Talk of JESUS . com

Tag: moses

  • A River of Redemption Flowing from Eden – Joseph

    Joseph Unlike Moses

    “Can we find anyone like this, a man who has God’s spirit in him?” … Pharaoh said to Joseph, “I am Pharaoh and no one will be able to raise his hand or foot in all the land of Egypt without your permission.” Pharaoh gave Joseph the name Zaphenath-paneah… – Genesis 41

    None can dispute that Joseph and Moses were both redeemers of the Hebrews, but they were very different men. The Lord called Moses to bring Israel from Egypt, but used Joseph to save both Egypt and Israel. Joseph, or Zaphenath-paneah as he was known in all of Egypt, preceded Moses by some generations. You will encounter two very different men by comparing the beginnings of their contrasting lives.

    Moses

    We read in Number 12: Moses was a very humble man, more so than anyone on the face of the earth. The Lord, speaking to Aaron & Miriam said:

    “Listen to what I say:
    If there is a prophet among you from the Lord,
    I make myself known to him in a vision;
    I speak with him in a dream.
    7 Not so with my servant Moses;
    he is faithful in[a] all my household.
    8 I speak with him directly,
    openly, and not in riddles;
    he sees the form of the Lord.

    What could be more humbling than standing before the form of the Lord, hearing the words of the Almighty directly?

    Moses was born into humble circumstances, raised in knowledge of both power and lowliness and willingly obeyed the Lord’s commands. Though brought up as a prince of Egypt for two decades, his mother sewed humility into Moses’ heart, as his servant nursemaid.

    Because he was a prince, Moses could easily escape to Midian for twenty more years to live a humble life in freedom. His choice to defend Hebrew slaves would have been self-indictment of disobedience to the King’s commands and conviction resulting in his own death. A return to Egypt at age eighty in obedience to the Lord showed only humility in the face of certain powerful opposition from Pharaoh.

    Moses is raised, educated and served by slaves in an Egyptian palace of perhaps the most powerful man on earth in his time. Joseph, by contrast, comes to Egypt by birth, but as a seventeen-year-old slave.

    Joseph

    Unlike Moses, Joseph was by no means a humble young man. He was blessed with good intellect and great favor, but learned humility later in life. He lived in the land of Canaan and tended sheep with his brothers. 

    (Do you recall from our previous post what Pharaoh thought of shepherds?) Joseph would not only enter Egypt as a shepherd, but as a captive slave.

    Genesis 37:

    3 Now Israel [Jacob] loved Joseph more than his other sons because Joseph was a son born to him in his old age, and he made a robe of many colors for him.

    Trouble waiting to happen. This teenager, Joseph, is favorite of his father (his mother, deceased) who makes him look like an administrator over his adult working brothers. Joseph is anything but humble and in fact appears to his brothers to be full of himself, even arrogant.

    5 Then Joseph had a dream. When he told it to his brothers, they hated him even more. 6 He said to them, “Listen to this dream I had: 7 There we were, binding sheaves of grain in the field. Suddenly my sheaf stood up, and your sheaves gathered around it and bowed down to my sheaf.”

    8 “Are you really going to reign over us?” his brothers asked him. “Are you really going to rule us?” So they hated him even more because of his dream and what he had said.

    We know God’s purpose for Joseph and that the outcome would finally prove Joseph’s dream to be true. In fact, Joseph would become a redeemer of Egypt because of his dreams from the Lord.

    … So Joseph set out after his brothers and found them at Dothan.

    18 They saw him in the distance, and before he had reached them, they plotted to kill him. 19 They said to one another, “Oh, look, here comes that dream expert! 20 So now, come on, let’s kill him and throw him into one of the pits…

    … his brothers pulled Joseph out of the pit and sold him for twenty pieces of silver to the Ishmaelites, who took Joseph to Egypt.

    Joseph, betrayed by his brothers for twenty pieces of silver, becomes a slave in Egypt.

    The Lord was with Joseph

    How can you say that the Lord is with someone betrayed, taken into the hands of God’s enemies and condemned to exile? The evil hand of his own brothers perhaps betrayed him to eventual death. Why does God allow it?

    As Joseph’s story unfolds we learn the answer of the Lord from the very words of Joseph to his brothers.

    Genesis 39:

    2 The Lord was with Joseph, and he became a successful man, serving in the household of his Egyptian master. 3 When his master saw that the Lord was with him and that the Lord made everything he did successful, 4 Joseph found favor with his master and became his personal attendant. Potiphar also put him in charge of his household and placed all that he owned under his authority…

    … the Lord blessed the Egyptian’s house because of Joseph. The Lord’s blessing was on all that he owned, in his house and in his fields. 6 He left all that he owned under Joseph’s authority…

    But Joseph again suffers unexpected consequence due to false accusation by his master’s wife.  His master then obligingly sends Joseph to prison.

    21 But the Lord was with Joseph and extended kindness to him. He granted him favor with the prison warden. 22 The warden put all the prisoners who were in the prison under Joseph’s authority, and he was responsible for everything that was done there. 23 The warden did not bother with anything under Joseph’s authority, because the Lord was with him, and the Lord made everything that he did successful.

    Although Joseph must remain in Pharaoh’s prison, in fact by the Lord’s purpose he is given authority.

    Dreams and Prophesy

    Prior to this and before betrayal by his own brothers Joseph had had another dream, which turns out to be prophesy.

    Genesis 37: “Look,” he said, “I had another dream, and this time the sun, moon, and eleven stars were bowing down to me.”

    10 He told his father and brothers, and his father rebuked him.

    Now in prison Joseph has another prophetic dream. Remember, he is in charge of and this time no doubt respected by his fellow prisoners.

    Genesis 40:

    5 The king of Egypt’s cupbearer and baker, who were confined in the prison, each had a dream. Both had a dream on the same night, and each dream had its own meaning…

    9 So the chief cupbearer told his dream to Joseph… 16 When the chief baker saw that the interpretation was positive, he said to Joseph, “I also had a dream.

    18 “This is its interpretation,” Joseph replied. “The three baskets are three days. 19 In just three days Pharaoh will lift up your head—from off you—and hang you on a tree.

    And so it happened that not only was the baker hanged, but the cupbearer was released, forgetting about Joseph. 

    Genesis 41:

    At the end of two years Pharaoh had a dream… 9 Then the chief cupbearer said to Pharaoh, “Today I remember my faults… 

    12 Now a young Hebrew, a slave of the captain of the guards, was with us there. We told him our dreams, he interpreted our dreams for us, and each had its own interpretation. 13 It turned out just the way he interpreted them to us: I was restored to my position, and the other man was hanged.”

    14 Then Pharaoh sent for Joseph…

    This brings us to the historical scenario where the Lord shows a coming famine, seven years into the future. The King of Egypt trusts Joseph to help them prepare. The severity of the middle east famine will eventually bring Israel to send his other sons from Canaan to Egypt for grain.

    A Prophet of Two Lands

    The Lord’s purpose in Joseph’s captivity and rise to power in Egypt is to save two lands from famine and prepare Israel for the promised land. As you know, he is brought before Pharaoh and interprets dreams of prophesy.

    15 Pharaoh said to Joseph, “I have had a dream, and no one can interpret it. But I have heard it said about you that you can hear a dream and interpret it.”

    16 “I am not able to,” Joseph answered Pharaoh. “It is God who will give Pharaoh a favorable answer.”

    It is always God who brings true prophesy. The truth of Joseph’s predictions make Pharaoh a believer in the Lord God!

    “Can we find anyone like this, a man who has God’s spirit in him?”

    39 So Pharaoh said to Joseph, “Since God has made all this known to you, there is no one as discerning and wise as you are. 40 You will be over my house, and all my people will obey your commands. Only I, as king, will be greater than you.”

    Contrary to Culture

    “Only I, as king, will be greater than you,” Pharaoh states. He is not a god, but a most-powerful man dependent upon God and his true Prophet. 

    Note that the changes ahead for Egypt will take fourteen years. Israel’s sons will enter the land as immigrants in need, bowing humbly to this leader, second in command to the King.

    So he placed him over all the land of Egypt. 44 Pharaoh said to Joseph, “I am Pharaoh and no one will be able to raise his hand or foot in all the land of Egypt without your permission.”

    45 Pharaoh gave Joseph the name Zaphenath-paneah and gave him a wife, Asenath daughter of Potiphera, priest at On.  And Joseph went throughout the land of Egypt.

    Joseph’s Administration
    46 Joseph was thirty years old when he entered the service of Pharaoh king of Egypt. Joseph left Pharaoh’s presence and traveled throughout the land of Egypt.

    To be continued…

     

  • A River of Redemption Flowing from Eden – to Goshen

    Pulled from the Torrent, a Redeemer Forgotten

    Perhaps you recall that the name Moses or מֹשֶׁה Môsheh means drawn; from drawing out (of the water), i.e. rescued. He is revered as a rescuer of Israel, but how did Moses get to Egypt in the first place? As a baby fleeing harm in a wicker sarcophagus, Moses was plucked from certain death in the waters of a river in Goshen.

    Psalm 18:

    16 He reached down from on high
    and took hold of me;
    he pulled me out of deep water.
    17 He rescued me from my powerful enemy
    and from those who hated me,
    for they were too strong for me.
    18 They confronted me in the day of my calamity,
    but the Lord was my support.
    19 He brought me out to a spacious place;
    he rescued me because he delighted in me.

    Pharaoh’s daughter then brought Moses into the house of the King of Egypt where he was raised in the best of privileged circumstances. She takes him from a wicker ark closed over him by his Hebrew mother and draws the child from the water into her saving arms. 

    Exodus 2:

    5 Pharaoh’s daughter went down to bathe at the Nile while her servant girls walked along the riverbank. She saw the basket among the reeds, sent her slave girl, took it, 6 opened it, and saw him, the child—and there he was, a little boy, crying. She felt sorry for him and said, “This is one of the Hebrew boys.”

    She most certainly would have known her father’s command:

    Pharaoh then commanded all his people: “You must throw every son born to the Hebrews into the Nile, but let every daughter live.” – Exodus 1:22

    2:10 When the child grew older, she [Moses’ mother, hired as a mid-wife] brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son. She named him Moses, “Because,” she said, “I drew him out of the water.”

    Migrant Tribes in the Lands of Others

    Perhaps you have not thought of it: peoples or tribes are homeless families looking for a place to live.

    The Hebrews were one such people; yet the Lord God is their ever-living חֲיָא Patriarch, even more so than Moses or Abraham. Ever since Abraham they raised sheep, migrated to lands where they could sustain life and became merchants trading with citizens and travelers in lands to which the Lord would lead.

    Recall that the persecution of the Hebrews in the time of Moses was consequence of envy of their prosperity by the rulers of the land.

    Exodus 1:

    8 A new king… said to his people, “Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and powerful than we are. 10 Come, let’s deal shrewdly with them; otherwise they will multiply further, and when war breaks out, they will join our enemies, fight against us, and leave the country.”

    11 So the Egyptians assigned taskmasters over the Israelites to oppress them with forced labor. They built Pithom and Rameses as supply cities for Pharaoh.

    In the first hall of the Temple of Rameses II

    Egypt’s and Israel’s Forgotten Redeemer

    Genesis 46:

    The words of Zaphnathpaaneah:

    “I will go up and inform Pharaoh, telling him, ‘My brothers and my father’s family, who were in the land of Canaan, have come to me.

    32 The men are shepherds; they also raise livestock. They have brought their flocks and herds and all that they have.’

    33 When Pharaoh addresses you and asks, ‘What is your occupation?’ 34 you are to say, ‘Your servants, both we and our fathers, have raised livestock from our youth until now.’

    Then you will be allowed to settle in the land of Goshen, since all shepherds are detestable to Egyptians.”

    All about Goshen

    Goshen & Ramses

    To be continued… 

  • A River of Redemption Flowing from Eden – The Ten Commandments

    Then all the people responded together, “We will do all that the Lord has spoken.” So Moses brought the people’s words back to the Lord. – Exodus 19:8 CSB

    Everyone knows The Ten Commandments – 

    As we noted previously, commandment implies both authority and relationship. Jesus’ answer to a lawyers’ question, “Master, which is the greatest commandment?” did not mention even one of the Ten Commandments, but rather pointed toward our relationship to God.

    When someone asks you about the Ten Commandments, what is your immediate response?

    Do you know them? (It likely depends on your religious upbringing.)

    I was raised in a family which worshiped the Lord where children and youth were weekly schooled  in a primer of faith. Therefore, from my Sunday-school training I instantly regurgitated, ‘Exodus 20,’ as response of quick recall about the Ten Commandments. Exodus 20 is actually just one place the Commandments are mentioned, but let’s start there.

    How many of the Ten Commandments can you name?

    How did you do? According to a source quoting a USA Today poll, if you could name five Commandments you did better than six out of ten Americans. If you correctly named all Ten Commandments, you are one of only fourteen in one hundred Americans [14%] who could do so. Sadly, this knowledge of Scripture is even lower in many countries on other continents.

    Background and Context of the Ten Commandments

    Did you realize that the Ten Commandments appear multiple times in the Bible? Though not listed every time, the record of the Ten Words gives context to their application and emphasis to their authenticity.

    Exodus 20

    Exodus 24:3 Moses came and told the people all the commands of the Lord and all the ordinances. Then all the people responded with a single voice, “We will do everything that the Lord has commanded.”

    • 4 And Moses wrote down all the words of the LORD… 7 He then took the covenant scroll and read it aloud to the people.
    • 12 The LORD said to Moses, “Come up to me on the mountain and stay there so that I may give you the stone tablets with the law and commandments I have written for their instruction.”

    From the Hebrew:

    24:12  וַיֹּאמֶר יְהוָה אֶל־מֹשֶׁה עֲלֵה אֵלַי הָהָרָה וֶהְיֵה־שָׁם וְאֶתְּנָה לְךָ אֶת־לֻחֹת הָאֶבֶן וְהַתֹּורָה וְהַמִּצְוָה כָּתַבְתִּי לְהֹורֹתָֽם׃

    Law – תּוֹרָה – Torah and Commandment – מִצְוָה – Mitzvah

    The Two Stone Tablets

    18 When he finished speaking with Moses on Mount Sinai, he gave him the two tablets of the testimony, stone tablets inscribed by the finger of God.

    “…and they are indeed a stiff-necked people.”

    The word of the LORD, of His chosen nation.

    Violation of the LORD’S spoken Word!

    Exodus 32:

    7 The Lord spoke to Moses: “Go down at once! For your people you brought up from the land of Egypt have acted corruptly. 8 They have quickly turned from the way I commanded them…

    9 The Lord also said to Moses: “I have seen this people, and they are indeed a stiff-necked people. 10 Now leave me alone, so that my anger can burn against them and I can destroy them. Then I will make you into a great nation.”

    11 But Moses sought the favor of the Lord his God: “Lord, why does your anger burn against your people you brought out of the land of Egypt with great power and a strong hand? … Turn from your fierce anger and relent concerning this disaster planned for your people. 13 Remember your servants Abraham, Isaac, and Israel…

    15 Then Moses turned and went down the mountain with the two tablets of the testimony in his hands. They were inscribed on both sides—inscribed front and back. 

    16 The tablets were the work of God, and the writing was God’s writing, engraved on the tablets.

    19 … Moses became enraged and threw the tablets out of his hands, smashing them at the base of the mountain.

    We will not here today dwell on Moses’ role as the hand of the Lord’s vengeful wrath. You may recall a sanitized image of the idolatry of the golden calf, but consider from scripture what took place.

    25 Moses saw that the people were out of control… 26 And Moses stood at the camp’s entrance and said, “Whoever is for the Lord, come to me.”

    … “This is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says, ‘Every man fasten his sword to his side; go back and forth through the camp from entrance to entrance, and each of you kill his brother, his friend, and his neighbor.’”

    28 The Levites did as Moses commanded, and about three thousand men fell dead that day among the people. 

    Did you remember this terrible refining of the camp of the Hebrews and slaughter of three thousand men?

    I didn’t, for I had not read this scripture recently.

    31 So Moses returned to the Lord… 

    33 The Lord replied to Moses: “Whoever has sinned against me I will erase from my book. 34 Now go, lead the people to the place I told you about; see, my angel will go before you.

    But on the day I settle accounts, I will hold them accountable for their sin.”

    Would you have been among those slaughtered for your idolatry? Or would you be among those enduring earthly plague, never entering the promised land?

    Is it not a fearful for us to be held accountable for our sin?

    The Lord Again Writes Down The Ten Commandments

    Exodus 34:

    The Lord said to Moses, “Cut two stone tablets like the first ones, and I will write on them the words that were on the first tablets, which you broke.

    4 Moses cut two stone tablets like the first ones. He got up early in the morning, and taking the two stone tablets in his hand, he climbed Mount Sinai, just as the Lord had commanded him.

    34:5  וַיֵּרֶד יְהוָה בֶּֽעָנָן וַיִּתְיַצֵּב עִמֹּו שָׁם וַיִּקְרָא בְשֵׁם יְהוָֽה׃

    5 The Lord came down in a cloud, stood with him there, and proclaimed his name, “the Lord.” 6 The Lord passed in front of him and proclaimed:

    The Lord—the Lord is a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger and abounding in faithful love and truth, 7 maintaining faithful love to a thousand generations, forgiving iniquity, rebellion, and sin.

    But he will not leave the guilty unpunished, bringing the fathers’ iniquity on the children and grandchildren to the third and fourth generation.

    8 Moses immediately knelt low on the ground and worshiped.

    Ten Words and More Commands

    10 And the Lord responded: “Look, I am making a covenant… 11 Observe what I command you today… 

    27 The Lord also said to Moses, “Write down these words, for I have made a covenant with you and with Israel based on these words.”

    28 Moses was there with the Lord forty days and forty nights; he did not eat food or drink water. He wrote the Ten Commandments, the words of the covenant, on the tablets.

    This hearing of the Law: To be continued…