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Special Lectures
| Lecture 28 : [Moses and Jesus 2] The First National Course to Restore Canaan (Moses) | |
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| Date created : 2015-03-18/ Views : 1114 | |
Lecture 28: Moses and Jesus in the Providence of Restoration: Part 2
The First National Course to Restore Canaan (Moses)
By the lessons of principle in the Bible, we are learning how to live on the foundation of Principle, seeing God’s time periods, being straight as a staff, cooperating as mother and son, maintaining our physical purity, and so forth. We can see a lot of variability and flexibility—all the way from Jacob’s bread and soup, to God’s miracle of quail and manna appearing in the desert, to Jesus’ own flesh and blood. Study of the course of Moses will illustrate more how God’s unchanging principles fit with changing situations—like ours.
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As we know, Jacob and his descendants were slaves in Egypt because Abraham failed in his symbolic offering. How did they get there? Joseph, the 11th son of Jacob, received favoritism from his father and so his older brothers were jealous. They sold him as a slave to Egyptian merchants when he was 17, but when he was 30, the Pharaoh appointed him Prime Minister of Egypt based upon his interpretation of Pharaoh’s dream. Joseph had predicted, based on the dream, that there would be 7 years of abundance followed by 7 years of famine. As Prime Minister, Joseph prepared for the years of famine by building massive ware houses throughout the land and storing surplus crops during the years of abundance.
Tribes near Egypt faced difficulties from the great famine because they didn’t prepare for it. This included Jacob and his children living in Canaan. They went to buy grain in Egypt, and their reunion with Joseph, whom Jacob thought was dead, is another great foundation of substance.
As a result, Jacob’s family of 70 people immigrated to Egypt and was allowed to live in Goshen located in the upper Nile, thanks to Joseph’s generosity. That was when Jacob was 130 years old and Joseph was 39 years old, around 1870 BC.
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At the outset, they farmed and multiplied their numbers. However, as the 18th dynasty of Egypt emerged, Pharaohs who had no relation with Joseph came into power. They feared the expansion of the Hebrews, and forced them into slavery. It grew worse and worse, until when Moses was born, and the Pharaoh ordered midwives to kill male Hebrew babies when they were born. He later ordered the death of all infant boys by drowning, letting only the infant girls live. (Exod 1:22)
As one of the descendants of Levi, one of the sons of Jacob, Moses was born as son of Amran. Amram’s wife, Moses’ mother, was Jochebed. Before Moses was born, there were his older sister, Miriam, and his 3-years-older brother, Aaron. Jochebed raised Moses secretly for 3 months, but she couldn’t keep his existence a secret forever. Therefore, she made a little boat, laid Moses in it, and put it in a field of reeds on the Nile near where the daughter of the Pharaoh bathed.
At that time, the Nile River was a holy place to the Egyptian people. The purifying ceremony by bathing in the Nile River was conducted with the faith that it will bring longevity and good health. It had places for women only to bathe. There was a special place for princesses and women from the palace. Jochebed put the reed box, which Moses was in, into this place. She also had Miriam watch the situation. At that time, the daughter of the pharaoh and her handmaidens went to that place to bathe and happened to hear the crying of the baby Moses. Therefore, Moses was named from the Egyptian word for ‘the person who was pulled from the water’. Moses turned into the one who led the Israelites out of Egypt, and in Hebrew ‘Moses’ means the person who leads people across the water, a liberator and savior.
When the princess was flustered with a crying baby in her arms, Miriam appeared to tell her, “Should I call on a nanny among Hebrew women and make her feed this boy for you, your highness?” The princess agreed. Miriam brought his biological mother to her and introduced her as his nanny. “Bring this boy and feed him for me. I will pay for you (Exod 2:9)” said the princess. For that reason, Jochebed brought and raised him until he was grown enough, while being paid, and brought him back to the princess in the palace. Moses became an adopted son of the princess and lived in the palace. With the help and effort from his wise mother and clever older sister, Moses could save his own life and receive education from the care of his natural mother working as his nanny.
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Thus, Moses restored through indemnity the foundation of faith on the condition of 40 years in the palace maintaining his allegiance to the God of his father, and fulfilled a dispensation of forty for the separation of Satan. By Moses’ time, the Age when symbolic offerings were the objects for the condition to lay the foundation of faith, was coming to a close. The new era opened, the Age when people were able to receive God’s Word directly. There was no longer any need for a symbolic offering to lay the foundation of faith. Therefore, Moses could restore the foundation of faith upon the completion of the dispensation of forty for the separation of Satan by upholding God’s Word.
As he laid the foundation of faith, he secured the position of the younger brother, Abel, in relation to the older brother, the Israelites. If they—as an entire nation—had obeyed Moses in faith, inherited God’s Will from Moses and multiplied goodness, they would have fulfilled the NATIONAL indemnity condition to remove the fallen nature, and laid the NATIONAL foundation of substance to receive the Messiah.
But how were they to recognize that this prince of Egypt was their younger brother and central figure? God set up a situation to give them a sign. Moses came upon an Egyptian slave-driver mistreating one of his brethren. Immediately he killed the Egyptian and buried him in the sand. (Exod 2:12) God allowed Moses to kill the Egyptian, representing the cruel despotism, to show the Israelites that Moses was their leader and liberator. At that moment, the Israelites getting behind Moses would determine if they could successfully begin the course of liberation and return to the Promised Land. If the Israelites had followed Moses, God would have brought them directly into the land of Canaan in 21 days. It’s not really a long journey.
Unfortunately, the Israelites did not rally behind Moses or appreciate what he had done for them. The next day, Moses reprimanded two Israelites for arguing with each other, and they retorted, “What then? Are you going to kill us, too?” It means that they didn’t trust Moses, and just considered him a murderer. Moses knew that if the Pharaoh heard of his deed saving the slave, he would execute him. So Moses had no choice but to flee into the Midian wilderness. Thus, the national foundation of substance for Messiah could not continue, and God prolonged His providence to a second stage. In that stage, as we shall see, God feared that the unpredictable Israelites might turn faithless and return to Egypt without completing their journey. Therefore, God led the people across the Red Sea, a point of no return, and then on a long course through the wilderness.
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We see that we can turn around really bad situations – like Joseph being sold into slavery, or the government trying to kill your baby body – by faith in God, and maintaining an active spirit with no complaint, but serving others.
So we see that the same principles take a different shape when on a national course, compared to the family course. And today we are on a world-level course, so God’s path to happiness is very challenging. But we will see that Moses and Jesus made a foundation for God to work through the second coming in this age, and we have tremendous hope.
We’ll learn more about this in the next session. Thanks for listening.
