Morning Musing: Exodus 6:11-13

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“‘Go and tell Pharaoh king of Egypt to let the Israelites go from his land.’ But Moses said in the Lord’s presence, ‘If they Israelites will not listen to me, then how will Pharaoh listen to me, since I am such a poor speaker?’ Then the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron and gave them commands concerning both the Israelites and Pharaoh king of Egypt to bring the Israelites out of the land of Egypt.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Doubt is scary stuff. It’s especially scary when it comes to the journey of faith. We’re not really sure what to do with doubt when thinking about faith. The two seem like opposites to us. Occasionally we treat them like they are oil and water and in ways that can actually be pretty harmful to people striving for one yet experiencing the other. Moses’ journey was in many ways a study in doubt and faith. We see it twice in this chapter alone. Let’s reflect together on it here and what it may have to do with our own stories.

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Morning Musing: Exodus 6:6-9

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“‘Therefore tell the Israelites: I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from the forced labor of the Egyptians and rescue you from slavery to them. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and great acts of judgment. I will take you as my people, and I will be your God. You will know that I am the Lord your God, who brought you out from the forced labor of the Egyptians. I will bring you to the land that I swore to give Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and I will give it to you as a possession. I am the Lord.’ Moses told this to the Israelites, but they did not listen to him because of their broken spirit and hard labor.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Have you ever been presented with a golden opportunity that you passed up because you just didn’t have the energy to take it? There are occasionally times in life when something comes along that looks incredible, but we don’t jump on it for one reason or another. Sometimes those reasons are good and understandable. Sometimes the people around us think we are certifiably insane for passing up on whatever it was. God, through Moses, was making some pretty incredible promises to the people of Israel here. Yet because Pharaoh had so broken their spirits, they wouldn’t believe any of it was really true. Let’s dig in a bit to what is going on here, and talk about staying encouraged when things seem bleak.

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Digging in Deeper: Exodus 6:2-5

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“Then God spoke to Moses, telling him, ‘I am the Lord. I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as God Almighty, but I was not known to them by my name ‘the Lord.’ I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, the land they lived in as aliens. Furthermore, I have heard the groaning of the Israelites, whom the Egyptians are forcing to work as slaves, and I have remembered my covenant.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

When a school gets an educational path right, everything you learn builds on what came before it. I’ve talked before about a very specific experience of that I had when I was getting my chemistry degree. My senior-level chem professor sat us down on the first day of class and said we were going to spend the semester learning why everything we had learned before wasn’t correct. He was being mostly tongue-in-cheek. What he meant was that we were going to spend the semester building on the foundation of what we had learned before in ways that made it hard to recognize some of what we had originally been taught. This is something God does throughout the Scriptures and especially here in the story of the Exodus. Let’s pause on this little section to see how He is doing this here.

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Explosive Beginnings

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This week we are kicking off a brand-new teaching series. Over the next few weeks, we are going to be journeying through the first part of the story of the early church in Acts. We will be looking together at how the church got its start and what that means for churches today. This is an incredible set of stories that you will not want to miss a single part of. In this first part we are talking about the church’s explosive start and what exactly it was that fueled it. Read on and find out for yourself.

Explosive Beginnings 

One of the things we so often miss when we go to the Scriptures is the humor. We start reading and even in our heads put on our “Bible reading voice” and make it sound all dry and boring. The truth, though, is that it is anything but boring, and it is often very funny. Our passage last week as we challenged our graduates (and, really, all of us) is a perfect example. You can’t help but to appreciate the humor of Moses’ doing his best to wiggle out from under the thing God was calling him to do (and which He was abundantly clear was going to end successfully if he would just go do it). But one of the passages that has long been the funniest to me comes right at the beginning of Luke’s historical record of the early church we call, “Acts.” 

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Morning Musing: Romans 3:23

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“For all have sinned, and fall short of the glory of God.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Have you ever been late to the party? Usually when that happens you try to slink stealthily into the back and gradually blend into the conversations that are already happening so your belated appearance isn’t quite so painfully obvious as it could be. Today I’m arriving a little late to the party. I have just a couple of comments on a song that is almost 12 years old, was a smash hit when it was released, and has remained remarkably popular as an anthem for the season we are in. I’m late to the party because, honestly, other than hearing it everywhere, I never paid the long the least bit of attention in its first decade-plus of existence. But a recent performance of it on America’s Got Talent brought it freshly to mind. Let’s talk for just a minute today about Lady Gaga’s quadruple Platinum anthem, Born This Way.

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