God in Genesis said that all that He created, especially man, was “very good” (Gen. 1:31). What’s good in God’s eyes is very precise: God is looking for His representation and His rest through the reigning of His life in the universe. Not only does He have His good desire, but also we — as His creation, His masterpiece, and His Bride — are meant to have the same standard and same eye for quality as He does.
In Exodus, we see that God was able to have a way to administer His taste and discernment of what was good through specific women who saw and treasured life. God was able to use them to preserve the life of Moses — whom his mother called a “fine,” or good, child (Exo. 2:2) — to ultimately make a way for the Israelites to leave Egypt. But what gave Moses’ mother the eyesight to, just like God did in Genesis, call something “good”? And what led the key women in Moses’ life, from the midwives who spared him to his wife, Zipporah, to have that keen sense to differentiate flesh from spirit, what is abhorrent to God from what is pleasing to God?
Consider Zipporah. Outwardly, she had nothing to do with the life of God. She was an outsider, a Gentile with an idol-worshiping background — her father was even a Midian priest. Yet when God’s judgment came upon her family on their way to Egypt, Zipporah hurriedly dealt with the flesh in her family, cutting off her son’s foreskin and casting it at Moses’ feet to save them from death (Exo. 4:25). Who was Zipporah to circumcise anyone in her family? The Israelites’ way of life was vastly different from how she had been raised. Yet she denied herself, coming out of her customs and Gentile background, to cut off the flesh and preserve life. Such a person must know the life of God — and also what is not of the life of God. Even though she was not an Israelite by birth, having been grafted into God’s lineage and administration by marriage, she was sensitive to the household of God and the needs of each person in it. Perhaps she just wanted simply to save her husband’s life, but having such a consideration for life — an eyesight for life — is a picture for us today as the church.
Just like Zipporah, the church must be keen to see what belongs and doesn’t belong in this household, as well as decisive and swift to execute accordingly. This is a true serving. Just as Zipporah set the scene for the rest of Exodus to happen, today such a serving paves the way for God’s household to be built. When our eyesight is set on and matches what God sees and values — what is truly “good” — we make the way for His reigning in life to come in.
(Above are notes of fellowship taken from gatherings on 11/3/2024 and 11/17/2024, not reviewed by the speaker.)