Tag Archives: Moses

Bible

Choose life

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Moses showed the consequences of our decisions in his last speech in Deuteronomy.

Moses says in Deuteronomy 30:19-20, “Choose life, that you may live, loving the Lord your God, obeying his voice and holding fast to him, for he is your life.”

The possibility of choosing between life and death goes like a red line through the Bible. It begins in the Garden of Eden with the two trees. Jesus speaks of eternal life and perdition. And in Revelation, humanity reaps the consequences of their choices.

In short, those who love God will live, those who oppose him will perish. God has mercy on those who turn back.

Deuteronomy 30:2 If you return to the Lord your God, you and your children, and obey his voice in all that I command you today, with all your heart and with all your soul, 3 then the Lord your God will restore your fortunes and have mercy on you, … 6  so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live.

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The past always looks better in hindsight

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Although the people have experienced God’s care and see his presence in the pillar of cloud and eat his bread daily, they long for Egypt. Instead of turning to God, they harass Moses. It even gets really dramatic. Moses fears being stoned (Exodus 17:4).

The past always looks better in hindsight. We forget suffering.

Endurance and trust is a sticking point in our lives.

What is striking is that God’s solution is always different. Now Continue reading The past always looks better in hindsight →

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The daily bread

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The manna that travelled with the people of Israel when they left Egypt has a deep meaning.

The manna that kept the people of God alive is a perfect illustration of Jesus, the gift of true life. Manna is a symbol for the daily mysterious care of God through Jesus in all eternity.

Jesus says in John 6:35, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.”

Jesus teaches us to pray in Matthew 6:11: ” Give us this day our daily bread“.

We need our bread every day. This means that we allow ourselves to be inspired and fascinated by God daily. Faith lives from the daily encounter with God.

What is also interesting is, that the manna could not be carried over from one day to the next, except on Friday for Saturday. This indicates that it was not simply a desert phenomenon but a daily miracle. This can also be seen from the fact that the manna began on exactly one day and ended on a specific day and accompanied the Israelites on their journey.

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God sometimes takes unusual ways

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When Israel leaves Egypt, God lets his people walk along the trade route towards modern-day Eilat. The goal was taking them to the mountain of God in Midian, as He promised Moses in Exodus 3:12: “When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.”

The area of Midian is today where the place Neom arises. Neom should also include the mountain of God (Jebel al Lawz) or reach to its edge.

Now there is an unexpected turn. God is leading them to an impasse on the left bank of the Gulf of Aqaba, to the Sinai in the Red Sea desert.

They stayed near Nuweiba. The Pharaoh thinks: They are lost. Therefore, I can bring them back. I deliver them from Moses who is leading them astray.

But behind all of it is God, who brings together piece of piece to show his glory. God has a clear purpose. We read in Exodus 14:4: “I will show my glory to Pharaoh and to all his army, and the Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD.”

God sometimes takes unusual ways. Some we never understand, others we later understand what God intended. It’s the challenge of faith to endure.

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sometimes an unexpected extraordinary path

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God does not always act as we expect, but in ways that increase our trust in God. One such story is the Exodus from Egypt.

There is a direct route from Egypt into the land where milk and honey flow. The way to Gaza. But the Philistines were a strong war nation. They came from Crete and had tried to conquer the Egyptians. Since Pharaoh managed to stop them, he made a deal with them. They defended the north flank for him and he gave them wheat in return.

This is how we can understand Exodus 13:17: “God did not lead them by way of the land of the Philistines, although that was near. For God said, Lest the people change their minds when they see war and return to Egypt.”

This was the risen God let Israel take a detour. God knows what he can lay at us. That is why he sometimes lets us take an unexpected, extraordinary path.

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Why a sacrifice? Isn’t belief in a forgiving God enough?

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The image of the Passover lamb in Exodus 11 is a preview of the cross of Jesus.

In order to understand the picture, we have to look back to the first sacrifice. When human beings wanted to decide for himself what should be good for him, he lost the familiar relationship with God and hid from him. He realized that he had nothing to offer God and stood before God without anything. Mankind tried to cover himself, but it was only fig leaves.

God took an animal, slaughtered it, and gave them the skin for clothing. Only through a skin could man continue to exist before God. Man experienced the result of turning away from God’s orders. Someone had to die because of their disobedience. They were made aware of the consequences of turning away from God. Death is the result of missing the aim – of sin.

The Passover sacrifice adds a deeper aspect. The Lamb appointed by God protects from judgment. The point is to trust and do God’s instructions.

In Jesus we now have a place to put our sins away. At the same time, it is a place where the victim experiences reparation. God does not simply ask us to forget, but he carries our burden in Jesus. In this way he understands us even in our need because he has suffered through it himself. God is not a distant God, but a God who helps us. He is close to us.

At Passover, Jesus uses the bread of the Exodus and the cup of redemption as a sign of renewed faith. The Lord’s Supper is an expression of the belief that Jesus died for me on the cross as the Passover lamb and rose again at Easter and that I have a part in his resurrection power. Death does not have the last word in my life.

Death and resurrection of Jesus is an offer of reconciliation that we can step into. It is not about religious accomplishment and not about a fig leaf, but about trust in God. We don’t create a path to God, we take up His offer of salvation.

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The beginning of a free life

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The tenth plague of Egypt (Exodus 12) leads to Passover, the first festival in the biblical calendar. Israel celebrates with Passover or Pesach, the beginning of a free life with the opportunity to build up their faith in God. The key to this story is in the first and perfect sacrifice.

God does not save because of ethnicity, but because of practiced faith. Faith is not about developing our ideas about God, but about listening to what He says.

The point is that the Egyptians trusted in other gods and despised the God of Israel. The attempts to wipe out Israel now hit them themselves.

Some think why should an animal be slaughtered, and the blood painted on the doorpost?

There are things in faith that we cannot explain as human beings because they come from a divine order, because they are important to God.

Perhaps it will help us if we remind ourselves that this story leads to the Jewish Passover festival. It was on this feast that Jesus, the perfect sacrifice, died. The death of Jesus is the fulfilment of Passover.

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God is the light of the world

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God says to Pharaoh, “I am the light of the world. It’s terrible when I’m excluded.” In the darkness there is disorientation. There is no plague more terrible than total darkness in hearts.

God asked Moses to release the darkness so that the Egyptians might know their condition. It got dark for three days. This is the absolute disorientation. But in Exodus 10:23 we read, “The people of Israel had light where they lived”.

God wants to redeem people and show them the way out of darkness. Everyone chooses for himself whether he wants to remain in Egypt or join the people of God.

The plagues are about the revelation of the power of God against the power of the gods of Egypt. The first plague affected the Nile, one of the most important gods of the Egyptians. This is about the main god: the sun. Re or Ra is the ancient Egyptian sun god. This means that the sun itself is a god and therefore was not created by a divine being. From this sun god the pharaoh borrowed his power, authority, and name.

David writes in Psalm 27:1: “The Lord is my light and my salvation”.

In Isaiah 49:6 it says about the Messiah: “I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”

John writes in John 3:19, “This is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light.”

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Despots tend to stick

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Despots seem to tend to stubbornly stick to their plans, even if their people perish in the process. Exodus 10:7 says, “Let the men go… Do you not yet understand that Egypt is ruined?”

A power struggle ensues. The Egyptians also had a god for the wind. But now the wind drives innumerable locusts, which also eat the sacred trees. There was also a god named Seraiah who was considered a protector from plagues of locusts. But he was powerless against the God of Israel.

The Pharaoh plays with deception. But you can already see the pitfall in his wording. His admission “Forgive my sin, … and plead with the Lord your God only to remove this death from me” (Exodus 10:7) is only superficial. He does not ask God for deliverance himself, but let’s others pray for him.

Anyone who changes his mind turns by himself to God for mercy.

The locusts consumed whatever was left of the hail. Instead of seeing the light and giving in, Pharaoh’s heart grows dark.

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If you do not learn from history

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It doesn’t usually rain in Egypt. They did not depend on the sky, but on the Nile. With Moses, instead of rain and blessings, they feel the harshness of the hail. Those who meet God’s blessings with coldness will be hit hard.

God let’s Pharo say in Exodus 9:14: “For this time I will send all my plagues on you yourself, and on your servants and your people, so that you may know that there is none like me in all the earth.” The grace of God is exciting. From verse 20 we read, “Then whoever feared the word of the Lord among the servants of Pharaoh hurried his slaves and his livestock into the houses …23 the Lord rained hail upon the land of Egypt… 26 Only in the land of Goshen, where the people of Israel were, was there no hail.”

The god of the air (Nut) could not help the Egyptians, the pharaoh feels compelled to speak of YHWH as the “Thunder-God” (Exodus 9:28). The earth belongs to YHWH (29).

Sometimes people say that if God only intervenes more clearly, then people will also listen to him. But the reports teach us that only a few took the right steps from the experience.