GOD’S WORD FOR JUNE 7

GOD’S WORD FOR JUNE 7 ~ ~ Exodus 9:16 ~ ~ “But for this purpose I have caused you to stand to show you my power, so that my fame may be declared throughout all the earth.”

Continuing with excerpts from chapter 4 of John Piper’s book, “The Pleasures of God”

“Why didn’t God Make Short Work of Pharaoh?

Exodus is where God began to shape the corporate life of His chosen people. For the rest of her existence Israel looked back to the Exodus as the key event in her history.

So in the Exodus we can see what God is up to in choosing a people for Himself. In Exodus 9:16 God speaks to Pharaoh a word that lets him —and us—know why God is multiplying His mighty acts into ten plagues, instead of making short work of Egypt’s stubbornness in one swift catastrophe.

This text is so crucial that the apostle Paul quotes it in Romans 9:17 to sum up God’s purpose in the Exodus, God says to Pharaoh, “But for this purpose I have caused you to stand —or “appointed you” …to show you my power, so that my name may be declared throughout all the earth”

So the point of Exodus was to make a worldwide reputation for God. The point of the ten plagues and miraculous Red Sea crossing was to demonstrate the astonishing power of God on behalf of His freely chosen people, with the aim that this reputation, this name, would be declared throughout the whole world. Is it not clear then that God has great pleasure in His fame?

One of the great implications of God’s pleasure in His fame is found in the story of Rahab, the harlot of Jericho. She was converted to the true God and spared from death, because of the fame of God from the Exodus that had run before the Israelites and reached her city. “We have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea before you when you came out of Egypt….The Lord your God is He who is God in heaven above and on earth beneath” (Joshua 2:10-11) Thus God’s love for His fame became the means of Rahab’s conversion. We will see this wonderful connection again and again.

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