Bible Reading Challenge Blog

We run across so many stories in Exodus that we have heard at one time, but the details are so very rich.  Here we find ourselves with the story of the manna that the Lord provided the Israelites.  I love the origin of the word.  It means literally in Hebrew: “what is it?”  In Hebrew you would say Man-hu?  But notice that it is not just the white flaky substance  that covers the ground which is the miracle, but also the quails which the Lord had promised.  So the people of Israel have both bread  and meat to comfort and support them as they make their way through the wilderness.

Yes, God provides, but notice how it is only after the Israelites complain bitterly, to the point where they say that it would have been better to have remained in Egypt than to die in the wilderness.  There might be some hyperbole there, but the Israelites are really not happy until the Lord provides.  So,  I guess we forgot the whole crossing of the Red Sea, or did we forget the passover, or the other 9 plagues that helped to liberate the people of Israel?  Either way, they say that it would have been better to die in Egypt, at least they wouldn’t have had to do this long trek.  The accusation was that they were going to die of hunger.  They couldn’t complain about dying of thirst, because they had already done that and the Lord provided.  Here is another opportunity for the Lord to provide.

In the midst of the provision we still find the consistent disobedience by the Israelites.  Only take up as much as you need.  They took too much and so it was filled with worms.  It was such a significant event in the life of the people of Israel that Moses is commanded to keep some of that white stuff for posterity sake.  He does.  We often need reminders of the Lord’s faithfulness and at times when we look for them it seems as if they have melted with the morning sun.  We forget what God has done for us just as quickly as the Israelites did.  It is a constant in our lives.

We have a song of praise and celebration after the Lord delivered the Israelites from the Egyptians.  It is led by Moses and the entire congregation of Israel sang this song to the Lord according to vs.1.  It is a song of triumph and a song of celebration which recognized the feat done by the Lord to overcome the powerful nation of Israel.  

Starting at vs.20 we see Miriam is attributed as the one who led  the people with tambourine and dance.  You did get that, right?  Miriam led the people of Israel in a dance with the tambourine and the people joined in.  It was the first example of contemporary worship that we have in Scripture.  That is a bit of a joke, but we definitely do not see the people  of Israel seated in their pews as Miriam is dancing while celebrating his conquest.  I can see the entire nation up and moving about grateful for what God had done for them.

Then just as quickly as they are celebrating, we find them complaining because there is no water.  There was water but it was Marah.  Remember reading Ruth and when Naomi returned with her daughter in law she said do not call me anything but Marah, for she was bitter for all that she had lost.  Here Moses is able to use a piece of wood to make the water potable.  It is a miracle and not something that I am going to try to explain away.  Some people like to spend a lot of time explaining exactly what it was that turned the water sweet.  I’m content to say that it was the Lord.

As the Lord leads the people of Israel he promises them that they shall not suffer any of the plagues that the people of Egypt had suffered.  It is a similar promise that is made after the flood to Noah and his family.  I will not cause this to happen again.  God is gracious and kind and abounding in steadfast love.

I think we need to begin this day with a picture:

What is fascinating to me is the length of time that it took to cross the sea and the length of time it took for the Egyptians to die in the sea.  If you read the Scripture again you will see that there was a stand off between the two camps because God got in the middle of them with a cloud.  As soon as the Israelites began to cross the sea after God had parted it, we read in vs. 22 that the Egyptians pursued them.

The parting of the sea is fascinating in and of itself.  I believe it happened.  Notice, that God didn’t just make it happen, like when Jesus stills the storm.  Rather, we read that God used a wind to make it happen.  He didn’t have to do that.  God could have just made it happen.  But He didn’t, He chose to use a wind.

It makes sense that the Israelites crossed the sea under the cover of darkness.  What we read is that as the sun came up, they were still trying to cross the Red Sea.  At this morning hour God threw the Egyptians into confusion and clogged up their wheels.  After this is when we read that the Israelites cross over safely.  The Egyptians are getting the feeling that something is up, and begin to question whether it is wise or not to pursue the Israelites.  I’m guessing they decide to turn back, but since they are all gummed up they aren’t able to escape in time before the water crashes back in on them tossing them into the sea.  

We finish this chapter with a sigh of relief.  We read in vs. 31 that the people saw the great work that the Lord had done so they believed God and His servant Moses.  Well, it is about time!

Maybe the trek looked something like this:

In my 90 Day Challenge IV folder I have three different maps with three different routes.  There are so many theories as to how the Israelites left Egypt.   But one thing for certain is that the people of Israel were commanded never to forget what it looked like when they did leave Egypt, and what God did for them when they left Egypt.  Once again we read about God commanding Moses to set aside a ritual that would take place once a year.  Ritual is good, it reminds us of God’s amazing grace.  

It is interesting that God spares the Israelites the psychological challenge of facing the Philistines first thing in the morning.  He decides to take them a different way so that they would not become discouraged.  Remember what happens when the spies are sent into the promised land?  This is years later, well they come back discouraged, except for Samuel, of course.  The Lord is trying to avoid that so early in the journey.  We don’t hear a peep from the Egyptians just yet.  Maybe Pharaoh was thinking that they were just going on a three day’s journey like it had been set up to be.  We will hear from them soon enough.

God always leads the way.  A cloud by day and a pillar of fire at night.  It is these passages  that make me think: How could they not have trusted the Lord?  They physically saw him every single day.  Then I remember the uncountable times that I don’t trust the Lord and say: Right, now I remember why they didn’t trust.  We never trust completely.  I would love it if we could trust and obey always.  Yes, I think it is time for a song for that one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fm1S-gO1SZM

And so the great plague has arrived.  Notice before the event takes place the Lord lets Moses know that this is going to be when Pharaoh lets you go, so we are going to have an event, a religious event, to celebrate this day.  He sets Moses up with a liturgy that the people of Israel are to follow for the rest of time to commemorate this event of the Passover.  Did you notice that there are many names for this festival?  Is it the Passover, or the festival of unleavened bread?  Regardless of what it is called it is one that is to be celebrated and remembered in a very specific way.

So, once the holiday is established and Moses is shown how it is to be historically celebrated, the plague strikes.  In this rendition of the passover we do not see an angel of death that passes over the people, but rather it is the Lord who strikes the firstborn of every Egyptian.  The only description that we find is seen in vs.23 where we see that the Lord, will prevent the “destroyer” from entering houses of the Israelities.  The one carrying out this task is called the “destroyer”.  There is no angel of death in Exodus as God’s plague kills the first-born of the Egyptians.  It is interesting to note that there is no differentiation between the man on the throne, Pharaoh, and the prisoner in his jail.  They all suffered the same fate.  

The escape of the Israelites is one where they travel nearly 130 miles when they are freed as they go from Rameses which is in Goshen to Succoth.  That is quite a journey when you have 600 men on foot to say nothing of the children and the women.  So you have thousands on this journey along with the livestock.  There is no mention of how the people of Israel felt about this, just that it happened.  That comes  in the following chapters.  

This chapter is really more or less a buildup of the “great plague”.  God tells Moses  that after this plague he will let you go.  Moses is instructed to go and tell Pharaoh what is about to come; that God will strike down the first born of every Egyptian child.  But it doesn’t end there.  It doesn’t even begin there.  We hear before that God instructing all to ask for gold and silver for their neighbor because they are about to get out of this country.  I guess this is a type of covert plundering of the nation.  

The sign that this act is happening and that it is of the Lord is that dogs will cease growling at the Israelites.  They will growl at every other person group, but they will no longer growl at the Israelites.  That is a bit curious.  We have a dog who doesn’t growl, but loves to bark.  We don’t love it when she barks.  But if she were to bark just at certain types of people or just certain ethnicities, that would be very curious indeed.  But for the plague of the Passover, which we will see next chapter, the whole growling of dogs is part of it.  

Moses tells Pharaoh of what is about to come and he leaves Pharaoh in ‘hot anger’ because he knows, he just knows that he will not listen to him.  In fact, God confirms that fact in the next paragraph.  The plague, the terrible plague comes next.

We are getting closer.  We now have two plagues here, plague 8 and 9.  Before the eighth plague comes we see the magicians and the wise men of Pharaoh’s court come to him and beseech him to let Moses and the people of Israel go.  The country is in tatters and he is only creating more and more problems for the people of Egypt.  It must have been a political nightmare.  So Pharaoh seems to try.  Okay, you can leave, but only your men can go and worship your God in the wilderness.  Leave behind the women and the children and the livestock.

Moses disagrees and Pharaoh goes ballistic.  As a result the locusts come and Pharaoh begs Moses for mercy.  It is interesting because at the beginning of this chapter we find that Moses reveled in the fact that history would remember this encounter as a time when the Israelites made the Egyptians look like fools.  This was to be passed on from generation to generation.  I can’t imagine that this reality helps the situation in the Middle East.

The final plague before the final plague is three days of darkness.  If there was ever a harbinger for the resurrection, this just might be it.  A deep darkness, like death, hung on the Egyptians and it lasted for three days.  That was too much for Pharaoh.  You can go, your children and women can go as well.  But, actually, if you could just leave behind your livestock that would be great.  Sorry, I need them for the sacrifices that we will be performing.  Pharaoh certainly was not someone who was used to being questioned, and this Moses had the audacity to talk back to him often.  As a result, again, Pharaoh’s heart was hardened and he said no.

This is not the only time that we see a leader who is directly opposed to the will of God who has his heart hardened by God so that God’s purposes could be carried out and a historical happening could take place as a result of God’s people overcoming someone with a hardened heart.  He hardened the hearts of the religious leaders in John and as a result they were able to not hear or see that Jesus was the Messiah.  The fault is not in God, but it is entirely in a will and desire that leads us away from the presence of the Lord.

Notice the pattern of the plagues.  We find ourselves in this chapter looking at plague number 5, 6, and 7.  The first is the disease of the livestock.  The second is the boils which fell on both animal and people.  The third is hail and thunder.  The first two only struck the livestock and people of Egypt.  Pharaoh noticed that all of his people were compromised, while the people of Israel were not.  The third we find the hail falling only in the land where the Egyptians resided where the area where the Israelites resided, Goshen, was not harmed.  

It is after this plague of the terrifying hail and thunder that Pharaoh tells Moses that he will let the people go.  Moses follows through and does what he says he is going to do, but again Pharaoh hardens his heart.  We see that as a constant theme.  God follows through and Pharaoh hardens his heart.  

Take a little time and think about the many, many times that God sends us signs about his presence and directives on turning our lives around and we instead choose to harden our hearts.  But God does not give up and does not go away.  I thank God for that.

Once again the Lord commands Moses to go before Pharaoh and warn him of the plagues to come.  The first plague was turning the water to blood, and then they follow in succession:  frogs, gnats, and flies.  After each of these plagues Pharaoh says that he will let the people go, but then he changes his mind, just as the Lord said that he would.  I think it is interesting that the magicians are able to turn the Nile to blood, they are able to bring out frogs, but when he gets to the gnats, they are at a loss.  It seems like from now on they will be at a loss.

There is a longer dialogue with Moses and Pharaoh, and it almost seems as if he is interested in knowing why the Israelites can’t just go and worship their God in their own homes.  Moses comes up with a good reason, even if I wonder it was simply for the attempt to get the people away from the land and away from their place of slavery.

Did you know that Moses was the little brother?  It is in vs. 7 that we see their ages when they approach Pharaoh.  It is not important for this part of the story, but it was interesting to me because it fits in with the other little brothers who were over their family like Isaac, and Joseph, and Jacob and others.  

The detail of this chapter is really quite rich.  We have read all of these stories in Sunday School, but I wonder since then if we have ever really read them?  I mean have you seen the detail in these stories?  The magicians were also able to throw their staffs down and snakes appear, but Moses’ staff which had turned into a snake ate up the other snakes.  The same way the magicians of Pharaoh were able to turn the water to blood, just like Moses did.  But they were not able to turn it back.

Did you notice that the water remained blood for 7 days?  Moses knew that Pharaoh would not relent, God had told him.  We are in Houston now, rebuilding, and it does feel like a plague has hit this city.  Entire blocks of homes are uninhabited and uninhabitable.  Slowly but surely the city is coming back, but these 7 months have been terrible for the city.  We know it was not the hand of God that caused this, but how can you not question the desires of the Lord in these situations?