Day 339

Day 339

Pray (ACts)

Read - Exodus 5:3-9

Message - Alan Burke
To the mocking of Pharaoh Moses and Aaron had in effect threatened pharaoh. Their threat was if he didn’t let them go there would be consequences (3). To pharaoh this was an idol threat and he was going to make them pay for it. He blamed Moses and Aaron for his workers strike, they may have been worshiping the Lord, it may have been the reason how Moses and Aaron got an audience with the most powerful man in the world, but Pharaoh was going to make an example of them. Their worship of the Lord may has well been some kind of industrial action for all Pharaoh cared, it was rebellion by his workforce as they were taking it easy, and it was contemptible to him. These people were not free, they were his slaves and only he could allow them to rest from their burdens.

If pharaoh didn’t make it clear with his sarcasm and mockery towards Moses and Aaron (2), he does now. The same day he gives a decree (6) is to drive a wedge between Moses and the people, it is a cool calculated move that was intended to break the peoples will, that will stop a possible uprising for they would blame Moses not pharaoh, it is a clever move by pharaoh. 

Moses is called a liar, he is discredited, he was welcomed as their saviour but now he would have been seen as fool who had cause them much more suffering, but there cries of suffering had come to the Lord already, they had cried out and he had heard. But by causing their pain and suffering to increase pharaoh was in direct opposition to God, he was an enemy of God, he made them work harder but his own heart was hardened. 

Things had gone from bad to worse for the people of God. Did God not say that he would be with Moses? That he would set his people free? And here it looks like if anything God is just making it worse. Yet this wasn’t the end of it, even though Pharaoh sought to thwart the purposes of God, he did not, and he could not. For God would achieved his great plan of salvation and has now down through the incarnation, how the only begotten Son of God became man, to die in our place so that we might be saved from a greater bondage, the bondage of sin. 

What can we expect to reap for obedience to God? Some false teachers will tell you that you can expect health, wealth, property, that faith and obedience will transform your life. But lets be honest, what can you expect for following Christ is not an easy life thats for sure. 

Jesus told his disciples to expect to be mistreated; “All men will hate you because of me, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved” (Matt 10:22). That can be in many ways, in the work place for believing what we believe, at home, how we are misrepresented in the media, how we are mocked for believing what we believe, and in many countries that is seen in the violence and persecution that believers faced. 

But why is it like this, why can we expect to be mistreated, to be hated for belief in Jesus Christ. Because Satan the enemy of God’s people is at work, he was at work behind all that was going on for the Israelites in Egypt, he was using pharaoh to try to thwart the purposes of God. The same Satan who tried to thwart the purposes of God as he tempted Jesus to abandon his mission (Matt. 4:1–11; Lk 4:1–13), and Satan continues to work today, he is still a prowling predator, he is a deceiver, he attempts to lead God’s people astray, but do not forget this truth that he is a defeated enemy and know that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom 8:38-38),

Pray (acTS)

Sing

WSC
Q 103 What do we pray for in the third petition?
In the third petition, (which is, Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven, (Matt. 6:10)) we pray, That God, by his grace, would make us able and willing to know, obey, and submit to his will in all things, (Ps. 67, Ps. 119:36, Matt. 26:39, 2 Sam. 15:25, Job 1:21) as the angels do in heaven. (Ps. 103:20–21)
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