March 28 elevate review

We took a broad brush review of the plagues.

As we worked our way through the plagues in Egypt we threw out two main points.
Point number one was that Pharaoh refused to see the miracles of God because his magicians could copy the first few of them.
What I tried to point out was that we often refuse to see the miracles of God because in our own little ways we give credit to outside sources that we believe can also mimic the miracles. The miracles I am referring to are the small daily miracles along our journey and the outside sources are things that we call circumstances, Fate, luck,karma, as well as a host of phrases or concepts in which we take away hundreds of miracles that God performs on our behalf and in doing so we refuse to see his hand and his power in our lives.
We need to develop within us the confidence in recognizing God's hand in our everyday life. To begin to see that he provides "our daily bread". In practicing or developing our eyesight to see the hand of God in this journey that we are on we become more confident in his power to take care of us should things get crazy in the world. We are able to walk through any circumstances even through "the valley of the shadow of death"because we understand and have seen his hand providing for us all along the way, even on the mountaintops, and "beside the still waters".

About halfway through the plagues even the magicians recognized that this was the hand of God. Recognizing God's power and submitting to it are two different things. We see the Pharaoh tried something that many of us also try and that led us to our second point.

The second point is what I would call conditional submission. Throughout the plagues Pharoh tried to negotiate the terms of releasing the Hebrews. He would beg for the plagues to end, then after relief came he would renege on his commitment to releasing the Hebrews. He also would try to limit the number of people that could go, what to be taken with them, or how far/long they were allowed to go. All of this negotiation on Pharaohs part was his way of controlling God and being able to claim that he told God what he could and what he could not do.
We do the same thing when we recognize God's power and we want him to use it, but we want him to use it under our conditions.
We say things like, you can take my life but let me do---------, I am willing to go anywhere just make sure it's not------------, I know you are the ultimate judge but I would like you to do this to---------- because I don't like them, or any number of blanks after a phrase in which we give conditions to God's use of God's power.
Like the Pharaoh we will learn that that is a dangerous place to live because God does not negotiate.
Pharaoh ultimately lost the firstborn child of his entire nation, and in waiting so long to learn his lesson he also lost major cash crops of the nation, huge amounts of of livestock, and caused much physical suffering and stench around the nation.

We also took a humorous look at what it would take to move a nation of people that had been living in the same area for approximately 400 years. We estimated conservatively that it was 2.5 million and could be up to 4 million people that had to get on the road and start leaving Egypt immediately. In doing so I have no doubt the line of people stretched out for probably about 6 to 10 hours.

I think it is also important to see that there are many ways to apply what happened to the Hebrews, the Pharaoh, the people of Egypt, and the magicians. There are many things that we can discuss and dialogue over in which we will never know for sure nor is it important if we are right but we can learn. I look forward to the things that you may have picked up in this study.