40 Minutes In The Old Testament - Episode 68 (Exodus 4:27-5:21)

Episode Date: January 10, 2017

Chad and Daniel give some final thoughts on the circumcision of Moses' son before moving on to he and Aaron's first encounter with Pharaoh which doesn't go well by any standards and results in further suffering for the Hebrew people. Have a listen!  

welcome back to 40 minutes in the old testament i'm daniel eric price i'm joined by chad bird as always chad good morning good morning how you doing i'm good man where we at we're in exodus 4 right and we're somewhere in exodus something like that i think we sort of left off in the middle of something last time little encounter that moses had with uh with god on the way back to to egypt something like that yeah his wife left something on his feet and uh yeah the whole thing right right so i guess we gotta we gotta we gotta finish that and uh and see what happens next is this gonna be a is this gonna be one of those uh everything seems to be going well kind of stories and then then there's one of these plot twists so got some uh good stuff coming up story of my life

man yeah yeah i think that's pretty much the story of all of our lives ups and downs back and forth right i think we are about at chapter 4 verse uh 25 26 we uh we have moses heading back to egypt and uh the lord beats him on his way and tries to put him to death we went into that at the very end of the 40 minutes last time and i the only thing i think i want to pick up and uh and talk about for just a minute that i don't think we got to last time is this whole whole idea of uh of the first born which i think uh is is part of this part of this story as well this is the uh this is the son of moses and uh he's not circumcised and so zipporah moses wife she circumcises uh their son and she touches moses with this blood from the circumcision with a bloody foreskin

and says, you're a bridegroom of blood to me, and thus Moses is saved by the blood of his son that was shed in the circumcision. And I did mention last time that this is connected by means of a certain Hebrew verb with the Passover itself, because here the blood is touched to Moses, and that same verb is used in Exodus 12, a few chapters later, to describe how the blood of the sacrifice is to touch, we usually say placed or painted or something like that, but the Hebrew verb is touched to the doors, the doorways, and the doorposts and the lintels of their homes. And by means of that blood, the firstborn of Israel are spared. So you kind of got that same thing going on here with the firstborn of Moses, and then the firstborn of

the Israelites being spared. And immediately after the Passover, you have several verses that talk about how the firstborn belong to God. So that's kind of the part of the backstory of this story. The firstborn end up becoming very significant in the life of Israel. The firstborn of animals, which are sacrificable, that firstborn is given over to the Lord, and they are sacrificed. They belong to him. And then if you have an animal that can't be sacrificed, it's either killed or something is substituted in its place and then you have the firstborn of the Israelites who also belong to the Lord and a special sacrifice is offered to to redeem them so you you have throughout the Old Testament both of man and beast this idea that the firstborn

is the Lord's possession his special property and they are they are redeemed by means of blood And this begins in the Passover itself, where the firstborn of the Israelites are redeemed. And then to jump ahead and to really understand what the firstborn is ultimately all about, you have the firstborn son of the Father, Christ himself, who comes in order to redeem us. And so he gives his own life as the Passover victim, as the Passover lamb, as the firstborn son, in order that we might be saved by his blood. As way back in Exodus, Moses himself was saved by the blood that his own son shed in his circumcision. So if you kind of see how all these things fit together with the sun and the blood and the salvation, all of this pulls together to give us in this real small story, this very short three-verse story, kind of an insight into the broader way in which this has ramifications for our understanding of how God has worked. And now he saves us even now by means of the blood of his firstborn.

Yeah, yeah. No, I think that's as good as that can be explained, Chad. Well, yeah. Well done. There's probably much more that can be said, but we'll leave it there. I'm not sure. Here's the thing. I'm not sure that there is much more that can be said.

Well, you know, this is one of those passages that, as I mentioned last time, that leaves us with uh still lots of questions but we don't have the answers we can ask all the questions we want and uh and not get any further so let's go on uh the the uh the chapter ends with a section that's 27 through 31 and uh this is this is where aaron and and moses meet the two brothers and then it kind of takes us from there down into egypt so this is this is interesting passage because this is this is actually something the bible does quite a bit you know it'll almost kind of provide a uh uh i don't want to call it a feel-good section but there's a section where it's almost as if you you get the impression that everything is going to go

well and it's really setting you up for what's to happen later because it's almost like every time that you have a section like this, where you get the impression that everything's going to kind of come together, everybody's going to get along, everybody's going to believe and be faithful, and everything's just going to kind of work out. Whenever you come across a section like that in the Bible, just wait, because you're almost guaranteed that what's going to happen next is going to prove that everything was not as good as it seemed. So what happens is that uh god appears to aaron uh journeys into journeys into the wilderness to to meet moses his his brother and presumably they haven't seen each other for uh for 40 years unless there's some

get together some reunion uh between his departure from egypt and this that we're not we're not told about and they meet uh significantly at the mountain of god this is uh where god appeared to moses and commissioned him to go into into egypt and uh there moses basically tells his brother everything that went down at the mountain so he tells him all the all the things that that god told him and he showed him all the signs that that god commanded him you remember that aaron is uh aaron's kind of part of this uh team ministry if you will because moses moses kept making excuses saying he couldn't do this and he couldn't do that and he couldn't speak well and why don't you send somebody else and so finally finally god lost his cool with aaron with moses and said all

right all right then we'll we'll bring your brother aaron along for for the ride so aaron's going to be part of this uh all the way in fact that aaron will kind of be the co-leader with with moses really until they get back to mount sinai and then all hell breaks loose when aaron decides to make a golden calf which will be a few chapters down the road so moses and aaron they make the journey together they they they go down into egypt and they gather together all the elders of of israel the the leadership uh political and and social and religious leadership of of the israelites and just like moses told aaron everything that god had told him and just like moses showed aaron all the signs that god had given to him so aaron and moses now turn around

and do the same thing for the people so they speak all the words they perform all the signs i i'm guessing they threw the rod down and became a stake and maybe moses did the whole leprosy and then cleanse of leprosy miracle anyway everything they they were told and everything they were given they spoke and they did and here's the result this is thou uh chapter four concludes it says so the people believed and when they heard that the lord was concerned about the sons of israel that he had seen their affliction then they bowed low and worshiped so you got faith and you got worship hand in hand after they hear all these words from god and after they're after they see after they see the signs so this is kind of the uh this is sort of that you know initial phase

of of hearing the good word of of becoming aware that god cares about them that he's he's come to see them he sent moses and aaron in order to in order to to help them and to and to redeem them so and it's kind of like the uh the parable of the soils that jesus told you know upon that some of it falls on on shallow soil and upon hearing the you know upon hearing the word they they receive it with joy right but but just because the word is received for joy with joy at the beginning does not necessarily mean that joy is going to follow as we'll as we'll hear in the next chapter but you know this is this is pretty this is very this is very typical of of all of us I mean, this is humanity displayed with the Israelites serving as our surrogates.

You know, it's easy to believe when basically everything is going well or that you think everything is going to go well, that you finally are on the point of everything kind of working out. And that's where the Israelites were. What they didn't realize was that, you know, God wasn't going to simply show up in Egypt and wave his magic wand and all of their problems and all of the evil and all of the slavery was going to go away. Anytime that God begins to act, he is going to meet with resistance from evil. And because God works through people and through ordinary means, then there's always going to be the possibility of rejection and of rebellion. And sometimes in order for evil to be overcome, more evil results. That's just the nature of the nature of our fallen world.

And so that's what the Israelites are about to experience. Yeah, I think that, you know, you got the old sorrow, my tarry for the night, but you know joy comes in the morning that whole thing uh i think that joy may come in the morning but sorrow comes in the night uh is uh also true uh it seems that days are cyclical like that and um so it's not as though like hey man we tend to think that like all right we get through this night and like yeah day it's like yeah yeah followed by night like again like and this is how this is how life works uh and uh the day the day does not last forever uh not not until that final day anyway yeah yeah you know and i think the the longer we live and and the more we study

the the biblical story itself so the more we see our own lives the more we see the the story of uh of the lives of people in scriptures that the more we're made aware of that and the less shocked we are when that next night comes because we know that morning will follow and that'll be followed by another night and that this is sort of the this is this is the pattern this is the pattern of life there's always going to be uh ups and downs and and crosses good Fridays and Easter's but I mean the good news that we also begin to realize more and more is that despite this inconsistency of our situation in life, there is consistency of God's faithfulness to us through it all. And I think we also begin to learn the various ways in which we receive

the blessings of God, whether the sun is shining or whether midnight is upon us, because we begin to see that in the good times, there is much for which to be thankful and that God is blessing us and is giving us all the gifts of his grace. But then we also, when those dark times come and when we bear the cross, we also realize that sometimes what's happening is that God is stripping away from us our idols and drawing us close to himself and assuring us that the one thing needful will never be taken from us, which is his love and his mercy. So, you know, that is the way that God works, whether it's daytime or nighttime, whether it's suffering or not. In all these various situations in life, he's showing us various things, various things

about himself and ourselves, and that ultimately it doesn't matter what's happening in our lives because our life itself christ itself is is unchanging yeah yeah so that's where the israelites were the same place that uh we that we often are so moses and aaron they do this people believe they they bow down and worship and now we'll see what happens next so this is the beginning of chapter 5. And here we have the first encounter with our friend Pharaoh. So, Moses and Aaron, having told the people that God cares about them, make this first step toward addressing Pharaoh and telling him what they want, and more specifically, what God demands from them. so they they go to pharaoh and the first words out of their mouth are uh thus says the lord

the god of israel which which i kind of i kind of have to laugh at because it's i'm just trying to picture this scene here you know here's here's moses who had to flee the country uh 40 years earlier because of the murder that he committed and he's there with his brother and uh they They approach the throne of a guy that considers himself to be the incarnation of a god, which is what the Pharaohs believe themselves to be. They believe themselves to be the incarnation of one of the gods, one of the gods of Egypt. So they understood, their self-understanding was that they were endowed with divine power. so you got to kind of keep that in mind this isn't like you know somebody marching into the oval office and making demands of the president of the united states this is this isn't even like

someone uh walking to the office of a king and uh in in another country and making demands of him these are two guys walking into the presence of a guy that considers himself to be the embodiment of a god endowed with divine power and the first words out of their mouth are a demand excuse me a demand from another god and not just a demand but a demand that he let the people of this god go so you can you can forecast you can forecast what's going to happen almost from these opening words and knowing knowing the setting so here's what they say they say thus says the lord which in literally is thus says yahweh the god of israel let my people go that they may celebrate a feast to me in the wilderness it's sneaky now you know yeah sneaky

now yeah we i think we've been talking about this before you notice the first thing they say is not let my people go, that they might journey through the wilderness and enter the land that God promised to give to them. It is, at least relatively speaking, a small demand. More or less, they're asking for a chance to go and to worship the God whom they serve in a way that He, you know, desires them to serve Him. So this, I mean, a feast, it says, that we may celebrate a feast in the wilderness this the the hebrew there is is hog which is uh is always kind of a like a pilgrim festival it's a pilgrim a pilgrimage to a specific place where a sacrifice is offered and and and worship worship takes place so uh you know for instance uh the the passover in later years the

passover was a hog and tabernacles was and pentecost was because in each of these hog festivals you traveled to jerusalem and there you offered sacrifices and had a feast and and whatnot so this is this is going to be not just some kind of celebration that takes place in egypt but they need to go out into the wilderness in order to to celebrate it and pharaoh's response uh is this he says who is yahweh that i should obey his voice to let israel go i don't know yahweh and besides i won't let israel go so pharaoh who sees himself as divine is saying i i don't even know this god that you're that you're talking about uh it's not like he's it's not like he doesn't acknowledge his existence because the the egyptians were polytheists i mean they they

fully believed that there were other gods and they they believed that other nations had had their gods so it's not like pharaoh is saying your god yahweh doesn't even exist he's saying listen i I don't even know who he is. And even if I did, I still wouldn't let you go and celebrate this festival in the wilderness. Yeah, I mean, you got to assume that he's also thinking like, so the God of the Hebrews, huh?

He's telling me like, I need to do this thing. But you've been in slavery for like a long time now. Your God is kind of weak sauce, man. I've kind of dominated you and your God. I mean, I don't know what kind of God this is, but you didn't seem to be... You didn't seem to be too powerful. Why is he coming to me to get you guys freedom?

You know what I mean? In this sort of day and age, man, you don't go and tell a neighboring country, uh our god said that uh you got to do this thing like no you just pray to your god and then like you go and you just like go kill them all or something you'll take oh you'll take what you want or like or or leave you know this sort of thing so um this sort of um god of diplomacy that's that approach is is especially from someone in a much weaker position saying i mean it i think it just to me i get it if you're pharaoh we are like it is a weak move dude like your god says

to let you go really yeah yeah that's a that's a fantastic point there were no kind of uh there was no sort of theological diplomacy that took place no i mean if if you wanted if you wanted to prove that your god was superior to somebody else's god then you attacked and you killed those people and that proved it because basically whoever was victorious whoever was master well that that proved that the god that they worshiped was was more powerful was superior so that that's that's just the way that's just the way it works so if you beat the philistines that proved that your god was more powerful than the philistines but if the philistines beat you they would think that their god was more powerful than you so that just that was it's a different mindset that we

aren't that we aren't accustomed to but it's it's the idea that earthly conflict earthly warfare mirrors heavenly conflict and heavenly warfare so that whatever people are on top that means their god is the more powerful yeah after that that initial attempt to convince pharaoh uh didn't go so well it's almost like uh moses and aaron decide to to take a step back and to approach this a little bit differently so this second time they say well instead of thus says yahweh they say the god of the hebrews which i think is interesting they no longer use the divine name they just say the god of hebrew the god of the hebrews has met with us so he's he's come to us And because of that, they say, please let us go a three days journey into the wilderness that we may sacrifice to Yahweh, our God, lest he fall upon us with pestilence or with the sword.

So this is a whole new tactic here, which also doesn't work because it's like Moses and Aaron are saying, hey, you know, we've got to do this or God's going to kill us. if he's met with us he's told us he wants this and if we don't do this then he's going to fall upon us with pestilence or with or with the sword which again is a is kind of to me a very strange argument uh if you're trying to get this all-powerful master of the israelite people to let them go do this then talking about how your god is going to send pestilence or the sword upon you uh when you are in pharaoh's captivity just i don't know it doesn't seem to uh to be a very persuasive argument no this this whole this whole train this this this whole thing is like i would have uh if i i don't know i feel like if i was one of those two guys i'd be like this

there's no way this is like i don't and i don't know like i mean you do wonder like okay again is this what god did god tell you to say all this stuff or did he just say like go and tell them like you know to let you go and then they did they concoct this line of reasoning for like themselves because there's not a good line of reasoning like i don't like i don't i i'm not i just feel like if i was there i would have been the guy like poo-pooing the whole thing being like guys this is not good this is not gonna work this is like this is all this is like terrible this is like none of this stuff's gonna work this is we gotta we gotta rethink this whole plan well but maybe moses wasn't just making excuses when he talked about how uh

he was uh slow speech and slow slow of time yeah maybe maybe this whole thing is coming across like maybe he's actually doing he's like uh because um the sword and uh and uh i mean the pestilence i mean we we gotta we gotta go like you know and barrow's like sitting there just like yeah right like i'm not doing that what are you talking about like i've got the sword like i am the pestilence like get back to work yeah that's right i am i am the sword you worried about sword and pestilence i'll give you something to worry about which is which is actually what what happens next uh so they they try these two different approaches first basically making a demand well that didn't work and then by talking about threats that that uh of what might befall them

if they don't do well that didn't work either because pharaoh isn't gonna be told what to do he's not going to be uh frightened by what might happen to them if they don't worship god in the way that they've uh they've asked so here is uh here's what pharaoh decides to do he says moses and aaron why do you draw the people away from their work get back to your labors so more or less leave me alone and get back to work listen you're my slaves uh you have been for a long time i am the incarnation of god i don't bow to the demands of other gods certainly not to the the gods of of my slaves and so i i have you as my as my workers you're here to make bricks you're here to build walls and cities and whatever else i want built and that's what you

need to be doing so don't be talking to me about worship don't be talking to me about making a three days journey into the wilderness don't even be talking to me about what might happen to you if you don't do this all i want to hear from you is work that's the only thing that i want to hear from you is we're going to work we're making bricks we're building what you want us want us to build but it gets worse because uh as as it as it goes on picking up here with verse five pharaoh says look the people of the land are now many and you would have them cease from their labors so you you want a day off to or three days off to make this journey or six days off how long it's going to be to make this journey into the wilderness well i've got work for you dude and

you're wanting to cease from their labors so pharaoh does pharaoh pulls uh you know i guess a typical a typical act of the oppressor he he throws everything back on the people and he blames them and he makes it even harder for them and then blames them when they don't follow through with with his with his demands so here's what he does he uh he gathers together the the task masters so these would be egyptians uh those who were in charge of the the various groups of the of the israelite uh these light servants and uh he says you are no longer to give the people straw to make bricks like you did before let them go and gather straw for themselves but the quota of bricks which they were making previously that's going to stay the same you're

not you're not going to reduce that one bit because they're lazy and because they're lazy they cry out about going to sacrifice to their god so here's what we're going to do we're going to make we're going to make the labor even worse on them we're going to make it even heavier on them. And we're going to work them so hard that they don't pay any more attention to false words. That's the way that verse 9 ends. So this is the typical tactic of someone, whether it's a dictator or whether it's an oppressor or whether it's a manipulator or whoever it might be. This is the way they always work. They throw everything back upon the other person and make them feel like they're to blame, shoves the guilt back on them, makes it even harder on them. So Pharaoh is

basically relieving himself of any responsibility for making it hard on the people. And he's saying, listen, you've made it harder on yourselves. And I'm going to teach you a lesson. I'm going to work you even harder. I'm going to drive you even more into the dirt in order that you're not going to pay any attention to false words which would call you away from the labor that i want that i want you to do yeah i feel like this um moses and aaron's popularity is off to a bad start uh oh you know i think this is also a pretty shrewd like yeah i want to sit around here and you know commend pharaohs or anything but if you are um you got if moses comes rolling in there And maybe, maybe some people initially are like, all right, you know, maybe they're skeptical,

but they're like, they're, they're, they're interested. Like maybe this, maybe, like, you know, maybe just, I mean, he's gone. He's this guy's back. I mean, I'm not sure, but you know, maybe, maybe, well, he just kind of squashes any, any, uh, any, any potentiality that like, this is the guy he's like, oh yeah, well, how are you going to like it when, uh, your quota of bricks stays the same, but I take, but you gotta gather your own straw that's this guy's fault like now now like i've immediately moses is um disparate after this they're like oh yeah that was awesome moses that was i'm so glad

you came back thanks a lot very sweet i'm sure i'm sure you did hear from god in a burning bush bush psycho go back to the sheep yeah yeah that's exactly what that's exactly what happens as uh as the story goes on uh you know without they had to have the straw to make the bricks and so it's not like they could just make mud bricks the the straw was was uh was an integral part of the recipe for making bricks it helped it held them together and as the straw would uh would basically decompose inside the bricks the the chemical reaction would would make the bricks stronger and make them last. So it's not like they could say, all right, well, we're just going to make bricks without straw. No, they still had to have the straw. And so the people are working even

harder and they can't make the quota of bricks. And as a result of that, the foremen who were Israelites, so you had kind of this hierarchy. You had Pharaoh on top, then you had Egyptian taskmasters, then you had Israelite foremen, and then you had the Israelite, basically the lowman on the totem pole, the workers. And when they did meet the quota of bricks, when the Israelite servants did meet the quota of bricks, then the foreman got beaten over it. The Israelite foreman got beaten over it by the Egyptian taskmasters. And so the Egyptian foreman, they go and they have the audience with Pharaoh and they say, why are you treating us this way? I mean, what what they're not giving us any straw and so we can't there's no way that we can keep up

the quota of bricks that we did that we did previously and pharaoh says look you're lazy you're you're very lazy and because of that you're saying hey we want some time off so that we go that we can go sacrifice but i'm i'm not going to let you do that and because you're lazy i'm I'm going to make you work even harder. So that's what the foremen hear from Pharaoh. And then it just so happens that as soon as they're walking out from their meeting with Pharaoh, they run into Moses and Aaron. And you can imagine how this conversation goes. These guys have just been, they didn't just get a tongue lashing.

I mean, they were actually beaten because their people couldn't do the impossible. so they're they were first angry with pharaoh and now when they hear the real reason they're mad and moses and aaron and here here's what they say to them they say may the lord look upon you and judge you because you have made us odious in pharaoh's sight and in the sight of his servants it's like you put a sword in their hand to kill us so that's how the that's how the egyptian foreman i mean that's how the israelite foreman react to to moses and aaron so yeah you talk about popularity level plummeting it it yeah it just it dropped way below the surface as a result of this initial meeting that Pharaoh and Aaron had with Moses.

Yeah, and I think that that's about it, man. Out of time. Well, I guess we'll have to pick it up there then. We'll see how Moses responds to this because he's going to have a few words of his own to say to God. So tune in next time. That's it. All right, guys, thanks so much for joining us.

If you haven't done this, you know, there's a couple of different events that we're doing this year. We're doing two. Maybe you live in the Detroit area because Christ Will Fast is doing a one-day event in Detroit at Faith Lutheran Church in Troy, Michigan, to be specific, right there next to Detroit. If you live in Michigan or the Detroit area, or maybe you're up in Canada and you want to come down and hang out, you should do that. You can go over to Christ Will Fast. Just go to the events page, and you can click on the Detroit thing.

Also, in October, the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, the Here We Still Stand conference, me and Chad will both be there, along with a ton of other people, and we're going to be eating tons of food, and there's going to be tons of music, and there's going to be tons of speakers, and the whole thing is going to be an absolute blast. that is october uh 19 through 21 and uh and you can go over to here we still stand.org get all the information uh that there is not an unlimited number of tickets for that thing um i'm not positive it'll sell out but i'm not i'm not saying it won't sell out either i think there's a pretty

good chance that it does so um so you might want to if you were interested in doing that you might as well get in now because it still is at a very cheap rate. And that rate will continue to go up as it gets closer. All right, guys, thanks so much for joining us. We will see you next week. Thank you for watching.