Exodus 10:1-12:13, Matthew 20:1-28, Psalms 25:1-15, Proverbs 6:6-11
Today is the 30th day of January. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian and it is great to be here with you today, right in the middle of the week taking the next step forward and moving to the back half of the week and the last couple of days of this first month of the year and I guess that describes where we are time. But where we are in the Bible is that plagues are falling on the land of Egypt and Pharaoh is resisting allowing God’s people to go free and we’ll pick up that story where we left off yesterday. Exodus chapter 10 verse 1 through 12 verse 13 today and we’re reading from the Common English Bible this week.
Commentary:
Okay. So, in the book of Exodus, the plagues continue to visit the Egyptians and we’ve watched a sort of a systematic dismantling of Egypt right before our eyes through these plagues. And if we just pause for a second, we can remember that Moses did come to Pharaoh in the first place and simply say, “let my people go, like, this is what the Lord’s telling us to do”. Obviously, Pharaoh didn’t do that and we’ve already talked about the fact that he thought he was a deity himself, the son of God, the gods of Egypt were the most powerful gods on the known world. And, so, he couldn’t imagine somebody coming in and doing that. And, so, he resisted but he had the opportunity, that’s the thing. Like this wasn’t an arbitrary judgment. He had the opportunity, this didn’t have to happen, and we’ll see that so much when we get a little bit further into our year and we get into the books of prophecy, we’ll see the same kind of thing where it didn’t have to go this way. Like, we’re on the Hebrew side as we read the Bible, so we want the Hebrew people to be set free, but what was visited upon the Egyptians was pretty difficult to bear. And, I mean, the fundamental issue came down to who was the more powerful God. And in today’s reading, you know, Pharaoh’s advisors and the leaders of Egypt they were getting this message pretty clear and they went to Pharaoh and they’re like, “don’t you get it, like, don’t you see that Egypt is being destroyed”. But Pharaoh just wouldn’t be humiliated in front of his people. Like, his pride was destroying the nation of Egypt, but he wouldn’t humble himself even in the face of these like overwhelmingly powerful signs. So, locusts came and covered Egypt and then nothing was left, right? Not a single leaf was left uneaten and the trees and the plants throughout Egypt were devastated. So, one more thing coming against Egypt to destroy it and once again Pharaoh comes to Aaron and Moses and says, “I’ve sinned and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah”, but at the end of our reading today something really pretty ominous happened because God is telling Moses that there’s only one more plague and that you won’t be asking to leave after this goes down, you’re going to be chased away. And, so, Pharaoh has one final negotiation, right? Just take your kids, take you people, but leave your livestock. And Moses is like, “we’re taking everything, like, this is what God’s told us to do”. And Pharaoh warns Moses, “never come back to see me again. The day you see my face you will die.” And that’s pretty close to where we ended today. And if we’re watching this on film this is where the ominous drone undertone starts to play because it's…Egypt is gonna have to face a devastation like they’ve never known, as if the plagues that were coming against them weren’t enough. And, so, we’ll get to that tomorrow.
And we have to notice that, and we probably have noticed this along the way because we’re reading Old Testament and New Testament, so, we’re juxtaposing this Pharaoh story with the ministry of Jesus, and we have to notice that Pharaoh and Jesus are like opposites in attitude and actions. And we can see that contrast pretty starkly because of the sections of the Scriptures that were reading juxtaposed against each other, but this contrast should allow us to look inside ourselves. When we see the posture of Pharaoh we see pride and we see arrogance and all of these things that we don’t see in the life of Jesus. And, so, if we look at our lives through each of those lenses, we find that we’ve got pride and arrogance in our own lives. We can find that pretty easy and that is not Christlike. That’s actually more Pharaoh like. Jesus invites us to look at our purpose in terms of how it is that we can serve one another, how we can help whoever needs help pretty much whenever they need it. Like, whenever it’s within our power to help we should, we should serve. This is what Jesus was saying in our reading today, even as He’s being asked to give the right-hand and left-hand seat to two of his disciples by their mom in his kingdom. So, even as He’s on His way to a cross He’s being asked to give these positions of authority to these sons. And it’s here that Jesus is like, “look, I’m I came to serve, that’s what this is about. I came to serve. And, so, if you want to follow after me, if you want to be like me then that’s what you need to do too.” So, it’s interesting because now we’re further in the story, we’re 2000 years away from this event and we have 2000 years of experience in theology to inform us and what’s interesting is that when we accept Christ we determine to serve Him like He’s wanting to be…like this is the purpose, like He’ come to earth and He’s died for the sins of the world and now He’s back up in heaven and he’s looking down upon the earth so that He can look down and see people serving Him. And, so, we get up every day and hopefully go through our day serving Jesus so that He can look down upon us seeing us serve Him well when He never came to be served, He came to serve. You know, so, put a spoon of that in your coffee and stir it around. I happen to be drinking tea today, but I’ll put that in my tea and stir it around because we spend so much of our lives trying to do the right thing so Jesus will look down upon us and see us serving Him when we ignore everyone around us and aren’t servants. And yet, it’s Jesus who said, “if you do this to the least of these, you do it to me.” And, so, if we want to serve Jesus then we have to serve those who need help. So, that should give us pause before we lay into our spouse today and destroy them with our words because we are doing it in the name of Jesus. We are serving Jesus as we go through this day and if we’re spitting things out of our mouths that are more Pharaoh like than Christlike then we have found ourselves on the wide path that leads to destruction and not the narrow path that leads to life, right? When we go off on anybody or when we just walk by anything that we have the power to do something, anything, about. And this isn’t just about handing money to a person who is, you know, has a sign out on the side of the highway. It may be exactly about that, but it doesn’t mean just those kinds of things where you’re like, “oh, I gotta…I gotta help these down and out people.” Everybody’s struggling friends. Everybody’s struggling. Like, we…we’re spending all of our time trying to pretend and portray to the world that we’re not, but we’re all struggling, but we don’t have to, we can serve one another, like we can face outward and stop facing inward at everything that we might be dealing with and start looking outward and serving one another, and then being served by one another. And then we have Christ in action on this planet and that can start right this second in your life. This day can be completely different for you if you’ll face outward, if we’ll look outward and start paying attention to what’s going on around us and start seeing the world through the eyes of our Savior. And there are enough of us on this planet who believe that we have the power to change the world, like immediately, but rather than paying attention to what’s not being done let’s commit our lives to us not being the weak link, to us actually being Christ and Christ-like, the hands and feet of Jesus in this world.
Prayer:
Jesus…Jesus, we invite you into that. It’s so hard to be vigilant and stay in that kind of heart and mind space all of the time because we have so many responsibilities and obligations. And this is a good time for us to consider this word that you have given us this year, “Maintain” because now we see like, ahhh, I could probably be Christlike if I would pay more attention, but I don’t really have any space to pay attention to anything other than what I’m obligated to in my own life. I have so much I’ve got to maintain that I can’t fully live into being Christlike. So we have to examine our lives and understand that our lives can only be as big as what we can maintain and if we’re not building enough margin in our lives to be Christlike than what is the point. Like, what’s the point of all this? We might as well just jump back out into the world and kill or be killed and try to live it up as long as we can. What’s the point if we’re not trying to become Christlike? And if there’s no room in our lives to become Christlike…well…what…what are we supposed to do with that? We’re gonna have to get rid of some of the obligations and responsibilities so that we can maintain a life that can be used by God instead of a life that’s just running around moving things from this place to that trying to pay for everything. So, Holy Spirit, come. We ask in the name of Jesus that you transform us and change us from the inside out and we begin by repenting. Repentance means that we will change our mind, that we will change our inner selves, and we can do that when we are exposed to the truth. When the truth comes crashing in then we can see it and move in that direction. You are showing us the truth. So, come Holy Spirit, may we chase you with all of our hearts. We pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.
Song:
To Be Like You - Hillsong
Humble King
Holy One
Friend of sinners
God’s own Son
God in flesh
Among men
You walked my road
You understand
Servant King
Friend to me
You saved my soul
Washed my feet
Here I’ll bow
Give all to You
Lord I want
To be like You
All I want
All I need
More of You
Less of me
Take this life
Lord it’s Yours
Have my heart
Have it all
I will walk
In Your ways
Love Your word
Seek Your face
My reward
My sole pursuit
To know You more
To be like You
Jesus Jesus
All I want is to be like You