All right, we're moving along. In the book of Exodus, we're in chapter 5. And my plan is to get through the chapter. We've been kind of going at a good clip chapter a week. And probably at some point, I'll have to divvy it up a little bit more than a chapter a week. But today, we're going to do a chapter. So let me pray for the word, and then we'll read some and talk about it. Our Father and our God, we pause before we read your word to ask your blessing, Lord. Your word's powerful, it's mighty. Lord, we're weak and we need your help. So I pray you'd open our ears so that we could hear it. Lord, our minds that we could understand it, our hearts that we could receive it. Lord, let us be changed for the better. because we spend time with you and in your word. And Lord, we thank you for that. In Jesus' name, amen. So let's start with verses one to nine, and the scene's gonna shift. We're gonna be in Pharaoh's court, and then we're gonna be in Pharaoh's fields, and you'll see as we move along, there's a couple of scene changes in this drama. But we begin in Pharaoh's court, or in his throne room, if you will, and this is verses one to nine. Afterward, Moses and Aaron went in and told Pharaoh, Thus says the Lord God of Israel, Let my people go, that they may hold a feast to me in the wilderness. And Pharaoh said, who is the Lord that I should obey his voice to let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, nor will I let Israel go. So they said, the God of the Hebrews has met with us. Please, Let us go three days' journey into the desert and sacrifice to the Lord our God, lest he fall upon us with pestilence or with the sword.' Then the king of Egypt said to them, Moses and Aaron, why do you take the people from their work? Get back to your labor. And Pharaoh said, Look, the people of the land are many now, and you make them rest from their labor. So the same day Pharaoh commanded the taskmasters of the people and their officers, saying, You shall no longer give the people straw to make brick as before. Let them go and gather straw for themselves. and you shall lay on them the quota of bricks which they made before. You shall not reduce it for they are idle. Therefore they cry out saying, let us go and sacrifice to our God. Let more work be laid on the men that they may labor in it and let them not regard false words. So this is God's command to Pharaoh. This isn't a message of Moses or a message of Aaron. This is God's command to Pharaoh. Let my people go. Douglas Stewart, in his commentary, writes, the reader must not lose sight of that identity of the combatants here. It's easy to assume that the contest for the Israelite deliverance was between Moses and Pharaoh, or between Israel and Pharaoh, or between Israel and Egypt. It was none of these. Rather, it was between Yahweh and Egypt's gods. The Pharaoh, being a devotee of representative of and human focal point for those gods. And you'll see that as we move through the plagues. He begins and says, I don't know this Yahweh you speak of. I don't know who he is. I'm not going to let your people go. But he's going to come to know who he is by the time we get done with these plagues, right? It's an interesting historical dialogue that goes on all the way through the chapters, the early chapters of the Book of Exodus. You'll see Pharaoh is going to sort of repent, but not really. He's going to relent, but then not really. I mean, as we move through the plagues, you probably know the story. When you get to Exodus chapter 12 and verse 12, I'll borrow from a future sermon here. It says, for I will pass through the land of Egypt on that night. This is God speaking. I will pass through the land of Egypt on that night and I will strike All the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast, and this is the part I want you to hear, and against all the gods of Egypt, I will execute judgment. I am the Lord. And that's what Douglas Stewart's talking about, that this is really a battle between Yahweh and the false gods of Egypt. And you'll see every plague is going to be attacking one of their false deities. And God's going to be known as the mighty God. right through all of this deliverance. So consider the courage it took. I thought about that. I was studying on this and I thought, I'd be scared to death. If God told me to go almost to anybody, I'm a very, I mean, maybe I don't come across this way, but I'm a very timid guy. I'm the guy that used to, I remember when I was a kid hiding behind my mom's leg, because somebody came over to the house. I'm still that kid at times. I just feel like hiding somewhere. I'm very timid. And for God to come to somebody like a Moses who says, I'm not eloquent in speech. I have no abilities. And God goes, no, I'll be with your mouth. I created your mouth. I'll be with you. And so the courage it would take to go into the court of Pharaoh, the most powerful man over the most powerful nation of his day, and to say something as audacious as not Moses saying, let my people go, but saying the Lord God, Yahweh, the God of the Hebrews, has said, let my people go. What a courageous act that would be. Arthur Pink writes, Moses and Aaron were now required to confront Pharaoh in person. His temper towards their race was well known. His heartless cruelty had been frequently displayed. It was therefore no small trial of their faith and courage to beard the lion in the den. That's just a way of saying to enter into the very courtroom of Pharaoh. To beard the lion would be to go into a lion's den and pull on his beard. That's the idea that Arthur Pink has there. And that's the idea. That's what they do. They come in trusting God. probably scared to death. We don't get a lot of those details. I like where the Bible's silent, because I'm thinking there's a lot more to the story than what's contained here. They had to have been frightened. These are just men, right? And I'm sure they were frightened as they confronted Pharaoh. I did a little rabbit trail, I won't take you too long down it, but I was thinking about all the biblical characters in the Bible that were filled with courage by the Holy Spirit and did the work of the Lord. And we don't always think of them as just men, just women, just ordinary people that were called by an extraordinary God to do extraordinary things. And I thought of John the Baptist. who confronted Herod over Herod's sin. What a terrifying thing that would be. But the Lord lay that on his heart. And there he was confronting Herod. Ended up getting his head lost because of that. But there he was courageously speaking out the truth of God to a sinful leader. You think of Peter and John. who basically prayer is outlawed, and they, and this is Acts 4 verse 18, it says, and they called them, commanded them not to speak nor to teach in the name of Jesus. Could you imagine if somebody told you that? This is the law of the land. You're not to speak or teach in the name of Jesus. Can't invoke his name. It's been outlawed. But Peter and John answered and said, whether it is right in the sight of God to listen to you more than to God you judge, for we cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard." You know, I hear what you're saying, and this might cost us our lives, but we're going to speak. It takes courage. It's a work of the Holy Spirit. Paul's courage in the face of physical abuse, and he really lays out all that he had been through in the Bible. But in Galatians 6.17 it says, And now let no one trouble me, the apostle Paul says to the church. Let no one trouble me, for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus. That's the word in the Greek, stigmata, and some people think it's like the marks of the nails. I don't think that's what it's talking about. I think he was physically abused. He was beaten so many times that if you saw the Apostle Paul without his robe on, you would have seen welts and scars all over his body. He says, don't trouble me. I've been abused for the message of the cross. Think of Daniel. Daniel's another one. Prayer was outlawed, right? You can't pray to any God except for the leader of the country. We're to devote all of our attention to the leader. And it says that Daniel went and prayed anyway, as was his custom since he was a little kid, right? And he got tossed into a lion's den. And what of us? One of us. I thought about that. There's so many times where I fear man. And the Bible tells us not to. Don't fear man. Jesus said that. Don't fear man. They can kill your body. Fear the Lord God, who can cast your body and soul into hell. They can destroy you. But there's times where we just need to step up, pray to God, get filled with the Spirit, and speak the truth to people, even though it's scary. And it is scary. You've done it. I've done it. It's a little bit scary. And that's Moses here and his brother Aaron speaking to Pharaoh. John Piper, and this is poignant in our day, but John Piper wrote, Christian courage is the willingness to say and do the right thing, regardless of the earthly cost, because God promises to help you and save you on account of Christ. Once upon a time, there was a safe private place to take your controversial stand for Jesus. No more. If you're going to stand, you'll be shot at, either figuratively or literally. And we see that in our day, don't we? It's gonna cost us something. Jesus taught that, the cost of discipleship. It'll cost us everything, but he'll be with us, right? Moses, he's an example in Aaron of one who, despite the worries, despite the natural fleshly fear, overcomes that fear. He's filled with confidence because of God, the Holy Spirit, and he speaks to Pharaoh. So I just wanted to labor that a little bit. So the battle ensues, right? This is the beginning of the great battle between Yahweh and the gods of Egypt. Again, Arthur Pink says, Pharaoh said, the people is mine. I will not let them go. God said, no, the people is mine. Thou must let them go. They've been created and chosen that they may serve me. The conflict was being waged over the destiny of a race, its place in history, and the service of humanity. Was Israel to be a slave? We're a priest. And that's what God says. Remember later he says in Exodus 19.6, You shall be to me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. You're not to be a kingdom of slaves. You're to be a kingdom of priests. And God's going to deliver his people. Who's this Yahweh? Pharaoh says. In Exodus verses 1 and 2 of chapter 5, afterwards, Moses, Aaron went to Pharaoh, thus says the Lord God of Israel, let my people go that they may hold a feast to me in the wilderness. Pharaoh said, who is this Lord? Who is he that I should obey his voice, that I should let Israel go? I don't know the Lord. That's honest. I don't know the Lord, nor will I let Israel go. Moses asked the same thing. Do you remember earlier in the earlier chapter, chapter three, that Moses, when he hears God, the angel of the Lord, which is a theophany, an appearance, a manifestation of God in the burning bush, and God tells him to go to Pharaoh and go to the elders of Israel and say, I'm God's, Instrument of delivery. I'm his instrument of redemption for you. And he says, but they're going to ask me, Moses says, who is this God that met you in a burning bush? Who do I say you are? He didn't know God either in that intimate, covenantial way. And God says, I am that I am. You tell him that the great I am sent you. But Moses, he confronts it more reverently. He wants to know who God is. It's an honest question, right? Lord, I don't know you intimately. I don't even know your name. What do you call yourself? And God, in grace, reveals himself to Moses. Pharaoh's not coming at it that way. This is a faithless stand in unbelief. I don't know this Yahweh. I'm not letting you go. It's as simple as that. And He will let them go, because God is all powerful. If you look at verse three, the response, and I think it's easily missed if we don't just pause on it for a second. When Pharaoh says, I don't know this Yahweh, I don't know him, I don't know this God, and I'm not gonna let you go. Moses reveals the true and living God this way. He says, so they said, and this is the response, the God of the Hebrews has met with us. This Yahweh is the God of the Hebrews, your slaves. They have the true and living God. He represents his own people, the Hebrews, the slaves. That's who this God is. And not to labor it too much, but we have to understand as Gentiles, I'm not Jewish, we serve the God of the Hebrews. And the book of Romans gets into that. It speaks of the root. of the tree, and I believe that Paul is talking about Abraham, is that root. This is in Romans chapter 11. That root has natural branches, which is the Jewish people. The unbelieving Jewish people, he says, were broken off. They didn't have faith. And we, as Gentiles, non-Jews, were grafted into that root. And this is what Paul says. He says, and if, this is Romans 11, 17, he says, and if some of the branches, I take that as unbelieving Jews, if some of the branches were broken off, and you, he means you Gentiles, you non-Jews, and you being a wild olive tree were grafted in among them, and with them became a partaker of the root, And I believe there he's speaking of Abraham, the covenant with Abraham. And the fatness of the olive tree, do not boast against the branches. Don't boast that you're better than those of Jewish descent that don't believe. Don't do that. He says, but if you do boast, remember that you do not support the root. But the root supports you. We've been grafted into Israel as Gentile believers. And he is the God, as he says, of the Hebrews. That's who Yahweh is. Yahweh has attached his reputation to the Israelites. And He will deliver them. He will be vindicated. What He says will happen, will happen. Because He's Yahweh. He's God Almighty. He's going to vindicate Himself. He's going to show Himself as all-powerful, all-true, the God of the universe, is what He's going to do through the book of Exodus. He's going to free them, right? We talked about this a couple weeks ago. Not just to be free-range, go off and do what you want. He's going to free them to worship the true and living God. And that's exactly what happened to us in our salvation. God freed us from the power of sin to worship the true and living God. He says in verse 3, Please let us go three days journey into the desert and sacrifice to the Lord our God, lest he fall upon us with pestilence and with the sword. And there's the warning, right? And that's what's going to happen. Even worse than that, through the plagues. Joseph Excel in his commentary writes, perfect freedom is not the thing demanded of Pharaoh, nor is the prize of their high calling held out before the eyes of Israelites. To serve God is the perfect freedom held out. To change masters, to be rid of him who had no claim to their allegiance and to be permitted without hindrance to serve him. who was indeed their Lord and their God, freed from the tyranny of Egypt and Pharaoh to serve the true and living God." And the king's response is somewhat telling here. Yahweh has made his demand upon Pharaoh through his instrument Moses, let my people go. It's a demand. It's not up for debate. This is my command to you, says Yahweh through Moses, to let my people go. Pharaoh, in turn, makes his demand of Yahweh's people, right? Aaron, Moses, the elders, right here. And remember, the elders are here too. They're not mentioned, but remember, Moses was to bring the elders of the Israelites with him. So there's a little bit of a group of people here confronting Moses. And they're obedient to the call of God. And the obedience that they're called to, they follow, and they act obediently, and they tuck away their fears, they go to Pharaoh, and Moses says through Aaron, let my people go. Let my people go. And the result of that obedience was hardship. Somebody wrote, obedience doesn't usually lead to comfort. And you can see that throughout the Bible. So don't let it surprise you when your obedience doesn't lead to comfort. But God's with you in your obedience. In Romans 5.3, trials produce perseverance in God's elect. And you'll see that it says, and not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing the tribulation produces perseverance. Paul sees the fact that a church is going through tribulation as a sign of faithfulness to God. And 2 Thessalonians 1.4, and we just studied that book, says, so that we ourselves boast of you among the churches of God for your patience and faith in all your persecutions and tribulations that you endure. It's evidence of a growing faith, of a faithful church, that they patiently endure the tribulations that the world hurls at a faithful church. In Philippians chapter 1, the Apostle Paul actually sees the tribulation as proof of salvation. And let me read it, and it doesn't come out crystal clear, so let me unpack it. It says in verse 28 of Philippians 1, and not in any way terrified by your adversaries, which is to them a proof of perdition." So he says those that are coming against the church, the fact that you hold up under those persecutions is proof of their lostness, right? That they're hurling this tribulation at the church. And then he says, but to you, And I'm gonna insert, it doesn't say it in my translation, it's a proof. So to you, the church, these persecutions and you holding up under it, but to you of salvation, it's proof of your salvation. And that from God for to you, it has been granted on behalf of Christ, not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for his sake. It's been granted to you to believe, and it's been granted to you to suffer for his sake. And that's what's going on here. Pharaoh decides to make the work harder. They're to gather stubble, right? They're not to be given the hay any longer. The work increases. Typical manager-labor relations, right? You have your laborers, and they're starting to complain. They're starting to whine. You go, you know what? You guys got too much time on your hands. I'm going to step it up a little bit. And what we need to do is really give you more work. And I don't want to go too deep, but that's what happens in the working world now, is labor and management. Management's like, they've got too much time on their hands. They formed a committee. They want to come and talk to me. Let's give them more work to do. And that's what Pharaoh does. So in verse 10 down to 14, we're now gonna go to Pharaoh's fields, right? We were in Pharaoh's throne room, and now we're going to Pharaoh's fields. It says, and the taskmasters of the people and their officers went out and spoke to the people saying, thus says Pharaoh, I will not give you straw. Go get yourselves straw where you can find it, yet none of your work will be reduced." So the people were scattered abroad throughout the land of Egypt to gather stubble instead of straw. And the taskmasters forced them to hurry, saying, fulfill your work, your daily quota, as when there was straw. Also the officers of the children of Israel, whom Pharaoh's taskmasters had set over them, were beaten and were asked, why have you not fulfilled your task in making brick both yesterday and today as before?" I thought Douglas Stewart helped me a little bit with this. He's a good commentator. I really hadn't thought too deeply on what's going on here and what that work would have looked like. Notice that Moses speaks, probably through Aaron, to Pharaoh and says, thus saith the Lord, let my people go. Now these taskmasters speak to the slaves, and they say, thus saith Pharaoh. Do you kind of see the battle ensuing here? Do you get the similarity? It doesn't come across in the Bible too much. But if you look at historical records, the Pharaohs of Egypt were seen as gods. Pharaoh saw himself as Yahweh's equal, at least. Oh yeah, Yahweh's a god? Well, I'm a god, Pharaoh would say. So Pharaoh is now speaking through his taskmasters and says, I will not give you straw at all. And this is what Douglas Stewart pulled out of that, and I thought this was good. He writes, this means that they could not have any or grow any of their own. No straw at all was to be provided to them, not by others, not by their own hand. What they then had to do, according to verse 12, was to go everywhere looking for stubble to serve as a substitute for straw. It was only a relatively poor substitute for straw, making the process of producing suitable brick much harder. But it also was much harder to gather from harvested fields, even when the season is right, requiring careful, tedious hand-pulling and cutting, as compared to the purposely preserved and usually bundled straw was almost hopelessly difficult to gather in the off-season. So that gave me a little bit more of a picture of what probably they were being told to do, which was to go into harvested fields and they would cut the straw down, the weed or whatever the grain was, and there's just little stubbles left. And to go into that field, can you imagine having to do that? I don't know if they had some kind of a cutting device, or they're pulling it up, or what. But they were told to go into those fields. I'm not going to give you any straw at all. You go gather, and it says in verse 12, they went and gathered stubble, is what they ended up doing. This was incredibly labor-intensive work. And they can't keep up with the quota. They don't do it. And you notice there's three groups of people in this section of the scripture. There is taskmasters. Some of your translations might say something like slave drivers. These are Egyptians. Their job is to make sure that these Jewish slaves are producing the brick that Pharaoh requires, their quota. That's their job. The Bible also says that there's officers here. Some of your translations are going to say something like Jewish foremen. So they would take some of the slaves and elevate them to be foremen over groups of slaves. These were Jews. They were the foremen. And lastly, you had the lowest tier of these people, the Jewish slaves. Slaves aren't producing. The foremen are then blamed. And they're beaten by the slave drivers. That's what's going on in the story, right? These foremen, these Jewish foremen, are beaten for this. And what they're going to do is appeal to Pharaoh, which seems kind of dangerous to do with this powerful Pharaoh, but apparently they're permitted to have court with Pharaoh and complain and ask requests. So when you get to verse 15, down to verse 21, it says, then the officers of the children of Israel came and cried out to Pharaoh, saying, Why are you dealing thus with your servants? There is no straw given to your servants. And they say to us, Make brick. And indeed your servants are beaten, but the fault is in your own people. But he said, You are idle, idle. Therefore, you say, let us go and sacrifice to the Lord. Therefore, go now and work, for no straw shall be given you, yet you shall deliver the quota of bricks. And the officers of the children of Israel saw that they were in trouble after it was said, you shall not reduce any bricks from your daily quota. Then as they came out from Pharaoh, they met Moses and Aaron, who stood there to meet them. And they said to them, let the Lord look on you and judge, because you have made us abhorrent in the sight of Pharaoh and in the sight of his servants to put a sword in their hand to kill us. So this is classic labor and management, isn't it? There's a lot of lessons that could really apply over to the work world. Asking too much of your employees, you have to understand when you're just demanding too much of people. And Pharaoh certainly doesn't see that. He sees them as lazy. You're not getting it done because you're lazy. You're idle. He says it twice in my translation. You're idle. You're idle. You have too much time on your hands. The work is not too much for you. You're just simply lazy. Notice that middle management is the one that gets blamed for this. It's these Jewish overseers that are blamed and beaten, right? They're the ones that are told, you've got to make these slaves produce. And if they don't produce, we're going to beat you. And so they come in. They're upset about this. They want to appeal to Pharaoh. And so they turn to Pharaoh and protest instead of, and it's not mentioned in the scripture, but instead of turning to God. You don't see in the scripture anyway that it says, and then all the overseers, the Jewish overseers, got together and said, let's have a prayer meeting. Let's fast and pray to Yahweh. He'll deliver us. We're being mistreated. Yahweh knows. Let's pray to him. They don't do that. They appeal to Pharaoh. And I thought, how convicting is that? I remember a long time ago, I heard preachers say, and it convicted me. This might not do anything for you, but it convicted me. But he said, when you get a headache, do you pray to God, or do you just go into the medicine cabinet and take an aspirin? I don't know why that convicted me, but I thought, I just go to the medicine cabinet and take an aspirin. And his point was, why don't you turn to God when you have problems? Why don't you turn to God when you have aches and pains? Why do you turn to medicine or to this or to that, rather than turning to the true and living God and saying, Lord, I've got this ailment. Would you heal my body? And then give God time to do God's work. And then he gets all the praise for it, rather than Johnson and Johnson. wherever you're getting your medicine from, right? That convicted me. But in the story, you don't see them turn to God. You see them turn to Pharaoh. Psalm 86, verse 6, And seven says, give ear, O Lord, to my prayer, and attend to the voice of my supplications. And the day of my trouble, I will call upon you, for you will answer me. So let me just lay that on you a little bit. Next time you got something going on, before you turn to another human being, or you turn to medicine, or whatever your problem is, turn to Yahweh. Read that song. Tell God, I know you hear my prayer, Lord. And here's my prayer. You already know it's on my heart. He knows what we need before we even ask Him. I remember C.S. Lewis, I think it was C.S. Lewis, somebody said, well, then why do we pray if He already knows? And I believe it was in the Narnia series, but he just says, He likes hearing you ask. And the Lord tells us to come to him and ask him. He knows what we need. He's like, Papa God, you know what I need. And we just, Abba, Father, Papa God. And he gives us what we need, right? So, you made us This might not come across, but when they go to Moses and Aaron and they're upset because the outcome of this meeting with Pharaoh, in the literal Hebrew, what they say to Moses is, you made us a displeasing stench. in the nostrils of Pharaoh. That's what they say. That's literally in the Hebrew. There's a couple of translations that stayed the course with that. The ESV, English Standard Version, says, the Lord look on you and judge because you have made us stink in the sight of Pharaoh and his servants. And the Holman translation says, because you have made us reek in front of Pharaoh and his officials. And that instantly took me to the New Testament. Because here they are, they're speaking truth to Pharaoh. The truth of God to Pharaoh. What they had to say was true. The hardship was unfounded. It was undue. And Pharaoh is actually battling Yahweh. And they confront Pharaoh with this. And when they do, the outcome of that, when Pharaoh resists and he hardens himself to it, is to say, you made us a stench in Pharaoh's nostrils. Does that take you anywhere in the New Testament? Because I'm going to read you a passage that you probably know. Because the Apostle Paul in the New Testament says, when we witness to people, We go to people that don't know the Lord, and we give them the law, we tell them their predicament before a holy God, and then we give them the gospel, and say, but God has made a way. He sent His own dear Son to go to a cross to die for the sins of those that have put their faith in Him. If you'll only bow your knee to Christ and repent of your sins and embrace Jesus Christ, you'll be saved. And when we do that, the Bible says this. This is 2 Corinthians 2, verse 15. He says, for we are to God the fragrance of Christ among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing. Those that won't come to Christ. To the one, we are the aroma of death leading to death. And to the other, the aroma of life. leading to life. And I always love that Paul follows that up and says, and who's sufficient for these things? You think the apostle Paul was this super brave dude that didn't fear when he stood in front of people? No. He tells over and over again that he feared. But he was being obedient to that call. He uses that language in the New Testament. I was obedient. When he's witnessing in the book of Acts, I was obedient to that call, O king. When Jesus met me on the road to Damascus and he called me to be his apostle to the Gentiles, I was obedient. to that call. But believe me, he was trembling in his boots, right? I was talking to Nate a week or so ago, and he goes, everybody thinks like, oh, it's easy for you. You've got all this confidence. You're out there doing what you do, and you're on the street corners, and nothing scares you. He goes, that's not me. He's like, I'm just obedient to the call. I'm terrified out there. But who else is going to do it? They need to hear of a Savior. And so he goes. And that's exactly what the Apostle Paul's talking about there. The Lord look on you and judge. They're upset with Moses. You've made us to stink in the sight of Pharaoh. They're really displaying a little bit of faithlessness here. Things didn't go the way they wanted to go when they went before Pharaoh, and they're not responding in faith. And I get it. I probably would have been pretty shaken myself with all that's going on. It seems like God said he raised up a deliverer, and all you did was make things worse. That's all you've done. It was bad before, and now you've just made it even worse. Joseph Excel, he's actually here quoting G.F. Pentecost, but he says, if you had not come, this is what he's imagining them thinking or saying, if you had not come, Moses, we should have plodded along in our bondage, bearing it as best we could, but you came. And you raised our hopes, not only to dash them down, but to make our already hard lot more bitter and unbearable. They were angry, apparently not a pharaoh, but with God's ministers." Ooh, whole rabbit trail you could go down with that. They're mad. And God's at work, but they don't turn their anger to Yahweh. They don't turn their anger to Pharaoh. They turn their anger to God's minister because he had spoken truth to them. Now we get to the end of the chapter and Moses is going to go talk to God. Where do ministers go when the people get angry at them? Especially if the people are angry because the ministers speak in the truth. Every minister has faced that. Where you get up and you've got a text of scripture. I used to tell my wife, I was like, what am I going to do with this? I remember one night I woke up. Just weird, just nodding off in sleep, and I said, I've got to tell everybody tomorrow they're going to die. Because I knew the text I had to preach. I was in the text. There's passages of the Bible that I don't like preaching. They're confrontational. Sometimes they rub me the wrong way, but that's what the Word of God says. I'm like, this is what it says. Don't get angry at me. Get angry at the author if you're going to be angry at somebody. Go talk to God. But when God's ministers face that wrath of the people because they spoke the truth, the right place to go is to God, right? In a spirit of humility. And that's what Moses does. In verse 22 it says, So Moses returned to the Lord and said, Lord... And I don't think... I think this is a very humble... I don't think he was angry. He's confused. Lord, why have you brought trouble on this people? Why is it you've sent me? For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has done evil to this people. Neither have you delivered your people at all. Moses is confused. And I would be too. And a lot of people, maybe if you look down into your Bible texts, they might have joined this last section of the chapter with chapter six, because God's going to answer Moses. And he's going to instill faith back into his servant, is what he's going to do. I'm going to save that for next time, whenever we get back to the book of Exodus. But here, I just want to pause with that thought. Here's Moses confused, and ministers that are facing the brunt of anger because they spoke the truth should turn to God. And it's okay to go to God and say, I don't understand. Why do you even call me into the pulpit? Why have you done this? I haven't seen you at work in the people. I haven't seen their attitudes change. I haven't seen their understanding of theological things change. Lord, why do you even send me? All you did was bring hardship to them. Demersen, in his commentary, writes, there come times to every earnest laborer in God's service when his efforts seem fruitless and he gets downcast. There are so many unforeseen contingencies to interrupt our work that it is beyond our power to provide against them. This portion of the great lawgiver's history will picture to us the sorrows of Christian service arising from, and he mentions these, from opposition. Moses is facing opposition. Misrepresentation. Right? Why do you, Moses and Aaron, let hinder the people from the work? Pharaoh says, you don't speak on behalf of God. You just simply want them to get a break, right? Because they're not getting enough work to keep them busy. Ingratitude, right? Nobody comes to Moses and thanks him for being God's spokesperson. Failure, right? It's not a final failure, but Moses does say that. He's like, Lord, ever since I spoke for you, things have gotten worse, right? The tyrant goes unpunished. The slave goes unfreed. The workers are disappointed. How would you like to be the leader of these people? the hope of the Christian worker. Somebody wrote, because the divine call will be vindicated, because service for the good of men cannot ultimately fail, let Christian workers hold on to the word and the promise of God. So a missionary in China who was greatly depressed by the careless unbelief of his hearers. And one day the words of Isaiah 53.1 came to his mind as sent from above directly to him. And those words are, Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? And they were followed by a dream. He thought he was standing near a rocky boulder in his dream. And he was trying with all of his might to break it with a sledgehammer. But blow after blow had no effect on the boulder. There was no impression made. At length, he heard a voice which said, never mind. Go on. I will pay you all the same, whether you break the boulder or not. So he went on doing the work of the Lord that was given him, and he was content. The results belong to God. And I think this lesson here, that Moses is questioning the Lord, that happens to us. I mean, you guys all do your ministry. I do my ministry. And sometimes we don't see the results. God's at work. And here, it was just simply not God's timing yet. God was going to work something marvelous and mighty. But it just wasn't His time yet. But God's servant Moses does doubt somewhat. I was reading an illustration about a railway that was built in Europe a long time ago. But it was to be built over these boggy, marshy areas. And labor was put into the work for years of just bringing rock and debris to build up that ground that it would be strong. And somebody wrote, do not let us be in a hurry with regard to results. We may seem to be doing little or even nothing. Our work may appear to be fruitless, but in reality, we're laying the foundation and we're driving deep the piles which prepare the basis for urgent and enduring Christian work and the highway for the gospel. And I always hold on to that thought that a lot of the work that we will do in our short lives And our lives are short. The older I get, the more I realize that. And a lot of the work that we do as Christians is just simply laying the foundation for the next generation. And I think of the work that we're joined to in Belize. and how much that country's changed, and the foundations laid, and it might be the next generation where the gospel sweeps through that country, like, unbelievably quick, because of all the labor and the work that went in to lay the foundation. And that's true in this town, too. Just laying the foundation for the next generation that the gospel will have a highway, right, built, that the gospel can go forth. I'll end with that. Our Father and our God, we thank you for your word. And Lord, this is a encouraging passage of scripture, even though we're going to leave it here with what looks like failure, what looks like you're not acting according to what you said you would do. But Lord, we know you're a God of truth. And in the coming chapters, we'll see you at work in mighty ways. And Lord, we see that in our own lives. And we thank you for that. In Jesus' name, amen. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace. Go in the peace of Christ Jesus to a world that desperately needs to hear the gospel. In Jesus' name, amen.