Delay, Disillusionment, and the Faithfulness of God

Scripture Passage: Exodus 4:18-6:13 

What is Trinity Fellowship - North Jefferson, AL?

In recent years, members of Redeemer Community Church from across north Jefferson County began praying and dreaming together about seeing a similar church planted in their community. This had already happened once before in Homewood when Grace Fellowship was planted in 2017 and they wondered whether it could happen where they lived. The more they prayed and discussed this with the leadership of these two churches, the more it became clear that God was leading them to partner together to plant Trinity Fellowship.

The long-term aim is for Trinity to be an independent church that continues to partner with the Redeemer family of churches in celebrating and declaring the gospel across the region.

If you would please, take your Bibles and turn with me to Exodus chapter 4.

It's also there in your worship guides, our scripture reading, but just so you know, we

are going to be covering a larger passage than what our reading will cover, so if you've

got a physical copy of the Bible or your phone nearby, it would be good to have that handy

ready to look at some of the other nearby passages that we'll be looking at as well.

But for our reading this morning, we'll be looking at Exodus 4 verses 18 down to chapter

5 and verse 2.

Moses went back to Jethro, his father-in-law, and said to him, Please let me go back to

my brothers in Egypt to see whether they are still alive.

And Jethro said to Moses, Go in peace.

And the Lord said to Moses in Midian, Go back to Egypt, for all the men who were seeking

your life are dead.

So Moses took his wife and his sons and had them ride on a donkey and went back to the

land of Egypt.

And Moses took the staff of God in his hand.

And the Lord said to Moses, When you go back to Egypt, see that you do before Pharaoh all

the miracles that I have put in your power.

But I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go.

Then you shall say to Pharaoh, Thus says the Lord, Israel is my firstborn son.

And I say to you, Let my son go that he may serve me.

If you refuse to let him go, behold, I will kill your firstborn son.

At a lodging place on the way, the Lord met him and sought to put him to death.

Then Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son's foreskin and touched Moses' feet with

it and said, Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me.

So he let him alone.

It was then that she said, A bridegroom of blood because of the circumcision.

The Lord said to Aaron, Go into the wilderness to meet Moses.

So he went and met him at the mountain of God and kissed him.

Moses told Aaron all the words of the Lord with which he had sent him to speak and all

the signs that he had commanded him to do.

Then Moses and Aaron went and gathered together all the elders of the people of Israel.

Aaron spoke all the words that the Lord had spoken to Moses and did the signs in the sight

of the people.

And the people believed.

And when they had heard that the Lord had visited the people of Israel and that he had

seen their affliction, they bowed their heads and worshiped.

Afterward, Moses and Aaron went and said to Pharaoh, Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel,

let my people go, that they may hold a feast to me in the wilderness.

But Pharaoh said, Who is the Lord that I should obey his voice and let Israel go?

I do not know the Lord, and moreover, I will not let Israel go.

This is the word of the Lord.

Let's pray.

Father, thank you for your word.

Lord, as we've read in your word and as we've sung or we want to say once again, great is

your faithfulness.

It's the Lord, your words are faithful and true.

So as we read your words together now, I pray that our eyes will be upon you and that your

spirit would open our eyes to see more of who you are in Jesus.

Lord, we pray that you would change us.

We pray this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Let me just get this cough drop out real quick, sorry.

I was ready for that to launch.

This past week, I was planning on meeting with a friend of mine, a pastor friend, and

he's one that's known to a number of you, his name is Dwight.

Those of you who know him know that over the past few years, his family has been hit with

one medical crisis after another.

They've been in and out of hospitals facing unimaginable hardships, and yet they have

worshiped the Lord through it, and he has made his faithfulness known.

But that is not to say that it has been easy, because it absolutely has not been, as they've

been hit with one hardship after another, after another.

And so in some ways, I was not surprised this past week when he reached out to me.

He said, could we reschedule our meeting because I've been injured and I've got surgery.

So just another thing.

Of course, I told him he needs to reschedule his surgery because we've planned to meet.

But no, as I received that message, I thought about all that they've been through in recent

years and I thought, isn't this just like what I've been reading all week in this passage?

You see here, the people of God have been going through immense hardship as slaves in

Egypt.

And then finally, some good news arrives.

God is going to set them free.

You see that there at the end of chapter four.

So they believe the good news and they worship God.

But after that, things don't get immediately better.

In fact, they get worse.

You read about that in chapter five.

So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and they said, thus says the God of Israel, let my

people go that they may hold a feast to me in the wilderness.

How does Pharaoh respond?

He refuses.

He says, who is the Lord that I should obey his voice?

I will not let Israel go.

And not only does he not let them go, as you read on, you see that he lays heavier burdens

on them.

Pharaoh tells the taskmasters to make them gather their own straw, but still require

them to produce the same amount of bricks.

In other words, he gives them an absolutely impossible task.

And so the Israelite foreman, those the Israelites who had been kind of put in charge of the

labor of the Israelites, who were answerable to the taskmasters, when they came and reported

that, they haven't been able to make enough bricks for the day because of all that you

have to gather straw.

They were met with resistance and the taskmasters were told beat them because they didn't meet

that quota.

So these foremen then go to the Pharaoh about this, and he shows them no mercy.

He says, this is their fault.

He accuses them of idleness, of laziness, saying, you're idle.

That's why you want to go and worship.

He doesn't relieve their burden at all.

He lays it on thicker.

And so Moses then comes before God.

By the way, I skipped this part, but the foreman come out and there are Moses and Aaron.

And so they blame Moses and Aaron for what is happening.

So Moses comes before the Lord and he cries out.

We see this at the end of chapter five.

He says, oh Lord, why have you done evil to this people?

Why did you ever send me?

You have not delivered your people at all.

So deliverance seems delayed, if not outright denied.

But now God lets Moses know something.

When you get to chapter six, the Lord says to Moses, now you will see what I will do.

Now is the time he is going to deliver them.

So he is bringing deliverance, and he's going to do so in his perfect timing, even if that

isn't something that they saw coming.

So it wasn't a question of denial, but a question of time.

So he reassures Moses in chapter six, and he gives Moses a message to bring to the people,

to reassure them that when he brings the message, they don't want to hear it.

This apparent delay in deliverance has led to, you might say, disillusionment.

We're told in chapter six and verse nine that they didn't listen to Moses because of their

broken spirit and harsh slavery.

You see, they had been let down before and they did not want to be let down again.

I wonder if you can identify with any of this.

Maybe you've come from a place of worship and hardship, and you have prayed for God

to cause specific things to get better.

You believe he can, but instead of things getting better after you've prayed, things

only get worse.

Maybe after a while of experiencing that kind of thing, it becomes hard to even hear the

promises of God.

Your faith starts to give way to cynicism.

So really the question I want to pose to us as we look at this passage together is what

do you do when you worship and things go from bad to worse?

You worship thinking things are going to get better and then they seem to be falling apart.

Or just immediately, we see here that if God's answers feel delayed or if faith is

giving way to disillusionment, he remains faithful still.

His faithfulness will never fail.

So for the next few moments, I want us to see two major truths about God that point

to his faithfulness, and then I want us to then briefly look at kind of two points of

say, okay, what are we going to do then in response to these two major truths about God?

First of all, we see here that we can depend upon God in times of delay or even disillusionment

because even then, he is dealing with his people from a heart of fatherly care.

So we see the fatherly care of God here.

So last week, we were seeing Moses at the burning bush and we saw how God reveals for

the purpose of relationship.

So God makes his name known to Moses so that we might truly know God, not just knowing

about him, but knowing him.

And here, we see something even more about the nature of the relationship we can know

with God.

And you find this in chapter 4, verses 22 and 23.

God's giving these instructions to Moses before he departs for Egypt.

He says this.

Let's read it again.

Now there's several really significant things happening in these verses.

I mean, for example, it really summarizes the book of Exodus as a whole.

If you just look for a place to summarize the whole book, like that is it.

The thing I want to draw our attention to though here is how God relates to his people.

Here we see that God is their father and Israel is his son.

And this is one of the main reasons why he is going to deliver them from slavery.

You see, they didn't belong to Pharaoh.

They belonged to God.

He's going to deal with them as his children.

He's hearing the cries of his children in slavery.

He's not going to leave them there.

So behind this great work of redemption that is about to happen is God's fatherly care

for his own.

Now the fatherhood of God and being his children may be something that we're kind of used

to.

Like you hear that and you think, yep, we know that.

Know this, as we're looking at it here, that's not the case.

You see, this is the first reference in scripture to God as father.

This is the first time that his people are referred to as his children.

So let's not lose the significance of this.

God cares for the world, yes.

But here we see that there is a unique relationship that he has with his people, with his own.

Also, the language of firstborn is reserved for the unique relationship that he shares

with his own.

So you might say, well, what made the people of Israel different from other nations?

Well, the answer is nothing.

They were humans just like anybody else, sinful, broken, just like anybody else.

This is not about who they are by nature.

It's that he chose them to make them his own, and now he treats them as his own.

He made them his children.

This is repeated throughout scripture.

So the Old Testament you see later on in Hosea chapter 11 in verse 1 says this,

When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.

I led them with cords of kindness and with bands of love.

So you see, God's fatherly care for his own.

And then this is then expanded upon in the New Testament.

When you come to the New Testament, that second portion of the Bible, and you say,

okay, well, who is God's son?

How is the New Testament going to answer that question?

Well, a couple of things.

One is that Jesus is God's son.

The father says, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased.

Romans chapter 8 and verse 29, for example, Jesus is referred to as the firstborn.

Let me read you exactly what it says there.

Jesus is referred to in Romans 8 and 29 as the firstborn among many brethren.

So Jesus is the firstborn.

He's the kind of highest ranking son.

There's a uniqueness to his sonship.

But he has brethren.

He's got brothers and sisters.

So who are they?

What's everyone who believes in his name?

It's you if your faith is in Christ.

So John chapter 1 and verse 12, it says,

To all who received Christ, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children

of God.

You see, just as the people of Israel were not children of God by natural assent, but

because God chose them to make them his own, so is the case with us.

So in Christ, we are chosen for adoption into God's family.

We see that in Ephesians chapter 1 and verses 3 to 6.

We're chosen and adopted in Jesus.

And so as we're looking to this God who is father, we're seeing he's not an impersonal

for us.

He's a loving father.

He cares deeply for his children.

If you're in Christ, you belong to him and he cares for you.

And here we also see that God doesn't just decide to make us his own.

He deals with us as his own.

So when he deals with us, he deals with us from a heart of care.

So for example, Jesus was very honest about the hardship that we would face in this world

as his followers.

If you look at Luke chapter 12 verse 32, there you'll see he describes us as a little flock,

emphasizing our weakness and vulnerability.

But there he says this, he says,

So he says, don't fear.

Yet you're a little flock, but you have a shepherd, your children who has a father.

God delights to give good gifts to his children, even at the cost of his own dear son.

And through him, he gives us his perfect everlasting inheritance.

He gives us the kingdom.

So fear not.

So even when we don't trust or even when we don't rather understand what he is doing,

we can trust in his care.

I recently heard a conversation with a man whose father was a multimillionaire.

And he talked about how there was a time when he was a teenager when he got into photography

and wanted to buy some film, but it was a bit expensive.

And so he asked his father, he had plenty of money to go and buy some film for him.

And so his father, instead of buying this film for his camera,

went and got in touch with a used car dealership.

And what he did is he asked the used car dealership whether or not they needed anybody to wash cars.

And so that was his answer to his son's request is here, I've got the film for you,

but you just got to go and wash these cars.

And so it felt like he talked about how it felt like a hard delay as a teenager.

But now as he looks back, he sees that it wasn't neglect.

It wasn't a lack of care on his father's part.

In fact, it was his father's care that led to this delay.

Just said that to say that if earthly fathers care for their children,

how much more does our Heavenly Father care for us?

Even in delays that we don't understand, we can trust that he is doing what is best.

His apparent delays are not denials, but invitations to depend more fully upon his grace and care.

All right, so we can trust in the father's care.

But not only that, the second thing I want us to see is that we can trust in his covenant faithfulness.

In chapters four to six here, we can see that God was not only motivated by his fatherly care,

but also he's motivated by his commitment to remain faithful to the covenant he made with them.

He made some promises and he fully intended to keep those promises that he had made.

This covenant goes back to the covenant he made with Abraham and there's references to that here.

You see that in Genesis 12 and 15, 17, 22.

It's repeated throughout Genesis.

So he calls Abraham to himself and he establishes a covenant with him and his descendants.

He's going to bless them and make them a blessing to all the families of the earth.

And he's going to bring them into a land that he is going to show them.

And there were times when that promise felt delayed, right?

So he promised descendants and he promised this descendant was going to come from him and his wife, Sarah,

but they have no child.

So what are they going to do?

But even though God seemed to be delaying there, he had made a covenant, a promise, and he was going to fulfill it.

He also gave, which he fulfilled in the birth of Isaac, but he also gave in Genesis 17 a sign of the covenant.

This is the sign of circumcision.

So every male when they were eight days old was to be circumcised.

This was an outward sign that marked them out as being part of God's covenant people and heirs to all of God's promises.

So you might see them in slavery here and think, has God forgotten his covenant with them?

The answer is no, he hasn't forgotten.

Interestingly, when you look back at chapter four, it seems that Moses had forgotten the covenant,

or at least he had neglected the covenant.

So let's look at verses 24 to 26 together.

You've got this wild account where God tries to kill Moses.

Let me warn you, it's kind of graphic.

You look at it, this is the blessing of expository preaching, just look at all of it.

So Moses sets off to go to Egypt, just like God told him to, and on this journey, you know, God tries to kill him.

We don't know how that played out or what that looked like,

but we do know that it was obvious to Moses' wife what is happening.

So Zipporah runs to the rescue.

How does she rescue Moses?

She circumcises their son, wipes his blood on Moses' feet.

She gives Moses a piece of her mind, calls him a bridegroom of blood.

And so God didn't kill Moses.

Aren't you glad you came this morning?

My apologies if you invited a visitor.

What is going on here in all of this?

When God tries to kill Moses, it's clear that's not what God ultimately wants to do.

I mean, if he wanted to, he could have done it instantly.

But that's not what happens.

In his mercy, he gives this buffer for this intervention to take place.

But we see here that God takes his covenant and the sign of the covenant very, very seriously.

But Moses hadn't taken this seriously enough.

And the fact that Zipporah is the one who carries out this circumcision means that she and Moses had spoken about this before.

See, Moses had married a Midianite, this people outside of the covenant.

And so this may have been why Moses chose not to give his son this sign, like they were living around the Midianites.

Maybe he was raising him in that way.

Maybe by now he had forgotten about all this.

But nonetheless, this was an act of disobedience.

But now that the sign is given, the blood has been shed.

God relents.

God withholds judgment here.

And interestingly, the word used for touch here in verse 25, when the blood was touched,

it's the same word used on the night of the Passover a few chapters later,

which we'll look at in a few weeks when they painted the doorposts with the blood of the sacrifice.

And when God saw the blood, he passed over them, his judgment passed over them and they lived.

Here's the point that's being depicted here.

God remembers his covenant.

This is clear before Moses got to Egypt, but it's also clear while he is there.

So what we saw graphically depicted in Chapter 4, we see addressed directly by the words that are given,

kind of in Chapter 5 and especially in Chapter 6.

I said kind of in Chapter 5 because when you look at Chapter 5,

even as Pharaoh is laying these heavy burdens on God's people, he says, this is why he's doing it.

Look at verse 9 of Chapter 5.

He says, let heavier work be laid on the men that they may labor at it and pay no regard to lying words.

He doesn't want them to listen to the promises of God.

Then you get to Chapter 6, God gives Moses a message that reaffirms his commitment to them.

And he does so in a way that shows, yes, his covenant faithfulness,

but he's going to show that that is connected with his character.

He's going to be faithful to his covenant because it is a reflection of who he is.

He is the I Am.

We see this in what he says about the past.

He lets them know that he is the same God who met with their forefathers.

He's the same God who made this covenant relationship with them.

He's the God of this same covenant that exists now all the way through.

He is the God of the past, but also he's the God of the presence.

He reassures that he is with them now.

He is. They're going to know even more of who he is than the generations before.

He's also the God of the future.

He is going to redeem them from slavery and bring them into the land of promise.

This is the message God gives to Moses to tell his people.

So the reason we can trust in his promises is because they flow from his character.

He is true. He is faithful.

Everything he promises, he's able to perform because he's all powerful.

This is who he is.

And all of his promises find their yes in Jesus.

This is what we read in 2 Corinthians chapter 1.

It is through Christ that we receive all that God has promised.

It's in Jesus that we ultimately see the character of God and it's by being in him that we inherit all of these promises.

You see the realization of the covenant happens in Jesus.

All of this look forward to the new covenant that Christ was going to bring about through the shedding of his blood.

Let me read to you Ephesians chapter 2 verses 11 to 13 to remind us of what it says there.

It says, Therefore remember that at one time you Gentiles in the flesh called the uncircumcision by what is called the circumcision,

which is made in the flesh by hands.

Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the Commonwealth of Israel.

And hear this, strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in this world.

So if that's us, how can we draw near to this God?

How can we know that his promises are for us?

It then tells us, it says, but now in Christ, Jesus, you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

You see it is through Christ and by his blood that we are brought into this covenant relationship with God.

We belong to him.

We've been purchased by his blood and his blessing is upon us.

And so every promise he has made will be fulfilled, not because of our great faithfulness to him, but because of his faithfulness to us.

This is who he is.

You know, like Pharaoh, the enemy wants us to not be listening to God's voice, to not be assured of his promises, to doubt his word.

And the enemy like Pharaoh may very well lay heavy burdens on us with that in view, too.

You know, physical and mental exhaustion can sometimes put us in a state where we find ourselves feeling very disillusioned.

So what does God do with us when, like Israel, we are so beaten down that we're hardly listening and and doubting the promises of God's word?

What does God do with us?

Here's the answer.

He remembers his covenant and he remains faithful still.

One of the most moving speeches I've ever heard was the resignation speech of a seminary professor by the name of Robertson McQuilkin.

You can you can find it online.

He was at the peak of his career when his wife was diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's,

and she would become particularly distressed when he was away from her.

And so he made the hard decision to resign from his post and to become his full time care carer.

But in his speech, he talks about how actually it wasn't a hard decision in the end.

He talks about his love for her and he also talks about the vows that he made to her all those years before.

He said, I promise to care for her in sickness and in health till death do us part.

He was going to remain faithful to those vows.

How much more faithful is our God?

Know this, our lives are secure in Christ.

He is unflinching in his commitment to us in every promise he has made to us,

whether we feel it or not.

We are a weak people and we're even a sinful people.

But God is a faithful Savior.

And here we see that God is not drawn to them, like the people of Israel, by their great faith, right?

They're not portrayed here as a people of great faith.

They're not listening.

They don't want to hear it anymore.

And yet still, even this faithless people, God chooses them and he's going to save them,

not because of the greatness of their faith, but because of the greatness of his grace.

Now, don't get me wrong here.

Are we called to trust in God?

Yes, we are called to.

But it is his covenant faithfulness that is the ground for his saving work in our lives.

It is seeing his grace and his faithfulness that teaches us that we can trust in him.

So God comes to us, even in our disillusionment, and he lifts our eyes to Jesus.

He shows us that once again that we can trust in him.

We may not know what he is doing.

He may not give us an explanation for what he is doing.

We don't find much of that here.

But what he does do is he lifts our eyes and says, but know who I am.

You can trust in me, even if you don't understand what I'm doing.

So what do we do when we worship and things go from bad to worse?

Two very brief calls for us as we draw to a close.

I think this passage is calling us, one, to a life of prayer.

Life of prayer.

God hears the cries of his people.

Look at Moses, for example.

Yeah, Moses has got some issues with what's going on here.

He's crying out to the Lord, why have you done this?

Why did you send me?

You've not delivered your people, but hang on for a second.

Notice who he's speaking to about it.

He's crying out to the Lord.

And it's in that place of prayer that God reminds him of his faithfulness.

So where should we take our frustrations with the Lord?

Will we take them to the Lord in prayer?

You see that over and over in the Psalms, the psalmist wrestling with God.

We are invited to.

Your Heavenly Father loves you and he wants you to bring those frustrations

to him in prayer.

So yeah, cry out, but do it in a Godward direction.

Calls us to a life of prayer, but also secondly, it calls us to a life of patience.

One thing that scripture repeatedly calls us to do in hard seasons of life

is to patiently trust in the Lord.

Lamentations 325, we read it at the start of the service.

The Lord is good to those who wait for him.

He'll be faithful.

He'll show us his goodness, but we wait for him.

Romans 12, 12 says, be patient in tribulation.

James 5, 7 says, brothers and sisters, be patient until the coming of the Lord.

Interestingly, James then goes to give an example of harvesting crops.

A farmer, when he goes out and he plants his crops,

he doesn't go out the very next day expecting there to be a harvest.

No, he patiently waits, expectantly, knowing that the harvest will come in the right time.

Can God change things in an instant?

Absolutely.

Sometimes he does.

He will change things when Jesus returns.

But when things aren't working out as we had hoped, even then,

we can trust that God is working in our waiting.

He's going to bring about a good harvest that he has planned in our lives.

We'll see some of that here.

We'll see the rest of it when we're with the Lord when he returns.

But none of his promises will fail.

So may we patiently wait on him.

You might think, well, I don't know where I could find that patience in me where I'm at right now.

Where does that patience come from?

Colossians 1, 11.

We look to Jesus.

Well, we don't have that kind of patience.

Paul says this.

He talks about how God strengthens us with all power according to his glorious might for all endurance and patience with joy.

Looking to Jesus and praying for patience.

The Lord himself is the one who gives us the patience that we are called to because he's faithful.

So let's pray.

Lord, great is your faithfulness.

You are our hope.

So, Lord, I pray that you would help all of us in whatever we're facing right now to trust in your fatherly care and your covenant faithfulness.

Knowing that you are good, you're bringing about your good promises in our lives.

Lord, I pray that you would assure each one of us of your love and commitment to fulfill all that you've said to us.

Lord, give us the faith to come to you with our struggles and the patience to wait.

To see you bring about the good work you've promised in our lives.

We pray this in Jesus name, amen.