Exiting Egypt Chapter 5 P3

Exiting Egypt

“When Everyone Criticizes You”

By Dennis Lee: Chapter 5 P3

Read Exodus 5

Let me try to answer. There is only one way to be free from this world, and that is to be miserable in it. In order to be delivered from sin we have to want to be delivered from it. No one wants to be delivered from what he or she perceives to be a comfortable place. It is only when it becomes uncomfortable that we will want to leave it.

Before Jesus healed the sick man at the pool of Bethesda, Jesus asked him, “Do you wish to get well” (Jn. 5:6). It’s a good question. In order to want to be well, we have to be aware that we’re sick and miserable in our present condition.

This is exactly why the Lord brings trials and tribulations our direction. He wants to deliver us from our service to sin and Satan, but to do so He needs to make that service miserable so that we will want the Lord and His provision over that of the world.

Again, going back to Wiesel’s book, “Night,” he describes a time when the concentration camp he’s in was being bombed. Although the bombs could have meant their deaths, the prisoners were filled with hope. Wiesel writes,

“We were not afraid. And yet, if a bomb had fallen on the blocks, it alone would have claimed hundreds of victims on the spot. But we were no longer afraid of death; at any rate, not of that death. Every bomb that exploded filled us with joy and gave us new confidence”

The bombs represented not death but life. So it is with the bombs in our lives. They’re the birth pangs of a new life.

And this is what the Lord is doing by making our lives uncomfortable. Those who we seek to blame, the Pharaohs of this life, are nothing more than gifts from God. They are whom the Lord sends to make us miserable in this world so that we will welcome His deliverance

Now let’s take a look at Pharaoh’s excuse of Moses’ interference. Pharaoh accused Moses’ of disturbing the peace and interfering with the people’s work, and demanded that they get back to work.

How this translates to our own day. We cannot read the Bible or talk to others about God, otherwise we’re disturbing the peace and interfering with our co-workers’ work. In fact, they say that we’re not tolerant, but in the same breath they will allow others to spout their nonsense about their false gods.

And so Pharaoh hindered the people’s ability to hear the message by making their work harder than ever. Pharaoh instructed the taskmasters not to provide the straw any longer to make the bricks, so the people were to comb the countryside for whatever material they could find; stubble, weeds, even roots.

Now, what is interesting is that the city of Pithom, which was one of the cities mentioned in Exodus as one of Pharaoh’s store cities that Israel built there as slaves (Ex. 1:11). Archeologists have uncovered the city and found in the lower part of the wall these bricks with straw mixed in. But as they went higher the bricks were made of all kinds of stubble, roots, and other material mixed in, which fits our story perfectly.