Tag: Moses

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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Morning Musing: Exodus 4:13-14

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“Moses said, ‘Please, Lord, send someone else.’ Then the Lord’s anger burned against Moses, and he said, ‘Isn’t Aaron the Levite your brother? I know that he can speak well. And also, he is on his way now to meet you. He will rejoice when he sees you.'” (CSB – Read the chapter)

I played basketball for a few years growing up. Well, I played basketball for a team for a few years. I played a lot of driveway basketball until high school. Then we moved to a house that didn’t have a goal in the driveway and I was too busy with other activities anyway (also, I was terrible). But in my few years of playing, one of the stories my dad told me to encourage me was of Larry Bird’s practice regimen. Bird was, of course, one of the greatest of all time. And while there was certainly an element of tremendous natural talent at play, he became such a superlatively great shooter because he would shoot the ball hundreds of times a day. There was a time, though, when he wasn’t so great. There was a time when Moses wasn’t so great either. This was it. Let’s talk about it.

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Morning Musing: Exodus 4:1

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“Moses answered, ‘What if they won’t believe me and will not obey me but say, “The Lord did not appear to you”?'” (CSB – Read the chapter)

One of the bumper sticker truisms about the Christian faith that sometimes gets thrown around is that whatever God calls us to, He equips us for. That process, however, is not always direct and smooth, and sometimes – especially if we don’t want to do it – we can be rather reluctant recipients of His help. Moses fits rather spectacularly into this category. In the first part of chapter four here, we find Moses trying to get out of what God was sending him to do. What we see here is not the great man of faith we know him to be, but who he was before that. Moses tries three times to get out of what God wants him to do. Let’s look at each of these in turn this week, starting with this first one.

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Digging in Deeper: Exodus 3:2-4

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“Then the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire within a bush. As Moses looked, he saw that the bush was on fire but was not consumed. So Moses thought, ‘I must go over and look at this remarkable sight. Why isn’t the bush burning up?’ When the Lord saw that he had gone over to look, God called out to him from the bush, ‘Moses, Moses!’ ‘Here I am,’ he answered.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

How good are you at paying attention to what’s going on in the world around you? Some people have a keen eye to catch every detail of their surroundings. Others seem more like they walk around in a permanent fog. This can be tricky when we serve a God who sometimes likes to be subtle. It often feels like it is hard to catch what God is trying to say. We just wish He would do something big and flashy like set a bush on fire without burning it up, and then speak out of it when we draw near…just like Moses got here. Let’s talk about what’s going on in this famous God-encounter and what it might mean for us.

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Morning Musing: Exodus 2:21-22

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“Moses agreed to stay with the man, and he gave his daughter Zipporah to Moses in marriage. She gave birth to a son whom he named Gershom, for he said, ‘I have been a resident alien in a foreign land.'” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Have you ever found yourself stuck somewhere you didn’t plan to be and didn’t necessarily want to be? For many of us, that can easily lead to a season of bitterness. We make do because we don’t have any other choice, but we’re not happy about it. And we make sure everyone knows we’re not happy about it too. But what if there’s another perspective on things? Sometimes seeing someone else’s story – like Moses’ here – can give us a glimpse through another lens that can be truly transformative if we’ll let it.

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