They may labor at it and pay no regard to lying words. So the taskmasters and the foremen of the people went out and said to the people, thus says Pharaoh, I will not give you straw. Go and get your straw yourselves wherever you can find it. But bring, but your work will not be reduced in the least. So the people were scattered throughout all the land of Egypt to gather stubble for straw. And the taskmasters were urgent, saying, complete your work, your daily task, each day, as when there was straw. And the foremen of the people of Israel, whom Pharaoh's taskmasters had set over them, were beaten. And they were asked, why have you not done all of your tasks, making bricks today and yesterday, as in the past? And the foreman of the people of Israel came and cried to Pharaoh, why do you treat your servants like this? No straw is given to your servants, yet you say to us, make bricks. And behold, your servants are beaten, but the fault is in your own people. And he said, no straw is given to your servants, yet they say to us, make bricks. We'll have to cut the volume a little bit. Your daily task each day, shoot, I'm sorry, I've lost my place half a dozen times. The foremen of the people of Israel saw that they were in trouble when they said, you shall by no means reduce your number of bricks, your daily task each day. They met Moses and Aaron who were waiting for them as they came out from Pharaoh and they said to them, The Lord look on you and judge, because you have made us stink in the sight of Pharaoh and his servants, and you have put a sword in their hands to kill us." Then Moses turned to the Lord and said, "'O Lord, why have you done evil to this people? Why did you ever sin me? For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has done evil to this people, and you have not delivered your people at all.' But God promises God promises deliverance. The Lord said to Moses, now you shall see what I will do to Pharaoh, for with a strong hand he will send them out, and with a strong hand he will drive them out of his land. God spoke to Moses and said to him, I am the Lord. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name, the Lord, I did not make myself known to them. I also established my covenant with them in order to give them the land of Canaan, the land in which they lived as sojourners. Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the people of Israel, whom the Egyptians hold as slaves, and I have remembered my covenant. Say, therefore, to the people of Israel, I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. I will deliver you from slavery to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and great acts of judgment. I will take you to be my people. I will be your God and you shall know that I am the Lord your God who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. I will bring you into the land that I swore to gave to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I will give it as a possession to you. I am the Lord. Moses spoke thus to the people of Israel, but they did not listen to Moses because of their broken spirit and harsh slavery. Please bow your heads with me. Lord, be glorified tonight. Shut my mouth. Speak to your people. Let us look into the mirror of your word and see all our faults and not go away unchanged, but rejoicing in your grace and your mercy recognizing it is your work that carries us along. Now speak to your people. Let me be forgotten. In the name of Christ, I pray. Amen. So we pick up in the same vein as last time, and you say, well, why didn't you preach it with the last one? I said I didn't know. besides it wouldn't fit. We'll be looking through the same great and brilliant lens of contrast. We have a tendency to grow accustomed to things as our earthly body adapts to the world around it. For instance, our pupils contract when the light is full and bright, and only when we've had an experience in the dark and then again in the light can we recognize just how bright the light really is. When our last comparison set the stage for the battle of the gods, Challenger, self-declared god-king of Egypt, versus the eternal, almighty, and true God, one that we already know is an absolute slaughter, literally. But here, we're going to look at the sweetness of God the Father, juxtaposed against the bitterness that his Pharaoh and all he represents. In general, we all know Pharaoh is terrible. Let's look at some specific problems with Pharaoh. In verse 14, he orders his taskmasters to interrogate and beat the four men of Israel for not completing their orders. Orders that he intentionally impeded with his little straw embargo. With a left hand, he takes away that which is needed to complete the task. while with his right hand he executes an unjust punishment against willing servants for failing to obey his impossible commands. A command that he even knew to be impossible. In fact, he meant it to be impossible. In verse 9 he said, let heavier work be laid upon men that they may labor at it and pay no regard to lying words. that were meant to be unable to finish, so that they would be forever busy, was meant to be a bondage of mind as well as the body. Because if they were allowed even one second of unburdened time, they might hear and consider the good news that their deliverer had brought to them. Pharaoh says, don't stop for even an instant to hear the message from God. His message is a lie anyway. Does that not sound utterly familiar? Maybe we heard that somewhere before, like maybe the time someone once said, did God really say you will surely die? Pharaoh is a narcissistic, insecure, possessive, overly aggressive, and abusive tyrant. Psychologically speaking, he's the kind of person who would run a once-in-no-way-out cult or batter his wife or abuse his children because he is of his father, the accuser, the liar, the murderer, the destroyer Satan. And maybe, it's just my opinion, but maybe he's also the epitome of the embodiment of the curse of sin. the spirit of Antichrist may just dwell within him. And when the people cry out, why do you treat us like this? And they make a reasoned defense of the shortfall and petition to be treated fairly. Pharaoh blames them for his own actions. You have not met the quotas as before, he bellows. The quotas as before, the quotas before you took away the means to fulfill them? The quote is before you raise them on top of that? What do you expect? You remove the means of compliance. And then in verse 17, he's gaslighting them. You're idle. They're doing twice as much work as they were doing. You're idle. And then he beats them and blames them for what he is doing to them. While he doesn't say it, you can feel his intentions emanate from the paper. Shrink and wither under your burden, worthless slave. The people of God are utterly exasperated. They condemn Moses and lose whatever faith they had for their deliverance. Forget Pharaoh Moses. Let the Lord judge you. We kind of sorta got along okay before you showed up. To quote that famous contemporary philosopher Pixar, we had our lot in life. Wasn't a lot, but it was our life. Then you came along to bring us to ruin, Moses. To the man that beat us with rods, you handed a sword. By law of averages, probably been there. The thing you thought was your great solution was looking more like your utter destruction. Even when you were striving to be faithful and doing the best you knew how to please God, great evil was inflicted upon you, and you were ready to give up in so much frustration that maybe you even did give up. Let's shine some light back from the New Testament. Colossians 3.21 says, children, do not provoke your fathers lest they become discouraged. Just checking. Sometimes I wish it said that. I really do. And no, that's how they sanctify us. Thank God he doesn't need sanctification. because it says, fathers do not provoke your children. I especially like the NASB, fathers do not exasperate your children so that they will not lose heart. While Paul certainly had his eye on the family unit in this case, if we hold the spirit of this verse in our hearts, I think you'll find it applying to more than just your blood. It'll be hard to find a time when you cannot justify applying it to any charge under your authority. This includes not ordering something and simultaneously standing in the way of it. We're not giving commands and taking away the means of obedience. There is hardly a more sure way to provoke your charges to anger than this. And on that surface, it would appear that Moses had every right to be exasperated. He obeyed the Lord and went to deliver the command to release the people of God, and all that seemed to happen was that Pharaoh was the worst tyrant, and he made enemies of his brethren. But Moses instead did one of the wisest things anyone has ever done. He didn't say anything to the frustrated people, but instead he turned to the Father, and I believe not presumptuously, but sincerely asked, why did you ever send me? You know I failed the last time. You know I can't do this. I have obeyed your directive, but still failed to accomplish the desired outcome. And why didn't you do anything while we were there? You didn't do anything to free them. I don't understand what's happening. Everything is worse. In chapter six, the Lord answers Moses, now you shall see what I will do to Pharaoh. Hey, Moses, son, I haven't even rolled up my sleeves yet. The signs that I showed you on that mountain back there, they will pale against what you're going to see. And when the Egyptians see this display of my power, they will pay you to leave. They will pack your bags and they will shove you out the door. Not only will you no longer be held in Egypt, you won't be allowed to stay. In their eyes, you will be a living monument and memorial to the very judgment of Almighty God. The world will hate you because of me, and you will be free. All because everything that I have told you, I will certainly cause to come to pass. Though I didn't give my name to your ancestors, I revealed my character to your fathers through real experiences of my providence. They had real firsthand knowledge of who I am because I made a covenant with them and I kept it. I have not remembered as if I forgot it for a while. I have eternally remembered. It is always fresh in my mind. because I am eternal and immutable. You will witness as I keep my covenant even now under the broken spirit, the broken spirited Israelites and their disheartened heirs. Even though their fate has waned, I will deliver them. I will stretch out my mighty arm And I will take you to be my people. In this phrase, my people, we shouldn't think of it as possessive. It is that, but it's more than that. It's an intimate, cherished connection, like my wife. My people is a lot more than my object. I will stretch out my mighty arm. and I will take you to be my beloved when you are too weak to come to me." Now, been in a lot of arguments lately where, if it's not in the New Testament, it's not for me today. Well, fine. Here's a New Testament example. Matthew 14, 28, 31. Peter answered him, If it is you, command me to come out on the water. And he said, come. So Peter got out of the boat and walked out on the water and came to Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid and beginning to sink, he cried out, Lord, save me. Jesus immediately reached out his hand and took hold of him, saying, O ye of little faith, why did you doubt? You see, Jesus commanded Peter to come to him, and he did on the water in the storm. And you say, yes, but he sank. And I say, yeah, but that proves my point. He failed to do what God commanded in his own power, and Christ reached down and took him. Just like Moses now in Israel. It says, Jesus completed the task in full where Peter fell short. See, it wasn't a mountain. about the amount of Peter's faith as if he didn't have enough magic potion. It's about the fact that his faith has turned to doubt. But even then, Christ pulled him through. Despite Peter's doubt, he ended up safe with Christ because the Lord enables, guides, directs, and disciplines and instructs his people. And just for good measure, if that's not clear enough, let's remember John 11, 43. Lazarus, come out. and the man who died came out. His hands and feet bound with linen strips and his face wrapped with a cloth. Talk about an impossible command, but it came to pass. Take a dead man, tie him up, and tell him to walk out of the grave, and that's what happened. The Lord shows us time and time again, I am nothing like your earthly authorities or even your earthly fathers, good or bad. What I have directed you to, I will not just enable, I will cause. So don't think when I say, go set my people free, that they aren't coming out. And if that isn't a shadow of Christ's work, I don't know what is. When we were slaves, sinking to the bottom of the sea, dead in sin and unable to come to God, God came to us in grace, grace alone through Christ. We didn't even deserve it. He came to us and we would find salvation by faith in Christ's righteousness alone. But there was nothing we could do. Nothing we will ever be able to do. And that salvation by Christ alone, the only son of God, is the only true mediator between God and man. Every bit of it is for his glory alone. He has nothing to be gained by saving us. We can add nothing to an infinite God. His abundance overflowing with grace is what saved us, for nothing more than His good pleasure. This is why around 1600 years ago, St. Augustine summed this whole thing up with, may make you say, huh? That's what I said to myself when I couldn't find this quote because I had expected a more modern translation. Give what you command and command what you will. Doesn't have quite the ring to it, does it? But I like the old archaic version better. I like the word enjoin. Enjoying is a great word. It naturally conveys this meaning. When we hear command, we tend to think of an order that was given and that's just the end of it. Command, now it's your turn, obey. No, that's not what enjoying is. Enjoying has a different range of meaning. It can imply command, but generally implies more of a directing. It's a continued involvement by the enjoyer. Give that which thou enjoy and enjoy what thou will In modern terms, it's more like, give us that which you are directing us to, and direct us to your will. That's why he opens with that statement about all of his hope being in the grace of God alone. See, St. Augustine understood this theme of God's word and tried to teach it to us in one phrase. God is a good father. A good father who has not come to exasperate. If he makes us angry, it is only because we are like petulant children when he is taking away something bad or dangerous, or when we have to forego something that we think is good now for something better later. He hasn't come to pull you in opposite directions. He hasn't come to order impossible things and then cruelly stand back and watch your helplessness. He will not order you to do things just to keep you enslaved like Pharaoh. His commands are for your freedom and your life, and he instructs you on how, and then, after he's instructed you how, also carries you to the goal. The great command, love the Lord with all your God, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and strength, and the second one, like it, love your neighbor as yourself, is not a cold, unfeeling command. Your heart is stone and loving is impossible, but He takes away the stony heart and will give you a new heart of flesh. Believe that Jesus is the very Son of God Almighty, is not a calloused order. He gives you the gift of faith. Be perfect as I am perfect is not impossible, for we are not sanctifying ourselves. He will sanctify us by the washing of the water of His Word. present us pure and spotless before himself on that final day. Go make disciples of all the nations, including your own nation, at the grocery store down the street is not unthinkable. He has sent his spirit to dwell in you, believer, to teach you concerning all things, to put the words in your mouth when you are on the spot. See, his commands are nothing like Pharaoh's. They don't end with a period on the paper. There are directives that He carries out in and through us. So little children, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. Scrub in the living water that He generously pours over you. Cinch down the armor that He has put on you. Be encouraged and stand firm in the faith that He has placed in you. Pray reverently, but with absolute boldness, entering the presence of the Lord of hosts. by the covering that is Christ's righteousness imparted to you. Learn to think, why are you cast down on my soul? Why are you in turmoil within me? Hoping God, for I shall again praise him, my salvation and my God. Do you not see what a hope we have? Because he is a good father. Whether it's about Israel, burdened in Egypt, or anyone in the church today struggling with pain, a wicked father, the weight of sin, contending with the flesh, your freedom, your redemption, your salvation, your sanctification, your next move of any nature will be by the grace of God. I said the Lord, I will stretch out my hand to redeem you and show my power to the world, and they will know I was there. I will make you my people. I will be your God, and you will know that I am the Lord God, your Father, who has delivered you even from bondage and sin and death."