God Promises Deliverance

I just love the heading of Chapter 6 God Promises Deliverance I mean what a beautiful beginning to a chapter.

We left off 2 weeks ago with Moses asking the hard question of :  “Why Lord, why have you brought trouble on this people? Is this why you sent me? (woe is me is this the only reason I was brought here to do nothing, but bring trouble? What’s the point?) Ever since I went to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has brought trouble on this people, and you have not rescued your people at all (like you promised what gives? Why did we even bother? So what’s the point? Why come here if nothing was going to happen and all we were going to do was cause trouble? And now no one likes great this is going real well Lord, now what?)

And we begin Chapter 6 with God answering Moses with “Now you will see what I will do to Pharaoh” I don’t know about you but if I were Pharaoh I would be scared (actually to be fair Pharaoh has no idea this conversation is happening so let’s reverse this) If I were Moses I would be terrified for Pharaoh.  There are a few people in life that I think God should be like let me show you my full power (no it isn’t right and yes I am judging and yes I will repent of that later) That being said there are a few. Even those few people don’t deserve to have the Lord Almighty say, “Now you (Sara Brown) will see what I (the Lord Almighty) will do to (insert the people Sara Brown feels deserve this punishment) to Pharaoh.” That gives me the chills just writing it. Then the Lord continues, “Because of my might hand he will let them go; because of my might hand he will drive them out of his country.” I love this. The Lord is leaving no doubt as to who will be responsible for letting His people go. It will be by His mighty hand and there will be NO DOUBT as to why Pharaoh let HIS (AKA the Lord’s) people go because it will be down “by my mighty hand”. Whew wee 

And here it comes again my favorite quote as if we were in doubt on who the Lord is: God also said to Moses, “I am the LORD (Dang signed sealed and delivered you can take it to the bank he is declaring once again to clear it up who he is) I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob as God Almighty (Wow just wow reading that man could you imagine being one of those blessed people and now Moses is one of them), but by my name the LORD I did not make myself fully known to them (I struggled with this and had to go back and re-read and re-read those accounts and I promise you I will do a follow up post on that soon more research needs to be done). I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, where they resided as foreigners. Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the Israelites, whom the Egyptians are enslaving, and I have remembered my covenant.”

Again God reminds the people and Moses that He remembers His promise and that He has heard their groaning (crying and pleading) and He will not forget His promise to them. This right here is some powerful stuff.

He goes on to make 7 I statements in the form of promises to the people of Israel that he wants Moses to tell them in the next paragraph that are important I am going to break them down for you so that you the reader can see them more clearly. He starts off again by saying: I am the LORD and:

1. I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians.

2. I will free you from being slaves to them

3. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgement.

4. I will take you as my own people

5. 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

6. I will bring you to the land I swore with uplifted hand to give to Abraham to Isaac and to Jacob.

7. I will give it to you as possession.

I am the LORD.

Wow 7 promises from God 7 I am statements from the LORD himself delivered and guaranteed to the people from Moses the prophet. Yet do the people respond in a positive uplifting way?

Nope they are just the opposite in fact they do not listen to Moses because of their discouragement and harsh labor… ponder that for a moment. Have you ever been in a situation that was so discouraging that you just couldn’t see the light shining in? or heard that one friend who was being uplifting telling you the truth, speaking the truth, spreading love because you were so discourage you couldn’t even bear to think of the positive? That’s where the Israelites were at. After all life while bad was livable they were slaves yes, but they were still able to live a life, until this Moses character came in and spouted off about God wanting them to be free and a purpose greater then this a life more exciting than this, freedom that existed outside of this and now look at life. Where had all this great talk gotten them? Where was God now? What was He doing? Why was he taking his precious time? Wasn’t he ALL POWERFUL, ALL MIGHTY couldn’t he just smite Pharaoh and be done with it all? What’s with this game Moses was playing all he was doing was making life… harder, struggles more unbearable, life more difficult. Was it really worth all this for God to prove he was I Am?

And if that wasn’t bad enough when Moses reports back to God that the people weren’t buying God wants him to go to Pharaoh and tell him to “Let the Israelites out of his country” Moses was like 

Doubt comes flooding back in (you remember that topic from here right) well beautiful doubt #3 raises it’s wonderful head “If the Israelites will not listen to me, why would Pharaoh listen to me?” (And let’s sprinkle in some of doubt # 4 for good measure because if the enemy is going to mess with our heads he’s going to do it to the ninth degree right?) “Since I speak with faltering lips?”

Poor Moses it doesn't appear that he can win in this situation. In fact it rather feel hopeless. 

Have you felt in this boat? God is telling you one thing and the world is telling you another? Or worse you friends and family are saying No? How have you dealt with it? 

We are going to work through 1/2 of the plagues (there are 10 after all) this week and next I hope. And I will continue to research how Abraham, Issac and Jacob did not fully know God (Chapter 6 vs. 3 thoughts welcomed). Let me know what you thought about today by leaving a comment here. Talk to you guys soon as we dig deeper into Exodus!

Also just a reminder anything in an (is totally my voice and interpretation nothing more) just wanted to throw that out there.