As Moses embarks on his journey with God something very strange happens. The text says that God was about to kill him. Moses’ wife, Zipporah, somehow realises this and at once cuts off her son’s foreskin and touches Moses’ feet with it. What is pictured here, in brief, is what happens later in Egypt, the very thing that God has just told Moses would happen. God would visit Egypt in judgement and all firstborn males would die. This same judgement is seen as threatening Moses here and deservedly so. The only thing that appears to stop the judgement is circumcision; not the rite itself but what it represents. The rite of circumcision, and later of the sacrificial lambs, was a symbol of what truly takes sin away, that is, the death of Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit. Moses needed to know that the only reason his family was different to the Egyptians who would suffer God’s judgement was the provision that God made for expiating their guilt. It is the same with you and me. Christians are not inherently different to other people. We are just as deserving of judgement. The only thing that sets us apart is the provision that God has made for the expiation of our guilt. Jesus Christ absorbed our guilt in his own sacrificial death and so he is our ‘bridegroom of blood’ as it says here in Exodus 4:25. You may feel judgement threaten you as you realise your own failings but you must always know that it cannot reach you because you are shielded by Christ.
Thank God for the grace and mercy he has given to you.
Read Exodus 4:24-31
