Today, I am reading and commenting on Exodus 16-18.

The account of manna recorded here is a great illustration of God using His power to provide for our needs.  For five days out of seven the people collected enough manna for their household, and no more.  If they shorted themselves in order to save some for the next day, it went bad by morning.  Then on the sixth day, they collected enough for two days, AND when they kept the extra overnight, it was still good in the morning.  Finally, on the seventh day, there was no manna to collect.  The Israelites had this daily reminder of both God’s power and His care for them for the entire time they were in the wilderness.  Yet, just a short time after they started collecting manna, they were afraid they were convinced that they would die of thirst.   We often do the same thing.  We live lives where we experience God’s care for our well-being everyday.  Yet when some new trouble over takes us, we panic and fear that this time God will not provide.  Let us strive to keep the ways in which God has provided for us, and is providing for us in the forefront of our minds, so that our faith will remain strong in the face of the next problem which comes our way.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Exodus 13-15.

Today’s passage begins with Moses telling the Israelites to commemorate the day they came out of Egypt by celebrating Passover and by sacrificing the first born males of their animals, redeeming their first born sons, as a sign that God brought them out of Egypt with His mighty hand.  Yet just a few days later, when they saw the Egyptian army pursuing them, they were sure that they were going to die at the hands of the Egyptians.  Then, after God rescued them by parting the Red Sea for them, but having it close upon and drown the Egyptian army, they grumbled about the lack of drinkable water.  They had even sung

“The Lord is my strength and my defense;
he has become my salvation.
He is my God, and I will praise him,
my father’s God, and I will exalt him.”

How often do we do likewise?  We witness God’s power, but fear the next crisis which comes along. We sing God’s praise for rescuing us, then act as if the next crisis is too big for Him to handle.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Exodus 10-12.

Before the Plague of Locusts, Pharaoh’s officials told him to let the Israelites go.  So, Pharaoh tried a compromise, he would let the men go to sacrifice to God, but demanded that the women and children stay.  He claimed that Moses had been asking for just that.  Then after the Plague of Darkness, Pharaoh offered to let all of the people go, but demanded that they leave their flocks behind.  When Moses had first appeared before Pharaoh he had asked Pharaoh to allow the Israelites to take a three day journey to worship the Lord.  Each time Moses appeared before Pharaoh after that he did not repeat the part about the three day journey.  He merely spoke God’s word to let His people go so that they could worship Him.  Finally, after the death of the first-born of all Egypt, Pharaoh not just let them go to worship, but ordered the Israelites to leave en-masse.  This was not “take a three day journey into the wilderness, worship the Lord, and return.”  This was “get our of here and never come back!”  Moses had asked for the Israelites to be able to take a three day journey into the wilderness to worship the Lord, but Pharaoh was unwilling to allow that.  Moses did not bargain with Pharaoh, and we should not bargain with the powers of this world.  Nor should we be like Pharaoh and attempt to bargain with God.  We should do what God demands of us.  Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if Pharaoh had agreed to let the Israelites take a short trip in order to worship God from the beginning.  It did not happen because that was not God’s plan.  The Israelites faced further hardship due to Pharaoh’s refusal to listen to God, but by facing that hardship they received a lesson in God’s power.  Pharaoh was the most powerful man on earth at the time and he was forced to bow down and do as God commanded.  If we do as God wills, it will go well for us.  If we resist God’s will, it will go badly for us, and God’s will will nevertheless come to pass.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Exodus 4-6.

When Moses asked God what he should do if the Israelites did not believe him when he said God had appeared to him, God told him to throw his staff on to the ground.  When Moses did this, his staff became a snake.  What I had never noticed before was that Moses ran from the snake his staff became.  I am not sure how that plays into what I want to write today, but I wanted to point that out.  I want to start by talking about how Moses was reluctant to do as God commanded him.  In fact, turning his staff in a snake was God’s response to the second of the objections which Moses raised (the first was in yesterday’s passage when Moses asked what name he should say was the name of the god who sent him when people asked, and yes, when Moses asked that he was putting God in with all of the other gods).  Moses repeatedly made excuses for why God should send someone else.  Then, when God had answered all of his objections, he outright asked God to send someone, anyone, else.  Then, after convincing the Israelites to believe in him, Moses went to Pharaoh with God’s message, and Pharaoh dismissed him out of hand, not even giving him a chance to argue his case and demonstrate God’s power.  Not only that, but Pharaoh increased the oppression that the Israelites were suffering under.  Pharaoh made things worse for the Israelites and they blamed Moses for it.  God told Moses to remind the Israelites of the promises He had made to their ancestors and to tell them that He was about to fulfill them.  The Israelites refused to listen to Moses when he told them.  Immediately following the Israelites rejection of Moses, God told him to go to Pharaoh again.  Once again Moses resisted doing God’s will.  I have summed all of this up because I want to point out something.  Despite the fact that Moses resisted doing as God instructed to the point that he angered God, throughout the Bible Moses is held up as one of the greatest servants of God.  Then when he started the mission God had given him, things seemed to go wrong.  Sure, there was a little success at first as the Israelites were initially enthusiastic, but when Pharaoh refused to listen, they became disheartened.  Nothing good had happened for Moses or the Israelites by the end of the passage.  Things had actually gotten worse.  Yet, everything was going exactly according to God’s plan.  So, don’t be discouraged if things seem to be going wrong in your life.  Just do what God has called you to do and trust that He has a plan.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.

Today, I am reading and commenting on Exodus 1-3.

The pastor where I worship preached in this chapters one and two last Sunday.  He pointed out that, technically, Moses’ mother followed the pharaoh’s decree to throw Hebrew boys into the Nile when they were born.  He also pointed out, as the translators’ note in the NIV says, that the word translated as “basket” is the same as the one translated as “ark” in the account of Noah and the Flood.  Finally before I get into the devotional portion of my blog today, I noticed a few years ago that the Hebrew spelling of Moses is the same as the Hebrew spelling of the second part of Ramses.  When I thought about this it occurred to me that Ramses means “born of Ra”, or “son of Ra”.  The Hebrews did not say the name of God, so Moses could be read as “Son of (God)”.  Now the passage says that Pharaoh’s daughter named him Moses because she drew him out of the water.  The writer interpreted that to mean that she used the Hebrew word which means “draw out.”  However, she may have meant “son of …” because she had drawn him out of the water and did not know who his father was.  Which, to me seems to reflect the way God often works.  For that matter, even if Pharaoh’s daughter named Moses for the Hebrew word for “draw out,” it resembles the way in which God often works.  When, many years later, Moses returned to Egypt to lead the Israelites, the Egyptians would have heard his name as “son of the god whose name we do not speak”, putting him on the same level of the Pharaoh (most pharaohs had names which meant “son of ‘insert name of Egyptian god here'”).

Which brings me to the devotional portion of what I am writing today (I don’t always have a devotional portion, but I do today).  When God told Moses that He was sending him to pharaoh to bring the Israelites out of Egypt, Moses asked, “Who am I to go to pharaoh?” This was bit disingenuous on Moses’ part, he had been raised in the royal court of Egypt.  But God did not bring that up, instead God said, “I will be with you.”  Here’s the thing, Moses was right, the fact that he had been raised in the royal courts of Egypt were NOT what made him qualified to go to pharaoh to bring the Israelites out of Egypt.  What qualified Moses to do that was the fact that God had sent him to do it.  Then Moses began to truly object to the mission which God was giving him.  “Yeah, but they’re going to ask me to tell them which of the gods you are.  What do I tell them?”  Moses know that God was not one of the gods worshiped by the Egyptians, the Canaanites, or any of the gods of peoples with whom the Israelites were familiar.  God’s answer to Moses was, “They know who I AM, just as much as you do.”

I want to take a moment to state the two important lessons.  The only qualification we need for the task God has assigned us is the fact that He assigned it to us.  And…no matter how much they want to deny it, the people God has sent us to know that He is God, and that He is good.  They may try to make excuses to not listen, just as Moses did, and that he was afraid the Israelites would do, but they know…and, if we follow God’s instructions, the Holy Spirit will reveal God to them.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.