I am using One Year Bible Online for my daily Bible study. For today, One Year Bible Online links here. I have found that by writing this daily blog of what I see when I read these scriptures, I get more out of them. I hope that by posting these ruminations others may get some benefit as well. If you have any thoughts or comments regarding these verses or what I have written about them, please post them. I hope that the Spirit is moving in others through these posts as the Spirit has definitely been convicting me.
The people complained to Moses about the results of his meeting with Pharaoh. Moses went to God and said, “I did what you asked and not only haven’t your people been freed, but things have gotten worse.” God replied to Moses that He was God Almighty and the Lord of All. God told Moses to tell the Israelites that He would free them from their slavery and demonstrate His power in such a manner that no one would be able to deny that He was supreme over all the earth. When Moses reported this to the Israelites, they did not listen to him because they were discouraged from the hard labor. How often do we do the same things? When things don’t work out the way we expected, we turn to God and say, “I thought this was what You wanted me to do, why are things getting worse?” God does not promise that things will get better right away when we do His will. He promises that He will show His power and those around us will know that we serve God Almighty.
However, God was not done with Moses. He told Moses to go to Pharaoh once more. Moses argued back, asking why Pharaoh would listen to him since he was so bad at public speaking. God’s answer to Moses was that Moses should just say what God had commanded him to say and Aaron could dress it up for Pharaoh. God told Moses not to worry because Pharaoh was not going to let the people go based on anybody’s fancy argument. Pharaoh was going to let the people go because God was going to demonstrate His power and Pharaoh would be afraid to not let them go. So Moses and Aaron went back to Pharaoh another time.
Aaron spoke to Pharaoh in the manner which God had commanded completing his presentation by throwing his staff upon the ground, where is became a snake. Pharaoh summoned his wise men and magicians. They also threw down their staffs and they each became a snake. The snake that had been Aaron’s staff, swallowed the snakes that had been the Egyptian magician’s staffs. Nevertheless, Pharaoh was not impressed and refused to listen to Moses’ and Aaron’s request. God instructed Moses to return to Pharaoh in the morning and once more tell him that God was requesting that He let God’s people go into the wilderness to worship Him. As a demonstration of God’s power Aaron was to stretch out his staff over the Nile, when Aaron did this, God would turn all of the water in the Nile to blood. Moses and Aaron did as God commanded and Aaron turned all of the waters of the Nile to blood. However, once more Pharaoh summoned his magicians and they also turned water to blood. And again Pharaoh refused to listen to Moses and Aaron.
How often do we see this pattern followed in the world around us? Christians call on God for something and God performs a miracle. However, those of the world dismiss the miracle because they can give it a naturalistic explanation. It is tempting to dismiss these miracles as nothing special because they could have happened without divine intervention. Notice however that there are always differences between the divine intervention and the natural event: Aaron’s staff swallowed the staffs of Pharaoh’s magicians; Aaron stretched out his staff and turned all the water in the Nile and its tributaries to blood, Pharoah’s magicians merely changed a smaller amount of water to blood (necessarily, since the Nile and its tributaries were already blood and therefore they needed to work on some water that was not part of that). Moses and Aaron could have given up. They could have said to God, “You aren’t doing anything that these other gods can’t do. Why should we continue to face the hardship of following You?”
Peter came to Jesus and asked Him how often he should forgive someone who sinned against him. Peter had given this some thought and thought he knew the answer. It seemed to him that since the number of perfection was seven, that would be the number of times to forgive someone. Seven times was being generous in Peter’s mind, and in ours. You know the person Peter was talking about. The person who does the same thing over and over and every time begs for your forgiveness. You just know that if you forgive them this time they will do the same thing to you again. Jesus tells us that we are to go ahead and forgive them, this time and every time, even before they ask us. Jesus illustrated His point by telling a parable. I am not going to retell the parable, follow the link and read it for yourself. The point of the parable is that we have sinned so much against God that the amount that any one person, or even group of people, has sinned against us pales in comparison. Since God has forgiven us so much, why are we even thinking about not forgiving our fellow-man the relatively minor wrong they have done to us? The other good thing about this parable is that it reminds us what it means to forgive. When we forgive someone it means that we are giving up any claim to recompense for what they have done to us. If we have forgiven someone it means that we will not treat them any worse than we would treat a complete stranger. That’s a tough one.
After this Jesus left Galilee and went into Judea. Crowds of people came out to see Him and He healed them. Some Pharisees came to test Him by asking Him what the conditions were for divorce. While I was studying this today I came across something I had been unaware of. There had been a debate between two rabbis on the conditions that justified divorce. The passage that was the core of the debate was Deuteronomy 24:1. The rabbi Hillel argued that if a man’s wife became displeasing to him for any reason, he could divorce her. The rabbi Shammai held that a man could only divorce his wife if she was sexually unfaithful. Jesus basically sided with Shammai, but He took it further. Both Shammai and Hillel based their position on their understanding of the passage in Deuteronomy. Jesus based His position on the Creation account in Genesis. Since a man leaves his parents, is united with his wife and the two become one flesh, it is a violation of God’s desire for them to divorce. Those whom God has joined together no man has the right, or power, to separate. The only grounds for divorce that Jesus accepts are marital unfaithfulness and even then He seems to be saying that remarriage is not an option. The disciples certainly viewed His position this way since they thought His teaching suggested that it was better not to marry. I am not completely sure of how my reading of this passage applies today. However, I am utterly certain that God intended for marriage to be a lifetime commitment with no opt out clauses.
Today’s psalm is Psalm 23. Anyone who is familiar with any part of the Bible is familiar with this passage and for good reason. This passage is a source of great comfort for those who love the Lord. The passage tells us that God is our shepherd and He will provide for our needs. There is a little more here than we usually notice. A shepherd provides for the needs of the sheep by driving them to where the things they need are to be had. Sheep often don’t want to go where the shepherd drives them. The shepherd makes it unpleasant for the sheep to not go where he wishes them to go. Despite the fact that we often do not want to go where God drives us, those are the places that we need to go in order for our needs to be met.
Those who do evil become trapped by their actions into doing more evil. Lack of discipline and unwillingness to accept the consequences of one’s actions leads to death. The folly of being unwilling to admit that one has done wrong, leads one to do more wrong.