EXODUS 4:18-31 Lesson 4b
THE LAWMAKER MUST ALSO OBEY THE LAW
I. Greetings:
Note: Today’s lesson is almost exclusively devoted to the life of the leader. The life of Moses has a lot to say to those in leadership. We will see this all through our study of the book, but here we see it clearly focused.
II. Introduction:
Q How many of you know of key national or fairly famous leaders who have fallen? Can you give me examples?
Q How many of you have experienced personally the falling of a spiritual leader in your lives?
Q Has it hurt you, how?
Q What causes leaders to fall?
An = Our study today will focus on a key reason leaders fall. We will see God make in Moses’ life a preemptive strike. It will be brutal, but not nearly as brutal as the fall of a good leader.
III. Getting Ready to Travel: Exodus 4:18-23.
>>>> Have someone read Exodus 4:18-20.
Q Whose permission to leave does Moses seek and receive?
An = His father-in-law (and employer) Jethro. Notice Jethro give me leave and gives him a blessing: “Go in peace”.
Q Once Moses starts to move (in obedience) was does he learn in verse 19?
An = That one of his fears in returning has been removed. God often waits for us to practically start and then shows us His own preparation for our obedience.
Q What did Moses take back with him to Egypt?
An = His wife, his sons and the “staff of God”.
Q Why does the author mention the staff?
>>>> Have someone read Exodus 4:21
Q What is the Lord predicting here in verse 21?
An = Even after the signs Pharaoh will resist. God will see that the road to success is difficult. The Lord is letting Moses know ahead of time, that things will be difficult. We will never win without a fight. What is surprising is that God’s hand seems to be involved with the difficulty.
Q Why would God make the road to success difficult?
>>>> Have someone read Exodus 4:22-23.
Q Who is Israel to God?
An = It is the Lord’s special “first born”. Many who are enslaved have no idea who they really are. Many who hurt others have no idea who they are hurting.
Q What will be the penalty for not letting Israel go?
An = Egypt will lose their first born. What they did to others, will be done to them. They killed Israelite babies when Moses was a child, now what “goes around, comes around”.
IV. Educating Moses: Exodus 4:34-36
>>>> Have someone read Exodus 4:24.
Q Who sought to kill Moses?
An = It is the Lord Himself. Now it seems odd that God spent all that effort to preserve Moses alive in the basket in the Nile. In addition, God had provided one of the finest educations possible to an Israelite in the Egyptian court (with Pharaoh’s daughter as his surrogate mother), surround his early life with wonderful examples of spiritual courage in the mid-wives and his mother. God had kept him alive and provided stability for him with Jethro as his father-in-law, and finally given him the “burning bush” experience. It seems that Moses was indispensable to God’s plans. It seems that God needed Moses for his purposes of redemption.
RQ How could God seek to kill Moses?
>>>> Have someone read Exodus 4:25
Q There is only one speech in this little episode and it is in this verse who speaks it?
An = It is not God, He never speaks. It is not Moses. Moses is silent, but it is Zipporah, Moses’ wife.
Q Does she seem happy to you?
An = I do not know about you but if my wife said that to me, I would not think she was very pleased with my religious practices!
Note: This side note can be skipped if you want. The NASB says she threw the “foreskin” at Moses’s feet, (NKJB says “cast it”) (NIV says “touched Moses feet with it”). The Hebrew literally says “she did something to his feet”. So she could have cast or thrown it or “touched his feet”. Also, since “feet” are sometimes another way of saying “sexual parts”, cutting her sons foreskin and touching his feet could be a way of saying the same thing.
Q What was Zipporah’s father’s occupation?
An = He was priest. Moses was a run-away slave and a member of a slave race. She was a priest’s daughter.
Q Did Moses marry up or marry down?
An = As famous as Moses is to us, in that time it appears that she married down. She probably had resisted circumcising her children because it was an Israelite religious practice. She probably thought she knew more about religion than her husband.
>>>> Have someone read Exodus 4:26.
Q Did God stop the attack on Moses?
An = Yes He did. Whatever Zipporah did, did not make her happy, but her husband was spared. She saved her husband’s life.
Q How does the narrator interpret her statement “bridegroom of blood”.
An = It clearly says it refers to the act of circumcision.
Q Who gave the right of circumcision to the Israelites and to whom was the right first given?
An = God gave it as a sign of the covenant to Abraham. To circumcise their sons was to say, their sons belonged to the covenant people of God.
Q How many special “rules” religiously did the Israelites have?
An = From what we know of Genesis, only one: circumcise your male children.
Q What was Moses to become in the near future? What is Moses going to be famous for?
An = Along with getting Israel out of Egypt, to a Jew, Moses’ real fame was being the means of Israel getting the Law. Moses was the “Law Giver”.
Q Again, how many laws have the people of Israel been given?
An = only one: circumcision.
QQ So what had Moses done with the one law of God that he presently had?
An = He had disobeyed it. Conceivably because of pressure from his wife, he had foregone circumcising their children. Now Moses is on the “eve of ministry” and God is teaching Moses.
Q What is God teaching Moses?
An = The Law Giver is not above the Law. So many in ministry, for whatever reason, think they are above God’s laws. No matter how gifted God makes us to be able to do ministry, we are not exempt from the laws He gives everyone else.
Q Is God willing to do without Moses, if Moses does not obey?
An = God was willing to start over. He can certainly start over after all the work He has done in preparing you for ministry. Obedience is not optional (Matthew 7:24-27) even for leaders!
Q So why do you think so good ministers fall when in ministry?
Q One final question on this issue, whose action saved Moses’ life and therefore ministry?
An = It was his pagan, non-Israelite wife’s action. To Zipporah, in a round about way, we owe the Ten Commandments.
V. Arriving In Egypt: Exodus 4:27-31.
>>>> Have someone read Exodus 4:27-28.
Q Who meets Moses in the desert?
An = His brother Aaron, the one God promised would speak for him. God keeps His promises.
>>>> Have someone read Exodus 4:29-31.
Q How did the ministry begin? Did Israel respond positively?
An = They believed, seeing the signs (or so they do now), and when they heard that God was concerned, they bowed low.