Today we meet Moses for the first time in the book of the Exodus. So we are looking at a chapter, chapter 2 of Exodus today in which we are meeting Moses and there is a series of folk we are going to meet in this chapter. We are going to meet Miriam and Moses and we are also going to meet a Midianite whose name is Jethro. He also has two other names. and Hobab but then even our own congregation we have some people with 2 or 3 names don't we? If Nicholas were here I'd smile at him but he's not. And there's also a couple of unseen players behind the scenes and we'll come to them as well. And we'll also towards the end if the Lord gives us time we'll look at Psalm 80 as we come towards the end of our time. And one of the things that strikes us as we start reading the story of Exodus and we see how that event unfolds and all that happens is conducted, we find that in effect the Exodus is a family affair. The central figures in the story of the Exodus are all related to one another. We know from Exodus chapter 15 verse 20 and when we compare that to other places in Numbers, for example Numbers chapter 26 verse 59, we know that the mother of Moses was called Jochebed and Jochebed means Yahweh her glory. So Moses' mother was a covenant woman and a woman of faith but there were other children that Jochebed had given birth to and we learn that the eldest of those was Miriam And though she's not named in the passage, it's Miriam who is the sister that's referred to here in Exodus chapter 2. We know that Aaron is just about 3 years older than Moses because a little later we find that Moses comes to speak to the new Pharaoh. Remember we have the Pharaoh of the oppression who dies at the end of Exodus chapter 2 and then at another time 40 years later roughly you have Moses coming back speaking to another Pharaoh. He is called sometimes in the commentaries the Pharaoh of the Exodus. And when Moses comes to speak with him he is 80 and Aaron is 83. And when we read those passages in the Old Testament which bring a commentary on On the event of the Exodus, and there are many, many of them, Isaiah chapter 63, 7-14 is one passage. Many of the Psalms make comments on the Exodus. Many passages in the Prophets, for example in Micah chapter 6 verse 4, you can look it up later on. These commentaries make it very plain that Aaron and Miriam and Moses were appointed by God to be the shepherds of God's flock at this point. Along with them we meet this man called Jethro, also called Ruel and one place in Judges he is called Hobab. Jethro is related to Moses by marriage. He is Moses' father-in-law. And he becomes a very significant figure in the book of Exodus particularly when we come to Exodus chapter 18 which is a sort of linking chapter as the people have come out. after the events of the Passover and they are assembled and Moses tells Jethro all that's happened because his wife Zipporah and his sons were not with him. He and Aaron were in Egypt doing their work and they came back and Jethro brought his wife Zipporah and his sons with him and they met and Moses explains to Jethro everything that's going on and Jethro then acts as a central figure in the question of how he comes to know who God really is and we'll say a little bit more about that later. But Jethro is a Midianite and again the Midianites were significant and we'll come to why Moses went to the land of Midian rather than elsewhere in a minute. So Exodus chapter 2 tells us of the birth of this child Moses And the actions of his mother, who is not named here, but we know from elsewhere is Jochebed. And in that action, according to Hebrews chapter 11 verse 23, which is a New Testament commentary on the event of the Exodus. In that chapter, Jochebed's action is an action of faith. By faith, she hid Moses for three months. until she could hide him no longer. And when we see what she did to Moses after that, we could also say that by faith she cast Moses into the Nile. Now that action of faith, and again in the New Testament as we said last week, Stephen in Acts chapter 7 gives us a commentary on the events of the Exodus. He says that they recognised, that is Moses' mother and father recognised that this child was lovely in the sight of God. In Hebrews it says that he was a beautiful child. What those references are indicating is that as the child was born Moses' parents recognised that there was something very, very special about this child. Now what you come to see, not least in Exodus chapter 2, but also further afield in the book of Exodus, what you come to see very clearly is that there is nothing special about Moses himself. Moses is painted throughout Exodus warts and all. He is shown to be a man of deep sinful human frailties and failings. In Exodus chapter 2 we read of the fact that he actually murdered someone. So Moses is not special because there's something about Moses. Now there's a historian, a Jewish historian called Josephus and if you look at Josephus writings on the internet or elsewhere, Josephus has long passages about the exploits of Moses when he was a princeling in Egypt and how he set about defeating the Ethiopians and clubbing them and riding his chariots over them and it gives the impression because Josephus was writing with a political end in view. It gives the impression that Moses is this great, heroic, strong deliverer figure in his own strength. And perhaps there was an element of that in Moses, but before he could be truly effective all of that had to be knocked out of him. So Moses is this special child, this one who is lovely in the sight of God, this chosen child, this anointed one, this appointed one along with Miriam and Aaron to deliver the flock of God. As the story unfolds you see that there is a little bit of sibling rivalry that goes on between Aaron and Miriam against Moses and that sort of jealousy leads to some terrible judgements and problems that come amidst the people of God. but nonetheless they were a family who were covenanted by God's grace into the membership of God's people and as a family they were used to bring the deliverance of God's people about. So Moses' mother sees this beautiful, anointed, appointed, special child, lovely in the sight of God. hides him, she can't bear to bring herself to obey the king's edict to drown him in the river Nile. And so she eventually, when she can hide him no longer, obeys the edict in a roundabout way, she casts him into the Nile but in a little ark. Some translations here have basket, some of the older translations have ark. It's sort of an ark basket if you can think about it. It's a waterproof box and some of the language here is reminiscent of the way in which Noah was to build his ark in Genesis 6. And the picture is of a salvation boat that Moses is placed into this wonderfully constructed intricate little salvation basket ark, covered over so it wouldn't sink. placed in the shallows so it wouldn't get carried away by the currents and Miriam, his eldest elder sister, stands and watches. Now if you've been to the east or in other countries you will see that the shallows of a river are where all the action happens. People are coming back and forth to draw water, they're coming to wash clothes, they're coming to bathe. So by placing this ark basket this salvation boat in the place where it was placed, Moses' mother is expecting it to be found. The question is, who would find it and what would they do? Pharaoh's daughters comes down and you think, well, how could all of this happen and eventually Moses be taken into Pharaoh's daughter's household? Well, these god kings, whom the Pharaohs understood themselves to be, were prolific in terms of their paternalising of the nation and it's said, for example, that Ramses II, who may possibly be the Pharaoh of the Exodus, had 60 daughters. as well as a number of sons because they had very many, many wives. And all of these daughters were kept in lodges, stroke palaces, big country homes with their staff and with their retinue and they had everything that they could need for a wonderful existence in the land of Egypt and so this daughter of Pharaoh, unnamed, comes and bathes and she sees, sends her maid to find out what is in this basket and when they open up the covering on it, the sort of little curtain thing that would have kept the son off baby Moses, there's a child in there. And what tugs at the heart of a woman and a mother possibly more than anything else than a crying child. And she says it's one of the Hebrew's children but she has pity on him. Now at that point Miriam says here's a chance and she goes up and says would you like me to try and find someone who can nurse the child. In the old translations it says a wet nurse, someone who can suckle the child from his own people. And the princess thinks, that's a very good idea. And so Miriam goes back to her mum. And throughout Exodus, we read Exodus as a very serious book. But actually you can't have holiness without joy in the scriptures. And at various points in the book of the Exodus, there are really delightful, humorous passages. And in a joyous irony, Dear Moses is suckled by his mother and brought up by her and she's paid to do it. And over those years Moses from his mother learns who he is and he learns what his people have been promised in the covenant and he learns where they've come from and he learns something about their destiny. And then at a certain point, probably at the age of about 10 to 13, when he's coming into some sense of adolescent maturity, he's taken back into the princess' household to be instructed in all the ways of Egypt. Now again we might think, oh this sounds a little bit unusual, but in fact there's many, many examples in the ancient Near Eastern literature and stories and accounts, there's many examples of foundlings who were taken into noble or royal households and who were brought up to positions of great responsibility and power. In fact, it's something that's happened all the way through history. After the Egyptians, the Babylonians did it and the Medes and Persians did it. Just think of Daniel. He wasn't a foundling but he did the same. Think of Joseph in Egypt beforehand. how he was raised up to that position. And then as you follow through history, both the Greeks and the Romans have done it and then you come into more modern history, the last great empire when we were children at school all of the map was pink or a quarter of it. The British Empire did the same. It was a way in which people could be drawn into the heart of what people understood to be the pinnacle of civilisation, whether it be Greek or Roman or Medo-Persian or British and could be taught in that way so that they could be a blessing to their people and so also that the empire could benefit from their knowledge. So what you read of here is not unusual at all and Moses was brought up as a princeling in Egypt. He would not have been in the line of inheritance but he would have been in the line of those people who are recognised as nobles and given great status because of that. So from Jocheved, that's his mother, Moses would have come to know something of who God is and something about what God had promised. But Moses did not yet know God. Now that's one of the big themes of Exodus and we'll come to it time and time again. In Exodus the whole story is how does a person come to know God? Pharaoh comes to know who God is but because he's impenitent, unrepentant, he only knows him through judgement. Moses comes to know who God is. Jethro, we'll hear about a little later, comes to know who God is. The whole of the people of Israel, who is this God? They come to know who God is. The whole story of the Exodus is how people come to know who God is. Now one of the things that's so central to Moses' experience and I think it's a general rule that there can be no final lasting ministry of fruitfulness unless there has been utter failure somewhere along the way. The Lord has to empty out all of our self-trust, all of the trust in our own abilities and powers. He has to empty the church, His people, Throughout history he's had to do it. He's doing it again in our day. He has to empty the church of all of its trust in itself and its systems and its pragmatic approaches and he has to somehow or other bring a man or a woman or a nation or his people generally. He has to wean them off all the things in which they would trust so that they would have their trust fixed on God alone. One of the verses which we have often heard Grant quote here in this congregation is, As the loin cloth clings to the loin of a man, so you have created your people to cling to you. And Moses understood who he was and he understood who his people were and he understood what the promises were that God had made to his people And he received or understood I think the fact that God had given to him providentially a remarkable upbringing. He had on the one hand all of the knowledge of that covenant faithfulness and on the other hand he had the position of power and authority to do something about it so he thought. And so when he sees an Egyptian mistreating one of his own people, he decides, ah, this is it. Now I can rise up to the full pitch of my authority. Usually happens when you're about 40, doesn't it? When you really think you're at your powers, you younger ones have got a way to go yet. And some of the older ones are looking back and thought, yeah, been there, done that, we are just so over. And he tries by his own hands and the commentary that Stephen makes on this event in Acts chapter 7 verse 25 is that Moses thought that his people would understand that he was delivering them from their oppression. Of course Moses was doing no such thing. He was simply engaging in an act of violence and murder. Do not fret, it leads only to evil doing. And when the matter is discovered he has to flee. He flees to the land of Midian and there he for 40 years becomes a shepherd. It is a very significant thing that the two greatest leaders in Israel's history, Moses and David, were shepherds. The reason that's significant is because in the Old Testament the kings were understood to be shepherds of the flock of God. The good kings in Moses, although he was not technically a king as the leader of the flock, and David as the king over his flock, the good shepherds were good shepherds of his people. They had learned in the wilderness and in just a humble pursuit of their shepherding enterprise they had learned what it was that was close to God's heart. The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. They knew God through their shepherding. Interestingly enough Saul it seems was a failed shepherd and he failed as a shepherd of God's flock. But what's also very significant for us and again we'll keep bumping into it as we come through the book of the Exodus is that the exodus itself and the wilderness wanderings and everything that happens during that time is described as God being the shepherd of his people Israel and he sends ahead of them Moses and Aaron as shepherds of the flock and then as you come later in the Old Testament to the prophets, they talk about a new exodus which is going to take place, a new bringing out of bondage and because they recognise from the story of the exodus that that bringing out of bondage has to be an action of God the shepherd, so in Isaiah and other places you read that that new exodus is going to need a new shepherd. In Ezekiel chapter 34 you read about God bringing about this new exodus, gathering together his flock and there will be one shepherd over them. my servant David and there will be one flock and then suddenly in John chapter 10 you read I am the good shepherd. So Moses flees to the land of Midian, there for 40 years instead of being a prince he's a shepherd and that's the thing that in practical experience equips him to be a shepherd over God's flock. In terms of his personal moral crisis, he's had to come to the end of himself. He's had to see his own strength fail and end in tears so to speak. And so when all of his own strength is gone for those 40 years, he learns to rely on God. Now while he's in Midian, so we've got Moses and Miriam and now he's in Midian and he meets a man there called Jethro, also called Ruel. Jethro has 7 daughters, perfect number of daughters to have and his daughters, because he doesn't have sons, his daughters are looking after the flock instead of the males looking after the flock and Moses having fled out of Egypt, he's settled in Midian by this time but at this particular point, on this particular day, he's resting by a well And then there's some bully boy ruffian male shepherds who come because the girl shepherds are trying to get their flock watered and the male macho chauvinist pig shepherds are the ones who are trying to drive them off to get the water first and then Moses intervenes you see. And Moses not only comes to their aid, but he actually sees to it that the flock is watered and everyone is cared for. And all the girls go running back to tell Jethro. And in a marvellous twist of humour, not twist but expression of humour, in Exodus chapter 2 verse 20, there are three questions. Who is this man? Why did you leave him? And why is he here? Like there are seven daughters, surely he can be a husband to at least one of you. He's too good a catch to let get away. Make sure you go and get him, bring him here so that he can have a meal with us. Jethro was on the lookout for someone who could be a husband to one of his daughters and so he gives Zipporah to Moses. Zipporah again becomes a significant figure particularly as we'll see in Exodus chapter 4 a little later. But the name Zipporah means Twitterer. I don't think it's a I don't think it's a derogatory title, I think it's just a title of a little bird, but I've noticed interestingly in the press recently that our Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition have taken to Twittering. There's a whole new web industry based on Twittering, where every moment of the day you let people know what you're doing, like just leaving the Prime Minister's cricket match, going to a Cabinet meeting. Ten minutes later you say, Cabinet meeting, very interesting. So it says in the paper, our Prime Minister currently is number 3 in the twittering stakes, the most viewed twittering site on the internet. Anyway, that's a huge distraction to our main thing. That's a huge distraction. So Zipporah is given to Moses as his wife. And through Zipporah he has sons, the first of whom is Gershon, which means stranger there or something like that, indicating that Moses dwelt as an alien in the land of Egypt. Why Midian? One of the interesting facts that we are told here is that Jethro was a priest or perhaps the priest of the Midianites. And if you go into Old Testament history you discover that the original Midian from whom the Midianites are named is in fact one of Abraham's children. We read of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob most often but we also know that Abraham had other children and Midian was one of his children through his concubine Keturah. In Genesis chapter 25 you can read how Moses had to pare down his household over the issue of inheritance finally, how everything had to be settled on Isaac so there would be no distractions. But when he sent away Keturah and the children including Midian amongst them, he actually made provision for them that they would be settled and cared for. So the Midianites were not Hamites. Egypt came through the line of Ham. Remember the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham and Japheth? Well, the Egyptians were Hamites but Abraham and his descendants were Shemites, that's where we get our word Semite or Semitic from. And as descendants of Abraham who had special provision made for them, The Midianites it seems had some knowledge of the covenant. Now the thing of course that you come to with Jethro is that he didn't know fully who God was but he knew there was a God who made covenant. He knew there was a God who had spoken to Abraham, his forefather. He knew the sort of basic outline of it and he knew that Moses now was one of these people. Now what happens in chapter 18 of Exodus, is that Jethro has an enormous revelation of who God really is and he comes to know God properly. Here at this point, he's sort of like in the book of Acts, there are God-fearers, people on the fringe of the covenant community. somehow who knows something that's right and central but don't know God personally yet and he's a priest of the Midianites and so Moses finds himself at home amongst them and both Moses in his way, Jethro in his, Pharaoh in his, Israel in a different way for them, Aaron in his way, they all finally have to come to know who God is. They have to come to know God as he is and that coming to know God as he is, is all a manifestation of God's grace. At no point do they take the initiative to discover God through their own intelligence. God comes to reveal himself, to speak to them, to visit them. So they are the main people we meet. We've got Miriam and Moses and Jethro the Midianite priest. But behind the scenes there are two other unseen players. In the book of Revelation, chapter 12, There's a picture there of a woman who is closed with the sun and the moon and stars are under her feet and that woman variously represents God's people throughout the ages. It might represent a specific person at any point, one through whom the promises come but perhaps the best way to understand that woman in Revelation is this is a representation of the spouse of Yahweh, the bride of Christ and it might stand for an individual at one point, it might stand for a community, a covenant community at another point and as that woman brings forth a son, standing there to devour that son as he comes forth is the dragon. Now one of the things that you find all the way through from Genesis 3.15 when God set enmity between the seed of woman and the seed of the serpent was that the serpent is always present to try to destroy the promised seed and behind the scenes here Though Pharaoh wouldn't recognise it, behind the scenes he is actually finally the instrument of the great serpent, the dragon, the ancient one called the devil. And at the time of Moses birth, there is an edict which is intent on destruction. At the time of the Pharaoh of the Exodus, He is intent on the destruction of the sea that comes through that promised line. In David's time there was Saul who was intent on destroying him. In Jesus' day there was Herod who was waiting there for the birth of Messiah and ordered the destruction of all of the infants in that particular area. At various points as the promise of God is brought forth, so at that very time the evil one is most present to seek to destroy. So he's the first unseen player behind the scenes and though by name he is never mentioned in the book of the Exodus, in terms of his action, his hand is evident all the way through. But behind him and over and through his action, even the evil actions that Pharaoh intends is the hand of God and he's the other unseen player here. It's God who gives eyes to Jocheved and to Moses' father to see that this child is lovely in the sight of God. It's God who ordains that this particular daughter of Pharaoh finds him and this particular daughter is moved to have compassion in her heart for him. He arranges that Miriam's advice will be well heard and he sent the Midianites out ahead of time and Jethro is there waiting so that there would be a family embrace around Moses that he might grow and to develop and lose that sense of independent, powerful trust in his own abilities. At every point God's hand is at work, unseen but active, ordering all events Do not fret, it leads only to evil doings. Do not fret, God's hand is behind all of the events over which the nations are in turmoil in these days. But this God who is behind the scenes is the one who keeps covenant to thousands of generations of those who fear him. And here in the book of Exodus, the end of chapter 2 The great word comes through, God remembered his covenant with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. Now even when Abraham and Isaac and Jacob's descendants had forgotten God, God had not forgotten them. And when God remembers his covenant, What that means is at this point in history he's about to enact his covenant promises. In Genesis 9 verse 5 you read about the bow that's in the clouds and the Lord says, when I see that bow I will remember the covenant that I've made with you Noah. I will enact my covenant promise not to bring that sort of judgement on the world again. In other places God talks about remembering his covenant kindness even if he's needed for a season to bring judgement upon his people as they went scattered into the nations. So God remembers his covenant. Now's the time when he's going to enact those covenant promises and when he enacts the covenant promises he sends. Whenever God remembers his covenant He sends someone who's going to be the enactor, the mediator of those covenant promises. And in this case, he remembers the covenant and he's preparing and sending Moses. It takes him 80 years to get Moses ready and Moses has had to have a terrible moral collapse in the middle of his life in order to be ready. But God is sending someone. And finally, when God remembers his covenant with his people, who does he send? This is my son, my only son. He sends the one who is most precious to his heart because he has remembered his covenant. This is the new covenant in my blood. Now this great action of God's covenant faithfulness, and here we finish and you might like to just listen as we turn to Psalm 80, you don't need to follow it. This action of covenant faithfulness is one of the great things that Israel always turned to. Many prayers in the Old Testament are structured around the fact that God remembers his covenant and God acts and in the remembering of that covenant Many of the faithful people in Israel would look at the parlous state of Israel and look at their degradation, their lawlessness, their rebellion against God and their solution to that was not, right we are going to legislate ways in which this is going to be fixed. That was a pharisaic solution and we know what the pharisees did to the one who came to enact the covenant. The faithful in Israel looked at all of that terrible confusion that happened amongst God's covenant people and their prayer was, Lord remember. Lord remember your covenant. Lord remember what you did. Lord remember what you said. Moses prayer has got that same quality about it when we come later to the incident of the golden calf. And he intercedes for the people and he says, Lord, if you were to break your promise to these people, we'd be a laughing stock amongst the nations. They would say that God is the sort of God who abandons his people when the going gets tough and he destroys them rather than remembering his covenant promises. That's a very bold prayer. Psalm 80 is a bold psalm. But I wonder whether we could hear Psalm 80 today and have in our mind not just the history of the exodus as we read it in Moses day. I think all of us look around the powerless state of the church, generally the church with a capital C, confusion, the rebellion, the powerlessness of the preaching, the way in which we just rely so readily on systems and pragmatic solutions that seem no different from the business world. Perhaps we have all of that in our hearts. O give ear, shepherd of Israel, you who lead Joseph like a flock, you who are enthroned over the cherubim, shine forth Before Ephraim and Benjamin and Manasseh, stir up your power and come and save us. God, restore us. Cause your face to shine upon us. We will be saved then. O Lord God of hosts, how long will you be angry with the prayer of your people? You have fed them with the bread of tears. You have made them to drink tears in large measure. You make us an object of contention to our neighbours. Our enemies laugh amongst themselves. O God of hosts, restore us. Cause your face to shine upon us and we'll be saved. You removed a vine from Egypt. You drove out the nations. You planted the vine. You cleared out the ground. It took deep root and it filled the land. The mountains were covered with its shadow, the cedars of gods with its boughs. It was sending out its branches to the sea and its shoots to the river. Why have you broken down its hedges so that all who pass that way might pick its fruit? A wild boar from the forest eats it away and whatever moves in the field feeds on it. Oh God of hosts, turn again, we beseech you. Look down from heaven and see and take care of this vine. Even the shoot which your right hand has planted, and on the son whom you've strengthened for yourself, it's burned with fire, it's cut down and perished at the rebuke of your countenance. But let your hand be upon the man of your right hand, upon the son of man, whom you made strong for yourself. And then we will not turn back from you. Revive us and we'll call on your name. Oh Lord God of hosts, restore us. Cause your face to shine upon us and we'll be saved. What a remarkable prayer of faith, isn't it? And so much better to read that psalm and take it as a prayer on our own lips for the church universal than to be all fussed up and anxious and think that we've got to legislate something in order to fix it all. And of course he has sent a vine. And he has planted him deep. And his branches go out into the ends of the earth. And he is the vine. And we are the branches.