In this lesson we will focus on Moses.
In Genesis we do not see a clear picture of redemption. With Abraham we see God’s calling, but there is no account of Abraham’s redemption. The picture we see in all of Isaac’s experience is a picture of the enjoyment of the rich inheritance rather than a picture of God’s redemption. With Jacob, even though he was eventually transformed into an Israel, a prince of God, there is also no record regarding his experience of redemption. In the book of Exodus, however, we can see in Moses a clear and full picture concerning God’s redemption.
In the book of Genesis neither do we see God’s glory manifested among His people in a substantial way. However, in chapter forty of Exodus, when Moses erected the tabernacle, not only did the glory of God come down upon it, but it also filled it. Thus, in Moses we also see the expression of God’s glory.
Moses was a vessel prepared by God for redemption. Pharaoh held the children of Israel in slavery and also sought to kill all the baby boys born to the Hebrew women (Exo. 1:11, 13-14, 16). God, however, heard His people’s cry and came down to deliver them out of the hands of the Egyptians (Exo. 3:7-8). Hence, He prepared Moses to be a savior for the children of Israel.
After Moses’ mother gave birth to Moses, she hid him for three months. When she could no longer hide him, she put him in an ark of papyrus and laid it among the reeds by the bank of the Nile, and Pharaoh’s daughter took him up and nurtured him as her own son. In the royal palace Moses was trained in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, and he was powerful in his words and deeds. But when he was forty years old, it came into his heart to visit his brothers, the sons of Israel. Seeing one of them being oppressed by an Egyptian, he slew the Egyptian, and hid him in the sand (Exo. 2:12). Now he supposed that his brothers would understand that God through his hand would give salvation to them; but they did not understand. Thus, he was rejected by them (Acts 7:25-28). Later, he fled and dwelt in the land of Midian, where he begot two sons.
After forty years, God appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount Sinai in a flame of fire out of a thorn bush and appointed him a leader and a savior to deliver the children of Israel out of the tyranny of Egypt and lead them out of the land of Egypt, the land of bondage, into the land of Canaan, a land flowing with milk and honey. Moses performed wonders and miracles in the Red Sea and in the wilderness for forty years to lead God’s people out. Hence, in Moses we see a complete picture of God’s redemption, including the Passover, the exodus from Egypt, and the crossing of the Red Sea.
In order to deliver His people out of the land of Egypt, the land of bondage, God sent ten plagues through Moses to punish the Egyptians. After nine plagues, however, the Egyptians were still hardened in their hearts and would not let them go. Hence, God sent the last plague, the slaying of all the firstborn, to demonstrate His power and to accomplish His way of salvation.
God commanded the children of Israel, saying, “All the firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die” (Exo. 11:5), but for Israel God established a way of salvation. God commanded the children of Israel to take to them a lamb without blemish for every household. They were to kill the lamb on the fourteenth day of the first month and strike its blood on the side posts and the upper doorposts of every house, and then at midnight God would pass through the land and go in to smite the firstborn of those whose doors were not sprinkled with the blood. Therefore, on the fourteenth day of the first month at midnight Jehovah smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast. Only the houses of the children of Israel were passed over, because of the blood of the Passover lamb that was sprinkled on the side posts and upper doorposts of their houses. Also, that night all the children of Israel had their loins girded, had shoes on their feet, and had a staff in their hand (Exo. 12:11), and they stayed in their houses to eat the flesh of the lamb. The Passover portrayed in Exodus 12 is a clear, adequate, and even all-inclusive type of the redemption of Christ.