“When Forty Years Had Passed”

• The following message by Aleister Beg is made available by Truth for Life. For more information, visit us online at truthforlife.org. And I invite you to turn with me to the book of Exodus and to chapter 3. And if you care to, you could also put uh your finger into Acts chapter 7 where in Steven’s sermon before his martyrdom, he includes a part of the story of Moses which uh begins in chapter 7 around uh verse 17.
• Anyway, uh Exodus chapter 3 and verse one. Now Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian. And he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. And the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush.
• He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. And Moses said, “I will turn aside to see this great sight. Why the bush is not burned?” When the Lord saw that he turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush. Moses, Moses. And he said, “Here I am.” Then he said, “Do not come near. Take your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you’re standing is holy ground.
• ” And he said, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God. Then the Lord said, “I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their task masters. I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and a broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.
• And now, behold, the cry of the people of Israel has come to me, and I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppressed them. Come, I will send you to Pharaoh, that you may bring my people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.
• But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?” He said, “But I will be with you, and this shall be the sign for you that I have sent you when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.” And um in Acts 7 um at this point in the story uh Stephen records that now when 40 years had passed an angel appeared to him in the wilderness of Mount Si in a flame of a fire in a bush. Father what we know not teach us.
• What we have not give us. what we are not makers for Jesus’ sake. Amen. Well, uh during the week, um I said to myself, there’s a kind of France Schubert element to what is going on with me at the moment. And um most of you say I I have the foggiest idea what you mean.
• Those of you who are from the sort of Cleveland orchestra realm will immediately know because Schubert, for all the things he’s famous for or remembered for, is remembered for his unfinished symphony. He um wrote two of the movements and he didn’t die, but he just didn’t write movement three and movement four. And so I said to myself, so there is some precedent for this.