Today’s passage is Exodus 4:18-31. Moses receives permission from his father in law to go on his mission to Egypt. God tells him to tell Pharaoh that unless he lets the Israelites go, he will kill Pharaoh’s first born son, but God will harden his heart. On the way, God tries to kill him but his wife circumcises their son so God leaves him alone. Directed by God, Aaron meets Moses and Moses tells him what to say to Pharaoh and what signs to make. Moses and Aaron meet the elders in Egypt and they worship the Lord after being convinced that he cares for them.
Why does God try to kill Moses?
How does circumcision save him?
“Sought to kill him”(24).
In an email, my daughter’s mother#8212;Mallory#8212;wanted to know if I had told my daughter that she would go to hell unless she accepted Jesus as her savior, and she hoped that I had not said it.
Her exact words were, “Please tell me you didn’t …” I was surprised at the demand not to evangelize my daughter.
But deep down I wasn’t surprised because I’d been expecting it for years.
Mallory is a secular Jew who doesn’t believe in God but sees her Jewishness as a racial identity.
She’s taught our daughter the same attitude. She naturally doesn’t want our daughter believing in Jesus Christ because it would be a huge threat to her worldly existence.
She would feel alienated from her daughter.
When I read her email, I felt like someone was trying to kill me.
I felt like I needed to defend myself and explain what had gone and what the context was so she would understand and be calmed.
At the same time I felt a twinge of anger because she didn’t want the truth given to our daughter, who will go to hell if she doesn’t accept Jesus as her savior.
But that’s what my daughter wrote to her.
When I read Mallory’s email, I also felt a little angry at my daughter for reducing a long conversation about God’s love and my wanting to meet her in heaven to going to hell unless Jesus saved her.
But that’s what my daughter heard loudest and it is the truth and a message that has brought sinners to the Lord for thousands of years.
I haven’t responded to Mallory’s email yet because I knew I needed to wait and pray for the right response, for God’s guidance.
I needed help because I felt like I was being attacked.
My spirit like someone was trying to kill me, just like Moses.
My wife’s QT showed her to be an Aaron who was to help me.
So we had a talk about how I needed to respond to Mallory, how I could evangelize her too.
The obvious and tested way is not to make an argument or a rationalization for what I’d done, but to give my testimony on how had Jesus healed my sins through my repentance.
Application: to write my testimony to my daughter’s mother
Lord, let me not die to other’s attacks on me but to circumcise my heart and serve you with joy.
