Dr Paul Allen

English: Moses Pleading with Israel, as in Deuteronomy 6:1-15, illustration from a Bible card published 1907 by the Providence Lithograph Company (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) I am stunned every time I read the story of the Exodus . How can the people of Israel complain like they do? How could they be so ignorant, so stupid, so forgetful? The God of the universe had just tossed around the most powerful man on the face of the earth like a toddler with a rag doll. God didn’t just humble Pharaoh ; he broke his spirit and revealed Pharaoh’s impotence. A slave people and their God left him and his nation in shambles. This display of power sent vibrations throughout the world, inspiring fear and awe. The Deadly Disease of Spiritual Amnesia Yet Israel ’s response to this spectacular deliverance from Egypt is not mainly praise, worship, and whole-hearted trust. Instead, Israel responds with  grumbling  — complaining, murmuring, quarreling. “No water, Moses ! Where’s the bee...

Rahab and the Emissaries of Joshua (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Three common systems of ethics Christians subscribe to: 1) Graded ethics. E.g. when lying to save a life, a lie is clearly the lesser of two evils. 2) Situational ethics . E.g. when lying to save a life, if the life is an innocent one and the person you are lying to doesn’t deserve the truth, then in that situation the lie is not evil at all, but justified by the situation. 3) Absolutism . E.g. God never permits us to sin, a lie is always a sin, and your only responsibility is to refrain from sinning; thus either refuse to co-operate with the request and deal with the consequences, or tell the truth and deal with the consequences. Here is a Bible passages that seem to contradict absolutism.  The Hebrew midwives (Exodus 1:15-20). If you read the account carefully you will notice that Shiphrah and Puah did not lie to save the lives of the Hebrew babies, they lied to save their own skin. They had already saved the ...

The provocation was very great. They wanted to return to Egypt from which God had delivered them. He had delivered them from bondage, parted the sea, fed them with bread from heaven, led them through the wilderness, and yet they could not trust His power to prevail over a few giants! They doubted His power. At Horeb they had made a calf, because they said it had brought them out of the land of Egypt, Exod. 32:4. They now wanted a captain to lead them back into Egypt. What is more they wanted to stone Joshua and Caleb who had told the truth. Truth is never popular, yet how important to maintain it in regard to the proper position and inheritance of the saints. The Lord’s anger was aroused, and He threatened to disinherit them and to make of Moses a great nation instead. Moses wanted no glory for himself, but he was jealous for God’s Name and glory. He could not bear the thought of the lustre of that glory being tarnished in the eyes of the nations around, vv. 15, 16. Moses pleaded f...

Oil painting of a young John Calvin. (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Woe to those who go down to Egypt for help, and rely on horses, who trust in chariots because they are many, and in horsemen because they are very strong (Isa. 31:1a). Isaiah declared that the Jews were not allowed to make any alliance with the Egyptians . He emphasized this for two reasons. First, to trust in anything other than God for their salvation was to despise the power and goodness of their Lord . Second, God had said in Deuteronomy 17:16 that they were not allowed to make alliances with the Egyptians. But the Jews stubbornly resolved to provide for their own safety, despising God and disobeying His will. Though it might seem that God was being too hard on the Jews for trusting in Egypt, He had very good reasons for being angry. He wanted to keep them from forgetting that He had redeemed them from Egypt, and He wanted to protect them from being corrupted by the superstitions and idolatry of the Egyptian...