Exodus 17:14a And the Lord said unto Moses, Write this for a memorial in a book…

When we read this verse we take the instruction for granted and it seems to us no big deal. We don’t look at the underlying issue of education in this matter. Israel was enslaved by Pharaohs for four hundred years. The only source of understanding about the God they prayed to was oral tradition. The Pharaohs would not have allowed these slaves to be educated.

We often overlook the plight of a people with whom we have no common history. We fail to understand the depths of their ordeals. Luckily God did not overlook this small matter. He chose Moses to be their deliverer.

Moses was a Levite raised in the house of Pharaoh’s sister. He would have been educated as one of the privileged few. It was no little thing for his mother to set his new life in a basket and put it upon the waters. It was no small thing for his sister to follow the basket to find out his fate. It was no small thing for the woman to pluck the baby from the water and love him.

All this happened at a time when Pharaoh ordered all newborn males of the slaves killed.

It was no small thing for Moses to lead Israel free.

It was no small thing that Herod the Great would, like Pharaoh, order the death of our deliverer in Bethlehem, and that He too should escape that execution.

But we accept without much thought for the peoples of those times and how difficult life must have been for them to believe God.

Now our time has come with easy of life, freedom and perfect peace but do we give thought at all to those enslaved and what they need to be set free?

Are they educated about Jesus?

Romans 10:6 But the righteousness which is of faith speaketh on this wise, Say not in thine heart, Who shall ascend into heaven? (that is, to bring Christ down from above:)

Peter himself had admitted that some of the things that Paul had to say were difficult to understand. This morning as I wrote about my nephew this passage came to mind with a clarity of understanding which escaped me in the past. I thank my nephew for this clarity.

My nephew wants understanding on his own terms and not on God’s terms. I can see that in this passage. “Hey God, if you do exist, come down here and meet me on my own terms.”

When God relinquished His position on the throne and came down to be born of a woman that is exactly what God did for us. He met us on our own terms.

Matthew 4:1 Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.

Jesus withstood temptation by the Prince of the Power of the Air, the highest spiritual authority in the world, and did not sin. Luckily Satan is not the highest spiritual authority in heaven.

John 5:30 I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me.

Jesus relinquished His will to the higher authority. This is the secret to this life in Christ, that we have access to the abundant life promised only if we relinquish our will to that of God’s authority.

Self-determination and self-rule has been the way of man for thousands of years and has led to nothing better than war, domination, genocide, slavery, death and destruction.

Yes the world is a better place than it has ever been but still falls under the terms and conditions of a ruling class who only has their self-interest at heart. Satan’s temptations in Matthew 4.