Remember
that Moses did not want to go to Pharaoh.
He spent two chapters (Exodus 3-4) trying to talk his way out of the
job. Finally, he knuckled under and went
to meet the Israelites, who believed and worshipped the Lord because he had
seen their misery (Exodus 4: 31). So
far, so good.
But the initial
meeting with Pharaoh didn’t go nearly so well.
Pharaoh refused to recognize Israel’s god and figured, “If they have
time for a three-day vacation, they have too much time. Let’s increase their workload!” (You thought your boss was demanding!) And, of course, the Israelites blamed Moses
for their increased misfortune. This seems
to be proof of the old adage, “No good deed goes unpunished.”
One thought
that occurs to me is that Israel’s faith was barely skin deep. In one instant, they were worshipping and
believing; in the next, they were shooting the messenger. I think that there’s an important insight
that helps us here. We often assume that
ever since the days of Abraham Israel had had just the one God, that they were
thorough going monotheists. However,
Abraham himself had come out of a polytheistic family; Rachel (the wife of
Jacob, Abraham’s grandson) was a polytheist (remember she stole her father’s
household idols, Genesis 31:19); and Israel lived in a thoroughly polytheistic
world.
Now, in the
ancient polytheistic world, gods were not all-powerful. Individual gods were powerful in their
specific arenas and in their individual territories. And military loss usually meant either that
your god wasn’t as strong as someone else’s or that your god turned his back on
you. So, the Israelites probably viewed
Yahweh (that’s their god’s personal name, usually rendered lord in our
English translations) as one god among many.
One of three things was probably going on when Moses came and told them Yahweh
had remembered them. They might have
forgotten all about their ancestral god.
(It had been 400 years since Jacob’s death, after all!) They might have assumed he was angry at them
and had abandoned them, in which case they were grateful he was thinking of
them again. Or, they may have assume
that their god just couldn’t exert any influence in the face of the Egyptian
gods. (I suspect Israel’s reality was a
mix of all three; the last one, in particular, will help explain some of the
plagues that are coming in the next chapters.)
The other
thought that occurs to me is the frustration that Moses gave voice to in Exodus
5:22-23. It’s as if he’s saying, “I didn’t
want to go; You made me; now, things are worse!
I did the right thing, and it didn’t help! What gives?”
That
happens to us, doesn’t it? We try to do
the right things, and sometimes they just don’t work out. I remember a conversation with an aggressive
person I had many years ago. There was
lots of accusation in the air. I thought
about my psychology training and tried very hard not to counter-attack. I went out of my way to use non-threatening “I”
language. (That’s a communication
strategy in which one avoids saying, “You cause these things,” and tries
instead to describe one’s own experience, “I feel . . .”) Anyway, I remember the conversation because
the other person looked at me and said, “I, I, I! It’s not all about you!” In that case, trying to do the right thing to
defuse a situation actually caused it to blow up!
Look, I
didn’t give up on “I” language after that incident. I recognize the wisdom of a style of
conversation that tries to avoid accusation and yet speaks honestly. It’s a good strategy, even if it doesn’t
always work out like I want. And here’s
the lesson: we do the right thing
because it’s the right thing—even if it doesn’t have the results we
expected. We’d sure like it if doing the
right thing always worked out, but it doesn’t always. Jesus always did the right thing, and that
got Him rejection, suffering, and a cross.
Yet, the Father used that less-than-optimal response to work salvation
for the world. Do the right thing, and
trust God to bring something good out of it—in His time and in His way.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.