"A darkness to be felt" ( Exodus 10:21 )
Last week we looked at Mary's song, known as the Magnificat, that is recorded in the first chapter of the Gospel according to Luke, and for the second week and lighting of the next candle in the Advent wreath, I thought it important to look at two other songs that I'm grouping together. These are found in the Book of Exodus, and sung by the great leader and prophet Moses and his sister Miriam.
The Exodus out of Egypt is the epic story of Moses leading the children of Israel out of slavery in Egypt and toward the land of Canaan, the land God promised to give to Abraham and his descendants in Genesis 12 & 15. God promised to bless all nations of the earth through Abraham and his offspring.
But perhaps a quick refresher is helpful, even though people outside of the Christian faith seem to know a bit about the garden and the fruit; let's set the record straight: Adam and Eve, our first parents, Adam being mankind's federal head, sinned in the Garden of Eden when they disobeyed the only commandment God gave to them of not eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. All trees were permitted, but not that one.
"The serpent, the devil, planted doubts in Eve's mind causing her to distrust God, His word and his goodness, thus desiring to be her own god. She ate and offered the fruit to Adam, who was with her, and he ate it as well. ( Ezekiel 28:13,
When I ask my grandchildren why they disobeyed in a certain area, my oldest granddaughter immediately says, "They ate the fruit." lol Of course, it's not an excuse to disobey your elders, I remind them, but I think it's important to teach our children sound doctrine from the get-go.
They can understand a lot more than we may give them credit for, and those babies need the truth embedded in them with the world they are going to inherit. This is an excellent teaching moment for the grace of God, in addition to the love of God and why Jesus died, and the core essentials of the Christian faith. This way they are prepared to always have an answer ready for anyone who contradicts the Bible with their secular world view or twist the Scriptures with their false teaching.
Honestly, that's the world we all inherit, and we're part of that world. Part of the rebellion, I mean.
Genesis tells us that when Adam and Eve ate the fruit, their eyes were opened, and worse, darkness settled into the entire human race.
Now all men live as well, deceived, denying the sovereignty of God in all things in a false, self-centered world of our own fallen imagination.
I believe one of the best places to see our sin of pride fleshed out is in the famous ( or infamous ) poem "Invictus" by the English poet William Ernest Henley. Jon Bloom of Desiring God Ministries says that after Henley's suffering from Tuberculosis "he wrote 'Invictus' as a poetic middle finger to the cosmos - and if God did exist, ( see the last stanza below ) to him too."
"It matters not how strait the gate,How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate,
I am the captain of my soul."
The poem has become a bit of an inspiration and life motto to our fallen natures ever since. The words do attempt to get at a sense of courage that we know in our broken hearts to be true. But as Bloom also pointed out, it must be the right kind of courage.
Like that of Mary and Miriam and Moses.
I often wonder when anyone of us humans do stand before the sovereign Creator of the universe if those prideful words would ever even remotely be on our quivering lips.
Henley should have kept reading the Genesis account to see what kind of God he was actually dealing with. He should've stayed tuned to behold the mercy of God. Because instead of leaving Adam and Eve to die in their sins, God pronounced His Gospel to them. He was sending a Redeemer, a seed from the woman who would crush the serpent's head. ( )
The redemptive narrative continues through a world-wide flood, the prideful tower of Babel, and to Father Abraham to whom the covenant from the Garden and the rainbow was more fully entailed. God, walking through the sacrificial pieces of animals, indicated that when man failed to uphold his end of the covenant, as man always does, that his Son would bear God's holy wrath for the sins of his people.
God would mercifully uphold both his part of the bargain and ours.
The narrative is stunningly beautiful.
But in the meantime as circumstances and God's sovereign providence would have it, Abraham's descendants end up as slaves in Egypt, away from the land of promise. However, God has risen up a leader out of the tribe of Levi to act as the people's mediator, a type and shadow of his Redeemer to come. One who will mediate between them and Pharaoh as he relentlessly refuses to let God's people go. Moses. Who has his own epic beginnings as well as dismal failures.
When the tenth and final plague strikes the Egyptians due to Pharaoh's hardened heart, the Israelites obediently smear the blood from their slain lambs on the doorpost of their dwellings. Because of the lamb's blood, God does not permit the destroyer to enter their homes but to pass over them.
This act commanded by God of applying the blood to their dwellings is a symbol of the blood to come from the sacrifice of his own Son, the Lamb of God, who would come and die for the sins of his people, releasing them out of their life of slavery to sin and into a life of freedom in Christ.
In the biblical narrative as the children of Israel hurry to eat their meal and make their way out of Egypt that dark night, they reach the Red Sea where God has guided them and where there is seemingly no way of escape. Pharaoh's forces are pursuing close behind them, as once again, Pharaoh has changed his wicked mind.
It's an impossible situation, but God does the miraculous by opening up the sea in front of them. He made a way - just as he does in the New Testament in his plan of salvation for his people. He again opens up the only Way.
And this was his plan all along. We see it in the first proclamation of the Gospel in the Garden of Eden and with each patriarch, God's covenant becomes clearer and more intense, with Noah, Abraham, Moses, and David.
Back in Egypt, the ninth plague that God imposed on the land after Pharaoh's stubborn refusal was darkness. "Then the LORD said to Moses, 'Stretch out your hand toward heaven, that there may be darkness over the land of Egypt, a darkness to be felt.'" ( Exodus 10:21 )
I remember before I came to faith in Christ the darkness that permeated every area of my life - it was so heavy upon me that I couldn't find words to describe its bondage; until I saw this verse recently in the Book of Exodus:
"A darkness to be felt." ( 10:21 )
That's exactly how I would describe my life before Christ.
Maybe you understand exactly what I mean. The human condition of slavery to sin is such a horrific, dreadful feeling because it's a reality of the darkness that grips the lost soul. A soul that continually doubts the goodness of God and desires to be its own god, to be the captain of its own soul.
However, when this darkness is felt, that means there is actually hope. We must first be awakened by the power of the Holy Spirit to the darkness, to the seriousness of our true condition of sin. In order for us to see the Light, the Way has to be opened up before us.
In order for the Light to be good news, we first must understand and feel the darkness. If we don't know our need, we will never come to Christ for salvation. If we don't understand that we are completely cut off from God because of our sin with no way through the deep darkness, we will never see the beauty and abundant life Christ bled and died and resurrected to give us.
"While we were sinners Christ died for us." ( Romans 5:8 )
That's the glorious good news of Christmas.
When the Holy Spirit regenerates our hearts and gives us faith to believe the Gospel of Jesus Christ, that truth leads us to praise him as Miriam and the other women did after they made it through the Red Sea. It's an organic act of worship out of a humble heart when we see our desperate need and then the Way opened up before us.
It's the angels piercing the dark night above the lowly shepherds watching over their flock, to proclaim the great tidings of joy that Christ the King is born in Bethlehem.
And as we saw Mary singing and praising God for his salvation after the angel Gabriel visited her, we see the same with Moses after the children of Israel are saved from slavery and walking through the Red Sea.
I think back to Moses as an infant floating in the Nile River inside of that little "ark" his mother constructed to save his life out of papyrus reeds that she daubed with bitumen and pitch. I think of his big sister Miriam watching her little brother from a distance to see what would become of him.
Now they sing and dance together because of the LORD's saving grace. What a story. That's the story of God redeeming his children through his own Son.
"The LORD is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation." ( Exodus 15:2 )
"And Miriam sang to them: ( By the way, Miriam is the Hebrew name for Mary. How beautiful is that? ) Sing to the LORD, for he has triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider he has thrown into the sea." ( 15:21 )
"You have led in your steadfast love the people whom you have redeemed; you have guided them by your strength to your holy abode." ( 15:13 )
And now in Him, Christ is our holy abode.
This weekend and into next week take some time to reread Luke 1 and Mary's Magnificat, and Exodus 14 &15 and the Songs of Moses and Miriam.
The Bible is so good when we learn to read it in context and for what it truly is - God's story of redeeming his people through the life and death and resurrection of his Son.
That's the glorious, good news of Christmas.
💜
( I thought I'd share a Christmas photo from the HBF archives of the late, great Atlas. I sure miss that big old boy. 💔💚 )
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