Tag: Salvation

Morning Musing: Exodus 11:9-10

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“The Lord said to Moses, ‘Pharaoh will not listen to you, so that my wonders may be multiplied in the land of Egypt.’ Moses and Aaron did all these wonders before Pharaoh, but the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he would not let the Israelites go out of his land.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Let me give you a bit of a peek behind the curtain this morning. I often write the introductions for these posts several weeks before I write the rest of them. These introductions serve as placeholders so that when I come back to actually write the full post I have a bit of a reminder of what I was thinking when I was first studying through a particular passage. As a result, I’m often studying one part of the text while writing about another a few chapters back. On occasion this lets me see connections between two different parts that I might otherwise miss. Way back at the beginning of chapter 7, just before God set Moses loose on Pharaoh, He told him (again) what was going to happen. The words He used then were remarkably similar to these words right here. Let’s come back to them again and touch yet again on this theme of Pharaoh’s hard heart. From that, we’ll spend a moment reflecting on why all of the repetition we find in this story is so important.

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Digging in Deeper: Exodus 11:4-8

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“So Moses said, ‘This is what the Lord says: About midnight I will go throughout Egypt, and every firstborn male in the land of Egypt will die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on his throne to the firstborn of the servant girl who is at the grindstones, as well as every firstborn of the livestock. Then there will be a great cry of anguish through all the land of Egypt such as never was before or ever will be again. But against all the Israelites, whether people or animals, not even a dog will snarl, so that you may know that the Lord makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel. All these officials of yours will come down to me and bow before me, saying: Get out, you and all the people who follow you. After that, I will get out.’ And he went out from Pharaoh’s presence fiercely angry.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

In the animated film from DreamWorks Studios about the Exodus, Prince of Egypt, the real climax of the film is when the Angel of Death moves through the city inflicting the final plague on the people of Egypt – the death of the firstborns. Even for an animated offering for kids, the scene is disturbing. The animation is scary enough, but the concept is what is really horrifying. We read this dryly and move on to the next part of the story in part because we don’t want to think about what is happening here. Indeed, when Moses writes about the actual event in the next chapter, he doesn’t describe it in any more detail than we see right here. Today, though, let’s wrestle a bit with what is going on here and what to make of this final plague.

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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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Digging in Deeper: Ephesians 2:8-9

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“For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift – not from works, so that no one can boast.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

The latest season of one of the most popular streaming series out there finally answered one of the most burning questions it has heretofore completely ignored: How do you eat with a helmet on? The answer: You don’t. With The Mandalorian’s third season having finally given us an answer to this, I’m not sure what else there is for them to do. At just over the halfway point in the season, though, the ride has been pretty entertaining. Let’s talk about what has worked, what hasn’t, and an interesting intersection with the Christian worldview.

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Broken from Birth

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As we continue our journey through some of the more unsettling results from the Lifeway and Ligonier Ministry The State of Theology survey, this week we are moving on from the doctrine of God to the doctrines of people and sin. One of the more common ideas about our status before God when we start out in life is that we are all born innocent in God’s eyes. Yet as we engage with the Scriptures carefully, we are greeted with the rather disturbing news that this isn’t the case at all. In this next part of our journey we are talking about why that is and why the truth is so much better. Thanks for reading and sharing.

Broken from Birth

I don’t watch as many of them as I used to, but I used to watch a lot of food competition shows. I’ll still occasionally tune in today just to see the sheer artistic splendor of the things the various food artists create. The level of detail and intricacy to some of their creations is simply jaw dropping. There’s a new series on Netflix called, “Is It Cake?” where judges have to guess which of the items on a display in front of them are cake and which aren’t. They get fooled a lot. The fact that someone can make a cake look so convincingly like something else like a shoe or a purse or even a burger and fries that you actually can’t tell which is which is amazing to me.  

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