Exodus 1-4

Make sure you are using a study Bible as you read through this year. If you are using a chronological Bible, if it does not have good study notes, don't abandon your moments of curiosity! There are great online commentaries to choose from on Crosswalk.com or you can read using one translation and benefit from the study notes of another. I believe the best one in stores today is the Apologetics Study Bible. I appreciate their bringing clarity to what secularist call contradictions in the Bible. For example, they may point out that in Exodus 2, Moses' father-in-law's name is Ruel and then called Jethro. Jethro is his first name though and Ruel the name of his clan. Again, in Exodus 1:5 Moses tells us that Jacob's descendants numbered 70 yet in the book of Acts, Stephen says 75, but that is because Stephen is counting the 5 sons of Ephraim and Manasseh. If we think we have found a contradiction, we have actually only found the continuation of our own lack of understanding!

For Moses being saved, have you ever thought what it must have been like for his mother to be able to nurse him, care for him, raise him until he was ready to be weaned? That meant they were living among families whose sons had been thrown into the Nile. Can you imagine the tension that created among them? Humility. With our greatest blessings, may we remember that our gift from God can be a painful reminder of tragic loss to others. We must be humble with our blessings.

Too, we see humility come when Moses goes to seek permission from his father-in-law, a priest of Midian. Would we have asked for permission? Come on, we just talked to God through a bush! I know my inclination would have been to go and tell Jethro Ruel that I was leaving under the mandate of God Himself! Yet, we see Moses, gracious, respectful, humble, having a mandate from God yet submitted to the spiritual authority of his life. How would churches change in the world to today if all operated under such protocol?

Something I am excited to read in Heaven, I hope you have a list like this, I want to read the account of the "burning bush" moment that Aaron had with God. Don't you? God tells Moses that Aaron is on his way to meet him. What? This reminds us that the Israelites had a life defining relationship with God, conversing relationship, worshipping relationship. God was in constant communication with His people. What we observed in the life of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob did not die with them but lived on now with everyone who were themselves covenant keepers. Can't you imagine Aaron, "Who, Moses? You want me to wander out into the desert to meet Moses, he's been gone for 40 years now, he'll be 80, 80...and he is going to be our leader into the long awaited exodus?" God, "Yes."

Can you imagine Moses walking back into the communities of the Israelites? Possibly the only surviving male of his generation. For us, may we ask the question of God today, what needs to be consecrated in our lives? What needs to be set apart for you? What needs to die so that your plans in me and through me can live?

Pastor Fred