Better News Podcast Ricky Alcantar - Cross of Grace Church

When you gather to celebrate a person's birthday, it's a special time to acknowledge their place in everyone’s heart. But just because you have a party one day a year doesn't mean you forget them the other 364 days. Gathering together to worship and honor God on a regular basis is one way that we can remember God's place in our lives. Sometimes we may struggle and having fellow believers to give you a boost and remind you of all He’s done can help you to regain your focus on what matters.

The Word of the Lord should permeate our lives. The birth, death, and resurrection of Jesus shouldn't be remembered once a year but be ever-present.

Out of sight, out of mind. The human attention span is shamefully short ,even when it comes to things that we should never forget. For example, keeping our minds on God and what He has done in our lives. As we’ll hear today in our study in Exodus, God’s people are struggling to keep God and His will at the forefront of their minds. People have a tendency to move on once they've had a particular experience or heard a specific message but God's grace and sacrifice for us should never get old.

No matter how good we think we are, we are all spotted with sin. We’ve burdened ourselves with it, with every wrong choice we’ve made. Sin destroys the things we love, our hearts, and our lives. Yet the God who created us wants us in spite of it. So much so that He willingly gave His most precious Son to unburden us of that sin. Today, as we hear about God's provision to His people as the firstborns of Egypt, we’ll begin to understand the magnitude of this gift and just how valuable it is.

When the Lord prepared to bring the final plague upon Egypt, He commanded His people to do a very specific thing, a ritual sacrifice. God’s people were not going to be spared the death of their firstborn because they were sinless, far from it. In His mercy, the Lord offers a way for the people to avoid this consequence of death. As we’ll see today this ritual was not an easy task. God is just and none of us will be free from justice but He is also loving and has given us the greatest sacrifice of all.

Every clap of thunder, every flash of lightning, is a warning that a storm is coming. Every plague brought upon Egypt was a warning as well. In this part of Exodus, we'll see how God slowly reveals His character with each new plague, not as a harsh tyrant but that of a merciful father offering chances for repentance. The Lord's justice isn't based on what we deserve, as we see through His grace throughout the whole scripture. The evidence of that grace isn’t limited to past events but runs throughout our lives.