The story we are in this summer is a story about God.  God wanted to rescue the Children of Israel out of slavery and lead them to the promised land.   The problem was, they didn’t trust God.   Even after experiencing God, they struggled to trust God.  When you read this story, it makes you wonder, who would do that?  Who would experience God saving them and then not trust God?  The answer is, we would, we do.  Their story in scripture is a story about us.

The Bible gives us this warning.   

1 Corinthians 10:11 These are all warning markers - danger! - in our history books, written down so that we don’t repeat their mistakes. Our positions in the story are parallel - they at the beginning, we at the end - and we are just as capable of messing it up as they were. Don’t be so naive and self-confident. You’re not exempt. You could fall flat on your face as easily as anyone else. Forget about self-confidence; it’s useless. Cultivate God-confidence. MSG

This God story is in the Bible for us to learn from.  This story was not just about moving from slavery to the promised land.  Remember was Sam taught week 1?  This journey was also a spiritual journey.  God was using this journey to shape and mold them spiritually.   God wanted to teach them to love and trust Him.  The problem was, they couldn’t do it.  They constantly fought against God.

Last week, Sam talked about the worst job interview ever.  God tells Moses he has the job.  Do you remember how Moses responded to God?

Exodus 3:11 Moses protested to God, Who am I to appear before Pharaoh? Who am I to lead the people of Israel out of Egypt? NLT 12 And God said, ‘I will be with you.’ NIV

Sam’s talk was so relatable because that feeling Moses had is exactly the feeling we have, isn’t it?   Don’t we all feel insecure about life?   Don’t we all ask ourselves, ‘Who am I to [fill in the blank]?  Who am I to be a great dad or mom?  Who am I to be a great spouse?  Who am I to be single and courageous?  Who am I to forgive?  Who am I to lead?  Who am I to serve?

Sam said, Moses was right, he wasn’t enough, but God was more than enough.  And it’s true today.  We aren’t enough, that’s true, but God is more than enough.  The big question we must wrestle with is this, ‘Am I focused on who I am, or who God is?’  Sam’s talk last week was excellent.

The story continues, and Moses goes back to Egypt to confront Pharaoh.  This is Moses’ first step into what God wanted.  Let’s stop here and think through this moment.  God called Moses into what God was doing, so everything is going to work out, right?  God, through a burning bush that didn’t burn, said, I will be with you, so it will be a success, right?  If God’s in it, then obviously, Moses will be blessed, right?  Isn’t that what we believe in North America?  Don’t we believe God is good and will bless us the way we want?  Don’t we believe that Christian churches and businesses that are successful are blessed by God?  And don’t we believe that Christian churches and businesses that struggle, we don’t say this out loud, aren’t as blessed by God?  In North America, we just have a way of viewing God’s blessing as success, bigger, better, more, right?

Moses speaks to Pharaoh; let’s read what happens.

Exodus 5:3 Aaron and Moses persisted. “The God of the Hebrews has met with us,” they declared. “We must take a three days’ trip into the wilderness and sacrifice there to Jehovah our God; if we don’t obey him, we face death by plague or sword.” 4-5 “Who do you think you are,” Pharaoh shouted, “distracting the people from their work? Get back to your jobs!” TLB

Moses’ first steps into following God were a failure.  It did not work out as you would expect.  Pharaoh thought Moses was a joke and shut him down.  Did you see this coming?  How is this possible?  God initiated this, right?  This was all God’s idea, right?  How can anything less than success be what God wanted?  Isn’t God a good God?  

We want things to work out the way we want them to work out.  We want things to look the way we want them to look.  When we experience anything other than what we want, we assume we failed, or God failed, and we wonder if God is with us.

Here is what I want you to see.  God is God, we are called to obey Him, and what we are asked to do might not have the results we want.   For some reason, in North America, it’s common for Christians to want success the way we define it, more than we want obedience.   

God explained this to Isaiah.  

Isaiah 55:8 “My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,” says the Lord. “And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine. 9 For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.” NLT

Moses didn’t have any idea what God was doing.  Moses was simply being obedient.  What does God say?  My ways, the way I think, you can’t even begin to imagine or understand them.  If you are Moses in this story, this moment is brutal.  God called you to free people from slavery.  You didn’t want to do it.  You finally agree to go, and then, failure.

For us today, we have the advantage of looking back and reading this story.  We know what God was doing.  There are many story lines taking place around.  God is setting the stage for an epic, world-changing event.  God is confronting Pharaoh and every demonic god in Egypt.  God is beginning to show His power and might to the Children of Israel.  God is beginning the process of teaching the Children of Israel to trust Him.  Through what God is about to do, the nations of the world would be shaken to their core.   You see, there were so many other story lines, and Moses would not have been able to see them.  All Moses is experiencing right now is failure and frustration.

Here is what I want you to see.  

God is God, we are called to obey Him, and what we are asked to do might not have the results we want.  

And in these moments that look like failure, like Moses, we don’t know all the other story lines happening around us.     

Let’s read verse four again.

Exodus 5:4 “Who do you think you are,” Pharaoh shouted, “distracting the people from their work? Get back to your jobs!” TLB

In Egyptian culture, Pharaoh was a god, the son of Ra.   When Moses confronts Pharaoh, saying the God of the Hebrews is demanding a three-day trip, Pharaoh is offended.   Pharaoh responds the way you would expect; he demands, ‘Who do you think you are?’ He’s thinking, ‘I am god, I take orders from no one.’ 

Isn’t this how people live today?  Don’t people view themselves as god?  And don’t people have a way of living that says, ‘I take orders from no one.  I will live the way I want.’  You see, if we think we are the god of our lives, we will decide how we will live, not God.  We will avoid God.  We will stay away from walking in a relationship with Jesus.  We will have no interest in the Bible.  Let me ask you, do you feel that battle?  The battle to decide who will tell you how to live.  

Scripture tells us that there are two forces that are constantly fighting each other inside of us.

Galatians 5:16 I advise you to obey only the Holy Spirit’s instructions. He will tell you where to go and what to do, and then you won’t always be doing the wrong things your evil nature wants you to. 17 For we naturally love to do evil things that are just the opposite from the things that the Holy Spirit tells us to do; and the good things we want to do when the Spirit has his way with us are just the opposite of our natural desires. These two forces within us are constantly fighting each other to win control over us, and our wishes are never free from their pressures. TLB

Selfish evil desires vs. the Holy Spirit, these two forces are constantly fighting each other to win control over us.  We should ask ourselves, ‘Who is winning this battle in my life?’

Back to Exodus.  Pharaoh rejects Moses.  Let's see what happens next.

Exodus 5:6 That same day Pharaoh sent this order to the taskmasters and officers he had set over the people of Israel: 7-8 “Don’t give the people any more straw for making bricks! However, don’t reduce their production quotas by a single brick, for they obviously don’t have enough to do or else they wouldn’t be talking about going out into the wilderness and sacrificing to their God. 9 Load them with work and make them sweat; that will teach them to listen to Moses’ and Aaron’s lies!” 13 The taskmasters were brutal. “Fulfill your daily quota just as before,” they kept demanding. 14 Then they whipped the Israeli work-crew bosses. “Why haven’t you fulfilled your quotas either yesterday or today?” they roared. TLB

Let’s just say it, Moses did exactly what God asked, and things only got worse, much worse.  Moses’ reward for doing what God asked was pain.   This is wild.  It’s a huge crisis.  Let’s quickly review how bad things got.  Pharaoh thinks Moses was a joke and rejects him.  Brick production is now completely unreasonable.  And because they can’t meet the quota, the Hebrew slaves are being whipped.  

One of the toughest things to experience is to walk through life, do what God asks, and then things get worse.  It’s the spouse who tries to love their spouse as God asked, but things don’t change, or they only get worse.  Little to no sexual intimacy.  Little to no deeper conversations.  Little to no fun moments together.  It’s the deeply wounded person who forgives the hurt, but the other person doesn’t change, and the relationship gets worse.  It’s the person who calls out something that is wrong in the company, in the political world, in school, and they lose their jobs, or they face backlash.   It’s the young person getting involved in ministry, and nothing seems to work out the way they expected.  We don’t have a category for that, do we?  It’s hard to do what God asked and experience things getting worse.  We doubt ourselves.  We doubt God.   But what if, what if, it’s all a part of what God is doing?  Think about that for a second.  What if what we think is failure and pain is what God is doing?  And God needs us to obey, not be concerned about success the way we define it.

And what if what God needs from us isn’t success, but obedience?  How are you with that?  Do you want success the way you define it, or do you want obedience?  Yeah, I hear you right now, you want both.  But life isn’t always both; it’s one or the other.

In this story so far, we have seen what Moses did.  We see how Pharaoh responded.  Are you curious to know how the slaves, the Children of Israel, are doing?  I ask because since Moses showed up with this great dream of freedom, life has become brutal for them.  What are they thinking?  Scripture tells us.

Exodus 5:20 When they met Moses and Aaron waiting for them outside the palace, as they came out from their meeting with Pharaoh, 21 they swore at them. “May God judge you for making us stink before Pharaoh and his people,” they said, “and for giving them an excuse to kill us.” 22 Then Moses went back to the Lord. “Lord,” he protested, “how can you mistreat your own people like this? Why did you ever send me if you were going to do this to them? 23 Ever since I gave Pharaoh your message, he has only been more and more brutal to them, and you have not delivered them at all!” TLB

This is painful.  Moses’ reward for doing what God asked was struggle.   The Children of Israel are now irate with Moses.  It was so bad, Moses went back to God with a prayer that sounded like, ‘What are You doing?   I didn’t even want to be here.  Why did You put me into this mess?  You see that things got worse, right?  God, You failed!’

Moses had an expectation, and that is the problem.  When our expectations aren’t met, we fall apart and question God.  We believe that if God loved me, then my life would be easy.   This is why many people turn away from God.  They believe adding God to their life is like adding a genie into their lives.  We make wishes, and our genie gives us health, wealth, comfort, happiness, and success.  But that’s not true.  God is no genie.  God is God, and God asks us to obey even when things don’t look the way we want.

I’m going to say something here that might surprise you.  What made Moses real and intimate with God was that he was honest with God.   He took everything to God, and he didn’t filter it.  He didn’t fake it.  He didn’t water it down.  He backed up the dump truck of failure, pain, and struggle and dumped it on God.  Have you done that?  Maybe it’s just what you need to do.  When we face life, we don’t stay away from God; we run to God.   How?  We take our dump truck of failure, pain, and struggle and dump it on God.   It’s called being in a relationship with God.

I share this story about Moses today because we must learn from it.  I don’t want you to experience pain.  But I love you enough to tell you the truth.  Sometimes the pain we walk through can be our greatest spiritual growth.   It’s sometimes the only way to learn new things and go much deeper with God.  

Remember what Jesus taught?

Matthew 5:3 You’re blessed when you’re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and his rule. 4 You’re blessed when you feel you’ve lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by the One most dear to you. MSG

I didn’t say the crisis is fun.  I’m not saying I want a crisis for you.  I’m not saying that through this crisis God will use it to bless the world.  I’m not saying the crisis is fair.  I’m saying, when we push in on God, that is when we change spiritually.  

Let’s bring this to a close.

Moses does exactly what God wants.  Moses experiences failure, pain, and struggle.  It led Moses to pour out his heart to God.

Here is what I want us to learn.  God is God, we are called to obey Him, and what we are asked to do might not have the results we want.    God is the center of the story, not us.   

What is success to you?   Is it obedience regardless of how things look?  Is it obedience even when things get worse?  Or is it success the way we want to define it?

Does this encourage you to understand that God is with you, even when you face hard times?

Remember, your journey is spiritual journey too.  God’s primary goal is to shape and mold you too.