Day 31 – Exodus 4-6

Moses is one stubborn and reluctant hero. He has God’s promise and miraculous powers; he has the message of God and his mission. Yet he resists as much as he can. “I am nobody who will be listened to.” “I don’t speak so well.” “They haven’t listened to me.” “They don’t like me.” God confronts every one of his objections, even appoints Aaron to help him. No wonder God was angry with Moses! Job was berated by the divine being, for less. Jonah studied the insides of a whale for refusing and running from God. I think Moses got off pretty easy. Have you ever resisted God’s calling or leading in your life? Have you ever tried to refuse his plan for you – whether it was a call to the mission field or a word for a neighbor? Many of us do, and almost always it turns out for us like Moses. God gets his way, but the path becomes harder for us when we first resist.
And of course Pharaoh dismissed Moses and the word from God. They were told he would! God said he would harden Pharaoh’s heart. In his letter to Rome, Paul uses this and God’s selection of Jacob over Esau as example and proof of what we today call predestination. Election is a central theme of the Bible and a defining characteristic of Israel. Through a chosen group of people God makes known his presence, his character, his desires, and carries out his plans so that the world will know who he is. Through a chosen people God brought his Son, the Messiah, to conquer sin and Satan and restore his relationship with mankind. Election, based on God’s logic and purposes, not on man’s deservedness, rings throughout the Bible.