Slavery

Exodus 1:10

Israel’s mistreatment by the Egyptians provides the background and motivates their redemption. Pharaoh did not allow them to follow Moses into the wilderness to worship the Lord and thus denied a measure of their religious freedom. But their oppression as workers in the Egyptian economic system is what really gets our attention.

God hears the cry of his people and does something about it. But we must remember that the people of Israel do not groan because of work in general, but because of the harshness of their work. In response, God does not deliver them into a life of total rest, but a release from oppressive work.

The Israelites’ Slave Labour in Egypt. (Exodus 1:8-14) The work that the Egyptians forced on the Israelites was evil in motive and cruel in nature. The opening scene presents the land as filled with Israelites who had been fruitful and multiplied.

This echoes God’s creational intent (Genesis 1:28; 9:1) as well as his promise to Abraham and his chosen descendants (Genesis 17:6; 35:11; 47:27). As a nation, they were destined to bless the world. Under a previous administration, the Israelites had royal permission to live in the land and to work it.

But here the new king of Egypt sensed in their numbers a threat to his national security and thus decided to deal “shrewdly” with them.

come, let us deal shrewdly with them, lest they multiply, and it happen, in the event of war, that they also join our enemies and fight against us, and so go up out of the land.”

We are not told whether or not the Israelites were a genuine threat. The emphasis falls on Pharaoh’s destructive fear that led him first to degrade their working environment and then to use infanticide to curb the growth of their population.

Work may be physically and mentally taxing, but that does not make it wrong. What made the situation in Egypt unbearable was not only the slavery but also its extreme harshness. The Egyptian masters worked the Israelites “ruthlessly” and made it bitter.

Exodus 1:13-14, So the Egyptians made the children of Israel serve with rigor. ¹⁴ And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage—in mortar, in brick, and in all manner of service in the field. All their service in which they made them serve was with rigor. As a result, Israel languished in “misery” and “suffering” (Exodus 3:7) and a “broken spirit” (Exodus 6:9).

Exodus 3:7, And the Lord said: “I have surely seen the oppression of My people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows.

Exodus 6:9, So Moses spoke thus to the children of Israel; but they did not heed Moses, because of anguish of spirit and cruel bondage. Work, one of the chief purposes and joys of human existence was turned into a misery by the harshness of oppression. God’s Call to Moses

Exodus 2:11-3:22 Although Moses was a Hebrew, he was raised in Egypt’s royal family as the grandson of Pharaoh. His revulsion to injustice erupted into a lethal attack on an Egyptian man he found beating a Hebrew worker.

This act came to Pharaoh’s attention, so Moses fled for safety and became a shepherd in Midian, a region several hundred miles east of Egypt on the other side of the Sinai Peninsula. Moses lived there for 40 years during that time he married and had sons. In addition, two important things happened.

• The king in Egypt died,
• Lord heard the cry of his oppressed people and remembered his covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

Exodus 2:23-25, Now it happened in the process of time that the king of Egypt died. Then the children of Israel groaned because of the bondage, and they cried out; and their cry came up to God because of the bondage. ²⁴ So God heard their groaning, and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. ²⁵ And God looked upon the children of Israel, and

God acknowledged them. This act of remembering did not mean that God had forgotten about His people. It signalled that He was about to act on their behalf. For that, he would call Moses. God’s call to Moses came while Moses was at work. The account of how this happened comprises six elements that form a pattern evident in the lives of other leaders and prophets in the Bible.

1. God confronted Moses. God got Moses’ attention at the scene of the burning bush (Exodus 3:2-5). A brush fire in the semi-desert is nothing exceptional, but Moses was intrigued by the nature of this one. Moses heard his name called and responded, “Here I am”

Exodus 3:4, So when the Lord saw that he turned aside to look, God called to him from the midst of the bush and said, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.”

This is a statement of availability, not location. 2. God introduce Himself. The Lord introduced himself as the God of the patriarchs and communicated his intent to rescue his people from Egypt and to bring them into the land he had promised to Abraham.

Exodus 3:6-9,

3. God Commissions Moses

God commissioned Moses to go to Pharaoh to bring God’s people out of Egypt.

Exodus 3:10, Come now, therefore, and I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring My people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.”

4. Objection by Moses. Moses objected the idea.

Exodus 3:11, But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and that I should bring the children of Israel out of Egypt?” Although he had just heard a powerful revelation of who was speaking to him in this moment, his immediate concern was, “Who am I?”

5. Assurance of God’s presence

In response to this, God reassured Moses with a promise of God’s own presence.

Exodus 3:12, So He said, “I will certainly be with you. And this shall be a sign to you that I have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.” 6. Confirmation with Signs.

God spoke of a confirming sign.

Exodus 3:12, So He said, “I will certainly be with you. And this shall be a sign to you that I have sent you: When you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall serve God on this mountain.” God’s Work of Redemption for Israel (Exodus 5:1-6:28) In the book of Exodus, God is the essential worker.

The nature and intent of that divine work set the agenda for Moses’ work and through him, the work of God’s people. God’s initial call to Moses included an explanation of God’s work. This droves Moses to speak in the name of the Lord to Pharaoh saying, “Let my people go”

Exodus 5:1, Afterward Moses and Aaron went in and told Pharaoh, “Thus says the Lord God of Israel: ‘Let My people go, that they may hold a feast to Me in the wilderness.’ ” Pharaoh’s rebuttal was not merely verbal. He oppressed the Israelites more harshly than before. By the end of this episode, even the Israelites themselves had turned against Moses.

Exodus 5:20-21, Then, as they came out from Pharaoh, they met Moses and Aaron who stood there to meet them. ²¹ And they said to them, “Let the Lord look on you and judge, because you have made us abhorrent in the sight of Pharaoh and in the sight of his servants, to put a sword in their hand to kill us.”

It is at this crucial point that in response to Moses’ questioning God about the entire enterprise, God clarified the design of His work. What we read here in Exodus 6:2-8 pertains not only to the immediate context of Israel’s oppression in Egypt. It frames an agenda that embraces all of God’s work in the Bible.

It is important for all Christians to be clear about the scope of God’s work, because it helps us to understand what it means to pray for God’s kingdom to come and for His will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. The fulfilment of these intentions is God’s business.

To accomplish them, He will involve the full range of His people, not merely those who do “religious” work. Coming to a clearer understanding of God’s work equips us to consider better not only the nature of our work but the way God intends for us to do it.

After an initially assuring response to Moses’ critical question about God’s mission (Exodus 5:22- 6:1), God frames His more extended response with the words “I am the Lord” at the beginning and the end (Exodus 6:2, 8).

This key phrase differentiates the paragraph and gives the content especially high priority. It reveals God’s own name and therefore speaks to who He is. He is the covenant-making, promise-keeping God who appeared to the patriarchs.

The work God is about to do for His people is therefore grounded in the intentions that God has expressed to them. Namely, these are to multiply Abraham’s descendants, to make his name great, and to bless him so that through Abraham, God would bless all the families of the earth (Genesis 12:2-3).

God’s work then appears in four parts. These four redemptive purposes of God reappear in various ways throughout the Old Testament and even give shape to the pinnacle of God’s redemptive work in Jesus Christ.

• a. The work of deliverance.

Exodus 6:6, Therefore say to the children of Israel: ‘I am the Lord; I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, I will rescue you from their bondage, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great judgments. Sometimes we use the word salvation to describe this activity of God, but we must be careful to avoid understanding it either in terms of rescue from earth to heaven or as merely forgiveness of sin.

The God of Israel delivered his people by stepping into their world and effecting a change “on the ground.” Exodus not only shows God’s deliverance of Israel from Pharaoh in Egypt.

• b. The Lord will form a godly community.

Exodus 6:7, I will take you as My people, and I will be your God. Then you shall know that I am the Lord your God who brings you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians.

God did not deliver His people so they could live however they pleased, nor did He deliver them as isolated individuals. God intended to create a qualitatively different kind of community in which His people would live with Him and one another in covenantal faithfulness.

Every nation in ancient times had their “gods,” but Israel’s identity as God’s people entailed a lifestyle of obedience to all of God’s decrees, commands, and laws.

Deuteronomy 26:17-18, Today you have proclaimed the Lord to be your God, and that you will walk in His ways and keep His statutes, His commandments, and His judgments, and that you will obey His voice. ¹⁸ Also today the Lord has proclaimed you to be His special people, just as He promised you, that you should keep all His commandments, As these values and actions would saturate their dealings with God and each other. Israel would increasingly demonstrate what it genuinely means to be God’s people.

• c. Ongoing relationship between God and His people.

Exodus 6:7, I will take you as My people, and I will be your God. Then you shall know that I am the Lord your God who brings you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. All the other statements of God’s purpose begin with the word I except this one. Here, the focus is on you.

God intends His people to have a certain experience of their relationship with God who graciously rescued them. It means that Abraham and family had not yet personally experienced the significance of this name as descriptive of their promise-keeping God who would fight on behalf of His people to deliver them from slavery on a national scale.

Ultimately, this is taken up by Jesus, whose name “Emmanuel” means God “with us” in relationship. (Matthew 1:23)

• d. God wants His people to experience good life.

Exodus 6:8, And I will bring you into the land which I swore[g] to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; and I will give it to you as a heritage: I am the Lord.’ ”

God promised to give Abraham the land of Canaan. It is a land of promise and provision. The regular and positive description of it as “flowing with milk and honey”

Exodus 3:8, So I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Amorites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites. Highlights its symbolic nature as a place in which to live with God and God’s people in ideal conditions, something we understand as the “abundant life.”

Here again we see that God’s work of salvation is a setting to right of His entire creation—physical environment, people, culture, economics, and everything. Four redemptive purposes. 1. The Slaves needs salvation. The Israelites were literal slaves under a cruel tyrant. Their parents and grandparents had been slaves for as far back as anyone knew. During the time of Moses’ birth, Pharaoh had given orders to kill all Israelite baby boys.

Years later, when Moses went to Pharaoh to demand that he let Israel go, Israel’s misery as slaves got worse. Pharaoh commanded that they had to gather their own straw to make bricks, while keeping their quotas the same. So, the Israelites knew their miserable condition as slaves. They knew that they needed deliverance from their bondage.

Israel’s literal condition as slaves was a picture of the universal human condition. We all are born in slavery to sin, captives in Satan’s domain of darkness.

Colossians 1:13, He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love,

2 Timothy 2:26, and that they may come to their senses and escape the snare of the devil, having been taken captive by him to do his will.

John 8:34, Jesus answered them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, whoever commits sin is a slave of sin. Paul also describes our condition outside of Christ as being “slaves of sin”

Romans 6:17, But God be thanked that though you were slaves of sin, yet you obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine to which you were delivered.

But the problem is, many who are captives of Satan, enslaved to sin, don’t realize their true condition.

• They are not walking around in chains, listening to a brutal slave-driver yell at them to get their quotas of bricks made.
• They don’t feel his lash on their backs.
• Rather, they’re doing rather well. Life is good.

• They have comfortable homes, two or more cars, plenty to eat, paid vacations, and good retirement plans.
• They don’t look like slaves or feel like slaves.
• So, they don’t see their need for salvation.

Salvation may be nice for religious types, but they want the freedom to run their own lives. They like to have their weekends free, rather than feeling obligated to go to church. They like to keep their money for personal pleasure, not feel like they need to give to the church. In their minds, if anyone is enslaved, it’s the religious crowd.

So, how do we tell people the good news about salvation when they think that they are doing just fine as they are? Like trying to sell an icemaker to an Eskimo! What is needed is the ministry of the Holy Spirit!

John 16:8-11, And He, when He comes, will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment; concerning sin, because they do not believe in Me; and concerning righteousness, because I go to the Father and you no longer see Me; and concerning judgment, because the ruler of this world has been judged. “Convict” means “to convince,” as in a court of law.

The Holy Spirit must convince those in slavery to sin about their true condition.

• He must convince them of their sin of unbelief.
• He must convince them that they fall short of God’s perfect standard of righteousness, as seen in Jesus Christ.
• He must convince them about the coming judgment.

So, we need to pray that the Holy Spirit would open the eyes of those we know who slaves of sin to their true condition are. One effective way to help people see that they are slaves to sin who need the Saviour is going over the law before you tell people about God’s love and grace. Walk people through the Ten Commandments to show that they have broken every single one. They are guilty before the Holy God!

Only when the Holy Spirit opens their eyes to see their condition as slaves of sin that they might be open to their need for salvation. 2. Rejecting God’s means of salvation is death.

Exodus 11:1, And the Lord said to Moses, “I will bring one more plague on Pharaoh and on Egypt. Afterward he will let you go from here. When he lets you go, he will surely drive you out of here altogether. Moses’ remarks that he began in Exodus 10:29. He warns Pharaoh of God’s threat of the death of all Egypt’s firstborn, both of people and of cattle.

But because of Pharaoh’s hard heart and the awful consequences that Moses could see coming.

Exodus 11:8, And all these your servants shall come down to me and bow down to me, saying, ‘Get out, and all the people who follow you!’ After that I will go out.” Then he went out from Pharaoh in great anger. You may think, however, that it was unfair of God to harden Pharaoh’s heart or killing all the first born.

Exodus 11:10, So Moses and Aaron did all these wonders before Pharaoh; and the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he did not let the children of Israel go out of his land.

Exodus 11:5, and all the firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on his throne, even to the firstborn of the female servant who is behind the hand mill, and all the firstborn of the animals. Who probably hadn’t even heard about the encounters between Moses and Pharaoh and who wouldn’t have known about the requirement to put the blood of a sacrificial lamb on her doorposts? Regarding Pharaoh, there is a mystery that we cannot fully fathom, but we must accept if we believe in the Bible as God’s Word.

Romans 9:18, Therefore He has mercy on whom He wills, and whom He wills He hardens. At the same time, people are responsible for their sins.

We aren’t free to challenge God on this. When Paul raises this issue, he anticipates our objection.

Romans 9:19, You will say to me then, “Why does He still find fault? For who has resisted His will?” Paul’s answers.

Romans 9:20, But indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, “Why have you made me like this?” In other words, “Sit down and shut up! God is God and you are not God!” Regarding the slave girl who had no knowledge of God’s impending judgment and yet suffered the loss of her firstborn, I admit that this is difficult to understand.

Acts 14:16, “In the generations gone by He [God] permitted all the nations to go their own ways.”

God has permitted many to live and die without hearing the gospel. I know that God is perfectly just and fair. He knows every thought and deed of every person. No one will be judged unfairly. So, I must leave that difficult question there.

But we need to see clearly that the issue in salvation is life or death. In the exodus, God made a distinction between Egypt and Israel.

Exodus 11:5-7, and all the firstborn in the land of Egypt shall die, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on his throne, even to the firstborn of the female servant who is behind the handmill, and all the firstborn of the animals. ⁶ Then there shall be a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, such as was not like it before, nor shall be like it again. ⁷ But against none of the children of Israel shall a dog move its tongue, against man or beast, that you may know that the Lord does make a difference between the Egyptians and Israel.’ His salvation of Israel meant life for them. His judgment on Egypt meant death for them.

1 John 5:12, He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life.

John 3:36, He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.” Thus, the people who need salvation are slaves. The penalty for rejecting God’s means of salvation is death. 3. Salvation through the blood of an acceptable sacrifice. In Exodus 12, God gives Moses specific directions for Israel regarding the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread, which immediately followed.

• a. The lamb (or goat) needed to be sufficient for each person in each family.

Exodus 12:4, And if the household is too small for the lamb, let him and his neighbour next to his house take it according to the number of the persons; according to each man’s need you shall make your count for the lamb.

This pictures that salvation must be applied by everyone. Being a member of a Christian family or a Christian church is not enough. You must personally apply God’s means of salvation.

• b. The lamb was to be “an unblemished male a year old”

Exodus 12:5, Your lamb shall be without[a] blemish, a male of the first year. You may take it from the sheep or from the goats.

This pictures Christ, our Passover Lamb.

John 1:29, The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!

1 Corinthians 5:7, Therefore purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us.

John 8:46, Which of you convicts Me of sin? And if I tell the truth, why do you not believe Me?

1 Peter 2:22, “Who committed no sin, Nor was deceit found in His mouth”; If Jesus had been a sinner, He would have had to offer sacrifices for Himself, as the Jewish priests had to do.

Hebrews 7:26-27, For such a High Priest was fitting for us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and has become higher than the heavens; ²⁷ who does not need daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifices, first for His own sins and then for the people’s, for this He did once for all when He offered up Himself.

• c. The lamb was to be selected Nisan 10th, but not sacrificed until 14th.

Exodus 12:2, & 6, ² “This month shall be your beginning of months; it shall be the first month of the year to you. ⁶ Now you shall keep it until the fourteenth day of the same month. Then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it at twilight.

This pictures that Christ was marked out for death before He was actually slain.

1 Peter 1:19-21, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot. ²⁰ He indeed was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was manifest in these last times for you ²¹ who through Him believe in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.

Peter’s reckoning, a day with the Lord is as a thousand years.

2 Peter 3:8, But, beloved, do not forget this one thing, that with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day. If Peter worked within the traditional chronology of the Bible, which reckons the coming of Christ at four thousand years after Creation, then his concept of Christ, the Passover lamb ‘chosen before the creation of the world,’ would fit the requirement of the lamb chosen four days before the Passover.” Scholars debate the exact time that the lamb was to be slain, (Exodus 12:6) but some believe that Jesus died on the cross at the same time that the Passover lambs were being killed at the temple.

Then the Israelites were to put some of the blood on the two doorposts and the lintel of their houses. They were to roast the lamb with fire and eat it that night along with unleavened bread and bitter herbs.

Exodus 12:8, Then they shall eat the flesh on that night; roasted in fire, with unleavened bread and with bitter herbs they shall eat it.

The fire may represent the fact that God’s true Passover Lamb had to endure the fire of God’s wrath on the cross. The bitter herbs were a reminder of the bitterness of Israel’s centuries of slavery in Egypt. The unleavened bread reminded them of the purity required of those whom God delivered from slavery.

Eating bread in the Bible also points to fellowship. Thus, we partake of the communion bread as a symbol of fellowship with the crucified and risen Lord Jesus Christ. The Passover was to mark the beginning of the New Year for Israel.

This is a reminder that God’s salvation by the application of Christ’s blood marks the beginning of new life for the believer. God promised that when He saw the blood on the doorposts and lintels of the Israelite homes, He would pass over them and not strike down their firstborn.

All who were under the blood would be safe.

4. God’s salvation is obedient faith. Paul uses the phrase, “the obedience of faith”

Romans 1:5, Through Him we have received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith among all nations for His name,

Romans 16:26, but now made manifest, and by the prophetic Scriptures made known to all nations, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, for obedience to the faith— Obedient faith is opposed to the dead faith.

James 2:17, Thus also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

• a. Obedient faith takes God at His word and acts on it.

To kill the lamb, eat it in the prescribed manner, and put the blood on the doorposts and lintel, required taking God at His word. Their obedience was evidence of their underlying faith.

Hebrews 11:28, “By faith [Moses] kept the Passover and the sprinkling of the blood, so that he who destroyed the firstborn would not touch them.”

Exodus 12:28, Then the children of Israel went away and did so; just as the Lord had commanded Moses and Aaron, so they did. If an Israelite questioned or doubted God’s word to Moses by saying, “This doesn’t make sense,” or, “Why do I need blood? That’s gross!” his firstborn would have died. If he said, “I am vegan and believe in animal rights; I am not going to kill and eat a lamb!” his firstborn would have died.

Obedient faith takes God at His word and acts on it.

• b. Obedient faith is the only genuine faith.

To say, “I really respect Moses and Aaron and I believe what they say,” but not to have applied the blood would have meant that your firstborn died. James and Paul were not at odds. Both believed that genuine saving faith obeys God’s word.

Ephesians 2:8-9, “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.”

But don’t forget verse 10.

Ephesians 2:10, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.” Genuine saving faith necessarily results in the obedience of good works. This is what James meant when he wrote that faith without works cannot save, because it is dead. Obedient faith is the only genuine faith.

• c. Obedient faith is seen in the ongoing holiness of God’s people.

“The Israelite did not put away leaven in order to be saved, but because he was saved.” He then points out that the penalty for eating leavened bread was to be cut off from the congregation of Israel.

Exodus 12:19, For seven days no leaven shall be found in your houses, since whoever eats what is leavened, that same person shall be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he is a stranger or a native of the land. Which answers to the church putting out of their fellowship those who persist in known sin.

The Passover with its application of the blood of the lamb pictured our salvation, when by faith we apply Christ’s shed blood to our hearts. But the Passover was followed by the Feast of Unleavened Bread, picturing the fact that those who are saved must clean out the leaven of sin and be set apart unto God, who is holy.

1 Corinthians 5:7-8, Therefore purge out the old leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you truly are unleavened. For indeed Christ, our Passover, was sacrificed for us. ⁸ Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

• d. Obedient faith passes the faith down to your children.

The Lord instructs Israel.

Exodus 12:24-27, And you shall observe this thing as an ordinance for you and your sons forever. ²⁵ It will come to pass when you come to the land which the Lord will give you, just as He promised, that you shall keep this service. ²⁶ And it shall be, when your children say to you, ‘What do you mean by this service?’ ²⁷ that you shall say, ‘It is the Passover sacrifice of the Lord, who passed over the houses of the children of Israel in Egypt when He struck the Egyptians and delivered our households.’ ” So the people bowed their heads and worshiped. Later generations when they lived in the land which the Lord would give them, and their children asked the meaning of the Passover. Do the fathers were to say, “Go ask your mother!”? No!

They were to explain the meaning of God’s salvation to their children. In the same way, Christian parents should explain to their children the message of salvation as pictured in water baptism and communion. To be baptized and partake of the Lord’s Supper, children should be old enough to understand the gospel clearly and give some evidence that they have personally believed in Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord.

They should be able to grasp the basic meaning of both ordinances, which picture the reality of saving faith.

• e. Obedient faith results in God’s people possessing the wealth of the nations.

It is mentioned and repeated.

Exodus 11:2-3, Speak now in the hearing of the people, and let every man ask from his neighbour and every woman from her neighbour, articles of silver and articles of gold.” ³ And the Lord gave the

people favour in the sight of the Egyptians. Moreover the man Moses was very great in the land of Egypt, in the sight of Pharaoh’s servants and in the sight of the people.

Exodus 12:35-36, Now the children of Israel had done according to the word of Moses, and they had asked from the Egyptians articles of silver, articles of gold, and clothing. ³⁶ And the Lord had given the people favour in the sight of the Egyptians, so that they granted them what they requested. Thus they plundered the Egyptians.

The Israelites asked the Egyptians for articles of silver, gold, and clothing, and that God granted them favour so that the Egyptians complied. I don’t know whether the Egyptians were thinking, “Take this and get out of here before another disaster strikes!” or that they gave because they highly esteemed Moses.

But it was God’s way of providing Israel with necessary provisions for their time in the wilderness, and the materials that they later needed to build the tabernacle. The application for the church today is that when we obey the Great Commission, God blesses us with the wealth of the nations—not material wealth, but rather people from every tongue, tribe, and nation worshiping around God’s throne.

Conclusion

A prominent soap manufacturer and a Christian were once walking along a city street as the Christian was explaining the gospel to the businessman. But the businessman objected. “If what you say is true, why is there so much evil in the world?”

The Christian was struggling with how to answer when he saw a little boy sitting on the curb. His face, hands, and clothes were filthy. The Christian asked, “I thought that you manufactured soap.” “I do,” said the man.

“If that is so, why is this boy so dirty?” The businessman replied, “The soap must be applied.” “Exactly,” said the Christian. “The work of Christ on the cross must be applied.” Have you applied the sacrificial blood of Jesus to your heart?

Believing in general that Jesus died on the cross to pay for your sins is not enough. You must recognize your desperate condition as a slave to sin, under God’s just condemnation. But then you must exercise obedient faith by putting your trust in Christ as your substitutionary Lamb.

If your faith is genuine, you will then seek to grow in holiness.