Now You Will See What I Will Do

[soso]

Now You Will See What I Will Do

Friday, July 27, 2018

“Then the Lord said to Moses, ‘Now you will see what I will do…'” (Exodus 6:1 NIV)

After much reluctance and trepidation, and armed with the promise //that God would be with him, Moses set out to let the people of Israel know that the Lord had heard their cry and would soon deliver them from slavery.  He also finally got the courage to confront Pharaoh.  “Let my people go!” was the message to the Egyptian king.  

But there was a major setback right from the start.  Instead of releasing God’s people, Pharaoh doubled down and retaliated, requiring the Hebrew slaves to make the same number of bricks per day /without providing them with the straw needed to make the bricks; they would now have to look for their own straw and still meet their daily quota. 

* setback - a reversal or check in progress,

This led to a huge outcry from the Israelites against Moses; and Moses came back to God with his complaint:  “Didn’t I tell you I wasn’t equipped for the task?  Why did you even send me out /if you knew it would mean failure for me and for the people?  Things have only gotten worse!”

Many of us have been there, haven’t we?  We sense the call of God on our lives, whether it be to start a Bible study or become a youth pastor or share the good news of Jesus with a group of people; but we get fearful, saying, “Who am I to do this great thing you have called me to do?”  Then, we finally get past all our excuses, believing that God will be with us; and we venture out only to experience pushback.  Sometimes things seem to get even worse than before!  Soon the enemy of our souls is whispering in our ear, “Hey, if you keep going, this whole thing is apt to come /crashing down!”

* get past; 1. to move around or ahead of someone or something that is in the way.

So we can easily imagine and empathize with Moses’ great disappointment.  I’m sure () he was ready /to abort the mission () God had given him.  In fact, he probably thought () he had no choice in the matter, because he had failed in what God had called him to do.  But that’s when God answered Moses with these simple yet powerful words:  “Now you will see what I will do…”  And everything changed that day.

God was saying to Moses, and is saying to us today, “You got past the ‘what ifs’ and obeyed me, and things didn’t seem to work out at first.  But what I said I would do, I will do.  I am going to back you one hundred percent!”  So here’s the challenge for us:  will we hang on to what God told us to do /even if we encounter obstacles right from the start?  Will we wait to hear him say, “Now you will see what I will do!”?

Read Exodus 5:1-9; 5:19–6:1.