Exo 8:26 | KingComments | STEP | For the first time Pharaoh makes an offer to let the people go to serve God. However, he does attach a condition to this. That condition means that the people serve God in his land, Egypt. He wants to keep the distance between him and the people of God as small as possible. He says as it were: “Serve me and God.” Even if a believer takes seriously his separation from the world, satan comes with his proposals, as Pharaoh does here. He wants to talk about that. Four times he proposes a compromise ( ; ). He will dispute every centimeter of space. But God and Moses, and everyone who belongs to God through faith in the Lord Jesus, will be satisfied with nothing but clear separation from the world which crucified Christ. This compromise is unacceptable to Moses. Whoever is truly a child of God cannot possibly stay in the world. By baptism he testifies that he wants to be free from it. Only then is he really free to serve God. He then, in picture, has passed through the Red Sea and has come into the wilderness. The answer of Moses speaks of the death and the resurrection of the Lord Jesus: the people must go into the wilderness a three days’ journey. The service that the people want to keep before their God is an abomination for the world. If the Egyptians see the Israelites slaughter a bull or cow, animals that they consider sacred, they will stone the Israelites. Any sacrifice to God that a believer may be required to make, but which an unbeliever claims for himself as his right or entitlement, arouses that person’s anger.

‏ Exodus 8:26

Moses Rejects the Compromise

For the first time Pharaoh makes an offer to let the people go to serve God. However, he does attach a condition to this. That condition means that the people serve God in his land, Egypt. He wants to keep the distance between him and the people of God as small as possible. He says as it were: “Serve me and God.”

Even if a believer takes seriously his separation from the world, satan comes with his proposals, as Pharaoh does here. He wants to talk about that. Four times he proposes a compromise (Exo 8:25 ; 28; Exo 10:7-9 ; 24). He will dispute every centimeter of space. But God and Moses, and everyone who belongs to God through faith in the Lord Jesus, will be satisfied with nothing but clear separation from the world which crucified Christ.

This compromise is unacceptable to Moses. Whoever is truly a child of God cannot possibly stay in the world. By baptism he testifies that he wants to be free from it. Only then is he really free to serve God. He then, in picture, has passed through the Red Sea and has come into the wilderness.

The answer of Moses speaks of the death and the resurrection of the Lord Jesus: the people must go into the wilderness a three days’ journey. The service that the people want to keep before their God is an abomination for the world. If the Egyptians see the Israelites slaughter a bull or cow, animals that they consider sacred, they will stone the Israelites. Any sacrifice to God that a believer may be required to make, but which an unbeliever claims for himself as his right or entitlement, arouses that person’s anger.