God's Immutable Plans and Purposes (Exodus 6:10-30)
An Exposition of Exodus 6:10-6:30 (Part 2 in a 3 Part Exposition of Exodus 6:1-7:7)
This is part 2 in a 3 part exposition of Exodus 6:1-7:7. It will benefit you to have your Bible open as we work through these passages together.
God’s Immutable Plans and Purposes (Exodus 6:10-30)
As we pick up where we left off in the previous post, we are in the middle of Yahweh's conversation with Moses. The people of Israel had received the word of God with great joy; they even responded with praise and worship. However, when Pharaoh reacted to the preaching of Moses and Aaron with increased persecution and afflictions, the people began to reject Moses and question the message he brought. Moses himself even questions the goodness of God. At this point in the narrative, the people of Israel are like the rocky ground in Jesus' parable of the sower. The Israelites are on the precipice of apostasy when God condescends to them in his grace and mercy and offers them a further revelation of himself. He reveals himself as the promise-keeping, covenant-making God of salvation and redemption. However, as Moses preaches this glorious message of God to the people of God, because of their broken spirit and slavery, they are incapable of listening to Moses.
In the passage before us today, we are shown that their disillusionment and demoralization due to exhaustion does not exhaust the grace of God towards them. God continues his plan to deliver and redeem them even though they are so broken and beaten that they cannot even listen to him. God's plans and purposes for his people are immutable. Pagan kings, wavering servants, and exhausted peoples will not thwart the plans of God.
An inclusio is a literary device used to bracket or envelope a passage. The passage before us today is interesting because Moses uses three of them to structure this passage. The first inclusio serves to bracket the entire passage. You will notice it in verse 12, "Behold, the people of Israel have not listened to me. How then shall Pharaoh listen to me, for I am of uncircumcised lips?" And then in verse 30, "But Moses said to the Lord, "Behold, I am of uncircumcised lips. How will Pharaoh listen to me?" Secondly, the genealogy has an inclusio that brackets it. Notice it in verse 14, "These are the heads of their father's houses." Then again, in verse 25, "These are the heads of the father's houses of the Levites by their clans." The final inclusio occurs in verses 26 and 27, "These are the Moses and Aaron" and "This Moses and this Aaron."
Seeing this structure is beneficial because it helps to structure our exposition from this passage, and it helps us to understand better what this passage is ultimately teaching us about God. The outer bracket teaches us about the immutable plans of God. It also focuses our attention on the genealogy, in the center of the text, which reveals God's covenant faithfulness through the generations.
The Immutable Plans of God (6:10-13; 28-30)
First, we are shown God's immutable plan. This passage begins and ends with another objection of Moses. God commands Moses to again go to Pharaoh and tell him to let the people of Israel go out of his land. However, Moses responds with an objection, "Behold the people of Israel have not listened to me. How then shall Pharaoh listen to me, for I am of uncircumcised lips?"
Here, Moses could be referring to the same objection that he made to God in the theophanic scene in Chapter 4:10, when Moses said to the Lord, "Oh, my Lord, I am not eloquent, either in the past or since you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and of tongue."1 Or it possibly could be that Moses is acknowledging his own sinfulness and unworthiness in a similar way to Isaiah's response when he saw the thrice holy God in a vision. Isaiah responded, "Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!" (Isaiah 6:5) If that is the case, Moses would have the response that most all men have when God bids them to come and preach.
Regardless of the meaning of Moses' response, it is yet another objection and excuse that he brings before Yahweh as to why he cannot carry out the mission. Verse 13 is God's answer to every objection of Moses, Israel's inability to listen, and Pharaoh's refusal to submit. "But the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron and gave them a charge about the people of Israel and about Pharaoh king of Egypt: to bring the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt." This is what Moses wants us to see: the plans and purposes of God are immutable. They cannot be thwarted; they cannot be changed; they cannot be objected to and excused away. Man’s inability and hardness of heart will not stop the plans of God. God intends to deliver his people from Egypt; nothing can stand in his way. This is comforting for us to see today because the God of Moses is our God. He has made promises to us to save us and redeem us eternally through the work of Christ, and his promises, his plans, and his purposes that he has made to the church are just as immutable as his promises to oppressed Israel in Egypt.
God’s Covenant Faithfulness Through the Generations (6:14-27)
Secondly, this passage's structure focuses our attention on this genealogy, which reveals to us God's immutable covenant faithfulness throughout the generations. For us, reading this passage with Western eyes seems out of place, but in reality, it is ideally placed. Doug Stuart comments, "A genealogy here is neither out of place nor stylistically intrusive but welcome and perfectly placed. At the end of 6:12 the ongoing narrative stops for a moment: right at the point where Moses said, in effect, 'I cant do it.'2 This genealogy offers suspense to the reader as we await the resolution to Moses' "I cant" as well as offering the genealogical qualifications of the two men that stand before Pharaoh and become the leaders of the covenant people of God; they are Levites, legitimate full-blooded, fully qualified Hebrews.
When we come to genealogies in the Bible, we are prone to see them as tedious, laborious, and, quite frankly, boring. So much so that many of us skip reading them, fail to study them deeply, and also fail to search for their theological significance. We must be reminded that "All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work."(2 Timothy 3:16-17) Paul's words to Timothy most certainly include genealogies.
Genealogies serve several purposes in the Bible:
1.) They trace the lineage of the seed of the woman and the seed of the serpent.
2.) They trace the tribal descent of the nation of Israel. This was particularly important in the days of Ezra. In Ezra, this was significant because it was your genealogy that qualified you to help in the Temple rebuilding project after the exile. If you could not prove your tribal lineage, you could not help rebuild.
3.) They trace the immutable providence and promises of God over generations and thousands of years.
4.) They trace the fulfillment of the creation cultural mandate to be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth with the imago dei.
5.) They trace the cessation of life and the reality of death.3 The genealogies exist because of the curse of God against Adam and Eve and their posterity for their transgression in the Garden. God told them that if you eat of this tree, you will surely die. Well, the genealogies trace God's fulfillment of that sure promise. They died, and their offspring continue to die, even today. That’s why we read the repeated refrain, “and he died,” in the genealogy of Genesis Chapter 5. This makes the Gospel so glorious because Jesus said in John 11:25, "I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live." Jesus promises the defeat of death for those who savingly believe in him.
6.) Genealogies are important to God; they are listed everywhere in the Scriptures. Chronicles opens with 9 Chapters of genealogies, and both Matthew and Luke open with long lists of the genealogy of Jesus.
7.) Genealogies prove to us that God is not merely concerned with saving a corporate people as if individuals do not matter, but rather he has listed before the foundation of the world every single name that would be included in the Lamb's Book of life. Genealogies serve to remind you that God intimately knows you, the individual, in an intimate and personal way. You are not just a number that makes up a corporate body; you are a name, an individual, a person God knows and remembers. The names remind us that the Lord knows who is his, that God knows whom his Son has died for.
Beyond these reasons, in Genesis and here in Exodus, the genealogies help to structure the book and progress the narrative. The Hebrew word for 'generations' is toledot; it occurs in our passage in verse 16 and verse 19. The entire book of Genesis is structured around ten toledot sections. There are ten sections of the book of Genesis that are introduced with the language "these are the generations of." These sections move the narrative along and structure book. Well, here in Exodus, this genealogy, this generations list implicitly, serves a similar purpose. Chapter 5:1 through 7:7 is the final attempt of Moses and Arron to convince Pharaoh to let the people go before God strikes Egypt with wonders and plagues. This genealogy serves in this section as part of the transition to the plague narrative.
It is interesting because chronologically, at this point in the narrative, the fact that Moses and Aaron are Levites and the names that are selected to make this list mean very little. However, their Levitical ancestry and the names that are listed with them come to have great significance for the nation of Israel. For Moses' initial audience—those who came out of Egypt, those who lived through the events of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, those who are about to conquest the promised land under Joshua—for them the Levitical ancestry of Moses and Aaron and each person of genealogical significance in this list is utterly important to their story and heritage, either for their importance or their infamy—as we will see.
One practical note of application before we trace through this list, it is essential for us to notice that in the Bible, the lineages are traced through the fathers. This is because it is God's plan and intention for fathers to lead their families, households, wives, and children in holiness and the pursuit of godliness. Philip Ryken writes,
"God holds fathers responsible for the spiritual well-being of their families. Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and the others were the heads of their households. It was their God-given responsibility to love their families by encouraging their wives in godliness and teaching their children to glorify God. God's best plan for the family is to show his love through the overflow of a father's heart. As Joshua would say to the Israelites many years later, "Choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve.… But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord" (Josh. 24:15). Joshua understood what it means to be the head of a family. Every good father makes a personal commitment to help his household serve the Lord."4
Fathers, take heed and lead your family well; it is God's will for your life.
Let us now trace the Levitical lineage that is presented in this genealogy. The 12 tribes of Israel in birth order are Ruben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Issachar, Zebulun, Joseph, and Benjamin. This list, in Exodus 6, contains only the first three tribes, Ruben, Simeon, and Levi. This is because Moses' intention is to reveal the Levitical lineage of these significant figures. Also, notice that the list follows the structuring of the list of Jacob's sons in Genesis, which offers another connection of Exodus to the book of Genesis.5 As we study this list, we also notice that the lineage of Moses is absent from Moses onward. This is because the lineage here is purposed to establish Aaron as the one qualified to serve as the High Priest, the equal companion of Moses, and the prophet of Moses.
The tracing of Aaron's lineage looks like this. Levi has Kohath, Kohath has Amram, Amram has Aaron and Moses, Aaron has Nadab, Abihu, and Eleazar, and Eleazar has Phinehas. The primary focus of the text is on the family tree of Aaron.
As we trace this lineage, we learn of many faithful people that are given to us to imitate in our own walks with God, and we are given several examples of failure and error. Both are given to us for our benefit and education. So that we can be spurred on to good works and we can be corrected of our errors. So, we are given encouragement and warning in this list of names. As Moses' first audience received this list, they would have been intimately aware of these names; their minds would have immediately been filled with their heroics and their failures, and they would have immediately been encouraged and warned by the lives of those named in this list.
Let us walk through the list together. First, we are given the names of Ruben and Simeon, the first two sons in birth order. In their list, we meet Shaul, the Son of a Canaanite woman, probably a word of caution Moses gave regarding the danger of intermarrying with pagans.
Then, in verse 16, our attention is drawn to the sons of Levi: Gershon, Kohath, and Merari. The sons will become significant servants in the worship of the Lord. Once God leads Israel out of Egypt in the Exodus, he will guide them to Mount Sinai, where he will meet with them. At Sinai, God will give Israel his law and instructions for the erection of the Tabernacle. This will be where the people of God meet with God to offer prescribed worship and sacrifices. It will be the Levites that God will place in charge of the Tabernacle and its worship.
Levi's sons mentioned here are given specific duties to carry out in the Tabernacle. The Gershonites were to care for the curtains of the Tabernacle (Numbers 3:25-26). The Kohathites were to carry and guard the various furniture pieces used in the Tabernacle during worship, including the ark of the covenant (Numbers 31:31). The sons of Merari were to oversee the frames, bars, and pillars of the Tabernacle (Numbers 3:36-37). Each family was given special and specific duties of service to carry out in the prescribed worship of Yahweh.
We read of their duties, and we are prone to think to ourselves that these tasks seem so mundane and insignificant. Who could possibly find joy and purpose in dealing with curtains, furniture, bars, and pillars? The reality is that everything they were assigned to do was essential and necessary to carry out the right and proper worship of God by the people of God. They were God's chosen and commissioned servants, and they glorified God through what we might call mundane practical service. They put curtains up, arranged the tables and altars, and they set up the frames and pillars. They did the practical things necessary to gather the people of God for corporate worship. We must be reminded that our purpose in life is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. Our highest calling, then, is to the right and proper worship of God. The worship of God requires that practical things be done. The elders need support, the building and grounds need to be maintained, the elements for the Lord's Supper need to be prepared, baptistries need to be filled, bulletins need to be printed and passed out, and babies and children need to be ministered to. Food needs to be ordered, prepared, and severed. Practical and mundane things must happen in the life of the church. The sons of Levi remind us that there is no task too small, that there is nothing mundane in the service of God, and that we must be faithful to carry out the duties God has granted to us regardless of how large or small they may seem. If we hang curtains, we do it with the greatest effort because we are hanging them for the glory of God. If we rock babies in the nursery, we rock them to the glory of God. If we mow the grass and plant the flower beds, we do so to the glory of God. This is how we must approach worship and all of life. All things are done to the glory of God.
It was a descendent of Kohath who wrote, in Psalm 84:10,
For a day in your courts is better
than a thousand elsewhere.
I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God
than dwell in the tents of wickedness.
The question we must ask ourselves is, can we sing this song with the psalmist?
In verse 20, the genealogy traces the sons of Kohath. His firstborn son Amram took Jochebed to be his wife, and she gave birth to Aaron and Moses. Jochebed's name means, 'Yahweh is heavy,' and serves as a prophecy that is fulfilled in the first plague as Yahweh makes Pharaoh's heart heavy (7:14).6 This lineage serves to establish Moses and Aaron as the grandsons of Levi, thereby presenting them as legitimate Israelites qualified to lead the people of Israel.
Next, in verse 21, we are introduced to Korah, he is the Son of Izhar, who is Amram's brother. Therefore, Korah is Moses and Aaron's first cousin; like Aaron and Moses, he is a Levite and a Kohathite. We are also introduced to his lineage in verse 24. Korah is mentioned in this list because of his infamy; he serves as a warning and as a cation to us.
Trials and struggles marked Moses' life, as all lives sacrificed to ministry are so marked. One of the darkest scenes in the life of Moses was the rebellion of Korah, recorded in Numbers 16. In this scene, Korah, the cousin of Moses, leads a rebellion against Moses and Aaron. In this rebellion, Korah incited 250 chiefs of the congregation to join him in usurping the God-given position and authority of Moses and Aaron. They join together and charge them in Numbers 16:3, "They assembled themselves together against Moses and against Aaron and said to them, 'You have gone too far! For all in the congregation are holy, every one of them, and the LORD is among them. Why then do you exalt yourselves above the assembly of the LORD?'"
Korah was a Kohathite and, therefore, had been assigned by God to be in charge of the furnishings of the Tabernacle. He had a God-given ministry, but Korah was not satisfied with the mundane tasks God had assigned him. He wanted more power, more authority, more recognition; he wanted the position of Moses. So, he set out to assault Moses and usurp his authority. What Korah failed to understand was that Moses had not raised himself up to this position but that God had raised Moses up; God had installed and appointed Moses. So, his rebellion against Moses was actually rebellion against Yahweh since it was Yahweh who appointed Moses.
Moses rebuked them and pronounced the judgment of God against them.
We read in Numbers 16:31-35,
"And as soon as he had finished speaking all these words, the ground under them split apart. And the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up, with their households and all the people who belonged to Korah and all their goods. So they and all that belonged to them went down alive into Sheol, and the earth closed over them, and they perished from the midst of the assembly. And all Israel who were around them fled at their cry, for they said, 'Lest the earth swallow us up!' And fire came out from the LORD and consumed the 250 men offering the incense.'”
What we learn from Korah is two-fold. First, we must be satisfied with the position and ministry God has granted us in his church. When we are driven by selfish ambition and pride, we begin to walk down the same dangerous path as Korah.
Secondly, God will protect those men he has placed as officers in his church. In 2 Timothy, Timothy is dealing with several false teachers and enemies seeking to usurp his authority and message. Two of these men, Hymenaeus and Philetus, are spreading heresy like gangrene; they had swerved from the truth, saying that the resurrection had already happened. To their rebellion, Paul writes in 2 Timothy 2:19, "But God's firm foundation stands, bearing this seal: "The Lord knows those who are his," quoting Moses from Numbers 16:5 in the context of Korah's rebellion. Paul's point to Timothy is that the Lord will protect those he has placed in the spiritual offices of the church. God will protect Timothy just as he had protected Moses, and God will protect his elders as he protected Moses and Timothy for the purpose of protecting his church and his message. God will judge those with severity who attack without cause those that he has appointed to spiritual offices in the church. It serves as a warning to each of us to acknowledge God's will in the church's life.
Verses 22-23 introduce us to Nadab and Abihu, and we must assume that they are mentioned here because of their folly in offering God strange fire. These brothers serve as another warning to us, even today. The warning of Korah is not to rebel against God and his plans and purposes for personal gain and selfish ambition. The warning that we receive from Nadab and Abihu is not to experiment with creativity in the worship of God.
The Bible is abundantly clear that God is the object of our worship, and as the object of our worship, God is the one who determines how he is to be worshipped. We call this the Regulative Principle of Worship. It is the biblical teaching that God regulates how he is to be worshipped; he prescribes the elements of his worship. We see this even in the 10 Commandments. In the first Commandment, God and God alone is to be worshipped, "You shall have not other gods before me." Then in the second commandment, God regulates how he is to be worshipped, and it is to not be with images. We can even go back to Genesis Chapter 4 and see that Able offered prescribed regulated worship, and Cain offered unregulated creative worship. So, the right and proper worship of God is regulated; it is not a creative free for all.
Well, Nadab and Abihu, they decided to get creative. They decided to worship God in their own way and according to their creative ideas, totally disregarding God's instructions and desires. Their actions are recorded for us in Leviticus 10:1-2, "Now Nadab and Abihu, the sons of Aaron, each took his censer and put fire in it and laid incense on it and offered unauthorized fire before the LORD, which he had not commanded them. And fire came out from before the LORD and consumed them, and they died before the LORD."
We learn here that God does not desire our creativity in worship; instead, he demands our obedience. We are only allowed to do those things that God has prescribed for us to do, and we learn from the folly of Nadab and Abihu that the dangers of creativity in corporate worship are severe. The author of Hebrews tells us in 12:28-29, "Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe, for our God is a consuming fire." The author of Hebrews surely has these two brothers in mind as he writes, for they were consumed by God’s fire.
Those who advocate for the Normative Principle of Worship would argue that we are free to do whatever is not explicitly forbidden in the word of God when we gather together for corporate worship. What the normative principle advocates fail to see is that what Aaron’s sons offer in Leviticus 10 isn’t forbidden fire. What is forbidden is unregulated worship.7 They profane the altar of incense by offering to God something other than what he prescribed. They offer him something strange, foreign, unauthorized, and creative, and God kills them for it, and he doesn’t allow the people to mourn for them. They followed Cain in practicing the normative principle of worship by bringing before God whatever they wanted, and the consequences were severe. Let us understand that God desires worshipers who will worship him in Spirit and in Truth according to his prescriptions and desires. God requires and accepts a sacrifice of worship that is regulated by his word.
Now in verse 22 of Exodus 6, we are introduced to their cousins Mishael and Elzaphan because they are the ones who drug their dead bodies out of the Tabernacle and carried them outside the camp.
Their death serves to warn us today against the temptation to offer to God unbiblical, unregulated, unauthorized worship. We may desire to do many things to make corporate worship more entertaining and exciting, but we must be reminded that we are not here to be entertained. Our minds are to be excited with thoughts and meditations of God fueled by the word of God.
The worship gathering is not about us, it is about God, and he sanctifies us as we behold his glory together. He sanctifies us as we worship Him according to his prescription. He molds us and shapes us into the image of Christ through the ordinary means of grace that he has prescribed. (2 Corinthians 3:18)
We gather to offer acceptable and pleasing worship to God. As we search the Scriptures, we clearly and easily see what it is that God would have us to do in this gathering. There are five prescribed elements of corporate worship in the Scriptures for the New Testament church. We are to read the word, pray the word, sing the word, preach the word, and see the word through the Lord's Supper and Baptism, which are the only dramas that God allows for us, whereby he allows us to see the Gospel visibly lived out. To go beyond this is to enter into the rebellion and folly of Nadab and Abihu and bring judgment upon ourselves. So let us be warned. God cares about how he is worshipped.8
Another warning gleaned from these brothers is for children. Be warned that your family connections and your family's faith will not save you. Nadab and Abihu were sons of Aaron, the High Priest. Moses was their uncle. Their heritage and lineage were as good as it could get; their pedigree was superior. And yet their sin led to them being consumed in the flames of God's judgment. For you to escape the judgment of God, you yourself must repent of your sins and confess Christ as Lord and Savior. Neither your parents' faith nor their position in the church will ever be enough to save you.
We also need to see in verse 23, two significant names that we are introduced to. We are prone to skim over them with little thought; however, we see here that Aaron takes Elisheba to be his wife; she is the daughter of Amminadab and the sister of Nahshon. These two names are significant because they are both ancestors of King David and, therefore included in the lineage of Jesus Christ. They are mentioned in Ruth 4:19-20 in the genealogy of David and Matthew 1:4 in his genealogy of Jesus. So, we see that even in the days of Moses and Aaron, God is working out his immutable and perfect plan to bring about the seed of the woman who is going to crush the head of the serpent and save God’s people. As we mentioned earlier, the genealogies often serve to trace the seed of the woman to the person of Christ, and we see that here as God preserves his promise through these two seemingly insignificant names in the midst of a tedious genealogical list. God is ever at work, let us rejoice.
Now in verse 25, the final link of Aaron's lineage is brought into focus. Eliezar, the third son of Aaron, takes a wife from the daughters of Putiel, and she gives birth to Phinehas. The genealogy ends here on a high note with Phinehas. In all of the OT, Phinehas stands out for his zeal for the Lord. In Numbers 25, the nation of Israel had fallen into a time of sexual immorality as they were being enticed by Moabite women, and these women led them into spiritual adultery as they enticed them to worship Moabite gods. Hence the veiled warning in the name of Shaul in verse 15.
The elders of Israel were incompetent in bringing judgment against this wickedness. Then, one day, a man named Zimri, in total disregard for Yahweh, brought his Midianite mistress into the Tabernacle to lay with her in the house of the Lord. It was at this point that the zeal for the holiness and glory of God within Phinehas boiled over. We read in Numbers 25:7-9,
"When Phinehas the son of Eleazar, son of Aaron the priest, saw it, he rose and left the congregation and took a spear in his hand and went after the man of Israel into the chamber and pierced both of them, the man of Israel and the woman through her belly. Thus the plague on the people of Israel was stopped. Nevertheless, those who died by the plague were twenty-four thousand."
His zealous action propitiated the wrath of God against the people of God.
John Currid notes, "Because of this courageous act, he was rewarded and made a leader of the Israelite army (Num. 31:6). Phinehas went on to enter the promised land (Josh. 22:30–32) and served as high priest before the tabernacle (Judg. 20:28). The great Hebrew leader, Ezra, was a descendant of Phinehas (1 Chron. 9:20). Thus, the genealogy ends on a high and positive note."9
We end this list by being encouraged to have the zeal of Phinehas10, to defend the honor and glory of God, to stand against evil, to stand for the truth, and to take bold and decisive action in defending the church of Christ when it is under attack from within and from without. We are encouraged to fight the good fight and not give an inch of ground to Satan and his minions.
So, what's in a name? Well, a lot, actually. In this list of names, we see God's immutable plans and purposes being carried out; for this Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and liberated the people of Israel. Even when this Moses thought it impossible because of his failure and inability, and the people could not even listen to the message of Moses because of their oppression, God still acted to carry out his immutable plans and purposes. Noting, not Pharoah, not exhaustion, uncircumcised lips, or sinners in the lineage can thwart the sovereign plans and purposes of God. The deliverance that follows is the work of God alone.11
Soli Deo Gloria,
Chase
MacKay, John L., Exodus, Mentor Commentaries (Fearn, Ross-shire, Great Britain: Mentor, 2001), 124.
Stuart, Douglas, The New American Commentary: Exodus (Nashville: B & H Publishers, 2006), 175.
Currid, John, A Study Commentary on Exodus: Exodus 1-18, vol. 1, EP Study Commentary (Darlington, England; Carlisle, PA: Evangelical Press, 2000), 152.
Ryken, Philip Graham, Exodus: Saved for God’s Glory (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2005), 184.
Seeing these connections between the first 5 books is significant in refuting those who deny Mosaic authorship and those who argue for the Documentary Hypothesis (JEDP). When we carefully study these books, it becomes clear that there is one single author, and that author is Moses.
Currid, John, A Study Commentary on Exodus: Exodus 1-18, vol. 1, EP Study Commentary (Darlington, England; Carlisle, PA: Evangelical Press, 2000), 149.
What is explicitly forbidden in the word is offering any form of worship that is not authorized/prescribed by God on the altar of incense. (Exodus 30:9)
Second London Baptist Confession of Faith, Chapter 22, Paragraphs 1-6.
Curris, John, A Study Commentary on Exodus: Exodus 1-18, vol. 1, EP Study Commentary (Darlington, England; Carlisle, PA: Evangelical Press, 2000), 151.
As an additional word of warning, one should consider the story of the sons of Eli, the High Priest, in 1 Samuel. Eli and his sons, Hophni and Phinehas, were descendants of Aaron. It is likely that Phinehas was named after this ancestor, which is named in Exodus 6:25. Hophni and Phinehas were worthless men who did not know the Lord. (1 Sam 2:12) We read in 1 Samuel 2:22, “Now Eli was very old, and he kept hearing all that his sons were doing to all Israel, and how they lay with the women who were serving at the entrance to the tent of meeting.” It appears that Phinehas is guilty of engaging in temple cultic prostitution in the Tabernacle. That he is guilty of doing the very thing and worse that his great ancestor is praised for ridding from Israel. Just because he bears his blood and his name does not mean that he is saved. He must repent and believe himself.
MacKay, John L., Exodus, Mentor Commentaries (Fearn, Ross-shire, Great Britain: Mentor, 2001), 124.