Day 50 – Moses & Pharaoh

Day 50… that’s another mini milestone. Well done, and keep going!

• Today we see what happens when Moses and Aaron meet with the Pharaoh to ask for the release of the slaves. Spend a moment or so thinking about what they were asking for… nothing less than for Egypt to let go of their entire free labour force of over half a million people! What sort of response do you think Moses and his brother expected as the walked up the steps to Pharaoh’s palace?
• How did Pharaoh respond when Moses asked for permission for the Hebrew people to leave for three days?
• What did Pharaoh order instead? Notice in Exodus 5:10 that when the Pharaoh’s orders were delivered, the phrase “thus says Pharaoh” is used, echoing the words by Moses in the first verse when he says “thus says the Lord”. What does this show us about what the Pharaoh thought of himself?
• How do you think Moses and Abraham must have felt as the Pharaoh’s order was sent out? How did the slaves react to what Moses and Abraham had done? Exodus 5:21 will help. It’s a pretty grim situation, isn’t it? Do you think this is how Moses imagined things were going to pan out?
• Have you ever had a difficult or strained relationship with someone you were trying to help, but ended up making things harder for them instead? Or perhaps can you recall a time when you honoured God but it seemingly just caused more difficulties? How did you deal with these situations?
• How did God reassure Moses in the authoritative words in the first half of Exodus 6? What did God remind Moses of? How many “I will” and “I am” phrases can you count?
• Consider God’s timing verses our timing. Does this story remind us to trust in God?

As you wrap up your notes and your time in the bible today, think about the bigger situation for a minute. Imagine you hadn’t read Genesis and you had started reading at Exodus instead. The Israelites are slaves in a foreign land, and Moses is struggling in his early attempts to follow God’s instructions to help the people. God’s commands seem to be causing more problems than there were before! What a mess, huh?!

But God can do anything, can’t He? So… why are we reading this story of His people in distress? Why didn’t God just wave a “magic wand” and fix the problem?

God could, you might suppose, create for us a world in which He fixed any problem before it started. Why do you think He chooses not to do this? At its root, it’s basically the same question as “Why is there suffering in the world?”. To answer it, we need to go back to Genesis, which is exactly why we read it before Exodus! You’d want to consider the perfect world God created in Genesis 1 & 2, the problem of Genesis 3, the rescue plan rooted in Jesus and the promise of Revelation 21 (check it out if you haven’t read it before!).

Why not try writing down an answer to this question in your journal, and write it in the way you might want to explain it if a non-Christian friend asked you to tell you why God doesn’t fix everything the minute we have a difficult situation. I’d be really interested to see what you write when we next meet up.