Sometimes things don’t always go to plan! The famous saying goes “the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” We can be certain of something but when the rubber hits the road it goes completely wrong. When this happens it is often demoralising and we ask why we even bothered trying in the first place. And as a variation on another famous saying says, “If at first you don’t succeed, give up!” I’m sure we have experienced these feelings at times in our lives. We may have given up or we may have tried again and again until the intended result came about.

All of this is part of human experience wherever you go. But when it comes to the plans of God, we don’t expect any mistakes. We expect things to go smoothly all the way without any problems or hassles that we would expect in other areas of life. But why do we expect this? Why is following God’s plans any different from following our own plans? The answer is that God’s plans are perfect. His plans never go wrong and they are always accomplished. That’s what the Israelite people believed – when God said something would happen they knew with absolute certainty that it would happen. We too believe this as Christians. But that’s not the full story. Yes, we believe that our own plans will at some point fail us, and yes, we believe that God’s plans will never fail us but what about the middle bits? The story of Moses and Aaron meeting Pharaoh is a good example of those ‘middle’ situations where it looks like God’s plans are actually going very wrong. But we know the outcome will show that God was right all along. So let’s look at how God makes His plan come into action despite all appearances to the contrary.

It all started very well – Moses had succeeded in persuading God to allow him to have a helper. He had secured a meeting with Pharaoh and was going to get him to let the Hebrews go and worship God. Everything was going to plan – Pharaoh would let the people go and they would finally be able to worship their God. So Moses and Aaron go to meet Pharaoh. They confidently go up to Pharaoh and say “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘Let my people go, so that they may celebrate a festival to me in the wilderness.’” They used the name that God had given them to use and surely Pharaoh would allow their request – they had come from Yahweh Himself and who can defy the will of Yahweh?! But as we heard, it all goes very wrong. Pharaoh’s first words to them shatter their confidence immediately. He responds, saying, “Who is the Lord that I should heed him and let Israel go?” You can imagine the look on Moses and Aaron’s face! They were confident to the point of arrogance that Pharaoh would simply listen to them and agree to their terms. But instead of this Pharaoh not only refuses their request but says something even more devastating – he says that he has never heard of the Lord their God. Moses and Aaron used God’s name to give them the authority to demand the release of Israel, and Pharaoh turns to them and says this name has no influence as far as he is concerned. In their minds, their only way of persuading Pharaoh has just been lost. If he doesn’t respond to the command of God, then what else can move this man? They give a half-hearted second attempt this time saying it was the God of the Hebrews who had sent them. Their confidence has been lost so they resort to pleading with Pharaoh. This has even less affect and makes Pharaoh mad. So they leave feeling demoralised and low, having caused more problems than they have solved. They had made Pharaoh so mad that he put even more work onto the Hebrews. He made a commandment that said that no straw was to be given to the Hebrews in order to make the bricks. They had to go find their own straw and Pharaoh still expected the same amount of bricks to be made each day. As you can imagine this did not please the Hebrews. So it appears that Moses and Aaron had dismally failed in their task and as a result had made things a lot worse for their own people.

But why didn’t they go back to Pharaoh? They had been given a mission by God and they hadn’t completed this mission yet so why stop there? They were demoralised and felt like failures. They had let the people down and so maybe they thought that by pushing the issue any further it would make life even worse for their people. Anyway at this point they decide not to go back to Pharaoh. But the oppression still continued. When the Hebrews could not produce the required number of bricks, the supervisors of the people were beaten. These supervisors were probably Hebrews who Pharaoh had given a position of authority, and this point is important. The best way to oppress a people and ensure their submission is to cause them to argue among themselves. By promoting some of the people into leadership positions made some feel superior and the others resentful and jealous. At the very least this would have caused arguments. So Pharaoh was using the classic tactic of “divide and conquer.” By making the people fight among themselves he was making his own position stronger. So when the leaders are punished for the peoples’ lack of work it serves to further this divide.

The next thing we see is the leaders going to complain to Pharaoh. They feel unfairly treated and want to appeal to Pharaoh. But Pharaoh is having none of it. He tells them that they are just being lazy and trying to use the excuse of worshipping their God as a reason to be lazy. When the leaders find out that Moses and Aaron were the cause of all the problems, the anger of the people and the leaders would be directed towards them. What would you do if you were Moses? Would you want to cause even more trouble by going back to Pharaoh, would you accept the blame? I probably wouldn’t! The leaders say to Moses and Aaron “The Lord look upon you and judge! You have brought us into bad odour with Pharaoh and his officials, and have put a sword in their hand to kill us.” That’s the last straw for Moses! Not only has God failed to free his people, and not only has his own people turned against him, they are calling on the name God to judge Moses! The same name that God gave Moses to use against Pharaoh is being used against him! So Moses has had enough. The plan had failed and he wants some answers from God. In his anger and desperation he calls out to God: “O Lord, why have you mistreated this people? Why did you ever send me? Since I first came to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has mistreated this people, and you have done nothing at all to deliver you people.” Do you see what has happened here? Moses is passing the buck as it were. He is saying to God ‘the people blame me for the problems, but we know that it is your fault God.” He wants an answer as to how God could let His plan go so terribly wrong. Moses is at his lowest point. It all started on Mount Sinai when God gave him the great revelation. From there Moses expected to go to Pharaoh and then God would make Pharaoh let the people go. It should have been easy. But things didn’t appear to be going to plan. What was wrong here?

You can read this passage in many ways but I think it shows us something important about the way God was working. Moses’ mistake was to assume that he completely understood God’s plan. The first thing we hear about is Moses going to Pharaoh with a demand from the Lord. He is confident to the point arrogance because he assumes that God’s plan was to set the people free straight away. This assumption was wrong – God had a different plan. So what was this plan? Why did God say He was going to release the people of Israel, send Moses to tell Pharaoh and then not go through with it? I would argue that God wanted to show the people something important and the best way to do this was to let Moses fail. He wanted the people to know that only God was responsible for freeing His people. So to do this He sent Moses and Aaron to the great Pharaoh of Egypt. As we heard, Pharaoh asserted what he thought was his supreme power and authority and punished the people even more. On top of this, Pharaoh says he doesn’t even know of this God they were talking about. So the stage is set up nicely. Pharaoh now has an image of being all-powerful, the one in control of the Hebrews lives. The people, including Moses, Aaron and the leaders of the people, would be asking “who could possibly free us now from such a great ruler?” We know the answer and so did Moses – it was God who would do the great deed. However, Moses was demoralised and didn’t understand God’s plan so that’s why he questioned God.

But it doesn’t all end here. They way the chapters have been split up doesn’t fit the story. The story in chapter 5 doesn’t end at verse 23 but rather it ends in chapter 6 verse 1. Moses has just accused God of giving up on His people. It seems like there is no hope for the people of God. But then God replies; it is now time for Him to act. He says, “Now you shall see what I will do to Pharaoh: Indeed, by a mighty hand he will let them go; by a mighty hand he will drive them out of his land.” God was waiting for these things to happen before He acted. He wanted to show that it was only by His “Mighty hand” that Pharaoh would let the people go. No eloquent words by man would do the job, only the action of God. And with this the whole story becomes clear. God allowed Moses to fail so that it would be clear it was God doing the freeing of Israel not Moses. It would be by God’s hand that they would be saved from slavery. All the events were under God’s control the whole time.

So, can we learn anything from these events? I think we can. As Christians we believe that God has a plan for our lives. This is basic to what we believe. We believe that God created us for a reason and that He can use our lives in some way. But the tension we all face at times is knowing the plan that God has for us. We can be like Moses thinking that we have God’s plan worked out, that we know exactly what needs to be done. Or we can be the exact opposite, not really knowing much about God’s plan for our lives. Sometimes when life is hard and things seem to go wrong we can blame God. We feel sorry for ourselves and think that God has failed to live up to His side of the bargain. This is exactly what Moses experienced! He felt let down by God and thought that the plan had failed. But we know that just as He did with Moses, God will bring His plan for our lives to completion. The apostle Paul was also confident of this fact. In Philippians 1:6 he writes “I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ.” When God starts something He will complete it. In Isaiah 55:11 it says “so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” So when it feels like God has let us down we need to hold on to these promises that God’s plans are always perfect. For when we trust in God’s plan we will see great things happening to us and through us.
 

Amen.

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