[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hey, thanks so much for listening to this message. My name is Jason, and I'm one of the ministers here at the Madison Church of Christ. It's our hope and prayer that the teaching you hear today will bless your life and draw you closer to God. If you're ever in the Madison area, we'd love for you to stop by and study the Bible with us on Sundays at 05:00 p.m. or Wednesdays at 07:00 p.m. if you have questions about the Bible or want to know more about the Madison church, you can find us
[email protected] dot. Be sure to subscribe to this podcast as well as our Sermons podcast Madison Church of Christ Sermons. Thanks again. Thank you again for stopping by. I hope this study is a blessing to you.
[00:00:38] Speaker B: This is the life of Moses class. We're specifically looking at Exodus last week. This is just some of stuff. This is me. If you didn't know, I got through a grad school program, kind of go to Egypt a few months ago, and essentially take part in some archaeological digs and studies and a couple other things as I went throughout the country. And I'm trying as much as I can to put some of that into this class while also obviously talking about the Bible. This is the layout of the class that we went over last week. Here are some pictures that we'll normally be looking at historical timeline wise.
This is just me. This is not everyone. There are two main views, and I'll explain why we're talking about this. There are two main views of when the exodus occurred. The traditional view that I think the majority of us would take if we really dug in and study would be in 1448.
This is because in one kings six one, we get a verse that literally says that 480 years before this specific time in Solomon's life, the Israelites exited Egypt. And until somebody, for me shows that 480 means like a magical type of number, like a twelve or a three or seven that we see throughout scripture, I'm not necessarily going to buy that. It's what a lot of other people believe there.
What this leads us then, to be able to do is kind of work out a historical timeline of what would have been happening when Moses was alive.
And some of the things that are just a little interesting that we got to talk about in the last class is the pyramids would have been built soon after the Tower of Babel, which means that when, like, not only Moses, but when Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, when Joseph, when any of these historical figures that we see in the Old Testament were in Egypt. Guess what was already there? The pyramids. They were in the background as they walked past them. That's pretty crazy. But other things that are really interesting that we talked about this last time, the Hyksos people were likely the people in charge of Egypt while Joseph was there, he specifically was given a position called being a vizier, which is essentially second or third in command to the pharaoh or the pharaoh and the queen. In that day and time, the Hyksos ruled. And then we show up with Moses, and there is a pharaoh who did not know who Joseph was. And that is likely because the Hyksos government got taken over. Egyptians began to rule again. They no longer liked shepherding people, which the Hyksos were. And guess what kind of people were shepherding people.
The Hebrews. The hebrew people that had been there, that had been trusted by the Hyksos, are suddenly the Egyptians enemies in this whole process. So that's kind of the historical background there. During Moses life, what begins to happen is we read in Exodus one and Exodus two, the Egyptians begin no longer trusting the Hebrews. Their population is growing too much. It's getting a little scary. They start saying, we need to toss the baby boys into the nile. All these other things start coming up, and we'll dig into a little bit of that. There are some mummies. I know that at least one person, Kirsten, liked looking at mummies last week.
Exodus one. Exodus two, we were in last week. We'll specifically dig in to the end of Exodus two. So that's where we got to. So up to this point, just making sure that everybody knows Moses was an egyptian name of a hebrew boy born by Jochebed in Egypt. Moses was told, I mean, Moses parents and the people who were in charge of him at that time were told that baby boys had to be cast into the Nile. He was raised for three months by his mother. His mother decides, all right, we're just going to basically leave this to God, is how I imagine her saying. And she puts him in a basket made of papyri, this papyrus basket. The word that they use there for basket, we talked about, is the exact same word for the word that's used for ark in the Hebrew, which is really, really significant, because guess who also wrote Genesis? It was Moses. Moses wrote Genesis. Exodus, Leviticus, numbers, deuteronomy. This is him trying to tell a story in the midst of everything that deals with God as a person who delivers people.
So Moses is put in a basket, shipped off the queen. Not the queen, but the princess of Egypt. Who may have been this lady that's known as Hatshepsut. Who we have her body and a temple dedicated to her. And other things found in Egypt today. She may have grabbed him when she was, like, six to eight years old. Taken her into egyptian care. And then he was raised with his mom. And then his son, sister Miriam, nearby him. Which then probably taught him about the hebrew people. And everything else going on. Moses gets to this point then. Where he's probably high up in egyptian society. But then he sees a Hebrew being beaten by an Egyptian. He decides to kill the Egyptian. He does not fear anything other than people finding out. And people begin to find out. So then Moses flees. We find out in other passages of scripture. That this was likely when he was around 40 years old. And then he is in the land of Midian. And that is where we are starting today. I promise you, every single class. Will not start with a recap of all the other classes. Because that took me eight minutes. And that is not going to work.
In Exodus, I believe we're in chapter two. Right. In Exodus, chapter two, here's where I think we got to verse 15. And verse 15 says this.
When Pharaoh heard of this. That Moses had killed an Egyptian. He tried to kill Moses. But Moses fled from Pharaoh. And he went to live in Midian. Where he sat down by a well. Now, a priest of Midian had seven daughters. And they came to draw water. And filled the troughs of water. And filled the troughs to water their father's flock. Some shepherds came along and drove them away. But Moses got up and came to their rescue. And he watered their flock. When the girls returned to Reuel their father. He asked them, why have you returned so early today? They answered, an Egyptian rescued us from the shepherds. He even drew water for us and watered the flock. And where is he? Reuel asked his daughters, why did you leave him? Invite him to have something to eat. Moses agreed to stay with the man. Who gave his daughter Zipporah to Moses in marriage. Zipporah gave birth to a son. And Moses named him Gershom, saying, I have become a foreigner in a foreign land. During that long period, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out. And their cry for help because of their slavery. Went up to God. God heard their groaning. And he remembered his covenant with Abraham. With Isaac, and with Jacob. So God looked on the Israelites. And he was concerned about them.
Just from what we've read about in this passage. What we've read about concerning the hebrew people suffering in Egypt for such a long period of time. We talked this past week about how it was hundreds of years that they had been there.
What do you guys think about verse 25?
Verse 25 says, so God looked on the Israelites and he was concerned about them.
Why do you think this chapter, this series of verses, ends with just that statement?
[00:09:05] Speaker C: Because it sets up the burning bush passes.
[00:09:08] Speaker B: Yeah, it sets up the burning bush passes. It sets up the rest of Exodus, doesn't it? It's God saying, like, all right, like, time for me to enter into the scene, like the great savior of this.
So one thing that this definitely helps me with is it's so difficult to understand, like, how God and suffering exist in the same world sometimes it's kind of easy once you really dig in to think logically how that works in some different ways. But when you're really, really, really going through the midst of it, when you're going through a difficult time, that's just a time where I've seen so, so, so many people lose their faith, fall away, struggle in a variety of different ways. And for me, at least when I read this, this just helps me to remember that in the midst of everything, God still remembers. God still sees us. He recognizes who we are, and he's continually watching out for us in the midst of whatever we're going through.
Sometimes it's hard to trust that. And I'm sure as the Israelites struggled for literally hundreds of years in Egypt, like grandkids, grandkids. Grandkids are just going through this struggle in the desert heat for years like cattle. And then God remembers them.
It's a fascinating verse, though, at the same time, because what does it mean that God remembers them? Does God not know everything? Does God not continually always have people in mind? Any ideas what it means by God remembered right before that it says he heard? And I think as people, we want to be heard of.
And then the rest comes after being heard. And remembering is this was, I think, a time, maybe this was the right time for them to act. I think that is perfect.
A lot of times I forget. There's some fancy word that I was supposed to remember in a class of mine a while back.
But the word essentially means that, like authors, when they were writing these books, specifically, Moses in this instance, was writing it for us to understand, not necessarily for God to understand. Remembering would have caused a lot of people over different periods of time, especially years and years ago, who don't really try to dig in and think of every single step theologically, like a lot of us do today. They would have just recognized, like, yeah, God remembered them. He looked down on them. They would have equated all of these things together. When it's saying remember it, I definitely think it's just trying to let us know that God recognizes, like, all right, now is the time. Now is the time for something big to happen. Now is the time for me to work. Now is the time for a different course of action to be taken.
And I think that it would be good, as we read this and passages like it, for us to just remember that goddess still is in control, has all the power, and is going to work his ultimate will no matter what. Through the good times and through the bad times in our life. We just have to constantly remember that he has good in mind and good prepared for all those who love him.
So I wanted to do a little bit of historical stuff that we didn't talk about last week. In chapter two, verse 23, it says, during that long period, the king of Egypt died. Sadly, I didn't include their mummy pictures on this one. But the first king. Just letting everybody know. Based upon what, I don't think it's any heaven or hell issue, but based upon recognizing for me that the exodus was occurred in 1446 because of one kings, six one, these guys would make the most sense to have been the pharaohs during his life. It was probably Thutmose III, which this is interesting Mos at the very end that is related to the word Moses. This was an egyptian word. This was common. It actually would have been Moshe in that day and time. But Thutmose III would have been the king or the pharaoh during Moses upbringing. And then following Thutmose III, who actually had a long, long, long reignite, it would have been Amenhotep II. And that makes sense in the midst of Moses living 40 years there and then spending a lot of time in Midian and then coming back when he was 80 years old, like we find out later on. So we have thutmose III and we have Amenhotep II.
I also want to take some time to do this. And again, some of you in all of these classes will be bored through sections like this. But I hope that this is just valuable insight for people who haven't heard this.
I want to start by saying this. When reading the entire Old Testament, I challenge every single one of you to, as you read, look up what's called interlinear versions. It's for people who don't really know the languages that the Bible would have been written in originally, like Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek, stuff like that. When you look up those versions, this is probably the most significant aspect of the Hebrew language that it gives us. That's different from what we'll read in our Bibles. We have the word Moses, which is just a transliteration of Moshe, which we read there. However, the hebrew people took this egyptian word and actually utilized its true definition from early on. It would have been too polar to draw out. And it actually says that in the text when we read about Moses earlier. So that goes along with his name, right? I mean, with what happened in his life, right? They literally drew him out of the water. Every single word that is a proper noun for the most part. So I can't say Every Single. So for the most part, most words in the HebRew Bible are going to have a super big significance to the Story even looking at the word Exodus.
So Exodus is the title of this BoOk that we're looking at. Exodus is actually a Transliteration of the Septuagint version of the BIble. If you don't know what the SEptuagint is, the greek people, the greek Jews, specifically in Alexandria, in Egypt, took the Old TesTament and said, all right, to me, people speak greek today, and our people don't even know how to read the hebrew version. We're going to translate this all into Greek. So then they named it a word that essentially means to exit, and Exodus is taken from that. But what's really, really interesting is that the hebrew title of this book is actually SheMoT. Shemot doesn't mean ExoduS at all. It has nothing to do with it. Even if you travel to Israel today and talk to a Jew, they're going to call it SHeMOTeZ. Shemot means names. They call it the book of names. And what's really interesting is when you read Exodus one, one it starts about, and these are the names of the sons of Israel who entered the land of Egypt. However, as you work throughout Exodus, we talked about fear as a theme last week. Another huge theme throughout this book in particular involves names. So let's take Exodus two that we just finished up.
What's the name of Moses father in law? Okay, if you are like me, the answer is Jethro. But when you read Exodus two, what does it call his father in law throughout Exodus two? Reul. And what's really, really interesting, something that we find out through all of that, is these weren't two different people. They're both Zipporah's father, they're both Moses father in law, Raul, in that day and age, likely would have been his genuine name, and it means friend of God. However, Jethro would mean excellence or his abundance.
I think this is really interesting because of a variety of situations. Moses, later on in his life, seems to look up to Jethro. He's the one that, following the Red Sea that we'll get into later, gives Moses some advice and is like, hey, split up your people, go into all these different things.
Or it could simply be because he wants to be really nice to his father in law. But Jethro is actually likely a title that Moses is giving to him. And it's him basically saying, like, his excellence, his abundance, like this very special port person. That's what I'm going to call him, because I'm going to respect my father in law. But this guy's actual name is Raul. And these are types of things you can only learn through the Hebrew Mount Horeb, which is later called Mount Sinai. Mount Horeb actually means a dry place, a place of heat, a place of desolate waste. We're going to talk about that later. Zippurah. I don't really, like, get the connection. It means birdhouse.
Yeah, I don't get it. So Jacobed means Yahweh is glory, Shipra and pua. Those are the midwives that we see in Exodus at the very beginning. I mean, one is a fair, beautiful one, and the other one is basically, like, the word for girl, which I don't know exactly what that means. It could be trying to tell that, like, this was, like, the older midwife, and this was, like, a young girl, like, helping her with work or something like that. And then Miriam is a name, essentially, meaning wished for child.
So who knows the story of Jochebed and everything else with regard to, like, her getting pregnant or other things. But that could have been part of that narrative, part of that story. As we go throughout this class, as we study the book of names, as it relates to the life of Moses, one thing we're going to try to go back to pretty consistently is the idea of what these names mean, why they're significant, and how understanding their original meanings will help us understand the life of Moses a little bit more. So, themes thus far. We have a theme of fear. We have, at the beginning of Exodus, people lacking fear, or people having too much fear, and people trying to figure out what the right kind of fear is, specifically the fear of God versus the fear of others. We have names and then another huge theme that we've had thus far that we'll talk about more tonight. Is the idea just of deliverance? That's with Moses on the Nile as a baby in his ark, but then obviously with Exodus, them crossing the Red Sea. So again, I think this might be the last nerdy part. All right, last nerdy part.
Just so everybody knows what and where we're talking about. This is Egypt right here. Egypt.
This map is huge. Again, this is the entire nation of Israel. Moses traveled to Midian in the midst of all of this to give you guys a little bit of perspective. This right here is the Nile river coming up. Lots of fresh water and other things everywhere. Right here, the Sinai peninsula, where the Sinai mountains go all the way through.
That is a massive, dry, barren wasteland of just absolute nothingness. And then you get to down here, where you have another outlet from the Red Sea. And most people think that Mount Horeb or Mount Sinai would have been at one of these two star locations. The traditional view tends to be right here. More modern people today have really thrown out that it would have been right here. But regardless, the land of Midian was this entire general area. So when we're talking about Moses fleeing the Midian, that would have been probably a 300 miles journey through just barren desert wasteland in the middle of nowhere, which is pretty impressive. In that day and age, most people traveling through here would have gone over by the sea, stayed by water as long as you can, and then just try to survive this cut across. But he likely went just straight down while he was there.
It's just a pretty fascinating journey that he takes. And then we're going to read right now the Bible. Finally, and in Exodus three, we're going to talk about how he was in Midian. He was probably on this side, and it said that he took his father in law flocks. In Exodus three, rill becomes Jethro, and he goes to the far western side, which would have been either of these locations. And that's where he approaches the mountain of God. So let's read that together.
I've talked for a long time. Does somebody want to read verses one through ten on the screen?
Can you guys read that?
[00:23:05] Speaker D: Can we read it out of our Bible?
[00:23:06] Speaker B: Yeah, you can. Sorry, sorry.
You can read anything that you want.
[00:23:12] Speaker D: Now, Moses was tending the flock of death rose, Father in law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far side of the wilderness and came to horeb, the mountain of God. There, the angel of the Lord appeared to him in flames of fire from within a bushe. Moses saw that though the bush was on fire, it did not burn up. So Moses thought, I will go over and see this strange sight. Why the bush does not burn up. When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called to him from within the bush. Moses, Moses. And Moses said, here I am. Do not come any closer. God said, take off your sandals for the place where you are standing is holy ground. Then he said, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. At this, Moses hid his face because he was afraid to look at God. The Lord said, I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers. And I am concerned about their suffering. So have come down to rescue them from the land of the Egyptians. And to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land. A land flowing with milk and honey. The home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, hazarites. I don't know all those words.
[00:24:32] Speaker B: You're good. A bunch of.
[00:24:34] Speaker D: It's now the cry of Israelites have reached me. And I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them. So now go. I am sending you to pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.
[00:24:47] Speaker B: All right. Very, very cool scene right here that's been talked about in a variety of different ways. I kind of want to just break down a couple aspects of it, ask some questions, and then we'll see if we'll get on to the next part.
But this is just me. Like, I want you guys to see. What I'm kind of doing in red is just if I have my bible with me, these are things I'm underlining and noticing. If you notice anything that's different from. From this, please let me know.
The Lord came, like, well, the angel of the Lord slash to the Lord.
We're not going to a discussion right now on exactly what that is. But spoke to Moses through a burning bush. And Moses said, here I am. Is there another, like, section of the old testament where God speaks? And someone says, here I am. That you guys can think of? Samuel, Isaiah. Isaiah is the one that I think of where God says, who will go for us? And Isaiah speaks up and he says, here am I. Send me.
I think Moses, here am I is the exact opposite of Isaiah's.
Moses is very much like, here am I. Don't send me.
I don't want anything to do with this, but I think this is just pretty fascinating. God begins this whole section, and we'll get into, like, God telling, like, Moses, first excuse that we'll get into a little bit is like, what will I tell people is your name? But God really does, like, from the start, tell Moses who he wants him to recognize that he is. God says, don't come any closer. Take off your sandals. This is holy ground. I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob. Moses hid his face. And then God goes into this just beautiful, beautiful thing, and I'll explain why it's beautiful. The Lord said, I have seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I've heard them crying out because of their slave drivers. I am concerned about their suffering. And as I read this passage, for those of you who might not be able to see, what I started highlighting were just all of the personal pronouns that I was able to mark in this. And while God is speaking, everything is centered around what God is doing, what God plans to do, or what God wants. In the midst of this, there is a bunch of I's, there's a bunch of mysite, and there's a bunch of mes. And then at the very, very end, he says, so now go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people out of Egypt. And what seems to happen in this to me is God. I feel with the amount of just personal pronouns, that the I's, the mes, the mys that are before this, I feel like there are so many of them, because goddess knows what Moses excuse is about to be. And he's trying to make it very clear, here's all the things that I'm going to do, what I want and everything else. Now, I'm letting you know that you're going to be my tool through this, but this is me working.
And then when Moses hears that, how does he interpret that, I guess, is my question.
Do you think Moses hears while God is about to do a lot of incredible things?
No. The only thing that Moses hears in all of this is, I have to do something. I'm going to do something. And I think that's a very important point for each and every person in here to realize God's going to work, and he's going to get work done, and he's going to continue to find ways to bring glory to himself, goodness to this earth, goodness to other people. However, sometimes he just asks us to be his tool in the midst of that. But we have to realize that even when we're God's tool, he's the one holding the tool. He's the one doing all the work. And it is so, so easy in our lives to get that mixed up and to get to the point where we're supposed to be doing our, like, tool like actions, and then we begin to only focus on what we're doing and not on what he is doing.
[00:29:23] Speaker C: So at this point, I mean, it's 40 years hence from when he left.
Is there still some apprehension about going back? Because he would have to be, you know, he might be charged for his actions, you know, murdering the egyptian kind of thing.
[00:29:39] Speaker B: Yeah. We find out through the text that.
I think it says, obviously, at the end of chapter two that the pharaoh died. But I'm pretty sure at the end of this chapter, it says that.
I'm pretty sure it says that, like, it's recognized that everyone who was chasing after him is dead or is also dead. It may have followed that at the end of chapter two, but it's weird. I don't want to reach too far into the text. We don't know if Moses knows that at this point, but I also believe that there's a reason that Moses wrote this into the text, because he wrote all of this. And could, in the midst of this whole section, God have revealed that to him, or could he have found that out? I mean, the Egyptians were the most powerful force in the entire world in this day and time. Moses has been out here for 40 years, realizes that the pharaoh has died. Like, it's kind of like imagining yourself at 80 years old with the law enforcement all dead and thinking, like, well, maybe Billy's still alive. And, like, he might still, like, know what I did 40 years ago. But, like, I'm not sure. Not.
But there could be some apprehension there. But he just says, who am I? And again, the first words are, who am I? When God just did a massive section of explaining that it doesn't really even matter who you are, this is who I am. And they continue to go into this. So Moses said to God, who am I? That I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt. And God said, answers in a personal first person pronoun. Again, I will be with you, and this will be the sign that it is I who have sent you. When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you will worship God on this mountain. And again, this mountain, at that day and age at least, was known as Mount Horeb. It literally means dry place or wilderness.
There are people online. You can look up YouTube videos who have tried to identify exactly where Mount Sinai is. And one of the ways that they've tried to identify it is they look where water falls down mountains and goes into towns, or, like, basically pulls up after it rains. Like, the one time a year that it rains in this area. And where it pulls up is where they guess people like Raul Jethro and his daughters may have lived. Civilization would have been around there. So then with Horeb being named dry wasteland, in the midst of a dry wasteland, it's got to be pretty dry. So what people try to do is say, like, all right, what is, like, the furthest point away from where water is, like, near anybody? And a lot of those ways are how they identify what might be Mount horeb, Mount Sinai. But the reason that that's interesting in this passage is Moses is in the middle of nowhere, man. Like, he is, like, in the absolute middle of the wilderness.
And God is saying here, like, yeah, you're going to bring all of those, like, hundreds of thousands or millions of hebrew people out. You're going to worship me on this mountain. And Moses is looking around in my mind, like, what? Like, here in the middle. It's like going to the, I don't know, the middle of North Dakota or something like that, and be like, really, God? Like, I know that I wondered here in all my, like, weirdness, but, like, this is where you're going to bring everybody right now.
And Moses said to God, suppose I go to the Israelites, and I say to them, the God of your fathers has sent me to you. And they ask, what is his name? What shall I tell him? And then we have one of the most famous verses in the entire Bible, Exodus 314, a thing that people have read in books and papers, actually have a paper I wrote on it and other things. But God said to Moses, I am who I am. This is what you are to say to the Israelites, I am has sent me to you. Now, this is very interesting, because throughout the Old Testament, God's name, we don't know exactly how to pronounce it, but if you like, try to insert vowels in it, is Yahweh. However, right now, God does not use Yahweh. He actually uses it. In the next verse, verse 15, he says here, when you go to them, say that my name is I am who I am.
To a hebrew person, this would have been weird because God's name, by the way, if you didn't know this is a whole other. God's name is not God. Have you ever thought of that?
Like, that makes me then get into, like, what does it really mean to use the Lord's name in vain? But we won't talk about that right now.
But God's name is Yahweh.
But in the midst of this, God tells Moses to say to these people, I am who I am has sent you. And people have written so much on this, it's just a vast amount. And in my little paper, I kind of took a bunch of things and broke down this hebrew word. And it's essentially the Hebrew. It has the hebrew verb stem for, like, an action word that just would be to be at its base root. So that can be like, I was, I am, we are, he is, I will be, stuff like that. But here's the thing. When he writes, I am who I am, that is not my favorite translation of it. And what's really interesting is when you look at a lot of more modern day english Bibles, sometimes people will write a note in it and say, we actually believe that, like, this is a more proper translation. But people have been saying, I am who I am for so long that since it still makes some sense there, we're just going to keep it right there.
But the interesting thing is, when you really dig into it, the way that it would, in my opinion, fit best in English is in a super nonsensical way, because the way that they pattern this verb in Hebrew makes zero sense at all. It would be, putting the way that I did in this paper, it would have been essentially the same as putting an ing at the end of the word is like, I am the is ing one, or something like that.
And the reason why is because from my studies and from a lot of people who have really looked into this, what God is likely trying to bring out there is that there is a past, present, and future tense aspect to his name. I am the one who was. I am the one who is. I am the one who is going to be, who will always be Moses through everything that has ever existed. I am the God. I am the God of the past, the God of your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I am the God who is the God right now in the present. And I am the God who will be in the future when youre long dead and gone and when things in your life are just empty.
It's God trying to explain that he's just always existing, but also always present and always working.
Because it's a verb. It's action in the midst of all of that time.
So here's my question for you. That was a lot.
What does it make you feel, think when you hear that definition of God? Like, how does you can answer it in any way? Like, whatever strikes your mind, how does that impact your life today? What would this have meant to the israelite people or the hebrew people in this day and time? Like, what does that mean to us?
[00:38:08] Speaker C: I think of the Israelites being in Egypt, in Egypt, having all their different gods, the goddess, the cattle, the gods of this, God of that. Where to me, God is saying, it's not a bunch of different gods. It is, I am God, just the one singular highest being. Whatever.
[00:38:27] Speaker B: Yeah, it's like just boom. Moment when God doesn't give a noun as his name, he gives a verb as his name, and it's just like, let all the other gods take that or whatever.
Yeah, I think that's a huge aspect that would have meant something to those people also going off of that.
So the Hebrew people were in Egypt. Egyptian gods were surrounding them all the time.
Egyptians, we know some about their religion, but they would offer things in certain ways to their gods and be blessed or not be blessed in their own opinions.
During this whole time, the Hebrew people are living in that culture. And even if they attempted to reach out to egyptian gods, do you think there was ever actual action taken on behalf of the hebrew people?
No. Like, no God ever did anything for anyone. But specifically, people living in slavery, like, can't make any argument that anything has ever been done for them. And then all of a sudden, a God of action appears on the scene. A God who's doing things and is willing to do things and is willing to help other people, is present, and he's there.
Anything else that strikes you all about that?
[00:39:51] Speaker C: You said that the HeBrew name for this book is names. And so you think of the Whole Torah in terms of the HeBrew people. It's an origin storY. And so you have genesis that is setting up creation and how God's people ended up where they were. You now have Exodus, and you think of at Mount Sinai, which is a big moment for the Hebrew people, where the law is given.
And God always describes himself after this, just like he's been describing himself, is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. One of the things that he testifies about himself is, I'm the one who brought you up out of Egypt, and Aaron is the one who said, this is the calf. This calf brought you up out of Egypt. And it seems like Exodus being the book of names.
The whole book has BeEN building towards this moment, the revelation of the divine name. I am. So you think of this origin story of the Hebrews, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Joseph, and now everyone who lives in the Goshen and our relationship with this being. Here he is. He tells us everything about himself in one SimPle Way.
[00:41:09] Speaker B: That's pretty much exactly how I wanted to end. So thank you off of that a LittLe bit. This doesn't have to deal with Exodus, but this week, when you guys go home or whatever else, just scan through the Bible and start looking at all the different times that Joshua or Isaiah or a psalmist or Stephen in his speech start telling the story of the Bible. And it's just fascinating for them to go into at Moses Point. He's the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. You get a few books away. He was the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and Moses. You get further down of all of them. And David, you get to Stephen. All of them, David, Jesus came all of this. And I just want us to recognize that in this whole story of Goddesse. Like, we are blessed enough right now to be the next scene in that story.
Like, when you guys talk about your lives, when you're talking about the history of God, are you able to say, God did this in the past and right now in my life, he's doing this in the present. And I just trust after this, until he comes, that this story is just going to keep going. So. All right, that's class.
