Moses - Steps to a Life of Faith by Saffrin Bob

Author:Saffrin, Bob [Saffrin, Bob]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Village Media
Published: 2011-11-21T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 14

______________

The Road Back to Egypt

Then Moses went back to Jethro, his father-in-law, and said to him, “Let me go back to my own people in Egypt to see if any of them are still alive.” Jethro said, “Go, and I wish you well” (Ex 4:18).

It doesn’t sound like Moses shared his burning bush experience with his father-in-law, Jethro. Do you think that maybe when we have deep intimate contact with God that we may be slow to share it with others? Maybe his experience with Jehovah was so intimate and personal that he wanted to keep it to himself.

Now the LORD had said to Moses in Midian, “Go back to Egypt, for all the men who wanted to kill you are dead.” So Moses took his wife and sons, put them on a donkey and started back to Egypt. And he took the staff of God in his hand (Ex 4:19-20).

Notice that the shepherd’s staff is now the staff of God. What belonged to Moses is now God’s. Before, the staff was used by Moses for his purposes. Now it is to be used by God for his purposes. Hold onto that thought. And so Moses and his family set out for Egypt.

At a lodging place on the way, the LORD met [Moses] and was about to kill him. But Zipporah took a flint knife, cut off her son's foreskin and touched [Moses'] feet with it. “Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me,” she said. So the LORD let him alone. (At that time she said “bridegroom of blood,” referring to circumcision.) (Ex 4:24-26).

Whoa! What is going on here? At first these verses seem obscure and weird. What do they mean and why are they here? Let’s look closely. “At a lodging place on the way, the LORD met [Moses] and was about to kill him.” Actually, in the original, this says the Lord “tried” to kill him. Do you see a problem in that? The Lord doesn’t “try” to do something. It must be that we are struggling here with the language of what happened. If we were there it would be probably be clearer. My guess is that Moses came down with some very serious sickness, which they interpreted as God trying to kill him. That brings up another question. Why do we sometimes get sick? What are the reasons why we might get sick? (Glory of God, death, learn to trust and rely on God, the fall of man, and sometimes God is just trying to get our attention).

For Moses it is pretty obvious that God wanted to get his attention. One thing we know from the text, is that Moses’ son was not circumcised. This was a big deal for a Jew. Without circumcision, an Israelite was cut off from the covenant promises of God. From the text can you guess why Moses’ son wasn’t circumcised? Moses’ wife was a Midianite. The Midianites thought circumcision was disgusting. And so, Moses and Zipporah got the message from God loud and clear.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.