14th January Morning
Exodus 5-6
So Moses returned to the LORD and said, “Lord, why have You brought trouble on this people? Why is it You have sent me? “For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in Your name, he has done evil to this people; neither have You delivered Your people at all.” (Exodus 5:22-1 NKJ).
Did you know that when God is about to do something important in your life things fall apart in your life? I have always argued that there cannot be a construction before a deconstruction. We are in a sinful world and the world builds systems of operation around our lives. These systems might be painful and bitter sometimes. But the longer we stay constrained within, the more we get used to evil and so familiar to the lifestyle.
The Israelites had toiled for a very long time. Though they wanted to leave, they did not know how to leave and they were not comfortable with just any means of departure. When they invoked God for a solution, God acted in the mode they never expected. God first interrupted and stirred up the employer-employee relationship in an unlikely manner. When God began to deliver the children of Israel from Egypt the situation became more bitter. That is exactly what happens when God is about to do something great in your life. He breaks down the systems you have been operating within. He takes off the roof from your house and he exposes you to more danger. He tears things apart and there is a bleeding.
When God is about to heal you from something, he launches a surgical operation that cuts you apart and sets you apart from your long-held customs, and that becomes more painful. You divorce yourself from soothing dysfunctional relationships. He takes away fake-friends out of your life. When God wants you to start your own business, conflicts arise at your work place for unknown reasons. God must break down some things in life in order for him to build new and better than what has been.
I do not know what you are going through, but find out whether it is an attack or deconstruction for a better construction. As you may know, not every bad situation is a deconstruction of a poor site for a better one by God, but it might be the devil bringing you down based on the choices you have made. Such you should not bear. But if it is a deconstruction for a better construction, then bear the pain.
When the devil heard that the Lord had risen to save his people, he doubled and tripled the task. He made life more difficult and so hard to live. Taxes sky-rocketed and salaries dropped. Incurable diseases dominated. Leadership became more corrupt, dictatorial and more oppressive. Marriages broke apart, children became unruly. Spouses started cheating and relatives started fighting family battles. Witch-craft took the center stage of the country. Banks took people’s property through credit in form of paper money. Landlords increased the cost of land and houses. Accidents increased etc. These and more happen to the Christians when he is about to do something great and better in their lives.
When Pharaoh heard of the Moses-Aaron proposal, he asked them two important questions and these questions centered on two characters: God and the People of Israel. The first question was: WHO IS GOD THAT I (Pharaoh the Great) MAY OBEY? This was a question of authority and power. When Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh to argue the case of the Israelites, they had not gone to ask or even negotiate the departure of the Israelites but rather to report the new command to the existing authority, and power from another authority and power known as God.
So the question of Pharaoh was not one that was seeking to know who God is but one that provokes and challenges the identity, authority, and power of this commanding officer known as God. WHO IS HE? WHO DOES HE THINK HE IS THAT EVEN I PHARAOH OF THE MIGHTY EGYPT SHOULD OBEY? JUST BECAUSE EVERYONE ELSE HAS OBEYED DOES NOT NECESSARILY MEAN THAT I TOO WILL.
Quick message here: Our problems do not actually target us but the God to whom we belong to. Our role as Christians is to report the challenge issued by our problems to the God we worship. Humans beings are the playgrounds and fight-arena of the giants of good and evil. That is why sometimes we find ourselves stepped, grounded and oppressed as these giants fight each other. We are not the target, we are just victims of circumstances. We are hit or actually saved depending on which side of the battle we take. The devil attacks whoever is on the side of the Lord and when he fails like he often does he directs that very anger to those his side. On the other
The devil attacks whoever is on the side of the Lord and when he fails, like he often does, he directs that very anger to those his side. On the other hand, God targets those on the side of the devil and when he succeeds like he always does, he adds them to the flock on his side. God multiplies something (Life) but the devil always subtracts to nothing (Death). Pharaoh challenged God that if he was he who said he was, then let him save the Israelites from his (Pharaoh’s) power.
The second question that Pharaoh asked was about people and it was: WHY DO YOU TAKE THE PEOPLE FROM THEIR WORK?. Let us ask ourselves, what work was this? It was slavery. It was survival for the fittest. It was an existence that depended on the size of burden you could carry each minute of your living. It was a righteousness by works and real hard work. While Pharaoh was willing to keep the Israelites alive, it depended on how much they could work.
The religion of pharaoh is the dominant belief system today. Our religions are built and exercised on Righteousness by Works. When preachers of Righteousness of Faith like Moses and Aaron come with the gospel to let the people off the heavy yoke of working, the modern Pharaohs ask, “why do you want to give people REST? Keep them working until they die.” Imagine!
The Seventh-day Adventist Church in Uganda asked me, “why do you tell our university students to write their exams on Saturday?“. The Pentecostals carry jerrycans to fetch water from their churches, they buy handkerchiefs and Jerusalem scarfs. They have to fast and pray for over 40 days sometimes. They have to attend morning prayers, lunch hour sessions, evening prayers and crown it with night prayers. They have to go on pilgrimages to Israel, and to some other designated mountains.
Catholics have to carry the rosary wherever they go. They have to bow to the images of Mary and her baby sculpture. The priest have to commit not to marry and separate themselves from society. I wish I could say something about Islam. The Pharaoh of modern religion asks modern Gospel preachers: WHY DO YOU WANT TO GIVE PEOPLE REST? Meanwhile, Jesus responds to this, in his call registered in Mathew 11:28: Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
Chapter 6 has these opening statements from God himself: Then the LORD said to Moses, “Now you shall see what I will do to Pharaoh. For with a strong hand he will let them go, and with a strong hand he will drive them out of his land.” And God spoke to Moses and said to him: “I am the LORD. “I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty, but by My name LORD I was not known to them.
This was an answer to Pharaoh’s question. “You wanna know who I am to you or actually compared to you? Alright, let’s go. Listen, Pharaoh. YOU WILL let them go regardless of what you want or what happens. I God, and the Lord have resolved and it will come to pass.” God displays his sovereignty in these words. He confirms to all the doubters and those contemplating which side to take between these two authorities and powers and he says: “I do not care what Pharaoh wants and who he thinks and says he is, at the end of it all, my kingdom will come and my will be done.” Hallelujah!
Isn’t this good news that eventually the will of God takes course and charge? God intimated that the manner in which he was going to reveal himself in these matters of Egypt were never known even to Abraham who walked with him every step of his life. The Lord promises to show his mighty salvific side that even our ancestors never knew. The Lord promises to do a new thing from the trend that people have always known him through. He is God almighty, king of kings and he is going to do things that will bring to senses both the slaves in fear and doubt and their arrogant masters, the Pharaohs.
God is LORD. It is important to point out that most of us are comfortable with the God who is the Savior but not the Lord. The Savior God is he who does what we want but the God who is the LORD is he whose will is done. We are not called to look at God as the Savior but we must understand that before God was the Savior he has always been the LORD. Let me ask, “Is God the Lord in your life?” You can answer this question by evaluating who you fear most in life? Is it your wife, husband, pastor, boss, tribal chiefs? Who is that at the command center of your life? That is the Lord of your life.
The bad news is that when those Pharaohic Lords in our lives start challenging God the true Lord into battles, he (God) has no problem in accepting the challenge of unsettling them. From verse 1 to 8 there are over five I WILLs and three I AMs in the speech pattern of God. In our world today, these can be categorized as egocentric. But the fact is that God is trying to make all of us understand that since our God is a loving God by nature, that means that all that he is in love, begins with a very particular self. God is not selfish but all that he does stems from who he is as an individual. So when he says: ‘I’, ‘I’…’I’, He is not like when me (Isaiah-White) say that ‘I’.
When we fallen human beings say ‘I’, it is always at the expense of others and for our own good. But when God says ‘I’, he is saying it at the expense of evil and for the good of those under the custody of evil. That is what the Wrath of God Theology is about. God is both the ideal and the real ‘I’ in the universe. He is the central ‘I’ and the center that holds. So when he repeatedly says: ‘I’, the Lord intends to mean that nothing fails if he does it. Every promise he pledged in the I WILLs in this passage was realized by the Israelites. The bible is filled with these pledges and commitment
The bible is filled with these pledges and commitments (promises) by God to all of us. All we need to do is to believe trust and claim these promises to our lives and yes they will come to pass. For the second time God told Moses to go into Pharaoh’s palace and command him to do the Will of God and let the children of Jacob go, but Moses had an issue and we can find it in his response: “The children of Israel have not heeded me. How then shall Pharaoh heed me, for I am of uncircumcised lips? Exodus 6:12. What I see in these words is the kind of resistance that Moses is suffering. Pharaoh, who is the slave master, resists the proposition of the God of Moses but also the Israelites who are the oppressed slaves resist the solution of the God of Moses.
Life can be like that sometimes. There are problems that are resistant to their cure. There are Pharaohic habits, diseases, and weaknesses that are resistant to the solutions we apply to them. However much we try so hard and apply the right solutions, these problems prove to be resistant and they stay with and around us. Life has these Pharaohic problems. Well, these might be justified since they are identical problems, but it boggles my mind when even slaves who need help are directly or indirectly resistant to the help or solution to their pain. Some slaves bite the hand that feeds them, some patients attack and beat up their doctors, some passengers grab drivers in fear and the results need not be guessed.
The Israelites had already formulated a resistance to Moses and had already started fighting the liberation party of Moses and Aaron. The Israelites had already begun to devise means on how to manage and continue living in slavery however oppressive it was.They could not subscribe to the new movement of the Exodus. That the first issue in the text. People don’t want the problem but their actions show that they cannot stand the solution either.
This brings me to the second issue in the text. Moses seems to ask God,“how dare we preach to the neighbors and expect them to be convinced when our very own family members are still on the opposition side?” Moses’ point was how do you preach to Pharaoh when your own family is not convinced by the same message. This does not mean we cannot preach to others before our family members are converted. However, it is a challenge to each of us to start with our homes and their belief is not our responsibility. It doesn’t matter whether they believed or not, what matters is whether they were told. Preach to your family members, tell them what you know. Train them your skills. Start from where you are.
14th January Evening
Genesis 7-8
Chapter seven is about a God who has a plot and a plan on how to deal with Pharaoh. God has a plan for everything against the success of his children. And he always discusses that plot with his prophets. He always discussed this with Moses and Aaron. And they did many things to Pharaoh. In fact, when you read this chapter, you will see that God performed one miracle after another. However, the miracles that God performed were not for the good of Egypt but just to hurt them as the consequence of the leadership decision.
What surprises me is that one of the last verses says: And Pharaoh turned and went into his house. Neither was his heart moved by this. (Exodus 7:23). Can you imagine!!! What in the world was wrong with this man? All that was happening did not move him to do the right thing. And the reason was that Pharaoh was not a victim of all that was happening. It was the Egyptians who were suffering the consequences of their Leader’s choices. Most leaders today do not mind the state of the people they lead. When people complain about the state of the matters, the leaders respond like the French Maria Antoinette, “If you cannot buy bread then eat cake.”
Pharaoh was not moved when God moved around his life. Many people today go to church and preachers speak. Many people go through threatening experiences like accidents and many other phenomenal events that are designed to inform them about their dreadful choices or even their lifestyles. And after all the series of such, they have a reaction similar to that of Pharaoh: THEY ARE NOT MOVED. By the way, are you moved? Then do respond positively and change your ways.
In chapter 8 God decides to punish Egypt with another predicament that was now going to involve the Pharaoh himself. “And the frogs shall come up on you, on your people, and on all your servants.” Exodus 8:4. Frogs filled the entire palace and Pharaoh himself also suffered for the first time what all people in Egypt were going through. The funny bit is that the Magicians tried to counter this miracle like they had always done. But this time when they did, they just multiplied the frogs. This is the problem with consulting witches for solutions to life’s problems. They do not solve problems but they just contribute to the problems. When you go to magicians with a problem of frogs, they give you more frogs but since they are magicians, they twist and wrap those frogs in the form of solutions.
In our modern times, we have Egyptian magicians in the form of pastors who perform all sorts of miracles that do not solve the real-life problems of the people. It is just magic and not miracles. Verse 8 says: “Then Pharaoh called for Moses and Aaron, and said, “Entreat the LORD that He may take away the frogs from me and from my people; and I will let the people go, that they may sacrifice to the LORD.” Pharaoh had given a deaf ear to the state of affairs until frogs jumped into his plate.
Many of us are like this man. We see people struggling with frogs and we mind our own business. They fall sick and suffer contagious diseases but still we cover ourselves to avoid the infections from them. We talk about the problems of our neighbors and warn our children not to go there or even play with their kids. Instead of helping them survive the frogs, we just build high walls as fences to keep out their frogs. By doing this we assume that they will die together with their frogs, forgetting that after frogs are done with them, they will come for us and by all means climb over the walls.
As Christians, we must always go out there and join those struggling with frogs and fight against the frogs. Do not hate people with frog problems, focus on the people. These are human beings, they are not frogs. People are not their problems. Let us always learn this: The problem at your neighbors is not your problem but the best way to save yourself from its effect, is to do something about it.
When God hit Egypt with the frogs, it was the slave masters who suffered with the frogs and all the plagues but when it came to the slaves, they were safe and secure in the district known as Goshen. Goshen was a provision for the people of God. It was a hiding shelter from the predicament that had befell the entire country. There are times when God provides a Goshen for his people in various ways. It is not that God discriminates but that he always has a provision for you.
After the frogs were dealt with after he had pledged to do the right thing the next verse says: “But when Pharaoh saw that there was relief, he hardened his heart and did not heed them.” It is so easy to preach to a sick and bed-ridden juvenile than to preach to healthy one. The reasons are displayed by this Pharaoh. When the frogs were in his bed and plates he was willing to do the will of God. But after all that was no more, the brother reverted back to his disobedience.
Many of us repent to God just to seek relief, and once relief is in place, we do not even wait to at least realize healing. Once we have temporary relief, we go back to the default settings. We can pledge to behave with money and do the right things with money but once we get it in our hands, we never remember the state of affairs in our life before we become big spenders with the little we have. Relief is very deceptive, it makes patients quit their drugs and others with organ injuries to start eating and drinking what the doctors have advised not to. Some start jumping and running on injuries that have not healed but just because of the relief.
God had no alternative but to break the relief and launch another plague on this man and this time round, it was better than the former and finally, Pharaoh decided to let the Israelites go. However, he had demands and let’s look at them in this verse: “Then Pharaoh called for Moses and Aaron, and said, “Go, sacrifice to your God in the land.” Exodus 8:25. Pharaoh wants people to worship but to worship within. He wants to worship God but within the confines of the devil. He wants the worship of God to be stipulated by the devil. He wants Israelite worship to be integrated into the worship modes of Egypt. He wants the Israelites to infuse their God into the league of Egyptian gods. He does not want them to go out, he wants them to stay.
The second demand that Pharaoh makes is: “I will let you go, that you may sacrifice to the LORD your God in the wilderness; only you shall not go very far away. Intercede for me.” Exodus 8:28. This time Pharaoh wants them to go but not to go very far. The devil has no problem with you if you read the Bible but not go very far. He has no problem with you if you pray at home but not do it so often. You can help and do good as long as you do not go too far with such. Satan wants you and I close, where he can access us whenever he wants.
We must learn to distance ourselves from this devil who does not want us to go too far. We need to do more and a little bit extraordinary from the ordinary lives we have been living. We need to go too far away from Satan and deep in God. The deeper we get into God the more difficult it becomes for the devil to access our faith. He can touch our bodies but he cannot harm our faith. Please go far.
God bless you. I invoke TRUTH, KNOWLEDGE, and FAITH.
Am Pr. I.T.White. THE GOSPEL HAWKER
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