Exodus 4-6 Moses really can't envision himself as the leader of the Israelites. God has to remind him who is really in charge (4:11) Then the LORD said to him, "Who gives speech to mortals? Who makes them mute or deaf, seeing or blind? Is it not I, the LORD? Now go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you are to speak." Then Moses is really frank with God: PLEASE SEND SOMEONE ELSE!!!!!! Can you think of a time in your life when you really wanted to pass the buck and simply decline to do what you sense God might be calling you to do?
What are we to make of God hardening the hearts of Pharaoh and the Egyptians? (4:21 and many other places)
Moses got a better reception this time than he had the previous time from the Israelites: "The people believed; and when they heard that the LORD had given heed to the Israelites and that he had seen their misery, they bowed down and worshiped" (4:31).
Exodus 5--As is often the case when big changes are afoot, things get much worse before they get better. The Israelites suffer more intensely and this occasions Moses' first argument with God (5:22ff): "O LORD, why have you mistreated this people? Why did you ever send me? Since I first came to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has mistreated this people, and you have done nothing at all to deliver your people."
Exodus 6-- God's response is "Just watch!" In this chapter we have another of those often-repeated phrases: God says: "Say therefore to the Israelites, 'I am the LORD, and I will free you from the burdens of the Egyptians and deliver you from slavery to them. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. I will take you as my people, and I will be your God."(6:6-7)
The chapter ends with a genealogy.
Psalm 18:20-50
18:20--"The LORD rewarded me according to my righteousness"--This is a perspective we find often in the psalms and it seems to be in contradiction to what we read in the NT. Is the psalmist wrong?
But keep reading! The psalmist delights in the help that he humbly acknowledges is God's gift to him (vss. 31-35)
Matthew 19: About divorce--Jesus has also spoken about divorce in the Sermon on the Mount. In Jesus' day as in ours marriage is challenging and sometimes people fail in lifelong commitments that they make in good faith. Jesus goes back to Genesis and then adds: "What God has joined together, let no one separate" (19:6). If we believe that Jesus said this, then what are we to do about the failures in our marriages? Is it always a sin to divorce? What do you think? I think it is helpful in answering to note that Jesus says "It was because you were so hard-hearted that Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so." While you and I may not naturally be inclined to call the result of divorce "adultery," as Jesus did, I think we would all acknowledge that sin is always involved in divorce in some way or other.
19:13ff Jesus blesses children. (Matthew seems to group "domestic" subjects together here.)
19:16ff Then Jesus speaks about the challenges of wealth. It is ironic in the extreme that people use the language about "with God all things are possible" to "prove" that they can grow rich and be successful by the measures of the world. Jesus has just said "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God." The disciples ask: "Then who can be saved?" (Apparently they thought of the rich as those who had been blessed by God.) 19:26 reads: "For mortals it is impossible, but for God all things are possible."
19:30 Jesus' concluding words express a recurrent theme of the Gospel: "Many who are first will be last, and the last will be first."
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