Moses: making a rescuer (Exodus 3:1-7:7)
What are Exodus chapters 3-7 about? They can be hard to place in the book. The scene is set in chapters 1 and 2… God is going to fulfil his Abrahamic promise to bless his people abundantly by rescuing them out of Egypt, the place of evil and death. And yet, there are five whole chapters before the action comes in chapter 7 with the plagues and the LORD revealing his power against Pharaoh. How come? Is there more to them than being an inconvenient detour before the exciting stuff in chapter 7 and beyond? Why are they there, and what are they teaching us?
[Note – this blog is written assuming you have recently read
3:1-7:7. It may be valuable for you to do that now. It can be found online at https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus%203&version=ESV]
Option A: awesome declarations and promises
One answer to this question is to highlight some of the
amazing things that God says in this section. You might go to 3:14, where God
said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM”. From this, you might reflect on how God is
utterly unique and holy.
Alternatively, you could go to 6:6-8, where God declares to
Moses his wonderful rescue promise (for him to tell to the people of Israel). You
may particularly zoom in on the part in v7 where God says, ‘I will take you to
be my people, and I will be your God, and you shall know that I am the LORD
your God’, and reflect on the LORD and the hope of relationship with him he
gives to his people.
You may also say something about Pharaoh’s response to Moses
in 5:2, where he arrogantly says, “Who is the LORD, that I should obey his
voice and let Israel go? I do not know the LORD, and moreover, I will not let
Israel go”. And from this, you might reflect on the arrogant, proud opposition
to the LORD Pharaoh demonstrates, teeing up him coming to know the LORD through
the plagues.
There really is great value to looking at each of these.
However, a question may still linger in the back your mind… what about the
other 95% in chapters 3-7? What are they doing in Exodus? There must be
something more to this section than just 3 headline statements.
Option B: a narrative about Moses?
We already have had a clue as to the big focus of this
section in our quotes above. Who is it the LORD says, ‘I AM WHO I AM’ to? One
person: Moses. Who is it that the LORD tells his promise to, for him to tell it
to others? Moses. Who is it that Pharaoh responds to? Moses. Moses is everywhere.
In fact, Moses is in the scene for 95 of the 113 verses in
this section, and the 18 verses where he is not present seem to be about him
too (5:14-19 are about the problem he caused with Pharaoh, and 6:14-25 are a
genealogy answering his question in 6:12). Exodus 3:1-7:7 seems to be all about
Moses.
But – what does this mean? What is the actual message of
these chapters for us as readers?
Letting the narrative be our teacher
To answer this question, we need to immerse ourselves in the
story. Rather than focusing on highlight verses, we want to listen carefully to
the whole narrative itself. This is the way to hear the message God has for us
in this book.
The story of 3:1-7:7: The LORD changes Moses from being a
rubbish rescuer to being an amazing rescuer
Part 1: Moses the rubbish rescuer (chapters 3-4)
The story starts out in chapters three and four with a very
long chat between God and Moses. God gives Moses a massive job. In 3:10, he
tells him, ‘I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the
children of Israel, out of Egypt’. Moses is God’s rescuer.
Except, Moses is a rubbish rescuer in these chapters. The
whole of his chat with God is him trying one excuse after another to get himself
out of the job as the rescuer, so much so he makes God angry because of his
refusal to help his people (4:14). Things reach their peak in 4:24-26, where it
is revealed that he had not even circumcised his own son. Back then, that was a
way of saying you didn’t even believe in God – he had next to no faith in the
LORD. Moses is the rescuer we do not want in chapters 3 and 4. Yet, the LORD is
patient and kind with Moses, telling him everything he needs to know, answering
all of his questions, equipping him for the job of rescuing his people.
Part 2: Moses the slightly better but still inadequate
rescuer (chapter 5)
By chapter 5, there seems to be some improvement in Moses’
credentials. Aaron had told God’s rescue promises to the people (4:31) and
Moses had the courage to tell Pharaoh to let Israel go (5:1-3). But there are
still some serious question marks about Moses at this point. He goes off script
from God’s instruction when speaking to Israel and to Pharaoh (Aaron did the
signs instead of him 4:31, and both times he doesn’t say exactly what God told
him to in 5:1-3 (compared to 3:18) and doesn’t take the elders with him). And
when Pharaoh makes life worse for Israel after Moses’ request, not only do the
people grumble (5:21), but Moses grumbles too (5:22-23). He is faithless in
hard times just like the people, and is still not the rescuer we want or the
rescuer we need.
Part 3: Moses the amazing rescuer (chapters 6-7)
However, things change in chapters six and seven. The LORD
speaks to Moses again, reminding him of his promise and his character. Hearing
the LORD’s words, Moses does his job better in 6:9, speaking the promise rightly
to the people. But he still has doubts after the people don’t listen (6:10-12),
and again the LORD tells Moses exactly what he needs to hear – his promise to
give Moses everything he needs to rescue the people (7:1-5).
By the end, Moses is the ideal rescuer. 7:6-7 are a
reference back to Genesis 7:5-6, where Moses is made to sound like a previous
rescuer who was righteous, blameless, who walked with God, who trusted the LORD
and brought a whole new creation - Noah. Moses now is fully obedient to the
LORD’s voice, trusting his promise fully, and ready to go toe to toe with the
scariest, most powerful man on earth (Pharaoh).
Drawing it together
3:1-7:7 is a story about Moses going from being a rubbish
rescuer who was scared of man and did not trust the LORD, to becoming an
amazing rescuer who knew God’s promise deeply, trusted him fully, and so obeyed
him completely as the rescuer of the nation.
That is the story of 3:1-7:7. But still, we haven’t yet
answered our question: what is the message of these chapters for us?
The story of 3:1-7:7 in the book of Exodus: teaching us
about the future rescue we really need
Exodus as a book is written to help us look forward to a
future rescue that the LORD will do: a ‘new exodus’ rescue, like the original
but even bigger and better. This means that 3:1-7:7 is written to help us
understand what this new exodus rescue will be like, and to have faith in the
LORD that he will bring this rescue. Knowing this, we can draw together the
message of these five chapters for us:
Give thanks for the amazing new exodus rescuer
Moses to start with is complete disaster of a rescuer. With
him like he was in chapters 3-4, the people of Israel would have had no rescue
and instead have had slavery and death. A rubbish rescuer who fears Pharaoh and
doesn’t trust the LORD is a tragedy. And yet, that is not the rescuer the LORD
provides his people. He moulds Moses into an amazing rescuer to show us the
kind of rescuer he would give us. Not one who grumbles like we so easily do,
but one who does not fear Pharaoh even though he is the most powerful man on
earth. Not one who forgets God’s promises when the going gets tough, but one
who knows them and trusts them in the deepest recesses of his heart. And this
is the rescuer we have in Jesus. What an amazing rescuer we have, who never
wavered from trusting God where we would have done, who didn’t fear the
powerful nations that opposed him, who was so committed to rescuing us that he
was faithful always even unto death. And in his absence, we can be confident of
his return to finish the rescue, because he is the perfect rescuer that we
really need, and that we really do have.
Give thanks for the rescuer-providing LORD
Lots of Exodus helps us understand the LORD better, whether
we see his power manifest against Pharaoh in the plagues or his grace manifest
to the people in the wilderness. And in 3:1-7:7, we see that the LORD is the kind
of God who provides the rescuer his people really need. It is the LORD that
changes Moses throughout the section, reminding him of the promise, answering
all his fears, equipping him with everything he needs to rescue. And this shows
us what God is like at his core – a God so committed to rescuing his people
that he will provide them with a rescuer that will get the job done. When John
says, ‘For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son’, this is not a
surprise. Because God cares about his rescue that he provided the perfect
person for the job, even though it meant giving his one and only Son.
What a wonderful God we have: an-amazing-rescuer-providing God.
(If you can come up with a more catchy tagline, hit me up).
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