Year 7, Day 54: Exodus 5

Theological Commentary: Click Here

No good task goes unpunished.  That’s my usual reaction to this chapter.  Moses goes and does what God asks.  He meets with the Hebrew people and they seem favorable to him.  Yet, when he goes to talk with Pharaoh, things go poorly.  Pharaoh is disagreeable and starts to take it out on the Hebrew people in general.  Pharaoh makes life miserable for the Hebrew workers.  The Hebrew people come back and turn on Moses.  They tell Moses that they expect God to look upon him with displeasure because in their eyes he has made their life miserable.

This is a rather common experience among people who try to do the work of the Lord, to be honest.  Often the Lord calls people to work in the lives of others.  Working in the lives of others usually implies change and challenge.  Change and challenge are scary to most people, often causing fear and rejection.  In fact, do you remember Moses’ reaction yesterday?  Moses was scared and hesitant to obey God because God challenged him.  God was big enough to take the challenge and give Moses time to accept the challenge.

Moses, being human, doesn’t learn this lesson.  Moses doesn’t have the eternal perspective of God.  He doesn’t know how God is going to unfold His plan.  He can’t see how this part of the story is necessary to getting the Hebrew people out of Egypt for good, having plundered the Egyptians along the way.  Instead, Moses turns to God and gives God the same kind of grief that the Hebrew people have given him.  The Hebrew people are short-sighted.  Moses is short-sighted.

The reality is that when we start following God, we need to expect some rejection.  There will always be people who do not want to listen to what God has to say in their life.  There will always be people who want to continue living as they are.  If you spend much time reading God’s Word at all, you will realize that rejection along the way is to be expected.

What is important is that we cannot let the rejection keep us from obedience.  People’s acceptance or rejection doesn’t change God’s calling for our life.  We cannot know the end that God has for us if we follow Him in obedience.  We must pursue His will while enduring the rejection of the world around us.  That, literally for Moses and figuratively for us, will lead us to the Promised Land.

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