In His Time — Part Three

I invite you to turn to Exodus and to chapter 2 and follow along as I read from verse 15 to the end of the chapter. Exodus chapter 2:

“But Moses fled from Pharaoh and stayed in the land of Midian. And he sat down by a well.

“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 saved them, and watered their flock. When they came home to their father Reuel, he said, ‘How is it that you[’ve] come home so soon today?’ They said, ‘An Egyptian delivered us out of the hand of the shepherds and even drew water for us and watered the flock.’ He said to his daughters, ‘Then where is he? Why have you left the man? Call him, that he may eat bread.’ And Moses was content to dwell with the man, and he gave Moses his daughter Zipporah. She gave birth to a son, and he called his name Gershom, for he said, ‘I have been a sojourner in a foreign land.’

“During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel—and God knew.”

Amen.

Well, just a brief prayer as we turn to the Bible:

Lord, we pray that now, in the evening hour, having asked for the enabling of the Holy Spirit and praying that he will illumine to us the pages of your Word—and that in this time before we break bread together, we might hear your voice and that we might be different as a result of it. We look away from ourselves, and we look to you, and we thank you that “your Word is … fixed in the heavens.”[1] So “take your truth, plant it deep in us; shape and fashion us in your likeness,”[2] we pray. In Christ’s name. Amen.

Well, for those of us who were present this morning as we made our way through verses 11–15, we’re aware of the fact that Moses’s initial attempts at leading the liberation of his people had resulted not in success but in disappointment and had resulted in the fact that he was forced to make a run for it—as the fifteenth verse in the second half tells us, that he “fled from Pharaoh,” and he ends up in Midian.

“He Sat Down by a Well”

Now, I’ve just written down in my outline a number of phrases from the text, and the first one should be no surprise. It’s there at the end of verse 15: “And he sat down by a well.” It’s just a wonderful thing to me that the Bible contains little things like this. It is a hallmark of its authenticity that when people invent stories, they tend not to give to us apparently incidental little moments like this, but here it is, recorded by Moses. Because, after all, he knew where he sat. And this is surely, in terms of Lennon and McCartney, one of these places that he will remember all his life, though some have changed.[3] And here at this well he sits.

I imagined him doing as I do in the evening, and that is writing his journal entry. And I imagined his entry to read something like this: “I wasn’t planning to exit Egypt in that way. I’m not proud of what I did. But I’m not afraid of Pharaoh. I’ve always been aware of the fact that there was a choice to be made about where my allegiance lay. Today my mind is made up. I’d rather face mistreatment with my people than to continue to enjoy what the palace has to offer.” If you don’t like that journal entry, then this evening, feel free to create your own journal entry. But don’t share it with me.

So, there he is. He’s in Midian. He is in Midian. We’re not really sure where Midian is. Even if you take a concordance, you find that people have got all kinds of conjecture about where in the geography of the Middle East this actually was. Suffice it to say, it’s the place of God’s appointing. He is in Midian, and his own people he has left behind in Egypt.

And it is very quickly becoming apparent to Moses that if and when deliverance comes—as, apparently, it has been promised to come—that deliverance will only come as a result of divine intervention and as a result of a display of God’s power. Whatever part that he, sitting here by this well, may have or may not have, he for now cannot see it.

If we imagine it, it’s fairly straightforward, isn’t it? He clearly looks like an Egyptian. We’re told that because that is what the daughters say: “An Egyptian helped us.” He looks like an Egyptian, he feels like a Hebrew, and he sits by a well.

It’s all very routine, isn’t it? It’s such a small moment. It’s a tiny piece of a vast canvas of God’s providence. But it is here (as it true for all of us), in the everyday, ordinary events of life, that God’s often unseen providential care and handiwork is then made known to us—here, sitting at a well. Those of you who know your Bibles will be saying to yourself, “Well, wells actually have featured quite a bit, especially in the early part of the Old Testament.” Yes. It’s a good place. In a sense, it’s the equivalent of the social media of the day. I mean, I’ve done a number of weddings in the last few years, and I say to them, “Where did you meet one another?” They say, “Well, we met on social media.”

If you had been given the privilege of sharing in the wedding of Isaac and Rebekah and you asked them, “And where did you meet?” they’d say, “Well, actually, we met at a well.”

“Well, that’s interesting. And how about you, Jacob and Rachel? How did you meet? Where did you meet?”

“Oh, we met at a well as well.”

“Oh! There’s something here, isn’t there?”

Now, here, in a very similar setting, Moses actually, through his encounter at the well, finds what is good and receives favor from the Lord in the provision of this lady, Zipporah, or Zipporah. Let’s go with Zipporah. Because as you read on—and you don’t have to read very far—you realize that the provision that God has made for him in relationship to his wife is a significant provision. And I’ll leave you to do your homework in that regard. The part that Zipporah plays for him and with him in the purposes of God is yet another unseen evidence of the fact that God has his hand upon him for good.

It’s worth pausing just to acknowledge that in the provision of God for those he puts in a position of leadership, the provision of a wife is of crucial importance. And Martyn Lloyd-Jones, when he was asked about this… And Lloyd-Jones was a medical doctor, as you will know. His wife was also a medical doctor. She never practiced medicine, because she married him, and she wanted to be the minister’s wife, exclusively so. This is what Lloyd-Jones has to say. I’m not giving him an A for all of it, but this is what he had to say:

As far as a minister’s wife is concerned, what she needs above everything else is wisdom so that she does not create problems. And another thing is this: She should never have a special friend in the church. That is very important. Otherwise, it will create division and jealousy. Her main business is to look after her husband, relieve him of worries about the home and, as far as she can, about financial matters, and—very important—not to keep on feeding him with the tittle-tattle of the gossip of the church. She is to protect him and to help him.

That was part of the privilege that was given to Zipporah. And as the story unfolds, the next thing I wrote down was the question from Zipporah’s father: “How is it that you have come home so soon today?” It’s an obvious question, isn’t it? They would have gone as according to normal plan, and the calendar of their life, the timetable of their lives, would have been probably fairly structured in relationship to the matters at the well. And so he is surprised by this, and so he inquires: “How is it that you’re back so early today?”

Well, the answer to that, the primary cause, is, of course, the providence of God—that God, who oversees all things, is in charge of the timing. And they’re not home by chance. They are home by divine appointing. That’s the primary cause. The secondary cause, which God uses in the fulfillment of his primary cause, is an altercation that took place while they were at the well. Their answer would be “Well, the reason we’re back is because the shepherds tried to interfere with us, and an Egyptian stepped up and sent them away and actually watered the flock.”

Can I just pause and give you a quote about the providence of God? I’ve been keeping these, and I’m running out of time to give them to you. And so this is Psalm 121, which is one of my favorite psalms, because it has in six words the great answer to the key question. The key question is “Where does my help come from?” In six words: “My help comes from the Lord.”[4] “My help comes from the Lord.” How does the help of God come from the Lord? Not in a vacuum! Through the secondary causes and events of life. We would all testify to that.

What the psalmist does always in the Psalms but uniquely in Psalm 121 is he is looking to the God who controls history. He looks up to the hills. One of the other psalms says, “As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the Lord is round about his people”[5] and protects them. So he looks up to the hills, and he says, “My help doesn’t come from the hills. My help comes from the Lord. He made the hills.” So he looks away to the God of creation, the God who controls history and geography, the God who controls and maintains everything according to the counsel of his will.

Which then means correlatively—listen—every threat that comes to us in the world arises and exists by his will. Let me say that to you again: Every threat that comes to us in the world arises and exists by his will, is controlled within his sovereignty, and is designed to achieve his purpose. And when we get to a grasp of that, however tiny the grasp might be, then we understand why it is that we were able to conclude the morning service by affirming the fact that we are safe. We are safe because of who he is.

And these girls, the seven of them… Was that seven daughters? Is that what it says? Yes, seven daughters. How wonderful that must be! That’s quite a wedding bill right there! I’ll say that at least. He had seven daughters. And Moses has stepped forward. Once again, you see his reaction to injustice: It’s not right that these fellows would be treating the women in that way. And so he is stirred again, and he steps up, and he saves them. We might imagine him moving into the context of the prevailing impact of these shepherd fellows and saying to them, “Hey! Let these ladies go! Let these ladies go!” Now, if he said that, little did he know that he was practicing for the day when he would stand before Pharaoh and say, “Let these people go.” Even in the tiny things of life, God is working his purposes out.

Now, his earlier interference back in verse 11 had ended in rejection. But on this occasion it turns out, we might say with an understatement, pretty well for him, don’t you think? It’s a win. It wins him friends rather than, in the previous incident, producing enemies.

And I think it’s worth considering the fact that there is a sense in which, when we’re still up in verses 11–15 and Moses is intervening and acting, we might say that as we look on that scene there, we’re aware of what he brings to the situation, or, if you like, what he brings to the table, or what he is able to do, what he thinks he can do, what he should do, and so on.

Sometimes we think that it’s only in the ability that we have to give that we’re actually doing anything. But there is a grace in learning how to receive.

But in this case, the roles have been reversed. You see, there is a grace in receiving, isn’t there? Sometimes we think that it’s only in the ability that we have to give that we’re actually doing anything. But there is a grace in learning how to receive. And maybe this is particularly the incident in his life where this truth dawned for him.

“Content to Dwell”

I found it wonderful—I hope you did, too—that it says that he “was content to dwell with the man.” It’s a kind of quaint phrase, isn’t it? So, “How did you find your time with Reuel?”—who, incidentally, is thereafter known routinely as Jethro. Don’t be confused by that. It’s the same person. And so: “How was your time with Jethro?” “Well, I was very content to dwell with him. I found it quite amiable, actually.” Well, he should! Because think about it. Think of all that he received. Number one: He was given a home. Number two: He was given one of the daughters. He was given Zipporah as a wife. Number three: Zipporah gave him two sons. You look down there; you go, “No, it says only one son.” I know it says only one son. But in chapter 18, we discover that he was given two sons.[6] That’s why I pointed it out to you. So he’s receiving a lot.

Sitting down at the well, wondering where he was, wondering what he was, wondering how things were going to be, having operated on the basis of his own timetable, on the basis of his own methodology, and that having failed, and his confidence perhaps draining away from him a little bit, all that he’d done on account of his position, privileged as it was, is now not just as solid for him. If there is any sense in which he had been full of himself before, he was emptying out now. If he’d been conscious of his capacities and his abilities before, he’s not so sure of himself now.

You see, because it was here, at the start of a forty-year journey, that God was going to make this fellow the man he wanted him to be. It wasn’t going to be as a result of his princely palace background or his education. It wasn’t even going to be as a result of the fact that his mother was godly and taught him the truths of the covenant of God. But it was actually going to be in brokenness.

You see, none of us—none of us—are as good as the way in which God may choose to use us. I was at a conference a few weeks ago here in Cleveland, and one of the speakers was Crawford Loritts. He gave a wonderful address, and he had so many one-liners. But at one point he looks out on us as we’re sitting there, and he says, “You know, every one of us here is only a half-step away from stupid.” That’s what he said. I said, “Well, that’s a nice encouragement. Yeah.” But isn’t it true? You’re a half-step away from stupidity! Not even a full step! A half-step!

So what does God do to refine us? Well, he brings us to the place, to unfamiliar events, so that in the chapters of our lives we will become consciously aware of the fact that “I need God’s help in absolutely everything.”

Now, until that reality grips a man, grips a girl, grips a church, the man, the girl, the church are in great danger. I say to you with all the love in my heart: The greatest threat to us now is the idea that somehow or another, we are a very good church—that we are this, that we are that, that we have done the next thing, whatever it might be. Danger! All danger! And God may choose by whatever means he designs to close down that mentality in order that we might become what he desires for us to be using the methodology that he provides and according to the timetable that he designs. For that is exactly what is happening.

You see, the prince from the palace is now the shepherd in the desert. Well, this would seem to be upside-down. It’s certainly very different from the kind of twenty-first-century businessman’s outreach strategy, where you don’t have an outreach strategy for business personnel—men and women, whoever it is—and invite in some poor fool who hardly managed to get out through his [GED] or whatever else it is. You can’t say, “Our speaker is going to be Bill Reynolds, and he’s done nothing. You’ll love him.” No, you have to say, “No, he finished, and he graduated, and he did…” and so on and everything else. That’s the way we’ll do it.

Well, really? Really? Uh-uh. No, it wasn’t the fact that he was a prince in a palace that got him before the burning bush. It was that he spent forty years as a shepherd in the desert. And that you can see because you can read it for yourself. When he sat down by the well, maybe that question’s still ringing in his ears: “Who made you a judge and a ruler? Who do you think you are?” He’d say, “Well, I know who I am. I’m a failure. I’m a foreigner. I’m a fugitive. I don’t know what’s going to happen now.” But it’s here, here, that the faithfulness of God is then revealed—peculiar surroundings in the middle of failures and mistakes. God, in his gracious and as yet undisclosed providence, is at work, providing a future and providing a hope.

No one has done better with the poetry of this notion than, probably, Annie Johnson Flint. I think she might have been a teacher. She suffered from dreadful arthritis. She ended her life in her sixties in a wheelchair. But she wrote wonderfully of what it means to come to the end of yourself and discover the grace of God. Some of you may know this hymn. It goes like this:

When we have exhausted our store of endurance,
When our strength has failed ere the day is half done,
When we reach the end of our hoarded resources,
Our Father’s full giving [has hardly] begun.

His love has no limits; his grace has no measure;
His power [has] no boundary known unto men;
For out of [the] infinite riches in Jesus
He giveth and giveth and giveth again.[7]

Can you imagine someone meeting him and saying to him, “How long do you think you’re going to be here, Moses?” He said, “I don’t know. I suppose as long as it takes.” The guy says, “What if it takes forty years?” He says, “Oh, I don’t think it’ll take forty years.” God’s way is perfect.

Meanwhile, Back in Egypt…

Now, there are just a few verses left, and I should say something about them. My third heading was “Meanwhile, Back in Egypt…” “Meanwhile, Back in Egypt…” The sun shines in Egypt. The sunny days in Egypt are well-known. There’s very little rain in Egypt. And the sun shines in Egypt, but the people who are back—the Hebrews back in Egypt—are living under the cloudy darkness of the enslavement that they’re experiencing. Days of darkness have overshadowed their lives. They’re walking on a pathway of sorrow.

When you read the text, you realize that the change in leadership has made no difference at all. That’s verse 23: The pharaoh died; another pharaoh stepped up—business as usual. The passage of time, that we often say time brings healing—well, there was no healing for them here at all. And that’s why when you read the text, you discover that the sound that is coming out of the community is not a sound of triumphalism. It’s a sound of agony. It’s a sound of pain. It’s a sound of groaning, of moaning—of, I would guess, shrieking. Because they find themselves enslaved, trying among them—those who are thinking—to figure out how it can possibly be that the covenant promise of God to their forefather has apparently bypassed them. It’s a bit like Psalm 13, isn’t it? “How long, O Lord, will you forget me? Forever? How long must I have sorrow in my heart all the day?”[8] If you don’t know what it is to use that in your prayers, you’re living a charmed life. These people knew that: “How long will this be?”

Now, because we have the text, we know what they didn’t know. What do we know? Well, just look at it—and I won’t expound it. Number one: that God heard their groaning. Number two: that God remembered his covenant. Number three: that he saw his people. Number four: that he knew them.

Now, that word “know” there, you need to think of it in terms of the garden of Eden: “[And] Adam knew … his wife,”[9] and she produced children. So you say, “Well, God doesn’t know us in that sexual-intimacy way.” No, but the intimacy part of it is true: that it is not simply some kind of intellectual, cerebral dimension that is known to the greatness of God, but it is an indication of the fact that, as we sang, “You know my name, you know my every thought, you hear each tear that falls, and you hear me when I call.”[10]

Final observation: Some of you in the honors course in 1 and 2 Samuel—which is a very small group (I’m not part of it, actually, myself)—but you may recall that we made the wonderful discovery that David’s sin with Bathsheba, which is there recorded for us in a couple of chapters—when the Chronicler in 1 Chronicles 17 runs through the story of David’s life, he never mentions David’s sin with Bathsheba, not because he’s seeking to deny it, not because he’s seeking to cover it up, but because forgiveness means forgiveness; that repentance means repentance; that new beginnings and fresh starts are exactly that. Exactly that!

Now, I mention that here because—and I went looking for this, and I was so thrilled when I found it: that when you go to Hebrews chapter 11 and the writer of Hebrews speaks about Moses, he doesn’t mention the murder. “By faith…” “By faith…” “By faith he left Egypt, not being afraid of the anger of the king, for he endured as seeing him who is invisible. By faith he kept the Passover,” the sprinkling of the blood, “so that the Destroyer of the firstborn might not [be able to] touch them.”[11]

James Boice, who’s been in heaven for a long time now (how we thank God for his memory and for his influence!), he comments on this. And I’ll just quote him with a little bit of me in it as well. I can’t remember what’s his and what’s mine. The good part will be his.

He writes—speaking of the way the writer of Hebrews records these events—he writes, “This is the way of God with us. He does not remember our failures.” He quotes from Isaiah 38, where Hezekiah’s speaking, and he says to God, “You have cast all my sins behind your back.”[12] All our failures, all our sins have been forgiven because of the work of Jesus. God knows us. He’s not surprised that there is failure in us. Those of us who talk about “Oh, I can’t believe I did that”—that’s just because you’ve got a fat idea of how good you are. I’m ashamed to say, I can believe I did that. I can believe I said that. I can believe I thought that. But God, when we confess our sins, holds no record of our wrongs—all of my sins, all of my mistakes, all of my failures—so that “when Satan tempts me to despair and tells me of the guilt within,”[13] I say, “Oh, no, Satan, I’m a much better person than that. I really am a very good…” No, you know what we say. And we’ll say it in just a minute, because it gives us the perfect segue. As Moses celebrated the Passover, so we celebrate that to which the Passover points—namely, the work of Jesus on behalf of sinners.

A brief prayer, and then we’ll sing, and then we’ll share:

Lord, our God, we pray that your Word will dwell in us, that all that is of yourself and is helpful may be retained, and anything that is unclear or unhelpful may be forgotten. Thank you that you forgive and you choose to forget—that an omniscient God puts our sins behind his back. What an amazing thought! So we pray that we might, as it were, cozy up to the Lord Jesus, that we might find our refuge in him, that we might rest entirely on what he has done on our behalf. And we pray that as we break bread together and as we sing these closing songs, that this might reinforce these truths and prepare us for the week that lies ahead. And we ask it in Christ’s name. Amen.

[1] Psalm 119:89 (ESV).

[2] Stuart Townend and Keith Getty, “Speak, O Lord” (2005).

[3] John Lennon and Paul McCartney, “In My Life” (1965).

[4] Psalm 121:2 (ESV).

[5] Psalm 125:2 (KJV).

[6] See Exodus 18:3.

[7] Annie Johnson Flint, “He Giveth More Grace.”

[8] Psalm 13:1–2 (paraphrased).

[9] Genesis 4:1 (ESV).

[10] Tommy Walker, “He Knows My Name” (2001). Lyrics lightly altered.

[11] Hebrews 11:27–28 (ESV).

[12] Isaiah 38:17 (ESV).

[13] Charitie Lees Bancroft, “Before the Throne of God Above” (1863).