Today's passage is Exodus 5:22--6: 13. Because Pharaoh made things worse for the Israeliess, making them find their own straw for brickmaking but not reducing the number they had to make, Moses said to God that the Israelites were so angry at the incresased work and the beatings that they wouldn't listen to him at all. God said the intensified complaints were part of his plan to make Pharaoh aware of him and to make the Israelites into his people and deliver them from Egypt to Canaan.
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Why does Moses see his mission as a failure?
Why does Moses focus on the problem with his speaking?
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"Faltering lips"(12)
Moses was reluctant to obey God in the first place, to leave Median and go back to Egypt to convince millions of Israelites to leave their homes and journey to another land with nothing but God's promise of success.
Now that his words to Pharaoh have made a bad situation into an intolerable one, resulting in everyone's hatred, Moses naturally sees the whole mission as a failure.
What did he expect?
What would prompt two million Israelites to worship the Lord and leave the only home they'd known for hundreds of years?
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If it hadn't been for the burning bush, Moses would not have left Median either.
What God was doing was creating a burning bush for all the Israelites.
Pastor Kim's Wednesday sermon helped me understand that.
What is my burning bush that God speaks to me through?
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One burning bush is my job or at least my attitude towards it.
I don't know if I'm really having to deal with more troubles than before or whether it's because I'm so tired that I just don't want to deal with them anymore.
But more and more I'm seeing my circumstances as a burning bush through which God is speaking to me. I just don't hear the message very clearly.
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Another burning bush is preaching the gospel to my daughter and dealing with her hostile mother.
Again, I'm wondering if there's really anything substantially different in my preaching the gospel to her or whether it's my own attitude that's getting in the way and causing the bush to burn.
Like my work, I seem to be missing the message God is speaking to me through these burning bush circumstances.
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Application: continue to read John's gospel to my daughter.
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Lord, let me praise my circumstances and stand before you gratefully desiring to hear your encouraging word.
