INTRODUCTION
• The hardest thing about ministry is relationships.
• Relating to those above us, beside us and below us is crucial for ministry success.
• There is no ministry outside of relationship.
• This encompasses all the key relationships in Moses’ life: Moses/Jethro, Moses/Zipporah, Moses/Aaron, Moses and elders.
• Moses did well with those above him. God and Jethro, his boss, priest and father-in-law.
But he was a woeful failure with those in his trust – leadership.
Exodus 4:19-20, 19”Now the Lord said to Moses in Midian, ‘Go back to Egypt, for all the men who were seeking your life are dead.’ 20So Moses took his wife and his sons and mounted them on a donkey, and returned to the land of Egypt. Moses also took the staff of God in his hand.”
• This ought to be a time of excitement and release, instead it is a time of disobedience danger and judgment for Moses.
• Moses has been empowered to do supernatural wonders, with his staff.
• God had opened a realm of authority, spiritual authority and entrusted Moses with great power, but Moses had issues.
• We run headlong into one of the most awkward Scriptures in all of the Bible.
• Ever been around a couple who has a fight? You wish you could disappear? That is Moses and Zipporah.
I. A SAD REALITY
• A sad reality is so many of us disqualify ourselves from destiny and ministry due to relationships that are out of order.
• Our homes, wow great place of humility.
• Come to church and move in healing and power and get in the car and have a fight on the way home.
• We all struggle with personal issues/relationships.
• Vs.24-25 - Glimpse of Moses’ issues.
• This is like being in a room with a couple arguing. The story is angry, full of history and explosive.
• Moses’ personal life is out of order, that is a nice way to say it’s a mess!
vs. 24-26 NLT, 24”On the way to Egypt, at a place where Moses and his family had stopped for the night, the Lord confronted him and was about to kill him. 25But Moses’ wife, Zipporah, took a flint knife and circumcised her son. She touched his feet with the foreskin and said, ‘Now you are a bridegroom of blood to me.’ 26(When she said ‘a bridegroom of blood,’ she was referring to the circumcision.) After that, the Lord left him alone.”
• There is difficulty all over these verses, their brevity, the reality that God worked 40 years with Moses and now he would take him out?
• It is important to say Moses wrote the words!
• God comes to Moses with judgment, but clearly if Moses doesn’t get his home together he has no ministry.
• Now let’s understand the context. Moses is told to go to Pharaoh and make a declaration.
Vs.22-23, “Tell Pharaoh Israel is my son…to let my son go that he may serve me or I will take your son your firstborn.”
• So we are dealing with sons here.
• God’s sons, Pharaoh’s sons and Moses’ sons.
• Exodus 18:2 - We are told he had two sons.
• He clearly saw he couldn’t confront Pharaoh about his son when he hadn’t taken care of his own son.
• The key to the story lies with Zipporah and her statements.
Vs. 25-26, “Now you are a bridegroom of blood to me.” 26(When she said “a bridegroom of blood,” she was referring to the circumcision.)
• What you have here is a long term marital battle of wills, Zipporah’s and Moses’.
• Moses was a Hebrew, thus he would have been circumcised the 8th day… according to word.
• This was God’s mark on His people. Many of us say, “Wow what is that about?”
• Good question. It is God putting His mark on a man’s identity. When you were born what was the first thing they used to say?
• They looked at your genitals and depending on what they saw they said,”It’s a boy” or “it’s a girl.”
• This was the beginning point of your identity and God said mark that place.
II. A MARRIAGE’S WEAKNESS
• This wasn’t new stuff but it was not going to go under the carpet any longer. It was disqualifying.
• Moses had a call and a marriage, they are tied together.
• Zipporah is steaming mad here. She takes a knife and circumcises her boys and throws the foreskin at Moses. Fights where people throw things are usually indicators that people are blowing up everywhere.
• What is she so mad about? She is not a Hebrew. Moses must have spoken to her about circumcision and his people at some point and gotten a rude reception.
• As in “don’t ever think about doing that to my son” ever!
• And Moses failed to lead in his home. He knew what was right and didn’t do it.
• And it almost cost him both his life and his ministry.
• He had the mark of God on his body and failed to impart it to his son.
• After he met with God it seems that he would have run home and taken care of clarifying his sons’ identity as sons of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
• The reason had to do with Zipporah’s attitude towards this issue. That is clear.
• The covenant sign is we circumcise our boys. She asks what is that? He tells her and she answers no way. What kind of God do you serve that would cut a baby.
• You know we often do this with our children today. We call it an exercise of love, but it is often compromise.
• We can’t do this or that because of the kids.
• Certainly there are times you can’t but there are times we put the kids above God. Honor them and dishonor Him.
• Moses took the position of least resistance, rather than explaining God’s heart on this matter to her.
• Some of you men are intimated by your wives spiritual maturity or seemingly maturity.
• But that is no reason to pass on your role to lead your family spiritually.
• You have got to talk about spiritual matters in your home when the opportunity arises.
III. ORDERING GOD’S WAY
• Clearly here Zipporah had won this battle and gotten her way.
• But now confronted by God, she is either going to lose her husband or her way.
• She chose not to gracefully to obey.
• Moses was the one who should have circumcised his boys but he didn’t.
• Why not? Maybe he was dying. Ill and her act saved his life we don’t know.
• She shows us that she is a driver. She sees the crisis and just does it.
• But you have a woman here who obviously had run her house much of the time when her husband would go off for three months at a time with the sheep.
• It was his job but what did he do when he got home. I will tell you what I often did…
• Play ball or kick back.
• Moses clearly forfeited his place and this irritated woman blows her cork.
CLOSE
• God said there must be order here in your home.
• Before you proceed…once this happens.
• Exodus 18:1-5 - Zipporah and the boys go back to Jethro and his boys never saw their father as the deliverer.
• There has to be a process in a home that acknowledges that we are a team and we are called to do ministry.
• “In all your ways acknowledge Him and then He will direct your paths.” Proverbs 3:6
