Weekly Pursuit – Week 3 of July
Verse:
Exo. 5:1 “And afterward Moses and Aaron came and said to Pharaoh, Thus says Jehovah the God of Israel, Let My people go that they may hold a feast to Me in the wilderness.”
Excerpts:
The book of Exodus reveals that God desires to rescue His people from everything other than Himself, that He wants to deliver them from everything that is not God. …Then they could be built up as God’s dwelling place on earth.
Not only were the ten plagues a warning and a punishment to the Egyptians, but they were also a revelation, an unveiling, to God’s people…. God wanted the life in Egypt to be exposed so that His people would hate it and want to flee from it. Therefore, God’s purpose in sending the ten plagues was not only to warn the Egyptians and to punish them. It was also to show His own people what the world was.
On the negative side, the book of Exodus unveils the world. On the positive side, it reveals God’s dwelling place. Firstly, the true nature, meaning, and issue of life in Egypt are exposed to God’s people. God’s intention in giving this revelation is to cause His people to become disgusted with Egypt, to leave Egypt behind, and to be separated to God for His dwelling place. The principle is the same today. If we have not been separated from the world, we cannot become God’s dwelling place. For the building up of His dwelling place, we must see the world as it really is. Furthermore, we must loathe the world’s way of living and be willing to forsake it.
Egypt is a type of the world. If we have a detailed vision of the world, we shall know God’s attitude toward it, and we shall spontaneously cease to love it. If we would be God’s dwelling place on earth, we must know the world in a thorough way, and the element of the world must be purged out of our being. Only through being separated from the world can we become God’s dwelling place. (Life-study of Exodus, msgs. 17 & 19)