If nothing else (and there’s plenty else) reading the scriptures brings you the opportunity to understand the Lord’s heart. He wants to demonstrate His Love for us. He wants to demonstrate His suffering and dedication to the collective healing of not the world but of the people. He wants us to know when we sacrifice, He already made a sacrifice for us. He understands pain, He understands the importance of moving forward past the pain as well.

Jesus with God, have Lorded over all from the beginning and have Lorded by example. Their sufferings on the earth also are “strangely dim” compared to the glory of their Heaven and the ongoing and everything gathering by grace of their beloved flock.

One of the most difficult scriptures to fathom is the death of the firstborn children in the plagues of the Egyptians. God knew that if the previous messages didn’t get thru, this one would. He knew it also demonstrated to His followers then and today that listening to the Lord protects. Acting upon instructions demonstrates listening. Rejoicing after protection demonstrates teaching about His Love.

It’s not that Jesus avoided His pain and imposed it on others, He certainly absorbed pain and separation. It is that God knew there was no other way to convince Pharaoh, who was reticent to listen thru even seemingly the worst plagues before this. God even knew that there would never be such louder wailing in Egypt than this act would cause. But Pharoah was unwilling to follow what clearly had been spoken by the Lord as messages.

God early on decided that His own First Born, Jesus, was a sacrificial Lamb. No wailing could be bigger than His. And no healing could be better than His, to have renewed hope of eternity with all the re-gathered sheep in us, in us who listen and obey. That’s the ultimate “moving forward”. God moved forward with a plan and powered thru His pain. When we have pain, we also need to move forward, that’s not always on our timelines, certainly not on anyone else’s, just only on God’s. God has determined to be with His people and moved Himself to make His people move.

God leads, lives, loves by example and by rule. God is the ultimate power and pursuer. God wants us to understand His heart. God wants our hearts in love. He longs for all His children. Listen to Him today.

Amen

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Exodus 11

The Plague on the Firstborn
11: Now the Lord had said to Moses, “I will bring one more plague on Pharaoh and on Egypt. After that, he will let you go from here, and when he does, he will drive you out completely. Tell the people that men and women alike are to ask their neighbors for articles of silver and gold.” (The Lord made the Egyptians favorably disposed toward the people, and Moses himself was highly regarded in Egypt by Pharaoh’s officials and by the people.)

So Moses said, “This is what the Lord says: ‘About midnight I will go throughout Egypt. Every firstborn son in Egypt will die, from the firstborn son of Pharaoh, who sits on the throne, to the firstborn son of the female slave, who is at her hand mill, and all the firstborn of the cattle as well. There will be loud wailing throughout Egypt—worse than there has ever been or ever will be again. But among the Israelites not a dog will bark at any person or animal.’ Then you will know that the Lord makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel. All these officials of yours will come to me, bowing down before me and saying, ‘Go, you and all the people who follow you!’ After that I will leave.” Then Moses, hot with anger, left Pharaoh.

The Lord had said to Moses, “Pharaoh will refuse to listen to you—so that my wonders may be multiplied in Egypt.” Moses and Aaron performed all these wonders before Pharaoh, but the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he would not let the Israelites go out of his country.

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Exodus 12:27-30
And when your children ask you, ‘What does this ceremony mean to you?’ then tell them, ‘It is the Passover sacrifice to the Lord, who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt and spared our homes when he struck down the Egyptians.’” Then the people bowed down and worshiped. The Israelites did just what the Lord commanded Moses and Aaron.

At midnight the Lord struck down all the firstborn in Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh, who sat on the throne, to the firstborn of the prisoner, who was in the dungeon, and the firstborn of all the livestock as well. Pharaoh and all his officials and all the Egyptians got up during the night, and there was loud wailing in Egypt, for there was not a house without someone dead.