The Scheme for January and February can be found here

Exodus 4-5; Acts 18; Psalm 53-54

We thought yesterday about how we are still dominated by the Narrative of Death – and Moses too is fearful. This Strange God, the ‘I AM’, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, who IS Life challenges Moses to his core. HE is exposed before him – his weakness, his fallibility, his stumbling speech. As he is afraid of Life, so he knows that the Israelites are not ready for this Life.

God in his infinite mercy, meets him where he is. As before he had bargained with Abraham over Sodom and Gomorrah, so too he gives him something ‘magical’, which Moses is still at a level that he will entrust himself to it [Pharaoh’s magicians do the same – Ex 7:8-13], he gives him Aaron – but all the same God’s anger is kindled in the face of such unbelief and it is only through blood that Moses is protected.

As Moses and Aaron draw near to Pharaoh, as Life is revealed in the servants of the LORD, immediately the Death Narrative struggles to re-assert itself. Knowing that its time is limited, it seeks to take to itself all that it can. In the midst of this conflict, Moses pleads with the LORD for a quiet life. But this Life is not quiet. Moses has little comprehension of what he is caught up in – no sense of Awe, that God’s purposes are infinitely greater than simply changing the mind of Pharaoh – rather that in the Exodus which he will effect for his people, his Glory may be revealed.

This is the Gift that is given to the Church – to reveal his Glory in the resurrection of Christ – present amongst us – Manifested in lives of worship and holy obedience.