Passover!

For Wednesday, April 1, 2026, Passover:

Genesis 17:7 NLT, The Father’s words: “I will confirm my covenant with you and your descendants after you, from generation to generation. This is the everlasting covenant: I will always be your God and the God of your descendants after you.”

The simplified version is, “I will be your God, and you will be my people!” This was God’s promise, God’s covenant with Abram and his descendants. God’s word is always good; God’s word is always truth. God will never renege on his promises. Hence, His commitment to the Hebrew people suffering under slavery in Egypt. It’s a long story, so I’ll jump right to the end,

God called Moses to approach Pharaoh, telling him to “Let my people go!” Pharaoh refused, so God set 10 disastrous plagues loose upon Egypt, the last being the death of the firstborn of everything. That’s right, the firstborn of all – livestock and people – would be visited by the angel of death. This was Pharaoh’s breaking point. He not only let the Hebrews go; he demanded that they get out of town! Of course, he later changed his mind, and most of the Egyptian army was lost in the Red Sea incident.

As for the Hebrews, God told them to have a lamb dinner the night before, and then mark their doorposts with the lamb’s blood. This would be a sign for the angel of death to bypass that house, hence the name, “Passover.” They were told to eat standing up, with their walking-stick in hand and their togas tucked inside their belts. God wanted everybody prepared for when it was time to go.

The Israelites were told to teach their children about God’s goodness as he rescued them from Egypt. Teach about the oppression, the plagues and about God’s eventual deliverance of them back to the Promised Land.

God’s words to Abram: “I will give the entire land of Canaan to you and your descendants. It will be their possession forever, and I will be their God.”

Jesus’ words to believers: “I will never leave you or forsake you!”

Pastor Norton Lawellin

The Father’s House

Jesus In the City Fellowship

Truth & Freedom Church

Moses - All In!

For Tuesday, November 11, 2025:

Hebrews 11:26 NLT: “Moses thought it was better to suffer for the sake of Christ than to own the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking ahead to his great reward.”

Moses had been adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter and was in line to inherit the wealth of Egypt. But after some investigation and using common sense, he knew he wasn’t an Egyptian. He looked more like those who were servants to the Egyptians. He was Hebrew through and through! Now, he could have kept quiet and continued to enjoy the privileges of Egyptian royalty. But he did not! When Moses saw Egyptians unfairly beating a Hebrew, Moses rose to the man’s defense. They fought, the Egyptian was killed, and Moses knew it was time to get out of town!

At that time, Moses had not met the God of his people. Yet he chose to support this unseen God. Having been raised up in the Royal Palace, Moses didn’t have a religious upbringing. That all changed when God spoke to Moses from a burning bush that did not consume itself.

God said to tell Pharaoh, “Let my people go!”

Moses replied, “You’ve got the wrong guy!”

God didn’t change his mind, “Take your brother Aaron with you. He’s better at speaking.”

God didn’t back down, and Moses found himself standing before Pharaoh. “Let my people go!” Despite Pharaoh’s persistent reluctance to let the Hebrews leave, 10 plagues later, they were crossing the Red Sea, on their way to the promised land.

Moses was “all in” for the Hebrew God. He did not renege on the faith question, even when others around him were faltering. It was God who spoke to Moses from the burning bush. He was therefore 100% convinced, and nothing could change his mind. He was “all in!”

Are you “all in” for God? Could anything change your mind? I sure hope not!

Pastor Norton Lawellin

Jesus In the City Fellowship

"All-in" Faith!

November 10, 2025, Monday Message:

Hebrews 11:22 NLT: “It was by faith that Joseph, when he was about to die, said confidently that the people of Israel would leave Egypt. He even commanded them to take his bones with them when they left.”

This is one more demonstration of faith, and a good example for us. Joseph’s story is unique. He was Rachel’s firstborn but Jacob’s 11^th son, and as it turned out, Jacob’s favorite. Joseph was gifted the famous “coat of many colors,” but a better translation might be “a coat with sleeves.” Men who worked outside in cold weather wore thick vests with no sleeves, leaving their arms unencumbered to perform the required tasks. But Joseph’s coat with sleeves meant he wasn’t required to perform physical work. The elder brothers didn’t like that. Jealousy set in, and eventually the siblings kidnapped their younger brother, leaving him in a pit in the wilderness. He was rescued by Egyptians and subsequently became a servant of Pharaoh.

It all fell apart when Pharaoh’s wife took a liking to Joseph. That landed Joseph in prison until he interpreted Pharaoh’s dream. Joseph’s interpretations were given to him by God, so the grateful Pharaoh restored Joseph’s position, making him kind of like “Secretary of State” for Egypt.

When drought resulted in a food shortage in Canaan, the Israelites traveled to Egypt seeking assistance. In a way only God could plan, the person to grant aid was in the line of Israel’s patriarchs. Of course, Joseph would help his people!

To summarize, Joseph had an unshakable belief in God and God’s ability to make things right. It’s called faith! God had protected him while growing up, and protected him as he was kidnapped. God protected him as he was taken to Egypt and given a good job in Pharaoh’s court. Pharaoh’s wife lied, landing Joseph in prison, where he was protected. God’s truth pleased Pharaoh, and Joseph was restored to a key government position, exactly where God wanted him to be when his Israelite brethren needed assistance!

Joseph’s faith never ended. His faith never got wishy-washy. He was “all in,” forever a fan of the Almighty. More about “all in” faith tomorrow!

Pastor Norton Lawellin

Jesus In the City Fellowship

Passover!

For Friday, February 21, 2025:

Exodus 23:15 CJB: “Keep the festival of matzah: for seven days, as I ordered you, you are to eat matzah at the time determined in the month of Aviv; for it was in that month that you left Egypt. No one is to appear before me empty-handed.”

Passover celebrates the rescue of God’s people from Egyptian slavery. Getting 2.5M people out of Egypt wasn’t going to be easy! So God orchestrated 10 plagues on Egypt, until Pharaoh not only let the Hebrew people go, but insisted that they leave! God said to never forget what he did! Enough with the plagues!

They ate bread without yeast so it didn’t need time to rise, so that it could be prepared quickly. When God said, “Get going,” promptness was the order of the day! The Jews also kept their walking stick by their side, and tucked their tunic inside their trousers so they could run quickly.

Passover was the day the Hebrew people were delivered. Easter, Resurrection Sunday celebrates the day Christians were delivered. We should never forget what a good thing God did for us!

Jesus conquered sin and death on the same day!

Pastor Norton Lawellin

Jesus In the City Fellowship

Convinced!

For Thursday, February 13, 2025:

Exodus 18:10 NLT: “Praise the Lord,” said Jethro, Moses’ father-in-law and priest of Midian, “for he has rescued you from the Egyptians and from Pharaoh. Yes, he has rescued Israel from the powerful hand of Egypt!”

Moses explained to Jethro all the good things God had done for the people of Israel. Jethro was the priest where Moses had been living before the Lord called him to lead the Israelites. Even though Jethro believed in God and led others in that direction, a sign from the Lord would convince him absolutely. A sign from above would cement his relationship with God.

Jethro continued v11: “I know now that the Lord is greater than all other gods, because he rescued his people from the oppression of the proud Egyptians.” The only thing he got wrong is that there really are no other gods – only the one God!

Q: Are you waiting for a sign from above to know that God’s real? Did God already perform a miracle in your presence, but you missed it, you weren’t watching for it?

God wants us to keep our eyes and ears open. He wants us to see everything he’s doing, and appreciate it! When things happen around me that defy human explanation, I attribute them to God, or at least to angels that God sends. I can’t logically explain why some diseases get cured, why chains of addiction are broken, why misdirected lives suddenly become productive. Some people are born a second time, delivered far from Satan. Their lives are changed forever. These good things must be God things. Watch for them!

Pastor Norton Lawellin

Jesus In the City Fellowship

Celebration!

For Saturday, February 8, 2025:

Exodus 14:31 NLT: “When the people of Israel saw the mighty power that the Lord had unleashed against the Egyptians, they were filled with awe before him. They put their faith in the Lord and in his servant Moses.”

Humans are fickle. One minute they think that God is the greatest thing ever, and the next they forget about him. For all that God had done – all the plagues and now their journey out of Egypt – some Israelites were still wishy-washy about the Lord. But now, with the parting of the Red Sea and all the Hebrews escaping to the other side, but the Egyptian army being crushed by the returning water, the fence sitters were convinced. God had been extremely good to the Jews and all were amazed!

When God has been that good, the proper response would be to exalt the Lord, to lift up his name. Praise and worship are the order of the day, and that’s just what they did. The people of Israel gathered and sang hymns, but that wasn’t enough for Miriam the prophet, Moses and Aaron’s sister. She grabbed a tambourine and led the women as they sang and danced even more before the Lord.

While that celebration was good, we should all be celebrating the Lord every day. God deserves praise and worship whether or not he has done anything spectacular. He is still God, the creator of everything in the universe. He is our creator, our Father in heaven. So grab your tambourine and sing a song to the Lord today! Dance if you’re so inclined!

Psalm 150:3-5 “Praise him with a blast of the ram’s horn; praise him with the lyre and harp! Praise him with the tambourine and dancing; praise him with strings and flutes! Praise him with a clash of cymbals; praise him with loud clanging cymbals!”

Pastor Norton Lawellin

Jesus In the City Fellowship

Faith Again!

For Friday, February 7, 2025:

Exodus 14:21 NLT: “Moses raised his hand over the sea, and the Lord opened up a path through the water with a strong east wind. The wind blew all that night, turning the seabed into dry land.”

This is the part of the story that everyone knows! The people of Israel walked through the middle of the sea on dry ground, with walls of water on each side! That’s right, all 2.5M of them, safely on the other side!

Soon the Egyptian armies and chariots chased after the Israelites, but God Almighty had two more things in mind. First, he ‘confused’ the Egyptian pursuers. With walls of water on each side, they were directionally challenged, and bent chariot wheels made progress impossible. Finally, God had Moses raise his hand again, the east wind stopped and the waters came back together, covering the Egyptians. God not only delivered the Hebrews out of Egypt, but he also delivered them from being chased down.

And when the people of Israel saw the mighty power that the Lord had unleashed against the Egyptians, they were filled with awe. They put their faith in the Lord and in his servant Moses.

Q: Has God ever helped with a major change in your life? Has he rescued you from a perilous situation? Has he delivered you from demons and similar oppressors?

When you and I see the mighty power of the Lord, it should be obvious that he deserves all our faith and trust. God will never abandon us, so we shouldn’t ever abandon him. Today is the accepted day to commit or re-commit ourselves to the Lord!

Pastor Norton Lawellin

Jesus In the City Fellowship

Unconditional Faith!

For Thursday, February 6, 2025:

Exodus 14:9 NLT: “The Egyptians chased after the people of Israel with all the forces in Pharaoh’s army—all his horses and chariots, his charioteers, and his troops. The Egyptians caught up with the people of Israel.”

When word reached the king of Egypt that the Israelites had fled, Pharaoh and his officials changed their minds. (Again.) “What have we done, letting all those Israelite slaves get away?” they asked. All the Israelites were to Pharaoh was free labor, and a lot of it, whereas freedom to worship their eternal God was fulfilling a Godly command for the Israelites. God vs Pharaoh – no contest!

But the people of Israel panicked when they saw the Egyptians. They cried out to the Lord and to Moses, “Why did you bring us out here to die in the wilderness? Weren’t there enough graves for us in Egypt? What have you done to us? Why did you make us leave Egypt? Didn’t we tell you this would happen while we were still in Egypt? We said, ‘Leave us alone! Let us be slaves to the Egyptians. It’s better to be a slave in Egypt than a corpse in the wilderness!’”

The Israelite population was short on faith and long on pessimism. They did not share Moses’ confidence in the Lord. They were about to begin a 40 year lesson about trusting God for everything. Jehovah Jireh – The Lord will provide!

Q: Is your faith more like Moses or the Israelites? If something doesn’t go your way, do you panic and say, “God, why did you leave me in this predicament?” Understand that God may have the next steps already worked out if you maintain unshakable faith in Him! If the God of the universe is our God, we need to trust him unconditionally.

The Egyptian soldiers had the Israelites backed up against the Red Sea. You probably all know what will happen next! Moses’ faith in God-the-provider was not misplaced!

Pastor Norton Lawellin

Jesus In the City Fellowship

Escape from Egypt!

For Wednesday, February 5, 2025:

Exodus 13:18 NLT: “God led the Israelites in a roundabout way through the wilderness toward the Red Sea.”

God is providing visionary leadership. He knows human nature better than anyone. He knew that Pharaoh would have second thoughts about letting the Israelites go. He knew that Pharaoh would send his army to retrieve the Jews. That army would have expected to find the Hebrews on the most direct path to Israel. So to buy them a little extra time, God aimed the Israelites toward the Red Sea, the Sea of Reeds.

Coming up against this body of water may at first look like a problem, but it was actually a solution. God had more in mind. He allowed Moses to part the water, allowing the Hebrews to escape to the other side. Then, as the Egyptian army pursued them, Moses closed up the sea, drowning the Egyptian army.

(Sidebar: This incident is dramatized in the 1956 Cecil B. DeMille classic, ‘The Ten Commandments.’ Just remember that Moses was probably a short, ruddy-looking Jew, not tall and handsome like Charlton Heston!)

The goal in all of this was to return the Hebrew people to Israel. All the plagues, all the meetings with Pharaoh and the colossal exodus march were stepping stones toward that goal. God will be with them all the way as the trek continues. The job won’t be finished until the Israelites are back home.

Both God and his Son Jesus said, “I will never leave you or forsake you.” Count on it! If God is “in” your mission, he’s “in” for the entire duration until your goal is achieved! God is good – very good!

Pastor Norton Lawellin

Jesus In the City Fellowship

Millions!

For Tuesday, February 4, 2025:

Exodus 12:17 NLT: “That night the people of Israel left Rameses and started for Succoth. There were about 600,000 men, plus all the women and children.”

Why was Pharaoh so reluctant to let the Israelites leave Egypt? Perhaps an understanding of the size of the exodus will help explain Pharaoh’s position.

There were more than just a few bodies leaving the Egyptian work force. Pharaoh would have to replace 600,000 men! And it would be fair to say that most of those men were married, so together that’s 1.2M people. If we estimate that each couple had at least two children, and add in a few stragglers who wanted to leave Egypt along with the Hebrews, we’re in excess of 2.5M, and that’s a lot of people to leave all at once!

As an example, if everyone in Minneapolis and St. Paul and the first inner-ring of suburbs all packed up and left, that would be close to 2.5M people. You’d leave a few semi-rural suburbs dotting the outskirts, with a giant 2.5M person hole in the middle! Rhetorical questions: #1 How could they all get out of town? Wouldn’t 494 and I35 be gridlocked? #2 How long does it take 2.5M people to get out of town? #3 Where could they all go to separate themselves from Egypt’s domination? It needs to be a considerable distance and a pretty big place! The closer we examine this scenario, the bigger God gets. Amateurs wouldn’t be able to pull this off!

Can you imagine one guy, Moses, being the God-appointed leader of 2.5M people? He must have been scared to death! Having his brother Aaron nearby offered some consolation, but not enough. Moses is to lead everyone to the Promised Land, a land of milk and honey, but he hasn’t yet been shown the way. (The dad-joke here is that Moses wandered for 40 years because he wouldn’t ask for directions!)

How big is my God? Big enough to move 2.5M people from Egypt to Canaan in 40 years, and sustain them every step of the way. How big is YOUR God?

Pastor Norton Lawellin

Jesus In the City Fellowship

No Yeast!

February 3, 2025, Monday Message:

Exodus 12:17 NLT: Then the Lord said to Moses, “Celebrate this Festival of Unleavened Bread (Passover), for it will remind you that I brought your forces out of the land of Egypt on this very day. This festival will be a permanent law for you; celebrate this day from generation to generation.”

Why unleavened bread? Well, making bread with yeast takes a long time. The yeast has to rise to make the bread fluffy. If you don’t allow the yeast to rise, you wind up with a cracker!

Commercial bakers have a “proofer,” which uses heat and steam to drastically shorten the rising time. But no such equipment existed in Egypt. The bottom line is that when God says it’s time to go, he means right now! We can’t be waiting for bread to rise to partake of our Passover meal.

The liberation of the Hebrew people from slavery in Egypt was very important to God, so important that he executed 10 different plagues to secure Pharaoh’s cooperation. As the whole debacle wrapped up, Pharaoh not only allowed the Jews to leave; he insisted that they get out of town! “Get out of here, you guys, and take some silver and gold with you!”

Each of the 10 plagues took time. Pharaoh continued to reject the miracles he had seen with his own two eyes! But remember, this series of events wasn’t just to change Pharaoh’s mind. It was also to showcase the supremacy of Moses’ God, the one true God!

God’s timing is always perfect. Everything worked out in the end!

Pastor Norton Lawellin

Jesus In the City Fellowship

Passover!

For Saturday, February 1, 2025:

Exodus 11:1 NLT: Then the Lord said to Moses, “I will strike Pharaoh and the land of Egypt with one more blow. After that, Pharaoh will let you leave this country. In fact, he will be so eager to get rid of you that he will force you all to leave.”

According to God, the tenth and final plague was the most severe and would get everyone’s attention, even Pharaoh’s. Here’s what would happen: All the firstborn sons would die in every family in Egypt. Even the firstborn of their livestock would die. Pharaoh’s oldest son preparing to take the throne would die. The only ones exempt from this plague would be the Israelites. Following this, Pharaoh would not only let the Hebrew people leave Egypt, he would insist that they get out of town!

The night before, each Jewish household sacrificed a lamb to the Lord, and it would be their final meal in Egypt. We call it the Seder supper. Blood from the sacrificial lamb would be spread on the door posts to each house, marking the inhabitants as people of God, and as death filled Egypt, the Lord would “pass over” those houses. Passover is remembered by both Jews and Christians nowadays.

Jesus himself would be the sacrificial lamb for Christian believers. He took our sin away so that we could reside in God’s forever Kingdom. Just as God provided for the Hebrews, he also provides for Christian faithful. The Lord always takes care of his people. Thank you, God, for including us in your eternity!

Pastor Norton Lawellin

Jesus In the City Fellowship

Dark and the Ultimatum!

For Friday, January 31, 2025:

Exodus 10:21 NLT: Then the Lord said to Moses, “Lift your hand toward heaven, and the land of Egypt will be covered with a darkness so thick you can feel it.”

Living in the city, we never experience total darkness. There are street lights, porch lights and lights on vehicles. But in Egypt 3k years ago, it was totally dark for three days. No one could see each other. No one dared move.

Pharaoh called for Moses: “Go and worship the Lord,” he said. “But leave your flocks and herds here.”

That wasn’t going to work. Part of worship back then involved animal sacrifices, so Moses needed to bring the livestock too.

On the one hand, Pharaoh had been challenged by the plagues Moses and his God had brought on the Egyptians. But on the other, he was just plain sick and tired of the whole thing. After all, there weren’t any problems like these until Moses showed up! So Pharaoh issued an ultimatum: “Get out of here! I’m warning you. Never come back to see me again! The day you see my face, you will die!”

Even after darkness, the ninth plague, Pharaoh still didn’t understand God’s power, so he’s leaving himself vulnerable to God’s final effort on behalf of the Israelites. As believers, we understand and believe what Pharaoh did not, that God is all-powerful and totally in control of everything. We love our God; Pharaoh resented God, thinking that he, Pharaoh, should have had the last word. But we know that the one true God is the final word on everything!

Pastor Norton Lawellin

Jesus In the City Fellowship