God vs. Egypt, Part 2

Hello everyone.

In my most recent post I discussed how God passed judgment on the gods of Egypt with the tenth plague,  (Ex. 12:12) and perhaps with all of the plague (implied in Numbers 33:4).  We looked at the first five plagues and talked about some of the specific gods that the Lord may have passed judgment on with each particular plague.  I would like to continue this discussion with plagues six through ten.  We will see that God is victorious over all comers.

Sekhmet

The sixth plague was the plague of boils.  Moses took soot from a furnace,and through it up in the air. The soot became a fine dust over Egypt and boils broke out on the people and animals of Egypt.  Pharaoh's magicians, who had tried so hard to compete with God, were in too much pain to even stand before Pharaoh (Ex. 9:11).  This could have been God's attack on several Egyptian gods related to health and medicine.  Most interesting of these is Sekhmet. She was a warrior goddess, but also the goddess of healing.  She had a lion's head.

The seventh plague was the plague of hail.  Before bringing this plague, God has Moses tell Pharaoh that he would now bring the full force of his plagues against Egypt and teach the Egyptians that there was no one like Him.  God would bring a hailstorm unlike any they had ever seen.  He even warns them to bring in the livestock and people out in the fields.  Those who feared the Lord obeyed the warning.  Those who were foolish enough to ignore it, did not.  Moses stretched out his hand and the Lord brought the wort storm in Egypt's history.  It beat don everything in Egypt, but left Israel's land of Goshen alone.  God is still showing a distinction between those who are His and those who are not.  This could be judgment on the goddess Nut, Egypt's goddess of the sky.  Nut was married to Geb, god of the Earth, whom God may have already passed judgment on.

Osiris

The Eighth plague was the plague of locust. Prior to the coming plague, even Pharaoh's advisers are telling him to let the Israelites go and worship God, saying "Let the people go, so that they may worship their God.  Do you not yet realize that Israel is ruined?"  But Pharaoh is stubborn and God brings the plague of locusts on Egypt, and any crop still left in tact by the hail, was devoured by the locusts.  There were several gods associated with crops in Egypt.  The most interesting is Osiris.  Osiris was the god of the afterlife, but was also the Egyptian god who made the crops grow.  Now the crops were basically gone, The God of Israel had shown himself to be more powerful than Osiris.

Plague number nine was darkness.  The places where the Israelites lived had sunlight, but for three days, the Egyptians wandered around in total darkness. This ninth plague appears to be God's judgment on one of Egypt's most powerful gods, Ra, the god of the Sun.  If Ra was that powerful, why did the Egyptians live in darkness while the Israelites lived in light?

Finally, we come to the tenth plague, the death of the firstborn.  Now, up to this point, everything has been speculation, but on the tenth plague we have the Biblical statement, that with plague God is bringing judgment on all of the gods of Egypt.  It can be pointed out that Horus, a god with a falcon's head was considered to be the protector of Pharaoh.  Pharaoh was left unprotected when the destroyer killed his son, as well.  We could look at this plague as an attack on Pharaoh himself.  He was worshiped as a god in Egypt, and it had been he who asked of Moses, "Who is the Lord that I should obey Him?"  But now he knows the answer to that question.  The Lord is a god, but The God.  The Lord is not a power, but The Power. So finally, with Egypt is ruin and his family and country in mourning, Pharaoh is broken and he lets the Israelites go.  In the end, the Lord took on all of the gods of Egypt and prevailed.  He always does.   

Tom

God vs. Egypt

Hello everyone.

As I continue my study of the book of Exodus, I wanted to share some things I have been learning in my study. When Moses first appeared before Pharaoh in Ex. 5:2, Pharaoh says, "Who is the Lord, that I should obey Him?"  Pharaoh is going to learn the answer to that question, the hard way.  God is going to bring the plagues against Egypt, and bring that powerful nation to its knees.

Hapi

In Exodus 12:12 and Numbers 33:4, the Bible says that with the tenth plague, God brought judgment on all of the gods of Egypt. As I have been reading about this, one could make a case that all of the plagues were judgment on the gods of Egypt, and at times, judgment was made on specific gods of Egypt. This judgment is what I want to examine today.

In the first plague, God turns the Nile River into blood.   There were many Egyptian gods associated with the Nile River, but this plague could be judgment against Hapi, god of the Nile.  God turned the Nile to blood. Egypt's magicians were able to duplicate the miracle.  But it would make more snse to counteract the miracle and turn the blood back into water.  The magicians and their god, Hapi, were powerless to do that.  Winner: God.

Heqet

The second plague was the plague of the frogs. This was possibly a judgment against the Egyptian goddess of fertility, Heqet.  Frogs were associated with fertility and Heqet had a frog's head. The magicians of Egypt were able to duplicate this miracle of God as well and add frogs to the overwhelming population of frogs.  But they could not get rid of the frogs.  In God vs. Heket, the clear winner was God.

The third plague was the plague of gnats.  If God had a specific target in mind for this plague, it is not as easy to see.  Some Bible scholars have hypothesized that the target here was Geb, the god of the Earth.  The reason for this, is that God had Moses strike the dust of the ground and the dust turned into gnats.  Egypt's magicians could not duplicate or counteract this miracle.  In fact, they began syaing things like, "This is the finger of God," (Ex. 8:19) differentiating The God, for Egypt's many gods.

The fourth plague was the plague of the flies.  This plague was significant because, this plague only happened to the Egyptians.  The land of Goshen, were the Israelites lived was free of flies.  God began to distinguish between those people who were His, and those who were not. (Ex. 8:23)  Of all of the plague, this one was the most difficult to find one god or goddess that was an obvious target for God's judgment.  I read a few different ideas from different writers.  Personally I like Khepri, but only because he had a dung beetle for a head.  It was Khepri's job to move the Sun across the sky. 

The fifth plague was the death of the livestock.  Like the fourth plague, this happened only to the Egyptians.  Afterwards, Pharaoh had it investigated to see if indeed only Egyptian livestock had died.  His investigators confirmed that this was true.  This could have been an attack on the Hathor, and Egyptian goddess, who is often depicted having the head of a cow.

At this point, after five destructive plagues on his nation, Pharaoh may have wanted to take back his arrogant question, "Who is the Lord that I should obey Him?"  He, his magicians and his gods are failing miserably against the one and only true God.  In fact, they never had a chance.

I'll finish this story in my next post, real soon.
Tom

God has a Plan, Part 2

Hey everyone.

Two weeks ago I wrote about God and his plan for Moses.  How Moses' young life was spared and in fact how he ended up becoming a part of the household of Pharaoh.  Too many things happened for it to have been just coincidence.  God had a plan, I believe, not only for Moses, but for all of his people to be liberated from the bondage of the Egyptians.  I would like to continue to look at that plan today.

Exodus 2:11-15 tells us how Moses, when he had grown up, killed an Egyptian who had been mistreating one of the Israelites.  This situation eventually put Moses on the run for his life from the vengeance of Pharaoh.  Stephen shed a little more light on this story in Acts 7:22-25.  He says, "Moses was educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in speech and action. When Moses was forty years old, he decided to visit his own people, the Israelites.  He saw one of them being mistreated by an Egyptian, so he went to his defense and avenged him by killing the Egyptian.  Moses thought that his own people would realize that God was using him to rescue them, but they did not." 

At forty, Moses was well-educated and powerful.  He believed that he was part of the plan to set his people free.  (Indeed he was, but not yet.)  His plan made sense. He was a powerful, that the Israelites could rally behind and be free of the Egyptians.  So he tried to rally the people, but they did not rally behind him. Instead, he becomes a man of the run for his life. 

He ends being a shepherd for the next forty years, until in Exodus 3, God calls him, at the age of eighty, from a burning bush.  Now God is ready to work his plan.  But why did God wait an extra forty years to free his people?  I don't know.  All we can do is speculate.  Perhaps Moses was not ready. At forty, he thought he was ready, but perhaps he was not.  Maybe, he needed that time in the Maybe the Israelites weren't ready.  Maybe they needed that extra time of suffering to really appreciate what God would later do for them.

To us, we can think, "OK, why the delay? Doesn't God care that His people are suffering?"  Think about all of the Israelites that died in captivity during that extra forty years, that could have been free if Moses had led the people out forty years earlier.  The truth is that God really does care, and works in way for our benefit, even if we don't see.  God had a plan for Moses and for His people.  It was just a very long plan.  So far the plan has taken eighty years and in truth, from the time of Moses birth, to the people of Israel actually entering the Promised Land, the plan took one hundred and twenty years.  Makes you think, doesn't it? Don't we sometimes wonder why God is taking so long in giving us what we want? Does is cause us sometimes to question His power?  Like Moses and the Israelites, however, we have to trust in His plan for us.  Peter wrote in I Peter 5:6, "Humble yourselves, therefore, under God's mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time."  God has a plan for us, It just may not work as fast as we want it too.  But he will lift us up in "due time."  Moses waited until he was eighty, but God lifted him up.  If you are waiting for your "due time," let's hope that the wait is as long as Moses" wait, but have confidence that God does have a plan.
Tom

God has a Plan

Hello everyone.

I have started a new study of the book of Exodus, I will share some thoughts with you from that study.  You are probably pretty familiar with Moses' story.  Pharaoh, out of fear, wanted all male Israelite children killed at birth. Moses' parents, Amram and Jochebed, hid their newborn baby for three months.  However, hiding babies is not easy, as they do not always cooperate.  They reached a point where they simply could not hide him any longer.  So they made a plan. They a basket out papyrus, tar and pitch, placed the baby in it and set it among the reeds in the Nile River. (Ex. 2:3)  We are all so familiar with this story that we don't really stop to think about how odd this plan really is.  They were going to save their baby's life by placing him in a basket and putting it in the river.  Then what?  Fortunately, the daughter of the Pharaoh came by and saw the basket and retrieved it.  When she saw that it was a baby she had compassion on it and adopted it. 

Now, if that was their plan all along, that Pharaoh's would come along, see the basket, open it, have compassion of their child and adopt it, I would have to commend them on their incredible foresight and wisdom.  There is a lot that could go wrong with such a plan.  What if Pharaoh's daughter doesn't come along?  What if she doesn't see the basket floating among the reeds? The plan works around her having compassion for the baby.  What if she doesn't?  According to the law her father had established, she was supposed to have this baby killed.  She recognized immediately that this was a Hebrew baby.  (Ex. 2:6)  So I would think that her father would recognize it immediately also.  Neither of them obeyed this law in Moses' case.  In spite of all that could go wrong, the plan worked.  In fact, it worked better than one could reasonably expect, as in the end Jochebed got paid to nurse her own son, something she would gladly do for free. 

Again, if this was how Amram and Jochebed thought this would work out, one has to be amazed at their wisdom.  No, clearly this was a plan that originated with God.  So did God tell them to do this. Were they guided by the Holy Spirit to do this?  Did God just take a plan with a lot of holes in it and just make it work out?  Who knows?  What we do know is that it worked.  Without a doubt, God had worked this plan, but I think that the plan was about more than saving just one baby.  This baby would grow up the lead the nation out of bondage and having this child grow up in the Pharaoh's household was part of the master plan. One never knows how God will work.  If Pharaoh had not desired to kill all of the baby boys, there would have been no need to place Moses in the basket on the Nile.  Moses would have grown up to be just another of Egypt's many slaves, and may not have received the training he needed to lead God's people. 

God has a way of taking the bad things and working it out for the ultimate good of his people. It is a good lesson for us.  Even in the midst of great difficulties, God is always at work.  We can believe scriptures like Jer. 29:11 and Rom. 8:28, no matter how dire the situation. There is a plan and even when, at first glance it doesn't make any sense, it will be a good one.
Tom

God Rides

Hello everyone

I am nearly finished with my study of the book of Deuteronomy.  As I neared the end I found something that I found very encouraging.  I will share with you.  The end of Deuteronomy is Moses' farewell to the people of Israel.  He blesses each tribe and then at the end of Deuteronomy 33 concludes by talking about God.  I want to focus on just one part of Moses' depiction of God, in 33:26. It says:
"There is no one like the God of Jeshurun,
    who rides across the heavens to help you
    and on the clouds in his majesty."

To understand this, we have have understand the term "Jeshurun."  I was unfamiliar with it.  Turns out, it is only mentioned four times in the Bible, three of which are at the end of Deuteronomy.  (Deut. 32:15, 33:5, 33:26 and Isaiah 44:2) After checking several sources, the consensus seemed to be that Jeshurun is a poetic term for Israel, and it means "the upright ones." Based on that idea, one could conclude then that Our God is willing to ride across the heavens to come to the aid of His upright people who are in need.  This is very encouraging to me, as I see that God doesn't just sit still in heaven to supply His help, but comes all the way across the sky to be with me when I need Him. His concern for the upright leads Him to want to be there with them.

This passage also made me curious, wondering "What does God ride as He comes across the heavens?"  The context indicates that He may be riding some kind of majestic cloud. Other scriptures, however, show that God has other means of transportation. There are other verses that indicate that God rides on clouds (like Isa. 19:1) Ps. 18:10 says that God flies on a cherub. My favorite, however, comes from Habakkuk 3:8 which says Gods travels on "chariots of salvation." (NASV) Whatever God shows up in, it is bound to be glorious.

It is pretty cool to consider how God might ride, but for me, the really amazing part of this passage is that God is emotionally invested in us to travel to where we are to meet our need.  That's a pretty encouraging thought.

Tom

Hold On

Hello everyone.

I want to backtrack a little bit to something I saw in Deuteronomy 11.  What I want to talk about today comes from Deut. 11:22 and 23: It says, "If you carefully observe all these commands I am giving you to follow - to love the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to Him and to hold fast to Him - then the Lord will drive out all these nations before you and you will dispossess nations larger and stronger than you."

God tells the Israelites that following Him involves three things, 1.) Loving Him, 2.) Obedience to Him and 3.) Holding fast to Him. God says that if they will do these things that He will give them great victory over nations that are both larger and stronger than they are.  This must have been a comfort to them, knowing that God would protect them and give them victory in situations that were larger and stronger than they were.  The good for us is that the same principle still applies. If we will follow God - loving Him, obeying Him and holding fast to Him, He will will give us victory in situations that are both larger and stronger than we are.  Certainly we all face situations that are bigger than we are.

I think that we all understand the idea of love and obedience are things that we understand, but the phrase "hold fast" is not something that we say a lot.  So what does it mean? It basically means "cling."  God wants to hold fast, or cling to Him, particularly in situations that are larger and stronger than we are, since they are not larger and stronger than Him.  It reminds me of  Ps. 63:70-8:                                            Because you are my help,
                                 I sing in the shadow of our wings.
                            I cling to you;
                                 your right hand upholds me.

David wrote this in the Desert of Judah as people were chasing him in an effort to kill him, and he could say this.  Having someone try to kill you trumps any situation I have ever been in.  He looked to God for his help and because God helped him, David felt secure enough to sing in the shadow of God's wings. (Who knew God had wings?)  He would cling(hold fast) to God and he recognized that God was holding him up with His right hand. So then question becomes, "Where do we look for our help and comfort in our times of need?"  If we are holding fast to anything other than God, we are fighting a losing battle.  Too often I have looked to other things, particularly food, to deal with stressful situations that were larger than me. It never helps long term.  Eventually I end up in a position where I must depend on God.  Then I have victory.  I would be better off, if I just went there first.  May we all have those victories n those situations that are larger and stronger than we are, knowing that God's powerful right hand will uphold us.  Then we can have the kind of security to sing in the shadow of His wings.
Tom

Qualifications for a King

Hello everyone.

Today, I am going to share something I've seen in Deuteronomy recently about leadership.  In Deut. 17:14-20, God reveals that He knows that some day Israel would ask for a king so that they can be like the nations around them.  It gives some instructions for the new king. It  says, in verses 18-20:

"When he takes the throne of his kingdom, he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of  this law, taken from that of the Levitical priests.  It is to be with him, and he is to read all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the Lord his God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees and not consider himself better than his fellow Israelites and turn from the law to the right or to the left.  Then he and his descendants will reign a long time over his kingdom in Israel."

Now prior to the passage above, god does gives some other instructions about not accumulating too much stuff or taking too many wives.  That such things would lead them astray.  Israel's history, of course, proved God correct in all of that.  But I want to focus on the part of these instructions written above.  It says that the new king must go to the priests and get a copy of the law, then set down and copy it word for word on his own scroll.  He was to carry his copy of the law around with him and read it every day.  So a good king was going to have God's word on his heart and read it every day. So then, what was this daily Bible study going to do for the king? 

It would help him know God better and respect Him more (learn to revere the Lord his God.)  It would help remain obedient (follow carefully all the words of this law.)  It would keep him humble (not consider himself better than his fellow Israelites.)  It would keep him faithful (not turn from the law to the right or to the left.) There is a lot there and it is all good.  So a good king was going to stay in God's word. 

This is good, but my guess is that no monarch's will actually read this post.  But I think this good instructions for any kind of spiritual leadership, because these attributes all thing that we should want.  Any leader, (or any disciple for that matter,) should desire a deeper relationship with God, to be more obedient to Him, to be humble in our dealings with our fellow disciples and to stay faithful. So how do we do that?  Do we need to literally write our own copy the Bible down and then carry it with us everywhere we go? I don't know, but we do need to do whatever it takes to keep God's word on our hearts and then study every day.  This will bring only positive things to us.
Tom