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Aaron, Aharon, Deceitful, Egypt, Exodus, Heart, Heart is deceitful, Israel, Israelites, land, Moses, Moshe, Old testament, Pharaoh, Promised, Red Sea, scripture, Sea, The Savior, Wandering, Wandering in the wilderness, Wilderness, Yaweh, yeshua, YHVH
You work tirelessly all day, mentally and emotionally confused, physically exhausted from hard work, under a hot sun, in a body whose legs will not want to walk in the morning. A body whose back is caking up from coagulated blood. Every movement hurts, only to find that the reason for all this is because Aaron and Moses had gone to speak with Pharaoh. Pharaoh’s reaction was, well, brusque.
Here now, you learn that Moses and Aaron keep at it! They go before Pharaoh again, this time having a magic show contest which ends with the Egyptian water supply being turned into blood. What! That’s not something that happens every day. Indeed, nor is even spoken of. Most preternatural and surreptitious, and now look, the Nile River runs with blood, even more preternatural. Who knows how the Egyptians will react to that. Pigs.
Over the course of several months (possibly), as time tries to march on as it always has, there are many plagues. After the first few plagues the Egyptian magicians are unable to respond with their dark arts. How much blood have the dark magicians been shedding? Eventually, through locusts that are so thick that they block out light, gnats so fierce they stop daily activities, something as harmless as frogs even, you think, in great number halts life as you know it. Then hail. Such a thunderous hail storm rips through the land that the majority of the crops are destroyed. What is left behind from the hail is destroyed by the locusts. It seems Aaron and Moses had enough of being slaves. You wonder what it must have been like to be there, in Pharaoh’s courts, during the meetings and what Aaron and Moses were doing to cause The Savior to bring the plagues. Finally, after the Egyptians cry was heard from the heavens, you find yourself up to your eyeballs in Egyptian gold, silver, clothing, writing tablets, cooking utensils, farming equipment and traveling provisions, all willingly given to you by your Egyptian neighbors.
With all of these fine items you are next to the Red Sea, with a cloud between your camp and the camp of the angry Egyptians. They are ready to take you back to Egypt to rebuild their nation. Then, Moses.
From your vantage point near the sea, you see him with his flowing gray hair and beard, standing stoically at the edge of the water, robes curling in the wind. His hands stretched towards the heaven with staff. You notice the Red Sea begin to lose depth in front of him. For miles! The waters on either side of the shallowing path grow and then flow back into the sea. There is a long hallway of dry ground! Holy cow. Without thinking, like lemmings you and everyone around you begin the long journey across the Sea.
Mouths agape and eyes wet with watery wonder, the occasional unknowing fish swims right through the wall of water and directly into the air, falling to the ground. A child picks the flopping thing up and throws it like a baseball at the wall of water. You watch it swim away with hurt pride, “Hmmff,” the fish seems to say, swimming quickly away from the embarrassing event.
Your whole camp makes it across the sea only to turn around finding that the Egyptians are now on the same path you are on, in order to overtake you and bring all of Moses and Aaron’s hard work to nothing. Then, you see Moses’ staff over the sea of Israelite heads. He is looking into the heavens and his mouth is speaking words. His expression concentrated and humble, praising The Savior with all of His strength even after a long and what should have been stressful journey. It occurs to you, maybe Moses has little to do with this being saved from Egypt, maybe our whole family of Israelites have done nothing to cause this to happen, you think. You see his hands and arms come down and towards each other while his body folds over in a crouched stoop, all in one momentus movement miraculously and maniacally bringing the sea back into itself. The Egyptian’s swallowed whole, never to be seen from again. The abrupt downfall of one of the most powerful nations ever to walk the face of our beautiful blue planet. Now nothing but a memory, strong, proud and monumental.
After witnessing all of these events, indeed living through them, how easy it would be to go to Moses and say to him
“I’m thirsty, Moses”
Or, “Moses, I’m hungry! Egypt had plenty, and this desert has nothing!”
Or, “Do something, Moses, why did you bring us here?”
Aaron and Moses were only used of Elohim, but not Elohim. Elohim took the time to explain to his children over and over again that it was Him who saved them from Egypt physically, and whether they liked it or not He was going to save them from Egypt mentally, spiritually, emotionally. The Elohim Who lovingly brought them out of Egypt was about to spend forty years lovingly bringing the Egypt out of them and their grandchildren out in the desert; or He would let them walk in circles until they figure it out; or allow them to pass from this life into the next as estranged children settlers who never made it out of the wilderness.
There is a reason our Isrealite brothers and sisters saw awesome miracles of Elohim, but never believed in Him. Never were saved. Never returned to Him and recognized Him as the source of life and target of worship. C.S. Lewis explains this well. “This” being the coming to Moses with their wants and needs instead of Elohim. Lewis makes this point in the book That Hideous Strength, the third book in The Ransom trilogy. If you have not read that book or listened to it on Audible it is worth listening to. It’s a skillfully written book that brings out a lot of existential points in relation to the truth of The Savior. Magic and crap is spoken of in the book, which I do not condone, but let’s not throw the baby out with the bathwater. Lewis makes a good point and in an eloquent way.
There is a scene where Jane, Dimble and Deniston, three of the book’s characters (it’s hard to say who the protagonist is, if there is a single protagonist) are out looking for Merlin, who had just been raised from death. Previously, Jane, Dimble, and Deniston along with all the manor at St. Anne’s had spent several chapters in conversation about
Merlin: who Merlin was, what his role was for their cause, and why they needed to make him a team mate before their enemies did. They even discussed a plan on how they would retrieve him and bring him back to the manor. We are talking about well learned people in intelligent conversation about a matter that their very lives and the lives of the people of the whole world are dependent on.
The three find themselves on the search for Merlin and are getting nearer and nearer to the place where they think Merlin will be found. Then, it dawns on them what they are doing, and that Merlin is IRL. As they get closer to Merlin, they begin to recognize that this mission they contrived and the man they had to capture was a being their mouths believed in, but it took coming near to Merlin for their hearts to recognize him as a reality.
Let’s set the scene: Jane, Dimble and Deniston are going through the woods, in the rain, at night with a torch to guide them. They walk through several different types of wood, getting closer and closer to what they believe is Merlin’s camp in a little dingle:
“The change from road to the field felt as if one had passed from a waking into a phantasmal world. Everything became darker, wetter, more incalculable. each small decent felt as if you might be coming to the edge of a precipice. They were following a track beside a hedge. Wet and prickly tentacles seamed to snatch at them as they went. Whenever Deniston used his torch, the things that appeared in the circle of it’s light: tufts of grass, 
ruts filled with water, bedraggled yellow leaves clinging to the wet blackness of many angled twigs, and once the two greenish yellow fires in the eyes of some small animal had the air of being more commonplace than they ought to have been, as if for that moments exposure they assumed a disguise that they shuffled off again the moment they were left alone; They looked curiously small too. When the light vanished, the cold noisy darkness seemed a huge thing.
The fear which Dimble had felt at the first began to trickle into the minds of the others as they proceeded. Like water coming into a ship from a slow leak. They realized that they had not really believed in Merlin till now. They had thought they were believing the Pendragon in the kitchen, but they had been mistaken. The shock was still to take. Out here with only the changing red light ahead and the black all ’round, one really began to accept as fact this tryst with something dead, and yet not dead. Something dug up, exhumed from that dark pit of history that lay between the Romans and the beginning of the English. It was an age, not a man that awaited them in the horrible little dingle.”
Like the protagonists in the scene by Clive Staples Lewis, some of us proclaim we believe. Some of us believe our very own claim. Some of us even teach the claims that our hearts do not actually accept as reality, thinking that we do. Deep within us, we still, in our unsearched hearts, are under the illusion of a lie that was breathed into us, from birth, by Satan’s army. Our Israelite brothers and sisters displayed their unfortunate unbelief time and time again whilst wandering for water in Elohim’s wilderness. Elohim provided. His mission for them, and us, transcends water and food though. As the artist Lucious wrote in His song:
“Silver and gold will vanish away
But a good education will never decay
He sent I as a messenger so here what I say.
Silver and gold will vanish away
But trust in Ya is the only way
It is the only way.”
In Exodus Ch. 16 Aaron and Moses understood that they were not the source of the power, awesome and mighty, coming through them. They not only understood this but undertook the awesome and difficult responsibility Elohim gave them of daily reminding the people that although they wanted to lift up and worship their potentates, that their praises would be misplaced if found with Moses or Aaron. Eventually divesting them of their relationship with Him: the only way out.
Here in Ch. 16 of the historical account of the great Exodus we see how important it was to Aaron and Moses that the people recognize, believe in, and follow the truth that The
Savior and His power is the source of those manifestations took place during that trying and awesome time for the Israelites, our brothers and sisters.
<Then Moses and Aaron said to all the children of Israel, “At evening you shall know that YHVH has brought you out of the land of Egypt. And in the morning you shall see the glory of YHVH; For He hears your murmurings against YHVH. But what are we, that you murmur against us?”> Also, Moses said, <”This shall be seen when YHVH gives you meat to eat in the evening, and in the morning bread to the full; for YHVH hears your murmurings which you make against Him. And what are we? Your murmurings are not against us but against YHVH”>
Although Aaron said only <”But what are we, that you murmur against us?”> and Moses said <”And what are we? Your murmurings are not against us but against YHVH”> They both said the same thing using different words, while Aaron was inferenceing the concept, and Moses out-rightly spoke the concept.
The repetition here shows what the point needing to be understood was. The repetition shows the importance of the concept. Moses and Aaron were not playing games. Their relationship with Elohim, and their very lives were dependent on getting the message across and yet, spoken plainly, it still fell on many deaf ears. There is a lot going on in just those few sentences in regards to the power of the words that Aaron and Moses’ tongues spoke, like: how easily, once one has seen and understood that YHVH is the source, did the people slide back into destructive thought processes; The mercy Elohim has; What a good leadership the people had in Elohim through Moses and Aaron who loved them and fought spiritually for them even when they showed hatred, wickedness, and all sorts of backbiting; and, the striving of The Savior’s love for us even when we don’t even come close to showing a sliver of deserving it.
The people’s constant seeking help from people instead of Elohim shows the point: That even though His words are ever on the lips, does not mean that His truth has been prepared a home in the heart. You see, Satan uses people’s own lips, their own thoughts even, to lie to their very own hearts. For without belief in the heart, there is no faith, and without faith, salvation lacks. Put your trust in His work and walk in His understanding.
this man really claiming to be greater than Abraham?” No, I do not remember Abraham doing those things. And those things He was company to was not of his own strength. Was it Abraham who took your sins within Himself, and poured out His life to bring you from living for death and into living and fighting for life?” No, that was not Abraham. That was, is, and always will be Yeshua, Who lives and reigns as The King of kings and Lord of lords.
been saved after seeing many great miracles performed in Egypt. In fact in order to tell His disciples that He indeed was greater than all the greats, He healed the sick, cast out demons, made the dead to rise, fasted 40 days and 40 nights in the desert, rebuked raging storms and many other very marvelous works that sang the song of the works done by YHVH, connecting those things to what He was doing before their very eyes. Yeshua is a wonderful counselor and great physician. He is a righteous, holy and good Father, and no suffering done under His tutelage will be done in vain if you stay walking in faith. Let your faith grow and produce good fruit for every tree that does not produce good fruit will be cut down. It then will be cast into the fire.
Gentiles alike get angry when a man claims to be greater than a righteous, yet imperfect man? Being greater than an imperfect yet highly honored man, if true, should be encouraged, yet is met with social sparring and segregation even today.
there who have come to understand this, but in order to acquiesce society most still speak in terms of the Gregorian midnight to midnight way of keeping time. Deep down inside they long to reverence The Writers of Scripture and honor The Father by keeping Biblical time.
Spirit to lead Elohim’s children out of Egypt and into the desert. <They set out from Rameses in the first month, on the fifteenth day of the first month. On the day after the Passover, the people of Israel went out triumphantly in the sight of all the Egyptians…>
helpful instead of hurtful. YHVH guide, bless and give provision to our conversation and subsequent days. Amein.
