Let My People Go!

The Call of Moses and God's Hearing of His People's Cry 0:20

Last week's study of Exodus 3, we talked about God's encounter with Moses. You have Moses, and he's out tending his father-in-law's sheep. He's off in the back of the wilderness, and behold, he sees this burning bush, and out of the burning bush there's a voice that calls to him. Says, Moses, Moses.

And so Moses approaches, and he has this encounter with God. Now in this encounter, God tells Moses two things. Number one, He says, I've heard My people's cry. He says, I have heard.

I know exactly what's going on in Egypt. I'm not the God who spins creation like a top and then stands back or runs away and doesn't pay attention. I've been paying attention. I know what's happening, and furthermore, I'm going to do something about it.

I've heard My people's cry. I know they're oppressed. I know they're bound. I know that Pharaoh and the Egyptians are treating them horrendously, and I'm going to act.

And here's the thing, Moses, I'm going to use you as My instrument. I'm going to use you as the tool to affect their deliverance. So God heard the prayers of His people. Last week we saw that their freedom was now imminent because He was going to send Moses to deliver them.

Now, chapter four, which we skipped over in order to move through this book, chapter four, which we did not include in last week's study, it describes the people's response.

From Worship to Grumbling: The Fickleness of Israel's Faith 1:39

The Israelites who have been bound, they hear the news. They hear the news that deliverance is nigh, that God has heard, and that God is going to act. Now, how do you think they responded? Well, initially, they were very happy.

Initially they said, huzzah, this is exactly what we've been praying for. God has heard our cry. He's going to do something about it any moment now, any moment now. Pharaoh is going to fall over our dead.

The chains are going to come off. We're going to leave and everything's going to just be wonderful. And at the end of chapter 4, verse 31, we hear of their gratitude. It says that when they heard that the Lord had visited the children of Israel and that He had looked upon their affliction, that they bowed their heads and they worshipped Him.

So when people first heard that God had answered their prayers or had heard their prayers, their action was thanksgiving and worship. But, but the enthusiasm they had in chapter 4 verse 31 doesn't even carry over one chapter later. You see, by the time we get to today's reading in chapter 5, the people who originally welcomed Moses, you know, those heroes welcome, there's Moses, our deliverer.

The excitement that he had in chapter 4 is going to be completely gone by the time we get to the end of today's reading in chapter 5. And the response when they see Moses coming in chapter 5, as we're going to see in a few moments, is they're going to tell him, thanks for nothing.

Thanks for nothing. People are going to do an about face. Their enthusiasm is going to be gone. And not only are they going to say thanks for nothing to Moses, they're going to accuse him and say to him, you're the worst thing that's ever happened to us.

A pox on your house for what has happened as a result of you coming in and giving us this promise of deliverance that evidently hasn't panned out. Let's see. Let's see how this transpired. Let's see what went on.

Let's look at today's text. Let's look at verses 1 and 2, and then we'll work through the balance. And let's see how the people responded with anger when their hope for deliverance didn't occur on their timeline and on their terms.

The First Confrontation: 'Who Is the Lord That I Should Obey Him?' 3:34

“Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Let My people go, that they may hold a feast to Me in the wilderness. And Pharaoh said, Who is the Lord, that I should obey His voice to let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, nor will I let Israel go.”

— Exodus 5:1-2 (NKJV)

Verses 1 and 2. So afterward, Moses and Aaron went in, and they told Pharaoh. This is our first recorded interaction with him. They told Pharaoh, Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may hold a feast to me in the wilderness.

And Pharaoh said, Who is this Lord? Who is the Lord that I should obey Him and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, and I will not let Israel go. All right, let's stop there.

At the start of chapter 5 here, we see the first of several encounters that these two guys are going to have, that Moses and Pharaoh are going to have. Now, when Pharaoh looked at Moses, you know, coming forward to him in his throne room, so to speak, what did he see? What did he see in Moses when he saw Moses approach?

When he saw Moses come down the aisle, did he see him as a threat? Well, no. Did he see him as a challenge to his reign, his authority? Well, not in the least. Not based on his reaction.

When Pharaoh saw Moses, you know what he saw? He saw just an old man, an old man. As we talked about last week, Moses had spent the last 40 years of his life tending his father-in-law's sheep, which is about as ignominious a job as you can have. We saw elsewhere in Genesis that the Egyptians, of all the vocations they did not regard, they thought shepherding was repulsive.

And here comes this old, decrepit shepherd, going to tell Pharaoh what to do. This 80-year-old guy rolls on in, and he doesn't have an entourage, he doesn't have a royal retinue. He's not coming in with fine robes and finery and a sword on his leg or anything like that. He comes in with arthritis and a cane.

That's basically what he has. We don't know if he had arthritis, but we know this. He bore the marks of age. That's what approached Pharaoh on this day.

There was nothing impressive about him in the least.

Moses the Mailman: Speaking Not for Himself but for God 5:24

With that said, when Moses opens his mouth in verse 1 of today's text, you notice that he's not speaking for himself. Moses knows he's not impressive. In fact, he just spent, remember last week, he spent about a whole chapter telling God, I'm not impressive. I'm not the right guy for this job.

You know, maybe 40 years ago, maybe back then I could have been some use to you, but I got nothing to offer you now, oh God. And God says, now you're exactly where I want you to be. You're humble enough and broken enough, and you're the sort of guy I like to use in moments like this.

So God sends him in, and Moses at this point, he doesn't approach Pharaoh with swagger. This is not Charlton Heston, to be clear. This is not Charlton Heston. He's not approaching Pharaoh with some sort of swagger and the strength of a movie star.

This is just an old dude who rolls on in, and at the moment he speaks to Pharaoh, he doesn't have his chest puffed up or anything about himself on display. Instead, you notice that the first thing he says to Pharaoh is he says, thus saith the Lord God of Israel, let my people go.

See, what Moses did was he didn't speak for himself, and he didn't say, Pharaoh, I've thought about this and I want you to let the people go or there's gonna be trouble. No, he didn't do that. He didn't write the mail, he's just there to deliver it. You understand this.

Moses is the mailman. God sent the notice to Pharaoh, and so Moses just clears the deck there and says, this isn't about me. Thus saith the Lord God of Israel to you, oh Pharaoh, let my people go. This message came from God.

Moses himself is really irrelevant. Moses is irrelevant in of himself, in the same sense I'm irrelevant right now. It's God's word that speaks to us, not necessarily the individual. With that said, notice how Pharaoh responds in verse 2.

And verse 2, Pharaoh says, all right, so God is speaking, huh? God is speaking, not you. Okay, I get that. But who is this God?

I'm an Egyptian. There's gods on every block. We got all sorts of gods. Who is this one?

Why should I yield to him? Let my people go? Do you have any idea what that'll do to my labor force? Let my people go?

Not gonna happen. Moses, now is it a good idea to say no when it's God who's the one who's speaking? Well, not so much and pharaoh's gonna learn that the hard way.

Pharaoh Increases the Burden: The Contest of Wills Between God and Pharaoh 7:42

All right, let's look at verses 3 through 14. Verse 3, so they said, the God of the Hebrews has met with us. Please let us go three days journey into the desert and sacrifice the Lord our God, lest He fall upon us with pestilence or with the sword. Moses and Aaron are saying, look, God told us to do this, and we're going to be obedient.

We're going to be obedient. Then the king of Egypt said to them, Moses and Aaron, why do you take the people from their work? Go back to your labors. Go back to your labors.

And the pharaoh said, look, the people of the land are many now, and you're making them rest from their labor. And so the same day, this is the end of their interaction with Pharaoh and Moses. At this point, Pharaoh's, you know, get out of my sight, go back to work is what he tells them.

And in verse six, he then talks to his taskmasters, and he says, the same day Pharaoh commanded the taskmasters of the people and their officers, saying, you shall no longer give the people straw to make bricks as before. Let them go and gather the straw for themselves, and you shall lay on them the quota, the same quota of bricks that they were making before.

You shall not reduce it, because they are idle, and therefore they're crying out, saying, let us go and sacrifice to our God. They've got too much time on their hands, and we need to do something about that. So let more, verse 9, let more work be laid on these men that they may labor in it, and let them not regard false words.

And so the taskmasters of the people and their officers went out and spoke to the people, saying, thus says Pharaoh. You hear this? We've all heard, thus saith the Lord, and Pharaoh dismissed that, and now his taskmasters say, thus saith Pharaoh. This is the big competition of wills you see here between God and Pharaoh, not Moses and Pharaoh, God and Pharaoh.

And spoiler alert, it's not going to end up well for Pharaoh. So verse 10, thus saith Pharaoh, I will not give you straw. Go get yourself straw wherever you can find it, yet none of your work will be reduced. Same amount of work as before.

So the people scattered abroad throughout all the land to gather stubble instead of straw, and the taskmasters forced them to hurry, saying, fulfill your work, your daily quota, as when there was straw. Also the officers of the children of Israel, whom Pharaoh's taskmasters had set over them, and were beaten, and were asked, why have you not fulfilled your task and making brick, both yesterday and today, as before?

All right, let's stop there. Back in verses 2 and 3, Moses conveyed God's message. It's God's message, not his. The message was, let my people go.

And Pharaoh hears that and goes, all right, well, no, I will not let them go. In fact, these people evidently have way too much time on their hands. They're pretty idle. They must be in order to cook this sort of plan up.

So tell you what, they're going to go back to work. And in order to eat up this idle time, they can go get their own straw for the making of the bricks. And even though I know that's going to be a lot of work, I don't care because I want the same amount of bricks done as they did before.

So in his first encounter, Pharaoh was dismissive. He couldn't care less about Moses. He couldn't care less about Moses' God. All he cares about is losing Jewish labor hours.

And then he tells them that they need to get back to work. Now, pharaoh knows this is an impossible task. I think everybody here knew this was an impossible task. Pharaoh doesn't care.

Being mean and cold-hearted and being perceived that way by the people, he doesn't care. It doesn't bother him in the slightest. In fact, he's totally cool with that. You know the old saying that the beatings will continue until morale improves?

Pharaoh, same idea all right let's look at verses 15 through 19.

Reason and Empathy Rejected: The Officers Cry Out to Pharaoh 11:15

Verse 15, then the officers of the children of Israel came and cried out to Pharaoh. Let me stop there. Within the Jewish slave labor force there were those who were leaders, Jews among the Jews who helped lead the other Jews and basically represented them and would come and talk to the taskmasters and even talk to Pharaoh.

And we see that in verse 15, the officers of the children of Israel came and they cried out to Pharaoh, saying, why are you doing this? Why are you dealing thus with your servants? There's no straw given your servants, and yet they tell us, make brick. Indeed, your servants are then beaten, but the fault is your own people.

But then Pharaoh said, you are idle. Idle. Therefore, you say, let's go sacrifice the Lord your God. Therefore, go and work.

He's tired of them coming before him. He just says, get to work. Go work, for no straw is going to be given you, and yet you will continue to deliver the full quota of bricks. And the officers of the children of Israel saw that they were in trouble after it was said, you shall not reduce any bricks from your daily quota.

All right, in verses 15 through 19, the Jews are tired of the beatings. They'd have the worst job in the world, making bricks for Pharaoh. You know, putting that on your resume, that won't get you anywhere. They got the worst job in the world, and not only they do this terrible job, but the job just got more difficult because now they lack one of the main ingredients for making bricks.

And furthermore, they're beaten if they slow down. So they cry out, and they say, you know what, let's have Stew and Bob and Fran and Bill, you guys go talk to Pharaoh and talk him down. Moses and Aaron, forget about those guys, they're the ones who got us into trouble. You guys go talk to Pharaoh, talk some sense into him, just let him know this isn't doable.

I mean, we can't do it. So they send these guys in, and, and I think the hope is that you can reason with Pharaoh, you know, conversation with Pharaoh, you sit down, you sip your tea, and you talk to him. That's not the way this works. Pharaoh immediately, he says, idle, idle.

He says, the very fact that you're in front of me reminds me you have too much time on your hands. The fact you keep talking to me about stuff tells me you got too much time on your hands. Get to work. Get to work.

Get to work. Get to work. You're the slave. I'm the master.

Get about your business. And so he just throws him out. And verse 19 says that at this point, the officers, the Israelites knew that they were in trouble. They tried reason.

It hadn't worked. They even tried appealing to empathy, common sense, just relatability, one human being to another human being. Pharaoh would have none of that. Pharaoh was not interested in listening to their cries.

All right, given that they were in this sort of trouble, what do you think they should have done next? Given that they were in trouble, what should they have done next? Let's look and see how they responded to Pharaoh's words in verses 20 through 23.

'Thanks for Nothing': Israel Blames Moses for Their Suffering 14:02

Verse 20. Now as they came out from Pharaoh, basically as they were kicked out from Pharaoh, they met Moses and Aaron who had stood there to meet them. Moses and Aaron had basically been hanging on, you know, just around the block, you know, on the hillside kind of waiting for them to come on out.

So when they came out from Pharaoh, they met Moses and Aaron who had stood there to meet them. And they said to them, let the Lord look on you and judge, because you have made us abhorrent in the sight of Pharaoh and the sight of his servants, to put a sword in their hand to kill us.

In essence, the guys say, the meeting didn't go well, and a pox on you, Moses and Aaron, because you're the ones who put us in this position where now Pharaoh's angrier than he's ever been. He's angry he's ever been, and we're gonna die as a result of what we're doing here. At least before we ate cantaloupes and we had to work, but it wasn't as bad.

Now it's worse.

God Does Not Work in a Straight Line: Providence Above Our Understanding 14:55

You showed up and things get worse. Now, verse 22, Moses, he's just browbeaten by this. This isn't what he expected either, in fairness. Everyone expects a linear path.

You say, God's in charge, and God's sovereign, and God's powerful, and God's good. Therefore, he'll move from A to B very quickly. We have this linear. We tell God, you know, I think I need to be cured of this issue, or I think this issue needs to be resolved, and just snap your fingers and do it.

I mean, you're God. Why not? But God doesn't work that way. He'll move laterally, he'll move different angles, and He will always fulfill His promises.

He will always get from A to B. If He tells the people, I will deliver you, they were going to get delivered. But they prescribed to him how it should go, and when He didn't fulfill or live up to their prescription, they get angry and they take it out on His emissary Moses.

So verse 22 Moses goes to God.

Moses Takes His Questions to God: Lament in Faith, Not Unbelief 15:47

It says, Moses returned to the Lord. He said, Lord, why? Why have you brought trouble on those people? Why is it that you sent me?

Clearly, it didn't work out. They all have this short-term idea, like, well, I guess it's not going to happen now. So he says, why is it you've sent me? For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has done evil to the people, and neither have you delivered them at all.

Moses, to the degree God esteems a human being, or at least loves a human being, God loved Moses, and yet Moses, even like us, when you're broken and you're in despair and you don't know what's going on, Moses had questions. Moses didn't get it. Moses didn't like it. And so Moses goes to God and says, what is going on here?

Everything is falling apart, and everyone's blaming me. The people have told me to get out of here with all this deliverance talk. Pharaoh is angry. Things are worse.

Have you ever had that circumstance where you pray to a good, wonderful, sovereign, loving God who decrees in His word that He loves you, and you pray, and then maybe next week is worse? Well, that's what happened here. But it didn't mean it was the end of the story. It didn't mean it was the end of the story.

So Moses asks God, as we should when we have questions, as we should when we have anxieties and doubts and fears. He goes to God, and he lays open his heart and says, God, what's going on? What's going on? Lord, why have you brought trouble to the people?

Why did you send me? Since I came to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he's just done more evil. And you haven't delivered your people through it. You know, the funny thing is, if you remember last week, God told Moses that Pharaoh wasn't going to listen.

God had already told Moses, it's not going to go well. This isn't going to be a one-off event. You're going to talk to Pharaoh more than one time. But evidently, in the emotion of the moment, he either doesn't recollect that or didn't understand that properly.

Again, for some of us, we can relate to praying to God and having His timing and trajectory seem different from what we've prayed for. If that's happened to you, if it's happened to you this week, if there's something you've been in prayer for and it's simply the answer doesn't seem to be evident, in fact certain things are going backwards in your life, it doesn't mean that God's not on the scene, and it doesn't mean that He isn't capable of responding.

What it does mean is that He's using everything you're going through today, tomorrow, yesterday, 10 weeks from now, 10 weeks in the past, is part of a larger plan that frankly is above your pay grade. And that's where faith comes in. Moses questioned God. He didn't understand it.

Elijah under the sycamore tree crying in a ball questioned God. He didn't like it. It's all right to question God, in the sense that we're asking when we don't understand. We ask God, how long, oh Lord, will this continue?

With that said, these men asked out of faith. They didn't understand, but they knew God was still in charge. Moses doesn't deny that when he asks him. He just simply wants to understand something that doesn't make sense with the reality around him.

And God can take that. God's big enough. He can take your anxieties, and He encourages you to go to Him when you have questions. Now that does not mean He's obliged to answer you or answer you in the way that you want to be answered.

But He does promise you in His word that He will utilize everything that's going on in your life to a good outcome that you might not see, because the horizon you can see is about one inch in front of your nose. God says, I have a bigger canvas, a bigger window than you do.

And I will use the things today that you don't like to bring about something good down the road. Do you trust me? This is that sort of moment here in Exodus 5. God calls us to trust in Him, not to lean on our own understanding.

If there's ever someone who needed to hear those words right here, it's Moses. All right, let's see God's answer. Let's see how God explains these developments to Moses.

'I Am the Lord': God's Covenant Answer and the Assurance of Deliverance 19:35

“I am the Lord; I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, I will rescue you from their bondage, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great judgments. I will take you as My people, and I will be your God.”

— Exodus 6:6-7 (NKJV)

I'm going to look at verses 1 through 8 from chapter 6. Then the Lord said to Moses, Now you shall see what I will do to Pharaoh. So God tells Moses, just hold your horses, Moses. Hold your horses.

You're going to see it. I told you it was going to happen. I told you. Now you're going to see what I'll do to Pharaoh.

For with a strong hand he will let them go, and with a strong hand he will drive them out of his land. And God spoke to Moses and said to him, I am the Lord. It's like a reminder. I am the Lord.

I am the one in charge of all things. If I say it, I'll do it. I am the Lord. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.

He's giving him a history lesson now to remind him of all the things He's done in the past. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, to Jacob as God Almighty, but by My name, Lord, I was not known to them. I've also established My covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, the land of their pilgrimage in which they were strangers.

I've also heard the groaning of the children of Israel, whom the Egyptians kept in bondage, and I've remembered My covenant. Therefore, tell the children of Israel, I am the Lord. Not a Lord, not one of many, not one amongst the pantheon of options in Egypt. I am the Lord who transcends everything, everyone.

I am the Lord. So go and tell them that I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. I will rescue you from their bondage, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great judgments. I will take you as My people, and I will be your God.

And then you shall know that I am the Lord. Then you will know when you see what I'm about to do, when you see what's about to happen, Moses. When the people see it, even when Pharaoh sees it, every hard heart in this land is going to understand that I'm the Lord. When I'm done with what I'm about to do, then you will know that I'm Lord.

That brings you out from under the burden of the Egyptians, and I will bring you into land that I swore to you, I swore to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, and I will give it to you as a heritage. I am the Lord. Remember Pharaoh's question? Who is the Lord?

Well, there is an answer. There is an answer that every man, woman, and child will one day see and hear and understand fully. Every knee shall bow, every tongue confess that he's the Lord. And here he declares it thrice in these eight verses.

Remember the Past: God's Covenant Faithfulness to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob 21:52

You know, whenever God's people had doubts about the future, and this is true for us as well, whenever God's people in scripture had doubts about the future, they didn't know what was about to happen. They didn't like what was on their radar. Whenever they had doubts about the future, God would say, hey guys, hey, hey, you remember the past?

Do you remember those other times when you were freaked out? Do you remember those other times when the Philistines and the Moabites and the Ammonites and Goliath and all that? Do you remember the times when those other scary things came up on your radar? Well, where was I? I was right there doing what I told you I do all along.

And if you look back and see the promises that I made to Abraham, you remember him, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the patriarchs. If you go back, guys, and you look at the promises I made to them, you'll notice I've kept every last one of them. Why in the world would you think I'm not capable or unwilling to keep the promises I've made to you if I've kept the promises I made to them.

Do you remember Abraham and Isaac and Jacob? Go back. Look at the covenant. Look what I told them I'd do.

Look at poor Abraham, this nomad, this old dude who had no kids. I told him you're going to have more descendants than the stars in the sky and the sand on the beach. Well, now Moses look around. Did that come true?

Yes, absolutely. Well, I also told Abraham that in due time and due time that a pagan, a foreign people would enslave My own. Remember, you see this in Genesis 15. God told Abraham the story of Exodus.

He says, in time, the people are going to be oppressed. He says this, know that your descendants are going to be strangers in a land that's not yours, and they will serve them, and they will afflict them for 400 years. And also the nation whom they serve, I will then judge. And afterwards, My people will come out with great possessions.

In Genesis 15, God told the plot for the whole book of Exodus. He says, I'm going to make you a people, Abraham, when as of now there's just one. I'm going to make you a people, and in due time, things are going to get kind of rocky. The people are going to be in land that's not theirs.

They're even going to be enslaved for a long period of time. But in due time, I will deliver them, and I will bring them into the land that I have promised, the land flowing with milk and honey. Well, here Moses and his contemporaries, they're on the verge of that promise. How cool is that?

The promise was made hundreds and hundreds of years before. They are now, they're the generation that's going to get to see it. And not only are they going to get to see it, they're going to see it with power. They're going to see miracles and plagues and all these different things.

They're going to see it with power. And yet the irony is, it's at this moment that their greatest disbelief is showing. Because that's how we react when we're stressed out and we're anxious. We suddenly think God's not there, He doesn't care, He's not listening.

And we think His promises must apply to someone else. And God's answer to them is the same as His answer to us. I am the Lord. I will do what I've said I will do, and you can take it to the bank.

I will bring you into land which I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I will give it to you as a heritage. I am the Lord. All right.

Faith Stress-Tested: Trusting God When Life Goes Backward 24:50

As we close here, and in the weeks to come, we're going to get into some exciting stuff with the plagues and all of God's interactions there with Pharaoh and the deliverance and the Red Sea and all this fun stuff. So come on back. But as we close up today, let me offer, I guess, a closing exhortation for us.

For us here this morning. You know, as we've looked at over the past three weeks, the Israelites have been kind of a fickle bunch. It really wouldn't change. I mean, you open up just anywhere in the Old Testament, they're being fickle.

And look at judges. You ever want to see it? Like every paragraph, they're like flipping back and forth in their affection for God. However, on a few occasions, they did demonstrate proper trust and faith.

And on some occasions, they seem to be on the right track. But even in those times when they were on the right track, the faith and trust they had for a short season, it could disappear when something scary came up on their radar. It's easier to be faithful and to trust God when everything's going wonderfully in your life.

It's more difficult when you look at a diagnosis, a prognosis, something's gone on that you don't want, you don't like, and it's at those moments that your faith suddenly is stress-tested. It's stress-tested. And if it's not built on the Word, if you're not immersed in the Word, if you're not immersed in your relationship, in an abiding relationship with Christ, you're really susceptible to the ground shaking beneath you.

You don't know which direction to go. The people, this happened to them all the time. We could go throughout the Bible and see this, especially in the Old Testament. Just here in Exodus, think about what just happened.

One chapter, chapter 4, the people are huzzah, we're going to go free. They're very excited. A chapter later, Pharaoh's angry. Well, Pharaoh's angry, let's go yell at Moses.

The Red Sea's in our way. The Red Sea, Egyptians are on our heels. Let's go yell at Moses. You know, we're getting hungry in the wilderness.

Let's go yell at Moses. We can't yell at God, but we can yell at His guy. And we can effectively say that His guy and the God above, evidently they're not on the job. Every time something happened, let's go yell at Moses.

It wasn't, again, just Moses they were upset with. Their faith was just paper thin. And when it was stress tested, it didn't sustain. They got angry.

They ran around with chickens with their head cut off. And this can happen not only when things are stress-tested in our lives, but it can happen if we build up false expectations of what God should do. How many times in your prayer life do you look at a crisis on your radar and you say, God, all right, God, here's the problem.

Here's the crisis. Here's what's weighing me down. But, God, I've got good news for you. I've also got the solution.

God, here's the problem. But if you would do blank and blank and blank and blank, then everything would work out fine. We bring God a problem, but we usually bring Him our solution. We give Him the prescription.

We say, just fill out here, and if you do this, then everything is going to be fine. How often does it work out that way? In my own life, even pastorally, really never. The things I tell God that I think should happen really don't happen in the way that I think they should happen.

It's not to say God is in honor of His promises. It's just to say that He has a better lay of the land than I do. In my ministry, the biggest mistakes I've ever made was when I was just charging ahead, praying to God, and asking Him to validate the steps I was taking.

Looking over my shoulder and saying, God, you with me? Let's go. That's not the way it works. A right relationship with God brings everything to God and asks Him, God, what would you have me do?

Lead me, oh great Jehovah. If you prescribe, prescribe, prescribe to God, you're going to end up disappointed. The people prescribed to God everything. They always thought that everything should have a linear path that fit with their expectations.

You know, God sets them free from Egypt. They plundered the Egyptians as they went. They brought treasures and gold. The first obstacle that they hit was the Red Sea.

And immediately they thought, Moses, you brought us here to die. They didn't think that the same God who could do all the plagues and rain, lightning and thunder and fire and bugs and blood and all that from the sky, they didn't think that God could find a way through some water. Again, we're called to a faith that will be stress tested today and next week and the days yet to come.

And yet it's a faith that's always validated. And if you have the benefit of retrospect, you see that. And that's why God reminds people, look at what I've done.

God-Blessed Difficulties: The Soil in Which Faith Grows 29:00

And then you'll remember what I can and will yet do in the days before. In your own life, if God loves you, He will throw you curveballs. In your own life, if God loves you, He will cause things to happen in your life that you don't like and that you don't want. And yet it's those things that, guess what?

Will bring you to Him and will bring you into church, will cause you to open up the Bible, will cause your faith to flourish in ways that good times and frivolity could never germinate. He will allow storm clouds to come into your life because it's in those moments you're most likely to look up to Him and to grow in your relationship with the One who formed you.

And because of that, God blessed difficulties. Because I tell you, there's more people in church this morning around the land as a function of God bringing stormy weather into their lives, there's a function of all the gold in the world combined. If God loves you, He will throw curveballs, because that's where our faith, that difficulties and challenges are the soil in which our faith grows the most.

Whatever your circumstance is today, God can and is using it. Let me say that again. Whatever your circumstance is today, and some of us, our circumstances look bad, they are bad, but if you're a blood-bought born-again son and daughter of the most high God, then the God who is your Father is using that circumstance for something good in your life, even if you can't see that now.

And that's what God told Moses to go tell the Israelites. Just hold on. Trust. Have faith.

I've made you a promise. I am the Lord. I will keep it in My time. Let's pray for the same grace to be patient.