Word of Encouragement (06/30/2022)

Then Moses turned to the LORD and said, “O Lord, why have you done evil to this people? Why did you ever send me? For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has done evil to this people, and you have not delivered your people at all.” (Ex. 5:22-23)

One of the big mistakes we make in our Christian life is that we are too quick to judge God. That sounds horrible, doesn’t it? How dare we judge God, who is the Judge of all? Yet, we think many horrible things we dare not say out loud, don’t we? At any rate, that was the mistake Moses made, except Moses did not just think it but said it aloud to God. When it comes to our communications with God, there is no point hiding our true feelings and thoughts since God knows them all already. But the fact that Moses said this aloud to God shows how he believed his judgment of God to be right.

But we should never be too quick to judge God according to our own assessment of the situation. It is like God promising us that we will win a baseball game and we are complaining that we are losing in the first inning! Even if we are losing at the end of the eighth inning, we cannot say that God is not keeping His promise. We shouldn’t because the game is not decided until the ninth inning is finished. We may not want any surprises; we may just want to dominate the game from the first inning to the last. That may have been how we interpreted God’s promise to us. But our interpretation may not be what God promised. God might have prepared a more exciting and dramatic win after many ups and downs throughout the game.

The ups and downs may be due to our mistakes and failures. But there are also times we are brought down due to no fault of our own. Listen to Moses: “Why did you ever send me? For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in your name....” He did exactly what the LORD told him to do. Why the downturn, then? At least, in this instance, it was to show the depth of Pharaoh’s wickedness. By the time the LORD was done with Pharaoh, there would be no doubt that Pharaoh deserved the punishment he got and much worse. It would be nice if others cheer us on as we try to do the right thing. But more often than we’d like, we get surprised by their negative reaction, which at times can be aggressive and violent. We may have to endure it before we see the good God intended. It can also be that God wants to expose the areas of our flaws and sins, which can be a painful experience, so that He can heal us and restore us by the power of the gospel.

Another reason was to show the falsehood of the Egyptian deities. Many of the signs God would perform in Egypt, which were made necessary by Pharaoh’s obstinance, would challenge the claims of the Egyptian gods and goddesses: these signs showed that the LORD, the God of Israel, was in charge of the universe and all its phenomena, not these false gods and goddesses that the Egyptian worshipped. God’s desire is not just to take care of our external circumstances; God desires our spiritual well-being, which is impossible as long as we hold on to the idols of our hearts. God exposes these idols and their futility so that we may willingly let go of them, which is probably one of the hardest things we do.

What is God doing in your life? Are you disappointed and even angry? Is it possible that you are being too quick to judge Him? There could be no resurrection of Christ without His suffering and death first. What did God really promise you? Can you think of the ways and reasons that your present situation is necessary for the fulfillment of God’s promise and give thanks to the Lord?

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