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For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.Eph 2:9 |
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| Archived Manna: | |
Dear
Friend,
If you do not already have a habit of gathering daily manna the first thing in the morning (we can look at the example given to us in Exodus 16 and find the pattern for make it a habit. Establish your life and your schedule to allow you the necessary time to do your daily collection first thing every morning to give you the strength to make it through the day. And remember that today’s manna will not be sufficient for tomorrow; tomorrow’s manna must be collected tomorrow morning. Sunday, June 7, 2026
Today's Passage : Today's Passage :Making Bricks Without Straw Bible Verse: Exodus 5:1-12 "Afterward Moses and Aaron went and said to Pharaoh, “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Let my people go, that they may hold a feast to me in the wilderness.’” But Pharaoh said, “Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, and moreover, I will not let Israel go.” Then they said, “The God of the Hebrews has met with us. Please let us go a three days’ journey into the wilderness that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God, lest he fall upon us with pestilence or with the sword.” But the king of Egypt said to them, “Moses and Aaron, why do you take the people away from their work? Get back to your burdens.” And Pharaoh said, “Behold, the people of the land are now many, and you make them rest from their burdens!” The same day Pharaoh commanded the taskmasters of the people and their foremen, “You shall no longer give the people straw to make bricks, as in the past; let them go and gather straw for themselves. But the number of bricks that they made in the past you shall impose on them, you shall by no means reduce it, for they are idle. Therefore they cry, ‘Let us go and offer sacrifice to our god.’ Let heavier work be laid on the men that they may labor at it and pay no regard to lying words.” So the taskmasters and the foremen of the people went out and said to the people, “Thus says Pharaoh, ‘I will not give you straw. Go and get your straw yourselves wherever you can find it, but your work will not be reduced in the least.’” So the people were scattered throughout all the land of Egypt to gather stubble for straw. " Message:
Pharaoh is the prototypical jerk boss. He is a bully with complete power. How would we feel if we asked our boss, “Can I have three days off to attend my sister’s wedding?” and he answered, “If you have so much idle time you can just take off for three days, you don’t have enough to do,” and then gives you additional work instead of the time off you’d requested. We’d start looking for another job — and this is just what God has planned.
Egyptian tomb painting of slaves making bricks
Egyptian tomb painting
Of course, the stakes are higher for the Hebrews; they are slaves and Pharaoh has life-and-death power over them. And most of us do not have jobs approaching the harshness of making mud bricks in the hot Egyptian sun, from dawn to dusk.
But Pharaoh has not simply treated the Hebrews cruelly; he has also interfered with the worship of the one true God, the God of real power. The Hebrews are not asking for a long weekend in the Bahamas, but rather, time to make obeisance to the Lord. Pharaoh certainly mistreats the Hebrews; but he makes an even greater mistake by effectively preventing God from being worshipped.
Pharaoh asks “Who is Yahweh,” meaning two things. First, he simply doesn’t know who God is. But more, it is a statement of disdain: Who does this “Yahweh” think he is, to give orders to the Pharaoh of Egypt? He then refuses to use the name again, paraphrasing their request as “let us go and sacrifice to our god” as if Yahweh is just another half-man, half-beast statute.
Pharaoh’s concept of a god does not give him the background even to understand what Moses and Aaron are saying. He thinks that they are, essentially, lying. Like every nonbeliever, then as now, God’s Word is just a bunch of nonsense that impedes his ability to set his own terms for life, a silly morality invented by someone else to impede his creative power and interfere with his enjoyment of life.
And we must also enjoy seeing, in context, one of the most famous phrases of the Bible, when Moses (speaking for Yahweh) first says: “Let my people go!”
Meditation : Prayer : May the word I have read, Lord, be planted deeply in my mind and heart. Help me not to walk away and forget it, but to meditate on it and obey it and so build my life on the rock of your truth. Amen. |
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