‹ Back

Exodus 5:15-21. Moses and Aaron have gone to Pharaoh and asked for the Israelites to be given three days to journey into the wilderness and offer sacrifice to the Lord. Pharaoh says no and says, basically, if the Israelites have that kind of time on their hands, then they don't have enough to do. He decides to take away the straw that they use to make the bricks, and make them have to go gather it themselves, but their required brick production will not be decreased. So, in this passage, the workers are angry and upset - now they have to work so much harder, and it will be virtually impossible to produce the same number of bricks. They are furious with Moses and Aaron for getting them into this position - they never asked for time off to go worship - Moses and Aaron took that on themselves and made their plight even worse!

 

It is so easy, when we know the story and know the outcome, when we know what God is going to accomplish, to not get the full effect of a small part of the story - to not fully understand the angst and uncertainty, on the part of all the characters, in the moment. Moses did not want to do any of this - God called him away from the home that he had made for himself and back to Egypt to, basically, antagonize the Pharaoh into letting the Israelites go. Being holy, Moses obeyed, but he was not always (or even usually) happy about it! The Israelites didn't want it, either. They were, for the most part, resigned to being slaves.

 

That is the way it works, I have learned. God often calls us to do things we don't want to do, and we don't know what he is trying to accomplish through us, so we often feel as though we are not accomplishing what we thought he was trying to do. But that's our pride, assuming we have God's purpose figured out. So when Moses is told by God to go ask Pharaoh to let the Israelites go worship, he probably assumed that meant that God wanted Pharaoh to let the Israelites go worship (I would have)! But, when Moses does this, relying on the Lord to see it through, Pharaoh not only refuses, but also increases the Israelites' workload. So Moses must have been like "What the heck, God? Why do you tell me to do something and then it all goes bad and everyone is mad at me?" And the people must have been like "What the heck Moses? Why do you have to come here making trouble for us? If God was really talking to you, and telling you to do these things, our lives would certainly be getting better, not worse!" But Moses doesn't know God's end game, the total freedom of his people! The Israelites know it even less - God is not speaking to them, they're just trying to live their lives, and all of a sudden Moses comes back and starts making trouble and making their lives so much worse. They do not know the story - they are in it. They don't know that God doesn't just want them to be slaves with three vacation days, he wants their total freedom!

 

God works through us and the world he has created to accomplish his plan. So, in order to gain his people's freedom, he starts small - asking Pharaoh, through Moses, for worship time for the people. Pharaoh has free will here, he could have said okay. (We don't know how the story would have played out then, but we can be certain that the Israelites would have been freed eventually anyway, since that was God's will.) This gets back to God not imposing his will on us - we all have free will - but using our choices, good or bad, for his purposes.

 

Pharaoh has to learn that Moses really is speaking for God - not "a god", like the Egyptians had, but "the God" - the only one. (Remember, Pharaoh is a child of God too, although his part in salvation history comes before that was revealed to him, or Moses, or the Jews, or us.) Moses has to learn to trust God - even when things don't play out the way he thinks that they will or should. And the people have to learn both of these things - that Moses is speaking for God, and that they therefore have to trust Moses.

 

We have to learn all of these things, as well. We are the characters in the story now. We don't know the ultimate outcome, but we know the promise. Often, we pray and pray and don't see the resolution to our issue as we see it, or things get even worse. That does not mean we are not being answered - it means God has something much better in store for us. In the world now there is so much strife and suffering, and it often seems things are getting worse. Instead of losing hope, or getting angry at people who seem not to be helping (and maybe they are, but we can't see it, like Moses and Aaron😉), just trust God. He protects those who take refuge in him, and he has all of our ultimate good in mind. It truly is freedom to trust him.

 

Edited 4/29/21 to correct typo