THE LORD SPOKE (January 22)

Daily Reflections from Scripture:

Old Testament: Exodus 1-3

It sounds so crass - “if it is a boy, kill him” and “every boy that is born you must throw into the Nile” (Ex. 1:6,22). Not really much worse than our “modern” abortion methods maybe - you still have to get rid of that disconcerting bit of tissue, don’t you? Hide the evidence. Do it quick and don’t think about it too much. O, that more of our nurses today would act like the Egyptian midwives back then. Someone, somewhere needs to say, “No! I won’t do that.” Someone needs to tell the evil abortion doctors they’re wrong and put a stop to this murder.

Someone needs to trust God for the outcome. In fact, we all need to. We need to act with integrity, obedient to God’s Word and to trust Him for the results. So what if it produces some difficulties along the way. They’re petty and inconsequential with eternity’s values in view.

Where would we be if Moses hadn’t been born? Imagine the world without Moses! Yes, it’s true that if he’d been one of the babies tossed to the Nile crocodiles God would have raised up someone else to do the job. But the fact is that Moses lived and God used him to change the entire world for good. God works through people, His wonders to perform, and few there have ever been in the history of mankind who have exercised a greater influence than Moses.

The story of Moses’ birth in Exodus 2 is a marvel of God’s grace. Amran and Jocabed (see Ex. 6:20) play their part as does big sister Miriam, but only God could have worked out such a miraculous deliverance. And then there’s the way He got the prince out of Egypt and gave him a desert education. How else could you come up with just the right combination for the job Moses was destined to do? Forty years in the university system of Egypt and then forty years at MIT/DS - the Midianite Institute of Technology / Desert Style.

When the time came to launch the operation, God performed another wonder. Shepherds don’t easily change professions. Desert rats aren’t comfortable with the idea of going to the big city. Someone who enjoys the solitude of sheep in the field isn’t probably going to jump at the chance to lead two million Chosen People subjected to slavery. But God moved Moses.

He moved him by revealing Himself. The Eternal One let Moses see the edge of His splendor and told him:

"I AM WHO I AM. This is what you are to say to the Israelites: 'I AM has sent me to you.' ...Say to the Israelites, 'The LORD, the God of your fathers - the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob - has sent me to you.' This is my name forever, the name by which I am to be remembered from generation to generation. (Ex. 3:14-15)

The very next word was “Go” (Ex. 3:16) and Moses went. He never flagged for the next forty years. His leadership changed a nation permanently. In fact, it has continued to go on from generation to generation right down to the present.

Will you follow the Lord like Moses?


New Testament: Matthew 22

They were all coming to Him with their “questions”. The Pharisees tried repeatedly (vs. 15,34,41) but the Sadducees (vs. 34) and the Herodians (vs. 16) tried also to get in their licks. They all came away licking their own wounds. Even when they plotted together (vs. 15-16) they were unable to stump Him. He beat them repeatedly by the power of His Word. Each time the crowd and those who heard Him were amazed (vs. 22,33,46). His words left them speechless, astonished, and without a comeback.

With the Herodians, who thought they could get Him to speak against Herod’s tax system (not a hard thing to do in first century Jerusalem), He turned it around to remind them that they were created in the image of God and that God expected an even higher tax of them (vs. 21).

The Sadducees didn’t believe in the resurrection so, with them, He cut straight to the chase. He silenced them (vs. 34) with His words and told them, “You’re wrong because you don’t know what the Bible says!” Rather than arguing with them, that should also be our response today with the cults and false thinking that surrounds us! (By the way, make sure you know what the Bible does say yourself.)

The Pharisees were the toughest nut to crack. With them, Jesus didn’t wait for their questions. He got it started by asking them some hard questions: “What do you think about the Messiah? Whose Son is he?” When they came back at Him with their neat little, memorized answers, He challenged them on their own turf. To the Bible-thumpers of His day, He posed a Bible question that a child could have answered but, because it would destroy their whole theological system, they turned away without a response (vs. 46). In fact, they studiously avoided Him thereafter because they were afraid to get trapped again in His words.

And so, the living Word of God (Jn. 1:1) used the written Word of God to establish truth and make His case. We can do no better, for Scripture is “quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword” (Heb. 4:12). It is the Bible that penetrates even the thickest skin.

It did mine.