Part 8: JUSTIFIED TO PROCEED
Jacob’s children, the Children of Israel, destined to be established as the Kingdom of God in this world, were locked down by unbelievers.
For hundreds of years, the Children of Israel sought to influence the Egyptians but finally, they themselves were harshly enslaved by a culture that denied the God of heaven.
The Lord used extreme weather displays and plagues to bring the Egyptians to their senses, water turned to blood, plague after plague, health scares, hail, even dread darkness similar to the darkness that covered Israel when the Saviour was put to death (Luke 23:44).
Finally, the Lord gave death to unrepentant Egyptians, Exodus 11:5, and the families who came out of Egypt did so through the blood of a sacrifice on the doorposts, Exodus 12:23.
They understood that a sacrifice was needed to cover sin and through the blood on the doorpost, they proceeded out into the desert where the Lord asked for their total obedience. ‘All the people answered together, and said, All that the Lord hath spoken we will do,’ (Exodus 19:8).
God gave them the Ten Commandments, written on stone and ‘he added no more. And he wrote them in two tables of stone,’ (Deuteronomy 5:22).
The sacrifice for sin was already confirmed by the blood on the doorpost. While ever Israel chose obedience and kept faith in the sacrifice to cover sin, God promised that the weather would be stable.
Part 9: THE ONLY NAME
God set up his Kingdom on earth again, this time as a nation. The chosen people of God were responsible for the weather in their land. They were to ‘love the Lord your God, and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul, that I will give you the rain of your land in his due season, the first and latter rain, …’ Deuteronomy chapter 11.
Sadly, the Kingdom of God apostatised many times and it was brought back through devastating weather changes.
Probably the most memorable one is in the time of Elijah when drought threatened for many years because of the apostasy of God’s people in establishing another cultural worship. 1st Kings, 16:32,33, and chapters 17 and 18.
Weather changes were not caused by environmental pollution but by human disobedience and disbelief.
Sin is a fact of life, we have inherited it and cannot mend it ourselves. “I was shapen in iniquity,’ says Psalm 51:5, and Paul reminds us, ‘All have sinned, and come short of the glory of God,’ Romans 3:23. But we can choose obedience and we can choose the sacrifice of Christ, the only name ‘given among men, whereby we must be saved,’ Acts 4:12.
Through the new nation, the new Kingdom of God, and through his chosen people, would come the last Adam (1st Corinthians 15:45,) made in the image of God, 2nd Corinthians 4:4, ‘Christ, who is the image of God …’
When Christ gave the Sermon on the Mount to his Kingdom, he made a statement about weather and outcomes. He said, ‘Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, …what ye shall put on, … But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.’ (Matthew 6:25-33).
What was he saying? He was warning of vast weather disruption if his Kingdom apostatised. People would be worried about what they would eat and what clothing they would have – basic essentials.
‘Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man who built his house upon a rock,’ (Matthew 7:24).
Even in his day, in the short lifetimes of Jesus, his nation, the Kingdom of God, disowned him – the one ‘made in the image of God.’ Even his own disciples ‘forsook him, and fled,’ (Matthew 26:56). But it was the birthpangs of the continuing Kingdom of God which formally came to fruition on the day of Pentecost.
What of those who refuse to accept what Jesus believed about the cause of disastrous weather changes? He has given us hundreds of years of events and warnings and he warned that rejection of him would cause further disasters after his death and resurrection (Matthew 24:3-7).
Christ believed the writings of Moses because he gave them to Moses to write and Christ is that Rock on which we must build. He is ‘that spiritual Rock’ that guided and covered them for forty years in the desert.
’And that Rock was Christ,’ 1st Corinthians 10:4.
Elizabeth Price
(To access the entire “Weather” mini-series, please click here.)