CHRIST PROMISES HIS PRESENCE
Of all of the promises of God, the promise that the Spirit of Christ would always be with us is the sweetest. As Moses told the Lord, “We do not want to go if You do not go with us.” I’m so thankful that Jesus is always with us.
A CALL TO WORSHIP
David invited others to come with him to worship the Lord. He wanted to hear testimonies of the Lord’s greatness and he wanted to sing songs praising the Lord’s name. It is good to praise the Lord alone. Yet, it is even better to praise the Lord together with other believers.
HOPE’S ANCHOR
Our hope must have a secure anchor, otherwise it is merely a wish. Biblical hope is like a rope and its anchor is the Lord Jesus Christ. Everything we hope for is “Yes” in Jesus. All our hopes all our dreams are only fully realized in Christ.
MOSES THE INTERCESSOR
When the people sinned with the golden calf, God threatened to destroy them and start over with Moses. But Moses interceded, not according to the people’s worthiness, but according to God’s covenant and God’s reputation. Moses remained and interceded even though God had asked him to “leave him alone” to let His anger blaze against the people. Moses took God’s instruction to leave as an invitation to stay and intercede. Like Abraham who interceded for Sodom, Moses interceded for the Israelites and God relented.
The Lord commanded that three annual festivals be celebrated in His honor. These festivals were:
1) The Feast of Passover
2) The Feast of Pentecost
3) The Feast of Tabernacles
The Lord may have had other reasons for commanding these festivals, but several reasons seem apparent:
1) To perpetuate remembrance of what God had done.
2) To keep them faithful to the Lord
3) To put seasons of rest and celebration in the annual calendar
4) To offer instruction, as the appropriate Scripture was read at each festival.
5) To renew their corporate identity as they came from all over Israel to the Temple to celebrate together.
6) To pass on the spiritual legacy of God’s people to the next generation.
How many of us as teens explained to our parents, “But everyone was doing it”? If your parents were like mine, then that excuse didn’t go over too welll. And it doesn’t go over well with God either. The Bible is clear. We are not to just follow the crowd. Wrong is still wrong even if the majority view it as acceptable. Live for the approval of the Lord, not the crowd. Following Jesus almost always means going against the flow of the crowd.
Have you heard of the “Jesus Prayer?” It goes like this, “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” When you don’t know how to pray, pray the Jesus Prayer. Call on Jesus to have mercy on you and He will answer your cry. This prayer hinges on the quality of Christ’s mercy, not our worthiness. For though our sins may be as scarlet, His mercy can wash them “white as snow” (Isa. 1:18).
The Pharisees expected a Messiah to be born in the lineage of David that would overthrow Rome and restore Israel as a nation. They did not understand the prophecies that foretold the Messiah’s divinity. This was the point that Jesus wanted to make with them, that the Messiah would not only be in the lineage of David, but also the Son of God. He was trying to open their eyes to see that He was in fact, the Messiah, the son of David and the Son of God.
When the Pharisees asked Jesus a question, their motivation was usually to entrap (Matt. 22:35) or otherwise show Him to be in error. However, when Jesus asked them this question about the Messiah, His motive seems to be not to stump them, although that was the apparent outcome, but to reveal His true identity to them.
THIS MANNA POINTS TO CHRIST
The Lord faithfully supplied the Israelites with manna every morning, except on the Sabbath, for forty years. It was always just enough for that day, except on the sixth day when the Lord gave them enough for two days to allow them to rest on the Sabbath. In this way, the Lord taught them to depend on Him for life.
We hear an echo of this in the Lord’s Prayer, “Give us this day our daily bread” (Matt. 6:11). Jesus taught his disciples to pray for that day’s bread, just as the Israelites had learned. Not next week’s, nor next year’s bread, just pray for today’s bread. Learn to depend on the Lord for daily life.
We hear the fulfillment of this in Christ’s declaration, “I AM the Bread of Life” (John 6:35). For Christ is the true Bread of Heaven come down to give everlasting life to those who believe on Him.
NO SHORTCUTS WITH GOD
Why didn’t God lead the Israelites out of Egypt and straight to the Promised Land? The Lord answered this question in Exodus 13:17 saying, “If the people are faced with a battle, they might change their minds and return to Egypt.” God knew they weren’t ready for battle. They weren’t an army. They were a rabble of slaves with no training nor confidence. They were free, but they didn’t know how to live in freedom. So, the Lord had to take them the long way, lasting 40 years, in order to prepare them to possess the Promised Land.