DECEMBER 19, 2021 Exodus 33:13 Now therefore, I pray, if I have found grace in Your sight, show me now Your way, that I may know You and that I may find grace in Your sight. And consider that this nation is Your people. Imagine being told that you are going to lead millions of people through a desert […]
DECEMBER 21, 2021 Exodus 33:20 But He said, “You cannot see My face; for no man shall see Me, and live.” As we discussed yesterday, no human has been permitted to see the face of God for to do so would mean death. If we can comprehend and embrace the fact that flesh cannot “glory in […]
DECEMBER 20, 2021 Exodus 33:18 And he said, “Please, show me Your glory.” Moses understood that it was the Presence of the Holy One who distinguishes His people from all the other nations. When the people gave into the sin of the Golden Calf and God removed His Presence from them, they were essentially nondescript in […]
When Moses was forty years old, he went out from Pharaoh's court to visit his brethren, the sons of Israel. He was appalled to see the mistreatment they endured. He realized that God had placed him in a position of power in order to help his people. Moved with compassion for his countrymen, Moses went to the defense of one man who was being beaten by an Egyptian. Moses struck the Egyptian, killed him and buried him in the sand.
He returned to the Hebrews the next day. He had a deep sense of purpose. Somehow he must help his people. He was on a mission from God. When Moses came across two Hebrew men fighting, he attempted to mediate between them. Instead they turned their resentment toward him. Clement, the disciple of Peter, says that they resented him out of a sense of envy:
Envy compelled Moses to flee from the face of Pharaoh king of Egypt, when he heard these words from his fellow countryman, “Who made you a judge or a ruler over us? Will you kill me, as you killed the Egyptian yesterday?” (1 Clement 4:10)
Yeshua taught that a prophet is without honor in his own home ( Matthew 13:57). Just as the Israelites initially rejected the authority of Moses, so too the Jewish leadership in the days of the apostles rejected the authority of Yeshua. Just as Moses disappeared, only to reappear a generation later and bring about the redemption from Egypt, so too Yeshua has been concealed and will be revealed in the last generation to bring about the final redemption.
When Moses realized that his attempts to help his people were not welcomed, nor could he trust them to conceal his secret about the Egyptian he had killed, he fled from Egypt. His noble delusions of being the redeemer of Israel all came crashing down.
“He supposed that his brethren understood that God was granting them deliverance through him, but they did not understand” (Acts 7:25).
Moses' life can be divided into three forty-year segments. At the age of forty, Moses thought he was the redeemer of Israel. He had a dream of saving his people. His dream was frustrated, and in exasperation, he gave up. He fled into the wilderness, where he became a shepherd, herding sheep for a pagan. He married a Midianite woman. His dream of redeeming Israel died in the wilderness. Only after the dream was dead and Moses was no longer trying to achieve it at all did God call him. Only then—long after the all the pride and bravado were gone—was Moses ready to be a tool in the hand of God. He spent the last forty years of his life fulfilling the dream that had been birthed in him forty years before.
This can be compared to a carpenter who hired a young apprentice. The apprentice was eager to get busy with building houses, too eager to take the time to learn the carpentry trade. “Very well,” said the carpenter, “if you are so certain of yourself, go ahead and build.” Halfway through the construction project, the lopsided frame he was erecting collapsed. The young apprentice turned in his tools and shamefacedly said, “I have to quit. I'm not a carpenter. I can't build anything.” “Excellent,” the carpenter replied. “Now you are ready to learn how to build.”
Shemot – שמות : “Names” Torah : Exodus 1:1-6:1 Haftarah : Isaiah 27:6-28:13; 29:22-23 Gospel : Mark 1,2
DECEMBER 18, 2021 Exodus 33:11 So the Lord spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend. One of the reasons that Judaism places so much stock in the first five books of the Bible — the Torah — is because of this statement in the Scripture. Prophets were moved upon by the Spirit […]
ONE OF THE GREATEST PROMISES in the Bible for parents or grandparents is this verse: “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it” (Prov. 22:6). The word train in Hebrew refers to using some form of discipline. Many sports teams have spring […]
DECEMBER 17, 2021 Exodus 33:7 Moses took his tent and pitched it outside the camp, far from the camp, and called it the tabernacle of meeting. And it came to pass that everyone who sought the Lord went out to the tabernacle of meeting which was outside the camp. After hearing that God’s Presence was being remove from the people, the children of […]
DECEMBER 16, 2021 Exodus 33:1-3 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Depart and go up from here, you and the people whom you have brought out of the land of Egypt, to the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, ‘To your descendants I will give it.’ And I will send My Angel before you, and I will drive out […]
DECEMBER 15, 2021 Exodus 32:34 Now therefore, go, lead the people to the place of which I have spoken to you. Behold, My Angel shall go before you. After such a horrendous upheaval among God’s people — the rebellion, the aftermath of their sin and the drama of Moses’ intercession — God tells Moses to get back on track […]
DECEMBER 14, 2021 Exodus 32:31-32 Then Moses returned to the Lord and said, “Oh, these people have committed a great sin, and have made for themselves a god of gold! Yet now, if You will forgive their sin—but if not, I pray, blot me out of Your book which You have written.” When Moses said, “Blot me out of Your book,” what […]
