God's Warning to Pharaoh (Ex. 8:20-21)

3/31/2008 9:24 PM

SPIRITUAL DIARY

My Worship Time           Focus:  God’s warning to Pharaoh

Bible Reading & Meditation               Reference:  Exodus 8:20-21

            Message of the verses:  “20 ¶  Now the LORD said to Moses, "Rise early in the morning and present yourself before Pharaoh, as he comes out to the water, and say to him, ‘Thus says the LORD, "Let My people go, that they may serve Me.  21  "For if you do not let My people go, behold, I will send swarms of insects on you and on your servants and on your people and into your houses; and the houses of the Egyptians will be full of swarms of insects, and also the ground on which they dwell.”

            God tells Moses and Aaron to get out of bed early to go and meet Pharaoh as he goes down to the Nile River to make some sort of religious ceremony.  Pharaoh was suppose to be descended from the gods, and was in fact suppose to be a god himself, and so this was something that he had to do as a god, for the Nile River was also worshiped by the Egyptians.  God tells Moses and Aaron that they should tell Pharaoh to let His people go, and if he did not let them go God was going to send a series of insects on all of Egypt, swarming insects that would be a great burden to the people of Egypt.  It is kind of hard to find out just what kind of insects that God was going to sent upon Egypt, as I looked up some of the commentary on this verse there were various ideas as to what these bugs were, but one thing most of them agreed on was these bugs were going to drive the Egyptians mad.

            Spiritual meaning for my life today:  The verses today make up a new chapter in Dr. Wiersbe’s book that he has written on Exodus, and the section that I should be going over for the next few days is entitled “Bargaining.”   God will give Pharaoh some options, which he will turn down, and then plagues will be given to Pharaoh and Egypt as the bargaining goes on.  Pharaoh did not obey God, but that should not be the case for me.  Dr. Wiersbe writes that “it’s only when we obey God that we can truly enjoy His blessings.”

My Steps of Faith for Today:  I want to trust the Lord to give me the grace to be able to handle the Bi-Polar Mood Disorder that Sandy has.  She does not respond in what I would consider normal ways and therefore it causes distress for me.

Memory verse for the week:                       Philippians 3:8

8.  More than that, I count all things to be loss in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but rubbish so that I may gain Christ.