Reading from Saturday, January 30

Well, I missed my first day of blogging, but definitely intend to catch up. I will do Saturday's entry now, and the reading for today, this evening.


I did miss the entry for good reason though: I was down visiting my friends from ORB. It was really great spending time with everyone again, and being at the ORB worship service this morning made me miss it so much. It just feels like home there. And while our new church, Metro, is great - we have just such strong ties at ORB. So Jilly and I were talking about going down to ORB Sunday service a little more often. I would really really like that, so we will see if we can make that happen and get up early enough on Sunday to do that.

Cool. So here's the reading for Saturday.

Reading for Saturday, January 30

Exodus 10:1-12:13
Right out of the gate here - its as though God heard my questions about his making the Egyptians stubborn, he further elaborates on his motives:

 ¹ Then the Lord said to Moses, “Return to Pharaoh and make your demands again. I have made him and his officials stubborn^[a] so I can display my miraculous signs among them. ² I’ve also done it so you can tell your children and grandchildren about how I made a mockery of the Egyptians and about the signs I displayed among them—and so you will know that I am the Lord.”

This still doesn't sound like a loving a graceful God - torturing one group of people to save another. This was, however, still under the 'eye for an eye' mentality.  When Jesus died on the cross, it took away God's need to seek retribution - hey look at me drawing conclusions!

OK - now see, this is making me angry again. Moses brings the plague of the locusts, and they devour every living plant in all of Egypt. Pharaoh is like "OK, seriously...I'm a jerk. I'm sorry to you and to your God. Your people may go." But then God 'hardens his heart' AGAIN! Pharaoh was ready to give in! He even confessed his sins to a God that wasn't part of the Egyptian custom and belief system.

Furthermore, what about all of the oppressed people in the world today? What plagues are being brought against their oppressors? What is God doing to set those people free? Maybe there are plagues of locusts in Tibet, and we're just not hearing about them...?

Then you will know that the Lord makes a distinction between the Egyptians and the Israelites.

OK, I guess this makes more sense now. I had just spent some time reading through Acts before I started this whole Bible project, and there was a part where Peter had a dream that convinced him that everyone on Earth is worthy of God's love and compassion and message, while in the Old Testament, God was only focused on the Isrealites.

However, what God is referring to here is killing all of the firstborn sons of Egypt. Pretty heavy stuff. This also triggers the first passover. God told all the Israelites living in the land of Egypt to slaughter a young lamb with no defects, eat that lamb for dinner, and smear the blood of the lamb over their door. God was to come down that night and kill all of the first born of Egypt, but for those who had blood on their door, he would "pass over" their house. See what he did there.

The other interesting thing here is 'why would God need an indicator of which houses were Egyptian and which houses were Israeli?' I don't think he did need it - the blood over the door frame represents two things as I see it:

1) It was an act of obedience to God, and one that I would imagine would be pretty easy to follow. If I heard God was going to come and kill all the bulldogs in Westwood, I would do whatever he told me to do for him to not kill Kreacher. So he was giving the Israelites an exercise in obedience.

2) The slaughter of a lamb with no defects is fairly, if not blantantly, symbolic of Jesus - a blameless, defect free, lamb of God. And accepting Jesus' sacrifice and 'smearing his blood' over the door to our hearts will protect us from God's wrath and the pitfalls of being a human.

Chris De La Cruz - are these interpretations anywhere close to being right?
Pete Mitchell - what am I overlooking?
 
Matthew 20:1-28 
A cool parable, a prediction, and a good lesson about serving others
I've heard the parable of the landowner many times, and I've heard a few sermons on it. I think this parable is a direct revoking of the way God treated the Egyptians in the book of Exodus. Here's the parable in a nutshell:

There's a guy who owns land. Let's call him Gary. Gary goes out at 6AM to hire workers to work his land. He tells them that at the end of the day, he tells them that he will pay them whatever is fair. He goes out again at 9AM, 12 Noon, 3PM and 5PM and hired workers to work until the end of the work day which was 6PM. At 6PM, Gary calls all his workers to get paid. The workers who were hired at 5PM received their payment first, and they all recieved a full day's wage. The workers who started at 6AM saw that and said "oh man, if the people who only worked one hour, got a full day's wage, we'll probably get a lot more!" Well, they all got the same amount of money.

I think this represents (again) two things:
1) Whether you come to God early in life, or late in life we will all recieve equal blessings and God will love us all equally. By extension you should not feel entitled or "deserving" of anything based on what you've done for God. As if doing good deeds stores up credit for God's blessings.
2) Same thing as above, but all people on the earth are worthy of God's love, no matter who you are.

The rest of this reading focuses on Jesus once again predicting his arrest, torture and death - with remarkable details. He also speaks about himself in third person. I wonder if that was a psychological "crutch" because to say all these things are going to happen to "me" would be terrifying I think. Even to God himself.

Then he talks about serving others, with the ultimate message here saying "I came to serve others, not to be served." So we shouldn't focus on being a leader among eachother, but just to serve eachother. So do that - be good to eachother.

Psalm 25:1-15

 ¹² Who are those who fear the Lord?
      He will show them the path they should choose.
 ¹³ They will live in prosperity,
      and their children will inherit the land.
 ¹⁴ The Lord is a friend to those who fear him.
      He teaches them his covenant.
 ¹⁵ My eyes are always on the Lord,
      for he rescues me from the traps of my enemies.

Still searching for answers on fearing God. These two verses show the result of fearing God, but not what it means to fear him. I still need to do more searching on this.

Proverbs 6:6-11
I should post this in my cubicle at work.

 ⁶ Take a lesson from the ants, you lazybones.
      Learn from their ways and become wise!
 ⁷ Though they have no prince
      or governor or ruler to make them work,
 ⁸ they labor hard all summer,
      gathering food for the winter.
 ⁹ But you, lazybones, how long will you sleep?
      When will you wake up?
 ¹⁰ A little extra sleep, a little more slumber,
      a little folding of the hands to rest—
 ¹¹ then poverty will pounce on you like a bandit;
      scarcity will attack you like an armed robber.

Alright! I seem to go a lot deeper into the interpretation when I'm not about to fall asleep. I need to start doing this earlier. I will do the reading for today later tonight.

Love all the time.