Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / January 17, 2021 | Exodus - When Things Don’t Work Out

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January 17, 2021 | Exodus - When Things Don’t Work Out · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: Wow, what a great dedication of Kennedy.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: So, our uh series, if you're just starting with us, is out of the book of Exodus.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's titled Breaking Us Out and Inviting Us In.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm encouraging everyone to take the Exodus Challenge where you read the book of Exodus.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, how many of you are reading the book of Exodus with us?
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: Great.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Four chapters should be up through chapter eight.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: This next week, chapters nine through twelve.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: We'll uh finish the book for Palm Sunday, four daily devotionals on those four chapters.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: So good.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: I really love it when you text me or write me during the week, email me, and let me know that you are doing these devotionals and something helped you out.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this morning's message is entitled When Things Don't Work Out, When Things Don't Go The Way You Expected Them To Go, When Things Don't Go The Way You Wanted Them To Go.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Story I'm About To Tell You has passed its 10 Day Quantine, So I believe It is safe for you to hear it.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_00: Twelve days ago, the elder meeting over in the College Avenue Building Auditorium had come to an end.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: It was about 10 o'clock at night, and one by one, the elders had left the room and left the building.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: I was still in my seat trying to finish up the secretary minutes of the meeting.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: And then all of a sudden, Hank or somebody came in really quickly saying, Jim, the police are outside.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: They're looking for you.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, They're looking for me.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: And he said, they want to talk to you right now.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, about what?
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: I think, he said, about your car.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: I said, what about my car?
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: Did someone back into it?
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: Just go, he said.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: They're waiting.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: So I went outside.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: It was really dark.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: There was a police car with his lights on, flashing.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: There was a there were officers.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: And there was a big officer about the size of Chris Jones of the Chiefs, standing next to my car, waiting for me.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: And as I came up, he motioned to the ground to motion for me to avoid stepping in something next to my car door.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: I looked down and next to my door was a pool of blood.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I avoided stepping into it.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: And he said to me, Uh sir, is this your car?
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: I said, Yes, this is my car.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: He said, Do you generally leave your car unlocked?
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: I said, No, I always lock my car.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: But that's right.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: I had to unlock it this evening, early this evening, and I think I forgot to relock it.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: Well, he says, We found a man inside your car.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: He was naked and he was bleeding and he was honking your horn.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Oh, that's okay, that happens to me all the time.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: No, I didn't say that.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: What I actually said was, really?
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: He said, Yes, we were in the neighborhood, we were investigating a stabbing, and a report of a stabbing, and we found him.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: And he says he was hiding in your car.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: He was the only one around here that was unlocked.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: We've already taken him downtown.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: Would you look inside your car for us?
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: And would you let us know?
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: Tell us if there's anything that isn't yours or anything that you're missing.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I got in, I looked around at my car, and I got back out, and I said to him, as far as I can tell, everything in the car is mine, and only one thing is different.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: This little loaf of plum bread has obviously been sat on.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: He did not even crack a smile.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: Chris Jones was serious.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: He just took down my contact information.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: He said a detective would be by the next day to pick up the video, security videotape, said goodbye, and he drove off.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: And that was that.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: For just a dollar, you can have a ride in my car after the service.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, that's not the entire story.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: And Melody heard the story, she was horrified, and she did a deep cleaning of my car the next day.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: So you won't find any signs of my naked bleeding friend.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: Now that experience was unexpected, but it ended harmlessly.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: But sometimes things don't end harmlessly.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes end poorly, sometimes things end just the opposite of the way we wanted, expected, or intended.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not as though we're sinning against God.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, we've done exactly what God has wanted us to do, and yet it turns out to be a complete fiasco.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: A Christian employee asks out of working on a Sunday on Sunday mornings, and a month or two later is let go.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: A girl turns down an unbelieving guy who asks her to marry him years later.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: She's sitting there still single, waiting for a husband.
• 5:31
  SPEAKER_00: A young couple goes on to the mission field after long preparation and after parental resistance.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: And then shortly after you get to the field in the first year, one of the children, true story, contracts a terrible disease, and they are forced to return home only to hear their parents say, See, we told you not to go.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: You lovingly share the gospel with a friend.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: She listens politely, and then from that time on avoids you.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: Moses had a similar experience.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: In case, again, you're just joining us.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_00: We're studying Moses because we're studying the book of Exodus, which is basically the life of Moses.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_00: There's more written about him than anyone else in the Old Testament outside of Abraham.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: And he's one of the great heroes of all of Israel's history, the greatest man between Abraham and Jesus.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: And God preserved his life as a baby.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's in Exodus chapter one, when he was under sentence of death, chapters one and two.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then God placed him in the palace of Egypt and raised him for 40 years as a royal prince, to equip him with the best education that the world had to offer, to enrich him with the knowledge and skills that he would need to be the leader and governor of a nation.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: And then God replanted him for the next 40 years on the backside of the desert to crush and humble and reduce that superstar down into a servant.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: And now God has just brought him back to Egypt.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: As we join the story in chapter 5 this morning, God has just brought him back to Egypt to act as his personal mouthpiece to lead Israel to freedom.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: To paraphrase the great Chicago evangelist Dwight L.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: Moody, Moses spent 40 years in Moses, in Pharaoh's court being told he was a somebody, 40 years in the desert learning he was a nobody, and now 40 years showing what God can do with the somebody who's realized he's a nobody.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: Israel's leaders, and his greatest fear was that when he went back to Egypt, Israel's leaders would reject him as they had before.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: But they've not rejected him.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, in the previous verse, last verse of, and if you have a Bible, you may want to turn to Exodus, last verse of chapter 4 tells us that they actually en masse converted to faith in Yahweh and they worshiped him.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: Chapter 4, verse 31.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: Now what's next is really just the last stage.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: Now he just simply needs to get Pharaoh to let Israel leave Egypt.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: And so as he enters the palace in chapter 1, chapter 5 and verse 1, he has high expectations.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: He's pumped, he's confident, he thinks he knows how this is going to go, and this is going to go well.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_00: After all, he is God's ambassador with God's own words.
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so when it's his time before the throne, he steps forward and he addresses the king with bold faith.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes things don't work out the way we want or expect.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: There we go.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: And when he does this, everything falls apart.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: So just to remind you, here's a map of Egypt.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: Israel was in the land of Goshen, which is up on the right hand side, the eastern side of the Nile Delta.
• 9:24
  SPEAKER_00: Here's Cairo today.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't a city back then.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: So Israel's up here.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: They've been building storehouses, store cities, and so forth for Pharaoh, been building palaces in chapter one.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: We read about that.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: So this is where we are on the map.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_00: And now he goes into Pharaoh's court.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: Moses and Aaron went in and said to Pharaoh, This is what Yahweh, the God of Israel, says, Let my people go, so that they may hold a festival for me in the wilderness.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: Moses starts by asking Pharaoh to let the Hebrews go for a few days for a religious festival, which, by the way, was the gist of what God had told him, Moses, to say, way back at the burning bush in chapter 3, verse 18.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: And Moses had the right to regard Pharaoh or to expect that Pharaoh would say yes, because we have a lot of evidence from Egyptian history that the pharaohs had a history of allowing their slaves to take off several days to worship their gods with religious ceremonies.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: They gave them religious freedom weekends.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: But you and I say, hold it.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_00: Why would Moses even ask that?
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: And why would God in chapter 3 and verse 8 tell him to ask that when what God really intends is to set his people free permanently?
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't this deceptive?
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: This doesn't seem honest.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a fair question that has two answers, or maybe better, a two-part answer.
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, this was the style of negotiations.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: In those days, the style was that when you were asking a large favor or asking permission, you didn't ask for everything you wanted.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: You just modestly asked for part of it.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: You can see this happening in the book of Genesis when Abraham in chapter 23 is wanting to buy a field.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: And then later you ask for the whole thing.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_00: So in the style of negotiation in those days, God has told Moses to make a mild initial request for three days off for a religious feast and then to ratchet it up later.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: But the second part of the answer is that God knows and told Moses back at the burning bush that Pharaoh was stubborn, and Pharaoh would say no even to this minor request, and that would be his first evidence of how hard-hearted Pharaoh was.
• 12:02
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, he was hard-hearted.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: Pharaoh responded, who is Yahweh, or who is the Lord?
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: But this is the personal name.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: Who is Yahweh that I should obey him and let Israel go?
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know Yahweh, and besides, I will not let Israel go.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_00: And you're right if you think this is a disrespectful answer.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: Now Pharaoh doesn't know it, but he's just been enrolled in God's school on the rapid education plan.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_00: And during the next two to three months, which is how long it takes the ten plagues to last, Pharaoh's going to move from elementary school all the way up through college.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: He's starting off right now, verse 2, on the first day of kindergarten, because he doesn't even recognize who this Hebrew God Yahweh is.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: After this talk with Moses, he from now on recognizes and even uses the name Yahweh himself, but he doesn't know who Yahweh really is.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then finally, before it's all over, he will find out the hard way who Yahweh really is.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: That is the God who is supreme over all of the gods of Egypt, including him.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: So as many scholars say, his question, who is Yahweh, is in essence the key question of the entire Pharaoh account, the whole story, and he's going to learn the painful answer.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: This should remind us, by the way, that the battle in this book is not between Moses and Pharaoh, or even Israel and Pharaoh.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: It is God versus the gods of Egypt, as we're told in chapter 12, verse 12.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: God versus the gods of Egypt, including their Pharaoh God.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: But right now, he's ignorant of the true God, and he doesn't even take him seriously.
• 14:07
  SPEAKER_00: In the reply, Moses, who's still sure that this is all going to work out, they answered to him, Well, listen, this is serious.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: We're not kidding around here.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_00: The God of the Hebrews has met with us.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: Please let us go on a three-day trip into the wilderness so that we may offer sacrifice to Yahweh our God.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: This is a direct quote of what God had told them to say back in chapter 3.18.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_00: Or else he may strike us with plague or the sword.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: Please listen to us.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: This is serious.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: This is not just a free weekend we want.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: And notice the irony.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: They say he might strike us with plague or the sword.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: The irony is, of course, God is going to strike the Egyptians with plague and with the sword of death in battle at the Red Sea.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: But the reply from the king of Egypt is, Moses and Aaron, why are you causing the people to neglect their work?
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_00: I do not know, but I could imagine from the end of the previous chapter that the Israelites who've converted to the Lord are so excited.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: Moses and Aaron are their heroes.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: They really believe they're now going to get out of Egypt.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: I can imagine that they've called in sick from work.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_00: They're not making bricks and building buildings right now.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: They're even gathering in mass with their suitcases, getting ready to leave.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: And the report has come to Pharaoh that the Israelites are already taking time off.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: Possibly.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: Not sure, but he says, why are you causing the people to neglect their work?
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_00: Get to your labor.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: Look, the people or the land are so numerous, and you would stop them from their labor.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this sentence reminds you, I imagine, of what the Pharaoh in chapter one said that these immigrants have multiplied so much.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: Remember the paranoia, we've got to institute population control.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: Step one of population control is turn them into slaves, make them work so hard, separate the fathers from the families, etc., and it didn't work.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: But there's a hint here that there's another part of it.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_00: This Pharaoh is so happy to have a million people in doing free labor and constructing major storehouses and cities.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: You get the hint that, yeah, he'd like to, you know, stomp them down a little bit and control their population growth, but at the same time, he loves taking advantage of all the free labor.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: But either way, his solution is the same.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: We need to work them harder so that they stop gallivanting around, they stop expecting to leave the country, they stop any of this stuff.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_00: And so he says that same day, very clever of Pharaoh here, because it splits Moses from the people.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: He gave this order to the slave drivers and foremen in charge of the people.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: The slave drivers were Egyptian, but they had Israelite foremen, just as in the concentration camps, remember, the Nazis used Jewish people as foremen in the concentration camps.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: Same here, slave drivers and foremen in charge of the people, quote, you are no longer to supply the people with straw for making bricks.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: Let them go and gather their own straw.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: So we learn from this verse that the Israelites were primarily involved in brick making.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: Two kinds of buildings in Egypt.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: There were things like pyramids, and by the way, the pyramids had already been built, the major ones, hundreds of years before this, about 800 years before this, and they were built out of stone.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: Egyptians built the stone buildings, the temples and the pyramids.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_00: Every other building, including the palaces, they wanted to be cooler, and so they built them out of mud bricks.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: And they would take the clay from the side of the Nile, the mud, which included some sand and there was mud and so forth, and they would shape it into bricks and then lay them out by the thousands to dry in the sun.
• 18:26
  SPEAKER_00: Here's one of those bricks.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: This one actually dates from this very time period that we're talking about, an Egyptian brick in the British Museum.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: If you look closely, you can see the straw sticking out.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_00: Because in the same way that we use iron bar called rebar today, building a house to sort of hold the wet concrete together, they needed straw to hold this wet mud together as it was laying out in the sun so it wouldn't fall apart.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, um when I was traveling uh through the backcountry on a four-wheeler with my brother Rob in Sudan, I noticed that they were doing the same thing today in third world countries.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: They were making these bricks, these uh and they were using straw and they were laying them out in the sun, making them out of mud, using a mold right here, and making them by the thousands in order to build buildings.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: So they're still making bricks the same way, right?
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now Pharaoh says, but I want you to stop giving them straw.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: Apparently, in the storehouses they had straw when I grew up.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: One of my jobs, main job during the summers, the oldest son, was that we sons had to uh get all the straw from the fields and we had to put it up in the barn because uh the cows, though we fed them alfalfa during the winter, they uh we also felt uh fed them the straw.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: And the straw was really strong stuff.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_00: And you can and we can I can see very easily how that straw would hold a brick together.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: So but he's but but Pharaoh's taken the straw away.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm closing the storehouses.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: We've been giving you the straw so you can make bricks.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_00: The storehouses will be closed.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_00: You can't even draw uh grow straw yourself.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: And then he says, but require the same quota of bricks from them as before.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_00: Do not reduce it.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, we have from one Egyptian papyrus statement of a requirement of one man that he produce 2,000 bricks a day.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_00: For they are slackers.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: This is why they are crying out, let us go and sacrifice to our God.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: Impose heavier work on the men, then they will be occupied with it and not pay attention to deceptive words.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_00: So strategy is that uh that we're gonna make them work harder and that way they can't do anything else but work.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: Very clever because it's going to separate Moses from his people.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: One of the lessons we learn here is we should expect that God's plan often includes things getting worse before they get better.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: Moses clearly goes in expecting one thing, expecting that this trajectory which has been going up will continue going up, but all of a sudden it's fallen off a cliff.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: And we're the same way.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we expect things, things have been going well, we expect them to continue to go well, and now comes the really important thing, the thing we've really been counting on, the thing we've really been hoping, and then all of a sudden we find out it's not happening.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the lessons is that God's plan in our lives, and maybe God's plan in the life of our country, is that things get worse before they get better.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_00: Verses 10 and 11.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: So the slave drivers and the foremen of the people went out and they said to the Israelites, Pharaoh says, I'm not giving you straw, go get straw yourselves wherever you can find it.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: But there will be no reduction in your workload.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: My goodness.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so they have to go all over Egypt, not literally, probably, but all over the land together.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: Now they're not even getting straw, they're getting stubble.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: They're sweeping up the stuff like you find on your driveway, which doesn't hold the bricks together very well, and they're just using stubble.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: And the slave drivers kept pressing them, saying, complete the work required of you each day, just as when you had straw.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: So unfair.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_00: But it was a deliberate act by the Pharaoh, wasn't it?
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: And then the Israelite foremen, whom Pharaoh's slave drivers had set over the people, were beaten.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: And asked, notice which came first, they were beaten first, and ask, why haven't you finished making your prescribed number of bricks yesterday or today, just as you did before?
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: Now there's a fascinating uh scene that you can see when you go down uh to central Egypt, as I have.
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_00: There's a tomb, Rechmire's tomb, it's called.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: He was a prime minister of some kind, he was a mayor, he was an architect, he was a bunch of things.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_00: And he has an amazing uh picture in his tomb of slaves, and by the way, he lived at the same time as Moses and died at this same time, about 1400 BC.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: And on his tomb wall is this beautiful picture of slaves, and they're actually Asiatic slaves, they're actually Israelites and others, you know, they they had slaves from all over that part of the world, and they are making bricks.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: And here at the bottom, um, in any well, let me let me just focus in on part of this, but it goes sort of around this way where you have a pile of soil and water and straw mixed, and you have he's using a hoe to mix it, he's using a hoe to mix it, he's he's straightening his hoe.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: Uh let me just show you here a drawing of this, a better one.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: So you have this pile of mud and clay, right?
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: And you have this interesting hoe that they used to use, just several sticks together.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: And uh that's the hoe that he's using to mix this mixture of clay and straw and mud, and he's straightening his, or he's tightening it actually.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: And so they make it, and then he puts it in the bucket, they lift it up, put the clay in the bucket, and then they carry it up to the fellow who's got a brick mold right there, and he's making, he's making the uh he's making the bricks out of it.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: Here's uh here's a loose drawing of it again.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: So they're making the clay, mixing it, putting it up on the bucket, giving to this to the guy who's making bricks, and then it comes over, and this fella is building the wall.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, the thing they left out of that other picture is that you see these two guys in white.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_00: These are these are the slave masters, and notice each one of them has a stick so that they can beat the Israelites even as they're making them.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: Very, very interesting.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: And and today we actually have dating from this very time period, some of the buildings, some of the storehouses that the Israelites and other slaves made, where you can see these mud bricks that have piled up and they've lasted for 3,500 years.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't this amazing?
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_00: And by the way, we know from uh Egyptian uh literature that their technique was always uh beating first, questions later.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: And that ties in, doesn't it, with chapter 5, verse 14, the Israelite foreman were beaten and then asked, why haven't you made the bricks?
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: We read in these papyruses, they were examined about other people, they were examined by beating with a stick, and their feet and hands were twisted.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_00: Papyrus 10, 52, the foreigner was brought.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_00: He said, Not me, not me.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: He was examined with a stick and found innocent.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: So my point here is just this the Bible is confirmed.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: In every, in even the smallest ways, the Israelites, these Asiatics, were slaves in Egypt.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: They built brick storehouses, as we read in Exodus chapter 1.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: They were required to make the bricks themselves.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_00: A straw was needed in those bricks.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: The daily quotas were required, right?
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: And failure meant beating first and questions later.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't that interesting how, even in the smallest ways in this text?
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: That's what archaeology does.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: Every time you start digging in and investigating the statements of Scripture, you find out that the Bible is confirmed in every way.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_00: Alright?
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm excited about that.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: I hope you are too.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: Verses 15 and 16.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: So the Israelite foreman, what do they do?
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_00: They went in and cried for help.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: Who'd they go to?
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_00: They go to Pharaoh.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: They're so upset.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: They think that somehow they can convince their worst enemy, this tyrant.
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_00: It's like going into Hitler, Jews, and asking, why are the concentration camps so bad?
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: Can you let up on us?
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: Can you close the gas chambers?
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well, they go in and cry for help to Pharaoh.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: Why are you treating your servants this way?
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: No straw has been given to your servants, and yet they say to us, make bricks.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: Look, your servants are being beaten, but it's your own people who are at fault.
• 27:03
  SPEAKER_00: How do you think that worked out?
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: But he said, You are slackers, slackers.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: This is why you're saying, let's go sacrifice to Yahweh.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: Now get to work.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: No straw will be given to you, but you must produce the same quantity of bricks.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: And when they left Pharaoh, they confronted Moses and Aaron.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: And they said, May Yahweh take note of you and judge, they said to them, because you have made us reek to Pharaoh and his officials, putting a sword in their hands to kill us.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_00: One good thing that you see here is they did not say, We're leaving Yahweh, we're not going to believe in Yahweh anymore, we're leaving the Yahweh religion.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: They don't say that.
• 27:46
  SPEAKER_00: They still apparently have trust in Yahweh.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: They are just so upset and they're so resentful because it seemed to be going so well, but now Moses has just made it worse.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so they suddenly turn on him.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: Suddenly, his friends who treated him and Aaron as though they were heroes have suddenly become like wolves and they're attacking.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, the word used in the Hebrew, they that Moses and Aaron are outside the palace, praying probably that this will work well.
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: And they go out and it says, and they pounced.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: Animal word, they pounced on Moses and Aaron, not just confronted them and basically cursed them.
• 28:25
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the lessons here I'll just stop as we're moving toward the close.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: We should expect that even our friends will at times misunderstand and turn against us if we obey God.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: We should expect that even our friends will sometimes misunderstand and turn against us if we disobey God.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: And what does Moses do?
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_00: Well, unlike the Israelites, he doesn't go into Pharaoh himself.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: He knows that's not going to work.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_00: And so he goes directly to the Lord in prayer.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: Like all of the great saints of Scripture, all of the great saints of Scripture, when they're at the end of their rope, Abraham, after 25 years, went to the Lord in prayer.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: Oh Lord, he said, can't you see that I still have no child?
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: Job goes to the Lord and says, Lord, why do you treat me like an enemy?
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: Why do you torture me?
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: David, O Lord, why do you stay far away?
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: Why do you hide your face from me?
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_00: Jeremiah, Jesus, why have you forsaken me?
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: When things fall apart.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: Well Moses did is what all the great saints do, and what you and I so often forget to do when things do not go our way, he turned back.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: He went back to Yahweh and he asked, Lord, Yahweh, why have you caused trouble for this people?
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: He's concerned for them.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: And why did you ever even send me?
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: There's an old gospel song that few of you will remember, but back in my quartet days, we used to travel around and sing this song among others, beautiful song.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: It goes, Where could I go but to the Lord?
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: And it goes like this.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_00: Some of you may remember it.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: Living below in this old sinful world, hardly a comfort can afford.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_00: Striving alone to face temptation's sword.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: Where could I go but to the Lord?
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: Anybody heard that?
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: Where could I go?
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, where could I go?
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: Seeking a refuge for my soul, needing a friend to help me in the end.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: Where could I go but to the Lord?
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: So when things fall apart, let's do like Moses, let's dump on God.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: All right?
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: It's not gone the way that you told me it would go, God.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_00: Why am I even here?
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: This makes no sense.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: You've made things even worse.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: And notice as he continues the prayer, let's give Moses credit.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: He's mostly concerned, not for himself.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's not, how come I was a hero and now I'm a bum?
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's not that.
• 30:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's always he cares for the people.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_00: Ever since I went into Pharaoh to speak in your name, he's caused trouble for this people.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_00: And you haven't rescued your people at all.
• 31:10
  SPEAKER_00: Why are you, why did you send me?
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: And why are you making things even worse?
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_00: This isn't a rescue.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: This is a this is a full-blown fiasco, and this is the same thing that you and I struggle with.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_00: Which is what?
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: What is Moses struggling with?
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: He's struggling with unmet expectations.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_00: The root of all heartache, Shakespeare said.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: Verse 23 reveals here that he expected that this was going to go pretty quickly.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_00: He expected it was going to go well.
• 31:42
  SPEAKER_00: His main figure had been the Israelite elders, but the Israelite elders had jumped on board, converted to the Lord, hugged Moses and Aaron, called them heroes.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_00: Moses had started picturing himself maybe as a snow white leaving the seven dwarfs out of Egypt, singing, hi-ho, hi-ho, to the promised land we go.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: And he had forgotten that God had told him back at the burning bush so long ago that this wouldn't be easy, that Pharaoh would be stubborn.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_00: He'd bought into expectations, high and happy expectations, that had exploded in his face and left him covered with shrapnel, wounded and hurt.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what gets you and me into the same problem.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_00: We have expectations.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_00: We expected something, felt like we deserved it from God, and we got the very opposite.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: Well, what's God's reply to this?
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: How does God answer this?
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_00: And the answer is in our last eight verses, chapters 6, 1 through 8.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yahweh replied, and by the way, the answer is going to be to just stay the two words at the beginning of the two sentences.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_00: I am and I will.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yahweh replied to Moses, now you will see what I will do to Pharaoh.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: Because of a strong hand, he'll let them go, and because of a strong hand, he'll drive them out from his land.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: I want to remind you, he says, I am going to keep my promise.
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_00: I told you it wasn't going to be easy, but I'm going to force him to let you go.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: And then in verses 2 and 3, God quickly reminds him of the basic plan that he had.
• 33:13
  SPEAKER_00: Very gently, God spoke to Moses, telling him, I am the Lord.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_00: This is the key line in this chapter and maybe in the whole book.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_00: I am the Lord, Ani Adonai, Ani Yahweh, I am the Lord Yahweh.
• 33:26
  SPEAKER_00: I appeared to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as God Almighty, El Shadai, but I was not known to them by my name Yahweh.
• 33:33
  SPEAKER_00: They knew his name Yahweh, but as you read Genesis, you find out they didn't address God by white.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't understand what Yahweh meant, the ever-present one to help and to redeem his people.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so he's just saying, you're gonna see who I really am, what my name really means here.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_00: I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, the land they lived in as aliens.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_00: Furthermore, I have heard the groaning of the Israelites whom the Egyptians are forcing to work as slaves.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_00: I've remembered my covenant.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: I hear you, I see you, I see the problem.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: And now we get to the three key verses in the whole book, right?
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_00: Amazing verses.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: I am and I will.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, God says, Tell this to the Israelites, I am the Lord Yahweh, and I will bring you out from the labor of the Egyptians, and I will rescue you from slavery to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and great acts of judgment.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: Seven times in these three verses, Moses loves sevens, seven times we're going to find, I will, I will, I will, I will, I will, I will, I will.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: And then that, but the key phrase really, the the one on this, the scaffold of the whole thing is I am the Lord.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_00: Verse 7, I will take you as my people, and I will be your God.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_00: You will know that I am the Lord, your God, who brought you out from the forced labor of the Egyptians.
• 34:56
  SPEAKER_00: I will bring you to the land I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_00: I will give it to you as a possession.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_00: I am the Lord.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_00: Did you notice those two things?
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: I am, and I will.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_00: And if you look carefully, you can see that our whole life is captured.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_00: These seven I wills vacuum-pack down to the three main parts of your life and mine as a Christian.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: I'm saved by God in the past, right?
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_00: That's verse six.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_00: Rescue you from slavery, liberate you, redeem you.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's in the past.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's what God's done.
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_00: Verse 7 is life with God in the present.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_00: I will take you as my people and I will be your God.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's the second half of the book of Exodus with the tabernacle and worship.
• 35:40
  SPEAKER_00: You and I will get to know each other.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: That's what we call the Christian life.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_00: And verse eight is what we call heaven.
• 35:47
  SPEAKER_00: I will bring you to the land I swore to give to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_00: Home with God in the future, saved by God in the past, close to God in the present, living with God in the present, home with God in the future, all of it based upon the fact that I am the Lord and I will do these things for you.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_00: This is unbelievable.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_00: His problem is unmet expectations.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_00: His problem and our problem is that we want something that we expect and it doesn't happen.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_00: We're following God and somehow it falls through.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_00: And God's reply is listen, I want you to know something.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_00: I am the Lord.
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_00: I will take care of you.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: Would you let go and let me be God?
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's God's solution to us.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: It was his solution to Moses.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so what he is saying is that all of your life, past, present, and future, from salvation all the way to heaven, I control and I am the Lord, and it won't go the way you think it should at times.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_00: You will be disappointed, your expectations will not be met.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_00: But I am the Lord, I am the Lord, I am the Lord, I will take care of you, you let go and let me be God.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_00: Every promise, every blessing that I have told you I will give you, it will happen.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_00: But when things don't go the way you expect, temporarily.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_00: When I disappoint you, I want you to remember that I am the Lord and I will take care of you.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so you need to let go and let me be God.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_00: When life unravels, remember I am the Lord, I will take care of you.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_00: You need to let go and let me be God.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_00: When a friend betrays us, he whispers in our ears, I am the Lord, I will take care of you.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_00: You need to let go and let me be God.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: When we lose a loved one, he puts his arms around us and he says, I am the Lord, I will take care of you.
• 37:53
  SPEAKER_00: You let go and let me be God.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_00: Let me say it one more time just to review.
• 37:59
  SPEAKER_00: When Moses complains that God's plan is not working, God says, I am the Lord, I'll take care of it.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: You let me be God.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_00: When Moses says things are not working out, they're actually getting worse.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_00: God's reply is, Listen, I am the Lord, I will take care of you.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_00: You need to let go and let me be God.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_00: And when you like Moses, when I like Moses, get so frustrated with what's happening in our country and what's happening perhaps even in our lives.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_00: And we take it to the Lord because where could we go but to the Lord?
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: Am I right?
• 38:36
  SPEAKER_00: Our temptation is to tell God how we want our problem solved because his plan is, you know, just a little bit off.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_00: He's not working it the way that he should, and we could tell him exactly how he could do it better.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: We know.
• 38:49
  SPEAKER_00: And we want to explain how our plan is better.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_00: If only he will answer us, and he says, I'm gonna give you something better than an answer.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna give you myself.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_00: And out of the shadow of the pyramids, his voice comes into the dust and the heat of our lives, and he says, I hear your cry.
• 39:05
  SPEAKER_00: I see your pain.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_00: I know things are not going the way you expected, the way you wanted, the way you hoped.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: I know you want solutions.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_00: You want results, you want answers.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_00: I give you myself.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_00: I am the Lord, I will take care of you.
• 39:21
  SPEAKER_00: You let go and you let me be God.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes things don't work out the way we want or the way we expect.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_00: Friends, God hears your pain.
• 39:35
  SPEAKER_00: He hears your prayers.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: And just as he told Moses that he heard Israel and he heard their prayers in pain, but then he says, I am the Lord.
• 39:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'll take care of you.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_00: You let go.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_00: And let me be God.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: Take your hands off of your life.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_00: Let me take care of it.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_00: There's a great old song I heard Aretha Franklin singing this last week, and I couldn't believe it.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: And I thought that song is absolutely perfect for this.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's a song that you know, and it goes like this be not dismayed.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_00: Whatever betide, God will take care of you.
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_00: Beneath, and she kept on singing, beneath, beneath his wings of love abide.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: God will take care of you.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_00: God will, God will, God will take care of you through every, every, every, every day or all the way.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_00: He will, he will take care of you.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: God will take care of you.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_00: God sings it to you today.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_00: I am the Lord.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_00: I will take care of you.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_00: You just need to let go and let me be God.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_00: Will you do that?
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we thank you for your assurance to us.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_00: The fact that you care for us so much that even when we get angry with you, even when we complain, you still bring yourself to us in such comfort and such assurance and such love.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_00: And though you don't give us answers, and though you don't work things out the way exactly we want, you do give us yourself.
• 41:23
  SPEAKER_00: And you tell us how to live.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_00: You assure us that everything from salvation to heaven is taken care of, that you're in charge of it, and that we simply need to put our trust in you and let you be God.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, we'll do that.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_00: We'll do that.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_00: Right now we're telling you this week, this month, this year, we'll let you be God.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name, God's people said, Amen.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for coming.