Maximum Impact! - Ruminating in the Word of God

The Lord is awe-inspiring, fearsome, fascinating, intriguing, majestic, and full of splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of him and what came to my heart and mind in Exodus 14:30-31,

"That day the Lord saved Israel from the hands of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians lying dead on the shore. And when the Israelites saw the mighty hand of the Lord displayed against the Egyptians, the people feared the Lord and put their trust in him and in Moses his servant."

I see a couple of things "under the covers" here. This deliverance of Israel from their enslavement in Egypt was dramatic. Very dramatic. I consider it one of the most dramatic events in all of human experience to date. It had what we might call "maximum impact" on the Israelites, as well as others. It is not difficult to see this impact expressed in their experience of witnessing "the mighty hand of the Lord." 

I don't read that the Israelites simply noticed the Lord had done something, but that they had just experienced a breath-taking view of the "mighty hand of the Lord." What I mean is, if, lets say, the Lord brought some illness to the Egyptians and they died from some epidemic, I'm certain the Israelite's reaction might have been much less dramatic as they walked out of Egypt - not a breath-taking event and a much more subdued one. But not this event. Not how the Lord orchestrated the way things unfolded here.

The Lord staged the events surrounding his rescue of Israel from Egypt in such a way as to provide maximum impact. He brought the Israelites to the edge of the Red Sea and he hardened Pharaoh and his court such that, following their earlier decision to allow the Israelites to go, they decided to saddle up and run down the Israelites. This left Israel with what might be best described as finding themselves between "a rock and a hard place" as they looked to the sea in front of them and the advancing Egyptians, in full war array, behind them. All this at the design and working of the Lord.

The outcome, short-lived as it was (much like America's reaction to 9/11) was such that the Israelite's "feared the Lord and put their trust in him and in Moses his servant." I think it instructive to note that it was only through the dramatic set of circumstances, the crisis created as much as the deliverance from it, that brought this reaction. As I have noted elsewhere, the dramatic nature of this deliverance of Israel was not just for their consumption (resulting in the reaction they had) but also to provide "legs" (both geographically and historically) to the telling of it, for the current inhabitants of the promised land the Israelites would eventually have to displace and the enemies they would encounter on their way there. All would know God was with Israel (note Rahab's comments forty years later in Joshua 2:8-11).

In any event, I see the Lord here staging things in a specific way to achieve his desired outcome. I fully believe that as the events surrounding the close of the age we live in unfold, the Lord will arrange things in certain ways to achieve the same. This may require great patience on the part of God's people, tied to an anticipation of what may take place that transcends our own expectations.

On a much smaller scale, I wonder what those things might be that the Lord engineers in our lives to bring about the outcomes he desires to see in our lives today. Something to think about. What we might consider to be difficult challenges and challenging discouragements may be the Lord preparing us for some exciting things in our own lives and possibly the lives of loved ones around us.

Something to consider...

Anything of the Lord capture your heart from Scripture today? Share what moved you about him from your Bible reading today. I'd love to hear from you!

If you have someone you would like to receive these ruminations, send me their email address. I'm happy to add them to the list. If you are receiving this and would like to be removed from the list, just respond and let me know.

Trevor Fisk

trevor.fisk@gmail.com

Remembering the Lord - Ruminating in the Word of God

The Lord is awe-inspiring, fearsome, fascinating, intriguing, majestic, and full of splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of him and what came to my heart and mind in Exodus 13:9-10,

'This observance will be for you like a sign on your hand and a reminder on your forehead that this law of the Lord is to be on your lips. For the Lord brought you out of Egypt with his mighty hand. You must keep this ordinance at the appointed time year after year."

The establishment of the Feast of Unleavened Bread, Passover, as an observance from year to year was to be a reminder for the Israelites: the Lord rescued, freed, delivered Israel from her enslavement in Egypt.

From one perspective, I find it surprising that a people would have to be reminded of their deliverance. What is it that folks need some kind of reminder? Do they really care so little for what the Lord had done for them that they needed reminding of it? Astonishing!

And, yet, as I read of the last supper Jesus had with his disciples, as Paul reflected on it he quoted Jesus, 'This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.' In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, 'This cup is the new covenant in my blood;do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.'"

In remembrance of me? How astonishing the Lord would need to provide his people with something to remember him by! Paul gave Timothy direction that just baffles me, "Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, descended from David." 2 Timothy 2:8.

How corrupt we are, even as redeemed believers, that we need to remember, to make an effort to recall him who gave his life for us! He who suffered an agonizing death to pay the penalty for my sins that I might share in the lavish and glorious inheritance, the riches of his grace that God is holding for those who are his! How is it that we need reminding of our deliverance from enslavement?

Yet, that is how we are. We often forget those who have done so much for us, particularly him who loved us so much that he sent his Son to die in our place!

The Jews were to observe Passover as a remembrance. The church is to observe the Lord's supper as a remembrance. Possibly there are other ways we can remember the Lord as well. If you had a notion to demonstrate your mindfulness of the Lord to him, how might you do that today?

Anything of the Lord capture your heart from Scripture today? Share what moved you about him from your Bible reading today. I'd love to hear from you!

If you have someone you would like to receive these ruminations, send me their email address. I'm happy to add them to the list. If you are receiving this and would like to be removed from the list, just respond and let me know.

Trevor Fisk

trevor.fisk@gmail.com

Applying the blood - Ruminating in the Word of God

The Lord is awe-inspiring, fearsome, fascinating, intriguing, majestic, and full of splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of him and what came to my heart and mind in Exodus 12:2,

"Then they are to take some of the blood and put it on the sides and tops of the doorframes of the houses where they eat the lambs."

Here in the midst of the tenth plague, a plague of death, the Lord told Moses to have the Israelites slaughter a lamb in a new festival, the Passover. The lamb that was to be eaten was to have its blood put on the sides and tops of their doorways for the Israelites to be spared of the death that was to come to so many that night.

Death came that night, but the Lord passed over every home where the blood was applied. This is a type, a pointer to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and the need we have to apply the blood of Jesus Christ to our own lives in order to escape that second death, eternal death that follows judgment day.

Jesus Christ is called our passover lamb. "For Christ, our Passover lamb, has been sacrificed." 1 Corinthians 5:7b. John the baptist recognized Jesus as this Passover lamb, "The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, 'Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!'" John 1:29. And, "When he saw Jesus passing by, he said, 'Look, the Lamb of God!'' John 1:36. The book of Revelation refers to Jesus Christ on a number of occasions as our sacrificial lamb, "Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain, standing at the center of the throne, encircled by the four living creatures and the elders." Revelation 5:6. See also Revelation 5:12, "In a loud voice they were saying: 'Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!'"

Just as all the Israelites who applied the blood of the sacrificial lamb at Passover were spared of their lives, so all of us who apply the blood of Jesus Christ in our account with God by embracing him in faith will be spared for eternal life.

Where would I be without the sacrifice Jesus Christ made of himself for my sins? What if God had not reached out to us in an incomprehensible love, providing his Son to make a way? Thanks be to God! This is exactly what he has done!

Anything of the Lord capture your heart from Scripture today? Share what moved you about him from your Bible reading today. I'd love to hear from you!

If you have someone you would like to receive these ruminations, send me their email address. I'm happy to add them to the list. If you are receiving this and would like to be removed from the list, just respond and let me know.

Trevor Fisk

trevor.fisk@gmail.com

Whose choice is it? - Ruminating in the Word of God

The Lord is awe-inspiring, fearsome, fascinating, intriguing, majestic, and full of splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of him and what came to my heart and mind in Exodus 11:7,

"Then you will know that the Lord makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel."

The Lord spoke these words through Moses to Pharaoh when Moses announced the plague of death of the firstborn Egyptians to Pharaoh. It is unmistakable that what is announced by the Lord to Pharaoh, and by extension, to the entire world, is that the Lord picks his own: "the Lord makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel."

The Lord had chosen the people of Israel as his own because of the faith their progenitor, Abraham. "Abraham believed the Lord, and he credited it to him as righteousness." Genesis 15:6. Abraham modeled the faith the Lord looks for from each of us as his determination for those who will join him for all  eternity. God chose all who would/will embrace him in faith as Abraham did, for himself, for his kingdom, his family. This is God's choice, his election. This is why we say that Israel is God's chosen people.

In discussing the Lord's choice of faith in the individual as the defining quality for all who will enter into his family, and the only quality, he distanced himself from many members of mankind who feel they ought to have a right to "earn their way" into heaven by being "good enough."

Does God have a right to decide this? Does he have the right to make his own choice for who will join him in heaven following this life? Does God have the right to chose whom he will select as his own "chosen people?" Does he have the right to choose Israel over Egypt?

Paul certainly thought so. I am reminded of his argument against those who feel people should decide in Romans 9:6-29. There Paul says, "It does not, therefore, depend on human desire or effort, but on God's mercy... Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for special purposes and some for common use?"

Certainly something to consider. God makes his choices and he doesn't check in with us first. He does not need and he does not ask for our approval of what he decides to do. When God chooses Israel and not Egypt, when God chooses people of faith and not people because of their performance at being "good", when God chose Jacob and not Esau, when he chose Abel's offering and not Cain's, he is exercising his sovereign authority over all he has made. It is his to do so, and it is our's to accept.

Anything of the Lord capture your heart from Scripture today? Share what moved you about him from your Bible reading today. I'd love to hear from you!

If you have someone you would like to receive these ruminations, send me their email address. I'm happy to add them to the list. If you are receiving this and would like to be removed from the list, just respond and let me know.

Trevor Fisk

trevor.fisk@gmail.com

A "darkness that can be felt" - Ruminating in the Word of God

The Lord is awe-inspiring, fearsome, fascinating, intriguing, majestic, and full of splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of him and what came to my heart and mind in Exodus 10:21-23,

"Then the Lord said to Moses, 'Stretch out your hand toward the sky so that darkness spreads over Egypt—darkness that can be felt.' So Moses stretched out his hand toward the sky, and total darkness covered all Egypt for three days. No one could see anyone else or move about for three days. Yet all the Israelites had light in the places where they lived."

This ninth plague was one of darkness. An unusual darkness, "that can be felt", fell on Pharaoh and the Egyptians. Just as Jonah did not embrace what the Lord told him to do until he spent three days in the belly of a fish, just as the world was plunged into a "darkness" for three days when Jesus Christ was buried until he rose again on that Easter morning (not the physical darkness that attended Jesus' crucifixion, but what might be considered an unusual spiritual darkness for all of creation), so Pharaoh and all of Egypt was plunged into a darkness as Pharaoh refused to allow God's people to leave.

Pharaoh did not like the darkness and summoned Moses to tell him to take his leave, sans the livestock. When Moses refused to leave the livestock behind, Pharaoh again refused to let the Israelites go and banished Moses from his presence - bringing another form of "darkness" to his palace.

The three days of darkness that we call the ninth plague is something of a metaphor for me. As the Lord plunged Egypt into the three day darkness, it speaks to, represents, another form of darkness to me that Pharaoh and the Egyptians dwelt in: a spiritual darkness in rejecting God. Pharaoh's heart was being hardened by God to ensure Pharaoh would not capitulate to Moses' demands, til such a striking series of events would take place that the account would have legs, both geographically and historically (it was an account that Paul quotes God as saying in Romans 9:17, "For Scripture says to Pharaoh: 'I [God] raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.'" This was the Lord's purpose for the plagues and for that purpose, the Lord insured Pharaoh would not give in to Moses. It wasn't that the Lord manipulated Pharaoh's heart so he wouldn't embrace him in faith, but that the Lord manipulated Pharaoh's heart, the heart of a man who had already rejected the Lord, to continue to refuse Moses' demands despite the dramatic and spectacular events that unfolded.

The whole of it speaks to me of the darkness that Pharaoh and the Egyptians dwelt in, a spiritual darkness. This darkness is that which now darkens the hearts and minds of people everywhere today who have not embraced Jesus Christ in faith. In foretelling the first coming of Jesus Christ, we read in Isaiah 9:2, "The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned." It is not just Pharaoh, but it is the whole world.

May we all find ourselves in what Jesus spoke to Nicodemus of, "Whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God." John 3:21. Woe to the man who remains in the darkness. Blessed is the man who steps into the light and embraces Jesus Christ in faith!

Anything of the Lord capture your heart from Scripture today? Share what moved you about him from your Bible reading today. I'd love to hear from you!

If you have someone you would like to receive these ruminations, send me their email address. I'm happy to add them to the list. If you are receiving this and would like to be removed from the list, just respond and let me know.

Trevor Fisk

trevor.fisk@gmail.com

How do you know what God is like, what he might do? - Ruminating in the Word of God

The Lord is awe-inspiring, fearsome, fascinating, intriguing, majestic, and full of splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of him and what came to my heart and mind in Exodus 9:23-26,

"When Moses stretched out his staff toward the sky, the Lord sent thunder and hail, and lightning flashed down to the ground. So the Lord rained hail on the land of Egypt; hail fell and lightning flashed back and forth. It was the worst storm in all the land of Egypt since it had become a nation. Throughout Egypt hail struck everything in the fields—both people and animals; it beat down everything growing in the fields and stripped every tree. The only place it did not hail was the land of Goshen, where the Israelites were."

We live in a day where it is often thought that God only brings what we might consider to be "the good." Whenever something we may consider is "bad" arrives, it wouldn't be from God - he only brings "the good." I'm sure you recognize the assumption, and, may have thought the same yourself, (and, may still!) However, if you were to ask some Egyptian farmer what he thought about the frightful event described for us in Exodus 9, he would certainly consider it a bad thing, one of the worst in the nation's history. From the Israelite's perspective: good. From the Egyptians perspective: bad.

Regardless of whose perspective is in view, when the plague of hail hit Egypt, we see the Lord sending thunder, hail, lightning - the most horrific storm in the land of Egypt "since it had become a nation." The storm killed all the people and livestock out in the fields, stripped all the trees bare and destroyed all the crops of the Egyptians when it hit.

To help us have a clear perspective on what God is like, what he may do or not, he has provided us much in the way of informing us. One such passage is Jeremiah 9:24, where he says, "Let the one who boasts boast about this: that they have the understanding to know me, that I am the Lord, who exercises kindness, justice and righteousness on earth, for in these I delight." In another passage we are told God is love, John 4:8, 16.

In another, "I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider [Jesus Christ] is called Faithful and True. With justice he judges and wages war. His eyes are like blazing fire, and on his head are many crowns. He has a name written on him that no one knows but he himself. He is dressed in a robe dipped in blood, and his name is the Word of God. The armies of heaven were following him, riding on white horses and dressed in fine linen, white and clean. Coming out of his mouth is a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations. 'He will rule them with an iron scepter.' He treads the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God Almighty." Revelation 19:11-15.

Accounts, such as Exodus 9, where we read of the plague of hail, help us understand who the Lord is, what he is like and just what it is he can or may do. This morning I am reminded that I need to insure my concepts of what God is like, what he might do, how he views things, and so forth, are informed by what he tells me of himself in the pages of Scripture. Otherwise, I just may drift to assumptions I have come up with in my own mind... and that certainly wouldn't do!!

Anything of the Lord capture your heart from Scripture today? Share what moved you about him from your Bible reading today. I'd love to hear from you!

If you have someone you would like to receive these ruminations, send me their email address. I'm happy to add them to the list. If you are receiving this and would like to be removed from the list, just respond and let me know.

Trevor Fisk

trevor.fisk@gmail.com

God's use of court magicians - Ruminating in the Word of God

The Lord is awe-inspiring, fearsome, fascinating, intriguing, majestic, and full of splendor: breathtaking! Here is what I saw of him and what came to my heart and mind in Exodus 8:6-7,

"So Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt, and the frogs came up and covered the land. But the magicians did the same things by their secret arts; they also made frogs come up on the land of Egypt."

Some of the signs the Lord used through Moses to compel Pharaoh to allow the Israelites to leave were duplicated by Pharaoh's court magicians. Aaron brought frogs by stretching out his hand over "the waters of Egypt" (actually the Lord did when Aaron did what the Lord told him to do.) In 7:22 we read that Pharaoh's magicians duplicated the plague of blood, and in 7:11-12 these magicians also duplicated what Aaron had done when he threw his staff down and it turned into a snake.

What is going on here? Does magic really work? Can people duplicate the miracles of God through "magic arts"? We are told these magicians performed their miracles "by their secret arts." 7:11; 7:22; 8:7. However, when they could not duplicate the plague of gnats, they claimed, "This is the finger of God", 8:19. Finally we read, "The magicians could not stand before Moses because of the boils that were on them and on all the Egyptians." Exodus 9:11.

Recall the Lord told Moses that he would harden Pharaoh's heart for his own purposes when he sent Moses to Pharaoh to request the Israelites be let go. It is my belief that the "secret arts" of these magicians had nothing to do with their ability to perform the miracles Moses and Aaron performed by the power of God. Rather, the Lord enabled these magicians to perform these miracles as they sought to perform them through their secret arts. It was to help accomplish what the Lord intended: harden Pharaoh's heart against the Israelites. If Pharaoh, through is magicians, could duplicate the miraculous performed by God's people, then why should he be intimidated by them?

I notice that when time came for the plague of gnats, Pharaoh no longer needed the support of his court magicians for his heart to remain hard. It was now fully fixed and so these magicians were no longer able to do what they had been doing in the prior plagues. The Lord no longer needed to use these magicians to insure Pharaoh's heart to be hardened and so no longer enabled these magicians.

It is an example of the Lord using wicked people to bring about the outcomes he desires. Just as the Lord brought about the occupation of Israel by idolatrous nations in the book of Judges, just as he destroyed the northern ten tribes of Israel through Assyria, just as he had his Son betrayed by Judas Iscariot, the Lord uses wicked people to his own ends. Amazing to think about.

I could certainly be wrong here. This is just my perspective (and I'm not going to fall on my sword to defend it). Regardless, the account of Moses and Aaron's confrontation with Pharaoh is an astonishing, exciting, and breath-taking event that took place almost three and a half millenia ago.

Anything of the Lord capture your heart from Scripture today? Share what moved you about him from your Bible reading today. I'd love to hear from you!

If you have someone you would like to receive these ruminations, send me their email address. I'm happy to add them to the list. If you are receiving this and would like to be removed from the list, just respond and let me know.

Trevor Fisk

trevor.fisk@gmail.com