Day 22

Today is Sunday, November 8th, and this is Daily Bread, Bible in a Year, thanks for tuning in.

Welcome to Daily Bread, Bible in a Year. It's Sunday, day 22, and this is your look at the week ahead.

Grace Okay, this feels like a big week. We finish Genesis, we start Exodus, and in Matthew things get clearer and more serious all at once.

Ben That is exactly it. Genesis has mostly followed one family God chose, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and how God kept his promises to them even when life looked anything but promising.

Grace Even when they kept getting in their own way.

Ben Even then. And by the end of Genesis that family is safe in Egypt, but they are not home. Then Exodus opens much later, that family has become a whole people, and Egypt is not safe anymore.

Grace That jump surprised me the first time I read it. Joseph is honoured one moment, and then a new Pharaoh comes along who does not even know Joseph, and Gods people are enslaved.

Ben Right. So if Genesis is God making promises, Exodus is God keeping them in power. It is one of the great rescue stories that the rest of the Bible keeps looking back to.

Grace So what are the moments we really should not miss this week, especially if this is all new?

Ben First, do not rush past Josephs last words. He is dying in Egypt, he has lived a long life there, but he tells his brothers that God will surely come to their aid and bring them up out of that land.

Grace And he makes them promise to carry his bones with them when that happens. I love that human detail. He is making plans for a future he will not live to see.

Ben It is faith looking forward. Genesis ends with a coffin in Egypt, which sounds like an ending, but Joseph is basically saying, this is not the end.

Grace And then the second moment has to be Moses at the burning bush.

Ben Yes. Moses is a shepherd and a fugitive at that point, not an obvious hero, and God meets him and says he has seen the misery of his people, he has heard them crying, and he is sending Moses to bring them out.

Grace And God gives his name there, I AM WHO I AM. That always stops me. It is not God making himself smaller so we can manage him, it is God saying, I am here, I am real, I will be who I will be.

Ben And he is personal, not distant. He sees, he hears, he comes down to rescue. That tells you so much about his character before anything else happens.

Grace The third moment is Passover, surely. After all the plagues, there is this meal, a lamb, blood on the doorframes, and God passes over those homes and brings his people out that night.

Ben That is the climax. It is tense and tender at the same time. God judges Egypt, but he also provides a way for his people to be sheltered, and then he leads them out as a free people.

Grace Can we stay with the plagues for a minute though, because I think that is the part that might puzzle or trouble a first-time reader. Sometimes it says Pharaoh hardened his heart, sometimes it says God hardened it, and the final plague is genuinely hard to read.

Ben It is hard, and I do not think we are meant to skim over that. One helpful thing is to notice the order. Pharaoh hardens his own heart again and again first. He has enslaved these people, and remember, he is the one who ordered Hebrew baby boys to be killed.

Grace So God is not lashing out at innocent people out of nowhere. Pharaoh has been refusing, warning after warning.

Ben Exactly. God sends signs, he gives time, he sends Moses back repeatedly, and Pharaoh keeps saying no because letting them go would cost him his power and his workforce. In the end, God confirms Pharaoh in the direction Pharaoh has chosen. Judgment is real, but it is not impulsive.

Grace That helps. Read it slowly, notice Gods patience, and notice who Pharaoh has been hurting long before God steps in.

Ben And notice too that it is not told as a celebration of death. It is a rescue from oppression, and it leaves you taking God and evil both seriously.

Grace Now in Matthew, we get a moment that feels just as pivotal. Peter says to Jesus, you are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.

Ben That is the turning point in Matthew. The crowds have been guessing who Jesus is, and now the disciples say it out loud. And almost immediately Jesus starts telling them plainly that he must go to Jerusalem, suffer, be killed, and be raised.

Grace Which Peter really does not like. He wants the Messiah without the cross.

Ben Most of us can relate to that. And then comes the transfiguration, Jesus shining with glory on the mountain, and Moses and Elijah appear beside him. That cannot be a coincidence in the same week we meet Moses at the burning bush.

Grace I was hoping you would go there. So Moses, who led the first exodus out of Egypt, is standing next to Jesus.

Ben And the voice from heaven says, this is my Son, listen to him. Moses pointed Gods people toward rescue, but Jesus will lead an even bigger one, not just out of slavery in Egypt, but out of slavery to sin and death.

Grace And Passover points to Jesus too, does it not? Later Jesus will share a Passover meal with his disciples and talk about his body and his blood. So when we read about the lamb this week, we are meant to store that away.

Ben We are. In Exodus, Gods people are sheltered through the death of a lamb. Christians call Jesus the Lamb of God because at the cross he takes the judgment himself so others can go free. Exodus gives us the pattern, Jesus fulfils it.

Grace That also makes sense of the forgiveness teaching in Matthew this week. There is that parable of a servant who is forgiven an enormous debt, and then refuses to forgive someone who owes him almost nothing.

Ben Yes, rescued people are meant to become merciful people. God hears the cry of the oppressed in Exodus and frees them, and in Matthew Jesus is forming a community that does not copy Pharaohs hard heart, but forgives because they have been forgiven.

Grace So maybe that is a lens for the whole week. Pharaoh keeps hardening his heart, Joseph dies trusting, Moses learns who God is, and the disciples are learning who Jesus is and what it will mean to follow him.

Ben And hanging over it all is that question Jesus asks his disciples, who do you say I am. It is the same God speaking in both parts of the reading, the God who says, I have seen, I have heard, and I have come to rescue.

Grace Bones, a bush, and a lamb on one side, and a confession, a mountain, and forgiveness on the other. There is a lot to watch for, but it all seems to be telling one story.

That's the week ahead. Tomorrow we start reading, so we'll see you then.

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