God's Move of Power

Exodus 11:1-3 -  The LORD said to Moses, "Yet one plague more I will bring upon Pharaoh and upon Egypt; afterwards he will let you go hence; when he lets you go, he will drive you away completely. Speak now in the hearing of the people,  that they ask, every man of his neighbor and every woman of her neighbor, jewelry of silver and of gold."  And the LORD gave the people favor in the sight of the Egyptians. Moreover, the man Moses was very great in the land of Egypt, in the sight of Pharaoh's servants and in the sight of the people.

The last plague….so bad that even Pharaoh’s heart will soften long enough to beg the Israelites to leave. God knows that the Egyptians will be so devastated that they will try to send the Hebrew slaves away with nothing…so he opens the hearts of the Egyptians to favor the Hebrews…and they give them all the gold and silver jewelry they ask for! Amazing!

Amazing to me because the Egyptians had lost pretty much all their cattle….and crops for that year…they had to dig deep wells for any drinkable water.  Maybe they were scared not to give them anything they ask for…they had seen 9 demonstrations of God’s power…they had suffered terribly.  Maybe Pharaoh had not been fully convinced…but the people of Egypt may have been….enough to hand over the best jewelry they owned to try and prevent the next plague.

Moses was so filled with anger that he stormed out of Pharaoh’s presence. Maybe because he was full of resentment for the way the Israelites had been treated all those years….maybe he was enraged that Pharaoh was so stubborn he would risk the lives of so many Egyptians…maybe he just reached his own breaking point…and the human emotion of holy indignation took over…and he had to vent.

God used all these emotions to prepare the people for their future.  The people collected much of the gold and silver they would later use to build the temporary temple of the wilderness…and Moses gathered strength in his anger to finish the first part of this hard job he had been given to do.  It couldn’t have been easy to pronounce the death sentence God gave him to deliver. At midnight…God is going to move….and the people of Israel are going to be free for the first time in 400 years!

Oh father…I thank you for moving in my life the way you moved in the Hebrews lives so long ago. You know my breaking point…and you always move just before I reach it.  No matter what I do to sidetrack myself…you are there ready to have me collect the things I need for the journey ahead…you are there to show me what to do to free myself from the chains of the world…the trappings that bind me to Satan’s tricks.  Thank you….thank you…and thank you a million times…for your goodness that chases after me…and uses every bad and good thing that happens to teach me how to love you more fully. Amen.