God Comes to Rescue Those Suffering in Slavery

Welcome to the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church. Kungsvinger is a beacon for the gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of northwestern Minnesota. We proclaim Christ and Him crucified for our sins and salvation by grace through faith.

Alone.

And now, here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg.

God Sees the Affliction of His People in Exodus 3 and 4

A reading from Exodus chapters 3 and 4. Now Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God.

And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. And Moses said, I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.

When the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, Moses,.

Moses.

And he said, here I am. And he said, do not come near, take your sandals off your feet, for the place in which you are standing is holy ground. And he said, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob.

And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God. Then the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt, and I have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey to the place of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.

And now, behold, the cry of the people of Israel has come to me. I have also seen the oppression with which the oppressions oppress them. Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.

But Moses said to God, Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt? He said, But I will be with you, and this shall be the sign for you that I have sent you when you have brought the people out of Egypt.

You shall serve God on this mountain. Then Moses said to God, If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, The God of your fathers has sent me to you, and they ask me, What is his name? What shall I say to them?

God said to Moses, I am who I am, and he said, Say this to the people of Israel. I am has sent me to you. God also said to Moses, Say this to the people of Israel. The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob has sent me to you.

This is my name forever, and thus I am to be remembered throughout all generations. Go and gather the elders of Israel together and say to them, The Lord, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob has appeared to me saying, I have observed you and what has been done to you in Egypt, and I promise that I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt to the land of 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, and you and the elders of Israel shall go to the king of Egypt and say to him, The Lord, the God of the Hebrews has met with us, and now please let us go a three days journey into the wilderness that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God.

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 he will let you go.

And I will give this people favor in the sight of the Egyptians. And when you go, you shall not go empty, but each woman shall ask of her neighbor and any woman who lives in her house for silver and gold, jewelry and for clothing, and you shall put them on your sons and on your daughters, so you shall plunder the Egyptians.

Then Moses answered, But behold, they will not believe me or listen to my voice, for they will say, The Lord did not appear to you. The Lord said to him, What is that in your hand? He said, A staff. And he said, Throw it on the ground.

So he threw it on the ground, and it became a serpent, and Moses ran from it. But the Lord said to Moses, Put out your hand and catch it by the tail. So he put out his hand and caught it, and it became a staff in his hand, that they may believe that the Lord, the God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, has appeared to you.

Again the Lord said to him, Put your hand inside your cloak, and he put his hand inside of his cloak, and when he took it out, behold, his hand was leprous like snow. And then God said, Put your hand back inside your cloak, so he put his hand back inside of his cloak, and he went and took it out.

Behold, it was restored like the rest of his flesh. If they will not believe you, God said, or listen to the first sign, they may believe the latter sign. And if they will not believe even these two signs or listen to your voice, you shall take some water from the Nile and pour it on the ground, and the water that you shall take from the Nile will become blood on the dry ground.

But Moses said to the Lord, O my Lord, I am not eloquent, either in the past or since you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and of tongue. Then the Lord said to him, Who has made man's mouth?

Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth, and teach you what you shall speak. But he said, O my Lord, please send someone else.

Then the anger of the Lord was kindled against Moses, and he said, Is there not Aaron, your brother, the Levite? I know that he can speak well. Behold, he is coming out to meet you, and when he sees you, he will be glad in his heart.

And you shall speak to him, and put the words in his mouth, and I will be with your mouth, and with his mouth, and will teach you both what to do. He shall speak for you to the people, and he shall be your mouth, and you shall be as God to him.

And take in your hand the staff, which you shall do the signs. Moses went back to Jethro, his father-in-law, and said to him, Please let me go back to my brothers in Egypt to see whether they are still alive.

And Jethro said to Moses, Go in peace. And the Lord said to Moses and Midian, Go back to Egypt, for all the men who were seeking your life are dead. So Moses took his wife and his sons, and had them ride on a donkey, and went back to the land of Egypt.

And Moses took the staff of God in his hand. And the Lord said to Moses, When you go back to Egypt, see that you do before Pharaoh all the miracles that I have put in your power. But I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go.

Then you shall say to Pharaoh, Thus says the Lord, Israel is my firstborn son. And I say to you, Let my son go, that he may serve me. If you refuse to let him go, behold, I will kill your firstborn son.

At a lodging place on the way, the Lord met him, and sought to put him to death. Then Saborah took a flint, and cut off her son's foreskin, and touched Moses' feet with it, and said, Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me.

So he let him alone. And it was then that she said, Bridegroom of blood, because of the circumcision. And the Lord said to Aaron, Go into the wilderness to meet Moses. So we went and met him at the mountain of God, and kissed him.

And Moses told Aaron all the words of the Lord, with which he had sent him to speak, and all the signs that he had commanded him to do. Then Moses and Aaron went and gathered together all the elders of the people of.

Israel.

Aaron spoke all the words that the Lord had spoken to Moses, and did the signs in sight of the people. And the people believed. And when they heard that the Lord had visited the people of Israel, and that he had seen their affliction, they bowed their heads and worshiped.

O Lord, have mercy upon us. In the name of Jesus.

Amen.

The Exodus as a Type and Shadow of Christ's Rescue

What an interesting story. God appears to Moses in a burning bush, gives him a purpose, and Moses says, Send someone else. What a great story. It's absolutely fascinating and amazing. But it's really easy to lose sight of something.

Did you see how many times God wanted his people to know that he had seen their affliction, and that he was coming to deliver them and to set them free? Did you notice that God saw and he cared? And so, here's an example of it.

The Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt. I have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings. And I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey to the place of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.

And now behold, the cry of the people of Israel has come to me. And I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppressed them. Come, I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.

And we know that this is type and shadow. We know that this is type and shadow and that the fulfillment finds itself in the story that we find ourselves in. We are under the oppression, the yoke of slavery.

We are the ones who suffer and toil in back-breaking labor, our bodies crushed back into the dust from which we came. It just seems that there is no rescue in sight. And this is a picture of how God has seen us and has sent not Moses, but sent his only son to save us.

The Three Signs Given to Moses and the Lord's Supper

Did you notice that Moses was given three signs, three signs? Miracles, and that's kind of the purpose of miracles, and you'll note that. That when miracles are given, they are given for the purpose of validating a message.

And so Moses was given three signs, his staff can turn into a snake, hmm, kind of like a Genesis thing there. And then the leprosy one, that was interesting. We have put his hand in and it comes out leprous, put it back in and comes back out.

But that third one, turning water into blood, that's an interesting one. That's a standout one. The reason it's a standout one in my mind has everything to do with the absolute miracle that happens every time we are able to have the Lord's Supper together.

Where Christ and his verba, spoken thousands of years ago, separated by time and space, that his verba still is taking ordinary bread and ordinary wine and adding to it his very body and blood given and shed for us for the forgiveness of our sins.

Note that. And then, of course, Moses decides he's gonna take the occasion of this rare face-to-face meeting with God. No human, very few humans have had such a conversation take place. And he wants to know God's name.

What is your name? What should I say? Who should I say sent me? And God gives him both the noun and the verb forms, if you would. The ha-yah, the I am, as well as the yah way, the self-existing one.

They're both here. But listen to those words again. What is your name, God? My name is, I am. Say this to the people of Israel, I am has sent me to you. And so Moses, although he tries to get out of it.

I always find it fascinating when you hear a purpose-driven preacher try to convince everybody that this is a great example of how God wants you to find.

Your purpose.

Well, Moses apparently was given his and he said, please send someone else. He doesn't seem to quite get the idea that his job is to live a purpose-driven life. And you'll note where Moses fails, Christ comes through beautifully.

But the best bit of all of this is at the tail end of four, where it says that Aaron, the brother of Moses, spoke all the words that Yahweh had spoken to Moses. And they did the signs inside of the people and listen to these words, and the people believed.

They believed when they heard that Yahweh had visited the people of Israel and that he had seen their afflictions, and they bowed their heads and they worshipped. That's right, God has seen. But have you ever read the account of Jesus walking on the water in light of this passage?

It's funny when you put the two together what happens, especially if you can read a little bit of Greek. And so consider this, Jesus has just fed 5 ,000 men, that does not include the women and the children, in the wilderness, out in the middle of nowhere.

And they all went, whoa, could this possibly be the son of David, the prophet, the one who was promised? They begin to kind of put two and two together after the feeding of the 5 ,000. And so Jesus, he's gonna dismiss the crowd himself.

And he sends his disciples, puts them in a boat, sends them across the Sea of Galilee for a nighttime crossing. And listen to the story in this account and watch the parallels, it's so amazing. Immediately, Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side while he dismissed the crowds.

And after he had dismissed the crowds, he went up on the mountain by himself to pray. And when evening came, he was there alone. But the boat by this time was a long way from land, beaten by the waves for the wind was against them.

And in the fourth watch of the night, Jesus came to them walking on the sea. But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were terrified. And they said, it is a ghost. And they cried out in fear.

But immediately, Jesus spoke to them and said, take heart, I am, do not be afraid.

What an interesting thing.

Here, and you kind of miss it cuz the modern translations,.

I don't know what they were thinking.

Cuz the Greek here says, a go, a me.

And listen to what he says, take heart, I am.

The old name of God from that burning bush comes out of the mouth of Jesus in the midst of this difficult crossing of the Sea of Galilee. And he says, don't be afraid, take heart, I am. And all the comforting words that Yahweh spoke to the people of Israel through Moses, through the burning bush, that I have seen their affliction, their oppression, their toil.

And I have remembered my covenant, and I have come to set you free. All of that now comes flooding back. Peter, of course, didn't believe. He didn't believe. Remember, Moses was worried. All right, what if they don't believe me, Lord?

What if they don't believe me? And so God gave to Moses the three signs. Well, here Peter doesn't believe it. There's just no way. That can't possibly be Jesus. Although he said, I am, and this is crazy.

He can't possibly be walking on the water. So Peter decides to challenge Jesus, in much the same way that Moses expected the people of Israel to challenge him. So Peter said to him, Lord, if it's you, command me to come out onto the water.

I need a sign, Lord. I need to know that that's really you. And Jesus said, come. Now, everybody likes to preach as if somehow Peter was stepping out in audacious faith. I would basically say he was stepping out in stupid unbelief, all right?

I mean, who else do you think this is, walking on the water, invoking the name of God, and able to do all of these things? You just saw him feed an entire multitude of people out in the Judean wilderness, and you're doubting that it's Jesus?

But Jesus, okay, just like Moses, Jesus has signs too, and God anticipated all of this, and so he says, come. So Peter got out of the boat, and he too walked on the water, and he came to Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid, and beginning to sink, he cried out, Lord, save me.

That's a good prayer. Lord, save me. Have you prayed that one lately? We pray it every day, do we not? We pray at every divine service. Have mercy on me. Forgive me, O Lord. Lord, save me. Lord, save me.

And so Jesus immediately reached out his hand, took a hold of him, saying to him, you of little faith, why did you doubt? And when they got into the boat, listen to these words, the wind ceased. Everything went silent.

Can you imagine rowing all night into the fourth watch of the night in the Sea of Galilee, and this is gonna include the white caps and everything that goes along with it, and you can never seem to make any headway, and it's just back-breaking, muscle-straining work just to make an inch's worth of progress.

And as soon as Jesus gets into the boat, it all stops. But you're gonna note here, he's invoking the divine name from Exodus 3. Take heart, I am, do not be afraid. And just like the children of Israel in Exodus 4, it says that all the people believed when they heard that the Lord had visited the people of Israel, and he had seen their affliction, so they bowed their heads and they worshiped.

In the same way, then, Jesus gets into the boat, and the disciples, the text says, they worshiped him, saying, truly, you are the son of God. Brothers and sisters, God has visited us. He sent his only begotten son, born of the Virgin Mary.

He came, he suffered under Pontius Pilate, he was crucified, died, buried, so that you and I can be set free from that tyrant Pharaoh known as Satan. So that we can be delivered from slavery to sin, death, and the devil, and that we might have an inheritance in the new earth, a broad and spacious land, that new earth, a land flowing with milk and honey.

I've heard that it doesn't even need the sun to give it light, because the glory of the Lord illuminates it 24 -7. You see, our God has seen our affliction, he has seen our toil, he has seen the oppression that we are under.

He has visited us, and he says, take heart, I am, do not be afraid. He has come to deliver us, and truly, he has. And so the disciples worshiped him, saying, truly, you are the son of God. And to this day, we worship him, because he truly is the son of God.

And this Lenten season, again, as we consider our own sin and his great deliverance, that he has worked for our salvation, let us again worship him. And be thankful that God has heard our cries. He has seen our suffering, he has had mercy on us, and that he has come to set us free from this affliction, so that we might finally, well, like Peter cried out, Lord, save me, that we might be saved.

Repentance is always about sorrow and contrition for sin, and trust and belief that you are forgiven. And because Christ has come for us, not to condemn us, but to save us, we too can take heart, we can finally lift up our heads and say there's hope, because Christ has come, in the name of Jesus.

Support for the Ministry and Closing Notices

If you would like to support the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, you can do so by sending a tax-free donation to Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, 15950 470th Avenue, Northwest, Oslo, Minnesota, 56744.

And again, that address is Kungsvinger Lutheran Church, 15950 470th Avenue, Northwest, Oslo, Minnesota, 56744. We thank you for your support. All of our teaching messages may be freely distributed, as long as you do not edit or change the content of the message.

And again, thank you for listening.