TONY & MICHELLE PAWLAK
MEMORY VERSE
I will bring you into the land that
I swore to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.
EXODUS 6:8a
A promise is a promise is a promise! We’ve all heard this
said before but how much
more true is this when it comes to a promise that God Himself made? Over the last few weeks we have talked about
the promise that God made to Abraham that He would make him a great nation and
give them
the land of Canaan. This
promise was then passed down to his son Isaac.
Then Isaac passed this promise down to his son Jacob. As we discussed last week, this would have
passed to his older brother Esau but Jacob, with the help of his mother
Rebekah, fooled his father Isaac into giving it to him instead.
Over the years, Jacob (also named Israel) had twelve
sons. Eventually Jacob’s entire family
ended up in Egypt where his sons had families of their own. Their children then had children,
and their
children had children, and their children had children and their…until there
were so many children of Israel that Pharaoh, King of Egypt, was afraid that
they might take over. So Pharaoh came up
with a plan. He decided to enslave all
of the children of Israel and make them work for him. They were treated very badly and began to cry
out to God. The time had come for God to
keep His promise to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
God called Moses and his brother Aaron to go to Pharaoh
and
tell him to release the Israelites. At
first, all they asked for was to go outside of Egypt for a few days to worship
God but Pharaoh even said no to that!
Pharaoh’s heart was so hard and he had so much pride that he wouldn’t
budge an inch. Pharaoh, however, wasn’t
big enough to stand in the way of God keeping His promise.
God decided that He would send a Plague, something that
causes great harm or distress, to Egypt to show Pharaoh that He means
business. So God told Moses to have
Aaron touch the Nile River, Egypt’s main source of water. As soon as he did this, the river turned to
blood and everything in it died! Pharaoh
had some sorcerers that could also turn water to blood so he wasn’t
impressed. The people of Egypt, though,
suffered greatly. Apparently this
wouldn’t be enough to convince Pharaoh to change his mind. This was no problem for God.
Next, God caused Egypt to be overrun with frogs. They
were everywhere! Pharaoh called Moses and said they could go
if he got rid of the frogs. Once the
frogs were
gone, Pharaoh changed his mind again and didn’t let them go. God kept sending plagues: Gnats, flies, the
animals
died, painful sores, deadly hail stones, a swarm of locusts, and
complete darkness. Each time God made
sure that the
plagues only affected the Egyptians. Goshen, the land where the Israelites were
living, was completely
unharmed. Still,
after all this, Pharaoh would not let them go.
He would promise to let them go in order to get God to stop the plague
but then he would break his promise.
God, on the other hand, was determined to keep His.
God saw that the only way to get Pharaoh to let His people
go was to visit Egypt Himself! He told
Moses to have the people sacrifice perfectly unblemished lambs; one lamb per
family. Then they were to use the blood
from the lamb and paint it on the mantle and doorposts of their houses. They were to stay in their houses all night
and not come out until morning.
That night, God sent the Angel of Death to go through
Egypt. He went into each house and took
the life of the firstborn son in every family.
However, when the Angel of Death came to a house and saw the lamb’s
blood on the mantle and doorposts, he passed over that house and everyone
inside was safe. (This is why Jews
celebrate the Passover Feast today.)
The next morning, Pharaoh realized that even his own
firstborn son had died during the night.
It was a sad day throughout Egypt as many families lost sons. Pharaoh finally decided that he’d had
enough. He told Moses to take the people
and all that
they owned and go. Finally,
the children of Israel could begin their journey to the land that God had
promised them.
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