Exodus 5:18-23 Now get to work. You will not be given any straw, yet you must produce your full quota of bricks.” The Israelite foremen realized they were in trouble when they were told, “You are not to reduce the number of bricks required of you for each day.” When they left Pharaoh, they found Moses and Aaron waiting to meet them, and they said, “May the LORD look upon you and judge you! You have made us a stench to Pharaoh and his officials and have put a sword in their hand to kill us.” Moses returned to the LORD and said, “O LORD, why have you brought trouble upon this people? Is this why you sent me? 23 Ever since I went to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has brought trouble upon this people, and you have not rescued your people at all.”
The story of the Exodus is a story of miracles – yet in the beginning, when Moses first appeared before Pharaoh to deliver the children of Israel from 400 years of slavery, the Israelites were severely tempted and became angry because of the initial hardships that were laid upon them.
They leveled their anger at Moses because suddenly they were told that they would have to gather their own straw for making bricks. They were concerned about offending their slave-masters, fearing that they would slay them.
The Israelites were so accustomed to their slavery that they didn’t want their lives disrupted despite the fact that freedom was at hand. Resigned to this miserable life, they utterly failed to apprehend or appreciate the freedom that was soon approaching. Yes, there was a temporary price: increased hardship and great pressure would set the stage for their final deliverance.
The same can happen to us. It has often been said, “The darkest night is just before the dawn”…
Perhaps the enemy senses his impending defeat and pulls out all the stops to prevent it. Perhaps the Lord loves a good story with a really dramatic and climactic ending and great glory for His Name…in any case —
Don’t let yourself remain accustomed to any form of bondage – seek and believe for the freedom that God has given us through His Son. Expect a life of great victory over sin and demonic oppression – Why? Because that is His promise to us!
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[worthy_plugins_devotion_single_body]Here in Israel we have an interesting geographical phenomenon – there are two landlocked seas. One is alive and one is dead. The sea full of life is the Kinneret, better known as the Sea of Galilee. The dead sea is…….you guessed it, the Dead Sea. Now the Kinneret is constantly emptying as it flows through the Jordan River valley…. into the Dead Sea. But the Dead Sea does not empty its water at all. Instead, the Dead Sea is continually shrinking, because the intense heat at this lowest place on Earth actually evaporates more water than is flowing in. Do you see a parable here?
One of my passions is studying history, especially the American Civil War. Here is an amusing story about General Stonewall Jackson’s famous Valley Campaign. During the war, Jackson’s army found itself on one side of a river when it needed to be on the other.
We tend to focus on the part of that scripture where God does the blessing — but why did He bless Him? The answer lies in the passage! The Lord told Abraham: “I will bless you — and you shall be a blessing.” Abraham was blessed so that he could be a blessing!
In the Olivet discourse recorded in Matthew 24, Yeshua prophesied that “… nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom.” The word “nation” in Greek is the word “ethnos”, from which we get the English word “ethnic”. All of this polarization and ethnic warfare which the media feed upon and incite is the work of the enemy as he stirs up the sinful nature of men.
Several hundred years before Jesus was born, a plague broke out in Athens, Greece. In an effort to stop the plague and appease the ‘gods’, the Athenians sought counsel from a wise man named Epimenides from the island of Crete.
A new driver for an interstate trucking company was having a difficult time. He found the long cross-country trips extremely tiring. The older driver who traveled with him, however, seemed to thrive on those long trips. He always seemed to look as fresh at the end of the ride as he did at the beginning.
There’s nothing we can do to earn God’s love, however if we want to experience His blessings we need to observe the qualifications that He’s given us in His Word. Psalm 112 details a whole list of blessings, but the key to receiving them is verse 1.