Exodus 4 Quotes

It was not unusual to be called Son of God in ancient Judaism. God calls David his son: “today I have begotten you” (Psalms 2:7). He even calls Israel his “first-born son” (Exodus 4:22). But in every case, Son of God is meant as a title, not a description. Paul’s view of Jesus as the literal son of God is without precedence in second Temple Judaism.

Do not simply know God according to what He does, but know Him according to what He is. Whether or not God does something for us means nothing.

(Exodus 4:14). Let us not pass the buck of leadership because we think ourselves incapable.

The world is not a source of enjoyment; it is a place of tyranny, and every aspect of the world is a form of tyranny (Gal. 4:8).

God GOD, noun [Saxon god; German gott; Dutch god; Swedish and Danish gud; Gothic goth or guth; Pers. goda or choda; Hindoo, khoda, codam. As this word and good are written exactly alike in Saxon, it has been inferred that God was named from his goodness. But the corresponding words in most of the other languages, are not the same, and I believe no instance can be found of a name given to the Supreme Being from the attribute of goodness. It is probably an idea too remote from the rude conceptions of men in early ages. Except the word Jehovah, I have found the name of the Supreme Being to be usually taken from his supremacy or power, and to be equivalent to lord or ruler, from some root signifying to press or exert force. Now in the present case, we have evidence that this is the sense of this word, for in Persic goda is rendered dominus, possessor, princeps, as is a derivative of the same word. See Cast. Lex. Col. 231.] 1. The Supreme Being; Jehovah; the eternal and infinite spirit, the creator, and the sovereign of the universe. God is a spirit; and they that worship him, must worship him in spirit and in truth. John 4. 2. A false god; a heathen deity; an idol. Fear not the gods of the Amorites. Judges 6. 3. A prince; a ruler; a magistrate or judge; an angel. Thou shalt not revile the gods, nor curse the ruler of thy people. Exodus 22. Psalm 97. [Gods here is a bad translation.] 4. Any person or thing exalted too much in estimation, or deified and honored as the chief good. Whose god is their belly. Philippians 3.

The purpose of redemption is Possession, and the purpose of Possession is likeness to Him who is Redeemer and Owner, is Holiness. [. . .] Redemption is too often looked at from its negative side as deliverance from: its real glory is the positive element of being redeemed unto Himself. [. . .] ‘Ye have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bare you on eagles’ wings, and brought you unto myself. Now therefore, if ye will obey my voice indeed, and keep m covenant, ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto me above all people: ye shall be unto me an holy nation.’—Exodus 14:4-6 The link between Redemption and Holiness is Obedience. [ . . .] God’s Holiness is His fatherliness; our holiness is childlikeness. [. . .] If we are truly to live as redeemed ones, we need not only to look at the work Christ did to accomplish our redemption, but to accept and realize fully how complete, how sure, how absolute the liberty is wherewith He hath made us free. It is only as we ‘stand fast in our liberty in Christ Jesus,’ that we can have our fruit unto sanctification.

We shall never know where the Israelites discovered Yahweh, if indeed he really was a completely new deity. Again, this would be a very important question for us today, but it was not so crucial for the biblical writers. In pagan antiquity, gods were often merged and amalgamated, or the gods of one locality accepted as identical with the god of another people. All we can be sure of is that, whatever his provenance, the events of the Exodus made Yahweh the definitive God of Israel and that Moses was able to convince the Israelites that he really was one and the same as El, the God beloved by Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

In the Middle Ages, marriage was considered a sacrament ordained by God, and God also authorised the father to marry his children according to his wishes and interests. An extramarital affair was accordingly a brazen rebellion against both divine and parental authority. It was a mortal sin, no matter what the lovers felt and thought about it. Today people marry for love, and it is their inner feelings that give value to this bond. Hence, if the very same feelings that once drove you into the arms of one man now drive you into the arms of another, what’s wrong with that? If an extramarital affair provides an outlet for emotional and sexual desires that are not satisfied by your spouse of twenty years, and if your new lover is kind, passionate and sensitive to your needs – why not enjoy it? But wait a minute, you might say. We cannot ignore the feelings of the other concerned parties. The woman and her lover might feel wonderful in each other’s arms, but if their respective spouses find out, everybody will probably feel awful for quite some time. And if it leads to divorce, their children might carry the emotional scars for decades. Even if the affair is never discovered, hiding it involves a lot of tension, and may lead to growing feelings of alienation and resentment. The most interesting discussions in humanist ethics concern situations like extramarital affairs, when human feelings collide. What happens when the same action causes one person to feel good, and another to feel bad? How do we weigh the feelings against each other? Do the good feelings of the two lovers outweigh the bad feelings of their spouses and children? It doesn’t matter what you think about this particular question. It is far more important to understand the kind of arguments both sides deploy. Modern people have differing ideas about extramarital affairs, but no matter what their position is, they tend to justify it in the name of human feelings rather than in the name of holy scriptures and divine commandments. Humanism has taught us that something can be bad only if it causes somebody to feel bad. Murder is wrong not because some god once said, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ Rather, murder is wrong because it causes terrible suffering to the victim, to his family members, and to his friends and acquaintances. Theft is wrong not because some ancient text says, ‘Thou shalt not steal.’ Rather, theft is wrong because when you lose your property, you feel bad about it. And if an action does not cause anyone to feel bad, there can be nothing wrong about it. If the same ancient text says that God commanded us not to make any images of either humans or animals (Exodus 20:4), but I enjoy sculpting such figures, and I don’t harm anyone in the process – then what could possibly be wrong with it? The same logic dominates current debates on homosexuality. If two adult men enjoy having sex with one another, and they don’t harm anyone while doing so, why should it be wrong, and why should we outlaw it? It is a private matter between these two men, and they are free to decide about it according to their inner feelings. In the Middle Ages, if two men confessed to a priest that they were in love with one another, and that they never felt so happy, their good feelings would not have changed the priest’s damning judgement – indeed, their happiness would only have worsened the situation. Today, in contrast, if two men love one another, they are told: ‘If it feels good – do it! Don’t let any priest mess with your mind. Just follow your heart. You know best what’s good for you.

Mark appears to acknowledge the reality that “no one had the strength to subdue” the demon of Roman military occupation (5: 4)—including the Jewish rebels. Yet he makes his revolutionary stance clear by symbolically reenacting the exodus story through a “herd” of pigs. With the divine command, the imperial forces are drowned in the sea. It is no accident that in the aftermath of this action the crowd, like Pilate, responds with “wonder” (thaumazein; 5: 20). To invoke the great exodus liberation story was, as it has been subsequently throughout Western history, to fan the flames of revolutionary hope (Walzer, 1986). Yet Mark realized that the problem was much deeper than throwing off the yoke of yet another colonizer. After all, biblical history itself attested to the fact that Israel had always been squeezed, courted, or threatened by the great empires that surrounded it. And the Maccabean revolt against the Seleucids had only resulted in recycling oppressive power into the hands of a native dynasty, one that in turn became an early victim of a newly ascendent imperial power, Rome. Thus the meaning of Jesus’ struggle against the strong man is not reducible solely to his desire for the liberation of Palestine from colonial rule, though it certainly includes that. It is a struggle against the root “spirit” and politics of domination—which, Mark acknowledges matter of factly, is most clearly represented by the “great men” of the Hellenistic imperial sphere (10: 42).

JESUS IN THE FOUR COLORS OF THE TABERNACLE What were the colors that God chose for the Tabernacle in Exodus 25-40? There were FOUR! 1. PURPLE looks forward to Matthew, because Purple is the color of royalty, and Matthew presents Jesus as God coming as the perfect King of the Jews. 2. SCARLET looks forward to Mark, because Scarlet is the color of blood which is the color of sacrifice which is the ultimate expression of servant hood and Mark presents Jesus as God coming as the perfect sacrificial servant; 3. WHITE looks forward to Luke, because White is the color of perfection, and Luke presents Jesus as God coming in the form of the Perfect man Christ Jesus; 4. BLUE looks forward to John, because Blue is the color of Heaven, and John presents Jesus as God the Son come down to Earth!

God knew when the time was just right to send Jesus, the Messiah, into the world. He knew when the exact religious, cultural, and political conditions were in place. Paul wrote, “When the right time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman” (Galatians 4:4, emphasis added). You see, God is not making up plans as he goes. All the grand events of God’s plan for our redemption have been scheduled in advance, from Creation to the enslavement and exodus of God’s people from Egypt; to David’s taking the throne in Israel; to the birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus; to the day when Jesus will return. Paul said that God “has set a day for judging the world” (Acts 17:31). The course and timing of history is not a mystery to God. Time is in his hands, and he will bring about his plans and purposes in our world and in our lives right on time.

Do not be slow to answer the Lord’s call! From the passage of the Book of Exodus read to us in this Mass we can learn how the Lord acts in every vocation (cf. Ex 3:1–6, 9–12). First, he provokes a new awareness of his presence—the burning bush. When we begin to show an interest he calls us by name. When our answer becomes more specific and like Moses we say: “Here I am” (cf. v. 4), then he reveals more clearly both himself and his compassionate love for his people in need. Gradually he leads us to discover the practical way in which we should serve him: “I will send you.” And usually it is then that fears and doubts come to disturb us and make it more difficult to decide. It is then that we need to hear the Lord’s assurance: “I am with you” (Ex 3:12). Every vocation is a deep personal experience of the truth of these words: “I am with you.”[153]

If we see that God’s intention is to work Himself into us, we shall automatically eat and drink of Him. Mothers know that babies eat and drink automatically, not caring for any forms, manners, or regulations. Infants are better at eating and drinking than adults are. Our eating and drinking are often hindered by all the attention we give to table manners. Sometimes the more we pay attention to manners, the less we enjoy our food. I heard of a Chinese ambassador who attended a formal state dinner in Germany. Because he was so concerned about proper etiquette and table manners, he did not enjoy the food at all. He spent his time watching how others at the dinner conducted themselves and how they used their eating utensils. Table manners kept him from eating. Children are not like this. When my little granddaughter visits us, her grandmother often gives her something to eat. My granddaughter enjoys her food in a spontaneous and informal way. She is a good example of how we should pay less attention to forms and more to eating and drinking. At the very time the Lord Jesus was speaking with the Samaritan woman, the priests in the temple were worshipping God in the formal, systematic, prescribed manner. But where was God at that time? Was He in the temple with [517] the priests, or was He with the woman by the well in Samaria? As we all know, He was with the Samaritan woman. He met with her in the open air, away from the temple and the altar, without religious forms and rituals. Eventually, this Samaritan woman drank of the living water and offered real worship to God. At that time the true worship to God was offered not by the priests in the temple, but by the Samaritan woman who was drinking the living water. The priests worshipped God in vain; the Samaritan woman worshipped Him in reality by drinking Him into her being. The Spirit as the living water was infused into her. God was seeking real worship, and He received it from this Samaritan woman who drank of the Spirit as the living water. Today’s Christians need to see what real worship is. They condemn those in the Lord’s recovery as heretical, when they themselves are heretical and ignorant of the truth. Like the priests in the temple, they are blind to what true worship is. In John 4 the Lord Jesus did not spend time talking to typical Jews according to the Old Testament way of worship. Instead, He conversed with an immoral, semi-heathen woman concerning the worship which satisfies God’s heart. This woman worshipped God in her spirit by drinking of Him as the water to quench her thirst. Thus, God was worshipped by her in a genuine way. How much different this is from formal, religious worship! Throughout the centuries, most Christian worship has been like that of the priests in the temple. Only a small number have worshipped God in spirit by drinking of Him as living water.

The Israelites called Yahweh “the God of our fathers,” yet it seems that he may have been quite a different deity from El, the Canaanite High God worshipped by the patriarchs. He may have been the god of other people before he became the God of Israel. In all his early appearances to Moses, Yahweh insists repeatedly and at some length that he is indeed the God of Abraham, even though he had originally been called El Shaddai. This insistence may preserve the distant echoes of a very early debate about the identity of the God of Moses. It has been suggested that Yahweh was originally a warrior god, a god of volcanoes, a god worshipped in Midian, in what is now Jordan.17 We shall never know where the Israelites discovered Yahweh, if indeed he really was a completely new deity. Again, this would be a very important question for us today, but it was not so crucial for the biblical writers. In pagan antiquity, gods were often merged and amalgamated, or the gods of one locality accepted as identical with the god of another people. All we can be sure of is that, whatever his provenance, the events of the Exodus made Yahweh the definitive God of Israel and that Moses was able to convince the Israelites that he really was one and the same as El, the God beloved by Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

EXODUS 3 Now Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law, Jethro, the priest of Midian, and he led his flock to the west side of the wilderness and came to Horeb, the  wmountain of God. 2 xAnd  ythe angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed. 3And Moses said, “I will turn aside to see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.” 4When the LORD saw that he turned aside to see,  zGod called to him  aout of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” 5Then he said, “Do not come near;  btake your sandals off your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” 6And he said,  c“I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for  dhe was afraid to look at God. 7Then the LORD said,  e“I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their  ftaskmasters. I know their sufferings, 8and  gI have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and  hto bring them up out of that land to a  igood and broad land, a land  jflowing with milk and honey, to the place of  kthe Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.

The next day the main French force resumed its advance after two days’ rest, by which time it was clear that the Russians were not going to fight another major battle in front of Moscow. ‘Napoleon is a torrent,’ Kutuzov said in deciding to surrender the city, ‘but Moscow is the sponge that will soak him up.’4 The Russian army marched straight through Moscow on the morning of the 14th; when it became clear that it was being abandoned, virtually the entire population of the city evacuated their homes in a mass exodus, hiding or destroying anything of use to the invader that they couldn’t carry away with them. Of its 250,000 inhabitants, only around 15,000 stayed on, many of them non-Russians, although looters did come in from the surrounding countryside.5 On September 13, the president of Moscow University and a delegation of French Muscovites had visited Napoleon’s headquarters to tell him that the city was deserted and no deputation of notables would therefore be coming to offer the traditional gifts of bread and salt and to surrender its keys.6 Instead an enterprising old peasant sidled up to offer the Emperor a guided tour of the city’s major places of interest – an opportunity that was politely refused.7 When the soldiers saw the city laid out before them from the Salvation Hills they shouted ‘Moscow! Moscow!’ and marched forward with renewed vigour. ‘Moscow had an oriental, or, rather, an enchanted appearance,’ recalled Captain Heinrich von Brandt of the Vistula Legion, ‘with its five hundred domes either gilded or painted in the gaudiest colours and standing out here and there above a veritable sea of houses.’8 Napoleon more prosaically said: ‘There, at last, is that famous city; it’s about time!

The Ten Commandments EXODUS 20  z And  a God spoke all these words, saying, 2 b “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. 3 c “You shall have no other gods before [1] me. 4 d “You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 5 e You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am  f a jealous God,  g visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, 6but showing steadfast love to thousands [2] of those who love me and keep my commandments. 7 h “You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain. 8 i “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9 j Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, 10but the  k seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the  l sojourner who is within your gates. 11For  m in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. 12 n “Honor your father and your mother,  o that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you. 13 p “You shall not murder. [3] 14 q “You shall not commit adultery. 15 r “You shall not steal. 16 s “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. 17 t “You shall not covet  u your neighbor’s house;  v you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.

The most interesting discussions in humanist ethics concern situations like extramarital affairs, when human feelings collide. What happens when the same action causes one person to feel good, and another to feel bad? How do we weigh the feelings against each other? Do the good feelings of the two lovers outweigh the bad feelings of their spouses and children? It doesn’t matter what you think about this particular question. It is far more important to understand the kind of arguments both sides deploy. Modern people have differing ideas about extramarital affairs, but no matter what their position is, they tend to justify it in the” “name of human feelings rather than in the name of holy scriptures and divine commandments. Humanism has taught us that something can be bad only if it causes somebody to feel bad. Murder is wrong not because some god once said, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ Rather, murder is wrong because it causes terrible suffering to the victim, to his family members, and to his friends and acquaintances. Theft is wrong not because some ancient text says, ‘Thou shalt not steal.’ Rather, theft is wrong because when you lose your property, you feel bad about it. And if an action does not cause anyone to feel bad, there can be nothing wrong about it. If the same ancient text says that God commanded us not to make any images of either humans or animals (Exodus 20:4), but I enjoy sculpting such figures, and I don’t harm anyone in the process – then what could possibly be wrong with it? The same logic dominates current debates on homosexuality. If two adult men enjoy having sex with one another, and they don’t harm anyone while doing so, why should it be wrong, and why should we outlaw it? It is a private “matter between these two men, and they are free to decide about it according to their inner feelings. In the Middle Ages, if two men confessed to a

The Ten Commandments EXODUS 20 And God spoke all these words, saying, 2“I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. 3“You shall have no other gods before [1] me. 4“You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. 5You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, 6but showing steadfast love to thousands [2] of those who love me and keep my commandments. 7“You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain, for the LORD will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain. 8“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. 9Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, 10but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. 11For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. 12“Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you. 13“You shall not murder. [3] 14“You shall not commit adultery. 15“You shall not steal. 16“You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. 17“You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.” 18Now when all the people saw the thunder and the flashes of lightning and the sound of the trumpet and the mountain smoking, the people were afraid [4] and trembled, and they stood far off 19and said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, lest we die.” 20Moses said to the people, “Do not fear, for God has come to test you, that the fear of him may be before you, that you may not sin.” 21The people stood far off, while Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was.

Unqualified Champions Consider these individuals from the Bible. Each person was aware of a personal shortcoming which should have rendered him disqualified for service. God, however, saw champion potential … Moses struggled with a speech impediment: “Then Moses said to the LORD, ‘Please, Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither recently nor in time past, nor since You have spoken to Your servant; for I am slow of speech and slow of tongue’” (Exodus 4:10). Yet God served as Moses’ source of strength. God used him to deliver the Israelites from bondage. Jeremiah considered himself too young to deliver a prophetic message to an adult population: “Then I said, ‘Alas, Lord GOD! Behold, I do not know how to speak, because I am a youth’” (Jeremiah 1:6). God’s reply: “Do not be afraid of them, for I am with you to deliver you,” (Jeremiah 1:8). Isaiah, whose encouragement I quoted earlier, had reservations of his own. Perhaps his vocabulary reflected my own—especially my vocabulary as a teenager: “I am a man of unclean lips” (Isaiah 6:5). Despite Isaiah’s flaws, God saw him as a man He could use to provide guidance to the nation of Judah. Paul the Apostle had, in his past, persecuted the very people to whom God would send him later. To most of us, Paul’s track record would disqualify him for use. But God brought change to Paul’s heart and redemption to his fervency. Samson squandered his potential through poor life choices. As I read about him, I can’t help but think, “The guy acted like a spoiled brat.” But God had placed a call on his life. Though Samson sank to life’s darkest depths—captors blinded him and placed him in slavery—at the end of his life, he turned his heart toward God and asked to be used for God’s purposes. God used Samson to bring deliverance to the Israelites. Do you feel like the least qualified, the least important, the least regarded? Perhaps your reward is yet to come. God has high regard for those who are the least. Jesus said, “For the one who is least among all of you, this is the one who is great” (Luke 9:48) and “But many who are first will be last; and the last, first” (Matthew 19:30). If heaven includes strategic positioning among God’s people, which I believe it will, that positioning will be ego-free and based on a humble heart. Those of high position in God’s eyes don’t focus on position. They focus on hearts: their own hearts before God, and the hearts of others loved by God. When we get to heaven, I believe many people’s positions of responsibility will surprise us. What if, in heaven, the some of today’s most accomplished individuals end up reporting to someone who cried herself to sleep at night—yet kept her heart pure before God? According to Jesus in Matthew 6:5, some rewards are given in full before we reach heaven. When He spoke those words, He referred to hypocritical religious leaders as an example. Could we be in for a heavenly surprise? I believe many who are last today—the ultimate servants—will be first in heaven. God sees things differently than we do.

(3) Theology of Exodus: A Covenant People “I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God” (Exod 6:7). When God first demanded that the Egyptian Pharaoh let Israel leave Egypt, he referred to Israel as “my … people.” Again and again he said those famous words to Pharaoh, Let my people go.56 Pharaoh may not have known who Yahweh was,57 but Yahweh certainly knew Israel. He knew them not just as a nation needing rescue but as his own people needing to be closely bound to him by the beneficent covenant he had in store for them once they reached the place he was taking them to himself, out of harm's way, and into his sacred space.58 To be in the image of God is to have a job assignment. God's “image”59 is supposed to represent him on earth and accomplish his purposes here. Reasoning from a degenerate form of this truth, pagan religions thought that an image (idol) in the form of something they fashioned would convey to its worshipers the presence of a god or goddess. But the real purpose of the heavenly decision described in 1:26 was not to have a humanlike statue as a representative of God on earth but to have humans do his work here, as the Lord's Prayer asks (“your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,” Matt 6:10). Although the fall of humanity as described in Genesis 3 corrupted the ability of humans to function properly in the image of God, the divine plan of redemption was hardly thwarted. It took the form of the calling of Abraham and the promises to him of a special people. In both Exod 6:6–8 and 19:4–6 God reiterates his plan to develop a people that will be his very own, a special people that, in distinction from all other peoples of the earth, will belong to him and accomplish his purposes, being as Exod 19:6 says “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.” Since the essence of holiness is belonging to God, by belonging to God this people became holy, reflecting the character of their Lord as well as being obedient to his purposes. No other nation in the ancient world ever claimed Yahweh as its God, and Yahweh never claimed any other nation as his people. This is not to say that he did not love and care for other nations60 but only to say that he chose Israel as the focus of his plan of redemption for the world. In the New Testament, Israel becomes all who will place faith in Jesus Christ—not an ethnic or political entity at all but now a spiritual entity, a family of God. Thus the New Testament speaks of the true Israel as defined by conversion to Christ in rebirth and not by physical birth at all. But in the Old Covenant, the true Israel was the people group that, from the various ethnic groups that gathered at Sinai, agreed to accept God's covenant and therefore to benefit from this abiding presence among them (see comments on Exod 33:12–24:28). Exodus is the place in the Bible where God's full covenant with a nation—as opposed to a person or small group—emerges, and the language of Exod 6:7, “I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God,” is language predicting that covenant establishment.61

DAY FIVE: ESTHER 1:20-22 At the end of the week, remember that God is still present — but beyond His presence, He is active and working in your life! Trust Him with the details of your day today!   FRIEND TO FRIEND... In Daniel chapter 3, we have a wonderful history about three determined young men and an equally determined king. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were Jews in Babylon, serving under the heathen King Nebuchadnezzar. One day, Nebuchanezzar commissions a statue to be built and worshiped by the inhabitants of the city. He gives an order that everyone is to bow down and worship this statue at the sound of an orchestra, threatening death by fire for those who do not bow. The account of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego does not suggest that there was any conflict in these young men’s minds. In obeying Nebuchadnezzar, they would be disobeying their true King. They would be breaking one of the Ten Commandments: ““You shall not make for yourself a carved image...you shall not bow down to them nor serve them” (Exodus 20:4,5). This was unimaginable. They would refuse to bow, and in doing so, they would trust the Lord in whatever consequences would follow their obedience to His commandments. When Nebuchadnezzar is informed of their refusal to bow, he has the young men brought to him. The king reminds them of his order, and the consequence of not obeying the order: they will be burned alive in a fiery furnace. Even finding themselves faced with dire consequences, these three young men remain determined to serve God and fulfill His purposes. They are prepared with an answer for him: “O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to answer you in this matter. If that is the case, our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and He will deliver us from your hand, O king” (Daniel 3:17). Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego acknowledge that they are not bowing as Nebuchadnezzar wants them to, but they do not try to defend themselves. There was no need to get into an argument when their minds were already made up. My favorite part of this response, however, comes next: “But if not, let it be known to you, O king, that we do not serve your gods, nor will we worship the gold image which you have set up” (Daniel 3:18). In other words, “Even if our God decides NOT to rescue us, we still will not serve your idol.” That’s determination! Truly, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego had made their minds up long before Nebuchanzzar even had his idol commissioned. The true reason they were able to face such a threat with such tenacity was that they had long ago decided to follow the Lord with their whole heart. The decision of this day was not whether to begin serving the Lord and refusing to bow; these young people already knew what they stood for, and they remained steadfast in their faithfulness to the Lord. Whether the Lord came to their rescue on this day was of little matter to them. They intended to serve the Lord. In order for you to fulfill the call that God has placed on your life, you will have to find yourself DETERMINED and TENACIOUS in following that call. On terrific days, you must be faithful. On terrible days, you must be faithful. When you display this kind of determination, you can be confident that God will show up every day. In Daniel 3:19-25, the history continues. At the close of this conversation with Nebuchadnezzar, things did not seem to go in Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego’s favor. As the king had threatened, these three were in fact thrown in the fire. What Nebuchadnezzar did not yet realize was that they would not go into the fire alone. Who was there in the midst of them? Three were thrown into the fire, but when Nebuchadnezzar looked into the furnace, he told his guards, “I see four men loose, walking in the midst of the fire; and they are not hurt, and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God” (Daniel 3:25). The Son of God was in the furnace with them! Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were confident

We all know that there are harsh passages toward others in the Bible as well: dispossess the Canaanites, destroy Jericho, etc. But, as I said earlier, the evidence on the ground indicates that most of that (the Conquest) never happened. Likewise in the case of the destruction of the Midianites, as I described in Chapter 4, this was a story in the Priestly (P) source written as a polemic against any connection between Moses and Midian. It is a polemical story in literature, not a history of anything that actually happened. At the time that the Priestly author wrote the instruction to kill the Midianites, there were not any Midianites in the region. The Midianite league had disappeared at least four hundred years earlier. As we saw in Chapter 2, it was an attested practice in that ancient world to claim to have wiped out one's enemies when no such massacre had actually occurred. King Merneptah of Egypt did it. King Mesha of Moab did it. And, so there is no misunderstanding, the purpose of bringing up those parallels is not to say that it was all right to do so. It is rather to recognize that, even in what are possibly the worst passages about warfare in the Bible, those stories do not correspond to any facts of history. They are the words of an author writing about imagined events of a period centuries before his own time. And, even then, they are laws of war only against specific peoples: Canaanites, Amalekites, and Midianites, none of whom exist anymore. So they do not apply to anyone on earth. The biblical laws concerning war in general, against all other nations, for all the usual political and economic reasons that nations go to war, such as wars of defense or territory, do not include the elements that we find shocking about those specific cases. ... Now one can respond that even if these are just fictional stories they are still in the Bible, after all, and can therefore be regarded as approving of such devastating warfare. That is a fair point to raise. I would just add this caution: when people cherry-pick the most offensive passages in the Bible in order to show that it is bad, they have every right to point to those passages, but they should acknowledge that they are cherry-picking, and they should pay due recognition to the larger--vastly larger--ongoing attitude to aliens and foreigners. In far more laws and cases, the principle of treatment of aliens is positive.

THE MEANS OF GOSPEL RENEWAL While the ultimate source of a revival is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit ordinarily uses several “instrumental,” or penultimate, means to produce revival. EXTRAORDINARY PRAYER To kindle every revival, the Holy Spirit initially uses what Jonathan Edwards called “extraordinary prayer” — united, persistent, and kingdom centered. Sometimes it begins with a single person or a small group of people praying for God’s glory in the community. What is important is not the number of people praying but the nature of the praying. C. John Miller makes a helpful and perceptive distinction between “maintenance” and “frontline” prayer meetings.1 Maintenance prayer meetings are short, mechanical, and focused on physical needs inside the church. In contrast, the three basic traits of frontline prayer are these: 1. A request for grace to confess sins and to humble ourselves 2. A compassion and zeal for the flourishing of the church and the reaching of the lost 3. A yearning to know God, to see his face, to glimpse his glory These distinctions are unavoidably powerful. If you pay attention at a prayer meeting, you can tell quite clearly whether these traits are present. In the biblical prayers for revival in Exodus 33; Nehemiah 1; and Acts 4, the three elements of frontline prayer are easy to see. Notice in Acts 4, for example, that after the disciples were threatened by the religious authorities, they asked not for protection for themselves and their families but only for boldness to keep preaching! Some kind of extraordinary prayer beyond the normal services and patterns of prayer is always involved.

Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.  Mark Twain.

demons. She doesn’t just carry weapons—she is a weapon against the enemy and the greatest weapon God ever created against darkness! Let’s talk about what virtuous means from a scriptural perspective. God defines virtuous woman in the same way He defines virtuous man—as someone who fears God, loves truth, and hates sin. The Hebrew word for virtuous in Proverbs 31 is translated several different ways. Translations of Exodus 18:21 and 1 Kings 1:42, 52 use words such as able, worthy, competent, capable, and honorable. The word virtuous used in Proverbs 31 is used to describe Ruth (Ruth 3:11), and it is also used to describe Boaz in Ruth 2:1—a man of standing (in him is strength). Ruth 3:11 says that everyone in the city knew Ruth was virtuous. That’s because real virtue is something that gets noticed even as the world tries hard not to embrace it. Ruth was the real deal, and everyone knew it. God is very purposeful in the way He makes us as men and women. As I mentioned earlier, Scripture says God made woman to be the crown of her husband (Prov. 12:4). The Hebrew word for crown is derived from atar, which means “to encircle (for attack or protection).”1 If the virtuous woman is the crown of her husband, then she is anointed to secure his domain, to encircle him like spiritual radar, protecting their territory from infiltration. The man who wears his crown securely on his head—who understands who his virtuous wife is and values her role—isn’t intimidated by her. Quite the contrary; he knows she is a spiritual force against the enemy, designed to work in tandem with her husband, offering not only protection in the spiritual but success and prosperity in the natural (Prov. 31:22), manifesting her God-given abilities through her labor (v. 24). The Hebrew word for virtuous is chayil, which accurately defines the role of the virtuous woman. Chayil, from the Hebrew chuwl, means a force [to be reckoned with], whether of men, means or other resources; army; might, power, riches; displaying strength, ability, and moral worth. A virtuous woman is a force to be reckoned with because she is worthy of war,

Yahweh intends that Israel be a nation of sisters and brothers in which there will be no more poor (cf. Deut. 15:4). This in itself makes clear that, according to the bible, the poor of Egypt are to become, through the Exodus, a kind of divinely-willed contrast-society . . . In fact, the new society that Yahweh creates out of the poor Hebrews through the Exodus is not only in contrast to the Egyptian society they have left behind, but beyond that it is in contrast to all other existing societies in their world [it is thus a task directed not just at Israel’s good but to the good of all humanity].

1. WATER TURNS TO BLOOD. Exodus 7:14–25 2. FROGS. Exodus 8:1–15 3. LICE. Exodus 8:16–19 4. FLIES. Exodus 8:20–32

Mungu si wa kudhihakiwa (Wagalatia 6:7)! Katika maneno kadhaa ya Biblia, anasema bila masihara kabisa kwamba yeye ni Mungu mwenye wivu (Kutoka 34:14; Kumbukumbu la Torati 6:4-15) – Yeye si wa kuabudiwa kama mungu mwingine yeyote yule (Kumbukumbu la Torati 12:3-4, 30-31). Alipowaagiza watu wake wateule Israeli kwa njia ya ibada yake, aliwaonya wasiongeze juu ya kile alichokuwa amewapa wala wasipunguze chochote (Kumbukumbu la Torati 4:2; 12:32; angalia pia Ufunuo 22:18-19). Kwa mfano, angalia hasira yake kuu wakati wana wa Israeli walipojaribu kumwabudu kupitia Ndama wa Dhahabu (Kutoka 32:1-9). Walitangaza kuwa ilikuwa sikukuu ya Bwana (mstali wa 5), lakini Mungu hakulithamini hilo! Alikuwa na hasira kali juu ya ibada ya sanamu za watu, kiasi kwamba alifikiria kuangamiza taifa zima na kuanza upya na familia ya Musa. Mungu huyohuyo – Yahweh, Bwana wa Agano la Kale – akawa Yesu Kristo! Je, Mwokozi wetu atakubali kuabudiwa kwa namna yoyote ambayo misingi yake imejikita kwenye uongo? Hapana! Na hili kwa vyovyote vile limezingatia mila na desturi zisizo za kibiblia (labda tunaweza kusema za “kipagani”) ambazo zimechukua nafasi ya maadhimisho ya kafara na ushindi wa kishindo wa Yesu Kristo.

Hakuna mahali popote katika Agano Jipya ambapo sheria ya Sabato imekomeshwa (Kutoka 31:12-17), kwani Mungu alianzisha Sabato kwa ajili ya wanadamu wote (Marko 2:27). Kinyume cha hapo, Yesu aliitunza (Luka 4:16), Paulo aliitunza (Matendo 17:2) na Wamataifa waliitunza pia (Matendo 13:42-44; 16:13)! Mwandishi wa Waebrania anaandika bila kificho, “Basi, imesalia raha ya Sabato kwa watu wa Mungu” (Waebrania 4:9).

The course of history was changed by the fasting of God’s people. The stories of God’s mighty grace through fasting are many. We could tell the story of Moses on Mount Sinai fasting forty days as he received the Law of God that would not only guide Israel for more than 3,000 years, but would become the foundation of Western culture as we know it (Exodus 24:18; 34:28). Or we could tell the story of how the Jews fasted for Esther as she risked her life before King Ahasuerus and turned the plot against Israel back on Haman’s head (Esther 4:16). Or we could tell the story of Nehemiah’s fasting for the sake of his people and the city of God in ruins, so that King Artaxerxes granted him all the help he needed to return and rebuild the walls of Jerusalem (Nehemiah 1:4).

Importance of Moses and Elijah (Matt. 17:3). Moses (Exodus 34) and Elijah (1 Kings 19) both had experiences of encountering God on Mount Sinai. Jewish belief at the time of Jesus expected the appearing of a Moses-like figure (from Deut. 18:15, 18) and an Elijah-like figure (from Mal. 4:5). Jesus identifies John the Baptist with Elijah (Matt. 17:11–13), and he himself is the prophet like Moses. This is perhaps indicated by the voice from heaven that says, “Listen to him” (Matt. 17:5; Mark 9:7; Luke 9:35)—the same instruction as given in connection to the prophet to come in Deuteronomy 18:15. The intertestamental book 4 Ezra indicates that a sign of the end of the age is that people will see those who were taken up and did not taste death (6:25–26). In all these ways, the appearance of Moses and Elijah indicated the coming of the kingdom of God.

Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments. Exodus 20:4-6 A gentleman who had read One Heartbeat Away emailed me one day. He said he was a WWII veteran. He made the fatal error of putting his phone number in his email, so I called him! We had the neatest chat. He was a machine gunner at the Battle of the Bulge! I told my mom that I had history on the telephone. So I picked his brain for a while. He said he had seen a copy of One Heartbeat Away lying on a table at a VA hospital and perused it a bit. He also told me he loves to read, so he figured that if it was left on the table, then he could take it! When he emailed me, he had already read the book once and was half way through it for the second time. He said, “I have three hundred years of Catholicism in my family. After reading this book, I am now trusting Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ alone, for my salvation.” All I could say was, “Wow!” Then he said, “My mind is sharp as a tack. I love to read. You got any more books?” Well, we sent him everything I had at that time. In his next email, he let me know that he had read One Heartbeat Away three times through, front to back, and he was telling everyone he could about Jesus! If you live in Ohio, there is an 89-year-old evangelist roaming around, so you better watch out! This veteran made the decision to break the cycle of Catholicism in his family. No more rituals. No more good works to get to Heaven. No more, I hope I get there. No more infallibility. He is trusting in the blood of Christ, and nothing else, for the washing away of his sins. He now wants everyone else to have that same blessing as well!

Os Hillman, in his book The Purposes of Money2, writes about four potholes on the road to prosperity: 1. Greed (1 Timothy 3:3) 2. Covetousness (Exodus 20:17; 1 Timothy 3:3) 3. Stinginess (Luke 6:29) 4. Self-reliance (Galatians 2:20)

Scripture references for Keepers of the Covenant: Ezra 7–10 Esther 1–10 Ruth 1–4 1 Samuel 15:1–35 Genesis 19:1–38; 36:1–12 Exodus 17:8–14; 28:1–42; 34:15–16 Numbers 1:47–53; 3:11–13; 8:5–26; 18:21; 25:1–15 Deuteronomy 25:5–10; 25:17–19 Joshua 2:1–22; 6:22–25 Judges 4–5 Matthew 1:5–6

the “firstborn” and received the inheritance. Jesus is the One with the right to the inheritance of all creation (cf. Heb. 1:2; Rev. 5:1-7, 13). Israel was called God’s firstborn in Exodus 4:22 and Jeremiah 31:9. Though not the first people born, they held first place in God’s sight among all the nations. In Psalm 89:27, God says of the Messiah, “I also shall make him My first-born,” then defines what He means—“the highest of the kings of the earth.” In Revelation 1:5, Jesus is called “the first-born of the dead,” even though He was not the first person to be resurrected chronologically. Of all ever raised, He is the preeminent One. Romans 8:29 refers

Day Twelve Let Your Words Be Seasoned with Salt “Whatever I tell you in the dark, speak in the light; and what you hear in the ear, preach on the housetops.” Matthew 10:27 These whispers are the whispers of the Holy Spirit. Listen carefully to them and speak the words God gives you. But must we be given words to preach? As the Lord has said, according to the Old Testament, “Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak.” Exodus 4:12 ESV The Prayer Lord, share Your heart with me in the dark and secret place. Whisper in my ear, that I may have words to share. For I know that faith comes by Your word and not by my opinions. So help me to be silent before You, that Your words, not my own, may be on my lips.

The difficulty comes in the few places in the Bible where the genre is not easily identifiable, and we aren’t completely sure how the author expects it to be read. Genesis 1 is a passage whose interpretation is up for debate among Christians, even those with a “high” view of inspired Scripture.17 I personally take the view that Genesis 1 and 2 relate to each other the way Judges 4 and 5 and Exodus 14 and 15 do. In each couplet one chapter describes a historical event and the other is a song or poem about the theological meaning of the event.

words of Moses given to the people of Israel at the end of the exodus from Egypt: Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is one Lord; and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. And these words which I command you this day shall be upon your heart; and you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. (Deuteronomy 6:4–7)

In his Mishneh Torah (Hil. Yesodei HaTorah 10:4), Rambam speaks of the guidelines for establishing whether one who claims to have received prophecy is a genuine prophet. Rambam writes that if the prophecy the person delivers foretells some future act of compassion, mercy or beneficence on the part of God, and this event does not materialize, then the supposed prophet is surely a charlatan, because God would never renege on a promise of good tidings. If, however, the prophecy promises bad tidings—famine, destruction, or the like—then the failure of the prophecy to materialize cannot be taken as evidence that the prophet is a liar. This is so even if the prophecy of bad tidings was given unconditionally, because, Rambam argues, there is no such thing as an unconditional promise of bad tidings; the possibility of reversal always exists, even if the prophet doesn’t explicitly state this. In essence, Rambam seems to be suggesting that prophecies of bad tidings ought to be seen as cautionary warnings of a worst-case scenario that will take place unless steps are taken to avert it. Thus, when Jonah prophesied that in forty more days Nineveh would be destroyed, his prophecy must be seen as a warning to Nineveh that their destruction looms, unless it is averted by the force of human free will; in the event, it is averted, after the people of Nineveh choose to change their ways.

He removed the high places and brake the images, and cut down the groves; and brake in pieces the brazen serpent that Moses had made: for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense to it. (II Kings, 18:3–4) The reference is particularly significant because a staff topped by a bronze serpent was the symbol of Pharaoh’s authority.

There are people who love birds so much they free them. There are others who love them so much they cage them.

The silence of the biblical writings about the Edomite deity provides circumstantial evidence for its identification with Yahweh. Further indications strengthen this claim. First, Edom is qualified as 'the land of wisdom' in Jer. 49.7 and Obadiah 8. In a monotheistic context, it is difficult to assume that wisdom would have a source other than Yahweh. Furthermore, it seems that the book of Job, the main 'wisdom book' of the Bible, has an Edomite origin, thus strengthening the linkage between Edom and Yahweh. Second, the worship of Yahweh in Edom is explicitly mentioned in Isa. 21.11 ('One is calling to me [Yahweh] from Seir'), and the duty of Yahweh in regard to his Edomite worshippers is stressed by Jer. 49.11 ('Leave [Edom] your orphans, I [Yahweh] will keep them alive; and let your widows trust in me'). Third, according to the book of Exodus, Esau-Edom and not Jacob-Israel had to inherit Yahweh's benediction from Isaac (Exod. 27.2-4). This suggests that, before emergence of the Israelites alliance, Esau was the 'legitimate trustee' of the Yahwistic traditions. [Fourth]: The Israelite nazirim (the men self-consecrated to Yahweh in Israel) are compared by Jeremiah to the Edomites: 'For thus says the LORD: If those [the Israelite nazirim] who do not deserve to drink the cup still have to drink it, shall you [Edom] be the one to go unpunished? You shall not go unpunished; you must drink it.' Such a parallel between the elite of the Israelite worshippers (nazirim) and the Edomite people as a whole also suggests that Edom was the first 'land of Yahweh'. [Fifth]: The primacy of Edom did not disappear quickly from the Israelite collective memory. This point is clearly stressed by Amos (9.11-12): 'On that day I will raise up the booth of David that is fallen, and repair its breaches and raise up its ruins, and rebuild it as in the days of old; in order that they may possess the remnant of Edom...' Together, these five points suggest the conclusion that Yahweh was truly the main (if not the only) deity worshipped in Edom. In this case, it is likely that (1) the name of Yahweh was not used publicly in Edom, and (2) 'Qos' was an Edomite epithet for Yahweh rather than an autonomous deity. (pp. 391-392) from 'Yahweh, the Canaanite God of Metallurgy?', JSOT 33.4 (2009): 387-404

Interesting evidence of the essential link between Yahweh and copper metallurgy is provided by the story of the first 'encounter' between Moses and Yahweh on Mt Horeb, near the 'burning bush' (Exod. 3), where it is related that Moses is involved in the mission to deliver the sons of Israel from Egyptian tyranny. It is also stressed that Moses had to perform a 'prodigy' in order to demonstrate that he acts in the name of Yahweh (Exod. 4.5). This prodigy is depicted as the reversible transformation of a matteh into a nahash (Exod. 4.2-5). The term matteh is generally understood as designating a wood-made staff, but this meaning is probably secondary. From Isa. 10.15 and Ezek. 19.13-14 it appears that a matteh was formerly a copper scepter hung up on a wooden staff.&sup32; The term nahash is generally translated as 'serpent'. However, the closeness existing in Hebrew between nahash ('serpent') and nehoshet ('copper') suggests that nahash may also designate copper.&sup33; Accordingly, the prodigy performed 'in the name of Yahweh' becomes the transformation of a copper artifact (matteh, the scepter) into melted copper (nahash, the serpent). It is interesting to notice that such a 'prodigy' (occuring not so far from the camp of Jethro the Kenite) happens after Moses threw his matteh on a hot source, the 'burning bush', which may be a poetic evocation of live charcoal. If the reversible matteh-nahash conversion is considered in the book of Exodus as a specific sign of Yahweh, this implies that this deity was intimately associated with copper melting, at least in the period prior to the Israelite Alliance. (pp. 395-396) from 'Yahweh, the Canaanite God of Metallurgy?', JSOT 33.4 (2009): 387-404 [32]: The term matteh is explicitly used to designate the wooden staff in Exod. 17.16-23. But the initial meaning is revealed in Isa. 10.15, when it is asked, 'Shall the axe vaunt itself over the one who wields it, or the saw magnify itself against the one who handles it? As if a rod should raise the one who lifts it up, or as of a staff should lift the one who is not wood!' It a matteh cannot be hung up without a wooden staff, it is clear that it is not the wooden staff itself but something that is fitted with it. Furthermore, in his lamentation about the destruction of Israel, Ezekiel mentions the fact that the staff supporting the matteh will burn and will provoke a qeyna (Ezek. 19.13-14), a term designating the smelting of copper (and by extension its melting). This strongly suggests that the matteh is a copper-scepter. In some cases, traces of wood have been found in the inner space of the scepter, confirming that such items were probably borne upon wooden staffs. [33]: The term nahash is also used to designate copper in languages closely related to Hebrew (Ugaritic, Aramaic, Arabic). In the book of Chronicles, the term nahash is used once to designate copper: Ir Nahash was a town founded by a descendant of Celoub (Caleb), a clan of metalworkers (1 Chron 4.11-12), so that it designates the town where copper was smelted or worked.

Interesting evidence of the essential link between Yahweh and copper metallurgy is provided by the story of the first 'encounter' between Moses and Yahweh on Mt Horeb, near the 'burning bush' (Exod. 3), where it is related that Moses is involved in the mission to deliver the sons of Israel from Egyptian tyranny. It is also stressed that Moses had to perform a 'prodigy' in order to demonstrate that he acts in the name of Yahweh (Exod. 4.5). This prodigy is depicted as the reversible transformation of a matteh into a nahash (Exod. 4.2-5). The term matteh is generally understood as designating a wood-made staff, but this meaning is probably secondary. From Isa. 10.15 and Ezek. 19.13-14 it appears that a matteh was formerly a copper scepter hung up on a wooden staff.&sup32 The term nahash is generally translated as 'serpent'. However, the closeness existing in Hebrew between nahash ('serpent') and nehoshet ('copper') suggests that nahash may also designate copper.&sup33 Accordingly, the prodigy performed 'in the name of Yahweh' becomes the transformation of a copper artifact (matteh, the scepter) into melted copper (nahash, the serpent). It is interesting to notice that such a 'prodigy' (occuring not so far from the camp of Jethro the Kenite) happens after Moses threw his matteh on a hot source, the 'burning bush', which may be a poetic evocation of live charcoal. If the reversible matteh-nahash conversion is considered in the book of Exodus as a specific sign of Yahweh, this implies that this deity was intimately associated with copper melting, at least in the period prior to the Israelite Alliance. (pp. 395-396) from 'Yahweh, the Canaanite God of Metallurgy?', JSOT 33.4 (2009): 387-404 [32]: The term matteh is explicitly used to designate the wooden staff in Exod. 17.16-23. But the initial meaning is revealed in Isa. 10.15, when it is asked, 'Shall the axe vaunt itself over the one who wields it, or the saw magnify itself against the one who handles it? As if a rod should raise the one who lifts it up, or as of a staff should lift the one who is not wood!' It a matteh cannot be hung up without a wooden staff, it is clear that it is not the wooden staff itself but something that is fitted with it. Furthermore, in his lamentation about the destruction of Israel, Ezekiel mentions the fact that the staff supporting the matteh will burn and will provoke a qeyna (Ezek. 19.13-14), a term designating the smelting of copper (and by extension its melting). This strongly suggests that the matteh is a copper-scepter. In some cases, traces of wood have been found in the inner space of the scepter, confirming that such items were probably borne upon wooden staffs. [33]: The term nahash is also used to designate copper in languages closely related to Hebrew (Ugaritic, Aramaic, Arabic). In the book of Chronicles, the term nahash is used once to designate copper: Ir Nahash was a town founded by a descendant of Celoub (Caleb), a clan of metalworkers (1 Chron 4.11-12), so that it designates the town where copper was smelted or worked.

The LORD said to him, "Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the LORD?" (Exodus 4:11)

In Greek the word for covenant is also the word for testament. Every proper covenant eventually becomes a testament. Before the person who enacted the covenant dies, it is the covenant. After he dies, that covenant becomes a testament. A testament in today’s terms is a will....We have a will full of hundreds of bequests. My heavenly Father has given me all these bequests, and they have been covenanted to me as a testament. That is the new testament. We have the New Testament of the Bible in our hands, but this is not the reality. The reality of all the hundreds of bequests in the New Testament is Christ. Without Christ, the Bible is empty, so the real testament, the real will, is Christ. Christ is our title deed, and this title deed is in our spirit as the all-inclusive, life-giving, indwelling, consummated Spirit.

Through the Lord’s death His blood enacted the new covenant; by the Lord’s resurrection He became the new covenant with all its bequests (Isa. 42:6; 49:8); and in the Lord’s ascension He is the Mediator, the Executor, of the new covenant (Heb. 8:6; 9:15; 12:24) and the surety of the new covenant, the pledge that everything in the new covenant will be fulfilled (7:22):

Healing Scriptures My son, attend to my words; incline thine ear unto my sayings. Let them not depart from thine eyes; keep them in the midst of thine heart. For they are life unto those that find them, and health to all their flesh. Proverbs 4:20-22 Behold, I will bring health and cure, and I will heal them, and will reveal unto them the abundance of peace and truth. Jeremiah 33:6 …Thus saith the Lord, the God of David thy father, I have heard thy prayer, I have seen thy tears: behold, I will heal thee. 2 Kings 20:5 Be not wise in thine own eyes: fear the Lord, and depart from evil. It will be health (medicine) to thy navel, and marrow (refreshment) to thy bones. Proverbs 3:7,8 And ye shall serve the Lord your god, and he shall bless thy bread, and thy water; and I will take sickness from the midst of thee. Exodus 23:25 Now when the sun was setting, all they that had any sick with divers diseases brought them unto him; and he laid hands on every one of them, and healed them. Luke 4:40 And Jesus went forth, and saw a great multitude, and was moved with compassion toward them, and he healed their sick.

According to Jeremiah 31 and Ezekiel 36, God promised to impart His law into us, to change our heart, to regenerate our spirit, and to put His Spirit within us. As a result, we have the inward law, which is actually God Himself, to produce in us not only what God requires, but also what God is. This was the reason the Lord Jesus said to His disciples, “You therefore shall be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48). When the divine life within us grows to perfection, we shall be perfect even as our Father is perfect.

Interesting evidence of the essential link between Yahweh and copper metallurgy is provided by the story of the first 'encounter' between Moses and Yahweh on Mt Horeb, near the 'burning bush' (Exod. 3)... ...Moses had to perform a 'prodigy' in order to demonstrate that he acts in the name of Yahweh (Exod. 4.5). This prodigy is depicted as the reversible transformation of a matteh into a nahash (Exod. 4.2-5). The term matteh is generally understood as designating a wood-made staff, but this meaning is probably secondary. From Isa. 10.15 and Ezek. 19-13-14 it appears that a matteh was formerly a copper scepter hung up on a wooden staff. The term nahash is generally translated as 'serpent'. However, the closeness existing in Hebrew between nahash ('serpent') and nehoshet ('copper') suggests that nahash may also designate copper. [The term nahash designates copper in Ugaritic, Aramaic, and Arabic. In 1 Chron. 4.11-12, Ir Nahash is founded by Caleb, a clan of metalworkers, and designates it as a place of copper smelting/working.] Accordingly, the prodigy performed 'in the name of Yahweh' becomes the transformation of a copper artifact...into melted copper. ...If the reversible matteh-nahash conversion is considered in the book of Exodus as a specific sign of Yahweh, this implies that this deity was intimately associated with copper melting, at least in the period prior to the Israelite Alliance. (pp. 395-396) (from 'Yahweh, the Canaanite God of Metallurgy?', JSOT 33.4 (2009): 387-404)

This development—moving away from the view that God causes evil (rape, famine, sickness, war), towards a view that such evil is demonic—can be seen much earlier within Judaism in the intertestamental book of Jubilees (ca. 100 BCE) which revises the biblical narratives found in Genesis and the beginning of Exodus. The book of Jubilees takes many passages, which in the Old Testament books are attributed to God, and instead states that these were in fact the work of “Mastema,” the prince of demons. For example, while Exodus says that God killed the firstborn children in Egypt (Exod 11:4), the later book of Jubilees instead attributes this to “the powers of Mastema” which literally means in Hebrew “the powers of Hate” (Jubilees 49:2). This illustrates the shift in thinking that was occurring within Judaism at the time which recognized the obvious moral difficulty in attributing acts of evil to God. We can see a similar revisionism as well in the canonical books of the Old Testament itself. 2 Samuel describes God telling David to take a census, and then punishing him for it: “Again the anger of the Lord burned against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, ‘Go and take a census of Israel and Judah’” (2 Sam 24:1). David then subsequently recognizes that this was a sin: “David was conscience-stricken after he had counted the fighting men, and he said to the Lord, ‘I have sinned greatly in what I have done’” (v. 10). God then punishes David for this: “So the Lord sent a plague on Israel from that morning until the end of the time designated, and seventy thousand of the people from Dan to Beersheba died” (v. 15). This obviously paints a morally problematic picture of God, which is revised in the parallel account in the later book of 1 Chronicles, which instead states, “Satan rose up against Israel and incited David to take a census of Israel” (1 Chron 21:1). Instead of God deceiving David and inciting him to sin, this is now presented as the work of Satan.

Much of ancient history is anchored in Egyptian chronology that is notoriously ambiguous and imprecise and creates problems for all kinds of historical anchoring of events. Donovan Courville in the 1970s, and more recently David Rohl, has explored the Egyptian problems to offer a “New Chronology” of the ancient world that roots Biblical history in new contexts significantly different from the conventional chronology.[3] They too have shaken up the establishment by uncovering the significant chronological problems of the conventional view. In more recent years, Gerald Aardsma, has offered the Biblical theory that the Exodus occurred in 2450 B.C., nearly one thousand years earlier than the conventional dates of 1445 B.C. or 1225 B.C.[4] This would place Abraham in Mesopotamia around 3000 B.C. instead of 2000 B.C. A radical reconsideration.

In the history of early Israel, God said, "I am the Lord who heals you" (Exodus 15:26). This God who creates and loves also heals and sustains our life. God's creating and healing work comes to fulfillment in Jesus Christ. Jesus' ministry to the sick, his many cures and miracles, expresses the Father's everlasting compassion. In Jesus the healer (Matthew 4:23-25), we see God's loving recognition of the life and dignity of every human being. In the life of the Church, the compassionate healing of the Father and the Son is made available to us through the gift of the Holy Spirit, who strengthens us to be compassionate healers.

Upon its passing, the Indian Removal Act effectively kicked out almost 125,000 Native Americans, mostly from the Cherokee nation, from their ancestral homes in Georgia, and sent the people, both young and old, trekking thousands of miles on foot towards their new settlements in Oklahoma. An estimated 4,000 Native Americans died, either through exhaustion, hunger, or exposure, while on the way to Oklahoma. This huge number of casualties is what led to this forced exodus to get the moniker “The Trail of Tears.

First, in Genesis 4, we have the Lamb typified in the firstlings of the flock slain by Abel in sacrifice. Second, we have the Lamb prophesied in Genesis 22:8 where Abraham said to Isaac, "God will provide himself a lamb." Third, in Exodus 12, we have the Lamb slain and its blood applied. Fourth, in Isaiah 53:7, we have the Lamb personified: here for the first time we learn that the Lamb would be a Man. Fifth, in John 1:29, we have the Lamb identified, learning who He was. Sixth, in Revelation 5, we have the Lamb magnified by the hosts of heaven. Seventh, in the last chapter of the Bible we have the Lamb glorified, seated upon the eternal throne of God, Revelation

LEAVE OUTCOMES UP TO ME. Follow Me wherever I lead, without worrying about how it will all turn out. Think of your life as an adventure, with Me as your Guide and Companion. Live in the now, concentrating on staying in step with Me. When our path leads to a cliff, be willing to climb it with My help. When we come to a resting place, take time to be refreshed in My Presence. Enjoy the rhythm of life lived close to Me. You already know the ultimate destination of your journey: your entrance into heaven. So keep your focus on the path just before you, leaving outcomes up to Me. JOHN 10:4; PSALM 27:13–14; EXODUS 15:13

DAY 17: How does Paul describe the return of Jesus Christ in 1 Thessalonians 4:15, 16? It is clear the Thessalonians had come to believe in and hope for the reality of their Savior’s return (1:3, 9, 10; 2:19; 5:1, 2). They were living in expectation of that coming, eagerly awaiting Christ. First Thessalonians 4:13 indicates they were even agitated about some things that might affect their participation in it. They knew Christ’s return was the climactic event in redemptive history and didn’t want to miss it. The major question they had was: “What happens to the Christians who die before He comes? Do they miss His return?” Clearly, they had an imminent view of Christ’s return, and Paul had left the impression it could happen in their lifetime. Their confusion came as they were being persecuted, an experience they thought they were to be delivered from by the Lord’s return (3:3, 4). Paul answers by saying “the Lord Himself will descend with a shout” (v. 16). This fulfills the pledge of John 14:1–3 (Acts 1:11). Until then He remains in heaven (1:10; Heb. 1:1–3). “With the voice of an archangel.” Perhaps it is Michael, the archangel, whose voice is heard as he is identified with Israel’s resurrection in Daniel 12:1–3. At that moment, the dead rise first. They will not miss the Rapture but will be the first participants. “And with the trumpet of God.” This trumpet is illustrated by the trumpet of Exodus 19:16–19, which called the people out of the camp to meet God. It will be a trumpet of deliverance (Zeph. 1:16; Zech. 9:14). After the dead come forth, their spirits, already with the Lord (2 Cor. 5:8; Phil. 1:23), now being joined to resurrected new bodies, the living Christians will be raptured, “caught up” (v. 17). This passage along with John 14:1–3 and 1 Corinthians 15:51, 52 form the biblical basis for “the Rapture” of the church.

The name, Seventh-day Adventist, is a standing rebuke to the Protestant world. Here is the line of distinction between the worshipers of God, and those who worship the beast, and receive his mark. The great conflict is between the commandments of God and the requirements of the beast. Ellen G. White Father Exodus 20:8King James Version (KJV) 8 Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Malachi 3:6King James Version (KJV) 6 For I am the Lord, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed. Son John 10:30King James Version (KJV) 30 I and my Father are one. Luke 4:16King James Version (KJV) 16 And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up: and, as his custom was, he went into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up for to read. Mark 1:21-22King James Version (KJV) 21 And they went into Capernaum; and straightway on the sabbath day he entered into the synagogue, and taught. 22 And they were astonished at his doctrine: for he taught them as one that had authority, and not as the scribes. Luke 13:10King James Version (KJV) 10 And he was teaching in one of the synagogues on the sabbath.

Moses said, “Pardon your servant, Lord. Please send someone else.” EXODUS 4:13 NIV

Philosophical discussions of God’s existence and nature typically fail to ask, “If God exists, has he done anything to address this profound problem?” Unlike other religions, the Christian story emphatically answers, Yes! God’s existence and his concern for humanity go hand in hand; he gets his feet dirty and hands bloody in Jesus, bringing creation and redemption together. His ministry and the salvation event signaled a new exodus and a new creation. His miraculous resurrection from the dead in particular guarantees hope and restoration, and this cornerstone event is accompanied by many publicly accessible reasons—historical, theological, and philosophical.4 Divine miracles don’t guarantee belief, though: “If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be persuaded even if someone rises from the dead” (Luke 16:31). Miracles can be rationalized away (see, e.g., John 12:29) or even suppressed by people who don’t want to believe anyway—such as Jesus’ enemies seeking to kill miraculous evidence—the resuscitated Lazarus (John 12:1, 10)! Miracles don’t compel belief, but for those willing to receive them, they do serve as sufficient indications of God’s activity and revelation. John calls them signs that point beyond themselves to Jesus’ significance: Jesus miraculously feeds bread to a crowd of more than five thousand and then declares, “I am the bread of life” (John 6); he says, “I am the light of the world,” illustrating it by healing a man born blind (John 8–9); he affirms, “I am the resurrection and the life” and shows it by raising Lazarus (John 11). No wonder Jesus says, “Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me; otherwise believe because of the works themselves” (John 14:11). His miracles, revealing the in-breaking reality of God’s reign, are available for public scrutiny.

These verses, as v.18 shows, recount the establishment of a covenant between God and Abram. Thus it is fitting that in several respects the account should foreshadow the making of the covenant at Sinai. The opening statement, “I am the LORD who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans” (v.7), anticipates a virtually identical opening statement for the Sinaitic covenant (Ex 20:2): “I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of Egypt.” The expression “Ur of the Chaldeans” is a reference back to 11:28 and 31 and grounds the present covenant in a past act of divine salvation from “Babylon,” just as Exodus 20:2 grounds the Sinaitic covenant in an act of divine salvation from Egypt. The coming of God’s presence in the fire and darkness of Sinai (Ex 19:18; 20:18; Dt 4:11) is foreshadowed in Abram’s fiery vision in this chapter (vv.12, 17). In the Lord’s words to Abram (vv.13 – 16), a connection between his covenant and the Sinaitic covenant is established by a reference to the four hundred years of bondage for Abram’s descendants and their subsequent “exodus” “and afterward they will come out,” v.14).

10:12; 14:17). ‹‹    DAY 5    ›› II. The purpose of God’s calling is fully revealed in the New Testament: A. God’s calling is according to His predestination (Eph. 1:4-5), His purpose (2 Tim. 1:9; Rom. 8:28), and His grace (2 Tim. 1:9-10). B. God’s calling is in Christ (1 Pet. 5:10) and through the gospel (2 Thes. 2:14). C. The New Testament reveals various aspects of the purpose of God’s calling: 1. God has called us out of darkness into His marvelous light (1 Pet. 2:9): a. Darkness is a sign of sin and death; it is the expression and sphere of Satan in death. b. When God calls us, He opens our eyes and turns us from darkness to light and from the authority of Satan to Himself; to be turned to God means to be turned to the authority of God, which is God’s kingdom of light (Acts 26:18). 2. God’s calling is that His chosen ones may be separated and made holy unto God, to be the holy ones, the saints (Rom. 1:7; 1 Cor. 1:2). ‹‹    DAY 6    ›› 3. God has called us so that we may enter into the fellowship of His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, to partake of and enjoy His all-inclusive riches (vv. 9, 30). 4. God has called us into the sufferings of Christ (1 Pet. 2:20-21). 5. For the Body of Christ, God has called us into the peace of Christ (Col. 3:15). 6. God has called us for the purpose of obtaining the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ; He has called His chosen ones unto salvation in sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth so that they might obtain the glory of the Lord Jesus Christ (2 Thes. 2:13-14). 7. God’s calling is by His own glory and with the goal of our entering into the eternal glory of God (2 Pet. 1:3; 1 Pet. 5:10): a. God has called us not only by His glory but also to His glory. b. In order that we might enter into His eternal glory, the God of all grace is ministering to us the riches of the bountiful supply of the divine life in many aspects and in many steps of the divine operation on and in us in God’s economy (v. 10; 2 Pet. 1:3). 8. God has called us into His kingdom (1 Thes. 2:12): a. The kingdom of God is an organism constituted with God’s life as a realm of life for His ruling, in which He reigns by the divine life and expresses Himself in the divine life (John 3:3, 5-6; Matt. 6:10, 13). b. Today we, the called ones, should live in the church as the kingdom of God so that we may grow and develop in the life of God unto full maturity; through this growth and development, the entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ will be richly supplied to us (Rom. 14:17; 2 Pet. 1:5-11).

Exodus, Chapter 20, several times. After returning from Mount Sinai and a conversation with God, Moses had proclaimed, from memory, the Ten Commandments to his followers, who had assembled before him. The ten he recited were those that are well known to every Jew and Christian today. 1. You shall have no other Gods before me. 2. You shall worship no idols or graven images. 3. You shall not take the Lord’s name in vain. 4. You shall keep the Sabbath Day holy. 5. You shall honor your father and mother. 6. You shall not murder. 7. You shall not commit adultery. 8. You shall not steal. 9. You shall not bear false witness. 10. You shall not covet your neighbor’s house, or spouse.

1.  Declaration of Intent: Hand lifting to the sky The first step is the collective declaration of intent to reestablish Kintuadi between Creator, Catalyst and Creation. That collective intent was implemented and manifested by the physical act of hand lifting to the sky.   Objective: To first acknowledge that we are lost due to a false start and to seek the alignment and the Kintuadi of 3 Components; Creator, Catalyst and Creation (CCC).   2.  Commitment and Decision: Cross Jumping The second step is the collective commitment and decision to abandon sinful, flesh and material driven life, and jump to the side of the creator and Christ. That collective commitment and decision was implemented and manifested by the physical act of cross jumping.   Objective: To stop and commit to a change of direction.   3.  Fasting and Meditation: Spiritual Retreat The third step is the collective fasting and meditation to gradually reduce total dependency on flesh and material driven life. This is the step of seeking spiritual enlightment, guidance and purpose for life. It is achieved by a temporary but frequent isolation and spiritual retreats. During this step, the body and soul are cleansed and fed with spiritual food.   Objective: To stop dependency on human guidance but seeks spiritual guidance and direction.   4.  Devotion and Service to God: Temple Construction (1987) The fourth step is the collective devotion and service to God. Now that body and soul are cleansed and fed spiritually, man devotion and service to god is manifested by the construction of the temple as an offering to God. The real temple is the body of Christ, the supreme sacrifice.   Objective: To regain God’s trust by gradually training the flesh and material wealth to serve God.   5.  Prayers and Faith Consolidation: Spiritual Soiree (1990s) Now that body and soul have constructed the sanctuary, the place of reunion and spiritual communion with God. This fifth step is the step of collective prayers and faith consolidation at the sanctuary, the place of invocation and the real body of Christ, our Catalyst.   Objective: To repair and reestablish communication between Creator, Catalyst and Creation.   6.  Redemption: The Begging for forgiveness; December 24, 1992 In the name of all humanity, on December 24, 1992 followers of Simon Kimbangu lead by Papa Dialungana Kiangani (Kimbangu son) gathered inside the temple in Nkamba, all wearing sac clothes and begged for the forgiveness of Adamus and eve original sin. After asking for forgiveness that Adamus himself did not have the courage to ask, the Kimbanguists burned all sac clothes. In 1994, Adeneho Nana Oduro Numapau II, President of the Ghana National House of Chiefs, initiated ceremonies in Africa and the Americas to beg forgiveness of African Americans for his ancestors ‘involvement in the slave trade.   Objective: To reestablish and maintain interconnectivity between Creator, Catalyst and Creation.   7.  Return to Eden, the Realm of Kintuadi (Oneness) December 24th, 1992 marked the beginning of a new spiritual era for mankind in general but for Africans in particular. The chains of physical and spiritual slavery were broken on that date. The spiritual exodus from Egypt, the land of Slavery to Eden, the Promised Land also started that date. On May 10, 1994 Nelson Mandela was inaugurated as the first black President of South Africa, Africa most powerful country. On January 20, 2009, Barack Hussein Obama was inaugurated as the first African American president of the United States, the most powerful country on earth.   Objective: To enjoy the Oneness between Creator, Catalyst and Creation.  Chapter 27  Kimbangu’s Wife, 3 sons  and 30 Grand Children As stated in chapter 11, few months after Kimbangu’s birth, his mother Luezi died, so Kimbangu did not know his biological mother and was raised by Kinzembo, his maternal aunt.

If you could kick the person in the pants responsible for most of your trouble, you wouldn't sit for a month.  Theodore Roosevelt.

For Mark, all the signs are that he was thinking, as many other early Christians were in his day, of the term ‘God’s son’ as having at least four meanings. First, in the Old Testament Israel itself is ‘God’s son’ (Exodus 4.22; Jeremiah 31.9). Second – and this seems to be a primary meaning in the baptism story – it is the Messiah, Israel’s anointed king, who is ‘God’s son’ (2 Samuel 7.12–14; Psalms 2.7; 89.26–27). Third, as we just noted, ‘son of God’ was a regular and primary title taken by the Roman emperors from Augustus on. But fourth, looming up behind and beyond all of these was the sense we find in the very earliest Christian documents that all of these pointed to a strange new reality: that, in Jesus, Israel’s God had become present, had become human, had come to live in the midst of his people, to set up his kingdom, to take upon himself the full horror of their plight, and to bring about his long-awaited new world. The phrase ‘son of God’ was ready at hand to express that huge, evocative, frightening possibility, without leaving behind any of its other resonances. We can see this already going on in the writings of Paul. It is highly likely that Mark expected his first readers to have the same combination of themes in mind.

For this purpose we will benefit most from the great passages of scripture that clearly show us our Father in relation to his creation and his earthly family. These are passages such as Genesis 1 or 15; Exodus 19; 1 Kings 8; 2 Chronicles 16 and 19; Nehemiah 9; many of the psalms (34, 37, 91, and 103, for example); Isaiah 30, 44, and 56–66; Luke 11; Romans 8; Philippians 4.

John’s activities have been previously observed by others. Geerhardus Vos (1862–1949) explains: Notwithstanding the preeminence thus ascribed to John, it is plain from the reason given for this preeminence that he was not so much a revealer of new truth as a recapitulator of the old. At the point where the old covenant is about to pass over into the new, John once more sums up in his ministry the entire message of all preceding revelation and thus becomes the connecting link between it and the fulfillment which was to follow.42  It appears that John was re-enacting Israel’s post-exodus entry to the Promised Land. However, given Israel’s sinfulness, he was calling the nation to repentance.43 Israel needed to prepare for the second (or eschatological) exodus that would come by the ministry of Christ. Evidently, John was preparing for this eschatological exodus because of his description of Christ’s ministry. John told the people that he baptized only with water, but the One who was to come would baptize them with the Holy Spirit (Mark 1:8).44 This statement, as well as John’s overall activity, is reported on the heels of what some have called the thesis statement of the Gospel of Mark, namely, the quotation of Isaiah 40:3: “Prepare the way of the LORD; make straight in the desert a highway for our God” (cf. Matt. 3:3; Luke 3:4; John 1:23). God drove Israel into exile, but He promised in the book of Isaiah that they would return to the land in a second exodus, the exodus from Babylon. However, the ultimate goal of the typical second exodus was the final exodus led by the Anointed of the Lord. It was the Servant of the Lord on whom God would put His Spirit (Isa. 42:1; 61:1; Matt. 3:13–17; 12:18–21).45 This Servant would lead Israel on the final exodus, and

types of behaviour out there, and the gospel message of Jesus, through which God’s glory is truly revealed (verse 11), is just as much opposed to them as the Jewish law is. But don’t imagine that by teaching the Jewish law you will do more than put up some more signposts warning people about these dangers. What’s far more important is to explore the gospel itself, the message which was entrusted to Paul and the other apostles. When the law was given in the first place, God also revealed his glory to Moses (Exodus 32–34), despite the fact that the people had already broken the law. Here, as in 2 Corinthians 3 and 4, Paul declares that, however good the law is, it is the gospel, not the law, which reveals God’s glory.

Now therefore, go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall say.” Exodus 4:12

Jethro was the “priest of Midian” and the father-in-law of Moses (Exodus 3:1; 4:18). He was also called “Reuel” (Exodus 2:18) and is described as a Midianite in Numbers 10:29. The original Midianites were probably descendants of Midian, one of Abraham’s sons by Keturah (Genesis 25:1-4). The land where they lived then became known as “Midian” (Exodus 2:15). It is likely that the people who lived in the land of Midian were then all called Midianites, even if they were not descendants of Midian. For example, some descendants of Ishmael appear to be called Midianites (Genesis 37:25,28; Judges 8:24). We don’t know whether Jethro was a descendant of Midian, or whether he had some other ancestry but lived in the land of Midian. In Judges 1:16, Jethro is described as a “Kenite” but that may not relate directly to his ancestry. The word keni in Aramaic means “smith” and it is thought that the Kenites may have been metal workers.

MORE FROM GOD’S WORD And He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” 2 Corinthians 12:9 NKJV You, therefore, my child, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. 2 Timothy 2:1 HCSB The Lord is my strength and my song; He has become my salvation. Exodus 15:2 HCSB He gives strength to the weary and strengthens the powerless. Isaiah 40:29 HCSB But those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint. Isaiah 40:31 NKJV I sought the Lord, and He heard me, and delivered me from all my fears. Psalm 34:4 NKJV Even when I walk through the dark valley of death, I will not be afraid, for you are close beside me. Your rod and your staff protect and comfort me. Psalm 23:4 NLT SHADES OF GRACE God’s grace is just the right amount of just the right quality arriving as if from nowhere at just the right time. Bill Bright A PRAYER FOR TODAY Dear Lord, I will turn to You for strength. When my responsibilities seem overwhelming, I will trust You to give me courage and perspective. Today and every day, I will look to You as the ultimate source of my hope, my strength, my peace, and my salvation. Amen

12.14 This day shall be to you one of remembrance: The Torah affirms the central importance of remembering. It may be credited with the invention of collective memory. There are six commandments of remembrance in the Torah: 1. The Sabbath “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy” (Exodus 20: 8). 2. The Exodus “You shall not eat anything leavened with it . . . so that you may remember the day of your departure from the land of Egypt as long as you live” (Deuteronomy 16: 3). 3. Receiving the Law at Sinai “So that you do not forget the things that you saw with your own eyes . . . and make them known to your children and your children’s children, the day you stood before the Lord your God at Horeb. . . .” (Deuteronomy 4: 9-10) 4. Amalek “Remember what Amalek did to you on your journey after you left Egypt, how, undeterred by fear of God he . . . cut down all the stragglers in your rear” (Deuteronomy 25: 17-19). 5. The Golden Calf and other incidents in which the Israelites angered God “Remember, never forget, how you provoked the Lord your God to anger in the wilderness” (Deuteronomy 9: 7). 6. God’s punishment of Miriam for speaking ill of Moses “Remember what the Lord your God did to Miriam on the journey after you left Egypt” (Deuteronomy 24: 9—the verse alludes to Miriam and Aaron’s negative comments against Moses in Numbers 12: 1-9).

HOW TORAH MONOTHEISM CHANGED THE WORLD This is the first time that the Torah draws a contrast between the God of Israel and other gods. Biblical monotheism and the Torah’s denial of all other gods served as the single most important moral and intellectual advance in history. See the commentary on Exodus 8:6, in which I offer fifteen world-transforming consequences of biblical monotheism. For the reader’s convenience, I will briefly list them here. The God introduced by the Torah: 1.   Is the first god in history to have been entirely above and beyond nature. 2. Brought universal morality into the world. 3.   Means “good” and “evil” are not individual or societal opinions but objectively real. 4. Morally judges every human being. 5. Gives humanity hope. 6.   Introduced holiness—the elevation of humans from animal-like to beings created in God’s image. 7. Gives every individual unprecedented self-worth. 8. Is necessary for human brotherhood. 9.   Began the long journey to belief in human equality. 10. Is incorporeal (no body; not physical). 11. Teaches us the physical realm is not the only reality. 12. Means there is ultimate meaning to existence and to each of our lives. 13. Gives human beings free will. 14. Teaches might is not right. 15. Made human moral progress possible.

my opinion, Paul means this: Moses veiled himself so that the Israelites would not fixate on that which was bound to be set aside. In other words, Moses wanted to prevent the people from so focusing on the ministry given to him that they would fail to see that, ultimately, it would be rendered inoperative at the coming of Christ Jesus. To be sure, Paul’s interpretation of the Exodus text is innovative and peculiar. But we must remember his starting point: God has now acted definitively through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus and the sending of the Spirit (Gal 4:1–7). From this perspective, Paul now looks back to the story of Moses’ veiling and understands that Moses somehow recognized that the covenant and law given to him were only temporary and provisional, and that God would one day bring them to their definitive completion.[4]

The Mosaic covenant was a conditional covenant, meaning that both parties were responsible to fulfill a duty to the other. The people were responsible to follow the Law. In return, God promised to abundantly bless and protect Israel (Exodus 19:5-8). The conditional nature of the Mosaic covenant made it very different from the Abrahamic Covenant, which was unconditional. In an unconditional covenant, God's favor, provisions, and blessings are based on His promises rather than on the actions of the people.

but your generation is the weakest, most pathetic generation of men this earth has ever known. You wear your skinny jeans, do your hair for girls and guys, you take sensitivity training and you watch your words and actions so as not to offend others around you. Your generation became polite, innocuous and virtuous. That’s no recipe for breeding hardened warriors. It’s a disaster of epic proportions.

hatred in and of itself is not evil. Hatred can in fact be a good thing, even a beautiful thing. We should bear in mind that indifference, not hatred, is love’s opposite. Hatred is a part of love and a sign of its vitality. Hatred is love in its ferocious and militant form. Whether it is a good hatred or a bad hatred depends on what, precisely, it is aimed at. Hatred aimed at the cancer patient is bad. Hatred aimed at the patient’s cancer is good. Not just acceptable, or admissible, but good. If you love a person, you must hate his cancer. There is no way to love someone while being indifferent, or tolerant, toward the disease that ravages him. Hatred always seeks to annihilate. So we should not want to rid the world of hatred unless we have rid it of all the things worth annihilating. Unfortunately, we have not accomplished that task and never will. There are many ugly, terrible, deadly, revolting things in our world, and we must have a raw, raging hatred for all of them—especially sin. The Bible repeatedly speaks of this holy and righteous hatred, and commands us—not merely allows us, but commands us—to have this sort of hatred in our hearts: Psalm 97: “Let those who love the Lord hate evil.” Proverbs 8:13: “To fear the Lord is to hate evil.” Romans 12:9: “Hate what is evil, cling to what is good.” Proverbs mentions seven things that God Himself hates, and in four places in the Bible (Genesis 4:10, Genesis 17:20, Exodus 2:23, James 5:4) we are told of sins so abominable that they “cry out” to Him for vengeance. A passage in Revelation is particularly interesting: “I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people.… Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first. Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place. But you have this in your favor: You hate the practices of the Nicolaitans, which I also hate.” God can find few redeeming qualities in the church in Ephesus—except for its hatred and intolerance. Those are the two things He cites positively, the two that they need not repent of. What redeeming qualities will He find in the church in America?

Good question. You have studied your history, and you know that slaves were property, not human beings, so they were objects instead of subjects to the government. To view another human being as property—objects instead of human beings—would not be biblical, because a slavemaster would kind of be acting like God–ruling over others and trying to use them for their own desires. That is not right, because the Bible says that no one is like God, and they shouldn’t act like a God over other people, because there is only one God, as one of the Ten Commandments mentioned. “Also, even if human beings were allowed to act like God, the way those types of people rule over their slaves is unbiblical, because they do not follow the commandments about love. The New Testament says that we should love, forgive, and help others the same way Jesus did, but if people are going to objectify each other and view each other as property, slave masters' intentions to love, forgive, and help others would be reduced, if not unfulfilled. “You also mentioned the New Testament’s commandments. You are correct, there are verses about slaves. Titus 2:9-10 says, ‘Slaves must always obey their masters and do their best to please them. They must not talk back or steal, but must show themselves to be entirely trustworthy and good. Then they will make the teaching about God our Savior attractive in every way.’ By law, a slave would have to obedient to his or her master, so Paul was sent to show that God acknowledges the existence of this law, but even though this law was used, notice how slaves are required to not argue and steal, and they are required to be trustworthy. Those are values that were taught to freed believers! Titus 3:9 talks about preventing quarrels, Exodus 20:15 literally says, “Do not steal,” and Proverbs 11:13 condemns slanderers and praises trustworthy people, so even though slaves were still expected to follow the law, they, like other believers, had the opportunity to uphold biblical values and become strong Christians. Colossians 4:1 also says, ‘Masters, be just and fair to your slaves. Remember that you also have a Master—in heaven.’ This verse actually ensures the welfares of slaves. The laws that the government enforced at that time probably did spread the notion that slaves are property, and so, by law, slaves were still property, but by Christ, they were quite equal to the status of a freed believer. Their was care for slaves’ welfares, which, under Christ, raised them to a greater status than just property. They were property by law, but children of Christ through God.

it would break the second commandment, Exodus 20:4: Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.

duties required by this Commandment we cannot do better than to quote the Westminster Confession of Faith. They are "the knowing and acknowledging of God to be the only true God, and our God (1 Chronicles 28:9; Dent. 26:17, etc.); and to worship and glorify Him accordingly (Psalm 95:6, Verse 7; Matthew 4:10, etc.),by thinking (Malachi 3:16), meditating (Psalm 63:6), remembering (Ecclesiastes 12:1), highly esteeming (Psalm 71:19), honoring (Malachi 1:6), adoring (Isaiah 45:23), choosing (Joshua 24:15), loving (Deuteronomy 6:5), desiring (Psalm 73:25), fearing of Him (Isaiah 8:13), believing Him (Exodus 14:3 1), trusting (Isaiah 26:4), hoping (Psalm 103:7), delighting (Psalm 37:4), rejoicing in Him (Psalm 32:11), being zealous for Him (Romans 12:11), calling upon him, giving all praise and thanks (Philippians 4:6), and yielding all obedience and submission to Him with the whole man (Jeremiah 7:23), being careful in all things to please Him (1 John 3:22), and sorrowful when in anything he is offended (Jeremiah 31:18; Psalm

All through the Bible, the presence of Moses is felt. And though he’s not mentioned until Exodus 2:2, he had written the book of Genesis, God’s authoritative and foundational story of who we are, how we got here, why things are as bad as they are and, yet, why we can hope anyway.

The Bible speaks of beauty in Psalm 27 as a characteristic of God, greatly to be desired. In fact, David says that to “gaze on the beauty of the Lord” is the one and only thing he really desires (Ps. 27:4). In another hint, the first example of God filling someone with his Spirit comes about in Exodus 31 when men are filled with God’s Spirit in order to create beautiful things for the tabernacle. A third indirect reference is when the Bible speaks of the beauty of creation and how that beauty reflects the glory of God (Ps. 19:1). These may not give us a Ten Commandments of beauty (always do this, never do that; blue is beautiful, green is not; straight lines are more beautiful than curved ones; or similar nonsense), but what these examples do is require us to consider the nature of beauty because the Scriptures teach that God is to be the fulfillment of our desire for beauty. God intends and empowers us to make beautiful things, and his glory is reflected in the beauty of his own handiwork, giving us a model to follow as men and women created in his image.

The scene was biblical, exodus and apocalypse in one.

The structural elements between Exodus and the gospels can be seen in two ways. First the Moses-Exodus typology can be seen throughout the gospels: Jesus is depicted as the new Moses (Matthew 5:1; John 5:46); He leads a new exodus (Matthew 2:13, 4:1-17; Mark 1:1–13; Luke 3:4-6); He gives a new law (Matthew 5-7); He supplies bread from heaven (John 6:32-34); He offers a new/final Passover (Matthew 26:26; Mark 14:22; Luke 22:19). Second, much of Jesus’ teaching fits into the language of covenantal texts: Jesus’ self- declarations as the God of the covenant (John 6:35, 8:12, 8:51), condemnation of Israel’s covenant breaking (Matthew 21:40–41; Mark 12:9), teachings on how to live within the covenant community (Matthew 5–7), blessings and curses of the covenant (Luke 6:20–26; Matthew 23), and even covenant discipline (Matthew 16:18–19, 18:15– 20).

Comfort Numbers 14:9 Deuteronomy 31:6 Psalm 27:10 Psalm 46:7 Psalm 73:23 Psalm 94:14 Psalm 103:17 Isaiah 41:17 Matthew 28:20 John 6:37-39 Romans 8:38-39 Peace Exodus 33:14 Numbers 6:24-26 Psalm 85:8 Psalm 119:165 Isaiah 26:3 Isaiah 32:17 Isaiah 57:2 Matthew 11:29-30 John 14:27 Romans 5:1-2 Ephesians 2:14 Colossians 3:15 Fear Deuteronomy 1:17 Deuteronomy 7:21 1 Chronicles 16:25-26 Nehemiah 4:14 Psalm 4:8 Psalm 28:7 Psalm 56:3 Proverbs 16:6 Isaiah 35:4 Isaiah 41:10 Jeremiah 15:20 Joel 3:16 2 Corinthians 1:10 Philippians 4:9 Hebrews 13:6 Anxiety Genesis 28:15 Job 34:12 Psalm 20:7 Psalm 50:15 Psalm 55:22 Psalm 68:19 Psalm 86:7 Proverbs 3:5-6 Isaiah 40:11 Isaiah 41:13 Matthew 11:28 John 16:33 For Those Who Feel Weak 1 Chronicles 16:11 Psalm 37:10-11 Psalm 55:18 Psalm 62:11 Psalm 72:13 Psalm 142:3 Psalm 147:6 Isaiah 57:15 Jeremiah 10:6 Habakkuk 3:19 2 Corinthians 12:9 Ephesians 3:16 Despair Psalm 46:1 Psalm 100:5 Psalm 119:116 Isaiah 40:29 Isaiah 51:6 Jeremiah 32:17 Ezekiel 34:16 Daniel 2:23 Haggai 2:4 Ephesians 1:18 2 Thessalonians 3:3 Hebrews 10:35 James 1:12 Grief Psalm 34:7 Psalm 71:20-21 Psalm 116:15 Psalm 119:28 Psalm 119:50 Psalm 121:5-8 Isaiah 43:2 2 Corinthians 1:3-4 Times of Trouble Psalm 9:12 Psalm 34:7 Psalm 37:39-40 Psalm 46:1 Psalm 50:15 Psalm 121:5-8 Psalm 138:7 John 16:33 Feeling Desperate and Depressed Psalm 30:5 Psalm 34:18 Psalm 40:1-2 Psalm 42:11 Psalm 126:5 Zephaniah 3:17 John 10:10

For example, even in a fallen world, God calls us to show kindness to animals (Exodus 23:12; Proverbs 12:10; Jonah 4:11), but if animals were suffering and being mis-treated in God’s “very good” world, then this would not reflect well on His character and render His creation “not very good.” However, God is not wasteful or indifferent with His creation, nor does He act in a cruel or harmful way towards it; therefore, we should not. The misuse of God’s creation is a result of our sin and not being obedient to His command.

34:6-7. merciful, gracious, slow to anger, kindness, faithfulness, bearing crime and offense and sin. This is possibly the most repeated and quoted formula in the Tanak (Num 14:18-19; Jon 4:2; Joel 2:13; Mic 7:18; Pss 86:15; 103:8; 145:8; 2 Chr 30:9; Neh 9:17,31). The Torah never says what the essence of God is, in contrast to the pagan gods. Baal is the storm wind, Dagon is grain, Shamash is the sun. But what is YHWH? This formula, expressed in the moment of the closest revelation any human has of God in the Bible, is the closest the Torah comes to describing the nature of God. Although humans are not to know what the essence is, they can know what are the marks of the divine personality: mercy, grace. In eight (or nine) different ways we are told of God's compassion. The last line of the formula ("though not making one innocent") conveys that this does not mean that one can just get away with anything; there is still justice. But the formula clearly places the weight on divine mercy over divine justice, and it never mentions divine anger. Those who speak of the "Old Testament God of wrath" focus disproportionately on the episodes of anger in the Bible and somehow lose this crucial passage and the hundreds of times that the divine mercy functions in the Hebrew Bible.

The information in 1 Kings 6:1 uses very precise chronological language (i.e., 480th year, 4th year, the 2nd month) and tells us that the exodus from Egypt took place 480 years before the construction of the temple, signifying an elapsed time of 479+ years.

The fallen man as of now is supposed to Seek the Face of God and there will come a day when the redeemed will See the Face of God!

4. Contemplate The final quality of a biblical Sabbath is, of course, the contemplation of God. The Sabbath is always “holy to the LORD” (Exodus 31:15). Pondering the love of God remains the central focus of our Sabbaths.

The angel of the LORD appeared to him in a blazing fire from the midst of a bush; and he looked, and behold, the bush was burning with fire, yet the bush was not consumed. So Moses said, “I must turn aside now and see this marvelous sight, why the bush is not burned up.” When the LORD saw that he turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush, and said, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” (Exodus 3:2–4) If

Redemption,” as we saw, is an Exodus term. These three chapters, like Galatians 4:1–11 only much more fully, constitute an Exodus narrative. Why would Paul want to write an Exodus narrative at this point? Because Jesus chose Passover as the explanatory setting for what he had to do. The early church from then on, as we have seen, used Passover as the basic route toward understanding why he died. Paul picks this up and celebrates it. Passover, as we have seen, had to do with the overthrow of the powers of evil, the rescue of God’s people as they passed through the waters of the Red Sea, the giving of the law, and above all the strange and dangerous Presence of God himself, fulfilling his promises, coming to dwell in the tabernacle, and leading the people on the long, difficult journey through the wilderness to their promised inheritance. All of these themes find their home in Romans 6–8 within the narrative of Messiah and Spirit. At their heart, again and again, is the Messiah’s death.

The Lord said to him, “Who gave human beings their mouths? Who makes them deaf or mute? Who gives them sight or makes them blind? Is it not I, the Lord? Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say.” —Exodus 4:11–12 (NIV)

salvation is from the Jews” (Jn 4:22). It is so critical for Christians to recognize the fact that the imagery of betrothal and marriage, the language of husband and wife, does not begin in the New Testament. It began with the Exodus

This letter is filled with truth from Scripture that you can hold on to. I encourage you to read God’s love letter to you and know these truths for yourselves: Psalm 139:13 1 John 4:18 Deuteronomy 3:22 Romans 8:31 Isaiah 54:17 Exodus 14:14 Psalm 91:11 Genesis 50:20 Philippians 4:19 Genesis 1:27 Psalm 34:10 Zephaniah 3:17

In Exodus 1:8, a new king who does not “know” Joseph ascends the throne of Egypt. Egypt was the most powerful nation in the world, and its king received the best education in the land. Therefore, it is unlikely the king was ignorant of Joseph’s story in Egypt’s history, especially given Joseph’s role in preserving and enriching Egypt during the great famine (Gn 41). Something else must be meant by the king’s failure to “know.” Indeed, yada (the Hebrew word for “know”) has a sense of covenantal relationship. Thus, when Adam “knew” Eve, she became pregnant (Gn 4:1). In addition, ancient covenant treaties used “know” when speaking of diplomatic recognition. Thus, when Egypt’s new Pharaoh refuses to “know” Joseph, it is not a forgotten history lesson, but

different kind of uprooting took place in eastern Europe, where enlightenment and emancipation advanced more slowly. There, in the sprawling Russian Empire, the significant movement at hand was not from one religion to another, but rather physical movement in the form of mass exodus. The conventionally assumed trigger point was the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881, in the wake of which a wave of violent pogroms directed against Jews broke out in Russia. It was at this time that the first of the huge waves of Jewish emigration from eastern Europe occurred, laying the ground for yet another rebalancing of the global Jewish population. It is estimated that almost 4 million Jews left Russia, Austria-Hungary, and Romania between 1880 and 1929, nearly two-thirds of whom came to the United States, which was now transformed

. God wants his servant Israel to understand “that I am he” (43:10; cf. 41:4; 48:12). The Hebrew conjures up associations with Exodus 3:14; the Greek rendering of this phrase is precisely the expression that Jesus repeatedly applies to himself in John 8 (e.g., John 8:58, “I am”). How then does Isaiah 43 shape how we must think of Jesus?