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Israel
desperately needed a deliverer. Many of them didn’t even realize it yet. Many
of them, we will find out later, didn’t even want it. But Moses was in a unique
position. Having been rooted in the Hebrew culture, and having access with the
halls of Egyptian power, he could see that a deliverer was needed. But Moses
didn’t say, “You know someone ought to do something about this.” Moses saw the
need, and realized that he was God’s appointed agent to meet that need. When
Stephen spoke of Moses in Acts 7, he said, “(W)hen he was approaching the age
of 40, it entered his mind to visit his brethren … (a)nd he supposed that his
brethren understood that God was granting them deliverance through him” (Ac
7:23, 25). The idea that he was to be the deliverer of his kinsmen entered his
mind because God put it there. He was dead right about what God was calling him
to do. But he was dead wrong in how he went about the task initially.
“Preach to hurting people, and you will never lack an
audience.” That is what one of my preaching professors told me over twenty
years ago. As a young man barely over 21, relatively new in the Christian
faith, I didn’t know much about the Bible or much about life. So, it sounded to
me like bad advice – I mean who would want to hear messages about comfort and
overcoming suffering all the time? Well, what I have learned in the ensuing
years is that suffering is always relevant because we are always suffering. You
might say, “Well, not me, I’m not suffering!” Just hang in there. You will get
your turn, I assure you. And even when we are not suffering personally, people
we love are suffering, and we suffer with them. But not only have I learned
that suffering is always a relevant subject to preach about, I have also
discovered that one cannot preach the Bible faithfully without regularly
dealing with the subject of suffering and apart from having a sound theology of
suffering. The subject does not arise “here and there,” or “on occasion” in
Scripture. I can hardly find a page of the Bible that doesn’t deal, in some
way, with suffering. So it has taken me a long time, but I have finally learned
that the old professor was right. Preach to hurting people – because that’s the
only people there are in the world – and you will never lack an audience –
because the subject is relevant to everyone at all times.
When we begin to read the book of Exodus, it does not take
us long to discover that the Israelites were suffering in Egypt . Of
course, few (if any) of us will ever experience the magnitude of suffering that
they did. The circumstances and intensity of suffering vary from person to
person, even if the experience of it is generally universal. But what is
unchanging from person to person and circumstance to circumstance is the source
of genuine hope in the midst of our hardships. So, when we read these words in
Exodus and see how God was bringing hope to His people in the midst of
hardships, we have every reason to believe that this same God is still bringing
hope to His people in the midst of our hardships as well. So, let us look at
our text and discover several truths about hope in the midst of hardship that
are evident in our text and applicable to our experience in the world today.
I. God’s people are not immune to suffering (1:1-14).
In school we all learned rules of grammar and syntax. One of
them was to never end a sentence with a preposition. For some reason, someone
just decided that ending a sentence with a preposition was something up with
which they would not put. And another rule – well, I just broke it – is that we
should never begin a sentence with a conjunction. Now, I have finally found a way
around this rule, but it isn’t easy. If you will take three semesters or more
of Hebrew, and become proficient in handling the Hebrew Bible, you can show
your teacher that the Scriptures which God inspired contain many sentences that
begin with a conjunction, and some entire books of the Bible begin with a
Hebrew conjunction. Exodus is one of them. If we were to be excessively literal
in our translation of the Hebrew here, we would begin verse one something like
this: “And these are the names of the sons of Israel
who went to Egypt
with Jacob.” There are a variety of rules of Hebrew syntax which explain the
use of this conjunction at the beginning of this book, but the most basic
reason it is there is that this is a continuation of the story of the book of
Genesis.
The first seven verses are all almost exact quotations of
verses in Genesis. The names are the same, only the setting has changed. Having
just completed a quick survey of the book of Genesis, we are familiar with
these people and how they came to be in Egypt . You will recall that they
were not there for the same reason that they would later be in exile in Babylon . In that case,
they were deported to Babylon
as a punishment for their sin. In this case, they are refugees in Egypt to escape
a devastating famine. They came at the invitation of Joseph, who had become
prime minister of Egypt ,
and his invitation was ratified by the Pharaoh himself. Moreover, upon
departing for Egypt, Jacob received a divine affirmation from God that Egypt
was exactly where He wanted His people to be for this season (Gen 46:2-4). He
had also revealed to Abraham in Genesis 15 that the people of God’s covenant
would be strangers in a land that is not theirs for a period of four hundred
years. So, in their coming to Egypt ,
the descendants of Israel
were merely being obedient to the will of God.
There are some who hold a theology not unlike that of Job’s
friends, who say that if someone is suffering, it must always be the result of
disobedience and a manifestation of divine displeasure. In some cases, you can
connect the dots between disobedience and suffering, but not all. It was not
true for the Israelites in Egypt ,
and it may not be true in our lives when we suffer. In many cases, even when we
are obedient, as the Israelites had been in coming to Egypt , we are
still subject to suffering and hardship.
Not only does obedience not insulate us from the potential
of suffering, neither does the blessing of God. In verse 7, we read that “the
sons of Israel
were fruitful and increased greatly, and multiplied, and became exceedingly
mighty, so that the land was filled with them.” One commentator says, “Moses
packed into the verse about every possible way of saying that the Israelites
rapidly increased in number.”[1]
They came into the land as a family of 70 members. They would leave Egypt as a
nation of approximately 600,000 men, not counting women and children (Ex
12:37). Conservative estimates would put the total population at two to three
million. To what can we attribute this amazing boom to Israel ’s
population? It was the blessing of God.
When we look back at the creation of humanity, we find that
God “blessed them; and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill
the earth and subdue it’” (Gen 1:28). So, one of the blessings God gave
humanity in the beginning was the privilege and responsibility of procreation.
Not only this, but more specifically, God had promised to Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob, that He would bless them by giving them descendants who would be as
innumerable as the sand of the seashore or the stars in the sky. God was
faithful to His word, and the blessing flowed immensely. But God’s blessings do
not protect us against the experience of suffering. No matter how richly God
has blessed you, you are still subject to the same hardships of life as any
person living in a sin-corrupted body in this sin-corrupted world.
In fact, we should expect God’s blessings to coincide with
suffering because “in a fallen world, the blessings of God are often so in
conflict with the prevailing corrupt values of this world’s culture that they
function as a threat to those who are not aligned with God’s will.”[2] We
need look no further than the earthly life and experience of Jesus Christ to
see the supreme manifestation of this truth. No human being was ever more
obedient or more blessed than He was; and yet no human ever suffered so much as
He did.
So, in spite of God’s people’s obedience and His blessing on
their lives, the Israelites found themselves suddenly outside of the good
graces of Egypt ’s
power structure and the object of their animosity. It came about as a result of
a regime change. Verse 8 says, “Now a new king arose over Egypt who did
not know Joseph.” In light of all that Joseph had done to rescue the Egyptians
for perishing in the days of famine, it seems very unlikely that anyone could
ascend to the throne without having some familiarity with his name or legacy.
Rather, we must understand this to mean that the new king chose to neither to
remember nor act upon any commitments made to Joseph and his descendants by the
preceding regime. While it is difficult to reconcile the biblical chronology
with that of Egyptian history, we can be fairly certain that this regime change
corresponds in some way with the transfer of power in Egypt either to
or from the dynasty of the so-called Hyksos kings. The Hyksos were a family of
foreign peoples from the Near East who had infiltrated Egypt and
seized power. Some have suggested that the new Pharaoh who knew not Joseph was
the founder of the Hyksos dynasty, while others suggest that the new Pharaoh
marked the end of the Hyksos dynasty and a return to native Egyptian rule. In
either case, it would not be surprising for the leader of the new regime to be
suspicious of such a vast number of foreign people living in the land.
The population of Israel , which was the direct result
of the obedience and blessing of God’s people, was a threat to the new
Pharaoh’s sense of national security. He reasoned that if an uprising or
invasion were to occur, the Israelites may align with the rival power and
overthrow him. The phrase in verse 10, “and depart from the land,” is an
unfortunate mistranslation of the Hebrew. If the fears of this Pharaoh are
well-founded, then the departure of this multitude would be music to his ears.
But, in every other occurrence of this Hebrew phrase in the Old Testament, the
idea is of something rising up to overtake a land. So, Pharaoh devised a plan
to “deal wisely” with them and control the growth of their population. This
plan involved subjecting them to the harsh conditions of brutal slavery. Their
hardships are stated in a succession of terms of increasingly intense
vocabulary: “afflict them with hard labor” (v10); “compelled … to labor
rigorously” (v13); “made their lives bitter with hard labor”; “labors which
they rigorously imposed on them” (v14).
The Israelites were forced to make bricks and carry out the
grandiose building projects of the Pharaoh, in addition to performing
backbreaking agricultural labor. The idea must have surely been that such
affliction would make the strong and healthy Israelites weak and sickly, and
take the lives of those who were already frail and infirm. Additionally, such
deployments of labor would mean that men were removed from their homes for long
seasons of time, and when they returned, they would be too physically fatigued
to procreate with their wives. But the plan backfired. Verse 12 says, “the more
they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and spread out, so that they were
in dread of the sons of Israel .”
The Egyptians could not understand why these foreigners were so hard to stamp
out of existence!
But we know why. Their growth was a result of their
obedience to God and God’s blessing on them. It did not make them immune to
suffering, but neither did their suffering hinder God’s power to bless them and
continue to prosper them, even as He had done for Joseph in the midst of all
the sufferings he unjustly endured. And so we may confidently apply this truth
to ourselves today. Let no one tell you that each and every instance of
suffering in your life is a result of your disobedience to God, or the
withholding of His blessing from your life. No, in fact, your obedience and His
blessing does not prevent you from suffering and may even precipitate your
suffering. But in the midst of it, hope can be found in knowing that your
suffering need not hinder you from continuing in obedience to Him, and it need
not prevent Him from blessing you in spite of your suffering.
Permit me to make one more point of application specifically
for us as American Evangelicals in the twenty-first century. The Israelites had
for several generations enjoyed a sense of cultural favor and were admired by
the rulers and citizenship of Egypt ,
just as American Christians were for a long time since the founding of our
nation. But winds of change blow across cultures sometimes slowly and sometimes
swiftly. Those who were held in high regard by former administrations may
suddenly find themselves the objects of fear, suspicion, and hatred. In America ,
it did not happen with the ascension of a Pharaoh who knew not Joseph, but with
a tidal shift in popular perception that began around the turn of the twentieth
century and accelerated through that millennia. We must not be surprised by these
changes. In fact, cultural prominence and influence has been something that the
people of God have rarely enjoyed anywhere at any time in the world. When it
has been found, it has been temporary and fleeting. So, we may never again see
the day when Bible-believing American Christians represent a “moral majority,”
but we must never forsake our role as a “missional minority.” In spite of the antagonism
and animosity of Pharaohs who know not Joseph and the cultures they represent,
we must continue in obedience to God and under His blessing to be His people
and do His will. Our once culturally
favored status never protected us or prevented us from experiencing hardships
and sufferings; but neither must the hardships and sufferings of the people of
God stand in the way of our obedience to Him or His blessing on us.
Now, we must move on
to the second truth pertaining to hope in the midst of hardship.
II. God alone is worthy of our greatest fear and trust (1:15-2:10).
“If, at first, you don’t succeed, try again.” That’s the
advice many of us were given as we were growing up. I prefer the one that says,
“If at first you don’t succeed, skydiving is not for you.” Pharaoh’s plan to
curtail the growth and expansion of the Israelites had not succeeded, but he
did not give up the effort. He intensified it by implementing a plan of
selective genocide.
The plan began with subtle secrecy. Pharaoh conferred with
two Hebrew midwives about the implementation of it. It is highly unlikely that
these were the only Hebrew midwives, but probably they were the “senior” or
“supervising” midwives. He gave them the plan in verse 16. When the midwives
were assisting in the delivery of a Hebrew birth, once they could determine
that the child was male, he should be killed. The midwives had a strategic
advantage in carrying out this plan. At various points in the delivery process
or immediately thereafter, they could strangle or suffocate a child without the
mother even noticing what happened. Why only the male children? Did not Pharaoh
need them as laborers in the building of his empire? No matter how much he may
need more laborers, his greater need was for fewer potential fighting men who
may seek to overthrow him. In time, with dwindling numbers of Hebrew males, the
surviving females could just be absorbed through marriage into Egyptian culture
and society and the Hebrew nation would dwindle to nothing. Now, we are not
told specifically, but we must assume that there was some leverage applied to
these midwives – a “do this, or else.” It seems hard to believe that Pharaoh
would expect these women whose entire lives had been dedicated to the
preserving of life to callously take innocent lives unless they were compelled
to do so by a great fear.
Now, these women did have a great fear – but their greatest
fear was not of Pharaoh. Verse 17 informs us: “But the midwives feared God, and
did not do as the king of Egypt
had commanded them.” They surely feared the king, but they feared the King of
kings all the more, and preferred obedience to Him over obedience to Pharaoh. In
a culture of death, they stood for life in reverence to a God of unrivaled
authority. And God did not fail them. Because they feared Him, He “was good” to
them, and He blessed them with households of their own (vv20-21). The idea
there in verse 21 is that it seems that midwives were often those who had no
children or families of their own. These two were likely beyond the age of
marriage and childbirth, but God honored their fear and faithfulness to Him by
granting them what they had helped so many others enjoy at the risk of their
own safety and personal sacrifice. Moreover, God caused their names to be
recorded in Holy Scripture as a memorial to these two heroic women: Shiprah and
Puah (meaning, Beauty and Splendor). What was the Pharaoh’s name? It would
answer a great number of questions of historical interest and curiosity if we
knew. But, we are not told. We are, however, told the names of these two women,
that their legacy of fearing the Lord would never be forgotten.
Now, let me interject something here that shouldn’t be
passed over. When Pharaoh found out that the midwives were not killing the male
babies, he confronted them and asked them why they had disobeyed him. Verse 19
says that their response was, “Because the Hebrew women are not as the Egyptian
women; for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife can get to
them.” And so much ink has been spilled on the problem of God blessing these
women for telling a lie. Now, let me ask you, does the Bible say that they
lied? Does the Bible say that they exaggerated the truth for a greater good? It
does not. So when we assume that they lied, we impugn not only their character,
but also God’s. Now, I will admit, just because they did not lie, it does not
mean that the necessarily told everything they knew. All they said was that the
Hebrew women gave birth before the midwives could get to them. Because
Pharaoh’s plan was secret and subtle at this stage, it had to be carried out in
that brief window of time when the midwife could kill the baby without the
mother’s notice and call it a stillbirth. Now, it is entirely possible that
these midwives, upon getting word that they were needed at a Hebrew home, may
have taken their sweet time in arriving so as to miss the opportunity to carry
out Pharaoh’s evil wishes. And it is also possible that in saying that the
Hebrew women were “vigorous,” the idea is that they were more involved and
attentive in the birthing process. The Egyptian women perhaps sedated
themselves and remained somewhat aloof in the birth process. But perhaps the
Hebrew women were very attentive and ready to have the baby handed off to them
as soon as he emerged from the womb. In any case, the point to be made is that
the Bible does not say that God blessed a lie or honored some well-intentioned
sin for a greater good. From what we are told, we have no reason to believe
that they told Pharaoh the truth – even if not the whole truth – and for their
bold fear of God, they were honored and blessed.
In Puah and Shiprah we see that God is worthy of our
greatest fear. But in another heroic woman, we find that He is worthy of our
greatest trust. With the subtle plot of the midwives foiled, Pharaoh
intensified the pogrom once more. This time, in 1:21, he ordered everyone in
the nation to join in the savagery. If you see a Hebrew infant male, cast him
into the Nile . Why the Nile ?
The Nile not only brought water into Egypt ,
it carried waste out of Egypt .
It was at one and the same time a water line and a sewer line. There would be
no mess to clean up, no evidence of the crime. Between the swift current and
the insatiable crocodiles, those little Hebrew babies would be carried away in
no time. But also, the Nile was personified as
a deity in the Egyptian pantheon. It was the god who gives life and takes it
away. So, casting the babies into the Nile becomes a sort of perverted act of
pagan sacrifice and worship, with the idea being that if the Nile takes the
baby, then the baby deserved to die; and if the baby didn’t deserve to die,
then the Nile would spit it back out.
Now, into this burgeoning holocaust of infant lives was born
a “beautiful” boy (2:2) to a yet to be named set of Jewish Levite parents. The
word rendered “beautiful” has a broad range of meaning. Suffice to say that
this mother saw something special in her child, and though she knew what the
law of the land required, she trusted God to protect this child. For three
months, she did her best to protect him herself – hiding herself away with him
during those months when babies sleep more than they are awake and when their
cries can be quickly silenced with a feeding. But the day came soon enough when
her efforts to hide the boy would no longer suffice. She had done all she could
do to protect the boy, but now she had to demonstrate how much she trusted the
Lord to do what she could not. So she got a wicker “basket” – the Hebrew word
is used in one other place in Scripture: this is the same word translated as
“ark” in the contexts about Noah’s flood. It is a floating vessel designed to
preserve life. Into that makeshift ark, she placed this boy and put it into the
river, not that the pagan deities may have their whims and ways with him, but
that the Sovereign God who measures the waters in the hollow of His hand (Isa
40:12) may accomplish His will through this act of trust.
A big sister follows closely behind, watching as the basket
winds along the river, coming to rest at the very spot where the daughter of
Pharaoh had gone for a ritual bath. And she had a characteristic that her
father lacked: “Pity.” When she heard the cries and saw the child, she knew at
once he was one of the Hebrew babies. How did she know? Undoubtedly because he
had borne the mark of the covenant – circumcision – since the eighth day of his
life. A life that her father had wished to kill, she was now prepared to save.
But would that mean that Moses would grow up outside of the blessings of God’s
covenant and know nothing of the God of his people? God could be trusted for
that too. At the suggestion of the baby’s older sister, his own mother was
recruited to nurse the child until the age of his weaning. And in those
formative years, his true identity was grounded in the religious and cultural
heritage of Israel .
Upon being weaned, he became the adopted grandchild of the Pharaoh who had
wanted him dead. But not before first becoming a part of the covenant community
of God through the influence of his godly parents. It was God who spared the
boy’s life, but it was his mother’s great and complete trust in God which
provided the opportunity.
God alone is worthy of our complete fear and trust. Are you
afraid of the threats of those who wish to harm you, who wish to do ill to you
or to manipulate you to do evil to others? Are you afraid of the consequences
of disobeying the laws of the land, or of falling out of step with the cadence
of this godless culture? All of those fears have their place, but their
rightful place is in subjection to the ultimate and overriding fear of the
Lord. And when matters get beyond your ability to control them, when the
outcomes of your circumstances exceed your power to influence to them, you can
have confidence in knowing that God is able to be trusted. Just as this mother
put her baby in the river, you can cast all your cares on the Lord and trust
that He will carry it along. Fear Him above all else; trust Him above all else.
Because He alone is worthy. That is an essential truth for having hope in the
midst of hardship.
Now thirdly …
III. God’s will must be done God’s way (2:11-22).
Here is a statement that can be overheard in the hallways of
church buildings on a pretty regular basis: “You know, there is this problem,
and SOMEBODY ought to do something about it!” You have heard it. You may have
said it. I have said it, but I try not to say it anymore. I have learned that
there is a reason some people seem oblivious to the needs and problems which
are so obvious to us at times. It is because God allows those to see the need
whom He is raising up to meet the need. So my philosophy is not, “Find a need
someone else can meet,” but rather, “See a need, meet a need.” How do I know I
am the person to meet that need? One factor is that God has given you an
awareness of the need. That awareness is evidence of His calling and purpose
for you to meet the need.
Moses went out to observe the conditions of his fellow
Israelites, and he observed one of them being severely abused by an Egyptian.
Being convinced that he was God’s appointed deliverer, he set about to God’s
will, but he did not do it God’s way. He killed the Egyptian and quickly buried
him in a shallow, sandy grave. He must have felt a sense of satisfaction and
accomplishment about this, because the next day, when he came upon two Hebrews
fighting with each other, he assumed they would welcome his interference. They
did not. In fact, they said, “Who made you a prince or judge over us? Are you
intending to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?” The secret was out, and
rather than causing the Israelites to look to him as God’s appointed deliverer,
they saw him as a vigilante street-fighter and wanted nothing to do with him.
His attempt to God’s work in his own way rather than God’s way disqualified him
as a leader in the eyes of his people and actually interposed a delay in the
accomplishing of God’s will.
We have to wonder if Moses thought he could deliver the
Israelites by knocking off the Egyptians one by one. Not only would that take
forever, it was out of step with God’s greater purposes. Though God’s purposes
may have been delayed by Moses’ impetuosity, it was not derailed. Pharoah
sought to take the life of Moses, but God would not have that. He got Moses out
of Egypt so that he might
get Egypt
out of Moses. He led Moses to the wilderness of Midian where Moses could learn
a different way of leading than by brute force. He would learn to be a
sherpherd-servant, and would learn the desert ways, that he might be able to
lead and sustain the people of God when the time came for God’s will to be done
God’s way and at God’s appointed time.
Moses’ instincts were right, but his methods were wrong. By
the time he got to Midian, God was already shaping him into a vessel fit for
use. Again he saw injustice taking place. Some roughneck shepherds were driving
some defenseless women and their flocks away from the well, and again Moses intervened.
But this time he did it with a different spirit. He didn’t strike them down, he
simply “stood up” to them. That is what Moses would need to do in Egypt . If there
was to be any striking down, God could handle that without Moses’ help. Moses’
job would be to stand up to Pharaoh and let the Lord fight for him and for his
people.
Next, Moses “helped them and watered their flock.” Later, he
would spend 40 years shepherding God’s people through these same desert sands,
helping them and watering them like a flock of sheep as a shepherd-servant. He
still looked the part of an Egyptian, but God was transforming him from the
inside out into a man he could use to do His will His way. And as a result of
this transformation, God gave Moses a home away from home there in the desert –
a new family, and a son of his own whose name represented Moses’ newfound
identity: “I have been a sojourner in a foreign land”.
Proverbs 14:12 says, “There is a way which seems right to a
man, but its end is the way of death.” When we are in the midst of hardship,
rather than finding our hope in the Lord and His ways, we often try to
manufacture hope for ourselves by acting in our own power and according to our
own nature. This always ends in destruction and disaster, just as it did for
Moses. Hope would come for the people of God in their hardship, but first,
God’s chosen deliverer had to learn to do God’s will God’s way. And so it must
be for us. In the midst of our hardships, when we resort to “common sense”
thinking, “do it yourself” tactics, or “bootstrap” theology, we short-circuit
God’s plan to bring about hope His way in His time. Our culture has instilled
in us some bad ideas and bad habits, just as Egypt had instilled in Moses. God
has to take those ideas and habits out to the desert and transform us. And when
He has prepared us to do His will, we will do it His way, in His time.
Now finally, the last truth in our passage related to hope
in the midst of hardship is this all-important one.
IV. Our hope is not in changing circumstances, but in an
unchanging God (2:23-25).
Verse 23 says that “it came about in the course of those
many days that the king of Egypt
died.” Was this the hope for which the people of God had been longing? Would
there now arise a new Pharaoh who did remember Joseph and his descendants and
who would lift the burden of oppression from their necks? That would have been
nice, but it is not what happened. Any sighs of relief from the Israelites were
soon drowned out by renewed sighs of anguish “because of the bondage.”
Every four years or so in America , we start to hear the
trumpets give an uncertain sound of change coming. And many American Christians
mistakenly look toward Washington, D. C., expecting the Kingdom of God
So it was, in the wake of the Pharaoh’s death, with the
reality dawning on the Israelites that their burden had not been lifted, that
they did what we all must do. “They cried out, and their cry for help because
of their bondage rose up to God.” Hear me carefully here: Prayer is essential.
But prayer is not ultimate. Our hope is not in our prayers, but in the God to
whom we pray. We do not pray because prayer works. Prayer works because we pray
to a God who works on our behalf. And we see here in the closing verses of
Chapter 2 that God did four things in response to the prayers of His people to
bring them hope.
God heard their groaning. Their prayers had an audience with
the most high. Hope wasn’t found in the throne of Pharaoh but in the throne of
grace, and the One who sits on that throne had heard them.
God remembered His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
It doesn’t mean that He ever forgot it, but that the time had come for Him to
act upon that covenant. Sometimes the greatest truths can be found in the most
unlikely places, and the greatest definition I have ever found of the word
“Covenant” comes from Sally Lloyd-Jones’ children’s bible, The Jesus Story Book Bible. She says that “covenant” refers to “a
never stopping, never giving up, unbreaking, always and forever love.”[3] That
kind of love is the bedrock on which the covenant promises of God are anchored.
And just as God acted upon that promise to His people in response to their
prayers, we can bring God’s promises found in Scripture back to Him in prayer
and know that He remembers His own Word and will act upon it.
God heard, God remembered His covenant, and God saw the sons
of Israel .
No matter where you are or what you are going through, hope is found in never
losing sight of this: He has never lost sight of you. God sees you. He sees
what you are going through. You are not alone, you are not forgotten. He sees
you and looks upon you in His love. No one else may see the depths of your
suffering but God sees it, He knows it, He hears you in it, and He will fulfill
His promises to you in spite of it.
And that leaves the fourth action of God: He “took notice of
them.” If I could put it more plainly: He cares for you. It would be of
precious little comfort to know that God hears, remembers or sees us in our
hardship if it were not for the fact that He cares for us. But because we know
that He cares for us, we can have hope in our hardship, knowing that this good
God who is all-powerful and all-knowing, whom we fear and trust above all else,
and who is able to transform our circumstances around us and us in the midst of
them, actually cares for us and is going to act on our behalf to accomplish His
purposes for our good and for His glory.
After all, when we cried out to Him from the bondage of our
sin, did He not hear us and remember His promise to save? Did He not look upon
us and demonstrate His care for us in placing our sins upon the Lord Jesus as
He died on the cross? And if we can trust Him to handle this matter of
ultimate, infinite, and eternal gravity on our behalf, can we not trust Him
with all else that we endure as well? “What
then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who
did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not
also with Him freely give us all things?” (Rom 8:31-32).
This is hope in the
midst of hardship: to know that we are not immune to suffering, but neither are
we hindered by it from obedience or prevented from living in the blessing of
God; to fear and trust the Lord above all else in this world knowing that He
will honor that fear and trust by His grace and good providence; to be
transformed in order to do God’s will in His own way and in His own time; to
know that hope is found in Him alone and not in the changing circumstances of
life; for He has proven Himself to us through Jesus Christ our Lord.
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