I have been reading in Exodus for the past couple of weeks. I have had a few new thoughts about the Israelites that I want to pen.
In Exodus 6, Moses has asked Pharaoh to let his people go and Pharaoh has of course said no. This has soured Pharaoh, so he then turns to his overseers and says to make work harder for the Hebrews. The Hebrews were making bricks at the time. He has told them that they cannot have straw for bricks but they are to make the same quota. So they have to go out into all the land and gather stubble to make bricks. He has also told his Egyptians to beat them. So now the Hebrew are coming back to Moses and Aaron and saying because you have come before Pharaoh we are now dealing with this enormous hardship.
My thought is that I wonder if God put them through this struggle in order to help them leave? I think life needed to be so bad for them as slaves that they just couldn’t stay. They were going to endure hardships in the desert. It would have been hard to leave when there is a desert ahead and you don’t know what is in store. I’ve often thought that sometimes it takes hardships for us to rely on God. Sometimes our day-to-day needs to be difficult enough for us to even turn to God to begin with. Sometimes people ask, “Why does God let people suffer?”. He loves us and wants to be near us and wants us to turn to him. Sometimes that’s what it takes for us to turn to him. We can be such selfish people that we rely on ourselves and not on God.
I had another thought. In Exodus 6:12 it says that Moses asked “Why would Pharaoh listen to me when I have faltering lips?” He says earlier that he is a man of slow speech. God delivered his whole people from 400 years of slavery and freed the Israelites to worship God in their own country. He used Moses who seemed to have some kind of speech handicap. God can use us exponentially even with our faults and our weaknesses.
There is one more thing I was pondering about the Israelites…
I imagine many of you will understand my suffering when I say I have an old phone. A phone that doesn’t recognize the new apps very well. A phone that laughs in my face when I try to do something that I need to do. I say this because my phone has rejected the “Church Center app” lately where I go to pay my tithe every week. So I feel like my efforts in tithing have become more difficult. All of a sudden, I may have to write a check. Uggh. I have not signed up for the automatic payments on purpose. I personally want to make sure that I am giving my offering by hand every week. I want to bring my first fruits to the Lord myself. But why should I get discouraged when an app doesn’t work and I might have to write a check? I think the Lord is teaching me something this week. This morning I was reading Exodus 35. This was after Moses came down from the mountain where his face glowed from seeing God. He came down and told the Israelites what the Lord had commanded of them. As he told them about how they were to rest on the Sabbath, they were also to bring the Lord offerings of gold, silver, dyed yarns and tanned skins among other things that were to be used to construct the temple. So these weren’t things that you just go get. These are things that they had to labor on and make excellent. Can you imagine that you have collected the hide from one of your animals and tanned it until it was the right type of leather and then had to take time to dye it? All the while you are doing this, you know you are doing it for the Lord. I wonder what it was like for them. Were they deep in worship? Were they praying to God a lot while they were working on this gift for him? Think of the time that was put into it. I do not give God that much effort in my giving. All I have to do is click a button and I can give to the Lord. I definitely feel that I need to put more time and effort into my giving. I don’t know what this means yet, except I will be praying a lot about this and seeking what the Lord would have me do.
I feel as if the Israelites have given me a lot to think about this week. Usually when I read Exodus, I mostly notice how much the Israelites grumble and sin. This time, I have used it to reflect on my own spiritual growth. Thank you God for your Word which is living, active, fulfilling, and teaching.
God bless,
Amy Thompson