When it Goes from Bad to Worse - Grab Hold of God

This morning we're going to continue our look at the story of Exodus and Moses, and the theme of the God who rescues, this unfolding story of God's revelation of himself as a God who is concerned and cares about us and about his people. We look at this morning the story of God who has promised to do something, promised to lead his people out of Egypt. But we see a situation that goes from bad to worse before it gets any better. And the encouragement this morning is for us to, in those situations, make sure we look to God, that we grab onto this God who has promised amazing things to us. You'll remember last week we looked and saw the moment where this God who has introduced himself as a God who is holy and yet who is concerned and cares for his people, this God places a calling on this man Moses and his life.

And in that calling or in response to that, Moses has, you know, excuse after excuse after excuse. Excuse. God, what if I don't have all the answers? What if I'm not equipped or enabled or don't have the ability to do this? What if the people don't listen to me?

God, what about this? What about that? And God sort of just knocks these excuses out of the park like Virat Kohli was doing yesterday in the cricket or David Warner for that matter as well. And God just says, my call on you is irrevocable. I'm not gonna give up.

I'm not gonna change my mind, Moses. You're gonna be the one. But take Aaron along with you. And so we come this morning to the situation or the confrontation that Moses and Aaron have with Pharaoh. This is the first moment that Moses tells Pharaoh, this is what God tells you: let his people go.

And so we're going to have a look this morning at Exodus 5, and again, we're just going to summarise some of this because we simply don't have the time to read through all of this. And I encourage you to do this in your own time, however. Moses and Aaron brought together all the elders of the Israelites, and Aaron told them everything the Lord had said to Moses. He also performed the signs before the people, and they believed. And when they heard that the Lord was concerned about them and had seen their misery, they bowed down and worshipped Him.

Afterwards, Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said, this is what the Lord, the God of Israel says: let my people go so that they may hold a festival to me in the desert. Pharaoh said, who is this Lord that I should obey him and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord and I will not let Israel go. Then they said, the God of the Hebrews has met with us. Now let us take a three day journey into the desert to offer sacrifices to the Lord our God, or he may strike us with plagues or with the sword.

But the king of Egypt said, Moses and Aaron, why are you taking the people away from their labour? Get back to your work. Then Pharaoh said, look, the people of the land are now numerous, and you are stopping them from working. That same day, Pharaoh gave this order to the slave drivers and the foremen in charge of the people. You are no longer to supply the people with straw for making bricks.

Let them go and gather their own straw, but require them to make the number of bricks as before. Don't reduce the quota. They are lazy. That is why they are crying out, let us go and sacrifice to our God. Make the work harder for the men so that they keep working and pay no attention to lies.

So far, our reading this morning. At the start of chapter 5, we see Moses and Aaron coming off their amazing spiritual high of a great conference with the elders of Israel. They had just shown the miraculous signs God gave them to show, and the elders believed that the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had spoken to them and that He was going to rescue them. And everyone worshipped God together, this amazing little Bible conference. And so Moses and Aaron walk out of that place full of confidence, just brimming with it.

And they decide now we can take on Pharaoh. We're gonna tell him what God says. And so they come to Pharaoh, and they are thinking in their minds, well, Pharaoh is just gonna capitulate and on their claims, he would let the Israelites go. But we see the story that it didn't quite go that way, did it? It didn't quite go that way.

Fresh off their exciting Bible conference, riding this amazing crest of emotion and euphoria, Moses and Aaron appear before the king of the land, Pharaoh. And their command is clear. This is what Yahweh, the God of the Israelites, says: let my people go so they may hold a festival to me in the desert. But their spiritual high just comes plummeting down when Pharaoh smirks at them and says, who is the Lord? Who is this God of yours that I should obey and let Israel go?

I do not know the Lord and I will not let Israel go. And from that really bad reaction, from that huge disappointment, it goes from bad to even worse. Because that very same day, in verse 6, Pharaoh gives the order for the slave drivers and the foremen of the Israelite slaves to not provide any more straw for them. Ramses the second, who we believe this Pharaoh was, was an amazing builder.

A man who was building tombs and statues and pyramids and all that sort of stuff at that time, and it was on the back of thousands upon thousands of slaves. And he says, don't reduce their quota, but now they're going to have to harvest and import their own straw. It's because they are lazy. It's because they've got too much time on their hands that they are starting to scheme up this revolution. Make them work harder.

Make them work harder and they will not believe these lies. The backs of the Israelites, imagine this scene. The backs of the Israelites are breaking. They were crying out to God in Exodus 2 for God to hear them, for anyone to hear them under this huge burden of slavery. Their backs are breaking and then Pharaoh says, no more straw.

You were working eighteen hours a day, well, you've got to work a few extra hours to get some straw. Verse 21, we see sort of the reaction after all of this. After Pharaoh has commanded them and the slave drivers are tired whipping these guys to the point of death. Verse 21, the elders come to Moses and Aaron and they spit at them with these words: may the Lord look upon you and judge you. You have made us a stench to Pharaoh and to his officials, and you have put a sword in their hand to kill us.

May God judge you. May God damn you for having done this to us. And so all the while, Moses, the man called by God, is caught in the middle ground, in no man's land. He is simply obeying God. He is simply doing what God commanded of him to do.

And in front of his eyes, the whole plan seems to be crumbling. His own people, the ones that he was supposed to save, are being worked to death now. Moses sees things getting a whole lot worse before they get any better. But that's exactly what I want us to explore this morning. Sometimes in our lives, before the salvation of God comes, before He comes through for us, like Moses, like Moses, Zeb, our mini version of Moses, was praying before for God to come through for people without work, for people in depression, for people struggling, before God comes through for us, our expectations may be dashed by a situation we didn't foresee.

A curveball that hits us that we just had no idea was coming our way. In the conversation between Moses and Pharaoh, we see the scene that sets up the following nine chapters of God's terrifying power and a blockbuster rescue story. And it's a blockbuster because I saw it on Monday. And one of the things that was actually portrayed really well for me was the absolute arrogance of this man, this king Pharaoh, who set himself up against God. And the issue here we see is actually not Pharaoh versus Moses, which the movie is about, but it's not that at all.

It's not Pharaoh versus Moses. It's Pharaoh, the god of Egypt, because that is how he was taken. That is who he was. Pharaoh, a god man. Pharaoh, the god of Egypt versus Yahweh, the God of the Hebrews.

That is the fight. That is the jewel that is being set up here. And the readers of the ancient times would have understood exactly what was happening here. It was a standoff between two gods. But God, Yahweh, had been silent for four hundred years.

He had been silent. And the megalomaniac pharaoh sneered, who is the Lord? What has He done? I don't know this guy. I will not let your people go on His account.

The pharaoh's contempt of God that He is too insignificant to know strikes a blow to Moses and Aaron's confidence and the entire Israelite nation. But significantly, and this is why it sets up the nine chapters to follow, significantly, God comes back to Pharaoh time and time again in the following chapters during the plagues and says this to him: these things are happening so that you may know that I am the Lord. These things are happening so that you know that I am the one, the God of this earth. All of it is mine. I control the very forces of nature.

And that's the first thing I want us to point out: that sometimes obeying God will mean that things don't immediately get better for us, but they may become worse according to God's plan. Sometimes we can't understand why things start going downhill when we expected something better. Why God allows even more difficult situations to come when we feel like we're at the very end of our rope. But the story of Exodus, in it, we actually see a glimpse of an entire story unfolding, and we have the benefit of hindsight to see how God moved through this. God's glory was at stake here and then, and the two gods set themselves up against each other in this duel. Why would God allow Pharaoh to punish the Israelites so severely?

Why would God allow Pharaoh to do that? Well, firstly, because it allowed Pharaoh's sin filled heart to be exposed for what it really is. He was ruthless. He was self obsessed. He was uncompassionate.

And God allowed Pharaoh to extend his reign of terror, which would then contrast so clearly with the compassion of God. Pharaoh was not a good god to follow. God was the one who heard and who had concern. In this standoff between God and Pharaoh that would last nine chapters, Pharaoh and Yahweh are held side by side and compared over and over and over again. They are compared, and Pharaoh, obviously, is found wanting.

And the entire watching world is asked this question: who would you rather serve? Who would you rather serve? Why did things get worse before it got better? Because even in that, God had a plan. Pharaoh was going to hang by his very pride that he had deep in his heart. And the world would see that he simply was an egotistical man.

He was not a god. He was not able to save anyone, not even his own Egyptian people. And that God was Yahweh, the God who cared, the God who rescues. Sometimes in our lives, obeying God and being faithful to Him may mean that God allows things to get worse in our lives before they get any better. You may lose that job that seemed to be your salvation.

You may hear bad news about a medical scan that you thought would have had an easy cure. The Lord may have taken someone to be with Him before you were ready to let them go. I'm sure the Israelites probably had mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers who died under pharaoh's whip. Sometimes obeying God means that things don't get immediately better but worse. But the second thing we see in this story as well is that circumstances that turn against us force dependence from us.

When you find yourself in a situation that suddenly reverses the field and puts you in a place that you didn't want to be in, our crutches are swept from underneath us. We lean, we depend on these things in our life to offer us salvation. And the biggest crutch, friends, in this day and age is knowledge. We must know how it's going to work out. We must understand why this is happening.

Our security in knowing what's going to happen forces us to have a dependence on our intellect or our rationalisation. But when that happens, when the tides are turned and everything is thrown out the window, it forces us to be dependent on someone who actually has control, and that is God. And believe it or not, God wants us often to be exactly there, to be uncomfortable, to need Him. That well known verse in the book of Proverbs 3 that reads, trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding, but in all your ways acknowledge Him and He will make your path straight. That explains it so well.

We want to lean on our understanding. The very word used there is like a crutch. We want to lean on it. We want to depend on it. We put the weight of our life on it, but instead the Bible says lean hard on God.

Trust Him wholeheartedly in every corner of your life, recognising that He is the one in charge. And that's our part. Part A is our part. Lean into God. Lean on God.

But then part B comes and it says He will make your path straight. He will make it smooth. He will even it out. He'll take care of those obstacles on the trail ahead of you. In those situations that force dependence from us, another thing happens and we learn to be patient.

We learn to be patient. When we are in that dependent position, we must wait by definition. We must wait because we're not the ones that are in charge here. We have, by definition, to trust for God to move, and so we wait. And it teaches us patience.

James 1:2, and it's a verse that I've come to many, many times. It says so graciously, consider it pure joy, brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. The testing of your faith develops perseverance. And perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. And this is the thing we have to understand when we do go through some of these hard things: that God is concerned more about our character than anything else. He wants to develop us.

He wants to mature us so that we do not lack anything. That we are complete, the Bible says. Perseverance and patience has work to do in your life. Do you know that? God wants us to be mature and complete, to be whole.

Yes, AJ, but if I had that job, I would be a lot more complete. Thank you very much. Not necessarily. You may have a job, but be very incomplete in your character. You may have everything for you, but you may not have a relationship with God.

Same goes for your health. Same goes for your relationships. You see, our logic can often be if God loves me, if He really cared for me, He would give me those things. We say that, don't we? If God really loves me, He would give me those things.

He would save me from this situation. But the Bible says sometimes God loves you so much that He doesn't give you those things right then. Or sometimes He just doesn't give them to you at all. We see individuals in the Bible, again, thank goodness for hindsight, characters like Abraham, like Moses, like David, who learnt patience by coming to a point where they are completely dependent on God. Everything is stripped away from them.

David in that cold, dark, dank cave running from Saul, you better believe he was dependent on God. They must lean on God's understanding. They must trust Him in everything they do. And we see again that God was interested in refining them. David had to go through all of that in order to become the right king of Israel.

God cared about their character, their maturity. And that leads us to our final point this morning. How can we encourage patience to grow in us while we wait to be delivered? The third point: we need to keep our eyes on God. And we need to remember who He is, what His character is like.

Right after Moses sees these terrible things in chapter 5, these terrible things that he was simply being obedient to God for and these things resulted, Moses goes back to God and says, why did you let this happen? You told me to do this. Look at your people. Why have you brought trouble upon this people? You have not rescued them at all.

But then we see this: how God responds. He says, now you will see what I will do to Pharaoh. Now you will see what I will do to Pharaoh. This had to happen. I think the Exodus movie says it well and poignantly.

It says, sit back and watch. Sit back and watch the fireworks. God would bring the full extent of His power down on Egypt because of Pharaoh, but more than punishing Pharaoh, He wanted Israel to know who He was. Five times, count it, five. In this chapter, in chapter 6, God repeats to Moses His special name Yahweh.

Have a quick look. Verse 2, it says, I am the Lord. Begins with that. I am the Lord. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as God Almighty, but my name, the Lord, I did not make myself known to them.

I am the Lord, He says. Verse 6, He says, I am the Lord, again. Verse 7, you will know that I am the Lord. Verse 8, I am the Lord. And verse 29 in chapter 6, I am the Lord.

Over and over and over again, God wants to make this point and He punctuates His message to Moses by saying, look at me Moses, your eyes have to look at me. You have to remember me, who I am, that I'm involved in this situation. I am the Lord and I will be what I will be. I am who I am. Get your eyes back on me, Moses.

Remember who I am. Or rather, He says, I am the Lord. Now you will see who I really am. But not only does He repeat this to Moses, and He says, you know, trust in this name, trust in this character, but He says this character is explained by eight promises that He makes in chapter 6 as well. Eight promises that are linked to I am the Lord.

Verse 1, see, watch, witness what I will do. Verse 6, I will bring you out of Egypt. Verse 6b, I will deliver, I will rescue. Verse 6c, the third part, I will redeem. I will bring out, I will deliver, and then I will redeem.

I will restore. Verse 7, I will adopt you, take you to be my people. I will be your God. Verse 8, I will bring you to a new land. And then verse 8b, I will give that land to you as a gift.

Promise after promise after promise God gives to Moses. It says, remember the name Yahweh. These things are going to be associated with it. I'm the God who gives. I'm the God who redeems.

I'm the God who restores. I'm the God who saves. I'm the God who leads out. Five times God says, I'm the Lord. Remember me.

But then He says, you will definitely remember me because I will keep these promises I've made to you. In our lives, we may go through some rough waters, but we've got to keep our eyes on God. There is no other hope. There is no other hope. Not our rationalising, not our thinking, not our planning, because God, thankfully, is the God of the underdog.

We've got to maintain our reliance on Him because He will come through for us. God makes His promises known to us in His word that whatever situation you are in, even if it goes from bad to worse, He is still the God who promised you daily bread. He is still the God who, while we are sick, will not remove our faith or our hope from us. Yes, you may go hungry, but you will not starve. Yes, you may get sick, but you will not lose your faith.

Yes, you may die, but you will not cease to exist. In fact, God promises that our present sufferings are not worth comparing to the glory that awaits us at our Father's side. What a great verse that is. Our present sufferings are not worth comparing to the glory that awaits us at the Father's side. These are promises, friends.

These are promises. They're not just verses. They're for us. Promises for our daily bread. Promises for the gift of faith that only God can give.

Promises of eternal life that has been won for us through Jesus Christ. There was an English poet by the name of William Cowper who existed in the eighteenth century, I believe. And he was a man that had come to the end of his rope and found himself so deep in despair that he tried to end it all by drinking poison one day. But God miraculously led someone to find him, took him, even in the eighteenth century with, you know, their limited medical understanding, took him and had his stomach pumped. And he was rescued that day.

That man saved his life. But as soon as he recovered, the depressive writer hired another person to drive him to the Thames River in London, where he intended to plunge himself into the dark swirling waters. The driver of the coach, however, would have none of it. He restrained Cowper, got him back into the coach, and drove him home. It was not going to happen on his shift that day.

Frustrated with that attempt, he, William Cowper, found a knife in the privacy of his own home and attempted to fall on it. Unbelievably, the blade broke. Still not deterred, he rigged up a rope in the basement of his house, put his neck in the noose, and dropped into thin air. But before long, someone found him and took him down, again rescuing his life. He just couldn't get that right.

But finally, in the depth of his despair, he was driven to read the book of Romans of all things. And in it, found a hope that brought him to his knees and faith in Jesus Christ. And this man, the great poet that he was, the depressive, unhopeful poet, became one of the hymn writers of his time. Years later, as a mature man of God, he penned a hymn called Light Shining Out of Darkness, with an opening line that has become a catchphrase in the English language. Listen to the words of a man who came to understand the power of God and looking at His character and His promises, even in our toughest times.

This opening line: God moves in a mysterious way. His wonders to perform. He plants His footsteps in the sea and rides upon the storm. Deep in unfathomable minds of never failing skill, He treasures up His bright designs and works His sovereign will. Judge not the Lord by feeble sense, but trust Him for His grace.

Behind a frowning providence, He hides a smiling face. When it goes from bad to worse, like it did for Moses and the Israelites, grab ahold of God. I am the Lord, He promises us, and I will come through for you. And while we wait, be obedient. Be obedient.

Be obedient to those parts of Scripture that says let's not be lazy. Let's be working. Let's be hitting the pavement for our jobs. Let's be changing our diets. Let's discipline our minds in the way we think.

Obey these commands from Scripture, but ultimately, rest in the knowledge that God is in control. And that even when it seems life goes from bad to worse, believe that our life is running according to a plan. That it is not spinning out of control, that He is in charge and He will see it through. Let's pray. Lord, thank you for the understanding that you are Yahweh.

The God who is I am. The God who exists without need for any other thing to exist. The God who is. But that you're also the God who will be what He will be, and that You will prove yourself again and again to us. And thank you, Lord, that you are also the God who was, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but the God of Moses and the Israelites as well.

That as faithful as you were to them, you will be to us. Father, wherever we face ourselves this morning, wherever we stand, we are comforted by the knowledge that you are in control and that you will come through for us according to those promises you have given us. Help us to trust in you, not to lean on our understanding, but to hold out and to see your salvation come, that you will even out our paths, that you will remove the obstacles in our way. At the same time, Father, we give our hearts, our souls, our minds to you again and say to you, Lord, complete us, perfect us, mature us in our faith, mature us in our relationship with you God, because that really is the most important thing in life. God, create within us hearts that understand, hearts that are patient, hearts that look towards you rather than to our situations.

And Father, give us immeasurable, amazing peace in all these things. Father, again, I pray that for us looking for work, looking for just our daily bread, Father, that you will provide, that you will come through for us. Father, for some of us at huge junctures in our lives, moving houses, buying houses, changing things for the next year, health, Lord, that is not as good as we would hope it to be. Father, for these things, we just pray that we may find you there with us, that we may find comfort, Lord, in a sense of your grace, and even in those situations, a joy that we are sons and daughters of the living God, redeemed by the Son Jesus Christ, who gave His life for us as a ransom and led us out of our Egypt under our slave drivers, our masters, our idols and gods who were not gods at all. Father, I pray that you will redeem us, that we will see your salvation, and Father, that ultimately we may give you praise and glory that is due to you.

In Jesus name, we pray these things. Amen.