THROUGH THE BIBLE - Exodus 4..

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com. That's cornerstonerbc.com. Good evening, everyone, and welcome to church. What a great privilege it is to have you once again, by His grace, worshiping the Lord Jesus Christ with us.

Each one of you, please open up your Bible to the book of Exodus. Exodus chapter 4. Exodus chapter 4. We continue with the corporate reading of the scripture. that we always do on the Lord's day by His grace and by His providence that brings us together to worship our Lord Jesus Christ, our Savior.

We're going to be reading together chapter 4. I'm reading from the English Standard Version of the Bible, so let's approach the text with much reverence and paying attention to each one of the words that come from the Holy Heart of our God. This is the Word of God. Then Moses answered, But behold, they will not believe me or listen to my voice, for they will say, The Lord did not appear to you. The Lord said to him, What is that in your hand?

He said, A stuff. And he said, Throw it on the ground. So he threw it on the ground and it became a serpent and Moses ran from it. But the Lord said to Moses, Put out your hand and catch it by the tail. So he put out his hand and caught it, and it became a staff in his hand, that they may believe that the Lord, the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, has appeared to you.

Again, the Lord said to him, Put your hand inside your cloak. And he put his hand inside his cloak, and he took it out. And behold, his hand was leprous like snow. Then God said, Put your hand back inside your cloak. So he put his hand back inside his cloak.

And when he took it out, behold, it was restored like the rest of his flesh. If they will not believe you, God said, or listen to the first sign, they may believe the later sign. If they will not believe even these two signs or listen to your voice, you shall take some water from the Nile and put it on the dry ground. And the water that you shall take from the Nile will become blood on the dry ground.' But Moses said to the Lord, O my Lord, I am not eloquent, either in the past or since You have spoken to Your servant, but I am slow of speech and of tongue.

Then the Lord said to him, Who has made man's mouth? Who makes his mute? Who makes him mute or deaf or seeing or blind? Said not I, the Lord. Now, therefore, go and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak.

But he said, Oh, my Lord, please send someone else. Then the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses, and he said, Is there not Aaron, your brother, the Levite? I know that he can speak well. Behold, he is coming out to meet you, and when he sees you, he will be glad in his heart. You shall speak to him and put the words in his mouth, and I will be with your mouth and with his mouth, and I will teach you both what to do.

He shall speak for you to the people, and he shall be your mouth, and you shall be as God to him. And take in your hand this staff, with which you shall do the signs.' 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 in 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 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 first son. At a lodging place, and 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 led him along. It was then that she said, A bridegroom of blood because of the circumcision.

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 worshiped." Amen. This is the words of God. What a chapter we have.

before us, beloved brethren. This chapter can be divided into two conversations, and this is how I want you to see it. Two important conversations we have here of God with men. One conversation with Moses, which is a continuation of the conversation that started in Chapter 3. And the second conversation, the conversation of God with Aaron, his brother, who is three years older than Moses, that starts, we can see it in verse 27 of the chapter that we have in front of us.

The outcomes of those two conversations are somehow similar, but somehow different. Aaron is going to respond in faith. and obedience. The Lord is going to say to him in verse 27, go into the wilderness. That is the wilderness of Sinai.

He was in Egypt. Go into the wilderness and you're going to meet up your brother. And what Aaron does is that in faith, he goes into the wilderness of Sinai with faith. And he actually ends up meeting Moses, who is the character of the first conversation that is coming from chapter three. The outcomes of these two conversations are going to be similar somehow, but also different.

Now, the importance, beloved brethren, of the conversation that God is having with Moses, it is in the fact that, as I said last week, this is the beginnings of the covenantal dealings of God with Israel through Moses, who is going to be the prophet of God. unto his people and who has been commanded to take the living oracles of God to bring them to the people of Israel with the promise of the liberation from the bondage that they have in the land of Egypt. This is very important and crucial for us to understand. This is the last verse of chapter two that God remembered the groanings, chapter 2, verse 24, that God remembered the groanings or the sorrow or the crying out of God's people, Israel. And then when He listened or heard to those groanings, then He remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

And then He acknowledged those groanings as the covenantal groanings of His people. It's from there that the conversation of God with Moses is derived, is the covenantal beginnings of God's dealings with His people. And Moses being the prophet of God or the patriarch of God, if you want, is going to meet up with God face to face in a similar way that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob met with Him in the book of Genesis. What I said last week to you, beloved brethren, is that the difference of this encounter of God with Moses is that now God is coming down to visit His people and to dwell among His people. When He was coming to visit Abraham and Isaac and Jacob in the book of Genesis, He will come down temporarily.

He will manifest Himself to them. He will reveal Himself to them. He will give them a promise and then He will depart. It was a temporary visitation or a temporary visit. better that God will have with the patriarchs.

But here, God is going to reveal to Moses with His covenantal name, I Am, He is going to reveal in chapter 3, in the place of God, the mountain of God in Horeb, Sinai, this is the place of God. And He is going to give him a covenantal promise that we found it in chapter 3, verse 16, when He says basically three things. Go to the elders, this is very important, three things. Go to the elders and the people of Israel and tell them that I have appeared to you, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who God is, the great I am. Second thing, tell them that I have listened or heard their groanings and their sorrows and that I have come down to visit them and that I'm going to take them out of Egypt.

And the third important thing, tell them that I'm going to bring them to this promised land, the lands of the Canaanites and all of these tribes. These are the three very important things. These are the three aspects of things that Moses was entrusted to bring as the prophet of God to the people of Israel. And then we have the answer to this calling or the response of Moses to this calling in chapter 4. which is sadly a response of unbelief.

He is going to present excuses before the Lord. He's going to say the first one, they will not listen. They will not believe. You're sending me to the elders and to the people of Israel. They will not listen to that.

but as a prophet needs these testing signs of God that this man is speaking of God, then God is going to use the unbelief and the lack of faith of Moses to actually give him the signs and the miracles and the wonders that will attest not only of the covenantal God who has sent him, but also that indeed this God has appeared to him, Moses, the prophet of God. They will not believe. What is that that you have in your hand? The Lord says to Moses, it is a staff. Throw it to the ground.

And when it was on the ground, it became a serpent. Take it back again and it will become a staff again. The first sign given. Three glorious transformations. Three glorious transformations that can only be performed by the mighty power of God.

Put your hand inside your clothes, and then when He took it out, it became a leprosy hand. Put it back inside, and now it's healed. Transformations that can only be performed by the hand of God. If they do not listen to the first sign or to the second sign, if they do not listen, A sign is something that you see, yet the Lord says to him, if they do not listen to the signs that I have given you, my prophet, then perform the third sign, take some water from the Nile and then pour it because it will become blood. The prophet is being empowered now with the testing signs that prove that he is the man of God.

But not only that, the Lord is going to empower this prophet with the authority that is necessary in the speech. He is going to do it through the weakness and the unbelief of Moses, because he's going to come with a second excuse. I'm not eloquent. I'm not good of his speech. The Lord is going to give two answers to that excuse.

The first one is his sovereignty, power and who he is as the creator of everything. I'm the one, I'm the owner of the mouth of men. I'm the one who is the owner of the sight of men. I'm the owner of everything. I produce this and I do this.

I am God, sovereign over everything. So he says, therefore, go and speak. Yet Moses, in his unbelief, he says, Please, Lord, send someone else. Then is when the Lord speaks of Aaron, his older brother, coming to meet him with gladness. He was in Egypt, and now he's going to come and meet him in the wilderness at Sinai.

And he is going to use now Aaron to give the authority of the words that Moses thought that he did not have. So now this prophet is not only empowered with the testing signs of a man of God and all these miracles, but now he's also empowered with the authority of words, even if they are spoken through another prophet, Aaron. So Moses is going to be like God unto Moses, but... The words of God will end up in the ears of His people because God is the one that is speaking. So He preserves the message through the mind of Moses into the mouth of Aaron and into His people as recipients of that.

But not only that, beloved brethren, this is the beginning of the covenantal dealings of God with His people. Beloved brethren, this is the beginning of the covenantal dealings of God with His people. So a prophet was not only meant to have these testing signs of the authority of the message that he was communicating and the authority that he had to have in the speech when it was being proclaimed, but also this prophet had to be a covenant keeper prophet. And this is when we have the difficult passage here that probably is what you have in your mind and expecting me to address, which is containing verse 24. We have this story there in which Moses is now responding.

to the call of God after these excuses that had been presented. Now he's responding to this call of God to actually leave Midian, which was the land in which he was with Jethro and the family of Jethro and his wife. And now he's leaving the land and going back to Egypt to perform the things that he was called to do. But during that trip, during that journey, something is going to happen. The Lord is going to appear, is going to reveal himself to them.

And Cipra, his wife, is going to do something very particular. She's going to take a knife or a stone or something like this, and then she is going to cut the foreskins of his sons. She's going to circumcise his sons. Moses' son, first son. And then something very interesting is going to say here.

She's going to say, 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 their circumcision. Now, beloved brethren, so many attempts to address this particular section of Scripture here by many men, many attempts to interpret what we have here. And the only thing that I want you to get from this portion of Scripture is, first of all, that us limited men, when we approach a section of Scripture that is difficult for us to understand, We have to submit ourselves to that which the text says and do not go beyond of that which Scripture says.

Because every time that we go beyond of what Scripture says, then we leave a speculation for the powers of our mind. And our minds are corrupt and wicked and deceitful. So we always come with the principle of Scripture, interpreting the Scripture, even if the interpretation that we get out of it does not fulfill the requirements of our fleshly intentions to have everything in a set of doctrines that clearly speaks of something. So Scripture interpreting Scripture, beloved brethren, we have Moses abiding in a Gentile land. He had left the covenantal people and he had departed.

He had departed from the presence of Israel as the covenant people of God. And he had traveled to Midian, to the hidden, if you want. And over there he had found for himself a wife who was not a member of the covenant people of God. He was the prophet of the covenant that was given to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. And you remember in Genesis 17, when the covenant was given to Abraham, the sign of the covenant given to Abraham was circumcision.

Every male from among you will be circumcised in the eighth day, even those foreigners and even those who come and live among you. If they are not circumcised, speaking of male in Genesis 17, then those men will be cast out or removed from the presence from the covenant people. Moses, of course, had been circumcised being the son of a Hebrew, but then being just removed from the presence. However, the family that he belonged to, Zipporah, and therefore his sons had not been circumcised. Zipporah was not supposed to be circumcised, but his sons, they were supposed to be circumcised.

Beloved brethren, The participation of the obedience to the commandment given to Abraham will not only purify covenantally the men into the covenant, but also the family of the men into the covenant. It was important that an Israelite family will have all the males, including father and son, circumcised so they will be covenantally accepted. Beloved brethren, Three relationships here the author of Genesis is going to present to us. He says, when you go to Egypt, speaking to Moses, tell him that Israel is my first son, that is my firstborn, that is my son, God as the father of Israel, as the firstborn of the first son. Then he says, if he does not let you go, then tell him that Pharaoh that I'm going to destroy, that I'm going to kill his first son, his first born.

Initially, or after that, the author of Genesis is going to take us to this important teaching or relationship of what circumcision produced in the family of a family for the people of Israel. When Moses and Zipporah with their son were coming back to the people of Israel, they had to be covenantally accepted within the people of Israel to accomplish that which he was called to do. The only reason, beloved brethren, why I'm saying this is because Moses was the shadow of the prophet like unto Moses. When Stephen is speaking of Moses as the one holding the oracles of God, he says that there will be another prophet like Moses and this prophet will contain these three important characteristics. This prophet will be in power with the attesting signs.

This is what Peter says in Acts chapter 2, that Jesus Christ is the man that came and performed all these mighty wonders among you, speaking to the Israelites and the ones that you have crucified, the mighty wonders and signs that God performed through him, Jesus Christ. Why? Because Christ also had these testing signs and miracles and wonders that were proving that he was the prophet of God, the ones who was bringing a better covenant. And this prophet, like unto Moses, will speak with the authority of the son of God. Why?

Because he was not only speaking the living oracles of God, as Moses was, but he was the word of God himself. And these prophets like unto Moses, the Lord Jesus Christ, being a fulfillment of who Moses is, will be a man who will be born under the covenant of the law, circumcised at the end day, keeping the entirety of the law, and a person who will keep all the requirements of the covenant, covenantally accepted, so that when he becomes the sacrifice, He is the perfect sacrifice and death has no power over Him, becoming the means by which all who by grace through faith are united to Him become covenantally accepted. Now, beloved brethren, we have here the beginning of the covenantal dealings of God with his people through Moses, being a shadow of Jesus Christ, the one that intercedes between God's people and God himself, the only mediator between God and men, Jesus Christ, the one that pays the price of our sins and our unrighteousness and makes us covenantally accepted before God. But something that I want you to point and see here, beloved brethren, is that the message that was given to Moses was that they might believe that I have appeared to you, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, that I'm going to take you out of the land of Egypt and that I'm going to take you into the promised land. The last verse of this chapter is terrifying.

Because the people who died in the wilderness, because they did not carry on believing, it is said to us that the people believed. And when they heard that the Lord had visited the people of Israel, and that they had seen their affliction, they bowed their heads and worshipped. Now the faith that they had is not the same faith that is given by Christ by grace and unites the saint to him eternally and they cannot be separated. But they had a type of faith that was sufficient for God to use his prophet and to take these people out of the land. A type of faith that even brought them down to their knees to worship the God that they did not believe for the entirety of the mission that had been given to them through the lips of Moses, but in Christ.

By listening to Christ, we are not required to be circumcised in the flesh to be covenantally accepted. We are required to be circumcised, not with a knife, not with a stone, but by the Spirit of Christ in the flesh, in the heart. so that we are united to Him, preserved and kept in Him, the prophet like unto Moses, attested by signs, with authority of His Word, the covenant keeper who makes us, beloved brethren, covenant keepers. Amen.