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Chapter 16: Let’s look at where we are:

1.  We left Goshen
2. Succoth- where the Lord began leading with a cloud by day and fire by night,
3. Pi-Hahiroth-where God parted the Red sea
4. Marah- meaning bitter, this is where God changed the water from bitter.
5. Elim-12 springs and 70 palm trees
6. The wilderness of Sin-God provided their daily needs.

The Lord is leading us the long way to the promised land for a reason.  🙂

Manna- means “what is this”.  I KNOW you can all slip this into your day…when my students hand in a paper today without their name on it I am going to yell MANNA!!

⁴ Then the Lord said to Moses, “I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. In this way I will test them and see whether they will follow my instructions. ⁵ On the sixth day they are to prepare what they bring in, and that is to be twice as much as they gather on the other days.”

The LORD will give a small commandment and test people to see if they will follow.  (I am not your Holy Spirit, I am just my husband’s,  but I am sure the Lord will speak to you personally in today’s read)

Manna is Israels’ food for their journey.

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³² Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. ³³ For the bread of God is the bread that comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”

³⁴ “Sir,” they said, “always give us this bread.”

³⁵ Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. ³⁶ But as I told you, you have seen me and still you do not believe.

Jesus is the only food for our journey towards our promised rest. (trying to keep this post short for anyone catching up, so moving on…but feel free to dig a little on this)

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Chapter 17-  This is kind of a big chapter for me and you will see why when we get to Numbers 20.   I will explain in Numbers. But the area they are in has an enormous amount of limestone that holds pockets of water.  The Lord gives specific instructions SO THAT the people will recognize that the water being provided is from the Lord, not Moses.  If you have a notepad write down the instructions and tuck them in your Bible for later.

Anyway, look back to your map up top: Rephidim.  Was it just me or were you reading and thinking…did I miss a page?  All of a sudden we went from a picnic with manna and water to someone named Joshua and an attack.

Amalekites: Flip back to Genesis 36:12.  I am sure you did not skim this page at all.  Oh, you did skim?  Ok, I will give you a visual then:

Amalek is the grandson of Esau!

Oh my stars!  The Amalekites will be a thorn in Israel’s side often but eventually, God will wipe them off the map as promised.

Who fought the battle?  The Lord did.  The reason for the this tactic of holding up his arms…letting them fall a little…was to show the Israelites that they had God as a Deliverer, a Provider, and now as his Warrior.

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Joshua.  Suddenly we see this name and we know he must be pretty important if a book is going to be named after him.  Joshua is Moses’ assistant.  God takes this opportunity to show Joshua that without the Lord (represented by the staff), you can do nothing without Him.  Joshua is going to need this lesson because what he does not know yet is he will be the one to bring the Israelites to the promised land.  Only 2 adults live to tell the tale of being in slavery and being an eyewitness to the Promised Land!!   The only battles that will be won in the Bible and in our lives are the ones that Jesus is fighting for us.

I urge you to seek application to your own life.  The battles will be won by the Lord.  We must be dependent on him for our needs (manna and water) as well as, the battles we face. The people in our lives merely support the mission by holding up God (the staff) in front of us.  Did the staff actually strike the enemies down or the trust and faith of it?  When the battle is won an altar was made and named JEHOVAH NISSI “The Lord is my Banner”. Do a little digging today and tell me what that means?

Chapter 18: Back in Chapter 17:14 we see here the first reference to “writing the Bible”.  In 18:20 “Teach them the decrees and instructions and show them the way they are to live and how they are to behave”.  The Lord has begun setting up future events where Judges will be called up for His purpose and Glory.

So if you want to do some extra digging:  What were the tribes of Joshua and Hur (not the same), and why is it significant to the coming of Christ?  What are the Hebrew names for cities?  Where did Jethro reside that made his proclamation to only One God a big deal? What does the name Joshua mean in Hebrew,  and how is he a typology?  My precious husband tells me the blogs are too long so I leave you here.

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Here is a map of the path God led the people on:

He could have led the people North, by way of a well-traveled trading route.  Instead,  he took them to a dead end.  Why? For God’s glory to be shown.  It wasn’t Moses that led them out of Egypt (slavery) it was The LORD.  Are they following and trusting Moses at this point or God?  Let’s take a look.

Chapter 13: This wonderful chapter speaks of the additional elements of the annual celebration his people are to celebrate.  Why?  Their children (and the generations to come) will not have witnessed these events personally so God is putting annual celebrations as an opportunity to teach the events that occurred: Verse 14:

¹⁴ “In days to come, when your son asks you, ‘What does this mean?’ say to him, ‘With a mighty hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt, out of the land of slavery. ¹⁵ When Pharaoh stubbornly refused to let us go, the Lord killed the firstborn of both people and animals in Egypt. This is why I sacrifice to the Lord the first male offspring of every womb and redeem each of my firstborn sons.’ ¹⁶ And it will be like a sign on your hand and a symbol on your forehead that the Lord brought us out of Egypt with his mighty hand.”

Go back to the LAST scripture in Genesis 50:

²⁴ Then Joseph said to his brothers, “I am about to die. But God will surely come to your aid and take you up out of this land to the land he promised on oath to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” ²⁵ And Joseph made the Israelites swear an oath and said, “God will surely come to your aid, and then you must carry my bones up from this place.”

²⁶ So Joseph died at the age of a hundred and ten. And after they embalmed him, he was placed in a coffin in Egypt.

We can pull together the promises made to Abraham fulfilled in Exodus 13:19.  Moses takes the bones of Joseph to fulfill an oath taken by the sons of Israel.

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Chapter 14- God leads them to a spot near Migdol, opposite Baal Zephon. “Baal” is a root word for a pagan god.  This may have been a place sailors would worship a god of the storm for safe travel.  I picture this as another showdown between The Lord and a god of Egypt.  Storm verse storm!  God verse god.  The Lord creates an east wind with His breath to make a way for final deliverance to show that HE has brought them to redemption.

³¹ And when the Israelites saw the mighty hand of the Lord displayed against the Egyptians, the people feared the Lord and put their trust in him and in Moses his servant.

The people feared and put their trust in the Lord, Moses was merely a servant to him.

Reading these scriptures in the Bible is a very personal and amazing read.  When we hear the words Old Testament, this is often the picture in on our mind:

I think this is a scene from the movie 10 Commandments. (not sure I have not seen it)  I like this one

The exodus from Egypt, though a real, historical event, prefigures the saving work of Christ for His people. What God did through Moses was to provide physical salvation from physical slavery. What God does through Christ is provide spiritual salvation from spiritual slavery.

Paul says, “For I want you to know, brothers, that our fathers were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual Rock that followed them, and the Rock was Christ” (1 Corinthians 10:1–4). Paul is giving the Exodus from Egypt a Christological reading; he is making the connection between the Exodus from Egypt and salvation in Christ.

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Chapter 15: Song of Victory

Moses and his sister Miriam teach the song to the Israelites.  The first part addresses the events that have already occurred, worshiping God as the majestic warrior who defeated the final claims that Pharaoh is a god.  Then in verse 13 there is a transition to future events.

On this journey they WILL encounter obstacles from the Philistines, Edom (remember this name?…look back at your genealogies to see who the Edomites are), Moab (who are the Moabites? gross), and the Canaanites (all the way back to the days of Noah we learned about them).

Today’s read ends with a piece of wood, Hebrew translation is a “tree”, which turns the bitter water into sweet drinkable water that brings life.  Hmmm. Symbolism?

What tree or wood are you thinking of from the Gospel that turned your bitter sin into living water?

God instructs his people to follow his ways (after redemption, so stop throwing stones at the lost people of the world….they are still lost) and the reward will come.  We end today with “They came to Elim, where there were 12 springs and seventy palm trees, and they camped there near the water.”  I don’t know why these numbers, but I am reminded of the 12 tribes and the 70 that ended Genesis.   ?

(There were a few really beautiful scriptures in these 3 chapters that I purposely did not talk about so that you can hear it straight from the Lord.  Please share if anything made you smile today)

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The last plagues: Each plague was significantly worse than the last.  When we get to the plague of darkness, this is when Pharaoh was shaking in his sandals.  Each god for the Egyptians was extremely important.  (One day you should spend some time digging into it, or the connection each plague had in the New Testament or End Times).

Anyway, back to the plagues.  Overruling the sun god Ra was HUGE!  See there were lots of gods in a “god hierarchy” but the Lord went straight for the top dog in each one.  I have this scene in my head after each plague was over God yelling….Next!

Chapter 11.  The plague of the firstborn.  Pharaoh was the god that mediated between man and all the gods and was in charge of divine order (obviously it’s a job that gave him a title without actually having to do anything.).  After death,  the pharaoh became divine, identified with Osiris, the father of Horus and god of the dead, and passed on his sacred powers and position to the new pharaoh, his son.

Before the last plague, lots of instructions are given, don’t forget to get all the material, gold, and silver you can carry (that’s odd, I wonder what God is planning to build? If you don’t know you will soon😁) Make this month the first month, Nisan.   So this is what their calendar looks like.

Why do you need to know this?  Because it will be a trivia question.  Just kidding.  As we read each Hebrew Jewish Feast WILL be fulfilled.  The feast is a foreshadow of what WILL come.

On the 10th day get a spotless lamb, bring it in for 4 days to ensure its unblemished state. Then there are specific instructions on what is going to happen and how you are to commemorate it.

Do you realize I worked on this post for 5 hours and have started over or deleted almost everything several times!!.  It is just too much and I don’t know where to focus myself!!!  I will just point out a few I suppose and explode later for not writing about all of them.

Calendar: I need the head to explode emoji here.  When I found out that God put all the commemorative holidays like Good Friday, Easter, (well, not Christmas, humans popped that one on the calendar, but it’s a wonderful day ending the advent of the birth of Christ.)  So God set all his feasts on the calendar in the Old Testament to be FULFILLED on the same calendar day in the New Testament.  Maybe some of you knew that, but I am telling you many don’t and it is awesome to hear it, put your hand out and say “wait, what??” and then marvel at how God’s plan and details are in everything. Here is a visual to help you get your mind around:

Chapter 12.  The Passover.

This entire chapter is the overwhelming foreshadow of the Messiah and the protective blood of Christ, the Passover lamb, that takes on the wrath of God for our sins.

The lamb is sacrificed, and no bone is to be broken, just like Christ on the cross.

Exodus 12:46 “It must be eaten inside the house; take none of the meat outside the house. Do not break any of the bones.

John 19:36 These things happened so that the scripture would be fulfilled: “Not one of his bones will be broken,”

The blood would be put on the doorpost.  Remember Covenant requires a sacrifice.  Salvation/the way to Heaven has NEVER changed!  Since Genesis Salvation has been the same as it is today.

For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son,

that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

When we believe that Jesus was the unblemished lamb that TOOK on the wrath of God for us so we can exit our slave state to sin and death (Egypt) that’s when death will also PASSOVER us.

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Chapter 12:17 Celebrate the Festival of Unleavened Bread. So if Good Friday is the Passover, then The Festival to follow is the Resurrection 3 days later.  Yeast is symbolic to sin (we will learn about this more later), it also causes decay through the fermentation process (a compelling representation of the result of sin).  This Festival lines up with Easter Sunday.

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John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world! (John 1:29)

For Christ, our Passover lamb, has beensacrificed.  (1 Cor 5:7)

They will make war against the Lamb, but the Lamb will overcome them because he is Lord of lords and King of kings—and with him will be his called, chosen and faithfulfollowers.” (Rev 17:14)

The lamb is sacrificed and applied.  Those who are obedient through Faith, they will be spared from death:

¹² “On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn of both people and animals, and I will bring judgment on all the gods of Egypt. I am the Lord. ¹³ The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are, and when I see the blood, I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt.

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The Exodus!

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How long were the Israelites there?? (Trivia!)

⁴⁰ Now the length of time the Israelite people lived in Egypt was 430 years. ⁴¹ At the end of the 430 years, to the very day, all the Lord’s divisions left Egypt. 

When The LORD was sealing the Abrahamic Covenant in Genesis 15 he said to Abraham:

¹² As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and thick and dreadful darkness came over him. ¹³ Then the Lord said to him, “Know for certain that for four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own and that they will be enslaved and mistreated there. ¹⁴ But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward, they will come out with great possessions. 

He says what He means and He means what he says!

 

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Why did God need to bring plagues?

1. To show that their gods were false
2. To show that the LORD is real
3. To show that there is only 1 God (theirs never showed up)

These plagues were miracles for both the Egyptians and the Israelites to see.   The Israelites will be delivered and it is important that they know that Moses is a vessel for God (not a god).   In chapter 6: the Lord says I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the LORD your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. 

It is REALLY important that the people who exit Egypt (Israelites as well as some Egyptians)  are following God, not Moses.

Moses (through God), and Aaron as his prophet performs the staff/snake miracle.  The magicians were able to duplicate it BUT were not able to UNDO God’s work.  The magicians had power (tricks, illusions, sorcery, satan,…)

The Plagues were designed according to the gods that were worshiped in Egypt.  There were over 100 named gods, but they worked “together” in categories, so The LORD is going to hit all 10 categories.

The most important thing in Egypt was the Nile. The Egyptians had a god that would be a guardian over the Nile, Khnun.  A “spirit” of the Nile called Hopi, and a god that gave life in the Nile called Osiris.   I can’t help notice their own imitation of the Trinity.   So God changed the Nile to Blood. (not just red…BLOOD).

The Frogs.  The Bedrooms in the palace were probably 3 stories up, surrounded by palace walls and protection. An interesting verse for me was verse 8..Pharaoh says “Pray to the Lord to take the frogs away from me and my people.  Why didn’t he pray to the god Heqt, the great Frog, who was in charge of resurrection and childbirth?

The gnats and the flies are the next 2 plagues.  Pharaoh now wants to compromise a little.  He says if you take away the flies, I will let you make an offering to the Lord. (the 3-day journey was obedience to the Lord Exodus 3:18.).  Isn’t it weird that the magicians tried to duplicate the plagues, rather than end the plagues.  Couldn’t Pharoah see their lack of power?

The Livestock.  The bull was a chief god called Apris.   Even the cow was a god, Hathor, the mother goddess.  (that reminds me, I have to defrost the burgers for tonight).  We begin to see that The Lord is making a distinction between the Hebrews and the Egyptians.⁴ But the Lord will make a distinction between the livestock of Israel and that of Egypt, so that no animal belonging to the Israelites will die.’”

The Boils,  notice none of this is happening to the Israelites.  But this time, God hardens the heart of Pharaoh, as said he would in 4:21. Yet where is the god of medicine, Imhotep to heal them? Where is he?  He must have taken a sick day.

We end today on Hail.  I am reading this paragraph and I think…This is it…finally! Pharaoh says  “This time I have sinned,” he said to them. “The LORD is in the right, and I and my people are in the wrong.  Pray to the LORD, for we have had enough thunder and hail. I will let you go; you don’t have to stay any longer.”

God could stop here, but that would leave gods on the list, as well as the ‘deity’ of Pharaoh.  It is important to show His Sovereignty to the Egyptians, but also to the Israelites so that when they exit slavery it is not a god, Pharaoh, or Moses that will free them.  It is The God.  The ONLY GOD.

 “the Lord says I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the LORD your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians.

Listen, I could have made that post 5 times longer.  There is so much info in this chapter we could talk about, but let’s save some for our next Read Through.

In yesterday’s post I touched on the hardening of the heart.  Here it is again.  I don’t want you to read this and think WHY would a loving God ever do that.  He didn’t.  The Hebrew word for ‘harden’ is chazaq.  It means to fortify or strengthen what he was already feeling.

Click here for a cheat sheet I found on-line.  I will pop it into the printable section too. 

Click here for a second option if you didn’t like the other one.

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Moses gave 5 excuses why he should not be put on God’s mission. (I usually come up with more than 5).

• Who am I? We never feel smart enough, educated enough, spiritual enough.
• I don’t know enough about Spiritual stuff.  He said “How will I describe you? What do I call you?   We all know what the LORD said…”I AM WHO I AM”. It is not our job to show God’s Glory, we just do what is asked of Him, He will do the rest.
• Nobody will believe me-have you ever tried to share the Gospel to your unbelieving family or friend.  It’s hard.
• I can’t speak.  We are all given Spiritual Gifts at the time of our Salvation.  The gift is from God.  The reason you were given it was to become a vessel or a messenger of God.  So it is important to note that we are all called to “speak” on His behalf, just according to the Gift he has given us.
• Last, but NOT LEAST! “Please send someone else”.  That’s not my thing, I am not good at that….

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In chapter 4 we see a foreshadowing of the first and last plague that will occur.

• 4:9 “the water you take from the river will become blood on the ground
• 4:23 “so I will kill your firstborn son”

So Moses headed to see the Pharoah with his staff in hand, the staff of God in his hand. (vs. 20)

The Lord told Moses he would harden Pharoah’s heart. “²¹ The Lord said to Moses, “When you return to Egypt, see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders I have given you the power to do. But I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go.”

The Hebrew word here is chazaq.  It means to strengthen or to fortify.  (Not change his feeling)

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I know what you are thinking…Zipporah could be a knife salesman on QVC!  I thought the same thing! 😂

²⁴ At a lodging place on the way, the Lord met Moses and was about to kill him. ²⁵ But Zipporah took a flint knife, cut off her son’s foreskin and touched Moses’ feet with it. “Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me,” she said. ²⁶ So the Lord let him alone.

Circumcision was an important symbol of the Abrahamic Covenant, and the lack of circumcision would mark a person as cut off from God’s people (Genesis 17:9–14). For Moses to neglect to circumcise his son was an affront to God as if he were saying that he and his family did not truly belong to God. How could Moses be an effective leader of God’s people if he were in violation of God’s clear command?

Moses never had his son circumcised. Why would they be? He was raised Egyptian!  So his wife swiftly secured the covenant with a flint knife.  That’s why I carry a pocket knife in case a mom ever needs to borrow it. 😬

I don’t remember if we talked about it (or if I just had the conversation with myself 🤪) Look for the ‘all caps’ LORD in the scriptures throughout the Bible.  When it is all caps it is the Hebrew word YHWH, we translated it to Yahweh or Jehovah.   In theology, YHWH is a tetragrammaton (“a word having four letters”).   Yahweh is the encompassing “I AM”.  The LORD has always been, He is the beginning and the end of time,  He is utterly independent.  God is constant, he is the same yesterday, today, and forever…I could go on!

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Chapter 5-  We are in Egypt and we have these 2 different groups of people.  The Egyptians obviously,  and the Israelites.  Let’s go back to the end of Genesis.  God was so good to put the families in Goshen, away from the city.  They were able to raise up their people away from the influence of polytheism.  The Pharaoh says “Who is the Lord?” The Lord is not one of the gods that is on the list for the Egyptians to worship, BUT Pharaoh’s name is on that list as a god.  So when Moses enters stage left and says “This is what THE LORD says”, it was putting the deity of Pharaoh as a match to a God that Pharaoh has never even heard of!  Oh Stars, that’s not good….but God has a bigger plan than “just” letting his people go.

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Chapter 6- (my favorite of the 3)  Read the first part with authority aloud and emphasize the word “I” or “my”.

So then you get to the end of Chapter 6 and you roll your eyes and say “C’mon! another “family record”, I can skim over this”.  No!

Like all the others it starts with Reuben…Simeon….boring…..and then we get to Levi-Moses’ family. and it stops there.  This partial genealogy of Levi (which must be important if it is the first 4 letters of the next book we will read, Leviticus), establishes the position of Moses and Aaron.  Jochebed’s name means “the Lord is glory”.  She is the first person in the biblical text to have a name incorporated with His divine name.

Ready for the best part?? Not only is God establishing the position of Moses and Aaron’s family but the wife of Aaron is Elisheba.  Elisheba is from the tribe of Judah.  God is uniting the tribe of Levi (the priesthood) and Judah (kingship, royalty) lines:  Jesus is on every page of this Bible.

If that does not make sense to you…IT IS OK!  IT WILL ONE DAY…I PROMISE!

 

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Here is the agenda for the next 2 weeks!

• Moses (1-7)
• The Plagues (7-13)
• The Exodus (14-18)
• The Law (19-24)
• Tabernacle and Worship (25-40)
• (I posted an Overview last night, sorry so late…I fell asleep studying)
• 

You do not even have to look at this timeline if it hurts your brain.  I know some people like history in “His Story”.  When Joseph was #2, the  Hyksos Dynasty was over Egypt.  When we turned the page from Genesis to Egypt over 400 years had passed.  The book of Exodus is around 1446.  What?  How do I know 400 years have passed?  Good question!

Let’s read Genesis 15:13 one more time..

 “Know for certain that for four hundred years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own and that they will be enslaved and mistreated there.  But I will punish the nation they serve as slaves, and afterward they will come out with great possessions.

We left Egypt naming 70 descendants and 431 years later they count about 2 or 3 million.  In verse 8, the new king, to whom Joseph meant nothing, came to power.

Pharaoh Timeline in Egypt

• Amenhotep I -2nd Pharaoh of 18th dynasty
• Thutmose I- practiced genocide on Hebrew male babies (Exod. 1:15-22).
• Hatshepsut – was the daughter of Pharaoh Thutmose I who drew Moses out of the Nile and later ruled as Queen (Exod. 2:5).
• Thutmose III (1504-1450 B.C.; 6th Pharaoh of the 18th dynasty) was the Pharaoh of the oppression who tried to kill Moses and from whom Moses fled into Midian (Exod. 2:15).
• Amenhotep II (1450-1425 B.C.; 7th Pharaoh of the 18th dynasty) was the Pharaoh of the plagues and the Exodus (Exod. 3:10—15:19).

The new king, Thutmose I, was threatened by a large number of Israelites so he enforced 2 plans:

1. Oppress them with forced labor, and when that didn’t work
2. Kill the newborn boys

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The parallel to the Gospel is unremarkable:

Matthew 2:13 : When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child (Jesus)  and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.” When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, 

Shiphrah and Puah are likely representatives of a large group of midwives.  This is the first recorded instance in the Bible of civil disobedience for God’s name.  In return, God blessed them with families of their own.  (Keep the book of Job in the back of your head.  Satan is going to do everything he can from disrupting God’s plan of bringing forth the Messiah).

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So the midwives will not obey Pharaoh…so a 2nd attempt was made:²² Then Pharaoh gave this order to all his people: “Every Hebrew boy that is born you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live.”

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Chapter 2  The parents of Moses, Amram, and Jochebed are both from the tribe of Levi (you need to know that for later).  When Jochebed puts the baby in the basket, the Hebrew word is tebah, which is the same word used in Genesis for the ark.  Both were used to save a life from the destructive force of water.  This passage is so visual.  I can picture his sister, Miriam, running down the riverbank keeping an eye on the tebah.  When the Pharaoh’s daughter herself defies the decree to kill the newborn, Miriam suggests a woman to nurse the baby….it was the birth mother!  Isn’t that amazing! ❤️

Later, Moses kills an Egyptian while Thutmose III is king, and it becomes known,  so he flees to Midian (an area settled by one of Abraham’s sons after Sarah died and he married Keturah)  where he meets Reuel (also called Jethro) and marries Zipporah.

Ruel “Jethro”  was the father-in-law of Moses and father of Zipporah. Jethro is described as “a priest of Midian.”  The name Reuel means “friend of God,” so the fact that the Bible calls him first by this name may mean that he was a priest of the Most High God.

Back in Egypt, Thutmose III dies, (opportunity knocks to bring Moses back to Egypt!).  I think this is probably the most popular chapter for pastors to teach from because there is so much in it.  To try to find something new in your read today.

But can I say, years ago I was talking to someone who just felt like her sins were  “the big ones” and God would not be able to get passed it.  She would never be good enough.  She had been loved on by the church, told all the right phases by her friends, probably had a coffee mug with 3:16 on it, and just could not feel it.  Clearly, I am not “slow in speech” (my co-workers wish…I don’t shut up!) like Moses, but I just said, “Woman, God used a murderer who was a fugitive, named Moses to save a nation, I am sure he can use you!”.

In short, God tells Moses, go back to the very place he committed murder, covered it up, ran as a fugitive.  So when Moses says “who am I” in verse 11 (not sure he wants that answered to be honest).  God does not answer him because IT DOES NOT MATTER who Moses is.  Instead, God waits for the question that does matter….”Who are you!”. ❤️

“I am who I am”!  Yahweh.  He is SOVEREIGN.  He states the covenant, adds a few promises (which I love),

When you read this scripture, what do you see?

• ¹⁷ And I have promised to bring you up out of your misery in Egypt into the land of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites—a land flowing with milk and honey.’

A long flowing with milk and honey?   True…BUT we have spent so much time looking at “people” so who are these people?  It will help you to understand who is occupying the land they are heading into one day.

Click here for the genealogy.

When Noah cursed Ham’s line in Genesis 9, they became the: Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites.  

❤️Have a wonderful day.  Remember if God can use a fugitive that stutters who murdered someone, he can use you to be an instrument to help someone today feel the love of God.❤️