#DailyDevotion You Will Know God One Way Or Another
Lent day 34 Saturday
Read Ex 7:1–25
Exo 7:1-6 And the LORD said to Moses, “See, I have made you like God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron shall be your prophet. (2) You shall speak all that I command you, and your brother Aaron shall tell Pharaoh to let the people of Israel go out of his land. (3) But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and though I multiply my signs and wonders in the land of Egypt, (4) Pharaoh will not listen to you. Then I will lay my hand on Egypt and bring my hosts, my people the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great acts of judgment. (5) The Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD, when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring out the people of Israel from among them.” (6) Moses and Aaron did so; they did just as the LORD commanded them.
Now this is one of main themes of the early part of Exodus if not the whole the whole scriptures. What is that you say? That mankind come to know the Lord. Here in particular is that Pharaoh and the Egyptians come to the know the Lord. Unfortunately for them they are going to get to know the Lord from his judgment side. They are going to learn about his power and might. The Lord still calls out to the world from his judgment side with disasters, calamities and the like calling us to repentance.
On the other hand the Israelites, God’s chosen people are going to get the know the Lord in a whole different sense, the sense the Lord really wants to be known. They will know the Lord as a great deliverer. He will free them from the land of bondage and of misery. They will be shown him who is merciful, kind, patience and bound to a covenantal love he had placed himself.
In the New Testament this is also a theme. Jeremiah says, Jer 31:34 “And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD. For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” Jesus says to the Jews, Joh 8:19 “You know neither me nor my Father. If you knew me, you would know my Father also.” To his disciples he says, Joh 14:9 “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Concerning those who would come after the apostles he says, “Joh 10:27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.” And St. Paul testifies, 1Co 13:12 “For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.”
God does not want to be a hidden quality. But to know the Lord as he wants to be known, one can only know him in Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ makes his Father known as the one who his patient, kind, long-suffering, forgiving and love. But apart from Christ Jesus you simply will not know the Lord this way. But you know him and will know him as one who brings judgment. How do you want to know him?
Lord Jesus Christ, you reveal to us the Father in the manner in which he wants to be know through faith your work in you innocent suffering, death and resurrection. Grant us faith to know you that we may know the Father as well. Amen.