Category: Exodus

Isn’t it interesting that God led them through the wilderness rather than directly to the Promised Land? That route didn’t make sense to anyone else, but God had good reasons for His choice. Further, He stopped them at a campsite that left them between the sea (with no way across) and Pharaoh’s pursuing army, the mightiest army of its day, in all of its strength.

So it often is with God’s plans. Sometimes He makes circumstances change for the better miraculously quickly and easily, and sometimes we find ourselves taking what looks like the wrong route, or languishing in a nowhere place that is not where we want to be at all. Or in a hopelessly perilous place. This story is our reminder that God has His reasons for leading us into some of these places, and they not only make sense to the One who knows the truth, but they are designed for our good. The dangerous place ended up being an exciting display of God’s willingness and ability to protect His people, judge their enemy, and further their growth. After the stand-off at the Red Sea, Egypt was in no position to pursue the Israelites into Canaan for a long enough period of time for them to grow into an independent nation capable of protecting themselves.

God hardened Pharaoh’s heart. That doesn’t sound like the action of One who “doesn’t want anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.” (II Peter 3:9) This is a part of God’s plan that we can’t understand. The Bible teaches that He is not unjust except mercifully. Pharaoh’s heart was already hardened by his own choices. What a frightening prospect, that one would harden his heart until God’s only work in that heart would be to harden it further. It grows from a series of choices that any of us are capable of making.

What a lesson in contrasts today’s reading is: the followers of God led on a ridiculous route into the wilderness and certain destruction that was transformed into an absolute victory, and Pharaoh’s hard heart leading the greatest power of its day to what looked like certain victory but was transformed into absolute destruction. What lessons can you apply to your own life from this account of God’s working in the affairs of men?

Appropriately, Israel paused to praise God. Do we do that? Their praise takes the form of ancient Hebrew poetry, which, again, does not make the most interesting reading for us. I challenge you to find in this psalm of praise one thing God’s people learned about God Himself that you can apply to your own life, and one thing about God’s works that you can apply to your life.

Passover was an ingenious command of God because He used it for so many purposes.

First, Passover protected the people of Israel from the plague suffered by the Egyptians. The death of a firstborn was a particular blow in the days when firstborns carried special significance and enjoyed special status. For Pharaoh, it meant the death of the heir to the throne. Blood – specifically, the blood of a lamb – on the doorposts is a strange idea, but it was the way God provided for their relief, and that’s all that mattered. Those who adhered to God’s way saved their firstborn; those who didn’t, lost theirs. Sovereign, Almighty God has the power to have the only opinion that matters in the relief from judgment.

Second, Passover fed the people just before they left, with fortifying food that wouldn’t weigh them down. They were ready to go when they received word. And they didn’t leave a mess behind in their haste. I delight in little details like that and what they reveal about God.

Third, Passover ensured that the people would remember this event. The remembrance would include

• their slavery in Egypt. It is important to remember what life was like before God’s intervention on their behalf, because it is a picture of what life would be like now without His intervention. Hopefully that remembrance drives them to embrace God.
• the judgment of which God is capable. This remembrance would serve to prevent their taking God for granted. 
• His mercy toward anyone who will obey Him. This remembrance should not only drive them closer to God in love as they recall and reflect on His mercy to them, but also remind them of the importance of obedience. It might serve as a renewal of a commitment to God.
• His amazing power that brought them out of slavery. This remembrance would give them cause to celebrate God in praise, which is an important foundation upon which a relationship with God is built.
• their foundation as a nation under God’s leadership. Remembering the history of their nation’s founding would direct them back to the path from which they may have strayed.

All were very important for them to remember, and they are important for us to remember as well. Although it is incredible to think that they would forget such a thing, history shows that it is possible, in that Egypt does not remember it. 

Remembrance of God’s work on our behalf is very important to Him, for it gives us cause for praise and thanksgiving, it helps us to know Him better, and it gives us encouragement and endurance. For these reasons Satan does not want us to remember, and he will try to snatch away from us memories of encounters with God that we think we couldn’t possibly forget. I can attest to this, for once I had an amazing encounter with God that was absolutely unforgettable. Incredibly, I would have forgotten about it in the stress of grief and pain of loss, had I not later found the account recorded in a journal. We must take a lesson from God’s institutionalization of the Passover celebration, and choose to make a way to remember our encounters with God.

Fourth, Passover gives us an object lesson for what Messiah has done for us. Jesus was crucified at Passover. God was preparing a way for us to gain a measure of insight into what His death accomplished for His New Testament people, through this account and His establishment of the institution of its remembrance. Can you spend a few moments prayerfully reflecting  on what Passover teaches about what Jesus has done for you? 

God’s choice of plagues may seem random to us, but they spoke volumes to the Egyptians. For example, turning the water of the Nile to blood didn’t just make the river disgusting and obtaining water difficult, it was a huge blow to these people who worshiped the Nile as a god, and to Pharaoh’s leadership. The river was life to the Egyptians; without it, the desert would encroach and they would have no water or fertile soil for growing crops. The main reason for Pharaoh’s role was to regulate all of Egypt’s efforts to control the river’s annual flooding and irrigation for the welfare of the land and its people. That role eventually evolved into worship of Pharaoh as a representative of the gods, the son of a god, and virtually a god himself, whose main responsibility was to control the Nile for the benefit of the nation. You can see what an assault the first plague was on their reverence for the Nile, its god, and for Pharaoh. Each plague was as significant to the people of ancient Egypt.

The dark arts are not something I contemplate; I prefer to avoid anything that Satan might be able to turn into a trap for me or for someone else. I do not understand how the Egyptian magicians were able to do the same things God had done. But even in that, God was able to demonstrate His supremacy. Isn’t it funny to think of Pharaoh’s magicians actually adding to the misery by producing blood and frogs? Notice that their magic could not overcome God’s work by reversing it – an action that would’ve made a lot more sense than adding to God’s plague and the people’s discomfort.

The plagues didn’t just display God’s supremacy over the gods the Egyptians worshipped; they judged Egypt and Pharaoh with destruction. In a time before grocery stores, refrigeration and mass transportation, the people were dependent on every year’s crops for survival in the coming year. Crop failure meant starvation. The plagues ruined every crop on which the Egyptians depended. It was a catastrophe for them. It seems to me that Pharaoh must have been crazy to allow it to happen, but there were apparently other nonbelievers. What an object lesson to us of the hearts hardened today by rejecting God. They fail to perceive the truth because they have rejected it, and then they accuse those who believe the truth of being crazy. Just like in ancient Egypt, belief in the truth to the point that we will act on it, is our only hope of salvation from sin and its deadly effects.

Notice that God’s primary intent was not to destroy Egypt, but to lead them to knowledge of Him. Often God’s works are seen as negative when they involve destruction and human suffering, but if we won’t know Him in the status quo, how merciful He is to try another way. Since “this is eternal life, that they know You, the only true God,” God is actually caring and merciful to use difficult circumstances to lead us to that knowledge. May we be quick to turn to Him; may we be doing the work we are called to do to witness and make disciples. May we cooperate with Him in turning suffering people’s attention toward merciful God when He allows such circumstances. For knowing Him is much more important in truth than our ease and comfort.

Today completes a month of reading! Well done, for those of you who have stuck with it! I hope it feels like a good accomplishment. You are one-twelfth of the way through the Bible! If you did it for the month of January, you can do it for another month!

If you have not read faithfully, please keep trying! Continuing to try is so much better than giving up! And you can still improve. Try to make a week at a time your goal.This is a worthy endeavor, worthy of continuing effort!

Notice that God gave Moses three signs to give to the Israelites if they didn’t believe. Important matters are never established by a single witness; Scripture says two or three witnesses. God is not stingy here with the signs He offers. And so He continues to be generous in His communication with His New Testament people, if we will only listen.

It’s also interesting that Moses was not yet prepared in God’s eyes when he seemed to us to be the best prepared, which is when he was part of Pharaoh’s household. No, it was when Moses was least prepared in his own eyes, after many years (possibly 40!) of living in the wilderness, that he was prepared in God’s eyes.

The account of the crisis on the way to Egypt is too lacking in details for us to understand, but that also is a good lesson for us: God gives us in Scripture the information we need, and sometimes that leaves us lacking all the information we want. Just because all the information is not available, doesn’t mean that  what is available is incorrect. Our relationship with God does require faith.

Today’s reading gives us yet another account of God’s dealing with His people according to His plan, in which the way does not go as smoothly as His people expect. God tried to prepare Moses for that very occurrence, but Moses seemed surprised by it, and it discouraged him. Jesus  prepared us for such occurrences, when He said, “In this world you will have trouble, but take heart: I have overcome the world.” (John 16:33) We should be prepared to fend off discouragement by believing Jesus’ warning and by learning from the example given to us in God’s dealings with His people in the past. “For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through endurance and encouragement of the Scriptures, we might have hope.” (Romans 15:4) So let us take courage from this account where we are today!

When God reminded Moses that the name which He had given to Israel was unknown to their forefathers, He was telling him that the nation would now know God in a way Abraham and Isaac had not. The crisis before them would give them a totally new experience with God, and thus a new way of knowing Him, an understanding of facets of God that the spiritual giants with whom they were acquainted, did not have. How exciting that God can use adversity for such good in our lives! This is why James could say, “My brothers, count it all joy when you fall into various trials.” (James 1:2)

God had a purpose for not allowing the exit from Egypt to go smoothly for Israel: He intended to use the experience to reveal Himself as I AM to His people and to the people of Egypt. He would do this by judging Egypt and Pharaoh in ways no one of that day could imagine. For Egypt had been THE world power in the known world for as long as anyone could remember, for longer than history could remember. The kind of devastation that God would wreak on them was unimaginable from the vantage point of Moses’ return to Egypt.

Take heart from today’s reading, My Friend, and apply the truths about God’s power and higher ways and thoughts to your own life.

They cried out in their distress, God heard their groaning, remembered His covenant with the nation of Israel, and took notice of them. Had He been busy elsewhere and forgotten them? Scripture tells us in II Chronicles 16:9 that “the eyes of the Lord move to and fro throughout the earth that He may strongly support those whose heart is completely His.” He sees all, is watching. Besides, He had a plan for these people that was vitally important to Him; He was making them thrive in the middle of their oppression so that their oppressors feared them. He had not forgotten them.

This account of the Israelites teaches us about the importance of prayer. What a mystery it is! It was God’s plan to keep the Israelites from possessing the Promised Land until the sin of its inhabitants had grown great enough to justify the judgment Israel’s taking possession would impose on them (reference Genesis 15:13-16). Part of that plan was Israel’s enslavement and oppression. That may seem cruel of God, but in truth, He may use our pain to accomplish a greater purpose. If they had not been enslaved and oppressed, would they have ever left Egypt? Or would they have settled there, integrating with the Egyptians, and ruining God’s plan to bring Messiah to man through Israel? Yes, sometimes God’s plan is painful to us, but He intends to use it for good. In the meantime, if we are “anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let our requests be made known to God”, who knows what, in His higher ways and thoughts, He might do?

He raised up a leader for His people as only God can do, orchestrating Moses’ amazing preparation in the very house of Pharaoh (when he should have been killed at birth!), and then in the wilderness. Two very different schools, but both necessary for Moses’ preparation. Those long years in the wilderness probably seemed like a dead end to Moses; perhaps he felt like his life was a waste. His response to God when He told him that it was time for him to take the leadership role for which he had been raised up and prepared, indicates that his self-esteem and confidence may have suffered erosion in those wilderness years. I guess that many of us can relate to that. Again, only God’s higher ways and thoughts can comprehend the work done in the wilderness or in the quietness of a dead-end position or place. If we are faithful to wait on Him rather than scramble to get out of that position or place, He can use it for good as He wants to do (reference Romans 8:28). In the meantime, we must be faithful in the little thing He has given us so that we develop faithfulness needed for the big things.

What of this account of the Israelites speaks to you today? If you see nothing, ask God what He wants to teach you, and allow Him time in the quiet to show you as you ponder and discuss your ponderings with Him.

Descriptions of encounters with God are always instructive to us. God is so much … more than we are – so much bigger, so much higher, so much wiser, so much greater…. Revealing Himself to Moses in a fire that doesn’t consume – what does that say to you about God? Introducing Himself with the descriptive name, “I AM” – what is He revealing about Himself there? Contemplating that is an opportunity to know God better, and the lessons are so much more real and memorable and transforming when they are taught by God as opposed to being relayed by man. One lesson that we must not miss is that God is so far beyond us, so far beyond our understanding, that we are incapable of knowing Him fully. We can only know facets of Him, and that only as He reveals Himself to us. We must never make the mistake of thinking that we know Him well enough to comprehend Him or His ways, or speak for Him. Here we are reminded that He is able to speak for Himself.

Seek today to know God better from what He reveals to you about Himself as you ponder this account of a man meeting with God in this way, and the name God gives him by way of introduction. For Jesus said, “Now this is eternal life, that they know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent.” (John 17:3)