Exodus 5:2 And Pharaoh said, Who is the LORD, that I should obey his voice to let Israel go? I know not the LORD, neither will I let Israel go.
Remember when you skinned your knee as a six-years-old? You wanted things to get better, so you went to your mom because she could make everything better. The moment your mom began to work on your knee, things felt like they were getting worse. First, she scrubbed your knee. It was already hurting; now it was hurting worse. She poured hydrogen peroxide into your open wound. It had been hurting before, but now it was screaming. Things felt like they were getting worse even though you went to your mother to make them better. Sometimes things do feel worse before they get better.
That is certainly true when you are doing the right thing. When Moses followed God’s lead to reveal that God was going to let His people go from Egypt, the Bible says, “The people believed: and when they heard that the LORD had visited the children of Israel, and that he had looked upon their affliction, then they bowed their heads and worshipped.” Things were getting better! Well, they got better for exactly one verse because in the next verse Pharaoh said, “Who is the LORD, that I should obey his voice to let Israel go? I know not the LORD, neither will I let Israel go.”
What followed was that Pharaoh made things harder on the Israelites. The officers of the Israelites came to Moses and said, “You have made things worse. You have put a sword in Pharaoh’s hand to kill us. He has made our work harder and our resources fewer. He is punishing us for what you said to him.” Moses then brought it to God and said, “Lord, wherefore hast thou so evil entreated this people? why is it that thou hast sent me? For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in thy name, he hath done evil to this people; neither hast thou delivered thy people at all.” Things got worse!
Now let me tell you that sometimes things don’t just feel like they are getting worse before they get better. Sometimes things do get worse so that they can get better. Lest that sound like some kind of double speak, I mean that exactly as I have said it.
Exodus 6:1 says, “Then the LORD said unto Moses, Now shalt thou see what I will do.” In other words, God was allowing things to get worse precisely so they could get better. In Exodus 7:4 God says, “But Pharaoh shall not hearken unto you, that I may lay my hand upon Egypt.” Pharaoh was not going to listen, and because of that God would lay His hand upon Egypt. Verse 5 continues, “And the Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD, when I stretch forth my hand upon Egypt, and bring out the children of Israel from among them.”
When you do the right things in your home, at your church, or in your business, things may seem to get worse, and sometimes they do get worse. But, they get worse in order that God may work and things may get better. So, trust God.
Trust God with the big picture. Are things getting better or worse? You don’t even know! So many times in Israel’s history things were getting worse, but they were getting worse precisely so that God could do what He intended.
Psalm 105 talks about God’s wondrous works which included His direction, His provision, and His blessing. The Bible says that He sent a slave, Joseph. He sent a famine. He sent plagues. All these harsh things were the work of God so that His people could grow from a family into a mighty nation while in Egypt. God knew the big picture. Moses did not.
Trust God with timing. It is fascinating to me that in Exodus 12, the Bible says that when the Israelites left, the Egyptians were “urgent upon the people.” The Egyptians couldn’t get the Israelites out of there fast enough to spare themselves from the plagues God was sending. The sojourning of the children of Israel in Egypt had been 430 years. So, on the one hand you have 430 years of waiting, and on the other hand you have an urgency that was unmatched. Sometimes we feel like God is going too slow or too fast, but trust God with timing.
Also, trust God with the people who don’t understand. When you do the right thing, even good people are not always going to applaud you and pat you on the back. In Exodus 6:12, Moses said to the Lord, “Behold, the children of Israel have not hearkened unto me; how then shall Pharaoh hear me, who am of uncircumcised lips?” He said, “God, if I can’t even get my own people to listen to me, how can I get Pharaoh to listen to me?” People may not always understand, but God knows.
Sometimes things do get worse, but they get worse so that they can get better. Even when we can’t understand or we can’t see we need to trust in God.