Psalm
67:1-2
May
God be gracious to us and bless us
and
make his face to shine upon us, Selah
that
your way may be known on earth,
your
saving power among all nations.
Now,
we get to the time when Pharaoh lets the people of Israel go – in fact he
pushes them out, and the Egyptians give them money, and jewelry and beg them to
go – for fear of their lives. They had been slaves for 430 years – which is a
very long time. The US has only been an independent country a little over 200
years so that gives you an idea of how long the Israelites were slaves in
Egypt. I remember there were 70 some odd people in Jacob’s family when they
arrived, and when they leave there are more than 600,000 men plus women and
children. How many generations were born in captivity? – well we know that none
now alive had ever been free, and so all of these needed to learn what it meant
to be God’s people. First thing God does is bless them with a celebration of
freedom – the Passover, and the second thing he does is instruct them in how to
be marked as God’s in their flesh and in their homes, and the third thing God
does, is take them out by way of the wilderness so they wouldn’t be afraid of
the warring Philistines. As an extra remembrance and help for them God instructs
them in consecrating and redeeming the first born to God, and in case they were
fearful or got lost (after all they didn’t know where they were headed just
yet) God gave them a pillar of cloud and fire. What will happen tomorrow do you
think?
This
story in Ezra is complimentary to the Exodus reading as we find the Israelites
rebuilding after their captivity. Soon, the Israelites in Exodus will be doing
the same thing. I wonder how often we force ourselves to redo and relearn what
we could have done or learned already. We see that the Israelites have done
this more than once. Good thing God hasn’t gotten tired of teaching and
redeeming us. Which brings me to our Psalm today. The psalmist asks for God to
be gracious and bless us – and to make his face to shine upon us...for the
purpose of making his name known and offering his saving power to the world.
That is why God keeps redeeming and teaching; he wants everyone to know it is
available.
OK,
this is a good summary for our readings today, and I won’t add any more to
this. In Paul’s letter to the Romans, this is what he says for all of us:
Therefore,
since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord
Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace
in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. More than that,
we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and
endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not
put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the
Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. (Romans 5:1-11)
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