In our passage Moses meets his brother Aaron in the wilderness. They head to Egypt to meet with the elders of Israel to pronounce the revelation of God with respect to delivering Israel out of bondage. Moses has a weighty calling, and he needs help from God to be able to fulfill that calling. Christians are called by God to be faithful and fruitful. It is a narrow path our Lord says we must walk. We will look at helps we need to stay faithful the Lord gives us from this passage.
The first we see is Christian fellowship. When God told Moses he was sending him to Egypt to be his spokesman, Moses has several reservations. One was that he was not eloquent. He saw deficiencies in his capabilities. He felt alone. So God promised Aaron as a helper and that Aaron would rejoice to see Moses. We see the fulfilment of that promise in our text. God sends Aaron and he meets Moses at the mountain of God warmly.
Aaron is a great help and enc
ouragement to Moses when Moses really needs it. Moses also will be a necessary help to Aaron when Aaron needs it. We need Christian fellowship, particularly a fellow pilgrim in the faith who helps us through difficulties. We need help not only for physical infirmities and hardships, but spiritual trials. Someone we can count on to pray for our souls and point us to serving the Lord in whatever circumstances we are in.
In John Bunyan’s classic work, Pilgrim’s Progress, we see the Christian pilgrim (named Christian) receive help from fellow pilgrims on the way to the celestial city. If you have never read this book, let me commend it to you. In one instance, Christian is afraid of death which is symbolized by a river. His head threatens to go under, but his companion Hopeful struggles to hold his head above the water which is symbolic of Christian holding on to his faith.
Hopeful perseveres and holds up Christian until he can see the light of the Lord and embrace anew the promises of Christ to him. We need someone to labor on our behalf in prayer, to encourage (or rebuke) when our head spiritually speaking is sinking. We also need the accountability when we are allured by sin or the world. God provides this in Christian fellowship but it is our obligation to cultivate it.
Another help God gives us his word; his whole counsel. In verse 28 we read that Moses told Aaron all the words of the Lord he had been given. In verse 30 we see similar language; when Moses and Aaron met with the Israelite elders, Aaron spoke all the words of the Lord he had been given by Moses. “All” the words is the important thing to note. We need to listen carefully to “all” God has given us in his word.
In Acts 20 when the apostle Paul meets with the elders at Ephesus for his farewell words to them he says: “I testify to you this day that I am innocent of the blood of you all, for I did not shrink from declaring to you the whole counsel of God.” Paul implies that the whole counsel of God was needed for their spiritual health and safety. If they didn’t pay heed to it, they had no one but themselves to blame for Paul had not neglected any part of God’s word.
We see in our passage the Israelites responding favorably to the words of the Lord. They worshipped the Lord in response. Yet we know this will not last. They will rebel against the Lord. Why? The answer is because things will get very difficult. It was not what they expected or wanted. They rejoiced in the words of deliverance but ignored the words of difficulty along the path.
In telling them “all” the words of the Lord, Aaron would have included the words that said Pharaoh is going to have a hard heart. God had said it would take a powerful hand to force Pharaoh to let Israel go, meaning this would be a slow and thorny process. The Israelites should have expected great difficulty. They did not. They did not listen to all God’s word.
We need to hear the Lord when he tells us we will go through trials, and that there is a judgment to come. If he says it, he means it. He also tells us we must combine what we hear with faith, something most of the Israelites will fail to do as we go through Exodus.
The “helps” God gives to us are a means to an end. Christian fellowship and God’s word (the whole counsel) are mandated means unto faithfulness. Be careful of neglecting them.
