A Bridegroom of Blood
Posted By Joe on March 22, 2010
I don't like to casually read the Bible. I don't like skimming over passages for many reasons. One of them is that you run the risk of missing something really crucial; a lesson that perhaps God needs to teach you or remind you.
One these jumped out at me in Exodus. I was surprised that I didn't underline this or note it before.
In chapter 4, we read about God's calling of Moses, his initial objections, and then his response to the call. There are a few verses tucked in there that you may miss if you are not reading carefully. I was guilty of this before and they hit me today.
Right after God tells Moses what He wants Moses to say to Pharaoh, we read:
Now it came about at the lodging place on the way that the Lord met him and sought to put him to death. --Exodus 4:24.
What! Wait a second . . . I just thought that God told Moses what He wanted him to say to Pharaoh. Now He wants to kill him? What made God so angry that He wants to kill him now?
Then Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son's foreskin and threw it at Moses' feet, and she said, "You are indeed a bridegroom of blood to me." So He let him alone. --Exodus 4:25-26.
Still confused?
Apparently, Moses had not circumcised his son, in violation of God's commandment.
"But an uncircumcised male who is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, that person shall be cut off from his people; he has broken My covenant." --Genesis 17:14.
What you need to understand is that God cannot use Moses to free His people if Moses is in violation of God's direct commandment. God could have found someone else to do the job. But Zipporah--Moses' wife--stepped into the role that Moses should have been in and circumcised their son in order to spare Moses' life!
What's the lesson? God says what He means, and He means what He says. If God commands you to do something then you do it. There is no other path.
Moses was God's chosen deliverer for Israel and yet He was willing to take Moses' life from him because at that moment, Moses was in violation of God's commandment. In other words, direct disobedience to God's law is a serious matter. You do not refuse to do what God tells you to do in His Word.
This passage was a wake-up call to me. What about you?
May He Increase!
About the author
I believe this Bible passage only proves that the Bible is irrelevant and at it's worst it is a sadistic book that encourages people to use violence against other people. The quicker humanity abandons the Bible or 4,000 year old doncepts such as God, the quicker there will be peace on Earth.
Amen.
Alejandro,
I appreciate you taking the time to stop by and post a comment.
But I'm not understanding how you can say that the passage in Exodus 4 "proves that the Bible is irrelevant." Are you saying that this single passage makes the entire Bible irrelevant? How so?
There is violence in the BIble. No doubt about that. But the violence is always caused by the sin of mankind. Sin entered into the world by the poor choices of Adam and Eve through the deception of Satan. If you want to know the "who" being the violence you can look no further than Satan and his demons.
I must take exception to your argument that if "humanity abandons the Bible or 4,000 year old [concepts] such as God, the quicker there will be peace on Earth." It's an illogical argument and in fact, it's demonic. That's exactly what Satan would have you believe. Satan would love nothing better than for people to abandon faith in God and His Word and to believe his lies and deceptions that we'd all be better without God.
Alejandro, you are ready to say that the Bible is irrelevant and that it "encourages people to use violence against other people." I ask you to consider what Jesus said in Luke:
And:
Those are just two examples of God encouraging us to love one another and that Jesus is our source of everything.
Again, thanks for taking the time to post a comment. I encourage you to keep your heart open to what God wants to say to you. Don't turn away from Him, Alejandro. I was there not so long ago. I didn't want to have anything to do with God. I used to think that He didn't exist, or if He did, you couldn't prove it. I believed the lie! It was an empty life and one that now, looking back, I regret. Don't make the same mistake I did.
Joe.