How God Reassures a Dejected Servant
Last weekend, after the Twins lost their first two playoff games in New York to the Yankees in just a little over 24 hours, I was listening to local sports-talk guys try to voice how Twins fans were feeling. “Disappointed” was one word they tried on, and clearly that wasn’t strong enough. “Discouraged”? Yes, but it felt deeper than that. One guy offered “dejected,” and others seemed to resonate. Despondent? Downcast? Depressed? (It’s interesting, isn’t it, how so many words in English for being down, to various degrees, start with D.)
This conversation about the level of discouragement, or dejection, over the Twins was especially interesting as I was preparing to preach on Exodus 6. We saw last week, at the end of chapter 5, how deeply discouraged Moses is. “Disappointed” doesn’t do it. Perhaps “dejected” gets at it best. Maybe despondent or depressed. As chapter 5 closes, Moses is at his lowest. Far more than any level-headed Twins fan. And of course, far more is at stake.
Ups and Downs for Moses
We’ve seen in Exodus 1 how God’s people multiplied in Egypt, and Pharaoh feared their growing strength and began to oppress them as slaves, even killing their newborn sons. Then in Exodus 2 came the birth of Moses, and the ironic, miraculous story of how Pharaoh’s own daughter “drew him up,” rescued him, from the waters of the river that otherwise would have killed him. Then, when Moses grew up and aspired to deliver his people, he acted out of turn. His own people rejected him, and Pharaoh sought to kill him, but God drew him up out of Egypt and brought him safely to the wilderness in Midian, where he married and lived for 40 years.
Then, in Exodus 3, with Moses now 80 years old, God appeared to him in a burning bush to call him to the very work Moses had dreamed about so many years before but had failed in his first attempt. Understandably, after 40 years of second guessing himself and humiliation and perhaps deep discouragement, Moses doubts himself. But God persists. God provides Moses’s brother Aaron to help where Moses feel inadequate. In Exodus 4, God gives Moses powerful signs to convince the people that Moses’s call is from God, not Moses’s own initiative, and when Moses returns to Egypt, “the people believed” (Exodus 4:31). The story seems to be gaining momentum. God has appeared to deliver his people. He had called Moses. Moses has responded. He has signs. The people believe. Now Moses goes to Pharaoh in Exodus 5.
Then it all comes to screeching halt. Pharaoh does not listen. He does not let the people go. In fact, he mocks Moses and his God. Added to that, he makes the people’s slavery more difficult. Now they must continue to make the same number of bricks and provide their own straw. The people turn on Moses in Exodus 5:21: “The Lord look on you and judge, because you have made us stink in the sight of Pharaoh and his servants, and have put a sword in their hand to kill us.”
At the end of chapter 5, Moses is deeply discouraged. He is dejected. He is despondent. He’s hit rock bottom. You can hear it in the edge to his words:
"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.” (Exodus 5:22–23)
It’s hard to miss Moses’s jaded, dejected, accursatory tone: he asks why God had “done evil” and “why [in the world!] did you ever send me?” It’s classic over-speak: “since I came to Pharaoh” — it was just one encounter — “you have [certainly!] not delivered your people at all.” But despite his edge and deep discouragement, Moses does one vital thing right. Verse 22: “Moses turned to the Lord.” It is not a sign of strength that he is so quickly shaken, but it is a sign of health that he goes to God. He didn’t turn elsewhere. He didn’t quit and walk away. Moses turned to the Lord.
Five Ways God Responds
Chapter 6, then, has two main parts. First, God answers Moses with words to reassure and recommission him in verses 1–13, and then comes this surprising genealogy, that seems to come out of left field, in verses 14–30.
Moses has uttered his complaints at the end of chapter 5, and now in 6:1–8, God responds. Here we see five ways God reassures his dejected servant.
1. God teaches Moses about the divine way.
God’s first response is 6:1: But the Lord said to Moses, “Now you shall see what I will do to Pharaoh; for with a strong hand he will send them out, and with a strong hand he will drive them out of his land.”
God’s response to Moses’s pity-party is not to grant the concern or to rebuke his dejected servant. Rather, God gives him a glimpse into the ways of God — the God who had said about Jacob and Esau, “The older will serve the younger” (Genesis 25:23), and who would say one day through the prophet Isaiah:
My thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts. (Isaiah 55:8–9)
The reason why these chapters unfold like they do, from the birth and call of Moses, to the ten plagues and exodus that are coming, is that God’s ways are higher than human ways. And his ways are typically harder than we could choose. And they are, in the end, better than we could have even imagined.
God says “Now” in verse 1 because Pharaoh’s refusal and increase of the people’s burdens are part of God’s plan. Not only will God deliver his people from Egypt, but God will so utterly overwhelm and defeat Pharaoh that he will send, even drive, them out. “Now,” God says — because Pharaoh has refused (according to plan!), and because he has acted wickedly to increase the peoples’ oppression — “Now the deliverance will be even more drastic.” Pharaoh’s refusal to let the people go will not only flip to eventual permission, but he will send them out — he will even drive them. “Now,” God says, “because it’s gotten worse, it will, in the end, be even better.”
This is such an important lesson for us to learn along with Moses about God’s surprising way of doing things. God is not afraid to have things get worse before he makes them better. In fact, he delights to do it just this way. This is just like God. In the seeming setbacks of his people, God is producing for us a greater glory (2 Corinthians 4:17). He takes longer than we would have chosen, and in the end, he effects an even greater victory than we could have hoped. When we pray with Paul in Ephesians 3:20, for God “to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think,” he doesn’t usually take the path of least resistance. He leads down a path more difficult than we would have chosen for ourselves to give us an even greater deliverance than we could have asked or thought.
2. God rehearses what he has done.
So, in verse 1, God teaches Moses about the divine way, and affirms that things are going according to plan. Next we see God reassuring Moses by rehearsing what he has already done.
"I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, as God Almighty, but by my name the Lord I did not make myself known to them. I also established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, the land in which they lived as sojourners. Moreover, I have heard the groaning of the people of Israel whom the Egyptians hold as slaves, and I have remembered my covenant." (Exodus 6:3-6)
Note first the past-tense verbs: Verse 3: “I appeared to Abraham.” Verse 4: “I established my covenant.” Now, he says — past actions with ongoing results — in verse 5, “I have heard” and “I have remembered.” In speaking reassurance and hope into Moses’s dejection, God rehearses what he has done. This is why Moses would eventually write the book of Genesis, to tell the exodus generation of what God had done in the past.
For us today, this is what we’re doing every time we open the Bible, and secondarily, every time we remember the various specific manifestations in our lives of God’s past goodness to us. We’re fighting discouragement and hopeless by remembering God’s past faithfulness which most certainly will continue in his perfect timing, not our preferred timing.
At this point in history, the past acts of God to remember were his appearing to the patriarchs and establishing his covenant with them. Then, after the exodus, that would be the main past action for God’s people to remember. Now, for us as Christians, we have not only the whole biblical history of God’s actions for his people, but we have the single most significant act, when God himself, in the person of his Son, gave himself for us at the cross to rescues us from our sins.
3. God promises what he will do.
So God not only rehearses what he’s done in the past, but says what he will do in the future. Listen for seven “I will” promises here:
"Say therefore to the people of Israel, ‘I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from slavery to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment. 7 I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God, and you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. 8 I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. I will give it to you for a possession. I am the Lord.’" (Exodus 6:6–8)
Into Moses’s dejection and discouragement, God speaks sevenfold hope in the form of what he will do for his people: bring them out, deliver them, redeem them, take them to be his, be their God, bring them into the promised land, and give it to them to possess. God doesn’t only remind Moses of the past, but paints for him a vision of the future — and not just a possible or likely vision but a reality as certain as he is God. When God makes promises about the future, it’s only a matter of time. None can thwart his plans. Not even the mightiest nation on earth. None can stay his hand. Not even the world’s most powerful ruler.
His Outstretched Arm
Two important phrases here we shouldn’t miss come at the end of verse 6. The first is “outstretched arm.” This is the first mention of what will become a refrain for God’s people, echoing throughout the Old Testament and bringing to mind the display of God’s power in the exodus over all kings and all nations: that God delivered his people by his mighty hand and outstretched arm (Deuteronomy 4:34; 5:15; 7:19; 11:2; 26:8; 1 Kings 8:42; 2 Chronicles 6:32; Psalm 136:11–12; Jeremiah 21:5; 32:21; Ezekiel 20:33–34).
This God is the one God, and there are no bounds on his power. His hand is mighty, and his arm is outstretched, not shortened, as Moses will say in Numbers 11:23, and Isaiah will echo: “Is my hand shortened, that it cannot redeem? Or have I no power to deliver?” (Isaiah 50:2). “Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save” (Isaiah 59:1).
His Great Acts of Judgment
So “outstretched arm” is about God’s power on behalf of his people, to save them to show them mercy, and the other phrase, “great acts of judgment,” refers to the exercise of God’s power toward the wicked who oppress his people. The same phrase comes again in Exodus 7:4, when God says to Moses: “I will lay my hand on Egypt and bring my hosts, my people the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great acts of judgment.” The great acts of judgment are the plagues to come. In these plagues, as we’ll see, among other things, God is judging Pharaoh and the nation of Egypt for their oppression and abuse of his people.
Now, with our modern, naïve ears we might hear about these acts of judgment, as functions of divine wrath, and think, “Oh my, what is this? Outstretched arm of power to save his people — yes, that is good. But this talk of great acts of judgment makes me squirm. Is it good news that God’s omnipotence not only saves his people but also punishes his enemies?” The answer is it is good news, if you’re part of his people. Because his saving his people with his extended arm, and punishing his enemies with great acts of judgment go together. Because his enemies soon enough will be, or already are, assaulting his people. And a good father is not indifferent to someone assaulting his family.
If a father doesn’t protect his family from the wicked, he is not loving. To be truly loving means to leverage what power you have to protect your beloved from genuine harm. And God is a good Father. He is genuinely loving. So it is not only good news that he stretches out the arm of his power to save his people, but also that he exercises his power to punish their enemies with great acts of judgment.
But the very heart of God’s promises about what he will do is verse 7. And verse 7, remarkably, is not only about the future. Which leads to the fourth, and most important, reassurance God gives.
4. God shows who he is.
The great significance of what God did in the past, and what he will do in the future, is showing, right now, in the present, who he is, as the great “I am.” The main thing that God has to say to Moses in his dejection, the main refrain in this chapter, the key truth and reality that lies beneath the surface at every point and is the first thing he says in verse 2, and the last thing he says in verse 8, and the heart of what he says in verses 6 and 7, and what the summary statement is verse 29 repeats, is “I am the Lord.”
Five times. I am Yahweh. I am the one who is. I am — present tense. Not only have I been. Not only will I be. But I am. I am right now. I am here with you. Not matter how ashamed you are about your past. Not matter how fearful you are about your future. Not matter how enemies have mocked you. No matter how your own people have turned on you. I am. Pharaoh and your own people may be against you, but I am for you, and I am here with you.
Look with me and see those five mentions of “I am the LORD.” First, verse 2: “God spoke to Moses and said to him, “I am the Lord.” Then the summary in verse 29: “The Lord said to Moses, “I am the Lord.” Then the heart of it in verses 6–8:
"Say therefore to the people of Israel, ‘I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will deliver you from slavery to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great acts of judgment. I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God, and you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. I will bring you into the land that I swore to give to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. I will give it to you for a possession. I am the Lord.’ ” (Exodus 6:6-8).
In particular, the heart of verse 7 is the main point of the whole exodus, and we will see it surface again and again in the coming chapters: “you shall know that I am the Lord your God.” And not only will God’s people know him through the rescue of his outstretched arm, but also the Egyptians shall know him through his great acts of judgment (Exodus 7:5, 17; 8:10, 22; 9:29; 14:4, 18). God’s making himself known in mercy to his people, and in justice to their enemies, is the bedrock reason and consistent rationale that drives what God does in the exodus: why he works as patiently as he does, why he hardens Pharaoh’s heart as he does, why he extends his judgment out over ten plagues, and then draws out the Egyptian army, and draws them into the sea, and drowns them in the waters just as they drowned the Hebrew boys.
To Know and Enjoy Him
But God revealing himself in power through judgment to Pharaoh and Egypt is secondary. Primary is God revealing himself in power through salvation to his people. God comes to his people, and not only frees them from slavery but takes them to himself. “I will take you to be my people, and I will be your God, and you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians.”
God’s main act in this liberation from Egypt is revealing himself to his people, to know him. What will they be liberated to? Carnal living in a luxuriant land? That would be its own slavery, and worse. Rather, the new land is but a setting for the main reality which is knowing and enjoying, worshiping, the true God.
The main point of the exodus will be, and the main point that Moses needs right now in his discouragement, is this: behold your God. The whats of the past and the future show Moses, and us, the who of the present, the God who is, to know him and enjoy him and trust him, not just yesterday and tomorrow but today, right now, in the present.
What Moses, in his dejected state, needs most is God himself. And what we need most in our discouragement is God himself. Not just the God who says, “I was,” and, “I will be,” but the God who says, “I am.”
So, God teaches Moses about his divine ways, rehearses what he did in the past, what he will do in the future, and most importantly who he is in the moment — present and accessible and with him — and finally, God gives us work to do.
5. God gives us work to do.
We learn in verse 9 that the people do not listen (more on that in a moment). God then tells Moses to go back to Pharaoh. Moses’s self-doubts endure, and he asks, in verse 12, “Behold, the people of Israel have not listened to me. How then shall Pharaoh listen to me, for I am of uncircumcised lips?” Moses raised a similar objection before in 4:10: “Oh, my Lord, I am not eloquent, either in the past or since you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and of tongue.” Maybe it’s the same now, or maybe it’s deeper (literally, “I am uncircumcised lips”): a genuine sense of unworthiness, that he is an unfitting mouthpiece for God. In chapter 4, God had an answer, but here God determines the time has passed for introspection and lingering in dejection and discouragement. Not every question, not every objection, needs to be answered. Eventually it’s time to “do the next thing” and move into productive work. In verse 13, God charges Moses and Aaron to return to the mission: “But the Lord spoke to Moses and Aaron and gave them a charge about the people of Israel and about Pharaoh king of Egypt: to bring the people of Israel out of the land of Egypt.”
Moses’s shaken confidence doesn’t keep God from using him. In fact, God calls Moses to his most important, most intimidating work — speaking face to face with Pharaoh — when Moses manifestly doesn’t feel ready for it or worthy of it.
And God handles us similarly in our dejection and discouragement. There’s a time to answer questions and address objections. But eventually it’s time to “do the next thing.” To fulfill your calling at home, at work, in the church, as father, as mother, as husband, as wife, as brother, sister, friend, employee, fellow Christian. God means for us to keep moving in trust and obedience in answer to his clear and objective call, even when we feel dejected and discouraged, incompetent and inadequate.
Going back to speak to Pharaoh required tremendous faith, and put Moses at great risk. Pharaoh already had said no. And increased the people’s burdens. And yet, even in this emotional frailty and lack of confidence, God calls Moses to do the most important work of his life — which will glorify God’s strength and power, not Moses’s.
Which is why this strange genealogy appears here in the story. The book of Exodus began in chapter 1, verses 1–5, with a brief genealogy. Now, in coming to verses 14–26 of chapter 6, we’re at the middle and heart of the story of Exodus 1:1–13:16. Here, of all places, with a dejected and discouraged Moses, is the turning point in the story. The genealogy appears now as a kind of intermission in the narrative, at the halfway point, and as chapter 7 opens, as we’ll see next week, Moses moves forward in obedience, turns the corner, and the dominoes begin to fall.
Here with Us Now
As we come to the Table, let’s jump back to verse 9. After God has given Moses these amazing words of reassurance and recommissioning in verses 1–8, verse 9 says, “Moses spoke thus to the people of Israel, but they did not listen to Moses, because of their broken spirit and harsh slavery.”
That could have ended it right there. God could have said, “These people won’t even listen to my prophet. I’m done with them.” But God didn’t give up on them. He knew their weakness and saw that this instance of unbelief wasn’t highhanded but they were worn down “because of their broken spirit and harsh slavery.” Even when his people fail him, our God is gracious and works salvation for us and does not fail us.
And so it was with Jesus. When he came to his defining and most intimidating work, his disciples fell asleep while he prayed, and scattered when he was arrested. Yet he continued on. God continued on to save his people, despite them not listening to his prophet. And Jesus continued on to secure this Table for us, and the salvation it represents, despite his people’s sleeping and scattering and denying him. And the heart of his salvation is his coming to us, in the present, right now, as the great “I am” made flesh, who not only promises to be with us, but says, in this very moment, “I am with you.”