Reading your Bible for Today January 20

January 20: Exodus 5:1-4

KJV Key Verse: Exodus 5:3
3 And they said, The God of the Hebrews hath met with us: let us go, we pray thee, three days' journey into the desert, and sacrifice unto the LORD our God; lest he fall upon us with pestilence, or with the sword.

Devotion:
War and fighting are certainly not new things; there has been fighting for as long as man has been on the planet! Arguments have been started over very simple things which have lead to the death of others. God has allowed those things to happen to show us just how rotten we can get so we can see the error of our ways. It does not please Him to have to allow such things, but sometimes it is the only thing which will get through to us! Is it not better to see what has happened in the past and learn from that than to have to go through the same thing for ourselves before we learn what is right and wrong?

God does not simply make war between two people or countries. He will always try to allow the people who are in the wrong to be warned about what they are doing wrong so they can repent of their ways before facing the sword. Before God took Israel out of slavery with the Egyptians, He made sure Pharaoh knew how God was about to exercise judgement and that there would be nothing he could do about it if he did not obey! God continues to be patient with us, but when we continue to do evil and to be evil, He has to draw the line somewhere. When He does, we had better listen or we may well face His wrath.

There are not too many places in the Bible where God personally showed His strength, but there are so many places where He showed it through others. He warned so many people that they faced doom unless they turned away from evil, and yet each one of them continued in their own pride and selfishness to refuse to believe all they were told. This was only the first warning God gave to Pharaoh, but we see his pride and selfishness covering that warning even before Moses and Aaron could finish the details of it...

Points to Ponder:
Do you always listen the first time?

How often does your pride leave God out of your life?