Wed 2nd Nov 2022 - Daily Reading:
Exodus 10:7-11:10
Compromises
Moses asked for, and the Lord demanded, nothing less than the total release of God’s people from Egypt. This was to include every person and all of their livestock and goods. When God comes to save his people, he does not come to do a half-hearted job. Complete freedom was God’s good plan for his people.
Pharaoh, of course, tried to bargain for a different deal. In Exodus 8:25 he told Moses to carry out worship to the Lord while staying in Egypt. In 8:28 he said they could go, but not very far. Now in 10:8-11, he gives permission for the men to leave, but their families and property must stay in Egypt.
None of these compromises were acceptable to Moses, or to God. In some ways, we are offered similar compromises today in our Christian walk, and they are just as unacceptable to the Lord now as they were then.
The world beckons us with these compromises. Like Pharaoh, the world wants us to fit in with the culture of our times or, if we must be different, it mustn’t be a radical difference. The world will accept and even welcome a comfortable Christianity that doesn’t offend, doesn’t challenge and doesn’t really make much of a difference.
By offering to let only the men leave, Pharaoh wanted to make sure God’s people had ties to Egypt that would prevent them from ever achieving the total freedom that God had planned for them. They could go and worship God, but Egypt would still have their hearts in the form of their families and possessions, so they could never truly leave and be free from slavery there.
However terrible their slavery had been, leaving Egypt meant leaving all that the Hebrews had ever known and heading out into an unknown wilderness. The compromise would have been more comfortable and probably less threatening, but it would have been less than the wonderful, perfect plan for total freedom and future blessing that the Lord had prepared for them. May the Lord make our spirits sensitive to recognise the compromises we are offered, and strengthen us to resist them in favour of his best plan for us.