Faith and Truth, Part III

 

So, despite my procrastination, I'm going to get in here and do this, because it is the most important part of Exodus that has the biggest parallels with our own time. It's part 3 of the Exodus , here for you. God taking the slack out of his people.

Moses was touched by God, had to face down his own doubts about God and about himself. That was part 1 and can be found here: https://fearfiles.blogspot.com/2023/10/faith-and-truth.html

Following this pattern, Moses had to provide "proof" of his God to Pharaoh, establishing the pattern of worldly governments establishing themselves as "gods" in their own right. You know how that ended.

So, now Moses has been told that he can extract his people from Egypt, and he goes about doing so with a surety that is remarkable, given the challenges. Those challenges are kind of glossed over, so let's dedicate a bit of thought to the lash-up that Moses drug around for 40 yrs.

One morning in the Spring of 1446 BC, after strife that I've not really touched on, Moses woke up from a nap and led 2.5 Million Jews out of Egypt. 600,000 men. And you KNOW that they didn't pack lightly. They brought the fucking kitchen sink with 'em. And let's talk about the character of those people. What do you think they were like?

They had been enslaved for generations. Kept, fed, tended, abused, but dependent in every way on their Egyptian masters. Upon Pharaoh. For their very existence. They knew in their hearts that there was a way of living that was free. God had promised them this in the stories of Abraham and his progeny. They seemed "up" for this challenge, and so Moses led them out.

I mean think about it for a minute. A lot of you have stood in front of, or led formations, but 2.5 million? With all their shit, their kids, and their animals? How daunting was that? My brothers and sisters, Moses was a fucking stud. [Hand and arm signal for "forward"]

As I mentioned earlier, Moses knew he had to hurry because the Man was bound to change his mind and come to destroy his people. And they did. A moment here that gets glossed over in the modern era: In 1446 BC, Egyptian chariots were the modern equivalent of M1A2 Abrams fucking tanks. What's more, Moses KNEW and had employed chariots in his past. All of that risk was known. Think about all of those factors for a couple of minutes.

Right? 600K men. Better part of 1.9 million women, children, and God knows how many dogs, cats, and livestock of every imaginable stripe. But we're free and we're moving and that's a good day, by God.

Oh, except we've got to somehow get all of those people over the Red Sea.

You wanna talk about a "pillar of faith"? Here's Moses, who knows where he's gotta go, and what's pursuing him, and what that force is capable of in terms of destruction, and there's the Red fucking Sea. Bigger than life.

Meanwhile, behind him, he's hearing "Oh shit, we're fucked! We should never have left Pharaoh. This was all a mistake!" And here is the crux of all of this. The sheer will of Moses to hold his leaders to the cause, despite every reason to just give it up. the effectiveness of those leaders to hold the resolve of the people to just keep fucking moving forward.

So, they get to the Red Sea and God fulfills his promise and brings them across (Moses' S-4 had to be dancing a fucking jig, by the way) THEN after every Israelite crossed with dry feet, and the armored phalanx began across the gap, God destroyed the Egyptian phalanx.

2.5 million people. With all their shit. Those of you who've moved people, sit for a minute and contemplate the scale of this miracle. Saved. Moses' faith and will has to be noted here. That's Cooperstown shit, right there. GOAT. I'm gonna skip over a lot of what comes next, but I have a reason for doing so.

What did Moses have to do next? He had to make his people feral again. Abraham was feral. Esau, Joseph, and Jacob were feral. The Israelites that Moses led into the desert were not. They were analogous to domesticated turkeys. It took God one single day to get the Jews out of Egypt. It took God 40 fucking YEARS to get Egypt out of his people.

Right there. That's the Lesson of Exodus. We sit up here, fat and happy, with our "Soft men create hard times" memes. Moses spent 40 years trying to fix that. Because God the Father could not simply allow this weak tribe to go out and be dominated by the feral people in Canaan. He had to harden them, he had to make them effective, so he spent a generation or two making them free.

As

@wayofftheres

and

@DolioJ

and

@Brushbeater

and

@EMBurlingame

and

@braxton_mccoy

et al. have tried to emphasize over the past couple of years, we have a duty to be Moses, essentially. Yet, we can't expect any of the advantages of having God part the Seas for us. Rather, we must rely on our own cunning and resilience to carry us and our families through what is to come. Exodus is a cautionary tale. You should read it. You should think about Moses, and how you measure up.

You don't need "proof", you don't need Him to come down and crush your enemies. The proof is in your heart, it's been there for millions of years. You need only have faith in that tiny voice that begs you to do the next right thing.