It was amazing reading through the account of the Exodus again. What an amazing story that is.
What part of the story stood out to you as you read through it this time?
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The thing that always strikes me when I read through this is how God hardens Pharoah's heart. It is sort of terrifying to think of God hardening anyone's heart, or allowing the Devil to come into them (as in Judas' case) since we are all His children and He wants us to love Him. But in both cases God ultimately used both those people to achieve His plan.
ReplyDeleteReading about that is also good motivation to keep fighting sin and stay serious about battling it and confessing daily. Also along with our New Year's theme of being prayerful, praying for God to search your heart and clean out whatever doesn't need to be there.
The other thing that hits me when I read the Exodus account is how God led the people with a pillar of fire, allowed the Israelites to cross the Red Sea on dry land, and then killed the Egyptians when they followed, yet a few days later the people are already grumbling about how they were better off in Egypt because they had food and water there. So many times God provided needs and crushed enemies, yet the people turned their backs so quickly.
We're only in Exodus and it's already painfully clear how badly we needed a Savior. Reading through all this continues to drive home to me how gracious God is for sending His Son.
Why did God harden Pharoh's heart? Why was it necessary to inflict the Egyptians with ten plagues before Israel was freed? These questions would confound us if Scripture did not offer a simple, though difficult, explanation:
ReplyDelete(Romans 9:17 ESV) For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, "For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth."
This is difficult for us to understand but God seeks glory for Himself. That He may be exalted over all. The Israelites could not boast that they had accomplished anything in the exodus. Nor could the Egyptians deny the power of God in it. Much like we cannot boast anything in our salvation.
How can God seek His glory if it is sinful for us to do this? Because He is God. That is difficult to understand as well without a good understanding of who God is and His nature. We must always approach Him with humility and thankfulness for His grace without which we would not be in His presence.
It's been mentioned a few times now that there were over 600,000 Israelites in the Exodus. What I've been wondering is what it really means when Moses "speaks to the assembly." Is it just the elders of the tribes that he speaks to and the message gets relayed to everyone else? I was just trying to picture 600,000 people being spoken to in my head. It's not like they had PA systems.
ReplyDeleteOr is the number of people one of those numbers we should not take literally?
In addition to speaking to the entire assembly, in today's reading it said that whole assembly was at the entrance to the tent of meeting.
ReplyDeleteI don't know for sure, but I am guessing that the 'assembly' is a representation of the people. I'll have to keep looking into this.