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

I have a Youtube video of me reading the Scripture passage and my comments. Please check it out and let me know your thoughts.

During the earlier plagues the passages tell us either that Pharaoh hardened his heart, or that Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, but beginning today with the eighth plague it tells us that the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart.  Initially, Pharaoh chose not to accept what God put before him, or allowed other things convince him not to believe.  But eventually Pharaoh lost the ability to choose to avoid further suffering from the plagues.  In order to explain my point I need to go back to something I chose not to mention yesterday.  Each of the plagues was a “refutation” of the power of the gods of Egypt.  Each plague was demonstration that God has power over an area which was supposedly under the domain of one or more of the gods of Egypt.  So, when Pharaoh hardened his heart, or had his heart hardened, he was denying the evidence that the God of the Hebrews existed and was more powerful than the gods of Egypt.  In the same way you will see today people who argue against Christianity will present arguments for rejecting Christianity, but when one of their arguments is refuted will turn to another argument without acknowledging that their argument failed.  Eventually, they become emotionally invested in their arguments and unable to reason about them at all.  In this passage we see that Pharaoh became overcome by his anger such that he stopped thinking rationally.  The end result being that the Egyptians plundered themselves of great wealth to get the Israelites to leave.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Exodus 7-9.

I have a Youtube video of me reading the Scripture passage and my comments.

When Aaron’s staff turned into a serpent, Pharaoh’s advisor’s did the same thing to their staffs.  When Aaron stretched out his staff over the Nile and the water turned to blood, Pharaoh’s advisor’s also turned water to blood.  When Aaron stretched out his staff and summoned frogs come up and cover the land, Pharaoh’s advisors also summoned frogs.  When Aaron stretched out his staff and struck the ground bringing forth gnats to the point where everyone was covered with them, Pharaoh’s advisors were unable to duplicate his actions.  However, by that point Pharaoh had become so convinced that Aaron and Moses were tricksters that he was sure that what they were doing was just tricks his advisors did not know.  Pharaoh had failed to pay attention to the fact that from the beginning there was something different about what Moses and Aaron were doing.  When all of the staffs turned into serpents, Aaron’s staff swallowed up the staffs of Pharaoh’s advisors.  When Aaron turned the water in the Nile to blood, Pharaoh’s advisors did it on a smaller scale.  When Aaron and Pharaoh’s advisors summoned frogs, it wasn’t Pharaoh’s advisors who ended the infestation.  It was Moses asking God which ended the infestation of frogs.  So, even when Pharaoh’s advisors were able to duplicate the signs which Aaron performed on behalf of Moses, God demonstrated that there was something different about what He was doing.  In the same way, when God gives us signs today, they may appear to be coincidence, or something which could be attributable to something else, but if we look closely we will see that the staff displaying God’s will swallows up those which try to dismiss it.  The people of Egypt suffered a lot because Pharaoh refused to listen.

There is a second way in which Pharaoh and the people of Egypt suffered because Pharaoh refused to listen when God first spoke to him.  Initially, all God asked of Pharaoh was that he allow the people of Israel to take a short trip into the wilderness to make a sacrifice to Him, returning after they were done.  Now God knew that Pharaoh would refuse that offer, but He made it nonetheless.  My point being that if Pharaoh had been the sort to allow the Israelites to take a three day journey into the wilderness to make sacrifices to God, who was not part of the pantheon from which Pharaoh’s power derived, the Israelites would not have been slaves in Egypt.  Since Pharaoh was the sort of fellow he was, God used him to demonstrate His power to the Israelites so that they would become His people.

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.

Today, I tried recording my reading of the passage before I began writing.  Previously, I had recorded my reading of the passage after I finished writing down my thoughts.  I decided to change it up because on several days I had additional thoughts about the passage while I was reading it with no time to put them into this.  Oh, I just realized that I had not announced on here that I have started recording my daily reading and thoughts and publishing those videos on Youtube.  So, feel free to check it out and tell me what you think.

This passage illustrates something which I heard a speaker say some years back, “If you think that you have the skills to accomplish the ministry to which God has called you, that is NOT the ministry to which God has called you.”  Moses felt like he was unqualified to do what God that to which God was calling him.  His attempts to convince God that he was the wrong person began in yesterday’s passage when he asked, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh?”  In today’s passage, Moses brings objections to being the one to undertake this task for God.  First, he says that the people of Israel will not believe that God has sent him.  I am sure that he was harkening back to the Israelite who asked him, “Who made you a prince and a judge over us?”  In any case, God answered that objection by giving Moses signs which he was commanded to perform to illustrate to the people of Israel that God had sent him.  Then Moses brought out what he thought was the key objection to God sending him, his lack of public speaking ability, or even ability to speak eloquently one-on-one.  We often have similar objections when God calls us to a ministry.  Our objection being, “I don’t have the skills/gifts to do that.”  Here is God’s answer to Moses when he said that he did not have the oratorical skills necessary for the ministry to which God was calling him, “Who has made man’s mouth? …Is it not I, the Lord? Now there go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak!”  God did not call Moses to lead His people out of Israel because Moses had the skills to do that to which God was calling him.  God was going to give Moses the ability to do what He was calling him to do.  God called Moses in order to demonstrate His power to Pharaoh, and to the Israelites.  In the same way, God does not call us to a ministry, to a task, which WE can accomplish by our own ability and power.  He calls us to do things which will demonstrate His power to us and to those to whom He has sent us.

As a final note, after God dismissed Moses’ final objection, Moses said what was really bothering him.  He didn’t want to do it and asked God to send someone else.  This made God angry.  But I want to note something we often miss.  God was already sending Aaron to meet Moses.  God had already started Aaron on his way to meet with Moses (check the verb tense in chapter 4 verse 14, “Behold, he is coming out to meet you,…”).  So, when God calls us to a task, he will provide us with the support we need to accomplish the task.

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.

I thought about writing about how the Egyptians enslaved the Israelites because they feared them and parallels with other instances of slavery in history.  Then I thought about writing about how Pharaoh’s daughter almost certainly knew that the wet nurse she hired for the baby whom she named Moses was his mother.  I thought about other themes as well, but then I came to the account about the burning bush.  The reason I decided to focus there is because it starts out in a way which follows on from what I wrote about yesterday.  The account begins by saying that the angel of the Lord appeared to Moses in a flame of fire.  Moses saw the bush burning, but not being consumed.  So he went to look closer, and when he did the passage tells us that God spoke to him.  So, is it an angel or is it God?  I know.  I already talked about this yesterday.  The word translated as angel in the Old Testament means messenger.  Once again, we have the messenger of God, who is God, appear.    In the New Testament, and, to a degree, later in the Old Testament, the Spirit of God often brings messages from God.  Further, the “angel of God” appears in a flame of fire.  This reminds me of Pentecost, where the Holy Spirit came down upon the disciples in tongues of fire.  I believe that that comparison is not an accident.  It seems to me that God purposefully used tongues of fire to remind His disciples of when He appeared to Moses.  So, what we have here is the Old Testament portraying the Holy Spirit.  The point I want to make is that the New Testament portrayal of God as a Trinity is not foreign to the Old Testament Scripture.  Even before the birth of Jesus, God’s people understood that there were different aspects to Him.  I will try to show how the prophets expanded on this as we go through the Bible this year (I will note that I have had similar ideas about a theme I would touch on throughout the year where God has had other ideas…or, perhaps I just lost focus).

I was going to stop there, but then I was struck by the way in which Moses asked, “Who am I, that I should go?”  In much the same way, Jesus’ disciples had to wonder who they were to be sent with God’s message of the new covenant.  They were not men of great learning.  They were not men with a gift for oratory.  They were not men of standing in their community.  But they WERE the men whom Jesus had chosen.  In the same way that Moses was the man God had chosen, in the same say that the people gathered in that place on Pentecost were the people God had chosen, we are the people God has chosen to speak His message.  I do not know to whom you have been called to speak, but I know that you have been called.  I do not know to whom I have been called to speak, but I know I have been called.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on Exodus 39-40.

When I read through this the first time my thought was that the cloud of the glory of Lord covering the tabernacle would be my focus.  As I reread the passage to get my thoughts in order, I read the description of what the skilled craftsmen had created and thought it was mostly a repeat of the description God had given Moses of what they were to do.  And that is definitely true.  I also thought about the description of Moses putting the tabernacle up for the first time.  Once again, I thought about the fact that he would have needed a lot of help to do so.  I have written about that before, but in light of how much the gold, silver, and bronze weighed this year I realized just how big that task was.  Then, once Moses was satisfied that the tabernacle and its furnishings had been set up correctly, the passage tells us that “the cloud covered the tent of meeting, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.”  Until today I always thought the “tent of meeting” in that sentence was the tabernacle.  It occurred to me today that, while in the passages following this “tent of meeting” referred to the tabernacle, in this sentence tent of meeting may refer to the tent of meeting which Moses used before the tabernacle was built.  Moses could no longer enter the old tent of meeting because the cloud settled over it, but the glory of the Lord was no longer there.  Moses no loner met with God at the temporary, cobbled-together, tent of meeting which he had designed and put up outside of camp for that purpose.  He now met with God in the tabernacle, which had been designed by God and was put up in the middle of the camp.  This foreshadows the change which happens when Christ died and rose from the dead.  Under the Old Covenant, we met God in a structure outside of ourselves.  In the New Covenant, we meet God inside our hearts.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on Exodus 36-38.

I am not sure how I am going to tie my thoughts about today’s together.  I know I often write that.  At the beginning of this passage the workers who were putting the materials together came to Moses asking him to get the people to stop bringing more materials because they had more than enough already.  As I read this, the Israelites were donating so much more than was needed for the work that it was starting to get in the way.  The Israelites wanted to take part in the construction of the tabernacle so much that they contributed more to its construction then could be used, and they had to be told to stop.  I think sometimes we don’t really comprehend just how much they contributed.  Part of that is because we do not use the units of measure which are used in this passage (or in any of the Biblical passages for that matter).  The translators’ notes gives us some reasonable approximations.  The tabernacle and its furnishings used over 1 ton of gold, 2 3/4 tons of silver, and 2 1/2 tons of bronze.  This does not count how much wood, fabric, yarn, thread, and precious stones were used.  And that is just how much was used!  The passage tells us that the Israelites gave even more than that for the work.  Further, we need to remember that this was a people who had left Egypt in a hurry, pursued by the Egyptian army, and almost constantly on the move since then.  Finally, I want to note that the Israelites transported the tabernacle around the wilderness for a little over 40 years.  Most of it was carried, which puts a whole different light on the later accounts when Moses divided up the duties of transporting the tabernacle and its furnishings.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Exodus 33-35.

After Moses had destroyed the golden calf and restored order in the Israelite camp, God told Moses to lead the Israelites on to the Promised Land, but that He would not go with them, because if He did He might destroy them on the way.  In response Moses said something which tells us a lot about our relationship with God.  As part of requesting God to go with them Moses said, “f you are pleased with me, teach me your ways so I may know you…”  God taught Moses His ways because He was pleased with him.  Also, Moses did not please God because he followed His ways.  If that were the case, Moses would not have needed God to teach him His ways.   In the same way, God is not pleased with us because we follow His ways.  Rather, He is pleased with us because we recognize that we need Him, and because of that He teaches us His ways.  It was important that Moses realize that he needed to be taught God’s ways.  It is just as important that we recognize that we need to be taught His ways.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on Exodus 30-32.

When we read and talk about the Israelites making and worshiping the golden calf while Moses was on Mt Sinai we tend to either look at how God got angry and Moses argued against God destroying them, or we look at how Moses got so angry that he destroyed the stone tablets which God had inscribed.  I have never heard or read anyone who looked at the contrast between Moses’ reaction when God told him about it and his reaction when he witnessed it for himself.  When God proposed destroying the Israelites and building a people to fulfill His promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob from Moses’ descendants, Moses argues against doing so.  Then on the way down the mountain, when they first heard the sounds of the festival which Aaron had the people put on in worship of the calf, Joshua thought it sounded like the aftermath of a battle.  However, Moses immediately realized that it did not sound either like the celebration of a victory, nor did it sound like the grieving after a loss.  Then when Moses realized what was actually going on, he was furious.  It seems to me that perhaps God suggested to Moses that He would wipe out the Israelites so that Moses would come to their defense, which would temper his anger when he saw what they were actually doing a short time later.  It is worth noting that when Moses sent the Levites through the camp to kill, they only killed about three thousand men.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on Exodus 25-27.

In today’s passage God gives Moses instructions for building the tabernacle.  He told Moses to make it exactly like the pattern which He showed him.  I have mentioned in previous years, and on other passages, that I do not usually get a lot out of passages which describe how things were supposed to look.  I started reading today’s passage thinking I was going to have to struggle to find what I wanted to write about.  Then I noticed something about the description of how they were supposed to put together the Ark of the Covenant.  Twice God instructs Moses to put the tablets of the covenant law into the Ark.  First, He tells him that he is to do so after the poles for carrying the Ark are installed.  Then a second time He tells Moses to put the tablets into the Ark after placing the cover on top of the Ark.  Specifically, God tells Moses to put the tablets of the covenant law, “which I will give you”, into the Ark.  At the central point of the tabernacle, and later at the central point in the temple which was modeled after that tabernacle, was to be the Ark of the Covenant.  And in the Ark was to be the words of the covenant law, etched in stone by God.  This was so important that God mentioned it twice.

Now what makes that important to us?  Well, as I read this I was struck that Paul wrote that we are now God’s temple.  The tabernacle, which was the model for the temple, was built according to plans which God showed to Moses of the heavenly temple. Just as the words of the covenant law were to be in the most central part of the tabernacle, so should God’s Word, and His words, be in the most central part of the temple which we have each become.  We each individually are God’s temple, and we as a group, as the Body of Christ, are God’s temple.  In both cases God’s Word, and God’s words, should be at the center of how we live our lives, and how we relate to each other.  It is so important that we should repeat ourselves in making sure that it is there.

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

Today, I am reading and commenting on  Exodus 22-24.

Before I get into my main point today I want to touch on a few other things.  In the second and third verse of today’s passage it says, “If a thief is caught breaking in at night and is struck a fatal blow, the defender is not guilty of bloodshed; but if it happens after sunrise, the defender is guilty of bloodshed.”  I am not sure why God makes that distinction between whether it happens at night or during daylight hours.  However, it seems like the expectation here is that at night one is more likely to be a bit disoriented (and thus be more likely to not calibrate your actions correctly), combined with the fact that after sunrise one can more reasonably expect aid to come in response to your cries for help.  The other verse I wanted to mention is the sixth one in today’s passage which says, “If a fire breaks out and spreads into thornbushes so that it burns shocks of grain or standing grain or the whole field, the one who started the fire must make restitution.”  That one struck me because of the fires in California and the evidence which makes me wonder if they were all set by someone.  Anyway, enough idle musing.

Later in today’s passage God tells the Israelites the following, “See, I am sending an angel ahead of you to guard you along the way and to bring you to the place I have prepared.  Pay attention to him and listen to what he says.”  God sent an angel to the Israelites, He has sent His Holy Spirit to us.  God told the Israelites that if they did not worship the gods, or follow the practices, of the people whose land they were going to occupy, but instead worshiped only Him, He would bless them.  He is bringing us to place which He has prepared for us.  He has sent His Holy Spirit to guard us and guide us.  If we listen to what He says, and refuse to follow the practices of the people around us, He will bless us.  Let us listen carefully to what He says, and do what He tells us to do.  Then He will be the enemy of our enemies and will oppose those who oppose us.  Of course, if we truly do as He says, then our enemies will be those who have chosen to be His enemies, and those who oppose us will be those who oppose Him.  I want to repeat the part which I find most important.  God has sent One to Guard us and guide us, and He has prepared a place for us.

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