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February 19, 2019

“THAT didn’t go as planned!” I can imagine this might have been Moses’ reaction after his audience with Pharaoh resulted in the latter’s order that these upstart slaves find their own straw to make their bricks. The Israelite leaders with whom he had met prior to going to Pharaoh were literally stinging from the lashes inflicted upon them by their taskmasters, and were as one can imagine, not too happy about this turn of events. The story is found in Exodus, the second book of the Bible, chapter five. “Deliverance? Bah! Humbug!”

Much of modern American Christianity is infatuated with a gospel that is little more than self-help pop psychology dressed in religious garb. We act as if God were in the business of fulfilling our every desire, with the result that we refuse to do some of the more difficult tasks God often assigns his people. When things don’t go our way, we quit. Moses complained, but he didn’t quit. He had encountered the living God on that mountain in Midian, and no matter how difficult the task, he wasn’t about to retreat.

Jeremiah had a similar experience. God gave him the difficult assignment of preaching to people who didn’t want to hear his message, to a king whose response to the Word of God was to throw the messenger in a dungeon. Most of his ministry was spent at odds with the powers of the day. It wasn’t the life he had dreamed of, and his complaint to God was, “You tricked me!” (Jeremiah 20:7) He accused God of a bait and switch scam. 

In a time when prosperity was seen as the evidence of God’s blessing, Job lost everything except his nagging wife who said to him, “Why don’t you just curse God and die?” (Job 2:9). And no less than Jesus himself assured his followers that they would be hated more than any others (Matthew 10). 

We are often tempted to evaluate life by the circumstances in which we presently find ourselves. This is a mistake. A good mystery leaves us in suspense until the last chapter when we are surprised by the twist of plot and surprise ending. Just as Pharaoh’s revengeful response was only the beginning of Israel’s deliverance, so our disappointments and setbacks are only part of the story. There was a time in my life when all I had worked for looked like it was going to go up in smoke. Had I thought those months were the end of the story, I’d have given up right then, but there was more to come, and God performed a miracle. I am thankful tonight that there is more to come in God’s story, and it ultimately is good.