The Covenantal God

We’re continuing our study in Exodus 2:23-25 this morning and we are going to spend the majority of our time today looking at verse 24. I think it’s important for us to read these verses again before we dive into our discussion this morning. Moses writes in Exodus 2:23-25

Exodus 2:23–25 ESV

During those many days the king of Egypt died, and the people of Israel groaned because of their slavery and cried out for help. Their cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel—and God knew.

Now last week we talked about the reality of suffering. No one can look at the world and say that suffering is only a state of mind. Suffering is everywhere. If you haven’t suffered yet, all you have to do is live long enough and you will. However, what we learned last week is that God is often strategic when it comes to suffering, especially when it comes to Christian suffering. There are many times in our lives and in the lives of the Israelites where God will use pain and suffering to bring us to that which we need the most. The world is incapable of looking at suffering in the same way that Christians do. We don’t deny the impact of suffering but we do deny its sovereignty. God, in His grace, often allows suffering in our lives so that we may possess something that will have eternal value for our lives. As we heard last week from Samuel Rutherford, “Losses and crosses are the wheels of Christ’s triumphant chariot.” We saw last week that there is a purpose to what the Israelites were going through in verse 23, just as there is a purpose in what we are going through in our own lives. Now if the story of Israel was to end in Exodus 2:23, we wouldn’t have a story of Amazing grace and God’s triumph, we would have a heartbreaking horror story. We would have a story with no happy ending, a story that would push the People of God solely into despair and deafeat. If we stop at verse 23 we get heartbreak, despair, groaning, and a crying out to a God that is there but doesn’t respond. A cry out to a God who is there but isn’t interested and this is the God that exists in the minds of many around the world. Many have no problem with admitting that there is some sort of impersonal force that created and is governing the universe but many of these people cannot fathom the idea that there is a God out there who hears them and not only hears them, but knows them intimately and loves them beyond what we are capable of loving ourselves. I recently came across a twitter post from an atheist account and it was actually pretty hilarious. It read, “CHRISTIANITY: Belief that one God created a universe 13.79 billion yrs old, 93 billion light yrs in diameter (1 light yr = approx.6 trillion miles), consisting of over 200 billion galaxies,each containing ave.of 200 billion stars,only to have a personal relationship with you. Lol.” I read that and I thought, “Yeah that’s true! Thanks for doing my job for me!” This account that is designed to bash not just Christianity but all organized religion just told it’s countless followers the kind of God that we serve. Now does this sound impossible? Sure! But that is the reality of what is really going on out there because with God nothing is impossible. Now I’m not sure if the math in their statement is correct but one thing I do know is that we do not serve some all-powerful force that doesn’t hear us and wants nothing to do with us. We serve the God who is there and He is not silent but I am getting a little bit ahead of myself. In Exodus 2:24 we read of these 2 amazing realities: God hears us and He wants to have a relationship with us. Let’s go to the Lord in prayer and then we will take a look at verse 24 again.

God Hears

Moses writes in Exodus 2:24

Exodus 2:24 ESV

And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.

The crying, the groaning, the shrieking, the moaning of the Israelites has ascended to the ears of God. Now I know that we are only a few weeks removed from Pastor Wayne’s series on prayer so I do not want to spend a lot of time rehashing what he said but there are a few things that I want to draw out from what the Word of God reveals to us.

What Does it Mean for God to Hear?

The first thing that I want us to look at is what does it mean for God to hear? The first half of verse 24 says that God heard the Hebrews groaning so what does that mean exactly? I think first and foremost, it is a reminder of God’s close proximity and intimacy with His creation. God hears every cry and every praise. Nothing escapes His ear. But it doesn’t just hit His ear, He understands and listens to every single word. I know that I have been guilty of only half-listening to people but God never does this! We always have His undivided attention. God’s hearing isn’t selective and our prayers are not just cries tossed up into nothingness. The prayers of the people of God aren’t just shooting up into Heaven falling upon deaf ears. I’ve read that for years, NASA and other organizations have been projecting radio waves, and at one point sent vinyl records, into space in the hopes that something is going to send a message back. Now this makes me wonder quite a few things. Are they hoping something out there hears them or are they hoping that something doesn’t? Because I’ll tell you this I have seen every Alien movie, every Predator movie, Men in Black, Independence Day, Signs, and War of the Worlds and none of the the things that come here seem to want to be our friends so what are we hoping to accomplish by sending these noises into space? For all the years that they have projected these radiowaves into the cosmos, you want to know what has never happened? Nothing has ever sent anything back! They are just sending these sounds out into nothingness. 1 Kings 18:29 is a really heartbreaking verse when you view it through the lens of evangelism and when you consider how this is the reality for many in this day and age. 1 Kings 18:29

1 Kings 18:29 (ESV)

And as midday passed, they raved on until the time of the offering of the oblation, but there was no voice. No one answered; no one paid attention.

These are the gods of the world. No voice, no answers, no listening, and no one pays attention.

Can anybody hear me?

Mankind longs to be heard. We don’t want to be the passing vapor that is never noticed. All our lives, we long for someone, anyone to hear us, be it God or just another human being. We want to contribute, we want to know that our voice doesn’t fall upon deaf ears. Our hearts cry is so very often, “Does anybody hear me?” While Lora and I were recovering from covid, we spent one Sunday listening to a sermon by Alistair Begg and he used this example: Pink Floyd back in 1979 released an album called The Wall which is a really depressing album to be honest and this is coming from someone who spent a large portion of his high school years being obsessed with Pink Floyd. On that album they had a song which I’m sure many of you are familiar with called Uncomfortably Numb. Do you remember how that song starts? “Hello, hello, hello? Is there anybody in there? Just nod if you can hear me. Is there anybody home?” David Gilmour and Roger Waters are only making the statement that our hearts have been screaming our entire lives. Is there anybody home? Is there anybody out there?

The Gospel is Good News for the Desperate

What we see in Exodus 2:23-24 are the desperate prayers and the desperate pleas of the People of God. I have heard it put like this: The Gospel is good news but it is only good news to the broken down and desperate man. I can’t even begin to tell you how many times I have heard preachers attempt to win people to the Gospel by saying, “God is going to use your grime, your dirt, your talents, your gifts, to make something wonderful out of you.” That’s a good sentiment but that isn’t the Gospel. If all I need for salvation is to bring God the best of what is already in me, why should I even bother coming if I have everything I already need? No, the best thing that we can bring to God are dirty, unrighteous rags and unless God clothes us with the righteousness of Christ, the only thing those rags will earn us is an eternity in hell! The Gospel is very good news! But it will only be good news for you if you are truly desperate. Are you desperate in your prayer life? Some of the greatest prayers that we can pray are the ones that are signed by our tears. One does not need to look too far into Scripture to see that suffering is always there and prayers are often soaked in tears and desperation. Look at the life of Job, look at the prayers of Hannah, look at the life of Joseph, look at the life of David and in the Psalms. Does the inclusion of suffering in Scripture indicate that God is indifferent or unaware of suffering? By no means! Look at David and look at Psalm 39. Do you know how that Psalm ends? Psalm 39:12-13 says, “Hear my prayer, O Lord, and give ear to my cry; hold not your peace at my tears! For I am a sojourner with you, a guest, like all my fathers. Look away from me, that I may smile again, before I depart and am no more!” Do you see what David is saying? I mentioned it in the second service a little last week, David is saying, “God, leave me alone so that I can have some peace and smile again!” This is the man that is called a man after God’s own heart! We don’t even have time to look at Psalm 88 but it is the most depressing Psalm in the entire book. Maybe the most depressing chapter in all of Scripture! In that Psalm, there is no mention of deliverance, no shout that the author will continue to praise the Lord, the Psalm ends in darkness and agony! Now one might think, “Why would God allow this to be included in Scripture? Why is such desperation seen in these prayers and in this book?” Derek Kidner in his amazing commentary on the book of Psalms sees a reason. Kidner says, “The very presence of such prayers in Scripture is a witness to God’s understanding. He knows how men speak when they are desperate.” How often do we say things that we don’t mean when we have our backs against the wall? We often say crazy and desperate things because we often find ourselves to be crazy and desperate people. But God uses desperate people. David says in Psalm 56:8 “You have kept count of my tossings; put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your book?” In the moment when the Israelites hearts were most desperate, that was the moment they were most ready for God. Notice the strategic nature of our Lord. Thomas Watson said, “Prayer is the arrow and faith is the bow by which our requests go up to heaven. A faithless prayer is a fruitless prayer: [In Mark 9:24] The father of the child cried out and said with tears, ‘Lord, I believe.’ When his tear dropped to the earth, his faith reached heaven.” Are you desperate? If you are that’s good. Remember Jesus didn’t come to save those that had all their ducks in a row, He came to save sinners. Sinners that had nothing and could give nothing and last I checked, that is each and every one of us. Let’s move on to the last half of verse 24.

Does God Forget?

Moses writes, “And God remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob.” Let’s address that first statement, “And God remembered.” At first glance what does this look like? It looks like God has forgotten His people. It’s as if God were sitting in Heaven and the cry from the people of Israel was like a loud thunder that caught His attention and made Him say, “What was that? You know what that reminds me of something!” But is that what this verse means? No, because there’s no forgetfulness with God. What we see here in verse 24 is very similar to what we read in Genesis 8:1

Genesis 8:1 (ESV)

But God remembered Noah and all the beasts and all the livestock that were with him in the ark. And God made a wind blow over the earth, and the waters subsided.

Now certainly that verse doesn’t mean that God forgot Noah! How could God forget the only person and family that He saved out of the entire world? For the Bible to say that God remembered something can’t mean that He had some sort of mental lapse or that He forgot something. What does it mean then? It means that God is about to act. The promise that He made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob has been brought to the forefront of His mind and He is about to do something. We see that in Genesis 8:1 when we see that as God remembers Noah, He acts by blowing a wind over the whole earth. If the people crying out in Exodus 2:23 knew what God was doing in verse 24, those shouts of pain would have become shouts of rejoicing. God is about to do something that will reach out of the borders of Egypt and be heard around the entire ancient world. For God to remember should have sent Pharaoh shaking in his sandels. Why? Because Pharaoh hasn’t just poked a sleeping bear, so to speak, he’s robbed the bear of its cubs! And God will not sit idly by and let wickedness have the last word, more of which we will talk about next week. God is about to do something that would cause the world to tremble. The assault on God’s people is never just an assault on those whom God loves, it is a direct assault on God Himself! We move into the second half of this verse where we read that God remembered His covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God is about to act in a very special way in regards to the covenant that He made with the patriarchs.

What is Covenant?

The question next comes down to this: What is a covenant? Or perhaps more pointedly, what does a covenant with God Himself entail. O. Palmer Robrtson gives an excellent definition by saying, “A covenant is a bond in blood sovereignly administered. When God enters into a covenantal relationship with men, he sovereignly institutes a life-and-death bond.” A covenant with God is more than just a relationship with Him, it is a relationship that is unlike any other relationship because it is instituted by God Himself. Throughout Scripture, one comes across several covenants but the one that we are most concerned with in this passage is the Abrahamic covenant. I’m sure that many of you are familiar with the covenant that God made with Abraham but if you are not, we read about it in Genesis 12 and 15. We read in Genesis 12:1-3 “Now the Lord said to Abram, “Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”” Three distinct promises are given to Abraham: Abraham will become a great nation and this is done through the promise of having offspring beyond what can be counted and he is promised that through him, all the families of the earth will be blessed. One of my favorite sections to teach from is Genesis 15. We read in Genesis 15:5 a discussion between the Lord and Abraham and it says, “And he brought him outside and said, ‘Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.’ Then he said to him, ‘So shall your offspring be.’” Now the most remarkable part of this is not that God is able to predict exactly what will happen to the descendants of Abraham 500 years before it happens, the most remarkable part comes in Genesis 15:17-18a “When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, ‘To your offspring I give this land.’” What makes this so significant is that God Himself walks through the pieces that Abrham had lined up. In those days when 2 people would make a covenant, they would slaughter an animal and then walk together through the pieces of the sacrifice to symbolize that they would both uphold their end of the covenant. But that isn’t what happens here. In Genesis 15:12 we read, “As the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell on Abram. And behold, dreadful and great darkness fell upon him.” Do you see what happens here? God Himself walks through the pieces! Abraham doesn’t take a single step through it. What is God is saying in this? He’s saying something absolutely remarkable is what He is saying. He’s saying, “Abraham, I myself will see to it that this covenant is upheld. I myself am putting my own reputation on the line, and if I fail to uphold this promise, may my life be like these animals.” What God is saying to Abraham is, “Abraham, you are completely powerless on your own to do what I’m about to do or bring about the ramifications of this covenant in any way.” What does this mean for the Israelites in Exodus 2? It means that God Himself is about to bring about the promise that He made to Abraham. It means that they are utterly unable to save themselves but they do not need to fear because God is about to do something in their day that will change the entire world! The time is coming for God to move but the covenant in verse 24 does not end the moment the Israelites leave Egypt, settle in Canaan, or establish the Davidic Dynasty. It continues even now and that is what I want to end our time together with today.

God the Father, Christ the Son, and the People of God

God remembers every aspect of the Abrahamic covenant and it is not totally fulfilled until every family of the earth is blessed. How does that happen? It comes in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The covenant that God made with Abraham is realized in the accomplished work of Christ. To fulfill the covenant that God made with Abraham, God really did become like those pieces. On the day of Christ’s crucifixion, darkness came down, just as it did in Genesis 15 and the Son of God became like those pieces. The immortal put on mortality. He that was eternal was dead. What did it cost God to uphold His covenant with Abraham? It cost Him His very life but death could not hold Him! So, now what? Just as God remembers His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, He remembers the full extent of that covenant which is seen fully in the Christ of the covenant! Just as God acted as He remembered the covenant He made with Abraham, He acts in the lives of those that have been blessed through the Seed of Abraham, Jesus Christ. Through Christ, we are in covenant with God Himself and God has accomplished all of this on our behalf. Charles Spurgeon sees the beauty of this when he said, “Sinner, if God were to look on you to all eternity, he could not see anything in you but what he is bound to punish; but when he looks on his dear Son whom he loves, and remembers how he lived, and loved, and bled, and died, and made atonement for the guilty; and when he remembers his covenant with his Well-beloved, he says, “I will bless these people whom I gave unto him by an everlasting covenant. I promised that he should see of the travail of his soul; and so he shall. I will break the power of sin, and I will set these captives free; to the praise of the glory of my grace, they shall be accepted in the Beloved.’ It is a great blessing that, although God cannot see any reason for mercy in us, he can see the best of all reasons for mercy in the covenant of his grace, and in his dear Son with whom he made it.” We’re running low on time but I want to share a few words of encouragement in regards to what we have read this morning. While the times have changed between now and the time of Exodus 2, the God of Exodus 2 remains the same.

Christian, God has heard every prayer and every cry that you have ever had.

No tear has ever been wasted and no sob has ever not been heard. If all you can do is toss up a single cry of desperation, know that God hears you. Your prayers are never nothing to Him and you are not alone. You have not been forgotten and you are not just another number in a long line of other numbers. Adrian Rogers said, “God hears every word. Somebody said, “Many things are opened by mistake, but none so frequently as the mouth.” Every word, every profane thought. But, thank God, He knows every prayer. He knows every tear. God knows all about me. Now, that may be a terror if you’re unsaved, but what a comfort if you’re saved.” Prayer is often heard before the effects of that prayer is felt. God answers every prayer in the exact way that we would want Him to if we knew everything that He knew. This moves onto my next offering of encouragement

God is working and He will act according to His timing

God never makes mistakes. He is never late, never early, He arrives and moves exactly when He should and how He should. God’s sovereignty is the pillow on which we should lay our heads down each night. As we are going to see next week, God always remembers His people, therefore we know that He will act. Look at the state of the world today and tell me that the time is not right for God to do something that only He could do. Finally, one last word of encouragement:

God will not deny the request of His Son and His Son has asked the Father that we would be where He is and that we would see His glory.

Christ says in John 17:24 “Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am, to see my glory that you have given me because you loved me before the foundation of the world.” To Christ, the mission of the Gospel is not complete unless those whom He has atoned for are with Him. Matthew Henry wrote, “Christ speaks here as if He did not count His own happiness complete unless He had His elect to share with Him in it, for it is the bringing of many sons to glory that makes the captain of our salvation perfect.” Have you ever stopped to reflect on this reality? The Eternal Son of God asks not for greater riches or higher praise but asks that we, these creatures made of dirt that often love sin and self far more than Savior, would be with Him and see Him in glory. But not only would we see His glory, because all will see His glory on the day of judgement, but that we would be made like Him! 1 John 3:1-2 says, “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.” Paul says the same thing in Colossians 3:3-4 “For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life appears, then you also will appear with him in glory.” We won’t get to just see glory, we will partake in that glory. The will of God the Father and Christ the Son are exactly the same. For Christ to will that we would see His glory means that God the Father wills for us to see His glory and if we are called to this, it is no question as to whether or not we will one day partake in it. Christians, be of good cheer! The Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords wants you and He shall have you. For Christ to ask for you by name is not a request that His Heavenly Father will deny. While our prayers are often laced with tears they are never laced without hope. How do we know this? Because God the Father always remembers the covenant that has been ratified by the blood of His Son. God always hears and He always remembers the covenant that Jesus Christ has made for you. Let’s go and thank the Lord in prayer for this marvelous reality.