Saturday, July 16, 2011

Doing as Commanded

Today's verse is a lesson to the Israelites. We've jumped through the entire book of Genesis and almost halfway through the second book of the Bible, titled Exodus. Since we've jumped right into the story I'll do a bit of summarizing to get us caught up. The rest of Genesis there are lots of great stories about people who follow God's commands and listen to His voice. There's Abraham, Joseph, Noah, Isaac, and probably more that's not coming to my mind. What we've missed in Exodus is the birth, and hiding of Moses. Moses gets picked up by Egyptian princess as he's floating in his basket down the Nile river. He grows up thinking he's a prince. One day he's walking through town and notices a slave driver beating an Israeli slave. Moses kills the slave driver. The slave gets angry and Moses runs away for fourty years for fear of his life. Moses meets God through a burning bush, God tells him to go back and lead the Iraelites out of Egypt. Moses tries to get out of it, and eventually God says fine take your brother Aaron and he will speak for you. Moses goes back to Egypt and with God on his side does a few miracles to try and get Pharaoh to let the people free. That doesn't work, so God sends plagues, seven to be exact. The last one Moses tells the Israelites to kill the first born lamb and smear the blood over their doorway so that when the spirit of God passes over the house their first born son will not be killed. So Pharaoh tells them to go. Then Pharaoh gets angry and sends the soldiers after them, they get trapped by the red sea start complain, God through Moses splits the red sea and leads the people to safety. Now we've come to a point where Moses had just giving the people a long list of blessings and curses, and commandments to follow. So here is the verse.

Exodus 15:26 saying, "If you will diligently listen to the voice of the Lord your God, and do that which is right in his eyes, and give ear to his commandments and keep all his statutes, I will put none of the diseases on you that I put on the Egyptians, for I am the Lord, your healer."

So this verse is telling the people that if they follow all the commands of God they would never receive the plagues that the Egyptians suffered. We know however that its impossible to keep all the laws, so there is a way out. God has grace for us.

So now we have a new form of grace and it comes through the death of Jesus Christ his son. So if we call upon Christ to be our savior we can receive that grace.

Romans 3:23, 24 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,