God Knows

In Exodus 3, God appeared to Moses from a burning bush and said him, “I have indeed seen the misery of My people in Egypt.  I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering.  So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land…” (Exodus 3:7-8).  When God said this to Moses, He wasn’t saying, “It has just come to my attention that the Israelites are in trouble and I am making a plan to save them.”

The Israelite’s plight came as no surprise to the LORD.  In fact, He told Abraham about His rescue plan well before Abraham had any children (Genesis 15:13-14).  When we hear this, have we ever asked ourselves, “If God knows everything and He’s going to bring about His purposes, why bother and what’s the point?”  Paul answers this question.  Paul said, “Now these things happened to them as examples and were written down as warnings for us…” (I Corinthians 10: 11a)

In I Corinthians 10, Paul informs us that our spiritual forefathers walked with God and experienced Him (vs. 1-4).  Paul reminds us that God was not pleased with most of them (vs.5) because they set their heart on “evil things” (vs. 6), which he then goes on to define (vs. 7-10).

According to Paul, in our spiritual journey we are going to be tempted or tested in every way (vs. 13).  The bottom line is that God is faithful and the unspoken question is, “are we going to trust Him?” (vs.13)

But Paul’s not finished.  Paul says that when we take “Communion” (vs. 14-17), he reminds us how we began our journey and who we are journeying with.  In the context of “the Exodus,” we are reminded that God saw our need well before we existed and when we look at the world around us we are seeing what God saw and we are discovering what God has known from the beginning.  I think that the rest of the chapter (vs. 14-33) can be summed up by what Paul says in his next letter when he says, “all this is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ, and gave us the ministry of reconciliation.” (II Corinthians 5:18).

God is going to accomplish His purpose in the world, but He’s asking us to join Him—daily.