Saturday, June 25, 2016

Aliens

DEVOTION
EXODUS
ALIENS

Ex 2:18-25
18 When the girls returned to Reuel their father, he asked them, "Why have you returned so early today?" 19 They answered, "An Egyptian rescued us from the shepherds. He even drew water for us and watered the flock." 20 "And where is he?" he asked his daughters. "Why did you leave him? Invite him to have something to eat." 21 Moses agreed to stay with the man, who gave his daughter Zipporah to Moses in marriage. 22 Zipporah gave birth to a son, and Moses named him Gershom, saying, "I have become an alien in a foreign land." 23 During that long period, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. 24 God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. 25 So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them.
NIV

So we have Moses on a break so to speak off in the land of Midian, having helped these women, and their father inviting him to stay, giving him a wife and they having a son. This is several years of time that has just happened in a few short verses. In fact we are even told it was a long period. We too could take a break from learning a lesson from Moses and return to the children of Israel for our lesson. There is a lesson about their crying out to God and he remembering them. Had he forgotten about them that he needed to be remembered hearing their cry? This is a phrase that seems a little confusing, but we should note he really never forgot them, but they forgot about him. It took years and years before they cried out to him because of their suffering. Could we say that God did not move on their behalf because they did not seek him? Could we also then say that he does not move on our behalf unless we seek him? Before we were saved we certainly could say we never cried out to God because of our suffering. Now that does not mean he was not watching or even making a case or a cause for us to seek him. It may even be he did act in order to bring us to himself. But in order to be born again, to be saved, to gain eternal life, we needed to cry out to him for salvation. This is the sense we see these phrases “he remembered them” and “was concerned about them”. God allows us to roam this life on our own, if that is our choice. He does not intervene in our affairs unless we ask him to. But accepting Jesus as our Lord and Savior we have asked not only for him to intervene, we have asked him to be the Lord and Master of our lives and thus he now has complete authority over us and so he continually acts on our behalf. Yet we still need to cry out to him on a daily basis so to speak. We still need to be in prayer, bringing our petitions, but more importantly listening to his voice, his Spirit, leading us into all truth, guiding our lives, our minds, our decisions, our hearts, our actions and reactions. The only thing God forgets about us now is our sin. Then again he never forgets, he just never recalls it to us, or holds it against us, or remembers it to us. This is the sense he remembered the Israelites. However, we could still learn something here in the life of Moses. The name he gives his son, Gershom, which means he has become an alien in a foreign land does bring us to a truth about our lives. Did not Moses think of himself as an alien in Egypt? He was born there so wouldn’t he be an Egyptian? Did the people of those days consider their citizenship by the country of their birth, or by their nationality, ancestry or ethnicity? It seems clear Moses thought of himself as a Hebrew, yet Reuel and his daughters thought Moses was an Egyptian. This may have been because of his garments, rather than his facial features, although he was most likely a very handsome, fine featured man, resembling the features of Egyptians rather than Hebrews. Nevertheless what we can make of this is he considered himself an alien, either way. He was no longer in Egypt, nor was he in the Promised Land to his forefathers. He was no longer in the place of his birth and he was not yet in the place he was promised, so he was an alien. We were born in this land, the world. It is the place of our birth, yet once we became born again as citizens of the kingdom of God, we no longer retain our citizenship in this world, we become aliens. We have yet to arrive at the Promised Land, the new city of Jerusalem, but we are also no longer in the land of our birth. We should be living as Moses considered himself, as an alien in a foreign land.

Heb 11:13-16
13 All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance. And they admitted that they were aliens and strangers on earth. 14 People who say such things show that they are looking for a country of their own. 15 If they had been thinking of the country they had left, they would have had opportunity to return. 16 Instead, they were longing for a better country — a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.
NIV

We too are all these people still living by faith even when we die. We might not see that which we are promised before our death, but we admit we are aliens and strangers on earth. If we think about this world, we could return to it, but we are longing for a better place, a heavenly one. Therefor God is not ashamed to be called our God, for he has prepared a city for us. Let us truly live as aliens here.


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