Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00Obedience, a lesson learned.
00:04We haven't read Exodus 6 verses 13 and 27, but these verses have a point to make.
00:11Their testimony is that Moses and Aaron are the same frail human clay they have always
00:15been.
00:16The revelation of Yahweh has given them a fresh awareness of Him, but left them unchanged.
00:22This is exactly the point.
00:24Amid all our human frailty we face life with our eyes on Him, looking to Him, expecting
00:29from Him, and relying on Him.
00:31Hence we read the key verse which will dominate the rest of the Exodus story, precise, detailed
00:37obedience.
00:39Moses is to do what Yahweh says and leave the outcome to Him.
00:43This comprises doing something silly, like throwing a rod on the ground, something seemingly
00:48pointless like killing a lamb, and something involving power beyond the human calling for
00:52darkness.
00:54Yet Moses must just do what Yahweh says and leave the outcome to Him, that's how Israel
00:59escaped Egypt's power and threat.
01:02It is what is called the obedience of faith whereas humanity says, I can't, so I won't,
01:07faith says, I can't, but He can, so I will.
01:10This was the Lord's promise to Moses, I have made you as God to Pharaoh.
01:16Though Pharaoh himself is God, Moses goes to Him with the promise of equal stature.
01:22In Exodus 7 verse 14 the narrative of the plagues begins to be carefully told, the first
01:28two dominate the godlike Nile, three and four are united in kind.
01:34Five and six are skin eruptions respectively on animals and humans, seven and eight destroy
01:39crops, and nine and ten, symbolically and then actually, express wrath against sin.
01:46Plagues one, four, and seven begin at the river, two, five, and eight begin in the palace,
01:51three, six, and nine are unannounced.
01:55It may be that some of the plagues can be reasonably traced to natural causes, but they
01:59are all the judgmental acts of God designed to give Pharaoh and Egypt a prolonged period
02:04of probation.
02:06Each trial is a test of obedience and grace, holding back the ultimate judgment in hope
02:11of its being rendered unnecessary by repentance.
02:15Reflection, according to James, we are placed no differently from Pharaoh.
02:20The tests of life are designed to implement spiritual progress.