Sunday, March 24, 2019

Exodus 12:31–51

³¹During the night Pharaoh summoned Moses and Aaron and said, "Up! Leave my people, you and the Israelites! Go, worship the LORD as you have requested. ³²Take your flocks and herds, as you have said, and go. And also bless me."

³³The Egyptians urged the people to hurry and leave the country. "For otherwise," they said, "we will all die!" ³⁴So the people took their dough before the yeast was added, and carried it on their shoulders in kneading troughs wrapped in clothing. ³⁵The Israelites did as Moses instructed and asked the Egyptians for articles of silver and gold and for clothing. ³⁶The LORD had made the Egyptians favorably disposed toward the people, and they gave them what they asked for; so they plundered the Egyptians.

³⁷The Israelites journeyed from Rameses to Succoth. There were about six hundred thousand men on foot, besides women and children. ³⁸Many other people went up with them, as well as large droves of livestock, both flocks and herds. ³⁹With the dough they had brought from Egypt, they baked cakes of unleavened bread. The dough was without yeast because they had been driven out of Egypt and did not have time to prepare food for themselves.

⁴⁰Now the length of time the Israelite people lived in Egypt was 430 years. ⁴¹At the end of the 430 years, to the very day, all the LORD's divisions left Egypt. ⁴²Because the LORD kept vigil that night to bring them out of Egypt, on this night all the Israelites are to keep vigil to honor the LORD for the generations to come.

⁴³The LORD said to Moses and Aaron, "These are the regulations for the Passover:

"No foreigner is to eat of it. ⁴⁴Any slave you have bought may eat of it after you have circumcised him, ⁴⁵but a temporary resident and a hired worker may not eat of it.

⁴⁶"It must be eaten inside one house; take none of the meat outside the house. Do not break any of the bones. ⁴⁷The whole community of Israel must celebrate it.

⁴⁸"An alien living among you who wants to celebrate the LORD's Passover must have all the males in his household circumcised; then he may take part like one born in the land. No uncircumcised male may eat of it. ⁴⁹The same law applies to the native-born and to the alien living among you."

⁵⁰All the Israelites did just what the LORD had commanded Moses and Aaron. ⁵¹And on that very day the LORD brought the Israelites out of Egypt by their divisions.

Psalm 78:36–72

³⁶But then they would flatter him with their mouths, lying to him with their tongues; ³⁷their hearts were not loyal to him, they were not faithful to his covenant. ³⁸Yet he was merciful; he forgave their iniquities and did not destroy them. Time after time he restrained his anger and did not stir up his full wrath. ³⁹He remembered that they were but flesh, a passing breeze that does not return. ⁴⁰How often they rebelled against him in the desert and grieved him in the wasteland! ⁴¹Again and again they put God to the test; they vexed the Holy One of Israel. ⁴²They did not remember his power-- the day he redeemed them from the oppressor, ⁴³the day he displayed his miraculous signs in Egypt, his wonders in the region of Zoan. ⁴⁴He turned their rivers to blood; they could not drink from their streams. ⁴⁵He sent swarms of flies that devoured them, and frogs that devastated them. ⁴⁶He gave their crops to the grasshopper, their produce to the locust. ⁴⁷He destroyed their vines with hail and their sycamore-figs with sleet. ⁴⁸He gave over their cattle to the hail, their livestock to bolts of lightning. ⁴⁹He unleashed against them his hot anger, his wrath, indignation and hostility-- a band of destroying angels. ⁵⁰He prepared a path for his anger; he did not spare them from death but gave them over to the plague. ⁵¹He struck down all the firstborn of Egypt, the firstfruits of manhood in the tents of Ham. ⁵²But he brought his people out like a flock; he led them like sheep through the desert. ⁵³He guided them safely, so they were unafraid; but the sea engulfed their enemies. ⁵⁴Thus he brought them to the border of his holy land, to the hill country his right hand had taken. ⁵⁵He drove out nations before them and allotted their lands to them as an inheritance; he settled the tribes of Israel in their homes. ⁵⁶But they put God to the test and rebelled against the Most High; they did not keep his statutes. ⁵⁷Like their fathers they were disloyal and faithless, as unreliable as a faulty bow. ⁵⁸They angered him with their high places; they aroused his jealousy with their idols. ⁵⁹When God heard them, he was very angry; he rejected Israel completely. ⁶⁰He abandoned the tabernacle of Shiloh, the tent he had set up among men. ⁶¹He sent [the ark of] his might into captivity, his splendor into the hands of the enemy. ⁶²He gave his people over to the sword; he was very angry with his inheritance. ⁶³Fire consumed their young men, and their maidens had no wedding songs; ⁶⁴their priests were put to the sword, and their widows could not weep. ⁶⁵Then the Lord awoke as from sleep, as a man wakes from the stupor of wine. ⁶⁶He beat back his enemies; he put them to everlasting shame. ⁶⁷Then he rejected the tents of Joseph, he did not choose the tribe of Ephraim; ⁶⁸but he chose the tribe of Judah, Mount Zion, which he loved. ⁶⁹He built his sanctuary like the heights, like the earth that he established forever. ⁷⁰He chose David his servant and took him from the sheep pens; ⁷¹from tending the sheep he brought him to be the shepherd of his people Jacob, of Israel his inheritance. ⁷²And David shepherded them with integrity of heart; with skillful hands he led them.

Romans 9:27-33

²⁷Isaiah cries out concerning Israel:

"Though the number of the Israelites be like the sand by the sea, only the remnant will be saved. ²⁸For the Lord will carry out his sentence on earth with speed and finality."

²⁹It is just as Isaiah said previously: "Unless the Lord Almighty had left us descendants, we would have become like Sodom, we would have been like Gomorrah."

³⁰What then shall we say? That the Gentiles, who did not pursue righteousness, have obtained it, a righteousness that is by faith; ³¹but Israel, who pursued a law of righteousness, has not attained it. ³²Why not? Because they pursued it not by faith but as if it were by works. They stumbled over the "stumbling stone." ³³As it is written:

"See, I lay in Zion a stone that causes men to stumble and a rock that makes them fall, and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame."

Romans 10:1-4

¹Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for the Israelites is that they may be saved. ²For I can testify about them that they are zealous for God, but their zeal is not based on knowledge. ³Since they did not know the righteousness that comes from God and sought to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness. ⁴Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.