The Israelites crossed the Sinai and camped in Etham on the other side of the desert. The Bible tells us that God went with them. There was a pillar of cloud during the day and a pillar of fire during the day. This was physical evidence that God was actually with them. All the people could simply look up and see this pillar. If they could see it, they were going in the right direction. Now this wasn’t just a wisp of smoke during the day or a tendril of fire in the night.
Author: Pamela Porterfield
I am a graduate of Bethany Nazarene College which is no Southern Nazarene University. I have a Bachelor of Arts in Speech, English, Creative Writing and Drama with a minor In Educations. I live in Baton Rouge, La, with my husband of 45 years, Stan. We are members of the Baton Rouge First Church of the Nazarene. I am excited to be doing what God has inspired me to do.
GIVE ME YOUR FIRSTBORN
Chapter 13 begins with “Consecrate to Me all the firstborn, whatever opens the womb among the children of Israel, both of man and beast; it is Mine.” (Exodus 13:2). The word consecrate means make or declare sacred; dedicate irrevocably to a religious or divine purpose. Literally, set it apart for God. The firstborn are the joy and pride of any family. They are the hope of the next generation. God, the creator and proprietor of all creatures laid claim to the firstborn of the Israelites. The firstborn was considered to be the best. And the best belonged to God. This was to be the memorial for the protection of the firstborn on the night of Passover. The remembrance that God had redeemed Israel, His firstborn people, from Egypt.
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TAKE YOUR PEOPLE AND GO!
Finally! Pharaoh called Moses and Aaron and told them “. . . take your people and go!” He made no restrictions or bargains. Just “Leave my people”. Pharaoh had to have known from the beginning that the Israelites never intended to return. The deaths of the firstborn across all of Egypt was devastating. Even the Egyptians were eager for them to leave as well. They urged them to leave or “. . .we will all die.” The Israelites did as Moses instructed and asked for gold and silver and clothing. The Egyptians were eager to comply with all of their requests. This generosity, inspired by God, allowed the Israelites to leave Egypt plundered of its wealth.
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THE ANGEL OF DEATH
Once the darkness lifted, Pharaoh went back to trying to bargain with God. (Exodus 10:24-29) But, God is not to be bargained with. But Pharaoh believed he was on equal footing with God. He was worshipped in Egypt as a god. Pharaoh was considered to be a god, the son of Ra, the supreme god. But he was only human, just as God was trying to show him. It still hasn’t dawned on him that God was greater and more powerful than any god he worshipped. But soon, he would learn that God was more powerful than life itself.
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TURN ON THE LIGHTS
The land of Egypt has been stripped bare. The locusts have eaten everything that had been left from the death of the livestock and the hail. But still Pharaoh would not let go of his gods and would not let the Israelites go. His pride in his personal deity and his belief in the gods of Egypt overruled what he had seen and heard. Again and again, God demonstrated the ineffectiveness of the Egyptian gods and goddesses. They had no power. God proved that He alone had control of creation, from the smallest insect to the life and death. Now God was going to prove that He was greater that the most worshipped god in Egypt, Ra.
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HAIL AND MORE BUGS
We have worked our way through six plagues. The only indication of time frame that we have is that seven days passed after God struck the Nile. I have read that some scholars think the time from the Nile turning to blood to the deaths of the first born was 40 days. God is kind of partial to 40 days, so who knows. At any rate, time waits for no man. Pharaoh was just a man, and he was running out of time. One of these days, Pharaoh will let the Israelites go, he just doesn’t realize it yet.
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BULLS AND BOILS
We’re going to look at the next two plagues this week. The fifth plague affected all of the Egyptian cattle “out in the field”. That phrase is important here. We’ll look into that. The sixth plague is boils. Boils on the people and the remaining animals.
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TINY LITTLE BUGS
We will be looking at two of the plagues this week. The third plague – gnats. And the fourth plague – flies. Little tiny bugs. Both give me the shivers. I don’t know about you, but bugs bug me (pun intended). We live in South Louisiana and both gnats and flies are in great supply here. Both are irritating and pesky. I don’t know about you but if you are familiar with either one, just multiply those tiny little bugs by the hundreds of millions and you might have an idea of how much the Egyptian suffered.
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FROGS! EVERYWHERE!
It had been seven days of blood. Now the Nile has been restored. But still, Pharaoh would not let the people go. The Bible tells us he hardened his heart. Moses and Aaron spoke to Pharaoh, asking that he “. . . Let my people go, so that they may worship Me.” Then, he was told exactly what would happen if he did not let them go. God was very specific with the details of what was coming. Frogs, everywhere. In the palace, in the bedrooms, on the beds, in the houses of officials and people and into the ovens and kneading troughs. In other words, you won’t be able to move without stepping on a frog.
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A RIVER OF BLOOD
as we learned before, Pharaoh believed he was descended from the supreme god. He believed that he had power over all facets of Egyptian life. He had magicians and wise men who could perform ‘miracles’. Whether these came by illusion or from demons is not told in the scripture. However, they could reproduce some of the things that God sent upon the Egyptians. But they could not reverse anything that God sent. God would soon show them that their gods had no power. One by one, the gods would fall.
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LET MY PEOPLE GO
Moses had a simple message. This is what God says, “Let my people go.” But Pharaoh was having none of it. Instead, he made it harder for the Israelites to make the bricks that they were forced to make for the Egyptians. God told Moses to go to the people and tell them that God had heard their suffering and remembered the covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. To tell them that He would free them and lead them to the land promised to the patriarchs. Moses passed this message on to the people and they would not listen to him because they were discouraged. They had had hope and all it got them was more work.
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NEVER HEARD OF HIM
By this time, the Israelites have descended into abject slavery. They were forced to make bricks. Their newborn sons were being thrown to the crocodiles. Those that were fortunate enough not to be making bricks were household or field slaves with nothing of their own. Their whole lives were dedicated to making the lives of the Egyptians easy. It was into this that Moses arrived to bring the hope of freedom.
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DELIVERANCE IS ON THE WAY
Moses, reluctantly, decided to follow God’s Instructions. Every felt like that? God tells you to do something and you really don’t want to. I know that I felt that way often growing up when my parents told me to do stuff. Often I didn’t want to, but equally more often, I did it anyway. Most of the time, it was ultimately rewarding. Other times, not so much. Moses had tried and tried to get out of going back to Egypt.
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EXCUSES, EXCUSES
How easy is it to overthink things? When a situation in your life comes up that is kind of out of the box, it’s so easy to think what if . . . I fail . . . I cause more problems than I fix . . . I can’t make people understand what I’m trying to do. I know I do. When I look at the test results before I speak to the doctor, my mind runs all over the place. Is it cancer? Is it something else? What happens now? What am I going to do if . . .? My brain is a very imaginative place. I can think of a million scenarios, most of them bad. So, here is Moses. He is overthinking. In doing so, he doesn’t take into account that God is in control. When God tells you that you are to do a particular thing, we need to remember that we will not be alone. God is there. He will provide all that we need.
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I KEEP MY PROMISES
God has identified Himself as the eternal God. The God of the ancestors of those Israelites who were now suffering in Egypt. He has confirmed that He has not forgotten them. He is stating that now is the time for the promise of deliverance to be fulfilled. Moses, who once may have thought he could deliver his people, has learned that he can do nothing without God. That he must walk in the path that God lays out for him and for the people of Israel. God now begins to tell Moses what will happen in general terms. The specifics will be seen as time unfolds.
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I AM WHO I AM
Moses is standing before God and has been told that he will go to Egypt to lead the Israelites out and into the Promised Land. Moses knows he is speaking with God. He knows that God has given him a monumental task. What do you think his response should be? Yes, sir!! I’m on it! And off he goes. Right? Nope. Not this Moses. He asks another question. Who are You? Well, not in so many words, but you know what I mean.
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WHO AM I?
One would think that Moses would be ready to do God’s bidding. He knew that his people were suffering. He knew that he had run away after killing an overseer. He knew that he had a price on his head in Egypt. But he knew that now he was a nobody. A shepherd. The kind of person that the Egyptians despised. He was no longer a prince of Egypt, the son of the daughter of Pharoah. I mean, really. He had been gone for forty years. He could just see the reaction of both the Israelites and the Egyptians. And he voiced it in three words, “Who am I?”
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FIRE!!
Moses had to move the sheep from place to place to find grazing for them. So, here he is on the mountain, and he sees a fire. Fire probably wasn’t uncommon in the desolate desert where dried vegetation could spontaneously catch fire. But he looks at the fire and notices that there is something different. The bush is not burning. The leaves did not curl, nor did the branches break and fall off. It’s on fire but it is not burning.
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MAN ON THE RUN
When we left Moses last time, he was a baby and was adopted by the daughter of Pharoah. A princess of the land. It follows that Moses was educated as a prince of Egypt. He was a trained warrior and a scholar. He probably knew several languages, the customs and traditions of several nations as well as how to run a province or even an entire country. He lived a life of privilege but at the same time he knew that he was not Egyptian by birth but a Hebrew.
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REALLY, I FOUND HIM IN THE RIVER
Exodus 2 begins with a birth announcement. A man and woman of the tribe of Levi had a child. A baby boy. Jochebed and Amran had two children before this baby. Aaron and Miriam. All of these children would be used of God over the next 120 years. We’ll see just how in our study of Exodus.
