Intro: Welcome to the Spoken Gospel Podcast. This is our attempt to speak the gospel out of every corner of Scripture. We believe every part of the Bible, Old Testament and New, is about Jesus, and this podcast is our experiment to publicly test that belief. Let's jump in.
David: All right, welcome to episode 2, week 2. We made it, we made it to the second week. Count them, count them. One, two, we're here, here we are. And last week we were in Exodus 1 and 2 talking about the narrative there, the beginning, the beginning of the story of Exodus, and then seeing how it showed us Jesus. If you haven't listened to our first episode of Exodus 1 1 and 2, we'd invite you to go back and do that. It'll provide some background for what we're going to be talking about today. But if you haven't and you don't want to, you can probably catch up. But you know, it was a good podcast. It was a good podcast. I like it. If we didn't like it, we probably wouldn't have posted it, but we liked it, so we posted it. So go listen to it. But today we're going to be talking about Exodus 3 and 4. And just to introduce ourselves again, my name is David Bowden. I'm a spoken word poet and an author living in Oklahoma City with my wife.
Seth: And this with me, as always, as always, as always in the two episodes, is Seth Stewart, and my only claim to fame is that I know David Bowman.
David: That's the worst thing I've ever heard in my life. Oh man. All right, we're gonna have to seriously review your, your qualifications, participation, participation in this podcast. Okay, so the first question we always want to try to ask when we come up to a new text is, what is the text? What's actually happening in Exodus 3 and 4? So do you want to, you want to start us off?
Seth: Yeah, so Moses was watching his sheep in and he sees something he hasn't seen before. He sees a bush burning, but it's not consumed by the fire.
David: Right, and where is he?
Seth: He's in Midian, no, he's not, he's in the wilderness.
David: Yeah, but—
Seth: The Horeb, the mountain of God.
David: Mountain of God, important.
Seth: He's on the mountain of God. Important. And he's like, okay, I'm gonna go see this great thing, and he does, and it turns out there's an angel of the Lord in the bush speaking to Moses, and Moses, begins talking to him. And what I think is interesting is the voice says, "I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." He's reminding Moses and the reader that this is the covenant-keeping God. And this is actually repeated over and over again in this. So verse 6 here, we're told that this is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. In verse 15, in verse 16, in 4:5, over and over again, God is saying, "I am the God that was with your fathers. I am the God that keeps covenant." Yes, extremely important. Extremely important. And he mentions the land promises twice here as well. So we talked about increasing and multiplying, having a new land. So in verse 8 and verse 17 of chapter 3.
David: And but there's people in that land.
Seth: There are people in that land. So that's a new development, right? We haven't quite heard yet. Yeah, the promised land is inhabited.
David: What's up with that?
Seth: We don't know yet.
David: Like, that's crazy. It's like, that's God's land. Like, well, why are there people there?
Seth: Yes.
David: And why do they all have crazy names?
Seth: And in this conversation, God identifies himself as the covenant-keeping God and will continue to do so. He says, I have surely seen the affliction of my people. This brings us back to chapter 2, end of chapter 2. He's the God who sees and responds to suffering. And he actually says this over and over again. God sees them in verse 7. He sees their suffering in verse 9. He sees suffering again in verse 16. And super interestingly, the people who are occupying the Promised Land will listen to the people of Israel. The people who are currently occupying the place they are supposed to be will go in there as people who have no power and no place, and the people with no power, no place will be listened to by those with power.
David: Where is that?
Seth: It is in verse 18. Verse 18, he says, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites, a land flowing with milk and honey, and they will listen to your voice. Egypt never did that.
David: That's crazy. You're right. And it says, and you and the elders of Israel shall go to the king of Egypt and say to him, and then, okay, I see. So he's juxtaposing something here. He's saying, well, you don't know he's juxtaposing it yet, but he's saying like, all the parasites in the land, all the zites in the land, they're gonna listen to you, and you're also gonna go to Pharaoh. But it doesn't say that they will listen to Israel.
Seth: No, and it says the opposite. He will not let you go unless completely compelled by a mighty hand.
David: Oh, and whose mighty hand is that?
Seth: The hand of God.
David: And he says that, doesn't he? Right?
Seth: Uh, yeah, no, no, he does, he does.
David: Yeah, 19. But I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go unless compelled by a mighty hand, so I will stretch out my hand and strike Egypt with all the wonders that I will do in it, and after that they'll let you go.
Seth: So conversation's happening between Moses and the Lord. Moses hears them affirming promises with them. You will go and you will take a new land and you will leave an old land and you will go into the new land and they will listen to you. You will leave the old land and they will not listen to you.
David: But I'll do it anyway.
Seth: But I'll do it anyway. And in the middle of this conversation, we have God's name.
David: Yeah. Huge moment in the Bible.
Seth: So we are already getting hints of who God is. He's the covenant-keeping God, but we don't have a personal name yet.
David: Well, we do. We do. Throughout the whole Bible, it's used. It's used like over 100 times in Genesis. This name Yahweh is used over 100 times in Genesis, but we don't know what it means yet. Like in the flow of the narrative, the— I mean, even, even, even here in the text itself in 3:2, and the angel of Yahweh appeared. That's a— in your Bibles, whenever you see LORD in all caps, that's always the name Yahweh.
Seth: Right.
David: And so we'll talk more about what that means. But we— so we have this name, but it's like, it's like if you're reading through the Bible in Hebrew, and you would keep running up against this name Yahweh, it's like if you had a lexicon that had every Hebrew word in it, and then a little dash, and then a definition of that word. If you were filling in the definition for every Hebrew word as it came up, you would have the word Yahweh in your lexicon, and then you'd have a dash, but then you'd have a blank line next to it, because God had not revealed what this name meant yet, right?
Seth: Yeah. In Exodus 6:3, I appeared to Abraham and Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name, the Lord, I did not make myself known to them. So something special is happening when Moses is face to face with God and God is speaking this name to him, right?
David: It says, yeah, that the verse you just read, it talks about he had revealed himself as God Almighty, which is the Hebrew word El Shaddai, but he had not yet revealed himself as Yahweh. So this is something new that he's doing, even though He'd been using this word beforehand. So we have to figure out what this word means now. So let's look at what this word means. So Moses comes to God and he has like some complaints, right? He has like some objections because God's like, I'm going to send you into Egypt and you're going to deliver my people. And Moses has some objections. And the first one is, who am I to do this? And God says, forget who you are. He doesn't say that. But in verse 12 of chapter 3, he says, he answers his question, but I will be with you, right? And you have the first occurrence of this, of this word in Hebrew, ehyeh, right?
Seth: Which I did not—
David: you did not know that. Here it is.
Seth: I will—
David: the I will I will be is ege, right, which means I will or I am. So it's like I am and I will. That's why some translations say I am and some say I will. It's very obscure. It's a both. It's an I am and I will. So it's like if we're like, if we're going, if you want to go get a, you know, go get some lunch after this and you're like, hey, you want to ride in my car? I could say like, yeah, I'm with you. And that wouldn't mean like, I'm with you right now and then it's over. It'd be, I'm with you and I will be with you in your car, right? We're going together. It's, it's current and ongoing. And so we have this Ehyeh. And then Moses says, okay, you're going to be with me. But if they ask who you are, whenever I say, hey, this God is here and it's all good, he's going to be with you. What should I say is his name? And he says, Ehyeh, Ehyeh.
Seth: Right.
David: He says, I am, I am, I will be, I will be. He says this thing twice. And so he says, you tell them that I will be has sent you, that I am has sent you, I'm with you has sent you, I will be with you has sent you. But then he says, then he gives his actual name after that. In verse 15, God also said to Moses, say this to the people of Israel: The Lord, capital L, capital O, capital R, capital D. The Lord, the God of your fathers Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob has sent you. So he says, then, then it changes from EYEH to Yahweh, because EYEH means I will be with you. Yahweh means he will be with you. Because if Moses came there and said, I will be with you, that's not appropriate. It's appropriate to say he, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob will be with you. So Yahweh means he. The covenant God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is with us and will be with us.
Seth: So what has happened then is that the people are suffering. They cry out to the Lord. We see God responding, saying, I've heard the people of the Lord. I've heard the people of the Lord. He's choosing Moses to go and rescue those people. And Moses says, who am I to do this? And then God's response is his own name, right? I am who I am. And based on who he is, He will provide redemption. He will save them from slavery.
David: It's not about who Moses is.
Seth: It's not about who Moses is, but who God is.
David: And if anything, there's— he's like this exiled murderer.
Seth: It's like, it's not stellar.
David: No one would— it's like once he runs away, you would, you know, into the wilderness after killing people and being afraid, you would kind of think like then chapter 3 would be like, and so God found someone else in Egypt. But instead we go to this guy. And it's like, yeah, we kind of stand with you, Moses. Who are you to represent God to his people? You're nobody.
Seth: And I think it's probably potentially— maybe this is reading a little bit too much in the text, but we've seen him like wrestle with this idea of him being an authority figure among his people and the Egyptians. He judges an Egyptian man and murders him, covers it up, and he's being accused by Pharaoh for doing something wrong. He's seeking to kill him. He attempts to arbitrate a dispute between two Hebrew men. They say, who are you to judge us? And the Lord says, I want you to go and Rescue my people. And Moses is replaying in his head how everyone else has told him throughout his entire life, you are not capable of judging here, right?
David: Who am I? Who am I to do this?
Seth: Who am I?
David: And God's like, that doesn't matter.
Seth: So let's just pause there. Yeah, how personal, like how relatable is Moses in that moment, right? We've all experienced that, like, you can't speak into this, you shouldn't be, you shouldn't be giving your opinion here, you're not valuable, you're not worthy, whatever you want to say. And the Lord says, I am coming to you and I'm saying it doesn't matter who you are. In one sense, it matters who I am, and I will be with you, right? My promises are not predicated on your greatness, but on my power.
David: Yeah, absolutely right. And so what happens after this then? So Moses continues to protest. He's like, God, you know, what if they don't listen to me? Right? And so God gives him tools to provide listening ears from the Israelites and the Egyptians. He gives him miracles. So he says, "You have a staff in your hand. If you put it on the ground, it turns into a snake. You can grab it by tail and it'll turn back into a staff. If they don't listen to that, try the second sign. Put your hand in your cloak. It goes in white but comes out leprous. You put it back in and it returns to being fully clean. And if they don't listen to the snake or the leprous hand, then take some water from the Nile, dump it on the ground, it will turn to blood, and they'll listen to that one." And these signs are specifically for the elders of Israel at this point.
Seth: Okay. So like he says, "Gather the elders of Israel together and say to them," in verse 16, chapter 3, "that the Lord your God is coming to save you." And he says, "Okay, in that interaction, what if they don't listen to me?" They being the elders of Israel. And he says, "Here's your 3 signs that you will do." And then what's fascinating is that those signs are kind of amplified Yeah, against the Egyptians, right? Yeah, it's not just a bowl of water on the ground that turns to blood.
David: It's a whole Nile, the whole river.
Seth: It's not just leprosy on a hand, it boils throughout the entire—
David: oh, that's good—
Seth: nation. It's not just a snake, it's a snake that eats all the other snakes.
David: Yes. And so, yeah, absolutely right. Okay, so then, uh, he complains about his mouth and he's like, I am— I'm not really a good talker, God. And, and so God's like, um, I'll be with your mouth. I'm bigger than that. Like, again, it's not You, it's me.
Seth: Yeah. He says, who has made your mouth?
David: Right?
Seth: I have.
David: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Okay, then, as we wrap up this, this overview of 3 and 4, we get this really weird text. I want to talk about this. We get this really weird text in 4, chapter 4, 24 through 26. It's really weird. And so you got to back up a little bit to understand it. So Moses is going to Egypt, he's heading there. He's on his way, and God speaks to him one more time. He says, you'll go into Egypt, you'll do these miracles, but I will, I will harden Pharaoh's heart so that he will not let your people go. Verse 22, then you will say to Pharaoh, thus says Yahweh, Israel is my firstborn son, and I say to you, let my son go that he may serve me. And then God says this, if you refuse to let him go, behold, I will kill your firstborn son. So God is saying, Israel's my firstborn son, and if you don't let Israel go, I will kill Pharaoh's firstborn son. And then we get the weird thing. So we get there, Moses and his wife Zipporah and Moses' son, which, what's his son's name again? Gershom. Gershom, right? We talked about that last week.
Seth: Gershom the foreigner.
David: Gershom the foreigner. They're sleeping in this lodging place, and God comes and seeks to kill Gershom. He seeks to kill him.
Seth: And then his mom cuts off his—
David: Gershom's—
Seth: foreskin in just a moment of panic, I guess, and then taps it on Moses' feet.
David: Weird, weird, so weird. But if you read it in the context here, it makes a lot of sense because God is talking about killing firstborn sons. Gershom is Moses's firstborn son, and God is like, I'm going to kill him too.
Seth: Why?
David: Why? Because—
Seth: is it obedience?
David: Right. Well, Moses has not been obedient to the covenant that God made with Abraham. He's not circumcised his son. And so just because Moses is God's chosen deliverer for his chosen people does not mean that Moses just gets to disobey. He still has to submit to the laws of the covenant, or else he will suffer the punishment, which is death. And so God seeks to kill Moses's firstborn son. But there's circumcision, there's blood. And Zipporah says, "You are a bridegroom of blood to me." Like, okay, that's crazy. And so in order to fix the relationship between God and Moses and his family, blood has to be spilled in obedience to the covenant.
Seth: And this, this takes us back into prior context a little bit, because we have with Abraham, the shedding of blood ratifying a covenant, right? Or being the context in which a covenant is established. Abraham had all these animals that were sacrificed, right? And the thing— the light is walking through it in the trance. Yeah, like sacrifice and covenant are really closely tied together, right, throughout the Old Testament so far.
David: Okay, so we have talked about some of the key themes, um, of, uh, covenant, of God's name, and of firstborn. Okay, so let's, let's leap backwards and see if we were reading this through, if we're reading the Torah through as a cohesive story, what things have happened in Genesis that we should be like, oh hey, this has happened before. What do you think, Seth?
Seth: So if we were to read the Torah, the first 5 books of the Bible, right? Or I guess just one at this point. If you were just to read Genesis and say like what's happened before, I think the thing that we should probably not neglect is— so as strange as the firstborn son story is, yeah, it does point us back to another firstborn son, Isaac, which is also really strange, which is also really strange where he, he too is about to be killed.
David: Right.
Seth: And he too is saved by a sacrifice of some kind.
David: Yep.
Seth: By a provision of the Lord.
David: Right.
Seth: So we need to see that. I don't like— maybe, maybe you have— I have a little bit of a hard time processing through those two stories.
David: Well, I think the bridge between them is the covenant. Right. So God said to Abraham, right, I'm going to make a covenant with you and you're going to bless all the nations. How are you going to do that? Through offspring. And he's like 90, you know, Sarah's 90, he's 100 or something like that. And it's like, miracle! Isaac finally comes after like 25 years of waiting for this promise to come true. And then God says, all right, kill him. And it's like, whoa, whoa, whoa, how will your covenant be accomplished? How will we be a blessing to all nations through our offspring if this offspring you've given me is dead? Right? And so it's like, so then you have again in Exodus, you have, all right, I remember my covenant with you. Let's go into Egypt and I'm going to rescue my firstborn son. But first I got to deal with your firstborn son.
Seth: Right.
David: Something is off there.
Seth: Yeah. There. What is off? So is it the fact that his son— I still, I'm still confused. I'm guessing where I feel like I'm hearing hints about Jesus in this.
David: Right.
Seth: But like, okay, so this— talk me through a little bit more.
David: Well, it's like I just, I think we see, I guess, a pattern right? Where it's— there's this— there's— for some reason, this God has like— wants to— wants us to continually see firstborn sons' lives being required of them. Like, in Isaac, this son of promise, it's like he, he has to be sacrificed, but then there's a provision made and he's not sacrificed. And then in Exodus, you have Moses's firstborn son, and he has to be sacrificed but there's a provision made and he doesn't have to be sacrificed. And so we, we at least are seeing that God is continually providing provision for his covenant, even though there's something wrong with the firstborn sons that are— their lives are required of them for some reason.
Seth: And fascinatingly, not just Pharaoh's firstborn sons, but Israel's firstborn sons as well.
David: No one's disqualified from this broken relationship between God and man.
Seth: And so we're looking for a firstborn son, right? A firstborn son who can fix the problem, right? So Isaac was supposed to be the solution. He's not.
David: He's not. Things are still broken.
Seth: Israel is supposed to be a solution as a people group, right?
David: They are collectively God's firstborn son.
Seth: Collectively God's firstborn son. But we know by the time Exodus comes and that they're not his firstborn son, right? We're actually still looking for the ram in the thicket We're still looking for the circumcision that will provide rescue for all of God's people for all time.
David: Yes.
Seth: And so who is that?
David: Right.
Seth: It's, it's Jesus. Jesus. Jesus is the substitute sacrifice. He is the one that's cut off.
David: Right.
Seth: For the people, for their salvation. I was thinking about Colossians 3:11 before we got to this point. He said, in him you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands. We understand, like, the biblical authors understand that circumcision is a sign of the covenant, a price that must be paid for entrance into it, and they're accustomed to doing it themselves with their own hands, with their own blood. But there's a circumcision coming made without hands, without their own blood. It was done by Jesus who put off the body of the flesh by the circumcise— by Christ's circumcision. So it's not just one part of the body, it's Christ's whole body was put off on the cross. So that we might be rescued. Yeah, we might be saved from encroaching death.
David: Right. Here's something we have to talk about. We didn't— we didn't talk about this in our overview. The first thing that happens when Moses comes to this burning bush, to this angel of Yahweh, who ends up being Yahweh himself, he comes and tries to talk to him and stand near him. And God says, take off your shoes. Because this is holy ground. This is sacred space that you're in here, and you're bringing all the filth from your shoes into it. And so God is setting something up for us that he is holy and perfect, always consistent with his perfect character and justice. And when we come near him, the filth has to be left out or else it will be judged and punished. Like, we'll see that later in Exodus, in fact. And so what we're saying here is like Moses and God are trying to like do this thing of rescuing Israel together out of Egypt. But their relationship is broken because Moses has been disobedient to the covenant. His son is uncircumcised, right?
Seth: Yeah.
David: And so a price is going to have to be paid. God's going to kill Gershom.
Seth: That— so I have such a hard time, even though I've been a Christian for a long time, even though I believe in God's goodness, hearing that just strikes me the wrong way.
David: Well, yeah. Yeah, but even— I mean, you see this picture of God that is very different to the God we want to paint, the safe God. You know, I'm reminded of— what's the C.S. Lewis quote about Aslan?
Seth: It's like, yeah, um, he's, he's good. Who said anything about safe?
David: Who said anything?
Seth: Lucy asked, yeah, is he safe?
David: Is Aslan the lion safe?
Seth: It's like, safe, Mr. Beaver said. Who said anything about safe?
David: He's not safe, but he's good. He's good.
Seth: Yeah.
David: And so it's like, God is good. And we have to expand our categories of goodness and also limit them in other ways. And so, because even as, as Moses is having all these petitions against God in this text, his, his anger kindles against him. God gets mad at Moses for his disobedience and for his lack of trust in his name and who he said he would be as the God of Israel and the covenant keeper.
Seth: And I think to answer my own question, yeah, my own point of like, This sounds so crazy. God, why would you kill a firstborn son? The point is he doesn't, right? The point is, the point is he provides a provision.
David: Oh, that's so good.
Seth: And the firstborn son won't be yours. It'll be mine.
David: Oh, come on. Come on. Yeah. God, in his holiness and in his justice, requires our blood to be shed. And he's good to do that because he's a— he's the righteous, good judge. But he provides that which he requires. Yeah, right. And what's interesting, like in Isaac, you know, he provided a ram in the thicket. Here we see provision through an obedient wife. Oh, whoa. That's kind of cool.
Seth: That is cool.
David: So Zipporah is like, I got this. I'll chop.
Seth: I got the knife. I got the knife in the night. My baby's crying. That's right. Oh man.
David: So again, we touched on this in like a off comment, but again, we see women stepping in to have this huge role in salvation history, right? We had Moses's mom.
Seth: Yeah, I didn't think about that.
David: Yeah. And now we have Zipporah obeying the covenant on Moses's behalf. Like, that's crazy.
Seth: I love that.
David: And so God always provides what he requires. And we'll see this perfectly, you know, like, or not perfectly, but we'll see this again in the Passover lamb. But we don't want to touch on that.
Seth: No, but on the women thing, I did notice this in verse 22 of Exodus 4: Each woman shall ask for a neighbor and any woman who lives in her house for silver and gold and jewelry. And through the women you will plunder Egypt. I never noticed that command was only given to the women. But anyway, right. It's again, this theme of like women are providing for the nation of Israel, one of the means through which God is fulfilling his promises.
David: Right. And this plundering of the Egyptians was what God promised to Abraham back in Genesis 15 that we talked about last week. We talked about how God promised that they would go into slavery for 400 years, and that had sure been fulfilled. But then the people were like, well, God also promised good things, that we would leave and be rescued from this slavery. And when we left, when we left, we would leave with great possessions. Genesis 15, I think it's 14, says that. And so here we see the first bit of this good promise, good fulfillment happening. He says, you'll plunder the Egyptians. And we know that that actually happens. But I never also made the connection that it was women who were providing for God's people. Yeah, which is really interesting. Side note, you know who provided for Jesus's ministry on earth financially? Women. Oh, wow.
Seth: Crazy. Jesus, we found him again.
David: So anyway, that's, that's really cool. So let's talk about— so God is, is, is reminding us of his covenant that he made with Abraham back in, in Genesis 15, because he's talking about this leaving, leaving the slavery with great possessions. So let's talk about the name of God and the covenant of God, because they're intrinsically linked up. Now, I don't want to throw anyone under the bus here. But it does seem that when we talk about the name of God, as either Ehyeh or Yahweh, I will be with you, he will be with you, or I am with you, you know, if we want to be more comfortable with the I am thing, we tend to just say, okay, so what does God as the I am teach us, and we just take this Ehyeh, this Yahweh out of the text, and we go, What does it mean? Oh, it means he's eternal. He's always been. He has no ending. He's not dependent on anything else. All these things are beautifully, wonderfully true.
Seth: So you're saying— I think you're right, because I've heard the same thing. Like, I am who I am. What does that mean? It means that God is your provision. He is your helper. He is your friend. Like, what do you need? That's what he is.
David: Yes, exactly. But there's more going on here in the text than just that, because God is constantly, like you said earlier in the episode, God is constantly saying, I'm the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of your fathers. So he's like, the same way I was with Abraham, I will be with you. I was with them, I will be with you. I— the covenant, this, this— you as my chosen people and me being with you and you being with me, all of this is not based on you because you're a failure. You'll constantly fail. It's based on me. And I am the God who will fulfill his covenant. I am the God who will do what he promises. And so God's name is covenant faithfulness, right?
Seth: And his name is the repeated story of him promising something and then fulfilling it.
David: That's right.
Seth: His name is that I have not once been faithless to somebody that I have promised something to. It's his name is that I have chosen a whole bunch so far of of people who have not lived up to the standards I've left for them, given them, yet I still remain faithful. That's his name.
David: Okay, so we've talked about how God's name as Yahweh— he will be, he is, with us is intrinsically tied up in the covenant itself. So he is with us to be the keeper of his own covenant, that he is present to accomplish what he said he would accomplish, right? So Seth, how do we see this in Jesus?
Seth: Well, so if you go back to verse 11, but Moses said to God, who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children out of Egypt? We've already talked about he's no one.
David: You're nobody.
Seth: He doesn't have the authority among the Egyptians or the or among the Hebrews to judge or adjudicate. He doesn't really have that type of authority, right?
David: If he asked one question that he probably should have asked, it was that one. Yeah, if you had one objection, that was the right one to have, right?
Seth: So he said, "Who am I?" But then God responds with, to answer a different question, "Who am I?" Who is God? And he says, "But I will be with you." And I immediately think about Emmanuel, right?
David: God with us.
Seth: God with us. Yeah. Where is God's covenant faithfulness most perfectly seen? It's in Jesus Christ. How do we know that God's promises for salvation don't just end in suffering? It's the fact that the Lord Jesus Christ has come into our suffering himself, experienced them, and then risen out of it, like risen out of the grave. He will be with us even in the grave in Christ, right?
David: And if you even, if you think about like, Jesus kept the covenant perfectly, he never sinned, right? Moses sinned, we see, we've seen him, he's a murderer, right? He's, he's in his dialogue with God, even looking at the angel of the Lord face to face in the burning bush, he doubts his goodness, which is egregiously sinful. And, and so, you know, in his sin, God comes to him and is going to take his firstborn. Jesus is not like this. Jesus comes as the ultimate covenant keeper. He— because he, he doesn't sin. He doesn't offend God's holiness. He is God himself. And so his life is not required of him. God does not come to the Son, this firstborn Son, and say, your life is required of you. I will, I will have to judge you, because Jesus is perfect. But instead, Jesus does allow himself to be judged. He willingly gives up his life for ours, right? He keeps the covenant for us.
Seth: He keeps the covenant for us. Yeah. And if it's based on God's own righteousness, if it's based on God's own power, if it's based on God's own work, what can we say to these things? If God is for us, then who can be against us? This is what— this is what Paul says: Who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things? He talks about assurance of salvation, justification, uh, freedom from condemnation, and then also the other things that neither death nor life or angels or rulers will prevent us from experiencing the love and goodness of the Lord.
David: Right. Because nothing can separate us because our judge is our advocate, right? The one— the covenant— the covenant creator is our covenant keeper. That is why when God is talking to Moses and saying, I'm going to fulfill my covenant to this people, and then Moses says, who am I to do it? God says, don't forget about who you are. Let me show you who I am. I'm the God who keeps the covenant. And so if we want to be in relationship with God, we go, well, who am I to do it? I'm disqualified, just like Moses and worse. And yet God says, forget who you are. I am. And so what we see in the gospel is that this covenant creator of God who made this system, this gracious system by which we could be reconciled to him but never will, he says, forget you, in a sense. And he says, I will come. And so Yahweh becomes Emmanuel. The one who says, I will be with you, is the one who says, I am with you. And so Jesus comes in the flesh and he keeps the covenant for us. And so the covenant creator is the covenant keeper, right? Yeah.
Seth: We always want to make the story about us. Yeah. We're like, I'm so lost to my weakness. I've tried to judge and I've tried to be a good person. I've tried to do these things.
David: Yep.
Seth: Like, and it's like, who am I to do these things? And that question reveals that we don't understand God. We don't understand that he, from first to last, is working out our salvation by his hand.
David: And we—
Seth: our identity is the fact that we are in him. Our identity is the fact that he is with us.
David: Yes.
Seth: And yeah, that's the story of the— of— that's the heart of a Christian, is being less and less dependent or focused on our own ability and own desires, but more and more focused on God's ability, his promises, his faithfulness, rather than our own.
David: Right. And speaking about Jesus's faithfulness, we have to mention the Great Commission, his last words recorded in the book of Matthew before he ascended into heaven. He says— he gives them the Great Commission to go and make disciples, to teach them everything that he had taught them, to baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. And then he says this, he says, "And behold, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. He repeats this, I am with you, this name of God. This is what God's name was, that, that this Yahweh is with them. And Jesus is the completion of this, not only in his life on earth, but also, um, he continues to be with us through his Spirit. So he's the ultimate embodiment of this promise of Yahweh to be with us. Okay, so to wrap up, I want to do something I don't think we talked about doing this, but I want to do it anyway. Um, and so, so we, one of the things we want to do on here is not only try to do some, some good exegesis— how do we understand this text, what is it saying, what's original intent— and then some good hermeneutics, right? How does this biblically speaking, apply to Jesus and then apply to us. What we also want to do is point out some like bad ways that things have— like people have interpreted the Bible, that you might often try to interpret the Bible, and give you a better way through it with the gospel. And so let's talk about how— let's talk about the sermons that probably most of us have heard in this dialogue Moses has had with God. Because you have all of these objections that Moses gives. He's like, what are they? It's, it's Who am I? We've talked about that one. And then we've talked about, well then, who shall I say is sending me?
Seth: Yeah, if I go to them, they're not gonna trust me, so who's my authority here?
David: Right, yeah, who's my authority? And then, yeah, they're not gonna listen to me, so, and then the one that they always talk about, I always hear moralized the most, is, well, I'm not very eloquent, right? I've always kind of been slow of speech, and you want me to go talk to people? That seems like really bad. And I've heard people say like, Hey, you know, God wants to use your weakness, you know, to manifest his strength, which is like a biblical idea. But I don't necessarily think that's what is the heart of this text right now.
Seth: Because are you saying when you say moralize, what you mean is you're not eloquent, God knows that, and he's going to make you eloquent if you trust on him?
David: Yeah, that's one of the morals you could bring out. So moralizing is kind of like turning a historical story that God has breathed out, and we know that, like, Jesus was part of that inspiration to be about him. So God wrote the story to be about Jesus, and we want to turn it into an Aesop fable where it's like, oh, what's the moral of the story? Let me moralize this a bit. Let me see if I can get something out of it for me instead of how do I understand how this actually teaches me more about Jesus? Because the Bible is about Jesus. And so when we moralize it, we try to take things that were meant to glorify Jesus and we try to get them to apply something more like boots on the ground right now for us. And so we do that with this, this story. But it's like, if you look, if you look at all the objections that Moses brings up, I think a better way to preach through those, if you wanted to, would be to talk about how in Moses's deficiencies, how was Jesus surpassingly efficient? Like what, in what ways was Jesus better than Moses? Right? So Moses says, well, who am I to represent the people? Jesus was God himself, right? By what authority and whose name am I going to go to these people? You know, Jesus said, before Abraham was, I am. Jesus was the I am. He didn't have to even point to another person. He was God himself. And then he's like, what, what, what sign should I do so that the people will believe in me? And God gives him these three miracles. Jesus performed miracles upon miracles out of his— out of the Holy Spirit living within him. He didn't need an external For he had the Holy Spirit himself because he was God himself. And then he's not eloquent. You know, Moses isn't eloquent. He's not a good talker. Jesus is the Word of God himself. He is this, this teacher who teaches with all authority, who dumbfounds the scribes and the Pharisees. So Jesus is better than Moses.
Seth: So then what is the application for the people who sympathize with Moses, who are like, no, but that's, that's where I am right now. Right now I feel really weak. Yeah, I feel really disqualified. I'm like, okay, Jesus is awesome, but that just proves I'm not.
David: Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure.
Seth: What do we do with that? Yeah, like, do we just say, well, that's not about you, so no, no, no, about Jesus.
David: So, so, okay, well, how do most people answer this question, answer those sympathies who are moralizing the text? They say like, hey, look, God can use you in your weakness, right? Which is kind of like a pat on the back, go get 'em, boy, kind of an answer. Or, hey, you know, like, you know, don't worry about who you are, God's with you. You know, it's like just it's more of like mental gymnastics, like just get over yourself, get over your perspective, change your perspective. Yeah. It's like, no, what we're saying is like there's an actual powerful historical answer to your feelings of insufficiency and inadequateness and inadequacies.
Seth: Right.
David: And it's that it's that where you're weak, Jesus has been strong. Like if you, if you feel like you can't do something, Jesus has done it for you. Like if you feel like you have disqualified yourself, Jesus has qualified you by his perfect life and in his blood. It's a better answer than a pat on the back and some psychological gymnastics.
Seth: It is. So then how does it change my experience at my next staff meeting? You know what I mean? So, okay, okay, good. Jesus is better than I am, and he's given me his righteousness because he's better. But like, what does that do when I— because it doesn't feel like it's changing me, right? Next time I go to that place where I feel most weak, right?
David: Well, the Bible teaches us that we become what we behold, right? Um, I think of 2 Corinthians 3:18 that talks about, as we behold the glory of the Lord in the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit works in us and we are transformed into the image of Jesus from one degree of glory to another. And so how do you actually change? How do you move from feeling inadequate to feeling adequate? How do you move from feeling weak to feeling strong. A lot of people want to say do different things, you know, think differently, think, change your perspective, right? What Jesus says is, know that I have done everything for you. Behold me. Don't change. Don't, don't look at yourself differently. Don't do things differently with your hands.
Seth: Look at me.
David: Look at what I've done with my hands already. Don't look at yourself. Look at me. Don't say, who am I? Say, who are you? Right? So behold Jesus and you will become what you behold. Does that help at all?
Seth: That's— I mean, it's so liberating to be able to say, okay, when I go to my next staff meeting, when I go to work, I don't have to continue to rehearse in my head truths or ideas or gin up— listen, you know, gin up like my self-effort. All I need to do is look. And where do I look? I look at Jesus Christ, what he's accomplished for me and what he's given to me. Yes, that's liberating.
David: Yeah, and that's what we see here in Exodus 3 and 4, is a man who cannot see his own worth, and God not, not patting him on the back saying, it's okay, buddy, you're good enough. You see a holy God who is about to require the life of an unholy firstborn, that kind of thing, saying, I'm good enough, I'm here to fulfill my covenant. It doesn't matter how good or how bad you are. I am good enough for everyone, and I'm making provision.
Outro: Thank you for listening to the Spoken Gospel Podcast. Spoken Gospel is a nonprofit organization dedicated to creating gospel-centered media that speaks the gospel out of every corner of Scripture in every corner of the world. To learn more about the ministry of Spoken Gospel and view more of our resources, visit SpokenGospel.com.
