Read the sermon
Good morning.
As we continue working our way through Exodus, we come to one of those passages that reminds us why there is such value in preaching through whole books of the Bible rather than simply choosing the passages we already know what to do with. If we were making a list of our favorite moments in the life of Moses, I doubt Exodus 4:24–26 would make many lists. It is strange, abrupt, and raises questions. At first, it almost seems as though someone dropped a completely different story into the middle of Moses’ journey back to Egypt.
But the more time you spend with the passage, the more you realize that it comes at exactly the right moment. For the last couple of weeks, we have watched Moses wrestle with God’s call. God appears in the burning bush, reveals his name, promises his presence, answers Moses’ objections, gives him signs, and provides Aaron. Moses asks, “Who am I?” “What if they do not believe me?” “What if I cannot speak?” Finally, he simply says, “Please send someone else.”
Now Moses goes. The excuses have run out, and he begins the journey toward Egypt with the promise of God and the staff of God in his hand. You would expect the next major scene to be Moses confronting Pharaoh, but before Moses ever stands before Pharaoh, Moses himself is confronted by God.
That interruption matters because it exposes something in Moses that can also happen in us. We ought to become deeply familiar with grace. We ought to know that salvation is not earned, that Christ receives sinners, and that God is patient and merciful. But there is a difference between resting in grace and becoming casual about grace.
Sometimes we begin to think that because God is gracious, certain areas of our lives must not be that serious. We tell ourselves that God understands, that everybody struggles, or that nobody is perfect. Perhaps most dangerously, we look at the ways God is still blessing or using us and conclude that everything must therefore be all right.
Moses is about to discover that this is not necessarily true. God can genuinely call us, genuinely use us, and still place his finger on areas of our lives that need to change.
So the question before us this morning is this: How do we live as people who have been claimed by grace by a God who is perfectly holy?
And the truth that holds this passage together is that the grace that calls us to serve the LORD never gives us permission to treat his holiness or his commands casually.
God Claims Those He Redeems
Exodus 4:18–23
Moses goes back to Jethro and asks permission to return to Egypt. Jethro gives him his blessing, and the LORD tells Moses that the men who had sought his life are dead. The threat that drove Moses from Egypt has passed, and so Moses gathers his family and begins the journey.
At the end of verse 20, we get a small but significant phrase: Moses takes “the staff of God” in his hand. What had once been the ordinary tool of a shepherd has now become associated with God’s authority and power. Moses is returning to Egypt as God’s representative.
Yet the rest of this passage will remind us that carrying God’s authority does not place Moses above God’s authority.
Before we get there, the LORD gives Moses another message for Pharaoh.
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.’ ”
That statement—“Israel is my firstborn son”—tells us something fundamental about the Exodus. Israel is not merely an oppressed people whom God happens to pity. They belong to him.
Pharaoh believes he has the right to determine their future, demand their labor, and even destroy their children. But Yahweh says, “Israel is my son.” Pharaoh is laying claim to someone who already belongs to God.
So underneath the conflict that will unfold through the next several chapters is a very basic question: Who has the right to rule these people?
Pharaoh says they belong to him. Yahweh says they belong to him.
And notice what God says: “Let my son go that he may serve me.”
Israel is not being freed from all service. They are being freed from serving Pharaoh so that they can serve Yahweh. They are not being liberated into independence. They are being liberated to belong to the One to whom they truly belong.
That becomes important for us because salvation works in a similar way. Jesus does not rescue us from judgment and then hand our lives back to us as though we now answer only to ourselves. He saves us for himself.
That changes the questions we ask. Instead of only asking, “Am I allowed to do this?” we begin asking, “Does this fit the life of someone who belongs to Christ? Does this honor the One who redeemed me?”
We understand that instinctively in other relationships. A husband who loves his wife does not spend his life asking how close he can get to adultery without technically crossing the line. Love asks what honors and protects the covenant.
Christian obedience grows out of belonging in the same way. God does not say to Israel, “Obey me, and then perhaps you can become my son.” He says, “Israel is my son,” and then he begins forming the life of the people who belong to him.
Grace comes first. Redemption comes first. Relationship comes first.
Then God teaches his people how to live.
God Confronts Those He Calls
Exodus 4:24–26
This is where the passage takes its unexpected turn. Moses is moving toward Egypt. He has obeyed, he carries the staff of God, and he knows what God has sent him to do.
Then we read:
At a lodging place on the way the Lord met him and sought to put him to death. Then Zipporah 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. It was then that she said, “A bridegroom of blood,” because of the circumcision.
There is no point pretending that this is an easy passage. It is not.
The Hebrew does not explicitly name the person the LORD seeks to put to death. Many interpreters believe Moses is the one under threat, and I think that is probably the most natural reading. Others understand Moses’ son to be the one in danger. There is also disagreement over the precise meaning of Zipporah’s words, “bridegroom of blood.”
So there are details here where we should be humble.
But the main issue is much clearer than the details.
The crisis ends through circumcision, which takes us directly back to Genesis 17. Circumcision was the covenant sign given to Abraham and his descendants. It marked covenant belonging, and God spoke very seriously about neglecting that sign.
Whatever uncertainty remains about the pronouns, there is an unresolved issue of covenant obedience connected with Moses and his household.
And when you place that beside the verses we just read, the irony is striking.
Moses is on his way to proclaim God’s covenant claim over Israel. He is going because God has remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Moses will stand before Pharaoh and announce, “These people belong to Yahweh.”
Yet before Moses announces God’s claim over Pharaoh, Moses himself must reckon with the claims of the covenant God.
That is what makes the passage so uncomfortable.
It is possible to be genuinely involved in the work of God and still have areas of life that need to be brought under the authority of God.
Moses really is called. He really is chosen. He really is carrying God’s message. God really will use him. But none of that means everything in Moses’ life is therefore automatically fine.
And we can easily make the same mistake. We allow faithfulness in one part of our lives to make us feel better about compromise somewhere else.
We say, “But I serve. I go to church. I give. I read my Bible. I pray. I help people.” Those things may all be true and genuinely good, but none of them gives us permission to make peace with something God has called us to surrender.
The danger is not that Christians struggle. Every Christian struggles. The danger is when we stop calling something a struggle and begin calling it acceptable; when we stop repenting and begin explaining why this one area should be exempt.
Sometimes we reinforce that thinking by looking at the ways God is still at work. “God is still blessing me. He is still using me. Things are going well. So perhaps this really is not that serious.”
But Moses reminds us that God’s use of a person is not the same thing as God’s approval of everything in that person’s life. God’s patience should never be confused with indifference.
At the same time, the confrontation itself does not mean God has abandoned Moses. Once the crisis is resolved, Moses continues toward Egypt. Even this severe moment occurs within the larger story of God’s grace.
We tend to think of grace primarily as comfort and reassurance, and certainly grace does comfort and reassure us. But sometimes grace also confronts us.
Sometimes grace comes through conviction. Sometimes through Scripture. Sometimes through another believer who loves us enough to tell us the truth. Sometimes through consequences that finally get our attention.
That is not necessarily God pushing his children away. Scripture teaches us that the Father disciplines those he loves because he is committed to forming them.
And that fits the larger movement of Exodus. The LORD redeems a people, brings them to himself, forms them through his Word, and dwells among them.
We love redemption and presence. But formation means God loves us too much to leave us exactly as he found us.
God Provides for Those He Sends
Exodus 4:27–31
Then the story moves again, and that matters because if the passage ended at verse 26, we could easily come away with a distorted picture of God. The God who confronts Moses is also the God who keeps his promises to Moses.
The LORD tells Aaron to meet Moses in the wilderness, and Aaron goes.
Remember Moses’ concern: “I am slow of speech and of tongue.” God had promised that Aaron would help him, and now Aaron appears.
God had not forgotten.
The same God who says, “This cannot continue,” is the God who says, “I will give you what you need.” His holiness and grace are not competing parts of his character. He is always both perfectly holy and perfectly gracious.
Aaron’s arrival also tells us something about the way we often approach obedience. We want everything settled before we move. We want to know how the conversation will go, where the resources will come from, and whether the outcome will be good.
But Moses does not meet Aaron before he leaves. He starts walking, and Aaron meets him on the road.
That does not mean every impulsive decision should be called faith. But when God has already made something clear, we do not have the right to demand complete visibility before obedience.
Sometimes the next faithful step has to be taken before we know how the whole road unfolds.
Moses and Aaron eventually gather the elders of Israel. Aaron speaks, the signs are performed, and then we come to verse 31.
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.
Those first words are especially significant: “And the people believed.”
Moses had said, “They will not believe me.”
He had already imagined the outcome. He could picture the rejection and failure.
But Moses did not know the future.
Fear often speaks as though it does. It tells us, “This is going to fail. They will reject you. You will not have what you need. Nothing will change.” And because we can imagine those outcomes so vividly, we can begin treating our imagination as though it were revelation.
Moses said, “They will not believe me.”
Then the text says, “And the people believed.”
That does not mean obedience always produces an immediate happy ending. In fact, next week Moses will obey God, confront Pharaoh, and watch Israel’s situation become worse.
The lesson is not, “Obey God and everything will work out the way you want.”
The lesson is that we do not know the future well enough to use our imagined future as an excuse for disobedience.
God is faithful whether the immediate outcome feels successful or not.
Christ and Exodus
When we step back from this passage, something else begins to emerge.
Moses really is God’s mediator, but even before he arrives in Egypt we discover that Moses is not the final mediator God’s people need. Moses himself needs correction.
Israel is also called God’s son: “Israel is my firstborn son.” Yet as Exodus and the rest of the Old Testament unfold, Israel proves not to be a perfectly faithful son. Israel complains, rebels, turns to idols, and repeatedly fails to trust the God who redeemed them.
So the story begins creating a longing for something better.
We need a better mediator than Moses.
We need a faithful Son.
And in Jesus Christ, those two lines come together.
Jesus is the greater Moses, the mediator who does not need correction for his own disobedience. He is also the faithful Son. Where Israel fails, Jesus obeys. Where Moses falters, Jesus remains faithful.
He comes not to do his own will but the will of the Father, and when he faces the cross he prays, “Not my will, but yours, be done.”
Then the gospel does something extraordinary.
The obedient Son takes the place of the disobedient.
Jesus does not bear judgment because he failed the Father. He bears judgment because we have.
That changes how we hear a passage like this. When God’s holiness exposes something in us, the answer is not to work harder until we finally become acceptable. Our hope is Christ.
Jesus obeyed where we have failed. He died for our sin, rose again, and through faith in him we are brought into God’s family.
That means we can actually tell the truth about ourselves.
We do not have to pretend everything is fine. We do not have to defend every failure. Our standing with God rests in Christ, not in maintaining the appearance that we have everything together.
And because of that, repentance becomes less frightening. We can say, “Lord, you are right.” We can confess, turn, and keep walking, knowing that our sin is serious but not more powerful than the grace of Christ.
How Do I Live This Out?
The passage has shown us what it means to belong to a God who is both gracious and holy. So how do we live this out? I think there are three questions that can help us carry this passage into ordinary life.
The first is, Whose am I?
God says of Israel, “Israel is my firstborn son.” Their identity determines the direction of their lives. They are being freed from Pharaoh, but they are not being freed from belonging.
For those of us who are in Christ, the same basic truth shapes us: I belong to him. My life is no longer simply mine to arrange around whatever I want most.
So when I think about my relationships, money, sexuality, speech, work, habits, and time, the Christian question cannot only be, “Can I get away with this?” We learn to ask, “Does this fit who I am as someone who belongs to Christ?”
The second question is, Where am I negotiating with something God has already made clear?
That is where verses 24–26 press upon us. Moses is obeying God by going to Egypt, but there is also an unresolved issue that God refuses to ignore.
Maybe there is something in Scripture that we understand perfectly well but have spent months or years explaining away. Perhaps we know we need to forgive but continue rehearsing the offense. Perhaps we know our anger is sinful but excuse it as personality. Perhaps we know a private habit is drawing us away from holiness but keep making peace with it.
This passage is not asking us to obsess over some mysterious hidden failure. It asks us to stop bargaining over what God has already brought into the light.
If God has spoken clearly, repentance does not require endless analysis. It means agreeing with him and responding.
And because our standing rests in Christ, repentance does not threaten our relationship with God. It is one of the ways his grace continues working within that relationship.
The third question is, What am I afraid will happen if I obey?
Moses was convinced the people would not believe him. He imagined the outcome before he ever arrived, and if he had allowed fear to rule him, he never would have gone.
We do the same thing. We imagine the difficult conversation, rejection, loss, or failure, and then make decisions based on a future that exists only in our minds.
But Moses discovers Aaron on the road, and believing Israelites when he arrives. He does not know those things in advance. He simply knows what God has called him to do.
So when God has made the next faithful step clear, we can take it without demanding that he first show us the entire road. We are not promised that obedience will always produce the outcome we would choose. We are promised that the God who calls us remains faithful.
Those are the questions I want us to carry from this passage: Whose am I? Where am I negotiating with what God has already made clear? And what am I afraid will happen if I obey?
But even those questions are not the final destination. We still need to ask what difference these truths will make if they actually begin shaping us.
So What?
If I really believe that I have been claimed by the grace of God, obedience begins to look different. I stop dividing my life into areas that belong to God and areas I still consider mine. I begin to understand that the One who redeemed me has a rightful claim over all of me.
That does not become oppressive when I understand grace rightly because I am not surrendering myself so that God might finally love me. I am learning to live according to the reality that, in Christ, I already belong to him.
If I really believe that God’s confrontation can itself be an expression of his grace, then correction begins to feel different too. It may still hurt, but I no longer have to interpret conviction as rejection. I can hear Scripture expose something in me without immediately defending myself because I know God is not looking for an excuse to throw me away. He is forming me.
If I really believe that the God who calls me is also the God who provides for me, then fear begins to lose some of its control. I do not need every outcome settled before I obey. I can stop treating the future I have imagined as though it is more certain than the God who has spoken.
And if I really believe that Jesus is the faithful Son and perfect Mediator, then I can take holiness seriously without living in constant fear of rejection. A deep seriousness about sin and a deep confidence in grace can exist together.
I do not have to make sin small in order to make grace big, and I do not have to pretend my obedience is better than it is in order to remain secure in Christ. My hope is not in the perfection of my obedience. My hope is in the perfection of his.
That creates a different kind of Christian life: not casual about sin, but not crushed by sin either; willing to repent, willing to obey, and increasingly able to live as someone who knows that he belongs to God.
The Holy God Meets His Servant
That brings us back to where the passage finally lands.
It does not end with Moses, Zipporah, or circumcision.
It ends with worship.
Listen again to verse 31:
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.
Think about how much has happened since Exodus 2. Israel groaned. God heard. God remembered his covenant. God saw. God knew. Then he called Moses, revealed his name, promised his presence, answered Moses’ objections, and provided what Moses needed.
Now the people hear that God has seen them and that he has come for them.
And they worship.
That is where this passage should bring us too. The goal is not that we leave fascinated by a strange episode on the road to Egypt. The goal is that we see more clearly the God behind the story.
He is the God who sees and remembers. He claims his people as his own. He is holy enough to confront what is wrong in those he loves and gracious enough not to abandon them when he does. He provides what his servants need and keeps the promises he has made.
And ultimately, he gives us his own Son.
In Jesus Christ, the holy God has not simply exposed our disobedience. He has dealt with it. The faithful Son has stood in the place of the unfaithful. The perfect Mediator has borne the judgment of imperfect people. Christ has died, Christ has risen, and through him we have been brought near to God.
So when God’s holiness exposes something in us, we do not have to run from him. We run to Christ. When he calls us to obedience, we are not trying to earn his love. We obey because we already belong to him.
And when we cannot see how the road ahead will unfold, we keep walking because the God who called us has not changed.
The grace that calls us to serve the LORD never gives us permission to treat his holiness casually. But his holiness does not give those who are in Christ reason to live terrified that he is waiting to cast them aside.
We belong to him. He is forming us. And because of Christ, we can walk with both a deeper seriousness about holiness and a deeper confidence in grace.
When Israel understood that the LORD had seen them and had come for them, they bowed their heads and worshiped.
May we do the same.
Amen.
Let us pray.
Father, we thank you that you are perfectly holy and abundantly gracious. Forgive us for the ways we sometimes become so familiar with grace that we begin to take you lightly. Forgive us when we confuse your patience with indifference or assume that because you are using us there cannot be places in our lives that still need to change.
Give us hearts willing to listen when you speak. Where you have made something clear, help us stop negotiating. Where your Word exposes sin, keep us from running away in shame or defending ourselves in pride. Teach us to receive your correction as the work of a Father who loves his children enough to form them.
Thank you for Jesus, the faithful Son and perfect Mediator. Thank you that where we have failed, he obeyed, and that the judgment we deserved fell upon him so that we could be forgiven and brought near.
Teach us to live with a deep seriousness about holiness and a deep confidence in grace. Help us trust you when we cannot see the whole road, obey when fear tells us another story, and bow before you in worship.
We ask it in the name of Jesus Christ.
Amen.
May the God who has called you his own give you grace to walk faithfully before him. May Christ, the faithful Son and perfect Mediator, keep your confidence anchored in his finished work. And may the Holy Spirit continue forming you into a people who reflect the holiness and grace of the God to whom you belong.
Go in the grace and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Amen.
Be Blessed to be a Blessing.