Exodus 4:24-26
Amen, you can be seated. Ask
that you’ll take out your copies of the scriptures and turn to
the book of Exodus, Exodus, chapter four, verses 18 to 31, Exodus,
chapter four, second book of the Bible. I think you’re up
for it. We take a break again today because we will be baptizing
another little one and we want to Think on God’s view of faithfulness
to his covenant obligations that he puts upon us. I think we live
in a world where we don’t like authority, right? What’s the
first thing a two year old says? No, what’s the first thing a
three-year-old says? You’re not the boss of me. And
then what do we keep saying the rest of our lives? We fight that
way. And I think that’s eased over
into the church culture. Actually, I don’t think it has,
I know it has. And so we sort of have a choose your own destiny
church today. Well, I don’t believe in baptism.
God might, but we don’t, and so we do things with our children
that aren’t commanded, and then we want God to bless them, right?
Or pick and choose another area of the Christian faith. We have
that you’re not the boss of me mentality, and so we believe
that our Bible is like those books that I read as a kid where
you could, if you didn’t like this ending, you could flip to
that ending, right? Y’all remember those, the choose
your own ending kind of books? You can’t do that with a Bible.
It won’t go well with you if you do. And so we want to look
at this strange passage today where God held Moses accountable
for not placing the covenant sign on his own child. And so before we read God’s word,
let’s ask for God’s grace. Pray with me. Lord, your word
is written to instruct us, to rebuke us, to correct us, to
train us in the ways of righteousness, It’s to fully furnish your church
so that we can do the will of God in the world. And so help us to hear and to
receive and to believe and to obey all that is written in.
May your spirit guide us and convict us and may your spirit
also give us the strength, the heart to conform to your holy
will. Bless us now as we turn to your word in Christ’s name,
amen. Exodus chapter four, beginning at verse 18. Moses went back
to Jethro, his father-in-law, and said to him, please let me
go back to my brothers in Egypt to see whether they are still
alive. And Jethro said to Moses, go
in peace. And the Lord said to Moses and
Midian, go back to Egypt for all the men who were seeking
your life are dead. So Moses took his wife and his
sons and had them ride on a donkey and went back to the land of
Egypt. And Moses took the staff of God
in his hand. And the Lord said to Moses, when
you go back to Egypt, see that you do before Pharaoh all the
miracles that I have put in your power, but I will harden his
heart so that he will not let the people go. Then you shall
say to Pharaoh, thus says the Lord, Israel is my firstborn
son. And I say to you, let my son
go that he may serve me. If you refuse to let him go,
behold, I will kill your firstborn son. At a lodging place on the
way, the Lord met him and sought to put him to death. Then Zipporah
took a flint and cut off her son’s foreskin and touched Moses’
feet with it and said, surely you are a bridegroom of blood
to me. So he let him alone. It was then
that she said a bridegroom of blood because of the circumcision. Then the Lord said to Aaron,
go into the wilderness to meet Moses. So he went and met him
at the mountain of God and kissed him. And Moses told Aaron all
the words of the Lord with which he had sent him to speak and
all the signs that he had commanded him to do. Then Moses and Aaron
went and gathered together all the elders of the people of Israel. Aaron spoke all the words that
the Lord had spoken to Moses and did the signs in the sight
of the people and the people believed. And when they heard
that the Lord had visited the people of Israel and that he
had seen their affliction, they bowed their heads and they worshiped. Amen. The word of the living
God. I’d said a few moments ago, when
we read the book of Hebrews chapter 11, that Moses spent his first
40 years living as a prince of Egypt. Maybe to put it in modern
day times, he had a cushy life, right? He had all the Apple gadgets,
he had a brand new car at 16, he ate three squares a day, had
his own workout center, went to private school, all the rest.
He was after all the prince of Egypt, right? Big stuff. For 40 more years, he was a shepherd
in Midian. That would be out in the Sinai
Peninsula. He was a shepherd of the flocks
of Midian for Jethro, his father-in-law. In that time, he married Zipporah,
his wife, a Midianite, somewhat of an Egyptian. And then the
next 40 years, we come to in this passage where he becomes
the shepherd of Israel. He becomes the covenant mediator
of Israel. Another thing to think about
Moses here in this passage today is that Moses is the author of
the first five books of the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, our book today,
Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. And so in a sense, what we’re
reading is somewhat autobiographical. Moses is recording for us an
incident where He’s kind of the bad guy. He’s not the hero of
the story. He goofed up, right? He sinned against Almighty God
and it nearly cost him his life. This passage is rather vague.
Some scholars have said, we don’t know who, we don’t know what,
we don’t know where, we don’t know when, and we don’t know
why. But I will tell you this much
is clear. Moses failed to obey God. And
God sought to put him to death. And so this section of scripture,
strange as it may be, reminds us that the wages of sin is death. This passage reminds us that
even if you’re Moses, Even if you’re the covenant mediator
of Israel, you must obey God to the dot and the crossing of
the T’s and all the rest. God demands fidelity to his covenant. Well, Moses is along his journey
to Egypt to confront Pharaoh. He’s packed up Zipporah, his
wife, Baby Eliezer is probably a newborn. His older son is along
the way and, you know, probably got his Legos and his toys. You
kind of get the idea there. They’re on a little journey from
Midian, leaving father-in-law, leaving family, going to Egypt
where he will say to Pharaoh, let my people go. Now I want to stop and explain
maybe a vague thing or two from this passage that help us understand
where we are. When God in the scriptures speaks
of Israel, Israel the nation, he very often, and he does in
this passage, he calls Israel my son. And so he’s going to
go to Pharaoh and say, let my son go. That’s all Israel. And then he’s gonna say to him,
if you don’t let my son, that’s all Israel go, I will kill your
firstborn son. And you remember in the showdown
between Yahweh through Moses and Aaron, the showdown between
Yahweh and the gods of Egypt. We know who won, right? God did,
Yahweh won. The final plague though, was
the death of every firstborn son, including Pharaoh’s. If you did not put the blood
of the Passover lamb on the doorpost of your house and observe Passover,
then the angel of the Lord with his sword would visit your house.
And remember the great cry went up from Egypt and that cry did
not skip over Pharaoh’s house. The only houses that skipped
over were the houses where there was blood saying to God, we have
faith in your promises, faith in your sacrifice, even faith
in Jesus, the great Passover lamb who is yet to come, but
whose life and his death and his sacrifice will pay the penalty
for our sins. And so we have to see in this
passage, I believe that when God is giving to Moses the commission
to go to Egypt and say, let my son go, or else I’ll kill your
son, that when we come to this strange little section, verses
24, 25, and 26, God is coming to Moses and saying, we better
get things straight with your son. Because how can you go and
preach and proclaim a message of covenant faithfulness when
your household is out of order? And so along his journey to Egypt
to confront Pharaoh, we’re told first that the Lord sought to
put Moses to death. Some of you have the NIV version
where it has supplied Moses’ name. Others of you have a version
that maybe just has the pronoun his. There’s general agreement. that God sought to put Moses
to death. He is the his, the context shows
it. He is the his here, it’s got
his wife involved in this. And so we have to understand
that when the Lord sought to put Moses to death, there had
been some divine counsel where God the Father, God the Son,
God the Holy Spirit recognized that Moses was on the way to
Egypt to do a great work of redemption. He was going to be the preacher,
the redeemer, the shepherd of Israel. And in this divine council,
there was notice taken, this man, this covenant mediator has
not been faithful to the covenant himself. Genesis chapter 17,
as we saw last week, said to Abraham and to us, it is a covenant
obligation to present your children to almighty God. It is your covenant
duty to present them on the eighth day and failure to circumcise
your children will cut you off from the body of Israel and the
presence of almighty God. Now stop there for just a moment.
And you say, oh, well, this whole baptism debate, this whole circumcision
business, this, you know, let’s just don’t argue about it. Doctrine
divides. Well, not doing it divides too.
Because what does God say if you’re not faithful to his covenant?
He cuts you off. And in this case, he’s gonna
kill you, right? Moses is under the sword here. What a terrifying thing. But God gives this covenant obligation
and has taken notice that Moses has not kept his duty. Now, you’re
scratching your head and saying, how did this come about? He’s
Moses. He’s the leader of millions of people out of the promised
land and into, or out of Egypt and into the promised land, through
the wilderness. How does a guy like him not do this? Well, the
language of the scripture, the contempt we’ll see in just a
moment of Zipporah, when she does circumcise her little one,
shows that there was a difference between them and their marriage.
One of the things I do when a couple comes to me and says, hey, we
want to get married, we go through all kinds of things we talk about.
But one of the most important topics that I go through with
them is, what are you going to do with kids? God has a sense
of humor, and if you’re married, you’re going to have kids. Doesn’t
matter what you do or how you try to prevent it, stop it, whatever.
They just come, right? And they’re a blessing, right?
One of the fruits of marriage is children. It’s godly offspring.
But what do you do with children? And so that brings up a couple
questions. How do you discipline them? How
do you teach them? How do you present them to the
church? You know, you got the whole, you say potato, I say
potata, you say baptism, I say christening, I say dedication
without water. I say dedication with water.
We get into all this little business. But I think an equally yoked
couple looking to marriage better know what they’re going to do
with children because parenting will divide a marriage. The way
you educate your children will divide a marriage. but your children’s
relationship with the church will divide a marriage. Who establishes
the relationship of children with the church? Do we say, okay,
kid, okay, God, here. Or is it the other way around?
God says, there’s your child, here I am. Walk before me and
be blameless. Present them before me, bring
them into my covenant. and then teach them all that
I have commanded you. Remember we said covenants are
from on high, they are imposed. We don’t ever look up to God
and say, pretty please, or you give a little, I’ll take a little,
and we come out with a used car deal. That’s not the way it works
with God. No, he is the covenant Lord.
He imposes relationships and we take it or leave it. And the
sad thing is here, Moses said, I’ll leave it. because apparently
there was a disagreement between him and Zipporah, and so they
had neglected the duty of Genesis 17 to mark out their sons to
the covenant Lord. There’s a really strong challenge
here, isn’t there, that we should never, ever, ever negotiate down
the ordinances of God. Remember the Sabbath day and
keep it holy, except when the mountains are calling. or the
beach is calling, or seven years of my child playing soccer on
the weekends, so they become a professional and buy mom a
house, right? That’s the way we’re thinking
in America. And isn’t it a mercy that the angel of the Lord is
not coming down to our houses and saying, what have you not
done? The Lord sought to put Moses to death because he neglected
his covenant duties. That ought to sink into our minds
and hearts. He sinned against God, and maybe
his conscience pricked him over time. I know, Lord, I know, Lord,
I know, Lord, it should have been done, but Zipporah is not
in agreement with it, and I just need peace in my house. Well,
do you want peace in your house or the angel of God to visit?
That’s what it comes down to, isn’t it? And I know that’s a
tough thing to say, but God in this case comes not in pricking
Moses’ conscience, maybe he had tried that, we don’t know, but
he comes and says, all right, I’ve had enough of your covenant
unfaithfulness. And the passage tells us next,
after it says, the Lord sought to put Moses to death, it says,
then Zipporah, that’s Moses’ wife, Then Zipporah took a flint. Took a flint. She took care of
business. She got down to it. Now, just bear with me for a
moment. We don’t know the details surrounding
this event, but we do know this. God showed up to kill Moses.
The cellos were playing, you know, soundtracks, you know,
Jaws, dun-dun, dun-dun, right? We have to put ourselves in the
frame here. It was dark. It was foreboding. There was the sound of judgment.
You think of Adam and Eve after they sinned against God, they
hid from God. And what did it say in Genesis
three? They heard the sound of the Lord,
their God walking in the garden. He came looking for them. Maybe,
maybe some of you young people or maybe you big people, you
remember as you were a kid, the footsteps of your parents. Oh
no, I’ve done it. I’m going to get it. Right. Or
wait till your father comes home and you hear the garage door
open. This is this is God showing up to take care of business.
And so there’s this period of darkness, this this obvious threat
of Yahweh. We don’t know the details, but
just maybe put your mind in that that frame. There were there
were there were probably words. There was great terror. There
were there were was probably a discussion between Moses who
in some way, shape or form seems to be incapacitated in terror
by Almighty God. You think of how casual we are
these days about our approach to God. And you read through
the Bible and you see all the people that encountered God.
Martin Luther had a wonderful phrase for this. He called it
the trauma of holiness. We go out into the world and
we see our sports heroes, and we see our boy band heroes, and
our heart flutters, you know, we, oh, we want their, you know,
we want their autograph, and woo-hoo, I met so-and-so. Who are we afraid of? It ought
to be almighty God. He comes into our midst and there
is great terror. Here’s Moses who he says of himself
in another place, he was the meekest man on the face of the
earth. Apparently he was also a bit too deferential. And can
we say it this way? Zipporah wore the pants in that
household. And you bet she circumcised that
baby when the terror Almighty God came into their camp that
night. She takes a flinch, she gets
down to business, a bloody process, a surgery, a removal of the dirty
flesh that would pass on from generation to generation, the
sins of the fathers, if not the spiritual reality represented
in it. taken care of by God and his
grace and his mercy. Moses needed to be fit to be
the mediator of Israel. And I can’t help but think of
Paul to Timothy, watch your life and your doctrine. Or I can’t
help think of the qualifications we read up for elders and deacons
and ministers. You can’t do the work of God
unless you meet the qualifications of God. And God is saying to
Moses here, get your life in order. I’m sending you to Pharaoh.
And so he takes care of business at this lodging place on the
way to Egypt. Now, it’s interesting here. You’ve
heard a little of the details of Zipporah and Moses relationship.
And you’ve been wondering to yourself, how do we how do we
know this? Well, the general translations at the end of 25,
surely you are a bridegroom to me. She took the skin that had
been removed surgically. And most commentators believe
she just, she threw it at Moses. Some say, well, they placed it
on his feet. She touched him and that brought
God’s wrath away. But there’s a general consensus.
She threw it at him and said, this is a bloody mess. Not in
the British sense, right? But this is your religion. Now we also know that she goes
back home and stays with her father. And after the work of
redemption in Egypt, Moses returns and collects his family and takes
them on into the wilderness. So not everything is rosy in
Moses’ camp, but Zipporah took a flint and she took care of
business. The third thing our passage says,
so God let him alone. He let Moses alone. How often do we think to ourselves,
And think of that phrase in verse three of the song we sang at
the opening of our service, where God’s threatenings came to us
as a grace. Do you ever think about the definition
of sin? Sin is not measuring up to God’s
standards. It’s lack of conformity, our
shorter catechism says, to the law of God, the will of God,
the standard of God. But sin is also knowing there’s
a line and transgressing it, crossing it. So it’s not measuring
up where it’s crossing a boundary. R.C. Sproul says so well that
sin is an act of cosmic treason. It doesn’t matter how little
the sin is or how great the sin is, it is an act of cosmic treason. And so Moses failed to do his
duty and God was coming to hold him to an account. His wife took
a flint and she performed the necessary surgery. Now, I’ve
got a little note here in my notes that says she did not circumcise
her son because she remembered Genesis 17 and God told Abraham,
eighth day, whole household, any subsequent children, generations
to come, it’s a command. She didn’t order the chicken
salad. You know, like we do in the South, we have a baptism,
we get a gown, we order chicken salad, croissants and sweet tea,
and we invite the whole place, right? That’s how it, that’s
how we do it. No, she, she did this simply because Yahweh was
there to kill her husband. The angel of the Lord there was
there and he had unsheathed his sword and said, I am going to
kill Moses because he is unfaithful to the covenant. And this is
the same idea we have to think of when just in a few chapters
ahead in the book of Exodus, God is gonna say, if you don’t
wanna die, do my ordinance, have Passover, take some blood and
put it on the doorpost and on the lentils. And my angel, my
avenger of death will pass over or jump to our day without faith
in Jesus Christ. without faith in Him who was
the Passover lamb, without faith in Him who was cut off in order
that we might be brought near to God through His own precious
blood. Remember, every covenant has
blood involved. Every covenant requires the cutting
of flesh and blood. And Jesus went to the cross and
was cut. He was pierced. He was wounded. Body bore our sins on that cross,
on that tree. And it was the blood of that
firstborn son of Moses circumcision. It was the blood of the Passover
lamb on the door post. And it is now the blood of Jesus
that alone saves us. because it satisfies God’s wrath. The greatest passage or phrase
in this little passage is, so he let him alone. What does the book of Hebrews
tell us? It is a terrible thing to fall into the hands of the
living God. The living God showed up to Moses
house. And I know in today’s culture,
you know, we, we, we, we think of the cross, we think of grace,
we think of Jesus and we kind of pick and choose our way to
do Christianity. And we say to ourselves, Oh, Jesus died on
the cross. God will never come and visit
me in anger. No, because of the cross, he
doesn’t hold your sins against you and he does not punish you
eternally in hell. That sin that, that, that, that
was placed on Jesus. You’re forgiven. You’re justified.
But the wages of sin is still death. And just ask Ananias and
Sapphira. Just ask others who came face
to face with God and he met with them because they had not followed
his ways. We don’t fear God anymore. You
know, we drive down the road and we see, you know, Jesus is
my co-pilot, right? Or Jesus is my homeboy, right? We literally make a mockery of
the living God. And we think he’s just our divine
bellhop. He’s Santa Claus. We sit on his lap at the mall
and we tell him what we want. That’s our prayer time, right?
And he’s supposed to give it to us. He’s the same yesterday,
today and forever. He is still the living and true
and Holy God. But we must see that his wrath,
his anger is only removed because of blood and now because of the
blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. So let’s just think for a moment
here. You keep in your obligations
to the Lord. Not as a works righteousness, not to save you, that’s all done
by Jesus. But we have these obligations,
right? Our duties, our obligations,
our fitness, our conformity, our being made into the image
of Jesus, our disciplines of grace. We have all those. Do
we think to ourselves, Lord, how am I measuring up? Should
you come down and visit me at night? Would it be good or would
it be ill? But do we fear God? Are we terrified of him? Remember
the great saying, little Lucy and the lion, the witch in the
wardrobe about Aslam, is he good? Oh, he’s good, but he’s not safe. That’s the way we need to think
of our God. He’s good, but he’s not safe. He did not spare his
own son, but gave him up for us. And so your greatest obligation,
brothers and sisters, is to look to Jesus solely, trusting, resting
in him alone for your salvation. Let’s go to him in prayer. Our
Lord, we thank you for the scary passages. Because we’re not scared. We
think you’re our buddy. And what a friend we do have
in Jesus, but you are the holy one of Israel. You are the one
who will yet come on a horse, with an army, with swords, and
you will take care of judging both the wicked and the righteous. And so we thank you, Lord, that
your blood is on our doorpost. We thank you that our hearts
have been circumcised and made clean by Jesus, by the Spirit.
And we thank you that our faith is strengthened day by day, week
by week, by your word, by your spirit, by your work in our lives.
And so, Lord, let us bind ourselves to you now, fearing you, but
also loving your grace that we find in Jesus’ precious blood. Hear us and help us now. We pray
in the name of Jesus, amen.