Exodus 13 , Bible Reading and Daily Devotionals

Max Lucado Daily: A Certain People - October 4, 2021

The setting of the book of Esther is the city of Susa in fifth century BC Persia (modern-day Iran). The empire consisted of roughly 44% of the world’s population. Xerxes, the king, had a thirst for wine, a disregard for women, and convictions that were prone to change with the weather.

Haman is the villain in our story. He had the ear of the king, the swagger of a pimp, and the compassion of Hitler. Haman told the king in Esther 3:8-9, “There is a certain people scattered and dispersed among the people…of your kingdom…let a decree be written that they be destroyed.”

Now these “certain people” were the Hebrew nation God preserved. They were a chosen race through whom God would redeem mankind. He had something special in store for them, just like he does for you today.

Exodus 13

God spoke to Moses, saying, “Set apart every firstborn to me—the first one to come from the womb among the Israelites, whether person or animal, is mine.”

3 Moses said to the people, “Always remember this day. This is the day when you came out of Egypt from a house of slavery. God brought you out of here with a powerful hand. Don’t eat any raised bread.

4-5 “You are leaving in the spring month of Abib. When God brings you into the land of the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Amorite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite, which he promised to your fathers to give you, a land lavish with milk and honey, you are to observe this service during this month:

6 “You are to eat unraised bread for seven days; on the seventh day there is a festival celebration to God.

7 “Only unraised bread is to be eaten for seven days. There is not to be a trace of anything fermented—no yeast anywhere.

8 “Tell your child on that day: ‘This is because of what God did for me when I came out of Egypt.’

9-10 “The day of observance will be like a sign on your hand, a memorial between your eyes, and the teaching of God in your mouth. It was with a powerful hand that God brought you out of Egypt. Follow these instructions at the set time, year after year after year.

11-13 “When God brings you into the land of the Canaanites, as he promised you and your fathers, and turns it over to you, you are to set aside the first birth out of every womb to God. Every first birth from your livestock belongs to God. You can redeem every first birth of a donkey if you want to by substituting a lamb; if you decide not to redeem it, you must break its neck.

13-16 “Redeem every firstborn child among your sons. When the time comes and your son asks you, ‘What does this mean?’ you tell him, ‘God brought us out of Egypt, out of a house of slavery, with a powerful hand. When Pharaoh stubbornly refused to let us go, God killed every firstborn in Egypt, the firstborn of both humans and animals. That’s why I make a sacrifice for every first male birth from the womb to God and redeem every firstborn son.’ The observance functions like a sign on your hands or a symbol on the middle of your forehead: God brought us out of Egypt with a powerful hand.”

17 It so happened that after Pharaoh released the people, God didn’t lead them by the road through the land of the Philistines, which was the shortest route, for God thought, “If the people encounter war, they’ll change their minds and go back to Egypt.”

18 So God led the people on the wilderness road, looping around to the Red Sea. The Israelites left Egypt in military formation.

19 Moses took the bones of Joseph with him, for Joseph had made the Israelites solemnly swear to do it, saying, “God will surely hold you accountable, so make sure you bring my bones from here with you.”

20-22 They moved on from Succoth and then camped at Etham at the edge of the wilderness. God went ahead of them in a Pillar of Cloud during the day to guide them on the way, and at night in a Pillar of Fire to give them light; thus they could travel both day and night. The Pillar of Cloud by day and the Pillar of Fire by night never left the people.

Our Daily Bread reading and devotion    
Monday, October 04, 2021
Today's Scripture
John 4:7–24
(NIV)

When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?”d 8 (His disciples had gone into the towne to buy food.)

9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritanf woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.a)

10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.”g

11 “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the wellh and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?”

13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst.i Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of waterj welling up to eternal life.”k

15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirstyl and have to keep coming here to draw water.”

16 He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.”

17 “I have no husband,” she replied.

Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. 18 The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”

19 “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet.m 20 Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain,n but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”o

21 “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is comingp when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.q 22 You Samaritans worship what you do not know;r we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews.s 23 Yet a time is coming and has now comet when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spiritu and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit,v and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.”

Insight

Who were the Samaritans? According to 2 Kings 17, after the Northern Kingdom of Israel was defeated by Assyria in 722 bc and most of its people taken into exile, other captured peoples were brought in to populate the region known as Samaria (v. 24). When they first arrived, they didn’t “worship the Lord,” and so God sent lions among them (v. 25). Then the king of Assyria sent a Jewish priest to the land to teach the people how to worship God, but the people continued to worship other gods (vv. 27–29). The Samaritans came from this exchange of peoples and mixture of beliefs. By: Alyson Kieda

Wherever We Worship

A time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks.
John 4:23

Intense pain and a debilitating headache prevented me from attending services with my local church family . . . again. Grieving the loss of community worship, I watched an online sermon. At first, complaints soured my experience. The poor sound and video quality distracted me. But then a voice on the video warbled a familiar hymn. Tears flowed as I sang these words: “Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart. Naught be all else to me save that Thou art. Thou my best thought, by day or by night. Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light.” Focusing on the gift of God’s constant presence, I worshiped Him while sitting in my living room.

While Scripture affirms the vital, essential nature of corporate worship (Hebrews 10:25), God’s not bound within the walls of a church building. During Jesus’ chat with the Samaritan woman at the well, He defied all expectations of the Messiah (John 4:9). Instead of condemnation, Jesus spoke truth and loved her as she stood next to that well (v. 10). He revealed His intimate and sovereign knowledge of His children (vv. 17–18). Proclaiming His deity, Jesus declared that the Holy Spirit evoked true worship from the hearts of God’s people, not from a specific physical location (vv. 23–24).

When we focus on who God is, what He’s done, and all He’s promised, we can rejoice in His constant presence as we worship Him with other believers, in our living rooms . . . and everywhere! By:  Xochitl Dixon

Reflect & Pray

Where do you enjoy worshiping God? How do you enjoy His presence and experience joy while worshiping Him?

Amazing God, please help me worship You as I rejoice in who You are, what You’ve done, and all You promise to do.

My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers
Monday, October 04, 2021

The Vision and The Reality

…to those who are…called to be saints… —1 Corinthians 1:2

Thank God for being able to see all that you have not yet been. You have had the vision, but you are not yet to the reality of it by any means. It is when we are in the valley, where we prove whether we will be the choice ones, that most of us turn back. We are not quite prepared for the bumps and bruises that must come if we are going to be turned into the shape of the vision. We have seen what we are not, and what God wants us to be, but are we willing to be battered into the shape of the vision to be used by God? The beatings will always come in the most common, everyday ways and through common, everyday people.

There are times when we do know what God’s purpose is; whether we will let the vision be turned into actual character depends on us, not on God. If we prefer to relax on the mountaintop and live in the memory of the vision, then we will be of no real use in the ordinary things of which human life is made. We have to learn to live in reliance upon what we saw in the vision, not simply live in ecstatic delight and conscious reflection upon God. This means living the realities of our lives in the light of the vision until the truth of the vision is actually realized in us. Every bit of our training is in that direction. Learn to thank God for making His demands known.

Our little “I am” always sulks and pouts when God says do. Let your little “I am” be shriveled up in God’s wrath and indignation— “I AM WHO I AM…has sent me to you” (Exodus 3:14). He must dominate. Isn’t it piercing to realize that God not only knows where we live, but also knows the gutters into which we crawl! He will hunt us down as fast as a flash of lightning. No human being knows human beings as God does.

Wisdom From Oswald Chambers

The Bible is the only Book that gives us any indication of the true nature of sin, and where it came from. The Philosophy of Sin, 1107 R

Bible in a Year: Isaiah 20-22; Ephesians 6


A Word with You, by Ron Hutchcraft
Monday, October 04, 2021

The Greatest Miracle - #9061

Ten pounds, ten ounces! Our grandson was born and weighed in at that weight. Man that's a lot of boy! Just ask his mama! And even though he wasn't our first grandchild, there was still something breathtaking and amazing about the arrival of a new person in this world, isn't there? I couldn't help but think of when his daddy was born. I was there in the delivery room when he arrived, and I'll never forget what the doctor said. Now keep in mind, this is a doctor who's, well, seen thousands of deliveries over a long career. As I held my newborn son, the doctor said, "You know, this is the greatest miracle known to man." He got no argument from me.

I'm Ron Hutchcraft, and I want to have A Word With You today about "The Greatest Miracle."

Out of all the ways Jesus could have explained how we can go to heaven someday, I'm glad that He chose to describe it as birth. Because that's one experience we all understand - we all have that in common. And having been close to the arrival of several family members, I'm impressed again with the parallel Jesus drew to what our doctor called "the greatest miracle known to man."

The birth route to heaven is described by Him in John 3, beginning with verse 1 - it's our word for today from the Word of God. "A man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus; a member of the Jewish council, came to Jesus at night." Now, he came with spiritual questions and he was stunned when Jesus said, "No one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again. You must be born again."

Now, no modern preacher or religious leader came up with that idea of being "born again." It was Jesus Himself. And whatever being "born again" means, there's obviously no way you can go to heaven without it.

The first time you were born, what do you get? You know, 70 years of life maybe. The second time you're born, this time, spiritually - you get life forever. You've got no life on earth of course, unless and until you're born. You've got no life in heaven unless and until you're born...again.

There's no doubt about our grandson's arrival. In fact, he'll be celebrating that day for the rest of his life. Being born again means that a person's relationship with God has a definite beginning. That beginning is described a couple of chapters earlier in the Bible. It says, "To all who received Him (that's Jesus), to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God" (John 1:12). So the definite beginning of belonging to God is when a person "receives" Jesus, when they "believe" in Jesus.

That's because of what keeps each of us from having a relationship with God. In the blunt words of the Bible, "Your sins have separated you from your God" (Isaiah 59:2). That's every time we've done something our way instead of God's way, and those are like countless. It's the way we've basically said, "God, You run the universe; I'll run me thank you." The eternal penalty for that is being separated from a holy God, now and forever. There's only one way that sin wall could be removed - in Jesus' words in the "born again" account, "God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son." Jesus came to die for the sinning you and I have done.

So the day you reach out and take for yourself what Jesus died to give you, you are born...again. And this was originally said to one of the most religious men of Jesus' day. So, it's obvious that there's no one so good that they don't need to be born again. Because we all have the cancer of sin. And we're going to die without the cure.

Which leads to the very personal question of whether or not there's been a time when you were born...again. If you don't know you were, you probably weren't. And you desperately need to be. This day could be your re-birthday - if you'll just open your heart to Jesus right where you are. Tell Him, "Jesus, I've run my own life, and I resign. I believe You died to pay for every wrong thing I've ever done. And beginning today, I'm Yours."

If you just prayed a prayer like that, and you want to be sure you belong to Christ, and maybe you're considering that, I really want to encourage you to spend a few minutes at our website. That's what it's there for - ANewStory.com.

Let today be the day when you personally experience what truly is "the greatest miracle known to man."