the Lord who delivered you from the hand of the Egyptians and from the hand of Pharaoh, and who delivered the people from under the hand of the Egyptians.  Now I know that the Lord is greater than all the gods; indeed, it was proven when they dealt proudly against the people.”  Then Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, took a burnt offering and sacrifices for God, and Aaron came with all the elders of Israel to eat a meal with Moses’ father-in-law before God.
 

After hearing how God delivered the Israelites from their bondage in Egypt, Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law, shares in the joy and goes even one step further – he blesses the Lord and now believes He is greater than “all the gods”.  Now, before we judge Jethro too harshly for his reference to “all the gods” – afterall, wasn’t he Moses’ father-in-law? – let us take a closer look at the Midanites and their religion.

Midianites were descendants of Midian, who was a son of Abraham through his wife Keturah.  Genesis 25:1-2 tells us Abraham took “another wife”.  When Moses got in trouble in Egypt after killing an Egyptian, he fled to the land of Midian where the Midianites had settled.  [In Genesis 26:4 we learn Midian’s descendants were basically five families.  In Genesis 26:6 we learn that Abraham had given them gifts and “sent them away from his son Isaac eastward, to the land of the East”.]  Also of interest to us may be the fact it was Midianites that had bought Joseph from his brothers many years later, which sold him to the Egyptians (see Genesis 37); both events occurring way before Moses’ time.

But back to Jethro, who is also referred to as Reuel in Exodus 2:18 and as Hobab later in the Old Testament.  The Bible first refers to him in Exodus 2:16 and 3:1 as a priest. This was before Moses’s burning bush experience normally referred to by many as the time or point when the worship of Yahweh is deemed to have officially originated.

The potential dilemma with the multiple names of Jethro may be due to the fact that in the Hebrew language, the term referring to male ‘in-laws’ is non-specific, referring to a woman’s male relatives and could be used for her father, brother or even grandfather. [This kind of language phenomenon occurs in English as well. My own father used to tease me about who ‘poor the English language’ really was compared to Greek.  He would point out how Greek had two separate words for a brother-in-law that referred to one’s wife’s brother (i.e. by blood) and a brother-in-law that referred to one’s sister’s husband (i.e. by marriage).]  One possible (but uncertain) solution to the Jethro dilemma in this case is that Reuel may have been the grandfather head of the clan, Jethro was Zipporah’s father, and Hobab could have been the brother-in-law of Moses, Jethro’s son.  Another solution may have been that Jethro and Hobab were brother-in-laws to Moses, and Reuel was their father.  In any case, Jethro was a Midianite. 

We note also that there were interesting similarities in the way Moses met his wife to how others had met their wives in some earlier biblical accounts.  Moses met Zipporah at a well (as did Abraham’s servant who met Isaac’s future wife at a well) and he was met by daughters (as Jacob was met by the two daughters of his uncle Laban).

Midianites inhabited the desert borders in Transjordan from Moab down past Edom.  In Exodus 6:2-3 we learned that God was not yet know to Moses by the name Lord (or Yahweh).  Jethro may, however, have known Him.  It is possible Jethro was worshipping the Lord by a different name, as many of Moses ancestors had worshipped Him, as a deity with the prefix El.  You may recall God being called El Elyon in Genesis 14:18 and El Sheddai in Genesis 17:1.  In Genesis 16:13, Hagar called God Elroi, the “God who sees me”.

Whatever the historical background of Jethro’s religion was, he now blesses the Lord God of Israel who delivered Moses from the Egyptians and Pharaoh, and who delivered the Israelites from the Egyptians.  One may wonder why Jethro separates God’s act of delivery into the personal deliverance of Moses and the collective deliverance of the Israelites.  Two possible ideas come to my mind.  The first is that Jethro was responding first as a father-in-law blessing God for saving the husband of his daughter and the father of his grandchildren, and then as a human being caring for the people of Israel with whom he was connected ancestrally and soon to be connected in faith.  The second idea is that even here in these early writings of Moses, God wants to reinforce the fact that He is a personal God as well as a God of nations.  In the New Testament this theme continues, as His Son Christ Jesus is both a personal Savior as well as the King of Kings.  Jethro now blesses this God as he comes to know Him better.  Do you this Yahweh?

The next sentence is rather interesting and may help us with what Jethro may have believed before, as touched on above.  Jethro now knows the Lord is greater than all the gods.  It appears from this statement that Jethro, while he may have worshipped El as a deity, he did not see Him as the greatest of all the others.  The reference to the “they” that dealt proudly against the people is to the Egyptians who were so proud in their actions against the Israelites.  Jethro now sees that God is greater than all of them and their gods combined.  And in his condemnation, he likely included all the magicians that joined and abetted Pharaoh in opposing God and attempting to compete against Him.  Matthew Henry writes, “The magicians were baffled, the idols shaken, Pharaoh humbled, his powers broken, and, in spite of all their confederacies, God's Israel was rescued out of their hands. Note, Sooner or later, God will show himself above those that by their proud dealings contest with him. He that exalts himself against God shall be abased.”

And what does one do when he comes to that realization in his/her own life?  Well, in Jethro’s case, and as a priest (but not of the children of Israel), he offers up a burnt offering.  The commentator Robert Jamieson says that this friendly reunion between two people, Moses and Jethro, ends up in “a solemn religious service” for all the chiefs of Israel, where burnt peace offerings were consumed on the altar in a feast of joy and gratitude, officiated over apparently by Jethro, now as a dedicated priest of the true God.  We may well ask ourselves how our periodic reunions with friends or family members end up.

Chuck Smith points out that this account verifies that “other people knew God and worshiped God, who were not the children of Israel in those days, Jethro being one of them. He was a priest of God.”  Matthew Henry says, “Here was a Midianite rejoicing”.  Jethro’s faith was confirmed and he made a public confession of it.  And what did he confess?  He confessed our true God is able to silence all the others and subdue them.  Smith says Jethro “knew it before, but now he knew it better; his faith [grew] up to a full assurance, upon this fresh evidence.”

Just to recap.  Moses and Jethro were reunited; they shared about what God had done; Jethro offers a burnt sacrifice and confesses the power of the Almighty as being above all other gods; and then together with the elders of Israel they ate a meal before God.  This was a means of expressing their joy and thankfulness – being in communion and peace and love with each other – not only in the sacrifice service that preceded, but also now in a feast.  Jethro, the Midianite, was now cheerfully admitted into fellowship with Moses and Israel.  (You will remember that the whole issue of the official priesthood in Israel that eventually went to the Levites was not yet settled.)

I love the observation Henry makes when he says, “Mutual friendship is sanctified by joint-worship.” What a delight it is to those involved and to God Himself when relations and friends who come together join in the spiritual sacrifice of prayer and praise, keeping Christ at the center of their own unity.  I was thinking about this, as many of our youth are meeting and developing good friendships with others of different faiths.  Sometimes these friendships turn into romance and ultimately marriage.  But if a mutual friendship has no hope of becoming an occasion of joint-worship, then one needs to be very wary of it.  As much as it may hurt, one needs to guard their heart in such cases to avoid either loneliness in their worship and service to God, or a walking away from their faith in order to support their relationship.  A big loss no matter which road is taken.

Those present with Jethro and Moses did indeed eat bread, likely manna.  Jethro as a Gentile had to see and taste the bread from heaven.  Together we as believers must share such meals with non-believers – showing the world how as Henry writes, “we eat and drink to the glory of God, behaving ourselves at our tables as those who believe that God’s eye is upon us.”  What is your table scene like these days?  I know mine can be improved.
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God: "Take This and See Me in the Morning" -- Exodus 16:9-12

--> Then Moses said to Aaron, “Say to all the congregation of the sons of Israel, ‘Come near before the Lord, for He has heard your grumblings.’”  And it came about as Aaron spoke to the whole congregation of the sons of Israel, that they looked toward the wilderness, and behold, the glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud.  And the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “I have heard the grumblings of the sons of Israel; speak to them, saying, ‘At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall be filled with bread; and you shall know that I am the Lord your God.’”
 

What great advice Moses wanted Aaron to share with the people – “Come near before the Lord, for He has heard your grumblings.”  Think about that.  When my grandchildren are complaining or moaning, as children they inadvertently want to be around their mother or father.  I guess misery likes to be heard.  As parents, or grandparents for that matter, we often say to them, “If you want to tell me something, go away, stop that grumbling and moaning, and then come back and talk to me properly.”  And I guess that is the difference between God and us when it comes to parenthood.  Moses is in essence saying, “God has heard your grumbling and He wants to address it, so go listen to Him.”  That’s our God.  Even when we grumble, He wants us to draw near to Him.  (This is yet another reason why I may well be changing my mind on how I feel about a person getting angry with God.  See my comments under Exodus 16:4-8.)

And sure enough in the morning, as Aaron was telling the children of Israel to draw near to God, they looked up and there “the glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud.”  He was there, He heard the grumblings, and He was involved.  The text says He spoke to Moses.  Did the others hear Him?  We do not know.  My guess is they did not or else why would He tell Moses to speak to them about what He said.  While God was working for the Israelites, He was still working with and through Moses.  God tells him He has heard the grumblings of the people and He wants Moses to tell them so.  He also wants Moses to tell them what He has done in response to their grumbling, and why.  He would provide them with meat every evening and in the morning He would give them their fill of bread.  As a result the people will know that He the Lord is their God.

Ever wonder how Moses knew God had heard their grumbling (in verse 9), even before God told him so (in verse 12)?  Well, the answer lies in verse 3 when the people grumbled about not having bread and then in verse 4 God simply says He will rain down bread.  Moses did not have to tell God; neither did the people have to.  He heard them.  God is aware of our every thought and uttering, whether it is directed to Him or not.

In verse 3 of this chapter, the people had complained about having no meat, and not being filled with bread.  So God provides just that.  In the evening He gives them meat and in the morning He fills them with bread.  Why did He not fill them with meat, and just provide bread?  I do not know for sure, but may I suggest that oftentimes God gives us exactly what we ask for.  If we ask for something good and get it from God, then we can praise Him as He totally satisfies us.  If we ask for something that will not be good for us, God sometimes gives it to us so that later we become more reliant on Him.

But here is what I can tell you for sure.  Whatever God does, His intent for us is that “we know He is the Lord our God.”   That is the key reason for His doing what He does for us or with us.  If we miss that; if we think it is all about us; if we grumble because we are not getting our desires, then we have missed the purpose of our relationship with Him.  On the other hand, if we do not like those terms of His, well we miss out on such a relationship.  We do life and eternity without Him.  The Israelites had a choice, and so do you and I.  Our heart’s desire should be to take the ‘meat’ He offers us at night and see His glory in the morning.

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How God Deals With Our Enemies and How He Deals With His -- Exodus 15:4-8

--> “Pharaoh’s chariots and his army He has cast into the sea; And the choicest of his officers are drowned in the Red Sea.  The deeps cover them; They went down into the depths like a stone.  They right hand, O Lord, is majestic in power, Thy right hand, O Lord, shatters the enemy.  And in the greatness of Thine excellence Thou dost overthrow those who rise up against Thee; Thou dost send forth Thy burning anger, and it consumes them as chaff.  And at the blast of Thy nostrils the waters were piled up, The flowing waters stood up like a heap; The deeps were congealed in the heart of the sea.”
 
Continuing in song, the Children of Israel give us glimpse of God’s capability in dealing with our enemies.  Not only were Pharaoh’s chariots and his army cast into the sea, but the text also says, “the choicest of his officers” were drowned.  Our enemies can put forth their very best – in personnel or efforts or technology – God can still defeat them all and always. (This theme resurfaces many years later in the account of David and Goliath – the very best the Philistines had to offer in their challenge to Israel.)  The Bible goes on to say here in Exodus that the choicest of warriors went “down like a stone” that would never again come to the surface.  When God is the One who truly destroys our enemies, they never resurface.

And then the song turns to pointing out some attributes of God Himself as the warrior.  He has a ‘right’ hand that is majestically powerful.  Perhaps the adjective was selected to impress upon us the fact that no one or no thing has more power, as “majesty” implies the highest in the land.  And with this power, God not only destroys the enemy, but He ‘shatters’ him.  In our English language, we have the range of marring something, or ruining it (from its original state), or destroying it (making it very difficult to repair as when after an accident, a vehicle is rendered to be ‘totaled’ or ‘a complete write off’), and then there’s “shattering” something or making it totally impossible to ever put back together again.  That is what God does with our enemies.

Now knowing how God deals with the enemies of His children is enough to make any sane person not want to go against them.  Something perhaps those who today have no use for the Jewish nation of Israel or for Christians, and who want to eliminate all of us, should well keep in mind.  But even worse than that is how God deals with those who actually are arrogant enough to rise up directly against Him, and to scorn Him personally.  Towards them, the text says, God applies the full force of the “greatness of His excellence” – the ultimate knockout-punch if you like.  The song tells us God emits His “burning anger” towards them and they are “consumed like chaff”.  I looked ‘chaff’ up in the dictionary to get a better idea of its meaning as a noun.  Chaff can mean the husks of corn or other seed separated by winnowing or threshing; or chopped hay and straw used as fodder; or worthless things; or trash.  What came to mind is that they all burn well.  The tie-in of this image of how God deals with His own enemies may well be a prelude of what the rest of Scripture depicts as the fate of all who ultimately reject Him as Lord and Savior.

Finally, God uses His power to suspend at His will the very laws of nature He ordained and controla in order to defeat our enemies.  In the case of the children of Israel, God breathes a blast and causes the waters that are normally subject to gravity, to pile up like a heap on either side of the passageway He opened for His children to cross the Red Sea on.  The “deeps” that otherwise were there due to the depth of the water were no longer visible, for they were “congealed” or solidified (transformed if you like) into a solid upon which Moses led his congregation over.

That is our God.  That is how He deals with your enemies and mine.  And that is how He deals with His own personal enemies.  But you say, “Fine, but God is not dealing with my enemies, He’s letting them make mincemeat out of me right now.”  I am glad you added the “right now” at the end.  And I am sure that the children of Israel felt exactly that way for 400 years (that’s longer than your whole lifetime and mine) while they served as slaves to the Egyptians.  You see God’s timing is not our timing.  You and I wear watches and follow clocks and calendars to give time some sort of order and make it easier for us to communicate.  But God who actually created ‘time’ is not at all ‘bound’ by it.  If we can somehow accept that, then we’ll be better able to realize that what matters is not “biding our time” but rather learning to “bide His time”.

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Our View of God After Salvation -- Exodus 15:1-3

--> Then Moses and the sons of Israel sang this song to the Lord, and said, “I will sing to the Lord, for He is highly exalted; The horse and its rider He has hurled into the sea.  The Lord is my strength and song, And He has become my salvation; This is my God, and I will praise Him; My father’s God, and I will extol Him.  The Lord is a warrior; The Lord is His name.”
 
Moses and the children of Israel have just been saved decisively from their enemies.  It is natural for them to want to sing a song “to the Lord”.  The words of the text give us the reasons for their jubilation.  First and foremost is that in their mind, God is “highly exalted”.   He is made lofty in their sight because He has defeated their enemies.  In so doing, not only does He become their salvation, but also their strength and their very song or expression.

For each of the singers, He has become a “personal God” and each will praise Him personally as did each of their fathers.  They know Him by name – He is the Lord, a warrior who leads them in battles He cannot lose.

As I think about how the Israelites felt at this time, I cannot help but consider my own feelings these last few days.  While driving home from visiting our eldest daughter’s family for American Thanksgiving, I received a call from a friend who wondered if our 8-year old grandson back home was okay.  Bill had heard on the radio there was a hit-and-run accident on our street, just a block away.  Our hearts sank.  (It turned out that it was a 12-year old that our eldest granddaughter knew and at the point of writing, though he would need several operations, it was believed he would pull through.)  The next day we attended a memorial service for our little grandson Ronin who we had buried just six months ago after he lived for only six hours.  And there are always the challenges of working with ministry personnel.  Plus family issues we all deal with – some we just have to accept as fact for there is nothing we can do about them.  And finally -- something that causes a lot of frustration for baby boomers these days -- I spent over two hours on the phone trying to fix something on my computer, only to have to take it in for a major overhaul.  Many others reading this had it much worse.   So how then do I, do we, say melodically, “I will sing to the Lord!”

Well, for starters, I look at this passage of Scripture and decide whether or not it applies to me as well.  Is God still my Lord?  Is He still worthy of high exaltation?  Am I still alive because He has dealt decisively with my enemies?  Is He still my one and only true strength?  Is He my everlasting salvation?  Is He still a warrior who goes to battle for me?

I responded with six resounding ‘yesses’.  As a result I can still “sing to and of” Him.  I can “praise” and “extol” Him whose name is Lord.   What about you these days?

When God saves us, He does not remove us from the day-to-day challenges of life.  He simply embraces us with Himself.  But that was all that the children of Israel needed as they spent the next forty years in the wilderness.  It is all we need to make it through our earthly trek.  Keep on ‘going on’.  The reasons for singing have not changed.

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[Are you looking for a speaker at your church, your club, school, or organization? Ken is available to preach, teach, challenge, and/or motivate. Please contact us.]

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Then See What I, the Lord, Will Do -- Exodus 12:12-13

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:“For I will go through the land of Egypt on that night, and will strike down all the first-born in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments – I am the Lord.  And the blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you live; and when I see the blood I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt.”
 

After God tells the Israelites how to prepare for their day of deliverance – their day of freedom from the slavery of Egypt and their exodus from the land, He tells them what He will do.  And I love the assurance with which He makes His statement, starting with “For I will . . .”.  They could count on it.  God was going to go through the land of Egypt that very night and take the first-born of every man and beast.  The Israelites had seen enough of God’s power and miracles and they had no reason to doubt Him for one moment.  I wonder where we stand in regards to the issue of doubting what God has said He will do in His Word.  Have we seen or experienced enough of His power and miracles in our own lives to be able to count on His Word for the future?  I do not about you, but I can assure you that my own life has been stamped with God’s fingerprints over and over again.  So much so, that nothing and no one can convince me I cannot count on Him to deliver what He said He would.  And by believing that without any doubt, I can be at peace, even when I consider the state the world is in today and what lies ahead.  Can you count on God?

God does not only exercise His power over evil man and his beasts, but we read here that in so doing, He is “executing judgments against all the gods of Egypt.”  Now what exactly is this all about?  Later in the Bible we read that the Lord “had” taken action or judgments against the Egyptian idols at the same time the Egyptians were burying their first-born.  And Jewish tradition indicates that this same night, by the same destroying Angel, God had broken the idols the Egyptians had in their homes and elsewhere into pieces.  When God acts against the evils of man, He not only goes after man’s possessions (the first-born of both man and of their cattle), but also of the false idols that have contributed to man’s deeds of evil.  You can count on God to do what He says He will do.  So, I humbly ask you and myself, “Who and what are we prepared to lose and allow to suffer because of our stance against God?  What false idols do we adhere to that will ultimately be destroyed and mean nothing?  Is it our wealth, or our cars, or our addictions – drugs, immoral sex, pornography, sports, gambling?  What is it?  Is any of it worth it?”

And then God adds this phrase of authority, “I am the Lord.”  Not, “for I am the Lord” – but just, “I am the Lord” as if to say “I don’t even need to give you a reason as to why I can or why I do what I do – I just am.”  This past week I heard of two good friends in the ministry being diagnosed with colon cancer.  Yesterday I heard that a man I personally knew was killed in a serious accident.  (In fact, the police had diverted the traffic I was part of that morning as a result of that accident ahead.  Little did I know who was involved in it.)  It is at times like these, and we all face them in our lives, that one can easily ask, “Why did God allow that? Or why did He do so and so?”  I learned early in my walk with Him not to do so.  In fact, my wife reminds me of how often I have asked the opposite question, “Why was I, why were we, spared?”  Please do not try to challenge God – He is the only one that cannot be challenged, for the simple reason, “He is the Lord.”  If you have a hard time accepting that, then your journey walking with Him, will be much more difficult.

God told the Israelites the blood of the Passover lamb they were to sprinkle on the doorposts of their houses would be a sign that indicates they belong to Him and the destroying Angel would not visit that house to take the first-born of man and animal.  Have you ever seen signs that say, “We gave at the office, so please do not ask again.” Or what about signs that say, “No soliciting whatsoever.”  Well, the sprinkling of the blood of the lamb was the sign for the destroying Angel to leave that household untouched that night – safe and sound with no harm befalling it unlike the rest of the Egyptian households.  Skip forward three thousand years and today we too are covered “by the blood of the Passover Lamb – Jesus Christ” who died in our place, for our sins.  God will not exercise His condemning judgment of eternal death on us who believe in, and personally know and love and serve, Jesus Christ.

You may have noticed in this passage and elsewhere that God refers to the destroying Angel and Himself interchangeably.  I do not want to get into a debate here of “who or Who it is exactly that is going to bring death to the first-born in Egypt.”  It is possible that it is God Himself.  It is also possible that the usage is such to imply that God is giving the orders and the Angel is carrying them out on God’s behalf.  I respectfully submit to you that this is indeed one case where it really does not matter, does it?  But here is what does matter.  There is no logical or intellectual or scientific reason whatsoever to think that by placing blood on one’s doorposts, one would actually prevent the destroyer from entering one’s home.  Absolutely none.  So, what’s the point here?  Simply this.  You have to do it by faith.  Only faith can save one from the plague that is about to befall Egypt, and only faith can save you and me from the everlasting death that is to befall mankind.

And even if you were religious enough in those days to participate in the Passover lamb dinner just to be part of the community, to fit into the Israelite society at the time, and you didn’t believe in the power of the sprinkling of the blood and thus did not carry out the splashing of it on your doorposts – well, you would have a great dinner, but your first-born would be gone in the morning.  Faith had to be exercised.  

But how hard was that since you believed in God and since you had seen His power and His works?  If you believed He was going to rescue Israel from the bondage of the Egyptians, then was it that hard to take that extra step of faith to be secured from the last plague?  I submit it would not have been.  But why is it so hard for so many today to accept the shed blood of Christ as their protection from death?  I do not know except to say God knew this would happen.  God knew the Enemy in the world would make things difficult for good men and women and children to come to Jesus.  God knew that many would see the simplicity of His plan for us as foolishness.  Others would fail to even see its need.  What remains is for you and me to determine whether or not we fall into that category.

Finally, as we study this portion of Scripture, I wonder if it is an answer to the question about whether or not we will live through all the tribulation the world will face in the future.  I think there is a good possibility that it is exactly that.  If this entire story of the Exodus of the Israelites form Egypt is a type of the end days, then I am coming to the conclusion that some of God’s people will live to see what is going on, but we will be spared, and kept safe from, the horror.  I leave that to your own further research.

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[Are you looking for a speaker at your church, your club, school, or organization? Ken is available to preach, teach, challenge, and/or motivate. Please contact us.]

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Genealogy of Moses and Aaron -- Exodus 6:14-30

Exodus 6:14-25: [The text in these verses (not reproduced here) are intended to connect for the reader, the sons of Jacob with the two men that God was using at this point in Israel’s history to free them of their bondage in Egypt.]
Exodus 6:26-30: It was the same Aaron and Moses to whom the Lord said, “Bring out the sons of Israel from the land of Egypt according to their hosts.”  They were the ones who spoke to Pharaoh king of Egypt about bringing out the sons of Israel from Egypt; it was the same Moses and Aaron.  Now it came about on the day when the Lord spoke to Moses in the land of Egypt, that the Lord spoke to Moses, saying, “I am the Lord; speak to Pharaoh king of Egypt all that I speak to you.”   But Moses said before the Lord, “Behold, I am unskilled in speech; how then will Pharaoh listen to me.”

In summary, the account tells of Reuben, Simeon and Levi’s sons and their descendants.  Of particular interest to us is the following genealogy of Levi. 

Jacob begot Levi (who lived 137 years).  Levi begot Kohath (who lived 133 years), among other sons.  Kohath begot Amram (who lived 137 years), among other sons.  Amram married his father Kohath’s sister, Jochebed, and together they had Aaron and Moses.  Here we are also told Aaron married Elisheba.  Elisheba’s family is mentioned but their names (here mentioned for the first time in Scripture) do not come into play again until later in the Old Testament.  Aaron and Elisheba had four children, some of whom we will hear about later.  One of the children is Eleazar, who marries a daughter of Putiel (whose name means “afflicted by God”) and she bore him Phinehas (whom we will meet later).

The passage itself ends by saying “these” (although it is not clear to whom that refers exactly or how inclusive it is) are the heads of the fathers’ households of the Levites.  Then it repeats somewhat what the author had already provided us with earlier in this chapter and even before that.  The question for the student of the Scriptures is “Why?”.

We can only offer the possible explanations that come to our mind.  First, by providing the genealogy, we are once again reminded that God cares about families and history.  He is sharing with us here how His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is linked via genealogy to Aaron and Moses.  It is this pair that is helping to carry out God’s promises to Abraham many years earlier.  As we saw, there are several generations between Abraham and Aaron and Moses.  What is important here for us to note is how each generation, beginning with Isaac, and Jacob right up to Aaron and Moses’ parents had an important role to play in “keeping the faith”.  They ran families and homes that talked about and taught their children about God, Who He was, and wanted He did for us, and what He wanted of us.  This is our job as parents representing various generations of our family tree and especially as participants in the implementation of God’s Plan for mankind.  Are you and I playing that role as best as we can?

Secondly, the text repeats itself, especially in verses 28-30, because it is important for us to be reminded that this was God’s plan, not theirs, and that He is the Lord.  And all our objections do not throw Him off at all.  He can and does overcome them.  So we find ourselves asking, “Do I realize that I am involved in God’s Plan?  And do I realize and fully accept that He is not just a business owner, or a politician, or a senior partner of a firm I work for, or a teacher at my university – but He is the Lord God Almighty?  And do I realize that while I can raise objections about His choosing me, my true happiness can only be found in obeying His instructions?”  That is the message for you and I from this passage.

[Are you looking for a speaker at your church, your club, school, or organization? Ken is available to preach, teach, challenge, and/or motivate. Please contact us.]

Thanks for dropping by. Sign up to receive free updates. We bring you relevant information from all sorts of sources. Subscribe for free to this blog or follow us by clicking on the appropriate link in the right side bar. And please share this blog with your friends. Ken Godevenos, Church and Management Consultant, Accord Consulting.  And while you’re here, why not check out some more of our recent blogs shown in the right hand column.  Ken.

It would be great if you would share your thoughts or questions on this blog in the comments section below or on social media.