Salty Zebra

  The Lord said to Moses, “when you return to Egypt, see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders I have given you the power to do. But I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go.   Exodus 4:21  Take another look at the verse for today above. It’s Moses’ commissioning statement. He is being sent and told that he will not be smoothly successful. He will face opposition, but that doesn’t negate God’s directions, say that Moses heard wrong, or that he’s not doing what he was supposed to. God is telling Moses that trouble will come, but God has still sent him and is still with him. That’s all Moses needed to be successful in the face of impossibility, and it’s all we need too.   We know the story. Moses goes back to Egypt and he and Aaron go before Pharaoh, performing signs and wonders, and Pharaoh refuses to do what he is asked to do, he refuses to let God’s people go. The thing that’s interesting about today’s text is that Moses knew this ...

  Moses said to the Lord, “Pardon your servant, Lord. I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue.”   Exodus 4:10  In today’s reading ( Exodus 3:19 -4:17), we return to the conversation between Moses and God in the wilderness at the burning bush. Let’s pause there a moment though and not read over the situation, accepting it as a simple, well-known story. Moses had a full-on, recorded conversation with God. Now, I talk to God a lot, and often I feel like I hear from Him. Very occasionally I even feel like I have a bit of a back and forth with Him where I say, “but this…” and He points something out to me. But I have NEVER had a full-on conversation with Him where He spoke to me so clearly and specifically as this. I’d venture to say that most of us haven’t. So, truly, this story is incredible in many more ways than we may have considered. It wasn’t just the miracle of the burning bush, but eve...

  Image credit: Gemini and me God said to Moses, “I AM who I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”   Exodus 3:14  In today’s passage ( Exodus 3:1-17 ), Moses encounters God in the burning bush in the desert. I love how God puts things together perfectly, and today’s passage was no exception. Upon encountering God, Moses asks two questions: Who am I and who are You?   Yesterday we looked at Moses’ fall from grace in his own eyes. He went from the high and mighty, self-assumed deliverer of his people to a fugitive, murderer, shepherd – the lowest of the low. This was a work God had to do in his heart to prepare Moses for the tasks ahead of him. The fact that Moses asked the first question he did is a testimony to this truth. Instead of telling God, “You’ve come to the right man! I’ll do great at this!” Moses asks God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” He recognizes that he is not w...

Image credit: Gemini and me When Pharaoh heard of this, he tried to kill Moses, but Moses fled from Pharaoh and went to live in Midian, where he sat down by a well.   Exodus 2:15  I wonder about Moses’ early life, the first forty years. Both of Moses’ mothers knew he was special and that God had shown favor to him, preserving him from the hand and edict of Pharoah. He was raised as a prince of Egypt. While it’s not explicitly laid out in the Bible that Moses was taught to see himself as Israel’s deliverer, somehow when he had come of age, about 40 years old, he had come to that understanding as Acts 7:23-25 tells us that Moses killed the Egyptian thinking that this would show his people that God was using him to rescue them. While it was true that God had miraculously preserved Moses’ life as a baby and destined him to be the deliverer of his people, he wasn’t quite ready to do that yet.   Moses had to be prepared in his early years in Pharoah’s court. He came to kno...

Image credit: Gemini and me When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh’s daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses, saying, “I drew him out of the water.”    Exodus 2:10  Throughout history, women have been overlooked, oppressed, kept lower – even just a little lower – than men. We have fought for our place in society. The women’s suffrage movement for example, beginning in the latter half of the 1800s and led by people like Susan B. Anthony, worked tirelessly for more than seventy years to secure women the right to vote in America. But this societal placement has not kept women from being crucial factors in the history of the world. Yes, a few women have risen to power, ruling and leading nations, like Cleopatra, Queen Victoria, and Joan of Arc, but much more frequently it is the common women, the housewives and midwives among us who play a much more pivotal role. Today’s story ( Exodus 1:15-2:10 )– coming straight from the words of scripture – highli...

Image credit: Gemini and me but the Israelites were exceedingly fruitful; they multiplied greatly, increased in numbers and became so numerous that the land was filled with them. Then a new king, to whom Joseph meant nothing, came to power in Egypt. Exodus 1:7-8  God is a good and just God. When Abraham had journeyed to the land of Canaan, God knew what the people of the land; the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites would do and what they would become, but they hadn’t become that yet. He knew their great-great-great grandchildren would be wicked and awful, even more than Sodom and Gomorrah in Abraham’s day, but they weren’t there yet. Even though God knows what will happen, He still give us the benefit of living it out. If He dealt with us ahead of time, don’t you think we’d wonder if it really would have come out the way He said it would? God is good and just. He didn’t punish the people of Canaan in ...

Image Credit: Love God Greatly  I don't know about you, but I am NOT a fan of this whole three-week break between studies. I think I'll need to pick out a book to go through for the next break. But, for now, I'm very, very ready for this next study! In Never Forsaken  we'll be journeying with the Israelites through the wilderness and seeing what lessons God has to teach us through the book of Exodus. We'll take a long look into Moses' life and ministry, and I am certain that God will be showing us how it relates to our life today as well.   Follow along with me here at the Salty Zebra Blog, or join in on the fun! You can grab your study materials for free on your phone with the Love God Greatly App  or you can purchase the digital version of the study here . If you're a paper book person you'll have to wait a minute for shipping, but you can grab the study on Amazon  and get it in a couple of days. I would also strongly encourage you to join Love God Gre...