Deuteronomy 6:5

“Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength.”

 

Here is a brief summary of religion, containing the first principles of faith and obedience. Jehovah our God is the only living and true God; he only is God, and he is but One God. Let us not desire to have any other. The three-fold mention of the Divine names, and the plural number of the word translated God, seem plainly to intimate a Trinity of persons, even in this express declaration of the unity of the Godhead. Happy those who have this one Lord for their God. It is better to have one fountain than a thousand cisterns; one all-sufficient God than a thousand insufficient friends. This is the first and great commandment of God’s law, that we love him; and that we do all parts of our duty to him from a principle of love; My son, give me thine heart. We are to love God with all our heart, and soul, and might. That is, 1. With a sincere love; not in word and tongue only, but inwardly in truth. 2. With a strong love. He that is our All, must have our all, and none but he. 3. With a superlative love; we must love God above any creature whatever, and love nothing but what we love for him. 4. With an intelligent love. To love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, we must see good cause to love him. 5. With an entire love; he is ONE, our hearts must be united in his love. Oh that this love of God may be shed abroad in our hearts!

To love the Lord our God with “all our heart” is NOT enough to fully please Him in our daily walk. It takes much more than that. It actually takes loving God different ways to fully please Him and to fulfill His calling upon our life.

The people of Israel had many customs and laws that seem unusual to us. They were still a rather wild people and hard to control. Their ideas of wrong and right were not the same as ours, and their tribal customs were different from our family traditions. One of their customs was that of the avenger of blood. Accidents happened in the wilderness. People got angry and killed each other. When that happened, the victim’s tribe appointed an avenger of blood to take revenge. The person would find whoever killed their relative and kill him in turn. If he couldn’t find the person, he would kill a close relative. This happened whether the first death happened on purpose or by accident. It wasn’t a fair system and innocent people often died.

God knew that he couldn’t order this to stop. The people hadn’t listened to Moses and they wouldn’t listen to Joshua. But maybe he could change the custom in such a way to protect innocent people. After the land had been divided up, Joshua chose six cities and made them cities of refuge. These cities were spread around the land, so everyone was only one or two days away from one. They were also built on high places, so they could be seen from far away. If a person accidentally killed another person (or even if he did it on purpose), he would run to the nearest city of refuge. The avenger of blood would chase after him. If he caught the man before he got to the city of refuge, he would kill him. But if the man made it safely to the city, the avenger could not do anything.

The elders of the city of refuge would look into the case and see if the murder was an accident or had been done on purpose. If it had been done on purpose, they sent the killer out of the city, and the avenger of blood usually got him. But if he had not meant to kill anyone, he was allowed to stay there and farm some land especially set aside for innocent people. He would stay there until the high priest of the nation died and was replaced by a new high priest. When that happened, he was free to go home and no one could hurt him. The six cities of refuge were Kedesh, Shechem, Hebron, Golan of Bashan, Ramoth of Gilead, and Bezer.

REFERENCE:

- www.chicagoubf.org

Numbers 30:2 (New International Version)

“When a man makes a vow to the LORD or takes an oath to obligate himself by a pledge, he must not break his word but must do everything he said.”

 

How many times have we made a promise to God on doing or maybe not doing something? I think we did it a lot of times; we call it our word but may before it was vows. In this verse, the command given is that these vows be conscientiously performed: We shall not break our word, though afterwards we may change his mind, but we shall do according to what we have said. Vowing is an ordinance of God; if we vow in hypocrisy we blaspheme that ordinance: it is plainly determined; it is better not vow than vow and not pay.

According to one author, when a person vows a vow unto the Lord, making God a party to the promise and designing his honor and glory in it. The matter of the vow is supposed to be something lawful: no one can be by his own promise bound to do that which he is already by the divine instruction prohibited from doing. Many similar vows might be made in an extraordinary heat of holy zeal, in humiliation for some sin committed or for the prevention of sin, in the pursuit of some mercy desired or in gratitude for some mercy received. It is of great use to make such vows as these, provided they be made in sincerity with due caution. Vows as they say are the hedge of separation, that is, a fence to religion. He that vows is here said to bind his soul with a bond. It is a vow to God, who is a spirit, and to him the soul, with all its powers, must be bound. A promise to man is a bond upon the estate, but a promise to God is a bond upon the soul. Our vows concerning that which before was in our own power, when they are made, are bonds upon the soul likewise.

What we have in Exodus is this: God says at the beginning that he will harden Pharaoh’s heart (Ex 4:21, 7:4-5). The hardening of Pharaoh’s heart is then described in several different ways:

* Pharaoh’s heart became hard (Ex 7:13, 23)

* Pharaoh hardened his heart (Ex 8:15, 32)

* God hardened Pharaoh’s heart (Ex 9:7, 10:20)

However, when the Bible says Pharaoh hardens his heart, it also says that this happened “just as the Lord had said” (Ex 8:15). In particular, consider Exodus 9:34-10:2:

When Pharaoh saw that the rain and hail and thunder had stopped, he sinned again: He and his officials hardened their hearts. So Pharaoh’s heart was hard and he would not let the Israelites go, just as the LORD had said through Moses.

Then the LORD said to Moses, “Go to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his officials so that I may perform these miraculous signs of mine among them that you may tell your children and grandchildren how I dealt harshly with the Egyptians and how I performed my signs among them, and that you may know that I am the LORD.”

In other words, Pharaoh’s hardening his heart is considered to be the same as God hardening Pharaoh’s heart. I take this to mean that Pharaoh did the actual hardening, as we see it – he decided on his own to not listen to God and let the Israelites go. But God knew in advance what Pharaoh would do in any given situation, and deliberately placed Pharaoh in this situation wherein God decided that Pharaoh would be born at the time and place that he was and thus placed him in this position of power (Exodus 9:13-16.) Thus God brought about the situation, namely that Moses would encounter a pharaoh whose heart was hardened against God, though Pharaoh hardened his heart of his own free will.

REFERENCE:

            - www.rationalchristianity.net

Leviticus 26: 1 (New International Version)

“Do not make idols or set up an image or a sacred stone for yourselves, and do not place a carved stone in your land to bow down before it. I am the LORD your God.”

We are constantly being warned. We have yellow flashing lights to warn us that we are in a school zone, and buzzing radar detectors, to tell us that a radar trap is nearby. A yellow light warns us that a red light is soon to follow. As a rule, yellow lights warn us about what is soon to happen, while red lights tell us it has happened. The flashing red lights on the dash of our cars inform us of an engine malfunction, or that an emergency vehicle is nearby, or that we are about to be cited by a policeman for violating the law.

We are so accustomed to warnings, and so used to them proving to be groundless, that we have learned to take them in our stride—indeed, to ignore them. Leviticus 26 is one of the clearest words of warning in the Pentateuch. It is reiterated more emphatically later on in the 28th chapter of Deuteronomy. The Israelites did not heed this warning and they paid a severe penalty for doing so.

A lot of times we have the tendency to ignore what is very much expected from us of shall we say we usually do what is not suppose to be done and we don’t do what is specially asked God. One of the main things that were mentioned most by God is about not making ourselves our own gods even though we do it consciously or unconsciously. Our Lord God demands so much for us to worship Him alone and no one else. We may not technically say that we don’t make our own selves our god but the mere fact that we are too absorbed with ourselves shows one or if not a family or a love one take over the place. Hopefully by God’s grace we do overcome such trait; day by day we glorify God by making Him our only one because by not hearing the warning we know that consequences and punishments awaits.

The problem is that the biblical account never refers to the Red Sea by name. In fact, nowhere in the entire Old Testament Hebrew text is the body of water associated with the exodus ever called the “Red Sea.” Instead in the Hebrew text the reference is to the yam suph. The word yam in Hebrew is the ordinary word for “sea,” although in Hebrew it is used for any large body of water whether fresh or salt. The word suph is the word for “reeds” or “rushes,” the word used in Ex. 2:3, 5 to describe where Moses’ basket was placed in the Nile. So, the biblical reference throughout the Old Testament is to the “sea of reeds” (e.g., Num 14:25, Deut 1:40, Josh 4:23, Psa 106:7. etc.).

Now the simple fact is, we do not know exactly what body of water is referenced by yam suph in Scripture, which is the origin of much of the debate. The translation “Red Sea” is simply a traditional translation introduced into English by the King James Version through the second century BC Greek Septuagint and the later Latin Vulgate. It then became a traditional translation of the Hebrew terms. However, many modern translations either translate yam suph as “Sea of Reeds” or use the traditional translation and add a footnote for the Hebrew meaning.

Historians have not positively identified the cities of Ramses and Pithom mentioned in the Exodus account (1:11), but many locate them in the Nile Delta near an archaeological site identified as the store city of Ramses. The route of the escape is then generally identified, at least in the early stages of the flight from Egypt, to be south from the store city of Ramses in the eastern Nile delta to the Bitter Lakes region. These are shallow lakes and marshy areas just to the north of the Gulf of Suez. The crossing of the sea would then be across these lakes and marshes, the yam suph where the miracle of deliverance occurred.

REFERENCE:

Dennis Bratcher, Copyright © 2006, Dennis Bratcher, All Rights Reserved

Exodus 33:19-20 (New International Version)

And the LORD said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the LORD, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. But,” he said, “you cannot see my face, for no one may see me and live.”

What is the glory of God? Can we see it? Can we feel it? Are we ready to see God’s glory? I don’t know because I’m not quite sure. Have you ever tried questioning God about how the things in our world work? And then it made you realized that what if God will explain it to you detail by detail, do you think your intellectual capacity can handle it? Maybe that is the reason why God never did try to tell us everything… Maybe it’s also the main reason why He doesn’t reveal to us His whole glory… Because we can’t handle it!

God explained to Moses that no one could see his face and live and offered to hide Moses as his glory passed by. God also equated his glory with his goodness. It also carries with it the idea of beauty, gladness and welfare. To define the glory of God we must go further than the light. The light is the brilliance of his glory. God’s glory is everything that makes up God; his authority, power, and sovereignty. Psalmists wrote that the heavens declare the glory of God and that his glory is above the heavens and earth. (Psalm 19:1; 113:4; 148:13) His glory is much more than we can comprehend; the depth of his goodness exceeds our grasp.

The church is desperate for the glory of the Lord to once again fill the temple. When his glory comes, his manifest presence, people change. Once we have experienced the wonder of his glory we will be ruined to everything we have known as church. In the presence of his majesty man’s agendas disintegrate. Only in a place where self has died can God take up habitation. Let us clear our schedules and make a place for the God of glory to call home.

Doesn’t anyone remember history? Doesn’t anyone remember the previous chapter to this story? Doesn’t anyone remember how God intervened? How the Hebrews were used to save the country, the ancestors of the very people who are now mistreating us? Doesn’t anyone remember Joseph? No. Not this king.

Under the traditional dating of the Exodus ca. 1446-45 BC, one would add 430 years this would give a date around 1876-75 BC. The Pharaoh of Joseph would be Senostris III. It is also commonly agreed that the Hyksos came to power about 1750 BC. This would fit in right nicely with the phrase, “‘Now there arose a new king over Egypt, who did not know Joseph.” The text refers to a “new king,” not a “new pharaoh.” Maybe this would indicate a “non-Egyptian King.” If not, then it would have to refer to the new pharaohs during 1550 BC who revolted against the Hyksos and drove them out of Egypt.

If the Later Date of the Exodus is used then the 430 years added to the date of Seti I, Rameses II and an Exodus date of 1290-1275 BC would give 1730 BC. This would be the time of Joseph arriving in Egypt and coming to power about 20 years after the Hyksos arrival. Possible date for Joseph to be somewhere between 1705 BC – 1730 BC.

In a word, it appears that the biblical, historical, and archaeological data are best served by theorizing that it was a Hyksos monarch before whom Joseph stood as an interpreter of dreams (Gen. 41:14-37) and who later ceded a choice parcel of land (Goshen) to Joseph’s family (Gen. 47:6). According to such a theory, the “new king” of Exodus 1:8 whom possibly we can call “Ahmose” would have been one of the native Egyptian monarchs of the New Kingdom who, as part of his Hyksos purge, resolutely refused to recognize the validity of the Goshen land grant. Discerning in the Israelites a multitude who might very well join with his Asiatic enemies in war, this new king moreover acted quickly to enslave the Israelites.

REFERENCE:

The Moody Atlas of Bible Lands, Barry J. Beitzel, Ph.D)

Exodus 4:10-12 (New International Version)

Moses said to the LORD, “O Lord, I have never been eloquent, neither in the past nor since you have spoken to your servant. I am slow of speech and tongue.” The LORD said to him, “Who gave man his mouth? Who makes him deaf or mute? Who gives him sight or makes him blind? Is it not I, the LORD ? Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say.”

 

It seems that Moses had a physical handicap in speaking, or at least a fear of speaking to a group. Thus, Yahweh appointed Aaron to be the spokesman for Moses. Is this really what the problem was, or could there have been a different one?

This verse speaks of Moses as being a highly educated man, one who could work and speak well. He knew the Egyptian hieroglyphics. As a diplomat in the Pharaoh’s court, he would have used Babylonian cuneiform, which was the dominant writing system for international correspondence. He was in contact with teachers, foreign emissaries, and various alphabets. Therefore, not only was he highly educated, but he also was able to speak well. He lived at a time when a Semitic authority standardized the form of the North Semitic alphabet.

Was it that Moses stuttered and feared to speak to anyone publicly or did he have a problem in being thrust into a language environment that he did not know or he just didn’t want to do what God wants him to do?

How many times have we been like this? We pride ourselves in the things we have achieved for we even boast on the educational degree we have attained but when God calls us to do a specific task for him, what do we do? We give him a lot of reasons! It is really sad when God has given us wonderful gifts that we usually use selfishly. We always claims that we are great, we know a lot and we can do it on our own without pausing for just a minute to recognize the giver of such knowledge and skills yet when God wants us to do something for Him that is of importance, we shun away and tell Him that we can’t. That our capabilities are limited! Oh, why are we so? We can never rationale with God with what we can and we cannot do for in the first place He knows what we can and we cannot do…

        The Egyptian records speak of Apiru while those written in Akkadian refer to Habiru. These ‘Apiru/Habiru are often describe as displaced people, disturbers of the peace malcontents who harassed the Ancient Near East during the second and third millennia. Not infrequently these ‘Apiru/Habiru hired themselves out as mercenaries.

           The word “Hebrew” derives from “Habiru.” However, one must bear in mind that “Habiru” is originally a sociological, not an ethic, term.  It is significant that “Hebrew” occurs in the Book of Exodus especially when the sojourn in Egypt and the Egyptians oppression are concerned. It is likely that a process of assimilation took place: ancestors of the Israelites who had freely gone down to Egypt later became assimilated to other ‘Apiru/Habiru. Since such ancestors are semi nomadic herders, they would obviously have resented a change in their lifestyle whereby they were reduced to a slave labor force.

            Some scholars speculate that the Israelites did not peak Hebrew as their original language but adopted it from their Canaanite neighbors when they moved into that territory. However, the weight of linguistic evidence from around the world speaks against such supposition. We simply do not have sufficient knowledge of those times to say which language resided in which territory by which group of people and how the people and the languages may have moved and mixed from one area to another. But we now know with a wealth of explicit evidence that Hebrew is the language in which the Scriptures were written, and they are among the most ancient documents we have.

            Some Egyptian monuments mention an enigmatic people: the “Apiru”. In one of these was carved on the stone walls a scene depicting men working at a wine press. Beneath the picture was a title which ran: “Straining out wine by the Apiru”. Scholars immediately recognized the similarity of the word “Apiru” to “Hebrew”, with a scene depicting manual labour, as described in Exodus for Hebrew people under bondage in Egypt.

REFERENCE:

            The Collegeville Bible Commentary: Based on the New American Bible by Robert J. Karris