Let's go back to that portion
of scripture that Bill read to us and asked God if he would
speak to us and give us some understanding of what these words
are all about as we consider the subject of Moses and Zipporah
and Jethro. That's our subject for this evening
and we'll see if I can give you an overview of Exodus chapter
18. Well, as I have been led to do
for several services, let me ask God to bless in the service
and then we'll go right into the Scriptures. Now, Father, we open the Word
of God knowing that we won't understand anything
spiritual from this portion of Scripture unless it be given
to us from above. We are needy souls. We need the Spirit of our Lord
Jesus to speak to us of that One who saved us, of that One
who redeemed us, of that One who is our Advocate, That one,
as our brother has just said, presents all of our causes unto
thee. We have a great high priest,
exalted in the heavens, and he has been exalted because of his
successful work of redemption, because he finished that work
that you gave him to do, in the old covenant of grace. How thankful
we are that you have loved us with an everlasting love. You sent your only begotten son
to be our substitute, to die in our stead. That he ever lives
is so soothing and comforting to our souls. For as He lives
now, so He says to all who believe Him, as I live, ye shall also
live. After all, He is the resurrection,
and He is the life. And so, Spirit of grace, be with
us this evening. Enable me to magnify the Son
of God, to exalt Him, Lord, speak to these who listen. Oh God,
give us the hearing ear. Give us the eye of faith. And
give us anew a heart to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. And
give us devotion to Him. May we know commitment to Him. to walk in the ways of our God. Lord, bless your word as it goes
forth this evening, and bless your people, and blessed be your
name, oh God. These things we ask for Christ's
sake, amen. This is a very interesting portion
of Scripture, and as the Spirit of God gave Moses this book of
Exodus, it is interesting the order that the Spirit of God
had Moses to lay it out for us. This was not by Moses. choice. It was by the leadership of the
Spirit of God. As we go back and just back up
a couple of chapters from this, we see in chapter 16 that bread
that came down from heaven And we know that speaks of our Lord
Jesus, that manna that God gave in chapter 16. Our Lord, He interpreted
that and He gave a spiritual meaning to it. In John chapter
6, He said, I am the bread that came down from heaven. And we
feast on Him. We feed on Him who is the bread
of life. And then we get to chapter 17.
And in chapter 17, we have Christ the smitten rock. The Lord told Moses, take the
rod, hit the rock. Take the elders of Israel with
you. And they'll be witnesses of what
you're doing. And God said, when you hit that
rock, water will flow. Well, don't you see Christ Jesus
there? He is the rock of ages. He is
the rock on which God builds his church. And he is the rock
that has been smitten by the rod of God's justice. He was
wounded for our transgressions. He was bruised for our iniquities. And the chastisement of our peace
was upon him. He was smitten and the water
came forth out of the rock. Which picture is that water picture?
Salvation. Therefore with joy should we
draw water from the wells of salvation. There is the water
of life, our Lord Jesus. And it also speaks, that water
also speaks of the spirit of God. The Spirit of God who was
given as a result of our Savior being wounded and smitten. As a result of the Savior's death,
God sent the Spirit of Truth, of whom Christ said, He won't
speak of Himself, but He will speak of Me. And then we get
to this chapter, chapter 18. And in the very first portion
of this chapter, we see the bride brought to the bridegroom. The bride is Zipporah. The bridegroom or the husband
is Moses. Moses stands as a picture of
our Savior. And Zipporah stands as a picture
of us, the redeemed of the Lord, the wife of the Son of God, the
ones who the Lord loved, the ones that he gave himself for
upon the cross of Calvary. And as a result, and here's the
picture, as a result of our Savior coming down to this earth, just
like God gave the bread from heaven. That's a picture of His
incarnation. And then, just as God had Moses
to hit the rock, with the rod of justice. Well, so our Lord
Jesus, he was smitten by the rod of justice. We know that.
And the result is that the Spirit of God is going to bring the
Savior's bride unto himself. There is a reconciliation of
sorts here in the first six verses of Exodus chapter 18. Here is Zipporah being brought
to Moses. And you and I must be brought
by grace unto the Savior. And as a result of him coming
down here, chapter 16, and him being the bread of life, chapter
16, and as a result of him being smitten with the rod of justice,
as a result of his death, chapter 17, water of life comes out,
and then the Spirit of God takes the message of the gospel. of
redeeming grace, and he brings it to our hearts, and he woos
us, he draws us unto the blessed Savior. Now, Moses is of course married
to Zipporah, but they have been separated for about a year, just
about a year. And I'll tell you what was the
basis or the reason for their separation if you'll go back
to Exodus chapter four. Exodus chapter four. Of course, in Exodus chapter
three, Moses, he drew near to the bush that burned, but he
wasn't consumed. And the Lord Jesus, God who saves,
the great I Am, he spoke to him out of the burning bush. And
he commissioned Moses to go to Israel or to go into Egypt and
announce to Pharaoh What God was going to do is going to liberate
his people. And Moses was to speak to the
children of Israel and tell them that, that the great I am has
sent me and we're going to be delivered by the might of God,
by the power of God. And of course that did come to
pass. And so I pick up the reading
here in chapter four of Exodus in verse 18. And Moses went and he returned
to Jethro, his father-in-law, and said unto him, let me go,
I pray thee, and I'll go and return to my brethren which are
in Egypt, and I'll see whether they be yet alive. And Jethro
said to Moses, go in peace. And of course, this is the same
Jethro that we just read about over in chapter 18. And the Lord
said unto Moses in Midian, Go, go return into Egypt, for all
the men are dead which sought thy life. And Moses took his
wife, Zipporah, and his sons, both of them. He set them upon
an ass, and he returned to the land of Egypt. And Moses took
the rod of God in his hand. And the Lord said unto Moses,
when thou goest to return into Egypt, see that thou do all those
wonders before Pharaoh, which I have put in thine hand. But
I will harden his heart, that he shall not let the people go.
And thou shalt say unto Pharaoh, thus saith the Lord, Israel is
my son, even my firstborn. I say unto thee, let my son go
that he may serve me. And if thou refuse to let him
go, behold, I'll kill your son. I'll slay your son, even thy
firstborn. And Moses and his wife and his
two boys, they begin the journey toward Egypt. But then we come
to just three verses of scripture that are, in some ways, kind
of puzzling. Let me see if I can clear it
up for you. Verse 24, and it came to pass
by the way in the end, they had stopped at an end to spend the
night, just like we would do if we was taking a trip, a long
journey, and you stopped to stay at a motel or something like
that. They stopped and stayed in the end, that the Lord made
him. God sought to kill him. God said,
I'm going to kill my servant Moses. And then his wife, Zipporah,
she took a sharp stone, cut off the foreskin of her son, that
is her youngest son, and she cast it at his feet and she said,
Surely a bloody husband art thou to me. And so God let him go. Then she said again, a bloody
husband thou art because of the circumcision. Now evidently Moses
had already circumcised his youngest son, his first born son, I should
say, Gershom. but it had not circumcised the
younger son, Eliezer. Now, circumcision was a sign
of the covenant. It was a seal of the Abrahamic
covenant that God had made with him, which involved the Lord
Jesus being the promised seed that would come forth from Abraham's
loins. And every covenant always involved
bloodshedding. Bloodshedding. Blood was shed
in all the covenant dealings in the Old Testament. You see,
blood sealed the covenant because it always, always points to the
blood of the Lord Jesus. Always. And it always points to the blood
of the everlasting covenant of grace. After all, we read, without
the shedding of blood, there's no remission of sin. This is
the blood of God's covenant. But Moses, though he circumcised
his first son, the firstborn, evidently to appease his wife,
He neglected to circumcise Eleazar and God struck him down and he's
weak. Moses is weak. In fact, he's
near death. He isn't even able to circumcise
that boy. And his wife realized, my husband
is dying. I don't know what God afflicted
him with. some kind of sickness, some kind
of ailment. I don't know what God did to
him, but Moses wasn't even able to get up out of bed and do this
deed himself. And his wife realized, my husband's
going to die if I don't circumcise this boy. Now listen, God had
insisted, God had ordained, God had commanded that all the sons
of Abraham, all the boys, all the little baby boys had to be
circumcised. That's important. Obedience to
God is vital now. It's very important. You remember
what Mary said to the servants in John chapter two at the marriage
of Cain of Galilee? When they ran out of wine, she
told the servants, whatever he says for you to do, do it. That's
what she said. Whatsoever he saith for you,
do it. Moses knew what to do. He knew
about circumcision, but he wouldn't do it. He neglected to do it. Now, you cannot neglect the blood
of the Son of God. You cannot treat the blood with
any kind of contempt and get by with it. You say, but this
is Moses. I know it's Moses, but it doesn't
matter who it is. Don't you neglect the blood.
That must not be neglected. by trampling the blood of the
covenant underneath your feet is an awful thing. And Zipporah
realized, my husband's going to die. And she loved him. And she realized God's going
to kill him. And she circumcised Eliezer,
and God let Moses go. God released him. And she said,
surely a bloody husband thou art to me. You're a bloody man. But listen, bloody men are redeemed
men. Those who think highly of the
blood, the substitutionary death of our Lord Jesus Christ are
redeemed men. Bloody men are accepted with
God. Bloody men are saved by the Redeemer. It doesn't matter who you are.
You might even be a Moses, but you're not going to overlook
the blood of the Son of God, and you're not going to overlook
regeneration, which is what circumcision pictured. And any man who neglects
in his preaching the blood of the cross of Calvary, redemption,
and neglects preaching regeneration, he doesn't speak for God. He
doesn't represent the Lord. We preach redemption. We preach
blood. We preach what can wash away
my sins, nothing but the blood of Jesus. And by blood, we mean
death. That's what blood represented. And we must also preach the necessity
of the new birth. The Savior said, you must be
born again. Now if He said that, and you
know He did in John 3, then you must be. you must be born again. And that which God uses in the
new birth is a sharp sword, the sword of the spirit. Anyone who denies these things
denies the very word of God. Well, go back to the text now. So evidently, After this happened,
Zipporah and the two boys went back to her daddy. She's gone
home to daddy now. And Moses goes on to Egypt to
do the work in Egypt that God called him to do. Now here in the first few verses,
here is Zipporah and she is reconciled to Moses. And this is a picture
of the reconciliation of the redeemed of the Lord, the Church
of Christ, by his death. You see, something really happened
at Calvary. Our Lord Jesus didn't put all
men in a savable position. He didn't make salvation available
for everybody at the cross of Calvary. When the Lord Jesus
shed His blood to His death, He saved His people. You understand
that? He reconciled us to God. He redeemed us. He brought in
everlasting righteousness for us. Now when the Spirit of God
does a work of grace within us, we find out about what the Son
of God's done for us. But when the Spirit of God does
a work of grace within us, that's not when we were redeemed. And
really, that's not when we were reconciled to God. We were reconciled
to God by the death of the Lord Jesus Christ. You know that,
and I know that, because that's what the Word of God teaches. Zipporah being reconciled to
Moses, she represents the wife of our Lord Jesus, the bride
of Christ, the church, who's been reconciled by His death.
And then Zipporah was a black woman. She was a black woman. She's a Midianite. She was an
Ethiopian. In fact, later over in the book
of Numbers, Miriam and also Aaron, but Miriam was the ring leader
of the two. She took issue with Moses marrying
this woman. She's a black woman. and she's
not of the lineage of Abraham. Moses, you have married a Gentile
dog. And Miriam got real upset about
it and Moses didn't even defend himself. And Aaron, he was a participant
in this rebellion of sorts, but mainly it was Miriam. and she
dared to speak out against Moses. He didn't say a thing about it.
Perhaps he just cast it aside as, well, I'm not going to argue
with you, sis. But God took issue with her.
God smote her with leprosy. You leave my servant alone. Because
here's a picture of grace. Our Lord Jesus, he came into
this world to save dead dog sinners. See, the Jews consider Gentiles
to be dogs. And that's what we are by nature,
dead dog sinners, but Christ came to save us. And we were
black in our evil, in our wickedness, in our darkness of rebellion
and ignorance and error. But what the Lord did for us,
he washed us and made black sinners to be whiter than the snow. It's interesting, the original
word from which Zipporah comes from means one who departed. You got that? One who departed. That's what we did in Adam. We
left God. We departed from God. Like all
of Adam's race, and really there isn't any difference between
the elect of God and the non-elect by nature. Because by nature
we're all black in sin and we all departed from God. And of
the people that our Lord Jesus died for, we read in Isaiah chapter
53 and verse six, all we like sheep have done what? Gone astray. Gone astray, just like Zipporah,
one who departed. We turned every one of us to
our own way. And yet God in magnificent, immeasurable
grace laid on him the iniquity of all of us who had departed
in Adam from him, all of his people. And we read that she
and Moses, Zipporah and Moses were reconciled. Guess where
they were reconciled? At the Mount of God. At the Mount of God, where God
gave the law. at the Mount of Justice. You
see, that's when we were reconciled to God. That's the place. Mount Calvary. Justice has got
to be honored. The integrity of God's law has
got to be upheld in salvation, or there will be no salvation.
Behold our Savior, who came to save us from the
curse of God's law that we had broken. And you'll remember that incident
there that I read to you about in Exodus chapter four, where
she said to Moses, a bloody husband thou art to me, we were reconciled
by blood, the blood of a covenant. That's how we were brought to
God. You see, our Lord Jesus, He came
into this world to remove every obstacle out of the way. He satisfied God's law. He obeyed
it fully. That law that we had broken.
He did love God with all His heart, mind, soul, and strength. And He did love His neighbor
as Himself. He was the perfect man. And having
honored God's law in his life, he died to pay the righteous
penalty of the law for all of his people. And then I remind
you here that Zipporah came to Moses with both of her boys. You notice there, look at verse
three, and her two sons, back to chapter 18, of which the name
of the one was Gershom, For he said, I've been an alien in a
strange land. There's the Lord's people in
our natural state. We're alienated from God. We're strangers to the covenant
and promises. And like Gershom, our natural
nature is much older than the new. And then Eliezer, look here
also, look at the next verse, and the name of the other was
Eliezer. For the God of my father said
he was mine help and delivered me. He saved me. He saved me
from the sword of Pharaoh. God is my salvation. God is my helper. So here are
the sons of Moses. And we learn spiritual lessons
just from their names. And then we get to verses seven
and eight. And as Jethro, he comes in and they greet one another
warmly. And then Moses begins to tell
what God had done for them. And I'm not gonna reread all
of these verses. Bill did a good job of reading
the chapter, but look at that last statement of verse eight. And how the Lord delivered them. You know, Moses, he didn't call
attention to himself. He didn't say, now, let me tell
you, let me tell you, Jethro, I brought him out of Egypt. Oh
yeah, I brought him out of Egypt and I've led them thus far. I'm
the one that hit the rock. I'm the one that did this. I'm
the one that did that. Oh no, he never mentioned himself. His only concern is to glorify
God. It's God who saved Israel. It's
God who delivered Israel. It's God who rescued Israel.
He's got nothing to say about Himself, and He doesn't have
anything to say about Israel, what Israel has done. No, no. No, no. Here's a true witness
for the Lord. Tell people what God has done. what God has done. Sometimes
people ask me, they'll say, I don't know how to witness to people.
I don't know how to talk to people about the things of God. Just
tell them what God has done for you. That's what a witness does. Don't add anything to it. Don't
take anything away from it. Who saved you? Say, well, God
saved me. Tell people that. Well, how did
God save you? By the blood of the cross of
Calvary, by the blood of Christ. Tell people that. That's being
a good witness. Did you save yourself by your
works or did God save you by His grace? You say, well, God
saved me by His grace. That's what you tell people.
You see, Moses here gives a good testimony. His testimony is how
the Lord delivered them. And Jethro rejoiced. He's happy. In fact, he even offers sacrifices
to God. And then they sat down and had
a fellowship dinner together. Here's a witness. Here's a witness
for the Lord in Moses. At verse 13, it says, it came
to pass on the morrow that Moses, he sat to judge the people. Now, remember the situation here. Moses hadn't seen his wife in
a year. Him two little boys, him two
little boys, he hadn't seen them in a year. And don't you know
when they saw Moses, daddy, daddy, and come running to Moses, he
took him in his arms and his wife hugs him and kisses him. You'd think Moses would say,
I need a week's vacation right now. But no, he goes right back
to work because he's got a duty to the people in the name of
the Lord. He's the judge of the people.
All of the people come to Moses every day. And one day Moses
is welcoming his family back, but early the next morning he's
right out there going to work. Here's my point. Don't even let
your family stand in the way of doing the right thing for
God. Not even your family. I've had people say to me, they'll
say, well, I'm sorry I missed last week, my family dropped
in on me. Well, you should have brought
them. Or you could have told them,
listen, if you don't want to go with us, just sit right here,
there's a remote to the television, or here's the computer, you can
watch here, but we're going to worship God. That's what you
could tell them. That's what you call having your
priorities straight. See, Moses, he does have his
priorities straight. He's gonna go do the work that
God called him to do. He's seeking to do the will of
God. He's the judge of Israel. And
he worked from morning till evening. And then Jethro, his father-in-law,
who's a priest of Midian, a man who doesn't know God, Say,
how do you know that? Look back at verse 11. Here's
what Jethro said. Now I know that the Lord is greater
than all gods. Your God's greater than my God. For in the thing wherein they
dealt, they dealt proudly. He was above them. This man's
not, he's not a believer. Oh, he goes through the motions
of worship. And he recognizes that the God
of Israel is greater than the other gods, but hey, wait a minute,
there are no other gods. All the rest of those who profess
to be gods are just idols. And so now he comes to Moses
and he says, You take too much on yourself. Let me give you some advice.
Listen to your father-in-law now. I'm gonna give you some
wise counsel. Now hear me, don't take wise counsel from those
who are wrapped up in false religion. What's Moses doing listening
to this man? Hasn't God provided for him all
along? Jethro says you take too much
on yourself. What you need to do is choose
some men from all the different tribes of Israel and let them
take some of the burden. You're just going to burn out
too fast, Moses. This will extend your ministry. It gives you more time to spend
with your family. And you know what Moses did?
He listened to him. It's almost unbelievable. He
listened to him. And Moses chose men who would
hear lesser cases, and then he would hear the major cases. And
in this, he ruins another picture. We have one who takes all of
the issues pertaining to the people of God to the Father,
and that's the Lord Jesus. That's our Savior. He's the one
who judges all these issues and who judged the biggest issue. And He settled that issue with
God when He died upon the cross of Calvary, when He took our
place, when He died our death. You see, my friends, All of our causes, all the things
that have to do with us are in the hands of the Son of God.
That's who Moses is a picture of. Had not the Lord led Moses so
far, had not God given him strength, indeed He had. The Lord was with
him. And Moses, he listens to the
wrong voice. Be careful who you listen to,
will you? This is not good for Moses. Notice
in verse 24, so Moses hearkened to the voice of his father-in-law
and did all that he had said. He listened to a false priest. And he chose out able men. They
took care of the lesser matters. He took care of the greater matters.
But look at verse 27. And Moses let his father-in-law
depart. And he went his way. He went
his way into his own land. He went back to his own gods.
He went back to his own beliefs. And he sowed a seed of unbelief
in the mind and heart of Moses. Now, let me show you that. Look
at the book of Numbers chapter 11. Look at Numbers chapter 11. Numbers chapter 11, verse 14. Here's what he says. I am not
able to bear all this people alone because it's too heavy
for me. That's exactly what Jethro told
him back in Exodus chapter 18. It's too heavy for you. You got
too much on you. And now Moses says, I got too
much on me. Too much on me. Let me ask you
a question. Is any burden too heavy for the
Lord? Are we not called upon to cast
our burden upon the Lord and He will sustain us? You see,
with the Lord, the weight of the world is nothing. But without
Him, the weight of a feather is overwhelming. Paul said in Philippians 4, I
can do all things through Christ which strengthens me. You see,
difficulties are no object to God. They're nothing to God.
He parted the Red Sea. The Israelites walked the cross. The needs of Israel was nothing
to God. He made sure that the Egyptians
provided the silver and the gold and the wealth for the Israelites
as they left Egypt's borders. Needs are nothing to God. Proud
men are nothing to God. He buried Pharaoh in the sea.
And our inabilities are nothing to God. You say, I'm weak. I
know you are. But here's what Paul said, when
I'm weak, then I'm strong. So you get in trouble when you
think you're strong. If we just all the time realize
and recognize our weakness and look to God for strength, we'll
be okay. We'll be okay. Are you still in Numbers 11?
Turn back a page or two to chapter 10. Let me show you this. Let me show you how this, it's
like this lack of confidence in the Lord. It just, it infected
Moses. Verse 29, Numbers 10. Moses said unto Hobab, the son
of Ragul, the Midianite Moses' father-in-law. That's just another
name for Jethro, Hobab. We are journeying unto the place
of which the Lord said, I'll give it to you. Now come thou
with us and we'll do thee good for the Lord has spoken good
concerning Israel. And Jethro or Hobat said unto
him, I will not go. I'm going to go back to my land
and to my kindred. But here's Moses' real motive
in asking him to stay. And Moses said, leave us not,
I pray thee, for as much as thou knowest how we are to encamp
in the wilderness, and thou mayest be to us instead of eyes. And you want to say, wait a minute,
Moses, why do you need the eyes of a false priest when you're
being led by the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire
by night? What do you need him for? Boy,
sin's a slippery slope, isn't it? So is unbelief. And verse 32, and it shall be,
if thou wilt go with us, yea, it shall be that what goodness
the Lord shall do unto us the same will we do unto thee. Now,
we want to say to our kinfolk, to our in-laws, to those who
are blood kin to us, come with us, we'll do you good because
we're gonna teach you about salvation by grace. That'll do you good.
That's the only message that will do you good. But we don't
have, we must not have some kind of ulterior motive like Moses
did. Well, keep reading verse 33. And they departed from the mount
of the Lord three days journey. without Jethro. Got that? Without Jethro. And the ark of the covenant of
the Lord went before them in the three days journey to search
out a resting place for them. And watch this, the cloud of
the Lord was upon them by day when they went out of the camp.
Moses, you don't need the eyes of a false priest. You just need
to look up by faith, follow the cloud. The Lord will lead you,
verse 35. And it came to pass when the
ark set forward that Moses said, rise up, Lord, and let thine
enemies be scattered. And let them that hate thee flee
before thee. And when it rested, he said,
return, O Lord, unto the many thousands of Israel. God help us to just believe Him,
trust Him, follow Him. I wrote a letter to someone this
week, and as I usually do, is put a verse of Scripture at the
end. I always do that when I write a letter. Proverbs 3, 5, and
6. You know it, don't you? Trust
in the Lord with all thine heart. not upon thine own understanding,
in all thy ways acknowledge him." Acknowledge that he's God. Acknowledge
his authority. Acknowledge his omnipotence.
Acknowledge his wisdom. Acknowledge the goodness of God
to you. In all thy ways acknowledge him
and he shall direct thy paths. Let's close in prayer. Thank
you, Father, for the day of worship you've given us. Take these words
that have been set forth this evening and magnify your Son
and give needed and valuable instruction to your children.
Lord, help us all to have the utmost respect for the blood
of the cross of Calvary. for the regenerating work of
the Spirit of God, and to remember that the Son quickeneth whom
He will. We attribute all things in salvation,
Lord, and all the good things in life only unto You. Give us faith to walk before
You in confidence Believing that where you lead us, you'll give
us grace and mercy to go there. Dismiss us with the benediction
of your love and grace and mercy. For Jesus' sake I ask these things. Amen.