October 14th
Exodus 13:1-14:31; Matthew 27:45-66; Proverbs 4:20-27
When I first watched this on the BBC News website, I so wish that I had gone and had a look at the Bible. Exodus 18:21 “and the Lord drove the sea back with a strong East wind”. Rather than challenging the Bible this study backed up exactly what was written thousands of years ago.
Just quickly dropping in things we have seen before, notice that the angel is knocking about going before the people and hanging around behind them when they camp. There for protection then and still here today.
But what is really important today is the relationship between God and the people. Today marks a huge part of the story of the people of Israel, right at the end yesterday the people were just leaving but today really covers the start of that journey. And what we start with is basic manners, saying thank you for everything God has done. God has sparred their first-born and he has saved them from slavery and so this whole starting passage is all about saying thank you. Offering your firstborn to God, a bit like us giving stuff to God’s work today because of everything he has done for us. It really helps a relationship when we use manners and God wanted a good relationship with his people, a two way relationship.
But then it goes pear shaped. The people just can’t stop whinging and this is something that you will have to get used to. If there is one thing that the people of Israel are good at in the Exodus, it is having a good whine. Hear they have a go at Moses because they feel that God has let them down, they would have preferred to have stayed in Egypt and died as slaves rather than in the middle of nowhere. They obviously didn’t see the angels hovering around protecting them and they also seemed to have forgotten the plagues and what God did to get them out. The gratitude has gone out of the window.
The Gospel of course gives us the real reason that we should be thankful. The crucifixion has been spread over a couple of days but today we come to the death of Christ. These events: the darkness, the ripping of the temple curtain, the earthquake, the dead raising, show us how cataclysmic this event is. It quite literally rocks the world, it changes religion, it reaches beyond the grave. Life changing and world changing stuff. Now is that not something to give thanks to God for.
Perhaps the lesson for today is that we have to trust God. Even when we feel as though he is far away, we feel as though we are in the real thick of it, God is there, and if we look, we can see the good stuff that he is doing. It is often good to say thank you even when we don’t feel like it, so find that think to say thank you to God for today.
When I first watched this on the BBC News website, I so wish that I had gone and had a look at the Bible. Exodus 18:21 “and the Lord drove the sea back with a strong East wind”. Rather than challenging the Bible this study backed up exactly what was written thousands of years ago.
Just quickly dropping in things we have seen before, notice that the angel is knocking about going before the people and hanging around behind them when they camp. There for protection then and still here today.
But what is really important today is the relationship between God and the people. Today marks a huge part of the story of the people of Israel, right at the end yesterday the people were just leaving but today really covers the start of that journey. And what we start with is basic manners, saying thank you for everything God has done. God has sparred their first-born and he has saved them from slavery and so this whole starting passage is all about saying thank you. Offering your firstborn to God, a bit like us giving stuff to God’s work today because of everything he has done for us. It really helps a relationship when we use manners and God wanted a good relationship with his people, a two way relationship.
But then it goes pear shaped. The people just can’t stop whinging and this is something that you will have to get used to. If there is one thing that the people of Israel are good at in the Exodus, it is having a good whine. Hear they have a go at Moses because they feel that God has let them down, they would have preferred to have stayed in Egypt and died as slaves rather than in the middle of nowhere. They obviously didn’t see the angels hovering around protecting them and they also seemed to have forgotten the plagues and what God did to get them out. The gratitude has gone out of the window.
The Gospel of course gives us the real reason that we should be thankful. The crucifixion has been spread over a couple of days but today we come to the death of Christ. These events: the darkness, the ripping of the temple curtain, the earthquake, the dead raising, show us how cataclysmic this event is. It quite literally rocks the world, it changes religion, it reaches beyond the grave. Life changing and world changing stuff. Now is that not something to give thanks to God for.
Perhaps the lesson for today is that we have to trust God. Even when we feel as though he is far away, we feel as though we are in the real thick of it, God is there, and if we look, we can see the good stuff that he is doing. It is often good to say thank you even when we don’t feel like it, so find that think to say thank you to God for today.
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