Reformed Devotionals Daily Podcast

God’s Justice Is Kinder And More Compassionate Than We Expect

When people read the laws in Exodus, especially the ones that deal with slavery or harm or conflict, they often feel confused. Some even feel unsettled. But these laws were never random. They were never harsh for the sake of harshness. They were given to a people who had just come out of generations of brutal oppression. They had no courts. No legal structure. No shared u...

There are times when we make worship more complicated than it needs to be. We worry about the right words, the right appearance, the right atmosphere. We start thinking God is impressed by our polish or our presentation. But in this short passage at the end of Exodus 20, God pulls His people back to the basics. He shows them that true worship is not about show. It is not about performance. It is not about our ability to impress Him...

When people think about God’s laws, they often picture limits. Restrictions. Heavy burdens. A list of things you cannot do. But Exodus 20 pushes us to rethink that. Because before God gives a single command, He reminds His people who He is and what He has already done for them. He has rescued them. He has carried them. He has brought them out of slavery. And the commands that follow are not shackles. They are invitations into real ...

There are moments in the Christian life where you feel drawn in by God. You feel His kindness. His nearness. His grace. But then, almost in the same breath, you also feel the weight of His holiness. The gap between who He is and who you are becomes painfully clear. And it is easy to wonder how both of those things can be true at the same time. Exodus 19 is one of those moments. God brings His people close. He reminds them of His lo...

Quick note here at the start - most people are interacting with these only via the podcast stream, or via the text. So there really doesn’t seem to be much point in making the video versions, and they require quite a bit more work. So I have decided to keep going on the podcast and the text versions, but to drop my video podcast.

There are seasons in life where you realise, often slowly, that you have taken on more than any one pers...

There are seasons where the fight goes on longer than you thought it would. You believed you could hold yourself together. You believed you could endure. You believed you had enough strength. Then the hours turn into days and the days into months, and you feel yourself slipping. Your arms get tired. Your resolve weakens. Your heart sinks. Exodus 17 shows us a moment exactly like this. It teaches us that God never intended His peopl...

There are moments in life where your expectations of God clash with your experience of God. You thought He would come through sooner. You thought He would answer differently. You thought obedience would lead to relief, not pressure. And when reality does not match what you hoped for, something inside you begins to harden. Exodus 17 shows us that this temptation is not new. Israel does not simply thirst in the wilderness. They begin...

We all have these moments in life where God allows us to feel our need so that we learn again where our help comes from. Hunger has a way of exposing the heart. It reveals what we truly believe about God and what we think we need to survive. Israel has already begun complaining. They have accused God of abandoning them. They have blamed Moses. They have twisted the past into something it never was. And yet God does not crush them f...

There is something very human about moments where our hearts are filled with faith one day and then crash into fear the next. We can stand in church overwhelmed with gratitude for what God has done, then find ourselves grumbling before lunch the next day. It is shocking how quickly joy evaporates when pressure rises. Exodus shows us we are not the first to fall into this pattern. Israel goes from tambourines on the shore to complai...

Have you noticed that some of the biggest turning points in life leave you strangely quiet? You come out the other side of something you thought would break you, a diagnosis, a betrayal, a season of fear, a weight you did not think you could carry, and instead of rejoicing, you simply move on. You slip back into routine. You do not stop long enough to recognise that God actually did something extraordinary. Exodus 15 confronts that...

There are points in the Christian life where God deliberately places us in situations that feel impossible. Places where our resources are not enough, where our wisdom is not enough, where our strength is not enough. Places where we come to the end of ourselves. And often our first instinct is panic. We think God has abandoned us, or that we have misheard him, or that something has gone horribly wrong. But again and again in Script...

There are moments in the Christian life where the path God takes us on makes no sense to us. We want the straight line, the easy road, the quickest way from slavery to promise. But God, in his wisdom, rarely takes us the way we would choose. And just like Israel, we find that the Lord leads us in ways that feel longer, harder, or slower than we had hoped. The question this passage raises for us is simple and confronting. Do we trus...

It is a remarkable thing that the very first instruction God gives Israel after bringing them out of Egypt is not about warfare, or strategy, or nation building. It is not about how to set up a government or how to defend themselves. The first thing God does is claim them. He tells them that the firstborn belongs to him. He tells them to remember his rescue. And then he tells them to teach their children that everything they are co...

There are moments in Scripture where God slows everything down and draws a line, not to exclude for the sake of exclusion, but to teach his people something about who he is and what it means to belong to him. After the urgency and chaos of Israel’s escape, the passage that follows feels almost jarringly calm. God turns from deliverance to definition. He tells his people what it actually means to be marked as his. And it forces us t...

There are seasons in life where we feel stuck, where the pressure stays on long after we think things should have changed. We pray, we try, we push, but nothing moves. Then suddenly, almost without warning, the situation breaks open. A door that felt sealed opens. A burden loosens. A way forward appears. That kind of sudden change can feel unsettling, but Exodus 12 shows us that these moments rarely come out of nowhere. They are of...

What Happens When God Finally Says “Enough is Enough”?

Exodus 12:29–32 (ESV)At midnight the Lord struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of the livestock. And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he and all his servants and all the Egyptians, and there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a ho...

Will you obey when you don’t understand?

Exodus 12:21–28 (ESV)Then Moses called all the elders of Israel and said to them, “Go and select lambs for yourselves according to your clans, and kill the Passover lamb. Take a bunch of hyssop and dip it in the blood that is in the basin, and touch the lintel and the two doorposts with the blood that is in the basin. None of you shall go out of the door of his house until the morning. For th...

What Does It Take for Death to Pass Over Us?

Exodus 12:1–20 (ESV)The Lord said to Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, “This month shall be for you the beginning of months. It shall be the first month of the year for you. Tell all the congregation of Israel that on the tenth day of this month every man shall take a lamb according to their fathers’ houses, a lamb for a household. And if the household is too small for a lamb, then he...

When God Draws a Line, How Seriously Do We Take It?

Exodus 11:1–10 (ESV)The Lord said to Moses, “Yet one plague more I will bring upon Pharaoh and upon Egypt. Afterward he will let you go from here. When he lets you go, he will drive you away completely. Speak now in the hearing of the people, that they ask, every man of his neighbour and every woman of her neighbour, for silver and gold jewellery.” And the Lord gave the people favo...