S132P6 – Patterns in Exodus: an impossible solution
Exo. 3:7-10
And the Lord said: “I have surely seen the oppression of My people who are in Egypt, and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows. So I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up from that land to a good and large land, to a land flowing with milk and honey, to the place of the Canaanites and the Hittites and the Amorites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites. Now therefore, behold, the cry of the children of Israel has come to Me, and I have also seen the oppression with which the Egyptians oppress them. Come now, therefore, and I will send you to Pharaoh that you may bring My people, the children of Israel, out of Egypt.”
The response from Moses to God’s instructions is partly suprising. His apprehension at being asked to confront Pharaoh is not the suprising thing. He responded as anyone would when asked to move what seems like an immovable mountain. His lack of confidence was rooted in his own inability when he should have been focused on God’s ability. We make that mistake today. What is surprising is that he seems not to mention the other impossibility here. God just told him that He would deliver Israel to a place already occupied, inferring that wars must be waged against various people groups. It seems from these instructions that the entrance into the promised land would come only through what appear to be impossible means.
What we see in the scriptures time and again is a God who leads his people to and through the seemingly impossible. We see that at the great Red Sea escape. We see that at the taking of Jericho. We see that in Gideon’s victory over the Midianites. When we say that we are on board to follow God’s plans of deliverance, we cannot limit those plans to our limited perspective. I am sure that I speak for many when I confess that I often expect God’s solutions to my issues to be swift and sensible by my estimation. I probably also speak for many when I say that my experience indicates that I am usually wrong. He so often makes a way that looks nothing like I would have designed and so far from what I even think is feasible.
God’s solutions are designed in a mind that is so far beyond ours that we should expect his plans to be shocking, suprising, or even uncomfortable for us. The good thing is that He has everything we need to walk out those plans. All it takes is our faith through yielding to those plans for them to come to fruition. It might take a ton of time. It might take a ton of effort. It might take a ton of discomfort. We must be open to these possibilities if we ask God to step in and deliver us his way. These are all worth it, because following God’s plans brings a ton of growth and a ton of power. Father, give us the faith not only to seek your plans for us but to follow them no matter how impossible they might appear or how much they stretch us.