Moses’ Exodus

REVELATION OF GOD Meditations No.6 of 10

Ex 3:6-8 Moses hid his face, because he was afraid to look at God. The LORD said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey…

Remember this is all about God gradually revealing Himself to mankind. At the end of Genesis we are left with Joseph and the rest of this family settled in Egypt. In the book of Exodus, about four hundred years pass and with the passing of time two things have happened. First, this family now named Israel has multiplied and multiplied and may well have been in excess of a million people. Each son has essentially become a separate ‘tribe’. The second thing is that their numbers have become a threat to the Egyptians who have now made them slaves.

In the early chapters of Exodus we find a miraculous encounter of Moses with God (not visible, but a voice from a burning bush). In the discussion that ensues God instructs Moses to go to the Pharaoh or king and demand the release of the Israelites. This Moses does but Pharaoh refuses. Through a series of ten ‘plagues’ of increasing severity we learn some more things about God. Because He is Creator, 8. He is all powerful and can act into His world and change it with what we call acts of nature.

Next, 9. Where He does bring pressure to bear on individuals or a nation, He always gives a warning and options first. But more than that, when He does bring such pressure to bear it is always with, 10. The intention of bringing such people through to a place of agreeing with Him, for their good and for the good of His people. Stubbornness and total refusal to respond means the death will ensue, i.e. 11. When all else fails, God will sometimes take that person or people off the planet, yet it becomes very clear in Scripture that, 12. God does not delight in death but wants people to repent and live.

So to summarise again, in the first twelve chapters of Exodus we find God revealing Himself as God who:
8. Is all-powerful and who can act into His world and change it with what we call acts of nature,
9. Where He does bring pressure to bear on individuals or a nation, always gives a warning and options first,
10. Always has the intention of bringing such people through to a place of agreeing with Him,
11. When all else fails, God will sometimes take that person or people off the planet but,
12. He does not delight in death but wants people to repent and live.

This part of Scripture reveals the shear folly of proud men who think they can out-think God, but it is also a chance to realise, as some modern counsellors have concluded, that ‘love must be tough’ and it is not loving to let tyrants carry on beating up on people. Why, we may ask, doesn’t He do it with all tyrants, and the answer from this part of the Bible is that he only does it when He is able to speak into the lives of such tyrants and give them the option to repent.

For anyone carefully reading and thinking about the ‘plagues’ that came upon Egypt, it becomes obvious that God could have wiped out the entire nation instantly from the beginning, yet the process that follows through chapters 4 to 12, amazingly gives ordinary individuals in Egypt, as well as the ruling class, the opportunity to come in line with God’s wishes for all people, and to avoid the plagues.

Moreover observing the plagues shows that they gradually increased in intensity so that the message could gradually sink into to these obtuse people. It was left to the prophet Ezekiel, many years later, to declare the truth from God which was obvious in this situation: “Do I take any pleasure in the death of the wicked? declares the Sovereign LORD. Rather, am I not pleased when they turn from their ways and live?” (Eze k 18:23) and “I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Sovereign LORD. Repent and live!” (Ezek 18:32).

As became obvious many years later with Israel before the Exile, God warned again and again and again before He acted. Some of us today might become exasperated with a father who kept on warning his wayward child and did nothing but warn, yet that is what we find again and again in the Old Testament. Those who speak about God as a capricious, hasty or angry God simply reveal they have never read the Old Testament!