Why is it that we question God, even when we are standing on holy ground, in front of a burning bush? Why is it so hard for us to believe what God says?
We know this story, it preaches well. “The shepherds staff in your hand is a “rod of God’ in the hands of the Lord. In our hands it herds sheep, in God’s hands it guides nations”. We encourage each other to give to the Lord whatever we have, and He will use it to do wonderful things.
I notice a couple of other things this morning. God tells Moses that Aaron is on his way to see him, as He says it I envision that Aaron is nearby, approaching the mountain, because God says “Look…”. But Moses returns home, says his goodbyes, packs up the family and is on his way to Egypt before he runs into Aaron. It reminds me of my limited ability to see and understand what God is doing. For the Lord, it was all in the present…He could see it unfolding in front of Him. But for Moses it was in the future…unable to be seen. God is working all around you and I, but often we are unable to see it because we are limited by our humanness. Perhaps it’s that humanness and inability that causes us to doubt. How could anyone be standing in the very presence of God and still question His plan and authority?
I have said several times “Lord, if you would just tell me what you want me to do….out loud, plainly…..I will be happy to do it.” As I read this I realize that knowing what God wants of me is only part of the problem. Willingness to do what God wants constitutes the other part. I hadn’t considered this before, but I guess it’s possible to be unwilling even when God appears in person.
Oh, in case you’re wondering what the whole point of Zipporah circumcising her son is, or why God wanted to kill Moses after sending him on a mission….no one is positive about what that means. It could be that Moses hadn’t fulfilled his covenant arrangement with God to be circumcised, or that God considered him disobedient because he didn’t circumcise his son. Whatever the case, Moses wife acts wisely and quickly and the Lord relents. I wonder how she knew what was going on in the first place….this must not have been a dream, otherwise how would she know what was happening, or what to do about it. Anyway, I think we can all agree that Moses married well.
Chapter 5-6
Sometimes when you agree to serve the Lord, your situation seems to gets worse instead of better. That’s because there is a contest of wills being fought. If you stay obedient and continue to serve God, you will see powerful things happen just as Moses is going to. Pharaoh represents our old nature in a way…he resists and rebels. God will subdue the old nature, but it will put up a fight. We must remain strong and patient.
The list of names is to help us understand the role of people who will be mentioned later. Sometimes God assigned jobs based on what clan you came from. Jesus will be identified in one way by which clan he comes from…so keeping track of who married whom is important.
Amram is the father of Moses and Aaron, and the grandson of Levi. So Moses’ great-grandpa was Levi. I’m not sure what I’m missing here, but when I add up the number of years each person lived, subtracting 40 years at the beginning (since Levi didn’t show up in Egypt at his birth) I come up with almost the exact number of years they spent in Egypt. But that number would suggest that each father had a son the same year he died. So somehow my math is off a little. I know they spent 430 years in Egypt, and we have the total years each man lived, and we know that Moses was 40 when he left and 80 when he returned. It could be that the wives of each man were much younger, and they bore sons to the men in their old age.
Faithfully,
PR