“40 Days and 40 Nights of God’s Word”

DAY 3: JULY 25

EXODUS 5 – EXODUS 31:18

This reading is the meat and bones of the Old Testament. It’s so rich, you could read it every day for the rest of your life and still find something new, something that impresses on you in a way it hadn’t before.

• It’s good that God told Moses in advance that his efforts to persuade Pharaoh to let the Hebrews go would fail multiple times before finally succeeding. Otherwise, Moses might have given up after the fifth or sixth try. God talks to all his children, to guide and encourage them. This spiritual fact has mostly been lost on Christians today. They think prayer is a one-way channel to God, but the communication flows both ways, as we see throughout the entire Bible. God is a very present God and Father for those who love him and serve him and heed his advice.

• Interesting that the Egyptian magicians (demon-summoners) could turn a rod into a serpent and back, and turn water into blood, but they couldn’t turn dust into lice, or call forth the frogs, or any of the other miracle plagues that God struck the Egyptians with. Even today, some people who claim to be Christians can perform miracles in Jesus’ name, but they’re actually summoning demons to do the task. Jesus warned us about those people. Just because someone performs a miracle in Jesus’ name doesn’t mean the miracle is from God.

• Note that the plagues didn’t affect the Hebrews, just the Egyptians. The Hebrews were protected by God. Note also that later in the reading, when the Hebrews are in the wilderness, God tells them they won’t get sick (“I will take sickness away from the midst of thee”). These are the protections promised to those who obey God’s Commandments and other directives. We are not of the world; we are in the world, not of it. Remember that.

• “SPOIL THE EGYPTIANS!” After 430 years of slavery, the Hebrews were only too happy to take whatever they could get from the Egyptians, and God made sure the Egyptians gave generously. But why on Earth did God direct the Hebrews to take gold jewelry and fabric on their wilderness journey? Would they not have been better off taking food and water? We find out later in the reading that the gold and fabrics are for the building of the Ark of the Covenant and everything that went with it (candlesticks, basins, etc.). God’s directions to you initially may seem odd and even nonsensical, but they always have a purpose, as you eventually find out.

• The Egyptians thought they had the Hebrews trapped when they heard they were camped on the shores of the Red Sea. The Hebrews, when they saw Pharaoh’s army coming for them, thought the same. But God’s whole purpose in bringing the Hebrews to the shores of the Red Sea was to trap the Egyptians, not the Hebrews. The Hebrews he safely led through the sea on dry land by miraculously parting the waters, whereas the Egyptians who followed after them he drowned. God ALWAYS makes a way for his people. No matter how hopeless and impossible it may look, GOD ALWAYS MAKES A WORKAROUND. We need to remember this for what is coming. You don’t have to give into evil because you don’t see a way around it. God will get you through it HIS way (that is, in a way that you cannot conceive at the time), if you trust him and follow his advice.

• THE TEN COMMANDMENTS! These are the core of scripture. None of them have changed, and they are all as equally valid today as they were thousands of years ago when God first gave them to Moses. Remember that, at the time, the Commandments were to apply to Hebrews only, so killing a non-Hebrew was not considered a sin. Jesus later expanded the jurisdiction of the Commandments to include everyone, whether believer or not, and God then wrote his Commandments on everyone’s heart, believer or not. So none of us now has any excuse not to follow them. No-one can claim they don’t know the Commandments, and no-one can claim they don’t apply to them. The Commandments now apply to everyone.

• Do you keep all of them? Your answer had better be “YES!” without thinking twice, or you have some repenting and restorative work to do.

• Fascinating directive about the altar – you’re not supposed to go up steps to get to it, and if it’s stone, it’s not supposed to be hewn. Strange, but nearly every altar I’ve seen in every alleged Christian church I’ve been to has steps leading up to it and is made of polished marble or some other manufactured stone, wood, iron, or artificial material. I don’t recall one altar in an alleged Christian church that was simply unhewn stone. Anyone know of any? How about graven images of people that are prayed to, decorated, or have lit candles around them – seen any of those in alleged Christian churches? “By their fruits shall ye know them.”

• I LOVE THE SABBATH! Obviously, God does, too, since he made it a Commandment and stressed that we need to keep it to “refresh” ourselves (his term). The Sabbath was made for our refreshing, so that we can rest physically and mentally and have plenty of time to get another hit of God’s Word without feeling obligated to perform other duties. It is the one day a week to be Mary sitting at the feet of Jesus rather than Martha running around like the proverbial chicken with its head cut off. There’s nothing better on Earth than spending the whole day with God and reviving yourself through scripture. If you don’t do that, you don’t have the refreshing you need to get through the next week. As Jesus said: “The Sabbath is made for man, not man for the Sabbath”. God wants us to refresh ourselves in mind, body and spirit one day out of every seven because he knows we need it. He made us that way.

What were your impressions of this blockbuster reading? Did anything jump out at you that you hadn’t noticed before? Leave a comment below and share your thoughts. Happy Sabbath, everyone!

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The BIBLE READ-THROUGH SCHEDULE on PDF is directly below:

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