Author: Gary

In this chapter we see how the Israelites go through a trying period when they are in the wilderness. They are suffering and are looking at Moses and Aaron thinking why did you bring us here to die. The Lord heard their complaints and surprisingly instead of judging them, God heard their cries and answered their prayers. One specific detail that I want to focus on is how when God answered their prayers and provided them food he gave them specific instructions. He gave them instructions to use what they needed for the day instead of the day before the sabbath to take double so they could completely rest on the Sabbath. How many times have we cried out to God for something and he answer our prayers and we actually think about why he answered it? For example, I can’t tell you how many times I have asked for God to provide me money to prosper and live and when he answers my prayer I use every last penny for myself and store the rest for something I selfishly want. Never once did I stop to pray and ask what he wanted me to do with the money. Once my prayer was answered I took control of God’s blessing for myself. Just like the Israelites, we tend to use God only in times where we need something. In this chapter the Israelites are complaining about why God has brought them where they were after he had rescued them from the Egyptians by sending 10 harsh plagues on their behalf, split the Red Sea for them to cross, and collapsed the sea behind them killing their enemies right in front of them. This sounds crazy that they would be complaining right? Many times in my journey in life God brings me through the wilderness and when times get hard I can have this same mentality. God has literally rescued me from so much and I still complain when times get hard. Instead of looking at my situation and asking God what I should be doing when times get hard I tend to complain. Just remember you are where you are for a reason and God has you right where he has you for a reason. We always have the choice to face our hard times in a complaining way or a rejoiceful manner. God never wastes suffering. So the next time you are in the middle of suffering or going through hard times discipline yourself enough to seek what God wants you to learn or do in that situation and be grateful that he has placed you where you are. God loves us and wants the best for us. You are where you are for a reason. In good times and bad times always rejoice in the Lord. Love y’all! Have a great day!

James 1:2–4
“Consider it a great joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you experience various trials, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing.”

Romans 5:3–5
“And not only that, but we also boast in our afflictions, because we know that affliction produces endurance, endurance produces proven character, and proven character produces hope.”

1 Peter 4:12–13
“Dear friends, don’t be surprised when the fiery ordeal comes among you to test you… But rejoice as you share in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may also rejoice with great joy when his glory is revealed.”

Every time I read about the Israelites in the Old Testament there is a parallel that is undeniable about what God desires from us back then and what he desires of us now. When we have been rescued by God he desires for us to see him for who he is and to worship him. It is what he has wanted from the very beginning. Also, Jesus lived and modeled his life here on earth exactly the way he intends us to live it. After Jesus is baptized by John the Baptist he immediately goes into the wilderness to be tested by Satan. When he saves the Israelites from the Egyptians, they immediately go into the wilderness to be tested. When we read God’s word we notice that there is a rhythm and a pattern to how this life goes. When God saves us almost immediately we go into a testing period. Everyone’s story is different and how everyone is tested is different. All in all when we receive salvation from Jesus we will eventually be tested. Spiritual wisdom is being able to notice when we are being tested and to put all of our strength and faith in God instead of ourselves. When suffering or hardship comes our way we should be careful not to give into our feelings and our emotions. They can bring out anger and rage from our flesh instead of letting God’s glory shine through us in our hard times. At the end of the day none of us are perfect and we are only human, but with God we can face all things because he is above all things. Love y’all! Have a great day!

Could you imagine how awestruck the Israelites must have been to see an entire Egyptian army coming toward them on one side and the Red Sea on the other? The Lord was still leading the Israelites as a pillar of cloud in the sky and he moved to the middle to separate the Egyptians from the Israelites so he could fight for them. He then tells Moses to raise his staff, and by the power of the Lord, he split the Red Sea and the Israelites crossed on dry ground. As the Israelites were crossing the Lord told Moses to stretch out his hand, and by the power of the Lord, the parted waves crashed and killed every single Egyptian. God was proving in real time to the Israelites and the rest of the world who the one true God was. He left the Israelites no doubt that he is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. This should show you how much of a sacrifice Jesus made when he died on the cross for us. The same God that had the power to wipe out all of these Egyptians is the same God who let his own people beat him and crucify him. He did this out of love. A love that we will never understand until we go to be with him someday. We are his disobedient children that he has an unconditional love for. I have a wife and 3 kids of my own and if I had to die for them to live I would do it every time. Where do you think this natural instinct comes from? We are created in God’s own image. Just like our families belong to us we all belong to him. We are all God’s children. No matter how much our children disobey us or doubt us, when they need us we are there. Our love is incomparable to God’s love for us. However much you love your kids multiply that by infinity and that is how stong God’s love is for us. There is nothing in this world that can separate us from him but ourselves. God is always there waiting for us to realize that there is nothing in this world greater than his love for us. The only way to not receive eternity with him is to choose not to accept him and what he did to save us. He did everything to provide us an escape route for dying with this world we live in. All we have to do is accept him. Love y’all! Have a great day!

This Chapter is right after God delivers the Israelites out of Egypt. God establishes that he has spared all of the Israelites first born males and first born animals from the same fate as the Egyptians. This is God’s way of telling his people that he is with them. He commands them to consecrate all of the first born males to him because they belong to him. This creates a pattern that God saves, therefore, what is first belongs to him. He also establishes the seven days that his people are to eat unleavened bread. The Israelites were commanded by God to not eat leavened bread for 7 days and to do this the same days of every year in remembrance of God delivering them from Egypt. It was an annual memorial so that the Israelites would not forget that they belong to the one true God. He says it serves as a sign on their hand and a symbol on their forehead. This signifies that because of what God did for them, it should shape their actions and their minds. God does not, nor has he ever, made us believe in him through blind faith. He has been with us and revealed himself from generation to generation. In our time he reveals himself to us through his word and through his Holy Spirit. Jesus Christ tore down every barrier between us and him by defeating death, hell, and the grave so that we could have relationship with him. God chose the bloodline that he would come through when he chose Noah to build the Ark and when he told Abraham that he would bless his descendants to be as many as the stars. This would all come to pass through God’s only beloved son, our lord and savior, Jesus Christ, with whom the father was well pleased. The father was well pleased because Jesus, God in the flesh, had fulfilled the will of the father by sacrificing himself like a lamb to the slaughter to save us. God reveals himself through Jesus and Jesus is the word. Love y’all! Have a great day!

John 1:1
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”

The Passover is one of the most historic events of the ages other than the crucifixion of Jesus which by no circumstance happened on the same day of the year. It is no coincidence that Jesus was called the Passover Lamb. During the Passover the Israelites were delivered from physical death by the sacrifice of a lamb without blemish. 1300-1500 years later after the Passover, Jesus was sacrificed at the same time of the Passover festival that the lamb would be sacrificed. The Passover is a clear foreshadowing of Jesus. It foreshadows how he was found without fault or blemish and was sacrificed for our inequities. When the Lord came in the middle of the night to kill every firstborn male he passed by every single house with blood of the lamb on the door post. The blood of the lamb spared the Israelites from the judgment of sin. When the Lord comes back again one day to judge the sin of the world once and for all he will spare everyone who has accepted the blood of Passover Lamb which is Jesus. Only the blood of Jesus Christ can spare us from the inevitable judgment of sin. Love y’all! Have a great day!

The past two chapters have had a very important detail. Notice that God tells Moses that he has hardened Pharaoh’s heart. This is one of the qualities and characteristics of God that I forget about sometimes. Naturally my mind usually links a hardened heart to sin which is correct. Consistently ignoring God in our lives slowly but surely hardens our hearts, but to think that God would harden a heart for his will and for his good is hard for me to understand. It is also hard for me to understand why God would kill all of the first born males of Egypt but God is just. For God to be just all sins must be paid for. A blood sacrifice has always been the payment for sin since the beginning of the world. This is where the hardest questions are answered. One of the hardest questions for me to answer is “if God is so good why do all of these bad things happen to us in this world we live in?” What we must first understand is that sin cannot exist where God is. It is impossible. When God created Adam and Eve they were created perfect without sin with the gift of free will. Free will allows us to have a true and real relationship with God. When Adam and Eve abused that free will, sin entered the world and God cannot exist with them anymore. From that point on sin entered the world and the only way God could exist with his creation is to take care of the sin barrier. That sin barrier is broken down by a specific blood sacrifice. In the Old Testament God’s people were instructed by God a specific way to sacrifice so that he could exist with them but all of these sacrifices were temporary. The permanent and final atonement for all sins had to be paid for by the Lord himself, Jesus Christ. His blood was the only blood perfect enough to pay for the sins of the world once and for all. When we accept this we are then saved from Gods righteous judgment of sin which is inevitable. The Israelites were saved from God’s judgment then, in Moses’s time by a temporary blood sacrifice and today we are saved from God’s judgment by the permanent perfect blood sacrifice of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. This is why he is worthy of us giving our lives to him because our lives were meant to belong to him anyways since Adam and Eve. Sin has separated us from God and has exposed us to God’s judgment instead of the relationship God intended for us to all have with him. He loves us enough to die for us even though we choose daily to pursue the things of this world. It is hard to understand that love and how strong it is. God looks at us in all of our sin and still loves us. There is nothing you can do for you to not have a relationship with God other than to reject him. To reject Jesus is to accept the judgment of your sin. God gives us a way out and that way out is through the perfect blood sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Love y’all! Have a great day!

We see here for the third chapter in a row and 2 plagues later that Pharaoh is still not able to give in to God’s demands 100%. We see how he bargains with God and tells Moses that he will let the Israelites go worship the lord, but only the way he allows them too. God shows here that 50% obedience is still disobedience. Pharaoh would not fully let go of his control of the Israelites and God uses Pharaoh to display how powerful he is so that way the Egyptian’s and the Israelites could clearly see the power of God and that he is more powerful than any human man. Just like Pharaoh, God gives us the free will the choose him or to keep control of our lives ourselves. God may choose to let us hold on to our pride for a little while, but that pride always eventually leads to our downfall. God always eventually shows us in our lives that we are not God. Every good blessing we have comes from him and he expects us to constantly remember this and to have a healthy reverent fear of him. The very air that we breathe comes from God. Without God this world would have never existed. God gives everyone a chance to choose him over themselves. The one thing to remember about God is that 50% obedience is still disobedience. When God calls us to give our lives to him, it should not come with stipulations. Be careful not to bargain with God or to tell God you will do what he is calling on you to do if only he will do what you ask. When we do this we fall in the same category as Pharaoh. God isn’t interested in what you think is best for his will. He desires us to use our free will to completely give our lives to him. To go where he leads without hesitation. This is where true joy, peace, and happiness comes from. To our flesh it doesn’t make sense, but to our soul, our soul becomes satisfied. Our very being was created to worship God. We were created for him. Love y’all! Have a great day!

It is easy for us to say to ourselves that Pharaoh has to be one of the most ignorant people to ever live. I mean who ignores God’s warning 10 different times and still keeps his pride? Before we start casting judgement, we must take the log out of our own eye. How many times have we prayed and said “God if you just get me through this I’ll never do this again?” For me, I know it surpasses 10 times, and yet God never ceased to chase me down. Once God would get me out of a situation that I bargained with him about I would always slowly but surely go back to doing the thing that I promised him I would never do again. The first time I read about Pharaoh ignoring all of these plagues, I only focused on his negligence. The truth is I have been ignoring God pretty much my whole life and yet he still saved me. How many chances has God given us in our lives? I know for me it is too many to count. Never think that you are too good to fall for the world’s traps. They can bring down the best of us. This is why we must consistently repent and ask for wisdom from God. It is impossible to overcome this sinful world we live in without him. Any one of us are capable of becoming like Pharaoh. Stay humble and be careful by which the scale you judge people. The scale you use to judge others is the same scale you will be judged with. Have an endless forgiving heart so that you will also be forgiven. Love y’all! Have a great day!

Luke 6:37–38
“Do not judge, and you will not be judged… Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give, and it will be given to you… For with the same measure you use, it will be measured back to you.”

In my past I have hardened my heart pretty significantly towards God, but Pharaoh’s heart is on a different level. All Moses and Aaron asked for was 3 days to go sacrifice and worship God. Pharaoh was so consumed in himself and his own selfish pride that he would not let the Israelites go. God has now turned all of the waters to blood and consumed all of Pharaoh’s people in frogs, gnats, and flies. 4 times he has seen a plague take over his people and 4 times he has hardened his heart and not obeyed God. In the end, the will of God is going to prevail. Judgement always eventually comes. Time and time again in the Bible we see God allow people to consume themselves with their own power, desires, and greed. No one knows God’s timing but God. When is he going to judge this world once and for all? Nobody knows. What we do know is that it is inevitable. God allows us to ignore him and pursue our wants and our own selfish desires for a certain time, but judgement always comes and it is going to come again. The only way to avoid his inevitable judgement is by giving all of our hope and trust to Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. God has provided a way for us to become his people and it is not by works. It is only through his grace and mercy that we can be saved and covered in his righteousness. There is no way to earn it. One day we will all be in the presence of God and 1 of 2 things will happen. God will see us in our sinful state and cast us away or he will see us clothed in righteousness that only comes from the perfect blood sacrifice of Jesus. We will never be good enough without him and that is worthy of our worship. Love y’all! Have a great day!