WAITING 

WAITING  

Exodus 2:23-25 NET.

²³ During that long period of time the king of Egypt died, and the Israelites groaned because of the slave labor. They cried out, and their desperate cry because of their slave labor went up to God. ²⁴ God heard their groaning, God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob, ²⁵ God saw the Israelites, and God understood … .

Last week, we left the Patriarch Jacob staring at a bloody tunic, confident that he would die of grief because of the loss of his son, Joseph. He was wrong on both counts. He did not die of grief, and his son had not died in Gothan. Instead, Joseph was taken to Egypt, where he lived a tough life, ending up in prison. But God gave Joseph a special gift – the ability to interpret dreams. That gift eventually led to Joseph being released from prison and appointed second-in-command over all of Egypt. Joseph saved Egypt from a terrible famine, and his family joined him to live outr their lives in prosperity in that land.

The Book of Genesis ends with the death of Jacob and Joseph – both old and prosperous. Exodus begins with the good news that the Israelites “were fruitful, increased greatly, multiplied, and became extremely strong, so that the land was filled with them” (1:7). Then the other shoe dropped. The next verse says, “Then a new king, who did not know about Joseph, came to power over Egypt.” The new Pharaoh – and his nation with him – began to view the Israelites not as a blessing but as a threat. Likewise, the Israelites in that generation saw Egypt not as a blessing from God for their survival but as a curse to oppress and destroy them. The union of nations that had been their salvation had now become division and polarization.

while we wait, the world changes around us.

It did not happen overnight. It was not a drastic cataclysmic event that caused the two nations to turn against one another. While the people were living their lives and doing what they thought they should do, the world changed around them. There was no doubt a long period of prosperity for the Israelites in Egypt that led to their fulfilling the mandates of the Adamic and Noaic covenants – being fruitful and multiplying in the land of Egypt. However, it was this prosperity and multiplication that was seen as a threat to the new regime in Egypt. Thus, he ordered their oppression and hard labor and eventually demanded that they kill all their newborn males.

Chapter two tells of Moses’ birth, his rescue from the Nile by Pharaoh’s daughter, and his being reared as a prince in Egypt. It also records his taking vengeance on a brutal guard and killing him. This led to Moses having to flee Egypt and settle down in Midian as a shepherd. Meanwhile, the nation of Israel waits for its deliverance. That “long period” continues when it seems like nothing is happening.

When a cataclysmic event happens, we sometimes refer to it as an act of God. We think that God did it, or at least allowed it, to get our attention. But the Bible teaches that it is not just the times of upheaval and disaster in which God is active. He is just as real and just as active in the long periods of waiting. We can learn from these chapters in Exodus what we should be doing during our long times of waiting.

while we wait, we can cry out to God.

“During that long period of time, the king of Egypt died, and the Israelites groaned because of the slave labor. They cried out, and their desperate cry because of their slave labor went up to God.” Before they began experiencing oppression and slavery, the Israelites were not known for their relationship with God. They were just another nation living in a land of many such groups brought together by Pharaoh’s mighty empire. But the tide turned, and the Egyptian culture turned against them and isolated them as a nation of slaves that must be controlled. Suddenly, the Israelites started praying. Their prayers were not ritual prayers that parents teach their kids to pray at mealtime or bedtime. Their prayers were the groans and cries of a people being mistreated and oppressed.

It is a fact that hard times tend to cause people to reach out, try to find answers and seek change. For many, that desire for change leads to a more intense religious life. It is an attempt to take hold of a power higher than the power that is causing the trouble that they are facing.

Our Lord asked a question after he taught the parable of the persistent widow. He asked, “Won’t God give justice to his chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? Will he delay long to help them? (Luke 18:7). In the parable, the widow was being treated unfairly, and she had no recourse but to cry out for help. She was commended for her persistence in doing just that. The Israelites in Egypt were in the same position. They were being mistreated. They were branded as enemies because the people in power feared them. They were made second-class citizens because of other people’s prejudice and ignorance.

The history of our world records many times when this has happened. Nazi Germany and the Holocaust is still fresh in our minds as a clear example of this phenomenon. But let’s open our eyes a little further. We might notice some similar situations closer to home: our own nation’s shameful treatment of Native Americans or Africans that we enslaved and deprived of their God-given rights.

Anything that we can do to make up for such shameful behavior is warranted. But what I am getting at is that such suffering can have a positive outcome. It is wrong, and it should never happen. Nobody is right to do it. But it can produce in the human heart a desire to be set free and a resulting cry to God for that deliverance. This is what was happening in the lives of those children of Jacob in Egypt. Their time of suffering was producing in them a connection with God that they had not felt during the time of prosperity and freedom.

All the elements of their oppression were already there among them before they started experiencing the oppression. They were living in a foreign land. They were under the control of a foreign king. That foreign king dictated their role in their society. But they were “getting along Ok” for a very long time until the oppression started. They should have been praying to their God during this time. They should have been seeking God and establishing a strong religious culture during this time. But it did not happen until the difficulties began.

while we wait, God is there.

Notice what today’s text says God was doing while his children were crying out to him. Verses 24-25 use four different verbs to describe what God was doing during this time. The temptation during long periods of waiting is to accuse God of doing nothing. We pray and pray and seek his face, but it seems like God is passive. Moses wants us to know that when the Israelites were crying out to God, he was anything but passive.

God heard their groaning. Moses used the Hebrew verb שָׁמַע. He used this word to describe how Adam and Eve heard God moving around in the Garden of Eden. It was the root of the name Ishmael, who was to be so named because God had heard Hagar’s painful groans. Moses used it to describe the way Joseph’s brothers felt when they remembered Joseph’s cries for mercy while he was down in the pit, but they refused to listen to him. Even if they ignored his cries, they most certainly heard them.

As we pray, we often wonder if anybody is listening. But the Bible tells us that God always hears. Even if the time may not be right for him to act, he still listens to our prayers. He can’t not hear them.

God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. This is the Hebrew verb זָכַר. The names Zachariah and Zechariah are based on that root. They mean Yahveh has remembered. This verb shows that God not only hears our prayers, but they actively remind him of his promises to us. God had made promises to Abraham and to each of the successive patriarchs who took up the mantle as representatives of his covenant. When the children of Israel cried out to God, he heard the voices of Abraham and the other Patriarchs.

As we age, our memory becomes… what was I saying? But our God is not like that. He remembers everything. Our prayers are important because they are linked to his promises. When we pray to God, everything he has promised us comes back to him. When the Israelites were praying because of their slavery and oppression, chances are they only prayed for immediate relief from that slavery. But God had promised so much more. The prayers of the Israelites set the stage for both the exodus and the conquest of Canaan. They prayed for some things, but God gave them more than what they asked for. The reason is that the prayers reminded God of all his promises.

Often, when we pray as believers today, we limit what we ask for to only the immediate emergencies that we are presently facing. When we do that, we are short-changing ourselves. We have a God who is capable of giving us so much more than we can ask for or even imagine having. That reminds me of the old story of the couple who booked passage on a luxury liner. They saw such glorious and delicious-looking food on the ship, but they hid away in their cabin and ate a few meager snacks that they had brought with them. They were not aware that the price they paid for their passage included all the fancy feasts on the ship. We often pray like that. We are so hesitant to ask God for anything.

However, Jesus tells us to ask, and it will be given to us. Seek, and we will find; knock, and the door will be opened to us. Why did he give us such an open-ended promise? Because our heavenly Father loves us and has an unlimited supply of resources to meet our needs. He wants to display his elaborate love to his children.

We often fail to ask for anything because we think we are unworthy. We are right. But the basis for prayer is not our worth but God’s grace. He blessed us with salvation when we came to him in repentance and admitted that we did not deserve it. He still responds to those who come to him with their need and trust in his love to meet those needs.

Verse 25 says that God saw the Israelites. This is the Hebrew word רָאָה, which we recently discussed in reference to the miracle at Moriah. The word means to see something, but it can also mean to see to something—to provide for what is needed. God not only saw the plight of the children of Israel, but he already had a solution for their problem. He had another land for them to live in. He had a way for them to be released from their slavery in Egypt. He had a way to provide for their needs as they traveled through the wilderness to Canaan. He had a way to defeat all the adversaries they would face on the way to Canaan.

I am reminded of a story about a computer company that had a problem. They had not been able to locate the source of the problem, much less devise a solution. So, they called in an expert. The expert examined the machine – pulled out a piece of chalk, and marked an X on the spot where the problem was. The company’s accountants were thrilled to have a solution to their problem, but they were pretty surprised when the expert sent them a bill for $50,000. They wrote the expert demanding that he present them with an itemized bill. Later, he wrote them back with a bill consisting of two entries:

• One chalk mark: $1.
• Knowing where to put the X: $49,999.

When the Bible says that God sees us, it means more than just that he recognizes our problems. It also means that he already knows the best solution for those problems. He not only sees us, but he can also provide us with what we need.

God saw their need and all the obstacles they would face in leaving Egypt and entering Canaan. I can imagine one of his angels standing and holding a clipboard. It had a long list of those obstacles. There was a box by each obstacle. The angel read through it:

□ Destroying angel  

□ Red Sea

□ Need for water

□ Need for food

□ Rebellion

□ Enemy kings

□ Wall of Jericho

But the angel knows that for each need that arises, God has a solution. He sees it all ahead of time, and he can deal with every incident and fix any problem.

He knows where to put the X. The final verb in verse 25 is “God understood.” That’s the Hebrew verb יָדַע, to know. Praying gives us access to the expert who has figured us out and knows what we need.

While we wait, we get stronger.

The power that the Israelites would experience in Egypt was not brought about simply because they prayed. They were able to overcome all the obstacles they would face because they first waited on the Lord to deliver them. Isaiah 40:31 says, “But those who wait for the LORD’s help find renewed strength; they rise up as if they had eagles’ wings, they run without growing weary, they walk without getting tired.”

The secret to Israel’s success in praying for deliverance is that they prayed to God and then waited for God to deliver them. They did not pray a short prayer to God and then go to the next provider on the list when nothing seemed to be happening. They waited a long time.

God did not need a long time to answer their prayers. He could have delivered them from Pharaoh’s grasp in a single day. But there is strength that comes from waiting on the Lord. God knows what we will face tomorrow, and he knows how much strength we will need to face it.  So, when we encounter a need and pray for God to meet that need, every day we wait is an opportunity to display our faith in a God who answers prayers. As we patiently wait for his solutions to our problems, we glorify him and declare our loyalty to him.

Every problem we face is actually several problems. First, there is the problem itself. Then, there is our reluctance to seek God’s face to solve the problem immediately. Then, there is our lack of trusting God to take care of the problem once we have prayed to him about it. Then, there is our anxiety over the problem when we feel we have no one to turn to. The story of the exodus should be a reminder for us that we serve a problem-solving God. Each generation of us is given an opportunity to put our faith in him and to display our trust in him.

Oh, Lord, may those of us in this generation prove faithful to you by entrusting our problems to you and waiting on you for their solutions.

Here is a quote from Devotions from Exodus:

“Nuisance

The frog was also a deity in the Egyptian pantheon. Heqet was a goddess who represented fertility. To have the territory overrun by these creatures was more than an annoyance. It was another reminder to Pharaoh that his worldview was erroneous. It was an embarrassment. And even though his magicians were able to duplicate the same thing on a smaller scale (because they were illusionists) he was perturbed, so he appealed to Moses to have Yahveh stop the plague. He was starting to take Yahveh seriously. Moses even gives Pharaoh the honor of choosing the day for the pestilence to stop. But when the break came, Pharaoh still stubbornly refused to comply with Yahveh’s demand.

I wonder if we are any better than Pharaoh was. We regularly experience nuisances in our lives, and they sometimes are so bad that we appeal to Yahveh to rescue us. But do we ever stop to ask if Yahveh wants to change us? Maybe an annoying event might be his way of getting our attention. Perhaps we should not be so quick to return to business as usual when the nuisance is over.

LORD, forgive us for ignoring you when you remind us of our need to change. Help us to see the possible significance of the annoying interruptions in our lives. Keep us sensitive to your guidance” (p. 40);

The book is 296 pages long and was released on May 17, 2024.