Exodus

Monday: Moses’ Character

Apart from Jesus Christ, no person in history has made such a deep or lasting impression on the world as Moses. Moses was the great lawgiver and emancipator of Israel. He is described in the book of Revelation as the servant of God, and he had a remarkable history. He was born to Jewish parents in a land that was not their own, where they were slaves. He was educated in the court of the mightiest empire of the day, one of the mightiest empires that has ever existed in history. He was heir to all of the wealth, prestige, and legendary pleasures of Egypt. And yet, when he was 40 years old, he elected to identify himself with his own oppressed race. He was driven out and had to flee from Egypt.

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Tuesday: The Nature of Scripture

Moses lived to be 120 years old. And roughly speaking he had 40 years in each place. When he was 40 years old he had to run away, and he spent 40 years in the desert as a shepherd. God met him at the burning bush and called him to be the deliverer when he was 80 years old. And then he led the people for 40 years. It has been said that Moses spent 40 years in Egypt learning something. He spent 40 years in the desert learning to be nothing. And then he spent the last 40 years of his life proving God to be everything. I think that’s a good way of putting what the Christian life is all about. Some of us don’t prove God to be everything, because we never learned that we ourselves are nothing. And when we come to that point, then we are ready to have God work through us. And that’s what He did with Moses.

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Wednesday: “Carried Along by the Holy Spirit”

The tie between Exodus and Genesis is closer than is apparent to most of us in our English translation. For one thing the Hebrew text of Exodus begins with the word “And.” We don’t write that way in English so the translators don’t begin it that way, but it actually says, “And these are the names.” Numbers and Leviticus begin this way. What he is saying, of course, is that the story that’s about to begin now in Exodus is not a new story, although it’s a new chapter in this continuing story of redemption. Rather it’s a continuation of what God began to do when He first called Abraham, the father of the Jewish people, out of Ur of the Chaldees.

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Thursday: The Call of Abraham

Now I would like us to look at that call to Abraham, because it gives us an outline of what’s coming. Next time, we’re going to see a little bit more about the condition of the people in Egypt, and after that the birth of Moses. I want you to see that what we find here in these books—Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy—is what was prophesied very clearly by God to Abraham, and recorded for us in Genesis 15. This chapter describes what was probably the most significant day in the whole life of the patriarch Abraham.

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Friday: Knowing God Better

Do you want to get to know God better? God wants you to get to know Him better. Tell Him that you would like to get to know Him better, and you will find that He will reveal Himself to you, as he did to Moses.

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Monday: Egypt’s History: Exodus 1:8-22

Sermon: The King Who Knew Not Joseph
Scripture: Exodus 1:8-22
In this week’s lessons, we learn about the historical setting for the exodus, and see that it is far better to be counted among the righteous lowly who serve the Lord than the pagan great who serve the world’s idols.
Theme: Egypt’s History

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Tuesday: Egypt’s Cultural Condition: Exodus 1:8-22

Sermon: The King Who Knew Not Joseph
Scripture: Exodus 1:8-22
In this week’s lessons, we learn about the historical setting for the exodus, and see that it is far better to be counted among the righteous lowly who serve the Lord than the pagan great who serve the world’s idols.
Theme: Egypt’s Cultural Condition

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Wednesday: Dating the Exodus: Exodus 1:8-22

Sermon: The King Who Knew Not Joseph
Scripture: Exodus 1:8-22
In this week’s lessons, we learn about the historical setting for the exodus, and see that it is far better to be counted among the righteous lowly who serve the Lord than the pagan great who serve the world’s idols.
Theme: Dating the Exodus

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Thursday: Sophisticated Yet Cruel: Exodus 1:8-22

Sermon: The King Who Knew Not Joseph
Scripture: Exodus 1:8-22
In this week’s lessons, we learn about the historical setting for the exodus, and see that it is far better to be counted among the righteous lowly who serve the Lord than the pagan great who serve the world’s idols.
Theme: Sophisticated Yet Cruel

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Friday: Trusting the Lord and Doing What Is Right: Exodus 1:8-22

Sermon: The King Who Knew Not Joseph
Scripture: Exodus 1:8-22
In this week’s lessons, we learn about the historical setting for the exodus, and see that it is far better to be counted among the righteous lowly who serve the Lord than the pagan great who serve the world’s idols.
Theme: Trusting the Lord and Doing What Is Right

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The Birth of Moses

Monday: A Spiritually Dry Time: Exodus 2:1-10

There is a verse in Isaiah 44 which comes to my mind when I think of this period in Jewish history prior to the birth of Moses. God is speaking and He says to the people through Isaiah, “I will pour water on the thirsty land and streams on the dry ground” (Isa. 44:3). It’s usually that way with God. It’s when things are grim, when the earth is spiritually barren and dry, that the Holy Spirit moves and blessing follows.

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The Birth of Moses

Tuesday: Moses’ Background: Exodus 2:1-10

In yesterday’s devotional, we concluded by saying that God always had a remnant, those who are faithful to Him even in dry times. Now that’s exactly what we have here in the second chapter of Exodus. In this case, the remnant that we’re told about is one family, a husband and wife, whose names were Amram and Jochebed. Amram means “exalted people.” We’re not given his name in Exodus 2, but the name is supplied elsewhere in the Old Testament genealogies in Exodus 6, Numbers 3, 1 Chronicles 6, and so on. He was of the tribe of Levi, and lived to be 137 years old. Jochebed means “the honor of Jehovah.”

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The Birth of Moses

Wednesday: Jochabed’s Decision: Exodus 2:1-10

This princess came down to the water, where she saw the little ark. Her slave girls were there, and she sent them to fetch it. When they opened it up there was a child, and the child was crying. Seeing this touched the heart of this woman. And so the God of providence, who had ordered the steps of the princess to the Nile at the very time that Moses was there in the basket (having been placed there by his mother), caused the baby to cry and touch the heart of the woman. And He softened the heart of this high-born lady toward the Hebrew child. Proverbs 21:1 says, “The king’s heart is in the hand of the LORD, and he directs it like a watercourse wherever he pleases.” It’s not only the king’s heart, it’s the king’s daughter’s heart, too. And that’s what He did on this occasion.

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The Birth of Moses

Thursday: God’s Providence: Exodus 2:1-10

God is a God of providence, not just the God of miracles. That means that He has been operating in all of the details and all of the circumstances of your life. Shouldn’t you recognize that if you believe in a providential God? And shouldn’t you thank Him for it? You say, “Well, I don’t like my circumstances.” Yes, but we have to learn to thank God in whatever state in which we are. That’s what the Apostle Paul learned to do. And furthermore you need to trust Him in those circumstances, even when things don’t seem to be going well.

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The Birth of Moses

Friday: Trusting the Lord: Exodus 2:1-10

Get into the habit of learning to think like God. If you get into the habit of looking for the remnant, you’re going to find it. They will not be the people the world is generally looking to for doing important things. It says in the Bible that the people God uses are the foolish, the weak, and the despised. And the reason He does that is because it’s through them that He can display His wisdom and reveal His righteousness. So look for people like that. And then when you’ve found them, get alongside them and work with them to see what God will do.

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Doing the Wrong Thing in the Wrong Way

Monday: Moses’ Early Education: Exodus 2:11-25

Moses’ educational background was important, and God gave that to prepare him for the work He had for Moses. Yet it was overshadowed by the education he received in his early years in his home from his slave mother. She taught him about God. We already saw that this was a godly family, and apparently for several generations.

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Doing the Wrong Thing in the Wrong Way

Tuesday: A Turning Point: Exodus 2:11-25

When Moses was forty years old, there came this momentous turning point in his life. We all have turning points in our lives, decisions we make that affect what happens afterward. But it is hard to imagine any turning point in anyone’s life more monumental than what happened with Moses when he threw in his lot with his people and turned his back on the pleasures of Egypt.

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Doing the Wrong Thing in the Wrong Way

Wednesday: The World’s Way: Exodus 2:11-25

We have a tendency, simply because we live in the world and are surrounded by the world’s ideas and ideals, to want to do God’s work in the world’s way, even as Christians. What is the world’s way? Well the world’s way is power, pressure, and money. And so we think that we need to do things that way, too. We need to collect a war chest in order to get our programs through, and we need to get our people elected and put them in positions of government so they can pass laws and force people to do what we think is right. Now there is a place for just laws and they flow from a citizenry who wants to do just things. But the Christian mode of operating is not by money or by power or by politics. Our way of operating is by the Word, teaching it to others, and also by prayer, asking God to bless it.

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Doing the Wrong Thing in the Wrong Way

Thursday: Preparation in Midian: Exodus 2:11-25

The last verses of Exodus 2 say, “The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. And God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them” (vv. 23-25). The Bible startles us from time to time by these understatements. God was concerned about them. I’ll say He was! He was about to shake heaven and earth to get them out of Egypt and bring them into their own land

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Doing the Wrong Thing in the Wrong Way

Friday: God Is Always at Work: Exodus 2:11-25

Are you demoralized because of some past failure? You can find yourself thinking, “God can’t use me anymore. I have failed Him.” Well, that’s what the devil would like you to think. And in case you don’t think of it, the devil will put those thoughts into your mind anyway. But listen, it is not true! And Moses is a great example to the contrary. He certainly failed, but it didn’t mean that God couldn’t use him. God came again and he used him greatly. God knows you. He knows you’re only dust. He made you. He’s not surprised that there is failure in you. He knows what you are like. But He also knows what He is able to do through you by Jesus Christ, and that makes the difference.

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The Burning Bush

Monday: The Burning Bush

There’s a phrase that’s used in Old Testament and New Testament scholarship that you may have heard; it’s the phrase, “the silent years.” What that refers to is the period between the last of the Old Testament prophets, Malachi, and the appearance of God to Zechariah in the New Testament to announce the birth of John the Baptist—four centuries in which there was no new revelation from God. God was silent. Now there’s a period like that in the early history of Israel, and about the same length of time.

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The Burning Bush

Tuesday: The Holiness of God: Exodus 3:1-4:31

God is also holy. And when Moses approached this bush he had to take off his sandals. Sandals of course would be dirty, picking up dust of the ground. Thus, they became a symbol for defilement or impurity. But the significance of putting off the sandals is to approach God in holiness, and that’s what Moses had to do.

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The Burning Bush

Wednesday: God’s Name: Exodus 3:1-4:31

When God revealed Himself to Moses by saying “I am,” the very fact that he said “I” indicated how personal He was. That’s a very important thing to bear in mind because when we are talking about God, we are not talking about some cosmic force. You can’t worship a force any more than you can worship gravity. God reveals Himself here to be a person who is able to interact on the personal level with Moses, a human being.

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The Burning Bush

Thursday: The Meaning of God’s Name: Exodus 3:1-4:31

The name also points to God’s self-sufficiency. Self-existence means that God has no origin; self-sufficiency means that God has no needs. “I am that I am.” That’s what God is saying to Moses. Now it is true that God graciously uses us to carry out His plans. He was doing that with Moses, after all. He was calling Moses because He was going to send Moses to Egypt to be His agent in bringing the people out to their own land. But He didn’t need to use Moses, and He doesn’t need to use us either.

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The Burning Bush

Friday: Doing God’s Will: Exodus 3:1-4:31

The second sign God gave him was a leprous hand. He was to put his hand inside his cloak, and when he pulled it out it had turned white with leprosy. When he put it back in again, it was cured. I suppose the power of that came from the fact that the Egyptians were very fastidious about personal cleanliness. They didn’t want defilement, and leprosy was the ultimate defilement. So here you have a revelation of a God who is able to inflict with illness and also to cure. Later on in the plaques, we are going to find out that the gods of Egypt who were supposed to do that were unable to do it. They were powerless before God.

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The First Meeting with Pharoah

Monday: “Thus Saith the LORD”: Exodus 5:1-6:27

Chapters 5 and 6 tell of the first meeting of Moses and Aaron with Pharaoh. When we become Christians, most of us have a pretty good idea in our minds of how the Christian life ought to go. We live in a technological age and we think of things working well, efficiently, on time, and in a predictable fashion. And we think that’s exactly the way the Christian life ought to go. It’s a little bit like driving a car: when you get into a car, turn the switch, step on the gas, you ought to move forward. Well, it doesn’t always work that way in the Christian life. We think we are doing the right things. But there seem to be setbacks and discouragements. And when that happens, and it happens quite often, we become discouraged. Many of us then wonder what’s gone wrong.

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The First Meeting with Pharoah

Tuesday: The Church and the State: Exodus 5:1-6:27

The idea of the separation of church and state is a perfectly valid doctrine, rightly understood. What that means is that the state is not to control the churches. In other words there is to be freedom of religion and churches can conduct their business as they please. And on the other hand, bishops or other officials in the church are not to dictate to the government. But it doesn’t mean that the state is not responsible to God, and never has to answer to the divine authority or live up to moral standards. It is the position of the church in a democracy where we have opportunity to speak out to remind the government that ultimately it is responsible to God, whether it acknowledges that or not.

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The First Meeting with Pharoah

Thursday: When Moses Prayed: Exodus 5:1-6:27

Here is Moses: defeated, rejected by his own people, alone, and isolated. I imagine they weren’t even talking to him. He did the only reasonable thing, and the only thing that was left. He prayed. He threw himself before God: “O, Lord, why have you brought trouble upon this people? Is this why you sent me? Ever since I went to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has brought trouble upon this people, and you have not rescued your people at all” (5:22-23). It was a desperate prayer, growing out of a great deal of personal pain. But it was honest and it was accurate, wasn’t it? He had come and Pharaoh had not responded, and trouble had come upon the people. And it was quite reasonable to ask God why. God responded reasonably and accurately. He told Moses what He was about to do. In Exodus 6 God ministers to Moses by telling him seven things.

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The First Meeting with Pharoah

Friday: Persevering in the Lord’s Will: Exodus 5:1-6:27

The third thing God said to Moses here in the sixth chapter is that he had a covenant with Abraham. Now that’s the covenant that we’ve already looked at. God expressed it in the fifteenth chapter of Genesis and elaborated it in the seventeenth chapter when circumcision, a sign of the covenant, was given. By it, God promised to bless Abraham, to multiply his descendants, and eventually to bring him into the promised land.

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Monday: When the True God Is Abandoned: Exodus 6:28-10:29

This week, we are going to look at the battle by which the Jews were freed from their slavery in Egypt. But I want to begin by saying that there is an enormous gulf between the way a secular historian would look at this and the way the Bible does. Secular historians might look at in a variety of ways, of course. Some would be inclined to see history as the acts of great men, and would say, “Well, this is a case of a marvelous leader, a man of great charismatic ability and faith and integrity and vision. And it was through the force of his personality that the people were brought out.” Somebody who is more inclined to think in terms of mass movements of people through the consolidation of the will of a vast number would say, “Well this is a people movement. Here were a vast number who, in this ancient culture, began to get a taste of what freedom was all about. They wouldn’t rest until they really obtained it.” That’s very different from what the Bible says.

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Tuesday: The First Plague: Exodus 6:28-10:29

Now God said to Moses and his brother that they were to go back and demand again that Pharaoh let the people go. This time they gave Pharaoh a sign. We’re told in Exodus 7 that they did the same sign that God had given to Moses when he was on Horeb on the other side of the Arabian Desert. When they appeared before Pharaoh, Moses had a staff in his hand, a shepherd’s crook, and he was to throw that on the ground. But when he did this and it became a snake, Pharaoh wasn’t very impressed. He probably had seen tricks like that done by his magicians. So he called over his magicians and they did the same thing, but with one very important difference: the snake that had come from the staff of Moses ate up the other snakes. You think that would give anybody pause! But it didn’t give Pharaoh much pause, and he still refused to let the people go. Exodus 7:13 says something that’s going to be repeated again and again in this struggle. It says, “Pharaoh’s heart became hard and he would not listen to them, just as the LORD had said.” Now at this point the plagues begin.

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Wednesday: “This Is the Finger of God”: Exodus 6:28-10:29

The second plague was an abnormal multiplication of frogs. God told Pharaoh to let His people go, and that if he did not, the Lord would bring a plague of frogs upon the country, in the Nile, in Pharaoh’s palace, in every house, even in their ovens and kneading troughs (Ex. 8:1-4). Aaron stretched out his rod over the Nile, and immediately all the frogs began to multiply and spread across the land.

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Thursday: Pharaoh’s Persistent Hardening: Exodus 6:28-10:29

Now the plagues got worse, with the sixth one being against the bodies of the people. Aaron took soot from a furnace and threw it up into the air. The dust dispersed and created boils on the bodies of the Egyptians. That must have seemed very ironic because one of the things they did in their ancient religion was to take the ashes of an offering and throw it into the air. The people thought they were blessed by these ashes thrown into the air and actually falling upon them. But what they regarded as a blessing is now a curse, and it causes boils to break out upon the people.

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Friday: Submitting Fully to the Lord: Exodus 6:28-10:29

No more warnings would be given. The ninth plague came suddenly and without any announcement whatsoever. Darkness descended upon the land, and it lasted for three days. That was the most significant judgment of all in terms of Egyptian religion, because the greatest of all the gods was the sun god Ra, and Pharaoh was considered the incarnation of Ra.

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Departure from Egypt

Tuesday: The Tenth Plague: Exodus 11:1-15:21

Now we come to the tenth plague itself. We’re told about the death of the firstborn at the end of chapter 12, in only two verses (vv. 29-30). They tell us that there was loud wailing in Egypt, and that there was not a house without someone dead. That is a very sober thing.

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Departure from Egypt

Wednesday: The Necessity of a Blood Atonement: Exodus 11:1-15:21

Yesterday, we said that the exodus teaches us important spiritual lessons. The first was that Israel was also guilty before God. Now there are reasons why the people might have been tempted to think differently. For example, even in the account of the plagues, from the fourth to the ninth plague, we are told that God made a distinction between His people who lived in the land of Goshen and the Egyptians in the rest of the land. This is why when the plagues came upon the Egyptians, it didn’t touch the Israelites. The Hebrews might have concluded that they were not harmed because they were special of themselves and that God would not do anything to judge them.

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Departure from Egypt

Thursday: Salvation through Faith: Exodus 11:1-15:21

In our own day, the requirement of faith seems absurd to those who are unbelievers. You talk about salvation through faith in the work of Jesus Christ, something that a man did two thousand years ago, and people think you’re foolish. But this is what God says. He tells us that salvation is in Him and by Him alone. If we believe in Him we are spared, and the judgment passes over us; and if we don’t, we perish.

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Departure from Egypt

Friday: The Song of Moses: Exodus 11:1-15:21

After all that had happened—the trauma of the night of the Passover, the march early the next morning, the deliverance by the passing through the Red Sea—what did the people do? They burst into song, led by Moses and his sister Miriam (Ex. 15:1-18).

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Walk With God

Monday: Coming to God Quickly: Exodus 15:22-17:16

As Christians read these stories in Exodus, they see parallels to the Christian life. We think of Canaan, the land to which they’re headed, as being a picture of heaven, and the passage through the wilderness representing the pilgrimage of this life. The parallels are not always exact, but certainly they are in this respect: the people were not mature; they had to learn to trust the Lord and see His provision for them. And seeing how God provided for them during those years of wandering is very instructive for us as we go through life as Christians.

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Walk With God

Tuesday: Jehovah Rapha: Exodus 15:22-17:16

After the water at Marah was made sweet for the Israelites to drink, God said, “If you listen carefully to the voice of the LORD your God and do what is right in his eyes, if you pay attention to his commands and keep all his decrees, I will not bring on you any of the diseases I brought on the Egyptians, for I am the LORD who heals you” (15:26). Just as He healed the water, you see, He’s going to heal them.

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Walk With God

Wednesday: Feeding on Scripture: Exodus 15:22-17:16

God had provided food for the Israelites. We are told that they were to gather the manna each morning, just enough for each individual. They couldn’t keep it until the next day because it would spoil. On the sixth day they were to gather a double portion because it wouldn’t be provided on the Sabbath, when they were to rest. There is one other interesting thing about this and it does give us an idea on how we’re to interpret the manna. They were to take an omer of it, put it in a jar, and then put it before the ark of the covenant. Now at this point that is an anachronistic reference because they didn’t yet have the ark or the tabernacle. But later, when these had been constructed, they were to take some and lay it up in the holy place of the tabernacle as a remembrance of what the Lord had done (see Deut. 8:2-3). At the end of this passage from Deuteronomy 8 we see that “man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.”

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Walk With God

Thursday: The Necessity of Prayer: Exodus 15:22-17:16

A fourth parallel is that the manna gathered daily had to be eaten. It was not enough to see it on the ground, appreciate that it arrived that morning, gather it up, and then do nothing else with it. The purpose of the manna was to feed the people, which means they needed to eat it. In the same way, you and I have to do that with the Word of God. Moreover we have to do it bit by bit.

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Delegating Authority

Monday: The Lonely Leader: Exodus 18:1-27

Leadership involves loneliness. The leader walks alone. The task of a leader is to set the vision, plan and motivate. By the very nature of the task, the leader is doing that more or less by himself. Sometimes it’s done with a team, of course, but not with the support or understanding of the masses of the people. Once you set a vision, it has to be communicated, and initially it’s not always shared. The plan, too, is so often misunderstood. And motivations are resisted. Yet the leader has to carry on.

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Delegating Authority

Tuesday: The Where and When of This Event: Exodus 18:1-27

These two old men have a great deal to share. Moses begins to rehearse to him all of the things that God had done on behalf of the people. Moses told of traveling to Egypt, meeting with the elders, and encountering Pharaoh, who rejected God’s demands. Moses told of the plagues and their significance. And then there was the night of the Passover, as the angel of death came through the land and killed all the firstborn of Egypt. After that, Moses recounted how Israel left in a hurry, and God saw them across the Red Sea and protected them in the desert, including delivering them from the Amalekites in that first great battle. In response, Jethro begins to praise God (vv. 10-11).

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Delegating Authority

Wednesday: A Praying and Teaching Leader: Exodus 18:1-27

As I said, the heart of this chapter concerns the need for help in judging. The day after Jethro’s arrival, Moses went out to judge the people. They began to come to him early in the morning, and Moses made these judgments from morning until late at night. That’s not at all surprising, given that there are two million people. You can easily imagine that they got in one another’s way from time to time. Somebody’s sheep wandered over into the other man’s pen, and the first man wanted it back and the other one thought that it was his sheep all along. And there were probably things far worse than that. Moses was absolutely worn out from this task.

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Delegating Authority

Thursday: Leadership Qualities: Exodus 18:1-27

Moses was an extraordinary man. He had magnificent gifts and unbelievable training, the best possible training you could have in that day. But you see, even Moses couldn’t do everything. This is why you get the division of leadership. If he couldn’t do it, we can’t do it either. And we should be looking for people who can.

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Delegating Authority

Friday: Some Practical Points: Exodus 18:1-27

The second principle is very much like the first. Not only do you need a division of authority, but you also need a plurality of leadership. You find this in the New Testament. When Christ appointed apostles, He appointed twelve. And then when the early church appointed deacons, there were seven of them. When Paul traveled around the Roman world and established churches, he always left elders in charge, never just one. In my denomination we can’t have a self-governing church until we have at least two elders. There is wisdom in having more than one elder.

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The 10 Commandments

Monday: God’s Moral Law: Exodus 19:1-20:26

We have come to a very important division in the book of Exodus, Roughly divided, chapters 1-18 deal with the exodus itself, from which the book gets its name; and then the second half, chapters 19-40, deals with the giving of the law. We think of Moses as the great emancipator, but he was also the lawgiver by the grace of God. And this matter of giving the law was very necessary if the Jewish people were to be formed into a true nation. Deliverance from slavery is one thing, but freedom without law leads to license—and license is only another form of slavery. So, what we find in the second half of the book is the work of God through Moses in providing the people with the law code.

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The 10 Commandments

Tuesday: A Time of Preparation for Israel: Exodus 19:1-20:26

There is nothing that our society needs as much as the Ten Commandments. In a commencement address at Duke University in 1987, Ted Koppel, the well-known news broadcaster, reminded the class of the Ten Commandments, and the fact that our culture needed them very much. He went down the list of them and he related them to all the moral problems of our time. Nobody liked that, but he was absolutely right.

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The 10 Commandments

Wednesday: Our Relationship to God: Exodus 19:1-20:26

All but two of the Ten Commandments are expressed in negative form, but the negative form implies the positive. Thus, when God says, “You shall have no other gods before me,” that’s the negative. The positive form implied in that is, “You shall worship me only and exclusively.” Jesus handled the commandments the same way. When Pharisees came to Jesus on one occasion, they asked, “Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?” Jesus, quoting from Deuteronomy, replied that the first commandment is this: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matt. 22:36-37). That’s the positive side of what the first commandment requires.

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The 10 Commandments

Thursday: Relationships with Others: Exodus 19:1-20:26

The fourth commandment tells us, “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.” Now up to this point, there is general agreement as to what the first three commandments require, even though we don’t keep them. When we come to this fourth commandment, there is no longer full agreement on what that’s talking about. The seventh day here is prescribed as a day of Sabbath rest. Yet, as we well know, the majority of Christians don’t observe it. We worship on Sunday instead, which is the first day of the week. In addition, we worship differently from what is prescribed in other places in the law.

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The 10 Commandments

Friday: Pleasing God in All Things: Exodus 19:1-20:26

The law reveals to us the holy character of God. As sinners, we cannot keep it as we are commanded. But Jesus Christ has kept the law perfectly for all those who come to Him in faith. Knowing this, we go on in His strength, through His Spirit, striving to please Him in all things. Ask yourself these questions: What has this study revealed to me about my sin and the changes in my life I need to make? Has it actually pointed me to Jesus Christ? Am I trusting Him as my Savior? Am I looking to Him for forgiveness and cleansing? Do I desire to be holy, even as God is holy? If not, why not? If so, what are the steps I should be taking?

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The Civil Law

Monday: The Civil Law of Israel

After the giving of the Ten Commandments, we have the civil law, seen in chapters 21-23. This has to do with the new nation of Israel, and how it was to be administered, and how crimes were to be punished. We call this the civil law, but the book of Exodus actually calls this and the section on the Ten Commandments the Book of the Covenant. These chapters then conclude with the confirmation of the covenant.

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The Civil Law

Tuesday: The Civil Law of Israel

Yesterday we looked at one view explaining the usefulness of the law in our own time. Today we look at the other two. The second view is that of dispensationalism, which makes a very strong contrast between the dispensation of law (the Old Testament) and the dispensation of grace (the New Testament).

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The Civil Law

Wednesday: The Civil Law of Israel

Regarding these three views—the traditional approach, dispensationalism, and reconstructionism—as different as they are, they do agree on two things: the ceremonial law has been fulfilled in Jesus Christ, and that the moral law applies today in some way, though each has a different understanding for how this should be done. I maintain that the traditional approach is the best because it believes that the covenant does continue from the Old Testament into the New, while also recognizing that there are changes that have come through the work of Christ.

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The Civil Law

Thursday: The Civil Law of Israel

The second category are laws relating to personal injury: homicide, physical injuries such as being kidnapped, maimed, or even hurt by words, and injuries caused by animals. The first part of this section makes a distinction between murder, which is intentional, and manslaughter, which is an accidental killing without malice or premeditation (see 21:12-14). Murderers were to be put to death. That’s not because the Bible treats life lightly. Quite the opposite! We are the ones who treat life lightly. The Bible treats life with respect because people are made in the image of God, such that if somebody murders another, he must be put to death. It’s as serious as that.

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The Civil Law

Friday: The Civil Law of Israel

Chapter 23:1-9 concern justice in the courts. Bribes were common in the ancient Near East. They pervert justice, and should be rejected. All of the other statements in this chapter have to do with Sabbath laws and festivals (see 23:10-19). We might think that when we look at these laws having to do with Sabbath observances and festivals that they really belong with the ceremonial law. That is true, they do. And they are repeated later, especially as we study Leviticus. But they are included here, and the reason I include here them is that they concern justice for the land, justice for animals, and even justice in regard to God.

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Ceremonial Law

Monday: God’s Building Instructions: Exodus 25:1-31:11

The book of Exodus falls into two main parts. The first part has to do with the exodus itself, which gives the book its name. The second part deals with those early months of Israel’s desert wandering, during which God gave them three types of law: the moral law, embodied in the Ten Commandments; the civil law, having to do with their civil government; and then finally the ceremonial law.

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Ceremonial Law

Tuesday: The Ark of the Covenant: Exodus 25:1-31:11

The ark contained a number of things. The first and most important thing it contained was the Ten Commandments, the stone tablets. It also had a gold jar that contained some of the manna that the people got during their years in the wilderness. It also contained Aaron’s rod that had budded. Because it contained the law, the ark was given different names. It was called the ark of the testimony because that referred to the law; the ark of the covenant, since the covenant was established on the basis of the law; or simply the ark of God, or the ark of the Lord Jehovah.

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Ceremonial Law

Wednesday: God’s Dwelling with His People: Exodus 25:1-31:11

When you went in you came to the tabernacle itself. It too was a rectangle, and had two rooms: the Most Holy Place and the Holy Place. The Most Holy Place was a perfect cube, measuring fifteen feet by fifteen feet by fifteen feet. The outer room was twice as long: thirty feet long, fifteen feet wide, and fifteen feet high. Thus, the whole tabernacle was forty-five feet long. Of particular interest was the curtain that divided the Holy Place from the Most Holy Place. It was made of blue, purple, and scarlet yarn, and fine linen. It had figures of cherubim worked into it. Its purpose was to shield the visible presence of God from human eyes. It could only be passed through once a year, and even then only by the high priest, and that was on the Day of Atonement.

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Ceremonial Law

Thursday: The Lord’s Priests: Exodus 25:1-31:11

In Exodus 28, the description of the furniture breaks off, and we have a description of the garments that are to be worn by the priests of Israel, followed by an account of their consecration. Now that seems misplaced, doesn’t it? We already talked about one thing that seemed out of order, when we looked at the ark. However, we saw why the ark was treated first. Here, we haven’t heard about the altar of incense yet, or the basin that was used for purification. Why doesn’t the story go on and finish up with the furniture and then talk about the priests and their garments?

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Ceremonial Law

Friday: Humbly Asking for God’s Mercy: Exodus 25:1-31:11

Exodus 30 now goes back to talking about the furniture, picking up with the altar of incense (vv. 1-10). This may seem out of place. After all, the description of the furniture was interrupted by material about the priests, and now Moses is going back to talk about the furniture. Not only that, but the altar of incense was in the outermost room, the Holy Place. It seems that it should have been discussed back when Moses was talking about the table of showbread and the menorah. But like before, the explanation is a theological one. Incense symbolizes the prayers of the saints (see Rev. 5:8). The incense arises to heaven, as our prayers do, and it smells sweet. Our prayers are sweet to God. He wants to hear our prayers, even when we stumble around and don’t quite know what to pray about.

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Moses' Finest Hour

Monday: Moses’ Finest Hour

There are always moments in the life of an individual or even in the life of a nation which provide an opportunity for greatness. And if they are seized, they lead on to great things. And if a person or a nation fails to seize them, they lead to defeat and discouragement. Exodus 32 was a moment like this, and it’s what I call the finest hour in the life of this most outstanding man, Moses.

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Moses' Finest Hour

Tuesday: What Moses Hears: Exodus 32:1-35

The second lesson from the story tells us of the problem with images. God had just given Moses the Ten Commandments, and one of the things we learn from them is this: “You shall not make for yourself an idol in the image of anything in heaven above, or on the earth beneath, or in the waters under the earth. You shall not bow down yourself to them or serve them.” It goes on to explain how the punishments of God will come upon those who do, even to the third and fourth generations.

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Moses' Finest Hour

Wednesday: Moses Pleads for the People: Exodus 32:1-35

Moses began to plead for the people, and he had two very impressive arguments. First of all he said to God, “What will the Egyptians say if you destroy your people? What they’ll say is this, ‘It was with evil intent that you brought them out to kill them in the mountains and to wipe them off the face of the earth.’ Therefore turn from your fierce anger, and relent and don’t bring this disaster on the people.” If God were to destroy the people, the Egyptians will win after all. No one wanted the Egyptians to win.

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Moses' Finest Hour

Thursday: A Bold Request: Exodus 32:1-35

Third, he called those who had remained faithful to God, and he commissioned them to execute a limited judgment on the people. He asked who was on the Lord’s side, and the tribe of Levi came forward. Then he told the tribe of Levi to take their swords and kill. It doesn’t say it in so many words, but he must have meant for them to kill the leaders. There were probably several million people, and they didn’t kill that many. What is stressed is that they were to execute judgment even on those who were members of their family, their friends, and their neighbors. And the Levites did it. They showed that they were faithful to God.

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Moses' Finest Hour

Friday: Jesus, Our Only Substitute: Exodus 32:1-35

Earlier, we were talking about the ironies of the story. On the preceding day, before Moses had come down the mountain, God had made that great offer to him. He had said to Moses that He was going to destroy the people, save Moses, and make a new nation of him. Moses went down the mountain, and he met with the people. He realized that he still loved them in spite of their sin. Then, Moses goes back up the mountain, and makes a powerful intercession for the people. He asks God to save the people and destroy him. As far as you and I know, there’s never been a greater offer made by any human being in all of the course of history.

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Show Me Your Glory

Monday: The Need for God’s Presence: Exodus 33:1-34:35

In last week’s devotional, we saw that the people had sinned in the making of the golden calf. Moses had intervened on their behalf, and God had postponed the judgment. God had even promised to go with the people and not abandon them. One of Moses’ pleas was that God had made an eternal covenant with His people, the covenant made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and, therefore, that Moses wanted God to keep the covenant. God answered that he would keep His covenant and bring the people into His land. God said that He would send His presence before them. Perhaps He was referring to the cloud or an angel or something of that nature, because He said, “I myself will not go with them, because this is a stiff-necked people. And if I go with them and they sin again, my anger might break out against them and I would destroy them” (Ex. 33:3).

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Show Me Your Glory

Tuesday: How to Know God: Exodus 33:1-34:35

The third way in which we use that word “know” is by experience. You can say, “I really know Philadelphia because I have lived there all my life.” You can talk about a person that way. You can say, “I really know so-and-so because we worked together for thirty years and I know how she functions.” That’s knowledge by experience, which is a far greater and far more important kind of knowledge than mere awareness. We talk about knowing God—that is certainly what we want to achieve—not merely to know there is a God or merely to be able to talk about God, however accurate we may be, but actually to know God by experience, that is, to experience God for ourselves.

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Show Me Your Glory

Wednesday: Moses’ Request to See God: Exodus 33:1-34:35

Before Moses came to his third request, he had achieved what he really wanted to achieve. As the leader of the people, he was very concerned that God go with him, and God said He would. But Moses isn’t quite satisfied. He is a remarkable man, and all the remarkable characteristics of this man come forward now. He recognized that he needed to know God, and what he had prayed for earlier, although God had promised to bless and teach him His ways, wasn’t quite enough. What Moses really wanted to see was the glory of God.

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Show Me Your Glory

Thursday: The Lord’s Mercy: Exodus 33:1-34:35

In this revelation, when God explains more fully to Moses what His name really means, He communicates what we call His communicable attributes, that is, the attributes of God the God can communicate or share with us because He has made us in His image. These are things like compassion, grace, slowness to anger, love, and faithfulness (Ex. 34:6), as well as goodness and mercy (Ex. 33:19).

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Show Me Your Glory

Friday: God’s Saving Mercy in Christ: Exodus 33:1-34:35

In 2 Corinthians 3 Paul refers to Moses’ glowing face with a threefold illustration. First, he used it to illustrate the veiled and fading glory of the old covenant in contrast with the unveiled and abiding glory of the new covenant (vv. 7-13. Old things are passing away, and all things are becoming new. The glory of the fullness of the covenant in Jesus Christ overcomes the limited revelation in the old.

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Shekinah Glory

Monday: An Interesting Climax: Exodus 39:32-40:38

There are not many studies of the great cloud that protected the Hebrew people during the years of their desert wanderings. I think that is surprising, and for two reasons. It was a striking phenomenon. There has never been anything like it in history before or since. And not only was it striking, it’s mentioned many times in the Bible. There are fifty-eight references to it in the Bible, scattered across ten different books. It appears more often than place names like Bethlehem and Nazareth, or the names of Herod, Joseph, Mary, Cain, Abel and Satan.

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Shekinah Glory

Tuesday: The Shekinah Glory

Now we have to ask something about this cloud and try to figure out what it was like. They called it a cloud but the only reason they did so was because they really didn’t have any word in their vocabulary to describe it.

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Shekinah Glory

Wednesday: The Shekinah Glory

God’s revealing Himself in the cloud culminates in the coming of Jesus Christ. You may recall that at the very beginning of John’s Gospel, John uses this very language, harkening back to Exodus, to talk about the incarnation. Speaking of Jesus, John writes, “The Word became flesh and lived for a while among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth” (1:14). Revelation 21 gives us the fulfillment of this idea of God’s dwelling among us. In verse 3 the apostle John wrote, “And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, ‘Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and will be their God.’” Through the appearing of the cloud in Exodus, God was teaching them about His presence in a preliminary, rudimentary, visible, and dramatic way for the people of Israel.

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Shekinah Glory

Thursday: God’s Guidance: Exodus 39:32-40:38

The cloud was also God’s means for guidance. That was clear from some of the passages we read. When the cloud rose up from over the tabernacle and began to move off, the people were supposed to move off, too. When the cloud stopped the people were to stop. As Nehemiah says, “By day the pillar of cloud did not cease to guide them on their path, nor the pillar of fire by night, to shine on the way they were to take” (v. 19). Another passage that gives more detail is Numbers 9:15-23.

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Shekinah Glory

Friday: The Indwelling Holy Spirit: Exodus 39:32-40:38

The Holy Spirit is given to us to enable us to follow as God leads and as we follow, to know that we are protected from all enemies. Nothing will ever happen to us that does not first pass through the will of God, and that whatever happens according to the will of God is ultimately for our good. “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him” (Rom. 8:28). To follow the Lord in obedience to His commands, knowing that He always watches over and protects us, is our opportunity and our joy.

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The Alliance is a coalition of believers who hold to the historic creeds and confessions of the Reformed faith and proclaim biblical doctrine in order to foster a Reformed awakening in today’s Church.

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