Читать книгу The Grand Sweep - Large Print - J. Ellsworth Kalas - Страница 33

EXODUS 5–7

Week 4, Day 5

When Moses and Aaron come before Pharaoh in the name of the Lord, Pharaoh answers, “Who is the LORD, that I should heed him . . . ? I do not know the LORD” (5:2). Pharaoh’s answer is in the essential secular voice, one that denies any divine right except its own.

So Pharaoh flexes his muscle (“I’ll show them who’s king around here!”), and Moses finds himself caught between a resentful people and the commands of the Lord. No wonder he pleads, “Why did you ever send me?” (5:22).

God reassures Moses, reminding him that the ancestral revelation to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is coming to an even more wonderful focus now, and that the covenant (one of the wondrous words of Scripture) is indeed remembered. But the Israelites cannot hear Moses “because of their broken spirit and their cruel slavery” (6:9). The harshness of life can make us dull to even heaven’s assurance.

Now the grand dialogue begins between Pharaoh, on the hand of strength, and Moses and Aaron, on the side of weakness. Moses is warned that there will be a hardening of Pharaoh’s heart, but even this warning is insufficient when the full degree of that hardening shows itself. The encounter begins with an almost playful show of power, Aaron’s miraculous rod, a demonstration that Pharaoh’s magicians easily imitate, though they are bested when Aaron’s rod consumes theirs. When the water is changed to blood, however, we know the full battle is engaged.

PRAYER: Give me the grace, dear Lord, to stand with those who are broken in spirit by some slavery of life; in Christ. Amen.

God reassured Moses by reminding him of his ancestral faith line—Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Take a few moments to record names from your faith heritage.