It can be extremely frustrating when you sense that people are not really listening to you. And it is especially frustrating when people aren't listening to you who really should be listening to you. Parents regularly face this with their kids. Kids should listen to their parents. But many times they don't, and this can be frustrating as we then see them going in directions that we know they will later regret.
However, just because your kids aren't listening to you one day does not mean that you stop being their parent. In fact, the mark of a good parent is when you are able to still lead and guide your children even when they aren't really listening to you. You do so because you are their parent, and that always remains the same, even when they aren't listening to you.
What we have in Exodus 4:18-6:30 is a whole section of Scripture where God is setting things up to save his people, the Israelites. During this process they experience some apparent setbacks and face some major difficulties. The Israelites soon become frustrated and begin to doubt God and even stop listening to what he was telling them.
So what does God do? Well, just because God's people aren't listening to God doesn't make God any less their God. Instead, God makes clear that the situation they were facing would be an occasion for them to see just much God truly is God, and specifically their God. This is in essence the main theme for this section of Scripture – to show that God is the Lord God, and he is the Lord God especially for the salvation of his people.
Some examples of people not listening to God in this section of Scripture are:
1. Moses' failure to circumcise his son (Exodus 4:24-26). Circumcision was a required rite for God's people. It was a sign of the covenant between God and Israel. Moses' failure to obey God in circumcising his son was essentially a rejection of this covenant. God was fully ready to judge Moses for this but Moses gets saved when his wife steps in and does what Moses was supposed to have already done.
2. Pharaoh rejects God's command to let Israel go. Pharaoh saw himself as equal to the Lord (see his sarcastic response in Exodus 5:2). For Pharaoh there is no "thus says the Lord" (Exodus 5:2), there is only "thus says Pharaoh" (Exodus 5:10). Pharaoh reinforces this point by making the Israelites work even harder, forcing them to find straw in order to make their daily quota of bricks (Exodus 5:10-11).
3. The Israelites doubt God in the wake of Pharaoh's actions, even though they had already witnessed several powerful signs that God was with Aaron and Moses (see Exodus 4:29-31). It's as if they no longer saw themselves as God's people but as Pharaoh's slaves, and so their main concern was to make sure that things didn't get worse for them as slaves.
4. Moses again doubts God after all these setbacks. At this point he wonders why God sent him to Egypt in the first place!
God in response shows Moses how none of these setbacks will get in the way of his plans. God is still God, and he is still in charge. Several times in Exodus 6:1-8 God states, "I am the Lord." God is stating that everything that has happened and will happen is meant first and foremost to remind his people and to show the world that he alone is the Lord God. There are also a number of "I will" statements in these verses. God is stating his intention to follow through on everything he's promised concerning his people. He will save and redeem them, he will adopt them as his own people, and he will bless them. All of this will be entirely God's work. God will get the credit for every aspect of their salvation and future blessing.
The Israelites sadly remained discouraged and depressed, even after Moses relayed God's words to them (Exodus 6:9-13). Difficult situations can deeply affect us and often threaten to break our spirit. However, God still speaks. God still gave the charge to Moses to lead his people out of Egypt. He still intended to accomplish his purposes.
In the end, it is all about God. He alone is the Lord God - self-existing, self-sustaining, mighty and strong, able to do all that he wants, even to a supposedly powerful man like Pharaoh. And this powerful, mighty, Lord God shows who he is especially in relationship to his people, and especially when he acts to save his people for himself. He does this even when they don't listen to him and doubt him.
This is the kind of thing God has always done and still does today. God still declares, "I am God. I am the Lord God. There is no other besides me. And I am the Lord God who is still shaping and forming a people for himself." Today the people of God are called the church. And the Bible tells us great things about the church – for example, that we are God's children and that we are God's special possession. But all those things are true of the church not because of any great listening habits on our end. They are true not because we are so much smarter or more spiritual than the Israelites were. No, God's people are made God's specially chosen and blessed people in the same way that it has always happened, namely, through God taking the initiative and acting as God for the saving sake of his people.
See for example Romans 8:28-32. Verse 28 tells us how "all things" are brought together for good for God's people. All things includes all our difficult circumstances. It includes all the times we disobey God and all the times we fail to listen to God. God is able to take all those things and still work out good for us. Why is this? Because we were "called according to his purpose."
Indeed, God foreknew us and predestined us (v.29) so that ultimately we might say, "If God is for us, who can be against us?" (v.31). What we are seeing here is God's relentless, dedicated pursuit of his people. There is nothing that can get in the way of God grabbing people for himself. This is why Jesus came. He came because God sent him, so that through Jesus God might forever secure a people for himself, sons and daughters who are siblings with Christ in God's family.
As a believer in Christ, you may at times feel unsure about whether or not you belong to God. You may doubt whether or not God is truly your God and if he has acted to save you. You may feel like God really has forgotten all about you and that he's not really on top of things, especially when it comes to your life. So where can we find the assurance we need? It's Jesus who gives it to us in John 6:37, "All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out."
Thus, God gets all the credit for saving us and keeping us saved as his people and him as our God. And thus, we have all the security and assurance we need for our salvation and all the blessings that God promises for those he saves through Jesus. We also have the encouragement and motivation we need in order to really live and stand out in our world as God's people.
Truly, only a Lord God could save a people like us! In fact, the initial failures of Moses and Aaron set things up so that it would be clear that it was the LORD GOD who was saving his people, and it is only the LORD GOD who is able to save his people.
2 comments:
Thanks for this, Vermon. Assurance is often hard to come by. Thank God our status with him is not ours to keep.
I could not help but recall a quote from Carson and Woodbridge's fine novel Letters Along the Way.
"Since becoming a Christian, you have become more and more aware of the sin in your life, and you are discouraged by it. But what discourages you, I see as a sign of life—not the sin itself, but the fact that you are discouraged by it. If you professed faith in Christ and it did not make any difference to your values, personal ethics, and goals, I would begin to wonder if your profession of faith in Christ was spurious (there are certainly instances of spurious faith in the Bible—for instance, John 2:23-25; 8:31ff.).
But if you have come to trust Christ, then growth in Him is always attended by deepening realization that you are not as good as you once thought you were, that the human heart is frighteningly deceptive and capable of astonishing depths of selfishness and evil. As you discover these things about yourself, the objective ground of your assurance must always remain unfalteringly the same: ‘if anybody does sin we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One’ (1 John 2:1). Let your confidence rest fully in that simple and profound truth.
What you will discover with time is that although you are not as holy as you would like to be or as blameless as you should be, by God’s grace you are not what you were. You look back and regret things you have said and thought and done as a Christian; you are embarrassed perhaps by the things you failed to think and say and do. But you also look back and testify with gratitude that because of the grace of God in your life, you are not what you were. And thus, unobtrusively, the subjective grounds of assurance also lend their quiet support."
(p. 23)
A great quote. Thanks for posting that Paul.
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