The Evacuation Initiated: Moses Called

The Evacuation Initiated: Moses Called

February 18, 2018

Summary and Goal

In dramatic fashion, God began to reveal His evacuation plan by calling Moses to be His mouthpiece to Pharaoh and the Egyptians. God wanted Moses to be sure to communicate exactly who was sending him and who would rescue them: I AM. God has been their God. God will be their God. God IS their God now.

Main Passages

Exodus 3

Session Outline

1.God Interrupts the Ordinary for the Extraordinary (Exodus 3:1-10)

2.Moses’ Questions, God’s Answers (Exodus 3:11-15)

3.God Explains His Plan (Exodus 3:16-22)

Theological Theme

When God calls us to serve Him, He does not just send us in our strength. He goes with us, empowers us, and brings about the completion of His plan.

Christ Connection

The call of Moses to be God’s instrument to free His people from slavery foreshadows the greater ministry of Christ to eternally free God’s people from sin and death.

Missional Application

When God sends believers in the world today, His power and presence go with us and accomplish His purpose.

Introduction

Throughout the Bible, God demonstrates a discernible pattern in the way He calls those whom He will use to further His redemptive work in the world. One of the distinctive characteristics is the calling of who would appear to be the least likely candidate. Abraham, at 75 years of age, was called to leave everything he knew that provided him with identity and security to go to a land he didn’t know and become the father of a great nation that, at his age, he presumably could not father. David was anointed king in a meeting he wasn’t even initially invited to because he was so small. Gideon was called to deliver his people from the Midianites while he was cowering in a winepress trying to use it to make bread. The examples are numerous, and they clearly show that God is the source of power when He calls.

Were any of the people to rely on their own strength to accomplish the tasks to which God had called them, every one of the tasks would end in failure. Some of them even testified to the fact that as the leader began to rely on his or her own ability, wisdom, or strength to accomplish something only God could, things went terribly awry.

Moses’ call fits in all of these categories. There could not have been a less likely person to send to the Egyptians as a negotiator for Israel’s freedom. But God’s power was at work in and through Moses to accomplish that to which Moses was called.

• What other examples in Scripture did God call who seemed like unlikely candidates?
• What does God’s calling of unlikely candidates tell you about who He can and will use to accomplish His purposes? How does that relate to you?
• Describe a time when you were shocked to learn the background of a person whose walk with Christ you respect. How do you think they felt when God first began to challenge them with the call on their life?

Session Summary

In this week’s session, God called Moses to lead the work of freeing His people from their enslavement to Pharaoh. Moses had been in self-imposed exile for 40 years, hiding in Midian, to escape the wrath of Pharaoh for killing an Egyptian overseer. In light of the monumental scope of the task, Moses had significant apprehension for assuming the role God was calling him to.

Moses’ apprehension, though, was based on his understanding of his own limitations. He was not thinking of the limitless power and sovereignty with which God could and would bring about what He said He would do. The passage for this week, then, is a look at what happens when God is the focus when He calls someone to serve Him.

1. God Interrupts the Ordinary for the Extraordinary (Exodus 3:1-10)

The close of Exodus 2, with God seeing and taking notice of the misery of the Israelites, was pregnant with anticipation of a coming savior for the enslaved in Egypt. The first sentence in Exodus 3, then, is full of drama. Beginning with “meanwhile,” the force of the sentence is that, while God was preparing to do something about the Israelites’ circumstances, Moses was just going through the motions of his daily routine. Significantly, his daily routine involved shepherding. Shepherding would have been an unimaginable occupation for an Egyptian, so Moses’ identification as a shepherd solidifies his identity as an Israelite. When he returned to Egypt, he would be doing so with no mixed allegiances.

When God appeared to Moses in the bush that was not consumed by fire, Moses was warned not to approach the fire. Fire is a widely used indication of the presence of God throughout the Bible. God’s warning not to approach drew the boundary that separated man from a holy God. God then reaffirmed the covenant that made Israel His peculiar people, by introducing Himself as the “God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” God placed Himself within the generations of human history so that Moses could understand that His faithfulness to the covenant was not dependent on a person, but on God’s own character.

• Passages like these emphasize the awe and holiness of God. What experiences have led you to sense the magnitude of God’s holiness? How did you respond in that moment?
• Moses’ identification as an Israelite meant that he no longer identified with the oppressive enslaver, but with those who need to be freed. How does that change in identification relate to salvation? How does it resonate with your change of identity in Jesus Christ?

After His divine covenantal introduction, God began to unfold for Moses His plan. The holy description began as a series of powerful verbs: “I have observed . . . have heard . . . and I know.” This succession of verbs answered the unasked questions: Where was God when all of these atrocities were taking place? Did He not know? To the contrary, He not only knew, but the empathic nature of these verbs also meant that God deeply felt the misery of His people.

Finally now, God announced, He was coming down to rescue them. He would evacuate them to a land of blessing. That sounded wonderful to Moses until God told him he was the one to lead the effort. In that moment, Moses must have remembered his many failures in Egypt that led to his self-imposed exile. After all, he wasn’t just going back to Egypt; he was going to Pharaoh.

2. Moses’ Questions, God’s Answers (Exodus 3:11-15)

The exhilaration of learning that God was finally coming to deliver His people must have had the opposite effect when Moses learned that he was the instrument through which God would bring about the deliverance. Moses still remembered the last time he was in Egypt. He remembered his sin. He remembered the rejection of his own people. He remembered the attempts of Pharaoh to have him killed. What is more, he now had a family.

When Moses posed his initial protest to God, God provided Moses with a promise and a fulfillment sign. This dynamic would become a familiar one through the history of Israel. The promise was that God would be with him, which meant that God would provide direct, special leadership to Moses as He guided him through this assignment. The fulfillment sign that God had actually kept this promise would be that all of Israel would return to the exact place where Moses stood at the burning bush, and worship God at Mt. Sinai.

• When was the last time something about your past caused you hesitancy in saying “yes” to an opportunity God had placed before you? How did you respond?
• How important is the vibrancy of your relationship with God when you consider daunting tasks? Why do you think so?

In what is perhaps the best-known passage in Exodus, God demonstrated a remarkable gesture of intimacy. Moses’ question was one indicative of a person who was accepting a call, anticipating questions to his credibility when he arrived. It was appropriate to expect this question given the polytheistic culture of Egypt. Moses could not have simply said, “God sent me,” because there were way too many gods in Egypt that could apply to. This was particularly true because Israel had been immersed in that polytheistic, Egyptian culture for over 400 years.

God gave Moses His covenant name, “Yahweh.” The force of His name, based on the Hebrew verb for “to be,” connotes that God is the Creator and Sustainer of everything that exists. His sovereignty over all things and all history is without rival or question. God then placed His covenant name in the context of the covenant He made with their patriarchs of Israel—Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God specified His timeless and unchangeable character, even amid the swirling circumstances in Israel’s history. He was not some new god Moses was returning with; He was the God who had been with Israel for centuries.

3. God Explains His Plan (Exodus 3:16-22)

With greater detail, God unfolded how His plan would proceed. Part of the greater detail was how the individuals Moses spoke with would respond to his message. God revealed that the elders of Israel would accept him and the message, which must have been an immense relief to Moses considering how he left the people of Israel four decades earlier. Pharaoh would not receive the message, but God revealed that ultimately the victory was His.

The message of the theophany that Moses took to Israel was heavily tied to the covenantal revelation God gave Abraham in Genesis 12 and 15. In Genesis 15, God even told Abraham that His people would be “foreigners in a land that does not belong to them; they will be enslaved and oppressed for 400 years” (Gen. 15:13). The clear connection was that, just as God had sustained and blessed their ancestors, His same provision and blessing would be with them, according to His redemptive purpose in the world.

• Even with this explanation, God didn’t reveal everything that would happen as Moses led the people. Describe a time when you had to trust God in a crucial situation. Did you know how every step would work out, or did God gradually and consistently show faithfulness?
• God also told Moses that Pharaoh would reject the request. Why is it important to understand that following God’s lead does not always lead to easy or enjoyable experiences?

Immediately after acknowledging that Pharaoh would refuse, God revealed the summary of the plagues that He would use to force Pharaoh to let the people go. While preparing Moses for the difficulty of the task ahead, God also assured Moses that He had the plan and the power to deliver the people. While Pharaoh was the most powerful king on earth, God is the I AM—He is sovereign over every created thing.

Conclusion

The call of Moses in Exodus is one of the most widely known call narratives in the Bible. What is generally less known is all of the factors in Moses’ life that made him, from an earthly perspective, the least likely candidate to go to Pharaoh on behalf of the Israelites. His past failures, his premeditated sin, and his rejection by the Israelites all made Moses a strange choice. However, in God’s sight, Moses was the perfect candidate for a variety of reasons that are beneficial for us to remember.

First, Moses had a humble soul. His self-imposed exile to Midian because of his sin and the consequences that came after had driven him away from his own people and the only home he’d ever known. In our vernacular, Moses was very much aware of his need for grace and of the severity of his sinfulness.

Second, Moses was bent toward action in stopping oppression. He acted to stop the oppression of a Hebrew slave (albeit in the wrong way). He acted to save Jethro’s daughters from the shepherds that prevented them from watering their flocks. Moses was a man of action when people needed to be liberated.

Third, Moses honored God. This may seem simplistic, but it’s vitally important to know that when God called, Moses responded. Even though overwhelmed at the size of the task, Moses’ responses indicated acceptance of the call. Moses revered and respected God.

When we understand that God calls all believers to personal ministry to the world, these same qualities are important for us. While we must be aware of our sinfulness, we must also have an understanding of what it means to be saved by grace. When we accept Christ, He redeems all of us. He restores us, in part, for His usefulness, so that we can share with others the grace we have experienced.

• When you think of God calling you to serve Him, how do you respond? Do you feel like He couldn’t use you because of past mistakes? Do you begin thinking about ways God could use your strengths?
• How does it impact your willingness to say “yes” to serving God when you understand, like Moses, that God will be with you, and that His power is ultimately responsible for accomplishing the task?
• God communicated His covenant name to Moses so that Moses would know who sent him. Christians have the Holy Spirit living inside of them. How does God’s desire for you to know Him shape your willingness to serve Him? How have you sensed that God might be drawing you to serve Him in ministry to others?

Prayer of Response

Pray that God will open the hearts of those in your group to the idea of serving Him. Pray that their intimacy with God will embolden them to trust God to empower their service, even when the calling is difficult.

Additional Resources

• The Call by OsGuiness
• Counter Culture by David Platt
• Living in the Power of the Holy Spirit by Charles Stanley
• How to be Filled with the Holy Spirit by A. W. Tozer

For Next Week

The Evacuation Announced: Moses Equipped

Main Passages

Exodus 4:1-17

Session Outline

1.Dealing with Doubt From Without (Exodus 4:1-9)

2.Dealing with Doubt From Within (Exodus 4:10-12)

3.Quit Delaying, Follow God’s Call (Exodus 4:13-17)

Memorize

14 God replied to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: I AM has sent me to you.” 15 God also said to Moses, “Say this to the Israelites: Yahweh, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you. This is My name forever; this is how I am to be remembered in every generation. –Exodus 3:14-15, HCSB

COMMENTARY

Exodus 3:1-22

3:1. As the story of Moses unfolds, we learn once again how sudden and unpredictable our lives can be in the service of God. But behind the scenes of 18 our lives is an invisible hand weaving a fabric with careful design. Perhaps the memories of his former life in Egypt and the knowledge of the still-oppressed people there slipped in and out of Moses’ consciousness.

For unknown reasons, Moses drove his father-in- law ‘s flock clear to the far side of the desert, all the way to Horeb, the mountain of God. Horeb was located in the peninsula of Sinai, where God later gave the law to Israel (18:5). Horeb and Sinai refer to the same mountain (cp. 33:6 with 19:11), but could also designate a series of mountains in the same vicinity.

3:2-6. Here the angel of the Lord appeared to Moses in flames of fire from within a bush. We could say that God appeared to Moses as the angel of the Lord With this appearance and continuing with the narrative that follows, the writer introduces to us something of the meaning behind the name Yahweh or Jehovah, the covenant God who cares for his people. This God, who remembers his covenant (6:5), will direct, deliver, and bless his people through his presence, or “active reality.” God did not create and situate a people merely to live for themselves on earth. He created a people to love and worship him.

God, for his part, would protect these people with a jealous love that would lead them to the promised land. The history of man now becomes the history of redemption, with this covenant God revealing himself as Yahweh , the ever-existing God who reveals himself in mercy and judgment. He stands ready to deliver, or redeem, his people from bondage. Although this bondage begins with political bondage in Egypt, God’s redemptive work goes far beyond that. With the revelation of God as Yahweh comes the unfolding teaching of the relation he sustains with a particular people. Subsequent writers of both the Old and New Testaments will develop this theme of God’s gracious choice of a nation and a people who are the apple of his eye.