MUSIC? – Any dream will do
Mount Sinai If Graham can show his holiday snaps last week, then so can I! This is me on the summit of
Today we are beginning a 5-week series on the life of Moses, so we need to begin with a bit of background. You may find it helpful to have the Bible open at Exodus 1 on page 56
PICTURE - Pyramids
As those of you who have seen the musical Joseph will remember, the story of Joseph ends with his father Jacob and the whole family moving to Egypt
‘And they all lived happily ever after’? – far from it!!
PICTURE – famine
At the end of Genesis the 7-year famine really bites and the native born Egyptians are having to sell themselves to Pharaoh to get enough food to eat, while Joseph’s extended family are doing very nicely, and growing in numbers all the time. SEE V 7
PICTURE – slaves doing forced labour
Eventually popular opinion turns against these immigrant families, maybe whipped up by the ancient Egypt
PICTURE – river Nile
However even that doesn’t stem the Hebrew birth rate, so Pharaoh hits on a new strategy, killing all the male Hebrew children at birth, decreeing in the end that all Hebrew baby boys shd be thrown in the river to drown. SEE V 22
At this point, just in case the parents of Darcy Nicole are getting a little worried, looking at our great big baptismal pool, let me break off to assure Darrel and Kerrie that this is not the River Nile
But a young mother from the tribe of Levi has other ideas. She hid her child at home for 3 months, but when he was too big to hide him any longer, she put him in a little papyrus basket in the reeds along the bank of the Nile, leaving the baby’s older sister to keep an eye out for what happened to him
OBJECT - wickerwork basket to float in the edge of the baptismal pool
The mother had chosen her spot well, because that is where Pharaoh’s daughter came down to bathe. She spots the basket, opens it up, sees the baby crying (well that’s what babies do when they get wet, as we may see with Darcy in a few minutes!)
She takes pity on the baby and employs a Hebrew woman to nurse him, who just happens to be his mother, and promises to pay her. So Moses’ mother ends up getting paid for doing what was closest to her heart – like being a vicar really!
PICTURE – Moses as a boy??
And when Moses has grown up a bit and been weaned off his mother’s milk – which may not have happened in those days until about the age of 5 – Pharaoh’s daughter adopts him, and he grows up as her son in the royal court. SEE V 10
That’s all useful background. Now let’s see what happens when Moses has grown up.
First Bible
Reading
Reading
PICTURE – Sinai - mountainous desert - taken when I was there last year
Oh no, I’ve blown it!!
Moses as a young man, arrogant and headstrong – he knows it all, he’s going to put the world to rights
Killing the Egyptian – sign of a hot temper, we will see again?
Caught between two worlds, is he an Egyptian or a Hebrew – having fallen out with his own people, and with Pharaoh trying to kill him, he runs away to Midian, a complete failure
Oh no I’ve blown it!! All the privileges of his upbringing, and now he’s stuck in the desert
Humanly speaking he’s put back the rescue of his people by 40 years…
PICTURE – the desert – valley floor
Moses flees to the desert as an outlaw, like so many before and since…
And yet God meets him there…
PICTURES DURING READING
Second
Reading
Reading
PICTURE – ICON OF MOSES
This is a 6th century icon, painted on wood, and preserved at St. Catherine’s Monastery, Sinai
I first saw this picture two and a half years ago, when I was praying about what to do next in my life, and God really spoke to me through this picture…
Burning bush… ‘how easy is it for me to get your undivided attention Mark?’
Sandals… ‘are you honouring me as Lord in every part of your life?’
Message… ‘are you willing to do whatever I ask, even if it is something really difficult?’
Let’s listen now to the message God spoke to Moses out of the bush…
Third
Reading
Reading
Following the wonderful revelation from God, comes his commissioning. I used to envy people who had very powerful visions of God, and wish it would happen to me – until I realised that God usually in the Bible gives special visions to people to whom he is giving something really difficult or dangerous to do! So don’t envy them – pray for them!
God commissions Moses to a difficult task he doesn’t like a bit – ‘please send someone else’
And yet it is the task for which Moses’ whole life up to now has been a preparation – Moses is the only one who can lead the Israelites out of slavery
- he is the only Israelite to have grown up with Pharaoh, and whom Pharaoh will talk to
- and he is the only Israelite who has spent 40 years in the desert, and knows how to survive in that desperate and dangerous environment
PICTURES – WATER FROM THE ROCK, COOKING IN THE DESERT
God forgives Moses and gives him a second chance, and he can do the same for us.
SUNRISE
We might feel we have messed up, that we have missed out on God’s plan for our lives by making a wrong decision years back, or by doing something stupid in a hot-headed moment that we really regret…
But God never gives up on us. Whatever we have done, God still loves us, and God can still use us. He always has a Plan B for our lives, if we mess up Plan A, and he also has a plan C and a plan D!
TEXT SUPERIMPOSED – ‘We know that in all things God works for good with those who love him’ – Romans 8.28
And that’s what baptism is all about:
In baptism we receive the grace of God, who treats us not as we deserve, but precisely as we don’t deserve, the grace which comes from Jesus who loves us and gave his life so that we can be forgiven…
Washed in the waters of baptism we are made one with Christ in his death and in his resurrection from the dead, so that we can be set free from the mistakes of the past and begin a new life, that will last for ever…
In baptism we are commissioned to be Christ’s faithful soldiers and servants for the rest of our lives. The task may not be easy; we may not like it, but God says to us, as he did to Moses by the burning bush, ‘I will be with you.’
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