The Story Through the Bible Exod 5-6
The Story through the Bible • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Oppression
Oppression
We start in Chapter 5 with the first appeal to Pharaoh by Moses and Aaron.
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.” Then they said, “The God of the Hebrews has met with us. Please let us go a three days’ journey into the wilderness that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God, lest he fall upon us with pestilence or with the sword.” But the king of Egypt said to them, “Moses and Aaron, why do you take the people away from their work? Get back to your burdens.” And Pharaoh said, “Behold, the people of the land are now many, and you make them rest from their burdens!” The same day Pharaoh commanded the taskmasters of the people and their foremen, “You shall no longer give the people straw to make bricks, as in the past; let them go and gather straw for themselves. But the number of bricks that they made in the past you shall impose on them, you shall by no means reduce it, for they are idle. Therefore they cry, ‘Let us go and offer sacrifice to our God.’ Let heavier work be laid on the men that they may labor at it and pay no regard to lying words.”
We start what becomes a long time tradition of many prophets the phrase “Thus says the LORD” The phrase only shows up in Exodus for the books of Moses - the first five books of the Bible.
Two things to note about Pharaoh’s response here. Who is Yahweh? not in the I just am not aware of this person/god but in the why would I care who this is way. He says I don’t know and don’t care. A response we get by many people in today’s world. “Who is God and why would I care even if he did exist?” seems to be the perspective of many. There is a response not to Pharaoh but to the people reading the question “Who is God?” it comes in 6:7 and 7:5 *highlighted in Bible to point out when we come across it later*
The king of Egypt does impose this penalty on the people to oppress them maybe hoping to make them turn against these leaders hoping they will become passive slaves. They do start to get upset having been hauled up short for not making their quota of bricks. The foremen of Israel even go to Pharaoh to protest this treatment but Pharoah isn’t having it pointing blame back to Moses and Aaron.
This seems to work and get under their skin pointing fingers back at Moses and Aaron saying in vs 21
and they said to them, “The Lord look on you and judge, because you have made us stink in the sight of Pharaoh and his servants, and have put a sword in their hand to kill us.”
in other words “You made him mad at us, and then handed them the ammo to justify their mistreatment”
Lets see what Moses does here at the end of chapter 5
Exod 5:22-23
Then Moses turned to the Lord and said, “O Lord, why have you done evil to this people? Why did you ever send me? For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has done evil to this people, and you have not delivered your people at all.”
A reminder of the three things I think are highlighted throughout this book.
First: God in his sovereignty is Active not Passive
Second: God is sovereign in his choice to save a particular people.
Third: God sovereignly displays His own Glory
Here Moses attributes the trouble the Israelites get into to God as the ultimate cause while still identifying Pharaoh as the immediate cause. It’s God’s sovereignty acknowledged even in the suffering of the people of Israel which will ultimately display His own Glory in Actively Saving this particular people. It’s the Sovereign GAS that will continue to show up. Glory/Active/Saving.
Moses was warned to be prepared for a stubborn response but apparently was dismayed by the cruelty other people had to suffer. It seemed okay to put himself on the line but now other people are on the line. God wasn’t fitting Moses’ expectations for this situation. I don’t think it’s necessarily wrong to question about what God’s doing. He does lots of things we don’t understand. We will all have the moments where we think “Why has God done this?” without knowing the whole picture. Even so far as Moses saying you haven’t even delivered them at all. There is a bit of implication this is a decent amount of time not just 2 days of trouble to reach this point.
God has a reply though in chapter 6.
But the Lord said to Moses, “Now you shall see what I will do to Pharaoh; for with a strong hand he will send them out, and with a strong hand he will drive them out of his land.”
God does not address the complaint about a suffering Israelite people. He re-iterates the promise. They will not just head out a few days into the wilderness to worship but they will be driven out, they will have a complete exodus. The reminder that these people will have a land promised to them through Abraham comes to mind when God brings up the covenant in the following verses.
God spoke to Moses and said to him, “I am the Lord. I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty, but by my name the Lord I did not make myself known to them. I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, the land in which they lived as sojourners. Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the people of Israel whom the Egyptians hold as slaves, and I have remembered my covenant.
God is connecting the dots of our story here. He is the God from their entire history. He’s not the new guy on the block. He has continually revealed himself more and more and now has even revealed his name. Then gives Moses instructions for what to tell the people who are in this terrible situation of oppression and slavery.
Say therefore to the people of Israel, ‘I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from slavery to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment. I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God, and you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. I will give it to you for a possession. I am the Lord.’ ” Moses spoke thus to the people of Israel, but they did not listen to Moses, because of their broken spirit and harsh slavery.
God is working miracles for a people that don’t believe in him (yet) because he decided he would save them and redeem them. The same applies to all of humanity that Christ died for. Sometimes people cannot see the salvation God provided because of their circumstances and struggles, but God still worked for it even knowing that many would still reject him.
We see God send Moses back in to the front lines to obey.
So the Lord said to Moses, “Go in, tell Pharaoh king of Egypt to let the people of Israel go out of his land.” But Moses said to the Lord, “Behold, the people of Israel have not listened to me. How then shall Pharaoh listen to me, for I am of uncircumcised lips?” But the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron and gave them a charge about the people of Israel and about Pharaoh king of Egypt: to bring the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt.
BOOM cut to commercial except here we cut to a genealogy!? what the heck why is this here? But this isn’t actually weird it’s the response to Moses’ protest trying to get out of the call God has for him. We’ve come back from commercial suspense building waiting to see what happens, similarly here we get a flashback the heads of the family. Who are these two? A lineage reviewed and it’s status important. Now back to the narrator picking up the story as we slowly pan in to Moses and Aaron standing atop steps wind gently ruffling their cloaks
These are the Aaron and Moses to whom the Lord said: “Bring out the people of Israel from the land of Egypt by their hosts.” It was they who spoke to Pharaoh king of Egypt about bringing out the people of Israel from Egypt, this Moses and this Aaron.
On the day when the Lord spoke to Moses in the land of Egypt, the Lord said to Moses, “I am the Lord; tell Pharaoh king of Egypt all that I say to you.” But Moses said to the Lord, “Behold, I am of uncircumcised lips. How will Pharaoh listen to me?”
And the Lord said to Moses, “See, I have made you like God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron shall be your prophet. You shall speak all that I command you, and your brother Aaron shall tell Pharaoh to let the people of Israel go out of his land. But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and though I multiply my signs and wonders in the land of Egypt, Pharaoh will not listen to you. Then I will lay my hand on Egypt and bring my hosts, my people the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great acts of judgment. The Egyptians shall know that I am the Lord, when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring out the people of Israel from among them.” Moses and Aaron did so; they did just as the Lord commanded them.
This gets to another subtle theme that shows us the beginning of a major section of Exodus which we’re about to start the second one with the Plagues but the pattern goes call → resistance → reassurance → obedience.
The Genealogy also tends to do this in the bible to -in some sense- re-introduce important people to the story and give us a hint we’ve got something big happening in the story.
So when you look at this pattern God calls, we resist, He reassures, and then we obey it’s not just Moses’ story. It’s ours. Every time we hit a wall and wonder if God really knows what He’s doing, this pattern is sitting there whispering, “Yes, He does. Keep going.” Moses didn’t get confidence from himself, or from quick results. He got it because God kept reminding him who He was. And that’s really the heartbeat of this section God’s people might not understand His timing, Pharaoh might not respect His name, but God’s still the one writing the story. He’s not waiting for us to get strong enough to obey; He’s teaching us that obedience starts when we trust that He already is strong enough to save.
