Sugar Land Bible Church

Dr. Andy Woods: All right, good morning everybody. As the children are being dismissed for their junior church program, let's take our Bibles and open them to Exodus chapter 6 and verse 14. Hoping my screen will come on at some point. There we go. You have not because you ask not, right?

Lord willing, looking at verses 14 through 27 this morning from the book of Exodus chapter 6, continuing our verse-by-verse teaching through the book of Exodus. The title of our message this morning is "A Call to Remember." God through Moses in the first major section of the book of Exodus is redeeming a nation. A nation that has been in subjection to slavery for 400 years.

Being in slavery that long, it would be so easy to forget who you are as God's special people. God now is doing a work to remove His nation from bondage. God selects a man named Moses for the job and He prepares Moses for the job. About the age when most people are retiring or thinking of retiring, this would be the age 80 to age 120, those actually became the most productive years of Moses' entire life.

This is a man that will, under God's power, bring the nation of Israel out of Egyptian bondage and he will write five books, the first five books of the Bible that we call Torah or Pentateuch. Moses steps out into his calling in chapter 5 and basically everything that can go wrong from a human perspective goes wrong. He confronts Pharaoh and says, "Let my people go" and Pharaoh, loose translation, says, "Forget it." Spanish translation, "No way, José." Moses at that point, as you can imagine, becomes very discouraged.

What's happening in chapter 6 is God is reassuring Moses. One of the ways He reassures him is what we're moving into here, verses 14 through 27. He encourages him by reminding him of his heritage as a Levite. It's here, verses 14 through 27, that we get a section of scripture that most of us just read over very quickly. It's a genealogy. Who wants to study a genealogy? Most people wouldn't go to church saying, "Yay, we're going to study a genealogy in church today." But we get that privilege, don't we?

It's interesting that God frequently calls His people to remember who they are in the Bible. When the nation would be on the precipice there, on the far right-hand side on the plains of Moab, poised to enter the promised land under Joshua, God in the book of Deuteronomy calls the nation to remember. In Deuteronomy 8:2, He says, "You shall remember all the way in which the Lord your God has led you in the wilderness these 40 years, that He might humble you, testing you, to know what is in your heart, whether you will keep His commandments or not."

Remember what God has done. Remember how far He's taken you. Remember how He brought you out of Egyptian bondage and provided for you in the Sinai Peninsula for 40 years. Then you go to the New Testament and you run into this church named Ephesus in the book of Revelation, Revelation 2:1-7. This is a church that's interesting, it had lost its first love. What is that church called to do? It's called to remember.

Revelation 2:5 says, "Therefore remember from where you have fallen, and repent and do the things you did at first, or else I am coming to you and remove your lampstand out of its place unless you repent." Over and over again, remember who you are. Remember your God.

Second Peter 1:9 says, "For whoever lacks these qualities is so nearsighted that he is blind, having forgotten that he was cleansed from his former sins." It's very easy for us as God's people to forget who we are, to forget our identity, to forget what God has called us to, to forget what He's given us. You see this perpetual exhortation in scripture for remembrance. That's what this genealogy is doing here.

It comes at a time when Moses is at one of his lowest points and God says, "Remember who you are." In this case, Moses, you're a Levite. You have Levi genes. We might have called the sermon "Levi Genes." I just thought of that, by the way. Scratch that sermon title, let's put "The Levi Genes" in there. You've got Levi genes. In other words, you're part of something unique. You're part of something special. You're part of a special tribe that you didn't originate, but it's called in the Bible to serve God in a special way. All the priests would come from this tribe and Moses, you stand in that heritage. Remember who you are.

So here is what this genealogy looks like. It starts with Reuben and goes all the way through God's purpose in giving this genealogy, verse 27. The first couple of names, Reuben and Simeon and then Levi, he passes over very quickly because he wants to get to Levi and he doesn't even mention the rest of the tribes. There's 12 total because he wants to show Moses his heritage. Notice verse 14. It says, "These are the heads of their father's households, the sons of Reuben, Israel's firstborn." Ed Jones did such a nice job reading those earlier, I'll just leave that to your remembrance as I'll do for a few of these names.

Now who is Reuben? Reuben is the firstborn of Jacob. Here are Jacob and his wives, plural, Leah and Rachel. The Bible isn't saying, "Hey, that's a great thing, go commit polygamy." This is just how it worked out in Jacob's life and then there was Zilpah and there was Bilhah, maidservants. Through Jacob and these four women came a group that we call Jacob's dozen, Jacob's sons. This became the foundation of the 12 tribes or the foundation of the nation of Israel. This is how Israel started. Israel started because God gave to Abraham the patriarch a covenant in Genesis 15.

Israel is the only nation in the history of mankind that didn't make a covenant with God per se, but has a covenant coming from God to them. Those promises were passed down to Isaac and then Jacob and through Jacob is going to come these 12 sons who will become Israel's 12 tribes.

He moves very quickly from there to the second born, Simeon, just kind of passed over because we're trying to get to Levi as fast as we can. It says verse 15, "The sons of Simeon" and then it lists several people from the lineage or the line of Simeon. You might remember that concerning the firstborn Reuben, the rights of the firstborn were passed on because he did something in Genesis 35 that he wasn't supposed to do involving his father's concubine.

Then you get to Genesis 34 where Simeon and Levi react with great anger towards an incident that happened involving the violation of their sister Dinah. They reacted so severely that they overreacted, the Bible says, and they wiped out all of the Shechemites in a particular city. It was so aggressive what they did out of anger, and you can imagine that their anger was rightful in a certain sense, but it was a massive overreaction to the point where at the end of that chapter Jacob is very pleased with them. That's why the rights of the firstborn were transferred from Reuben to Simeon to Levi to Judah.

Judah being the fourth born, and yet it's through Judah that the Messiah is going to come, Genesis 49:10. When the Messiah comes, He will come from the tribe of Judah, not Reuben because of Genesis 35, not Simeon and Levi because of Genesis 34. Simeon and Levi are there in the scriptures to a large extent to talk about the problem of not managing one's anger. Modern vernacular is anger management.

Genesis 49:5-7 says, "Simeon and Levi are brothers, their swords are implements of violence. Let my soul not enter into their counsel, let not my glory be united with their assembly, because in their anger they slew men, in their self-will they lamed oxen, cursed be their anger, for it is fierce, and their wrath, for it is cruel. I will disperse them in Jacob and scatter them in Israel."

The Bible over and over again warns us of unchanneled anger. Proverbs 16:32 says, "He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his own spirit is better than he who captures an entire city." We all suffer from anger, we're angry over different things. A lot of times it's injustices perpetrated against us and the human tendency is just to get in the flesh, get in the sin nature and try to settle the score. Don't get mad, get even sort of mindset.

This is the very thing that cost Simeon and Levi the opportunity to be the tribe that would bring forth the Messiah. Unchanneled anger. My biological father used to tell me all of the time, because he would watch me play basketball in leagues when I was very young and he would see me getting angry and upset, he says, "When you get angry, it's temporary insanity. You're not in your rational mind when you're angry and that just hurts you."

That's the plain teaching of scripture. James 1:20 says, "For the anger of man does not achieve the righteousness of God." I understand there's a time for anger, there's a place for anger, but the Bible is saying to monitor that very carefully because if you let it out of the bag, so to speak, there could be some temporary consequences down the road.

It goes right back to Genesis chapter 4 where Cain was very, very angry that his sacrifice was rejected and his brother's sacrifice Abel was accepted. The Bible is very clear that Cain became very angry about that. It's at that point that God speaks to Cain and He says, "Consider your ways very carefully. Your anger is trying to dominate you, but you need to dominate it. It's trying to overpower you, but you need to keep it under control."

Of course, Cain did not heed that exhortation. We know how Cain murdered Abel, the first murder in human history, and Cain spent the rest of his life suffering temporary consequences, a vagabond so to speak, because of a bad decision that he made. You look at so many people and how their lives completely and totally shift and change because of a moment of unvented rage or anger. We do things that we wouldn't do in our more rational times and faculties.

This is why it skips very quickly over Reuben, it skips very quickly over Simeon, and it moves very fast into Levi because this is where Moses' family tree is. Notice Levi, verse 16. It says, "These are the names of the sons of Levi according to their generations." From Levi are going to come three groups: Gershon, group number one; Kohath, group number two; and Merari, group number three. Then it says the length of Levi's life was 137 years.

So it's just an introduction of who's coming from Levi. From Levi is going to come the Kohathites, the Gershonites, and the Merarites. As far as this genealogy is concerned, the focus is going to go to Kohath because from Kohath is going to come Amram, who is the father of Moses. This is demonstrating that Moses stands in this very proud Levitical genealogical heritage.

A few quick comments are made about the Gershonites just to complete the family tree. It says there in verse 17, "The sons of Gershon" and then it mentions some names there, which I'm not going to try to pronounce to you today. Ed Jones can come back up here and do that when he feels fit. I trust his pronunciation. It's just information rounded out to give a full explanation of this family tree that Moses is a very proud part of.

Then it moves from there to verse 18, the Kohathites. This becomes a focus because Moses is going to descend from the Kohathites. You see that in verse 18. "The sons of Kohath" and it says, "Amram and Izhar and Hebron and Uzziel." Then it says the length of Kohath's life was 137 years. That's a lot of specific information about when a person died. He keeps saying that over and over again.

Why are these kind of specifics mentioned in the Bible? Because it's trying to show that this actually happened. This is not Jack and the Beanstalk stuff. This is actual history, in this case genealogical history. One that's going to come from the Kohathites is Amram. That's Moses' father. That's Aaron's father. That's his sister Miriam's father as well. Coming from Levi, the Kohathites and then underneath the Kohathites, you see Amram and from Amram is going to come Moses, his brother Aaron, and sister Miriam.

Then you go down to verse 19, not much to say there. It just gives a quick overview of the Merarites. It says, "Sons of Merari" and then we have Mahli and Mushi and then it says, "These are the families of the Levites according to their generations."

The focus of the action here is let's get to the Kohathites because Moses is not going to be a Gershonite, he's not going to be a Merarite, he's going to be a Kohathite. Let's focus on that. Here come all of the names from the Kohathites. Let's start with verse 20. Amram, who is Moses' father. It says in verse 20, Amram married his father's sister. Say what? Did I read that right? Let me reread that. "Amram married his father's sister." Jochebed, and she bore him Aaron and Moses.

Then it gives the death, how old was Moses' father when he died? It says the length of Amram's life was 137 years. These guys had a lot of birthday parties back then. Apparently from the Kohathites comes Amram and Amram married Jochebed. Jochebed is Moses' mother. Amram is Moses' father. What about this stuff here in verse 20, Amram married his father's sister? What in the world is that all about?

Dr. Ed Hindson says this on that verse in his commentary in the book of Exodus. He says Moses' father Amram and mother Jochebed, who was not only Amram's wife but also his aunt, are listed. He goes on and he says the laws against such interfamilial marriage had not yet been given by God at Mount Sinai. So apparently—