God's Ministry — Harder than Expected

Today's lesson is Exodus 5 and 6, and we titled it God's Ministry Harder Than Expected. The goal of the entire story of Exodus is bringing God's people from a place of bondage that they found themselves into to the place of promise that God intends for them. That is divine deliverance. And they had already cried out to God for deliverance. God had raised up Moses, called him, equipped him by saying, I will be with you, sent him with his brother Aaron back into Egypt, and Moses and Aaron met with the elders of Egypt and say, hey, God heard your cry, this is awesome, he's gonna do something about the situation that you're in. They believed him, they had that awesome night of worship together where we ended last week, remember? And we realized along the way, too, that we as New Testament Christians are also called in ministries that God gives us calling things he wants us to do. God doesn't have kids that he doesn't give assignments to, and we have a calling, and we also need to know that God is with us. But in this lesson, now we see the sturdy pushback from Pharaoh in what God had called Aaron and Moses to do. This chapter brings a string of difficulty that I don't think Moses had imagined or anticipated. And there are things in our calling, in our Christian life, that are going to, that we're going to see some answers through some careful study of these scriptures. You know, we don't really think that life should be super easy, we don't really think that, but yet we really do gather up some expectations that if we obey God, if we serve him, that somehow our life should be blessed, and we should be healthy, and we should be, you know, protected. But that's not the way this life works, and we find out that God's ministry is harder than expected. Now I'm not going to go verse by verse through all two chapters, because you guys already did that in your study. I'm hoping today to add another layer over the top of what you already studied, but we will read the first four verses. Verse one starts this way,

And Pharaoh said,

And then they said,

But the king of Egypt said to them,

Behold, the people of the land are now many, and you make them rest from their burdens. So Moses and Aaron did just what God had called them to do. They went and told Pharaoh, hey, let my people go that they can come and serve me in the wilderness. And Pharaoh asked these questions, who is the Lord? Who is, and this is Jehovah, Yahweh. Who is Jehovah? I don't even know this God, so why would I obey him? And it's interesting in Scripture that sometimes God likes to use those first words that come out of somebody's mouth and create a whole life of them, because next week God will show Pharaoh exactly who he is. But on a practical note, Pharaoh has a whole country to run, and he needs this massive manpower that Israel provides for him in order to just get stuff done. And so he has no interest in letting them go to worship God, even for a short time. Time is money, and he needs them. So after Aaron and Moses leave Pharaoh, he rolls a sofa in his mind and he shrewdly thinks to himself, I should probably do something to ensure that these people of mine that are working for me have far less time to talk about these worship retreats that they're talking about. And so Pharaoh resented their idol, and so that's why they say, let us go to offer sacrifice to our God. And he thinks if they have more to do and less opportunity to talk, that would be better. So verse 6 told us that that same day, Pharaoh commanded that the people should no longer have a straw delivered to them to make their bricks, but they should have to go out and gather it for themselves, all while keeping the quota of bricks that he wanted made. And he's thinking that if the people were scattered throughout the land of Egypt to gather the stubble for straw, that would impact both their workload and their proximity to one another. And this is what Pharaoh was after, separate the people and make life harder for the people. And so to summarize how the chapter goes, the Egyptian taskmasters barked at the slaves, complete your work as when there was straw, the quota of bricks was not maintained, so the Israelite foremen were beaten. They cried out to Pharaoh, why do you treat your servants like this? It's not our fault. You're not giving us the raw materials that we need. And Pharaoh wouldn't relent, and he says, you're idle, now go and work. And Moses and Aaron were waiting outside that conversation as the foreman left Pharaoh, and the foreman turned to Moses and Aaron in verse 21, and they said to them,

And the chapter ends with Moses turning to the Lord now in this raw and honest moment, and he says to the Lord,

And so Moses is experiencing something here that maybe we have experienced as well, that when we accept the call of God, the ministry that he's given us, and we do it joyfully, sometimes life gets a little harder, sometimes bad things happen a little more often, sometimes people misunderstand and they accuse us, and we realize that God's ministry is harder than we expected. Now in the narrative of Israel, it was an effective strategy for Pharaoh to keep them busy with an extra burden of work. It was brilliant of him to scatter them and isolate them and send them all over creation to now gather their own raw materials, but it was terribly resourceful of him to keep them discouraged, or to discourage I should say Aaron and Moses, by using their own people. Pharaoh didn't have to be anywhere near that conversation. He knew that if they made, if he made them burdened and busy, the Israelites themselves would turn on the leader and do the damage that Pharaoh wanted to have done when they said, the Lord look on you and judge. Now we want to remember something we opened up with that Paul told the Romans in chapter 15, everything that is written in the past is written to teach us, right, and through the encouragement of the scriptures we might have hope. So we realize that these things that were written in the past are to teach us as well, and so this raises some questions about this chapter. Why is Israel in bondage in the first place? Biblically speaking, what does Egypt represent? What does Pharaoh represent? Why is there so much trouble? So we want to answer those questions. In scripture, Egypt is a type of the kingdom of the world that is opposite to and opposed to the kingdom of God, over and over in scripture. And the ruler of this kingdom, Pharaoh, represents for us the ruler of the kingdom of the world that we're living in, Satan. The Bible makes it clear to us because of the sin of man, which we studied in Divine Design, Genesis chapter 3, that the rulership of this world that was intended for Adam and his partner was handed over now to Satan, and man has found himself spiritually moved from life in Eden to death in Egypt, a coffin in Egypt. And that is our condition, that's our human condition. The New Testament teaches, the Apostle wrote it to Ephesians this way, put it up on the screen for you, and this is out of the NIV because I like the rhythm of it. As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins in which you used to live when you followed, look at this, the ways of this world and the ruler of the kingdom of the air. All of us lived among them at one time. This is man's condition, okay? Like the rest, we were by nature objects of rest. So that answers the question for us, you know, why are they in Egypt in the first place? This is a symbol to us of our bondage to sin. We are born into this bondage to sin, but God has a plan to redeem man back into life, but God's plan has opposition to it. Just like Moses and Israel experienced this pushback from Pharaoh, we are subject to the same tactics of our enemy, the same pushback. Now the New Testament also teaches us that we are not to be unaware of the devil's schemes, and Paul exhorted the Ephesians to take their stand against his schemes, because our struggle is not against flesh and blood. Our struggle is not against one another. Our struggle is against the rulers, the authorities, and the powers of this dark world. Now I tend to sometimes shy away from a lot of conversations about spiritual warfare and Satan attacking and things like that, and the reason that I do is because sometimes I feel like the words, Satan's really been attacking me, is a little bit of a modern cop-out. Sometimes, sometimes I feel like our conversations and our comments about Satan's activities and his capabilities become skewed, and they're not proper. For example, Satan is not omnipresent. He is not every place at one time. That is an attribute of God. That is not an attribute of Satan, and yet sometimes our conversation almost ascribes that to him. I find that troubling. Satan is not in Sri Lanka and San Diego at the same time. Our Heavenly Father is, and so that's one reason I'm a little careful. Another reason is Satan is not omniscient. He doesn't know all things. Our Heavenly Father is omniscient. He knows everything. Satan does not, and yet sometimes we're careless, and we almost ascribe that to him. But like Pharaoh, Satan is shrewd, and he has the capacity to guess our actions and our reactions to things probably better than we do. He will always resist God's plan to deliver someone from bondage to sin, and he will always try to thwart God's efforts or thwart the ministry of God that people are actively involved in. He is indeed an ancient foe. So even though I have a personal resistance, opposition is the subject. It is the context of these chapters, and so we should probably look at it from that point of view, because Scripture tells us, I do not want you to be unaware of the devil's schemes. So we want to look at what was the opposition of the ruler of Egypt? What did that look like? And what does the opposition of the ruler of this world, how does that, what is the comparison? What do we see mirrored in that? And so I want to put up four strategies that I want to go through that we see in this chapter that may help us in not being unaware of the devil's schemes, and they are, this is what we see with Pharaoh, keep them confused by asking who is the Lord, keep them busy when Pharaoh says now go to work, keep them separated, go out and gather straw, and make them discouraged as the foreman said, the Lord look on you and judge. And we'll just leave that up as I go through these. The first one, the first strategy of Pharaoh was to confuse, the strategy of Satan is to resist God's plan to redeem his people and confuse the ministry of those who are speaking for God by casting doubt on who God is. Of course we see this, if you are born again and have the Spirit of God, we can see this clearly, we can see effectively the work of Satan in this world. But he brings confusion to those who do not yet know God. First he asked who is the Lord? Like is there a God? Who is this? This is a little silly. And he says things like, Pharaoh said, I do not know the Lord, Yahweh, I don't know him, he's not real to me. Now maybe, and Satan would tell us, maybe you need a crutch of believing in a higher power and believing that there is a God, but you can't know him. I don't know him, you don't know him, he's unknowable. And then in this passage, Pharaoh says, why should I obey his voice? And Satan will always try to drum up this concept in us, work up the pride of man, that you know truth, you know what you should do in this situation, and it's somewhat beneath you to obey the voice of the Lord, because you're smart. And so that is a work that we see mirrored with Satan. His tactic is to keep us confused, and it is important that we as adult women know the Lord, know his word, and that we are able to impart it to our children. I've been sharing a few little things from biographies that I've been reading again recently, and this one caught my attention. F.B. Meyer lived from 1847 to 1929, and he was a great devotional Bible teacher and wrote books. I think we referenced him a few times in 1st and 2nd Peter, but look at what it said about his beginning. Nothing in Meyer's birth hinted that a spiritual soldier had come on the scene. Home life in Brighton was happy, comfortable, but also spiritual. Listen to this, his mother taught the children the Bible, and his father set an example as a dedicated Christian businessman. On Sunday mornings they attended the Bloomsbury Chapel, and in the evenings they held family services at home. I liked that short phrase, his mother taught the children the Bible, because she was home. His father was a businessman. She used her time wisely, but in order to teach the children the Bible, she had to know the Bible herself, right? She had to learn it herself, and so that's one of our purposes with Women of the Word, is we are here to train and to encourage one another to know the Bible, know what it teaches, so that we can impart it to the next generation, whatever that looks like. Whether you still have children at home, or whether you're teaching Sunday school, or whatever. Number two, Pharaoh's tactic was to keep them busy. Pharaoh said, now go and work, and this is still a tactic of the kingdom of the world today. Our modern life demonstrates to us how little time and energy we have left over after the busyness and the burdens of our life to go and serve God, and to worship God, right? Are we not busy and burdened? And I think a lot of it is unnecessary and even preventable, because, and the reason is, because it's initiated by the system of the world, and yet we embrace busyness and almost become addicted to it. Anyway, that's what I have found in my life. So we ask the questions, have I become too busy with the burdens of life to do what God called Israel to do in this passage, was to leave your work, go to the wilderness, and serve me there? I have found myself addicted. Pharaoh says here, he says, now go and work, and we could apply that into our life. Now go and work, do more work, go and play, go and shop, go and create. I will finish a project, home, I'll paint a room, or something like that. What's my first thought? Now what? As if I'm addicted to completing projects. Have you ever felt that? Like we get, we suck up busyness like our life depends on it, and so this passage, I'm rolling this around and say, okay, stop, enough already. What am I too busy with that has not been initiated by the Lord, but initiated by the system of the world? So our response should be discernment and filtering, sifting through what's going on in our life. Number three strategy of Pharaoh was keep them separated. He said go and gather straw, and Satan still works to isolate believers today, to isolate us from one another, and this causes trouble and even bad theology. Have you gone, ever gone through a system of a time, season is the word I was looking for, season of kind of isolation, and you're alone with your thoughts? All you have is your thoughts over and over. You're having devotions with yourself in your mind, and You come out of that season, and you gain perspective, and you say to yourself, wow, I needed perspective. And that wasn't healthy at all. Now, Israel had to scatter in all directions for straw. You know what this meant? Where we left last night, that night of worship, that was unrepeatable. They could not gather together and worship, bow together and worship the Lord, because now they were sent in all directions. But they needed to repeat that. They needed to repeat that over and over again. Sports teams need the locker room to go over their plays. And companies need the boardroom to impart business plans. And pastors need retreats with one another to encourage and to equip. And God's people need community to worship together, to speak and to hear the word of God together. We need community with regularity. We need it with order. We need it with purpose. And we need it with genuine hearts. We need it. But one of the tactics of our enemy is to separate us out from that. So we do not want to be unaware of his schemes. And we want to correct anything that is in our life, or perhaps even the life of others around us. Fourth thing was Pharaoh made them discouraged. And these weren't Pharaoh's words. These were the words of the foreman. When they looked at Aaron and Moses and said, the Lord look on you and judge, they were accusing them. And we said that Pharaoh's resourcefulness had created this situation, that he didn't have to be anywhere near. And we mentioned already, Satan is not omnipresent. But he doesn't have to be anywhere near in order to do damage. All he has to do is make some of God's people, particularly, burdened. And they will do the work. Because it is our human nature to look around and find someone else to blame. We were laughing about this with our family the other night when the kids were little. And Aaron broke a lamp one time. And he turned around and said, Nellie. She wasn't in the room. But that's what children do. It's human nature. And Satan knows human nature. And he knows that all I have to do is get somebody into trouble. They'll turn around and lash out at others. He doesn't have to be anywhere near. Have you been the recipient ever of a dressing down like Moses and Aaron got from the foreman? Satan got somebody burdened. And they just took it out on you. Probably you have at some time in your life. If you do ministry at all, this is a regular thing. Because it's human nature. Because we live with a sinful nature. And it's a tactic of the enemy. So we shouldn't be surprised at it. And we shouldn't take it personally. Have you ever been the one doing the accusing? And we all say, oh, no. I've never done that. And yet, there's probably been a time when Satan got you burdened, or loaded down with grief, or puffed up with pride, or engaged in sin. And you were the one leveling the accusations against one of God's servants. Hurting people hurt people. Discouraged people discourage other people. And we can war against this by not taking it personally. Remember what the Apostle Paul said? You do not war against flesh and blood. But you're warring against the powers and the principalities. OK, so what do we do when we do become discouraged? Now we're turning this back to Moses, because he is discouraged. Look what he cried out to God. There's two things. And I'll put them on the screen. Two simple things here that we see in this passage. The first one is to be honest with God. And the second one is to be encouraged by God. Simple, but not easy. So first, Moses was honest with God. He said, why have you done evil to this people? And why did you ever send me? And why have you not delivered your people at all? It was a fairly pitiful prayer. But you know what? God can handle pitiful prayers. The Psalms have lots of them. When people get discouraged, and they're somewhat pitiful, we say, God, why didn't you do this? Why did you do this? Why didn't you do that? And God doesn't get frustrated a bit with Moses here. He doesn't get angry with him. He turns around and encourages him. And so I want you to know, if you're discouraged, your prayers are safe with God. I'm not sure it's wise to go and tell all your friends how you feel, maybe. But I know in my life, somebody comes to me with a burden. And I don't encourage the way God wants me to all the time. I need to. But God's words are perfect. Look at how God encourages them. But this is starting in chapter 6. The Lord said to Moses, now you shall see what I will do to Pharaoh. For with a strong hand, he will send them out. With a strong hand, he will deliver them out of this land. And so God didn't tell Moses, hey, it's OK. Hang in there. You're doing a good job. You're going to wear him down. I know you are. Just keep doing it. No, God didn't say a thing about Moses' capabilities. But he goes on to say everything about his capabilities. And so let's read it. This is what God said.

Now there's real encouragement. There is a foundation that we can rest upon. And in our study guide on page 30, we ask the question, have you become discouraged? Has your place in life sort of become clouded? And we suggested that this is a place to start by listing what you know to be true about the Lord. Don't exchange what you don't know for what you do know. Moses could have and was saying right here, I don't know how you're going to do this. And God said, don't exchange that for what you do know. And that's it. I told you I was going to do it. And it is going to happen. We can do the same thing. It's not easy. But we can settle in with, what do I know to be true about God? I'm confused. I'm discouraged. I'm burdened. But make a list. We learned last week. I will be with you. We're learning this week. I will redeem you. There are things we know to be true about God. So Moses went and told the people of Israel. But look at in verse 9, it says, but they did not listen, poor dears, because of their broken spirit and harsh slavery. And I can relate. It was tough. It was a tough situation. But God continued to encourage Moses, even though at this moment he's getting zero affirmation from Israel. He is getting zero approval from his peers. And God is calling him to do the hard work of a leader and forge forward, even though no one around him is cheering at the moment. Sometimes that's our job, too, isn't it? Sometimes that is our job in our family. That is our job in our marriage, sometimes in whatever ministry we have, to forge ahead, even without affirmation. You know, I got a text message. There's a gal from Baker that sends me verses once in a while. And this came in right before I taught this lesson last night. And I feel like it just dovetails with what Moses has to do right here. She sent me Galatians 6, 9.

That's an important Bible truth. And she said, if you're tempted to walk away, make sure to seek God, because you never know what he might do if you have the courage to stay. Those were good words. Well, the Lord told Moses, go in and tell Pharaoh king of Egypt to let the people of Israel go out of his land. And I feel like we're out of time. And I can't go through the rest of this chapter. We did it in our study guide. There's a genealogy there. You studied it. We're on the verge of these mighty acts of God in the next four chapters, which are going to be a delight to read through that, because there's been a long preamble here to get to that point. I just want to end with one really important. note, and that is that even though Moses was told that he's supposed to go in and tell Pharaoh, let my people go, this is still just a preamble because no deliverance ever happens with words alone. Deliverance only happens with blood. Moses could have talked himself blue, but it's only the preamble. There will never be deliverance for the children of Israel by talk, only by the Passover, and in our lives there's never deliverance from our bondage to sin, death in Egypt, to go into life in Christ with talk. The deliverance has to be with that personal acceptance of sheltering under the blood of the Lamb, choosing to place ourself in that position figuratively where we say this is the only way. It's not up here. It has to be in understanding what Jesus did for us, embracing and sheltering. That's where we're headed in God's unfolding story of redemption. Still just a preamble, but sometimes God has a long preamble to the action that he's going to take. Father, thank you for this passage. The things it teaches us about Satan's tactics, Lord, may be the things that we realize we have embraced and just allowed to feel normal, but they're not normal. It's not what you have for us, and so Lord, I pray that each one of us will process this, be able to glean what you want us to glean, change in our lives, appropriate what you want us to, Lord, that we might figuratively be able to leave any bondage that we still find ourselves in and have that freedom to go, to worship, to serve in your power and your strength. I pray in Jesus' name. Amen.