The Bible Recap - Day 033 (Exodus 10-12) - Year 6
Episode Date: February 2, 2024SHOW NOTES: - Head to our Start Page for all you need to begin! - Join the RECAPtains - Check out the TBR Store - Show credits - Watch the 2010s Christian Song Battle FROM TODAY’S RECAP: - Ephes...ians 6:10-18 - Exodus 4 - Join the RECAPtains! SOCIALS: The Bible Recap: Instagram | Facebook | Twitter/X | TikTok D-Group: Instagram | Facebook | Twitter/X TLC: Instagram | Facebook D-GROUP: D-Group is brought to you by the same team that brings you The Bible Recap. TBR is where we read the Bible, and D-Group is where we study the Bible. D-Group is an international network of Bible study groups that meet weekly in homes, churches, and online. Find or start one near you today! DISCLAIMER: The Bible Recap, Tara-Leigh Cobble, and affiliates are not a church, pastor, spiritual authority, or counseling service. Listeners and viewers consume this content on a voluntary basis and assume all responsibility for the resulting consequences and impact.
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Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble and I'm your host for the Bible Recap.
Yesterday we saw the first seven plagues God brought on the Egyptians because Pharaoh wouldn't
listen to Moses and set the Israelite slaves free.
Today we dropped in on the rest of the plagues.
The first few sentences we read today said,
I have hardened his heart and the heart of his servants,
that I may show these signs of mine among them,
that you may know that I am the Lord.
This whole paragraph was a weighty paragraph.
It almost sounds like part of God's plan was to harden Pharaoh's heart against his plan.
And the reason was that this process would help Israel really know and trust him as God. He uses the wicked as a tool to advance his plan and bless the children he's adopted
into his family. We can't cut sentences like this out of the Bible. We have to wrestle
with them and see what they mean and how they fit into the context of everything else in
Scripture. I'm not going to tie it up with a pretty bow and make it look simple. It's
hard. It's mysterious. And it's okay to not have answers about it up with a pretty bow and make it look simple. It's hard. It's mysterious.
And it's okay to not have answers about it yet, or maybe ever.
In yesterday's reading, we encountered several places where God hardened Pharaoh's heart,
a few where it just says, his heart was hardened, and a few that attribute the hardening to
Pharaoh himself.
But interestingly, Pharaoh's hardening of his own heart is almost always followed with
the statement, as the Lord had said.
It can feel threatening to recognize that God is bigger than your own heart, that he
can shape it for his own purposes.
If that's you and you're feeling that way right now, I would encourage you to not let
fear drive that thought.
The enemy of your soul wants you to view God's power through a lens that pushes you away from him instead of drawing you in.
So instead, try to stop and acknowledge how comforting it is that we serve a God who is that powerful.
For instance, think about the people that you know and love who are the furthest from God.
People you've prayed for and cried for, people who have told you that they never want to hear you say another word about God again.
God can soften their hearts and turn them on their heels just like he did with the apostle Paul, who by the way wasn't just not seeking God, he was actively at war against God and his people,
much like Pharaoh. For God to be sovereign over sins and hearts means no one is beyond his reach and it's never too late for anyone.
And that is the greatest comfort I can imagine.
Moving on, today we see the frustration mounting
with Pharaoh's servants and Pharaoh starts
to weaken his resolve.
But instead of obeying, he asked for a compromise.
God doesn't really go for that.
So the locusts and the darkness come,
but still no repentance.
Then God sends what he knows will be the final plague.
Moses has all the Israelites ask the Egyptians for their valuables
and they hand them over.
He also tells every Israelite house to sacrifice a lamb
and sprinkle its blood on the left sides, right sides,
and tops of their doorways,
marking their homes and their families by the blood of a sacrifice. Interestingly, if you were to use a hisp branch, like they did, to wipe
blood in those three spots, the placement on the left and the right and then the dripping
from the top down to the ground would leave the shape of a cross. God also tells them
to eat their dinner but finish it quickly, don't even make bread that rises, and stay
fully dressed with your carkeys in hand, basically.
By the way, the description he gives of their attire is a little bit reminiscent of the armor of God
described much later in Ephesians 6, 10 through 18.
Then he tells them about an annual dinner party he's planned for them to celebrate what he's about to do that night.
I love that God is already telling them how to commemorate His deliverance before He fulfilled it.
Jewish people around the world still celebrate this event today.
The Hebrew calendar is built around it.
You'll see this one-day event referenced in Scripture as Passover,
and this is important to what we'll be learning in Scripture, so make a mental note of it.
It's called Passover because that's what the Lord did when He saw the blood on their doorways.
He passed over that house and didn't kill the firstborn.
So all the firstborn of Israel are spared, but not Egypt.
By the way, in the references to the destroying angel in this passage, his identity is kind
of blurred, but most signs point to this being a theophany, possibly a Christophany.
After the angel, who is maybe God the Son passes through,
the Egyptians drive the Israelites out
just like God promised,
with fistfuls of jewelry and fine clothing
that they willingly handed over just like God promised.
The Israelites plundered the Egyptians.
In the middle of the night, 600,000 men
and an estimated total of two to three million people
left Egypt on foot.
Some other non-Israelites went with them.
We find out later that even some Egyptians went too.
And God tells the Israelites to treat them like family,
as long as they're circumcised.
Also, you may be a little concerned about the 430 years
that it says they spent in Egypt, like,
God was 30 years late.
I thought it was only supposed to be 400 years.
There are two possible ways this could shake out.
First, God could have just been giving
a round number generality,
not a down to the minute timeline.
Or second, those first 30 years may have included
the good times when Joseph had first moved his family there
and all was still right with the old Pharaoh
before they started enslaving them.
So if you were worried that God got it wrong or broke his promise,
hopefully that will help you breathe easy.
What was your God shot today?
What did you see about his character or his motives or his heart?
I've kind of been paying attention to this theme he keeps touching on.
Think back to day 31.
We read two things in Exodus 4 that kind of foreshadowed this final plague
and helped us see a little bit of what's happening here with God's motives.
Remember how God was angry and sought to kill someone, maybe Gershom,
Moses' firstborn son, because Moses had disobeyed God by not circumcising Gershom,
which means he wasn't set apart as one of God's people?
And remember how God said that if Egypt didn't relent
and let his firstborn son Israel go free to be set apart,
that he would kill their firstborn son?
That was all a bit of foreshadowing for today.
This even has echoes of Abraham and his firstborn son Isaac.
And then today, just like with circumcision,
God tells Israel to set themselves apart with a specific marking,
to mark the entryway of their homes with blood, in the shape of a cross no less. That makes today's reading feel like foreshadowing for something
yet to come in Scripture.
God has been hinting all along at what he's initiating here. He's so protective of his
people and his plan for their freedom and restoration, he goes to great lengths to secure
it. And this is certainly not even the greatest length God goes to.
God knows the pain the Egyptians felt, because to secure your freedom and mine, He sacrificed
His firstborn son, so that the massive debt our sins accrued could be paid in full.
We could never pay it, even with His help.
We don't need Him to help us.
We need His utter and complete rescue.
And through the plan he initiated to sacrifice his son,
he also initiated a relationship with us
and saved us from ourselves.
We needed an initiator, God the Father,
and we needed a mediator, God the Son,
and we need someone to sustain and fulfill his work in us,
God the Spirit.
The plan that God has initiated, sustained, and fulfilled is the only way we can be united
with him.
And thank God, because he's where the joy is.
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