Out of Egypt: Getting Pharaoh out of the way.

"Then Moses returned to the Lord and said, "O Lord, why have you brought harm to this people? Why did you send me? Ever since I came to Pharaoh to speak in Your name, he has done harm to this people, and You have not delivered your people at all."--Exodus 5:22-23.  Moses' mission to bring the Israelites out of Egypt has begun.  His first encounter with Pharaoh is less than favorable. Not only does Pharaoh not let the Israelites go, he doubles their workload and naturally the Israelites blame Moses and Moses blames God. What Moses is experiencing is trouble getting Pharaoh out of the way. 

Getting Pharaoh out of the way.  For those of us who have experience in evangelism, I think we have all experienced this. We try to do what God would have us to do in bringing people "out of Egypt" and first time around we fail, not because of our own actions but because of the person's heart or maybe like in this case, something is standing in the way.  

Getting Pharaoh out of the way.  The only thing standing between Moses and bringing the Israelites coming out of Egypt was Pharaoh.  More often than not, when we study with people, we will not get results the first time around.   

Getting Pharaoh out of the way. This is what makes evangelism difficult.  Ideally, we would love to just preach the simple gospel message and the person convert right then and there but sometimes, we need to get Pharaoh out of the way.  This may involve dealing with a belief system they have or dealing with a certain sin they have trouble letting go of. 

Getting Pharaoh out of the way.  But this doesn't apply to the lost only. Sometimes we need to get Pharaoh out of the way in our own lives. 

Getting Pharaoh out of the way.  Pharaoh is what stands between us and God. In the Scriptures, Egypt is used to symbolize sin after the Exodus is over.  Pharaoh is the leader of Egypt. 

Getting Pharaoh out of the way. I want to close this devo with a question for reflection? Where are you right now in your walk with God? Are you on Mount Sinai, or in the case of those of us who are in Christ, more specifically, Mount Zion? Or are you still back in Egypt? If we allow ourselves to slip back into sin, we have slipped back into Egypt and we have become Pharaoh. As Christians, we like to identify with Moses and think of ourselves as responsible for bring others "out of Egypt." This is good but how often do we allow ourselves to become Pharaoh and become stubborn about getting rid of something that prevents us from coming fully to God?    

Getting Pharaoh out of the way. My encouragement to you is this, whether it's bringing others out of sin or getting yourself out of sin. Don't be discouraged if you fail the first time. Bringing others to Christ or yourself back to Christ will occasionally take more than one try.  Moses had to try to ten times before Pharaoh finally let Israel go and even then they were chased as we will see in a later devo. So as you go through this week, when dealing with sin, make it a point to remove the stumbling block and GET PHARAOH OUT OF THE WAY! 

DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT! PRAY ABOUT IT! LOVE Y'ALL! GOD BLESS!