January 30

Exodus 10:1-12:13, Matthew 20:1-28, Psalm 25:1-15, Proverbs 6:6-11

Pray: Father, today I pray we will be thankful for Your sacrifice for us. Lord, You did the impossible when You freed us from our sin slavery. The choice to use Your Son as our spotless lamb sacrifice is a love beyond our comprehension. In light of that, I pray along with David in our Psalm for today “Good and upright is the Lord, and your steadfast love has been from old. You lead the humble in what is right, and teach the humble your way.” Thank you Jesus! Continue to humble us daily that we might daily be free from our own sin, darkness and death. Amen.

Read: Locusts, Darkness, Death… These are the last three plagues that fall upon the Egyptian people. I wonder, were there little pockets of light shining among the Jewish people living in Egypt? What a picture for us as Christians living in the darkness of our days. We can choose to go stumbling along blindly with the Egyptians in the darkness of pride and idolatry or we can choose the light of freedom and deliverance from the slavery of our sin. In this powerful chapter in biblical history and among the Jewish people, we see that the only way to escape slavery and imminent death is through the blood sacrifice of a spotless lamb. Christ, once and for all, became our spotless sacrificial lamb on the cross of Calvary. Jesus was the perfect sacrifice to deliver people from all sorts of bondage. A friend of mine once said, “Death didn't happen to Jesus. Jesus happened to death.”

Edify: Moses asks a convicting question to Pharaoh in 10:3 “How long will you refuse to humble yourself before me?” What a poignant question for us today. Despite how many “plagues” we face in our life, some of us still refuse to humble ourselves before God and acknowledge that He is in control. The Psalms tell us “many are the plans in a man’s heart but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails.” Many of us will go on to the bitter end choosing our way over God’s and the consequences are seen even more decisively in the final two plagues; darkness and death. That is the ultimate question for each and every person, isn’t it? Things haven’t changed much. You can choose darkness and death or light and life…

Practice: Jesus tells us a powerful story in our New Testament reading today. A vineyard owner needed some workers so he hired some at the beginning of the day agreeing to a day’s wage. Then three hours later he hired some more for the same wage, then again three hours later, and again three hours later and then again two hours later. The only problem is that everybody got the same pay, a day’s wage. UNFAIR! In a twelve-hour day some of these good for nothings got a day’s wage for only working one hour! At least that’s what the workers who started at the beginning of the day said. What can we learn from this and put into practice? Don’t look beside you and measure your work for the Lord by others, and don’t worry about when you started on your journey with the Jesus. Just know that we are all working in the same vineyard for the same master and He can do what He chooses with what already belongs to Him.