Priest, King, and Sojourner

[0:00] Good morning. It's good to see all of you. For those of you who are new or visiting, my name is Sean. I'm one of the pastors of Trinity Cambridge Church. We started a new sermon series in the book of Exodus last week. We are in chapter 2 today.

[0:15] So if you would turn with me to Exodus chapter 2. We'll go through the whole chapter together. Let me pray for the reading and preaching of God's Word.

[0:30] Amen. Heavenly Father, our sinful flesh and this sinful world is full of counter-messaging to your Word of truth.

[0:50] So we come humbly before you again that we might hear you speak to us in your Word, from your Word again.

[1:01] That we might walk by faith and not by sight. That our lives might be governed by faith and not by cynicism and despair.

[1:15] So Lord, as we incline our ears, our hearts to you this morning, fill us with hope.

[1:28] Remind us of your love and your faithfulness. In Jesus' name we ask. Amen. Exodus chapter 2, verses 1 to 25.

[1:47] Now a man from the house of Levi went and took as his wife a Levite woman. The woman conceived and bore a son. And when she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him three months.

[2:02] When she could hide him no longer, she took for him a basket made of bulrushes and daubed it with bitumen and pitch. She put the child in it and placed it among the reeds by the river bank.

[2:15] And his sister stood at a distance to know what would be done to him. Now, the daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river. While her young woman walked beside the river, she saw the basket among the reeds and sent her servant woman and she took it.

[2:33] When she opened it, she saw the child. And behold, the baby was crying. She took pity on him and said, This is one of the Hebrews' children.

[2:43] Then his sister said to Pharaoh's daughter, Shall I go and call you a nurse from the Hebrew woman to nurse the child for you? And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, Go.

[2:56] So the girl went and called the child's mother. And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, Take this child away and nurse him for me, and I will give you your wages. So the woman took the child and nursed him.

[3:10] When the child grew older, she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter, And he became her son. She named him Moses, Because, she said, I drew him out of the water. One day when Moses had grown up, He went out to his people and looked on their burdens.

[3:26] And he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, One of his people. He looked this way and that, And seeing no one, He struck down the Egyptian and hit him in the sand. When he went out the next day, Behold, two Hebrews were struggling together.

[3:41] And he said to the man in the wrong, Why do you strike your companion? He answered, Who made you a prince and a judge over us? Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?

[3:53] Then Moses was afraid and thought, Surely the thing is known. When Pharaoh heard of it, he sought to kill Moses.

[4:04] But Moses fled from Pharaoh and stayed in the land of Midian. And he sat down by a well. Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters, And they came and drew water and filled the troughs to water their father's flock.

[4:17] The shepherds came and drove them away. But Moses stood up and saved them and watered their flock. When they came home to their father, He said, How is it that you have come home so soon today?

[4:31] They said, An Egyptian delivered us out of the hand of the shepherds And even drew water for us and watered the flock. He said to his daughters, Then where is he? Why have you left the man?

[4:42] Call him that he may eat bread. And Moses was content to dwell with the man. And he gave Moses his daughter Zipporah. She gave birth to a son. And he called his name Gershom.

[4:54] For he said, I have been a sojourner in a foreign land. During those many days, The king of Egypt died. And the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery And cried out for help.

[5:09] Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. And God heard their groaning. And God remembered his covenant with Abraham, With Isaac, And with Jacob.

[5:21] God saw the people of Israel. And God knew. This is God's holy and authoritative word. At the end of chapter 1, We saw Pharaoh escalating his oppression of the Israelite people.

[5:37] And when his wicked plan to kill off a large portion of the male babies, Hebrew babies, Using the midwives, Failed. Because the Hebrew midwives refused to obey Pharaoh And chose to obey God instead.

[5:50] He commanded all of the Egyptians, Every son that is born to the Hebrews, You shall cast into the Nile. So now he has mobilized all of the Egyptians To carry out this extrajudicial killing of all male Hebrew babies.

[6:05] And so in chapter 1, At every turn, Pharaoh's attempt to control and oppress God's people have failed. Because God's promise to Israel is continuing.

[6:16] The promise to protect and preserve them And to make them into a great nation. And so that raises a question now, With Pharaoh further escalating his oppression. What will happen now?

[6:28] Where is justice? Will God intervene to deliver his people from even this? And chapter 2 gives us the Bible's answer.

[6:40] And the main point of this passage is that God remembers his promises And raises up a priest to rescue his people from slavery. We're going to see Moses' identity as a priest, As a king, As a sojourner, And how that points to Christ in this chapter.

[6:56] And the first thing we learn about Moses is that he was a priest. Because it tells us in verse 1, Now a man from the house of Levi went and took as his wife a Levite woman. The fact that Moses is born of a Levite father and mother is significant.

[7:10] Because later in the book of Numbers, which Moses also writes, The Levites are specially set apart for God to assist Aaron and his sons, The priests, With work around the tabernacle. There are people who God said after the Exodus That all of the firstborn males belong to him.

[7:27] And instead of having to, Taking the firstborn males for himself, He chooses to take the Levites in there instead. He says, The Levites belong to me as my special servants.

[7:38] And so Moses is one of those people, And that's significant because of the connection later to Christ. So far so good. But verse 2 introduces the problem. The woman conceived and bore a son.

[7:51] We find out in verse 4 that the baby boy, Moses, Already has an older sister named Miriam, And an older brother named Aaron.

[8:03] So this is not the woman's first baby, But these are the times in the past. In the past it was fine to have babies. But right now is dangerous time for a Hebrew woman to have a male baby.

[8:17] In these times, I mean, you can imagine the sinking feeling, You know, when after the painful labor, They hold the baby in their arms, And they see that it's a boy, And then the joyful celebration gives way quickly to grief and panic.

[8:38] It's a boy! It's a boy! Praise God! It's a boy! It's a boy! What do we do, honey? Oh, how I wish you were not a boy!

[8:55] How I wish you were born at another time! If only you were a girl in this day and age! And verse 2 continues, And when she saw that he was a fine child, She hid him three months.

[9:07] Of course, from the perspective of a loving parent, Every baby is a fine child. But here the word fine conveys, you know, Health, beauty, and general desirability.

[9:19] I mean, when babies are born nowadays at hospitals, They run APGAR tests. You guys have heard of this? I think you guys have all had APGAR tests. They poke the baby. Their reflexes see how active they are with arms and legs.

[9:34] They observe their breathing. Whether or not they have a vigorous cry. You know, they check their pulse. If it's over 100 beats per minute, then it's good. If it's less than that, it's not as good.

[9:44] And they score them. You know, how does their skin look? Is it, you know, reddish and ruddy? Or is it bluish and pale? And so they score them out of 10. It's an APGAR score to see how viable, how strong the baby is.

[9:57] So if you were to give Moses an APGAR test, He scored really high. That's what it means here. He was a fine child. The mother looked at this baby boy and thought, Okay, this boy will grow up and be a healthy man.

[10:10] He's strong. He is ruddy. So she hides the boy for three months so that her Egyptian neighbors would not find out that she gave birth to a boy.

[10:22] And these three months, can you imagine, would have been very stressful because it's very hard to hide a baby because you can't control a baby. And a baby cries. And they cry very loudly.

[10:32] But somehow she manages to hide them for three months. But the baby's getting too big. You can't hide the baby any longer. And so the moment of reckoning is here. And she can't, as a loving mother, bear to see her son taken away by the Egyptians.

[10:48] And she could never hurt him herself. So it says in verse 3, She took for him a basket made of bulrushes and daubed it with bitumen and pitch. And she put the child in it and placed it among the reeds by the river bank.

[11:01] She weaves the basket together and waterproofs it and then floats it onto the river and makes it caught in a reed so that it doesn't just drift into oblivion. And technically, it's ironic.

[11:14] She's obeying Pharaoh's command. She's putting him into the Nile, but in a boat, right? And it's an ingenious solution.

[11:25] And the Hebrew word for basket is used to refer to only two items in the entire Old Testament. It's Moses' basket and Noah's ark.

[11:38] It's the same word for ark. So Noah's ark became the vehicle by which Noah and his family and through them the entire humanity was saved from the deadly flood waters.

[11:49] And now here, Moses' ark becomes the vehicle by which Moses is saved from the deadly waters of the Nile. And through Moses, God's chosen people too will be delivered from Egypt.

[12:00] And then it says in verse four that Moses' sister stood at a distance to know what would be done to him. So they're watching, hoping that the exposed baby will be picked up by a compassionate Egyptian family who will bring him up as their own.

[12:14] It says in verses five to six, Now the daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river while her young woman walked beside the river. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent to her servant woman and she took it.

[12:26] And when she opened it, she saw the child and behold, the baby was crying. She took pity on him and she opened it. And she said, this is one of the Hebrews. Sorry, where am I? Then his sister said to Pharaoh's daughter, shall I go and call you a nurse from the Hebrew woman to nurse the child for you?

[12:42] And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, go. And so the girl went and called the child mother. This is an incredible turn of events. I mean, this sister is quite the go-getter.

[12:53] She goes, she watches and goes, and then she says, hey, I happen to know a woman that can be a wet nurse for you. Can I go get her for you? And then she goes and gets Moses' mother.

[13:04] And so this is a great example of God's providence. Providence refers to how God governs and guides all of creation and all of history. You know, ironically, in God's providence, it's Pharaoh's own daughter that defies his father's command to cast these Hebrew boys into the Nile and then draws the boy out of the Nile.

[13:26] And ironically, it's Moses' own mother that gets to take care of Moses. And now she gets to get paid for it. It's amazing. Only God could orchestrate something like that.

[13:38] God is still governing and guiding all creation, all of history today. Even through the ups and downs, twists and turns of our own lives, God is sovereignly working out his plan for us.

[13:51] And notice also how in both chapters one and two, highlights how God used the woman in particular to thwart Pharaoh's wicked plan to kill the Jewish male babies.

[14:02] In chapter one, it was the Hebrew midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, who defied the Pharaoh's command to kill the male Hebrew babies. Now in chapter two, it's Moses' mother and sister and Pharaoh's own daughter who defy Pharaoh's command.

[14:19] Pharaoh thinks he can't control the Jewish population simply by limiting the number of their men. But that turns out to be a miscalculation because the woman won't allow him to carry out his evil plan.

[14:34] And they subvert Pharaoh's rule and defy the most powerful man in this part of the ancient world simply, and this is the amazing part, simply in their roles as midwives and mothers.

[14:45] Later, God will use a man, Moses, to confront Pharaoh and deliver Israel from their slavery. Moses only survived because God used a woman in his life to save him from Pharaoh.

[15:00] This is a wonderful illustration of what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11, 11 to 12. After teaching us that a man is the head of his wife, since the man was not made from the woman, but woman from man, and because the man was not created for the woman, but woman for man, Paul goes on to say this.

[15:17] He says, Nevertheless, in the Lord, woman is not independent of man, nor man of woman. For as woman was made from man, so man is now born of woman, and all things are from God.

[15:31] There is a wonderful complementarity in the way that God has designed man and woman. The woman was created from man to be the man's helper, but every man is first born of a woman as a son.

[15:47] I know Mother's Day is still two months away, and I probably will not have a special sermon for that that's different, so I'll talk about something here. We all have mothers who brought us into this world, and there are many mothers in our congregation and we should esteem what they do very, very highly.

[16:11] Even if the world does not often remember the contributions of mothers, we should remember that all history makers and all kingdom shakers had mothers who raised them.

[16:25] Childbearing and childrearing are not insignificant roles. The future of humanity depends on them. Verse 10 continues this incredible story. When the child grew older, she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son.

[16:39] She named him Moses because she said, I drew him out of the water. So Pharaoh's daughter most likely did not speak Hebrew, and she would not have given her a Hebrew name.

[16:51] So the word Moses is likely an Egyptian name first. The word Moses or Moses is an Egyptian word that means born of.

[17:02] It's very common to find that word in Egyptian names, or born of, son of something. So for example, various pharaohs from around the same time period have names that contain the word Moses.

[17:13] So Amos means born of, or son of Ah, the Egyptian god of the moon. Thutmos means son of Thuth, the Egyptian god of wisdom and writing, science and magic.

[17:27] Ramesses means son of Ra, the Egyptian god of the sun. So there are two main possibilities for the interpretation of the meaning Moses. So first possibility is this.

[17:38] Since the Egyptian hieroglyphic for water was Mo also, Moses' name could simply mean born of water because he was taken out of the water.

[17:51] Second possibility is that Moses' name simply means born of without the attribution because he was an orphan, an exposed child, a foundling, an abandoned child.

[18:03] So he's not a born of anything, he's a born of, son of nobody, Moses. Moses. But that's what's important for us is not the name that Pharaoh's daughter gave him, but the connection that the Bible makes to Moses, his person and his, what he will do in the future.

[18:27] Because if you look at the footnote at the end of verse 10 in your English Standard Version Bibles, it says that Moses sounds like the Hebrew for draw out. It's quite ironic because Moses was cast into the Nile because of Pharaoh, but his name means drawn out of the Nile because of God.

[18:46] And God will later use Moses to draw out his people from the water, through the water, the Red Sea. Isaiah 63, 11 to 12 makes this connection explicit and plays on the word Moses, the name Moses.

[19:02] Then he remembered the days of old of Moses and his people. Where is he who brought them up out of the sea, drew them out, this word play on the same name Moses, with the shepherds of his flock.

[19:16] Where is he who put in the midst of them his Holy Spirit, who caused his glorious arm to go at the right hand of Moses, who divided the waters before them to make for himself an everlasting name.

[19:27] So already in the name of Moses, we see God's destiny for him. He is going to draw out his people from the water. Pharaoh's edict to kill the male babies at birth could not thwart God's plan for Moses.

[19:47] Being exposed as an infant could not thwart God's plan for Moses. Growing up in Pharaoh's household could not thwart God's plan for Moses. Moses will be the one who draws God's people out of the water.

[20:02] Likewise, God's sovereign plan for us cannot be thwarted. So we don't need to worry that we've missed a time or irreparably messed up our lives because we can keep following the Lord, trusting that his sovereign purposes for us will prevail.

[20:19] So... Verses 1 to 10 told us about Moses' childhood. The word child is used seven times there. Now in verses 11 to 15, we learn of Moses' adulthood in Egypt and here the word man is used seven times.

[20:35] It says in verses 11 to 12, one day when Moses had grown up, he went out to his people and looked on their burdens and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his people. And he looked this way and that and seeing no one, he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.

[20:50] So we know from Stephen's speech in Acts 7.23 that Moses was 40 years old at this time. So despite the fact that he spent 40 years in Pharaoh's court and grew up in Egypt, getting Egyptian education, Moses does not see himself as an Egyptian.

[21:08] Verse 11 says, he went out to his people and looked on their burdens and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his people.

[21:19] So Israelites are slaving away under Egyptian oppression and it seems Moses is indignant. He has anger at this injustice. Perhaps he feels some guilt as well.

[21:32] I mean, the way it's phrased, right? He sees his people bearing their burdens. It doesn't say their burdens together, like with him. Moses is not sharing any of their burdens.

[21:44] He's enjoying the comfort of a life in Pharaoh's household. So maybe he feels some guilt looking at what the Israelites are going through. And so he looks around to make sure there are no witnesses and then he strikes.

[21:57] The Egyptian man kills him. There's a contrast here. The word for beat and strike, there are different translations, the same Hebrew word.

[22:10] So the Egyptian man was beating the Hebrew and Moses beats the Egyptian man. So there's a comparison there. But the difference is the outcome. Moses' response is disproportionate because the Egyptian man didn't kill that Hebrew man, but Moses kills the man.

[22:30] No doubt that Moses had some good intentions here. He wanted to intervene on behalf of an oppressed brother. However, it was still wrong for him to take things into his own hands and murder the Egyptian.

[22:41] It's not true in our own lives. When we take things into our own hands, often things spiral out of control even more. It says in verses 13 to 14, when he went out the next day, behold, two Hebrews were struggling together and he said to the man in the wrong, why do you strike your companion?

[23:00] He answered, who made you a prince and a judge over us? Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian? Then Moses was afraid and thought, surely the thing is known. So this time it's two Hebrew men arguing and fighting and Moses makes a quick judgment that one person is in the wrong and he confronts the man that he perceives to be in the wrong, says, hey, stop.

[23:22] Why are you striking your companion? That could also be translated your compatriot or your comrade, your own people. Why are you hurting him? And then the man retorts to him, who are you?

[23:38] You're an Egyptian prince. You're not our prince. You're not our ruler. You're not our judge. Moses, Stephen says in Acts 7.25, wanted his brothers to think that God was raising them up to save them in this time, but he took things into his own hands.

[24:07] It was not the time. It was not the way to do it. If he's gonna lead God's people, it will not be as Pharaoh's grandson.

[24:18] It will be as the descendant of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. So verse 14 tells us that Moses was afraid and thought surely the thing is known. And so when Pharaoh finds out and tries to kill him, he flees to Midian.

[24:35] Midian is in modern-day Gulf of Aqaba, which is just at the northern tip of the Red Sea. And can you imagine Moses' disillusionment and disappointment in Midian?

[24:47] He was once a prince of Egypt. He grew up in Pharaoh's court, but now he's a murderer. He's a fugitive fleeing for his life. He is destitute. He's got nothing to his name.

[24:58] He has no roof over his head, no means of providing for himself in a foreign land to boot. He has no family. His prospects are dim. And his aspiration of rescuing God's people from their oppression in Egypt seems all but doomed.

[25:15] But as we will find out, it's not all over because during Moses' sojourn in Midian, God humbles and grows Moses as a man of God and blesses him with a family. We know that he spends 40 years in Midian.

[25:29] We know that because of Exodus 7-7, which tells us that Moses was 80 when he confronted Pharaoh. So those 40 years could not have been easy years for Moses. I mean, 40 years of feeling like you don't quite belong in a foreign land.

[25:44] Midianites think I'm an Egyptian. The Egyptians think that I'm a Jew. Who am I? Where do I belong? 40 years of being frustrated that there's nothing he could do about the oppression of his own people in Egypt.

[25:57] What am I doing here? I'm wasting my life. What's my purpose in life? But those 40 years are not wasted years.

[26:08] God is at work. He is shaping, molding Moses. Because surely, without those 40 years, Moses would not become the man that Numbers 12-3 decides as the meekest man, the humblest man on the face of the earth.

[26:22] Have you taken matters into your own hands like Moses? Do you feel that you've messed things up, ruined your life? Rest assured that just as Pharaoh can thwart God's sovereign plan for you, neither can you.

[26:37] God is at work in your life, even in and through your sins and mistakes. In the updated Alpha class that we've run in our church before, there's an episode seven entitled, How Does God Guide Us?

[26:53] And one of the narrators recount the story of Lord Bradstock. He was a British aristocrat from the mid-19th century, and he happened to be traveling in Norway, and at the hotel or whatever accommodation he was staying at, he heard a little girl playing a piano in the hallway.

[27:11] Playing is too generous. She was tinkering, hitting random, discordant notes, plink, plink, plunk, and the noise was tolerable at first, and then a minute later and longer, it starts to drive him crazy, and he's just watching on, doesn't have the heart to stop this little girl who's enjoying herself, but he can't do anything else, and as he's watching this little girl, a man comes and sits by her on the bench, and then he starts playing the piano.

[27:45] He starts surrounding those random notes with beautiful chords and harmonies and turns it into glorious music, and as he marveled at it later, he found out, Lord Bradstock found out that this man was, the daughter, the girl was the man's daughter, and this man was the famous Russian composer, Alexander Borodin.

[28:10] I didn't know about him until I heard this, but I looked him up. He's best known, his string quartet, number one and two. Maybe you guys played it. Okay, you guys have played, some of you guys have played it before, in his opera, Prince Igor.

[28:21] In a much deeper and more transcendent way, God also works in and through the mess and ruin we have made of our own lives.

[28:35] If you are discouraged this morning and thinking that your life is an irredeemable mess, feeling like a hopeless failure, whether it's due to your own sins and faults, and or that of others, remember that our God is the redeemer yet, and there is still music to be played in your own life.

[28:58] The story continues in verses 16 to 22. Moses meets Midian's seven daughters at the well, helps them, rescues them from the shepherds who are trying to harass them and drive them out.

[29:14] And we meet Moses' father-in-law, Reuel, which means friend of God. He was a worshiper of the true God of Abraham. We know him more by his other name or title, Jethro. Perhaps, you know, Reuel couldn't attend to the flock himself because of his priestly duties.

[29:30] He says that he's a priest of Midian. He sends his daughters to the well to water them, but that was a difficult task to put them in charge because most of the shepherds were men and they were stronger and they wanted their flocks watered first and so they harassed these girls regularly, it seems, because they came back earlier than they usually do.

[29:49] It seems they dealt with this on a regular basis. But Moses comes to their aid and helps them and then they tell, report back to their father, an Egyptian helped us.

[30:02] That leads to an invitation to dinner, which leads to an invitation to stay in lodge and then it eventually leads to a marriage proposal. And this too is a clear evidence that God's sovereign purposes are being fulfilled in and through Moses.

[30:18] Moses meeting his eventual wife, Zipporah, at the well is intentionally reminiscent of Isaac whose servant met Isaac's eventual wife, Rebecca, at the well in Genesis 24 and it's especially reminiscent of Jacob who was also a fugitive fleeing for his life from his father, Eve, and then he met his future wife, Rachel, at the well and what did he do there?

[30:44] He watered her flock at the well. So in the same way that God had guided those patriarchs and through them continued his promise to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, God is now guiding Moses and fulfilling his promises to his people.

[30:59] So Moses marries Redwell's daughter, Zipporah, who gives birth to his son, Gershom, whose name means sojourner in a foreign land and in this too Moses resembles the patriarchs because Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were all sojourners in Canaan holding on to God's promises that he would give them this land and make them into a great nation.

[31:22] Moses didn't quite belong in Egypt though he was adopted by Pharaoh's daughter. He was a sojourner there. He doesn't belong in Midian. He's a Jew, a descendant of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.

[31:35] God's people belong in God's promised land and this is true for all of God's people. That's why 1 Peter 2, 11 addresses all of God's people as sojourners and exiles and urges us to abstain from the passions of the flesh which war against our souls.

[31:55] As God's people, we're always going to feel a little out of place in our sinful flesh. How many of you have felt that? If you're a believer, you have all felt that.

[32:07] You want to love the Lord and serve the Lord and obey the Lord and be holy and set apart for him but you wrestle with your own sinful flesh. You feel out of place.

[32:18] What is wrong? Until our bodies are made perfect at the resurrection, we'll feel like sojourners in a foreign land.

[32:28] As God's people, we're always going to feel a little out of place in this world like we don't quite belong. James chapter 4, verse 4 says, whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God because our world is fallen and sinful and the world's purposes and priorities are not aligned with God's purposes and priorities until Christ returns and brings the new heaven and the new earth.

[32:56] We are Gershom. We are foreigners, sojourners in a foreign land. And through the ups and downs and the twists and turns of Moses' life, we're seeing God's sovereign hand at work.

[33:11] God is raising up a deliverer for Israel and we see this in the most emphatic way in verses 23 to 25. Please follow along with me as I read it. During those many days, the king of Egypt died and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help.

[33:29] Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God and God heard their groaning and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.

[33:40] God saw the people of Israel and God knew. Notice the deliberate repetition of word God here. That was not necessary. This is intentional to emphasize a point.

[33:52] It's like powerful hammer fists that come down over and over again to smash all of our doubts of whether God is good, whether God cares, whether God sees.

[34:07] Do you ever wonder if God hears your groaning for help? Do you feel sometimes like God has forgotten about you in your suffering, in your loneliness, in your pain?

[34:19] Do you ever wonder if God notices your struggles? Do you question whether or not God really knows you, knows your heart? Listen to the declaration of verses 24, 25.

[34:34] God heard. God remembered. God saw. God knew. God hears your pained groans in the middle of the night, your whimpers.

[34:52] God remembers you and the promises he has made to you. He has not forgotten you. God sees all of your struggles and sufferings. God knows you intimately and loves you completely.

[35:15] God has been guiding Moses' life for the past 80 years so that he might use him, deliver his people from slavery in Egypt.

[35:26] And that plan of God has been in the works since eternity past. And Moses is ultimately a shadow.

[35:38] He's only a foreshadowing of the ultimate redeemer we have, Jesus Christ, the new and greater Moses. Hebrews 3 tells us that Jesus is the great high priest.

[35:50] He's the priest who is greater than Moses because Moses was God's servant, but Jesus was God's son because Moses had, Moses the priest had to make sacrifices again and again and again, but Jesus makes the one sin for all sacrifice by giving his own life on the cross for our sins.

[36:11] There's no more sacrifice needed because of what Jesus has done. And our sin, not in part, but the whole is accounted for, covered and forgiven.

[36:22] And Jesus is also the true and greater king. Moses tried to take things into his own hands. He sinned. Jesus never sinned. Jesus ruled in a perfect way.

[36:34] He's the messianic king, the promised king. He's the prince of peace who brings God's peace to those who trust in him. Jesus was also himself a sojourner.

[36:45] On Christmas Eve, we studied Matthew 2 together where it speaks of how Jesus fulfilled the prophecy of Hosea 11.1 that out of Egypt I called my son. Moses escaped the Egyptian king's infanticide by leaving his fellow Jews and living among the Egyptians.

[37:03] Similarly, Jesus escapes King Herod's infanticide by leaving his fellow Jews and spending his infancy in Egypt. The biblical authors are drawing an intentional parallel here in order to teach us that God's redemptive acts in the Old Testament, including his redemption through Moses in the Exodus, prepare the way for and point ultimately to God's redemption in Jesus Christ.

[37:29] all your wrestlings with sin, all the brokenness that we see in this world, all the pain and the hardship, all the answer is found in Jesus.

[37:44] In Jesus, all the promises of God are yes and amen. He fulfills them all for you. Amen. So when you are in your groaning, in your grumbling, in your complaining, in your doubting, look to Jesus.

[38:05] Look at him, his cross, his empty grave. And know that God will keep his promises for you.

[38:18] Let's pray. God, we do feel out of place at times.

[38:37] We feel unknown. But Lord, we thank you and praise you that you know us.

[38:47] God, I pray for your comfort for those in our midst right now who are going through really hard times and suffering.

[39:02] Help them to feel and remember with faith that you hear them and see them and remember them and know them.

[39:17] In Jesus' name we pray. Amen.