Category: Exodus

You have just won 1 million dollars!!!!!

Now pretend that you have very little money and barely have enough to eat, let alone pay bills. Every day creditors are calling and threatening to take you to court. You have a one bedroom apartment and you are two months behind on rent. Your landlord is threatening to evict you and your family if you don’t pay for your two months, plus interest on the top. So, on hearing this news you would be absolutly thrilled. If it were me, I would probably be spinning on my head in excitement. How crazy would it be if you did not except it? What if your excuse was, “I am not sure how to handle the money so I don’t want it.”

Ridiculous, right?

Exodus 6, begins with a promise of deliverance from God Himself. The Israelites had been taking abuse and oppression from Pharaoh, the king of Egypt. Moses has been going to Pharaoh and demanding in the name of the Lord that he let Israel go but Pharaoh just makes things worse. God tells Moses that He is going to deliever His people because He has heard their groanings (v. 5). He lets Moses know that He would soon do this because of the covenant that He made with Abraham, Issac, and Jacob (v. 3). In other words, God is showing Moses the essence of His very character, that He is a God of kept promises. He always keeps his word.

Finally, God came to save the day. Israel is going to be delivered, and all that Moses had to do was go and tell Pharaoh to let Israel go. It is a done deal, but Moses doesn’t respond with excitement and confidence. How did he respond?

But Moses said to the LORD, “Behold, the people of Israel have not listened to me. How then shall Pharaoh listen to me, for I am of uncircumcised lips?”

He basically says, “God, I can’t do it. I know that you are promising to deliver us but I am not the man for the job.”

Why did he respond this way? Simple: Moses was focused on himself and not God. He was not trusting in God’s promises but instead He was fixated on his inabilities to do such a task.

However, before we start looking at Moses with judgement, we must first recognize that God was asking Him to do a seemingly impossible task. Moses was afraid, and by all humans standards, rightfully so. Would you or I have responded differently? You may say, “I am not sure. I have never been put in that kind of situation.” You are likely correct, but the truth is that most of us respond just like Moses when we are faced with mediocre tasks on the fear scale.

For example, God has called us to go and make disciples of all nations (Matthew 28:18-20) and many of us will not even talk with our friends and family about Jesus. How about (2 Timothy 3: 14-16), we are promised that scripture is suffient for training us up in righteousness and living a faithful Christ-honoring life. Most of us do not read our Bible. Even if we do, it is not very consistant. Instead we are trusting in something other than God’s word whether it be money, relationships, food, drugs, kids, success, and the list goes on. As a result, Many of us are finding ourselves in the list preceding this promise in 2 Timothy 3:1-13:

But understand this, that in the last days there will come times of difficulty. For people will be lovers of self, lovers of money, proud, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, heartless, unappeasable, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not loving good, treacherous, reckless, swollen with conceit, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God, having the appearance of godliness, but denying its power. Avoid such people. For among them are those who creep into households and capture weak women, burdened with sins and led astray by various passions, always learning and never able to arrive at a knowledge of the truth. Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men corrupted in mind and disqualified regarding the faith. But they will not get very far, for their folly will be plain to all, as was that of those two men. You, however, have followed my teaching, my conduct, my aim in life, my faith, my patience, my love, my steadfastness, my persecutions and sufferings that happened to me at Antioch, at Iconium, and at Lystra—which persecutions I endured; yet from them all the Lord rescued me. Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted, while evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived.

Questions for application: