The Park Forum

Links for today’s readings:

Read: Exodus 8 Listen: (5:07) Read: Matthew 19 Listen: (4:04)

Scripture Focus: Exodus 7.22b-23

22 …Pharaoh’s heart became hard; he would not listen to Moses and Aaron, just as the Lord had said. 23 Instead, he turned and went into his palace, and did not take even this to heart.

Exodus 5.2

2 Pharaoh said, “Who is the Lord, that I should obey him and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord and I will not let Israel go.”

Reflection: Pharaoh’s Epistemology

By John Tillman

The first person God called “prophet” was Abraham. Moses and Aaron were next. It is interesting to compare the results.

God warned Abimelek in a supernatural dream to let Sarah go. God’s prophet, Abraham, would pray for the king and bless him if he did. If Abimelek did not, all his people would die. Abimelek could have hardened his heart and doubted his dream but he didn’t.

God warned Pharaoh through Moses, Aaron, and supernatural signs, to let his people go. If Pharaoh did not let the people go, he and his kingdom would suffer. Pharaoh could have believed the signs but hardened his heart and the hard-hearted find excuses not to listen.

Pharaoh questioned the prophets’ motives, their political alignment, and their honesty, calling them lazy, troublemakers, deceptive, and divisive. Pharaoh had an identity-based epistemology. “Who is the Lord that I should obey him…?” (Exodus 5.4)

Pharaoh doubled down and reaped disaster. Abimelek relented and reaped blessings. How kings and citizens respond to prophetic warnings matters.

Before being too hard on Pharaoh, consider whether we share his identity-based epistemology. Today, we don’t distrust supernatural prophets. We distrust everything.

If our news source says it, it’s true. If your news source says it, it’s biased. If the facts make our side look bad, they are fake. If scientific results challenge us, it’s a conspiracy. If the courts rule against our side, they are corrupt.

This skepticism extends to biblical teaching. We too often judge the trustworthiness and orthodoxy of pastors by their politics rather than their theological claims. We are in an epistemological crisis. Hard hearts find excuses not to listen. We only trust ear-tickling prophets.

How do we escape this crisis of truth? How can Christians reclaim the mantle of being people devoted to the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help us God?

If I had 10,000 words instead of 400, I still couldn’t answer that. However, I know one step is not asking like Pharaoh, “Who said this that I should believe it?”

We need an Exodus from Pharaoh’s epistemology even if it means wandering in the desert. How we respond to prophets of any kind, matters. Let’s recover a commitment to the truth, no matter who says it or benefits from it.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Request for Presence

Show your goodness, O Lord, to those who are good and to those who are true of heart. — Psalm 125.4

– Divine Hours prayers from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Read more: Tortured Prophets Department

Conspiracy, disloyalty, and financial gain are common accusations used today to discredit whistleblowers and victims. Amaziah is alive and well.

Tortured Prophets Department — Readers’ Choice

Read more: Conspiracy Theology

“Trust no one” is the mantra for our day. We have seen the news turn from a daily source of information to headlines judged for signs of misinformation.

Conspiracy Theology

Links for today’s readings:

Read: Exodus 7 Listen: (3:29) Read: Matthew 18 Listen: (4:25)

Scripture Focus: Exodus 7.1-6

1 Then the Lord said to Moses, “See, I have made you like God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron will be your prophet. 2 You are to say everything I command you, and your brother Aaron is to tell Pharaoh to let the Israelites go out of his country. 3 But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and though I multiply my signs and wonders in Egypt, 4 he will not listen to you. Then I will lay my hand on Egypt and with mighty acts of judgment I will bring out my divisions, my people the Israelites. 5 And the Egyptians will know that I am the Lord when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring the Israelites out of it.” 6 Moses and Aaron did just as the Lord commanded them.

Reflection: Live Prophetically

By John Tillman

God makes Moses and Aaron a metaphoric picture of being a prophet.

Prophets speak in a deity’s name as a messenger speaks in a ruler’s name. This was common in preliterate history.

Messengers represented a sender’s words. They delivered a sender’s speech from memory with exact wording and took back exactly worded replies. (2 Samuel 11.19-22; 2 Samuel 14.2-3, 19-20)

Special messengers represented a sender’s will. These messengers went beyond rote memorization. They knew their masters’ minds and spoke freely on their behalf. Examples include Abraham’s servant (Genesis 24.50-58) and Sennacherib’s commander (Isaiah 36.1-5).

Messengers represented a sender’s person. They would be treated with respect due to the sender. Mistreating or disrespecting a messenger was tantamount to treating the sender in the same way. (2 Samuel 10.3-6)

Normal messengers represented the words, will, and presence of their senders. God’s prophets represent the words, will, and presence of God.

There is an important lesson in not responding to prophets as Pharaoh does, but today focus on your prophetic call. You have one.

Whether you can “speak well,” like Aaron, or whether, like Moses, you are “slow of speech” you do not lack any spiritual gift in Jesus Christ.  (1 Corinthians 1.7)

Prophecy is not necessarily foretelling the future, but speaking the truth. When we speak the gospel, we tell the truth about the past, present, and future. “Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again,” is a prophetic statement.

Be aware and worthy of your prophetic calling.

Faithfully know and represent his words. Read the Bible to know the words of Jesus and how Jesus treated scripture. Follow his interpretive example. Do not distort, leave out, or reinterpret scripture to justify your sin or anyone else’s sin.

Faithfully discern his will and follow his ways. Know the mind of Christ and follow his way. You cannot do his will outside of his ways. (ref) Get wisdom, though it costs you everything. (ref)

Faithfully represent his presence. Be Jesus’ feet and hands, serving the outcast and hurting. Have no “fear of man” or favoritism for the powerful or the weak, but speak the truth lovingly and firmly. Suffer, die, and rise with him, both metaphorically each day and literally one day in the future.

Do not shirk your prophetic calling. There are kings to be confronted and people to be set free. There are wonders to be shown and rescues to be enacted. Live prophetically.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Small Verse

Open, Lord, my eyes that I may see.
Open, Lord, my ears that I may hear.
Open, Lord, my heart and my mind that I may understand.
So shall I turn to you and be healed.

– Divine Hours prayers from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Read more: Invisible Status

Jesus calls “the greatest” those others call “the least.”
Jesus moves the invisible to the best seats at the feast.

Invisible Status

Read more: Choices and Hard Hearts

Hardened hearts happen in stages. Our choices matter. Our hearts are hardened or softened day after day.

Choices and Hard Hearts—Readers’ Choice

Links for today’s readings:

Read: Exodus 3 Listen: (3:59), Read: Matthew 14 Listen: (4:14)

Scripture Focus: Exodus 3.18-20

18 “The elders of Israel will listen to you. Then you and the elders are to go to the king of Egypt and say to him, ‘The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, has met with us. Let us take a three-day journey into the wilderness to offer sacrifices to the Lord our God.’ 19 But I know that the king of Egypt will not let you go unless a mighty hand compels him. 20 So I will stretch out my hand and strike the Egyptians with all the wonders that I will perform among them. After that, he will let you go.

From John: We look back on this post from 2023 to remind ourselves that God tests individuals, his Church, and nations before judgment. Judgment begins with God’s household (1 Peter 4:17). May we not be found with Pharaoh-like hard hearts. May it not take plagues for those God cares for to be set free.

Reflection: Testing Before Judgment

By John Tillman

God told Moses to ask the current Pharaoh for a three-day journey into the wilderness to worship God, presumably at Sinai. Yet, even at the beginning of this story, we know that’s not God’s full intention. God also told Moses that he intended to take all Israel out of Egyptian slavery and return them to Canaan. Is God’s request through Moses a deception? Will not the God of all the earth tell the truth? (Genesis 18.25)

God is not being deceptive. The request is not a lie. It is a test. God is testing Pharaoh’s heart. This story ends with acts of divine violence. It’s important to remember that it starts with a test. Pharaoh fails the test.

Another passage on divine violence is similar. God heard an outcry against Sodom. He sent representatives to test if the city was as bad as the report. (Genesis 18.20-21) Only after testing does God initiate judgment.

Moses, Aaron, and the slowly escalating nature of the plagues provide Pharaoh with off-ramps to escape further judgment. The plagues interrogate Pharaoh’s heart, “Are you as proud and stubborn as I have heard? Will you repent and turn from evil?” What he finds in Pharaoh’s heart seals his fate.

Typically we apply this story by seeing ourselves as Moses, Aaron, or perhaps the suffering Israelites. But it is often helpful to learn from villains as well as heroes. What does the way God tested Pharaoh tell us about God and about testing?

God’s tests prove him righteous. Pharaoh repeatedly “hardened his heart” proving God right about him. Eventually, his chances run out. God is merciful and compassionate, but he does not leave the guilty unpunished. God’s final plague on Pharaoh is to harden Pharaoh’s heart further, making him incapable of letting the people go.

Are there wicked ways within us? Are Pharaoh-like thoughts creeping in?

It is a good spiritual practice to regularly ask God to interrogate our hearts, to test us. Testing from God is a mercy that allows us a chance to humble ourselves and repent.

What happened to Pharaoh doesn’t have to happen to us. God’s tests for his children are not intended to lead to judgment and pain. They are intended to lead to our repentance and sanctification. Soften your heart today to hear him and obey, to repent and rejoice.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Greeting

You are my hiding place… you surround me with shouts of deliverance. — Psalm 32.8

– Divine Hours prayers from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Read more: Proverbs’ House of Mirrors

Perhaps Hebrew poetry’s love of parallelism is a reflection on the name of the God…God’s name has parallelism within itself.

Proverbs’ House of Mirrors

Read more: Poisoning the Heart of the Gospel

“Poisoning the blood”…This phrase poisons the heart of the gospel. To believe this phrase, we must call Paul, Peter, and Jesus liars.

Poisoning the Heart of the Gospel

Links for today’s readings:

Read: Exodus 2 Listen: (3:18), Read: Matthew 13 Listen: (7:23)

Scripture Focus: Exodus 2:6, 10

6 She opened it and saw the baby. He was crying, and she felt sorry for him. “This is one of the Hebrew babies,” she said. …

10 When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh’s daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses, saying, “I drew him out of the water.”

Reflection: Subverting a King’s Order

By Erin Newton

The final words of Exodus 1 are a genocidal edict from Pharaoh. An entire generation of foreign workers were targeted simply because there were a lot of them. The king thinks the Hebrew community will “join my enemies,” thus prejudging them as a sort of problem.

But we see the subversive plan of God at work in chapter 1 when many babies were saved, because Shiphrah and Puah saw each person as valuable and defied the pharaoh’s orders. And just a few verses later, a baby survives by the hands of an Egyptian woman!

Here she is—a member of the powerful, royal family and the majority ethnic group—looking at a Hebrew baby with compassion. In the narrative she stands as a parallel to the same bravery displayed by Shiphrah and Puah.

Pharaoh’s daughter defies her father’s order, not out of some hormonal weakness, but because she sees value in humanity. Despite her family—her community of influence—she made a choice based on principles.

Shiphrah and Puah are among the targeted community. Their actions are strategic, successful, and brave. Pharaoh’s daughter is among the abuser’s community. Her actions are thoughtful, merciful, defiant, and morally right. Shiphrah, Puah, and Pharaoh’s daughter looked at the law of the land, saw it for the evil it was, and did the opposite.

As in ancient history, leaders today are promoting decisions that cast people out, labeling them as the enemy, and pursuing any avenue to eliminate them. When leaders (even leaders we like) choose power over people, over peace, or over principles, we don’t have to follow them or obey them.

For many of us, we are not in the demographic targeted by these decisions. Pharoah’s daughter couldn’t overturn the mandate, or save everyone, but she did what she could for who she could.

When laws or policies are cruel or unjust, what can you do where you are for those affected? Can we be like the brave women of this story? Are we speaking Pharaoh’s words, “throw them into the Nile” or his daughter’s, “I drew him out of the water.”

We are standing by the Nile. The cries of the children and their parents call out. We can stand against evil edicts and save lives or stand by and watch the once-cleansing waters soon turn to blood.

Choose principles over power. Be ready to recognize when your own people are wrong.

Divine Hours Prayer: A Reading

Jesus said: “In all truth I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave. Now a slave has no permanent standing in the household, but a son belongs to it forever. So if the Son sets you free, you will indeed be free.” — John 8.34-36

– Divine Hours prayers from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.

Read more: Exceptional Emperors

Nero was an exceptionally bad emperor but Peter made no exception for the character his readers must demonstrate.

Exceptional Emperors

Read more: Resisting in Faith

In the midst of one of the most powerful and evil governments in history, Daniel understood…Their calling was to speak to power, not to strike at it.

Resisting in Faith