Wednesday Thought – July 15, 2015

Good Morning Friends,

“Say to the Israelites: ‘I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the LORD your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. And I will bring you to the land I swore with uplifted hand to give to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. I will give it to you as a possession. I am the LORD.’” (Exodus 6:6-8)

God was promising to bring the people of Israel out of their Egyptian slavery. It would not be a swift or easy process, but God would do what He was promising. He would unleash His power to bring about the fulfillment of His promise. He could have just wiped out the Egyptians in the very beginning and allowed the Israelites to walk out to freedom. But God also cared about the Egyptians and although He knew they would not respond to His power or His judgment, He was unwilling to destroy them without giving them multiple opportunities to repent.

God’s heart is revealed in what He said to Moses. Buried within that paragraph is the reason God was moving so powerfully to bring the people of Israel out of Egypt. He had heard their cries for help, to be sure, and He was responding out of the compassion that is the characteristic of His heart. He loved them and He wanted to bless them. But there was a deeper reason than these for God’s action. “I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God.” The deepest motivation of God’s heart was His desire for relationship with the Israelites!

God wanted them to know Him. God wanted them to be His people. He was unleashing His power to draw them to Him. That desire is still the deepest longing of God’s heart, to have a people of His own, to be in relationship with people.

God wants men and women who will know Him. He wants to be their God, to love them, and care for them. It’s about relationship. It was from the beginning, and it still is today.

His, by Grace,

Steve