Then you will know that I am God

Today I’m going to take you on a quick romp through the next few chapters – Exodus 4:18-7:13 if anyone other than me is actually reading the actual Bible!

It starts with Moses returning to his own people in Egypt ‘to see if any of them are still alive’. Going back is never easy. The best example of this I have seen recently is in the film PRIDE (which I would thoroughly recommend) – where Gethin (played so brilliantly by Andrew Scott) faces returning to Wales after 16 years of exile. For Moses, going back to the scene of his crime and potentially facing the consequences will be hard enough, let alone the emotion of facing up to all that his people have endured in his absence.

I struggle with v21 and others like it –

I will harden his heart so that he will not let the people go.  Exodus 4:21

I find it hard to imagine that God would or could do this, knowing the suffering that is to follow…..I have no answers other than to say the context and time in history and the way things were reported then are all-important. This next passage is even more bizarre –

At a lodging place on the way, the Lord met Moses and was about to kill him. But Zipporah took a flint knife, cut off her son’s foreskin and touched Moses’ feet with it. “Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me,” she said. So the Lord let him alone. (At that time she said “bridegroom of blood,” referring to circumcision.)  Exodus 4:24-26

What can I say? It will probably take you a while to shake that image out of your head!

Then Aaron meets Moses and together they go to the elders of the Israelites –

And when they heard that the Lord was concerned about them and had seen their misery, they bowed down and worshipped.  Exodus 4:31

This is important. Knowing that God sees and cares is important. Knowing that others see and care is important. Back to PRIDE again – one of the most moving aspects of the film is the disbelief and wonder of the beaten down striking miners and their families in a forgotten miserable village in Wales that a group of flamboyant gays and lesbians from London had heard about them and cared for them and were doing something to support them. We need to let people know that we care.

So Moses and Aaron go to Pharaoh and ask him to allow their people a few days off to hold a festival in the desert….and he responds by making their lives harder, making them collect the straw themselves to make the bricks without a drop in production. One of those examples where things have to get worse before they get better – and one of the reasons why people keep their heads down and put up with substandard working conditions etc, because rocking the boat can lead to worse conditions for everyone – and make Moses and Aaron the most unpopular people in the land –

May the Lord look on you and judge you! You have made us obnoxious to Pharaoh and his officials and have put a sword in their hand to kill us. Exodus 5:21

Who asked you to get involved anyway? We were getting by until you came along. Filling our heads with false hopes and dreams. Look at what you’ve done. We’re worse off now than before you came. Butt out!

So Moses looks to shift the blame – and blames God. And God responds with a whole section of ‘I wills’ –

Therefore, say to the Israelites: ‘I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment. I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians. And I will bring you to the land I swore with uplifted hand to give to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. I will give it to you as a possession. I am the Lord.’  Exodus 6:6-8

A whole load of promises that will not be broken because God is God and God is faithful. For now, sit tight and trust…you do not have to even believe all this will happen because when it does, ‘then you will know that I am God.’ When we’re in the middle of something, it is hard to believe that things will ever get better……..in a whirlwind of stress and trauma and your head is all over the place or in a pit of depression when your head is in no place at all……don’t worry, you don’t have to believe or feel God’s presence or say the right words…..all we have to do is sit tight and keep on keeping on and when the rescue comes and we escape from the bondage, ‘then we will know that God is God.’

Rather like the Israelites who are so caught up in their own suffering that they cannot listen to Moses –

Moses reported this to the Israelites, but they did not listen to him because of their discouragement and cruel bondage.  Exodus 6:9

And if they won’t listen, what chance does Moses stand of making Pharaoh listen to him?

(Then there is one of those asides full of names – the family record of Moses and Aaron.)

So we then get back to Moses and his faltering lips (we all know what it’s like to be lost for words and to struggle to convey what we need to say and to be afraid of speaking out).

But God will give him the words to say and the signs to perform –

Then the Lord said to Moses, “See, I have made you like God to Pharaoh, and your brother Aaron will be your prophet.  Exodus 7:1

All Aaron and Moses have to do is do ‘just as the Lord commanded them’. Easy, eh?

So Aaron throws down his staff before Pharaoh and it becomes a snake and the Egyptian sorcerors and magicians and wise men do the same thing….and Aaron’s snakes swallowed up their snakes.

People are quick to discount God’s wonders and signs and explain them away – they use science and common sense and ‘a healthy dose of cynicism’ and that lovely word ‘coincidence’ – because having faith that God cares and wants to connect with us is scary and definitely to be avoided, right?

So then we come to the proper scary bit – the plagues – but I’ll leave that til tomorrow! Enjoy your day!