The Bible Recap - Day 031 (Exodus 4-6) - Year 3

Episode Date: January 31, 2021

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Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble and I'm your host for the Bible recap. Yesterday we ended our reading halfway through God's conversation with Moses, and Moses had given two reasons why God shouldn't or couldn't use him to rescue the Israelites from slavery in Egypt. Today we pick up the back half of that conversation. God gives Moses some signs to use to prove himself, and Moses gives God three more excuses or a buttolls to his call.

Honestly, Moses seems kind of right, but God is unmoved. God patiently responds to each of his concerns, never hedging on his plan, despite the fact that Moses is completely ill-fitted for this calling. I mean, even in verse 3, Moses throws the staff on the ground and when it becomes a snake, he runs from it.

The guy who's afraid of a snake probably shouldn't go toe-to-toe with a dictator. But God reassures him, not with the promise that everything will go perfectly, but with words like these. I will be with your mouth and teach you what to speak. I will send a helper." Moses doubts himself, but God, his maker, reminds him who he's talking to. Questioning God's calling is an insult to the God who made him. All five of Moses' excuses are identity issues.

Going up in the environment, he grew in it would be shocking if he didn't have identity issues. At this point, it doesn't seem like he really knows or believes God, which means he can't really know who he is either. At the last excuse, God gets angry. It seems like Moses' hesitation was in a front to God's wisdom in calling him, as though Moses believed God wouldn't be sufficient. Moses' fears and insecurities are an attack on God's character, but God does not lean into this offense. He leans into patience and compassion. He provides Aaron, Moses's older brother, to go with him. So Moses gets permission from his father, Jethro, packs up the family, and heads to Egypt. But God does not promise an easy journey.

He basically tells Moses, you're going to ask Pharaoh for something and I'm going to harden his heart so that he says no to you. That's a tough assignment. But in the part of this conversation we read yesterday, God said that, with a mighty hand, he would compel Pharaoh to yield. So at least Moses has that to hold on to. One thing I want to point out, God called Israel his firstborn son, and promised us to kill the firstborn of Egypt

that they don't let his son go. This is foreshadowing not just of the Passover, which we'll get to in a few days, but also of the inclusion of the Gentiles into God's family. Remember how the firstborn gets the blessing, but Jesus our older brother shares his inheritance with us as co-airs? We see this with the Israelites too. They're God's firstborn, but in God's great generosity, he also adopted Gentiles, non-Jews, into his family as a part

of his promise to bless all the nations of the world through this one family. And because of that, we Gentiles share in their inheritance, just like with Jesus. Something puzzling happens on the way to Egypt where God gets angry and seeks to kill someone, but it's unclear who or why. Most scholars believe the reasons for God's anger is that Moses' son, Gershim, hasn't been circumcised, and most think that God's anger was directed toward Moses. To not circumcise his son was a violation of the covenant,

and this was especially important given that Gershim was about to be in the midst of a powerful enemy culture. He must be set apart. So Zipura to the rescue. She circumcises Gershim, then touches the foreskin to Moses' feet. But one caveat here is that the Hebrew word for feet is occasionally used as a euphemism

for genitals. So this whole passage is filled with mystery. Don't get too hung up on it. Remember what we talked about in the prep episodes? We don't want to build our theology on obscure, unclear passages. By the way, if it was Moses that God sought to kill, then this is the second time his life has been saved through the help of a woman. If it was Gershim that God sought to kill, then this is an interesting foreshadowing of killing the firstborn son of those who don't live under God's protective covering. More on that in the days ahead. In the next scene, God Himself sent Aaron, Moses's older brother, to help him. They go to Egypt, Aaron gives a speech to the Israelites, Moses demonstrates the sign from God,

and the people are thrilled. But when Moses and Aaron approach Pharaoh, he denies their request. So they ask again. This time, he not only says no, but cracks down even harder on the Israelite slaves who blame Moses for it. Moses obeyed God's commands and things got worse.

God tells Moses to go back to the Israelites and remind them what he's promised, but they don't believe him. They were excited when Moses first showed up on the scene, but their enthusiasm got crushed by the extra workload. Life has been too hard for them to be hopeful. Then God sent Moses back to Pharaoh to try again. We ended with a genealogy connecting these two messengers with the lineage of people they were coming to rescue,

and a reminder that Moses feels inadequate. But this marks a turning point. After scripture makes this connection, we don't see Moses doubting God's power anymore. He's finding confidence and freedom in God despite his own shortcomings. Where did you see God at work today? Here was my God shot.

I saw so much of God's compassion in his response to all the hesitation Moses displayed. God knew his story, God knew his brokenness, he was patient toward Moses and his self-doubt. Later, I saw God's compassion again when Moses went back to the Israelites a second time after their workload had been increased and their former excitement had turned to despair,

they couldn't muster any kind of faith on their own. Heartache and oppression can steal your ability to hope and trust in the words of God. God knew they had no strength to fight, so he sent someone to fight for them. He sent someone who had received his compassion to demonstrate it to them. He sent a condom of hope and freedom

to the people who were hopeless and who had never known freedom. He's compassionate, he's attentive, and he's where the joy is. We don't want to just help you read the Bible. We want to help you study the Bible and we want to help you engage with others about what you're reading.

So we've built out two tools that we hope will help you and they work together perfectly. The first tool is a daily study guide. This is designed for you to do on your own. There are roughly five questions a day to help you dig into the text and learn more on your own while you're reading. These questions tend to focus more on research and study,

and we've left a space for you to write in the guide itself. The second tool is the weekly discussion guide. It has about 10 questions per week and they're totally different questions from the Daily Study Guide. But again, they work together perfectly. The weekly discussion questions are more reflective and they'll help guide your group through a conversation that will build relationships as you work through Scripture together. To get your copies of these or see sample pages of each, check out

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