Tag: A chapter a day

The Lord had warned Moses that Pharoah’s heart would be hard, and that he would not let the people go “unless [my] mighty hand compels him”. And yet Moses, perhaps shaken by the harshness of Pharoah’s response, asks the Lord, “Is this why you sent me?”

The foot soldiers in the Lord’s army have no ability (of their own) except availability. And like foot soldiers, they are not to concern themselves with the overall strategy of the war – the generals do that. No, the job of the foot soldier is to trust and obey.

“But Moses said, ‘Pardon your servant, Lord. Please send someone else.’ Then the Lord’s anger burned against Moses.”

The greatest (really the only) ability we sinful humans have is availability.

The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.

The Triune God. Abraham is the father of many nations, but especially the father of the faithful. Isaac is the sacrifice, or would have been had not the angel intervened. Jacob wrestled with the angel of God on Mt. Peniel. He endured difficult circumstances, yet through them all did not forget the promises of God. Perhaps in some way Jacob pictures the Holy Spirit.

God is the great I AM, and yet, as he told Moses, he is also “the God of your father. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”

“God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob.”

Jacob’s descendants were made slaves in Egypt, and they were in bondage for generations — 400 years! God himself had foretold this to Abraham centuries before.

“God heard their groaning.” Not, as it were, for the first time. But now, in the fullness of time, it was time to act.

The midwives lied to their Egyptian masters to protect the Hebrew boy babies. Nevertheless, “God was kind to the midwives.”

God alone is Judge.

“Joseph threw himself on his father, and wept over him and kissed him.”

Joseph did. His brothers felt too much shame and guilt (and fear of what Joseph do to them now that their father was gone) to express much emotion.

But Joseph spoke kindly to them, and assured them of his love. God is out to bless his people. Ironically, God used Joseph – the one they had wronged – to communicate that message.

Jacob’s final words to his sons were brutally honest, and recalled painful events from the past. The brutal murders committed by Simeon and Levi. The sexual immorality of Reuben, when he slept with his father’s wife!

Jacob remembered these offenses years later, and rendered his judgment from his deathbed. What a difficult scene that must have been!

Jacob is on his deathbed and has not forgotten the promises God made to him and his descendants.
He pulls Joseph close and reminds him of these things.

Then, inexplicably, but in the providence of God, he crosses his hands so that his right of blessing was placed on the head of Ephraim, and not Manasseh the firstborn.

“I have traveled this earth for 130 hard years.”

This was Jacob’s response to Pharoah’s question, “How old are you?” Jacob was an old man who looked even older than his years. He had indeed lived a hard life.

He had deceived his own father. He had run for his life from his own brother. He fell victim to the deception of his uncle. He had wrestled with an angel. He had buried a father, a wife, and lost (or so he thought) a beloved son in a tragic accident.

For a few brief minutes these two ancients occupied the same stage, brought together by Joseph, the man they both respected. Other than that, however, they had nothing in common.

It is remarkable that God revealed to Jacob where he would die, and that his beloved son Joseph would be at his bedside, to “close [his] eyes”.

His grandfather Abraham was told that his descendants would be “strangers in a foreign land, where they [would]be oppressed as slaves for 400 years”, and that God would deliver them by a mighty hand. But it appears Abraham kept that to himself.

“So Jacob set out for Egypt with all his possessions…”