Exodus chapter 5 and we'll read
from verse 1. 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. And Pharaoh said, 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.' And they said, The
God of the Hebrews hath met with us. Let us go, we pray thee,
three days' journey into the desert and sacrifice unto the
Lord our God, lest he fall upon us with pestilence or with the
sword. And the king of Egypt said unto
them, Wherefore do ye, Moses and Aaron, let the people from
their works get you unto your burdens? And Pharaoh said, Behold,
the people of the land now are many, and ye make them rest from
their burdens. And Pharaoh commanded the same
day the taskmasters of the people and their officers, saying, Ye
shall no more give the people straw to make brick as heretofore. Let them go and gather straw
for themselves. And the tail of the bricks which
they did make heretofore ye shall lay upon them, ye shall not diminish
aught thereof, for they be idle. Therefore they cry, saying, Let
us go and sacrifice to our God. Let there more work be laid upon
the men, that they may labour therein, and let them not regard
vain words. 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 ye can find it, yet not aught of your work shall
be diminished. So the people were scattered
abroad throughout all the land of Egypt to gather stubble instead
of straw. and the taskmasters hasted them,
saying, Fulfil your works, your daily tasks, as when there was
straw. The officers of the children
of Israel, which Pharaoh's taskmasters had set over them, were beaten
and demanded, Wherefore have ye not fulfilled your task in
making brick, both yesterday and today, as heretofore? Then
the officers of the children of Israel came and cried unto
Pharaoh, saying, Wherefore dealest thou thus with thy servants?
There is no straw given unto thy servants. And they say to
us, Make brick, and behold, thy servants are beaten. But the
fault is in thine own people. But he said, Ye are idle, ye
are idle. Therefore ye say, Let us go and
do sacrifice to the Lord. Go therefore now, and work. For
there shall no straw be given you, yet ye shall deliver the
tail of the bricks. And the officers of the children
of Israel did see that they were in evil case. After it was said,
ye shall not many short from your bricks of your daily task. 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
ye have made our Saviour 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. And Moses returned unto the Lord
and said, Lord, wherefore hast thou so evil entreated this people? Why is it that thou hast sent
me? 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. Amen. May the Lord bless to us this
reading from his word. It was now time for Moses and
Aaron to go into the presence of Pharaoh and carry with them
the message of the Lord. And this was the message. Thus
saith the Lord God of Israel, let my people go. This phrase Thus saith the Lord
was to be a message repeated many times to Pharaoh in the
coming weeks and months. And it is often indeed connected
with let my people go. But Pharaoh had no intention
of letting Israel go. Not to worship God, even for
three days in the wilderness. And in this chapter we see both
the pride and the brutality of Pharaoh as he intensifies the
workload of the children of Israel and aggravates their suffering. And he hardens his attitude also
against Moses, God's representative. The request that was made for
three days travel into the wilderness to sacrifice was made to show
that Pharaoh was not willing to consider even a small request
as being of good for this people. The people of Israel were prohibited
from doing what was a reasonable thing, a small thing. in order
to reveal that there was no likelihood or possibility of them obtaining
complete release from the land of Egypt, where they had now
become a nation of captives and a nation of slaves, who were
for the labour that they gave of value to the Egyptians. They were the brickmakers for
the cities that the Egyptians were building. So that Pharaoh's
response to Moses, that he did not know the name of the Lord
and felt under no obligation to obey him, was his settled
view. And it was probably true what
he said. But here we see a proud attitude
in Pharaoh, as if this man's knowledge and his will was the
standard by which God was to be judged, God was to be heard,
and God was to be obeyed. Well, I don't know that God.
And of course that continues to be expressed in much the same
way today. People say, I don't know your
God. And I don't care to know your God, and I'm certainly not
going to do what your God says. And Pharaoh's next response to
Moses' request was to intensify the suffering of the children
of Israel. And he did that by stopping all
the supplies of straw for the manufacture of bricks. It appears from the account that
this had previously been supplied by the Egyptians to the children
of Israel at their brick kilns or the means by which they made
these brick. But in future, Pharaoh says,
the children of Israel would be expected to gather their own
straw. but there wouldn't be any reduction
in the quantity of bricks that were required of them. And this Pharaoh hoped would
stop them from asking to go and worship their God. He would make
them so busy, he would make them so oppressed that they wouldn't
think about these other things. and the leaders of the children
of Israel and Moses himself seems to be surprised at Pharaoh's
reaction. And we find that Moses questions
God's purpose and why there was yet no deliverance, only more
pain. So there's a couple of lessons
that we can draw from this and I would like to just leave with
you. And the first one is this, that
despite being told by God that Pharaoh's heart would be hardened
and that God would perform mighty works on Pharaoh. We notice in
this chapter that Moses seems to be hurt, personally offended
that Pharaoh did not at once agree to let the people go. And
it's not really very clear as to why that should be. Perhaps
it was the sharp words of criticism that were spoken to Moses by
the leaders of the children of Israel. Or perhaps it was the
evident increase in the hurt and the suffering of the people
that Moses observed. But here the man of God seems
to be confused and he seems to be perplexed. that the Lord did
not begin this process of bringing out the people from the land
immediately. And we've mentioned this before,
I think. It is our responsibility, indeed
it is our privilege, to take our troubles to the Lord. But
it is not wise for us to specify the means or the methods or even
the timing by which the Lord will fix our problems. Because
the Lord sees a bigger picture. And the Lord saw a bigger picture
here in Egypt. What was happening was a much
bigger work than Moses could see at that moment, even although
he knew a lot about God and about God's purpose. God told Moses
much about what he was going to do, and yet Moses still struggled
to understand. There was to be a step-by-step
procedure gone through And this was just the beginning. So that
when we take our requests to the Lord, or when we're waiting
on the Lord to do something to help us, we have to learn to
be patient and we have to learn to wait to see the bigger picture. Because only then will the wisdom
of God be revealed. And the Lord calls on us to exercise
faith and trust and patience when we go to him with our problems
and we go to him with our prayers. And here's the second thing to
learn. Moses took his unease, he took
his complaint back to the Lord. But I wonder if you noticed with
me that there was a sharpness in the words as though Moses
was upset with God. Why have you not done what you
said you would do? And there's even a sense in what
Moses says of him reverting back, going back to that initial reluctance
that he felt about this whole plan. because God wasn't acting
quickly enough. And the lesson here is that while
it is right to take our burdens and our concerns to the Lord,
we must not blame God when things don't fit our plans or our timescales. It's interesting that God doesn't
rebuke Moses for his sharpness, which perhaps shows the gentleness
and the goodness of God as a patient father. But it is still clear
that Moses has much to learn at the hand of God. And here's
an interesting thought. Would we look differently on
our trials if we saw those trials to be God's teachers rather than
simply our problems. That God uses our trials to teach
us, not simply that they cause us problems. Here's the third
thing that I want to leave with you, and then we will be done.
Moses and Aaron, as well as all the children of Israel, and indeed
all the nations round about, because we are going to discover
that all the nations round about were watching what was happening
in Egypt at this time. Moses, Aaron, the children of
Israel, and all the nations around about were going to be amazed
on lookers as the heavy hand of God fell upon Egypt and fell
upon Pharaoh. because that was God's will. If Pharaoh had just said to Moses,
sure thing, no problem, go ahead, any time you want to go out of
the country you can just do that, stay away as long as you like. You know, God could have softened
Pharaoh's heart so that that was exactly the attitude that
he took and he let the children of Israel go without any trouble,
without any problem and thought, let's be rid of them, it's good
to be rid of them. After all, remember that they
had been fearful of the children of Israel many years before because
of their increase in number. Now they had brought them into
servitude. Now they had provoked the Lord
by the way in which they had treated his people. Pharaoh's heart would not be
softened, but it would be hardened. If Pharaoh had let the children
of Israel go, there would have been no evidence of God's love
for his people. There would have been no evidence
of God's covenant faithfulness to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. There would have been no evident
deliverance. There would have been no punishment
for the sins that had been committed against the children of Israel
and against their God. There would be no retribution
for the hundreds of years of wicked oppression that had been
placed upon these people and the countless mothers' tears
as their babies had been ripped from their arms and thrown into
the river. And there would have been no
demonstration of justice. and there would have been no
glory for God. There would only have been glory
for men and ironically it might even have been for Pharaoh. Look
how merciful he was, look how generous he was. Well that would
not do. God will not allow evil to go
unpunished and he will not allow men and women to take his glory. This whole exercise of the deliverance
of the children of Israel would take time. and it would reveal
God's power. It would bring destruction on
Pharaoh and on Egypt and it would be remembered by Israel and by
God's church and people as an example of God's saving power
for the rest of time. The Jewish people still celebrate
this event as part of their history. and the Passover lamb would provide
the Church of Jesus Christ with one of the clearest pictures
of their Saviour and of his accomplishments. Our own salvation and our deliverance
from the captivity of sin is pictured here in this work of
deliverance and it wasn't going to be an easy work. It would not be achieved by the
will or the wisdom of men and women. It would be the sovereign
work of God. And the glorious sacrifice of
the Lord Jesus Christ is God's sovereign work to bring our deliverance. If it was easy for a person to
be saved, or if we could save ourselves, we would claim the
glory. So that won't happen. God will
have all the glory for our salvation and we shall see how great a
task our deliverance was, how hard it was to be obtained and
where all the glory lies for it. May the Lord bless these
thoughts to our heart.