Exodus 15:19-17:7, Matthew 22:1-33, Psalms 27:1-6, Proverbs 6:20-26
Today is the 2nd day of February, welcome to the Daily Audio Bible I’m Brian it is a joy and an honor to be here with you today as…well…we’re taking these steps forward into this new month, so we can move into it comfortably and sail through all the Scriptures have before us. So, it’s good to be here with you as we continue our journey through the month of February. We are reading from the Voice Translation this week, picking up with our story of the children of Israel in the wilderness from the book of Exodus. Just reminding you, yesterday there was a showdown. The enemy was coming against a population of former slaves known as the Hebrews. They were backed up to the Red Sea. There was nowhere to run, and God split the Red Sea and they crossed over. And the…the Army, the Egyptian army was just gonna go through as well, but they didn’t make it. The ocean collapsed over them and that was that. And that’s kind of where we find ourselves. They got to the other side of the Red Sea on dry ground and saw what happened to their enemy and then they burst out in song. And, so, we find ourselves on the other side of the Red Sea in a time of celebration and we will continue with that singing and dancing today. Exodus chapter 15 verse 19 through 17 verse 7.
Commentary:
Okay. Let’s talk about what we read in the book of Exodus today. So, we are with the children of Israel in the wilderness now and they are freed from slavery in Egypt. And I mean, man, God has invaded Egypt, right, dismantled Egypt and the Israelites essentially pillaged Egypt by requesting silver and gold on their way out. And, so, they pillaged Egypt without even drawing his sword. So, obviously God had been with them. And then He’s leading them cloud by day pillar of fire by night. They cross the Red Sea on dry ground and watch the armies of Pharaoh be drowned in that same Red Sea. And then they head out into the deep deep deep desert and they can’t find water. And sure, sure that’s a struggle. In fact, that’s a struggle for survival. That’s what God was up to. They are in the wilderness, and they are trying to do what they can do to survive in their own strength when God had invited them into a different story, one that was going to shift and change their identity altogether. The only identity and we will…we will touch on this many times because I’ve already mentioned, we’re in the wilderness part of our journey right now in the Old Testament and we’ll be in the wilderness. And we need to learn the message of the wilderness just like the children of Israel need to learn the lesson of the wilderness because you can’t get out of it until you learn. So, let’s learn it. So, here they are wandering around and their thirsty. They’ve seen God do all the things we just mentioned. So, they have plenty of proof that He is with them that He cares about them and that He is most powerful. And yet here they are, they can’t find water and what do they say, “why did you bring us out here to die in the wilderness?” And then they start thinking about slave days, cucumbers, bread, meat in the pot. That’s what they had. And, so, they’re lamenting that they don’t have those things anymore even though they have their freedom. They would rather give up their freedom for an easier path. You see where this is going friends? Like all we gotta do is understand that the Bible so often is simply a mirror exposing us, like exposing all the things that we are naked and ashamed about, exposing the ways in which we are hiding and pretending.
So, we watch Jesus do this kind of stuff with His words in the New Testament. We’re watching this, these stories become the stories of our lives as well as we pay attention. How many times have we felt freedom, have we felt God rescuing us, that He did rescue us and then things got difficult again or they got even harder quickly? And we would trade freedom for slavery just to have it easy. There’s so many things to think about on so many levels in that that that is where the Bible has led us to today, to invite the Holy Spirit to reveal these ways that we choose slavery over freedom because slavery might be easier, bondage might be easier even though it’s going to kill us in the end. When God is saying fight for your freedom and then you will be free. Like, learn to trust me utterly and you will be free. Nothing can touch you after that because nothing can be taken from you. You know who you belong to and you know that He is the most-high God and that for eternity you will be His child, you will be in fellowship with Him. There’s nothing that can take that away from you. Until we learn that we just keep making circles in the sand and it’s going nowhere. And we’re watching this in the children of Israel’s lives but it doesn’t take too much effort to see it in our own.
Prayer:
Holy Spirit come. Yeah, it might be easier sometimes to just give up, just settle for whatever, just…just be in bondage because freedom that…that would be too painful, that would be too much of a risk, that would be…that would be too difficult. We’d give up, we’d walk back. We’ve done it so many times. But You are inviting us like, for real into freedom, that we can walk into freedom. Even though it will be supremely difficult we can become free if we will completely and utterly depend upon You. Come Holy Spirit and show us the ways that we’ve put the chains back on our ankles and wrists and that we just keep carrying around bondage for no reason. And the only reason being that we just think it will be too hard to be free. Come Holy Spirit we pray. In the name of Jesus, we ask. Amen.
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