COME AS A CHILD LESSON 117 THE ODDEST THINGS CAN HAPPEN ON THE WAY TO EGYPT

^{(Written by Sheila Gail Landgraf)}

 God told Moses to go back to Egypt.  God said that Moses should not be afraid because all of those who previously wanted to kill him were now dead.  Does this not remind you of Jacob going back to the land of his birth after so many years of working for Laban?  Both men had fears of returning, and God needed to reassure both of them.  I have found many parallels between the story of Jacob and the story of Moses as he left Midian to go to Egypt to do the will of God.  

Both Moses and Jacob had a strong influence in their lives from women.  Moses' life was saved several times by women, first the midwives, then his mother, then his sister, then Pharoah's daughter, then his wife Zipporah.  The part Zipporah played in saving Moses' life is in our lesson today.

 

Before leaving for his task in Egypt, Moses went back to Midian and spoke with Jethro (his father-in-law) and said to him, “Let me return to my own people in Egypt to see if any of them are still alive.”

Leaving Jethro must have been hard for Moses.  He had been like a true father to him.  This might have been even harder for Jethro.   Moses had been living with Jethro for 40 years now.  He had worked with him every day, tending his flocks.   Jethro had taken Moses into his home at a time when Moses was a homeless fugitive, and he had even allowed his daughter, Zipporah to marry Moses.  Now Jethro had two grandsons by Moses and Zipporah.    

The oldest grandson of Jethro was named Gershom (meaning I have become a foreigner in a foreign land), and the youngest, who was probably just born around the time that God called Moses out to go back to Egypt, was Eliezer. (Eliezer’s name means God delivers.) Though Jethro loved these two grandsons, he was not selfish and he did not think of himself.  He did not try to persuade Moses to stay for his sake.  He seemed to grasp the larger picture of the Hand of God on the life of Moses.  Jethro simply said, “Go, and I wish you well.”  This was similar, yet a complete opposite of the experience of Jacob with Laban.  Moses left his father-in-law on good terms, and Jacob left Laban on different terms.  Both men though, had foreign father-in-laws that they had to leave in another land.   Both men took away the daughters and grandchildren with them.

So Moses packed up his wife, children and possessions and set out traveling south toward Egypt.  He carried the staff of God in his hand as they traveled. 

The LORD spoke with Moses as they were on the way and said “When you return to Egypt, see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders I have given you the power to do.  But I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go.  Then say to Pharaoh, ‘This is what the LORD says:  Israel is my firstborn son, and I told you, “Let my son go, so he may worship me.  But you refused to let him go; so I will kill your firstborn son.” 

Moses listened to what God wanted him to do and must have thought this over all the way to Egypt.

Soon they had journeyed for a whole day and it was beginning to be evening.  They came to a place where they set up camp to rest for the night.  Many scripture passages say this was an inn, but it is mistranslated because there were no inns in the dessert between Midian and Egypt at that time.  There were resting stations here and there with empty shelters if you had your own provisions, but people basically just camped on the side of the road, wherever they were when evening came. 

Once Moses and his family arrive at their camp for the evening, we find out there is a very strange turn of events.  One minute everything seems to be fine, but suddenly we hear “in this place the LORD met Moses and was about to kill him.”

Would God kill Moses?  Now????

Why on earth would God do that?  He had just recruited Moses to go to Pharaoh and tell him to let His people go.  Apparently, Moses was being prepared for this moment his whole life.  Now on the first evening of his journey to do God’s will we hear that God comes looking for Moses to kill him!  Very strange words!  

It gets even stranger!  We then read of Zipporah coming to Moses’ rescue by taking a flint knife and cutting off her son’s foreskin and touching Moses’ feet with it!  What on earth could this mean?  Then she screams “Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me.”

What an odd thing to say; but apparently those were just the right words because the next thing we know God has let Moses go, and all seems to be well again.

A better translation of the words of Zipporah would be “How beloved is the blood that has delivered the bridegroom from the hand of The Angel of Death.”  Does that sound a little different to you?  The wording of the scriptures makes all of this very hard to understand.  

People have been trying to explain this strange scripture passage for ages.  There are many different interpretations and I have simply studied a lot of them and picked the parts that I feel are right.  I do not claim to know.  I am simply reporting what I learned from my own studies.  Don’t take my word for it.  Study it yourself and see the reason behind all the logic with your own eyes.  Do your own research and see if you agree or disagree.  This is a very hard passage to interpret! 

A good place to start the study would be to grasp a full understanding of the covenant of God with Abraham (this is a subject we have already covered in previous lessons) and to have a clear understanding of the ritual of circumcision. 

Remember in the covenant of Abraham there was a cutting ceremony with a heifer, a goat and a ram.  Their parts were laid out with an aisle between the two divided parts of each slaughtered animal.  It was customary for the weaker party of the covenant to pass between the body parts and pledge his loyalty to the stronger party by saying “May it be unto me as with these slaughtered animals if I fail to be loyal.”  It is very surprising that God was the only one to pass through the body parts in His covenant with Abraham.  That act put all the responsibility of keeping the covenant on God.  Abraham had absolutely nothing to do!  All of the oath of fulfilling the covenant fell on God.  God made Abraham unconditional promises.

It wasn’t until much later that Abraham took his oath to God by passing under the knife in the act of cutting his foreskin in the act of circumcision.  This was the same as Abraham saying “May I and my offspring be cut off if I do not act in loyalty toward God.”

Now it seemed that Moses had not kept the covenant of Abraham with God in that he had neglected to circumcise his first born son.  Moses had grown up in Egypt and these things would not have been so obvious to him when his first son had been born.  Yet, he knew of his own circumcision that had most likely been performed properly on the eighth day after his birth.  He was a foreigner in Midian, and had not been with his true people even growing up in Egypt.  Was it possible that Moses didn’t seem to know what was proper?  At his age, he probably DID know what would have been proper for a Hebrew.  Perhaps he could only realize what his Midian Father-in-law had shared with him.  Maybe it was the custom in Midian that the practice of circumcision did not to take place until a boy was 13 years old (as a rite of passage) instead of on the 8^th day after his birth, very similar to what their neighbors (the Ishmaelites) practiced.)  These things are unclear, but the thing that WAS clear was the fact that a child of Moses, a descendant of Abraham had not been circumcised.  

There is also the possibility that Zipporah did not understand the necessity of keeping Abraham’s covenant with God and did not wish to subject her son to the bloody ritual and therefore maybe she persuaded Moses that this act was not necessary.  This would have been long before Moses had the burning bush experience; so it might not have seemed so important or relevant to them at the time. 

Surely though, God knew all of these "ifs", "ands" and "buts."  They did not seem to matter.  We must remember that God looks at things from outside of time.  He knows the beginning from the end, the whole story, where we only see where we are standing now.  God KNEW that every firstborn son would die in Egypt unless they were protected by blood over their doorpost.  That would be the sign for the Angel of Death to pass over.  God had explained to Moses that he should tell Pharaoh these things, but was Moses being as stubborn as Pharaoh in neglecting to give his own son the protection of God that came from circumcision?  God could not have a man as guilty as Pharaoh commanding Pharaoh.  Moses’ disobedience in this matter needed to be tended to. 

It seemed to be clear that God was very angry and his wrath was coming toward Moses.  It was a righteous anger.  Maybe though, even this isn’t all it appears to be on the surface.  Some scholars have suggested that this wrath and anger and the fact that the scriptures say God was coming to kill Moses might have been just another form of speech which actually meant God was holding Moses in a “death grip.”  In other words, perhaps Moses was wrestling with God in a spiritual battle that affected him physically, very similar to the time when Jacob wrestled with God when God changed Jacob’s walk.

Moses needed very much to change his spiritual walk.  How could the leader of the people whom God had chosen to bring about the Messiah have violated the very sign that identified his descendants with God?  Could Moses proclaim God’s law to the people later when he had not even been observant of such things in his own life?  Any leader worth his weight must be true to the things he teaches to others.  Moses had been too careless.  God was about to change his attitude. 

It was obvious that whatever was going on between God and Moses had Moses totally debilitated to the point that when it became clear that God’s anger was all about not performing the act of circumcision, Moses could not even move or break loose to perform the act. Zipporah had to quickly step in and take the necessary action.   

Perhaps Moses was wrestling with God in the “death grip” in order to save the life of his son; most likely his first born son, since the new son might not yet be even eight days old. 

 It was clear from God’s commandment to Abraham about circumcision that all who were not circumcised would be cut off from their people.  It was the circumcision that identified the people as those who followed and believed God.  The bloody foreskin was a sign of God’s protection over them; just as the blood over the door post later became a sign of God’s protection over the first born sons while in Egypt.  God wasn’t just randomly getting mad and killing people who were uncircumcised, as some might have supposed. God was merely wanting his people to be clearly identified to others.  They were not to blend in with all the cultures around them.  

God wasn’t just making threats in anger; He was simply stating facts.  Moses’ son needed to be marked for God and not the pagan cultures around him.  Circumcision stood for proof of obedience to God.  When God had explained to Abraham that all who refused circumcision would be cut off God wasn’t just making idle threats.  God was simply stating the truth of the matter.  God wasn’t bringing punishment for unjust reasons, His anger was about the carelessness of decisions of disobedience that brought harm to the innocent.  

The cutting off was simply from the cause and effect of the wrong decisions of men; not the wrath of God.   God had offered them life.  If you cut yourself off from life; you die.  All of this comes simply from the cause and effects that men create for themselves whenever they are disobedient to God.  All of our choices have consequences.  God told Adam from the very beginning not to eat from the wrong tree, if he did; it resulted in death.  God told the people of Abraham to be circumcised, if they did not; they would be cut off.  It wasn't God's wrath that caused the troubles, it was the wrong decisions of the people.

So perhaps we should be looking at this text from a different perspective.  Instead of thinking “if we don’t circumcise ourselves, God will get angry with us and kill us, we should be remembering that  God doesn’t ask the impossible of us.  God wasn't angry with Moses' son.  He was angry with Moses.  

NO ONE IS ABLE TO CIRCUMCISE THEMSELVES.  Circumcision is something that someone else has to do for you.  Like Abraham’s covenant; all that matters is what God will do.  You can do nothing for yourself.  Everything depends on God and God alone.  But you must CHOSE to TRUST GOD.  You must allow yourself to receive the circumcision, which is today recognized as the state of our hearts through baptism.  

God had commanded that all Israelites be circumcised on the eighth day after their birth.  At this state the person being circumcised is just an infant, totally incapable of wielding a knife.  The child is circumcised by someone passing the blessing on to them.  They have done nothing to deserve it; and it is a free gift, but it must be passed on in order to take effect. 

Why would anyone neglect doing this?  How could Moses have overlooked something so important to God and expect God to protect them?

 Zipporah woke up to the truth just in time!  She saved her husband from the penalty of death he had brought on himself because of his sin of disobedience by shedding the blood of her son.  Once Zipporah performed this act of circumcision to redeem the sins of Moses, God was pleased and satisfied and He let Moses go. 

Whew!  For a moment I thought a whole nation might be lost!

It is the same situation for us today.  We are all freely blessed by God through the shed blood of Jesus Christ.  Circumcision was only a foreshadow of what happened with Jesus on the cross.  Just as our baptism symbolizes the circumcision of our hearts today.   

Innocent blood was shed to cover the sins of disobedient humanity in order to redeem them from the wrath of God.  There is a “death element” in circumcision as well as in baptism (the modern day circumcision.)  One must die to one’s self and turn his heart only toward God.  Jesus would say at a much later date; “If anyone wants to come after me he must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me daily.” 

All great men of God seem to go through such a time of testing.  The right decisions and the proper things must be done.  Abraham had such a time; Isaac and Jacob had such a time.  Jesus was tested in the wilderness by Satan.  The key to passing any test from God is obedience. In all of this wrestling with God, Moses had to learn to die to himself and be obedient to God.  Once Moses' own house was in order and all were submitted completely to God’s will, Moses was ready for God to begin to change his identity and make him a leader in the eyes of the people.   He was no longer Moses from Egypt, or Moses the Shepherd from Midian.  He became Moses The Leader of Israel, very similar to when God wrestled with Jacob and then changed his name.         

For anyone planning on leading others in a public way, it is always best and right to look at your own home first.  Do you have your personal affairs in order?  Have you done everything that God has commanded of you in the smaller things?  If you cannot handle your own home or you cannot take care of the smaller things of life; how would you expect God to allow you to lead others and take care of the larger things in life?  

God made sure that Moses did his homework before proceding.  All of the large things rested in the completion of many other smaller things.  Once this was taken care of, God and Moses were on the same page again.

What seemed like a really terrible bad day for Moses was actually a foreshadowing of the love of God for all of us in that Christ died for our sins and gave us eternal life.  Sometimes life with God is a matter of trusting and doing, even if you don't see the whole picture, even if you don't understand.  This is one thing that Abraham was good at.  This is one thing that God was determined that Moses would learn.  It is something that we could all take to heart.  Trust and obey - for there is no other way!