https://vimeo.com/415584330

Okay, that's hilarious. This is take three because grandpa's not real bright sometimes. So who are we talking about this week? Do you know? Moses. Oh, it's very good. Way to go, Amy. Man, you got it. What do you know about Moses? Anything? Moses? It's a movie about him. He's what? It was a movie about him. Oh, I thought you're cheating now. There is a movie. There's a few movies about him actually because it's a great story in the history of Israel. But let's go back to the start of the story where we began. Remember, who'd we start with? Adam. Adam, and then who'd we go to? Abraham. Abraham, way to go. OK, we're going to take a look at the map again just to kind of get the story straight where all this began. OK, remember it began in Ur. Abraham traveled up here into modern day Israel. OK, back then it was called Canaan. And he lived there and he had a son named Isaac and he had one named Esau. And then Isaac had a child named Jacob. And he also had another one. But then Jacob was the first one that was called Israel. He got his name changed. He fought with an angel. You read that story. He wrestled with an angel overnight. At the end of it, the angel changed his name. He said, you're going to be called Israel. So he has a lot of kids. Remember, he had a whole bunch of kids. One of them was Joseph. And Joseph, the other brothers were jealous. So they kidnapped him and they sold him into Egypt. OK, this is where Israel lived now. Israel's children all came to Egypt during that famine. They were all hungry and that's where food was. So Joseph said, come live here with me. They did. But when they lived there, they grew fruitful and they multiplied and they became a whole lot of people. Now there's probably 2 million Israelites living in Egypt. And how do you think the Egyptians felt about that? Got 2 million people living here who don't belong here according to the Egyptians because they're not Egyptian. They don't belong. So how does Egypt feel about that, do you think? The leader of Egypt was called not president, not prime minister. He was called Pharaoh. OK, he said it, Pharaoh? Pharaoh. Pharaoh, OK, he was called the Pharaoh. He was the big guy. How's he feeling about 2 million Israelites living with the Egyptians? Well, he got afraid of them. He thought they could take over for not careful because they're having more babies than the Egyptians are having. So he makes slaves out of them. He makes slaves. And he puts them into bondage. So they have to work and they make bricks and they build stuff for the Egyptians. And he barely feeds them. And so for a long time, they're in captivity and they're crying out to God because Abraham taught them about God, God, don't you care? We're here. We're suffering. Could you please come and help us? And now this part of the story. This is what I want you to see this part of the story. Remember this chart? OK, we've done Abraham, Isaac, and now we're on Moses. OK, right here. Moses was 2100 years. I mean, Abraham was 2100 years before Christ. Moses is about 1500 years before Christ. So we've had Abraham. They've gone to Egypt. Now they're in Egypt. And now we're going to talk about this. There's two big moments in the history of Israel. One is the Exodus. The other we'll talk about over here later is called the exile. What's Exodus mean? Do you know what Exodus means? When you hear the word Exodus, what do you think of? What do you think of? You go into a building, you see a sign above the door. What's the sign say? Exit. Exit. So Exodus is like exit. It means to come out. It means to get out of Egypt. And so this is the big story of where God takes Israel from the land of Egypt. And he moves them back where he wants them and in the place where he promised Abraham and Canaan. So we're going to talk about these books. We talk about Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. These are these books that all are in the time of Moses right here. So here's a man getting lost, humanity getting lost without a manneve. God comes to Abraham and reveals himself. And then we've got Isaac and Jacob and Joseph in there. Now we've got Moses. And then we're going to go on to Joshua and judges and Ruth till we get to David. So right now, this is the big thing. They're in captivity and God wants them out. The people want out. Of course they want out. They're tired of being there. So then they talk about going into, let me go, here we go. So how do we get them then back out of Egypt through to the promised land again? And that's what this story's about. As God delivers them, he takes them out. So here's what happens. Moses, Pharaoh's taken to killing all the babies that are born, all the male babies. He doesn't want them to live because they're getting too big and they're getting too strong. So he says, I'm going to have all the male babies killed. That's what you're going to see if you watch the story. Moses' mom is an Israelite and she has this baby. They're Moses and they're going to kill her baby. And they killed them by drowning them in the river. They just threw them in the river and drown them. So she made a little boat. She put Moses in the little boat and she pushed him out into the river and said, God, you have to take care of my little boy. And the little boy floats right down to where Pharaoh's daughter is taking a bath in the river. The little boat floats in. Doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo, doo. And she takes a little boy. She said, oh, what a lovely boy. I want this little boy. So she's going to let him live. And so he actually finds Moses' mother to feed and take care of Moses while he's young. So Moses gets to be with his mom. She gets to feed him. He can raise up this boy, but he knows he's not an Egyptian. He knows he's an Israelite. And one day he ends up getting really angry, watching an Egyptian beat an Israelite. And so he kills him. That's Moses got that mad. He killed a guy. And then he ran off to the desert to hide. He ran back into the desert. We're going to talk about to hide from. And then he gets married. And one day he's walking around tending sheep. And do you remember what happened? Special thing happened to a bush. You remember the bush? What was the bush? It was dirt. He was walking. He's on a hike. And he comes on this bush and it's burning. It's on fire. But it's not being destroyed. It's not burning up. It's just burning. And he goes, oh, what is this? And God said, Moses. Or maybe he said, hey, Moses, take off your shoes. I want to tell you something. And God says to Moses, look, I want you to deliver the Israelites. And Moses said, I don't want to do it. Don't ask me. I don't know what to say. I'm not going to Pharaoh. I don't want to go. Kind of like Austin. He's a little shy, right? He doesn't want to go. So he doesn't go. He says he's not going to go. So God said, OK, well, take your brother with you. He can speak. Eventually, Moses ends up going back to Pharaoh and says, set my people free. And Moses says, not going to do it. Got too much slave labor. How are we going to get rid of all the labor we have going on? We're not going to do it. And there's a whole story that goes on here of God trying to get Pharaoh's attention. And Pharaoh not listening. His heart getting hard. And Moses coming back saying, well, you know what? This is going to happen if you don't. In this story where the last night they're there, right toward the end, God's bringing one last plague on Egypt. And it's going to be painful. It's going to hurt a lot of people. And but God says to the Israelites, listen, this angel is going to come and it's going to kill the firstborn male children. Austin, that's you again, firstborn men. They're all going to die in Egypt. But if you do this, if you kill a lamb and put his blood on your door posts, then the angel is going to pass over your house. He's not going to come to your house. So your children get to live. And so all the Israelites put this on their doors. They put the blood and they sat in and the angel passed over and they were all saved. And that's why when Jesus, the night before he was killed, do you remember he had this meal with his disciples that we call communion, the Last Supper? It was at the Passover celebration. Israel celebrated the Passover. They still do. They still celebrate the day that God saved them from Egypt and the angel passed over them. That's what Passover comes from. And the next morning, Pharaoh wakes up and so many kids were now dead in Egypt. And they were, Stephen so says, you get out of here, take your people, get out of Egypt, leave. And then they gave them all kinds of stuff. They gave them their treasure and their gold because they wanted them to leave so badly. So the children of Israel are here. I always forget to grab my pen. Children of Israel are here and now God leads them out into Sinai. But what's this right here? What's that? You know what that is? It's part of the Red Sea. How are they gonna get across that? Two million people. How are they gonna get across it? And what God did, Moses went to the edge of it and God said, hey, I'm gonna open away. And he blew the sea back. He parted the sea so that they could go right through the middle of it. They walked on dry land and now with Pharaoh, he's like, well, I don't want those guys to leave. I want them back. And so he sends his armies to go get them and make them slaves again. But Israel's passing through the sea. And when the Pharaoh's army sees it, they will go through the sea too. They start going through the sea. And as the Israelites get a Christ on the other side, the sea swallows up and all the armies of Egypt get killed. And God delivers his people yet again. He delivers them. Is that a pretty good story? Now they're through here. They're through here in the sea and now they're gonna go up here around the backside of Jordan and come into Canaan right here, the land that God had promised them. But they got there and they began to see how many people there were in that land and whether they could take it and whether they could get it. And they decided, we can't do it. We can't do it. And God said, trust me, I'm big enough to do this. One man, Joshua says, we can do this. God's big enough. We can do it. But the people were afraid and they didn't go. And so God says, you know what? I'm gonna need you to wander around that wilderness for a while. I'm gonna need you to wander here until this older generation that doesn't trust me will die out so that a younger generation will come up and decide to trust me and I will give the promised lamb to them. That's pretty sad, huh? So for 40 years they wandered. And during that time, God did some things with Israel. He taught him some things. And if you read the story in Exodus and then Numbers Leviticus and Deuteronomy are all the laws. God gave him a lot of laws. He wanted to build a tabernacle, which is like a temple, only it's a tent. So it moves around so that God could have there. They could make sacrifices there. They had rules for what they couldn't do. Lots of rules, so many rules. What they eat, they couldn't eat bacon. They couldn't eat ham. They had to eat beef. They couldn't eat blood. It animals had to drain the blood. They had to wash certain things. They had to purify. They had to have the ceremony. They had these festivals every year to celebrate. God gave them lots of stuff. Some of those books, I'll promise you, they get a little boring. And they're all numbering. They're counting how many are various tribes. Because Israel splits into, during the story, they split into 12 tribes. Each of them from one of the sons that came from Joseph, came from Jacob, excuse me. All those sons had a tribal name. And Joseph had two sons. So two of the tribes with Joseph's sons names. And they had 12 tribes in Israel. And so they, and God gave them lots of ways to live in them. Now, what do we make of all those rules? The Jewish, for the most part, still follow all those rules that God gave them. When they talk about eating kosher, which is they don't eat pork, like some of us do eat bacon or ham. They don't eat that. They have certain washings. They don't do sacrifices anymore because they stopped killing animals to sacrifice to God. And, but we know that the sacrifices stopped because Jesus became our sacrifice. Okay, so it makes sense? And some of the rules God gave them were great rules, like don't murder, don't kill, don't cheat on your husband or your wife. He gave them some great rules. And he gave them lots of little rules. You couldn't wear this two different kinds of cloth in the same clothes. Well, that's a rule, why is that? Here's the rules God gave them were for four different reasons. One, God wanted them to know the way the universe works. Austin, you got a game controller right there in front of you, don't you? Pick that up for me. Show it to us, would you? Just show it to us, a game controller. What game do you play with that? Fortnite. Do you play Fortnite with that? And there's like your guns and stuff. Do you shoot stuff? Yeah. Do you know which button to press to get the guns to work? Yeah. Do you know what buttons to press to make the guy move around? Do you know which buttons? Do you remember when you first had that controller and you didn't have any idea what the buttons did? Do you remember that? Did somebody teach you how that works, how the game works? Nobody taught you? Yes. You just learned by yourself? Did your dad help you? Did your mom? Did somebody help you, Austin? No, you just learned by yourself. Somebody did. Now, Lindsay's telling me somebody did, you're telling me somebody did it, now I'm confused. Let's say somebody did. If I was, if I wanted to play Fortnite, Austin, would you teach me how to run the controller? Yeah, you would, because you know how, right? That's what those laws are for from God. Many of them are that God knows the way the universe works. Why? He made it, right? He made it. The person who first made that controller you've got there, Austin, he had to teach other people how to use it. And they wrote manuals so other people could use it. And other people were teaching people how to use it. The reason God gives a lot of this information to Moses while they're in the wilderness is so that they will come to know how it is that the universe works, how it is that we walk in this world with God because we were walking for a long time without him. We were doing things our own way. And what was the world like? People were killing each other, like Moses killing somebody in Egypt. They were enslaving each other like Egypt. The world wasn't working very well. They were following false gods. So God tells Moses, this is the way I meant the world to work. There are laws here. Do not kill, do not murder, do not lie, be true to your, honor your parents. That's one of them. There's all these things God gave us so that we could begin to learn how the world works. And he gave them rituals for worship, like God in a tent. It was like, God's eye, I'll be in this tent. So I'll be with you, why? Because the Israelites were scared of God. Remember Adam and Eve were scared of God? He's so holy and he's so righteous. And we mess up so much and we're scared of him. And God does sometimes things that block the world and make us afraid. And we don't know what to do about all that. So we get scared. And so God gives them even rituals that we don't need today. We don't need the tabernacle. We don't need priesthood. We don't need those things that Israel had. God gave them for a reason. You know what the reason is? Austin, just like when you were right, learned to ride your bike. What did you have on your bike when you learned to ride it? You remember? Yeah, training wheels, right? You had some extra wheels on there. So it wouldn't fall over and you wouldn't scrape yourself up. And the idea was if you had training wheels there for a while, you could learn to ride it. Then you can take the training wheels off, right? Do you ride with training wheels today? No, you don't. You zip all over the street. I've watched you and you squeak your brakes and you do all kinds of silly things on your bike. The training wheels were just supposed to be for a little time until we could learn to follow God again. In this case, God gave a lot of these rituals until Jesus came into the world. When Jesus came, he fulfilled all of that. So now we don't walk with God by following rules like Israel did. We learned to walk with God by trusting Jesus. What Abraham did? Abraham learned to trust God and he followed him. Now the people didn't know how to trust God. So God gave them rules until Jesus could come and Jesus could teach us how to trust. And where we trust, then we get to walk with him. Religion is the way man, humanity makes rules for God. Every religion has a bunch of rituals and rules. Unfortunately, even Christianity. But God didn't make us for rules. God made us to learn to follow him. Now the rules help us know when we're following him, right? If I'm killing and murdering, I'm not following him. And I'm adding to destruction in the world. So if I learned to follow him and I learned to treat people respectfully and lovingly, then we can live in the world the way God wanted. And so God teaches Israel these things, but to them, they're just a bunch of rules and there's feasts and there's sacrifices and there's so much work to this. But that was the way of God saying, I wanna keep you thinking about me. And I want you to think I'm in that tent so you won't be afraid of me. But actually God wasn't in that tent. He was with them. He was all the time with them. So Moses finally takes them to Israel, to the land of Canaan, excuse me. But he couldn't go in. God didn't let him go in. Instead he stood on this mountain. This is Mount Horeb in Jordan. See this little lake over here? That's the Dead Sea. Right behind this mountain range right here is the Jordan River and Galilee is up that way. Jerusalem is over here. God had, Moses had been with the people so long and taken them through so many things. And toward the end of it, Moses said, listen, I need somebody else to take them into the Promised Land. So God took Moses up on this Mount Horeb. This right here is Mount Horeb. I stood on there a couple of years ago and we looked over at Israel the Promised Land. Look how desolate this is here. See how desolate this is? It's like a desert. That's what the wilderness is like. Now there's a road there. That road wasn't there back then. But look how desolate that. That's the wilderness that Children of Israel lived in for 40 years. And how did they eat? They had no food. God gave them manna. Bread fell from heaven every morning that they could eat and God provided for them and God provided water for them. And now he's getting ready. What happens next is Joshua takes them into the Promised Land and then they begin to have kings. And now we're going to talk about the whole history that goes from there. Let me tell you this one story before we're done. Because one of the things the law says is, don't cheat on your husband or wife. Don't do that. If you do that, you need to be stoned. And they would actually stone people who did it. Today we don't do that. People sometimes don't stay in their marriages and things get hurt and people get hurt, but we don't stone them for it. The law said you've got to stone the adulterer, someone who cheats in their marriage. One day while Jesus was on the planet, they brought an adulterer to him. They brought a woman who'd been cheating on her husband. They bring her to Jesus and say, okay, Moses says to stone her, what are you gonna do? Because they knew Jesus was a lover that he didn't destroy sinners. He was offering them redemption instead. He wasn't wanting to kill people. And they bring this woman to him. It's a John chapter eight. You can read this story. And they say, what are you gonna do? And Jesus says, well, let's do it this way. The person in here who's never sinned, you can throw the first stone at her. And then he began to write something in the dirt. We don't know what he wrote, but people are going, well, first, then people began to walk away because no one there was without sin. No one there had never done wrong. They've all, we all sinned. And when they all left, he looks at the woman and he says, where's your accuser? She said, there are none left. And then Jesus says, neither do I accuse you. So here's Jesus. Here's the law God gives, stone the adulterer. Here's Jesus having a chance to fulfill that law. And the fulfillment of the law wasn't actually in stoning her. It was forgiving her and giving her and giving her a new way to live her life. That's the difference. This is the old story. This is Moses coming through to teach us, this is how you follow God, you follow these rules. And the Jesus comes and says, oh, the rules will help you understand what God's like, but you can't get there by following the rules. You got to be forgiven. You've got to learn to trust me and I will lead you to freedom. So Moses is a great story. It's beginning to help us learn how God thinks and how we can follow God. But it wasn't complete yet because it wasn't teaching us how to relate to God yet. Not yet. We'll learn that later as the Jesus story continues.