Sermon: Let My Son Go

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Well, it is so good to be here with you today for worship, and I'm so thankful for Jeff and Luke and Dr.

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White and Apologia Ministries and their kingdom work and example to the

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Church of Christ, and it's a real joy for me to have the chance to share with you today. It's also a pleasure to be with my dear friend

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Andrew and his wife Sharon and my colleague Bart from the Ezra Institute.

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As we gather this evening, I want us to turn to God's Word first, and then we'll say a short word of prayer, but I want to read from Exodus chapter 4,

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Exodus chapter 4, beginning in verse 1, and I'll be reading the whole chapter,

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Exodus chapter 4. Then Moses answered, what if they won't believe me and will not obey me, but say, the

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Lord did not appear to you? The Lord asked him, what is that in your hand?

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A staff, he replied. Then he said, throw it on the ground, and he threw it on the ground, and it became a snake.

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Moses ran from it, but the Lord told him, stretch out your hand and grab it by the tail.

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So he stretched out his hand and caught it, and it became a staff in his hand.

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This will take place, he continued, so they will believe that Yahweh, the

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God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the

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God of Jacob has appeared to you. In addition, the Lord said to him, put your hand inside your cloak.

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So he put his hand inside his cloak, and when he took it out, his hand was diseased, white as snow.

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Then he said, put your hand back inside your cloak. He put his hand back inside his cloak, and when he took it out, it had again become like the rest of his skin.

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If they will not believe you and will not respond to the evidence of the first sign, they may believe the evidence of the second sign.

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And if they don't believe even these two signs or listen to what you say, take some water from the

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Nile and pour it on the dry ground. The water you take from the Nile will become blood on the ground.

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But Moses replied to the Lord, please, Lord, I have never been eloquent either in the past or recently or since you have been speaking to your servant, because I am slow and hesitant in speech.

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Yahweh said to him, who made the human mouth? Who makes him mute or deaf, seeing or blind?

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Is it not I, Yahweh? Now go, I will help you speak, and I will teach you what to say.

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Moses said, please, Lord, send someone else.

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Then the Lord's anger burned against Moses, and he said, isn't Aaron the

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Levite your brother? I know that he can speak well, and also he is on his way now to meet you.

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He will rejoice when he sees you. You will speak with him and tell him what to say.

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I will help both you and him to speak and will teach you both what to do.

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He will speak to the people for you. He will be your spokesman, and you will serve as God to him.

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And take this staff in your hand that you will perform the signs with.

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Then Moses went back to his father -in -law, Jethro, and said to him, please let me return to my relatives in Egypt and see if they are still living.

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Jethro said to Moses, go in peace. Now in Midian, the Lord told Moses, return to Egypt, for all the men who wanted to kill you are dead.

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So Moses took his wife and sons, put them on a donkey, and returned to the land of Egypt.

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And Moses took God's staff in his hand. The Lord instructed

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Moses, when you go back to Egypt, make sure you do all the wonders before Pharaoh that I have put within your power.

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But I will harden his heart so that he won't let the people go. Then you will say to Pharaoh, this is what

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Yahweh says, Israel is my firstborn son. I told you, let my son go so that he may worship me.

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But you refused to let him go. Now I will kill your firstborn son. On the trip at an overnight campsite, it happened that the

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Lord confronted him and sought to put him to death. So Zipporah took a flint, cut off her son's foreskin, and threw it at Moses' feet.

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Then she said, you are a bridegroom of blood to me. So he let him alone. At that time she said, you are a bridegroom of blood, referring to the circumcision.

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Now the Lord had said to Aaron, go and meet Moses in the wilderness. So he went and met him at the mountain of God and kissed him.

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Moses told Aaron everything the Lord had sent him to say and about all the signs he had commanded him to do.

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Then Moses and Aaron went and assembled all the elders of the Israelites. Aaron repeated everything the

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Lord had said to Moses and performed the signs before the people. The people believed.

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And when they heard that the Lord had paid attention to them and that he had seen their misery, they bowed down and worshipped.

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This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Let's pray for a moment, shall we?

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Lord, open my lips and my mouth shall show forth thy praise.

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Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be pleasing and acceptable in your sight,

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O Lord, our rock and our Redeemer. Amen. So the subject that I have chosen to speak to you about this evening and the title

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I have given what I want to say is, Let My Son Go. Let My Son Go.

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Moses is in the midst of an encounter with the living

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God in this famous incident at the burning bush. And the

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Lord not only revealed the awesome mystery of his name Yahweh in this encounter at the bush, but he showed that because God's presence was with his people, although they were enslaved in Egypt, they were not consumed.

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So Moses encounters a bush that is burning, perhaps not that unusual in the desert. You would know better than I.

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But the bush was not being consumed. And the presence of God was with his people and even though they were in distress, they were not consumed.

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And in this part of this encounter at the burning bush in chapter 4,

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Moses is now learning something of Yahweh's calling on his life with respect to the people of God enslaved in Egypt.

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What was it that God was going to require of him? And what was the ultimate goal that God had in view?

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We're going to see that that was that a people might be liberated to honor, worship, and serve him in the earth.

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The goal in view was that God would have a people to worship and serve him in the earth and for that they needed to be liberated.

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And so I want to consider this chapter under three simple headings.

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First, three signs. Second, two objections. And thirdly, freedom for the people of God.

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And since I'm saying it all in an English accent, I know you will pay even greater attention than if James was preaching.

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So first of all, the three signs. Three signs. So up to this point in Moses' life, we might say that his actions had been largely self -motivated.

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You remember that in Egypt, Moses had risen up seeing the distress of one of his fellow countrymen, one of the

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Hebrews, and he had slain one of the Egyptian soldiers or guards.

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He slew this Egyptian in his own strength. And then when he realized that Pharaoh was angry and was after him, he fled to save himself.

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Moses now, after fleeing Egypt, finds himself for many years in the wilderness.

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He's now married, as we meet him at the burning bush. He's tending sheep. He's gone from Pharaoh's palace to herding sheep for his father -in -law.

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And there is still an urge in Moses' heart to serve his people.

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The desire to associate himself with the suffering of his own people is still in him, but there's no apparent solution in sight to Moses' tending sheep in the wilderness with his people all enslaved in Egypt.

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Until, that is, this conversation at the burning bush. Finally, Moses' encounter with God in the wilderness.

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And God has been teaching him during this period, and it's a long period of time. He's been teaching

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Moses to wait. In the wilderness, all of that self -confidence of Moses, that self -motivated action that rose up in his own strength to slay the

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Egyptian, is being broken down, and Moses is learning reliance upon God.

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Do you ever feel yourself in that kind of a situation, that your own strength is being broken down, you're being taught to wait, and you're learning reliance upon God?

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So Moses knows at this point in chapter 4 that he is being sent to Pharaoh.

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We see that in chapter 3. But he has no idea how God is going to work this deliverance for his people, beyond being told that God is going to do something.

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He's going to do miracles. And so Moses has all kinds of questions. He's got all kinds of doubts.

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He's got all kinds of fears. And who wouldn't?

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Because Moses is a human being, just as Elijah was a human being.

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Moses is as fallible and fallen a human being as you or I. And he was scared.

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And he had questions. And he didn't know how God was going to do this.

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It's interesting that his first objection in verse 1 of chapter 4, which we're going to return to in a moment, is not primarily a fear of the

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Egyptians, or of Pharaoh, but a concern about the cynicism of his own people.

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They won't believe me. It's a common feature, actually, of Scripture and of church history that frequently those who claim to be

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God's people are most resistant to God's prophets and messengers. Isn't that strange?

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Including Christ and the apostles amongst the Jews. Remember what the Lord Jesus said, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you?

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And Moses, like Elijah, even though Elijah, remember, had seen

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God demonstrate His power at Mount Carmel and defeat the prophets of Baal.

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And then all of a sudden, oh, there's a woman after me. I'm going to go and run away and hide in a cave. Because Elijah was human.

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Moses was human, and he was afraid of the reaction of the people. So to prepare

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Moses for what lay ahead, and to confirm his calling, to meet his concerns,

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God offers three signs. Two of which He performs right in front of him, and which were going to be done as well before the

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Israelites and eventually before the Egyptians. The first sign is the staff or the rod incident.

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The second is the leprous white hand. And the third is the Nile water becoming blood.

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These are the three signs that God speaks to Moses about. Now, if we're going to understand the significance of these signs, it's important to understand something very quickly of the religious faith of Egypt.

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Why would these signs be powerful? If I say to you,

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Egypt, probably the first thing that comes to your mind is pyramids.

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You know, maybe a close second is Pharaoh, but mainly pyramids.

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They're a strange thing, aren't they? Sat out there on the flat plains of Egypt.

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They're one of the wonders of the world, so -called. And they are actually a reminder of the faith of the

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Egyptians, the beliefs of the Egyptians, because their triangular shape, their durable permanence, revealed a religious view of their culture that it was aligned with the essential structure of all being.

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The Egyptians believed the universe was a static realm without change. And that the, basically, their pharaohs, their gods, were the connecting point between heaven and earth.

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And the pyramids, touching heaven and earth, with their mathematical perfection, and the

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Egyptians loved their math, symbolized the durability and the permanence and the stability of Egypt, a universe, a world without change.

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One commentator described it this way, and I quote, In challenging Egypt's faith,

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God struck at the world of nature. Suddenly, nature became to the

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Egyptian mind perverse and undependable. This fact struck at the foundations of Egyptian life and religion.

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Egyptians' certainties became uncertainties. So when you look at what the signs that God is performing, and when you look eventually at what happens with the ten plagues, it was the religious root, the religious faith of Egypt that was being undermined.

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Instead of durability, permanence, stability, constancy, the structure of being, the harmony of their culture with the structure of all things, suddenly, that structure seems utterly perverse and turns on them.

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Now understanding that helps us understand the significance of some of the signs.

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The first one is the rod, or the staff incident. Moses is a shepherd, he's got a staff in his hand.

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We're familiar with the image of the staff, we think of a shepherd's staff, often had the hook on the top because it was useful for pulling sheep back from the brink.

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The shepherd's staff, he is instructed to throw on the ground. And when he does, it becomes a serpent.

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And then he's told to do the thing you should never do with a dangerous desert serpent in Egypt, pick it up by the tail.

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You grab a serpent, a snake, by the tail, the chances are it's going to turn around and bite you.

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But when he picks it up, it returns to being a wooden staff, a shepherd's staff. Now the rod, or the staff in the

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Bible, is a symbol of power and authority. A symbol of power and authority.

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It's ultimately, of course, a sign of Christ's authority over the nations. We see that in Psalm 2.

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You shall break them with a rod, with a staff of iron. You see it in Revelation 2, 27, where that passage is quoted.

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Jesus is described as the great and the good shepherd.

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And many of the kings and emperors of the ancient world described themselves as great shepherds.

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They utilized frequently the symbol of the staff. They were the shepherds of their people.

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It's one of the reasons why Jesus describes himself as the good shepherd, the great shepherd of the sheep.

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All these other shepherds are imposters. So the staff is a symbol of power and authority.

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And in Moses' hand, because Moses is the servant of the Lord, it's a type of divine power.

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And as a type of divine power in the hands of God's servant, it's a staff of care, of discipline, a staff of righteousness.

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But power and authority wielded outside of the hand and rule of God changes character, and it becomes serpentine.

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It becomes like a serpent. It's diabolic.

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So scripture declares, can a corrupt throne be your ally, a throne that makes evil laws?

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Psalm 94, 20. The snake actually had an important role in Egyptian mythology.

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It had a very prominent place on the front of Pharaoh's crown, right on the front of his crown.

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And it set forth the Pharaoh's power to kill. The snake, in this form, was a symbol of the goddess

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Wadjet in Egypt. And so what we're being told here is that, like a serpent,

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Pharaoh was biting and killing God's people. But he was soon to be turned by the

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Lord into a dry stick. The godless state, you see, power and authority outside of the authority of God, when it's not in service to the

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Lord, becomes a leviathan, a serpent that opposes God.

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But back in the hands of Moses, as he takes it again, and he takes up the staff, the serpent returns to being a shepherd's staff.

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It is a marvelous reminder of Psalm 2, the true shepherd king who alone has authority to rule the nations.

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But it's interesting, isn't it, how in our own time, power and authority is becoming more serpentine in character.

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It's becoming diabolic. The more it's taken from under the authority of God, and we declare our autonomy and independence from God in the state, in the civil sphere, it's becoming serpentine.

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Only when fulfilling its role as God's servant does the state not become diabolic, demonic, a leviathan.

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So the first sign is the staff becoming a serpent, and then back in Moses' hand becoming a staff again.

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The second sign is, well, it reads like something out of Tolkien, the leprous white hand.

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It must have been a pretty frightening experience. I mean, the staff -serpent thing is frightening enough.

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Moses naturally ran away from the serpent on the ground. But here he's told to put his hand in his cloak.

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And when he removes it, it's leprous, it's diseased, it's gone white. When he puts it back in and removes it again, it's become whole.

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I've often wondered if he sort of did this. In Scripture, leprosy symbolizes sin and defilement.

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Sin and defilement. It separated people from society. You were unclean.

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You couldn't participate in the life of the people. And diseased and unclean was how

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Pharaoh was soon to be perceived by his own people. Only God, of course, is able by his grace to make us a new creation, to cleanse our evil hearts.

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It's wonderful to read the encounters of the Lord Jesus with lepers in the Newer Testament, isn't it?

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Because he cleansed the leper, he restores them to community. Interesting that when he healed the ten, only one came back to say thank you, and he wasn't a

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Hebrew. God alone is able to cleanse us by his grace.

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And even hard -hearted Israel was going to be made to hear God and be given a heart of flesh to be cleansed.

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So the second sign is given then to Moses, the second miracle.

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If they don't believe the first one, do this one. Then thirdly is the

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Nile water becoming blood. Now this sign, of course, is not performed in front of Moses, because he's not at the

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Nile, but was later by Aaron before the people in verse 30, and then finally, of course, on the grand scale before Pharaoh.

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And this sign has very clear reference to the Hebrew infants who were thrown into the

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Nile, the infanticide of Egypt. You'll recall that Pharaoh was requiring that the

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Hebrew midwives take the sons of Egypt and the newborn babies and throw them into the

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Nile. Egypt was committing infanticide against God's people.

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The god of the Nile, and the Nile was regarded as a god by the Egyptians, was part of the permanence, part of the prosperity, the fertility of Egypt.

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The Nile would become putrid and loathsome being turned into blood. Why? Because God had not forgotten the infants drowned in Egypt.

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And He hasn't forgotten all the murderous abortions performed in the West over the last 60, 70 years.

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God hasn't forgotten. And His judgment does not fail.

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Do we want to understand why we've seen what we've seen over the last two or three years?

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Panic and fear and terror in people's hearts. A kind of madness.

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You know, the scripture says that madness is in men's hearts while they live because their hearts are full of evil.

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And we've got the collapse of our economies increasingly, incredible debt burden, inflation in much of Europe, a massive rise in the cost of energy.

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And now we've got excess mortality that they can't explain. And it's worse than during the

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COVID period. I've just read that in the Daily Telegraph, the broad mainstream media in England. Do we want to understand why

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God is striking at the heart of those things that Western people think is so permanent and secure? Energy, money, health.

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Maybe we don't need to look much further than the blood that's on our hands. God is not mocked.

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People's professed unbelief in divine judgment in history is irrelevant to God's vengeance in history.

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It's irrelevant. So these are the signs and the symbols

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Moses is given to assure him of his calling that God is with him and that he has the power to accomplish the work.

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So you would think, well, that's a done deal then. I mean, who could ask for more?

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A staff becoming a serpent and back again, a leprous hand becoming healed, and an assurance that the

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Nile waters will be turned to blood by the God of the burning bush. Moses has all the empirical evidence he could ever want to trust

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God and obey. We've just been singing, trust and obey. Sometimes easier to sing than it is to do.

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God's almighty power has been made manifest in front of Moses in the bush and in these signs.

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And these signs are remarkable, aren't they? You know, the whole Gospel of John is built around the seven signs and the seven

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I am sayings of the Lord Jesus. Why are they signs? Signs are signposts to something.

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You don't stop at a sign, you know, to the recreation area and say, all right, we'll put our, let's have our lunch here by the sign.

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The sign is pointing you to something. And of course,

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God is not bound by his laws for creation. He's above his law for creation.

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There is a creator -creature distinction. And we need to disabuse ourselves of a view of reality that sees this world as a kind of, well, it's inherited from the

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Enlightenment really, as a sort of great clock, a great complex machine, which is basically running under its own power and in terms of its own internal law.

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And periodically, God comes along with a divine screwdriver. He puts his screwdriver into the cogs.

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That gives him a chance to monkey around, do something different, and then he pulls it out again and off the universe goes on its own.

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That's not the picture we have of creation in the Bible. What Scripture actually tells us is that it's

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Christ's powerful Word that holds all things together. Creation is an instantiation of the powerful

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Word of God, and so what we call laws of nature, or laws within creation, are

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God's ordinary way of working. But sometimes God doesn't always do the ordinary thing, the everyday thing.

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God does something different. He goes down a different path occasionally. Lepers, you see, don't usually get cleansed instantly, do they?

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Blind people don't usually see when they have mud rubbed on their eyes and spittle.

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Dead people don't usually come out of their grave, especially if they've been dead for several days and they stink and their brain has turned to liquid.

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And yet Lazarus comes out of the tomb, all his memories intact. People don't usually walk on the water, do they?

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Or say, peace be still to the storm. You see, that's the Creator in His creation.

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He curses the fig tree and it withers. He says, put water in those jars, and it becomes wine at His Word.

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Whatever He says to you, do it. This is the power of the

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Word of God who made all things. So Moses' issue at this point surely is not intellectual.

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He had no ground to question God's Word of power. But he makes excuses despite the signs.

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The issue was faith, not the evidence. And can I suggest to you, without too long a digression here, that this is why evidentialism is a failure.

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It's not that we don't have good evidences for the truth of the

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Christian faith when we set those evidences in the context of biblical faith. But nobody is out there like a brain in a white lab coat, weighing in a neutral fashion in terms of the autonomy of their reason, waiting for an inference to the best explanation of the universe, that God probably may be the best explanation.

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God has given every sign in creation, within our own being, that renders us without excuse, but Moses makes excuses.

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You see, faith is the root. Faith lies at the root.

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The faith function in our lives lies at the root of what people believe and will accept about reality.

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And the Apostle Paul is clear in Romans 1, isn't he, that the challenge for unbelievers is not a lack of evidence of God's divine power, but that they hold down, they suppress the truth in unrighteousness.

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We make excuses. The unbeliever makes excuses. Moses made excuses.

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So those are our three signs. We have two objections. What was the first objection?

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What if they won't believe me? What if they won't believe me? Now, from the time

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Moses had risen up to kill that Egyptian, his self -confidence had been steadily shattered. And you can imagine why, can't you?

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You've gone from Prince of Egypt to shepherd on the back end of nowhere. You probably are thinking at that point, yeah, my career path has taken a bit of a downturn here.

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How's God going to use me now? I mean, as Prince of Egypt, I could see myself affecting change for the people of God, for my people, but what can

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I do now? Imagine that, the effect of that on your sense of self -confidence.

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But you know, Scripture shows us, doesn't it, that broken people whose hearts are transformed by the Spirit of God, who are ready to walk in the grace and power of God, can be used for God's victorious purposes.

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And so this wasn't the end for Moses, this was the beginning. His self -confidence had been broken down.

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God had given Moses these signs because his first objection had been, what if they won't believe me and will not obey me?

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Now, here I think is something really important, for all of us. For a person to actually believe that they have something important and valuable to say to a rebellious people and culture, to a wicked generation, takes courage and faith.

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And it doesn't come naturally to anybody. This is not about personality.

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Oh, well, it's okay for Dr. White and for Jeff and others, because, you know, they've got that kind of a personality.

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It's got nothing to do with personality. There are all kinds of personalities in the

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Bible. But to be ready to speak with courage and faith, that's not something that comes naturally to anybody.

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And the first thing we ask ourselves when God calls us to do something, or to speak, to speak for Him, is why would anybody listen to my voice?

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Why would anybody listen to me? Even Isaiah, remember, said, who has believed our report?

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So rarely were the prophets of God truly listened to and believed.

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Speaking to people, even in the churches, who seem determined to ignore God's lawward, and to tolerate evil and injustice, it can feel hopeless, it can feel depressing.

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And later on, you see in Moses' leadership of Israel, he was frequently depressed. In fact, at one point, he said,

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Lord, just kill me. I can't deal with these people anymore.

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If that's how you're going to deal with me, just kill me now. That's in Numbers 11,

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I think. But here, God graciously gives Moses signs to go in boldness.

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And can I suggest that God has given all of us, as Christians, every sign in Christ, in the witness of Scripture, in the testimony of the

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Holy Spirit, to speak with boldness and to obey

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God's calling in our lives? None of us should be saying,

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Lord, I've got these excuses. But he has a second objection, and this is all too familiar as well.

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I am not eloquent. My mouth and tongue are slow. I'm not a good speaker.

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So Moses doubts his own suitability and his own equipping now as God's instrument.

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I'm not a quick thinker, Lord. I'm not a good debater. I'm not a

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Dr. White. I'm not quick on my feet, Lord. How can I speak? How can

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I act? How can I do? How often is this our answer when

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God calls us to do something? Someone else would do it better, Lord. Such -and -such has got these gifts, so that would be more suitable for them.

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Well, the answer God gives is utterly shattering. And it breaks every feeble excuse.

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Here's what the voice of God says. Who placed a mouth on human beings? Who makes a person mute or deaf, seeing or blind?

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Is it not I, the Lord? Now go, I will help you speak, and I will teach you what to say.

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Have you answered that? Didn't I create the mouth and the eye and the ear?

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In other words, what He commissions us to do, He will empower us to fulfill.

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What He commissions us to do, He will empower us to fulfill. Are you, am

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I, inadequate? Well, the answer to that is obvious, yes. Let's just settle that one now.

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Yes, yes, we're inadequate to the task. But God will be with our mouth.

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That's literally what the Scripture says here. God will be with our mouth.

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There's an interesting parallel to this, isn't there? In the Newer Testament, Jesus' words to His disciples.

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Look, I'm sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore, be as shrewd as serpents and as harmless as doves.

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Because people will hand you over to Sanhedrins and flog you in their synagogues. Beware of them.

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You will even be brought before governors and kings because of me, to bear witness to them and to the nations.

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But when they hand you over, don't worry about how or what you should speak.

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For you will be given what to say at that hour. Because you are not speaking, but the

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Spirit of your Father is speaking through you. The Spirit of your

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Father is speaking through you. Now, the Lord is clear, isn't He, that to challenge rebellion and oppression and wickedness in our time and culture is difficult.

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In fact, it's dangerous. Beware of men. They're going to haul you before councils. They're going to drag you before kings and governors.

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It's been interesting, actually, to watch in the last two years that even people who do not profess the name of Christ, who have stood up against massive state overreach, or a radical woke agenda in universities, are being persecuted.

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I can think of several professors in England and in Canada who have lost their jobs or been no -platform.

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They're not even Christians. A former Supreme Court justice in England speaking out against state overreach the last two years, pilloried and persecuted and no -platformed, all for speaking common sense.

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Now, if that's what happens to those who don't openly profess Christ, how much more for those who proclaim and defend

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God's law and gospel and call people to repentance? Jesus never promised us that we'd be willing a popularity contest as we proclaim the kingdom of God, did

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He? That people would pat us on the back and always be saying, thank you.

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In recent months, we've seen in Canada, and Dr. White mentioned this earlier in the service, we've seen pastors fined, churches invaded, like my own church in Canada, and our elders fined.

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We've even seen pastors imprisoned in maximum security jails in Canada for opening their church.

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Now, if you'd said that to a Canadian Christian even five or six years ago, they'd have thought you were mad.

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Humanly speaking, when we look at the torrent of evil today in almost every department of our culture, all of the injustice, we feel helpless.

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But not when we are called and sent in the power of the Holy Spirit. Because it's not about us, it's not about our wisdom or our power, it's about the power of God.

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I have over the years been in some pretty intimidating situations, and I have myself been confronted with my own inadequacy, the limitations of my own abilities.

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And I haven't done as many debates as Dr. White. He is, I think, one of the most important, actually, apologists of this era, and I think will be noted as such, as one of the great debaters of our time.

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I've been in a few myself over the years. A lot of universities don't do debates anymore. Because they don't want anybody even on the campus who might offer a different perspective.

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You're no platform before you get there. But I remember on one occasion,

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I was sat on a platform at a Canadian university in the capital, and I was doing a series of debates that week on the existence of God.

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I was on a podium not unlike this one, and there were two tables, one here, one there. I was sat here.

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My opponent was sat there. And they'd hired in an American atheist, a humanist, to come and do the debate.

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And I sat there on the platform. I hadn't done that many debates at this time in my work as a

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Christian apologist. And the auditorium was filling up. You know, I'd often been to these situations where I was kind of quietly hoping there wouldn't be many people there.

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I hope this is a really small one, you know. If it doesn't go so well, it won't matter so much. And I was sat there at this table, and the place was just filling up, and people just kept coming in, kept coming in, kept coming in.

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I just had my notepad there and a Bible, and my opening statement was tucked away somewhere.

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And as I sat there, the audience was close to me, like these rows here, you know, close up.

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And the kind of people that tend to go to these events are not there because they think, you know, I'm really interested to see, you know, whether the

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Lord is real and whether he might speak to me tonight. No, they're there to cheer on their guy. And as I looked out at this audience, mainly of young people from the university,

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I was just struck by the malice on some of their faces. They looked like they wanted to tear my head off, and I hadn't even said anything yet.

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And I've got to admit, I was afraid. I was afraid in my heart.

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And at that moment, I'll never forget how the Lord spoke to me, and I don't recommend this as a practice in your devotional life, but I just picked up my

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Bible as I was sat there to try and look at something else other than their faces, and I opened my Bible at random, and I looked down at the page, and this is what

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I read from Jeremiah chapter 1. Do not be afraid of their faces, for I am with you to deliver you, says the

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Lord. Then the Lord put forth his hand and touched my mouth, and the

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Lord said to me, Behold, I have put my words in your mouth.

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And it was a great evening. It was a great evening. You see, the focus in both

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Exodus and in Matthew is on being ready and willing. Not being perfect, not being adequate, not being in control of the circumstances.

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It doesn't mean we're lazy. We do our best. We seek to serve God with excellence.

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But it's about being dependent on God, whatever our station and situation.

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And because of the promises of God, He doesn't accept any excuses. I will be with your mouth.

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And yet, Moses is still in doubt. And this is the bit,

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I think, that's probably most astonishing about this passage. What does he say next?

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Please, Lord, send somebody else. You can almost hear him.

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I've told him I'm not a good speaker. He's not accepting the excuse. Please, Lord, send somebody else.

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Do you ever feel like that? Please, Lord, just send somebody else.

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Not me. Well, actually, the Scripture says that Moses angered

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God at this point. God was angry with Moses. Because it's unbelief.

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It's unbelief. And God was angry with Moses.

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And yet, God is so gracious, He's so kind,

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He accommodates Moses' weakness, and He meets him halfway, and He says, okay, Moses, your brother

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Aaron is a good speaker. I've made him eloquent.

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He's a good communicator. And so He gives

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Aaron, essentially to Moses, to be his mouthpiece.

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It's a bit like a presidential press secretary, and Lord knows you need one of those up here. How many states are there again in the

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U .S.? I can't remember. I think your president recently said it was 54. So Moses is effectively given a spokesperson.

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The content, the authority was coming from Moses. Aaron would be the primary speaker.

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And this reminds us that we've all got different roles in service to the king. We have different callings.

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We've not all got the same calling. But faithfulness to God's calling is the requirement. And so Moses is ordered to take the staff as he represents

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God as the shepherd of Israel in verse 17. Take the staff. And the arrangement of Moses and Aaron is actually used in God's providence to have a deep impact upon Pharaoh.

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This is what one commentator points out about this arrangement that God sets up between Moses and Aaron.

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And I quote, Pharaoh was to the Egyptians the great god, and as such he spoke to the people through various officials who were his mouth.

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The Lord uses Moses' reluctance to establish an ironic parallel, one which both mocks and challenges

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Pharaoh. Moses appears before Pharaoh as God's prophet and also instead of God.

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And like Pharaoh, he has a mouth, Aaron, to speak for him. This was so bold a challenge and one accompanied with supernatural judgments that it restrained

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Pharaoh's vengeance against Moses and Aaron. Have you ever wondered why Pharaoh, when

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Moses and Aaron kept coming before him, why Pharaoh just didn't say, who are these shepherds out of the hills? Take them away and kill them.

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Pharaoh was intimidated by the situation. Here was a man in Moses representing

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God, for him the God of the hills, he was going to learn very soon he was the God of all the nations, who had a mouthpiece just like Pharaoh had a mouthpiece.

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This was a contest between two claims to being God. This was a standoff between two deities, the living

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God and a false God of Pharaoh. Now, if you are obedient and you speak up for the living

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God and you're His mouthpiece, you'll be asked to speak on behalf of others, just like Aaron.

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And we are required by God to speak faithfully to our generation, whatever the cost may be.

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We're required to speak faithfully and to act faithfully in obedience, whatever the cost may be.

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Jesus said in Luke's Gospel, chapter 21, Therefore make up your minds not to prepare your defense ahead of time, for I will give you such words and a wisdom that none of your adversaries will be able to resist or contradict.

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In other words, don't fret. Don't worry. There's been times I've shown up in places,

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I'm sure this is true for Dr. Sandlin and Dr. White as well, where you think you've got it all sorted out, what you're going to say, and you get there and you look out and you realize this is completely the wrong thing.

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And you have to do something else. That's just in public speaking.

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But whatever area, apply it into your own life and vocation. And there's this beautiful moment where Moses and Aaron meet in the wilderness on the mountain and they kiss one another there.

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You know, the Puritans used this. They said that Moses, civil authority, and Aaron, priestly authority.

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The civil authority and the priestly authority embrace one another and kiss one another at the

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Mount of God in service to God. Civil authority and priestly authority.

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And there they embraced one another. Moses and Aaron, these two brothers, were now ready to speak truth to power to the most powerful man in the then known world, to the most powerful empire in the then known world, just a wooden staff in their hand and the

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Word of God in their hearts. That's it. Finally, I know you're sad it's almost over, freedom for the people of God.

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Let's just consider the conclusion of this, the goal and focus of Moses' calling and preparation.

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What was all of this about? Was this just a bunch of... These signs, were they sort of parlatrix?

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You see, God didn't actually make Moses a magician. He said, I'm going to give you the power to do these particular signs.

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It was a very limited assignment. I'm going to give you power to do these signs. But it wasn't about the signs.

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God wasn't impressing Pharaoh with a few parlatrix. This was about the progress of the kingdom of God in history.

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This is what this confrontation was about. Moses has gone to his father -in -law,

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Jethro, and he says, I need to go back to Egypt. I want to see if my relatives are living there. God assures

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Moses that those who sought his life there are now dead. And it's at this point in our text that God reminds him of the central message

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He is to give to Pharaoh. The signs are to accomplish this end.

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Remember, they're a signpost. And what is the goal? What is the end? This is what God says.

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Israel is my firstborn son. Let my son go, that he may serve or worship me.

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Let my son go. Now, since the Pharaohs considered themselves sons of God, this was a direct challenge to their status as well.

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And it came with a warning of judgment on the sons of Egypt if Pharaoh refused, that God would strike at their sons.

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Now, the critical thing to notice, I think, is that the kingdom of God here, the kingdom of God entails freedom for the sons of God.

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The kingdom of God has always entailed freedom for the sons of God.

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The account of the Exodus is a story of slavery to freedom. It's the paradigmatic story of the

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Bible. Slavery to freedom.

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It embodies the story of the Gospel. Pharaoh is like Satan. Moses is a type of Christ.

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Imprisonment and slavery in darkness. A journey to freedom through the waters.

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The Scriptures say it is for freedom that Christ has set us free.

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We Western English -speaking people used to believe that. It is for freedom

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Christ has set us free. The Apostle Peter says, live as people who are free, not using your freedom as a cover -up for evil.

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So if the people of Israel were to truly worship God, they needed to be liberated to serve the

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Lord and receive the covenant law and be a light then to the nations concerning God's rule and reign.

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And you know that the life of Jesus, Jesus is the truly obedient son.

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He is the true Israelite. Israel was a disobedient son. Jesus is the truly obedient son.

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You know the prophet says, out of Egypt I have called my son. Where did

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Jesus go after he was born in Bethlehem? He was taken down to Egypt. Here is the true

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Israelite. Here is the truly obedient son. And Jesus recapitulates the journey of Israel.

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He goes through the waters and then out into the wilderness, not for 40 years but for 40 days.

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And there he is tested. Israel failed its testing in the wilderness.

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Jesus overcame. And after his testing in the wilderness, where does

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Jesus go? He goes up onto the mountain. We call it the Sermon on the

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Mount where he interprets God's law as the greater Moses. You look at the life of Jesus in the

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Gospels, it's a recapitulation in part of the life of Israel.

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The gospel of the kingdom needed a home from where to spread.

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Moses was being sent to liberate God's people so that there would be both a people and a place, a promised land.

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For the law and the promises, not just to be believed up here, but applied.

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Applied. This is why wherever the gospel has gone, it has brought liberty and freedom.

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Always. In every department of life.

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Not just freedom in your heart, as important as that is. Freedom from the burden of sin, but freedom from oppression.

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Freedom from the tyranny of sin. When I was thinking about this message, when you look at where the gospel goes, freedom follows.

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When the gospel declines, what declines with it? Freedom. Liberty. In a few days in England, we have this bizarre celebration.

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It'll probably seem bizarre to you anyway. November the 5th. There may be the odd Briton here who knows what

01:00:00

I'm about to talk about. It's sometimes called Bonfire Night or Guy Fawkes Night.

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And in this somewhat macabre celebration, we gather sticks and so forth and build a big bonfire.

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And there's usually some fireworks. Sometimes the secularized version is Firework Night. And then we burn an effigy of Guy Fawkes.

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November the 5th. Interesting special day in the history of England. On this day, two great deliverances happened in England.

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A plot was discovered and foiled to destroy the Houses of Parliament, which at that time was the seat of Western freedom.

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It was the Citadel of the Reformed Faith in 1605. It is also...

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November 5th is also the anniversary of the landing of King William III, William of Orange, in 1688.

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That's the year of the glorious and bloodless revolution central to the establishment of liberty, political liberty, and religious liberty in England.

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And one of the great Baptist preachers of England, Charles Spurgeon, the great 19th century

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Baptist preacher, said this about November 5th. He said,

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Our convictions and our love of liberty should make us regard its anniversary with holy gratitude.

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Let our hearts and lips exclaim. We have heard with our ears.

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Our fathers have told us what deeds you performed in their days, in days of old.

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You have made this nation the home of the gospel. And when the enemy has risen against her, you have shielded her.

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End quote. Now, God's free grace to England was also seen in marvelous ways in what became the

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United States of America, in Canada, a home for the gospel.

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America became such a home for the gospel that it overtook and eclipsed the missionary sending nations of England and Scotland in the 19th century and became the great missionary sending nation in the 20th century.

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We're now being eclipsed by the global south. You see,

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England and the United States, I should say Britain, for the sake of my Scottish and Welsh brethren and the

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Northern Irish, Great Britain and the United States and Canada and Australia and who'd want to be in Australia at the present time?

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Good gracious me. It's like a prison island, or it was. These were places of freedom for the gospel and the gospel flourished and freedom and liberty was the result and it spread from these nations to the nations of the world.

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And this is the privilege we are squandering right now. And we're being steadily dispossessed.

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Do you know in one year, 2 % of Albanian males have illegally landed in the

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United Kingdom. That has far -reaching consequences.

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That's just in 12 months. We're being steadily, Christians are being steadily dispossessed.

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Muslims, Islam is growing. We've been squandering this privilege.

01:03:55

You see, if the sons of God, if the brothers of Christ, the firstborn son are bound up in a lawless state, in a godless state that begins to persecute the faith, freedom is steadily destroyed and it's steadily eroded for the gospel.

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You know, the myth is that if we just don't bother with the culture and political life and everything that's going on out there, they'll leave us alone in our church.

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They won't. Look at the last two years. They won't.

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Do you know, in Canada, last year we had a law passed, Bill C -4. And Bill C -4 basically means that if you, as a parent, with, say, your 15 -year -old child, or even an adult friend, a consenting adult friend, were to come to your pastor in your church and say, my child has unwanted same -sex desire, can you speak with them and pray with them?

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You are committing a criminal offense for which you can go to prison for up to five years. Not just the pastor who's doing the counseling, but the parent who takes their child.

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That's just a little bit north of here, that place, cold place, remember? Called Canada. And the bill itself, when you read the law, and I encourage you, go read the legislation,

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Bill C -4, it explicitly reduces the Bible to mythology. And we've thought for so long, oh, we don't need to worry, just preach the gospel, don't worry about culture and politics, just tell people about Jesus.

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We're okay in our churches. No, you're not. If you ecclesiasticize the gospel, you imprison the word of God in the four walls of the ecclesiastical structure of the church institute, you call forth the secularization of the world, and eventually your ecclesiasticized gospel is eaten up, even in the life of the church.

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Because we're effectively saying the word of God does not have total authority over men and nations and peoples. This is why exponents of godly faith and liberty in the face of tyranny, like the great reformer

01:06:15

John Knox in his admonition to England, were able to develop a theology of resistance that contributed to the preservation and development of liberty across Europe.

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In fact, John Knox argued that common people had the right and duty to disobedience if state officials ruled contrary to the

01:06:32

Bible. And to do otherwise would be rebellion against God. And he inspired great leaders like English Puritans like Samuel Rutherford who wrote

01:06:43

Lex Rex or The Law and the Prince in 1644 which argued that the law is king, that's

01:06:49

God's law, and all law must be grounded in the law of God. Christ is the true sovereign whose law must govern.

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Francis Schaeffer, one of your countrymen, has pointed out, and I quote, he said, in almost every place where the

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Reformation flourished there was not only religious non -compliance, there was civil disobedience as well.

01:07:16

And that's why when this past few years in Canada I, along with another pastor, drafted a document called the

01:07:23

Niagara Declaration asserting the liberties and freedom of the church and drafted a letter signed by over 400 churches called the

01:07:32

Reopen Ontario Churches Campaign and we did actually make some progress with that and got into a discussion with the government and they opened the churches to a degree.

01:07:42

The reason I got involved with that was not because redemption is political but because redemption and Christ's lordship has implications for political life.

01:07:55

We must be released to worship and serve the Lord. The gospel involves a people and a place.

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The first land grant was Eden. The second land grant was Canaan. Both forfeited. The land grant given to God's people is the whole cosmos, the whole earth.

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The meek shall inherit the earth and delight themselves in the abundance of peace. It's the whole earth.

01:08:25

It's a people and a place and we're to carry the message therefore to all the nations. And to obey

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God fully to serve God and his kingdom requires freedoms to do so, doesn't it?

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Right now our taxes are paying in Canada for euthanasia. We're expanding that in March and April next year to include children and people who are depressed.

01:08:53

Mature minors, they call it. And my taxes are paying for abortions and sex change operations.

01:09:03

And the freedom of the people of God to even counsel and teach their own children is being further and further curtailed and restricted.

01:09:12

The state interfering with the ministry and worship of the church. You see, to truly obey the word of God requires freedom.

01:09:22

That's why the exodus was necessary. Otherwise God could have left the Hebrews in Egypt and just said, worship me spiritually there.

01:09:30

But he wanted to give them his word, his covenant law as a light to the nations.

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The gospel is a people and a place. If we fail to recognize the importance of this, we fail to see the meaning of the exodus.

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Moses, let my son go, he says to Egypt, to Pharaoh that he may serve me.

01:09:54

That he may worship me. God honors and blesses nations that give free reign to the covenant law and gospel of Jesus Christ.

01:10:06

Moses, in verse 20, I think it is, he actually says, take

01:10:12

God's staff. The staff that Moses had, the shepherd's staff, was God's staff. It was God's authority.

01:10:17

And we don't do this in our own authority. We don't take the gospel of the kingdom to the nations and to every area of life in our own authority.

01:10:27

Christ says, all authority in heaven and on earth belongs to me. And we are given this assurance in Isaiah 54, 17.

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No weapon formed against you will succeed. And you will refute any accusation raised against you in court.

01:10:45

This is the heritage of the Lord's servants and their righteousness is from me. This is the

01:10:50

Lord's declaration. Now I'm done. But you may be saying to yourself, how on earth has

01:11:00

Joe gotten through this sermon and escaped reference to the foreskins and the blood?

01:11:10

How clever! So let me just say this. Moses is reminded on his way to Egypt with God's staff that judgment begins with us.

01:11:26

Judgment begins at the house of God. One of his sons is not circumcised.

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One of his sons does not have the sign of the covenant. This is what God required.

01:11:40

Obedience to his covenant. The sign of the covenant. And so we cannot go and proclaim the gospel of the kingdom.

01:11:47

We cannot declare the righteous law of God and expect success if we ourselves are not committed to obedience to God's covenant word even in our own families.

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In our own lives. We don't want to be hypocrites, do we? That saps our moral strength and courage.

01:12:08

That's why we come to the Lord's table. To have our sin dealt with.

01:12:13

Our guilt cleansed. And to renew again our covenant commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ.

01:12:21

God is no buttercup. And he reserves the right to judge anyone who despises his covenant.

01:12:33

And the apostle Paul is clear about that with respect to the Lord's table. He says, some of you are sick and some of you have even died because you have despised the

01:12:46

Lord's table. The sign of the covenant. So we need to walk in obedience.

01:12:55

And Moses' family needed the sign of the covenant to walk in obedience to be effective and so must we.

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And God's given us the sign of baptism and the Lord's supper. And I know that we're going to come now to the

01:13:10

Lord's table as we consider what it really means to be his covenant people.

01:13:19

To be a people seeking a place for the freedom for the gospel of the kingdom.

01:13:27

Let's just pray. Our Lord and our God, we thank you for your word.

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Your word is truth. We thank you for the reality of the covenant.

01:13:41

We thank you for the Lord Jesus Christ. We thank you that you have called a people for yourself, your church, but there is also a place, your earth, where your kingdom is to be made manifest.

01:13:57

Free us as your people. It's for freedom that Christ has set us free. Help us to live as people who are free.

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And Lord, in your mercy, preserve our freedoms in the United States, in Great Britain, in Canada, despite our sin and rebellion.

01:14:18

Forgive us and grant us freedom and liberty in the name of Christ our