THROUGH THE BIBLE - Exodus 5..

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com. That's cornerstonerbc.com. So we come to our time of corporate reading, and we're in Exodus chapter 5. So I invite you to open up the Bibles or your Bibles to Exodus chapter 5, and we'll read the chapter together, starting from verse 1.

Afterward, Moses and Aaron went and said to Pharaoh, Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may hold a feast to me in the wilderness. But Pharaoh said, Who is the Lord that I should obey His voice and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, and moreover, I will not let Israel go. Then they said, The God of the Hebrews has met with us. Please let us go a three-day journey into the wilderness that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God, lest He fall upon us with pestilence or with the sword.

But the king of Egypt said to them, Moses and Aaron, why do you take the people away from their work? Get back to your burdens. And Pharaoh said, behold, the people of the land are now many, and you make them rest from their burdens. The same day, Pharaoh commanded the taskmasters of the people and their foremen, you shall no longer give the people straw to make bricks. As in the past, let them go and gather straw for themselves.

The number of bricks that they made in the past you shall impose on them. You shall by no means reduce it for they are idle. Therefore they cry, let us go and offer sacrifices or sacrifice to our God. Let heavier work be laid on the men that they may labor at it and pay no regard to lying words. So the taskmaster and the foreman of the people went out and said to the people, thus says Pharaoh, I will not give you straw.

Go and get your straw yourselves wherever you can find it. But your work will not be reduced in the least. So the people were scattered throughout all the land of Egypt to gather stubble for straw. The taskmaster or masters were urgent, saying, Complete your work, your daily task, each day, as when there was straw. And the foreman of the people of Israel, whom Pharaoh's taskmasters had set over them, were beaten and were asked, Why have you not done all your task of making bricks today and yesterday and in the past?

Then the foreman of the people of Israel came and cried to Pharaoh, Why do you treat your servants like this? No straw is given to your servants, yet they say to us, Make bricks. And behold, Your servants are beaten, but the fault is in your own people. But he said, you are idle. You are idle.

That is why you say, let us go and sacrifice to the Lord. Go now and work. No straw will be given you, but you must still deliver the same number of bricks. The foreman of the people of Israel saw that they were in trouble when they said, you shall by no means reduce your number of bricks, your daily tasks each day. They met Moses and Aaron who were waiting for them as they came out from Pharaoh and they said to them, The Lord look on you and judge, because you have made us stink in the sight of Pharaoh and his servants, and have put a sword in their hand to kill us.

Then Moses turned to the Lord and said, O Lord, why have you done evil to these people? Why did you ever send me? For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has done evil to these people. And you have not delivered your people at all. This is the word of the Lord.

Well, there's no doubt what we have before us is the extremity of human experience. From the closing words in chapter four, we have the people who have a great sense of hope and a joyful expectation of what's to come. And now here, towards the closing of chapter five, we see really gut-wrenching misery from bliss to despair in only a matter of days. But don't for a moment think that this is an experience that only these people have experienced or it's set only in that context, because we all know, if we're honest with ourselves, that every one of us has experienced the wonderful highs, those mountain tops of our Christian faith. And we've also experienced the lows, the valleys, the miserable places.

This evening, by God's grace, I hope from this chapter that we can learn much from Moses and the Israelites, how they dealt with the situation before them. And we can learn these lessons that will remind us, on one hand, the frailty of humanity, and on the other, the supreme sovereignty of God over all things. Now, the last time our brother took us through chapter 4 last week, we see that that was the high point. At least he ended on the high point. I want to remind you what was said, because Moses and Aaron came before the people of Israel and the elders.

And Aaron says this, he spoke all the words. This is verse 31, chapter 4. Aaron spoke all the words that the Lord had spoken to Moses and did the signs in the sight of the people. And the people believed. And when they heard that the Lord had visited the people of Israel, that He had seen their affliction, they bowed their heads and worshipped.

Finally, finally, the Lord God has heard our prayers. Finally, after 400 years of captivity, under this harsh treatment, under this foreign pagan king, God hears our cries and he decides to deliver us from our affliction through this prophet he's chosen, this prophet Moses. He'll rescue us from this bondage and he'll set us to the land that is flowing with milk and honey, that land that was promised to our fathers many, many years ago. And that's the last thing we hear of in chapter four. but their joy is short-lived.

Because when Moses and Aaron meet with Pharaoh and request a three-day excursion into the wilderness to sacrifice to God, that is to worship God, their appeal is met with much hostility. And what seems to be a reasonable request is completely denied. I do not know the Lord, Pharaoh says. It's a true statement. He had a pantheon of gods.

Many gods, in fact, that the Egyptians would worship. Pharaoh considered himself to be a god in these days also. So the true God of Israel, the only true God, was unknown to him. He's correct in saying that. But his statement seemed a little, I think, belittling or even patronizing.

There's smugness in his voice. What sort of God, he's thinking, would allow his people? What sort of God would allow his people to be slaves for 400 years and not do anything about it? I don't know this God, he's thinking. And even if I did, he's no match.

He's no match to the gods of Egypt. Why? Because the god of Egypt or the gods of Egypt, there are no gods at all. But he's thinking these words are more powerful because we are the masters over these people who supposedly have this God. This is probably what's working in his mind.

But at the moment when we read this passive, there might be something else working in your own mind as well. And that is, why would God command Moses to speak to Pharaoh and ask for a three day excursion into the wilderness when God actually had mandated that he will indefinitely free his people from bondage? Why is that? Some have suggested, believe it or not, deception. Now, we know that's not the case.

Our God does not deceive. Our God is not man that he should lie. Numbers 23, 19. So it's definitely not deception. But I believe that God was simply doing something.

He was putting something on display. And I believe he's putting the wickedness and the sinful heart of Pharaoh on display for his people to see. You see, many historians would note that there are many ancient documents or documents that they have access to that show that slaves were actually allowed every once in a while to request from their master time away so they could go to their sacred places and worship or sacrifice to their gods. This is not an uncommon thing. And it's not an unreasonable request.

Pharaoh is an unreasonable man. And he flat out denies that request. and exposes his wickedness. Now deeming his slaves to be completely lazy, and he says in verse 9 that they speak lies, and they are the words of our Lord God. Pharaoh becomes nasty and unreasonable, and he places on the Israelites some very heavy burdens.

The same amount of bricks were to be made, but without straw. Now, the Egyptians would provide the straw for the Israelites. But now he says, no more. You're going to provide your own straw. So we see or hear in the text that the Israelites would be scrummaging throughout the land to find some straw, some stubble that they can bring back and mix with the clay.

Because the straw was like a hardening material to make the clay or the bricks harder than than usually would be needed in extreme weather in Egypt. But anyway, they weren't provided by the Egyptians. So the Israelites were meant or were mandated to go and do these things to find the hay. And their quota was not reduced. They were expected to make the same amount of bricks even though their conditions were hardened.

How is that fair? It's not fair. The Pharaoh is an evil man. He's an unreasonable man. So what does he do?

The quota is not met. He beats the foreman, the Hebrew foreman that is said to be part of the Israelite people. And the conditions now we see have gone from bad to really bad, bad to worse. But brothers and sisters, what I want to see this evening is how do these people respond? How do the Israelites respond?

And how does Moses respond? And what can we learn from their response? We find the foremans weren't very happy. They speak to Moses and Aaron in verse 21. It's almost, in their response to them, it's almost like them saying, Moses, we wish you never came.

We wish you didn't come back to Egypt because you've made things worse than they were before. In other words, Pharaoh didn't inflict as bad conditions as now that you have by speaking to Pharaoh. And then they say something along the lines of, Moses, You put a sword in his hand, and that's synonymous to saying, our blood is on your head, Moses. The people reject him. Sure, their situation was rough, but how could these people make a 180 degree turn in such a short period of time?

Have they so forgotten the God's promises and the promises he set before them just earlier on, only a few days before, that he's heard their afflictions? Did they really think that God is that fickle, that He's forgotten them already? They believed back then. Verse 31 tells us of the previous chapter that the people believed and they worshipped God. Was this true faith or was it just emotions?

Beloved, we ought to remember the parable of the soils in Mark chapter 4. And in particular, I'm thinking of the soil that hit the rocky ground that Jesus speaks of in verse 16 and 17. Listen to what he says. And these are the ones sown on rocky ground, the one who, when they hear the word, immediately receive it with joy, and they have no root in themselves but endure for a while, then tribulation or persecution arises on the account of the word, immediately they fall away. Realize how it's after tribulation or persecution that faith is seen for what it really is.

Or as the Apostle Peter would say, that it is the testing through fire that proves one's faith genuine. And beloved, every one of us will walk through the fire in one degree or another. Every one of us will have our faith tested. I pray that it will be tested and seen to be true. If anyone knows, if anyone knows testing, in the Bible we know that Job knows testing.

He knows how hot the fire, that furnace that tests the faith can be. Listen to what he says in Job in the 23rd chapter. He says, when He, that is God, has tried me, when He's tested me, when He's put me through the fire, I shall come out as God. Testing our faith is essential. It either reveals counterfeit faith or genuine faith.

And if it's genuine, it's strengthening through the suffering, it's strengthened through the suffering, it's strengthened and it's matured as a result of the testing. And that's grace, beloved. As one of my professors in seminary once said, he said, if you're in the midst of suffering and you cry out to God, take this away. Relieve me from the suffering. God can answer one or two ways.

This is how Christians ought to take it. Either you can say yes, or you can say grow. Yes or grow. Because indeed, when God says no, he's saying grow. And right here to the Israelites and to Moses, God is saying, grow.

That's his answer. Moses takes the whole situation badly. We see this in the text. The last two verses are really telling about how Moses is at this point. We can essentially learn two things from Moses's actions.

One, we should emulate and the other we must avoid. You see, Moses does the right thing, but he does it with the wrong attitude. We'll start with the second one first, his attitude. Moses has allowed the surrounding circumstances to interpret the situation he's in, rather than trusting in the promises of God. He'd met the great I Am, and he knew his promises.

And he knew that the journey was not going to be easy. He knew that that when he confronts Pharaoh, that Pharaoh is not going to agree straight away. God has already given him the heads up on this. You remember in the previous chapter where God says, I will harden Pharaoh's heart and he will not let my people go. This is no surprise to Moses.

He knew. And what does he expect from a heart that's now harder than before? What do you expect from a hardened heart? Of course, more stubbornness, more wickedness, more cruelty. And that's exactly what we get in the case of Pharaoh.

But he's frail. This is Moses' frail humanity is exposed here, and he's weak, despite knowing all these things. So Moses interprets the events and the rejection of the people as a failure. Failure on his behalf, because he says to God, why did you send me? There's regret in that statement, but even worse, beloved, Failure and accusation on God's behalf.

Why have you done this evil to these people, he says. And then he goes on and says, you have not delivered your people at all. The last words of this chapter. You, O God, have not delivered these people at all. He accuses God of being unfaithful to his promises.

Now God was well within His right to pour out His wrath on Moses in that moment. But He doesn't. He's so gracious. And we'll explore His response in chapter 6 next week by God's grace. But for now...

Moses is broken. He's in despair. Why? Because he hasn't explicitly trusted in the promises of God. Now that's, beloved, what not to do.

But Moses does something that we should all emulate. Something we should all do. Something that every child of God ought to be doing as a natural instinct. When his world was crumbling around him, He was accused and rejected by his own people, rejected by Pharaoh. Where does Moses go?

His heart drew him to God. He knew there's only one place he can find solace for his soul. He knew there's only one place where he can find answers to his or for his calamity. One place where he can get answers about the salvation of his people that God had promised. One place and one place only.

Now he does it with the wrong attitude. What he said is wrong. Don't get me wrong. Honesty is important, but it must come with reverence when you come before the Holy God. Moses had absolutely no right to accuse God the way he accused Him.

But like a child who's fearful and anxious, who runs to the comfort of the embrace that he finds, of his mother or his father, Moses runs to God. This is the evidence of true faith. Because even though he sins in his approach, Moses knows, unlike the gods, the false gods that he grew up in Egypt, all who are dead, by the way, no gods at all, the God he serves is a living God. He can make his complaint to Him because He's a God who hears everything. He's a God who sees everything.

He's a God who knows everything. And if you remember back in Exodus chapter 2, that chapter concludes with those truths. In other words, the great I Am is a God who's sovereign over all things. Who else can Moses turn to in his time of despair? Who else can he run to in this time where he feels broken, where everyone else has rejected him?

He doesn't know where to go or what to do. Who else can he turn to? Beloved, who else can we turn to in every circumstance of our life? We turn to the Sovereign of the Universe, in His Son, Jesus Christ. We turn to Him alone.

Amen.