Exodus 5-6 • Building Without Bricks

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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)

 Let me ask that you would look in your Bibles at Exodus chapters 5 and 6, Exodus chapters 5 and 6. In the songs and stories that we tell out of this chapter in Israel's history, there is a familiar phrase. "Moses said to Pharaoh, "Let my people go," declares the Lord."



 That's what Moses says to Pharaoh.



 But it is not what God said to Moses the first time the phrase was introduced. The first time God is instructing Moses on what he should do with Pharaoh, he says, "Tell Pharaoh, "Let my son go."



 The nation of Israel is being treated as a child. This is fatherly love on display as God demonstrates to us in Exodus 5 and 6, how he cares for his children.



 As a father should care for his children. Let's stand as we honor God's Word. I'm going to take you through portions of these two chapters. We can't read all of it. Exodus 5, beginning at verse 1, "After Moses and Aaron have gone to the people and said, "We've seen the Lord and he's going to deliver us," then we read this, Exodus 5, 1, "Afterward Moses and Aaron went and said to Pharaoh, "Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, "Let my people go, that they may hold a feast to me in the wilderness." But Pharaoh said, "Who is the Lord, that I should obey His voice and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord, and moreover, I will not let Israel go." Then they said, "The God of the Hebrews has met with us. Please let us go a three days journey into the wilderness that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God.



 Lest He fall upon us with pestilence or with the sword."



 But the king of Egypt said to them, "Moses and Aaron, why do you take the people away from their work? Get back to your burden."



 And Pharaoh said, "Behold, the people of the land are now many and you make them rest from their burdens."



 The same day Pharaoh commanded the taskmasters of the people and their foremen,



 "You shall no longer give the people straw to make bricks, as in the past let them go and gather straw for themselves.



 But the number of bricks that they made in the past you shall impose on them. You shall by no means reduce it, for they are idle. Therefore they cry, "Let us go and offer sacrifices to our God. Let heavier work be laid on the men, that they may labor at it and pay no regard to lying words."



 Well, that word gets back to the taskmasters and the foremen. And verse 19 picks up the story.



 "The foremen of the people of Israel saw that they were in trouble when they said, "You shall by no means reduce your number of bricks, your daily task each day." They met Moses and Aaron who were waiting for them as they came out from Pharaoh. And they, as the foremen said to Moses and Aaron, "The Lord look on you and judge, because you have made a stink in the sight of Pharaoh and his servants, and have put a sword in their hand to kill us."



 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."



 God responds, chapter 6, verse 2.



 "I have heard the groaning of the people of Israel, whom the Egyptians hold as slaves, and I have remembered my covenant. Say therefore to the people of Israel, "I am the Lord. I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. I will deliver you from slavery to them. I will redeem you with an outstretched arms and with great acts of judgment. I will take you to be my people. 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." We'll stop there. Let's pray together.



 Father, teach us your people even now. You are the Lord. You see, and you hear, and you know, and you remember your covenant to your children. Help us as those children who gather in your name by the work of Jesus Christ to recognize in all of our failings, in all of our burdens, you are the God of covenant keeping, who has promised that you will redeem us as we turn to you. We do. We seek you now in your Word. Bless us for Christ's sake, for we pray in Jesus' name. Amen. Please be seated.



 In the book, "Hero, the Strong Dad's Your Children Need," Counselor Meg Meeker tells her own story.



 In her college year, she was on holiday, away from the campus, but wanting to be back on campus with her friends and away from her parents.



 So despite the parents' urging and warning, and despite the impending snowstorm, she went to the Denver airport to catch a flight and later wrote, "That was a mistake."



 My flight was canceled due to the storm, and after waiting for many hours to be rebooked on an ongoing flight, I had to face reality. There were no flights going to leave the Denver airport that night.



 I called my parents. My father answered. He said, "I've already booked a room for you by the airport. I would not have to sleep on the airport floor that night. I could always rely on my dad, even when I did not want to.



 When I had burdens or pressures, he always took them on himself. Even when I stubbornly resisted his care, he went ahead of me to provide for me."



 That's what dads do. It's what their children ultimately want them to do, to go ahead of us, to provide for us, even when we're stubborn, and say we don't want it. That's not just the message of earthly fathers. It's the message of a heavenly father. It's what this passage of Scripture is portraying, the nature of a God who takes burdens on himself and goes ahead of us to make provision for his children, even when they say they don't want it.



 Even when they fear he's not there anymore, even when they fear he does not care anymore, he is the God who goes ahead and makes provision. How do we know? The whole theme of Exodus is that God sees and hears and knows. And what we are learning here is that he sees and knows our burdens.



 Even when we think he does not. The burdens are clear. Here in chapter 5 is that famous phrase, "The Israelites are being told they must make bricks without straw." Even in this culture that is becoming more and more distant from the Scriptures, we know the words. It's the way we talk about a responsibility, a job that's been given to people that is unfair because the boss is expecting things that can't be done because the resources are not available and so the pressure just builds and builds and builds bricks without straw. That is not fair.



 God knows. He sees, he hears, and he makes it clear as he tells us even in this chapter, which he inspired Moses to write, that he knows the natures of such burdens. The first aspect of the bricks without straw burden is to have to work for a boss that does not know.



 It's not just the cliche of every employee lunchroom and every business in the world that employees will gather together and talk about what their bosses or supervisors or superintendents don't know. If they just knew as much as we do, this company would really succeed. This school would really move forward. This organization would really advance if they were as smart as we are.



 It's not the lack of business knowledge that Moses is writing about. Pharaoh's lack of knowledge is lack of knowledge of God.



 Verse 2, "Pharaoh said, "Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice and let Israel go? I do not know the Lord."



 It sounds distant. It sounds old. But these words are in direct contrast to what Moses has said about God in preceding chapters, chapter 3 and verse 19. While Pharaoh is saying, "I don't know the Lord," God says to Moses, "I know the king of Egypt, that he will not let you go unless compelled by my mighty hand."



 There is a hard man who has enslaved the people of God. And God says, "He will not let you go unless I harden his heart in such a way that he ultimately sees I am stronger than him and all of his gods. And then by the plan of God, he will let you go as I harden the heart of a man already hard so he will do what he must do because he does not know me."



 God tells us he knows the bosses who do not know him. Ever worked for a boss that did not know the Lord? And you wondered if God knew.



 When I was in college, I worked for the same company every summer as I returned to my parents' home. I worked for a road construction company, and my job was working in the shop, dispatching shop equipment for equipment on the road when it broke down, which meant I got very close to the shop foreman, who became my friend, in some ways a father figure, in some ways my main tempter in my college years.



 Because I was a Sunday school boy, training to be a preacher, he liked teasing the preacher kid by asking me and others to join him in his games of profanity and pornography and drinking on the job as well as off.



 Sometimes I got caught, my own heart giving in. It was hard to resist my boss who wanted me to participate, but it was enough of a Bible belt culture that when I finally gathered the strength to resist, that he just teased me more and let me off.



 I didn't lose my job then, but I thought I might with the next temptation. One day my boss approached me and he said, "Hey, you've done great work for us the last two summers, so I'm going to give you a break this summer. I've got a fishing hut down in Mississippi. If you'll go down into Mississippi and just do a little painting, do a few chores for me around the cabin, you can stay there and you can fish all you want once you finish the chores. It'll just take you a little while. You can be there. It's just a privilege." I said, "Well, thank you very much, but I actually need the money to pay for tuition in college by working. I can't take the days off." He said, "No problem. I'll keep you on the payroll while you go down and work on the cabin." I was off like a shot. Payroll and fishing together. Good deal.



 I did the chores, got ready for some catfishing at night, and got a call from my dad.



 Brian, what are you doing?



 Well, dad, my boss said if I just did some chores around his cabin, I could stay here and fish. That's what your mother told me. "It's all right, dad. He's going to keep paying me." That's what your mother told me too.



 Brian, what are you doing accepting company pay for private work?



 Well, I hadn't exactly thought of it that way. I didn't want to think of it that way. I said, "Dad, I can't go to my boss and tell him I'm doing something unethical. He might fire me. You know that I need this job to pay for college."



 My father said, "I know that you need the job for college, but I know what you need for life, and this is not it."



 I left the cabin. I did not get fired. I got teased a lot. But I will tell you I learned something more.



 I learned that a godly father might know a little bit more about what is good for life and eternity than a boss that does not know the Lord.



 And that's not just true of my earthly father. That is true of my heavenly father. He also knows what is best and right for my eternity more than a boss that does not know the Lord. And for that reason, I seek my heavenly father in his word. It's what I'm called to do because I've learned to trust my heavenly father by what he has said in his word is that he knows my burdens. He even knows the boss who does not know the Lord and still calls me to faithfulness. But I still struggle. We struggle because we saw as I'm honoring this boss who does not know the Lord, God is calling me to do more and more that I don't have the resources to do. I'm called to responsibility without apparent earthly resources, bricks without straw. How can I possibly do what I'm supposed to do when God is requiring of me things I cannot do?



 It's not just an ancient story where we look at the people of God long ago who are being called upon to do things they cannot do in their own strength.



 Patrick Morley of the Man in the Mirror organization just talks about the burden of every Christian man. If you're thinking about what it means to try to live before the Lord in the culture that we are in, not just the secular culture, but the church culture as well. He writes, "The average Christian male is up to his neck in debts and duties."



 He often measures his spirituality by how much he can live up to the church's definition of what it means to be a good Christian.



 What does that mean? Number one, I need to spend quality time with my wife. Number two, I need to be a super dad to my kids, attend, maybe coach all of their sporting activities. My dad didn't, so I'll do better.



 Number three, I need to make lots of money so my family can be secure and happy and live in a good neighborhood and the kids can have the right labels on their clothes and go to the right schools.



 Number four, I need to join a men's small group to grow with a band of brothers. Number five, I need to have daily devotions, not only personal but also with my family. Number six, I need to involve myself and my family in Sunday worship as well as midweek activities. Number seven, I need to have some kind of practical ministry to share my faith with non-believers. Number eight, I need to be a good citizen and a neighbor involved with right political organizations and right mercy ministries. Number nine, I need to work very, very hard to get all this done without jeopardizing my career.



 Number ten, I need to find a good hobby so I can spend a little quality time developing myself.



 And at the end of it all, Morley says, "And now I'm just tired of even making the list."



 Who can do all of that?



 Who can do all of that perfectly in right balance? Because we are being called to live responsibly before the Lord, and ultimately every Christian man cries out to God, "Bricks without straw!"



 Who can do everything that you're telling me I have to do to be a good Christian man?



 God responds by reminding us who He is. Because to all of this pressure, this honoring a boss who does not know the Lord, meeting the responsibilities without resources, the ultimate pressure that Moses is identifying is that he has to do this all for a God who has no heart.



 You know, in our stories, the way we tell this account of the Exodus, Pharaoh is always the bad guy, but there's someone virtually worse in the chapter. "Did you catch it?" Verse 3.



 Moses and Aaron said, "The God of the Hebrews has met with us. Please let us go on a three-day journey into the wilderness that we may sacrifice to the Lord our God, lest He fall upon us with pestilence and with the sword."



 Let us go worship God, or else He's going to make us sick or kill us.



 Where did that God come from?



 In every place that Moses has been instructed by the Lord to this point to say to Pharaoh, "Let us go into the wilderness for three days so that we can worship our God." It's an effort to harden Pharaoh's heart. But what's going on in Moses' heart? Who is the God that he is recognizing? "I have to go and honor this God, or He's going to kill me or make me and my family sick." Now, maybe say, "Well, He's just saying that because that's the nature of Pharaoh's gods." And so he's trying to speak to Pharaoh in a way that Pharaoh will understand. Whatever it is, whether it's in Moses' mind or Pharaoh's mind, it's in the human instinct.



 "I will serve God, or else the ogre in the sky will get me."



 And if what you're trying to do is being faithful to God with a boss that does not know the Lord, trying to be faithful to meet all your responsibilities, when you know it's virtually impossible to balance it all correctly every day, what will make it even worse is to believe that God does not understand, that He is the God who just is going to be petulant and petty. When your responsibilities are great and your God is petty, it is a hard way to live. How do we deal with that?



 Morley says, "If all we are doing is saying, by our sermons, by our Sunday school lessons, by our fathering, these messages, measure up or I'm mad at you.



 Meet my expectations or I am done with you.



 Make me look good or you face the consequences.



 If that is the nature of our fathering, people will read God through that. And if that is their understanding of God, it is the way that they will father."



 Morley goes on to say it this way. There are two fathering styles. Fathering for performance and fathering for the heart. Most dads father for performance. They focus on getting their children to do the right thing.



 They exasperate their children by making their affection conditioned upon performance.



 As they exasperate their children, what a man does as he fathers for performance is he emphasizes conformity, and the child grows in an atmosphere of fear.



 What is the alternative? In contrast, when a man fathers for heart change, his emphasis is on reflecting God's values with God's heart, and the atmosphere is one of security.



 At that point, Morley writes something I've never thought about, but when I saw it, I thought, "This is profound."



 He writes this, "When fathers say, "I love you, and I am proud of you," regardless of what has come, they are actually, he says, reflecting the sacraments of the church."



 What happens in the Lord's Supper?



 Sinners gather around the table of God, and God says, "I welcome you to my table.



 In all your sin, your brokenness, your weakness, I welcome you. I love you. I invite you to my table to eat with me." And in baptism, what is happening? The God who knows the sin, the taint, the stain on our lives, nonetheless says, "I, by the blood of Jesus Christ, will wash you white as snow, so that when I look at you, I see my own precious child.



 I love you as much as I love Jesus," he is saying in our baptisms. And when a father is saying to a child, "I know the worst about you. I know the failure. I know you didn't meet the expectations, but I love you, and I am proud that you are my child," it is making the home, the holy place in which the sacraments of the church are being expressed to a child by a father who is ultimately showing the character of God. After all, what happens when there is fathering that has affection that does not vary, even when performance does? We begin to reflect a God that is not known in this chapter. What happens when responsibilities are great and your God is petty?



 Blame. How dare God require this? How can He do this? How can He hurt me this way? Did you catch what Moses actually said? God, how could you have done this evil to us?



 It is even Moses that seemingly has the wrong idea. He is not the only one. In verse 19 of chapter 5, the foreman of Israel saw simple words, "We are in trouble."



 This is in direct contrast to what happens at the end of chapter 4, where Moses and Aaron go and say to the people of Israel, "We have seen the great I AM, and the people bow down and worship God." They say, "Hallelujah!"



 What happens when your hallelujah goes to, "Uh-oh, we are in trouble."



 You start looking for someone to blame. It is precisely what happens here.



 If you look at verse 21, the foremen blame Moses.



 They say to Moses and Aaron, "The Lord look on you and judge, because you have made a stink in the sight of Pharaoh and his servants, and have put a sword in their hand to kill us." Just two quick observations.



 The Lord that you have brought, that Lord judge you.



 They have learned the name of the Lord, and in the name of the Lord they curse.



 The very name they have learned is the one they now use to curse.



 And the one they curse is the one that represents the Lord. It is just one of those Christian messages that we need to learn. If you represent God, and the perception people have of that God is he is just the ogre in the sky, people will curse you for the God that you represent to them.



 It amazes me sometimes, just honestly, still new in this town to go to different places where I meet people once associated with this church, maybe in vacation Bible school, maybe members, maybe officers, whose perception is that during their time in this church, they were only judged.



 And my startled response at time is facing the degree of anger that they still feel.



 It may be at the church, it may be at their own parents.



 The way in which they are so angry, because their parents were representing a God they could not possibly know.



 They love. He burdens us and then blames us.



 And so we'll blame Him right back. And in particular, we will blame the people who represent Him.



 That may be a pastor, it may be you.



 It may just be the church in general. We feel bad, that's not the worst problem.



 The worst problem is not the people blaming the representative of God, it's that the representative of God blamed God.



 After all, it's Moses who speaks in verse 22.



 Moses turned to the Lord and said, "Oh Lord, why have you done evil to this people?" Do you recognize the impact of those words? This is the I Am who said, "Take off your shoes, you are on holy ground." This is the three times holy, holy, holy God who has revealed Himself without sin, without evil, but rather the antidote to it all. And Moses, the one who is supposed to be speaking for God, looks to God and says, "You have done evil to this people." And beyond that, you said you would deliver us and you have not delivered us at all.



 Even the representative of God speaks in such a way as to curse and blame God. How do we avoid going there? Something in us should recognize that every person who has been created feels most fulfilled, most alive when they are doing what they were made to do.



 And so much of the error in the presentation of what Moses is saying, what God's people expect, is what they are expecting is, "If I do what God wants me to do, life will be easy, there will be no problems, everything bad will go away in this world, God will just fix it all because I've met the standards of performance."



 How do we get past people believing that because you recognize no one meets the standards of performance?



 Bruce Barton, a Christian writer, says, "It will help if we learn to say to our own children, this Christian life is not easy."



 Say, "It is not easy, but it is important."



 Jesus called forth the greatest human effort by promising obstacles and persecution. In this world, you will be persecuted. You must take up your cross daily to follow me. This is going to be tough sledding. This is going to be hard. But as you go against this hard world in which God is asking you to serve Him, you do so with the assurance that He has eternal purpose for the very things that you do.



 Our primary purpose is not our pleasure. It is His glory.



 We are not called to do something easy. We are called to do something important. This church answered the call last week. I mean, at this very time, I said to you, "We have more kids registered for Vacation Bible School than ever at this time, and we don't have enough volunteers."



 And I ask you, would you please help? For eternal consequence in the lives of children. I know some of you changed your schedules, changed your vacation, changed what was in your convenient life in order to say, "We have something important to do. We are not serving us. We are serving others now." And it's just right in the line of this legacy, of this church, that we are saying, "For the sake of the children, we will do what is not pleasurable to us, for the souls of them."



 That is our calling. We are doing something important, not necessarily pleasurable, because we believe that God will give eternal consequence to what is even earthly suffering if it is done to fulfill His purpose in this world. Why would you do that? Why would you serve a God who knows your burdens, and because He doesn't fix them all right away, it's so easy to blame Him. Why would we still serve Him? Because of His blessings. Even in the face of our burdens and our blame, He blesses, because He reveals Himself to be a God of a covenant without conditions.



 If you go into chapter 6, just recognize what has happened. The people are blaming Moses. Moses is blaming God.



 And what does God say? Verse 6 of chapter 6, "I will bring you out. I will deliver you. I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and mighty acts of judgment." Verse 7, "I will take you to be my people. I will be your God." Verse 8, "I will bring you into the land I promised to your forefathers. I will give it to you." You don't earn it. You don't qualify for it. You're yelling at me right now, and here it is.



 It's an amazing statement of what a covenant is, that God is saying, "I will love you. I will go ahead of you. I will provide you even when you don't want me to, even when you're blaming me, even when you're cursing me.



 I will provide for my people, not because they have met the conditions, because I am a covenant-keeping God." It's what He's actually declaring about Himself. Why is God being so faithful? Verse 2, "God spoke to Moses and said to him, I am the Lord. I am the great I am. I'm not from anybody. I don't owe anybody."



 "I am not leveraged by today's circumstances. I'm not changed by today's events. I am." And because I am has said He would fulfill His promises. He's not waiting for us to fulfill the conditions.



 He is maintaining His covenant because He is the great I am. Verses 3 and 4, "I appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob as God Almighty, but by my name, the Lord, I did not make myself known." They don't even know my name. They can't even honor me the right way. "But what did God do?" Verse 4, "I established my covenant with them to give them the land of Canaan, the land in which they lived as sojourners."



 They don't even know my name. They don't honor me correctly. They're not doing all the right stuff. They haven't met all the qualifications.



 "But I made a covenant with them, and because I love them, I will maintain my promise." This is not a contract. So many Christians, because of their fathering, are living a contract. If I'm good, He'll be good. If I do the right stuff, then He'll love me. If I mess up, then I break my end of the contract, and it's done with Him.



 Listen, the best example we have of what a covenant is, a promise that is made and kept on the basis of a prior commitment, not on the basis of conditions being met, is the marriage covenant. That we still repeat in wedding ceremonies in the church, "I promise to love you for richer, for poorer, in sickness, and in health, regardless of what happens.



 For better, for worse, I will love you."



 I'm not waiting for you to keep up your end. I'm not saying the contract has...this is a covenant. It is not based on conditions being met. It is based upon a prior commitment to love before anybody met any condition. And God is showing us it's even the nature of a family covenant. He now, speaking as a father, says to His children, "You blame me. You are angry at me. You are stubborn and stiff-necked, but I will fulfill my covenant." What do fathers do? Before my child was ever born, I love Him. I will care for Him. Will He ever fail to meet my expectations? Ever embarrass me? Ever disappoint me? Ever curse me? Perhaps and almost definitely.



 But that is my child, and in the covenant of the family of God, I will love my child. My son may turn against me. My son may hurt me. My son may embarrass me. That's my son.



 Because we are bound together by covenant, not by contract. When that begins to affect us, it means we begin to recognize that it is the love that God is exemplifying as a father so that we will echo it as the fathers He calls us to be. I need that fathering. You need that fathering. When we know that the expectations have not been met, we need to know, "God, thank You. It's not a contract the way that You love me." It is a covenant, and it's based upon Your nature, not mine.



 What will happen when we begin to recognize that God's fathering love is a covenant, not a contract? Meg Meeker again, as she advises us to learn to take advantage of our children's failures.



 Oh, they expect You to praise them and show affection in their successes. But how do You show God's covenant love?



 To look for the failures, to take advantage of them, and to say, "Even in the failure, in the anger, in the cursing, in the blaming, in all of them, I will love You."



 Because that is how God has treated me.



 Meg Meeker says, "One of my most telling counseling experiences was with a young woman named Conchetta.



 She was angry at her family, angry at life, angry at herself. She chopped her hair off, pierced body parts, got tattoos, all to get back at her dad, who disapproved it all."



 She wrote, "I'll never forget the look on my dad's face when he saw my tongue bar. He was sadder than he was angry. He looked right in my eyes that day.



 He told me to hand over my phone because those were the rules. He was angry, but he was more hurt than he was mad.



 His eyes filled with tears. I had really hurt him. The hurt was not over. At fourteen, I found a twenty-year-old man who worked at a local garage. I snuck out at night to meet him.



 Twice, I thought I was pregnant. I thought my dad did not know.



 But one morning, I came down to breakfast with a black eye. My father had never yelled at me. But this time, he screamed in shock or agony. He literally jumped up from the table and came over to me and put out his arms and hugged me.



 I thought he would do more. I thought I had screwed up too much for him ever to love me anymore. But he just kept hugging me.



 I began to cry uncontrollably. The longer he hugged, the longer I cried. Then he looked me in the eyes and he said, "Conchetta, you are my precious daughter. You will never again put my daughter in the way I am."



 "You are the only man of a cruel man. Do you hear me? You are so much more precious to me and to God to put yourself in the hands of a jerk like that."



 She wrote after that, "I felt like a curse had been lifted from me. A light went on in me and my life turned around." Do you recognize that's what covenant love is supposed to do? When we recognize there is a love that's greater than a sin, a mercy that works beyond all of our weakness and brokenness and cursing and blame and failure. And God is saying, "I will love you." That's the very thing that turns us around and brings us back. I know there are some of you parents right now saying, "If only a hug would have turned around my child." If only my hug would turn around a child. I don't mean to be simplistic about it. Do you recognize Moses himself has walked with the Lord for 80 years now and he's still blaming God. And God still keeps coming at him. You have to know who I am. Do you know who I am? What I'm like? I'm the covenant keeping God. And God worked for decades in Moses' life. He worked for centuries in the life of Israel. Just to say, "I am the covenant keeping God. I will love you. Turn back to me." After all, what is your alternative? Blame them back, yell at them back, isolate from them. What else is going to turn them around? But a father or a mother who says, "I will love you anyway and always. I will love you." It is the love of God the Father. Praise God for him.



 And I pray that we, your people, who so need a covenant loving God, not only experience it, but the more we experience it, begin to reflect it. Even with those that we love the most, our own children, the children of this church, the children of this community, help us to be a fathering church that reflects a covenant love of a heavenly Father. So you have loved us through Christ, and so we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.