“‘Therefore tell the Israelites: I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from the forced labor of the Egyptians and rescue you from slavery to them. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and great acts of judgment. I will take you as my people, and I will be your God. You will know that I am the Lord your God, who brought you out from the forced labor of the Egyptians. I will bring you to the land that I swore to give Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and I will give it to you as a possession. I am the Lord.’ Moses told this to the Israelites, but they did not listen to him because of their broken spirit and hard labor.” (CSB – Read the chapter)

Have you ever been presented with a golden opportunity that you passed up because you just didn’t have the energy to take it? There are occasionally times in life when something comes along that looks incredible, but we don’t jump on it for one reason or another. Sometimes those reasons are good and understandable. Sometimes the people around us think we are certifiably insane for passing up on whatever it was. God, through Moses, was making some pretty incredible promises to the people of Israel here. Yet because Pharaoh had so broken their spirits, they wouldn’t believe any of it was really true. Let’s dig in a bit to what is going on here, and talk about staying encouraged when things seem bleak.

Let’s start with what God actually said to the people, and then we’ll get to their reaction to it. God actually gives Moses a prophecy here. It’s hard to catch at a glance, but it’s hiding there right in plain sight. God tells the people that they will know Him as the Lord their God “who brought you out from the forced labor of the Egyptians.” That would indeed be the way the people came to know Him. Over and over again throughout the rest of the narrative of the Old Testament, God is presented to us as the one who led the people of Israel from out of their bondage in the land of Egypt.

In other words, God isn’t merely telling the people here what was going to happen. He was making them a promise. This is actually a promise He makes to them twice. He does it once at the beginning of this passage and again in the middle. He tells them who He is and what He is going to do for them. Then, He tells them who He will be to them and how they will know Him. Repetition like this in the Scriptures is a way of emphasizing what has been said. Just like God had done with Moses to convince him to step out and be the leader of this whole venture, He was now telling the Israelites what was going to happen. He was giving them the end from the beginning. He wanted them to know Him as the God who is for them and who fulfills the promises He makes to them.

We have touched on this a bit before, but this is the kind of promise all of us wishes we could get from God. If we got such a clear affirmation of what His plans for us were, we would gladly follow Him wherever He leads. But the Israelites don’t buy it. They don’t want it. They got excited the first time Moses and Aaron cast a vision of freedom to them, but Pharaoh and the Egyptians were just too powerful. No, slavery was going to be their lot indefinitely into the future. It’s hard not to look at this and shake our heads in disbelief at how utterly unfaithful they were as a people. God was telling them what the outcome of this whole adventure was going to be, but they wouldn’t believe Him.

There is a bit of irony in this reaction on their part. Thinking back to Moses’ litany of objections to God’s initial call, this was one of the situations he laid out as a possible outcome he feared. He wanted God to call someone else precisely because of the chance of the people’s reacting like this. From Exodus 4:1: “Moses answered, ‘What if they won’t believe me and will not obey me but say, “The Lord did not appear to you”?'” And now, here he was facing this very outcome. The fact that Moses himself didn’t give up and go home after this is a testament to just how much he had grown in a relatively short amount of time. When we step out in obedience to God’s command on faith that He is who He says He is and will do what He says He will do it is remarkable just how fast our faith grows deeper and strong. That being said, and as we’ll see tomorrow, Lord willing, this reaction got at the heart of Moses’ insecurity, and he took some convincing to move forward again.

But the people aren’t there yet. They had gotten burned and weren’t interested in risking such an outcome again. They made a polite request through Moses and Aaron, and Pharaoh responded by slapping them down ruthlessly for it. A less polite request was likely to get them killed. They didn’t want to hear anything about freedom anymore.

Yet before we go about condemning them for their unfaithful, disbelieving hearts, let’s approach them with a bit more understanding. They couldn’t see the end from the beginning. Sure, they had God’s words through Moses, but those same words proved (to them) false last time. Why would they trust them this time? They couldn’t see the whole story. They just knew that their life was hard and didn’t show any signs of getting any easier by bucking against the system that held them so firmly in place. If we were in their shoes, we’d probably be right there with them, refusing to listen to Moses’ words.

Actually, before we puff up ourselves on our own faithfulness, let’s address a rather uncomfortable reality. We can see the end from the beginning. We have the Scriptures giving us the full context of human history from its beginning to its final and glorious end. We can see all the stories of God’s acting on behalf of His people in spite of odds that seem stacked against them. We see His overcoming all those who would oppose Him. He raises up and brings low for His purposes. We see His love put on display in a way no one could miss in Christ on the cross. We can marvel at the resurrection. We stand in awe of the vision John was given of the end of times. All of that is there for us to read and study and know.

And yet we don’t believe. We doubt. We refuse to follow because it seems too hard or risky. Our spirits get beaten down by rough circumstances and we can’t lift our heads to lay our eyes on Jesus. We falter and fail and fall hopelessly short of His righteousness. In other words, we’re no better than Israel was. Israel’s story is not an opportunity to pat ourselves on the back for how much better and more faithful we are, it is an occasion to look in an uncomfortable mirror that reminds us human nature is irritatingly consistent from one age to another. Knowledge isn’t our problem. Sin is. And the only solution to sin is the grace of Christ made available by His sacrifice on the cross. That is, the only solution is God’s solution.

Israel’s story in the Exodus then, doesn’t only give us reason to shake our heads with a rueful sigh that we haven’t gotten any better in more than 3,000 years of history. It is a reminder that God has always been in the business of saving people from sin and its consequences. We can trust in Him. And if we will, we will experience the freedom available in Christ. Let us acknowledge we aren’t any better than Israel, yes, but let us rejoice that God is the same yesterday, today, and forever. Receive Him today and live.