Exodus by Conrad Hilario (2022)

Archeology has time and again revealed cities or people groups only mentioned in the Bible thus refuting Bible skeptics. You don't have to be anti-intellectual in order to believe in Christianity. God laid out in the Bible His plan to rescue Israel and overcome the circumstances they faced. He can do the same for you!

For the first forty years of Moses' life, he thought he was a somebody. God used the next forty years to teach Moses he was a nobody. When God was ready to use Moses to lead His people out of Egypt, He did not make Moses adequate for the job, but told him He would be with him. God's ways are different from our ways. If God can use Moses' rod, He can certainly use us.

In the process of preparing Moses for the great he would eventually do, God had to teach him some lessons on failure. Moses needed to learn to not be careless with the words of God, to say exactly what God said. Moses needed to learn to follow God despite rejection, whether from Pharaoh or his own people. Moses learned that fear of failure is opposed to faith, but he can go to God when he does fail. Moses discovered El Shaddai is the God who is sufficient for our personal inadequacies.

The ten plagues of Egypt were not just God's judgment against Pharaoh but also against Egypt's many gods. Each plague revealed the impotence of each of their gods and the power of the one true God. God was very patient with Pharaoh and gave him many chances to humble himself but Pharaoh remained prideful even to the very end when he lost his firstborn son. Although he allowed the Jews to leave, he then pursued them to the Red Seas and perished there with his whole army.

The powerful way God foreshadowed the sacrificial death of Jesus on the cross by the tenth plague of the deaths of the first-born sons in Egypt is a prophetic reminder through the ages of God's desire to save us. God gave the Passover message to strengthen our faith in Jesus and to give faith to those who are not yet Christians.

God is sovereign and does not always explain His plans to us. When God led the Israelites out of Egypt, He took them on a curious route, not a direct path, to the the Promised Land. We need to depend upon God for His direction and His protection, even when we don't understand His plan.

Concepts of right and wrong and humans responsibility are real. They ae not social constructs. They are objective. This is because God exists, and He has spoken and revealed His will to us. The Ten Commandments are given in the context of a loving relationship. He gave them to us for our good.

Because God demands absolute moral perfection, no one can ever be made right with God by following the Law. Even in the Old Testament, people were saved by faith and not by following the Law. Christians are not under the Law because Jesus fulfilled the Law for us, but the Law is useful for giving us a moral orientation.

The Tabernacle was a scale model of the heavenly reality. It communicated God's desire to have a relationship with His creation but that there were barriers that prevented them from drawing near to Him. The Tabernacle was a powerful symbol of how He would remove those barriers by the the work of His Son Jesus.

When God makes us wait, it raises big questions such as "Can I trust God?" This testing of our faith can cause it to grow just as exercise causes muscles to grow.