Ex. 18:1-12
NOW WE have a family scene out in the desert. It is God Himself 1010 has formed the family, and where the Lord Jesus is owned as saviour and Lord in the home, what happy times are enjoyed there. Today Satan is hard at work seeking Ito undermine and break up the family circle, for he knows that when family life has disappeared from the home, when there are no regular gatherings for prayer and reading the Word of God, when the home is broken, it will lead to the ruin of society and the downfall of the nation. As the days grow darker and much of what God has instituted for man’s blessing is disappearing from our generation, the Christian can take comfort in knowing that God is gathering His family out from the nations of this doomed world. Soon He shall call His redeemed children away from earth to heaven, to dwell with Christ in the Father’s house forever.
Perhaps you remember that Moses and his wife, Zipporah, had a little son born to them while he was a stranger in the land of Midian. He called him Gershom, “for he said, I have been an alien in a strange land.” Then God gave them another little son, and they called him Eliezer; “for the God of my father, said he, was mine help, and delivered me from the sword of Pharaoh.” The names of these two boys are significant. Gershom tells of Israel’s strangership now while they are away from their own land, but Eliezer speaks of God’s deliverance in power from the world and all their enemies in a coming day.
But Moses had sent the little boys and their mother back to her father, Jethro, in Midian, while the terrible judgments were falling on the land of Egypt, and here in Zipporah, the Gentile wife of Moses, we have a picture of the Church who will be removed from earth to heaven dung the time when the awful judgments of God will be falling upon this world in the great tribulation. Then after the tribulation, the Church will return with Christ when He comes back to reign. Jethro had heard of all that God had done for Moses, and how he had brought his people out of Egypt, “and Jethro... came with his sons and his wife unto Moses into the wilderness, where he encamped at the mount of God.”
“And Moses told his father-in-law all that the LORD had done unto Pharaoh and to the Egyptians for Israel’s sake, and all the travail that had come upon them by the way, and how the LORD delivered them.... And Jethro rejoiced for all the goodness which the LORD had done to Israel... and Jethro said, Blessed be the LORD, who hath delivered you out of the hand of the Egyptians, and out of the hand of Pharaoh.... Now I know that the LORD is greater than all gods: for in the thing wherein they dealt proudly He was above them.”
Here we have a beautiful picture of the future millennial kingdom and the glorious reign of Christ. Moses is a type of Christ as King, and, as mentioned, Zipporah, the Church, His bride. Next, we have the tribes of Israel, all in their proper place and order. Then we have the Gentile as seen by Jethro’s blessing and confessing Jehovah’s name, for when Jethro heard the wonderful works of God concerning the Israelites, he praised God and rejoiced greatly. The Gentiles in that day will rejoice for all the goodness the Lord will have done to Israel in delivering them from the hands of all their enemies from first to last. Like Jethro, they will come up to see the glory of the Lord at Jerusalem and will rejoice before Him. (2 Chron. 9:1-12; Rev. 21:24.)
“And Jethro... took a burnt offering and sacrifices for God: and Aaron came, and all the elders of Israel, to eat bread with Moses’ father-in-law before God.” It is a wonderful picture of the joy and gladness and blessing that shall flow out when Christ shall be King over the earth. The knowledge of these things, dear young Christian, should make us, who are the Lord’s, to rejoice now in thoughts of our saviour’s exaltation and glorious reign, He will set all things right in this, world then. Now righteousness suffers, but in that day righteousness shall reign.
ML-12/07/1969