Hello and good morning! Welcome back to another Biblit! Last week we saw Moses give it his all to escape this calling from the Lord. The Lord obliged Moses at every doubtful turn and Moses ends up taking the staff (haha) and heading back to Egypt to tell Israel the good news. This week we get to see what happens when Moses actually begins to enact God’s glorious plan.
Context
Alright, so Moses has finally come around to the Lord’s plan. That means everything is going to go perfectly, right?
Wrong.
Moses definitely thinks it’s going to go well. I’m sure he’s all confident in the Lord right now walking into Pharaoh’s palace, assuming the conversation will go smoothly and the Pharaoh will let the Israelites go.
That’s not exactly what happens, though.
First of all, this would be the first time in 40 years that Moses has been back in Egypt. I’m sure he’s at least relieved to know the Pharaoh that wanted him dead years prior is himself dead. I guess enough time has passed that either they forgave or forgot that Moses is a murderer, and he’s actually allowed an audience with the Pharaoh too.
Moses walks right up to Pharaoh and boldly proclaims what the Lord told him to. He and Aaron tell Pharaoh that the Lord requests His people to travel 3 days into the wilderness to make sacrifices to Him.
Unbanounced to Moses, Pharaoh refuses right out of the gate. He’s like, who even is this “Lord” you speak of and why would I let my slaves go?
Moses and Aaron try to reason with him; they tell him who God is and that if they don’t obey his command, He will curse the Israelites and reduce the number of Pharaoh’s slaves.
Pharaoh “brilliantly” realizes that if the Israelites want to travel into the wilderness for 3 days just to make a sacrifice, then they must clearly be bored and lazy. No hard-working slave in their right mind would want to do that. Traveling for 3 days is hard work, afterall. Therefore, he commands his taskmasters and foreman to stop collecting straw for the Israelite slaves.
See, the Israelites were tasked with making a certain number of giant bricks every day. Think of the bricks you see on pyramids or the sphynx. Huge bricks made with Nile mud and straw. Apparently, the Egyptian taskmasters used to collect straw for the slaves. Now they have to collect the straw themselves and they cannot reduce the number of bricks made each day either!
It takes a hot second for the word to get to the Israelites, but eventually, they realize there is no straw and they’re like, “what gives?”
The taskmasters tell them they have to get it themselves now, but that they also have to keep producing the same number of bricks. Israel is furious and goes to complain to Pharaoh.
Pharaoh tells the Israelites that they are lazy. That if they are idle enough to want to go make a random sacrifice 3 days into the wilderness, then they clearly have more room for work in their schedule.
Then the Israelites go and complain to Moses. Sorry, Moses, you’re going to have to get used to that. Moses hears the complaints and instead of getting angry with them, he takes the complaints straight to the Lord. I’m sure he’s confused and a little angry himself. Here is what he says to God:
“O Lord, why have you done evil to this people? Why did you ever send me? For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has done evil to this people, and you have not delivered your people at all.” (Exodus 5:22-23 ESV).
And with that, we close the chapter and have to wait to hear God’s response.
Interpretation
Ok, so after reading that a couple of times I think 2 main things stand out to me.
Moses’s plans failed, but God’s did not. Now, this is a bit of conjecture on my point, but I like to assume Moses thought this would work the first time. He trusted God would deliver the Israelites, we see him say that back to God at the end of chapter 5. So I think it’s safe to say, he assumed when God said He’d deliver Israel, He meant immediately. Moses probably thought the first appearance to Pharaoh would do the trick.
He was wrong. Not even the second or third or fourth time does the trick. It takes a good while for the message to sink into the hard-hearted Pharaoh. I’m sure this really tested Moses’s faith as well as all of Israel.Moses complained on behalf of Israel. Moses acted as the intermediary between Israel and God. This is pretty huge. Have we seen this behavior before? I don’t think so; not to this degree at least. With the patriarchs, God came to them to give them commands or direction. We don’t really see Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob going to God on behalf of an entire nation. We see them meditate and pray to God for sure. We witnessed Isaac and Rebekkah pray for Rebekkah’s womb to be open and God answered their prayer. We also see Abraham pray to God to save Lot and his family from the destruction at Sodom and Gomorrah. However, we don’t really see them taking an entire nation’s struggles to God in this way. It’s another point of transition as we move into this new way God relates to His children and nation. The transition that leads to the priests and ultimately to Jesus.
Application
So those were the main two things that really stuck out to me. So as always, I want to meditate on how God wants to use those things in my own life.
Our plans will fail, but God’s will not. I guess my first point is to trust in God and His plans. This is oh so true as Taylor and I continue to plan our future. It’s not wrong to be prepared or to make plans, but we want to always ensure we lean on the Lord’s plans. As Solomon says in Proverbs:
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and do not rely on your own understanding; in all your ways know him, and he will make your paths straight.” (Proverbs 3:5-6 CSB).
This is a prayer we say a lot back to God. “God we trust you and lean on your understanding, and we trust that you will make our paths straight as you promise to.”We are also not called to succeed. Don’t take that the wrong way. What I really mean is this: we are not promised a cushioned life on earth. We are promised to suffer. Moses was promised they would be delivered to the Promised Land, and we are promised we will be delivered to the Kingdom of God. However, Moses didn’t know how much hardship there would be in between. He also had no idea the kind of power God would showcase for all to wonder.
So, no, we are not called to fail endlessly, but neither are we called to succeed. We are called to surrender, and yes that will lead to suffering. But the good news is that there is one who has already succeeded on our behalf. Christ conquered death once and for all so that we may succeed and can be delivered into the Kingdom of God!
“The God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, establish, strengthen, and support you after you have suffered a little while.” (1 Peter 5:10 CSB).
However, don’t lose hope in suffering, for there is peace in it as well. We only suffer for a little while, and as Paul says:
“I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is going to be revealed to us.” (Romans 8:18 CSB).
This doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t acknowledge suffering or feel grief. Rather it gives us hope in God’s glory, that His glory IS going to be revealed to us and that His glory is grander than any evil this world has against us. That is the hope we hold onto.