What a service it has been! It was filled with lively discussions, definite agreements and disagreements. All in all it had a general theme of awe. You would not be a child of this town if you did not question certain ethics surrounding the workings of God. One of the specific things that featured during the discussion was if God actually instructed Moses to lie or if the intent initially was for the Israelites to go for the 3 day service to God and then return to Egypt and into slavery, even though the long term goal was to go to the Promised Land? Why did God then, from the Israelites’ perspective, harden the pharaoh’s heart? All this said and done we didn’t really reach a conclusion, seeing as both camps had equal reason and in the end we settled on agreeing to disagree.

 The other prominent theme that came forth was the theme of blood and forgiveness/ blood and salvation. Blood always seems to be a very prominent theme when it comes to the restoration of relationship between God and humanity, as a confirmation of a covenant or bond. The struggle of Moses’ death and the circumcision of his son, the touching of that blood to him which led to set him free. This connects to  Jesus’ death, that it is His blood that restores the whole relationship between God and man. It is interesting to see this theme surfacing this early within the Old Testament and also links to the golden thread of God’s involvement to restore humanity.

 Where are we now? We reached the point where Moses saw God in the burning bush, he had the conversation with God, they did the miracles. Moses was almost killed because he wasn't circumcised, but his wife circumcised his son. Then we come up to the point where he spoke to the pharaoh for the first time. Being uniquely trained within the confines of growing up as a pharaoh’s child, Moses was in the privileged position to be able to have an audience with the pharaoh. Once again it just symbolizes how God moves a person that is uniquely qualified for a position. Moses speaks to the pharaoh and the pharaoh decides that if the Israelites have enough time for worship they have enough time to do labour that his people have been doing, as well as still having to meet their quota of work as before. Obviously the response from the Israelites was to reject Moses at this point in time, because he increased their burden.

 To some of the members this was. a comparison to the journey of their faith. The moment you start really connecting with God, the devil wants to get hold of you and separate you from God by increasing your trails and tribulations in life. The story of Moses and Israel, the increased suffering before the actual leaving of Egypt, symbolises this pressure that the devil places on people when they step into relationship with God. In a certain saying confirming what Jesus said “I didn’t come to bring you peace right now”, which is basically saying, it will get worse before it will get better. It proves a psychological understanding of how life becomes more challenging when we start facing our issues and we  and start living for God.

 We understand the Bible as the inspired Word of God but yet from a human understanding it makes it so much more clear cut to understand how God is involved in this world . The jury is still out on how exactly to interpret that.

• < Prev
• Next >