Murderous Escape

Good morning. It’s good to see all of you today here at Shepherds Gate for our 11 a.m. service. My name’s Tim.

If I haven’t had a chance to meet you, I get the privilege of being one of the pastors here. And if you are a guest, maybe this is your first time here, or you came at Christmas, or maybe you’ve been checking us out the last two or three weeks, and we haven’t had a chance to meet you yet, there will be several of us in the middle of our West Lobby after the service. And if you wouldn’t mind just coming up and introducing yourself, telling us a little bit about yourself, and then it just gives us an opportunity to thank you for joining us today.

We would really appreciate that. We do have coffee and refreshments after the service as well. I want to say hi to all of those that are watching online, or maybe they’re streaming in from wherever they may be, or watching later on demand, including all of our friends that are watching in Algonac today as well, as we are in week three of our series on Exodus.

So before I do that, there is something I do want to address that happened last week. You guys saw, if you were here for the 11 o’clock, this place was packed full, and during the closing song, some of the chairs actually that were in the folding chair section, the ones that we added, we ended up folding them up before the conclusion of the song, and we know there were some people that got upset about that, and we just want you to know we hear you. We’re going to make sure that doesn’t happen again.

It wasn’t our intention to ruin that moment of the worship service. We were trying to do that for traffic flow reasons, which is also why we’re asking some of you, if you’re able to get up a little bit earlier on Sunday, to shift to the nine o’clock service, and I don’t know if anybody in here wants to volunteer to do that. Some people did, and I had to tell the nine o’clock, hey, just so you know, because they’re used to a little bit more elbow room, the nine o’clock people, they’re usually the people that don’t like people as much as the 11 o’clock people.

I said, just remember, we’re the ones that told them to come to the nine, so people might take your seats. You’re just going to have to get over it, okay? So we’re all just figuring this out together, and most importantly, we just love watching what God’s doing, because we want more and more people to hear the greatest message ever, that Jesus died and rose again for them. Amen? So thank you for helping us do that and accommodate all of those things.

And so here we are, we’re doing 12 chapters, the first 12 chapters of Exodus over the next 12 Sundays, so we’re in week three. We do encourage you to bring your own Bible with you. You can see the lights are nice and bright.

Bring a highlighter, bring a pen. It allows you to go through the scriptures together, and the challenge has been is to be part of the entire 12-week series. Don’t miss a week.

If you can’t be here, make sure you catch up by watching it on demand or streaming online. If you are a guest, the challenge is always to come to Shepherds Gate for three weeks. Just give us three weeks, and to see if this is the church that God would have you call home.

And of course, we have these resources available to you on our app and website, which helps you to further expand even what we’re talking about on Sunday morning. And so today, we’re going to end where we left off last week, because we’re basically taking chapter two, and we took chapter two and divided it into two weeks. We got through chapter two, verses one to ten.

And so last week, this was our last verse. It said, when the child grew older. How many of you were here last week? Remember how old he was? Three.

So he was three, because according to Hebrew tradition, that’s how long a mother would nurse her child. So we have this baby that’s been saved, because a lot of the other babies that were born at this time, unfortunately, were thrown into the Nile and killed. Brutal mass murder that took place, because they’re trying to control the population.

This one baby has been saved, and it’s been saved by Pharaoh’s daughter, because she finds this basket floating in the Nile that his mom had actually made and put him in, trying to preserve his life. And through a series of events, God saved his life. And so this new mom, Pharaoh’s daughter, now gets to name him.

So his biological mom didn’t even get to name him. So the reason he’s called Moses is by her, and because she says, I drew him out of the water. Now what’s really interesting is you see that says Exodus 2.10. For those of you that have your Bibles and you have them open, you’ll see in Exodus 2.11, this is really crazy, one verse later it says, one day.

How long is that? After Moses had grown up. Well, how old is he? Any guesses? 13, 20, 18, 14. Here’s what’s interesting, and I told you this last week.

Scripture interprets Scripture. Scripture quotes Scripture. And a third one, if you want to add that today, is Scripture explains Scripture.

And if you go to the book of Acts, the seventh chapter, there’s one of the early Christians. His name was Stephen. He actually is the one that tells us how old Moses is in this verse.

And we find out, you ready for this? He’s 40 years old. So in one verse, we went from, you know, baby Jesus. The next verse, we go to toddler, not Jesus.

We go from baby Moses to toddler Moses. And now all of a sudden, we have full grown. I mean, at 40 years old, you’re a full grown man.

Okay, here’s the crazy part. He’s still living in mama’s house. Make that what you will.

All right, so here he is. He’s grown up, and he went out to where his own people were. Well, why didn’t he go out earlier? Why now all of a sudden, 37 years after living this comfortable lifestyle, having all the food, and servants, and recreational activities, everything at his disposal, even though he’s a Hebrew.

He doesn’t belong in this palace. He doesn’t belong in this family. But through an act of God, somehow he’s been raised in the heart, the epicenter of the Egyptian culture, and has prospered all of these years.

He finally goes out to his own people, and he was watching at how hard they were being worked. He could see that they were being worked ruthlessly, as the text has told us up to this point. Then he sees an Egyptian beating a Hebrew.

So he sees one of the people that he’s enjoyed the lifestyle, because he’s been part of that, beating one of his own people, which is what he should have been. He should have been a slave, just like they were. And so now here he is.

He’s 40 years old, and here’s what happens next. Looking this way, and looking that way, and seeing no one, which whenever somebody looks one way or another, that’s never a good thing, is it? If you have to look one way or another before you do something, it’s probably not going to end well. It says Moses did what? Killed the Egyptian, and he hit him in the sand.

Now this is me, because I always have lots of questions for God. How did he kill him? Did he kill him with a shovel? Did he kill him with his own bare hands? I mean, he didn’t go out with any weapons. He didn’t go out with an army or anything like that.

He didn’t have bodyguards, at least that we know of in Scripture, or what Scripture tells us. And then he hides him in the sand. So did he actually go and get a shovel, and dig a hole six feet, and then bury him? Or did he just use his own hands to dig up the sand, and got him as deep as he could, and then there was a mound afterwards? I mean, what in the world is happening in this text? And here’s what’s so fascinating, because sometimes we read the account of Scripture, but we have to remember, we have to do it through the lens of what it is that God is doing.

And so what they actually teach you at Bible college, what they teach you at seminary, is to always look where God is at work. To go to a 30,000 foot view, and to see where it is that God is orchestrating these events. And what’s interesting is this, is that Moses’ first act recorded in Scripture is what? Now think about that for a moment.

God spent all that time and energy saving him, and then protecting him. And now he becomes an adult, and what does he do? He commits murder. And I would submit to you today, this is God giving us a clue of saying to us, pick the worst possible sin you think someone could commit on the planet.

Go ahead. Come up with the worst possible thing. Well, I think a lot of us would put murder at the top of that list.

And watch, because I’m going to take a guy who literally starts his adult life by killing somebody, and I am going to work in and through him. I’m going to forgive him, and then I’m going to show you that he has a greater purpose and plan on the planet. And I want you to remember that for later on in the sermon, when we prepare our hearts to receive Holy Communion, that God can and will forgive you of anything that you have ever committed.

This is God giving us yet another nod of his grace and his mercy. But let’s go back to the text for a moment. What is he thinking? Dude, what are you doing? Why would you do this? And what we know, and what we can see, is that clearly Moses had a compassionate heart for injustice.

He sees an Egyptian mistreating an Israelite, and he has something inside of him that causes him to respond this way. Something deep down that just angered him. Does anyone ever have those moments where something deep down in you, and you just want to kill somebody? Go ahead.

You can raise your hands. I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again. The people that I want to murder on this planet, are people that tailgate.

I don’t know why. And now that we’re in snowstorm and snow season, I cannot fathom why anyone would tailgate somebody when there is snow and ice on the ground. And yet, they’re all over the place.

They might even be in here for all I know. And I don’t know what causes that feeling within me. And now that I have a student driver in my home, it’s cute because he will say, Dad, that guy is on my bumper.

That guy’s riding me. What’s his problem? I’m like, I don’t know. We should stop the car and beat him senselessly.

That’s usually our first reaction. It’s not to turn around and go, bless that child. Prosper him.

Whatever he’s dealing with, or why he can’t see that our car is really close to his. No, instead, we’re like, God, could you just take him at the next turn? Like, help this car to spin out and teach him a lesson? I mean, that’s really what we want. We want people to suffer and we want God to get them.

Well, what’s interesting is in the very next verse, it’s the next day, Moses goes out and he saw two Hebrews fighting. Okay, so now there’s two of his own people. And he asked the one in the wrong, which I find fascinating because how did he know that was the one in the wrong? Were they in a fistfight? Was one on top of the other and he’s just wailing on them so he could tell that that one was in the wrong, or at least that one was the one winning the fight.

Like, what was it about this circumstance? I wish the text gave us a little bit more detail. And he just simply asked, because we know he’s physically harming him, why are you hitting your fellow Hebrew? Why are you wailing on this guy? This is the second time that we see the heart of Moses and this compassionate side of his ability to stand up and to fight for someone that seems to be in a precarious situation. And the man said, well, who made you ruler and judge over us? Yeah, don’t you like that? Talking back to Moses, him in his Egyptian clothes and, you know, his Egyptian status and everybody would have known who he was.

Everyone would have known that basically he hit the lottery. I mean, who else got to grow up and experience the life that he’s experienced up to this point? And then he goes on to say, are you thinking of killing me as you killed the Egyptian? Uh-oh. Wait a second.

He hit him in the sand. How did people know? How is this all of a sudden coming to light? Was it because there were people that were watching this all unfold that he couldn’t see? Or was it the Hebrew that he actually saved went back and began to tell people, you’re not going to believe this. I was in a situation and Moses actually stopped the situation, saved me from the situation, so much so he killed the person that was abusing me.

And of course, the natural response is he’s afraid and he thought what must I or what I did must have become known. Word is getting out and it’s going through his people first. Everybody that’s connected to him historically, all of the Israelites are finding out what exactly Moses did.

And I would tell you today that whatever is done in secret always comes to light. Did you know that? Why do we always think that we can hide our sins? Why do we play these games first and foremost with God? Can I just tell you this? Stop playing games with God. God sees you.

He knows you. He knows every thought. He knows every wicked, you know, portion of your heart.

There is absolutely nothing that you can hide from God. Every thought, word, deed, action is laid bare before Him. And here’s the beautiful part.

He can handle it. He knows our situation. He knows the struggles that we face living in a fallen, sinful world with a fallen, sinful human heart that we have.

The war that happens with inside each and every one of us, even if we are followers of Jesus, even if He has saved us, even if we’ve been baptized, we still day in and day out struggle with a fallen, sinful nature. And so not only has this now reached the ears of the Israelites, it’s now transferred over into the Egyptians. And of course, as the Egyptians are finding out, it ultimately leads up to Pharaoh.

And so when Pharaoh hears of this news, he then puts a death warrant on Moses. He tried to kill Moses. And somehow Moses must have found out that he is now a wanted man.

And so what do you do when you’re wanted? You run. You get out of dodge. You know, we’ve had people here at Shepherd’s Gate that tried to bury sins, big sins that we would call them, things that came to light that there was no way that they could deny.

And you know what they do? They run. Instead of running toward grace, instead of running toward their pastor, instead of running toward reconciliation, instead it’s so easy to just disappear. Some of them even have left the state and they leave all of the carnage here for us to have to pick up the pieces because they can’t humble themselves enough to admit that what they have done is wrong or face the consequences for it.

This happens all the time. And so he flees from Pharaoh and he goes and he lives in Midian and he sits down by a well, which is always a good idea when you’ve been running all day. Probably thirsty.

I mean, he didn’t go out on this second day planning to have somebody out him. And he certainly wasn’t going out, you know, with his bags packed and everything that he needed to survive. He knew he needed to get out of there.

Wells are interesting because if you do a deep dive into wells in scripture, they actually are very significant. And whenever you see the term well or somebody sitting by a well, you lean into that because over and over again, Old Testament and New Testament, it means that something is about to happen, something very important. And in Moses’s case, there’s a priest of Midian and he had how many daughters? How many of you want to shake this guy’s hand when you get to heaven? Seven daughters.

Wow, that’s a lot of daughters. That’s amazing. Somebody after the nine o’clock service said, I knew a guy that had 10 daughters.

And he goes, that means there was 11 women living in his house. I said, oh man, that’s, that’s, God bless him. And they came to draw water, which I like this because he doesn’t send sons.

Maybe he didn’t have sons. Who knows? They came to draw water and fill the troughs to the waters of their father’s flocks. Here you go, ladies, young ladies in the room.

You can do the same thing boys can do. Amen. And you can be trusted to carry on this task.

And so while they’re there and Moses is catching his breath and trying to figure out what his next move is, some shepherds came along and drove them away. Isn’t it interesting? Because usually in scripture, shepherds are like these nice people and you know, they go and visit baby Jesus. Here’s some not so nice shepherds.

This is when that story gets kind of interesting. And so who are they? We don’t know. Where did they come from? We don’t know.

Why are they picking on these ladies? We don’t know. But wouldn’t you know, Moses got up and what does he do? Oh, this is so cool. He comes to their rescue.

I mean, Hollywood can’t write stuff better than this. They try and they always try to have one central character. It’s like the hero, whether it’s Braveheart or Gladiator or any other movie where you have this one central male character.

How in the world was Moses able to fend off a whole group of shepherds? God, couldn’t you give us just a little more detail? I mean, he’s already committed murder, so he’s got that under his belt. Was he just trained in the arts? Did he just know how to wrestle? Like, what was that like? Was that verbally assaulting them or was it a mix of verbally assaulting them and also with his hands or whatever the case was? All we know is that he shoot them away. And then this is really cool.

Single guys in the room lead into this. Not only does he rescue not one, not two, not three, not four, not five, not six, but seven ladies, he waters their flock. No one’s impressed with that this morning? I mean, seven girls go to get water for all of these animals and he’s like, you guys, you guys, you just sit right there and I’ll do this for you.

This is so cool because when the girls returned to their father, Ruhl, he asked them, why have you returned so early today? Like, I sent you out. It should have taken you this long to do it. Why are you here? And they answered him, an Egyptian rescued us from the shepherds.

Wait a second. Why are they calling Moses an Egyptian? Very good. It’s because of how he is dressed.

Again, he didn’t think that he would end up at this well on this particular day. They don’t really recognize the difference other than you can imagine the clothes on his body must have been expensive and clearly Egyptian. He even, dad, drew water for us and watered the flock.

And I love this response to every future father-in-law. What does he say? Where is this guy? He’s got a job. He’s got a 401k.

He’s got a house. He just didn’t know he was living in his mom’s basement yet, right? Where is he? Ruhl asked his daughters, why did you leave that guy? That’s the one of you needs to marry. Invite him to have something to eat.

And what do you know, they go and they find him and bring him back and he agrees to stay with the man. And things get really progressed in the story because all of a sudden he’s given a daughter, Saborah, to Moses in marriage. And first come love, then comes marriage, then what? Here comes the baby.

Gave birth and it’s a son, which is interesting. Moses names him Gershom saying, I have become a foreigner in a foreign land. See, isn’t it intriguing when you slow it down long enough and you read what’s actually in scripture, how much of it we might not even know or recognize if we were fortunate enough to grow up in church and go through a Sunday school program.

All of these little nuances that are happening in the text. And again, always having eyes to see, God, where is it that you are at work? That God, you knew that those seven daughters would be at that well. That you knew the father-in-law would respond the way that he would.

And you’re still, even though he’s a murderer, you’re still protecting him. You orchestrated those events to get him back to this guy, this priest, which we don’t really know too much about what he was a priest of, to get him all the way back to this home and now you are going to protect him in the context of this wilderness, but with this family, so much so you’re even going to bless him with a wife and a kid. How many think that’s unfair? Am I the only one that thinks this is unfair? He hasn’t stood trial.

He murdered a guy. Can I just say it again? He murdered a guy. Why do we give him a pass? Usually when people murder people, we want them to suffer, don’t we? We want them to rot in a jail cell and that is not what happens.

Instead, for some crazy reason, he gets grace and mercy and even blessings in his life. I want to go back for a moment to the whole concept of wells because those of you that were with us in Genesis, you might remember some of these accounts. Abraham was actually trying to find a husband or a wife, I’m sorry, Abraham was trying to find a wife for his son.

Does anybody remember Abraham’s son? Isaac. And so he sends out the first ever matchmaker in Scripture. And he says, the woman, when he sees Rebekah, she was beautiful, she was a virgin, no man had ever slept with her.

Think about that. In Genesis 29, Jacob is the one that’s at a well with two sisters, Jacob and Leah. And he tells us, Leah, well, Leah was Leah, and Rachel was beautiful in form and appearance.

And now here we see the same pattern again, God using a well to orchestrate the events of a marriage, which is kind of interesting. It’s kind of like, you know, the Christian mingle of their day. Like if you want to find a good looking person, where should you go? If you want to find a wife, where should you go? So in our day and age, where should the young people go to find a spouse? Who said bar? Where do you now receive the living water? In church.

Church is a great place to meet someone, to attend together, to worship together, to talk through Scripture together. Thank God Pastor Eric’s working on all sorts of new young adult groups, and he’s going to be splitting them into college and young adult and older young adult and all these things so that we can foster community here at Shepherd’s Gate. And by the way, it’s not that you can’t meet somebody in a bar, okay? Someone said, well, you know what a bar is called, Pastor Tim? A watering hole, thanks.

So you guys are all catching up on the nine o’clock. All right, verse 23. During that long period, okay, it’s not telling us the time length.

Anybody know what the long period is on this one? Another, ready for this? 40 years. So I just want you to keep track of that. Baby Moses, toddler Moses, 40-year-old, and now an 80-year-old.

God allowed him 40 years with this family, and yet in that time, now finally the king, that ruthless, horrible king that ordered all those babies thrown in the Nile, he finally dies. And the Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and here’s what’s so beautiful, their cry for help because of their slavery makes it way up to the ears of God. But wait a second, God, where have you been all of these years? I mean, they were enslaved for hundreds of years.

God, why would you allow your chosen people, the people that you strategically moved all throughout Genesis, and now as we transfer and transition into Exodus and we see that you still are working and your plan is to ultimately save them out of this situation that they’re in, why do you wait so long? You ever wonder that? I mean, it’s okay, God, if sometimes you want to make us wait weeks or months, but once it starts bleeding into years, isn’t that a little ridiculous? Can we just say that? Like, God, come on. How about decades? Anybody like waiting decades on God? No, of course not. And here they are, they’re crying out for help, and it goes up to the ears of God.

And it says next that God heard their groaning, and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He goes back to all of the covenants that he’s made all along, and now God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them. God, haven’t you been concerned all along? Weren’t you concerned when the babies were thrown in the Nile? Weren’t you concerned every time one of your precious children were whipped at the abuser’s hands? God, why do you allow abuse to continue to happen? God, why do you allow people to go through hardships? And sometimes this is some of the hardest, you know, things to grapple with as a follower of Jesus, because his timeline is not our timeline.

And the way that he administers justice is not always the way that we want him to administer justice. And let’s be honest, sometimes we get really frustrated with the speed at which God reacts and responds. Can we admit that this morning? But here, hear this text this morning.

This is the gospel for you and me, is that God sees us. In fact, he knows every thought in our head, and he knows every concern that we carry in our hearts. He knows everything about us.

He created us. He knows every word that we speak. And not only does God see us, God hears us.

He hears your cries. He hears your prayers. He knows the pain that you’re going through.

He knows the treatment plan that you’re on. He knows that when the doctor tells you, which one of our brothers at the nine o’clock service told me that, that he’s not going to even have the results for 18 months. He doesn’t even know that what he’s doing right now, if it’s actually going to make a difference.

And I was like, man, that has to be so tough. And he said, the hardest part is, guess what? Waiting. And yet this last thing is so beautiful, because it says God remembers.

And the Hebrew word, because Exodus was written in Hebrew, is zakar. And what’s so important is to lean into this. Because sometimes in the English, we assume something about this.

We think, well, did God forget? Or we attribute it to ourselves, where sometimes we remember things, and then other times we forget things. And I don’t know about you, but the older I get, the harder it is for me to remember things. Does anybody else have that happen to you? Especially when my wife says something to me.

I don’t know why. I’m like, we had this conversation last night. I’m like, first of all, are you sure we had a conversation? Yes, we had a conversation.

Are you sure that you said those things? It’d be better, could you just email me next time? Could you just like, you know, have record? No, I’m just joking. But it’s what happens. This is not the case with God.

God is omniscient. He knows everything. We’re fallen, sinful, frail human beings.

He is not. And the word, remember, in here is covenantal language. When he makes a covenant, he keeps it.

And that’s why it says in the text that he goes all the way back to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. When he remembers, it is very significant. And what it says is, is that God is about to act.

He is about to unfold the plan that he already had in place. He’s about to unfold what it is that he will do in and through any person that he chooses to do it in and through, even a murderer, by the way. And what’s so precious about this is that as we today get the opportunity to receive Holy Communion.

And by the way, this may be your second week with us, as last week we focused on baptism and this week we focused on the other sacrament that we believe so strongly in, which is Holy Communion. Because we believe that Christ is actually present in communion. That not only does he offer us the forgiveness of sins, but that he strengthens our faith as we receive that in faith.

It’s why we do it often here at Shepherd’s Gate. And so when you see this word remember, it is not that God forgot. God has not forgotten you.

God knows everything about you. What it means is, is that God is going to carry through what he promised from the very beginning. And the way that this ties into communion is this way.

That just as God has remembered his covenant and is about to set forth his plan to deliver the Israelites, which is what we’re going to get into next week as we move into chapter three. In Holy Communion, stay with me here, God remembers his promise and he delivers forgiveness to his people, which is you and me. See these people that we’re reading about, they’re connected to us.

They’re part of our ancestry because of our faith in God and what it is that he’s doing through his son, Jesus Christ. And I know so often in communion, the shift kind of takes place as we bow our heads and close our eyes, we confess our sins, and we remember what it is that Jesus has done on the cross for us, as we should. But listen to me this morning, this is what’s so beautiful about the text this morning, is as we remember what it is that Jesus has done for us, our Heavenly Father remembers what he did to Jesus.

He’s the one that put him on this planet. He’s the one that put him on the cross. He’s the one that allowed the sins of the world to be placed upon his body, even those that commit murder, even those that commit the sin that you don’t think you could ever be forgiven.

If God can forgive Moses, and if God can use Moses, he can certainly forgive and use you. And so when we bow our heads and close our eyes in that moment, realize this is your opportunity to tell him what he already knows. Why keep hiding it? Why try keep burying it in the sand, when he wants nothing more than to take that sin from you, and once again nail it to the cross, and to send you out here as a forgiven, redeemed child of God.

So remember that. Remember that today, that he also remembers you, and loves you, and wants you to receive the incredible blessing that comes from this gift that we are about to partake together. Amen.