Our Priorities After the Exodus
Exodus 11.1-13.16
Okay, let’s jump right in, because we have a lot to see today. If you remember, in Exodus 5-10, Moses stood before the king of Egypt, the Pharaoh, as God’s representative, demanding that the Pharaoh release the people of Israel from slavery. The Pharaoh continually refused to listen, so God let loose nine different plagues against Egypt, each one worse than the last. As time went on, no matter how bad the people’s suffering got, the Pharaoh grew harder and harder against God’s commands, refusing to let the people go.
But there was one plague left. And through this final event, and everything else that surrounded it, God would prepare his people for something much bigger, coming much further down the road.
We’re going to be looking at three chapters today—Exodus 11, 12 and 13—and these chapters are dense: there is a lot of imagery here that we can analyze, and there’s no way I can get through it all. So I’ll just be scratching the surface today, but even that is enough to feast on.
Preparations (11.1-12.28)
So we’re going to begin at the beginning of chapter 11, right after the ninth plague of darkness covering the whole land of Egypt. God tells Moses what he’s about to do—what the tenth plague will be: he says that at midnight, he will go out into Egypt, and every firstborn in the country will die—“from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sits on his throne, even to the firstborn of the slave girl who is behind the handmill, and all the firstborn of the cattle” (v. 5).
But then we see something interesting. God gives instructions to his people concerning how to prepare for this night. This is the only plague God has sent against Egypt which demands preparation from the people of Israel. With every other plague that has taken place, the Egyptians were targeted, while the Hebrews were left alone. When, for example in chapter 9, all of the Egyptian livestock was killed, Moses said that the Lord would make a distinction between the livestock of Israel and the livestock of Egypt; all the Egyptian livestock died, all the Hebrew livestock were fine.
But in this case, it’s different. In chapter 11 (a relatively short chapter), Moses tells the Pharaoh what God will do, and of course the Pharaoh doesn’t listen to him. (We saw the reasons why that is the case last week.)
And then at the beginning of chapter 12, God gets the people of Israel involved in the process. First of all he resets their calendar, saying that from now on this month will be the first month of the year, and during this month, each family will make a sacrifice of a lamb, one year old, without blemish. On the tenth day they’ll set their lamb apart, and at midnight on the fourteenth day, every one of these lambs will be killed.
And on this first occasion of this particular sacrifice, the Hebrews are called to do something really specific. Before they cook the lamb and eat it, they must take some of the blood from the lamb and put it on the doorposts and the lintel of the houses in which they eat it. Once they go inside to eat, they are not to come out until morning.
After that, he gives specific instructions on how this meal is to take place. Chapter 12.8:
8 They shall eat the flesh that night, roasted on the fire; with unleavened bread and bitter herbs they shall eat it. 9 Do not eat any of it raw or boiled in water, but roasted, its head with its legs and its inner parts. 10 And you shall let none of it remain until the morning; anything that remains until the morning you shall burn. 11 In this manner you shall eat it: with your belt fastened, your sandals on your feet, and your staff in your hand. And you shall eat it in haste. It is the Lord’s Passover.
The bread they eat is to be without leaven. Unleavened bread stays good a lot longer than leavened bread; it’s food for traveling. They will bring no leftovers—no roasted lamb sandwiches for lunch the next day. Whatever meat you don’t eat, you burn, because the meat won’t stay good on the road. You’ll eat this meal with your shoes on, your belts cinched around your waist, your staff in your hand. Keep your backpacks on, your car keys in your hand—be ready to move.
Why? Because tonight, God is going to clear a path for you to leave; this time tomorrow, you’ll be out the door. V. 12:
12 For I will pass through the land of Egypt that night, and I will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and on all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgments: I am the Lord. 13 The blood shall be a sign for you, on the houses where you are. And when I see the blood, I will pass over you, and no plague will befall you to destroy you, when I strike the land of Egypt.
So the people of Israel do what Moses tells them to do. They get their lambs ready, they kill the lambs at the same time, they take some hyssop branches and paint the doorposts at the same time, and they go inside and have their meal.
Can you imagine the heaviness of that meal? You’re at that table, eating that food, with your bags packed and your shoes on, about to be released from slavery…and the whole time, you know full well what the cost of your freedom will be.
The Exodus (12.29-42)
And finally, once the people of Israel are safe and sound in their houses, with their doorposts painted red with the blood of the sacrificial lambs, God visits one last plague on the land of Egypt, because of the Pharaoh’s refusal to obey him. 12.29:
29 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. 30 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 house where someone was not dead. 31 Then he summoned Moses and Aaron by night and said, “Up, go out from among my people, both you and the people of Israel; and go, serve the Lord, as you have said. 32 Take your flocks and your herds, as you have said, and be gone, and bless me also!”
So the entire people of Israel—six hundred thousand men, plus the women and children, which would likely have put their total number at around two million people—take up their belongings and leave Egypt. Their belongings are now substantial, because, as we see in v. 36, God had influenced the people of Egypt to give them riches. Thus, Moses writes, they plundered the Egyptians.
They left in a hurry, bringing with them no provisions other than the unleavened dough they had made to bake bread. They left together, after 430 years in Egypt, many of which were spent in bondage. God rescued his people; it was the beginning of the fulfillment of his promise to Abraham, to give them a land that would be theirs.
The Feasts (12.43-13.16)
Now if you know the story, you know that we’re reaching the climax of this part of it—the scene at the Red Sea. And we really want to get there, because we’ve seen the movies—we know how awesome that part it.
But before we get there, we have another set of instructions, and they’re easy to overlook because what comes before, and what comes after, are both so massive.
But this is probably the most important section in this entire text, because not only does it respond to what has just happened, but it sets up some incredibly important things, not only for the rest of the book of Exodus, but for the entire biblical narrative.
Starting at v. 43 of chapter 12, through verse 16 of chapter 13, we see three separate sets of instructions that God gives to Moses and Aaron. They’re not instructions concerning where they are to go, but rather they are ritual instructions: God is telling them how the people of Israel are to commemorate what has just happened in Egypt.
The first instruction God gives them concerns the Passover that the people will now celebrate every year. He says (12.43-49):
43 And the Lord said to Moses and Aaron, “This is the statute of the Passover: no foreigner shall eat of it, 44 but every slave that is bought for money may eat of it after you have circumcised him. 45 No foreigner or hired worker may eat of it. 46 It shall be eaten in one house; you shall not take any of the flesh outside the house, and you shall not break any of its bones. 47 All the congregation of Israel shall keep it. 48 If a stranger shall sojourn with you and would keep the Passover to the Lord, let all his males be circumcised. Then he may come near and keep it; he shall be as a native of the land. But no uncircumcised person shall eat of it. 49 There shall be one law for the native and for the stranger who sojourns among you.”
Now, why these instructions about foreigners and slaves, and how they should approach the Passover? The first reason is because, as we see in v. 38, the people of Israel were not the only ones who left Egypt with them that day: a “mixed multitude” went with them. We don’t know exactly who these people were, but they were not Hebrews. So if they were hoping to join with the people of Israel, it would be natural for them to want to celebrate their feasts with them.
And God says that’s fine—provided that all the males of their households be circumcised.
This is actually really important, because it connects the Passover God is instituting here to his promises to Abraham. Remember, God gave circumcision as a sign of the covenant he was making with Abraham, and of the promises he had given to him. God told Abraham he would make him the father of many nations (Genesis 17.3-4). God was open to letting foreigners join in his saving purposes (something the people forgot fairly quickly later on), but if they would share in his blessings, they would also share in the commitments that came with those blessings: they would commit to fulfilling Israel’s side of the covenant, to obey God’s commandments.
The second instruction God gives, in 13.3-10, concerns a feast Israel would hold, called the Feast of Unleavened Bread. This was a feast that would last seven days; it would be initiated by the Passover, after which the they would eat unleavened bread for seven days before culminating in a feast to God.
Why unleavened bread? Because that’s what they had to take with them the night they left Egypt: bread that would not go stale, bread made for traveling.
The third instruction is incredibly important. The firstborn of all of Israel would be consecrated to God. 13.1:
The Lord said to Moses, 2 “Consecrate to me all the firstborn. Whatever is the first to open the womb among the people of Israel, both of man and of beast, is mine.”
To “consecrate” something meant to give it back to God, to set it aside for his honor and for his service. God goes further in v. 11-13:
11 “When the Lord brings you into the land of the Canaanites, as he swore to you and your fathers, and shall give it to you, 12 you shall set apart to the Lord all that first opens the womb. All the firstborn of your animals that are males shall be the Lord’s. 13 Every firstborn of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb, or if you will not redeem it you shall break its neck. Every firstborn of man among your sons you shall redeem.
So the firstborn of every creature belonging to Israel—the firstborn sons and the firstborn of all the male animals, were to be given to God.
Now concretely, what did that mean? It meant that every firstborn animal that was male was to be sacrificed to God (or redeemed through the sacrifice of another animal), and every firstborn son was likewise to be “redeemed.” That is, they would sacrifice a lamb instead of the son (thank goodness). In other words, God says, because I killed the firstborn of Egypt in order to free you, you owe me your firstborn as well. It’s only fair that if they lost their firstborn, you lose yours as well.
But I’ll provide a way for you to not have to lose your sons: sacrifice a lamb in their place, and your son will be considered “redeemed.”
The Exodus for Us
Now, let me ask you a question I find really interesting, that I always like to ask when I’m reading the Bible, particularly the Old Testament. You can’t always find an answer, but it’s a good question to ask: Why did God chose to do it like this? Why do you think God choose to free the people of Israel like this? Why go through all these complicated plagues, and the death of the firstborn in Egypt?
Because he could easily have done this another way. God could have just struck all of the rulers in Egypt dead—the Pharaoh, the ministers, the foremen tasked with managing the people of Israel, the heads of the army—and no one would have been left to stop the Hebrews from just walking out of there. Or God could have simply rewired the Pharaoh’s brain and changed his mind. God didn’t need the Pharaoh to let the people go; he could have made the Pharaoh do it, in an instant.
So why didn’t he do it that way? Because he wants to teach his people—and us—a number of things.
God frees the people from slavery in Egypt, and commands them to observe a number of rituals afterwards. I’m sure, if you read these chapters 12 and 13 this week, that you noticed something interesting. In these chapters we see something repeated: a hypothetical situation that would almost definitely come up in the life of a faithful Hebrew family.
The first time we see it is when God is giving his more extensive instructions for the Passover, in chapter 12. In v. 26, God says this:
26 “And when your children say to you, ‘What do you mean by this service?’ 27 you shall say, ‘It is the sacrifice of the Lord’s Passover, for he passed over the houses of the people of Israel in Egypt, when he struck the Egyptians but spared our houses.’ ”
And again, in 13.8-9, during the instructions for the Feast of Unleavened Bread:
8 You shall tell your son on that day, ‘It is because of what the Lord did for me when I came out of Egypt.’ 9 And it shall be to you as a sign on your hand and as a memorial between your eyes, that the law of the Lord may be in your mouth. For with a strong hand the Lord has brought you out of Egypt.
And then again, in 13.14-16, during the instructions for the consecration of the firstborn:
14 And when in time to come your son asks you, ‘What does this mean?’ you shall say to him, ‘By a strong hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt, from the house of slavery. 15 For when Pharaoh stubbornly refused to let us go, the Lord killed all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both the firstborn of man and the firstborn of animals. Therefore I sacrifice to the Lord all the males that first open the womb, but all the firstborn of my sons I redeem.’ 16 It shall be as a mark on your hand or frontlets between your eyes, for by a strong hand the Lord brought us out of Egypt.”
When you see something repeated like this in such a short span of time, it’s because the author means for us to pay attention. What he’s saying is that these feasts, these rituals, were not meaningless; they have a pedagogical purpose behind them. They are meant to keep the events of the Exodus in the forefront of the minds of God’s people, so that they might not forget them. (A mark on your hand, frontlets between your eyes—something you won’t be able to miss.)
The Passover, and the Feast of Unleavened Bread, and the consecration of the firstborn, are a reminder—embodied memorials. They’re a series of physical acts that helped the people of Israel to look back at what God did in Egypt, so they would not forget.
But that’s not all it is; these feasts aren’t merely memorials to an event that took place a long time ago. They look back to the story of the Exodus, but the Exodus itself is a reminder of something too. It’s a reminder of a different sort—one that doesn’t look back, but forwards.
We see it in the Feast of Unleavened Bread. God reminds the Israelites of a meal taken in haste, with dough that would not need to rise, because their departure was imminent. We too have been told (Luke 12.40): You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.
We see it most clearly in the Passover and the consecration of the firstborn. God tells Israel to set aside all their firstborn sons for him. Even if you only have one son, that son is to be consecrated to God, and redeemed by the sacrifice of a lamb. God demands the first.
But he doesn’t just demand the first from his people. He gave the first to his people.
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
The firstborn of Israel were to be redeemed by a sacrifice that would take their place. God’s firstborn too, eight days after his birth, was consecrated in the temple (Luke 2.21-39). But this firstborn of God wasn’t only redeemed by a sacrifice; he was himself the sacrifice given for all the people—a perfect sacrifice, given once and for all.
When John the Baptist first saw Jesus coming to him at the river where he was baptizing, what did he say about him? John 1.29:
The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”
John already understood what other took longer to grasp: Jesus was the Lamb of God, sent to redeem his people—to be sacrificed in their place, that they might be freed from their sin.
God gave his firstborn—his only Son—in order to save his people. All of us are born in bondage to sin, that instinct in us to reject God and rebel against him. Because of that sin, we are as guilty as the Pharaoh: hard-hearted and under God’s just condemnation. But in his grace, he provided an Exodus for us: a means of being redeemed, a means of being released from slavery to our sin.
You see, the story of the Exodus has its echoes all throughout the Bible, not because it is a seminal story in the life of the people of Israel, but because this story is our story. The true Exodus of the Bible is not Israel’s exodus, but ours.
The story of the Bible is entirely centered around God giving his firstborn in order to free us from bondage to sin, to bring us out of darkness into light, out of death and into life.
God Deserves the First
Now here is what we have to see. Jesus, through his life, death and resurrection, brought an end to the Law of Moses. We are no longer required to celebrate the Passover, or the Feast of Unleavened Bread. We are no longer required to offer sacrifices for our firstborn sons.
But God has not changed. These things are no longer required of us, not because they are unimportant, but because they are completed. What is not completed—what will never be completed—is the proper response God that deserves from us because of what he has done for us.
When God rescued the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt, he told them to observe these feasts, and to consecrate their firstborn, as a way of remembering and responding to what he did for them. When your sons ask you why you’re doing these things, he said, tell them it’s because of what God did for us in Egypt: how he freed us by a mighty hand.
The Exodus of the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt was far less significant than our Exodus from slavery to sin. This second Exodus took place, not for one nation, but for all nations—for people from every country, every tribe, every language, throughout all of human history.
But for many Christians today, if God made the same demands he made on the people of Israel—observe these feasts, perform these rituals, perform these sacrifices to consecrate your firstborn—they’d think he’s asking way too much. It’s just too much work; lighten up, God, no one has time for all that.
Why do we think that God would deserve so much less after the second Exodus than after the first?
You see, many Christians have completely misunderstood what grace means. God’s grace does not mean there is nothing left for us to do after we are saved; his grace means that even when what we do is far from enough to repay him, we are still loved and accepted by him. It means our salvation doesn’t depend on our works, but on his.
But he still deserves the first—not just of our children, but of everything we are, and everything we have: our time, our thoughts, our actions, our resources, our talents—everything. God has given us so much, so much that we did not deserve: that is the gospel. And we can gauge our understanding of the gospel by how we respond to the gospel.
If you remember, earlier I mentioned that first Passover meal in Egypt—the people of Israel eating their food with their clothes and shoes on and their bags backed, while they could hear the cries going up in all the land of Egypt around them. It’s a heavy image, and it would have been a heavy experience. The same is true for these festivals they were meant to keep. The consecration of the firstborn, the celebration of the Passover, were bloody affairs.
These things are meant to be heavy, because our salvation is not a light thing. The Exodus story helps us remember just how serious these things are—how much God has saved us from, and how much it cost.
This is no light matter. God gave the first, and he deserves the first from us.
Often when we think about where God fits in to our calendar, our budget, our priorities, we’ve already started off on the wrong foot. Just look at what I just said: we think about where God “fits in” to our priorities. God shouldn’t “fit in” to our priorities; our priorities should be shaped around him. He’s not the meeting we have to try to find a place for; when our calendars are clear, when our budget is still undefined, when our priorities are still taking shape, the first event we create, the first line in our budget, the first priority, should be his.
Not because we have to do it to be saved, but because he deserves it. After everything else he’s done for us, how could any other response make sense?
While we were in the U.S. on vacation we heard a great sermon on just Exodus 13.11-16, the consecration of the firstborn. The pastor told a story during that sermon of a discussion he had with his son, a discussion similar to ones we have had with both of our kids many times. He explained that he was paid at the beginning of every month, and the first thing he did at the beginning of every month was to set aside a certain sum for the church. When his son was about thirteen years old, he came into his dad’s office while he was writing checks for the monthly bills (this was before direct deposit). He looked at the stack of checks on the desk, and noticed that the first check on the pile was written out to the church.
His son’s eyes bugged out when he saw the amount (a lot for a thirteen-year-old). “Dad!” he said. “Why are we giving that much money to the church? Didn’t they just pay you that money? Why are you giving it back?”
The pastor looked at his son and said, “I give that much to God because I used to be a slave, but he set me free.”
God deserves the first—not just of our finances, but of everything: of our time, our talents, our love. And we know how much he deserves by how much he gave; he gave the first.
My prayer for my family, and for all of our families, is that we might live in such a way that will cause some confusion in our children—why do we spend our money on this? why do we spend our time doing this? why don’t we do this?
And I pray that when they come to ask us these questions, we might get excited about the answer we will give. “We do these things, kids, because we used to be slaves, but God set us free.”
Pause: God and Hard Hearts
Exodus 7-10
I’ve been on vacation in America for the last two weeks; we got back yesterday morning. While I was gone, Joe and Eduardo taught on Exodus 7-10, in which we see the first nine out of ten plagues that God sends against the Pharaoh of Egypt, because he refuses to let the people of Israel out of slavery.
Ordinarily, we would just continue on to chapter 11 today, but we’re not doing that quite yet. If you remember, while we were going through Romans, occasionally we took breaks to talk about specific topics this book brought up. These topics weren’t the main point of the text, but they were topics that we wanted to address more specifically.
We’re going to do the same thing in Exodus from time to time, because there are some topics here that would benefit from further digging, because of how far removed we are from the place and time in which these events occurred.
I’m sure you noticed the subject I’m referring to if you were here the last two Sundays.
So here’s what I’d like to do today. We’re going to look at God’s hand in the Pharaoh’s actions here (a doctrine called the Doctrine of Reprobation, if you’re interested; that name simply means God’s sovereignty over hard hearts), and then we’re going to take a step back and see what all of this means for us on a wider scale, because even if you disagree with some of the conclusions I’ll draw here, there are a number of truths we see in these texts that are inarguable from the rest of Scripture, and that are really important for us to understand.
God’s Sovereignty Over Pharaoh’s Hard Heart
Just as a reminder in case you weren’t here, in Exodus 7-10 Moses is sent by God to tell the Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, to free the Hebrews from slavery. Repeatedly, the Pharaoh refuses. So God sends a series of plagues upon the Pharaoh and the people of Egypt—the river turns to blood, there’s an infestation of frogs, then gnats, then flies, then all their livestock die, then painful boils appear on their bodies, then there’s a crazy hail storm, then a swarm of locusts that eat everything, then darkness covers the whole country for three days. All this time, the people of Israel are left unscathed while the people of Egypt suffer for the Pharaoh’s refusal to listen to God.
These plagues served as both punishment and warning: they were God’s way of saying, "This is how powerful I am, and it can get even worse than this if you persist.”
And we see something repeated several times. Two somethings, in fact.
The first is that the Pharaoh hardens his heart against God’s commands to let his people go. We see it in 7.13, 8.15, 8.19, 8.32, 9.7, and 9.35 (I’ll quote 8.32):
But Pharaoh hardened his heart this time also, and did not let the people go.
That’s what we see on repeat, either the declarative “Pharaoh hardened his heart” or the passive “the Pharaoh’s heart was hardened, as the Lord had said.”
If that’s all there was, we could accept it easily. He hardens his heart against God’s command to release his people from slavery, so he deserves the judgment he received.
But that is not all there is here; Moses doesn’t let us off that easily. We also see on repeat a different side of that same coin. For example (9.12):
12 But the Lord hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and he did not listen to them, as the Lord had spoken to Moses.
We see it again, in 9.12, 10.1, 10.20, 20.27, and 11.10:
Moses and Aaron did all these wonders before Pharaoh, and the Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart, and he did not let the people of Israel go out of his land.
On first glance, this is either really disturbing to us, or something we just assume we’re misunderstanding. Surely God wouldn’t do that, right? Surely God wouldn’t do something that would prevent someone from doing the right thing? Because let’s just be clear: this isn’t just a case of allowing the Pharaoh to suffer the consequences of a certain action. Sorry for the spoiler, but he ends up dying in the Red Sea along with his army. This hardening of Pharaoh’s heart effectively separates him from God, forever.
Surely God doesn’t decide that too. Right?
This is a very difficult question to answer, and the answer is debated in Christian circles without end. A lot of Christians say things like, “Well the Pharaoh hardened his own heart, so God just kind of went along with what he was doing and hardened his heart even more.”
The problem is, the text doesn’t allow us that latitude; it doesn’t make that link. In fact, as we’ve seen, it goes in the other direction—God says beforehand, not what will happen, but what he will do. In 7.3-4, once again, he says, I will harden his heart.
And in 9.16, he gives a clear statement of why he does this, and he goes even further than just speaking about the hardening: he tells the Pharaoh that a) it wasn’t the Pharaoh’s bloodline that made him king of Egypt; God himself raised the Pharaoh to that position of power, and b) he explains why he did it. Exodus 9.16:
But for this purpose I have raised you up, to show you my power, so that my name may be proclaimed in all the earth.
Everything God is doing here, he is doing to display his power as God, and to make himself known as God throughout all the land.
I know that sounds cold, but let’s put that feeling off to the side for a moment; I promise we’ll come back to it. We need to reckon with the simple reality that once you see this happening in Exodus, you start to see it all over the Bible. We won’t read all these texts now, but here are just a few examples, if you want to look them up later. We see God acting in this way—that is, taking sovereign action over things we usually think of as our domain—in:
• Joshua 11.20,
• Psalm 92.7,
• Proverbs 22.14...
Now I know you might be thinking, those are all passages from the Old Testament; surely things changed in the New Testament, right?
Sorry, no. We also see it in:
These are just a few examples of many, many others I could give. When I first saw this reality in the Bible I started marking a little triangle in the margin next to any verse where we see God exercising his sovereignty over things we usually think of as belonging to us. When I had gone through the whole Bible, there was at least one triangle on nearly every page.
An Explicit Example: Romans 9.17-24
But the passage where we see this reality laid out the most specifically is, of course, in Romans 9. We’re just going to read a handful of verses from Romans 9, so that no one might think this only applies to what happened to the Pharaoh.
The context of Romans 9 isn’t any one, localized situation, but the much larger issue of the salvation of the Jewish people: why are some Jews saved, while others reject Christ? Paul actually gives the example of the Pharaoh in v. 17, quoting Exodus 9.16:
17 For the Scripture says to Pharaoh, “For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.” 18 So then he has mercy on whomever he wills, and he hardens whomever he wills.
In other words, it’s not only the Pharaoh whom God may sometimes decide to harden.
Our reaction to that verse, if we’re reading it for the first time, is going to be strong and swift: “How is that fair?!”
Paul’s one step ahead of you; he anticipates that question in the next verse (v. 19):
You will say to me then, “Why does he still find fault? For who can resist his will?”
That’s exactly the question, isn’t it? And Paul’s answer is brutal and perfect, because he doesn’t even attempt to answer it. His answer is, essentially, “You’re in no position to even ask that question.” V. 20:
20 But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to its molder, “Why have you made me like this?” 21 Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for dishonorable use? 22 What if God, desiring to show his wrath and to make known his power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, 23 in order to make known the riches of his glory for vessels of mercy, which he has prepared beforehand for glory— 24 even us whom he has called, not from the Jews only but also from the Gentiles?
And there it is. This is tough, but please listen, because it’s one of the most important things we may ever see in the Bible.
At first glance, it will seem that Paul is describing God acting in a very un-Godlike way. It’s hard for us to imagine God making some for “honorable use” and some for “dishonorable use”, preparing some for destruction and preparing others for glory.
That’s a hard thing to wrap our brains around, much less our hearts. But I’ll share with you what helped make sense of it for me. In v. 22, Paul says (in the form of a hypothetical question) that God has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction.
Why would God need to be patient with those he has prepared for destruction? Wasn’t that part of his plan all along? If it was part of his plan to harden their hearts like the Pharaoh’s, why would be need to endure them with much patience?
The answer is simple: These people whom God judges desires the sin that they pursue, and because God is patient, he doesn’t punish them immediately, like they deserve. He allows them to live their lives, during which they’ll experience pain, yes, but also happiness. And whatever happiness they experience during their lives on this earth is happiness they do not deserve, because they were never once coerced into disobeying God.
No one will stand before the throne of God at the day of judgment and say, “I didn’t sin against you willingly.” When we sin against God, it’s because we desired that sin more than we desired his righteousness.
This is why Moses is so careful to show both sides of that same coin in the Exodus account: God hardens Pharaoh’s heart…but the Pharaoh also hardens his own heart. It’s never one-sided.
So God’s judgment against all sinners is always perfectly just.
And here’s the important part: God’s judgment against sin makes his power known. God’s judgment against sin displays his right and his authority and his justice to not let sin go unpunished. God’s mercy brings him glory, absolutely—and thank God for that, because otherwise no one would be saved. But his wrath against sin brings him glory too.
So to summarize: why does God show mercy to some? In order to make his glory known.
And why does God harden some? In order to make his glory known.
You see, it’s not just God’s grace that brings him glory. His wrath brings him glory too.
Are We Free?
Now at this point I know some of you will be asking a simple question: are we really free? If God is the one who “has mercy on whomever he wills,” and who “hardens whomever he wills,” do we ever really have a choice in the matter?
The first thing we have to understand when we ask a question like that is that the Bible doesn’t ever give a clear answer, because that’s just not a question it’s trying to answer. The question of our own free will is a relatively modern question (only going back the last five hundred years or so); it was not on the biblical authors’ minds at all. They do talk about freedom, but it’s almost always freedom from sin, not freedom to do what we want to do.
Someone put it this way: the Bible isn’t there to answer all of our questions; the Bible is there to show us what questions we should be asking.
That said, there are answers to these questions which we can infer. And the explanation I’ve found the most coherent with what we do find in Scripture is a concept called “theological compatibilism.” You don’t need to remember the name, but the concept is really important.
Theological compatibilism says that yes, human beings are free…but our freedom is limited. Not just human beings, but every created thing, is free to act in accordance with its nature. For example, I’m not free to fly like a bird, because I’m not a bird; I’m a man. No matter how much I may want to do it, it’s not in my nature to do so, so I’m not free to do it. (I’m free to try, but it won’t work.)
When we’re left to our own devices, we have a sinful nature. Paul says in Ephesians 2 that we were “dead in our trespasses and sins.” Our nature is to sin. So we are absolutely free to do whatever we want—but what we want is to sin against God. (And again, that’s why we’re guilty: because we want it.)
But when God saves us, what does he do? He gives us a new nature—a holy nature, a nature that is able to fight against the sin in our bodies. So finally, we are really and truly free. When we sin, it’s because we want to sin, but when we obey God, it’s because we want to obey God.
So true freedom isn’t the freedom to do whatever we want; it’s the freedom to desire what we ought to desire.
Now, I know I’ve lost a few of you here. I know the feeling. I grew up hearing the exact opposite of much of what I’ve said here today, and I distinctly remember the first time I heard someone preach on this subject. The pastor in question basically walked through Romans 9 and said, “If you’ve read this text and thought you must be misunderstanding something—like, this can’t possibly true—you’ve probably understood just fine. What Paul seems to be saying here is exactly what he is saying.”
That was a really hard day for me. I sat down as I listened to that sermon, and I stared off into space for about an hour, my mind reeling. I was really upset, because I didn’t want to accept what I was hearing. At the same time, I couldn’t dispute the fact that I could see it clearly in Scripture. That following week, I tried over and over to dismiss it, to find a way to argue it away, so that I didn’t have to grapple with it. But I couldn’t.
So at the end of that week, I had a conversation with God. I said, “God, I don’t like this; I don’t understand how this is good news. But at the same time, I can see that you say this in your Word. So I have a choice. Either I can ignore this part of your Word, at which point I may as well ignore all of it. Or I can accept it even if I don’t understand it, and trust that you know better than me, and that it’s good news because you say it’s good news.”
So obviously I did that, and I’ll tell you, over the course of time, these truths that made me so uncomfortable at first have become the things I lean on for assurance when I’m feeling unsteady. Because if God is that in control of every aspect of his creation, that means he’s completely in control of every aspect of my faith, and that is the only way I would ever possibly make it. If my success in the Christian life is up to me, then I’m doomed. But fortunately, it’s not up to me.
Four Undeniable Truths
Whether or not you agree with what I’ve said so far, there are four truths displayed in this text that are, I believe, completely undeniable from Scripture. You can debate and analyze what the Bible says about our freedom, but I do not believe you can debate these truths.
1. God judges sin.
Sin is man’s rebellion against God, our natural inclination to move away from him and to try to be our own masters. All sin—from the greatest to the smallest—is as offensive to God as it could possibly be, because it is treason against a good and loving Creator. There are no degrees of impurity here—whether it’s a drop of poison in the barrel or a gallon, the whole barrel is unusable.
The proper response to sin is judgment. We might think that’s excessive, but we only think that because we’re the ones being judged. When someone sins against us, we desire judgment; we want justice to be done. And that’s right.
So God, because he is just and righteous, must and does punish sin. To put it another way, none of the plagues he sent against Egypt was unfair. That judgment, and more, is what we all deserve, not just the Pharaoh. God judges all sin.
2. When God judges sin, he has the right to judge as he sees fit.
Sometimes when kids misbehave, they get this weird idea in their head that they can negotiate the punishment. They disobey, so we confiscate a toy for the foreseeable future, and they say, “No, not that one; I lost this one.” And they hold up a toy they weren’t even playing with, hoping that will be enough.
That doesn’t work with parents, and it certainly doesn’t work with God. God is the Creator of all things, and the Judge of his creation. He gets to choose what judgment looks like.
But—
3. His judgment is always just.
In Deuteronomy 32.4, Moses sings:
“The Rock, his work is perfect,
for all his ways are justice.
A God of faithfulness and without iniquity,
just and upright is he.”
If we ever look at a judgment God renders against anyone in the Bible, for any reason, and if we find that judgment too severe, it is because we are underestimating the gravity of sin. God’s judgment is always just. If he ever leans further in one direction, it is in the direction of compassion—he shows human beings far more patience than we deserve. God’s judgment is always just.
And lastly:
4. His judgment displays his glory.
This is what we saw in Romans 9, and it’s what we see in Exodus 9: when God judges sin, that judgment glorifies him just as much as his compassion. Because God isn’t only love; he is also justice, and wrath against sin. And we should be infinitely thankful that he is just, because that means that for every injustice we have suffered or observed, there will be justice. Whether it’s today, or in a year, or in ten years, or in fifty, God always judges sin, and his judgment is always just, and his judgment shows us what kind of God he is: a righteous God, who is perfectly pure in right, who loves what is lovely and hates what is hateful. He is a good God.
Three Benefits of these truths
One last thing before we finish up: why does any of this matter? Why is it helpful to talk about these truths? They’re uncomfortable, and they’re hard to understand, and we don’t like to think about them. So why should we?
There are many reasons, but I’ll leave you with three benefits these truths will have on our lives if we sit with them and allow them to work on us.
The first is simple humility—a healthy fear of God. We’re so used to thinking in terms of what we need or what we want from God, but God doesn’t exist for us; we exist for him. When we know that our salvation depends entirely on him, and that he would be in the right to harden us as he hardened the Pharaoh, it puts us in our proper place, reminds us that it is only by his grace that we are saved. So believing what God says, that he shows mercy on whom he wills and hardens whom he wills, helps us to be humble before him.
The second benefit of these truths is that they require us to be absolutely submitted to God’s Word—even the parts that are difficult for us to accept or hear.
If you’re new to the faith, and you’re unsettled by this doctrine, it may be hard to hear that this is not the only difficult doctrine in the Bible; there are plenty of doctrines that are difficult for us to accept, and if we are to follow God, we have to make a concerted effort to submit ourselves to all of his Word, and not just the parts that we’re comfortable with.
The last benefit of these truths we’ll see today is a passion for God’s glory.
I’ve talked a good bit about God’s glory today. In case it’s not clear what that word means, God’s glory is all of his attributes—his love, his power, his wisdom, his justice, etc.—made visible. When we see God for who he is, in all the fullness of his character, we see his glory.
That may be tricky for some of us, because we might place more importance on some of God’s attributes than others. For example, most people would say God’s love is his most important attribute, citing 1 Corinthians 13.13: So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.
The problem is this verse isn’t talking about God’s love, but ours; Paul never says that love is the best thing in God—he said it’s the highest virtue that could be present in us.
But God’s glory cannot be put in a bottleneck: it cannot be reduced to his love, as if his other attributes do not bring him glory. God’s justice is just as important to his glory as his grace. God’s wrath is just as important to his glory as his love. God wills to display the fullness of who he is, not only a part of who he is. That necessarily includes a display of his justice and his judgment against sin.
If we choose to trust God that he knows what he’s doing when he hardens the Pharaoh’s heart, it will be because we place more value in his glory than in our own understanding.
And—please hear me—we have to do this. We absolutely must place more value in his glory than in our own understanding, because if we don’t, we will never fully accept why Jesus Christ had to come and die. We’ll see Christ’s life as a mere example to follow, and his death as a mere symbol of sacrificial love, and his resurrection as a mere image of victory over evil.
But Christ’s life, death and resurrection are far more significant than that. Christ lived a perfect life in our place because we couldn’t do it, and if any of us were to be saved, a perfect human life had to be lived, to fulfill God’s covenant with his people. Christ died the death we deserved in our place, because all sin deserves punishment, and the only appropriate punishment against sin is infinite punishment—something no ordinary human being could ever endure. Christ was raised so that he might apply his perfect life and his perfect death to us, sinners as we are, his death might be counted as ours, and so that we might share in his life.
These are truths we can never adequately understand, and if we are to accept them, God’s glory—seeing God for who he is—has to be more important than our understanding of how it all works.
The same is true for all these other doctrines as well. When we accept that God is absolutely sovereign over all aspects of salvation and judgment and creation, we do so because we know his glory is more important than our own understanding of how this all works. If we wait to understand it all, we’ll never accept anything more than a surface-level “Jesus was a good teacher” kind of faith, which isn’t faith at all.
But if we desire to see God’s glory, we’ll accept even those truths we don’t understand, and trust that God understands what we don’t. And in so doing, we will see his glory. And that glory will be our greatest comfort in life and in death: knowing that God is in control, and he is faithful to fulfill his promises, and he is wise and good. These truths are spiritual weight for our souls, the things that keep us steady when the waves begin to crash over us. What a gift it is to serve a God who is incomprehensible!
The Creator God vs His Adversary
Exodus 7.8-8.15
Last week Joe preached on Aaron and Moses' first meeting with Pharaoh, the first time Aaron and Moses went to speak to Pharaoh saying, "This is what the LORD God of Israel says: Let send my people to celebrate a feast in my honor in the desert."
And the Pharaoh's response is, of course, very negative. He said "Who is the Lord so that I obey at his orders? (...) I do not know the Lord and I will not let Israel go" - and the Pharaoh will not only prevent the Israelites from leaving but he will also make their slavery even harsher.
And the reaction of the Israelites, when they see that their situation is worse than before, is rather to say "Well done Moses, eh, well done, we were better off without you." And they no longer want to listen to what God wants to tell them through Moses.
And Moses, in the middle of all this, doesn't really know what to do, because his people don't want to listen to him and even less to the Pharaoh.
Joe told us last week that the main problem at this time is not really the enslavement of the people - but the fact that they don't really know God. And Pharaoh doesn't really know God either, that's why he doesn't want to let the people of Israel go.
So God is now going to settle these two things - he is going to make himself known to Pharaoh and he is going to make himself known to his people - using this confrontation, between him and the Pharaoh.
Yes, this text shows a spectacular confrontation between God on one side and the Pharaoh on the other, but the context not to be forgotten is this initial response from the Pharaoh: "Who is the Lord for that I obey at his orders? (...) I do not know the Lord and I will not let Israel go.”
This shows that the Pharaoh:
Does not know the Lord - "know" in the sense of knowing who he is, knowing his identity.
Does not recognize the Lord - "recognize" in the sense of knowing what his authority is.
Does not obey the Lord - he refuses to do what the Lord asks him to do.
That's the initial state of things. And this is normal - this man is the supreme authority of the oldest, most developed, most powerful kingdom of his time. He is a god, he has his people, his priests, and people really consider him divine at the time.
So it's not very surprising, ultimately, that his response to the first miracle, the transformation of the stick into a snake, is rather "we have people back home who do that too". The Pharaoh also has his "prophets", who have occult knowledge and who know how to perform miracles.
So we start with a situation of apparent equality - more or less, because there is this detail of a snake eating other snakes, but hey, we can say that the miracle that God gave to Moses, and who had convinced (at least for a while) the Israelites, did not convince the Pharaoh at all.
It is there, with this resistance of the Pharaoh, that God will send these 10 plagues, the 10 plagues of Egypt. And we will see that it is ultimately more like 9 wounds plus 1 wound at the end which is very specific, different from the others, which we will see in two weeks. Today we're talking about the first 9.
And we will therefore see how with these 9 plagues, these 9 scourges, God responds to his adversary, the Pharaoh. An adversary who says he does not know him, does not recognize him, and who resists his will.
The 3x3 plagues
In the reading we read 5 of the 9 plagues, and I encourage you to read the others at home if you have not yet done so. And when we read paying attention to the structure of the text we see that there are three series of three plagues. In each series, a key piece of information about God is revealed to Pharaoh.
The first series
In the first series, we have the waters turned to blood, the invasion of frogs and the infestation of mosquitoes or lice - it changes depending on the translation because we don't know exactly what this word means, but it It's certain that it's a disgusting little insect, in a Parisian translation of the Bible I think we could talk about a bedbug...
In this series, we see a progression of comparing the power of God to the power of Egyptian magicians. At first, the magicians manage to copy the transformation of water into blood... It doesn't help much, but at least it's enough to harden the Pharaoh's heart - he persists in his position.
In the second plague, the invasion of frogs, the magicians manage to do the same thing but... it makes even more frogs! It's even worse ! So the Pharaoh is obliged to call on Moses and Aaron to resolve the problem. But this does not mean that the Pharaoh gives in his position.
And in the third plague - mosquitoes, lice or bedbugs - depending on the translation the magicians try to send back the bedbugs - I think now they have understood that there is no point in bringing in more bedbugs, so they are trying to chase them away. But they don't arrive. And so they are obliged to recognize that this is divine intervention. They are not at all in a situation of equality, they are in a situation of despair. But this does not mean that the Pharaoh gives in his position.
The second series
So God sends a second series of three plagues [we didn't get any plagues from the second series in the reading]: flies that bite - like the "anthrax fly", which you know if you work as a breeder; a disease that causes livestock to die; and ulcers in the skin of people (and animals too).
In this second set of plagues, God introduces a new key piece of information: His people are not treated the same way as Pharaoh's people. God shows this by sending flies, cattle disease and ulcers only to the Egyptians, and not to the region where the Hebrews lived.
"(...) I will deal differently with the region of Goshen where my people live (...) so that you may know that I, the Lord, am present in this region. I will separate my people from the here.”
God has power over the Israelites, God has power over the Egyptians, but God is not indifferent. God shows that he is more than a personification of the forces of nature, of natural disasters that strike blind.
God had already shown himself to be powerful, now he shows that he is powerful and intentional. He preserves those who have made a covenant with him.
Later in Exodus, in Chapter 33, God will say to Moses: "I am gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I have compassion on whom I will have compassion.".
When we say that, that God deals differently, that he makes a separation, we come to the revelation of God as a judge, as someone who is not indifferent to what we do.
And, moreover, in the gospels we also see, in many of Jesus' parables, a separation between the sheep and the goats, the good grain and the weeds, between those who are known to the Lord and those to whom the Lord says “I don’t know you”.
One could imagine that faced with this revelation, the Pharaoh could possibly be tempted to obtain the favor of God, or to maybe join the people of Israel, to be in the camp without flies.
But the Pharaoh is still stubborn, still hardened in his position. He still resists the order to let the people go. And this is what triggers the third series of plagues, where things will become even clearer for the Pharaoh.
The third series
The last three plagues are still growing in strength: there are hail and lightning storms which cause the death of flocks and people; the locusts that eat all the plantations that survived the hail; and darkness which covers Egypt for three days, without the sun shining.
The text makes it clear that these are incomparable situations: there has not been such a strong storm since the beginning of Egypt, there have never been so many locusts, and - this is implied by hyperbole - there has never been darkness so thick that one could touch it.
But what remains clear in this last series above all is the authority of God over the Pharaoh. God lays his cards on the table, and he says it clearly: he could have gotten rid of the Pharaoh a long time ago. If Pharaoh stands, it is because the LORD keeps him standing, the heart hardens, so that his name may be known.
So in the very fact that he resists God's plan, the Pharaoh ends up having a role in God's plan. He may present himself as an adversary of the Lord, mockingly saying that he does not know the Lord, but he ends up increasing God's reputation.
It is perhaps in response to this that the Pharaoh pretends to repent. We hear him say "I have sinned, I ask for forgiveness", but God lays his cards on the table again - he knows it is a lie. Pharaoh cannot pretend to be repentant before a God who sees hearts and who is even sovereign over the hearts of men.
Knowledge of the Creator
So in these three sets of three plagues, the Lord makes himself known to Pharaoh as a mighty God - much more powerful than Pharaoh,his gods or their magicians; he makes himself recognized as a God who judges, who acts differently depending on people; and he shows that even his resistance cannot escape him.
But these lessons also serve the Hebrews, who did not really know their God well - and we saw in last week's sermon that they no longer really wanted to hear about God.
Deep down, they didn't fully believe that God was stronger than Pharaoh.
Or they didn't fully believe that God would care about them.
Or they thought that Pharaoh's resistance defeated God's plan.
But the Lord shows that it is quite the opposite: he is powerful, he is not indifferent, and his plan is not defeated by Pharaoh.
This was not only a revelation to them, the Hebrews of that generation, but also something they should tell their descendants.
These 9 plagues also contradict a politicalist or idolatrous vision of the world. In any political culture, particular domains of existence are each assigned their own god - each domain, each phenomenon, will have its god or goddess. The god of the river, the god of wild animals, the goddess of the harvest, the god of storms, etc. Egyptian religion was like that.
And we see that the Hebrews had given in to this vision of things too. Not explicitly - we don't see the Hebrews worshiping Ra or Osiris, no, we're not talking about that. But they do not attribute all areas of existence to the authority of the Eternal.
They don't want Moses to confront the Pharaoh because it might be worse. The God of Abraham is now for them a family God, of their tribe, of their home, but not a universal God, who could act on the Pharaoh, on Egypt, or even on all creation, and therefore not a God who could truly set them free.
But these 9 plagues reveal an Eternal One who is not limited to a particular domain of existence or creation. He is the creator God. It acts on wild animals and herds, on water and dust, on rainand on the sun, on order and on chaos. Not the god of a thing.But the God of all things.
And I don't know how obvious this link was for the people who experienced those moments, but certainly it was clear for the first people who read this written text: there is in the choice of vocabulary of this text full of links to the creation story in Genesis.
I haven't noticed it myself, but fortunately several people who have studied this text more deeply than I have noticed it and put it in books - fortunately. But there are plenty of words or whole expressions that are borrowed from the creation story that are used here.
But I will cite only one example, but there are many others: In the last plague, God says "let there be darkness" - a reference to "let there be light" of Gen 1:3.
There are plenty of other examples like this, enough that we can say that this is an intentional connection between the two texts, and also obvious to first readers of this text.
This reaffirms that the Eternal is the God who created everything, that he has control over everything and that he can undo the order he created or manipulate it whenever he wants, according to his will.
Whose shoes are we putting ourselves in?
So, when we look at a text to think about what it means for us today, we often ask ourselves “whose shoes are we putting ourselves in”? Who should I identify with?
And I had just told you that through these plagues God comes to address the ignorance of the Pharaoh and the Egyptian people about who he is, and that he addresses at the same time the ignorance of the Hebrew people about who he is.
So we can put ourselves in the place of these two groups who have things to learn.
The Great God of Everything
In the same way as the Hebrew people, we often need to rediscover this God who is not only my particular god, the god of my tribe so to speak, but the Creator and Lord of all things.
As Joe mentioned last week, when we are faced with a financial problem, a health problem, deep emotional distress, we can begin to forget, or even ignore the extent to which God is also Lord of these aspects of our life. life. We say to ourselves, yes the Lord is God and I recognize him but... he has nothing to do or wants to do anything about this particular subject. About my slavery. About my finances. About my singleness. About my colleagues. About my future.
But it is not as a particular god of a specific realm of existence that God revealed himself in the plagues. It is like the Creator God who is sovereign over all creation. Who is sovereign even over the human heart. There is no area that is truly off-topic for him.
And the New Testament reiterates this for us in a slightly more concise way, even if less graphically, when Paul says, speaking of Jesus Christ:"The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For in him everything was created in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, thrones, sovereignties, dominions, authorities. Everything was created by him and for him." (Cl 1:15-16)
All domains, in the sky and on the earth, the visible and the invisible, nothing escapes its perimeter and nothing is really irrelevant.
And the two peoples, the Hebrew people and the Egyptian people, in this passage, were able to testify, in different ways, to the greatness of God.
It's not a greatness that makes us say "wow, that's amazing" - an exclamation of someone simply impressed. There is also a feeling of fear, of fear which is added naturally - we say to ourselves with our buttons "I hope this power does not turn against me". Maybe you're thinking "ah, but that's the God of the Old Testament" - but I have to remind us that Jesus preached a lot about God as the final judge, who will leave nothing really hidden, and the The way Revelation presents the power of God may make us think that these plagues in Egypt are just an early version...
So neither those people at that time, nor we today, can afford to have an image of God that is very watered down, that eliminates what might be frightening or that limits Him to a particular area of life.
After the revelation...the hardening?
And it might shock some people, perhaps, if I say that we should try to put ourselves in the shoes of the Pharaoh. Maybe someone will say to me "ah, but I'm not opposed to God, I'm part of his people, etc etc". Alright.
But it is still, with God, the protagonist of this passage. And we see, in all the wounds, a refrain, a repetition which says that the heart of the Pharaoh was hardened. This means that he persists in his sin, that he does not want to listen, that he does not want to be corrected, that he does not want to give in. And we see that his hardening of heart does not really depend on the particular characteristics of each wound - if the magicians manage to reproduce the wound, he has a hardened heart; if the magicians do not arrive, his heart will also be hardened. His heart is hardened in either case.
Atstart in the first plagues, we read rather that the Pharaoh hardened his own heart, then, later, we read rather that God hardened the heart of the Pharaoh. It's an interesting question about who hardened Pharaoh's heart, and it will be part of next week's sermon as I understand it, but here is what is important for us today: it is not not a phenomenon exclusive to the pharaoh. It is not even a phenomenon that is limited to those whoconsider outside of the people of God.
In Psalm 95, and in the letter to the Hebrews, we can find the following appeal:“Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your heart”. This call is intended for people who consider themselves as belonging to the people of God, but who are entirely capable of doing the same thing as the Pharaoh: that is, having their hearts hardened, insensitive to what God wants to teach us, what God asks of us, what God shows about himself.
Indeed, we will see later in Exodus that God did not save people with the most tender hearts when he saved the people of Israel from slavery. There is much Pharaoh in each of these people and there is much Pharaoh in our own nature. And I could tell you of situations where I stubbornly recognized myself as a little Pharaoh, where I walked very proud and very stupid towards my own ruin.
And this is not only common, it is almost the rule: God reveals himself to us when we are still his adversaries. When we are still saying, like the Pharaoh: I don't really know him, I don't really recognize him and I'm not going to do what he wants me to do. It is often through this confrontation that God reveals himself.
Last week Joe told us that the Exodus tells a story where God comes to meet a people and to have a lasting relationship with those people. And that this is not possible without this people being able to know God, hence the need for God's revelation. But following this revelation, what does it produce in us? A purely intellectual knowledge accompanied by a rejection of what it demands from us? Or a trust, which commits us to a relationship?
What happens after God comes to break our paradigms, after he comes to show his greatness and our smallness? What happens after God refuses even our compromise proposals and continues to assert his will over ours?“Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your heart.”
It is paradoxical to see a text where God hardens the heart of the Pharaoh and at the same time a call not to harden one's own heart. It's paradoxical, but it's a real call because"Today, if you hear his voice", it is not too late.
In Romans 5:8 Paul tells us, "But this is how God demonstrates his love toward us; while we were still sinners, Christ died for us." We have all been in the position of the Pharaoh. But we don't need to stay there.
Do We Know Him?
Exodus 5.1-6.13
Good morning, it's a pleasure to be with you this morning, and thank you for keeping this text open in front of you.
I confess to being an expert on plans that don't go as planned. A few years ago, my wife and I had the idea of going camping.
Everything went perfectly until the first meal. First problem - I couldn't get the camping gas to work. Our tinned food was eaten cold. Second problem - I had thought of the electric pump to inflate the mattress. I hadn't thought about the fact that once inflated, the mattress wouldn't fit into the tent. Third problem - it was extremely cold for May, so much so that we had to abandon the tent and sleep in the car, except that our only blanket was full of cat hair ... to which we're both allergic.
If I were to suggest camping together now, I think you'd find it hard to take the plan seriously.
Which brings us to our question this morning - what do we do when God's plan of salvation seems about as successful as my camping weekend?
What's the answer when you don't find God's plan of salvation credible?
Let's be honest.
There are plenty of reasons to doubt its credibility! First of all, our lives often don't look very saved! Does believing in Jesus improve anything? Often it doesn’t seem to!
I'm thinking of someone who had quite a complicated life for the first thirty years of her life, including her family. She gave her life to Jesus. What happened next? In a way, things got worse. Her family did not appreciate this choice.
My dear wife converted at the age of 19. Not long afterwards, she discovered that she had a chronic illness. Difficulties, illnesses and personal tragedies don't stop when you believe in Jesus. Sometimes they increase.
Our lives don't always seem very saved.
But that's not all. We're surrounded by people who don't believe at all in God's plan of salvation! For many of our contemporaries, the idea of putting their hopes in things they can't see makes no sense.
In a month's time, Connexion will be organising a week of evangelism. Don't be surprised if many of the people we talk to find it hard to take God's salvation seriously.
Finally, even to us who believe, sometimes God's plan of salvation can seem ... a bit 'huge' ... in the wrong sense of the word!
A bit big.
We expect the resurrection, eternal life and a new earth when nothing we see with our own eyes seems to confirm this expectation.
Can we believe it?
What is the answer when God's plan of salvation doesn't seem credible?
The book of Exodus - this is the book to which generations of God's people systematically returned ... when God's salvation seemed hard to believe.
When they were beaten by their enemies, slaughtered because of their sin, exiled because of their disobedience, the book they returned to was Exodus.
This morning we will see that the difficulty of taking God's salvation seriously is nothing new.
Exodus 5 and 6 describe a situation where we struggle with this very problem. We'll see that the answer lies in knowing who the Lord, our God, really is.
1. The appearance of God's failure
First of all ... there are times when God's plan of salvation not only seems hard to believe; it looks like a failure!
Let's imagine you were the author of Exodus. You've just described one of the most famous moments in the Bible. God has revealed himself to Moses in the burning bush, told him to bring the people out, and even given him a few super-stylish miracles to show that it's not a hoax.
Moses went back to the Israelite leaders, presented them with all this and - Exodus 4.31:
"The people believed. They heard that the Lord cared for the Israelites, that he had seen their suffering, and they fell down and worshipped."
Now write the rest!
Here's what I would have written:
Moses stood before Pharaoh and said, "The Lord has appeared to us. He wants you to set us free. Here are a few miracles so that you will believe me".
Pharaoh replied: "OK".
That's the dream. The reality is that the plan seems to be going even worse than my failed camping weekend.
Pharaoh refuses and worse:
Exodus 5 verse 6:
"The same day, Pharaoh gave the following order to the people's inspectors and commissioners: "You will no longer give straw to the people to make bricks as you did before. They will collect straw themselves. You will, however, require them to make the same quantity of bricks as they did before, but you will not do away with any of it. For they are lazy. That's why they cry out: 'Let's go and offer sacrifices to our God!
First failure. They can't leave, and now their situation is even worse than before. Thank you, Moses. And that's not all. The Israelites can no longer fill their quota of bricks. Their leaders were beaten by the Egyptians. They go to see Pharaoh to complain.
Verse 15
"The Israelites' commissioners went to complain to Pharaoh, saying, 'Why do you treat your servants like this? Your servants are not given straw and we are told, 'Make bricks!' And behold, your servants are beaten as if your people were guilty." Pharaoh replied, "You are lazy, nothing but lazy. That's why you say, 'Let's go offer sacrifices to the Lord!" Now go to work."
Second failure. The Israelite leaders are humiliated. Thanks again to Moses.
So they approach Moses and Aaron at the exit. Verse 21:
"May the Lord look upon you and be your judge! Because of you, Pharaoh and his servants have nothing but disgust for us; you have put a sword in their hands to slaughter us."
Third failure. The people no longer believe in Moses' plan ... and Moses is not far from no longer believing in God's plan.
Verse 22
Moses returned to the Lord and said, "Lord, why have you done evil to this people? Is this why you sent me? Ever since I went to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has been harming this people, and you have not delivered your people at all."
"Lord, why have you harmed us?"
Have you ever prayed that?
"Lord, why have you hurt me?"
At Easter a few years ago, Anne-Sophie and I wanted to take the opportunity to share the good news of Jesus with other parents from our daughters' school. We thought everyone needed some good news. It was during the lockdown. We sent out a message on WhatsApp to several people to get them thinking about the meaning of Easter.
The reaction was hostile and humiliating.
Why, Lord? Is this your plan? We just wanted to obey you.
A group of teenagers wanted to set up a high school Bible group. They could have met informally, but instead they asked the headmaster for permission. It was forbidden to meet in the school.
I imagine we can all think of times when we've asked ourselves: "Lord, why did you hurt us?
In Exodus 5, the hardest thing to swallow is that the one who doesn't care about God seems to win! Pharaoh seems to win out over God.
Just as in many places even today, those who oppose God's salvation also seem to have the upper hand.
Sometimes God seems to have failed and his plan seems really hard to believe.
In a way, that's reassuring. Even in the Bible, we struggled with this. Nothing new under the sun!
But it does raise a question.
In the previous chapters, God warns Moses that things would happen this way. He's not caught off guard.
But then ... why . Why does God deliberately let the situation get so bad before it gets better? Why doesn't the plan work the first time?
It seems to me that it's to put his finger on a problem that he wants to solve.
The problem of ignorance
What these failure-like situations reveal is what we know - or don't know - about God.
These situations, which we all encounter, where it seems that God has not been there, expose our convictions.
This is what we discover in Exodus 5.
No one knows the Lord. Not yet.
Verse 2
"Pharaoh replied [to Moses' request]: "Who is the Lord, that I should obey his commands and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord and I will not let Israel go.""
Behind his cruelty and arrogance is ignorance of the LORD. It's not that he doesn't know that the Israelites have a god. All the peoples of the time had gods. The Egyptians had many. It's rather that he doesn't see why he should submit to the Lord.
I have a neighbour who is a policeman and I met him before I knew he was a policeman. I used to see a police car parked outside my window, so I started to worry, and then I found out that my neighbour was a policeman.
Before I found out, if he'd asked me to move my car, for example, I might not have felt obliged to do it.
But now that I know, it's different.
Perhaps the same goes for the pharaoh. He surely knows that the Israelites worship a god. He just doesn't see why he, the most powerful man in the world, should obey it.
Pharaoh doesn't know the Lord, but neither do the Israelites. Again, it's not that they didn't believe in his existence. Just before, they had heard that God was looking after them, they had fallen down and worshipped him. They had believed in God. They sang hymns.
But when the going gets tough, their reaction proves that they don't really know him yet. Not like they should.
And that's not all. Even Moses doesn't really know the Lord.
He spoke with him. He has heard his words, but in the face of Pharaoh's attitude, which God had warned him about, he too shows that he doesn't really know the Lord.
"Ever since I went to Pharaoh to speak on your behalf, he has been doing evil to this people and you have not delivered your people at all."
Can we see what the author is up to?
Behind the difficulties in believing in his plan, behind the frustration, anger or bitterness, there is a more fundamental problem.
The problem of not knowing God. Nobody knows him as well as they should.
In September I'll be married to Anne-Sophie for 15 years. In 15 years you have time to get an idea of a person's character.
Let's imagine that this week I start going through her messages and emails. When she leaves the house, I follow her. When she goes to work I call her colleagues to check she's there.
I decide not to trust her.
What does that say about me? That I don't know my wife! If I really knew her, I'd know that I had nothing to worry about.
It's the same thing in this passage. This difficulty in taking God's plan of salvation seriously reveals an ignorance of who God is.
When we talk about ignorance, we're not just talking about a lack of information.
It is an ignorance like that of the people in this passage. They know that the Eternal exists. But to the extent that they don't take him seriously, don't fear him and don't trust him ... they show that they don't know who the Eternal One is.
This is always revealed when life doesn't go according to plan or when we struggle to trust God.
What we believe - or don't believe - about who he is.
Pain is often the true test of what we believe.
For example, if like me you've ever worried about money, you know what those moments reveal about our belief, or lack of belief, that God is a father who cares for his children.
I think of a missionary friend during the pandemic who, as he watched the economy plummet, was very worried about his financial support and confided in me that he doubted God's goodness.
My wife's health problems over the last few years have forced us to ask ourselves the same question. Who is the Lord? Who is he really?
It's easy to think that what keeps us going in times of trial is some kind of superhuman inner strength, as if faith were some kind of superpower.
The Bible says otherwise. The source of perseverance and faith is authentic knowledge of God. That's why in this passage God deliberately puts the Israelites in the deep end. To teach a lesson that they were going to have to learn and that we too have to learn.
When the world falls apart, when God's plan takes an unexpected turn, the fundamental question is: do you know me?
Do you know the Lord?
It's the most decisive question a human being can ask himself.
By default, we are like the Israelites. We all evolve with a greater or lesser ignorance of God.
That's why this passage shows us not only the problem of ignorance of God but also the need for God's revelation.
The need for God's revelation
The answer to doubt, the answer to discouragement, the answer when God's plan doesn't seem credible, is ... to know who the Lord, our God, is.
In a way, it's like any other relationship. Why do I trust my wife, why do I love her, why am I happy to walk alongside her even when life is difficult?
Because I know her! I know who she is! What I have seen of her identity confirms that she is trustworthy.
That's why in chapter 6 God speaks to Moses again, hammering home 4 times: "I am the LORD."
He insists on his identity.
And look at verse 6 of chapter 6
"Therefore say to the Israelites: 'I am the Lord, I will free you from the burdens of the Egyptians, I will deliver you from their slavery and I will redeem you with power and with great acts of judgement. I will take you to be my people, I will be your God, and you will know that I am the Lord, your God, who will free you from the burdens of the Egyptians.
The weight given to a name depends very much on the exploits of the person in question.
Ten years ago, the name 'Mbappe' didn't mean much to most people. If I said of a footballer, 'that's the next Mbappe', people wouldn't have understood. But now that we've seen his exploits in two World Cups, we know who we're dealing with when we hear the name Mbappe. It's not that he didn't exist ten years ago. It's rather that he 'revealed' himself to the world through his exploits on the pitch.
I apologise for the football illustration.
It's a bit like what God announces he's going to do for his name 'the Eternal'.
He is going to reveal by his exploits in what reverence, in what honour, in what wonder his name is to be held. Who the Eternal One is.
This explains a verse that may seem a little odd. Exodus 6 verse 3
"I appeared to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as the Almighty God, but I did not fully make myself known to them by my name, the LORD."
This verse can be perplexing.
When we read the stories of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in Genesis, we find the name the Eternal. So how can we understand God telling Moses that he had not revealed his name to them?
The explanation, which I find the most likely, is that it is only now, when God finally delivers his people, that we will really understand his identity, as with Mbappé and his exploits on the football pitch.
God made promises to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Promises that can be summed up in 4 words beginning with the letter P: a large people, a land to live in, a special relationship, and that all the peoples of the world would be blessed through them.
But Abraham, Isaac and Jacob did not see these promises fulfilled in their lifetime. It is only now, when he fulfils what he promised, that we will finally understand his identity.
The plagues, the Passover, the crossing of the Red Sea that we will see in the next few weeks, all serve to make the Eternal One known. In particular, it will serve to show that the Lord is a God who commits himself, who saves and who fights for his own.
As we saw last Sunday, in the original language, the name God means "I am" or "I will be". It is a name that implies that God is absolutely incomparable and absolutely autonomous. He is transcendent and immanent.
You can't put him in a box, you can't really compare him to anything else, and he does whatever he wants!
But this God chose freely, by pure grace, to identify himself with the world ... by saving ... and by keeping his commitment to his people.
Kylian Mbappe could have chosen to make himself known to the world in any way he wanted. He could have become a baker, a singer, a pétanque player - anything he wanted ... but he chose football.
God could have made himself known to the world in any way he wanted - "I will be who I will be" - but he chose to do it by saving ... according to his promise.
"You will know that I am the Lord your God ... when ... I free you from the burdens laid upon you by the Egyptians".
He wants this to be clear in our minds.
The name Eternal is not synonymous with empty words but with promises kept! That's how God wants to be known! As the Eternal One - the great "I am" the God who has put his identity on the line by committing himself to save.
Let's draw some implications.
The crux of the matter, the difference between perseverance and panic, between trust and cracking, comes down to one very simple question.
Do you know your God? Do you know the Lord? Have you grasped the fact that he is the God who commits, who saves and who fights for his people?
Exodus tells a story of love. God comes to find a people to offer them liberation ... with a view ... to a relationship! A relationship in which we love him, know that he loves us, trust him and live for him.
None of this is possible if we don't know him. But if we do know him, it changes everything.
This knowledge doesn't come from navel-gazing. It doesn't come by asking ourselves: um, I wonder what he's like as a god? Is he a bearded man sitting in the clouds or does he look like an elephant? I don't really know. No! Nor does it come from contemplating our feelings. 'God can't love me very much today because I don't feel very loved.’
To know God, we have to look at what he has revealed to us, through his objective actions in history, as described in the Bible.
He did this through the Exodus.
Ultimately, he did it through the cross and resurrection of Jesus, which reveal to us the full extent of his commitment to save.
So what is the answer when we struggle to believe in God's plan of salvation? Quite simply ... it's to know who the God behind the plan is!
This is the cure for doubt, discouragement and despair. A right knowledge of the Lord.
It requires us to make a choice: Between observation on the one hand: what the world tells us, what our emotions tell us, what our eyes tell us ... Or revelation on the other hand - the demonstration in history of God's identity.
Observation is often discouraging ... we see the failures, we see the difficulties and so on. But revelation shows us the God behind the plan! It radically changes the way we approach trials.
We can experience them either as signs that God's plan is not credible or as opportunities to remember who our God is.
You lose your job. That hurts, of course. And it presents you with a choice. Do you see it as a sign that God has let you down - that's the observation? Or do you choose revelation and remember that he is committed to providing for your needs, and that he is sending you this trial to work on that conviction?
Another example - illness. Nobody wants to suffer in their body. Statistically, illness will affect many of us. If this is what God sends us, we can welcome it with bitterness or we can remember who he is. A God who has pledged always to carry us, and, whether he heals us now or not, who will give us a glorious body in the new creation.
This is an area where Anne-Sophie and I have come to realise over the last few years just how much we have to do to get to know God better. Little players whom God has invited to get to know him better by this means.
A final example. We are discouraged in our evangelism. We try to talk about Jesus, and he gets thrown back in our faces. We can get discouraged, or we can remember who our God is and that he is committed to bringing many people into his kingdom. No matter how much rejection we get, God WILL draw people to himself.
In fact, think about what you're worried about right now. Now ask yourself what it's like to know the Lord as the God who commits, saves and fights for his own even in difficult situations.
Perhaps there are gaps in our knowledge of God ... and so this is an opportunity to grow. For some of us, what God wants for us is not to give us an easy life, but to know him.
Do we know him?
So many times in the Bible, God's people found themselves in situations where God's plan seemed anything but credible. Everything seemed to be falling apart. No reason for hope.
Each time, the solution consisted of six words: you will know that I am the Lord ...
Église Connexion... Do we know the Lord?
God Knows
Exodus 2
Every week, I get anywhere from five to ten calls from people, from Paris, but often even all over the country or even internationally. Most of the time these people want to know if they can rent a room of the church for an event (sorry, no), but fairly often, these calls are from people who have questions about the Christian faith, or people who are going through hard times, and simply want to talk to a pastor.
This week I got a call from an older woman with a lot of health problems, who didn’t grow up in church, but had spent the last forty years trying to reach Christ. She’d gone to all sorts of different churches, hearing all sorts of different things. This poor woman was so confused, and she admitted as much. She’d go to one church, and ask questions about why she’s suffering with these health problems, or what does she have to do to be saved, and she’d get some answers. Then she’d go to another church, and ask the same questions, and get totally different answers. Every time, these churches were sure of their answers—they’d say, this is the truth, this is what the Bible says. But they’d quote different texts, out of context, and make the Bible say opposite things.
I was on the phone with her for about forty-five minutes. We talked a lot about the gospel, and about her current situation (she’s in a place now where she doesn’t have access to a local church and can’t leave her home). Talking about the gospel, I was on sure footing. I know the gospel, and from what she told me I do believe she genuinely has faith in Christ, so I hope and pray I was able to give her some peace about the doubts that she had.
Where it got tricky was when we started talking about her health problems, and the repercussions these problems were having on her faith. She started listing all of the different things she’d heard from different pastors over the years about why these health problems plagued her: she didn’t have enough faith, or she wasn’t praying right, or she hadn’t been baptized correctly, or God was punishing her for something she’d done, or God was testing her—there were many others.
As I listened to her speak, I found myself getting angry: angry at these pastors who claimed to know why this poor woman was suffering, and even more, who had enough confidence in their knowledge that they could place the blame on her.
So when she finally asked me why I thought she was suffering, I just said, “I don’t know.”
She didn’t speak for a really long time, nearly a full minute; I don’t think anyone had ever said that to her before. So finally I repeated: “I don’t know why you’re going through these things. Knowing what I know of God in the Bible, I don’t believe he’s punishing you, because Christ already took your punishment on the cross. So it’s not that. But why, specifically? I can’t tell you that; I don’t know.
“But he knows.”
Three truths about God become our foundation in times of prolonged suffering like that, and they are very simple: 1) God is sovereign over the world and over our lives (so he does what he pleases, and nothing can stop him from doing his will); 2) God is wise, and knows the best possible way to do his will; and 3) God is good. So even if we don’t know why he’s doing what he’s doing, we can rest in the fact that he is good, and that he knows.
That conversation was an excellent preparation for me, getting this sermon ready.
If you remember, we left the people of Israel in a terrible state last time. They’d been brought into Egypt by their brother Joseph, they’d multiplied and become very numerous and strong. Then the Pharaoh, the king of Egypt, became afraid of them, so he decided to submit them to heavy slavery and put out an order to kill all Hebrew male children, to try to stunt their growth.
That’s a terrible situation, in which we can find absolutely nothing good, looking at it from a human perspective.
But it is in that situation that God was already working out his plan to rescue them.
The Savior Preserved (v. 1-10)
At the beginning of Exodus 2, we come across a family. We don’t know who they are, except that they were from the tribe of Levi. This Levite family finds out they are going to have a baby.
Imagine the terror of those nine months—not only are they afraid of all the other, normal things that could conceivably go wrong during the pregnancy (and back then, a lot could happen than it can today), they had to deal with the fear of not knowing whether this child would be a boy. Because if he was, he’d be condemned to die the second he came out of the womb. And that’s exactly what happens. V. 1:
Now a man from the house of Levi went and took as his wife a Levite woman. 2 The woman conceived and bore a son, and when she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him three months.
So the second this boy is out, the family is immediately faced with a devastating decision. You can hide a newborn for a couple of weeks, maximum. But pretty soon their cries become much louder, and it will be impossible to hide. So this family had a choice to make.
V. 3:
3 When she could hide him no longer, she took for him a basket made of bulrushes and daubed it with bitumen and pitch. She put the child in it and placed it among the reeds by the river bank. 4 And his sister stood at a distance to know what would be done to him. 5 Now the daughter of Pharaoh came down to bathe at the river, while her young women walked beside the river. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her servant woman, and she took it. 6 When she opened it, she saw the child, and behold, the baby was crying. She took pity on him and said, “This is one of the Hebrews’ children.” 7 Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and call you a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you?” 8 And Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Go.” So the girl went and called the child’s mother. 9 And Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this child away and nurse him for me, and I will give you your wages.” So the woman took the child and nursed him. 10 When the child grew older, she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son. She named him Moses, “Because,” she said, “I drew him out of the water.”
So all of this is a fairly extraordinary series of events. First, I think it’s pretty safe to assume that the baby’s mom knew where the Pharaoh’s daughter came to bathe, so that’s why she put him in this basket in the river. (And we know that she was at least hoping for a happy outcome, because the baby’s sister was standing by, watching to see what would happen to the boy.)
So along comes the Pharaoh’s daughter, and not only does she not obey her father’s orders to drown the baby in the river, she takes pity on the baby. How could she not? Thank God for rebellious young women. (I know I won’t be saying that in a few years, but for now I’m grateful.)
Then it gets even more extraordinary. Moses’s quick-thinking older sister finds a way to bring him back home. So for the first few years of his life, Moses’s mother not only get to know he wasn’t thrown in the river; she gets hired to take care of him. And this time, when she had to essentially give him up for adoption, there was no uncertainty. She knew he would not only be living, but living better than any other Hebrew boy in the country, in the Pharaoh’s palace.
The Savior Rejected (v. 11-15)
So it starts off really well. But he had to have grown up feeling like a fish out of water—raised in the Pharaoh’s palace, but he knew that he was a Hebrew (we see it in v. 11, when he sees an Egyptian beating a Hebrew slave, and recognizes this slave as “one of his people”).
So already, he had to have felt “different.” But that felt difference would be accentuated even more by what happened after that.
In v. 11, we see that Moses has grown up, and one day he goes out to where the Hebrew slaves are working, and he sees an Egyptian beating one of these Hebrew slaves. So Moses makes sure the coast is clear, then intervenes and ends up killing the Egyptian.
The next day, he comes out again and sees two Hebrews fighting. Again, he tries to intervene, and this time, the Hebrews turn on him. In v. 14, we hear one of them say, “Who made you a prince and a judge over us? Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?”
So apparently the coast wasn’t as clear as Moses thought; people knew what he had done. And despite the fact that Moses was genuinely trying to help—first in defending the Hebrew who was being beaten, and second in trying to split up this fight—they reject him. I understand why they did it—they were probably afraid of him, not knowing what he would do—but they make it clear that this is not a safe space for Moses.
And before long, there is no safe space for him. The Pharaoh hears about what Moses did, and tries to kill him. So Moses runs away from Egypt, and goes to a country called Midian (which, interestingly, is on the other side of the wilderness where God will soon bring the Israelites; Moses had to cross that wilderness to get to Midian).
The Savior Accepted (v. 16-22)
In Midian, he meets the daughters of the priest of Midian, a man named Reuel (in other passages he’s called Jethro; many people in the Bible are referred to by two names, often because of an encounter they had with God). What kind of a priest was he? Hard to say, but we at least know a couple of things about him. First of all, this name “Reuel” means “friend of God.” Some commentators take this to mean he was a priest of the one true God, and not of a pagan deity. What we can say for sure is that later on in the book, Jethro/Reuel proves himself to be a godly man, who offers wise counsel to Moses when it’s needed.
At any rate, he sits down by a well, and this priest’s daughters come to give their animals water, but they’re set upon by a group of unruly shepherds who try to chase them away. And like he did in Egypt, Moses intervenes: he protects this priest’s daughters and saves them. And this time, the response isn’t rejection. He’s welcomed into Reuel’s home, and even ends up actually marrying one of his daughters and having a son with her.
Already here we have a few clues as to what this man Moses must have experienced. Growing up in Egypt, he knew his own story well enough to know who he was: that although he was raised and educated as an Egyptian, he wasn’t an Egyptian, but a Hebrew. So he was an outcast at home. At the same time, he was an outcast amongst his own people. Can you imagine the animosity they must have felt toward him? A Hebrew, like them, who wasn’t subjected to slavery like they were, but who got to grow up in very comfortable conditions, in the Pharaoh’s palace.
This man is at home nowhere.
And now, finally, he’s come to a place where he is accepted and appreciated and welcomed. He finds a home, and he finds a family. This should be (in our thinking) happily ever after for Moses. But it’s just the beginning.
God Knows (v. 23-25)
Moses’s story obviously continues in chapter 3, but before we get to it, the author (who, incidentally, is Moses himself, telling his own story) inserts three short verses that have nothing directly to do with him. They can almost feel like an afterthought if you’re reading quickly.
But they are absolutely massive in terms of their implications. This has long been one of my favorite passages in the entire Bible.
23 During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God.
I think it’s safe to assume that nothing we see in this verse is new. It’s been several generations now, one Pharaoh dies, another takes his place, and the people keep suffering. The people of Israel cry out to God for help, so clearly they still remember him, they remember the stories; so in all likelihood they’ve already done this many times before. Nothing external has changed in their situation, except that it’s a new king persecuting them now.
Even so, when they cry out this time, something is different. V. 24:
24 And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.
If you’re new to the Bible, this verse might sound a little confusing, so we need to take a bit of time to define some words.
The first is this word “covenant.” When you start reading the Bible, you quickly realize that the word “covenant” appears all over the place.
Typically in the Bible, a covenant is like a contract: it is an agreement between two people for an exchange of goods, or for the purchase of land, or for mutual support. This kind of covenant is bilateral—it goes in both directions. I do something for you if you do something for me.
But there are also covenants that are unilateral—that is, one person makes a formal commitment to act a certain way towards someone else, regardless of what that second person does.
This is the kind of covenant God made with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It is a promise in which God makes a commitment to them, to multiply their family, to give them the land of Canaan as a home, and to bless all the nations of the earth through them. The Israelites—the descendants of Abraham—have been multiplying, as we saw last week. But the other parts of that covenant hasn’t been fulfilled yet.
So now, when the people cry out to God, he hears their groaning, and he remembers his covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
There’s another word we need to define, in the context of this story: the word “remember”. We can mean one of two things when we say we “remember” something. The first is that we remember something we’d forgotten—usually when that happens, it’s too late. I’m already on the train when I remember I left my computer at home. That’s not the kind of remembering we’re talking about here; God hadn’t forgotten his covenant.
The second way we remember something is to call to something mind in a certain way, at a certain moment, in a way that makes us act in a specific way. I will never forget the birth of my children—the first time I saw them, the first time I held them. I haven’t forgotten that experience. But even today, now that they’re older, sometimes I look at them, and I remember that moment, and I’m so filled with love for them that I go and give them a hug, squeeze them tight.
God had not forgotten the covenant he made with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. But at this particular moment, when he heard their groaning, he remembered it. He called it to mind in such a way that he is driven to act.
Then v. 25 gives us this small but massively important sentence:
25 God saw the people of Israel—and God knew.
What exactly did he “know”? He knew everything he could have possibly known about their situation. He knew what they were going through, and even more importantly, he knew what he was doing. In fact, if we know this story already, we can see that even before the people of Israel cried out to him, God had already begun executing his plan to rescue them.
Years before, God kept Moses safe as a baby. He put Moses in Pharaoh’s house. He exiled Moses from both people groups—the Egyptians he had grown up with, and the Hebrews to whom he belonged. He brought Moses to Midian and caused him to be welcomed there.
V. 23-25 are wholly unnecessary for the story. They change nothing about the facts of Israel’s situation, or what’s happening with Moses. They are included here in order that the people reading this story might know that the cries of God’s people did not fall on deaf ears, that he was not indifferent to their situation.
But God’s plan is not always what we would expect. He had heard the people’s cries for years, decades, centuries…but he hadn’t acted yet in any way that they could see, because it wasn’t the right time. That is a hard pill for us to swallow. Often we are so sure that surely God’s plan for me, God’s plan for his people, couldn’t possibly be this.
We think far too small. God’s plans are bigger than just for us. His plans are not primarily for the alleviating of our suffering; his plans are for the healing of all suffering.
God knows. He hadn’t forgotten his covenant with his people. Even if for them it seemed interminably long in coming, God was faithful to do what he promised.
And that is true across the entire narrative of the Bible, and throughout all of human history. He knows. HE IS FAITHFUL.
For the people of Israel, God knows. HE IS FAITHFUL. Already, he has gotten ready. He delivered Moses as a baby, he preserved Moses when the Pharaoh tried to kill him, he placed Moses where he needed to be—in exactly the right place to be called and sent to rescue his people. For the people of Israel in this story, God knows what he’s doing.
For all of his people, God knows. HE IS FAITHFUL. What happens much later on in the story? It’s no accident that the story of Moses, in so many ways, mirrors the story of Jesus Christ: when God was doing all this stuff with Israel, he already knew exactly what he would do with Jesus.
The people of Israel were in Egypt, away from the land God had promised them, for four hundred years before he came to their rescue. Much later, the prophets would go silent, and the people would wait for God to finally fulfill the promises given through those prophets, and send them a Messiah.
The people of Israel were in Egypt for four hundred years. How much time passed between the last prophet and the coming of Christ? Four hundred years.
God protects the savior Moses from a murderous king who sets out killing his people’s baby boys. The Savior Jesus, too, is protected from a murderous king who sets out killing his people’s baby boys.
Moses intervenes to save, on two different occasions: his attempt to defend his own people is rejected by them (or at least by some of them), but his attempt to rescue Reuel’s daughters is welcomed, appreciated, and accepted.
Jesus intervened to save; his salvation was rejected by all but a few of his people, but it was welcomed and accepted by some, and even by those outside of his own nation. And it’s still going on.
None of this was an accident. Not just for the people of Israel, but for all of God’s people—for us, and all the saints throughout history—God knows. He is faithful. At just the right time, in just the right context, Christ came and delivered us. He lived our life and died our death and was raised for our justification. Why didn’t it happen earlier, or later, or differently? God only knows. But God knows. HE IS FAITHFUL.
This is what we see all throughout Scripture: God knows what he is doing. He makes promises, and he is faithful to fulfill those promises. He has a plan to do his will, and he perfectly executes that plan.
And you can apply this all the way down the line—from the monumental moments of history to the smallest circumstances of our lives.
Some of you are at a high point in your lives, and you feel like everything’s coming together, and you’re just happy to be where you are with the Lord. And thank God for that.
But I’ve learned enough to know that more often than not, that’s not the case; most of you are struggling with something, and the struggles going on in this room are as various as the people we have here today.
Some of you may be struggling with feelings of depression, or anxiety.
Some of you have serious health issues you’re dealing with.
Some of you are struggling with very real and very heavy sin, and you’re feeling crushed under the weight of it, wondering if it will ever end, and wondering if anyone here would still love and accept you if they knew.
Some of you are struggling with wounds from past abuse, and some of you are dealing with the temptation to act in abusive ways.
Some of you are struggling with fear over financial pressure, or pressure from school or work, or feelings of worthlessness, or suicidal thoughts, or eating disorders, or pride, or anger, or bitterness, or fear, or any number of a million different difficult things that you could possibly go through.
And some of you are simply struggling to believe that God even really sees you at all, much less loves you and cares for you.
Whatever it is you are dealing with—whatever you are struggling with, whatever it is that seems to be crushing you—God knows. He is not surprised by this. He is powerful, and he is wise, and he is good—he knows what he is going.
And not only does he know what he’s doing in your situation, he knows you. He understands you. He sees into depths of your heart that even you are unable to comprehend. He sees you, and he hears your cries for help, and he remembers his promises to you. There’s a road to those promises, and it may not be the road you would have chosen for yourself—it almost never is. But he sees you, and hears you, and he is taking you by the hand and guiding you towards the fulfillment of every promise he has made to his people. That fulfillment might come tomorrow, or in five years, or only when Christ returns. But whether you can see it or not, that’s where he’s taking you.
23 During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. 24 And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. 25 God saw the people of Israel—and God knew.
He hasn’t changed.
Conclusion
So the question this text forces us to ask is, Will you trust him?
This text gives us two options in response to the Savior whom God sent to save us: we can accept him, or we can reject him. That’s it, and that’s all.
The thing is, he’s sovereign over your life whether you accept it or not. If we reject the Savior, that changes nothing about God’s plan for us. All it does it make living through that plan more difficult. In all of our lives, there will be suffering, there will be struggle. But suffering without Christ is infinitely more difficult than suffering with him, and knowing that the God who rules over your life is a good and wise God who works for you and not against you.
So I would plead with you to accept him. That means willingly and gladly submitting to his sovereignty, and resting in the knowledge that your sins are forgiven, your future is secure, and your life—even if it may be painful and difficult to understand—is being molded into a story that, in a hundred years, you will not want to change. For those who belong to Christ, we have this promise: when we are with him in glory, we will never once look back on our lives on this earth and wish God had done anything differently.