Why, Lord? Why? (Exodus 5:1-6:27)

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Good morning. Cityview Community Church, turn your Bibles with me to Exodus five. And if you’re using the Pew Bibles, that’s page number 47 and if you don’t own a Bible, please take that one with you. That’s our gift to you. In 2011 the citizens, citizens of Syria began a peaceful protest with the hopes that they would see political reform and freedom, only the Assad regime met them with brutal crackdowns, arresting, torturing and killing protesters. What began as this movement of Hope quickly turned into a catastrophic war. Families were displaced, and many hoped for a better. Syria, Saudi country, destroyed instead. This is one of many stories of injustice in our world today. We turn on the news we see the tragedy in Ukraine, the Sudanese Civil War, the ever ongoing war between Israel and Palestine, and that’s without even looking at our own country. Lord, where are you? Why aren’t things getting better? How long? Oh, Lord, before you do something about it, these questions are new, and it’s something that’s very common in the Bible, and in fact, that’s exactly what we’re going to see in this section of Exodus. In Exodus five verses one through 627, we see Moses wrestling with God as he goes through these tough situations, and he questions God, Why, Lord, why? And we wrestle with these questions too, but we often just keep it with ourselves. We don’t talk to others, and we definitely don’t talk to God. So let me start with this big idea. Call on Him who longs to hear you. We’re going to break down this passage into four parts, a disappointment and a response, another disappointment and another response, starting with the first disappointment, the uncomfortable reality. Let’s look at this. Let’s look at Exodus. Five verses, one to 18. Afterward, Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and said, This is what the Lord, the God of Israel says, Let my people go so they may hold a festival to me in the wilderness. Pharaoh said, 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. Then they said, The God of the Hebrews has met with us. Now let us take a three day journey into the wilderness 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 labor? 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 overseers 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 same number of bricks as before. Don’t reduce the quota. They are lazy, and that is why they are crying out, let us go and sacrifice to our God. Make the work harder for the people, so that they keep working and pay no attention to lies. Then the slave drivers and overseers went out and said to the people, this is what Pharaoh says, I will not give you any more straw. Go and get your own straw wherever you can find it, but your work will not be reduced at all. So the people scattered all over Egypt to gather stubble to use for straw, the slave drivers kept pressing them, saying, complete the work required of you for each day, just as when you had straw. And Pharaoh’s slave drivers beat the Israelite overseers they had appointed, demanding, why haven’t you met your quota of bricks yesterday or today as before then the Israelite overseers went and appealed to Pharaoh. Why have you treated your servants this way? Your servants are given no straw. Yet we are told to make bricks. Your servants are being beaten. But the fault is with your own people. Pharaoh said, lazy. That’s what you are. Lazy. That is why you keep saying, Let us go and sacrifice to the Lord. Now get back to work. You will not be given any straw yet. You must produce your full quota of bricks. That was a lot. There’s so much to unpack here. But before we do, it’s important that we set the story in context. We just saw Moses and Aaron go to these Israelite elders and do these wonderful signs. And now these elders are excited. They’re thinking reform. They’re thinking freedom. And so now it’s time to go and talk to Pharaoh. The hard part, the Lord even tells Moses what this request is going to look like. In Exodus, 318, 19. It says the Lord, says the elders of Israel will listen to you. Then you and the elders are to go to the king of Egypt and say to Him, the Lord, the God of the Hebrews, has met with us. Let us take a three day journey into the wilderness to offer sacrifices to the Lord our God. But I know the king of Egypt will not let you go unless a mighty hand compels him. Interesting, we see how confident Moses and Aaron were considering that the Israelite elders believed in them, yet only Moses and Aaron seemed to be the people going and confronting Pharaoh, despite the Lord commanding them to take the Israelite elders with you. Nonetheless, they go in faith, so in their boldness, they told Pharaoh that these were the words of the Lord, Let my people go that they may hold a festival for me in the wilderness, probably exactly like they rehearsed it. But here’s something you cannot rehearse. Pharaoh says, I do not know the Lord, and I will not let Israel go. Then they try to double down and actually say what God said. And they said, The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, has met with us. Let us take a three day journey into the wilderness to offer sacrifices to the Lord our God. But they add a sentence, a sentence that God didn’t say, and this is their first sign of fear, or he may strike us with plagues or with the sword, not God’s words, he didn’t say that he would harm the Israelites. It’s evident that Moses is scared because his first burst of confidence, his confidence that he had in the Lord is quickly shifted to this fear of Pharaoh, and so he starts trying to justify this request with lies. Nonetheless, God doesn’t condemn Moses for his actions at all. In fact, he graciously uses it. But something heartbreaking does take place here. Moses is confronted with the reality when Pharaoh says, mockingly, who is the Lord? I don’t think Moses planned for that response when we started this sermon series, something that Brandon pointed out that is going to be super important in the context of Exodus, is that we gain a knowledge of God. So the impact of Pharaoh’s response, I do not know the Lord, or who is the Lord, is going to create this trickle down effect that is going to cause further trials for the Israelites, but also the Egyptians, but most of all, for Pharaoh himself, in fact, his response to the message of God is further torment, further brutality. For the Israelites, he dismisses God, but he also dismisses everything God stands for, like justice, truth, mercy. He dismisses God and when we do not know God, we do not know justice, truth and mercy, in a world like the one we live in, where people do not know God, moreover, people reject Him, we live in a world without justice, truth and mercy. We live in the grief of not knowing the Savior of the world, the God of the universe. You may have heard the story of Otto Warmbier. It’s a story that marks the brutality of a regime that does not know God. In 2016 Otto Warmbier, who is a college student from Ohio was arrested in North Korea for stealing a propaganda poster. To no one’s shock, the horrendous justice system of North Korea sentenced him to 15 years of hard labor, 15 years for stealing a poster. The manual labor was so aggressive that it often led to the death of the prisoner, and that was Otto’s case. He was released by North Korea just a year later and sent back to Ohio in a comatose, vegetative state. He had several, several fractures to his skull and severe brain damage. Warmbier died a few days later. Imagine the pain his family went through when he saw when they saw him. This aspiring college student can’t even move now, the injustice when we talk about a brutal regime that does not know God, this is what we talk about. This is what we picture, and we should picture when we see Exodus because of the wickedness of the pharaoh all the. Because he does not know God. But don’t miss God in this story of horror, let’s see if you caught it. Pharaoh says, Who is the Lord? I do not know the Lord. Get back to your work. But the Lord already told Moses in Exodus, 319, I know the king of Egypt will not let you go unless a mighty hand compels him. Pharaoh might not be compelled by Moses. He might not even know the Lord. But the Lord knows Pharaoh. The Lord knows that it’ll take a lot more for Pharaoh to let go of his people. In other words, the Lord is still in control. Why then would God send Moses to confront Pharaoh? It’s because it’s here where Moses learns to trust in the Lord when being confronted with reality. And this is going to be this recurring theme in Exodus, and I want you to keep an eye out for it in these coming weeks, where Moses is being confronted by the wickedness of the world and his people, and he has to trust God to get to the other side of his grief. So what Moses does here when he was so what does Moses do here when he’s confronted with this reality? He laments it. His response is lamenting reality. Let’s read on. Look at verses 19 to 23 the Israelite overseers realized that they were in trouble when they were told you were not to reduce the number of bricks required for you each day, when they left Pharaoh, they found Moses and Aaron waiting to meet them, and they said, May the Lord look on you and judge you. You’ve made us obnoxious to Pharaoh and his officials, and have put a sword in their hand to kill us. Moses returned to the Lord and said, Why Lord? Why have you brought trouble on this? People? Is this why you sent me? Ever since I went to Pharaoh to speak in your speak in your name, he’s brought trouble on this people, and you have not rescued your people at all. Have you ever gotten involved in somebody else’s problem only for the problem to get worse? Funny story, I’ve learned this the hard way, and let’s just say that’s why I don’t get involved in my friends love lives. When I was in high school, I saw my best friend getting slapped by his girlfriend for absolutely no reason, and it’s crazy how fairly common things like that is in public school. So I intervened, and I said, What’s going on here? Are you crazy? Only for my best friend to push me away and said, Stay out of this, man, just stay out of this. I was angry, and I prayed out to God. I said, Lord, why I thought it was doing the right thing. Are you going to take everything away from me? Was I being a little too dramatic? Yes, but I still have to often fight some of these lies in prayer even now. Why should I intervene in issues? If it isn’t my problem to deal with, let me just ignore the wrong so I can live peacefully. We intervene because, like Moses, we’re called to do good, even if it doesn’t result in what we hoped for. But like Moses, we should also lament that reality. There’s something so radically comforting about placing our faith and praying to God when things just don’t make sense. And this is what Moses is learning in this situation, he’s learning that he needs to cry out to God because it simply just doesn’t make sense to him. He needs to cry out to God because this is a familiar place of grief, like we saw in Exodus two. He’s being rejected by the Israelites and the Egyptians yet again. So his response, though not how we picture prayer to be with using our churchy words and sounding good is exactly what the Lord expects of him. Why Lord? Why have you brought trouble on these people? Why have you sent me? Why have you not rescued your people? This is real prayer, the kind of conversation you have with someone when you have a relationship with them, it’s raw. This is what Moses needs. He needs to not sugar coat the injustice or the burden that he’s carrying, but he also needs the person he’s crying to to be somebody who could change that reality. But it’s here where I have to say, quite often, those realities don’t change. Should I still cry out? Should I still lament? Earlier this year, we did a series on lament, and we defined lament. As a prayer of pain that leads to faith. See, as theologian Nicholas, www says, lamenting is the language of suffering, not the language of reform. You Don’t lament because you just want answers and changes from God. No, you lament because you know that he who holds the whole world in His hands, hears you, it’s more than just for answered prayers. And if you don’t believe me, I’m okay with that, but believe the Word of God, the story of Job, a man who lost everything from property to children, was commended, was commended for crying out to God and asking why, while his friends who used these churchy words to rebuke Him were rebuked by God. Or think about the laments of David and other psalmist, the whole book of Lamentations, not to mention the man of sorrows, Jesus, Christ, His words in the garden, Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken away from me, yet not my will, but Your will be done. Should I still lament? Yes, there is no one who can carry your burdens like God does. So lament and know that God hears your prayers. Lament So Moses prays, but how does God respond? Let’s look at the next point, the unbelievable covenant. Look at chapter six, verses one to nine. Then the Lord said to Moses, now you will see what I will do to Pharaoh because of my mighty hand, he will let them go because of my mighty hand, he will drive them out of his country. God also said to Moses, I am the Lord. I appear to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty. But my name the Lord, I did not make myself fully known to them. I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, where they resided as foreigners. Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the Israelites, whom the Egyptians are enslaving, and I have remembered my covenant. Therefore, say to the Israelites, I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. And I will bring you to the land I swore with an uplifted hand to give to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. I will give it to you as a possession I am the LORD Moses reported this to the Israelites, but they did not listen to him because of their discouragement and harsh labor. It’s actually a very awesome portion of the text, because it reflects exactly what God is going to do for the rest of the book. God states, I am the Lord, which, if you remember from these past weeks, is his way of saying the Almighty God of the universe. But not only does he say who he is, he then says, I’ll do what I always do, because I am who I always am. You will see what will happen because of my mighty hand. He says, I am God, and I will show you that I am God, this alone is an act of grace. We know that he can just use words and things come into be. Why is he doing this? Why wait? Why not just snap his fingers and change the reality? When God spoke to Abraham Isaac and Jacob, he promised them a land flowing with milk and honey, he could just snap his fingers, and that would become reality for sure, but that would remove every opportunity for faith. Hebrews 11, the faith chapter in verse nine, mentions this about Abraham. By faith, he made his home in the Promised Land like a stranger in a foreign country, he lived in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of this same promise. When you hear a stranger in a foreign country, I hope you’re thinking of Moses. This is the story of Moses life, and it is this same promise that God made with Abraham and the other patriarchs, then Moses and the Israelites are being invited to but how, how are they being invited to this promise? God is inviting his people to share in the promise by participating in his covenant. Moses seems to find comfort in this promise as well, considering that he goes forth and shares it with the Israelites. But what is special about this promise? It’s in these two sentences, don’t miss it. I have heard the groanings of the Israelites and remembered. My covenant God tells Moses that I hear you, and I hear the Israelites as well, who are burdened by the weight of slavery. And I will tell you what I told your ancestors. I will take you out of Egypt into the Promised Land. Moses finds comfort in knowing that the God who neither sleeps nor slumbers, is working even when he cannot see it. And here’s something we have to contend with. What do we do when we cannot see God in our trials? What are our coping mechanisms, or what are the ways we try to escape reality rather than confront it? Do we escape reality by consuming alcohol or maybe gaming or pornography? Maybe it’s a compulsive desire to buy new clothes. Maybe it’s gossiping about someone else to feel better about yourself. Or maybe, if you’re like me, you wrestle with running to sports when you’re in an argument. What do we do when we cannot believe that God is with us, when it feels like you don’t have friends, or your marriage is falling apart, or your children don’t seem to care for you, or others when you’re being abused at your workplace? What do we do hear from the words of Jesus, which were read for us earlier. I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace in this world, you will, you will, you will have trouble. But take heart. I have overcome the world, and then you looked to heaven and prayed. You might feel like your world is crumbling at this moment, you may feel alone, maybe in your weaknesses or your sin. But Jesus reminds us that even in moments like this, in him, you may have peace, even though it feels like the burden of the world is on your shoulders. He reminds us that we can take heart because he has overcome the world. The reason we pray in moments like this is because God hears us and he remembers his covenant with us in Christ, Jesus. If you have given your life to Jesus, then there is a promise for you that this momentary reflection is not worth comparing to the glory that will be revealed when we see Him face to face. Yet in Moses’ light boost of confidence, the Israelites were still downcast, still relenting because of their harsh labor and slavery, their grief is a hindrance to their belief. And that takes us to the last response, lamenting responsibility. Look at Verse 10 to 27 Then the Lord said to Moses, Go tell Pharaoh king of Egypt to let the Israelites go out of his country. But Moses said to the Lord, if the Israelites will not listen to me, why would Pharaoh Listen to me? Since I speak with faltering lips, then we have a long genealogy, which I won’t read because the names are hard to say, but we will still talk about it, and it is very important in the first command to go and talk to Pharaoh. It almost seems as though God was requesting Pharaoh to let go of his people. But now it’s no longer a quest. It’s a demand, in other words, give me back my people. Moses responds to God with the same old lousy complaint that we saw last week in Exodus four. My lips are faltering, which in this context, could either mean he has a stammer, or he’s still not ready for public speaking, or he thinks he needs help, or he’s just scared. It’s kind of the same thing I told Brandon when he said, Preach this portion of Exodus. I’m a man of faltering lips. He said, You don’t even have an accent, you’ll be fine. So here I am, but in the same way that Brandon didn’t punish me for complaining, although he finds creative ways to do that, in general, God doesn’t punish Moses for his complaint. He acknowledges it hears him, and we have a genealogy. Wait what this feels like the center of the story. Why do we have a genealogy here? God just said to Moses, Go demand the people back from Pharaoh. How can a genealogy possibly help us here? Maybe we need to ask the right question, what is in this genealogy that helps us understand God? If you look at this long list of individuals, you’ll realize that the focus is on the family of Aaron Moses’ brother, a Levite. The Levites were the priestly tribe of Israel, and this genealogy gives us a. Hint that there is so much more to come in this story, especially considering the mention of Phinehas, who is Aaron’s grandson, who was one of the priests in the period of the judges. And Jake actually pointed out for me when we were doing our huddle, and he said he also acknowledges God’s faithfulness in the past, with the mention of Jacob’s sons, which is probably really important for the for Moses and the other Israelites. That being said, what is the role of priests like Moses? Their role is to be mediators of God’s judgment and intercessors of the people of Israel. They burned sacrifices so that the sins of the Israelites may be pardoned, and that day, the Israelites would have right standing with God. But there is a priest who isn’t mentioned in this genealogy, a high priest who wasn’t just a middle man between God and man. No, he was both God and man. His name is Jesus, as Hebrews 414, to 16 states. Therefore, since we have a great high priest who is who has ascended into heaven, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are, yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. See, God didn’t just send his son to intercede for the people’s sins and the sins of the world. No, he sent him to become it. That means Jesus bore the wrath of God for those who placed their faith in Him, the wrath which we deserve. Because like Pharaoh, we act as though we don’t know God. Like Moses, we don’t trust that God has equipped us with these special gifts. Like the Israelites, we’re discouraged in our grief, in our weaknesses, in the sin of this world. But he didn’t just take on our sin. He gave us the right to become children of God, the love that the Father has for His Son Jesus is now bestowed upon us who have placed their faith in Him. This great high priest is the one who has overcome the world. This great high priest is calling us to come to Him. This great high priest is interceding on our behalf in our weaknesses and tormenting life on Earth. So let me say this once again. Call on Him who longs to hear you. We lament because we long for the eternal world to come and Christ comes back. Call on Him who longs to hear you. We lament, because in a world that doesn’t see our pain or hear our calls for help, the God who loves us deeply, if we are in Christ, Jesus sees us and hears us, call on Him who longs to hear you, we lament, because when we are being pressed down by a world filled with sin and we are, we have a Savior who has overcome the world. Call on Him who longs to hear you. Praise be to God who sees us and hears us in our pains, in our griefs, and our afflictions, and Praise be to Him who longs to hear us. Pray with me, Heavenly Father, Lord. We thank You. We thank you, because you long to hear us, even in our weaknesses. Not only do you long to hear us. Lord, you’ve become weak so that we may have strength in you, that we are able to rely on you our fortress and our stronghold in our tormenting life here and when we see the sin that’s around us and within us, Lord, may we not shy from coming to the throne of grace, But Lord, may we press on. May we know, Lord, that you’re calling us with all the love in your heart, longing to embrace us and call us your own. Come have your way in us. Lord, help us see you, admire you. Fall in love with you all the more as we live this life on Earth in your precious, precious name, Lord Jesus, we pray, amen.