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Now these things happened to them as an example, and they were written for our instruction, upon whom the ends of the ages have come.
1Corinthians 10:11 NASB
The gavel falls, and the sentence is prison. The citizen turned felon doesn’t want to go, but the behavior is so heinous that the public is at risk. So, a peaceful society must take the extraordinary step of using violence — taking hold of the prisoner, putting on shackles, even lifting the perpetrator off the ground at times. Peace can return when the violent one is safely secured.
Now, imagine the challenge when the fate of the world is at stake. The Creator created Israel long ago to be a society of intercessors for the entire world (Ex. 19:5–6; 1Pet. 2:9–10; Rev. 1:6; 5:10; 20:6), to help mankind reconnect with the Source of life and existence. So, Israel’s freedom meant the world’s freedom, and Israel’s release from the hold of empire and false sources of life was necessary for the world. And to do that took breaking the ancient empire that thought it controlled Israel’s bodies, hearts and minds.
Likewise, the Holy One of Israel has shown us through messengers that on “that day,” aka the Day of the LORD, that it will again take the force of Heaven to break the powers holding captive all nations.
This is the pattern of the first Exodus and the last Exodus: Turn back to the Creator, follow the Liberator, trust the Redeemer and submit to the Healer, Who gives us a new name, a new identity.
In the Torah reading בא Bo (“come,” Exodus 10:1–13:16), Pharaoh still had to be convinced that God was the one with the overwhelming power, not himself. Unfortunately because of Pharaoh’s pride and hardness of heart — partly a product of pride and partly of Heaven — God had to literally destroy Egypt’s economic and military superpower status to do so.
This had to happen to show not only Egypt, but the entire world, Who is truly in charge. And it wasn’t an emperor or a so-called deity (Ex. 12:12). It was only after the death of the first-born of Egypt, including his own son and heir, that Pharaoh was finally convinced that it was in his best interest to let Israel go.
Major cities of the world sprout out along river ways, the living water that flows in and out attracts settlement and commerce. This is true of the Nile, the Mississippi, the Danube, etc. The children of Israel had settled in the land of Goshen, which is where the Nile empties into the Mediterranean, which was a land full of life, but it because a lander of suffering and death for the children of Israel.
God turned the tables and made Egypt a land of suffering and death for the Egyptians until they relented and set the Israelite slaves free.
Exodus and Revelation plague parallels
We talked recently about how the Day of the LORD is compared to the first Exodus but is foretold to be much more significant. When we look at the plagues in Egypt, as recorded in Exodus 7–13, there are very interesting parallels in Revelation 8–11; 15–16:
| Trumpet plagues (Rev. 8–11) | Plagues in Exodus 7–12 |
|---|---|
| Trumpet 1: 1/3 earth | Plague 7: Hail |
| Trumpet 2: 1/3 sea (source of food) | Plague 5: Livestock killed |
| Trumpet 3: 1/3 rivers (drinking and irrigation) | Plague 1: Blood in the Nile |
| Trumpet 4: 1/3 heavens | Plague 9: Darkness |
| Trumpet 5: Locust demons | Plague 8: Locusts |
| Trumpet 6: 1/3 humans killed | Plague 10: Firstborn killed |
| Trumpet 7: Consummation; the Lamb and His forces conquer the dragon, who the LORD created and allowed to persist as a tempter and liar | Passover: Blood of the Pesakh blocks the LORD’s Destroyer |
| Bowl plagues (Rev. 15–16) | Plagues in Exodus 7–12 |
|---|---|
| Bowl 1: Sores | Plague 6: Boils |
| Bowl 2: Blood in sea | Plague 1: Blood in the Nile |
| Bowl 3: Blood in rivers | Plague 1: Blood in the Nile |
| Bowl 4: Sun burns people | — |
| Bowl 5: Darkness | Plague 9: Darkness |
| Bowl 6: Euphrates dried; 3 unclean spirits like frogs from the mouths of the dragon, beast and false prophet to gather the nations for war at Har Meggido (Armageddon) | Red Sea dried for Exodus crossing Plague 2: frogs |
| Bowl 7: Earthquake; accompanied by thunder and lightning | Plague 7: thunder and lightning accompanied the hail |
| — | Plague 3: gnats |
| — | Plague 4: flies |
Freedom can come at a high cost
The cost of Israel’s freedom was the death of the first-born of Egypt. That is an important and sobering part of the Pesach seder1Hebrew for the Passover ceremony recollection of the Exodus. But that cost wasn’t only back then; it’s with us even now to this day. We acknowledge the great cost that was paid for our freedom from bondage to “dead works,” or a way of life that doesn’t lead back to the Creator.
The death of Egypt’s first-born was because of the sins of the parents. The actions of the leadership often come upon the innocent subjects.
The cost of our freedom from sin and death was also paid by Yeshua haMashiakh2Original Hebrew for Jesus the Christ, the Anointed., the Creator’s First-born (Gen. 22:2; John 3:16, 18; 1John 4:9).
While they were freed overnight, it would take thousands of years of wandering, exiles and regatherings for the people of God to understand what freedom really is and why freedom is improtant.
The war between kingdom of Heaven and the kingdom of the Adversary is over for those who have repented of their sins and walk the walk of teshuvah3Hebrew for “return,” i.e., repentance..
The ‘new covenant’: Sinai on the inside
The memorials of Pesach reached a pinnacle at Yeshua’s last Pesach on Earth, aka the Last Supper:
In the same way He took the cup also after supper, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.”
1Corinthians 11:25 NASB
and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood, which speaks better than the blood of Abel.
Hebrews 12:24 NASB
The children of Israel went to Sinai first and then went to to enter His “rest,” aka the Promised Land. They first had to — and us today — must enter God’s freedom, His “new covenant,” first foretold in the Prophets then made a reality with the life, death and resurrection of the Messiah (Jer. 31:31–34; Ezek. 36:26-27). As the Prophets explain and Yeshua reminded those who heard Him (Matt. 5:17–20; Luke 16:16–17), this new covenant is Sinai on the inside. It’s about learning God’s laws and receiving His Spirit to allow God’s character to become our character, to become what we naturally do.
The Messiah’s key role was to introduce people to the Father (Jer. 31:34; John 14:8–11), a relationship that would lead mankind to life made full in the present and eternal life in the world to come.
Circumcise your heart
We have to leave behind and circumcise — cut out — our old live from our hearts (Deut. 10:16, 30:6; Jer. 4:4). We can’t live the way we used to live and be happy in God’s presence.
Is freedom worth the price?
This freedom comes at a steep cost, a cost sometimes so high that some may not the high cost was necessary or even worth it. People have lost their friends, family, jobs and even their lives to live in God’s ways.
“Therefore everyone who confesses Me before men, I will also confess him before My Father who is in heaven. “But whoever denies Me before men, I will also deny him before My Father who is in heaven.
“Do not think that I came to bring peace on the earth; I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I came to ‘SET A MAN AGAINST HIS FATHER, AND A DAUGHTER AGAINST HER MOTHER, AND A DAUGHTER-IN-LAW AGAINST HER MOTHER-IN-LAW’; and ‘A MAN’S ENEMIES WILL BE THE MEMBERS OF HIS HOUSEHOLD.’
“He who loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me; and he who loves son or daughter more than Me is not worthy of Me. And he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me. He who has found his life will lose it, and he who has lost his life for My sake will find it.”
Matthew 10:32–39 NASB, quoting Micah 7:6
The prophet Micah was pointing toward an internal sickness in the people of God, who had drifted so far from relationship with Him that they no longer had loyalty or compassion for close relationships around them.
‘Cancel culture’ is as old as time
New York City’s slogan for vigilance after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has been, “If you see something, say something.” The original stated goal of that measure against terrorism and others from various levels of government was beware of “wolves in sheep’s clothing.” Today, the definition of terrorist is fast expanding to include many.
During the 1950s, Sen. Joseph McCarthy lead an effort to find and expose Soviet spies and communist sympathizers. He was later written off as a conspiracy theorist, and he sometimes went to extremes to try to find these people. However, in the 1990s when the Soviet Union archives were opened, McCarthy was largely vindicated. From that and the earlier Venona intercepts, we’ve learned that there actually were hundreds of Soviet spies and sympathizers in the highest levels of the U.S. government and in key positions of society.
“Cancel culture” may seem foreign in the U.S., with our First Amendment protections for religion, speech, assembly, press and petition, but mankind has nearly always hated righteousness (Rom. 1:18–21). It goes all the way back to Cain’s murder of Abel (Gen. 4:3–8). The righteous continually face slander and abuse, and God compares slander to murder — assassination of someone’s name, their reputation.
Cancel culture is what we call this modern form of ostracism and mob “justice.”
Starting a new life in the Kingdom is simultaneously easy and not easy. Heaven’s offer is easy to accept, but we must understand in doing so that we have to be willing to give up our family, friends, etc. There’s that much at stake.
God instructs us to honor our mothers and fathers because they are the ones who gave us life. We should be grateful to God for giving them to us, even though they may live in a way that God tells us not to live and want us to do likewise. We have to honor their role, but we can’t hold to them so tightly that we loose our desire for the Kingdom.
When your world is collapsing, do you trust your captor or your Liberator?
The point of the exiles was to awake the people to how far they had turned away from God’s law. They no longer loved their neighbor as themselves. Under the hood of the parallel passage for Bo (Jeremiah 46:13–28), the northern nation of Israel (also called Ephraim in prophecy) had been taken away by the Assyrians about 100 years before. In Yermiyahu’s time, Judah thought that making an alliance with Egypt would protect them from the Babylonians. But Egypt abandoned them and Babylon prevailed and ended up taking them away captive into exile.
God allowed this to happen so that Israel would remember Who their real Savior was and is and is to come. And they were to remember to treat each other as brothers.
Before the exile of the Kingdom of Yehudah4Hebrew for Judah, God warned Jeremiah not to marry and have children because they would be lost to war, famine, or disease.
The stakes for the world are very high. If the people of the world truly repent and want to be protected from the Destroyer, each person must repent, face their own Mt. Sinai before they can enter His rest.
Summary: Tammy