January 30

2009, 2011

Click here for today's text.

Exodus 10:1-12:13
(1) "Then the LORD said to Moses, "Go to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his officials so that I may perform these miraculous signs of mine among them 2 that you may tell your children and grandchildren how I dealt harshly with the Egyptians and how I performed my signs among them, and that you may know that I am the LORD."

Apparently I underlined this passage in bright red years ago perhaps because here lies two important points that I know perennially stay with me:

(a)God hardened these hearts so that I may perform these miraculous signs

(b)...that you may tell your children & grandchildren

I can't stress enough how the existential, eternal-now mindset of American culture weighs upon me. Its not merely a secular worldview; it resides profoundly in significant segments of the Church.

Many post-moderns refer to "community" and "the village"; truths within the tribe. Brian D. McLaren writes:

To understand anything we need to apprentice ourselves to the community that honors what it is we want to understand.
(More Ready Than You Realize: Evangelism as Dance in the Postmodern Matrix, p. 77)

Although he's writing this sentence in the context of inviting a young woman, Alice, to learn the value of studying the Bible with the biblical community McLaren goes on to write:

As you would expect, the biblical community preserves its own biases. For example, a denomination that began in the sixteenth century might hallow the sixteenth century worldview without realizing it-and thus its biblical interpretations would be just as limited as a twenty-first century reader's would.

So why would God harden Pharoah's heart if only to stage His own spectacular, miraculous signs which would be told for generations to come?

McLaren might have us believe that grandpa only thought grandpa's liberation from the oppression of Egyptian slavery miraculous precisely and merely because he was enslaved. Perhaps (even) grandpa is embellishing the grand story, the sacred Narrative, with plagues, "signs & wonders", the fire leading by night, the cloud by day, the manna, and the parting of the Red Sea...all that...merely as a literary device to express how liberating his experience (the tribe's collective experience) was to people who didn't share the experience.

The Passover meal was to memorialize the culmination of the tribe's liberation ("this is a day you are to commemorate...you shall celebrate it as a festival to the LORD-a lasting ordinance" Ex 12:14) and to be observed perennially. The Seder meal has the famous Mah Nishtanah, when the family's youngest child asks (Ex 13:14):

Why is this night different from all other nights?

In Scriptures the reference is from Exodus 12:26, 27

And when your children ask you, 'What does this ceremony mean to you?' 27 then tell them, 'It is the Passover sacrifice to the LORD, who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt and spared our homes when he struck down the Egyptians.' "

If McLaren wants to understand how the Passover meal was extended to include Gentiles, "out-grouping", he would do well to study the act of Christ during the Last Supper; or how nations were blessed in Acts and the Lord's Supper taught as an ordinance to those outside Hebrew tradition. Just my thoughts.

Matthew 20:1-28

Psalm 25:1-15

Proverbs 6:6-11

Years Read
2009, 2011, 2025