From our Tuesday Morning Bible Study:
A former Supreme Court Justice once said of the court: "We are not final because we are infallible. We are infallible because we are final." He was speaking of how the Supreme Court's rulings are unimpeachable because the Court has the last say. While theoretically, he was wrong because of the checks and balances of the Constitution; in reality, a U. S. Supreme Court ruling is about inviolable as any decree of man that exists today. In many ways, the Supreme Court has close to absolute power. That should be scary to people.
You may be wondering now how this relates to the Tuesday Bible Study on the Exodus. The connection is this; Pharaoh had absolute power. It is doubtful that anyone has ever dominated a nation as the Pharaohs dominated ancient Egypt. The Pharaohs had such power and self-focus that they would spend a great deal of their reign, not to mention the national budget, building monuments to themselves, many of which still stand today. Not only that, Pharaoh was considered to be a god so his decrees were not just the decrees of a king but of a divine being. The power of modern-day presidents and congressmen pales in comparison to the power of Pharaoh.
Pharaoh's absolute power is probably the reason Paul uses him as the prototype for those who would oppose God's purposes but who must ultimately bend to God's will.
For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” (Romans 9:17)
When Pharaoh refused to release the Israelite slaves, his mighty power was of no concern or consequence to God whose divine purposes do not require the cooperation of man. Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon, another mighty man who opposed God, realized this when God turned him insane for a period of time. Afterward, He wrote of the Lord God:
I blessed the Most High, and praised and honored him who lives forever, for his dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom endures from generation to generation; all the inhabitants of the earth are accounted as nothing, and he does according to his will among the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth; and none can stay his hand or say to him, “What have you done?” (Daniel 3:34-35)
We need to remember these lessons today. Our hearts grow burdened when we see many in the leadership of our nation promoting ideas and policies that directly and explicitly contradict God's word and His divine law. Though the power of these people cannot be compared to the power of a Pharaoh or a Nebuchadnezzar, they arrogantly presume to change laws and customs that have existed for centuries, if not millennia.
As an example, last week, the Supreme Court of the state of Iowa ruled that marriage must be redefined to extend beyond a man and a woman. Yesterday, the Vermont state legislature did the same thing, overturning thousands of years of law, not to mention explicit commands of God, in establishing homosexual marriage. These judges and legislators claim to be doing good even as they despise God's law.
We also see the increase in government funding for those brutal organizations that profit from the killing of unborn children. All the while, the political leaders who support them speak of the "service" these murderers provide as if it was a virtue. In all of this, the condemnations of Scripture are made more clear:
Woe to those who call evil good
and good evil,
who put darkness for light
and light for darkness,
who put bitter for sweet
and sweet for bitter! (Isaiah 5:20)
Though we may be frustrated and dismayed by much of what we see in our nation today, we need not dispair. We must remember the lesson of the Exodus. As with Pharaoh, God will have the final say. He will not allow His laws to be violated with no consequence. In fact, such evil only exists because God permits it so that He may gain greater glory over its inevitable defeat. Let us remember this and praise God through the difficulties knowing that He still rules the hearts of men and the destinies of nations.
Tony
Audio from Tuesday's Study (right click to save)
An End and a Beginning
Handout
From Our Tuesday Morning Bible Study:
Pharaoh in ancient Egypt was thought to be a god. He ruled with absolute power and authority over the mightiest, most prosperous, and most advanced nation of his day. He reigned above all, having no rivals or peers. He thought he had all power...that is, until he was confronted by the One who truly did have all power. Then, he was shown to be the pretender that all men are.
Moses confronted Pharaoh with God's order for him to release the Israelites from bondage. When Pharaoh refused, God brought ten plagues upon the land of Egypt. These plagues came in three sets of three with a final devastating plague. The first set of plagues (blood, frogs, and gnats) were nuisance plagues. They were greatly annoying and inconvenient but not particularly destructive. God was granting Pharaoh the opportunity to repent without having his nation destroyed. Despite the plagues, Pharaoh's heart was hardened and he refused to let the people of Israel go.
The second set of plagues were of a destructive variety (flies, death of livestock, and boils). They added personal pain and financial loss to the inconvenience of the first set of plagues. God was raising the level of discomfort for Pharaoh, granting him the opportunity to obey God without a great loss of human life. Pharaoh, however, remained obstinate. He would not submit to the commands of God to release the slaves.
The final set of plagues (hail, locusts, and darkness) threatened the lives of the Egyptians. The hail killed those left out in the open. Locusts ate all of the green plants in Egypt, affecting the food supply, while darkness represented death itself. Still, even in the face of this overwhelming power, Pharaoh refused to listen to God and release his slaves. He would yet receive one final, horrifying plague that would shake the nation so much that he would release the Israelite slaves from their bondage.
Pharaoh could have saved himself and his nation a lot of devastation if he had simply obeyed God and recognized Him as the sole ruler. Pharaoh was not prepared to do that. He was not ready to admit his need to submit to any God other than himself.
Pharaoh, as the leader of Egypt, was no different than the public leaders that we see today. When was the last time you heard any of them speak of repentance or of the need to humble ourselves before God? I know of none who would have the boldness of Abraham Lincoln in 1863 when he wrote that we "were too proud to pray to the God who made us." (See handout) The United States is in the place of Egypt in the ancient world. We are the most powerful and prosperous nation in the world. In spite of those blessings, we have abandoned God. We feel we are self-sufficient. We no longer recognize that our bounty comes from the generous hand of the Mighty One.
God's power is undiminished, however. If He can bring judgment upon Egypt and Pharaoh, He can bring it upon us. As a nation, we are neither more capable, more intelligent, nor more moral than Egypt. We are just as vulnerable to God's power. Let us pray that our people and our leaders will recognize their need for God before He causes America's blessedness to dissolve into nothingness. May we, as a nation, recognize who is truly in charge.
Tony
Audio and Handout from Tuesday's Study
The Power of Plagues, Part 2
Handout
From our Tuesday Morning Bible Study:
Moses was given a task that would look impossible to most of us. He was to go back to Egypt and confront the most powerful man in the most powerful nation on earth and give him a message that he did not want to hear and would not accept.
God told Moses from the beginning that Pharaoh would not let the Children of Israel go without a mighty demonstration of His power. Like we often do, Moses heard the part of God's message that he wanted to hear. He became totally discouraged when, in his first confrontation with Pharaoh, God's words were proven true. Moses then basically accused God of not backing him up and of not realizing what Moses had tried to tell Him from the beginning...that he was not the man for the job. (Read Exodus 5:22-23)
Moses still had not learned that God's ways are inscrutable. As Paul said in Romans 11:33:
O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past finding out!
God was planning to use the continued resistance of Pharaoh as the occasion to show his power and glory. God did this first by turning Aaron's staff into a snake. When Pharaoh continued to harden his heart, God brought the plagues. Through all of this, God was doing several things:
First, he was demonstrating to Pharaoh, the man who thought he was a god, that there was a God and that it was not Pharaoh. Secondly, God showed His people that He was a faithful God who loved and cared for them. Lastly, God taught Moses to trust Him completely. The Moses that emerged after they left Egypt was a far more settled leader and far more trusting in God.
Remember this when you face difficulties in life. All things that God allows to come your way may not seem good and helpful at the time that they come but God is using them for a far greater purpose in your life. He is teaching you to trust in Him more.
Audio for Tuesday Bible Study:
We have been recording our Tuesday Bible Studies. The files are below. Left-click on the link to listen to a session. If you want to download the file, right-click on it and choose "Save As." We have included the handouts from the study also. You can download them the same way. They are in Microsoft Word format.
Session 1 - Why Egypt?
Handout
Session 2 - The Birth and Early Life of Moses
Handout
Session 3 - From the Desert to the Palace
Handout
Session 4 - The Power of the Plague, Part 1
Handout
Bro. Tony
From our Tuesday Morning Bible Study:
Moses was a man of superior ability. He was raised in the royal household of Pharaoh and had the best education in the most advanced nation in the world of his day. According to the Bible, he was "mighty in his words and deeds" (Acts 7:22). This is quite a statement when you live in the most powerful and sophisticated nation on earth. Josephus, in his history of the Jews, tells us that Moses was a great general in the Egyptian army. That is a great resume'.
This was not all; Moses realized even while in Egypt that God wanted to use him to deliver the Israelites from slavery. (Acts 7:25) Most of us thought that Moses was first called at the burning bush.
Now, to the natural thinking of just about all of us, Moses was the kind of man that God should choose as a leader. After all, he was talented. He was prominent. He was influential, being raised in the household of Pharaoh. This is a man that God could use...or so we think.
God thinks differently.
God's big problem with Moses was that there was still too much of Moses in him. Moses made an abortive attempt to lead the Israelites out of bondage. He killed an Egyptian in defense of a Hebrew slave. It seems that he thought this would prove to his people that God had chosen him as their deliverer. Undoubtedly, he had in mind some kind of military revolt against Pharaoh to free the people. For Moses to think that he could lead a revolt to free Hebrew slaves from the most powerful nation on earth shows a self-confidence that borders on arrogance.
It was not to be.
Moses' efforts resulted in dismal failure. The Israelites rejected him right away, probably from mistrust. When the Egyptians found out about his murder, they were out to get him too, probably thinking correctly that he wanted to lead a rebellion. Moses quickly went from celebrity to fugitive, from insider to outcast. He had no one to turn to so he fled Egypt. Settling in Midian, he married a shepherd girl and took on a new job of keeping the flocks of this father-in-law. As far as he was concerned, his public life was over. He had retired to the simplicity of sheep keeping.
But God was not through with Moses. What Moses did not know then and what we often do not know now is that our greatest times of failure and the times when we seemingly have been put out to pasture, are really times of God's hands-on training in our lives. God often trains his children by putting them through the furnace of affliction. Failure, difficulty, isolation, rejection; these are God's tools to transform us from what we are to that person He can use for his glory.
When Moses' forty years in the desert were completed, he was a vastly different man. He no longer had the brash self-confidence of his youth. Years in the desert had taught him that there was very little that he himself could control. In fact, Moses' self-esteem seems to have been so low that when God finally called him out of the bush, Moses tried every way possible to get out of going back to Egypt. He did not think he could do it.
Now Moses was ready for God's use. Now Moses was ready to understand that God's power, not his own, was the only way the Israelites could be delivered from slavery.
Often, God has to break us down before he can build us anew in His own image and for His service. Our problems are usually with ourselves, problems of pride, selfishness, and misplaced confidence. Only when God transforms our focus from ourselves to Him can we be truly used by Him.
May we recognize God's training program for what it is and submit to His corrections to our lives. They are all for our own good...and for His greater glory.
Tony
Welcome to the Clifton Coffee Shop, a blog of Clifton Baptist Church by your pastor, Tony Hicks.
The first question that some of you may have is, "What is a blog?" The word "blog" is short for "web log." Basically, a blog is a personal web site where where you can post your own thoughts, pictures of your grandchildren, information about your vacation, or even your own gripes. There are multitudes of blogs out there so I thought it would be good if we had one too.
I have been writing on blogs for a few years now. I have a personal blog that you can access at this link. I use it to comment on issues in the Christian world. I also write on a political blog here using a pen name. (I'll let you guess which one I am)
Someone once said of blogging; "Never have so many people with so little to say written so much to so few people." That may be true but blogs are both fun and helpful.
I would like to use this church blog as a tool to communicate with our church. Many of you are active on the internet. Hopefully, this will be something that you will make part of your normal internet habit. Some posts may be an announcement of coming events. Some posts may be devotionals or book reviews. Some may be information pieces and others may be just flat-out opinions. I will try to be clear about what I am doing.
I welcome any suggestions about how to do this best, including the blog name. I have chosen "The Clifton Coffee Shop" but I am open to any better suggestions.
I hope this will be a beneficial endeavor for us all.
Tony
From our Tuesday Morning Bible Study:
