22nd April 2024

22nd April 2024


Pray (ACts)


Read (Exodus 11:1-10 focus v1-3)


Message (Alan Burke) 


No matter how much you may think it, want it to be true, try to live as if it is the case you are not sovereign over your life. Yes you may think the world revolves around you, it doesn’t! You may want the world to revolve around you and it doesn’t and you might live like it should revolve around you and all you do is rub people up the wrong way because it doesn’t revolve around you. I meet many people who are trying to be sovereign over their life they haven’t quite twigged on yet that they are not, they might even claim to know the Lord as their God but the truth is the Lord is sovereign over all of our lives, completely in every way. That means the hardship we face, the joys, the highs and lows and everything in-between and you should know that  “If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.” (Jam 4:15). The Lord has ordained already every day that is laid out before us, they were written in his book before one of them came to be (Ps 139:16). In the midst of all of those he uses our sinful actions, our choices, the sinful actions and choices of others for his glory. 


Today and the rest of this week as we look at this passage in Exodus we are confronted with how the Lord is sovereign over the nations, over all of life and over our very hearts. Here in v1-3 it is over the nations as Pharaoh who had been so obstinate, who had refused to let the Israelites go is now going to cast them out, banish them, drive them out of the Land of Egypt. Once more the Israelites would plunder the Egyptians as they went. We are told that the Israelites are to ask their neighbours for articles of silver and gold because the Lord made the Egyptians favourably disposed towards his people. Even after the previous nine plagues, even after the plague that was to come that would bring and end to this whole affair the Egyptians are going to freely offer, make a freewill offering if you like of their silver and gold to the Israelites. 


In all that was going on, the Lord was making himself known. The Egyptians were polytheists had come to know that all their gods were as useful as a chocolate teapot, their gods were nothing but wood and stone, the imaginations of men like all other gods except the Lord God of the Israelites. What was happening is that the Egyptians hearts were being transformed by the work of God, they were beginning to understand their foolishness in worshiping false gods who could do nothing for them and the Lord God was bringing some of the Egyptians to worship him and to serve him. 


In chapter 12:31 Pharaoh has finally had enough and in 12:37-38 we read: “37 The Israelites journeyed from Rameses to Succoth. There were about six hundred thousand men on foot, besides women and children.  38 Many other people went up with them…”


“Many other people went up with them”. 


There were Egyptians who left with the Israelites. While of course we do not know how many went with the Israelites, who left Egypt with them there were those who did, many of them. The Egyptians while the Lord made them favourable disposed towards his people, they had learnt that there is only one God and some of them were let to go and worship him, serve him with his people. They learnt that he alone is the Sovereign God of all. Those who gave freely to the Israelites, their silver and gold had begun to believe that the God of the Israelite was the one true God. And were acknowledging his power, were honouring him with their wealth. In all of this the Lord was showing his sovereignty, over Egypt and over its people, he was sovereign over the Egyptians and his people the Israelites just as he is sovereign over all the nations today, and the Lord is;


Pray (acTS)


Sing


WSC
Q19. What is the misery of that estate whereinto man fell?
A. All mankind, by their fall, lost communion with God, are under his wrath and curse, and so made liable to all miseries in this life, to death itself, and to the pains of hell for ever.
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