(Exodus) Exodus 2:16-25

Now, the priest of Midian had seven daughters, and they came and drew water and filled the troughs to water their father's flock. The shepherds came and drove them away, but Moses stood up and helped them and watered their flock. And when they came to Reuel, their father, he said, How is it that ye are come so soon today? And they said, An Egyptian.

You see, Moses passed as an Egyptian. He certainly had the background for it. An Egyptian delivered us out of the hand of the shepherds and also drew water enough for us and watered the flock.

He said unto his daughters, And where is he? Why is it that ye have left the man? Call him, that he may eat bread with us. And Moses was content to dwell with the man, and he gave Moses Zipporah his daughter. Now, she is given to Moses, and he takes a bride.

And it's interesting, many of the men of the Old Testament are figures of Christ. Not in all detail. It couldn't be.

Certainly not in the fact Moses was a murderer. Christ was not. He was a Savior.

And Jonah is a figure of Christ in resurrection, but certainly not in running away from God. And so Moses here, in the time of his rejection, why, he gets a bride. And we are living in the day of the rejection of Christ.

But he's calling out a bride out of this world today, and that's the church. And so we find him now down in the land of Midian, and 40 years goes by. There's always been a question relative to Moses' marital state.

I personally feel like that that's one of the things that Moses more or less passes over. I'm sure he must have loved his wife, but the record that we have doesn't reveal a very wonderful relationship at all. I would presume that it was not the best in the world.

Here is this man now that's down in the land of Midian, on the backside of the desert, getting his B.D. degree, backside of the desert degree. And there God was training him to deliver his people. We are told, though, in verse 21, And Moses was content to dwell with the man, that is, the priest, there in Midian.

And he gave Moses Zipporah, his daughter. And Zipporah means sparrow. She must have been a little thing.

And she bear him a son, and he called his name Gershom. For he said, I've been a stranger in a strange land. Came to pass in process of time that the king of Egypt died, and the children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage.

And they cried, and their cry came up unto God by reason of the bondage. And God heard their groaning. And God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.

And God looked upon the children of Israel, and God had respect unto them. Now, God is going to come down and deliver the children of Israel now. And Moses has been trained to be that deliverer.

Now, the question, of course, arises, why did God do this? Now, if you have any notion that the reason God did this was because of the superior ability of these people, then I think you'd be entirely wrong. And God did not come down to deliver them because He said, my, these children of Israel are so superior to the Egyptians. And they've been true to me.

They've not gone into idolatry. And they've served me faithfully. And they are a lovely people.

May I say to you that God never said that because it wouldn't have been true. These people were not faithful to God. They did not serve Him.

They did go into idolatry. And you'll recall when they got out into the wilderness, they couldn't wait to make a golden calf. Just soon as Moses got out of sight, why, Aaron started making the golden calf for them.

They had gone into idolatry. They were away from God. They were in slavery.

Now, why would God come down and deliver them? Because they're in a helpless, hopeless position. They are in the position where unless somebody will intervene on their behalf, they're through. They are using the common colloquialism of the day.

They've gone down the tube. They are not even savable. They cannot be salvaged, it would look like at this particular juncture.