Moses as Guest Preacher
God Remembered His Covenant with Abraham — Exodus 1:15–2:10; 2:23–25
By Michael A. Graham
A note before you read
Last week I told Joseph’s story as a frame, with Jesus Christ at the center. This week I was working on Moses’ story the same way. I wondered how Moses would explain his story to us if he came as a guest preacher. Then I remembered that Jack Miller preached a sermon in which he let Judas Iscariot tell his own story from the Bible, and he did the same with a few others. So I invited Moses to be our guest preacher and let him tell his story from the Bible.
What follows is a rhetorical device. I am the one speaking, in Moses’ voice and in a short note from Joseph that closes out last week. Neither of them has given me any new word. I am not writing or rewriting Scripture. The Bible verses are quoted as they stand in the NIV 1984, except the memory verse from the KJV, and each time Moses tells you something, you will see where the Bible says it.
A note from Joseph
My name is Joseph. Last week your pastor told my story as a frame around chapter 38 of Genesis, the first book of the Bible. Thank you. Many people skip that chapter to get back to me.
Chapter 38 is about my older brother Judah and Tamar. My mother was Rachel. Judah’s mother was Leah. God kept His promise of the Savior through Leah’s son Judah and through Tamar. Their son was Perez. God had kept His promise the same way through Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebekah, and Jacob and Leah. Matthew, who wrote the first book in the New Testament about Jesus, names Tamar in Jesus’ family tree. “Judah the father of Perez and Zerah, whose mother was Tamar.” (Matthew 1:3)
My life served God’s promise. I told my brothers, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” (Genesis 50:20)
When I was about to die, I looked ahead to the day God would bring my family out of Egypt. “By faith Joseph, when his end was near, spoke about the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt and gave instructions about his bones.” (Hebrews 11:22) Exodus means “the way out.”
Moses carried my bones out of Egypt. This week your pastor is telling Moses’ story the same way, as a frame around God keeping His promise. Ask Moses to tell you his story. He will tell it about Jesus Christ.
Joseph
Moses speaks
I am alive
My name is Moses. I was born in Egypt about three and a half thousand years ago. My body died long ago. I am alive with God.
Jesus said so. Here is how.
One day God spoke to me from a bush in the desert. The bush was on fire, and it kept burning without burning up. God called out to me from the fire. “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” (Exodus 3:6) Abraham was Jacob’s grandfather. Their bodies had died hundreds of years before I was born.
Jesus pointed to what God said to me there. God called Himself the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob long after they had died. God is the God of living people. So Jesus said Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are alive with God, and one day God will raise their bodies from the dead. “He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.” (Luke 20:38)
I am alive with Him too.
There is a letter in the Bible called Hebrews. It has a list of people who trusted God. I am on that list. Right after the list it says, “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith.” (Hebrews 12:2)
I have seen Jesus with my own eyes. I am here so that you will look at Him.
I was a servant in God’s family. Jesus is the Son. “Moses was faithful as a servant in all God’s house… But Christ is faithful as a son over God’s house.” (Hebrews 3:5–6)
My story is a small part of the Son’s story. Here it is.
The story starts before me
The story starts in the Garden of Eden. God made the first man and woman, Adam and Eve. The devil came to them as a serpent, a snake. They listened to him and turned away from God.
Then God spoke to the serpent. God made a promise. One of the woman’s children would crush the serpent’s head. “He will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” (Genesis 3:15) The Bible calls that child the Seed. Paul tells you who He is: “one person, who is Christ.” (Galatians 3:16)
I wrote that down. I wrote Genesis for my people after God had brought them out of Egypt. I wanted them to know that God had a plan for them before they were born.
God had told Abraham that his family would be slaves in another country. “Your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own, and they will be enslaved and mistreated four hundred years… and afterward they will come out with great possessions.” (Genesis 15:13–14)
That country was Egypt. Jacob’s family moved there in Joseph’s day. Over the years they grew into a big people. They were called Israelites, because God had given Jacob the name Israel. They were also called Hebrews. Then a new king came to power in Egypt, and he made them slaves.
What Pharaoh was doing
The king of Egypt was called Pharaoh. He was afraid of us because there were so many of us.
First he made us work as slaves, making bricks. Then he called in the midwives. A midwife is a woman who helps a mother when her baby is born. Pharaoh told them to kill every Hebrew baby boy as soon as he was born.
That failed. So Pharaoh gave an order to all the people of Egypt. “Every boy that is born you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live.” (Exodus 1:22) The Nile is the great river that runs through Egypt. Pharaoh wanted our baby boys drowned.
If that order had gone on, in one generation there would have been no Hebrew men left. God’s people would have disappeared.
God had promised that the woman’s child would crush the serpent. The devil went after that child. The last book of the Bible shows it: “The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child the moment it was born.” (Revelation 12:4) The devil was behind Pharaoh. He went after the sons.
God had also said that a King would come from Judah’s family. “The scepter will not depart from Judah… until he comes to whom it belongs.” (Genesis 49:10) A scepter is the rod a king holds.
God chose the line the King would come from, one father and son at a time. After Judah and Tamar’s son Perez came Hezron, Ram, Amminadab and Nahshon. “Perez the father of Hezron, Hezron the father of Ram, Ram the father of Amminadab, Amminadab the father of Nahshon.” (Matthew 1:3–4)
That family lived in Egypt under Pharaoh. Pharaoh wanted their boys dead. God kept the line He had chosen alive, from father to son. I knew that family. Nahshon’s sister Elisheba married my brother Aaron. (Exodus 6:23: “Aaron married Elisheba, daughter of Amminadab and sister of Nahshon.”)
What God did
The midwives feared God more than they feared Pharaoh. They let the baby boys live. “So God was kind to the midwives and the people increased and became even more numerous.” (Exodus 1:20)
Pharaoh ordered death. God gave life.
Then I was born. God gave my mother and father faith to trust Him. “By faith Moses’ parents hid him for three months after he was born… and they were not afraid of the king’s edict.” (Hebrews 11:23) An edict is a king’s order.
When I was too big to hide, my mother made a basket out of reeds. She covered it with tar so the water would stay out. She put me in it and set it in the tall grass at the edge of the Nile. My big sister stood a little way off to watch.
When I wrote my story, I used a special word for that basket. It is the same word I used for Noah’s ark. God kept Noah and his family safe in the ark when the great flood came. God kept a little Hebrew baby safe in a basket on Pharaoh’s river.
Then Pharaoh’s own daughter came down to the river to bathe. She saw the basket in the reeds and sent her servant girl to get it. She opened it. I was crying, and she felt sorry for me. God turned her heart toward me.
My sister asked her, “Shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?” The princess said, “Yes, go.” (Exodus 2:7–8) My sister brought my own mother. So God put me back in my mother’s arms, and Pharaoh’s daughter paid her to take care of me.
When I was older, my mother took me to the palace. “She took him to Pharaoh’s daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses, saying, ‘I drew him out of the water.’” (Exodus 2:10) God was the One who drew me out.
Pharaoh’s daughter took one Hebrew boy into her family. God was taking a whole people into His family. Later God told Pharaoh, “Israel is my firstborn son… Let my son go, so he may worship me.” (Exodus 4:22–23)
Later God drew all His people out of Egypt through the sea. Many years after that, God brought His own Son out of Egypt. When Jesus was a baby, a king named Herod wanted to kill Him. God told Jesus’ family to escape to Egypt. Herod killed the little boys in Bethlehem, just as Pharaoh tried to kill ours. When Herod died, God brought Jesus home. “Out of Egypt I called my son.” (Matthew 2:15)
A Hebrew in Pharaoh’s house
I grew up as a prince of Egypt. Stephen, one of the first Christians, said, “Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in speech and action.” (Acts 7:22)
When I was grown, God gave me faith to give it up. “He regarded disgrace for the sake of Christ as of greater value than the treasures of Egypt, because he was looking ahead to his reward.” (Hebrews 11:26)
The treasures of Egypt were right in front of me. Christ was ahead of me. God gave me eyes to see that Christ was worth more.
What I did with my own hand
I had faith. I still tried to do God’s work my own way.
When I was forty years old, I went out to visit my people. In the book of Exodus I wrote down what I did. “He saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his own people. Glancing this way and that and seeing no one, he killed the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.” (Exodus 2:11–12)
Stephen told you what I was thinking that day. “Moses thought that his own people would realize that God was using him to rescue them, but they did not.” (Acts 7:25)
The next day I saw two Hebrews fighting. I tried to stop them. One of them said to me, “Who made you ruler and judge over us? Are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian?” (Exodus 2:14) I was afraid. Pharaoh heard about it and tried to kill me. I ran far away to a desert land called Midian.
My own people turned me away, the way Joseph’s brothers turned him away. Many years later God’s people turned Jesus away too.
Who remembered
I lived in Midian for forty years. I married and had a family. I took care of sheep.
Back in Egypt the king died, and nothing got better for my people. They groaned under their work. They cried out, and their cry went up to God. “God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them.” (Exodus 2:24–25)
A covenant is a promise God makes and swears to keep. God had sworn to Abraham that the Savior would come from his family.
God heard. God remembered. God looked. The word I wrote for “concerned” means “knew.” God knew His people as His own.
Then God came to me at the burning bush. He said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt… So I have come down to rescue them.” (Exodus 3:7–8) God told me His name, the LORD. He sent me back to Egypt to lead His people out.
God brought us out so He could bring us to Himself. He said, “I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God.” (Exodus 6:7) Later He said, “I carried you on eagles’ wings and brought you to myself.” (Exodus 19:4)
It all started with God. Hebrews says, “By faith he left Egypt, not fearing the king’s anger; he persevered because he saw him who is invisible.” (Hebrews 11:27)
How do you see someone who is invisible? You see Him only when He shows Himself. God showed Himself to me by speaking. At the bush I saw the fire, and I heard God’s voice.
Later I asked God, “Now show me your glory.” God answered, “You cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.” (Exodus 33:18, 20) So God passed in front of me and told me His name. “The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.” (Exodus 34:6)
With my eyes I saw Pharaoh, his army and his anger. With faith I saw God, because I believed what God told me about Himself. “Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.” (Hebrews 11:1) God gave me that faith through His word.
The servant who stood between
After God brought us out of Egypt, He gave us His law, the Ten Commandments, at a mountain called Sinai. Then the people made a calf out of gold and worshiped it as their god.
I stood between God and the people and prayed for them. “Moses, his chosen one, stood in the breach before him to keep his wrath from destroying them.” (Psalm 106:23)
I even asked God to take my name out of His book instead of theirs. “Please forgive their sin—but if not, then blot me out of the book you have written.” The LORD answered me, “Whoever has sinned against me I will blot out of my book.” (Exodus 32:32–33)
I could pray for them. I was a sinner too. My death could save no one.
God chose my brother Aaron and his sons to be priests. A priest stands between God and the people. But the priests kept dying. God sent a Priest who lives forever. “Now there have been many of those priests, since death prevented them from continuing in office; but because Jesus lives forever, he has a permanent priesthood.” (Hebrews 7:23–24)
That Priest came from Judah, the family Pharaoh tried to drown.
Outside the land
God brought us out into a desert. We lived there forty years. We were hungry and thirsty, and we grumbled against God. God fed us and led us. “By day the LORD went ahead of them in a pillar of cloud to guide them on their way and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light.” (Exodus 13:21)
Being brought out did not end the hard days. God was with us in them, and He kept His promise through them.
At the end of my life, God took me up a mountain called Nebo. From the top I could see the land He had promised Abraham. God told me, “I have let you see it with your eyes, but you will not cross over into it.” (Deuteronomy 34:4) I died there, outside the land.
Before I died, I told my people that God would send another Prophet. “The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own brothers. You must listen to him.” (Deuteronomy 18:15)
On the mountain with Him
Many hundreds of years later I stood on a mountain with Jesus.
Jesus went up the mountain to pray. He took three of His closest friends, Peter, James and John. While Jesus was praying, His face and His clothes shone bright with God’s glory. Then Elijah and I were there with Him. Elijah was a prophet who lived long after me. “Two men, Moses and Elijah, appeared in glorious splendor, talking with Jesus. They spoke about his departure, which he was about to bring to fulfillment at Jerusalem.” (Luke 9:30–31)
The word for His departure is exodus, the way out. We talked with Jesus about His exodus.
In Egypt I led God’s people out behind the blood of a lamb. Jesus was going to Jerusalem to be the Lamb. He was going to die on a cross. After He rose from the dead, Jesus said, “Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” (Luke 24:26) His exodus went through suffering to glory.
I had offered my name to be blotted out, and God said no. Jesus offered His life for His people, and God accepted it. Jesus took the punishment for their sin. He leads His people out of slavery to sin and death.
I saw His glory. Then God spoke from a cloud. “This is my Son, whom I have chosen; listen to him.” (Luke 9:35) I had told my people to listen to the Prophet God would send. God told them who He is.
Where I am now
I am with Jesus now. Hebrews tells you that when you come to God, you come “to Jesus the mediator of a new covenant.” (Hebrews 12:24) A mediator is the one who stands between God and people and makes peace.
I trembled at Sinai. Now I stand near Jesus. His blood has made me right with God.
The pastor asks Moses
“Moses, our key word this week is remembered. You wrote, ‘God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant.’ What did you and God mean?”
When we say we remembered something, we usually mean we forgot it and then thought of it again. God knows everything all the time. When I wrote that God remembered, I meant that God acted on His promise. He kept the word He swore.
I wrote it first about Noah. Noah, his family and the animals were in the ark for months while the flood covered the earth. “But God remembered Noah… and he sent a wind over the earth, and the waters receded.” (Genesis 8:1) God remembered, and the water went down.
God said it to me in Egypt. “I have remembered my covenant. Therefore, say to the Israelites: ‘I am the LORD, and I will bring you out…’” (Exodus 6:5–6)
God remembered, and so He brought us out.
The covenant He remembered was His promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It was the promise of the Seed, the Savior. My people had lost hope. They groaned and cried out. Their rescue rested on God and the promise He swore.
“What was the night of the Passover like?”
God sent nine plagues on Egypt. Pharaoh still would not let us go. Then God told us about the tenth plague and what to do that night.
Each family took a lamb. At sunset we killed the lamb. We put its blood on the sides and top of the doorway of our house.
We roasted the lamb and ate it with bitter herbs and flat bread made without yeast. We ate dressed and ready to leave. “This is how you are to eat it: with your cloak tucked into your belt, your sandals on your feet and your staff in your hand. Eat it in haste; it is the LORD’s Passover.” (Exodus 12:11)
That night the LORD went through Egypt. He had said, “When I see the blood, I will pass over you.” (Exodus 12:13) That is why it is called the Passover. The oldest son in every Egyptian house died. The oldest son in every house with the blood on the door lived. A lamb died in his place.
Pharaoh had ordered our sons thrown into the river. That night God judged Egypt and kept His own sons safe.
God told us to remember that night every year. He told us what to say when our children asked what it meant. “It is the Passover sacrifice to the LORD, who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt and spared our homes.” (Exodus 12:27)
God remembered His covenant and passed over us. We remembered what God had done.
“Today we come to the Lord’s Table. What would you tell us?”
On the mountain I talked with Jesus about His exodus. Then He went to Jerusalem. On the night before He died, He ate the Passover meal with His disciples. “I have eagerly desired to eat this Passover with you before I suffer.” (Luke 22:15)
At that meal He took the bread and said, “This is my body given for you; do this in remembrance of me.” Then He took the cup and said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you.” (Luke 22:19–20) That is the Lord’s Supper you eat at His Table.
Paul said, “Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed.” (1 Corinthians 5:7) In Egypt our oldest sons lived because a lamb died in their place. You live because Jesus, God’s Son, died in your place.
In the new covenant God remembers in two ways. He remembers His promise. He also promises to remember your sins no more. “I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” (Hebrews 8:12)
When Jesus was dying on the cross, a thief was dying on a cross beside Him. The thief said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” Jesus answered him, “I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23:42–43)
The Passover was a family meal. “Each man is to take a lamb for his family, one for each household.” (Exodus 12:3) The Lord’s Supper is a family meal too. God brought you out, and He took you in. “So you are no longer a slave, but a son.” (Galatians 4:7) By His Spirit you call God your Father. “And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’” (Romans 8:15) Abba means Father.
When you come to the Table, God has already remembered you. You remember Jesus. You eat like we did in Egypt, as people God is bringing out, dressed to leave, on the way home.
When I first told my people what God had said, they believed. “And when they heard that the LORD was concerned about them and had seen their misery, they bowed down and worshiped.” (Exodus 4:31) They heard that God had seen them, and they worshiped. God sees you too.
Moses closes
Jesus said, “If you believed Moses, you would believe me, for he wrote about me.” (John 5:46) The books I wrote are about Jesus.
I was a servant. Read my books, and look at the Son. God said it from the cloud: “This is my Son… listen to him.”
Fix your eyes on Jesus.
The pastor speaks in the name of Christ
Moses is alive because God is the God of the living. Moses points us to the Son.
When we read this story, we tend to look for a hero or a lesson. We look for a brave mother, a kind princess, or a man God used. We look for a rule to keep.
Moses tells it another way. God kept His promise. God kept the line of Judah alive when Pharaoh tried to drown its sons. God gave faith to the midwives and to Moses’ parents. God heard His people groaning, remembered His covenant and came down.
God did all of that in Jesus Christ. God’s Son came down from heaven. He died for His people’s sin. He made His exodus at Jerusalem, and He brings His people out. He also brings His people in. He makes us His children.
We still groan, the way Israel groaned in Egypt. “We ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.” (Romans 8:23) God is at work in our groaning. One day He will raise our bodies from the dead.
God may seem invisible to you this morning. God sees you right now. He heard His people groaning in Egypt, and He hears you. He remembered His covenant, and in Christ He remembers you.
“If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” (Galatians 3:29) At His Table this morning, God remembers His covenant, and we remember Christ. Come to His Table as His children, and worship Him.
This week’s memory verse: “Behold, he that keepeth Israel shall neither slumber nor sleep.” (Psalm 121:4, KJV) God watches over His people day and night.
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