Ending with Pharaoh, Beginning with God Exodus Series #10

If you take your Bibles, please, and turn with me to the book of Exodus. I want to take you through a number of scriptures. And if you don’t have your own Bible, please find the Pew Bible that’s there in front of you. Exodus 4 is where we were last week, and we’ll pick up there. Would you stand, please, as we read from the scriptures?

We’ll pick up with verse 27 of Exodus 4.

There’s a transition between 26 and 27, and we know from Exodus 18 that Moses sends his wife away at this point. The Lord said, verse 27, to Aaron, “Go into the wilderness to meet Moses.” So he went and met him on the mountain of God and kissed him. So Moses told Aaron all the words of the Lord who had sent him and all the signs which he’d commanded him.

Then Moses and Aaron went and gathered together all the elders of the children of Israel. And Aaron spoke all the words the Lord had spoken to Moses, and then he did the signs in the sight of the people. So the people believed—this is probably elders believed here—and when they heard that the Lord had visited the children of Israel, and that he had looked on their affliction, they bowed down, literally they prostrated themselves and worshipped.

Afterward, in chapter 5, Moses and Aaron went and told Pharaoh, “Thus saith 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 Israel, to let them go? I do not know the Lord, nor will I let Israel go.” A colloquial understanding of this that the Hebrew scholars give us is he literally said, “I don’t care a whit about Jehovah.”

“The God of the Hebrews has met with us,” now he’s speaking to his own workers, saying, “let us go three days’ journey.” The king of Egypt said to them, in verse 4, Moses and Aaron, “Why do you take the people from their work? Get back to your labor.” Pharaoh said, “Look, the people of the land are many now, and they make them rest from their labor.”

So Pharaoh commanded the taskmaster, saying, “No longer give the people straw to make brick. Let them gather straw for themselves, but lay on them the same quota of bricks which they had made. You shall not diminish it, for they are idle; therefore, they cry out, ‘Let us go and sacrifice.’ Let more work be laid on the men, but let them not regard false words.”

In other words, make them work harder so they’ll have no time to listen. And then you have the story of the taskmasters, you have the story of the officers. In verse 19 of chapter 5, “The officers of the children of Israel saw that they were in trouble after it was said, ‘You shall not diminish any bricks from your daily quota.'”

And they came from Pharaoh and met Moses and Aaron. And they said to him, “Let the Lord look on you and judge you because you’ve 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.” Moses returned to the Lord and said, “Lord, why have you brought this trouble on the people? Why is it you have sent me? For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he’s done evil to this people. Neither have you delivered your people at all. Boy, does that sound like us.” Then the Lord said to Moses, “Now you shall see what I’ll do to Pharaoh with a strong hand. He will let them go with a strong hand. He will drive them out.” God spoke to Moses and said, “I am the Lord God. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and Jacob as God Almighty, or El Shaddai. But by my name Jehovah, or Lord, I was not known to them. And I’ve established my covenant with them and so forth. All of this is a reminder of these words that we’ve had before.”

And then from verse 14 of chapter 6 on through verse 27 are words that have to do with genealogy, the important background of Moses and Aaron particularly. In verse 28 of chapter 6, it came to pass in the day when the Lord spoke to Moses in the land of Egypt. He spoke to Moses saying, “I’m the Lord. Speak to Pharaoh, king of Egypt, all that I say to you.” Moses said before the Lord, “I am a man of uncircumcised lips; how shall Pharaoh heed me?” In chapter 7, verse 1, the Lord said to Moses, “See, I have made you as God. Actually, that’s a repeat of verse, uh, uh, chapter four, and the word is probably oracle, more oracle here. I have, I’ve made you like an oracle, or as God to Pharaoh, and Aaron your brother shall be your prophet.”

Just keep your Bibles open, please, as you’re seated. Last week, we discussed with you the important fact that every Christian needs to be thoroughly aware of Ephesians 1:17 through 20 when it comes to this business of who we are. The eyes of our understanding need to be enlightened. We need to know what the hope of His calling is but also what the greatness of His power to us who believe.

And of course, in Paul’s words, Paul’s understanding, it is the resurrection of Christ, that dynamic change, that cancels death. That is the example to us of how God can work in our lives. So the object lesson is resurrection, but the focus is that God wants to change us, and that’s what we’ve been saying.

He wants to be clear in our experience. But understand, my friend, that always, this great power of God is cross first, resurrection second. Most of us, however, knew nothing about the hope of our calling and very little about the working of His mighty power. We certainly, in most instances, do not see ourselves seated in heavenly places.

In fact, for most of us, puny circumstances are larger and more real to us than anything supernatural. The ongoing struggle in our life is between the great power of release and deliverance out of the darkness of our circumstance. But where we are most of the time is this unreal moment that allows puny and unimportant material things to loom so large to us.

That they blot out the significance and greatness of God. And if we were honest this morning, that’s where most of us are. Let me give you an example. If you ever got a speck in your eye or dust in your eye, suddenly that piece of dust begins to work its way in such a way into your eye that you lose the sight of the sun.

You can’t even see the sun. Sight closes. You become blind. At least in that temporary moment of time because you have lost your sight by a speck. Now the great laser power of God is about to focus on Egypt in this moment of time. God is about to do something the Liberator, the Livermore Laboratories, could not produce a laser like this.

So powerful that God will focus on Egypt because He has a covenant word to His people. And that is all a part of the process why we have called this series, Going Out to Enter In. You cannot enter into the promise until you’ve gotten out of Egypt. In fact, there has to be deliverance in our lives before we ever come into an inheritance.

And I’m going to become very specific in the next two Sundays on this subject. I want to talk about spiritual warfare in a very deliberate way. I want to talk about bondage. I want to talk about satanic involvement in believers’ lives, very specific. And while that’ll scare some of you away, and you’ll change your vacation plans.

Some of you know that there are friends of yours who need to hear what God is going to say to us in these words. But the simple fact is that Egypt is a type of sin and a type of bondage. It’s constantly used in the Old Testament in this way. And there has to be deliverance from Egypt if there’s ever to be a promised land.

That is just the way it is. And in that same way, let’s put it… in the topic for today’s message. You have to get done with Pharaoh. You have to stop your involvement with Pharaoh before you can go on with God. That is the absolute imperative process. You have to end your involvement with Pharaoh. You have to end his involvement with you, which is more what it’s like.

And that’s exactly what we look at today. In all of these scriptures, keep in mind that the scriptures have three basic understandings. One, there’s always a literal interpretation. Generally, that’s the historical implication. What actually was happening? And we know what’s happening here. This is historical fact.

God visited His covenant people who were slaves, formed them into a nation, and brought them out of Pharaoh’s bondage. That’s the primary interpretation. But always, there are practical applications of truth. And generally, every scripture will also have a prophetic understanding. The primary understanding is simple.

Some people think that’s all you should ever apply is just the primary, in this instance, the historical. But of course, the hermeneutic of this passage is very, very important to us. Don’t let a word like hermeneutics throw you. It’s a really simple word that means the study or discernment of the true meaning.

How do you come to really understand what that scripture is saying? It involves exegesis, and it involves many other things. However, we have a hermeneutic for this passage in Exodus—a very clear hermeneutic. The first one is in Romans chapter 15, where Paul tells us that whatever things were written were written for our learning.

In other words, this means that the Old Testament Scriptures were written for us to learn from them, so that we may find comfort in the Scriptures and hope. I particularly like the message translation here. As it was written in Scripture long ago, you can be sure it’s written for us because God desires the combination of His steady, constant warning and warm, personal counsel of the Scripture to characterize us, to keep us alert for what He will do next in our lives.

That’s the implication. Now in 1 Corinthians 10, Paul adds these words: “All these things were written, and they happened to them.” Now that’s a bold statement to make. I know many Old Testament teachers in Bible college who wouldn’t appreciate what Paul is saying here at all. All these things happened to them.

And they are written for our admonition or as examples to us, upon whom the end of the ages has come. Once again, let me read Eugene Peterson’s words; I appreciate them here. These are all warning markers. They say, “Danger.” They are in our history books, written down so that we don’t repeat their mistakes. Our position in the story is parallel to theirs.

They were at the beginning, and we are at the end, and we are just as capable of messing it up as they were. Now, would you please read those last words with me? Everyone read it in unison: “We are just as capable of messing it up as they were.”

Somebody might say, “Even more so. We are more capable of messing it up than they were.” You know, when you start teaching like this from a passage in the Old Testament, some people might say, “Oh, that’s allegorical teaching.” Not on your life. It is the Word of God that says, the hermeneutic for understanding this is that this is all written for you.

You’re in the same trial they were, only you’re at the end of the age, and they were at the beginning of the age. Well, these verses that we’ve read are all very strategic and significant. However, there are some very specific things that I believe God wants to add to our understanding this morning.

Historically, this moment is not repeatable. Seventy men went down to Egypt after Joseph, of course, had been placed there by God. Yes, it was the enmity of his brothers that brought him there, but God said, “I put him there.” And through that, the seventy came to Egypt, and now that seventy has multiplied, and God has kept His covenant word.

He had said to Abraham, “Your descendants will be as numerous as the stars and the grains of sand on the seashore.” And now, of course, Pharaoh himself says the people of God are like locusts—they’re everywhere. But listen to this, and these words are very critical for you.

They were descendants of the covenant, but that’s all they were. They were descendants of generations of men who had known God, but they themselves had to come to a personal time of covenant, and that would happen for them in Exodus 24 when the covenant is remade for them. They were scattered individuals, but they had to be brought into a purposeful nation, and God did that on Mount Sinai.

Their knowledge of God was historical—stories of old men, faith of their fathers. However, their knowledge had to become intimate, experiential, and personal. They were to come to know God in a most real way. In fact, God says in this passage, “You will know me better than Abraham knew me.” They were slaves at this point.

They were bound to materialism and taskmasters. What’s more, they were broken, crushed in spirit, and living purposelessly as slaves in bondage. They had to be healed, made confident, transformed, lifted up, and assured of their value.

They needed to know their mission and their destiny. I love a slip that God makes to Moses in the sixth chapter. In the sixth chapter, God says to Moses, “I want you to bring them out by their armies.” Well, God knows they didn’t look like an army. I love the way God does that. He calls Peter the rock when he looks like a pebble.

He calls Jacob Israel when he’s still a deceiver. You see the transformation of people by God’s experience is to see in us something of value that we don’t see ourselves. And, by the way, what we’re going to discover today is not only did they not see themselves as anything but slaves, they didn’t want to be anything else but slaves.

So if you’re here this morning and you don’t want to change, take courage. Those are the people God generally starts with. People who not only say, “I know I’m a slave,” but “I like it! Don’t mess around with my slavery. I know where to go every morning.” You know? “Don’t change my schedule.” There’s a five-fold principle in this story that I want you to see.

First is the principle of communion, or koinonia, or fellowship. Secondly is the principle of confrontation. My wife says, “I don’t like that at all,” and she’s right. My staff say, “I don’t like that.” They’re right also. But I’m getting better. After this service, I may get really good at confrontation. And conflict that follows confrontation.

And then chagrin. Now you need to learn this word. I had to find a C word for this.

I had to keep the points alliterated. No, really, chagrin is a great word. It means discomfort.

So, when you go out of the service tonight, you can say, “Today, you can say to your friends, ‘I’m in chagrin.’ You know, that’s a good, that’s a good thing to start out with.” And the last principle is communication growth. Let’s look at these first. Believer’s fellowship. Now, you’ll see that to be done with Pharaoh and get on with God, we have to understand this principle.

Believer’s fellowship. You have Moses, then Aaron, then the elders, and then the people. There’s a breakdown first with the individual or breakthrough, rather, first. Of course, that’s true. But then there’s submission to leadership, and then there’s the principle of change in relationship when there’s a change to a new experience.

And then the principle of true multiplication by our fellowship. This is very, very important. In this passage, for example, we see this change. But let’s look first at the outline of this overall passage before I get to this first point. In Exodus 4 through 7 that we’ve read today, the first part is about the coming of Aaron and the elders.

Very significant part of the teaching. Then there’s the visit of Moses and Aaron to Pharaoh and what his result is. And then there’s the future revelations that God gives to Moses. And last is a kind of encouragement to Moses about what’s happening. Now, in that outline, going back to our first principle, that God begins breakthrough with individuals.

I want you to see Acts chapter 7 verses 17 through 20. This is Stephen’s remembrance, remembrance of this happening. And he said, when the time of the promise came, which God had sworn to Abraham, the people were multiplied. A king arose who didn’t know Joseph. The man dealt treacherously with our people, even making them expose their babies.

But at this time, Moses was born. I just want to take that phrase with you. We believe in this church in plural leadership, but we understand that first is single headship. God starts always with a man. God doesn’t give vision to committees. God gives vision to a man. So the breakthrough comes through an individual.

When God was gonna get his people out of Egypt, what’s the first thing God did? Saw that Moses was born. That’s the first thing he did. So the breakthrough begins with the individual, but then that individual must be submitted. That single leadership is submitted. And of course, you have Moses here as the anointed leader, being brought to his brother Aaron, and then to the elders of the church.

And I’m going to just say this, I don’t care if you’re a wife dealing with your husband, if you’re someone in this church, this morning hearing my voice, who has never really submitted to the leadership of a church. You just kind of go around like this peninsula does, kind of look up on Saturday what church to go to, but you’ve never experienced, or even you come to the same church, but you’ve never experienced real submission to leadership.

You’re in a dangerous place. It’s a perilous world to be in if you’re not in submission to those whom God has placed you under. This is a very important principle. But then the second principle here, within the same context, is the change of relationships. That’s the next thing you need to consider. Now, I want to clarify something here, and it may be misunderstood.

Last week, we discussed the Holiday Inn incident. Moses was on his way with Zipporah, his wife, and his two sons when God attempted to take Moses’ life. This revelation might be unsettling for some of you—to know that the same God who raised Moses also tried to take his life. This was because God was not going to allow him to enter the battle when some part of the covenant remained unfulfilled in his life.

Zipporah was aware of the issue, as she took a sharp object and performed circumcision on her son. I know this is a painful topic, but it’s crucial to address. What transpired afterward? Of course, after the circumcision, God withdrew His hand from Moses, as that was the underlying issue—Moses had yielded to his wife and failed to follow God’s clear command.

However, what did Moses do next? He sent her away, along with his two sons. They later reunited with Jethro in the 18th chapter after the battle had concluded. Moses understood that he couldn’t continue in this battle with the same old connections. So, he sent Zipporah and his two sons back to his father-in-law in Midian. Then, he proceeded just a few feet and met up with Aaron and the elders.

In the 16th chapter of Acts and the 15th chapter, you may recall the dispute between Barnabas and Paul regarding whether to include John Mark in their mission. The separation that occurred was quite significant. Some might attribute it to Paul’s stubbornness, which indeed played a role. Paul later had to repent, and Mark was eventually integrated into Paul’s life intimately.

However, the key point is this: God was preparing to do something new, and that required a change in relationships. Barnabas took John Mark, while Paul took Titus. What transpired in chapter 16? Paul immediately encountered Timothy, who became the most important relationship in his life. Although he had met Timothy before, it was in this new context that their relationship blossomed.

Additionally, he connected with Dr. Luke right away, marking the two most meaningful relationships in his life because something new was about to unfold. Similarly, with Moses, as he entered a situation of change, he reconnected with Aaron and met with the elders. The change was beginning to take place.

I will never forget this experience, even if I live to be a thousand years old. I was in Hong Kong in 1968, accompanying Dr. Jack McAllister, the head of World Literature Crusade, one of the preeminent mission organizations globally. Our mission was to go to Vietnam as the Vietnam War was drawing to a close.

We were unaware of the situation until the last minute. Due to Dr. McAllister’s Canadian passport and the animosity towards Canadians and the British in Vietnam for not assisting in the conflict, he was prohibited from entering. He told me, “You’ll have to go,” and I vividly remember standing at a fence as he threw a folder over to me, saying, “You’ll have to take this into Vietnam. Good luck.”

Boarding the plane bound for Vietnam, I held a folder of materials I knew nothing about, fully aware that I was undertaking one of the most critical and strategic missions possible. Upon arriving at the airport, I was met by Garth Hunt, a Christian Missionary Alliance missionary, who drove me in an old utility van. I can never forget the sight of that van—it was originally meant for transporting Christian literature but was now stained with blood from carrying bodies and wounded individuals during the final days of Vietnam.

He was understandably disappointed that the prominent missionary leader wasn’t present, and I, a young person, had been sent in his place. Nevertheless, he stated that we had an essential meeting scheduled that we should proceed with. I vividly recall racing through the streets of Saigon that night, with bombs falling and missiles hitting the streets. There were no lights, only kerosene lamps and a few campfires burning as we sped through the dark streets without headlights.

And at one point, Garth just took a direct left turn and started right for a fence. I thought he had lost his mind. Suddenly, I saw two little Vietnamese boys pull back part of that fence, and he sped into the inner parts, immediately closing the gates. We entered a darkened room, and there, sitting in a corner, and sitting around in a circle, were the leaders of the Christian Church of Vietnam.

They had gathered from all over Vietnam, men who had risked their lives to be in that meeting. I was there to share with them our commitment to ensuring that a message was printed and could be placed in every house. By the way, it was successfully distributed to every house in southern Vietnam. Seven of the distributors of that literature died in those latter days while trying to get it into the homes of every person in South Vietnam before the fall came.

Well, that’s what this was like. The elders coming together. Look, you, lady, you don’t have to have a great imagination. These elders had this stuff on their heads. It wasn’t in their hearts. They weren’t expecting deliverance. Maybe some of them harbored a little faith in the scriptures still, but here was this moment.

I want you to know this, and I want to make it clear to you. God always brings you into the collective if you’re ever to be valuable. It’s not going to be in your own understanding of some little single effort you have. You’re going to have to give up the single effort. God brings you into an understanding of the collective, a submission to the collective, and an involvement in the collective. That’s where the release of God comes.

And I’m just going to say this to you. I love you and want the best for you, but some of you are never going to make it to that point. Some of you have struggled in this church for years because you’ve got your own little agenda. You come to everything that the church is doing with your own little agenda. God loves you and may allow you to work on your agenda.

But until you release your agenda and see the corporate agenda, there can never be an ongoing release of God in your life. You’re just going to go on and do your little thing. God knows we have enough stuff going on in this church. If you want to do your own little thing, you can probably find a little thing somewhere.

There’s something little for all of you. Little things for little people. But God would like you to see the total picture. He’d like you to see what this whole corporate thing is that God’s trying to do and become a part of the whole thing.

Don’t look at me as though you don’t have the foggiest idea of what I’m talking about.

Of course, the second thing is confrontation. Naturally, after this thing of communion and getting together, this whole corporate thing that Moses had to learn, he now has to go to the Temple of Pharaoh. Can you imagine what it was like for him to walk back into the same halls where he had played like a boy?

Can’t you just see him running around in these columns and running around in this great place? And here he is walking in again, and he’s facing Manapta. Now Manapta is a Pharaoh we know a lot about. He was harsh and cruel. In fact, from the statues, at least he had them honestly done, he has a little beak nose and he really looks like history describes. He was cruel and harsh. But it must have been Maneptha who was raised at the time Moses was. So Moses is walking back into these halls, now with a shepherd’s staff and probably a full-grown beard, and he’s walking in to confront the little boy that he had played with, now grown up to be a man, but he had played with in the very halls of the temple.

Do you understand this picture? But now it’s confrontation. And some of you are saying, “Well, let’s be fair to Maneptha. He didn’t have a word.” I want to tell you something. A hundred years before Maneptha, just 100 years before this moment, there was a Pharaoh in Egypt, Akhenaton. A hundred years before, he came to an understanding of a divine God and absolutely destroyed all the statues to gods in Egypt. He worshiped this living God, and I’ll tell you what, if you read what he wrote, he had a better understanding of the living God than some of the Israelites did. He understood God’s mercy and compassion and how God was a God of all creation.

He wouldn’t allow any graven images to be built to this God. And by the way, Agaton eventually lost his own life because he stood for this. The Egyptians wanted to go back to the multiple pantheon of gods that they had known before. So when you see Maneptha, and hear Maneptha saying, “I don’t care a whit about this Jehovah!”

You need to put it in context. Romans say that any man who wants to know God will know God. If a man takes the light he has, God will bring him to the next step of light. That’s why I like this colloquial translation of the Hebrew that says, “I don’t care a whit for Jehovah.” That’s more what he was saying than “I don’t know who he is.”

And then, of course, the confrontation leads to the conflict. Of course, the rest of this story, you understand. God had already said, “I’m gonna harden his heart.” The Bible says clearly in Exodus that he hardened his own heart seven times before God ever hardened his heart. It’s only after the sixth plague that you have the word of God saying, “God hardened his heart.”

But you see what he says here. He says, “I’m gonna make this absolutely miserable. They want to worship God, I’ll show them how to worship God. They’re gonna make the same quota of bricks, but we’re not giving them straw. They gotta get the straw, they gotta make the bricks, DON’T DIMINISH THE LOAD, INCREASE IT!”

Well, I’ll tell you something, as predictable as you are moving towards something new in God, God’s gonna say, “The devil’s gonna make it tough for them to hear.”

Half of you Christians in this church still don’t understand the power of distractions. I don’t care if it comes from the sound room, an usher, someone distributing communion, or whether it comes from a worship member, a pastor, or whoever it comes from; you don’t understand that Satan has this marvelous ability to distract you when God’s trying to get your attention.

And the distraction becomes huge when it has to do with God wanting to bring deliverance to your life. The Holy Spirit begins to bring something, and then trouble develops. I want you to understand something in your life. God’s not going to be a servant to you. He will bless you in spite of yourself.

It’s like people who say, “Well, let’s see now, if I tithe, if I give God 10%, he’ll give me 20? That’s a good deal. That’s better than Great Western Bank.” So you begin giving God 10%, and what happens? All hell breaks loose in your finances.

Because I’m trying

for the wrong reason.

God wants to find out whether you’re tithing because it’s obedience to His word or you’re tithing to get rich. Let’s face it, friends. When deliverance comes, the taskmasters begin to add to the problem. Some people think that just by getting saved and sitting in the pew, everything’s going to be alright.

No, the discomfort that comes, and that’s the next word, is this word “chagrin.” I want to say this to you: the discomfort that comes is from God! Oh, I know, Pharaoh’s the one who says, “Don’t give them any straw.” But the chagrin, the discomfort is coming from God because if you’re going to be done with Pharaoh and get on with God, you better understand that there is a very vital reason why God has to let you get uncomfortable.

Now, this chagrin or this discomfort had really four purposes: the people, the leadership, Moses himself, and of course, ultimately, the issue of timing. First was the people themselves. Do you know, sir, that all the — and we’ll start on this business of the real warfare; we’re gonna get into this business of these triads of God’s tests upon Egypt. But do you know that the first three plagues came upon Israel as well?

Did you know that? It’s not until the beginning of the fourth plague that God says, “I’m going to make a differentiation between my people and the people of the land.” This was written many, many years later by a prophet. Verse 7, God says, “On the day I raised my hand to bring them out of Egypt, and I was trying to bring them into a land that flowed with milk and honey, and I said to them, ‘Throw away your abominations before your eyes, and don’t defile yourselves with the idols of Egypt, because I am the Lord your God.'”

And they rebelled against me. They wouldn’t obey me, they did not cast away the abominations before their eyes, and they did not forsake the idols of Egypt. I said, “I will pour out my fury on them, and I will fulfill my anger against them in the midst of the land of Egypt.”

“God, hey, it’s a lot easier to bring you into Canaan than it is to get Egypt out of you.”

“It’s a lot easier to give you inheritance than it is to bring you deliverance. And that’s why some of you just keep heaping on the good stuff, but you’ve never dealt foundationally with some of the other stuff.”

“It’s an old rule. You know, just mix it up. So you go on into all the spiritual things, and you’re baptized in the Holy Spirit, and you have all this stuff, but you’ve never dealt with the foundational issues of cleaning up your life. Pretty clear, isn’t it? So this chagrin came to Israel because they had married their taskmasters, their heart was in materialism, they were worshipping the idols of Egypt.”

“In fact, if you want to study the ninth chapter, and some of you probably are already asking this, God says in the ninth chapter, ‘Look, if I just wanted to get them out of Egypt, I could have done it in a moment. One moment I’d have delivered them.’ But that’s not what was going on.”

“God had to deal with them. He could have accomplished the exodus in a second. But the second purpose is on the leaders themselves. Look at chapters 5, verses 12 through 21. Three times you find in verse 14, ‘The officers of the children of Israel.’ Verse 15, ‘The officers of the children of Israel came and cried to Pharaoh.'”

“Verse 19, ‘The officers of the children of Israel saw that they were in trouble.’ The word here is ‘writers,’ literally in the Hebrew, because they were a middle class among the Jews. Did you know that in the concentration camps in World War II, in the so-called Nazi Holocaust, it was Jews themselves who were the foremen over their fellow Jews in the concentration camps?”

“Do you know that? Same thing’s happening here. It’s fellow Jews who are in this kind of middle class position. They are enforcing the rules of the taskmasters. And who gets uncomfortable first? They do.”

“It’s a principle too, isn’t it? Leaders are next. Never got out of their spirit dead. Numbers 11, they’d already gone through the Red Sea. This is way ahead of our story today. They’ve gone through the Red Sea. They’ve been delivered. They’ve got manna from heaven. They’ve got rocks pouring out water. And what do they say?”

“Oh, we’d like to go back to Egypt where there are leeks and garlic. I don’t even know what leeks are, but I think some of you do. Something about soup. I know I have leeks in soup.”

“God knows, if you’re going to use garlic, please use the kind that doesn’t smell. Right?”

“Their heart was still in Egypt. Even after they’re delivered, their heart is still in Egypt. And the leaders have to learn this lesson. Moses had to learn this lesson, of course. You know, I’m always hearing from people who want to have the gift of leadership. Hmm.”

“Even from those in the lesser staff positions who can be so critical about people who have to assume the final leadership. And people who would like the joys of being the first person. The numero uno. Have their own parking place. Yeah?”

“I remember when I first came to this church, and there was a very rough time. We’ve just alluded to it on several occasions and not, it was a very important time. It was a building time and it had to take place and what God was doing. But I remember when God brought me to a verse about David in 2 Samuel.”

“It was a verse in which the Amalekites had come against David’s little team. And this is before he’s made king. And his people had lost their wives and their children. It says, ‘The people spake of stoning David.’ Now that was a pretty literal translation for me in those days. Because David wasn’t the only person who was being spoken of in those terms.”

“And the passage says, ‘But David encouraged his heart in the Lord.'”

“Hey, it’s just not the elders that had to learn something. Moses had to learn something, and that is the answer wasn’t going to come through a nice middle class who wrote big checks. It wasn’t going to come through skilled leaders in the church who had great gifts. That the eye had to be on the Lord, and Moses had to get that strength.”

I’m sure Moses still kind of had an idea. He’d come back with this message, and the people of God would organize, and they would, they’d have a revolution, and he’d become the Lafayette, the Napoleon of the people of God. Good luck.

It doesn’t happen. So Moses himself had to set his heart upon God and God only. In fact, it’s interesting because when Moses turns to the Lord and says, “Why are you doing this? Since I’ve come, there’s been nothing but trouble, and you haven’t done anything anyway!” And God says, “I love this,” God says, “Now, first word of chapter 6, Now, I’m going to show myself mighty.”

Remember when Abraham had fled to Egypt? It’s another story. Earlier on, when he fled to Egypt, he passed his wife off as his sister. It was a great moment of failure. Finally, he turned around and came back out of Egypt. He built a worship place. He was so discouraged. He didn’t think God would even talk to him anymore.

And God said, “Now. Now lift up your eyes from the place where you stand. Look northward, southward, eastward, westward. I will give you.” And that’s the first time God ever used the word “give.” He had shown, said before, “I’ll show you the land, I’ll bring you to the land.” Now he said, “I will give you the land after his greatest failure.”

You don’t comprehend that kind of guy, do you? See, because he’s a God of principle and process. And Abraham had just gone through a failure, but Abraham was now in a position where God could say, “Good, I’m ready to work.” And the same with Moses. It’s after the taskmasters. After bricks without straw.

After the people are complaining. After Moses says, “What’s going on in this?” God says, “Okay. Now I can do something. Now you’re at the place I can begin.” And, of course, the last principle is communication. The simple fact is this, when you go through a circumstance, God has a new revelation to give you.

Most of us are second or third-generation Christians. Most of us in this room today have not paid much for our faith. We’re in this building, or if you were in some other church, you’re in a church somebody else built.

Our fathers paid for the full gospel message and for the truth of worship and the baptism of the Holy Spirit when there was cynicism, and some of them even suffered physically for that faith. Now it’s kind of semi-popular, and people come here because of the worship, even from other churches, they enjoy what’s going on.

That’s a totally different day. You haven’t paid anything for that.

You’re just kind of riding in on somebody else’s, uh, shirt sleeves. But… If you’re ever going to know God in a new revelation, there’s got to be a new trial that brings you into that experience. God says to Moses, “Look, I’m going to tell you something, and I want you to tell your people this. I want you to tell your people that even their fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, they knew me by the God name El Shaddai, the Provider, but this people will know me as Jehovah, the God who changes things.”

I had a brother with me in Russia who was one of the fellow teachers, a wonderful man. The kids loved him. He was a real pastor and had a great ministry. But about the third day he and I were together, he said, “I know why I’m here. I’m not here to teach these kids. I’m here because God wants me to learn some things.”

He wants me to hear some things you’re saying. You know, his wife had just gone through a… traumatic experience. A typical kind of ministerial background, up, up, up, up, bigger church, better church, more acceptance, and then an absolute crash. And at this point, his wife is saying, “Where’s God in this?” They lost a child, many other things had complicated the whole story.

And he was telling me the story, and I was grinning. I didn’t know I was grinning. I really wasn’t trying to be facetious. I was listening deeply to what he said, and he stopped. He’s a very direct guy. At one point, he said, “Do you think you know the answer to everything?” He asked me that during the, said, “No, there are a few things I haven’t learned.”

But at this occasion, he said, he stopped. He said, “Why are you grinning?” He said, “I’m, I’m, I’m telling you about my life falling apart,” and I said, “I’m sorry, I was already at the next stage.” He said, “What do you mean?” I said, “This is the title for your new book.”

This is where your ministry is going to be released in the greater dimension you’ve ever known. As Paul says to the Corinthians, it’s out of the comfort that you have received that you comfort others. That’s the principle. You want to learn God by a new name? You want a new revelation of God? You think it comes from Bible college?

Good luck!

It comes because God wants you to know Him as the God who changes things. Even your dad didn’t know Him that way. Even your mom didn’t know Him the way you’re supposed to know Him. You’re going to know Him in a way nobody in the past has ever known him, because it’s in your particular circumstance. I got a letter this week from a young man.

I get them all the time, but this one was particularly important because he used a phrase that probably summarizes, uh, a thousand young men scattered around this world that I don’t even know. And if it weren’t for David Schroeder and June, who faithfully send the tapes out, this young man said, “You are my distant, silent mentor through your tapes.”

And then he sent a computer copy of something. He’s in Bible college; this is his last semester. He’s going to be going into ministry. He said, “This I made on my computer. It’s in front of me; it’s on my desk. I see it every time I sit down at my desk.” And these are the words, taken from a tape: “The only way our voice takes authority, the only way our lives are moved into fruitfulness, is through the process of brokenness.

You can’t teach it in Bible school; you don’t get it in homiletics; it doesn’t come because you have a knowledge of scripture. It comes when you submit to the process of the Holy Spirit, and you turn your circumstance into His hands, and He takes them and molds them, and out of that comes life.

I tell you, when I hear people say it (and it happens every month), “I’d like to have a ministry like yours. I’d like to teach the Word of God the way you do.” Sometimes the tears literally come to my eyes when I hear them say that.

Because I know where it comes from. I understand the process. I’m not sure I’d go through it again myself. Fortunately, God fools you. He hangs a carrot out in front of you. He gets you started towards it. If I knew all that was involved, I’m not sure that I’d have made the decision. That’s the goodness of God, isn’t it?

He shadows it. You think it’s water, and it’s sand.

It’s a principle of fruitfulness and growth, and I want you to know, however… Because I’ve said some things here this morning that are a little difficult, I want you to know this process may be tough, lady, but it’s less tough than staying in Egypt.

There is a process to getting out.

If you could only see what God has for you. If you could understand what this loving God wants to do in your life. If I could help you to see that picture just long enough, that it could be better than leeks and garlic.

Several years ago, in fact, it was in the John Jose days when Ken Medema used to come to this church frequently. And when he wasn’t around, John sang his songs. One of Ken Medema’s songs that I remember, and I go over this song many times, was a song of the woman caught in adultery, and you remember that whole story. These self-righteous Pharisees who were going to stone her, and Jesus tells whoever is without sin to cast the first stone, and they gradually go their way, and he says to the woman, “Where are your accusers?”

She says, “There are none, Lord,” and he says, “Go thy way and sin no more.” It’s a great story because Medema has it worked with various kinds of music. There’s a little bit of jazz, there’s a little bit of honky-tonk. It’s really funny as these Pharisees bring all their little words in. But the chorus is what is so phenomenal.

And these are words that I constantly remember and I constantly rehearse to myself: “There’s a place that’s as clean as a mountain stream, and it’s as bright as an April morn. There’s a place for rebuilding your shattered dreams. There’s a place where hope is reborn. There’s a place that is given to all this day.”

It is a place given to all men. There’s a place that is only a step away. It’s the place of beginning again. That’s what it’s about. It’s not about some of us being good and some of us not, or some of us living from the step of being called to God and His salvation while we just have an upward journey. Not at all!

We’re all in this process of slipping back into Egypt and finding again the taskmasters and the bondages. We’re all in the process of God trying to extricate us from this because He has something else so wonderful for us. And in His dealings, we’re all in the place where we have to get uncomfortable first before our dependencies upon Him and the willingness to get Egypt out of our lives and to get on the path towards what He has for us, what His purpose is for us. But that’s the wonderful thing about this God that we serve. It’s His lovely, intentional, repetitive opportunities for us to start over. To begin again.

And however we’ve failed, or whatever has been the failure in our life, God says, “Come on. You know, you never slipped all the way back. Each time you’ve slipped back, it’s just been not quite as far as you were before. So it’s step by step you’ve been moving up. Now it’s time to really take the move. It’s time for us to get done with Pharaoh in your life, and it’s time for us to really begin with what I want to bring into your life.”

Let’s bow our heads in prayer, please. With our heads bowed this morning and no one looking around, I want to ask a question, even before we get spiritual about this. How many of you are in the place of discomfort at this point? May I see your hand? Must be because it’s hot in here. Almost every hand. Some sense of chagrin.

Some sense of chagrin. God is shaking, God is stirring, God is changing. That’s good news, isn’t it? Isn’t that why Paul said to the Hebrews, if you’re without chastisement, you’re a bastard. You’re not a son or daughter. Because any son or daughter God has received, He has begun training you. That’s the confidence we have that we are in His hands.

He’s saying, “Look, jump higher. Jump longer.”

He doesn’t allow us to stay comfortable in the place we are, and He says, “I want to change you, I want to move you into a new dimension.” The second thing on my heart today is this. How many of you have a little picture in your mind, however slight it may be, of what God would like you to be? What He kind of has in mind for you?

Can I see your hand? There’s a bit of a vision there somewhere. There’s a bit of an understanding of what the promised land looks like. Yeah. That’s neat. Thankfully, He doesn’t show us it all. We’d be filled with such dissatisfaction. But He shows us enough to give us hope. And then He says, “I want to reveal myself to you in a way that your fathers didn’t know, no one else knows.

I want to reveal myself to you in a way that only you will know because it involves your circumstance, your life. I want you to know me as the God who changes things. As the God who makes things new.”

How many of you say this morning, “I’d like, and I need, and I’m desperate for a new revelation of God in my life? I mean, to know Him in a new way.” May I see your hand? That’s who you are. Okay, that’s great. Stand with me, please. Everybody, I mean everybody standing.

It’s a wonderful process of God in our life to change us. Most of us are standing at some point where change has occurred. That’s good news, isn’t it? And you can say, “Well, I’m not in this anymore, and I don’t do this, and this is no longer part of my life, and God’s really accomplished a victory in this, and I have found God to be faithful in this.”

But yet we’re realizing the discomfort as God is moving us on to a higher level of completion. I’m not sure that it’s always finished in this life. In fact, I know it isn’t. Perfection comes when we’re with the Lord. But I do believe this, that He at least wants to get us out of Egypt and get us into the wilderness.

At least there. And it begins opening water to us, and bringing manna to us, and revelation, putting His glory cloud in the midst of us. He at least wants us, as a people, to hear His word, know His word, and to become the army of God that He means for us to be. So will you embrace what He’s doing this morning?

Can you reach out with a sense of love and acceptance and say, “Lord, I don’t like making bricks without straw, and I don’t like some of the things that are happening, but I know what they’re doing, and I believe you for the process, and I embrace it.” Can you say that to the Lord? “Lord, I embrace it.” And I thank you for what you’re doing in my life.

Father, I thank you for the brothers and sisters here today, for what you are doing and saying and being to us. Thank you for the communion. Thank you for our fellowship. Thank you for the worship. Thank you for the many elements that, together again today, have spoken to us about who you are and what you want to be to us.

And above all, Lord, for the brothers and sisters in deep levels of discomfort this morning. Certainly, not all of it is because you’ve arranged it. We understand that. There’s the flesh. There’s the enemy. But we know, Lord, that much of this discomfort is you moving us to a higher plane. You’re trying to get us rid of some things and tuning our faces and hearts toward you.

And we respond to that. We embrace it. Right now, in our minds, we put our arms out and say, “Lord, I love you, and you love me, and I’m your child, and you are bringing me in. You’re taking me out to get me in, and I’m glad. I rejoice. Now, Lord, bless us. As tonight we continue in this four Sunday commitments to worship and release, we ask you to continue to express yourself to us in ways that will change us.

In Jesus’ name, and everyone said, Amen. Bless someone beside you; you are dismissed. God bless you.