Notes of Addresses at Catford 1976
Title Page
1. The Four Women in Moses’ Early Life 2
2. The Reluctant Servant ?
3. The Song of the Servant ?
4. Alone with God ?
5. The Influence of the Man of God ?
“In which time Moses was born, and was exceeding fair, and nourished up in his father’s house three months: and when he was cast out, Pharaoh’s daughter took him up, and nourished him as her own son. And Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and in deeds. And when he was full forty years old, it came into his heart to visit his brethren the children of Israel … God by his hand would deliver them.” (Acts 7:20-23, 26)
“By faith Moses, when he was born, was hid three months of his parents, because they saw he was a proper child; and they were not afraid of the king’s commandment. By faith Moses, when he was come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter; choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season; esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt; for he had respect unto the recompense of the reward. By faith he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king: for he endured, as seeing him who is invisible. Through faith he kept the passover, and the sprinkling of blood, lest he that destroyeth the firstborn should touch them.” (Heb. 11:23-28)
I have read these passages from the New Testament rather than read long passages from the book of Exodus, but, substantially, they cover those passages in Exodus. I want to speak firstly of the person of Moses, the man of God. I trust that we will see how the features that were seen in that man can and should also be seen in us in our day. First of all let me say that Moses stands out pre-eminently as the man of God. On six occasions we find that he is referred to in this way (Deut. 33:1, Josh. 14:6, 1 Chr. 23:14, 2 Chr. 30:16, Ezra 3:2, Ps. 90:1). These are very interesting and varied references to this wonderful servant of the Lord. I thought that tonight we might see a little of the features that attach to him in the early days of his spiritual formation in view of the time when he would be a leader amongst the people of God.
There is something very akin to what is going on at the present moment in those early days of Moses. He was born into a world of change. The nation of Israel were blessed in Egypt at one time, living in the land of Goshen under the care and attention of Pharaoh, and they had a very honoured place in the land, but all that had changed, they were now oppressed captives working in vigorous bondage. All this is akin to the day in which we find ourselves. Fifty to a hundred years ago Christianity, we might say, was a ‘popular’ thing in Great Britain. It was a common thing to go to church or chapel or a meeting place, and consequently these places were full. As I go around the country I go to fairly large halls and people say, ‘We can remember fifty years ago when this place was full, and now there are only a handful of people’. That is not peculiar to our circle of meetings, that is the case in many other circles all over the country. One of the saddest sights as I travel over the country is to see disused chapels. It all says the same thing, a declension, a departure away from God, a change, and the word of God and the things of Christ are no longer esteemed or revered; the pendulum has swung the other way and I do not think it will ever come back. Things are going to get worse (2 Tim. 3:13). It is in this kind of situation that this little boy, Moses, was born. And as the years rolled on the question was to which side was he to give his allegiance, the side of popularity, the marvellous land of Egypt with its large buildings, its priesthood, wealth, military fame and its seemingly impregnable condition (oh what opportunities were to be had in this land), or was he going to give his allegiance to the despised people in bondage, beset by all the evil power of Pharaoh and all that he represented? How was Moses going to react to those conditions? He chose rather to suffer affliction with the people of God and turned his back upon Egypt. He “was mighty in words and in deeds”. All the education and opportunity that was in Egypt was available to him but he deliberately turned his back upon it all in order that he might be for the people of God. This is where we have to make our choice this day. Some of us have grown older in years, and, thank God, we have made our choice, but we feel for our young people growing up in this kind of condition where it is unpopular to be a Christian, where it is a despised, reproached thing to be a Christian, and there are so many opportunities available for advancement in this world in the spheres of commerce, entertainment or sport. What a wonderful thing it is when young people can say, ‘I do not want this, I want to live for Christ’. This is a challenge, living in a changing world, in a world that is set against God and Christ, to make up our minds, both young and old, because we are all in the matter, that we are not going to be governed by the prevailing sentiments but to take the pathway that is pleasing to God.
This little babe was not long in the world before he experienced two things that he would experience all through his life, opposition and care (or support). First of all we have the opposition of Pharaoh the king, who gave word that every male child born to the Israelites was to be killed, and when that did not succeed he issued another law, that all the male children were to be thrown in the river and drowned. None of the male seed were to be left alive (Ex. 1:15-22). His object was to destroy the strength of the nation of Israel, and he saw in his earthly wisdom that this was the way to deal with the matter, so against the little boy Moses this enmity was directed, just as it was in a greater sense when the glorious Son of God came into this world and Satan in all his malice directed his hatred against this little Child through Herod the king (Matt. 2:16-18). Thank God that there were those who cared for him—no doubt under the hand of God, because God had a purpose for Moses. Moses was God’s chosen deliverer, and from the moment he came into this world he was under the eye of God and under the care and protection of God, until the time when intelligently he was the man of God and the leader of God’s people.
Moses’ Parents
“A man of the house of Levi … took to wife a daughter of Levi.” (Ex. 2:1)
I want to show for a few moments the wonderful influence that this little babe came under. First of all he was the product of a godly yoke. The beginning of Exodus 2 says that a daughter of Levi and a son of Levi were married, and then Moses was born. I am not saying for one moment that if a Christian should ever marry someone who is not converted and eventually the unconverted person gets converted that their children are unlikely to be more godly that the children of parents who were Christians when they were married, but I am saying this, that the children of godly Christian parents have a better opportunity to be faithful to the Lord if the parents are faithful. Now beyond any doubt the parents of Moses were faithful parents. There is one verse which always runs in my mind when I think of this and that is the song of Moses in Exodus 15. Moses exalted that God was his salvation and he said he would rejoice or exalt in “his father’s God” (v. 2). This indicates to me that Moses’ father had often spoken to him about his wonderful God, the God of Israel, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the One who had made and would yet fulfil His promises for the destiny of this wonderful people, the people of Israel. I am sure that Moses listened intently and imbibed that instruction into his heart.
We read that when he went to adjust his brethren he thought that they would understand that God was going to use him as a deliverer. In some way or other before the incident of the burning bush Moses must have understood from God that He was going to use him. Perhaps he acted a bit prematurely, acting in the flesh and by human wisdom, and God in discipline had to teach him this was not the way, but at the very outset what an opportunity he had having faithful parents who cared for and instructed him. It is a wonderful thing to have Christian parents. I did not have Christian parents, but I can see the advantage of having them, and not only having Christian parents but having intelligent Christian parents who can direct, guide and help in the things of the Lord. I have seen parents fail in Christian instruction towards their own, having relied upon others in Sunday School and Bible Class or having relegated the responsibility to others, a responsibility that is so solemn. What a responsibility it is to bring up children for the Lord. I say this humbly, brethren, because I know the tremendous difficulties that are involved in instructing the young in the things of the Lord. It is something that can be prayed for and God is intensely sympathetic. The parents of Moses and those who were connected with him were deeply concerned about the prosperity of this baby boy.
Four Women in the Life of Moses—1. The Midwives
“And the king of Egypt spake to the Hebrew midwives, of which the name of the one was Shiphrah, and the name of the other Puah, and he said, When ye do the office of a midwife to the Hebrew women, and see them upon the stools; if it be a son, then ye shall kill them: but if it be a daughter, then she shall live. But the midwives feared God and did not as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the men children alive … therefore God dealt well with the midwives.” (Ex. 1:15-17, 20)
I want now to draw attention to four women or groups of women who had a great deal to do with this young infant. They each represent certain features that are available for us today for our encouragement and our help. First of all, in Exodus 1 the midwives were told by Pharaoh, ‘Every time a male child is born kill it’, but they refused because “they feared God”, and when Moses was born they saved his life. That is the simple story, they feared God and saved the life of Moses and many other male children along with him. This is the first thing I want to speak of—salvation. We can never be men or women of God unless first of all we have experienced the wonder of salvation in our lives, this indisputably is the first step in our experience. What a wonderful thing it is to be clear of the power of Satan, to be out of his clutches and then to be set free for the power and service of God. In principle this is what happened when the little child Moses was saved through the faithfulness of the midwives who feared God.
It used to be said that this country was ‘a God-fearing nation’, but when did you last hear any ministry about the fear of God, and yet it is a subject that runs all through the Bible. I have a book that gives the meaning of Greek words and in connection with this word fear, the author says that ‘the fear of God is a consuming desire not to offend God’. That is a very good expression to explain what this term means. This word ‘fear’ is associated with terror, but when we connect the term “the fear of God” with the expression that the author of the book gives, this to me does not mean that I am afraid or terrified of God, but rather that I want to avoid the things that He hates. This is what is involved in the fear of God.
The midwives had a choice. Pharaoh, the supreme ruler in the land, had given them a command, but principally they owed their allegiance to God, the supreme ruler of the world, and it was simply who was to get the victory? They had a consuming desire not to offend God, and so they had to offend Pharaoh. That is a principle for us today. In our fear of God we do not consider whether the conduct that we express will offend others. We do not deliberately go out of our way to offend people, but if there comes a moment when we have to make a choice and by our choice we offend people because of standing for the truth, we must stand for the rights of God as those dear women who feared God and did that which was right. Little Moses owed his salvation to their faithfulness.
Four Women in the Life of Moses—2. His Mother
“And [Moses’ mother] conceived, and bare a son: and when she saw him that he was a goodly child, she hid him three months. And when she could no longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein; and she laid it in the flags by the river’s brink.” (Ex. 2:2-3)
For three months Moses’ mother had this little babe in her home and there she nourished him. This nourishment is what we all need as believers the moment we are converted. If a little babe is born in a healthy condition we thank God for that, but even the fittest, if it is not nourished, will soon die. But this little babe received nourishment from one who loved him. So new born believers, blessed by God, crave for the nourishment and to obtain that which builds up and enables them to be strong in the things of our Lord Jesus Christ and of God. We know that if children are fed well when they are young they have a good chance of growing strong as they get older. Many of the ailments of later life can be avoided by good nourishment given in early days. What a life Moses was to have. He was to be forty years in Egypt and then forty years in the wilderness—and oh, the privations that he would have to undergo as he was in the backside of the desert for those forty years! and oh, the wearying times he would have in the desert with the nation for forty years bearing all their grumbling and moaning and opposition! What an arduous thing it would be for him even physically, apart from what he bore in his spirit, so we can see the value of this nourishment when he was a babe.
Oh, how we need to be nourished up in the words of truth and doctrine in this changing world in which we live where the truth of God does not matter, where there is compromise and a turning aside from the word of God. I read this morning about a clergyman who is leading a new movement and he is an avowed homosexual, and what is more, two bishops in the Church of England agree with him and give him support! This is the kind of thing that our young people are facing in this world today in the land that once was famous for the reading of the Bible and its adherence to divine things, and that is only the tip of the iceberg. There is much more that is never seen, where the truth of God is ignored, where, they say, ‘These people are nice and sincere, well meaning, and so let us sympathise with them, it does not matter what the word of God says’. This is the kind of thing that our young people (and we also) have to face day by day, so Paul instructed Timothy to be “nourished up in the words of faith and of good doctrine” (1 Tim. 4:6). It is this that matters for a man of God. Paul said again to Timothy that “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works” (2 Tim. 3:16-17). This is what we require today in order for us to take our stand for God in this world, and if we have not got this nourishment we will wilt under the opposition, we will turn back from the pressure, but if we have the word of God in our hearts and in our minds we are able to meet it.
Peter used a beautiful expression in his first epistle when he said, “as new born babes, desire [earnestly (J.N.D.)] the sincere milk of the word, that ye may grow thereby” (1 Pet. 2:2). He was not referring to Christians as if they were immature persons as Paul in writing to the Corinthians said, ‘Ye ought to be grown men but you are not, you are only babes, I am feeding you with milk because you are in such an immature condition’ (1 Cor. 3:1-2), instead Peter was presenting the normal picture of a new born babe earnestly craving for its nourishment and if it does not get it it opens its lungs and yells because it desires its food that it might grow in the things of the Lord. The early brethren were marked by their diligent study of the word of God. They must have been diligent students, they could not have produced the works that they did unless they had been. We would not have been here tonight with the truth of God as we understand it unless they had been diligent students. We all owe a tremendous amount to those brethren who spent so much time digging into the word of God to find truth for the benefit of others. The word of God is real nourishment, it is strong meat, and it builds up the soul. This is what Moses required and this is what he got. His mother saw that he got it, she gave him this nourishment for three months.
Four Women in the Life of Moses—3. His Sister
“And when she could not longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein; and she laid it in the flags by the river’s brink. And [Moses’] sister stood afar off, to see what would be done to him.” (Ex. 2:3-4)
Moses’ mother made a little basket, covered it with pitch and placed the little babe in it and then laid it at the side of the river. She did not put it out into the current where it would be carried away. The Nile was worshipped as a god and it had many influences, and so they made sure that they did not put it out into the current, they kept it at the side where they knew it would be looked after. I mention the Nile as being idolatrous to show that we should make sure that our children are not connected with things that are harmful to them in the thought of idolatry, worldliness and wickedness, we would guard against that. Children have to take their place in the world legitimately, but when Moses’ mother put the little basket there it says his sister watched, she made sure that there was no harm going to come to that little child, and she kept watching until the moment came when Pharaoh’s daughter came along and the little child was discovered. The sister of Moses represents this principle of care and watchfulness in relation to the young and, indeed, to us all. When Cain slew his brother Abel and God asked about him he said, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Gen. 4:9), in other words, ‘What does it matter to me?’ and, in the language that we are so accustomed to today, ‘I could not care less, I am not interested in Abel’. That is not the principle to be acted upon in the Christian company, rather there is to be watchfulness, care and concern for the progress of others so that we all act in a way that is pleasurable to God. It says of the leaders in Hebrews 13:17, “they watch for your souls”, they are concerned. The leader is not the man who gives out the notices or perhaps takes the Bible readings or gives the lectures, that is not the main thing, the man who is a leader amongst the people of God is the man who is concerned about them. The shepherds in Ezekiel 34 did not care about the people of God, they were only concerned about themselves, they did not care for the flock, and God had to speak in a very scathing way about their shepherding responsibilities. But the leaders in the New Testament were those who lead diligently, humbly and dependently and they lead the people of God in the right direction, they lead them to Christ, they lead them to God, they lead them in the paths that were pleasurable to Them. So this spirit of watchfulness is something that we greatly need in our companies today, concern about and caring for each other, a readiness to help and guide in the proper direction. There is a feeling sometimes, ‘Oh we must not speak, there will be trouble, there will be upset, do not say anything, it will be alright in the end’, but unfortunately most of these things do not turn out all right in the end. A discrete word of help and warning or of encouragement might have saved many a disaster. This is what the sister of Moses represents, when we see the watchfulness and care that she expended on that little babe.
Four Women in the Life of Moses—4. Pharaoh’s Daughter
“And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself at the river; and her maidens walked along by the river’s side; and when she saw the ark among the flags, she sent her maid to fetch it. And when she had opened it, she saw the child, and, behold, the babe wept. And she had compassion on him, and said, This is one of the Hebrews’ children. Then said [Moses’] sister to Pharaoh’s daughter, Shall I go and call to thee a nurse of the Hebrew women that she may nurse the child for thee? And Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, Go. And the maid went and called the child’s mother. And Pharaoh’s daughter said unto her, Take this child away, and nurse it for me, and I will give thee thy wages. And the woman took the child, and nursed it. And the child grew, and she brought him unto Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son. And she called his name Moses: and she said, Because I drew him out of the water.” (Ex. 2:5-10)
Finally, the daughter of Pharaoh, although perhaps she did not understand it, was an instrument of God at that time, she was used for the preservation of that little boy. She lifted him up—I always feel touched when I read it—and the babe wept. It was a natural thing for a babe to do. It looked up from its basket and instead of seeing its mother’s face it saw this strange face of the daughter of Pharaoh, and it wept. What Moses experienced as that little babe at the time of his childhood was something that he experienced all through his life, the sorrows, the difficulties and the trials that were involved in being faithful to God. It was not all sorrow, there were joys and blessings, moments of great dignity and glory, the two things run together, just as they did in the life of the Son of God, the Man of sorrows (e.g. Isa. 53:3, John 11:35, Matt. 23:37) and yet the Man of supreme joy (e.g. Matt. 13:44, Heb. 12:2). Moses experienced them both as he was here in his humble pathway for God. So, the daughter of Pharaoh was used in this wonderful way for the preservation of this little boy. I am sure that each one of us, as we look back on our Christian pathway, can say to ourselves, ‘However did we get through?’ We think of all the difficulties that we have gone through, we think of all the temptations that we have known, some of which we have succumbed to, others, thank God, we were able to overcome, but as we take account of it we say, ‘However have we reached this point in our Christian history?’ Thank God we can say, as Peter could say, that we were “Kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Pet. 1:5). God has used many instruments, many people have helped us and acted in this preserving way, guiding and helping us, and perhaps it has been unknown to us. We may have failed to take account of it, we may have been unaware of the amount of preservation and blessing that has been ministered to us, but God preserves His own. This was the apostle Paul’s confidence that, nearing the end of his life, he would be preserved for the heavenly kingdom (2 Tim. 4:18). He knew he would be because he was conscious of belonging to God, and although the infant Moses did not realise it, he too was being preserved because God had a great service in mind for him. So these four women occupied an important place in the infant life of Moses.
“And Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and was mighty in words and in deeds. And when he was full forty years old, it came into his heart to visit his brethren the children of Israel. And seeing one of them suffer wrong, he defended him, and avenged him that was oppressed, and smote the Egyptian: for he supposed his brethren would have understood how that God by his hand would deliver them: but they understood not. And the next day he showed himself unto them as they strove, and would have set them at one again, saying, Sirs, ye are brethren; why do ye wrong one to another? But he that did his neighbour wrong thrust him away, saying, Who made thee a ruler and a judge over us? Wilt thou kill me, as thou diddest the Egyptian yesterday? Then fled Moses at this saying, and was a stranger in the land of Midian, where he begat two sons.” (Acts 7:22-29)
“Now Moses kept the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian: and he led the flock to the backside of the desert, and came to the mountain of God, even to Horeb.” (Ex. 3:1)
Moses was a man called of God, a man with a desire to serve God and yet he was extremely reluctant to do what God wanted him to do; this too was part of his training. Last night we saw that many features were operating in the early life of Moses for his spiritual benefit. These were all part of the training that enabled him to be such a worthy servant of the Lord. Now he was away from the land of Egypt altogether and he was looking after sheep. This was far from being what Moses wanted to do, he wanted to be the deliverer who would take the nation of Israel out of the bondage of the Egyptian Pharaoh and his army. It is remarkable how often we find that men who are busy are the men who are called of God to do His service; He does not call lazy people. In the book of Proverbs we find many references to the sluggard, God has nothing for the sluggard to do because He knows it will not be done efficiently, but those who are prepared to apply diligence to their work are the kind of persons that the Lord wants in His service. The Lord’s service is not to be done negligently or in a sluggardly way, the work of the Lord requires diligence, attention, care and perseverance and there is not an occupation that sets forth these qualities like that of a shepherd, the preparedness to endure suffering night and day. To give you some idea, I have a standing order not to ask the brethren in Northumberland to have meetings at certain times of the year because if you have been at a farm during the lambing season the working day is not a sixteen-hour day, it is a 24 hour day, the lambs must be attended to and the brethren will be too tired to get to meetings every night.
“And the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush: and he looked, and, behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed. And Moses said, I will now turn aside, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burnt. And when the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses. And he said, Here am I. And he said, Draw not nigh hither: put off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the place whereon thou standest is holy ground. Moreover he said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face; for he was afraid to look upon God. And the Lord said, I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows; and I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land unto a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey; unto the place of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites. Now therefore, behold, the cry of the children of Israel is come unto me: and I have also seen the oppression wherewith the Egyptians oppress them. Come now therefore, and I will send thee unto Pharaoh, that thou mayest bring forth my people the children of Israel out of Egypt.” (Ex. 3:2-10)
“This Moses whom they refused, saying, Who made thee a ruler and a judge? the same did God send to be a ruler and a deliverer by the hand of the angel which appeared to him in the bush.” (Acts 7:35)
God spoke to His servant, and here for the first time (at least as far as Scripture is concerned) in the life of this devoted man we find the evidence of a living contact with God. It was not now an idea in his mind that he was going to serve the people of God, it was not something he had just learned from his father about the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, now he was coming into contact with God in a living way in his own experience, and what a wonderful experience it was.
There are a few Scriptures I want to refer to in this connection. The first one is found in Deuteronomy 33:16, in connection with the blessing of Joseph where Moses made mention of “the good will of him who dwelt in the bush”. This is what Moses experienced. There was something in this wonderful incident that he never forgot. There was no thought of judgment or of destruction in this message, it was God speaking out of the burning bush telling him that He was concerned about the happiness, the joy and the deliverance of His beloved people. It was the call of Moses to come to serve God in a living, intelligent way in relation to the people whom God loved. That is why Moses spoke about “the good will of him who dwelt in the bush”. It is a wonderful thing to know that God loves. Oh, how many people in the world today wrongly think that God is One who is only always ready to punish, One who is going to bring us to account because of our sins and our folly! Oh, how right the psalmist was when he said, “If thou, Jah, shouldest mark iniquities, Lord, who shall stand?” (Ps. 130:3). He is not that kind of God, if He were none of us would be here tonight. God is a God of love and is deeply concerned that we should be freed from all the things that hinder us from worshipping Him, that we might be in the living enjoyment of His presence and that we might respond to Him in a way that is appropriate. This is why God chose His servant carefully, a reliable instrument, that the people of God might be led out from bondage into the place of liberty and response, “Let my son [Israel] go, that he may serve me” (Ex. 4:23). Oh, dear friends, all this was in the mind of Moses when he spoke about the good will of God; again I say, what a wonderful thing it is.
In the book of Malachi God refers to all the sons of Jacob’s backslidings, failings, trials and difficulties, and the way they had feebly responded to Him, yea, indeed, turned their backs on Him, but God is a God of wonderful compassion, “therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed”, Jehovah changes not. God does not turn aside from His promises or His purpose because of our failure, He loves us too much. This is why we find in Malachi, at the end of the Old Testament record where there was so much that merited the judgment of God these words, ‘No I am not going to act in a consuming way I am being true to my promise, true to my purpose, I am only concerned for your blessing’. Is this not true today? Has not the church of God failed abysmally, even more so than the nation of Israel? The church of God has infinite resources to draw upon, far more than Israel ever had, everything that is for the believer is centred in our Lord Jesus Christ in glory. The Spirit of God is here indwelling the assembly of God upon earth and yet we look at the public expression of Christianity and what a shame it is, what a mockery of what God intended it to be! and we all have our part in it, every one of us. I do not suppose there is a believer here who would be prepared to say that he was what he ought to be. Yet, in spite of all this, the love of our God is unchanged towards us, the good will of this wonderful God expressed to us in Christ, and for those who are prepared to follow Him all the resources of heaven are still available, they always have been available, they always will be available, and the Spirit of God is still here unchanged in His power and devotion to the things of God in relation to the people of God. Well, then, may we take courage.
Moses, I am sure, derived a tremendous amount of encouragement from this initial experience with God. In this first lesson we see the greatness and the holiness of God and the attitude of His servant to the impressions that he received.
“And Moses said unto God, Who am I, that I should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth the children of Israel out of Egypt? And he said, Certainly I will be with thee; and this shall be a token unto thee, that I have sent thee: When thou hast brought forth the people out of Egypt, ye shall serve God upon this mountain. And Moses said unto God, Behold, when I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto them, The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you; and they shall say to me, What is his name? what shall I say unto them? And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you. And God said moreover unto Moses, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, The Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you: this is my name for ever, and this is my memorial unto all generations. Go, and gather the elders of Israel together, and say unto them, The Lord God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, appeared unto me, saying, I have surely visited you, and seen that which is done to you in Egypt: and I have said, I will bring you up out of the affliction of Egypt unto the land of the Canaanites, and the Hittites, and the Amorites, and the Perizzites, and the Hivites, and the Jebusites, unto a land flowing with milk and honey. And they shall hearken to thy voice: and thou shalt come, thou and the elders of Israel, unto the king of Egypt, and ye shall say unto him, The Lord God of the Hebrews hath met with us: and now let us go, we beseech thee, three days’ journey into the wilderness, that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God. And I am sure that the king of Egypt will not let you go, no, not by a mighty hand. And I will stretch out my hand, and smite Egypt with all my wonders which I will do in the midst thereof: and after that he will let you go. And I will give this people favour in the sight of the Egyptians: and it shall come to pass, that, when ye go, ye shall not go empty: but every woman shall borrow of her neighbour, and of her that sojourneth in her house, jewels of silver, and jewels of gold, and raiment: and ye shall put them upon your sons, and upon your daughters; and ye shall spoil the Egyptians.” (Ex. 3:11-22)
This is a sad reflection on the nation of Israel. Perhaps all the traditions had been lost regarding the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. Think of all the wealth of experience in the lives of these men that must have been handed down to these people and yet they were so wrapped up in their bondage and sorrow that they could not even remember the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. Things must have been at a very low ebb that Moses had to ask this question. God said, ‘When you go to them say I AM, the self existing One, has sent you’. In the New Testament we see the I AM, the Word become flesh, the One who could say, “Before Abraham was, I AM” (John 8:58). This is the same One who was speaking to Moses. Something of the greatness of God entered into the heart of this devoted man.
Moses was told to take his shoes off for the place where he stood was holy ground. This was not just an ordinary experience, this was not like any other piece of land, this was holy ground because God’s presence was there. When we come to the writings of Moses, no doubt inspired by God, how often he referred to this matter of holiness. In the instructions concerning the Tabernacle over and over again Moses referred to the matter of holiness in connection with the offerings, also the civil law, the ceremonial law and the moral law. All these things are characterised by this great principle of holiness, that which is fitting for the presence of God. I am sure that this was something that Moses never forgot as he carried on his service for God. Moses was also afraid to lift us his face to see God. There was a proper condition of reverence produced in his soul, a proper attitude of mind that caused him to act in this way. These three things were carried in the soul of this servant all through his life, an understanding of the greatness of God, an understanding of what was in keeping with this wonderful God, the holiness of life, purity of heart and mind, and also the due reverence that was to be given to Him. How can we possibly represent God today unless we have something of this in our souls, how great God is? What a wonderful God He is! Yet how easy it is to forget this. Nehemiah often spoke of the great God. He is not just a God amongst many, He is the God, the only God, He is the God who can do things, who can be relied upon, and who can fulfil His purpose and will. I am sure this was a great comfort for Moses as he went through the service in the wilderness. How could he possibly have stood at the Red Sea with an army behind him and an impassable sea in front of him without some knowledge of this greatness in his soul, when he said to the people, “Fear not, stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord” (Ex. 14:13). He knew that God could do things and he could encourage the people in this way. It is absolutely necessary that we have in our souls an understanding of the greatness of our God. Do our hearts fail us when we see the trend of things in the world today, the seemingly unhindered advance of evil and hostile movements against God? Do we sometimes fear that all that is good and pure and holy is going to be overthrown forever? Ah, let us remember that God has a purpose and God is not God if man can destroy His purpose, God will fulfil every feature of His will and purpose. It was something of this that was in the heart of the apostle when he said in Romans 8:31, “If God be for us who against us?” He issues the challenge and, although our hearts may (and sometimes do) fail, eventually every thought of God will be fulfilled. It is necessary that we carry with us this impression of God in our hearts, that He is infinitely greater than all the opposition that is against Him. Then we can think of another expression of Paul’s when he said, “Now unto him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us. Unto him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end. Amen” (Eph. 3:20-21). This is a wonderful fulfilment of the purpose of God. So often we refer to that verse in connection with circumstances that we pass through and we say, ‘God is a wonderful God, He can do abundantly above all that we can ask or think in connection with our needs’. Brethren, what the apostle is saying is that we can ask or think about blessing, but what God has in mind is infinitely greater than anything we can ask or think, God’s plan and purpose is far beyond our poor finite minds, yet it must be so wonderful that no human mind can comprehend it and it is going to be fulfilled in persons like ourselves, the assembly that has been brought to Him through Christ. Think of that!
Then, holiness. Numerous New Testament passages refer to the holiness that is required of those who know and represent God in contrast to the corruption and evil that exists in this world for the simple reason that the world has turned its back upon God and opened the door for Satan and all that is wicked and evil to enter, and oh, how much we need this attitude of reverence! Moses was frightened to lift up his face towards God, he knew in his condition in the presence of such a wonderful God that it was right that he should have this attitude. God is great, holy, righteous and true but because we are His children and His sons, we are not bowed down to the earth in fear as perhaps Moses was at that moment. We have been brought to God in such a wonderful way that we can lift up our eyes and our hearts and worship and praise Him. His sons have the right to respond to Him in this way. So there may be a difference between us and Moses in this respect.
Now Moses begins to ask some questions. He says, ‘Who am I?’ and ‘What am I going to say?’ So he says, ‘Do not send me, send someone else.’ He shows this attitude of reluctance to do the will of God. We might say, ‘This is very strange, we would have thought that after this remarkable experience with God he would have been filled with enthusiasm and said, ‘Oh let me get started! This God is behind me and with me’, but he did not react like that, he did his best to get out of that position. It is a strange contrast to that which he showed when God called to him, “Moses, Moses”, and Moses said, “Here am I”. If we read the Scriptures carefully we will find that many of God’s servants reacted in this way, “Here am I. I am ready to go, ready to listen, ready to be instructed, ready to serve”. Moses had a good beginning when he said, ‘Here am I’, listening to what God had to say, but it was not very long before he began to question ‘Who am I?’ and ‘What shall I say when I go to these people? I am not very eloquent, I cannot speak well, these people will not listen to me.’ Moses had a sense of inferiority. It was not very long ago that he had tried to help his own people and they had refused him and he had had to flee. Would it be any different when he went back? God knew perfectly well that it would be different. I remember reading about the life of Hudson Taylor who said that ‘God’s work is carried on by God’s power and it produces God’s results’. It is God all along the line. If God calls someone to a work He gives that person the power to do the work and there is fruit for Him. What a wonderful thing that, after God does all this, He gives the servant a reward, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord” (Matt. 25:21).
Moses said, ‘Who am I? I am a poor soul, I cannot do very much’. How often have you heard or said that? I have said and felt like it often, but we must get away from this spirit. It is not a question of what we can do, it is a question of what God can do. In 1 Corinthians 1:27 Paul said that “God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty”. The things that men despise are the instruments that God has used for His glory. When the great army was against Israel in the times of the judges God gave Gideon a sign when a man in the enemy camp dreamt and saw a little barley cake tumbling into the camp and the man was upset because the interpretation of this was, “This is nothing else save the sword of Gideon the son of Joash, a man of Israel: for into his hand hath God delivered Midian, and all the host” (Jud. 7:14). A little barley cake rolling into the camp, this is exactly how God works. An army of 32,000 Israelites was raised but God whittled it down until there were only three hundred left. In the eyes of men this is rank stupidity. They argue that, to fight a battle, the more soldiers they have the better, but God said, “No”, and whittled it down to three hundred because three hundred men were quite sufficient to rout this great army that was against the people of God. This is always the way that God works. He does not generally choose the intellectual, although he may, He does not choose all the influential people, the kings or rulers and so on, otherwise they would all turn around and say, “God cannot do without us”, God carefully chooses the humble instruments such as fishermen, people who are not thought much of in this world and He uses them that His power might be manifest in them. This is what Moses had to learn. He had learned it in some measure in Egypt, that in spite of all his desire and natural strength he achieved nothing, but in the hands of God he became an instrument to work mightily for Him. There is no telling what can happen in our lives as we simply give them to God for His glory. It is a wonderful position to be in when we can humbly and sincerely say to God that we have no desire but to do His will.
This reluctant attitude has marked many servants of God. Saul, the first king of Israel, was not always a bad man, there was a time when he was a good man. When he was little in his own eyes he hid himself, he did not want to be king, then when he came out of his hiding place and acted as a king he wrought many great exploits for God; he was a very successful king at the beginning (1 Sam. 10-11). The reluctance that he showed was indicative of a humble spirit, and this was what the prophet commended in him (1 Sam. 15:17). The danger is that when we become big in our own eyes we are not much use for God, and many a servant has been spoilt because he has been too big in his own eyes; a faithful servant must be humble. Paul, the great servant of the Lord, could say “I am less than the least of all saints” (Eph. 3:8). Here was a servant who could take the foremost place amongst the saints and yet was prepared to be counted as less than the least of them. One of the great requisites for serving the Lord is this attitude of humility. Jeremiah had the same kind of idea in his heart, ‘Why choose me? I am frightened to go and speak to these people!’ But God said, ‘Go Jeremiah, before ever you were born I had this in mind and you are a chosen vessel for me. Do not be afraid of them, just you do as I tell you;’ and Jeremiah was a very powerful instrument in the hand of God. The most outstanding case of a reluctant servant in Scripture is Jonah. How he wanted to run away from his service! It was not palatable to him, and what reluctance he showed, but God brought him back to it, and thank God his service was owned of God. There was one glorious Man who never showed any reluctance in His service who said, “I do always the things that please [the Father]” (John 8:29), and “My food is that I should do the will of him that has sent me, and that I should finish his work” (John 4:24), there was no reluctance in the life of the Son of God.
So we find that, step by step, Moses indicated this unwillingness to do the things that God wanted him to do and God was angry with him for this (4:14). God was concerned that Moses should do the things that He wanted him to do that he might fulfil His mind and His will and so be here for his pleasure.
“And Moses answered and said, But, behold, they will not believe me, nor hearken unto my voice: for they will say, The Lord hath not appeared unto thee. And the Lord said unto him, What is that in thine hand? And he said, A rod. And he said, Cast it on the ground. And he cast it on the ground, and it became a serpent; and Moses fled from before it. And the Lord said unto Moses, Put forth thine hand, and take it by the tail. And he put forth his hand, and caught it, and it became a rod in his hand: that they may believe that the Lord God of their fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, hath appeared unto thee. And the Lord said furthermore unto him, Put now thine hand into thy bosom. And he put his hand into his bosom: and when he took it out, behold, his hand was leprous as snow. And he said, Put thine hand into thy bosom again. And he put his hand into his bosom again; and plucked it out of his bosom, and, behold, it was turned again as his other flesh. And it shall come to pass, if they will not believe thee, neither hearken to the voice of the first sign, that they will believe the voice of the latter sign. And it shall come to pass, if they will not believe also these two signs, neither hearken unto thy voice, that thou shalt take of the water of the river, and pour it upon the dry land: and the water which thou takest out of the river shall become blood upon the dry land.” (Ex. 4:1-9)
Pre-eminently God was teaching Moses that He could do things that Moses could not, and if Moses was going to serve Him he had to rely on His power. I am sure that was a salutary lesson to Moses. The Lord taught this when He raised Lazarus at Bethany, He said to the sisters, “Where is he?” and being directed to where he was He told them to roll away the stone and they did so. Then the Lord said “Lazarus come forth!” and Lazarus came forth. He then said, “Take the grave clothes off him” and they did so. Every time the Lord asked them to do something it was entirely within their capabilities. He never asked them to raise Lazarus from the dead, that was something that He did, He demonstrated His power to them in this remarkable way. We have to learn this in our service and testimony for God. I often feel that we ask the Lord to help us to do things that we are perfectly capable of doing and God says, ‘Go and do them’, but there are things that we cannot do and it is in this area that we need to cry aloud to God that He might do these things and so make His work in us fruitful. This is what God was teaching Moses, but although they were signs to him, we can see in them a symbolic teaching that can be of great help to us.
The serpent is a well-known figure of Satan (e.g. Gen. 3, Rev. 20:2); leprosy is a well-known type of sin operating in the flesh (e.g. Num. 12:10, 2 Chr. 26:19); blood is a well-known figure of death (e.g. Acts 22:20); and the incident that we did not read, circumcision, Exodus 4:24-26, is a well-known figure in relation to the cutting off of the flesh (e.g. Phil. 3:3, Col. 2:11). Here are lessons that we all have to learn in whatever way we are serving the Lord. The first lesson is that Satan’s power has been annulled. The Bible says to us as Christians, “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (Jas. 4:7). This is a very important lesson for us to learn because we are apt to get distressed and upset and unhappy about the visible signs of Satan’s power and we can get into our minds a sense of, ‘What is the use? There is so much power against us we will never succeed’, but God says, ‘I have power to control him’. Paul wrote to the Romans and said, “the God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly” (16:20). This happened pre-eminently at the cross when Satan was bruised under the feet of our Lord Jesus Christ, but it is happening now with believers because Christ’s victory has opened the door for victory over Satan’s power in the people of God.
Then there is this question of sin in the flesh that leprosy represents. Sin operating in our flesh is really rebellion against God, and there are two outstanding occasions in the Bible which illustrate this. Uzziah the king presumed to go into the presence of God and to offer up the sacrifices and under the hand of God he became a leper (2 Chr. 26:19). Secondly, there was the occasion when Miriam, who along with Aaron, presumed to question God’s choice of Moses as the leader of God’s people and Miriam was also afflicted with leprosy (Num. 12:10). These two incidents illustrate to us that leprosy is God’s judgment against this rebellion, this attitude of heart. Leprosy indicates opposition to the things of God which is in the flesh of each one of us. You might say, ‘Well, that is a bit extreme’, but it is true that we all have a nature that is opposed to the things of God and, even if we endeavour to serve the Lord, this kind of thing can come into expression, but God indicated to Moses that all this was under control as far as He was concerned. We read in the epistle to the Romans how this is brought under control in the life of a Christian who wants to bear fruit for God. The law of sin and death has been overcome and now the believer is walking in the power of the Spirit of God, “For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death” (Rom. 8:2). Blood is the last figure that we find, the well-known symbol of death.
All these things the servant of God has to face, whether it be Satan’s power or sin in the flesh or the power of death, all these operate in this scene. Circumcision represents the cutting off of these things and we must learn them in a practical way in our lives and be governed by them to be effective for God in this world.
“And Moses went and returned to Jethro his father-in-law, and said unto him, Let me go, I pray thee, and return unto my brethren which are in Egypt, and see whether they be yet alive. And Jethro said to Moses, Go in peace. And the Lord said unto Moses in Midian, Go, return into Egypt: for all the men are dead which sought thy life. And Moses took his wife and his sons, and set them upon an ass, and he returned to the land of Egypt: and Moses took the rod of God in his hand.” (Ex. 4:18-20)
Lastly, there was a little word of encouragement for Moses. The door was being opened wide for this man to begin his service. You will often find this, that circumstances can indicate to a person a certain line of conduct. This is represented by Jethro saying to Moses, “You go back”, but along with this is God’s definite call and commission, and you will find that circumstances and God’s call can coalesce and so indicate to the servant that he is on the right path. We find an example of this in Genesis 24, when the servant, in obedience to Abraham, goes out and then when he is in the way he gets indications from certain circumstances that he is in the right path and then he says, “I being in the way, the Lord led me to the house of my master’s brethren” (v. 27). So this simple figure indicates to us what is so often an encouragement to us. It is very easy to say when everything turns out all right, ‘The Lord is in this’, we hear this so often, but sometimes the Lord is in it when the circumstances are not congenial (and Moses had passed through a lot of uncongenial circumstances), yet here he was being brought to a point where there was nothing to hinder him; there was no pull from Jethro saying, ‘You cannot go, you have a good job here, I need you for watching the sheep’, instead Jethro said, ‘You go Moses’ and God said along with Jethro, “Go”. So here was this double indication, the circumstances being all right and the positive call from God, and so the servant moved out into his service for God.
However, it is a dangerous thing simply to rely purely upon circumstances to know God’s will, but it is an encouraging thing that when we do want to do the will of God we find that circumstances are being altered so that we can answer to that will.
May these few remarks be a help to us as I am sure that deep down in all our hearts there is a desire to serve God. I would say again in closing, how great God is, and we are not now governed by a fear of Him in the sense that He is going to deal harshly with us, but rather that we have to do with a God who loves us, who has made Himself known to us in the Person of His Son and has made so much available to us that we might serve Him with reverence and with godly fear. May it be so for His name’s sake.
“And I saw as it were a sea of glass mingled with fire: and them that had gotten the victory over the beast, and over his image, and over his mark, and over the number of his name, stand on the sea of glass, having the harps of God. And they sing the song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, Great and marvellous are thy works, Lord God Almighty; just and true are thy ways, thou King of saints. Who shall not fear thee, O Lord, and glorify thy name? for thou only art holy: for all nations shall come and worship before thee; for thy judgments are made manifest.” (Rev. 15:2-4)
What was borne into my mind was the songs of Moses and we just have not time to consider the three songs that are contributed top him. Exodus 15 is well known, the victory and triumph of the nation of Israel at the Red Sea and the song of Moses in all its exhortation and joy in the great deliverer. There is another one, perhaps not so well known, but a wonderful song in Deuteronomy 32, beautiful song. It is a song that is extremely comprehensive, the greatness of God, the blessing of God towards Israel and then sadly we can see their failure and their eventual recovery l and then there is this song, the song of Moses the bondman and servant of God, linked with the song of the Lamb. And I have chosen this one because it is compact and yet its full of instructions for us and so we will concentrate on this song. But before we do so, we want to say this that thank God, the service of God is not all sorrow and trial and difficulty and opposition, hostility, it often is. But as we read in the Scriptures we find that the servants of God have their moments of joy. And it is obvious that Moses had his share of this experience of God. Moments when his heart bubbled over in the experience he had with God and responded to God in song, intelligent song. And this is how it should be with us as believers. And we are very thankful for the wonderful collection of hymns that we have, not only in the book that we have been singing from this evening, but in many others, collection of songs, composed of men and women who had experience with God and who committed that in writing and tunes so that similar experiences could sing together of the greatness of God and of Christ. And we are very thankful for this outlet. I remember saying to a brother once, I do look forward to the meetings if for nothing else to sing. And he looked at me in amazement and said, is that all you go to the meetings for? I assured him that it was not but was one of the things that I really enjoyed and still do enjoy when in fellowship together we can sing these songs of the glory of Christ and of God. Now I ask you dear brethren, how often have you come along to the meetings with your spirit …heaved and perhaps some depression and as you entered into the song that was being sung the Spirit of God has refreshed your spirit and lifted up your heart and made you feel what a wonderful place to be in when we are all gathered together with the one glorious obvious before us, well either the worship of God or the worship of our Lord Jesus Christ and singing together of the common blessings that we have through infinite grace. And so, I believe Moses had his share of this. We can understand him on the banks of the Red Sea lifting up his voice in the way he did in praise and worship to God as he saw the total equips of the enemy’s power and the nation of Israel set free and now they were able to sing with himself singing this great song of victory. God has triumphed victoriously, the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea. We do find in Deuteronomy 32 the wonderful story, oh, that we had time to consider it. He sits down and pens this song and then he reads it over to the nation of Israel, the song that went over their long history and recounting all their failures and then eventually promising to them recovery. Most remarkable that after Moses had finished reading that song to Israel God says to Moses, you are going to die. Go to the mountain, I will show you where to go and there you are going to die. You are going to lay down your responsibilities, someone else will carry on the end of the journey for you, Moses. I suppose naturally if we had been faced to a situation like that we would have sat down and perhaps mourned, cried and said oh well what a sad thing it is that I have to give up this service, I am still strong and able. But Moses bowed to the will of God, accepted is from God and then he did a remarkable thing, he blessed the sons of Israel. What a remarkable thing to do! Being faced with death, being brought from the service by God he opens up all his heart and he blesses all the tribes of Israel and he has nothing bad to say about them. Everything is good and precious according to the purpose of God. In Genesis 49 when Jacob blesses the tribes of Israel he gives a prophetic outline of the history of the nations until the end when it will be blessed sovereignly by God. Very alike to the addresses to the seven churches in the Revelation. But here in Deuteronomy 34 it is all blessing from the beginning to the end, no failure attaching to anyone, all the blessing that comes sovereignly from God and this man of God was able to impart his. So, from this little incident we can say he is a man who can sing, he is a man who can accept the will of God, he is a man who can bless. Now I am sure that provides a very deep and instructive lesson in itself.
Now we come to his great song, the song of Moses, the servant of God or if you like the bondman of God. And it is linked with the song of the Lamb. Now I could not possibly attempt to indicate the song that belongs to Moses and the song that belongs to the Lamb. I do not know how you could differentiate between the two. It seems to me they are so bound up together. It’s impossible to distinguish where one begins and one ends. It seems to me that the song really stresses the feelings of Moses, the bondman of God, and also of the Lamb. And this is surely a wonderful honour for this great servant. He was indeed the great Servant, the great bondman, but here he is in company with the bondman. We remember in Philippians 2 it says He took upon Himself the form of a servant. The form of a bondman and in that form, he was perfect for God. In His service everything He did was perfect for the heart of God. So, we find this remarkable servant of God linked with God’s glorious Son, the perfect servant. Now that is a great honour. I have been thinking of a few ways in which Moses is linked with our Lord Jesus Christ and I think a first indication is the one we have in Hebrews 11. He esteemed the reproach of Christ greater riches than all the treasures of Egypt. Now how he did this I do not know but the Word of God says he esteemed the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt. Now this a very wonderful thing that this devoted man, and we mentioned this already, was prepared to turn his back upon all the promises and advancement and glory in Egypt and … the reproach with the people of God. But notice the recompense because there are three distinctive ways after this in which Moses is linked with our Lord Jesus Christ. First of all, in his writings. Remember the Lord had said to the …, now if you had believed Moses you would have believed in me because he wrote of me. Now this was a wonderful recommendation by the Lord, wonderful commendation to this servant of God. That Moses had written of Christ in his writings, he had prophesied of this great person who was to come, the great prophet. You remember when the Lord was to come and the Lord opened up the Scriptures to the two He met, He said to them, All the things that were written in the book of Moses concerning Him had been fulfilled. So there again they find another Scriptural weapon to the writings of Moses concerning our Lord Jesus Christ. The world is full of books, theological writings they are called, in some way or another they are writing about the Lord Jesus, some of them would be better in the fire because they do not glorify the Son of God, they drag His glory in the dust. Thank God for all the volumes that have been written about the glory of Christ. But they all must be … in Scriptures because all that persons can write about the Lord Jesus Christ is based upon Scriptures, there is no other source of information. They cannot trust the fathers and all the legends we had… yesterday and all the imaginary stories they find there but we can the Word of God. How wonderful that this man, this servant of God, who was prepared to endure reproach for the sake of Christ should be led by the Spirit of God to write about Christ. And then there is that distinctive blessing, that unique blessing, that we mentioned before, that with Elijah he stood on the holy mount in the company of our Lord Jesus Christ. Great servants of the Old Testament, Moses and Elijah. There he is in company with our Lord Jesus Christ. What an honour! What ample recompense for all… that he endured in the desert, in Egypt … And then lastly, there is … connection, he is linked with the Lamb in this song. I think we can see from this that it was well worthwhile turning his back from all that Egypt spoke of. And I just want to say this to all our hearts, myself included, that to endure the reproach of Christ is opening the door for blessing from God. O how much God appreciates those who are true to Christ, those who are prepared to bear the shame and scoffing and sneering that comes from this world upon those who follow Christ. And it is well worth, those who follow me, the Lord saith, him will my Father honour. That is a wonderful blessing. And I think we some of this honouring of this wonderful servant in these three connections that we have spoken of. And again, I say, because I want to get this lesson for our souls, that while Moses and his service, and his position and his experience is unique, yet thank God, the principle that if we are faithful, if we bear reproach we can expect the compensating blessings that are always true in this thing. Now we come to the song. The first thing, and this of course is preeminent, is the greatness of God. Perhaps we might say, before we say anything about that, that this song is by those who will bear the testimony in a time between the coming of the Lord for His church and the setting up of the kingdom. A period that will be marked by immense pressure and opposition. This evil personage called the beast, empowered by Satan, he compels everyone to bear his mark and serve him and oppose God. This personage is mighty in power. And so many people instead of obeying the beast will be prepared to lay down their lives. We have a picture here of the great martyred remnant that can sing this song of victory. They had not succumbed to all this power of evil, they were prepared to lay down their lives rather than to submit and they sing this song of triumph. Now while we are not going to sing the same song today in the Church period, again I say the principles are here that we can clearly see they are alienated for us in New Testament teaching. And so, the first thing is the supremacy and greatness of God. Lord God Almighty and King of saints, or King of nations or the King of the Ages. Now these few thoughts bring home to me, first of all, Lord God Almighty, who is supreme in power. And King of the nations, the idea of rule and dignity. I think these thoughts can be conveyed right throughout the Scriptures wherever these terms are used. Lord God Almighty, kingship, these are the thoughts that we would have associated with them. Power and rule and dignity. Now we have said what we think about the terms in this setting and all we need to do now is convey this idea to the present dispensation as God is revealed to us as Father. Because that
is the distinctive name of the present dispensation. God has been revealed to us Father, not simply as Father, not simply as Father in origin as He was to Israel, because Israel calls Him Father. Doubtless “Thou art our Father”, we find this three or four times in the book of Isaiah. That is not so much the idea, or even the idea of care as presented in the sermon on the mount, but when we read of the Father in the present dispensation it is the association which we have with the Son, in the place where He now is in glory. And we are associated with Him as sons and responding to God as Father I all the love and in all the glory of His purpose. It’s a wonderful place that we have today and it is the highest possible place of blessing and our hearts can contemplate. We can proof this by saying as in Ephesians 1 when God’s eternal purpose is set forward it is the place that we have as sons by adoption that will fill His heart with never-ending pleasure throughout eternal ages. This is the Father’s purpose to have us as sons before Him so that He might enjoy the responses from our hearts for evermore! Wonderful blessings, dear brethren, we are privileged to have them, we are privileged to know them, oh that they would govern our lives and govern our responses too, not now to Jehovah, belonging to Israel, not the Most High, supreme in government in the world to come, not even to God Almighty, supreme in power, but the Father, with all the wealth of the love and purpose that is connected with that glorious Name and this belongs to us now. Now if we think of power connected with the present dispensation we must surely think of that wonderful moment at the end of the gospel by Matthew when the Lord appears to his disciples and He told them, “All power has been given unto me in heaven and in earth.” All power, not just some power, but all power. And those who are Scott might say, well it had not well …, Christianity is requiring all of the world. Well, we are not surprised about that, because all this has been said to us in the Word of God. But we do know that the purpose of God is being fulfilled day by day in the lives and hearts of His people and is shortly to be consummated for the pleasure of God. And that is being done because the power of Christ is continually offering (?). You might say, what is this to do with Moses? Because we believe that this was expressed in the life of Moses. God’s power was with him along the line. If you think for a moment of all the powers that were agreed against Moses as he was in Egypt and then leading the people through the desert it is a wonder that he ever got to the borders of the land. But you see, Moses was following a plan and that plan was in relation to the purpose of God, the God of Abraham, Isaak and Jacob. Those promises had to been fulfilled. And all the power of God was operated through his service to bring to pass His plan. Here I believe, Moses is referring to something of that in his song when he speaks about the Lord God the Almighty. And we too can catch up the spirit of this song and say, despite all that has been against the assembly from the time it was set up at Pentecost down through the ages, the dark middle ages, when the lamp was burning very, very dimly. And then in the bright revival of Wesley and Whitfield and others to the recovery of the truth in J.N. Darby’s day of the assembly and many other wonderful truths and now the light perhaps dimly burning again, despite of all the opposition people of God are still here and the purpose of God is being completed and will be completed because divine power is operating on behalf of the saints of God. We cannot possibly think of power and forget about the Spirit of God why surely this is the reason why things have been maintained. The power of the Spirit of God operating amongst the people of God collectively and individually and that is why we are here this evening with some measure of interest and enjoyment in the things of God. The mighty power of the Spirit of God which will never be gone until the purpose of God is completed. And then we think too of all the power of God Himself and this is expressed to us in the first chapter of the Epistle to the Ephesians. You remember Paul said, all the power that was expressed in the resurrection of Christ from the dead is the surpassing power that is operating on our behalf. Now all the power that was expressed in the resurrection of Christ is operating today towards the people of God. That is why we are here this evening and that is why there are so many believers in the world today who are following our Lord Jesus Christ with truth and sincerity. Now when we come to the title “King”, not a title that belongs to God in the present dispensation except perhaps we find it, I think its 1 Timothy “King of Kings and Lord of Lords” in connection with God, not so much in connection with Christ, in connection with God, the One who only has immortality. But the idea of king is perhaps more in the future in relation to the government of the Lord, kingship over Israel, here King over the nations. In Jeremiah, very interesting book to read, if you have the time just go through it and notice how often kings are mentioned. And there are many times. I think I counted well over 200 occasions where the term “king” is employed. But in chapter 10:10 we have a reference to God Himself. He says He is the King of Eternity. And all the kings that are amongst men must take a backseat when we are presented with the King of Eternity, His greatness and supremacy, the One Who orders all according to counsel of His Own will. And here, I believe, we have this idea of rule, this idea of dignity, royalty attaching to the term king. Now as we said, we want to apply this to ourselves. Moses knew something about this, because he had kingly royalty, he reigned as a king in Jeshurun. He acted as a king, he was not called a king, he issued laws, he gave direction, he acted in moral dignity himself and he was a wonderful expression of what a king should be. But here is drawing attention to the greatness of God as King. Now if we transfer this idea to the present day and see how rule and dignity is attaching to the greatness of God in relation to the assembly then we find some help for our souls. God hasn’t left us to our own devices, God had not left us out to follow our own ways, He wants us to do His will, His way, He is not the God of disorder. And so, find rule amongst the people of God, I believe it to be expressed in the headship of Christ where the members draw their resources from their head, their direction and control from their head and all the mind of God is expressed through the head towards the members of the body, so that they express the mind of Christ, the will of God. And it goes without saying that if all the members of the body of Christ were really holding the head in the proper sense of the word and subject to the head’s guidance and control there would be no disorder amongst the people of God. You say, what is that to do with Moses? And again, I say, that if you study the life and service of Moses you will find that all the disorder that crept in amongst the saints of God was caused because they neglected to obey the commandments of God that He expressed through His servant. If they had only listened to what Moses said, the Word of God, then those disorders would never have happened. So, I believe Moses is a picture of this, a great type of our Lord Jesus Christ, the one Who maintains rule and order amongst the people of God. Individually, if we think of the Lordship of Christ and as we submit ourselves to the Lordship of Christ then we have another expression of authority or rule amongst the people of God. If we all submit ourselves to the Lord, then there will no disorder. And this was the trouble in the Corinthian assembly, that the Lordship of Christ was ignored and man substituted for His control, His guidance his own ideas, and what sorrow it brought amongst the people of God. Then we the control and guidance of the Holy Spirit. If the Spirit animates to do a certain thing and I submit myself to the Spirit and I express myself in a certain way we cannot think for a moment that that same Spirit will act in someone else to do exactly the opposite – it is inconceivable! If we are all subject to the control and guidance of the Spirit then we are going to express the things which are pleasurable to God. And then finally the Word of God. The Word of God is really the guidance for the people of God, for their order, for their control, and if we are subject to the Word of God then we will never go wrong. You see, we could quite easily say, oh, I am subject to the head, the head has directed me to do this. And another one can say, yes, I am subject to the Lord and the Lord has directed me to do this. And someone says, oh, the Spirit has inspired me to this. And we say, well, thank God for that. But does it agree with the Word of God? And so, the Word of God preserves us from mysticism and imagination, the Word of God just keeps us in the right channel. And if all the people of God had obeyed Moses when he expressed to them the Word of God they would have maintained the rights of God as King in their midst. But they did not! And can we say, if we have done the thing that was right, can we say that we have always obeyed the direction of the Head, or orders of the Lord or the guidance of the Spirit or even obedience to the Word of God. If we have, thank God for that. But oh, to see the dignity of the glorious person, the King! It impressed me very much today on thinking about it. We live in a world where the rights of God are floating, we live in a world where there is hostility towards God, very definitive hostility, hatred. There are millions of people today who subjected to intense propaganda that God had not exist and millions and millions of moneys are spent every year in propaganda to tell people that there is no God. Thank God it had not succeed. They would be better spending the money on another project. But oh, thank God for the knowledge that we have in our souls that God is supreme. Thank God that we have some sense in our souls that God is. This is what the Bible says that those who believe that God is, that God exists, are to follow Him, and God will a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. And what a wonderful thing it is to have in our souls the knowledge that God is. When all the trend in the world is away from God “there is none that seeketh after God”, oh, how wonderful to be seekers after God and to preserve in our hearts the glory and the dignity, the royalty if you like, of the greatness of God, and not only so, but to be governed by. Oh, never let us take Satan from us the knowledge of Whom God is and that He is supreme and He has expressed Himself towards us in the Person and work of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now this great God is presented in this song as having attributes; His works, His ways, His righteousness, His holiness. Now we cannot speak about all these things fully, time forbid. But we want to mention them. And we want to see how they belong to the present day. They could all be connected with the life and service of Moses because if a person likes a song he is drawing upon his experience with God, it is not simply a piece of poetry. When Mr Darby composed some of his poems he handed them over to the person who was going to publish them, now, he says, these were (are) the result of experience with God. They were written spontaneously, they weren’t compositions in the sense that he spent hours thinking of the correct phrase and the proper rhyme and the proper word to use. They were the spontaneous writings of his experience with God. That is why they are so delightful to read and so delightful to sing. And so, he was a man who in our own time was drawing upon his experience with God and committed it to writing and we are still singing those songs with joy and with delight in our hearts. And this is so with Moses. He is drawing upon his own experience with God, he knew the wonderful works of God while he knew God had taken him from the backside of the desert, a shepherd, a nobody, just working away there under no eye that saw him with favour, a nobody again I say, and God takes him from that place and makes him the ruler of His nation and gives him the power to lead them out from the power of Pharaoh. And then all the wonderful works of God through the Red Sea, through the wilderness, all the difficulties, no wonder Moses could sing about the works of God. And when we come to the New Testament days, you remember at Pentecost, when Peter stood forth and preached the gospel people were amazed. All the Jews from all the provinces from all around the world at that time had come together and they hear all the wonderful works of God in their own tongue. The wonderful works of God, where were they expressed? In the Person and Work of our Lord Jesus Christ. These are the works that stand out pre-eminently in our present day, the works that have secured for us the place of blessing that we now enjoy. And they are the works of God, expressed in His well-beloved Son. And God’s ways, oh, how Moses could speak about them. I am sure as he went up mount Nebo at the end of that long time of service he could stand there and look back and think of all the way that God had led him, all the difficulties he had passed through, the seemingly unsurmountable problems and now he says, I can see it all. I can see why God allowed that, oh, how wonderful are His ways. And when we come to the New Testament, Paul, at the end of that parenthesis, 9th, 10th and 11th of Romans he ends up with saying, Oh, how marvellous are the ways of God, how unsearchable His judgments, His ways past finding out! God alone can unravel all the tangle scheme of men’s difficulties nationally and individually. And the Jew and the gentile – what a problem it is. That is why there is so much strife in the Middle East. Jew and gentile – and they are striving together and they’ll never be reconciled. But Paul looks down the ages and he sees the reconciliation, all in the mercy of God. And he says, what a wonderful thing it is, the ways of God, and it enhances the glory of God, for of Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things. God is working through His own beloved Son for His own glory and it involves blessing for men and women. And so, the ways of God are wonderful. And then His righteousness, oh what a wonderful thing it is to talk about the righteousness of God. When I was a young believer I heard people speak about the righteousness of God. It often produced in my heart some sense of fear. It may have been because I was not living as I ought to have lived as a young believer, it may have been a guilty conscience. I do not know, but this idea of righteousness always seemed to me something of steer, something that demanded something from me, though when I got to understand what the righteousness of God meant it was certainly a landmark in my spiritual experience. And when we read in the epistle to Corinthians that we have been made the righteousness of God in Christ we can see that we are in a place of such a wonderful blessing that is most difficult to try and explain, but God has made His own righteousness. No distance, it is the place of blessing, the place of assurance, the place of the greatest possible nearness to God. You see, if I am the righteousness of God, this is what the Bible says I am in Christ, there is not a thing that God will raise against me, there is not a thing that anyone can raise against me. I know that in practice I failed often and you know that too. But God had not view us in our failure, He views in Christ, the righteousness of God. Not a spot, not a stain, not a fault, everything is perfect because we are made the righteousness of God in Christ. And instead of being a term to produces fear in our hearts it is a term to bring us near to God because we are standing there before God in perfect righteousness. You remember the story of the tabernacle, and this is connected with Moses, the man of God, that the boards of the tabernacle they stood up. They were made of acacia wood covered over with gold. And the sockets or the tenants rather fitted in to the sockets of silver those bases of 114 pounds of silver. Now this is a beautiful picture of the believer standing – not on his own feet – because we have no standing before God naturally, not one of us. But we are standing before God on the basis of redemption, the work of Christ, and we are covered over with gold, the well-known symbol of the righteousness of God. And when God looked at the boards, because it was for the eye of God, when God was in the most holy place all that He saw round about Him, was gold, His own righteousness, the symbol of it. So, when God looks at these boards, He sees nothing but gold, no flaw, no spot, no stain, it is all His own righteousness. What a wonderful thing that is. It’s true of us now, it will be true of us for all eternity. And I am sure this is what Moses experienced in spite of his own personal failings in the wilderness and with the people, and he did fail on occasion, that God looked at the heart of His servant and He saw there the pure gold. So, how often He said, there’s nobody like Moses, do not you speak about him, the man Moses is very meek, He says, the man Moses is very great. Oh, how God vindicated His servant! But in a greater way, yes, I say in a greater way, the position that we occupy in Christ is perfect according to the mind of God. And then His holiness, I think we said this already in connection with the instructions given by God to Moses that He continually referred to this principle of holiness. And you remember the high priest had a band of gold around his head and written upon it was “holiness unto the Lord”, that the whole service of approach to God was to be maintained in holiness, a condition suitable to His presence. And Moses experienced this and is it any different today? Well, we read in the First Epistle of Peter, first chapter, verse 15, where Peter says, “Be ye holy, for I am holy”. Peter is quoting from the book of Leviticus, search it out. I think you find four times at least this quotation is given. Be ye holy, for I am holy, in different connections. And so, it is today. Thank God, the believer positionally is holy and so too he is to be holy in practice, to be in keeping with this glorious God who has. Now very briefly, because it must be brief, the time is gone, there must be a response in the hearts of people when there is such when there is such a wonderful God, and there was in the nation of Israel. There were times when they did worship God, there were times when they were true to God, there were times when they glorified God but sadly, those times were few. And thank God today, because of so much that has been done for us, we can respond to God, we find three things mentioned in this song. God is to be feared, God is to be glorified, God is to be worshipped. Now this response can be in the hearts, in our hearts now in this present dispensation. Moses experienced all these things in his life, in his experience with God, that is why he could sing about it. Could we sing about it in the same way? Thank God, I am sure we can. It may be in feeble measure, but we can. I believe that there is a fear of God in our hearts otherwise we would be careless in our lives, we would be negligent of the things of God, we would sin without any conscience. But because we have the fear of God we do the things that are pleasing in His sight. And glorify Him? Yes, I believe we do glorify Him in our lives as we do the things that please Him, as we do them for Christ, as we magnify God and justify God, I believe that we glorify Him. Because, you remember, in the life of our Lord Jesus Christ, the supreme example, He said, I have glorified thee on the earth, I have completed the work which thou gavest me to do. Now, He did this by being true to God in every place He was, whatever He said, He was always true to God and by so doing He glorified God. He made much of God, He added we might say in a practical way to the glory of this wonderful God. Then it speaks about worship. We said last night, I think it was, that this is the greatest possible blessing for the creature to worship God. And if God is so great then surely, He is entitled to the worship of our hearts. Moses knew what it was to worship, he bowed his head and worshipped. And I am sure we too at times know what it is to worship. I believe the true worship of our hearts is something that we experience so rarely. We are perhaps more accustomed to thanksgiving and praise, but true worship, I believe, is the completest …of one spirit in the knowledge and greatness of God.
“And Moses said unto the Lord, See, thou sayest unto me, Bring up this people: and thou hast not let me know whom thou wilt send with me. Yet thou hast said, I know thee by name, and thou hast also found grace in my sight. Now therefore, I pray thee, if I have found grace in thy sight, shew me now thy way, that I may know thee, that I may find grace in thy sight: and consider that this nation is thy people. And he said, My presence shall go with thee, and I will give thee rest. And he said unto him, If thy presence go not with me, carry us not up hence. For wherein shall it be known here that I and thy people have found grace in thy sight? is it not in that thou goest with us? so shall we be separated, I and thy people, from all the people that are upon the face of the earth. And the Lord said unto Moses, I will do this thing also that thou hast spoken: for thou hast found grace in my sight, and I know thee by name. And he said, I beseech thee, shew me thy glory. And he said, I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee; and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy. And he said, Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live. And the Lord said, Behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock: And it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I will put thee in a clift of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by: And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen.” (Ex. 33:12-23)
There is so much detail in this passage that it will be quite impossible to consider it all. But we trust the Lord will speak to us and give us some help. There are incidents in the Bible connected with certain persons, and Moses is one of them, incidents that are unique to them. We couldn’t possibly think for one moment that we could have the same experience. This experience that Moses has here with God is unique to him. There was only one Moses, there was only one such experience. We think of Peter and James and John on the mount of transfiguration. They were the only persons who had this marvellous experience, unique to them, only once done and never repeated. We think of the man who carried the cross of the Lord as He was going to His execution. This man had a unique experience, it only belonged to Him. No one else ever had that experience. The woman who brought the Alabaster box of ointment, she too, a unique experience and a unique privilege in glory attaching to it. But I believe in all these experiences there are certain principles that indicate in some measure we can have those experiences in our lives. And I suggest, dear brethren, that this is one of the things that is sadly lacking in our Christian lives and experience, personal experience with God. Not only knowing our Bibles, not only being intelligent as to the different books in the Bible, not only being engaged in Christian service, not only being consistent attenders to the meetings, all these things are so important, but to have personal experience with God is, I believe, something that we are sadly lacking in. And I feel it, I can assure you. And yet when we read the Gospel by John the Lord Jesus speaks to us and opens the door wide to us that we might have these spiritual experiences. Listen to what He says in chapter 14. He says, “If you have my commandments and you keep them, you love me, my Father will love you and I will come to you and will manifest myself to you.” Now, there I believe, is a distinct promise that is available for us, everyone of us. It has nothing at all to do with gift, nothing at all to do with age and maturity, it is a promise for every believer if we keep His word, if we love Him, we will be loved by the Father and the Lord says, I will come and manifest myself to you. Now how that manifestation takes place I am not prepared to say. But the Lord can manifest Himself to us in His own way, I believe in the power of His Spirit, to give us a sense of His presence, a sense of His glory that is infinitely greater than every service that we might render here for Him. A few verses further down, the Lord says, “If anyone loves me and keeps my commandment, my Father will love Him and we will come and make our abode with him.” The Father and the Son are going to dwell with those who are faithful to the Lord’s Word and commandment. Now I believe all this lies in the realm of spiritual experience and is opened for everyone of us. Would it be true to say, dear brethren, that we have failed so much in keeping the commandment of the Lord, in keeping His Word that that is the reason why we know so little about spiritual experience with Him and with the Father. It would seem that this is the reason because the promise is open to those who keep His Word, who keep His commandment. I believe the experience of Paul, the servant of the Lord, was unique to him when he was caught up into the third heaven and heard things that were unlawful to be uttered, a unique experience, wonderful experience. I do not know if it is possible for us today, at the moment I believe it was unique to the apostle Paul. What an experience it was! And this is what I have in my soul tonight to say a little about, and if we could write over this section that we have read together a caption we might say “Alone with God”. And that is something we have to learn and cultivate too because Christian service is not the only thing in a person’s life. Very important, we do not want to in any way relegate it to a place of secondary importance. It has its own unique place of a Christian, Christian service whatever it might be. But if we are always doing something and we have not time to be alone with God it will not be long before our energies will flag, it will not be long before our service will be dry and disinteresting and will become an onerous burden. We require time alone with God and we find this devoted man very much alone with God. He is in the tent or he is on the mountain top and in both of these circumstances, both of these places he is alone with God and he is speaking to God face to face as the Word of God says. First of all, in the tent. I think we should say here, although the Authorized Version says the tabernacle, you know as well as I do, the tabernacle was not erected at that time. It was after Moses went up into the mountain that he received all the directions for the construction of the tabernacle. So, at this time it did not exist. And it would be right to say that this was the tent of Moses that was graced with the presence of God. I think it is well briefly just to go over the events preceding this experience that Moses had. Moses was called up into the mountain, forty days and forty nights he was there receiving from God all the instructions regarding the nation of Israel. And when he was up the people says, what’s become of this man Moses? Where has he gone to, why has he left us? Let’s have a god that we can worship. And that man of God, Aaron, was led astray, they make a golden calf, they fall down and they worship it, and they say, these be thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee up out of the land of Egypt. Is not this terrible, that people who had experienced such wonderful power and grace and deliverance from the hand of God should attribute that deliverance to a molten calf, a golden calf. It shows how awful that human heart is when it gets away from God. It’s capable of doing the most monstrous things and this is surely an exhibition of it. And when Moses comes down from the mountain and finds this terrible condition he smashes the tables that he had received from God on which the law was inscribed and then he acts for God. And those who were faithful to God went outside the idolatrous camp to where Moses was in the tent and there was a great deal of pressure put upon those who were unfaithful, a great deal of discipline and punishment. And I think this is one of the reasons why the presence of God is seen with this devoted servant. There was no hesitation on his part in dealing with this idolatrous situation that had arisen amongst the people of God. Immediately he knew what was the right thing to do, he smashed the tables of stone rather than take them into the camp and destroy the whole nation, because the very first commandment on the stones had been broken “thou shalt have no other gods before me” and so, the man intuitively knew what was the right thing to do and smashed the stones that would have been the condemnation of the whole nation and then he took action as we have said already. Now I believe it is because this man was faithful that God’s presence came to him in such a remarkable way. We say later in his talking with God how he desires that the nation of Israel should be distinguished, in other words separating from the rest of the nations, and I think, just before we go on into our subject, very briefly, we have the two well known features of separation that are presented in the Word of God in the New Testament. First of all, in 2 Corinthians chapter 6 we have Paul’s word to the Christians in relation to all that was around them amongst the nations. “Be not unequally joked with unbelievers.” How can life be connected with darkness; how can Christ be connected with Belial? And that whole section is enjoining the Christian not to be connected with unbelievers in any shape or form that would involve a challenge to the rights of Christ and the rights of God. It means simply that I do not allow myself to be brought into an association where the partner can claim on the basis of the partnership that I do things that are contrary to the will of God. If we enter into a contract, if we enter into a partnership then that partner has a right on the basis of that partnership or that contract to demand of me things that might be contrary to the name of Christ. And for this, Paul says, do not be unequally joked with unbelievers because it is wrong. And I believe this is what Paul is saying, when he says, we want to be distinguished, separated from the nations that are in the world. But then this other matter was a sad matter. The nation of Israel was redeemed to God, they were His people, they belonged to Him. They were His own, His own peculiar treasure. He loved, He cared for them and He brought them out of Egypt. And now, they had failed, failed in such a way that Paul says, I do not want to be among them, I am going outside the camp. And all those who were faithful went outside the camp and they realised something of the presence of God. Now, strictly speaking, I do not think this is connected with Hebrews 13, because I believe there the figure is that the sin offering was taken outside the camp and burned, a reference to the day of atonement in Leviticus 16. But the principle, I believe, is clearly seen in 2 Timothy 2 where the call for separation is not from unconverted people or, should I say, not from people who do not confess Christ. The call for separation in 2 Timothy 2 is from people who profess to be Christians. And they are so bound up with evil doctrine that the apostle says to Timothy and the Christians, now, come out from among them, not the exact word, “those who name the name of Christ, depart from iniquity.” And a few verses prior to that he clearly indicates the type of thing that he meant. Persons who denied the resurrection and who were undermining the foundations of Christianity. Paul says, you cannot have fellowship with people like that, you cannot hope to improve them, so you have got to leave them. And this a keener form of separation, if you like, a sadder form because it involves to be leaving people who profess to be followers of Christ. And this is, I believe, set out where Moses goes outside the idolatrous camp, sets up the tent and those who really were for the Lord, who is for the Lord come out to me, he says, and they went out to him, outside the camp. Now, that is only by the way, I did not mean to speak about that, but it came into my mind.
And so, we find this devoted man speaking face to face with God. What a wonderful thing! If we turn to the book of Numbers we find there in chapter 12 where God says to Aaron and to Miriam, “Weren’t you afraid to speak against my servant Moses? Why,” he says, “I can speak to other people by visions and dreams, but when I speak to Moses I speak to him mouth to mouth.” Well, this indicates the wonderful communion that God had with His servant. And so, we find this wonderful, unique blessing that belonged to this man. God says, the form of the Lord does he behold. I believe there was something mysterious in this that Moses experienced far and above all the rest of the nation of Israel. But we want to bring this down to ourselves today and thank God we can know what it is to be alone with God and speak to Him and it is a wonderful thing and there are many, many blessings attached to being alone with God. There is one very good thing about it. You are utterly cleared of all veneer and sham and hypocrisy and any attempt to impress. Nobody can ever attempt to impress God. And you know that perfectly well, because when you speak to God you are downright honest because you know perfectly well that God knows your heart. We can speak together and we may not be honest to each other. We make and twist and turn the words we use in the phrases we employ we may try to convey a certain impression that we know is not exactly true of us, we know perfectly well we cannot do that with God. And so, when we are in His presence there is real honesty, there is downright honesty, there is no hypocrisy, we are real in the presence of God. And that is a wonderful blessing because then we speak the truth, we speak what is in our hearts. But apart altogether from asking or seeking help there are wonderful moments when we can bow our knees in the presence of God and just speak to Him in the known relationship that we have, knowing that we are loved by Him, that He cares for us, that He is concerned about us. This is a very wonderful thing. And although that I have said what we have been reading this evening is unique to Moses, yet every one of us, from the youngest believer to the oldest, we can all experience the joy of entering into the presence of God and speaking to Him. Because there is no barrier now, everything has been removed in the person and work of Christ. Paul says to the Ephesian believers, “Through Him (that is Christ), we both (that is Jew and Gentile) have access to the Father in the power of one Spirit. There is a way of right in to the presence of God. Paul writing to the Hebrews says that through the blood of Jesus we have the privilege to enter in through the veil into the very presence of God Himself, to speak to Him. This is open for every believer. We do not need any priest to guide us there. We do not need anyone else to take there. We have our glorious mediator. And we approach God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Now, first of all, I want to speak about the things that Moses said to God and they fall into two categories. First of all, what Moses said to God about the people of God and then secondly what he desired for himself. And so, he says to God “Thy people”, “I and Thy people” and this is very important for us as we speak to God about the saints. Earlier in this section we find God saying to Moses, “thy people have corrupted themselves”. And Moses says, “O no, they are not my people, they belong to You, they are Your people.” And God, He is true to His promise. Not that He wanted in any way to go back upon His promise but Moses refused to accept that the people belonged to him. Now this is extremely important for those who serve amongst the people of God. We do not believe in persons claiming that certain believers are their flock. The flock belongs to God, “the flock of God” is a scriptural expression. We do not believe that any person has any authority over the people of God apart from the authority that God has invested them with in a spiritual sense to feed and care for the saints of God. No brother has any right to endeavour to order the people of God as if they belonged to him. The people of God, they belong to God, they belong to Christ. We never read of any assembly belonging to Paul or anyone else. The assembly of Christ, the assembly of God. And I believe that no person can serve the saints of God correctly unless he holds in his heart that the people of God belong to God and if he loves them and cares for them, because they are the people of God, then he is on right lines. But any attempt to claim the people of God as a speer for one’s authority, and one’s activity and one’s supremacy is entirely foreign to the Word of God. We believe in the body of Christ, wherever a member has its part. We believe in leaders, but leaders in the plural, not leaders in the singular. There is only leader, and that leader is our Lord Jesus Christ. And wherever we find leaders amongst the people of God they are always mentioned in the plural. There can be many leaders but there’s only one leader, who is the leader, our Lord Jesus Christ. And I believe we have to be continually reminded of this and I feel this is enforced by Moses when he says to God “I and Thy people”. And he says “if Thy presence goes with us then we will be separated” or we will be distinguished. I think this is the word that Mr Darby gives in his translation. A distinguished people. Now, this had already been seen in all the plagues in connection with the land of Egypt when the children of Israel were still in bondage, God continually distinguished between His people and the Egyptians and the darkness was over the land, the people of God had light in their dwellings. I have heard a lot about a sister called von Poseck since I have been here and her father wrote a book, and that is the name of the book “Light in Your Dwellings”. Some people have said there aren’t any books amongst us for guidance for the household, the Christian household. Well, it seems that this book has been sadly neglected because this book deals with the husband and wife and children and all matters pertaining to the Christian household. It was written a long time ago and it is a very fine book and I thoroughly recommend it to you for your reading, “Light in Your Dwellings” by our brother J.A. von Poseck. Now, the children of Israel were distinguished in this sense because God made a difference between the Egyptians and the Israelites. “And”, Moses said, “if Thy presence goes with us we will be distinguished”. O dear brethren, while our faces must be in the dust because of all the failure that exists in us, either individually or collectively, never forget we are a distinguished people, a very distinguished people. When you read the First Epistle to the Corinthians you come face to face with the awful corruption that existed in a Christian assembly in the Apostolic era, not hundreds of years after the Lord had died, not hundreds of years after the apostles, but right at the very time when the apostles were still upon earth, persons who had been with the Lord, had seen Him and heard His ministry. At the very time of the apostle Paul who had had such wonderful experiences of the Lord Jesus Christ. And here was an assembly, and I think you will agree, that you would find it difficult to find such an assembly today, even in spite of all our wickedness and failure. And yet this assembly is described as the assembly of God in Corinth. All its failure did not destroy its distinguished character. Of all the people who lived in Corinth there was this little company, I do not know how many they were, I would assume they weren’t a large company. This little company was distinguished in that it alone was described as the assembly of God. The called-out ones of God, belonging to God and graced with His presence. As we read on in the epistle we find a phrase occurring again and again. Paul says, “ye are the temple of God”, “ye are this” and “ye are the next thing”. He had not say, ye ought to be, that was perfectly true. But because of the work of Christ and the purpose of God, he says, ye are. They were made that in the mind of God. They were a distinguished people. Now it is this that Moses is saying, if Thy presence goes with us, we shall be a distinguished people, a separated people, different from all the other peoples that surrounded the nation. And what a wonderful thing that it. It goes without question that if in the mind of God, in the ways of God we are a distinguished people, we ought to be distinguished in conduct too. And that is why the law was given, the moral law, the civil law, as distinct from the ceremonial law. A law that governed all the people in their habits, their clothes, were they lived and how they acted. This distinguished them from all the nations that were around and indicated they were a people for God. So, he says, if Thy presence goes not with us, carry us not up hence, do not let us take another step further if we are not going to know Thy presence. Is it not a wonderful thing that in the Epistle to the Corinthians that was beset by so many difficulties that the apostle should write to them in chapter 14 and say, now, if you follow out certain things, an unbeliever will come amongst you and he’ll be bound to fall down on his face and say, God is amongst you by a truth! This is a distinguished people indeed! That unbelievers can come in and so see the character of the people of God that they are bound to confess that there is something here that is infinitely beyond anything else in the world, that God is in the midst of His people. Now it is this that characterizes all the instructions in the book of Exodus, the later chapters, the book of Leviticus, the book of Deuteronomy especially, God is in the midst of His people. And if that is so, everything else is to be in line with that. This was the whole basis of the well-known tract of Mr Darby that needs to be read over and over again; “Separation of Evil, God’s Principle of Unity”. And Mr Darby points out that if God is in the midst of His people then the lives of the people are to be regulated by this great fact that God is in the midst of His people. It’s not a question of a certain label attaching to us, the Christians, not a question of a certain form that we adopt, it is a question of God being amongst us. And if God is amongst us then our whole conduct individually and collectively ought to be regulated by that. Business meetings amongst the brethren, or care meetings as they are sometimes called, can be a great headache, we all know that. If would seem to be that sometimes brothers might think, well, here is an occasion where we can let off steam or express our feelings in any way we like, but we cannot! A business meeting, a meeting of brethren called together for practical matters or matters pertaining to the assembly, discipline, is still connected with the name of Christ and the presence of God. And the conduct of the brothers there should be the conduct of the brothers when they are gathered together for the breaking of bread, sense of the presence of Christ amongst them, not in any way just to express oneself freely as we might do in a business circle. We must always be regulated by this great principle that God is amongst His people. And so, this is what the great servant of God desired, the wellbeing of the people of God. And you find this continually in the life of Moses. He is not so much concerned about himself, he is concerned about the people of God. Indeed, had not he say in this section, “Blot me out of thy book,” he says, “but spare thy people”. This is the attitude of one who loves the people of God. Now he speaks about himself and he says, “show me Thy way” and he says “show me Thy glory”. Here two wonderful things Moses asks, and a third thing he says “that I might know Thee”. That is a very familiar expression. We might this is the Paul of the Old Testament wanting to know God, just as Paul desired to know Christ. How true it was that this man had acted in the way Paul did. This man turned his back upon all the riches and pleasures of Egypt in order to be with the people of God. Paul in the New Testament counted all but loss that he might know Christ and win Him and follow Him. And here is Moses saying to God, I want to know Your way, I want to know the way that we are going to be led, I want to know Thy mind. And that is a good thing for us to ask, not only in relation to the people but in relation to ourselves individually. Continual request, we want to go the right way. Moses had not say, Now I have drawn up a plan, I have drawn up a sphere of service, I have drawn up a few things that I want done – would you put your signature to it? Moses is not saying that. He says, show me Thy way, this must always be the best way, to be shown the way that God wants us to go, to be intelligent as to the mind of God, and to have the desire to do His will, once it is revealed to us. The time I would know Thee – O, what a wonderful thing to have personal knowledge of God. Had not it say in the book of Daniel that they who know their God shall do exploits? And if you read in the Scriptures about those who knew God they were able to represent God in a way that was pleasing to Him. Wonderful thing to know God! And I believe, dear brethren, we have been privileged over many, many years now, to have an unfolding of truth that encourages us, that makes us intelligent as to the mind of God for us. Good for us if we follow that instruction! We shall be kept free from the things that dishonour God, we shall be led in the pathway of His will, we shall do the things that are pleasing to Him. And then, what a wonderful desire, “Show me Thy glory”. We know that Moses couldn’t in any way appreciate or comprehend or even gaze upon the glory of God in all its fulness. I think the theologians have an expression for this kind of thing. They call it “theophany” where God in some way makes Himself known to His creature not in the full blaze of His glory and greatness but in a manifestation that the creature can in some way understand and appreciate. And this is what Moses experienced at this time. God hid him in the cleft of the rock, covered him there with His hand, because He knew that Moses, poor mortal man, could never stand the full blaze of the glory of God. He passed by and Moses saw His backparts and it produced in Moses the attitude of worship and praise to God. And this is the great end to which God is always working that there might be produced in our hearts a spirit of response and this was secured in the heart of His beloved servant. Moses made haste. One of the many men in the Bible and women too who were in a hurry. And here Moses is in a hurry. Not to do something but to get down in the presence of God and worship Him. He made haste, he bowed himself down and he worshipped God. And I believe this is the greatest point that any believer can be brought to, to be brought to a worshipper. When we get to glory all the activity will have ceased, at least in that sense, and not forgetting that we are going to be very, very busy in the Millennium, very busy. We are going to be sharing in the administration of Christ for a thousand years. We will have the whole universe to look after. Those who suffer with Christ now are going to reign with Him then. So, there is plenty to do in the Millennium, different character of work from what we have at the present moment. But to be in glory when time and sense have gone forever, we enter into those eternal conditions, this will be the note in heaven, the note of worship. All activity will have gone forever. How wonderful to reach this now in the presence of God, appreciating His ways, appreciating His glory, appreciating the knowledge of Himself and bowed down as a worshipper. This is opened to everyone of us, the youngest to the oldest, everyone of us. We can all be worshippers of God. Now just for a few moments, some of the things that God said to Moses. He said “thou hast found grace in My sight and I know thee by name.” And according to the time that is available for us now I am not going to attempt to refer to the eight times that God says to Moses “I will”. Just look at them yourself when you go home and just think about them. You’ll find there is a great deal of joy and blessing contained in them. Eight times God says to Moses “I will”. But just these two things “thou hast found grace in My sight” and “I know thee by name”. Now, that Moses had found grace in God’s sight in a remarkable way is evidently true because God was pleased to speak to this man face to face, grant him this wonderful expression of His glory and so he had found this wonderful grace and God knew him by name could be proved beyond all possible doubt at the very outset when at the burning bush God said to him “Moses, Moses”. And I think this is a very wonderful thing, it was true in connection with Moses, it is also true too in connection with ourselves. We have already mentioned about being graced or accepted in our Lord Jesus Christ. I think this word “accepted” could also be translated “graced”. This is our position before God. This is our position of blessing. It cannot be improved on, it will never deteriorate, it is the place that God has given to us in Christ because of His own purpose and because of the perfection and work of Christ. We are accepted in the Beloved in the presence of God before His face forever. And that is true of everyone of us. Is there a Christian here who continually doubts his or her salvation, who is continually beset with problems and trials as to this kind of thing? This is the work of Satan of course. Well, the way to get clear of that is simply to look at the Word of God and see what God says about this. Now, the Word of God says that we are accepted in the Beloved. Every person who believes in Christ, every person who understands what Christ has done for them at the cross, then those persons are accepted in the Beloved. Is God going to refuse anyone who is sheltered by the blood? Is God going to refuse anyone who is connected to Christ? Ah now, we are accepted in the Beloved, we are accepted because of the worth and the work of our Lord Jesus Christ. And that can never alter. The Person of Christ is perfect, His work is complete and we are accepted in Him and that is the wonderful grace in which we stand. Now lastly, for a few moments, He knew Moses by name. There is a passage in the book of Numbers, I think it is the first chapter where God says to Moses, now choose this one, and that one, and the next one, and He mentions twelve names. And these persons were to be princes in the nation of Israel in connection with the tribes. As far as I am aware their names were never mentioned before nor are they mentioned again except perhaps in the genealogies. They are certainly not connected with any incidents and this is the only time we read of them and this indicates how God knows us by name. He did not say to Moses, now choose well, any twelve you like you like, but choose well, He says, no, you choose the ones that I have chosen. I have have picked out, you get them and you see that they fulfil the task that I have appointed them for. He knew them all by name. And when we come to the New Testament this is very wonderful. You remember the disciples when they were sent out by the Lord with power over demons, power to raise the dead, power to cure sickness, they came back full of joy, “We have done this, we have done that, we have done the next thing”, and they were overjoyed because their service had been successful. Well, the Lord very quietly said to them, that is a very wonderful thing. What else did you expect? That is what I sent you out to do. I gave you the power, I told you to do that, why are you overjoyed about it? There is something better than that. He said “Rejoice that your names are written in heaven”. That is a very wonderful thing, far better than being successful in service. To know that your name is written in heaven, no one can erase it from the book there, it is permanent, it is there because Christ died for us. And that is a very wonderful thing. And in John chapter 10 the Lord says, “I know my sheep”. He knows them by name, calls them by name and that is a very wonderful thing that the Lord Jesus knows each one of us individually by name. How often has it been referred to in this connection that when Mary went to the tomb to find the dead body of her Lord, the Lord appears to her. She had not know who He is. And then the Lord says to her “Mary” and whenever He uttered her name she knew Who it was. The Lord called her by her name. And it is a very wonderful thing that the Lord knows our names, everyone of us, and they are all written in heaven, they are there, our names are written in the Lamb’s book of life. And although we might say, well, Moses was a very wonderful man, and he certainly was, and that God knew him by name, yet poor and insignificant persons like ourselves as we are in this world, yet, thank God, we too have this wonderful privilege, wonderful blessing, that God knows us all by name and He loves those names, He treasures them. Just one word and I am finished. You remember on the high priest, on the stones, the onyx stones that were on his shoulders, six names of the children of Israel were engraved on one stone and six on the other. And on the breast plate there were twelve names inscribed on the twelve stones. And the typical teaching for us is that we are connected with our priest, our names are borne upon His shoulders of strength, strength that never vanes and our names are borne upon His breast, upon His breast of love that never deteriorates or lessens. O, how wonderful that our names are borne before God in all the power of the person and work of Christ and in all the love of His wonderful heart. And our priest will never allow those names to be destroyed in any way. The engraving of the signet was an indelible form of engraving, it couldn’t be erased, it couldn’t be taken away, it was there in a permanent fashion and that is what we have to understand that our names are before God in permanency, they are there forever and shortly we will be in the presence of God, know to Him individually and be for His pleasure for evermore. May we be encouraged then by these things for His name’s sake.
I found it difficult to decide on a portion of the Word of God for this last address, but I thought it might be better to refer to each occasion when Moses is referred to as a man of God, and these are the six places where Moses is described in this way “Moses, the man of God”. There is a great deal of teaching attached to all the incidents that we have read together, each one in itself could provide us with great deal of instruction and help, but we will say something about them briefly to give us a comprehensive idea of this man who was so devoted to the will of God. First of all, then, this saying in Deuteronomy 33 where Moses before his death blesses the children of Israel. We commented on it last night and we want to say a little word about it again. Moses is going to die. The end of that wonderful life of experience with God has come to an end. And here we find, no doubt inspired by the Spirit, to write these things, here we find him drawing upon all his experience too with God and knowing intelligently what God had in mind for His people and expressing it in such a wonderful way. And we just have not time to go into all the blessings of the tribes. And I read these two verses from the whole chapter just to indicate the kind of blessing that was in the heart of this servant. “He’ll love the people” and then “underneath are the everlasting arms” that “our God is our refuge.” I wonder if there is anything more calculated to encourage us at all times than the thought that God loves us and the thought that God’s power is on our behalf. I think bound up in these two expressions there is sufficient for our souls at all times to be here for the pleasure of God. How easy it is to get discouraged, how easy it is to be disappointed, how easy it is to yield to the tempter’s temptations to give up and forget about the responsibility of our testimony in this world. How easy it is to feel things pressing in upon us and say, well, what is the use, it does not matter, my quarter will not be missed. And then we are reminded that God loves us and if He loves us that is ample compensation for anything that we are called upon to pass through. Because had not the apostle at the end of Romans 8 mention all these things that cannot separate us from the love of God and remember what the apostle John said too, that if God so loved us, we are to love one another. And so, I believe that the realisation of souls that God, such a wonderful God, loves us is sufficient to encourage us at all times. And then in the blessing of Asher Moses spoke about God being the strength and that underneath were His hands, His arms, and all the power that they are capable of. And so, what a wonderful thing this is to realise that all that power of God is available at all times for His people as they pass through this wilderness journey. Oh, how Moses had experienced this. Not only from Pharaoh, but, Oh, how often from the people of God, when they disputed his leadership, when they questioned his authority, when they questioned the leading and guiding that was taking place. Oh, how it must have been trying to the heart of this man. But then the power of God was with him, the authority of God was with him and he was sustained in this great task and it was some task to lead all these people through the wilderness right to the borders of the promised land. And so, and very much more, was contained in the blessing of the man of God. And surely this is one of the marks of a man of God that he is able to impart blessing to souls. It is not only that a man of God is expected to know his way about the Bible and able to explain it, it is not only that he has discernment in dealing with problems that exist amongst the people of God but surely one of the main functions of a man of God is the ability to impart blessing, to convey the mind of God to the people of God for their encouragement and for their upbuilding. I do not know how you feel, but I would certainly like to think that at the end of my life I would be able to impart blessing in some way to others. I would be a sad thing to come to the end of one’s Christian life, that is if the Lord does not come for us, and not be able to encourage a soul or to impart some form of blessing to them. Let us think of Jacob. What a long-checked life he had, all the difficulties he passed through. How often he despaired, “All these things are against me” he said, things aren’t going well at all” until he found out that everything was just falling into place in the ways of God for his personal blessing. And then when he comes to the end of his life what kind of a man is he! Is he disappointed because he passed through so many difficulties? What a man he was! He lays his hands upon the sons of Joseph intelligently and he blesses them. And what a blessing it was, wonderful blessing. The God who had shepherded Jacob all through his life, the angel that had redeemed him from all evil, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaak, the God of our fathers, blessed the lads. Here he is in all the fulness of his experience, desiring blessing for the sons of Joseph. And then he was into the King’s presence and he blesses Pharaoh and we could certainly say as it was said in connection with another that the greater blessed the lesser, that Jacob in spiritual experience with God was infinitely greater than Pharaoh. O what a man he was that he could bless this King of Egypt. And then we find, as we mentioned last night, blessing his twelve sons, the heads of the tribes. Here is a man full of blessing. At the end of a life of experience with God he is able to bless others. And that was not the final, he worshipped God, leaning upon his staff. What an end to this man’s life, what an end to any life to be able to impart blessing and to be a worshipper of God. At the end of the Epistle to the Romans Paul said I am … when I come to you I will come in all the fulness of the blessing of Christ. What confidence in the heart of the Lord’s servant. He was not just coming along to have a social time with them, he was not coming on just to carry on some religious ceremony, to carry out some religious meeting, that was not the point at all. He was desirous of being amongst them to impart what was in his heart, the fulness of the blessing of Christ. O how wonderfully he had been blessed. Did not he say to the Ephesian believers that we have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in Christ Jesus, and I believe the apostle enjoyed them. Sometimes we spend a great deal of time in asking, what are those blessings? We want them all spelt out for us, we want to say this is that and that is the next thing and so on. We want to tabulate them all out when the Word of God wants us to enjoy them. And there are so many wonderful blessings that we have in Christ. And when we read the Bible, when we read the New Testament, we can see those wonderful blessings, distinct altogether from earthly blessing as was connected with Israel and connected with a risen glorious Man at the right hand of God. Wherever the apostle went, his heart was full of this blessing. And we are very thankful as we read in the Acts of the Apostles and as we can see from his letters he was able to impart this to others in the power of the Spirit of God. He was an ambassador for Christ, a representative of his master and by so doing he could impart the riches, the resources, the glories of his master to those who required them. Dear brethren, let us ask ourselves, are we persons of blessing? There was a hymn we used to sing when I was younger, I do not know if they sing it yet, “Make me a channel of blessing”. It’s a good hymn, it is a good desire, good thing to pray about to be a channel of blessing. That channel to be clear and pure and to be usable to the Lord and under the Spirit’s guidance and to be used to impart blessing to others. Of course, that involves that you are enjoying the blessing yourself, so that you might be a channel of blessing to others. But what a wonderful prayer it is. When we are in the company of other believers, are we always moaning and complaining about the difficulties of the times. We can speak about the difficulties of the times in a dignified, intelligent way, the difficulties are to be seen. But then there is the danger of being occupied with them or perhaps there is the danger of being over-occupied with one’s personal difficulties and always imparting this to others. Well, I do not think that is the way for blessing. O how wonderful to be an encourager for a soul, a comforter for a soul, to impart some blessing of some kind to someone who is in need. I am sure you have experienced often the joy of being in someone’s presence and finding that there was some blessing there, some encouragement and after they went away or you left them you felt you were the better of that contact. There was something perhaps difficult to explain but something had happened, something had been conveyed to you, you had received something from the Lord and it was well worthwhile. I can quote a piece of poetry that there was a dear brother who had the picture of a well-known servant of the Lord, now in the glory, who said something like this: It was not the truth you brought to you so clear, to me so dim, but when you came you brought the atmosphere of Him. Now, I think that is blessing. It’s not so much what you say about the truth but it is the influence of Christ that you’re bringing your life in contact with others. It’s this that really matters. And I am sure no one was in the company of Paul but they felt the power of the person of Christ being expressed in this servant. Now, when we come to Joshua. I have got a paper here to remind of the verses in case I forget. When we come to Joshua we find a time when the man of God has gone, he has departed, he is no longer with the saints. Does that mean his influence has ended? And that is one of the great things about a man of God. He may be called home to be with the Lord but his influence carries on. His influence continues. In this first chapter God said a beautiful thing about His servant. He says, My servant Moses is dead. Now He says to Joshua, I want you to carry on, I want you to lead the people into the land. And as I was with Moses, so I will be with you. All the support that Moses had experienced leading the people through the wilderness was now guaranteed to Joshua as he was to lead the people into the land. And as we read in this book, we see that step by step the people really followed the instructions of Moses, the law of the Lord, and then in this chapter we find a person, Caleb, being influenced by what the man of God said, and resting upon that demanding a fulfilment of the promise. Now I think there’s all the power and authority behind the promise of the man of God. How often do we make promises and seldom keep them, not because we do not want to keep them, the simple reason we have not the spiritual power or energy to do what we’d like to do? But when Moses, the man of God, made a promise, that promise was as sure as the Word of God itself. And this is what Caleb relied upon. Now, he says, the man of God promised that I would get this portion of land. I wholly followed the Lord when others turned their back away and gave an unfaithful report I gave a true report, I gave what was in my heart. Now, he says, Moses promised, that I will get this territory, and he says, I want it. And he got it. Now, this to me indicates the influence of a man of God long after he has died. And recently this struck me very much. Does our influence die with us? What are we doing in our lives that will continue? We read about many people in the Scriptures whose works follow them, they may go to be with the Lord, but their work carries on, their influence remains, power even in what they say after they are dead. And that to me is what is expressed in Moses, the man of God, in this chapter in the book of Joshua. You remember the dear woman when she brought the Alabaster box and broke in the presence of the Lord. She bestowed it upon Him, it was very costly. And the Lord says, wherever the gospel is preached I want this to be spoken about. I want this woman to be remembered as one who was wholly devoted to Me and to my interests and wherever you speak about the truth, remember this dear woman. We forget that, do not we? But the Lord had not forget and the Lord wanted the memory of this perpetuated. Here’s something that was continuing long after the woman died. She had done something that remained. And thank God, down through the history of the church many people have said things, and done things, they have written books and poems and hymns and those things remain. So, … enjoyment and spiritual encouragement to those who are alive at the present moment. Sad to say, we can leave things behind us that remain too. Scares, troubles, distresses. We do not want to leave that kind of thing. Had not it say every time when Judas is mentioned “the betrayer of the Lord”, “the one who delivered up the Lord”? The persons who wrote the gospels, long after Judas was dead, we perpetuating the memory of his shame, of his infidelity, his shameful betrayal of the Lord. What a thing to leave on record. No, we do not want that kind of thing, we want to leave something like the man of God, an influence that encourages others to follow in the way of faithfulness and in blessing.
Now the next one was in 1 Chronicles 23. I want you to notice this, it is worth noticing. 1 Chronicles 23 verse 14. I do not know why but in the earlier genealogy in 1 Chronicles we do not find Moses and his sons. I do not know why it is omitted. There may be a reason. But here, later on in the book, we find this little genealogy coming in and it speaks about Aaron and his sons, they are separated to burn incense before the Lord, to minister unto Him and to bless in His name forever. And we might say now, well there’s no question about Aaron’s sons, God called them and God separated Aaron and his sons to do this great service before the Lord, specifically called by the Lord to do this kind of thing. So, there is no question about Aaron and his sons. But I believe there is a question mark about the sons of Moses, because they were the two sons born to him when he was at the backside of the desert when he married Zipporah, the daughter of the priest of Midian. Now, I think she was a gentile woman, I am open to be corrected, I think she was a gentile woman and, strictly speaking, Moses was doing something that experienced him. You remember we spoke about his parents, his father and his mother belonged to the tribe of Levi. No difficulty at all about their marriage, happy and equally joked and God blessed it. But here is Moses the son and he marries a gentile woman. And I think this raises a question immediately against the offspring. But here we find now concerning Moses, the man of God, his sons were named of the tribe of Levi. That is, they were granted the privilege by God to be numbered in the tribe of Levi and I think this was the gracious consideration of God in relation to the devotion and faithfulness of His servant. God honoured the faithfulness of this devoted man. And we are very thankful to see this kind of thing. It had not always happen. Many faithful men and faithful women have had their hearts broken with their sons and daughters through no fault of their own, through no fault of their own. But thank God for those who have brought up their children in a right way and have had the joy seeing their sons and daughters secured for the Lord. But what I see behind it is the honour that God attaches to His servant in imparting this blessing to His sons. And that is one of the, shall we say, the blessings of being a man of God. God is extremely interested in us and all we are faced connected with us, our homes, our children, our businesses too, everything connected with us, if we are devoted to the will of God these things come within the orbit of God’s care and God’s attention and God’s concern. And that is all I want to press about this verse the mention of Moses, the man of God and the blessing imparted his two sons.
Now we go over to the 30th chapter of 2 Chronicles. And this is a very wonderful incident. We read through the history of the kings in the Book of Kings and in the Chronicles and we find many, many failures. Search it out and you will find it to be true that there was not one good king ever reigned over Israel. And when I speak about Israel I am referring to the Northern Kingdom connected with the 10 tribes that broke away from the two tribes centred in Jerusalem. And over that kingdom not one good king reigned. There were some bad kings over Juda, thank God, there were some good ones. And Hezekiah was one of the good ones. And he came and he reigned and he cleaned away all the filth and the rubbish that was connected with the house of God and he re-instituted the Passover and many other things and raised up the altar, the altar of God in contrast to the idolatrous altars that had been reared in God’s centre. And you will notice we read together in verse 16 “and they stood in their place after their manner according to the law of Moses the man of God: the priests sprinkled the blood which they received of the hand of the Levites.” In the previous verse, verse 14, we see the altars that were for the idols of the nations. They are all destroyed. And that is a very important thing, because you cannot build something clean on an unclean foundation. And so often we find this in the Bible, the old has got to go to make way for the new. They cannot mingle together. You have to get rid of the things that are dishonouring to God before the things that are pure and worthwhile are established. And this is what we clearly in the recovery in the days of Hezekiah. But we want to stress this that the recovery was on good, firm principles. Is was according to the law of Moses the man of God. Down through the ages since the breakup in Christendom many attempts have been made to have a new beginning. “Let’s start again.” Now I ask you, dear brethren, is it not the utmost folly to think that any company of Christians can restore the glory and beauty of the setting up of the assembly that existed at the time of Pentecost. If that broke down when the apostles were there, when everything was new and bright and glorious, what can we expect to set up that would be immune from all the troubles and disasters that beset the church of God. It’s the utmost folly. And if any company of believers tries to set up the perfect church it will only break up and disintegrate and bring dishonour on the name of the Lord. But what we do see that in spite of breakdown there is always room for revival in the hearts of the saints and there is always opportunity to return to the Word of the Lord and be governed by that Word and do the things that are pleasing in His sight. And no company of Christians intelligently taught in the Word of God would ever set themselves up to be the church of God but there is nothing to prevent any company of Christians being governed by the Word of God as far as they are able to apply to their lives and company and do the things that are pleasing to the Lord. And that is why I believe, here again, the influence of the man of God is seen so distinctly that in this brief revival, because it did not last too long, there was a return to right principles and a right approach to the God of Israel. What a terrible thing it was that right there in God’s centre there should be idols reared to gentile gods. What a terrible thing! No, we do not want that kind of thing, says God. We do not want that kind of thing, says Hezekiah and he implores the people to get rid of it all and make way for this altar upon which the burnt-offering and the other offerings can be offered on according to the mind of the Lord. It’s very encouraging to see as we shall see in the next Scripture that approach to God is the thing that is most essential in any line of recovery. Sometimes people say, well we ought to be busy in service, we ought to this, that and the next thing and let us organize and make sure that we do it. Now, we do not want to depreciate in any way the greatness of service for God in testimony in this world, not in the least bit. There ought to be more of it in the power of the Holy Spirit, but unless we see this clearly that the main thing in any revival is a response to God then we will fail in the rest. It’s this that is the most important thing in the believer’s life, a response to God in worship and praise because of all the wonderful things that God has done. And when that is right then the testimony follows. The two things go hand in hand, the royal priesthood, the holy priesthood, outside and inside, they always go together. The sons of Aaron, worshipping in the most holy place, the Levites serving in relation to the tabernacle. All through Scripture worship and testimony go hand in hand together. But we put the cart before the horse if we concentrate on the testimony and forget about the worship. And we have always been taught, and I believe rightly taught, that true service Godward begins in the inside. Therefore, in the service of worship as we find it as gathered together to the Name of the Lord Jesus to remember Him is the best place for people to function, whether they be young or old, this the greatest and most glorious feature of service to appreciate the Person of Christ and to express it to God the Father and to worship the Father in spirit and in truth. This is man’s highest service and from it testimony in this world flows. I remember distinctly on one occasion when gathered to the Name of the Lord to remember Him the Spirit of God so moved our hearts that our hearts were encouraged and O I did feel, O if only more people could enjoy this kind of thing, if only more people would get converted and come along and gather to the Name of the Lord. And I believe this is how it works. You enjoy the presence of Christ, you enjoy the worship of the Father, that that being so you would desire that other some in. Is this not the setting of John 4? Poor woman in her sins, and the Lord saying to her, get rid of those sins and come and worship the Father. And then she goes and tells others, come see a man who told me all things that ever I have done. This is the way it works. And I believe the more we enjoy the privileges we have in worshipping the Lord and the Father the more energizes we will be to bear the Lord in testimony in this world.
Now Ezra, just for a few moments, Ezra chapter 3. We see the same thing again in this revival. As we said the revival in Hezekiah’s day did not last too long, I am not quite sure how long, perhaps a period of 30 to 40 years and then eventually the children of Judah were carried into Babylon into captivity. After 70 years God wrought in the heart of Cyrus and there was this rest by, this recovery and many of them went back to Jerusalem to build the walls and to build the temple. Time of recovery and that recovery lasted a considerable time until it degenerated into such a sad condition. But here we find the first thing they did as far as the book of Ezra is concerned, they set the altar on its base. He did not build the wall. That was very important in its time, that had to come, but they set up the altar and they re-established this principle that we have already spoken of, approach to God in worship and in praise. If we read the sacrifices in the book of Leviticus they fall into two categories, broadly speaking. And we could describe them as sacrifices that indicate we are in communion with God. We think of sacrifices like the burnt offering and the peace offering and the oblation. Now all these sacrifices indicated that the heart was right with God and they were expressions of worship towards God. But then there was another category. The sin offering and the trespass offering and this indicated failure and an approach to God to rectify matters. Now these two kinds they go hand in hand, they go along together. We are always conscious of the need of worshipping God and being in communion with God and we are always very conscious of our failure and our need. And thank God, both features have been met in the Person and Work of our Lord Jesus Christ. Because we are accepted in the Beloved, because His work is so complete we can worship the Father in spirit and in truth. Access is available for us right into the presence of God, no barrier. And then, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the Righteous, if we have sinned we know how communion is restored. Everything is available for us in the Person and Work of our Lord Jesus Christ. So, those persons returning from the captivity of Babylon set up the altar, established this approach to God and they are on a firm footing. They can then set about building the temple as it was in Ezra and in Nehemiah, they built the wall. And there it was complete. You see, there is no good building a wall if there is nothing precious to guard. That is the whole object of the wall. If you have got something precious inside, well, you want to guard it. And that is the whole principle of separation in Scripture, is to guard what is precious according to God. It’s not a “holier than thou” attitude, it is an attitude that you defence the things of God because they are worth defending. And we find that the wall in the Book of Revelation is high because all that is inside that wall is precious and worthwhile to God. The gold, the precious stones, the building, it is all valuable, it is all precious and it must be protected. And this system of approach to God was the most precious thing that was in Jerusalem at that time. And so, they built the wall to protect it. And again, we see that those principles were according to Moses the man of God. Whether in days of glory, as it was in the days of Joshua, days of triumph and power, or in days of partial recovery in Hezekiah, in days of great weakness and return from Babylon, the influence of the man of God is seen all along the line. What a man he was! Man, after God’s own heart like David indeed, a man who continually influenced the people of God. And is it not remarkable the extension of this recovery right on to the end of the Book of Malachi, and the very last word in the Book of Malachi “remember the law of Moses, My servant”. God’s last word to His people in the Old Testament “remember what Moses said, My servant”.
Now just for a few moments, and we only have a few moments. Psalm 90: I am not going to attempt to explain it or say anything about it, but from the fact that here we have the recorded prayer of Moses, the man of God. I think it is the only statement of this kind in connection with Moses, the prayer of Moses, the man of God. We were considering his song last night, the song of Moses, the bondman of God. Here’s the prayer of Moses, the man of God. And there’s one thing sure that no one will ever be any worthwhile for God unless they know what it is to pray. And Moses was a man of prayer, man of intercession. We find him saying to God: O save the people but blot me out of Thy book if it is necessary. He stood between the living and the dead and stayed the plague when Miriam had leprosy because she spoke against Moses, he prayer for her. And again, and again and again we find this man of prayer. And here we find him in all the fullness of his heart praying to God. And this is the attitude of a man of God. A man of God is not one who thinks because he knows a lot or because he has done a lot or because he is well thought of that he can afford to neglect dependence upon God. Not at all! There is never a moment when a man of God or a woman of God can dispense with prayer. It’s one of the essentials, dependence upon God in order to have His power and support. It has often been pointed out and rightly I believe that there is a very close correspondence between the five books of Moses and the five Books of Psalms and it has been suggested that the Book of Numbers corresponds with the 4th Book of Psalms which begins with this prayer of Moses, the man of God. Now if we examine it carefully I think we will find in the centre of that psalm Moses is saying, O the trouble that we have had in the wilderness pathway. That is the Book of Numbers is it not? The book of failure, it is the place where Moses failed that disqualified from him from entering into the land. It’s the place where the nation failed, over and over again. And he is saying to God, O, do not deal with us because of our failures. And we would all say that, would we not, dear brethren? O if God marked iniquities who of us would stand. We would all be down on our faces before God. And this is what Moses is saying, O he says, Thou art the God from eternity to eternity. Time had not matter with Thee, we are only frail creatures, four score years and ten and perhaps a little more. Well, he lived to be a hundred and twenty. He got a fair extension over the four score years and ten. But even at that only a few years, a small brief space of time, compared with the One Who exists from eternity to eternity. And at the end of the psalm he is saying, satisfy us, make us glad, let Thy work appear to Thy servants, let our work be established. And this is the note that he ends on. Let our work be established, do not let it be blown away like the chaff of the threshing floor. Let it be something worthwhile that can stand the test of time, that can stand the scrutiny of the judge at the judgment seat of Christ. Wonderful day that, when everything we have said and done shall be examined and all that is worthless will be burned up. I am glad about that. I do not want it to remain. And all that is worthless will be burned up. Thank God what is for the Lord will remain. O, that we might all pray this prayer of the man of God, that God might come in and help us and satisfy us because we live in a dissatisfied world, not only because there is economic difficulty. In spite of everything that people have, and they have much, there is this attitude of dissatisfaction, we want more and more and more and if we get the more we are still dissatisfied. And O, for the saint of God to say, we are satisfied with Christ. We are satisfied with the things that God has blessed us with. And that all our work may appear the work that is of the Lord and be established and note what he says and let the beauty of the Lord be upon us. This is real beauty, this is real beauty that is pleasurable to God, that affects to men and women in testimony. O that we might pray it and O that we might express it, for His name’s sake!