Moving further into Exodus, we are now getting into Moses’s interaction with Pharaoh. Today we read chapters 5-8.
Know the Lord
The first thing that struck me was Pharaoh’s response in 5:2. “I do not know the Lord”.
I don’t like over-mentioning the fact that I was an atheist before the Lord reached out and brought me to Himself. The only reason I do so is to glorify God, that He would save His enemy.
Pharaoh’s attitude toward God was very similar to my own. Why would I obey a God I did not know? How could I call Him Lord, when I did not even recognize Him as my Savior?
Romans 6:20 points out, “When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the control of righteousness.”
So Pharaoh, and many of us, believes he can go on acting any way he chooses. Even when confronted with a direct command from the Almighty God, he thinks too highly of himself. Kings in Egypt thought of themselves as a deity. They wanted their people to worship them.
Have your priorities right
Today, most of us work for companies that treat us much better than Pharaoh treated the Israelites, but there is still a similarity.
Our employers want to provide us with our income, our healthcare, even much of our leisure activity. They want us to make them the center of our lives.
As Pharaoh states in 5:9, they want us to be so busy with company stuff, even masquerading as off hour’s recreation, that we are too busy to notice what God is saying to us.
To continue to grow, the company increases our goals and demands more effort.
It has been my job to help the agents I train become more efficient so that they can produce more output, like the bricks in Exodus 5, with no need to provide them as much straw. If we can improve sales efficiency, we won’t need as much spent on marketing efforts.
I will devise new ways to approach the sales process and test it. When it shows promise of increasing the results, we roll it out to the teams and they have to implement what we show them.
We call this enabling them. But what we end up doing is putting them under stress. They then are called into their managers’ offices to find out why they are not reaching the higher quotas.
I can almost hear them asking why I made them struggle in their performance.
God has a plan
God always has a bigger plan than we can see. In chapter 6, He assures them He is about to show Pharaoh His mighty hand.
Whenever we are going through a trial, we should try to figure out what God is doing.
We can trust Him, knowing it is for the greater glory. But, because we may not understand it, at first it causes anxiety.
Even though I remind myself that I should cast all my cares on Him (see 1 Peter 5:7), it doesn’t stop me from freaking out.
God is faithful, and He has provided me with a greater life than I could have imagined. He has given me much more than I need, while withholding the punishment I deserve.
Still, when those challenges seem insurmountable, I try to figure out if there is another way I can achieve the results I need.
Like Pharaoh having his magicians recreate the miracles that God is doing, I attempt to conjure up my own method.
That is when my life starts to reek like the Nile when it turns into blood.
We must have faith that God is at work and He will deliver us, just as He delivered Israel.
Instead of seeking signs and wonders, we must seek the Lord and walk with him. Even when someone else, even someone in control of our lives, like Pharaoh was in the days of Moses, is prohibiting us from moving.
If the Lord is telling us to go, why are we not moving?
What is God telling you? Are you feeling He’s leading you to a ministry or to contribute to a program?
Are your excuses not to respond as powerful as the God that is leading you?
