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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Morning Musing: Exodus 6:1

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“But the Lord replied to Moses, ‘Now you will see what I will do to Pharaoh: because of a strong hand he will let them go, and because of a strong hand he will drive them from his land.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

I’m sure I’ve used this illustration before somewhere, but one of my favorite types of magic tricks are the ones when the magician seems to make a mistake or have something go wrong with the trick. The best versions of these have you totally buying into the drama of the moment only to leave you absolutely astounded when they pull off an even more impressive trick than it had looked like they were going to do in the beginning. After Moses’ first encounter with Pharaoh makes it look like God’s plans were going to be a total bust, God offers Moses a bit of reassurance. Let’s talk about what’s going on here and what it means for us.

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Morning Musing: Exodus 5:15, 17, 20-22

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“So the Israelite foremen went in and cried for help to Pharaoh: ‘Why are you treating your servants this way?’ . . . But he said, ‘You are slackers. Slackers! That is why you are saying, “Let us go sacrifice to the Lord.”‘ . . . When they left Pharaoh, they confronted Moses and Aaron, who stood waiting to meet them, ‘May the Lord take note of you and judge,’ they said to them, ‘because you have made us reek to Pharaoh and his officials – putting a sword in their hand to kill us!’ So Moses went back to the Lord and asked, ‘Lord, why have you caused trouble for this people? And why did you ever send me?'” (CSB – Read the chapter)

We like stories that have a happy ending. Just nearly all of our stories do too. In order to get to that happy ending, though, there is often a journey involved. And while sometimes that journey is short and smooth, there are other times when it is anything but that. Sometimes, in the beginning, it looks like there won’t be any journey at all. Instead, it appears that we are simply bound for failure, and everyone around us is worse off for our efforts. Let’s talk today about Pharaoh’s reaction to Moses and Aaron, and when our best efforts just seem to make a mess of things.

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