Waiting and Trusting for Deliverance

Listen Online:

Transcript:

We’re going to be in Exodus chapter 5 this morning. Exodus chapter 5. Had an interesting discussion on Friday in class about World War II.

Some of the kids were studying World War II and their history lessons. And it’s surprising to me how little some people know about it. First of all, I’ve thought for years the H on the little corner of the screen in History Channel stood for Hitler because 90% of the stuff is about World War II.

It’s the Hitler Channel. there was a lot of stuff that the kids didn’t know and that made me worry a little bit about our future but the fact that they were interested in asking me questions made me feel a little better because they were interested in learning our history because it’s not just about dates and names but it’s actually stories and was sharing with them as they were bringing it up that World War II actually here within the next couple weeks we’ll have the 70th anniversary of the end of the war in Europe And they were asking me questions about Winston Churchill and who he was. Finally, one of them said, wait, that’s the guy in the picture behind your desk.

I said, it is. I have pictures of several people with quotes that I thought would be beneficial to the classroom on the wall behind my desk, and one of those is Winston Churchill. And the quote I have from him up there is the one where he said, never, never, never, never, never, never, I think, give up.

That’s an important quote, but you’ve got to understand who the man was and where that came from. And I’m not here this morning to preach about Winston Churchill. It’s just sort of an illustration to lead us into the message.

Churchill sounded the alarm about the rise of Nazi Germany and really about the danger of Germany, even before the rise of the Nazis, for years. And we look back in history and just as, well, it’s Winston Churchill, of course, everybody listened to him. They didn’t.

He sounded the alarm for years saying, we need to prepare Britain. We need to prepare France. We need to prepare America.

But being from Britain, especially, we need to prepare Britain to stand against this threat. Because there is coming this threat that is going to take over Europe, that’s going to take over Britain, if they can, is going to take over the whole world if we don’t stand against them. And we need deliverance for Britain.

We need somebody who’s going to stand and strengthen us and say, we’re going to lead this country to freedom from the Nazi threat. People for years didn’t listen to him. See, back all the way in 1915, Winston Churchill had been first lord of the admiralty.

He was one of the government leaders in charge of the military. And while World War I was going on, he came up with what looked on paper like a brilliant idea, that they were going to send a British fleet down to the Gallipoli Peninsula in Turkey, and they were going to open up a second front against the Germans and the Turks. Although it looked good on paper, thousands of British soldiers died.

They were cut to shreds as they tried to go ashore at Gallipoli against the Turkish guns. Churchill was forced to step down in disgrace. Now, he held a series of government posts from that time on, but the government fell in Britain, partially as a result of that.

And in order for a new government to be formed, one of the conditions was that Churchill would have to step down to a lower position. And so nobody was listening to Churchill. And he’s all the while saying, we need somebody who is going to deliver us from the Nazi menace.

We need to strengthen our country. And government after government after government played footsie with Hitler and said, well, if we just give him this little slice of land, if we just give him the Sudetenland, if we just let him take Austria, if we just give him the rest of Czechoslovakia, then it’ll be fine. For about 20 years, Churchill warned and warned and said, we need to be freed from this threat.

We need somebody who is going to stand and free us from that threat. That’s a long time to stand and wait for deliverance to occur. It wasn’t until September of 1939, 20 years after the First World War ended, Germany invaded Poland September 1st. September 3rd, Britain declared war on Germany.

You all know the story. And that same day, the government asked Churchill to take back his old job that he had had to give up about 25 years earlier to become First Lord of the Admiralty. They put him back in charge of the military They said what he’d been saying all along, we need to be delivered from the Nazi threat, and we need somebody with the strength to do it.

The next year, he became prime minister and led the country through World War II. We look back on it and say, of course, everybody listened, it was Churchill. But he saw for 20 years, or a good portion of that 20 years, the threat of Germany, and said, we need to be delivered from this.

Talk about never give up. that is a long time to wait for something to happen. And now though we look back on it in history and say, well, it was inevitable.

It didn’t look inevitable in 1939 that the Allies would win. By 1943, it didn’t even look inevitable. They stayed the course knowing that what was right was right and trusting that good would win out in the end.

I bring this up because he said never, never, never, never, never, never give up. He knew what he was talking about. as someone whose cries fell on deaf ears for 20 years before finally something started to happen.

He knew of the importance of not giving up. I know I said I came here this morning not to talk to you about Churchill, but I think that’s a good illustration for us, a good frame of reference for us from a story we’re familiar with in history of what happened in biblical times. Moses was sent to sound the alarm and say, we need God’s people to be delivered.

God sent Moses for the purpose of saying, we need to be delivered from Pharaoh’s oppression. And if you watch, the Ten Commandments is a great movie. Don’t get me wrong, I love that movie.

I’ve got it on DVR right now, in case I want to sit down and spend three hours on it again. It’s a great movie, but we can, if we’re not careful, get some wrong impressions from it. And one thing is the idea that, oh, God’s deliverance took place in the course of a couple hours.

Didn’t happen that way. The Israelites had been enslaved for 400 years. Wait a minute.

I say that and now I don’t remember. I know they’d been in Egypt 400 years. They were not slaves that whole time.

They’d been slaves for at least 100 years. Could have been 200. Could have been 300.

they’d been slaves for a while. It wasn’t just a couple days. And then Moses comes along and we think he was plucked out of the river.

He grew up. He set them free. It didn’t happen that way.

Moses was 40 when he killed the Egyptian and was forced into exile. He was 80 years old when God spoke to him out of the burning bush. And even then when he goes back to Pharaoh at the age of 80, we think, oh, boom, boom, boom, boom.

These things happen and God convinced Pharaoh to set the people free. It didn’t happen that way. It took a long time.

And we’re going to look at this story this morning, but I want you to be thinking about the time that’s being required here, that these things did not happen immediately. And we live in a microwave popcorn world where we expect it to happen today. We were talking about this in the car on the way down here, were we not?

I can tell you from experience, I have been praying for one thing in particular for a year and a half, and it hasn’t happened yet, and I get antsy. One thing in particular, and I know the Bible says God will answer our prayers. No is an answer to.

And if I felt like God was saying no, I would quit praying for it. But I haven’t gotten that sense yet. And other godly people that I talk to are saying, just wait, it’s going to happen.

Okay, I trust your judgment in that. Wait can also be an answer. And yet it’s so tempting sometimes to give up and say, God, I’m waiting for you to do this thing that I desperately need to happen.

I need you to deliver me from this. God, would you please do this? And we pray, and when it doesn’t happen in five minutes, we are tempted to just doubt God’s will for us or doubt that God’s listening at all.

No is an answer. Wait is also an answer a lot of times. So I tell you everything I tell you this morning from the same boat that you may be in today.

I preface by saying that to let you know, it’s not just the preacher standing up here telling you, wait on God, it’s going to be all right. I have to do this in my own life too. And yet when it comes to waiting on God to do what only God can do, we must never, never, never, never, never, never give up.

So Exodus chapter 5, verse 1, says, And afterward, Moses and Aaron went in and told Pharaoh, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, let my people go that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness. Okay, we left off last week talking about the burning bush, how God spoke to Moses out of the burning bush, told him everything he needed to do. And Moses, there were all these miracles that should have reminded Moses of the power of God.

It wasn’t just to remind the people of Israel that God had power. It was a message to Moses as well. Turning the stick into a snake and back again.

Turning his hand leprous and then back again. telling him, I’m going to give you all the words you need. Fine, you don’t trust me, I’ll give you Aaron to speak for you.

God has prepared him and reluctantly, finally, Moses has said, I will go. And it says afterward, Moses and Aaron went in and told Pharaoh, here’s what God says. Thus saith the God of Israel, the Lord God of Israel, let my people go that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness.

We get the idea from stories we hear in Sunday school, as well as from the movie, that they go in and tell Pharaoh, Let my people go, period. There’s a comma there. Let my people go that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness.

The first demand that God made was not Pharaoh, let everybody go for all time. Now that was God’s intent. I’m not sending them back.

But Pharaoh, just let them go about three days journey into the wilderness so that they can hold a feast unto me. When we say feast, it doesn’t mean a feast like a party. We picture the Romans and their feasts and their reclining on couches and eating more food than three people ought to.

When we say feast, when the Bible talks about a feast in the Old Testament, it’s talking about times of worship. And they would offer sacrifices and that some of those sacrifices would be eaten by various people. But it was not only a time of celebration, it was a time of worship.

And so God merely sent Moses and Aaron into Pharaoh and said, ask him to let them go or tell him to let them go for a few days so that they can go and worship. That seems like a reasonable request. I mean, don’t keep my people as slaves, let them go. Sounds reasonable to us today.

Even more reasonable, hey, let the slaves go and worship for three days. This goes to show us how stubborn Pharaoh already was. The Bible says at different times during this exchange that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart.

And some people have taken that to mean that God made Pharaoh resist. Not what I see here. Pharaoh was already resisting God. When the Bible says that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart, I understand that to mean God merely solidified him in the choices he was already making.

All right, Bubba, you want to play stubborn? Let’s be stubborn. I feel like I just had this conversation with my son yesterday.

So he says, let my people go that they may hold a feast unto me in the wilderness. And Pharaoh said, and it’s hard for me to read this without hearing Yul Brynner’s voice from the movie. Who is the Lord?

Who is the Lord that I should obey his voice to let Israel go? I will not subject you to having to listen to me read all that impression of him. Who is the Lord that I should obey his voice to let Israel go?

I know not the Lord, neither will I let Israel go. Now we read that, who’s the Lord? What do you mean?

The kids at school, especially the younger ones, were shocked to find out that in Hebrew, the name of God is Yahweh. Or at least that’s as close as we can get to the pronunciation from what we know today. That God actually has a name.

And when you see Lord in all caps in the Old Testament, usually it’s a rendering of that name. Y-H-W-H, Yahweh. So the question that’s asked that we see in English, who is the Lord?

What do you mean, who is the Lord? He’s the Lord. The question makes a little more sense when we understand it.

Who is this Yahweh you speak of? I don’t know any such God. He knew Ra.

He knew Otten. He knew Isis. Isis was the name of an Egyptian god, right?

That’s what I thought. Oh, Cyrus. He knew all of these, but who is this Yahweh of whom you speak?

I don’t know him, and I am not going to let Israel go just because you said so, and this God who for all I know you made up. And they said, the God of the Hebrews hath met with us. And you don’t know who he is, he’s the God of the Hebrews.

Again, as I said last week to Pharaoh, that wouldn’t sound all that intimidating, really, the God of the slaves. That’s who’s telling me to let his people go. If he’s so powerful, why are they still slaves?

Now, that’s not coming from me. That’s what I would assume would be going through Pharaoh’s mind. That’s what would be going through my mind if I were Pharaoh.

This God isn’t much of a threat to me. If he was so powerful, his people wouldn’t be still slaves. The God of the Hebrews hath met with us.

Let us go, we pray thee, three days journey into the desert and sacrifice to the Lord our God, lest he fall upon us with pestilence or with sword. Because you have not let us worship, we are in danger here because we have not been able to keep the Lord’s commands. Would you let us go three days journey into the desert to hold this feast, worship the Lord?

Would you let us do that before we are in danger of divine judgment? And the king of Egypt said unto them, Wherefore do you, Moses and Aaron, let the people from their works get you unto your burdens? And Pharaoh said, Behold, the people of the land are now many, and ye make them rest from their burdens.

I had to dig into this to really understand what he’s saying. When he says you make them rest, what he’s saying is they have a lot of work to do. And there are a lot of them.

That is a lot of work being done. And you want them just to have the time off? I’m losing a lot of man hours if I listen to you.

Pharaoh commanded the same day the taskmasters of the people and their officers. The taskmasters are the Egyptians who are in charge of all the slaves. And the officers are the Hebrew people who are slaves, but they’re sort of the higher up slaves, and they’re in charge of keeping their people under control.

Saying, you shall no more give the people straw to make brick, as heretofore let them go and gather straw for themselves. And the tale of the bricks, which they did make heretofore, you shall lay upon them. You shall not diminish aught thereof, for they be idle.

Therefore they cry, saying, let us go and sacrifice to our God. Let their more work be laid upon the men that they may labor therein, and let them not regard vain words. So what he says here is, I want you to go and tell all the people, if they’ve got all this free time that they want to take up to worship, if they’ve got all this free time that they want to take up listening to Moses, sort of if you’ve got time to lean, you’ve got time to clean.

If they’ve got all this free time, they need to be doing something valuable with it. So what we’re going to do is you don’t give them straw anymore. The Egyptians, you don’t give them any more straw to make bricks.

Now, if you don’t put straw in the bricks when you bake them, they crumble and fall apart. So they still needed to have straw, but you’re not going to give it to them. They’re going to have to go on their own time in all this free time that they have, and they’re going to have to go glean straw.

They’re going to have to go glean the stubble out of the fields so that they can make their bricks. Oh, but let this not be an excuse for them. Let this not be an excuse.

I don’t want to see one brick fewer in the tally. Don’t let them say, well, we couldn’t make as many bricks because we had to go glean straw. They had time to whine about going out into the desert for a feast, so they have time to glean straw.

Maybe that’ll cure them of their desire to go and worship God. Because you know what? If they didn’t have all this free time, they wouldn’t be having time to think about going and worshiping.

They wouldn’t be having time to listen to Moses. They’d be working. And the taskmasters of the people went out, and their officers, and they spake to the people, saying, Thus saith Pharaoh, I will not give you straw.

Go ye, get you straw where you can find it Yet not aught of your work Shall be diminished Think of what it would be like To be the Hebrew slaves I’m not going to give you any more straw Okay, we’ll go get straw We’ll continue to make bricks But you can’t make one brick fewer What? When are we supposed to have time to Go get the straw? So the people were scattered abroad All throughout the land of Egypt To gather stubble instead of straw that the straw that the Egyptians had already harvested couldn’t be used for the bricks.

They were left to try to scrape up the stubble that was left in the fields. And the taskmasters hasted them, saying, fulfill your works, your daily tasks, as when there was straw. You keep working and you make as much without straw as you did when we were giving you straw.

And the officers of the children of Israel, which Pharaoh’s taskmasters had set over them, were beaten and demanded, wherefore have you not fulfilled your task making both brick yesterday and today is heretofore. So when the tallies came back in and they were less, they called in the officers of Israel and they beat them. They said, why could you not make as many bricks today and yesterday as you used to?

And again, we don’t have straw is not an excuse. So knowing that they were going to be suffering beatings, you know they lit a fire under their people. Then the officers of the children of Israel came and cried unto Pharaoh, saying, Wherefore dealest thou thus with thy servants?

They appealed to Pharaoh. That’s a pretty gutsy move. We’re the leaders of the slaves, but we’re going to go to Pharaoh.

He could have killed them right there. They’re probably to the point where we can’t go on with life like this anymore. Might as well let Pharaoh kill us as the taskmasters.

Why have you dealt with your servants this way? There’s no straw given unto thy servants. And they say to us, Make brick, and behold, thy servants are beaten, but the fruit is in thine, or the fault, I’m sorry, is in thine own people.

Fault makes more sense there. The fault is in thine own people. They go to Pharaoh and said, why have you done this to us?

We’re not given any straw to make bricks and they’re telling us make bricks and they’re beating us. But the reason is they’re not giving us the straw we need. It’s their fault.

And it was their fault. But he said, you’re idle. Imagine thinking we’re going to go talk to Pharaoh, tell him, we want to make your bricks.

We want to please you. We want everybody to be happy and nobody has to get beaten. We want to please you, but your people won’t give us the straw.

And when he begins to speak, the realization that these orders came from Pharaoh. And imagine how your heart would sink in that moment. He says, you’re idle.

You are idle. Therefore, you say, let us go and do sacrifice to the Lord. You have way too much time on your hands.

I’m sorry. If you hadn’t come to me whining about wanting to go out in the desert and worship, I wouldn’t have realized that you had all this free time on your hands to go and worship. So if you’ve got free time on your hands to go out and worship, you’ve got free time on your hands to go out and glean straw.

Go therefore now and work, for there shall no straw be given you. Yet shall ye deliver the tale of bricks. And the officers of the children of Israel did see that they were in evil case.

After it was said, ye shall not minish aught from your bricks of your daily task. They realized what a tight spot they were in. And they realized that these were the orders of Pharaoh, not only that they not be given straw, but that they have to go out and glean straw, and yet they were not allowed to make one brick.

And they met Moses and Aaron, who stood in the way as they came forth from Pharaoh. And they said unto them, The Lord look upon you and judge, because you have made our savor to be abhorred in the eyes of Pharaoh, and in the eyes of his servants, to put a sword in their hand to slay us. They come out for meeting with Pharaoh, and they see Moses and Aaron and said, God sees what you did, and you let the Lord judge whether you were right or wrong, because you’ve done this to us.

Wait a minute, God sent them. Yet they said, may God judge you for this because you have caused us to be hated in the eyes of Pharaoh. Moses and Aaron didn’t cause them to be hated in the eyes of Pharaoh.

They were slaves. I’d say that’s pretty hateful already. But you’ve caused us to be hated in the eyes of Pharaoh and you’ve put a sword in his hand to slay us.

Moses was bothered by this. I mean, even if you knew you were doing the right thing, hearing something like that would be hard to hear. it would get you right in the heart.

I’ve said this enough times, my students have started to quote me. It’s kind of scary. Do you want the knife back or shall I just keep it right here?

It would hurt to hear that. And so Moses returned unto the Lord and said, Lord, wherefore hast thou so evil entreated this people? Why is it that thou has sent me?

So Moses returns to God and says, God, why have you caused this evil to fall on your people? Why, if we were just going to make things worse, God, why did you send me here? For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in thy name, he hath done evil to this people.

Neither hast thou delivered thy people at all. When you sent me to speak to Pharaoh, it only got worse. He’s only oppressed the people worse.

Things have only gotten worse. You sent me to deliver the people and they haven’t been delivered at all. It’s been the opposite.

Then the Lord said unto Moses, now shalt thou see what I will do to Pharaoh. For with a strong hand shall he let them go, and with a strong hand shall he drive them out of his land. God says, now you’re going to get to see my power.

Now things are heating up. And you will see that eventually not only will Pharaoh let them go, he will drive them out. He will beg my people to leave his land.

And God spake unto Moses. So God continues here and said unto him, I am the Lord. It’s a reminder of Moses, you know who I am.

You have already seen Moses, what I’m capable of. I am the Lord. And I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob by the name of God Almighty.

But my name Jehovah, or Yahweh in Hebrew, was I not known to them. And I have also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, the land of their pilgrimage, wherein they were strangers. And I have also heard the groaning of the children of Israel, whom the Egyptians keep in bondage, and I have remembered my covenant.

Wherefore, say unto the children of Israel, I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will rid you out of their bondage, and I will redeem you with a stretched out arm and with great judgments. I will take you to me for a people, and I will be to you a God, and ye shall know that I am the Lord your God, which bringeth you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. And I will bring you in unto the land, concerning the which I did swear to give it to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.

And I will give it to you for an heritage. I am the Lord. So he says, you go tell Israel this.

You go tell them that I am the Lord. You go tell them exactly who I am. They know who I am, and you go remind them I’m the God of their fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

They knew the stories. But I can’t think of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob without thinking of the faith that those men had in God. Now, their faith wasn’t perfect.

Sometimes they doubted. We can see that. But I think specifically of the story of Abraham going up to sacrifice Isaac.

I can’t even imagine. I can’t imagine what must have been running through his mind at that moment. But somehow trusting that God was going to take care of all of this, and he raised the knife to slay his son.

I’m sure he raised the knife reluctantly with a trembling hand and tears in his eyes. And then God stayed his hand. And God said, you’ve proven yourself faithful.

Now, did God not know he was faithful beforehand? God knew. I think the test was so Abraham could see what faith was.

And then God provided a sacrifice in the form of a ram. I am the same God that Abraham served by faith, that Isaac served by faith, and that Jacob served by faith. Even in their frailty, even in their faults, they served me by faith.

The same God who delivered them and cared for them, and I am going to lead you out of Egypt. He said, go tell the Israelites that. You remind them who I am.

I’m going to lead them out and lead them to a land that I’ve promised them since the time of Abraham. And Moses spake so unto the children of Israel, verse 9, but they hearkened not unto Moses for anguish of spirit and for cruel bondage. they could not see the promises of God.

They could not see the faithfulness of God. They could not see the power of God because they were so focused on their own circumstances, because they were so focused on their own bondage and their own suffering. And that’s not to say that their own circumstances and bondage and suffering don’t matter.

Obviously, they mattered to God because how many times has he already said, I’ve heard their cries out of bondage and I’m paying attention and I’m going to do something about it. Those things matter to God. The hurts, the things that we suffer from, those matter immensely to God.

But sometimes we can get so wrapped up in those circumstances and wrapped up in now and here’s what’s happening now. Here’s the threat I’m under now. Here’s the pain I’m enduring now.

That God is out there saying, I’ve made you these promises and I’m going to deliver you and we can’t see far enough past our own circumstances to trust Him for who He really is. And we’ve got to remember that even though our pain and suffering matters, God’s promises matter more. Our problems, who am I preaching to me now?

Our problems are not insurmountable. They may be for us, but there’s not a problem yet that God has met that was insurmountable for him. You name me a problem this morning.

It is not outside the realm of God’s power. You name me a circumstance you’re going through this morning, and it is not so big that God cannot deliver you from it. And you may say as I do, but I’ve been praying about this for years.

and he’s done nothing. Folks, he’s done nothing that you’ve seen. He’s done nothing that we’ve seen.

Could be that he’s working behind the scenes in ways that we can’t perceive. Things that we won’t know about until all heaven breaks loose and we see the end result and what he’s done. Or it could be that we’re just not paying attention because we can’t see past our own circumstances.

It’s easy to blame ourselves and say, as I did earlier, that we live in a microwave popcorn culture where we want it now, we want it yesterday, get irritated when it takes two minutes to go through the drive-thru at McDonald’s. True story, that happened this morning. You’re supposed to have the food to me 10 seconds before I order it.

We live in that kind of culture. It’s easy to blame ourselves, and yet 3,000 years ago, 3,500 years ago, they were doing the same thing. Well, we prayed about it once, and God hadn’t delivered us yet, so what’s going on here?

God doesn’t work on our timetable. Oh, I don’t like that. In the flesh, I’ll admit to you, I don’t like that.

God, why can’t you deliver me from this today? Or better yet, yesterday? God’s got this under control.

He’s always working for his glory and for our good. And so if he says you’ve got to go through this bondage just a little bit longer to really see what I’m doing, as hard as it is, we’ve got to trust that. It’s human nature, whether you’re in AD 2015 or whether you’re in 1445 BC to say, but God, I want it now.

You know what? Sometimes we have to wait on deliverance. It doesn’t mean it’s not coming, but sometimes we have to wait.

And sometimes we have to trust him. And sometimes we’ve been waiting and trusting so long that we think it’s not going to happen and we stop trusting and we’ve got to remind ourselves again to trust and to wait. God’s deliverance may take time, but he will eventually have his way.

Don’t let the passage of time convince you that God somehow is not on his throne. We look at all the evil around us in the world, just for an example, and say, how does God allow this to happen? Isn’t he in charge?

Isn’t he sovereign? Isn’t he in control? And how does this stuff keep happening?

Is God really going to judge sin and set things to right? Well, don’t forget the days of Noah were worse than ours. God gave them 120 years to repent.

The Bible says now that God is not slack concerning his promises, some count slackness. In other words, he has not forgotten his promises of judgment. He’s not negligent in his judgment.

He’s not slack concerning his promises, as some count slackness, but he is merciful and not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance, Peter wrote. That’s a reminder to us that, God, why haven’t you set all this to right? Why haven’t you brought judgment on them?

Why haven’t you dealt with that evil? Why haven’t you stopped that situation? Because God’s will is to extend mercy as long as he can, as long as he needs to, until all who are willing come to repentance.

Because it’s not God’s desire to destroy anybody in a fit of righteous judgment. It will 

Powered by atecplugins.com