Articles
Shall Know That I Am the LORD - Exod. 6:7
Shall Know That I Am the LORD - Exod. 6:7
Israel had been enslaved to Egypt for hundreds of years, longing to be freed from such bondage. God has seen and heard and is now ready to deliver them. He has raised up Moses to be their leader and sent him to confront Pharaoh. Pharaoh’s initial reaction: “Who is the LORD that I should obey His voice”. He is about to find out!
As God prepared to display Himself unto the people, He instructed Moses: "Say, therefore, to the sons of Israel, 'I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from their bondage. I will also redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great judgments. 'Then I will take you for My people, and I will be your God; and you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians” (Exodus 6:6-7)
9 times in the book of Exodus we read this phrase: “Shall Know That I Am The LORD. It is spoken of different people:
· Pharaoh would know – 7:17
· Egypt would know – 7:5; 14:4, 18
· Israel would know – BUT with a difference: they “shall know that I the LORD your God”! – 6:7; 16:12; 29:46
· Israel’s descendants would know – 10:2; 31:13
Then the epic confrontation of the LORD against the gods of Egypt. God displayed His power over them again and again. God showed that He alone is ‘god’, that the ‘gods’ were nothing. This all culminated in their crossing the Red sea on dry land and arriving safe on the other side.
YET, having seen the power of God displayed against Egypt, the children of Israel were unfaithful to God. That whole generation which had observed this conflict between the LORD and the gods of Egypt, they all died in the wilderness due to their lack of faith.
While at first they did believe: “When Israel saw the great power which the Lord had used against the Egyptians, the people feared the Lord, and they believed in the Lord and in His servant Moses” (Exod. 14:31), they proved unfaithful. “Therefore, just as the Holy Spirit says, "Today if you hear His voice, 8 Do not harden your hearts as when they provoked Me, As in the day of trial in the wilderness, 9 Where your fathers tried Me by testing Me, And saw My works for forty years. 10 "Therefore I was angry with this generation, And said, 'They always go astray in their heart, And they did not know My ways'; 11 As I swore in My wrath, 'They shall not enter My rest.'" (Hebrews 3:7-11).
It wasn’t that they didn’t believe God did these things, they did, BUT, they didn’t TRUST God. As disciples, we are instructed to trust God: “Therefore, those also who suffer according to the will of God shall entrust their souls to a faithful Creator in doing what is right” (1Pet. 4:19).
Hence the writer of Hebrews warns: “Take care, brethren, that there not be in any one of you an evil, unbelieving heart that falls away from the living God. 13 But encourage one another day after day, as long as it is still called "Today," so that none of you will be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. 14 For we have become partakers of Christ, if we hold fast the beginning of our assurance firm until the end, Hebrews 3:12-14
Knowing and trusting are not the same. Are you trusting God?
Hugh DeLong
