And God heard their groaning, and God remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. And God looked upon the children of Israel, and God had respect unto them. See, a lot has happened. If you think about the first two chapters of Exodus, a lot has happened, a lot of years have passed. The children of Israel have gone from a favored people protected by Joseph and his reputation to an oppressed people. hated by the king. They were oppressed, they were enslaved. He ordered the murder of the male children under the cruel regime of a brutal God-hating king. Then we see the birth of Moses. And then you see Moses placed in Pharaoh's home and you think, well, God is gonna work now. Now God has rescued this baby and now he's gonna be raised in Pharaoh's house and now something's gonna happen. But then you see Moses go and he falls apart and steps out too soon and now he runs and hides in the wilderness. So now they're right back to where they started. After Moses goes to the wilderness, they're right back to where they were. Bondage suffering so they got 40 more years from that point until you get to the end of the chapter of Suffering 40 more years of bondage 40 more years of sign and growing The true turning point was not when Moses decided it was time and he rose up and said I'm gonna lead God's people the true turning point was not when somebody said, you know, somebody's got to do something and stepped out and The true turning point comes at the end of chapter number two. It wasn't Moses that started a revolution. It wasn't Moses that started an exodus. His starting ended in failure. It was God. It was God that made that turning point. The last three verses of this chapter set the stage for everything else that's to come. Human effort had done all that it could do, and it left them right back where they started in bondage. A man that had the power, the boldness, the wisdom, the zeal, he couldn't do anything. But here is the turning point, whenever God heard the prayers of His people. So far, in chapters 1 and 2, all we've seen is what's happened on earth. That's all we've looked at, is we've seen what Joseph did, we've seen what the Pharaoh did, we've seen what Moses' family did, we've seen nothing but what's happened upon the earth. Well, in this transition, it goes from the earth to heaven. We get a glimpse of pain from the perspective of earth, don't we? That's all we've seen so far is all this bad thing happening to Israel, all from the perspective of earth. But then in verse 24, it says, And God heard. And then we're transported into heaven. And from there we get a perspective of the pain of the people of God from the heavenly perspective. So we are transported in that one verse from the pain, what it looks like as you experience it, to what it looks like from heaven and how we can know that God hears us. So we have a perspective of pain from earth and a perspective of pain from heaven. And I wanted to continue these series of messages on encouragement this morning from the book of Exodus as we consider the subject of encouragement to persevering prayer in suffering. Encouragement for us to persevere in our prayer as we suffer. in this life, that there are problems and there are trials in this life that we must endure. So the Bible tells us here that we must persevere in our prayers unto God, even when it seems like our prayers aren't being heard, even when it seems like nothing has happened. 40 years is a long time to pray and cry out for deliverance, with seemingly nothing moving in any direction whatsoever. So let's look first at the pain from the perspective of earth. We have this in verse 23. And it came to pass in the process of time that the king of Egypt died, and the children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage, and they cried, and their cry came up unto God by reason of bondage. So I like that phrase, and it came to pass in the process of time. It came to pass tells us that God has ordained it. that it was happening, it was coming to pass, just like it was planned to do. It didn't randomly happen, but it was coming to pass. It was coming together as God had orchestrated it. Then it says, in the process of time, as God has planned it. So, it's coming to pass as God has ordained it, and in the process of time, in the wheels of time spinning and moving, it is happening just the way that it's supposed to do. This process that God has planned out from the beginning is unfolding and unraveling just as God has ordained it. So this was not just a turn of phrase to change the subject here. It came to pass in process of time. It is happening and unfolding just like it's supposed to. The events in our life always come to pass as they have been ordained to do so. It's always coming to pass. Time is always passing. Sometimes it passes too fast for us and depending on how old you are, time passes too slow for some other people. It's either going by too fast or going by too slow. But really, time passes at the same pace, and it's at the pace that God has ordained for us, that it is unfolding, that when you're young, you can't wait till you grow up, and then when you get older, you wish you could put it on the brakes on time, right? But it unfolds, it happens, as God has ordained it to come to pass. Time passes as God has ordained it, but our God is eternal. God is spirit. So He's not bound by anything. God is not bound by space. He's spirit. He's not bound by a body. He's spirit. He's not bound by time. God is outside of time, as impossible as that is for us to fathom. God was before time itself. He is eternal. There's no beginning and there's no ending to God. So things come to pass as he orchestrates them, not as he sees it unfold. So we look at it and say things are coming to pass, things are in the process of time. We watch things unfold in our lives, but God doesn't watch things unfold. God is eternal and without limits. So it comes to pass, as it always does, in the process of time as God has ordained it. And that's a comforting thought. It's mind-blowing, but it should comfort you to remember that God doesn't see into the future, but He is ever-present and above time itself, and nothing can or does take God by surprise. He has ordained the end from the beginning. So as Pharaoh forgot Joseph, or didn't know Joseph, rather, and as Pharaoh turned against the people of God, and as the people of God suffered, God wasn't in heaven watching it unfold, trying to adjust and trying to plan. No, this was all ordained. This was all in God's plan from the very beginning. And it came to the pass, it says, in the process of time, that the king of Egypt died. Not a day sooner or not a day later, but in God's process of time, it came to pass that his day had come to an end. This evil schemer, this brutal king fell into the hands of an angry God. His time had come. A lot of days had passed, and he has come the way of all the earth, and he has met his God. He was so powerful that he could call a meeting and plan the extermination of the whole people. He ordered the slaughter of baby boys at a whim. He spoke and nations listened. He was one of the most powerful people on earth at this time. And the next Pharaoh would be even more powerful, but this great and powerful king who spoke and people listened, who gave edicts and people trembled. died in the process of time. There was nothing that he could do, no science that could extend his life. There was nothing that he could do to move that life one day beyond those bounds that God had ordained. It came to pass that the king of Egypt died. The man who wanted Moses' life, the man who could raise him in his own house, then would have killed him like a criminal. the hater of God's people, this bitter king who bore enmity against Moses for 40 years. Moses stayed in the wilderness until this Pharaoh died. For 40 years, he held a grudge, a hated grudge that would have put Moses to death 39 years after the slaughter of that Egyptian slave. He still was angry and bitter against Moses. He was a hater of God's people. But now the human obstacle for Moses's return is dead. The Pharaoh was that obstacle, now he's gone. No matter how powerful a person is, we're mortal. And there's coming to pass a day that we will all go the way of the earth and we will all die and face our God. And God is no respecter of persons in this regard. Pharaoh lived his life and God gave him a long life, but it doesn't matter what position you are or what you have in life. We saw the last couple of weeks, President Bush died. It doesn't matter what he did in this life. It doesn't matter the height of power he reached. God is no respecter of persons. And whether you are at the height of power or nobody ever knows your name, that you must stand before your God. And so he died in the process of time. His life, he lived his life and God extended his life and God gave him every day. But the days of the righteous and the days of the wicked, both are ordained and numbered by God. It says, it came to pass in the process of time, so God has prepared Moses to lead his people. As all this was happening, it was coming to pass that Moses is prepared. So we looked two weeks ago and we saw that God had prepared Moses out in the desert, preparing the sheep. So the king of Egypt had to live and keep Moses away so Moses could be prepared. God was also preparing the people to receive Moses under the heavy hand of Pharaoh. And now the generation was born and will come to age that will leave Egypt, right? So all those people that you read about in the Exodus, the ones that murmured and the ones that complained, they had to be born, they had to live under a cruel Pharaoh. God was not only preparing Moses, and preparing Pharaoh, but he's preparing Israel, and preparing those people to go into the wilderness. God has prepared Pharaoh, the other Pharaoh, the next Pharaoh, to be raised up, to come to power. It came to pass. Romans chapter 9 and verse 17 tells us that it came to pass. So as we look at things from earth, we also see these things have been ordained by God. In Romans 9, verse 17, it says this. For the scripture saith unto Pharaoh, even for this same purpose, now this isn't the Pharaoh that died, it's the next one. Even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might show my power in thee, that my name might be declared throughout all the earth. Why did all this happen? Why did one Pharaoh die and another one raise at this precise time? Why did it come to pass this way? God said that he had to raise this Pharaoh up for a purpose. That he would show his power on the earth. Therefore hath he mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth. Thou wilt say unto me, then unto me, why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will? Nay, but, O man, who art thou that replies against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, why hast thou made me thus? Hath not the potter power over the clay of the same lump to make one vessel into honor and another into dishonor? What if God, willing to show His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction, and that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy which He hath aforeprepared on the glory?" So it's coming to pass that God is raising up vessels of honor and vessels of destruction. It's coming to pass just as God had planned that His name would be made great throughout all the earth. Now how could anyone have known what was about to happen? When we read in our text that the children of Israel sighed by reason of bondage, they couldn't have known what was about to happen. They couldn't have known why God had them in bondage or why one Pharaoh died and another one was raised up. They could not have known all the parts that were coming to play. But because God has told us, and because we can look back from history, we can see how this is all working together. We can see why God raised him up, that he might receive honor and glory. We can see why God and how God dealt with Moses. But at that moment, in that time, the children of Israel suffered, they could not understand and see how this was playing out. Likewise, we can't see how things play out in our lives and may never be able to see how things will play out in our lives. We have to trust that the same God is working things out in our life, that He is still Almighty. Things still come to pass in the process of time. So this gives us an encouragement to trust in our God. Now we get to the praying part here. It says that they sighed. by reason of the bondage, and they cried, and their cry came up by reason of the bondage. So there's more of that repetition. They sighed and they cried, and it was because of that bondage. So it's showing us how hard it was and how rough it was. When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice, but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn. It says in Proverbs 29 too. And the people were mourning. Genesis ends with joy. It ends with reconciliation of the brothers and and Joseph it ends with Jacob blessing his children it ends with peace and prosperity that the children of Israel are dwelling in safety in the land of Goshen while the world is starving to death they have the best land in all the earth and it ends in blessing and Why? Because of Joseph and the Pharaoh that knew Joseph. So while the righteous were in authority, the people rejoiced. But now when this wicked Pharaoh beareth rule, the people are mourning. And they sighed or they groaned because of their bondage. Those groanings may have been audible groanings or it may have just been the sighs or just those inaudible expressions of grief. Those moments where you just groan in your spirit because even those hurts just can't be expressed. Those agonies that we have already expressed but just won't go away. Sometimes just because you express what's wrong and acknowledge what's wrong doesn't mean that the the trial goes away and There's just comes to a point when all you can do is just just groan Well, they mourned and they vented their grief and they moaned over this No suffering can hurt and there's no point in pretending that trials don't hurt and Whenever these things happen, it just becomes the main thing in your life. I'm sure that you rarely think about your little toe. You probably never think about it unless you stump it on the side of the bed in the dark. Then you think about it, right? But otherwise, you don't go around just meditating on your little toe. But whenever it hurts, That's about all you can think about. You could be the President of the United States going to go on live TV to give a speech that all the world will see. If you stomped your toe, you'd probably be thinking about that for that moment of time anyway more than anything else. That's just the way it is. Whenever you're in pain, it draws all your attention to that. This suffering hurt. That was what they had before them. We're not told to ignore it. We're not told to be like the Romans and be Stoics and so forth. But we are to deal with it. And I think that we can see in this how one way that we are to do that, and we are to take this to God in prayer. That our prayer, our grief, and our sign needs to be taken to the Lord God. We are not to bear it on ourself. We're not to, and we're to mourn correctly. As far as I can see, there's at least three legitimate categories of mourning in the Bible. You see people mourning for the dead. Abraham mourned for Sarah. Jacob mourned for Joseph. Mary and Martha mourned for Lazarus. The devout men of the church mourned for Stephen in the book of Acts. All those are godly people, not reprimanded by the Lord, but shown as examples of people mourning the loss of their loved one. There's nothing wrong with that. I was talking to Brother Paul Stepp down at the funeral home, and he's trying to reconcile that. His mom just died. He was looking at her there in the casket, and he's trying to reconcile the joy that he knows he's supposed to have in Christ, and that she's in heaven with the pain and the agony that he was feeling that she was gone. But there's nothing wrong with mourning. We are sad that when we lose someone, and the Bible shows us that, but there's an appropriate way. We mourn, but not like those who have no hope. Not like those who think that all that there is in this life, but we mourn as Christians, knowing that we will see those in Christ yet again, that there is hope, that our Lord has defeated death. You see in the Bible, mourning calamities. Job mourned in sackcloth and ashes at the calamities that struck him in his life. And yet, and the Bible says that he sinned not with his mouth. So you see him mourning in those first two chapters, yet he did not sin. So mourning over calamities, the death of his children, the loss of all that he had, the death of his servants. Job mourned, yet he did not sin. You also see mourning over sin itself. Psalm 51 is a good example of David mourning and bemoaning and sighing and grieving over his sin against God, which is, in fact, a good thing, that we must mourn and weep over our sins, because that is something that we need to grieve over. So there's nothing wrong with sign. They are not sinning by sign under their bondage. But God does give us direction for how we're to do this. That we are to go to the Lord in prayer. We are to take these groans and these complaints unto our God and pray and seek His blessing. You and I are more blessed than the children of Israel are this morning. And I'm not just saying that because of finances and freedom and that kind of thing. We are blessed in that we have a book that they didn't have. We have the book of Psalms that we can go to. A Holy Spirit inspired book that is a teacher and a guide for us on how we can rightly train our emotions. We can grieve, but then we can go to the Psalms and find the Psalm that expresses our feeling. And then it will also show us how to direct our sorrows and help us to guide through this. So, the Bible doesn't tell us that we have to live through life without Feeling the pain of this life, our Lord Jesus Christ mourned and grieved in sorrow. We see him praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, truly dealing with sorrow. God does not tell us not to do that, but God tells us how to do that. And that's what's important. God tells us how to do these things. And in many of these cases, we find it in the Book of Psalms. We're not robots or machines or stoics. But God helps us to pray even when we look at the Psalms. There's at least 40 Psalms that have to do with some type of lament of an individual. And then there's 15 more Psalms where people mourn together, like a tragedy that has happened together where a group of people mourn and lament something. So you've got well over 50 Psalms that are dedicated to some kind of lamenting, either a personal trial, a national tragedy, some personal sin. So God in the Psalms helps us and guides us. So we don't have to be like the children of Israel, just blindly groaning and not sure how to direct our minds, but God shows us in his word. One man said, whatever your particular need or trouble, from this one book, you can select a form of words to fit it. And not only hear it and pass it on, but learn the way to remedy your ill. The children of Israel groaned and cried and they mourned. But in the Psalms, we can go and find the prescription for that. There is not an emotion that we can experience that God hasn't some way represented in His book that we can go by the power of the Holy Spirit and find hope for our grief and relief from our sorrows and courage in our fears and hope in our doubts and comfort in all of our cares and knowledge and wisdom whenever we're perplexed. All these things are found in God's Word. If we will go to Him in prayer, and prayerfully consider and meditate, and use these even as guides to our prayer, to cry out unto God, and find the remedy of our suffering. So, press on in the Word, and press on in prayer, because God hears us. And suffering will show us what is important. It'll show us what is really important in life, and then it'll drive us to prayer. One man said, we are to pray to God that he would increase our hope when it's small, awaken it when it's dormant, confirm it when it's wavering, strengthen it when it's weak, and that he would raise it up when it's overthrown. That's what we need to do, not just to focus on the trial, but try by faith to look above and to think it's coming to pass in the process of time. It's coming to pass as our God has ordained. Lord, give me hope to trust in you. Give me faith to look to you. Give me strength to pray to you. And that's what has happened here. It took this trial, The thing is, we know that they had faith. We know Moses' parents had faith, and Miriam and Aaron. We see people with faith, but it's taken all the way to the end of chapter two before we find somebody crying out, before we find someone pleading specifically unto God. So if nothing else, these trials will motivate us to prayer. It'll get us praying like we ought to pray. He came to pass in the process of time, and the king of Egypt died, and the children of Israel sighed by reason of bondage, and they cried. And their cry came up with the God by reason of the bondage." See, here is the joy of the Christian, that God hears those cries. This would be a terrible story if you didn't have that last part. If you didn't have verse 24 on, if you don't have that part, all you do is you have a people who are enslaved and they have no hope and they're moaning and grieving over this injustice and that's all that you have. No hope, no joy, no reason to pray, they have nothing. But we find here, because of those groanings, God heard. Why? I think what this is saying to us, it is by reason of the bondage that the people cried. And God heard when they cried. It was the God-ordained suffering, the God-ordained trials that drove the people of God to cry out to God. And God heard them. By faith, we can imagine the slaves are laboring out in Egypt. They're sweating. They're bleeding. They're building. You know, they're being whipped and cursed and harassed. They have no friends in this world. They have no allies on this earth. They have no leader. They have no hope in government. They have no hope in man. They are just a big family. They're no nation to speak of. It just started out with Jacob and his boys. And they just kept growing and growing and growing. They've never had, they don't have a constitution. They don't have a king. They don't have a history other than just being this family. So in this earth, they have zero hope whatsoever that they're ever going to get out of this mess. Their only hope is that Pharaoh dies and somebody better comes along. But in fact, Pharaoh dies and somebody worse comes along. But now, we're gonna leave the fields of labor, the fields of crying and groaning, where people are just weeping and sighing and their hearts are broken because this bondage has gone on such a long, long time. Maybe a hundred years or more that they have just been under great pain and suffering. And they pray and nothing happens and they pray and it just keeps getting worse and worse and worse. But now, we are transported from this life, and we zoom out, out of the fields, out of the palace, out of Egypt, and we're looking down, and we're into the throne room of heaven, so to speak. And now we're gonna see the same scenario, the same situation, from the perspective of heaven. So as this is going on, where is God? Verse 24, and God heard their groaning. And God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. And God looked upon the children of Israel, and God had respect unto them. God heard them. God heard their prayers. He heard their sighs. He heard their moans. God hears your prayers. O that thou hearest prayer, unto thee shall all flesh come. That's how David in Psalm 65 prayed, O thou that hearest prayer. That's how he addressed God. You who hearest my prayer, you that hearest prayers, I come to you. Psalm 10 says, Lord, thou hast heard the desire of the humble, thou wilt prepare their heart, thou wilt cause thine eye and thy ear to hear. It is a reality that God hears our prayers, even when it doesn't seem like it. So if it's right, that estimation of what most people say, then it's been about between 50 and 80 years since that edict was passed down that all the boys would die. Moses is 80 years old, so it's been over 80 years. Many prayers were offered, many sighs went up, And God heard them. God hears the prayers. God heard them cry. God heard Moses' mom and dad when they prayed. And all those parents of the little boys that prayed. In all those years they cried out, Lord help us, Lord help us. And God heard their prayer. But they looked and nothing was changing. Nothing happened. Prayer doesn't force God to act. I read that in a book earlier this week. I read that, and I thought it was pretty good at first, and then I read that, and I just stopped reading, and there wasn't any sense of wasting my time with it, because he was saying how prayer forces the omnipotent hand to act. We don't force God to do anything. We don't force God to act. Here you have people legitimately crying out in fervency. You want to talk about a fervent prayer, imagine being whipped in the back by an Egyptian. You can't say anything because he'll kill you and just run you over and leave you laying for dead. But they groan and they complain and they cry in their fervency, Lord help us. And nothing happens. Why? Because we don't know how God is going to answer our prayer. Sometimes God says no. Sometimes God just tells us flat out, no, that's not what I'm gonna do. We don't know how God will answer our prayer and we don't know when God will answer our prayer. But no earnest plea from his child is ignored. And not one prayer that was offered up by one of his children during this century of oppression was ignored. God heard it. and God will answer it when it comes to pass in the process of time. We must never despair and never grow weary in our prayer and never give up in our prayer. We should never stop the prayer but we keep on praying fervently because we never know when the time will be that God will show His power strong. Charles Spurgeon He said, let me tell you that if any of you should die with your prayers unanswered, you need not conclude that God has disappointed you. He said, I've heard of a godly father that had the unhappiness of having six graceless sons. They were all infidels and they led horribly lustful lives. The father had prayed for them constantly. their entire lives and he hoped that in his death that he should tell them to flee to the Savior. But as they gathered to his bedside, his unhappiness and his dying was extreme because he lost sight of God's countenance and was beset with doubts and fears. And he died with the horror. He said, instead of my death being a testimony to my God, which will win my dear sons, I'll die in darkness and gloom, and I will confirm their infidelity and lead them into nothing but judgment. So as his hour of death approached, he became more fearful. And instead of being a testimony of dying, he thought, my testimony is going to drive them further from Christ. So here's a man that had prayed his whole life that his sons would be saved, and he gets to the end, and he feels his strength getting smaller. And now, to add to that, the despair that he will die and be the final nail in the coffin of their depravity and their perdition. But Spurgeon went on and said the effect was actually the reverse. The sons came around the grave at the funeral, and they returned to the house. The eldest son said, my brothers, throughout his lifetime, our father often spoke to us about religion. And we have always despised it. But what a sermon his deathbed gave to us. For if he who served God so well and lived so near to God found it so hard a thing to die, What kind of death may we expect ours who have lived without God and without hope? It was His death and it was His suffering that the Lord used to awaken those boys. that his prayer of a lifetime, that his children would turn from their iniquity and trust in the Savior was not realized in his life. And in fact, he left this life with less hope that they would be saved than ever before and that he had ever experienced. But God heard those long prayers. And God heard those cries and those groans of this godly father as he mourned the fact that if his sons would not believe in Jesus, they would die and they would go to hell. But God used his suffering and his death and even his failure as the means by which he brought his children to faith. So don't cease from prayer. You may pray a lifetime for the salvation of a loved one. Do not cease. As long as you have life and as long as you have breath, pray and continue to pray. And don't lose hope and continue on in this. The children of Israel did not see their prayers answered. Many of them didn't. They died in bondage. but God heard their prayers and God remembered. God does not forget. Period. God does not forget. When the Bible uses things such as this, see, this is all God heard and God remembered and God looked. These are all ways that the Bible describes things so we can wrap them around our mind. Because we know that God is eternal. The next chapter tells us that I am that I am. He is self-sufficient. So these are ways that God speaks to us that we can wrap our mind around. So when we talk about God remembering, it's not like God forgets. Even the Psalm 13 says, how long will thou forget? All this is doing is using phrases to describe our perception of what's happening. From the perception of the children of Israel, God had not heard them. Or maybe that God had forgotten the covenant. But God tells us that He does hear. And He does remember. That He does not forget. The remembering is whenever we're aware that God is delivering us. God does not forget. God does not forget His people. God does not forget their trials. God does not forget His promises. And this is really what this is getting to. God does not forget His promises. Why does God remember? Now this is very important. This is very important to understand the whole book of Exodus. God remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. As I've been reading a little bit about Exodus in the last month or so, that many liberal denominations and many liberal theorists use the book of Exodus and they just plug in any oppressed people and they put them in the position of children of Israel. So liberation theology looks at the liberation from a purely social aspect. And this was developed in the last century in South Africa. And what they do is they take any people who are oppressed, no matter what the oppression is, or whether it's real or not, and they put them in the place of the people of Israel. And it teaches that God is always with the oppressed people against the people in power. So, if you are oppressed, then God is for you, and if you have power, God is against you. And that's what they teach. And they say, but God heard their groaning because they were oppressed, and now God is going to save them because they were oppressed. This theology is used by feminists, homosexuals, the black liberation theology. Many different groups use this and say, well, I'm oppressed by men, so God is for me, or I'm oppressed by this group or that group, so God is for me and against them. You've heard this, I'm sure, where people use the phrase, let my people go, to refer to some kind of social aspect of of marginalized people. But God didn't hear their prayer because they were oppressed. That's not why God heard their prayer. It wasn't because the children of Israel were worthy. It wasn't because God always sides with the people who are oppressed or feel oppressed. There's a lot of people oppressed in the land of Canaan. God wasn't on their side. It's not because God always sides with the people who are not in power. It's not because Israel was better. Do you remember how they got there to start with? How did they get in Egypt to start with? Because the brothers hated godly Joseph and they were going to murder him and they decided just to sell him into slavery instead. That's how they got down there. That's what the whole string of events started is their hatred and their evil and their wickedness. It's not because they were better. It's not because they were oppressed. Why did God hear their prayer? Why did God come to save them? It was because God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. It was not based upon what the children of Israel had done. It wasn't based upon their goodness. It wasn't based even upon their fervent prayers. But it was God's covenant of grace. that God chose Abraham out of paganism and promised Abraham life and blessing. It was not based upon the law. You don't get the law until chapter 20. We're in chapter 2, so it can be based upon keeping the law. They don't have it yet. It was based upon the covenant God made with Abraham. And it wasn't a covenant that Abraham had to keep. It wasn't God said, Abraham, do this and I'll bless you. Keep doing that and you'll have eternal life. It was a covenant that God had made and the promise was made to Abraham. God didn't say, I will save you if you follow me. No, God said, I will save you. I will make of you a great nation. And by your seed, all nations will be blessed. And it was that promise that God, that covenant that God made in the Godhead, that He promised Abraham. So why did God hear the prayers of the children of Israel? Because He is merciful. Because God had promised Abraham, and then Isaac, and Jacob, a seed and a nation, and that in Him all the nations of the earth would be blessed. And the book of Galatians chapter 3 tells us who that is, that seed, which is Christ. all the nations of the earth will be blessed. This covenant that God speaks of is the everlasting covenant. The covenant of grace that God would bless as He promised through the seed of Abraham, which is Christ. And the covenant was confirmed in Christ. And the law was given in the last part of the book of Exodus in part to draw people to Christ. God remembered, not because of who Israel was, but because who He is. It was His promise. God hears the prayers of His people because of that promise. Not a conditional covenant, but a covenant God made and then promised Abraham. this covenant of grace between the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit that the Son would come and to redeem and to die the people the Father had given Him, and the Son would, on the basis of that vicarious sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ, apply that redemption to us and give us and regenerate us and sanctify us and draw us to the Savior. It was this eternal covenant made before the foundation of the world that God's people are called and regenerated and justified and sanctified and will be glorified. And it was on the basis of this promise, the basis of this love of God toward an undeserving people, based upon the satisfaction of the death of the Lord Jesus Christ, that God heard their groaning, and God heard their prayers. It has nothing to do with their worth, and their value, or their dignity, or their fervency of their prayers. It has everything to do with the Lord Jesus Christ. God hears your prayer this morning, not because you suffer, God hears your prayer, not because you're going through a trial. See, we tend to believe that, don't we? That whenever we're really in a bad situation, then God will really hear us, because we'll really pray hard. Or that God hears us more when we suffer. Or because we suffer, God will hear us. That's why many ungodly people pray when things go south. Because they think, well, I'm suffering, and God always hears the cries of the suffering, so I'm going to ask him for help. Many ungodly people ask me to pray for them. Why? Because they think, well, I'm suffering and God has to help me because I'm suffering. Job said in Job 35, 9, by reason of the multitude oppressions, they make the oppressed to cry. They cry out by reason of the arm of the mighty, but none sayeth, where is God my maker who giveth songs in the night? Men cry because they are oppressed, but how many of them cry out because of their sin? How many cry out, Lord, forgive me? How many cry out to God, their maker, instead of just crying out? The basis of our prayers and the God hearing our prayers is the Lord Jesus Christ. He hears your prayer because of the covenant. God remembers His promises. He is a covenant-keeping God. And because Jesus Christ is the sinner's substitute, and because He bled and died on the cross, and because our high priest washed us clean in His blood, and because He is the ever-sufficient sacrifice who made satisfaction for all sin, because He now sits at the right hand of God, He makes intercession for us, this is why God hears our prayers. He is the covenant-keeping God. Even Zacharias, John the Baptist's father in Luke chapter 1, pleaded the same thing as he prophesied, that God is the covenant-keeping God, that He would save Israel from her enemies because of the promise that He gave Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, that God would deliver because He is merciful, because He has promised. Our hope is not in what we do, but what God has promised. God's people have always cried out unto God, Be faithful to what you have promised, because we know that He is. God looked, for the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is perfect toward Him. 2 Chronicles 16.9 God heard them. God remembered His covenant. God saw them. And God knew them. It's interesting this structure that you have. So Exodus starts off in chapter 1, you've got the list of the children of Israel. The children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The children of promise. The children of the covenant. And then in verse 8 it says, Now there arose a new king of Egypt which knew not Joseph. The children of the covenant. Now you've got somebody in charge that doesn't know them. But then chapter 2 ends with God remembering His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. God didn't forget that covenant. God didn't throw that covenant away. And then verse 25 says He has respect unto them. That word translated respect is the same word in verse number 8 of chapter 1 where it says Pharaoh knew not Joseph. Pharaoh didn't know Joseph. But God knows him. That's that knowing in an intimate, loving way. Man did not love or care for the people of God, but Jehovah did. God loved His people. God remembered His covenant, even if Pharaoh didn't. God is present with His people, even if it didn't seem to be. And it came to pass, in the process of time, God makes His power known to all the earth. And that's what you get in the beginning of chapter number 3. It looks bad, but God never forgot. God always heard. God was always in control. It was all happening just as he had ordained. So we have seen the same situation from two different perspectives. Down on earth, God's people were focused on the pain. The agony was great, and it was hard to see anything else. They mourned because they suffered, and they cried because they hurt. They prayed because they had nowhere else to go. It was hopeless. But God draws the curtain of heaven back and allows us to peek inside to see that there is no hopelessness in heaven. God sits on his throne and there's no randomness on earth because the king controls it all. The size under the burden of slavery, were heard, the sounds of the whips and the tools reached the throne of grace. And those incomprehensible groans of suffering were understood in their fullest by our Father, for the Spirit helpeth our infirmities." When we don't even know how to pray and what to pray for, He makes intercession for us. So press on in prayer. Don't give up hope because your Father hears. And He hears you not based upon what you have done, but based upon the covenant He has made in the Godhead, the eternal covenant of grace. And He hears you because of the blessed Son of the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, may God bless you and keep you and encourage you to press on in prayer. We'll stand and be dismissed in a word of prayer. And at this time, we'll ask the very devil