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Good morning friends, today is July 5, and we’re reading Exodus 6 today. I hope you had a great 4th yesterday. I also hope you had time to consider our remarkable nation and how God blessed we have been. . .and how far our society is, from where we could be, if our society really wanted to honor God, and be used of Him to help our world become a God honoring world.
Exodus 6 really begins with Moses’ meltdown in Exodus 5:22,23. Have you ever had a similar conversation with God? Moses was upset. He had done what God had told him to do, but the Pharaoh was not interested or impressed, and his response was to retaliate against Moses, by making life much more difficult for the slaves. Moses felt responsible, but knew there was nothing he could do to fix the problem or make amends. Moses was stuck… may I suggest, right where God wanted him. Helpless, and totally reliant upon God, to do what only God could do!
Please notice an important spiritual principle at work here: Moses was concerned about the immediate problem, but God was working on a much bigger PLAN, of which this problem was only one small ingredient.
From God’s perspective, this had very little to do with brick making, it wasn’t even primarily about the deliverance of 1 million or more Hebrews from slavery in Egypt. God gives us a glimpse of His bigger plan in Exodus 6:8. “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.”
If you had to identify ONE major, overarching, objective of God, which seems to always frame everything God does in His relationship with the human race and our planet, what would you say it is?
I think it is this, and I’ll give it to you in three specific, different verses from God’s Word: “Let the name of the LORD be praised, both now and forevermore. From the rising of the sun, to the place where it sets, the name of the LORD is to be praised. The LORD is exalted over all the nations…” (Psalm 113:2,3,4)
“There is no God apart from Me, a righteous God and a Savior, there is none but Me.
Turn to Me and be saved, all you ends of the earth; for I am God and there is no other.” (Isaiah 45:21,22)
“Then the nations will know, that I am the LORD,’ declares the Sovereign LORD, ‘when I show Myself holy through you, before their eyes.” (Ezekiel 36:23b)
It seems to me God, who designed our Universe, our planet earth, the human race; and then created all that He designed, has one fundamental objective: that everything He created PRAISE Him as LORD and WORSHIP Him through a relationship of Love, as we honor our Creator, with everything we are and do.
Now ponder that a moment or two.
Do you see that our Universe functions best, when it operates according to the design of The Creator? Do you agree humanity functions best, when we live in Praise and Honor of God? Dysfunction happens when we push God out.
So look closely at God’s response to Moses’ complaint. You’ll find it in vs. 1-8 of Exodus 6. First, God wants Moses and the people to know WHO He is… the one, true, living, Almighty God, who has now given Himself a new name, which He wants them to own. YHWH…LORD. In the past, with their ancestors Abraham, Isaac & Jacob, God had introduced Himself with the name “El Shaddai”…God Almighty. It means: The All Sufficient God, able to do whatever is necessary, to keep His promises and accomplish His purposes.
That’s why God could invite Abram & Sarai to follow Him, and He’d lead them to a new land, which He wanted to give to this dear old couple and all their descendants. Then, even though childless, God was more than sufficient to bless them with a miracle son Isaac, from whom this miracle nation would come. And because Isaac’s wife was also barren, “El Shaddai” was able to continue the covenant and open her womb, and bless them with twins, to continue the miracle nation of promise.
So read carefully those first six verses and put yourself in the slave, brick making, mud pits, under the blazing hot Egyptian sun. And remember they had no Bible, no Sunday church, no Pastor…none of the things you think of when you consider your Christian life. All they had was a 400 year old story and an old Egyptian coffin in the back room of some house, which most of them had never seen, but they had heard it contained a mummy of someone named Joseph.
It’s no wonder “…they did not listen to him (Moses) because of their discouragement and cruel bondage.” (Exodus 6:9) Let’s be honest this morning… we’ve all been there. So discouraged, the Bible seemed as dry as dust. Prayer seemed like talking into the wind. Worship singing seemed like meaningless music. Discouragement has the ability, to so totally distort our perception, that everything seems meaningless and hopeless. I wonder how often that was the case 243 years ago, in the days, weeks and months after July 4th, and the original Independence Day declaration? More personally, I wonder how often you’ve found yourself in this deeply discouraged place?
How discouraged?
Well look at verses 10-12. Moses was ready to quit! He had lost his perspective, and rather than his focus being on the God, whom he met at the burning bush which was not consumed,… the great “I AM WHO I AM”, his focus was on himself, and the hopelessness of slavery in Pharaoh’s brick making mud-pits. Discouragement always happens when we allow our focus to shift, from being amazed by the Majesty of God, to being overwhelmed by the circumstances of our pitiful human existence.
Perhaps you wonder why, stuck in the middle of this remarkable story of Moses & God, are these 12 verses of names, in Exodus 6? The Bible prioritizes truth and understanding. These verses explain who Moses is, where he came from, what his lineage is. Link it with Genesis 29:31-34 and we learn Jacob, who was the son of Isaac, the son of Abraham, had a large family. His firstborn three sons were Reuben, Simeon and Levi, in that order. Moses and his brother Aaron were born in the descendant line of Levi. In fact do you see Moses’ mother is named in vs. 20?
That’s the lady who refused to kill her son, as the Pharaoh’s law demanded. She instead made a basket and entrusted her son to God. I wonder how many of your mothers did the same when you were a new born… entrusted you to God and prayed for God’s protecting and guiding hand upon you, for the rest of your life? How many of you had a praying mother like I did? How many of you are praying mothers, today?
Finally please notice vs. 28-30. It’s a summary of where we are in the story. God had created Moses and done miracles to keep him alive, and now invited him into God’s big plan of deliverance, and Moses had only 1 role: “Tell the Pharaoh king of Egypt, everything I tell you.” That’s it! Moses was not responsible to do anything else, and not responsible for the results. Only one thing… say what God tells him to say.
There’s an important life lesson here. We tend to make life much more complicated then it needs to be, because we tend to make life all about ourselves and our ambitions…rather than about God and His ambitions in our world!
And Moses’ response to God’s plan? “Since I speak with faltering lips, why would Pharaoh listen to me?” And so at the end of chapter 6 of Exodus, God finds Himself with angry Hebrews, who are so discouraged they don’t want to hear anything about God. Fearful Moses, who wants out of God’s plan. Hard hearted Pharaoh, who is angry that some foreign god is disrupting his control over his world. Hebrew elders, who are confused and frightened.
What a mess. . .and yet have you learned, that our messes are the platform for God’s miracles? Our discouragement is fertile ground for God’s development of our character? Our hopelessness is the place where “El Shaddai”, God Almighty, the All Sufficient God, can become the great “I AM” and totally transform both our situation and our lives, both now and for eternity? And our despair can be the place God does such a significant work, the word ripples out and everyone who knows us is drawn to praise God and Psalm 113 becomes reality?
From the discouragement of Exodus 6, as you know, things are only going to get darker, more painful, more difficult… until finally, hearts turn to God and yield to Him, and then everything changes! Has that been your story too?
I wonder what God is wanting to say to each of us today…as we look at our lives through the lenses of Exodus 6? Who are you, what is your lineage, from where have you come? What is your situation and what is God wanting to do for His glory and your good, in your life situations today? Are you positioned for a miracle?
Lord Jesus…
Pastor Doug Anderson 262.441.8785
“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, with our eyes fixed on Jesus…” (Heb. 12:1,2)
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