Day 307

Day 307

Pray (ACts)

Read - Exodus 3:7-10

Message - Alan Burke

There is much that we hide from others, we put the face on when we leave the house and today we have anonymity behind a mask so we don’t even need to chat to people. There are other things that happen behind closed doors that are only known to us, how we feel, what we are going through, our circumstances are just a few. We thought last Monday of the cry of the people of God (Ex 2:23-25), how they in their desperation cried out to him, and in verse 25 “God saw the people of Israel—and God knew.” 

Here the Lord God revealed to Moses that he had seen the misery of his people (7), their affliction, he had watched the oppression of Israel for a long time and has heard the people‘s cry of distress, he knows the extent of their need, and the moment for his action on the their has arrived.

His people may have wondered if God even cared but once more we are reminded that God always cares, he knew what his people were going though in Egypt and he knows what his people are going though this day, he is well aware of what we face, what is happening to us, he sees and knows our suffering and he cares about it. The Lord God is full of pity and compassion for the people he loves. God cares about the suffering of his people, and he comforts them (2 Cor 1:3-4), remember that this day. But God not only had seen their bondage he was going to deliver them from it, to bring them out of Egypt (8). 

God was saving his people from their bondage in Egypt but he was saving them to something too. He was saving them into the Promised Land but all the while they were to look to that heavenly city. Likewise when God saved us, he saved us from our bondage to sin, our slavery to sin and is saving us to something greater, communion with the living God that was lost at the fall, he is saving us to a new heaven and a new earth. 

For all of us, this is what God is saving us too, until we come to faith in God we are living in slavery, it may not be as the world sees it but all of us are slaves to sin (Rom 6:20), enslaved by its passions and desires, we are in as much need of salvation as God’s people in Egypt. God had come down to save his people and Jesus came down from Heaven to lift us up to glory. It is through Jesus that we enter into a personal saving relationship with God, in which we are saved from the power of sin, the terror of Satan, and the finality of death. We are also saved to something: Heaven is our promised land, the place of God’s abundant and eternal blessing. 

What is more The God we come before is the God who sees, hears and remembers, is the God who knows our situation in all its desperate need. He is a God who is worth praying to. He already knows all about our situation because he sees everything that happens. He hears our prayer, He remembers that we belong to him through Jesus Christ and He answers our prayers even though they may not be in the way we wanted or desired but in a way that brings him glory. 

Pray (acTS)

Sing

WSC
Q 75 What is forbidden in the eighth commandment?
The eighth commandment forbiddeth whatsoever doth or may unjustly hinder our own or our neighbour’ s wealth or outward estate. (Prov. 21:17, Prov. 23:20–21, Prov. 28:19, Eph. 4:28)
​