Go Forward With God

[0:00] well as we continue our progress there through this section of exodus we come to this verse at chapter 6 where we find moses understandably perhaps uh conscious of his own what seems like a failure the end of chapter 5 since i came to pharaoh to speak in thy name he hath done evil to thy people this people neither hast thou delivered thy people at all in other words lord you said you were going to do this and you haven't actually done it yet and that is true as long as we include the word yet because god's timing is not our timing and god's ways are not our ways if moses was having doubts at the end of chapter 5 then this opening statement that we have in chapter 6 is intended from the lord designed to bolster his confidence and to allay any fears and for the the evidence of doubt uh so the avoidance of doubt to to reiterate god's intention of what he is going to do then the lord said unto moses now shalt thou see what i will do to pharaoh for with a strong hand shall he let them go and with a strong hand will he drive them out of his land and although it is failed and he's just in to it it is clearly again as we see throughout this it is about the lord thou shalt thou see what i will do to pharaoh and as we say for the avoidance of doubt this is reiterating god's already stated plan and in case moses is still a wee bit wavering god is then giving in verse 2 this definitive statement which brooks no argument notice how short a verse verse 2 this all that it contains is this statement i am the lord this statement brooks as we say no argument believe me and back me or else deny me and the consequences of that of course are are tragic and ultimate and eternal so believe me and back me but this is where the commission for moses and the hope of the children of israel begins and ends i am the lord and of course as we know throughout the rest of scripture which is of course as the catechism tells us not manifold but one in other words it is one revelation of god from genesis to revelation it is one revealing of his grace from beginning to end it is all about the lord i am the lord he is the beginning and the end he is the first and the last the alpha and the omega as it says in revelation so take it from there and go forward i am the lord if there's doubts about what the israelites are going to do how are we going to accomplish this how are we going to ever get free i am the lord yes but lord that doesn't explain how we're going to do you don't have to know the explanations you get in your car and drive away from the service after tonight do you need to know all the internal workings and the mechanics of the internal combustion engine do you have to be able to take that entire engine apart every screw and nut and bolt and know how all the chemistry works in order to be able to use the clutch and the accelerator pedal and the brake and the steering wheel no you learn how to drive and how you operate the instruments that drive the car excuse me oh that was going to sneeze but you don't have to know all the internal workings that's for the experts it's still not going but but the fact of the matter is that only the lord needs to know the details you and i we only need to know god is in us i am the lord and that is the end of the story as well as its beginning so moving on and i appear unto abram to isaac and to jacob by the name of god almighty but by my name jehovah was i not known to them now here is a potentially problematical verse here is something that is a potential difficulty for people as as they think but surely the lord did appear to abraham and isaac and jacob by his name you know even if even if we go back and think yeah appeared by god almighty and you know chapter 17 and verse one of genesis and abram was 90 years old and then the lord appeared to him and said him i am the almighty god walk before me and be thou perfect but who appeared to him well the lord capital l-o-r-d and as we've said in the past wherever we have this capitalized version of the name of the lord it is in our translation and also would have been for the hebrews too that which they write over the top of the divine name which as we've mentioned in the past would be roughly jehovah or jehovah as we now spell it out which although it's not an exact translation as we have in chapter 3 and verse 14 the unpacking of what that name means is effectively i am i am that i am as he reveals himself uh to moses chapter 3 verse 14 so we have a wee bit of an anxiety but surely he did reveal himself you know well let's go back to genesis 12 verse 1 where god begins to speak to him the lord had said to abraham get thee out of thy country and from my kindred and from my father's house and to a land that i will show you and it says the lord capital life it's yahweh it's jehovah surely it's the lord in his divine name and again at verse 4 so abram departed as the lord had spoken unto him and at verse 7 the lord appeared unto abram and said unto thy seed will i give this land but of course these are not in themselves conclusive because it is entirely possible for the lord to appear to abram to speak to abram and for abram to know that it is god almighty without necessarily revealing his divine name to him for example on the road to damascus saul of tarsus is not in any doubt as to the power of the the person or the being that has appeared to him and blinded him in that blinding flash of light and the voice from heaven but he says who art thou lord he says i am jesus whom thou art persecuting now at the time when the light appears and at the time when the voice first speaks uh and all the things that happen there you could say yes god is revealing god is making himself known to so but he doesn't yet know who it is he doesn't yet know it is jesus of nazareth in his risen form so we could say that abram here well the lord has appeared to him but he's not revealing his divine name okay up to that point so far you could get away with it in chapter 15 of genesis if we go there then we find again it becomes a little more problematic after these things the word of the lord capitalized came unto abram in a vision saying fear not abram i am thy shield and thy exceeding great reward and abram said lord god capitalized god in other words the divine name but yahweh what will thou give me seeing i go childless he addresses the lord by the divine name how can he say that he doesn't know the divine name verses six and said he believed in the lord he said unto him i am the lord that brought thee out of the calvites and he said verse eight of chapter 15 in genesis lord god capitalized whereby shall i know that i inherited so abram is addressing the lord by the divine name that the yahweh what what would seem pretty conclusive there i mean how can you say i wasn't known to them by my name jehovah in those days well there are three possibilities here remember that if something seems to be thorny or difficult in scripture it will not be that scripture is a thought nor will it be that god is inconsistent jesus himself said in the new testament the scripture cannot be broken there will be ways in which it is actually telling the whole truth and not just a little part of it here so there are three possibilities no doubt more but at least three possibilities here first of all given that the name and we've mentioned this in the past the name of anything or anyone especially in the old testament as well as in the new especially in spiritual terms it was no mere kind of luggage label it wasn't just a sort of identity tag like a name tag your mom would saw in your clothes when you were going to school or whatever it was rather an expression of personhood character the very essence of the individual it could mean that the lord was making a full revelation of his personal being and identity to moses now than he had ever made to any of the patriarchs you know i wasn't known by my name in other words i didn't unpack the i am and so on for them i didn't then reveal myself in the way that i did to you moses and we have to acknowledge that the lord continues uh throughout the scriptural record to make fuller and fuller revealings of himself and his identity to to moses for example he he reveals more uh than he did to abraham to the prophets he reveals more to david he reveals more come the new testament he reveals himself come the apostles time and spreading out of the christian church he pours out his spirit so that there is the the fullness of christ spread amongst his people not just confined within the body of one person so he does reveal more and more of himself as scripture progresses so we could take it that way that's one possibility i didn't reveal as much of myself to the men as i now have to you moses it could mean the name in that sense secondly the name capitalized in english as jehovah is simply the divine name by which we have already established that abraham addressed god you know chapter 15 of genesis verses 2 verse 8 and so on but the unpacking of that name the declaration is spelling out of the i am that i am perhaps that's what it means i never declared what it means i never declared the i am to to abraham in a way that i have to moses that certainly is is one way of looking at it it's a fairly clumsy way of not saying it no i didn't reveal myself to them as the i am it's not the best way of saying it we might say but it would still be true as would the first aspect of revealing more and more of himself but the strongest and perhaps most likely possibility which can still take in the other two possibilities of course both of which are also true is that this is in fact not a a statement of i did not reveal myself to them but rather a rhetorical question i appear unto abraham to isaac and the jesus by the name of god almighty and by my name jehovah was i not known to them and then on with it and i also established my covenant with them was i not known to them you think why would you take it that way well one of the reasons would be that the hebrew script particularly in its its ancient form as a written script originally carried neither vowels nor punctuation marks we in writing a question would conclude uh you know with a question mark we were writing out a question on paper uh then we would put a question mark at the end of it if we wanted simply to make a statement we'd put a full stop or an exclamation mark at the end of it but they have no such facility no such facility was available to those writing the script of of ancient hebrew and only the context can identify for sure whether it is a question or a statement that is intended added adds to this the fact that the hebrew letter or word for but as we have here but by my name jehovah was i not known is the same as for and it is a single hebrew letter which can be a name and it is the letter or word wow which if you want to look up psalm 119 which is all the divisions of the hebrew alphabet in it it will be the sixth section the sixth section of psalm 119 you'll see that either the word of it while it's a single stroke like a slightly a slightly softened one it's in there and that as a preposition either can be and or it can be but and there is no way of knowing exactly how it's meant to be used except the context so it would be entirely possible to read verse 3 i appeared unto abraham and to isaac and and to jacob by the name of god almighty and by my name jehovah was i not known to them and i have also established my covenant with them to him the land of cain you know didn't i reveal myself to them how much more am i going to reveal myself to you moses and either way of taking that statement or question is entirely legitimate because you cannot tell from the original hebrew or much much less in the ancient manuscripts because there's no punctuation and there's no vowels and so on whether this is intended as statement or as question our translators in the authorized version have put it as statement it could just as easily be questioned if it is statement then there are ways in which that statement can be understood as we've looked at the gradual revealing of god the unpacking of his name and so on would make it true both of those could be true and if it is understood as a rhetorical question then the advantage of that is that the narrative flows in one sense much better neither are incorrect but there are two possible ways of understanding that verse 3 if we take it as a rhetorical question given the limitations of the hebrew script that as we say it takes away any linguistic difficulty takes away any any problem uh with the situation any problem of consistency however moving on into verse 4 i have also established my covenant with them to give them the land of canaan the land of their pilgrimage wherein they were strangers and i have also heard the groaning of the children of israel whom the egyptians keep in bondage and i have remembered my covenant now these verses go to five they go together because there are two parts of the reason that lord is saying why i will act now first of all there is the covenant with the fathers my promises to them in former times verse 4 i have established my comment with them to give them the land of canaan abraham isaac and jacob i promised them long time ago but i promised them to give them the land of canaan the land of their pilgrimage wherein they were strangers that was them and that was them in verse 5 the second reason is i have heard the groanings of the children of israel so there is the compassion that i have for the plight of the israelites now there is the covenant made with the fathers then there is the compassion with the israelites now and this compassion in turn brings to mind the remembrance of the covenant of old remember that god is an eternal being all past present and future are immediately in front of him they are right there as though they were in the immediate present context past present and future god is an eternal being he is not bound by the constraints of time as we are so that which he promised what seems to us hundreds of years before and was is to him right there as though he has just said it just promised it right there right there so his compassion that he has for the israelites invokes the covenant that he had made with the fathers long ago and he intends now to put it into action verse 6 wherefore say unto the children of israel i am the lord make the definitive statement to them that the lord makes to moses at verse 2 and i will bring you out from under the burdens of the egyptians and rid you out of their their bondage and redeem you with a stretched head arm and so on so the promise to them now for action now not hundreds of years down the line as it would be for the fathers when it was promised to them you know abram did not see the fulfillment of the promise isaac didn't jacob didn't but the israelites now at the time of their lowly state when they are not only slaves in israel but when they are crushed with their little flicker of hope that maybe they were going to be delivered and then chapter 5 pharaoh grinds them down even more they have nothing left to hope for now at their lowest state god comes and makes this promise to them say to them i am the lord and i will bring you out from under the burdens of the egyptians you see we look around at the difficulties at the earthly level we look at all the power of the egyptians oh the oppression of the slavery and so on and all these human factors and the answer overriding all these things is i am the lord and there is no answer to that except submission to it except humility before it i am the lord we look at the human problems the human opposition the human difficulty it has dust before the lord i am the lord it is this command and invitation to faith to put trust in who god is and i will take them out and redeem them with a stretched out arm i will take you to me for a people verse 7 and i will be to you a god and ye shall know that i am the lord your god if you didn't know it before you'll know it when you see it happen but what is happening there verse 7 something new is happening we are never to become a chosen nation for the first time ever the lord is choosing to himself a nation not merely individuals not merely just a small covenant line within a single extended family as was the case down through the early chapters of genesis and so on but finally a nation a people for himself of his own for he made them for this he nourished them in egypt where there's plenty of food of course even in the pharantines thanks to joseph where there's abundance of them able to build up and increase their nation which they probably couldn't have done to the same extent if they were still in the land of canaan sort of scratching a living off the ground with the pasture lands and so on where they were a tiny minority but no he's caused them to increase he's caused them to grow he's caused them to become the numbers and strength of a nation small nation but a nation nevertheless whom he is choosing for himself this is a new thing god is doing in salvation history and i will bring you into the land concerning the which i swear to give to abram isaac and jacob i will give it to you for an heritage i am the lord there is again this statement of faith it keeps coming back verse 2 verse 6 verse 7 verse 8 i am the lord and moses spake so unto the children of israel but they hearken not unto moses for the anguish of spirit and for cruel bondage this all too human and we might say understandable reaction and we might say well lord of course that's what they felt you know why why did god not just simply begin earlier why did you not just hold off making any promises until you were ready to actually act why didn't you begin the first time moses goes into pharaoh and all your miracles start then and maybe some of the plagues too that would have been good and then the israelites could have felt yeah their faith in god was was justified because they believed when moses first went to them and they said yeah this god does care about is it there's hope here there's an opportunity his power from the first encounter with pharaoh could have been shown why didn't the lord do it then why didn't he just begin it would have seen so much better for everyone if he had just begun a little sooner or else not made the promises until he was ready to act we just don't understand that show his people their willingness to follow him was justified perhaps if we're looking for a reason why of course god doesn't have to give us a reason why but we might suggest perhaps that it was in the first instance to demonstrate pharaoh's total enmity and hostility against the god of the hebrews his total contempt for the lord god of israel i know not the lord as we saw there in chapter five neither will i let israel go he had the opportunity to be to come to terms and to agree and to to accept what god was asking but he chose instead enmity and that had to be demonstrated so he said you know last week when there was no threats no plagues nothing forcing his hand what does he choose well he chooses the same as most normal human beings in their fallen condition do when they're not under pressure when they're not being threatened is it the lord or is the world well thanks very much i'll have the world i'll take what i can put my hand on i'll take what is tangible rather than things i can't see so he follows the way of human nature which is enmity with god and this is demonstrated secondly to show to the hebrews the depths of their own crushed unbelief pharaoh's intimidation had worked on them it was designed to make them forget any ideas of going three days in the wilderness to sacrifice to this god that they supposedly worship you know forget those ideas get back to work and they're okay fine we're intimidated our lives are more miserable more harsh now than whatever they were before so that whatever happened now the hebrews could see that they were not delivered by themselves they were not delivered because their faith was so strong because they were so noble and devout and of course the lord wanted to deliver them see the faith they had see the strength they had see how prayerful and trusting and believing they were no none of that they were brought to the situation where they were unbelieving disbelieving because of the anguish of spirit and cruel bondage so that even they themselves they were crushed and they were not delivered by anything on their part but solely by the lord i am the lord remember that whether it is for for good or ill as it may seem to be everything god does is for his glory remember what we said this morning in proverbs 17 i think it's in verse 6 or verse 4 you know the lord has made everything for himself even the wicked for the day of evil everything will glorify god at the last everything glorifies god by his design everything god does is ultimately for his glory we desire and we wish and we want that it would be what suited us that's why we say lord why didn't you act sooner why didn't you just do it the first time when you encountered pharaoh with moses why didn't you just begin to deliver the hebrews right away then they would have believed then it would have been okay that is not god's plan as he says in isaiah 55 my thoughts are not your thoughts neither are your ways my ways say the lord for as the heavens are higher than the earth so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts for as the rain cometh down in the snow from heaven and returneth not thither but watereth the earth and maketh it bring forth and bud that it may give seed to the sword and bread to the eater so shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth it shall not return unto me void but it shall accomplish that which i please and it shall prosper in the thing whereto i send it his ways are not our ways his timing is not our timing everything god does is ultimately for his glory but the israelites are wavering and the lord speak to moses go and speak to pharaoh king of egypt and let the children of israel go out of his land verse 12 moses is wavering now he spake before the lord behold the children of israel have not hearkened unto me how then shall pharaoh hear me who am of uncircumcised lips now of course circumcision is a reference not to the lips but ultimately as we know uh to to the male member uh for reproduction and but it was a reference in terms of how that act of circumcision sanctified the whole person so if any part of the body of the being was described as uncircumcised it meant unsanctified unfit for any holy purpose i am of uncircumcised lips i am not i am not worthy of this i can't deal with this lord i am not set apart for this the way that i ought to be i'm not holy and the lord spake unto moses and unto aaron and gave them a charge unto the children of israel and unto pharaoh king of egypt to bring the children of israel out of the land of egypt this charge is not something new or different or unchanged but rather now it is solemn formal and official commission not a mere invocation or suggestion it wasn't before anyway but now it is is given more solemn and authoritative status now to fail to do it as god has charged and commanded them is positively to go against god to have have apostatized and join the other side now it's serious now it's solemn you know in some ways i mean if let's say somebody wants to join the army and they go for the basic training and boot camp and so on and then they they go through all the other aspects of training let's say they then go off to the sandhurst or whatever they they do officer training and then finally at the end of it they will get their commission signed by the queen and with a particular date on it and so on now up to that point do all the training yes they they feel i'll be doing into the army yes they want to do the training they want to go for it they feel the good the ability and all the authorities say yes you passed this this and this question and so on and you've got through it all but until the time when they get the commission it's all still kind of preparation once they have the commission it's official if they now go against their commission if they now do something by way of treason or that it works against their country or against the interests of the crown or whatever they become bona fide traitors traitors traitors against the queen's commission traitors against what they have been lawfully authorized to do up until that point it was all kind of in an unofficial status it was training yes it was an intention towards a particular goal but once you got the commission now it's official now you are signed in and signed up and your path is set before you and in a sense here at verse 13 this is god's formal commission to aaron to moses he gave them a charge unto the children of israel now it's becoming official you've reached the point moses aaron where there's no turning back now if there ever was before you can't do it and now to fail to do what i've commanded you is to go against god it's not just to think oh i'm so unworthy i don't have the strength i don't have the ability now it's to go against me i am the lord i am the lord i am the lord and he gave them a charge and to go against that is to have apostatized to join the other side now moses at this day he must have been feeling pretty hopeless because all the lord's solution to his difficulties to his complaints to his to his legitimate questions and uh and pleadings he said look they're not gonna listen to me even the israelites don't listen to me how much more is pharaoh gonna listen to me you know moses now has nothing he's got nothing except the lord at this stage he is probably at the lowest point in his entire life he's not a prince of egypt anymore he doesn't have the privilege and the wealth and all that the soft upbringing that he had he doesn't have all the education at his fingertips and the privileged status that he has he has no reputation with the egyptians at all he's a renegade a runaway from justice and now he comes back demanding a pharaoh whom the egyptians regard as a god let your slaves go just let them go he has no reputation in egypt he has no reputation with the hebrews as far as they're concerned he made them a promise and things just got worse he has absolutely no peace in his family before at least when he was out in the desert well he had his wife bear his kids he was sort of domestically happy and they were peaceful pending his father-in-law's flock out in the desert and there was no hassle from the egyptians and just quiet happy domestic life there was at least that he doesn't even have that anymore remember how he parted from his wife she flung down the son's bloody foreskin at his feet saying a bloody husband not bow to me because of the circumcision and they went back moses doesn't even have that now he doesn't have his quiet domestic family life he doesn't have peace he doesn't have any reputation he's got no position he's got no wealth he's got no support base he has no power he has no strength in himself and everybody has rejected him pharaoh has rejected him egypt has rejected him his own family and wife have turned their back on him and even the hebrews have turned their back on him he has got nobody except god the lord has painted him into a corner where do you go when the lord does that to you because sometimes individuals do get to that stage where they feel as though the lord has taken everything away from them box them into a corner where they have nobody had to help them nothing left left where do you go there is only one way to go when the lord paints you into a corner you must take him at his word you must go forward with him and in him you have nowhere else to turn except to the lord because he has left you with nothing as he left moses here with nothing except himself he gives moses and aaron this solemn charge this solemn charge this solemn charge in which he has already stripped away any possibility of lingering reputation or reason for the hebrews or the egyptians to believe that he's got nothing except god what do you do you have to take god in his word you must take him you must go forward or else everything everything everything everything in your life up to that point everything you have experienced everything you've gone through everything you have lost will have been for nothing everything will have been for nothing if you don't take the lord and go forward that's where moses is brought to now in verse 13 he's got nothing except the lord and perhaps you've been in that situation or perhaps you're going to be in that situation one day let me assure you from the word of god it will be no accident it will not because god is cruel it's because the lord wants to make it easy and straightforward for you there's nowhere else to go and all that has been before and all that you've endured and all that you've suffered and all that you've built up and all that you've lost will have been for nothing if you don't take the lord now at that point and go forward with him because this is no accident you see the next verse is on from verse 14 on to verse 27 we think well this is a sort of tangent isn't it this is a little sort of ancestral kind of who do you think you are kind of going looking back to the the ancestry of of moses and aaron and so on and it begins with reuben and simeon and then levi and we think oh this is going to talk about all the heads of the tribes of all the children of israel but it doesn't it doesn't go on with judah and with dan and naphtali and gab and asher and all the rest of it it only has reuben as the eldest and simeon as an ex-born and then levi now we could say why does it start with reuben and simeon when the main focus appears to be levi and his descendants i would suggest to you two possibilities one because it is setting levi in the context of the elder sons of jacob they're all sons of leah remember uh of of jacob's uh first wife there so there's reuben the eldest who of course was under a curse from his father because of his incestuous adultery with bilhub you've got levi and simeon who were also under a curse from their father for the slaughter of the shechemites but what we see here is that those who were previously cursed are being brought in by the lord into this statement of the heads of the families in the context of which and the other tribes too will follow but they are especially mentioned as the eldest as the most senior for whom the lord still has a plan still has a purpose their past is a cursive their origins what they the original founders of those particular families are under a curse from their father we are all under a curse in the way that we are born and conceived in sin and at enmity with god then it doesn't have to stay that way that's the case for the rubinites the case for the simeonites the case for the levites because as we see in the context here the real objective here is to talk about the levites to talk about the levites and the different families and sons and descendants of levi to bring us to the stage of moses and era particularly era because you'll notice that moses does not talk at this point about his own wife or his own sons he's talking about moses wife and about his parents and husband and wife husband and wife and about the children that they have he is seeking to establish the pedigree of the priesthood and the situation of both civic and religious leadership for the israelites before they even begin to come out of of bondage in egypt we see here how at verse 16 there's mention of levi's age when he died 137 and then kohath his son verse 18 he's 133 and then amram moses and aaron's father he's 137 you see that at verse 20 and then aaron himself as we go into chapter 7 at verse 7 we see that he is 83 when he stands before pharaoh with moses now of course this doesn't tell us exactly how many years have elapsed since the death of joseph or jacob for example because although we've got the ages of all these generations we do not know arithmetically how old jacob was when levi was born we don't know how old levi was when kohath was born how old kohath was when amram was born and so on down the years so they don't enable us to carry on the dating genealogy from the end of genesis we've got an accurate arithmetical count from the fall to the end of genesis but we don't have a date after because we don't know what age these particular members of the levite tribe were when their respective sons were born but why are we given all these ages priests because we are tracing the line direct direct from jacob through levi through kohath to amram to aaron part of the requirement for the priests as we'll see in the books of ezra and nehemiah is that in order to demonstrate that they were true priests and descendants of aaron they had to show their genealogy and what we have here is moses giving the genealogy of his brother aaron the first high priest where he descends from how he comes from we also see these ages which are long ages now remember that uh that jacob lived to a considerable age what was it something like a 140 or 130 something 147 i think it was uh you know that's nothing compared to isaac who lived 180 abram lived 175 levi at 137 that's that's pretty young moses when he dies he's 120 he's getting really young now by comparison why are the ages contracting one suggestion from commentators is that with the time of moses and the giving of the law the revelation of god the testimony of god becomes reduced reduced to writing moses wrote all the words of this law he wrote out exodus and deuteronomy and all these other books of the first five books of the bible so we have the law of god in writing it can be referred to it can be checked it's been cross-referenced there is no longer the same need for the patriarchal fathers to live to such an age and to transmit the truths of god orally and to verbally pass them on to succeeding generations that's one theory one possibility that once the word of god is reduced to writing there is not the same need for oral transmission to the subsequent generations there's not the same need for the fathers to live so long so their years become curtailed as moses says in psalm 90 the days of our years are three score years and ten and if by reason of strength 84 score years yet it's their strength labor and sorrow so this is one suggestion but the point of this all is to give the scene setting and the context for moses and aaron because we are taught this is that these are they which state to pharaoh king of egypt to bring out the children of israel from egypt these are that moses and aaron verse 47 why is this sort of tangent in there well we see it because we take up at verses 28 to 30 came to pass on the day when the lord speak to moses in the land of egypt the lord speaking was says i am the lord then it is again speak unto pharaoh king of egypt all that i say unto thee and moses said before the lord behold i'm on circumcised lips and how shall pharaoh hearken of the day is that a bit of repetition from what we had before and one says yes what has gone in between what has gone in between is this apparent tangent which is not a tangent it is in fact a scene setting that when god chooses moses and aaron as well and sends him to pharaoh it is not an accident of timing the demonstration of these preceding generations and all the hundreds of years that people live is in order to demonstrate that god has been preparing this event for hundreds of years he has been preparing precisely this scenario and all the individuals that would precede moses and aaron all the fathers that went before them all the years they would spend in egypt and the subdivisions of the families and the levites and the priests and those who would follow god knows exactly what he is doing he is bringing all the pieces and ingredients into place for what he intends to create god does nothing by accident nothing catches god out nothing takes him by surprise the reason for this tangent as it seems the reason for this genealogical scene setting is to give the context in which the lord is demanding of moses i have taken away everything else i have taken away everything else you've got nothing but me now what are you going to do he has given moses and aaron a charge and moses saying oh i can't do it i'm of uncircumcised lips what does god say verse 29 same as he says in verse 8 same as he says in verse 7 same as he says in verse 6 i am the lord moses like us is so inclined to say but look at the problems look at the obstacles look how really quick i am look what i haven't got the gifts to do this and that and the next thing lord i can't do this i i i i i i and it is we ourselves i myself that i posit as the obstacle in the way of the workings of god don't die don't you that is what we do we behave and talk as though the center of the universe is me and the difficulties i face the center of the universe friend is not you it is not me it is the lord and he says i am the lord i have been preparing this for centuries i have been bringing you precisely to this moment i have orchestrated and designed every intentionality that has brought you to this hour i know exactly what i am doing and i know exactly who i am doing it with and i know exactly why i've chosen to do it with them because i am the lord now stop moaning moses aaron or posit your own name there or mine stop complaining and pretending that it can't be done because by you it can't be done by me it can't be done but by the lord it shall be done why because he has said it and the demonstration and the proof and the test of whether we are prepared to go forward with them or to turn our backs and just whether and die is this statement again i am the lord there is where it begins and ends because with him and in him all that has gone before has been for a purpose that is glorious and intentional and glorifies god and dignifies the sinner in a way they could never have imagined before and never would have would have dared to hope but without him everything that has gone before everything is from nothing if we have not the lord and he is there for us and he intends exactly what he does i am the lord learn it believe it accept it and go forward with it for this is your day and this is the lord's hour of grace let us pray